Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

One from Column A, one from Column B

Just a few tidbits that I thought I would cram into one big honkin’ post:

I’ve tidied up the blogroll a bit and eliminated a couple of blogs that, for whatever reason, have simply run out of gas.  One notable that you’ll find “disappeared” is the legend of mark michaels, and in the past I fielded an e-mail or two as to why it was up there in the first place.  Simply put, the guy’s wacky antics amused the hell out of me, and I lived vicariously through his escapades (Lord knows I have no life).  I don’t know where he’s gone off to, but I imagine a tour through some of Florida’s finer drunk tanks would eventually reveal his whereabouts.  I’ve also yanked Hornet Sting, Check—a Green Hornet-oriented blog that we OTR fans had high hopes for but for one reason or another has turned up AWOL.  (I know how busy one can be and not have time to blog—it’s practically a part-time job.)  There were a couple of other blogs that I wanted to eliminate but I keep hoping that someday they’ll return—particularly my pal Pete, who no longer stares out his Dark Window.

I also added a couple of blogs that for one reason or another have decided to link to the nonsense known as Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  One of these fine sites is Thunder and Roses, whose author (Zonker!) I had the privilege of meeting when Steve at Blog d’Elisson saw fit to crowd La Quinta’s lobby with bloggers a while back.  (“By gadfrey, sir—a lobby crammed with bloggers!  You’re the most amazing character…there's never any telling what you'll say or do next, except that it's bound to be something astonishing.”)  The other is Limbo, a truly well-written blog that concentrates on politics, books, television, etc. and is definitely worth checking out.

While he anxiously awaits the results of the blood test that will determine the true child of television, my learned colleague Brent McKee has embarked on a series of essays modeled after this article at Blogcritics.com.  (It’s an interesting list, to be certain—though I have long argued that Steptoe and Son is far superior to its American cousin, Sanford and Son.)  Brent starts off with a nice piece on I Love Lucy that makes me appreciate it more than I have in the past (for the record, I don’t dislike Lucy—otherwise I wouldn’t own the entire series on DVD—but the fact that I can turn on the toaster oven and hear “Ethel to Tillie…Ethel to Tillie” reinforces my opinion that it’s on television entirely too much) and then follows up with an even better dissection of The Phil Silvers Show (a.k.a. Bilko) that makes me that more determined to run for office and pass my sweeping Bilko legislation.

Brent also observes in his Silvers piece Bilko’s influence on Britcoms like Porridge and On the Buses, so this seems as good a time as any to mention that TVShowsOnDVD.com has announced a Region 1 release for the complete run of Buses for September 12, courtesy of Canadian distributor VEI (who also gave us the Hardcastle & McCormick: The Complete First Season release).  Amazon.ca has it listed for $69.97 (Canadian), and while it’s a bit too late for me to jump on the bandwagon (since I have most of the series on Region 2, as released by Network) there’s no reason why you couldn’t capitalize on this opportunity.

In other DVD news, the success of Warner Home Video’s Film Noir Collections (I haven’t had an opportunity to crack open Volume 3, but I hope to soon) has inspired Kino Video to do something along similar lines…except they’re repackaging earlier releases into one big affordable collection due to be released on September 12th.  I’m debating whether or not I want this—I have two of the five movies already (Railroaded and Sudden Fear)—I guess I’ll wait and see what develops.  Finally, for classic TV fans—two DVD releases of note: Paramount Home Video is following up its Gunsmoke: 50th Anniversary Collection in October with Gunsmoke: The Directors Collection, which cherry picks selected episodes spotlighting directorial talents like Robert Stevenson, Arthur Hiller, Mark Rydell and Andrew V. McLaglen.  MPI Home Video, on the other hand, will release Family Affair: Season Two on November 21st…it’s heartening to see that MPI isn’t as easily discouraged as other DVD companies with their box-set follow-ups.       

- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 10:57:55 PM - comment []

“I’m not a real movie star…I’ve still got the same wife I started out with twenty-eight years ago.”

Back in February of last year, I posted a piece on the legendary Will Rogers while discussing a pair of his Fox films that I was afforded the opportunity to watch.  But with Fox Home Video’s DVD box set, The Will Rogers Collection: Volume 1, arriving on my doorstep last week (and I literally mean on my doorstep—the postperson has given up trying to get packages into the mailbox), the set has allowed me to fill in the gaps with three Rogers vehicles with which I was not previously acquainted.

For those of you who may have been wondering why better-known Will Rogers comedies like They Had to See Paris (1929) or State Fair (1933) didn’t make the first volume’s cut, it’s because Fox chose to concentrate the box set’s contents on the last four films made by the comedian in 1935 before his untimely death in a plane crash that same year.  (Rogers’ contract stipulated that he would receive a yearly salary of $1.1 million for four films—a king’s ransom during the Depression years—and he was tentatively scheduled to make a fifth: Ah, Wilderness!, the MGM film adaptation of Eugene O’Neill’s landmark stage play that Will had appeared in on stage briefly in 1934.  Rogers opted out of that production at the last minute.)  Each of the films in this collection—Life Begins at Forty, Doubting Thomas, In Old Kentucky and Steamboat Round the Bend—has been digitally remastered and restored, and looks positively exquisite (many of the original negatives for these films were destroyed in a studio fire in 1937…so we’re damned lucky to have them, as my folks used to say).

Since I had already seen Doubting Thomas, I decided to watch it again but with the audio commentary turned on—said commentary provided by film historian Anthony Slide, who also contributes commentary to Forty and Kentucky.  Slide’s observations, though often interesting, are a bit dry and academic; he often sounds as though he’s jotted all of his comments down on index cards beforehand and is reading them as the picture gets underway.  (He also dismisses the career of Johnny Arthur—one of the many marvelous character actors in Thomas’ cast—in a single sentence, which prompted me to ask out loud: “Didn’t this guy ever see The Masked Marvel (1943)?”)

Be that as it may, Slide has heady words of praise for Thomas, and speaking for myself, it’s still my favorite of the Rogers sound vehicles I’ve been fortunate to see.  Rogers was the screen personality responsible for saving Fox’s bacon (he was the number-one box office attraction in 1934 and 1935) but that it’s in a nutshell—he was a personality, not an actor; his mere presence in a movie often being enough to carry the whole show.  Many of his movies have a distinct sameness about them; he usually plays a small-town sage who (like W.C. Fields) is often at odds with the bluenoses and so-called “respectable” folks in his community.  Doubting Thomas breaks this mold somewhat:  He’s still the sage (he plays a sausage baron—and I swear my choice of the word “sage” was not meant to be funny), but much of the film’s running time is devoted not to Rogers but rather the supporting players (like the marvelous Billie Burke and Alison Skipworth).  Also, many of what I thought were Rogers’ trademark ad-libs are actually (according to Slide) lines from The Torch Bearers, the George Kelly film on which the film is based.  (Will was legendary for “reworking” many of his lines in order to make them sound more natural, which had a tendency to befuddle his fellow actors patiently waiting for their cues.)

One of the movies in the Will Rogers set that I had been looking forward to seeing is Life Begins at Forty, and while I wasn’t disappointed it still contains the standard Rogers plot:  he’s a small-town newspaper editor named Kenesaw Clark whose willingness to back an ex-convict’s story that he was framed for a bank robbery makes him a pariah in the burg.  There’s a lot to be savored in Forty, though: Will is paired with Jane Darwell (far more glamorous here than in The Grapes of Wrath or The Ox Bow Incident), who lends fine support, along with Rochelle Hudson (in her fourth and final film with Rogers), Slim Summerville, Sterling Holloway, Richard Cromwell and George Barbier.  Forty was directed by George Marshall, whose crowning cinematic achievement remains Destry Rides Again (1939)—though he’s also revered by film comedy fans for his work with Bob Hope, Martin & Lewis, W.C. Fields and Laurel & Hardy.

Marshall was also holding the reins on In Old Kentucky, the final new Rogers film released theatrically (but not the last to be filmed—that distinction belongs to Steamboat Round the Bend) after his death.  The results are a mixed bag: there’s a good deal of potential in this entry that features Will as a horse trainer caught in a feud between a pair of Hatfield-and-McCoy-like clans but on the whole, the production is a bit too rushed to satisfactorily hit the mark.  (This shouldn’t seem too surprising: Rogers often hurriedly shot his films back-to-back in order to free up the rest of the year for his own interests.)  The highlights of Kentucky are the moments when Bill “Bojangles” Robinson appears onscreen, particularly when Bojangles attempts to teach Rogers how to dance—but one scene will probably make modern audiences blanch:  Rogers, incarcerated in the county jail, “blacks up” to pass as Robinson in order to escape.  (The joke here is that Rogers-as-Bojangles is ordered by the cops to demonstrate his dancing talents…which Will does very well in an impressive bit of hoofing, proving that he was paying attention during his time with the Ziegfeld Follies.)  Several elements in Kentucky were later recycled in Money From Home (1953), an underrated Martin & Lewis vehicle based on a Damon Runyon story.

The final movie in this collection is Steamboat Round the Bend, the last of three movies Rogers made with legendary director John Ford, and an effort that’s eerily similar to the W.C. Fields romp Poppy (1936)—both films feature the two men playing patent medicine hucksters who assist a pair of young lovers in their goal to get married.  While I was entertained by Steamboat, I’m not nearly as enamored of the movie as is Scott Eyman, the author of two Ford-related books (including Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford) who, in his audio commentary, lavishes laudatory praise for the Rogers-Ford trilogy.  (As much as I revere Ford, I must confess that I don’t particularly care for either his comedies or the humorous elements in his other works; they seem more funny-peculiar than funny-ha-ha.  The exception to this is Donovan’s Reef—though this statement is subject to change provided I get around to seeing The Whole Town’s Talking one of these days.)  Still, a charming cast that includes Anne Shirley, Irvin S. Cobb (the Saturday Evening Post writer who, according to Eyman, was at one time being groomed as a replacement for Rogers), Frances Ford (rank nepotism!), Eugene Pallette and Lincoln Perry (a.k.a. Stepin Fetchit) and Ford’s sure-footed direction makes the movie an enjoyable experience.  (I will warn you right now, however, those individuals expecting Mr. Fetchit, talented though he was, to break out of his stereotyped character and play a well-spoken, erudite African-American are going to be devastated and disappointed.)

The extras in the Will Rogers Collection are a bit skimpy (though there’s one Fox Movietone newsreel spotlighting the Will Rogers Memorial Fund…with outtakes to show that these productions tended to be on the rehearsed side), but the Thomas disc includes a recent Biography episode, Will Rogers: An American Original that is must-viewing for any Rogers fan.  Wonderfully narrated by Robert Culp, the documentary was fortunately co-produced by 20th Century-Fox, allowing generous clips from rarely-seen Rogers films (like Lightnin’ and So This is London) to be used.  (If Fox hadn’t been involved—you more than likely would have spent the whole two hours with public domain segments from Judge Priest.)

- Posted by Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. - 8:09:51 AM - comment []