B-Western Wednesdays: Riders of the Badlands (1941)

The titular horsemen of this programmer are a band of malcontents led by Mac Collins (Charles Starrett), and to help deal with the Collins gang’s deviltry, Texas Ranger Steve Langdon (Charles Starrett) is transferred to a detachment commanded by Captain T.L. Martin (Roy Barcroft).  Regarding those cast members in parentheses—it’s not a typo.  First, The Baddest Villain in All of Serialdom, Mr. Barcroft, is on the right side of the law for a change.  Second, Mac Collins and Steve Langdon look so much alike they could be twins…which is why they’re both played by the same actor.

The striking “Prince and the Pauper” similarities between Mac and Steve are first discovered by Steve’s fellow Ranger, “Lucky” Barton (Russell Hayden); Lucky and his new bride Celia (Kay Hughes) have the misfortune to be on a stagecoach robbed by the Collins mob, and that’s when Barton thinks: “That Collins looks a lot like a chap I know.”  Then tragic events unfold, with Barton swearing vengeance on Steve because Celia draws her rations after being shot by his doppelganger during the robbery.

We know, of course, that Steve is perfectly innocent—in fact, he was in the company of troubadour/part-time dentist “Bones” Malloy (Cliff Edwards) when the robbery went down.  The trouble is: no one believes Bones’ story (everyone is convinced he was in on the holdup, too).  Lucky, to his credit, starts to have second thoughts about Steve’s guilt after going all out to make sure his fellow Ranger is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law…but since Langdon has been sentenced to swing, it’s going to be a race against time if Lucky and Bones are to find the needed evidence to exonerate Steve before his date with the hangman.

Riders of the Badlands (1941) was the second of eight Columbia Pictures oaters to team B-Western cowboys Charles Starrett and Russell Hayden; Hayden was well-known as a co-star in many of the Hopalong Cassidy westerns produced in the 1930s, while Starrett joined Columbia in 1935 originally to replace the studio’s reigning cowboy king Tim McCoy.  Curiously, Starrett wasn’t particularly wild about the Western genre, and originally agreed to make them for a period of two years…but he became a victim of his own success, and stayed in the saddle for Columbia until 1952, chiefly on the strength of his Durango Kid series.

By the time Badlands went before the cameras, the Durango Kid films numbered just one: 1940’s The Durango Kid.  The franchise didn’t really go great guns (sorry about that) until The Return of the Durango Kid in 1945, so it’s a shame that it didn’t start earlier because in the case of Badlands they could have had four roles for Starrett—Mac, Steve, and their Durango Kid counterparts.  (Just a thought, mind you.)

I have a special affinity for the B-product put out by the Columbia folks…probably because they were so good at it; the studio’s origins were steeped in Poverty Row programmers (Columbia at one time was known as the CBC Film Sales Corporation; industry wags joked that the “CBC” stood for “Corned Beef and Cabbage”).  I pretty much love of all the franchises cranked out by Columbia (Boston Blackie, The Whistler, etc.), and my introduction to slapstick comedy was as a result of my exposure to two-reelers featuring Andy Clyde and the Three Stooges at an impressionable age.

So I was predisposed to like Riders of the Badlands…but was pleasantly surprised that it’s a most enjoyable little shoot-‘em-up.  Starrett and Hayden make an excellent team, and Badlands gets an extra assist from comic relief Cliff “Ukulele Ike” Edwards; he substitutes his uke for a guitar but sings three songs in his inimitable style.  The lookalikes plot (scripted by Betty Burbridge) never gets too silly, though Andrew Leal’s mom (I affectionately refer to her as “Mother Grover”) might engage in a little eye-rolling if given the opportunity.  (As a side note: co-star Hayden even used the “twin” plot for a 1947 oater released by Screen Guild Productions, Trail of the Mounties.)  Journeyman Howard Bretherton (in the chair for several of the early Hoppy westerns, as well as 1933’s Ladies They Talk About) is credited with the direction, and he does a solid job (he helmed Starrett and Hayden’s West of Tombstone [1942] for the studio as well).

Befitting a Columbia production, you’ll spot a number of the studio’s stock players including Eddie Laughton, John Tyrrell, and Ethan Laidlaw, plus familiar Westerns faces like Edmund Cobb and George Chesebro.  Young Ilene Brewer plays Collins’ daughter Flo, a character they created for Badlands to make her outlaw pop more human, I suppose…but there’s a rather disturbing development at the denouement when we learn Flo is being sent to a girls’ boarding school (accompanied by second female lead Edith Leach).  I’m assuming that her Pa paid for his crimes but that would mean that he’s taken Steve’s place in the hangman’s noose, wouldn’t it?  She seems a bit calm and rational for a kid who just lost her Dad.

I obtained Riders of the Badlands on DVD through curious means: it’s available at Finders Keepers, my pal Martin Grams, Jr.'s video website…but I didn’t actually buy this one—I recall he sent it to me gratis for one reason or another.  I’m glad he did, because it was most enjoyable…and throughout the first ten minutes of the movie I marveled at how beautiful a print it was.  (Then the “Encore Westerns” logo appeared on the screen.)

Book Review: For Art’s Sake

My introduction to funnyman Ben Turpin was initially in an overview in Leonard Maltin’s The Great Movie Comedians, in which Len discusses a few “second-string” comedians that did not make the cut in the chapters that follow.  He once had a conversation about Ben with writer-director Tay Garnett: “I have some very definite opinions: Ben lacked a great deal of being a funny man.  He was funny only when placed in a ludicrous position—particularly one of grave danger—then, playing it dead seriously (perhaps a bit overseriously), which was the only thing he could do.”

Now, I would say that I hope author Steve Rydzewksi didn’t come across this quote when he was working on For Art’s Sake: The Biography & Filmography of Ben Turpin—his loving paean to the cockeyed comic who was one of the earliest cinematic mirthmakers, having started his movie career in 1907—but Garnett’s observations are in his book, so you can’t accuse Steve of showing favoritism towards his subject.  Despite Tay’s assertion that Turpin “lacked a great deal of being a funny man,” I have no qualms about calling him a “funnyman.”  At the very least, Ben was one of the hardest working clowns to ever cavort in front of a motion picture camera…and on that basis alone, attention must be paid.

Turpin’s name probably won’t register with anyone outside of silent comedy fans or classic films in general—but I’ll bet dollars to donuts people will recognize his face even if his surname is stuck on the tip of the tongue.  Born in N’awlins in 1869 to a family who operated a successful candy store, Bernard “Ben” Turpin would later strike out on his own (after a series of jobs including shipping clerk and bellhop) at seventeen, and for many years lived the life of a hobo—riding the rails and cadging meals at every opportunity.  Eventually, he drifted into the world of show business, working in traveling medicine shows, circuses, burlesque, and vaudeville.

Turpin’s famous stage act was impersonating Happy Hooligan, the popular comic strip character introduced by cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper in 1900.  Happy was a hobo who got into various scrapes and was distinguished by his crossed eyes and a tin can he wore for a hat; since Ben bore such a strong resemblance to the character, he decided to imitate him (as did a number of other folks in show business) and found great success in doing so.  Crossing his eyes for ten shows a day, however, resulted in Turpin waking up one morning to find that his right orb had decided to stay that way; the comic consulted a doctor, who told him that it could be corrected with an operation…but that he would then have to retire his Hooligan shenanigans.  Till the end of his life, Turpin told himself he would eventually have his eye fixed once he retired from show business…yet he never did, and it was a wise decision on his part.  As Maltin states in Great Movie Comedians: “Turpin’s fortune was his face.”

Ben began his movie clowning in 1907 (while he was still the studio janitor), performing in Essanay (founded by George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson—hence S an’ A) releases to the point where he became that studio’s bread-and-butter in one-reelers like Mr. Flip (1909), the earliest recorded film instance of someone taking a pie in the mush (and that person was, unsurprisingly, Turpin).  (Mr. Flip is included on the DVD set Slapstick Encyclopedia, which I mentioned in last week’s book review.)  Turpin also worked for IMP and American before returning to Essanay; by that time the studio had hired away Charlie Chaplin from Mack Sennett, and Chaplin featured Ben in his first three comedies for his new employer.  Ben always bestowed generous praise on The Little Tramp for giving him his big break in movies; the other recipient of the comedian’s effusive thanks was Chaplin’s old boss Sennett, who hired him in 1917.  With Sennett, Turpin would eventually become a major comedy star with a salary as high as $3,000 a week; the comic departed the studio in 1925 not because of any animosity toward his boss but because he was concerned about his wife, who was in ill health at the time.

After the death of Mrs. Turpin, Ben eventually returned to motion pictures; he made additional two-reelers for Sennett in 1926-27, and also a series of comedies for the Weiss Brothers beginning in 1928 (some of these shorts are featured on the VCI DVD collection Weiss-O-Rama).  But with that pushy upstart known as sound movies crashing the party, the kind of silent slapstick practiced by Turpin was no longer in vogue, and until his death in 1940 he made only sporadic film appearances (a good many cameos in films like The Love Parade and Million Dollar Legs) despite a potential comeback in the 1935 Warner’s two-reel comedy Keystone Hotel.  (WB only agreed to produce one short in this series…and when it proved to be a smash, the studio couldn’t afford to pay the salaries of the actors for further shorts because their agents weren’t stupid.)  Ben’s last film appearance was a hilarious contribution to the Laurel & Hardy feature Saps at Sea (1940); he was going to play a role in Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) but his passing nipped his participation in the bud.

In his interview with Leonard Maltin, director Garnett observed: “I guess what I’m trying to say is that in my opinion, Turpin was not a mental giant.”  Well, he who laughs last laughs best; Ben was shrewd enough to manage his money in a number of rental properties throughout the L.A. area, and while other performers in the silent era had frittered away their earnings, Mental Giant Turpin had socked away enough to live comfortably until the Grim Reaper came a-callin’.  Turpin continued to work only because he wanted to.  I’ll confess that Garnett’s assessment of Ben colored my perception of the man for many years…but after reading Rydzewksi’s book I have come away with a brand-new appreciation of the man.  Steve chronicles how Ben Turpin worked harder than many of his fellow funsters to get laughs (his litany of bumps, scrapes, and bruises would make Buster Keaton envious), while lovingly painting a picture of a man who lived without pretense…his only vice seeming to be a need to induce people to forget their troubles through the gift of laughter.

Steve Rydzewski’s For Art’s Sake is profusely illustrated, with a bulging filmography for Turpin (that Steve admits is a work in progress) and over forty years of research collecting clippings from newspapers and trade magazines in addition to anecdotes obtained from people who worked with the movies’ funniest cockeyed clown.  If I had a tiny nitpick with his book, it’s that a lot of its content is a little too voluminous; on a number of occasions Turpin’s narrative comes to a halt to feature a newspaper account or two that essentially repeats what the individual has already read (this treasure trove of information might have been better served in an appendix or two).  Rydzewski would no doubt defend this by asserting: “I chose to make the book a compilation, a chronological documentary, and decided to let Mr. Turpin and his associates tell much of it themselves rather than paraphrase.”  You certainly can’t argue with that.

“Everything I do is wrong, all wrong,” Ben Turpin related in 1924 to Neil M. Clark in an interview for American magazine.  “That's why people laugh.  I don't look right.  I don't do right.  I try to carve a roast and the dog gets most of it.  I wear the wrong kind of tie, and it comes off in the peas.  I try to propose to my best girl, and I say the wrong things.  It isn't only comic looks that make a comedian.  He's got to act comic, too!”  Fans of silent film comedy will want this essential biography of this legendary slapstick clown for their bookshelves, and For Art’s Sake is also available in a Kindle edition (for those of us starved for space).

“And now it’s time for another special feature…”

Hello, Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful.  Honest Ivan here again...but not to sell you anything.  When the DISH Austerity Program first went into effect in the House of Yesteryear, I was a little crabby…and I may have even whined a little.  (How do I know this?  Well, when about half a dozen people say to me “Will you stop whining, ferchrissake?” that’s a little hard to ignore.)  I had reached a point where I started to sound like Karl Swenson in The Birds: “It’s the end of the world!”

But a month into our whittled-down package…I’m beginning to think that Nietzsche guy was right.  I speculated that when I first announced the DISH news this experience might be a positive one for TDOY, in that such a removal of this distraction might provide the impetus for more prolific blogging.  At the risk of tooting my own piccolo, I have been en fuego in the month of August.  While the ‘rents search in anxiety for something with which to be entertained (Mom is so sick of Dad’s constant watching of MSNBC that I think she’s on board with Giant Meteor in November), I sit smugly in Count Comfy von Chair with my tablet, composing blog post after blog post.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Occasionally, when I get wind that a movie I wanted desperately to see is playing on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™, I tear up a little.  But it passes quickly.

This post is going to serve as sort of a guide to the “new” Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—what you can expect in terms of content and such.  Not all of what I write about will appeal to everyone, so if you have an idea of what will appear on the blog on a daily basis you can plan your visits accordingly.  (In a perfect world, of course, you would not only read every utterance you would pledge complete and unwavering fealty to TDOY…but alas, we do not live in such a Utopian existence.)

Mondays – Book reviews.  Again, because I’m under oath—or am I?—I must truthfully admit the few times I reviewed a book here at TDOY in the past is when someone graciously sent me a free copy for the blog.  (No money exchanged hands, I cannot emphasize this enough.  It’s more “quo” than “quid”—if I may indulge in a little pun.)  In most cases, there were books that I paid for myself with TDOY funds simply because it was something I was excited about reading.  Since I invested in the new computer three years ago and it came equipped with Kindle. I have found that it’s relatively inexpensive to build an electronic library if you just keep an eye peeled for book bargains.  (BookBub is a great resource in giving you a heads-up on this.)  So I’m going to make a concerted effort to read more than I have previously (the Kindle allows me to effortlessly sit in Count von Comfy and accomplish this task), and we will see where that takes us.

Tuesdays – It was Todd at Sweet Freedom who first instituted “Overlooked Tuesdays” and in the beginning, I tried my darndest to structure TDOY so that movies that don’t always receive the greatest number of electrons here in the blogosphere would be featured on “Overlooked Films on Tuesdays.”  My track record for participating, sadly, was the very definition of “spotty”; I blame this on the fatigue and ennui I experienced after completing Serial Saturdays and Doris Day(s) on Mondays.  (More on this in a bit.)  Nevertheless, I have seen the light, brother, and am committed to making certain an overlooked motion picture gets its due on Tuesdays, be it an edition of “From the DVR” or “Grey Market Cinema.”

Wednesdays – If you’re going to place a bet in the pool of “Which feature will have the shortest shelf life at TDOY”, this might be the nominee that will pay off big time.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good shoot-‘em-up, it’s just that the number of economically-shot oaters in the Dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Archives has diminished in recent years: many of my B-Westerns were relegated to the trash can (I decided about a year-and-a-half ago that I was going to stop recording movies at anything lower than SP speed) and the others wound up on the eBay runway.  I know I’ve got some on hand; it will just require my digging through a—what I call for lack of a better word—“pile” of DVD-R discs.  Still, B-Western Wednesdays is back with a vengeance, baby—so saddle up for some good ol’ rootin’-tootin’ fun (in memory of my dear departed Facebook compadre Lloyd Fonvielle).

Thursdays – Thursdays will be devoted to “silent cinema”; it can take the form of comedy shorts that I’ve acquired over the years (my recent review of Steve Massa’s Lame Brains and Lunatics no doubt inspired this) …or “On the Grapevine,” which spotlights DVDs purchased from Grapevine Video.  There may also be silent films both unknown and well-known tossed into the mix (discs purchased from Flicker Alley and Milestone Films).  And there may be an occasional “talkie” featured as well (I’ve socked away quite a few Alpha DVDs.).

Fridays – It’s Forgotten Noir Fridays!  (Don’t tell me you’ve relegated yesterday’s post to ancient history already.)  VCI Entertainment and Kit Parker Films’ acclaimed DVD series will be examined on a weekly basis, one movie at a time.  By the way, I made a lulu of a boo-boo yesterday in my review of I’ll Get You: according to friend of TDOY/film historian Richard M. Roberts, the Lippert film library was never “orphaned.”  “Robert Lippert Sr. sold the rights to those films to the Weiss Brothers in the early 60's, where Weiss Global International kept them in perpetual television syndication into the early 80's,” Richard wrote me in an e-mail.  “When Adrian Weiss passed away in the early 00's, the rights and materials to the Lipperts and all other surviving Weiss product was sold to Kit Parker, who has made them available ever since through VCI.”  I am so grateful that Richard is around to keep me honest.

I’ve made the decision that with the exception of an occasional post (like this one) or the announcement of swag to give away, weekends will be kind of quiet here at TDOY.  (Hey, I have book reports to write.)  Which means that Serial Saturdays will be retired (though I had two chapters left in The Black Widow—if I can locate the DVD I’ll try to wrap those up) and as for Doris Day(s)…well, again—a little honesty is in order.  I have to watch these episodes in order to transcribe the dialogue…and then a second time (I generally speed this up if I’m in a hurry) for the screen grabs.  I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude for this anymore (and my recent diabetes diagnosis doesn’t help, either—Doris is awful gooey at times).  Maybe if MeTV decides to add it to its schedule (I’ve seen the traffic for Mayberry Mondays shoot up since they started airing RFD reruns, and I think I thank them for that) I may apply some paddles but for now you’ll just have to settle for memories of Leroy B. Semple Simpson.  (Andrew “Grover” Leal keeps insisting I’ve lost the Doris DVDs…this is simply not true, though I sometimes wish it were.)

So there you have it: the new Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  (I feel like I just participated in a network upfront.)  Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and meet me back here Monday.

Forgotten Noir Fridays: I’ll Get You (1952)

In 2007, VCI Entertainment released the first of several DVDs in a series they chose to dub “Forgotten Noir”; the films featured were for the most part titles furnished by Kit Parker Films after KPF acquired much of the orphaned movie library of Lippert Pictures, an independent motion picture studio that operated between 1945 (when it was originally known as Screen Guild Productions) and 1955.  The movies were produced with an eye toward economy (read: “low-budget”), and while a good many of them rarely rose above programmer status a few releases stand-out; for example, Robert L. Lippert gave novice director Samuel Fuller his first opportunity to sit in the director’s chair with three films Sam also wrote: I Shot Jesse James (1949), The Baron of Arizona (1950), and The Steel Helmet (1951).

The first of VCI’s “Forgotten Noir” releases was a double feature of Portland Exposé (1957) and They Were So Young (1955)—both of which I wrote up in a “Where’s That Been?” column at ClassicFlix.  After the “Forgotten” volumes were released individually, they were then bundled in a series of “Collector’s Sets”—three of which I purchased many, many moons ago and had planned to watch for the blog.  But those collections were eventually sacrificed in what I frequently refer to as The Great DVD Purge before I had the opportunity to free them from their shrink wrap prison.  (Not an uncommon occurrence here in the House of Yesteryear…which is why a lot of the discs that laid down their lives in the Purge were sold as brand-new.)  I later re-purchased Exposé/Young from another vendor around the end of 2014, and when VCI had a “flash sale” on the other “Forgotten” volumes I snapped those up quickly (I think only one of them wasn’t on sale, and I acquired that so as not to break up the sets).

So that’s a longwinded explanation of how TDOY’s newest regular feature came into being.  Our initial entry is I’ll Get You (1952—a.k.a. Escape Route), a cloak-and-dagger mellerdrammer with George Raft as Steve Rossi, one-half of a comedy duo that was quite popular in the 1960s.  No, hang on a sec…I’ve confused him with someone else.  Rossi is an FBI agent investigating the kidnappings of several scientists by a mysterious gang, who ship the eggheads off behind the Iron Curtain.  Rossi travels to Old Blighty to track down a man named Michael Grand (Clifford Evans), who apparently has knowledge of the organization’s activities.

To make certain Grand knows he’s in the country, Rossi slips past immigration upon his arrival at Heathrow, making himself a person of interest where Scotland Yard is concerned.  Rossi eventually comes into contact with British intelligence, who assigns an MI5 agent named Joan Miller (Sally Gray) as his keeper.  While the duo doggedly pursues Grand, they also fall in love…because movies is magic, ma chere.

In my ClassicFlix review of Portland Exposé and They Were So Young, I prefaced the piece by observing that many classic film fans are predisposed to label crime movies as “film noir” regardless of whether they actually conform to that particular style or not.  “Personally, I think the tent is big enough to encompass a wide range of crime films without getting bogged down in a tedious debate,” I wrote.  But I’m not all that convinced that I’ll Get You meets the criteria; I’d be a little more charitable if this film actually lived up to its title card hype (“IT’S LOADED…with searing, screaming, suspense!”).  I get the impression that the reason why George Raft has his mouth agape in surprise is because he’s finally recognized the farce his movie career has become.

I really, really, really wanted to like I’ll Get You.  There’s just one problem: it is dull.  Sweet baby carrots, is it tedious.  The filmmakers should have been brought up on charges of felony ennui…which, to be honest, would have made a much better noir when you think about it.  (And, really—if you can’t make an espionage movie exciting, perhaps you should pursue another line of work.)  The first twenty minutes of this movie literally consists of George Raft’s character stopping by various places and residences looking for the elusive Grand, and the always polite British apologizing that, sorry, they can’t assist him with his inquiries.  (There is a risible moment in the movie’s prologue, however, where the kidnappings of the scientists are filmed in the same fashion as a Monty Python sketch.)  I’ll Get You doesn’t really start to pick up speed until the halfway mark, and by the time you get to a moderately exciting climax with Raft and Evans duking it out on an elevator platform, chances are you’ll have forgotten why Raft was looking for him in the first place.

Star George Raft is mostly the reason why I’ll Get You is so boring.  George had to be one of the luckiest actors in the history of motion pictures.  He wasn’t particularly good at what he did for a living (very wooden and unconvincing), but he did have a knack for playing heavies (his finest hour might be 1939’s Each Dawn I Die) …which he didn’t want to do anymore, and so he left Warner Brothers in the early 40s to freelance.  For every success like Johnny Angel (1945) and Nocturne (1946) there were critical and box office duds like Nob Hill (1945) and Christmas Eve (1947), so by the 50s George’s stock in the film industry had taken quite a dip.  I’ll Get You was the second feature in a three-picture deal he inked with Lippert, preceded by Loan Shark (1952) and followed by The Man from Cairo (1953).  (Both of these movies are on “Forgotten Noir” sets, which means I’ll have to slog through them eventually—the trailer for Loan Shark looks promising, though.)

British actress Sally Gray is the other “big name” in I’ll Get You, best known for appearances in Green for Danger (1946) and The Hidden Room (1949—a.k.a. Obsession).  It’s Sally’s cinematic swan song, and while I’m tempted to speculate that having to fake romantic scenes with Raft (the two honestly have zero chemistry) is what scared her off from future appearances in front of a motion picture camera, she actually made the decision to retire on her own (she married into nobility as the wife of Dominick Geoffrey Edward Browne, the fourth Lord Oranmore).  There’s an unintentionally funny moment in I’ll Get You where Gray pulls a gun on Raft, and Raft tries to disarm her with a bit of malarkey: “You better be careful…you might hurt somebody…I knew of a couple of fellas one time…”

He lunges for the gun, and she quickly executes the old arm-behind-the-back maneuver.  “Go on about your friends, Mr. Rossi,” she says to him.  “What happened?”

“Never mind…it doesn’t matter,” he says in an “I-know-when-I’m-licked-fashion.”  I was hoping against hope that this movie wouldn’t resort to the usual romantic clichés…and in a small way, it really doesn’t since the romance between the two is most unconvincing.

Scripted by John V. Baines (with a dialogue assist from Nicholas Phipps), I’ll Get You was co-directed by Seymour Friedman—a name I recognized from a pair of Boston Blackie movies that I wrote up for the Radio Spirits blog (Trapped by Boston Blackie and Boston Blackie’s Chinese Venture).  We’ll be hearing from Mr. Friedman again at this space, since a number of his efforts listed at the [always reliable] IMDb are also present and accounted for in future “Forgotten Noir” volumes.

Phat boys

In his book Lame Brains & Lunatics, film historian Steve Massa describes the comedic trio known as A Ton of Fun thusly: “{T]he idea being that if one fat guy was funny, then three would be a riot.”  The corpulent threesome was comprised of Frank “Fatty” Alexander, Hillard “Fatt” Karr, and Bill “Kewpie” Ross, with Alexander and Karr the silent comedy veterans. (Karr had a starring series of “Funny Fat Filbert” comedies for Josh Binney Comedies before moving on to Fox and then Universal; Alexander was a Mack Sennett veteran in addition to stops at Century and Vitagraph.  He then worked as a foil for Larry Semon for nearly a decade.)  From 1925 to 1928, the plus-sized mirthmakers appeared in thirty-six two-reel comedies for producer Joe Rock and his Standard Cinema Corporation.  (That’s why seeing “A Standard Comedy” at the bottom of some of the comedies’ title cards is often funnier than the content in those two-reelers.)

I sampled some of A Ton of Fun’s clowning this week in an Alpha Video Classics release available from Oldies.com entitled Three Fatties (the alternate name for the chubby trio).  The DVD box boasts that it’s an “exclusive collection of nine vintage shorts” which is a bit of an “expedient exaggeration,” to quote Cary Grant’s character from North by Northwest.  I’d seen two of the two-reelers previously in other collections: Heavy Love (1926) is available on the American Slapstick DVD, while Three of a Kind (1926) is among the many comedies spotlighted on Slapstick Encyclopedia.  Fatties does include the first Ton of Fun collaboration, Tailoring (1925)—and while I’ll freely admit I don’t have the inside skinny (sorry about that) on how Alpha decides which shorts will make their DVD’s final cut, they might have wanted to strike this from the list.  The print is in abysmal shape, so bad it’s a chore reading the title cards at times (which is a shame, since they actually provide a few laughs; one describes a character as so cheap he “fired a shot Christmas Eve and told his children Santa Claus committed suicide”).  Tailoring is a pretty incoherent affair with a Katzenjammer Kids vibe; one of the Fatties (the print is so bad I can’t tell which member it is) is made up to look like “The Captain” from that classic comic strip while the other two are dressed like overgrown children.

Massa describes the Ton of Fun comedies as “a clever and fun series” …though I think the jury is still out on the “clever” part.  He further observes that “[t]he usual format for the shorts consisted of putting the Fatties in situations and locations where fat men should fear to tread and then milking all the weight-related gags possible...”  Maybe I’m being a bit too harsh (or maybe I haven’t seen the Fatties at their best) but I didn’t find many of the shorts on the collection particularly outstanding…though they do provide some amusement from time to time.  The aforementioned Heavy Love features the plumpish threesome as carpenters, building a house for Lois Boyd (another Sennett veteran, and a frequent leading lady in their comedies); I examined Boyd during Love, and she didn’t seem to exhibit any signs of mental illness—so why she employed these jamokes in the first place is a complete mystery.  Heavy Love does wrap things up with a funny closing gag involving an eccentric who informs Lois and the boys the house has been built on the wrong lot and will have to be moved.

There are some risible moments in Old Tin Sides (1927)—the porcine trio help out in a general store—including a little old lady who somehow gets a leaping fish down her skirt (it’s a long story) and goes through some hysterical gyrations and leaps courtesy of a stuntman.  The two-reeler also features hilarity as the TOF and their boss flood the cellar with homemade applejack and drunkenly break out in a chorus of “Sweet Adeline.”  In addition, I liked Standing Pat (1928)—the penultimate Ton of Fun comedy—in which our heroes use a miracle cleaner to destroy both suits of clothes and cars of unfortunate customers, then later have to deliver a crated piano to a music professor (one of their earlier victims).  The stunt work featuring the team losing control of their car and then the runaway piano as it meanders down steep hills will appeal to anyone who enjoys physical comedy.

The cleaning fluid plot in Standing is reminiscent of the “Bright-O” gags featured in the Three Stooges short Dizzy Doctors (1937) …and to be honest, much of A Ton of Fun’s shtick is similar to that of the later comedy trio who made a cottage industry out of face-slapping and eye-pokes.  Both teams relied on physical destruction for comedy, and as someone once observed of the Stooges, at times the titles of their shorts were funnier than the finished product (the Ton of Fun comedy The Heavy Parade [1926] is a take-off on the 1925 M-G-M classic The Big Parade.)  Two of TOF’s shorts are titled Three of a Kind and Three Wise Goofs (1925), which could easily be appropriated for Stooges shorts.  (They actually do share one title: A Ton of Fun’s Three Missing Links [1927] features the boys as motorcycle patrolmen…though the Stooges’ similarly-titled comedy in 1939 has Moe, Larry, and Curly loose in the jungle making a movie.)

I did get a kick out of seeing a few familiar names in the credits of these shorts: Tay Garnett, who would later direct films like The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), is credited with the title cards on Three Wise Goofs, while Raymond McCarey (brother of Leo) and Pinto Colvig are credited as writers on Standing Pat.  Ray would go on to direct such funsters as Laurel & Hardy (Scram!), Our Gang (Free Eats) and the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins), while actor-animator Colvig is best known as the voice of Goofy in those classic Walt Disney cartoons.  Harry Sweet was in the director’s chair for Three of a Kind; he also acted in silent films but is perhaps best remembered for starting up the shorts department at R-K-O and helming many of the early Edgar Kennedy two-reelers until his untimely death from a plane crash in 1933.

I picked up Three Fatties during the Oldies.com continuing-in-perpetuity 5 for $25 sale (though I think it’s now 10 for $39.90), and while the print quality isn’t particular sparkly (the screen grabs probably tipped you off to that) the comedies are mostly watchable (Tailoring is the only one that’s really terrible).  If you’re looking for a way to sample the work of a forgotten comedy trio for pennies on the dollar, this is the advisable way to go.

B-Western Wednesdays: Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957)

Hey, the last time I did one of these was back in June of 2012…I don’t know how long the second feature oaters will last, but let’s give one a try for old time’s sake.

There are two reasons why I decided to sit down and watch Revolt at Fort Laramie (1957).  First, the one and only MISTER John Dehner receives top billing—something mighty unusual for a thespian who was mostly practiced in the art of character acting.  The second reason was the title; future Perry Mason star Raymond Burr starred in a short-lived radio western entitled Fort Laramie, but the actor who played Burr’s role as Cavalry Captain Lee Quince in the show’s audition was…you guessed it, John Dehner.  So a Western entitled Revolt at Fort Laramie is bound to make me smile; I had a mental picture of Dehner and Burr duking it out in front of a microphone as Harry Bartell, Vic Perrin, and Jack Moyles looked on.

As I have said so often ‘round these parts—I’m simply not that lucky.  In Revolt, Dehner plays Major Seth Bradner—the commander of the titular fort, and a native son of The Old Dominion.  Bradner has pressing issues to deal with: one, he’s trying to negotiate a peace treaty with Sioux chief Red Cloud (Eddie Little Sky).  There is mutual distrust between the two men, and matters aren’t helped when a few of Red Cloud’s warriors attack a supply wagon en route to the fort; Bradner’s second-in-command, Captain James Tenslip (Gregg Palmer), is convinced that Red Cloud wants to steal a gold shipment on the wagon so that Red Cloud can fortify his tribe without having to deal with all that bothersome red tape that accompanies treaties.

But the largest item in Bradner’s inbox is that talk of a war between the North and South is brewing; in fact, during a dance at the fort where the Major is set to announce that his niece Melissa (Frances Helm) will be pledging her troth to Tenslip, he is sidetracked with a bulletin that Fort Sumter has been fired upon.  A number of Johnny Rebs plan to resign their Cavalry commissions to join up with the Confederate cause…and they announce these plans to Major Bradner.  They’d also like to take along that gold shipment and deliver it to a Confederate fort in Texas to ensure the South has adequate capital to fight “the war of Northern aggression.”

The Civil War subplot of Revolt at Fort Laramie is an intriguing one, and I kind of wish writer Robert C. Dennis (who later enjoyed a prolific career scripting small screen fare like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 77 Sunset Strip, and Perry Mason) had explored it in a bit more detail.  But there’s no room for any of that boring character development; this is a Western, damn it, and it’s far more important to concentrate on the skirmishes between the Cavalry soldiers and the Sioux…and later on in Revolt, a tense situation in which Bradner (who announces to any soldier hailing from the South that they will receive honorable discharges so that they can fight for the Confederacy) and some of the soldiers have to hold off Sioux warriors with a dwindling ammunition supply.  All in all, Revolt boils down to 73 minutes of typical "cowboys-vs.-injuns" shoot-'em-up.

My admiration for Dehner knows no bounds…but unfortunately in this oater, he’s got precious little to work with.  There are a few familiar faces here and there: Don Gordon is a half-breed Indian scout named Jean Salignac, and either his ma or pa was French because he uses a Gallic accent throughout the movie.  Kenne Duncan is also on hand, and (Harry) Dean Stanton has one of his earliest motion picture roles as a Southern recruit named “Rinty.”  The majority of the cast manages to say their lines and refrain from bumping into the furniture—there aren’t too many standout performances here.  There is, however, an interesting continuity boo-boo: another Southerner (Bill Barker) answering to “Hendrey” lets Tenslip in on the soldier’s plans…and when he returns to his bunk, he finds the others lying in wait for him.  They quickly dispatch him to the Happy Hunting Ground to a chorus of “Dixie” (a bloody knife is wiped clean on the blanket of one of the bunks); later in the movie, it’s reported that Hendrey’s dead body has been found outside the fort…he’s been scalped to make it appear he was killed by the Sioux.  Tenslip tells Bradner that he suspects Hendrey was killed because he knew too much, and Major Seth says he’ll look into it.  The investigation goes no further.

Directed by journeyman Lesley Selander (who helmed many of the Hopalong Cassidy programmers in the 30s/40s), Revolt at Fort Laramie was an independent effort of Bel-Air Productions (the company produced one of my favorite B-pictures, Big House U.S.A.) and distributed through United Artists.  Bel-Air later teamed Dehner with a cast that includes Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, and Marie Windsor in a classic piece of WTF cinema, The Girl in Black Stockings (1957) …which is available on MOD DVD.  (Sadly, Revolt at Fort Laramie is not—I caught this one on MGM HD.)

Book Review: Lame Brains & Lunatics

It’s been said confession is good for the soul.  So here’s mine: I purchased a Kindle edition of my Facebook amigo Steve Massa’s Lame Brains & Lunatics: The Good, the Bad, and the Forgotten of Silent Comedy on August 9, 2013—if what Amazon.com says is true, and I have no reason to believe they would ever lie to me…he said, rather unconvincingly.  As you can see by the date of this blog post, it’s been three years since I’ve gotten around to devouring its contents.  So I’ll state up front: this is no reflection on Steve’s indispensable reference book.  I’m just lazy.

Not that I’m unfamiliar with Steve’s exemplary silent film comedy scholarship.  He’s one the very best, and if you’ve been thinking about investing in any of the Accidentally Preserved DVDs (collections of previously thought one- and two-reel comedies) from Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions, you’ll want to pony up the additional scratch (only $5.95—a mere bag of shells, as The Great One would say) for the companion guide, also co-written by Massa.  He put together a similar guide for The Mishaps of Musty Suffer DVDs, too.  (Some of the material in Lame Brains & Lunatics overlaps with the information provided in these guides, but that’s certainly understandable.)

Let me approach this from the viewpoint of someone who’s just been introduced to the wonders of silent movie comedy.  Steve’s Lame Brains & Lunatics goes beyond the parameters of what film historian and friend of TDOY Richard M. Roberts (and others) often calls “the big three”: Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd.  There were a number of unsung clowns who diligently worked hard to make audiences laugh in the silent era, and for various reasons (chiefly the inconvenient truth that a lot of their work has been lost to time and neglect) they’re not well remembered today.  You can make a strong argument that some of them are well-deserving of their obscurity (that’s whom Steve refers to with the “Bad” in the book’s sub-title) but too many of them were talented practitioners in the art of mirthmaking, and Massa has made it his mission to chronicle their careers in a respectful fashion.

Ever hear of Billie Ritchie?  Truth be told, I wasn’t well acquainted with him either until I picked up Steve’s book; I probably had him confused with Chaplin imitator Billy West.  Ritchie is often classified as in the same Chaplin-aping league as West, but as Massa observes “Billie had a long stage career before Charlie became famous.”  Ritchie was once a member of the Fred Karno company (as was Chaplin), and even claimed to have originated Charlie’s Tramp character.  “I was amazed to discover that not only is Ritchie different from Chaplin,” Steve writes, “but also that he deserves his own place in silent comedy history for presenting possibly the most low-down, despicable, and unlikable character ever seen on the screen.”  This is saying a lot: Billie Ritchie even outdoes well-known misanthropes as W.C. Fields (who at least had a twinkle in his eye when he was conniving and scheming).  Massa generously provides a filmography for Ritchie (in addition to other select funsters) toward the end of the book; I glanced at the titles and didn’t see anything I recognized other than Live Wires and Love Sparks (1916) so it’s clear I need to track down more of his films.

Funny ladies also receive prominent chapters in Lame Brains: Alice Howell, Gale Henry, Fay Tincher, etc. (which reminds me: Steve's next book will be Slapstick Divas...and it will be due out soon, so keep an eye out for it)—I’ve a passing familiarity with their work since a few of their shorts are spotlighted on the out-of-print Image Entertainment DVD set Slapstick Encyclopedia (released in 2002).  I particularly enjoyed reading a chapter on Marie Dressler, since I had the foresight to DVR a few of her features before Rancho Yesteryear’s DISH austerity program kicked in (I loved Marie in Reducing…Polly Moran—not so much).  In addition, the careers of Roscoe Arbuckle and his nephew Al St. “Fuzzy” John are examined…not to mention Max Linder, Marcel Perez (the subject of another book by Massa, and a companion guide to Undercrank’s The Marcel Perez Collection), and George Rowe.  The title of a section on one of my favorites here at TDOY, Charley Chase, reads “Comedy’s Best-Kept Secret” (so appropriate) …and you’ll not only learn about Our Gang but the myriad of kiddie imitators that attempted to duplicate the troupe’s success.

You know the old cliché about someone “knowing their onions.”  That describes Steve Massa to a “T”; Lame Brains & Lunatics is meticulously researched and sourced (a list of reference works is provided at the conclusion of the book), and Massa’s knowledge of his subject is nothing short of amazing.  I chortled out loud when I read a line attributed to Steve by one of his friends: “You’re more interested in the peel than the fruit.”  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  (I also enjoyed how he described the mantra to his childhood as being “movies, monsters, and comic books.”  That sounds awfully familiar.)

Film historian/archivist Eileen Bowser contributes a foreword to Lame Brains & Lunatics (as a one-time curator for the Museum of Modern Art, she tells a wonderful anecdote about the first she encountered Steve), while Sam Gill—co-author with Kalton C. Lahue of the seminal silent film comedy reference book Clown Princes and Court Jesters—has the final say.  In between, however, is the sensational work of Steve Massa; this book is essential reading for the silent comedy fan.  I only regret it took me so long to find out.