My Thanksgiving with Dracula

I spent Thanksgiving with Dracula, and I don’t mean that creepy relative who likes to dress in black or my cold-hearted, soul-sucking “ex.”  On Thanksgiving evening, I watched the 1931 Universal film interpretation of Bram Stoker’s novel about the world’s most famous vampire, except it wasn’t the one with Bela Lugosi. Instead, I devoured the Spanish-language version starring Carlos Villarias. The Spanish Dracula, or Drácula, can be found as one of the extras on Universal’s DVD release, which is part of their Monster Legacy Collection. I was so intrigued with what I saw that I returned to the Lugosi version to compare and contrast.

In the early sound era, Universal sometimes produced two versions of the same film—one with English-speaking stars for American audiences and another with Hispanic stars for Spanish-speaking audiences. The purpose was to prevent the loss of the Spanish-speaking market because of the advent of talkies. In the silent era, producing a film for international audiences simply meant translating the intertitles into other languages. When sync-sound became the norm, international markets were far less interested in English-language talkies, and the big studios became concerned about losing foreign revenue. For a short while, Universal produced Spanish-language versions of some of their films to maintain their Spanish-speaking markets. Spanish versions of Universal films used different casts and directors but were shot on the same schedule using the same sets. I had heard about this practice back in film school, but I had never seen any of the Spanish-language Universal films until I watched Drácula.

READ MORE

The Silent Robin: A Tonic for the Soul

I suppose to the eyes of the world, we were a motley looking crew as the capacity crowd flowed eagerly into George Eastman House‘s Dryden Theatre in Rochester, New York last month. Unlike the first Hollywood premiere of Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1923) at Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre on October 18, 1922, there were no limos, no gowns, no red carpets, no klieg lights searching the sky, and certainly no hint of a “Day of the Locust” style mob scene. However, there were about five hundred not very glam but expectantly eager people gathered on an October evening for the “World Premiere” of this restored version of the tale in the 21st century starring Douglas Fairbanks in one of his classic roles.

So, who were these people who came out to see this 87 year old film version of the English bandit’s adventures?  Among the crowd at this movie were a few who might have been just old enough to have seen a later Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. film in a movie theater, a generous sprinkling of younger cinephiles, middle aged academics, and a delightful gaggle of children of about nine years of age in the audience that Saturday.  Once thought lost until it was rediscovered in the 1960s, this film’s “premiere” was a highlight of the seventh biennial conference of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies at the University of Rochester, where the historical and literary permutations of the appealing errant figure of lore were analyzed and, frankly, reveled in by the participants. Accredited scholars and hard core Robin buffs from around the world spent three days discussing the evergreen legend of this “Robin Hood: Media Creature”, trying to discern if the 700 year old hero of Sherwood Forest even existed, while enjoying an extravaganza of multi-media exhibits (including Douglas Fairbanks boots, seen below), early manuscripts, songs, and presentations discussing all aspects of the tale.

READ MORE

“And 5000 Others!”, including Maria Ouspenskaya

5k
As TCM winds down a month featuring one of the greatest character actors who ever stole a picture, (Claude Rains, the September Star of the Month),  my appetite for  character actors in the spotlight has been whetted. Partly in response to repeated requests from those interested readers who frequent these pages, I thought a deserving glimpse of more supporting players might enliven the month of October. Each week this month, I’ll focus one of those actors who may not have been the stars of the show, but whose work invariably stood out from the crowd of “5000 others”. This week, I thought I’d tip my hat toward at least one of the gifted Russian émigrés who trained at the Moscow Art Theatre.

Maria Ouspenskaya, whose talent came out of that creative seedbed for some of the finest actors and boldest hams, stands out among them, despite being under five feet tall. Many of her colleagues lent their credibility and indelible gifts to Hollywood, but she may be the most readily identifiable of the bunch. While hightailing it away from the Cossacks, the Whites, the Reds, the Mensheviks, the Bolsheviks, the anarchists and the fascists who made life a bit too “interesting” in the first half of the 20th century from Siberia to the shores of Ellis Island, several of these actors found a pretty fair living in Hollywood, among them Akim Tamiroff, Olga Baclanova, Vladimir Sokoloff, Leonid Kinskey and Konstantin Shayne. They may never have felt completely at home in what sometimes seemed the Babylonian splendor of “barbaric” American culture in the studio era. Cut off from their cultural roots and often having lost their families and nearly their lives during the revolutionary times they lived in, these actors often proved their strength of character and professional versatility when asked to play characters of almost every class and ethnicity in American movies.

READ MORE

Documentaries Fit for the King

elvis10Being an Elvis Presley fan and author, I feel obligated to acknowledge him in mid-August, which is the anniversary of his death. In Memphis, the annual commemoration of his life and career known as Elvis Week just ended, while TCM devoted yesterday to Elvis’s acting career. I thought I would cap off the festivities with some attention to the documentaries about the 20th century’s most famous singer. Whether watching them for research or entertainment, I found that these films either put Presley in a context to explain his career or presented him onstage in way that captured his charisma and energy.

If you are an Elvis fan, I am sure you have seen these films, and I would be interested in knowing your favorite documentaries; if you are not a fan, you might enjoy them because of the historical context of the content or the craftsmanship behind the filmmaking techniques.

READ MORE

All Too Human a Father

John Wayne, looking worried,with good reason, in Trouble Along the Way (1953)“What do you know about love? I think love is watching your child go off to school for the first time alone… sitting beside a sick kid’s bed waiting for the doctor, praying it isn’t polio… or that cold chill you get when you hear the screech of brakes, and know your kid’s outside on the street some place… and a lot of other things you get can’t get out of books, ’cause nobody knows how to write ‘em down.”

~John Wayne as Steve Aloysius Williams in Trouble Along the Way (1953)
READ MORE

The View in the Rear View Mirror

A brooding James Cagney drives his cab as if he's doing penance in The Roaring Twenties (1939), while Priscilla Lane remains oblivious to his despairHave you a favorite cab driver from classic movies?

Is he (or she) loud, pushy and aggressively seeking a faster route and big tip–maybe a Alan Hale, Sr. or Nat Pendleton type, quick with his mouth and his fists when needed? Or is the celluloid cabbie you cherish a comical “hail fellow well met” type, eager for conversation and filled with an inexplicable sense of bonhomie–perhaps played by a George Tobias, Red Skelton or Frank McHugh? Might another compelling favorite be those Charon-like figures behind the wheel, ferrying passengers across the dark city, musing philosophically about the pulse of the lifeblood of the city while guiding those in the back seat to a physical and spiritual destination–weightier characters captured by such diverse actors as Tom D’Andrea and Paul Lukas?

READ MORE

The O’Hara Factor

Maureen O'Hara in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)With St. Patrick’s Day almost upon us, in this, the second of my attempts to honor women in film history during March, I need to get a bit personal.

Growing up, my red-haired sister and I always felt different, even though our parents, both of whom were of Irish descent, taught us to take a quiet pride in the achievements in arts, letters, and public life by the Irish around the world. While we adopted their low key approach to this ethnic pride as Irish-Americans, while honoring others in this melting pot, we soon learned that you just can’t blend in easily with a crowd when you have this unmanageable mop of red curls that refuse to behave. Short bobs, annoying barrettes and preventive measures to stave off the endless threat of some wickedly painful sunburns were sometimes our lot. People would literally stop us on the street to talk about this undeniable feature, asking us if we were from Ireland, much to our embarrassment.  Kids, being nature’s hard-core conformists, did enjoy pointing out regularly that we were “different.” That may not sound too bad, and it wasn’t, in retrospect, but phrases such as “red-headed stepchild” or comments about “fiery temperaments” really did make us feel a bit odd at times. Throughout history, the hair color, caused by a set of recessive chromosomes that have been reported in recent news stories as nearing extinction, has been the subject of fascination and quite often outright persecution.  I should probably be happy that I was born in a relatively benign era when titian-colored tresses didn’t get you burned at the stake, buried alive, mistaken for a vampire, or stoned at birth.  READ MORE

Margaret Booth: Cutting Like Poetry

Margaret Booth in her prime at MGMAmid our recent hectic news cycles, the quieter news that the month of March is Women’s History Month probably seems pretty unimportant. I know it passed me  by until a friend recently remarked that it seemed “quaint and irrelevant” to him. I must admit that I could see his point. Then I started to mull over the idea of the sometimes little known contributions of my foremothers to this world. Maybe some of the women who helped to make new pathways for all of their daughters, sisters and friends of the “female persuasion” deserve a bit of a nod.

So, during March I’ll be highlighting a few of the women in film history in front of and behind the camera who made a difference. The first of them is someone whose work you’re almost certain to have seen, though remarkably few people know her name or her story. She was Margaret Booth (1898-2002) and her influence as a pioneer film editor–for good and ill–on movies extends from her first formal credit of Orphans of the Storm (1921) to The Way We Were (1973) and beyond. In 1977, when she was in her ’70s, Film Comment magazine asked her fellow film editors (many of whom were half a century younger) to name the top editors in film history. She was Number Three and still playing an active role in the film world then. To help me place this pivotal figure’s career in some insider perspective, my friend Lynn Zook, who is a present day film editor and archivist has been of great help to me. Her comments will be laced throughout this brief look at Margaret Booth‘s career.

The year 1915 was before women had the vote, could own property in most states without their father or husband’s consent, and was a time when women’s choices were often the home, the sweatshop or the street. This is when Margaret Booth (seen in her prime, above left) began to work on silent pictures.  It wasn’t a career choice for her, it was a matter of her family’s survival. READ MORE

“Lassie Doesn’t Give Speeches”

Roddy McDowell and friend in "Lassie Come Home" (1943)

No interviews, please. That’s always been one of the blessings of animals in movies. These stoic creatures don’t complain and they don’t explain in public, no matter how much we anthropomorphize their reactions to the world. Nor do they ever tell us their views on life, love or politics. They just are, enduring our endless attempts to project onto them our longing to understand and bridge the gulf that inevitably lies between us.

Since the upcoming Oscar award ceremony has yet to feature a Best Animal Actor Award, I started to muse about which of the warm blooded mammals found in the movies who’ve beguiled me over the years might be a prime candidate for an Oscar–if they gave one. There are horses, (Flicka, Trigger, and Black Beauty, for instance), cats, (Thomasina, Pyewacket, Rhubarb), pigs, (Babe, Wilbur), lions, sheep, pumas, deer, and even wild boars to choose from, ( the latter make great villains, as anyone who’s seen Home From the Hill and The Yearling will testify).

Since a merger between the PATSY Awards and those given by AMPAS each year is highly unlikely, I’d like to make a case for at least one Academy Award worthy creature whose charismatic presence in the popular imagination has continued to this day. (The PATSYs are the Picture Animal Top Star of the Year given by the American Humane Association, an award created to prevent animal cruelty on movie sets after a notorious accident on the set of Jesse James (1939) finally got the public’s attention about the treatment of animals during filming).

READ MORE

The Duality of Ronald Colman

Ronald Colman, in all his diffident gloryI’ve never met anyone remotely like Ronald Colman (1891-1958). It’s better that way.

He had an impossible to replicate, highly theatrical blend of the lighthearted and the grave that sparkled behind his brown eyes–a quality that seems to have vanished from this world. Oddly, his quiet, often surprisingly modern style, (especially when compared with his screen contemporaries), seems to be overlooked today, whether he is acting in a playful role such as his first talkie,  Bulldog Drummond (1929), playing a disillusioned husband in Cynara (1932),  the touching  amnesiac in Random Harvest (1942) or in his deeply felt part as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities (1935). His characters, which he recognized were often shadows of an earlier time in British history even as he played them with such style, have an elusive grace  that was often imitated but uniquely his own.

READ MORE

MovieMorlocks.com is the official blog for TCM. No topic is too obscure or niche to be excluded from our film discussions. And we welcome your comments on our blogs and bloggers.
Archives
Popular terms
3-D  Action Films  Actors  Actors' Endorsements  Actresses  animal stars  Animation  Anime  Anthology Films  Autobiography  Avant-Garde  Aviation  Awards  B-movies  Beer in Film  Behind the Scenes  Best of the Year lists  Biography  Biopics  Blu-Ray  Books on Film  Boxing films  British Cinema  Canadian Cinema  Character Actors  Chicago Film History  Cinematography  Classic Films  College Life on Film  Comedy  Comic Book Movies  Crime  Czech Film  Dance on Film  Digital Cinema  Directors  Disaster Films  Documentary  Drama  DVD  Early Talkies  Editing  Educational Films  European Influence on American Cinema  Experimental  Exploitation  Fairy Tales on Film  Faith or Christian-based Films  Family Films  Fan Edits  Film Composers  Film Criticism  film festivals  Film History in Florida  Film Noir  Film Scholars  Film titles  Filmmaking Techniques  Films of the 1980s  Food in Film  Foreign Film  French Film  Gangster films  Genre  Genre spoofs  Guest Programmers  HD & Blu-Ray  Holiday Movies  Hollywood history  Hollywood lifestyles  Horror  Horror Movies  Icons  independent film  Italian Film  Japanese Film  Korean Film  Leadership  Literary Adaptations  Martial Arts  Melodramas  Method Acting  Mexican Cinema  Moguls  Monster Movies  Movie Books  Movie Costumes  Movie locations  Movie lovers  Movie Magazines  Movie Reviewers  Movie settings  Movie Stars  Movies about movies  Music in Film  Musicals  New Releases  Outdoor Cinema  Paranoid Thrillers  Parenting on film  Pirate movies  Polish film industry  political thrillers  Politics in Film  Pornography  Pre-Code  Producers  Race in American Film  Remakes  Revenge  Road Movies  Romance  Romantic Comedies  Russian Film Industry  Satire  Scandals  Science Fiction  Screenwriters  Semi-documentaries  Serials  Short Films  Silent Film  silent films  Social Problem Film  Spaghetti Westerns  Sports  Sports on Film  Stereotypes  Straight-to-DVD  Studio Politics  Stunts and stuntmen  Suspense thriller  Swashbucklers  TCM Classic Film Festival  Tearjerkers  Television  The British in Hollywood  The Germans in Hollywood  The Hungarians in Hollywood  The Irish in Hollywood  The Russians in Hollywood  Theaters  Thriller  Trains in movies  Underground Cinema  VOD  War film  Westerns  Women in the Film Industry  Women's Weepies