Movies that had Great Initial Success and, then, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

[2jakes]

Wow....you wern’t kidding!

 

[LizzieMaine]

There were many, many cases of actors passing out on the set from the heat, and it became common to film late at night when the outdoor temperatures weren't as high. It didn't help a lot, but it helped some. Sometimes they'd have cakes of ice right outside the soundstage for actors to sit on and cool off -- they couldn't use any kind of fans or air conditioning because the sound was recorded live, and it would pick up on the mics. One actress, the Warner Bros. comedy star Winnie Lightner, permanently damaged her eyesight because the lights were so bright, and had to retire prematurely.

This kind of stuff was a big factor in the formation of the Screen Actor's Guild in the mid-thirties, and was also a big part of the reason why the Technicolor fad of 1929-30 collapsed so quickly. The later Technicolor processes would use faster film that didn't require so much light, and used more efficient prisms in the camera so there wasn't as much light loss, bur even then Technicolor wasn't a particularly pleasant process to work under.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Wow....you wern’t kidding!

The scary thing is, "Golden Dawn" was co-written by Oscar Hammerstein, the man who gave us Show Boat and South Pacific and "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught." The Hammerstein Organization has tried its damndest to bury all memory of the stage show, but they don't own the movie and can't suppress it, so it continues to show up on TCM and is out on DVD. I met Hammerstein's grandson a couple years ago, and I mentioned to him that "Golden Dawn" was my favorite Hammerstein show, and his jaw dropped open like I'd just revealed his family's most terrible secret. Oooweee.

Pointless trivia: the stage version of "Golden Dawn," was in 1927 the opening attraction at the Broadway theatre which later became home base for the Ed Sullivan Show and David Letterman's show, and now James Corden holds forth from a stage baptized by perhaps the most ridiculously offensive -- even by the standards of its own time -- stage musical ever mounted. I wonder if there's ghosts?

 

[2jakes]

^^^^^
Very interesting material Lizzie.
I watched a documentary about Abbott & Costello and the
segment “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” (Glenn Strange).

(Glenn Strange, not Karloff in this image.)

By this time a rubber head piece was used on the top to create that square shape.
Took “only” about two hours where as Karloff’s make-up took much longer.

Nevertheless, it was mentioned that sweat about a cup full would pore down when
Glenn removed the head piece .

 

[Fading Fast]

There were many, many cases of actors passing out on the set from the heat, and it became common to film late at night when the outdoor temperatures weren't as high. It didn't help a lot, but it helped some. Sometimes they'd have cakes of ice right outside the soundstage for actors to sit on and cool off -- they couldn't use any kind of fans or air conditioning because the sound was recorded live, and it would pick up on the mics. One actress, the Warner Bros. comedy star Winnie Lightner, permanently damaged her eyesight because the lights were so bright, and had to retire prematurely.

This kind of stuff was a big factor in the formation of the Screen Actor's Guild in the mid-thirties, and was also a big part of the reason why the Technicolor fad of 1929-30 collapsed so quickly. The later Technicolor processes would use faster film that didn't require so much light, and used more efficient prisms in the camera so there wasn't as much light loss, bur even then Technicolor wasn't a particularly pleasant process to work under.

And I thought I had read it was mainly the cost of filming in color that kept it rare until the '50s, but technological constants makes sense as well. What was the bigger component, Lizzie, cost or physical limitations?

 

[LizzieMaine]

The main thing was that the Technicolor Corporation itself maintained a very tight leash on the technology. It used propeitary cameras that were owned by the Corporation and had to be operated only by Technicolor's own camera crews. This was both an expensive proposition for the studios, which had no negotiation power at all -- they either paid Technicolor's fees and used their equipment, or they didn't film in Technicolor at all -- and one controlled by scarcity: there were never more than a handful of three-strip Technicolor cameras built, and studios had to wait their turn to use them. And when they did use them, they had to follow color guidelines set by Technicolor's own "color consultant" to ensure that the process looked as its owners wanted it to look.

There were rival processes, the most notable of which was Cinecolor, but they were markedly inferior -- Technicolor controlled the patents for three-color professional processes, and the competing systems were two-color (like Cinecolor,) or based on blown-up consumer technology (like Kodachrome, which was never a serious factor for professional motion picture use.)

In the early fifties, the key Technicolor patents were expiring, and there was a burst of activity with cheaper, simpler full-color systems based on Eastmancolor -- marketed under such phony names as Metrocolor, Warnercolor, Pathe Color, Deluxe Color, and so forth. Eastmancolor was nothing like Technicolor -- it was a chemical process rather than an optical one, and because of that it was extremely unstable and prone to fading, graniness, and erratic color stability -- but it was cheap, and it cut the Technicolor Corporation right out of the picture. Technicolor abandoned its own process by the end of the fifties, and adopted a different, simpler system, and eventually got out of photography altogether. Technicolor Corporation survives primarily as a distribution and film-shipping organization, while variations on Eastmancolor remain the standard for color film photography today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

^^^^^
Very interesting material Lizzie.
I watched a documentary about Abbott & Costello and the
segment “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” (Glenn Strange).

(Glenn Strange, not Karloff in this image.)

By this time a rubber head piece was used on the top to create that square shape.
Took “only” about two hours where as Karloff’s make-up took much longer.

Nevertheless, it was mentioned that sweat about a cup full would pore down when
Glenn removed the head piece .

No wonder Frankie's hair always had "the wet look."

Nice sideburns on the monster there. Who's this guy Elvis?

 

[Bushman]

Mrrrrrr! Fire bad! Peanut butter and banana sandwich goooood!

 

[Zombie_61]

The first season of "Star Trek" (1966) was sponsored by a color tv manufacturer (RCA, I think). Watch a first-season show sometime and notice the bizarre colors, with different-colored light coming out of every doorway on the Enterprise. It was done deliberately, to showcase color tv.

More useless trivia: The development of the Star Trek character Spock was dictated somewhat by black-and-white television sets. Spock was originally going to be half-Martian, and actor Leonard Nimoy had undergone a number of makeup tests in which his face and hands had been painted red with greasepaint. This was the plan until someone mentioned the fact that so many people still had black-and-white television sets, and that his red makeup would appear black on them. Gene Roddenberry changed "half-Martian" to "half-Vulcan", Max Factor created a special greasepaint (still designated "LN-1" to this day) with a yellowish hue that would hint at the Vulcan's green blood, and the rest is television history.

...And this is akin to folks watching Trek now who complain about stuff like, "It's obvious that it's not William Shatner in the long shots in the fight scenes - it's a stuntman!" You literally could not tell back then when watching on a 19" b/w TV with antenna reception...

Really? I was five years old when Star Trek premiered, and even then I could tell the stuntmen were far too obvious.

...I assume they've been restored because the quality of the Netflix streaming picture for those, now, almost 50 year old shows is incredible.

CBS remastered the entire series in 2005 or 2006 because high-definition televisions were becoming the norm in most homes. The live action scenes were color and sound corrected, and the special effects scenes were replaced with CGI. I've recently finished re-watching the entire series on Netflix, and for some reason one of the episodes (I can't remember which) was the original version rather than the remastered version.

 

[2jakes]

And more Super trivia flying this way....
Originally Supe’s costume was grey and brown to read properly when
it was filmed in glorious black & white for television in the ‘50s.

Pointless trivia:
The movie that never was or was canceled, “SUPERMAN LIVES”,
with Nicholas Cage in the lead role.

Cage wondered why was Superman’s red underwear on the outside
of his suit?

But, it may have been Tim Burton (director) who might have asked.

Not 100 % sure on this.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The trunks-over-tights thing was a common costume convention for circus performers in the early 20th century -- they prevented the tights from revealing too much to the public gaze. In real life, they were rather puffy, not skin tight the way Superman wears them. One could draw conclusions from that, but I won't.

Joe Shuster always said he based his idea for Superman's costume on those circus outfits but he was likely also inspired by The Phantom, who showed up in the funny papers in 1936 wearing striped trunks over his tights.

 

[Fading Fast]

The main thing was that the Technicolor Corporation itself maintained a very tight leash on the technology. It used propeitary cameras that were owned by the Corporation and had to be operated only by Technicolor's own camera crews. This was both an expensive proposition for the studios, which had no negotiation power at all -- they either paid Technicolor's fees and used their equipment, or they didn't film in Technicolor at all -- and one controlled by scarcity: there were never more than a handful of three-strip Technicolor cameras built, and studios had to wait their turn to use them. And when they did use them, they had to follow color guidelines set by Technicolor's own "color consultant" to ensure that the process looked as its owners wanted it to look.

There were rival processes, the most notable of which was Cinecolor, but they were markedly inferior -- Technicolor controlled the patents for three-color professional processes, and the competing systems were two-color (like Cinecolor,) or based on blown-up consumer technology (like Kodachrome, which was never a serious factor for professional motion picture use.)

In the early fifties, the key Technicolor patents were expiring, and there was a burst of activity with cheaper, simpler full-color systems based on Eastmancolor -- marketed under such phony names as Metrocolor, Warnercolor, Pathe Color, Deluxe Color, and so forth. Eastmancolor was nothing like Technicolor -- it was a chemical process rather than an optical one, and because of that it was extremely unstable and prone to fading, graniness, and erratic color stability -- but it was cheap, and it cut the Technicolor Corporation right out of the picture. Technicolor abandoned its own process by the end of the fifties, and adopted a different, simpler system, and eventually got out of photography altogether. Technicolor Corporation survives primarily as a distribution and film-shipping organization, while variations on Eastmancolor remain the standard for color film photography today.

Sounds like Technicolor missed an opportunity by misunderstand the limits of its monopoly which were, in part, that B&W, at the time, was an acceptable alternative (or substitute in economic terms). I don't have enough information to be definitive, but it sounds as if Technicolor could have profitably expanded its market share by having more cameras available and pricing more competitively to B&W - but again, just a guess based on incomplete information.

I'm glad they didn't as I love B&W and am glad we have so many B&W movies up well into the 1960s.

 

[Fading Fast]

Does anyone remember the movie "Earthquake," a mid-70s "disaster" film trying to slipstream behind the other disaster movies like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Tower inferno?"

It got a lot of press (at least this at-the-time ten-year old remembers it that way) and was, I think, a box office success. It also had some gimmicky "sound" effect to create the feel of an earthquake that I remember being disappointed with in the theater.

That said, while I see "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Tower inferno" listed on TV now and then, I can't remember ever seeing "Earthquake" showing on TV. That one really went chirp, chirp after its initial fanfare.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Most of what went on at Technicolor can be laid at the feet of its founder, Herbert Kalmus -- who was a scientist and engineer first and a businessman far far second. He never forgot the disastrous outcome of the 1929-30 Technicolor fad, when the company took on more business than it could handle, was forced to expand its facilities, and ended up putting out shoddy, unacceptable work because there was no time to adequately train the crews. This nearly bankrupted the company. After that, he pursued an ultraconservative approach that insisted on placing quality before quantity. As you say, this worked only so long as he had a monopoly -- but once Technicolor was unable to maintain that hold, the studios were very quick to put the company in its place. Notably, Disney -- because Kalmus had done Walt a favor in 1932 by giving him exclusive use of the three-color process for cartoons, a contract which financed the system's development for live action -- remained the steadiest and loyalest Technicolor customer into the '60s, which is why the "Wonderful World of Color" and the Disney live-action features still had that rich, saturated look long after everyone else had moved on.

The big thing with "Earthquake" was "Sensurround!", which was another proprietary process that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth -- it was expensive, difficult to maintain, could only be used in single-screen houses, and when improperly calibrated had the unfortunate effect of shaking chunks of plaster loose from the walls and ceiling. The Dolby process turned out to be simpler, cheaper, easier to operate, and was considerably less destructive.

You can't overstate how popular those Irwin Allen gimmick pictures were in the early seventies -- they were basically all the same plot: take an all-star cast of performers who were a bit over the hill, add a few flashy newcomers, put them in a disaster setting, and let them fight it out for two hours. People forget some of the personalities who showed up in these pictures -- Fred Astaire, who was riding the crest of the nostalgia craze just then, had a big role in "Inferno." This makes Astaire the answer to the remarkable trivia question, "Who is the only actor to share screen time over the course of his career with Ginger Rogers, Bing Crosby, and O. J. Simpson?"

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ "Sensurround" that was it - Lizziepedia to the rescue again.

I remember all those "old" actors showing up in those disaster movies as I knew them from my "old" movie watching on TV. I was about the only one of my friends who did know them.

And Disney's color was noticeably richer, as you said, in the '60s.

 

[skydog757]

Anyone watched Paper Moon lately? I would watch Madeline Kahn in anything, and I enjoyed her in Moon, but I thought that there was entirely too much fuss about about the film at the time. That would include Tatum O'Neil winning an Oscar. A nice period piece; that was about it for me. A good film, but nothing special for me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That was my favorite movie when I was a kid, especially the soundtrack. I even bought the soundtrack album, thus becoming the only kid in my class to know who Enric Madriguera was. But even then I noticed that Tatum O'Neil seemed to have one, and only one, facial expression.

That's the one. I resented her because I could make that face too, and I even had the same haircut. And I did it first.

 

[2jakes]

Paper Moon.

I love the background music in this scene. Reminds me of places from my youth
when folks would sit on the front porch to read the paper. My grandma had a radio
near the front window and we’d listen to a baseball game.

I've never paid much attention to the words back then.
Until recently. Ooowooeeee

The Banks of the Ohio The Blue Sky Boys - YouTube

 

[Fading Fast]

Anyone watched Paper Moon lately? I would watch Madeline Kahn in anything, and I enjoyed her in Moon, but I thought that there was entirely too much fuss about about the film at the time. That would include Tatum O'Neil winning an Oscar. A nice period piece; that was about it for me. A good film, but nothing special for me.

Good catch. There was a huge fuss at the time - lines outside the theater and all that. I saw it again about ten years ago and thought exactly like you, good film, but nothing special. Maybe the timing was right amidst the chaos of the '70s, it hit the right nostalgic chord.

 

[Fading Fast]

That was my favorite movie when I was a kid, especially the soundtrack. I even bought the soundtrack album, thus becoming the only kid in my class to know who Enric Madriguera was. But even then I noticed that Tatum O'Neil seemed to have one, and only one, facial expression.

That's the one. I resented her because I could make that face too, and I even had the same haircut. And I did it first.

And it was only a few years later, I think it was the movie "Little Darlings" that set off my Tatum O'Neil and Kristy McNichol's crushes that ran for several years.

I'm not proud of myself from back then, or, well, today either, but there it is. For boys of my age - I was born in '64 - those girls had our attention for a few years as they seemed more attainable (even though that was utterly ridiculous) versus, say, any of the "Charlie's Angels" women.

Maybe not Tatum and Kristy themselves, but girls like them seemed a little closer to our reality than the Angels or beamed-in-from-outerspace Brooke Shields.