From the DVR: Tomorrow (1972)

H.T. Bookwright (Jeff Williams) was on trial for the shooting death of a young no-account named Buck Thorpe (Dick Dougherty), who was shot while attempting to run off with Bookwright’s daughter.  Bookwright’s lawyer (Peter Masterson), a man named Douglas, was fairly sure the jury would acquit his client on self-defense (gotta stand your ground where family is concerned, son) …but he hadn’t counted on one holdout—a cotton farmer named Jackson Fentry (Robert Duvall), who refuses to vote for acquittal.  Why?  Douglas looks further into the matter, and learns that Fentry should never have been seated as a jurist in the first place.

Olga Bellin, Robert Duvall

For the explanation why, we flashback to Fentry’s life from many years previous.  Jackson is hired by the father of Isham Russell (Richard McConnell) to be the caretaker of the family’s sawmill during the winter…and on the morning of Christmas Eve, Fentry prepares to set out for his father’s farm when he discovers a young woman passed out from hunger not far from his shack.  She’s Sarah Thorpe Eubanks (Olga Bellin), pregnant and homeless after being abandoned by her husband and shunned by her family.  Fentry asks her to stay in the boiler shack he calls temporary home (the Russells are planning to build him a permanent dwelling come spring) until she delivers the baby…and their friendship eventually blossoms into a romance, one where Fentry and Sarah tie the knot despite her already being married.

In 1973, Robert Duvall received the first of his seven Academy Award acting nominations for his supporting turn as consigliere Tom Hagen in The Godfather (1972).  (Duvall would eventually win a trophy for his performance as a veteran country music singer-songwriter in 1983’s Tender Mercies…though some have persuasively argued he should have won it for the title role in 1997’s The Apostle.)  I’d be willing to gamble, however, that Bob would have preferred his inaugural Oscar nom be for his outstanding work as Jackson Fentry in Tomorrow (1972), a performance that he has singled out in several interviews as one of his personal favorites.  The story goes that Duvall based Fentry’s unusual accent (from the information presented in the film, Fentry is a Mississippian…though I’m sure some natives would take exception to this) on a man he encountered walking the foothills of the Ozarks.  Listening to Duvall’s speech patterns (I particularly enjoy how he pronounces the woman’s name as SAY-ruh as in “Marry me, Sarah”) reminds me of that kid in Swing Blade (1996—Duvall has a small role in this one, too): “I like the way you talk.”

Duvall

A soft-spoken man with limited emotional reserve, the stoic Jackson Fentry surpasses expectations by reaching out to a woman who’s been kicked around by life; Sarah, who’s not used to being allowed a voice in any kind of situation, relates how she lost her mother at an early age and that her existence has been dominated by men insensitive to her needs from that moment on.  Fentry is the man she’s sorely needed to bind her emotional wounds—on that initial Christmas Eve morning, he purchases some hard candy for her as a Christmas gift, and is determined to take care of her after the arrival of the baby.  Taciturn for most of the film—he speaks only when it’s necessary—Fentry expresses unbridled love and joy in the scenes where he’s taken on the responsibility to raise Sarah’s son (Johnny Mask) …a happiness that, sadly, will be short-lived.

Bellin

Written by William Faulkner as a short story published in 1940, Tomorrow was fashioned into a play by Horton Foote (who won screenplay Oscars for two of Duvall’s films, To Kill a Mockingbird [1962] and Mercies) that was originally presented on CBS’ Playhouse 90 in 1960 (with Richard Boone and Kim Stanley).  Foote would rewrite and expand his presentation for a production that ran for 25 performances at the HB Playwrights Foundation Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1968; it starred Duvall and Olga Bellin, who reprised their roles for the film directed by Broadway veteran Joseph Anthony.  Tomorrow was Bellin’s feature film debut…and her swan song; she purportedly did not take direction well from Anthony, and decided to return to stage work until her death in 1987 from cancer.  (Olga’s celluloid resume is sort of spotty, though she did guest star in such TV classics as Route 66 and Naked City.)

At the time of its initial release, Tomorrow barely made a blip on the radar of moviegoers: New York Times critic Vincent Canby wasn’t particularly laudatory, noting “Even if the movie's intentions are decent, as reflected in the accurate look of the production, filmed in Mississippi, the effect is mostly patronizing.”  The movie got a bit more exposure when it was re-released in 1982, but for the longest time it was a difficult film to track down (a DVD released by Homevision in 2004 quickly went OOP…thankfully B2mp brought it to Blu-ray in 2015).  I first saw it on IFC in the late 90s back when those letters stood for “Independent Film Channel” (since being bought by AMC, both it and The Sundance Channel have strayed vastly from their “independent film” mission to become AMC-Lite) so when I saw it on the schedule of The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ recently I was eager to possess it (my precious).

Sudie Bond

As a person who’ll readily admit to not being particularly enamored of a lot of William Faulkner’s work, Tomorrow is one of my favorite adaptations.  I love how director Anthony chose to shoot the film in black-and-white to emphasize the harsh, rural setting, and Duvall’s performance is a marvel (I’ve noticed a few critics have emphasized that deciphering his thick accent can be a chore for some…which worries me, because I never had a problem).  One of my favorite character actors, Sudie Bond, also does splendid work as the midwife who provides Fentry with support and assistance.  Some viewers might find Tomorrow challenging because it’s mostly dialogue-driven (it also takes some sleuthing figuring out how the scenes in the beginning connect with the rest of the movie) and devoid of blowing things up real good, but the characters are so vividly drawn that I’m always filled with regret when the closing credits run.  I agree with Randy Miller III at DVD Talk when he observes “Tomorrow is a buried treasure that's unquestionably more compelling than any simple write-up can make it sound.”

I got plenty of Sutton

When future Academy Award-winning director George Stevens arrived at Universal Pictures in 1932, he was already a seasoned motion picture veteran—having worked for many years at the “Lot of Fun,” the Hal Roach Studios, where he served as a writer, cinematographer and director on many of Roach’s classic two-reel comedies.  Stevens left Roach for bigger opportunities…but at Universal, he pretty much did what he did at his former studio, direct two-reel comedies featuring the likes of Frank Albertson, Henry Armetta and James “Is zat so?” Gleason.  (Though Universal is where George held the reins on his feature film debut, The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble.)

Stevens’ stint with Universal lasted only a year before he gravitated to R-K-O, which afforded him many more opportunities in the feature film department: he directed two of Wheeler & Woolsey’s finest comedies, Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935), and later made his mark with such classics as Alice Adams (1935), A Damsel in Distress (1937), and Gunga Din (1939).  But before he could do that…it was back to the world of two-reelers.  George receives directorial credit on several of Edgar Kennedy’s “Average Man” comedies (Quiet Please, Grin and Bear It) …not to mention a pair of Tom Kennedy (no relation to Edgar) shorts.  Stevens also instituted a short-lived series that was quite reminiscent of some of the comedies he helmed in the Roach “Boy Friends” franchise (High Gear, Air Tight, Mama Loves Papa) that was known as “The Blondes and the Redheads.”

The series is also referred to in reference books as “The Blonde and the Redhead”—which makes a bit more sense, as there were only two women starring in the shorts.  The platinum blonde was baby-voiced Carol Tevis, while the gal with the crimson tresses (the common sense dame) was played by June Brewster…who left the series after the first five shorts and was replaced by Dorothy Granger, a Boy Friends alumnus.  Stevens also used another Boy Friends player in the Blondes and Redheads comedies, Grady “Alabam” Sutton, who in most of the shorts was the unlikely object of affection of the two women.

In his book Selected Short Subjects (a.k.a. The Great Movie Shorts), Leonard Maltin has effusive praise for the inaugural Blondes and Redheads effort, Flirting in the Park (1933)—which I have not had the pleasure of seeing but is available (along with three other B&R shorts) from Encore Home Video as part of their “R-K-O Comedy Classics” collection.  I’m sure Encore puts out a nice product…but the tariff on these shorts is a bit out of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s price range (I know you think blogging is the glamorous life…but it’s anything but, I assure you).  So I had to go with a collection in keeping with the TDOY budget: a set of four B&R shorts from Alpha Video at Oldies.com (it costs me a five-spot) culled from the collection of “The Movie Man,” John Carpenter.  (Full disclosure: Mr. Carpenter is a Facebook friend.)

Buying product from Alpha is always a hit-or-miss affair (I’ve heard some unpleasant stories about how they operate…but now is not the time or place) so I was pleasantly surprised with the content on this DVD, which kicks off with the third short in the B&R series, The Undie-World (1934).  This one is a lot of fun: Grady plays a violinist hired by mobster Guinn “Big Boy” Williams (who also worked quite a bit at the Roach studios, notably in the 1936 feature Kelly the Second) to ply his trade while Williams attempts to fool June and Carol (who live in an apartment across the way) that he’s the virtuoso.  Complications set in when June and Grady have an encounter in the hallway (upon seeing her, he’s a smitten kitten), and she’s convinced he’s the gangster—not “Big Boy” (who answers to “Bugsy McHugh” in the short).

Bugsy and Grady “double-date” with June and Carol, taking them to a “tea room” (where they encounter Roach Studio stalwarts Charlie Hall and Tiny Sandford—not to mention serials/B-Western veteran Ernie Adams)—with Bugsy a little ticked at Grady for becoming a serious rival for June’s affections (Grady also accidentally shot Bugsy in the foot, which doesn’t help his disposition any).  He asks several of his fellow gangsters seated at a nearby table to keep an eye on Grady…and then tells Grady that he paid one of the men to take a sock on the jaw from Grady in order to impress June.  You can probably guess where this is going: the mobsters take a powder and another gang, led by Palermo (Dewey Robinson), makes itself at home.  The twist is that when Grady slugs Palermo, Palermo congratulates the creampuff for his Moxie…and he asks Grady (after seeing his violin case) to help “put one of his boys to sleep.”

The Undie-World has some first-rate farcical situations and slapstick gags—not to mention some snappy comic dialogue (courtesy of Jack Townley and Jean Yarborough):

GRADY: Excuse me…I was detained by a misadventure in the hall…

BUGSY: Miss who?

GRADY: I was delayed by a mishap…

BUGSY: Never mind the dames…let’s get down to business…

As enjoyable as Undie-World is, the second short on this DVD (the fourth in the series) is even better: Rough Necking (1934) casts June and Carol as sisters, and June is gaga for Grady despite her father’s (Spencer Charters) objections.  Father orders June confined to quarters, and hires a formidable female detective (who else but Hope Emerson?) to keep watch over her.  Carol, on the other hand, convinces Grady to help her put Madame Bodyguard out of commission…and then Grady will take her place.

Despite Grady’s nancy boy persona in movies (a character in one of the shorts refers to him as “Lollypop”), you wouldn’t think he could pull off the female masquerade…but he does, even to the point where June and Carol’s pop starts to flirt with him.  The fun begins when an old friend of Father’s (Roach veteran Fred Kelsey) and his idiot son (George Chandler) stop by for a visit…and discussion soon gets around to a “merger” between June and the Idiot (apparently she was betrothed when the two were kids).  So Carol gets Father out of the way, and Grady now impersonates June…and again, because myopia ran rampant in those old days of the flickers, Junior falls for Grady’s charms.  There’s some exceptional slapstick in Rough Necking (both Charters and Sutton execute funny slides down the stair bannister) but for me the laugh-out-loud moment finds Charters offering Grady-in-drag a swig of some of “the good stuff” and Grady, breaking female character for a few seconds, declares “I need it!”  Townley also co-wrote the story for this one, with an assist from yet another Hal Roach veteran, Fred Guiol.

The Dancing Millionaire (1934) is the only short on this DVD not directed by George Stevens—Sam White, brother of Columbia shorts department head Jules White, sits in the director’s chair and does a nice job with a story by Guiol, Townley and Leslie Goodwins (the future director of R-K-O’s “Mexican Spitfire” series).  Grady is the titular character (“Ronnie Graff”), who meets up with Carol and series newcomer Dorothy Granger at a dance studio after a run-in with a wrestler named Crusher McGee (Tom Kennedy).  Graff has McGee arrested and placed in the pokey…but McGee and his manager (Harry Bowen) get out and head for the same nightclub where Graff and his chauffeur (Jack Mulhall) have taken the girls.  This necessitates that Dorothy and Carol switch back-and-forth between two tables (“Pardon us while we powder our nose,” Dorothy says when they excuse themselves) so as not to alert Crusher to Ronnie’s presence—supplemented with a subplot in which Dorothy drops an engagement ring into a soup tureen.  Having Kennedy in this one amps up the enjoyment (what can I say—I’m a fan of Tom), but comedy veterans like Jack Duffy, Billy Franey and Spec O’Donnell also make appearances…as does Jack Rice as the dance studio manager (Rice would soon find steady employment in the Edgar Kennedy shorts as Edgar’s obnoxious brother-in-law).

The fourth and final two-reeler on the Blondes and Redheads DVD is Ocean Swells (1934)—the penultimate short in the series directed by Stevens and the first to feature Granger.  It’s probably the weakest of the bunch from the DVD, though it does have its moments; in this simple story of Dorothy, Carol and their “Auntie” (Zeffie Tilbury, the “Grandma” in the Our Gang comedy Second Childhood) vacationing at Catalina (before having to return to their dreary jobs in a laundry), the girls meet “wealthy” Bunny De Puyster III (Grady) and Hopping B. Hoppy Jr (Cully Richards).  The gentlemen are actually swabbies on a yacht; while the ladies are mistaken for the mother and daughters of the boat’s captain (Edgar Dearing).  The girls decide to throw a party on board…and then the captain comes back unexpectedly (the interaction between him and his “mother” is hysterical).  The problem with Swells is that it’s a little disjointed, plot-wise, (I’m not sure if it’s the print or the way it was actually written) but there’s still plenty of funny business—the highlight is a spill captain’s assistant Landers Stevens takes on deck after stepping on a bar of soap.  (The wrap-up on this one is kind of sweet, too.)

Stevens’ final B&R short was Hunger Pains (1935; another one I’d like to see), which also gets a nice write-up by Maltin in Selected Short Subjects—then it was off to feature films for him fulltime (and Oscars for A Place in the Sun [1951] and Giant [1956]).  After two more entries, Wig-Wag (1935; Sam White) and Pickled Peppers (1935; Ben Holmes), R-K-O decided to end the series…which was a curious thing, since the Blondes and Redheads comedies offered a nice contrast to the Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol two-reelers (both of which had a tendency to work the marital comedy formula to death).  Still, I was genuinely surprised by the hefty laugh quotient on these short subjects, and I’d highly recommend them for fans of two-reel comedies.

Lot(s) of fun

You may recall my mentioning back in May of this year that film historian Richard M. Roberts—a friend of the blog, and the Silent Comedy Mafia capo di tutti capi who keeps me honest whenever I’ve mangled a fact or two—has published a book available through Grapevine Video entitled Smileage Guaranteed: Past Humor, Present Laughter.  The first volume (subtitled Musings on the Comedy Film Industry 1910-1945 Volume One: Hal Roach and published by Practical Press)—part uno of a trilogy to come—deals with the “Lot of Fun,” better known as the Hal Roach Studios…and when I received news of this via e-mail I knew I would eventually have to acquire a copy.

So I went out and collected pop bottles, mowed a few lawns…okay, I’m sort of making this up—but I did manage to save a penny here and there and purchase a copy of the book in the latter part of September.  I need to be upfront about this: I was a ready-made audience for this publication; I have had a lifelong love affair with the shorts and features that emanated from the Roach studio, whose stars included the likes of Harold Lloyd, Our Gang, Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy and many, many more.

It’s a book that I would recommend without hesitation: comprehensively thorough and meticulously well-researched…with the added benefit of being profusely illustrated to boot (stills, lobby cards and a scrapbook courtesy of Roach employee Marie Mosquini).  (The author jokingly refers to it as “The World’s Longest Footnote.”)  The filmography alone is worth the price of admission, and the first one out there who dismisses this with a wave of the hand and a “Oh, that’s what the IMDb is for” I need to let you know right now we can no longer be seen hanging out together.

I do need to issue a major caveat.  While many of the individuals who starred in these wonderful silent and sound comedies are discussed in rigorous detail in Smileage Guaranteed’s multiple chapters, you’re not going to read long dissertations on the work of major stars like the aforementioned Lloyd, Our Gang or Laurel & Hardy.  The author acknowledges that their contributions to the “Lot of Fun” have already been covered exhaustively by other writers—Randy Skretvedt (Laurel & Hardy), Rob Stone (solo Stan & Ollie), Adam Reilly and Annette D’Agostino Lloyd (both chroniclers of Harold Lloyd)…and especially Leonard Maltin, who detailed the history of Our Gang with Richard Bann (The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang), and touched upon Thelma Todd/ZaSu Pitts/Patsy Kelly (Movie Comedy Teams) and The Boy Friends (Selected Short Subjects) in must-have book collections.  (Leonard even contributed a nice rave for Richard’s book, which you can read here.)

While I would have loved to read Roberts’ take on the Boy Friends and Todd-Pitts/Todd-Kelly comedies (to his credit, he does briefly touch upon them in discussing other comics) I can certainly understand the necessary pruning: the present volume (as Maltin observed) is about the size of a large telephone directory, and Richard joked to me in an e-mail that he’ll have to start writing shorter books because of the stamina he needed to haul around copies of Smileage Guaranteed at various film festivals over the summer.  (He is now the most ripped film historian I know.)  The focus of the book is on additional performers employed by Roach, notably Charley Chase…whom Roberts has always emphatically argued should not ever be described with the adjective “neglected,” and I wholeheartedly agree.  Charley’s career at the studio is outlined in loving detail, and he also benefits from a filmography appendix at the end of the book that not only contains his Roach productions but other outside work (like his Columbia short comedies) as well.

Richard also pays attention (for attention must be paid) to ‘Snub’ Pollard and Max Davidson; in fact, after devouring the section on Davidson I knew that I finally had to get off my duff and acquire that Edition Filmmuseum collection that I had been promising myself for ages I’d buy.  (I also bought the Female Comedy Teams discs, because I don’t like to break up a set.)  Other funsters mentioned in book chapters include Beatrice LaPlante, Eddie Boland, Paul Parrott (aka James Parrott, brother of Charley Chase), Will Rogers, Clyde Cook and Glenn Tryon.  I’ve a passing familiarity with some of these comedians’ works (the works that still survived, that is) but reading about them in greater detail might make you sad that their films are not more readily available.  One of my favorite chapters is “A Few Failed Female Funnies,” which mentions the attempt of the studio to make a star of personal favorite Martha Sleeper and a comedy team out of Anita Garvin (another fave) and Marion Byron.  The work of Mabel Normand during her brief stint at the Roach studio is also discussed…and again, I’d love to be able to see some of these films as they sound both fascinating and fun.

Roberts’ chapter on Harry Langdon’s stint at the Roach studios is an interesting one (and I learned one or two things of which I was not previously aware, which is always good) but while I love Langdon’s silent comedies and am fond of the occasional Langdon Educational and Columbia two-reeler, I’m probably one of the “haters” to whom Richard refers in that chapter because I just can’t warm up to his Roach comedies.  (I’m hoping that our mutual dislike for the Dippy Do-Dads and the Taxi Boys is enough to paper over this disagreement.)  My high praise for Smileage Guaranteed comes down to this: I like reading Richard’s criticism of the films and how he firmly believes that discussion of the subject of comedy should in itself entertain; it need not be just a dry and dusty film school dissertation.  E.B. White once observed that “humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.”  With Richard, there’ll be some dissection involved…but there’ll also be some other “cutting up” (if you’ll pardon the pun) when the professor’s not looking.

Mister Roberts is currently at work on a second volume of Past Humor, Present Laughter—which will outline the history of the curiously-named Educational Pictures comedy studio.  Will I purchase a copy of that when it comes out?—you betcha bottom dollar I will.  But for right now, if you’re anxious to find the perfect Christmas gift for that person in your family who adores movie comedy, I cannot stress enough the urgency of running over to Grapevine Video and snatching up a copy.  Smileage Guaranteed firmly occupies a prestigious position on the movie bookshelf here at Rancho Yesteryear…it’s simply a book you can’t be without.

The very “Model” of a successful Kickstarter project*

Back in November of last year, I wrote a post about a Kickstarter campaign entitled “Accidentally Preserved”—a project initiated by silent film historian-accompanist Ben Model to raise funds ($3,600) for the production of a DVD that would showcase silent film rarities from 16mm sources…which, in many cases, are the only extant versions of these comedies and other novelties that have succumbed to both neglect and the ravages of time.  (As I said in the original post, Ben’s mission was to “get these films out of cans and onto peoples' screens so they can be enjoyed and studied.”)

For a pledge of $25 or more, you could make a little film preservation history by seeing this project to fruition—and you’d also get a mention in the closing credits…

Holy smoke!  That's meeeeeeeeee...

And if you sit patiently through the list of people who ponied up for this project, you'll see a bonus abstract ("A Friend in Need") from a 1925 Clyde Cook comedy, Starvation Blues.  Blues was co-written by Stan Laurel, who recycled the "musicians-freezing-their-tails-off" idea in the classic L&H comedy Below Zero (1930).

…the DVD shipped a week or two back, and is available through the MOD Create-A-Space at Amazon.com.  It’s gotten some nice write-ups from good movie folk like cartoon guru Jerry Beck and NYT critic Dave Kehr, as well as other influential blogs…and seeing as I finally got the opportunity to sit down with it Sunday night and early Monday morning, I thought I’d offer up a few Thrilling Days of Yesteryear impressions of the disc.

It’s extremely well-produced, for starters—a lot of time, effort and professionalism went into the making of this DVD.  A major plus is that a lot of info about the shorts on the disc is included on screens preceding each presentation…and in the case of three of the shorts—The Lost Laugh (1928; with Wallace Lupino), Wedding Slips (1928; with Monte Collins) and The Water Plug (1920; with Billy Franey)—Ben and silent film historian Steve Massa (author of Lame Brains & Lunatics, just released by BearManor Media) provide audio commentary choc-a-bloc with tantalizing tidbits of history for silent comedy geeks like me.

A good bit of the DVD's content consists of one-reel “Cameo” comedies—these one-reelers were distributed by Educational Pictures (“The spice of the program”) as a companion to their two-reel “Mermaid” comedies.  I’m going to go on record here and say that while one-reel comedies aren’t my particular cup of Orange Pekoe (I tend to agree with historian David Kalat, who once opined that one-reel shorts are “the ugly stepchildren of silent comedy”) the more of them I watch, the more I’m being won over.  If a one-reeler has particularly strong gags—like Preserved’s Cheer Up (1924), which features an almost forgotten comedian named Cliff Bowes—I’ll generally overlook the shortage of time to develop character.  (Bowes’ Cheer Up has a riotous bit where he’s spun around and left upside down when his rival attacks him with a hand drill.)  I also enjoyed a comedy on the DVD entitled Loose Change (1928), starring Jack Duffy as a thrifty Scotsman who solves his reluctance to take cabs by employing a bit used by Harold Lloyd in Safety Last (1923)—bumming a ride from an ambulance.

Another favorite: an abstract from a Clyde Cook comedy (the full version is a two-reeler), The Misfit (1924), which features a funny gag in which Clyde paints himself into a predicament...

...but ingeniously finds a way out. (Well, for the time being anyway.)

There are additional items included on the Accidentally Preserved disc besides silent comedy: The House of Wonders, a two-reel industrial short from 1931 touting Elgin watches (you might be familiar with Elgin as the people who sponsored Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life before he started telling prospective DeSoto customers “Tell ‘em Groucho sent you”) and an Out of the Inkwell cartoon from 1922, Mechanical Doll, which will be of major interest to animation buffs (they really are inventive cartoons, and Doll is no exception).  Three Stooges devotees will be intrigued by a one-reel Monte Collins comedy, Wedding Slips (1928), directed by future Columbia Shorts Department head Jules White.  This comedy is also an example of how fragile many of these treasures are: the emulsion of this print started to buckle a few months before the DVD went into production and a transfer was made in the nick of time (the decomposition is noticeable in the main titles and in the last few minutes of the short).

In his write-up for Accidentally Preserved at the Paper of Record, Dave Kehr remarks: “This compilation is aimed at specialists, but it is a sterling example of the kind of home-brew work that is now possible in film preservation, and where much future effort will doubtlessly lie.”  If you’re as passionate about this as I am, maybe you can shift some of those funds you were planning to pony up for that Zach Braff movie (seriously—a follow-up to Garden State?) towards the eventual sequel (Accidentally Preserved II: Texas Blood Money), which I will keep you posted about when it is announced.  In the meantime, you can purchase the original disc over at Amazon…and take it from me, it will be money well-spent.  There’s additional information (including notes on the films) at the DVD’s website.

*I took liberty with Ben’s last name to make a small pun; it’s actually pronounced “Mow-dell”...like the Paul Reiser character in Diner who kept glomming onto every one’s French fries.

Passing around the hat (#3 in a continuing series)

Back in October of last year, I had a post up on the blog concerning a project at Kickstarter.com, in which Sam Nelson—son of Ricky and grandson of Ozzie & Harriet—was raising funds to restore all 435 episodes of his nana and papa’s classic TV sitcom (The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet) to DVD.  Like most of your public television pleas for money, the project had several tiers at which you could pledge…and I’m pleased that my contribution netted me some nice goodies, one of which was a T-shirt with the sitcom’s logo imprinted on it that my mother wears often, much to the amusement of the staff at Publix.

As someone who’s made classic film, TV, old-time radio and other nostalgic forms of entertainment a passion during my brief stay on this planet, I’m always enthusiastic about kicking in some money in kitties (and I don’t mean in the feline sense) if and when I have two nickels to rub together.  (The joke around our house goes: “Money is no object…mostly because we don’t have any.”)  But a search of the couch cushions here at Rancho Yesteryear recently turned up some spare coinage that allowed me to donate to another Kickstarter project that will be of interest to both silent comedy fans and students of film preservation.

Ben Model is a name that I’ve mentioned a time or two on the blog; he’s a film historian and filmmaker, as well as one of the USA’s leading silent film accompanists.  A small list of his credits would include…well, if you own a copy of Shout! Factory’s Ernie Kovacs Collection you’ve seen his name on it (he was the curator of that box set), he also curates/produces the Museum of Modern Art’s annual Cruel and Unusual Comedy retrospective and for the past fourteen years has produced (as co-founder) NYC’s Silent Clowns Film Festival.  He asked me for a solid some time back when he came across a review I did for the 1970 Robert Youngson compilation film 4 Clowns (he needed a copy of it), and in return he sent me a DVD of the 1920 Lon Chaney film The Penalty, complete with his own personally composed score.  Not to put too a fine point on it…he’s good people in my book.

As a film historian, Ben has also amassed a rather impressive collection of silent films on 16mm…and in many instances, these prints are all that’s remaining of the originals.  He’s initiated a Kickstarter project to produce a DVD for classic film buffs that will, as he nicely puts it, “get these films out of cans and onto peoples' screens so they can be enjoyed and studied.”  The movies will feature HD transfers and new musical scores, and will also be put on YouTube for future generations of film fans to enjoy.

The project—titled “Accidentally Preserved”—has set a goal of raising $3,600 to produce a DVD that will contain 8-9 of these rare and/or lost silent classics…and with two weeks left to go, he’s $3,065 in as of this writing.  Ben recently e-mailed the backers to let them know that three of the films on the DVD will be one-reel “Cameo” comedies (the title that the Educational Pictures studio used for their one-reelers; their two-reelers were known as the “Mermaid” comedies) featuring the talents of Cliff Bowes, Wallace Lane (brother of Lupino Lane) and future Columbia second banana Monty (Monte) Collins.  Ben’s “reasonably certain” that these films constitute the only surviving copies of these treasures from the past.

As always—every little bit helps…and there’s several tiers for people to donate.  If this project is successful (and with your help, it’s practically a shoo-in) there’s a darn good chance that future volumes would also be produced—and Ben’s connections with other silent film collectors would insure that the material for these discs consist of true cinematic treasures.  If you can contribute, I urge you to do so—and when you do, be sure to mention my name. (It won’t do you any good, of course, but it helps to spread my name around.)

So This is a Placeholder

Each week around this time, Thrilling Days of Yesteryear tries its darndest to get up a review for Overlooked Films, a participatory event among many other wonderful individuals in Blogtopia whose contributions are catalogued, indexed, stamped and what-have-you at my friend Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom.  I’ve been guilty these past few weeks of backsliding in the first degree…my only excuse is that the time I spent previously watching and reviewing movies for this is now eaten up by the preparation for Mayberry Mondays…which I keep promising to have done by the Sunday before its posting date, and never do.

But I actually have something this week!  Only you’ll have to take a short trip to the Radio Spirits blog for this one—it’s an essay on So This is New York, the 1948 satire starring “radio’s bad boy,” Henry Morgan, and based on Ring Lardner’s novel The Big Town.  Caught this one about a week ago via a trial subscription to Netflix (ha ha…suckers…) and the reason for my interest in this movie is twofold: 1) I hadn’t seen the darn thing since the 1980s, when it played one time in a late-night slot on a local Savannah, GA station, and 2) it dovetails nicely with a new collection that Radio Spirits has just released—a five CD set containing ten broadcasts from Morgan’s 1946-48 comedy show on ABC Radio.  I’ve always been a big fan of Morgan’s ever since I was young enough to remember watching My World and Welcome to It, and if you have a few shekels, an investment in this set would definitely be worth your while.  (The movie—Morgan’s only feature appearance save for a small role in 1960’s Murder, Inc.—is also worth a look at Netflix if you got it…it is truly the definition of an “overlooked film.”)

2012 Queer Film Blogathon: Different for Girls (1996)

This essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s contribution to the Queer Film Blogathon being jointly hosted by Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr from June 18-22.  For a complete list of participants and the movies and/or topics discussed, click here.

Kim Foyle (Steven Mackintosh) is taking a taxi to her job at a greeting card company when her cabbie collides with a dispatch messenger and his motorcycle, sending the man to the pavement.  The only thing that seems to be injured is his pride, but both he and the cab driver exchange a few heated words before the messenger, Paul Prentice (Rupert Graves), asks Kim to intervene.  Kim, noticeably nervous about the incident, hurries off because she doesn’t want to get involved.

The reason for Kim’s reticence is that she recognizes Prentice as her best friend from an English boarding school…when he himself was “Karl” Foyle, and before he underwent sexual reassignment surgery to become a woman.  (We get a preview of their past friendship during the opening credits sequence, when Karl is taunted by bullies while taking a shower and Paul comes to his defense.)  Upon finishing her workday, Kim is stunned to find Prentice waiting for her outside the company…he’s figured out where he knows her from.  Their reunion is awkward, but they decide to “make a date” to catch up on old times.

Awkward is very much the watchword in the couple’s efforts to reestablish their friendship.  The date at a restaurant is painfully uncomfortable, and a second encounter at a music club doesn’t go quite as smooth, either—the hotheaded Prentice manages to tick off some hoodlums at the bar…forcing him and Kim to make a skin-of-their-teeth exit.

But the bad date to end all bad dates occurs when Kim invites Prentice over to her flat for dinner…where he reveals that he’s been reading up on the subject of transgender and transsexuality in an effort to understand Kim better, with whom he’s becoming quite fond beyond the initial curiosity and protectiveness.  A discussion about the subject leads to an incident where the inebriated Paul storms out of her apartment building and whips out the old one-eyed trouser snake in public, which brings the police by and gets Prentice arrested for indecent exposure.  When Kim places a hand on one of the officers’ shoulders to try and convince them not to arrest Paul, she is charged with obstructing an arrest.  Thrown into the back of a police van, one of the cops (Rick Warden) isn’t quite sure what to make of Kim (he thinks “he’s” a transvestite) and puts his hand up her skirt expecting to find evidence proving him right.  This prompts Prentice to intervene and stop the groping gendarme…and he receives a beating in the process.

Paul is also charged with assaulting that same officer, and is depending on Kim to back up his story that it was the officer who was responsible…Kim, having endured enough personal pain and embarrassment to last several lifetimes, is hesitant to become involved and would prefer that the matter simply go away.  She arranges to stay at her sister’s (Saskia Reeves) in the meantime to avoid a meeting with Prentice’s solicitor (Lia Williams)…but gradually agrees to do the courageous thing and testify on Paul’s behalf.  Despite all the bumps and bad patches in their courtship, both of them realize that they are emotionally and sexually compatible with one another (“It fits!  It bloody fits!”)…and by the end of Different for Girls (1996), the two are involved in a lovably quirky partnership, described by Kim during her testimony at Prentice’s trial: “Our relationship doesn’t have a precise nature—it never will…all I know is, I don’t know how I’ve done without him.”

Different for Girls, with a title inspired by the classic Joe Jackson song (heard on the film’s soundtrack), gets my vote for one of the most unconventional romantic comedies I’ve seen in the past twenty years.  I came across it a few years back on one of my cable system’s On Demand channels, and found it thoroughly captivating.  Much of the credit for this goes to actor Steven Mackintosh, who is able to overcome what many would consider “stunt casting” with a wonderful, finely modulated performance as Kim.  Jeered and bullied for being effeminate when he was a young man, her determined attempt to make for herself a new life is turned topsy-turvy when “old mate” Paul Prentice suddenly pops back into her life by accident (via an accident).  The two of them are a study in contrasts: Kim is shy and reserved, never needing nor wanting to be the center of attention; while Paul is boisterous and irresponsible (there’s a running gag through out the film in which the motorcycle he uses in his line of work is repeatedly in the process of being repossessed by the finance company).  Rupert Graves, as Prentice, struggles a bit with his role as first because he comes across as so obnoxious in the early scenes of the film you question why Kim would have anything to do with him in the first place.

But it doesn’t take long to see that there is much good in Paul; there’s a lovely sequence where he and Kim have gone back to his flat after the scene at the music club, where they decide to listen to records as they did in the old days.  The two of them end up dancing to Another Girl, Another Planet (by The Only Ones), in a completely captivating scene.  Paul later teaches Kim how to ride a motorcycle, which provides some nice light laughs, and another amusing highlight occurs the morning after the disastrous “first date” when Prentice, clad in his work leathers, stops by Kim’s office at the greeting card company with a bouquet of flowers to apologize for his boorish behavior the night before.  (This results in some stares and tongue-wagging from Kim’s co-workers and her boss—played by veteran character great Miriam Margoyles—who had written their fellow worker off as some sort of wallflower.)

Despite its Cinderella-like romantic comedy trappings, Different for Girls makes an interesting relationship palatable for those who might be put off by the subject matter while ensuring every effort to distinguish the difference between transsexualism and transvestism/homosexuality, succeeding admirably on all counts.  The only problem I have with the film concerns the subplot involving sister Jane (Reeves) and her soldier husband Neil (Neil Dudgeon), who because of his infertility allowed his wife to have a son with another man.  The script by Tony Marchant seems to want to suggest in a ham-handed fashion that the anguish Neil is experiencing about his inadequate seed is comparable to Kim’s gender reassignment; but it comes across every bit as awkward as Paul and Kim’s early courtship dilemmas, and I think the film might have been improved by eliminating that entirely.  But Marchant has a nice ear for dialogue, and Girls contains some wonderfully quotable lines; my favorite occurs at the end of Kim’s testimony when she informs the prosecuting solicitor (Edward Tudor-Pole): “By the way—I may have had certain things removed during surgery, but my eyesight wasn’t one of them…and I know what I saw after he was arrested.”

Directed by Richard Spence, Different for Girls also features a soundtrack with an eclectic performers lineup including Kool Moe Dee and Desmond Dekker and the Aces.  It’s beguiling, and incredibly well-acted…with major props to Mackintosh for his understated performance (he never hits a false note), and a round of cheers for Graves, Margoyles, Reeves and Charlotte Coleman as Kim’s scheming co-worker—a young actress (you might recognize her as the gal who shacked up with Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral) who left us far too soon.  It’s also a permanent part of my DVD library…though earlier this week I thought I was going to have to call an audible for the Queerathon when I misplaced the darn thing.  (Fortunately I ordered a hard target search of my boudoir and found it with seconds to spare.)  Check it out and see if you’re not as taken with it as I was.