Beyond The Rocks

"That, after all, was supposed to be the great virtue of pictures - that they would last forever." Gloria Swanson naively wrote in her 1980 autobiography. But she had to admit that there was no remaining copy of her 1922 film Beyond The Rocks, in which she starred with legendary Rudolph Valentino (or Rodolph as he was called then).


Two stars of such magnitude at the time just did not appear together in a film because their contracts usually prevented it. And indeed, Gloria Swanson had such a clause in hers. Although she was thrilled at the idea of playing opposite the latin lover, she affected to do producer Jesse Lasky a favor, in exchange of which she was offered a paid vacation in France. This was her occasion to escape the very roles that she played in Beyond The Rocks.

In the Kevin Brownlow documentary "Hollywood", Swanson refers to her roles of the time:
"Every picture I made, the train got longer, and the hairdo got more complicated until I got so fed up, I started screaming: I don't want to be a clotheshorse". So she went to France for more artistic parts like Zaza.

Beyond The Rocks is clearly a good example of what she meant. She wore over a million dollars worth of jewelry and very elaborate costumes.

Even as it was made, censorship forced the director to shoot two versions of the love scenes. One for the USA, in which kisses were not supposed to last more than 3 yards of film, and another for the foreign market with no limitation.

In 2000, Joop van Liempd, a Dutch collector of old films died, leaving behind 2000 cans of films, mostly unlabeled. It took another three years for all seven reels of Beyond The Rocks to be discovered among them.

It would seem that seven minutes are still missing, probably owing to poor storage conditions. In fact some scenes show very heavy signs of film decay. But van Liempd's print is obviously the European, uncensored version.

What about the film itself? Sam Wood offers a competent, if rather unimaginative, direction of a phoned-in love triangle story by Elinor Glyn. And yet, the film is still captivating, thanks to the efforts the two stars.

If you wish to make your own opinion, the film is available on DVD .


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The Paradine Case

Alfred Hitchcock came to America to work for Selznick in 1939 when the latter was involved in the production of his masterpiece, Gone With The Wind. Yet their first completed project together was Rebecca, a great success which won the Best Picture Oscar the year later. Hitchcock's filmography shows that his producer then loaned his services to other studios (RKO, Universal, Fox...) while a frustrated Hitchcock still received the same weekly payment from him.

In 1946, the end of the contract was near and Selznick couldn't count on a future collaboration with him. Though he still had one pet project called The Paradine Case. He intended to make it a prestige picture with an all star cast, with none other than Greta Garbo in the title role. Unfortunately for him, the diva of the screen had no intention of leaving her retirement, especially to play a part she hated. So it was decided that Mrs. Paradine would be played by a young hopeful that Selznick wanted to launch in the USA, much like Vivien Leigh in Gone With The Wind. In retrospect, the part of a cold-blooded murderess may not be the ideal choice to introduce a new personality like Alida Valli (nicknamed "Valli" for the occasion).

In any case, Selznick was so eager to have another big success that he made a nuisance of himself, rewriting the script (he eventually got sole credit for it), demanding retakes, and even supervising the editing and sound mixing himself. The end result was the explosion of the budget. Would you ever guess, watching the film, that it cost more money than Gone With The Wind? Well it did!

Although Hitchcock objected many things (like Louis Jourdan who did a fine job but was, in his idea, badly miscast), some elements are obviously his. Ann Todd has trouble shining in a rather unattractive part but she is definitely part of the cool blonde Hitchcock canon. The intricate camera moves inside the Keane mansion will be developed in his next productions like Rope or Under Capricorn. And the sadistic personality of the judge must have appealed to him. Also, his often used character actor Leo G. Carroll plays a lawyer here and John Williams, another lawyer, would go on to play more substantial parts in two other Hitchcock films.

More to the point, the film, in its rough cut ran approximately 3 hours. At the premiere, it had been cut down to 132 minutes. The version generally available today runs about 115. According to Bill Krohn, a "flood" has destroyed the negative of the 3 hour version in the 1980s. He also reports that the 132 minute version is all that remains and yet even that one did not find its way to home video. In addition, two of the missing scenes from the 3 hour version are still extant, only without the sound; These are apparently kept at George Eastman House in New York.

One of these scenes originally took place right before the trial and is featured on a lobby card with Ethel Barrymore, Gregory Peck, Charles Laughton and the actor who plays the painter (possibly Alec Harford), Peter De Lindstrom (an obvious nod to Selznick star Ingrid Bergman whose husband was Petter Lindström and who was considered for the lead at one point). In it, Sophy, the judge's wife, met Keane secretly in an art gallery to ask him to save Mrs. Paradine's head because she couldn't cope with another evening with her husband when he has to sentence the death penalty. They ran into the judge talking to the artist who kindly offers to show Sophy his drawings, sensing the uneasiness in the air. Left alone, the judge tells Keane he has considered placing his wife in an institution.

I do not know if the scene was cut to reduced the length of the feature or to suppress the underlying implication that the Judge enjoys sending people to their deaths and the very obvious fact that he mistreats his wife. I should point out that, in the novel, the scene took place earlier in the story and that it had been discarded by the original script writers (including Hitchcock and his wife).

This re-release trailer contains a few alternate shots and deleted moments (check out Ethel Barrymore trying to hide in the audience).

The music of the film, although composed by famed composer Franz Waxman in an attempt to recreate the Rebecca atmosphere and success (particularly obvious when Kean explores Mrs. Paradine's bedroom), has not met with the same success and is now available only as reorchestrated rhapsody on CD. The music-only track of the DVD is the only way to hear it in its entirety.

The main title gives you an idea of the rushed job that was the whole affair: since Selznick could not decide between a plethora of working titles (Fascination, Bewitched, Under Oath,...), he finally went with the book's original title on the eve of the premiere, causing the font of the title to be different from the rest of the credits.


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Lizabeth Scott

In her autobiography, Lauren Bacall explained how, after making the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, she was discovered by Howard Hawks and put under contract by Warner Brothers in a legendary film where she met her husband Humphrey Bogart: To Have and Have Not.

You may not remember her, but a few years later, a young lady with very similar characteristics was launched by Paramountin a Hal Wallis production. Since the vamp at her studio was Veronica Lake, she was marketed as a kind of clone, even though she was closer in looks to Lauren Bacall and even played opposite Humphrey Bogart. Yet, even if she played mostly in the film noir genre, she had an interesting career all her own. Her name was Lizabeth Scott. She is still alive today, although she made her last film in 1972.

I strongly suggest you buy her second film, which was recently released on Blu-raycalled The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. The transfer is a little soft due to DNR but the film still looks good and is definitely worth a look.

Confidentialmagazine once printed a story hinting that she was a lesbian. She sued, along with other stars like Robert Mitchum and Maureen O’Hara. You can read more about that in this article.

I’d like to share a page from a Belgian magazine called Ciné Revue dated August 31, 1951 regarding the release of the film Dark City (also available on Blu-ray), with a young Charlton Heston in one of his first roles. His love interest in the film is Lizabeth Scott, a nightclub singer who performs the standard “That Old Black Magic” in a fairly straightforward yet poignant fashion. Although Lizabethlater cut her own record album, she is dubbed here by Trudy Stevens.

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The Capture of Tarzan

I found an old magazine in a flee market the other day, which reminded me of Ron Hall's quest to find information on a lost Tarzan movie.

In 1934, Johnny Weissmuller had become the one and only Tarzan for generations to come and his last film Tarzan and his Mate even showed Jane swimming nude underwater. Talk about jungle adventures!

The next outcome would have to be even more adventurous. So Tarzan would encounter all sorts of evils in The Capture of Tarzan, directed by James C. McKay, who had done some uncredited directing duties on Tarzan and His Mate. Because of the Hays censorship code, Maureen O'Sullivan would now have to wear a one piece suit.
MGM executives weren't satisfied with the result (allegedly because it was too gruesome).

A succession of directors proceeded to reshoot the picture that eventually became Tarzan Escapes. John Farrow, George B. Seitz, William A. Wellman took the job, and eventually, only Richard Thorpe got on-screen credit for it.

Ron Hall remembers that, as a kid, in the fifties, he saw at least one of the sequences from the original cut, that of the climatic vampire bats which still appear on various promotional material. He explains that this was probably one of the only scenes retained from the original film and that even it got cut before release eventually. However, there must have been a negative of the new version of the film with this sequence intact somewhere in the vaults of MGM which they used for the 1954 re-release.

The French magazine I picked up loosely follows the story of the new version but it does include the sequence although it is summed up as "monsters they had to fight". Ron also found these two trailers:
the first one is specifically about the film and mentions the bats among other elements now lost, and the second one is an MGM tour that offers a snippet of a deleted scene.

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The Black Cauldron

The Black Cauldron was conceived as a renaissance picture for the Disney company. Just like Sleeping Beauty over two decades before, the film was several years in the making, with a colossal budget, a different style, a scope format...
When the film met with little success, it was shelved, and Disney spent much effort to make you forget they ever released such a failure. I remember seeing it in the eighties and later not remembering clearly if the film was a Disney movie at all.

1983 Tim Burton drawing

The film finally resurfaced on home video and has lately been restored for a new DVD release. Some other previously lost material also made its way on the disc and on various books. These include preliminary drawings made by Tim Burton when he worked at the studio. He drew sketches of the Horned King's lair and various creatures. Apparently none of which were used in the finished film.

Tim Burton creature

A "deleted" scene was also part of the bonus features. It is actually an alternate and extended version of the scene where Taran and his friends meet the Fairfolk. Details vary: the group makes its way out of the cave thanks to a growing magic bean, much like Jack's instead of magic dust, the design of the king is rather different, the kid fairies weren't in the film, etc.

Concept by James Coleman

This is just a sample of the various scenes in development which, although fully animated, were completely changed or deleted at great costs!
The real treat that is yet to come, would be a documentary about the making of the film, and to see all the other scenes, especially considering that some of them were removed in a later stage of production.
In fact, twelve minutes were apparently edited out of the finished film by unhappy studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg. It is still unclear what the scenes are but the recent release of the film's soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein throws new light about this.

Character design

Its producer Randy Thornton explains that the eighth cue of the third reel "Incantation" was meant to underscore one of the excised scene. The cue alone lasts 1 minute and 52 seconds and it seems obvious, given the dark tone of the music, that the scene featured the Horned King, which seems to confirm that the cuts were essentially made to lighten the mood of the picture and avoid a restricted rating in spite of the obvious attempt of the studio to get out of its corny image. Incidentally, that scene was right after the Fairfolk sequence mentioned before.
In other cases, the scene remained but was shortened by several shots. This is the case of the famous Cauldron born scene. There again, the complete cue on the CD shows us that several seconds were cut right before Eilonwy says "Oh it's horrible!" And indeed what she saw was too horrible to make the final cut. A devoted fan mixed the soundtrack with rare cels of the original sequence to give you a rough idea of what the scene looked like originally.

Here's hoping that these scenes make their way back to the public on a future Blu-ray release.
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The Story of William Tell

Errol Flynn is mostly remembered for his role in The Adventures of Robin Hood. 15 years later, his "wicked wicked ways" had finally taken their toll: he had become an alcoholic and his looks were fading rapidly. According to Maureen O'Hara who worked with him on Against All Flags, he had to inject booze in oranges because the director forbade drinking on the set.
Flynn also broke his ankle during the shoot and on the next film, he collapsed and doctors announced he would die right there. Miraculously, he survived. But he ended his contract with Warner Brothers after a falling out with Jack Warner. He stayed in Europe, and decided to put all his money into an independent production which he would co-produce with Italian funds.
He asked famous cinematographer Jack Cardiff who had worked on his last film if he would take his first directing job and surrounded himself with friends like actor Bruce Cabot (whom you may remember from King Kong) who happened to be without a job at the time.

Jack Cardiff & Errol Flynn

The film would be The Story of William Tell, in which, once again, Errol would wear his famous tights, Orson Welles and Gina Lollobrigida would co-star. Cinecitta was briefly considered but an entire village was built in Courmayeur, in the Italian Aoste valley.

Soon, Orson Welles left the project, and Gina Lollobridgida was replaced by Antonella Lualdi (A then-unknown Sophia Loren tested for the part but was rejected by Flynn). On June 14, 1953, shooting began on the troubled production. The new Cinemascope format had been licensed from 20th Century Fox and the film would be in color.
Unexpectedly, 2 months into the production, the Italian producers bluntly announced that they had no intention of honoring their part of the contract. Cardiff and the crew went right on filming without salary for another six weeks, trusting Flynn to find another backer. Unfortunately, Flynn was ruined, and he found out that the man who handled his affairs in the USA had made debts in his name before he died.

As if this betrayal wasn't enough, his friend Bruce Cabot left and sent his lawyers to Flynn for failure to pay him for his performance in the film. They seized all of his assets down to his wife and kid's clothes.
About 30 minutes of the script were apparently shot and the footage survives although only brief segments were ever shown with some of Jack Cardiff's behind the scene color footage.
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Confidential

I was at work the other day, and saw one of my colleagues reading a trash magazine with nude pictures of some reality TV starlet splashed all across the front page, with a caption saying she wasn’t a whore when all about her pose screamed otherwise.

Once upon a time movie stars not only built their success on talent instead of scandals, but avoided the latter like the plague. But trash did not wait for the 21^stcentury to appear in newspapers.

In Hollywood, the pioneers of gossip were a couple of columnists. William Randolph Hearst goon Louella Parsons was the first to come on the scene. Even though she introduced washed up actress Hedda Hopper to her boss, the two women became rivals in the gutter press department. According to David Niven, their methods to collect information was to fix a hefty drink for their guest and to threaten them to reveal secrets about them if they didn’t tell them what they wanted to know.

Louella Parsons & Hedda Hopper

Because of them, stars were sometimes given a boost in popularity, and careers were destroyed. Hedda had an intense hate for Charlie Chaplin and spat venom on him as often as she could, when Louella campaigned against Citizen Kane and its director Orson Welles who dared caricature her boss in the film.

Early scandals included the death of Virginia Rappe during a party for which comic actor Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was sent to prison,  More importantly, even though his fame was comparable to that of Chaplin’s, his career never recovered and, even decades later, he had to use an alias to direct a few films.

Director Thomas H. Ince made the headlines of the Los Angeles Times in 1924 when he died. The paper reported that he was shot aboard William Randolph Hearst’s yacht although his personal physician testified he had died at home of heart failure.

Gay actor William Haines’s career was publicly ruined by MGM because of his refusal to deny his homosexuality.

But in general, the private life of their stars was kept private by the studios and their publicity department. Articles about gay actors like Clifton Webb, Cesar Romero, Tab Hunter, Anthony Perkins, periodically appeared in the papers recounting their happy “confirmed bachelor” status, usually illustrated with pictures of them surrounded by young starlets just in case someone might get the wrong idea.

With the decline of the studio system, the protection that went along with it gradually disappeared as well, and in 1952, Robert Harrison decided it was high time a magazine was created that dealt solely with what the public ashamedly wanted to read: dirt.

Confidential magazine was first published in December of that year and its instant success proved Harrison right. Articles about Robert Mitchum’s conviction for drug use, Marilyn Monroe’s divorce, or Liberace’s sexual orientation assured the magazine’s success.

Although much of the gossip printed had no basis in fact, as is often the case in these publications, it opened the floodgate for future popular magazines. The industry initially fought it. Numerous trials took place by Lizabeth Scott, Maureen O’Hara, Robert Mitchum, Dorothy Dandridge, Liberace, etc.

They eventually had to deal with it and talent agent Henry Wilson “sold out” a story about Rory Calhoun’s criminal past so Confidential would agree to not publish a story about his major star Rock Hudson’s homosexuality.

Some lesser known actors like Barbara Payton even used the magazine to boost their careers.

Maureen O'Hara at the trial

Even though the magazine’s influence decreased after pressure from the studios (and the trials) in the late 1950s, its publication went on until 1978.

Closeted actor Tab Hunter even called his autobiography “Tab Hunter Confidential”, owing to the influence the magazine had on his life at the time. And Errol Flynn’s autobiography is called My wicked wicked ways, after the title of an article about him.
In the excellent "LA Confidential", look no further for the inspiration of Hush Hush Magazine.

And in his book Groucho and Me, Groucho Marx wrote a letter to the head of the magazine when one too many story about his liking young girls or that his TV show You Bet Your Life was crooked. The letter went : "Gentlemen? If you continue to write nasty pieces about me, I shall be obliged to cancel my subscription."
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