Favorites List --- The Spiral Staircase

I looked at The Spiral Staircase again this week. Among other things, it’s one of the best looking RKO titles around, that being result of the negative reverting to Selznick following general release and being better preserved since. So many of the other RKO’s went into C&C meat grinders and saw logos cleaved and end credits shorn. This one looks a million still and does justice to moody settings by director Robert Siodmak and cameraman Nicholas Musuraca. It’s a high-class scare picture like The Lodger, The Uninvited, and those few that major studios did during the forties when horror subjects were thought better left to low-budgets and kids. Likelier than not 1945-6 patrons wet pants over chill scenes in The Spiral Staircase, as it plows surprisingly inelegant ground, even as producer Dore Schary brings stately opulence to all aspects of production. I’d call it a Val Lewton with money, lots and lots of that compared with belts RKO wrapped around Lewton B’s. His were clearly a source of inspiration for The Spiral Staircase. Shadowy menace lurks about ink-black corners and even Kent Smith graduates up from Lewton’s unit to lend support. Ads called The Spiral Staircase one they dared to film, and it’s sure enough a whoopee cushion beneath mannerly mid-forties thriller-making. If Lewton had produced this story instead of Schary, it would certainly be better regarded. The psycho killer here has a thing for strangling disabled women, and the fact we can guess his identity early on doesn’t necessarily diminish suspense, for he has easy and continued access to would-be (and mute) victim Dorothy McGuire. The Spiral Staircase was consolidation of that actress’ promise as engineered by David O. Selznick, his efficiency at star-making being a hit-or-miss thing depending on what contracted merchandise he loaned where.

Selznick developed the project, cast most principals, then sold his ready work to RKO, reserving a gross percentage and eventual ownership of The Spiral Staircase for reissues and ultimate sale to television. The result was overproduced in that manner unique to Selznick, even if Schary called credited shots. DOS investment in contractee Dorothy McGuire disallowed too much authority being entrusted with others. He didn’t want properties ruined by inept handling (which in Selznick’s view meant virtually anyone outside himself), so even projects sold brought with them ongoing memos and second-guessing out of DOS headquarters. Dore Schary was a Selznick employee as well, so was obliged to listen when the boss expressed concerns. Throwing $968,000 to the final negative cost might have been overkill, considering what Val Lewton achieved with less than a quarter of that for individual entries in his series. Money bespoke class to pupils taught by Selznick. He could be impressed by what former assistant Lewton did with Cat People, as others engaged on The Spiral Staircase undoubtedly were, but no package of Selznick’s was going to be done on short change. The Spiral Staircase has the feel of something made by people determined to bring class to a lowly genre, as if a deluxe model reboot of humble horrors Val cobbled out of near-nothing could somehow remove the stain horror subjects bore.

Imagine the Amberson house well haunted and besieged with unsolved murders. I wonder how many of those sets made redressed way to The Spiral Staircase. Robert Siodmak suggests the directorial look of Welles at times. Citizen Kane’s influence was felt in so many RKO films that came after it. Did any artists leave deeper imprints there than Orson Welles and Val Lewton? I half expected Amberson family members to lend an investigative hand to mayhem of The Spiral Staircase, if no other reason than familiarity of backgrounds and approximately same period setting. Siodmak was no stranger to horror themes. Those plus noirs on his resume made this an ideal berth, but how free was his hand to develop stylings we associate with that director? The Spiral Staircase doesn’t list among Siodmak’s best (should, though). Again, it’s more a producer’s accomplishment than a director’s. Not much termite art could bore ways through masonry so solidly built as this. Profits realized by The Spiral Staircase were RKO’s highest for 1945 after The Bells Of St. Mary’s. There was $2.6 million in domestic rentals and $1.2 foreign, with a final gain of $885,000. More’s the pity for not having been around in late 1945 and ’46 when it was playing, as I'll bet The Spiral Staircase generated similar word-of-mouth excitement to the much later Psycho, for both dealt with "sick" murders committed against women and represented steps forward in onscreen violence. The difference is that Psycho still has capacity to shock, while The Spiral Staircase appears mild via passage of time, though I doubt it seemed so in the forties. Were we to classify this one as a horror film, The Spiral Staircase would be the biggest genre succe$$ of the decade, and very likely one that audiences of the day remembered as scariest of them all.

If you shop for The Spiral Staircase on DVD, be sure and get the Anchor Bay release instead of the MGM. DVD Beaver explains why here.

J.D. Salinger --- Film Collector

I found out this week that J.D. Salinger was a 16mm film collector. While everyone was waiting for him to write another Catcher In The Rye, Jerry was holed watching Bill Fields and The Marx Brothers. He fit the personality profile of many collectors I dealt with. Eccentric … check. Reclusive … yeah. Spoke in tongues and drank his own urine … well, that lost a few of us, although I knew one guy who stayed in the same pair of pajamas for three days as he ran through NTA’s entire package of Gene Autry westerns. So how much did 16mm shape this dean of American writers? I’ve never read a word of his output, being a functional illiterate as to fiction and not proud of it, but will confess to being intrigued by Salinger, more so now that I’ve learned he collected. They say he had lots of prints. Favorites included aforementioned Fields and the Marxes, plus The Thin Man, Lost Horizon, early Hitchcock, and bless him, Laurel and Hardy. Salinger’s daughter wrote a book about life around his Cornish, New Hampshire retreat. Our shared world was not books, but rather, my father’s collection of reel-to-reel movies, she wrote. Salinger would set up a screen in front of the living room fireplace, and they’d watch The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes, and Foreign Correspondent, among others. He’d later switch to videocassettes, but Margaret found them a sterile substitute for the sensuous delight of 16mm. That last part struck a chord, for I’ve heard many a loyalist to film express similar feelings. Perhaps there is something sensuous about handling celluloid, and digital profanes it. Salinger’s ritual of threading and rewinding was crucial to the authenticity of experiencing movies, and his daughter lovingly describes reel changes and splices he executed with precision (He wasn’t scared of getting cut at all …). I particularly enjoyed the part where she talked of running out of the room terrified during suspense scenes in Foreign Correspondent, and how Salinger lambasted her lack of nerve. Christ, all you and your mother want to see are sentimental pictures about Thanksgiving and puppy dogs.

So how did Salinger come by his prints? Sooner or later, every collector has to deal with others. I’ll bet Salinger did too, perhaps under another name. Did we buy, sell, or trade with him without knowing it? Chances are good that his heirs will find old Big Reels when they dig through the house for unpublished novels. But who will get the 16mm stuff? Little of that is worth much now, other than for Salinger having owned it. Consider what The Bank Dick in 16mm might bring on Ebay … then imagine the same with J.D. Salinger’s Personal Print on the header. How many English Department heads can we figure to bid on that? I wonder if a fellow collector could have gotten through Salinger’s barricade. One who tried was Warren French. He’d written the first book-length study of Salinger in 1963 and sent a letter asking if they could exchange lists and maybe a few rare prints. Apparently, French got no reply (maybe Salinger suspected French was using the films as a device to engage the author about his books). Another writer, John Seabrook, was invited by Salinger’s son to come over and watch a movie. That was in the mid-eighties, according to an article Seabrook recently wrote for the New Yorker. He describes how Salinger made them popcorn and ran his print of Sergeant York, with a good time had by all. Seabrook described his host as friendly and sociable. Well, isn’t any collector pleased to share his bounty with appreciative guests? The more I read about this guy Salinger, the more I think we would have hit it off. Not having read his stuff, I wouldn’t have peppered him with dumb questions about Holden Caulfield, Uncle Wiggly, and the rest. It would have been enough for us to ruminate over a screening of Chickens Come Home and discuss finer points of the Marxes at Paramount vs. Metro. I might even have found him an original print of Young and Innocent. From such bonding as this, I’ll bet he’d have taken my calls anytime.

My Son John Again

Turner Classic Movies finally ran My Son John this week. I’ve been hung up on Leo McCarey’s fabled fiasco since driving down to Raleigh for a rare 35mm showing in October 2007, an event covered previously here. Seeing it again on TCM inspired me to further excavations. I wrote before of ABC having run it around 1970, and no one else doing so since, at least on American television. Turns out that network’s broadcast actually took place April 29, 1973, and again on September 2 of the same year. ABC’s Sunday Night Movie played My Son John both times in a two and a half-hour time period between 9:00 and 11:30 PM. The New York Times listing described MSJ as an artful grovel to the late Senator McCarthy, a pretty good indicator of how political winds were blowing by 1973. Most of us too young to have seen it in 1952 made acquaintance here, as Paramount never reissued My Son John theatrically nor in US syndication. Specialty bookings maintained legend gathering around what was said to be the most rabid of anti-Communist tracts. New Yorkers glimpsed MSJ as part of a Leo McCarey Festival held at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church (!) on August 24, 1977, while The Collective for Living Cinema, a Lower Manhattan alternative and avant-garde site, played it during November 1980. As My Son John never surfaced on video, some imagined the film had been suppressed, even as there was non-theatrical availability in 16mm from Films, Inc., at least until that rental house closed its doors. Online forums propagated rumors of TCM "banning" My Son John for their not having played the feature, ignoring less provocative likelihood that programmers couldn’t be bothered with such an obscurity.

Turns out Leo McCarey was longer gestating My Son John than I’d realized. He began with anything but a completed script (I have one point, the director said, Does it matter how I arrive at it?). The story was McCarey’s, but he brought on John Lee Mahin and Myles Connolly to flesh things out. He spent autumn of 1950 in pursuit of Helen Hayes to star. Getting her would be a coup, as the self-described First Lady Of The American Theatre had been off movie screens since the mid-thirties save for a cameo in Stage Door Canteen. Hayes’ participation was a major selling point for My Son John, as other casting followed close behind her agreement to star. In December of 1950, McCarey described his project as highly emotional, but with much humor, this being lure that brought Hayes aboard. His films were best loved for gentle humor and heart appeal, reliable handmaidens to a sock boxoffice as proven by McCarey with Going My Way and Bells Of St.Mary’s. My Son John’s story would remain top secret even as the forty person crew arrived in Washington during March 1951 for location work, including principals by then in place. Several weeks were spent there, but little of what they filmed made way to the final print. McCarey admitted that his script is in far from final shooting shape, adding that I knew enough of what I wanted in Washington to do some exteriors and other background shots here. At that point, the director hoped to finish My Son John by early June for late 1951 release, though wandering around town in search of interesting backgrounds wasn’t getting the job done any faster. One entire day was spent filming Helen Hayes in a Catholic church McCarey had come across and liked, but none of this footage would be used. We’ve only shot one scene that was in the original script, observed his star actress. Being producer, director, and busy re-writer gave McCarey authority to make whatever changes suited him, even as slow pace of production brought him closer to rendezvous with Robert Walker’s unexpected passing on 8-28-51.

Walker had been a loan-out from MGM, still home lot for the actor. His participation in My Son John is what gives the film its primary interest for me. Bob brings all the fun of Bruno Anthony to his performance as prodigal son John, a less privileged first cousin reduced to office droning that Bruno would have deplored in Strangers On A Train, with low level treason barely a step above catching the 8:15 in the morning to sell paint or something. And what of detective Van Heflin worming his way into family confidence as means of trapping one of their own, much in the same way MacDonald Carey did in Shadow Of A Doubt? Son John is a clear amalgam of Bruno and Uncle Charlie, so much so as to suggest Alfred Hitchcock himself lent a guiding hand. My suspicion as to that found confirmation in a March 1951 interview Leo McCarey gave to The New York Times during production on My Son John. There’s a lot of the suspense element in the film and McCarey boasts of having gone directly to the master --- Alfred Hitchcock --- for pointers, said the article, while McCarey added: This is my first Hitchcock. He even ran off the first four reels of his new film for me. I’m taking a lot of kidding about how I stop before every shot and try to figure out how Hitchcock would do it. I may even put myself in one scene like he does. Those four reels McCarey referred to were from Strangers On A Train, awaiting July 1951 release as he continued laboring on My Son John. Did Hitchcock suggest the partial recap of his own Shadow of A Doubt? And was Robert Walker’s casting the result of McCarey’s sneak peek at those reels? There’s enough of Bruno in John to suggest AH lent advice as regards the characterization. Certainly McCarey showed a very public willingness to be guided by the Master’s counsel, though he drew a line at staging suspense of a melodramatic, "chase" type. Hoping to start a new trend, according to the article, McCarey identified his My Son John goal thus: It’s more a suspense of ideas in conflict. That may have been the film’s essential problem as things turned out. With Hitchcock fully in charge, we’d have had at the least a full-throttled espionage plot with John at its center, and perhaps a whammo finish atop the Washington Monument. AH would certainly have ditched propaganda in accordance with past policy and delivered a thriller fans might not have waited these forty years to see again. Would My Son John be a classic today if Leo McCarey had collaborated as writer with director and final decision-maker Alfred Hitchcock?

Metro's Nod To The Classics

Hollywood might have made more classical musicals were it not for the fact that people can’t sing and dance in them. There’s little opportunity for movement beyond hands gliding along keyboards or pushing bows over fiddle strings. Those who study or perform great music tend to dismiss what few movies explored the topic. My Music Appreciation teacher at college said A Song To Remember was rubbish. Thirty years past seeing it, she laughed over Cornel Wilde as Frederic Chopin coughing up blood on piano ivories, even as that 1945 Columbia release inspired a public to cough up unprecedented cash for records and sheet music by the long-dead composer. I’ve been a hound for Chopin since first playing him with 8mm silents. People who dedicate lives to study of classical music always seemed to me an enviable lot. Given the option, I’d enjoy my next incarnation as a four-year old keyboard prodigy. Can anyone be so focused as a serious musician? Much is appealing about a life spent in single-minded pursuit of one thing (OK, so I guess I've achieved that watching old movies). MGM’s Rhapsody addresses the grand obsession even as it otherwise hews to formula romance lines demanded by Elizabeth Taylor’s then-following. Nobody much remembers this 1954 star vehicle, but it’s one I admire for affording a glimpse into music mavens and cloistered worlds they live in. Metro walked a tight rope as not to alienate general audiences who might think Rhapsody was for longhairs only. Tips for exhibitors cautioned: While the so-called serious music values of "Rhapsody" are not emphasized, it is also important to indicate that the picture has beautiful musical content. The safest route for movie usage of classical music was always a romantic one, thus preponderance of Rachmaninoff, Mendelssohn, Debussy, and others off a general listener’s short list. Pop tunes were often adapted from composers whose music struck bobby-soxer chords. And what was movie scoring then but slight updating on ideas the masters utilized years before?

Imagine An American In Paris with Rachmaninoff’s Concerto # 2 for Piano and Orchestra in C Minor for the extended finish instead of Gershwin. Rhapsody constructs its drama around a third-act performance of that by John Erickson’s character. We don’t know if he will finish thanks to emotional trauma inflicted by willful Liz. Those ten minutes the concert lasts are pitched to viewers enraptured by the music as well as ones more invested in the love match. We can dismiss Rhapsody as empty gloss after a Metro fashion, but here they tried at least to put classical works before a mass public, and make better-known the names of performers unfamiliar outside music realms. Claudio Arrau was the pianist who stood in for John Erickson. He and violinist Michael Rabin (age seventeen at the time) got considerable publicity during 1954 national tours thanks to having supplied tracks for the film, even if Arrau sniffed later of his Rhapsody appearance that one endures such moments to survive (he also stated, perhaps correctly, that Rachmaninoff is for the movies). MGM tied in with The National Federation of Music Clubs of Providence, RI (it’s still there) to get word of Rhapsody out to chapters. The organization was particularly impressed by Metro’s sympathetic treatment of "musical artists." (… it treats these artists not as freaks but as human beings). Had the image of classical adherents come to this? If so, then Rhapsody would do a lot to alleviate it. Conservatory students the film portrays are, to a man (and woman), both attractive and neatly turned in dress and deportment. Vittorio Gassman is a dashing rake perhaps far removed from real-life violinists, while John Erickson aspires to concert piano after having been a WWII commando (!). Whatever serious musicians thought of Rhapsody’s fantasy excesses, they must surely have been pleased for its having rehabilitated oddball impressions of their membership.

Paramount initially developed Rhapsody. It was ready to shoot when they sold the package to Metro. The sale represents the first application of the former studio’s recently announced policy against filming any story that it cannot cast properly or make at a cost deemed to be reasonable on the basis of anticipated boxoffice receipts, said The New York Times. Certainly Paramount was tightening expenditure in late 1952 when their sale took place. A look at that company's output finds little done on a large scale outside of DeMille projects. MGM economized too. Whatever European flavor Rhapsody needed (it took place there) would be supplied by second unit footage director Charles Vidor shot in Switzerland with co-star Vittorio Gassman. Remaining principals never left Culver City. Rhapsody was finished at a negative cost of $1.9 million, more than Paramount would spend on its releases that year minus a very few. Elizabeth Taylor’s films had been mostly profitable, these being smaller pictures starring her or big ones where she supported veteran names. Metro demurred as to hard selling Taylor as a sex symbol, at least for the present. They still had Ava Gardner and Lana Turner for that. Taylor’s beauty was of a sort left to critics to discover for themselves, with most willing to overlook her thespic shortcomings. Bosley Crowther was elevated upon wings of praise in his New York Times review of Rhapsody. Calling it a high-minded film … all wrapped up in music on the starry-eyed classical plane (was he catering to lowbrow readers here?), Crowther really wound up on his infatuee’s behalf. Her wind-blown black hair frames her features like an ebony aureole, and her large eyes and red lips glisten warmly in the close-ups on the softly lighted screen. This was twilight upon an era when critics could still unburden themselves of longings a screen goddess inspired. Variety would be less fawning, however (… it is the type of tear-and-torment drama that has little appeal for the younger set or the male ticket buyer). Selling problems the trade paper predicted saw confirmation in domestic rentals of $1.2 million, far less than was needed to cover MGM’s investment. Thanks to Euro-setting and celebration of its music, however, Rhapsody took a lively $2.4 million in foreign rentals and managed an overall profit of $124,000. The film continued getting theatrical dates up to its syndicated television release in October 1968. For instance, during a period between 9-1-62 and 8-31-67, there were 68 bookings with an average rental rate of $42 flat for a total of $2,826. Not difficult to understand why companies like MGM saw greater revenue potential in TV for their vault titles. Warner’s Archive has lately released a DVD of Rhapsody that is happily presented in the original 1.85 widescreen.

Confessions Of An Unabashed Rathbone/Holmes Fan

Critical standards be hanged whenever I address Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes series. Currently engaged in re-viewing all fourteen, I must confess to being all for each and more so for all, as there’s not, for me, an outright dud in the lot. Most of you have taken these up, I’m sure. Who hasn’t that grew up with a television in the house? Maybe not for a while, though. TCM ran a batch for Christmas, finally licensing ones that aren’t PD. If you’ve not visited the series lately, go back and look again, because they hold up beautifully. The scary ones are more so than whatever monster shows Universal was doing at the time (did any Shock Theatres run The Scarlet Claw? If not, they should have). Here’s the thing with me and Sherlock, or maybe I should say Rathbone and me. I wanted to be this man. No, forget the past tense, I still do. He is devastatingly cool. Others have said he is snippy and arrogant with Dr. Watson. That never bothered me. Maybe because I knew Basil and Nigel Bruce were on-set pals and cooked up much of the repartee themselves. Sherlock Holmes was always easier going for this viewer than Charlie Chan. I didn’t have to follow narratives so closely with SH. Chan would invariably lose me with so many red herrings and complications. Maybe I'm confessing to plain stupidity, but mysteries go down better here when they're not so mysterious. With Holmes and Watson, the goal line was visible and it was usually a matter of tracking opponents we know and understand right from get-go. Revolving door suspects seldom cluttered their way. These two often as not spent half-a-dozen reels tracking simple quarry, be it a match folder, music boxes, or busts of Napoleon. Why they did so provided the bumps and saw us through narratives straightforward and always ripe for revisiting. Villainy was more colorful for not having to wait an hour to find who villains were. To observe commonplace Holmes rituals is as enjoyable as seeing him bust up crime. My pleasure's complete for Rathbone exclaiming Kippers! over his serving tray. I’ve promised myself for years to fix up a room just like 221 B Baker Street. Lots of devotees surely have. What am I waiting for?

Director of most Holmes entries Roy William Neill was under-appreciated then and more so now. He said it was atmosphere that made these pictures work, and so laid that on with a trowel. Script deficiencies matter less with Holmes than elsewhere. A dark house was never darker than ones Neill managed. I’ll bet he kept a fog machine running in his den at home. Had this director not passed so early (1946), there’d have been a second wind sure doing film noir, this suggested by promise of his last, Black Angel. Several of the Holmes stop short of being horror films, but only just. They frankly make better use of familiar chiller icons than straight-up horrors did. Lionel Atwill, George Zucco, Henry Daniell, and certainly Rathbone seldom had better dialogue or such fruitful situations as were provided by these. You could depend on a Universal Holmes to position its opponents head to head for verbal showdowns always the highlight of respective shows. I’d guess for players of Rathbone and Atwill’s experience, a last reel parry in Sherlock Holmes and The Secret Weapon would be a child’s walk-through, but to contempo eyes, being so long deprived of classically trained thesps, they seem positively brilliant. I was never bothered by updates to wartime setting for Holmes at Universal. Impure as this was in the face of Conan Doyle, it did lend urgency to detecting that might seem prosaic against gaslit backgrounds. For at least the first brace of Universals, the very Empire itself was habitually at stake, and that couldn’t help but increase excitement for uncertain WWII audiences. Sherlock Holmes made a credible adversary for Axis powers, more so perhaps than Superman or Tarzan, and Universal’s 40’s London seems hardly removed from Doyle’s own conception.

The Universal Holmes group was customized for supporting positions. You’d generally find them beneath an Abbott and Costello or Montez/Hall. Those latter were the big noise on selling ends for a company struggling to break into first-run theatres with their attendant heady revenues. Holmes was generally dessert served after a main course of action, music, or comedy. Sometimes he even backed up stage shows, as here. Running times and negative costs made clear these were B’s for supporting position. A Sherlock Holmes seldom ventured far past an hour, ideal length for us now, as there’s never padding evident. Money that Universal spent clearly tabbed the series for lower-berths. Sherlock Holmes and The Voice Of Terror was first of the group (released September 1942) and cost $131,000. Expense crept up as further entries surfaced. The fourth, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, ran to $168,000 in negative costs, while The Scarlet Claw (May 1944) took $203,000 to finish. Even as the company’s purse strings held fast below "A" level, final product never reflected it. These were some of the most handsome program pictures around. Universal sold their Holmes group outright in 1954, first to James Mulvey, president of Samuel Goldwyn Productions, who in turn peddled them to Motion Pictures For Television, headed by Matty Fox. That year found Holmes all over home screens and stirring up resentment among exhibitors who kept score of studio backlog gone free tube routes. TV distributors sliced off logos and end title references to the original producer (as means of minimizing awareness that a major company was bargaining with television), but trade watchdogs like Harrison’s Reports were not fooled. Pete Harrison got what he called the no comment treatment upon inquiry to Universal executives, and warned that theatre owners probably will not soon forget those companies who are selling old pictures to a medium that offers free entertainment in direct competition with them.

Some of the negatives got lost among varied handlers passing them one to the other. Matty Fox ultimately sold the Holmes package to Eliot Hyman’s Associated Artists Productions, and AAP put several back into theatres, even as they continued playing free-vee. United Artists took over Holmes from AAP by the late fifties, with Four Star International succeeding them in May of 1965. The seventies found Leo Gutman, Inc. distributing the twelve. For all this handling and exchange of existing elements, it’s a wonder the Sherlock Holmes films survive at all. Thanks to multiple cooks in the stew, prints were easier got by collectors trolling among TV outlets just done with broadcast rights. I scored the twelve from a Greensboro station happy to get rid of burdens on their storage space. My willingness to carry this stuff off merely saved them a trip to the dumpster. 16mm Holmes prints were generally good. It was lousy dupes made off four having gone public domain that gave black eyes to the rest. One I remember as problematic, even in so-called "original" prints for television, was The Spider Woman, so far removed from its camera neg as to be almost unwatchable (fortunately, the DVD rectifies that problem). The two Fox features, Hound Of The Baskervilles and Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, were for years isolated from the rest and difficult to track down. Baskervilles had been sold to TV during the early fifties and appeared in syndication under the Hygo Television Films banner, and by 1959 turned up in a large Screen Gems package with 228 other titles, including Fox’s Charlie Chans. Hound Of The Baskervilles was later withdrawn from syndication over rights issues and remained in limbo for some time. The other Fox property, Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes, initially played TV via Matty Fox’s Motion Pictures For Television during the mid-fifties, then was back among 20th packaging with others of their pre-48’s. It was quite the event when CBS rescued Hound Of The Baskervilles and Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes from obscurity for late-night network runs around 1979-80. Now the Universal twelve, plus the Fox pair, are neatly packaged on DVD after having been restored by UCLA’s film archive, funds for that provided in part by Hugh Hefner, one of classic film’s most generous benefactors.

Universal's New Vault Series

Universal has initiated a "Vault Series" of DVD-R’s to compete with Warner’s Archive Collection. So far, they’re available exclusively from Amazon. Prices started out at $20 as with the WB discs, but now I’m seeing Amazon drop to $14.99 and up, depending on the title. None of these are being heavily promoted elsewhere yet. I found out about them from reading the Home Theatre Forum, which is, to my mind, the best place to keep up with DVD news. Yesterday’s arrival of The Perfect Furlough inspires this quick dispatch to say that, based on initial sampling, it looks as though Universal/Amazon’s offering will be a good thing, assuming they keep releases coming and quality maintains. I’m not among those who disparage studio use of DVD-R as a format. For the moment at least, this is the only we’ll ever have access to something like The Perfect Furlough. To arguments that such discs will deteriorate over time, I’m safe in assuming they’ll last as long as I will. After that, who cares? None of my heirs have expressed interest in Tony Curtis comedies made fifty-two years ago. I might, in fact, be concerned for them if they did. To your question as to Universal’s transfer of The Perfect Furlough, I’ll merely convey my inexpert opinion that it looks just fine, having projected splendidly on my wide screen in anamorphic 2:35. This can’t be too old a transfer. Universal probably remastered it fairly recently for satellite broadcast leasing. A number of theirs have turned up lately on Cinemax and HD Net Movies . It'd be great knowing how much of the UNI library has been transferred to High Definition format, but it’s unlikely they’ll confide that in me. I do recall watching The List Of Adrian Messinger in HD back in March 2006 on Dish Network, so I’m pretty confident the Vault Series DVD I’ve just ordered will be good. Someone at HTF reported, however, that The Chalk Garden is straight letterbox and not anamorphic. I’d like to think that’s an oversight and Universal will correct it.

Again, I’m curious to know how many Perfect Furloughs Amazon will sell. Was mine the first? We classic shoppers are an increasingly small fraternity (so they tell us). But whoa --- The Perfect Furlough a classic? I bought it for Cinemascope, a 50’s tour of Universal’s backlot dressed up as Paris, and because it was among ones that Charlotte’s Channel 9 used to show after I’d get home from school in eighth-grade. The foregoing disqualifies me to review it sensibly. Some of us are just drawn to that time warp that was Universal in the fifties. I relish their audacity for yet again palming off faux-Euro streets for the real thing, even as rivals were flying over crews to shoot the genuine article (compare Furlough with MGM’s near-as-light confection, Ten Thousand Bedrooms, with its extensive Rome locations, shot but months before). The Perfect Furlough is notable for several firsts that led to Universal’s boxoffice ascendancy the following year. It just preceded director Blake Edwards’ breakthrough of Operation Petticoat and a decade of hits. Writer Stanley Shapiro was on the cusp of Pillow Talk and a new kind of sex comedy that ushered in UNI's Doris Day-Rock Hudson franchise. The Perfect Furlough represents quite the advance in suggestive dialogue and situations. I won’t pretend much of it is funny, but how many laughs can we reasonably expect from corseted 50’s comedies? It’s enough to look at The Perfect Furlough through eyes of its 1958 fan magazine public, those milk-shakers who idolized real-life perfect couple Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh without regard to merits of whatever vehicle starred them. But what I must know is this: How did Universal let Troy Donahue get away? It seems they built him up for several years, then turned over a near finished model to Warner Bros. His presence is fleeting in The Perfect Furlough just as it had been in The Tarnished Angels and even The Monolith Monsters. Why develop a teen idol, only to let the competition reap boxoffice spoils?

The Perfect Furlough is, for me, an auspicious beginning for Universal’s Vault Series. Its release demonstrates their willingness to put really obscure titles into the pipeline. Others from the first group bode well. There is the 1954 Dragnet feature, House Of The Seven Gables, Ruggles Of Red Gap, and The Brass Bottle (wish I’d seen that new in 1965 so I could excitedly scoop it up now). Universal surprises me for maintaining a standard DVD release schedule as well. A Cary Grant box is imminent, and the Paramount Alice In Wonderland from 1934 arrives March 2. Just this week Movies Unlimited announced another Deanna Durbin Collection with five more of hers for later in the Spring. I’d hope that Universal will explore possibilities of silents and precodes they own. A Lonesome, Broadway, or Night World are the very sorts of things a Vault Series can best accommodate. Of this beginning group, the earliest is 1934's Death Takes A Holiday. One final aspect of The Perfect Furlough worth noting is fact that it had no menu screen whatever. Not that I particularly care. It’s actually refreshing not to have to wade through FBI warnings and a raft of logos enroute to the feature you’ve paid for.

Director Choice --- Samuel Fuller

I once looked at Hell and High Water with a film studies professor who said little until a scene where a guy’s thumb got mutilated in a submarine hatch. Ah yes, Sam Fuller, he laughed appreciatively as the character writhed in agony. Of all directors bearing maverick label, Fuller may be easiest to venerate. He painted with the broadest brush, always had a big cigar in his mouth, and came of hardscrabble background that made his narrative calls unimpeachable among buffs who never saw combat or insides of city rooms like he did. Sam also lived long enough to mentor a lot of them. He’s the kind of flamboyant auteur I’d like to have sat down with, being among few that really fit definition of that overused tag (he did it all upon assuming control of sets). Columbia’s recent seven-disc Samuel Fuller Collection gives voice to industry successors who sat at the Great Man’s knee and learned at least as much about life as wild and wooly films he yanked out of cauldrons filled with strife and attempted studio interference. Here was the tough guy artist every beginner wanted to be when he grew up (and I limit that to he for suspecting that women don't find Fuller’s work so appealing). Surely SF knew galvanizing effect he had on New Hollywood acolytes. They tell of finding him night and day bent over a typewriter, knocking out scripts and articles like tabloid pieces he generated daily during gangland twenties. I wonder if his wife and daughter aren’t still finding stories tucked away in Fuller closets and drawers.

The Columbia set introduced me to several B’s Samuel Fuller penned on his way to becoming a full service writer/producer/director. Others mostly took screenplay credit, but concepts and ideas seem to have largely originated with Sam. The nice thing about the DVD box is dual usefulness as Fuller instructional plus first acquaintance for many with Columbia B output from the 30’s/40’s. Other than some horror films and one or two westerns John Wayne happened to appear in, we’ve had nothing by way of low-budget disc representation from this company. An inside Hollywood story with Richard Dix and Fay Wray would be welcome in my household even if Sam Fuller had nothing to do with it. The fact he wrote It Happened In Hollywood with three other scribes is sole basis for inclusion here, but whatever gets DVD release done is Jake by me. Same for The Power Of The Press, a six reel quick-shot I particularly enjoyed seeing guest celeb Tim Robbins gush over as though it were opening shot of a coming social Revolution. Fancier writers than me (and I hope it stays that way) call Fuller an authentic American primitive and/or a didactic patriot. That’s how big a net this man throws. Mostly though, he was a yarn spinner always stacks ahead of whatever one he’d just finished shooting. Six Fuller clones might have kept up with adapting to movies all the stories he developed. There was a trade announcement in 1964 wherein Sam touted a forthcoming comic team of Constance Towers and Patsy Kelly, the two just off The Naked Kiss. They’d get laughs, he promised, just like Kelly had done with Thelma Todd back in 30’s comedies the director remembered fondly. That notion came to merciful naught, but who knows? --- Fuller might have made something wonderful of it. Disc extra disciples say he used to generate narratives in a standing position based on half a sentence one of them would get out, the whole thing ready for a binder minutes later. This writer/director’s enthusiasm for the craft was such as to nearly implode his fertile brain. Fuller’s kind of prolificacy wouldn’t let him sleep. Such overabundance of talent must have seemed at times more curse than blessing.

A novel of Sam’s that broke through was The Dark Page, well named for exploring newspapers and crimes they exploited. Howard Hawks bought it not long after 1944 publication and that promised an important screen translation. How it ended up at Columbia’s discount store is a tale insiders could better tell, but I wonder if 1948’s The Big Clock stole a little of its thunder for a very similar premise. Fuller didn’t get to direct the movie as emerged in 1952. That was done, and well, by Phil Karlson. Scandal Sheet was a title deemed better suited to lower berths it mostly occupied (domestic rentals a mere $581,000). Columbia shoveled economy bookings full with what they had for stars. Lead Broderick Crawford had fluked an Academy Award a couple years before, but what else would go on sustaining him other than big bruiser roles like he played before Willie Stark? TCM reminded us lately of how good some of those are (seen The Mob?). John Derek was like Tony Curtis minus intensive training Universal-International would have accorded him, while Donna Reed worked ways toward her own fluke of an Oscar for From Here To Eternity the following year. Scandal Sheet is very much a writer’s movie, which makes it a Samuel Fuller movie even if someone else called Action and Cut (and they say this very good show is considerably denuded from the book). For what he had to offer (and so much of it), I wonder why Columbia didn’t just hire Fuller to do three or four per annum, on his own efficient terms. He was known for coming in under schedule and budget, after all. Given opportunity, SK could have turned out films with the frequency of bulldog editions he’d sold on streets as a boy. Buried and obscure Fuller films continue to surface. Park Row turned up on TCM. Three of his for Lippert have been released. Even incendiary White Dog barks again on Criterion's label. I haven’t watched that for being less often of an incendiary frame of mind and knowing what trauma cut-loose Fullers can inflict. His work scores best, I think, with youth in quest of shock and awe. The Naked Kiss and Shock Corridor are two ideally suited for them and others girded for a pummeling (Fuller college retrospects were always reliable programming). Of the seven Columbia packaged, Underworld USA deals the harshest dose of Fuller per expectation interviews and profiles create. Watch it and know his is a sensibility utterly unlike anyone else’s in movies.