From Those Were the Days:

1942 - The comic soap opera Clara, Lu ’n Em was revived on CBS Radio (the original show began in 1931 on NBC). Clara, Lu and Em were together again for just a short while before vanishing into radio oblivion.

1947 - Lassie debuted on ABC Radio. It was a 15-minute show about an extraordinary collie. Animal imitator, Earl Keen provided the whines and other dog noises. The announcer was Charles Lyon; Marvin Miller and Betty Arnold played Lassie’s owners. The sponsor was Red Heart dog food.
12:46:48 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“All but seven…”

I’ll admit this right off the bat—I have a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. Why, I don’t know—I’m not one of the magazine’s biggest fans, but occasionally I’ll find something in it worthy of the 98% of the dreck they usually publish. The latest issue has an article on special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, which is a very good read, and after reading it I was kind of in a Harryhausen-state-of-mind: so last night, because I was again off from work, I unwrapped (I’ve made it a point to do more of this) my DVD of Jason and the Argonauts (1963)—my favorite Harryhausen film (and his as well).

I think Jason and the Argonauts is my favorite because it eschews the usual fantasy-adventure movie (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and instead features a smart, intelligent script by Jan Read and Beverley Cross that possesses a tiny agnostic streak (one bit of dialogue has Jason remarking on the gods, “In time, all men will have to do without them”), in addition to being a fairly faithful treatment on the famous Greek myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. I first saw this movie as a tadpole, since my father told me the myth as a bedtime story one night, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate what a really fine film Jason is and I still marvel at the amazing special effects (the skeletons sequence is probably Harryhausen’s most famous, but my personal favorite is the one featuring the Harpies). When we studied Greek mythology in school, I always pictured the goddess Hera as a frumpy Ethel Mertz type—but Honor Blackman (Goldfinger) makes her magically babe-a-licious in this movie, and gets fine support from Niall MacGinnis (Night of the Demon) as Zeus.

After this, I put on one of my all-time favorite Westerns, the 1943 classic The Ox-Bow Incident. Growing up, I was never a big Western fan, but I think my father should take the credit for ultimately changing my mind—I’ve stated previously that if he’s flipping channels and comes across someone on a horse, he’ll usually stay with it to watch. (So it’s sort of rubbed off on me, I guess.) Incident was adapted from the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark, and it’s a searing indictment on mob rule as a would-be “posse” ends up hanging three innocent men (which include Dana Andrews—in what is most certainly his finest performance—and Anthony Quinn) for cattle rustling and murder. Fonda had to expend a lot of his capital at 20th Century-Fox to get the picture made, and though it was a box-office flop it has since become recognized as one of the true classics in the Western genre. I love the picture; it’s amazingly mature for its time and it’s sort of a forerunner to the “adult” westerns of the 1950s like The Gunfighter and Winchester ’73 (both from 1950) and the CBS radio series Gunsmoke (1952-61). Included in the fine supporting cast are a young Henry Morgan (he’s Fonda’s sidekick), Jane Darwell, Harry Davenport, William Eythe, Mary Beth Hughes, Marc Lawrence, Margaret Hamilton, Rondo Hatton and Billy Benedict of Bowery Boys fame.
12:46:24 PM    comment []  trackback []