I Got You, Abe

(This Tuesday marks the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Someone else lived there before that. No, no, just kidding. Of course, I'm talking about Abraham Lincoln's famous speech. Wishing to mark the anniversary myself, albeit a few days early, I'm re-running this post from September, 27, 2008. I've added a few pictures this time around--KJ)

This coming February 12 is the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. As absurd as it may sound, that actually makes me feel kind of old. When I was a kid, the Civil War was just about 100 years in the past. Now, to find out that war's central figure is having a bicentennial! And where exactly does that leave George Washington? All the way back to where the Pilgrims used to be?!

Wondering if I could connect at all with this almost prehistoric figure, I decided to take a look at something Lincoln wrote: the Gettysburg Address. I did this with some trepidation. I was afraid it might read like The Canterbury Tales, or something by Shakespeare: in English, yet you still need a translator. Turns out I didn't. The speech's first, and most famous, sentence is a bit daunting (I wasn't sure what he meant by "score". Was there a game going on? Or had a band played?), but after that it's smooth sailing. It could have been written yesterday (Thank God the Civil War wasn't yesterday. Our military's stretched thin enough as it is.)

So here it is, along with a few of my comments (which Honest Abe may or may not agree with.)

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation...

Less than a hundred years separate George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I'm not sure if that should make me feel old or not.

...conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

White men, anyway. Lincoln fails to mention his own Emancipation Proclamation, which was significantly more dedicated to that proposition. Of course, as long as the war raged, the emancipation existed only on paper, so maybe that accounts for his modesty.

Now, we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

The Confederate flag was a campaign issue as recently as 2000.

We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field...

According to some historians, the organizers of this event weren't even going to invite Lincoln. But then they thought, well, he IS president.

...as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

3,155 Federal soldiers were killed in action, with 5,365 missing. 2,136 of the 14,529 wounded died. All together, a mortality rate of nearly 15%. As far as the Confederacy goes, estimates range from 2,934 to 5,750 killed or missing.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

Sounds here like ol' Abe is just giving lip service.

But, in a larger sense...

Oh, wait. He's got something up his sleeve.

...we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground.

According to a recent news story, some developer wants to build a casino near the battlefield.

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated, far above our poor power to add or detract.

Edward Everett spoke first. His speech contained 13,607 words, and lasted two hours. Lincoln's speech contained 186 words, and lasted a measly two minutes.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here...

Edward who?


...but it can never forget what they did here.

Not to take anything away from what they did there, but one reason Gettysburg is more well known than, say, Antietam (where there was an even greater loss of life) is because of what one tall, lanky guy with a beard and stove top hat said there.

It is for us the living, rather...

I knew there was a catch.

...to be dedicated to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...

Did those who died at Gettysburg, or on Omaha Beach, or on Iwo Jima, really die for freedom or democracy, or did they actually die for a country that at the time just happened to be free and democratic? After all, people who have lived in dictatorships, or slave-based societies, have fought just as hard, and have died in as many numbers as we Americans. Freedom and democracy should be something more than mere synonyms for sovereignty and the homeland. Those high ideals can also be fought and lived for. How exactly do we do that? What are our weapons? Let's see, there's the ballot box, the soap box, the picket sign, the petition, and the letter to the editor. Maybe even blogs.

...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Despite the best efforts of the all too many fools and scoundrels since Lincoln, it somehow hasn't perished yet.

Quips and Quotations (Role Playing Edition)

 

"Where's Papa going with the ax?" (p.1)

When I was growing up, one of the weirdest of the many weird things I did, was to cast movies I planned to direct, or rather, imagine to cast movies I planned to direct, based on books I had just read. Early on it would have been something like Charlotte's Web or Encyclopedia Brown, then when I was a little older, War of the Worlds or A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. When I was in my thirties...Well, never mind that, you're probably wondering where I got my actors. Simple. I just poured through a TV guide for inspiration. Eve Plumb, who played Jan on The Brady Bunch, would have made a pretty good Fern Arable in Web, don't you think? Yes, I'm aware Dakota somebody played her in a recent film version, but I'm talking early 1970s. Plumb kind of resembled the Garth Williams drawing. Just dye her hair brown. Also, Fern's mother consults a child psychiatrist after her daughter tells her that animals talk. There were certainly times when Jan Brady could have used a good shrink. Though in her case more likely because she was upset that all the barnyard animals were paying more attention to Marcia. 

 

I'm also convinced that Russell Johnson, who was on Gilligan's Island, would have made a good Connecticut Yankee. I mean, if the Professor could somehow invent a lie detector machine with only coconut shells and bamboo at his disposal, just imagine what he could have done in medieval England. The possibilities are endless.

"I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must do as he did - invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy" (p. 53) 

 

 

  However, I found out later on that a filmmaker doesn't necessarily go through the mundane tasks of holding auditions and conducting screen tests all by themselves. An underling, appropriately enough called a casting director, does all that. The film's director (along with the producer and the the CEO of whatever corporation owns the studio) has the final say, of course, but that underling nevertheless serves a vital role, one that does not yet have an Oscar category all its own. A fellow by the name of Tom Donahue hopes to rectify that with an HBO documentary that came out last year called Casting By. Not long after the movie premiered at the Toronto Film Festival, a well-known director penned  the following open letter to The Hollywood Reporter taking up Donahue's cause: 

In my case certainly, the casting director plays a vital part in the making of the movie. My history shows that my films are full of wonderful performances by actors and actresses I had never heard of and were not only introduced to me by my casting director, Juliet Taylor, but, in any number of cases, pushed on me against my own resistance. People like Jeff Daniels, Mary Beth Hurt, Patricia Clarkson and others who are people I was unfamiliar with. A number of discoveries and careers have been launched by the energies and resourcefulness of my casting director. Not only did I use Meryl Streep for a small part in Manhattan when she was a relative unknown, but at the best my casting director helped start the film career of Mariel Hemingway and Dianne Wiest, a stage actress completely unknown to me but known by Juliet Taylor. I’m particularly difficult in the casting area because the whole process bores and embarrasses me. If it were up to me we would use the same half dozen people in all my pictures, whether they fit or not. Despite my recalcitrance, Juliet has forced me to meet and to watch the work of many new people and to hire people on nothing more then her strong recommendation. Because my films are not special effects films and are about human beings, proper casting is absolutely essential. I owe a big part of the success of my films to this scrupulous casting process which I must say if left to my own devices would never have happened. I might add also, anecdotally, that despite my firm conviction that I could never persuade luminaries like Saul Bellow, Marshall McLuhan, Susan Sontag, Mayor Koch and others to work in my films, the confidence and insistence of my casting director proved more accurate and I wound up getting these unlikely notables.

--Woody Allen

All well and good, but I wonder, does Juliet Taylor ever use a TV guide?

Max Fear Factor

 

Yes, the above picture is that of a fly reading what appears to be Forbes while being groomed by a middle-aged man in glasses. Look carefully, or even haphazardly, and you'll see what appears to be a human hand holding up the back of the magazine, which has an ad for what I'm guessing is the Sheraton hotel chain. So it's not really a fly at all, but an actual human, an actor by the name of David Hedison. In the 1958 film The Fly, Hedison played a scientist named Andre Delambre who invents a machine that can transfer matter across space, sort of like the transporter on Star Trek, though it would be another eight years before that show's debut. Unlike Captain Kirk, Dr. Delambre doesn't want to beam himself from the Starship Enterprise to a planet down below. He's perfectly content, and reasonably believes it would be a big enough scientific achievement, to go from one side of his basement to the other. Unfortunately, when he steps into the chamber, he doesn't notice the housefly inside. The machine switches on, atoms scramble, and man and fly end up with each other's head and arm/leg. On the plus side, they do make it to the other side of the basement.

 

Here's another picture:

 

The bare-chested flat-headed fellow in the middle is actor Boris Karloff. Obviously, he was never in the running to play Tarzan. No, he portrayed the title character in the 1931 film Frankenstein. Wait, that's not right. An actor by the name of Colin Clive played that particular role. The confusion is understandable. Even Universal Pictures sometimes got it wrong, such as when they came out with Abbott and Costello Meets Frankenstein in 1948. Bud and Lou met no such person. They did meet, or at least ran in the opposite direction of, a monster played by Glenn Strange. But Karloff portrayed that monster first, and best. In the 1931 film, Clive/Frankenstein is intent on creating life in the laboratory, as if the planet wasn't overpopulated enough all ready. Maybe the idea was to help childless couples.  Anyway, the result is Karloff. As you can see, he has a face only a mad scientist could love.

No, this fellow's not the Batman villain Two-Face. It's actor Lon Chaney, who played the title character in the 1925 film Phantom of the Opera. What exactly is a phantom doing at the opera, you may ask? Turns out he's a frustrated producer. When his favorite actress doesn't get the lead, he goes into a snit and drops a chandelier on the audience. I do hope the survivors got their tickets refunded.

 

 

The fellow getting groomed this time is the Phantom's son, Lon Chaney Jr. He actually came into the world as Creighton Chaney, but changed his first name once he realised identification with his father could get him acting jobs. One of those jobs was the title character in 1941's The Wolf Man. He starts out the film as a very human Larry Talbot, and turns into a monster only after being bitten by a wolf. He should be grateful he didn't get rabies.

 

 

If you're not quite sure whom that gruesome fellow in middle is, first imagine him wearing a fedora. You can't see his hands, but if you could you would, or should, see switchblades in lieu of fingers. Yep, it's none other than Freddy Kreuger, aka actor Robert Englund, of The Nightmare on Elm Street movies. In the first film of this long-running series, Freddy terrorizes teenagers in their dreams until he finally kills them, and they wake up dead. Or rather they don't wake up. He does this seven times from 1984 to 2003. Why? Originally to seek revenge. He was burned to death by a bunch of vigilante suburbanites, and now he's going after their kids. Why was he burned alive? He murdered a bunch of kids. And why did he do that? As Peter Boyle told another serial killer in an episode of The X-Files, because he's a homicidal maniac. So basically Freddy goes from being a homicidal maniac in life to a vengeful homicidal maniac in death. As the series progresses, he puts revenge behind him and goes back to being a homicidal maniac without any personal bias attached. He eventually goes after the real-life actors who played the characters in the first movie, but only kills the fictional people they encounter, proving that, in this series at least, being make-believe can be hazardous to your health. Finally, he has a turf war with Jason Voorhees, of Friday the 13th fame. I, for one, don't blame Jason for moving to the suburbs. There's a lot more kids there to kill then you're gonna find at some abandoned summer camp.

 

What the above pictures all have in common is that none of them are from the actual movies I describe. Rather, they're behind-the-scenes photos of the actors in the process of being turned into hideous beings so they can appear in those movies. None of these thespians were hideous in real life. Mostly, they were average-looking, except Hedison, who had screen idol looks (though the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea co-star had to contend with a much smaller screen as time went on.)

 

The man responsible for Karloff's and Chaney Jr's hideousness was long-time Universal make up department head Jack Pierce. That's him to the left of Karloff in the Frankenstein photo (sorry, don't know who the other fellow is) and he's holding up the scissors in the Wolf Man picture (when I see that I'm reminded of the Bill Cosby routine about a werewolf getting a haircut "Just a little off the knee.") Ben Nye is the guy hiding all human traces of David Hedison, except the one hand. Nye later founded his own make up line. David B. Miller did Englund's makeup in the first Nightmare, but that's Bill Terezakis and an assistant applying the scars for a later film.  As for Lon Chaney Sr, he did his own transformations, and is proudly displaying his makeup case in that photo.

 

Suppose you saw one of those monsters in real life? What would you do? Run? I wouldn't blame you, but how far would you run until it occurred to you that maybe that really wasn't a monster you saw? After all, everytime you see a film where the monster's a  monster solely through the art of make up, it's evidence that someone who's NOT a monster can LOOK like a monster. Thus, once you're safely in your house, your basement, with the doors to both locked and bolted, and you're hidden under the pool table, then would probably be a good time to say to yourself, "Hey, I bet that was an actor. I should have got his autograph!"

 

Of course, all actors dressed up like monsters aren't necessary worthy of an autograph. Halloween's almost upon us, and all those "haunted houses" run by the Jaycees and whoever are open for the season. We don't think of the people who work in such places--often high school or college kids--as being actors, but that's what they are, even if they don't belong to Equity. Just like Karloff and Englund, they, too, have transformed themselves into creatures of the night via make up. Or rubber masks if they're lazy. I try not to judge. It can't be easy squeezing horror in between homework.

 

 

 Certainly people do get scared when they go to those places. But I wonder, are the scariest haunted houses the ones where actors have the most convincing makeup, or masks? I once went to one where someone dressed like a--well, I'm not sure what exactly, but it was scary enough. Except I knew it wasn't real. I was in one end of the room, and the goblin or ghoul or whatever was in the other. He (or she; couldn't tell) came up to me and went AAARRRRGGGHHH!!!! and then followed me out of the room, down a hallway, and right out of the haunted house, AAARRRRGGGHHHING all the way! I'm like, dude, I get your point already. But the make up was convincing.

 

 

Unlike real haunted houses, assuming there are such things, fake haunted houses operate under a tremendous disadvantage. People who willingly go to one know, as I did, that it's fake. If they didn't, they probably wouldn't go. I mean, if it's a real haunted house, the monster kills you, right? What's the fun in that? Yet the paying customers do want to be scared, but just safe and secure in the knowledge that no physical harm will befall them. Frankly, it's a rather contradictory thing to want, but I suppose some psychological theory about getting your catharsis off can explain it. Except make up (or a mask) no matter how good, isn't going to do the trick by itself. Instead of fear, it may just inspire a certain admiration for a job well done.

The key, I think, is the element of surprise. Not that surprise is all that easy is a situation where people are walking around snapping there fingers going, "C'mon, c'mon, it's a haunted house, I want to be surprised. Coulda gone and seen Fast and Furious 17, instead I came here." But it can be done. Just make sure their mind is somewhere else. Ever do that? I don't even mean on purpose. I mean, you know, someone's wrapped up in their own thoughts, you innocuously say "hi" or whatever, and they jump back and scream, "Oh! You frightened me!" At which point, you rush to the bathroom and check your face for acne. Fright begets fright.

If I had a haunted house, here's what I would do. I'd give everybody who walked in a Rubik's cube. Let them walk through the place trying to figure out how to solve it. When they're deep into it, then you scare them. The house wouldn't even have to look haunted. It could be brightly lit, with pictures of baby chicks on the wall. My actors would look equally unsuspecting. Instead of monsters, they'd be dressed like Jehovah Witnesses. I envision them sneaking up on unsuspecting Rubik's holders and saying things like "Have you read the latest issue of The Watchtower?" Trust me, people would jump right out of their flip-flops. And the cubes would remain unsolved.

Getting back to movie monsters, there is an exception to the anything-scary-in-a-movie-could-be-fake-in-real-life rule. Stop-motion or digital animation creatures. That can only be faked on the screen. So, if you happen to see a fifty-foot ape in a real-world setting, you have my permission to wet your undies.

All this talk about stop-motion or computer animation makes me wonder. Suppose you saw a run-of-the-mill animated figure in real life. I don't mean someone dressed up as a cartoon character, like you see at Disneyland. I mean, a hand drawn cartoon. Wouldn't have to be a monster. Could be the most benign, friendliest cartoon character in the world, yet if you saw it walking right up to you on the street,  I bet you'd be scared. I bet you'd run. Or, if you were cornered, I bet you'd reach for your crucifix.

Or your Scooby snacks.

There's one last picture I want to show you:

That's James Cagney, not an actor one normally associates with horror. In fact, he's not, strictly speaking, being made up to look like a monster. He's getting ready to play the aforementioned Lon Chaney Sr. in the 1957 biopic Man of a Thousand Faces, which raises an intriguing prospect.

 

The next time you see a monster in real life, not only could it be an actor pretending to be a monster, but also an actor pretending to be an actor pretending to be a monster!

 

Nevertheless, I suggest you approach with extreme caution.

 

If you don't, you could end up with the wrong autograph. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Quips and Quotations

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by the way of advice than "Try to be a little kinder."

--Aldous Huxley

Vow Vow Voom!

By some odd stroke of fate, British actress (and later Hollywood star) Deborah Kerr and British film director (who never made it to Hollywood but should have) Michael Powell both share a birthday. She was born on this day in 1921, and he a bit earlier in 1905. They made several movies together, the most famous of which is Black Narcissus, (co-directed--as was often the case--by Emeric Pressburger), all about a convent high in the Himalayan hills where a group of repressed nuns wage a mighty struggle with their own pent-up desires. And what is it exactly that the pent-up sisters desire?

Make-up.

You have to understand, this was shot in 1947. The British censors back then were just as efficient at pent-upping the desires of filmmakers as their American counterparts. Besides, ever see a nun put on lipstick? She might as well be doing a striptease.

OK, she was actually resigning from the nunhood, but Sister Kerr is nevertheless appalled.

Here's the trailer:

Here's a more scholarly take focusing on a subplot involving British (despite the tan) film actress (and later Hollywood star) Jean Simmons, and Indian film actor (but British and Hollywood star) Sabu:

If you didn't have the seven minutes to spare, what the professor or whoever was talking basically said was that back when this film was made, the West viewed the East as a land of sinful sensuality. How times change. Nowadays, the East views the West that way!

SPOILER ALERT: The final clip I want to show you is the film's climax. If you really want to see this movie sometimes, and I obviously recommend that you do or else I'd be wasting my time on something else, I suggest you skip this and go see if it's available on Netflix, which I'm sure it is.

That said, here's the aforementioned Deborah Kerr (the one in the habit) and British actress (and never quite a Hollywood star, but, Jesus Christ, she should have been) Kathleen Byron in a scene that's a literal cliffhanger:

That, folks, is what's known as a Hail Mary pass.

Vital Viewing (Bea Benaderet's Long Count Edition)

Animator Chuck Jones was born on this day in 1912. He's best known for the thirty-some years he spent at Warner Brothers, where he brought to life such characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck (my favorite WB cartoon character, incidentally), Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Pepé Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Wile E. Coyote, and the Road Runner.

The characters Jones didn't bring to life include Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Tweety Bird, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil,  and, for those of you with long memories, Bosko. Also, his Bugs, Daffy, Porky, and Elmer look and act a little different than they do in shorts directed by Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Friz Freleng, or Robert McKimson. I bring this up to remind you that the animation studio founded by businessman Leon Schlesinger (whom Jones, Avery, Tashlin, Clampett, Freleng, and McKimson reportedly disliked) was no assembly line operation but a progressive arrangement that encouraged artistic freedom, innovation, and individuality. As long as the cartoon took no more than two weeks to make and turned a profit. Hell, I don't know. The system worked somehow. Maybe it was just dumb luck. Variously called Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies, the cartoons were both commercial and artistic successes (though a whole generation would pass before the latter was acknowledged.)

Chuck Jones is now generally recognized as the most artistic, innovative, and individualistic animator ever to have emerged from the studio. Predictably, this almost got him fired early on.

Jones first cartoons for Schlesinger/Warners were cute Disney-like things, many starring a squeaky, motormouthed mouse named Sniffles, an innocent adrift in a world of antisocial basso profundos. These cartoons were lovely to look at but not all that funny. Jones was told to change his style. He did, and came up with this hilarious short. Except his bosses weren't all that amused.  Done in a kind of too slow-then too fast-then too slow again-then too fast again style, with minimalistic backgrounds and abstractly drawn characters, it was considered downright radical in 1942. Jones himself abandoned the technique for a while, until he took it up again about five years later, most notably with his popular Road Runner cartoons.

So, here, then, is The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall, a parody of a once-popular, now-obscure series of books for adolescents. I really don't think you have to be familiar with the source material to find any of this funny.

 

 

Schlesinger/Warners never did fire Jones. World War II was on, and good cartoon directors were in short supply. So at least something positive came out of that attack on Pearl Harbor.

In Memoriam: Julie Harris 1925-2013

I'm late on this one, folks. My apologies, especially to Miss Harris, if by chance the Internet reaches the hereafter.

Actress. Five-time Tony Awards winner, meaning, if you want to see any of THOSE performances, you kind of had to have been there at the time. Fortunately, she did appear in a few movies as well: The Member of the Wedding. I Am a Camera. East of Eden. Requiem for a Heavyweight. The Haunting. Harper. Reflections in a Golden Eye. You're a Big Boy Now. Gorillas in the Mist.

A lot of things. It's imagination and a good voice...And sometimes it's the people, it's small or large. You know, it's everything. Everything.

--Julie Harris, when asked why she was so damn good at her craft.

Her voice was like rainfall. Her eyes connected directly to and channeling the depths of her powerful and tender heart. Her talent, a gift from God.

--Alec Baldwin (I've read and re-read that quote, and, for some reason, I can't quite imagine it coming out of Baldwin's mouth. Nevertheless, I do echo the sentiment--KJ)

In 1950, 24-year old Harris played a 12-year old tomboy in the Member of the Wedding on Broadway. Two years later, the now 26-year old actress played the same role in the movie version. With Ethel Waters and Brandon deWilde.

 A short time later, Harris played Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera, again both on stage and in the movies. The story later became musicalized as Cabaret.

East of Eden (1955) With James Dean

She got over her reluctance later in the movie. Whoosh!

"I doubt that Jimmy would have gotten through East of Eden except for an angel on our set. Her name was Julie Harris, and she was goodness itself with Dean, kind and patient and everlastingly sympathetic. She would adjust her performance to whatever the new kid did. Despite the fact that it had been made clear to me that [studio chief Jack] Warner, when he saw her first wardrobe test, wished I'd taken a "prettier" girl, I thought Julie beautiful: as a performer she found in each moment what was dearest and most moving....She helped Jimmy more than I did with any direction I gave him.

--Elia Kazan

In Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), Harris played a mousy clerk in a temp agency who becomes absolutely turned-on when an ex-boxer (a puffy-faced, mushmouthed Anthony Quinn) walks into the room.

The Haunting (1964) Ever have one of those nights where you just can't fall asleep?