tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47790970045562857802024-03-13T12:28:22.836-07:00Jim Lane's CinedromeDedicated to the study and appreciation of movies and personalities from the Golden Age of Hollywood.Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.comBlogger149125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-30412951052737754612016-09-11T17:11:00.000-07:002016-09-11T17:11:20.649-07:00Step Right Up...Er, I Mean...Step Right OVER, Folks!<em>The Big Day has finally arrived: The new incarnation of Cinedrome</em><br />
<em>is up and running, and you are all cordially invited to hop over and</em><br />
<em>check it out. </em><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.com/">CLICK HERE</a> <em>to go directly to my new location. Tell</em><br />
<em>your friends! Tell your enemies! Tell strangers!</em><br />
<em><br /></em><br />
<em>If any of my readers have been kind enough to make Cinedrome one</em><br />
<em>of their bookmarks -- well, first off, I thank you if you have, but you</em><br />
<em>can delete this bookmark now; there'll be no more posts at this location.</em><br />
<em>I hope you'll like my new blog well enough to bookmark that one too. </em><br />
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<em>Come on over, the more the merrier. And whoever is the last one to</em><br />
<em>leave -- don't bother turning out the lights; they'll take care of themselves. </em><br />
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<em>Cheers, </em></div>
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<em>JIM LANE</em></div>
<span style="color: #0b5394;">.</span>Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-60165760262410704022016-07-10T22:42:00.000-07:002016-07-11T02:20:24.113-07:00Please Stand By...<em>I know I said my posts on Cinevent 2016 would be the last ones at this location, but I feel the need to add one more. Like nearly all construction jobs, the building of the New Improved Cinedrome is meeting with unexpected delays. I ask readers to be patient -- and be assured that I'm not about to let things slide into inactivity again. In fact, I have several posts in the works and am researching and preparing them -- but I'm not going to publish any of them here because it would be just that much more that would have to be reformatted and transferred to Cinedrome's new location. So stay with me, keep checking, and we'll let you know as soon as Cinedrome 2.0 is ready to go public.</em><br />
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<em>Jim</em></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-53959343778071192602016-06-23T04:55:00.000-07:002016-06-25T01:10:45.441-07:00Cinevent 2016, Concluded<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sunday, the last day of Cinevent 2016, got off to a vivacious start with a double feature showcasing that most utterly, charmingly, irresistibly delightful of movie stars, Clara Bow. Only the persistent prejudice against silent movies keeps Clara Bow from her rightful place among the movies' greatest stars -- in the minds of the general public, that is; true movie buffs know her worth. Greta Garbo and Marilyn Monroe, at the height of their careers, were never as popular or as sexy as Clara. But Greta and Marilyn are enshrined in the Temple of Screen Immortals, even to people who know them only by name, while the name of Clara Bow is something out of a quaint, distant, forgotten prehistory, like Nell Gwyn or Minnie Maddern Fiske. <br />
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This is unfair. To see Clara Bow at her best -- in <em>Mantrap</em> (1926), or in <em>It</em> or <em>Wings </em>(both '27) -- is to see someone who is still as animated and as immediately alluring as she was the day she reported to the set. Everybody who ever worked with Clara spoke of her ever after with a wistful smile. More to the point, the camera loved her as it has loved few other women who ever stood in front of one. <br />
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She's been the victim, perhaps, of the legend that her atrocious Brooklyn accent doomed her when sound came in. Not so. While it's true that the microphone terrified her at first, she rolled with the punch and gamely soldiered on. In her 11-year career she appeared in 56 features, and 11 of them were talkies. There was nothing wrong with her voice, any more than there was with Jean Harlow's (the two women's careers overlapped by a few years). Clara's sound pictures did reasonably well at the box office, though it's true, not as well as her silents. But that's not because Clara was talking now. The simple truth is that her day was passing, while Jean Harlow's was coming on. <br />
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I'll save any further thoughts for another day. For now, let's turn to Clara's Sunday double bill in Columbus. <br />
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First came <em>The Saturday Night Kid</em> (1929), based on <em>Love 'Em and Leave 'Em</em>,<em> </em>a 1926 play by George Abbott and John V.A. Weaver. The play was filmed silent (also in '26) under its original title (and screened at Cinevent in 2010), with Evelyn Brent and Louise Brooks playing Mame and Janie Walsh, two sisters who work together at a big department store. Mame is the older, more responsible one, forever mother-henning her hedonistic, troublemaking kid sister Janie. For this talkie remake, Clara played the slightly renamed Mayme and Jean Arthur was Janie (though she was in fact five years older than Clara). Janie is a hell-raiser and borderline sociopath, playing the ponies with the store empoyees' charity fund, losing it, then blaming Mayme for the embezzlement -- and even trying to steal Mayme's boyfriend (James Hall). Clara wasn't looking her best (she was, just this once, a trifle overweight and a bit frowzy), but the picture was a hit in 1929 and it still plays well; when Mayme finally got fed up and slapped Janie clear across their bedroom, applause rippled through the Cinevent audience.<br />
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Next, <em>Kid Boots</em> (1926) was one of those oddities, a silent movie based (albeit loosely) on a Broadway musical comedy produced by Florenz Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld's star Eddie Cantor made his screen debut here, playing a man hired to flirt with a rich man's gold-digging wife and give the husband grounds for divorce. At a mountain resort, Eddie hits it off with the swimming instructor -- but their romance proceeds awkwardly because every time she sees him he's wooing somebody else. Since Eddie couldn't resort to song-and-dance, he was teamed with Clara (as the swimming instructor) for box-office insurance. It was a felicitous pairing. The two got along famously; Eddie helped Clara with her comic timing and she helped him learn how to act for the camera, and their rapport and mutual affection still come through on the screen.<br />
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After lunch there was a new wrinkle this year. They called it the Audience Choice Picture: Earlier in the year, on the <span style="color: #bf9000;"><a href="http://www.cinevent.com/">Cinevent Web site</a></span>, those of us planning to attend were polled as to which of four titles we'd like to see screened in this slot. I can't remember what the four choices were, nor which one I voted for, but we wound up with <em>The Parson of Panamint</em> (1941), from a story by Peter B. Kyne. Like Kyne's perennially popular <em>The Three Godfathers</em>, the story was a parable. Charlie Ruggles (in a change-of-pace straight dramatic role) plays the mayor of the rough-and-tumble mining town of Panamint, California. The mayor goes to the big city of San Francisco to hire a preacher for his town's new church, and that's where he finds the Rev. Philip Pharo (Phillip Terry) -- not in a church, but taking the mayor's part in a saloon fight. The Rev. Mr. Pharo accepts the job and rides back with the mayor to his new congregation.</div>
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At first things go well between the parson and the townspeople. But as it becomes clear to them that he takes the Christian doctrine of "love thy neighbor" quite literally, his innate goodness begins to make people uncomfortable -- plus, his concern for the welfare of the town's gold miners incurs the enmity of the self-styled leaders of the community, who set about stirring up public outrage against him. The script by Adrian Scott and Harold Shumate, and Kyne's original story, bore obvious parallels to the life of Jesus (although -- <em>spoiler alert!</em> -- in the movie things work out rather better for the Parson of Panamint than they did for the Carpenter of Nazareth). The picture garnered good reviews but poor box office; today it's an unusual little jewel of a movie, marred only by a too-bland performance by Phillip Terry as the parson. But Terry was more than compensated for by others in the cast, especially Ruggles and Ellen Drew as a local saloon girl (the movie's equivalent of Mary Magdalene).</div>
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<em>The Parson of Panamint</em> was the final highlight of this year's Cinevent, but the weekend didn't exactly end with a whimper. The last two features were <em>The Tomboy</em> (1924), a rural romance starring the now-forgotten silent comedienne Dorothy Devore (just the kind of scheduling Cinevent excels at, spotlighting former stars for whom there's no market on video but who deserve to be remembered); and <em>King of Alcatraz </em>(1938) a marvelously tight little Paramount B (running a lightning 68 min.) starring Lloyd Nolan and Robert Preston as frenemy wireless operators on a tramp steamer matching wits with an escaped crime kingpin (J. Carrol Naish) who hijacks their ship in mid-Pacific.</div>
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And so it was at 5:48 p.m. on Sunday, June 5, 2016, that the 48th Annual Cinevent Classic Movie Convention came to a close. I've posted on it in some detail, as I have in the past, because movie buffs everywhere should know about it and be encouraged to take it in. I haven't even touched on the dealers' rooms this year, though I once again acquired my share of books, videos, and memorabilia (some of which will no doubt find its way here from time to time). </div>
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As film festivals go, Cinevent is hard to beat. Financially, it's just about the bargain of the century: a pass for the entire weekend goes for less than you'd pay for a single screening at some classic film festivals. But it's more than that. Cinevent is a get-together of <em>friends</em>; historian and bestselling biographer Scott Eyman calls it "the most relaxed, friendly, unpretentious, accessible and enjoyable of the Cinephile Conventions." I hope to see you all there one of these years. Be sure to say hello.</div>
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<em><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><strong>Afterword</strong></span></em></div>
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There are changes afoot here at Cinedrome. That's why this series on Cinevent 2016 has taken longer than I would have liked: I've been working two blogs, in a way, putting together these posts on the one hand, while working on the other hand with my friend Jean at <span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://mybigfatsites.com/">My Big Fat Sites</a></span> to develop a new and (I hope) improved Cinedrome. This will be the last of my posts here on Blogspot, though I'll update this afterword with my new Web address when it's ready to be seen. </div>
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And oh yes, all previous posts will still be available (maybe, if plans work out, even more so) at Cinedrome's new location.</div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-52861432370376600882016-06-17T03:45:00.001-07:002016-07-11T02:28:45.435-07:00Cinevent 2016, Part 4<em><strong><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><u>Day 3</u></span></strong></em><br />
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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 <em>Magical Maestro </em>(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 <em>Duck Amuck</em> over at Warners the following year, and it's better seen than described. <br />
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Fortunately, that can be arranged. Click <em><span style="color: #f1c232;"><u><a href="http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-animatie/tex-avery-mgm-1952-02-09-magical-maestro?autoplay">here</a></u></span></em> 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. (<strong><em><u>NOTE</u></em>:</strong> 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.)<br />
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The cartoon program was followed by <em>Houdini</em> (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.<br />
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This was followed by Tim McCoy in <em>Law Beyond the Range </em>(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 <em>The Covered Wagon</em>, 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 <em>Requiem for a Gunfighter </em>in 1965.</div>
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In <em>Law Beyond the Range</em> 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).</div>
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After dinner came of two of the highlights of the whole weekend -- both, as it happened, from Universal. First was <em>California Straight Ahead</em> (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 <em>Stagecoach</em>, and John Wayne is billed <em>above</em> 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 <em>California Straight Ahead </em>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. <br />
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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. <br />
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In his introduction to the screening, <span style="color: #e69138;"><u><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-duke-of-hollywood.html">Wayne biographer Scott Eyman</a></u></span> 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 <em>California Straight Ahead </em>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."<br />
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And then came the deluge, again courtesy of Universal Pictures. The title of this onslaught was <em>Crazy House</em>, 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.</div>
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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 <em>Fleischmann's Yeast Hour</em>, 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 <em>Hellzapoppin</em>, 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. <em>Hellzapoppin </em>ran for over three years -- 1,404 performances, and it was never the same experience twice.</div>
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In 1941 Universal induced Olsen and Johnson to put the show on film (as <em>Hellzapoppin'</em>, 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.</div>
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And so it was this year with <em>Crazy House</em>, 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: <em>"Olsen and Johnson are coming!"</em>, 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.</div>
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Let's leave it at that, shall we? <em>Crazy House </em>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 <em>Laugh-In</em> in the 1960s and Jim Henson's original <em>Muppet Show </em>20 years after that. </div>
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After the boisterous delirium of <em>Crazy House </em>anything</div>
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would have been an anticlimax, so 1927's silent <em>The</em></div>
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<em>Fighting Eagle</em> started off at a disadvantage. Still, it</div>
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was an engaging, slightly tongue-in-cheek swashbuckler</div>
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with Rod La Rocque (such a perfectly Hollywood name,</div>
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and yet it was his own) swaggering grandly as a braggart</div>
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popinjay French soldier engaging in swordplay, intrigue</div>
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and romance (with countess Phyllis Haver, the movies'</div>
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original Roxie Hart in <em>Chicago</em>) in the days of</div>
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the Emperor Napoleon. </div>
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And finally, another midnight snack: <em>The Monkey's</em></div>
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<em>Paw</em>, a low-budget 1948 British thriller with a good</div>
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but uniformly unfamiliar cast, adapted from the</div>
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classic short story by W.W. Jacobs. If you haven't</div>
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read the story, you should; give yourself a sleepless</div>
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night or two. It concerns the eponymous, mummified</div>
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simian extremity, a talisman with the power to grant</div>
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three wishes. But this monkey's paw is no rabbit's</div>
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foot; it's the ultimate illustration of be-careful-what-</div>
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you-wish-for: In a touch not in the original story</div>
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but added for the movie, one woman wishes to be</div>
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free of her boring, alcoholic husband; her freedom</div>
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is granted to her when he shoots her dead. </div>
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Jacobs's story is a vivid one, but short, and the</div>
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script by Barbara Toy and director Norman</div>
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Lee fills it out without diluting its sinister</div>
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spirit -- as that flashback scene with the bored</div>
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wife makes clear. And so it was, at 2:00 that</div>
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Sunday morning, after the monkey's paw had</div>
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wrought its dark magic on the hapless</div>
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Trelawne family (played by Milton Rosmer,</div>
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Megs Jenkins and Eric Micklewood), that</div>
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those hardy night owls among us were</div>
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finally trundled off to our rooms, our lights,</div>
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and the comforting drone of an all-night</div>
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television...</div>
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<em><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><strong>To be concluded...</strong></span></em></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-80734129297127172302016-06-14T02:55:00.000-07:002016-06-16T20:54:03.671-07:00Cinevent 2016, Part 3<em><strong><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><u>Day 2 (cont.)</u></span></strong></em><br />
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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 <em>Sons of the Desert</em> 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.</div>
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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. </div>
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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, <em>Violent is the Word for Curly</em>). 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. </div>
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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 <em>Powder and Smoke</em>, <em>Stolen Goods</em>, <em>Too Many Mammas </em>(all 1924), and <em>Looking for Sally </em>('25), the Chase program included <em>The Way of All Pants </em>(<em>'</em>27), complete for the first time in a couple of generations. A truncated version of <em>Pants</em> has survived in the Robert Youngson compilation <em>The Further Perils of Laurel and Hardy </em>('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. </div>
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Anyhow, <em>The Way of All Pants </em>(U.K. title <em>The Way of All Dress</em>, 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. <strong>(</strong><em><strong><u>NOTE</u>:</strong> </em>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.)</div>
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The evening highlight of Day 2 was <em>Slightly Scarlet</em>, a 1956 Technicolor <em>film noir </em>(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 <em>Double Indemnity</em>, <em>Mildred Pierce</em> and <em>The Postman Always Rings Twice</em>) entitled <em>Love's Lovely Counterfeit</em>; 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.</div>
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After that, another silent, <em>White Tiger</em> (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 (<em>London After Midnight</em>) Browning, who could always be counted on to come up with a real whopper.</div>
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Day 2 closed out with a midnight snack: An episode of the short-lived (1961-62) TV series <em>Bus Stop</em>, 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 (<em>Psycho</em>, "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. </div>
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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-<em>Stagecoach</em> John Wayne...</div>
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<em><strong><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">To be continued...</span></strong></em></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-7944115973865572012016-06-11T03:48:00.000-07:002016-06-14T00:13:58.245-07:00Cinevent 2016 (Continued)<strong><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><u><em>Day 2</em></u></span></strong><br />
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The second day of Cinevent began with a departure from custom and a real curiosity: <em>Die Reise nach Tilsit</em> (<em>The Trip to Tilsit</em>), 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 <em>The T</em><em>rip to Tilsit</em> is based on the same Hermann Sudermann story that inspired F.W. Murnau's <em>Sunrise</em> (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 <em>The Trip to Tilsit</em> 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 <em>Sunrise</em> is one of the supremely transcendent visual poems of movie history, a movie that, once seen, is never forgotten; <em>The Trip to Tilsit</em>, well-made as it is,<em> </em>is just a mundane Teutonic soap opera. Historian and Cinevent regular Richard M. Roberts dismissed it as "the Nazi <em>Sunrise</em>", 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 <em>Jew Suss</em> in 1940.)<br />
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One more point of interest about <em>The Trip to Tilsit</em>. 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 <em>Casablanca</em> -- personally, I say it's a pity he didn't -- but he had already signed for <em>Random Harvest</em> at MGM and the scheduling wouldn't work. No telling how Dorn's career might have gone if he had done <em>Casablanca </em>instead of Paul Henreid, but as it was he still managed to rack up a pretty good career -- <em>Ziegfeld Girl</em>, <em>Tarzan's Secret Treasure</em>, <em>Calling Dr. Gillespie</em>, <em>Passage to Marseilles</em> and <em>The Fighting Kentuckian</em>, among others (he was especially fine as Irene Dunne's husband in <em>I Remember Mama</em>) -- before ill-health forced his retirement in 1955. He died in Los Angeles 20 years later, age 73.<br />
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After "the Nazi <em>Sunrise</em>" it was back to Hollywood and the English language for <em>Every Night at Eight</em> (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 <em>High Sierra</em>, <em>They Died With Their Boots On </em>and <em>White Heat</em>, 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".</div>
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...And then came Cecil B. DeMille's <em>This Day and Age</em> (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 <em>Gabriel Over the White House</em> ('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. </div>
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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.</div>
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<strong><em><span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;">To be continued...</span></em></strong></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-82243922314264344832016-06-09T03:30:00.001-07:002016-06-24T03:33:45.645-07:00...A-a-a-and We're Back...!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.<br />
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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 <span style="color: #f1c232;"><a href="http://www.cinevent.com/index.html">Cinevent Classic Film Convention</a></span> in Columbus, Ohio.<br />
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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 <em>a step</em>? Actually, the new place is about <em>three flights</em> 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. <br />
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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. <br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><strong>Cinevent 2016, Day 1</strong></span><br />
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The first day featured a screening of King Vidor's classic slice of life <em>The Crowd </em>(1928), one of the greatest pictures of the silent era -- and probably one of the top 40 or 50 of all time. <em>The Crowd</em> 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 <em>Melody Cruise</em>, 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 <em>The Jungle Book</em>); and <em>The House of Rothschild</em> (1934), from Darryl F. Zanuck's fledgling 20th Century Pictures. <br />
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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:<br />
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<u><strong><em>Melody Cruise</em> (1933)</strong></u> With a title like <em>Melody Cruise</em> 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.<br />
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<em>Melody Cruise</em> 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.<br />
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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 <em>bon voyage</em> 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.<br />
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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 <em>Love Me Tonight</em> (from over at Paramount) right off the bat, as passengers in a shipping office negotiate for their respective cruises in a sort of <em>recitative </em>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 <em>Love Me Tonight</em>.<br />
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Making his screen debut here (if you don't count an uncredited background bit as a nightclub drummer in 1929's <em>Why Be Good? </em>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 <em>The Wild Blue Yonder</em> (1948) and <em>The High and the Mighty</em> (1954). Later on in 1933, he and director Sandrich would collaborate on the short <em>So This Is Harris!</em>, which would go on to win an Oscar for best comedy short subject.<br />
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<em>Melody Cruise</em> 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."<br />
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<strong><u><em>The House of Rothschild </em>(1934)</u></strong> At the beginning of 1933, Darryl F. Zanuck was head of production at Warner Bros., the man behind <em>The Jazz Singer</em>, <em>Little Caesar</em>, <em>The Public Enemy</em>, <em>42nd Street</em>, 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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."</div>
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Arliss and Young's first project for 20th Century was <em>The House of Rothschild</em>. 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).</div>
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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 <em>Disraeli</em>, 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.<br />
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<em>The House of Rothschild</em> 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: <em>The Hound of the Baskervilles </em>(Lanfield) and <em>The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes</em> (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. </div>
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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), <em>House of Rothschild</em> has the distinction of being one of the first movies (probably in fact the <em>very</em> 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.</div>
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<em>The House of Rothschild</em> was a major hit and a <em>succes d'estime</em> for 20th Century, Oscar-nominated for best picture (it lost to <em>It Happened One Night</em>). 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.</div>
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The first night was rounded out by <em>Tomorrow at Ten,</em> a British picture from 1962. Robert Shaw -- already a veteran of British TV (<em>The Buccaneers</em>) and on the cusp of stardom that would come his way with <em>From Russia With Love</em> ('64) and <em>A Man for All Seasons</em> ('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. </div>
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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 <em>From Russia With Love</em>, playing a role very similar to Marlowe.) It was a good way to close out the first day of Cinevent.</div>
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And the weekend was only beginning.</div>
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<span style="color: yellow; font-size: large;"><strong><em>To be continued...</em></strong></span></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-5961438308120935872014-10-31T12:10:00.000-07:002014-10-31T12:10:35.777-07:00The Fog of Lost London, Part 4 (Republished)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u><i><b>NOTE</b></i></u><i><b>: </b></i>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 <i>London After Midnight</i>. 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!</div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">* * *</span></b></span></div>
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The concluding chapters of <i>London After Midnight </i>by Marie Coolidge-Rask:<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 19 - The Man in the Beaver Hat</b></span></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 20 - Hibbs' Madness</b></span></div>
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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 -- <i>They're coming! They're all around! I go to destroy them!</i><br />
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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. <br />
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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!<br />
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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? <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 21 - Help from Scotland Yard</b></span></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 22 - A Strange Conference</span></b></span><br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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."<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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Colonel Yates leaves with the police. Sir James, he says, will be joining them later.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 23 - From Out of the Past</b></span></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
<br />
Lucy parts a frayed curtain and looks into the next room at the man sitting at her father's desk. It <i>is </i>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 <i>so </i>like him.<br />
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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." <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 24 - Metamorphosis</b></span></div>
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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!</div>
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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?</div>
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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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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? <i>And who is Colonel Yates?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 25 - Sinister Preparations</b></span><i><br />
</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 26 - Sir James Pays a Call</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 27 - In Hypnosis</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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 <i>can </i>prove it, he says, now. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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: <i>Don't let him get away! He's still under hypnosis! I'm coming!</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 28 - A Dramatic Awakening</span></b></span><i> </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i> </i>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? </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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?</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 29 - Surprising Revelations</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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
--</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"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.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 30 - Recapitulation</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 31 - Professional Pride</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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!"</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Afterword</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMpAsWRamqI/AAAAAAAAAqY/Crhe_T9gCj0/s1600/06-Tense+Moment.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMpAsWRamqI/AAAAAAAAAqY/Crhe_T9gCj0/s640/06-Tense+Moment.jpg" height="458" width="640" /></a></div>
So there you have it, friends: <i>London After Midnight</i> -- a Halloween treat with a trick. If you've seen 1935's <i>Mark of the Vampire</i>,<i> </i>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."<br />
<br />
There are major discrepancies between the Philip J. Riley and Turner Classic Movies reconstructions of <i>London After Midnight </i>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.)<br />
<br />
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.").<br />
<br />
All things considered -- and with no true copy of <i>London After Midnight</i>,
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 <i>we </i>have, too; as Lucy's world is turned topsy-turvy, so is ours.<br />
<br />
I
hope you've enjoyed Marie Coolidge-Rask's spooky little Halloween
campfire story. Have a safe and happily creepy Halloween,
everyone!<br />
<span style="color: #0b5394;">.</span> Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-37708305358550588142014-10-29T23:52:00.000-07:002014-10-29T23:52:22.847-07:00The Fog of Lost London, Part 3 (Republished)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u><i><b>NOTE</b></i></u><i><b>: </b></i>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 <i>London After Midnight</i>. 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!</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">* * *</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Continuing with <i>London After Midnight </i>by Marie Coolidge-Rask:<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 10 - A Question of Vampires</span></span></b><br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 11 - Harrowing Tales</span></span></b><br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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Finally, Smithson pulls herself together and tells<br />
the men what happened. As Miss Lucy was<br />
getting ready for bed, she says, she left her<br />
to fetch some towels from the linen closet.<br />
In the hallway she saw the man in the beaver<br />
hat, the one she saw on the steps of Balfour<br />
House as she was passing the night before.<br />
The man was stooped over and creeping<br />
toward her, his skeletal hand outstretched,<br />
his spiky teeth gleaming. Smithson was too<br />
frightened even to scream.<br />
<br />
Thinking of Miss Lucy, Smithson says, she<br />
rushed back to the young lady's room,<br />
shoved Lucy into the dressing room and<br />
locked her in. Then she locked the door to<br />
the outer room and thought they were safe.<br />
But before her horrified eyes, a green mist<br />
streamed through the keyhole and formed<br />
itself into the man in the beaver hat. The<br />
man came to her; she was unable to speak<br />
or scream, or even move. She felt him<br />
bending over her, felt his teeth on his throat.<br />
That must have been when she screamed,<br />
she says, but she doesn't remember it.<br />
She knew nothing more until she heard<br />
Sir James, Colonel Yates and Hibbs<br />
pounding at the still-locked door.<br />
<br />
Lucy, greatly excited, calls their attention<br />
to the window, where all of them see<br />
the man in the beaver hat skulking<br />
across the grounds in the direction<br />
of Balfour House. Colonel Yates tells<br />
Hibbs to remain with Lucy and see<br />
that she is not left alone; he and<br />
Sir James will investigate the matter<br />
further. <br />
<br />
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 12 - Panic</span></span></b><br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 13 - The Woman on the Ceiling</span></span></b> <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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!<br />
<br />
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<div style="text-align: right;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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 -- "</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 14 - By the Light of Day</span></span></b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 15 - Two Suitors</span></span></b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Surprised and alarmed, Lucy runs sobbing from the room. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 16 - Exorcisms</span></span></b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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." </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
As they talk, Hibbs is overcome with drowsiness. He sleeps. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 17 - An Assassin Foiled</span></span></b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Chapter 18 - The Fallen Sword</span></span></b> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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?<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<i><b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To be concluded...</span></span></b></i><br />
<i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span><b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span></span></b></i></div>
</div>
Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-55162087044672521582014-10-28T22:16:00.001-07:002014-10-28T22:20:33.184-07:00The Fog of Lost London, Part 2 (Republished)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u><i><b>NOTE</b></i></u><i><b>: </b></i>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 <i>London After Midnight</i>. 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!</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">* * *</span></b></span></div>
Here begins a chapter-by chapter synopsis of <i>London After Midnight</i>, a novel by Marie Collidge-Rask, based on the scenario of the Tod Browning production. Like the book, the synopsis will be<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
FROM THE PHOTOPLAY</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER PICTURE</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
STARRING LON CHANEY</div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 1 - Balfour House</b></span></div>
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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." <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 2 - Another Mystery</b></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMTU55ZJphI/AAAAAAAAApc/ZzQEsFrsnyQ/s1600/03-Body+of+Harry.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMTU55ZJphI/AAAAAAAAApc/ZzQEsFrsnyQ/s640/03-Body+of+Harry.jpg" height="460" width="640" /></a></div>
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 3 - Who Killed Harry Balfour?</b></span><br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 4 - Hypnotic Hypotheses</b></span></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 5 - A Betrothal</b></span></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 6 - Uncanny Tenants</b></span> <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMUjRtYZvHI/AAAAAAAAApk/T59uiBbHpNk/s1600/05-Real+Estate.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMUjRtYZvHI/AAAAAAAAApk/T59uiBbHpNk/s640/05-Real+Estate.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
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.</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
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.</div>
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 7 - Sir James Receives a Shock</b></span></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 8 - An Unexpected Guest</b></span></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
<div style="color: #ffd966; font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Chapter 9 - Ghouls</b></span></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-myf8X4qwEx0/Umou_koijOI/AAAAAAAACR4/p0hSQsRAy8Q/s1600/04-Sir+James+Worried.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-myf8X4qwEx0/Umou_koijOI/AAAAAAAACR4/p0hSQsRAy8Q/s640/04-Sir+James+Worried.jpg" height="452" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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 <i>who </i>signed Roger Balfour's name to that lease.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The two men halt at a sudden sound -- it sounded almost like a sigh. They wait, tensed, but now there is only silence. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
There is a flash of lightning, a rumble of thunder, and somewhere in the night, the mournful, blood-curdling howl of a dog. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">To be continued...</i></span></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">.</span></span></span><b style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </i></span></b></div>
Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-61890391013617104252014-10-28T01:05:00.000-07:002014-10-28T01:05:49.591-07:00The Fog of Lost London, Part 1 (Republished)<div style="text-align: justify;">
<u><i><b>NOTE</b></i></u><i><b>: </b></i>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 <i>London After Midnight</i>. 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!</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">* * *</span></b></span></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMDrSgOL88I/AAAAAAAAApE/Ho23kdzduF0/s1600/Chaney.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMDrSgOL88I/AAAAAAAAApE/Ho23kdzduF0/s640/Chaney.jpg" height="507" width="640" /></a></div>
<i>London After Midnight </i>(MGM; 1927) is the Holy Grail of Lost Films. Oh sure, there's the complete <i>Greed</i>. But we do have the <i>in</i>complete <i>Greed</i>,
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 (<i>Heresy! Heresy!</i>) a bit of a bore? But be that as it may, we do have <i>Greed</i>; all we have of <i>London After Midnight</i> is an assortment of stills like this one of Lon Chaney in makeup and costume as the Man in the Beaver Hat.<br />
<br />
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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/London-After-Midnight-Philip-Riley/dp/0845347136/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1287772871&sr=1-1"><u>as much as 115 bucks</u></a>
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 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/TCM-Archives-Chaney-Collection-Hearts/dp/B0000B1O9L/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1287774946&sr=1-1"><u>The Lon Chaney Collection</u></a>. <br />
<br />
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 -- <i>Street Angel </i>(1928) with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, Rex Ingram's <i>The Garden of Allah </i>(1927), and Tod Browning's own <i>The Show </i>with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree -- have surfaced since then, so there's always hope. But <i>London After Midnight</i>
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."<br />
<br />
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 (<i>"Will add nothing to Chaney's prestige as a trouper, nor increase the star's box office value."</i>),
nor did he shrink from discouraging potential viewers by recounting the
entire plot, solution and all. Then, amazingly, in his last paragraph,
he said: <i>"The usual suspicions, planted while the situations are
worked out, succeed in leaving an impression of mystery regarding the
outcome."</i> (Not anymore, Mori!) <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
But back to <i>London After Midnight</i>. There's always hope it may someday surface, like <i>Street Angel</i>,<i> </i><i>The Garden of Allah</i> and <i>The Show,</i>
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
-- <i>Mark of the Vampire</i>, 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. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMHfDtIgbAI/AAAAAAAAApU/VV-suPs-0Kk/s1600/02-Title+Page.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMHfDtIgbAI/AAAAAAAAApU/VV-suPs-0Kk/s400/02-Title+Page.jpg" height="400" width="248" /></a></div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMHe0ooZ6sI/AAAAAAAAApQ/aIdajycbTvo/s1600/00-Cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMHe0ooZ6sI/AAAAAAAAApQ/aIdajycbTvo/s400/00-Cover.jpg" height="400" width="265" /></a><br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i>Or</i></b>...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 <i>Sparrows </i>(1926) and the King Vidor-Lillian Gish <i>La Boheme </i>that same year (now there's a literary platypus for you: a novelization of a silent movie of an opera). </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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 <i>London After Midnight </i>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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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): </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"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."</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Got all that? Here she is again, later on the same page: </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"In
his presence, the baronet felt himself unusually helpless. Like a fly,
pinned against the wall for scientific inspection with a microscope." </div>
</blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
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. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_fqmwiYyxzFo/TMIZTV6ZcpI/AAAAAAAAApY/-CTNRrh_LcM/s400/Browning+Moran+Chaney+Ouija.jpg" height="332" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Anyhow,
now, just in time for Halloween, I propose to spend<br />
the next few posts
hacking through the purple undergrowth of<br />
Marie Coolidge-Rask's prose (I
do these things so you don't<br />
have to), distilling it into a
chapter-by-chapter synopsis of her<br />
novelization. In this way I hope to
get some sense of what<br />
audiences at Browning's vampire/murder mystery
might have<br />
seen in 1927 -- sort of like Tod Browning, Polly Moran and Lon<br />
Chaney here pretending to commune with the spirit world for<br />
the MGM publicity department. This will be (if you'll pardon the<br />
expression) by the book, without
reference to either Philip J.<br />
Riley's or TCM's reconstructions; if there
are differences,<br />
maybe we can talk about those later. </div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
So be warned: if you're worried about spoiling the ending of<br />
<i>London After Midnight</i> (which you can't see anyhow) or<br />
<i>Mark of the Vampire </i>(which you can), proceed at your<br />
own risk.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><i><b><span style="font-size: x-large;">To be continued...</span></b></i></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></div>
</div>
Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-80124917301219015022014-10-23T03:16:00.000-07:002014-10-26T03:02:16.094-07:00A Weekend With David O. Selznick<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pCflLIam7kw/VC-05B06uOI/AAAAAAAADD8/4daxouq-WPI/s1600/TS-posterA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pCflLIam7kw/VC-05B06uOI/AAAAAAAADD8/4daxouq-WPI/s1600/TS-posterA.jpg" height="640" width="423" /></a></div>
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 <i>Gone With the Wind</i>. 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.<br />
<br />
On Saturday the 27th, however, the reunion was more private: a family-and-friends home screening of 1938's <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</i>. I'll be spending most of this post talking about that one, because...well, of all the terms you might use to describe <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, "neglected classic" is certainly not one of them.<br />
<br />
Some years ago, my friend John McElwee over at Greenbriar Picture Shows posted on <i>Tom Sawyer </i><a href="http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/2006/09/favorites-list-adventures-of-tom.html"><u>here</u></a> and <a href="http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/2006/09/adventures-of-tom-sawyer-part-two.html"><u>here</u></a>. "Does anyone else share my longstanding affection for this show?" John asked rhetorically. In the comments I replied, "Good heavens, doesn't <i>everyone </i>share it?"<br />
<br />
Well, apparently not; in <i>David O. Selznick's Hollywood</i> 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 <i>Nothing Sacred </i>or the original <i>A Star Is Born</i>. Still, John and I aren't entirely alone; Leonard Maltin gives <i>Tom Sawyer </i>three-and-a-half stars, and I have anecdotal evidence aplenty of the picture's enduring ability to please any crowd. <br />
<br />
In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and assert that Selznick's <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>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 <i>The Prince and the Pauper</i>, and an equally close third to 1960's <i>The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn </i>with Eddie Hodges and Archie Moore.) <i></i><br />
<br />
But back to <i>Tom Sawyer</i>. 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, <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>broke nowhere near even, losing some $302,000 -- probably more than the picture would have <i>cost</i> if it had been produced anywhere but at Selznick International.<br />
<br />
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). <br />
<br />
Today that four-year-old has 13 grandchildren of his own, and <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>(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.<br />
<br />
And here I have to discuss the color in <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>(Selznick's movie) -- in general, and in my print in particular. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zCfx0ItlkgE/VEDNrqo7gEI/AAAAAAAADFk/ckXZxg4tRrE/s1600/TS%2Bposter02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zCfx0ItlkgE/VEDNrqo7gEI/AAAAAAAADFk/ckXZxg4tRrE/s1600/TS%2Bposter02.jpg" height="378" width="640" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
Selznick was an early proponent of Technicolor -- any other producer in the world would have made <i>Nothing Sacred</i>, <i>The Garden of Allah </i>or <i>A Star Is Born </i>in black and white, and even his closest associates thought Technicolor for <i>Gone With the Wind </i>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 <i>Gone With the Wind</i> (which is why Metro ever after presented <i>GWTW </i>as if they had produced it) -- the rights didn't always go to people willing to spring for striking new Technicolor prints. <i>Nothing Sacred </i>and <i>A Star Is Born</i> 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".</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I don't know what was used for the 1958 reissue where I first saw <i>Tom</i>; 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>I've</i> 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.")<br />
<br />
The second (and, so far, last) time I saw <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>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.<br />
<br />
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 <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer</i> 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.)<br />
<br />
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 <i>terrible </i>pinch -- so I decided to shop around and see what else I could find.<br />
<br />
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 <i>South Korea</i>, 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.)<br />
<br />
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 <a href="http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com/2006/09/adventures-of-tom-sawyer-part-two.html"><u>Part 2</u></a> 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 <i>Tom Sawyer </i>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:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekUB5oLbzVQ/VENt2bnm-nI/AAAAAAAADF0/4tcGenlhflw/s1600/TS%2BCollage01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ekUB5oLbzVQ/VENt2bnm-nI/AAAAAAAADF0/4tcGenlhflw/s1600/TS%2BCollage01.jpg" height="489" width="640" /></a></div>
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First, here's Tom (Tommy Kelly) and Becky Thatcher's (Ann Gillis) first after-school "date". Notice the increased detail and texture, especially in the 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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...</div>
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...this one of the crowd at the party celebrating Tom and Becky's rescue.</div>
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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. </div>
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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 <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>looking better than it has in years; for myself, I don't know if I've <i>ever </i>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.)<br />
<br />
<i>Tom Sawyer</i>, like most of Selznick's literary adaptations from <i>Little Women </i>to <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, is a perfect illustration of his dictum that it's less important to film an entire novel than to give the <i>impression</i> 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).<br />
<br />
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 <i>Lady for a Day</i>, 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.)<br />
<br />
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 <i>is </i>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 <i>exactly </i>the right person for a role came along, seemingly out of nowhere, at <i>exactly </i>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).<br />
<br />
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. <i>The Adventures of Tom Sawyer </i>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.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;"><span style="color: #f1c232;">* * *</span></span></b></div>
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Then on the next day, Sunday the 28th, it was <i>Gone With the Wind</i>, which I hadn't seen in a theater since its 50th anniversary reissue in 1989.<br />
<br />
The day may come when I have something to say about <i>Gone With the Wind</i> 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: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Making-Gone-Wind-Steve-Wilson/dp/0292761260/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414056732&sr=1-1&keywords=the+making+of+gone+with+the+wind+steve+wilson"><u><i>The Making of Gone With the Wind</i></u></a> by Steve Wilson.<br />
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Now I will confess that when I heard of this book, the first thing I thought was, "Oh great, just what we need, <i>another </i>book about the making of <i>Gone With the Wind</i>!" 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 <i>less </i>of a sense of the movie it's supposed to be about?<br />
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So much for gripes and quibbles. I was wrong. No matter how many books on <i>Gone With the Wind </i>you've read or thumbed through, this one eclipses them all. It's actually the companion volume to an exhibition at the <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/visit/gwtw/"><u>Harry Ransom Center</u></a>, 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.<br />
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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 <a href="http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/web/gonewiththewind/"><u>this link</u></a> 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 <i>have</i> 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.<br />
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-60042155410242298732014-10-11T03:16:00.000-07:002014-10-11T23:13:17.957-07:00A Mystery Photo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oELsw7AMYTw/VDjoBzBYMLI/AAAAAAAADEM/v4JZ1GGVzxI/s1600/Barrymore%2Bphoto01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oELsw7AMYTw/VDjoBzBYMLI/AAAAAAAADEM/v4JZ1GGVzxI/s1600/Barrymore%2Bphoto01.jpg" height="640" width="513" /></a></div>
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. <br />
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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 <i>did</i> deduce.<br />
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In the bottom left corner of the photo is a handwritten inscription:<br />
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<i>To my dear friend</i><br />
<i>Sadie Thompson</i></div>
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<i>John Barrymore</i></div>
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On the back the photo is stamped, in letters ranging from one-quarter inch to one inch high:</div>
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">P</span>RICE <span style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>TUDIOS, <span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span>NC.</span></div>
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SALMON TOWER BLDG.</div>
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11 WEST 42nd ST.</div>
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N.Y.C.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">TELEPHONE -- PENN. 1780</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">Above the stamp is handwritten</span> in pencil: "Larchmont Yacht Club 1930". Next to the date, also in pencil but sideways, is the number "13" in a circle.</div>
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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. </div>
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-60LOPfBEPWM/VDkCsAwE5TI/AAAAAAAADE0/qO5AtQs9_34/s1600/Barrymore%2Bphoto%2Bdetail01b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-60LOPfBEPWM/VDkCsAwE5TI/AAAAAAAADE0/qO5AtQs9_34/s1600/Barrymore%2Bphoto%2Bdetail01b.jpg" height="286" width="320" /></a></div>
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As for the inscription to "my dear friend Sadie Thompson" -- well, that can only refer to the central character in <i>Rain</i>, 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 <i>played </i>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 <i>Sadie Thompson</i>. 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?</div>
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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. </div>
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Does anybody have any ideas? Comments and speculations are welcome.<br />
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<b><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-size: large;"><u><i>Update 10/11/14, 11:05 pm</i></u><i>: </i></span></span></b> <br />
<b><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></i></span></span></b>
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<b><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i> </i></span></span></b><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F-pUx7c_WNE/VDoUFpOXLMI/AAAAAAAADFE/oBfubmmYg5w/s1600/Roberts%2Bpic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F-pUx7c_WNE/VDoUFpOXLMI/AAAAAAAADFE/oBfubmmYg5w/s1600/Roberts%2Bpic.jpg" height="640" width="513" /></a></div>
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Today I received this picture from historian Richard M. Roberts, who states conclusively -- and <i>I'm</i> convinced -- that my picture isn't John Barrymore after all. Richard's message:<i> </i></div>
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<i>Hello Jim,</i><br />
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<i>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.</i><br />
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<i>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.</i><br />
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<i>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.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Hope you are well, I always enjoy your blog and look
forward to seeing you at Cinevent next year.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Sincerely,</i><br />
<br />
<i>RICHARD</i><br />
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Many thanks for getting in touch, Richard; I had a hunch -- no, I <i>knew</i> -- 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.<br />
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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?</div>
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Speculations remain welcome...</div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-62395515415581477192014-08-17T19:01:00.000-07:002015-07-23T01:32:06.816-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 14<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VAYnAIEDamw/U-KMt4NVQVI/AAAAAAAACyU/MwMaalwq_Ao/s1600/1939pic05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VAYnAIEDamw/U-KMt4NVQVI/AAAAAAAACyU/MwMaalwq_Ao/s1600/1939pic05.jpg" width="275" /></a></div>
And so we come to the endgame of the Shirley Temple Phenomenon. It's the<br />
summer of 1939; Shirley is 11 years old -- though she and the rest of the world<br />
still think she's only ten -- and she's bumping up against a principle that won't<br />
even be articulated until 1997: what critic Louis Menand called "The Iron Law of<br />
Stardom". In a New Yorker article by that title published in March '97, Menand<br />
posited his "Iron Law" as one of the immutable laws of the universe, like gravity<br />
or the speed of light. Put simply, the Iron Law is this: stardom never lasts more<br />
than three years. Menand was careful, however, to distinguish between "stardom"<br />
and "being a star". Once a star, always a star, he said, but actual <i>stardom </i>is<br />
something else -- "the period of inevitability, the time when everything works<br />
in a way that makes you think it will work that way forever...the intersection<br />
of personality with history, a perfect congruence of the way the world<br />
happens to be and the way the star is." Thus, Menand explained, Elizabeth<br />
Taylor remained a star all her life by virtue of being the person who was<br />
Elizabeth Taylor from 1963 (<i>Cleopatra</i>) to 1966 (<i>Who's Afraid of Virginia</i><br />
<i>Woolf?</i>), and Al Pacino remains a star as the person who was Al Pacino<br />
from 1972 (<i>The Godfather</i>) to 1975 (<i>Dog Day Afternoon</i>). <br />
<br />
By this reasoning, and with hindsight, we can see that Shirley in 1939<br />
fits the pattern. She remains a star, but it's by virtue of being the person<br />
who was Shirley Temple from 1934 (<i>Little Miss Marker </i>and <i>Bright Eyes</i>)<br />
to 1937 (<i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>and <i>Heidi</i>). Nineteen-forty will round out not<br />
only the decade, but her reign atop the box office and her career at 20th<br />
Century Fox as well.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>The Blue Bird </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released January 19, 1940)</span></span></span><br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vx87mDZKHyA/U-HtNAAQ_TI/AAAAAAAACyE/BKP4qIyoA6Q/s1600/BB-mag+ad01a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Vx87mDZKHyA/U-HtNAAQ_TI/AAAAAAAACyE/BKP4qIyoA6Q/s1600/BB-mag+ad01a.jpg" width="494" /></a></div>
<i>The Blue Bird</i> was Shirley's second brush with a Nobel Prize winner, after Rudyard Kipling and <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>. 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 <i>Pelleas and Melisande</i> (1893), a doomed-lovers tragedy that inspired numerous operas, all of which are performed these days far more often than the original play.<br />
<br />
A close second to that, however, would have to be <i>The Blue Bird</i>, 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 <span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">"a poetic fancy, which reveals, sometimes in the guise of a fairy tale, a deep inspiration". This could only have been a reference to <i>The Blue Bird</i>, 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).</span><br />
<br />
<span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><i>The Blue Bird</i> 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, "</span><span itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">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...."</span><br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
The reason isn't hard to figure out. Despite its elaborate settings and special effects, and characters symbolic of everything under the sun, <i>The Blue Bird</i> simply has no story. <i>Why </i>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 <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> -- 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 <i>The Blue Bird </i>hasn't been staged 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. <br />
<br />
With all that said, 20th Century Fox's 1940 version of <i>The Blue Bird</i> has been given a bum rap over the years. The main thrust of the rap is that <i>The Blue Bird</i> was Fox's attempt to duplicate the success of MGM's <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> (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<i> Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i>. (In which, by the way, both failed. <i>The Blue Bird</i>, in Time Magazine's inevitable snark line, "laid an egg", but <i>Oz </i>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.) <br />
<br />
Now let's stipulate right up front that <i>The Blue Bird </i>is nowhere near the same league as <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>-- 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 <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, is that MGM was adapting L. Frank Baum while 20th Century Fox was adapting Maurice Maeterlinck.<br />
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Or trying to. <i>The Blue Bird</i>'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.)</div>
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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.</div>
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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. </div>
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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).</div>
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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. </div>
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The fire is a highlight of <i>The Blue Bird</i>; 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 <i>The Blue Bird</i>'s two Oscar nominations, for special effects. (The other was for Arthur Miller and Ray Rennahan's Technicolor cinematography. In both categories <i>The Blue Bird </i>lost, and justifiably, to <i>The Thief of Bagdad</i>.) This forest fire would be the best scene in <i>The Blue Bird </i>if it weren't for...</div>
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<br />
...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 <br />
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."<br />
<br />
Mytyl and Tyltyl wander among children who are preparing for<br />
what will be their calling in life. One boy proudly displays the<br />
anesthetic he will discover; another tinkers with an electric light.<br />
Still another, solitary and melancholy, tells them his destiny is to<br />
fight against slavery, injustice and inequality -- but people "won't<br />
listen...they'll destroy me."<br />
<br />
<br />
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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 <i>Young Mr. Lincoln</i> the year before.)</div>
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Father Time has to speak sharply to these young<br />
people (Dorothy Joyce and Tommy Baker). They<br />
knew this day would come, but they couldn't help<br />
themselves -- they've fallen in love. She begs to<br />
go with him ("Please, we love each other, and I<br />
shall be born too late.") while he pleads to stay<br />
behind ("I will be gone before she comes down.").</div>
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<br />
Time is implacable, and both lovers know they<br />
cannot choose. At last the boy tears himself<br />
away and the girl falls sobbing. Soulmates, they<br />
know they will never meet on earth, but will live<br />
their lives out in a cold, lonely world without<br />
ever understanding why.</div>
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<br />
The children whose time has come<br />
board a graceful alabaster ship with<br />
silver sails and the figurehead of a<br />
swan. As the boat pulls away from<br />
the quay into a golden sea and sky,<br />
the children left behind, still awaiting<br />
their turn, bid their friends a joyous<br />
<i>bon voyage</i>. The departing passengers<br />
fix their eyes on the far horizon, and<br />
they sing:<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>To the world so far away</i><br />
<i>Sail we now at break of day.</i><br />
<i>Mothers waiting there below.</i><br />
<i>Do they hear us? Do they know?</i><br />
<br />
From the unseen distance another song<br />
can be heard -- the song of the mothers<br />
coming out to meet them.<br />
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The last we see of the children -- those on the ship</div>
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as well as those left behind -- is a glimpse of each</div>
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of the two young lovers. First the boy -- miserable,<br />
downcast, the only one not singing...</div>
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...then the girl, the only one not waving a cheering farewell.</div>
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She lies awash in her own tears, knowing in her broken heart<br />
that her life is over without ever having had a chance to begin.<br />
As the ship sails into the golden mists, it is a journey begun<br />
in lovers' parting -- lovers who are fated to be born, live, and<br />
die, never to meet again this side of Heaven.</div>
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Before we move on, I want to pause to acknowledge</div>
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this little girl. Her name is Caryll Ann Ekelund, and</div>
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in <i>The Blue Bird </i>she plays a child who tries to sneak</div>
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aboard the boat transporting children to be born. Father</div>
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Time catches her -- this is the third time she's tried to</div>
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be born before her time -- and he scolds her gently before</div>
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sending her back to wait her turn. Caryll Ann was four</div>
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years old in the summer of 1939 when she played this</div>
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wordless cameo -- and sadly, she did not live to see</div>
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herself on the big screen. At a Halloween party later</div>
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that year, a jack-o-lantern candle ignited her costume</div>
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and she died three days later of her burns. She was</div>
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buried in the pink tunic she wears here.</div>
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<br />
<br />
<br />
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.</div>
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<br />
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?"<br />
<br />
<i>The Blue Bird </i>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 <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, but simply because <i>The Blue Bird</i>'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.)<br />
<br />
The idea that <i>The Blue Bird </i>suffered by comparison with <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>in 1940 basically springs from the fact that it suffers by that same comparison today. Almost everyone who sees <i>The Blue Bird</i> nowadays can't help seeing similarities to <i>Oz</i>, and of course <i>Blue Bird </i>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 <i>The Blue Bird</i> 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 <i>Oz </i>(where they did not belong). In a real sense, MGM's <i>Wizard of Oz </i>was an imitation of <i>The Blue Bird</i>, and not the other way around.<br />
<br />
If viewers today were as familiar with Maeterlinck's dreadful play as they are with <i>Oz</i>, <i>The Blue Bird</i>'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 <i>no reason</i> 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. <br />
<br />
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 [<i>sic</i>] 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 sparkling technicolor [<i>sic</i>] 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 <i>The Blue Bird</i>'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 <i>Oz</i>, which an earlier New Yorker review had called "a stinkeroo", is at the bottom of Mosher's scale.)<br />
<br />
The opinion of <i>The Blue Bird</i> 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 <i>The Blue Bird</i> somewhere along the line, but what he thought remains unknown. In <i>Child Star</i> 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.<br />
<br />
Whatever Maeterlinck might have thought, <i>The Blue Bird</i> 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 <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>.<br />
<br />
But whatever I or anyone else may think today, in 1940 <i>The Blue Bird </i>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.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Young People </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released August 23, 1940)</span></span></span><br />
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As Fox had followed the lavish <i>The Little Princess</i> by placing Shirley in a B western, so they followed the even more lavish <i>The Blue Bird</i> with an even-more-B musical. But more significantly, perhaps, by the time <i>Young People </i>opened in New York in August -- in fact, even before Variety reviewed it in July -- the picture <i></i>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 <i>Young People</i> would be Shirley's swan song at 20th Century Fox. <i>The Blue Bird </i>might at least have ended her career with a bang; <i>Young People </i>was a whimper.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley says Edwin Blum and Don Ettlinger's script for <i>Young People</i> "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 <i>Hello, Frisco, Hello</i>) 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 <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>.<br />
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In early scenes, <i>Young People </i>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 <i>Curly Top</i>. 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 <i>Stand Up and Cheer! </i>"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, <i>George Montgomery </i>deserved better. Ironically, <i>Young People</i> 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 <i>Heidi</i>. Shirley was by no means "over" in 1937, but by 1940 (and her third picture for Dwan), she certainly was.<br />
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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 <i>Susannah of the Mounties </i>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."<br />
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If these valedictory tributes were intended even subliminally to soften the blow and let Shirley go out a winner, it didn't work. <i>Young People</i>, 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 <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>: Shirley would be a has-been at 15.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;">* * *<i></i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div>
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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 <i>Lady Jane</i>, but she had outgrown the part by then -- in <i>Young People</i> she was already developing hips and breasts (in <i>Child Star </i>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 <i>Babes on Broadway</i>, fearing (probably correctly) that in their company her daughter would get short shrift.<br />
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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.<br />
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The sole result of Shirley's sojourn at MGM was <i>Kathleen</i> ('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.<br />
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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 -- <i>Since You Went Away</i> ('44), <i>Kiss and Tell </i>('45), <i>The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer </i>('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 <i>A Kiss for Corliss </i>in 1949).<br />
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Shirley did, in time, get the hang of grown-up acting, as the host and occasional star of <i>Shirley Temple's Storybook </i>and <i>Shirley Temple Theatre </i>(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 wings of 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.<br />
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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):</div>
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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 <a href="http://www.steynonline.com/6099/on-the-good-ship-lollipop-animal-crackers-in-my"><u>Mark Steyn</u></a> aptly put it, she wasn't a "child star" at all. She was a star who just happened to be a child.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Epilogue</i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><br />
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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. </div>
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Standouts? Well, the first one that comes to mind is...</div>
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<b><i>Wee Willie Winkie</i></b> This may be the best picture -- as a <i>picture </i>-- 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 <i>Fort Apache</i>, only strengthens the connection. There is nothing in Shirley's career quite so moving as Pvt. Winkie singing "Auld Lang Syne" at Sgt. MacDuff's bedside, followed by her affectionate gaze at the friend who she doesn't realize -- or cannot admit -- has just died. </div>
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<b><i>Little Miss Marker</i></b> There's a reason this picture made her a <i>bona fide </i>star; it has what just may be her most fully realized and least self-conscious performance. If Sgt. MacDuff's deathbed in <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>is Shirley's best single scene, a close second is the first exchange of dialogue and eye-contact between Shirley's Marky and Adolphe Menjou's Sorrowful Jones. </div>
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<b><i>Curly Top</i></b> I think <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-6.html"><u>Leslie Halliwell</u></a> 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 <i>tour de force </i>of "When I Grow Up".</div>
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<b><i>Stowaway</i></b> 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. </div>
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<b><i>The Little Princess</i></b> 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.</div>
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<b><i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i></b> 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 <i>tour de force</i> in that tap routine to "Military Man".</div>
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Also, in varous bits and pieces, <i>anything</i> -- acting or dancing -- with <b><i>Bill Robinson</i></b> (honorable mention: <b><i>Buddy Ebsen</i></b>). </div>
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And finally, a special nod to <b><i>The Blue Bird</i></b>, 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. </div>
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So long, Shirley, and thanks for the memories -- these and so many more.</div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-52751103865925140592014-08-04T03:04:00.000-07:002014-08-28T02:36:44.123-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 13<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley says that after the release of <i>Little Miss Broadway</i> Darryl Zanuck announced that her next picture would be an adaptation of <i>Lady Jane</i> by Mrs. Cecilia Viets Jamison. Published around the turn of the 20th century (1903, as near as I can tell), the novel told the Dickensian tale of an orphan girl in New Orleans of the 1890s. Little Jane and her gravely ill mother, having fallen on hard times, are taken in by a Mme. Jozain, who, seeing the fine clothes in their luggage, calculates that she'll be well compensated for nursing the mother back to health. But the mother dies, leaving the girl in Mme. Jozain's hands to be exploited and abused, her only friend a blue heron. <br />
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All ends happily, of course, but we needn't go into it any deeper than that. In trolling around the Internet looking for information on the book -- it's apparently out of print, but used copies are widely available -- I found this. It's a 1935 edition published by Grosset & Dunlap, a firm that often published movie novelizations and "motion picture editions" of classic books. As you can see, the dust jacket says, "This is the beautiful story from which the 20th Century Fox picture was made". However, Grosset & Dunlap seem to have jumped the gun; <i>Lady Jane</i> was never filmed, with Shirley or anybody else. Could it be that Fox purchased the book as early as 1935, anticipating making a movie, even though Shirley doesn't mention it coming up until three years later?<br />
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In any case, nothing ever came of <i>Lady Jane</i>. Other titles were tossed in the hopper, including one suggested casually by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau over lunch with Shirley and her mother: <i>The Little Diplomat</i>.<i> </i>On Zanuck's orders, <i>The Little Diplomat</i> got as far as a treatment by studio writer Charles Beldon and a first draft by Eddie Moran, then withered on the vine. Another proposal, the 1936 children's novel <i>Susannah of the Mounties</i> by Canadian Muriel Denison, went the distance, as we'll see later. But for now, in the fall of 1938, Fox yet again turned to an old Mary Pickford vehicle. This time more than just the title would be used, and curiously enough, the story had some elements in common with <i>Lady Jane</i>. The result would be the glittering apotheosis of Shirley's career at 20th Century Fox.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>The Little Princess </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released March 10, 1939)</span></span></span><br />
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Unlike <i>Lady Jane</i>, <i>A Little Princess </i>has never been out of print since it was first published in 1905. It was the work of Frances Hodgson Burnett, who was born in England in 1849 but lived much of her adult life in the U.S., where she became a citizen in 1905, and where she died and was buried in 1924. She began writing short fiction for magazines while still in her teens, later progressing to romantic novels for adults and sentimental books for children. Her books sold well all her life, enabling her to support a transatlantic lifestyle with homes at various times in America, in England and on the Continent. Her adult novels were all popular in their day, but it's for her children's books that she remains best remembered, specifically <i>Little Lord Fauntleroy </i>(1885), <i>The Secret Garden</i> (1911) and <i>A Little Princess</i>.</div>
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<i>A Little Princess</i> first appeared in 1888 as a serial in St. Nicholas Magazine under the title <i>Sara Crewe: or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's Boarding School</i>. In 1902, Mrs. Burnett turned the story into a play, <i>A Little Un-fairy Princess</i>, the title later shortened to <i>A Little Princess</i>; in January 1903 the play opened in New York (with "<i>The</i>" replacing "<i>A</i>" in the title). About the same time, Mrs. Burnett set to expanding the original story into a complete novel, and the book (full title: <i>A Little Princess; being the whole story of Sara Crewe now told for the first time</i>) was published in 1905.</div>
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In the novel, Sara Crewe is the seven-year-old daughter of a well-to-do British Army captain serving in India. Pampered without being spoiled, Sara is brought by her father to be educated in England, away from the unhealthful Indian climate. He enrolls her in Miss Minchin's Select Seminary for Young Ladies, where the proprietress, Miss Maria Minchin, continues the practice of pampering Sara, albeit more for love of her father's money than from any affection for Sara herself. In fact, Miss Minchin dislikes and resents Sara for her native intelligence, her scholastic aptitude, and her self-possession, which Miss Minchin regards as impertinence.<br />
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Sara spends four years at the school, fawned over (insincerely) as Miss Minchin's star pupil. Then, just as Sara turns 11, her father suddenly dies, his health and spirit shattered by a series of financial reverses that have left him, and now his orphaned daughter, penniless with no friend or family to turn to. Miss Minchin's resentment boils over at the thought of the luxuries she has lavished on Sara, expecting to be reimbursed by her father. She confiscates Sara's fine clothes and evicts her from her well-appointed room. Henceforth, Sara will be expected to continue her studies while earning her keep as a scullery maid and all-around drudge, doing chores and running errands at all hours and in all weathers, wearing threadbare, ill-fitting clothes, sleeping in the attic with the rats and the discarded furniture, and taking what nourishment she can from the scraps of food thrown to her -- that is, when her "meals" are not withheld for some imagined infraction or other.</div>
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Sara endures two years of this shabby abuse with stoic dignity, years in which both she and Miss Minchin show their true colors. In the end, Sara's virtue is rewarded. While her father has indeed been lost, it turns out that her fortune has only been mislaid, and is now returned to her a hundredfold. She sweeps out of Miss Minchin's clutches richer and more a "little princess" than she ever was, while Miss Minchin is left to gnash her teeth and contemplate what will become of <i>her</i> if word of how Sara was treated ever gets around.</div>
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<i>A Little Princess </i>was first filmed in 1917 with Mary Pickford as Sara. That version was reasonably faithful to the book -- at least, as faithful as it could be in 62 minutes, especially when 16 of those minutes digressed into a long telling of "Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves", which Sara recounts to her schoolmates. (This scene was supposedly included to dramatize Sara's fertile imagination, but it chiefly served to relieve Pickford for a while from having to look and act like a ten-year-old.) </div>
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For Shirley's version -- like the 1903 New York stage production, it was <u><i>The</i></u><i> Little Princess</i>, not</div>
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<u><i>A</i></u><i> Little Princess</i> -- 20th Century Fox mounted a lavish production. The budget, Shirley says, was $1.3 million, "six times the cost of my first film". For this scene alone, a quick shot of Londoners cheering their soldiers off to war, the extras probably outnumbered the entire casts of Shirley's last three pictures combined. (Shirley and Ian Hunter as Capt. Crewe can just barely be glimpsed in a hansom cab in the top right background.)</div>
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Ethel Hill and Walter Ferris's script took major liberties with Mrs. Burnett's story while retaining its basic structure. To spare Shirley having to age from seven to 13, they confined the action to a single year, 1899 to 1900. Capt. Crewe has been ordered from India to Africa to fight in the Boer War, and is reported killed at the siege of Mafeking. However, we soon learn that he was not killed but is only missing in action, and is being cared for in a hospital right there in London, a semi-comatose amnesiac whose identity is a mystery to those who are tending to him. Whether Capt. Crewe is dead or missing, the effect on Sara and on Miss Minchin (Mary Nash, still in villainess mode from <i>Heidi</i>) is the same. The difference is that Sara refuses to believe the reports, and she haunts the very same hospital whenever she can steal away from the school, always searching for her father but never finding him, asking after him but never asking anyone who knows about that mysterious unknown patient. In the end, with a gentle assist from Queen Victoria (Beryl Mercer, serving much as Frank McGlynn's Abe Lincoln did in <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>), Sara is finally reunited with her father. The change is crucial: for this Sara Crewe, the happy ending is not regaining her fortune, but regaining her father.<br />
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Hill and Ferris also added a romantic subplot involving Rose (Anita Louise), a teacher at Miss Minchin's, and Geoffrey Hamilton (Richard Greene), the school's riding master (seen here with Sara before the downturn in her fortunes). Geoffrey is the semi-estranged grandson of Lord Wickham (Miles Mander), who lives next door to the school, attended by his Indian servant Ram Dass (Cesar Romero). Miss Minchin takes cruel delight in breaking up Rose and Geoffrey's romance and discharging Rose, thinking it will curry favor with Lord Wickham. </div>
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Meanwhile, Ram Dass, crossing the roofs from his attic room to Sara's, has seen the wretched conditions under which she's forced to live. Sara tells him of all the comforts she pretends her cold, dusty garret has. Later, with the approval and connivance of Lord Wickham, Ram Dass sneaks into the room while Sara sleeps and installs all the comforts she has only imagined -- down quilts, soft cushions, cases of lovely books, food on the table and a warm fire in the grate. In this way the movie includes one of the charming touches in the book, changing the source of the mysterious largesse by establishing Lord Wickham as the curmudgeon with a heart of gold that has by now become a standard element of Shirley's pictures.</div>
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The movie also provides Miss Minchin with a brother Bertie</div>
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(Arthur Treacher) -- "our professor of elocution and dramatics."</div>
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Bertie is also a former music hall entertainer, although Miss</div>
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Minchin is too much of a snob to allow him to admit to it when</div>
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Sara's father remembers having seen him perform. And this</div>
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is all the excuse the movie needs to put Sara and Bertie</div>
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through a couple of quick song-and-dance choruses of the</div>
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1882 Albert Chevalier chestnut "The Old Kent Road" -- first</div>
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here in Miss Minchin's parlor (when she's not around,</div>
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of course), then later at the hospital to entertain</div>
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the convalescent soldiers.</div>
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In this way and others, <i>The Little Princess </i>tailors Frances</div>
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Hodgson Burnett's original story to Shirley's strengths.</div>
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"Studio moguls," Shirley sighs in <i>Child Star</i>, "had given</div>
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up the prospect of making me fit the story and had</div>
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returned to making the story fit me."</div>
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Indeed they had, but more happily than in <i>Heidi</i>. <i>The Little Princess </i>demonstrates the difference between working to Shirley's strengths and depending on her tricks -- never more so than in this sequence, which comes at the picture's two-thirds point. Sara is asleep in her garret; while she sleeps, Ram Dass steals in through the attic window and bedecks her room with comforts and finery -- but we won't know that until later because we are in Sara's dream. She dreams she's a princess holding court, with (like all dreams) people from her life taking their roles. Bertie is her court jester, Ram Dass her lord chamberlain (perhaps Sara, even asleep, is half-aware of his presence?), and Miss Minchin is there filing charges against Geoffrey for stealing a kiss from Rose. The scene is spoken in rhymed verse written by Walter Bullock, set to music by Samuel Pokrass (<i>"There, you see, he broke the law! / What I say I saw, I saw!"</i>). Geoffrey is acquitted because the kiss wasn't stolen, it was given freely by Rose (<i>"There, you see! I had a feeling / This was not a case of stealing."</i>), and the accuser is banished from Princess Sara's realm.</div>
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There follows a round of entertainment from the court dancers (to a genteel arrangement of "The Old Kent Road"), in which a new prima ballerina (who looks very much like Princess Sara herself) wins the approval of the court.</div>
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As the dance ends, Sara awakens to find her room transformed -- so completely transformed that at first she thinks she must be still asleep and dreaming.</div>
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The dream fantasy is a pure Hollywood touch, but it works <i>for </i>the picture rather than crippling it, as "In Our Little Wooden Shoes" had done to <i>Heidi</i>. In <i>Heidi</i>, there was no way we could believe that this little Swiss urchin would fantasize herself as a Dutch girl clomping around by the Zuider Zee in her wooden shoes, much less promenading through a stately minuet at the Palace of Versailles. But the fantasy here is entirely in keeping with the Sara Crewe we've come to know; for that matter, it's consistent with the novel's original Sara Crewe as well. Before Sara's fall from grace, everyone at the school calls her a "little princess" (some, the mean and spiteful ones, sarcastically); after her fall, it becomes even more important to Sara to be "a princess inside" and take whatever mistreatment Miss Minchin can fling at her with the grace and dignity that implies. So in her dream we see Sara as she sees herself, dispensing justice to the good and wicked alike. The scene also illustrates Sara's greatest asset in adversity: her vivid imagination. (The "Ali Baba" sequence in the Mary Pickford version tried to do the same, but it went on more than twice as long -- in a movie that was half an hour shorter -- and bore no connection to Sara's waking life.)</div>
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<i>The Little Princess</i>, despite the liberties it takes with Frances Hodgson Burnett's novel, is one of Shirley's strongest pictures -- classic Hollywood star-vehicle moviemaking at its best. In it, for perhaps the first time -- or maybe the second, after <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> -- 20th Century Fox gave the movie a production worthy of the studio's biggest star, rather than expecting her to carry the show more (<i>Dimples</i>) or less (<i>Stowaway</i>) on her own. Reviews were indulgent. Variety's anonymous reviewer wrote, "Shirley Temple appears in Technicolor for the first time but, more important, it's her best picture in a long while." At the Times, B.R. Crisler said, with tongue slightly in cheek: "With any other child star on Earth, it is amazing to reflect, 'The Little Princess' would stand out as one of the most glaring examples of pure hokum in screen history; with Mistress Temple, it may very well be, as Mr [Z]anuck unflinchingly proclaims, the greatest picture with which Mr. Zanuck has ever been associated. And that would be greatness indeed." Even John Mosher at The New Yorker allowed, "This careful and even handsome screen version of the story Mother used to love when she was a girl is rich with all the sugar and all the poison of the past." <br />
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For Shirley's next outing, it was back to black-and-white, and a follow-through on one of the projects that had been back-burnered in favor of <i>The Little Princess</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Susannah of the Mounties </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released June 23, 1939)</span></span></span><br />
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We needn't spend much time on <i>Susannah of the Mounties</i>. Muriel Denison's novel, published in 1936, was the first of four she would eventually turn out; the sequels were <i>Susannah of the Yukon</i>, <i>Susannah at Boarding School</i> and <i>Susannah Rides Again</i>. This first book told of a nine-year-old Canadian girl in 1896 sent to live with her uncle when her parents are assigned to a remote corner of the British Empire. The uncle, an officer at a Royal Canadian Mounted Police outpost in the wilds of Saskatchewan, is at first surprised and unwelcoming, but Susannah soon wins his heart, along with those of everyone else on the post. My own copy of the book is still on order; when I've had a chance to look it over, if there's anything more to be said about it, I'll post an update here.<br />
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But I suspect there won't be, because once again 20th Century Fox jettisoned everything except the title. The script was credited to Robert Ellis and Helen Logan (story by Fidel La Barba and Walter Ferris), but several other writers put their oars in without credit -- never a good sign. Yet again, Shirley played an orphan: Susannah Sheldon, sole survivor of a wagon train massacred by renegade Blackfeet Indians in the 1880s. She is found by Mountie Randolph Scott out on patrol, and more or less adopted by him. From her place on the post she becomes embroiled in tensions between the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the Blackfeet tribe, especially after she befriends the son of a Blackfeet chief sent to the post as a hostage against good behavior. Together Susannah and Little Chief (played by a 13-year-old Blackfeet youth named Martin Good Rider) intervene with his father Big Eagle (Maurice Moscovich) to thwart the warmongering of the villainous Wolf Pelt (Victor Jory) and "show White Man and Indian how to live as brothers." Peace pipe smoked, fade out.<br />
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That's about it. There's a perfunctory romance between Susannah's guardian Inspector Angus "Monty" Montague (Scott) and his commanding officer's daughter (Margaret Lockwood) that falls somewhere between the similar subplot of <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> and the one of <i>The Little Princess</i>; otherwise <i>Susannah of the Mounties</i> has the mediocre look and feel of a B-western (albeit spiced up with stock footage from earlier, more expensive Fox westerns). There's also an attitude toward Canada's native tribes that's almost as uncomfortable today as the treatment of African Americans in <i>The Little Colonel </i>and <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>. "Ugh!" is a common line of dialogue given to Blackfeet characters; other lines include "Little Chief not sleep White Man house," and, so help me, "Devil child have forked tongue!"<br />
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Reviews were dismissive, with an air of disappointment, as if the reviewers' hopes had been raised by <i>The Little Princess</i>, only to be dashed. Variety called <i>Susannah </i>"weakest in the Temple series for some time", adding, ominously: "Youngster is growing up fast, and is losing some of that sparkle displayed as a tot which carried her so far as a b.o. bet." B.R. Crisler in the Times, noting the movie's Mounties in their pillbox hats instead of the familiar peaked campaign hats, cracked: "The early Canadian Northwest Mounted Police certainly wore tricky uniforms, though. Except for the fact that they are on the screen, people at the Roxy might almost mistake them for ushers." The New Yorker's John Mosher put it succinctly, and correctly: "The whole offering must be considered as very minor Temple."<br />
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<i>Susannah of the Mounties</i> was directed by Wiliam A. Seiter, one of Shirley's favorites, who had already directed her in <i>Stowaway </i>and <i>Dimples</i>. Some scenes were directed without credit by Walter Lang (Seiter had performed the same fill-in duty on <i>The Little Princess </i>when director Lang left on "medical furlough"). Shirley's next picture would reunite her with Lang. Once again, Shirley and Lang would be working in Technicolor, and the production would be, if anything, even more lavish than <i>The Little Princess</i>. Results, however, would differ sharply. For the first time, a Shirley Temple picture would lose money. <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/08/shirley-temple-revisited-part-14.html"><u>To be concluded</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-77733069526985439672014-07-27T03:00:00.000-07:002014-08-28T02:05:51.153-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 12Despite the success of <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>and<i> Heidi</i>, 20th Century Fox decided to table, for the time being at least, any literary pretensions in Shirley's pictures. In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley says otherwise: "Ahead would be <i>Fanchon the Cricket </i>followed by <i>Pollyanna</i>..." -- but nothing ever came of those, and she never mentions either title again, not even to explain why they didn't happen. Both, not coincidentally, had been Mary Pickford vehicles in 1915 and 1920, respectively.<br />
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<i>Fanchon</i>, despite what Shirley says, was almost certainly never on the agenda. The 1849 George Sand novel on which it was based (<i>La Petite Fadette</i>) had no particular following in the U.S., and Pickford's picture of it was long forgotten -- presumed lost, in fact (a partial print didn't surface until 1999). Besides, the character of a semi-feral peasant girl who wins the love of a respectable village boy in rural France was hardly a good fit for Shirley. Perhaps Mother Gertrude mentioned the title for (or to) Shirley, but Darryl Zanuck surely didn't. <br />
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<i>Pollyanna </i>is another case entirely; why that one never happened is a mystery. The idea was a natural, more natural in fact than <i>Heidi</i>. For that matter, Eleanor H. Porter's 1913 novel was virtually an American carbon copy of <i>Heidi</i> -- without goats and mountains, with an aunt instead of a grandfather, and with Heidi and Klara, the crippled friend who learns to walk again, combined into the one character of Pollyanna Whittier. The story could easily have accommodated as many songs for Shirley as Zanuck and his minions cared to throw at it, and could even have been updated to the 1930s without doing serious damage to the original. Fox's failure to follow this lead has to count as a major missed opportunity, maybe even (depending on the results, of course) a crime against posterity. Could the problem have been that the Porter novel was still under copyright? I suppose we'll never know. <br />
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Shirley wrote about Zanuck "grappling with that chronic demon" of "selecting my next screenplay." The grappling produced results -- Shirley made three pictures in 1938 -- but the results were, alas, generally undistinguished. Shirley described one of those pictures as "unfailingly bland", but she could have been talking about any of the three, and we can deal with each of them in a very few paragraphs.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released March 25, 1938)</span></span></span><br />
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<i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm</i> was another of Shirley's "no trace" pictures, like <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-8.html"><u><i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i></u></a> and (allegedly) <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-7.html"><u><i>The Littlest Rebel</i></u></a>. What there was no trace of this time was the 1903 novel by Kate Douglas Wiggin. The story had been filmed faithfully in 1917 with Mary Pickford and again in 1932 with Marian Nixon (produced by Fox Film Corp., so the post-merger studio still had the property lying around). For this incarnation, the studio adopted the same curious practice they had used with <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>: take a title widely identified with Mary Pickford, then make a picture with absolutely no connection to what Pickford and Co. did with it.<br />
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As if to ensure that <i>Rebecca </i>would be as familiar as possible, Zanuck and associate producer Raymond Griffith packed the supporting cast with returnees from Shirley's earlier pictures: Gloria Stuart and Jack Haley from <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>; Helen Westley from <i>Dimples</i>, <i>Stowaway</i> and <i>Heidi</i>; Slim Summerville from <i>Captain January</i>; Bill Robinson from <i>The Little Colonel </i>and <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>; J. Edward Bromberg, the <i>deus ex machina </i>judge from <i>Stowaway</i>, serving the same function as a doctor this time; even Alan Dinehart, the sleazeball detective from way back in <i>Baby Take a Bow</i>, was brought back. Of the names on this poster, only Randolph Scott and Phyllis Brooks were new, and both would work with Shirley again before the year was out. The director, once again, was <i>Heidi</i>'s reliably unimaginative Allan Dwan.<br />
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Even the story was a bit of a recycle; as in <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, Shirley becomes a radio star unbeknownst to her ostensible guardian (duties divided this time between her grumpy aunt Helen Westley and shifty stepfather William Demarest) when, while living with her aunt on the farm of the title, she sneaks out for a remote broadcast from the farmhouse of her neighbor, radio producer Randolph Scott.<br />
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During that broadcast, <i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm </i>drops all pretense to being anything more than Shirley Temple In Concert. The program's emcee (Jack Haley) invites Shirley/Rebecca to "sing the songs that made a lot of people happy." So she sings:<br />
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<i>My dear radio audience, </i><br />
<i>Now I shall do</i><br />
<i>Some of the songs I've had the pleasure of introducing to you...</i><br />
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This, mind you, on what is supposedly her very first broadcast. What follows is a medley of "On the Good Ship Lollipop" from <i>Bright Eyes</i>, "Animal Crackers in My Soup" from <i>Curly Top</i>, "When I'm With You" and "Oh, My Goodness" from <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i> and "Good Night, My Love" (the lyric changed to "Good Night, My Friends") from <i>Stowaway</i>. "Ah, but it's great to reminisce," Shirley/Rebecca sighs. <br />
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Like <i>Captain January</i>, <i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm</i> was one of Shirley's first pictures to hit TV in the 1950s, so it has a special place in the childhood memories of many Baby Boomers. And giving credit where it's due, <i>Rebecca </i>is a pleasant enough vehicle for Shirley. But it plows familiar ground while the original furrows are still fairly fresh. Those Baby Boomers (including myself) first saw <i>Rebecca </i>on its own, without the feeling of <i>deja vu </i>that comes from knowing about all the other movies it ransacks for actors, songs and plot elements. <br />
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"Flin" in Variety wasn't fooled. He gave Shirley full credit as "a great little artist", but added:<br />
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<i>The rest is synthetic and disappointing. Why they named it "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is one of those mysteries. The only resemblance is a load of hay, a litter of pigs and Bill Robinson's straw hat.</i></blockquote>
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But <i>Rebecca</i>'s familiarity doesn't always breed contempt. The picture ends, and I'll end my comments on it, with Shirley singing "The Toy Trumpet" by Sidney Mitchell and Lew Pollack, then dancing the song with Bill Robinson. Granted, it's really just a less-bravura retread of "Military Man" from <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, but hey, it's still Shirley and Bojangles (yet again, colorized): </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Little Miss Broadway </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released July 22, 1938)</span></span></span><br />
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<i>Little Miss Broadway </i>was the one Shirley called "unfailingly bland", and that about sums it up. Shirley is once again an orphan, this time moving from her orphanage to live with a friend of her late parents (Edward Ellis) who runs a hotel for entertainers. The curmudgeon this time is the rich old landlady next door (Edna May Oliver, her middle name misspelled as "Mae"), who not only plots to get rid of those unsavory show people by selling their hotel out from under them, but (channeling Sara Haden's truant officer from <i>Captain January</i>) moves to have Shirley returned to her orphanage. Meanwhile, her playboy nephew (George Murphy) is charmed by Shirley and smitten with Ellis's daughter (Phyllis Brooks of <i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm</i>) and tries to thwart the old girl. It all ends in the courtroom of judge Claude Gillingwater, with Shirley and her troupers proving that they've got a moneymaking show on their hands and can afford to keep the hotel open.</div>
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<i>Little Miss Broadway</i> was the first of two straight pictures Shirley made with associate producer David Hempstead. The other pictures Hempstead would make at Fox before decamping to RKO in 1940 were <i>Happy Landing</i>, <i>Hold That Co-ed</i>, <i>Straight Place and Show</i> and <i>It Could Happen to You</i> -- not B pictures exactly, but definitely A-minus, and the same must be said for both of Shirley's pictures for him. Even Mother Gertrude had noticed, with some alarm, the budget cutbacks in Shirley's pictures, and there's a chintzy, slapdash quality to <i>Little Miss Broadway</i>. It shows in odd ways, too -- for example, the fact that Edna May Oliver, at the time one of the best-known and most popular character actresses in movies, couldn't even get her name spelled correctly in the credits. (Also, the fact that as curmudgeon <i>du jour</i>, she doesn't actually get won over by Shirley; like grumpy aunt Helen Westley in <i>Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm</i>, she just stops being a curmudgeon and turns nice when the Harry Tugend-Jack Yellen screenplay decides it's time.) And by the way, the thought of Shirley and Jimmy Durante in a movie together may sound promising, but it's just a tease; he spends more time flirting with soubrette Patricia Wilder at the hotel's switchboard than he does on screen with Shirley.</div>
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In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley spends less time talking about the picture itself than about First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's visit to the set during production. 'Nuff said.</div>
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But at least Shirley had a couple of nice dance turns with George Murphy. One</div>
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was the climactic title number (by Walter Bullock and Harold Spina), in which</div>
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George and Shirley's song-and-dance magically turns Judge Gillingwater's</div>
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courtroom into a glittering Busby Berkeley-style replica of Times Square. But</div>
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I'm posting here their earlier number, "We Should Be Together" (also by Bullock</div>
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and Spina); the colorized YouTube clip is better quality, and besides, the number</div>
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In the New York Times, Frank S. Nugent was rather sympathetic: "The devastating Mistress Temple is slightly less devastating than usual in 'Little Miss Broadway,'...Although she performs with her customary gayety [<i>sic</i>]<i> </i>and dimpled charm, there is no mistaking the effort every dimple cost her." Variety's "Flin" added: "Shirley is better than her new vehicle, which in turn is better than her last one, 'Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.'" Whether <i>Little Miss Broadway</i> was really better than Shirley's last vehicle is open to debate. But it was certainly better than her next one.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Just Around the Corner </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released December 2, 1938)</span></span></span><br />
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If <i>Little Miss Broadway </i>was an A-minus picture, <i>Just Around the Corner </i>was no more than a B-plus. If that. Shirley plays Penny Hale, who is taken out of private school when her widowed architect father (Charles Farrell) loses his job, and consequently the penthouse he and Penny have been living in, as well as the money to pay for her school. He's now forced to work as the electrician in the apartment building where they formerly occupied the penthouse, and he and Penny must now make do with a tiny apartment in the basement.<br />
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The penthouse now belongs to tycoon Samuel G. Henshaw (Claude Gillingwater again), the uncle of Penny's new playmate Milton (Bennie Bartlett) and her father's sweetheart Lola (Amanda Duff). This coincidence leads Penny to confuse the real man with the symbolic "Uncle Sam" -- after all, he has the same white goatee -- and to set about pulling him, her father and the country out of the economic doldrums by staging a benefit show at five cents admission.<br />
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<i>Just Around the Corner</i>, like <i>Little Miss Broadway </i>before it, was directed by Irving Cummings -- the same man who had warned Mother Gertrude during <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>two years earlier that it was time for the studio to find better stories for Shirley, now that she had lost "that baby quality". I doubt if this is what he had in mind. Shirley is ten now -- or nine, depending on which version of her birth certificate people believed. In any case, she's too old to be mistaking the "I Want You!" Uncle Sam for somebody's real uncle who happens to go by that name. Conversely, she's still too young to be spouting the lick-the-Depression pep talks that Warner Baxter once declaimed in <i>Stand Up and Cheer!</i> <br />
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Shirley remembered that her mother became alarmed at the trend of her recent pictures, not only the decreasing budgets, but the sameness of Shirley's roles. As Shirley remembered it, her mother met with Zanuck and "expressed the opinion that recent scripts were forcing me into rigid, stereotyped roles inappropriate to my growth." Zanuck countered that the public didn't want their stars to change. "Now she's lovable...The less she changes, the longer she lasts."<br />
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<i>Just Around the Corner</i> wasn't a dead loss. It's worth seeing for, if nothing else, Shirley's final teaming with Bill Robinson. Their last number together, "I Love to Walk in the Rain" (by Walter Bullock and Harold Spina), was a bit anticlimactic; more their style was an earlier number, "This Is a Happy Little Ditty", in which they're joined by Joan Davis and Bert Lahr. Their dance here looks more like Bojangles's work and less like that of credited dance directors Nick Castle and Geneva Sawyer. Note especially Bojangles's truckin'-on-down entrance into the number -- that man could dance down a staircase like nobody's business! (Note also, earlier in the number, when Shirley and Joan Davis get out of step with each other. Now there's a typical B-movie touch for you: either nobody noticed, or they didn't bother to retake it so Joan and Shirley could get it right.)</div>
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The unsigned review in Variety was surprisingly positive ("topflight for general all-around entertainment"), but conceded, "Youngster is unquestionably getting more mature, and in growing older, Shirley seems to be under stress of acting rather than being natural." At the Times, Frank Nugent was biting:<br />
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<i>Fee-fi-fo-fum, and a couple of ho-hums. Shirley Temple is at the Roxy in "Just Around the Corner" and that's where we're lurking with a cleaver in one hand and a lollypop </i>[sic] <i>in the other...Shirley is not responsible, of course. No child could conceive so diabolic a form of torture. There must be an adult mind in back of it all -- way, way in back of it all.</i></blockquote>
And we'll leave the picture with those two swings of the critical pendulum. <br />
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Next time out, Shirley would be restored to the undeniable ranks of Fox's A-pictures. No expense would be spared -- including, for the first time since the final seconds of <i>The Little Colonel</i>, the use of Technicolor.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/08/shirley-temple-revisited-part-13.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-13991199384679234012014-07-22T03:13:00.000-07:002014-08-04T03:18:17.914-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So far we've taken Shirley up to the middle of 1937. She's been Hollywood's top box-office star for two years, and she'll go on to be for two years more. This is probably a good time to deal with one of Hollywood's most persistent and tantalizing legends: <i>Is it true that Shirley Temple was originally set to play Dorothy in </i>The Wizard of Oz<i>? </i>The short answer is: No, but there may be a complicated grain of truth to the legend. In fact, given Shirley's stature in the industry during the mid-to-late 1930s, it's unlikely that there <i>wouldn't</i> be something to it.<br />
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First of all, before we go any further, dismiss from your mind any images of Shirley chirping her way through "Over the Rainbow" or pumping her fists and pouting that she wants to go home. Frankly, I suspect those are scare-images conjured up by Judy Garland's more jealous fans, in that unique way they have of seeking to tear down anyone they see as a threat (<a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2013/05/americas-canadian-sweetheart-1921-2013.html"><u>Deanna Durbin</u></a>, for example) -- as if Judy needs that kind of help. If Shirley had made <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, there would certainly have been no "Over the Rainbow", and possibly no songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg at all. <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>starring Shirley Temple would have been utterly and absolutely different -- far more different, for example, than <i>Gone With the Wind</i> would have been if Paulette Goddard had played Scarlett rather than Vivien Leigh. Granted, it's hard to imagine <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>being any <i>better </i>(though it's not impossible: I do wish Buddy Ebsen had been able to stay on as the Tin Man). But that doesn't mean it would have been any <i>worse</i>. Just <i>different</i>. In that alternate universe where Shirley played Dorothy, W.C. Fields played the Wizard, Buddy Ebsen played the Scarecrow and Edna May Oliver was the Wicked Witch of the West, it's entirely possible that people there cherish their <i>Wizard of Oz </i>just as much as we do ours.<br />
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The most common form of the legend goes like this: In 1937, 20th Century Fox and MGM worked out a tentative star-swap. Fox would get the services of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow to star in a picture called <i>Mrs. O'Leary's Cow</i> about the Chicago Fire of 1871; in return, MGM would get Shirley to play Dorothy in <i>Oz</i> and to co-star in another picture with Gable. But when Harlow died suddenly in June 1937 the whole deal was off; Fox made their picture, now called <i>In Old Chicago</i>, with Tyrone Power and Alice Faye, and MGM didn't get Shirley.<br />
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The story is interesting, with an appealing for-the-want-of-a-nail quality to it. Henry King, the man who eventually directed <i>In Old Chicago</i>, told it once in print (I recall reading it, but have been unable to remember or track down where), and Shirley repeats it in <i>Child Star</i>. But the story doesn't really fit the facts. At the time of Harlow's death, the screen rights to <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> belonged not to MGM but to Samuel Goldwyn, who had purchased them in 1933 for $40,000.<br />
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Shirley gets another point wrong in <i>Child Star</i> when she talks about who might play "the role of fourteen-year-old Dorothy"; she actually more than doubles Dorothy's probable age. In L. Frank Baum's first Oz book Dorothy's age isn't mentioned, but W.W. Denslow's illustrations show a girl of six or seven, and internal evidence in later Oz books suggests that that's about right. In other words, Dorothy in <i>The </i>[original] <i>Wizard of Oz </i>is almost exactly the age of Shirley Temple at the height of her career at Fox. It may well be that around that time Darryl Zanuck tried to obtain the rights as a vehicle for his biggest star (wouldn't you?), but aside from him there wouldn't have been a lot of interest in the book. In any case the point was moot; Goldwyn wasn't selling (what he though <i>he</i> was going to do with the property is anybody's guess).<br />
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Then things changed on December 21, 1937 when Walt Disney's <i>Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs</i> premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. It was an immediate smash hit -- and suddenly there was a renewed interest in making movies out of fairy tales. In <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Making-Wizard-Oz-Aljean-Harmetz-ebook/dp/B00FVE9CCC/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405493313&sr=1-1&keywords=the+making+of+the+wizard+of+oz"><i><u>The Making of The Wizard of Oz</u></i></a> Aljean Harmetz quotes a New York Times story of February 19, 1938 telling how Goldwyn was suddenly besieged with offers to take <i>Oz </i>off his hands: "Twentieth Century-Fox [<i>sic</i>] is reported anxious to purchase the book for Shirley Temple, but all offers have been rejected."<br />
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Then MGM made Goldwyn an offer he couldn't refuse, and the deal was finalized on June 3, 1938: MGM bought the rights to <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>from Goldwyn for $75,000. Louis B. Mayer, Ms. Harmetz says, tried to borrow Shirley from Zanuck, but to no avail. (Shirley claims Zanuck made a counter-offer to buy the rights from Mayer, but I question her reliability on that point; she may have been reporting second- or third-hand studio gossip or wishful thinking. It seems to me that if Zanuck couldn't offer Goldwyn enough to get the rights from him, he wasn't likely to offer enough to MGM when the price was $35,000 higher.)<br />
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In later years Arthur Freed, who always inflated his role in producing <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, insisted he intended all along for Judy Garland to play Dorothy -- even saying he would have refused to make it with anybody else. We can dismiss that. Freed was only a songwriter in 1938 with no track record as a producer (and he got no screen credit on <i>Oz</i>). If Louis B. Mayer could bring Gene Kelly into his office in 1951 and tell him to make <i>Singin' in the Rain </i>with Debbie Reynolds (a nobody), he'd have had no problem ordering Freed to make <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>with Shirley Temple whether he liked it or not. And Freed would have done as he was told; he got where he was by sucking up to L.B. (to be fair, he <i>stayed </i>where he was by producing one great and profitable musical after another for nearly 20 years). <br />
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So...sorting all this out, it strikes me that the bottom line is this: In the mid-1930s, if anybody ever gave a serious thought to remaking <i>The Wizard of Oz </i>(there had been two silent versions), the obvious and only possible choice to play Dorothy would have been Shirley Temple, and that very idea came up more than once. But for whatever reason, 20th Century Fox never got control of the property. Samuel Goldwyn, who owned it, seems never to have seriously considered filming it. Then in 1938, when MGM pried the rights loose from Goldwyn, they tried to borrow Shirley but couldn't. As Aljean Harmetz correctly points out, if it had ever come to a serious showdown between Shirley and Judy Garland for the role, Judy would certainly have lost. <i>Ergo</i>, in this universe at least, it was never going to happen, Hollywood gossip and later tales notwithstanding. "Sometimes," as Shirley said, "the gods know best."<br />
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For the picture Shirley actually did make next, the question of rights was never an issue -- the story had recently drifted into the public domain.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Heidi </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released November 5, 1937)</span></span></span><br />
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According to Variety, <i>Heidi </i>was chosen for Shirley by public demand, as expressed in her fan mail -- although the showbiz bible may simply have been parroting a studio press release. Either way, the role was a natural for Shirley. The source was a novel by Johanna Spyri (1827-1901), first published in the author's native Switzerland in 1880. The book was instantly popular, and promptly translated from its original German into virtually every written language on Earth. The book was -- and remains -- so popular, in fact, that it's surprising to realize that Shirley's picture in 1937 was the first attempt to make a movie out of it (there have been over a dozen since).<br />
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To direct <i>Heidi</i>, Darryl Zanuck first approached Henry King, and he was an excellent choice. King's directing career began in 1915 (and would stretch on to 1962), and he was one of that select group of directors who mastered moviemaking in the silent era, then adapted easily to the changing times when sound came in. By 1937, at Fox, he had already directed, among others, the first <i>State Fair </i>('33) with Will Rogers and Janet Gaynor; <i>Ramona</i> ('36), Fox's first Technicolor picture, from the Helen Hunt Jackson novel of old California; and <i>Lloyds of London </i>(also '36), which made a star of Tyrone Power (who would work with King ten more times). Still to come were some of 20th Century Fox's most important and successful pictures: <i>Alexander's Ragtime Band </i>('38), <i>Jesse James </i>('39), <i>The Song of Bernadette</i> ('43), <i>Wilson </i>('44), <i>Twelve O'Clock High </i>('49), <i>The Gunfighter </i>('50). King was the only director under contract to Fox who even approached the stature of John Ford (though King was a rather distant second at that), and if he had worked with Shirley it might have carried her farther along that fork in the road her career had taken with <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>.<br />
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Alas, it was not to be. As King remembered it some 40 years later, he was on a busman's holiday in Honolulu, doing prep work with the script for <i>In Old Chicago</i>, when he became stranded there by a steamship strike. Zanuck cabled him that <i>In Old Chicago </i>was being postponed and that he (Zanuck) wanted King to consider directing <i>Heidi</i>. "I immediately went to a bookstore in Honolulu, read it and didn't think there was much of a movie in it. I don't believe in fairies to begin with."<br />
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It's hard to imagine what King meant by that last sentence; <i>Heidi </i>is no fairy tale. Otherwise, his point is well taken -- at first glance there <i>isn't </i>much of a movie in <i>Heidi</i>.<i> </i>The story is unevenly weighted; most of the plot is stuffed into the first 240 pages (my edition runs to 404), followed by 140 pages of anticlimax before the story kicks in again for the last 20. For all that, however, the book paints a vivid picture of now-bygone country life in the Swiss Alps, and the characters have considerable charm, Heidi herself supremely so. It ought to have been right up King's alley, but he didn't see it that way; he was far more excited about <i>In Old Chicago</i> and wanted to concentrate on that. The prospect of working with Shirley was no inducement, he recalled telling Zanuck: "'I've had my time directing children. I don't want to start all over again.' I had done <i>Little Mary Sunshine </i>and all those Baby Marie pictures way back, and that was all behind me." ("Baby" Marie Osborne was a long-forgotten child star of the 1910s with whom King had made several pictures.)</div>
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With King taking a pass, the job of directing <i>Heidi </i>fell to Allan Dwan, whose movie career went back even further than King's. Dwan began directing even before the advent of feature films, when directors on location wore six-shooters on their hips to protect against both the rattlesnakes in the Los Angeles hills and raiding thugs from Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company. By the time he retired in the late 1950s, Dwan would rack up a mind-boggling 403 credits (he claimed as many as a thousand more, but couldn't be sure). Dwan is also the source of one of my favorite stories of those early wild-and-woolly days of moviemaking on the fly. He was with one such company on location in the wilds of Southern California, serving as a sort of paleo-location manager, when the director disappeared on a drunk. When several days passed without the man returning, Dwan cabled the higher-ups back in Chicago suggesting that the cast and crew be recalled; they wired back, "You direct." Dwan called the gang together and put it to them: "Either I'm a director or you're all out of a job." Without exception they all said, "You're the best damn director we ever saw." </div>
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As that anecdote suggests, Dwan throughout his prolific career was more stage manager than creative artist, and that was the attitude he brought to <i>Heidi</i>. In <i>Child Star </i>Shirley quotes him in a later interview as saying, "I liked to avoid children, especially those that were 'over.' She had hit her peak and was sliding fast when I started working with her." Shirley doesn't say when or to whom Dwan said this, but he was clearly speaking from hindsight; in 1937 few people thought Shirley Temple was "over". Now, we can see that Shirley's career at Fox had indeed peaked -- probably with <i>Captain January</i>, <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, <i>Stowaway</i> and <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> -- but she had been number one at the box office in 1935 and 1936, and would continue to be in 1937 and 1938. Dwan overcame his hesitation at working with Shirley (she won him over, of course; she won everybody over -- except perhaps Alice Faye), and he and Shirley went on to make two more pictures together. Shirley was by no means "sliding fast" when she made <i>Heidi </i>-- but her slide started soon thereafter, and the pictures she made with Dwan were a part of it. Small wonder that years later he preferred to believe that she was already fading before he came along.<br />
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The story of <i>Heidi</i> hardly needs synopsizing; nearly everybody knows it -- or thinks they do. A sweet little orphan girl is dumped by an unfeeling aunt with her grandfather, a bitter, reclusive hermit and a stranger to her. Then, just as Heidi is beginning to thaw the heart of the old man, the aunt returns and kidnaps Heidi away to be sold to a wealthy Frankfurt family as a companion for the crippled daughter of the house.</div>
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Screenwriters Walter Ferris and Julien Josephson grappled with the narrative fermata that sets in on page 240 of Johanna Spyri's book, choosing to solve the problem in a way that was utilitarian but not really felicitous. In the book Heidi makes friends with the crippled Klara -- in fact, with everyone in the household except Fraulein Rottenmaier, the starchy, humorless old maid housekeeper. But Heidi becomes so homesick that Klara's doctor insists she be sent home to her grandfather. Then come those 140 pages of Heidi romping through the Alps with her friend Peter, the goatherd, and mending the hard feelings between her grandfather and the villagers below. All this time Heidi keeps in touch with Klara, who finally comes to visit when the doctor agrees her frail health is strong enough. In the clean Alpine air, and with the encouragement of Heidi and her grandfather, Klara's health is restored and she's able to leave her wheelchair and walk again. <br />
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Ferris and Josephson replaced all this pastoral cavorting with melodrama. Heidi doesn't go home to her grandfather until the very end; before that the old man (Jean Hersholt) walks the 100 miles to Frankfurt in search of her, then stalks the city streets calling her name, sometimes missing her my mere seconds. Meanwhile, Fraulein Rottenmaier (Mary Nash) is upgraded (or <i>down</i>graded) from a mere narrow-minded, stiff-necked stick-in-the-mud to a full-fledged villainess; she plots to keep Klara (Marcia Mae Jones) crippled and dependent in the hope that the girl's father Herr Sesemann (Sidney Blackmer) will be moved to marry his "indispensable" housekeeper. When Heidi unwittingly thwarts Fraulein R. by teaching Klara to walk, the fraulein retaliates by -- I am <i>not </i>making this up -- trying to sell Heidi to a band of gypsies. Only the intervention of a cool-headed police captain clears the way for a happy ending back on Heidi's mountain.<br />
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<i>Heidi </i>gets off to a promising start. The picture's Lake Arrowhead<br />
locations, combined with good special effects (probably the work<br />
of Fred Sersen, Fox's effects wizard) make a credible substitute for<br />
Switzerland, and the early scenes of Heidi's unquenchable good<br />
cheer slowly charming her gruff, taciturn old grandfather -- Shirley<br />
once again winning over a crusty curmudgeon -- are well-played<br />
by Shirley and a nearly silent Hersholt. One particularly charming<br />
touch is a lilting little melody that Heidi hums to herself as she<br />
goes about her chores -- and which the grandfather eventually<br />
finds himself humming without even realizing it. So far the<br />
movie has been absolutely faithful to the spirit -- and<br />
reasonably faithful to the letter -- of Johanna Spyri's<br />
story.<br />
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This lasts precisely 19 minutes and 37 seconds.<br />
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Then disaster strikes -- incredibly enough, in the form of exactly the sort of thing Darryl Zanuck said he <i>didn't </i>want in <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>. As Heidi and her grandfather sit at their cabin table, he ostensibly begins reading her a story about "The Magic Wooden Shoes". The camera moves in on a woodcut in the book, and the picture dissolves to a quaint little Dutch scene by a storybook Zuider Zee, and there's Shirley -- or is it Heidi? -- in blonde braids and bangs and a starched cap, singing about her shoes: </div>
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<i>Have you seen my new shoes?</i></div>
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<i>They are made out of wood.</i></div>
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<i>Such nice little shoes.</i></div>
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<i>Don't you think they look good?</i></div>
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(The song is "In Our Little Wooden Shoes" by Lew Pollack and Sidney D. Mitchell, uncredited.) Then Shirley leads her companions, all of them dressed in adorable Hans Brinker costumes (the boys look like they all stepped off a can of house paint), in an energetic clog dance (staged by Sammy Lee, also uncredited), with Shirley soaring over their heads to land in a treetop, then turning to sail back to earth -- or rather, to the stage floor -- again.</div>
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Then, <i>apropos </i>of absolutely nothing whatsoever, the scene dissolves to an elegant marbled hall, with Shirley dolled up like a miniature Marie Antoinette, leading (presumably) the same troupe of children, now dressed like lords and ladies of the French court, in a genteel minuet to the same tune. Then the number segues back to that stagebound Holland and its two-dimensional windmills, and finally back again to Switzerland as the grandfather tucks the sleeping Heidi into her little bed.<br />
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There's nothing really "wrong", exactly, with all this, except for one thing: <i>It doesn't belong here.</i> It has nothing to do with the life of a little girl in provincial Switzerland in 1880, but it has plenty to do with being Shirley Temple in 1937. This silly little number, coming when it does, wrecks <i>Heidi </i>beyond fixing. After this, we no longer believe we're in Switzerland or, later, Frankfurt; we can't possibly be anywhere but Hollywood. (The melodramatic blandishments of the script -- <i>selling Heidi to gypsies??</i> -- and Dwan's directing every scene at a headlong, breakneck pace, as if he has to be somewhere across town 15 minutes after calling cut, certainly don't help.)<br />
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Shirley tells us that the number was inserted in the picture halfway through shooting. Whose bright idea was it? I blame Darryl Zanuck; nothing happened at his studio or went into his pictures that he didn't know about and approve. What ever happened to "<i>We don't want to depend on any of her tricks</i>" or "<i>She should not be doing things because she is Shirley Temple, but
because the situations -- sound and believable -- call for them</i>"? I can only think -- and this is pure speculation on my part -- that Zanuck's edicts in that story conference on <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> were said simply to placate John Ford, as if Ford had said, "All right, Darryl, I'll direct your Shirley Temple picture, but don't try to saddle me with any of those cute little song-and-dance scenes; I won't have it." Maybe if Henry King had agreed to direct <i>Heidi</i>, those edicts would have stood. King might well have insisted, but not a director like Dwan. </div>
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At the time, Shirley enjoyed the number, enjoyed wearing those Dutch braids and bangs, enjoyed being flown on that invisible wire. In retrospect, writing in <i>Child Star</i>, she saw it as the turning point in her career. She called the "Wooden Shoes" number "a traditional Temple musical filler", adding that "it marked the collapse of any studio resolve to build on the purely dramatic momentum first evident in <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>." With the same hindsight we can see that Shirley was right. </div>
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That's in hindsight, however; no such thing was apparent at the time. In 1937, the picture was a major hit. Along with <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>, Shirley's only other picture that year, it kept her the number-one box office star, and Heidi became one of Shirley's signature roles. Maybe even <i>the </i>signature role; to this day, it's often the first picture mentioned when Shirley's name comes up. Reviews were positive -- better, in fact, than for <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>. Variety's "Char" called it "good for average Temple draw or better" (which it was), and said it "follows the original [novel] rather faithfully" (which it didn't). In the Times, Frank S. Nugent was, for him, almost rhapsodic: "All of it has been framed handsomely in the snows of a Hollywood Switzerland, with a soft sepia (and blue) tinting to accentuate its dreamworld quality" (unlike <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i>, <i>Heidi </i>has not survived in that form). Nugent closed by admitting, "Shirley has scored another 'coo.'"</div>
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But looking back, we can see the handwriting on the wall. For me, seeing <i>Heidi </i>again for the first time in nearly 60 years was an eye-opening shock. I had remembered it as one of Shirley's best-loved pictures. In fact, it always perplexed me that the 1952 Swiss version, which I saw about the same time, stayed fresher in my memory over the decades. Seeing Shirley's again, I'm no longer perplexed. <i>Heidi </i>is no doubt one of her best-loved pictures, but it's not one of her best. Despite those very good early scenes, and some later ones like the scene where the grandfather accompanies Heidi to the church that he hasn't visited in years (straight out of Frau Spyri's novel), the picture never recovers from the miscalculation of "In Our Little Wooden Shoes"; it's one of the head-scratching what-on-Earth-were-they-thinking moments of 1930s Hollywood. What they were thinking, I suspect -- or more to the point, what Darryl Zanuck was thinking -- was that his dictum about writing the story as if it were a <i>Little Women </i>or <i>David Copperfield</i>, about writing for Shirley as an actress and not depending on any of her tricks, was no longer operative. Henceforth, as far as 20th Century Fox was concerned, Shirley's tricks would be her stock in trade. The studio was no longer interested in
Shirley becoming an actress; instead, they would keep her a baby taking a bow for
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/07/shirley-temple-revisited-part-12.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-39893909735875904652014-07-11T15:01:00.000-07:002014-08-27T19:51:31.459-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 10On July 30, 1936 there was a story conference on what would become Shirley's next picture after <i>Stowaway</i>. At that conference, according to notes published in Rudy Behlmer's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Memo-Darryl-F-Zanuck-Twentieth/dp/0802133320/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404966684&sr=1-1&keywords=memo+from+darryl+f+zanuck"><u><i>Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck</i></u></a>, the Fox studio chief said:<br />
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<i>I feel the only way to make this story is to disregard the formula of all the previous pictures Shirley Temple has appeared in to date...My idea...is to forget that it is a Shirley Temple picture. That is, not to forget that she is the star, but to write the story as if it were a </i>Little Women <i>or a </i>David Copperfield<i>...All the hokum must be thrown out. The characters must be made real, human, believable. Only then can we get a powerful, real story.</i></blockquote>
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<i>The role must be written for Shirley as an actress, and nothing sloughed over because Shirley is in it and therefore it will be good. We don't want to depend on any of her tricks. She should not be doing things because she is Shirley Temple, but because the situations -- sound and believable -- call for them. In other words, write a role and let Shirley adapt herself to the picture.</i></blockquote>
This conference took place almost a full year before the picture was released. Without checking studio archives, we can't be sure if Zanuck had already assigned a director, but given his determination to disregard the Shirley Temple formula, he probably had. In any case, the assignment went to John Ford, whom Zanuck had under non-exclusive contract. Ford had been directing since 1917, had already won the first of his four Oscars for <i>The Informer </i>at RKO, and was on the threshold of his own personal Golden Age, which would extend into the 1960s. According to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Print-Legend-Life-Times-John-ebook/dp/B007Z4RWSW/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404983140&sr=1-1&keywords=print+the+legend+by+scott+eyman"><u>Ford biographer Scott Eyman</u></a>, Ford gave two accounts of his reaction to being assigned a Shirley Temple picture. In the one Eyman finds more likely, Ford said "my face fell atop the floor." In the other, more consistent with the director's self-image as a no-nonsense moviemaker, "I said 'Great' and we just went out and made the picture."<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Wee Willie Winkie </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released July 23, 1937)</span></span></span><br />
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Calling the picture "Rudyard Kipling's" <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> was a bit of an overstatement. The original story was published in 1888, when the future Nobel Prize winner was 22. It told of Percival William Williams, the six-year-old son of an army colonel stationed with his regiment in British India at the foot of the Khyber Pass on the indistinct border with Afghanistan. Percival has a penchant for nicknaming people, including himself, so he has adopted the name Wee Willie Winkie from one of his nursery-books. Winkie is bright but typically mischievous for a boy his age, and under the military discipline imposed by his father he is forever earning, then forfeiting, a succession of Good Conduct Badges.<br />
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One soldier that Winkie takes a particular shine to is Lt. Brandis, whom he nicknames "Coppy" for his copper-colored hair. His affection for Coppy is so great that when he sees Coppy "vehemently kissing" the daughter of one Major Allardyce he keeps the secret to himself. <br />
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Shortly thereafter, for yet another infraction, Winkie once more loses his Good Conduct Badge and is "confined to quarters under arrest" -- what a later generation would call "grounded". But when he sees Coppy's Miss Allardyce, in a fit of willful independence, riding out beyond the river where all are forbidden to go, Winkie breaks arrest and rides after her on his little pony.<br />
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He catches up only when her own horse stumbles and throws her, twisting her ankle so that she cannot stand. She pleads with him to ride back to the post for help. But Winkie has been taught that "a man must <i>always </i>look after a girl", and when he sees men approaching from the hills -- bandits, perhaps, or worse -- he dismounts and whips his pony, sending it galloping home without its rider. When the natives come across the boy and the injured young woman, they begin mulling over whether to take them hostage for ransom.<br />
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Winkie bravely stands up to them, to their great amusement, ordering them to send to the post for help. One of the natives, a former groom at the post, warns his fellows that disturbing these two will only be asking for trouble, and the debate among them goes on long enough for Winkie's pony to reach home and for the alarm to be sounded. As the regiment rides to the rescue, the Afghans see the approaching soldiers and prudently melt back into the hills. Winkie and Miss Allardyce are brought back to the post, where Winkie is hailed as "a <i>pukka </i>hero"; his breaking arrest is forgiven, and he even regains his Good Conduct Badge.<br />
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Needless to say, in Ernest Pascal and Julien Josephson's screenplay nearly all of this was changed. Percival was changed to Priscilla and given a widowed American mother (June Lang). The colonel backs up a generation, becoming Priscilla's grandfather (C. Aubrey Smith), who sends for Priscilla and her mother when he learns they are living in poverty in America. Priscilla is still nicknamed Wee Willie Winkie, but her military discipline is self-imposed in an effort to become a soldier, since that seems to be the only type of person her grandfather the colonel likes. "Private" Winkie still takes a shine to Lt. "Coppy" Brandis (Michael Whalen, Shirley's father in <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>), but he throws over Maj. Allardyce's daughter to romance Winkie's mother. While he's doing that, Coppy's duties as Winkie's best friend among the soldiery devolve onto a new character, Sergeant MacDuff (Victor McLaglen).</div>
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In the closest <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>comes to Kipling, young Pvt. Winkie again bravely faces and scolds an array of scornfully unassimilated Afghans, in this case led by the proud warlord Khoda Khan (Cesar Romero). But the movie goes Kipling one better: Winkie even averts a frontier war and brings peace when her grandfather Col. Williams and Khoda Khan agree to resolve their differences for the child's sake.</div>
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It's not uncommon these days to hear <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>described as Shirley's best picture at 20th Century Fox -- and John Ford's worst. As for Ford, he would go on to direct <i>Young Mr. Lincoln</i>, <i>Drums Along the Mohawk</i>, <i>The Grapes of Wrath</i> and <i>How Green Was My Valley</i> for Darryl Zanuck, winning Oscars for the latter two. To be sure, <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>isn't in the same league with any of those. But the worst? Hardly. Take a gander at <i>Tobacco Road</i>,<i> </i><i>When Willie Comes Marching Home</i> or <i>What Price Glory </i>sometime.</div>
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But Shirley's best? Well, here those folks may be on to something. Ford, Pascal and Josephson followed Zanuck's orders to write a role and "let Shirley adapt herself" to it, and not to depend on any of her tricks. She pouts but little (and only when called for), never breaks into dance, and sings only once, a couple of choruses of "Auld Lang Syne" at the bedside of Sgt. MacDuff as he lies mortally wounded after a skirmish with Khoda Khan's men. The scene is a famous one, and justly so; it may be the best-played scene of Shirley's entire career, staged and composed with masterful restraint by Ford and quietly scored by Alfred Newman. Winkie has no idea that MacDuff is dying; the knowledge has been kept from her. As she sings we see conflicting emotions flit across her face -- affection for her good friend, confusion at the sense that something's not right with him, then a banishing of the confusion, persuading herself that he's only fallen asleep.</div>
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In <i>Child Star </i>Shirley devoted more space to <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> than to any of her other pictures -- partly because labor unrest was roiling the studio during production (the studio even shifted the shooting schedule, sending the company off for several weeks of location work at Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley while demonstrations at the studio gates blew over), partly because her mother underwent surgery for a benign tumor during that time. But mostly it was because <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> was her favorite, at least in retrospect. "Of all my films," she wrote, "I rate <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>the best, but for all the wrong reasons. It was best because of its manual of arms, the noisy marching around in military garb with brass buttons, my kilts bouncing. It was best because of daredevil stunts with snipers and stampeding horses. It was also best because I finally seemed to earn the professional respect of someone so blood-and-thunder macho as Ford."</div>
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That respect was a while in coming. Try as she might at first, Shirley couldn't charm Ford or coax him into collegial conversation. Where other directors had dandled her on their knees, he would merely stride past chewing on his handkerchief, ignoring her when he wasn't giving her carefully detailed and specific direction, as if he didn't trust her to do things right. Ford began to thaw when he saw how eagerly she embraced the close-order drill called for in the script, then a little more when he noticed how she didn't flinch in the face of a rearing stunt-horse (remember that pony on the set of <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/04/shirley-temple-revisited-part-2_5.html"><u><i>To the Last Man</i></u></a>?) or a marksman shooting out a lamp over her head (actually, Ford <i>wanted </i>Winkie to flinch that time; the shot had to be redone). The clincher was this scene, a potentially dangerous shot of Winkie scampering to safety out of the path of a stampeding herd of horses, which Shirley volunteered to do without a double. No doubt about it, the kid had guts. Eleven years later, when they worked together on <i>Fort Apache</i>, Shirley would ask Ford to stand godfather for her first child, and he would agree.</div>
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In my notes on <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-7.html"><u><i>Captain January</i></u></a> I quoted Graham Greene's review in the London Spectator, in which he mentioned Shirley's "oddly precocious body", as voluptuous as Marlene Dietrich and "interestingly decadent". Over <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>he crossed a line. Writing in the highbrow magazine Night and Day (which he co-edited) on October 28, 1937, he said:</div>
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<i>"The owners of a child star are like leaseholders -- their property diminishes in value every year...Miss Shirley Temple's case, though, has peculiar interest: Infancy is her disguise, her appeal is more secret and more adult. Already two years ago she was a fancy little piece (real childhood, I think, went out after </i>The Littlest Rebel<i>). In </i>Captain January<i> she wore trousers with the mature suggestiveness of a Dietrich: her neat and well-developed rump twisted in the tap-dance: her eyes had a sidelong searching coquetry. Now in </i>Wee Willie Winkie<i>, wearing short kilts, she is completely totsy. Watch her swaggering stride across the Indian barrack-square: hear the gasp of excited expectation from her antique audience when the sergeant's palm is raised: watch the way she measures a man with agile studio eyes, with dimpled depravity. Adult emotions of love and grief glissade across the mask of childhood, a childhood skin-deep.</i></div>
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<i>"It is clever, but it cannot last. Her admirers -- middle-aged men and clergymen -- respond to her dubious coquetry, to the sight of her well-shaped and desirable little body, packed with enormous vitality, only because the safety curtain of story and dialogue drops between their intelligence and their desire."</i></blockquote>
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Greene closed out with a left-handed compliment, noting that the story was "a long way after Kipling. But we needn't be sour about that. Both stories are awful, but on the whole Hollywood's is the better."<br />
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Fox was less than mollified; they sued for libel, charging that Greene had accused the studio of "procuring" Shirley "for immoral purposes". Greene fled to Mexico, and the British court found for the plaintiffs, ordering damages of 3,500 pounds sterling, 500 of it to come from Greene personally. (The amount of the judgment was about $17,500 at the time; multiply by 20 to get an approximation of the amount in today's dollars.) From Mexico Greene wrote his Night and Day colleague Elizabeth Bowen: "I found a cable waiting for me in Mexico City asking me to agree to
apologise to that little bitch Shirley Temple -- so I suppose the case has
now been settled with the maximum publicity." In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley wrote about the dust-up with some amusement, noting that at the time the whole thing had gone pretty much over her head.<br />
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Students of Graham Greene's prose have spent decades parsing Greene's review, digging for his intent. Some say he was kidding ("Shirley Temple = Marlene Dietrich? Seriously?"), others that he was satirizing Shirley's handlers or her audience. Still others contend that Greene was obviously right, that the sexualization of Shirley Temple on Fox's part was conscious and deliberate ("<u><i>I'm</i></u> obsessed with sex?? <u><i>You're</i></u> the one showing me all these dirty pictures!"). Personally, I won't weigh in on all that -- except to say that very often, a review tells us more about the reviewer than it does about the work under discussion. <br />
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In any event, other reviews were more circumspect, if hardly more complimentary. The New Yorker's John Mosher, sniffy as ever, sniffed, "Miss Temple's talent is rather overexploited at times, and she seems just a bit too pert. Mr. Kipling's children were never allowed to take over the platform in quite this fashion." Variety's "Flin" liked the picture well enough, but tempered his opinion (as Variety often did) with marketing advice, saying that "as a roadshow attraction at advanced admission prices, 'Winkie' is too long for the continuous type of film theatres. Temple is boxoffice dynamite because of the kids who flock to see her, but youngsters can't sit still for an hour and three-quarters. They're squirming all over the place; however, reducing footage for general exhibition will be easy. It also is essential." And the New York Times's Frank S. Nugent ended his cease-fire, which had begun with <i>Stowaway</i>: "The picture, on its unassuming and frankly sentimental surface, is a pleasing enough little fiction, sure to delight every Temple addict and likely to win the grudging approval even of those who, like myself, are biding their time until she grows up, becomes gawky and is a has-been at 15."<br />
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Seen today, <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> bears out Shirley's opinion more than it does Mosher's, Flin's or Nugent's. The picture is certainly not too long. Children may squirm during the protracted love scenes between Michael Whalen and June Lang, but so do adults. Both were bland Fox contract players on an unstoppable career path toward B pictures and, at the onset of middle age, television. Whalen's dark good looks were about to be rendered irrelevant by the rise of the far more charismatic Tyrone Power. As for Lang (Shirley's "mother" was only 11 years older than she was), within seven years she would be a nameless, uncredited "Goldwyn Girl" behind Danny Kaye in <i>Up in Arms</i>, and would finish her career with one-off guest shots on TV cop shows in the '50s and '60s. Whalen and Lang were (and remain) attractive and inoffensive, but they lack the chemistry -- with either the audience or each other -- that Robert Young and Alice Faye showed in <i>Stowaway</i>, or Faye and Jack Haley in <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>. (The blue-green of this frame-cap, like the sepia of others, reproduces the tinted stock <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>sported on its original release.)<br />
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John Ford was probably no more interested in Lang and Whalen's romantic subplot than we are today. What he emphasized in <i>Wee Willie Winkie</i> was the theme he would later explore more deeply, and more famously, in his "cavalry trilogy" of 1948-50 (<i>Fort Apache</i>, <i>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</i> and <i>Rio Grande</i>): military life on an often hostile frontier, with an almost fetishistic reverence for its rugged pomp and pageantry. And in the chemistry department, <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>makes up in Victor McLaglen, C. Aubrey Smith and Cesar Romero what it lacks in June Lang and Michael Whalen. As Scott Eyman astutely notes in his biography of Ford, the on-screen relationship between McLaglen's Sgt. MacDuff and Pvt. Winkie mirrors the one between Ford and Shirley between takes: "eye-rolling impatience at the thought of being saddled with such a ridiculous apparition, followed by grudging respect, ending in a protective friendship." C. Aubrey Smith brings a British lion's dignity to the now-standard role of curmudgeon for Shirley to win over. And Romero's Khoda Khan, like the American Indians in Ford's later trilogy, is an adversary, even an antagonist, without ever becoming a villain.</div>
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A key difference between <i>Wee Willie Winkie </i>and the cavalry trilogy, of course, and what makes it particularly appealing, is that we see the story not through the eyes of John Wayne or Henry Fonda or Maureen O'Hara, but through those of an eight-year-old American girl who comes to love the panoply and close-order drill just as much as her crusty old grandfather does. Like the Winkie in Kipling's original story, the movie's female version becomes the mascot and hero(ine) of the regiment, and she returns their respect and affection.</div>
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For Shirley's next picture, 20th Century Fox would once again mine the deep vein of 19th century European literature. This time, however, Darryl Zanuck appears to have had second thoughts about his determination not to rely on any of Shirley's tricks.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/07/shirley-temple-revisited-part-11.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b>Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-63301837602426292642014-07-06T22:22:00.000-07:002014-07-15T02:01:13.319-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 9During shooting on <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, director Irving Cummings drew Shirley's mother aside and warned her that (as Shirley recalled it in <i>Child Star</i>) "the studio would have to find better stories for me; I had lost that baby quality and was getting an emotional understanding, 'like Helen Hayes when she started.'" Cummings's point was well taken, but like contract players at other studios, Shirley was at the mercy of the 20th Century Fox front office, and their interest was in keeping her a baby as long as possible. Certainly that was how they played it for her next picture.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Dimples </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released October 11, 1936)</span></span></span><br />
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I'm going to pass over <i>Dimples </i>as quickly as duty will allow because, like <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/04/shirley-temple-revisited-part-3.html"><u><i>Now and Forever</i></u></a>, it's a bit of a dud, and for similar reasons. The setting is New York in 1850; Shirley plays Chalvia Dolores Appleby, known by all as "Dimples". As in <i>Now and Forever</i>, she's the child of an unregenerate grifter, only this time it's not her father but her grandfather, "Professor" Eustace Appleby (Frank Morgan). The Professor calls himself a music teacher of "the Pianoforte, the Bugle, the Melodion, the Drum, also Bird Calls", but mainly he just stands in the crowd shilling while Dimples and his other "students" sing, dance and play their instruments in the streets. Then he starts the contributions when Dimples passes the hat and, while other bystanders are dropping coins in, he works the crowd picking pockets. In another similarity to <i>Now and Forever</i>, Dimples catches the eye of wealthy old Mrs. Drew (Helen Westley), who wants to lift her out of the Bowery poverty in which she lives with the Professor. At the same time, Mrs. Drew becomes estranged from her nephew Allen (Robert Kent) when he becomes romantically involved with (<i>gasp!</i>) an actress whom he decides to star in a production of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> -- in which he later hires Dimples to play Little Eva.</div>
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Unlike Shirley's character in <i>Now and Forever</i>, Dimples is wise to her reprobate forebear and goes out of her way to shield him. When he steals a clock from Mrs. Drew's house, she returns it, telling the kind lady that <i>she </i>stole it and the Professor made her bring it back. When Allen Drew wants to hire Dimples for <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i> but has no part for the Professor, she turns the role down until he agrees to give the Professor a job. In this way and others, the Professor becomes the child and Dimples the guardian. </div>
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In <i>Child Star</i> Shirley remembered Frank Morgan's tireless efforts to upstage her and steal focus during their scenes -- fiddling with his cuffs, flourishing his handkerchief, placing his stovepipe hat on a table between her and the camera so that she couldn't be in the shot without stepping off her mark and out of the light. ("Both of us knew perfectly well what he was doing. There was no way I could cope, short of biting at his fingers.") Director William A. Seiter was on to Morgan's tricks too; in this scene, where Dimples sings "Picture Me Without You" (one of four pleasantly forgettable songs provided by Jimmy McHugh and Ted Koehler), Seiter made Morgan sit in a chair with his back to the camera. ("When this picture is over," cracked producer Nunnally Johnson, "either Shirley will have acquired a taste for Scotch whiskey or Frank will come out with curls.")</div>
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Shirley's consternation is understandable, but the problem with the Professor isn't Morgan's performance -- he's as delightful as ever -- it's the character. The man is simply no damn good. There isn't an honest bone in his body; every word that passes his lips is a lie, and he'll steal anything that isn't bolted to the floor. He never makes the slightest effort to reform the way Gary Cooper's Jerry Day tries to do in <i>Now and Forever</i> -- at least not until the waning seconds of the picture, when it comes much too late to be convincing. Variety's reviewer "Odec" described the Professor as "Micawberish", but that's a slander on the great character from <i>David Copperfield</i>. Wilkins Micawber is merely feckless and improvident; Eustace Appleby is what later generations would call a sociopath and pathological narcissist -- Robert Kent's Allen Drew is much closer to the mark when he denounces the Professor as a "senile old scoundrel." On top of that, he's stupid, and Dimples's frequent efforts to cover for him (which convince no one) only make her look like a fool. The Professor's bumbling perfidy casts a sour pall over every scene he's in, and Frank Morgan, despite his skill at stealing scenes (maybe even because of it), is powerless to make this good-for-nothing tinhorn Fagin likeable. </div>
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<i>Dimples</i> does have its pluses. Bill Robinson, doing off-camera duty this time as dance director, gave Shirley some sprightly syncopated routines, like this one here to McHugh and Koehler's "He Was a Dandy", flanked by Thurman Black and Jesse Scott. The picture sports a few anachronisms. It's explicitly set in 1850, but it opens on a shot of a campaign poster for Franklin Pierce and involves a stage production of <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>; both Pierce's election and the novel's publication didn't happen until 1852. Still, there's a nice period feel to it, and the glimpse of the 1850s American theater is pretty authentic. Maybe <i>too </i>authentic -- the play's Uncle Tom and Topsy (and, for plot reasons, Frank Morgan) appear in blackface, as do such genuine African Americans as Stepin Fetchit and the Hall Johnson Choir (in those days even people of color, on the rare occasions they were allowed to perform with whites, were required to "black up").</div>
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Neither "Odec" in Variety nor Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times was overly impressed with <i>Dimples</i>. Odec assured exhibitors that they'd make money as usual on Shirley's latest, "but it won't be due to the fact that 'Dimples' is solid, expertly fashioned entertainment. It's anything but that." Nugent, for his part, was downright exasperated: "Why they bother with titles, or with plots either for that matter, is beyond us...Now leave us alone a while; we want to brood."<br />
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Just one more point about <i>Dimples</i> before we move on. In <i>Child Star </i>Shirley recalled filming Little Eva's death scene (which she plays much the way a child actress in the 1850s would probably have done it), and actor Paul Stanton, as Eva's grieving father, sobbing so broadly that he shook the bed she was lying on. However, Shirley transplanted the recollection from <i>Dimples </i>to <i>The Little Colonel </i>the year before, and she identified her over-emoting stage father as John Lodge, who played her "real" father in that picture. Such are the occasional vagaries of even the most reliable memory.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Stowaway </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released December 18, 1936)</span></span></span><br />
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<i>Stowaway</i> gave Shirley an exotic setting, a story that didn't require her to carry the show all by herself, and cast-mates who were strong enough to share the load. Shirley played Barbara Stewart, nicknamed "Ching-Ching", the orphaned daughter of missionaries in Sanchow, China. At the approach of bandits from the hills, she's about to be orphaned again -- or worse -- because her guardians the Kruikshanks (also missionaries) refuse to flee from the approaching marauders. Defying them, the wise local magistrate Sun Lo (Philip Ahn) spirits Ching-Ching away with a boatman to Shanghai.<br />
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But upon arrival, the boatman robs the sleeping Ching-Ching and disappears, leaving her to wander the city alone. That's how she meets Tommy Randall (Robert Young, on loan from MGM), a wandering American playboy. After their encounter, the girl falls asleep in the rumble seat of Tommy's automobile while he goes roaring off on a drunk with another wealthy globetrotter (Eugene Pallette). Tommy's valet Atkins (Arthur Treacher) tracks his employer from bar to bar and manages to get him aboard their departing ship safe and (reasonably) sound, along with Tommy's auto -- and, unbeknownst to all, the sleeping Ching-Ching.<br />
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When the befuddled Ching-Ching awakens the next morning, she's immediately spotted for a stowaway and chased from deck to deck. She takes refuge in the stateroom of Susan Parker (Alice Faye) and Susan's future mother-in-law Mrs. Hope (Helen Westley), on their way to Bangkok to join Susan's intended. Before long, Ching-Ching is reunited with her "Uncle" Tommy; for his part, Tommy agrees to stand good for the child's passage until her guardians can be contacted. Also, even through his pounding hangover, he can see that Susan is the most beautiful woman aboard ship. Susan's eyes are clearer than his, but it's plain to see that the attraction is mutual.<br />
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On the voyage from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Ching-Ching plays unwitting matchmaker between Tommy and Susan, to the consternation of Mrs. Hope, who urgently cables her son Richard (Allan Lane) not to wait till they reach Bangkok but to fly at once to meet the boat at Hong Kong. The ever-obedient Richard does as he's told, and the inevitable romantic complications arise, with Susan eventually cold-shouldering Tommy when she mistakenly thinks he has returned to his ne'er-do-well ways. In the meantime, the ship's captain (Robert Greig) learns from the American consulate that Ching-Ching's guardians the Kruikshanks have paid with their lives for their refusal to flee those approaching bandits; the child will have to be returned to Shanghai and the orphanage there. </div>
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Tommy persuades Susan to adopt Ching-Ching when she and Richard are married, promising to take the child off their hands as soon as his lawyers can arrange it. But Richard, under the influence of his domineering mother, will have none of it; he sees no reason to do Tommy any favors and he doesn't give a hoot about Ching-Ching. Shocked by his (actually, <i>their</i>) callous attitude, Susan breaks the engagement. Soon thereafter, Tommy, seeing Ching-Ching about to be sent off to a life of "marching in lock-step and eating gruel", desperately begs Susan to marry <i>him</i> -- in name only, he assures her, just so he can adopt Ching-Ching, with a quickie Reno divorce and a generous settlement for Susan as soon as they reach the States. <br />
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Well, we can all guess where this is headed, and sure enough it gets there -- with a wise judge in Reno (J. Edward Bromberg) consulting with Ching-Ching before denying a divorce petition for probably the first time in the history of the State of Nevada. <br />
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<i>Stowaway </i>reunited Shirley with director William A. Seiter (and also with writer William Conselman, who had done so well by Shirley on <i>Bright Eyes </i>and<i> The Little Colonel</i>, writing this time with Arthur Sheekman and Nat Perrin, from a story by Samuel G. Engel). Without the odious Professor who blighted <i>Dimples </i>(and without Frank Morgan's upstaging stunts), Seiter was able to do much better by Shirley, mainly by not forcing her to be the whole show.<br />
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Not that she doesn't have plenty to do. Ching-Ching is still the fulcrum of the plot, as Marky was in <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, serving as matchmaker for Robert Young and Alice Faye almost exactly the way Marky did for Adolphe Menjou and Dorothy Dell. And life in a remote village deep in the heart of China hasn't deprived Ching-Ching of a keen grasp of American popular music (which she credits to "Sun Lo's phonograph"): When she visits an amateur-hour theater in Hong Kong with Tommy and Susan, Ching-Ching takes the stage to sing "You Gotta S-M-I-L-E to Be H-A-Double-P-Y" (by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel). Then she reprises the song in the style of Al Jolson, then Eddie Cantor (that's some record collection that Sun Lo has!) -- and finally <i>a la </i>Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with a white-tie-and-tails dummy strapped to her toes that just happens to be sitting backstage.</div>
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<i>Stowaway</i>'s take-away hit was Gordon and Revel's "Good Night, My Love" -- introduced by Shirley as a lullaby learned at her late mother's knee, then later reprised by Alice as a love song, with a new "grown-up" lyric. (In <i>Child Star </i>Shirley confessed to a private, childish jealousy over Alice getting the last word on "her" song. "Instantly I knew her rendition had finessed mine. Hers was deeper-throated, more resonant, and her facial expressions insinuated much that I sensed was important without knowing why." Could this be a glimpse of conditions on the set that would lead Alice decades later to speak of "that Temple child"?) </div>
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Alice also sang "One Never Knows, Does One?", another one by Gordon and Revel, this time with no little-girl version for Shirley. Then Shirley closed out the show with "That's What I Want for Christmas", written by the uncredited Gerald Marks and Irving Caesar. This last number comes at the very end, after the story has been brought to a satisfying conclusion, and it plays almost like a curtain-call encore. Evidently it was added at the last minute to exploit the movie's holiday engagement at New York's Roxy picture palace (it didn't sift down to the rest of the country until after the turn of 1937).</div>
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Reviews of <i>Stowaway </i>were a big step up. Variety's "Bige" called it "a nifty Shirley Temple comedy with musical trimmings" and said it was "apt to regain whatever ground has been lost by the kid star's last few efforts." (For the record, Shirley's "last few efforts" had been <i>Dimples</i>, <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, <i>Captain January</i>, <i>The Littlest Rebel</i> and <i>Curly Top</i>. Apparently <i>Dimples</i> had left a <i>really </i>bad taste.)</div>
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At the New York Times, <i>Stowaway </i>appears to have restored Frank S. Nugent's faith in both 20th Century Fox and Shirley in particular ("[a] clever little baggage when she is kept in her place..."). "For the first time in several starts," he wrote, "she has an amusing script behind her, an agreeable adult troupe with her and a clever director before her. The combination has produced a thoroughly entertaining romantic comedy, unquestionably the best thing the gifted moppet has done since 'Little Miss Marker.' It practically convinces us there is a Santa Claus." Even John Mosher, at that citadel of sniffy sophistication The New Yorker, conceded, "I am sure that this new film of [Miss Temple's] should be the bright spot, perhaps the brightest spot, of the holiday season for her great following."</div>
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<i>Stowaway </i>is indeed a charmer, the more so since Shirley doesn't have to supply <i>all</i> the charm. Robert Young and Alice Faye have a playful romantic chemistry, and he's in good comic form while she's in excellent voice; Arthur Treacher is amusing as Tommy Randall's valet, in a state of perpetual nonplussedness; Helen Westley, as the old harridan Mrs. Hope, offers a clever change from her cuddly matron in <i>Dimples</i>; Eugene Pallete is, as always, a hoot playing a shipboard lush (albeit too briefly this time); and as the ship's captain, Robert Greig -- that stalwart Australian character actor whom audiences are always happy to see but whose name they can never remember -- adds his own patented grace notes of dignity.</div>
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Watching Shirley's movies in succession today, something is beginning to make itself noticeable by the time one gets to <i>Stowaway</i>, and it bears on Irving Cummings's remark to Mother Gertrude about Shirley "losing that baby quality and getting an emotional understanding." Remember, at this point it's been just a hair over three years since the day Shirley auditioned for Lew Brown and Jay Gorney on <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/03/shirley-temple-revisited-part-1.html"><i><u>Stand Up and Cheer!</u></i></a>; since then Shirley has made 15 pictures. She's no longer a toddler, as Cummings noted, and as for "emotional understanding", she has certainly come to understand how cute she is. She has by no means lost the "spontaneity and cheer" that Mordaunt Hall noticed in <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, or the "unspoiled freshness of manner" that Andre Sennwald found the saving grace of <i>Now and Forever</i>. But she no longer has the element of surprise on her side, and from her mother's coaching her to "sparkle" she's begun to develop tricks: the carefully calculated giggle, the pumping fists, the pouting lips -- the mannerisms that have provided fodder for countless parodists since the 1930s. </div>
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This is noticeable now only by viewing in rapid succession (and closely, and more than a few times) the movies that audiences in the mid-'30s saw only once, and spread out over years. But Darryl Zanuck had already noticed it himself, and he decided to shake up the formula a little before it got too stale. And so it was that Shirley, for the first time in her career, got the opportunity to star for a truly great director.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/07/shirley-temple-revisited-part-10.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-16937253855563840102014-06-28T02:26:00.000-07:002014-07-06T22:24:35.274-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 8<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Since I last posted on <i>The Littlest Rebel </i>I've had a chance to examine both Edward<br />
Peple's play and novel of that title (both were copyrighted in 1911, so it's impossible,<br />
without input from Mr. Peple's heirs and descendants, to know whether the play was<br />
based on the novel or vice versa). It's clear that Variety's reviewer "Land" misspoke<br />
when he said there was "no trace" of Peple's play in Edwin J. Burke's script. In fact,<br />
Burke followed Peple's broad outline quite faithfully, making such changes as the<br />
passage of 25 years and the talent on hand would call for. The stagebound bombast<br />
of the play's dialogue is purged entirely, as is the "colored" humor that was hopelessly<br />
dated by 1935 (albeit replaced with humor that looks equally dated to us today). In<br />
the play, Virgie saves her father from the firing squad by appealing for clemency to<br />
Gen. U.S. Grant; having her appeal to President Lincoln in the movie was an obvious<br />
improvement. And, of course, song-and-dance opportunities were inserted for Shirley<br />
and Bill Robinson because it would have been plainly stupid not to do so. <br />
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"Land" was being either forgetful, ignorant or unjust. If he wanted to see a movie<br />
that <i>really</i> had no trace of its original source, he need only have waited for the<br />
picture that 20th Century Fox hustled Shirley into immediately after shooting<br />
wrapped on <i>Captain January</i>.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released June 25, 1936)</span></span></span><br />
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Don't be misled by the picture's title as it appears on the cover of this sheet music (and on several of the posters and lobby cards); the title was <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, with no "<i>The</i>". <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>has a distinction it shares with <i>Our Little Girl</i>: They are the only two pictures from Shirley's reign as Fox's box-office queen (before and after the merger) that are not available on DVD; both can be seen only on out-of-print colorized VHS tapes.</div>
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There's another distinction that <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>has all to itself: It's one of Shirley's decidedly odd, even bizarre, pictures. The oddity begins with the screenplay credits. Once again, as with <i>Captain January</i>, the script is by Sam Hellman, Gladys Lehman and Harry Tugend, this time "suggested by the stories of Eleanor Gates and Ralph Spence." </div>
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In order to clarify that "stories of" credit, we need to go back to the beginning, and it begins with Eleanor Gates (1875-1951). She published her novel <i>The Poor Little Rich Girl</i> in 1912, then turned it into a play that ran for 160 performances on Broadway the following year. The novel tells of seven-year-old Gwendolyn (for the play her age was upped to 11 and she was played by 15-year-old Viola Dana, the future silent movie star). To all appearances, Gwendolyn is a pampered child of wealth and privilege, but she's really lonely, confused and unhappy. She's neglected by her workaholic father and social-climbing mother, who leave her in the hands of servants who bully her and treat her like a nuisance. One night her nursemaid, eager for an evening off, gives her an overdose of a sleeping medication that puts Gwendolyn into a near-death coma. In her delirium she has a bizarre Alice in Wonderland-style dream in which all her waking fears, confusion and insecurity take literal and symbolic form. By the time the crisis has passed and she is out of danger, her repentant parents have realized how important she is to them and vowed to neglect her no more. The play was filmed in 1917, with reasonable fidelity, and starring Mary Pickford.</div>
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A casual reading of <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>'s credits might seem to imply that Miss Gates and Ralph Spence collaborated on the "stories", but they didn't; they may not even have ever met. Spence (1890-1949) was a writer of intertitles during the silent era who was famous for adding spice to otherwise pedestrian pictures ("All bad little movies when they die go to Ralph Spence," read a full-page ad he took out in a Hollywood trade paper). Why he got story credit on <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i> might have remained a mystery, but Shirley herself offers a convincing explanation in <i>Child Star</i>. It seems two writers filed a nuisance suit over <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, claiming it had been stolen from a story they wrote on spec for Shirley and submitted to Fox in 1934. Shirley says Eleanor Gates herself resolved the issue by attesting that the title was hers, but the picture's plot was taken from Spence's story "Betsy Takes the Air". So if Shirley's recollection is right (and it sounds reasonable to me), 20th Century Fox bought <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>'s title from Eleanor Gates and its story from Ralph Spence. In any case, one thing is abundantly clear: Fox may have made all the right payments to avoid any possible hassle, but <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>is in no way a remake of Mary Pickford's 1917 <i>The Poor Little Rich Girl</i>, nor is it based on Eleanor Gates's novel or play. </div>
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It is, however, about <i><u>a</u> </i>poor little rich girl. Shirley plays Barbara Barry, the daughter of young widower Richard Barry (Michael Whalen), multi-millionaire owner of Barry's Beauty Soap. Barbara is pampered to the point of absolute boredom, with no friends or playmates. If she sneezes more than once in an hour, she's shunted off to bed by her nursemaid Collins (Sara Haden). Mrs. Woodward, the housekeeper (Jane Darwell), convinces Barbara's father to enroll the girl in a private school where she can be among children her own age, and he arranges for Collins to take the girl to the school in the Adirondacks that Barbara's late mother once attended.<br />
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While waiting for the car to take them to the station, Barbara asks Collins what she'll do while Barbara's away at school."I'm going to take a little vacation," Collins tells her. Barbara asks what a vacation is. "It's a rest, dear. It means getting away from people you've been with every day and seeing new faces. You really become another person on a vacation."<br />
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The words leave a fateful impression on Barbara. When they get to the station, Collins stops to send a telegram telling the school that Barbara is on her way. That's when she misses her purse; she must have dropped it as she got out of the car. She tells Barbara to wait, and rushes outside to search. There she's run down by a car and winds up in the hospital, unconscious and unidentified.<br />
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Meanwhile, back in the station, Barbara gets tired of waiting and decides to take a "little vacation" of her own -- and the "other person" she decides to become is Betsy Ware, an orphan in her favorite series of stories that Mrs. Woodward has been reading to her. In this guise she meets Jimmy Dolan and his wife Jerry (Jack Haley and Alice Faye), vaudevillians down on their luck and looking to break into radio. Taking little "Betsy" into their act, they rename her "Bonnie Dolan" and make the rounds as "Dolan, Dolan and Dolan" -- and sure enough, before you can say "audition" they've landed starring spots on a radio show. On top of that, their show is sponsored by the Peck Soap Co., arch-competitor to Barry's Beauty Soap, and little Barbara/Betsy/Bonnie has charmed the socks off cranky old Simon Peck (Claude Gillingwater), who had long vowed never to sponsor a radio program. All this happens within two days, while Barbara's father, who assumes his daughter is safely ensconced at school in the Adirondacks, is romancing the Peck Soap Co.'s head of advertising (Gloria Stuart).<br />
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Well, all of this gets sorted out in time for a happy fadeout -- that is, for everyone except poor Collins, the nursemaid, whom we last see comatose in the hospital while doctors puzzle over her identity, and who is never heard from again. <br />
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And then there's <i>this </i>character. He's never identified by name, so I can't even say who the actor is (if there are any name-the-unknown-actor buffs out there who can enlighten me, I'll be eternally grateful). Anyhow, this guy shows up shortly after Barbara leaves the train station to embark on her "little vacation". He stalks her for the rest of the movie, following her everywhere she goes and eavesdropping on her conversations with the people she meets. At one point he accosts her in the hallway of the apartment house where she's staying with the Dolans, and he offers to buy her some peppermint candy if she'll walk down to the corner with him. He calls her a "cute little trick" and tries to get her to tell him who her <i>real</i> daddy is. <i>Who is this guy??</i> A kidnapper for ransom? A child molester? His presence is never explained, but he gives <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>a gruesome undercurrent of creepy menace that's hard to square with the picture's musical comedy trappings; he's like a scorpion on a wedding cake. No two ways about it, the Hellman-Lehman-Tugend script for <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>is one screwy piece of work.<br />
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The movie's saving grace is its score by Mack Gordon and Harry Revel, one of the best ever composed for one of Shirley's pictures and one of the few that can properly be called a <i>score</i> as opposed to simply a collection of songs. Gordon and Revel's numbers are clever, catchy and full of surprises. This is charmingly demonstrated in the very first song, "Oh, My Goodness", which Barbara sings to four of her dolls after being banished to her bedroom for excessive sneezing. She begins by bemoaning her fun-deprived life: </div>
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<i>I wanna make mudpies</i></div>
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<i>In fact I'd like to be a mess</i></div>
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<i>I wanna make mudpies</i></div>
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<i>I know that I'd find happiness</i></div>
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<i>If I got jam on my fingers, chocolate on my face</i></div>
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<i>And molasses all over my dress </i></div>
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Then the number segues into the song proper, as Barbara scolds the dolls for their naughty behavior:</div>
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<i>You're the only friends I've ever had</i></div>
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<i>But one minute you're good</i></div>
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<i>And the very next minute you're bad</i></div>
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<i>At times I ought to hate you</i></div>
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<i>You make me feel so blue</i></div>
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<i>But honest I can't hate you</i></div>
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<i>When you smile at me the way you do</i></div>
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<i>Oh...</i></div>
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<i>My...</i></div>
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<i>Goodness! </i></div>
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...and then, exactly the right touch: the dolls jump up and dance for her. The whole scene is a perfectly delightful expression of the loneliness of a friendless little girl, presented in song (by Shirley) and dance (by the dolls). <br />
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Other songs round out the musical program with variety and a satisfying range of styles. There are spoofs of commercial jingles in the ditties for the competing soap companies, "Buy a Bar of Barry's" and "Wash Your Necks with a Cake of Peck's". A standard love song, "When I'm with You", introduced by an unbilled Tony Martin at the very beginning of his career -- and one year before his three-year marriage to Alice Faye. The song is then reprised by Barbara, singing to her father (and including the rather alarming line, "Marry me and let me be your wife."). These and other songs, often heard in different forms in the background, on pianos, hand-organs and what-not, add to the varied musical texture of <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i>. <br />
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A highlight comes when Dolan, Dolan and Dolan make their debut on the Peck's Soap Hour with "You've Gotta Eat Your Spinach, Baby". The number begins with Jimmy singing a conventional love song, which Jerry turns into a playful flirt-song. Then "Bonnie" stalks on and the number morphs into a sort of American variation on a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song: the girl sings a manifesto of youthful rebellion (<i>"No-o-o-o spinach!...Halle-loooo-jah!"</i>); Jimmy and Jerry counter with a stern assertion of adult authority (<i>"Children have to do as they are told...Children shouldn't be so very bold"</i>), resulting in a sullen surrender (<i>"Yes, sir...yes, ma'am..."</i>):</div>
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Once the conflicts have been cleared up, and the Barry's/Peck's rivalry<br />
resolved with a merger, <i>Poor Little Rich Girl </i>goes out on a high note:<br />
a bravura song-and-dance number, "Military Man" (light on the song,<br />
<i>very </i>heavy on the dance). Shirley remembered nerves getting frazzled<br />
when she, Jack Haley and Alice Faye met to post-dub their taps to a<br />
playback of the silent image of their dance. All three knew the routine<br />
cold, but with no music to guide them, not even a metronome or<br />
choreographer Jack Haskell to give them the beat, matching their tap<br />
sounds to their mutely dancing picture proved tricky in the extreme.<br />
They finally got it, of course, and in recognition of their hard work I<br />
include this colorized clip here. Besides, it's a whole lot of fun:<br />
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Years later, Alice Faye shared her memories of <i>Poor Little Rich Girl</i> with her great fan W. Franklyn Moshier, author of the self-published <i>The Films of Alice Faye </i>(which was picked up by Stackpole Books in 1974 and published as <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Faye-Movie-Book/dp/0811700860/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1403944838&sr=1-1&keywords=the+alice+faye+movie+book"><i><u>The Alice Faye Movie Book</u></i></a>), and Frank Moshier shared those memories with me when I knew him in the early '70s. Evidently, Alice rankled at having to play second fiddle to this eight-year-old; according to Frank, she never talked about "Shirley", it was always "that Temple child". Alice told Frank, and Frank told me, stories of Shirley throwing tantrums on the set -- red-faced, stomping, screaming "Miss Faye pushed me! Miss Faye pushed me!" Frank had the good sense not to include such tales in <i>The Films of Alice Faye</i>, but he did assert that "while pure and wholesome in appearance and the darling of everyone from Key West to Puget Sound, Shirley was more than a little difficult to work with."<br />
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Nonsense. I didn't believe these stories in 1972 and I don't believe them now. They simply fly in the face of everything -- <i>everything</i> -- that everybody else who ever worked with Shirley had to say about her. We can only speculate on what prompted such melodramatic yarns; both Shirley and Alice -- and for that matter, Frank Moshier -- are beyond asking about it now. In any event, Alice Faye was not through playing second fiddle to Shirley Temple. Within a very few months, she'd be doing it again.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/07/shirley-temple-revisited-part-9.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b>Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-38318935892638289502014-06-16T00:55:00.000-07:002014-09-01T14:25:00.947-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 7<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The creation of 20th Century Fox was announced as a merger, but it was really a friendly takeover. Darryl Zanuck (former production head at Warner Bros.) and Joseph Schenck (former president of United Artists) had formed 20th Century Pictures in 1933 as an independent concern, renting equipment and studio-and-office space from UA. In two years 20th Century had produced 18 pictures, all but one of which had made money, and several of which had made quite a lot: <i>Folies Bergere de Paris</i>, <i>The House of Rothschild</i>, <i>The Affairs of Cellini</i>, <i>The Call of the Wild</i>, <i>Les Miserables</i>, etc. But Zanuck got his hackles up when UA wouldn't sell any of its stock to 20th Century, and he started looking around.<br />
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Enter Sidney Kent, president of Fox Film Corp. When Kent entered into merger negotiations with Zanuck and Schenck, he probably had visions of "Fox-20th Century Pictures", thinking he was co-opting the rising competition and bringing a hot young producer into the Fox fold. But he didn't figure on the drive and energy of Darryl F. Zanuck.<br />
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Neither did Winfield Sheehan. The Fox production chief knew there'd be room for only one chief at the new studio, and he braced himself for a struggle. But he was overmatched; Zanuck was younger, more aggressively ambitious -- and, frankly, he had a better record at the box office. By the end of July 1935 Sheehan had taken a $420,000 buyout and left the company. Sidney Kent stayed on as president, at $180,000 a year, plus $25,000 as president of National Theatres Corp., Fox's distribution affiliate. Just to show who 20th Century Fox's real key figure was, Zanuck was made vice president in charge of production at $260,000 a year, plus ten percent of the gross on the pictures he supervised -- plus enough stock in the company to ensure another $500,000 a year.<br />
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The assets Fox brought to the merger consisted mainly of its studio complex and distribution system serving some 500 theaters. In terms of on-screen talent, however, the holdings were far more modest. Foremost among them was Will Rogers, in 1935 probably the most beloved private citizen in America. He made as many as four pictures a year for Fox, and every one was guaranteed money in the bank. A close second was Shirley, also a guaranteed winner. In distant third and fourth were 20-year-old Alice Faye, whose star was fast rising, and Janet Gaynor, her own popularity on the way down. Suddenly, less than three months after the merger, Will Rogers was dead in the wreckage of his friend Wiley Post's plane up at the north end of Alaska -- and Shirley Temple was alone at the top of 20th Century Fox's star pyramid.</div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OTygokWWvS4/U5LGhchbgLI/AAAAAAAACk4/2bzCjDGZ8Lo/s1600/Merch+collage01a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OTygokWWvS4/U5LGhchbgLI/AAAAAAAACk4/2bzCjDGZ8Lo/s1600/Merch+collage01a.jpg" height="400" width="395" /></a>By this time Shirley was selling more than just theater tickets. First came dolls, in baby and little-girl sizes, through an agreement with the Ideal Toy Co. The first model duplicated the red polka dot dress she wore in <i>Stand Up and Cheer!</i>; later editions capitalized on her aviator suit from <i>Bright Eyes</i> and the 19th century togs of <i>The Little Colonel</i>. Within a year other products appeared sporting her image or her name: Everything an American girl could possibly wear -- dresses, overcoats, hair ribbons, barrettes, pajamas, hats, berets, pins, anklets, costume jewelry -- or use -- soap, mugs, plates, pitchers, paper dolls, coloring books, playing cards, scrapbooks, pocket mirrors, notepads, toy sewing machines, candy molds. Then there were the product tie-ins: Quaker Puffed Wheat, Wheaties, flowers by Postal Telegraph, Sperry Drifted Snow Flour, and on and on. To say nothing of the flood of unauthorized products in the U.S., England, Spain, Germany, France -- everything from rag dolls and figurines to tiaras, rings and cigar bands. These kept the lawyers at Ideal, Fox and elsewhere busy in a largely fruitless effort to stem the tide of fly-by-night piracy.<br />
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Such popularity did have its worrisome side, especially for Shirley's parents; the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby was still news. Their concern would be borne out during a radio broadcast on Christmas Eve 1939, when a woman in the audience, unhinged by grief, pointed a gun at Shirley, determined to kill the body that she believed had stolen the soul of her own dead daughter; the danger passed when the woman was seized and disarmed by two FBI agents who had been alerted to her suspicious presence. But that's getting ahead of my story. For now, in 1935, the studio engaged burly John Griffith to serve as Shirley's chauffeur and bodyguard (Shirley considered him a grown-up playmate). "Watch the kid like a hawk," Zanuck told Griffith. "If anything happens to her, this studio might as well close up."<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>The Littlest Rebel </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released December 19, 1935)</span></span></span><br />
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Shirley's first picture to bear the new 20th Century Fox logo (with its now-famous fanfare) had been in the works before the merger, as the cover of this sheet music suggests. The ostensible source was a play by Edward Peple that ran for 55 performances on Broadway in the winter of 1911-12 before embarking on a long and prosperous tour, making a child star of the ill-fated <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2010/09/movie-playing-cards-9-of-diamonds-mary.html"><u>Mary Miles Minter</u></a>. The play had been filmed before in 1914, a version now presumed lost. (Playwright Peple, like <i>The Little Colonel </i>author Annie Fellows Johnston, did not live to see Shirley's remake, having died of a heart attack in 1924, age 54.)</div>
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Surprising as it may sound, Edward Peple's play is still in print. I have a copy on order, but it hadn't arrived by the time this post was ready to go live. When I've had a chance to peruse the script, I'll have a sense of how closely Edwin J. Burke's script followed it, and if necessary I'll post an update here. For the present, all we have is the testimony of Variety's reviewer that there was "no trace of the Edward Peple play in the Burke film version."<br />
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But actually, that's a bit of an overstatement. In fact, several of the characters' names survived from stage to screen. Shirley plays Virginia Cary, a six-year-old resident of her namesake state whose birthday party is interrupted by news of the firing on Fort Sumter. Her father (John Boles) soon rides off to war, leaving the plantation in the hands of his wife (Karen Morley), little Virgie, and their loyal slaves, led by butler Uncle Billy (Bill Robinson) and his assistant James Henry (Willie Best). Late in the war, the Union Army sweeps through, and Virgie's defiance earns the amused respect of Yankee Col. Morrison (Jack Holt). When Capt. Cary sneaks home to attend his wife's deathbed and is captured, a sympathetic Morrison tries to help him and Virgie escape through Union lines, but father and daughter are caught and the two men are condemned to the firing squad -- Capt. Cary for spying, Col. Morrison for aiding and abetting the enemy. Virgie and Uncle Billy rush to Washington, hoping to obtain a pardon from President Lincoln. I won't say how this all turns out, but even if I did it would hardly amount to a surprise or a spoiler.<br />
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<i>The Littlest Rebel </i>was aimed at duplicating the success of <i>The Little Colonel</i>; in fact, it surpassed it, and was one of Shirley's smoothest pictures. The only thing that really dates it today -- and it dates it terribly -- is the racial attitude I mentioned in my notes on <i>The Little Colonel</i>. That attitude is even more glaring and uncomfortable in <i>The Littlest Rebel</i> because the picture deals directly with the Civil War itself. When Edward Peple wrote his play in 1914, the war was well within human memory; even by the time the movie was made, that generation had not yet passed away (three years later, in 1938, the 75th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg would occasion a reunion of nearly 1,900 Civil War veterans). The Old South with its genteel planter aristocracy and loyal, happy, contented slaves was an article of faith in the Myth of the Lost Cause, one that died hard and bitterly, and it's on full display in <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>. It's difficult to argue with modern viewers who find it just too hard to take. (Shirley even plays one scene in blackface disguise, though at least we are spared the sorry spectacle of hearing her speak with a "darkie" accent.)<br />
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Modern misgivings about <i>The Littlest Rebel</i> tend to focus on Willie Best as James Henry. Comedian Robert Klein once described Best as "the man who single-handedly set back race relations in this country fifty years." That was an exaggeration for comic effect and a disservice to Best. Nevertheless, Klein's joke had a kernel of truth. Willie Best was, essentially, Stepin Fetchit with better diction; like Fetchit (another talented performer, born Lincoln Perry), he adopted a comic persona -- shiftless, slack-jawed, none too bright -- that played into the hands of racists then and now, only too eager to believe it represented African Americans in general. Both men were unable (or not allowed) to give their characters the kind of dignity that Bill Robinson, Hattie McDaniel, Clarence Muse, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, and a very few others were able to project during those years of artistic apartheid.</div>
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So: <i>The Littlest Rebel</i> has Willie Best's James Henry to neutralize (if not nullify) the humanity of Bill Robinson's Uncle Billy -- rather than complement and reinforce it, as Hattie McDaniel's Mom Beck had done in <i>The Little Colonel</i>. Plus a slave population so happy in bondage that they have no interest in emancipation and don't even understand what it is. With all that, it's not surprising that many viewers prefer not to watch the picture today -- much less show it to children who can't place it in its proper historical context.<br />
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Still, if you <i>can </i>place it in its context and make the necessary allowances, <i>The Littlest Rebel </i>has its compensations. John Boles and Jack Holt may not quite strike the sparks with Shirley that Lionel Barrymore or Adolphe Menjou did, but they're personable performers who are at ease with her, and vice versa. Shirley's own acting instincts are at their best, and her performance shows (paradoxical as it may sound) a sort of sophisticated simplicity. This scene, for example, is extremely well-played. It's in Uncle Billy's cabin; Col. Morrison is searching for little Virgie's father, who's hidden in a trapdoor in the ceiling. The colonel doggedly questions Virgie, who tries to convince him her father is gone, but she's not accustomed to lying and becomes rattled under his cross-examination.</div>
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This scene of Virgie's audience with President</div>
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Lincoln is another highlight. Lincoln is played</div>
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here by Frank McGlynn Sr., one of Hollywood's</div>
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main go-to guys when it came to our 16th president</div>
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(McGlynn played the role 11 times between 1924</div>
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and 1939). Here Virgie and the president discuss</div>
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her father's case while sharing slices off an apple.</div>
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McGlynn and Shirley had worked together before;</div>
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in <i>Little Miss Marker </i>he played Doc Chesley, the</div>
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racetrack vet tending to Marky's "charger" -- the</div>
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"Kind Keeper", Marky calls him. (And by the way,</div>
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another memorable touch in this scene is the</div>
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moment when Lincoln greets Virgie and Uncle</div>
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Billy -- memorable for the look of surprise and</div>
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pleasure on Uncle Billy's face that the President</div>
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of the United States is shaking his hand.)</div>
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Chief among <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>'s compensations is -- do I really<br />
need to say it? -- Shirley and Bojangles dancing. Like this scene,<br />
with Col. Morrison riding up to Uncle Billy's cabin,where Billy<br />
and Virgie try to act carefree and nonchalant,dancing to "The<br />
Arkansas Traveler" on the harmonica and banjo to keep the colonel<br />
from suspecting that Virgie's father is hiding in the garret overhead.<br />
(<u><b><i>UPDATE 8/6/14</i></b></u><b><i>: </i></b>Alas,this clip has been removed from YouTube<br />
and the associated account closed. The only other clips of this dance<br />
are of far inferior quality, but I'll keep checking.) (<b><i><u>UPDATE #2, 8/21/14</u>:</i></b></div>
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This clip is colorized and the focus is too fuzzy, but it will suffice to<br />
give a sense of the exuberance of this dance. I'll keep looking for<br />
something better.)<br />
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This one, in which Virgie and Uncle Billy become street entertainers in an effort to earn the</div>
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money for train tickets to Washington to see President Lincoln, may be Shirley and Bojangles'</div>
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best-known number (second, perhaps, to the staircase dance from <i>The Little Colonel</i>). Like the</div>
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staircase dance, it's "<i>a capella</i>", so to speak, performed without musical accompaniment except for</div>
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the sounds they make themselves. The clip, again, is colorized -- and this may be a good time to discuss</div>
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the preponderance of colorized clips among these posts on Shirley. In the 1980s, when colorization</div>
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had its brief run, nearly all of Shirley's 1930s pictures were released that way on VHS -- no doubt in</div>
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hopes of appealing to young children, who (then as now) did not share their elders' admiration for</div>
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black-and-white photography, nor their dislike for computer-coloring. Even today, on DVD, these</div>
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movies offer the choice of viewing one way or the other. Anyhow, here are Shirley/Virgie and</div>
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Bojangles/Uncle Billy in <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>'s boardwalk dance:</div>
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Variety's reviewer "Land" pegged <i>The Littlest Rebel </i>exactly, noting its striking similarity to <i>The Little Colonel</i>, yet conceding that it probably "won't dampen the enthusiasm of the Temple worshippers...All bitterness and cruelty has been rigorously cut out and the Civil War emerges as a misunderstanding among kindly gentlemen with eminently happy slaves and a cute little girl who sings and dances through the story...Story is synthetic throughout but smart showmanship instills the illusion of life." In the New York Times, Andre Sennwald agreed: "You may have got the mistaken notion from 'So Red the Rose' [a Civil War melodrama released the month before] that the war between the States was filled with ruin, death, rebellious slaves and horrid Yankee barbarians. 'The Littlest Rebel' corrects that unhappy thought and presents the conflict as a decidely chummy little war...As Uncle Billy, the faithful family butler, Bill Robinson is excellent, and some of the best moments in 'The Littlest Rebel' are those in which he breaks into song and dance with Mistress Temple." </div>
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For Shirley's next picture, her first of 1936, it would be back into modern dress, although the story on which it was based had been written even before <i>The Little Colonel</i>:<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Captain January </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released April 24, 1936)</span></span></span><br />
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<i>Captain January</i> seems to have a special place in the hearts of Baby Boomers of a Certain Age, perhaps because it was one of Shirley Temple's first features to go into television syndication in the 1950s. The source material was an 1891 novella by Laura E. Richards. Born Laura Elizabeth Howe in 1850, Mrs. Richards was the daughter of Julia Ward Howe, author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". A prolific author in her own right, Mrs. Richards wrote over 90 books, including, with her sister Maud Howe Elliott, a biography of their mother that won them a Pulitzer Prize in 1917. Mrs. Richards also wrote the children's nonsense poem "Eletelephony" ("Once there was an elephant,/Who tried to use the telephant --/No! No! I mean an elephone,/Who tried to use the telephone..."). Unlike the authors of <i>The Little Colonel </i>and<i> The Littlest Rebel</i>, she lived long enough to see two movies made from her modest little story, dying in 1943 at 92. Whether she saw either movie, or what she thought of them, is not recorded.<br />
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Mrs. Richards's <i>Captain January </i>is a short-and-bittersweet tale of a retired old seafarer, one Januarius Judkins ("Captain January"), who lives alone tending a lighthouse on a small island off the rugged coast of Maine.<br />
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One night during a terrible storm he sees a ship founder in the rocky sea around his island. Venturing out in search of possible survivors, he finds only one, an infant girl clutched in her dead mother's arms. He retrieves the child and several corpses, including both the baby's parents. The anonymous dead he gives a decent burial on his island, the orphan girl he takes to shelter in his lighthouse. The next day a trunkfull of clothing belonging to the infant's mother washes up on shore, but it contains no hint of the dead parents' identities beyond some embroidered initials. With no way of knowing the baby's name or family, he raises the girl himself, naming her Star Bright.<br />
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Ten years later, a woman on a passing cruise ship catches a glimpse of Star and is convinced she is the daughter of her dead sister, lost at sea with her husband and child while sailing home from Europe ten years earlier. It's soon established beyond doubt that Star is Isabel Maynard, the long lost and presumed dead niece of that cruise ship passenger, Mrs. Morton. At first, Mrs. Morton wishes to take the girl to live with her, with full gratitude to Captain January for rescuing and raising her. But when she sees how it will break the hearts of both Star and the captain, she relents, and lovingly leaves the girl with the only father she's ever known.<br />
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Even so, Captain January knows that his days on earth are nearly done, and he arranges with his friend, sailor Bob Peet, to keep an eye on the lighthouse whenever he sails by: If the little blue flag is flying, all is well; if the flag has been struck, it's time for Bob to come and collect Star, and to take her to live with the Mortons, who will welcome her as one of their own -- which in fact she is. Finally, in the spring of the following year, January feels his heart failing, and with his last ounce of strength he hauls down the little flag, then returns to his favorite chair to wait. "For Captain January's last voyage is over, and he is already in the haven where he would be."<br />
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<i>Captain January </i>was first filmed as a 1924 silent</div>
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with Baby Peggy and Hobart Bosworth as the little</div>
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orphan and her lighthouse-keeper foster father. For</div>
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reasons known only to scenarists John Grey and</div>
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Eve Unsell, this version features a name switch: the</div>
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orphan girl is nicknamed "Catain January" while her</div>
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guardian is "Jeremiah Judkins". Otherwise, the silent</div>
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version has elements that would survive in Shirley's</div>
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remake twelve years later: The busybodies in the</div>
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nearby village conspiring to wrest the child from her</div>
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guardian "for her own good"; the ingenious ending</div>
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that restored the orphan to her family without taking</div>
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her from her beloved guardian. (By the way, I am</div>
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delighted to report that as of this writing, Baby Peggy</div>
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-- now known as Diana Serra Cary -- is still with us,</div>
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and if all goes well, will turn 96 next October 26.</div>
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Continued long life to her.)<br />
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For <i>Captain January</i>'s 1936 incarnation, Sam Hellman and Gladys Lehman, who had written Shirley's signature role in <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, were engaged to write the script with Harry Tugend. The first thing the three did was to straighten out the names: Shirley plays Star, the orphan of the storm, while veteran character actor Guy Kibbee played the old lighthouse-keeper (the first time somebody besides Shirley played the title role in one of her pictures; it wouldn't happen again until <i>The Blue Bird</i> in 1940). </div>
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The writers also supplemented the contents of that washed-up trunk of Star's mother's clothes; there is now enough in the trunk to include a photograph of Star's mother, and to establish that she was an opera singer who once played Lucia di Lammermoor. This sets up an amusing scene later where Star, Captain January, and January's friend Captain Nazro (Slim Summerville) sing a burlesque of the famous sextet from <i>Lucia</i>, with the parts reduced to three and Star squeaking that hers is "too high!...Still too high!" The trunk also contains other clues to Star's identity; the fact that January never followed through on them as thoroughly as he might have, and that Nazro later does, becomes a point of conflict in the movie's plot.</div>
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The village busybodies from the 1924</div>
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movie are here reduced to one, but she's a</div>
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formidable battleax: Agatha Morgan (Sara</div>
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Haden), the new local truant officer. Like all</div>
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busybodies, she delights in overstepping</div>
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her bounds; not content with making sure</div>
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Star is enrolled in school, she makes it her</div>
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personal mission to get the child away from</div>
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Cap's "disreputable" custody. When the</div>
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lighthouse is slated for automation and it</div>
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looks like Cap will be thrown out of a job,</div>
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it's clear to everyone that Mrs. Morgan</div>
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will be only too eager to pounce. Captain</div>
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Nazro, fisherman Paul Roberts (Buddy</div>
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Ebsen), and the sympathetic schoolteacher</div>
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Mary Marshall (June Lang) take steps they</div>
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feel are necessary, and the plot accordingly</div>
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thickens.</div>
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Years later, director David Butler reminisced about the shooting of this scene, where Captain Nazro brings a live crane as a birthday present for Star. The crane, Butler recalled, clamped its beak onto Shirley's nose and refused to let go, even as Shirley's mother and teacher, the crane's handler, and sundry crew members fluttered around in varying states of agitation. The story, frankly, has the air of an old-timer's tall tale, and sure enough, Shirley makes no mention in <i>Child Star </i>of such a thing happening.<br />
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She does, however, remember problems with that obstreperous crane. At their first meeting, the bird did peck in her direction, tumbling her backwards in surprise. "They always go for the eyes," a propman warned. "Keep your distance." (That makes more sense than latching onto the nose.) All efforts to wrangle the crane were met with attacks -- until one of the crew drove flathead nails through the webbing in its feet, anchoring it to the floor. Thus the scene shown here was shot, with the three humans standing well out of reach, then the bird was released, none the worse for the experience. Shirley says Butler swore everybody to secrecy, but word leaked out and late that afternoon a representative from the humane society showed up to investigate. Fortunately for Butler and 20th Century Fox, every time the woman tried to inspect the bird's feet for telltale perforations, she got pecked at for her trouble, and the whole thing blew over. <br />
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The musical highlight of <i>Captain January</i>'s three songs was Shirley's song-and-dance duet with gangly, stilt-legged Buddy Ebsen to "At the Codfish Ball" by Lew Pollack and Sidney D. Mitchell. As choreographed by Jack Donohue, it was a long and complex routine that ranged over a long stretch of the Fox backlot, made extra-challenging by the almost comical discrepancy between the length of Shirley's stride and Buddy's. "Somehow," she remembered, "he shortened his stride and I learned to fly." The focus is a little soft in this YouTube clip, but the number still comes through:</div>
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The other songs were an opening number, "Early Bird" (Also by Pollack and Mitchell), which had Star popping out of bed in the morning and breaking the fourth wall, singing directly to the camera (and hence the audience) as she gets dressed.</div>
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Then there was this rather odd little number. The song was "The Right Somebody to Love" by Pollack and Jack Yellen. It was one of those wistful little ballads like "Where Is Love?" from <i>Oliver! </i>-- the kind of song that can be sung child-to-parent, parent-to-child, or sweetheart-to-sweetheart. In this case, Star sings it to Cap, followed by this fantasy sequence where their roles are reversed, and Cap is the baby being tended by nurse Star. It was filmed on a giant-size set designed to make Kibbee look like an infant -- which meant that Shirley, in turn, looked positively Lilliputian.</div>
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Both Abel Green in Variety and Frank S. Nugent in the New York Times found <i>Captain January</i> to be "okay film fare" (Green) despite the "moss-covered script" (Nugent). One of the most interesting reviews came from across the Pond, where Graham Greene, writing in the London Spectator, found the picture to be "a little depraved, with an appeal interestingly decadent...Shirley Temple acts and dances with immense vigor and assurance, but some of her popularity seems to rest on a coquetry quite as mature as Miss [Claudette] Colbert's, and on an oddly precocious body, as voluptuous in grey flannel trousers as Miss [Marlene] Dietrich's." Greene would pursue that line of thought in subsequent reviews, and would in time catch the gimlet eye of 20th Century Fox's legal department. But I'll get to that in its turn.<br />
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For the record, just in case you've lost track, Shirley was now seven years old; her eighth birthday was the day before <i>Captain January </i>opened in New York. Of course, hardly anybody besides her parents knew that; the rest of the world -- including Shirley herself -- thought she had just turned seven.<br />
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<b><i>Next time: Fox's top two female stars go head-to-head.</i></b><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-8.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-91983743958492509982014-06-01T16:44:00.000-07:002014-08-21T20:09:21.196-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 6<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Our Little Girl </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released June 6, 1935)</span></span></span><br />
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I'm not going to spend a lot of time on Shirley's next picture because...Well, if (as I said in <a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/04/shirley-temple-revisited-part-3.html"><u>Part 3</u></a>) <i>Now and Forever </i>is a bit of a dud, <i>Our Little Girl</i> is a flat-out stinker. A country doctor (Joel McCrea) gets so wrapped up in his practice and his research that his wife (Rosemary Ames), feeling ignored, seeks comfort first in the company, then in the arms, of their bachelor neighbor (Lyle Talbot). Meanwhile, the doctor's nurse (Erin O'Brien-Moore) nurses an unrequited love for him. Caught in the middle of all this, and neglected by both her parents, is the couple's daughter (Shirley).<br />
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Shirley couldn't save this one; nothing could. The script by Steven Avery and Allen Rivkin was an indigestible stew of sugar, soap and corn, and director John Robertson (a veteran whose credits went back to 1916) was utterly defeated by it. On the other hand, even a brilliant script couldn't have survived Robertson's leaden, clomping direction, which made the picture feel much longer than the 64 minutes it actually ran. Perhaps not incidentally, this was Robertson's last movie, as it was for leading lady Rosemary Ames, whose two-year, eight-picture career ended here.<br />
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Shirley never made a worse movie, and neither did Joel McCrea. (Lyle Talbot did -- but only because he made three pictures with Ed Wood.)<br />
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Variety's reviewer "Odec" predicted (accurately) that "despite [the] story", Shirley's fans would make the picture profitable. At the New York Times, Andre Sennwald was less conciliatory: <i>"As we have learned to expect, 'Pollyanna' and 'The Bobsey Twins' </i>[sic]<i> are classics of gutter realism by comparison with the sentimental syrups which Miss Temple's impresarios arrange for the Baby Duse</i>.<i>"</i> Dyspeptic, yes, but <i>Our Little Girl</i> had it coming, and worse. (Mr. Sennwald still spoke fondly of <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, but he was clearly reaching a saturation point, if not with Shirley, at least with her vehicles. As fate would have it, he would review only two more of them -- <i>Curly Top </i>and <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>, with increasing asperity -- before dying in a gas-line explosion in his Manhattan penthouse on January 12, 1936; Sennwald was only 28.)<br />
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In <i>Child Star</i>, Shirley said of <i>Our Little Girl</i>, "I forgot it as soon as possible." As well she might, but it wasn't because of the picture itself; it was due to things that happened during shooting.<br />
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First: Shirley was going through the normal tooth losses of any kid her age, but shooting couldn't be held up while they grew back, so she wore temporaries for the camera. One day on <i>Our Little Girl</i>'s rural location, she sneezed two of hers out into a grassy meadow. The whole crew searched long through the grass, but to no avail, and the company had to wrap for the day while new ones were crafted for the little star. Shirley had conceived a girlish crush on Joel McCrea, and seeing his annoyance at the delay, she was accordingly chagrinned.<br />
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But worse was to come; the very next day, Shirley's chagrin turned to mortification. Standing with McCrea by a stream while lighting gaffers fiddled endlessly with their lights and reflectors, and with the long silence broken only by the trickle of the nearby brook, Shirley -- there's no gentle way to say it -- wet her pants. Understandably, she immediately burst into tears. Mother Gertrude gently led her sobbing daughter to their trailer, where socks and undies were replaced, then Mother bucked up Shirley's courage for the unavoidable return to the set. "Finally I mustered enough confidence to open the door," Shirley wrote, "but only by convincing myself the whole thing had never happened." She considered that moment her "Oscar performance". <br />
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Poor Shirley. Even fifty-plus years on, writing in <i>Child Star</i>, her humiliation is still palpable. No wonder she forgot <i>Our Little Girl </i>without delay. We should too.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Curly Top </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released August 1, 1935)</span></span></span><br />
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Now this was more like it. <i>Curly Top</i> may not be Shirley's best movie, exactly -- there are several pictures ahead of it in <i>that </i>queue -- but it just might be her most typical. And as a showcase for the full range of her talent it has few equals. The late film encyclopedist Leslie Halliwell cited it as an example of Shirley at her personal best, when he placed her in his fanciful Halliwell's Hall of Fame ("for captivating the mass world audience and enabling it to forget the depression").<br />
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Shirley plays Elizabeth "Curly" Blair, an orphan who charms Edward Morgan (John Boles), one of the rich trustees of the orphanage where she lives; Morgan legally adopts Curly while pretending to be acting on behalf of one "Hiram Jones."<br />
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The story was a liberal reworking of Jean Webster's 1912 novel <i>Daddy Long Legs</i>, which told of Judy Abbott, an orphan who, when she grows too old to stay at her orphanage, is sponsored through college by a benefactor who insists on remaining anonymous. By story's end Judy learns that the mysterious "John Smith" is wealthy Jervis Pendleton, whom she knew (and had a girl's crush on) from his visits to the orphanage. Now full-grown (and college educated), Judy marries him. Webster's novel had already been filmed in 1919 with Mary Pickford and in 1931 with Janet Gaynor (and would be again in 1955, as a musical starring Fred Astaire and Leslie Caron). Since Fox had produced the 1931 version and still owned the screen rights to the story, they were at liberty to refashion it to fit Shirley.<br />
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Needless to say, if the boys at Fox couldn't wait for Shirley's adult teeth to grow in, they certainly couldn't sit around while she reached an age to marry John Boles, so Patterson McNutt and Arthur Beckhard's script supplied Curly with an older sister Mary (Rochelle Hudson) to be adopted with her and to discharge the romantic duties with the handsome Boles. Hudson and Boles even held up their end with the songs: Hudson, a neophyte singer, did quite well with "The Simple Things in Life" (by Edward Heyman and Ray Henderson), while Boles returned to his musical comedy roots with "It's All So New to Me" (also by Heyman and Henderson) and the picture's title song (Henderson and Ted Koehler).<br />
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But like the story, the supporting players (Boles; Hudson; Jane Darwell and Rafaela Ottiano as matrons at the orphanage; Esther Dale as Boles's aunt; Billy Gilbert and Arthur Treacher as his cook and butler) were all beside the point. Shirley was just about the whole show. She is even the focus of both Boles's songs. After singing "It's All So New to Me", while the orchestra wafts on in the background, he strolls around his palatial drawing room, where he fancies Shirley beaming down at him from the paintings on the walls...</div>
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...Then there's the title tune, "Curly Top".</div>
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First Morgan sings it to and about Curly,</div>
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then for the second chorus she does a</div>
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tapdance on top of his piano (he's rich,</div>
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he can afford it).</div>
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<i>Curly Top</i> also has what became, for</div>
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Shirley, a signature song second only</div>
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to "On the Good Ship Lollipop":</div>
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"Animal Crackers in My Soup" (by</div>
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Ted Koehler and Irving Caesar). The</div>
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song is a real charmer, but I'm not</div>
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posting a YouTube clip of it for the</div>
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same reason I didn't for "Lollipop":</div>
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surely just about everybody knows it.</div>
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But they may not know this one (once again, colorized). It comes later in the picture, when Curly, who hasn't forgotten her and Mary's friends back at the orphanage, persuades Morgan to stage a charity show to benefit her former home. In it, she performs "When I Grow Up" (Heyman, Henderson), in which she sings of what her life to come will be like. Shirley's mishap by the brook on the set of <i>Our Little Girl</i> reminds us -- as it no doubt did her co-workers -- that this showbiz phenomenon was really just a little girl after all. Conversely, "When I Grow Up" reminds us that this little girl was a genuine, honest-to-God phenomenon. I mean, how many kindergarteners would <i>you </i>ask to imagine themselves at 16, 21 and 75? Well, they asked it of Shirley, and she delivered a virtual one-girl production number:</div>
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Variety's Abel Green pegged <i>Curly Top</i> as "cinch b.o. for almost any house", and, as usual, he was absolutely right. And even the Times's Andre Sennwald found the picture (at least while Shirley was on) "completely bearable": "Her remarkable sense of timing has never been revealed more plainly than in the song and dance scenes in her new film, and she plays her straightforward dramatic scenes with the assurance and precision of a veteran actress. With all this, she has lost none of her native freshness and charm."<br />
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<i>Curly Top </i>was Shirley's last picture for Fox Film Corp., and her last with Winfield Sheehan, who had piloted her career since <i>Stand Up and Cheer!</i> As chief of production in the wake of William Fox's personal and professional nosedive in 1929-30, Sheehan had managed to stave off the studio's total financial collapse (largely through hanging on to Will Rogers and locking Shirley into a long-term contract), but the waters were still rocky. Even before <i>Curly Top </i>went into production, there were rumors of negotiations with the upstart Twentieth Century Pictures, a thriving new kid in town, but one in need of a studio complex and distribution system -- one like Fox's, for example. On May 29, 1935, a merger was announced; the new studio would be called 20th Century Fox. Less than two months later, Winfield Sheehan was out as head of production, replaced by the man who had spearheaded Twentieth Century to a success that entitled it to be senior partner in its merger with the more venerable Fox. The man, moreover, who would be in charge of Shirley's career for the rest of the 1930s: Darryl F. Zanuck.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-7.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><br /></i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-35643530039596196782014-05-29T03:53:00.000-07:002016-04-25T02:50:41.092-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 5<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>The Little Colonel </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released March 21, 1935)</span></span></span><br />
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Shirley's first picture of 1935 was a period piece, her first costume drama as a star. The source material was a children's book by Annie Fellows Johnston of McCutchanville, Indiana. Mrs. Johnston turned to writing at the age of 29 when her husband died in 1892, leaving her with three small stepchildren to raise on her own. <i>The Little Colonel</i>, published in 1895, was her third novel, and it proved so popular that she wrote a sequel a year until 1907. She wrote, in all, some four dozen books before she died in 1931 at age 68, but <i>The Little Colonel </i>was the only one that was ever filmed. It's a pity Mrs. Johnston couldn't have hung on for four more years and seen the apotheosis of her most famous creation.<br />
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Anyone who thinks that a movie is never as good as the book should try reading <i>The Little Colonel</i>. Mrs. Johnston's ever-so-precious style hasn't weathered the years well; I suspect it hadn't by 1935, either. (It's available online <a href="http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/johnston/colonel/colonel.html"><u>here</u></a> if you want to check it out.) The story, as the saying goes, had "good bones", and writer William Conselman fleshed them out rather better than Mrs. Johnston had. (Conselman also wrote <i>Bright Eyes</i> and would write for Shirley again.)<br />
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In Conselman's script (unlike the original book), the story opens before the birth of its title character. A title tells us it's "Kentucky in the '70s", and we meet old Colonel Lloyd (Lionel Barrymore), an unreconstructed Confederate for whom the War isn't over. At a <i>soiree</i> at his plantation he offers a toast: "Gentlemen, I give you the South -- and confusion to her enemies!" But it's the Colonel who's due for confusion; one of those "enemies", a Northerner -- named Sherman, no less -- has won the heart of his beloved daughter Elizabeth (Evelyn Venable). The Colonel interrupts her and her intended (John Lodge) in the act of eloping, and he warns her: "Elizabeth, when that door closes, it'll never open for you again." Elizabeth leaves without another word, and she doesn't close the door -- she slams it.<br />
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Next scene, it's six years later and the Shermans -- Jack, Elizabeth and their daughter Lloyd (Shirley) -- are at a military outpost on the edge of the western frontier. Lloyd has become the darling of the post, and she receives a commission as honorary colonel -- an addition by Conselman that makes the girl a "little colonel" in fact, not just as the nickname the author gives her in the original story. The family has sold everything they own and left their Philadelphia home. Papa Jack is to continue west to make a new home for them; when he's well-established and it's safe, he'll send for his wife and daughter. Until then, Elizabeth and the Little Colonel will return to Kentucky and live in a small cottage on the family property that was left to her by her mother. <br />
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When the Old Colonel learns there are new tenants in the Cottage, he drops by to welcome them. But when the door is answered by his daughter Elizabeth, he storms off in a rage. "You're a bad man to make my mother cry," little Lloyd tells the old man's portrait in the Cottage parlor. Later, when the two Colonels -- Old and Little -- finally meet, he doesn't realize who the girl is, and he berates her for dirtying her dress making mudpies. Whoever your mother is, he tells her, she should teach you better. The Little Colonel stamps her foot -- "Don't you dare say anything about my mother!" -- and hurls a fistful of mud at his white suit.<br />
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Later, when the old man learns who she is, he is mollified, even apologetic. He may have disowned his daughter and her husband, but he sees no reason not to associate with his granddaughter -- especially since she reminds him so much of himself (<i>and</i> his outcast daughter, though he won't admit it).<br />
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When Lloyd's Papa Jack staggers home, sick with fever after having been swindled of the family's savings by two hucksters (Sidney Blackmer, Alden Chase), Lloyd is sent to live with her grandfather to avoid catching what has laid her papa low. In time, just as we expect, the Little Colonel will effect a family reconciliation. But in the meantime she and her grandfather will just about drive each other to distraction, they're both so willful, stubborn and short-tempered.</div>
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It's easy to imagine that the Old Colonel's consternation at the little girl's spunk in standing up to him was a reflection of Lionel Barrymore's own response to his little co-star; there's a befuddled mix of exasperation and amusement that seems to come from both character and actor. Like the people they play, Barrymore and Shirley's working relationship got off to a tetchy start: At their first rehearsal, when Barrymore stammered and groped for his lines, Shirley (who, being still too young to read, had memorized the whole script) prompted him. This sent the veteran actor storming off to his dressing room, where he sat sulking (and probably drinking) and threatening to walk off the picture. </div>
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Shirley describes in <i>Child Star</i> how both director David Butler and her own mother gently but firmly prodded her to make peace: you brought this on, they said, you have to make it right. And she did. She says she managed it by going to his dressing room, addressing him as "Uncle Lionel", and asking for his autograph ("To my favorite little niece," he wrote, "Your Uncle Lionel.") It's hard to believe it was a simple as that, for the seasoned old trouper to be coaxed out of his pout by the toddler who caused it, but that's what Shirley says (oh to have been a fly on <i>that </i>wall!). Anyhow, Barrymore didn't walk, and <i>The Little Colonel</i> crackles when he and Shirley are on screen together.<br />
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There's another teaming in <i>The Little Colonel </i>that also makes it crackle. Playing the Old Colonel's butler Walker was Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Robinson began in vaudeville in 1900, and by 1934, when <i>The Little Colonel</i> was made, he was universally recognized (and for that matter, still is) as one of the greatest tapdancers who ever lived. Shirley was always proud that she and Robinson were the first interracial dance team in movie history. More than that, because of the age difference between six-year-old Shirley and the 56-year-old Robinson (and at the time, let's face it, because of the difference in the color of their skin), they were one male-and-female team whose dances carried no hint of courtship or romance -- nothing but the sheer joy of dancing together. ("The smile on my face wasn't acting," Shirley said in <i>Child Star</i>; "I was ecstatic.") The teaming was Winfield Sheehan's idea, and he hesitated only because he was unsure if Robinson could act; his three previous screen appearances had been dance-only. Robinson passed a screen test, and that was that. In all, he and Shirley would make five pictures together (I'll get to the others in their time), and it all started here.<br />
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Their first dance together was the famous staircase dance. It was Robinson's signature act, and he modified it to accomodate Shirley's abilities; she couldn't have come up to his level in the rehearsal time they had -- but then, probably <i>nobody</i> could, no matter how long they rehearsed. Shirley remembered her "Uncle Billy" as "a superlative teacher, imperturbable and kind, but demanding...Every one of my taps had to ring crisp and clear in the best cadence. Otherwise I had to do it over." <br />
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It's been a while since I posted a YouTube clip of Shirley, and this is a good time to resume. Not the staircase dance, though. As good as it is, you don't see as much of their body language, especially their faces beaming in the pleasure of each other's company, as you do in this one, which comes later, with Walker and little Lloyd cavorting in the stables, to the accompaniment of "Oh! Susanna" on the harmonica:<br />
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It must be said that racial attitudes of the 1930s make <i>The Little Colonel </i>(and <i>The Littlest Rebel</i>, later in '35) an awkward experience for some people today. It's hard not to view these movies through the hindsight of how far African Americans have come (on screen and in real life) in the last 80 years. It's worth remembering, though, the progress they <i>had </i>made by 1935 -- what little there was, and only on screen at that -- in the 40 years since <i>The Little Colonel </i>was written (or even the 20 years since <i>The Birth of a Nation</i>). We rightly cringe now when Colonel Lloyd calls to his granddaughter's black playmates, "Come on, you pickaninnies!" But in Annie Fellows Johnston's novel he uses an even uglier word -- and for that matter, so does the Little Colonel herself. And to be fair to <i>The Little Colonel </i>(the movie), there's a scene where Lloyd attends a black church's baptism ceremony in a stream that runs through her grandfather's property; the scene is presented unpatronizingly and without condescension. Also, the two most prominent black characters are played by Robinson as Walker and, as the Little Colonel's cook and housekeeper "Mom Beck", Hattie McDaniel (five years before she became the first African American to win an Academy Award). Both of them imbue their characters with a warmth and dignity that rises above the racism of the time.<br />
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Plus, of course and always, there's the sheer pleasure of Shirley and Bojangles dancing.<br />
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<i>Apropos </i>of nothing, and apparently just because the</div>
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powers that be at Fox felt like it, <i>The Little Colonel</i></div>
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<i> </i>ends -- after Papa Jack has gotten well, his fortunes</div>
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have been restored, the swindlers brought to</div>
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justice, and Colonel Lloyd reconciled to his daughter</div>
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and son-in-law -- in Technicolor. The rationale is</div>
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young Lloyd's penchant for casting her stories in colors:</div>
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"Tell me a <i>blue</i> story"; "This is a <i>yellow</i> story".</div>
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Evidently, she asks her grandfather for "a pink party"</div>
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(the surviving version isn't clear; something seems</div>
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missing), and he replies, "Yes, just as pink as those</div>
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flowers," as a vase of black-and-white roses change</div>
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to pink-and-green. I leave <i>The Little Colonel</i> with a</div>
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shot from this party scene because it's Shirley's first</div>
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appearance in the newly-perfected Technicolor</div>
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process -- and her last for several years.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/06/shirley-temple-revisited-part-6.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></i></span></span></b><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><br /></i></span></span></b></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-16979748814715876322014-05-22T23:02:00.000-07:002015-08-20T11:38:47.873-07:00CMBA Blogathon: Come Next Spring (1956)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>I interrupt my look back at Shirley Temple's career to offer Cinedrome's contribution to the <a href="http://clamba.blogspot.com/"><u>Classic Movie Blog Association</u></a>'s blogathon <b>Fabulous Films of the 1950s</b>. </i><i>Go <a href="http://clamba.blogspot.com/2014/05/cmba-blogathon-fabulous-films-of-50s.html"><u>here</u></a></i> <i>for
a complete list of entries; you'll find my colleagues holding forth on an impressive array of movies legendary and obscure, long-remembered
and half-forgotten. </i><br />
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<i>The '50s, like the '40s before (subject of another CMBA blogathon <a href="http://clamba.blogspot.com/2013/01/fabulous-films-of-1940s-blogathon.html"><u>here</u></a>), were an embarrassment-of-riches period. The Hollywood studio system was dying, it's true, but that wasn't so clear at the time; in the second half of the decade especially, the studios seemed to be recovering from the sucker punch of television. There were plenty of terrific movies, three of which are illustrated on the banner here. For Cinedrome's entry, I've decided to follow my customary practice and choose a lesser-known title -- one that deserves to be remembered and rediscovered:</i><br />
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In the mid-1950s Republic Pictures was on its last legs as a movie-producing entity. Formed in 1935, it was the brainchild of Herbert J. Yates, founder and president of Consolidated Film Industries, a film processing lab based in New York. Yates saw his big chance when six of Hollywood's Poverty Row studios -- the largest (relatively speaking) being Monogram and Mascot -- became deeply indebted to Consolidated for processing fees. Yates called all their debts, then offered an alternative: merge into one production facility, with Yates as head of the studio. The others went for it, and Republic Pictures was born. (In 1937, unable to get along with Yates, Monogram's officers backed out of the deal and reorganized under their old corporate name, which morphed in 1947 into Allied Artists.)<br />
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Strictly speaking, Republic was a notch or two above Poverty Row, but it was never a major operation. Its bread and butter was chapter serials and westerns, its biggest stars John Wayne, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Rex Allen (in just about that order). There was the occasional prestige picture (again, relatively speaking), like <i>Sands of Iwo Jima </i>and <i>The Red Pony </i>(both 1949), or, a few more notches up the scale, John Ford's <i>Rio Grande </i>('50) and <i>The Quiet Man </i>('52), but for the most part it was cliffhangers, horse operas and hillbilly comedies for the small-town venues. In the summer of 1955, taking one last shot at prestige, Yates dispatched a unit headlined by Ann Sheridan and Steve Cochran up north to the California Gold Country town of Ione (pronounced "eye-own") in the hills of Amador County 35 miles southeast of Sacramento. There they made what is surely (with the arguable exception of Orson Welles's 1948 <i>Macbeth</i>) the best movie ever to come out of Republic Pictures that didn't involve John Ford or John Wayne. (And no, I'm not forgetting <i>Johnny Guitar</i>.)<br />
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<i>Come Next Spring </i>was directed by R.G. ("Bud") Springsteen.</div>
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Springsteen was the epitome of the reliable but unexceptional</div>
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studio workhorse. Actually, "plowhorse" would be more like</div>
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it; his first directing credit came in 1945, and by the time of</div>
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<i>Come Next Spring </i>ten years later he had already directed over</div>
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50 features -- mostly Republic program westerns running about</div>
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an hour, with a smattering of crime dramas and shoestring musical</div>
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comedies. At the very least, Springsteen was a man who didn't</div>
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waste time, film or money -- a triple virtue guaranteed to endear</div>
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him to the penny-pinching Herbert Yates. It would also earn him</div>
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a secure niche in television; by the time he retired in 1970 he</div>
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had a hefty resume consisting of multiple episodes of <i>Gunsmoke</i>,</div>
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<i>Rawhide</i>, <i>Wanted: Dead or Alive</i>, <i>Wagon Train</i>, <i>Bonanza</i>,</div>
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<i>Gentle Ben</i> and others.</div>
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The secret ingredient of <i>Come Next Spring</i> was its writer, Montgomery Pittman (shown here in a small role on TV's <i>Cheyenne</i>, in an episode he also wrote). Pittman was the kind of talent who might almost be described as "unjustly forgotten today" -- except that the sorry truth is he died before even being noticed, succumbing to throat cancer at 45 in 1962. He was prolific, resourceful and original, and what he did accomplish in his brief 11-year career gives a frustrating hint of what might have been if even another ten or 15 years had been granted to him.</div>
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Born in Louisiana in 1917 and raised in Oklahoma, Pittman left home while still a teenager and found work with a traveling carnival as (no joke!) a snake-oil salesman. After military service during World War II he landed first in New York, then Los Angeles, with hopes of becoming an actor. Among the odd jobs he took during this time was housecleaning for fellow actor Steve Cochran, then under contract to Sam Goldwyn and beginning to make a name for himself; their friendship would bear fruit with <i>Come Next Spring</i>. </div>
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After a few minor movie roles (including one in <i>Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison</i> with his friend and sometimes employer Cochran), Pittman transitioned into writing and eventually, like other writers before him, into directing as a means of protecting his scripts. Along the way, in 1952, he met and married Maurita Gilbert Jackson, a widow whose ten-year-old daughter Sherry was already launched on a career as a child actress. Pittman's relationship with his new stepdaughter would also bear fruit in <i>Come Next Spring</i>.</div>
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In the mid-to-late-'50s Pittman was a contract writer for Warner Bros. Television, where he contributed scripts to the studio's westerns <i>Cheyenne</i>, <i>Sugarfoot</i> and <i>Maverick</i>, and the private-eye series <i>77 Sunset Strip </i>(for the latter three he usually directed his scripts as well). </div>
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In the early '60s (and, in fact, just as his time among us was running out) Pittman wrote and directed three episodes for Rod Serling's original <i>The Twilight Zone</i> on CBS. These jobs are worth mentioning here for several reasons. For one thing, Pittman was the <i>only </i>person during the entire five-year run of the show who both wrote and directed an episode, and he did it three times. For another, those three are among the very best episodes that weren't written by <i>The Twilight Zone</i>'s "Big Three" (Serling, Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson). Finally, and most pertinent to the subject at hand, two of those three contain clear echoes of <i>Come Next Spring</i>: (1) "The Last Rites of Jeff Myrtlebank" -- about a young man who springs to life out of the coffin at his own funeral, causing his backwoods neighbors to suspect he ain't exactly human -- takes place in the same time and region as <i>Come Next Spring</i>, and it even features several of the same actors (James Best, Edgar Buchanan, and Pittman's stepdaughter Sherry Jackson); and (2) "The Grave", in which bounty hunter Lee Marvin accepts a dare to visit the grave of the outlaw he's been chasing, not only features James Best again, but it has a female character named Ione -- an unmistakeable hat-tip to the town where <i>Come Next Spring</i> was filmed.<br />
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<i>Come Next Spring</i> takes place in 1927 in<br />
the hills of Arkansas. We first meet Matt<br />
Ballot (Steve Cochran) walking along a<br />
country road on a hot summer day. He<br />
strikes up a conversation with a little boy<br />
he meets (Richard Eyer), and offers to<br />
walk along with him a spell, since they<br />
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It turns out that they're not only headed<br />
the same way, they're headed to the same<br />
place. For the boy, Abraham, it's the<br />
farm where he lives. For Matt it's where<br />
he <i>used</i> to live, before he ran out on his<br />
wife Bess and daughter Annie nine years<br />
ago. Abraham is the son Matt never<br />
knew he had. <br />
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Bess (Ann Sheridan) is astonished to see Matt again after all these years, and she makes it plain that the surprise is not a pleasant one. "Why are you here, Matt?" she asks coldly.</div>
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Matt tells her he's been all over the country, and found that whisky tastes pretty much the same everywhere. The last three years he's been wondering what his wife and daughter were doing, "and I guess I just talked myself into" coming to find out. You never answered my letters, he says; didn't you get them?</div>
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She may have gotten them, but clearly she didn't read them. I never wanted to see you again, she says; I see no reason to change my mind now. Chastened, Matt is turning to leave when Bess suddenly relents. "I still think you done wrong in comin' back," she says, "but the damage is done now. Bein' as you're here, I reckon it's only fair for you to see Annie. So you can stay to supper. If you stay sober."</div>
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Matt assures her that he's been sober for three years, then he asks about Annie. "Is she...Did she ever get over...?" "Nope," says Bess, "still mute. Cain't utter a sound."</div>
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When Abraham returns from washing up, ready to do the milking, Bess hesitates barely a second before telling him who Matt is. "Gee," says Abraham, "I didn't even know I <i>had</i> a papa." Later, when Annie (Sherry Jackson) comes home and warily eyes the stranger in their barn pulling a tick from the cat's tail, Abraham shares the information, with the pride of a little brother who knows something his big sister doesn't: "Annie, this here's our papa!"</div>
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That night, Abraham surprises Bess by showing up for supper in his Sunday best: suit, bowtie. Later, as Matt prepares to leave, Bess unbends a little more. It's a long walk in the dark, she says; Matt can spend the night in Abraham's room. Even Annie, still shy of this stranger in the house, nods that it's all right with her.</div>
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The next morning Abraham comes to breakfast having for the first time slept through the night without suffering from his "problem" -- bedwetting. Even Annie is sorry to see Matt leave. So Bess softens an inch or two more. "I forgot how important a man is to children," she says -- and besides, she could use a hand around the farm. So she offers Matt the job. But that's all he'll be -- a hired hand, at a dollar a day plus his keep, bunking with Abraham. "All right, Bess," Matt says, "you hired yourself a hand."</div>
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Matt's return is greeted by others in the community with little enthusiasm; most of them will offer him no more than a frosty hello -- and that only after he's greeted them first, with their own "hello" signaling an end to the conversation. One of the few who greets him kindly is old Jeff Storys (Walter Brennan), a sharecropper on Bess's farm who knows nothing of her and Matt's history. Another, who <i>does </i>know but likes Matt anyway, is the Ballots' friend and neighbor Mr. Canary (Edgar Buchanan), who urges Matt to have patience: "Look at it like you was one o' them, Matt, put yourself in their place. What would <i>you</i> a-been thinkin' the night Abraham was born?" Matt wonders if Canary feels the way they do. "I've always felt," Canary tells him, "that you was a lot more of a man than they gave you credit for. If you're still around here come next spring, you'll prove I'm right." </div>
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(This isn't the first time the movie's title pops up in the dialogue; the phrase seems part of the local idiom. At one point Abraham asks his mother, "How come people are always sayin' 'come next spring' somethin's gonna happen?" "Oh, it's just a saying," she tells him, "meaning 'in the springtime' or 'not too far away'." Abraham shrugs. "Seems to me it means it ain't <i>never </i>gonna get done.")<br />
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One who has particular and personal reasons for disgust at Matt's return is Leroy Hightower (Sonny Tufts), Canary's hired hand, who has been futilely trying to court Bess almost since the day Matt walked out on her. Leroy's not a bad sort at heart, but there's more than a little of the bully about him, and he talks to (and about) Matt with the snide sarcasm of a frustrated suitor. Leroy believes it's only a matter of time before Matt falls off the wagon and becomes the same good-for-nothing drunk he was nine years ago -- and Leroy's not above doing his bit to make sure it happens.<br />
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Bowen Charles Tufts III is one of Hollywood's sad cases. He was not without talent, but not talented enough to overcome some unfortunate life and career choices. Born of a prominent Boston family (his great-uncle founded Tufts University), he shunned the family banking business to study opera at Yale. Thanks to his good looks and a college football injury that made him 4-F during World War II, he found stardom in Hollywood when handsome leading men were relatively scarce. Alcohol was his undoing, and his off-screen behavior became notorious. He gave probably his best performance in <i>Come Next Spring</i>, and a few years later he reportedly sobered up in hopes of landing the role of Jim Bowie in John Wayne's <i>The Alamo</i>. Whether that's true or not, by that time his name was already a Hollywood punchline, and the idea was probably a non-starter. He died of pneumonia in 1970, age 58.<br />
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How Matt Ballot, heeding Mr. Canary's advice about patience, slowly wins his way back into the love of his family and the respect of his neighbors forms the spine of <i>Come Next Spring</i>. The movie's emotional centerpiece comes almost exactly halfway through its 93 minutes, when Matt, prompted by a question from Abraham, and knowing the question will never go away, finally explains to Annie why she is unable to talk. "It wasn't no Act of God like you always been told," he says to her. "God give you a voice just like everybody else." Bess tries to stop Matt -- by this time even she doesn't want to see him torn down in the children's eyes -- but Matt forges on. What happened, he tells Annie, was that one night, too drunk to drive and too belligerent to let Bess take the wheel, he drove their car off the road and wrecked it. Bess and Matt walked away unhurt, but the traumatic shock left Annie unable to speak -- or to make any sound at all -- from that day to this.</div>
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There are still crises to come for Matt, Bess and the children -- a cyclone that devastates their farm, a long-simmering showdown with Leroy, a frightening disappearance by one of the kids -- but how it all plays out is something best discovered by seeing the movie itself.<br />
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When she made <i>Come Next Spring</i>, Ann Sheridan was 40, several years past her glamour days as Warner Bros.' "Oomph Girl" (a nickname she loathed). Even at the height of her career at Warners, her talent never got the respect it deserved -- not surprising for a studio dominated by its male stars that already had Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland. But she was an actress of considerable -- even remarkable -- depth and range. She demonstrated this to anyone who cared to notice during the fall of 1941, when she was shooting two pictures simultaneously: She worked mornings on the raucous farce <i>The Man Who Came to Dinner</i> (and was one of the funniest things in it), then after lunch she reported to the set of the brooding, dark melodrama <i>Kings Row</i>. All through World War II she was well-liked by co-workers, popular with audiences, and underrated by critics. That combination held all the way through her untimely death at 51 in 1967 (and the "underrated" part has stayed with her ever since).<br />
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Sheridan's Bess Ballot is a woman who has had self-sufficiency thrust upon her by the only man she's ever loved, and the experience has made her stern almost to the point of harshness. When Matt's wandering brings him back into her life, her defenses instantly fly up -- because the sight of him, in spite of everything, still makes her weak in the knees. We can see it, even if she can't, in the way she softens every time Matt is on the verge of leaving again: First she says he can stay for supper, then till morning, then till "come next spring" as a hired hand. This always-underrated actress was never better than she was as the resolute, wounded Bess.<br />
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Steve Cochran, unlike Sheridan, was never underrated -- exactly. But ever since his sudden death from a lung infection at 48 in 1965, the question has haunted movie buffs: <i>Why didn't this guy ever become a bigger star? </i>Part of it may have been his tabloid lifestyle of womanizing, carousing and boozing, flying in the face of his fragile health (he had a heart murmur that kept him out of the service during World War II). Or it may have been because he never managed to break the mold of gangsters, thugs and unsavories into which he had been typecast, certainly not the way other actors -- Robert Mitchum and Dana Andrews, for instance -- had been able to do. Still, he never really gave a bad performance even in the most ill-chosen of his 39 pictures; he was clearly an actor of substance (on stage he had played Orsino in <i>Twelfth Night</i>, Horatio in <i>Hamlet</i>, even Richard III). In Matt Ballot, Cochran gives us a good man who has been beaten down by an ill-spent life and the consequences of his own bad decisions, and who now hopes only to pull himself together before it's too late. It was the role, and the performance, of Cochran's life, and he knew it. When Monty Pittman brought him the script, Cochran bought it for his own company, Robert Alexander Productions (named for his real first and middle names), then sold it to Republic on the condition that he and Sherry Jackson play the roles that had been written for them. If Cochran had given this performance for any studio but Republic it might have made all the difference in the arc of his career. But the truth is that probably no other studio would have cast him as anything but a ne'er-do-well or a hood -- Matt Ballot, if you will, unrepentant and unreformed. It may even be that no other studio would have touched <i>Come Next Spring </i>at all. That, sad to say, was just Steve Cochran's luck.<br />
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As if Ann Sheridan, and Steve Cochran, and Montgomery Pittman's intelligent and perceptive script were not enough, there's another excellent reason to see <i>Come Next Spring</i>, one that all by itself would be more than enough: the extraordinary performance of 13-year-old Sherry Jackson. If Pittman's script was intended as a showcase for his friend Cochran, it seems to have been equally intended to give Pittman's own stepdaughter the role of a lifetime. Even by the time Pittman married her mother in 1952, Sherry was already a veteran of more than 15 feature films. Mostly uncredited bits, but more substantial roles were ahead: one of the visionary Portuguese children in <i>The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima </i>('52), John Wayne's daughter in <i>Trouble Along the Way </i>('53). When shooting started on <i>Come Next Spring</i>, Sherry was coming off her second season as Danny Thomas's oldest daughter on <i>Make Room for Daddy</i>. </div>
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As the shy and withdrawn Annie -- "around the animals so much," her mother says, "she's beginning to act like one" -- Sherry Jackson is thoughtful, watchful and wary. With her enormous -- and enormously expressive -- eyes, and with every tiny movement of the corners of her mouth, she makes Annie's every fleeting thought as plain as if she spoke them out loud. And she does it without making a sound. Jane Wyman in <i>Johnny Belinda</i> won an Oscar (and rightly so) for doing not much more than Sherry Jackson does in <i>Come Next Spring</i>.</div>
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Ann Sheridan, Steve Cochran, Sonny Tufts, Sherry Jackson. All of them were never better -- maybe even never as good -- as they were in <i>Come Next Spring</i>. Hmmm. Maybe this Bud Springsteen was a better director than he ever got credit for.</div>
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<b><span style="color: orange;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">* * *</span></span><i> </i></b></div>
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When it played host to the <i>Come Next Spring </i>company in 1955, Ione, Calif. was a small foothill community of perhaps 1,500 people. It's grown somewhat in the 59 years since then, but not as much as you might think. The population now hovers around 4,200 (not counting the nearby Mule Creek State Prison, whose 3,000 inmates are technically "residents" of Ione). The town itself has changed even less than the population. Even allowing for its being dressed to resemble Arkansas 30 years earlier -- with its fleet of Model A and Model T Fords, the vehicles of choice for small farmers in the 1920s -- the Ione of <i>Come Next Spring</i> is still visible in the Ione of 2014. (<u><i><b>NOTE</b></i></u><i><b>: </b></i>I am indebted to City Clerk Janice Traverso and her co-workers in the Ione City Hall, and to local resident Doug Hawkins, who played a small role in the picture at the age of 11, for their assistance in finding and photographing locations for <i>Come Next Spring</i>.)<br />
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This is Main Street of (the fictitious)<br />
Cushin, Arkansas as the Ballot family<br />
drives into town on Saturday to do<br />
their weekly shopping. That's them<br />
on the right in their Model T -- Matt<br />
driving, with Annie (holding her hat)<br />
and Bess in the back seat. That<br />
imposing-looking two-story building<br />
is actually the meeting hall of Ione<br />
Parlor 33 of the Native Sons of the<br />
Golden West...<br />
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...and it's still there today, not much<br />
changed except for the removal of<br />
that out-of-control ivy on the eastern<br />
wall.<br />
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One block west and on the other side</div>
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of Main Street, this building...</div>
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...has had a facelift since 1955 --</div>
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probably more than one, as a matter</div>
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of fact -- but it's still recognizable.</div>
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Pretty much.</div>
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On the other hand, this stretch of</div>
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sidewalk where a group of boys</div>
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(including Doug Hawkins's</div>
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classmate Guy Campbell, a local</div>
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boy who still lives in Ione) are</div>
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taunting Annie as the town "dummy"...</div>
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...well, that's hardly changed at all. </div>
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Here are Jeff Storys and Matt standing</div>
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outside the town's picture show chewing</div>
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the fat (presumably the Ione Theatre's display</div>
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cases have been changed to reflect what might</div>
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have been "now showing" and "coming next</div>
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week" in 1927). Doug Hawkins remembers seeing</div>
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<i>Come Next Spring</i> in this theater. That was no doubt</div>
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a sneak preview for citizens of the host town; the</div>
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picture's world premiere was held at the Amador</div>
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Theatre in nearby Jackson, the Amador County</div>
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seat (and mighty big news <i>that</i> was in Jackson,</div>
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believe you me). The Amador is gone now; where</div>
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it stood is now the parking lot of the Jackson</div>
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branch of El Dorado Savings...</div>
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...and the Ione Theatre is also gone,</div>
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gutted by fire decades ago. The space</div>
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is now a mini-mall housing a hair</div>
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salon, a massage-and-tanning parlor,</div>
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and other local businesses.<br />
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This locomotive is "Iron Ivan". In</div>
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1955 it was the last steam engine</div>
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operating on the Amador Central</div>
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Railroad, a short (approx. 12 miles)</div>
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line that operated entirely within the</div>
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borders of Amador County. Ivan</div>
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made this cameo appearance in a</div>
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brief scene showing the area's</div>
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farmers arriving with their milk and</div>
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eggs to ship them off to market. Iron</div>
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Ivan was retired in 1956, not long</div>
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after this scene was filmed...</div>
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...and rests now on permanent display</div>
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in the Ione City Park.</div>
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This is the little country church where the Ballots</div>
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and their neighbors worship. It is from these windows,</div>
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during a Sunday morning sermon on the evils of drink,</div>
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that the congregation first notices the approach of</div>
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cyclone weather. And it's here that Matt literally seizes</div>
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the reins and stems a rising panic in the parking lot as</div>
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worshipers dash madly out to their wagons and<br />
autos to try to save what they can of their homes.</div>
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In 1955 this church was in the tiny community of</div>
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Camanche, about five miles south of Ione. Today,</div>
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Camanche is at the bottom of Camanche Reservoir,</div>
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created when an earthfill dam was completed</div>
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across the Mokelumne River in 1963. (For you</div>
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non-Californians out there, the river's name is</div>
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pronounced "McCullumy".)</div>
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The church, however, was moved to higher ground,</div>
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where it stands today overlooking the north shore</div>
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of the reservoir -- with the addition of a newer</div>
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entry vestibule and storage shed.</div>
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As<i> </i>I mentioned before, the mainspring of <i>Come Next Spring</i> is Monty Pittman's pitch-perfect script. It tells an unusual yet simple and straightforward story without a wasted word or a false note. Even its minor characters -- for example, Harry Shannon as neighbor Tom Totter (that's him a few pictures up giving Matt Ballot the cold shoulder at the railroad siding), Wade Ruby as the preacher Delbert Meaner, and Roscoe Ates as Shorty Wilkins, the local moonshiner -- are sketched in sharp detail with a few deft strokes. Sometimes only a few lines are all it takes to tell us what we need to know about these people -- and Pittman knew the right few lines. Then there are the sensitive performances, and the typically emotional musical score by the great Max Steiner (including a title song written with Lenny Adelson that was a popular hit for Tony Bennett, who sings it under the credits).</div>
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<i>Come Next Spring </i>has been going in and out of print for over 30 years, ever since the dawn of the home video age. As near as I've been able to determine, it's currently out. But the good news is that it's <i>not </i>unavailable. It can be had for streaming <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Come-Next-Spring-Ann-Sheridan/dp/B009HEGVN0/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1400315547&sr=1-1&keywords=come+next+spring"><u><i>here</i></u></a> at Amazon Instant Video -- it's even free if you subscribe to Amazon Prime. </div>
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So here's a challenge for my Cinedrome readers. As soon as you finish reading this post -- or as soon as you have 93 spare minutes -- click over to Amazon Instant Video (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Come-Next-Spring-Ann-Sheridan/dp/B009HEGVN0/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1400315547&sr=1-1&keywords=come+next+spring"><u>here's the link again, just to double-dog-dare you</u></a>) and treat yourself to <i>Come Next Spring</i>. Do yourself a favor. </div>
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And one last thing. This is a promise: The very last shot of the picture, just before it fades to "The End", is something you'll remember as long as you live. Mark my words.</div>
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<span style="color: #0b5394;">.</span></div>
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Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4779097004556285780.post-43173750379473219532014-04-26T03:37:00.000-07:002014-08-28T16:49:50.224-07:00Shirley Temple Revisited, Part 4According to the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025580/releaseinfo?ref_=tt_ov_inf"><u>IMDb</u></a>, <i>Now and Forever</i>'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.<br />
<br />
Whatever the case, both Andre Sennwald in the Times and Abel Green (again) in Variety pegged Shirley as <i>Now and Forever</i>'s saving grace. Sennwald: <i> </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>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 </i>[the photoplay]<i> </i><i>becomes, despite its violent assaults upon the spectator's credulity, a pleasant enough entertainment.</i></blockquote>
And Green:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"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.</i></blockquote>
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.<br />
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Next it was back home to Fox for...<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>Bright Eyes </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;">(released December 20, 1934)</span></span></span><br />
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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.</div>
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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.). </div>
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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 <i>them</i>) 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."<br />
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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. <br />
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In real life, eight-year-old Jane was nothing like the character she played. <i>Bright Eyes</i> 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 <i>Bright Eyes </i>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.<br />
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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 <i>Giant </i>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.<br />
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But back to <i>Bright Eyes</i>. 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 <i>him</i>), 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.</div>
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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.</div>
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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, <i>if</i> Shirley and Loop can manage to survive the flight.</div>
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<i>Bright Eyes</i> 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 <i><u>the</u> </i>Shirley 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 <i>any</i>body 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: </div>
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<i>I've thrown away my toys</i></div>
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<i>Even my drum and trains</i></div>
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<i>I want to make some noise</i></div>
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<i>With real live aeroplanes</i></div>
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<i>Someday I'm going to fly</i></div>
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<i>I'll be a pilot too</i></div>
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<i>And when I do</i></div>
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<i>How would you</i></div>
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<i>Like to be my crew</i></div>
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<i>On the goo-oo-ood ship Lollipop...</i></div>
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<i>Bright Eyes</i> 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 <i>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn </i>(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. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i>* * *</i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div>
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In a nutshell -- and not counting five shorts and bit roles under her old contract to Jack Hays, or the two walk-ons in <i>Change of Heart </i>and <i>Now I'll Tell</i> -- Shirley Temple's output for 1934 consisted of a breakthrough debut in <i>Stand Up and Cheer!</i>, a confirming star turn in <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, a placeholding appearance in <i>Baby Take a Bow</i>, credit for the save in <i>Now and Forever</i>, and a tailor-made vehicle in <i>Bright Eyes</i>. A great year for any rising star, and unprecedented for one who turned six midway through it.<br />
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In <i>Child Star</i> 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 <i>The Thin Man </i>or Bette Davis for <i>Of Human Bondage</i>, 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 <i>Little Miss Marker</i>, 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 <i>It Happened One Night</i>; Davis, even with the write-ins, came in third).<br />
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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:<i> </i>"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."<br />
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In <i>Child Star</i>, 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 <i>Pollyanna</i> in 1960; after that, beginning with nine-year-old Mary Badham for <i>To Kill a Mockingbird </i>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 <i>anything</i> from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I doubt if that record will ever be broken.</div>
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Shirley Temple's career hit its stride with <i>Bright Eyes</i>. Nineteen-thirty-four had been a banner year, and the banner would continue to wave in '35. I'll get to that next time.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><a href="http://jimlanescinedrome.blogspot.com/2014/05/shirley-temple-revisited-part-5.html"><u>To be continued</u></a>...</i></span></span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><i><span style="color: #0b5394;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span> </i></span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #ffd966;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></div>
Jim Lanehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00981196894914646656noreply@blogger.com3