There are only two more weeks left for the “Movies that Haven’t Aged Well” Blogathon. So if you have a movie that you have revisited over the years, only to find that the film wasn’t as wonderful as you had initially remembered, share your experience here! It’s happened to all of us…maybe some wet-behind-the-ears cinephile can benefit from your life experience!
If you need some ideas, click here to visit our original blogathon announcement and see links to the entries that have already been submitted. We have some really great entries so far, so join the club and tell us about a movie that’s done you wrong over the years!
So you’re finished with another hot summer day. You’re cool and refreshed, you have your snacks at hand, and you’ve turned on Turner Classic Movies to watch that favorite film of yours that you haven’t had the chance to see in decades. And then, as the minutes roll on…
Your nostalgia melts like a Sno-Cone in the summer sun, as the memories of that movie you treasured for ages suddenly devolve into, “What did I ever see in this thing?”
It’s happened to all of us. Some movies only get better with age, while others remain frozen in time, their once-vibrant charms faded like a reel of nitrate film left in an outhouse in the 1930’s.
Only by writing about this wrenching event can you regain power over your movie-watching experience. Hence…THE “MOVIES THAT HAVEN’T AGED WELL” BLOGATHON!!
We don’t want you to postpone this personal growth experience — there’s no time like the present! Right this wrong by writing about the movie that’s done you wrong. Then follow these steps:
* Post the writing at your blog.
* Go to the “Comments” section below, and post the name and URL of both your blog and the movie you’ve written about.
* Grab the banner shown at the top and bottom of this blog entry, and link it back to this URL. (Be sure to link it back to the URL that references this blogathon, not just our blog’s general URL!)
* As soon as we see your listing in the “Comments” section, we’ll link back to your blog for all the world to read your movie memoir!
Again, this blogathon is running right now, through Aug. 31, 2015. You don’t have to wait for some far-off date in the future — share your cathartic movie experience with our blog’s readers ASAP. If global warming is going to keep us trapped in our homes for the entire summer, let us at least make it count for our fellow film buffs!
It’s only one week away from our Beatles Film Blogathon, and I’m…well, if not embarrassed, than certainly humbled to say that we have only three blogger entrants thus far.
Only THREE? One less member than The Beatles themselves??
I hope that this blogathon — besides honoring both Ringo Starr’s 75th birthday and his recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — will reflect the spirit of fun that The Beatles at their best provided us.
Although entries for the movies A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, and Let It Be are spoken for, there are still plenty of Beatles-related movies and music videos to blog about. Click on the blogathon’s banner (above) for more information about the ‘thon, and if you’re interested in blogging for it, please leave your blog’s name and URL, and the movie or video you want to blog about, in the “Comments” section below. Show your love of The Beatles by sharing it in our blogathon!
The following is my contribution to the Classic Movie History Project Blogathon, a blog project that is so epic, it took three blogs to host it! (Click on the appropriate blog name [to follow] to read each section of the blogathon.)
Movies Silently is covering the silent-film era; Once Upon a Screen is covering cinema’s “Golden Age” of 1930 to 1952 (to which I am making my blog contribution); and Silver Screenings is covering the “Modern Era” of 1953 to 1975. Also, please give a round of applause to Flicker Alley, the blogathon’s sponsor!
And now, our feature presentation:
Prologue.
Act I: At War with the Producers.
At the beginning of Laurel & Hardy’s movie Block-Heads (1938), Stan and Ollie are part of an army company in World War I that is preparing to go “over the top.” Private Stan has been ordered to stay behind and guard the trench until further notice. Stan quietly tells Ollie, “Gee, I wish I was going with ya. Take care of yourself, won’t ya?”
Ollie kindly replies, “Don’t worry about me, Stan. I’ll be back. We’ll all be back.”
This is simply the beginning of an hour-long, typically silly romp with Stan and Ollie. But the real Laurel & Hardy couldn’t have guessed how prescient those words would be.
Since the beginning of Laurel & Hardy’s success as a comedy team in 1927, their movies’ producer, Hal Roach (above, center), had kept Stan and “Babe” (as Hardy was affectionately known off-screen) under separate, overlapping annual contracts. In other words, when Stan’s contract was due to expire, Babe’s contract would still have another year to run, and vice versa. Roach later admitted that this was his way of keeping power over the comedy duo.
Upon the completion of Block-Heads, Stan left the Roach Studios amidst a flurry of lawsuits going back and forth between Roach and Laurel for various reasons. Due to the animosity between the two men, it was widely believed that Block-Heads might be the last-ever Laurel & Hardy movie. Meanwhile, Babe remained under contract with Roach. Publicly, Roach did his best to appear nonchalant about the separation.
In the 1920’s, Harry Langdon was a shining silent-film comedian, at one point rivalling Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd in terms of popularity and box-office. By the late ‘20s, Langdon’s star had fallen, and in the ‘30s, he was appearing in minor short subjects for Hal Roach and working as a gag writer for him. (He contributed to Block-Heads.)
Roach bought the rights to a short story that he turned into a feature film titled Zenobia. The movie featured Babe in a major role as a country doctor, and Langdon as more or less Babe’s sidekick.
The movie is set in the Old South and plays like a low-rent Gone with the Wind, but its supposed appeal was in its “teaming” of Langdon and Hardy. However, the duo shared very few scenes together, and Babe alone was responsible for the few scenes in the movie that worked.
After Zenobia bombed with the critics and the public, Roach realized where the box-office appeal lay. On April 8, 1939, attorneys representing Roach and Laurel worked together to drop all legal action between the two men, and on that same date, Stan and Babe signed separate but concurrent one-year contracts with Roach.
At the same time, a former musical producer named Boris Morros decided he was to become a movie producer and wanted to make his debut with Laurel & Hardy. Roach agreed to loan out the comedy duo for Morros’ production The Flying Deuces.
Ironically, Deuces was directed by Edward Sutherland, who had produced Zenobia under Roach’s auspice. Roach had nothing good to say about Sutherland’s work, and in turn, Sutherland later summed up his work on The Flying Deuces by stating that he’d “rather work with a tarantula” than with Stan Laurel again.
The most likely reason for Sutherland’s surly attitude was that, until Laurel & Hardy were forced to make movies via the Studio System in the 1940’s, Stan Laurel was always the uncredited director of Laurel & Hardy comedies, no matter who sat in the director’s chair. Even though it was made outside of the Roach Studios, The Flying Deuces was no exception.
The movie began life as a script from Alfred Schiller, a writer hired by Borros. Schiller appeared to understand little about the delicate characterizations of Stan and Ollie. He wrote them as being wiseguy rivals for the same girl, and with Ollie saying nasty things such as, “Go on, beat it, Frog!” to a French gentleman.
Stan was not happy with this script but, as he and Babe were in the midst of making the Roach feature film A Chump at Oxford while the Deuces script was being prepared, the most he could do was editorialize in writing. When Stan would come to something in the script that he didn’t like or was out-of-character, he’d cross it out and write in the margins, “OUT. OUT. OUT.” Later, after Stan watched an early cut of the film, he submitted five pages of “Cutting Notes” to the movie’s editor. Thus, The Flying Deuces was the only non-Roach-produced L&H film in which Stan was allowed as much creative control as he’d had at the Roach Studios.
Eventually, the movie became so much like Old Home Week that it was practically an ersatz Roach production. Stan insisted to producer Morros on having Roach veterans Charley Rogers and Harry Langdon on the movie’s writing staff. Art Lloyd, whose photography at Roach’s aided in making Stan look child-like — “Wash me out, Artie!” Stan would insist, “No shadows!” — photographed Deuces as well. And Roach repertory players Sam Lufkin, Arthur Housman, Rychard Cramer, and (most memorably) James Finlayson were commandeered for the movie.
Act II: Love Is In the Air.
(This paragraph = SPOILER ALERT 1) The movie’s main plotline has Stan and Ollie on a cook’s tour of Paris, where Ollie falls in love with a beautiful local girl named Georgette (Jean Parker). Georgette strings Ollie along, never telling him that she is already married. When Ollie proposes to Georgette, she politely but firmly declines. At first, Ollie is so heartbroken that he tries to commit suicide (and drag Stan along with him!). But at the last moment, a local officer (Reginald Gardner) convinces Ollie to join the Foreign Legion to help him forget his past love. Stan, of course, tags along.
In real life, the movie resulted in a much happier ending for the twice-divorced Babe. When shooting on The Flying Deuces began on July 22, 1939, Babe and the others were introduced to the movie’s script girl, Virginia Lucille Jones. Stan eventually liked Lucille’s work so much that he brought her back to work on A Chump at Oxford and the follow-up L&H feature Saps at Sea.
Babe had thought his relationship with Lucille was strictly professional. But one day during work on Saps at Sea, Lucille tripped and fell on a rolled-up carpet, hit her head against one of the cameras, and landed in the hospital. Suddenly, Babe realized he had feelings for Lucille. The duo’s courtship began by Babe sending Lucille a box of roses and a note wishing her a speedy recovery.
Things blossomed from there, and eventually Babe proposed to Lucille before they’d even been out on a date. Lucille was not completely adverse to marrying Babe but was still unsure until she talked to her mother, who told her what a nice gentleman she thought Babe was. Lucille accepted Babe’s proposal; they went out on their first date on New Year’s Eve, 1939, and they married on March 7, 1940, the marriage lasting until Babe’s death in 1957.
Act III: The Producer Who Came in from the Cold.
The Flying Deuces’ biggest behind-the-camera surprise: Laurel & Hardy, and the rest of the movie’s cast and crew, had no idea that they were working with a spy. Producer Boris Morros, having emigrated with his Russian family to America in 1922, became a Soviet spy in 1934, at one point using a sheet-music company he owned as a cover for Soviet espionage. In 1947, Morros became a counterspy for the FBI. In 1960, Morros co-wrote the screenplay for Man on a String, a movie loosely based on Morros’ spy exploits. Ernest Borgnine played the Morros role.
Anyone who has seen Laurel & Hardy’s 1931 featurette Beau Hunks won’t be much surprised by The Flying Deuces, which is an expanded version of the same storyline. The same actor, Charles Middleton (shown above, and best known to ‘30s movie buffs as Ming the Merciless in Universal’s Flash Gordon serials), even plays the French Legion commandant in both movies. (Middleton also played a villain in Laurel & Hardy’s feature film Pack Up Your Troubles [1932] and their short subject The Fixer Uppers [1935].)
The caricature of Laurel & Hardy in the movie’s first scene was drawn by Harry Langdon.
The movie features two of the duo’s all-too-rare but delightful musical outings. In the first, Ollie sings “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” and Stan does an eccentric soft-shoe dance to the music.
The second number is far more fantasy-like. (SPOILER ALERT 2) At one point, Stan and Ollie are to be shot at sunrise by a Foreign Legion firing squad. As they await their fate in a prison cell, a bored Stan plucks at his bed’s springs and discovers that they sound musical. With that, he pulls up the bedsprings and, harp-like, proceeds to play “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” on the springs a la Harpo Marx. (The following photo and paragraph = SPOILER ALERT 3)
Lastly, in real life, Stan Laurel believed in reincarnation, but nothing was above satirization for Stan, even his own beliefs. The climax of The Flying Deuces features The Boys trying to pilot an out-of-control airplane; eventually, the plane crashes. Stan survives, but we see Ollie ascending to heaven. In the movie’s epilogue, Stan, now a lonely vagabond, happens upon and happily reunites with Ollie, who has come back to life as a horse (complete with his toothbrush mustache).
Closing Credits.
A major source for this article was Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies (1987, Moonstone Press), a delightful biography by Randy Skretvedt. Whether you are a hardcore Laurel & Hardy buff or you are just starting out on your “journey” with Stan and Ollie, this book will provide an endless source of inspiration and delight.
We hope that this article has provided you with an adequate education of Laurel & Hardy’s contribution to 1939 American cinema!
It’s been a hot little weekend here at Movie Movie Blog Blog. But all good things must come to an end, so gather ’round for…
Not counting yours truly, we had one dozen delicious entries on the topic of movies that suggested sexuality rather than overtly depicting it. Our last two bloggers gave it everything they had and made it to the finish line with these entries today:
Reel Distracted held up The Thomas Crown Affair as a shining example of the games lovers play (especially chess) when they’re afraid to let down their guard with each other,
and thestopbutton.com discussed Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan doing their best to satisfy both themselves and the Production Code in Tarzan and His Mate.
If you missed these or any of the other participating blogs, click here to go to our original blogathon announcement, which provides links to all of the blog entries.
My thanks to all of the wonderful and gifted bloggers who took the time to write and post their thoughtful entries. Further thanks goes to all of the readers who visited both this blog and the participating blogs to get a wide range of viewpoints about the depiction of sex in cinema.
Lastly, if you are a fan of The Beatles and/or their movies and music videos, I encourage you to participate in this blog’s upcoming Beatles Film Blogathon, being held July 5-7, 2005 in honor of Ringo Starr’s 75th (!) birthday and his recent induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Click on the banner below to read more about the blogathon and how to participate in it.
Thanks once more to everyone who joined in this blogathon, and try to stay cool this summer!
Let us prove what’s even more wonderful the second time around with our
The entries just keep getting better and better. Obviously, our bloggers have got what it takes, and they know how to use it!
Criterion Blues looks at Summers with Monika, an early Ingmar Bergman entry in which the acclaimed director details the arc of a budding relationship between two maturing youngsters.
Seville, Spain-born-and-raised Moon in Geminiexamines Blood and Sand and gives it an “A+” for authenticity — although happily, she never fell head over heels for Tyrone Power, only to be tossed aside for Rita Hayworth.
And finally,The Fluff Is Raging shows how the film-noir classic Double Indemnity warns us that, when it comes to two lust-soaked lovers, even a meticulously planned murder is never fully insured.
Curious about the rest of our blogathon entries? Links to both our original ‘thon announcement and our Day 1 recap are shown below — follow the links to read every blog that has been submitted so far. As for the rest of our entrants, our blogathon ends at the end of the day today. So PLEASE post your entries as soon as possible, and post their URLs in the “Comments” section below. We need them SO BADLY!!
It’s time to lie back, smoke ’em if you got ’em, and review our technique in the afterglow of the
As any pollster will tell you, the numbers don’t lie. Out of a total of 13 blog entrants, we had a whopping 62% participation in the first day. This is obviously a hot subject for a hot season!
BNoirDetour was kind enough to explain why Claire Trevor and Laurence Tierney were Born to Kill.
A Shroud of Thoughts demonstrated how an old-fashioned party line (What’s that??) allowed Doris Day and Rock Hudson to engage in a little Pillow Talk.
CineMavenshows how a couple of women could turn Maurice Chevalier into The Smiling Lieutenant in Ernst Lubitsch’s film of the same name.
Outspoken and Freckled convincingly makes the case that Mae West’s She Done Him Wrong singlehandedly ushered in Hollywood’s censorious Production Code.
Ernst Lubitsch again rears his stylish head, as Shadows and Satin lets us in on Gary Cooper and a couple of friends having a menage-a-twow in Design for Living.
portraitsbyjenni brings us another round of Gary Cooper, this time as a loquacious professor who gets introduced to modern slang (and other worldly elements) by nightclub singer Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire.
Defiant Success charts the effects that The Long, Hot Summer can have on a number of couples, including Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
And last but certainly least, your faithful correspondent chronicles the outcome of Lana Turner and John Garfield tempting the hands of Fate (and each other) in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
And the passion isn’t over yet — we still have a whole weekend left to go! If you want to read the rest of our blogathon’s participants, click here to find out who is left to post their entries. We’ll post a Day 2 recap here on Sunday!
Blogging foreplay is over. It’s finally time for the SEX! (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON!
For the uninitiated (by which I intend a light double-entendre), this blogathon’s subject is movies that are devoted to artistically suggesting the subject of sex, through imaginative dialogue and imagery, rather than graphically depicting it. Any old movie can show you a beautiful naked body, but the “horse” dialogue in The Big Sleep? Let’s see Scarlett Johansson show thatoff in her cleavage!
Below are the participants in the blogathon, which runs from Fri., June 19 through Sun., June 21, 2015. The only set deadline is that the participants must have their entries posted by the end of the day on June 21.
If you are one of the participants, please scroll down to the “Comments” section and post the URL of your SEX!blog entry; once you have posted it, it will be linked to the listing of participants shown below.
If you are a visiting reader, the following list has links to both the blog entries and the blogs themselves. Even if a particular entrant’s SEX! blog isn’t posted as yet, I encourage you to visit each and all of these blogs, as they all have something unique and entertaining to say about a variety of movie-related topics. (And of course, definitely check out their entries for this blogathon!)
Have fun, everyone! Here is the list of SEX! BLOGATHON entries:
The following is my contribution to the “Love Hurt” Blogathon, Sister Celluloid’s sterling tribute to actor Sir John Hurt who, sadly, has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. This blogathon will run all through the summer of 2015. Bookmark the link on the above banner, and keep checking back to read numerous blog entries that continually prove why (as that ’80s song says) Hurt’s so good!
If some (few) would argue that John Hurt has not suffered a lot for his art, he has certainly suffered a lot in his art. Perhaps that is why Hurt took a couple of small but memorable roles in Mel Brooks comedies — to cleanse the palate, as it were.
When most people think of Mel Brooks, they think of broad, broad humor, but in Brooks’ History of the World Part I (1981), Hurt managed to contribute some big laughs by playing as small as possible. The joke was in Hurt’s offering a station of collective calm in the storm of Brooks’ burlesque shtick. And you can’t get any more calm and collected than Jesus Christ.
Just the set-up is enough to make you smile. Brooks is a waiter taking orders at the Last Supper. He yells out Judas’ name at an inopportune moment and inevitably curses, “Jesus!”, prompting Christ to do an Abbott-and-Costello-like routine with a waiter.
Hurt’s other moment of comedic glory is in Spaceballs (1987), Brooks’ painfully labored take-off on Star Wars. For my money, Hurt’s cameo provides the one genuine belly laugh of an otherwise pitiful low in Brooks’ movie career. In one fell swoop, Brooks manages to parody both Hurt’s role in Aliens (1979) and Brooks’ love for the screwball humor of Warner Bros. cartoons — more genuine satire/tribute than the movie manages in its remaining 95 minutes. And, as in History, Hurt proves to be delightfully in on the joke.
“Mel called and said, ‘Look, John, I’m doing this little movie and there’s a bit in there that has to do with Alien, so come on over.’ He made it sound like a bit of a picnic. He also did that to me on History of the World Part I. He always does that. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a couple grand, we’ll put you up in a nice hotel, you’ll have a good time, and then you can go back again.’ And when you get there, you suddenly realize, it’s a $3 million scene — God knows how much the animatronic singing and dancing alien cost — and they couldn’t possibly have done it if it hadn’t been for you. What I’m saying is, I think he got me rather cheap. [Laughs.]” – John Hurt, in a 2011 interview with A.V. Club
I’m as worked up as any (blogging) male could be, because it’s only four more days until my SEX! (now that I have your attention) BLOGATHON!
It’s still not to late to enter the ‘thon if you’d like. What I’m looking for is a blog entry about any movie that, through dialogue and/or imagery, suggests sex rather than graphically depicting it. The blogathon is taking place this Friday through Sunday, June 19-21, 2015. Click here for more information on how to enter the blogathon.
For the dozen of you who have already entered, I do not have e-mail addresses for all of you, so here is what I plan to do. This Friday, June 19, I will post a fresh blog entry about the blogathon, including the name of your blog and the movie you plan to blog about. Once you have posted your blog entry, please visit this blog and scroll down to the bottom of my June 19 entry until you reach the “Comments” section, where I’d like you to post the URL of your blog entry. Once I receive that, I will link my blog back to your blog entry.
As I’ve previously mentioned, there will be no scheduled dates for posting. As long as you post your entry by the end of the day on June 21, I will be satisfied.
(However, with that said, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could post your blog as soon as possible after 12:01 a.m. on June 19. I have a personal hang-up about bloggers who wait until the last possible minute to post their blogathon entries. Read more about my hang-up here.)
Jane says, “Get’cher blog here on time — or else!!”
I very much look forward to reading (and linking to) your blogs this weekend!
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