Sweet Saturdays

Lance Pugh joined the Bijou team last September as an associate producer on the Matinee at the Bijou sequel series. Among other duties, he manages the Bijou Mini-Matinee Theater. We asked Lance to recall his experiences as a genuine front-row kid.

Nearly every Saturday afternoon during the 1950’s we were spread throughout the three sections of seats in the Roxy Theater in Pacific Beach, California, broken into groups of friends and co-conspirators as we waited for the curtains to part and the Matinee to begin. We all had made a preemptory pass by the snack bar and were busy feasting on sweets as we recounted the best of last Saturday’s matinee. We made bets as to how the star of the current serial had somehow dodged doom and was once more feisty and fresh for the upcoming battles with evil, as we then defined it.

I was a freckle-faced bowling ball boy, eager to roll down the alley towards the candy pins of the Saturday Matinee. I rolled a strike every time, though I was spinning furiously.

I had a pocket full of change from my paper route, destined to be spent on popcorn, sodas, salted nuts, Bon-Bons, Good and Plentys, candy bars, Jujubees, taffy, red and black licorice, Milk Duds, Red Hots, Jujyfruits, Sugar Babies, and, in general, a tsunami of all things tasty, including hot dogs. A 3-Musketeers candy bar was always accommodated.


The afternoon engulfed us in cartoons, serials, B movies, newsreels, snack bar ads. We were barraged with insistent requests that we all stay in our seats and resist the urge to shoot spit wads, make loud comments, park bubble gum under our seats, mumble incessantly or cause disruptions for little or no reason. Ushers with flashlights prowled in the darkness to ferret out the incorrigibles, which, when discovered were always given a chance to be quiet before being ejected outside and into the bright sun of the afternoon.

Such a fate almost never befell me, as I cherished the dark redoubt where friends and fun kept the realities of the world at bay.

As soon as the first cartoon hit the screen everything more or less calmed down as all eyes were riveted to the framed humor at hand. Hours passed in a flash, though our parents thought our absence both extended and refreshing. Newsreels gave us an adult perspective, series like Flash Gordon, Commando Cody, Radar Men from the Moon, Undersea Kingdom, Zorro’s Fighting Legion and a host of others ended every Saturday with an impossible cliffhanger that strongly suggested sure death for our heroes.

Yet, when we came back the following Saturday, we saw a slightly different version of the supposed demise and our faith was rewarded by a close call that turned the tide, if only for a few minutes, in favor of the protagonists. Those who would trap and torture us were usually dealt a smart slap, at least until the end of the chapter, where another cliffhanger was engineered to trap us in disbelief.

At the end of the double feature matinee we begrudgingly exited the Roxy, to be picked up by our parents or headed home on foot or by bicycle in packs of sugar laden kids, anxious to recount our many hours in the dark to our waiting families, who were lathered with incomplete sentences, canned fright, B movie madness and newsreels to times unknown. It would take hours for us to settle into some sense of calm, at which point our parents sighed in relief at the price paid for a few hours of our delirious transport at the Saturday matinee.

I was fortunate enough to have frolicked in the fun of movie Matinees at the Roxy and fondly recall many sweet nights at the local drive-ins. I lament the passing of both of these institutions, but look forward to the sequel series to Matinee at the Bijou. Though the Matinees may be delivered this time through television and the Internet, the emotional impact and travel back in time will be a soothing salve for millions during these troubled times.

© 2007 Lance Pugh

Along with Bijou and other preoccupations, Lance is a freelance journalist. We look forward to future Matinee and Drive-in musings from Lance.

A Brief Biography of Pinto Colvig

Oregon's pastoral Rogue Valley, the home of Matinee At The Bijou, is much better known for pear orchards than showbiz, but MATB is far from Southern Oregon's first brush with the big time.

Vance DeBar Colvig was just one local product to make a significant impact on the entertainment industry. Born in nearby Jacksonville in 1892, his schoolboy compatriots, inspired by young Vance’s abundant freckles, dubbed him “Pinto, the human leopard.” The freckles eventually faded, but the name stuck and helped launch Colvig on a trajectory that would leave an impact on several of the lively arts.

After attending Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis, Pinto’s first of many careers was with the circus, performing as a clown and "squeaky clarinet player." Pinto then found work as a newspaper cartoonist, first in Nevada, later with the San Francisco Bulletin and Chronicle, which led to a partnership producing animated cartoons. In 1915 his Animated Films Corporation produced the world’s first feature-length cartoon, “Creation.”


AFC didn’t survive World War I, so Pinto began his own studio; Encyclopedia Brittanica credits him with the world's first color cartoon, 1919’s "Pinto's Prizma Comedy Review." In Southern California in 1928 Pinto and Walter Lantz produced one of the world’s first talking cartoons, "Blue Notes," with Bolivar the Talking Ostrich. All three cartoons are now apparently lost, though five frames of “Creation” survive among Pinto's papers at the Southern Oregon Historical Society.

1924 had brought Pinto to Hollywood and live film. Pinto worked as a gag man, scenarist and title writer for Mack Sennett, Jack White, Harold Lloyd and many others; he also often appeared before the silent camera in small comic roles. Then, as Pinto tells it, Mack Sennett gave him the go-ahead to a suggestion for a cartoon gag in one of his short subjects. This introduced animation into live-action comedy and brought Pinto back to pen and ink, hand-drawing explosions or swarms of bees onto frames of celluloid to bedevil the live comedians.

The advent of sound drove Pinto from silent comedy to Walt Disney Studios, where he continued as a gag man, co-wrote “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf,” and found yet a new career in sound effects and character voices. He barked for Pluto and spoke for the Practical Pig, Grumpy and Sleepy, and was the voice of Goofy for the next thirty-five years. Pinto also voiced Popeye’s Bluto for Fleischer Studios and for decades produced a broad range of freelance voice work for radio, cartoons and film. Several Munchkins in “The Wizard of Oz” speak and sing in Pinto Colvig’s voice, including the one who sounds exactly like his Gabby from Fleischer’s “Gulliver’s Travels.”

In 1946 Walter Livingston contracted Pinto to write and record the original Bozo the Clown record albums; three years later he starred as the first TV Bozo, on KTTV in Los Angeles. The distinctive voice and delivery used by every Bozo since (including Pinto’s son, Vance Jr., who took up the role in 1959) has been in imitation of Pinto Colvig.

As a side note, in 1906 Pinto’s father decided to move the five miles from Jacksonville to the burgeoning town of Medford. Pinto was 14 and about to graduate from elementary school, so Judge Colvig bought a house across the street from the high school. He hadn’t anticipated, though, that his son would fail the required high school entrance exam--miserably. So at the age of 14 Pinto was a free man: His father was rich and powerful, he had no responsibilities, and he was living in the largest town in the area. Young Pinto became well-known in Medford; among the many he befriended was Frank Willeke, the railroad flagman on Main Street. Willeke was mildly retarded and universally described as the happiest man in town; Pinto later said that he “admired his simplicity.” Decades later Pinto told Walt Disney of his friend and imitated his distinctive laugh, and Medford’s Frank Willeke became the inspiration and model for Goofy.

Pinto left his mark on Medford literally, as well: On a brick of the old railroad station is Pinto’s name along with an arrow pointing toward Jacksonville, written in ink in a strangely familiar style. The handwriting is that of the Walt Disney logo—which itself is drawn in the hand lettering Pinto had used since his youth. After the adoption of that logo, Walt Disney himself had to learn to imitate Pinto Colvig’s penmanship to sign his own autographs.

Poverty Row Revisited

John Galbraith was co-creator and one of the producers of the original Matinee at the Bijou PBS series. John originally wrote this article for the third season Bijou program guide.

____________

By the end of the 1920s both silent movies and the New York Stock Exchange were rapidly coming to the end of the trail. The economy was sinking into a quagmire of confusion and rising unemployment and the Great Depression quickly shrouded the nation under a gloomy cloak of uncertainty.

The movies too had fallen on hard times as the great silent stars and their studios scrambled to meet the challenges of the latest technological invention: “talkies.” Audiences nervously chuckled, then openly guffawed at the tenor whine of romantic leads like John Gilbert and strained to understand the dialogue emanating from screen idols with thick foreign accents.

The great Hollywood dream factories wasted little time mooning over the demise of the silents, however, and soon film palaces were alive with extravagant sound musicals, bigger-than-life screen romances and a cavalcade of new stars – anything to reassure the public that movies were still “your best entertainment.”

By the mid-thirties a trip to the theater offered a Depression-weary public newsreels, comedy shorts, cartoons and serials before the neighborhood theater’s double features. It is here, in the shadow of the mammoth Hollywood studios, that the Poverty Row independents began to thrive. Companies with names like Chesterfield, Invincible, Mascot, Puritan, Lone Star, Preferred, Colony, Tiffany, World-Wide, Quadruple, Big 4, and Majestic began churning out an amazing volume of 50-60 minute “action” features.

The small independent filmmakers could ill afford expensive sound stages and fancy effects. For them a camera, a truck, a few actors and a sunny day up at the old Warner’s movie ranch or at Eagle Rock in the San Fernando Valley was all that was needed. With this in mind it’s easy to see why the outdoor Western became the staple of those early Saturday afternoon matinees.

Once the location work was finished on a picture, the producer would then rent a sound stage for the “wrap up.” The time spent in these “rental stages” was kept at a bare minimum, and the use of “gimmick effects” to cut costs became a minor art form. If a director lost a shot, for example, the film editor would not hesitate to use generous portions of stock footage borrowed from more lavish productions. To avoid paying a studio orchestra, most Poverty Row companies mixed in prerecorded or “canned” music to give their final product a more expensive flavor.

In 1935 the average cost of a low-budget or “B” picture was from $10,000 to $30,000 for a feature western, and between $45-60,000 for a serial adventure.

The “stars” of these epics fell into two main categories. First there were the fallen angels from the silent era or those who had been dropped from the major film producers like Warner Bros., MGM or Paramount. Names like Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, Guinn “Big Boy” Williams and Harry Carey soon became the staple of Gower Gulch “action” pictures.

In the second category were a wealth of newcomers who sparkled briefly on the matinee screen but soon fell into oblivion. These hard-working Poverty Row actors never became household words, but to the front-row kid of the thirties, forties and fifties, Bob Custer, Buzz Barton and Buffalo Bill Jr. shone more brightly than any of Hollywood’s screen royalty.

The maneuvering for the B-movie market continued through the thirties until three main Poverty Row studios emerged as the winners. Absorbing most of the Gower Gulch independents, Monogram, PRC (Producers Releasing Corp.) and Republic Pictures dominated the matinee marquees for the next twenty years.

Of these Republic was the indisputable king of the B’s. From 1935 to 1956 Republic produced and released approximately fifty-five pictures a year and sixty serials. During those years Republic elevated the budget genre to unparalleled heights. The films seldom took more than a week to complete, yet they had a technical quality and a certain literate efficiency that was highly respected throughout the film industry. With the coming of television and rising production costs, however, Republic eventually succumbed and closed their doors in 1959.

The cowpokes of Gower Gulch and the companies along Poverty Row are all merely words in a few history books now. Off into the sunset are the likes of Tex Ritter, the Range Busters and Roy Rogers. But on Matinee at the Bijou the spirit and tradition of their films will live on and once again thrill new audiences with thundering heroics, frontier justice and silver six-guns that never seem to run out of bullets.

They'll Never Get Out Alive!-The Cliffhangers

Prior to the mid 1950s, many matinee moviegoers considered the weekly cliffhanging movie serials to be their favorite part of the show. Week after week, for 12 to 15 consecutive weeks, audiences would return to learn how the hero or heroine managed to survive impossibly dire predicaments left to the imagination when the episode faded to black the week before.

Also called chapter plays, the original silent serials were incredibly popular, so popular that 35mm prints were literally run to death, which is why relatively few silent serials survive today. The blockbuster that created the furor was "The Perils of Pauline"(1914) starring Pearl White. Unlike later serials, Pauline was extricated from peril within each twenty minute chapter. No cliffhanger. One early silent serial that does survive is "The Master Mystery" (1919) with Houdini and robot! Rumor has it that a restoration of this intriguing chapter play is underway.

Of course, Matinee at the Bijou features the sound serials, and producer’s are currently screening and contemplating which classic serials to include in future seasons of Matinee at the Bijou. The 12 chapters of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe will kick off our first new season, and later we’ll be scheduling The Green Archer, a grand 15-chapter Columbia Pictures serial from 1940. We're also looking at former silent western superstar Tom Mix's last sound film, a western/sci-fi Mascot serial extravaganza called The Miracle Rider (1935) for eventual inclusion in the series.

The very first Flash Gordon serial, based on Alex Raymond's adventure comic strip, blasted the serial into movie palaces where it played alongside first run features. Olympic star Buster Crabbe as Flash remains the quintessential serial hero, just as Charles Middleton as Ming The Merciless became the ultimate chapter play villain. The ending of chapter 2 was especially terrifying as Flash wound up in the clutches of a 12-foot dragon monster called the Gocko. Can he escape and reach a hypnotized Dale before she marries the arch fiend Ming? Time will tell if we are able to persuade the corporate copyright holder of the original “Flash Gordon” serial to permit our booking it for a future Matinee at the Bijou season.

In future posts, we’ll look at the movie serial output of the major and minor studios. Columbia Pictures, for example, produced a total of 57 serials, including the Superman and Batman serials. Republic Pictures is usually credited with consistently having the best action sequences, along with their share of innovative cliffhangers. Mascot Pictures made more serials than feature films!

We’ll also spotlight the stars and character actors who portrayed the heroes and villains, and we’ll feature some of the preposterous plots and far-fetched cliffhangers. Watch for a fun post about serial “cheat endings” where the cliffhanger showed certain death, but substituted an entirely different sequence the following week!

Meanwhile, here's your chance to enjoy a sneak preview of The Green Archer - one of Bijou's upcoming serial presentations, while learning something fun about the way the serials were made. One thing many action-packed serials had in common with B-movies could best be summed up as “the old hat trick.” This trick was often pulled when the script called for a gaggle of gangsters or cowboys, all wearing hats, to break into a staged fistfight. A thrilling fight sequence or two was a must in every single chapter, and the action had to go on for some time. This created complex continuity problems for the director and keeping track of the many hats an impossible task. The problem was easily resolved by fastening the hats on the heads of the actors so they would not come off no matter how many times they got hit or went down. Why did they need to wear hats? Naturally, so the medium shots of stuntmen cut in better with close-ups of the heroes!

You can watch this phenomenon right now in a sample chapter from The Green Archer currently playing as part of our Bijou Mini-Matinee series. Click on the link to the right under the marquee and enjoy the show.