Classic Movie Hub Blog

The Funny Papers: Celebrate Marie Dressler 150! Hometown Hosts Her Birthday in Style

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Kellee Pratt

Celebrate Marie Dressler 150! Hometown Hosts Her Birthday in Style

“By the time we hit fifty, we have learned our hardest lessons. We have found out that only a few things are really important. We have learned to take life seriously, but never ourselves.”
–Marie Dressler

Leila Marie Koerber “Marie Dressler”, born November 9, 1868.

I wholeheartedly agree. Marie Dressler should know, and wore the battle scars of showbiz- and life- to prove it. Dressler looked the very opposite of the youthful beauties that graced the stages and silver screens of her time, but Marie was the true audience favorite.

Born Leila Marie Koerber on November 9, 1868, Dressler left home at the mere age of fourteen (claiming she was 18) to join the Nevada Theatre Troupe, with aspirations for the bright lights of the Broadway stage. By her 20s, she made it to both Broadway and vaudeville. But it wasn’t until her early 40s when she transitioned to silent film, co-starring with Mabel Normand and a fresh-faced Charlie Chaplin in Mack Sennett’s Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914). The “Tillie” character continued to be a crowd-pleaser in more features.

Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler in Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914).

After several comebacks following deep struggles in her career over the years, Dressler finally found huge success in motion pictures. By the early 1930s and with the transition to sound, she had reached a peak of popularity at a mature age. She was nominated and won an Oscar for her performance as an Actress in a Leading Role in Min and Bill (1931). The following year, she was nominated again in the same category for her role on Emma (1932).

Movie Poster for Min and Bill (1930) starring Marie Dressler.

Movie Poster for Emma (1932) starring Marie Dressler.

In PreCode classics like George Cukor’s Dinner at Eight (1933), magnetic stars like Jean Harlow lit up the screen with her beauty and charisma. But it was the extremely popular Marie Dressler whose name appeared at the very top of the credits. Her career and fame were on fire when cancer took her life at age 65 on July 28th, 1934.

Jean Harlow & Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight (1933).

In the coming months, Marie Dressler’s hometown of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada will honor their most famous funny lady’s 150th birthday with a series of events. Recently I caught up with Rick Miller, President, and Chair of the Marie Dressler Foundation (https://www.mariedressler.ca/index.php), and here’s what he shared:

Kellee Pratt: Rick, how did you first become associated with the Marie Dressler Foundation and Museum?
Rick Miller: “When I moved to Cobourg, Ontario in 2011, I discovered the annual ‘Vintage Film Festival’ which was run by volunteers of Marie Dressler Foundation. I was curious as to the connection between the Festival and Marie Dressler, so I started to research the history. At that time, there was no Museum but instead, there was a ‘memorabilia room’ in Marie’s honor. I joined the Foundation as a volunteer and in 2013 I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Foundation and was appointed President & Chair.”

Rick Miller, President & Chair of the Marie Dressler Foundation and Museum.

KP: When and how did you become a fan of Marie Dressler? Were you a classic film fan first?
RM: “I was first and foremost a film fan, not initially a classic or vintage film fan. I was a big fan of the Disney animation classics, which I watched over and over again with my young (at the time) daughter. I didn’t have access to TCM and therefore had limited knowledge and access to early films. When I assumed my role in the Foundation, I made it my mission to learn everything I could about Marie. This included reading several biographies about Marie and her own two autobiographies, watching every movie with Marie that was available, and digging into the Foundation’s extensive archive materials.”

KP: What is it about Dressler that holds such an appeal for audiences back then? Do you think her appeal would hold true for audiences today?
RM: “Marie was the top box-office draw for both 1932 and 1933. It wasn’t because of her age or looks. I believe it was her personality – she was well loved by fellow actors and fans alike. Initially, Marie became popular through her comedic roles in “Dangerous Females” and “Reducing”. Her popularity peaked during the Great Depression because her audiences could identify with Marie as the empathetic loving mother figure. This warmth was evident in her roles in Min and Bill, Tugboat Annie, Emma and Prosperity.

Today’s audiences would appreciate Marie’s talent as she could play a diverse number of roles.”

KP: Being such an ardent fan, undoubtedly you have become, in a sense, close to Ms. Dressler over the years. Please tell us- is there anything about her that the typical classic film fan may be surprised or delighted to discover?
RM: “After Marie’s theatre career ended in the mid-20’s, Marie operated a hotdog stand at the tail-end of Coney Island. She was proud that she could make a living outside of the theatre. Soon thereafter, scenario writer Frances Marion learned of her fate and arranged to write in a small part for Marie in Anna Christie, which became Marie’s comeback role, this time in the movies.

Fans may be surprised to learn that Marie suffered from stage fright for her entire career.”

A peek inside the Marie Dressler Museum in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada.

KP: This year marks the 150th birthday of Marie Dressler, tell us about the many events going on between September and November in celebration.

RM: “In addition to the Marie Dressler Museum which focuses on the life and achievements of Marie, we have created a program of community events which we have named ‘Celebrate Marie Dressler 150’.

Firstly, we have created an Exhibition entitled ‘Cobourg’s Sweetheart: Celebrating Marie Dressler’ which will run from September 8 until November 10 here in Cobourg. The Exhibition features video interviews of community members with their stories, the history of Marie’s birthplace home, how American and international film fans popularized Cobourg, and how the community has stayed connected with Marie over the past 90 years. During the exhibition, there will be three presentations by local experts on the topics of ‘Art & Cinema’, ‘Music & Cinema’, and ‘Stage & Cinema’ during the early 1930’s.

On September 14, the Foundation is presenting ‘Women and Hollywood’ featuring documentary filmmaker, author, and film scholar Cari Beauchamp. Cari will talk about the powerful roles of women in front of and behind the camera in early Hollywood and the importance of communities of women then and now. Cari will be joined by Matthew Kennedy author of ‘Marie Dressler: A Biography’ who will talk about Marie’s role as a social activist. Both authors will sign copies of their books at the event.

On September 29th, the Foundation will host Dinner At Eight, a 1933’s themed birthday party celebration for Marie. The evening has been designed after the November 9, 1933, giant Hollywood birthday party for Marie during the depths of the Depression. The party was hosted by Lois B. Mayer with a special radio link to Cobourg, during which Mayer gave a shout-out to Cobourg residents listening in. I will send you under separate cover, a scan of the Cobourg Sentinel-Star newspaper article on November 9, 1933, announcing the birthday party.

This year’s celebration will include a 1930’s themed menu (not rations) along with big band and jazz music performed by an orchestra over dinner, Cobourg’s biggest birthday cake, a showing of Marie’s penultimate movie, Dinner At Eight, and some special surprises.

Finally, on Marie’s birthday, November 9, Cobourg will celebrate ‘Marie Dressler 150 Celebration Day’ in front of Cobourg’s national heritage building, Victoria Hall. There will be speeches, music, food and other giveaways to attendees. Downtown Cobourg is featuring ‘Celebrate Marie Dressler 150’ banners along the street.

Some trivia: Victoria Hall was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (who also shared Marie’s birthday of November 9 and would later become King Edward VII) on September 6, 1860. In 1907 Marie met the King in London and remarked how he, as an 18-year-old Prince of Wales, had opened a building in her hometown of Cobourg, Canada.”

KP: If someone is a huge Marie Dressler fan or a big classic film fan who yearns to discover a deeper appreciation for her, what’s the best way to make the most of a visit to MD’s hometown this Fall?
RM: “A good start would be to visit Marie Dressler Museum. The museum which opened in September 2016 in Marie’s birthplace, is one of the newest interactive heritage museums in the country and features a year-round exhibition called ‘From Cobourg to Hollywood: The Story of Marie Dressler’. Admission is free, and donations are welcomed.

The two-month long exhibition ‘Cobourg’s Sweetheart: Celebrating Marie Dressler’ will focus on the community’s love affair with Marie. [Again,] Admission is free, and donations are welcomed.

“Cobourg’s Sweetheart: Celebrating Marie Dressler” will run from September 8 until November 10 in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada.

The 26th Annual Vintage Film Festival, held October 12, 13, 14 will feature three Marie Dressler films, namely The Patsy, Anna Christie and Politics along with many other interesting films. Program details and tickets are available at www.vintagefilmfestival.ca

Of course, depending on the timing of the visit, the ‘Celebrate Marie Dressler 150’ community events previously mentioned will also have a strong connection to Marie Dressler. Finally, Cobourg is a lovely little town with a population of around 18,000 which has one of the nicest beaches (on Lake Ontario) in the country.”

Marie Dressler’s 150th Birthday Celebration.

KP: Being the birthplace of Marie Dressler, it’s apparent Cobourg takes the responsibility of honoring her legacy in earnest. Other than the unfortunate fire in the late 80s, I was impressed to read her birth home has essentially served well in honoring her connection to it over the years. Did she ever return to visit her hometown after chasing the bright lights of showbiz at the young age of 14?
RM: “There is no record of Marie returning to Cobourg after she left. Her family had long since moved out of Cobourg and she did not have any relatives living in the area. The Toronto Star newspaper reports that Marie performed in a theatrical production of Tillie’s Nightmare in 1912 in Toronto and performed again in 1913.”

Marie Dressler, Sally O’Neil and Gertrude Olmstead in The Callahans and the Murphys (1927).

KP: Due to the timing of her lifetime, in conjunction with her bumpy journey of showbiz from stage to silents, to talkies, Dressler was middle-aged by the time she hit stardom. She received her first Oscar nomination, which she won, shortly after her 63rd birthday. Would you say she’d make a good role model for actresses today, of any age, to keep hopeful?
RM: “Marie is a good role model for women (not just actresses).
During World War I, Marie was one of the leading fundraisers for the Liberty Bonds, tirelessly traveling from town to town to speak at rallies which would often attract 5,000 or more 1925 attendees. She was a social activist, supporting the cause of those less fortunate than herself. In the 1919 Actors’ Equity Strike, Marie as a former chorus girl and now the highest paid performer on Broadway supported the cause of the chorus girls. The outcome was the loss of her career on Broadway when theatre owners banned her from performing on Broadway. In the mid-1920’s Marie was very active with women’s groups in New York, performing at various fundraising events. Her role in ‘politics’ exemplifies Marie’s own philosophy.

From a career point of view, Marie is an inspiration. She came from a modest background, ran away from home at age 14 (she must have been extremely brave) to make a career in theatre, silent movies, and talking movies in a career spanning more than 40 years. She had her share of career and personal setbacks, losing her fortune more than once, but she always had the spirit not to give up. Louis B. Mayer once called her ‘the most adored person ever to set foot in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio’.

Finally, Marie was ahead of her time with respect to championing the right of women to self-esteem. In her 1934 autobiography, My Own Story, she said:

“To this day, I contend that every woman has the right to feel beautiful, no matter how scrambled her features or how indifferent her figure. She needs this inward assurance to give her serenity, poise, and power. It is her birthright. To all women between the ages of eight and eighty, who want to grow in beauty, here is my advice: Forget what your looking glass tells you, but say to yourself a dozen times a day ‘I am beloved’. No woman who actually believes that she is precious in the eyes of another can be entirely without charm.”

KP: Dressler is also an example of a lady who never gave up. I read that she was very down on her luck, financially and career-wise, more than once, when folks like Frances Marion, George W Hill, Irving Thalberg, gave her comeback-from-the-brink opportunities that led to her mega-stardom. She certainly is an inspiration for hard-work, patience, and persistence, would you agree?
RM: “Yes, even when she was down on her luck, she was optimistic. She once said, while operating her Coney Island hot dog stand, ‘No job is ever menial. Just doing any little job well makes it a big job’.”

KP: If Marie Dressler were alive today, what priceless gem of wisdom do you think she’d give us in this oft-chaotic and whacky world of modern day?
RM: “I really like Marie’s quote, ‘Only a few things are really important’.”

KP: Finally, what hopes and dreams do you wish for the future of the museum and/or the film festival?
RM: “Marie Dressler was an unlikely star. The Foundation’s mission is to attract visitors to Cobourg to discover Marie Dressler. The Museum’s role is to present a compelling view of Marie’s life story and achievements and inspire others.

Every year since its inception in 1990, the Foundation presents bursaries to graduating secondary school students who are pursuing further studies in the performing arts. This year we presented four bursaries, each in the amount of $1,500. This is made possible by the generosity of our volunteers, donors, sponsors, and patrons of our annual Vintage Film Festival and other fundraising events. We would like to continue and grow this program over the coming years. The annual Vintage Film Festival presents a program of films over three days that span the earliest days of filmmaking to about 1960. We hope to inspire younger generations of movie fans to learn about and enjoy the treasures of early films.

We also present RearView DocFest, which is an annual festival of documentary films that are timeless and topical. Now entering its third year, we are seeing a real interest here, as well.

Finally, working with other organizations and film festivals, we aim to continue to champion Canadian-born Marie Dressler as one of the treasures of early Hollywood. We hope, with your support in writing this article, that we will attract a growing number of American visitors (including yourself) to Cobourg to discover Marie.”

If you’re interested in exploring more of Marie Dressler’s charming talents and universal appeal, this is your golden opportunity. Treat yourself with an in-depth discovery via a road trip to this quaint, little town in Ontario. Rick – and Marie- welcome you to join them!

Marie Dressler in Chasing Rainbows (1930).

…

–Kellee Pratt for Classic Movie Hub

When not performing marketing and social media as her day gig, Kellee Pratt writes for her own classic film blog, Outspoken & Freckled (kelleepratt.com). Kellee teaches classic film courses in her college town in Kansas (Screwball Comedy this Fall). Unapologetic social butterfly, she’s an active tweetaholic/original alum for #TCMParty, member of the CMBA, Social Producer for TCM (2015, 2016), and busy mom of four kids and 3 fur babies. You can follow Kellee on twitter at @IrishJayHawk66.

Posted in Interviews, Posts by Kellee Pratt, The Funny Papers | Tagged Marie Dressler | 4 Comments

Western Roundup: Snowy Westerns and Day of the Outlaw

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Laura Grieve

Western Roundup: Snowy Westerns and Day of the Outlaw

Within the Western genre, there are some frequently recurring themes, including range wars, cattle drives, wagon trains, town takeovers, and travelers banding together against a common enemy. While some viewers might find the familiar ideas repetitive, for me there is great pleasure in seeing each Western film’s unique spin on a story.

A theme which doesn’t show up quite as frequently as others but which I find quite enjoyable is what I like to call the “snowy Western.” In these films, the winter weather provides a striking backdrop, and frequently the setting also serves as a key plot device.

One such wintry Western is 20th Century-Fox’s The Secret of Convict Lake (1951), in which prisoners who escaped from a Carson City jail seek refuge from a blizzard in a small Sierras settlement where the men happen to be away. Glenn Ford, having fallen in love with Gene Tierney (what man wouldn’t?!), stands up to his fellow outlaws; by the time the storm fades and a posse arrives, Ford and the settlers have handled the outlaws in their own way.

The Wild North (1952) is another snowy Western, which also fits into what I think of as the “Northerner” subgenre, with a Canadian setting! Mountie Wendell Corey is charged with bringing in a trapper (Stewart Granger) to face a murder charge, but in the end, the trapper saves the Mountie’s life as they battle the harsh winter elements for survival.

Stewart Granger, Wendell Corey and Cyd Charisse in The Wild North (1952).

At a screening I attended of William Wellman‘s Track of the Cat (1954), his son William Wellman Jr. described the film as “offbeat” and “a black and white movie shot in color.” That’s a wonderful summation of a wintry film about a dysfunctional family, which features Robert Mitchum riding through the snow in order to hunt down the big cat which killed his brother. The contrast of the few colors seen in the film against the blinding white backdrop of the snow is one of the film’s most memorable aspects.

A Movie Poster for Track of the Cat (1954) starring Robert Mitchum.

The Far Country (1954) is one of my favorite James Stewart Westerns directed by Anthony Mann. While not as wintry as the previously mentioned movies, there are great shots of Stewart and cast riding through the snow in “Alaska” — actually Jasper National Park in Canada — as well as gorgeous snow-covered mountains. With snowdrifts in the background, it seems genuinely cold throughout much of the movie, making one long for some of costar Walter Brennan‘s beloved coffee. The first time I saw the film I remember thinking one could almost feel and smell what it must have been like standing right there as the cameras rolled.

Ruth Roman, Steve Brodie, and James Stewart in The Far Country (1955).

And who can forget the shocking final shot of Robert Taylor in the snow in The Last Hunt (1956)?

An excellent modern spin on the snowy Western is Wind River (2017), replacing the traditional sheriff and deputy with an FBI agent (a woman, in fact, played by Elizabeth Olsen) and a Fish and Game employee (Jeremy Renner). Though it’s more gritty in terms of depicting violence, Wind River fits right in the tradition of these earlier films and is highly recommended for classic film fans.

I’ve just watched yet another winter Western for the very first time, Day of the Outlaw (1959), and will share my impressions of this memorable film below at greater length.

Day of the Outlaw was directed by Andre De Toth, who had previously directed a number of good Randolph Scott Westerns and a particularly fine Joel McCrea Western, Ramrod (1947). The script for Day of the Outlaw was written by Phillip Yordan, based on a novel by Lee E. Wells.

The cold winter weather is front and center from the movie’s very first scene, as rancher Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) and his loyal employee Dan (Nehemiah Persoff) arrive in the small settlement of Bitters.

“I don’t think you want to kill me”

Starrett is intent on killing farmer Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) for fencing off his land, but the honest truth is that Starrett would like to make a widow of Crane’s wife Helen (Tina Louise of Gilligan’s Island), with whom he once had an affair.

A showdown between Starrett and Crane is immediately looming when suddenly Captain Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives) and his outlaw gang arrive in town, loaded with stolen money and seeking refuge from their hard, wintry ride with the cavalry in pursuit.

Bruhn promises the townspeople that his men won’t drink, harm the womenfolk, or shoot up the town but his control over his men is only good as long as he’s alive. The town veterinarian (Dabbs Greer) is coerced into removing a bullet from Captain Bruhn’s chest, after which the vet warns the townspeople that Bruhn may not have much time left to live.

Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) on Horseback in Day of the Outlaw (1959).

Bruhn’s restless men (including Jack Lambert, Lance Fuller, and Frank DeKova) insist on dancing with the town’s ladies. Gene, the youngest of the gang (David Nelson), takes a shine to young Ernine (Venetia Stevenson) and is considerate of her and her family, but things start to turn ugly with the other men, who are on the verge of bursting out of control.

Starrett has been changed by the experience and realizes he doesn’t want to be a killer like Bruhn’s men. He devises a plan to protect the townspeople by leading the gang out into the mountains, but it may be a trip with no return.

Day of the Outlaw is a movie to watch wrapped in a warm blanket, even in August, as everyone in the film looks genuinely, constantly cold, even when bundled up against the weather. According to IMDb, the movie was filmed in Oregon and around Flagstaff in Northern Arizona, and the snow-white locations, as filmed by Russell Harlan, are stunning.

The final sequence of the men trudging through deep snow is visually breathtaking, especially in moments where the sun unexpectedly shines through the trees; it’s especially difficult to watch the poor struggling horses! As hoped by Starrett, the weather gradually takes its toll on the gang, as one by one they collapse, freeze, or fight over the remaining horses.

“I’m not doing anything special, just taking some bad men out of a good town”.

The story, with an outlaw gang led by a father figure taking control of a large group of upright citizens, reminded me a bit of John Ford‘s Wagon Master (1950), but what makes Day of the Outlaw different is the way the farmers and ranchers are forced to unite to face a common threat, illustrating the old adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Ryan’s gradual transformation from villain to hero is another especially interesting element. He looks a bit worn here, but it works in terms of his portrayal of a character struggling to carve out a living in a remote area. He might seem a mismatch for the much younger Louise, but Ryan is nothing if not powerfully charismatic, and their relationship is also in keeping with the story, in which there are very few adults in town; with only three women there in addition to Helen, that greatly limits potential relationships.

David Nelson’s Gene, whom Bruhn treats somewhat like a son, is out of step with the rest of the group, raising all sorts of questions as to how he became mixed up with them in the first place. It’s rather interesting to note that the very same year David appeared in this film, his brother Rick was holding off the bad guys in a little Western town alongside John Wayne, in Howard Hawks‘ classic Rio Bravo (1959). The Nelson boys picked their Western roles well.

Venetia Stevenson, like Nelson, was from a show business family; her parents were actress Anna Lee (who appeared in John Ford’s Fort Apache) and director Robert Stevenson. Stevenson is effective as a lonely girl attracted to a handsome young man, in a town with few romantic options; unfortunately, her desire to protect Gene from what seems certain death almost undoes Starrett’s valiant plan. For that matter, her concern for her little brother (Mike McGreevey) also leads to trouble. A case of good intentions not working out so well!

Ives made this film the year after his Oscar-winning supporting role in William Wyler‘s classic The Big Country (1958). It’s a quieter part, but he’s equally powerful in both films as an outlaw with something of a conscience, who will take necessary steps if someone younger crosses a line. In the end, he is rather valiant, taking responsibility for protecting the town from his men by following Starrett, knowing full well the most likely outcome of the journey.

Look for Helen Westcott in a minor role as one of the town’s quartet of women. Westcott’s best-known role was probably as Gregory Peck‘s estranged wife in The Gunfighter (1950). Circling back to the beginning of this article, it also just so happens that she was in The Secret of Convict Lake.

I very much enjoyed my first viewing of Day of the Outlaw and recommend it, along with the other films mentioned above. Stay warm, everyone!

…

– Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub

Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.

Posted in Posts by Laura Grieve, Western RoundUp | Tagged western movies | 26 Comments

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Scout and Jem

Posted on August 27, 2018 by Annmarie Gatti

The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Scout & Jem
Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

Another Big Thank You to author Tom Santopietro for hand-picking another excerpt for us – this time about the casting of Scout and Jem – from his book “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”. This is the second in our two-part series on the filming of To Kill a Mockingbird, courtesy of Tom. If you’d like to read the first excerpt, about the casting of Atticus Finch, click here.

Boatwright [an aspiring agent from Reidsville, North Carolina] had never cast even the smallest off-Broadway play, but after meeting with Pakula [producer] – “a most remarkable man”- for three hours, she succeeded in charming and cajoling her way onto the production as director of child casting. She next met with Bob Mulligan [director], who signed off on Boatwright’s participation but strongly admonished her: “I want children- no show biz professionals! “

Armed with energy, savvy, and Mulligan’s dictum ringing in her ears, Boatwright soon waded through hundreds of interviews. She began in New York, but soon realized that the northern boys and girls “didn’t have the rhythm, the poetry of growing up southern – it never would have worked.” Southward she headed, interviewing Shirley Temple wannabes in Richmond, Winston-Salem, Charlotte, Nashville, Dallas, and Atlanta. None were right but one thing remained constant: “The mothers were just as pushy in the south as they were in the heart of Manhattan.”

Her style was intimate, sitting close to the youngsters, talking to them, and asking them to read: “I tried to make them feel comfortable. I served ginger ale and cookies. I met some real characters; one of the little boys eating a cookie said “This tastes like my foot when it goes to sleep…” Some of the children wanted to audition, while others were present only because they had been forced by their parents, but the lines of potential Scouts and Jems seemed to grow by the day, with no end in sight. Feeling burned out, and no closer to casting the roles, she called Pakula to moan: “Alan? I don’t think I can talk to anyone who’s under thirty ever again… I’m locked in my hotel room. I haven’t been able to leave it for twenty-four hours because of the crowds of mothers and children just sitting waiting for me in that lobby downstairs- I saw over a hundred children today… and they all began to look alike.”

An exhausted Boatwright was no closer to casting either Scout or Jem when in walked nine year old Mary Badham, clad in jeans, a striped t-shirt and sporting, in Boatwright’s words, “a gamine haircut.” Badham had arrived at the auditions courtesy of Boatwright’s good friend Genie Watt-Stokes, with whom Boatwright was staying during her sojourn in Birmingham. It was Genie who told Boatwright that little Mary Badham might be worth an audition, and when the youngster walked into the room, an exhausted Boatwright slowly looked up and thought: “Hmmm… definitely not a Shirley Temple clone.”

Smiling but nonchalant, Mary thought this acting business sounded like fun but was not particularly concerned about winning the role. It was her mother, the proper Mrs. Henry L. Badham, who seemed most interested in the idea. Having done some acting in her native England, most notably a radio version of George Bernard Shaw’s St. Joan, she liked the idea of Mary following in her footsteps, but Mary’s audition almost never happened, because Henry Badham, a retired Air Force general, had no interest in a possible acting career for his daughter. In his blunt statement to Boatwright: “We don’t think nice people work in show business.”

In the baroque world of personal southern geography, however- a world so interconnected that on a flight from New Orleans to Birmingham, Alan Pakula told the social, friendly Boatwright “If you speak to even one person you know on this plane I’m going to kill myself!”- it turned out that a cousin of Boatwright’s mother was related to the Badham family. This fact, combined with a push from Mary’s brother John, finally convinced Henry Badham to acquiesce to the audition. In the words of Mary’s mother: “What could be the possible harm?… Henry dear- what are the chances the child will get the part?”

Aside from playing dress-up and putting on skits for her parents, Mary had never acted, and she prepared nothing to read for Boatwright. In later years she did vaguely remember “something about chopping some wood”- – but what caught Boatwright’s immediate attention was the youngster’s forthright personality:

“How old are you?”

“Nine”

“You look younger and smaller than nine.”

“Well, if you drank as much buttermilk and smoked as many cornsilks as I did you might be smaller too.”

Chatting with the youngster about her life- southern to the bone, Badham, in Boatwright’s recall, “pronounced ‘nine’ in two syllables”- the casting director was even more delighted to learn that Badham possessed a die hard Scout-like desire to always tag along after her brothers, insisting on taking part in every last one of their games. She even had two Calpurnias in her life in the figures of Beddie Harris and Frankie McCall. Nonchalant, winning, and resolutely non show-biz, Badham charmed Boatwright, who concluded the interview, ran to the phone, dialed Pakula and excitedly told him : “I found Scout!” (One of Badham’s classmates, Elizabeth “Bimi” Woodward was also in the running for the role; evidently the loss grated, as she told their mutual classmates that the director and producer really preferred her for the role of Scout, but that her mother “had nixed acting as ‘tacky.’”)

Making her red letter day even better, Boatwright found her ideal Jem that very same afternoon when Philip Alford, a thirteen year old eighth grader, walked in for his audition. With a boy next door affect and, in Boatwright’s words, “an angel face”, Alford projected a polite but rather indifferent attitude towards the idea of acting in a movie. The son of a bricklayer foreman, Alford had actually appeared in amateur theatre productions of The King and I and The Man Who Came to Dinner, but when it came to acting he could take it or leave it. He was more interested in sports than acting, explaining that he wanted to be Tarzan- not Johnny Weissmuller. As it was, when the same James Hatcher who had told Mary Badham’s mother about the auditions called Philip’s mother and suggested that Philip audition as well, Philip turned the invitation down- until he learned it would allow him to skip half a day of school.

Alford, it turned out, lived a mere three streets away from Badham, and although the two youngsters did not know each other, the combination of his looks, nonchalant boy next door persona, and southern working class background (he lived in Birmingham but spent summers at his grandmother’s house in the Maycomb-like small town of Piedmont, Alabama) heightened Boatwright’s interest. Even more to the point, it was immediately evident to the casting director that Alford possessed genuine acting talent. Alford met with Boatwright for no more than five minutes, returned home, and promptly forgot about the audition.

Every day life resumed until three weeks later, when Alford was asked to come to New York for a screen test. Heading north on the train because his mother was afraid of flying, Philip stayed in Manhattan for three days while meeting with Mulligan and Pakula. Badham flew north at the same time with her own mother, and the two children were paired together for their screen tests. Mulligan was immediately struck by the fact that they looked like brother and sister, and the discrepancy in their sizes felt just right: Alford was four feet eight inches and seventy-six pounds, small enough to pass as “Jem”, but big enough to lord it over Scout and Dill.

Mulligan, in fact, did not ask either youngster to read from the Mockingbird script. Instead, he put them before the camera and asked them questions about their lives, the better to gauge how natural they appeared on camera. Did they each came across as genuine children, or as jaded seen-it-all- veterans from a road company of Gypsy? The verdict: both Mary and Philip read onscreen as utterly natural. Said Mulligan: “They both had a quality I was looking for. They were bright. They were alive. They both seemed to have active imaginations.” Mulligan purposely kept it all low key- no hangers on, no studio executives: “The only one they had to deal with was me. I made it as much play as I could.”

It all passed pleasantly, if vaguely, and Mary and Philip returned to Birmingham, happy with their New York adventures. Both youngsters may have assumed they were about to resume their normal routines, but Robert Mulligan now had other plans in mind. After their informal but carefully calculated screentests, he felt absolutely certain that he had found his youthful leads, two unstudied, natural sounding, southerners who would react to the filming just like regular children- as an adventure. Calls were placed- by this time Mary’s mother had overcome her husband’s objections- and Mary Badham of Birmingham, Alabama was officially and enthusiastically on board to play Scout. At which point, on New Year’s Eve of 1961, the phone rang in the Alford residence and Philip’s father was asked to have Philip in Los Angeles by early February for the start of filming. The role of Jem was officially Philip’s.

In the end, after traveling thousands of miles and conducting hundreds of interviews, Boatwright had found her Scout and Jem on the same day, in the same town. Two youngsters who lived a mere three blocks from each other had been chosen from nearly two thousand applicants spread across seven southern states. In Boatwright’s view: “It was just miraculous- serendipity.”

…..

Hope you enjoyed this excerpt! And, if you liked this one, please check out the excerpt from author Tom about the casting of Atticus Finch here.

–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub

Here’s a short trailer about the book, narrated by author Tom Santopietro.

And, for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to win our contest, you can order the book on amazon by clicking the link below:

Posted in Books, Posts by Annmarie Gatti | Tagged Mary Badham, philip alford, the casting of scout and jem, To Kill a Mockingbird, Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters | 1 Comment

Musical Interlude: The Singing Voices Behind the Stars

Posted on August 24, 2018 by Jessica Pickens

The Singing Voices Behind the Stars

Lucy Ricardo always tried to get in on Ricky’s act, despite her less than pleasant singing voice on the show I Love Lucy. Lucy would sing in a shouting, off-key manner. And when I was a little girl, my grandmother would tell me that Lucille Ball really could sing and star in musicals in the 1940s.

Fast-forward to years later when I watched Du Barry was a Lady (1944), and the film begins with Lucille Ball singing. I looked up the film and saw that Ball wasn’t singing at all and was dubbed by Martha Mears. I had been living a lie all of those years!
Today in musicals, Hollywood wouldn’t dream of dubbing the singing voice of a star. Can you imagine the backlash on social media when audiences found that out?
But from early movie musicals of the 1930s (Joan Blondell in Gold Diggers of 1933) to films released in the 1980s (Margaret Avery in The Color Purple), dubbing singing voices was common practice.

By definition, “dubbing” is when a film studio replaced the singing voice of an actor with another person’s singing voice. This was either because the actor could not sing, but they needed their star power or dancing prowess for the musical. For example, stars considered to be musical stars like Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Vera-Ellen or Virginia Mayo couldn’t sing, but they all fit the bill in the dancing department.

Other times, a star may only be partially dubbed or dubbed in individual songs or films. Joan Leslie was dubbed in several movies by Sally Sweetland but did her own singing in others. Rita Moreno is known as a singer but was dubbed in the song “A Boy Like That” by Betty Wand in West Side Story (1961), because it was out of her vocal range.
Many audience members never realized that their favorite stars like Rita Hayworth didn’t sing (case in point, my grandmother), even though the speaking voices and singing voices often didn’t match.

When dubbing singing vocals, Marni Nixon is often noted. With approximately 20 film credits to her name, Nixon dubbed stars in many big-budget end-of-the-musical-era films, such as Deborah Kerr in The King and I (1956), Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961) and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964).

Nixon’s 2016 New York Times obituary called her, “American cinema’s most unsung singer,” which I admit I take issue with. On the contrary, Nixon has been celebrated in recent years because she fought for recognition and is the most well-known dubber. The unsung singers are the vocal dubbers that came before Nixon in the 1930s and 1960s, singing the notes that came out of the mouths of stars and often didn’t get credit.
I wanted to highlight a few of the other film dubbers, like Mears, who sang for Hollywood’s top stars that you may not be as familiar with as Nixon. You hear their voices, here are their stories:

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Martha Mears’ Film Dub career consisted of singing for popular Hollywood stars like: Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake and Marjorie Reynolds.

Martha Mears: 38 film credits — The vocal dubber who dubbed more actresses and films than anyone else was a singer, Martha Mears. From 1938 to 1951, Mears provided the singing voice to any actress of the golden era you can think of: Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, Loretta Young, Marjorie Reynolds, Audrey Totter, and Maria Montez. Mears was unique compared to most dubbers, as she was able to change her voice to match different characters and actresses. Mears sang “White Christmas” for Marjorie Reynolds in Holiday Inn (1942) which topped the Hit Parade and won an Academy Award. Outside of films, Mears was a popular radio singer and signed a contract with NBC in 1934, singing on several radio programs and also on Armed Forces Radio during World War II. Servicemen voted Mears, along with Ginny Simms, as their favorite girl singers during the war. Mears’ last film credit was Half Angel (1951) for Loretta Young. Mears died in 1986.

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TIME Magazine called film dubber Marni Nixon “The Ghostess with the Mostest.”

Marni Nixon: 20 film credits — Marni Nixon is most notable for the large budget films, mentioned above. She acted and sang in films as early as 1942 at age 12, with a role in the movie The Bashful Bachelor (1942). Nixon was a trained singer, and at age 17, she was the vocal soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Leopold Stokowski. To make money for her own lessons, she taught singing lessons to actresses at MGM, and her first dub job was Margaret O’Brien in The Secret Garden (1949). She dubbed actresses like Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Marilyn Monroe through 1964. She finally sang on screen as a nun in Sound of Music (1965). Like most film dubbers of this era, Nixon was uncredited for her roles, so TIME magazine called her “The Ghostess with the Mostest.” Nixon also performed in musicals on stage and performed until a few years before her death, according to her obituary. She also taught at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, where she founded the vocal department. Nixon died in 2016.

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Bonnie Lou Williams, with over 17 folm credits, dubbed both Virginia Mayo and June Haver in multiple films.

Bonnie Lou Williams: 17 film credits — Bonnie Lou Williams dubbed Virginia Mayo more than any other singer, including during her early-1950s Warner Brothers musicals like She’s Working Her Way Through College (1952) and She’s Back on Broadway (1953). Before dubbing, she was Tommy Dorsey’s singer from 1944 to 1945 and performed with Bing Crosby in 1946. Williams also performed for June Haver in several films, including Look for the Silver Lining (1949). After retiring from films, Williams worked at a company that programmed airline music, and she died in 1986.

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Betty Wand’s Film Dub credits include: Adventures in Baltimore, West Side Story, Easy to Love and Pagan Love Story.

Betty Wand: 15 film credits — Betty Wand’s career started with singing with bands in the 1940s, including Xavier Cugat. Wand’s first dubbing job was for teen Shirley Temple in Adventure in Baltimore (1949) and her last film was for Rita Moreno in West Side Story. Wand also dubbed Esther Williams (Easy to Love (1953), Pagan Love Song (1950)), Leslie Caron (Gigi (1958)), Sophia Loren (Heller in Pink Tights (1960)), Shelley Winters (Poseidon Adventure (1972)), and Kay Kendall (Les Girls (1957)). In the 1990s, Wand wrote a book on how to stay young.

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Film Dubber Bill Lee is credited with lending his voice to movies such as Sound of Music, South Pacific, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book.

Bill Lee: 13 film credits — Bill Lee sang for some of Hollywood’s actors including Christopher Plummer in Sound of Music (1965) and John Kerr in South Pacific (1958). He also had a career with Walt Disney Studios. He began as a baritone with Disney’s Mellomen, a singing quartet and also sang in some Disney films, like Peter Pan (1953), 101 Dalmatians (1961) and The Jungle Book (1967). Lee died in 1980.

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Film Dubber Jo Ann Greer’s voice was so similar to Rita Hayworth that she was used in several of Hayworth’s singing scenes.

Jo Ann Greer: 12 film credits — Jo Ann Greer dubbed films in the early to late 1950s, including Rita Hayworth later in her career in Affair in Trinidad (1952) and Pal Joey (1957). Greer was selected for Hayworth because they had similar speaking voices. Before film dubbing, Greer was married to bandleader Freddie Slack and sang with Les Brown and Ray Anthony’s big bands. In films, Greer also dubbed Esther Williams, Kim Novak, Susan Kohner, June Allyson and Gloria Grahame. During her singing career with big bands and for films, Greer never got credit for her singing or her own singing album during her lifetime. In 1991, Greer teamed up with fellow film dubbers India Adams and Annette Warren for the cabaret show “Voices.”

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Sally Sweetland’s soprano voice can he heard in almost a dozen films inlcluding Yankee Doodle Dandy and Rhapsody in Blue.

Sally Sweetland: 10 film credits — Sally Sweetland is best known for dubbing Joan Leslie, such as in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Leslie sometimes also did her own singing. Sweetland also sang for Joan Fontaine, Martha Vickers, and Brenda Marshall. Outside of films, she performed on “The Perry Como Show” and “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and had a song chart in the top 100 when she performed “I’m Walking Behind You” with Eddie Fisher. Sweetland died in 2015 at age 103.

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Before starting her career as a film dubber, Trudy Erwin regularly performed on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall.

Trudy Erwin: 10 film credits —Trudy Erwin performed with various bands before starting in Hollywood. She sang with the Music Maids on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall, and then with Kay Kyser’s band. As one of Kyser’s band member, she appeared in the films My Favorite Spy (1951) and Hollywood Canteen (1944). Erwin dubbed Lana Turner and Lucille Bremer twice. She also dubbed Linda Darnell, Lucille Ball, Ruth Roman and Betty Field. Erwin died in 2000.

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Louanne Hogan, a film dubber for various movies, also lent her voice to the singing group “Pied Pipers.”

Louanne Hogan: 9 film credits — Louanne Hogan performed as a singer with various big bands including Tommy Dorsey and Harry James, and she sang with the Pied Pipers. In Hollywood, Hogan is best known for dubbing Jeanne Crain in State Fair (1962), Apartment for Peggy (1948), Centennial Summer (1946) and Margie (1940). Hogan retired from singing in 1958 after dubbing Sophia Loren’s humming in Desire Under the Elms (1958). Hogan died in 2006.

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Film dubber Anita Ellis’ credits include The Loves of Carmen, The Lady From Shanghai and Down to Earth.

Anita Ellis: 8 film credits — Ellis is the fourth singer who regularly dubbed Rita Hayworth (Mears, Greer, Nan Wynn) and is the performer who sang “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda (1946). Ellis also sang for Hayworth in The Loves of Carmen (1948), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), and Down to Earth (1947). Others Ellis dubbed included, Vera-Ellen and Marie Windsor. Before film dubbing, Ellis was a singer on the radio for WLW Cincinnati and appeared on radio shows, like “The New Jack Carson Show.” In the late-1950s, Ellis signed with Epic Records and released jazz records. She retired in 1987 and still lives in Manhattan.

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Film Dubber Carol Richards was featured on an episode of I Love Lucy called “The Indian Show.”

Carol Richards: 6 film credits — Singer Carol Richards signed with Decca Records in 1949 and recorded songs with Bing Crosby, such as “Silver Bells” and “Sunshine Cake.” Richards most notably dubbed Cyd Charisse in films, including Brigadoon (1954), Silk Stockings (1957) and It’s Always Fair Weather (1955). She also dubbed Vera-Ellen in Call Me Madam (1953). Richards had a lawsuit with Decca after recording a song for “The Robe,” because she only authorized the use of the song in the film and not for sale on a record. Carol Richards was seen on TV on the episode of I Love Lucy, called “The Indian Show,” where Richards sings in Ricky’s Indian show at the club, and Lucy tricks her way into taking her place. Richards retired in 1966 and passed away in 2007.

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Trudy Stevens: 4 film credits —Trudy Stevens didn’t dub for many films, but notably she dubbed Vera-Ellen in White Christmas (1954) and Kim Novak in Pal Joey (1957). Stevens also dubbed Lizabeth Scott twice.

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This isn’t a complete list of the film dubbers, but a highlight of some of the most notable. The film credit numbers are thanks to this massive research on this film dubbing website. This is the most comprehensive dubbing list, as IMDB does not credit all of the film credits for dubbers.

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– Jessica Pickens for Classic Movie Hub

Jessica can be found at cometoverhollywood.com and on twitter at @HollywoodComet. In addition to her overall love of classic movies, she has ongoing series on her site including “Watching 1939″ and “Musical Monday.”

Posted in Musical Interlude, Posts by Jessica Pickens | Tagged anita ellis, betty wand, billy lee, bonnie lou williams, carol richards, film dub, jo ann greer, louanne hogan, marni nixon, martha mears, music, sally sweetland, trudy erwin, trudy stevens | 23 Comments

Grace Kelly: Dress to Impress, Exclusive Guest Post by Author Mary Mallory

Posted on August 23, 2018 by Guest Post

Grace Kelly: Dress to Impress
Exclusive Post by Mary Mallory, Author of Living with Grace

Grace Kelly resembled and acted like a Princess long before she actually married Prince Rainier of Monaco. Serene, elegant, and so unforgettable, she is the epitome of the definition of the word “grace,” bringing polish, flair, and simplicity to each day. Humanitarian, actress, and fashion icon, Grace offers a perfect role model for how to achieve style and success in living, which “Living With Grace: Life Lessons From America’s Princess” delves into.

For many, Grace remains a model on how to dress to impress in a simple but elegant way. Her innate sense of style made her one of the World’s Best Dressed Women for years and helped popularize the casual All-American look in the 1950s. A classic beauty, Grace reigned as a fashion queen from her earliest days.

Dressed in classic fashion by her former model mother, Grace also learned valuable fashion lessons from former fiance and designer Oleg Cassini as well as good friend and head Paramount costume designer Edith Head, which she carried to the end of her days. From each person, she learned style lessons any one of us can follow.

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1) Buy the Best You Can Afford

Margaret Kelly purchased her children’s clothes off the rack at Philadelphia’s best department stores, well-made quality garments with classic looks that would never go out of style. She dressed her children impeccably, mimicking the fashion of the blue blood main-line Philadelphia crowd just out of their reach. Grace continued the practice even after she became famous, buying every day clothes at high end department stores and having them tailored, saving designer duds for fancy occasions. Quality products ensured a better fit and more classy look while lasting for years. As the Associated Press wrote in 1955, “Grace Kelly, a nice girl from a nice family, has made good taste, glamorous.”

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2) Show Yourself Off

From the beginning, Grace wore classic, understated clothes that accentuated her graceful figure and played up her coloring and vulnerability. Picturegoer magazine called her “…an artist in underdressing.” Oleg Cassini emphasized that “…her beauty should be set off like a great diamond, in very simple settings. The focus was always to be on her.” Wearing sleek, elegant outfits emphasized her and not the clothes. Never copying fads, Grace followed her own innate sense of good taste, reflecting a timeless sense of fashion that always looks good.

Edith Head also played up this simple element, designing no-frills, exquisite costumes for Rear Window and To Catch a Thief by focusing on single colors, fitted silhouettes, lush, flowing fabrics, and long lines. These details accentuated Grace’s slender frame and delicate, graceful looks. Head described this wardrobe as “Simple, beautifully tailored clothes giving an air of genuine elegance.”

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3) Always Look Your Best

You don’t need to spend a million bucks to look smashing. Grace achieved her stylish look by always appearing organized and classy. Meticulous and pulled together, she sported sparkling hair, natural makeup, and spotless, crisp clothes. Grace’s professional presentation was simple but impeccable, with Women’s Wear Daily defining the “Grace Kelly Look” as one that was crisp, naturally unpretentious, and polished, reflecting the American spirit.

Head considered Grace’s good grooming one of her best assets. Her background as a former model and dancer gave her perfect posture, making her stand tall and erect, showing herself and her clothes to best advantage. Being clean, neat, and groomed allowed Grace to feel at home in what she wore, allowing her to feel confident and act like she owned the room.

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4) Dress to Impress

Grace always strove to be taken seriously, aspiring to great things, and looking spotless, sharp, and classy, she was. Oleg Cassini described her special style by saying that Grace “represents the new appeal, a combination of the All-American type with aristocratic bearing.” Many admired her. Swimsuit designer Fred Cole stated, “Today the ideal is the ladylike look personified by Grace Kelly. And people are discovering that ‘lady-like’ doesn’t mean sexless.” Grace dressed to impress those higher up the social and career ladder, looking like a serious actress by differentiating herself from the buxom, full-figured bombshells through classic, understated clothing. Gary Cooper acknowledged her impact when he stated, “She’s a refreshing change from all these sex girls.”

Women’s Wear Daily also praised her fashion sense and good taste. They described liking Grace as “an indication of greater maturity both in motion pictures and in public standards, an appeal that is not based on too blatant curves, too tight dresses, too lavish furs, or jewelry only noteworthy for its abundance.” Her impressive taste put her at the top of many Best Dressed lists around the world in the 1950s.

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5) Casual Doesn’t Mean Sloppy

Long before the Gap came along, Grace appeared to be modeling their classic wardrobe of crisp Oxford cloth shirts and fitted jeans, the perfect business casual look. MGM fashion designer Helen Rose called this “stylish simplicity.” Grace successfully mixed both high and low fashion, combining expensive suits with simple scarves and silk shirts with khaki pants. Grace looked neat and smart, with not a hair out of place. Edith Head called Grace fastidious, in that she ensured everything was clean, pressed, and perfect before heading out the door. She personified the All-American look, fresh and natural. Clean and uncluttered, Grace appeared carefree and relaxed. Women’s Wear Daily wrote, “…she illustrates how to be casual without flying shirttails, how to formal without looking bizarre.”

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6) Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize

While Grace wore understated, simple clothes, she added sparkle and pizzaz to her outfits with accessories. Hats, gloves, and belts were one of the cheapest and best ways to brighten and modernize her wardrobe, with gloves becoming one of her signatures while in Hollywood. These items added color and flair in a subtle way by finishing her outfit without overpowering her natural look or wardrobe.

They also sometimes led Grace into spending sprees. Paramount costume designer Edith Head remarked that “Gloves and shoes are the only things where Grace loses count of money.” After she became a princess, Grace first carried around a large Hermes handbag to hide her pregnancy, which soon was renamed the “Kelly bag” and is still one of their more popular items.

Grace learned her fashion lessons well from her mother, Cassini, and Head, never making a wardrobe faux pas. She remained a style icon all her days, never following fads or overpowering with her wardrobe. Grace’s superb fashion sense reflected her aristocratic bearing, setting the stage for her later life as Monaco Princess.

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–Mary Mallory for Classic Movie Hub

Mary Mallory is a film historian, photograph archivist, and researcher, focusing on Los Angeles and early film history. She is the author of Living with Grace: Life Lessons from America’s Princess. She also co-authored Hollywood at Play: The Lives of the Stars Between Takes (with Stephen X. Sylvester and Donovan Brandt) and writes theatre reviews for The Tolucan Times and blogs for the LA Daily Mirror. Mallory served on Hollywood Heritage, Inc.’s Board of Directors, and acts as a docent for the Hollywood Heritage Museum. You can follow her on twitter at @mallory_mary.

You can click here to order Mary’s latest book on amazon:

More Books by Mary Mallory:

Posted in Books, Guest Posts | Tagged author Mary mallory, grace kelly, living with grace: Life Lessons from America's Princess | 4 Comments

Vitaphone View: This is Not a Musical!

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Hutchinson, Founder of The Vitaphone Project

Vitaphone View: THIS IS NOT A MUSICAL!

From Edison’s earliest experiments to add sound to film, the overwhelming majority of pre-1920 talkie efforts included musical performances.

In 1894, barely one year after Thomas Edison built his Black Maria studio at his Orange, NJ laboratory and began making his first films, his assistant W.K.L Dickson attempted to wed the recording phonograph with film. A 17-second test was missing its accompanying cylinder “soundtrack” for nearly a century until it was found by persistent researchers. The violin seen on camera is played directly into the horn of a recording Edison phonograph – which is also on camera and takes up nearly half the frame. The restored test can be seen and heard here:

Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894).

The countless subsequent attempts at talking pictures continued until 1920, usually incorporating singing or the playing of an instrument. The 1920-21 Kellum System preceded Vitaphone by just a few years, and utilized disk recording for the sound, albeit with a somewhat more sophisticated synchronization system, Several Kellum talkies survive at UCLA Film and Television Archive, including one by the legendary banjo playing Van Eps Trio in “The Famous Van Eps Trip in a Bit of Jazz” (1921).

A soundtrack disk label for a 1915 British Gaumont sound short. This is actually a commercially issued Victor 78 rpm record with the Gaumont label stuck over it. When filmed, the performer lip synched to the record.

During the teens, the Cameraphone, Oskar Messter, and Gaumont sound film systems each utilized a disk synchronized to the separate film (picture) portion, driven by two different units which often struggled with synchronization. These and other systems often did not record the sound as it was being filmed, but instead used an already recorded commercial 78. The on-camera talent – often NOT the one heard on the recording – would lip-synch to the record during filming. While today one might call this cheating, it did overcome one major technical problem in making sound films. The commercial 78s were recorded in state-of-the-art phonograph recording studios, with the singer standing inches away from the recording horn. The result was a loud, clear and understandable recording. Before Vitaphone in 1924, early talkie producers did not have access to microphones. So if recording a singer or actor live, the horn of the phonograph had to be hung just over them out of camera range, and the performer had to practically yell in order to ensure sufficient volume on the finished disk or cylinder. This is very evident in the 1912-13 Edison Kinetophone shorts. Here are a few examples:

The Edison Kinetophone (1912).

The Edison Kinetophone Sound Film (1913). (note the “fairy princess”: shouting her lies around 1:22!)

(A DVD set of restored Edison Kinetophones has just been released and is available here)

As previously reported in earlier Vitaphone CMH blogs, every attempt to promote talkies to the public from 1894-1928 failed for three technical reasons: No way to fill a theatre with sound, having to rely on horn phonographs to do the job; no reliable way of assuring perfect synchronization between film and sound, often getting the productions laughed off the screen; and difficulty in recording the performers with horn phonographs, and its inherent less-than-natural sounding acoustical recording process.

Fast forward to Vitaphone, and The Jazz Singer in 1927, and the kickoff of the revolution towards sound films by all the studios by 1928. Musicals led the way in 1929, with at least 32 being produced that year. Often combining two-color Technicolor, musicals did not have to be good to make money. The overproduction of the genre ramped up such that in 1930, the number of Hollywood musicals released had more than double to 78.

Many of the plots were the same, set backstage with predictable storylines of vaudeville teams split up. Even the titles became repetitious. In 1929-30, studios put out Broadway, Broadway Babies, Broadway Melody, Broadway Scandals, Howdy Broadway, and Broadway Hoofer. Musicals did well through the winter of 1929-30. But then, the public finally had enough.

Audience’s rejection of musicals as 1930 progressed can be seen by charting some selected films’ cost and grosses (in thousands). In 1929, musicals ensured a healthy profit. Into 1930, not so much:

Title & Cost Gross Receipts

1928-29

The Desert Song – $354 $1,549
The Singing Fool – $388 $3,821
Sunny Side Up – $400 (est) $3,000
Broadway Melody – $379 $2,808
Say It with Songs – $470 $1,725
Gold Diggers of Broadway – $532 $2,540
Rio Rita – $678 $1,775
Sally – $647 $1,219

Made and released in 1929, when the public still embraced movie musicals, Fox’s Sunny Side Up brought in $3 million at the box office.

1930

No No Nanette – $418 $839
Under a Texas Moon – $486 $687
The Cuckoos – $407 $662
The Rogue Song – $646 $824
Viennese Nights – $611 $315
New Moon – $782 $508
King of Jazz – $3,019 $1,272

Ad for the Universal super musical, King of Jazz. Begun in early 1929, then put on hold, then finished filming early in 1930, by the time this $3 million all Technicolor production was released in May 1930, the public had shunned musicals. Despite its beauty (recently restored and on Blu Ray & DVD from Criterion), the picture lost $2 million.

A poster for Warner Bros all Technicolor operetta Viennese Nights (’30) The public in general shunned operettas and this picture lost about $300,000, bringing in less than half its cost.

In author Richard Barrios’ essential book on movie musicals, A Song in The Dark, he writes of studios panicking over the many musical features they already had completed or were planning. He states:

“Warners adopted a slash-and-burn policy. As much music was removed as could be without rendering the films completely incoherent. The Life of the Party and three Joe E. Brown features Going Wild, Sit Tight and Top Speed were restructured” as non-musicals.

Other studios, realizing by mid-1930 that musicals, as Barrios writes, “could not draw flies,” similarly took a hatchet to completed musicals and their future releases schedule. United Artists spent over a million dollars on the Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. musical Reaching for the Moon (’31). It originally had six songs by Irving Berlin, but all but one were cut. Warner Bros had backed the Broadway version of the Cole Porter musical Fifty Million Frenchmen in 1929, with the intent of producing an elaborate Technicolor Vitaphone feature after the run ended. When production finally began in August of 1930, musicals were a pariah at the box office, so every song was cut, the gap filled in by more Olsen & Johnson routines. The public was not pleased, and the picture died at the box office. “The show, without any songs, was less than zero” Barrios observes.

Winnie Lightner and Joe E. Brown appeared in the successful early 1930 musical, Hold Everything (now lost). Soon after, the public’s rejection of musical led to other stars films having all songs deleted.

Perhaps the most extreme case of draconian steps taken by a studio in 1930 was at MGM. Their massive production, The March of Time, attempted to document the history of the stage and music through the years, using old-time stars, new ones like Buster Keaton, Bing Crosby, and Marie Dressler, and many large-scale musical numbers. All in Technicolor. And filmed in multiple languages. When production wrapped in mid-1930, the studio realized it had an expensive, unsaleable white elephant on its hands. They elected to not release it at all. In ensuing years, individual production numbers found their way into a many of MGM Colortone short subjects like Crazy People (’31), Wild People (’32), and at least three Ted Healy/Stooges shorts.

The 1933 Technicolor MGM Colortone short Hello Pop starred Ted Healy and the Three Stooges. Lost for 8 decades, a print was found in 2012 and restored. This and other MGM color shorts used musical numbers from the unreleased 1930 musical The March of Time.

Theatre newspaper ads and marquees often added the tagline “NOT A MUSICAL” to avoid public rejection of titles that could be misconstrued as such.

But as always — in life and in Hollywood — the pendulum eventually swung the other way as the number of produced musicals first waned, then took off again:

Year & Number of Musicals Produced:

1929 – 32
1930 – 78
1931 – 11
1932 – 12
1933 – 34
1934 – 44

The resurgence in 1933 was due primarily to the public’s embracing Warner Bros 42nd Street.

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– Ron Hutchinson, Founder of The Vitaphone Project, for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Ron’s Vitaphone View articles here.

Ron is widely recognized as one of the country’s foremost film historians, with special emphasis on the period covering the transition to sound (1925-30) and early attempts to add sound to film. As the founder of The Vitaphone Project, he has worked with Warner Brothers, UCLA, LOC and private collectors worldwide to find previously lost soundtrack discs and restore early sound shorts. Ron’s unique knowledge has been sourced in over 25 books as well as documentaries for PBS and TCM, and commentary for “The Jazz Singer” DVD boxed set. He was awarded the National Society of Film Critics “Film Heritage Honor” for his work in film preservation and discoveries, and was the presenter of rare Vitaphone shorts at the 2016 TCM Film Festival. For more information you can visit the Vitaphone Project website or Facebook Group.

And, if you’re interested in exploring some of these newly discovered shorts and rarities, you can pick them up on DVD via amazon:

Posted in Posts by Ron Hutchinson, Vitaphone View | Tagged early musical, musicals, talkies, The Jazz Singer, The Vitaphone Project, thomas edison | 2 Comments

To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Atticus Finch

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Annmarie Gatti

The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Atticus Finch
Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

A Big Thank You to author Tom Santopietro for hand-picking this excerpt about the casting of Atticus, from his book “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”. This is the first in our two-part series on the filming of To Kill a Mockingbird, courtesy of Tom.

Although producer Alan Pakula and director Robert Mulligan now held the rights to a national best seller, they did not possess the clout to finance the picture themselves. To ensure an adequate budget they needed a star – a big star – one whose presence alone would guarantee not just financing but also distribution. Who possessed both the requisite big name, as well as strong enough acting chops, to believably portray a small town Alabama lawyer circa 1933? In Harper Lee’s mind, only one actor: Spencer Tracy.

Oh yes, Harper Lee certainly liked Spencer Tracy – “I can’t see anybody but Spencer Tracy in the part of Atticus” – and although she had vowed to leave Mulligan and Pakula to their own devices, she soon sent a note to Tracy via the William Morris Agency. Tracy possessed a quintessential all-American face, and as evidenced by his work in Adam’s Rib and Inherit the Wind was clearly at home in court room scenes. Perhaps he was a bit old for the role, but the veteran actor was possessed of such naturalistic acting ability that everyone involved felt enthusiastic about his casting. The idea, however proved a non-starter, because after receiving Harper Lee’s note, Tracy responded that he was busy filming Devil at Four O’Clock with Frank Sinatra and could not even read or think about Mockingbird at the present time.

Gary Cooper? With his inherent decency and strong, silent unwavering morality, Coop would be great, but the idea never proceeded past the discussion stage because the actor, who had so memorably portrayed small town heroes in High Noon and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, was sick with cancer, dying in May of 1961 shortly after shooting of Mockingbird actually began.

The month after Tracy’s refusal, Nelle’s literary agent Maurice Crain wrote Alice Lee to explain that Bing Crosby “very much wants to play Atticus.” Although Crosby had proved himself a capable dramatic actor in The Country Girl, his championship box office days were at least fifteen years behind him and – who was really going to believe Bing as a deliberate southern lawyer? Crosby’s diffidence would, it was feared, immediately undercut the hidden but essentially warm and loving layers of Atticus’s character. At that point the name of Robert Wagner was floated, but the then thirty-one year old Wagner lacked the requisite gravitas, and with Universal having signed on to distribute the film, the studio began exerting its own muscle in the casting process. Their first question was a simple one: how about the biggest star at Universal, Rock Hudson?

Hudson, riding high at the box office after appearing in a series of smash hit Douglas Sirk films as well as wildly popular comedies opposite Doris Day, had expressed great interest in playing the role. In fact, he would have brought a solid masculine gentleness to the role, but at heart he seemed to lack the personal heft required; in casting agent Boaty Boatwright’s words, “Knowing Rock, he had the intelligence and good taste of his own not to fight for it, to know he shouldn’t play it.”

With Hudson out, producer Pakula now spoke up. There was really only one actor he had in mind for the role: Gregory Peck.

But would Peck – the “perfect Atticus” in Boatwright’s words – be interested in a story that had no romance, no violence, and little action? Already an admirer of Pakula and Mulligan’s work on Fear Strikes Out, Peck agreed to read the by now much talked about novel. Sitting up all night he read straight through to the end, later recalling “I called them at about eight o’clock in the morning and said ‘If you want me to play Atticus, when do I start?… I felt I could climb into Atticus’s shoes without any play-acting, that I could be him.” A devoted father himself, he felt a kinship in Atticus’s relationship with Scout and Jem, and his own small town childhood memories came flooding back: the one parent household, the longing for home – Peck felt it all in his bones, instinctively knowing he was right for the part.

The Academy Award nominated Peck carried far more weight and experience in Hollywood than either Mulligan or Pakula, and aware of the fine performance Mulligan had drawn out of Tony Curtis in The Great Imposter, and trusting the artistry of both producer and director, he agreed to sign on. Just as Nelle had formed her own company, Atticus Productions, as a tax shelter, Peck now incorporated his own production entity, Brentwood Productions, to function as one of the film’s producers. In a move of even more import, however, because of his stature and power within the industry, he was able to demand that the final cut of the film reside with Mulligan and Pakula; it proved to be a key creative provision neither producer nor director would have had the clout to insist upon.

The thoughtful, analytical Peck did in fact fit Atticus like a glove – even his limitations as an actor worked for this role. He might have been entirely too dignified for the displays of mischief which made a Cary Grant or William Powell so beloved, but just as Atticus always seemed to be wearing a three piece suit even when home at night, Peck himself often looked a bit stiff on film; somehow, if the scene called for him to appear shirtless he still seemed to be wearing a coat and tie. The role of a thoughtful man of principal fit into his wheelhouse beautifully. Says film scholar Jeanine Basinger: “The right man landed the role. Spencer Tracy was a marvelous actor but he would have been a more shambling, ambling Atticus. Gregory Peck had a majestic, untainted quality which suited the character perfectly.” And true to his own character, he would not just help produce the film, but also have a say in casting, sign off on the script, and all along the way display his creative muscle, albeit in the most gentlemanly of fashions.

“It’s somehow fitting that the greatest movie ever made about fatherhood is told through the eyes of a child… children literally look up to their parents with the unquestioning belief that they hold all the answers. They seem 10 feet tall. To Scout Finch, her father seems even taller than that. And as played by Gregory Peck, he is.” — Film critic Chris Nashawty on To Kill a Mockingbird

“I was sitting next to Gregory Peck at a luncheon for Quincy Jones. I didn’t know what to say. I finally turned and said: ‘So how’s Scout doing?’ Because it’s in my brain – because he will always be Atticus to me.” — Oprah Winfrey

…..

Hope you enjoyed this excerpt!

–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub

Here’s a short trailer about the book, narrated by author Tom Santopietro:

And, for those of you who weren’t lucky enough to win our contest, you can order the book on amazon by clicking the link below:

Posted in Books, Posts by Annmarie Gatti | Tagged bing crosby, casting for To Kill a Mockingbird, Gary Cooper, gregory peck, rock hudson, spencer tracy, the filming of to kill a mockingbird, To Kill a Mockingbird, Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters | 4 Comments

Classic Movie Travels: Billie Burke

Posted on August 18, 2018 by Annette Bochenek

Classic Movie Travels: Billie Burke – New York

The beautiful Billie Burke.

While best remembered for her portrayal of Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Billie Burke led a fascinating life and career that spanned from work on Broadway, radio, silent films, to sound films. An Academy-Award nominated actress and the wife of famed Broadway producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Billie Burke is fondly remembered in a variety of ways.

Mary “Billie” Burke was born in Washington, D.C. Her father was a singer and clown working for the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Her family later settled in London, where she would frequently attend plays in the West End.

By 1903, Burke began acting on stage and made her acting debut in London as part of The School Girl. She also participated in The Duchess of Dantzic (1903) and The Blue Moon (1904).

Billie Burke as a young girl in The Theatre Magazine.

After working on stage in London, Burke returned to America in order to gain experience on Broadway. Here, she aimed to work in musical comedies, carrying out lead roles in Mrs. Dot, Suzanne, The Runaway, The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl, and The Land of Promise. She also carried out various supporting roles in The Amazons, where Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. spotted her in the cast. The two married in 1914 and had a daughter named Patricia Ziegfeld Stephenson.

Burke purchased an estate in Hastings in 1910, which Burke named Burkeley Crest. She, Ziegfeld, and their daughter lived there. Ziegfeld enjoyed flowers, so they had hyacinths and daffodils planted all around the property. The family had 17 servants and a wide range of animals, including deer, parrots, geese, ponies, pheasants, bears, and buffalo.

A family portrait of Billie Burke and her husband Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

Burke entered into the film industry playing the lead role in Peggy (1916). Her popularity grew immensely and she quickly became the highest paid film actress at that time. She typically starred in dramas and comedies, with studios capitalizing upon her charming, eccentric personality and glamorous image. Audience lauded her fashions, as she was always clad in lovely gowns, furs, and jewelry. Her fashions were often provided by Lucile, a fashion designer who also dressed many socialites and celebrities.

Billie Burke as Peggy Cameron in Peggy (1916).

Though Burke received positive reviews in her films, she returned to the stage and continued to participate in several plays. However, when the Wall Street Crash occurred, she decided to go back to Hollywood in order to better support her family. The family left Burkeley Crest for the west coast.

Burke would return to the screen in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), in which she played Katharine Hepburn‘s mother in Hepburn’s debut film. Tragically, Ziegfeld passed away during the production of the film. Nonetheless, Burke decided to continue working in films. In 1940, she sold Burkeley Crest.

Billie Burke and Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement (1932)

Burke would go on to play a variety of scatterbrained socialites in her future films. One such example is Dinner at Eight (1933), which proved to be a massive success and let to Burke being typecast in similar roles.

By 1936, MGM produced a biopic on the life of Ziegfeld, in which William Powell and Myrna Loy played Ziegfeld and Burke. Loy’s portrayal upset Burke, as the two actresses were both working for the same studio and Burke theoretically could have played herself. However, the studio deemed her too old for the part.

Burke continued her film career with several comedies, including Topper (1937), and Merrily We Live (1938). Her performance in Merrily We Live earned Burke her sole Oscar nomination.

Billie Burke in Topper (1937).

Her most iconic performance, without question, is as Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Here, she worked with Judy Garland once again after having played her mother in Everybody Sing (1938). While she was offered the role of Aunt Pittypat in Gone With the Wind, she refused. Laura Hope Crews, who was chosen for the role, was instructed to perform in a zany, “Billie Burke-ish manner.”

Billie Burke as Glinda The Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

In addition to her work in films, Burke also appeared on radio and television. Her radio show, “The Billie Burke Show”, aired on Saturday mornings from 1943 to 1946 on CBS. Her television show, “At Home With Billie Burke”, ran from 1951 to 1952 on the DuMont Television Network. Burke was one of the first female talk show hosts. Burke went on to appear in Father of the Bride (1950) as well as its sequel, Father’s Little Dividend (1951).
While Burke attempted to make a comeback on stage in New York and California, the shows in which she starred were not successful. Though Burke herself received positive reviews, her memory began to fail and she had difficulty remembering her lines. As a result, she retired from show business. Her final screen appearance was in the Western film, Sergeant Rutledge (1960).

Billie Burke’s final performance in Sergeant Rutledge (1960).

She passed away from natural causes on May 14, 1970, in Los Angeles, at age 85. She and Ziegfeld are buried at Kensico Cemetery at 273 Lake View Avenue, Valhalla, New York.

Billie Burke’s grave at Kensico cemetary in Valhalla, New York.

Today, Burke is memorialized in several ways. The Lyceum Theatre in Manhattan has a 1912 opening night program for The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl with Burke’s image on it on display in the theater lobby.

The Lyceum Theatre 1912 opening night program for The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl featuring Billie Burke.

Burke’s dress from The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl exists today but is no longer on display.

Billie Burke’s dress from The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl (1912).

Burkeley Crest was demolished soon after Burke sold off the estate. While the structure itself no longer exists, the area where it stood is now an athletic park called Burke Estate Field. This is located on the corner of Farragut Ave and Mt. Hope Boulevard in Hastings-On-Hudson, New York.

Burke Estate Field Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

While the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York once displayed a framed photograph of her over an exit staircase, it was removed after renovations. The theater was razed in 1966. It stood at 1341 Sixth Avenue, New York, New York.

Interestingly, beyond tributes here on Earth, there is also a crater near the north pole of the planet Mercury named after Burke as of November 2015.

If you are traveling to New York, take a moment to appreciate Burke and her passion for acting or at least enjoy your visit in a “Billie Burke-ish manner.”

…

–Annette Bochenek for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Annette’s Classic Movie Travel articles here.

Annette Bochenek of Chicago, Illinois, is a PhD student at Dominican University and an independent scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the Hometowns to Hollywood blog, in which she writes about her trips exploring the legacies and hometowns of Golden Age stars. Annette also hosts the “Hometowns to Hollywood” film series throughout the Chicago area. She has been featured on Turner Classic Movies and is the president of TCM Backlot’s Chicago chapter. In addition to writing for Classic Movie Hub, she also writes for Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, and Chicago Art Deco SocietyMagazine.

Posted in Classic Movie Travels, Posts by Annette Bochenek | Tagged billie burke, classic movie travels | 12 Comments

Win Tickets to see “TCM Big Screen Classics: Rebel Without A Cause” (Giveaway runs through September 8)

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Annmarie Gatti

Win tickets to see “Rebel Without a Cause” on the big screen!
In Select Cinemas Nationwide Sun Sep 23 and Wed Sep 26!

“You can wake up now, the universe has ended.”

CMH continues into our 3rd year of our partnership with Fathom Events – with the 10th of our 13 movie ticket giveaways for 2018, courtesy of Fathom Events!

That said, we’ll be giving away EIGHT PAIRS of tickets to see “TCM Big Screen Classics: Rebel Without a Cause” – starring James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo — the way it was meant to be seen – on the Big Screen!

In order to qualify to win a pair of movie tickets via this contest, you must complete the below entry task by Saturday, September 8 at 6 PM EST.

We will announce the winner(s) on Twitter on Sunday, September 9, between 6PM EST and 7PM EST. If a winner(s) does not have a Twitter account, we will announce that winner(s) via this blog in the comment section below.

The film will be playing in select cinemas nationwide for a special two-day-only event on Sunday, September 23 and Wednesday, September 26 at 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. local time. Winners will be responsible for their own transportation to the Event. Only United States entries are eligible. Please click here before you enter to ensure that the Event is scheduled at a theater near you and that you are able to attend. (please note that there might be slightly different theater listings for each date)

ENTRY TASK (2-parts) to be completed by Saturday, September 8 at 6PM EST…

1) Answer the below question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog post

THE QUESTION:
What is it about “Rebel Without a Cause” that makes it a classic? And, if you haven’t seen it, why do you want to see it on the Big Screen?

2) Then TWEET* (not DM) the following message:
I just entered to win tickets to see “TCM Big Screen Classics Presents: Rebel Without a Cause” on the Big Screen courtesy of @ClassicMovieHub & @FathomEvents #EnterToWin #CMHContest link here: http://ow.ly/hoPz30lsHE4

*If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can still enter the contest by simply answering the above question via the comment section at the bottom of this blog — BUT PLEASE ENSURE THAT YOU ADD THIS VERBIAGE TO YOUR ANSWER: I do not have a Twitter account, so I am posting here to enter but cannot tweet the message.

NOTE: if for any reason you encounter a problem commenting here on this blog, please feel free to tweet or DM us, or send an email to clas…@gmail.com and we will be happy to create the entry for you.

ALSO: Please allow us 48 hours to approve your comments. Sorry about that, but we are being overwhelmed with spam, and must sort through 100s of comments…

About the film: In one of moviedom’s most influential roles, James Dean is Jim, the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of postwar teens — and reverberates over 60 years later. This two-day event includes exclusive insight from Turner Classic Movies.

Please note that only United States residents are eligible to enter this giveaway contest. (see contest rules for further information)

BlogHub members ARE also eligible to win if they live within the Continental United States (as noted above).

You can follow Fathom Events on Twitter at @fathomevents

Good Luck!

–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub

Posted in Contests & Giveaways, Fathom Events | Tagged james dean, Movie Ticket Giveaway, natalie wood, rebel without a cause, TCM BIg Screen Classics, TCM Big Screen Classics Present Rebel Without a Cause | 26 Comments

Silents are Golden: A Brief Look at Obscure Silent Film Comedians

Posted on August 16, 2018 by Lea Stans

A Brief Look at Obscure Silent Film Comedians

Since I touched upon the history of silent comedy a couple months ago, I thought I’d do a follow-up post exploring that history in a little more detail. Hope you enjoy!

If you ask anyone with a bit of film history knowledge under their belt to name some famous silent comedians, they’ll probably say “Chaplin – Keaton – Lloyd!” right off the bat (and without batting an eye). Some of them might also cite Mabel Normand, Roscoe Arbuckle, or Ben Turpin.

Which is a grand and wonderful thing, of course. But while folks like Lloyd and Keaton were indeed some of the top names in their time, it’s worth knowing that the world of silent comedy was a massive one, constantly evolving and constantly throwing ideas at the wall to see what would stick with audiences. There was a veritable sea of comedians in every makeup you can imagine, all trying (and often failing) to make it big–or at least to entertain their own small groups of fans. Let’s take a look at some of the overlooked, obscure, or just plain forgotten names in silent comedy history!

…..

Billy Bevan and Louise Fazenda in It’s a Boy (1920)

One of the earliest comedians, aside from the more generally-known Max Linder, was the popular André Deed, a fellow Frenchman with a similarly bumbling character named “Foolshead.” Marcel Perez was a gifted comedian from Spain who performed in Paris, created a character named Robinet for a series of Italian comedies, and eventually headed to the U.S. where he cycled through a number of screen names — Bungles, Tweedy, Tweedy-Dan, and Tweedy-Dum (which has caused much confusion among silent film historians).

Marcel in a 1918 publicity photo for his latest short.

In the early 1910s, what constituted as “comedy” was sometimes blurry, as performers might star in broad slapstick one day and “polite” comedy the next. But in time, comedians discovered their niches. The Vitagraph studio, for instance, would create series of light comedies, starring such favorites as the tubby John Bunny and rail-thin Flora Finch. The lesser-known Lillian “Dimples” Walker and Wally “Cutey” Van were also popular — Lillian, in particular, had a series of “Miss Tomboy” comedies.

On the other hand, Universal’s Joker Comedies unit (which churned out a mind-boggling number of shorts in the 1910s) proved to be an excellent boot camp for slapstick comedians like Max Asher, Harry McCoy, Bobby Vernon and Heinie Conklin, who would all be familiar to audiences for many years. Bobby Vernon, a diminutive actor who had worked as a stunt diver, would be one day be paired with Gloria Swanson in their own Sennett comedy shorts. Heinie would eventually adopt one of the oddest and most recognizable makeups in silent comedy — a dropping mustache with tiny curls on the ends.

Comedian Charles John “Heinie” Conklin

Joker comediennes who would gain their own followings by in the late 1910s included skinny Gale Henry, sometimes said to be the inspiration for Olive Oyl, and Louise Fazenda, who would specialize in daffy “slaveys” (a catch-all term for a household servant). They perhaps took some inspiration from Rose Melville, who was famous at the time for her “rube” character named Sis Hopkins. Melville had played the character on the stage and then in a series of shorts for the Kalem company–all of which are sadly lost today.

Rose Melville as the original Sis Hopkins (1919).

The biggest comedy factory of all, of course, was the mighty Keystone Film Company. Aside from the famed Arbuckle, Normand, and Chaplin, one of the most popular Keystone comedians was Ford Sterling, one of the most uninhibited performers in silent comedy. Arbuckle’s petite wife Minta Durfee and the rowdy, tomboyish Polly Moran were confident presences in dozens of shorts. Chester Conklin, nicknamed “Walrus” for his big, bushy fake mustache, was often paired with gentle giant Mack Swain. Swain had a distinct look consisting of dark eye makeup, a large mustache, and a little lock of hair that comes across as rather startling today. Tall, skinny Slim Summerville was another instantly recognizable Keystone regular, as was the limber, trick bicycle rider Al St. John. Popular Bathing Beauties Phyllis Haver and Marie Prevost would become Sennett leading ladies, and would eventually leave the fold to star in other studios’ films.

Swain, Conklin, and Gloria Swanson in The Pullman Bride (1917).

Years before Laurel and Hardy were teamed up, there were comic duos like Ham and Bud, Waddy and Arty, Lyons and Moran, and Plump and Runt (“Plump,” by the way, was played by Oliver Hardy). Female duos were rarer, one example being Anita Garvin and Marion Byron in a short-lived 1928-29 series for Hal Roach.

The circus was a perfect training ground for silent comedy, so naturally, more than one circus performer ended up in films. One was the Hippodrome clown Toto, who starred in a series of shorts for Pathe in the late 1910s (not the same Totò from Italy who was famous from the 1940s-60s). Clown and daredevil trick rider “Poodles” Hanneford acted steadily in shorts throughout the 1920s, and British music hall veteran Fred Evans starred as his character “Pimple” in dozens and dozens of 1910s shorts.

Moving Picture World, 1917.

The 1920s had its share of colorful or just plain unusual comics. Monty Banks specialized in comedy-thrillers, which often featured leaps from cars onto trains and other neck-breaking stunts. Charley Bowers made shorts to showcase his quirky stop-motion animation, which is still impressive today. The Ton of Fun was a rare comedy trio, composed of Hilliard “Fats” Carr, Kewpie Ross, and Frank “Fat” Alexander (the logic being that three heavy gentlemen would be thrice as funny as one). And let’s not forget the animal stars, from Snooky the Chimpanzee (or “Humanzee”) to Teddy the Sennett dog to the many stars of the surreal Dippy-Do-Dads series, where all the parts were played by animals.

Snooky’s Twin Troubles (1921). Image credit: FilmPreservation.org

This, of course, is only a brief sampling of the many, many obscure or just plain forgotten faces of silent comedy. For a “niche” area of film history that’s so often overlooked, there’s a startlingly large world of unpretentious fun to explore–and if you ask me, that’s a wonderful thing.

…

–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.

Posted in Posts by Lea Stans, Silents are Golden | Tagged ben turpin, Billy Bevan, Buster Keaton, Charles Conklin, charlie chaplin, chester conklin, Comedians, Gale Henry, gloria swanson, Harold lloyd, it's a boy 1920, Keystone Film Company, Louise Fazenda, mabel normand, Mack Swain, Marcel Perez, Max Linder, monty banks, Roscoe Arbuckle, Rose Melville, Silent Comedy, silent film, Sis Hopkins, snooky's twin troubles 1921 | 1 Comment

Celebrate Marie Dressler 150! Hometown Hosts Her Birthday in Style

Leila Marie Koerber “Marie Dressler”, born November 9, 1868.

Mabel Normand, Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler in Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914).

Movie Poster for Min and Bill (1930) starring Marie Dressler.

Movie Poster for Emma (1932) starring Marie Dressler.

Jean Harlow & Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight (1933).

Rick Miller, President & Chair of the Marie Dressler Foundation and Museum.

A peek inside the Marie Dressler Museum in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada.

“Cobourg’s Sweetheart: Celebrating Marie Dressler” will run from September 8 until November 10 in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada.

Marie Dressler’s 150th Birthday Celebration.

Marie Dressler, Sally O’Neil and Gertrude Olmstead in The Callahans and the Murphys (1927).

Marie Dressler in Chasing Rainbows (1930).

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Western Roundup: Snowy Westerns and Day of the Outlaw

Stewart Granger, Wendell Corey and Cyd Charisse in The Wild North (1952).

A Movie Poster for Track of the Cat (1954) starring Robert Mitchum.

Ruth Roman, Steve Brodie, and James Stewart in The Far Country (1955).

“I don’t think you want to kill me”

Blaise Starrett (Robert Ryan) on Horseback in Day of the Outlaw (1959).

“I’m not doing anything special, just taking some bad men out of a good town”.

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The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Scout & Jem Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

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The Singing Voices Behind the Stars

Martha Mears’ Film Dub career consisted of singing for popular Hollywood stars like: Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Lucille Ball, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake and Marjorie Reynolds.

TIME Magazine called film dubber Marni Nixon “The Ghostess with the Mostest.”

Bonnie Lou Williams, with over 17 folm credits, dubbed both Virginia Mayo and June Haver in multiple films.

Betty Wand’s Film Dub credits include: Adventures in Baltimore, West Side Story, Easy to Love and Pagan Love Story.

Film Dubber Bill Lee is credited with lending his voice to movies such as Sound of Music, South Pacific, Peter Pan, 101 Dalmatians and The Jungle Book.

Film Dubber Jo Ann Greer’s voice was so similar to Rita Hayworth that she was used in several of Hayworth’s singing scenes.

Sally Sweetland’s soprano voice can he heard in almost a dozen films inlcluding Yankee Doodle Dandy and Rhapsody in Blue.

Before starting her career as a film dubber, Trudy Erwin regularly performed on Bing Crosby’s Kraft Music Hall.

Louanne Hogan, a film dubber for various movies, also lent her voice to the singing group “Pied Pipers.”

Film dubber Anita Ellis’ credits include The Loves of Carmen, The Lady From Shanghai and Down to Earth.

Film Dubber Carol Richards was featured on an episode of I Love Lucy called “The Indian Show.”

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Grace Kelly: Dress to Impress Exclusive Post by Mary Mallory, Author of Living with Grace

1) Buy the Best You Can Afford

2) Show Yourself Off

3) Always Look Your Best

4) Dress to Impress

5) Casual Doesn’t Mean Sloppy

…..

6) Accessorize, Accessorize, Accessorize

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Vitaphone View: THIS IS NOT A MUSICAL!

Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894).

A soundtrack disk label for a 1915 British Gaumont sound short. This is actually a commercially issued Victor 78 rpm record with the Gaumont label stuck over it. When filmed, the performer lip synched to the record.

The Edison Kinetophone (1912).

The Edison Kinetophone Sound Film (1913). (note the “fairy princess”: shouting her lies around 1:22!)

Title & Cost Gross Receipts

1928-29

Made and released in 1929, when the public still embraced movie musicals, Fox’s Sunny Side Up brought in $3 million at the box office.

1930

A poster for Warner Bros all Technicolor operetta Viennese Nights (’30) The public in general shunned operettas and this picture lost about $300,000, bringing in less than half its cost.

Winnie Lightner and Joe E. Brown appeared in the successful early 1930 musical, Hold Everything (now lost). Soon after, the public’s rejection of musical led to other stars films having all songs deleted.

The 1933 Technicolor MGM Colortone short Hello Pop starred Ted Healy and the Three Stooges. Lost for 8 decades, a print was found in 2012 and restored. This and other MGM color shorts used musical numbers from the unreleased 1930 musical The March of Time.

Year & Number of Musicals Produced:

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The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Atticus Finch Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

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Classic Movie Travels: Billie Burke – New York

The beautiful Billie Burke.

Billie Burke as a young girl in The Theatre Magazine.

A family portrait of Billie Burke and her husband Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr.

Billie Burke as Peggy Cameron in Peggy (1916).

Billie Burke and Katharine Hepburn in A Bill of Divorcement (1932)

Billie Burke in Topper (1937).

Billie Burke as Glinda The Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Billie Burke’s final performance in Sergeant Rutledge (1960).

Billie Burke’s grave at Kensico cemetary in Valhalla, New York.

The Lyceum Theatre 1912 opening night program for The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl featuring Billie Burke.

Billie Burke’s dress from The “Mind-the-Paint” Girl (1912).

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Win tickets to see “Rebel Without a Cause” on the big screen! In Select Cinemas Nationwide Sun Sep 23 and Wed Sep 26!

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A Brief Look at Obscure Silent Film Comedians

Billy Bevan and Louise Fazenda in It’s a Boy (1920)

Marcel in a 1918 publicity photo for his latest short.

Comedian Charles John “Heinie” Conklin

The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Scout & Jem
Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

Grace Kelly: Dress to Impress
Exclusive Post by Mary Mallory, Author of Living with Grace

The Filming of To Kill a Mockingbird: The Casting of Atticus Finch
Exclusive Excerpt from “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”

Win tickets to see “Rebel Without a Cause” on the big screen!
In Select Cinemas Nationwide Sun Sep 23 and Wed Sep 26!