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.”
Continue reading Two Days In Another Town
Tags: Al Lewis, bus, Buster Keaton, California, Hollywood, hollywood blvd., hollywood boulevard, jules white, los angeles, Metro, The 3 Stooges, THE MUNSTERS, The Three StoogesFiled Under Rants
Dig A Hole: Cyd Charisse
June 17th, 2008 by Scott Marks
One of the single most beautiful, heart-stopping moments in all of cinema involved the equally exquisite Cyd Charisse. It appears towards the end of The Band Wagon’s Technicolor topper The Girl Hunt Ballet. On bended knee, her other spectacular stem acting as rudder, she glides across the highly polished soundstage floor like a child on ice, stopping on a dime at the feet of Fred Astaire. It was worth every take director Vincente Minnelli put her through. Every time I have seen this film in a theater, the audience never fails to gasp.
Ms. Charisse, 86, was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Monday after suffering an apparent heart attack. She died earlier today.
Born to dance, Ms. Charisse spent her early childhood taking ballet lessons and joined the Ballet Russe when she was just 13. According to Bob Thomas, “She was a sickly girl who started dancing lessons to build up her strength after a bout with polio.” In order to fit in with the Russian dance troupe she appearing under the names Maria Istomina and Felia Sidorova.
She was nicknamed Cyd by her brother who was unable to pronounce sister and called her Sid. She later convinced her agent to keep the name with the present spelling fearing that Sid was too masculine.
In 1939 she married her ex-dancing instructor Nico Charise. Four years later the former Tula Ellice Finklea began her Hollywood career under another assumed name, Lily Norwood, dancing opposite Don Ameche and Janet Blair in Something to Shout About (1943). It wasn’t, but she was and the offers began pouring in.
“I had just done that number with David as a favor to him,” she said in “The Two of Us,” her 1976 double autobiography with Martin. “Honestly, the idea of working movies had never once entered my head. I was a dancer, not an actress. I had no delusions about myself. I couldn’t act — I had never acted. So how could I be a movie star?”
She signed a seven-year contract with M-G-M just as the Arthur Freed unit was poised to usher in the studio’s Golden Age of Technicolor musicals. She played a small role in The Harvery Girls, but it was her appearance opposite Fred Astaire in one of The Ziegfeld Follies’ specialty numbers that inked her as a Metro contract player.
Astaire, who also danced alongside her in The Band Wagon and Silk Stockings, said of Charisse in a 1983 interview: “She wasn’t a tap dancer, she’s just beautiful, trained, very strong in whatever we did. When we were dancing, we didn’t know what time it was.”
In 1948, the year after she and Nico divorced, Charisse married Mr. Electricity, Tony Martin. Tony warmed the heart and introduced audiences to the Cohen’s pianola and the Kelly’s with their Victrola in his Tenement Symphony in The Marx Bros. The Big Store. Beg all you want, I have nothing bad to say about a man who has been with me since as far back as my memory extends, no matter how deleterious his efforts were.
Michael Kidd, Cyd Charisse, Gene Kelly & Dan Dailey in It’s Always Fair Weather
Ms. Charisse graced Metro’s three most spectacular musicals of the 1950s: Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon and the seldom discussed though equally impeccable It’s Always Fair Weather. It’s certain that all three of these will pop up on TCM sometime in the next 96 hours.
Next to Barbara Stanwyck, Cyd Charisse possessed the best set of pins in the business and in 1952 she had them insured for $5 million.
By 1960 the demand for musicals waned, as did her career. She had one more masterpiece at Metro. In 1962 Vincente Minnelli directed Two Weeks in Another Town, his long awaited sequel to The Bad and the Beautiful. Ms. Charisse plays Kirk Douglas’ ruinous ex-wife and their careening, studio bound (and magnificently staged) drive through the hills of Rome is the film’s stylistic capper.
Two Weeks was followed by forty years of bad television and self-imposed retirement. If you are lucky enough to be Mrs. Tony Martin, why leave the house?
Filed Under Obituaries