Gilder-Shreve’s Bad Day

As days go…I’ve experienced better.  It started last night, when I had just finished putting the finishing touches on this blog post excuse.  The indispensable Internets stopped working for your humble narrator, and he quickly surmised—due to the inclement weather (not that I’m complaining—we need the rain)—that Windstream was apparently experiencing an outage.  (For those of you who reside in a rural area where your Internet needs depend on Windstream…you have my unceasing empathy.  They really are terrible.)

I couldn’t immediately see to the problem upon rising early this morning because I had an appointment to see my endocrinologist and that necessitated getting out the door before 7am.  (My appointment was at 8:15, and Mumsie is a stickler for being early.)  The good news is that the doctor was effusive in his praise for my progress on the diabetes front; my A1C level was waaaaay down, and overall, I’m managing it like a bitch.  (There was no celebratory donut, sadly enough.)  Having returned from the docs (and a side trip to Kroger Nation for a case of water and a bag of ice), I fired up the laptop…and learned to my disappointment the outage was still raging on.

I would rather cut off a pinky finger than deal with the Windstream people.  For starters, you must negotiate one of those automated customer service deals…and this one is a real hoot, because the voice informs you: “I understand complete sentences, so speak to me like a real person.”  Unfortunately, they leave out the “stupid” between “real” and “person”; I had to repeat my phone number three times before Mr. Automated Service Rep acknowledged my existence.  Then, after going through that charade, you get to speak to a real person who makes the automated guy look like a member of MENSA.  Now, I’m very sympathetic to the fact that the real people are only making $7-8 an hour to read from a manual…but I knew the trouble had to be on their end, and this jadrool kept telling me it was on mine.  He tells me that someone from “Internal” will call me back, and that could take anywhere from 24-48 hours.

I actually resorted to cleaning up my room while waiting for the Internet to return. My mother was delighted.

After lunch—about 12:30 my time—I decided to call Windstream again because I was growing more and more agitated.  (We give these people an arm-and-a-leg for shitty service—the least they could do is make sure the lights stay on.)  I danced the Automated Polka again, and this time there’s a message informing me that, yes, there is an outage in my area.  “Who’s the nut case now, Ray?  Who’s the nut case now?”  They said it would be up and running at 2pm (it was more like 2:45), which now brings everyone up-to-date.  Without further ado, the “my dog ate my homework” post:

In retrospect, I was certain that the first regular Thrilling Days of Yesteryear feature to bite the dust would B-Western Wednesdays.

I had every intention of getting a book read this week.  I really did.  I did not anticipate, however, that I would spend a good deal of the time I normally set aside for this purpose on other pursuits.  For example, I am in the process of trying to whip a movie database into shape.  I own a lot of movies, and I like to keep track of what I have because…well, there’s been a time or two where I have made DVD purchases and then learned to my chagrin I already have a copy in the dusty TDOY archives.  I don’t do this too often (otherwise I would start to wonder if I should see my doctor about the early onslaught of senile dementia) …but if I had a nickel for every time I’ve burned a DVR’d movie to disc that I already own—or by that same token, didn’t DVR a movie because I thought I already owned it—I would be the proud owner of many nickels.  I’ve also got some Radio Spirits and ClassicFlix assignments in my inbox that will need to be completed before the ‘rents and I get away for a little R&R over the holidays.

The book that I planned to crack open—Hold That Joan, by my Facebook chum Ben Ohmart—never received the crack-opening it was due.  As the deadline to have a book read and the post completed got nearer and nearer, I considered calling an audible: I bought—on an impulse buy—a cute little Kindle book entitled F in Exams: The Very Best Totally Wrong Test Answers and I devoured that in the time it takes my father to go once around the DISH channel lineup looking for a show about cops arresting people.  I cannot emphasize enough the word “cute” when describing this book, put together by Richard Benson.  In a nutshell, it’s a tome that lists questions that originally appeared on tests and the hi-larious responses from the test takers who, because they did not know the answer, did what I did on so many examinations in my high school and college days—baffle them with bovine excrement as opposed to dazzling them with brilliance.  The problem with the content in F in Exams is that none of these answers are really all that funny; oftentimes one is left with the impression that someone had a copy of Joe Miller’s joke book in their back pocket during the test.

Here’s an example:

I remember a broadcast of The Jack Benny Program where Jack tells announcer Don Wilson that he has an agreement with Abbott & Costello: “We leave them alone, and they leave us alone.”  So, I decided to scrap a review of F in Exams…which necessitated deciding between continuing to read books and writing about them on the blog…or just spending that time continuing to watch and write about movies.

To no one’s surprise, throwing the book review feature under the bus didn’t require a great deal of soul-searching.  (I really enjoy watching movies more.)

I will say this: I have not completely abandoned the book review feature of this blog.  It’s just that it will not be appearing with the regularity as the other fine features you’ve come to know and love here at TDOY.  If I’m reading a book and decide to do a little write-up in a blog post, fine.  If I’m reading a book and I decide it’s not worth mentioning, also fine.  If I just don’t feel like reading…well, that’s okay as well.  (To be honest, while I’m not in the habit of giving out tips…if it were my money, I’d bet on this last one.)

What will replace the book review feature, I hear people asking?  Well, at this point I haven’t really decided.  There are movies I watch that I’d like to write about…except they really don’t fit into the admittedly narrow parameters here on the blog, and as such, I’m thinking about allotting Mondays to give them a fair hearing.  Andrew “Grover” Leal has been pestering the dickens out of me to resurrect Doris Day(s), so there’s another option.  Which reminds me that it’s been a while since I did anything TV-related on the blog (one of the reasons I made a concerted effort to participate in the recent Classic TV Blog Association Blogathon—that, and because I thought it would be tremendous fun).  Whatever I ultimately decide, I hope the relegation of book reports to semi-regular status doesn’t disappoint too many of you among the TDOY faithful.  Tomorrow, I’ll resume with the regular blog content and Overlooked Films on Tuesdays.  (I just hope there’s not another rain delay.)

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).

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.

Book Review: In Search of Lost Films

Even if you only have a passing familiarity with this blog (and I certainly wouldn’t blame you for wanting to keep your distance), you’re no doubt aware that I have had a lifelong love affair with silent cinema.  It began when I was a mere sprat, and our local public television station would entertain me with the Paul Killiam versions of such classics as The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Gold Rush (1925), and The General (1927)—among many others.  Growing up in Ravenswood, WV, my next-door neighbor and I would scour each edition of TV Guide and try to find the oldest movie airing on our local stations that week.  One time, we saw that The Phantom of the Opera (1925) was scheduled for a New Year’s Eve airing (this station traditionally ran horror movies to ring in the new year) and we were anxious to see it despite the fact it was going to be on at 4am.  We arranged for a sleepover, and though we tried our darndest our constitutions were not strong enough to stay awake for the presentation.  (As such, I didn’t see Phantom until many years later.)

The history of silent film preservation is a troubling one.  In 2013, The Library of Congress issued a report that estimated 75 percent of the feature films made in the U.S. during the silent era are now lost to future generations of classic movie lovers.  This depressing news doesn’t even take into consideration the number of vanished short films made at that same time, nor does it address the number of sound movies that have also disappeared.  It can’t even begin to scratch the surface of the gaps in foreign cinema, either.  So when news is reported that a previously lost movie has resurfaced (often in the unlikeliest of places) or I get a heads-up that donations are being requested to bring silent movies to DVD (as in the case of two recent campaigns to make the Marion Davies features When Knighthood Was in Flower [1922] and The Bride’s Play [1922} accessible to home video fans), it brings a smile to my usually stone-faced countenance (something I suspect I inherited from my days of watching Buster Keaton).

That face was the recipient of another ear-to-ear grin when I received an e-mail from Clint Weiler (at CWPR) offering me the opportunity to review a book written by journalist/film critic Phil Hall about the subject of film preservation, In Search of Lost Films.  In Search has just been published by BearManor Media (full disclosure: BMM’s Ben Ohmart and I have been chums for many years), a first-rate history on the subject of just how these cinematic treasures—silent and sound, U.S. and foreign—have turned to dust in what Hall himself describes in one chapter as “the roots of a cultural tragedy.”  Hall, a contributing editor for Film Threat magazine and author of other BearManor releases including The History of Independent Cinema and The Greatest Bad Movies of All Time, hits one out of the park with this enjoyable read; at the risk of resorting to cliché, In Search is a real page-turner, one of those books in which you’d be willing to knock someone down just to get to the next chapter.

Phil discusses his subject over a number of fascinating chapters; he provides a history of early movie making in the first section, and how those pioneers weren’t motivated by art but by the pursuit of the almighty dollah (which goes a long way toward explaining why so many of these movies no longer exist—preservation was a move made in hindsight).  “Lost Films, Lost Careers” highlights how the likes of Theda Bara and Lon Chaney (you can imagine my delight that mirthmakers like Lloyd Hamilton and Raymond Griffith are also included) have had their silver screen legacies suffer due to the absence of many of their works.  There are also sections devoted to lists of now-lost and culturally significant silent films (The Great Gatsby, Hats Off) and sound presentations (The Rogue Song, Convention City), with Hall providing extensive background on the production history (when available) of these members of the cinematic “disappeared.”

“In Search of Missing Sequences and Segments” concentrates on indisputable classics (The Wizard of Oz, The Magnificent Ambersons) that were cut down from their original versions…and the extant footage no longer exists.  The last chapter, “The Age of Recovery and Rediscovery,” contains a list of films thankfully revived from their MIA state; I chuckled audibly when I read that John Cassavetes’ original version of Shadows (1959), his debut feature, was discovered in the Lost and Found Department of the New York City subway system.

Naturally, I was a ready-made audience for this book, and I particularly enjoyed how many of the lists of missing silent/sound films don’t duplicate the ones tallied in Frank Thompson’s excellent Lost Films (Thompson steered clear of lost “talkies” in his tome as well).  There are also wonderful quotes from some of the folks I’m proud to share Facebook with—film history experts like Ron Hutchinson, Jim Neibaur, Ben Model (his Accidentally Preserved series gets a nice mention), and Steve Massa (whose book Lame Brains & Maniacs is going to be the next one I tackle, I swear—I have the Kindle edition, so there’s no excuses).  Any classic movie fan who’s ever wiped away a tear—knowing that there are so many wonderful films that have since departed for that Great Movie Palace in the Sky—needs to purchase a copy of In Search of Lost Films…and keep it on hand for reference, to make certain we do what we can to keep another parade from going by.