A few weeks ago, Jenni, a regular reader of this blog, asked if we could write more about character actors here. In an effort to satisfy her and my curiosity about one of those too often obscure figures, I’d like to offer this brief profile of an unforgettable actor whose name took me years to discover. He went by character names such as these on screen: Old Timer. Old Codger. Old Geezer. Old Coot. Old Miner. Old Con. Flophouse Bum. Sleepy Martin. Flunky. Barfly. Squint. Curly.  You get the picture. He seems to have been born old, and perhaps bald. He could also convincingly play some minor character with a menial occupation, if any.

Hank Worden (1901-1991), an actor who worked in the business of show from 1930 to 1991, often appeared very briefly–even without credit, in movies directed by Hollywood hacks, journeymen and the legendary likes of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Henry Hathaway and King Vidor. He also appeared in self-parodying dreck such as  Please Don’t Eat the Babies (1983), though he brought to even those unworthy vehicles a vague sweetness and strangeness that was simultaneously endearing and disturbing. The impression he made during his brief spotlight moments, in particular in his role as the addle-pated Mose Harper in Ford’s masterwork, The Searchers (1956),  place his best characterizations somewhere West of both Shakespeare’s Fools and the characters from Samuel Beckett’s absurdist Waiting for Godot. Almost all Hank‘s characters have a strange, off-kilter style as they react to the world in an often odd, demented fashion, apparently clinging to some shreds of an identity that appears to have been torn up by the roots long ago.

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With services like Netflix, it feels like the whole history of cinema is available at our fingertips. This sense is false, of course.  As Dave Kehr and Jonathan Rosenbaum have pointed out, of the 157,485 films listed in the American Film Institute’s Catalog of American Feature Films, only 5,884 are available on home video (this doesn’t even include the sorry state of foreign film distribution in the US). So while the advent of DVD has vastly increased the audience for classic film, where towns without a repertory theater can still watch Murnau and Hawks, the breadth has suffered. Which is why the advent of the Warner Archive is a such a cause for celebration.

The archive manufactures out-of-print titles on demand. This cuts out the cost of mass production and warehousing, while still allowing customers access to the product. According to Warner’s George Feltenstein, they have 6,800 films in their archive, and only 1,200 are on DVD (4,100 made it to VHS). Currently only 150 titles are available in the program, but each month around 20 more will be added to the list. It’s the brainchild of Feltenstein, the (deep breath) senior vice president for theatrical catalog marketing at Warner. Long regarded as one of the best in the business at pushing classics onto home video, from the VHS and laserdisc days to the present, this latest initiative is possibly his greatest achievement yet. With DVD sales flagging, it’s a smart way to wring more revenue out of their archive, and with some success will hopefully urge other studios to offer similar programs. READ MORE

I love being surprised by a film I’ve never seen before. Not only had I not seen Lydia Bailey but I had never heard of it. Recently, I watched this unusual historical drama unfold on the big screen at Chicago’s Bank of America Theater, a small venue dedicated to showing classic Hollywood films.

 Though Lydia Bailey might not appeal to everyone, and it was not without its weaknesses, I loved the stars, the location photography, the voodoo drums, and the way the movie reflected the issues and problems of the era. And, I don’t mean the era it was set in — 1802 Haiti.  I mean the era it was made in — 1952 America.

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Last Wednesday we screened a 35mm print of Ralph Bakshi’s Wizards (1977). The distributor warned me that their surviving print was pretty rough, but I took a chance on it anyway. I first saw it in Jr. High on 16mm back around 1980 in an auditorium packed with kids all somewhere in the 11 – 14-years-of-age ballpark. Whatever teacher programmed it probably thought it was appropriate for kids because it was an animated PG film about a fantasy world inhabited by elves and wizards. Of course, this was back when PG-rated films still had teeth (more like Jaws), and I’m not going to shy away from saying that, heck yeah, as far as we kids were concerned, this was the funnest thing to have happened at Baseline Jr. High since Mrs. Danielson fell asleep adjusting her bra, and was even more entertaining than Mr. Reno’s stories about the finger tips and maggots that mysteriously found their way into people’s sandwiches (our English teacher claimed the former occurred at a Deli he used to work at while the latter came from an automated sandwich dispensing machine). READ MORE

You already know this if you’ve seen any films by Takashi Miike (Audition [1999], Dead or Alive [1999]), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure [1997], Pulse [2001]), and especially Minoru Kawasaki, who likes plopping animal-suited characters into his genre films in order to mix it up with the humans who, in most cases, might be initially surprised but usually become complacent about the absurdity of the situation. A good example of this is THE CALAMARI WRESTLER (2004) which is the sort of movie which will immediate polarize potential viewers into two camps based solely on images or clips from the film, its plot description or even the title alone. It all depends on how you feel about a movie in which a former championship wrestler-turned-squid returns to the ring to reclaim his title, win back his girlfriend who is now the fiancee of the current champion, and battle corrupt promoters and new rivals such as Squilla, the boxing shrimp.    READ MORE

But for the requirement that you first have to be dead in order to qualify, I think it’s the ultimate honor to have your mug immortalized on a postage stamp.  I picked up a sheet of the new 42 cent Edgar Allan Poe stamps a few weeks ago and I actually thought, for about five minutes after I bought them (“Now you’re working for the Poe-st Office” I cracked to the teller and we both did the horse laugh.), that I’d keep the whole sheet for the sake of posterity… but with the economy the way it is and my net worth the way it isn’t, I can’t indulge in an almost $8 keepsake.  I’ve been paying bills this week and slapping Poe stamps on all the outgoing mail and  little of me dies every time I let one of those suckers go.  But anyway, all this has me thinking about stamps, specifically those bearing the likenesses of movie stars and filmmakers from Hollywood and beyond. READ MORE

I was all set to write up Part 2 of my German movie star postcard research when I noticed that one of my favorite MGM movies is playing tonight at midnight!  It’s the 1948 all-star version of Alexandre  Dumas’ classic adventure novel The Three Musketeers, a boisterous, color-saturated, ornate, probably over-produced but immensely entertaining MGM extravaganza, starring the studio’s reigning musical star Gene Kelly as the wanna-be musketeer D’Artagnan.   I’m sure everybody has their own favorite cinematic interpretation of Dumas’ story — whether you like Oliver Reed, Keifer Sutherland or even the Ritz Brothers, you can find something suitable — but the zippy and good-natured MGM version does it for me.  Literary accuracy aside, I don’t think you can beat Kelly’s hilarious interpretation for pure fun.

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After that date, when Turner Classic Movies went on the air, things were never the same for me and as it turns out for many like-minded fans. I had to get a VCR and cable and later I had to find out what movies were on the network on a monthly basis! Little did I know that date was just the beginning of an ongoing  education in the language and people of film that has continued to be an enriching aspect of my life–even if some of those who claim to know and love me might occasionally prefer to describe this “education” as an “addiction”. Whaddya they know?

Aside from learning about the history of movies from the earliest to today, one of the delightful things about becoming a member of the TCM audience online has been getting to know other movie lovers, some of whom you will have a chance to meet this month too.