EARLY CINEMA BOOK REVIEWS: From W.C. Fields to Max Linder

Not a month goes by that I do not received a package at my front doorstep containing a book that the author or the publisher asked me to review. Somehow I feel obligated because they went to all the time and expense to ship it to me, and write the customized letter requesting the favor. The most recent box came from Bear Manor Media and contained four biographies about actors and actresses that are long overdue. 

I THANK YOU: THE ARTHUR ASKEY STORY

By Anthony Slide 

A diminutive, frenetic comedian, known for catchphrases that were once part of the English language, Arthur Askey was one of Britain’s most popular entertainers throughout much of the 20th Century. Immediately after World War One, Askey made his professional debut in concert parties at British seaside resorts. He began to appear on the stage and on radio, and in 1938, with Richard Murdoch, he introduced Band Wagon to BBC radio listeners. It soon became the most popular program on the air, and launched Askey’s career as a film star (one of Britain’s biggest), a major entertainer in pantomime and on the legitimate stage, and ensured an easy transition some years later into television.

 

Arthur Askey’s life and career is presented here in informative and readable fashion. I Thank You: The Arthur Askey Story is the first book-length biography of a great British comedian, and will, hopefully, introduce him and his humor to new audiences around the world.

 

If you never heard of Arthur Askey, do not feel ashamed. I never heard of him, either. But the fact that Anthony Slide went to all the hard work to document the life and career of this actor was essential to ensure Askey did not fall into obscurity. Through this book, his life will live on.

 

 

THE SILENT MOVIES OF W.C. FIELDS

By Arthur Frank Wertheim

The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields is a comprehensive depiction of Fields’ early years in New York and Hollywood, his personal and professional trials and accomplishments, his triumphs and disillusionments, each of which would lead to his ultimate screen legacy. Written by Arthur Frank Wertheim, who recently published a three-volume biography on W. C. Fields, this was an amusing read.

 

To my knowledge, Wertheim’s book is the first to examine W.C. Fields’ twelve silent movies and how they influenced his later career in sound films. Quite simply: the author concludes that Fields might never have become one of the premier comedians during the Golden Age of Sound Films without first embarking on a career in silent movies. In this exploration, readers discover new insights and surprises concerning Fields’ experiences in this medium. After all, he was a stage performer and acting for the screen was an entirely different field altogether.

 

The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields details Fields’ early failed screen attempts, which resulted in his decision not to abandon his successful Ziegfeld Follies career, a choice that would prevent him from joining the pantheon of great silent film stars: Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd---each of whom, by 1925, had achieved worldwide recognition and success.

Wertheim relates how Fields would have to struggle against all types of roadblocks to reach the second pantheon tier – and how legendary filmmaker D. W. Griffith came to his rescue by directing two of his silent pictures.

 

Generously illustrated with many new and rare photos, The Silent Movies of W.C. Fields will prove invaluable to fans of both the comic genius of W.C. Fields and his pristine time of moviemaking.  

 

 

SILENTS OF THE VAMPS: BAD GIRLS YOU DON’T’ KNOW – BUT SHOULD

By Jennifer Ann Redmond

The United States of the 1910s and 1920s was terrorized by an epidemic so pervasive, so virulent, it threatened to destroy every family it touched. Parents prayed their children would be spared. Small-town America formed tactical police units to combat it. Influenza? Communism? Nope. Vampires. Not the kind repelled with garlic, either. Author Jennifer Ann Redmond delves into the secret files of eleven screen sirens who drained the life (and banknotes) out of men by day while leading criminally captivating lives by night: Alice Hollister, Carmen Phillips, Claire de Lorez, DeSacia Mooers, Edna Tichenor, Iva Shepard, Marcia Manon, Olga Grey, Rosa Rudami, Rosemary Theby, Ruth Taylor. As a sexy vamp on the screen, the personal lives of these actresses are explored with rare photographs and summaries of their careers. I knew of Theda Bara, the most famous screen vamp, so this book helped make me more familiar with other screen sirens of the 1910s and 1920s.

 

 

MAX LINDER: FATHER OF FILM COMEDY

By Snorre Smari Mathiesen

 

Max Linder, born Gabriel Leuvielle in St. Loubes, France in 1883, started in films with the Pathe Brothers in Vincennes, just outside of Paris in 1905, making him one of the first film comedians that became world-renowned. In fact, there is evidence that Linder was the first screen celebrity to see his name in print. His comedy timing and gags (Linder started writing his own scenarios early on) have been copied and imitated by many of his followers, including Charlie Chaplin.

 

The fine line between comedy and tragedy blends into shades of gray in the story of Max Linder, a French comedian and director of the silent film era, who was often held as the standard for the legendary stars coming after him. Max's early start soon escalated into hundreds of films loved worldwide and elevated him into one of the first international movie stars years before Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin. Renowned and recognized globally, his fame nearly extinguished due to World War One injuries, but he recovered, returned, and regained his status only to face one of the most terrible tragedies in human existence. His hilarious films and heartrending personal tale unfold fully in this richly researched and annotated biography and filmography. Illustrated with dozens of photographs. 

 

Author Snorre Smári Mathiesen is a Norwegian cartoonist (yes, he lives in Oslo, Norway). A silent film aficionado since childhood, he researched Max Linder’s life for the past ten years and this book is the culmination of that research. He worked as assistant and translator on sociologist Thomas Mathiesen’s autobiography, Cadenza (European Group Press, 2017), which first gave him an opportunity to learn how to write and craft a book and get it published.

 

THE RISE AND FALL OF MAX LINDER: THE FIRST CINEMA CELEBRITY

By Lisa Stein Haven

In Lisa Stein Haven’s book, Linder's story is both a comedy and a tragedy. His meteoric rise to fame by 1907/8 hit a roadblock in 1914 with the onset of World War I, and was dealt a death blow by his attempts to revive his career in America and Austria. His marriage to a young wife was ill-fated and ill-timed, leading Linder to take the life of his wife and himself on the night of October 31, 1925, leaving a 16-month-old daughter behind, Maud, who would devote her life to restoring his film legacy. 

 

It is nice to see that there are two more books exploring the life and career of Max Linder, and both have something the other does not, making them both essential for the cinema fan.

Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's FANTASTIC FOUR

With Marvel Studios' announcement that a Fantastic Four movie is in the works, it does not hurt to look back at the rendition that was never meant to be seen. 

In 1994, Roger Corman produced a low-budget movie based on Marvel's popular comic book series, The Fantastic Four, starring Alex Hyde-White, Jay Underwood, Rebecca Staab and Michael Bailey Smith. This marked the first of what would be four live action renditions. Regardless of the fact that the three movies to follow had huge million-dollar budgets, fan boys at comic cons generally agree that the 1994 film is perhaps the best of them. Yet, the Roger Corman film was never released theatrically in theaters, commercially on VHS or DVD, and continues to sit on the shelves gathering dust. In fact, the only way anyone can watch the movie is to buy a VHS or DVD bootleg. Even worse is the fact that the movie was produced with no true intention to release the film - ever!

In the mid-1980s, German film producers, Constantin Films, bought the screen rights from Marvel Comics for an initial $250,000. Among the terms of the contract was that the studio had to produce a movie within ten years or the screen rights would revert back to Marvel. Just before the ten-year option ran out, and in order to meet the terms of the contract, executives at Constantin hired Roger Corman and hurriedly put this film into production. According to the story, executives at Marvel were not impressed at the low-budget results and in order to avoid damaging the brand the studio quietly bought the few existing film prints and negatives from Constantin Films to avoid the possibility of a theatrical or video release. Both Roger Corman (who produced the film), director Oley Sassone and the cast and crew of the film were not consulted or informed of this move, as there were indeed plans in place for a small theatrical release. (A movie trailer was made with this in mind.)

Constantin Films was able to maintain another ten-year option on the screen rights, secured funding from 20th-Century Fox, and the big budget 2005 version was the end result. A 2007 sequel and a terrible 2015 reboot followed.

While the movie was a means to tap dance around a contractual clause, fan boys today have managed to secure a primitive form or preservation by mass duplicating copies of the 1994 movie on VHS and DVD. It is estimated that every fan of The Fantastic Four, across the country, have a copy of this movie in their collection. (I had the good fortune to watch the movie at a fan gathering in Michigan a number of years ago.) If executives at Marvel or Constantin wanted to keep the movie locked away, their plan failed. To believe the film could be suppressed at this point would be futile. 

So you can imagine my pleasure when I learned that two years ago director Marty Langford produced an 84-minute documentary titled Doomed! The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four, providing the view from the ground of what it was like to pour your heart and hopes into something that was never going to be seen by the general public. Practically every actor, writer, producer, director, stunt man and crew technician was approached and interviewed for commentary, providing background into the film that today you can find easily on YouTube. It is pop culture documentaries like these that I find enjoyable. Now available on DVD through Amazon.com, I recommend this to anyone who loved the 1994 Roger Corman gem. 

THE NARROW MARGIN (1952) Movie Review

When a mobster’s widow decides to testify and provide names of others involved in evil deeds, she goes undercover to avoid being killed. Onboard a train going cross-country, she is escorted by a detective who agrees to keep her in hiding long enough to reach their cross-country destination in order to testify. But when he discovers the mob is on their trail, and have boarded the train, attempting to make sure she never reaches her destination, he also discovers his job is complicated by a few passengers on the train.

 

Filmed in 1950, this movie was not released until 1952. According to director Richard Fleischer, when the film was finished, RKO Pictures owner Howard Hughes heard good things about it and ordered that a copy of it be delivered to him so he could screen it in his private projection room. The film stayed in the projection room for more than a year, apparently because the eccentric Hughes forgot about it.

 

Ironically, this movie turned out to be RKO’s biggest money-maker of 1952.

 

The film was shot in 13 days and the only part filmed on board a train was a few seconds of the arrival in Los Angeles. In preference to removing various walls from the sets, the director decided to make extensive use of a handheld camera that could be brought into rooms; this was one of the first films to do so. To save money, the train sets were rigidly fixed to the floor and the camera was moved to simulate the train rocking. The effect works beautifully for the cinematography, thus covering every aspect that defines film noir.

 

Charles McGraw and Marie Windsor

This was also Marie Windsor’s breakout part. She had been hyped as “the new Joan Crawford” but had not been noticed much until this movie was released theatrically. Also, the film does not have a music score in the usual meaning of the term: the director substituted actual train sounds in places where music would ordinarily be heard for dramatic effect.

 

Whenever someone wants to watch film noir for the first time, this is the movie I recommend they start out with. A perfect example of the genre, an enjoyable 70 minutes, and the film that usually turns cinephiles into film nori addicts. If you are going to watch only one old classic this year, this is the movie to seek out.

P.S. Avoid the 1990 remake with Gene Hackman. 

 

 

Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic

Vertigo is undeniably Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece (if not one of them) and perhaps his best film. To view it once is to be devastated. With each subsequent screening, most viewers notice bits of business, depths of thought, and stunning ironies that had previously eluded them. The first time I watched the film I was about nine years old and thought the movie was boring. But I have seen the film twice since and come to appreciate the film greatly. Vertigo is a riveting experience, haunting its fans in the same way that Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is haunted by the mysterious Madeleine Elster (Kim Novak). 

Upon researching the film, author Dan Auiler found that "this odd, obsessional, very un-matter-of-fact film was created" under "systematic, businesslike, matter-of-fact circumstances." His book gives us the opportunity to witness the construction of a film that seems at once amazing complex and absolutely seamless. He discusses the painstaking development of the screenplay (including its controversial explication of the mystery only two-thirds of the way through the film), the decision to cast Novak instead of Vera Miles opposite Stewart, the typically meticulous Hitchcock shoot, the film's amazing special effects and extraordinary credit and dream sequences, and the legendary musical score composed by Bernard Herrmann. 

The book also includes a forward by Vertigo enthusiast Martin Scorsese, and hundreds of production photos, reproductions of memos, storyboard sketches, and posters. Vertigo: The Making of a Hitchcock Classic is available in paperback and hardcover. If you are a fan of the movie, this book is a must-have.