#hokum! productions

[fibula-rasa]

Lost, but Not Forgotten: What Price Beauty? (1925)

Direction: Thomas Buckingham

Scenario & Story: Natacha Rambova

Titles: Malcolm Stuart Boylan

Production Manager: S. George Ullman

Camera: J. D. Jennings

Art Direction: Natacha Rambova 

Production Design: William Cameron Menzies

Costume Design: Adrian

Studio: Circle Films (Production) & Pathé Exchange (Distribution)

Performers: Nita Naldi, Pierre Gendron, Virginia Pearson, Dolores Johnson, Myrna Loy, Sally Winters, La Supervia, Marilyn Newkirk, Victor Potel, Spike Rankin, Rosalind Byrne, Templar Saxe, Leo White Maybe: John Steppling, Paulette Duval, Dorothy Dwan, and Sally Long

Premiere: None, general release: January 22, 1928

Status: Presumed entirely lost.

Length: Variously reported as 5000 and 4000 feet (more commonly listed as 4000) or 5 reels

Synopsis (synthesized from magazine summaries of the plot):

Mary, a.k.a. “Miss Simplicity” (Dolores Johnson) is a starry-eyed, country-to-city transplant. She works at a beauty shop operated by a glamorous matron (Virginia Pearson) and owned by the young and handsome Clay (Pierre Gendron). 

Mary is in love with Clay, but doesn’t have the nerve or feminine wiles to woo him. The uber-sophisticated Rita (Nita Naldi), however, is chock full of nerves and wile. Rita’s fancy clothes and perfumes and advanced flirting skills leave Mary feeling destined to fail at winning Clay’s amorous attention. 

These feelings sublimate into an expressionistic dream for Mary, where she finds herself transformed into a sophisticate like Rita. Her boss is seen as a magnificent wizard, converting her clients into archetypes of glamour: exotic types, flappers, and sirens. Her competition, Rita, is seen as a bewitching spider.

In the end, surprising Mary, it turns out that her fresh-faced, unassuming charm is more appealing to Clay than Rita’s more practiced charm.

Additional sequence(s) featured in the film (but I’m not sure where they fit in the continuity):

Scene of the trials and tribulations of a fat woman trying to “reduce”

Points of Interest:

Only one quarter of Nita Naldi’s Hollywood films have survived (7 extant titles/21 lost or mostly lost titles).

——— ——— ———

What Price Beauty? was the first and only film produced under Natacha Rambova’s own company. Coordinating production for the film was the business manager for Rambova and her husband Rudolph Valentino, S. George Ullman. The couple met Ullman when he was working for Mineralava beauty products, the sponsor of their 1922-3 dancing tour. 

When Rudolph Valentino entered into a contract with United Artists, said contract reportedly stipulated that Valentino-Rambova were not a package deal. Therefore, Rambova could not collaborate with Valentino on his productions for United. Possibly as consolation, Ullman funded a production for Rambova while Valentino worked on The Eagle (1925, extant).

For Rambova, What Price Beauty? was meant to be a proving ground for her idea that an artistic film could be made on a modest budget. She also wished to remind people that she was a skilled artist in her own right.

In an interview in Picture Play Magazine from August 1925, Rambova asserts:

“…I do not want the production in any sense to be referred to as high-brow or ‘arty’. My reputation for being ‘arty’ is one of the things that I have to live down, and I hope by this picture, which is a comedy—even to the extent of gags and hokum—to overcome that idea. “A woman who marries a celebrity is bound to find herself in a more or less equivocal position, it seems, and her difficulties are only increased when she happens to have had some artistic ambitions of her own before her marriage. I am afraid that those who have accused me of meddling in my husband’s affairs forget that I enjoyed a certain reputation and a very good remuneration for my work as well before I became Mrs. Valentino.”

“What I desire personally is simply to be known for the work which I have always done, and that has brought me a reputation entirely independent of my marriage.”

There isn’t a vast amount of information on what exactly prevented WPB from gaining release in a timely fashion. If the film was truly nothing more than a ploy to separate Rambova from Valentino, that would be an absurd waste of time, money (~$80,000 in 1925 USD), and talent—Rambova employed soon-to-be famous designer Adrian for costumes and William Cameron Menzies for set decoration. Not to mention that, in front of the camera, Nita Naldi was still a popular star and the Rambova discovery, Myrna Loy, made her quickly hyped debut. 

When Pathé finally purchased WPB for distribution in 1928, they did very little to promote the film. Naldi had moved on from the film industry—as had Rambova. And, while Loy hadn’t become the huge star we know today by January of 1928, Warner Brothers had already given her top billing in a number of films. Pathé barely mentions Loy’s role in the little promotion they did do.

To put WPB’s release in the context of Rambova’s personal/professional biography (which you can read more about here):

June/July 1925 – WPB is completed, Rambova and Valentino separate (in July according to Rambova’s mother as quoted in Rambova’s book Rudy)

August 1925 – Rambova leaves Hollywood for New York City, reportedly to negotiate distribution for WPB. She and Valentino would see each other in person for the last time. Rambova leaves NYC for Europe.

September 1925 – Valentino draws up a new will disinheriting Rambova

November 1925 – Rambova returns to the US to act in a film, When Love Grows Cold (1926, presumed lost), a title which Rambova objected to

December 1925 – Rambova files for divorce

August 1926 – Valentino dies 

January 1928 – WPB is finally released with no fanfare by Pathé

In my research for my Rambova cosplay, the suspicious production/release history for this film stood out to me. I hoped that I might find some reliable evidence of whether WPB was a consolation prize and/or a scheme to keep Rambova and Valentino apart. Honestly and unfortunately, circumstantial evidence does support it!

After poring over what few contemporary sources cover WPB, there seemed to be no plan in place for distribution as the film was in production. United Artists, at whose lot the film was shot, claimed to have nothing to do with its release. Ullman had a news item placed about negotiating the distribution rights in the East. However, in Ullman’s own memoir, he admits that when he travelled to New York with Rambova, it was in a personal, not professional capacity—navigating the couple’s separation. (Ullman’s book contains many disprovable claims and misrepresentations, so anything cited from it should be taken with a grain of salt.) That said, Ullman’s failure to secure even a modest distribution deal for WPB in a reasonable timeframe speaks to how ill-founded Valentino’s and Rambova’s trust in his business acumen was.

WPB cost $80,000 to produce, which converts to $1.4 million in 2023 USD. While that wasn’t an outrageous budget for a Hollywood feature film at the time, especially one with such advanced production value, it’s certainly an absurd cost if the goal was only to separate a bankable star from his wife and collaborator.

A close friend and employee of Valentino and Rambova, Lou Mahoney, recalled in Michael Morris’ Madam Valentino:

“The picture was previewed at a theater on the east side of Pasadena, and Mahoney remembered the audience reaction as positive, but, thereafter, What Price Beauty? was consigned to oblivion. Mahoney knew why: ‘No help came from anyone, no thoughts of trying to get this picture properly released. No help came from Ullman, Schenck, or anybody else. Their whole thought was that if the picture were a success, Mrs. Valentino would be a success. She would then start producing under the Rudolph Valentino Production Company. But this nobody wanted—except herself, and Mr. Valentino.’”

——— ——— ———

The few reviews from 1928 that I was able to find are not very complimentary of WPB. The critics seem thrown by the film’s tone or genre—reading it as a drama. (Part of that is Pathé’s fault as they listed it as one.) But, according to sources contemporary to WPB’s production, it was intended to be a farcical satire of the beauty industry and social expectations of feminine beauty. Given the simple story, the intentional typage of characters (“The Sport,” “The Sissy,” and “Miss Simplicity”), and the over-the-top-but-on-a-budget art design of WPB, all signs point to high camp. In 1925 as well as 1928, the stodgier side of the critical spectrum would likely fail to see its appeal.

It’s a true shame we can’t find out for ourselves how good, bad, or campy WPB was as of yet, but here’s hoping the film resurfaces!

More about Rambova

GIFs of some of her design work on film

☕Appreciate my work? Buy me a coffee! ☕

Transcribed Sources & Annotations over on the WMM Blog!

[byneddiedingo]

Robert Morley and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938)

Cast: Norma Shearer, Tyrone Power, John Barrymore, Robert Morley, Anita Louise, Joseph Schildkraut, Gladys George, Henry Stephenson. Screenplay: Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Henry Grace. Film editing: Robert Kern. Costume design: Adrian, Gile Steele. Music: Herbert Stothart.

Hollywood historical hokum, W.S. Van Dyke's Marie Antoinette was a vehicle for Norma Shearer that had been planned for her by her husband, Irving G. Thalberg, who died in 1936. MGM stuck with it because as Thalberg's heir, Shearer had control of a large chunk of stock. It also gave her a part that ran the gamut from the fresh and bubbly teenage Austrian archduchess thrilled at the arranged marriage to the future Louis XVI, to the drab, worn figure riding in a tumbril to the guillotine. Considering that it takes place in one of the most interesting periods in history, it could have been a true epic if screenwriters Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Ernest Vajda (with uncredited help from several other hands, including F. Scott Fitzgerald) hadn't been pressured to turn it into a love story between Marie and the Swedish Count Axel Fersen. But the portrayal of their affair was stifled by the Production Code's squeamishness about sex, and the long period in which Marie and Louis fail to consummate their marriage lurks unexplained in the background. MGM threw lots of money at the film: Shearer sashays around in Adrian gowns with panniers out to here, with wigs up to there, and on sets designed and decorated by Cedric Gibbons and Henry Grace that make the real Versailles look puny. The problem is that nothing like a genuine human emotion appears on the screen, and the perceived necessity of glamorizing the aristocrats turns the French Revolution on its head. The cast of thousands includes John Barrymore as Louis XV, Gladys George as Madame du Barry, and Joseph Schildkraut (made up with what looks like Jean Harlow's eyebrows and Joan Crawford's lipstick) as the foppish Duke of Orléans. The best performance in the movie comes from Morley, who took the role after the first choice, Charles Laughton, proved unavailable; Morley earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his film debut. With the exception of The Women (George Cukor, 1939), in which she is upstaged by her old rival Joan Crawford, this is Shearer's last film of consequence. When she turned 40 in 1942, she retired from the movies and lived in increasing seclusion until her death, 41 years later. It says something about Shearer's status in Hollywood that Greta Garbo, who retired at about the same time, and who also sought to be left alone, was the more legendary figure and was more ardently pursued by gossips and paparazzi.

[themaresnest-dumblr]

One Piece May Be The Most Irritating Manga Comic Of All Time, But The TV Series Is Well Worth Your Time

You have to hand it to Netflix, they've done it again.

Whereas the original comic and animated TV series were definitely acquired tastes (or lack of it) with a protagonist with the most dubious set of teeth this side of Tony Blair, the live action series distills the essences of all the characters into a far more palatable form, and the world into a more palatable format.

Yes, a lot of it is cheesy, inbetween the moments which appear lifted straight from Terry Prachett's Discworld, but it holds up, not least of all because the cast play up their parts so well.

Iñaki Godoy is wonderfully silly as Monkey D. Luffy - whose rubber persona serves as a metaphor for his ability to constantly bounce back from every set back (and frequent severe beatings) that have his more rational reluctant crew begging to throw in the towel, not least of all stereotypical whirlwind swordsman Zoro (yes, really - played superbly by Mackenyu Maeda) and the calculating Nami (Emily Rudd finally getting a role in a major production) who act as effective counterfoils as they're sucked ever deeper into Luffy's madcap life - despite every brain cell they have telling them they ought to be getting a hundred miles away from this bumnugget's insistence he will find a fabled treasure and be crowned King of the Pirates.

By the end of the first series, Luffy's got an eyewatering price on his head, has pissed off just about every pirate hunter and every other pirate on the planet, has the entire Marine Corps after him - and yet hasn't done a single piece of actual pirating - let alone one piece ...

If you want to know how this Klutz Corsair managed that, you can bingewatch the entire eight episodes of the first series just now - much of it highly rewatchable.

If you fancy some low brow hokum with a not that low brow plot, you could do a lot worse that 'One Piece'.

[cantsayidont]

Early-morning hater hours:

MARMALADE (2023): Fizzy Keir O'Donnell crime comedy-drama about a wide-eyed young hick (Joe Keery) telling his new jail cellmate (Aldis Hodge) about how his romance with a pink-haired wild child called Marmalade (Camila Morrone) became a crime spree. Familiar but very charming for its first 70 minutes, with a bright, poppy visual style and a vivid evocation of the feeling of falling for someone who pushes you out of your comfort zone in ways both good and bad, the film then loses the plot with a twist obviously inspired by the 1995 crime drama THE USUAL SUSPECTS, leading to a resolution that isn't nearly clever enough to make up for the loss of the story's original emotional core. A real disappointment after its enjoyable opening.

MONSIEUR SPADE (2024): Peculiar AMC/Canal+ co-production, set in 1963 and starring Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade, now a retired but still cagey man of leisure living on the country estate of his late French wife (Chiara Mastroianni) in the rural town of Bozouls and acting in loco parentis for Teresa, the now-teenage daughter of Brigid O'Shaughnessey (Cara Bossom). Spade is drawn into a complex web of murder and conspiracy involving a mysterious young Algerian boy many people will kill to find, and who is somehow tied up with Teresa's errant father, Philippe Saint-Andre (Jonathan Zaccaï). Elliptical and very French, the show's sun-dappled atmosphere is pleasant, but the oblique way the story takes shape demands closer attention than it ever rewards, and the actual plot is both convoluted and unconvincing; at one point Spade aptly calls it "hokum." Furthermore, while the show is most enjoyable where it focuses on the hard-boiled American detective's uneasy integration into drowsy French rural life, it ultimately struggles to justify placing Spade so far outside his original milieu. It seems like creators Scott Frank and Tom Fontana wanted to create something approximating the Conan Doyle stories of a retired Sherlock Holmes keeping bees on the Sussex Downs, but Spade is really too thinly drawn a character for that, although Owen is better than one might expect. I also don't buy that Spade's exploits (at least vis-à-vis THE MALTESE FALCON) would make him world-famous like Poirot or Holmes.

[moosefeels]

basically there's no way to engage with childcare in the united states and emerge normal. it's 100% a madness rune. like i'm not even talking about parenting writ large, but the institutions of education and care here are so fucked, and part of it is because education is both a vector of conspicuous consumption and because everyone wants social reproduction without paying for it. every type of daycare is insanely, outrageously evil in some capacity (literally all of them, yes including the one you send/sent your kid to/the one you went to). waldorf schools are literally white supremacist hokum, montessori schools are the Original 'daycare as class indicator,' reggio emilia is montessori II with extremely aggressive EU enforced branding (and no one i know who's worked one has recieved a living wage), and chain daycares are entirely oriented around the idea of 'kindergarten readiness' (which is to say, women making minimum wage attempting to drill sight words into three and four year olds in environments with live camera feeds and preparing lunches primarily comprised of canned products from sysco). if you are lucky, one of these will cost you around $10k for a year of care for one infant.

[signalwatch]

Doc/ Review Watch: That's Entertainment (1974)

Watched:  12/31/2022

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jack Haley Jr.

I'm not clear on where this first showed - I guess wide release?  It has a box office take listed, so I guess it was put out in theaters.  Which is pretty wild.  The movie is essentially a review/ clip show of MGM musicals and the greatest generator of a punchlist for movie nerds I can think of.  

What's even wilder is that the movie was released as a 50th Anniversary celebration of MGM - and we're about 50 years from the release of this film.  Time.  It does roll on.  

The film is hosted by an array of folks who were still living and vibrant, from Frank Sinatra to Bing Crosby to Elizabeth Taylor to a Mickey Rooney (who'll de damned if he's gonna shoot in the sun and manages the worst lighting you'll see in a major release as he wanders down a tree-lined sidewalk).  But it's all a celebration of what made the movie musical great - and it makes a stunning case for the idea.  Spectacle, talent, artistry and a bit of hokum all combine in an electric mix across about 100 clips supporting the thesis and the arguments presented for the musical. 

Clips cover everything from the Depression-era Busby Berkley opuses to Andy Hardy films to Eleanor Powell, Ann Miller and of course Fred and Ginger (and Fred and Cyd).  And a reminder that the most insane Hollywood may have ever gone was staging Esther Williams movies.  It's impossible to imagine happening in the past 40 years.  

1974 - the year of release - is an interesting inflection point.  Liza Minnelli appears to remind you she's the daughter of Judy Garland and Vincent Minnelli and that she just won an Oscar for a musical.  It's the promise of a new generation taking on musicals, which may have seemed possible in '74.  But, clearly, that's not what happened.  Sure, these days we get one or two a year, and most Disney cartoons are musicals for all intents and purposes, but as much as westerns would fade, musicals became a novelty.  And, frankly, it seems like people my age feel weirdly threatened by musicals that don't start as Broadway shows.*

Trotting out the old guard is a fine idea for a retrospective, but in 1974, there's no home video.  They weren't going to re-release 45 years of musicals, I don't think.  So what was this for?  One last hurrah and a trip down memory lane?  The stars walk the now clearly dilapidated sets, around a decaying MGM lot, and I have to ask "why?"  Why would MGM show their own sets in such a state of disrepair?  I don't know what happened to MGM in the 1960's, but the story of MGM by the 1980's was about purchases, mergers, real estate sales...  the company had gone from being a force of nature to a has-been.  Even today, MGM seems to exist to put out Bond movies and not a whole lot else.  If this film hoped to push people to clamor for musicals, I guess - not so much.

That said, it's a stunning reminder of what Hollywood - at least MGM - did on the regular to deliver wildly imaginative productions, the kind of talent they had on staff, and what movies can do.  And maybe what we lost when the 1970's taught us to rely on "realism" in film, or at least pivoted us to space epics for our visions of flights of fancy.  

Clearly Broadway tells us there's still an audience for musicals, and you do wonder - with today's techniques - what would an Esther Williams film look like?  Who could star in it?  Can an audience sit for a tap number?  Do people still get swept up in ballroom dancing by the best, or just when it's a reality show with D-level stars trotted out for two minute numbers and people pretending to be judges?

And, honestly, even TCM doesn't play musicals like it used to.  I'm sure the numbers track better to other kinds of films for whatever reason, but it would be nice to have some play of those big spectacle flicks.

MGM produced enough of these musicals that it spawned several sequels - That's Entertainment 2 and 3, as well as That's Dancing.  So clearly they were making some money off of these things.  

*I will never get the hostility to La-La Land

https://ift.tt/oC8A3vV

from The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/EwbolCf

[thelonesomequeen]

And they're not even the production company OR the distributor for that movie. They're just the sales rep.

Honey, Don't Production Company - Focus Features

The Materialists Production Companies - 2AM/A24/Killer Films Sales Rep - Sony Pictures Distributor - Stage 6 Films

Sacrifice Production Company - Iconoclast Entertainment Sales Rep - CAA Media Finance

(This is all info found on IMdB Pro) So the "only" CAA backed movies is hokum as well lol 🧜🏻‍♀️

Now they are saying he’s only doing CAA backed movies cause “he burned his bridges.”🤣🤣//

Right it’s not like the director/producer has a say in who gets cast🙄🙄🙄

If they didn’t want him he wouldn’t be there. CAA may help but they don’t have the end say.

They give CAA alot of power lmao

[churchofsatannews]

Hokum Returns to JCTC's Merseles Studios for Summer Edition

Jersey City, NJ - Hokum Productions returns to the Jersey City Theater Center on June 2nd for its summer edition. Advance tickets are on sale now at: ticketfly.com/event/1695828-jctc-music-hokum-jersey-city/. This showcase will feature the New Jersey swamp rock band Reese Van Riper, alternative Americana artist Dolly Rocker Ragdoll on tour from Ohio, as well as black roots artists Vienna Carroll and Keith Johnston. The event will be MC'ed by blues artist, Church of Satan priest, and Hokum co-founder, Darren Deicide. The summer edition returns after a sold out debut at the Jersey City Theater Center. Hokum Productions is dedicated to alternative roots music and culture, and thus, will be having tables including JC Oddities Market, Jersey City Food Not Bombs, and more to be announced. Saturday, June 2, Doors at 7pm Merseles Studios at the Jersey City Theater Center 339 Newark Ave., Jersey City, NJ $10 and tickets available in advance at ticketfly.com/event/1695828-jctc-music-hokum-jersey-city/ 

[leporellian]

So (continuing on my Batshit Rigoletto Interpretation) i think the whole curse thing in the opera has a completely different dramaturgical meaning than most people actually ascribe it. it's simultaneously as important and not as important as it's made out to be in various productions. here's my thinking

first off, i don't think the curse is an actual, literal curse. interpretations that make this out to be the case also strip all the characters of any agency from that moment forward, removing much of the dramatic tension. and it opens up more plot holes- why does the curse seemingly only affect rigoletto, and not the duke? why does monterone imply in act 2 that his curse isn't supernatural? everything that constructs the actual 'effects' of the 'curse' are all very much pre-built aspects of character reaching their natural conclusions. also it gives the opera a distinct sense of hokum and is slightly ridiculous in its nature.

the second, counteractive idea to the first is that the curse actually does not matter at all dramaturgically and was only really included to give the opera a false sense of moralism. i would argue the opera already has a moral; it's just more directed at us the viewers than it is the characters. (there are multiple morals, perhaps. but the largest one calls us out. i'll get to that later.) as evidence of this idea people point to how the motif for the curse becomes less and less used over time, and how the entire plot could theoretically happen the exact same way even if the curse and all references to it were removed. which you'd THINK would make sense but the idea of monterone's curse is a string that runs through the play's beads of plot. it's a dramatic through-line and something of a measuring stick.

so here's my thinking: the curse is not a literal curse. it's a representation of a theme: turning on other outsiders in order to conform to society.

it is through monterone that this idea is first expressed because monterone is the grandest of all the 'outsiders' and, also, the closest to actually conforming to society. (i've seen multiple productions imply that monterone himself was once a courtier before being abandoned for growing out of their schemes and/or becoming too old for them, which i think is a really neat idea.) monterone commands a sort of dramatic power and image. it's also perhaps the most on the nose example, given that much of the things rigoletto mocks monterone for are traits that he also possesses. rig is mocking monterone not out of personal malice but because the courtiers goad him into doing so and because rig, despite hating the courtiers, wants so BADLY to be part of society in some way or another. monterone's curse affects rig not because rig particularly believes in curses but because rig understands damn well what it means: he's losing himself in pursuit of an ideal that will never come to pass, and that rattles him.

the idea of the curse reappears, from then on, in scenes that have to do with that exact idea. that's why it keeps appearing. it occupies rig's mind after the whole gilda-kidnapping episode because, in his desire to be 'part of the gang' and in on the courtiers' group of friends, he ended up endangering his own daughter. it comes up during pari siamo before that after rigoletto's long spiel of self-hatred, showing that ultimately his desire to conform hurts himself, too. it even comes up when rigoletto isn't on the stage: when sparafucile decides to kill someone else instead of the duke and pass them off as the duke's corpse to rig, the music eerily echoes the courtiers' musings after rigoletto is cursed, showing that ultimately, sparafucile in that moment is doing the same thing rigoletto did. and of course the curse comes up in its most violent and horrific musical form when gilda dies and rigoletto's own machinations of participating in societal conform (this time in committing an act of revenge, which had previously been established as a Common Language utilized by the courtiers) fail in the worst possible way.

however, while rig's fatal flaw is very much his need to conform, this opera is not a 'be yourself!' type story. there is no room or safety for being one's own self in this world. if you are disabled or otherwise marginalized, there is not the safety and freedom to be yourself. rigoletto's entire livelihood depends on his need to conform, and without that there would be no other jobs for him to pursue given his disability. the opera's moral is not given to its characters but to its audience: could you change this? could this have gone down differently in another place, another time?

there's no answer, of course. there never is.

[disgruntled-foreign-patriarch]

I am not sure where the 500 years of oil number came from. Going by currently discovered reserves and assuming we don't discover more or change our rate of consumption we have roughly 50 years left till we run out of oil. Which given every nation's reluctance to try and find out things to use instead of oil could be why they don't ramp up production.

everyone has kept assuming that there won't be any more discoveries or innovations. I remember growing up and hearing that same "only 20-30 years left!!!1!" hokum. We'll be okay

[blackswaneuroparedux]

David Niven really loves Anthony Quayle, and Gregory Peck loves Anthony Quinn. Tony Quayle breaks a leg and is sent off to hospital. Tony Quinn falls in love with Irene Papas, and Niven and Peck catch each other on the rebound and live happily ever after.

- Gregory Peck explaining the plot of The Guns of Navarone (1961)

The Guns of Navarone is more than typical for a wartime adventure story. A team of roughneck military specialists is sent on a fool’s errand of certain death. You have the steel-eyed commando leader. The explosives expert. The cold-blooded killer, good with knives. The local boy looking for his shot. The aged, ethnic veteran of war. And the regular Joe, who just happens to have a certain knowledge that makes him ideal for a mission that must be completed. Given that the first four character types are, in this case, British, Navarone is strikingly reminiscent of The Bridge on the River Kwai.

The model the film offers is now a familiar one, as it was copied numerous times in the following decade, most notably by The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare and countless other fictional war stories of the 60s.

Based very loosely on an Alistair MacLean novel, it tells the story of a crack platoon of military misfits sent on a suicide mission to a Greek island in the Aegean Sea, where the Germans control the area with two huge artillery guns mounted in a cave. Sadly, as entertaining a notion as this all is, there is no island called Navarone, nor were there any big guns, or a mission to destroy them – it’s all pure hokum.

The film boasts a stellar cast in Gregory Peck, David Niven, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Baker, Anthony Quayle, James Darren, Irene Papas, Gia Scala, James Robertson Justice, and Richard Harris.

With such a large cast, some characters are often overlooked, but almost everyone I’ve mentioned gets at least one big scene, and the ones between Peck, Quinn and Niven are totally riveting. For Peck, it’s one of his less sympathetic roles, as the leadership of this band of miscreants ultimately drives him to sacrifice Anthony Quayle’s character to achieve the objective. But that’s exactly where Navarone is great, because it’s about the underlying tension between the characters, their allegiances and how the dynamic of the group alters during the story.

Gregory Peck firmly had his tongue in his cheek when promoting this classic war film by teasing the homoerotic themes that are not really there. Cinema-goers of the period were obviously far too excited by all the explosions and derring-do to notice. They also mostly missed the basic tenet of the story: that war destroys all those involved, irrespective of their virtues.Perhaps it’s worth forgiving those that missed all this, because the production values here are excellent. This was the most expensive movie made at the time, and looks it.

The Guns of Navarone is one of those films one can watch over and over again, like slipping into well worn slippers, and still feel comforted of what a good war movie should look like for mayhem, fighting, and a simple, sanctimonious story about heroism when it’s war at all costs. To me it’s one of the best ever war movies.

[byneddiedingo]

Line Noro and Jean Gabin in Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937)

Cast: Jean Gabin, Gabriel Gabrio, Mireille Balin, Saturnin Fabre, Fernand Charpin, Lucas Gridoux, Gilbert Gil, Marcel Dalio, Gaston Modot, LIne Noro. Screenplay: Henri La Barthe, Julien Duvivier, Jacques Constant, Henri Jeanson. Cinematography: Marc Fossard, Jules Kruger. Production design: Jacques Krauss. Film editing: Marguerite Beaugé. Music: Vincent Scotto, Mohamed Ygerbuchen. 

When Walter Wanger decided to remake Pépé le Moko in 1938 as Algiers (John Cromwell), he tried to buy up all the existing copies of the French film and destroy them. Fortunately, he didn't succeed, but it's easy to see why he made the effort: As fine an actor as Charles Boyer was, he could never capture the combination of thuggishness and charm that Jean Gabin displays in the role of Pépé, a thief living in the labyrinth of the Casbah in Algiers. It's one of the definitive film performances, an inspiration for, among many others, Humphrey Bogart's Rick in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1943). The story, based on a novel by Henri La Barthe, who collaborated with Duvivier on the screenplay, is pure romantic hokum, but done with the kind of commitment on the part of everyone involved that raises hokum to the level of art. Gabin makes us believe that Pépé would give up the security of a life where the flics can't touch him, all out of love for the chic Gaby (Mireille Balin), the mistress of a wealthy man vacationing in Algiers. He is also drawn out of his hiding place in the Casbah by a nostalgia for Paris, which Gaby elicits from him in a memorable scene in which they recall the places they once knew. Gabin and Balin are surrounded by a marvelous supporting cast of thieves and spies and informers, including Line Noro as Pépé's Algerian mistress, Inès, and the invaluable Marcel Dalio as L'Arbi.

[lesbiancolumbo]

tony curtis for the film dictionary?

i read this paragraph in the bookstore where i found this book and it is very amusing:

Curtis was for years one of the test cases cited to illustrate the follies of the cinema. How, it was asked, could this Bronx kid with greasy hair dripping over his forehead be taken seriously? After the Navy and various drama schools, he made his debut in Siodmak’s Criss Cross (48) and was soon signed up by the Universal slave market of young talent.

Two came through: Rock Hudson and Curtis. One benefit of the system was that it enabled Curtis to make a lot of movies in a short time—mostly enjoyable hokum: [this is the part of the paragraph where David just lists out his entire shitty filmography......]

Perhaps it was a test of endurance, but Curtis wore tights and uniforms honorably and never took himself as solemnly as some of his scolds chose to. In 1956, he began earnestly to improve himself with Carol Reed’s Trapeze, a film that carefully blended the athletic and the sentimental. But he came into his own when readmitted to a modern urban world, and in Mister Cory (57, Blake Edwards) and as Sidney Falco in Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success (57) he was able to show some of the things a Bronx Ali Baba had learned about life. In the latter, he gave one of the first portrayals of unprincipled American ambition and of the collapsible personality that goes with it. He was man on all fours some years before America really noticed the posture. The script has many cutting things to say about Falco that are like cigarettes put out in Tony’s “ice-cream face.” In response, Curtis was hurt, brave, and bitter—a terrific performance.

Curtis did not escape flabby costume films: The Vikings (58, Richard Fleischer); Spartacus (60, Stanley Kubrick); and Taras Bulba (62, J. Lee Thompson). But he next adventured into comedy, thrust there first by Billy Wilder in Some Like It Hot (59). He is the subtlest thing in that outrageous film: more cunningly feminine than Lemmon and throwing in a superb impersonation of Cary Grant as a bonus. Blake Edwards immediately cast him with Grant in Operation Petticoat (59) and Curtis was now a comic Falco, still convincing but several shades rosier. After Who Was That Lady? (60) for George Sidney, he gave one of his best performances as the chronically flexible Great Imposter (60, Robert Mulligan), an underrated film that owes a lot to Curtis’s fallible grasp of himself.

One other thing: in 2008, Tony published a memoir, American Prince, that claimed a sweet romance with Marilyn Monroe from 1948. Well, good luck. But then in 2009, he co-authored The Making of “Some Like It Hot,” and said there was a second affair during the production. Tony? Kissing Hitler? Some ad-libs are sacred and some memoirs leave a smell!

[jdpink]

In early December, the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed the Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act. This bill, introduced by a California Democrat, Mark Takano, amends the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act to reduce the federally recognized standard workweek from forty hours to thirty-two. The direct beneficiaries of this change would be hourly wage workers, who could potentially earn more overtime pay. But salaried knowledge workers would also be affected by the cultural shift that Takano’s bill would initiate. If a four-day workweek were made the federal standard, working less would no longer be a disruptive experiment undertaken by a few startups. Instead, it would be an option that employers would have to justify not offering

Five years ago, the Thirty-Two-Hour Workweek Act would have been dismissed as progressive hokum. Today, it’s endorsed by nearly a hundred members of Congress.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/office-space/its-time-to-embrace-slow-productivity

[talenlee]

Henry Orenstein

I'm going to tell you a story. It jumps around a little, to future and past, and it has a big twist in it that I'm going to need you to trust me on. Because of that, the fold - and content warning - is coming later than you'd expect.

This story, started, for me, on the Transformers wiki.

This is a Rubsign. It's a small piece of plastic that's heat-reactive. When Transformers started out as a brand, there was an immediate push to make cheap knockoff toys with similar ideas. In order to 'protect' the brand and ensure kids only wanted to buy the genuine Transformers, they developed something that they could pretend was part of the play pattern: a small symbol on the robot's body that had the silhouette of either the Decepticon or Autobot faction, and you wouldn't know for sure if you didn't heat it up, usually as a child, by rubbing it with your finger.

Transformers, and their gimmick of 'transforming', is essentially, open source. You can't copyright it or even copyright the techniques of a mould. This is one of the reasons there's so many knockoffs of those toys — the actual technique of a transforming toy is pretty much uncopyriteable method.

The rubsigns, however, were made with patented technology; not only weren't other people allowed to put them on their toys, but even worse, they simply couldn't make them because the method for their creation was proprietary. What I thought as a child was a clever way to represent a disguise, for a moment of tension in the narrative, was really just a corporate control collar, a thing that meant they could draw a hard line between their version of the idea and the other, shitty ones, so I could ensure my collection of second hand transforming robot toys was properly branded.

Rubsigns are a cop is what I'm saying.

But, they had to be invented.

This is Henry Orenstein. Learning about the origin of the rubsign meant learning that to my surprise, the patent for them is not held by The company per se, but is instead partially owned by Hasbro, and partially owned by this one dude, Henry Orenstein.

When I found his name in the Transformers wiki, the wiki stated, perhaps boldly: His life is more interesting than Transformers.

Bold claim.

This is professional Poker. It's a well known game that involves players playing for extremely large sums of money, often with similarly large sums of money involved in the buy-in. It's grown in popularity over the past twenty years, in part because of improvements in presenting the game to an audience. Back in 1995, a patent was filed for a device known as a hole camera, which let the broadcasters collect the information about the players' hands without doing anything that disrupted the natural flow of the game. The hole camera was used in 1999, and that's about when poker started to pick up in public discourse.

And the patent for the earliest hole camera (which isn't used much any more) is to a guy named Henry Orenstein. So important was this - and his winnings and his achievements lifetime - that he's been inducted into the Poker Hall of Fame.

This is a Johnny Seven OMA, which were made by Topper Toys. And that's a company Henry Orenstein founded to make his toys after being annoyed at how expensive dolls and toy guns were for poor kids. Topper Toys eventually folded into another brand, Deluxe Reading, which I understand if you are a hardcore toy collector, really into things like barbie accessories and cross compatibility, is very important to the hobby.

This background was how Henry got the attention of Hasbro, and wound up working with them on acquiring new toy properties. That meant he was in position to be in Japan, looking at Takara and Microchange toys, and come back with the idea of acquiring both toy sets, and rebranding them as Transformers in 1980.

Interesting dude, right? He should write a memoir.

Except he did already:

And now, when we jump back in the story, I have to say: Content Warning: Nazis.

Henry Orenstein was born Henryk Orenstein, one of five Jewish children to a Polish family, born in Hrubieszów, Poland, 1923. That is to say, when he was 16 years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied his country. This was obviously not ideal, and the Orensteins first hid themselves in their house through secret passages and hidden chambers between the walls. When the food and water ran out, the parents made the painful decision to surrender to arrest, in the hopes of keeping their children alive.

Henryk's parents were taken, shipped to a camp, and shot. The children were then sent to a camp, where Henryk dedicated a plan to keeping moving. If they were being moved around, transferred from thing to thing, if the person in charge of them was different from time to time, nobody would have the time to really make a protracted plan to execute them. That, hypothetically, was the idea. This meant that he and his siblings were in five different concentration camp - including the camp run by Amon Goeth, the villain of Schindler's List.

They end up in the camp in Budzyń. A few days after arrival, a report comes over the loudspeaker that 'Any Jews with math or science training must report to front office' and Henryk signs himself and his brothers up.

... they did not have math or science training

See, as things were Getting Worse towards the end of the war, the Germans were trying to maximise the resources they did have. This is part of the grouping of things you'd possibly hear as the wunderwaffe — the preposterous weapons of the later days of Hitler's aspirations. You may know these as a sequence of History Channel tv ads, like Hitler's Greatest Tanks or Superboats or The Cannon That Shoots Time Frozen Chunks Of Hitler's Future Brain or whatever. Nowadays, wunderwaffe is a German word primarily used sarcastically, in case you're curious. The Nazis were desperate, because they were a bunch of sucky losers who couldn't make anything good on their own —

And never did

— they instead tried to turn their prisoners to the task of solving their problems with the finest of Nazi Bullshit Magic. At this point, Henryk is maybe nineteen years old, and he and his brothers are signed up to the camp's equivalent of the Shed they dump the A-Team in. The scientists in charge of the lab are scared: if this fails, they're just wasting manpower, and while the Jewish subordinates may fail, if they fail, they're going to get shipped to the front and treated like meaty bullet catchers.

Henryk, recognising the situation, proceeded to run cons on the Nazis with his brothers.

They made bullshit devices that wouldn't work, but did look like they worked. They stole from the labs. They crafted things that could be faked to working but wouldn't work for real. They entertained the scientists with the finest of hokum. And then the researchers, full of relief that they wouldn't become a statistic on a Soviet soldier's bayonet, started to talk about how great their progress was of Doing Science At Shit to their command.

Command released an order to demand that these Jewish Science Wizards produce a tank paralysing gas.

Which was a problem.

Look, the Nazis were fond of demanding things that couldn't be done. Then they could shout at their subordinates who were fucking up, or they'd deliver and you looked great. Again, this is not an environment for refined science, this is a shrinking circular firing squad where everyone is trying to just not be the next person shot. But nonetheless, Tank Paralysing Gas was demanded.

Henryk and his brothers did what they could, they made something they assured the Nazis would work, and the scientists, sweating bullets, sent it off to another base to be tested.

Where it didn't work.

Obviously.

Okay, so now for a moment, consider the situation. Consider what this looks like. These scientists have sent a giant pile of reports about how great a job they were doing, and there's a big trapdoor labelled Actual Bullets on it underneath them. They just put together their wunderwaffe and sent it off to be tested, and it didn't work, so what do they do?

Blame the prisoners?

Uh, that's going to go poorly, because they were saying the prisoners were doing a great job just a few days ago.

Come clean?

Fuck off.

Okay, so what else do they have as an option? Well, they did the only thing a fascist can do. They posted through it, Nazi style.

They sent infuriated reports to the other camp. WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR TANK-PARALYSING GAS THAT MADE IT NOT WORK!?

And... you can see how this goes.

Right now, nobody wants to be the person who admits something is wrong. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the circle of who gets shot even closer. You don't want to tell your superiors you fucked up handling the Tank Paralysing Gas, or if you made the Tank Paralysing Gas, you don't want to tell them that the Tank Paralysing Gas didn't work.

And so back and forth they go. Testing things that won't work and demanding ever-increasing test protocols to try and make it the other person's problem. I don't have proof of it, but some accounts of the story include the two camps getting infrastructure projects like new roads to make sure the transport of the Tank Paralysing Gas works and is good and proper and anyway, the war ended before they got this resolved.

But there is paperwork, recovered during the fall of Berlin, with Heinrich Himmler's signature on it, ordering the mass production of the Tank Paralysing Gas made by Henryk and his younger brothers.

"The whole tale about the scam they pulled on the nazis is... instructive, too"

[hedgerowdevil]

Bram Stoker's DRACULA | Francis Ford Coppola | 1992

Unabashedly lavish and fevered batty hokum accomplished in a way that Terence Fisher could only have had troubled hallucinatory dreams about.

I never understood why Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula got it in the neck critically, because, production design-wise - where it draws upon silent cinema aesthetics and in-camera techniques - and spooky-vibe-wise it hits the stake on the head: candlelit castles of creeping shadows and distant cries, ornate and luscious costuming, all enveloped in a heightened, delirious, narcotised aura.

It's the misty haunted realm of Scooby-Doo taken very seriously. Then there's how it depicts a gothic Victorian London of the imagination - the most successfully realised since Lynch's The Elephant Man.

Yeah, yeah, Keanu "I know where the *bahstard* sleeps!" Reeves. He and fellow rising star Winona Ryder, both miscast, both struggle with the upper-crust English accent and making their plain, uncomplicated characters work in the overripe ambiance. Ryder is particularly bad, much as it still pains me to say after I was so smitten by her breakthrough performances a few years previous to this. Here her limited talent was exposed fully, and she's partly the reason for the movie's weak final half-hour, but this is due to the fact that she was cast because she was hot property rather than whether she was right for the role. In Heathers and Beetlejuice, she's perfect. I mean, Sadie Frost (who gets an 'Introducing' credit) has, arguably, less talent, but she's ideal here in the role of flighty socialite, Lucy.

Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins, on the other hand, rule. Big, meaty roles and they rightly go big and bold; not so much 'theatrical' as Grand-Guignol and perfectly pitched.

There is a reason that this was the film I saw more than any other at the cinema in the '90s, and, if you allow it to sink its teeth into you, it remains spellbinding.

"Yah... nosferatu. Yah... Dracul."

Review: DC Merryweather, March 2021.

[addendum: turns out Winona Ryder brought the script to Coppola. So it was through using her clout that the film came to be made and that she starred in it. She miscast herself! Winona Forever, tho! x]