BOULEVARD OF BROKEN SCHEMES

Your grandparents went to the
movies 46 times in 1929. You go twice
a year. Ergo, it's your fault.

Hollywood is dying, so the YouTube videos tell me. Prop supply businesses closing up. Writers becoming building contractor supervisors or -- gasp -- writers' assistants. Agents moving back to the East Coast, actors working fulltime at Home Depot, productions moving to Canada, Hungary, Bulgaria...

And why? Covid, strikes, A.I., unions, overpaid A-listers, overstaffed writers rooms, overpriced cinema tickets, streaming, the new Supergirl movie -- it's all very familiar to me. Only my roadblocks and detours started earlier.

Note: much of the following information will be familiar to some. I write about it here to, as they say, put things in perspective. And take up space.

My former writing partner and I churned out several scripts starting in the late 1980s. Our years of work amounted to one option and a near-miss that otherwise could have been our ticket to success. (It's still a good idea, but that's another story.) I continued on my own for a few more years, to no avail. Scripts dropped off with agents wound up dropped off in their trash cans.

They do a pretty good job keeping my books 
from falling over, too.

Then a lucky break. An old college friend, now working at NBC, hired me to write network promos, freelance, at $500 a day. My first job won three Promax awards, and more years of work, not just at NBC, but other networks and one movie studio. 

At last! A steady writing gig, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of showbiz execs! Would this lead to a full-time job writing from the comfort from my Upper East Side bedroom? Or would I be moving to L.A. with my own office on a studio lot? Who cares, as long as those checks keep coming!

Thanks a lot, Osama.

All that came to a roaring stop on September 11, 2001. For reasons I didn't understand at the
time and no longer remember, the networks started belt-tightening almost overnight. NBC got rid of 25% of all its full-time employees, and 100% of the freelancers. Other networks, studios and production houses followed suit. Even my full-time job in New York used 9/11 as an excuse to start chopping the payroll. 

Time passed. Seeing that showbiz was no longer where it was happening, I took a course on selling freelance pieces to newspapers and the budding world of online news sites.

Boom -- suddenly, the New York Daily News started buying my stuff for its op-ed page. Double boom -- a contributor to The Weekly Standard hooked me up with his editor. Suddenly, I was a regular contributor to the online version of their magazine. I'd wake up early almost every morning, bang out a piece and submit. 

Bill Kristol isn't so sure about me.

The checks were coming day after day. A lot of my Weekly Standard pieces were reprinted on Bloomberg, Business Insider, Forbes, and, once, CBS News (pre-Bari Weiss). At last! A steady gig, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of news outlets!

All that came to a roaring stop with the rise of "free" news sites replacing newspapers and magazines that cost money. Over the years, full-time writers and freelancers got tossed overboard like unnecessary weight off a leaky zeppelin. It didn't help that my editor at the Standard left and was replaced by two people who didn't like my style -- the style that their predecessor loved.

No way! I'm gettin' the benjamins, bro!

Time passed. I was laid off my full-time job. Seeing that news commentary was no longer where it was happening, I went
back the showbiz route by doing background work. This coincided with becoming an occasional contributor to Next Avenue, the PBS-owned site for the over-50 crowd. 

Once again, my creative side was being fulfilled, this time with two outlets. Covid derailed the background work for several months followed by my busiest, most satisfying year ever.  At last! Two steady gigs, with my name becoming familiar with a growing number of casting agents, and an editor who liked my pieces!

Too bad Mickey doesn't stand with either of you.

Then came the double-whammy of actors and writers strikes. Throw in the Trump administration cutting off funding for PBS -- meaning Next Avenue -- and it's a triple. 

Background work has been slashed for union and non-union alike. The few sites paying freelancers do so in cents per word, the fewer the better. 

 I'm not looking for sympathy or pity. Frankly, I'm lucky I did as well as I did, considering I was already in my 40s when the good times started, grew when in my late 50s, and peaked when I was at the age when most people retire. Finding whatever success I had in each field kept my spirits and finances afloat; I look back on those times with nothing but good memories. They were fun, and fun is something not to be taken lightly.'

God, that's clever.

9/11. The rise of the internet. Covid. Strikes. Streaming. Artificial Intelligence. I
experienced it all before it became a meme. Before images of the HOLLYWOOD sign crumbling down the mountain became as much of a cliche as anything you'd see in a Jennifer Lopez movie. 

Maybe it helped I never quite got the brass ring. No matter how promising things got with each job, I never had far to fall when it stopped. 

Otherwise, I could be that Academy Award-winning sound mixer I saw online, who worked just 10 days last year in his chosen field, and is now toiling away at a big box store. His Oscar is likely taunting him from his mantlepiece -- How's it feel to be one of the crowd, Mr. Hollywood? My Promax awards are content to be flashy bookends.

Good news, though. I worked one three-day background gig on an A-list movie in May -- the first in a year -- and am scheduled for another job on a popular TV series next month.  A comeback at age 70, or a bone tossed to an old dog? Let me scratch behind my ear and think about it.

                                                         #########

MOST LIKELY YOU GO YOUR WAY (AND HE'LL GO HIS)

 For all the curveballs life throws at us, there are always a few things we can count on. Journalists using the word "earthquake" to describe any political result they weren't expecting. Commercial breaks on Netflix appearing in the middle of a vital line of dialogue. Some oaf sneezing without covering his mouth just as you walk past him on the street.

"It's not changing one goddamn bit."

Towering above all these, steadfast as the sun rising in the east or the tides controlled by the moon's gravitational pull, is this: People complaining about Bob Dylan concerts. 

You know the drill. I couldn't understand the lyrics. He sounded terrible. He never acknowledged us. He didn't sing the hits. He sang the hits but gave them different arrangements. I didn't know he was singing "John Wesley Harding" until 10 seconds before the song ended. 

Have any of these muttonheads not read a review of a Dylan show in the last quarter-century? This is Bob's whole shtick. This is how Bob is. This is who Bob is. Anyone expecting something different is being willfully stupid. It's like being stunned that Paul McCartney is an entertainer. 

Noel Paul or Bob -- which one looks cooler?

The latest person to be shocked, shocked I tell you, that Bob Dylan concerts don't replicate evenings at the Gaslight Cafe circa 1961 is Noel Paul Stookey, better known by his middle name when he was the tall guy in Peter, Paul & Mary. What is Mr. Stookey's reaction to Bob's "Never Ending Tour"?

 “I’m saddened by it. Because that’s all he’s got. I mean, that’s all he’s got. He hides behind a piano when he plays. I saw him recently in Boston. It must be really, really difficult for him to have a real relationship with somebody. I mean, unless he’s got a separate little place that he runs to, in which case, God bless you, Bob Dylan."

Did Mr. Stookey become Dr. Stookey, Psy.D. when my back was turned? Really, you can figure out someone's personal life by the way he plays piano? Unless that pianist is named Liberace, I call bullshit on Mr. Stookey's analysis. 

And don't forget Sebastian Cabot.

You know what kind of relationships Mr. Stookey has? I dunno! I can't analyze his private life by the way he plays acoustic guitar. But I know what he doesn't have: a musical legacy that reaches back roughly 65 years, and that has influenced musicians as varied as the Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Bruce Springsteen, and David Bowie. 

Hell, if he had never written anything other than "Blowin' in the Wind", "Like a Rolling Stone", "Masters of War", and "The Times They Are A-Changing", he'd be legendary. You could read every book analyzing Dylan's songs, style, and impact, and still never live long enough to finish them.

Nothing says "folk music" like wardrobe from
from Bloomingdale's.

Peter, Paul & Mary, on the other hand, were created by music manager Albert Goldman to cash in on the folk craze. Only Peter Yarrow had a folk background. Paul was part of a band that combined pop music with comedy, while Mary Travers was a Broadway chorus girl. 

They were to folk music what Pat Boone was to rock & roll: well-dressed young people meant to record bland, non-threatening, chicken broth-smooth versions of the real thing for the masses. Oh, and "Puff the Magic Dragon"? More like "Choke the Tragic Flagon". (I'm sure that has some kind of meaning if you think about it hard enough.)

Pat Boone is a CIA psyop.

If Peter, Paul & Mary deserve any credit, it was adding to Bob Dylan's coffers by recording radio-friendly versions of his songs, the way Pat Boone crooning "Ain't That a Shame" and "Tutti-Fruitti" made money for Fats Domino and Little Richard. As Mr. Stookey would condescendingly say, God bless you, Pat Boone.

If Mr. Stookey hadn't believed Dylan would change his act just for him, his comments regarding the concert might have been, "What can you say? It's Bob being Bob. I knew what to expect. And you know, I tip my hat to him for following his muse, whatever it is, no matter what anybody says. That's Bob all over, isn't it?" And Mr. Stookey would chuckle and sip his dandelion tea.

How have other fans reacted to Bob over the years? And how did he react? Let's see,

Booed him when switched to rock & roll in 1965. Didn't care. 

Scratched their heads when he recorded a country album in 1969. Didn't care.

Hated the Self-Portrait album in 1970. Didn't care. 

Freaked out when he "went Christian" in 1979. Didn't care. 

Gave up on him when he used synthesizers in 1985. Didn't care. 

DGAF

Wept when he let an accounting firm use "The Times They are A-Changing" in a commercial in 1994. Didn't care. 

Choked when he sold his music catalogue to Universal for around $400-million in 2020. Didn't care.

Threw in the towel when he sold his master recordings to Sony in 2022. Didn't care. 

Keep showing up to his concerts even though they're going to complain in 2026. Doesn't care.

If you can't figure out Bob Dylan by now... guess what.

                                                    ##########

TV SHOW OF THE DAY: "1960 TONY AWARDS"

 When the Tony Awards recently aired, the general feeling was Why is some pop singer named Pink hosting instead of a Broadway actor?  Because that's what you do to get eyeballs for a traditionally ratings-starved broadcast like this. 

Now, back in 1960, it was a whole different ball of spirit gum. Strictly a local New York broadcast on WCBS-TV, this Tony ceremony didn't have musical numbers, commercials, or what television suits refer to as "star power", That's why it was two hours shorter than the bloatfest it's become as a network spectacle, the New York version of the Oscars only with less attractive actors. (You'd never guess presenter Jason Robards, Jr. was still in his 30s.)

White gloves that went past the elbows were the
burkas for high-society dames.

Before the opening credits even appear, soprano Vivian Della Chiesa comes out to sing the National Anthem. Can you imagine such a thing happening at any awards show today? And I'm not referring to Vivien being dead since 2009. What do they think this is, the Super Bowl or something?

Then there's the location. Instead of the art deco palace Radio Music Hall, the 1960 Tonys were held in the "grand ballroom" of the long-gone Hotel Astor following dinner, giving it the air of a rich person's Rotary Club meeting. 

The only member of the original stage cast
of The Best Man asked to repeat his role in the
movie version. See it if you haven't yet, dammit!

Award shows live or die by stars, so it was a delight to see my man Lee Tracy welcome the audience. Making his Broadway comeback in Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Tracy is older than we've seen him before, wearing reading glasses, with his familiar voice a little more worn and raspy than his pre-code heyday. But honest to God, I was thrilled to see him here, and intend to hang out with him in the afterlife. (Tracy missed out on the Best Actor award, but since that segment is missing, it's no loss to me.)

Keep your daughters away from Eddie Albert.

Tracy is followed by your genial host for the evening, Eddie Albert.  A little too genial. His meandering comments and weird horndog behavior around females, like a 17 year-old actress who hands out the awards to the winners, suggest a few too many Muscats with dinner. (Anne Bancroft, Lauren Bacall and Celeste Holme appear to have ordered one more for the road as well.)

Being blacklisted in Hollywood meant Revere
returning to acclaim in New York. We dig the
rebels.

As the presenters and winners come and go, you're gradually reminded of how many "movie stars" began on stage, like Featured Actress winner Ann Revere, who costarred in the previously discussed 1934 shocker Double Door. Another "duh, no kidding" fact is that other than Julie Newmar, everyone you see is now dead, And Newmar wasn't even nominated for anything, as she makes the most of accepting an award for someone else. Had nominees Jane Fonda and Warren Beatty won, they'd have joined Newmar in the Still Alive category.

Well, aren't you so goddamn special.

The most fascinating difference between then and now are the acceptance speeches. Rather than the egomaniacal, soporific orations prevalent today, the average length here is roughly 12 seconds. And some are shorter, like from the guy who has to be shanghaied back to the podium to say anything. Not that they're all humble. Helen Hayes can't give an award without reminding her peers that they're "the most beautiful, the most witty, the most glamorous creatures in the world!" And, oh, how they love hearing that!

Take a good look -- you won't see the likes of these
guys on TV anymore.

So, it's rather unusual that the highlight of the show are the lengthier remarks when playwright Elliot Nugent gives his old college pal James Thurber a special Tony for the stage revue The Thurber Carnival. Now blind, Thurber is led to the stage by Carnival's director Burgess Meredith, who also receives a special Tony. Listening to two classy wits like Nugent and Thurber is both a pleasure and a sad reminder how far civilization has fallen. 

74-year-old George Abbott makes it to the stage in
one piece.

It wouldn't be an awards show without one tasteless moment; here, it's when Albert Hackett, the winning playwright of The Diary of Anne Frank, walks to the stage accompanied by the orchestra playing "Papa Loves Mambo".  Just going to the stage is an arduous journey itself, seeing that the winners have to make their way through a sardine-packed crowd sitting at oversized dinner tables, something that director George Abbott compares to a scene out of a B-jungle movie. By the way, presenter Vivien Leigh doesn't even give the names of the nominated play's writers. Guess these things write themselves, haw haw! 

Hey, look! It's Jean-Pierre Aumont, star of  
A Second String! Don't tell me you've never heard
of that play. Or him.

Many of the nominated shows give an idea how ephemeral Broadway really is. Fiorello!, Take Me Along, Destry Rides Again, A Loss of Roses, One More River -- once acclaimed, now nothing more than titles you see in the collection of Playbills at Lincoln Center. 

Yet Fiorello!  was considered good enough to tie with The Sound of Music for Best Musical in 1960. Just to show you how little Rodgers & Hart thought of the Tonys, neither bothered to show up, sending their adult children to accept the awards they likely knew were already in the bag. 

Helen Menken offers JDR III a happy ending
for getting rid of all those poor people.

But you know who does show up? John D. Rockefeller III, who's happy to receive an honorary Tony for ponying up the cost of building Lincoln Center. Or, depending on your point of view, displacing thousands of neighborhood residents and their businesses to make room for it. I'm sure those folks watching the broadcast from their "new" homes in the outer sections of the Bronx warmly applauded their benefactor. American Theater Wing president Helen Menken, giving Rockefeller the award, couldn't sound more hammy if her name had been Swift's Premium.

And just as you're ready to take a bathroom break, Eddie Albert, sounding like he's been gargling with Wild Turkey backstage, returns to wish us goodnight. It's easy to feel both gratitude at the show's brief length, and a vague sense of regret that it didn't go just a little longer in order to see more of these kinescoped ghosts of Tony Awards Past -- and the possibility of Eddie Albert eventually conking out on the podium.

                                                       ##############

THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 70

Strap yourself in as we travel to Bengal, Jamaica, the old West, and a tool supply company. Oh, and Florida, too, but keep it to yourself.

BEYOND BENGAL (1934): The 1930s were a prime era for jungle documentaries, no matter the quality, e.g., the notorious Ingagi. Harry Schenck, Beyond Bengal's star/director, is credited on only three other movies. This made him as qualified as anybody else churning out these things, especially when it came to padding it out with phony footage shot in Florida. (You can figure out the Florida scenes because they're in focus and, well, look phony.) Even the industry trade paper Variety doubted Beyond Bengal's authenticity in its bemused review.

In fact, you can bet your last poisha that anything in focus is as fraudulent as Harry's on-camera friend Joan Baldwin almost dying of jungle fever. Not even the footage of a native guide almost eaten by a crocodile trying passes the smell test. On the other hand, another guide almost getting squeezed to death by a python looks genuine -- but if it is, why didn't the cinematographer help the poor schmuck instead of cranking the camera? Oh, I know why! Non-white = expendable. 

The Bengali segments that are definitely for real are when Harry's pals shoot animals. (At one point, the narrator gloats, "Boy, this is gonna be good!" as one poor tiger is ready to bite the dust.)  When the narrator describes a panther as "the most dangerous and hateful creature on the planet," it's clear nobody involved with Beyond Bengal ever went beyond 5th grade to learn the definition of "ironic". An interesting history lesson to see how you didn't need A.I. to fool the public. 

BONUS POINTS: "Produced in cooperation with HIS HIGHNESS THE SULTAN OF PERAK F.M.S." (as the credits read), Beyond Bengal was nominated for the Mussolini Cup at the 1934 Venice Film Festival. Do they give that out anymore?

VAGABOND ADVENTURE: JAMAICA (1934): In addition to pseudo-documentaries about jungle life, one-reel travelogues entertained audiences at a time when travelling the world was strictly for the wealthy. 

Unlike MGM's Technicolor Traveltalks, the Van Buren/RKO Radio Vagabond Adventures lived down to their name. Its 16mm black & white footage of Jamaica captures none of the "silver rivers", "verdant valleys" and "blue Caribbean sea" the narrator breathlessly describes. His patronizing description of "peasant Negroes" hasn't aged well, either.  And why does the accompanying music sound like a Jewish folk song? However, what it offers is a rare look at Jamaica decades before it was a tourist haven for vacationers and potheads.

The opening shot presents a shoreline without hotels or bars, while the rest of the area doesn't seem to have any buildings more than two stories high. Locals still make sugar the old-fashioned way (it involves an oxen team, which also takes the banana crop to the ships), and peddle their foods at the market.  

Outside of the trolley car and autos in Kingston, Jamaica as presented in this Vagabond Adventure is probably little different from how it had been a century earlier. If you can get past the annoying voiceover, it's more fascinating than any contemporary documentary on the country you'd find today.

BONUS POINTS: We see the statue of Queen Victoria, who the narrator informs us "is lovingly referred to as the supreme lady of Jamaica". Not anymore, I bet.

TRAIL OF THE VIGILANTES (1940): Tim Mason, a reporter from back East, goes undercover out West to expose a colleague's murder by Mark Dawson, a cattleman ripping off locals by running a protection racket.

If you think that's a fairly standard plot for a run of the mill oater, so did director Allan Dwan. That's why he hired someone to do a rewrite and turn Trail of the Vigilantes into a sly upending of the genre while maintaining its serious throughline. From the moment Tim Mason shows up in the ironically named dusty town of Peaceful Valley -- a scene awfully similar to anyone who's seen Blazing Saddles -- you know this is not going to be your typical B-western. 

Luckily, the cast is game, starting with Franchot Tone as Tim, the tenderfoot who doesn't convince anybody he's an old cowhand, with an amusing running gag of making an ass of himself while jumping on his horse. As two ranch hands, Broderick Crawford and Andy Devine send up their usual screen roles, while the great Mischa Auer gets the most laughs as a con man impersonating a Native American chief, Spanish bullfighter, Russian Cossack, and Southern shyster. There is nobody but nobody like Mischa Auer around anymore, and we're all poorer for it.

 And talk about out of the box casting -- Warren William plays straightman as the no-good polecat Mark Dawson. At 46, he carries the bearing of a man a decade older but looks as elegant in Western finery as he did tuxedos during his pre-code days at Warners. Trail of the Vigilantes doesn't always hit the mark -- a scene at a mudhole is straight out of a latter-day Three Stooges short -- but otherwise provides a ranch-sized number of genuine laughs while still providing the action and dramatic arc that comes with the (Western) territory.

BONUS POINTS: Co-star Peggy Moran later recounted Trail of the Vigilantes did good box-office with "New York's sophisticated audiences." 

IMPULSE (PILOT EPISODE) (1952): Before Alfred Hitchcock Presents, there
was Impulse. Or would have been had there been more than its unaired pilot episode. Going by the opening narration of this episode (titled "Mr. Pips"), the series would have explored the idea of the consequences from acting upon our worst impulses. Don't tell me you haven't had the urge.

The eponymous Mr. Pips, a mousy worker at a tool supply factory, is regularly humiliated by his repulsive boss into literally crawling through a rabbit-warren of sky-high crates piled dangerously high to retrieve items. These scenes -- far creepier and more claustrophobic than you'd expect -- are greeted by non-stop derisive laughter by the workers, including the woman Pips has a crush on. Eventually, the laughter stops when Pips, finally pushed to the breaking point, brings a gun to work in order to exact some well-deserved revenge. Never push a mousy guy too far.

Maybe you need some personal connection to the mousy side of life to appreciate it, but character actor King Donovan slams it out of the park as Pips, a perfectly nice guy who's allowed himself to be the object of ridicule by not standing up for himself. When he finally explodes by smacking his boss in the mouth with a gun, I almost shook with joy. Pips forcing the weeping guy to crawl through the crates and ordering the others to laugh at the threat of death? Heaven.  If this was the kind of series Impulse had been like, I'd have owned the entire run on 4K UHD Blu-ray. Oh, and the moral of the episode seems to be Chicks dig guys who threaten violence to others!  

BONUS POINTS: "Mr. Pips" was directed by Alfred E. Green, whose 119 credits include Dick Powell's NRA-rah rah short The Road is Open Again.

                                                    ##############

NOBLE ROT

I listen to a lot of Times Radio, the BBC, and other UK news outlets. And speaking as an American with zero skin in the game, the most fascinating thing going over there isn't Prime Minister Keir Starmer gripping on to power the way Donald Trump does a Big Mac. It's the growing loathing toward Britain's most expensive welfare family, i.e. the Royals. 

Catherine plots to repurpose the Tower of London
to its original prison status.

The raucous negative reaction they received at the recent Trooping the Color event was a shocker. (By the way, does "Trooping the Color" sound like anything that should exist after the Victorian Age?). Princess Catherine's response to the loud, lusty booing of spectators was worthy of Melania Trump at her most repulsed. Or repulsive, it's your call. 

To answer your question: Charles knew everything.

It must have been quite the comedown for the Princess, whose handling of her
cancer diagnosis a few years back brought out admiration from all but the most cold-hearted citizen. What could she have possibly told her royal kiddies -- with the straight-out-of-fairytale names George, Charlotte, and Louis -- when they asked her, Mummy, why are those peasants making unpleasant noises at us? Can't you execute them or something? 

This dolt actually takes this stuff seriously.

As further damning information about Prince Andrew continues to be released -- information that was covered up by his mummy and big brother -- the rising anger against the House of Windsor is to be expected. When diehard royal fans explain the reason for the monarchy is they "set an example" for the peons to follow, they seem to desire the entire country to hide crimes of treason and sex made by one of their own. 

Believe it or not, there's something even more inexplicable going on. With the rise of the anti-royal outrage, you'd think Prince Harry would be taking a victory lap or two for quitting his job. Instead, he and his family are returning to visit the homeland for the first time in four years -- and, if stories are to be believed, the are-they-or-aren't-they Prince and Princess want to make it permanent. 

"You get hair implants or else!"

Yes, the "ginger one" (as the childishly anti-Harry horde refers to him) allegedly wants to make his father, stepmother, and brother forget he gave them a right thrashing in his ghostwritten autobiography Spare. Maybe because it was published three years ago, he believes that they will forgive being called a bunch of cruel, dysfunctional, coldhearted racists. You would if it happened to you, right?

It's very possible  ol' dad will turn the other pallid cheek, but word around the palace has it that once William gets crowned, Harry will get the royal boot for good. He already received a taste of what might be coming his way when Spike Lee refused to shake his hand at the Knicks/Spurs game last week. To someone who's had a lifetime being treated like, er, a prince, Spike's deportment must have been a jolt bordering on trauma. And this time, he can't blame it on racism toward his wife.

Obviously not a discussion with fans.

Further confusing things is the reaction from Harry and Meghan fans in America. Anti-royal to their core, they were suddenly thrilled to see a mixed-racial marriage shake up Buckingham Palace. Their revelry increased when the couple pulled up stakes for Montecito and started making bank with Netflix and Spotify. We hate the royals! We hate the rich! We love the royal and rich Harry & Meghan! 

Now that Harry & Meghan no longer feel the love from their one-time American showbiz friends -- the couple has been diagnosed with the contagious disease "loser" -- they're trying very hard to make inroads at the Palace. And in a textbook case of cognitive dissonance, their fans who were ecstatic the couple left their "royal duties" are suddenly angry that those horrid palace people allegedly don't want them back. 

But nobody seems to care that the treasonous sexual abuser Andrew is still eighth in line to the throne. 

Be thankful for your wacky family.

                                                               #############

THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 69

 

THE WITCHING HOUR (1934): "From the celebrated stage play by AUGUSTUS
THOMAS", as the opening credits inform us. Don't worry if you haven't heard of it, as it was first staged in 1907, and hasn't been revived since. 

Jack Brookfield accidentally hypnotizes his future son-in-law to murder a rival (you mean it hasn't happened to you?). The only lawyer who'll take the case is Martin Prentice, a former judge whose belief in the paranormal causes yet another climactic, borderline illegal courtroom stunt -- as in The Kiss Before the Mirror, involving gunfire -- we've all become accustomed to in movies like these. Which is why I love them! 

I don't know why The Witching Hour takes place in the South, other than to feature the usual black butlers speaking the way black butlers spoke in these movies. Keeping its timeframe in the turn of the century was a good idea since its basic idea would probably have been accepted by many people, just as the ghost of Martin Prentice's old flame visiting him every day was likely greeted by audiences with a shrug -- doesn't that happen to everybody? A fun, fast paced movie with the occasional welcome surprise -- the most welcome being how movie studios could whittle a four-act stage play like The Witching Hour down to 68 minutes.

BONUS POINTS: The only actor you'll recognize in The Witching Hour is William Frawley, two decades before his run as Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy, as the cynical jury foreman who winds up playing a key part in the defendant's freedom. (SPOILER: It involves hypnotism. Of course.)

THE SECRET BRIDE (1934): Attorney General Robert Sheldon has secretly married Ruth Vincent just before her father, Governor W.H. Vincent, is accused of accepting a bribe. If word gets out Sheldon is married to the Guv's daughter, it looks bad for both men. If he delays the investigation, it looks really bad. Worse still, Ruth refuses to testify on behalf of a woman wrongly accused of the murder of Sheldon's assistant. Ruth, you see, witnessed the crime through the window of Sheldon's apartment at midnight -- they're not supposed to be married, remember? Impeachment or electric chair: what to choose?

Despite featuring two of Warner Bros. top  actors-- Barbara Stanwyck and Warren William -- The Secret Bride is a comedown for both, as it possesses the odor of a mediocre script that the studio thought could be saved by its stars. Released not long after the enforcement of the Hays "code", the movie plays like Warners' attempt into more generic dramas where sex didn't exist and crime didn't pay. Stanwyck didn't stick around long afterwards, becoming a freelancer within a year. William, his caddish roles behind him, was transferred to Warners' Perry Mason series before being shown the door.

While William -- who isn't even billed on some of the lobby cards -- accepts his role with grace, Stanwyck seems vaguely aware that The Secret Bride is a comedown after slam bang pre-codes like Baby Face, Night Nurse, and The Miracle Woman. Both actors disappear in the final reel, as a complicated flashback narrated by another character explains the whole confusing mystery. Had The Secret Bride been made three years earlier, the lead characters would have been shacking up rather than married, the Governor really would have been crooked, and the killer might have gotten away with it because the victim had it coming. Sounds better, right?

BONUS POINTS: It wouldn't be a '30s movie without the reliable gun-in-the-desk-drawer trope, and The Secret Bride gets it out of the way in the first five minutes. 

NON-STOP NEW YORK (1937): Jennie Carr, a witness to a murder, is flying from London to New York in order to stop an innocent man from getting the hot squat at Sing-Sing. Other passengers include Police Inspector Jim Grant, a professional blackmailer, a wiseacre adolescent violin prodigy, and the real murderer. And you thought your last flight was weird.

The through-line is secondary to that humdinger of an airplane showcased in the poster. That's the real star of Non-Stop New York, often placing it (wrongly) in the sci-fi category for years. The British production could have benefited from Alfred Hitchcock's sly touch, but director Robert Stevenson does a serviceable job with his engaging actors, many of whom went on to have fine careers both in the UK and the US. Anna Lee and John Loder pull the old will-they-or-won't-they routine as Jennie and Jim, while semi-familiar character actor Francis L. Sullivan is a proto-Victor Buono as the killer who has a couple more targets in mind. 

Absurd moments abound -- an outdoor deck with a guard rail only waist high, Jim climbing atop the plane while in flight, to name two -- but that's the fun of it, even if it wasn't meant to be goofy. Non-Stop New York takes a while for the story to get up to speed, but once the plane takes off, so does the movie, with a surprise twist courtesy of the violin prodigy. By the way, the wonder of the plane isn't just its futuristic double-decker construction, but that it flies 3,000 miles in "only" 16 hours! It would be nice to know why the designer thought it would be a good idea to put an outdoor flight deck on there, though.

BONUS POINTS: Twenty-five-year-old Peter Bull, possessing an almost unreal blobby face straight out of Alice in Wonderland, makes the most of his brief, slimy moments a blackmailer-wannabe. If his name isn't familiar, you may remember him as the Russian ambassador in Dr. Strangelove.

THE BOY WHO SAW THROUGH (1956): Through walls, that is. Not like he sees
anything important. A minister looking for his false teeth, a cook dropping a roast on the kitchen floor. Nothing that would get a kid in trouble. Unless you're living in a small town at the turn of the 20th century, and you're treated as a freakish troublemaker nobody believes.

At 24 minutes, The Boy who Saw Through plays like a lighthearted episode of The Twilight Zone. And like most of the Zone stories, it seems to be an allegory. The boy's therapist realizes the X-ray vision is real, but advises him not to mention it anymore -- the same way most children who see the truth are told to shut up. 

I couldn't discover if The Boy who Saw Through was part of a forgotten anthology series or merely syndicated to plug a half-hour hole in local TV schedules. Most everything about it is strictly so-so and is included here solely due to its 15-year-old star Ronnie Walken, who would later change his first name to Christopher. Already possessing charisma and ease before the camera, Walken also has a touch of the creepiness he would become famous for. But I guess that makes sense if he can see through walls. 

BONUS POINTS: The near-ever present shadow of the boom microphone is almost a star itself.

                                                      ############