Laughing Gravy's Notable DVD Releases of 2007

Back in October we interviewed Cliff Weimer, better known to fans of his wonderful website In The Balcony as Laughing Gravy. (What some of his loyal readers may not know is that Cliff has also been known to operate in the shadowy guise of The Grand Slitz of Sunev. Sorry, Cliff, if we’re putting your loved ones in jeopardy by revealing your secret identity. Perhaps you should have thought of that before embarking on your nefarious triple life.) We proudly announced at the time that LG has agreed to become a regular contributor to The Bijou Blog. This is his first guest post, a delightful and highly personal look back at the year’s notable classic film DVD releases, just in time for your holiday shopping. Thanks for a great job, Cliff!

For my first offering to Matinee at the Bijou, which has quickly become one of my favorite classic movie sites, I’ve been asked to point out the best classic movie DVD releases of the past year. To give it a twist, though, I’m going to spotlight mainly those smaller releases from companies with a small profit margin who release these things for the same reason we watch ‘em: because we LOVE them. These “labors of love” often feature films that nobody else would even think of releasing, meticulously compiled, restored, and even offering extensive bonus material. They are worthy of our support, and let’s show them some love as we build our own in-home Matinee at the Bijou library and await the return of this great show to television.

At inthebalcony.com, we always begin our shows with a cartoon, so we’ll start there. Thunderbean Animation has given us a series of DVDs compiling rare 1930s animated frolics, mainly from the Van Beuren Studio. This year’s Complete Animated Adventures of the Little King ($14.95) is their finest offering yet, with all 12 cartoons in the 1933-1934 Van Beuren series (released by RKO), most unseen in decades, plus two “prequel” cartoons featuring Sentinel Louie and the Max Fleischer revival, Betty Boop and the Little King (1936). The cartoons are filled with gags and weird animation effects; I especially love the jazz-filled 1933 mini-musicals On the Pan and Marching Along, the latter of which is an operetta about the National Recovery Act! Thunderbean has even added extensive liner notes about the cartoons and Little King creator Otto Soglow. The cartoons were compiled from the finest 35mm and 16mm elements that could be located, with as many as four different prints from around the world used to restore each cartoon. Thunderbean deserves major accolades for this one.

Next comes our short subjects, and now we turn to Looser than Loose Publishing, a small New Hampshire company that specializes in rare silent and early sound films. In 2007, they released a 2-disc collection with great prints of six especially hard to find 2-reelers, Selected RKO Shorts ($24.99). You’ll find early offerings with star comics who would go on to long series at the studio, Edgar Kennedy (Quiet Please, 1933) and Leon Errol (Fixing a Stew, 1934, directed by legendary gagman Al Boasberg), plus Tom Kennedy and Billy Bletcher in Cracked Shots (1934), “Big Boy” Williams and Grady Sutton in the funny gangster spoof The Undie World (1934), and a very young Ginger Rogers in A Quiet Fourth (1935). Best of all, though, and one of the best and most entertaining shorts I’ve ever seen, the musical drama Melody in May (1936). Songstress Ruth Etting hides out in Nowheresville to escape the pressures of her singing career, but ends up befriending timid Frank “Junior” Coghlin from his cruel classmates. This is one of the few shorts we’ve ever shown that the audience demanded we show again immediately! Don’t miss it.

Okay, now we come to this week’s exciting cliffhanger, and I’m proud to point a serial spotlight at Restored Serials. Through a painstaking process called “Super Restoration”, vintage serials are cleaned frame by frame and digitally transferred, allowing old, public domain material to shine anew. So far, because of the mammoth amount of work entailed to clean and transfer each serial (remember, a 15-chapter serial can be as long as 4 or 5 B-features), only one has been completed so far, and it’s a beaut: the 1940 Columbia mystery thriller The Green Archer ($19.95) starring Victor Jory, Iris Meredith, and James Craven. Fifteen episodes of action, adventure, and fun in a haunted castle (in Southern California, yet) filled with gangsters. Directed by James W. Horne, veteran of Laurel & Hardy and Buster Keaton comedy classics, so the action is both furious AND fun. I had seen this serial previously more than once, and it looked better than new in the restored edition. Guaranteed to supply 15 weeks of laughs and adventure.

We’re up to our feature presentation, and this was a tough one. Among the smaller companies, Grapevine Video gave us numerous worthy contenders with rare B movies of the 1930s, and moving up the ladder VCI Entertainment released so many wonderful western, musical, science-fiction and noir double features from the Lippert vaults I can scarcely keep up with them all. As for the larger companies, Warner Bros. (particularly with their Film Noir Vol. 4 collection of ten essential crime films) and Criterion (loved the Sam Fuller: Early Years boxed set) continued to do their usual outstanding work. But I kept coming back to one release that especially pleased me; I’ve been hounding Columbia for years to pay more attention to the vintage films in their vaults and to consider adding serial chapters, cartoons, and short subjects to their DVD releases.This year, with the company’s home video department run by Sony, fans of classic films finally have somebody in our corner, and the first result exceeded even my expectations: Sam Katzman: The Icon of Horror Collection ($24.96)


For four decades, “Jungle Sam” Katzman was known for producing profitable films on a low budget (and yes, for cutting corners and often putting out shoddy product to ensure his pictures finished in the black no matter what), and the very fact that Sony named a boxed set after him shows that they understand their market for these types of films. Not only does the 2-disc set include four irresistibly loony low-budget sci-fi films of the 1950s, The Giant Claw, Creature with the Atom Brain, The Werewolf, and Zombies of Mora Tau, with such genre favorites as Richard Denning, Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Allison Hayes, and Gene Roth, but you’ll find a Mr. Magoo cartoon, an episode of the 1951 serial Mysterious Island, and the hilarious 1936 comedy short Midnight Blunders with Tom Kennedy & Monte Collins, plus trailers. It’s Matinee at the Bijou in a box, and highly recommended.

It was a great year for vintage releases, and a special nod goes to Warner Bros. for restoring and releasing the original Jazz Singer in a 3-disc set packed with bonus Vitaphone featurettes, a five-film Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland collection, and numerous other vintage film releases packed with short subjects and cartoons. It’s a wonderful feeling to watch a DVD presentation and think, “The folks who made this obviously love old movies as much as I do.”

In Wednesday's upcoming Mini-Matinee we'll be featuring selections from Laughing Gravy's year-in-review,including The Little King in "A Christmas Night", an exciting cliffhanger from The Green Archer, and a terrifying trailer for The Giant Claw.

The Famous Bouncing Ball

Audiences have always loved a rousing group sing-along. Before 1900 magic lanterns projected glass song slides of lyrics, as charmingly depicted in the vaudeville scene in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934). Everyone sings “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree” as poor Mrs. Wiggs forgets her troubles. Even villain Charles Middleton joins right in. The shared singing formed an emotional bond in communities through the 1940s that is fondly remembered.

Magic lantern slides moved into picture palaces in the teens, but it remained for cartoon innovator Max Fleischer to reinvent the sing-along on film. Max had made training films during World War I in which he used a pointer to identify equipment. This gave him the “Bouncing Ball” idea. A white ball on the end of a black, hand-held pointer bounces from one word to the next onscreen to help the audience sing in unison.

In 1924 the first “Ko-Ko Song Car-Tune” was a big hit at New York’s Circle Theatre. Ko-Ko the Clown jumped out of the inkwell and ran through a few hijinks before the Bouncing Ball led the song Oh Mabel. Audiences caught on fast and loved it. The theater re-ran the film while Max and Dave ran to make more.

The Fleischers teamed up with sound pioneer Lee DeForest to make the first talking cartoons that even pre-dated Steamboat Willie. In My Old Kentucky Home (1926) Bimbo says to the audience: “Follow the ball and join in everybody.” The Metropolitan Quartet sings while the Ball leads off. Soon the ball is replaced by a cartoon character who dances across the words. In later cartoons the animated words take on a surreal life of their own. For example, the word “watch” might turn into a pocket watch or “faraway” would morph into a chugging train.

The deForest Phonofilms were mostly seen in the chain of 36 theaters owned by The Red Seal Film Corporation, which was partnered with Hugo Riesenfeld, Edwin Miles Fadiman, Dr. Lee deForest, and Max Fleischer. While a few large theaters in major cities had deForest sound equipment as well, these milestones of animation were regarded as a mere novelty. The Song Car-Tunes went out to the rest of the country in separate silent versions to be accompanied by the house organ.

From 1924 to 1927 the Fleischers made 36 Song Car-Tunes with 12 produced in the actual deForest sound on film process. The songs ranged from contemporary tunes such as "Margie," and "When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam', to old-time favorites like "Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?," "Comin' Thro the Rye," "My Old Kentucky Home," “Sweet Adeline,” "Come Take a Trip in My Airship," "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up In the Morning," “ By the Light of the Silvery Moon," and “Dixie.” (Many excerpts appear in Ray Pointer's fine documentary Max Fleischer's Famous Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes.

When DeForest went bankrupt, the Fleischers forged ahead with a new series of “Screen Songs with the Famous Bouncing Ball,” turning out 109 between 1929 and 1937. Ko-ko no longer starred, but Betty Boop made guest appearances in six. Popular singers like The Mills Brothers, Rudy Vallee, Ethel Merman, Lillian Roth and the Boswell Sisters appeared in live-action to start the songs.

Jean Shepherd expressed the unique emotional appeal in his collection of stories "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash" (1966): "The white ball bounced from word to word as the audience, conditioned by countless hours of Kate Smith, Harry Horlich and the A & P Gypsies, Jessica Dragonette and the Silver Masked Tenor, belted it out. A Depression audience did not mess around. When that bouncing ball bounced, they belted! The empty coal bin and next month's rent forgotten... The only time I ever heard my Old Man sing was when the mighty Wurlitzer, like some demonic pipe of Pan, drove him on."

The Fleischer imagination dimmed by 1935 and the Screen Songs turned routine. Many were set in a theater with rather lame spot gags appearing on the movie screen inside the cartoon. The annoying Wiffle-Piffle character starred in too many. Lesser bands of Shep Field, Henry King and Jack Denny were given more screen time, which was cheaper than animation, and playing with words in the songs was abandoned.

The Bouncing Ball was called into service during World War-II for many live-action Sing-Alongs made just for soldiers fighting overseas. “G.I. Weekly” shorts featured a scantily clad young lady, songs and the Bouncing Ball. The group singing proved to be quite a morale booster. Also the girl. After the war Famous Studios, who had taken over Fleischer, revived the Screen Songs series in color with When G.I. Johnny Comes Home, released Feb. 2, 1945. 39 more were made through 1951. Live-action bands and singers were gone but the delightful animation of words in the last verse returned.

The one-sheet movie poster shown here, courtesy of Cartoon Research attests to the popularity of the Screen Song after the war. The emotional experience had deep roots in our psyche. In sorrow or triumph, America had sung together for decades, but times were changing. Because of the advent of television, America stopped going to the movies weekly by the mid-50s.
 
“Sing Along with Mitch" carried the tradition to television from 1961-1966. Family and neighbors often gathered for the show, but it wasn’t quite the same. The group Sing-Along barely survives today in music videos, in Rocky Horror Picture Show revivals and in sing-along versions of The Sound of Music and The Wizard of Oz, which are from a simpler era when audiences loved singing together. If only an animated Toto would scamper across the words “Over the Rainbow” to bring back memories of the Fleischer heyday!

Matinee At The Bijou will always have a song on its lips and a “Famous Bouncing Ball” in its back pocket.

Here you can enjoy a delightful Fleischer Screen Song called Love Thy Neighbor (1934) that spoofs the movie-going experience featuring a live-action Mary Small "the little girl with the big voice."

Hollywood At War-The Studios and Stars Enlist

This is the first in an occasional series about Hollywood and the war industry during World War II.

At the outset of WWII, Hollywood’s well-oiled movie machine became an extension of the nation’s war machine, capitalizing on America’s love affair with the movies. Theatrical cartoons, shorts, serials and feature films produced by the major studios all began to incorporate the war culture into their productions.

The military had their own filmmaking units, but as studio craftsmen were enlisted by the various service branches, the content and quality of government training and propaganda films were elevated to Hollywood levels. Many of filmdom’s greatest producers, directors and stars also enlisted to do their part for Uncle Sam.

James Stewart was reportedly the first film star to enter the service in WWII, having enlisted a year before Pearl Harbor was bombed. He had to talk his way in due to a weight issue (too thin). Colonel Stewart flew 20 combat missions and earned the Air Medal, the Distinguished Flying Cross and seven battle stars.

Clark Gable enlisted at age 41 as a private in the Army Air Force after his wife, actress Carole Lombard, died in a plane crash while on a war bond drive. Gable flew bombing missions over Europe, eventually became a Captain, and appeared in instructional films.

At the outset of the war, Army Reservist Ronald Reagan was called to active duty and appointed to the First Motion Picture Unit – in Culver City, CA. There, Reagan toiled in the hometown comfort of the old Hal Roach film studios, dubbed Fort Roach for the duration. Reagan worked on more than 400 training and propaganda films, appearing onscreen in many.

Movie stars who didn’t join the armed forces, helped out by selling war bonds onscreen. Even Bugs Bunny got into the act (he tried to enlist but was turned down...too dimensional). Many radio and film favorites toured in USO shows or showed up at the Hollywood Canteen to rub elbows with soldiers on leave or about to ship out.

In early 1942, seven years after making the Oscar-winning It Happened One Night, film director Frank Capra enlisted in the Army. He was assigned a key role to convince a skeptical, formerly isolationist nation of the critical importance of America’s participation in the global conflict.

Over the next four years, Capra contributed two important bodies of work to America’s war effort. First, he helped produce and direct an inspired Oscar-winning documentary film series called Why We Fight, and, second, he applied his filmmaking skills to help create and manage a bi-weekly series of motion picture short subjects called The Army-Navy Screen Magazine.

The Screen Magazines were 20 min collections of short films designed to inform servicemen at base movie theaters worldwide about events on the home and war fronts, to inspire and entertain. Most included a Private Snafu cartoon and often a variety show with entertainers like Bob Hope, Dinah Shore and favorite radio and movie celebrities of the day. By war's end, the Screen Magazines were being seen weekly by over 4 million service members. Capra and company knew these films needed to entertain the audiences gathered at base theaters to see the latest Hollywood blockbuster. The Army-Navy Screen Magazines were a very effective shared experience for the GIs, and greatly influenced their perception of the war.

Other prominent Hollywood directors suited up for the war as well. John Huston went from making The Maltese Falcon in 1941 to directing a string of wartime government docs, including such classics as Report From the Aleutians, The Battle of San Pietro, and a controversial longtime withheld film masterpiece called Let There Be Light. John Ford directed several docs, including The Battle of Midway and December 7th, as well as training films like the disturbing short subject called Sex Hygiene, made to caution the soldier about the horrors of VD. William Wyler enlisted and directed a famous wartime doc called The Memphis Belle, and even flew several combat missions himself on the famous plane to photograph some of the scenes.

During the war, the major studios released a steady stream of war-themed cartoons starring their famous cartoon icons, with provocative titles like Daffy Duck in The Ducktators and Bugs Bunny in Herr Meets Hare. The talented cartoon artists at Warner Brothers created the famous Private Snafu as a motivational character, voiced by Mel Blanc, to make the soldier laugh while being taught an important lesson. Snafu (as any GI would know, an acronym for Situation Normal, All F*cked Up) would invariably screw something up, only to learn from the experience. Disney was the one Hollywood studio designated a “key war production plant” and 94% of its work was war related, specializing in the production of animated instructional films.

Some excellent examples of the kind of short films produced during the war by the Hollywood studios and the US Government are playing right now in our Bijou Mini-Matinee theater.

The Inimitable Mae Questel

“Made of pen and ink, she can win you with a wink …”
Knowing fans recognize those lyrics as the start of another great Betty Boop cartoon. Mae Questel, the face behind the voice, was made of flesh and bone and can win you over whether she’s voicing sweet Betty, Olive Oyl, Little Lulu, Little Audrey, Casper the friendly Ghost, or even Popeye’s voice in a few of his cartoons.

Back in the roaring 20s, Bronx teenager Mae “Kwestel” knew she had a gift. She could mimic all sorts of familiar sounds, animals and people. In spite of the severe disapproval of her orthodox Jewish parents, Mae's career in show business took off in earnest after she won a local talent contest at age 17.

For radio and stage, Mae created an act she called “Mae Questel – Personality Singer of Personality songs” wherein she would perform dead-on vocal impersonations of then-superstars like Mae West, Rudy Vallee, Ruth Etting, Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier and Helen Kane, the flapper queen of “Boop-oop-a-doop.” .

Animator Max Fleischer was seeking an actress for the cartoon voice of Betty Boop, when he caught Mae’s act, especially her impersonation of Helen Kane. Max hired Mae for the Betty Boop role in 1931, and for the full decade Mae Questel entertained the world in over 150 appearances as everyone’s favorite cartoon vamp.

In 1933, Max Fleischer’s brother, Dave Fleischer, directed a Betty Boop cartoon titled “Popeye the Sailor,” introducing the Popeye character. A new cartoon star was born, and for the first two Popeye cartoons, Olive Oyl was voiced by Bonnie Poe. From there, Mae became the definitive Olive Oyl, after tailoring Olive’s voice to that of comedian Zasu Pitt’s whiny persona. Margie Hines was the Olive Oyl character from 1938-44, but then Mae took over again and moved with the Popeye series to television in 1960.

Paramount would have other plans for Miss Questel during the ensuing years. Though screen credit was rarely provided for voice artists, Mae Questel went on to become the voice of such cartoon stars as Little Lulu, Little Audrey, Casper the friendly Ghost, and even Popeye the Sailor Man’s voice six or seven times, according to Ms Questel, after Popeye’s voice artist, Jack Mercer, went off to WWII.

Mae Questel appeared in many movies during the 60s, 70s and 80s, notably playing the card-playing matchmaker Mrs. Strakosh opposite Barbra Steisand in Funny Girl. She voiced Betty Boop once again in Woody Allen’s Zelig, and was the Jewish mother in the Oedipus Wrecks segment of New York Stories. Her stage credits include Dr. Social, A Majority of One and Enter Laughing. She was even widely known as "Aunt Bluebell" for Scott Towels during the 1970s. Questel died in 1998, from complications related to Alzheimer's disease, at the age of 89.

Saving The Great Old Movie Theaters

A vast majority of the traditional American movie theaters that predated the multiplexes, from the grand, ornate movie palaces to the neighborhood Roxys, Rialtos and, of course, Bijous, met their end with a wrecking ball to make way for malls, parking lots, condos, office buildings and, yes, multiplexes. However, hundreds of these architecturally unique and culturally fascinating theaters around the U.S. have been saved, restored and reopened. These restorations represent the efforts of thousands of dedicated people and the raising of untold millions of dollars.

We here at Matinee at the Bijou are by no means experts in this realm, but the folks at Cinema Treasures certainly are. We applaud their passion, and the exciting and provocative work they do to help keep these unique American treasures alive.

Cinema Treasures was launched in 2000 by cinema entrepreneurs Patrick Crowley and Ross Melnick. Their mantra is to “Discover, Preserve and Protect” this vital aspect of American popular culture.

To further promote national awareness and stimulate preservation and restoration efforts, Ross Melnick and co-author Andreas Fuchs recently published a companion book: Cinema Treasures – A New Look at Classic American Theaters. This is a lively and engaging look at this rich history, resplendent with scores of sumptuous photographs.

In future articles, with the help of the crusaders at Cinema Treasures, we will be shining a spotlight on those who work tirelessly behind the scenes to keep these theaters alive, and we’ll be profiling some of the great old classic movie theaters around the country.