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.

Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes

Well it's the end of a decade folks so all the movie blogs are bound to have a lot of lists. Since I have barely watched ten movies from this decade (if I didn't exaggerate, I would die) I will focus on stuff I'm actually watching. You know: old movies. So here's my Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes to keep you heated up on this cold winter's day.


10)Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in Uniform. And if that's not enough...submarines! Gary Cooper has many great pre-code love scenes: The scene at the end of One Sunday Afternoon where he in a matter of a few minutes saves his marriage and wins the audience's grudging affection. Not to mention scenes in Farewell to Arms where he makes you forget momentarily that the script has left Hemingway behind pages ago. But none of these scenes are really all that different from Gary Cooper love scenes after the code. A big exception is to be found in the oddball melodrama Devil and the Deep co-starring Tellulah Bankhead, Charles Laughton and a little known (at the time) actor named Cary Grant. Cooper picks Bankhead up, literally, he saves her from keeling over in the midst of a festival, and spends the night with her in an oasis. The scene lasts ten or eleven minutes following the couple as they move through crowded streets, back-alley bazaars and eventually the moonlit dessert. At one point she's trying to get rid of him and she shakes his hand to say goodbye, he keeps it and continues talking to her in a low monotone of hypnotic seduction while stroking the inside of her wrist with his forefinger. It's a completely cheeky thing which would get a mere mortal slapped, if he didn't look like Gary Cooper. Bankhead plays into it beautifully, protesting half-heartedly until it's too late. The rest of the film is campy good fun that ends in a submarine crash in which everyone gets wet (except Cary Grant, who sadly left the movie before this point, D'oh!)

9) Cheap and Vulgar. Warren William and Joan Blondell in The Goldiggers of 1933. Joan Blondell calls herself "Cheap and vulgar Carol" and Warren William replies "I love you, whatever your name is." It's really pretty awesome. See it here. More on Golddigers here.

8)Put em round me. Norma Shearer and Clark Gable in a Free Soul. This whole scene is the essence of pre-code from the costumes (Norma Shearer's loose, low cut dressing gown worn without underwear would never be permitted a few years later) to the context (the scene takes place as the couple are spending the night in Ace's hideaway.) Gable and Shearer argue. He wants to marry and she doesn't. She ends the dialog and the argument with a direct command for some lovin. "Come on. Put 'em round me." A contemporary review of the film found this couple preposterous, but now they are almost cliche--the gangster bad boy and the wild, society girl. The whole scene is linked here, and starts at about the three minute mark. More on A Free Soul can be found here.

7)The pussyfooting. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie discuss the ups and downs of shacking up together in Illicit. "I can't stand all this pussy-footing around," he declares to which she replies, "Don't say you don't like the pussy-footing." Stanwyck is adorable and hilarious and Rennie has stuck with me, even though this is the only movie I've ever seen him in. The combination of romance, comedy and a head-strong heroine mixed in this scene would be repeated frequently in Stanwyck's best pictures. Highlights are linked here and begins around the 55 second mark. More about Illicit can be found here.

6) Jungle love. Four Frightened People. Herbert Marshall and Claudette Colbert lose their clothes and, eventually, their inhibitions as they lose their way in the jungle. After epic quantities of flirtation, he touches her shoulder. She tells him that it feels so good when he touches her and he replies "everything I've touched for weeks now has seemed to be you." Squeeeeee! Later in the film the lovers, exchange wedding vows while tied back to back to a piece of bamboo. Marshall's character has a wife back home which adds an extra level of pre-code angst to the proceedings. More about Four Frightened People here.

5) I'm gonna let you watch me shave. In Bed of Roses (1933), Joel McCrea plays a gritty ship's captain who falls for a prostitute (Constance Bennet). The whole thing is a bit of Red Dust rip off in that respect, but it's a fun movie, with well-written dialogue and enormous chemistry between the leads in their third pairing on film. In one scene McCrea's character shaves in front of Bennett and things get pretty steamy. I happened upon this movie in the last five minutes and I was completely mesmerized by McCrea and Bennett, so much so that I made a point to seek out the whole film and others with these two actors. McCrea is ridiculously handsome in this movie. I'd been used to seeing his films from the early Forties, where he was pretty, but wow. OK, just... wow. Fan of Palm Beach Story? Watch one of his pre-code comedies with Bennett and prepare to have your mind blown.

4) They are still talking about typewriters, right? Leave it to Lubitsch to make even an old typewriter sexy. In Design for Living Frederich March and Glinda admit there feelings for one another and then move on to more important matters--talking about Tommy's old typewriter. Him: "Ya didn't keep it oiled! The keys are rusty." Her, "It still rings." He moves really close to her and she whispers, "it still rings." See the whole scene here starting at around minute 54.

3)Garbo and the furniture In Queen Christina Garbo and her real-life lover John Gilbert act out the doomed love affair between a queen dressed as a man and her Spanish lover, Antononio. They spend three days together snow bound in an inn. In one memorable scene Garbo moves around the room touching the furniture and draperies with a sensual delight. She explains to Anotonio "in the future in my memory I shall live a great deal in this room." See the whole scene here.

2) What about breakfast? In The Smiling Lieutenant, Claudette Colbert and Maurice Chevalier discuss when they will next see each other. She suggests dinner, but he says no that's too long to wait he is hungry now. Then she suggests tea and he says, knowingly, what about breakfast? As she's leaving, they kiss and the screen fades to black. In the next scene she is happily cooking him breakfast. And that, ladies and gentleman is why they call it the Lubitsch touch! See the whole thing here, from the five minute mark.

1)UNF. If you don't know what UNF is try looking it up and you might just find a scene from Red Dust there as an explanation. The rather crude acronym has come to mean"paradigm of sexiness" and that about says it all really. It's hard to pick just one scene from Red Dust. One might do a list of at least five just from that film. My favorite is the first meeting of the couple in which they mostly debate the merits of different kinds of cheese. It's almost as if the writers were trying to come up with the least sexy dialog possible, but Gable and Harlow somehow set it on fire anyway. See it here.

Some people call me Maurice

I'd never watched any Maurice Chevalier movies until recently, and then I watched two, from the book-ends of his career: The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) and Love in the Afternoon (1957). Chevalier made his name as a suave singing comic lover on the stage before he signed with Paramount and starred in their earliest musicals. In The Smiling Lieutenant, a thin, spicy plot hangs together around Chevalier's musical numbers which are charming and often quite bawdy. He is the apex of a love-triangle with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins and in one memorable scene the two women get together to prepare notes, cooing over how handsome he looks in his signature straw boater. "Did you ever see him in...oh, no nevermind" Colbert says, blushing. She goes on to give Hopkins some musical tips about spicing up her lingerie wardrobe before leaving Chevalier to enjoy the fruits of her makeover talent. Only in a pre-code Ernest Lubitsch movie would you have such a sophisticated and nonchalant attitude toward sex. Well, perhaps in a modern French film, but then they'd all stand around and look out the window all day and no one would sing or dance or anything!

in Love in the Afternoon, Chevalier plays a private detective whose daughter (Audrey Hepburn) falls in love with one of his most notorious targets--an American playboy played by Gary Cooper. Cooper and Chevalier were both leading men at Paramount in the early 30s and it must have been a bit irksome to him to be relegated to the fatherly role, while aging Coop still clung to his male lead status. The movie is delightful and funny and while many people have a problem with pairing 56-year-old Cooper with 28-year-old Hepburn. It is well-known that director Billy Wilder's first choice for the part was Cary Grant. Now I can never deny feeling that Grant would be a superior choice in almost any film (OK, maybe not in say, A Streetcar Named Desire), but I actually think Cooper is just fine. Yes, he looks his age, as Grant did not at that point. Cooper shows a bit of vulnerability when he becomes insanely jealous over Hepburn's implied experience with men. Of course the whole thing is a big bluff, but that doesn't stop him from going completely over the top. If this weren't handled just right, I think it would be kind of creepy, which is why I'm glad Cooper finesses the situation just perfectly.

My only real beef is with Wilder who seems completely paranoid about Cooper's face. He is never shown in close-up until almost the very end and he is almost always in shadow. This very frustrating for Cooper's fans. If so much had not been made of his age by the director, I don't think it would be such a big deal.

Anyway, Chevalier and the whole rest of the cast are wonderfully charming and fun. I love the script which tries very hard at being European and sophisticated, but still comes off being pretty quaint by today's standards. Hepburn is worthy of everyone of Wilder's loving close-ups, the ones he didn't give to Coop, and she and her leading man, and her pretend father all act wonderfully together. This is really one of those movies that is kind of like comfy old slipper that you could try on any time you need to feel warm and fuzzy.

A Song is Born

I've had A Song is Born (1948) in my tivo queue for more than a year. I don't know why I've overlooked watching it till now. I recorded it because it was a young Danny Kaye movie and I've always loved young Danny Kaye. I started watching it, with my usual twenty minute rule--if a movie doesn't hook me in that time, I turn it off. In the first twenty seconds I was intrigued because it looked like it was filmed on the Ball of Fire (1941) set. It took me another ten minutes or so to realize that A Song is Born is a technicolor musical remake of Ball of Fire, my favorite Gary Cooper movie. It was directed by Howard Hawks who made the original as well.

The script sticks very close to the original except that instead of creating a general encyclopedia, the professors are working on a complete history of music with a set of reference recordings. One of the professors is played by Benny Goodman and the group of musicians who drop by to help with the project are a who's who of Big Band Jazz. In one scene Goodman sits in on a jam session, pretending to know nothing about jazz. Lionel Hampton tells him that they all play without sheet music, just like Benny Goodman, to which the professor replies, "Never heard of him."

Danny Kaye and Virgina Mayo play the parts made immortal by Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. Mayo has that breezy, sexy way of singing and relating to the older professors that makes the movie crackle and kaye is adorable as usual. Kaye gets an added scene of typical nonsense. After he realizes he's in love with Miss Honey he eats breakfast, stirring jam in his coffee with a dill pickle, putting mustard on cake, etc. Happily its a short scene. As brilliantly funny as he is, he never seems to know when to end a gag.

Though the script sticks close to the original, some of the dialog is mangled in a Song is Born. Some scenes have been updated or cut down to make room for the musical numbers while later references are in tact from the original script. This would be a bit confusing if you hadn't practically had the original memorized as I do. You can see why they decided to remake this a musical. It makes sense since the fugitive from justice is a nightclub singer and the original has a very memorable musical sequence "Drum Boogie" which feature Gene Krupa on the matchbox.

Even though I think the story flows a bit better in the musical version, I still prefer Ball of Fire. Cooper and Stanwyck have amazing chemistry and the love scenes in A Song is Born are a bit flat in comparison. I found myself anxiously waiting for the next musical set piece rather than enjoying the romantic interaction between Honey and the Professor. Perhaps the problem is that in original, Cooper was playing against type and in the remake Danny Kaye is more or less playing Danny Kaye. Which is more romantic, finding Gary Cooper buried away under layers of dust in old mansion or finding Danny Kaye in the same circumstance?

Quaker Bad Boys: Friendly Persuasion

Is there any movie that Gary Cooper can't save? I've wondered that for a while now, and I think after seeing Friendly Persuasion, we have a definitive "no." This could have been a earnest, insufferable "message picture", with its Pat Boone soundtrack and teenage angst but somehow the presence of Coop elevates it to light, comic gold. It is also helped by a thoughtful script which poses the topic of pacifism in a more intelligent and in-depth way that the more famous Oscar-winning Sargent York. To be fair Sargent York could not have been made during the Second World War and given us any other answer to the question than it did.

Jess (Gary Cooper) and Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) Birdwell are Quakers struggling to keep their religious views in the midst of the civil war. They manage this by compromising a lot with their kids, their church and their neighbors. That is to say they stay Quakers by being lousy Quakers. Their eldest son Josh (pre-Psycho teen hearthrob Tony Perkins) wants to enlist to fight against slavery which the Quakers oppose. Their daughter Mattie (Phyllis Love) is in love with the nice neighbor boy who happens to be in the Union Army and a Methodist. Their youngest seems to be perpetually scrapping and even their pet goose is a badass. The Birdwells' response to this tension is to try to reason with and convince their children to follow the right path. They use persuasion. Get it, "friendly" persuasion as in "Quaker friends." Ha.

I loved this movie because it has such a sane response to teenagers. What other movie from the fifties can you think of where the parents aren't the enemy? Rather than forbid and punish they allow them to make their own mistakes, trusting that they've given them enough in the way of example and discipline that they will find their way back. Jess seems to be dealing with his own issues with his religion. His wife is a minister but he's a bit of Quaker bad boy. He buys a fancy organ even though music is forbidden, he gets in the occasional "altercation," he drops his "thees" and "thous" at will and he trades for a fast horse so he can show up his neighbor. In one scene his daughter and her suitor are up in the attic playing the forbidden organ when the church elders drop by for an unannounced visit. He covers up the noise with especially voiciferous praying that is really only a gorgeous Gary Cooper eyelash away from blasphemy.


Friendly Persuasion has a liberal slant that I would expect more from the seventies than the fifties. Mattie is full of faith and pride but a little male attention sends her running down the road barefoot in a wantonly display of hatless unQuakerly behavior. Her parents let it slide. If the Birdwells aren't letter of the law Quakers they're not very good Victorians either. Jess has an interesting way of dealing with marital discord that is pure Gary Cooper. He uses sex. The disagreement over the organ has Eliza sleeping in the barn out of protest. So Jess puts the kids to bed early and goes out there himself. The next we see of the couple it's morning and they are cheerful, disheveled and Jess has hay all over his shirt. It's refreshing to see a movie from any era where married people have sex and its a normal healthy thing.

When the war comes to their peaceful, idyllic community Josh decides to enlist in the home guard. Neighbors who were letter of law Quakers loose everything and join the fight out of bitterness. Fearing for Josh's life, Jess goes after him leaving Eliza to guard the homestead. She manages to preserve the place by offering the Rebels absurd quantities of home-cooked food and beating one of them with a broom when he gets wrong ideas about her pet goose. When Jess catches up with Josh he finds the boy popping Rebel Raiders at a rate of proficiency that would make Alvin York proud. It helps that Josh feels really crappy about it. Jess manages to turn the other cheek in a near fatal altercation. Compromises are made but the family remains. The kids are alright after all.

Cupidon's Blog

Bojour Cherie!

I am Cupidon! Pint size companion to Clio Dulaine. I know all the dirt of the people here abouts in Saratoga Springs. I smoke cigars with Mr. Clint and he says I should "start one a them there blogs on the internets." So here I am to give you all the gossip.

They say charity begins at home so I will give the goods on Mrs. Dulaine. First of all. She is not a countess. She wants me to call her "her ladyship," but that is just a little joke with us. Just like Mr. Clint was never a colonel in the army. Second of all Angelique is not black. She is a white woman in make-up. I think Clio thinks it is more chic to have black maid so she makes Angelique put on the make-up. But I ask you, what is the deal with the eyebrows? She went crazy with the eyebrows.

Now you might have heard a word or two around the Springs about Mrs. Dulaine and Bartholomew Van Steed. I think, meh, she likes his money, but she is in love with Mr. Clint. You watch, Cherie, she will always go back to Mr. Clint even though his idea of money is winning $500 in a card game. Did she not follow him here from New Orleans? She may talk about getting revenge for her mama and marrying a rich man, but I can tell, in her heart it is all Clint, Clint, Clint all the time. Let me tell you another thing, Cherie. That door between their rooms is never locked, not even once. They are alike those two. Always lying, always angry and always scheming to "get the other fella first be he gets you."

The big talk around Saratoga Springs is the railroad, the so-called Saratoga Trunk line between the coal fields and the rest of New York. Bartholomew Van Steed owns it, but Mr. Soule and his cronies are trying to get it away from him in the courts. So Mr. Clint says he should hire some tough guys and take it back, station by station. I tell Mr. Clint when the day comes to fight, Cupidon will be there by his side. I despise Mr. Soule because when Mrs. Dulaine addressed him he sat there in his seat like a lump. Maybe she is only a pretend countess, but still a gentleman should stand up and greet her. He is no gentleman and he will not keep the railroad. Oh no, Cupidon will see to that.

I should say something about the social scene here. Everyday the place to see and be seen is at the spring drinking the waters. As usual with these things the water is terrible, nasty stuff. It was a mystery to me how this place could be so popular-- a musty old hotel full of rich stuffed turkeys drinking disgusting water? That was until I met Mrs Coventry Bellop. As Mr. Clint says, she is one tough old battle ax. (He say that to me in private, not to Clio because she likes Mrs. Bellop.) Now this Bellop uses her influence to make the resort popular among her set of folks. If they decide to go elsewhere she convinces them to stay because she knows the dirt on all of them, even more than Cupidon! They are all scared of Mrs. Bellop, even Mrs. Van Steed, Bartholomew's mama. Oh, Mrs. Bellop should write a blog too! But that would not do because she makes her living by keeping her mouth shut. In return for this service, the hotel overlooks her bills. It is quite an arrangement. I guess she sees something of herself in Mrs. Dulaine, so she has decided to keep quiet about New Orleans and all of our mischief there for free.

Well, that is about all for now, Cherie. Angelique is coming to roust me for an errand. I better post this before she can stop me.

Au revoir!

Vera Cruz: too much spaghetti can be a bad thing

Grinning Burt lancaster and Gary Cooper man a machine gun in Vera Cruz.

Let's get this straight. I'm not a big fan of spaghetti westerns. I don't much like Eastwood or Bronson, their ultra-violence and their bleak outlooks. A little Ennio Morricone goes a long way for me. My late father's all-time favorite film was the Spaghetti Western masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West directed by Sergio Leone. Personally I find it a bit of a trial to get through, though I do highly recommend a video on Youtube which cuts together most of the best footage with Arcade Fire's haunting "My Body is Cage." So when the chance to watch films by Robert Aldrich, whose cynical, violent westerns of the 1950s were a pre-cursor of the spaghetti style, (Morricone worked as an assistant to Aldrich) let's just say, I left it in my tivo queue for a long time.

On the surface Vera Cruz starring Gary Cooper in bold technicolor is a piece of 50s cinemascope travelogue bombast. It's got spectacle, spectacle and more spectacle. My two year old loved it because their are horses charging in almost every single scene. This is before CGI people, so there must have been a lot of flies following that filmcrew around out in the Mexican dessert. Yet for every sweeping vista of Mayan pyramids, there is an act of brutality that undercuts the proceedings and leaves the viewer with a purposefully bad taste.

Look just a bit deeper and Vera Cruz is an attack on the status quo. The "hero" Ben Trane (Cooper) starts off by shooting his lame horse, reveals he's a former confederate soldier, refuses to fight for the revolutionaries because they won't pay enough and instead throws his lot in with a dubious bunch of thugs led by black-clad gunslinger Joe Erin (Lancaster). Right off we have a hero who was unapologetically on the wrong side of the civil war, doesn't care about the fight for Mexican independence and who has at least as much passion for the oppulent mansions of Emporer Maximillians court as he does for his love interest in the film. This just doesn't quite sit right and the Cooper fan waits for him to reveal himself to be more like what we expect. At least he's not as sadistic as Erin, who grins maniacally into the camera every time he guns someone down, which is quite a lot actually. The inevitable does come and Cooper turns out to be a good guy after all. It's such a sudden last minute reversal that you wonder if coop didn't have something in his contract that required him to always be a hero, and that clause kicked in at the last minute. I usually love the movies where Cooper plays with his image as unassailable western hero, but Vera Cruz just doesn't do it for me.

Loving Design for Living

I just saw Design for Living (1933) for the first time and I'm going to gush a bit. Ernest Lubitsch and Ben Hecht, the best director and writer of this type of material adapt a Noel Coward play with Frederick March, Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins. The result is one of the wittiest, sexiest comedies in a decade jam packed with such gems. George Curtis (Gary Cooper) a starving painter and Tom Chambers (Frederick March) an unpublished playwright, meet a commercial artist, Miss Glinda Ferrell(Miriam Hopkins) on a train to Paris. Unable to choose between the two, Glinda enters into a "gentleman's agreement" to live together with them with "no sex." In return, she offers them hard nosed criticism and their art greatly improves. As one can imagine this "no sex" thing doesn't last very long. As soon as Tom goes out of town, Glinda makes a move on George, attacking a lower button on his coat with an offer to sew it back on. George attempts to resist her seductive seemstressing by insisting she go take in the new Tarzan movie. "Glinda, please, Tarzan" he says helplessly. Moments later Glinda is sprawled across the sofa saying "we had a gentleman's agreement. Fortunately, I am no gentleman."

George and Glinda make a go of it for a while as his career takes off. Meanwhile in London, Tom is heartbroken, but his play "Goodnight Mr. Basington" is a massive hit. I love the play within a play which somehow involves a mandolin, a love triangle and the immortal line, "it may be fun, but not more fun than 100% morality and three squares a day." After meeting a mutual friend, Max Plunkett (the always brilliant Edward Everett Horton) in London, Tom decides to go back to Paris to find Glinda. While Tom is away painting a commission, Tom seduces Glinda by going over the finer points of typewriter mechanics. If ever a movie needed the slightest pretenses for a love scene, it was Design for Living. George arrives home early and punching ensues. Again, unable to choose, Glinda leaves them both for Max Plunkett who wastes no time in marrying her. Much of the plot of the movie is delivered through dictated letters and telegrams and one of the most delightful is the one Max writes to his mother telling him of his upcoming nuptials. We learn among other things that Max has no romance in his soul and that Glinda is originally from Fargo, North Dakota. As a fellow North Dakotan, I have to thank Noel Coward (or perhaps Ben Hecht?) for that one!

The comedy really gets cooking when George and Tom join forces to retrieve Glinda. I think Gary Cooper struggles a bit in other parts of the movie, trying to find his feet as George. The minute he and March get genuinely wacky he really starts to come alive. The last 15 minutes of the movie are out and out screwball comedy and certainly do add greatly to the argument that the Production Code was not a necessary element in that genre. Of all the pre-code movies I've watched in the last few weeks, Design for Living is far and away the most entertaining. I don't mind telling you, I'm loving Design for Living.

Eye Candy of the Day: Nevada

Thelma Todd, Gary Cooper and Ernie Adams in Nevada (1927). The film also co-stars William Powell who plays a villainous ranch foreman who sells out his boss to cattle rustlers.

Young Gary Cooper in one of his first lead roles plays, Jim Lacey, A.K.A. Nevada, a gunfighter who goes straight and takes on an army of cattle rustlers. This is slight fare but it is well made and entertaining from start to finish. The pace is quick with few inter-titles, and is easy to follow. Cooper looks gorgeous and is quite effective especially in a few dramatic moments later in the movie. Thelma Todd plays an English woman who starts out as the typical damsel in distress but surprises as she dons gauchos and a cowboy hat and rides out to help save her brother's ranch. In one memorable scene, Nevada ties her to a tree to prevent her from joining the battle. Shortly after that she decides he's the love of her life and picks him over his rival, William Powell. Powell's part is small but memorable. In a few scenes he exhibits a mix of dastardly and charming that is hard to forget. He has that Powell panache at the end when he's arrested and he reaches for a cigar instead of his gun. There is a touch of the cool style that would be his meal ticket in decades to come.

The Westerner: If only Judge Bean had a blog

Left: "Judge" Bean surrounded by his impressive Langtree memorabilia collection. Below: Coop and his neckerchief, which can scarcely be contained within any given frame of the film.

The Westerner (1940) was one of the most important films Gary Cooper ever made. It was the follow-up film for the team that made Wuthering Heights: director William Wyler, producer Samuel Goldwyn and cinematographer Greg Toland. I first came to the movie because of the dream team and of course, Coop doesn't hurt either. Billed as a straight-forward western--the posters looked like the cover of a dime Zane Gray novel--The Westerner marks a turning point in the genre. There is ambiguity in heroes and villains alike as well as some very anti-social behavior on the part of cowboys. The opening scene shows cattle ranchers destroying a fence and herding their animals across farmer's fields. When one of the farmers tries to interfere, he is shot at by a cowboy. The Westerner proves itself different from everything that came before it with that brief opening scene.

Gary Cooper, with his enormous neckerchief and buckskin fringe coat would seem to be the obvious candidate for the "hero" but he arrives a very ambiguous character. He may or may not have stolen a horse, which is a crime punishable by death in this part of Texas. Apparently almost everything is punishable by death in this part of Texas, as it is under the control of a self-appointed "judge" named Roy Bean (Walter Brennan). As a villain, Bean is a mixed bag. He's funny, he's pathetic and occiasionally sympathetic. It's hard to hate him. It is particularly hard to hate him as a classic movie fanatic, since Bean is driven by his obsession with the famous English actress Lily Langtree.

The first half hour of the film shows the workings of Bean's "court". After the hapless farmer from the opening scene is given a brief trial, he is hanged. Then Bean and his boys go into the bar to toast to Lilly Langtree. Bean is maniacal, surrounded by dozens of portraits of his idol. One wonders without the benefit of Ebay, how he managed to get a hold of so many pictures of her. Indeed I think if Bean had access to the relatively healthy outlet of a blog, he might not have hanged so many men for so little reason. As it stands, his obsession with Langtree is both funny and frightening and he reveals that he has killed men for disagreeing with his opinion about her. Who can blame him? The guy was probably just a troll anyway.

Cooper is brought in to the midst of this insanity, accused of stealing a horse. He is given a quick trial and about to be hanged. In desperation, Cooper keys in on Bean's obsession with Langtree and uses it to bide for time. He claims to know Langtree and even to have a lock of her hair. Bean becomes obsessed with the idea of buying the lock of hair, which Cooper claims is "with his stuff in Pecos." Bean postpones his hanging until Cooper can retrieve the lock by post. Again, if Judge Bean had a blog, or some other internet outlet for his obsession, he would have already met plenty of other Langtree fans and he wouldn't fall for the tricks of a smooth talking cowboy.

While Cooper is describing Langtree's beauty in intricate detail a man named Evans comes in. Cooper claims that this is the man who sold him the stolen horse. There is a brawl, Cooper wins, and he takes 60 dollars from Evans who has been knocked out in the fight. This robbery is justified with a claim that is what Evans charged him for the stolen horse. Evans wakes up, reaches for his gun and is shot and killed by Bean. Bean fines the corpse the remaining money in his purse, rules him guilty and then orders his men to hang him for theft.

Cooper and Bean head back into the bar to toast again to Lily Langtree, each pouring an entire bottle of whiskey into a beer mug and then downing it quickly. Amazingly neither dies of alcohol poisoning and the next scene is them waking up in Bean's bed together with Lily's picture gazing down at them. Cooper wakes up first and washes his face by waterboarding himself in a bucket of water. He makes enough noise doing this to wake up the judge who doesn't remember him. Cooper tells him that he was the man who won Chickenfoot's horse at cards. Bean doesn't ask why he is in room dunking his head in a bucket. Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time at the Lily of Jersey. Bean asks Cooper to fix his neck which has a crick in it from a hanging mishap a few years back. Cooper obliges then high-tails it out of town on Chickenfoot's horse.

Bean staggers into the bar to get some hair of the dog. He suddenly remembers something about the night before and takes off after Cooper. In an exciting chase he catches Cooper (Chickenfoot's horse probably was tired from being stolen so many times), leaps off his horse and knocks Cooper to the ground. He immediately begins questioning Cooper about the lock of Langtree's hair and Cooper puts him off saying he was just riding to the post office to see about that. Though the sequence is done in a wide shot, with the figures in sillhouette, it's easy enough for me to believe that a 60 year old man would make a leap like that off a moving horse to get a lock of a star's hair. We've all been in serious memorabilia bidding wars at one time or another. I would do the same myself if another fan came between me and a vintage one-sheet that I had my eye on.

So ends one of the most darkly funny sequences in any film to date, and certainly one of the most unconventional openings to a Western, ever put on film. Bean sinks deeper into madness and delusion and throughout Cooper is always able to use his friendship and seeming devotion to Langtree to his advantage. There is a lot more to the plot involving a range war between farmers and ranchers, the love of a good woman and the inevitable confrontation between Bean and real justice. It's that opening sequences which plays oddly like the first-ever Lily Langtree fan convention, complete with drunkeness, awkward accomodation sharing and fisticuffs over memorabilia that makes The Westerner such an apt subject for this blog.

Eye Candy of the Day: Wolf Song

Take a dip in Pre-code Hollywood!

Rumor has it that this 1929 film starring off-screen lovers Lupe Valez and Gary Cooper contains a complete nude scene, some of which is glimpsed here.

I've never seen Wolf Song but what survives of this lost classic looks interesting. You can see a clip of disheveled Gary Cooper and Lupe Valez cutting a rug on Youtube. I would really appreciate hearing from anyone who knows how to get a copy of this film, has any images from it or any other information on it. So c'mon and share your Wolf Song.

Extra special Thanks to Coops Girl for the image and info.

This silent movie is billed as a "partial talkie" because it has three musical numbers including, "Yo te amo."