Screening Report: FOXY – THE COMPLETE PAM GRIER at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

Like I needed another reason to adore Pam Grier.

“I loved the old Boris Karloff films,” the actress said on Friday night before a midnight screening of SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM (1973) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Francesca Beale Theater, part of an eleven-film retrospective of her work.

“Those films back in the day – black and white films – those scared the shit out of me,” she laughed.

Coincidentally, Grier carved her place in pop culture history in a film genre that scared many moviegoers in the early 1970s, but for entirely different reasons: the so-called “Blaxploitation” action films. With a tone and sensibility unimaginable during the Studio Era, these envelope-pushing, post-Civil Rights Act parables of African American empowerment capitalized on the new creative freedoms enabled by the collapse of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1968. Opportunistic producers quickly cashed in, and the result was a torrent of low budget, independent productions that shocked older audiences with sex, profanity, and “anti-establishment” violence and were irresistible (at least for a while) to young viewers.

“SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM was, I think, $500,000 and it made something like $8 million. COFFY was $650,000 and it made $20-some million. And FOXY BROWN was $800,000 and it made another $30 or $40 million,” Grier told the Film Society’s Josh Strauss, programmer of the series. “I didn’t understand an ‘A’ movie or a ‘B’ movie, I just did the work. And that’s what, I think, has allowed me to work for 45 years. My approach was to be authentic and original.”

Still sexy and sassy at 63, Grier is one of the most memorably original actresses of the modern era. And, with her outsized Afro, aggressively liberated sexuality, and unapologetic propensity for ass kicking, Grier’s characters from her best-known films remain iconic a generation (or more) later. Hip hop artist Foxy Brown borrowed her nom de rap from Grier’s most successful movie of the ‘70s, Quentin Tarantino paid homage to her in 1997’s JACKIE BROWN (which also screened on Friday), and director Larry Cohen placed her on equal footing with the male heroes of the black action genre in his 1996 “reunion” film ORIGINAL GANGSTAS (which, sadly, was not part of this series.)

Grier shows no sign of slowing down as her career approaches the half-century mark. She recently wrapped a six-season run on the Showtime original series The L Word, spent four years writing a memoir (Foxy: My Life in Three Acts, which she signed for fans over the weekend), and continues to work in features (her last major studio release was Tom Hanks’ LARRY CROWNE in 2011). She’s also developing a biopic based on her book.

But for many longtime Pam Grier fans (like me), her rough-hewn early films will always hold the greatest charm. In that regard, the Film Society of Lincoln Center did not disappoint, with presentations of many rarely screened titles – most in 35 mm. And a few of the prints were delightfully battered, providing the closest thing to a grindhouse experience I’m likely to see in the Disneyfied New York City of 2013.

The festival kicked off on Friday afternoon with the women-in-prison epic THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972), Grier’s first real starring role. Set in an unnamed banana republic (but filmed in the Philippines), BIRD CAGE was produced by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures (always a good sign) and written and directed by Jack Hill, who provided the print (the Film Society said it was the only extant 35 mm copy). Pam plays Blossom, a gun-toting revolutionary who infiltrates an island work camp where the inmates’ only crime appears to be their penchant for toplessness. Charismatic exploitation film mainstay Sid Haig is Blossom’s boyfriend Django (no relation to the recent iteration). And Vic Cheng, a character actor known as “the Peter Lorre of the Philippines,” is a flamboyantly gay prison guard who ends up humorously (?) ravaged by the sex-starved inmates.

Next up was Jack Hill’s FOXY BROWN (1974), the second film in Grier’s career-making three-picture deal with American International Pictures. Originally conceived as a sequel to COFFY (1973), FOXY BROWN again finds Grier battling drug dealers who peddle the “new slavery of hard dope.” When Foxy’s D.E.A. agent boyfriend is rubbed out by thugs, she goes undercover as a hooker and vows revenge.

“Vigilante justice? It’s as American as apple pie,” she says.

The occasionally campy tone of the film is offset by some relatively shocking violence, including the apparent off-camera rape of Grier’s character, the immolation of her rapist and the castration of the blow-dried, medallion-wearing male villain (Peter Brown).

“It looks like a pickle jar,” remains one of the great climatic lines in film history.

Eddie Romero’s BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (1973) followed, with Grier once again frequently disrobed in an island prison, this time with a gay female matron who likes to peek in on the proceedings in the shower room. Like THE BIG BIRD CAGE, BLACK MAMA was shot in the Philippines, and features many returning cast members, including Haig and Cheng. The film is perhaps best remembered for an extended sequence in which Grier and co-star Margaret Markov evade capture while shackled together, like Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis in THE DEFIANT ONES (1958). Unlike Potier and Curtis, however, Grier and Markov are in panties.

Friday’s program also included a sold-out screening of JACKIE BROWN (1997), and the late show of SCREAM BLACULA SCREAM (1973). In this sequel to A.I.P.’s BLACULA (1972), Grier plays a Voodoo practitioner who falls under the thrall of the revived African prince Mamulwalde, and seeks to cure him of his centuries old vampire curse. William Marshall is memorably creepy in the title role, and the film is far more serious than the jokey title implies. It’s also the rare sequel that’s better than the original – much better, in fact.

Grier demonstrated genuine affection for the film and her co-star during her introductory remarks on Friday night.

“It was an honor to work with Professor William Marshall, a Shakespearean actor,” she said, playfully mimicking his deep voice. “I loved him. And the cape looked good on him, too.”

Marshall had struggled to maintain the dignity of the character during production of the first film, and both he and Grier pursued their work in the sequel with with the same level of dedication.

“I did do research on Voodoo and Ju-ju. And shit started to happen. It scared me,” Grier confessed. “With William Marshall, we both loved the fact that we prepared, we studied. But we didn’t want to mess with it. We wanted to respect it, just in case it worked.”

On Saturday, the festival moved across the street to the larger Walter Reade Theater for Andrew Davis’ ABOVE THE LAW (1988), in which Grier plays good cop to Steven Seagal’s bad in his (unintentionally hilarious) feature film debut. Next was Michael Schultz’s GREASED LIGHTNING (1977), featuring Richard Pryor as Wendell Scott, the first African American NASCAR driver. Pryor is charming in the film, and he and Grier have genuine chemistry – not surprising, considering that they were a couple for more than a year.

“Richard Pryor said I was crazier than he was,” Grier reminisced after the rarely seen film unspooled.

According to Grier, Melvin Van Peebles was originally slated to direct GREASED LIGHTNING, but was replaced by COOLEY HIGH (1975) helmer Michael Schultz, who had directed Pryor in CAR WASH (1976). She didn’t offer details of Van Peebles’ exit from the project, other than to say she was “brokenhearted when he left.”

Saturday’s keynote presentation was Jack Hill’s COFFY (1973), preceded by an on-stage chat with producer/director Warrington Hudlin (whom Grier said she also had dated).

Similarities abound between COFFY and FOXY BROWN. Both films were written and directed by Hill, both feature Grier as a vigilante posing as a hooker in pursuit of drug pushers, and both conclude with a male character being “relieved” of his masculinity (this time by a shotgun). But unlike in FOXY BROWN, Grier’s heroine in COFFY is more based in reality (relatively speaking). Early in the film we see her toiling at her nursing job, and her scenes with her strung out younger sister are grim. “Coffy” Coffin also spends the first few minutes of the film trying to talk herself (and the audience?) into the justness of her actions. In FOXY BROWN, she doesn’t waste time with such nuances. She just takes care of business.

Sunday kicked of with Arthur Marks’ BUCKTOWN (1975), a Fred “The Hammer” Williamson vehicle that completely wastes Grier in a supporting role (and also features Thalmus Rasulala and Carl “Apollo Creed” Weathers). The Hammer has his charms, and the “good guys turn bad” plot is inventive, but it’s difficult to watch Pam sit on the sidelines while the men fight it out, particularly when she was at the height of her badass renown. BUCKTOWN is also extremely sloppily directed by Marks, who ironically went on to direct Grier’s most polished action film of this period, 1975’s FRIDAY FOSTER (which was not included in the series, but is available via Amazon Instant).

Next was William Girdler’s SHEBA, BABY (1975), which features Grier as an ex-cop turned private eye out to once again avenge the death of a loved one (this time it’s her father). The decision to make Sheba Shayne a professional law enforcer removes the “average citizen forced into heroism” angle, and the film suffers for it. Grier also mostly keeps her increasingly stylish clothes on which, for better or worse, removes a key component from the, um, visuals. Plus, the water-based climax (Sheba’s on a jet ski! Now she’s shooting the bad guy with a spear gun!) comes off like a low-rent Bond knockoff.

John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM L.A. (1996) followed, with Kurt Russell returning as Snake Plissken from ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981) and Pam in a supporting role as a transsexual. The festival concluded with A Conversation with Pam Grier, an hour-long, on-stage interview with clips from her most famous films.

It was a great weekend, a unique opportunity to witness the trajectory of a career with the artist present to share intimate, behind-the-scenes details. All of it was done with style and the curatorial excellence New York City movie buffs have come to expect from the Film Society. But Grier herself summed it up best:

“They brought some funk to Lincoln Center.”

Pam Grier at the Film Society of Lincoln Center

Actress Pam Grier appeared tonight at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Elinor Bunin Monroe Film Center. She’s still gorgeous and sassy at age 63.

Foxy: the Complete Pam Grier, an 11-film retrospective, continues through Sunday. The schedule is here.

The Good, the Bad, and the Old Movie Weirdos

“You’re an Old Movie Weirdo,” my girlfriend said to me. “I know you don’t think you are, but you are.”

Before we go any further, you need to know something about Maggie: she’s honest to a fault, particularly when it comes to me. When we met, I was a 30-year-old workaholic with a premature comb-over and a wardrobe comprised mainly of sweater vests and pleated slacks. She was a 22-year-old graphic artist with a nose ring, a tattoo, and what you might call an “alternative sensibility.” Like a hippie Henry Higgins, Maggie made me over swiftly and completely, and her handiwork is still in effect fourteen years later.

In exchange, I’ve turned Maggie into a classic film fan – nowhere near as rabid as I am, but a fan nonetheless. It all started on one of our early dates, with DIAL M FOR MURDER in 3-D at Film Forum, the New York City repertory house that’s been my second home since college. In the years since, she’s accompanied me to old movie screenings (on occasion), movie memorabilia expos (reluctantly), and three editions of the TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood (mostly for the hotel room service). But my proudest moments are when I come home and find her in front of the TV, watching a classic. Cary Grant is her favorite star, proving it’s never too late to learn good taste. She even named our goldfish C.K. Dexter Haven, after Grant’s wisecracking rogue in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY.

As in any good relationship, we’ve both learned from each other, and our lives are better for it. Which brings us back to her “Old Movie Weirdo” accusation, and the surprisingly – at least for her – vigorous debate it sparked.

One of my favorite things about living in New York City is the wealth of opportunities to see classics on the big screen. There are at least ten venues in close proximity that screen old movies, and I’m a regular at most of them. But there are others who frequent these establishments who are, to be kind, somewhat odd.

Go to a classic film screening in any major city and you’ll probably be able to spot the Old Movie Weirdos. They’re usually male, middle-aged or older, sitting alone, often with questionable grooming habits and almost always carrying one or more large bags. These  totes are usually plastic-handled, scuffed or otherwise in disrepair, and are often doubled-up, because one or more of the handles has become detached.

What’s in these bags? God only knows, but the contents are apparently important enough that they need to be on hand at all times. I know of certain people who drag the same bags from venue to venue, as if the tote was a physical extension of their being, a vital appendage without which they would be lost.

Sometimes the bags contain a meal, like a homemade sandwich, or a Tupperware filled with rice, or a thermos of soup. Often these culinary do-it-yourselfers have their food items individually wrapped in plastic, supermarket-type bags, which crinkle throughout the screening, adding a distracting accompaniment to the soundtrack. At one recent screening, a diminutive older gent in a rumpled suit munched away on what smelled like a liverwurst sandwich, methodically rewrapping the crinkly bag after every bite. My efforts to shush him were met with a faraway, frightened look, as if to suggest that interaction with other human beings was not a frequent (or welcome) experience.

On the other hand, there’s the overly excited Old Movie Weirdo – the wild-eyed buff who is so happy to be there that he strikes up impromptu chats with anyone within striking distance. This guy wants to tell you all about Ginger Rogers, and how there are no stars like her anymore who can sing AND dance AND act and that’s what they used to call a “triple threat” and wow, did you see the movie last night? It was so good! I’m still humming the songs! They don’t make movies like that anymore, do they? They sure don’t. Okay, it looks like the line is moving. This is gonna be great!

This type is often acquainted with every staff member at the theater by name, and is there so frequently he knows everybody’s shift schedule. (“Bob?! What are you doing here, Bob? You don’t usually start until 6!”) At Film Forum in particular, the employees tend to humor these characters, perhaps because their awkward enthusiasm is sort of charming. Or maybe they’re just scared of saying the wrong thing (“Who’s Ginger Rogers?”) and ending up in little pieces in the bag.

Whichever type you encounter, the overly social or the anti-social, it suggests one thing: these guys don’t get out much. They’re extremely socially backward and painfully, unapologetically idiosyncratic, usually sitting in the exact same seat for every screening they attend and, in some cases, wearing the same clothes day in and day out. I’ve often wondered if some of them are homeless, and just go from theater to theater each day in lieu of living quarters. But how you can pay for movie tickets if you can’t afford an apartment? That suggests misplaced priorities.

Whatever their story, the Old Movie Weirdos are a fact of life for me, whether I like it or not. They’re not going anywhere, and neither am I. As much as they may creep me out, or leave the auditorium reeking of liverwurst and body odor hours after they’ve left, they do add a perverse texture to my classic film-going experience. That does not mean, however, that I consider myself one of them.

But my girlfriend does, apparently.

“I am not an Old Movie Weirdo,” I protested, after arriving home from Film Forum one night last week. “Those guys are nuts. They all live alone with their cats.”

“We have three cats,” Maggie rebutted. “In a one-bedroom apartment.”

“That was your idea,” I replied. “But we have a nice apartment. They all live in dark basements filled with old newspapers and memorabilia.”

“And I can’t hang up my dresses because our only closet is filled with your comic books and memorabilia,” Maggie shot back. “An every inch of wall space is covered with old movie posters.”

“But they’re artistic! And some day I can sell them at a profit…”

Maggie’s laugh interrupted my righteous indignation. “Like those hundreds of VHS tapes you’re gonna sell on eBay. We don’t even have a VCR! Not only are you an Old Movie Weirdo, you’re an Old Movie Hoarder!”

She has a point about the VHS tapes, though I wasn’t about to admit that when I was already on the dialectical ropes. When we moved in together I promised to sell some stuff and put the rest in storage. That was seven years ago. Not only have I not thinned out my various collections, I’ve added to them. And everything’s still in the apartment, in every available nook and cranny.

Maggie continued: “How many movies did you see today?”

“Three,” I said. “That sounds like a lot, but they were short. It was the closing day of the 1933 Festival at Film Forum.”

“And how many have you seen this week?”

I pulled out my Macbook and opened up the Excel grid I use to track my movie viewing.  It includes every film I’ve seen since 2007, with columns for the year it was released, director, cast and where and when I saw it. With almost 2,000 entries so far, this is the only way I can keep everything straight.

“You can’t even remember what you saw!” she said. “And the fact that you even have a spreadsheet entirely proves my point.”

The contempt with which she spat the word spreadsheet shook me to my very core.

“I can so remember,” I insisted, stalling as I counted. “Um…sixteen.”

“You’ve seen sixteen movies at Film Forum in the last week?”

“No,” I said. “Fifteen at Film Forum. The other one was at the IFC Center, but that was from 1935, not 1933, so it doesn’t count.”

“Again, this is my point,” she said. “You’ve gone to the same theater every day for the last seven days and seen at least two movies per day. Then you went to another theater and saw a third.”

“It was actually before,” I corrected. “The one at IFC was an 11 a.m. screening. I got up early.”

“Whatever,” she said. “And I’ve been asking to see THE HOBBIT since December.”

“So we’ll go see that tomorrow.”

“We can’t. It’s closed.”

“Oops. Sorry.”

For the record, she’s right about my bias against new movies. I almost never see them. I have nothing against them, per se. It’s just that, I won’t turn down an opportunity to watch a classic respectfully presented on the big screen in order to see some cacophonous blockbuster in a multiplex filled with people texting. We saw LES MISERABLES on New Year’s Eve, and I got into two separate arguments with people using cell phones. Nobody pulls out a phone during an old movie at Film Forum. If you do, you might end up in the bag.

“I’m just saying, you make a distinction about yourself that I don’t think anyone else makes. The people who work at Film Forum see you there every night for weeks at a time. You think they don’t consider you one of the Old Movie Weirdos?”

“But those guys, with their bags…”

“You carry your backpack every day,” she replied. “And it weighs a ton.”

“But they always sit in the same exact seat!”

“So do you.”

“And they wear the same clothes!”

“How many times this week have you worn that hoodie?”

“But they talk your ear off while you’re waiting on the line,” I said. “They’ve done it to you!”

“And you talk to people about old movies all day on Twitter. And you write a blog, and you do podcasts. These guys probably don’t even have computers. And they certainly aren’t flying to LA for a classic film festival with thousands of fans. This is probably the highlight of their day – just like it’s the highlight of your day. There’s no difference…”

“But I have you!” I said. “I guarantee you none of the Old Movie Weirdos are going home and having sex with a hot girl.”

“Stop hinting,” she replied, shooting me a side eye. “Or you won’t be either.”

And this is really the crux of the matter. When I met Maggie, I had spent most of my life engaging in various fan-ish endeavors. I even skipped my senior prom for a Dark Shadows Festival in Newark, New Jersey. I was comfortable with who I was, but Maggie gave me a different identity – and something a lot more fun to do with my free time. I was the weirdo who got the girl, and lived happily ever after.

But, to paraphrase Sondheim, “When you’re a weirdo, you’re a weirdo all the way. From your first fan club meeting, to your last dying day.”

For the last decade and a half, she’s been the antidote to the inherent weirdo-ism I can’t shake, or don’t want to shake. Every time I go to a convention, memorabilia show, or film festival – any event where odd guys in my general age group congregate – I wear Maggie’s presence on my arm like a badge of honor. Everyone stares at my girlfriend like she’s a celebrity, and I get to go home feeling better about myself. And on the rare occasions she agrees to come to an old movie screening, I drag her up to the concession stand as if to say, “See? This is my girlfriend. And my girlfriend and I will now order some popcorn, while the other weirdos sit by themselves and eat their liverwurst sandwiches out of crinkly bags.”

In life, all of us play the character we want to play, with varying degrees of connection to reality. What Maggie was asking me to do was to stop acting, and to start being. That’s what I get for showing her too many Kazan films.

“Just be who you are.’” she said. “You’re the least weird of the Old Movie Weirdos. Be proud of that. Obviously, I don’t mind. I’ve stayed around this long.”

I thought about this for a minute, and finally said the one thing I’ve wanted to say to Maggie for a very long time.

“Does this mean I can keep the VHS tapes?”

Screening Report: CARTOON CUT-UPS of 1933 at Film Forum

The cinematic celebration of 1933 – “Hollywood’s naughtiest, bawdiest year!” – continues at New York City’s Film Forum on Monday, February 25 with Cartoon Cut-ups of 1933, a collection of rare animated shorts released by RKO, Columbia, MGM, Warner Bros., and Universal before enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code began in 1934. The selections include work from some of the most seminal figures in early filmed animation: Walter Lantz; Leon Schlesinger; Ub Iwerks; Charles Mintz; Pat Powers; Amedee van Beuren; Hugh Harman; Rudolf Ising; and William Nolan.

While they were created for an adult audience, these cartoons rarely feature the salaciousness for which Pre-Code films are best known today. They do include the broad ethnic and gender stereotyping that was common to comedy of the era, and an inordinate amount of caricatured cameos of celebrities and newsmakers. In that sense, these shorts offer a snapshot of the zeitgeist that you might not get from individual feature films released that year.

Cartoons were an important part of the movie-going experience from the 1920s through the ‘60s, usually preceding a feature (or double feature), along with newsreels, comedy short subjects, adventure serials, travelogues and other forms of one- and two-reel content. Bugs and Daffy, Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, Superman, Woody Woodpecker, Mighty Mouse, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Mr. Magoo and their respective supporting cast members all got their start on cinema screens during the first generation of sound filmmaking, before moving to the new medium of television – initially in broadcasts of theatrically released cartoons and later (in some cases), in newly produced content.

But despite the ubiquity of digital media, there remains a lost generation of animated stars from the late silent and early Talkie era who are forgotten today and, due to their lack of copyright protection, will likely remain so. When was the last time you watched a Cubby Bear cartoon? How about Scrappy, or Willie Whopper or the Little King? Without a rights holder to finance proper restoration and release, many extant cartoons remain unavailable, or viewable only in sub-par versions.

Where have you gone, Flip the Frog? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

The Cartoon Cut-ups program I previewed on February 11 at Film Forum featured a dozen animated shorts curated by collector Greg Ford, many in 50+ year-old, 16 mm prints from home movie distributors like Blackhawk and Official Films. All were presented in glorious black and white – the standard production model for most animated shorts throughout the 1930s. And most were in surprisingly good shape.

Many of the characters in these shorts were unfamiliar to me, with one notable exception: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Co-created by Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks, Oswald made his debut in Trolley Troubles, a 1927 short distributed by Universal, which controlled the copyright to the character. After a contract dispute forced a parting of the ways between Walt Disney and producer Charles Mintz in 1928, Disney lost all claim to Oswald, whose animated exploits continued for another decade and a half at Universal. In 2006, the Walt Disney Company welcomed the wandering hare back into their corporate hutch when they “traded” the contract of Monday Night Football announcer Al Michaels to NBC Universal for Oswald and the rights to the 26 original, Disney-produced Oswald shorts. This may be the only time in sports history that a human was traded for a cartoon character, although I’m sure the Mets may have tried it at least once.

The Film Forum program kicked off with two shorts Ub Iwerks produced for Pat Powers’ Celebrity Productions after Iwerks split from Disney. The first, SODA SQUIRT, stars Flip the Frog in the last of his 38 cartoons, all released by MGM between 1930 and 1933. In this installment, Flip opens up a soda fountain and stages a red carpet premiere, featuring appearances by a gallery of Hollywood luminaries: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy; Jimmy Durante and Buster Keaton (co-stars of MGM’s WHAT NO BEER, also released in 1933); Lionel Barrymore as Rasputin (from MGM’s 1932 feature RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS), the Marx Bros. (weeks before the release of DUCK SOUP, their final film for Paramount before signing with MGM), Mae West (also a Paramount contractee), and Joe E. Brown (under contract to Warner Bros./First National). In the cartoon’s only slightly suggestive moment, Flip’s ice cream cone melts all over his hand when Mae West coos at him. Later, Flip serves an effeminate male customer a concoction featuring tacks and DDT, and the man transforms into Fredric March’s Mr. Hyde (from Paramount’s DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE, a 1931 release). “Hyde” proceeds to destroy Flip’s joint, until our hero squirts him with “Eau de Pansy” and he reverts to his mincing, stereotypical self. Congratulations Mr. Iwerks, for ending Flip the Frog’s movie career with a gay joke.

CAVE MAN, the second Iwerks short in the Cut-Ups program, features Willie Whopper, a chubby little moppet with a propensity for spinning tall tales. And speaking of tall tales, CAVE MAN was released on July 6, 1934, five days after Code enforcement officially began. So, not only is it not a 1933 film, it’s not even (technically) Pre-Code – though it does end with Willie winning the love of a young damsel by clubbing her over the noggin. Another highlight of this film is a hot soundtrack by Bennie Moten and his band, featuring a young Count Basie on piano.

SITTIN’ ON A BACKYARD FENCE is the only Warner Bros. cartoon in the program, a Merrie Melodies release based upon Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal’s song from Busby Berkeley’s FOOTLIGHT PARADE (1933). I’ve always found the number (which features Ruby Keeler tap dancing in a cat suit) to be one of the most delightful oddities in Berkeley’s bizarre canon, so it was a particular treat to see this inventive animated version. The action takes place on the titular Fence, with a duplicitous female kitten manipulating two clueless toms into fighting over her. There are some fun visual gags, with dancing union suits on the clothesline and a feline band playing junkyard instruments. Plus, we get some alternate arrangements of the song, including lyrics not heard in FOOTLIGHT PARADE.

FIVE AND DIME, another cartoon based upon a popular song, features a very Mickey Mouse-y Oswald the Rabbit singing the Harry Warren hit, I Found A Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store), backed by a chorus of toys. Cameos include Laurel and Hardy (again), Jimmy Durante (again) as a jack-in-the-box, and a Charlie Chaplin wind-up doll with an affinity for underage females. Talk about art imitating life. The short ends with Oswald marrying the girl he picks up in the 5&10, and impregnating her, which is kind of Pre-Code-y.

Next up was SILVERY MOON (re-titled CANDY TOWN for home movie distribution) from New York-based Van Beuren Studios. This stylish RKO release opens with a Betty Boop knock-off singing On Moonlight Bay, as her boyfriend woos her in a canoe. They climb a staircase to the moon, which they enter through a gigantic mouth, and find the streets lined with ice cream, candy, and cake. This may explain why the moon looks somewhat puffy, and has skin that appears to be pockmarked from acne. After gorging on sweets to the point of nausea the young lovers are chased by an anthropomorphic bottle of castor oil and a spoon, until they fall off the moon and back into their boat. This short may have been a parable about pre-Depression excess, New Deal hopefulness, or just the result of somebody at Van Beuren smoking a lot of reefer. Supposedly, animators from Fleischer Studios (home of Betty Boop) sometimes moonlighted at Van Beuren. It’s a wonder nobody got sued or fired for this obvious rip-off of Fleischer’s most enduring character.

WEDDING BELLS is a Charles Mintz-produced short for Columbia Pictures featuring Krazy Kat, a character created by animator George Herriman for a comic strip in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Evening Journal. With big eyes and floppy ears, Mintz’s Krazy bore more of a resemblance to Mickey Mouse (and Oswald) than to the strip character or to the silent version produced by Hearst’s International Film Service in 1916 and 1917. On the political correctness front, look out for the Daffodil made to resemble a “pickaninny.”

HAPPY HOBOES is an installment in Van Beuren’s Tom and Jerry series (not that Tom and Jerry), produced between 1931 and 1933 for RKO. Jerry is short, Tom is tall and their careers apparently vary from film to film. Here, they’re hobos (or hoboes, if you’re Dan Quayle) living in a HooverVille down by the train tracks. Highlights include a snowstorm caused by two angels having a pillow fight, and a racially insensitive portrayal of a Chinese cook. Interesting fact: a young Joe Barbera worked on this series and would go on to create the far more famous Tom and Jerry series at MGM with his partner, Bill Hanna.

Otto Soglow’s The Little King is another example of a series that never took off for Van Beuren, despite its success first as a strip in The New Yorker and then in the papers of Hearst’s King Features Syndicate.  In CHRISTMAS NIGHT (originally released as PALS on December 22, 1933), the lonely Little King watches forlornly as a happy family brings home a Christmas tree and decorates it. The King finds two bums loitering outside a department store and, in the spirit of the Holiday, brings them home to his castle. There the three men strip down and take a bath together while the queen sleeps, which probably didn’t get the laughs in 1933 that it might today. At the end, Santa shows up with toys for the Little King, which is odd because he appears to be a grown man. Interesting point: one of the vagrants has an NRA tattoo on his chest, which stands not for the National Rifle Association but rather for FDR’s National Industrial Recovery Act, a key component of the New Deal

Van Beuren Studios began life as Aesop’s Fable Studio in 1920, a partnership between producer Amedee J. Van Beuren and animator Paul Terry. In 1929, Terry left to form Terrytoons (where he later produced Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle shorts for 20th Century Fox) and Van Beuren took over as head of the renamed company. OPENING NIGHT is the first of Van Beuren’s Cubby Bear shorts, which were still marketed as part of the Aesop’s Fable series. In this adventure, our favorite bear can’t get into the Roxy Theater on Opening Night (the famed New York City movie palace actually opened in 1927, so I guess this short is a flashback). With his big eyes, short pants and mischievous countenance, Cubby bears (pun intended) a striking resemblance to Mickey Mouse, and Oswald, and Krazy Kat. It seems that every studio had their own version of this madcap character at that time, not unlike the numerous Chaplin imitators that churned out comedy shorts during the Silent Era.

In CUBBY’S WORLD FLIGHT directed by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising (veterans first of Disney and then Warner Bros., where they helped start the Looney Tunes series), our singing hero is an aviator about to embark on a round-the-world journey. The Four Marx Bros (again) and Charles Lindbergh give him a big send-off at the airport, but things don’t go according to plan. Cubby crashes and his propeller burrows through the Earth, taking him first to Hell and then to China, which I’m pretty sure is geographically impossible. Later he’s serenaded by a singing Hitler and Napoleon (doing a Maurice Chevalier imitation, complete with straw hat). Cubby ends his journey hanging from one of the spires on the Statue of Liberty’s hat, as King Kong dances in the distance on the Empire State Building. (The Cubby shorts were distributed by RKO, Kong’s home studio.)

Cartoon Cut-ups concludes with two shorts featuring the impish Scrappy, his brother Oopy, girlfriend Margy and dog Yippy. Created by Fleischer veteran Dick Huemer and produced by Charles Mintz, the highly visual, often absurd Scrappy shorts were in production for nearly a decade at Columbia.

Set at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair, THE WORD’S AFFAIR (get it?) features some hilarious visual gags, including an agriculture demo that grows hair on a bald man’s head. Newly elected president Franklin Delano Roosevelt shows up, as do Albert Einstein, Ghandi and the ubiquitous Jimmy Durante. But my favorite SCRAPPY short, and perhaps my favorite of the entire program, was SCRAPPY’s PARTY. Our hero throws a wild, jazzy shindig for his birthday and invites old favorites the Marx Bros., Laurel and Hardy and Jimmy Durante, plus Marie Dressler, Will Rogers, Babe Ruth, Al Capone (who can’t come because he’s in prison), Ghandi (who rides in on roller skates), Garbo, and Marie Dressler. It’s fun to see the animated Dressler interacting with the brothers, and to fantasize about what she might have done with the “Margaret Dumont role” in a Marx Bros. feature.

A number of shorts featuring these characters are available in public domain versions on You Tube, and some have been released on DVD. The Ub Iwerks DVD sets are recommended, and are also available streaming from Amazon on Demand.

Cartoon Cut-Ups of 1933 plays Monday, February 25 at Film Forum

Screening Report: Pre-Code Fun at Film Forum’s 1933 Festival

This weekend, Film Forum kicked off 1933: Hollywood’s Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year – a monthlong, 66-film retrospective of my favorite year in movie history.

I didn’t say it was the best year in movie history, of course. That honor, at least during the studio era, is usually awarded to 1939. But 1933 was sexier, more violent, more lurid, more open-minded, and generally more fun than ’39 or, in my opinion, any other twelve-month period in American filmmaking until (at least) the end of the 1950s. 

It was also the year that the studios finally perfected the art and technology of sound filmmaking, and began to consistently churn out movies that looked and sounded like films would for the next two decades. Gone were the scratchy, tinny soundtracks and static staginess of early Talkies. In 1933, Hollywood was firing on all cylinders – inspired by both the creative challenges of attracting audiences during the worst year of the Great Depression, and the renewed optimism (at least for Democrats) inspired by the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Film Forum started the festivities on Friday with a bang: Roy Del Ruth’s THE LITTLE GIANT, a gangster “comedy” with Edward G. Robinson gently spoofing the persona he had perfected in LITTLE CAESAR (1931). Mirroring the political and social upheaval of the year in which it was made, THE LITTLE GIANT tells the story of bootlegger James Francis “Bugs” Ahearn (Robinson), who retires from bootlegging as Prohibition repeal looms. Nothing goes smoothly on his road to redemption, and Bugs is forced to rely on some old tricks when a family of grifters tries to take the toughest mug in Chicago for a ride.

The second half of the single-admission double feature on Friday was Del Ruth’s EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE starring prototypical Pre-Code cad Warren William as Kurt Anderson, ruthless general manager of a giant New York City department store. Lovely Loretta Young is the down-and-out girl who falls for Anderson’s charms – and into his bed – and Wallace Ford is the good-natured protegee who falls for Loretta. (And really, who wouldn’t fall for Loretta Young in 1933, or any year?)

Seeing EMPLOYEES’ ENTRANCE with a large crowd was a particular treat. Every hyperbolically heinous utterance from Warren William’s character was met with applause or appreciative laughter. And it wasn’t the “Oh, isn’t this hilariously quaint” mockery that you sometimes get from newbies at classic film screenings. This was an informed crowd eating up the delicious Pre-Code dialogue and sharing the love, communally. What a delight.

Saturday brought a screening of what may be my favorite Pre-Code film of all time: Mervyn Le Roy and Busby Berkeley’s seminal GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933. This is a film I have seen many times – on TCM, at the TCM Classic Film Festival, even at Film Forum. But the enthusiastic reactions of my fellow audience members made it feel like I was seeing the movie for the first time. GOLD DIGGERS was preceded by Scrappy’s Party, a trippy, one-reel cartoon produced by Columbia’s Screen Gems unit featuring “animated cameos” from the Marx Bros., Laurel and Hardy, Babe Ruth, Albert Einstein, and Ghandi. (Yes, it’s as odd as it sounds).

The second half of the bill on Saturday was Harry Joe Brown’s SITTING PRETTY, a rarely seen Paramount musical starring Jack Oakie and Jack Haley as Tin Pan Alley songwriters with Ginger Rogers as an all-singing, all-dancing lunch counter proprietress. Highlights include sexy Thelma Todd as a conniving starlet who breaks up the duo, intentionally bad ditties like I Wanna Meander with Miranda, Jerry Tucker as Ginger’s wisecracking eight-year-old brother Buzz, Ginger singing Did You Ever See a Dream Walking, and the Busby Berkeley homage/rip-off that is the big closing number.

The weekend concluded with a Sunday night screening of George Cukor’s DINNER AT EIGHT, based upon the stage play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber. I’ve always found this film to be too long and too stage bound, but the big crowd in attendance at Film Forum ate it up. No other movie I saw this weekend got more laughter or applause than DINNER AT EIGHT, with most of it going to delightful Marie Dressler in her penultimate role as straight-talking Carlotta Vance and Jean Harlow as “poisonous little rattlesnake” Kitty Packard.

And this is why I love to watch classic films with live audiences, even when I’ve seen the film before. There are so many nuances I caught on the big screen this weekend that I had missed during TV or DVD viewings, so many moments in which my fellow audience members reminded me of what I love about these films. Plus, nothing beats seeing a film you love with  a roomful of people who feel the same way. It’s the closest thing this lapsed Catholic gets nowadays to a religious experience.

Photos courtesy Film Forum, Photofest and Dr. Macro.

A complete schedule for 1933: Hollywood’s Naughtiest, Bawdiest Year is available here.

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN (1931) from Warner Archive: One Kiss and You Die!

The year is 1931. Three undressed women catfight over the lover they share – wrestling in his bed, tearing at each other’s skimpy negligees. One of them is Louise Brooks, pansexual star of some of the sultriest silent films ever made. The other is pouty French dancer Yola d’Avril. The third is platinum-haired hottie Joan Blondell, whose tastefully topless publicity shots would be banned two years later by enforcers of the dreaded Motion Picture Production Code.

Sounds hot, right? And GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN (1931, Warner Bros.) is hot, for approximately one of its 72 minutes. Then the object of these young ladies’ affections pokes his head out from under the sheets, and everyone watching goes “Huh?”

If the title was intended to be ironic, GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN might have been a hilariously hip parody of a Lubitsch/Chevalier musical comedy. Alas it was not, so the funniest thing in this curious “bedroom farce,” now out on DVD from the Warner Archive Collection, is the idea that beautiful women want to go anywhere near the titular protagonist’s bedroom.

Most curious of all was the casting of 40-year-old, puffy-nosed Vaudeville comedian Frank Fay as a Parisian playboy inexplicably irresistible to women. I’ve never been to Paris, and I’m no expert on what makes men attractive, but I’m pretty sure suave Frenchmen don’t look like Irish bartenders from the Bronx. Best known today as Mr. Barbara Stanwyck, Fay is almost entirely charmless as Jacques “Toto” Duryea, ostensible “man of a million women.” And, as the supposed inspiration for drunken asshole Norman Maine in A STAR IS BORN, Fay was apparently equally distasteful in real life.

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN opens at Club Perroquet, a hot jazz joint with lots of drinking, smoking, and provocative Pre-Code posing from gorgeous girls in gam-hugging gowns. Top-hatted Toto tipples in with three sexy young things on his arm: Fifi (Blondell, in her sixth feature film) and the twins Maybelle and Marie (Eleanor and Karla Gutchrlein, credited as Sisters G). Close behind are Florine (Brooks) and Dagmar (d’Avril). All are married to other men, but still gaga over our not-so-handsome hero.

After legendarily sowing his wild oats for years, the supposed descendant of Don Juan has become blind to him amorous admirers. Toto now has focused his no-longer-roving eye on a new conquest: Diane (Laura La Plante, looking luminous), daughter of cigar-chomping industrialist John Churchill (Charles Winniger, in full bluster) from the rust belt metropolis of Rochester, New York.

Toto bribes the maître d to dim the lights in the club so he can covertly cut in on Diane’s dance, but the down-to-earth damsel is unimpressed with his whiny wooing and leaves. This only inspires Toto to amp up his aggressiveness, and he begins to do engage in what would now be referred to as stalking. (”Everywhere I go you follow me!” Diane laments, like a guest on Maury.) Instead of securing a restraining order, Diane agrees to go to Toto’s apartment, where his bitchy sometime girlfriend Tania (Margaret Livingston, the “city girl” from SUNRISE) makes a less-than-timely appearance. Diane swears off Toto and his philandering ways, but he dons a succession of disguises to (illegally) gain access to her and, instead of having him arrested, she succumbs to his “charms.”

This does not sit well with Mr. Churchill, who is apparently as confused about Toto’s appeal as we are. Sensing that his daughter is about to throw her life away on a heartbreaker, Churchill sends his personal physician (Arthur Edmund Carewe) to examine the counterfeit Casanova. Ironically, Toto is the one who turns out to have a broken heart. After a not-particularly-thorough examination, he’s “diagnosed” with a fatal aortic aneurysm that will doom him to an early grave if he engages in stimulation of any sort. 

“One kiss and you die!” the doctor lies, in clear violation of the Hippocratic Oath. “If you want to live you must emulate the tranquil existence of an oyster!”

Toto’s efforts to live like an asexual bivalve mollusk are complicated by his paramours, who insist on “nursing” him back to health by taking off their clothes and getting into bed with him. And this is where we came in, with Louise Brooks and company in their nighties.

Brooks, who reluctantly returned to Hollywood after starring in G.W. Pabst’s PANDORA’S BOX and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL in Germany, is tenth-billed and only in the film for a few minutes. But when she’s there, she makes it count. She doesn’t even sport the iconic bob hairdo she made famous though, oddly, the characters played by the Sisters G both do. Brooks, who has grown to become one of the most revered figures of the Silent Era, apparently didn’t have much clout at this point in her career, due to an ongoing dispute with Paramount. One of the many frustrations of GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN is how underutilized she is in a film that desperately needed her talents. The same can be said for Blondell, who spends most of her time fawning over Fay in a manner that completely violates the hyper-realistic, straight-talking, self-assured character she would perfect throughout the gritty 1930s at Warner Bros.

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN was directed by Michael Curtiz, best known for CASABLANCA (1942), wherein he transformed an actor not blessed with leading man good looks into one of the most romantic heroes in movie history. Why he was unable to do anything with Fay in this role is unclear, though the character becomes far more sympathetic after his bogus diagnosis. Fay is much better as a dimwit who believes he’s dying than he is as a confident lover, and only in the second half does the movie become the slapstick farce it should have been from the get-go.

This lack of narrative consistency may be attributable to “too many cooks syndrome,” with four different writers credited. The film was “suggested by” the play The Devil Was Sick by Jane Hinton, but the opening title card gives full story credit to Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, a scenario writer who got his start as a St. Louis crime reporter. “Screenplay and dialogue” are attributed to Joseph Jackson (who also wrote the delightfully lurid SAFE IN HELL for Warners’ subsidiary First National) and Raymond Griffith, the former top-hat wearing silent comic whose acting career was cut short by talkies. There were also apparently songs written and shot for the film that were cut for the American release, but survived in foreign versions (now lost).

One of the few indications of the film’s genesis as a musical is the presence of the dance duo Sisters G in two strangely small, non-speaking roles. I assume they featured more prominantly in excised musical numbers, such as the opening scene in the club, which fades to black when a dance sequence begins. Another piece of evidence lies in the scene where Fay and La Plante sit down to tea in Toto’s apartment. Both speak in a cadence that suggests they may break into song, but the scene is cut short.

Engaging in this sort of amateur cinematic forensics is one of the things I enjoy most about Pre-Codes. Often the investigations relate to sequences that were selectively censored for regional audiences, or cut outright to achieve certification for post-Code re-releases. While GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN has not been restored by Warner Archive for this manufacture-on-demand DVD, it’s pretty clear that, at some point in the film’s history, missing snippets once excised by censors were reinstated. While the quality of the transfer is generally decent for an obscure, early ’30s release, the most heavily damaged scenes are the ones that obviously violate the Code.

If, like me, you’re fascinated with Pre-Code film, GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN is a must-see. If you’re not, I suggest you save your pennies for something less curious, preferably something without Frank Fay.

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN
Distributor: Warner Archive Collection
Format: Manufacture-on-demand DVD
Quantity: 1 disc
Aspect Ratio: 1.33.1 Full Frame
Special Features: Theatrical trailer

GOD’S GIFT TO WOMEN (1931)
Release Date: April 25, 1931 (per AFI)  Duration: 72 minutes
Director: Michael Curtiz Producer: Uncredited
Writers: Frederick Hazlitt Brennan (story); Joseph Jackson, Raymond Griffith (screenplay); Jane Hinton (play, The Devil Was Sick)
Studio: Warner Bros.

Cast: Frank Fay (Jacques “Toto” Duryea), Laura La Plante (Diane Churchill), Joan Blondell (Fifi), Charles Winniger (John Churchill, Diane’s father), Alan Mowbray (Auguste, Toto’s butler), Arthur Edmund Carewe (Dr. Louis Dumont), Billy House (Mons. Cesare), Yola d’Avril (Dagmar), John T. Murray (Mons. Chaumer, an irate husband), Louise Brooks (Florine), Margaret Livingston (Tania Donaliff), Armand Kaliz (Mons. Rancour)

Here’s to a Classic 2013!