The Falcon and the Englishman

Over at the Radio Spirits blog this morning, there’s a little birthday shout-out to actor Tom Conway, born on today’s date in 1904.  Classic movie mavens know him as the older brother of accomplished screen cad George Sanders—and that he replaced George as the star of RKO’s Falcon franchise in 1942 with an ingenious little entry entitled The Falcon’s Brother—but he also maintained a presence over the ether in two radio series: The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (he replaced the definitive Holmes, Basil Rathbone, in the fall of 1946) and The Adventures of the Saint (he got that gig when star Vincent Price left in May of 1951).  Conway also starred as Inspector Mark Saber in a television series alternately known as Mystery Theater and Inspector Mark Saber: Homicide Squad.

My recent eBay auction finished last night and if anyone out there in YesteryearLand purchased any swag—I thank you one and all.  (And so does my mother.  You have no idea how happy you’ve made her, believe me.)  I’ve got my fingers crossed that I’ll eventually get to a point when the eBay kiosk will pretty much run itself, but until that time the hard-hitting, probing movie and television profiles that you’ve come to expect here at TDOY will have to wait a while longer…okay, I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish saying that with a straight face.  But if you’re curious as to what’s been keeping me occupado in the meantime; I have a couple of reviews currently in rotation at the ClassicFlix Beta site: It’s in the Bag! (1945—an old TDOY fave) and Inferno (1953).

Also this Sunday—we’re going to start a new feature here on the blog that I’ve decided to call "Sunday Night at the MOVIES!" because I simply have no imagination.  Each Sunday, I’ll post a rundown of what will air this week on the new Fox affiliate digital sub-channel, much in the same way “Coming Distractions” looks at what’s scheduled monthly on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™.  So, here’s what to expect this week:

Today, September 15

08:40am Kidco (1983)

11:00am Homicidal (1961)

12:55pm Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)

02:20pm A Message to Garcia (1936)

04:10pm Blind Fury (1989)

06:00pm Destination Gobi (1953)

08:00pm The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

11:30pm The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

03:05am Lisa (1962)

05:25am The Big Town (1987)

Monday, September 16

08:00am Take a Hard Ride (1975)

10:10am Cripple Creek (1952)

11:50am 7th Calvalry (1956)

01:30pm Mysterious Island (1961)

03:40pm The Naked Prey (1966)

05:45pm Murphy's War (1971)

08:00pm Hatari! (1962)

11:25pm Hatari! (1962)

02:50am The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

04:50am Cripple Creek (1952)

Tuesday, September 17

06:30am Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938)

08:25am Kidco (1983)

10:40am Boeing-Boeing (1965)

12:55pm Teacher's Pet (1958)

03:30pm The Rat Race (1960)

05:45pm Diamond Head (1963)

08:00pm The Big Picture (1989)

10:10pm Pretty Baby (1978)

12:35am The Big Picture (1989)

02:45am Pretty Baby (1978)

05:05am Against All Odds (1984)

Wednesday, September 18

08:00am The Jayhawkers (1959)

10:10am Murphy's War (1971)

12:25pm Nightmare Alley (1947)

02:45pm The Star Chamber (1983)

05:05pm Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

08:00pm Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

10:25pm Flaming Star (1960)

12:25am Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)

02:40am Flaming Star (1960)

04:40am Reprisal! (1956)

Thursday, September 19

06:15am The Guns of Fort Petticoat (1957)

08:00am Comanche Station (1960)

09:35am 7th Calvalry (1956)

11:15am Homicidal (1961)

01:10pm The Gambler (1974)

03:30pm Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)

05:50pm Runaway (1984)

08:00pm The Italian Job (1969)

10:10pm The Assassination Bureau (1969)

12:35am The Italian Job (1969)

02:50am The Assassination Bureau (1969)

05:15am The Molly Maguires (1970)

Friday, September 20

08:00am Hatari! (1962)

11:25am The Lords of Discipline (1983)

01:25pm The Assassination Bureau (1969)

03:45pm Road House (1948)

05:50pm The Big Picture (1989)

08:00pm Tap (1989)

10:25pm Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

01:40am Tap (1989)

04:05am Lady Sings the Blues (1972)

Saturday, September 21

08:00am Mothra (1962)

10:00am Kids Programming (FCC-mandated)

01:00pm Boeing-Boeing (1965)

03:15pm The Family Jewels (1965)

05:30pm Sabrina (1954)

08:00pm Teacher’s Pet (1958)

10:35pm Do Not Disturb (1965)

12:50am Teacher’s Pet (1958)

03:25am 711 Ocean Drive (1950)

05:35am Nightmare Alley (1947)

The MOVIES! are great medicine

Yesterday, my mother went through the onscreen schedule to see if there was anything on to justify the enormous amount of capital we give CharredHer Cable each month, and upon deciding that nothing was to her liking on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ (it was a day filled with musicals, a movie genre that is verboten in the House of Yesteryear) I noticed that there was a station listed below it at Channel 165 (TCM is 164) that read simply “Movie.”  They were showing at that time the 1941 Lloyd Nolan “Michael Shayne” movie Sleepers West.

“I know that’s a movie,” I cracked, “but what is that channel called?”  I started to do a little hunting via the Internets but before I could track the info down the channel went to a commercial break.  During that time, they did a station I.D.—we were informed that we were watching MOVIES!

MOVIES! is a digital subchannel that went on the air this past January 2013, and is a joint venture between Weigel Broadcasting (the father of my current wife, Me-TV) and the Fox Television Stations subsidiary of 20th Century-Fox.  Its schedule is crammed with movies old and new; there’s a great deal of product from the Fox coffers but I’ve also seen contributions from the Columbia and Paramount library as well.  Mom has now adopted the channel as her new best friend in the afternoons…because the only alternatives are the bloviators on MSNBC or reruns of Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

The good thing for me, however, is that because it’s a digital substation I can pick it up on my bedroom TV with very little effort (just like Antenna, Me-TV and INSP) and have it on in the background while I’m working.  I’m not able to get TCM at my work area because those rat bastards at CharredHer told me in no uncertain terms that we need an extra cable box for that…so I sent them a bucket of sand with pounding instructions.

MOVIES! is by no means perfect—as I mentioned in the above paragraph, there are commercial breaks…but I’ve become accustomed to that folderol by now—and besides, they are not as numerous and interruptive as that once-proud cable channel that now goes only by its initials (Ay Em Cee) because they don’t show anything resembling an “American Movie Classic.”  (This is a direct quote from my mother: “I won’t watch AMC anymore.  Their movies are shitty.”)  Before a showing of Hatari! (1962) this a.m., there was an honest-to-my-grandma disclaimer that read: “This movie has not been time formatted in order to show more commercials.”  (Prompting my father to ask: “What in the hell are you cheering about?”)  They will, however, edit movies that have naughty language or inappropriate nudity and/or sexual content—because there are kids watching, ferchrissake!—but if you’re a classic movies aficionado this shouldn’t matter a great deal.

The other nitpick about MOVIES! is that they don’t seem to have a standard regarding the letterboxing of movies: the showing of Hatari! was the pan-and-scan version, while last night’s Chinatown (1974) presentation was letterboxed (again, some of the language was bleeped out).  Of course, I was only interested in having Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939) on while I was completing a few tasks, so those two factors do not enter into it.  I noticed on their schedule that they’ve also got Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938) on this month; nice to see that there’s a place for the venerable sleuth since there have been many protests about those classics being shown in the past.

If you click here, you can find out if MOVIES! is available in your area—they’ve got just a handful of affiliates right now, but I imagine that number will grow within the coming year.  It’s not going to replace TCM, but for the TCM-impaired it’s better than nothing.

With the positive buzz in sales on eBay—and if any member of the TDOY faithful has purchased anything, I thank you gigantically (I know my good friend Federal Operator 99 has)—and my other outside assignments I know contributions have been spotty with regards to the blog; hopefully I’ll be able to rectify this soon.  I did want to give you a heads-up on a couple of more upcoming blogathons…

…the first coming from our good friend Rick at the Classic Film & TV Café.  It’s the Hammer Halloween Blogathon, which will get underway from October 21 through 25.  The title is pretty self-explanatory: the movies to be covered will be those wonderful horror films that were sired in the stables of Britain’s Hammer Film Productions—Horror of Dracula (1958), Curse of the Werewolf (1961), etc.  If you’re interested in participating, sashay on over to the Café for the rules and regs…but don’t tarry too long, since most of the good ones are being snapped up as I write.

And longtime TDOY compadre VP19 is going to expand on last year’s successful The Great Recasting (which was held from July 27-28 by Frankly, My Dear and In the Mood) by serving up The Great Silent Recasting (think of it as a prequel); a blogathon in which participants will take current box office hits and restyle them as entries from the silent era—sort of like this:

I found out about this at Movies, Silently by the way—I guess she had originally planned to co-host but has now dropped out in order to spend more time with her family.  (Oh, stop it—it’s a political joke…)  Again, if this is the sort of thing that stirs your creative juices (although I think there’s a state statute against that in Georgia) mosey on over to Carole & Co. and sign up.

In the meantime, here’s that wacky nephew of mine frolicking by a fountain to remind us that summer is slowly ebbing away and that soon fall will be upon us…well, except in Georgia (there’s a statute against that, too).

The Gish Sisters Blogathon: The Wind (1928)

The following essay is Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s contribution to The Gish Sisters Blogathon, underway from September 7-9 and being sponsored by Movies, Silently and The Motion Pictures.  For a full list of the participating blogs and the films/articles discussed, click here.  Spoiler alert: I give away the ending of the movie, so if you haven’t seen it—postpone reading it until you do.

In a short prologue that precedes some showings (notably the Kevin Brownlow-David Gill Thames Silents presentation, with scoring by Carl Davis) of The Wind (1928) on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™, actress Lillian Gish explains that it was she who submitted ideas on several of the motion pictures in which she appeared while under contract to MGM…because the studio’s “boy wonder,” Irving Thalberg, was “overworked.”  She suggested what eventually was filmed as La Boheme (1926) and The Scarlet Letter (1926)…and after reading The Wind, a 1925 novel originally published anonymously (but later revealed to be Dorothy Scarborough), she lobbied Thalberg to let it be her next picture, and he agreed.  (She did not know at the time that it would also be her last picture—at MGM, anyway—but I’ll get to that in a sec.)

The Wind tells the story of Letty Mason (Gish), a young Virginia woman en route to a ranch located in Texas (identified as Sweet Water in the film).  On the train, she makes the acquaintance of a cattle buyer named Wirt Roddy (Montagu Love), who, judging by how he never seems to be at a loss for lascivious looks, has designs on Letty…yet is gentlemanly enough to offer assistance, particularly when a sandstorm ruins the lunch she’s taken aboard.  Roddy explains to the innocent Letty that the blowing winds are a constant presence in that part of the country—and that women have been driven crazy by the relentless gusts.

Letty’s cousin does not meet her at the stop—that responsibility falls to a neighboring farmer, Lige Hightower (Lars Hanson), and his older sidekick Sourdough (William Ormond).  The two ranchers see that Letty gets to her destination safely, where she is warmly welcomed by her cousin Beverly (Edward Earle).  Beverly’s wife Cora (Dorothy Cumming), on the other hand, reacts to their guest as if she were a cholera epidemic—and though Letty has explained that the relationship between her and Bev is that of brother and sister (Letty’s mother raised Beverly as a child), Cora is very jealous…particularly when her three children grow quite fond of their cousin.

Both Lige and Sourdough want to marry Letty, and both plan to propose to her at an affair in town.  Their marriage proposals are interrupted by the arrival of a cyclone, which forces many of the partygoers into a storm cellar.  It is while in the cellar that Roddy, who’s come back to Sweet Water to check on his gal, reveals to Letty that he wants to take her away from the windy hamlet.  Once the cyclone has passed, Lige and Sourdough each ask Letty for her hand in marriage—even to the point of flipping a coin.  Letty is convinced the two men are putting her on.

Letty hadn’t planned on running away with Wirt…but that decision is made for her by Cora, who angrily tells her off in a jealous rage (accusing her of macking on her husband), forbidding her to stay at the ranch any longer.  To add insult to injury, Letty learns when she goes to Roddy that he’s really just in the market for a mistress—he’s already married.  Between a rock and a hard place, Letty agrees to marry Lige but she’s hardly enthusiastic about it.  When Lige becomes forceful in his amorous pursuit of his wife on their wedding night she dismisses his intentions…telling him he’s only made her hate him more.  Vowing to never touch Letty again, Lige is determined to raise the money to send her back to Virginia.

The blowing of the winds and the relentless dumping of sand and grit everywhere starts to take its toll on Letty—so much so that when Lige and his fellow cattlemen decide that something must be done to ward off starvation for their herds, Letty begs to be taken along to a meeting they’re to attend.  (Here’s a pro tip, fellas: don’t raise cattle in the freaking desert.)  She’s unable to keep up with the others, even after Lige has her ride double on his horse, and so Sourdough is ordered to take her back to the ranch.  Later, when Lige returns, he has an injured man with him—it’s Wirt Roddy, lecher-at-large.

Lige learns that a “norther” will drive wild stallions out of the hills, and rounding the horses up will allow him to raise the money to send Letty back to Virginia.  He enlists Roddy’s help in the round-up, but Wirt manages to sneak back to Letty and once again he asks her to run away with him.  The house takes a pounding from the norther, and when Letty faints, Wirt takes her to bed (presumably for nefarious purposes).  The next morning, Letty’s unwanted gentleman caller continues to force himself on her—she points his pistol at him and he is shot trying to grab the gun.  She then buries him outside…and become terrified when the wind starts to uncover where she’s hidden his body.

Lige returns home to Letty, who is overjoyed to see him…whereupon she confesses that she’s killed Wirt and left him for the prairie dogs.  Lige explains that the wind is mighty helpful in covering up evidence of just shootings…and when he announces he has the money to send her home, she elects to stay with him.  Her fear of the wind is now a thing of the past.

Upon its release in 1928, The Wind was a box-office disappointment for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer…so MGM decided to release “The First Lady of the Silent Screen” from her contract.  Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, of course—classic movie fans and critics recognize it as not only one of the finest silent films ever made, but a movie that contains one of Lillian Gish’s best performances.  The movie was selected to the Library of Congress’ United States National Film Registry in 1993.

Gish had worked with Swedish émigré Victor Sjöström (Seastrom) on the earlier Scarlet Letter, and asked him to direct this project adapted by Francis Marion.  Lillian also handpicked her leading man, Lars Hanson, whose previous performance in a Greta Garbo film she thought quite highly.  But one area in which Gish could not exercise her star pull was in the movie’s original ending—in the novel, Letty goes insane after killing Roddy and wanders off into a windstorm to die.  MGM insisted on the more upbeat “happy” ending, forgetting that Gish’s La Boheme wasn’t exactly what you’d call a date movie.  The original close seems to make more sense from a logical point of view, but in an essay on the film at Senses of Cinema, Adrian Danks makes a convincing case that the present way the movie calls it a wrap is a better call: “But although the surprisingly romantic ending that does grace the film feels a little too strident—and somewhat over-performed by Gish, in particular—it nevertheless seems perfectly integrated into the complex web of visual motifs and themes that Sjöström has developed throughout. Also, the “proper” ending that Gish has commonly touted—where her character walks out into the desert to die—seems closer to a puritanical Victorian morality (where a woman raped may choose to die, may in fact want to) than the more pragmatic sense of everyday survival, and gender roles, that drive the film.”

The movie was partly filmed in Death Valley, where temperatures regularly climbed in the triple digits and sunscreen is usually recommended.  Actually, most of the cast and crew wore goggles and blackface makeup to ward off the sun, and bandanas around their mouths to stave off the choking sand and grit.  The “winds” in the movie were kept in constant motion with the help of airplane engines.  In the Thames prologue, Gish remembers going over to a truck for makeup and putting her hand on the door handle; finding it hot to the touch, she pulled her hand back and left a little bit of flesh as a souvenir.

The Wind is my favorite of Lillian Gish’s films.  I don’t know if it’s my favorite of her performances—the hysteria she displays in the famous scene in Broken Blossoms where she’s locked in the closet and waiting for her brutish father’s (played by Donald Crisp) return is awfully hard to top—but it’s unquestionably my preference when I get a jones to see some of her work.  This may also be the movie that made me a fan of director Sjöström.  The sad story of silent cinema is, of course, that steps weren’t taken to preserve this art for future generations…but from what I’ve been able to see of Victor’s movies, including He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and The Scarlet Letter, The Wind clearly demonstrates the man’s unmistakable artistry.  The most striking images in The Wind that remain with me are when Letty imagines the “ghost horse” that Native Americans in the area are convinced are the source of the winds; it’s very similar to his 1921 masterpiece Körkarlen (aka The Phantom Carriage).  The brevity and economy of some of Sjöström’s direction in The Wind is astounding—my favorite touch involves how he demonstrates that Letty and Lige’s wedding has taken place not with showing the audience the traditional ceremony but a few spare camera shots involving a ring, bits of costume, an open book and other tokens usually involved with that trip down the aisle.

When Gish made the famous statement: “Silent movies were well on their way to developing an entirely new art form…it was not just pantomime, but something wonderfully expressive”—The Wind is the very motion picture that closes that case.  It’s one of several films (including Sunrise and The Crowd) that I would show to people who think silent movies are herky-jerky affairs where people run around real fast and throw pies at one another.  In one of my favorite movie books, Danny Peary’s Alternative Oscars, Peary argues that Lillian should have taken home an Oscar statuette in the first year of the Academy Awards (she was even nominated; she did garner a nod in 1947 for A Duel in the Sun but had to settle for an Honorary Award in 1971) for what is a truly extraordinary performance.  (And don’t get me started on the fact that this movie is still unavailable on Region 1 DVD…just be thankful that it makes the rounds frequently on TCM.)

It’s that time again…

Over at the Radio Spirits blog this morning…there’s no mention of the fact that today is my birthday.  (But that’s okay.)  I’ve reached the half-century point, and hope to be able to duplicate that in another fifty…but my love of fried foods and cheeseburgers might exercise a veto over that, so…  My folks—collectively known as “the ‘rents”—are going to treat me to a fantabulous dinner later this evening, and they are also getting me a swell birthday present in the form of a new office chair.  (Because believe you me…I can certainly use a new one.)

As you can see, the celebration has started early.

We’ve been hoping to stuff a little extra money into the coffers here at Rancho Yesteryear, so I’m back at the ol’ eBay thing, selling off some of the inventory from the dusty TDOY archives.  They’ve imposed a sales limit on me for the time being, so I’ve only got about fifty items listed…here’s the link if there’s anything you’d like to adopt into your home.  (And if you don’t see anything you like…there’s more to come.  My mother is seeing to that.)

My nephew also celebrates with a doughnut as big as his head.  (Okay, this technically doesn't have anything to do with my birthday...the photo just makes me laugh.)

There are a few blogathons looming over the horizon that I’d like to draw to your attention.  The earliest comes from Jessica at Comet Over Hollywood and Lindsay at Lindsay’s Movie Musings—the Journalism in Classic Film Blogathon, which will run on September 21 and 22…and will salute those ink-stained wretches and gentlemen/gentlewomen of the fourth estate with a look at films that dwell on the subject.  I have RSVP’d my intent to participate in this one, and will take one of the greatest journalism films ever made, 1952’s Deadline – U.S.A., as the text for my sermon.

The Sisters Metzinger, Diana and Connie, will host The Great Imaginary Film Blogathon from October 1 to October 3 at their home base of Silver Scenes…and sadly, those dates have coincided with a previous engagement here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear so I’ll have to take a pass.  But that shouldn’t keep you from having fun with it, so if you’d like to learn more about what it entails and the rules and regs, click here for the pertinent info.

The final blogathon on the schedule will also take place in October—on Halloween (the 31st).  Lara at Backlots is whipping up a tribute to The Master of Suspense with Hitchcock Halloween—the title of which should be fairly explanatory, but in case you want to participate click here to scope out the guidelines for joining up.  (Gonna have to skip this one, too—October is going to be a little more busy than I had planned.)

Gonna be another busy week here at Castle Yesteryear, so I probably won't get too much up on the blog.  But before I go...The Kitty Packard Pictorial is featuring yours truly over at "the Kitty Corner," a regular feature of that foine broth of a blog that allows bloggers to talk about their favorite subjects...in this case, TDOY.  (I only wish I knew beforehand that the Corner actually features real cats...otherwise I would have brought along some kibble.)  Go ahead and read it at your leisure.

Addendum: Jessica at Comet Over Hollywood has informed me via the Twitter machine that today is also Michael Troutman's natal anniversary (Michael blogs at I Shoot the Pictures).  He not only joins me on the honor roll, but also screen inebriate Jack Norton, serials scribe George H. Plympton, radio comediennes Amanda Randolph and Barbara Jo Allen (aka Vera Vague), Bowery Boy Buddy "Butch" Gorman and kidvid host Chuck McCann (among many others, including Lois Lane!)...

Guest Review: Captain Blood (1935)

By Philip Schweier

A year or two back I got me a Kindle, and being the cheapskate that I am, I immediately loaded it up with as many public domain books as I could find. Among them was Raphael Sabatini’s swashbuckling adventure novel, Captain Blood. Midway through reading it recently, I decided to revisit the film version. Directed by Michael Curtiz in 1935, it is the first of nine pairings of then-unknowns Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.

Flynn plays Dr. Peter Blood, a physician in 1685 who is called out in the middle of the night to tend the wounds of a political rebel.  Consequently, he himself is convicted of treason against King James and exiled into slavery in the West Indies. There, he is purchased on the whim of Arabella Bishop (de Havilland), the niece of a wealthy plantation owner (Lionel Atwill). As a prank, she arranges for the defiant doctor to treat the governor’s gout, which draws the resentment of the town’s official physicians (Hobart Cavanaugh and Donald Meek).

The doctors conspire to finance Blood’s escape, ridding themselves of this usurper to their profession. Blood intends to take with him a company of his fellow prisoners, but on the eve of their departure a Spanish galleon attacks Port Royal, Blood leads his men to capture the vessel and escape to the high seas. Privateers though they may be, Blood instills in his crew a unity of purpose, and a vow for the fair and ethical disposal of all their booty, including captives, especially women.

Nevertheless, Blood’s name becomes fear throughout the Caribbean, leading to a partnership with the French pirate Levasseur (Basil Rathbone), who chafes under Blood’s ideals. This builds to a head when Levasseur captures Arabella, who is sailing home after a brief visit to England. With her is Lord Willoughby (Henry Stephenson), who has been tasked by the king to bring an end to the pirate raids in the West Indies.

In a duel to the death with Levasseur, Blood wins the lovely Arabella and rids himself of the cruel French captain with the stroke of a single cutlass. While aboard Blood’s ship, she rebukes the charming buccaneer, who in turn decides to exchange her freedom for his own. Of course any one can see that these two kids are crazy in love, and nothing good will come of all this posturing.

Blood intends to sale to Port Royal even though it will mean not only his death, but that of his crew. Arabella’s uncle is now the governor, and he’s sure to put the lot of them in a noose at the first opportunity.

Arriving at Port Royal, Blood discovers the town under attack by a pair of French ships. Willoughby explains that France and England are at war, and he has been authorized to offer Blood and his crew a place in the British Navy. Naturally, they collectively refuse to serve King James, only to be told by Willoughby that James has been deposed and William III now sits on the throne.

With a fresh wind blowing, Blood orders his vessel into the harbor where, under the guise of the French flag, he is able to take both ships by surprise and save the town from destruction in a dramatic battle sequence. Though filmed mainly with miniatures, process photography and stock footage, it is surprisingly effective.

But what of Blood’s fate? Governor Bishop had abandoned the protection of his station in a misguided and fruitless pursuit of Blood. Willoughby reveals to Bishop that if he’s lucky, the new governor might not hang him for abandoning his post. Of course it’s up to Arabella to plead for clemency, but seeing as how her true love is now the governor, she just might be able to save her uncle from the gallows.

Of course, similar events would be played out a few years later, when Flynn plays yet another dashing rogue who charms a privileged beauty in his quest for justice and loyalty to the King of England, skewering Basil Rathbone in the process. Yes, kids, I’m talking about The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), also directed by Michael Curtiz.

If it seems that Rathbone made a career out of playing villainous swordsmen, there’s a reason. At the time, he had a reputation as the finest swordsman in Hollywood. His skill was legendary, and it has been claimed he was so good that he could make a novice opponent (usually the film’s hero) appear far better.

Comparing the novel to the film, the movie is of course condensed, and the book perhaps rather wordy by today’s standards. The book harkens back to an earlier time, when adventure novels were epic stories in the vein of The Three Musketeers or Scaramouche. I don’t hold it against the film that it hits mostly the high points of the novel. It’s merely the product of its time – but it’s a mighty good product. Its only fault is that it parallels too closely its younger sibling, the more widely known Adventures of Robin Hood.

The State of the Blog (pre-birthday edition)

This morning at the Radio Spirits blog, I was asked to do a shout-out to character great Willard Waterman, who was born on this date ninety-nine years ago.  Willard is best remembered as the actor who replaced Hal Peary as The Great Gildersleeve in the fall of 1950; Peary had asked his sponsor, Kraft Foods, for an ownership stake in the program…and thought that if he signed a deal with the CBS Radio Network (just another soldier in Bill Paley’s Talent Raid platoon) the show would follow him.  Bzzzzt!  Wrong answer.  Kraft kept Gildersleeve on NBC (hiring soundalike Willard) and Peary went on to do Honest Harold (aka The Hal Peary Show)…a short-lived sitcom that some old-time radio fans believe better than its reputation.  (For the record…I’m not one of them.)

Waterman’s transition to the Gildersleeve role was virtually seamless; he sounded precisely like Peary’s character—the only differences was that Willard refused to do the “dirty laugh” (he-he-he-he-he), believing it to be Hal’s trademark (and it pretty much was) and he also cut back on Gildy’s singing (Waterman was a fine singer…he just couldn’t duplicate Peary-as-Gildy as well).  While Willard was able to get away with the deception on radio, he had a few problems when it came to TV: he was much taller than Harold Peary (Waterman was 6’4”) and people had their own idea of what Gildersleeve looked like after seeing Hal play him in a number of movies in the 1940s.

It kind of does Waterman a disservice to think of him only as “the replacement Gildy,” however—he worked other radio shows, including The Halls of Ivy…where he played Professor Merriweather, the ally of Dr. William Todhunter “Toddy” Hall (Ronald Colman).  Waterman came to Los Angeles in the mid-40s because a sitcom on which he was appearing, Those Websters, moved there from Chicago and Willard went along for the ride.  Those Websters was a continuation of That Brewster Boy, an Aldrich Family-like sitcom that had a brief run in the early 1940s (in fact, I read somewhere where the family was renamed “Webster” because it was an anagram of “Brewster”).  Waterman also did a few movies and a lot of TV; he was Mr. Quigley, the grocer on Dennis the Menace, and you might recognize him as Claude Upson if you’ve ever seen Auntie Mame (1958).  Back in my video store clerk days in the 1980s, the trailer for The Apartment (1960) would play often and you could hear Waterman’s Mr. Vanderhoff wail “I already ordered the cake!”

So with the steamers and noisemakers handed out…now I have to drop the bad news ordnance.  Things have been pretty busy around Rancho Yesteryear of late, what with my new responsibilities and all…so it looks like we’re going to have to go another week without Riders of Death Valley (1941) and Doris Day(s).  I’ve also got things outside of these two chores competing for my time—one of them involves working on a way to make a little money because while we’re exactly destitute here in the House of Yesteryear we may have to turn to that if we don’t develop a new revenue stream or two.  There is a Coming Distractions post due later in the day (around 6pm), and Mr. Schweier has another movie review for us tomorrow around 8am.  In the meantime, play nice and I’ll get back with you when I can.

Guest Review: Casino Royale (1967)

By Philip Schweier

After watching last year’s documentary Everything or Nothing: the Untold Story of 007, I decided I should revisit the original Bond films, including “Casino Royale” as it was presented on CBS in 1954. This episode of the television series Climax! featured an American Jimmy Bond played by Barry Nelson.

As bad as that was, it was only slightly more palatable than the 1967 James Bond spoof of the same name. According to some sources, it was originally intended to be filmed by the Bond producers Albert “Cubby” Brocolli and Harry Saltzman, but the recent partnership with Kevin McClorry on Thunderball (1965) had left a bad taste in their mouths, so Charles K. Feldman, who held the rights to Casino Royale, proceeded without them.

Rather than produce an entirely independent spy film as McClorry would later do with Never Say Never Again (1983), Feldman chose to play the story for laughs. Sure, let’s cast Peter Sellers and Woody Allen, and the laughs will just happen. Of course, in Hollywood that never works.

Starring as Bond is David Niven, brought out of retirement by the assassination of his former boss M (John Huston). Bond immediately takes over the old department, and realizing that James Bond 007 has a target on his chest, he immediately sets out to confuse the enemy – SMERSH – by designating all his agents as James Bond 007 just to confuse the enemy – including his nephew Jimmy (Allen).

With the help of Vesper Lynd (former Bond girl Ursula Andress), a trap is laid for SMERSH operative le Chiffre (Orson Welles) by causing him to lose at baccarat, drawing the enmity of his superiors. Subbing for Bond is baccarat authority Evelyn Tremble (Sellers).

Meanwhile, the real Bond sends his daughter Mata (Joanna Pettet) to infiltrate a SMERSH hive located in West Berlin. It’s trippy in a deChirico sort of way, and merely provides a diversion from the original story while introducing a kidnappable sidekick for later in the film.

The film is dull, despite the hand of six different directors and 10 different writers (most of them, such as Allen, Sellers, Ben Hecht, Jospeh Heller and Billy Wilder) would be uncredited. To call it a comedy is being generous, as there are painfully few laughs to be had. In all, it adds up to 131 minutes of painful watching best left for desperate rainy afternoons, or those days when one is suffering from a cold and misery is such that anything else can hardly do any further harm.

The mighty Thor

Over at the Radio Spirits blog this a.m., I was asked by the fine staff of the leading publisher and marketer of old-time radio programs to whip up a surprise party for actor-announcer Larry Thor, born on this date in 1916.  Larry’s best known for his five-year-stint as New York detective Danny Clover on Broadway’s My Beat; if you’ve not heard his familiar voice on that, you probably know him as the announcer on Suspense from August 1951 to October 1956.  He worked a great many shows (On Stage, Crime Classics) as both actor and announcer, and he also appears in more than a few films and TV episodes as well.

Here’s the story: I asked one of the editors at Radio Spirits if she could supply me with some pictures of Larry to go with the essay…and she was able to come up with a really good one.  But when I hunted around on the Internets to look for others—the only one I came across was the one the editor bestowed upon me.  Not to worry, I said to myself—a quick glance at his IMDb stats showed me that I had one or two movies in which he had roles in the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives…and I could even fall back on some TV work (which, fortunately, I didn’t have to do).

One of Larry’s most prominent film roles is that of the Army doctor in the 1957 sci-fi cult classic The Amazing Colossal Man—but a search of the archives yielded no positive results of that cheesy favorite.  I did, however, manage to locate my copy of The Fast and the Furious (1955)—another cult fave where man-on-the-run John Ireland takes Dorothy Malone hostage at a diner and the two of them elude the police with a really fast set of wheels as he convinces her of his innocence.  Larry plays one of the detectives investigating Ireland, and fortunately for me he turns up pretty early in the film because I revisited this one the last time it was on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ and was reminded just how boring it is.

Thor is also in Zero Hour! (1957)—another favorite here at Rancho Yesteryear, mainly because it’s the inspiration for the 1980 mega-hit cult comedy Airplane!  Larry is one of the guys in the situation room and is featured prominently in the section of the movie where Sterling Hayden has to talk Dana Andrews down from the flight in which the passengers and pilots come down with food poisoning (we lose Larry when Hayden heads up to the control tower).  Zero is a fun little thrill ride of a movie…but if you’re like me and you’ve seen Airplane! way too many times, you’ll probably find yourself filling in the gags during the “straight” presentation.

The 1970 animated feature The Phantom Tollbooth—directed by Chuck Jones & Abe Levitow from Norman Justus’ classic kids book—prominently showcases Thor’s speaking tones…but then again, that movie is crammed with great voice artists and OTR veterans: Mel Blanc, Daws Butler, Candy Candido, June Foray, Hans Conried, Shepard Menken and Les Tremayne.  Over at the always reliable IMDb, Larry is credited with playing “Kakofonous A. Dischord”…and I’m sorry, IMDb people—but the actor in that role sounds nothing like Thor.  (I’m convinced it’s Cliff Norton playing that part.)  I’m pretty sure Larry voiced Tock the Watchdog in that movie (a part credited to Shep Menken at the IMDb—Shep definitely plays the Spelling Bee, because he’s using his Richard Haydn/Clyde Crashcup voice on that).  To be honest—I’m not a Tollbooth devotee; it’s one of those movies that I’ll watch every now and then mostly for the vocal talent.  After the movie, I watched the other movie I had on the disc—1001 Arabian Nights (1959), another animated feature that I enjoy more for the voices (Butler, Conried, Jim Backus, Alan Reed, Herschel Bernardi) than the finished product.

Finally, Larry has a quick bit as a police sergeant in a Columbia potboiler from 1958: The True Story of Lynn Stuart.  The title says “true” because it is apparently the “ripped from the headlines” story of Santa Ana housewife Phyllis Carter (Betsy Palmer, before she went on a killing spree in Friday the 13th) who convinces the authorities to let her go undercover and infiltrate a gang of drug pushers who, it is alleged, are responsible for the death of her nephew in a car crash.  As “Lynn Stuart,” Betsy is a hard-boiled parolee who attracts the eye of narcotics dealer Willie Down (Jack Lord) and having gained his confidence reports on his activities to Lt. Jim Hagan (Barry Atwater).  But “Lynn” finds herself up to her neck in trouble when she is spirited away from her carhop job by Willie to assist in a big-time drug deal…and she is helpless in reaching her contacts on the force.

I kind of facetiously joked about The True Story of Lynn Stuart’s truthiness but it is based on fact; they take a few liberties with the story (“Lynn” had no nephew who died, her undercover activities occurred over a period of six years while in the movie it seems like weeks, etc.) but it’s pretty much grounded in solidity—future California Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown (state district attorney at the time) narrates the prologue to let us know it’s “just the facts, ma’am” and I don’t think he would lie.  I rather enjoyed this one; Palmer, Lord and Atwater are the only actors credited in this but you’ll spot character veteran John Anderson as the head of the dope ring, Richard “Mr. Oleson” Bull as a customs official, comedian Snub Pollard (as the old guy who has to clean up the gas station washroom) and Russell Thorson—plus, Gavin McLeod makes his feature film debut as a member of Anderson’s gang.  Lord and Palmer are really ta-riffic, as Gavin would say—try and catch this one the next time it turns up on TCM.