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Two Days In Another Town

April 18th, 2009 by Scott Marks

Traveling north, I found myself in sunny Malibu meeting with commcinema.com, California’s premier provider of outdoor cinema systems. Say hello to their new San Diego rep, but more on that in future columns.

From Malibu, I sailed east to the lovely city of Burbank to spend the night at brother Rick’s conclave celebrating with pizza from Casa Bianca (as good a thin crust pie as any in Chicago) and watching educational DVDs. Rick could not make it through more than thirty minutes of Emilio before his George C. Scott impulse kicked in and he began to scream, “TURN IT OFF!” Besides, with a suitcase filled with The Munsters and latter day Buster Keaton shorts directed by Jules White, who needed contemporary art house drivel?

En route to Casa Bianca, we made our loyal pilgrimage to Ledge & Riverside to visit the Toluca lake Branch of Planet Hope. As always, Rick’s car radio instantly turned to AM 1620, Bob Hope Airport Radio. Where else on earth (except my house) can you hear Bob Hope’s name mentioned at least once every minute?

There was a lot more I heard coming from Radio Free Hope. Things I dare not tell you.

Herman’s Sorority Caper was a revelation on Rick’s Hi-Def monitor. The cameo by Mike Ross (he prays for Fat Jack’s death in The Disorderly Orderly) looked so crisp that one could actually smell the wine on Grandpa’s breath. The image was was so lifelike, when Grandpa cast a spell on Herman to cure him of hiccups, I wound up in a trance!

Grandpa lays it on Herman!

The Jules White touch is unmistakable. Say what you will about the end results, the man was an auteur. I can spot a Jules White cutaway shot a mile away. The same goes for one of his lazy, trademarked cut-ins. (Begin a scene by placing the camera twelve-feet away from the action. Stop, move the camera in six-feet and resume filming.) Using the Stooge template, White directed ten Buster Keaton shorts for Columbia between 1939 - 41. The credit design, and many of those credited, are identical to the opening passages used in Stooge shorts from the same period. The shorts were scripted by longtime Keaton co-writer (Sherlock, Jr., The General) and then-current Stooge scribe (I’ll Never Heil Again, Brideless Groom) Clyde Bruckman. In one form or another you have seen every gag these shorts have to offer.

That doesn’t mean I failed to study ever foot of them, particularly the sound effects. The penultimate Stooge sound effect is the “UHH!” It’s the funniest god damned thing.The first recorded evidence that I have been able to track down occurred in the dance class scene in Hoi Polloi. It’s the same guy, who sounds nothing like any of the Stooges, saying “UHH!” a hundred times. They appear in literally dozens if not hundreds of Columbia shorts and features throughout the 30s and 40s. Each time I hear one I laugh, especially when they arrive unexpected.Next time a Blondie film is on, stick around for the inevitable scene where Dagwood collides with the postman. UHH!

By comparing shorts, you can actually see the methods to the sound effects editor’s madness. The “UHH!” is only brought out when the punishment fits the crime. Bumping into someone, having a door open in your face, or even falling off a horse is cause for an “Eeep,” not an “UHH!” Getting head butted in the stomach is immediate cause for an “UHH!” The same goes for when characters fall on top of each other, although in this instance it is almost impossible to determine just who emitted the sound. I am revealing too much information from my upcoming 7,000 page doctoral thesis on the semiotic use and application of sound effects at Columbia Pictures, 1935 - 1958.

The next morning I had to hop two Metros and one Big Blue Bus to travel from Burbank to Santa Monica. The #222 (Lloyd Haines wasn’t my driver) picked me up on the corner of Magnolia and Hollywood Way. Taking up all three handicapped seats at the front of the bus were a couple from Nashville whom your grandmother would describe as “good eaters.” There was some sleazy guy in his late 30s seated opposite them trying to sell them on taking one of his personalized tours of Hollywood. Here’s a red flag: If a guy has his own fleet of limos to chauffeur tourists around the city, what the hell is he doing on a public bus?

The young couple, in town for the weekend in order to attend a religious convention, had never before ventured into this part of the world. They were actually very nice people and everybody instantly got in on the conversation. I am always nice to tourists and will go out of my way to make sure they know how to arrive at their intended destination. Let them go back to Tennessee and tell everyone how nice Southern Californians are and entice their friends to come west and spend their vacation dollars.

“So where do you think the best place is for us to see some movie stars,” he asked in his best Jethro Bodine. I told them either The Ivy or the Von’s in Burbank where I saw Bob Hope. Others had better suggestions. I pointed out the seven little houses on Hollywood Way that Uncle Walt built for the seven lead animators that worked on Snow White. Even the so-called tour guide never heard that one before. He quickly pointed at the building with the name Warner Bros. writ large across it’s side and said, “that’s Warner Bros. Clint Eastwood has an office there.” Rounding Alameda he announced, “that’s NBC where they tape the ‘Leno’ show. It starts taping at five, but people line up for hours before.”

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DVD Review: MUNSTER, GO HOME! / Earl Bellamy (1966)

December 23rd, 2008 by Scott Marks



Photo credit: Marky Munster

Munster, Go Home! (1966)
Directed by Earl Bellamy
Written by Joe Connelly, Bob Mosher and George Tibbles
Starring: Fred Gwynne, Yvonne DeCarlo, Al Lewis, Butch Patrick, Debbie Watson, Terry-Thomas, Hermione Gingold, John Carradine, Robert Pine, Bernard Fox, Cliff Norton, Arthur Malet and Richard Dawson
Running Time: 96 min.
Photographed by Benjamin J. Kline in

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

My first screening of Munster, Go Home! came, as it did to all Mockingbird Heights maniacs my age, on the bottom half of a double bill with the Don Knotts dud The Ghost and Mr. Chicken. (The film had not performed as well as expected so the worried studio immediately reissued it as part of a TV theme combo.) This would be the first chance audiences had to see America’s first family of fright in color and I couldn’t descend the El platform steps and turn the corner fast enough to get to the decrepit Howard Theatre.

This was not the first time Herman, Lily and the gang were committed to color stock. (Neither Universal or CBS would pay the extra $10,000 per episode needed for color, so the show was subsequently filmed in black and white.) In 1964, Universal presented CBS with a 16 minute color demo reel in response to what they saw as the nation’s growing monster mania. A decade earlier, the studio had sold its film library to television and their classic creatures from the 1930s saw a resurgence in popularity. Suddenly, monsters became fun and television smelled potential sitcom material. Ray Walston’s “Uncle Martin” was the first out-of-this-world jester to hit the airwaves and My Favorite Martian became a surprise hit of the 1963 season. The fall ‘64 roster saw no less than four supernatural sitcoms. Bewitched led the way followed by The Addams Family, The Munsters and the all but forgotten My Living Doll which starred Julie Newmar as a sexy robot opposite hopelessly sexist Bob Cummings.

The Munsters’ presentation that Universal put together for CBS execs was shot on existing sets and used discarded music from a Doris Day picture as its theme. Fred Gwynne, Al Lewis and Beverly Owen all made the cut, but the CBS brass insisted on recasting the role of Herman’s wife, “Phoebe,” played by Joan Marshall. They felt Ms. Marshall bore too close a resemblance to Carolyn Jones’ “Morticia Addams” and she was replaced by on the skids movie star Yvonne DeCarlo. Both Gwynne and Lewis’ insecurity began to show. Would a seasoned movie star pack a lot of ego or, even worse, outshine the boys? Ms. DeCarlo was perfect in the role of “Lily Munster” and the actors later admitted they were wrong in their initial assumptions.



Gone, too, was Happy Derman, a monstrous little tyke whose one note interpretation of Eddie Munster didn’t bode well. Popular child actor Billy Mumy was the original choice for Eddie Munster, but his parents wouldn’t agree to the extensive makeup it would take for their son to become a little wolfboy. Next up, Happy Derman whose sole shot at Munsterdom is preserved on the two DVD set The Munsters: America’s First Family of Fright, a must for all collections. Happy looks like a little Larry Talbot after the third transformation dissolve. He walks hunched over, bares his fangs and teeth and speaks in growls. Butch Patrick, the boy who would be “Eddie,” remembered his predecessor: “Happy Derman wasn’t very happy. He was the meanest little kid I’d ever seen.” He is a thoroughly off-putting little creature and, with all due respect to Butch, one I would have gladly spent two seasons watching.

Conceptually,The Munsters is little more than The Donna Reed Show, a typical sixties sitcom about a wholesome suburban family, played in greenface. God damn if the show doesn’t continue to make me laugh to this day due in large part to the perfect teaming of Gwynne and Lewis. They had previously worked together on the NBC sitcom Car 54, Where Are You? and their pairing as a Yiddish Grandpa Dracula and his seven-foot green, goyish son-in-law redefined genius.

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