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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Lost And Rare Films

Today, I’d like to share an awesome video release, in keeping with the topic of my blog. I already covered lost television episodes in my article about the Avengers. Now, from Festival Films come the first volumes in a series of DVDs called “Lost and Rare”.

And volume 1 contains exactly that! Rare episodes, films, pilots. Some are seen here for the first time since they first aired, and others… have never been seen at all.

So here is your chance of seeing lost and rediscovered footage of Hollywood stars as if you were a sponsor, deciding if the pilot is going to series. Singer – dancer Jane Powell opens the ball with The Jane Powell Show. A 32 minute sitcom so rare that even the Imdb had no record of it before I submitted an entry. As a matter of fact, don’t waste your time looking for info on the internet. You won’t find much.

And yet, this pilot was full of promise. Miss Powell (of Royal Wedding fame) stars as K.C. McKay, a famous singer who quits her job to become the housewife of a suburban college professor. Of course, adapting to campus life will not be easy; especially considering how prejudiced the other professors are against show-business, and how her impresario pressures her to return to work. The part is played by Elliott Reid (Jane Russell’s boyfriend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).

The pilot never developed into a series, however, Russell Johnson who plays the husband, went on to star in Gilligan's Island as another professor.

Canine star Munroe

Verna Felton fighting a lion

Next, animal-lovers are in for a treat with a Rintintin-like adventure called Munroe. Watch out for Verna Felton in one of her last roles as the mother-in-law. You may not know her face, but you‘ve heard her voice for sure as the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, the fairy godmother in Cinderella, Aunt Sarah in Lady and The Tramp, Flora in Sleeping Beauty or an Elephant in The Jungle Book and Dumbo. Another Disney regular and awesome character actor appearing here is John Fiedler as the cook. He is the kind of character actor who seemed to appear in every TV show in town at least once. He was also the voice of Piglet.

A Margaret O’Brien vehicle is also included (inventively called “Maggie”). Remember little Tootie from Meet Me In St Louis? Well, she grew up. And she is a lot for her parents to handle. As a matter of fact, her screen dad in both films is the same one: Leon Ames. You may remember her mother Fay Baker in a little part as a party girl in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious; and her neighbor Jesslyn Fax as Miss Hearing Aid in Rear Window by the same director.

The irony of this volume is that the only pilot that spurred a successful series on this set, was not a pilot at all. Meet McGraw was intended to be just another episode of Four Star Playhouse. It is presented here complete with commercials. Look out for Ellen Corby, the hotel manager in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, in a lengthier part.

And the icing on the cake is the pilot for the second “Ed Wynn Show”. This actor is a fascinating and lovable character: you may remember him in Disney productions like Alice in Wonderland as the mad hatter, That Darn Cat, Son of Flubber or as uncle Albert in Mary Poppins. I strongly suggest you watch The Twilight Zone’s second episode “One for the Angel” where this amazing actor displays his enormous talent. Here he plays a somewhat similar role as a kind of guardian angel not only to his two grand daughters but also to a group of college kids.

An exclusive footage of Ed Wynn talking to the sponsor is included after the show.

Volume 2 of the collection focuses on sports.

In only 10 minutes, the first newsreel “Sports Immortal” offers a 1939 montage of older footage from many sports champions (one of whom is the horse Man O’ War) who remain famous to this day. There is even a rare glimpse at a very young ice-skater Sonja Henie before she started her film career.

Joe DiMaggio

Baseball fans will love Touching All Bases! Actual legends are captured here on film (Like Marilyn Monroe's husband Joe Die Maggio) and should you want to emulate them, they are giving you instructions (with slow motion and all) for your game.
Also from 1939, The Brown Bomber will show you that Entertainment Tonight invented nothing. The camera follows heavy weight champion Joe Louis as a groupie would in his training, his breakfast, his listening to records, etc. 

Kings of Sport is a newsreel featuring champions of the forties like Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, or golfer Bobby Jones.
To wrap up these volume is a piece of History! Adolf Hitler himself appears in an American newsreel about the 1936 Olympic Highlights. It is fascinating to have an American point of view over the Nazi-themed event so famously covered by German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl.


Find out more about this set and upcoming releases from the official site, the youtube channel, and of course buy volume 1 and volume 2 on amazon !

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Alice Guy, the woman's touch

Directors often are men. I mentioned Dorothy Arzner a few months ago. Her position in Hollywood is rather unique. Ida Lupino also directed films but she was primarily famous for her career as an actress, which is how she began anyway.

Did you know that one of the first internationally successful directors of Cinema History happens to be a woman?

Before the D.W. Griffith, before Cecil B. DeMille, there was a woman who, amazingly enough, started as a simple secretary for Mr. Gaumont and became the first woman film director.

Her name was Alice Guy. She directed her first film some time between 1896 or 1902 but her last was made in 1920. In that time, she developed the use of special effects, color, sound, etc. More importantly, she made the medium evolve from just shooting an unrehearsed street scene for a minute or two, to filming a fiction film of feature length.
The confusion concerning the start of her career comes from the fact that she claimed it started in 1996 although the film she mentions as her first was identified as from 1902.

Alice on the set of her first film in 1902

She remembered her first film to be a short subject about a “cabbage fairy” who made babies appear in a garden. Until recently, it was naturally assumed that this film was “The cabbage fairy”, directed earlier in 1900 by some unknown director, but a closer inspection of Gaumont films enabled to identify the film as Birth of the Children, later retitled Midwife to the upper classes, with a similar subject. The confusion was easy: the subject is roughly the same, but the sign on the seller’s shop clearly says “The cabbage fairy”, which title Alice Guy preferred anyway (It may have been a working title). The picture on the left was taken after the filming as a souvenir, Alice Guy jokingly wore the unknown actor's clothes so she could appear between her two friends and actresses: Germaine and Yvonne Serand who were sisters. Here is the film:

25 years before the success of The Jazz Singer, she also made more than 400 sound films as early as 1902 with a process called chronophone. They were usually just one continuous shot of someone singing or dancing. In this rare behind the scene shot from January 9, 1907, Alice is seen directing The Capulets's Ball from Romeo and Juliet (Catalog number 300), assisted by Etienne Arnaud who is wearing sunglasses to shield his eyes from the intense lighting.

More ambitious projects came her way: in 1906, she directed a 33 minute epic called The Birth, The Life and The Death of Christ. Although primitive to a modern audience (the film is basically a succession of wide angle scenes in the tradition of the theater), it was nevertheless a definite breakthrough for the time with elaborate sets and costumes, animals and hundreds of extras.

Alice Guy directing Bessie Love

Soon after her marriage with an English director named Herbert Blaché, she moved to the USA to work with American stars of the time like Bessie Love, Olga Petrova; and for William Randolph Hearst among others. She even created her own film studio (Solax) in New Jersey. Unfortunately, she moved back to France after her divorce and gave up the film industry. Although she directed hundreds of films (among which many are lost even though she tried herself to find copies later) and eventually got some recognition (she was awarded the legion of honor late in her life), she is mostly forgotten like many other pioneers of cinema.
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Lost Hair

In my article about Leslie Caron, I briefly mentioned her An American In Paris co-star’s habit of wearing a cap to hide his bald scalp: Gene Kelly almost never appeared without a wig or a cap. But there are a few pictures out there of him going “natural”.

Some other actors also lost their hair at a relatively young age. For most of them, it was a well kept secret outside of the industry. Others occasionally appeared without their toupee in public.

John Wayne even once joked about the fact that his hair was real, not his, but real. He appears on this picture signing autographs for soldiers. The war is indeed a time when stars often stop bothering about “trifling” matters like their appearance. During most of World War II, Fred Astaire gladly got rid of his wig, which he didn’t like much. The latter was designed with a visible receding hairline anyway.

Bing Crosby wore a similar kind of prosthesis and you can see him without it on this picture.

Other stars in the same condition include Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Tony Curtis,…

Even though Sean Connery set the trend for a more natural look, to this day, actors like John Travolta show their scalp only on stolen paparazzi pictures.

 Women, of course, rarely encounter the same problem. However, filmmakers can be very demanding with their actresses. Vera Miles, among others, had to shave her head for the filming of 5 Branded Women. Consequently, she had to wear a wig for her next film and most famous role: Lila Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.

But there is another area where women tend to use artificial hairs.

Lana Turner

It will come as no surprise to you if I tell you that Mae West or Jean Harlow had shaved their eyebrows which they used to replace by a stylized and quite unrealistic stroke of makeup pencil. In those days, it was all the rage.
Most stars of the 1940s and 1950s who started as starlets in those days did the very same thing. Trends changed later and actresses like Ingrid Bergman launched a more natural look that was soon adopted by all.

Unfortunately, you may not know that once shaved, eyebrows do not always grow back. The most famous story is that of Lana Turner who, in one of her early screen roles in The Adventures of Marco Polo, not only had to wear a very uncomfortable wig, but also had to shave her eyebrows, as producer Samuel Goldwyn insisted. For the rest of her life, she had to design her eyebrows with makeup.

and in 1938 in Marco Polo

Turner in 1937 (They Won't Forget)

A not so renown story is that of Judy Garland. Makeup artist Del Armstrong, who worked with both ladies, remembered : "With Judy, there was one problem - it was the same problem Lana had - no eyebrows. Because in the early days of glamor, they used to tweeze them quite a bit so they could make exaggerated shapes, and if you tweeze your eyebrows too much, then they just don't grow back. So I had some hair lace, like for a mustache or wigs, and I had some eyebrows made for Judy for this picture (A Star Is Born). You couldn't just pencil them in, because there's no dimension. A pencil is flat. Penciling is fine for a still picture, but for a motion picture, people are turning their heads and you can see that it's flat. So I put these eyebrows on Judy."

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Sodom & Gomorrah (4) Special Effects

I'm going to write some more about Sodom & Gomorrah (see my previous posts about the film) and I will concentrate on the special effects and technical aspects. The battle scene required 4,000 people among which were the Moroccan army, the extras, the actors, and 150 crew members. It was shot between Ouarzazate and Marrakesh using three helicopters.

Maurice Binder's title sequence

I mentioned James Bond production designer's work Ken Adam on the film : if you wish to see a sample of his work, there is a storyboard of the dam sequence on the French cinematheque website.

The torture of the captured slave required a complex mechanism with 6 fans, motors and ice to cool down the temperature for the stunt men tied to a giant wheel dipped in fire.

Stunt man in the throne room

Obviously the sequence that required the most screen trickery was the destruction of Sodom. The throne room was a set that could be tilted and many pieces, columns, statues could be operated to fall on cue. It took seven days to build it and cost $15,000 (for a total budget of $6 million) with an extra $10,000 device needed for the fall of over 180 y3 of debris on the 650 extras.

A rare look at a deleted scene of the dying queen

The whole scene was filmed by 5 film cameras as well as video cameras on a closed-circuit especially for the attending journalists. Unlike so many CG movies of today, what you see on the screen is really happening. The whole room collapsed.



These two picture appear to come from deleted scenes with Anouk Aimée. It seems unlikely that the first one could have been included in the final film without eroding the believability of the previous scene : in the film, it is clearly seen that the queen is smashed by an enormous rock. Yet she is seen here agonizing with only half of her body trapped under it.

The second one is from an unknown scene not in the film since Anouk Aimée is never seen in the film with that hairdo.

These are rare behind-the-scene quality pictures of Stewart Granger performing the miracle scene in front of the camera.

This is what appears to be a re-release trailer (since the film is advertised under the alternate title "The Last Days Of Sodom And Gomorrah").

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Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is now available on Blu-ray. Here’s a perfect opportunity to see one of the director’s masterpieces.

Several famous sequences come to mind. The famous tracking shot that starts at the top of the stairs, embraces the ballroom and ends on an extreme close-up of the key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand (which is not even in the script, by the way). The famous kissing scene that defied the censors who refused an on-screen kiss that lasted more than 3 seconds: the two leads alternate kisses and speech in a steamier way than a long uninterrupted kiss ever would have been.

I’d like to focus on more obscure aspects of the film, and on lost sequences.

Roy Webb

An often overlooked asset of the film is the score. Due to the fact that producer David O. Selznick had limited faith in the film’s potential success, he sold the project and the people attached to it to RKO. And the company’s head of the music department at the time was Roy Webb. Although he successfully worked there from 1935 until 1955 (the death of the studio) and despite the fact that he wrote the score for masterpieces like Cat People, Bringing Up Baby, The Body Snatcher (starring Bela Lugosi), I Married A Witch (starring Veronica Lake), etc. his work is still sadly underrated and poorly remembered. There are two major reasons for that: due to the disappearance of the company, none of the RKOmaster tapes were preserved. Also, the entire collection of his manuscripts was lost in a house fire.

Even now that the most obscure works of contemporary composers like Bernard Herrmann or Max Steiner are being released on CD, sometimes newly recorded, Roy Webb’s most famous scores remain in the vaults. The only way to enjoy his marvelous music for Notorious is available on the Blu-ray: it is the “international track”.

In order to facilitate the dubbing process in foreign countries, a sound track with just the music and effects mixed in was shipped abroad; the foreign dialog was then recorded and mixed with this track. Time has not been very kind to it, but it is a unique opportunity to enjoy the score.

Original credits

On first release, the credits mentioned RKO as the production company and distributor, as well as a Selznick credit concerning the "arrangement" between the companies. When it was later reissued through Selznick’s company, the credits were altered accordingly. This version was the one circulating until Criterion’s first DVD version. Here is the Selznick modified version:

The opening scene of the film was originally slightly different: the point of view was that of Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) and the two FBI agents watching her at the end of the brief scene were Adams (played by William Gordon) and Devlin (Cary Grant). Since the introduction of the character would be more efficient later in the film, Devlin was replaced by a random FBI agent played by Frank Wilcox.

Original version with Cary Grant

Retake with Frank Wilcox

Deleted scene on lobby card

Following that, a scene in Alicia’s apartment was supposed to take place the morning after the trial. Alicia was being dumped out of the blue by her boyfriend Ernest Weylin who, we learn from the dialog was supporting her. She proudly gives him back a bracelet. This scene was censored: it was unacceptable for a single woman to live with an older man out of wedlock (“loose sexual habit” was the term used). The part of Ernest was played by Gavin Gordon, the life partner of famous actor Edward Everett Horton. Gordon disappeared from the film, but one of the few still pictures taken on the set of that scene was used on promotional material nonetheless.

Bergman in a deleted scene

The love-hate relationship between Alicia and Devlin was even more explicit before two scenes were cut. A scene explaining Devlin’s sometimes cruel behavior towards Alicia took place while they were preparing for the horse ride to meet Sebastian. It is Alicia’s very cold attitude in this outtake that triggers Devlin’s reaction throughout the film.

Scene 351 took place in Paul Prescott’s office. Devlin asked him to be reassigned because the situation became unbearable to him, therefore admitting a vulnerability not so obviously expressed in other scenes. Since the whole dialog was shot in one continuous take and Louis Calhern (who incidentally replaced Ray Collins in the role of Prescott) was not available anymore to re-shoot, the entire scene had to go when the censorship board asked for a line about divorce to be cut.

Lenore Ulric at the party

Deleted scene on lobby card

Another outtake was originally placed after the arranged meeting with Alex: he, his date Mme Ortiza, and the couple of spies are having a drink somewhere in the park. While Mme Ortiza makes idle conversation with Devlin, Alex flirts with Alicia. They both walk away from the table under the watchful eye of Devlin. Mme Ortiza is played by Lenore Ulric. She still appears in the film during the horse ride, and during the party scene where she feels flattered that Devlin remembers her. But you can catch a glimpse of her during the diner scene where Alicia is first invited at the Sebastian mansion. During that scene, Mme Ortiza's husband (played by Antonio Moreno) was also invited, but his introduction (and subsequently his entire part) was completely cut.

Lenore Ulric visible in the distance

Ulric & Moreno in an outtake

Also, actor Lester Dorr is listed in the IMDb as playing the part of a motorcycle policeman in a scene cut from the film. Although there is such a part in the film (played by Garry Owen), I was not able to understand if the scene was re-shot with a different actor or if Dorr played in a different scene.

The film was to be bookended by three brief scenes involving envious government office file clerks who bitterly discuss Alicia's change of marital status and leave of absence. They were very brief scenes but their inclusion in the film, had they not been deleted, would have given a very different tone to the ending of the film. One of these girls was Bea Benaderet (the voice of Betty Rubble in The Flinstones) and another was played by Virginia Gregg in her first part : she later voiced the famous mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho!

I’d like to finish this article with a little bit of trivia from Notorious:

First of all, the obvious height difference between Claude Rains and Ingrid Bergman was partially hidden in their many scenes together by having Rains stand on a box or on stairs. This is especially visible when they walk away from the camera and Rainsbecomes smaller and smaller.

An almost casual indication in the script,  at the end of the scene where Alicia first sips some of the poisoned coffee, reveals that what the old lady is sewing is actually Alicia’s shroud.

And finally, if the voice of Senator Walter Beardsley sounds somewhat familiar to you, it’s because the part is played by Moroni Olsen, the voice of the magic mirror in Walt Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs.

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