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Quick-Draw J. Stuart Blackton Demonstrates His Art Speedy and Shorter and Welcome, AI Pioneer filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton got a start in vaudeville doing what was called “lightning sketches,” artist and easel on stage to astonish watchers by how fast he could draw. Stuart sped so at the game that he took up cartooning, which made switch to movies a cinch. This was pre-teens when everything in…
No Such Scene in the Picture We Have Access To, But We Can Dream, Can't We? Precode : Cagney with Blondell , Welcome to Hollywood , and Have a ( Hard) Seat BLONDE CRAZY (1931) --- The first starring James Cagney after a quartet with him in support or unexpected lead ( Public Enemy a surprise for Jim and employers). He was difficult from a start, demanding more money he knew he was worth, falling…
I Could Have Grown to Accept Betty's Dog Ears as Half-Moon Earrings Had They Been Tendered as Such Cartoon Columns Should Be Shorter, So Here Goes ... Decided to inaugurate a series for animation, and those being best where brief, let points stay nugget-size like candies enjoyed while watching. Too Few Humans? Betty Boop began as a dog, at least had dog ears. She did not appeal that way, not…
CCC: Merry Clipped-Out Marxes , Bouncing Baby Sandy , Dapper Offscreen Harold , and Comedies Gone Till Now KEEPSAKE MARXES --- Clippings, shavings, call these fragments what we will, but this was collecting on clowns before there was public access to posters, stills, lobby cards, wells into which much money is presently pumped by those who seek Marx artifacts long gone from theatre fronts and shop…
So Much Meat on the Hoof. Can Cornel Bring One Down? STS: Three That Speak to Survival Been fasting this week. Told by You Tube that it’s a good idea. They could be wrong, in which event I’m in little better circumstance that casts of three seen of late to rise and fail during the mid-sixties when bare-fist survival stories had not a vogue perhaps, but did appear to come out of nowhere in a…
"Written by Mark Twain" Said Credits True or no? --- most films improve upon novels they adapt. Why buy books for adapt to movies? Many are useful as pre-sell. Lots have a concept surefire, can’t miss. How was Jaws anything other than bulletproof for screens? Mark Twain wrote The Prince and the Pauper and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court , two not taught much at school, but bore his…
What This Book Tells Will Surprise You Plenty. Go Get It. Ad/Odds: Drews Delight in New Book , Mac/Eddy a 60's Happening , Cooped Up Lost World Watchers , and What Got Looked At Twenty Years Back They Go Way Back but Still Are Funny for My Money PRESENTING MR. AND MRS. SIDNEY DREW --- Neither odd nor an ad, this instead a new book by Rob Farr that explores the lives of Sidney Drew and the two Mrs.…
POP Goes : Dick Tracy Detects , Hombre Means Man , Tides are Passionate , and Groucho Goes Motoring DICK TRACY (1945) --- Called in some quarters Dick Tracy, Detective , as if we’d need telling what Dick did for a living, or maybe it was necessary s ince he derived from a comic strip called kid stuff by most (even though grown-ups liked him too), the character better put to serials . Three of…
Noir : The Crooked Way , A Cry in the Night , and Cry Vengeance THE CROOKED WAY (1949) --- A sort of from hunger turn on the serviceman with amnesia theme used by Fox for Somewhere in the Night a few years before. John Payne had lately took a leaf from Dick Powell to effect a postwar image change from charm boy to beat-down survivor of noir travails, trouble being his Crooked Way fall-guy falls…
Here is What a Local Theatre Could Ad-Achieve in 1924. Great Art I Calls It. Boots No More ... but Still: Chaney and Ford Legit ... and Not HE WHO GETS SLAPPED (1924) --- Stop presses. He Who Gets Slapped is no longer a bootleg. Not that it has been for a good many years now, Warner Archive having released a standard DVD, then Flicker Alley with a Blu-Ray culled from better preservation materials…
When Warners Turned Fifty Warner Bros. threw an anniversary party for themselves in 1973. History went back to 1923 (or somewhere thereabouts) but owner of the pre-49 backlog was United Artists, which meant birthday showings of WB classics would have to be cleared through UA. It had been that way since the mid-fifties when Warners perhaps foolishly (no “perhaps” about it) sold their library…
Beware Austerity Eyes That Paralyzed From Fact: Doing Without Even After You Win Lots imagine how great it would be to have met one or all of the Beatles. What fun to find common ground with that irreverent lot, but here’s the thing, a massive thing. We of stateside spoilage had not a thread in common with these or any Liverpool boys or girls, virtually all of whom knew life in the rawer than we…
Showmen: Hondo and What Happened to 3-D TV's? , Plus The Sting Glasses Given Out So Viewers Can Watch Once-Only 1991 TV Run of Hondo in 3D Producing Partners John Wayne and Robert Fellows HONDO (1954) --- Why did they take away 3D televisions? Were we being punished for something? There’s eerie effect to corporations that make a policy decision, all hands down with it. Guess I'm out of luck when…
CYB: Pearl Diving at You Tube So much technology rides current wind. I’m beginning to take miracles for granted. For instance what’s being done with Public Domain content aboard You Tube. Features, shorts, cartoons, all put to freshener that is, what, AI? CGI? I’m dumb to details of how but dazzled by results. All of a sudden comes high-def spun off standard transfers, clouds parted to bluest of…
The General Died at Dawn (1936) An Action Oddity Gary Cooper continually exposes himself to mortal danger for no reason other that his love of democracy , so he says, and often, in The General Died at Dawn , a lethal dose of Clifford Odets as screenwriter and recent Communist Party member. Didn't he realize that soldiers of fortune were supposed to be after fortunes first, maybe a woman next, then…
What Trades Told: 1929 from 1970 Viewpoint Films in Review was among few ways film folk kept in touch, (more/less) monthly means for kindred souls to sha re plus be reassured that others, if few, were like them. Write in and chances were they’d print your letter. Industry notables contributed, FIR house organ for the National Board of Review, which had been around long as movies themselves.…
Wide Worlds : China vs. Us , Raindrops Fall on Westerns , and Eastwood Deals in Dynamite THE SAND PEBBLES (1966) --- Was there roadshow fatigue by the mid-sixties? At least for Fox, there seemed more losing than winning, The Sound of Music a historic exception, though for every one of that, there were two like The Bible or The Agony and the Ecstasy , plus barely-eecking-profit Cleopatra which…
Greetings from Homer ... But What Is He Doing Here ? Art of ... When Music Masters Mastered Movies That man Homer they credit with The Iliad and The Odyssey turns out to maybe not have existed. He, whoever he (or she?) actually was, got nowhere near Greek texts, these emerging instead from oral tradition, meaning stories told, retold, translated, gone through tens of thousands of iterations till…
Watched: Agar Ugly Again , Invite to Ranch Party , and Muni's Angel Does His Killing HAND OF DEATH (1962) --- Fun of fundamental science-fiction is observing the experiment, waiting on it to somehow go wrong, then aboard for whatever monster results from the failed venture. Cheapness does not deter, in fact it enhances, like with Hand of Death where John Agar develops a sort of nerve gas to ease…
What Horror Film Approached Such Unnerving Imagery as This? Thriller-Chiller-Diller: The Testament of Dr. Mabuse Fritz Lang liked length and so let his German edition of this run past two hours, muchness his style almost from a start directing. The first Mabuse in 1922 took two feature parts to weave its story, Last Testament improving upon it for pace and thrills. Mabuse was cunning enough to…
Among the One-Hundred: A Place in the Sun Opening of A Place in the Sun is its own mini-masterpiece. American tragedy happens here before a first word is spoken. George/Monty hears, but just glimpses, a convertible streaking by and sounding its distinctive horn. He won’t know, and we might not register even later, that it’s Angela/Liz. I so lament fact she did not stop and pick George up . Imagine…
42nd Street and Dancing on Precode Ceilings Let’s say that dancing is your dream and you’ll do just anything to be on Broadway and show your stuff. Many gave wholly enough of themselves to end up with nothing save spent youth and limbs shot for good. I knew a Broadway seeker who ended up teaching what she could no longer perform, aged hopelessly out by thirty. Having been in the Will Rogers…
CCC : Fields the Inventor , Ernst Lubitsch Makes Us Pay Attention YOU’RE TELLING ME (1934) --- Back a moment to 9/23/2024 and W.C. Fields making Winston-Salem stand in 1970, “The Great Man” promoted thus: See the crusader against everything, the funniest comedian of all time representing everything that decent people don’t, or say they don’t, want to be. This sounds like local management talking.…
First and Last Time Jack Would Be Billed Alone Above the Title Where Appearing with Garbo STS: Stars That Shone and Smoldered , Gold is Where Warners Did Not Find It SURE WAS SEDUCTIVE --- There is a great old book called Seductive Cinema , written by James Card who used to ramrod the George Eastman House film archive. He showed up also at Syracuse shows, post-GEH retirement, but I never…
You Can't Tell Me This Isn't Rudy Revived Through Early Realized Miracle That Was AI. Ad/Odds: They Revived Rudy in 1956! , Cosmic Carradine , Snooze and Lose Was Rudy So Tall As This? Sources Indicate He was Between 5"8' and 5'9" FIRE MAIDENS FROM OUTER SPACE (1956) --- Z as in grade but also for Zzzz, destination sand land for many watching, or trying to, 74 minutes yawning toward eternity. Fire…