Happy Valentine's Day!

What's a little love without a little Hollywood nostalgia? These photos should help get the blood pumping.

Gail Patrick

Irene Regan

Marilyn Monroe

Rita Hayworth

Gene Barry and BAT MASTERSON

Lawman, Indian fighter, scout and professional gambler. That's the way Bat Masterson was portrayed on a television program starring Gene Barry in the title role, broadcast over NBC from 1959 to 1961. The classic Western television series was produced by ZIV-TV, famous for producing such classics as Science Fiction Theater, I Led Three Lives, Highway Patrol and Sea Hunt.

The program featured Masterson's adventures through the pioneering West, meeting criminals and beautiful women along the way. With a derby hat, a gold-topped cane and clothes that fancied himself as a dandy, the program ran a total of three seasons. Along the way, Barry went on strike for merchandising which was never extensively detailed in his salary contract. For your amusement, here are some archival letters and telegrams that reveal some fascinating behind-the-scenes trivia. (Remember to click on the photo to enlarge.)

The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939)

movie poster

As a friend of mine, Michael Schlesinger, wrote: "It was an irresistible idea." But it should never have been made. Perhaps it could have been better. Either way, The Gracie Allen Murder Case, a 1939 Paramount motion-picture, should include a suicide hotline number.
 
About seven years ago I saw the movie for the first time. It had been unavailable on the television markets since the 1970s, but when The Gracie Allen Murder Case finally made it to home video in 2006 through Video Attic (and then on DVD in 2008 through Nostalgia Family), I took advantage of the opportunity and spent the evening watching the movie friends recommended. I enjoy the George Burns and Gracie Allen radio show, so why not a movie starring Gracie Allen? After all, she gets top billing over Warren William.

Seventy-eight minutes later, I was not laughing. Only one chuckle. My opinion was etched in stone. The film wasn't very funny. I thought my friends were going to shoot me when I delivered my opinion but, over the years, I later came to the conclusion that others felt the same way as I do. One of the flaws is that Warren William, star of The Mind Reader (1933) and four of the six Perry Mason movies (which I enjoyed, by the way), never shows up for a half-hour and when he does, he's the straight man. When Gracie cracks a joke, William pauses momentarily (obviously so the audience can have a few seconds to laugh). He's great as a straight man, but he was much better as Perry Mason.

Title screen for The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939).

William Powell was the first Philo Vance, having starred in three Vance movies including The Canary Murder Case (1929) and The Benson Murder Case (1930). Powell was great as Vance. But when he went to MGM and starred in The Thin Man movies, his character shined and dominated the Paramount mysteries. The Philo Vance movies were financially successful for the studio, Paramount, which housed Gracie Allen in a number of motion pictures. So it seemed only fitting that the studio team them up for a big production.

Just after Christmas of 1937, Van Dine agreed for $25,000 to supply Paramount Pictures a 3,000 word outline of a Philo Vance mystery to star Gracie Allen and, it was assumed, her husband and straight man, George Burns. Reportedly Burns would bow out after seeing the first draft of the screenplay. Under contract, Paramount could do anything they liked with Van Dine's outline while he went his own way and published his novel based on the original outline.
The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939) did not became one of the studio's more profitable pictures that year and it's probably because Gracie tries too hard to be more dumb than she depicted on her weekly radio program. And yes, publicity for the movie was inserted by the announcer's closing comments at the end of each radio broadcast at the time the picture came to theaters. And yes, there can be a bit too much Gracie. The only cute part of the picture is Gracie repeatedly referring to the detective as "Fido."

The Gracie Allen Murder Case

In any case, the film was made and Van Dine made his "novelization" (retaining the George Burns character from the original outline). Both movie - opening in New York June 8, 1939 - and book flopped, but Van Dine went on that year to do one more Philo Vance mystery (this time prompted by an offer from Fox Films for him to build a Philo Vance novel around their latest star, Olympic champion skater Sonja Henie, to be filmed later). The mystery was called The Winter Murder Case and was in its final stages of pre-publication when Van Dine succumbed to a heart attack on April 11, 1940. Some have theorized that Gracie Allen's starring vehicle meant the decline of the Philo Vance mysteries but, in all fairness, that decline began a couple years prior.

There would be one more posthumous Philo Vance movie from Warner Brothers, Calling Philo Vance, a remake of The Kennel Murder Case, and three more from a poverty row studio in 1947. The Gracie Allen Murder Case was the last during Van Dine's lifetime and with his direct participation. Fox later reworked Van Dine's last story, omitting the character of Philo Vance entirely, to make "The Sonja Henie Murder Case," which was ultimately released as Sun Valley Serenade!

In March of 2012, I had the opportunity to watch the movie a second time, thanks to the selection of movies at the Cinefest Convention held annually in Syracuse, New York. Now with an audience that (I hoped) would add a sense of laughter to the sound track, I had hoped the film would be funnier the second time around. After all, Laurel and Hardy shorts are funny when you watch them by yourself. They are hilarious when you watch them in a theater filled with people laughing. The projectionists set up both reels, the lights dimmed down, the sound of popcorn crunching diminished with the soundtrack during the Paramount Pictures logo.... and away we go!

Two projectors cued and ready to screen the movie.

The projectionist sets up for the late-night showing at Cinefest.

Close-up of one of the projectors.

 

Noted trivia to keep an eye out for. Gracie sings "Snug as a Bug in a Rug," co-written by Matty Malneck, who composed and conducted music for many radio comedies including Duffy's Tavern. Gracie makes a reference that "cigarettes never hurt anyone." Gracie makes a reference that she heard "Fido Vance" on the radio. And there's an indirect reference to former Vance cases including The Canary Murder Case, The Benson Murder Case and The Greene Murder Case.

Seventy-eight minutes later I was still not laughing. How much you enjoy The Gracie Allen Murder Case will entirely depend on how much you like Gracie Allen as a comedian.

S.S. Van Dine wrote The Gracie Allen Murder Case in 1938 to introduce his real life friend, Gracie Allen, into a Philo Vance Murder Mystery. George Burns made a appearance in the novel as the head perfume-smeller at the In-O-Scent Perfume Corporation, but is not in the movie version of the novel. In classic Gracie style, when Van Dine was working on the novel, Gracie quipped, "S.S. Van Dine is silly to spend six months writing a novel when you can buy one for two dollars and ninety-eight cents." The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1938) (also published as The Scent of Murder) was the eleventh of twelve detective novels by S.S. Van Dine. Can anyone tell me if I will enjoy the novel more than the movie? Because I fear in doing so, I'll waste five hours of my life I will never get back.

Closing comment: Cinefest is held annually in March in Syracuse, New York. Their web-site is http://www.syracusecinefest.com/ and if you are withing driving distance of the event, I recommend you take a day and check it out. Vendors sell everything from magazines, comics, books, DVDs, posters, lobby cards and much more. The selection of movies ranges from silents to 1940s star-studded musicals. Almost all of the films they screen are not available commercially which means the films they screen are rare. Even Leonard Maltin attends and raves about the event in his blog. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Photo of old movie, screen and old-time radio magazines.

Books available for sale at Cinefest in the vendor room.

78 records available for sale at Cinefest in the vendor room.

Batmobile Sold for $4.62 Million

George Barris and the Batmobile.

For all you Batman fans, this one's for you. Not sure if you were watching the recent Barrett Jackson auto auction, but my wife does. She's a tom boy and watches the auction like a religion. I have to admit that while I do not share her passion for four-wheel vehicles and couldn't tell the difference between a red car and a blue except for the color, the antiques formerly owned by Hollywood celebrities. This year I watched an auto formerly owned by Fatty Arbuckle and another formerly owned by Clark Gable went for large figures. But the highlight of the past auction was the iconic Batmobile from the 1960s television show which sold for $4.62 million ($4.2 with a ten percent buyer's premium added) at the Barrett-Jackson classic car auction in Scottsdale, Arizona.

The Saturday night sale thrilled famed car customizer George Barris, who first bought the 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car for one dollar from Ford. He then transformed it into the Batmobile in 15 days with a budget of $15,000, according to auction notes from Barrett-Jackson. 

Batmobile on the auction block.

There had been some question as to whether the car would fetch a large sum. Craig Jackson, chief executive of the auction firm, said he expected the car to sell for millions. One speculator theorized that the price wouldn't fetch more than $200,000. Others pointed out, though, that many imitation Batmobiles had been built over the years, a good number of them virtually indistinguishable from the original. That raised the question of whether collectors would be willing to pay a huge sum for this Batmobile simply because it was the first.

In this case, the TV Batmobile really is a singular creation. While there have been many imitations, this is the only original.

The heavily modified car, known around the world, was built at Barris Kustom Industries auto shop on Riverside Drive in North Hollywood. It has been on display there in a gallery since the television show ended in 1968.

The Batmobile makes it's way to the auction.

The Futura concept was originally created by a design team at Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln styling department. The 19-foot-long, two-seat, bubble-topped grand touring car prototype was entirely hand-built in 1954 by Ghia Body Works in Turin, Italy, and unveiled in its original pearlescent "frost-blue" white paint finish in 1955 at the Chicago Auto Show.

In late 1965, 20th Century Fox Television and William Dozier's Greenway Productions tapped Barris to come up with a car to foil Batman's enemies. Barris, who also made the Munster Koach and "Beverly Hillbillies" jalopy from the 1960s TV shows, turned out a monster.

The car features bulletproof Plexiglas bubble windshields and the Bat Ray (dual 450-watt laser beams that blasted obstacles to bits). It also has a Bat-O-Meter, which identified the location of the bad guys, as well as oil squirters, fashioned from lawn sprinkler heads, to foil evildoers.

"I saw the script and it said, 'Bang,' 'Pow,' 'Boom,' " Barris, now 87, said in an interview before the auction. "That's exactly what I wanted the car to do. I wanted it to be as big a character as the actors."

My nephews and nieces with a replica.

As for the winner... that's an amusing tale. When the Batmobile came out on stage, the crowd of bidders was so large that security did their best to prevent anyone from touching the pop icon. Hands went up and within 20 seconds, the $100,000 starting bid reached one million. By the time it reached $3 million, the bidding was down to two men and the price crept up $100,000 every minute. Eventually the total reached $4.2 million. Going... going.... sold!

The car's buyer was Rick Champagne, a Phoenix-area logistics company executive. Asked by television interviewers what motivated him to pay such a princely sum, he pointed to the woman accompanying him and said: "Her." He then explained that he'd had his eye on the Batmobile “ever since I was a kid. I had a toy model of it,” according to SPEED TV, which airs the auction "live." Asked whether he'd keep the car in his garage, he said he'd put it in his living room. No joke. "I'm going to tear down a wall and put in my living room," Champagne explained. Smart move when you consider the security issue.

Barris himself was present during the auction and was bigger than life. You could see him getting emotional on Saturday but joined in with the excitement. And he admitted later he was pleased with the price. The Batmobile ties the record for the highest price fetched for a movie car at auction. In 2010, the Aston Martin DB5 driven by Sean Connery in Goldfinger set the record when it went for $4.6 million. In 2011, the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang car auctioned for $805,000, shy of the $1 million it was expected to fetch.

In case you never heard of the Barrett Jackson Collector Car Auction, this event has a 42 year history and was established in 1971. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, the auction provides products and services to classic and collector car owners, collectors and automotive enthusiasts. The company produces the “World’s Greatest Collector Car Events” in Scottsdale, Arizona, Palm Beach, Florida, Orange County, California and Las Vegas, Nevada. According to my wife, the best is always the one held in January in Scottsdale, Arizona. Although it is billed as an automobile auction, other items are also sold, including trucks, motorcycles, airplanes, engines, boats and other memorabilia. The auction has also became a place for American car manufacturers to sell the first production vehicles of a given model and generation combination, in charity format. The Saturday auction is commonly known as 'Shatterday', referring to the frequent record breaking sales that occur that day. And the highlights of the weekend are held on Shatterday.

George Barris and the Batmobile

For the record, the Batmobile was the third highest grossing auction in the history of Barrett Jackson. The second was a 1950 General Motors Futurliner tour bus, fetching $4.32 million – The fully restored Parade of Progress display vehicle used in GM’s nationwide events was a surprisingly strong seller at the 2006 Scottsdale auction. The most expensive was the 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 Super Snake, sold for $5.5 million – Carroll Shelby’s own Cobra, a specially built supercharged big-block version of the iconic performance sports car, sold at Scottsdale in 2007. 

A friend of mine who wished he could have had enough money to buy the Batmobile, joked that he only bid $4.1 million and just missed out. Better luck next time... 

Closing thought... If he was a fan of the Batmobile prior and probably would have bid on it anyway, just what did Rick Champagne's woman tell him to convince him to buy the car?