Classic Scrooge

Bah. Humbug. I'm tempted to utter Charles Dickens' famous expletive a lot during the Christmas season. Holiday displays featuring bears and bicycles bring out the Scrooge in me. (Bears? Bicycles? Am I missing the Christmas connection there?) Sometimes it's a version of A Christmas Carol. Have you seen the lumbering musical with Albert Finney? Or the one with Bill Murray that plays like a Saturday Night Live sketch stretched to the limit? There are versions with Mickey Mouse, the Muppets, Jim Carrey, and even the Fonz, er, Henry Winkler. Dickens' classic is in the public domain so anyone can make a movie or stage a theatrical version without requesting permission or paying the author's estate one cent. Even stingy Ebenezer would like that deal. But for my money, there are only two versions as enduring as the tale itself. One is a live action black-and-white theatrical feature. The other is a cartoon made for television.

The feature, produced by England's Renown Pictures in 1951, is known as Scrooge in its native U.K., but was retitled A Christmas Carol in the U.S. and elsewhere. It stars Alistair Sim, whom the late Shel Silverstein once called “the greatest comic actor. . . a genius.” Sim is also the only actor to make enough of an impression as Scrooge to claim the role as his own. The actor shows us Scrooge's hard exterior, but also gives us a glimpse of the sensitive young man he once was, a man bruised by life and determined to protect himself from further disappointment. Scrooge's transformation from cold miser to the man who "knew how to keep Christmas well" is believable because Sim creates a three dimensional figure.

The rest of the cast is also splendid with Mervyn Johns (best known for 1946's classic Dead of Night) a perfect Bob Cratchit and skeletal Ernest Thesiger, good old Dr. Pretorius from Bride of Frankenstein, as Mr. Stretch, the undertaker as cadaverous as his clients.

Since A Christmas Carol is a ghost story as much as a Christmas tale, the mood needs to be just right and director Brian Desmond Hurst captures it perfectly. The mood is what really distinguishes this film and sets it apart from other adaptations. This is no jolly sleigh ride but a fairly dark tale, often depressing until its joyous climax. When it debuted in U.S. theaters, the film was praised by The New York Times for its "somber and chilly atmosphere" while Variety panned it for being too grim. The film's lack of contrived good cheer hurt it at the box-office, but the film acquired a strong following after it began to appear on television.

Unfortunately, a colorized version that dilutes the film's power has become too prominent on television in the last decade, and the original black-and-white version can often be seen only on video.

If you really want your Scrooge in color, try Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol. First aired on U.S. television on December 18, 1962, the hour long animated film is unique in that it casts a cartoon character, the bumbling, dangerously near-sighted Magoo, as Scrooge and does so without compromising the integrity of Dickens' creation. The show is well produced with many memorable songs, and, it too, has a suitably dark tone at times, although it is considerably more upbeat than the 1951 film. If this version isn’t entirely faithful to Dickens, it is nonetheless true to his spirit and is a fine way to introduce children to this beloved literary classic.

A Christmas Carol has been popular with filmmakers since the earliest days of the cinema with the earliest known version appearing in 1908. New versions will continue to be produced as long as we celebrate Christmas, but it's doubtful anyone will offer a version to challenge those of Mr. Sim or Mr. Magoo.

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal

© 2003 Brian W. Fairbanks

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3 Forgotten Christmas Movies

The promise of peace on earth is never fulfilled at Christmas, but everything is possible in Christmas movies. George Bailey is saved from suicide every Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge always greets Christmas morning as a kinder, gentler man, and Bing Crosby rises from the dead to sing "White Christmas" in black and white (Holiday Inn) and color (White Christmas). Like the sound of reindeer on the rooftop and sleighbells in the snow, Christmas movies are a part of the holiday landscape. It wouldn't really seem like Christmas without It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street, but while those classics are among the most heralded Christmas movies, there are other, less popular, but still delightful films sure to brighten your holiday season.

1940's Remember the Night is the charming tale of a prosecuting attorney who takes a shoplifter to his family's farm for Christmas because he doubts he can successfully convict her on Christmas Eve and doesn't wish to see her spend the holidays in jail. The shoplifter, a product of a broken home, experiences a Christmas unlike any she's known before. Meanwhile, the prosecutor falls in love with her, making his professional duties all but impossible. Four years later, the film's stars, Fred Macmurray and Barbara Stanwyck, made one of film noir’s most cynical couples in Double Indemnity, but in this Preston Sturges masterpiece, they display a warmth that is as endearing as the Preston Sturges screenplay.

In 1949's Holiday Affair, Janet Leigh is a widowed mother responsible for getting department store clerk Robert Mitchum fired during the Christmas season. Mitchum is soon competing with Wendell Corey for the affections of both Leigh and her son in this modest but effective Christmas romance. It's especially nice to see big, bad Bob Mitchum in such a gentle role, and his tough guy image keeps the sugar coated story from becoming too sweet.

Bob Hope is as synonymous with Christmas as Bing Crosby. In addition to starring in annual holiday TV specials and entertaining the troops, he starred in The Lemon Drop Kid, a delightful but now relatively forgotten 1951 comedy that deserves to be revived every Christmas. In this Damon Runyon story, Hope is a scam artist whose gang poses as Salvation Army sidewalk Santas in order to pay off a debt to a gangster. Like Scrooge, Hope sees the error of his ways by the time the credits roll, but not before providing some big laughs and introducing the classic Christmas carol, "Silver Bells," an Oscar nominee for best song.

All three of these films are available on video and are sure to brighten the holiday season as much as the more famous Christmas movies. Watch them, and, who knows, they may become as much a tradition in your home as It's a Wonderful Life.

© 2003 Brian W. Fairbanks

Originally published at Paris Woman Journal

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Kurt Vonnegut: And So He Went

I read Slaughterhouse Five in a college literature class. It was only then that I realized that the phrase, “And so it goes,” did not originate with Linda Ellerbee of NBC News’ Overnight, the sassy late night news hour that ran from 1982-83. I liked the book, but wasn’t impressed enough to read anything else that Kurt Vonnegut had written. Years later, I did read a few of his essays (in one, he praised Helena Blavatsky, the witch credited with introducing the occult to America, as “quite wonderful”), and a slim volume, God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (chosen because it was slim and wouldn’t require more than an hour to read). By then, he was being published by the comparatively small Seven Stories Press since the major houses had written him off as a spent force.

I always liked his hair. Like me, he had a head of thick, unruly curls, and still did when he died at age 83 in April 2007. I always liked that he was an unrepentant and unapologetic chain smoker (another trait I share, although he preferred Pall Malls while I favor Camels). Somehow, he avoided the diseases associated with the nicotine habit, although I do recall reading he had emphysema in his latter years, but a case too mild to require traveling with an oxygen tank. However, I did not like his rather smug, knee-jerk liberalism, often expressed in cheap shots like the one he took at George W. Bush on The Jon Stewart Show. I don’t remember his exact words, but then they weren’t very memorable, pretty much limited to calling Bush an “idiot.” I wasn’t a fan of Bush 43 either, but to go on TV and suck up applause for such a trite insult is unworthy of anyone, but especially of a man who made his name with words. Real clever, Kurt.

A self-professed “humanist,” a philosophy he described as promoting decency and kindness without concern for the rewards in an afterlife, Vonnegut was not always decent and kind himself, even at times when decency and kindness would not require much effort. In And So It Goes - Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, Charles J. Shields describes Vonnegut’s behavior at a 1983 speaking engagement at Oxford. Taking questions from the audience, he was asked if he kept any “tools of the trade” on his desk, perhaps a favorite dictionary. It’s as legitimate as asking a writer where he gets his ideas, but an easier one to answer. Vonnegut treated the question as an opportunity to get a cheap laugh at the expense of an admirer. As Shields writes:

“Kurt chuckled, apparently amused by such a jejune question - a favorite dictionary? The audience murmured and laughed in sympathy.”

The fan who asked the question felt humiliated. After the audience stopped chuckling, Vonnegut finally provided an answer.

“No, he said finally, he had no ‘favorite dictionary,’ dismissing the notion by shaking his curly head”

Angry that the big shot author he idolized would embarrass him publicly, the student who posed the question wrote Vonnegut the next day: “It is your prerogative to piss on everything till doomsday, Mr. Vonnegut: but why do it in public? And why do it pretending to be doing something else?”

A few weeks later, Vonnegut sent a reply, along with a check, a refund for the cost of admission to his speaking engagement, not, he insisted, as a gesture of apology. Vonnegut was angry that he had been taken him to task for his rudeness. Years later, the student, now a reporter for Newsweek, found himself having lunch with Vonnegut and several others at Rockefeller Center. Before leaving, he reminded Vonnegut of their previous correspondence, believing both could laugh it off. Vonnegut didn’t laugh. “Oh, I remember,” he said. “Funny, you don’t seem like an asshole.” Of course not. On both occasions, the asshole was Vonnegut.

Before becoming a successful novelist, one who I always assumed was highly regarded in literary circles (alas, the literati generally dismiss his work as belonging to a phase that college students go through before abandoning him for more serious writers), Vonnegut was a corporate writer (so was I for a time), a public relations man at General Electric. He got the job on the recommendation of his brother, Bernard, a chemist credited with co-inventing a process of “cloud seeding” that could manipulate the weather. (Gee, I wonder what those who chuckle at conspiracy theories involving chemtrails would say about that?)

Vonnegut, like many another liberal, would later rail against corporations like GE. But, like many another liberal - Bella Abzug, are you listening from beyond the grave? - he owned stock in them, fattening his bank account on profits from, among others, “Dow Chemical, the sole maker of napalm during the Vietnam War: and Multitrust Real Estate Fund, a development of apartment complexes and shopping centers in six cities.”

Shields claims these investments were not really inconsistent with Vonnegut’s beliefs. “He believed in free enterprise,” he writes. “It had made his forebears rich. And he recognized that many ideas of Western freedom are intrinsically tied to capitalism.”

I guess if you’re going to devote a chunk of your life to writing a 513 page bio (including the index, etc), you’re tempted to make excuses for your subject, but for Vonnegut to profit from a war he publicly opposed, which he certainly did by investing in Dow, is hypocrisy. Even investing in a company that built shopping malls and had to mow down nature to do it should raise eyebrows. Vonnegut was an environmentalist, after all, who said, “I think the earth’s immune system is trying to get rid of us . . . we are a disease on the face of this planet.”

It was only after he achieved literary success that Vonnegut even began to think about a political stance. Since the audience for his work was primarily young and liberal, he adapted a pose that would appeal to that demographic. He let his close-cropped hair grow into an unruly mop and grew a mustache. But he continued to favor suits, ties, and black wingtips, attire that, if favored by anyone under 30 in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, could only mean they were flag waving, Nixon supporting republicans. That wouldn’t describe Jefferson Airplane, the psychedelic rock band responsible for “White Rabbit” whose lead singer, Grace Slick, once claimed to have dropped LSD into Tricia Nixon’s drink during a visit to the White House. As a “hero of the counterculture,” Vonnegut received an invitation from the band to brainstorm ideas for their next album. “The vibrations were just awful,” he remembered. “I wanted out as fast as possible.. . . They may have had funny ideas about who I am on the basis of my books, and I turned out not to be that way at all.”

Some fans who never met him personally saw through the facade. After receiving a “fill in the blanks” form after requesting Vonnegut for a personal appearance, a fan wrote an angry letter to his agent. “Maybe I’m silly but I thought he’d be different. I thought he’d care just a little. How wrong I was. He’s just a capitalist like everyone else. No time for someone truly interested, for someone who truly cares.”

To hear others tell it, Vonnegut gave Hal Holbrook a run for his money by consciously playing Mark Twain in public. Critics had first pointed out Vonnegut’s resemblance to Twain in appearance (the hair, mostly, and the mustache), and the fact that they shared a birthplace and a sense of humor encouraged Vonnegut to play up the similarities, and pattern himself after the former Samuel Clemens. Much in demand for public speaking engagements, Vonnegut did his Mark Twain schtick, an act he also trotted out for fellow writers. At a party for PEN, an organization claiming to promote free speech but actually designed to further a liberal political agenda, novelist Hilary Masters recalled Vonnegut “doing his Mark Twain imitation, baggy white suit, bushy hair, and flowing mustache. He was standing a little apart, maybe aloof, like an icon of some kind . . . My attitude toward Vonnegut was that he was something of a poseur and that his impersonation of Twain was almost a theatrical device.”

Poseur. My thoughts exactly. And so it goes.

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

Nick Adams was a rebel

“Johnny Yuma was a rebel. He roamed through the West.”

Those words were sung over the credits of The Rebel, a half-hour western drama from the early 1960s that is probably familiar to most baby boomers. It doesn’t resonate as strongly as a Beatles song, but it resonates. In an episode of Seinfeld, Kramer absent-mindedly sings the theme on the phone after he's put on hold. It might have been scripted, but it could have just been a bit of improv by Michael Richards, an actor old enough to remember when the show starring Nick Adams originally aired. It helps that the theme was sung by Johnny Cash, a bonafide music legend whose death in 2002 was marked with all the hoopla one expects post-Elvis.

The Rebel's star died in February 1968 at age 36, and though his passing was not a media event, it was front page news, certainly in Cleveland, Ohio. The Plain Dealer ran the headline, “Actor Nick Adams Found Dead,” near the bottom of its front page. A few days later, The Cleveland Press’ "Showtime," an entertainment tabloid included in the Friday edition, featured a eulogy by a showbiz columnist titled “Then His Star Began to Fade,” detailing Adams’ struggle to achieve stardom in Hollywood and of how he fell short of realizing his ambition while still coming closer than most to grabbing the brass ring.

As a poor kid growing up in Pennsylvania, Adams escaped at the movies, idolizing John Wayne and James Cagney in whose footsteps he hoped to follow. In Hollywood, he hooked up with another wannabe star, James Dean. If the more sensational accounts of their history are accurate, the two survived by hustling gay men on the streets of Hollywood and Vine. In Hollywood Babylon Revisited, author Darwin Porter claims Adams used his rumored “well hung” status to land auditions and movie roles. However he went about realizing his dream, he succeeded in being cast in Mister Roberts with Cagney and Henry Fonda, though he’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-him presence. He was a little more prominent, though not by much, in Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean’s follow-up to East of Eden which rocketed him to stardom in early 1955. By the time Rebel was released later that same year, Dean was dead and about to be reborn as the object of one of the first celebrity death cults.

A born hustler, Adams exploited his Dean connection to work his way into the shadow of Elvis Presley, who admired Dean and inherited his place as the misunderstood rebel whose sneer was but a cover for a sensitive, wounded heart. It is primarily through his association with these two legends that Adams is known today, but he had a few memorable roles in such films as Picnic, Pillow Talk, and The Last Wagon. His finest moment came in a comedic part, that of Private Ben Whitledge, Andy Griffith’s bespectacled pal in the hilarious No Time for Sergeants. But such a role wasn’t compatible with the image that Adams wanted to project, that of the tight-jawed hero like those he worshiped in his movie-going youth. If casting directors didn’t see the 5'7" actor in the Duke Wayne mold, he’d have to take matters into his own hands, and did, by co-creating The Rebel with Andrew J. Fenady, and successfully selling the idea to ABC.

Popular for a time, The Rebel survived only two seasons (1959-1961) on the then struggling network, but Adams wasn’t through. After landing a minor supporting role in Twilight of Honor, a 1963 courtroom drama dashed off to cash in on Richard Chamberlain’s popularity as TV’s Dr. Kildare, Adams seized the opportunity to position himself for an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. He hustled - buying $8,000 worth of trade ads to promote himself and successfully bought a nomination. It was a classic example of chutzpah, all the more remarkable since Adams’ role in the film wound up on the cutting room floor. Melvyn Douglas won for Hud. If Douglas hadn’t triumphed, singer Bobby Darin would likely have won for an impressive turn as a traumatized soldier in Captain Newman, M.D.

With Hollywood concerned that so many productions were now being filmed on foreign soil, Adams made some noise by telling reporters he would only accept parts in movies made at home. Trouble is, he wasn’t receiving offers in the States, so he did an about face, and went to England to co-star with Boris Karloff in Die, Monster, Die, an above average adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story released by American International in 1965, the same year Allied Artists tossed out Young Dillinger, with Adams in the title role, as one half of a drive-in double bill.

His co-star in the latter film was a young actor for whom Adams was a mentor: Robert Conrad, already popular due to his role on TV’s Hawaiian Eye, and about to win more fans as James T. West, the secret service agent of The Wild, Wild, West. Conrad managed to squeeze Adams in as a guest star on a pair of episodes at a time when his only other options were such made-in-Japan atrocities as Frankenstein Conquers the World and Monster Zero. By then, Adams was more familiar to TV audiences as a celebrity contestant on PDQ, a game show hosted by Dennis James.

The circumstances of Adams’ death in February 1968 remain a subject of debate with some mystery aficionados suggesting he was knocked off, perhaps by someone intent on covering some shady business practices. He was found slumped against the wall of his bedroom, eyes open and staring. An autopsy found a combination of drugs in his system, usually a sign of either an accidental overdose or suicide.

Before his death, he managed two more film roles. Mission Mars, a shoddy space travel flick with Darren McGavin, may not have been released theatrically (it never arrived in my hometown, anyway), but Fever Heat, a racing drama for Paramount, was unloaded at drive-ins four months after his death, supported by a re-issue of The Sons of Katie Elder.

Adams comes to mind because The Rebel is being revived on Me TV (Memorable Television), a network whose programming is a sort of Greatest Hits from TV’s past (look for it on one of the many sub-stations that popped up after the switch from analog to digital broadcasting). Nick Adams may be little more than a blip on the radar screen of pop culture today, but there was a time when, for a half-hour of network prime time each week, he was the brave, somewhat surly, hero he always wanted to be. And now, thanks to reruns, he is sneering heroically again.

POSTSCRIPT: Allyson Adams, daughter of the late Nick Adams, recently found a diary written by her father during the eight days he accompanied Elvis Presley when the latter was being celebrated by his hometown of Tupelo, Mississippi. Titled The Rebel and the King, you can find more information about the book (and pre-order a copy) at the following link: http://therebelandtheking.com/

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Who's Bob Hope?

This, a TV network catering to the substations that began to appear after the switch from analog to digital broadcasting, recently showed I’ll Take Sweden, a Bob Hope flick with Tuesday Weld and Frankie Avalon (on break from American International’s Beach Party series to give the United Artists comedy some “youth appeal”). It’s one of several films that the ski-nosed comedian made for United Artists in the 1960s (Call Me Bwana, Eight on the Lam, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number, and The Private Navy of Sgt. O’ Farrell were among the others), a decade in which he thrived on television as the host of numerous NBC specials and the annual Academy Awards, but found his big screen appeal on the wane. The movie audience by that time was growing increasingly younger, and had turned their attention to more contemporary comic personalities like Peter Sellers. Even Hope’s older fans were finding his movies embarrassing as he continued to play the would-be-Lothario even in his mid-60s. In his final big-screen starring vehicle, 1972's Cancel My Reservation, released by Warner Bros., Hope, then nearing 70, tells someone he’s 42, and, no, it wasn’t meant as a joke, a variation on Jack Benny’s running gag that he was always 39.

In I’ll Take Sweden, Hope plays his age. He’s married to Dina Merrill. Tuesday Weld plays his daughter who is being wooed by Avalon, of whom Hope probably disapproves. I say “probably” because I wasn’t following the intricacies, such as they were, of the plot. Seeing Hope in this movie made me wonder if the comic, once a godlike figure in American culture, and a controversial one for his outspoken conservative politics and support of the Vietnam War, is known to anyone under 30 today?

On a recent episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, bandleader Paul Shaffer made a reference to Hope when pop star Britney Spears made an unscheduled appearance, something Hope had done many times on The Tonight Show during the reign of Johnny Carson.

“Who’s Bob Hope?” she asked.

Who’s Bob Hope?!!!

In the 1960s and ‘70s (and in earlier decades), such a question would have been unthinkable. Britney Spears may not be typical of her generation in being unfamiliar with a man whose presence was impossible to avoid when I was growing up, but I think she is. The days when the three major TV networks (CBS, NBC, ABC) dominated American culture are long gone. Even a casual TV viewer would have likely been exposed to Bob Hope in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, either through his Christmas specials, his old movies (and some of the older ones, like My Favorite Spy and those Road movies with Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, were good ones) on local television late shows, itself a remnant of the past, or through his regular visits to the evening and afternoon talk shows. Even if you didn’t actually watch these shows, you would have been aware of them during the commercials breaks during Star Trek or The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Hope’s NBC specials were ratings powerhouses, always placing in the top 10 of the weekly Nielsen ratings. In the late ‘70s, however, his drawing power began to deteriorate. His much ballyhooed trip to China, the subject of a 1979 special, was creamed in the ratings, even losing to ABC’s airing of Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, ironic considering that Hope was a mainstream establishment figure with wide appeal, and Allen, who idolized Hope, was a comparatively fringe performer whose appeal was to a younger, more intellectually inclined (and pretentious) clique.

Hope continued cranking out specials into the ‘80s with disappointing results, then retired the next decade, finally passing on at age 100 in 2003. Hope’s death was front page news and received massive media coverage, but NBC, the network at which he spent several lucrative decades, didn’t bother to commemorate his career with a prime-time special compiling clips from his many specials. Times had changed and tastes had shifted. Hope was an historical figure of interest to viewers other than those in the age bracket (18-49) that appeals to advertisers, and, therefore, worthy of a news report but not an even an hour of prime-time.

Times waits for no one, as the Rolling Stones observed, and time passed Bob Hope by as it is passing by many icons for the 20th century. The icons include performers, but also products that were once essential to our daily lives. Timex may have sponsored many of Bob Hope’s TV specials, but the wristwatch is no longer a necessity to a generation raised in the age of the cell phone. Many young people don’t wear watches. They simply whip out their cell phones to check the time, and since it’s displayed in digits, knowing that it’s, say, 2:30 when the small hand is on the 2 and the big hand is on the 6, is almost useless. Newspapers have been a staple of American life since the 1800s, but their considerable influence was usurped by the Internet and most, even such venerable institutions as The New York Times, are unlikely to survive with their power intact, if they survive at all. Magazines are still around, but their circulation and revenue, dependent on advertising dollars, are dwindling and their future is looking increasingly precarious. Newsweek has been losing $20 million a year and has been put up for sale by its owner, The Washington Post. Time, which debuted in 1923 and on whose cover one was thought to have reached the pinnacle of fame, may be doing better, but no one really cares about “making” the cover anymore. I’m more likely to read it online than in print. Movies survive, but 35 mm film, on which movies have been shot and printed since their invention in the last years of the 19th century, is likely to become obsolete as digital becomes the format in which movies are made and projected. Television is still with us, but those three networks - ABC, CBS, and NBC - that once dominated the industry, must now compete with Fox which started in the ‘80s as a minor niche network, but now has the single most popular prime-time program thanks to American Idol. Now there are four networks, and while they still command the largest chunk of the viewing audience, cable channels have made inroads into their audience. Some younger viewers watch their favorite shows online.

Also competing with television is home video, introduced to the market in 1976 with the debut of the Betamax. Soon, the Betamax lost out to VHS, which became the format of choice among consumers. Now, tape has been replaced with discs, DVDs and now Blueray. Eventually, discs will disappear as movies are downloaded via the Internet. The accessibility of movies in these formats threatens movie theaters as they become less important. Will they disappear, too? Technology has had the greatest impact on the recording industry. It was in 1877 that Thomas Edison invented sound recording which soon became available to the public on cylinders. Dials made of wax and rubber soon took their place and pre-recorded music was available to the public on discs that played on phonographs at 78 rpm (which stood for “revolutions per minute”). The long-playing 33 1/3 disc was introduced in the middle of the 20th century, along with the 45 rpm single that traditionally contained two songs, one per side. Reel-to-reel tape made its debut shortly thereafter, followed by 8 Track cartridges, then cassettes. The vinyl record dominated until the ‘80s when the compact disc, a tiny metallic object little bigger than the average palm, took its place. Now, however, music is being downloaded from the Internet, sometimes illegally. Disc sales are way down, and the major recording companies, including such famous names as RCA, Capitol, and Columbia, are almost certainly going to crash and burn as recording artists bypass them completely and market their music themselves. And that music is heard more often than not on the Internet or played on tiny hand-held devices like the MP3 player, rather than on the radio. It’s a new world.

It’s a world in which many people are likely ask the same question that Britney Spears posed to Paul Shaffer: "Who’s Bob Hope?"

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Halloween at "Horror Hotel"

Although set in February, the month of Candlemas Eve, Horror Hotel is a perfect movie for Halloween. From 2006, here are my thoughts on one of my favorite chillers.

The poster for the 1963 U.S. release of Horror Hotel, a tiny reproduction of which appears on the cover of Navarra’s Triple Feature Horror Classics, Volume 5, was one of the most misleading pieces of advertising ever devised for a film’s marketing campaign.

“Just ring for doom service!” the tag line reads. A key on which the film’s title is imprinted dangles from a skeleton’s hand surrounded by a grotesque face with fangs, saliva visible in its open mouth.

The poster gives no clue to the atmosphere that director John Moxey and cinematographer Douglas Dickinson bring to this tale of modern day witchcraft in the village of Whitewood, Massachusetts. A movie that basks in morbidity and sends chills down the spine is depicted as a grade B scream fest on the order of a William Castle production, something like The Tingler that inspires more giggles than groans. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which gives its seal of approval to films and their advertising, may have rejected an ad campaign that hinted at the movie’s portrayal of human sacrifice. When released in the U.K. as City of the Dead in 1960, this chiller may have benefitted from a more honest and effective promotional campaign, but I’m sure children were forbidden from attending even with parents.

By the early ‘60s, horror films were generally regarded as kid stuff in the U.S., fodder for Saturday matinees and drive-in triple features. The U.K. had a ratings system long before Hollywood introduced their self-policing system in 1969, and the colorfully gory titles produced by Hammer were frequently slapped with an “adults only” label in their native country of Great Britain. Once they traveled overseas to the States, they were open to all audiences, perhaps due to simple economics. The early Universal horror films, Dracula and Frankenstein, which established the horror genre, appealed to adults, as well as younger audiences. As the genre deteriorated into less sophisticated territory (Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman), the fan base narrowed to teens and kids.

By the late ‘50s, when Universal released its backlog of pre-1949 titles to television, Hammer was reviving the moribund genre with full color remakes. At the same time, Forrest J. Ackerman began publishing Famous Monsters of Filmland, a magazine devoted to horror and science-fiction films, soon to be followed by the competing Castle of Frankenstein whose approach was more sophisticated, geared more to film buffs who admired horror and science-fiction, and less to kids who simply liked monsters.

But the kids who liked monsters, and preferred building Aurora model sets of Dracula and Frankenstein to slapping the glue on plastic airplanes, won out, so Horror Hotel’s advertising campaign was directed at them, as were the ads for The Head, the German film that comprised the second half of the double bill when Horror Hotel opened stateside in June 1963, just in time for summer vacation and the start of the drive-in season.

I saw it at the Pearl Road Drive-In in Cleveland, Ohio with my family, and it made a strong impression on me that was only strengthened when I saw it again a few years later on the Friday night late movie hosted by Houlihan and Big Chuck on WJW-TV8. It was a mainstay on local television throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, then disappeared in the ‘80s, its owners having failed to renew the copyright. But it continued to haunt the imagination of those who saw it on television, usually in the wee hours, the perfect time for a film that casts such a macabre, creepy spell.

Horror Hotel was finally released on home video in the ‘90s, and I checked in again in 2004 to find it every bit as effective as I remembered.

Horror Hotel is a triumph. Filmed entirely on a soundstage at Shepperton Studios by Vulcan Productions, which would change its name to Amicus for such future shockers as Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors and The House That Dripped Blood, it is unmatched for its atmosphere. The fog machine never worked harder than it did when used to create the crypt-like ambience of Whitewood. The Raven’s Inn, the private hotel built on the exact spot where Elizabeth Selwyn was burned at the stake on March 3, 1692 (a dramatic sequence that opens the film), is dark and deathly quiet except for the ticking of the clock in the lobby and the solemn chanting that visiting college student Nan Barlow tells the proprietor, Mrs. Newliss, she hears coming from beneath the trap door in her room.

“There’s nothing under there but earth,” Mrs. Newliss says, and points to the trap door’s lack of a ring as evidence. The ring later appears dangling in the window shortly before the film’s most frightening moment: Nan Barlow’s descent via the cobwebbed stairs beneath the Raven’s Inn where she meets her terrifying fate.

Horror Hotel has a few hokey moments. When Professor Barlow (Dennis Lotis) invades the witches coven below the Raven’s Inn, he empties his handgun into his foreboding colleague, the undead witch, Professor Driscoll (Christopher Lee). The bullets have no effect, so what does Barlow do? The same thing the gangsters did on TV’s The Adventures of Superman when realizing the Man of Steel could not be deterred with mere bullets: Barlow throws his gun at Driscoll! Even more laughable is Driscoll’s reaction: he ducks!

Then there’s that bookstore operated by the granddaughter of the reverend who warns visitors to Whitewood that the devil lives and is worshiped there. Considering that the aligning church has no congregation, and all of the townsfolk appear to be witches, who is the clientele? Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson) stops in seeking books for her college thesis on the history of witchcraft in Whitewood, but she only borrows a dusty antique volume (A Treatise on Devil Worship in New England) that she can’t afford to buy. Ken Jones’ jazz that is heard as Barlow drives to Whitewood has been criticized, but since it seems to be emanating from the car radio, it’s not inappropriate. Still, it contributes nothing to the film, quite unlike Douglas Gamely’s eerie choral music that opens the film and is heard during the witches rituals. It has the effect of a cold, dead hand on your shoulder.

The acting is excellent, much better than required for a low-budget horror show, an indication that the producers envisioned a quality project and sought only the best talent.

Venetia Stevenson, the perky blonde whose disappearance while researching witchcraft for a college assignment paves the way for the fiery climax, has an innocent charm that contrasts well with the saturnine Patricia Jessel, whose strong features attract and repel at the same time. Despite her fourth billing, Jessel is the true star of Horror Hotel, and her performance as Elizabeth Selwyn/Mrs. Newliss would have been a mere caricature of a witch in lesser hands. But Jessel was a Tony Award winner as best supporting actress in the 1956 Broadway production of Agatha Christie’s Witness for the Prosecution, and her performance suggests she did not regard her role in a “horror movie” as a lark.

When Nan Barlow asks Mrs. Newliss if Elizabeth Selwyn was really burned as a witch on the site where the Raven’s Inn now stands, Jessel doesn’t merely say “She was,” but answers with a mix of pride and pain with a facial expression to match. She conveys both the haughty delight she takes in having been condemned for her beliefs, as well as the sorrow she feels about her persecution.

Christopher Lee as her accomplice is no mere boogeyman, but a weary sort, impatient with those, like Professor Barlow, who mock and condescendingly dismiss his teachings as nonsense. Dennis Lotis, previously known as a pop singer, is also impressive, never more so than when he follows his sister’s trail and, in the cavern below the Raven’s Inn, discovers the corpse of Lotti, the mute servant sympathetically played by Ann Beach, whose attempts to warn the guests of their host’s true nature leads to her doom.

Tom Naylor as Nan’s boyfriend, Betta St. John as the heroine of the second half of the film, and Norman Macowan as Reverend Russell are also excellent.

Then there’s Valentine Dyall as Jethro Keane, who hitches a ride with Nan Barlow on her way to Whitewood, only to disappear into mist when they reach the cemetery. Dyall, a character actor with a distinctive baritone, later played the caretaker in 1963's The Haunting, a more prestigious horror film that would make for a perfect double feature with Horror Hotel.

Horror Hotel is a superbly crafted thriller that received scant attention from critics (The New York Times panned it, along with The Head, in a review so brief that I suspect the critic didn’t bother to see the movie), but it has inspired devotion among those who discovered it, quite unexpectedly, through its television airings, and now regard it as the scariest movie they’ve ever seen.

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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Bob Dylan, Art Thief?

Since when is it considered plagiarism to make a drawing or painting of a photograph?

Bob Dylan came under fire this week when it was revealed that several of his paintings on display at the Gagosian Gallery in New York were based on photographs, many retrieved from Flickr, and at least one of which copies the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Other than Dylan's dubious claim that "I paint from real life," and that the paintings are a "visual journal" of his travels, my reaction is, so what?

Drawing from photographs is a fairly standard practice among high-school art students, as well as for artists without access to live models. Dylan is neither, but if creating a painting from a photograph is theft, then it could be argued that a photographer is a thief whenever he aims his camera at any subject other than himself.

If he photographs a bridge and doesn't acknowledge those who built it, well, he's a plagiarist, is he not?

If he photographs a building and does not acknowledge the architect, as well as receive his permission to duplicate his work on film, he's stealing the architect's work, right?

If that's the case, a photojournalist who captures a crowd scene on film needs the permission of every individual in the photo, all of whom have the right to decide if that photo can be published. They are also entitled to financial compensation if the photographer is paid for that published work. It's even been said that the camera steals the soul of its subjects. If that doesn't entitle a photographer's subject to damages, well, there's something wrong with our legal system.

If Dylan is a plagiarist, he's in good company.

Did Andy Warhol request permission from the Campbell Soup Company before creating his legendary "soup can"? Did Campbell's share in any profit that Warhol made from selling his work or reproductions thereof?

What about the manufacturers of Brillo, whose box became another memorable Warhol piece? Somebody created the original design, although it's doubtful Brillo gave him credit or anything but a flat fee or paycheck.

How about Warhol's piece depicting an electric chair? Should he have acknowledged whoever built it and been required to pay a licensing fee?

And let's not overlook Warhol's silkscreens of Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, two superstars whose images are worth millions and who did not agree to pose for him. Warhol depicted Elvis in a scene from the 1960 Twentieth Century Fox film, Flaming Star, and Monroe from the same company's 1957 film, The Seven Year Itch. Not only was Warhol stealing from Elvis and Marilyn, he was ripping off Twentieth Century Fox, as well as the photographers, film directors, and even the screenwriters who might be able to claim ownership of those images.

As for music, where's the name of Lennon and McCartney on David Bowie's 1975 song, "Young Americans," which quotes "I read the news today, oh boy" and its accompanying melody from the Beatles' "A Day in the Life"?

Joe DiMaggio earned a mention in Paul Simon's "Mrs. Robinson." Was DiMaggio consulted beforehand? Did he have the right to demand that the line in which his name appears be excised? For that matter, what about all of us who comprise the “nation” whose lonely eyes Simon said were turned to Joltin’ Joe? What right does Simon have to suggest my eyes are lonely or that they are turned to a baseball player?

Dylan has written songs about several famous public figures, including Billy the Kid, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, mobster Joey Gallo, and Hattie Carroll and her alleged killer, William Zantzinger. Do they or their descendants have the right to demand a share of the royalties as well as a credit on the songs that told their stories?

What about an artist who makes a collage using photos from various newspapers and magazines. Is he a plagiarist if he hasn't received permission from those publications?

The answer to all of the above questions is NO!

Dylan should have been more straight-forward about where he found his inspiration for those paintings, but they're still HIS paintings. Even if an old photograph was the catalyst, they are new creations. This controversy probably has less to do with giving credit where credit is due than it has to do with money, and the possibility of milking a millionaire in a plagiarism lawsuit.

Like the brouhaha over Dylan's concerts in China earlier this year, this is much ado about nothing. Oops, that's a quote from Shakespeare. "It's plagiarism, pure and simple," Rob Oechsle, the owner of that Flickr account told The Los Angeles Times regarding Dylan's use of photos posted online. "If a writer were to use a phrase from Shakespeare, and not credit him, or attribute it in any way," Oechsle said, "that's what they'd be accused of."

Well, not really, Mr. Oechsle, or "Okinawa Soba" as he calls himself. (That sounds a little like Kimosabi to me, and Mr. Oechsle does not acknowledge Tonto or the Lone Ranger on his Flickr page.) Many of Shakespeare's phrases are so common that it's possible to quote him without knowing it, just as I don't know the origin of the phrase I quoted earlier about the soul-stealing capabilities of a camera. I've heard it plenty of times, and never from anyone who cited its author. Some quotes are so famous that attribution isn't necessary. In jest, a film buff might quote Clark Gable's famous line from Gone With the Wind ("Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn") or the line many people believe Humphrey Bogart said to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca ("Play it again, Sam") without mentioning the films, simply because it's assumed everybody knows them. And naming the movie might not be enough for Mr. Oechsle. You'd also have to list the screenwriters and the author of the original book or play from which the screenplays were adapted, and maybe the director and film company, too. Of course, to do so would be utterly ridiculous, much like the controversy over Dylan's paintings.

If the Gagosian Gallery were presenting an exhibit of Dylan photos, and it turned out those photographs came from Flickr or the portfolio of Henri Cartier-Bresson, that would be a scandal worth examining. But paintings from photographs? If a picture is really worth a thousand words, it's also worth a painting or two, and when the painting is by an artist of Dylan's standing, the photographer should feel complimented.

(By the way, the accompanying photo is an ink drawing I made of Dylan 21 years ago from a photo I found in a book. I don't know who took the original photo. If anyone does, let me know and I'll give him credit, lest I piss off Okinawa Soba.)

© 2011 Brian W. Fairbanks

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