31 Days of Oscar and the shorts

It looks as though once again, TCM is making a good-faith effort to have the shorts it airs between the movies this coming months be Oscar-related. For the most part, that means shorts that were Oscar-nominated, although it looks as though there's at least one short that's Oscar-related in a different way; a 1960s-produced montage of drawings of Oscar-winners. If you're wondering what the heck, you're not alone.

I never really paid much attention to the historical Oscar nominations for short subjects, so seeing certain shorts show up in February always makes me wonder whether or not they were Oscar-nominated. An example would be the Joe McDoakes short So You Think You're Not Guilty, which airs at 4:43 AM Tuesday. Sure enough, it's listed in the Academy's database as having been nominated in the one-reel category back in 1949.

Speaking of the one-reel category, that's one of the interesting things about the shorts and the Oscars. It looks as though the first awards for shorts were given out for 1931/32, or the fifth Oscars ceremony. (Recall that in the beginning, the nominating period was for a "season", which went from July to June; it wasn't until the awards for 1934 that it was changed to a caledar year nominating period.) Back then, there were two awards given out for live-action shorts: one for "comedy" and one for "novelty"; I don't know where dramatic shorts would have fit. There was also one Oscar for animation; Disney won the first eight animation short Oscars.

In 1936, the categories for live-action shorts changed; there was one for color shorts, a second for one-reelers (presumably only in black and white), and a third for two-reelers. This only lasted two years before the color short award was discontinued. The one- and two- reel shorts categories continued through 1956, after which there was just one award for live action shorts.

The other interesting thing is that through 1942, the nominees are listed as the studios. Only in 1943 did this change and it was the producers of the shorts who were nominated. Something similar happened with the Best Picture (ie. feature-length; or the big award) category, except there it wasn't until 1951 that the nominees were changed to being the producers and not the studio.

Enjoy the shorts!

Obituaries I probably should have noticed

A couple of people died in the past few days who probably deserve at least a brief mention:

Jacques Rivette. Rivette, who died on Friday at the age of 87, was a French director who was part of the French New Wave movement that certainly changed American perceptions of French cinema regardless of whatever else it did or didn't do. I have to admit that Rivette is one of the New Wave directors I knew very little about since the French New Wave isn't particularly my thing. The title Celine and Julie Go Boating sounds vaguely familiar, but that would only be from seeing show up on a TCM schedule or something since I know I haven't seen it after looking at the the synopsis.

Frank Finlay. Finlay died on Saturday at the age of 89. He was a British actor who, seemingly like a lot of the British actors, did a fair amount of work on the stage as well as in dramas for the BBC. But he had smaller roles in quite a few movies too, with bigger roles in the 1973 version of The Three Musketeers as Porthos, and an Oscar-nominated turn as Iago in Laurence Olivier's 1965 version of Othello. There's yet another Shakespeare adaptation I haven't seen.

February is coming up again

February on TCM means the annual 31 Days of Oscar programming feature, a title that takes it name from the days when the Oscars were still handed out in March and it made sense to have a full 31 days given over to such a programming theme. Presumably it must have been cheaper to keep the title 31 Days of Oscar than to have to pay rights fees to the Academy to change the title. That, and once every four years you'd have to change the title from 28 Days of Oscar to 29 Days of Oscar anyhow.

I finally got the chance to see the end of a movie as it aired on TCM (as opposed to off my DVR) and noticed that they're using the same music and graphics package that they've used for the past couple of years. They even repackaged the "Word of Mouth" piece that Liza Minnelli did on her father Vincente, although the editing seemed a bit odd in that it didn't look properly cropped for 16:9; the pastel bit at the bottom that TCM uses to display graphics seemed almost a bit cut off.

Anyhow, I was really posting about the beginning of February so as to point out that the Rusty movies as well as the Bowery Boys movies are going to be taking a four-week break from their usualy Saturday morning time slots for the Oscar programming, but will both be returning at the beginning of March. I think there are two more Rusty movies, and I don't know how many Bowery Boys movies. There were close to four dozen Bowery Boys movies, but I don't know if TCM will be showing every one of them.

Tonight is also the final night of the current season of The Essentials. That, too, will be returning on the first Saturday of March, and as far as I am aware Sally Field is also going to be returning to present the movies along with Robert Osborne. I know there are a lot of people who don't really like The Essentials, but I've always thought of it more as something that's not particularly geared to those of us who are big enough fans of the old movies to read or even write a movie blog; instead it's for the more casual viewers who might not realize that yes, they can be fans of classic cinema too.

Finally, there are going to be some movies returning to FXM Retro in February after a substantial absence. I think I noticed two coming up next week; I don't know how many will be coming back in the weeks following if only because I didn't look at the schedule past the 7th and don't know how far out the FXM schedule is available anyway.

Victor Mature, 1913-1989

Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah (1949)

Today marks the birth anniversary of actor Victor Mature, who was born on this day in 1913. He started his career in 1940's One Million BC and his career looked promising when all of a sudden the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, dragging the US into World War II. Like a lot of Hollywood people, Mature took time out to serve, in his case with the Coast Guard. Before leaving however, he was able to make his star shine brighter with work like I Wake Up Screaming.

Mature returned from the war and to Fox, where he was promptly cast as Doc Holliday in My Darling Clementine, a movie which kick-started his career even though I would have thought Mature had entirely the wrong physique to play the consumptive Holliday. Mature would eventually put that physique to good use, playing a football player in Easy Living; and perhaps most famously the biblical Samson opposite Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah. Other epics followed, most notably The Robe and The Egyptian.

Mature's career really cooled off in the late 1950s, in part because, I think, Mature was more laid back about his career. He was famously self-deprecating, with lines like, "I'm no actor, and I've got 64 films to prove it!". And some actors just develop other passions in life anyway. Still, in the two dozen or so movies Mature made in the decade after returning from World War II, there are some interesting roles well worth watching. In addition to what I've mentioned, there are also the noirs Kiss of Death and Cry of the City, as well as the entertaining if not particularly good Violent Saturday.

Whip appeal

This month's TCM Spotlight on production designer William Cameron Menzies concludes tonight, with the night's lineup including a strange little movie that he directed as well as doing the production design on: The Whip Hand, at 11:30 PM.

Elliott Reid plays Matt Corbin, a journalist who is on vacation in some small town in the northern part of Wisconsin, which you might think is an odd place to go for a vacation, until you realize that some people want to do things like fish and go in the great outdoors for their vacation. This particular town is supposedly one of the best around for fishing. Except there's one small problem: the fish aren't biting. Well, that's the immediate problem. The real problem is that all of those fish have died, as Matt learns when he goes to the local hotel, managed by Steve Loomis (Raymond Burr). Now, if you're watching a movie of this vintage, you should know that the casting of Raymond Burr means Something Is Wrong. Loomis helpfully informs Corbin that all of the fish have died, and that the town seems to be dying along with the fish. So if Corbin wants to go fishing, he'd be better off spending his vacation somewhere else.

But Corbin is a journalist. When he finds that something has killed all the fish in town, his first instinct is to investigate! As we've seen with the recent story of the government screwing up the water supply in Flint, MI, when a man-made disaster hits a town like this, it's a big human interest story. So, naturally, Matt starts poking around. Big mistake. A lot of people are just giving him a wide berth, or else politely but evasively suggesting that he get out of town. The only one who isn't is the doctor's kid sister (Carla Balenda). Worse, when Matt gets close to the big estate out in the middle of the forest, he raises the ire of its security system, something which threatens to get him killed.

And that's just for starters. Matt tries to telegraph his boss, but the lines suddenly go down. And the one other person who seems to be enough of an old-timer, and uncomfortable enough about what's happened to the town to tell Matt what's really going on, suddenly dies just before he gets the chance to tell Matt. So what is going on out that house out in the forest? Well, I'm not going to give it all away, but the next paragraph does include a spoiler, so beware.

The Whip Hand is decidedly B material, made interesting thanks to a decision from RKO boss Howard Hughes. The movie was originally conceived in the late 1940s with the Nazis being the evil people in the house out in the forest. But then anti-communism became a thing, and Howard Hughes suddenly decided that the baddies shouldn't be Nazis, but Communists. This was after principal shooting had been done, forcing a fair bit of reshooting. There's also an opening sequence tacked on that gives the game away that the bad guys are communists, but not what it is they're doing.

I've stated several times before that if you want to look at whether an anti-communist movie really is as bad as the anti-anti-communists might have you believe, a good way to analyze this is to make the bad guys either Nazis or the mob depending on which one fits the plot better. The Whip Hand, then, offers us an intriguing opportunity to test that hypothesis. I tend to think that the movie wouldn't be that much better if the bad guys were Nazis. It might be a little more coherent in that they wouldn't have had to do any reshooting, but if the movie had been conceived with the Communists being the villains, it would have been just about as good: a B movie that's bizarrely entertaining at times, but overall just a B movie.

I don't think The Whip Hand has received a DVD release, so you're going to have to catch the TCM showing.

Garbo says a word or two

One of the movies stuck on my DVR that I finally got around to watching is Garbo Talks. It's available on DVD, so I can feel comfortable doing a full-length blog post on it.

Ron Silver plays Gilbert Rolfe, an accountant with one of the big firms in New York City liing with his wife Lisa (Carrie Fisher). Gilbert also has a mother Estelle (Anne Bancroft) who is quite the character. She loves the movies of Greta Garbo, and she has principles to the point that she's willing to get arrested for them. Indeed, at the start of the movie, Estelle has just gotten arrested again, in a dispute over the price of some produce. It's up to Gilbert to bail her out of jail. What a mother!

Things, however, are about to change. Estelle has been suffering from headaches recently, and they've been getting more severe. When she goes to the doctor, she gets the terrible news: she's got a brain tumor, and it's inoperable. There are some treatments, but they're probably going to be futile, so in all likelihood she's only got six months or so to live. She can't live in her apartment any longer, so it's off to the hospital while the doctors treat her as best they can, and while Estelle waits to die. While having a conversation with Gilbert at the hospital, she comes up with a daffy wish: she'd like the opportunity to meet Greta Garbo before she dies.

It was well enough known that it didn't take the sort of people who nowadays read movie blogs to be aware that there's a big problem with this wish. Garbo was famously private. Not quite reclusive, since she could be seen in shops in the vicinity of her Manhattan apartment; but private in that she wasn't about to let anybody get close to her and didn't do any public appearances. How's a regular schlub like Gilbert Rolfe going to find Greta Garbo, much less convince her to see his mother?

With this begins our son's quirky quest to fulfill his mother's dying wish, regardless of the consequences. There's a substantial monetary commitment in trying to find her, which puts a strain both on his work and on his marriage. But along the way, Gilbert meets a number of interesting characters played by a series of actors not quite of the prestige of an Anne Bancroft. Howard Da Silva (in his final film) plays a photographer who used to stalk people to get photos of them; Hermione Gingold (also in her final film) plays a woman who made silent films with Garbo, although she was well down the cast list; Harvey Fierstien plays a gay man Gilbert meets on Fire Island; and Dorothy Loudon has a hilarious scene as a cat lady/agent.

All in all, Garbo Talks is a pretty good journey, although I have to admit that I found the Estelle character to be terribly irritating. It's easy to understand why Lisa would find her difficult and why Gilbert's sudden chasing of Greta Garbo would put a huge strain on her marriage. Not that Lisa is a saint, of course. But the problems Lisa poses Gilbert seem more for comic effect, while Estelle is the sort of person you'd think seriously about not bailing out the next time she got herself arrested. It is, however, a testament to Anne Bancroft's acting that she makes Estelle a compelling character to watch.

Especially if it shows up on TV anywhere, give Garbo Talks a chance.

Lost Boundaries

I apologize for failing to notice that Lost Boundaries was on TCM this past Sunday night. I had intended to blog about it then, but on the day totally failed to notice it was on the schedule. The joys of working 6:00 AM to 2:30 PM. At any rate, the movie seems to have been released to DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so you can still catch it whenever you want, albeit at a higher price point than with a lot of movies.

After telling us at the beginning that what we are seeing is based on a true story, the action of the movie begins. Scott Carter (Mel Ferrer) is about to graduate from medical school around 1920 and marry his girlfriend Marcia (Beatrice Pearson). Interesting, all of his friends are black. That's because Scott and Marcia are both supposed to be light-skinned black people (although played by white actors; more on this later). In fact, they're light enough that they can "pass" for white, much like the daughter in both versions of Imitation of Life did.

They don't want to pass for white, however, and Scott tries to get a good job as a doctor. However, being black, he finds that a whole bunch of avenues are closed to him because of the racial prejudice that existed in America to a much more prevalent extent than today. Eventually, there's an opening for the town doctor in one of those small New Hampshire towns that dot the New England landscape, kind of like the one in Peyton Place or the one our heroine departs from at the beginning of Valley of the Dolls. There's only one small problem: in order to take the job, the Carters are going to have to pass themselves off as white, which pretty much means closing one chapter of their life.

Still, they make the difficult decision to do so, and move north to New Hampshire. The have a son and a daughter, and never tell the kids that the kids are legally black. Time passes, the son Howard (Richard Hylton) goes off to the University of New Hampshire and even makes friends with a black student, and everything seems good for the family. And then the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor, sending the US into World War II. Now, World War II tore apart a lot of families' lives, but it was really going to have an effect on the Carters. Howard wants to enlist in the Navy, and Dad eventually agrees reluctantly to join the medical corps. But there's a problem. The military was still segregated during World War II; President Truman wouldn't desegregate it until a few years after the war. Howard of course tries to join a white outfit, but the Department of the Navy is having none of it for either him or Dad. Needless to say, Howard isn't particularly happy with suddenly finding out after 20 years that he is in fact legally black. And will the town still accept Dr. Carter?

Lost Boundaries is an interesting idea, especially since it's based on a true story. But it's also not without its problems. One is that you know exactly what side of the issue the movie is taking; there's not much subtle here. The other issue is casting a bunch of white actors in the parts of legally black people trying to pass themselves off as white. This, I think, is rather a complex issue. Of course, a lot of people are going to be anywhere from disappointed to outraged that the part of a main character who is black is not going to a black actor. However, the script specifically calls for the characters to be able to be viewed by the public (at least in the context of the movie characters) as white. People like Sidney Poitier (whose career hadn't begun yet) or Lena Horne were very talented. But I don't think there's any why they could have passed as white. There's also the further issue of whether the movie would have gotten a budget at all by casting a black person in such a role. After all, a lot of those Lena Horne (and other black musician) musical numbers were scripted such that they could be easily cut in the segregated South. Some movies get it badly wrong here, such as Pinky, where Jeanne Crain is just too unbelievable. (Supposedly Linda Darnell really wanted the part, and she would have been far less egregious as somebody trying to play black-passing-as-white.) The first version of Imitation of Life actually used a light-skinned black actress, Fredi Washington, to play the daughter, helped somewhat by lighting and film stock that I think lighten her skin tone even more. The later version has Susan Kohner, who had a Czech father and a Mexican (European-Mexican, I think) mother. Mel Ferrer looks like he could vaguely play one of those Mexicans of European heritage, so he's not too awful in terms of casting.

Whatever your opinion of the casting, Lost Boundaries is an interesting movie that deserves at least one viewing.

Briefs for January 25-26, 2016

TCM's prime time theme for tonight is spy movies of the 1960s. I thought it was people who get reluctantly involved in the spy game, but that is not in fact the case. One of the movies running is The Ipcress File, at 10:00 PM. In this one, Michael Caine plays already-a-spy Harry Palmer, who has to investigate a series of brainwashings. I'm sorry to say that the one time I saw this I had a hard time getting into it, and have never been bothered to watch it again when it shows up. So since I don't really care for it and haven't seen it in ages, anyway, it's not something I'd be comfortable doing a full-length post on. That having been said, watch the movie and judge for yourself.

The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with another movie I haven't seen in quite a few years, Arabesque. In this one, Gregory Peck plays a professor of Middle Eastern studies who gets involved in some plot involving a piece of ancient hieroglyphics, which supposedly contain the key to the political intrigue going on in one or another Middle East hotspot. Sophia Loren plays the female lead. My memory of this is that it was a good example of 60s style, although I have to admit that the plot details are rather fuzzy, since a lot of those 60s spy movies tend to blend into one another.

TCM, I think, made a slight mistake in scheduling the movies, however. At 4:00 AM tomorrow, you can catch The Prize, followed at 6:30 AM by Our Man in Marrakesh (also known as Bang! Bang! You're Dead!). In the latter movie, Tony Randall plays the man who gets roped into some plot involving somebody trying to bribe delegates to the United Nations. I haven't seen it, so I can't comment on it. In The Prize, which is entertaining, Paul Newman plays a writier who is in Stockholm to pick up his Nobel Prize for Literature; while meeting with the other Nobel laureates, he gets the distinct feeling that one of them Edward G. Robinson has been kidnapped and replaced by a double.

I think these two movies should have been flipped in the TCM schedule. That's because tomorrow, January 26, is the birth anniversary of Paul Newman. TCM are running a bunch of his movies in the morning and afternoon, beginning at 8:15 AM after Our Man in Marrakesh. So if they had flipped that and The Prize on the schedule, you'd have The Prize ending the night of 60s spy films and beginning the day of Paul Newman movies.

Over on FXM Retro, you've got two chances to catch Captain From Castile, tomorrow at 4:00 AM and 11:00 AM. Who says FXM doesn't repeat its films often enough?

She's so fine she blows my mind

Tonight's Silent Sunday Nights selection on TCM is Mickey, airing tonight at midnight.

Mabel Normand plays the title character, the orphaned daughter of a miner out west. She's been raised by her father's business partner. They're looking to sell the mine to secure a comfortable living for Mickey, and when they meet the mining engineer looking to buy it, he and Mickey develop a liking for each other.

But meanwhile, Mickey and her guardian also have to go back east, where Mickey has an aunt she hasn't seen in years. The aunt is living a life of luxury, but it's a bit of an illusion in that she really doesn't have that much money and is looking to marry her daughter off into a well-to-do family. Mickey shows up with that mine, and naturally, Auntie thinks the money earned from selling the mine would be just the thing to help her daughter's prospects. However, she finds that perhaps the mine is all played out, which would make it worthless, and suddenly starts treating Mickey terribly.

Mickey is a comedy, however, so we all know that things are going to work out right in the end. It's been a while since I've seen it; I know I watched it on TCM when they ran a night of silents for some reason or another. Maybe it was when they had silent stars as Star of the Month; I can't remember. But it's one of those movies where I have a clear memory of the basic plot but not enough of the specifics to do justice to it with a full-length blog post.

Thankfully, however, Mickey, having been released in 1918, is in the public domain, which means that it's available on Youtube legally for free:

MGM Oddities

A lot of the studios produced some odd little shorts back in the day, but MGM actually called one of its series of shorts "MGM Oddities". One of those oddities, Chili and Chills, airs tomorrow at about 8:01 AM, just after Rasputin and the Empress (6:00 AM, 121 min). This one, which I haven't seen, involves a couple driving through Mexico and seeing some odd sights.

In fact, I have to admit to not having seen most of the MGM Oddities. MGM made about two dozen of them in the early and mid 1930s, with subject matter that often seems as though it would be more suited to the Pete Smith shorts. Indeed, Pete Smith was already working at MGM by this time and was involved in some of the MGM Oddities, at least according to IMDb. Menu, for example, comes to mind. That's also one of the few that I've seen.