Staying home, practicing social distancing and binge-listening to podcasts, we're thinking of our friends who are in the business of rescuing and preserving our celluloid heritage.
NFPF posted Too Much Johnson, a long-lost 1938 film by Orson Welles which was originally shot to be incorporated into a Mercury Theatre stage presentation. The cinema rarity was found in a Pordenone warehouse. Thanks to George Eastman House and National Film Preservation Foundation, we can see it.
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog have enjoyed the DVDs the
NFPF have been involved in.
In addition there are historic 1950's style animated industrial films, such as The Story of Creative Capital (1957). Note: don't chortle too loudly at the film's topper, beginning with narrator Marvin Miller's WTF-inducing description of a post-World War II economic miracle, starting at 12:47. Could this be a deliberate joke (snuck in by writer Bill Scott) or was it merely the product of a much more innocent time? We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog put our two cents on the latter.
This "you, the average Joe, are the cornerstone of our thriving economy" opus by John Sutherland Productions was sponsored by The Chamber of Commerce of the United States and E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company, Inc. - and created by quite the all-star lineup of talent. Sutherland would continue producing industrial and educational animated films for business into the 1970's.
A few NFPF restorations, such as this black and white version from The Library Of Congress of a Walter Lantz "Cartune" promoting dental hygiene for Ipana Toothpaste, are up on YouTube.
Since this B&W print of Boy Meets Dog was posted awhile back, an excellent Castle Films color print was located, restored and posted on the Cartoon Research website. Many of us animation buffs first saw Boy Meets Dog in 8mm silent black and white prints, so it's fantastic to see this.
At home while the worst global pandemic in years and the first to hit the United States since 1918 rages on. That means staying up late and watching TV. Cinema Insomnia is always a good choice.
Now feeling genuinely cheered up after watching Mr. Lobo and other friends from the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival, will turn to the dulcet tones of horror host Zacherley. Robert Emmett played this ditty on KFJC's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack Show earlier today. The lyrics and cheesy organ are fabulous.
How does one follow Zacherly? With a Tex Avery WB cartoons about. . . Mother Goose??? I recall a very good Disney cartoon titled The Truth About Mother Goose, but this Tex Avery Merrie Melodie is even better and offers good laughs to accompany hanging around the house!
We definitely won't start or finish this playlist for a pandemic with the movie Contagion, but will watch arguably the only funny cartoon ever made about contagion, Bugs Bunny in Hare Tonic, directed by Chuck Jones. The irony of Elmer Fudd purchasing a live rabbit for dinner from his neighborhood meat market or farmer's market is not lost upon me.
The following Felix The Cat cartoon doesn't cure any killer viruses, but does involve scientists, anthropomorphized microbes, the use of reducing and enlarging fluid, as well as Felix shrinking to molecular size and getting chased by a giant germ.
Walt Disney made a cartoon about contagion-spreading mosquitoes for the World War II effort.
Alas, there are only so many Bugs Bunny cartoons about killer viruses, and Felix adventures starring microbes, and no Fleischer cartoons featuring a rampaging contagion.
Thinking about being home-bound permanently brings to mind The Prisoner, the ambitious television series and the piece-de-resistance of actor-writer-director-producer Patrick McGoohan.
McGoohan has his urbane 007 style protagonist from his last TV series, John Drake, a.k.a. Danger Man or Secret Agent ("they've given you a number and taken 'way your name") resign abruptly from British intelligence - and then get kidnapped.
Drake wakes up living in a very controlled, very odd and very creepy "model community" known as The Village. Not only is the weirdly bucolic retirement community jam-packed with former spies who name Drake "Number 6", the spooks tail Drake incessantly, spy on him and do their very best to intimidate the former ace intelligence officer into revealing why he resigned. Not surprisingly, all this makes the fierce and fiercely independent Number 6 determined to escape, as well as obsessed with finding out who "Number 1" in this operation is.
A beguiling, brilliant and cinematic blend of spy show, 1960's Britain, science fiction, futurism and social commentary regarding how modern technological societies could perpetrate "friendly totalitarianism" within a covert surveillance state, The Prisoner holds up extremely well after all these decades.
The mix is served imaginatively through McGoohan's original spin on the kinds of expansive, genre-stretching ideas and inventive visual concepts seen, among other places, in the films of Orson Welles. Love the underlying sly wit behind all the intrepid and ingenious attempts of Number 6 to escape the outwardly benign but palpably diabolical and lethal world of "The Village."
We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog could happily binge-watch all 17 episodes of The Prisoner in order - then follow this with documentaries about the innovative series.
Presently rattled, troubled, worried and angered by current events and definitely not planning to read The Plague by "Big Al" Camus anytime soon, we shut-ins at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog find that the first order of business is to select St. Paddy's Day films to watch - and also make good on the promise to not spend the day (and night) swilling green beer.
What would St. Patrick's Day be without leprechauns hawking Lucky Charms cereal? That leprechaun looks hungover from drinking green beer!
This leprechaun-filled cartoon directed by former Disney ace animator Bill Tytla is one of the better Famous Studios Noveltoons, even though it would have been more interesting if both the little guys and the emaciated super-villain of the cartoon flaunted the Production Code by drinking green beer throughout.
The best cartoon ever made featuring leprechauns was created by Chuck Jones and his crew at Warner Brothers. . .
There are terrific St Patrick's Day flicks. Saw one of the best, the ultimate St. Patrick's day film, John Ford's The Quiet Man, in big screen glory at Palo Alto's Stanford Theater.
21st century viewers may find Ford's nostalgic ode to Ireland and 19th century patriarchal culture rather dated, but this blogger is always happy to watch it because, among other things, the wonderfully fiery Maureen O'Hara kicks the asses of both Victor McLaglen and John Wayne in the same movie.
Also love The Quiet Man because everyone, including the entire John Ford stock company, is at least five sheets to the wind on Guinness throughout. No green beer in that pub!
And that brings us to Irish comedians. My dad's favorite was The Jack Benny Program's Irish tenor and comedian (both on radio and TV) Dennis Day, the funniest guy he ever saw. Dennis performed an act in the 1950's and 1960's that combined songs and comedy routines penned by Jack's writers. My father's seven word review, "Dennis had 'em rolling in the aisles!" While it does not appear there are any filmed records of Day's standup comedy act, here's Dennis, singing with gusto, wit and more than a touch of blarney.
As far as Irish songs go, Bing Crosby simply had to get into the action on his hit White Christmas album - and did so brilliantly.
While the comedy programs of the U.K. that made it to American television tended to hail from England and were frequently creations of The Pythons, our local public television stations did periodically present shows featuring excellent comedians from Ireland as well. One Irish comic who had much success on BBC television was the satiric monologist and storyteller Dave Allen.
Barely squeaking into the 20th century pop culture focus of this blog is standup comedian Graham Norton, who has been hosting his hilarious talk show since 1997.
Here's Graham interviewing one of the outstanding comedy writers and actors of the 20th and 21st centuries, Stephen Fry (Blackadder, Jeeves & Wooster, A Bit Of Fry & Laurie) and also doing a funny bit about the 1990's versions of cell phones.
Although the phrase "Hot Diggity Dog" will not be heard around here anytime soon, these movies, cartoons and cheesy St. Patricks Day commercials will help.
Strict (and long overdue) avoidance of TV news and social media is also highly recommended. The following editorial cartoon by the excellent Nick Anderson says it beautifully and much more eloquently than this blogger can.
Instead, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall listen to rock n' roll, "new wave" and blues-rock bands - and that stirring music shall make the nervous 2020 St. Patrick's Day at least okay enough. Let 'er rip, U2.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! Cheers and a pint of Guinness to Jimmy Cagney and Frank McHugh! Then it's time for some green beer!
Online courses are an excellent option when staying home, frightened and trembling in panic due to That Darn Pandemic. There's a new one, For The Love Of Laughter, presenting an extensive 15 lesson course on classic film comedy. It's a fun and detailed online video course by actor, singer, writer, author, producer, director, comedian, writer, standup comic and expert on classic movies Nick Santa Maria. Do we need laughs? Heck, yeah! Nick elaborates further here.
Nick knows his stuff and no doubt will be most entertaining as he looks at the show business greats who made us laugh on the silver screen way back when - and now, on Blu-ray and DVD.
Part of the price of the class will go to The Gentle Barn, a wonderful organization which rescues and helps abandoned and abused animals. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog are sympathetic, having adopted one cat from the SPCA and two more felines from a friend who passed of cancer in 2017.
You may be familiar with Mr. Santa Maria from his contribution to the present-day tribute to 1930's and 1940's comedy teams, The Misadventures of Biffle & Shooster. The 21st century homage to 20th century classic comedy stars the aforementioned Mr. Santa Maria and Will Ryan, and is directed by Michael Schlesinger.
If you can't make it to Southern California to see Nick's classes in-person, you can buy the course, For The Love Of Laughter. Might as well laugh while we practice social distancing!
Thinking about Buster, The General in particular is truly spectacular and, like the Harold Lloyd features, is made to be seen on the big screen with an SRO audience. It's noteworthy that none of the Keaton silent or sound feature films actually lost money, just that some were massive box office smashes and others were modest hits that did not make a huge profit.
Specifically for this year's blogathon, Silver 17 Productions produced a trailer based on the 1918 film The Cook, one of the very successful Comique Productions "knockabout comedy to outdo all competing knockabout comedies" short subjects starring Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton and Al St. John, all somersaulting their way through the 20 minute running times. Yours truly remembers classic movie buff Johnny Carson running clips from this on The Tonight Show way back when!
Here's a rundown of the scholarly, enjoyable and well-written posts about The Great Stone Face that were posted in The Sixth Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon. Enjoy reading them!
This writer is floored about so many things regarding the cinema icon, not the least of which that a quarter of a century after his biggest box office hits on the silver screen, Buster worked and worked and worked and then worked some more through the television era and right up to his passing in 1966. It is rare to find an appearance of Keaton's that is not touched by his comic genius and astonishing talent for acrobatics. Am always stunned to find yet another film or TV show Buster appeared in that I had never seen or heard of.
Buster was nothing if not prolific!
In case any non-Damfinos, non-silent cinema or non-classic movie buffs somehow find their way to this very under-the-radar blog by mistake, here are books we highly recommend for more info on Buster's silver screen legacy :
Mr. Arbuckle, during his "William Goodrich" years, directed complete films and sequences of films starring his Comique Productions mates Buster Keaton and Al St. John through the 1920's and early 1930's.
This is Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog's contribution to the Sixth Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon - happy to be a part of it!
To begin today's post, we thank Lea Stans of Silent-ology for hosting this and the previous five Buster Keaton Blogathons. Will post the full list of 2020 Buster Blogathon articles tomorrow.
Buster Keaton ranks atop the short list of our all-time favorites who ever appeared in or directed movies at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, so we're thrilled and delighted to contribute.
This, with some trepidation, brings us to one of Buster's dreaded MGM talkies, Speak Easily, arguably the best of the bunch that began with Free and Easy and ended with What! No Beer? (described by Buster as a "100 per cent turkey").
In the promotional posters, Buster's name is first but Durante's face dwarfs Keaton's. Funny, I have a sneaking suspicion who MGM was trying to build up as a new star here! Also notable: the poster describes a naughty love triangle storyline that does not occur in the movie.
The cautionary tale of Buster at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and part of the Keaton legend remains that The Great Stone Face transitioned from independent producer to MGM star and lost all creative control over his films in the process.
Buster was caught between his friends/colleagues - Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd pleaded with their fellow comedy filmmaker NOT to sign with MGM - and his family, as he was married to Natalie Talmadge, sister of Norma Talmadge (Buster's sister-in-law) who was married to Joseph Schenck, whose professional association with Keaton dated back to the comedian's first experiences in movies, working as stock company player, gagman and assistant director for Roscoe Arbuckle at Comique Productions. Joe Schenck's brother Nick was among the head honchos at MGM.
Why Speak Easily’s credits say “A Buster Keaton Production,” we have no clue.
Speak Easily is an MGM feature starring three top comedy talents, Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante and Thelma Todd. For the three principal stars, it's a likable albeit second tier piece in their silver screen careers, with The General, Billy Rose's Jumbo, Hips Hips Hooray and the incredibly funny Charley Chase - Thelma Todd 2-reeler The Pip From Pittsburg, among others, representing the top tier.
Buster Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Our Gang and, in two films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1940's, Laurel & Hardy, had their problems with MGM (A Night At The Opera notwithstanding), even though Our Gang and L&H made many of the funniest comedy short subjects ever committed to celluloid, which were produced for MGM release by the Hal Roach Studio a.k.a. The Lot Of Fun.
Marie Dressler was one brilliant comedienne who was not held in check by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer.
The larger-than-life actress and comedienne, star of stage and screen, Marie Dressler alternated at MGM between dramas and lightweight comedies co-starring former Mack Sennett Comedies headliner Polly Moran - and is still known for her epic triple-take for the ages in reaction to Jean Harlow that closes George Cukor's dark comedy Dinner At Eight.
MGM's clear preference as the stars of comic films would be leading men and leading ladies who demonstrated a pronounced flair for comedy such as Robert Montgomery, Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, and (especially) William Powell and Myrna Loy.
One star of MGM features who could be both a leading lady and a quite talented, goofy comedienne was the very funny Marion Davies.
Marion, like Marie Dressler, was not at all averse to broad humor and slapstick and even co-starred with Marie in The Patsy. It's a good bet that Davies was not held back from doing more comedies by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer brass, but by W.R. Hearst, who fancied her as a stately grand dame starring in costume dramas.
Buster Keaton wanted very much to make a talkie with Marie as his co-star and even pitched a western comedy in which the duo would co-star to Irving G. Thalberg. The MGM brass said no. A Buster Keaton - Marion Davies feature would have also had strong comedic possibilities, but Hearst would have no doubt nixed such an idea in less than a New York minute.
The most glaring problem with Speak Easily, and all the Keaton MGMs is the mega-studio's complete and utter inability to grasp the essential Keaton characterization. Why Lawrence Weingarten and other MGM execs in charge of these films thought casting Buster as a dimwit was funny, we'll never know. Perhaps MGM brass concluded that because The General was not a boffo box-office hit, having Buster play an indefatigable and resourceful fellow would mean bad box office. The penchant for turning Buster's intrepid and heroic, albeit slightly absent-minded character into a bumbling, blithering idiot is painful for Buster fans to watch!
In Speak Easily, he plays a professor - and spends much of the film's 80 minute running time acting like a moron. The point comes where it's not funny, as charming and likable an actor as Buster can be. It is also very odd that the script did not use the fact that his character is a professor and presumably a learned and intelligent fellow to drive the storyline. The plots of the Keaton silents - Our Hospitality, The Navigator, Go West, The General and Steamboat Bill. Jr. in particular - were not driven by idiocy by his characters. This tendency is deadly in the MGMs and begins as early as The Cameraman.
The production executive in charge of the Keaton MGM films, Lawrence Weingarten, later the producer of everything from Spencer Tracy - Katharine Hepburn vehicles to Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, along with the other execs, proved utterly and completely baffled by Buster Keaton.
Buster would have scoffed at the very idea of his silent features possessing “epic,” “mythic” and “poetic” qualities and insisted he was just trying to make a good picture, no big deal - but this is the area where the MGM films after The Cameraman (and especially the talkies) are sorely lacking. The sense of grandeur and scale is gone. Man against a cyclone. Man against a locomotive. Man against something he doesn’t understand. The settings and situations are scaled down, indoors. Buster is no longer a mere blip in the wide open spaces.
While there is a segment with Buster running around and doing his customary mindboggling stunts at a train station in Speak Easily, he is definitely earthbound. As noted in my review of Parlor, Bedroom and Bath for the first Buster Keaton Blogathon, in the MGM talkies, The Great Stone Face is stuck delivering dialogue as opposed to battling with forces far more powerful than himself. While Buster is a very good actor and his Midwestern sound suits his characters, he is much diminished by this. One wonders if the MGM executives other than Irving Thalberg ever actually watched Our Hospitality, The General and Steamboat Bill, Jr. Even the subsequent low-budget Educational Pictures short subjects as Grand Slam Opera get a little more Buster in the mix!
The storyline of Speak Easily casts Buster as an isolated, lonely and socially awkward college professor who receives a bogus letter stating that he shall receive a substantial inheritance: $750,000 in Great Depression money. Not knowing it's a ruse, the professor instantly opts to take a sabbatical from teaching and see the world. At the train station, Professor Potts by chance runs into a low-rent theatrical troupe and, thinking he's rich, pays for the entire cheesy company to take their cheesy musical review to Broadway! Cross-country hijinx, including aggressive pursuit of the incredibly naive academic by the troupe's gold digging diva/vamp, and a chaotic, disastrous, mishap-packed opening night ensue.
In the cast along with Buster, Jimmy Durante and Thelma Todd are actress Ruth Selwyn (who plays Buster's girlfriend Pansy Peets), columnist-to-be Hedda Hopper in a cameo as the overprotective Mrs. Peets, and character actor Sidney Toler.
Toler, between many successes on the stage and later in movies as the always three steps ahead super-sleuth Charlie Chan, does a fine job in his part as a nameless theatrical director, unendingly vexed by Professor Potts' penchant for jumping onstage at the worst possible times and wreaking holy havoc.
All of the above said, Speak Easily is not a bad movie by any means, has its moments throughout. There are several funny Pre-code bits - at one point Profesor Potts declares "I'll buy companionship" - and many involve Thelma Todd's vamp character.
Buster and Thelma create several very good sequences of physical comedy, most notably a variant on the dragging a drunk woman to bed routine that had previously been a cornerstone of Keaton’s last silent film, Spite Marriage, and would be performed two decades later by Buster and his wife Eleanor at the Cirque Medrano.
And then, can't finish this review without mentioning the topic of Buster co-starring with Jimmy Durante. . .
Buster said of Jimmy Durante's role in this film: "He was very good in the one picture we made together that had quality. I think this was because the character he played was very much like the real Jimmy Durante. The picture was Speak Easily, which...had a sound comedy plot." Buster and Jimmy are not teamed, but play off each other pretty well; yes, Jimmy is very loud but the two work together and Jimmy does not overpower Buster, the table salt and cayenne pepper contrast notwithstanding. Jimmy went to bat for Buster with MGM brass when Keaton did not show up on the set due to heavy drinking and the two comedians became lifelong friends offscreen.
The most interesting aspect of the film is how its "utter mayhem on stage" climax closely resembles another movie starring showbiz icons under the heading of "Comedians Who Got Screwed By MGM," the Marx Brothers. Watch both as a double bill and the parallels between are clear, right down to the bit in which Harpo swings across the stage, which Buster does in the scene of the Broadway show's disaster-filled opening, in which he ends up, quite unintentionally, as a comedy star and audience favorite. While there's no Margaret Dumont or Sig Ruman in Speak Easily, what the hey, it's funny.
This is not the only instance of something from a Buster Keaton movie turning up in A Night At The Opera, as a brief bit in The Cameraman appears to be the kernel of what would be expanded into the hilarious stateroom sequence of the Marx Brothers classic. Buster couldn't have worked on A Night At The Opera - he was alternating between overseas features and Educational Pictures 2-reelers at the time - and yet, there are a couple of instances of Keaton-esque moments in said film. When MGM re-hired Buster a few years later as a gagman and script doctor, he did, in what couldn’t have even a pleasant experience, work with the Marx Brothers; Groucho in particular did not welcome writers who weren’t named George Kaufman, S.J. Perelman, Harry Ruby or Arthur Sheekman, so this couldn’t have been fun for Buster.
Jimmy's next silver screen appearance at MGM would be in Blondie Of The Follies, a vehicle for one of the very few not named Marie Dressler who starred in funny and successful comedies bearing the MGM brand (not counting films produced by the Hal Roach Studio for MGM release) in the early talkie era - Marion Davies. Durante only has a couple of scenes, but the sweetness and genuine warmth underlying Jimmy's bluster and braggadocio is there - and would be the cornerstone of Schnozzola's comedy through several decades of movies and television.
Wrapping this up with a question. How would the Buster Keaton MGM talkies be evaluated if all his silents except Battling Butler and/or College, were lost films and hadn't been seen since 1928. Whatˇif Our Hospitality, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and The General had burned up in the Little Ferry, New Jersey vaults in 1937 (or in the "day the music burned" wipeout of MCA recorded masters in 2008)?
Would Keaton's MGM talkies still be considered to be debacles, horrible wastes of Keaton's talent or regarded as decent 1930's comedies which do not make proper use of The Great Stone Face's acting, directing and filmmaking talents? None of the Keaton MGM talkies are masterpieces, even on par with MGM's William Powell and Myrna Loy comedies, but are any, other than Free and Easy, unwatchable disasters? We'll think about that while preparing to watch Sherlock Jr. after several short subjects produced for MGM release by the Hal Roach Studio, including several of the first tier films of Speak Easily co-star Thelma Todd.
The International Buster Keaton Society (A.K.A. the Damfinos) hosts a convention paying tribute to Buster every October in Muskegon, Michigan and are both sponsoring this blogathon and donating a $50 giftcard to their Buster Stuff store.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog shall make a return visit to the dreaded Keaton MGM talkies. Shall take a look at the 1932 film Speak Easily, co-starring The Great Stone Face with ubiquitous comedienne of the early 1930's Thelma Todd and vaudeville star Jimmy Durante, at that time making the transition to movies.
