Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 14

August 17, 2014, 7:01 pm

≫ Next: A Mystery Photo

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 13

$

0

0

And so we come to the endgame of the Shirley Temple Phenomenon. It's the
summer of 1939; Shirley is 11 years old -- though she and the rest of the world
still think she's only ten -- and she's bumping up against a principle that won't
even be articulated until 1997: what critic Louis Menand called "The Iron Law of
Stardom". In a New Yorker article by that title published in March '97, Menand
posited his "Iron Law" as one of the immutable laws of the universe, like gravity
or the speed of light. Put simply, the Iron Law is this: stardom never lasts more
than three years. Menand was careful, however, to distinguish between "stardom"
and "being a star". Once a star, always a star, he said, but actual stardom is
something else -- "the period of inevitability, the time when everything works
in a way that makes you think it will work that way forever...the intersection
of personality with history, a perfect congruence of the way the world
happens to be and the way the star is." Thus, Menand explained, Elizabeth
Taylor remained a star all her life by virtue of being the person who was
Elizabeth Taylor from 1963 (Cleopatra) to 1966 (Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?), and Al Pacino remains a star as the person who was Al Pacino
from 1972 (The Godfather) to 1975 (Dog Day Afternoon).

By this reasoning, and with hindsight, we can see that Shirley in 1939
fits the pattern. She remains a star, but it's by virtue of being the person
who was Shirley Temple from 1934 (Little Miss Marker and Bright Eyes)
to 1937 (Wee Willie Winkie and Heidi). Nineteen-forty will round out not
only the decade, but her reign atop the box office and her career at 20th
Century Fox as well.


The Blue Bird (released January 19, 1940)

The Blue Bird was Shirley's second brush with a Nobel Prize winner, after Rudyard Kipling and Wee Willie Winkie. Belgian poet, essayist and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) was a leading proponent of the Symbolist movement in European art and literature of the late 19th century. His most influential and commercially successful play was probably Pelleas and Melisande (1893), a doomed-lovers tragedy that inspired numerous operas, all of which are performed these days far more often than the original play.

A close second to that, however, would have to be The Blue Bird, which was an immediate hit when it premiered at Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre in 1908. When Maeterlinck won the Nobel Prize in 1911 "in appreciation of his many-sided literary activities, and especially of his dramatic works," the citation explicitly mentioned "a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration". This could only have been a reference to The Blue Bird, which was then sweeping the world and would have been prominent in the minds of the Swedish Academy (in those days, commercial success was not considered a disadvantage when Nobel Prize time rolled around).

The Blue Bird recounts the many adventures of the boy Tyltyl ("til-til") and his little sister Mytyl ("mee-til"), the children of a poor woodcutter somewhere in Central Europe. One night the children are roused from sleep by a bent and withered old woman who, changing shape, is revealed as a beautiful fairy named Berylune. The fairy dispatches the two on a quest to find the Blue Bird of Happiness, in which they are to be accompanied by their dog and cat, both of whom are magically given human shape for the occasion. Also accompanying them, and also in human form, are the spirits of Bread, Water, Milk, Fire and Light. The children's search takes them to many fanciful places -- the palace of Berylune, which once belonged to the infamous Bluebeard; the Palace of Night, deep underground; the Graveyard of the Happy Dead, where they are briefly reunited with their late grandparents and seven brothers and sisters who all died in childhood; the Palace of Happiness, where luxuries and joys abound; and the Kingdom of the Future, where they meet children waiting to be born, all of whom have a knowledge of their destiny that they will lose once they begin their earthly lives (Tyltyl and Mytyl even meet their own future little brother, who already knows that he too will die in infancy). In the final scene Tyltyl and Mytyl awaken back in their own beds; their parents think they have only slept through the night, but the children know better -- how could both have had the same dream? Whether dream or magic, their quest has failed, they never did find the elusive bird they sought. Then, to their surprise, they see that the Blue Bird is right there in their own house, and was there all along. At the very end the bird flies away, and Tyltyl turns to the audience and says, "If any of you should find him, would you be so very kind as to give him back to us?... We need him for our happiness, later on...."

My memory of Maeterlinck's play is unfortunately sketchy; it's been more than 40 years since I read it, and I wouldn't read it again if you held a gun to my brother's head. I found it to be long, turgid and utterly pointless, and it calls for spectacular effects that might have been wonderful to look at but make awfully dry reading (given the state of stagecraft in 1908, Stanislavski's set designers, carpenters and stage managers must have been tearing their hair as opening night drew near). The play was a great success in the first and second decades of the last century, no doubt because the fantastic effects it calls for made for quite a wondrous spectacle to behold. But after that first flush of success and the afterglow of the Nobel Prize, its charm quickly evaporated.

The reason isn't hard to figure out. Despite its elaborate settings and special effects, and characters symbolic of everything under the sun, The Blue Bird simply has no story. Why do Tyltyl and Mytyl undertake this convoluted journey? Why don't they just tell the old hag to get lost, then roll over and go back to sleep? The kids have nothing at stake in this quest; they're just gallivanting around in Maeterlinck's head. In The Wizard of Oz -- to cite an example that will come up more than once in the course of this post -- what Dorothy and her companions are after is crystal-clear, and there's never any doubt what's at stake. That's why The Blue Bird hasn't been produced in 90 years, and is never even read except under duress by hapless students in university drama classes -- while L. Frank Baum's tale still sells thousands of copies every year.

With all that said, 20th Century Fox's 1940 version of The Blue Bird has been given a bum rap over the years. The main thrust of the rap is that The Blue Bird was Fox's attempt to duplicate the success of MGM's The Wizard of Oz (this has also fed the myth that Shirley "lost" the role of Dorothy). It would be closer to the truth to say that both pictures were attempts to duplicate the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. (In which, by the way, both failed. The Blue Bird, in Time Magazine's inevitable snark line, "laid an egg", but Oz didn't do much better, either with the critics or at the box office; it was voted "Most Colossal Flop" of 1939 by the Harvard Lampoon, and it took 16 years and two reissues for the picture to turn a profit.)

Now let's stipulate right up front that The Blue Bird is nowhere near the same league as The Wizard of Oz -- but what movie is? Of all the many differences between them, the most basic one, and the one that most redounds to the advantage of The Wizard of Oz, is that MGM was adapting L. Frank Baum while 20th Century Fox was adapting Maurice Maeterlinck.

Or trying to. The Blue Bird's greatest faults are inherent in Maeterlinck's play; this was one case where Fox might have been justified in jettisoning everything but the title. Instead, Ernest Pascal's script made an honest effort (with moderate success) to streamline, simplify and motivate the wild excesses of Maeterlinck's fantasy. First, merely as a practical matter, the birth order of the lead siblings was reversed, making Mytyl (Shirley) the older and Tyltyl (Johnny Russell) the younger. The size of their expedition was streamlined, with their only companions being the cat Tylette (Gale Sondergaard, right) and dog Tylo (Eddie Collins, next to her). Of Maeterlinck's five spirits, only Light remained (played by Helen Ericson), and she served, logically enough, as the children's guide on their quest. (The group is shown here as they set out, with Jessie Ralph as Berylune on the left.)

Pascal also attempted to motivate the quest by making Mytyl something of a brat, selfish, petulant and malcontented. She whines in an early scene about how unhappy she is -- so it makes some sense for her to strike out, dragging her kid brother behind, looking for that Blue Bird. It also adds meaning to her return home -- when, as the saying goes, she truly knows the place for the first time, and finds that the Blue Bird of Happiness has been there waiting for her all along, if only she would see it. This change (and it's amazing, when you think about it, that Stanislavski didn't suggest it to Maeterlinck in the first place) means that Mytyl and Tyltyl have been on a real journey from one psychological place to another, and not just running around all night getting into trouble.

Finally, Pascal simplified the children's travels considerably. First they visit their late grandparents (Cecilia Loftus and Al Shean), who are awakened from their eternal slumber now that the children are thinking of them (all those dead brothers and sisters are mercifully dispensed with). This visit, bittersweet as it is, teaches Mytyl and Tyltyl that Happiness is not to be found in the Past, and they must regretfully move on, leaving Granny and Grandpa to resume their dreamless sleep.

Next, in a scene with no counterpart in Maetterlinck's play, the children visit the home of Mr. and Mrs. Luxury (Nigel Bruce and Laura Hope Crews), two aging twits with far more money than brains, who unhesitatingly indulge their every shallow whim. At first the children are seduced by all the fancy clothes and fun to be had, but they come to realize that Happiness is not found in Things, and they escape (this despite the treachery of Tylette, who for feline reasons of her own tries to thwart them at every turn).

There follows another departure from Maeterlinck. After they escape from The Luxurys, the children must pass through a great forest. Tylette, hoping to rid herself of the children and thus gain her freedom, runs ahead of them and incites the trees (represented by Edwin Maxwell, Sterling Holloway and others) to avenge themselves on the children of the woodcutter who is always chopping them down.The trees take the bait, even calling on their old enemies lightning and fire -- so eager are they to destroy the children that they willingly immolate themselves in a great forest fire. Tylette, however, has outsmarted herself; trying to lure the children to their doom, she is herself burned to death, and only the courageous efforts of the loyal Tylo enables the children to escape to safety. 

The fire is a highlight of The Blue Bird; even in this age of computer graphics when anything is possible and nothing is surprising, it is full of astonishing moments. This scene (the work, once again, of the great Fred Sersen) accounted for one of The Blue Bird's two Oscar nominations, for special effects. (The other was for Arthur Miller and Ray Rennahan's Technicolor cinematography. In both categories The Blue Bird lost, and justifiably, to The Thief of Bagdad.) This forest fire would be the best scene in The Blue Bird if it weren't for...

...the Kingdom of the Future, where (returning to Maeterlinck's text) Mytyl and Tyltyl find countless children are waiting to be born. In this remarkable scene, which
looks like something designed by Maxfield Parrish, Mytyl and Tyltyl wander among the eager throng, so amazed at what they see that they completely forget to look for the Blue Bird. They meet a little girl who joyfully greets them by name (Ann Todd, not to be confused with the British actress of the same name), telling them that she will be their little sister, "in a year perhaps." Then she adds sadly, "I'll only be with you a little while."

Mytyl and Tyltyl wander among children who are preparing for
what will be their calling in life. One boy proudly displays the
anesthetic he will discover; another tinkers with an electric light.
Still another, solitary and melancholy, tells them his destiny is to
fight against slavery, injustice and inequality -- but people "won't
listen...they'll destroy me."

Then into the hall strides Father Time (Thurston Hall), coming to call those whose time it is to be born -- including that melancholy fighter against injustice. (If this boy is who we think he is, it tells us that Mytyl and Tyltyl are visiting the Kingdom of the Future on February 11, 1809. A clincher, for those who notice such things, is composer Alfred Newman quoting a couple of bars from his score for John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln the year before.)

Father Time has to speak sharply to these young
people (Dorothy Joyce and Tommy Baker). They
knew this day would come, but they couldn't help
themselves -- they've fallen in love. She begs to
go with him ("Please, we love each other, and I
shall be born too late.") while he pleads to stay
behind ("I will be gone before she comes down.").

Time is implacable, and both the lovers know
they cannot choose. At last the boy tears himself
away and the girl falls sobbing. Soulmates, they
know they will never meet on earth, but will live
their lives out in a cold, lonely world without
ever understanding why.

The children whose time has come
board a graceful alabaster ship with
silver sails and the figurehead of a
swan. As the boat pulls away from
the quay into a golden sea and sky,
the children left behind, still awaiting
their turn, bid their friends a joyous
bon voyage. The departing passengers
fix their eyes on the far horizon, and
they sing:

To the world so far away
Sail we now at break of day.
Mothers waiting there below.
Do they hear us? Do they know?

From the unseen distance another song
can be heard -- the song of the mothers
coming out to meet them.

The last we see of the children -- those on the ship

as well as those left behind -- is a glimpse of each

of the two young lovers. First the boy -- miserable,
downcast, the only one not singing...

...then the girl, the only one not waving a cheering farewell.

She lies awash in her own tears, knowing in her broken heart
that her life is over without ever having had a chance to begin.
As the ship sails into the golden mists, it is a journey begun
in lovers' parting -- lovers who are fated to be born, live, and
die, never to meet again this side of Heaven.

Before we move on, I want to pause to acknowledge

this little girl. Her name is Caryll Ann Ekelund, and

in The Blue Bird she plays a child who tries to sneak

aboard the boat transporting children to be born. Father

Time catches her -- this is the third time she's tried to

be born before her time -- and he scolds her gently before

sending her back to wait her turn. Caryll Ann was four

years old in the summer of 1939 when she played this

wordless cameo -- and sadly, she did not live to see

herself on the big screen. At a Halloween party later

that year, a jack-o-lantern candle ignited her costume

and she died three days later of her burns. She was

buried in the pink tunic she wears here.

This lovely and poignant scene in the Kingdom of the Future -- straight out of Maetterlinck, but massaged by Ernest Pascal to make it less cumbersome and archly precious than it reads in the original play -- is the last stop on Mytyl and Tyltyl's journey; having visited the Future, and still not finding the Blue Bird, there's nothing left for them but to return home.

The next morning, Mytyl amazes her parents with her cheerful attitude ("Oh Mummy! Everything is so wonderful, isn't it?"), so different from her petulant whining of the night before. And along with this newfound happiness in hearth and home, the children, to their surprise, even find the Blue Bird they have been searching for -- but then, just as suddenly, they lose it again as the heedless bird flies away. Nevertheless, the new, improved Mytyl is undismayed. "Don't worry," she says, "we'll find it again...I know we can, because now we know where to look for it." Then, like the Tyltyl of the play, she addresses her last words directly to the audience: "Don't we?"

The Blue Bird was the most expensive of all Shirley's pictures -- $1.5 million, she tells us -- and it took a terrible bath at the box office, both in its original road-show engagements in New York, Detroit and San Francisco, and after going into general release at Easter. This was not, as legend would have it, because it suffered by comparison with The Wizard of Oz, but simply because The Blue Bird's time had long since passed. Even the 1918 silent version, lavishly produced within a decade of the play's premiere, was a flop. (The curse repeated itself yet again in 1976, when a U.S./Soviet co-production directed by George Cukor sank like a rock. Some people never learn.)

The idea that The Blue Bird suffered by comparison with The Wizard of Oz in 1940 basically springs from the fact that it suffers by that same comparison today. Almost everyone who sees The Blue Bird nowadays can't help seeing similarities to Oz, and of course Blue Bird can only be found wanting. There is, for starters, the black-and-white prologue, with the switch to Technicolor when the real adventure begins (although The Blue Bird never returns to black-and-white; in keeping with Mytyl's improved outlook, the Technicolor stays to the end). Also, there's the premise of the fantasy/dream and the look-for-happiness-in-your-own-back-yard moral. Which is ironic, considering that those elements are not found in L. Frank Baum but were swiped by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf from Maeterlinck's play and grafted onto their script for Oz (where they did not belong). In a real sense, MGM's Wizard of Oz was an imitation of The Blue Bird, and not the other way around.

If viewers today were as familiar with Maeterlinck's dreadful play as they are with Oz, The Blue Bird's virtues would stand out more clearly. Ernest Pascal greatly improved on the original, tightening and focusing the diffuse and rambling story, and adding two elements lacking in the play: a villain (Tylette the cat) to scheme against the children, and a champion (Tylo the dog) to come to their aid in times of danger. For all his improvements, however, Pascal never solved the dramatic problem at the heart of this fatally flawed play: there is simply no reason for Mytyl and Tyltyl to undertake this dangerous quest, and no clear reward at journey's end to justify it. It was a shaggy-dog fairy tale when Maeterlinck wrote it, and a shaggy-dog fairy tale it remained.

The play's reputation had lost its luster by the time Darryl Zanuck and 20th Century Fox undertook to film it, and the movie's reviews reflected the fact. In the Times, Frank S. Nugent confessed to having "long considered 'The Blue Bird' complete twaddle", an opinion which the movie did nothing to dispel: "it has about the gayety [sic] and sparkle of the first half of 'A Christmas Carol'". Variety's "Flin" wrote: "Whatever freshness and imaginative charm the Maurice Maeterlinck poem play possessed a generation ago seem to have tarnished through the years...Not even Shirley Temple, in a gallery of sparking technicolor [sic] settings, and aided by all the wizardry of the finest technical workmanship, can make it seem new." (To be fair, Shirley didn't have much chance. Her performance is strong, but dominated by the story rather than dominating it; as written by both Maeterlinck and Pascal, Mytyl is as much a spectator to The Blue Bird's goings-on as we are.) Flin correctly cited the scene in the Kingdom of the Future as "the best and perhaps complete justification for the production...However trite some other passages of 'The Blue Bird' seem to be, this episode is touching and fine eerie storytelling." And in The New Yorker, John Mosher said, "All in all, I should rank 'The Blue Bird,' with its pretty moments and its lapses, too, somewhere halfway between the Disneys and 'The Wizard of Oz.'" (Notice that Oz, which an earlier New Yorker review had called "a stinkeroo", is at the bottom of Mosher's scale.)

The opinion of The Blue Bird that would be most interesting to hear, alas, I have been unable to find: that of Maurice Maeterlinck himself. Maeterlinck landed in the U.S. later in 1940, a refugee from the Nazis storming across France and his native Belgium, and he remained here until 1947, when he returned to his home in Nice (he died at 86 in 1949). He may well have seen The Blue Bird somewhere along the line, but what he thought remains unknown. In Child Star Shirley quotes Darryl Zanuck as saying only that the playwright was consulted on the script, and that he objected to the cutting of so many of his characters, but more than that I cannot say.

Whatever Maeterlinck might have thought, The Blue Bird was a sincere effort, exerted with all the resources at 20th Century Fox's command, and it holds up today on the strength of its production values -- and, it must be said, despite the deadly weaknesses of the source material. It holds up, that is, if -- and it's a big "if" -- one can watch it without making invidious comparisons with The Wizard of Oz.

But whatever I or anyone else may think today, in 1940 The Blue Bird utterly failed to find its audience -- as the silent version had done in 1918, and as another version would do 36 years later. Its failure was probably Maeterlinck's fault more than Shirley's, but hers was the more familiar name, and the stain of the flop stuck to her. The next time out, things would not get better.


Young People (released August 23, 1940)

As Fox had followed the lavish The Little Princess by placing Shirley in a B western, so they followed the even more lavish The Blue Bird with an even-more-B musical. But more significantly, perhaps, by the time Young People opened in New York in August -- in fact, even before Variety reviewed it in July -- the picture was already a lame-duck movie. Fox chairman Joseph Schenck had announced on May 12, 1940 that the studio was "releasing" (i.e., "firing") Shirley from the remaining 13 months of her seven-year contract. The effort of crafting vehicles for a growing child star -- and of dealing with Gertrude and George Temple's increasing objections to the unvarying parade of orphan and waif roles -- had become more trouble than the diminishing box-office returns were worth. So Young People would be Shirley's swan song at 20th Century Fox. The Blue Bird might at least have ended her career with a bang; Young People was a whimper.

Shirley's co-stars were Jack Oakie and Charlotte Greenwood as Joe and Kit Ballantine, a husband-and-wife vaudeville team who informally adopt the infant daughter of their best friends, the O'Haras, when both parents succumb to untimely deaths.

The infant grows into Wendy (Shirley) and is incorporated into the act, now called The Three Ballantines. As Wendy approaches adolescence, Joe and Kit decide to retire from show business to a little farm they've bought in Connecticut, where Wendy can enjoy a "normal" life. But their brash showbiz manners scandalize the staid provincial citizens of their new home and the Ballantines become outcasts and objects of local ridicule, to the point where they are driven out of town in frustrated disgrace.

In the end, a fortuitous hurricane makes landfall near the town, Joe becomes a hero by rescuing a group of children caught out in the storm, and a tearful scolding by Wendy of the town's leading citizens and the Ballantines' chief tormentors (Kathleen Howard and Minor Watson) brings these bigoted small-town snobs to their senses, and the Ballantines are belatedly welcomed by their new neighbors with open arms.

In Child Star Shirley says Edwin Blum and Don Ettlinger's script for Young People"made cheerless reading", and it makes even more cheerless viewing. The new songs by Harry Warren and Mack Gordon (still three years from their Oscars for "You'll Never Know" in Hello, Frisco, Hello) are lackluster, and the movie has a half-hearted romantic subplot for Arleen Whelan and George Montgomery that makes one long for the scintillating screen chemistry of June Lang and Michael Whalen in Wee Willie Winkie.

In early scenes, Young People illustrates Wendy's start in Joe and Kit's act by tipping in, clumsily, footage from Shirley's "old" movies. First Jack Oakie and Charlotte Greenwood sing a chorus of Henry Kailikai's "On the Beach at Waikiki", followed by an extended shot of Shirley's hula dance from Curly Top. Then, most egregiously, Oakie and Greenwood perpetrate a crass and stupid trashing of Brown and Gorney's "Baby, Take a Bow" before the movie cuts to Shirley's solo of the song from Stand Up and Cheer! "The film's value," Shirley accurately writes, "amounted to less than the sum of its parts." Shirley deserved better, and so did Jack Oakie and Charlotte Greenwood. Hell, George Montgomery deserved better. Ironically, Young People was directed at his usual headlong pace by Allan Dwan, who years later would assert that Shirley was "over" before he undertook to direct her in Heidi. Shirley was by no means "over" in 1937, but by 1940 (and her third picture for Dwan), she certainly was.

Reviews were surprisingly indulgent -- perhaps betraying a certain degree of relief that there would be no more Shirley Temple pictures for the foreseeable future. "Walt" in Variety wrote: "'Young People' establishes the definite spot for continuance of Shirley Temple in pictures through her adolescent and formative years. Not as a star, burdened with carrying a picture on her own, but in the groove of a featured player sharing billing and material with other top-notch artists...an above average programmer..." The Times's Bosley Crowther added, "If this is really the end, it is not a bad exit at all for little Shirley, the superannuated sunbeam." Even The New Yorker's John Mosher, who rightly pegged Susannah of the Mounties as "very minor Temple", said, "Miss Temple has obviously retired in the full tide of her powers...she shows no weariness, no slacking up, no arthritic pangs."

If these valedictory tributes were intended even subliminally to soften the blow and let Shirley go out a winner, it didn't work. Young People, even with its shoestrings-and-stock-footage budget, was a flop. Shirley was no longer tops at the box office -- she had dropped to fifth in 1939, and by 1940 was out of the top ten -- and Frank Nugent finally got the wish he expressed in his review of Wee Willie Winkie: Shirley would be a has-been at 15.

*                    *                    * 

Shirley's divorce from 20th Century Fox had been neither amicable nor particularly acrimonious. As late as April 1940 Darryl Zanuck had even resurrected the idea of starring her in Lady Jane, but she had outgrown the part by then -- in Young People she was already developing hips and breasts (in Child Star Shirley recalls getting her first period at her "tenth" birthday party in 1939). Both Zanuck and the Temples were ready for a split, and on April 10 Gertrude Temple retained agent Frank Orsatti to negotiate Shirley's release. Later that year, Orsatti landed Shirley a two-picture contract with MGM, but it would prove to be an uncomfortable fit. Metro turned out to be unhappy with Shirley's hair, her face, her figure, her singing and her dancing, while neither Shirley nor her mother were happy with the studio's makeover attempts. Mrs. Temple nixed the idea of Shirley co-starring with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Babes on Broadway, fearing (probably correctly) that in their company her daughter would get short shrift.

On top of that, Shirley's first meeting with producer Arthur Freed had not gone well. Shirley says (and frankly, I believe her) that Freed said, "I have something made just for you. You'll be my new star!", then stepped out from behind his desk and exposed himself to her. Shirley reacted like the 12-year-old she was, bursting into a nervous laugh that didn't sit well with the notorious casting-couch jockey, and he angrily ordered her out of his office. At almost the same moment (again, I believe Shirley), L.B. Mayer was in his office coming on to an affronted Mother Gertrude -- stopping short of exhibitionism but making his intentions plain. Perhaps coincidentally, Shirley's contract was quickly redrafted: only one picture, with no approval or creative input from Shirley or her mother.

The sole result of Shirley's sojourn at MGM was Kathleen ('41), a "tedious, thinly plotted fable" (Variety) where, according to the Times's Theodore Strauss, "In those wistful, winsome close-ups Miss Temple seemed to be trying to say just one thing: 'Get me out of here!'" In any event, that's exactly what happened.

Next, Shirley went under contract to David O. Selznick, which worked out better for her, although her days of stardom were behind her. Throughout the 1940s she would give some effective performances -- Since You Went Away ('44), Kiss and Tell ('45), The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer ('47) -- but Shirley was slow to learn that what had made her "sparkle" as a five-and-six-year-old could look infantile and affected in a young woman of 18 or 19. An ill-starred marriage at 17 to Army Air Corps Sgt. John Agar (who parlayed the connection into a long but inconsequential career in B movies) ended in 1950 -- outlasting Shirley's movie career by one year (her last picture was A Kiss for Corliss in 1949).

Shirley did in time get the hang of grown-up acting, as the host and occasional star of Shirley Temple's Storybook and Shirley Temple Theatre (NBC, 1958-60), giving intelligent and measured performances in "The House of the Seven Gables", "The Land of Oz", "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and other episodes. (I remember as a child being unable to connect this adult Shirley to the curly-haired little girl in those old movies that were turning up on TV about the same time.) But by then acting was more a hobby than a calling, and when the show ran its course in two season she left it as she had left Hollywood in 1949, with never a backward glance. Ahead lay a third career -- or fourth, if you count wife to Charles Black and mother to their two children, plus a daughter by John Agar -- in politics and international diplomacy. And let us not forget her courageous battle with breast cancer in the 1970s, becoming one of the first celebrities to go public with her experience in that brush with death. All in all, the second half of the 20th century took her far from the tot who stood security for her movie-father's bet on a fixed horse race and flew off on the Good Ship Lollipop. She had the grace and poise to take her long life as it came, and to make the most of it.

It's been a while since I posted a YouTube clip of Shirley. I think it's fitting to conclude with this one of her last public appearance on January 29, 2006, accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild. She is three months away from her 78th birthday (having long since learned her true age):

This was the woman who left us on February 10 of this year; long live her memory. She changed forever what it means to be a child star -- mainly because, as critic Mark Steyn aptly put it, she wasn't a "child star" at all. She was a star who just happened to be a child.

Epilogue

So there you have it, Shirley Temple's entire career as a rising star and reigning princess during Hollywood's Golden Age. As I said at the very beginning, while I had nothing but fond memories of Shirley, I had not seen any of these 24 pictures since I was about the age Shirley was when she made them. Several of them I had never seen at all. Seeing them -- again or for the first time -- was like a trip in a time machine with two stops: one at Shirley's childhood, and another at my own.

Standouts? Well, the first one that comes to mind is...

Wee Willie Winkie  This may be the best picture -- as a picture -- of them all, and John Ford made the difference. It was, in effect, a sort of children's introduction to the Cavalry Trilogy -- for that matter, almost a trainer-wheel introduction for Ford himself, a dry run for the later, full flowering of his art, after his experience in the Navy during World War II had deepened and enriched his understanding of military camaraderie. The fact that 19-year-old Shirley would be on hand for the first chapter of the trilogy, 1948's Fort Apache, only strengthens the connection. There is nothing in Shirley's career quite as moving as Pvt. Winkie singing "Auld Lang Syne" at Sgt. MacDuff's bedside, followed by her affectionate gaze at the friend she doesn't know -- or cannot admit -- has just died.

Little Miss Marker  There's a reason this picture made her a bona fide star; it has what just may be her most fully realized and least self-conscious performance. If Sgt. MacDuff's deathbed in Wee Willie Winkie is Shirley's best single scene, a close second is the first exchange of dialogue and eye-contact between Shirley's Markie and Adolphe Menjou's Sorrowful Jones.

Curly Top  I think Leslie Halliwell got this one right; Shirley's full range of talents -- acting, singing and dancing -- are showcased here at their very peak, topped off by the almost startling tour de force of "When I Grow Up".

Stowaway  This one stays in the mind -- mine, at least -- for the deep bench of Shirley's supporting cast, and for her sly comic rapport with Robert Young. 

The Little Princess  Another strong supporting cast, beautiful Technicolor, Shirley's acting chops at their most assured, and the most lavish production Shirley ever had to carry -- which she did, easily.

Poor Little Rich Girl  A whimsically charming score and fine chemistry with Jack Haley and Alice Faye help this one triumph over the bizarre elements of the script. Plus another tour de force in that tap routine to "Military Man".

Also, in varous bits and pieces, anything -- acting or dancing -- with Bill Robinson (honorable mention: Buddy Ebsen). 

And finally, a special nod to The Blue Bird, just because it's an honest and unstinting effort that has been so cruelly and unjustly maligned for nearly 75 years, forced to undergo a comparison that no movie ever made could possibly withstand.

So long, Shirley, and thanks for the memories -- these and so many more.

.

---

A Mystery Photo

October 11, 2014, 3:16 am

≫ Next: A Weekend With David O. Selznick

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 14

$

0

0

I'm preparing a post now on my recent David O. Selznick weekend, but before I get to that, an intriguing mystery has come up.

Here is a photograph I picked up two days ago in an antique shop in Ashland, Oregon. The proprietor of the shop wasn't able to tell me any more about it than I was able to deduce from looking at it -- in fact, much of what he told me was at a variance from what I did deduce.

In the bottom left corner of the photo is a handwritten inscription:

To my dear friend
Sadie Thompson

John Barrymore

On the back the photo is stamped, in letters ranging from one-quarter inch to one inch high:

PHOTOGRAPHY BY

PRICE STUDIOS, INC.

SALMON TOWER BLDG.

11 WEST 42nd ST.

N.Y.C.

TELEPHONE -- PENN. 1780

Above the stamp is handwritten in pencil: "Larchmont Yacht Club 1930". Next to the date, also in pencil but sideways, is the number "13" in a circle.

The shop owner asserted that the signature reads "John Berryman", but it clearly says "John Barrymore". I got the distinct impression that the name John Barrymore meant absolutely nothing to him. 

I was able to find online several examples of John Barrymore's autograph, and it must be admitted that most of them bear only a slight resemblance to the signature on the photo. However, most of them appear to have been scrawled in haste, no doubt as Barrymore was accosted on the street or in a restaurant and asked to sign someone's autograph book; the photo, on the other hand, appears to have been inscribed at leisure and with some care. Personally, I'm satisfied that this is an authentic John Barrymore autograph -- because I'm satisfied that the man in the photo is John Barrymore himself. Grotesquely made up, granted, but still easily recognizable.

The shop owner had the photo labeled "Vaudeville Photo 1920's" and said it was of two vaudevillians in their stage costumes. I disagree. To me, there can be no doubt that the photo was taken at a costume party at the famous Larchmont Yacht Club in Westchester County, NY sometime during 1930 -- Halloween, perhaps.

As for the inscription to "my dear friend Sadie Thompson" -- well, that can only refer to the central character in Rain, the play by John Colton and Clemence Randolph based on W. Somerset Maugham's story "Miss Thompson"; the idea that Barrymore, or anybody else for that matter, actually knew somebody by that name is patently far-fetched. It's far more likely that this is a playful inscription to an actress who had played Sadie Thompson. By 1930 there were only two such actresses. The first was Jeanne Eagels, who created the role on Broadway in 1922, toured with the show for two years, then returned with it to Broadway for another run of a year and a half. But Jeanne Eagels died in October 1929; obviously the photo was not inscribed to her. That leaves Gloria Swanson, who starred in the 1928 silent picture Sadie Thompson. Was this photo a gift from Barrymore to his "dear friend" Gloria? Or did he have some other "dear friend" whom he identified with Maugham's notorious good-time gal as a private joke?

And the final mystery: Who is the woman in the picture? It's not Dolores Costello, to whom Barrymore was married in 1930. Nor is it Gloria Swanson, America's only living Sadie Thompson.

Does anybody have any ideas? Comments and speculations are welcome.


 Update 10/11/14, 11:05 pm:

 

Today I received this picture from historian Richard M. Roberts, who states conclusively -- and I'm convinced -- that my picture isn't John Barrymore after all. Richard's message: 

Hello Jim,

I saw your Cinedrome blog today about your alleged Barrymore pic and I am really going to hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but it is not a picture of John Barrymore, nor of his autograph.

Attached is a copy of a carefully inscribed and autographed picture of John Barrymore, a good sample of the actor's actual signature, and you will see that the signature and handwriting on your picture is nothing like it. Barrymore's script was much more flamboyant, he was both an actor and an artist (as in sketching) don't forget. The fellow in your picture also has a much longer and slimmer neck than Barrymore, nor are the eyes and eyebrows right.

The inscription is obviously meant to be ironic and sarcastic in a friendly way, meant to imply that the woman is being saucier than she actually is, and that the man is a more important actor than he is, but neither name is meant to be the actual names of the people involved. They most likely are two vaudevillians, probably husband and wife, but I have no idea who they actually are.

Hope you are well, I always enjoy your blog and look forward to seeing you at Cinevent next year.

Sincerely,

RICHARD

Many thanks for getting in touch, Richard; I had a hunch -- no, I knew -- you'd be able to shed light on the subject. Now that I compare the pictures directly, I can see that the ears are wrong too.

The picture remains a mystery, of course: Who are these people, and what -- if anything -- did they have to do with the Larchmont Yacht Club? Maybe New York socialites slumming as showbiz types for a party at the club?

Speculations remain welcome...

.

A Weekend With David O. Selznick

October 23, 2014, 3:16 am

≫ Next: A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

≪ Previous: A Mystery Photo

$

0

0

Over the weekend of Sept. 27 - 28, I had an opportunity to revisit two of my favorite David O. Selznick pictures. On Sunday the 28th it was the Turner Classic Movies two-day-only theatrical reissue of Gone With the Wind. I'm sure many of my Cinedrome readers (among others) availed themselves of that one -- at least, if the size of the audience I saw it with is any indication.

On Saturday the 27th, however, the reunion was more private: a family-and-friends home screening of 1938's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I'll be spending most of this post talking about that one, because...well, of all the terms you might use to describe Gone With the Wind, "neglected classic" is certainly not one of them.

Some years ago, my friend John McElwee over at Greenbriar Picture Shows posted on Tom Sawyer here and here. "Does anyone else share my longstanding affection for this show?" John asked rhetorically. In the comments I replied, "Good heavens, doesn't everyone share it?"

Well, apparently not; in David O. Selznick's Hollywood Ron Haver dismissed it as "basically old fashioned and slightly dull", and it has little of the latter-day respect accorded other Selznick pictures such as Nothing Sacred or the original A Star Is Born. Still, John and I aren't entirely alone; Leonard Maltin gives Tom Sawyer three-and-a-half stars, and I have anecdotal evidence aplenty of the picture's enduring ability to please any crowd.

In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that Selznick's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is just about the best movie ever made from any story by Mark Twain. (For the record, I'd give a close-second place to Warner Bros.' 1937 The Prince and the Pauper, and an equally close third to 1960's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with Eddie Hodges and Archie Moore.) 

But back to Tom Sawyer. Selznick originally hoped to shoot the picture in Technicolor, but there were no Tech cameras available. So instead, he began shooting in March 1937 in black and white, with H.C. Potter directing. Shooting proceeded in fits and starts until July, when Technicolor cameras unexpectedly became free; Selznick closed down production, had the location sets all repainted, replaced some cast members (Beulah Bondi was out as Aunt Polly, May Robson in), and brought Norman Taurog in to direct (Potter having walked off, exasperated with Selznick's incessant kibitzing). The final negative cost, John McElwee tells us, was $1.2 million -- some sources say as high as $1.5 million, but I trust John on things like this. Anyhow, whatever the cost, it was astronomical for the time, especially for a picture with no battle scenes, no production numbers, and no scenes using more than maybe 50 or 60 extras. (As a very broad rule of thumb, multiply any figures from this era by about 100 to get an idea of the cost in today's dollars.) The bottom line: despite some glowing reviews and high hopes, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer broke nowhere near even, losing some $302,000 -- probably more than the picture would have cost if it had been produced anywhere but at Selznick International.

The picture got a handful of reissues over the years, both before and after Selznick sold it off (along with the rest of his library) during his cash-strapped 1940s -- the poster above is from one of those reissues -- and that's how I first saw it in 1958; my father, with fond memories of having seen it back in '38, took the whole family to see it at the Vogue Theatre in Pittsburg, Calif. My brother was only four years old at the time, and I still remember his reaction: He sat down with a bag of M&Ms from the snack bar, took one out ready to pop it in his mouth, looked up at the screen, and was instantly hooked. As the movie ended and the lights came up, he was sitting there with that first M&M still between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand (and no, it hadn't melted).

Today that four-year-old has 13 grandchildren of his own, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain's original book) has been working its way through the family. My brother read it, and my sister-in-law, and their daughter has been reading it to her three kids. This prompted a groundswell of requests for a family screening of my 16mm print, which I last screened some six or eight years ago, before many of the kids were born. So I scheduled the screening for September 27, and got out my print to see what sort of shape it was in.

And here I have to discuss the color in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Selznick's movie) -- in general, and in my print in particular.

Selznick was an early proponent of Technicolor -- any other producer in the world would have made Nothing Sacred, The Garden of Allah or A Star Is Born in black and white, and even his closest associates thought Technicolor for Gone With the Wind was a needless extravagance. But Selznick was convinced that Technicolor would increase the reissue value of his pictures. He was absolutely right, of course -- but what he failed to anticipate was that he wouldn't be the one reissuing them. When he sold his library off in the 1940s -- he even let MGM buy his interest in Gone With the Wind (which is why Metro ever after presented GWTW as if they had produced it) -- the rights didn't always go to people willing to spring for striking new Technicolor prints. Nothing Sacred and A Star Is Born were issued in the '40s in prints by the inferior Cinecolor process, with "In Technicolor" on the title frame either blacked out or overprinted with "In Color".

I don't know what was used for the 1958 reissue where I first saw Tom; the color looked okay to me at the time, but I was only a kid; what did I know? In any event, it would appear that no IB Technicolor 16mm prints of the picture were ever struck -- anyhow, I've never seen or heard of one. My uncle used to have an Eastman print with decent color that turned and faded over time -- but not before he had the chance to screen it for a couple of generations of his and my aunt's elementary school students. (He even wrote to David O. Selznick once, letting him know how the picture continued to entertain children, and received a reply only a few months before Selznick's death in 1965: "Dear Mr. Lane, Thank you for your letter...I was naturally very pleased.")

The second (and, so far, last) time I saw The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a theater was at the Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif. in the late 1980s. Now the Stanford is operated by the Stanford Theatre Foundation, which is headed by David W. Packard (son of the founder of Hewlett-Packard) and has contributed millions in cash and resources to the cause of film preservation. Consequently, the Stanford is on excellent terms with film archives all over the country. Any time a picture plays the Stanford, you can rest assured that you'll be seeing the very best available print.

So it didn't bode well that the print I saw that night in 1989 was a slightly red-shifted Eastman print. Oh dear, I thought. Could it be that The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was one of those pictures that hasn't survived in Technicolor at all? (No, as it turned out. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

My own 16mm print, when I acquired it about ten years ago, was yet another Eastman print, and the color was distinctly faded. Also, over the years and reissues the running time had been whittled down from 93 to 77 minutes; my print ran 79. When I scheduled the family screening for last month, I hadn't looked at it in years, so I cranked up the projector to see what condition it was in. Bad news -- the color was pretty much shot, and in some scenes even the image was going fast. This print would do, but only in a terrible pinch -- so I decided to shop around and see what else I could find.

To make a long story short -- if it's not already too late for that -- I found two DVDs. One was a Region 2 British DVD, the other a transfer from South Korea (that one defaulted to Korean subtitles, but through the miracle of DVD I could turn those off). Why this quintessentially American story is available on DVD in Great Britain and South Korea, of all places, but not in the United States is one of those vagaries of video that defy explanation, but there it is. (In any case, it's a powerful argument for owning a region-free player.)

Either one of these DVDs was a huge improvement over my 16mm print, but the difference between the discs themselves was like night and day.  The South Korean disc, in fact, might almost have been made from the print I saw in Palo Alto: it had the same red-shifted, high contrast image. The British DVD, on the other hand, must surely have been transferred from the restoration Disney made when they gained control of the picture in the early 1990s (see Part 2 of John McElwee's post for details of that restoration). So to answer the question I asked myself that night in Palo Alto: No, the Technicolor Tom Sawyer is not lost; it still exists -- if only on DVD. Here are some frame-caps comparing the two transfers, South Korea on the left and UK on the right:

First, here's Tom (Tommy Kelly) and Becky Thatcher's (Ann Gillis) first after-school "date". Notice the increased detail and texture, especially in hill behind them and the creek under their feet, and the purer fleshtones. Notice, too, in all these frames that the Korean disc crops the image along all four edges.










Here, Tom and Joe Harper (Mickey Rentschler, left) play pirate on their island in the Mississippi, unaware that the folks back home believe they've been drowned. As in that frame above with Tom and Becky, the grass is a whole lot greener (and the sky less purple) in true Technicolor.

Becky and Tom on the way to the school outing where they'll become lost in the cave (superbly designed by William Cameron Menzies and built on a soundstage at the Selznick studios). This shot is a particularly dramatic illustration of the difference between the two discs, both in the quality of the color and the size of the image, as is...

...this one of the crowd at the party celebrating Tom and Becky's rescue.

Both discs, I believe, are complete -- at least, they're more complete than my 16mm print. But neither of them has the original 93-minute running time. Not only that, but while they appear to be identical, the South Korean disc runs 90 min. 46 sec., the British disc 86 min. 45 sec.

As you can no doubt gather from those frame comparisons, the British DVD was the way to go, so I put the 16mm projector back in the closet and got out my Epson Powerlite 6100. That old 16mm print of mine I junked; it had long outlived its usefulness. The night of the 27th my family and friends were treated to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer looking better than it has in years; for myself, I don't know if I've ever seen it looking as good as it does on that Region 2 DVD from the United Kingdom. If you're in the market, accept no substitutes. There are a number of Hollywood classics that are available only in Region 2 DVDs, but for my money, this disc alone justifies the expense of buying a region-free player. (Alternatively, Region 2 DVDs will play on most computers.)

Tom Sawyer, like most of Selznick's literary adaptations from Little Women to Gone With the Wind, is a perfect illustration of his dictum that it's less important to film an entire novel than to give the impression that you've done so. Mark Twain's book is loosely constructed and episodic, almost a collection of short stories rather than a unified novel. John V.A. Weaver's script picks and chooses episodes both for how well they express the spirit of Twain and how they form a solid dramatic arc, building to Tom's climactic showdown in the cave with Injun Joe (Victor Jory) and his struggle up the rocks to the light and safety (two moments that aren't in Twain's book, but which fit neatly into the movie).

The casting and performances are spot-on right down the line. Beulah Bondi was closer to the physical description of Aunt Polly in Twain, but it's hard to imagine her improving on what May Robson does with the role. Robson perfectly captures the stern-yet-tender heart of Aunt Polly, a remarkable tightrope-walk for an actress to pull off. (By the way, here's a Fun Fact: Do you know what distinction May Robson, who was nominated for best actress for 1933's Lady for a Day, has among Academy Award nominees? She's the only one who was born before the American Civil War, on April 19, 1858. Obviously, that record will stand forever.)

Right smack in the middle of all these perfectly cast veterans -- Walter Brennan, Victor Jory, Donald Meek, Olin Howland, Victor Kilian, Frank McGlynn Sr. -- there's one of those little miracles that come along once in a great while: 12-year-old Tommy Kelly as Tom. The son of an unemployed Bronx firefighter, he had never acted before -- and truth to tell, in time his acting skills would prove to be extremely limited. But that hardly matters here; he simply is Tom Sawyer -- it's as simple as that. Despite his inexperience, he is center-screen in almost every scene and carries the picture with natural ease. It's one of those incredibly rare moments when exactly the right person for a role came along, seemingly out of nowhere, at exactly the right time in his life to play it. I'm pleased to report that at this writing, Tommy Kelly is still with us at 89, as are Ann Gillis (Becky Thatcher, now 87) and Cora Sue Collins (Amy Lawrence, also 87).

So how did my screening go over? Like gangbusters, as I knew it would because it always has. None of the kids had ever seen it, and it was a revelation to all of them. I know that in years to come they'll cherish the movie as a fond childhood memory -- as their grandfather and I do, and as our father did before us, and all those grade-schoolers in my uncle and aunt's classrooms over the years. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser that never seems to age, thanks to Technicolor (now brilliantly restored) and a quaint, old-fashioned style that meshes perfectly with the 19th century nostalgia that infused Mark Twain's book in the first place.

*                    *                    *

Then on the next day, Sunday the 28th, it was Gone With the Wind, which I hadn't seen in a theater since its 50th anniversary reissue in 1989.

The day may come when I have something to say about Gone With the Wind that hasn't already been said far better by somebody else. But this is not that day. Instead, I'll just take this opportunity to mention a new book on the subject, and here it is: The Making of Gone With the Wind by Steve Wilson.

Now I will confess that when I heard of this book, the first thing I thought was, "Oh great, just what we need, another book about the making of Gone With the Wind!" And I wasn't particularly impressed with the book's cover, with its monochrome image washed in thin blue and green of Vivien Leigh peeking out through the "O" in "GONE" while she grabs a quick cigarette between takes on the set -- I mean, was there ever a book cover that conveyed less of a sense of the movie it's supposed to be about?

So much for gripes and quibbles. I was wrong. No matter how many books on Gone With the Wind you've read or thumbed through, this one eclipses them all. It's actually the companion volume to an exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, an archive, library and museum complex on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. The exhibition is running now through January 4, 2015, and it draws from the Center's massive David O. Selznick archive consisting of 5,000 boxes of documents and photographs and millions of feet of film. Steve Wilson, the book's author, is curator of the Center's film collection, and the book takes us step by step through the three-and-a-half years from the day Selznick bought the rights to Margaret Mitchell's novel to the night the picture swept the 1939 Academy Awards. We see everything from the nationwide talent-search-cum-publicity-tour through shooting (presented chronologically as it was shot), editing, previews, everything. And all of it is illustrated with newspaper clippings, letters, telexes, telegrams, memos, call sheets, concept paintings, makeup and costume tests, notes, set photos, matte paintings, sheet music, maps -- you name it, all of them reproduced in their original colors (or lack of them) on high-quality glossy paper.

I thought of scanning a sampling of some of the illustrations and posting them here, but that way lies madness -- once I started I'd never be able to stop. Instead, just check out the link to the Harry Ransom Center above, or this link to the Center's Web exhibit on the movie. That'll show you more than I could ever post here. After that, just see if this isn't a book you have to have. At the very least, it's easier and less expensive than trying to squeeze in a trip to Austin between now and January 4.
.

A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

March 25, 2014, 4:58 pm

≫ Next: The Fog of Lost London, Part 1 (Republished)

≪ Previous: A Weekend With David O. Selznick

$

0

0

Here's a challenge for Cinedrome's readers, just for fun.

I recently won an auction on eBay for a 16mm print. The
picture is Up in Mabel's Room (1944), directed by Allan
Dwan, based on the 1919 Broadway chestnut by Wilson
Collison and Otto Hauerbach. The movie's cast includes
Marjorie Reynolds, Dennis O'Keefe, Gail Patrick, Mischa
Auer, Charlotte Greenwood and Binnie Barnes.

But none of that is important for our purposes here. What
is important is what came with the print. The seller included
a little note thanking me for my purchase and hoping I enjoy
it. Attached to the note was a unique bookmark, consisting
of four frames of 35mm Technicolor film (plus a diagonal
slice of an additional frame at each end). The four frames
are reproduced on the left.

Now here's the challenge, in two parts: (1) Name the movie
these  frames are from; and (2) Identify the actors. The
Grand prize is unlimited bragging rights. Leave your guesses,
or any questions, in the comments. All right, ready? Go!

Next up here at Cinedrome: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 1.

The Fog of Lost London, Part 1 (Republished)

October 28, 2014, 1:05 am

≫ Next: The Fog of Lost London, Part 2 (Republished)

≪ Previous: A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

$

0

0

NOTE: The Spooky Season is upon us once again, so it's time for my annual re-post of my four-part tribute to the legendary lost Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collaboration London After Midnight. Whether you remember it from years past or are coming to it new, I hope it brings you a creepy moment or two. Be sure to read the four parts in order -- you don't want to get ahead of the story!

*                         *                         *

London After Midnight (MGM; 1927) is the Holy Grail of Lost Films. Oh sure, there's the complete Greed. But we do have the incomplete Greed, and it's a masterpiece as it stands. Besides, tell the truth: Isn't there just the tiniest little fear, deep down in your heart, that if Stroheim's 42-reel, ten-hour cut should miraculously turn up, it just might turn out to be a letdown, maybe even (Heresy! Heresy!) a bit of a bore? But be that as it may, we do have Greed; all we have of London After Midnight is an assortment of stills like this one of Lon Chaney in makeup and costume as the Man in the Beaver Hat.

There are enough of these remnants that Philip J. Riley was able to publish a reconstruction of Tod Browning's movie in book form. If you didn't have the opportunity or good sense to pay $29.95 for it in 1987, you may have to shell out as much as 115 bucks for it now, though there are used copies available for close to the original price. A few years ago Turner Classic Movies did a similar reconstruction, this time on film, and that one's available on The Lon Chaney Collection.

In 1970 the Museum of Modern Art staged a "Lost Films" exhibit and published an accompanying book by the same title. At least three of the pictures in MoMA's exhibit -- Street Angel (1928) with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, Rex Ingram's The Garden of Allah (1927), and Tod Browning's own The Show with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree -- have surfaced since then, so there's always hope. But London After Midnight remains lost, and the pages devoted to it in the MoMA book are sparse. Author Gary Carey wrote: "It is almost impossible to synopsize a mystery film which one has not seen because critics, bound by professional ethics, divulge little of the plot let alone its solution."

Mr. Carey should have read the review that appeared in Variety on December 14, 1927. Variety's reviewer, "Mori," didn't much care for the movie ("Will add nothing to Chaney's prestige as a trouper, nor increase the star's box office value."), nor did he shrink from discouraging potential viewers by recounting the entire plot, solution and all. Then, amazingly, in his last paragraph, he said: "The usual suspicions, planted while the situations are worked out, succeed in leaving an impression of mystery regarding the outcome." (Not anymore, Mori!)

As a side note, let me add that Mori wasn't the only Variety reviewer to do this sort of thing. It's our good luck now that the Spoiler Police weren't so powerful back then; the detailed descriptions in Variety's reviews from 1907 to 1930 are virtually all we have to go on for movies now lost beyond recall. I've found them invaluable in researching the careers of the stars in the M.J. Moriarty deck of movie playing cards.

But back to London After Midnight. There's always hope it may someday surface, like Street Angel,The Garden of Allah and The Show, but it hasn't happened yet; the last known print was destroyed in a studio fire in the 1960s. Director Browning did a loose remake in 1935 -- Mark of the Vampire, with Bela Lugosi and Lionel Barrymore taking over the equivalent roles that were both originally played by Lon Chaney -- but that time Browning made major changes; for one thing, the new picture didn't even take place in London. If we want any sense of the original, we still have to depend on the Riley and TCM reconstructions.

Or...there is this. I came across this book while perusing the shelves at the estate sale of a popular Sacramento TV personality. The novelization is the work of Marie Coolidge-Rask, who evidently made a decent living out of this kind of piecework. She's known to have also novelized Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926) and the King Vidor-Lillian Gish La Boheme that same year (now there's a literary platypus for you: a novelization of a silent movie of an opera). 

Otherwise, Ms. Coolidge-Rask's literary output seems not to have left much impression on the shifting sands of time. These movie tie-ins weren't a terribly lucrative field for the writer-for-hire; usually there was just a flat fee -- probably, in the 1920s, no more than a thousand dollars or so, if that -- and that was that, no royalties. A shame, because London After Midnight may have sold pretty well; Mori's opinion notwithstanding, the movie was the most successful Browning-Chaney collaboration. Whatever MGM and/or Grosset & Dunlap paid her for her efforts, I hope for her sake she invested it wisely.

In any case, she doesn't seem to have slavishly followed Browning and Waldemar Young's script: Her novel features at least one character, a certain Colonel Yates, who doesn't appear in the movie's cast list on IMDB. And she isn't bound by the limits of silent movies -- her characters are certainly a talkative bunch. For that matter, so is Ms. Coolidge-Rask herself -- she crams words in like a canner stuffing sardines in a tin. Here she is describing Sir James Hamlin (Henry B. Walthall):

"Sir James, despite the studied calmness of his demeanor when with Lucy Balfour or in the presence of those he deemed his inferiors, was of a nervous temperament, at times easily influenced, again firm to the point of stubbornness, according to his mental reaction to whatever force against which he found himself in opposition."

Got all that? Here she is again, later on the same page: 

"In his presence, the baronet felt himself unusually helpless. Like a fly, pinned against the wall for scientific inspection with a microscope." 

I don't know what kind of scientist would pin a fly to the wall to see it through a microscope, but I suppose Ms. Coolidge-Rask might have known some.

Anyhow, now, just in time for Halloween, I propose to spend
the next few posts hacking through the purple undergrowth of
Marie Coolidge-Rask's prose (I do these things so you don't
have to), distilling it into a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of her
novelization. In this way I hope to get some sense of what
audiences at Browning's vampire/murder mystery might have
seen in 1927 -- sort of like Tod Browning, Polly Moran and Lon
Chaney here pretending to commune with the spirit world for
the MGM publicity department. This will be (if you'll pardon the
expression) by the book, without reference to either Philip J.
Riley's or TCM's reconstructions; if there are differences,
maybe we can talk about those later.

So be warned: if you're worried about spoiling the ending of
London After Midnight (which you can't see anyhow) or
Mark of the Vampire (which you can), proceed at your
own risk.

To be continued...

.

The Fog of Lost London, Part 2 (Republished)

October 28, 2014, 10:16 pm

≫ Next: The Fog of Lost London, Part 3 (Republished)

≪ Previous: The Fog of Lost London, Part 1 (Republished)

$

0

0

NOTE: The Spooky Season is upon us once again, so it's time for my annual re-post of my four-part tribute to the legendary lost Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collaboration London After Midnight. Whether you remember it from years past or are coming to it new, I hope it brings you a creepy moment or two. Be sure to read the four parts in order -- you don't want to get ahead of the story!

*                         *                         *

Here begins a chapter-by chapter synopsis of London After Midnight, a novel by Marie Collidge-Rask, based on the scenario of the Tod Browning production. Like the book, the synopsis will be

ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES

FROM THE PHOTOPLAY

A METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURE

STARRING LON CHANEY

Chapter 1 - Balfour House

Balfour House is an old ancestral home on the outskirts of London whose origins stretch back to before the time of Charles II. Successive generations of the Balfour family have added to it until it is a weird and mystifying architectural abnormality, a labyrinth of chambers, corridors, passageways and dark, massively furnished and heavily curtained rooms. One room, heavily bolted and padlocked, has not been opened in centuries. It is said that a beautiful young woman once met a horrible death in that room, and that her ghost walks restlessly moaning and sobbing whenever some tragedy is about to occur in the house. Those sobs are heard the night Roger Balfour is found dead in the house, a bullet in his head, driven to suicide by depression and money problems.

Roger's son Harry, 15, and daughter Lucy, 13, become the wards of their father's friend and neighbor Sir James Hamlin. Since there was no will, Sir James supervises the settling of Roger Balfour's estate and takes the two children into his home. Balfour House and its grounds become shunned and neglected and, with no money left for their upkeep after settling Roger's debts, fall into disrepair.

Five years pass. Harry Balfour, now 20 and more than a little resentful of his and Lucy's dependence on Sir James's generosity, returns from school and announces that he wants to reopen Balfour House. Sir James says this is impossible without major repairs, either by finding a wealthy tenant or a wealthy bride for Harry. Harry refuses to marry for money. Sir James offers to buy the Balfour estate outright, to give Harry a stake in life. Again, Harry indignantly refuses: "So long as I live the Balfour estate shall not revert to other hands."

Soon after this, Harry has an unpleasant scene with Jeremiah ("Jerry") Hibbs, Sir James's secretary. An agitated Hibbs mutters to himself that Harry is "courting disaster" if he goes near Balfour House.

Chapter 2 - Another Mystery

Two days after his confrontations with Sir James and Hibbs, Harry fails to show up for a riding date with his sister Lucy. No one has seen him since dinner the night before, and his bed has not been slept in. At first Lucy pouts that Harry has ruined her day, but as the day wears on she begins to worry.

That night Hibbs sends one of the servants on a confidential errand. Overheard by the maid, Anna Smithson, Hibbs asks her to say nothing to anyone.

An hour later a group of Sir James's servants, lashed by wind and rain, spooked and unnerved as they search through the overgrown grounds at Balfour House, find the body of Harry Balfour. As they lift the body to carry it to shelter, one of the servants swears he can hear, beneath the whistling of the wind, the wails of the ghost in the secret room of Balfour House.

Chapter 3 - Who Killed Harry Balfour?

 Lucy Balfour is still worrying about Harry's disappearance when her brother's body is brought in. She is distraught at his death and horrified, as are the others, at the sight of two red wounds on his throat. The coroner's inquest returns a verdict of death at the hands of "person or persons unknown." In testimony at the inquest, neither Sir James nor Hibbs mentions their respective run-ins with Harry before his disappearance. The maid Smithson testifies that on the night of the murder, she was looking out a window into the storm and saw a man heading toward Balfour House. The man was definitely not Master Harry, she says. It is assumed that the person she saw was the murderer, but there is no clue as to his identity, his motive, or why he would make those wounds on Harry's throat.

Chapter 4 - Hypnotic Hypotheses

Chief Detective Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard, dining with the assistant commissioner of his division, discusses the unsolved murder of Harry Balfour. Burke believes that the murder of Harry confirms his suspicion that Roger Balfour was murdered as well, even though all signs seemed to point to suicide at the time. He says that he has a number of leads but no firm evidence, and plans to test his theory that under hypnosis and the proper conditions, a criminal will reenact his crimes. Burke borrows a book from the assistant commissioner's library, saying that he expects to be busy with his investigation for some time. When next they dine together, Burke says, he is sure he'll have the proof he needs.

Chapter 5 - A Betrothal

Seven months have passed since Harry's death, and Lucy is finally beginning to emerge from her grief. As May turns to June, Lucy finds herself turning more and more to Jerry Hibbs for companionship, and her feelings for him have grown more than sisterly. At last, in a sun-bathed arbor scented by the blooming roses of Hamlin House, Lucy and Hibbs profess their love for one another. They agree to say nothing to Sir James for the time being, for fear that he will disapprove and dispense with Hibbs's services.

Chapter 6 - Uncanny Tenants

Night. Two men stand under a tree on the grounds of Balfour House, near where Harry Balfour's body was discovered. They are representatives of the London realtor's office that administers the Balfour property and are waiting while prospective tenants inspect the premises by lantern-light. The people came into the office near closing time and expressed an interest after seeing a picture of the house in a magazine (the realtors having long since given up advertising the property). If satisfactory, the tenants propose to move in at once. This has all happened so quickly that the agent hasn't had time to notify Sir James, though he did get in touch with Hibbs. Hibbs told him to go ahead with the transaction if the tenants' references are satisfactory. The agent is waiting outside for the tenants because, he said, nothing would induce him to enter the house.

Meanwhile, Anna Smithson and Thomas, another of the Hamlin House servants, are returning from the village station in a cart with the luggage of a guest Sir James is expecting. They see the light in Balfour House. They can see two shadowy figures moving about with the lantern; one of them is a woman, but they can make out no other details. Thomas believes the woman is the ghost of the house, but Anna scoffs. As they watch, the door of Balfour House opens and a man emerges, tall but stooped, shrouded in a heavy Inverness coat and wearing a high beaver hat. That's all it takes for Thomas to crack his whip and hurry the horse on to Hamlin House.

The man in the beaver hat crosses slowly to where the realtor's agents wait. The agents apologize for not accompanying him into the house, but he reassures them -- in his spooky way: "Life is a mystery no man can solve. It extends beyond the grave." They remind him that the owner will make no improvements, but he doesn't mind; the house will suit his purposes.

The agent hands the man the lease papers and he peruses them, only briefly looking up when a mournful wail rises from somewhere out in the darkness. By now the agents are thoroughly unnerved and eager to be off. With a "horrible" smile, the man in the beaver hat slowly signs the lease. As he heads back into the house, the agents scurry off to apprise Sir James of the transaction.

Chapter 7 - Sir James Receives a Shock

At Hamlin House, preparations are under way for the coming of Colonel Yates, Sir James's guest, when the realtor's agents arrive. Sir James is astonished to learn that Balfour House has been let, and it is evident that the surprise is not an entirely pleasant one. Hibbs explains that he did not expect the tenants to take immediate possession; he thought they would merely inspect the property and then negotiate terms. The agents report that the tenant's references were impeccable and he paid the entire term of the lease in cash, in advance.

Reassured, Sir James glances at the papers the agents have handed him. His calm demeanor vanishes and his face goes white when he sees the signature on the lease. It is signed "Roger Balfour." And it is in Roger Balfour's handwriting.

Chapter 8 - An Unexpected Guest

Why wasn't this noticed at the office? Sir James asks. The agent replies that the matter was handled by a new employee who didn't know the house's history; the agent himself had simply presumed that this Roger Balfour was perhaps a distant relation wishing to see the ancestral home. Sir James says there are no other branches of the family and demands a description of the man in the beaver hat.

At this point, the butler announces Colonel Yates. Sir James's consternation is almost complete, because in addition to this shock about Roger Balfour, he has been trying all day to remember who Colonel Yates is; he learned only today that this "old friend from India" was coming, and has been unable to place the name. As Yates is ushered in, however, Sir James remembers him at once and is reassured by Yates's solid, dependable, no-nonsense presence. In fact, he welcomes his guest's opinions on the matter of the new tenant at Balfour House, and briefly explains the situation to him.

It turns out Yates had known Roger Balfour years before, but had lost touch and did not know of his death; he says suicide seems unlike the Balfour he knew. When the agents describe the new tenant as "creepy" and "un-holy," Yates scoffs. "You chaps must have been smoking something..." His laughter diffuses the tension in the room; even Sir James looks less upset.

Chapter 9 - Ghouls

As Yates and Sir James discuss the matter later, alone, Sir James shows Yates some documents signed by the late Roger Balfour, and Yates concedes that the handwriting on the lease is unmistakeably the same. Mulling this over, he cautions Sir James not to dismiss out of hand the idea of supernatural; years in India, he says, have taught him the folly of that. In fact, he has a book with him that he thinks might bear on the subject, and promises to give it to Sir James. Later, after dressing for dinner, Yates gives the book to Hibbs to place in the library, where it will be available to anyone interested. Hibbs (who for some reason has taken an instant, mild dislike to Colonel Yates) does so, and a glance at the book's contents interests him enough to make him resolve to come back to it later.

All through dinner, and even afterward as Lucy plays for diversion, Sir James's mind is elsewhere. He had insisted to Yates that he does not believe in ghosts, but he nevertheless has a superstitious nature and is troubled.

After Lucy finishes playing, Yates invites her to take a walk on the verandah. Hibbs, miffed and a little jealous, decides to take a closer look at Yates's book in the library. He finds Sir James in the library, himself so absorbed in the book that he doesn't hear Hibbs's approach. Hibbs suggests that a study of the book might "throw light upon the mysteries of Balfour House." Sir James says the mysteries be damned, he just wants to know who signed Roger Balfour's name to that lease.

When Yates joins them in the library, Sir James shows him a passage in the book, printed in early English text, that has particularly alarmed him: "Men who have died by murder or suicide frequently become vampyrs." The two agree that, unpleasant as the idea is, nothing will do but that they inspect the vault on the grounds of Balfour House where all the Balfours, including Roger, have been entombed. The sooner the better.


After midnight Yates and Sir James set out, armed with revolvers and carrying a lantern. Almost immediately Sir James's courage begins to fail. He senses that someone, or something, is following them and trying to stop them on their errand, but every time he turns around, nothing is there. Only Yates, in his "military determination," is unwavering, and Sir James forces himself to go on.

At one point something suddenly flaps at them out of the darkness. A bird? A bat? No way to tell. Slowly, carefully, onward they creep. At the door to the Balfour crypt Yates raises his lantern. The door is closed and locked, seemingly undisturbed since the day months earlier when Harry Balfour was interred there. Sir James's hand shakes as he inserts the key into the locked door. The rusty lock resists, but eventually yields, and the door slowly swings inward.

The two men halt at a sudden sound -- it sounded almost like a sigh. They wait, tensed, but now there is only silence. 

Standing in the yawning doorway, they peer into the darkness of the tomb. Yates raises the lantern and holds it forward in the gloom. By the dim yellow light, Sir James's eyes search the shadows. His blood freezes as he sees that the lid of Roger Balfour's coffin is open. The coffin is empty. 

There is a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, and somewhere in the night, the mournful, blood-curdling howl of a dog. 

To be continued...

.

The Fog of Lost London, Part 3 (Republished)

October 29, 2014, 11:52 pm

≫ Next: The Fog of Lost London, Part 4 (Republished)

≪ Previous: The Fog of Lost London, Part 2 (Republished)

$

0

0

NOTE: The Spooky Season is upon us once again, so it's time for my annual re-post of my four-part tribute to the legendary lost Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collaboration London After Midnight. Here's Part 3. Whether you remember it from years past or are coming to it new, I hope it brings you a creepy moment or two. Be sure to read the four parts in order -- you don't want to get ahead of the story!

*                         *                         *

Continuing with London After Midnight by Marie Coolidge-Rask:

Chapter 10 - A Question of Vampires

The howling of the dog, coming from the direction of Balfour House, continues as Sir James and Yates make their way home from the crypt. They recount their experience to Hibbs, and the three discuss aspects of vampire lore as written in Colonel Yates's book. Since murdered men and suicides are supposedly liable to become vampires, and since Roger Balfour's coffin was still undisturbed at the time of Harry's interment, it is cautiously suggested that the son's unsolved murder may have had some supernatural effect on Roger Balfour's restless soul. Sir James is clearly rattled by the night's experience; Hibbs and Yates realize that there is some unknown factor at work over in Balfour House, and the mystery seems to deepen with every new event. It is near dawn when Sir James and Colonel Yates go to bed. Hibbs steals back downstairs to the library for further study of Colonel Yates's book.

Chapter 11 - Harrowing Tales

All three men rise late the next day, leaving Lucy feeling quite lonely in the house, oppressed in the heat that has been intensified, rather than dispelled, by the early-morning electrical storm. At dinner that evening, conversation is kept trivial; by tacit agreement among the three men, Lucy is given no hint of what happened the night before.

Later that night, after Lucy has gone to her room, the three men resume their discussion of the night before. Suddenly they hear a piercing scream from upstairs, in the direction of Lucy's room. Rushing upstairs, they find Lucy's door locked. They try to break down the door, but before they have to, the door opens. In the room they find Smithson, the maid, trembling and sobbing, her eyes wide with fear, two small wounds at her throat, similar to the ones seen on the body of Harry Balfour. Sobbing, she tells the men that Lucy is locked in her dressing room, and they release the confused and frightened young lady from her confinement.

Finally, Smithson pulls herself together and tells
the men what happened. As Miss Lucy was
getting ready for bed, she says, she left her
to fetch some towels from the linen closet.
In the hallway she saw the man in the beaver
hat, the one she saw on the steps of Balfour
House as she was passing the night before.
The man was stooped over and creeping
toward her, his skeletal hand outstretched,
his spiky teeth gleaming. Smithson was too
frightened even to scream.

Thinking of Miss Lucy, Smithson says, she
rushed back to the young lady's room,
shoved Lucy into the dressing room and
locked her in. Then she locked the door to
the outer room and thought they were safe.
But before her horrified eyes, a green mist
streamed through the keyhole and formed
itself into the man in the beaver hat. The
man came to her; she was unable to speak
or scream, or even move. She felt him
bending over her, felt his teeth on his throat.
That must have been when she screamed,
she says, but she doesn't remember it.
She knew nothing more until she heard
Sir James, Colonel Yates and Hibbs
pounding at the still-locked door.

Lucy, greatly excited, calls their attention
to the window, where all of them see
the man in the beaver hat skulking
across the grounds in the direction
of Balfour House. Colonel Yates tells
Hibbs to remain with Lucy and see
that she is not left alone; he and
Sir James will investigate the matter
further.

Chapter 12 - Panic

Left alone with Lucy and Hibbs, Smithson realizes that the two young people (whose feelings for each other have not escaped her notice) wish to be alone, so she tells them she is going down to the kitchen; after her experience she could use a nice cup of hot tea. Downstairs she finds the servants -- butler, housekeeper, cook, maids and footmen -- cowering in the kitchen, wondering about all the commotion earlier but afraid to go and see what it was. They mill around her, clamoring for news. Deciding she could use something a little stronger than tea, Smithson asks Billings, the butler, for "a little drop of spirits." Thus fortified, she proceeds to regale the servants with another recounting of her experience in Lucy's room, this one much embellished for dramatic effect as Smithson relishes the attentions of her rapt and horrified audience. At this inopportune moment, a cat knocks over a tin pan from the sink onto the floor; the sudden clatter sends the servants into an uproar. Upstairs, Lucy and Hibbs hear the melee downstairs and wonder what can possibly happen next.

Chapter 13 - The Woman on the Ceiling

Colonel Yates and Sir James make their way to Balfour House, proceeding slowly by a roundabout route, pausing frequently to watch and listen for prowlers or anything untoward. Once again Sir James's heart is racing, and once again he depends entirely on the resoluteness of Colonel Yates to keep him going.

It is well after midnight when they approach Balfour House. The house is dark, but they can see a faint light glimmering from one of the upper windows -- in fact from the "secret chamber" that has been unoccupied for centuries, the one in which a woman's ghost is said to roam. Slowly forcing their way through the tangled grass and foliage of the overgrown grounds, they find a large tree from which they should be able to see into the lighted chamber. Taking the lead as usual, Yates climbs into the tree. At that moment they hear, low but clearly audible, the insistent sobbing of a woman in despair.

Through the high windows of the secret room they can see only the ceiling and the upper walls inside. There they behold a sight that confounds them. By the dim light inside, they see a mysterious shape in the secret room -- now sharp and clear, now blurry and indistinct, now rising to the ceiling, now swooping below the level of the windows, now contracting, now expanding as if carried by huge bat-like wings. At one point the apparition turns its head to the light, and the two men clearly see the profile of a woman -- a woman hovering and swooping high in the secret room on the wings of a bat!

From their perch in the tree they are able to step gingerly and noiselessly onto a narrow balcony by one of the windows, from which they have a wider view of the room. They see three men, all with a ghastly pallor to their faces, absorbed in watching the movements of the bat-woman over their heads. One of them is the man in the beaver hat. Another is unidentifiable, but the third man, as Sir James confirms in a trembling whisper, is Roger Balfour.

The bat-woman, where she hovers near the ceiling, turns her face toward the window, her eyes intent, as if to pierce the darkness beyond. Yates and Sir James take an involuntary step back into the shadows. The figure of Roger Balfour also turns to the window, his eyes keenly searching, his face ghostly pale, a small open wound crusted and discolored at his temple. Sir James shudders.

Colonel Yates whispers that they have seen enough for one night, and Sir James readily agrees. They stealthily return to the tree and cautiously climb back down to the ground. Sir James is highly agitated. In a distraught whisper he urges that they return at once to Hamlin House; God only knows what has happened to Lucy in their absence. In a sudden flash of insight, Colonel Yates realizes that Sir James's feelings for Lucy are not merely those of a guardian for his ward. 

From a rise a little distance from Balfour House they look back. In the dim light of the upper window they see a shape standing at the window, and they hear a voice, low and plaintive, calling: "Lucy -- Lucy -- Lucy -- "

Chapter 14 - By the Light of Day

Sir James spends a sleepless night, his mind going over and over the weird events of the night and the uncanny things he and Colonel Yates have seen. The next day at noon, Lucy, alarmed at his tired and ill appearance, asks him what happened while he and the colonel were out. Feeling it best to keep her unaware, he says that they were unsuccessful in their attempt to follow the man in the beaver hat; he had eluded them, and their long walk was for nothing. 

Sir James and Colonel Yates decide to return to Balfour House by daylight; they tell Hibbs that if they are not back in an hour he should send a party in search of them. Under the hot summer sun on a cloudless day, Balfour House looks impressive and looming, but empty and unthreatening. Sir James wonders, was what they saw the night before merely a figment of their imaginations? No, says Yates; they saw what they saw, but what it can mean is impossible to say. Sir James is not reassured.

They knock at the door, but there is no answer. Entering cautiously, they see no signs of occupancy, no disturbance in the dust on the tables, chairs and floor. The door to the secret room is still locked and bolted, the lock rusted and untouched. As they creep from room to room, searching, Sir James again has the unsettling feeling he had on the night they visited the Balfour crypt, that some unseen presence is following them, watchful. 

As they enter the library, the room in which Roger Balfour died five years ago, a strange sight greets them: High in a corner of the ceiling are a group of five bats, hanging in silent slumber. 

Chapter 15 - Two Suitors

Back at Hamlin House, Lucy waits for Colonel Yates in the rose garden; she has promised to give him a tour of the garden and a description of the blooms cultivated there. Hibbs scolds her for being alone, even in the daytime. She laughs, saying she wishes she had seen the man in the beaver hat herself; she'd have captured him! Hibbs, realizing she has been kept in the dark as to the extent of her danger, restrains himself from telling more than he should. 

Sir James and Colonel Yates come into the garden. As they discuss what to do about the previous night's events, Yates notices the flash of suspicion on Sir James's face at the apparent intimacy between Hibbs and Lucy. Yates urges Sir James to ask Scotland Yard to investigate Balfour House; involving the local police, he says, could lead to unwanted and harmful gossip, but the Yard is renowned for its discretion. Have Hibbs write Scotland Yard, he says, asking them to send several good, able-bodied men -- "men who are not afraid of man, ghost or devil" -- under cover of darkness. 

Sir James and Hibbs go into the house to draft the letter, leaving Yates and Lucy to their tour of the garden. As they chat, Lucy confides something she has never told anyone, not even her brother Harry: When she was a little girl, she was strangely afraid of Sir James, although she never knew exactly why; he was always so good to her. And since her father's death, he has been kindness itself; she feels she could never repay him for all he has done for her and Harry. 

Colonel Yates assures her that he understands. He tells her that he wants to have "a serious talk" with her, on a matter that concerns her closely. 

From the house, Hibbs watches Lucy and the colonel in the garden. He sees Lucy throw her arms around Colonel Yates and kiss his cheek, then begin weeping on his shoulder. His jealousy flares, and it is with difficulty that Sir James recalls him to the task of writing Scotland Yard. 

Later, Hibbs confronts Lucy and demands an explanation. She cannot say anything, she says, and begs him not to ask. But she mollifies him by assuring him that she intends to break the news to Sir James of her and Hibbs's feelings for one another. 

Lucy finds Sir James in the music room, as eager to speak with her as she is with him. Sir James wonders: Has Lucy been annoyed by the unwanted attentions of his secretary? No, not at all, she assures him. Before she can go on, he tells her he is glad to hear it. Hibbs could never support Lucy in a way to which she is entitled. On the other hand, he -- Sir James himself -- has long looked forward to making Lucy his wife. 

Surprised and alarmed, Lucy runs sobbing from the room. 

Chapter 16 - Exorcisms

Sir James and Colonel Yates find a passage in Yates's book: "A wreath of tube roses at the window, a sword across the door, will make it impossible for the Vampyr to enter a sleeping room at night." It may sound absurd, but after the past two nights nothing should be discounted; at least it can do no harm. 

Hibbs is tense and upset as they place a wreath of tube roses from the garden and a sword that had hung on the wall, according to the directions in the book; lack of sleep, concern for Lucy, and mistrust of Yates are taking their toll. Reading from the book, he speaks the prescribed incantation: "They shall not pass this threshold."

As everyone retires for the night, Yates draws Hibbs into the upstairs study, saying he has something to tell him. Ignoring the smoldering anger in Hibbs's eyes, Yates guides him to a chair and gently forces him to sit. He tells him that Lucy's love for Hibbs speaks well of him, that Yates can see through her eyes what a fine fellow Hibbs is. 

All thought of Yates as a rival is suddenly gone from Hibbs's mind. In the colonel's steady gaze he sees the eyes of a friend and feels an urge to confide in him. Too bad about Lucy's brother, Yates says; did he and Hibbs get along? Ruefully, Hibbs says no, Harry objected to Hibbs's love for Lucy and was resolved to separate them for good. 

As they talk, Hibbs is overcome with drowsiness. He sleeps. 

Chapter 17 - An Assassin Foiled

Midnight. The house is still. A crouching, shadowy figure moves stealthily to the door of one of the sleeping rooms. Slowly, silently, the figure turns the knob, opens the door and slips inside. The figure approaches the sleeper in the bed, in its hand a long thin object, gleaming in the dim moonlight from the window. 

As the figure is poised to strike, the sleeper lunges bolt upright, startling the attacker to flight -- out the door, down the hall, with the intended victim -- none other than Colonel Yates -- in pursuit. Yates fires his revolver at the fleeing figure, rousing the house. Lucy calls from inside her room, asking that someone remove the sword and let her out.

Sir James comes from his room, his hands shaking as he ties the belt of his robe. What was that? Nothing, says Yates; I must have had a nightmare. Sir James and Lucy are reassured, and the house settles down.

Alone again in the hall, Yates reflects that Hibbs did not appear after the gunshot. He kneels and searches the carpet. Finally he finds what he seeks: a spot of blood. His assailant did not escape untouched after all.

Yates makes sure that Lucy's room is still secured with the sword and tube roses, then goes to Hibbs's room. The door is open, the bedclothes rumpled, but the room is empty. Yates deftly makes up the bed, then goes into the study, where he finds Hibbs, still sound asleep in the chair where he dozed off while they talked. 

Chapter 18 - The Fallen Sword

Upon being awakened, Hibbs apologizes for his rudeness in dropping off. Don't mention it, says Yates; on the contrary, I apologize for keeping you up so late. Yates leaves Hibbs in the study, telling him they both should be in bed.

Hibbs looks at his watch. Two-thirty! Have they really been talking so long? He hardly remembers a word they said. Before retiring, he decides to check on Lucy's room. He is horrified to find the protecting sword missing. He pounds on the door, calling her name. 

Sir James appears, alarmed at Hibbs's display -- and outraged that he addresses Lucy by her first name. Colonel Yates joins them and they break in the door to Lucy's room. It's empty. She's gone.

Finally the strain of the past few days has its way, and something in Hibbs snaps. He becomes hysterical, babbling that "vampyrs" have taken Lucy, that they must all be destroyed. Colonel Yates tries to calm him, to no avail. As Hibbs runs off, delirious, there comes from the direction of Balfour House the wild, piercing scream of a woman in distress. Could that have been Lucy?

No, says Gallagher, Sir James's Irish chauffeur. That wasn't Miss Lucy; 'twas the wail of "the banshee o' Balfour House," foretelling tragedy to come.

To be concluded...
.

The Fog of Lost London, Part 4 (Republished)

October 31, 2014, 12:10 pm

≫ Next: Tragedy in Nevada, January 1942

≪ Previous: The Fog of Lost London, Part 3 (Republished)

$

0

0

NOTE: As the Spooky Season reaches its climax, I repost the climax of my four-part tribute to the legendary lost Tod Browning-Lon Chaney collaboration London After Midnight. Here it is, with a few afterthoughts. If you haven't read the first three parts yet, you'd better scroll down and catch up -- you don't want to get ahead of the story!

*                         *                         *

The concluding chapters of London After Midnight by Marie Coolidge-Rask:

Chapter 19 - The Man in the Beaver Hat

At Balfour House, the man in the beaver hat, lantern in hand, climbs the stairs to the secret room where the bat-woman hovers near the ceiling. Come down, he says, all is ready; she is on her way.

In the overgrown garden the bat-woman waits as Lucy approaches. As the two come together, a shriek like a woman's voice rends the air. Lucy cowers, but the bat-woman soothes her: "It's nothing. They're awake -- coming." Lucy feels herself taken in two strong arms and carried bodily into the house. She sees that her bearer is the man in the beaver hat described by Smithson.

Lucy looks around; tears well in her eyes as she takes in the home she has not seen since her father's death five years before. She begs the pair with her to tell her who they are.

The man in the beaver hat silences her with a gesture. Footsteps are heard outside. Suddenly there's the crash of a shattering window and a man tumbles into the room at their feet.

Chapter 20 - Hibbs' Madness

In Hamlin House, Hibbs dashes downstairs to where the servants cluster, roused from their sleep by the sudden hue and cry from Lucy's room. They urgently entreat Hibbs to tell them what's going on, but he is incoherent, raving -- They're coming! They're all around! I go to destroy them!

The unfortunate Hibbs rummages around the kitchen, yard and outbuildings of the estate, raving about an axe and a hickory stake, the implements he must have to destroy the "vampyrs." He finds an axe in a chopping block and sharpens two pieces of wood into stakes, muttering madly all the while. The servants watch in amazement, afraid to intervene in his maddened state. Soon he is off on his way to Balfour House on his desperate, fevered mission.

At Balfour House he lurks outside a window, his eyes wide, barely suppressing the wild beating of his heart. What he sees through the window drives him madder still: Lucy standing with the man in the beaver hat and the bat-woman. She doesn't run, she doesn't flee; she is in their wicked power! She must be saved before it's too late!

Hibbs leaps through the window, falling at the feet of Lucy and the two fiends in a shower of glass. Before he can move or clear his fevered brain, creatures of unimaginable strength have pounced upon him, overwhelmed him, bound him, borne him off. Is this the end? Has he failed to save Lucy? Is he doomed to be a vampire himself?

Chapter 21 - Help from Scotland Yard

At Scotland Yard, the summons to Hamlin House has been received and a squad of constables is ready to set out. The assistant commissioner knows now that Inspector Burke's preparations -- carefully set in motion by the work of an undercover agent -- are about to bear fruit.

The constables pile into a car and swiftly depart for their destination, an estate outside London. They are told that when the car is sighted there will be a signal -- a siren; they are to reply with a howl, just like the other night.

As the car speeds along, they hear the siren -- a long, piercing shriek like a woman's scream. The car replies with its own special signal, a blaring electric horn like the howl of a dog. Peering into the darkness, the constables see the outline of Hamlin House straight ahead.

Chapter 22 - A Strange Conference

At Hamlin House, Colonel Yates hears the howl of a dog, just like the one the night of his and Sir James's visit to the Balfour crypt. Looking out the window, he sees a car approaching. It must be Scotland Yard, he tells Sir James, and not a minute too soon.

As Yates and Sir James go downstairs, the butler is admitting the police, who have arrived in response to Sir James Hamlin's request. Sir James introduces the policemen to Colonel Yates, saying he will explain the situation to them; Sir James himself is too distraught.

The colonel surveys the police detail with a military eye, apparently deciding that they will do. Quickly he summarizes the weird train of events that have led to their presence here. Now, he says, they have reason to believe that Miss Lucy Balfour is in dire peril in her former home. The police should proceed at once to Balfour House and be prepared for "instant action."

Yates turns to Sir James; does he have his revolver ready? Sir James does. Let me see it, says the colonel. Examining the gun, he notes that it has not been fired in a long time and may not be reliable. Turning to one of the officers, he asks for a spare pistol that Sir James can carry in case the need for it arises.

Sir James, seated at his desk, tries to insist that his own revolver will do, but something in Colonel Yates's eyes stops him. Sir James, in his highly nervous state, seems suddenly transfixed. Colonel Yates moves his hands before the man's face but gets no response.

Satisfied, the colonel takes Sir James's desk clock and sets the hands to eight o'clock. He places the clock before Sir James. At twenty-five minutes past eight, he tells Sir James, come to the verandah door at Balfour House.

Colonel Yates leaves with the police. Sir James, he says, will be joining them later.

Chapter 23 - From Out of the Past

Lucy is upset at what is happening to Hibbs -- those men seizing him, binding him, carrying him away, saying he must be drunk. Jerry is never drunk! The bat-woman tries to calm her. Please, dear, she says, didn't he tell you to remember your part and do it, no matter what? Yes, Lucy says, but he said he'd take care of Jerry, see that he comes to no harm. And so he will, the woman says, we all will. She turns to the man in the beaver hat. What was wrong with him? Too much excitement, the man says; he'll be taken care of and kept out of harm's way. But now we have to work fast.

Lucy pulls herself together. You'd better see the man in the next room, the bat-woman says to Lucy, prepare yourself. It might be a shock and you should get it over with.

Lucy parts a frayed curtain and looks into the next room at the man sitting at her father's desk. It is a shock. The resemblance is uncanny, eerie. For a moment she feels like a little girl again, the little girl who came into this very room and found her father dead, sitting where that man is now. Lucy looks down at herself and sees that she is not that little girl at all anymore. This man can't be her father -- but he looks so like him.

Lucy prays for the strength to do what she must. She goes up to the man, who rises to greet her. They talk briefly. She answers his questions about the night she last saw her father alive. He tells her he can only imagine how difficult this is for her. He has three daughters of his own, and he hopes any one of them would feel just as Lucy does. But he also hopes that they would find the strength to do what must be done. It's so important. "Play the role," he says, "and make it a success."

Chapter 24 - Metamorphosis

Lucy returns to the waiting bat-woman. The woman dresses her in a girlish white frock identical to one she had as a young girl. The woman tells her it is the same dress, that Smithson has retrieved it for Lucy to wear tonight. Again, as so often this night, Lucy is surprised; she thought she was being so clever in stealing away from Hamlin House, and Smithson knew all the time!

Colonel Yates strides into the hall with several men. One of them Lucy recognizes as one of the men who subdued Hibbs; in a flash she realizes that the other man who grappled with her sweetheart was the man who so resembles her father. Who are all these people? And who is Colonel Yates?

The man in the beaver hat removes his cloak and hands it to the colonel. Is everything ready? Yates asks. The man says yes, handing his hat to the colonel, then removing his wig and handing that over as well. In the hat, wig and cloak, stooped over and contorting his face, Colonel Yates looks exactly like the other man -- except for the absence of those spiky teeth, which he conceals by raising the collar of the cloak. 

And now Smithson is there, telling Lucy how sweet she looks. I followed you to the edge of Hamlin grounds, she says, to make sure you were safe. 

Colonel Yates also compliments Lucy on her appearance -- just what he wanted. As he takes her by the hand and leads her toward the other room, questions swim in Lucy's head. What is this all about? Why isn't Sir James here? Who are these people? Who is Smithson, really? And who is Colonel Yates?

Chapter 25 - Sinister Preparations

A steady stream of commands, directions and questions comes from Colonel Yates. Where is the notary? The stenographer? He questions Lucy about the arrangement of the furnishings in the room, making adjustments as she points them out. He orders everyone to their positions. He turns to Lucy and asks if she is ready. Yes, she says, but how can going through that night again bring a guilty person to justice? All will be clear in good time, he assures her. And he reminds her, after she has said good night, not to linger but to go directly to the room where the bat-woman waits for her. 

The colonel disappears behind a screen, but Lucy can just see his eyes watching through the slits between the panels. How she wishes this were all over and done. But now the house is silent, waiting. Someone is approaching along the verandah. 

Chapter 26 - Sir James Pays a Call

When the desk clock reads 8:25 Sir James rises and leaves the house, pausing briefly to tell Billings, the butler, that he is going to call at Balfour House. Billings says nothing, as he was directed by Colonel Yates, merely watches Sir James go. Billings reflects on the mystifying events of the last few days, most mystifying of all being the note left by Anna Smithson, thanking him for his many kindnesses and saying, regretfully, that it is necessary for her to leave Hamlin House immediately; a baggageman will call for her luggage in the morning. 

Sir James proceeds steadily to Balfour House, pausing to look around as he enters the grounds. What a fine estate he will have, he reflects, when these grounds are combined with his own. 

As Sir James enters the house, the butler, Mooney, announces him. His friend Roger rises to greet him. And there is dear Lucy, that lovely little girl of Roger's. Sir James observes with envy the affection between father and daughter as she kisses Roger good night. Lucy smiles at Sir James and extends her hand, wishing him a good night. Aren't you going to kiss me too? Sir James asks. 

Lucy's smile vanishes. She tells Sir James she doesn't like him when he talks like that. Then she is gone; Sir James and Roger Balfour are alone.

Chapter 27 - In Hypnosis

In Sir James's mind, it is five years ago, the night he last saw Roger Balfour alive; the man with him is Roger Balfour; and they are alone. But the man he takes for Roger -- whose real name is Drake -- knows that none of those things are true. They are certainly not alone; every move they make is being watched, every word heard and taken down for the record. Now that Lucy is out of the room, there is only one person who knows how the conversation went between the two men that last night. Sir James is reliving his half of that scene; Drake must now play a very delicate game. He must deduce from Sir James's behavior what he, as Roger Balfour, should do or say next. The slightest misstep can shatter Sir James's hypnotic trance. 

Sir James, unable to quite conceal his annoyance, tells "Roger" that he has come here tonight in a spirit of friendship to help his friend with his financial difficulties. I know about your troubles, he says, more than you realize. 

Drake plays a hunch. He tells Sir James that he knows exactly the extent of his knowledge -- he sees that his hunch has hit home, and continues -- knows that Sir James has been stealing from him right and left, made him penniless. Now that you have me in your power, he says, what do you want?

I want Lucy, says Sir James. I have loved her since she was a baby, and I want her for my wife. You have always distrusted me, suspected me. You have called me a drug user and a sensualist, but you could never prove it. 

Now Drake, with the revulsion of a father with daughters of his own, knows what Roger Balfour must have said, the only thing that could have caused events to turn out as they did. I can prove it, he says, now.

Sir James's eyes blaze with hate as he draws his revolver. He demands these "proofs." The other man refuses, and Sir James fires. Drake crumples to the floor, a bloody wound in his temple. 

Sir James searches the desk. Those proofs, whatever Roger had, must be here, he is certain. He goes through every drawer quickly but carefully, finding nothing. The fool was bluffing. Well, now he's dead, and good riddance. Sir James takes out his handkerchief, wipes his pistol clean, and lays it on the floor near the dead man's lifeless fingers. Now he must escape before he is found here. He backs toward the door. 

As he reaches for the doorknob his arm is seized in a powerful grip, then his other arm. Sir James struggles in a desperate frenzy, unable to break free. He hears a voice: Don't let him get away! He's still under hypnosis! I'm coming!

Chapter 28 - A Dramatic Awakening

 As Sir James struggles, the man in the beaver hat emerges from behind a screen. Under the man's penetrating gaze, Sir James ceases to struggle. He looks around. Balfour House! How did he get here? He sees Roger Balfour dead on the floor, exactly where he left him. But that was five years ago! Or was it? Has it all been a dream, these five years, all his patient plotting and planning to possess Lucy? All a dream during the few seconds as he made his way to the door? 

It must have been! Roger had been too clever, had his men in hiding. But not clever enough; they've prevented my escape, but they're too late to save his life. Sir James looks at the man in the beaver hat. Have I been asleep?

No, says the man, and neither have I. He reaches out and rips the sleeve from Sir James's jacket. Sir James recoils from the searing pain. There! says the man. I knew I clipped you when I shot at you tonight. You thought you'd finish Hibbs with your poison needle, but I was there instead waiting for you. 

Chapter 29 - Surprising Revelations

Drake rises from the floor, wiping the stage blood from his face, grateful that Sir James had been handed a doctored revolver back at Hamlin House. The man with Sir James removes his beaver hat, cloak and wig, revealing --

Yates! cries Sir James. I thought the years had changed you, but now I see you're an impostor. You've set this trap to blackmail me! You'll get nothing from me! Sir James shrieks with indignation.

"Colonel Yates" takes off his glasses, removes the subtle disguise from his face, rearranges his hair, and shows Sir James his badge: Inspector Burke of Scotland Yard. I have what I want from you, he says. I've spent the last three days carefully breaking down your defenses, creating a mental strain that would make you susceptible to hypnotic influence. My theory that a criminal in hypnosis, faced with the circumstances of his crime, will repeat that crime exactly -- my theory has been proven correct.

Cornered, broken, trapped, Sir James crumbles and confesses all. He murdered Roger Balfour just as Burke and his crew have seen him reenact the crime tonight. He murdered Harry Balfour with a poison injection to the throat for fear that Harry would discover the proof of his wicked life that he could not find before -- and worse, would take Lucy away from him. He tried to do the same to Hibbs to get him out of Lucy's life, before Yates/Burke's intervention sent him fleeing for his life. 

The stenographer has it all. Inspector Burke orders the statement typed up. He tells Sir James that the law will see to it that every last farthing he stole from Roger Balfour will be restored to Lucy as the last survivor of her murdered family. And finally, he orders his men to examine Roger Balfour's desk closely for evidence of a secret drawer; those proofs must be in there somewhere.

Chapter 30 - Recapitulation

Burke tells Sir James that he suspected him from the start; if only he could have acted sooner, he might have saved Harry Balfour's life. Burke's investigation had uncovered evidence of Sir James's embezzlement from Roger Balfour. A former policewoman, Anna Smithson, was planted in Sir James's household, where she uncovered evidence of Sir James's drug use and degenerate activities. She had also overheard conversations between Sir James and Harry -- no one ever notices the servants -- and knew that Harry intended to remove his sister from Sir James's influence. She had even found the vial of poison with which Sir James murdered Harry (and intended to murder Hibbs) and replaced it with a harmless liquid. The real poison is now in police hands, to be used as evidence.

Chapter 31 - Professional Pride

Inspector Burke goes upstairs to where Lucy is sitting by the bedside of Hibbs, now all but recovered from his derangement. Burke tells Lucy and Hibbs his true identity, and that he has the murderer of Lucy's father and brother in custody. He spares her any details for the moment. She must know all in time, of course, but later, when she's stronger. 

Burke apologizes for keeping Hibbs in the dark, but it was necessary to the operation; Hibbs is not dissembler enough to have been able to play a role. Hibbs sheepishly admits that he now wishes he'd taken "Colonel Yates's" advice and gone to bed. It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble -- especially himself. 

Smithson comes in to say goodbye; she will miss Miss Lucy and Mr. Jerry. She playfully scolds Burke for that "terrible tarradiddle" he made her tell about the green mist through the keyhole. 

Finally come the man in the beaver hat and the bat-woman; their part in Burke's elaborate charade is done, and now it's back to the music halls for them. Come see us, the woman says, Mooney and Luney -- Jimmy Mooney and Lunette the bat: "I fly by night an' I sleep by day, the looniest kind of a bat!"

Afterword

So there you have it, friends: London After Midnight -- a Halloween treat with a trick. If you've seen 1935's Mark of the Vampire,the twist came as no surprise to you; for that matter, even in 1927 the New York Times commented that whether the ending surprised anyone would be "a matter of opinion."

There are major discrepancies between the Philip J. Riley and Turner Classic Movies reconstructions of London After Midnight and the story told by Marie Coolidge-Rask. In both reconstructions, Hibbs is identified as Arthur, not Jeremiah (Jerry), and he's Sir James's nephew, not his secretary. (Variety's Mori says Hibbs is Roger Balfour's nephew, but that doesn't make sense and is probably a mistake on Mori's part.) Riley's version describes the search for and discovery of Harry Balfour's body, but the TCM version doesn't, nor do the reviews -- they don't even mention Harry's existence. Anyhow, the illustration in the novel (see Chapter 2, "Another Mystery") suggests Harry must have been in there somewhere. (Oddly enough, in the caption Jules Cowles, who played Gallagher the chauffeur, is identified by his own name rather than his character's.)

Most important of all, the idea of Inspector Burke operating incognito as Colonel Yates seems to have been entirely Ms. Coolidge-Rask's invention; in the reconstructions and reviews Burke is openly himself throughout. He is even shown investigating the "mysterious" death of Roger Balfour and deciding it was suicide, then coming back five years later to prove it was murder -- the Times reviewer pinpointed the howling illogic of that ("...Burke of Scotland Yard, the genius who wills to solve a murder mystery five years after he has declared it to be a case of suicide.").

All things considered -- and with no true copy of London After Midnight, having only Variety's detailed recounting, the New York Times's musings, and the two reconstructions to go on -- I have to say it's pretty clear that Marie Coolidge-Rask, despite her cumbersome way with words, made a considerable improvement on Tod Browning's story, which appears not to have been given much clear thought by Browning, his co-scenarist Waldemar Young, or anybody else at MGM. Once you accept the basic premise -- an elaborate police sting to hypnotize a murderer into reenacting his crime -- her story has its own logic and builds a good amount of suspense. There are many nicely creepy moments -- not least the eye-opening whiff of pedophilia in Sir James's character, which in the novel surely goes beyond what the Hays Office would have tolerated in 1927. Much of the plot as it reads must have been the novelist's creation; there seems far too much to fit into a picture that Variety says ran only 65 minutes (TCM's reconstruction runs 46). And the book has a good sense of pace, becoming quite breakneck as the climax approaches -- just about the time Hibbs goes crazy we begin to feel as if we have, too; as Lucy's world is turned topsy-turvy, so is ours.

I hope you've enjoyed Marie Coolidge-Rask's spooky little Halloween campfire story. Have a safe and happily creepy Halloween, everyone!
.

---

Tragedy in Nevada, January 1942

March 12, 2014, 4:07 am

≫ Next: A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

≪ Previous: The Fog of Lost London, Part 4 (Republished)

$

0

0

Before I get into my Shirley Temple retrospective, I want to mention an important new book by my friend Robert Matzen. The second-best thing about Fireball: Carole Lombard and the Mystery of Flight 3 is that you don't have to be a movie buff to find it a real page-turner; the best thing about it is that if you are a fan of classic Hollywood, and particularly of Carole Lombard, this is one of the indispensible books.

Bob Matzen is the author of two other books that are proudly ensconced on my bookshelf and deserve room on yours: (1) Errol Flynn Slept Here (with Michael Mazzone), a biography of Flynn's Mulholland Farm estate high in the Hollywood Hills, from the time he built it in 1941 until it was torn down in 1988 (after Errol was forced to sell, it became home first to songwriter Stuart Hamblen, composer of "This Ole House" and "It Is No Secret What God Can Do", then to rock-n-roll icon Rick Nelson); and (2) Errol & Olivia: Ego and Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood, about Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, their on-screen magic and complicated off-screen relationship.

The title Fireball has a three-pronged irony: it describes Carole Lombard's feisty screen persona, her vivacious off-screen personality, and (grimly) the way she died on January 16, 1942, when the DC-3 taking her home from a World War II bond drive in her home state of Indiana flew smack into the side of a mountain outside Las Vegas, Nevada. It was less than six weeks after Pearl Harbor; Lombard had been the first Hollywood star to hit the campaign trail to sell war bonds and buck up homefront morale, and now she became the first star to die in America's sudden new war.

With a vividness that would do credit to Walter Lord -- and if you've read Lord's recounting of the Titanic sinking (A Night to Remember), Pearl Harbor (Day of Infamy) or the Alamo (A Time to Stand), you know what high praise that is -- Bob Matzen shifts his narrative almost cinematically back and forth between witnesses on the ground in Nevada who heard TWA Flight 3 pass overhead, saw the terrible fire light up the desert sky and trekked up the sheer slopes of Potosi Mountain to look for possible survivors, and a biography of Lombard from her birth in Fort Wayne to the night she boarded that plane for her last flight. Then he takes us through the cruel business of climbing up to the smoldering wreckage in the dead of a desert winter, identifying bodies (some of them burned, mangled or lacerated beyond recognition) and bringing them down by pack-horses for proper burial -- a nightmare assignment that haunted strong men for the rest of their lives, and is hardly less haunting to read about.

Fireball naturally focuses on Lombard, her husband Clark Gable, who never did get over her loss, and her mother Elizabeth Peters and publicist Otto Winkler, who both died with her. But the book doesn't neglect the 19 others who perished on Flight 3: the 15 Army airmen, recent bride Lois Hamilton en route to Long Beach to join her Air Corps husband, and the three-person flight crew (including pilot Wayne Williams and stewardess Alice Getz, shown here). That's what really makes Fireball such a compelling read. 

Bob Matzen sure did his homework, and he sketches these individuals for us through official records, letters, and the memories of friends and family. They may be forever fated to remain what they were in 1942, supporting players in the national tragedy of the loss of Carole Lombard, but Bob makes them live again for us, however briefly, and he poignantly shows what the loss of them meant to those they left behind (one airman's young widow never remarried, and mourned her lost husband all the 66 years that remained to her).

Bob even went (literally!) above and beyond, climbing Potosi Mountain (8,500 ft. above sea level) to visit the crash site, in terrain so remote and forbidding that debris from the crash remains on the mountainside over 70 years after the fact. And he speculates credibly on what we can never know for sure: what happened in the cockpit of that DC-3 in those last minutes to send a perfectly functioning airplane, under the command of TWA's most experienced pilot, straight into the side of a mountain on a clear, calm night.

A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

March 25, 2014, 4:58 pm

≫ Next: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 1

≪ Previous: Tragedy in Nevada, January 1942

$

0

0

Here's a challenge for Cinedrome's readers, just for fun.

I recently won an auction on eBay for a 16mm print. The
picture is Up in Mabel's Room (1944), directed by Allan
Dwan, based on the 1919 Broadway chestnut by Wilson
Collison and Otto Hauerbach. The movie's cast includes
Marjorie Reynolds, Dennis O'Keefe, Gail Patrick, Mischa
Auer, Charlotte Greenwood and Binnie Barnes.

But none of that is important for our purposes here. What
is important is what came with the print. The seller included
a little note thanking me for my purchase and hoping I enjoy
it. Attached to the note was a unique bookmark, consisting
of four frames of 35mm Technicolor film (plus a diagonal
slice of an additional frame at each end). The four frames
are reproduced on the left.

Now here's the challenge, in two parts: (1) Name the movie
these  frames are from; and (2) Identify the actors. The
Grand prize is unlimited bragging rights. Leave your guesses,
or any questions, in the comments. All right, ready? Go!

Next up here at Cinedrome: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 1.

Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 1

March 26, 2014, 11:28 pm

≫ Next: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 2

≪ Previous: A Cinedrome Pop Quiz

$

0

0

Shirley Temple got her feet wet in the movie business -- and came to the attention of Fox Film Corp. -- in Jack Hays's "Baby Burlesks". These were a bizarre series of shorts that pretty much have to be seen to be disbelieved. The basic idea was to show toddlers in diapers either spoofing famous movies or engaging in various grown-up activities: war, politics, making movies (although the series called into question exactly how grown-up that particular activity was).  The first of these shorts -- though the "Baby Burlesks" name hadn't been adopted yet -- was Runt Page, a send-up of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's The Front Page. And this shot right here was America's first look at three-year-old Shirley Jane Temple. She sits in her high chair listening as her screen parents and another couple chat about having seen The Front Page; then she flops over in sleep and dreams a ten-minute version of the story featuring her and her tiny playmates.

In her dream, Shirley is the fiancee of reporter Bilgy Yohnson, played by Georgie Smith, her "first leading man"; they are shown here with little Eugene Butler, who played Bilgy's editor Walter Scalds ("Bilgy Yohnson" and  "Walter Scalds" for The Front Page's Hildy Johnson and Walter Burns, get it? That's about the level of producer Jack Hays's writing). America may have seen her in Runt Page, but nobody heard her voice, or the voices of any of the other kids; they were all dubbed by adults. For that matter, it's an open question exactly how many people even saw her; in Child Star she writes that the one-reel short was a "dismal failure in the marketplace [and] its sale was abandoned". Besides, as this frame suggests, Shirley still had a few things to learn -- for instance, not to look at the camera.

But she proved to be a quick study, especially at home with Mother Gertrude, who coached her in how to "sparkle" for the camera. "When she said 'sparkle'," Shirley wrote, "it meant energy, an intellectual intensity which would naturally translate itself into vivid and convincing gesture and expression." (By the way, let me insert here that there can be no doubt that Shirley herself wrote Child Star; she writes like a diplomat. But not like a diplomat talking to her foreign counterparts -- no, like a diplomat reporting to her colleagues back at the State Department.)

Runt Page was produced and distributed by Universal; evidently Shirley's memory of it as a "dismal failure" was correct, because the studio bailed on making any other shorts with the "Baby Stars". Jack Hays and his troupe of toddlers wound up at Educational Pictures, a Poverty Row establishment that trawled around the fringes of Hollywood snagging talent either on their way up (Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Edward Everett Horton worked there early in their careers) or on their way down (Harry Langdon, Buster Keaton and Roscoe Arbuckle all fell to earth there when their own stars went into eclipse).

Like the other kids in the Baby Burlesks, Shirley was under exclusive contract to producer Jack Hays. To finance his share of the shorts (Educational supplied 75 percent of the funding, Hays 25 percent), Hays farmed the kids out for modeling gigs, promotional gimmicks, bit parts or walk-ons, anything that required a child, pocketing most of the money and passing a pittance along to the parents (in Shirley's case the few dollars supplemented her father George's income as a branch manager for California Bank). All that shuttling around L.A. on Hays's loan-outs, on top of her lessons at Mrs. Meglin's Dance Studio, gave Shirley a tidy fund of experience for one so young.

After Runt Page the dubbing by adult voices was abandoned, and for the rest of the Baby Burlesks' brief run the kids would all perform, for better or worse, with their own voices. In Shirley's case it was for the better, as it turned out she could sing and dance. Here, in her seventh Baby Burlesk, Glad Rags to Riches, she sings for the first time on screen, playing Nell (aka night club chanteuse La Belle Diaperene). The song is "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage"; Shirley is four years and nine months old.

In September 1933 Jack Hays declared personal bankruptcy, and George Temple used his banking contacts to negotiate with Hays's court-appointed trustee to buy back Shirley's contract for $25. (Hays, one of Hollywood's true bottom-feeders, said nothing at the time. But later, after Shirley had hit it big, he tried suing for half a million dollars, claiming the sale had been illegal. His nuisance suit dragged on for years before he finally settled for $3,500.)

After two-and-a-half years, in which she made 15 shorts and appeared in five features, Shirley was unemployed. Then, as the saying goes, fate intervened. At the end of November 1933, at a sneak preview for What's to Do?, one of the Educational shorts Shirley had made on loan from Hays, she and her mother met songwriter Jay Gorney, recently hired by Fox Film Corp. This landed her an audition with Gorney and his partner Lew Brown, who was also serving as associate producer under Fox production chief Winfield Sheehan. Brown and Gorney cast her in a small part in a picture that was already well into production. For all intents and purposes, whatever her previous experience, Shirley Temple's screen career -- and certainly the Shirley Temple Phenomenon -- began with...


Stand Up and Cheer! (released April 19, 1934)

Stand Up and Cheer! was an "all-star" revue masquerading as a standard book musical (the original working title was Fox Follies). The premise of Ralph Spence's script, based on a "story idea suggested by" Will Rogers and Philip Klein, was that the U.S. President, in order to help people forget their troubles during the Depression, creates a new cabinet post, Secretary of Amusement, and appoints Broadway producer Lawrence Cromwell (Warner Baxter, essentially xeroxing his Julian Marsh from 42nd Street the year before) to oversee federally-funded public entertainment.

This provided the framework for a series of songs and specialty numbers by guest artists. Most of them were second- and third-string stars even at the time -- vaudevillian Sylvia Froos, dreamboat tenor John Boles, blackface red-hot-mama entertainer Tess "Aunt Jemima" Gardella, hillbilly singer "Skins" Miller, knockabout comics Mitchell & Durant -- and they're all now generally (even utterly) forgotten. In fact, the one who's best-remembered today is the one who wasn't a star at all -- yet: Shirley herself. In this poster she receives seventh billing, but on screen she's billed third, right after romantic ingenue Madge Evans. Clearly, Fox had some inkling of what they had on their hands.

In Child Star Shirley remembers her mother taking her on December 7, 1933 to audition for Jay Gorney and Lew Brown. She sang "Lazybones" sitting on Brown's piano, then slid down and stood by while the two songwriters discussed her as if she weren't there (none of them suspecting, no doubt, that she'd be writing about it half a century hence). Brown was dubious; Winfield Sheehan, he said, was "high on the other kid." Gorney demurred: "Unnatural, precocious. A revolting little monster." Brown agreed, and they offered Shirley the part. After all, they wrote the songs for Stand Up and Cheer!, plus Brown was the picture's associate producer. Shirley never knew how they brought Sheehan around, but Abel Green, in reviewing the picture for Variety, mentions approvingly that Brown had "held out...for that cute Shirley Temple."

Shirley's share of Stand Up and Cheer! consisted of two brief scenes, a curtain-call appearance in the movie's finale, and a song-and-dance duet with James Dunn to "Baby, Take a Bow". It may have helped them both that "Baby, Take a Bow" was the best song in the score. Or was it that it just seemed like the best because Dunn and Shirley performed it? That's a chicken-or-the-egg question, but the bottom line was beyond debate: "Baby, Take a Bow" was the highlight of the weird, unruly hodgepodge that was Stand Up and Cheer!

Thepicture was deep into shooting when Shirley was cast, and the cash-strapped studio couldn't afford to dawdle, so she had some serious catching up to do. To save rehearsal time, dance director Sammy Lee jettisoned the tap routine he'd taught to Dunn and had the actor learn the steps Shirley already knew from Mrs. Meglin's. Then, late on her first morning, it was off to the sound studio to pre-record the song. Dunn flubbed several takes, then finally got it right. When her turn came, Shirley stood on a stool (her mother had taught her the words to the song just minutes before) and sang -- then was mortified when, on the very last note, her voice slipped into an unintended falsetto ("Dad-dee, take a bow-oo!"). She thought she'd ruined the take and was terrified she'd be fired, but she needn't have worried; that little half-yodel at the tail end of her vocal provided the perfect "button" to the song and firmly cemented her Cute Quotient.

My apologies to any black-and-white purists in the house, but the best clip of "Baby, Take a Bow" available on YouTube really is this colorized version, so try to make allowances (anyhow, the colorizing is better than usual, without those spray-on-tan orange skin tones). It's worth posting here because it really is one of movie history's genuine A Star Is Born Moments. Besides, it's a fun number, well-stage by Lee in Busby-Berkeley-on-a-shoestring style. First comes Dunn singing the song to Patricia Lee, she silently beaming and sashaying in Toby Wing fashion. Then the customary parade of chorines, with Dunn endearingly hopping hither and yon to avoid stepping on their long trains. Shirley enters at about the two-thirds point -- first she poses, then she sings, then she dances, each stage of the number presented as if to say, "But wait, there's more!" As Shirley dances, swinging her arms in joyous abandon, it's easy to imagine that she knows this is the chance of a lifetime, and is carpe-ing this diem for all it's worth. That may be reading too much, though; after all, she's only five. It may simply be that she's having fun!

Stand Up and Cheer! ran 80 minutes, and Shirley was on screen for a mere 5 minutes, 5 seconds. (The picture survives only in a 69 min. version reissued after Fox had merged with Darryl Zanuck's 20th Century Pictures -- but considering that by that time Shirley was the main selling point, it's a cinch they didn't cut a frame of hers.) Fleeting as they were, those five minutes were all she needed, and there was no doubt who stopped the show. Variety's Green got right to the point. In his very first sentence, he wrote: "If nothing else, 'Stand Up and Cheer' should be very worthwhile for Fox because of that sure-fire, potential kidlet star in four-year-old Shirley Temple." (Shirley was five -- in fact, she turned six the day before Green's review appeared -- but never mind; Fox publicity had already shaved a year off her age.)

Meanwhile, over on the other coast, the New York Times's Mordaunt Hall was borderline obtuse. He absurdly compared Stand Up and Cheer! to Gilbert and Sullivan and spent long inches recounting the picture's plot -- not its most prominent virtue -- and praising an excruciating scene between Stepin Fetchit (so popular in the '30s, so cringe-making today) and a penguin in a coat and hat claiming to be Jimmy Durante (the voice impersonated by Lew Brown). But even Hall paused to mention "a delightful child named Shirley Temple."

Even before the public verdict was in, Winfield Sheehan knew what he had, and he wasted no time locking Shirley down. Two weeks after Shirley's audition for Brown and Gorney, he tore up the old one-picture, two-week contract and offered a new one for a year, with an option to renew for seven. The money was a lot better, but Shirley and her parents were still dealing in a buyer's market, and Fox got a sweet deal.

That was the easy part. Now the question was: How could Fox -- bleeding cash, defaulting on loans and teetering on bankruptcy -- exploit their most promising new star when she was only five -- oops! make that [wink] four -- years old? While they mulled that over, Fox decided to make a little mad money by loaning her out. And so it was that Shirley Temple's first above-the-title credit, and the role that confirmed her as a bona fide star, came to her from another studio. 

To be continued...
.

Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 2

April 5, 2014, 3:18 am

≫ Next: Mickey and Judy -- Together at Last

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 1

$

0

0

"Anyone four years old," Shirley Temple Black wrote, "absorbs experience like a blotter." Anyhow, she certainly did, and her experience with the Baby Burlesks gave her plenty to soak up. She learned that making movies was business, and wasting time was wasting money -- and if you wasted too much of either, you wouldn't get any more of it. She learned about hitting chalk marks on the floor to be properly lit. Even better than that, she found that her face was particularly sensitive to the warmth from the overhead lighting instruments, which made her good at what actors call "finding your light"; she could feel the difference between the light hitting her forehead, her cheek or her chin.

Something else that she found she could do didn't surface until she made Stand Up and Cheer!: filming to playback. On the Baby Burlesks there hadn't been time or money for fripperies like pre-recording; when Shirley sang "She's Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage" in Glad Rags to Riches or "We Just Couldn't Say Goodbye" in Kid in Hollywood, she performed live on the set to a simple piano, with other instruments to be dubbed in later (even that was an extravagance for penny-pinching Educational). This idea of recording the song first, then mouthing the words later for the camera was entirely new to her. As even the most experienced actors have learned to their dismay, it's not simply a matter of synchronizing lip movements; your posture, your breathing, the angle of your head, even your facial expressions can all influence the sound your voice makes when you're singing. If you don't replicate them precisely, audiences tend to notice the difference, even if they can't quite put their finger on what's wrong. Getting it right called for the application of another actorly phrase, "sense memory". Shirley found that it came easily to her. "Mimicry is not an unusual talent in a child," she wrote, "and I had no appreciation for what a nasty problem such synchronization presents for many actors."

There were many such lessons that went into The Education of Shirley Temple. Henry Hathaway told a story of directing her in To the Last Man, a 1933 western from a Zane Grey novel about an age-old blood feud between two Kentucky clans that continues as both families relocate to the Nevada frontier. Shirley played an uncredited bit (one of her loan-outs from Jack Hays) as a third-generation child of one of the families. (She's shown here with Muriel Kirkland, left, as her aunt and Gail Patrick as her mother.)

The script called for her to be conducting a play tea party in the yard outside her family's ranch house when a member of the enemy clan shoots the head off her doll, hoping to prod her father, uncles and grandfather into a showdown.

As the camera rolled, she was to offer a cup of tea to a small pony standing by her table. But the pony became inordinately interested in the sugar bowl on the table and stuck his snout into it. Ad libbing with the moment, Shirley snapped "Get away! Get away!" and slapped the pony's nose. The scene escalated into a shoving match, with Shirley pushing at the pony and kicking at his fetlocks. As Hathaway looked on in horror ("Oh Jeez, I was scared to death."), the pony turned his back and kicked viciously at the girl with his hind legs, missing her head by inches. She stood her ground and glared at him: "You ever do that to me again, I'll kick you!"

Hathaway had seen enough -- too much, really. "Cut!" He went up to Shirley. "Didn't that scare you?"

"Yes," she said. 

"Well, you didn't stop." 

"Oh, I wouldn't dare stop." 

Even at the age of five, Shirley already knew two things: (1) animals can't be counted on to follow the script, and you have to be ready to deal with what they actually do; and (2) no matter what happens, only the director gets to call "Cut!" (By the way, the pony's kick did not remain in the picture; it would have detracted too much from the "murder" of the doll, the dramatic point of the scene.)

Shirley's new contract with Fox was exclusive, but in the immediate aftermath of shooting "Baby, Take a Bow" for Stand Up and Cheer! all the studio found for her to do was a less-than-worthless bit in a Janet Gaynor/Charles Farrell romance called Change of Heart. Eight seconds on screen -- with her back to the camera, yet! -- and not a syllable of dialogue; it was worse than the bits Jack Hays used to send her on. Mother Gertrude set out to drum up some work -- if some other studio wanted her daughter, surely a loan could be worked out -- and she had just the picture in mind, over at Paramount. It was one for which Shirley had already auditioned and been dismissed out of hand. ("They took one look, watched me dance, and rejected me without a smile.")


Little Miss Marker (released June 1, 1934)

Somehow, this time Gertrude was able to wangle an interview with the movie's director, Alexander Hall. In Child Star Shirley doesn't know how Mother did it; I wouldn't be surprised if word of Shirley's song-and-dance with James Dunn was already circulating on the Hollywood grapevine. In any event, Shirley auditioned for Hall personally.

The director showed Shirley to a chair and sat facing her. "Say, 'Aw, nuts.'"

"Aw, nuts!"

"Scram!"

"Scram!"

Hall stood up. "Okay."

"Okay!"

"No, kid! Stop! We're finished." It was as simple as that; Shirley had the part. Paramount offered Fox $1,000 a week for Shirley's services (a huge profit over the $175 in her Fox contract), and on March 1, 1934 Shirley reported for her first costume fittings for Little Miss Marker.

William R. Lipman, Sam Hellman and Gladys Lehman's script was adapted from a story by Damon Runyon about a sourpuss bookie named Sorrowful who grudgingly accepts a bettor's small daughter as a sort of "hostage" for a two-dollar bet on a horse race. The father promises to get the money and be right back, but he never comes back. Sorrowful finds himself saddled with the little girl, whose sunny sweetness gradually thaws his heart, brightens his outlook and loosens his airtight purse strings. Everyone notices the change the tot makes in Sorrowful, and they warm to little "Marky" themselves.

Damon Runyon died in 1946, but his name has stayed current in American culture thanks to the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls (its title taken from one of his story anthologies, its plot from two of his tales). But Guys and Dolls has also skewed the popular image of his stories and what it means to be "Runyonesque". The musical is set in a rollicking fantasy land of cute underworld denizens -- grifters, mugs, oafs and dames, colorful and essentially harmless. In Runyon's stories there is humor, to be sure, but it's not rollicking; it's more often sardonic, even mordant, and the atmosphere of the stories, despite the picturesque speech, is hardly fantasy. The world of Runyon's nameless narrator is gritty and down to earth, lit by bare bulbs in cheap hotel rooms and the gaudy glare of street neon; we can almost smell the cheap cigars and stale perfume. Things may work out -- for the time being -- for the characters, but it's usually thanks to ironic accidents, not a benign universe. There's often an undercurrent of menace beneath the whimsy, and bad things do happen.

And so it is in "Little Miss Marker". One snowy night Marky wakes to find her nursemaid asleep and Sorrowful gone. Running outside barefoot in her nightgown, she tracks him to the Hot Box nightclub and runs into his arms just as a killer named Milk Ear Willie is about to settle an old grudge by plugging Sorrowful. Willie changes his mind, so Marky has saved Sorrowful's life -- but at the cost of her own. She contracts pneumonia and dies in hospital, despite the efforts of Sorrowful and his associates (even Milk Ear Willie chips in, kidnapping a famous child specialist to attend Marky's bedside). Minutes after Marky's death her father turns up, having suffered from amnesia since the day he left his little girl with the bookmaker. He has read about Marky in the newspapers and has finally come to take her home. "I suppose I owe you something?" he asks Sorrowful. Yes, says the bookie, you owe me two bucks. "I will trouble you to send it to me at once, so I can wipe you off my books." He is once again the old Sorrowful, with the same "sad, mean-looking kisser" he had before -- "and furthermore," says the narrator, "it is never again anything else."

The movie keeps Runyon's hospital climax -- Marky is there with life-threatening injuries from falling from a horse, not pneumonia -- but softens the ending: Marky lives, and Sorrowful's reformation is allowed to stick. (The writers also gave Sorrowful a surname, Jones, which is not in the story but has stayed with him through two remakes.) Otherwise, it's faithful to the spirit of Runyon's story -- basically a drama with small comic flourishes -- with a suitable mix of seediness and vulgar glamour. Surely, Runyon was pleased.

Little Miss Marker contains one of the  most unusual movie pairings of the 1930s: Shirley Temple and Adolphe Menjou. The usually dapper, immaculately tailored Menjou (he was voted Best Dressed Man in America nine times) was, at first glance, an odd choice not only to team with a child but to portray the rumpled, unkempt Sorrowful Jones. But it works; Shirley's Marky brings out the debonair sport in Menjou's Sorrowful, the one we knew was there all the time, by inspiring him to move to a more suitable apartment and upgrade his wardrobe.  (Curiously enough, Menjou would play a similarly disheveled grump, and have a similar rapport with kids, in his last picture, Disney's Pollyanna in 1960 -- this time with two child stars, Hayley Mills and Kevin Corcoran.)

Shirley says in Child Star that Menjou once offered to play hide-and-seek with her, but otherwise tended to keep his distance ("off-camera he treated me with the reticence adults commonly reserve for children"). But when the camera's rolling the two have a remarkable chemistry. It's there when Marky and Sorrowful first meet, as she stands beside her father on the divider railing in Sorrowful's shabby office. Sorrowful orders Marky "down offa there", but she teases him: "Look, Daddy, he's running away! Is he afraid?...You're afraid of my daddy! Or you're afraid of me. You're afraid of something..." There follows a remarkable moment when Sorrowful picks Marky up, supposedly to get her off the railing, but holds her for a short while, her hands resting on his shoulders, while their eyes meet. Then he sets her down and growls to his henchman Regret (Lynn Overman), "Take his marker...A little doll like that's worth twenty bucks. Any way you look at it." ("Yeah," Regret grumbles, "she oughta melt down for that much.")

The chemistry is there, too, in a charming scene where Sorrowful and Marky talk about God, and he grudgingly agrees to teach her to say her prayers: "All right, get outta bed. I'll show you how to pray. Sort of. But don't you tell anybody, see?" The topper to the scene is the look on Sorrowful's face when he hears why she wanted to learn: "And please, God, buy Sir Sorry a new suit of clothes." In the very next scene, Sorrowful the sartorial butterfly has hatched out of his rumpled cocoon. ("Sir Sorry the Sad Knight" is the name Marky gives Sorrowful; she names all his cronies according to the stories she's heard about King Arthur.)

Marky's "Lady Guinevere" is Bangles Carson (Dorothy Dell), nightclub singer and kept doll of Big Steve Halloway (Charles Bickford). Bickford, of course, was in the early stages of a long and distinguished career. Dell might have been, too; she was only 19 when she made Little Miss Marker, her second picture, with a husky contralto voice and a wise way with a good line. She too had a strong rapport with Shirley, only this time it extended to off-camera, where she was as much a big sister to her as Bangles is to Marky. Dorothy Dell might have become Paramount's answer to Alice Faye, Joan Blondell or Jean Harlow. Alas, when this scene of Bangles singing Marky to sleep was shot, Dell had only three months to live. Early in the morning of June 8, 1934, she was returning from a party in Altadena with a friend, Dr. Carl Wagner. On a deceptively sharp curve on Lincoln Avenue in Pasadena, Wagner lost control. The car hit a rock, then, flipping end over end, a light pole and a palm tree. Dorothy was killed instantly, crushed in the mangled wreck. Wagner was thrown clear but died six hours later without regaining consciousness. Shirley was back at Paramount then, making another loan-out (Now and Forever); the studio staff kept the news from her as long as they could.

Some of Shirley and Dorothy's chemistry is on display in this scene of the two singing one of Bangles's songs, "Laugh, You Son of a Gun" (by Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger). I post it here not only for Shirley, but for Dorothy; she deserves to be remembered. (UPDATE 9/1/14: Alas, the video clip from Little Miss Marker that was originally embedded here has now gone dead. Here's a soundtrack-only clip of the song, as it was recorded live on the set during filming; hopefully a full clip will surface someday):

Little Miss Marker fleshed out and in many ways improved Runyon's original story. The amnesiac-father angle was always a bit of a credulity stretch; in the movie he becomes a suicide -- driven off the end of his rope when the bet he placed with Sorrowful turns out a loser. This heightens Sorrowful's sense of obligation to Marky: the race was rigged and he knew it when he took the man's bet. It also links Marky to that losing horse, the ironically named Dream Prince. When Big Steve, Dream Prince's owner, is suspended over suspicions about that fixed race, Steve and Sorrowful set Marky up as Dream Prince's dummy owner so the horse can continue to run. Marky's affection for "the Charger" (another one of her fanciful King Arthur names) draws her, Sorrowful and Bangles closer together, and leads to a crisis when Big Steve gets wind of shenanigans behind his back.

Little Miss Marker was a smash hit. With it Shirley Temple truly arrived, and it remains one of her best pictures with one of her best performances. It proved that her show-stopper in Stand Up and Cheer! was no fluke, that she could handle the central role in a major feature and hold her own with a castful of seasoned professionals. Just look at her billing in the picture's opening credits: her name alone, before the title and just as big -- bigger in fact than Menjou, Bickford, Runyon, even director Alexander Hall. Runyon's story would be filmed again over the years, going from good (Sorrowful Jones [1949] with Bob Hope) to bad (40 Pounds of Trouble ['62] with Tony Curtis) to awful (Little Miss Marker ['80] with Walter Matthau). In every single one, the little girl playing Marky made absolutely no impression whatever. Can you even name them? (If you said Mary Jane Saunders, Claire Wilcox and Sara Stimson, move to the head of the Trivia Seminar.) Marky is Shirley Temple's role for as long as movies live.

And how the boys at Paramount must have crowed over that "Adolph Zukor Presents" line; take that, Fox! If you don't know what to do with Shirley Temple, stand aside. (Paramount did in fact offer to buy Shirley's contract for $50,000 outright. Fox declined.) Besides "announcing" Shirley and making her a real star, Little Miss Marker served notice to the geniuses over at Fox that they'd better get off their duffs and come up with something better than that miserable walk-on in Change of Heart. Luckily for Fox, they didn't waste any more time; they put Shirley in a flurry of tailor-made pictures that are all but unique in the first year of any newborn star -- a concentrated series of hits so impossible to ignore that it would spur the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, unsure what else to do, to invent a brand new award category just for her.

To be continued...
.

Mickey and Judy -- Together at Last

April 11, 2014, 3:46 am

≫ Next: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 3

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 2

$

0

0

Another thread was broken this week that tied the 21st century to the Golden Age of Hollywood. This thread was a thick one, too. Unlike other child stars, including his contemporaries Shirley Temple and Deanna Durbin, Mickey Rooney didn't go gentle into that good night after a long retirement far from the limelight. No, he was working -- or planning to work -- right up to the end; his last credits on the IMDb are for the second sequel to Night at the Museum and (as both actor and composer) a forthcoming production of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Whether he passed away before contributing anything to those pictures remains to be seen, but even if he did, you need only go back to 2012 for his next credit (The Woods). He began performing in vaudeville at the age of 18 months. Yes, it's true: Mickey Rooney was the only movie star -- and surely there will never be another -- who could boast a 90-year career in show business.

Just about every kind of show business, too, except medicine shows, grand opera and ballet. Vaudeville, movies (and, in the 1930s, personal appearances to go with them), radio, television, Broadway (in Sugar Babies, which was a revival of old-time burlesque), you name it. At one time or another, people as varied as Cary Grant, Anthony Quinn, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando and Gore Vidal named Mickey Rooney as the best actor in Hollywood. Well, I don't know about the best actor, exactly -- competition there is mighty stiff -- but there can be little doubt that he was the most multi-talented person who ever stood in front of a movie camera. He could act, sing, dance, clown, and play piano and drums (among other musical instruments).

He also had a talent for getting married. Or, to be more precise, the one talent he lacked was for staying married -- at least until his eighth and last marriage, to Jan Chamberlin in 1978. (They eventually became estranged but never divorced, and she survives him as his widow.) He once joked that his marriage licenses were addressed "To Whom It May Concern", and said that "in those days you had to get married to get laid." (A reading of his 1991 autobiography Life Is Too Short shows that, in his case anyhow, that wasn't true.)

Ninety years in any line of work is going to have its ups and downs, and Mickey's life was turbulent. There were problems with alcohol, pills, gambling and bankruptcy. His Irish brashness wasn't always charming, and not everyone who worked with him cherished fond memories of the experience (Ann Miller was particularly bitter about Sugar Babies, for which both of them were nominated for Tonys). Through it all, he kept plugging away. He had to -- both psychologically and financially. Along the way he accumulated four Oscar nominations (two in his heyday, then two more after he was supposedly washed up), two special Oscars (1938, 1982), five Emmy nominations (one win), two Golden Globes, four stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and that Tony nod for Sugar Babies.

During all those decades, he worked with four generations' worth of moviedom's best performers and/or biggest stars. A partial list, in no particular order: Ed Wynn, Joel McCrea, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Will Rogers, Jean Harlow, William Powell, James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Dick Powell, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone, Wallace Beery, Spencer Tracy, Warner Baxter, Rosalind Russell, Sophie Tucker, Robert Montgomery, Lana Turner, Rex Ingram, Kathryn Grayson, Lee J. Cobb, Esther Williams, June Allyson, Elizabeth Taylor, Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead, Thomas Mitchell, Pat O'Brien, William Demarest, Robert Preston, Bob Hope, William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, Edmond O'Brien, Mel Torme, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, James Caan, Bruce Dern, Clint Eastwood, Stewart Granger, Jean Arthur, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Burt Reynolds, Michael Caine, Raymond Massey, Sammy Davis Jr., Andy Griffith, Liza Minnelli, Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Richard Widmark, James Stewart, Christopher Lee, Dennis Quaid, Nathan Lane, Helen Hunt, Stacy Keach, Tim Robbins, John Cleese, Cesar Romero, Angela Lansbury, Tobey Maguire, Ernest Borgnine, Ned Beatty, John and David Carradine, George Clooney, Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Kirk Douglas and Amy Adams.

Whew!

Not to mention the entire cast of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Plus, during his hungry days and among the more obscure of his 338 movie and TV credits, more unknowns, losers and nobodies than most of us have even seen. 

Plus, of course, Judy Garland.

In the late '30s and early '40s, when Mickey was the No. 1 box-office star in America, it seemed that the Andy Hardy pictures would be his legacy to movie history -- that is, it would have, if anybody had been talking about things like "legacies" back then. Certainly Louis B. Mayer thought the Andy Hardy series was MGM's (and his own) greatest achievement, and it was Andy that won Mickey that first special Oscar, "for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth".

Well, time and changing tastes have rubbed some of the bloom off Judge Hardy's family. In fact, the rub started early: the last Hardy picture, in 1958, was a flop. Now, with hindsight, we can see that the high point of Mickey's epic career was his screen partnership with Judy Garland. Most of all, there were the four Mickey-and-Judy musicals they made for Arthur Freed, the ones where the rallying cry was "Hey, kids, let's put on a show/form our own band/stage a rodeo!" First came Babes in Arms (1939), then Strike Up the Band ('40) and Babes on Broadway ('41), and finally, the best of the bunch, Girl Crazyin '43. (That's the one that inspired this multimedia rendering by MGM staff caricaturist Jacques Kapralik.) In addition to those, there were Judy's appearances in three of the Andy Hardy pictures (Love Finds..., Life Begins for..., and ...Meets Debutante) and a specialty number in 1948's Words and Music, with Judy guest-starring as herself in a duet with Mickey's Lorenz Hart to "I Wish I Were in Love Again". Finally, there was a nostalgic, wistful reunion on Judy's short-lived TV show in December '63. Every time, their teaming was nothing less than pure joy.

"Judy and I were so close we could've come from the same womb," Mickey once famously said. "We weren't like brothers or sisters, but there was no love affair there. There was more than a love affair. It's very, very difficult to explain the depth of our love for each other. It was so special. It was a forever love. Judy, as we speak, has not passed away. She's always with me in every heartbeat of my body."

That was in the 1992 TNT documentary MGM: When the Lion Roars, after Judy had been gone 23 years. It might have seemed like the musings of an old man in winter mourning a long-lost colleague -- except that Mickey had very similar words on the occasion of that guest spot on The Judy Garland Show thirty years earlier: "We've had a wonderful seven days together here," Mickey said at the close of the show, his arm around Judy's waist as she caressed the lapel on his tuxedo. "This is not only 'tradition'; this [woman] is the love of my life. My wife knows this -- my wives know this. [She] always has been, because there never will be, there aren't adjectives enough to express, in the world, how the one and only Judy -- is Judy." There was an awkward sweetness to his obviously ad-libbed words that bespoke unfeigned sincerity. 

Judy wrestled with many of the same things that beset Mickey during those post-MGM years: pills, liquor, serial failed marriages. Why he battled through them and lived to 93 while she got barely more than half that is impossible to know for sure, I suppose; I expect Mickey must have wondered about it himself from time to time.

Last May, at the Classic Film Festival and Hall of Fame in Orinda, Calif., Mickey made a personal appearance to introduce a screening of National Velvet, looking as chipper and cheerful as he ever did at his very best. In the Q&A, I had a chance to ask him about those days: "You've spoken many times about the joy you had working with Judy Garland, which comes through in all your pictures together. Is there some particular memory that always springs to mind whenever you think of Judy?" His reply was succinct: "I'd rather not say." 

Fair enough, Mick. After all you gave us, you're allowed to keep something for yourself. Whatever that memory is, I hope you and Judy are sharing it now.

.

Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 3

April 15, 2014, 2:30 am

≫ Next: The Duke of Hollywood

≪ Previous: Mickey and Judy -- Together at Last

$

0

0

At this point in our story it's still the spring of 1934. Before renting Shirley Temple out to Paramount to become a star, Fox frittered her away in one more pointless bit in Now I'll Tell. Actually, the picture's full title on screen was "Now I'll Tell" by Mrs. Arnold Rothstein, and as that suggests, it purported to be the inside dope on the high-flying life and mysterious death of Mrs. Rothstein's deceased husband, the gangster/gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series, was shot in November 1928 (apparently for welshing on a poker debt), and died two days later refusing to name his killer. Names were changed to protect the guilty, so Spencer Tracy starred as "Murray Golden", with Helen Twelvetrees as his saintly, noble wife (Mrs. Rothstein wrote the story, remember!), and with Rothstein's many mistresses combined into one person and played by 18-year-old Alice Faye.

Shirley's role was an inch or two better than in Change of Heart: 42 seconds on screen and a whopping five lines of dialogue (to wit: "And we saw a cow there, too!", "Does a black cow make black milk?", "Good night", and "Good night, Daddy" -- twice). Publicity poses like this one may have led Shirley to misremember her role as that of Tracy's daughter; in fact, she played the daughter of Tommy Doran (Henry O'Neill), a boyhood chum of Golden's who grows up to be a police detective -- on the other side of the law from his old pal. A decent enough gangland melodrama, Now I'll Tell hit screens one week after Little Miss Marker, and could only have underscored Fox's cluelessness.

(A side note: While Fox quickly learned to value Shirley, they never did know what they had in Spencer Tracy. They put him in 18 pictures in five years, usually as mugs and lummoxes, with the occasional loan-out here and there. Gradually he built a reputation as one of the best actors in town, but Fox kept wasting him on parts you could practically train a gorilla to play. Eventually they let him slip through their fingers into a contract with MGM in 1935. Within two years at Metro, Spence had snagged his first Oscar nomination; in the following two years he got his second and third, winning both times.) 

After Now I'll Tell, however, Shirley's days of Poverty Row shorts, four-line bits and uncredited walk-ons were finally behind her. For her next picture, she got top billing at last from her home studio, and just to remind audiences where they'd seen this kid before, Fox changed the title to...

Baby Take a Bow (released June 30, 1934)

First, an explanation of a trivial point, just so you don't suspect sloppy copy editing here at Cinedrome. The title of Jay Gorney and Lew Brown's song "Baby, Take a Bow" has a comma, and the comma appears in this and some other posters, ads and lobby cards for the movie. But it's not on the picture's main title card as it appears on screen. Therefore, I'll be using the comma when referring to the song, but not using it when I'm referring to the movie. Got it?

Anyhow, "Baby, Take a Bow" isn't in Baby Take a Bow -- except as a line of dialogue spoken by James Dunn (once again playing Shirley's father); but more of that later.

There's an intriguing mystery about the source material for Baby Take a Bow that's worth going into before we get to Shirley's version of it. It was originally a play by James P. Judge titled Square Crooks that ran on Broadway for 150 performances in 1926. That was a pretty decent run in those days, especially for a one-set play with a cast of nine, so Square Crooks probably turned a profit for its investors. In any case, it was bought by Fox and filmed as a silent in 1928.

Robert Armstrong and John Mack Brown played two ex-cons trying to go straight who fall under suspicion when a crony from their criminal days steals a pearl necklace from their wealthy employer. The thief tries to get the two to fence the pearls but they refuse. Complications arise when the thief, sensing the cops hot on his trail, stashes the necklace with Armstrong's unsuspecting little girl, who thinks it's a birthday present. What follows is a comic round of button-button-who's-got-the-button as the thief tries to retrieve the pearls; the heroes try to return them to their boss; an implacable insurance detective seeks to get the goods on the heroes, whom he suspects of the theft; and the little girl thinks it's all a game of hide-and-seek.

The mystery I mentioned arises from a reading of Variety's review of Square Crooks. The reviewer "Mori" praised it lightly as a "moderately interesting" B programmer (it ran only 60 minutes), but added, "Only chance with a story of this kind was to build a central character. But here five different people and a juvenile player divide interest, with the baby drawing first honors." Mori didn't identify the "baby", and neither does the picture's IMDb listing or the listing for the original play on the Internet Broadway Database (where the credits are admittedly incomplete). So unless a print of Square Crooks survives in the Fox vault (which, for a silent that came out during the hectic talkie revolution, is highly doubtful), the name of the little girl who Mori thought stole the show is probably lost forever to history.

Be that as it may, we certainly know who played the kid in the sound remake. Shirley is shown here with Claire Trevor, who plays her mother and James Dunn's wife. Trevor is younger and softer in Baby Take a Bow than we remember her from her better-known performances -- Stagecoach; Key Largo; The High and the Mighty; Murder, My Sweet -- she could almost pass for Ginger Rogers here.

Baby Take a Bow opens as Eddie Ellison (Dunn) is released from Sing Sing, promising to go straight. His girl Kay (Trevor) meets him at the gate, with continuing tickets for them to Niagra Falls for a justice of the peace wedding and honeymoon. At the same time we meet insurance investigator Welch (Alan Dinehart in an interesting performance), a tinhorn Javert who bluffly pals around with the men of various police forces -- and tries in vain to make time with Kay. Everybody, especially Kay, makes it clear that they don't like him, but Welch remains oblivious, blithely carrying on as if he's one of the guys. Six years later, when Eddie and Kay have built a happy home with their daughter Shirley (star and character share the given name), it will be Welch who tries to hound Eddie and his pal Larry (Ray Walker) back into prison.

Unlike Little Miss Marker over at Paramount, Baby Take a Bow gives ample evidence of having been thrown together in haste. It begins as melodrama, then segues into farce as Dunn, Walker, Trevor, Shirley and Ralf Harolde as the thief chase the pearl necklace up, down, back and forth in the Ellisons' apartment house. Then for the last reel it shifts back to melodrama as Harolde finally nabs the pearls and kidnaps Shirley to use as a shield in making good his escape. All ends happily, with the thief in custody, the pearls returned, and the heroes exonerated. Even the meddling Welch gets his just deserts.

Director Harry Lachman was evidently too hurried -- or too clumsy -- to negotiate these shifts in tone; the comedy scenes fall particularly flat. The picture's chief pleasure, predictably, is Shirley herself. But there are other small ones along the way, such as this, a tossed-off scene in which Kay and Shirley go through some dining-room calisthenics while listening to an exercise progam on the radio. Mother and daughter (and the actresses playing them) are clearly having fun, and it's contagious.

Also among those pleasures is another song and dance number for Shirley and James Dunn -- the one touch of music in the picture. The song is "On Account-a I Love You" by Bud Green and Sam H. Stept, performed by father and daughter at a rooftop birthday party for Shirley in which she shows off the new ballet dress Mommy and Daddy have given her. Again, the haste of the production is evident in the under-rehearsed hoofing (dance director Sammy Lee apparently didn't even have the few days he was allotted for "Baby, Take a Bow" in Stand Up and Cheer!). Still, the number is a highlight and worth sharing. At the end of the song, you'll see Dunn turn to Shirley and say, "C'mon, baby, take a bow," thus justifying the picture's title (again, the YouTube clip is colorized, and again I ask your indulgence):

Variety's reviewer "Kauf" pegged Baby Take a Bow exactly: "Without Shirley Temple this might have been a pretty obvious and silly melodrama, but it has Shirley Temple so it can go down on the books as a neat and sure b.o. [box office] hit, especially for the family trade." (It's a pity Mori couldn't have reviewed it; it would be interesting to have him compare it to Square Crooks -- assuming he even remembered a six-year-old silent B picture as late as 1934.) Meanwhile, back east at the New York Times, the anonymous reviewer sounded the first notes of praise mixed with highbrow condescension that would increase in some quarters in coming years (and would lead eventually to a successful libel suit against novelist Graham Greene and the British magazine Night and Day):

Little Shirley Temple continues in her new film at the Roxy to be the nation's best-liked babykins. A miracle of spontaneity, Shirley successfully conceals the illusion of sideline coaching which, in the ordinary child genius, produces homicidal impulses in those old fussbudgets who lack the proper admiration for cute kiddies.

Then, in the next sentence, the reviewer gave credit where it was due: "In 'Baby, Take a Bow,' she tucks the picture under her little arm and toddles off with it." (And by the way, it's worth noting that "nation's best-liked babykins" line. This, mind you, on the strength of only Stand Up and Cheer! and -- especially -- Little Miss Marker.)

Before embarking on her next picture at Fox, Shirley was shuttled back to Paramount for another loan-out:

Now and Forever (released August 31, 1934)







Shirley's billing on Now and Forever was again above the title, but third this time. Still, when you're billed third after Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard, you've really got no kick coming. (On screen she gets an "and": "And SHIRLEY TEMPLE".) Even more significantly, the music under the opening titles is an instrumental rendition of "Laugh, You Son of a Gun" -- reminding audiences of Little Miss Marker the way Baby Take a Bow had reminded them of Stand Up and Cheer! 

Now and Forever also reunited Shirley with director Henry Hathaway, who had presided over her near-death experience with a pony on To the Last Man. In this picture, Gary Cooper plays Jerry Day, a globe-trotting confidence man, with Carole Lombard as Toni, his accomplice and companion. In the credits she's identified as "Toni Day", but the script makes it pretty clear that they're not married; in the first scene he tells her, "I told you I was married," not, "was married before." Anyhow, Jerry was married, but when his wife died, he left his infant daughter with her wealthy, disapproving family; he figures the child must be five or six now. When he and Toni find themselves out of cash, he proposes to go to his stuffed-shirt brother-in-law and sell his parental rights for $75,000. But one brief visit with little Penny (Shirley), who naturally doesn't know him, changes his mind. He reveals himself to her and takes her with him while his brother-in-law fumes and blusters.

First stop, New York, where Jerry runs a scam on a Mr. Felix Evans (Sir Guy Standing) for $5,000 in a phony mining deal. Then it's bon voyage for Europe to meet Toni in Paris. Their ship is barely out of port before they meet Mr. Evans strolling the deck. Jerry manages to stammer out that he was suddenly called away to Europe, and Evans gives him a smooth, knowing smirk. "Quite a coincidence, Mr. Day. Because the same thing happened to me." And Evans calmly wishes him a good day.

Jerry and Penny join Toni in Paris, where, after a little jealous tension, Toni and Penny bond with one another. Toni has an uneasy conscience over bringing Penny into the lifestyle she and Jerry have adopted, and in his way, so does he. He tries to settle down into an honest job in Paris, but his and Toni's rich tastes are his undoing. Then the sinister Mr. Evans reenters his life. Evans has his eye on the jewels of Mrs. J.H.P. Crane (Charlotte Granville), a dowager widow who has taken a shine to Penny, and he wants Jerry to help him lay hands on them.

That's really as far as we need to go with Now and Forever because...well, frankly, despite the nostalgic value of Cooper, Lombard and Temple in the same picture, it's a bit of a dud. The script by Vincent Lawrence and Sylvia Thalberg (sister of Irving) is as bland and pointless as the title, and this sort of ersatz Ernst Lubitsch was never director Hathaway's strong suit. Shirley sings one song, "The World Owes Me a Living" from the then-current Disney Silly Symphony The Grasshopper and the Ants, which serves as Jerry's unofficial theme song (he's whistling it when he first meets Penny). But even that's a cheat; Hathaway cuts away for a long scene of Jerry stealing an emerald necklace and stashing it in his daughter's teddy bear, with Penny's voice barely audible in a distant room of the old lady's mansion. Now and Forever is really only memorable for two things. One is Shirley's recollection of the fun of working with Carole Lombard ("If she really employed bawdy humor and truck-driver expletives, it was never within my hearing. Wherever she went she seemed to wear a halo of crystalline happiness.").

The other thing is a scene in which Penny learns that her father is a jewel thief and has lied to her about it. On the set that day, just before the cameras rolled, some blabbermouth inadvertently spilled the beans about Dorothy Dell's gruesome death. The tears we see in that scene aren't Penny's disillusionment with her father; they're Shirley's genuine grief at the loss of her friend from Little Miss Marker.

After this second excursion to Paramount, Shirley returned to Fox for her next job, the first real "Shirley Temple picture" -- in the sense that it was tailor-made just for her -- with the song that, as she put it, would stick to her "like lifelong glue". Except for a famous near-miss several years later (which I'll get to in good time), there would be no more talk about loaning her out.

To be continued...
.

The Duke of Hollywood

April 19, 2014, 3:11 am

≫ Next: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 4

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 3

$

0

0

Scott Eyman has been crafting definitive Hollywood biographies for over 20 years now, and each one seems to come hotter on the heels of the one before. His Lion of Hollywood: The Life and Legend of Louis B. Mayer and Empire of Dreams: The Epic Life of Cecil B. DeMille appeared only five years apart (2005 and 2010 respectively); a lesser writer -- someone like, well, me for instance -- might have spent 12 or 15 years on either one of them and never managed to convey the sense that yes, this must be what the man was like, as well as Scott did both times. And as if that weren't impressive enough, in between those two he collaborated with Robert Wagner on his 2008 autobiography Pieces of My Heart.

(Full disclosure: Scott Eyman is a friend of mine. I first met him about 15 years ago and could hardly believe I was shaking the hand that wrote The Speed of Sound [1997] -- the indispensible book on the talkie revolution. Scott is some years younger than I am, but I hope to be just like him when I grow up.)

Scott's latest book is John Wayne: The Life and Legend -- and yes, this must be what the man was like. This is very much a companion volume to Scott's 1999 bio Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford, and it could hardly be otherwise: the two names were linked in life and art as few others have been. Both books end with the final image from The Searchers: Wayne as Ethan Edwards, framed in the cabin door and walking away from the family reunion into a barren landscape.

There are no bombshell revelations in John Wayne, yet the book is full of surprises -- beginning with the cover, which pictures a younger, slimmer, smoother Wayne than we're used to. (I carried the book into a Hallmark card store one day and set it on the counter while I paid for my purchase. The clerk, looking at it upside down, thought it was a picture of James Dean.)

Other surprises: The idea that Wayne stumbled into acting by accident was a myth propagated by Wayne himself. In fact, he was movie-struck from childhood, stage-struck as early as high school, and began lobbying for on-screen parts from the day he first walk onto the Fox lot as a laborer. And his feelings for his parents -- the feckless father whom he adored for his kindness, the stern mother (who detested him to her dying day) whom he resented even as he paid tribute to "her strength of character, her strong sense of right and wrong, and her temper -- all of which he inherited."

Perhaps the biggest surprise for me was how separately the man viewed himself from "John Wayne". "In Wayne's own mind," Scott writes, "He was Duke Morrison. John Wayne was to him what the Tramp was to Charlie Chaplin -- a character that overlapped his own personality, but not to the point of subsuming it." The Duke never legally changed his name; his death certificate identified him as "Marion Morrison (John Wayne)". 

Two quotes from the Duke, which Scott uses as epigraphs, illustrate this separation. From 1957: "The guy you see on the screen isn't really me. I'm Duke Morrison, and I never was and never will be a film personality like John Wayne. I know him well. I'm one of his closest students. I have to be. I make a living out of him." And again, much later: "I've played the kind of man I'd like to have been." These two wistful quotes put me in mind of the famous remark by Cary Grant (who always thought of himself as Archie Leach): "Everybody wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant."

Scott gives us a picture of Wayne the underrated actor (how anyone could watch Wayne's performances in Stagecoach, They Were Expendable, The Searchers, True Grit, Island in the Sky, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Quiet Man and still say he was "always the same" strikes me as a study in obtuseness, and I suspect Scott would feel the same way). The biography doesn't shrink from an honest appraisal of the conservative politics that made Wayne such a hated lightning rod in the last third of his life, or the fact that he could be impatient, demanding, gregarious and charming -- sometimes by turns, sometimes all at once. We also see the history buff who knew the American Civil War backward and forward, the collector who could discuss Asian or Native American art, and the "demon chess player" who could psych out an opponent as much as out-maneuver him on the board. 

Last but never least, John Wayne: The Life and Legend shows us the man who loved everything about making movies, who was first on the set in the morning and the last to leave at night. And who loved to talk about movies, his own and other people's. At one point, Scott quotes reporter Billy Wilkerson of the Hollywood Reporter, who sat in on a conversation between Wayne and director William Wellman in 1954, when the two were putting the finishing touches on The High and the Mighty: "They had praise for every name brought into the gab and, above all, praise for the business that made it possible for unknowns to become great personages in such a short span. They had logical excuses for some failures -- theirs and others -- with never a knock, never derision, always enthusiasm."

That, I think, is the John Wayne I would like to have met. And thanks to Scott Eyman, I feel like I have.

---

Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 4

April 26, 2014, 3:37 am

≫ Next: ...A-a-a-and We're Back...!

≪ Previous: The Duke of Hollywood

$

0

0

According to the IMDb, Now and Forever's U.S. release date was August 31, 1934. However, it wasn't reviewed by the New York Times or Variety until October 13 and 16, respectively. Apparently, either Fox sent the picture off to down-market engagements two-and-a-half months before opening it in New York -- or (more likely, I think) the IMDb has the date wrong.

Whatever the case, both Andre Sennwald in the Times and Abel Green (again) in Variety pegged Shirley as Now and Forever's saving grace. Sennwald:  

The little girl has lost none of her obvious delight in her work during her rise to fame. In "Now and Forever" she is, if possible, even more devastating in her unspoiled freshness of manner than she has been in the past...With Shirley's assistance [the photoplay]becomes, despite its violent assaults upon the spectator's credulity, a pleasant enough entertainment.

And Green:

"Now and Forever" is a remote title; it strains credulity; it can't stand analysis; it has sundry other technical and plausibility shortcomings -- but it has Shirley Temple and that virtually underwrites it for boxoffice...Shirley Temple in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" would probably click just as well.

In these reviews, both written by seasoned showbiz observers, the subtext is unmistakeable: Shirley Temple saves the show; Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard do their best, but without Shirley they'd have gone down with the ship. And Shirley is still only six years old.

Next it was back home to Fox for...

Bright Eyes (released December 20, 1934)

Shirley's last picture of 1934 teamed her for the third time with James Dunn -- not as her father this time, but as her godfather, an airplane pilot named "Loop" Merritt. William Conselman's script (from a story by Edwin Burke and director David Butler) gave the two stars an unusual setting: the early years of commercial aviation, when airmail was an innovation and passenger flights were strictly for the well-to-do, who could fly coast-to-coast only in short hops of 200 miles or so, while the vast majority of the moviegoing audience could only dream of someday, maybe, going up in a plane. Much of the picture was shot on the grounds of Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, ten miles north of downtown Los Angeles, and it served as a publicity gold mine for American Airlines and Douglas Aircraft, both of which cooperated generously with the production.

Shirley plays Shirley Blake, whose father, Loop's best friend since childhood, died in a plane crash some years before the story opens. Shirley spends much of her time with Loop and his aviator pals, and is something of a mascot around the airport, while her widowed mother works as a maid to a family in nearby Flintridge (then, as now under its incorporated name of La Canada Flintridge, an affluent suburb of L.A.). 

The airport is a lot more fun than home; Shirley loves her mother and the other servants, but the family they all work for is a trio of world-class pills. Mr. and Mrs. "Smythe" (real name Smith, but that's not good enough for them) are a couple of selfish, snooty social-climbing snobs. As the story opens on Christmas Eve, Mrs. Smythe (Dorothy Christy) is reprimanding Shirley's mother Mary (Lois Wilson) for taking so many personal phone calls and visits from her aviator friends. As Mary slinks contritely back to the kitchen, the effete Mr. Smythe (Theodor von Eltz) smirks, "I told you when you engaged her that it wouldn't work out.""Well," she sighs, "she was so pathetic about wanting a nice home for her little girl that I let my sympathy get the better of my judgment." Then, showing the true depth of her sympathy, she adds, "I'll let her go right after the holidays."

As bad as the Smythes are, they're not the worst of it. That would be their daughter Joy (Jane Withers), a screaming little monster in a perpetual state of tantrum, and the most misnamed child in the history of human life on Earth.

In real life, eight-year-old Jane was nothing like the character she played. Bright Eyes was her big break after a handful of uncredited bits since 1932. Fox quickly signed her to a seven-year contract and she went on to become a star in her own right, though inevitably in Shirley's shadow, especially since they worked for the same studio. The two girls never worked together again -- which is a pity, because Jane was the perfect foil for her younger co-star, and in Bright Eyes she comes as close as anybody ever did to stealing a show from Shirley Temple. Playing an obnoxious, spoiled-rotten brat, Jane was genuinely funny -- no small achievement when you consider how many child actors over the years have tried to be funny, only to come off looking like obnoxious, spoiled-rotten brats.

Jane continued acting into her early 20s, even after 20th Century Fox dropped her in 1942, then she retired from the screen in favor of marriage to a rich Texas oil man. That foundered after eight years, and Jane made a comeback as a character actress in George Stevens's Giant in 1956. Thereafter, she stayed busy in movies and on TV, and she became familiar to millions of baby boomers as Josephine the Plumber in a series of commercials for Comet Cleanser in the 1960s and '70s. As of this writing Jane Withers is still with us, and hopefully in good health and spirits. Continued long life to her.

But back to Bright Eyes. Rounding out the household is Uncle Ned Smith (Charles Sellon), a crotchety old invalid who drives his wheelchair around the house like an assault vehicle, barking and grumbling sourly at everybody. Underneath the crust, however, he's an old softie, especially toward Shirley; it's just that he has no patience with his nephew and niece-in-law's hifalutin airs (the original family name is good enough for him), and he can't stand the holy terror Joy. He knows the Smythes don't like him any more than he likes them, that they only fawn over him in hopes of a big payoff when he finally kicks the bucket, and he enjoys lording it over them for just that reason.

Finally there's Mrs. Smythe's cousin Judith Allen (Adele Martin), visiting from back east for the holidays. By a remarkable coincidence, Judith is the former society debutante whose family pressured her into jilting Loop Merritt years earlier. It's clear she still thinks the world of Loop, but just as clear that he feels once-bitten-twice-shy; the best she can get from him when they meet is an icy politeness.

So that's the situation going into Christmas Day, when Mary Blake, hurrying through her duties and rushing off to join a Christmas party at the air field with Shirley, Loop and the boys, is struck and killed by an automobile. Uncle Ned orders the Smythes to take the orphaned Shirley in, but they're not happy about it. Neither is Loop, and as Shirley's godfather he wants to bring her to live with him, even though the life of a seat-of-the-pants aviator is marginal at best. Uncle Ned thinks he knows what's best, and takes steps to adopt Shirley. This prompts Loop to take on a dangerous flight in deadly foul weather to earn the money to hire a lawyer to fight Uncle Ned's expensive legal team. Meanwhile, Shirley, knowing full well how unwelcome she is in the Smythe house, stows away on Loop's plane. The stage is set for a nasty custody battle -- that is, if Shirley and Loop can manage to survive the flight.

Bright Eyes was the first movie created from the ground up specifically to showcase Shirley Temple, and it has many of the elements that would become standard in Shirley's pictures: Shirley the orphan, the legions of grown-ups charmed by her, the cranky old coot for her to win over (although in this case she's won him over before the movie begins), etc. And not incidentally, it has theShirley Temple song, "On the Good Ship Lollipop" by Richard Whiting and Sidney Clare. I'm not posting a YouTube clip here because, frankly, I don't think I need to -- is there anybody over the age of 18 who doesn't know this scene? It's interesting to note, though, that the song isn't about a seagoing vessel -- it's about an airplane. As Shirley sings in the verse: 

I've thrown away my toys

Even my drum and trains

I want to make some noise

With real live aeroplanes

Someday I'm going to fly

I'll be a pilot too

And when I do

How would you

Like to be my crew

On the goo-oo-ood ship Lollipop...

Bright Eyes was Shirley's last teaming with James Dunn, who had pretty much been her steady escort to the top of the heap at Fox. Dunn himself, however, was on the way down, thanks in large part to his increasing dependency on alcohol. He didn't make the cut when Fox merged with 20th Century in 1935, and he drifted off to other studios: first Warners, then Universal, then a long sojourn on Poverty Row, almost unemployable. He made a comeback of sorts -- ironically, at 20th Century Fox -- in 1945, winning an Oscar as the charming, alcoholic father in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (a virtually autobiographical role). He never really made it back to the top, or out of the bottle, but his Irish charm never entirely deserted him, and he worked steadily until his death at 65 after stomach surgery in 1967.

*                    *                    *

In a nutshell -- and not counting five shorts and bit roles under her old contract to Jack Hays, or the two walk-ons in Change of Heart and Now I'll Tell -- Shirley Temple's output for 1934 consisted of a breakthrough debut in Stand Up and Cheer!, a confirming star turn in Little Miss Marker, a placeholding appearance in Baby Take a Bow, credit for the save in Now and Forever, and a tailor-made vehicle in Bright Eyes. A great year for any rising star, and unprecedented for one who turned six midway through it.

In Child Star Shirley remembers that when Oscar nominations for 1934 were announced, "a vicious cat fight had erupted. My name was on the nomination list and odds-makers had me an almost certainty to win." She goes on to assert that a storm of protest arose over the Academy's failure to nominate either Myrna Loy for The Thin Man or Bette Davis for Of Human Bondage, and that as a result her own nomination was rescinded and voting rules changed to allow for write-ins. I've been unable to find this confirmed anywhere else, and I suspect Shirley's memory was playing her false. She doesn't say which picture she believed she had been nominated for (if they'd had supporting awards in '34, she might have been a cinch to win for Little Miss Marker, but those categories were still two years in the future). Shirley is right, however, about the write-ins and the protest -- though the storm was more on behalf of Davis than Loy (in the end, the award went to Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night; Davis, even with the write-ins, came in third).

Be that as it may, there was no ignoring Shirley's meteoric rise to the top tier of box-office stars, and the Academy Board of Governors conferred a new award, a miniature statuette "in grateful recognition of her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment during the year". The emcee at that year's awards was the prolific Kentucky humorist, author and columnist Irvin S. Cobb (shown here with Shirley), one of those writers whose fame more or less died when he did in 1944. Most of his 60-plus books and 300 short stories are out of print now, and he is probably best remembered for what he said that night. First:"There was one great towering figure in the cinema game, one artiste among artistes, one giant among the troupers, whose monumental, stupendous and elephantine work deserved special mention...Is Shirley Temple in the house?" Then, after Shirley joined him at the podium: "Listen, y'all ain't old enough to know what this is all about. But honey, I want to tell you that when Santa Claus wrapped y'all up in a package and dropped you down Creation's chimney, he brought the loveliest Christmas present that was ever given to the world."

In Child Star, even 50-plus years on, Shirley's disappointment still sounds tender to the touch ("If mine was really a commendable job done, why not a big Oscar like everyone else's?"), but I think she overlooks the specialness of her special award (the only one given that year). The miniature Oscar that was created just for her would remain the standard recognition for outstanding juvenile performers for the next 26 years, and would be given 11 more times. The last went to Hayley Mills for Pollyanna in 1960; after that, beginning with nine-year-old Mary Badham for To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962, the kids would have to take their chances with the grownups (and some -- Patty Duke, Tatum O'Neal, Anna Paquin -- would even win). Of those dozen miniature-Oscar winners -- who include Mickey Rooney, Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien and others -- the little girl who inspired the creation of it was the youngest to receive it. In fact, she remains to this day the youngest person ever to win anything from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I doubt if that record will ever be broken.

Shirley Temple's career hit its stride with Bright Eyes. Nineteen-thirty-four had been a banner year, and the banner would continue to wave in '35. I'll get to that next time.

To be continued...
. 

...A-a-a-and We're Back...!

June 9, 2016, 3:30 am

≫ Next: Cinevent 2016 (Continued)

≪ Previous: Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 4

$

0

0

It's been way too long -- over a year-and-a-half -- since I posted anything new here at Cinedrome. I want to apologize for that. I won't overstate the concerns and conditions that led me to suspend blogging. Nor will I exaggerate the number of posts I began and never got around to finishing. But there have been some of both.


Be that as it may, I've had my necessary vacation and I feel rested, refreshed, and ready to soldier on. So with that, I file the following report on the 48th Annual Cinevent Classic Film Convention in Columbus, Ohio.


This was Cinevent's second year in its new home, Columbus's Renaissance Downtown Hotel. The convention's previous, longtime venue, which had changed hands and names several times over the decades, closed suddenly -- and permanently -- in February 2015, only three months before that year's Cinevent. Which, with an undertaking of this scale, qualifies as "at the last minute". The Cinevent Committee had to scramble madly to find another venue, and by the grace of a merciful Providence the Renaissance was available. Better yet, the new place proved to be a step above the old one. Did I say a step? Actually, the new place is about three flights above the old one: superior accommodations, a better screening room with more comfortable chairs, a bigger dealers' room, everything centrally located on one floor -- and the hotel itself centrally located in a much better neighborhood, one block from the Ohio State House, with plenty of good restaurants nearby.


The Renaissance is now, as I said, Cinevent's new home -- but it wasn't available for Memorial Day Weekend this year, so the get-together was delayed a week to June 2 - 5. Next year (the contract has already been signed) they'll be going back to Memorial Day.


Cinevent 2016, Day 1


The first day featured a screening of King Vidor's classic slice of life The Crowd (1928), one of the greatest pictures of the silent era -- and probably one of the top 40 or 50 of all time. The Crowd is readily available on video and pops up regularly on Turner Classic Movies. Much harder to find -- incredibly rare, as a matter of fact -- was a program of all-but-lost comedy shorts from Fox Film Corp. For me, the highlights of the first day were Melody Cruise, a 1933 comedy starring Charlie Ruggles and Phil Harris (in his movie debut, 30-plus years before voicing Baloo the Bear in Walt Disney's The Jungle Book); and The House of Rothschild (1934), from Darryl F. Zanuck's fledgling 20th Century Pictures.


And by an astonishing coincidence, those happen to be the two pictures at this year's Cinevent for which I supplied the program notes. And here they are:

Melody Cruise (1933)  With a title like Melody Cruise and a leading man like Phil Harris, you can be forgiven if you expect this picture to be one uninterrupted songfest. Well, it's not exactly, so you'll be wise to dial those expectations back a bit so you can join in the fun. It's not really a musical -- a "comedy with songs" would be a better term. But director Mark Sandrich -- who was finally, after six years directing shorts for various studios, beginning to graduate once and for all to features -- assembles the picture with an intuitive sense of musical rhythm that would come to full bloom in his partnership with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.


Melody Cruise concerns a trip by sea from New York through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles undertaken by two men, both well-to-do and each with an eye for the ladies: Pete Wells (Charlie Ruggles), a married man best described as a "male flirt"; and Alan Chandler (Phil Harris), a confirmed bachelor who loves to romance the fair sex but is (in the words of one of the movie's semi-songs) "not the marrying kind." In order to avoid any possibility of being waylaid into matrimony, Alan dispatches a letter to Pete's wife in California "to be opened only in the event of my marriage" and detailing all of Pete's marital indiscretions while husband and wife were on separate coasts; this, Alan figures, will give Pete a vested interest in scotching any shipboard romances that his bachelor pal may fall into.


Ah, but the best-laid plans...No sooner does the ship leave the pier than Alan meets winsome Laurie Marlowe (Helen Mack), and this bachelor suddenly finds himself feeling much less confirmed. Throw in an old flame of Alan's who is also aboard (Greta Nissen), and a couple of randy party girls from Pete's bon voyage celebration who linger in his stateroom after the vessel sails (June Brewster, Shirley Chambers), and the ingredients of an old-fashioned farce of misunderstandings and mistaken identity are in place, and the voyage promises to be a busy one for all concered.


The plot of this RKO pre-Code may be tissue-thin, but the execution gives it a gloss of frivolous fun. We can detect the influence of the previous year's Love Me Tonight (from over at Paramount) right off the bat, as passengers in a shipping office negotiate for their respective cruises in a sort of recitative of rhyming dialogue, while the underlying music suggests a melody for their words that would become a song if anyone wanted to sing (the songs are credited to Val Burton and Will Jason). It happens again later as the ship sets sail, with the activities of the crew carefully choreographed to Max Steiner's music, and later still as the ladies aboard (look sharp and you'll catch a glimpse of 16-year-old Betty Grable) gossip about Alan Chandler in "He's Not the Marrying Kind". And in the picture's one full-fledged song, sung by Phil Harris to Helen Mack as their ship waits its turn at the moonlit Panama Canal, both the title ("Isn't It a Night for Love?") and the staging are redolent of "Isn't It Romantic?" from Love Me Tonight.


Making his screen debut here (if you don't count an uncredited background bit as a nightclub drummer in 1929's Why Be Good? with Colleen Moore), Phil Harris is younger, sleeker and smoother than the big loveable galoot we all remember from Jack Benny's radio program and movies like The Wild Blue Yonder (1948) and The High and the Mighty (1954). Later on in 1933, he and director Sandrich would collaborate on the short So This Is Harris!, which would go on to win an Oscar for best comedy short subject.


Melody Cruise got an indulgent recpetion from the critics. Variety's "Rush" found it "just a well-rehearsed trifle, padded out unmercifully with incidentals, atmosphere and other embroideries", but allowed that "photography and technical production are better than first class, becoming notable for excellence at many points" -- an apparent nod to the many whimsical screen-wipes Sandrich and conematographer Bert Glennon use to transition from scene ot scene. Likewise Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times, who called it "an adroit mixture of nonsense and music which makes for an excellent Summer show...It is, however, not the singing or the clowning that makes this a smart piece of work, but the imaginative direction of Mark Sandrich, who is alert in seizing any opportunity for cinematic stunts. From the viewpoint of direction this production is quite an achievement, for there are moments when it has a foreign aspect and there is some extraordinarily clever photography."

The House of Rothschild (1934)  At the beginning of 1933, Darryl F. Zanuck was head of production at Warner Bros., the man behind The Jazz Singer, Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, 42nd Street, and other seminal pictures of Warners' pre-Code era. On April 15, Zanuck abruptly resigned. As might be expected -- especially with Warner Bros. -- it was due to a dispute over money.  For once, though, it wasn't Zanuck's money that was being disputed. Zanuck had reluctantly agreed to be the bearer of the bad news when the brothers imposed temporary studio-wide pay cuts in the wake of FDR's bank holiday in March '33. When studio chief Jack Warner decided to extend the cuts beyond the agreed-upon end date, Zanuck felt that he (Warner) had broken his (Zanuck's) word to the employees. Harsh words flew, and Zanuck took a walk.

Zanuck wasn't idle long. Three days later he consulted Joseph Schenck, president of United Artists, for advice on some job offers he was considering. Schenck made an offer of his own: the two of them should go into business together. Schenck secured a loan from his brother Nicholas, president of Loew's Inc., and 20th Century Pictures was born -- with Schenck as president, William Goetz (son-in-law of MGM's Louis B. Mayer, who also put up some money) as vice president, and Zanuck as production chief.

The new concern hit the ground running. One of Zanuck's first moves was to sign contracts with stars George Arliss and Loretta Young, whose contracts with Warner Bros. had just recently expired. That must have been a source of grim satisfaction to Zanuck.

It certainly rankled Harry Warner, who filed a protest with Will Hays of the MPPDA complaining that the creation of 20th Century was a deliberate, unethical slap in the face to Warner Bros, financed by loans from MGM's Nick Schenck and L.B. Mayer and poaching Warners' empoyees -- particularly Arliss and Young. Joe Schenck got wind of Harry's letter and filed his own rebuttal: neither Arliss nor Young, he wrote, had signed with 20th Century until after their Warners contracts expired. As for where Schenck got his financing, "it is absolutely none of [Harry Warner's] business."

Arliss and Young's first project for 20th Century was The House of Rothschild. Arliss played the dual role of Mayer Rothschild, patriarch of the clan in 1780, and 32 years later, Mayer's eldest son Nathan, who with his four brothers secured the family's fabulous wealth by backing the right side in the Napoleonic Wars. Loretta played Nathan's daughter Julie, who visits consternation on her devoutly Jewish father by falling in love with a Gentile officer in the Duke of Wellington's army, a young captain played by Robert Young (no relation, of course).

George Arliss was, like his contemporary Marie Dressler, one of the most unusual movie stars of the 1920s and '30s -- neither handsome nor young, but charming and witty, with a twinkling eye that nicely complemented and softened his typically English stiff upper lip. Born Augustus George Andrews in 1868, Arliss cut his teeth as an actor on British provincial stages in the days of Henry Irving and Herbert Beerbohm Tree. He made the transition from stage to screen with remarkable ease, and, thanks to his orotund elocutions, he moved just as easily from silents to talkies when sound came in. His signature stage role was as Queen Victoria's favorite prime minister in Disraeli, which he filmed twice, as a silent in 1921 and a talkie eight years later (winning an Oscar the second time). Historical figures were a bit of a speciality -- Disraeli and Alexander Hamilton before Nathan Rothschild, the Duke of Wellington and Cardinal Richelieu afterward -- but, with appropriate changes in costume and hair style, they all semed to look and sound pretty much like George Arliss. That was good enough for audiences in the 1930s, and time hasn't dimmed the old boy's charm; it's good enough for us today.

The House of Rothschild was directed by Alfred Werker, a reliable studio workhorse whose work was generally unobjectionable if undistinguished. According to the IMDb, some scenes were directed by the uncredited (and similarly reliable) Sidney Lanfield, though without combing the studio's archives there's no way of knowing which. Oddly enough -- or perhaps it's not so odd at that -- both men would have their finest hours in 1939 directing Basil Rathbone's first two outings as Sherlock Holmes: The Hound of the Baskervilles (Lanfield) and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Werker). The screen also credits, as "Associate Director", Maude T. Howell, a member in good standing of Arliss's informal support group on both stage and screen.

Written by Nunnally Johnson from a play by George Hembert Westley (real name George Hippisley, a humor writer and editor for the Boston Evening Transcript), House of Rothschild has the distinction of being one of the first movies (probably in fact the very first) to deal with the subject of anti-Semitism -- this, mind you, just as the Nazis were coming to power in Germany. Nathan and his brothers deal with Jew-haters again and again, epitomized by Boris Karloff as the reptilian Count Ledrantz of Prussia and personified by the rioting mobs Ledrantz sets on the Jews in their ghettos all across Europe -- until Napoleon's escape from Elba puts Nathan once more in the financial driver's seat. The picture was a powerful argument for tolerance in 1934, and it looks even more powerful today in light of what we now know was to come.

The House of Rothschild was a major hit and a succes d'estime for 20th Century, Oscar-nominated for best picture (it lost to It Happened One Night). Reviewers hailed it as one of the best pictures of George Arliss's career, maybe even the very best -- a judgment that holds up today. Variety's "Land" called it "one of those occasional 100% smashes which Hollywood achieves." In the New York Times, Mordaunt Hall enthused, "Mr. Arliss outshines any performance he has contributed to the screen, not excepting his expert and highly revealing interpretation of Disraeli." In The New Yorker, even the perennially sniffy John Mosher concceded, "Mr. Arliss at last condescends to appear in a film of some maturity of purpose. His 'House of Rothschild' compares with his 'Disraeli' in quality as well as in the basic theme." However, Mosher couldn't forbear sniffing that the final scene was "soaked in abominable Technicolor for some mysterious reason." The print we're screening includes that scene in true IB Tech, so the Cinevent audience can judge for themselves the justice of Mr. Mosher's complaint.

The first night was rounded out by Tomorrow at Ten, a British picture from 1962. Robert Shaw -- already a veteran of British TV (The Buccaneers) and on the cusp of stardom that would come his way with From Russia With Love ('64) and A Man for All Seasons ('66) -- plays Marlowe, a cold-eyed criminal who kidnaps a wealthy man's little boy and stashes him in an isolated, anonymous rented house with a little "golliwog" doll to keep him company. Then he brazenly walks into the boy's home and demands 50,000 pounds sterling and free passage to Brazil. Only then will he phone the father and reveal the boy's location.

Inevitably, the police are called in, but Marlowe is unruffled. His trump card: that golliwog doll is a time bomb, and it's set to go off the next morning at ten a.m. How all this plays out, especially after Marlowe dies without disclosing the boy's whereabouts, makes for a nifty little thriller, a rare (for Americans) look at a British B-picture. (This one, unlike most British Bs, got a stateside release in 1965, after Shaw had made a name for himself with U.S. audiences in From Russia With Love, playing a role very similar to Marlowe.) It was a good way to close out the first day of Cinevent.

And the weekend was only beginning.

To be continued...

.

Cinevent 2016 (Continued)

June 11, 2016, 3:48 am

≫ Next: Cinevent 2016, Part 3

≪ Previous: ...A-a-a-and We're Back...!

$

0

0

Day 2

The second day of Cinevent began with a departure from custom and a real curiosity: Die Reise nach Tilsit (The Trip to Tilsit), a 1939 German film. That's the departure; Cinevent has heretofore screened almost exclusively (if not entirely so) English-language movies. The curiosity is that The Trip to Tilsit is based on the same Hermann Sudermann story that inspired F.W. Murnau's Sunrise (1927): a cheating husband plots to murder his wife and make it look like an accident, but changes his mind when the couple visit the big city and rekindle their love for each other. The compare-and-contrast lends The Trip to Tilsit a fascination it doesn't have all by itself; it's well-crafted and well-acted, especially by Kristina Soderbaum (wife of director Veit Harlan) as the wronged wife. But Sunrise is one of the supremely transcendent visual poems of movie history, a movie that, once seen, is never forgotten; The Trip to Tilsit, well-made as it is, is just a mundane Teutonic soap opera. Historian and Cinevent regular Richard M. Roberts dismissed it as "the Nazi Sunrise", and that just about nails it. (Director Harlan was an ardent Nazi who joined the party in 1933 and prospered during the '30s turning out propaganda for Josef Goebbels, culminating in the viciously anti-Semitic Jew Suss in 1940.)


One more point of interest about The Trip to Tilsit. Playing the philandering husband (and also good) was a Dutch actor named Hein van der Niet, billed as Frits von Dongen. Unlike his director, van der Niet fled the Nazis at the outbreak of World War II and wound up in Hollywood working as a freelance actor under the name Philip Dorn. He was Hal Wallis's first choice to play Victor Laszlo in Casablanca -- personally, I say it's a pity he didn't -- but he had already signed for Random Harvest at MGM and the scheduling wouldn't work. No telling how Dorn's career might have gone if he had done Casablanca instead of Paul Henreid, but as it was he still managed to rack up a pretty good career -- Ziegfeld Girl, Tarzan's Secret Treasure, Calling Dr. Gillespie, Passage to Marseilles and The Fighting Kentuckian, among others (he was especially fine as Irene Dunne's husband in I Remember Mama) -- before ill-health forced his retirement in 1955. He died in Los Angeles 20 years later, age 73.

After "the Nazi Sunrise" it was back to Hollywood and the English language for Every Night at Eight (1935), a well-above-average musical from Paramount. George Raft and Alice Faye (on loan from 20th Century Fox) were top-billed, but the prime role went to radio singer Frances Langford, in her feature debut. Alice and Frances played two of three pals (the third was Patsy Kelly) seeking and finding radio stardom with bandleader Raft. Raoul Walsh, better known for movies like High Sierra, They Died With Their Boots On and White Heat, directed at a lively pace, and there was a bunch of first-rate songs, two of which are still with us: "I Feel a Song Comin' On" and "I'm in the Mood for Love".

...And then came Cecil B. DeMille's This Day and Age (1933). Talk about a curiosity! Richard Cromwell plays the leader of a group of high school students who get appointed to ceremonial positions in city government -- judge, chief of police, district attorney, etc. -- as a way to give them an on-the-job view of how the grownups run things. When a friend of theirs is murdered by a local gangster (Charles Bickford) who gets off scot-free thanks to an oily high-priced attorney, the kids take over the government for real, kidnapping the gangster and torturing a confession out of him ("We haven't got time for rules of evidence!"), after which the adults see the error of their ways. The trauma of the Great Depression spawned more than one movie like this -- check out a little oddity called Gabriel Over the White House ('33) sometime -- movies where audiences could vent their frustrtion with "the System" by vicariously experiencing things they'd never get away with (or seriously contemplate) in real life.

I'm going to cut this post short in the interest of getting it up. But stay tuned; we're not even halfway through the weekend, and there's more where this came from.

To be continued...

.

Cinevent 2016, Part 3

June 14, 2016, 2:55 am

≫ Next: Cinevent 2016, Part 4

≪ Previous: Cinevent 2016 (Continued)

$

0

0

Day 2 (cont.)

A regular feature at every Cinevent is a program of Charley Chase shorts. If you don't recognize the name, it's worth the effort to familiarize yourself. Unlike some other greats of silent comedy (Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy), Chase never graduated from shorts to features (though he turned in a delightful supporting performance in Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert in 1933). Still, his output was prodigious; Cinevent could present a program of five of his shorts (assuming they all survived, which unfortunately they don't) and go 50 years without repeating one. Cinevent regulars and others familiar with him may skip the next two paragraphs.

Charles Joseph Parrott was born in Baltimore in 1893. He began performing in vaudeville as a teenager and started in movies at 19. After stints with Al Christie and Mack Sennett, he joined Hal Roach as a director in 1920 and by 1922 rose to be general manager of the studio. It was Parrott who brought Oliver Hardy to the Hal Roach "Lot of Fun"; he also recruited Robert McGowan to oversee Roach's Our Gang comedies, which McGowan did for 14 years.

But Parrott found admin work unrewarding, and by 1924 he returned to performing. Rechristened Charley Chase (a wordplay on the title of a popular World War I-era song, "Chase Me Charlie"), he developed his own comic persona as a lanky, dapper, bedeviled everyman, and was a mainstay of Hal Roach shorts for over ten years, silent and sound, though always a third banana behind Our Gang and Laurel and Hardy. When Roach cut him loose in 1935 (the reasons are a little vague; Roach may simply have been retrenching), he wound up at Columbia starring in his own series of shorts and directing others for the Three Stooges (including one of their best, Violent is the Word for Curly). By this time health problems, exacerbated by alcoholism, were dogging him, and when his beloved younger brother James (who had his own substance-abuse problems) died in 1939, Charley's drinking soared out of control until a heart attack killed him in June 1940 at age 46.

That's the quick-and-dirty version of Chase's career, and some day I may post on him in more detail. For now, suffice it to say that Cinevent is doing its share to keep Chase's name alive (as Richard Roberts aptly put it, he's not so much neglected as taken for granted) with these regular annual tributes. This year the Cinevent audience got a real scoop: in addition to the shorts Powder and Smoke, Stolen Goods, Too Many Mammas (all 1924), and Looking for Sally ('25), the Chase program included The Way of All Pants ('27), complete for the first time in a couple of generations. A truncated version of Pants has survived in the Robert Youngson compilation The Further Perils of Laurel and Hardy ('67), but the complete two-reeler was long believed lost. A British release print was recently discovered, with some damage due to age and decomposition; it was digitally restored, then transferred back to 16mm film for screening in Columbus. The whole thing was touch-and-go right down to the wire: the print wasn't completed until just a few weeks beforehand; it wasn't even mentioned in the program book because they weren't sure it would be ready in time to be "re-premiered" at Cinevent.

Anyhow, The Way of All Pants (U.K. title The Way of All Dress, since "pants" was considered vulgar in Britain at the time) was an ingenious delight, ringing endless changes on men (beginning with Charley) losing their trousers at a high-tone dinner party. A canine performer identified as Buddy the Dog all but stole the show. (NOTE:Lacking program notes, I've had to rely on my memory. Richard M. Roberts, if you're reading this and I've got any details amiss, feel free to set me straight.)

The evening highlight of Day 2 was Slightly Scarlet, a 1956 Technicolor film noir (if that's not a contradition in terms) about two sisters, one nice (Rhonda Fleming) and one naughty (Arlene Dahl), with John Payne as the political muscle man to a corrupt city boss (Ted de Corsia) serving as the rope in a tug-of-war of female sibling rivalry. It was based on a novel by James M. Cain (better known for Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce and The Postman Always Rings Twice) entitled Love's Lovely Counterfeit; if nothing else, the movie at least improved on Cain's title. Directed by the venerable Allan Dwan, it was a suitably fast-paced melodrama of sex and politics set amid the now-retro decor of 1950s moderne-ity, and it demonstrated conclusively that whatever you might think, Rhonda Fleming and Arlene Dahl are not, in fact, the same person (both ladies, God bless 'em, are still with us at this writing, 92 and 90 respectively; continued long life to them both). Cinevent's print had deliciously lurid Technicolor but was presented in the standard 4:3 aspect ratio and not screened in "Superscope". Whatever that is.

After that, another silent, White Tiger (1923), with Wallace Beery as a jewel thief who teams up with two confederates, Priscilla Dean (top-billed) and Raymond Griffith -- concealing from them both the fact that not only are they brother and sister separated in infancy, but Beery himself betrayed their father and brought about his death. It was directed and co-written by Tod (London After Midnight) Browning, who could always be counted on to come up with a real whopper.

Day 2 closed out with a midnight snack: An episode of the short-lived (1961-62) TV series Bus Stop, which was unrelated to the William Inge play or the Marilyn Monroe movie, but essentially a dramatic anthology series with a few continuing characters playing peripheral roles in each episode. This one was "I Kiss Your Shadow", from a story by Robert (Psycho, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper") Bloch, about a man (George Grizzard) haunted -- in every sense -- by the death of his neurotic, possessive wife (Joanne Linville) in a car crash. It was (spoiler alert!) a creepy, atmospheric variation on Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", just the thing to send you back to your hotel room to sleep with the lights on and the flat-screen TV blaring all the rest of the night.

Next up: Day 3, Saturday, featuring a supremely anarchic turn by Olsen and Johnson, the two-man Monty Python of the 1940s, and an exhilarating horseless turn by the pre-Stagecoach John Wayne...

To be continued...

.

Cinevent 2016, Part 4

June 17, 2016, 3:45 am

≫ Next: Cinevent 2016, Concluded

≪ Previous: Cinevent 2016, Part 3

$

0

0

Day 3

Another regular -- and eagerly anticipated -- feature of Cinevent is the Saturday morning cartoon program, compiled and curated by animation maven Stewart McKissick. This year the bill included a specimen from each of the major cartoon studios of the 1930s through '50s -- Disney, Warner Bros., MGM, Fleischer, UPA, etc. The clear highlight of the morning was MGM's Magical Maestro (1952) by the great Tex Avery, in which a spurned vaudeville magician wreaks vengeance by disrupting an operatic recital by "the Great Poochini" (as the poster shows, the cartoon is populated by dogs). It's a wild and zany ride that anticipates (may even have inspired) Chuck Jones's Duck Amuck over at Warners the following year, and it's better seen than described.


Fortunately, that can be arranged. Click here to see the cartoon complete from beginning to end -- including a few fleeting (and fairly harmless) seconds of non-p.c. ethnic humor. It's only six-and-a-half minutes, and worth the side trip. I'll wait till you get back. (NOTE: The cartoon is on a Romanian-language Web site and is preceded by a commercial for one product or another. Look for a white "X" in the top right corner of the frame or the word "Inchide" ["skip"] in the bottom right; click on either of those and it'll go directly to the cartoon.)


The cartoon program was followed by Houdini (1953), a purported biopic starring a youthful Tony Curtis and then-wife Janet Leigh as the legendary escapologist and his wife Bess. A big hit in 1953, the picture was a mainstay of Saturday afternoon kiddie matinees when I was going to them -- I remember seeing it three or four times -- and I've always had a soft spot for it. There was, of course, a magician and escape artist (born Erik Weisz) who billed himself as Harry Houdini, and his wife Wilhelmina Beatrice was known as Bess; aside from that, the movie is arrant fiction from first frame to last -- but it's as entertaining as it is made-up. Seeing it in Columbus this year -- especially right after a whole slew of cartoons -- made me feel seven years old again.

The afternoon was devoted to two silent programs: Douglas Fairbanks in His Picture in the Papers (1916), followed by a selection of rarely seen comedy shorts, also from 1916, consisting of The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, starring Doug Fairbanks again as a detective named (get this) Coke Ennyday (a spoof on the name of Craig Kennedy, a character created by Arthur B. Reeve in 1910 and popular in magazine fiction until Reeve's death in 1936); An Angelic Attitude, directed by and starring Tom Mix, already seven years into his movie career and poised on the brink of superstardom; and A Scoundrel's Toll, a Mack Sennett short starring Raymond Griffith. (Griffith would be a mid-level comedy star throughout the 1920s, but his badly damaged vocal cords would relegate him to behind-the-camera work writing and producing, and quite successfully, once talkies came in.)

This was followed by Tim McCoy in Law Beyond the Range (1935), an unpretentious and quite entertaining B western from Columbia. Tim McCoy was one of those interesting characters who sort of backed into movies because making movies was fun and he himself was fairly comfortable in front of a camera. Born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1891, he became fascinated with the Wild West as a student in college; he dropped out and resettled in Wyoming, where he became a ranch hand and expert horseman. After serving in World War I (he rose to the rank of colonel and later, in his movie career, was sometimes billed as Col. Tim McCoy), he was appointed adjutant general of the Wyoming National Guard. In that capacity he worked diplomatically and well with Wyoming's native Arapaho and Shoshone tribes, and in 1922, when Paramount came to Wyoming to film their epic The Covered Wagon, McCoy served as liaison between the company and several hundred Indian extras. That gave him the bug. He resigned his commission and cried "Westward ho!" once again, settling in Hollywood, where he worked steadily through the 1940s, then tapered off into retirement, making his last appearance in Requiem for a Gunfighter in 1965.

In Law Beyond the Range McCoy played a Texas Ranger who leaves the force to take over an old friend and mentor's crusading newspaper in a neighboring town. Arriving in town shortly after his editor friend's death, he carries on the paper's crusade against the crime boss who is running the town (Guy Usher). In the end he brings down the bad guy, but not because the pen is mightier than the sword; in fact it takes a blazing shootout that fills the local saloon with a dense cloud of gunsmoke, a rip-roaring climax that Col. Tim's 1935 fans had no doubt been waiting for all along. At the final fadeout he has not only cleaned up the town but cleared an old friend (Robert Allen) of a bogus murder charge and won the heart of the late editor's daughter (Billie Seward).

After dinner came of two of the highlights of the whole weekend -- both, as it happened, from Universal. First was California Straight Ahead (1937). I here reproduce the title card from the movie's credits, rather than a poster or lobby card, to make a point: It's 1937, two years before Stagecoach, and John Wayne is billed above the title. And not in a B western from Monogram or Republic, but in one of six pictures he made at Universal (none of them westerns) before returning to the saddle at Republic. It's still a B picture, of course; it would take John Ford to promote the Duke out of B's once and for all. But California Straight Ahead has a better-than-B professional gloss to it; with Universal's backlot and production infrastructure a few dollars could go a lot farther than they could on some location ranch up in the San Fernando Valley.

Wayne plays a partner in a struggling Chicago trucking firm, trying to make a go of his little two-truck operation against sometimes unscrupulous opposition from other truckers and railroads (he faces some unsporting competition for the affections of the fetching Louise Latimer too). The story climaxes in a cross-country race between Wayne's convoy of big-rigs and an express train, both seeking to deliver a shipment of airplane parts to the Port of Los Angeles to be loaded on a ship and dispatched across the Pacific before a general strike closes the port. With a smart script by W. Scott Darling and lickety-split direction by Arthur Lubin, the picture makes for an enjoyable 67 minutes.


In his introduction to the screening, Wayne biographer Scott Eyman told us that Wayne regarded his six-picture foray at Universal as a mistake; it had failed to take him out of the "juvenile ghetto" of Saturday afternoon B westerns, and when it was over he found himself back at Square One in Republic horse operas -- without his former momentum and unsure when, or if ever, he could work his way out of them. (He couldn't know, of course, that his big break was just around the corner.) I quote Scott at length on California Straight Ahead and the Duke's five other Universal B's: "This is a good movie; they are all good, solid movies. They're better, frankly, I think, than the Republic westerns he'd been making, because the technicians are a little bit better, the scripts are a little bit better, and the production schedules a little bit longer, and you can get more of where he's not just riding and roping and slugging people. He actually gets a chance to do a little acting in these movies. And as you'll see, he's getting better and better. By 1937, and finishing up this series of pictures, he's ready. He's ready for John Ford, he's ready for the Big Time."

And then came the deluge, again courtesy of Universal Pictures. The title of this onslaught was Crazy House, and the leading inmates of the loony bin were two slap-happy vaudevillians named Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. How do you describe these two to someone who's never seen them? In my last post I called them the Monty Python of the 1940s, but the truth is, Olsen and Johnson made Monty Python look like a Sunday afternoon game of whist between Oscar Wilde and James MacNeill Whistler.

John Sigvard "Ole" Olsen and Harold Ogden "Chic" Johnson first teamed up in 1914 as members of a more or less straight musical vaudeville quartet. Their personalities and wacky senses of humor dovetailed, and they eventually morphed into a madcap improvisational comedy act, with neither of them playing the customary straight man. Eventually they wound up on radio in "The Padded Cell of the Air", a segment of NBC's Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, hosted by crooner Rudy Vallee. The rather stodgy Vallee evidently left Olsen and Johnson pretty much to their own devices, and the team's wild act was free-wheeling and utterly unpredictable. They reached their apotheosis in 1938 with the Broadway musical comedy revue Hellzapoppin, whose title remains a byword for insanely corny, anything-for-a-laugh comedy. It was a show where nobody ever knew what was going to happen next. And I don't mean just the audience -- I mean the stagehands, the orchestra and the other performers. Hellzapoppin ran for over three years -- 1,404 performances, and it was never the same experience twice.

In 1941 Universal induced Olsen and Johnson to put the show on film (as Hellzapoppin', adding the apostrophe). It might have seemed like a fool's errand, and Universal hedged their bets by forcing the insertion of a conventional romantic subplot, but the movie clicked. It was screened at last year's Cinevent and stole the whole weekend, as hilarious as ever.

And so it was this year with Crazy House, Olsen and Johnson's follow-up movie two years later. It begins with Olsen and Johnson staging their own triumphant return parade down Hollywood Boulevard, with the cry preceding them: "Olsen and Johnson are coming!", while everyone from studio bigwigs to hairdressers and carpenters flies into a panic. (On one soundstage Basil Rathbone tells Nigel Bruce of the dire devastation in store for them all when the two comics arrive. "How do you know all that?" Bruce asks. "I'm Sherlock Holmes," snaps Rathbone. "I know everything.") The boys show up to find the Universal lot deserted and barricaded against them. Unfazed, they resolve to produce their next movie themselves.

Let's leave it at that, shall we? Crazy House goes on in that vein for a lightning 80 minutes, throwing jokes so fast you miss every third one because you're still laughing at the first two. Olsen and Johnson's governing principle was that a joke not good enough to use once might be bad enough to use five times, and it still works; O&J's influence can be seen not only in Monty Python but elsewhere, including Laugh-In in the 1960s and Jim Henson's original Muppet Show 20 years after that.

After the boisterous delirium of Crazy House anything

would have been an anticlimax, so 1927's silent The

Fighting Eagle started off at a disadvantage. Still, it

was an engaging, slightly tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler

with Rod La Rocque (such a perfectly Hollywood name,

and yet it was his own) swaggering grandly as a braggart

popinjay French soldier engaging in swordplay, intrigue

and romance (with countess Phyllis Haver, the movies'

original Roxie Hart in Chicago) in the days of

the Emperor Napoleon.

And finally, another midnight snack: The Monkey's

Paw, a low-budget 1948 British thriller with a good

but uniformly unfamiliar cast, adapted from the

classic short story by W.W. Jacobs. If you haven't

read the story, you should; give yourself a sleepless

night or two. It concerns the eponymous, mummified

simian extremity, a talisman with the power to grant

three wishes. But this monkey's paw is no rabbit's

foot; it's the ultimate illustration of be-careful-what-

you-wish-for: In a touch not in the original story

but added for the movie, one woman wishes to be

free of her boring, alcoholic husband; her freedom

is granted to her when he shoots her dead.

Jacobs's story is a vivid one, but short, and the

script by Barbara Toy and director Norman

Lee fills it out without diluting its sinister

spirit -- as that flashback scene with the bored

wife makes clear. And so it was, at 2:00 that

Sunday morning, after the monkey's paw had

wrought its dark magic on the hapless

Trelawne family (played by Milton Rosmer,

Megs Jenkins and Eric Micklewood), that

those hardy night owls among us were

finally trundled off to our rooms, our lights,

and the comforting drone of an all-night

television...

To be concluded...

.