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Kid 'N' Hollywood [Kid in Hollywood] (Charles Lamont, 1933)

Jun

12

Child Labor Day

Kid 'N' Hollywood (1933)

A movie set on a movie set in Kid 'N' Hollywood. Shirley Temple can be seen on her knees scrubbing the floor as the character Morelegs Sweettrick. Standing next to her with a bullhorn and adult spats is Arthur J. Maskery as the tyrannical movie director Frightwig von Stumblebum. As in all the Baby Burlesk shorts, the kids are only half-dressed with their diapers showing.

 

Shirley Temple was “discovered” at the age of three by then-casting director Charles Lamont and promptly shot to stardom is his satirical Baby Burlesks: short talkies starring toddlers in diapers (a burlesque being a short, humorous skit). The gag was that the kids behaved and spoke like adults, seemingly unaware of being #children.

“This isn’t playtime, kids, it’s work.”

– Charles Lamont, Baby Burlesk director

In the Baby Burlesk Kid 'N' Hollywood, Temple plays a Hollywood hopeful called Morelegs Sweettrick, who gets her break when the star doesn't feel like showing up (kids, right? no discipline).

 

While Kid 'N' Hollywood is relatively innocent, others in the series are much more sexualised (War Babies (1932) stars Temple as prostitute Charmaine) or plain racist (Kid 'in' Africa (1933) with Temple as Madame Cradlebait, bringing civilisation to Black kids portraying fearsome cannibals).

 

I'm not the one to take events from the past out of context and apply modern-day sensibilities to them, and with the advent of #ChildLabor laws for #Hollywood child actors, many of the horrors recalled by Temple and her peers are history. School is mandatory, long hours restricted, and using twins to split the workload is definitely not unheard of.

 

And then I watched teevee, and saw chubby, precocious blondes with dental plates to hide their missing baby teeth, wearing lipstick and baby-dolls, grinding and crooning with no backup in sight. And I remember Miss Temple say:

“Any star can be devoured by human adoration, sparkle by sparkle.”

– Shirley Temple

Suspense (1913)

Triangular split-screen in Suspense (1913). While the Wife (Lois Weber) is on the phone with her Husband (Val Paul), unbeknownst to them the Tramp (Sam Kaufman) cuts the telephone wire.

Suspense (1913)

June 11: say Hi! on #SayHiDay

Suspense (Phillips Smalley & LoisWeber, 1913)

Now he's in the…

Suspense is not only the title of this short silent thriller, but also the state of mind the viewer is put into as soon as the film opens. Using POV (point-of-view) shots and breaking the fourth wall, the imminent threat – a vagrant trespassing and creeping up to a lone woman and her newborn child – creeps up on us. We know we're safe, on the other side of the screen, but the Tramp (a particularly haunting Sam Kaufman) looks us right in the eye. He passes us on the stairs, but he's going around us so he must be, hopefully, aware of our presence.

Meanwhile, we also see something that only cinema and books can give: multiple happenings at once. The Wife (Lois Weber) calls her Husband (Val Paul) on the phone. Suddenly the screen splits into three: in the middle, the Husband on call, listening to his Wife on the right who's begging him to hurry home. On the left, the Tramp. Unlike us, he cannot see the conversation promising a happy end. But instead that bringing some relief to the viewer, he cuts the phone cable. While we see that happen, we have no way to tell the Husband to make haste, or the Wife that the Tramp's getting closer.

What's striking too is the omnipresence of modernity: the couple's home and Husband's office have telephones and therefore electricity, and the Husband speeds off in an automobile. The cinematography for the telephone and car chase scenes are filmed and edited with great knowledge of the technical possibilities of the medium; split-screen (only gathering popularity much later, see Pillow Talk (1959), and the usage of the Entfesselte Kamera [unchained camera], the latter a mid 1920s German invention.

A similar, triangular split-screen scene from Michael Gordon's Pillow Talk (1959) with (LtR) Eileen (Valerie Allen), Jan Morrow (Doris Day), and Brad Allen (Rock Hudson) on the party line. With Ms Day's character centred, we know that she's the one to identify with in this particular scene. DP: Arthur E. Arling.

Pillow Talk (1959)

With that, Suspense not only preceded Italian futurist cinema, but also the usage of suspense as a cinematic technique. Now go and watch, and remember

it's only a movie it's only a movie it's only a movie

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #PhillipsSmalley #LoisWeber #SamKaufman #USA #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #drama #suspense #crime #thriller #HomeInvasion #1910s ★★★★☆

#todo

A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Dieterle + Max Reinhardt, 1935)

Jun

10

Superman Week

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

Oberon (Victor Jory) – King of the Fairies – on his horse with Puck (Mickey Rooney) – a trickster sprite. While they ride of, Oberon's cape flows behind them through the trees, supported by the fae. A lot of the other-worldly fairy sparkle was accomplished by generous amounts of DuPont® cellophane and cinematographer Hal Mohr's contribution of trimming the trees with aluminium paint, cobwebs, and small metal particles. DP: Hal Mohr.

Capes, cloaks, and mantles are everywhere in Dieterle and Reinhardt's lavishly outfitted A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dreamlike #CostumeDesign by Max Rée and the uncredited Milo Anderson is as much as a personality as #Shakespeare's characters are.

“Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray…”

– Oberon, Act 5, Scene 1

Any reports of Kenneth Anger's presence as the Changeling Prince are greatly exaggerated.

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (Richard Blackburn, 1973)

Jun

4

meat

Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973)

A fancy looking silver plate with what appears to be raw meat. DP: Robert Caramico.

“Wouldn't you rather I did it out of love, than have one of those wood things do it out of their own animal hungers?”

– Lemora

Who Killed Teddy Bear (Joseph Cates, 1965)

Jun

3

Who Killed Teddy Bear (1965)

A square 1960s man – Jan Murray as Lt. Dave Madden – smugly pouring himself a stiff drink. DP: Joseph C. Brun.

“I don't find you the least bit amusing, Lieutenant Whatever-your-problem- is!”

– Norah Dain

The Last Man on Earth (Ubaldo Ragona + Sidney Salkow, 1964)

Jun

2

Republic Day – Italy

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Dr. Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) walking down the stairs of the Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana (aka the Palazzo della Civiltà del Lavoro aka the Colosseo Quadrato), with bodies scattered around him. DP: Franco Delli Colli.

Rome's EUR was Italy's site for the 1942 World's Fair, and meant as a showcase for #Mussolini's then-20 year old fascist state. Due to the outbreak of World War 2, EUR was never used for the Fair. Instead, the Italian Republic restored the project after the war and – quite appropriately if I may say so – turned it into a business district.

“Your new society sounds charming.”

– Dr. Robert Morgan

An idealised, hypermodern interpretation of Classical Roman architecture, EUR feels alien and inhumane and serves as a perfect backdrop for the events a last man on earth may come up against.

 

Besides in The Last Man on Earth, EUR makes an appearance in Antonioni's L'eclisse (1962), Bertolucci's Il conformista (1970), Antonio Pietrangeli's Io la conoscevo bene (1965), and Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect (1987).

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Gertie raises her creator Winsor McCay in her mouth. McCay holds a dressage whip but in his tuxedo resembles a musical conductor more than a lion tamer. DPs: John A. Fitzsimmons & Winsor McCay.

Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

June 1: dinosaurs for #DinosaurDay

Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914)

I made ten thousand cartoons —each one a little bit different from the one preceding it.

Long before we all flocked to the movies, there was vaudeville. Vaudeville comes in many flavours, from raucous song and dance, acrobatics (see #BusterKeaton's start) to chalk talk: a live performance in which an artist would chat and draw on a blackboard in real time. The format is perfect to enlighten and entertain an audience, about the dangers of alcohol, the importance of religion, the demand for women's suffrage.

But where there's a scholar, there's a showman. As a chalk talk consists of a succession of quickly drawn illustrations, one flowing into the next while the performer raps over it, the leap to animation is a logical one. In 1914, a brontosaurus named Gertie and a comic strip creator called Winsor McCay travelled the land – both animated and real.

McCay, known for his fantastic comic strips Little Nemo in Slumberland and its predecessor Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, introduced the great animated animal to the audience with little tidbits of knowledge about the mighty brontosaurus, throw her an apple, demonstrate her gentleness by stepping into the screen (a parlour trick made the transition from real to animated look incredibly convincing) and let Gertie carry him around in her prehistoric world. In front of the delighted audience, the showman then would reappear into our realm.

The movies were young and promising, and Gertie's leap to celluloid was made the very same year. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), an adaptation of the vaudeville act and the first animated dinosaur movie, moves the stage to a dinner party at the animator's studio, where McCay shows off his animation skills as part of a bet.

Gertie, with its combination of animated and real content, had a huge influence on film makers to come. You can see it in Max Fleischer's wonderful Out of the Inkwell cartoons (1918 – 1929) and Ubi Iwerk's Alice Comedies (1923 – 1927, the only original work that ever came out of the Disney studios). And Buster Keaton? In honour of Gertie he rode a claymation brontosaurus in his Three Ages (1923).

The Boy's (Buster Keaton) nifty use of a pre-Willis O’Brien stop-motion Brontosaurus' high vantage point. DPs: Elgin Lessley & William C. McGann.

Three Ages (1923)

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #WinsorMcCay #JohnAFitzsimmons #vaudeville #comedy #dinosaurs #animals #animation #ShortFilm #SilentFilm #USA #1910s

#todo

Sure Fire (Jon Jost, 1990)

May

31

National Utah Day

Sure Fire (1990)

The Utah landscape with part of the text from “Doctrine and Covenants 3, The Lord’s course is one eternal round” superimposed over it. It reads: …y come to naught, for God doth not walk in crook…. DP: Jon Jost.

Wes has it all laid out. His business partner just needs to see it. And his wife. And the people from the West Coast, California, where there's smog and people and no space. They surely want a home, or a second home, in Utah. It's close to Vegas, sure they'll love it. The people.

“One cannot even be sure, whether it is a sect, a mystery cult, a new religion, a church, a people, a nation, or an American subculture; indeed, at different times and places it is all of these.”

– Sydney E. Ahlstrom, historian (1982)

With Sure Fire, director Jon Jost accomplishes that what Lynch tries. A mundane gem with an ominous undertow, but all without the need for mystery or eccentric characters.

 

Just Utah, and its people.

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

May

27

Golden Gate Bridge

Vertigo (1958)

A pensive Novak in black in front of a sunlit Golden Gate Bridge. DP: Robert Burks.

A bridge to celebrate the 1937 Golden Gate Bridge opening.

“Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you; you took no notice.”

Night Tide (Curtis Harrington, 1961)

May

22

National Maritime Day

Night Tide (1961)

Johnny Drake (Dennis Hopper) and Mora (Linda Lawson) in front of her joint that reads “MORA the MERMAID. ALIVE! LOVELY SIREN of the DEEP”. The sideshow's mural, and presumably the lettering too, were painted by Kenneth Anger associate Paul Mathison, both part of (Marjorie) Cameron's Magick Circle. DPs: Vilis Lapenieks & Floyd Crosby.

On the Santa Monica pier, sailor Johnny falls in love with one of the attractions of the local #sideshow, Mora the Mermaid. As people warn Johnny about the faith of Mora's previous suitors, captivated, he becomes convinced that she is a real siren, planning his downfall.

– Yes, I love the sea most of all. But I'm afraid of it, too.

– I guess we're all a little afraid of what we love.

 

This, lost dreamlike L.A. is gone; a treasure like Night Tide serves as a reminder of a more spellbinding Hollywood.