The new year begins and with that we celebrate the natal anniversary of one of this blog's favorite silver screen comediennes, the very funny, talented, genuinely charming and unfairly maligned Marion Davies, born Marion Cecilia Douras in Brooklyn, NY on January 3, 1897.
It would take dozens of blog posts to scratch the surface of her life and times, relationship with newspaper publishing magnate/tycoon William Randolph Hearst, numerous movies and even lengthier list of philanthropic endeavors.
For a quick reminder of how funny she was, here's Marion, doing impersonations of fellow silent movie divas Mae Murray, Lillian Gish and Pola Negri in THE PATSY (1928).
Marion crammed two or three eventful lifetimes into her 64 years on this earth - Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, movie actress, humanitarian, San Simeon "hostess with the mostest," businesswoman/entrepreneur, activist and founder of The Marion Davies Children's Clinic.
Thankfully, Lara Gabrielle's book Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies has done as detailed and thorough a job as humanly possible chronicling those many roles on and offscreen. It even got a most favorable review from Will Hearst, the grandson of William Randolph Hearst.
Hearst a.k.a. "W.R." launched Davies in movies in 1917 and preferred her as a grande dame in epic period pieces. On one hand, Hearst made it possible for Marion to be a movie star. On the other hand, in both strongly resisting featuring her in comedies and interfering with productions, Hearst also hindered the progress of her silver screen career.
That said, When Knighthood Was in Flower and Little Old New York were the biggest box-office hits of 1922-23. Hearst's hunches regarding the degree of Marion's onscreen charisma and star power turned out to be correct.
Beverly of Graustark, The Cardboard Lover, Enchantment, The Bride's Play, Lights of Old Broadway, Zander The Great, Yolanda, Beauty's Worth, The Restless Sex, The Red Mill, and Tillie The Toiler were also box-office hits.
This writer and silent film fan is partial to her end of silent era comedies directed by King Vidor, The Patsy and Show People - and extends big time thanks to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival for providing opportunities to see Marion get laughs on the big screen in these two terrific films.
The Patsy and Show People, both directed by King Vidor, are hilarious!
Marion co-stars with the larger-than-life Marie Dressler in the former and wry comic actor William Haines in the latter. Why Irving Thalberg did not propose a potential Marion Davies - Marie Dressler - Buster Keaton MGM feature as a possibility we'll never know.
Show People remains one of Marion's most memorable starring vehicles.
Marion followed her performances in The Red Mill, Tillie The Toiler, The Patsy and Show People with a successful transition to talkies, which included several musicals. She is among the numerous MGM stars to appear in The Hollywood Revue Of 1929, beginning at about 50 minutes, after Laurel & Hardy's segment.
Another celebrated pre-Code film, the Marion Davies vehicle It's A Wise Child, exists in a 35mm nitrate print at UCLA, but, due to rights issues, has been entirely out of circulation for decades. Asked the expert, Davies biographer and historian Lara Gabrielle about this and learned that it still can't be shown publicly because, while the rights still technically belong to the heirs of the fellow who wrote the play the screenplay was adapted from. . . there are no heirs.
It's A Wise Child was adapted from a play by Laurence E. Johnson, who died in 1933. Johnson's estate, however, still owns the rights to the movie. This, rather than risque content would appear to be why it was not among the films not chosen when the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer package of features was released to television. The account from one person who was seen UCLA's 35mm print, Nick Langdon of the Marion Davies tribute website, it is among her very best films.
Maybe this excellent Davies comedy will eventually be extricated from the legal entanglements and rights Twilight Zone and made available to the classic film loving public. Then again, maybe not. One would hope the rights issues could be resolved, 94 years after It's A Wise Child was produced.
She co-starred with then up-and-coming star Bing Crosby in one of his first feature films, Going Hollywood.
Marion Davies was the Turner Classic Movies star of the month a few years back and it's great that the intros and outros to her starring vehicles are still up on YouTube.
Thanks, Alicia Malone and TCM!
Marion finished her career at Warner Brothers, retiring from movies in 1937.
Her last film was Ever Since Eve (1937), co-starring Robert Montgomery and ace comedy actors Patsy Kelly, Frank McHugh, Allen Jenkins and Louise Fazenda.
Marion Davies' zany sensibility would be a forerunner of the screwball comedy style that emerged as she was finishing her career in the mid-1930's.
Thankfully, there are very good films of hers, silents and talkies, available on Blu-ray and DVD. For more, check out the documentary Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies (2001), which includes interviews with biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles and the late Cari Beauchamp, expert on Ms. Davies' friend and frequent collaborator Frances Marion.
This and the biographies by Fred Lawrence Guiles and Lara Gabrielle go a long way to dispel the myths, misinformation, lies and b.s. - thanks, Mank - about Marion Davies, who is finally getting her due for her many contributions to the art of motion pictures more than 60 years after her passing.
At least Orson Welles tried to correct the wrongs done by the otherwise marvelous Citizen Kane by writing the forward to the 1975 book of interviews with Marion, and restore her place among the great comediennes of motion pictures.
Closing note: the second Mrs. Charlie Kane, Susan Alexander, was based on horticulturist and incredibly unsuccessful diva Ganna Walska, at one point the high-profile mistress of Chicago press tycoon/industrialist Harold McCormick.
While wishing fervently for a Star Trek teleportation device to make attending today's San Francisco Giants home opener at A T and T Park possible, this blogger will be watching baseball flicks on Turner Classic Movies. Thrilled and delighted to hear TCM hosts Eddie “The Czar Of Noir” Muller and Ben Mankiewicz talk baseball movies on the April 2 edition of Marty Lurie’s Podcast on KNBR, source of San Francisco Giants radio broadcasts.
While we also like the 1994 version of Angels In The Outfield starring Danny Glover, the 1951 film, directed by Clarence Brown, has got it all - Paul Douglas and Bing Crosby for Madame Blogmeister and Janet Leigh, baseball player cameos, Keenan Wynn and Harry Ruby for the Blogmeister.
On the surface, Ron Shelton's Bull Durham is a randy, raunchy and Rabelaisian rom-com that sneaks profound baseball knowledge within a storyline about what it takes for players to get to the major leagues and then stay there, the dynamic between minor and major league teams. . . and, of course, groupies. It would be the first of Shelton's explorations (White Men Can't Jump, Tin Cup, Cobb) of sports as narrative.
Bull Durham reflects that TCM has expanded its reach to films that, while made quite a long time ago, are more in line with the sensibility of present-day 21st century movies than the cinema of 1929-1949. At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, often wrap our addled psyches around the fact that movies we saw first run on the big screen are 40+ years in the rear-view mirror.
Bull Durham will be followed by the 1949 Busby Berkeley directed MGM flick, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, co-starring real-life baseball fan Frank Sinatra, dancin' Gene Kelly, aqua-queen of the MGM lot Esther Williams and quintessential stage and screen musical comedy gal Betty Garrett.
Appropriately, on Jackie Robinson Day, April 15, The Jackie Robinson Story will lead a baseball-packed TCM triple bill which includes The Natural and The Pride Of The Yankees.
Jackie, along with Larry Doby and Monte Irvin, were among the intrepid, tough and fearless men who broke the color line and paved the way for arguably the greatest baseball players of the 20th century, perennial MVPs and fellow Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Hank Aaron.
Åll MLB players will wear #42 to honor him. And Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog will find time to see the excellent movie 42 again.
THE NATURAL makes a terrific Robert Redford 1-2 with his 1992 film A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and is, with A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN, FIELD OF DREAMS, the aforementioned BULL DURHAM and (our favorite) EIGHT MEN OUT among a slew of very good baseball flicks produced in the 1980's.
Tough to top Pride Of The Yankess, although this movie buff frequently thinks of Coop doing his John L Sullivan impersonation in the Hoawrd Hawks masterpiece BALL OF FIRE!
Any additions we'd make to the TCM baseball film fest? Yes! Joe E. Brown in ELMER THE GREAT and ALIBI IKE!
Just re-read Jerry Beck's September 23 post on Cartoon Research reminding the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog that tomorrow night (Saturday, October 2nd), Turner Classic Movies shall spotlight an animation program curated by Tommy Stathes of Cartoons On Film.
TCM will present a four-hour program, including a tribute to the groundbreaking animation of the Fleischer Studio, beginning at 8:00 p.m. EST with the documentary Cartoon Carnival.
The film delves into the history of pre-Steamboat Willie animated cartoons.
That will be followed at 9:45 EST by The 100th Anniversary of Fleischer Animation – Part 1: The Silent Era.
The cool lineup of vintage restorations is as follows: The Boxing Kangaroo (Bray, 1920)
Reunion (1922)
Cartoon Factory (1924)
Vacation (1924)
Come Take a Trip in My Airship (1924) one of the actual, original Koko Song Cartunes, with 1930s reissue soundtrack
It’s the Cat’s (1926)
At 10:45 p.m. EST, Turner Classic Movies will present The 100th Anniversary of Fleischer Animation – Part 2: The Sound Era, curated by Tommy and Steve Stanchfield. Brand spanking new Stathes and Stanchfield restorations will be on hand.
The program is as follows:
Hurry Doctor! (1931) – the rarely seen Texaco sponsored film
Betty Boop’s Crazy Inventions (1933)
Let’s Sing With Popeye (1934)
Betty Boop and Grampy (1935)
Dancing On the Moon (1935)
Popeye Meets Sindbad (1936)
This is an outstanding lineup of Fleischer Studio animation goodness. Ladies and gentlemen, set your DVRS, tablets, smart phones and streaming devices. Thanks Tommy, Steve and Turner Classic Movies!
Elated to have survived the last two weeks (and year), this blogger realizes that three of the most memorable and talented women to ever work in movies - Marie Dressler, Edna May Oliver and Hedy Lamarr - share November 9 birthdays.
The "password" for Marie remains her part in MGM's 1933 black comedy Dinner At Eight, directed by George Cukor.
Here, Marie delivers the greatest "take" in the history of motion pictures. No doubt Oliver Hardy and Charley Chase watched this moment of sheer comic genius in admiration.
Marie Dressler had an illustrious career that began back in the 1890's.
Matthew Kennedy's Marie Dressler biography elaborates further on her long career, which began in the 1890's.
Marie would be the top character actress in motion pictures in the first 5 years of talkies, hold her own with none other than the legendary Garbo in Anna Christie, win the Best Actress Oscar for Min & Bill, and be nominated for Emma.
A key collaborator of Marie’s was ace screenwriter Frances Marion, who had the magic touch over a four decade career. Frances Marion’s screenplays did wonders for Mary Pickford and other stars of silent pictures.
Having begun her movie career in the feature length Sennett knockabout-fest Tillie's Punctured Romance, she proved she could successfully transition from dramatic roles to broad physical comedy. Here she is, tearing it up with the very funny comedienne and mimic Marion Davies in The Patsy.
Marie tackled slapstick with panache, often with the star of pratfall-packed Mack Sennett and Fox Sunshine Comedies Polly Moran.
We were glued to TCM a few years back, when Marie Dressler was the Star of the Month.
One of the most prolific character actresses of the 1930's was Edna May Oliver, who began her career onstage and would become most ubiquitous in 1930's movies.
Performing everything from Dickens to Kalmar & Ruby, often brilliantly, Edna brought spunk and good humor to her roles, and, as was the case with Marie Dressler, could absolutely ace both comedic and dramatic parts. Love her in the the Wheeler & Woolsey comedies Half Shot At Sunrise, Cracked Nuts and Hold 'Em Jail.
With Bert & Bob, Edna appears to have relished doing comedy.
Here's one of the Hollywood caricature cartoons seen the least, from the B-studio of B-studios, Screen Gems. Edna May Oliver is Mother Goose and enters at 1:29. Spoofing actors and actresses who were not caricatured in any another cartoons, Mother Goose In Swingtime rivals the Disney opus Mickey's Gala Premier and Tex Avery's WB masterpiece Hollywood Steps Out for sheer quantity (if not quality) of movie star caricatures.
One imagines that the Charles Mintz/Screen Gems studio did NOT have the desire or requisite dough-re-me to hire caricaturist extraordinaire and future UPA director T. Hee, responsible for outstanding character design work at Disney and Warner Brothers in those aforementioned Hollywood star-filled cartoons, to work on Mother Goose In Swingtime. Nonetheless, it's a very entertaining cartoon and the only one that features a caricature of Kay Francis!
The great Hedy Lamarr, a.k.a. Heddy Lamarr, while largely known for her beauty and amazing silver screen presence, could be described as a scientist who did modeling and movie acting on the side.
Unfortunately, Ms. Lamarr did not receive her due an inventor and innovator during her lifetime - although that recognition has come since her passing in 2000.
Partly because Hedy was nothing less than stunningly, breathtakingly gorgeous, her screen acting, IMHO, could be a tad underrated. While, given, she does not approach the character acting and comedy genius demonstrated by Marie Dressler and Edna May Oliver, let alone the rarified air and gravitas of a Bette Davis, Ms. Lamarr pulls off the following scene and others throughout the Bob Hope vehicle My Favorite Spy admirably and adeptly.
Richard Rhodes has penned a book about the life and accomplishments of Hedy Lamarr. Looks interesting!
Although the front covers of this still stresses Hedy Lamarr, babe, first, then Hedy the scientist, this looks like a good read.
We finish by noting that prolific silent film comedian and "king of the extras" in talkies Snub Pollard was also born on this day - and that tomorrow, November 10, is the birthday of Mabel Normand, the top comedienne in silent pictures.
Mabel, dubbed "the female Chaplin," worked in short subjects and features, and was a director of her own starring vehicles at Mack Sennett's Fun Factory.
The first headliner of Sennett's Keystone Comedies, along with Ford Sterling and Fred Mace, "Madcap Mabel" preceded Charlie Chaplin as a movie star and appeared in 220 films.
More on the movie careers of Marie and Mabel can be found in Steve Massa's comprehensive and superb book on the numerous women of silent film comedy, Slapstick Divas, which devotes chapters to both silver screen icons.
Determined to avoid the news AND the plague, we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog continue the Brit-com bent that started with The Goons, The Pythons, The Two Ronnies and Alexei Sayle and now begin an Ealing Studios and Alec Guinness binge. Batting leadoff, just one of many outstanding movies starring the one, the only Sir Alec Guinness - The Horse's Mouth.
There is Kind Hearts & Coronets, in which Guinness plays eight incredibly disagreeable and loathsome characters with perfection. For this writer, the Ealing Studios masterpiece ranks high on the list of greatest feature films - and most wicked comedies - ever made.
Very much enjoyed seeing one of this blogger's favorite standup comedians, authors, B-movie historians and cartoon voice artists, Patton Oswalt, introduce and discuss Kind Hearts & Coronets, the black comedy to end all black comedies, as a TCM guest programmer.
As is the case with the great comedies of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, there's no such thing as too many viewings of The Lavender Hill Mob.
The late, great Robert Osborne elaborates:
The Lavender Hill Mob is so cool, it even includes one of the earliest silver screen appearances of the iconic and always winsome Audrey Hepburn.
Another Alec Guinness vehicle we dearly love is The Man In The White Suit.
Alexander Mackendrick, the director of Whisky Galore!, The Man In The White Suit and The Ladykillers, was a master of the witty Ealing Comedies style, but also helmed an all-time favorite American film of the classic movie fans at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, the warm and cozy Sweet Smell Of Success.
We're also quite fond of the ever-so-slightly less well known but very funny Passport To Pimlico.
We'd be remiss to not mention the classic 1949 Ealing Studios comedy that was the directorial debut of Alexander Mackendrick, Whisky Galore!
Before watching another 15 or 20 Ealing Studios Productions, followed by several episodes of Hancock's Half Hour, we shall finish off today's post with this look at the Ealing Studios from the British Film Institute.
First remember reading about a good many of the 36 films TCM shall present Monday in Leonard's terrific book The Great Movie Shorts: Those Wonderful One- and Two-Reelers of the Thirties and Forties.
Have copies of The Great Movie Shorts, first published in 1972, as well as the 1983 trade paperback reissue, Selected Short Subjects. Combined with Leonard's books Movie Comedy Teams, The Disney Films, The Great Movie Comedians and Of Mice & Magic, these formed, along with William K. Everson's books and Clown Princes & Court Jesters by Kalton C. Lahue & Sam Gill, a terrific foundation of classic film education.
Leonard hosts the Short Film Showcase, which will include quite a few unbeatable classic movies - comedies and musicals - near and dear to the diehard film buffs at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog.
Vitaphone cranked out tons of musical short subjects, starting with the Vitaphone Varieties in 1926 and extending through the Melody Masters big band shorts well into the 1940's.
In the 36 movie lineup: two particularly wonderful musical short subjects produced by Vitaphone in the 1930's and featuring outstanding African-American entertainers.
Short Subject Potpourri #1 kicks off with Smash Your Baggage, an exceptional Vitaphone musical short made in 1932. First heard about this from one of the country's top animators and animation historians, who is also a big time classic movie buff and aficionado of musical short subjects. It did not disappoint.
Small's Paradise Entertainers, a super talented troupe of dancers and musicians, were the featured performers at the Harlem nightclub Small's Paradise. In Smash Your Baggage, entertainers whose day jobs are as redcaps and porters in a train station (which looks like Grand Central) give a performance to raise money for an ill member of their group.
There is spectacular singing and dancing throughout the nine minute running time.
In the red-hot Small's Paradise house band: ace trumpeter Roy Eldridge, future Count Basie Orchestra trombonist Dicky Wells and the legendary "Big Sid" Catlett on drums.
Leonard Maltin's Short Film Showcase also includes The Black Network (1936), featuring one of the early silver screen appearances by the incredible Nicholas Brothers. This is just one of many Vitaphone mini-musicals directed by Roy Mack before he started making Soundies in the 1940's.
In this writer's opinion, by far the funniest of the "Big V Comedies" are the talkie "comeback" shorts starring Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
In Buzzin' Around (1933), the "Prince of Whales" plays a homespun inventor who has developed a substance which keeps china from breaking - at least until a swarm of angry bees and much resultant mayhem intervene. Arbuckle's acrobatic Sennett Comedies and Comique Productions co-star (and nephew) Al St. John and the equally amazing Pete the Pup from Our Gang co-star.
The second Vitaphone comedy short is Ralph Staub's pie-throwing homage to Mack Sennett's silent slapstick comedies, Keystone Hotel (1935). Former Sennett luminaries Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Marie Prevost, Hank Mann, Chester Conklin and the Keystone Kops star. Unfortunately, Keystone Comedies stalwart Mack "Ambrose" Swain passed in August 1935 and Roscoe Arbuckle, who would have fit right in and thrown pies with gusto and precision, passed after finishing shooting the last of his six Vitaphone 2-reelers on June 29, 1933.
Not surprisingly, given Mr. Maltin's writings in The Great Movie Shorts and The Great Movie Comedians, there are many films among the 36 chosen produced by Hal Roach in the Short Film Showcase.
There will be a bunch of films starring the great movie comedian who, in addition to Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy, gets the biggest belly laughs from the crew at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, Charley Chase a.k.a Charles Parrott. The lineup will include Whispering Whoopee (1930), Girl Shock (1930), The Pip From Pittsburg (1931), His Silent Racket (1933), Fallen Arches (1933), The Chases of Pimple Street (1934) and Four Parts (1934).
In Four Parts, Charley plays adult quadruplets - a traffic cop, a bus conductor, a taxi driver and a physician - all living under the same roof. He also sings "Auntie's Got Ants In Her Pantry."
Notable in the mix: our favorite of The Charley Chase Talkies here at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, The Pip From Pittsburg (1931), the closest Mr. Chase got to replicating the blazing comedy brilliance of his 1924-1926 work, in collaboration with director Leo McCarey, in sound films.
After Thelma and Charley made a wonderful team and worked beautifully together in The Pip From Pittsburg and other short subjects, producer Hal Roach spun Thelma off into her own series. He had been experimenting with female comedy teams for awhile, having teamed comediennes Anita Garvin and Marion "Peanuts" Byron in the silent 2-reelers A Pair Of Tights, Feed 'Em And Weep and Going Ga-Ga, so Thelma was teamed with character actress and comedienne ZaSu Pitts.
The team headlined 17 short subjects, two of which, Asleep in the Feet (1933) and The Bargain of the Century, get the spotlight in the Thelma Todd & Friends segment. The latter, directed and written by Charley Chase, is a brilliant comedy, spotlighting the relationship between ZaSu and Thelma while expressing the duo's character acting mojo.
Patsy Kelly succeeded ZaSu Pitts as Thelma's teammate and foil in 1933, and they would co-star in 21 comedy shorts. One of the very best in this series, Top Flat (1935), will be on the program.
Lesser known Lot Of Fun series are also represented. The Boyfriends comedies were director George Stevens' teenage variation on "Hal Roach's Rascals," featuring the silent era cornerstones of Our Gang, Mary Kornman and Mickey Daniels, as well as the equally prolific silent movie child actress Gertrude Messinger, the future director of Our Gang comedies and Robin & The 7 Hoods Gordon Douglas, and soon to be super-stuntman David Sharpe. Doing much of the comedy heavy lifting throughout the 1930-1932 series: the wonderfully goofy comedian Grady Sutton, known for his stellar work with W.C. Fields. Four entries from The Boyfriends series Air-Tight, Call A Cop, You're Telling Me and
Too Many Women will be seen.
Also on hand will be a cross-section further comedy favorites noted at length in The Great Movie Shorts, including Robert Benchley short subjects (How To Sleep, A Night At The Movies), Pete Smith Specialties (the Oscar-nominated Movie Pests) and the musical comedy Apples To You! starring Billy Gilbert as "Pinsky," a flamboyant burlesque impresario hired to add a bit of excitement to a lackluster production of The Barber of Seville.
Bringing the Short Subjects spotlight into the post-World War II era will be two hilarious examples of the Joe McDoakes series, directed by the one, the only Richard L. Bare for Warner Brothers.
George O'Hanlon, known to comedy and animated cartoon fans as the voice of George Jetson, stars as wiseguy regular guy Joe McDoakes. So You Want To Be a Detective (1948) and So You Want to Play the Piano (1956) demonstrate how the Joe McDoakes one-reelers rank among the most consistently funny of movie shorts.
We thank TCM and Leonard Maltin for doing this! Always enjoy re-visiting the terrific musical shorts and very funny comedies of the 1930's and 1940's. We also extend two respectful tips of a Stan & Babe style brown derby to Dave Lord Heath of the extremely informative Another Nice Mess: The Films Of Laurel & Hardy website. We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog much appreciate its many levels of research, reviews and frame grabs regarding all things Hal Roach. Have donated to this worthy website before and shall do it again!
