School young Orson Welles attended faces the wrecking ball
October 4th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Click to enlarge
Young Orson attending the Tood School c.1930
A historic dorm for boys in Woodstock, IL once attended by prep school student Orson Welles is marked for demolition.
The Chicago Tribune reports, “the two-story residence hall was the center of campus life for Welles and hundreds of other students at Todd School for Boys, which operated from 1848 to 1954. It now serves as offices for Woodstock Christian Life Services, which wants to raze the 88-year-old building to make room for independent-living duplexes for seniors.”
“As a young fellow, Orson Welles would sit in the living room of Grace Hall and enthrall other students with his impromptu storytelling,” said Caryl Lemanski, 67, who was raised in the building, where her parents served as resident faculty.
“He would write scripts for radio shows in a basement sound studio.”
My friend and LaSalle Theatre successor Matt Hoffman has been keeping EC abreast of the situation. He writes that it looks pretty bleak for that Todds school and that there will be a vote on it Tuesday. He also enclosed portions of a letter detailing a Thursday night meeting which his friend Jerry attended with his wife, Patty. (The names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
As for our meeting, it was great at the beginning as they have made concessions to our criticisms, but it got bad when Patty decided to bring up what they were planning to do with the historic building. There were only six of us neighbors there, in this little conference room at the nursing home these guys run, so that was a little awkward anyway. When Patty started questioning why they were in such a hurry to do this, and started getting a little heated at the way they weren’t answering her questions, two of our old-lady neighbors started whispering to her that “you’re on a different mission”, and, “this isn’t the place for this”; then the HR guy from the home who was there started raising his voice about how Patty was being hypocritical because we had earlier agreed that our main concerns about their plans had to do with aesthetics, safety and privacy, and now she was bringing up this separate issue. Patty apologized and said that she hadn’t realized this wasn’t the appropriate venue for this issue and sat down, and I could tell she was steaming. The lawyer didn’t help things by saying that if we got the building designated a landmark, and nobody else purchased it, they would just let it sit there and rot. Great, thanks.
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Tags: historic building, illinois, Orson Welles, orson welles school, orson wells, orsonwelles, todds school, WoodstockFiled Under News
New Photos Added: Johnny Depp, Orson Welles, “Baby Jane,” Angie Dickinson, Jack Brickhouse, Cary Grant, Jean Seberg, Jerry Lewis, etc.
October 4th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Jean Arthur (with Charles Boyer) - 1 Photo added from History is Made at Night.
Chicago TV and Radio - 3 images of Jack Brickhouse added. HEY! HEY! (Thanks, Rob!)
Cartoon Movie Posters - New gallery with 84 images added.
Raymond Burr - New gallery with 11 images added.
Kirk Douglas - 1 image added from Lust for Life.
Johnny Depp - 2 images added from Arizona Dream (with Jerry Lewis).
Cary Grant (poolside with Randolph Scott) - 1 image added.
The Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon - 1 image added.
Angie Dickinson in Point Blank - 1 photo added.
Jean Seberg - 1 image added.
Frank Tashlin - 24 images added.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine in Some Came Running - image added.
Orson Welles - 16 images added. (Thanks, Rob!)
Bette Davis, Joan Crawford and Maidie Norman in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? - New gallery with 34 images.
Jayne Mansfield, Tony Randall, Joan Blondell and Shamroy in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? - New gallery with 13 images.
Tags: Angie Dickinson, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Jack Brickhouse, Jean Arthur, Jean Seberg, Jerry Lewis, Joan Crawford, Johnny Depp, Kirk Douglas, Orson Welles, Raymond Burr, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?Filed Under Image Blog
A few words about “Citizen Kane”
September 28th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Why, tell me why the f do I have to go to imdb.com to research CK only to find Alan Thicke and Arthur Hiller’s pictures below the title? Ooooohhh!
Matt Wilson writes: “…sometimes I wonder if maybe it’s time we all take a break from shoving “Citizen Kane” down everyone’s throat.”
NEVER! WE MUST NEVER FORGET!
Kane is everything. It’s the first film noir (screw The Maltese Falcon!) and contains elements of just about every genre. It’s a goddamned history of cinema class! You have traces of comedy, melodrama, romance, newspaper pictures, there’s a musical number, even a reference to westerns when Jed exits the dusty swinging bar doors. While it may not contain a spaceship, there is a brief visit to Kong’s Skull Island to keep the fanboys happy.
On a performance level, it showcases a Stooge player (Phil Van Zandt), hack-tor Alan Ladd’s best performance, and Kane remains the only studio film made in the 40s that doesn’t contain a cameo by Bess Flowers! I told you Welles was a genius!
I won’t even start on the nonsense that Kane was the first sound film to show ceilings and explore the possibilities of deep focus cinematography. I’ve seen Scarface and Stagecoach and besides, James Wong Howe did it a decade before Gregg Toland. Welles is to talkies what Griffith is to silents. Kane is the first modern talking picture in it’s use of sound as a means to tell its story. In that sense, and so many more, we all owe it everything!
If there was a better photographed black-and-white film released by a major studio send a copy up on that dumbwaiter tout de suite. Forget about pretty pictures or that painterly MGM crap. Go back and watch how the camerawork tells the story during the flashback to Kane’s Boarding House. We start on Young Charlie outdoors playing with Rosebud. In a moment we realize that the camera is shooting from inside the house. In six or seven shots Welles and Toland give the illusion of an unbroken take. Through subtle movements, the camera continually comments on the dialog. It could be the single greatest scene ever committed to film.
A decidedly beige Orson Welles during a 1940 makeup test.
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Tags: Citizen Kane, citizen kane photos, greatest movie ever made, greatest movie of all time, Orson WellesFiled Under Rants
Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL DVD Special Edition slated for October release
July 8th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Here’s something you won’t find on any DVD - Whit Masterson’s BADGE OF EVIL
Emulsion Compulsion’s favorite movie of all time is set to receive a (semi) deluxe, 50th Anniversary DVD reissue
The reason I qualify ‘deluxe’ with a parenthetical ’semi’ is because the set fails to include the outstanding 1999 documentary Reconstructing Evil. A couple of sites erroneously listed it as an extra included in the 2000 DVD edition. I double checked and aside from the trailer and a copy of Welles’ 58-page memo (both included in the new set) there is nothing in the way of extras. In its place there are two new documentaries, Bringing Evil to Life and Evil Lost & Found.
Continue reading Orson Welles’ TOUCH OF EVIL DVD Special Edition slated for October release
Tags: Amazon, Anniversary, Charlton Heston, dvd, F.X. Feeny, James Naremore, Janet Leigh, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Orson Welles, Photos, Restoration, Rick Schmidlin, Special Edition, TOUCH OF EVIL, VideoFiled Under News
Fritz Lang’s original cut of METROPOLIS found in Buenos Aires museum
July 5th, 2008 by Scott Marks
In May, rumors that an uncut, 131 minute print of Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons was discovered at the São Paulo Cinematheque. A fellow named Roberto posted this tidbit on the Turner Classic Movies website adding, “cans labeled correctly but ignored by over-worked local preservation staff which assumed it was regular print of film.”
Recently, staff members of the Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken in Buenos Aires, found a 16mm negative of what was thought to have been long lost missing scenes from Fritz Lang’s 21st Century masterwork Metropolis.
On Thursday, the recently discovered material was shown to journalists for the first time in decades. Museum director Paula Felix-Didier said theirs is the only copy of German director Fritz Lang’s complete film.
All this talk of Brazil and Buenos Aires being the meccas of lost movies prompted compulsive Emulsion Compulsion loyalist ‘Bushido’ John Decapias to slide back his porkpie hat, scratch his head and muse, “Boy, everything is being rediscovered in South America. Let’s see if they find anything else.”
How about unearthing the missing reels to Greed, the pie fight from Dr. Strangelove and a copies of London After Midnight and Don Siegel’s Baby Face Nelson while they’re at it?
The last time anyone saw the complete version of Lang’s futuristic tale of man vs. machine was in May of 1927. According to Zeit Online, “At the time it was the most expensive German film ever made. It was intended to be a major offensive against Hollywood. However the film flopped with critics and audiences alike.”
Fanning flopsweat, American reps from Paramount took a scissors and started snipping away at Lang’s creation. The plot was restructured to the point of oversimplification and many crucial scenes excised. In their wake, all that remained of the original Metropolis was an incomplete original negative and copies of shortened and reedited release prints. For eighty years, over a quarter of Lang’s original vision had been considered missing in action.
Continue reading Fritz Lang’s original cut of METROPOLIS found in Buenos Aires museum
Tags: Argentina, Argentine, Brazil, Buenos Aires, Cinemateque, Complete, Film Preservation, Film Restoration, Fritz Lang, Images, Martin Koerber, METROPOLIS, Museo del Cine Pablo C. Ducros Hicken, Original Cut, Original Version, Orson Welles, Paula Félix-Didier, Photos, Pictures, Preservation, Restoration, São Paulo Cinemateque, Science Fiction, South America, The Complete METROPOLIS, The Magnificent Ambersons, Uncut, VideoFiled Under News
Orson Welles’ THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND completed by Peter Bogdanovich for Showtime
April 17th, 2008 by Scott Marks
Here we go again.
According to Lawrence French’s interview with Peter Bogdanovich published on Wellesnet.com, Showtime is once again set to bankroll the completion of Orson Welles’ highly anticipated The Other Side of the Wind.
There were rumblings over the years that Showtime commissioned Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich to finally put an amen on the project. Bogdanovich, who also stars in the film, was asked by Welles “to finish the picture if anything should ever happen to him. ” In August 2002, the premium channel announced that a deal had been reached to finish and release the film.
At that time Welles’ daughter Beatrice, who controls her father’s estate but has no claim to the film, threatened the deal with a lawsuit saying she owned the film. Shortly thereafter Showtime backed down.
Rumors persisted that the film was never completed, but according to Bogdanovich, “I don’t think we need to shoot anything, but we still have to see all the footage, so we’re not entirely sure. But Orson said he didn’t think there was anything left that needed to be shot.”
There was also talk that Oja Kodar, Welles’ lover at the time of his death, was also acting as a roadblock. Bogdanovich countered those claims by saying, “No, it wasn’t Oja. I don’t want to go into details, but there were some rights we still needed, but hadn’t gotten. But Showtime is still going to go forward with the project. We just have to work out of few more of the rights issues. Since then, I’ve actually seen a lot of the footage I hadn’t seen before, because we got into Oja’s vault in Los Angeles which has all the positive footage. I’d only seen about 40 minutes of the film and now I’ve seen quite a lot of new footage. These are scenes we had shot but Orson never showed them to me. I still haven’t seen everything, because there is so much stuff to look at. It’s the dailies and so on and it looks great.”
A friend noted, “the footage that I’ve seen seemed ragtag, as if it was slapped together.” The only scenes made public were included in Welles’ 1975 AFI Tribute and the documentary The One Man Band. While cimematographer Gary Graver is hardly a worthy substitute for Gregg Toland or Russell Metty, the footage looked remarkably fresh as though the cinema’s supreme experimental filmmaker was still finding new methods of storytelling.
As much as I would love for the San Diego premiere of The Other Side of the Wind to be held in my living room, let’s hope that the film has a theatrical run before hitting cable TV.
The entire transcript of Peter Bogdanovich’s interview can be found here.
Tags: Completed, Orson Welles, Peter Bogdanovich, Showtime, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, Video
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