Bootleggers or preservationists?

I've been watching classic movies since the mid 1980s and I've been interested in film preservation since the mid-1990s. I must say though that my interest in film preservation, was at first entirely selfish. Being big into Cary Grant, there were a small group of us who simply wanted copies of all of his films. Cary Grant belonged to Paramount for the first seven years of his film career. Around a third of his total filmography belonged to Paramount and with all the corporate mergers in the 80s, these archives changed hands pretty frequently.

In the seventies and early eighties, before home video took over the world, classic films were primarily shown in the afternoons on local televisions stations as filler programming. Paramount sold the rights to many of their early films to be shown on television. At that time, satellite television was just coming onto the consumer market. They were expensive but they appealed to people who lived in remote places or who were gadget heads. There were also quite a few film fanatics and collectors who owned dishes. They could sit in their living room in Wyoming and tape movies off the dish being shown anywhere in the world. These unsung heroes were the renegade saints of the classic film world for they had in their vast archives of video tapes a great many films which were simply unavailable anywhere else. And luckily they were happy to sell them to us for little more than the cost of their efforts. This truly was a labor of love.

Though Turner Classic Movies existed in the late 90s their access to the Paramount archives was (and still is) limited. To this day, many early Paramount films are tied up in this limbo. There is very little hope that most of these films see the light of day as a DVD release. Paramount not only owned Cary Grant, but Gary Cooper. Cary Grant fans are lucky, all his work survives and many of those titles which we lovingly bootlegged and passed around amongst ourselves 15 years ago, have since been officially released. Gary Cooper fans are not so lucky. A great deal of Cooper's silent work is considered lost and many of his early Paramount efforts are only available through back channels on the internet. Of course, Paramount is just one studio and Gary Cooper is just one star. What of the fate of the work of lesser known, but equally great actors? What of the smaller studios? The foreign studios? Those films have even less of a chance of ever being rescued from the dustbin.

It is these back channels that I want to talk to today. There are numerous sellers on Ebay, Bonanzle and on small e-commerce sights who collect rare and out of print films and distribute them at a low price, usually enough to recoup their cost in time and materials. Some collectors keep lists of missing or lost titles. Occasionally collectors turn up with a copy of these lost titles and the film can be momentarily preserved because it can be seen. The quality of these copies varies so widely, it's hardly worth talking about, but suffice to say that it's not uncommon to buy two or three copies of a film over time, to try to improve one's luck. I have four copies of the Lawrence Olivier/Merle Oberon film, the Divorce of Lady X. The first two were old VHS tapes that were unplayable by the time I got a hold of them. Eventually, I was able to track down a decent fan made DVD rip of the movie just before an official DVD came out.

In recent years there are a die-hard group of film fans who upload classic movies to Youtube in 10 minute chunks. There are many films that I would not have been able to track down if it weren't for these new rogue bootleggers. Their films are constantly being removed by Youtube which doesn't allow complete films on its site, but they continue to operate, changing titles, keywords and accounts frequently. Again, this is a labor of love. The people uploading the movies receive no compensation for their time and efforts.

What does all this have to do with film preservation? As much as this internet back alley trading keeps collectors going, and in some cases is the only way we can preserve a film if its original has been lost, it is simply not enough. Google Books is in court battling an anti-trust suit and its outcome could potentially effect classic film fans. If the court allows Google to electronically publish books whose copyright holders can no longer be tracked down, there is a possibility that films whose copyrights are in similar limbo could be electronically cataloged in the same way. Five years from now we could sit down at our computers and stream these classic films to our computers.

Of course films aren't exactly analagous to books. To begin with, books are a lot tougher than movies. If you don't believe me just pick up an old Photoplay magazine from the 1930s and count the number of "lost" titles within. The cheapest pulp paper is more durable than the most expensive film stock from a given year. Even handling archived collections is risky, let alone figuring out how to digitize them. For those films that are in stable condition sitting in archives, unseen there should be a massive digitization effort. For film fans and for future generations these things should be made digital and they should be made available.

For films that are in the hands of private collectors, digital technology should make sharing them easier than ever. Sadly this has not been the case. Peer to peer (P2P) sharing, which has been the bane of music and movie industries has not had much effect on the classic film market. In order for P2P to be effective you need to have a large number of people interested in a title and willing to allow people to download it from their computer. If any of you are old enough to remember the final days of the original Naptster you may recall that it went from being a place where you could slowly download the latest top 40 junk to a music-lovers paradise where you get any obscure thing you could want at high speeds. The reason for this improvement was that the rumors of the demise of the site pushed a huge number of users there at once. Compared to the latest blockbuster still in the theater, there is almost no interest in sharing a 70-year old film.

It's conceivable that a safe harbor for out of print films could be created, where fans could peer to peer share their collections using the internet instead of the mail. It's possible that VEOH, which Time Warner and other corporations have invested in, which runs on P2P, might be the perfect place. They allow high quality dowloads, support flash streaming and most importantly, whole movies. My experiences with streaming classic movies there have been maddeningly frustrating, but if the site were to catch on with more classic movie fans, maybe the ease of delivery would be improved. I should start a rumor that VEOH is going away!

Another viable model for getting films out of the vaults and into DVD players, is being used by Warner Brother's for their Vault Collection. They burn a DVD after its paid for and send it out. It's rather like those Bonanzle sellers who make a DVDR for you after your Paypal has cleared. You can support this model by buying those DVDs. If it proves profitable, I think other film collections could be distributed in this way. Not only will it increase the number of titles on offer, it would greatly improve things for the average film collector subject to the whims of the market where titles constantly go in and out of print.

What of those films in archives that are not stable, that are damaged and deteriorated to the point that digitizing is out of the question? This is where the painstaking and expensive work of restoration comes in. I once looked in to the possibility of purchasing restoration software. I was told that a single license cost $30,000. This is before you take into account the user skill and expensive hardware set-ups required for such an undertaking. Many organizations public and private do film restoration. This blogathon is in support of the National Film Preservation Foundation, which is part of the Library of Congress. I can personally attest to the quality work that this organization does. In 2001, as part of a Cary Grant convention we were allowed to view the recently restored Notorious. I'd seen the film many times on television and at least once in a theater, but seeing a newly restored print in a theater is almost like watching a different movie. You notice new details in the background and on the soundtrack. Seeing the original contrast in a black and white film makes the images leap off the screen, where before they might have been very gray or washed out.

Please check out the NFPF, support the blogathon and consider giving a contribution. In a somewhat similar vein to my post, John McElwee of Greenbriar Picture Show recounts his own efforts at film collecting and preservation in the 1970s.

Surprise! Another gratuitous pic spam!

Kate Gabriel at Silents and Talkies came up with this meme. Who are your most swoon worthy actors? Who will you watch in anything, just to see them? Though I've probably pummeled you with this information subliminally for the last 18 months, I thought I'd spell it out, just in case someone wasn't paying attention. But really this is just a great excuse for me to spend hours trolling through my hard drive to find favorite pictures that I haven't posted yet.



Cary Grant: Duh, my obsession with him is so long standing I've been known at work as the Cary Grant Girl for years. Favorite Film: Bringing Up Baby. Movie that made me an obsessed fanatic, versus a casual admirer: weirdly, it was Monkey Business, which was the only Cary video tape I owned in college. It was a desert island thing. You had to be there.




Gary Cooper: At first I kept my Cooper obsession to myself. Would my Cary Grant fandom friends understand that there was room in my heart for "GC" as well as "CG?" Turns out there were a whole bunch of us crowded into that particular closet. Favorite film: Ball of Fire, also the movie that made me lurve him. I must have watched half a dozen Cooper films before this movie changed my mind forever.


Laurence Olivier: Only classic actor obsession that predates Cary Grant. I taped speeches from Wuthering Heights when I was 15 and played them on my walkman. I love Olivier's Matinee idol period, and mostly avoid movies from the 60s and 70s were he tended to work for anyone with the greenback dollars. Still I've watched enough of those. Favorite Film: Wuthering Heights, and That Hamilton Woman. Honarable mention: Divorce of Lady X.


Michael Redgrave: If I had an Essentials list, I'd have to include The Lady Vanishes and The Importance of Being Earnest. I probably said all I had to say about how swoony he is in my Thunder Rock post.


Gregory Peck: First actor obsession to come out of this blog. The movie was Spellbound. I'd probably seen it more than ten times before I got all goopy about Greg. Weird, huh? Favorite Film: Roman Holiday


Herbert Marshall: so there I was watching Riptide and I just couldn't believe that anyone even cared anything about Norma Shearer when she was playing opposite this totally awesome Brit who was understated and had such a dry, detached delivery made every line seem as if it were a gem descended from the gods or at least Noel Coward. He was elevating the shit out of his material, yo. Favorite film: The Good Fairy.


Robert Donat: Goodbye Mr. Chips? Goodbye my heart, more like. This guy is so awesome and he only made 20 movies. So why, why can't I see all of them right now. Favorite film: The Thirty Nine Steps. After that, I honestly can't decide: it's a five way tie between Mr. Chips, The Ghost Goes West, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Winslow Boy, and Knight without Armor.


Jeremy Northam: See the best actor you've never heard of. Swoon. Favorite Film: Emma.

Brian Aherne: The first time I saw him in a film, Sylvia Scarlett, I made a note to myself to watch more of his movies. And then it occurred to me while putting together youtube playlists for myself, that years had gone by and the opportunity to see more Brian Aherne movies just never came up. What the? So I went on a mission. I scanned my sources carefully, and managed to collect a tiny handful of his films. I bought his autobiography and read it. I've been collecting photos and putting together an online gallery. Favorite Film: Merrily we Live.


David Manners: David Manners got me to watch horror movies in earnest for the first time in my life. He helped get me over a life-long fear of ventriloquist dummies with his character in The Miracle Woman. And in the above picture he proves that one can wear jodhpurs and not look like a silent film director. He really is quite an actor. Favorite Film: Man Wanted.


Colin Firth: I've been holding forth on Firth a lot lately. It's my campaign to bring him Oscar buzz. Oh yeah, he's a cinch now. Favorite Film: Pride and Prejudice.



Warren William: The funny thing about Warren William is that I don't usually like cads or men with mustaches and William has both cadishness and mustaches in spades in most of his screen roles. (Above pic is from one of his rare clean shaven roles, Cleopatra (1934). Favorite film: The Dark Horse and Golddiggers of 1933.



Liam Neeson: I may have been the only person ever to sit through a preview of Schindler's List and say aloud in the theater, "hey, it's the guy from Satisfaction!" I look for this actor so frequently in programming searches on my Tivo, that the machine knows what I'm looking for after typing the letters, "L" and "I". As proof that I'll watch any thing with him in it, here's a sampling from Tivo in the last year: Suspect (Neeson has 5 minutes as a homeless murder suspect in this Cher, Dennis Quaid drama), Next of Kin (Neeson has 10 minutes as a hillbilly murder suspect in this awful Patrick Swayze movie), Gangs of New York (Neeson wanders through this violent mess of a movie for about 10 minutes). The above still is from one of my favorite Tivo finds of the last few years, Seraphim Falls which not only features Liam Neeson in a fur coat, it co-stars Pierce Brosnan, another of my 1980s obsessions. Favorite film: Michael Collins.

Some who didn't quite make the cut: George Sanders, Joel McCrea, Ronald Colman, Ricardo Cortez, Paul Henreid and Rossano Brazzi. All these actors I either haven't seen enough of their films to quite qualify them or I'm mainly interested in certain periods of their work, such as Pre-Code Joel McCrea for example.

Eye Candy of the Day: The 39 Steps

Robert Donat and Madeleine Carrol are literally shackled together and shacking up in Alfred Hitchcock's adventure thriller the 39 Steps (1935). Richard Hannay (Donat) steps into a music hall to divert himself and before long finds himself hip deep in a spy ring, beautiful women, racy sleeping arrangements, and murder. The action begins with a pick-up: a mysterious woman in a veiled hat invites herself up to Hannay's apartment and winds up dead a few hours later. Hannay borrows her ploy of using sex to get what he wants and finds women mostly willing to go out of their way to help him. Hitchcock exposes a society ready always to believe the lascivious and vicious before the innocent truth. Of the three women Hannay ends up spending the night with he falls for the one he fights with (Madelaine Carrol) which is true to the spirit of the screwball comedies that were bubbling up in America.

There's an interesting and poignant interlude on the Scottish moors with a woman who is completely swept off her feet by the dashing mysterious stranger who has stumbled briefly into the miserable cottage she shares with an even more miserable husband. The film leaves her behind, but not before she gets the memorable chance to make a noble sacrifice for him and get a kiss from our hero. She's like the fleshed out version of the woman into whose hospital room Cary Grant passes through in North by Northwest. Speaking of which, The 39 Steps is remarkably similar to that later more famous Hitchcock film. Both movies use a man on the run from the police as an excuse for a cross country chase and a series of entertaining adventures as he dodges the law, deadly thugs and prevents a master spy from stealing important military secrets. The focus of North By Northwest is a sweeping, technicolor travelogue while The 39 Steps has a more intimate agenda. Unlike the larger than life characters that inhabit North By Northwest, the supporting cast in 39 Steps insinuate themselves quickly into the memory and seem like real people glimpsed in the midst of their daily lives. That moment in North by Northwest when Cary Grant is treated like the movie star he is by the woman in the hospital room, is funny because the audience is in on the joke of the whole stylized, over-refined universe. And a similar moment in The 39 Steps is completely uncynical and poignant because Hannay begins his flirtation with crofter's wife as part of a role he's playing and ends with his genuine concern for her welfare. His good-bye kiss is what is required of the part but you can see him conflicted about the game he's played.

In both movies, Hitchcock seems to enjoy torturing his heroes, putting them not only in constant peril, but continually uncomfortable, awkward and embarassing situations. They get hungry, tired and dirty along the way (though not quite as much as mortal men would) but they never seem to get lonely! If there's one thing you should learn from these movies its this: chicks dig fugitives.

Caryvention IX

Cary Grant tickles Genevieve Tobin in Kiss and Make Up (1934).

I'm back too soon from my seventh Caryvention, CVIX, in Chicago. It's always tough to say good-bye at Caryvention, and this year was no exception. I miss everyone already. Our hosts, Lynnette and Kim really outdid themselves. What a rush it was to pick up the program for the Music Box theater and see "Caryvention presents." I don't know how you guys swung it, but hats off too ya! As always all the warbrides went mental with the gifts. One dedicated warbride wrote to Eva Marie Saint and got her to send us an autographed statement about how much she loved working with Cary. My goody bag is truly awesome. Thanks everyone!

The Warbrides celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of North by Northwest in style at the Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago. It was such a trip to walk up and down the staircase into the hotel every day that Cary uses in the movie. I'm such a dork, I had to walk the path that Cary walks toward the hotel in the exterior shot.

The highlight of the week-end for me was watching North by Northwest on the big screen of the Music Box Theater with the other warbrides. I have seen the movie twice before in a proper theater, but this time was definitely the best. The only thing better than watching Cary on the big screen is watching him on the big screen with a room full of fanatical fans. There were three warbrides who came from far corners of the earth who had never had the opportunity to see him on the big screen before. Janine, Natalie and Irena, I hope it was worth the trip! If only to see the yellow boxer shorts in larger than life format.

We also watched Kiss and Make-up, one of my favorite Cary pre-code films. I first watched this film on the big screen with the Warbrides at the DC Caryvention and it's always held a special place in my heart because of that. While this isn't a great movie by any stretch of rational measure, it is completely and utterly fun to watch in room full of semi-reverent warbrides. It's a high-energy comedy about a man who runs a beauty spa and the women in his life. It also has a love song to corned beef and cabbage. As the projectionist at the teater in DC said after screening it for the first time "Where has this movie been all my life?" I'd like to see watching this movie become a Caryvention tradition where we could give it the "Rocky Horror" treatment.

After the movie screenings, my favorite part of Caryvention is the random Cary Grant or other film conversations I have with other Warbrides. Turns out there's a big Jane Austen/Cary Grant cross over that I haven't had a chance to quite process yet, other than to think about finding a way to put my awesome Jane Austen "boots and shirtsleeves" screensaver on line for you.

I have a ton of other movies to blog after my two week break, so I'm gonna wrap this up by saying, "Happy Thoughts!"

Eye Candy of the Day: A Brian Aherne Gallery

Brian Aherne surrounded by adoring nurses during a World War II USO tour.

I started this blog, in part, because I always had a fantasy of producing a modern version of the fairly trashy movie magazines that were popular during the golden age of Hollywood. If I had such a power, I would print lots of lovely pictures of all my favorite actors and actresses and of course give all my favorite obscure English actors the spotlight they deserve. I would probably devote an entire issue,or at least a cover to the under-rated Brian Aherne. I first noticed Aherne in Sylvia Scarlett (1935) playing the floppy-haired bohemian artist rival to Cary Grant's "bad, handsome" cockney piano man. It's the rare actor that can turn my head away from Cary for even a moment. Though Aherne's character is kind of a jerk in the movie, I've always gotten what it is that Katharine Hepburn's character sees in him.

Brian Aherne was a British theatrical star who had been on stage since he was eight years old. Like many of his fellow thespians he was recruited to Hollywood when the movies got sound. Women ruled at the box office in those days and Aherne was fortunate enough to play second fiddle to some of the best. His first talkie was made at Paramount as Marlene Dietrich arm candy in Song of Songs (1933). One of his first films was the British version of The Constant Nymph (1934), which was later remade in 1943 starring Ahern's then-wife, Joan Fontaine. Another standout part for Aherne was the male lead to Helen Hayes in What Every Woman Knows (1934) where he plays a thickly-accented Scottish politician at the turn of the century. That same year he starred opposite Ann Harding in the World War I picture The Fountain. He also played the male lead in the Joan Crawford vehicle, I Live My Life (1935). He played the sympathetic Irish rebel, Dennis O'Riordan, in Beloved Enemy (1936) with Merle Oberon and David Niven.

Aherne got his first starring role in 1937 in Jame Whale's The Great Garrick, a biopic about the great 18th Century actor, David Garrick. Though the movie was a critical success it was expensive, especially for a Warner's picture and it flopped. Aherne's comic abilities got further airing with Constance Bennett in the My Man Godfrey knock-off, Merrily We Live (1938). Ahern eplays a rehabilitated tramp who becomes the family chauffeur. Screwball antics ensue. In 1939, Aherne starred in Captain Fury, his most commercially successful movie, about another Irish rebel who escapes from an Australian prison. That same year he earned his only Oscar nomination in a hilariously-bearded supporting role in the Paul Muni biopic Juarez. He played a self-made man who spoils his child in My Son, My Son (1940) and made the first of three comedies with Rosalind Russel, Hired Wife and My Sister Eileen and What a Woman.

He co starred in a courtroom drama with Rita Hayworth, The Woman in Question (1940) . He starred in The Man who Lost Himself (1941) and the musical remake of Smilin' Through where he listened contemplatively to songbird, Jeanette McDonald. He made a romantic comedy with Lorraine Day, A Night to Remember and a pair of war movies Forever and A Day and First Comes Courage. After that he took some time off from film and returned in the later forties as a supporting player. One later Aherne role that comes to mind is the teen pregnancy drama Susan Slade (1961) in which his wife is played by Natalie Schafer, best known as Mrs. Thirston "Lovey" Howell the Third on "Gilligan's Island."

After retiring from Hollywood, Aherne tried his hand at writing, composing a casual biography of George Saunders called "Dreadful Man" and his own autobiography "Proper Job." He was married to actress Joan Fontaine, from 1939-1945. He met Fontaine because he had first dated her sister, Olivia De Haviland, while filming their movie, The Great Garrick. He later married Eleanor de Liagre Labrot, the sister of celebrated broadway producer Alfred de Liagre, Jr. The couple were married until his death in 1986.

Enjoy more pictures of Brian in my gallery.

Eye Candy of the Day: Cary Grant and Randolph Scott

Is there really no such thing as bad publicity? In the 1930s Cary Grant and Randolph Scott posed for a series of photos that highlighted their domestic lives together as room mates. In one picture Grant is wearing an apron in another they sit close together on a diving board. In the most suggestive of the photos, they are shown in silhouette with the ocean in the background. Scott reaches over to light his cigarette from Grant's. I'm sure that the intention of the publicity campaign was to show how Hollywood stars are just regular people who do normal every day things and to show the camaraderie between their contract players. Over the years the photos have popped up repeatedly usually as evidence of a gay relationship between Grant and Scott. I'm not sure whether the photos actually started the rumors that Grant and Scott were lovers but it's safe to say that they've done nothing to quash them. A book came out last year that maintained that the studio publicity machine actually deliberately created that subtext in order to give the actors a gloss of free-living bohemianism.

My reason for posting this is not to drag up the controversy again since I feel like it's been done to death. I just happened upon this picture and it reminded me that many of the pictures in this infamous photo shoot are among my favorites of Grant. Many of the pictures have an absurd quality such as the one where they are tossing a giant medicine ball around and those who can tear their eyes away from the beefacke long enough will note that Grant is wearing white bobby socks on the beach. I put one of the photos in my book, not only because I felt like it needed to be addressed in as honest a manner as I could, but because I couldn't imagine a compendium of pictures of Grant's life that didn't include some of those photos. They are part of his image, good, bad or indifferent.

Grant spent a fare amount of time in the last twenty years of his life denying as politely as possible, rumors that he was gay or bisexual and Scott's family have come forward also to deny them as recently as last year. Books on Hollywood continue to state Grant's bisexuality with point-blank authority when his more thorough biographers are convinced that at most it is still an open question but more likely to be a case of guilt by association. The fact that these pictures were printed as recently as last year in a major English newspaper makes me think that that more than twenty years of after his death, Grant is still making news, and that there really is no such thing as bad publicity.

I can't give you anything but love, Baby!

Happy Valentines Day my fellow cinematic obsessives. I have, for the sake of the occasion, my all-time favorite film, Bringing Up Baby. Yes, it's a movie with roaring leopards, barking dogs, tumbling dinosaurs and a shocking disregard for firearm safety, but it's also my idea of romantic.

Part of what makes Bringing Up Baby so romantic is that it is very old-fashioned. I say that not because it's 71 years old, but because it harkens back to a more innocent time than 1938. From the tin pan alley origins of its theme song to it's breezy college prank plotting, Bringing Up Baby feels more like something out of the twenties than the thirties. And with Cary Grant in full-on Harold Lloyd mode, it's difficult not to recall The Jazz Age. Indeed the screenplay is based a humorous short story from the previous decade. The problems of the characters are those of care-free, self-absorbed rich folks, the sort of ridiculous catastrophes that marked P.G. Woodehouse's best work.

Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) falls in love with a quiet zoologist, David Huxley (Cary Grant), who is trying to woo her aunt for a million dollar donation to his museum. She makes up her mind to deter him from marrying another woman by scheming to get him to help her take her leopard up to her farm in Conneticut. Plot complications such a psychiatrist who believes Susan is a kleptomaniac, an incessantly barking dog (Asta) who steals a "rare" and "precious" dinosaur bone and a "baaaad" leopard escaped from the circus, all click into place at exactly the moment they are needed. The dialog is as fast-paced as it is slyly funny and the entire cast of rock solid RKO studio players (May Robson, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, and Walter Catlett) are up to the challenge of delivering it. Add to that mix Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, a comic team who literally move together as one being in the famous torn coat/torn dress sequence, and you have nothing less than the funniest movie of all time. All that might be enough to make it one of my favorites, but it wouldn't explain to you why I've saved this movie for Valentine's Day.

Bringing Up Baby has served over the years as a bit of manifesto for me. It shows us action is needed and ethics mostly unimportant when what is stake is one's entire happiness. Susan Vance practically kidnaps a man she's met twice in order to keep him around long enough to make him fall in love with her. As Susan explains to her aunt who is curious to know why a rude, naked man is wandering around in her house in a negligee, "If he gets some clothes, he'll go away and he's the only man I've ever loved!" David Huxley is a shy, awkward bookish fellow trapped in the body of a movie star. The man he changes in to at the end of the film--brave, quietly amusing, romantic--is purely Susan's creation. The scene where she drags the snarling "bad" leopard to the jail is a visual metaphor for the way she drags David out of his shell and makes him into a lion tamer. Put another way, there are two lessons to be learned from Bringing up Baby: 1) all is fair in love and war. 2) never leave your keys in your car.

The movie is also very romantic in its Midsummers Night's Dream of a setting. The bulk of the action takes place on a moonlit evening in the woods in June. Susan must be her own Oberon, but there is also the feeling that Fate is right behind her filling in with screwball schemes of its own whenever it appears that David might make his matrimonial date with the aptly named Miss Swallow. The tune "I Can't Give You Anything but Love Baby" not only captures the old fashioned romance, but it is also integral to plot, as it is said to have a calming effect on the leopard. As such David and Susan must roam the countryside singing a fair bit of their dialog to the tune and memorably wind up howling it along with George and Baby under the psychiatrist's window. There is a music to the rhythm of the dialog as well. David's chorus is "be with you in a minute Mister Peabody" and Susan's is "everything is going to be alright." One could make a fairly deadly drinking game out of just the repetition of those two lines of dialog, but I prefer to think of them as a quirky but beautiful love song.

Is it too early for a clip show

Sam Jaffe, Douglas Fairbanks Junior and Cary Grant brave the heat on the set of Gunga Din.

You may have been wondering where the heck I've been lately after teasing you with hints of Kay Francis marathons and more Tonto and Friends. The strangest thing happened (cue wiggly screen effects and flashback music) when I got together with Tonto and Friends to discuss their latest movie review of Gunga Din at the CinemaOCD Vault and Winebar.

Jenny: OK, guys, I love your review of Gunga Din. It was very astute Tonto when you compared the film to Three Kings (1999). So you see the George Clooney as being comparable to the Douglas Fairbank's junior character since he has the romance with the girl. Would that make Mark Wallberg, Cary Grant and Ice Cube, Victor McLaghlen, then?

Tonto: Yes.

Jenny: We should add that, then. I thought the biggest laugh came from Frankenstein when he compared himself to Victor McGlaglen. I guess you see yourself as an oft-misunderstood brute with good intentions?

Frankenstein: Gahhhhh, same shoe size!

Jenny: I see. I have to agree with Tonto's assessment of Joan Fontaine in Gunga Din, "all eyebrows. No sex appeal." I love her in Rebecca and Suspicion, but here she just seems underused and annoying. No wonder they don't want Douglas Fairbanks Jr. to marry her.

Tonto: Is classic buddy movie quandry. Unworthy woman comes between good friends. Is Saving Silverman with elephant thrown in.

Jenny: I agree, Tonto. It is a classic motif. Annie the Elephant is the real female star of the movie. Tonto, I also really liked your Gunga Din drinking game.

Tonto: Take sip fire water every time character is thrown out window.

Jenny: Yeah, that does happen a lot doesn't it? But I was curious to know how you Tonto especially felt about this being essentially a Cowboys and Indians movie with a different setting.

Tonto: Tonto prefer "Native Americans."

Jenny: Fair enough but you know what I'm saying?

Tonto: Tonto understand. I not agree completely. Maybe Jenny Nipper can't resist Cowboys and Indians pun?

Jenny: Oh Tonto, you know me so well. More Merlot, anyone?

Frankenstein: Merlot good.

Tonto: Tonto think some comparison apt, such as cavalry charging in to save day. Tonto can not think of Cowboy movie where noble Native American sacrifice self to save white men.

Jenny: Maybe we should throw that out there to our readers. If it exists, they are sure to have seen it. As a person of color, Tonto, does Gunga Din, offend you?

Tonto: Tonto not offended by so-called racism in Gunga Din. Tonto view Kipling as critical of colonialism. They are out to plunder treasure, not help people of India defeat evil murder cult. Could view as metaphor for entire colonial adventure.

Jenny: That's how I've always viewed it too. But isn't Din a "noble savage" stereoptype?

Tonto: That make Tonto laugh. Many people think Tonto is noble savage stereotype. Tonto assure critics that he put breeches on one leg at a time just like anyone else.

Jenny: Good point. And Jaffe is very good. I think he and Grant play particularly well together.

Tarzan: (Yawn) Me go get more cheese. Anyone want anything from bar?

Frankenstein: No, thanks. Me good.

Tonto: Tonto good too.

Jenny: Well, I think this review is ready to go. I've got my introduction where I talk about how every time I go a month or more without watching a Cary grant movie, I'm always blown away by watching him and think "oh my God! Cary Grant is awesome. Why haven't I been watching his movies more." I think I'll dig up some tight uniform Eye Candy and---

Tonto: Guys, bartender is gone!

Tonto: Huh? Tonto drink too much fire water again. He probably inside vault stocking shelves. (Tonto gets up to look inside vault) Hey guys look at this. Note from bartender.

(Jenny the Nipper, Tarzan and Frankenstein follow Tonto into the Vault. Suddenly a gust of wind blows the door shut. Alarmed, Tarzan tries to open the vault door.)

Tarzan: We're trapped.

Frankenstein: Gahhhh. Small spaces baaad. Frankenstein clausterphobic.

Jenny: don't panic, big fella. I'm sure the bartender will be back soon. What does the note say?

Tonto: (Reading note) "Sorry. I just received text from ex-wife. Having panic attack. Be back when Zantac kicks in."

Tarzan: Awwwwwououou Awwwwwwwwwww! HEEEEEEEELPPPPP!

Tonto: Tarzan warn Tonto next time he going to scream in Tonto's ear!

Frankenstein: Gaaaaaaaah! We die in here!!!!

Jenny: Everyone just calm down. We have plenty of wine and cheese and DVDs to sustain us for as long as it takes for the bartender to return.

Tonto: What about bathroom?

Jenny: Well that could be a problem. We did drink quite a lot of merlot.

Tarzan: Quit talking about bathroom. Only make things worse.

Jenny: Let's try to focus on some thing creative and positive to pass the time.

Tarzan: I know! Jenny and Tarzan could explore unresolved sexual tension.

Jenny: er, what unresolved sexual tension?

Tarzan: (shrugs) Was worth a shot.

Tonto: Tonto and Friends could discuss favorite moments from CinemaOCD blog.

Frankenstein: Gah, a clip show!!!! Clip show baaad.

Jenny: I agree. I don't think we've been around long enough for a backward look. That's a season three gimmick along with replacing the cute kid with an even cuter little kid.

Tarzan: Is always sexual tension thing.

Jenny: Right, clip show it is, then. Frankenstein, why don't you start us off what's your favorite moment from the blog so far.

Frankenstein: Me love Cupidon!!

Jenny: That was a lot of fun, wasn't it. I'll go next. My favorite moment from the blog was probably the first Tonto and Friends piece on Moonstruck!

Tonto: So embarassing! Like first season Simpsons. Is all raw, unformed ideas.

Jenny: That's what I love about it. Tonto you go next.

Tonto: Tonto's favorite moment from blog so far was in depth look at pre-code Barbara Stanwyck. Missy so pretty. Pretty, pretty Missy. Sigh.

Tarzan: Me like Barbara Stanwyck Eye Candy of Day, too.

Jenny: Was that your favorite moment?

Tarzan: Well, maybe. Tarzan can't decide between Norma Shearer Eye Candy of Day and Barbara Stanwyck picture from Lady of Burlesque.

Frankenstein: (wolf whistles) Lady of Burlesque.

Jenny: I really enjoyed the discussion that followed that Norma Shearer post.

Frankenstein: Must have blooopers!! Clipshow need bloopers!

Jenny: Oh, yes good idea. Let's see there was the time I spelled Bette Davis with a "Y" or the time I randomly changed a director's first name to "Bruce." But both of those mistakes got fixed, thanks to the miracle of the edit button. Here's a good blooper reel for you, anyway with some flubs from Saratoga Trunk.

Tarzan: Ha! Classic stars swearing! It never get old.

Tonto: Tonto say montage of people punching each other out, never get old.

Frankenstein: Hitting!

Jenny: Thanks, Tonto, now I'm going to have Tub Thumping in my head for the remainder of our stay in this vault.

(Montage of time elapse: Calendar pages falling away, Tonto drinking wine, Frankenstein eating a big piece of cheese, everyone watching DVD of The Yearling and trying to act like they have something in their eye, Jenny and Tarzan having an almost kiss moment, Jenny hitting Tarzan over the head with empty wine bottle, which makes funny Three Stooges sound effect, more calendar pages falling away until we see that it has been nine days.)

Tonto: Tonto say if bartender no show up soon, bladder going to explode.

Frankenstein: Guuuuuh, Nine Days! Nine Days!

Tarzan: No more Gregory Peck movies! Me kill next person who brings up Gregory Peck!

Jenny: And who would that comment be aimed at, eh, loincloth boy?!

Tonto: (putting ear to door) Shhh! Tonto have super Native American hearing ability. Tonto think bartender coming back.

(Suddenly vault door rumble and swings open.)

Jenny: Oh thank god we're saved!

Bartender: You were in there the whole time? Man, I thought I had it rough with the ex and all. Anyone for a glass of wine. We just got a new case of merlot in and---

Everyone: Don't mention Merlot!!!!

(Group makes mad rush for the bathroom.)

Sub Mission: A tribute to submarine movies

Cary Grant in Destination Tokyo. If there isn't a scene like this in every sub movie, there should be.

I love a good submarine movie. There's something about the genre. You can say what you want about the Freudian symbolism of the craft, but I wonder if it's a coincidence that they all have at least one scene where the men start stripping off their wet shirts to deal with the heat and oppressive atmosphere. It's always Tennessee Williams hot on board a submarine, in more ways than one.

Das Boot goes for gritty (and sweaty) realism.

Probably the best sub movie of all time is Das Boot. It's also the longest. I've heard rumors of five hour cuts of this film. That's a lot of submarine. Even I might tire of a submerged tin can full of pent up testoreone and men in wet shirts. Nah. Who am I kidding? If one of my loyal readers sent me the five hour Das Boot, I'd watch it. This is a hint, people, by the way.

I dug up the trailer for Crimson Tide (1995) on Youtube. Watch for a pre-Sopranos James Gandolphini saying "Dive, Dive" and sweating a lot. Notice how everyone is sweating a lot in the clip. And in the scenes where they aren't sweating it's raining really hard, just to up the wateriness quotient of the movie, I guess.

Gable: They carried the whole "wet look" a bit too far.

One of the dramatic devices of Crimson tide, the clash between an old captain and a younger officer, is a recurring theme in the genre. From Charles Laughton and Gary Cooper in Devil in the Deep (1932) to Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson in K-19, the Widowmaker (2002), you pretty much now that two things are going to happen. The young guy is gonna get wet and then he's gonna yell at the older guy. In Run Silent, Run Deep (1958), it's the old guy, Clark Gable who gets wet.

After the yelling and the second guessing, there will be certainly be a contrastingly quiet scene where almost we hear is that "Boop....booop" noise that you always hear in the background in a sub movie. That's usually the cue to start the tech talk. "Crush depth," "fire torpedos," "up, persicope" and the like. I love all the tech talk in a sub movie. It reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, which is really every kind of navy battle movie set in space. You definitely have the submarine thing, because they put their nukes in tubes and fire them like torpedos. Every time Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) starts barking out navigational coordinates, you can tell that President Roslin (Mary McDonnel) just wants to jump his bones. Submarine movies have long extended sequences where people talk in this kind of gibberish and yet it's always tense and dramatic.

Gregory Peck and his periscope in On the Beach.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, I wouldn't be surprised if the creators of that series had seen On The Beach with Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. They are both about people coping with the end of the world. How do survivors move on with their lives and what problems do they have hooking up with other survivors. Turns out they have a lot of issues. Gregory Peck plays a submarine commander whose surely lost his family in the war that's destroyed all of the the Northern Hemisphere, but he continues to act as if they are o.k., buying them gifts, writing letters home. Yet he's trying to come to terms with his relationship with Ava Gardner, which is like mental adultery to him. It's a very fine drama that has amazing work from Gardiner, Peck, pre-Pyscho Anthony Perkins, and Fred Astaire among others. That's why I resisted the temptation to title this whole piece "Das Booty Call: Gregory Peck in On the Beach." That would be too flippant even for me.

I wasn't expecting On the Beach (1959) to be a sub movie, since it's about nuclear war. The opening scene has Gregory Peck bending over a periscope. I had to stop the movie and replay it and say aloud, "You had me at 'up periscope' On the Beach."

When obsessions collide: Cary Grant and Bill Murray

Separated at birth?

Walter Ecklund (Cary Grant) and Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) are both alcoholic sea captains with emotional baggage and silly hats. Bill Murray will be on Turner Classic Movies "Under the Influence" tonight talking with Elvis Mitchell about his role model, Cary Grant. My obsessions have not collided in such an interstellar way since Murray got on stage at a Bob Dylan concert.

Edit: well the interview was dull as paste, but I am usually bored with interviews with my favorite actors. On top of that Bill seemed a little spaced out and he roundly denied taking any influence from His Girl Friday, though he talked about North By Northwest. This puzzled me since Cary Grant's character, Walter Burns in HGF, is a prototype for the half heel/half hero types that Murray occasionally plays. (See Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters and Phil Connors in Groundhog Day).

One bright spot in that Bill looks more like his brother Brian Doyle did in the 80s, which made me want to re-watch the Razor's Edge. "Ohhh Piedmont. Fresh meat!"

Notorious: by the ticking of the champagne clock

I first glimpsed Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, Notorious in college. A journalism professor showed us the scene at the party with the key and the device I've come to call the "champagne clock." I don't remember what the teacher's point was, I just remembered the bliss of seeing my beautiful Cary on the big screen in class. After that, I sought out the movie in the library, marveling at the obsessive craftsmanship of the director in balancing the tension of scenes like the champagne clock with the moments of humor and the swooning romance.

Notorious is a sophisticated movie. It acknowledges that there is such a thing as sex and that it doesn't always happen in marriage. The title at first seems to refer to Ingrid Bergman's character Alicia and her bad reputation, but as the film goes on it becomes increasingly ironic. Alicia grows ever more vulnerable and desperate, and is the victim surrounded by playboy spies, murderers and mother-in-laws. Even the supposed bad guy, Alex Sebastian, played by Claude Raines is to be admired for his good taste in women and pitied for his over-bearing mother, who is the real villain of the piece.

Bergman's performance is wonderful. She is achingly insecure one minute and quite funny in the next. My favorite scene is the one in which Cary Grant's Devlin returns from the meeting where he's gotten the assignment to have Alicia seduce the evil Nazi played by Claude Raines. He is suddenly cold toward her, but she doesn't realize right away and chatters on happily about how her chicken caught fire once while it was cooking. How could any man resist her sweetly amusing Swedish sing-song love patter? How come Devlin doesn't just drop to his knees, declare his love and tell his bosses to go drink some of Mrs. Sebastian's delicious coffee? I guess there wouldn't be a movie if he weren't such a fat-headed guy full of pain.

Cary Grant also gives a layered performance. He is tough, and glib in all his interactions with Alicia, but there is just a glint of sentimentality in him that comes gushing out in genuine sentiment in the final love scene with Alicia. The famously long embrace looks so passionate in stills, but is quite gentle and sweet in the context of the film. Cary's voice is hushed, his dialog almost rushed as he must quickly declare his love, keep Alicia alive and moving out the door, all the while planning an exit strategy for his rescue. When Claude Raines appears he turns back into the Iceman, giving him that same hard side that he always showed Alicia, all the while continuing to whisper encouragements in her ear. When he guides her slowly down the stairs he looks as if he were balancing on a tightrope (or on the roof of a French Chalet, perhaps?) . Cary Grant got his start in show business as an acrobat and once you know that fact it's difficult not to see him as a stilt walker pulling off the illusion of ease in an uncomfortable situation.

Hitchcock indulges in plenty of camera "gimmicks" showing Devlin only from the rear in the first scene, turning his image upside down when Alicia has a hangover and using strange lighting and focus effects to dramatize Alicia's illness. Some of these experiments work (the upside down Devlin) and some fail and become distracting (filming Devlin from behind.) I don't think Hitchcock's importance as a director lies necessarily in those innovations of his. I think it has to do with the overall incorporations of his obsessions (and I know a thing or two about those!) into his art. The mother-in-law is a variation on Mrs. Danver's from Rebecca and like Danver's, Hitchock hints that she has some kind of unhealthy sexual obsession, in this case with her son. In Bergman, Hitchcock found the first of his cool, but passionate blondes. When Bergman left Hollywood she was replaced first with Grace Kelly and then with Eva marie Saint and Kim Novak. Yes, Notorious is definitely a good place to start for a blog that is about Cinema obsessions.

Eye Candy of the Day

Click on the pic for High Rez Hotties

I'm Obsessed Thank You Very Much

Quick 80's movie nerds, (aka Neoclasicists), what movie is the headline a quote from? Hint: a booga, booga, ah, ah ah!

I've been obsessed with movies since I was a kid. Star Wars was probably my first true obsession, but my disorder didn't fully kick into high gear until I hit puberty. The year was 1985 and I found myself working in a video store checking out three movies a night and watching HBO and WTBS whenever I had the chance. I fell in love with Cary Grant. I became obsessed with Bill Murray. I went completely bonkers for Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, so much so that I recorded dialog from the movie onto a cassette which I played in my Walkman. (That was sorta like a big clunky iPod, kids. Ask your folks.)

I began to kick old school in a big way in college, taking film classes and occasionally ditching out of work and real-life to watch movies in the library basement. I built the first iteration of my Shrine to Cary Grant. After college I started working a desk job and began to play around building web pages. In 1995, I launched the first ever web site devoted to Cary Grant and a few years later I was contracted to write a book about him called "Cary Grant: A Life in Pictures." Two more books followed on Grace Kelly and Bob Hope and I became a founding member of the E-mail Warbrides, the first mailing list devoted to Cary Grant. Since then, I have attended Caryventions and even hosted one in Minneapolis.

In 2002 I got married and began a new obsession shortly thereafter: Jane Austen and more importantly, film adaptations of her books. Sci Fi was not forgotten and the Star Wars pre-quels loomed large in this time in my life. My love of Old Hollywood of the Turner Classics variety has never waned and new obsessions have been added almost yearly to now include: Michael Redgrave, Gary Cooper, Powell and Loy, Irene Dunne, Gregory Peck, Barbara Stanwyck, Jimmy Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock and the list goes on. I'm always on the look-out for the obscure from those stars that I follow, so if anyone hears of a showing of early and out of print films with these stars, I'd be much obliged if you'd let me know in the comments section.

I plan to post regularly on the films I'm currently watching and especially provide goodies, like "The Eye Candy of the Day" with awesome photos of pretty people in the movies.