Movies Til Dawn

Though the above commercial was purportedly 'banned' (not sure by whom or where exactly), I remember quite clearly seeing it as a child. It made little sense to me at the time--I remember wondering why the shnooky guy didn't just tell all those foxy girls to leave him and his meeskait fiancee alone--but I can't imagine it truly bothered anybody enough to race to the FCC and stamp their foot. Then again, we are America. Even Dodge Chargers are suspects in the war against decency. Question: is the real reason the ad was banned because concerned citizens were afraid that people were going to park their Chargers in the sand on the beach? Extra credit question: is that Cybill Shephard at the end of the commercial doing the pitch??   Subscribe in a reader

Here's a nice little silent collection of New York City footage shot in 1938. Nothing spectacular but nice views of midtown, Harlem (warning: contains footage of young kids tap-dancing and eating watermelon), the then-new George Washington Bridge, the not yet built west-side highway area (which looks like an elaborate park), pretty views of Rockefeller Center and a strange shot of the Rockettes rehearsing a dance number on the roof of the Radio City Music Hall. A peacefully quiet video with no mis-selected music to distract your attention from the reverie of another era.   Subscribe in a reader

The above is a long-ish theatrical trailer for Elia Kazan's 1969 film "The Arrangement", starring Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway and based on Kazan's bestselling novel. The trailer begins in an unusual way, focusing on Kazan himself as the subject of interest. Gradually we get into some very swinging looking scenes, both indicative of and mocking toward the period the film takes place in, which is the time it was made during. My impression from the trailer is that Kazan looked upon the late 1960s with something of a jaundiced eye even as they were occurring under his own watch. Certainly the swagger of the design and speech belies a suspicion of all that was current and mod. Kazan disliked the film and speaks ill of it in his superbly compelling autobiography, the starkly titled "A Life". He'd wanted Brando and he got Kirk Douglas. His sense from the beginning of the shoot was that they were going down the wrong path and all he could do was "fini...

Above is an informative little ten-minute made-for-youtube doc concerning ten high-profile movies that never got released. It's a subject I find fascinating for some reason (Schaudenfreude perhaps? Am I really that low?) and as a result I've decided to revive my D.O.A. (Dead On Arrival) Film Festival, which I introduced in November of last year and promptly abandoned. The rules are quite simple: the film must have begun shooting (and not have been abandoned in prep) and needs to have a real budget and well-known actors. The above movies were actually finished and then locked away in embarrassment, which is a slightly different thing than our festival generally deals with but I'm thinking of expanding things along these lines. The difference between unfinished films and unreleased films is an important one--it's a disaster to close a movie down during production but there is the chance of an insurance recoupment assuming the producers had the good fortune of having on...

"Look At Life" was a series of ten-minute infotainment films produced by the J. Arthur Rank organization for showing in their theaters before the main feature, beginning in the late 1950s and continuing well into the following decade. (Television had usurped the need for newsreels, you see). Above is a very cool episode titled 'Goodbye Piccadilly'. It features wonderful mid-sixites views of the area and appears to have been intended as something of a nostalgic farewell as a massive new building project was about to decimate the square--a project that seems never to have taken place. The period is just on the cusp of the soon to be swinging London--a mite on the side of the previous era--with well-dressed young and middle-aged working folks predominating the landscape (although the occasional pre-mod swankster can be spotted). There are nice views of the underground (including the sub-subway--the guts of the system) and occasional marquees reference the hits of the d...

Here's a fascinating ten-minute reel of a handful of the ridiculous amount of screen tests that David O. Selznick ordered while casting 'Gone With The Wind'. The ballyhoo for the 'search for Scarlett O'Hara' was a masterstroke of publicity, designed to keep interest in the project alive during the very extended (almost two years) preparation process before filming finally got underway. As a result, there are a lot of actresses testing for Scarlett and Melanie who are clearly nowheresville, though all give it a gamey try. But really: Lynda Watkins? Francis Fuller? Mary Kent? The young Lana Turner gives Scarlett a try and bricks heavily. Her partner is Melvyn Douglas (playing Ashley Wilkes) and I dare say he makes a less silly/prissy Ashley than Leslie Howard, though ultimately he would've looked too much like Gable for it to have worked. Most stunning of all, though, is Paulette Goddard who apparently had a real shot at Scarlett. She's mesmerizingly bea...

Above is rare behind the scenes color footage of the picnic scene in 'Gone With The Wind', which was shot at Busch Gardens (all of the film was shot in LA--not a location shot in the whole damn thang). There are nice shots of the director Victor Fleming, of Clark Gable smoking a cigarette and of Olivia De Havilland's stand-in, who the ditz female anchor of the show on which the footage is being displayed, refuses to believe isn't Olivia herself.   Subscribe in a reader

In the early 1940s, Alfred Hitchcock--newly arrived in America and missing the countryside of his previous home in England--purchased a 200 acre weekend 'getaway' estate in the Northern California town of Santa Cruz. Above, take the drive that Hitch (and wife Alma and daughter Pat) would have taken on the way to their country crash pad--the footage was shot in 1938 and comes complete with inappropriate 1920s music. Below, see what became of the Hitchcock spread. It's now a winery and a rather impressive one at that.   Subscribe in a reader

Take a drive through the streets of London sometime in the early to mid 1950s and notice, among other things, how incredibly gorgeous EACH AND EVERY GODDAM AUTOMOBILE WAS (to say nothing of the glorious London architecture). The above clip--shot from a moving car for God knows what reason--is in glorious 'colour' (to use the British misspelling of the word. Of course, they also drive on the wrong side of the street and speak with that silly accent but we stout Americans forgive them for all of it). Enjoy the glimpses of the now unidentifiable and slightly (but lovably) doofy chaps and ladies wandering the streets on this unusually sunny day. This is the London of the Ealing comedies, the Goon Show,  Diana Dors and John Profumo. This was the 'recovered' London, the city that had endured the bombings and blitzing and had stoically survived to remain largely intact both in appearance and spirit.   Subscribe in a reader

Above is some behind-the-scenes footage shot on the set of "Oliver!" in 1968. (Or more likely in '67 as the movie was released in '68). The director, Carol Reed, gets a lot of attention--he's the imposing, white-ish haired chap who plays with the cigarette and stands behind the camera looking at unseen actors in an imploring sort of way. Ron Moody is also seen as is Mark Lester (Oliver), mouthing to the playback of one of the songs. The film is silent like yesterdays 1903 footage of London--is this an English thing?--and the silence brings the ghost-like quality of the footage to the fore; it plays like a memory you're having rather than a conventional recording of the activities at hand. The movie won Reed his only Oscar and I watched it recently (some of it anyway), quite impressed with how un-limp, un-widescreen, un-big-boring-60s-old school-musical it was. Reed made it move, filled the screen with dynamic imagery, and the amount of dancing extras, crowds...

Welcome to Edwardian England and the congested streets of London in 1903. The above posted footage is mesmerizing, in part because it is silent--the Youtube poster didn't bother with an 'appropriate' piece of music and this gives the images an even more ghostly, more otherworldly feeling. One can imagine, however, the clamor and noise that was going on in those heavily populated streets. Horse and Carriages are everywhere. Nestle's milk and Lipton Tea, both still going strong, take up the bulk of the advertising on the buggies. So does Kodak (which, alas, has recently stopped going strong). Better to imagine the sounds than the smells which, to our modern nostrils, would probably prove to be impossible to bear, making time-travel a complete non-starter. The horseshit, the clothes worn over and over, the dirt, the smoke--oh, who knows? It must have smelled okay to them so maybe we'd deal. Most of the angles are high-ish wide-ish shots which enhances the general fee...