WE WANT YOU SALLY….WE WANT YOU….COME TO US!         READ MORE

[Slapsticon, the greatest film event of the year, has been canceled this year.  To grieve it, I am devoting the entire month of July to posts about slapstick comedy.]

He was the Roger Corman of comedy.  A miserly skinflint whose extraordinary ability to identify and nurture talent made his studio THE jumping-off point for more superstars than anywhere else.  The litany of film greats who started here, even if they went on to achieve greatness elsewhere, is astonishing—not to mention all the has-beens and already-ares who cycled through his orbit as well.

But Mack Sennett’s films remain difficult territory for film fans.  Call him the King of Comedy if you wish, but a great many of his productions fall flat to today’s audiences, or require a patience or mindset that only the most dedicated fan can muster.  Seeing as I am one of those patient, dedicated fans, I offer up here a tribute to—and primer on—the man who invented American slapstick.

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Though I was an infrequent VHS tape buyer until the medium was nearly dead (at which point I went a little crazy buying out the stock of shuttered video stores) and I never got on the laser disc bandwagon (for which I was teased mercilessly by my fellows – I’m looking at you, Tim Lucas), I got in on the ground floor of DVD and enjoyed quite a few good years of buying and collecting as a bachelor before I got married and my children were born. Even though my disc purchases declined by about, oh, 99% after the birth of my daughter in 2005, I still received a fair amount of movieage related to my work and as gifts from friends. As a result, I have well over 1,000 DVDs. Mind you, this is not a staggering amount compared to some people I know, whose home library is double, triple and quadruple that. I’ve had to move my collection several times since I came out to Los Angeles in 2004 and since that time the bulk of my back catalog has resided in banker’s boxes, for the last three years in my daughter’s bedroom closet. Now that Vayda is of an age to develop her own interests and accumulate her own possessions and gear, I’ve decided I can no longer in good faith take up half of her closet space with my movies. While I have no intention of parting with my collection, I can do the most sensible thing – put all of my discs in DVD binders and ditch the packaging. It’s an obvious solution but not a simple one because I am, I confess, a packaging junkie.

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Pierre Cardin & Jeanne Moreau

When people see the name Pierre Cardin they usually associate it with high fashion. The French designer is known worldwide for his cutting edge fashion designs, stylized accessories and various perfumes. But he’s also responsible for creating some incredibly beautiful costumes for classic films and popular television shows. Cardin has dressed many talented starlets including Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, Shirley MacLaine, Joanne Woodward, Jane Fonda, Mia Farrow and his one-time love interest, Jeanne Moreau, just to name a few. Today Pierre Cardin is celebrating his 89th birthday and I thought it would be fun to take a look back at the designer’s impressive career and highlight his contributions to classic film.

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Years ago, Hugh Hefner came across Fay Wray at a party and famously told her, “I loved your movie!”  She replied the only way she could, by asking, “Which one?”   This story has made the rounds enough times for people to think it’s apocryphal but, in fact, as told by Hefner himself in many an interview, it’s true (and is the first line of the TCM bio of her on this very site).   Most likely, Wray knew exactly which film he was talking about (King Kong, of course) but wanted to force the point home that, as a respectable Hollywood actress, she had made dozens of films (over a hundred, actually), many of them very successful.     But try as Fay may have to change the public’s perception, King Kong was her movie, forever (though I love her in Mystery of the Wax Museum and Doctor X).  I don’t know if it would’ve provided Wray with any solace whatsoever, but even the biggest names in Hollywood have always had this problem.

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Edmond O’Brien enjoys a post-Independence Day fireworks display in Rio Conchos, the 1964 Western just released by Shout! Factory on DVD. With all my squawking about studios cutting back on library titles for home video, there are still plenty of rare and strange items sneaking onto those glimmering circular discs. Over the past few weeks, Shout! Factory and Warner Archive have shown they’re still fighting the good fight, and I’ll run down a few of their most intriguing recent renovation jobs.

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I believe the best way to understand the appeal of Marilyn Monroe is to separate the flesh-and-blood actress from the two-dimensional icon by focusing on her work. In this second of my three-part series on Monroe, I offer a primer on her films. This is not a list of my favorite MM movies; nor are they all superior examples of classic filmmaking. Instead, these are the films that altered or affected the course of her career as she evolved from starlet to movie star to actress.

Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! June Haver stars in this 1948 comedy with the ridiculous title, which revolves around small-town life. The film would be entirely forgettable if not for MM’s bit part in her first film appearance. She speaks one line, “Hi Rad,” as she passes Haver on the church steps, but the line is a throwaway and inconsequential to the scene. She actually passes by the camera before uttering the line. For years, rumors persisted that her one line had been cut; Monroe herself believed this as evidenced by her remarks during a 1955 television interview. However, with the benefit of VHS, DVD, and Youtube, it is possible to slow down the scene to see Monroe walk by and hear her say the line as she strolls out of camera range. MM also appears in a later scene paddling in a canoe with another girl.

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A library in Colorado Springs recently purged its collection of short 16mm children’s films. Thanks to the alert eye of a librarian on my campus these have been rescued and I plan to screen some of them tonight. It will be part of a family-friendly 4th of July weekend screening that I’m putting on in my backyard. With over 23 films to choose from, how do I choose tonight’s two-hour program? I’ve familiar with some of them already, but surprised at how many of these titles I’ve never heard of. Clearly, a bit of research was required.     READ MORE

[Slapsticon, the greatest film event of the year, has been canceled this year.  To grieve it, I am devoting the entire month of July to posts about slapstick comedy.]

It’s mid-summer 1928.  A California District Court of Appeal is considering a case involving alleged fraud.  On one side stands Charles Millikan, the lawyer representing Charlie Chaplin.  On the other are Ben Goldman and J.J. Lieberman, representing Mexican actor Charles Amador, AKA “Charlie Aplin.”

Amador’s lawyers are putting forth the argument that, yeah, no question about it, Amador was ripping off Charlie Chaplin’s appearance and persona.  But, they contend, that’s OK, because Chaplin himself had ripped it off first—and therefore he had no viable claim of ownership.

I won’t leave you in suspense: Amador lost this argument.  He lost the original trial, he lost this appeal—and when he tried to get the Supreme Court to listen to him, they shrugged him off.  The ruling in Chaplin v. Amador established that, as far as the Court was concerned, Chaplin was the creator of his comic identity and therefore had intellectual property at stake.  But. . .

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