Cult Cartoons, Part IV: Ub Iwerks by Paul F. Etcheverry

The studio of Ub Iwerks, the guy who animated the first Mickey Mouse cartoons and was certainly the fastest pencil in the west, created some of the most psychotronic and psychedelic of cult cartoons.



After his stellar, often brilliant animation enlivened the Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series, Disney's ace animator split the Mouse Factory - he hoped - for fame and fortune producing his own cartoons in 1930. Neither fame nor fortune happened. Ub's Flip The Frog, Willie Whopper and Comicolor Fairytale series flopped like a shameless NBA power forward.



The story goes that one could never, ever bring the subject of his unsuccessful studio up with Ub - decades later, it was still too painful for him to discuss. Little did the quiet but groundbreaking animator, inventor and special effects guru know, the eccentric and remarkably un-ingratiating product of his studio would find cultish rediscovery after his death.



The very qualities that absolutely doomed these shorts in their original release - weird graphic designs (that make you wonder if the artists were popping heavy duty psychedelics), aggressively uncuddly characters and a dreamlike atmosphere - allowed them to somehow weather the test of time. The 1930-1933 Flip The Frog series could at times be as surreal as a Fleischer cartoon.



For MGM distribution, after the Flip The Frog series ended, the Iwerks studio produced a series starring a tell-tale tellin' Baron Munchausen kid named Willie Whopper. The wilder the tales, the better the cartoon.



Here are two of the wildest Willie Whopper cartoons, Stratos-Fear and Hell's Fire, a.k.a. Vulcan Entertains. The story goes that the former was directed and largely animated by the legendary Grim Natwick. Animation historians out there: tell me if I'm wrong! But not until you enjoy some of the best classic cartoons from the 1930's.




The Comicolor Fairytale series ran from 1933-1936 and would be the Iwerks Studio entry in the "let's see if we can make our own version of something like Disney's Silly Symphonies" sweepstakes. While the Comicolors are frequently enjoyable, colorful and entertaining cartoons, there are not in any way like the original Silly Symphonies, which were originally animated in some cases entirely by Ub for Disney in 1928-1929 (The Skeleton Dance and Hell's Bells particularly outstanding among them).



Like the Willie Whopper cartoons, the Comicolor Fairytales featured animation by several heavyweights in the field: the aforementioned Grim Natwick, as well as Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster and Berny Wolf.



Some of the Comicolors, Jack Frost and The Brave Tin Soldier in particular, convey the aforementioned dreamlike atmosphere along with a genuine charm that even evaded the big budget Disney and Harman-Ising studios.









While perhaps only one of every three Iwerks Studio shorts demonstrated true blazing inspiration, those exceptions invariably proved surreal, memorable and striking.



Routinely dismissed as worthless crap are the later Iwerks Studio endeavors, which appeared as entries in the black and white Looney Tunes (in these cases, Chuck Jones and Bob Clampett were among the Warners animators who made Porky Pig cartoons for Iwerks) and Columbia Color Rhapsodies series. Your Blogmeister champions some of these films, particularly the art deco orgy Merry Mannequins and the truly psychedelic Horse On The Merry-Go-Round as among the studio's most imaginative work.



Here are two more from Ub's stretch making cartoons at his Santa Monica studio as part of the Rodney Dangerfield of cartoon series, the Columbia Color Rhapsodies. The first, The Frog Pond, was transferred from a dark and substandard print, but will do until a better digital copy from 35mm comes along. Most notable in this cartoon is some killer animation by the wonderful Irv Spence, later known for his work on Hanna & Barbera's Tom and Jerry cartoons.


The second, Midnight Frolics, is a musical featuring exceptionally goofy ghosts.



What I like about Iwerks in effect crushed his dreams of popular success with his own studio - the fact that he made cartoons that were in no way, shape or form like Disney's. Would Disney build cartoons around art deco mannequins, a grotesque, knife-wielding "thug frog", dentistry-induced hallucinations, "pin cushion men" or gibberish speaking space aliens? I don't think so.

Cult Cartoons, Part III: More B-Studios

First and foremost, there's the Van Beuren Studio. Animation fans say "God bless Amadee J. Van Beuren", who was the personification of the absentee producer, off somewhere else while his animators churned out delightfully crude Aesop's Fables, Tom And Jerry, The Little King, Amos N' Andy and Cubby Bear cartoons. His office wasn't even in the same building as the studio!



To this day, many decades later, the Van Beuren cartoons manage to be simultaneously inept, saucy and hilarious.



Here are a few great and indescribably bizarre examples of animated mayhem from the New York "B" cartoon studio that resided just down the block from Fleischer's:

And then there was Columbia Pictures sales executive turned cartoon producer Charles Mintz (1889-1939). . .In the 1920's, businessman Charles Mintz tried to show Walt Disney who was boss by taking his starring character and most of his staff. Could the thoroughly maligned outfit known as the Screen Gems Studio have been God's revenge on Mintz for screwing Walt Disney out of his studio and rights to the beloved Oswald The Lucky Rabbit back in the 20's? Or was the fact that Universal Pictures subsequently won rights to Oswald and sent Mintz packing retribution enough?








In any case, after Universal ate Mintz' lunch, he retreated to a more hands-off approach - so it's very likely that Mintz' disinterest enabled the preponderance of bizarre cartoons that emerged under his watch in the 1930's as head of the Columbia/Screen Gems Studio. Another factor was the presence of the unique, imaginative and royally twisted gag mind of director/storyman/animator Sid Marcus.



At one point, both the looked-down-upon Mintz cartoons and those of Ub Iwerks' struggling studio were released in the Color Rhapsodies series. Both meet all of the criteria for cult cartoons!

Here are some 1931 Krazy Kat and Scrappy cartoons produced by Mintz, the former by the production crew headed by Manny Gould (yes, the same guy who contributed stellar animation to Bob Clampett and Robert McKimson cartoons at Warner Bros.) and Ben Harrison, the latter by Sid Marcus, Dick Huemer and Art Davis.

Happy Birthday, Mel Torme

With George Shearing in Berlin, 1989.

Cult Cartoons, Part II: Ted Eshbaugh

The next question: what cartoon producer would be the Walt Disney of cult/psychotronic cartoons? It's tantamount to asking who's the D.W. Griffith of nudie films, but let's start with . . .

Ted Eshbaugh

Here's a 1931 cartoon, Goofy Goat, by this New York-based independent producer:



The little studio that could then produced The Snowman, starring, you guessed it, an abominable snowman. Like Goofy Goat, this cartoon was originally in two-strip Technicolor, but only black and white prints exist today.



Eshbaugh also created the first Wizard Of Oz cartoon, which features a soundtrack by Carl Stalling.





Then Ted produced cartoons in RKO's Rainbow Parade series, including Pastry Town Wedding and Japanese Lanterns (which, unfortunately, only exists in black and white prints - it's a lost film in the original Technicolor) as well as a very long commercial for Borden's. . . the definitely not-of-this-world classic The Sunshine Makers:







Yes, Sunshine Makers starred suspiciously happy dwarves who guzzled sunshine milk, well, before it was illegalized. They convert a bunch of depressive dwarves without as much as one self-help book. What designer drug was Borden injecting into their milk, anyway?

The Eshbaugh studio also made commercials, including this Wonder Bread advertising film, originally produced for the 1939 Worlds Fair.



Little is heard from Eshbaugh until a re-emergence during the WW2 years.



In Cap'n Cub, a fuzzy wuzzy bear bombs WWII Japan back to pre-civilization - so the survivors could star in Fleischer's "Stone Age" cartoons.



Unquestionably, Ted Eshbaugh deserves a "Cult Cartoons" bowling shirt.

Cult Cartoons, Part I

The phrase “cult movies” is not meant to describe the entertainment preferences of Heaven's Gate "straight to Saturn" club members, David “Go Ahead, Burn Us Down - See If I Care” Koresh, the Reverend Jim “Kool-Aid” Jones, Charlie “They Wouldn't Let Me Be A Monkee” Manson or "mass murder on behalf of (pick a deity)" psycho killers.

This term usually refers to schlocky drive-in B-films, featuring mad scientists, hideous monsters, radioactive bugs, rampaging dinosaurs and greasy-haired, booze-swillin’, big-boobed platinum blonde pot smokin’ juvenile delinquents out for a cheap thrill (no doubt hoping for the cameo appearance by Jerry Lee Lewis, Gene Vincent or, if a subterranean hipster, Charlie Parker).

Animation historian Jerry Beck coined the phrase "cult cartoons" in a 1980 article to describe "a coveted few Hollywood cartoons that have a magical quality and appeal with their audience of cartoon fans (and non-fans) that far surpasses their production (story, art and technical) value."



As Jerry's list of the top five cult cartoons includes Chuck Jones' DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24TH1/2 CENTURY, this is not limited to the cartoon equivalent of campy low-budget monster movies. He does note that cult cartoons offer "something unique about them that makes a person vividly remember the film days, weeks, years after viewing."

Many of my favorite cult cartoons scared the living daylights out of me in my childhood.


Cult movies and cult cartoons embrace both elephantine and miniscule budgets, the theatre, the multiplex, the grindhouse and in some cases the outhouse.

What Are Cult Cartoons?


Any cult (or psychotronic) cartoon worth its saline must meet any two of the following criteria:

• no pun is too obvious, no joke too stupid, no sight gag too ridiculous for inclusion in the cartoon
  




• film or series has been the object of universal vilification by critics, bloggers and even knowledgeable historians




• identified as among the worst cartoons or studios ever by at least one Golden Age animator who lived long enough to write memoirs



• what the late, great Frank Zappa termed “cheapnis”



• a naive, unconscious and usually pointless surrealism that gives the proverbial finger to the “let’s copy real life” aesthetic. . .




• blatant, shameless propaganda (Great Depression and World War II era cartoons and Civil Defense films)



• a mixture of artistic inspiration, the willingness to offend, genuine laughs and disturbing overtones - provided the cartoon was produced at least four decades before the heyday of Andrew Dice Clay. After all, bad taste and general excess, once fashionable, become a bore.

Here is a quintessential psychotronic cartoon, Balloon Land, produced in 1935 by the Ub Iwerks Studio. This psychedelic, dreamlike and bizarre piece, starring a quite phallic "pin cushion man" (maniacally voiced by Billy Bletcher - and Sigmund Freud would have loved him), without a doubt, must have been one of the essential building block cartoons of David Lynch's childhood.

Still More Psychotronic Cartoons

Since there are so many truly outstanding animation blogs (my "links" section doesn't even get around to all of them), I haven't been doing cartoon-related posts. So I'll rectify that momentarily by posting some classic cartoons I like.



This one, The Bad Genius, was produced in 1932 by the infamous Charles Mintz (who thought he got the last laugh when he took control of Disney's Oswald The Lucky Rabbit character and hired away Walt's staff).



The following, Yelp Wanted and Sunday Clothes, are the first and third entries in the Scrappy cartoon series, produced by ex-Fleischer Studio artists who brought a certain East Coast sensibility to West Coast animation.



Both opuses de Scrappy are truly twisted, in bad taste, and look like they were drawn by R. Crumb - in short, everything we love about pre-Code psychotronic cartoons!



A fair amount of the cartoony goodness was by the legendary Dick Huemer, previously known for stellar work on Fleischer's Koko The Clown and subsequently a key storyman with Disney (he co-wrote Dumbo).



Additional scenes arose from the pungent pen of gagman par excellence Sid Marcus, later known as the guy who, with Robert McKimson, created The Tasmanian Devil at Warners. And responsible for the remaining classic rubber hose animation: the great Warner Bros. animator and director Art Davis, who worked in the cartoon biz for eight decades.



For the last word on Scrappy cartoons, check out the Scrappyland site by journalist and vintage animation expert Harry McCracken.

This Week's Scandal Du Jour

Since it isn't possible to attract high ratings or readership with hard-hitting investigative stories about serious issues, right now all the media's talkin' about Senator Larry Craig. While dealing with my "fat pains" at the gym, I noticed one of the monitors was tuned to CNN (couldn't hear it, luckily) and that Senator Craig's attempt at lavatory romance (gees, whatever happened to buying dinner, a "tickler" bouquet and a movie first) was the only topic of discussion - in an era distinguished by political skullduggery, rampant corruption and astonishing ineptitude - the entire time I was there.

Senator Craig, shut up and pay the 5000 bucks. And call George Michael - he's lonely.

My Favorite Prog Rock Clips

That early 1970's musical landscape of prog rock and fusion is most difficult to explain to the uninitiated. Neither of the two genres were rock music or jazz in the conventional sense - not at all. They were inter-related and all over the map, although to slap Frank Zappa, Don "Captain Beefheart" Van Vliet, Miles Davis or Cologne avant-gardists Can with either term seems insulting; such labels still do not even begin to describe their music.

"Prog rock" could mean everything from thoughtful, tuneful pop (Barclay James Harvest) to jazz-rock jams (Soft Machine) to Wagnerian spectacle (Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman) to hallucinatory surrealist futuristic Broadway (early Genesis). And I'm still seeking the quintessential Prague Prog Rock ensemble.

"Prog rock" could also mean whatever lovely, wondrous, twisted synthesis of diverse musical genres bandleader-guitarist Robert Fripp was deep into that year, in the case of the following clip, the 1972 version of King Crimson:


Robert Fripp - guitar; John Wetton - bass; David Cross - violin; Bill Bruford - drums; Jamie Murr - drums and percussion

One of my all-time favorites from the prog rock and fusion era was a unique band from Holland, Focus.

Here's one among quite a few video clips of their piece-de-resistance, "Hocus Pocus", the mindboggling yodeling-vocalese-opera-whistling-fire breathing proto-metal number that was the most wonderfully weird thing to hit 1960's and 1970's Top 100 besides Napoleon XIV's "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa".

For me, the following version of Hocus Pocus takes the proverbial cake, as the customary guitar gymnastics by Jan Akkerman are even more ridiculous than usual.

And besides, the band is introduced by Gladys Knight, a fine singer with or without The Pips.


Jan Akkerman, guitar and lute; Thijs Van Leer - keyboards and flute; Bert Ruiter - bass; Pierre Van der Linden - drums

Burt Bacharach Day

I regret not having an amazing clip of the late great Max Roach, backed by a blend of his one-of-a-kind percussion ensemble M'Boom with Burt Bacharach himself playing cool bossa nova chords (on electric piano or synth), giving "The Look Of Love" the full Brazilian treatment: traps, mallets, brushes, sticks, wood, congas, marimbas, steel drums, etc.

For this month's Burt Bacharach Day, here's a stellar performance by the finest Bacharach interpreter whose name isn't Dionne Warwick or Elvis Costello, the incredible Dusty Springfield.

Uploaded by pierrot77

Combine elements of Dusty's impassioned version of "I Don't Know What To Do With Myself" with the take-no-prisoners rendition by The White Stripes and you get some kind of epiphany.

My Toast To The Incomparable Max

"To Max Roach, who brought moments of crystalline clarity and beauty to the deepest improvisational frenzy."

Drum Solos - Max Roach 1
Uploaded by madafonka2

Max, we can't thank you enough. Keep soaring.

Remembering Max Roach

I absolutely detest having an "R.I.P. blog", since countless truly great individuals - some famous, most only known to their loved ones - shuffle off this mortal coil every day. However, jazz is a pet topic and we just lost a towering and uncompromising figure, percussionist, composer and bandleader Max Roach.

Mr. Roach also blazed trails as a civil rights activist, global cultural ambassador and teacher. He was also that rarity, a truly open-minded creative artist, always ready to build bridges between generations, nationalities and genres. Proving repeatedly that nothing is mutually exclusive, Max turned conventional wisdom on its sorry, timid ass.

Here's a sample of the pure magic the percussion master could conjure from a hi-hat.

I consider myself truly blessed to have heard Max, Philly Joe Jones, Art Blakey, Roy Haynes, Ed Blackwell, Elvin Jones, Billy Higgins, Jack DeJohnette, Dannie Richmond, Andrew Cyrille, Famoudou Don Moye and other amazing drummers in person - and boy, am I sorry I didn't catch Buddy Rich and Jo Jones.

Enjoy this clip of Max' quartet - Cecil Bridgewater on trumpet, Billy Harper on the tenor saxophone and Reggie Workman, the beating heart on the upright bass - kicking serious ass while challenging conventional wisdom in 1977.

Swingin' At Capitol Records

I'll wager this is the only blog around that features posts on both The Buzzcocks and Peggy Lee in the same week!

As a guy who enjoys singin' those lounge tunes, I often listen to great vocalists to steal ideas from - I mean for inspiration, really! In the mid-1940's, three of the best, Nat King Cole, June Christy and Peggy Lee, were recording wonderful jazzy sides for Capitol Records. The Cole sides, amazingly, sold, so the label recorded lots more in that relaxed yet swingin' approach. This represented the cutting edge of that era's popular music; even Sinatra himself didn't quite catch up with this remarkable trifecta until he signed with Capitol a few years later.

Serious immersion in The Complete Peggy Lee and June Christy Capitol Transcription Sessions has left me with nothing but admiration for these two vocalists, as well as musical director and guitarist Dave Barbour. Both made their names with the more modern big bands (Goodman and Kenton, respectively), but, instead of squandering their first solo recordings on pale preppy commercial music, they created masterpieces of small-group jazz.

While June Christy is notable for her sophisticated swing, wonderful liquid vowels and highly imaginative musicianship, Peggy Lee demonstrates an unerring knack for deeply understanding and expressing a song's emotional life (her rendition of "Porgy" is especially powerful), in a way only matched by Louis Armstrong. Christy knocks Ellington's "Prelude To A Kiss" out of the ballpark as if it's an easy tune to sing. And Lee's recording of Irish folk chestnut "Molly Malone", in which the band's upbeat, jazzy accompaniment contrasts (probably unintentionally) with a vocal that digs very deeply into the tragedy in the lyrics, is one weirdly compelling Mulligan stew.

Imagine, the idea of making great music, as opposed to registering high marks with focus or test marketing groups, as the reason for recording and creating. What a concept! That was the m.o. of Nat Cole, June Christy, Peggy Lee and Louis Armstrong - and they have stood the test of time. Swing into eternity, baby.

756

Barry Bonds is the Lance Armstrong of baseball. Lance Armstrong is the Barry Bonds of cycling. The Tour de France is the buck naked reality of sports competition, and has been for a long time. That's the way it is. OK, I'm a cynic - so sue me. Anything that strikes me about this story?

• Both Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron received death threats over breaking a home run record. Yes, death threats over, of all things, sports. . . Roll those words around in your mind again, death threats. What are these people thinking? These are baseball players, for cryin' out loud. What variant of pond scum (and I say that with apologies to all the nice pond scum) squanders energy and time directing death threats at professional athletes?
• Barry's homer put the Giants ahead in a game they eventually lost, due to a four run rally off their horrid bullpen, a shell-shocked corps that invariably brings reliable relief to the other team.
• Cheating? If I were Giants owner Peter Magowan (and I'm not), I'd pay Hall Of Famer Gaylord Perry to personally teach Barry Zito and the misbegotten Giants relievers the good ole' country sinker. Then we'll win some ballgames and both Barries could have some fun!
• Sanctimonious commish Allan H. "Bud" Selig should have checked his own ego at the door and let George W. Bush be commissioner of baseball way back when.
• I'm glad this is all over - now I can get a good seat when Giants phenom Tim "Lights Out" Lincecum pitches.

They're Old, They're Punk, They Rock

Never Mind The Bollocks, here are Manchester's The Buzzcocks, live in 2007.

Old is a state of mind - well, at least until you're pushin' 80. Don't go there until there's absolutely no choice.

Fleischer Popeyes Hit DVD

The new DVD set of 1933-1938 Popeye cartoons, mastered from the original negatives, receives its official release today.



Indeed, this is an amazing treasure trove for film buffs and includes a host of intriguing extras. If you're an animation or classic movie buff, just buy it and enjoy.




Kudos to Jerry Beck and many others who made this happen!

THRILL-O-TRONIC FILM SHOW, EL CERRITO, AUGUST 4

We will soil the beautiful Cerrito Speakeasy Theatre with the aforementioned matinee this Saturday at 2:00 p.m.

I get asked what our "themes" are in these programs (and ask myself, "you mean, we have themes?"). Well, here goes. . .

• non-union actors in cardboard robot suits



• non-union actors dressed as aliens



• non-union actors dressed as gorilla suits



• trailers from horrid movies



• calypso music



• swing music



• early rock music



• showgirls



• car, cigarette and theatre snack bar commercials



• any film we can find with unsubtle double entendres



• surreal and psychedelic 1930's cartoons



• 1950's "duck and cover" films



• "educational" films that went horribly, dreadfully wrong



• anything that provokes the response "what were they thinking?"



• general mayhem and political incorrectness



• and, yes, showgirls

I think that's a start. See you there.

More Felix By Otto Messmer, 1924

Boy, is this cartoon in bad taste!

Felix Woos Whoopee

Felix The Cat in Comicalamities (1928)

Felix breaks "the third wall" before Bertolt Brecht, before Tex Avery, before Olsen and Johnson, before Ernie Kovacs, in this remarkable 1928 cartoon by Otto Messmer. Disregard the cheesy soundtrack.

If this just isn't enough Otto Messmer for you, ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive has posted these excellent Felix The Cat comics.

Felix The Cat by Otto Messmer

Felix The Cat goes Dutch in Two-Lip Time (1926), a classic cartoon by the incomparable Otto Messmer. I have also heard that early animation stalwarts Bill Nolan and Raoul Barré worked on this cartoon (if any of you experts and historians out there in cyberspace can confirm or deny this, by all means leave a comment).

The silent Felix series manages to be simultaneously cartoony, minimalistic and otherworldly. And they still deliver the goods with audiences - I've witnessed this first hand. While the subsequent retirement in 1927 of pioneering animator Raoul Barré couldn't have helped matters for the Pat Sullivan Studio, the series nonetheless continued its winning streak.



Messmer only got credit for his amazing work in animation many decades after Felix' heydey as an international star, as booked in the movie theatres around the world as Rudolf Valentino.

Here's a clip from Jane Canemaker's interview with the legendary animator in his documentary Otto Messmer & Felix The Cat.

Saved From The Flames

My last entry covering the 12th San Francisco Silent Film Festival will attempt to explain something that totally defies rational explanation: the fascinating yet disturbing allure of ultra-rare time capsules from the earliest days of cinema. How early? Imagine movie buffs watching Ratatouille in, say, 2111-2114 - that's how early!

Serge Bromberg, founder of Lobster Films, presented one of his celebrated Retour de Flamme (Saved From The Flames) programs - an annual tradition in Paris - for this year's fest. While the show included a very funny 1928 short about a drunken, showgirl-crazy fireman who saw naked Folies-Bergere dancers, including a somewhat more clothed but always witty and striking Josephine Baker, everywhere he looked, most of the 35mm French rarities dated from the turn of the 20th century. The core of the program spotlighted ultra-rare "trick films" by Georges Méliès, Gaston Velle, Segundo de Chomom, Ferdinand Zecca and others.

The modus operandi of the earliest trick films is "hey, look - we can do this", and draws from magic tricks, vaudeville and Grand Guignol. One very early "short short" solely featured a guy getting his head chopped off, while another (more entertaining) later trick film had a fellow's barber decapitate and re-capitate him - something I'm pretty sure was not taught in barber college. Another trick film portrayed an overenthusiastic musician who, incessantly playing his clarinet for captive audiences, suffered an accident that shoved the instrument through and out the top of his head; the big joke, even better than Steve Martin's arrow-through-the-head gag, was that he continued playing. Still another sublimely ridiculous reel consisted entirely of a zaftig showgirl doing a series of little dances with an actor in a giant pig costume.

The fascination in such wonderfully bizarre relics is self-evident, but what causes me to describe them as disturbing? It isn't the content, but the visceral experience of seeing living history: walking, breathing people who lived and died long ago in a 19th century Victorian world so very different from our own. Some of this rings true in the more advanced pre-WWI silent cinema of D.W. Griffith, Max Linder, G.M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson and others, but it's really resonant after experiencing 90 minutes of pre-1905 movies - and brings one vividly in touch with that pesky, nagging topic of mortality.

Burt Bacharach Day

In the middle of all these postings about last weekend's San Francisco Silent Film Festival comes. . . the 20th of this month, so that means it's Burt Bacharach Day.

Alas, Burt wrote nothing (that I know of) to accompany silent movies, but I'll pay tribute to the great pop composer-arranger-songwriter anyway. This month's clip, of L.A. psychedelic-garage-folk-punk rockers Love performing Bacharach and David's "My Little Red Book" on American Bandstand, is precisely the kind of unorthodox treatment of Burt songs I like.


It's unlikely that Burt and Hal liked this rocked-out 1966 variation on this tune, but who cares - it ties in with the stretch of Arthur Lee and Love related material I posted earlier this month.

I'm still waiting for Elvis Costello's variation on "My Little Red Book".

The Unknown Silent Comic

The funniest film shown at the 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival featured a comic only known to the most devoted of classic movie buffs: Max Davidson.



You won't hear much about Max (1875-1950), whose career dated back to D.W. Griffith's heydey at Biograph, these days. The Berlin-born comedian's stock-in-trade was a Yiddish stereotype, rarely seen today, but absolutely rampant in the silent era. Max played a 60+ immigrant straight off the boat (having that in common with tens of thousands of new arrivals to post-WW1 New York City), deeply frustrated by this strange new land. Inhabiting his blustery characters with subtlety and nuance, Davidson played numerous supporting roles with Mabel Normand and other headliners at the Hal Roach Studio.



In Max' very funny starring series of two-reelers for Roach, produced in 1927-1929, he's even more vexed, as patriarch "Papa Ginsberg" by his unendingly goofy family.



The San Francisco Silent Film Fest showed a 35mm restored print from UCLA Film And Television Archive of THE BOY FRIEND (1929) as part of last Saturday's Hal Roach Studio tribute. Since it is both timelessly wacky and the least "ethnic" Davidson comedy I've seen (I didn't catch a single joke about his heritage in the entire film, and that's fairly rare for 1920's-era humor), this will be the one that gets revived and perhaps chosen for DVD release. The premise - not wanting their young daughter to get married anytime soon, the Davidsons act loony when the boyfriend visits - is simple, and brilliantly realized by Max and co-star Fay Holderness.




Why are we even talking about Max Davidson? First, unlike a lot of other comedians who depended on stereotype schtick, he was a most talented actor, very funny, fully capable of transcending the limitations of these roles. Secondly, in a brief stretch between history-making stints creating the Charley Chase and Laurel & Hardy two-reelers, Leo McCarey contributed inspired direction and writing to the Davidson series. THE BOYFRIEND and the devastatingly funny PASS THE GRAVY (1928) stand out as unrelentingly hilarious examples of the Roach Studio style.

The Beery Brothers

No, this is not a reference to my homebrewing past, but yet another entry about last weekend's 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Fest. And the brothers are not happy guys well-fortified with Monkshof Kloster-Bock, but those ubiquitous character actors from the silent and early sound era, Wallace and Noah Beery, who held prominent roles in two films shown in the festival.

In "Wild Bill" Wellman's Beggars Of Life (1928), Wallace Beery absolutely nailed a plum role as a "good bad guy", while his half-brother Noah exemplified slimy, despicable villainy as "The Brute" in the festival's closing opus (by that master of mayhem, Cecil B. DeMille). As "Oklahoma Red", larger-than-life godfather of the rail-ridin' hobos, Wallace stole the picture and got top billing in the main titles. Noah Beery played one sicko juvenile detention prison guard - sadistic and a craven coward to boot - and really gave audiences a "man you love to hate" in The Godless Girl.

Although both films were conceived as "part-talkies" (only silent prints exist today), The Godless Girl exemplifies the acting approach and visual style of a silent movie, while Beggars Of Life definitely points forward towards the sound era. If you could have heard Wallace Beery, the voice that accompanied those nuanced movements and magnificent facial expressions, backed by the stirring soundtrack by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, it would have been the best of both worlds.

The story after these two late-1920's features, of course, holds more tragedy and drama than the films themselves. Only the directors and the two Beeries would continue, unabated, in "talkies".

• The film's comely yet androgynous co-star, that most original maverick actress known as Louise Brooks, would soon leave for Europe and achieve silent screen immortality in Pandora's Box and Diary Of A Lost Girl, two notably dark, corrosive Weimar Republic-era time capsules by director G.W. Pabst.



• The prolific Cecil B. DeMille would recover from the commercial disappointment of The Godless Girl and hit the talkies with a bang, producing two even more hysterical, ridiculous and provocative films, Dynamite and Madame Satan, in 1929-1930.



• Reputedly having a New England accent that limited her options in talkies, Marie Prevost drew the "bad luck" card, big time, which ultimately cost the successful silent movie star her life. The fates being cruel, audiences would be deprived of her warm and likeable screen presence in character roles.



• After striking paydirt at Warners directing "little tough guy" Jimmy Cagney in Public Enemy (1931), Wild Bill Wellman would return to the thematic territory of Beggars Of Life with the Depression era drama, Wild Boys Of The Road (1933)

The Solo Camille

Alla Nazimova, with Rudolf Valentino in Camille (1921).

"It's all about suspension of disbelief." Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994)

Silent screen diva Alla Nazimova basked in the calcium light once again last Saturday evening at the 12th Annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival, with her 1921 version of Camille, co-starring Rudolf Valentino.

After her training at Stanislavsky's Moscow Art Theater, the Russian-born actress was a legendary star of the American stage and premier interpreter of Ibsen's work, before signing a contract with Metro in 1917. Nazimova soon became the highest paid movie actress of the time and, following the lead of actress-producer-mogul Mary Pickford, gained complete creative control over her productions.

Known for her lavish, flamboyantly gay (in both senses of the word) lifestyle, Nazimova threw spectacular parties for movie stars, jetsetters, movers and shakers - and fawning female groupies - at her opulent estate, known as the Garden Of Alla. She was a rock 'n' roll star.

As for the film itself, 98% Nazimova and 2% Dumas, the combination of the then ultra-modernist settings and costumes (by the equally legendary Natasha Rambova) with heavy-duty melodramatics becomes quite a bit of fun, as long as you don't waste energy on resistance. Even though the only honestly erotically charged moment in the picture happens when Camille meets a girlfriend - it really looks as if Nazimova and Patsy Ruth Miller are going to just ditch Rudy and the boys, pull the shades and just go for it - once you just relax and go with the flow, it is possible to have quite an excellent time.

Amidst the splendid, striking and stylized art-deco trappings lies an intriguing contrast between the two silent screen icons. Valentino, a few years away from chewing up serious scenery in "The Sheik", is by comparison low-key and naturalistic, and at times even leads the scenes. While his performance works quite well, Valentino's screen presence was not lost on Nazimova, who makes this largely a solo Camille and shares as few scenes as possible with the up-and-coming star.

While aware every moment that I was being manipulated by the most shamelessly over-the-top theatrics, I still found myself moved at times, unexpectedly misty instead of thinking "OH - JUST GET IT OVER AND DIE ALREADY!" during the grand finale. Alla Nazimova won. She got to me. Her artistry had me referencing my own (never entirely healed) broken heart: the painful losses and the ones who got away.

And, as a postscript, the screening's emcee, Robert Osborne, splendid and informative host from Turner Classic Movies, mentioned that Nazimova made brilliant - and entirely different - appearances in sound movies, in brief but memorable character roles. In such classic 1940's flicks as Blood And Sand and Since You Went Away, Alla Nazimova emphatically demonstrated that even after the passing of her stardom and fame, she still had her chops.

Silents Please

I just spent most of the weekend at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, an amazing event that holds forth every July at the grand art-deco movie palace The Castro Theatre.

The joint was packed for every show, and you could literally spot internationally reknowned film historians, authors and archivists everywhere.

Still recovering from the last opus of this year's festival, one doozy of a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle, The Godless Girl (1929) starring Marie Prevost (yes, Nick Lowe fans, that Marie Prevost), I will need a day or two to collect my thoughts on this mind-blowing trek through the way-back machine.

The 13th Floor Elevators

After these recent posts about Arthur Lee And Love (in my estimation, the indispensible aesthetic link between the folk, psychedelic and punk eras in rock music), I tried to think of something - anything - comparable.

Well, here's something at least semi-comparable: a rare clip featuring my other favorite short, fast and loud single from 1966, You're Gonna Miss Me by Austin's finest rock 'n' roll band, The 13th Floor Elevators.

There, screaming it out in all his glory, is Roky Erickson, the father of Texas psychedelic grindhouse garage-punk rave ups. Roky will be rocking Dallas' El Grenada Theatre, backed by his current band, The Explosives, this very Saturday, July 14.

Still More Love With Arthur Lee

Enjoy this 2002 Arthur Lee/Baby Lemonade performance of Bummer In The Summer, a classic tune from Forever Changes. Mike Randle contributes the tasty yet economical guitar solo.

The original 1967 recording features Arthur's rap, which pre-dates The Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron, The Sugar Hill Gang, etc. . . (although its cadence reminds me of Bob Dylan's "talkin' blues" spoken word numbers). Heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali, however, may well have beat Arthur - and everyone else, with the possible exception of some 1960's Jamaican reggae vocalists - to the punch on that "first rapper" claim.

Arthur Lee & Love


Arthur Lee & Love: Doggone - Live 1970

Arthur Lee & Love: Love is more than words - Live 1970

More Love With Arthur Lee

While on the topic of Arthur Lee and Love, here's a clip from the Danish television show En gruppe ved navn Love (a group by the name Love), originally broadcast on July 17, 1970.


In this March 12, 1970 performance at Tivoli Koncertsal in Copenhagen, "Doggone", an almost sea chanty-like folk ditty (albeit with lyrics, typically, more reminiscent of Captain Beefheart) from the Out Here album, segues into "August", a very cool slice of improvisational "prog rock". While the considerable talents of singer-songwriter Bryan McLean (who wrote "Alone Again Or") and Johnny Eccols' idiosyncratic lead guitar from the original Love band are certainly missed, this really rocks.

Assembled after the meltdown of the original lineup, this version of Love delves into the hard rock end of psychedelia, at times exploring Hendrix/Cream/Zeppelin/Allman Bros. territory. It is completely different from the band that recorded Da Capo and Forever Changes.

I consider this Arthur Lee And Love lineup underrated, much as the contemporaneous version of The Byrds (featuring the remarkably gifted Kentucky Colonels guitarist Clarence White) was, and for the same reasons: neither group played in the folk-rock style associated with their celebrated 1965-1967 albums.

'Twas a shame that Arthur's friend Jimi Hendrix did not tour incognito with this version of Love. Then again, perhaps it's just as well; the spectacle of Lee, Jimi and Jay Donnellan all playing wild guitar in the same band would have caused way too many Fender Stratocaster fetishists to spontaneously combust.

7 And 7 Is

What can you post on 7-7-07? A tribute to the greatest rock 'n' roll single ever, "7 And 7 Is", recorded in 1966 by the late, great Arthur Lee and Love.



Here's a nice montage of Arthur Lee & Love memorabilia, backed by the original 1966 track.


For a short time in the mid-1960's, the legendary psychedelic-flower-punk-folk band were the kings of the Sunset Strip, following The Byrds and preceding The Doors. Love's 1967 album Forever Changes combines elements of everything from Broadway to L.A folk-rock to flamenco to Hendrix with Lee's cryptic yet poetic lyrics. It is still an amazing piece of work, and, like Brian Wilson's SMiLE, only reveals its multiple layers of artistry after many listenings.

Lee, like Brian Wilson and Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green, was a visionary who, after an extended stretch of hard times, re-emerged, revitalized and returned to performing more than three decades after his 1960's exploits. The following clip, from the January 15, 2003 Royal Albert Hall performance (adeptly accompanied by Baby Lemonade and The Stockholm Strings N' Horns), is available on the highly recommended Forever Changes Live DVD