THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 75

Buckle up for a time-travel jaunt from 1933 to 1984, with stops in Hollywood, Bali, and the moon. All aboard!

GIVE A MAN A JOB (1933): Well, whaddaya know -- another three-minute short
promoting the National Recovery Administration, this time courtesy of Metro-Goldwyn- Mayer! Why hold rallies and make speeches when the studios did the heavy lifting gratis? (That's what they mean by "PATRIOTICALLY CONTRIBUTED".)

Give a Man a Job isn't the official title of the short. In fact, it really doesn't have a title to speak of. It's the song 36-year-old Jimmy Durante talks/sings/raps to a group of people wanting to learn more about the NRA. In a rhythmic, rhyming conversation with select patrons, Durante tells businessmen to hire more workers, and ordinary folks to patronize more businesses. Using his famous mispronunciation, Durante orders a hypochondriac, "You must see a doctor for pneumonia/a doctor for insohm-nia/one for osmosis/and two for halitosis/One for anemia/One for eczemee-ah/Neuritis, bronchitis, phlebitis, St. Vitus, or any other kind of an itis/That will delight us!"  This poor lady is being coerced into shelling out for at least ten doctors, who are already making bank. Hey, there's a Depression going on, remember? 

While Durante is, per usual, great fun to watch -- especially since he sings live in one take -- at no time does he explain how these folks are supposed to pay for all this extra help. Some musical emotional blackmail, then, is in order: "If the ol' name of Roosevelt makes the old heart throb/You take this message straight from the president and give a man a job!" To drive the point home, at the finale Durante unveils a portrait of FDR, to the cheers from his audience, and very likely Roosevelt himself in the White House screening room. Ponder MGM hiring Tim Allen doing the same for Trump while promoting Medicare cuts. 

BONUS POINTS: Rodgers & Hart patriotically contributed the song "Give a Man a Job", while Moe Howard plays an exterminator strong-armed (strong-nosed?) by Durante into giving weekends off to his regular employees so he can hire more. Well, at least they won't be working seven days a week anymore.

LEGONG (1935): A subgenre of the 1930s exploitation movie craze was the so-called "goona-goona" picture. These were semi-documentaries of South Pacific islands featuring exotic landscapes, animal violence, and "natives" of all ages in various states of undress. 

Legong (subtitled Dance of the Virgins) differed from your run-of-the-mill goona-goonas due to being in Technicolor, produced by A-list actress Constance Bennett, released internationally by Paramount, and its more or less respectful treatment of the non-pro cast and their characters... in various states of undress. This seemed to be the whole point of these movies, which makes you wonder the reasoning behind the MPAA giving a pass to Legong. (The animal violence is restricted to a cockfight -- a sport, like soccer, that seems to transcend nations.)

Although shot entirely in Bali, the allegedly true story of a young woman losing her boyfriend to her younger sister is straight out of any Hollywood writers' building. Legong's historical interest lies in capturing the real-life culture of the locals. Getting breakfast off the nearest fruit tree, making rice cakes, selling said rice cakes at the local market, and dancing. If what Legong portrays still exists in the jungles of Bali, it looks a lot more paradisical than what we consider civilization. But I hope the extras have since learned not to look at the camera.

BONUS POINTS:  Filmed two years before its 1935 release, Legong was one of the last two-strip Technicolor movies and silents. Shows you how an audience attuned to talkies would come out for people in various stages of undress. And cockfights.

STEPTOE AND SON (UNAIRED AMERICAN PILOT) (1965): It isn't a secret that the 1970s
sitcom Sanford and Son was a remake of the UK series Steptoe and Son. But what nobody (meaning me) realized was that an American version almost came to pass several years earlier, starring Fish-Eye fave Lee Tracy as the slovenly junk dealer, along with Aldo Ray as his put-upon adult son. And I never would have known about it without Fish-Eye reader Gary Donaldson kindly gifting me with a UK-only DVD of Steptoe and Son's unaired pilot. 

Alas, despite Tracy's participation, it's clear why the project wasn't picked up. There's trouble right from the opening credits with its dopey theme music, sound effects, and the idea of a junk man travelling around an American city in a horsedrawn cart in 1965. Too, there's little funny (as presented, anyway) about a father and son living one step away from poverty -- especially when the father treats his son like a piece of junk he's trying to sell. 

Still the same pro from his pre-code days, the now-haggard Tracy does his best to put Steptoe and Son over. Whatever laughs he evokes comes from his familiar delivery and the goodwill he brings, rather than the trite material. But Aldo Ray is no comedian; he's too strong to be believable as a grown son putting up with his father's crap. Eliminate the laugh track, and you've got the first draft of a second-rate Arthur Miller knockoff by a third-rate writer. 

But you know what? It's nice that Lee Tracy, who made his movie debut in 1929, was still in demand the same year Rubber Soul was released. Thanks for thinking of me, Gary! Let me know if there's a US DVD you'd like.

BONUS POINTS: Need I repeat myself? Lee Tracy.

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (1984):  Intended as a satirical tribute to Hollywood's golden age, Nothing Lasts Forever is a mishmash of Humoresque (sensitive young artist Adam Beckett tries to make it in the big city), The Wizard of Oz (Adam leaves his black & white world and enters a land of color under Manhattan), and cheesy 1950s sci-fi (he takes a bus ride to the moon to meet his true love). I left out some details, but so did writer/director Tom Schiller. Between the 82-minute running time and the number of scenes that fade out without a pay-off, you know a lot of footage never made the final cut. And little of what remains isn't worth watching.

As for the cast, Zach Gillian is the star, but supporting players Dan Ackroyd and Bill Murray seemed to be the insurance for studio financing. (Schiller himself was best known for his short films during Saturday Night Live's early years.) More interesting are unexpected appearances by the likes of Imogene Coca, Eddie Fisher, and Mort Sahl, while 93-year-old Sam Jaffe gives the best performance in a role based on his character in Lost Horizon. He died shortly after filming, perhaps of embarrassment. 

Nothing Lasts Forever --an ironic title for a movie that had me continually checking the clock -- is, like Harry Nilsson's godawful Son of Dracula, a "midnight movie" begging for a well-lubricated audience to overlook its many flaws. Outside of a few film festivals, it hasn't been screened since its original one-week release in Phoenix in 1984, nor has MGM ever made it available on home video. But a second-generation print is illegally streaming on a site originating from Russia. Haven't they made the world suffer enough?

BONUS POINTS: A lot of the bit players were stage and movie actors going back to the 1930s. One familiar face is Calvin DeForest, aka Larry "Bud" Melman from David Letterman's late-night series. Also, the closing credits' "The End" is identical to the style used by MGM in the 1930s. 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 74

 Anti-communism! Pro-New Deal! Capitalism! Civil Rights! The entirety of the 20th century in three movies and one TV show. 

FORGOTTEN COMMANDMENTS (1932): The amount of hypocrisy that went into the making of Forgotten Commandments is equal only to its mediocrity. The work of two directors (each probably had to poke the other to stay awake), Paramount's low-budget, anti-Commie screed is further cheapened by two reels of... well, let the opening credits explain: Glorified by Spectacular Episodes from CECIL B. DE MILLE's Epic "THE TEN COMMANDMENTS". By the way, that's the 1923 silent version. Without it, this thing would run crawl only 40 minutes.

Newlyweds Paul and Marya move to Moscow to attend med school. Being married, they're allowed less expensive lodgings: a dorm-like facility, where each side-by-side "apartment" is one room minus a ceiling. Prof. Marinoff takes a liking to Paul, as does his sweetie Anya. Not to worry -- Marinoff considers monogamy to be anti-revolutionary... until Anya seduces Paul, which drives Marya to divorce, and Marinoff himself to murder. Moral: When the boot's on the other foot, Reds turn green with jealousy. (As for DeMille's Ten Commandments footage, it brings to life the story of the Exodus told by an old Orthodox priest to a group of children, which lands him in front of a firing squad. He should have stuck with "Hansel and Gretel".)

Subtle as a Russian farm tractor, Forgotten Commandments' script ("Don't keep calling me 'darling'. It's bourgeoise!") is Reefer Madness without the reefer. It also shares the same non-qualities -- simple set-ups, the look of filmed rehearsals -- as similar quickies of the time. Nobody, other than John Carradine as a rabblerousing Marxist, puts any effort into their performance -- it's astonishing this dreck was produced by one of the major studios. But what really bugs me is that the sexual shenanigans frowned upon here were rampant in Hollywood as they are now. Worse, it would take another seven years for a major studio to make an anti-Nazi movie, having spent most of the decade running scripts past the German embassy for approval. The real forgotten commandment in 1930s Hollywood was Thou Shalt Cower Before Fascists.

BONUS POINTS: Marguerite Clark (Marya) and Irving Pichel (Marinoff) starred in Dracula's Daughter four years later. Gene Raymond (Paul) starred in the manic marionette melodrama I Am Suzanne! Edward van Sloane (as a surgeon) was Hollywood's go-to actor as medicos, while Harry Cording (as a cop) was the junkie doctor in Narcotic. That's my idea of an all-star cast. 

MOTHER'S HELPER (1933): People who think certain Hollywood folks kowtow to Donald Trump have never watched the studio-produced, pro-NRA shorts. These didn't just explain what Pres. Roosevelt was trying to accomplish, they lauded him as the second coming of Abe Lincoln while actively pushing his agenda to audiences who just wanted to escape real life for a couple of hours.

Unlike The Road is Open Again, there's no finger-snapping song to warble in Mother's Helper. This is just a three-minute sitcom featuring a husband explaining to his wife that he's home early because his boss has signed the NRA pledge. The husband's workhours have been split with new employees in order to provide more jobs to the Depression-hit unemployed. At least that's what I think he said. When you've got Fox Film's resident Swedish dialect comedian El Brendel doing the talking, you're lucky to figure out (or care about) half of what he's saying.

Professional flibbertigibbet Zasu Pitts is the housewife who tries just as hard as us to understand what this NRA business is all about, fluttering her fingers as if shaking with the D.T.'s. Or maybe, as a hardcore anti-FDR Republican in real life, being forced to recite dialogue like "Anything the president does is OK with me" made her shake with rage. A genuinely funny appearance by starlet Esther Muir as Brendel's new part-time wife -- his own idea of NRA -- wraps things up with an unexpected laugh. An interesting example of how show business worked with the government in order to push a president's agenda, Mother's Helper offers all kinds of possibilities for a contemporary, ICE-inspired short starring Dean Cain and Roseanne Barr.

BONUS POINTS: Esther Muir would gain lasting fame as Groucho Marx's would-be paramour in A Day at the Races. 

TAKE IT FROM HERE (1954): When a movie has only one showing, it's either a real
stinkeroo, something completely oddball (like It Never Happened ) or a promotional short made for a convention. Take it From Here falls in the last two categories, but people with a less worldly view of entertainment than me would drop it in the first as well. It's lonely being open to the strange and different.

Made for the 1954 Texaco gas station owners convention -- did you know such a thing existed? -- Take it From Here is a two-reel musical advising them how to promote their businesses. Such a premise sounds pretty D-U-L-L, which is why the Texaco folks jazzed things up with over a half-dozen dames with fishnet- stockinged gams. Set in the "Texa-Courtroom", Judge Harry Von Zell provides over (make that leers over) a "trial" where the women -- each representing a different mode of advertising -- musically "testify" how they help the gas stations keep the pumps pumping. I guess that still sounds pretty dull if you're not looking at the aforementioned fishnet-stockinged gams.

This is where Jimmy Durante and Donald O'Connor come in. Clad in their finest Texaco pump jockey uniforms, the two sing and clown their way through a pep talk aimed at the "jury" (i.e. conventioneers). Their message is essentially, Texaco dropped a fortune on a national advertising blitz, now hand out Texaco hats to your customers. Unlike similar ephemeral shorts, Take it From Here is in wonderful condition, looking as good as it did the day it was run for a room of drunken conventioneers who wanted more of the girls and less of the stars. 

BONUS POINTS: The classy unnamed singer representing radio --the only woman here in a fancy dress -- is a reminder of the weekly Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcast sponsored by Texaco from 1940 to 2003. The conventioneers did not give crap one about her. 

HOLLYWOOD ROUNDTABLE (August 28, 1963): Following Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
March on Washington, seven of its participants gathered in a TV studio to discuss the civil rights movement. Moderated by journalist David Schoenbrun, the roundtable consisted of Harry Belafonte, Charlton Heston, Sidney Poitier, writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Marlon Brando, and James Baldwin. 

That's one heck of a discussion group, and startling in so many ways -- not the least of which is Heston and Brando being on the same side of a liberal cause. Unlike similar broadcasts today where the idea is scoring points with meme-ready wisecracks, these folks are lowkey and thoughtful; Heston freely admits that his involvement in the civil rights movement was for too long merely cocktail party chatter. Such a thing would get you condemned today for being late to the game rather than being literally welcomed to the table.

The white guys have their own way of speaking. Heston tends to be brief, occasionally quoting the founding fathers. Mankiewicz is passionate, verging on angry, at how "the Negroes" have been treated. Brando is Brando, talking as if being paid by the word, wanting to be taken seriously as anything but an actor. If Schoenbrun hadn't interrupted him, Brando would have kept yakking all night.

Belafonte, Poitier, and Baldwin of course are the only ones who speak from
experience in regard to civil rights or lack thereof. They are serious; while likely appreciative of the white celebrities' support, the three appear to be thinking Why should I care what they have to say? They also make you sit up and listen; Baldwin's closing remarks would be considered shocking today. 

Hollywood Roundtable, filmed by the U.S. Information Agency (oh, how times have changed!) makes one yearn for the time when news and public affairs programs were civilized and made you think. Too bad a discussion about civil rights doesn't include any women, though.

BONUS POINTS: It's weirdly nostalgic seeing people on TV enveloped in cigarette and pipe smoke. 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 73

 As the world marches further into self-destruction, I retreat further into cinematic and televised obscurities. Do you blame me?

DER KAISER VON KALIFORNIEN (1936): One of the more bizarre moments in motion picture history, German actor/director Luis Trenker brought his cast and crew to the U.S. in order to film Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, the biopic of the German-born John A. Sutter, whose trek to California in the mid-19th century led to the eventual discovery of gold in them thar hills, and the expansion of the nation's territory.

But this being a Nazi-endorsed picture, calling it a "true story" would be a stretch, seeing that the real Sutter came to America to escape debtor's prison, and looked more like Edward Arnold (who starred in Sutter's Gold the same year) than the handsome Trenker. Nor did Sutter have two young sons who were shot down by his one-time friend. And there's no mention here of Sutter enslaving entire Indian tribes and, when that didn't work, engaging in genocide. Best not for the German movie public to be reminded what was happening at home, I guess.

The whole idea behind Der Kaiser von Kalifornien seems to be that it was a strong, noble German cowboy who turned the arid deserts of the Golden State into a lush paradise through hard work, wisdom, and paternal leadership, only to be brought down by greedy rivals. (You know they're bad because they hang out with black women.) 

Der Kaiser von Kalifornien is more of an interesting piece of cinema history rather than cinema itself, little different than your average forgotten Western from the time, other than Deutsch sprechen cowpokes. It even features the old saw of a spirit leading Sutter to America and, at the end, into the Great Beyond. A shame the spirit didn't have the foresight to tell him how that world war was going to turn out for the fatherland.

BONUS POINTS: Look carefully at one scene and you'll see an automobile speeding in the distance.

PLAYHOUSE 15 ("PARTNERS IN LAW") (1953): For those who found Playhouse 90 too long, the one-season anthology series Playhouse 15 was the answer. So much for the internet being the cause of short attention spans. 

In this episode, legal partners Phillip Manning and Arthur Saunders have survived a train accident. Phil's okay, but Arthur has amnesia. Phillip tells a former client, Dr. Yardley, to perform a fatal brain operation on Arthur -- because if he regains his memory, Arthur will tell the authorities that Phil stole money from a client and hid evidence that the doc was drunk during a previous botched surgery. That way, Arthur dies "accidentally", the doctor keeps his practice, and Phillip can run away with Arthur's wife. Phillip even suggests the doc find a fly-by-night mortuary to get rid of the body! Boy, if I'm ever in a jam, I know just who to call.

Playhouse 15's "Partners In Law" is impressive for packing in a complex story in such a short runtime, as well as the number of times Arthur rubs his head when repeating his I-can't-remember-a-thing mantra, and the ease with which Phillip tries to convince the surgeon to destroy Arthur's memory for good, The doc's response -- "You'd have to remove so much [brain] tissue that you'd reduce the individual to an imbecile!" -- made me think that just taking this show seriously would do the job.

Yet everything about Playhouse 15 -- the overwrought dialogue, melodramatic acting, and especially the music -- gave me a quarter-hour of warm, comforting nostalgia of childhood afternoons in front of the TV watching old reruns while drinking Cocoa Marsh. Such moments mean more now than they did then. 

BONUS POINTS: Bart Robinson, who plays Phillip, appeared in Woody Allen's Sleeper as Dr. Orva.

ANYONE CAN WIN (8/11/1953): Don't be fooled by the hyped-up announcer's promise of Anyone Can Win being "fabulous and exciting". It's just one of a billion stupid 1950s game shows created to give celebrity panelists a paycheck, and a host to crack wise. 

The twists here are that celebrities Laraine Day, Jackie Cooper, and Wendy Barrie are joined by a mystery guest disguised as Hairless Joe, a character from the "Li'l Abner" comic strip, and that the host is "Li'l Abner" creator Al Capp. (Gee, I wonder how they convinced him to take the job.) But as with many game shows of its time, Anyone Can Win has rules ridiculously complex yet sound like they're being made up on the fly. Something about questions, answers, lights, buzzers and phoning somebody at home to see if they can identify who's behind the Hairless Joe mask. 

Anyone Can Win's frenetic atmosphere is heightened by the audience. You see, they're divided into four groups, one for each panelist. Whoever wins will allow their group to split the money earned. Talk about greed -- by the end, these folks actually scream out the answers to the players, which should be against one of the show's 75 rules. 

While Al Capp tries keeping things relatively sane, Laraine Day throws a fit when one of her answers isn't accepted by the judges. And she ain't kidding -- Day is such a big baby that they give her the win just to shut her up. Maybe they were afraid her husband, New York Giants coach Leo Durocher, would come by and beat them with a baseball bat. The way Anyone Can Win operates, it wouldn't have looked out of line.

BONUS POINTS: The commercial for Carter's Little Liver Pills, before the feds forced the company to remove "Liver" from its name. Which makes sense, since according to the spot's "doctor", the stuff was for constipation.

I'LL DO ANYTHING (UNRELEASED ORIGINAL EDIT) (1994) A rare floppo for writer/director James L. Brooks, I'll Do Anything was filmed as a musical with most of the songs composed by Prince, with Carole King and Jackson Browne chipping in one each. Following a disastrous sneak preview, Brooks cut the musical numbers, did reshoots to cover what was lost, and released it as a straight romcom, receiving reviews ranging from sympathetic to hostile.

Recently, somebody uploaded a bootlegged workprint of I'll Do Anything's musical version onto the internet. Forget about a cast made up almost entirely of non-singers (read about At Long Last Love to see how that kind of thing turns out). The problem is the story -- or, rather stories. Nick Nolte is an out of work actor in Hollywood suddenly given custody of his bratty young daughter while romancing production assistant Joley Richardson. Meanwhile, Albert Brooks is a self-centered movie producer who can't commit to Julie Kavner, the owner of a company that sets up sneak previews for studios. Memo to Hollywood: nobody cares about your problems. Nor do they find the movie business as fascinating as you do. And when in hell will you learn that LOUD, BRATTY CHILDREN ARE NOT AND NEVER HAVE BEEN FUNNY. 

This is why the musical version of I'll Do Anything is interesting in its daring, even as it took me five hours to slog through its 140 minutes. Not that the numbers are particularly good. It's just that, well, if there's a chance of your movie being a debacle, you might as well swing for the fences as James L. Brooks does here. 

In other words, give the lead role to an actor with the comedy chops of Richard Nixon! Hire songwriters lacking musical comedy experience to write the score! Make sure only one of your actors (Tracy Ullman) can actually sing! Have your dancers jump around instead of dance! Without these gaffes, I wouldn't have made it past the first 20 minutes. 

BONUS POINTS: I'll Do Anything would have been made for a far better, funnier romcom focusing on Albert Brooks and Julie Kavner. Maybe somebody can edit out the Nick Nolte throughline and fill out the rest with A.I. 

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THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 72

 
These four movies live up to the phrase Now I've seen everything. Whether you want to see them is another story.

THE BLACK STORK (1917): If The Very Idea presented the funny side of eugenics, The Black Stork is shocking in its casually positive perspective. Named for the animal that allegedly kills the newborns it deems unhealthy, The Black Stork is based on the career of Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, a surgeon infamous for doing likewise to human babies. Despite Haiselden's notoriety, his movie counterpart, Dr. Dickey, is presented as a hero doing God's work. And if you want proof, when the doctor goes to work on one unfortunate newborn, Jesus cradles the baby's soul in His arms upon its death, so there.

The story, about a man carrying a "defective" gene via his grandfather's "unclean" housekeeper, is extended an extra half hour or so by the mother's nightmare of how her newborn's child's life will turn out if he lives: ostracized by children, rejected and mocked by society in adulthood, killing the surgeon who let him live, and eventually fathering a whole brood of "unfit" kids with what used to be referred to as a downtrodden woman. And in The Black Stork, people unfit to live include those with Down's Syndrome and epilepsy. Oof.

Not once are society's visibly horrified reactions to these people considered out of line; instead, it's those people's fault for living. In order to give The Black Stork a documentary feel, authentic "deformed" children and adults are featured exploited, with Dr. Haiselden himself playing the hero eugenicist! Re-released in 1924 as Are You Fit to Marry? with an additional framing story, The Black Stork played the grindhouse circuit until the early 1940s, when Hitler made the concept of eugenics less acceptable for (public) endorsement.

BONUS POINTS: Henry Bergman, who plays "The Defective" in the mother's nightmare about her child's future, would go on to better things as a regular co-star and assistant director for Charlie Chaplin.

THE DEVIL'S ASSISTANT (1917): The long-forgotten, barely-known-in-his-time Harry Pollard careened between directing mainstream studio pictures and exploitation dreck involving the usual cinematic sins -- drugs, sex, and Satan. The Devil's Assistant combines all of them in a two-reel (cut down from its original five) whirlwind of madness. 

Oh wait, madness is the fourth sin here, suffered by our heroine Marta upon the birth of her baby. She's being treated by the evil Dr. Lorenz, the man who has secretly loved her forever, eventually turning her into a drug slave under his spell. During an attempted rape in a thunderstorm, the roof caves in on them, sending the shamed Marta brief to Hell for a look-see. But maybe it was only a dream, as her husband Jack rescues her from the clutches of the late Dr. Lorenz. (Jack had been dallying with Marta's friend Marion, but we'll forget about that.)

Other than not explaining what happened to Marta's baby -- it isn't clear whether the kid died at birth or went the way of the black stork -- the 30-minute hack job done on The Devil's Assistant's later rerelease doesn't matter to the story. Movies like this exist strictly for shock moments, like Lorenz briefly turning into Satan at Marta and Jack's wedding, Lorenz's chauffeur leering with approval at Lorenz assaulting Marta (probably the creepiest moment in the whole show), and the red-tinted visit to Hell.

Like the similar scene in Spencer Tracy's Dante's Inferno, The Devil's Assistant passes this off as a moral lesson rather than the cheap thrill it really is. But give director Pollard credit for attaching two phony heads and a cheap pair of wings on a real dog to create Cerberus, even if he looks no more evil than the participants in the canine costume contest in our neighborhood every Halloween. All things considered, The Devil's Assistant, even in its barely-rescued-from-self-destruction condition, is a morbidly fascinating psychoactive experience. But the only lesson you'll likely learn: if your current PCP sports a goatee and sinister smile like Dr. Lorenz, find yourself a new one.

BONUS POINTS: Say what you want, but there's something creepy about Death being portrayed by a guy in a skeleton costume and hooded cape.

IMPRESSIONS OF DISRAELI (1931): We're all used to celebrities making political endorsements. But the 15-minute Impressions of Disraeli takes it one step beyond by starring George Arliss as the famous 19th-century Prime Minister promoting Britain's Conservative Party. 

Mind you, Arliss never comes out and says, "Vote the straight Tory ticket!" Instead, he recreates a few of Disraeli's speeches that explained what the Conservatives stood for and why they were better than the Liberals. And what's fascinating is that they appeared to support equal rights, freedom of speech and justice for all, where no class was better than the other -- you know, liberal ideals. The closest he comes to sounding "conservative" is when he endorses tariffs, but only against countries who impose their own. If this is what the current American conservatives were like, I could sleep better at night.

By 1931, Arliss had portrayed Disraeli on the London and New York stages, as well as a silent and talking movie. As far as audiences were concerned, he was Disraeli the way Hal Holbrook was Mark Twain. And, gosh darn it, Arliss really pulls it off. Not that I was around during Disraeli's lifetime (1804-1881) to know for sure. Arliss' make-up and hairstyle appear closer to the real thing than in his 1929 bio talkie, which makes me think he applied it here himself, as he likely did onstage. Never seen in the US (and, for some reason, repeating one speech twice in a row), Impressions of Disraeli is riveting historically and artistically -- this is as close as you'll get to knowing what George Arliss was like onstage. Like anybody but me cares.

BONUS POINTS: The movie is introduced by Conservative Party leader and future Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin (I had to go online to learn who the hell he was).

BOOM (1968): Tennessee Williams' Boom (the exclamation mark exists only in the posters, not the credits) encapsulates everything wrong with "edgy", "stylish" movies from the mid to late 1960s. Bad dialogue, gaudy color schemes, camera movements that call attention to themselves, and an A-list cast wallowing in trash, led by Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Noel Coward. Oh, what a free trip to Italy and a good paycheck will do to some people! 

Taylor is Mrs. Goforth, living in splendor on her private island where she screams at her employees between glasses of vodka and bottles of pills, when visited by Chris Flanders (Burton). Flanders, a distant acquaintance of Goforth's, is nicknamed the Angel of Death, which alerts you how the movie is going to end. At that point, you could go out to dinner and return to catch the climax because nothing but nothing outside of reams of bad dialogue happens in between. Trashy movies can be entertaining (see Machine Gun McCain), but Boom is a stupefyingly pretentious bore.

Aside from Michael Dunn as Goforth's security chief, the only person you'd miss by skipping the bulk of Boom is Noel Coward as the, uh, Witch of Capri. Thanks to his brilliant delivery, Coward actually makes his dialogue sound wittier than it is. Tennessee Williams seems to have had given up all pretense of offering some kind of a "message" in his screenplay, lapsing into either self-parody or the crime of WWI (Writing While Intoxicated). When near the end of Boom Taylor moans, "This is the worst day of my life," I thought, You don't know the half of it, Liz.

BONUS POINTS: Tennessee Williams considered Boom the best movie adaptation of any of his plays, which goes to show artists aren't necessarily the best judges of their own works. 

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DAY OF METRO MOVIE-A-TONEMENT

WARNING: Lengthy, unusually nerdy movie column to follow. Proceed with caution. 

From 1928 to 1930, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a couple dozen short films known as Metro Movietones. Most were filmed at the MGM Eastern Studios on Second Avenue and 126th Street (shown below) and featured some of the most acclaimed music stars of the New York stage.

Just to get an idea of what Broadway and bigtime vaudeville was like, I sat through all the Movietones -- three hours' worth -- over two days. (When you get to be my age, you realize what's important in life.)

Nowhere do you see familiar names like, say, Eddie Cantor, the Four Marx Brothers, Ethel Waters, George M. Cohan, Bessie Smith, or anyone else who might, just might, ring a bell. Just why MGM didn't convince them or their 14-karat brethren to step before a movie camera for a few minutes is a puzzlement.

Most of the female singers of this time, like Marion Harris, were considered jazzy, which now would be considered something of a stretch. But in 1928, any piece of music with a hint of rhythm beyond that of "Old McDonald" was considered syncopated. Harris is certainly a fine, personable thrush; calling her a "jazz singer", though, is like considering Taylor Swift profound.

While we're talking women, a Movietone favorite was singing siblings: The Brox Sisters, the Ponce Sisters, and, no kidding, the Five Locust Sisters. While the Brox and Ponce sibs are fairly easy on the eyes, the Locusts are about as sexy as a Biblical plague. What all of these acts share are cartoonishly high voices and 1-2-3 rhythm that make them sound far more dated than, say, the Andrews Sisters, whose 1940s big band warbling can still get a room to jump 'n' jive. 

Men get more of their fair share of screentime, which is too bad for them. Leo Beers ("world renowned whistling songster") trills some "naughty" songs in a vaguely effeminate manner while accompanying himself on the piano. Not to be outdone, George Rose, a forgotten vaudeville MC, tells a few "naughty" jokes in an equally effeminate manner before going into a dead-serious Mammy song, Which is strange for a white guy born in the UK. Irish tenor Joseph Regan gets in on the Mammy act as well, proving how influential Al Jolson could be even when it's totally inappropriate. 

It wouldn't be a vaudeville show without novelty acts. Fuzzy Knight ("And His Little Piano") and Jack Pepper appear to have taken a few dexies before ripping off Cliff Edwards' scat-style singing, interrupted by jokes lacking punchlines. Miss Ella Shields, an American by birth, sings and dances as a male British sailor. Frances White does three numbers: one as a Gilded Age matron, another as a child in a onesie, and a third in a strapless gown while swinging a feathered fan. That's versatility right there, folks.

For those who enjoy humor aimed at nationalities other than their own, Van & Schenck perform in Jewish, Irish, and Asian dialects, and the Happiness Boys sing (and bark) a number about a German threatening to kill his dog. Someone else does a blackface stand-up routine about Christopher Columbus. Oh, and there's a guy who plays a musical saw. Maybe this wasn't entirely bigtime vaudeville.

George Dewey Washington is one of the few performers whose style holds up today, as he possesses a strong baritone and a weird hold on your attention. But in what might have been the only way he could have performed on an otherwise all-white bill, Washington is dressed like a stereotypical hobo instead of a tux like the other guys. Still, he receives top billing over four ofays, so no complaining!

The only person in any of these Movietones who went on to better things is Jack Benny. As the MC of The Song Writers' Revue, Jack introduces eight of the best-known pop composers of 1929. Only 35, Jack's famous physical mannerisms are already solidly in place. Unfortunately, he was still years away from his loveable cheapskate persona, making his sarcastic, mildly aggressive delivery even less funny today. (Bonus point: Jack briefly speaks Yiddish, perhaps the only time he ever made a reference to his Jewish background.)

Few viewers today would find the Movietone entertainers, well, entertaining. At best, they can be studied as one does unique specimens of extinct peoples that were wiped out by an "extreme event", otherwise known as Bing Crosby.

Once Bing crooned his way to stardom, his sexy, sophisticated style suddenly made all the Movietone singers, male and female, obsolete. Just a few years after appearing in these shorts, most of them were reduced to "and featuring" status or disappeared entirely from the stage and screen.

These Movietones, then, are valuable because we get to see certain stage folk before being ushered offstage by a new, hipper generation of entertainers. Marion Harris, Jack Pepper, the Brox Sister, George Rose -- they and the rest received huzzahs from audiences and newspaper columnists alike, no matter how moth-eaten they appear now. And don't kid yourself: you would have loved them, too. Possibly.

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LOTSA BOTS

I have a rough idea of how many people read this blog. Some receive updates either from me or Blogger itself. Many of those readers forward certain pieces, usually involving politics, culture, or movies to friends who might enjoy them. And I can tell when the friends forward them to others. 

Once in a while there's a spike when either a piece really hits home, or a bunch of bots try to leave a comment without bypassing the "prove you're a human" page. But in the past week, my review of the 1958 drama Cop Hater, published five years ago, appears to have caught on in an alarming way, as this graph shows:

In the early hours of July 17, Cop Hater bounced from zero (where it had been for three weeks) to 250 and stayed in that general area for the next five days. As I write this (July 23, 1:00 P.M.), it's currently at 75. The total number -- 1,220 -- is primarily from that time frame.

Yeah, I wouldn't trust this crew.

No other piece has seen this happen during those five days. When similar weird spikes happened many years ago, they coincided with a rise in readers bots from Hong Kong, Russia, and a few Eastern European countries. This week, the majority of hits --35% -- have come from the U.S., followed by Singapore at 17%. The other countries are in the single digits. 

Is it possible all these Cop Hater hits are coming from Singapore? Well,
Singapore Business Review reports that bots account for 50.4% of internet traffic in that country. Of that amount, 45% are "malicious".  That sounded like Singapore would be the likely source, although note the phrase "in that country" rather than "from". 

A little more nosing around brought me to a recently published piece from something called SUURV, which in itself sounded pretty sus. But the headline definitely was the real deal:

Aha! Those Singaporeans were the culprits after all! You can read the how and whys here if you're interested (and if you, too, have noticed a sudden interest from a country you have never thought of without the word "Sling" following it). 

The SUURV columnist gives some helpful advice on how to stop the Singapore bot numbers from showing up on the blog, but I'm not likely not follow it. Not only do I not understand what he's talking about, I get a kick out of seeing how some mindless bots are trying to convince me to do whatever it is they want me to do.

But this leaves a very important question: Of all the movies that could have been chosen as their prime target, why Cop Hater? What was wrong with Ingagi, Myrt and Marge, or I Am Suzanne! 

To you it's for exercise. To the police in
Singapore, it's advice not to commit 
another crime.

Well, plenty, I suppose, but that's not the point. Something about Cop Hater -- or the title -- drew the attention of these bots or their programmers. Maybe even the police force itself. There's a site devoted entirely to three countries that use corporal punishment with a rotan for certain crimes -- in Singapore's case, 47 of them.                                                             Sounds like nasty business, to be sure, but Singapore also has one of the world's lowest cases of violent crime, to quote the site, "partly no doubt because the authorities have managed to make the island almost entirely gun-free" (not to mention gum-free, also!).

The weapon so nice, he named it twice.

Weigh the choice. In exchange for getting rid of guns, and thus having a very low rate of violent crime in return, would you be good with your local police force using what James Brown called a licking stick?                                                                          But we're getting off topic. Why Cop Hater? Who's responsible? And will Kash Patel come for me after his next bender?                   

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