THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 47

You've got to get up mighty early to find two movies directed by people better known (and more talented) as actors; one of those actors starring in another picture; and a Magnacolor short starring a one-time Shakesperean actor now slumming in stoogeville. Aren't you glad you stayed in bed while I did the heavy lifting?

UNUSUAL OCCUPATIONS (#23) (1940): Running for 12 years, Paramount's short subject series Unusual Occupations seems to have picked up where Warners' Ripley's Believe it or Not! left off. Not that anything is impossible to believe, since everything is fully documented in almost-glorious Magnacolor. 

Yet a glance at the entire series takes a rather liberal interpretation of the word "occupations". The Dionne Quintuplets? Cylinder records? Clams that look like ducks? None of these are jobs. Still, some of what we see in this chapter certainly count as side hustles. Painting miniature portraits (Jesus, FDR, and Hitler among other subjects), creating art out of flowers, or growing pumpkins in the shape of human skulls could earn folks a buck or two. But what of the gas station attendant who built a hand-cranked machine to kick yourself in the ass when you've done something stupid -- no charge!

The longest section belongs to John Barrymore, whose occupation on his tax return was "Actor" but in Unusual Occupations appears to be "Collector of Dead Things". As he leads radio announcer Ken Carpenter around his mansion, Barrymore shows off the collection of fish he's caught, animals he's shot, stuffed heads, and a dinosaur tooth, and, not surprisingly, lots of guns. Comfortably ensconced in his self-parody stage of life, Barrymore's deliberately hammy delivery (you have no idea how someone can roll his r's with such ease) and double-takes entertained moviegoers who avoided his classy productions years earlier. Whatever pays the hunting bills, I guess. Although I wonder if Barrymore thought he deserved a round or two with the ass-kicking machine for allowing booze to destroy his career.

BONUS POINTS: A still of Barrymore from this particular Unusual Occupations appeared in a book about film restoration which I owned as an adolescent. It took over 50 years before discovering the movie online. Too bad its current owner plastered a timer and FOOTAGE FILE watermark over the entire movie.

MY TRUE STORY (1951): Columbia Pictures must have run out of radio series to adapt before giving True Story magazine the movie treatment. My True Story appears to have been a one-shot entry into the non-genre, perhaps as a bone tossed to down-on-his-luck Mickey Rooney to direct. A true story about his life would have been a lot more interesting.

Femme convict Ann Martin is sprung from the slammer with the promise of a job from a kindly confectioner claiming to have been a friend of her mother. He is, in fact, part of her three-man pre-prison jewel robbery gang. Ann is set up as the caretaker for dowager Mme. Rousseau in order to steal the secret ingredient for the perfume her late husband created: oil of myrrh.  While Ann starts having second thoughts, the gang is willing to kill the guy who runs the perfume factory, and, if necessary, Ann's bf, and Mme. Rousseau herself. Beware of three wiseguys carrying myrrh!

All due credit to My True Story for coming up with oil of myrrh rather than jewels or money as the criminals' target. But a B-picture starring no one of importance rises or falls on the script and direction. Neither are particularly special -- the dialogue is run-of-the-mill, while Rooney's directorial style seems to be holding the end of each scene for several seconds after the last line is spoken before fading out. Aldo Ray (billed as Aldo DaRae) is featured in his first movie role as Rousseau's chauffeur who's also part of the criminal gang. As for the rest of the cast, Wilton Graff (as the gang leader) seems to be imitating Vincent Price, while character actor Ben Weldon is the only familiar face. Strictly for B-movie fans, My True Story makes for a somewhat interesting if long 67 minutes. 

BONUS POINTS: The ridiculous finale tries to convince you that Ann's change of heart means she'll never serve a day in prison for taking part in a criminal act that wound up with two people dead. 

THE BIG OPERATOR (1959): Any '50s crime picture  beginning with a guy getting knocked on the noggin and tossed into the back of a cement truck definitely gets my attention -- especially when followed by credits accompanied by a brass & drums-heavy theme common in the late '50s. Welcome to the world of corrupt union leader "Little Joe" Braun, who will stop at nothing from preventing honest union guys from testifying against him in a federal investigation -- like torture, murder, and when that's not enough, the threat of torture and murder to be inflicted on a kidnapped child. A guy's gotta keep his job, y'know.

As in Quicksand and Drive a Crooked Road, Mickey Rooney is superlative as Braun. No need for him to give his character any complexity, either -- he's a just an extraordinarily violent, angry guy towered over by the world yet terrifies all who come in contact with him. (You can't tell me the 5'1" Rooney didn't carry around a tremendous grudge -- his onscreen anger is too convincing not to be real.) And as long as he's onscreen, The Big Operator makes for a riveting good show. Unfortunately, unlike his other two movies mentioned above, there's way too much time devoted to the supporting characters, one of whom is set on fire. (Just to set things straight, the hitman did it on his own accord, forcing Braun to admonish him, "Look, you don't set anybody on fire without my permission!")

That supporting cast, though, is dizzying. Jackie Coogan (The Addams Family)! Jim Backus (Gilligan's Island)! Jay North (Dennis the Menace)! Mel Torme (The Fearmakers)! Vampira, Charles Chaplin, Jr, Mamie van Doren, Joey Foreman, Ray Danton, Steve Cochran -- all in Cinemascope! Their presence alone threaten to overshadow Rooney from time to time. But for my money, you can keep the star of jolly MGM musicals and heartwarming Andy Hardy pictures -- I'll take his angry little chumps, doormats, and criminals any time.

BONUS POINTS: Jackie Coogan -- oddly also receiving a "Dialogue Coach" credit -- played opposite Charles Chaplin, Jr.'s dad in The Kid in 1921. 

GANGSTER STORY (1959): There must have been something in the air in the 1950s for
actors wanting to spread their unsteady wings. For not only did Mickey Rooney direct My True Story, Walter Matthau stepped behind the camera for the crime picture Gangster Story. And, as with Rooney's movie, the poster claims (meaning lies) it's a true story. The main difference is that My True Story at least looks professional, while Gangster Story is probably the worst B-movie starring an actor who was already established -- if, admittedly, not exactly famous yet. 

Gangster Story is the usual, uh, story about a gangster. Jack Martin, on the run from the police, robs a bank -- by making it look like he's rehearsing a movie! -- before being found by the yeggs on the payroll of criminal ringleader Earl Dawson, who hires him to join the gang. Martin's first job is to rob the safe from a country club. While Dawson intends to keep his new employee on the payroll, Martin wants to run away to Mexico with Carol, a librarian who has fallen in love with him for no damn good reason. A subsequent shootout with Dawson and the cops puts everybody's plan to bed for good.

OK, not exactly original but serviceable for a 65-minute quickie. The problem is Matthau the director. Working with a penny-ante budget and non-union crew, he appeared to deliberately make sure that Gangster Story looked strictly amateur hour. Camera shots consistently off-center and occasionally out of focus, dialogue looped in during post-production, ham-fisted editing, and a score that sounds like needle drops -- everything leaves you asking yourself questions. Was this Matthau's attempt at a calling card to break out of supporting roles into leads? Did he surround himself with terrible actors to make himself look that much better? And how the hell did his career survive this piece of junk? If Matthau the actor wasn't as good as he was, Gangster Story could be mistaken for an Ed Wood production. Definitely a must-see. (Google the title and see just how many fly-by-night video companies have released it with covers featuring photos of 1970s Matthau.)

BONUS POINTS: The only name I recognized in the credits, Radley Metzger (the editor), would later become famous as the auteur of artsy softcore epics. When that's a step up in a career, you know you started at the dregs.

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 18

Sex! Loansharking! Magical murder! A singer making a fool of himself for the sake of a TV show! It must be another Early Show.

SEX (1920): Now there's a 

 straightforward title for a straightforward movie
about a straightforward woman whose life eventually goes sideways. Sneering showgirl Adrienne Renault is enjoying an affair with Philip Overman -- until his wife divorces him. The thrill of the relationship now gone, Adrienne dumps Philip in favor of Dick Wallace, with whom she unexpectedly falls in love. Two years after they marry, Dick begins an affair with Daisy Henderson, a once-innocent dancer whom Adrienne had taken under her protective wing. Her marriage, heart, and spirit now broken, Adrienne sails to Europe on an ocean liner, where her previous lover Philip Overman has reconciled with his wife. How you like now, Little Miss Sex Queen?

As with similar dramas of its time, Sex wanted to titillate its audience with, um, sex, while making them feel guilty about it by the sixth reel (a trick Cecil B. DeMille successfully put to use in his career). Adrienne's cynicism is upfront, advising virginal newcomer Daisy to take what she can get without feeling sorry for anybody but herself. As for the millionaire businessmen, we never learn exactly what they do to make themselves wealthy -- they seem to spend all their time at their girlfriends' apartments, attending Broadway shows, and ducking their wives. 

By 1920, histrionics were becoming a thing of the past in movies, so Sex's actors keep the emotions on a low boil. Louise Glaum is excellent as Adrienne, pulling off two scenes that mirror each other -- first as the mistress and later the spurned wife -- quite well. Credit director Fred Niblo, too, for tackling a potentially melodramatic subject without going overboard. As movie historians like to say, Sex is ripe for reappraisal -- if only somebody could do a restoration of the current washed out print that often make the intertitles difficult to read. But who needs words with a movie called Sex?

BONUS POINTS: Wondering how audiences reacted to a movie titled Sex that never features anything stronger than a kiss.

I DEMAND PAYMENT (1938): Forced into joining a loansharking outfit run by Joe Travis, Toby

Locke marries his girlfriend Judith Avery solely to prevent her from testifying against him in court. When she learns the truth, Judith takes the easy way out by driving her car in front of a speeding train (wouldn't an annulment worked just as well?), but survives just so her surgeon, Dr. Craig Mitchell, can fall in love with her. Meanwhile, Toby kills one of Travis's enforcers, Louie Badolio, in order to get his hands on the ten grand he's carrying, before convincing Judith to run away to Mexico with him. Louie's brother, oddly named Smiles, and another enforcer, oddly named Happy, follow with murder in mind. Just as Smiles is ready to pull a gat on Toby, Dr. Mitchell shows up to try to win back Judith. Can't a couple honeymoon in peace?

And is it too much to ask for a movie titled I Demand Payment to live up to its promise of being strictly a low-budget indie crime movie? Apparently so, since the subplot involving Judith and Dr. Mitchell takes up too much cutesy time. I was really hoping the underrated Jack LaRue (the poor man's Bogart) would have more screentime than he does as Smiles, but what we see of him will have to do. (Unless I'm mistaken, LaRue starts out with an Italian accent before giving up midway through.) 

As dimwitted gunman Happy Crofton, Guinn (Big Boy) Williams, on loan from Warner Brothers, gives his usual better-than-expected performance -- the part seems like it was written specifically for him -- especially in the final scene, where all the actors finally have something interesting to chew on. LaRue and Williams do the heavy lifting for nominal "stars" Betty Burgess, Matty Kemp, and Lloyd Hughes. As loanshark ringleader leader Joe Travis, Bryant Washburn deserves a shoutout for a cleft chin deeper than the Erie Canal. The only movie I can find released by the who-the-heck-are-they Imperial Pictures, I Demand Payment will have you demanding why I wrote about it. (Because of the title, Jack LaRue, and its 58-minute runtime, OK?)

BONUS POINTS: Betty Burgess looks better after smashing into a train than most women do after a trip to the beauty parlor. 

THE STRANGE MR. GREGORY (1945): A magician known as Gregory the Great, having fallen in love with Ellen Randall, frames her husband John for two murders, including that of... Gregory the Great! Impossible you say? Not at all -- Gregory has mastered the mysterious "death trance", right down to losing a pulse. (I'm not giving anything away -- you'd have to be in a death trance not to have figured it out.) Gregory reappears as his twin brother, Lane, to resume his pursuit of Ellen. Ellen's friend Sheila smells a magic rat, and before you can say "hocus pocus", she and the D.A. are out to prove that Lane is really Gregory by visiting his tomb -- where the magician appears to be still dead. What gives? And how long do you think it will take before Gregory turns up again to put his final moves on the unwilling Ellen?

For a movie that runs 63 minutes, it took a lot of condensing to cram the general idea of The Strange Mr. Gregory into one paragraph. That's why today's screenwriters could learn from the guys who churned out movies for studios like Monogram: add a different plot point every three minutes, the better to keep the audience from realizing that what they're watching is a lot of hooey, and still wrap up the show at the end of lunch hour.

Like many former A-listers who found themselves freelancing on Poverty Row in later years, Edmund Lowe never phones it in as Gregory, even though he probably laughed all the way through the first table read (as if Monogram ever had table reads). Whether sporting a thoroughly unconvincing toupee and goatee as Gregory or his authentic thin moustache as Lane, Lowe likely reminded 1945 audiences that he still had what it took to be a star, doing his pitch-perfect best to pretend that The Strange Mr. Gregory isn't as silly as it seems. You won't miss anything special if you don't see it, but it's not an hour wasted, either.

BONUS POINTS: Jean Rogers, who plays Ellen, was the sexy Dale Arden in the Flash Gordon serials a decade earlier. If her voice is any indication, she was either stage-trained or smoked three packs of Old Golds a day.

EVERYTHING HAPPENS TO MEL (1955): Imagine an SCTV sketch directed by Ed Wood, and you have Everything Happens to Mel, an astonishingly amateurish unaired sitcom pilot starring crooner Mel Torme playing crooner Mel Turner. (Already you know the kind of deep thought that went into this.) After being mauled by a strange Southern hick named Millie, Mel brings her to his nightclub instead of the nearest police station because she's a good singer. Just as he's ready to become her manager, Millie's hillbilly father shows up to bring her home. And that's all she wrote. 

Well, maybe not she wrote. It could have been a he, or even an A.I. prototype -- it's impossible to know. While the cast is listed in the credits, none of the behind-the-camera "talent" takes the blame for creating the celluloid miasma known as Everything Happens to Mel. And my Ed Wood reference isn't necessarily a joke. While anybody can be a lousy writer/director, Wood leaves his uniquely inept stamp on his projects like a stray dog with an intestinal virus; this show has it all in spades. Yet nowhere in Wood's oeuvre does Everything Happens to Mel appear. It doesn't even come up on Torme's imdb resume. It's as if we're watching a bad Kodacolor dream brought on by an overdose of Robitussin. 

And perhaps that's how Torme would have wanted it. As good a singer he is, his songs here range from forgettable to abhorrent; only his ace drum solo makes a positive impression. Torme proved himself a fine dramatic actor three years later in The Fearmakers, but what happens to Mel here is an embarrassing attempt at spreading his wings before falling flat on his face. 

BONUS POINTS: The only thing that could make this thing worse is if former vaudeville comic/Abbott & Costello foil/short-lived Stooge Joe Besser (as the nightclub owner) reacted to Torme's sudden turn of bad luck by turning to the camera and bawling, "Everything happens to Mel!" So he does. Thanks, Joe!

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MOVIE OF THE DAY: "THE FEARMAKERS" (1958)

I'm no film historian, but I'll go out on a limb and declare The Fearmakers the first movie to expose push-polling -- the "art" of asking a question a certain way in order to get the desired answer and, thus, steer the public to a certain way of thinking. Something like, "Do you think The Ol' Fish-Eye is one of the best blogs about obscure movies, family hijinx, and satire of current events that you've ever read?" 

Alan Eaton, an army vet released from an enemy detention camp during the Korean War, returns to the Washington PR firm he built with his business partner, who mysteriously died the day after selling out the company to Jim McGinnis. Eaton discovers that McGinnis has been working as a front for a shady organization intent on manipulating statistics in order to shape, rather than report, public opinion for their own nefarious reasons. The deeper Eaton digs for the truth, the more his life is in danger. He shoulda stayed in the POW camp.

Don't look now, but the guy with the
notepad is redder than a blushing cardinal.

The Fearmakers never explicitly states that Communists are pulling the strings. But when one of McGinnis' clients is the Committee for the Abolition of Nuclear War, you know that there's a pinko in the woodpile -- lots of pinkos and they're everywhere: the flight Eaton takes to Washington, the boarding house where he stays, and, of course, at work. Responding to a beating by one of McGinnis' stooges, Eaton mutters, "I've been worked over by professionals. They call it co-existence!" -- the dog whistle of Communism. As John McCain, another POW, would tell you, peace is the first sign of treason.

"How did I afford an Edsel? Oh, I forgot,
it was free!"

Despite looking like a cross between Moe and Shemp Howard, Dana Andrews is agreeably low-key as Alan Eaton, prone to violence only when provoked. You can tell he's a tough guy -- when offered bacon and eggs for breakfast, he replies, "I generally have a cigarette and coffee in the morning." (Just how many people hearing that would have thought, Me too?) If that's not 1950s enough, Eaton's secretary Mary drives a spanking new Edsel, a desperate product placement for a car nobody wanted.

"Forget about 'Blue Moon' -- I'm such
a Commie, I sing 'Red Moon'!"

While Dick Foran and Kelly Thordsen are pitch-perfect as McGinnis and his scummy henchman Hal Loder, The Fearmakers' real surprise is 33 year-old Mel Torme as Barney Bond, the eager beaver of the PR company. Squinting through Coke-bottle glasses, nervously wiping sweat from his face, trying without success to win the respect of McGinnis, Torme makes for an unexpectedly good character actor in the Byron Foulger mold -- a mousy creep with a nasty side. Probably the only thing preventing him from carving out a second career in movies was the response from the audience -- "Hey, that's Mel Torme! What's he doing there?" (His credit reads "Presenting Mel Torme" -- conveniently forgetting that this was roughly his 15th movie appearance since 1943.)

By never using the word "Communist," The Fearmakers ages much better than most other anti-Red melodramas of its time. You can pretend that Democrats or Republicans are the bad guys here, and it would play just as well -- better, in fact, because they're pulling this kind of thing all the time. The brainwashing Eaton endured by the Reds is no different than that being conducted in the name of polling. Only now they call it "information gathering." Sounds less red, and more red, white and blue.

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