Reginald Denny

Do you remember Max de Winter's friend and secretary Frank Crawley in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca? It was a small part but the dashing blue-eyed man who played it made the most of it. You'd never guess by seeing him that he had been a star 20 years before that film.

He was born in London in 1890. The son and grand-son of comedians, he appears on stage at the age of 6 in the play The Royal Family, opposite Gertrude Elliott, in the part of the young Prince Charles Ferdinand. At 16, while still taking acting courses, he decides to become a professional boxer. Championed by Lord Lonsdale, he wins a tournament in 1908.

He then spends a year in the USA to play in a musical, Quaker Girl, opposite Miss Ina Claire. On his return, he sings at the Opera of Manchester and leaves again for a tour in Australia and India.

In Rebecca with Joan Fontaine

In 1913, he gets married in Calcutta to Irene Haisman, an actress who plays with him in several plays and films, and then goes back to New York where he appears in Twin Beds, James Barrie's Rosalind with Marie Tempest, The Professor's Love Story with George Arliss, and The Great Catherine.

He spends Word War I in the Royal Flying Corps, afterwhich he is hired for the New York revue The Passing Show of 1919 at the Winter Garden. He also appears with John Barrymore in Richard III.

It is then that he starts appearing regularly in films: Bringing up Betty, Paying The Piper (directed by George Fitzmaurice), Disraeli (with George Arliss again!), Footlights (with Elsie Ferguson), Sherlock Homes (also with John Barrymore, a film recently restored and available on Blu-ray).

But it is in the role of Napoleon Gibbs Jr. in 39 East that he is noticed by the public and by author H.C. Witwer who offered him to star as boxer Kid Roberts in the Universal serial called The Leather Pushers, adapted from his story. Denny was a shoe-in for the role with his experience of boxing. The serial lasted 24 episodes from 1922 to 1924 and a remake was made in 1940 starring Richard Arlen (from Wings).



Reginald even plays the son of Kid Roberts, Elliott Beresford, in the now lost film On your Toes.

Aside from the serial, Reginald Denny is offered starring parts in features, most often related with sports: The Kentucky Derby (Cinemagazine calls him "impeccable" in it, although they find the film disappointing), Sporting Youth (he even has an accident during the shoot of this film and recovered), and occasionally other subjects like the adaptation of his favorite author Jack London's Abysmal Brute.

One of these films is called Fast and Furious, not unlike the 2001 Rob L. Cohen film The Fast and the Furious.

He also stars in many comedies, eight of which with Otis Harlan, Happy in Snow White, like Where Was I? where the disapproving father (played by Tyrone Power Sr.) of his bride-to-be hires a girl to pretend he is already married; or What Happened to Jones? where, pursued by the police for gambling, he ends up in rags in a Turkish bath on ladies night.

Reginald in a 1925 Xmas publicity picture with wife Irene Haisman and daughter Barbara

In Out All Night, he takes the place of a ship surgeon.

In Skinner's Dress Suit, another comedy, he steps in the shoes of former star Bryant Washburn who starred in a previous version of the film.

His influence is such then that he even takes the role of director on his film That's My Daddy, when the original director Fred C. Newmeyer and he have "creative differences".

Mary Pickford and Reginald Denny

He embraces talking pictures and helps famous stars speak some of their first words. Jeannette MacDonald in Oh, for a man!, Buster Keaton in Parlor Bedroom and Bath, Mary Pickford in Kiki!
He then keeps starring parts opposite Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Boris Karloff, Bette Davis, etc. But as he gets older, he gradually becomes a supporting character actor, his recurring part of Algy Longworth in the Bulldog Drummond films being an example.

By the 1940s, his most notable parts are in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror and in H.C. Potter's Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (starring Cary Grant).

Reginald's employee: Marilyn Monroe

He also develops a passion for model planes and radio controlled planes and launches the Radioplane company. One of his factory employee, nurse Ethel Dougherty, in April 1944 finds a job there for her daughter-in-law Norma Jeane, who gets noticed by a photographer a few months later and will soon become Marilyn Monroe.

He then focuses his career on television and ends it by a role in the acclaimed TV series Batman as King Boris and his very last role is in the Batman feature (available on Blu-ray) as Commodore Schmidlapp. Incidentally, that series is to be released this year on DVD.

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London After Midnight

Some films were so popular in their day that it seems amazing that they could be lost today.
London After Midnight is arguably the most sought after lost film ever.

Yet some people still alive have seen it because the film hasn't been lost for such a long time : at least one copy had been preserved in the MGM vaults until 1967 when a fire destroyed it. Amazingly enough, it appears to have been the only remaining element of the film throughout the world.

Its popularity has so endured that TCM commissioned a reconstruction of the film by Rick Schmidlin from studio stills and a shooting script. It is available on DVD and proves the film was compelling because I was hooked even though it was missing its main attraction : the main actor's actual performance.



Tod Browning directing Lugosi

Not only does it star the "man of a thousand faces" Lon Chaney who had previously starred in hits like The Phantom of the Opera, but it was directed by his then frequent partner director Tod Browning who directed masterpieces like Freaks or Dracula. And the film was the team's most lucrative output.

The link with Dracula is not the only one. First of all, it was Universal's plans to lure the winning team for the picture. They managed to get Browning but the death of Chaney forced them to hire the play's actor Bela Lugosi.

And Lugosi was used once again as replacement for Chaney when MGM decided on a sound remake called Mark Of The Vampire (also available on DVD).

In any case, the film gives an idea of how Chaney would have played Dracula : he shows two of his "thousand faces" in the film. The police inspector and the hideous vampire for which he wears his usual heavy makeup, transforming his appearance completely.

In the recent TV series Whitechapel, the film is at the center of episode 5 from season 3. In it, London After Midnight is credited with an urban myth that it drove viewers crazy. This was spurred by a British criminal case in 1928 when murderer Robert Williams claimed that he had killed Julia Mangan in Hyde Park after seeing the film.

However in the series, one of the character supposedly has the last remaining copy of the film. I wish that were true.

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Dracula

Universal is celebrating its 100th anniversary and one of the studio's trademark has recently seen a Blu-ray box set release.
Universal monsters movies have defined the codes of the genre, not to mention the features of Halloween masks for centuries to come.
And the first Universal talking picture stars the most famous of them all. In 1931, the first official screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula hit the screen. It had been preceded by Murnau's famous Nosferatu which, although a masterpiece, was not granted permission to use the story by Bram Stoker's widow. She subsequently tried to have the negatives and all copies destroyed.






Universal's movie was adapted from Hamilton Dean's successful stage play. The studio had wanted to pair the two "masters" of horror: star Lon Chaney, who had triumphed in The Phantom of the Opera, and MGM director Tod Browning. They managed to lure Tod Browning in the Universal family, but Lon Chaney died of lung cancer. After several casting considerations like Conrad Veidt, it was finally decided to go with the easy choice and use the star of the play, Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi.

The latter gave such a memorable performance that he was typecast in the horror genre for the rest of his career.

A rather unknown alternate version of the film is simply the silent version. Indeed, at the time, many theaters weren't equipped with sound and so the film was also edited silent, with the usual title cards for dialog.
In the early 1930s, sound being the new wonder that it was, the technique of dubbing was in its infancy and it was decided that the best way to export a film abroad was to re-shoot it whatever language that was needed. Such was the case with Dracula. When the English crew finished their day's work, a Spanish-speaking crew would come in those same sets and shoot their version of the film at night.

The viewing of this version starring Carlos Villarías is rather unsettling. It is a different movie, yet the scenes are almost sequenced identically. The sets are often photographed in very different ways, showing off more production values that Browning's version. But the Spanish cast gives an impression of camp which is not readily apparent in the English version where the actors seem to take things more seriously. In any case, the scenes drag in the Spanish version and the film lasts about 30 more minutes.

"Nunca bebo... vino"

That version was missing a whole reel for several decades, and the missing scenes (everything from Renfield fainting in Dracula's castle to the opera scene in London) were located in Cuba. There is a very noticeable drop in quality in the restored print throughout these sequences.

For the Blu-ray release, the film has been lovingly and intensively restored. I must say it was easier to appreciate that way, because not only did it erase a good deal of the ravages of time, but it actually corrected several problems that were probably there on first release.

For one thing, the ground noise (hiss) was among the worst I could remember. It was not eliminated but is significantly reduced on the Blu-ray. And the main title was plagued by a jump cut and a drop in the audio, which were both erased.

Through time, some elements of the film were changed. Censorship imposed Dracula's screams to be removed when Van Helsing drives the stake through his heart. They were restored along with Renfield's when he meets his fate.

In 1999, Philip Glass offered the film what Universal executives felt it had been missing since day one: a musical score. Except for a brief fragment of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake over the main titles and the opera scene, there is no music in Dracula, as filmmakers at the time felt that the audience wouldn't understand where the music was coming from if you didn't see the orchestra on the screen.
The new score gives a more modern feel to the film, even though I felt it was a bit obtrusive at times. It is interesting to notice that the newly recorded alternate language versions offered on the Blu-ray (such as the French track) contain that score and a new foley track, meaning there is no age related hiss to be heard.

In spite of its restoration, there is a scene still missing from the film. In the spirit of the next monster movie's prologue Frankenstein, Dracula originally ended with a short scene with professor Van Helsing addressing the audience in front of a blank screen and telling them, in essence "Just a moment ladies and gentlemen! Just a word before you go. We hope the memories of Dracula won't give you bad dreams. So just a word of reassurance. When you get home tonight, and the lights are turned out, and you're afraid to look behind the curtains, and you dread to see a face appear at the window, well... Just pull yourself together and remember: after all... There ARE such things!"
This scene, although apparently still extant, is not available in a decent quality and only a small portion of it can be seen in the documentary available in the bonus section.

In any case, and despite obvious budget limitations, Dracula remains a milestone in film history and I strongly recommend this new release.
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Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo has recently been voted best film ever by Sight and Sound. In my book, it’s been competing for the title with Disney's Snow White for years (granted, in a very different style).

For legal reasons, that film has been lost for decades after its initial release during which its moderate success disappointed the director. After the long hiatus, Universal (new owner of the rights after Paramount and Hitchcock himself) re-released the film in 1983, and in the nineties, Robert Harris and James Katz, who worked on the restoration of My Fair Lady among others, decided to undertake the restoration of the 1958 classic.

Unused take with blood on Jean Corbett

Through their efforts, they managed to restore lost elements of the film like a brief scene, when Judy first meets Scottie, she accepts his offer to a date that same evening. Their brief exchange during which she says "you’d better give me time to change and get fixed up” was abridged. It may have been cut for timing as censorship would have cut the previous line instead “I’ve been picked up before”.

They also unearthed the so-called “European censorship ending” (offered as a bonus feature on the Blu-ray) that Hitchcock probably never seriously intended to use in any versions, although Herbert Coleman wrote (in his book The Man who knew Hitchcock) that the director had his doubts about revealing the culprit before the ending right up until it was too late to return the copies already shipped to exhibitors. Otherwise, the flashback sequence would have been trimmed before release. As a matter of fact, this sequence proved the most problematic during the restoration as the elements for the introducing fade-in were lost.

And here we come to the negative elements of the restoration. All fade-ins and fade-outs are problematic in the film. Since the original elements were apparently lost, it was unfortunately chosen to erase them and start the fade-ins later and the fade-outs earlier. Meaning that some footage is lost. In short, instead of restoring the footage, they just erased it. Here's an example : 

They did, however, improve the overall visual qualities of the film, since the Vistavision system used to shoot the feature enable the film to be restored unto 70 mm film, making fine detail apparent such as Kim Novak’s bruises on her leg when she is carried out of the water by James Stewart.
Anyone who has seen the film knows how important Bernard Herrmann’s score is to the atmosphere and overall quality of it. So going back to the original session tracks to create a new 5.1 mix was an excellent idea. Due to a 1957 strike of musicians in the USA and the UK, the score had to be recorded in 2 different places (London and Vienna). So unlike his usual habit, Herrmann had to let his work be conducted by Muir Mathieson. And the Vienna cues were recorded in mono.

It is very difficult for any technicians working on the restoration of a work of art to decide when they are crossing the line between restoration and violation. In my idea, if Robert and Katz did a great job with the picture (albeit what I already mentioned), and although their original idea was excellent, I do not hold their treatment of the sound in very high esteem. For one thing, the all important music cues are at times slightly off sync. If it were obvious only to a fan like myself, it wouldn't be so bad, but in order to keep some of the dialogue (like James Stewart’s cry when going up the stairs) they had to keep snippets of the original mix (correctly synchronized), creating a brief albeit revelatory cacophony.

And although I love the score (available on CD), some moments were very disturbing. One of these was the church sequence where the cue is supposed to be some kind of diegetic music heard in the background to convey a religious atmosphere. In the new mix, the music has been given a boost, making its presence much more obvious and even intrusive. And the cue “The Park”, even though beautiful, was obviously deteriorated quite beyond what was necessary for a smooth listening pleasure. The final mix, although, not in stereo should have been used for a section of it, instead of a damaged original music session.The foley track creates another problem. 

Unlike the dialog, anything that could be replaced by a newly created sound was. The same process was applied with Psycho, though the help of a new technology that dissects the “DNA” of a mono sound track and enabled the restoration team to work more with original elements. Though the sound of a door knob can sound quite different to someone who knows the film by heart, the difference is not as jarring as the Vertigo mix. In the documentary about the restoration, they explain that they actually recorded the sound of the motors of the actual same cars seen in the film. While that sounds impressive, I was somewhat disturbed by how different the sound was during this many awkward moments. I feel that it would have been best to reproduce the sound of the film as it was, not as it should have sounded. Who are we to tell that Hitchcock wanted the sound of that particular vehicle? It could very well have been looped in post production for something completely different that somehow pleased the director.

Some elements were downright wrong : I read in the scriptgirl’s report that the bells of Mission Dolores were recorded especially on the day of location to be used for the tower scene (there is no bell tower at San Juan Bautista). The very famous final shot is now spoiled by an out-of-tune chime. Also, the thump heard when Madeleine hits the roof, although realistic, is quite different from the original. The film is now available on Blu-ray (part of box set) and a brand new 5.1 mix has been created that adresses these issues and others. The original soundtrack has wisely been offered as an option. I recommended it!
I also recommend Dan Auiler's fascinating book.

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Rope

Alfred Hitchcock's Rope will be released on Blu-ray in September, along with many other classics owned by Universal.
Of course, any cuts on this film had to be made before shooting in the script itself. And the topic made it the ideal target of censors: the movie was about "it". "It", being a very respectable way of meaning homosexuality. So the adaptation removed the very British (but also very ambiguous) use of the word "dear" spoken between men, and various other things. 
I'm eager to see the results of the re-mastering. I remember a time when we were lucky if a film had not been tampered with when released on home video.

I found an old British VHS tape of Rope. You'd think since the film is shot in long continuous takes, there was no way they could change anything.
Yet, not only is the opening Warner Brothers logo is also replaced by Universal's, but David Buttolph's arrangements of Francis Poulenc's "Mouvement perpétuel" are drowned into a different arrangement! You can still hear the original music under the overdubbing. Presumably, this was done to achieve a stereo effect during the very few moments where there was music.
 Here is the opening title in this version:

 And here is the end title:

For comparison, here is the film on youtube:

And the awesome especially filmed trailer which takes place before the film:

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Torn Curtain

Torn Curtain was Alfred Hitchcock's attempt at a "serious Bond film": i.e. Bond, without the parody element. His ideas were to have a gray color scheme, get rid of the humor, the girls, and especially show how difficult it is to actually kill a person.
With this in mind, yes, the film is as dark and unappealing as you may think. At the time, though, it seemed like the thing to do since the Bond series had basically copied many elements that Hitchcock himself had used in previous films, the most obvious example being North by Northwest. The master, after a box office failure with Marnie, and with the pressure of it being his 50th film, wanted desperately to show that he could send a new trend, change styles and keep up with the times, a desire which led him to several other unfortunate decisions.

Besides that, several major problems plagued the film: Universal wanted famous stars to recapture some of the glamor of Hitchcock's fifties movies. The director wasn't necessarily against the idea but the two leads chosen were bad casting. Julie Andrews didn't inspire Hitchcock and missed the so needed above-mentioned glamor. Although they both were respectful with one another, he considered her unattractive. A memo about a line to his scriptwriters politely reveals his feelings about her looks: "Not that I wish to cast any aspersions on Miss Andrews' physiognomy, but do you think 'beautiful' is perhaps too much, and cannot we say 'lovely' instead?"

Paul Newman was fine in the looks department, but he was a method actor, and Mr. Hitchcock was not the kind of director who would trouble himself with character motivation for a 5 second shot where one character hands a note to another. Hence they did not get along.
As if that was not enough, the actor's salary skyrocketed, which Hitchcock always resented, and chances of going on location in Europe were lost.

Some character actors were enjoyable, such as Lila Kedrova, Tamara Toumanova, and of course Wolfgang Kieling as Gromek, none of which could quite save the picture, which was a box office disaster.

So what's left? The idea of the kill which bloomed into an iconic murder scene. And a movie-that-could-have-been. How so? Well for one thing, an interesting idea which was shot, edited and scored was dropped because it would have made the lead characters even more unsympathetic.

Scenes 123 to 135 were to follow the murder scene: Newman and Andrews were invited to see a factory were they met Gromek's older brother (played by the same actor). This was in keeping with the realistic approach of the horror of killing a human being: in this scene, we learn that Gromek was a kind family man with three kids waiting for him at home. The brother then cuts a piece of sausage with a knife similar to the one used for the murder of his brother and asks Newman's character to give it to Gromek. Eventually, this scene was cut. You can find the script for the complete sequence on Steven DeRosa's website.

The most famous element of the film that did not make the final cut, obviously, is the Bernard Herrmann score.
Hitchcock usually liked to work with a team of people who came back film after film. The desire to change styles, his relatively recent move from Paramount to Universal, and the deaths of some of his co-workers put and end to that.


Bernard Herrmann had scored his most famous films and it was implicit that he would score the new film. Alfred Hitchcock sent him a telegram requesting a "pop score". In itself, the request basically meant that he wanted another composer: no way anyone in their right mind would think that Herrmann would compose a pop tune, although some of the films he worked on had a pop song connected to them, some composed from his themes (Marnie).

Eventually, Herrmann's score was as dark as expected (and as the film itself) and the two men argued over it. The composer walked out and Hitchcock commissioned John Addison a new score. You probably know the theme he later composed for Murder She Wrote. The pop theme "Green years" composed for the film was also cut from it and appears only on the soundtrack album.
Some cues of the original score were recorded by Herrmann and used in the special features section of the DVD. Others weren't recorded (or weren't used in it). But the Herrmann music was also recorded later (never in its entirety) by Elmer Bernstein and Joel McNeely.

Although the famous murder scene finally went unscored in the final cut, initially Hitchcock requested music in this scene and both composers wrote a cue for it.
Here is the scene with Herrmann's music:

Here is John Addison's take at the scene:

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