THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 52

 From the frozen North to the streets of Chicago and New York come two features, one TV news documentary, and an industrial short starring a comedian in a rare dramatic role. You've never seen any of these and, unless you're someone like me, probably never will. Your loss, my friend.

THE VIKING (1931): When the prologue to a movie uses the phrase "the greatest catastrophe in the history of the motion picture industry", it isn't referring to Michael Bay. Not to say the script for The Viking isn't hackneyed -- two feuding members of a seal hunt in love with same girl wind up having to save each other's lives. The acting, too, is strictly amateur hour (and nine minutes). No one is credited as director, but producer Varick Frissell is one of the two guilty parties responsible, with B-director George Melford wisely keeping his name somewhere else. 

But Frissell must be applauded for the extraordinary footage shot aboard the titular ship during a real seal hunt in the freezing waters of Labrador. Nothing is faked here -- not the icefloes the sailors walk on (or jump across to avoid falling in the ocean), the icebergs towering over them like skyscrapers, the blizzards, or the seal hunt itself (don't worry, folks, no clubbing here, only rifles are used). When The Viking sticks to its real-life footage, the result is riveting enough to make you almost forget the mediocrity surrounding it.

Frissell would have done better just making a straight-ahead documentary along the lines of With Byrd at the South Pole from a year earlier instead of padding it out with a trite love triangle. Instead, Frissell hired unknowns (only lead Charles Strarrett would go onto semi-big things in B-Westerns). Non-actor Bob Bartlett, real-life commander of the ship taken by Matthew Perry to the North Pole in 1908, gives the most authentic performance as, what else, the captain of The Viking. Luckily for them and the rest of the cast, they were on dry land when, during reshoots, the ship blew up, killing 25 crewmembers, along with Frissell himself. Now you understand the "greatest catastrophe" hype.

Critics didn't cut The Viking any slack for the deaths, while the movie did poor box-office. Not even the introductory appearance of Sir Wilfred Grenfell ("the greatest living authority of the Labrador Country") raised a pulse of sympathy. Let that be a lesson to moviemakers: nobody cares about your damn tragedies.

BONUS POINTS: The Viking was, as far as I know, the only talkie with the sound captured via wire recorder.

BLOOD MONEY (1933): Shady bail bondsman Bill Bailey springs bank robber Drury Darling, kid brother of Bill's on-and-off lover Ruby. Their relationship is coming to an end, though, as Bill flips for society sweetie Elaine Talbert. When Drury skips town, Elaine joins him, going so far as to double-cross Bill by making it look like he robbed the bank. Further gumming up his life is the jealous Ruby putting a hit out on him in a way that gives "behind the 8-ball" a whole new meaning.

It isn't often I stumble across a pre-Code I've never heard of, but thank God and Darryl F. Zanuck for Blood Money, which gives us not only the fine roughhouse character actor George Bancroft (Thunderbolt), but also Judith Anderson playing a dame long before she was a real Dame. It's rather refreshing to see a couple who aren't young and gorgeous, with Anderson, age 36, looking compatible with 51-year-old Bancroft. Their characters have seen plenty of action in their time, reflected in Ruby's cynical eyes and Bill's cigarette & liquor-aged face. 

 But it's Frances Dee who puts the "pre" in pre-Code as Elaine Talbart, possibly the most carnally obsessed woman in a studio picture up to then. Any time the subject of sex, violence, or sexual violence is brought up, her mouth opens in a twisted smile and her eyes pop out as if inflated behind their sockets. "What I need is someone to give me a good thrashing," she warns Bill on their first date. "I'd follow him around like a dog on a leash!" And if you stick around to the end of the movie, you'll see that's her least shocking moment. Over and done in 65 minutes, Blood Money is Type A entertainment with enough startling dialogue to drive your wife out of the room as it did mine.

BONUS POINTS: 22-year-old platinum blonde Lucille Ball has one line of dialogue in her role as a hooker at the dog track. Just the kind of girl you want to bring home to no one.

DREAM STREET (19??): Long before the concept of hidden cameras catching
criminals became a regular part of television, WCBS-TV in New York presented the 30-minute news special Dream Street hosted by reporter Bill Ledder. At least I think that's his name; the show's scratchy soundtrack makes it difficult to make out. But that only adds to the old-school, pre-Dolby Atmos you-are-there feel of the show.

Filmed in co-operation with the NYPD, the first half of Dream Street follows three undercover cops staking out the Prospect Place area of Brooklyn waiting for the pusher man to sell his supply to willing customers. Conversation between the cops, allegedly captured by hidden microphones, appears to be dubbed in; not only is it slightly out of synch with their mouths, much of it sounds scripted, along the lines of "Look, here come the three addicts" as if the guys were wearing jerseys identifying their team. The second half, shot inside a police station, consists of a police sergeant interviewing "apprentice dealer" Big Sam and addicts Vernon and Willie the Whip one at a time. While interesting, it's something of a slog compared to the footage preceding it.

Just when Dream Street originally aired is difficult to figure out; it's supposed to have been in the early 1960s, but it looks a few years older. Men sell furniture on the street while keeping warm with urban campfires. Produce stands outside bodegas take up much of the sidewalk. Salesmen use horse drawn carts to peddle their wares. And by God the addicts wear nice fedoras, overcoats and neckties I would kill for. When did druggies become the slobs they are today?

BONUS POINTS: Is heroin still sold in capsule-form like it is here? Or am I just misunderstanding what the capsule really is?

THE ORDEAL OF THOMAS MOON (1956): From its stark black and white photography to its real-life ambient sound accompanying the on-location film shooting in the original Penn Station and Manhattan's west side, to the narrator who will sound familiar to TV-addicted baby boomers, The Ordeal of Harry Moon captures that brief time when cinema verite took hold in American entertainment, big pharm was still considered the answer to all our problems, and being overweight was the exception not the rule. 

The corpulent, perpetually perspiring Thomas Moon can barely walk up a flight of stairs at Penn Station, reach into his pants pocket for change, or fit inside a phonebooth. Nor can he open a newspaper or overhear a conversation without being reminded he's fat. Even his girlfriend chews him out -- telephonically, not literally -- sending him on a self-loathing stroll around Times Square. (How did he have the ability to walk 20 blocks from Penn Station?). 

You can't help but wonder what 24-year-old Dom DeLuise thought about playing a poor schlub surrounded by ads reading "ARE YOU SELF-CONCIOUS ABOUT YOUR WEIGHT?" or "FAT PEOPLE DIE FIRST." (His reflection in a storefront window is a near doppelganger of Oliver Hardy.)  When his character finally has a nervous breakdown in the middle of Broadway, DeLuise probably didn't need more than one take or even a rehearsal. 

The Ordeal of Thomas Moon lasts 14 minutes -- long enough for our heavy hero to decide he needs to do something about his condition. Or, as the understanding narrator reminds us, "He will face his problem the safe way, the only way, by seeing a doctor" -- who will likely put him on meds made by the film's sponsor, Smith, Kline & French Laboratories, the fine folks who manufactured and sold Benzedrine for weight loss. What, you thought proper diet and exercise would do the trick? 

BONUS POINTS: Dom DeLuise's breakdown happens directly across the street from the aptly-named Broadway Theater on the corner of 53rd Street, where, as we can see in the screenshot, Sammy Davis, Jr. was currently starring in Mr. Wonderful. 

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