Movies Til Dawn

Here's a full episode (twenty or so minutes) of a show that it's hard to believe ever had an audience, "Championship Bridge With Charles Goren." The format of the show was to pit two professional bridge players against each other, using two non-pro but very good players as their partners. Goren and another Bridge expert, Alex Drier, then scientifically analyzed and critiqued the play. The non-pros were usually semi-celebrities of some kind and this episode features an old, very worn out looking Chico Marx. A liftetime gambling addict, Chico only lived another year after this was televised. He died broke, supported by his brothers and sadly unmourned by the comedy world. Chances are he died owing them all money. Chico speaks just shy of the two minute mark and, like Harpo (see yesterday's posting below), has Groucho's lilt and cadence in his voice. At first you think he's doing his Italian shtick, but in fact its his genuine East Side Jewish turn-of-the-...

In my recent revival of interest in all things Marxian, I got to thinking about how impossible it is to imagine Chico speaking in a non-Italian dialect. Did he carry that act over into his personal life? Was he ever Lenny to his card-playing friends? (Was Groucho ever Julie?) And what of Harpo? (Was he ever Adolph--at least before 1939? And was he ever Artie after?)  He was said to be quite shy and not terribly conversational, though when he wrote his autobiography it ran to five-hundred some pages so I guess we can dismiss that canard. But he famously never spoke in public and the sound of his voice must remain a mystery. Or must it? Click on the above video for an actual sample of Harpo talking (it comes about one minute in). He's a straight up, old-fashioned New York Jew with a deeper and more serious delivery then you might expect. As for Chico's real voice, tune in tomorrow...   Subscribe in a reader

I'm ending our week-long tour of old LA via stock footage with a look at Christmas on Hollywood Blvd. in the late 40s. Dig the glaring Christmas sun. Dig the absurd decorations. Dig the restaurant called 'Doloros's' (at two minutes in) that looks like 'Mildred's' from 'Mildred Pierce'. It's Christmas in LA in the late forties, and it looks more or less the same as every Christmas I've spent in LA over the years. Ewwwww...   Subscribe in a reader

Today's view of a Los Angeles that only partially still exists takes us on a smooth ride down Hollywood Blvd., starting in the domestic flats just east of Laurel Canyon (and hence directly below Marlon Brando's house which I've featured over the previous two posts--scroll down, honey, scroll down) and continuing all the way to Highland Avenue. A few things to note. 1) The domestic area looks pretty much the same today as it did when this was shot. 2) At around forty seconds, our driver blows a red light. 3) At a minute and twenty-some seconds, a dishy blonde dame crosses the street wearing tight pants and early F-Me Pumps. 4) Streetcar tracks still existed on Hollywood Blvd. and are visible once the car crosses La Brea and enters the business district. 5) Grauman's Chinese Theater is clearly visible on the left. 6) More dangerous driving is displayed as our camera-car almost collides head-on with another car just east of La Brea. At Highland, they make a left and pro...

Look what I found. It's a segment from Edward R. Murrow's 'Person To Person' TV program featuring Marlon Brando being interviewed in the house that's currently for sale and that I posted about yesterday (scroll down, kiddo, scroll down). The year is 1955 and it's just a few days after Brando won his Oscar for 'On The Waterfront'. The exterior of the house is pictured and is exactly the same as in the photos currently on display. The interview begins in the garden, where Brando treats us to the nighttime view from his patio. From there we move inside to the massive sunken living room, also pictured in yesterdays link. Brando's father shows up and is most unpleasant--Murrow asks him if he's proud of his son and the bastard actually answers, "As an actor, no. As a son, yes." Jesus. The offscreen sound of beating conga drums interrupts the interview. Brando apparently has a musician friend stashed in the basement. He leads us down to the...

No, Marlon and Ann never hooked up--at least as far as I know--but they did share a house. At different times each of them lived in 8142 Laurel View Drive, in the hills over Sunset Blvd and Laurel Canyon. Located directly above the Chateau Marmont, the house--an eccentrically Moorish four story villa--is now for sale for somewhere in the low three-millions.  Click here to view 15 photos of the joint.  I doubt it will fetch that. It's a wonderful place but requires an exceptionally peculiar buyer. The house is laid out on at least seven levels--the main entry floor contains a circular foyer, a raised dining room, a sunken living room, stairs to the second floor bedrooms, further stairs to a third floor tower room and somewhere, somehow, passage to a wine room that seems to be below the living room. Brando lived there in the mid-fifties but I don't know when Ann did. I'm seriously tempted to call the realtor and waste a little of their time checking it out, as I d...

Today's filmed tour of ancient Los Angeles takes us on a drive down Wilshire Blvd. in 1935. Beginning at Canon Drive in Beverly Hills, the car--with camera mounted on the rear looking backwards--heads east all the way to Robertson Blvd. where it makes a slight turn and then stops. The camera cuts and, at two minutes and twenty-five seconds, resumes back at Canon Drive, this time pointing southward (thus giving us the view from the side window) and makes the same drive. You can see the Warner Brothers Beverly Hills Theater, then playing "Oil For The Lamps of China", a lot of gas stations, plenty of open lots and the very interesting free-form style of driving that then existed. Cars sort of float around in a friendly, not-threatening way that's devoid of any rigid pattern i.e staying in lanes.  There are several things to be deduced from the above clues. One is that in 1935 Los Angeles it took under three minutes to drive on Wilshire Blvd.from Canon Drive to Robert...

Continuing our severing of the funny scenes from the unfunny scenes in 'A Night At The Opera', here's one of the most underrated of the Marx's farcical room shuffle chases (they have one in almost every movie--hotel doors slamming, mistaken identities, confused authorities, confounded blackmailers etc.) This is the 'missing beds' boogie, where Chico and Harpo move all the furniture from one room of the hotel suite to another right under the nose of the law. In addition to the impeccable timing, the scene also contains what is clearly an on-set ad-lib that got left in. Henderson the Private Eye, in response to Groucho's Garboesque "I vant to be alone" says "You'll be alone once I throw you in jail!" And Groucho--with a lack of conviction that makes me think he truly did just stumble upon the thought at precisely that moment--says "Isn't there a song called something like that, Henderson?" It's not the funniest line h...

Here, in all its four minutes of glory, is the seminal 'stateroom sequence' from ANATOP. Each of Groucho's lines is my favorite one in the scene, until the next one tops it. Scroll down to previous two days posts containing the opening Driftwood/Claypool meeting and the "party of the first part" contract scene. "Is my Aunt Minnie here?" "No, but you're welcome to come in and prowl around a bit." Enough said.   Subscribe in a reader

Per yesterdays promise, a week of excerpted comedy scenes from 'A Night At The Opera' continues with the opening scene between Groucho (Otis B. Driftwood) and Margaret Dumont (Mrs. Claypool). Scroll down to yesterday's post for the 'party of the first part' contract scene, as well as my favorite Groucho/Thalberg anecdote. "Do you follow me?" "Yes, I do." "Well, stop following me or I'll have you arrested!" Enough said.   Subscribe in a reader

By 1934 The Marx Brothers were an act that had gone into freefall. 'Duck Soup' had, unbelievably, been a huge box-office disappointment and Paramount had failed to renew their contract. Zeppo, sick of being fourth banana, had abandoned the act and started a new career as an agent (and a quite successful one as it turned out). Harpo went on tour in the Soviet Union, Groucho toured in the play 'Twentieth Century' and decided he preferred actually being an actor to being a comedian and Chico played a lot bridge. Then along came Irving Thalberg who decided that there was mucho juice left in the act as long as they revamped their style of filmmaking. Instead of hanging absurd comedy routines on an absurd plot (as had been their modus operandi thus far), Thalberg insisted that a conventional plot with romance, pretty songs and intrigue would lure non-Marx lovers into the theater and provide a more suitable backdrop for their madness. The initial result, 'A Night At The O...

This time our mystery cameraman has front mounted his camera and taken a daytime drive around Hollywood Blvd. and its environs. It's 1957 and Los Angeles has already acquired the same glaring, brown, sickly light that has made me nauseous for as long as I can remember. There is a near collision with a blue Thunderbird that, after waiting at a red light, attempts to jump the green light and make a left turn, only to find itself stuck as the car next to our camera-car apparently beats him to it. Another instance of LA having changed very little--aggressive drivers in sports cars continue to screw things up to this day.   Subscribe in a reader

Leaping ahead sixty-plus years and crossing the country in an airplane that had yet to be invented in the world we visited yesterday , lets take a drive down the Strip that time forgot. It's an evening in 1967 and somebody's decided to take their 16mm camera (at least it looks like 16--8mm wouldn't have been able to capture this as well), mount it in the rear window and then take a drive down Sunset, heading east. He starts rolling somewhere just outside of the Beverly Hills city limit, as the first thing we see is the sign for Doheny Rd. (The City National Bank building looms to the right, as it continues to do in the present day). The Strip has many wonderful nightclub signs of course, but I'm a little surprised at how many service businesses there are--a market, several gas stations, rent-a-car places. Then there are the cars and boy are there a lot of Camaros, then brand new. This charming three minute ride is followed by a fatally uninteresting one minu...

Above I've posted a mysterious and fabulous piece of footage that I don't think I've ever before seen. It's a ride down Broadway in a trolley, shot sometime in the early 20th century. The reasons for this film's existence are lost to time. Somebody mounted a camera on or at the front of a streetcar and just exposed film. What we have as a result is a wonderful study in traffic--the lawlessness of the era allowed streetcars, trolleys, horse and carriages and pedestrians to dodge and feint, avoiding near-collisions with almost comedic deftness. The streets are crowded with gentleman in top-hats, the ladies carry parasols, several store signs advertising closing sales (one thing that hasn't changed) and the whole thing winds up at 14th street and Union Square which is astonishingly recognizable. And, as always with these snippets of antiquity caught on film, I find myself fascinated by the simple act of watching all of those dead people, very much alive in their m...

Talking, as we've been , of the last gasps of great comedy teams appearing in final films that should never have been made, we come to Laurel & Hardy's desperately sad swan song, 'Atoll K' (trailer posted above). Or is it called 'Utopia'? Or, as some prints insist, "Robinson Crusoeland'? The title confusion is indicative of the general chaos that prevailed on this doomed project, destined for a short D.O.A. release before disappearing back into the obscurity from which it should never have emerged. So how did it happen? As with all of these final misbegotten missteps in the careers of great artists, the answers are not simple to unravel. First of all, L&H were a dead commodity in post-war America, replaced by the likes of Abbot and Costello and Martin &Lewis. They were your fathers favorite comedy team, not really relevant to the new, hipster comic crowd. The fat guy who tramps around with the dumb guy who cries; gorgeous though we now k...

Above I've posted yet another oddity from the grab-bag hodgepodge movie that is officially the Marx Brothers farewell to their audience'. It's the 'Sadie Thompson' number, as danced by the wonderful Vera-Ellen. (What a genius move putting the hyphen in that name was--it takes two undistinguished first names and creates something puzzlingly exotic).  As with everything in 'Love Happy', you can't simply enjoy the number for what it is as there are too many lame things that get in the way. Why is she wearing that stupid striped skirt? (Probably the cheapest thing in wardrobe). Why are they performing in an empty theater? (Probably no money for extras). Why is it shot so poorly? (Lack of time I imagine). Yet Vera-Ellen pulls it off quite nicely, given the limitations. I've been looking for the film's rooftop finale, where Harpo is essentially a shill for a bunch of neon advertising signs that were--as far as I know--the first instance of product pla...

Why was "Love Happy" (the Marx Brothers last movie sort of) made? The official story is that Chico had gambling debts and the brothers kicked in to help out. But if that's the case, why is Harpo the star? (He's the center of the 'plot', such as it is. Chico is sort of there and Groucho is the film's desperately needed older brother, there to explain and hold together and apologize for the incoherence). Groucho disliked the film intensely, even bad-mouthing it in the interview in which he remembers Marilyn Monroe's participation in the folly. But if you don't think much of a piece of work, you don't mention it, right? You drop the subject. Mentioning an inferiority and your shame at having participated in it only revives the memory of it. Yet Groucho took the opportunity on a number of occasions to loudly proclaim "Love Happy's" lousiness and his disgust with it. Why? I think it has to do with a family dynamic sort of thing. I...

The Marx Brothers 1949 "Love Happy" is generally considered to be not just their worst movie but the worst final movie of any movie comedian ever made. But is it truly beyond critical rehabilitation? Yes. Let's move on to the interesting stuff. Beyond being an inglorious farewell to the brothers, the film is notable for bringing the world Marilyn Monroe, who has a brief and quite funny scene with Groucho, who later remembered the intense effect she had on everyone on the set. The producer, Lester Cowan, seems to have sensed that there was more value in her than was being taken advantage of in the little scene. So what did he do about it? Write a bigger part for her? Sign her to a long-term contract? No. The justly forgotten Cowan opted for creating a flip-book, featuring Marilyn and Chico. (A flip book is one of those things where you flip pages of photographs and they flutter by making it look like an action is occurring...oh, Christ, I don't need to explain this,...