Mollie Lane

Classic Movies, Music and Television

• Home
• Mollie Speak
• Celebrity Photo Gallery
• Photo Gallery
• Links

The Dettman Files

Books and Things

 

Bruce Dettman is a professional writer and has been published in numerous magazines.  He is a regular contributor to The Adventures Continue and  Glass House Presents websites, as well as Scarlet, The Film Magazine.  Mollie Lane is privileged to bring Mr. Dettman's unique writing style to her viewers, particularly those who are fans of the 1950's series, Adventures of Superman.

____________________________

 

Radio By The Book: Adaptations of Literature and Fiction on the Airwaves

By Tim DeForest

McFarland Books

 (www.mcfarlandpub.com)

 

 

 There is something decidedly odd about the history of what is affectionately referred to by nostalgia merchants as either Old Time Radio or the Golden Age of Radio, namely that it sometimes seems to have never truly existed. Despite the immense popularity of the radio medium, particularly during the twenty-five year period between the mid 1920s and the late 1940s when such classic shows as The Shadow, Jack Benny, Inner Sanctum, Suspense, The Lone Ranger, Amos and Andy, Sam Spade and Burns and Allen came into the living rooms of millions of American households, the legacy of radio has not only faded but been reduced to a kind of hazy or shadowy arena of limited appreciation safeguarded only by a small coterie of aficionados, fans and rabid collectors.

 

 

Howard Duff as Sam Spade

 

In its heyday, however, nearly every actor of the Silver Screen at one time or another appeared on radio, either as guests on both variety and dramatic anthology shows or in many cases as stars of their own series, the latter including such performers as James Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Joel McCrea, yet when the obituaries of these performers are written or their life work chronicled in books, articles or filmed documentaries, their radio work is either given short shrift or not referenced at all. It’s hard to say exactly what the reasons are for this. Certainly the nearly overnight advent of television quickly phased it out of the picture (ironically many of the most famous radio shows -- Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Superman, Gunsmoke, Amos and Andy --  morphed into the best known efforts of early TV) but this still doesn’t account for the overall silence of recollection and memory that seems to have been drawn so tightly around radio. It is regrettable too because at its best radio drama could be potent, evocative, thrilling, masterfully produced and acted, “the theatre of the mind,” as someone once put it.

 

 George Burns and Gracie Allen in 1953

Over the years there have been a number of good books out on the subject of radio drama, some of an encyclopedic bent such as airwaves’ maven (and noted mystery writer) John Dunning’s On The Air, others, topped by Jim Harmon’s The Great Radio Heroes, more inclined as nostalgic trips down memory lane where favorite shows and performers are fondly recalled and described.

 

A new and most welcome contribution to the literature of the genre is Radio By The Book by Tim DeForest. The author takes a bit of a different slant in his approach to the subject by focusing only on those shows which were adapted from famous literary sources. In this manner, tracing the lineage of the characters from the printed page to the airwaves, DeForest is able to gauge and measure the accuracy and success of the radio shows against the original printed works that inspired them. Not only does this make for a lively and entertaining read, but DeForest, who obviously knows his stuff and has first hand knowledge of the books and shows he covers, educates as he goes along, bringing to life the creative forces that established some of the 20^th century’s most well-known characters in addition to introducing a lot of fascinating tidbits and little known facts about the inside creation and production of these shows. Along the way, although this is a radio and not a film tome, he often touches, albeit briefly, on the differences between the cinematic and radio incarnations of the characters and shows.

 

Each series is given its own chapter and history from book to radio. Some of the  characters covered are Charlie Chan, Bulldog Drummond, The Saint, Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Ellery Queen, The Shadow, Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, Perry Mason and the Cisco Kid.  In addition, he includes those dramatic anthology series which often drew from literary properties including Escape, Dimension X, Weird Circle, The Mercury Theatre and Exploring Tomorrow.

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce on Radio

 

This is a most enjoyable and satisfying read. Fans of old time radio will savor DeForest’s attention to detail, accuracy and impressive research. Those not overly familiar with the bygone history of radio will be amazed at the variety of the shows, the personalities involved and the wide range of famous characters that once filled those great and now ghostly airwaves of the past.

______________________________

The Green Hornet:

A History of Radio, Motion Pictures, Comics, and Television

By Martin Grams & Terry Salomonson

OTR Publishing

 

Available on Amazon

 

 

Within the popular culture of the Twentieth Century, spawned and influenced by the new mediums of the daily comic strip and later comic books, radio, film and ultimately television, a whole pantheon of original characters were created. Although many of these soon withered and died on the vine and are largely forgotten today, a small number only grew in stature, often actually outdistancing their original creator’s conceptions and morphing with the times into expanded or altered versions of themselves. Eventually these characters took on the trappings of mythological figures, not simply media creations designed to momentarily entertain, but deeply imbedded parts of the American psyche. Even individuals who were born generations after their creation and never actually experienced their popularity firsthand are still familiar with the names of The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, Flash Gordon, Tarzan and many others.

 

Another figure with staying power is The Green Hornet, a character with an extensive resume on radio, in film and on television and whose impressive crime-fighting history is wonderfully profiled in Martin Grams’ and Terry Salomonson’s highly entertaining and astoundingly detailed new work The Green Hornet: A History of Radio, Motion Pictures, Comics and Television.

 

The Green Hornet was the brainchild of George Trendle, owner of radio station WXYZ, which several years earlier had introduced the character of the Lone Ranger to America’s listening public. Whereas the creative origins of the Ranger are still debated -- with honors being shared more or less equally between Trendle and his head writer Fran Striker -- the Hornet was strictly Trendle’s baby. He came up with the idea of a kind of modern version of the Ranger and set his writers, Striker included, running with the ball.  

The result was a sort of modern version of the celebrated masked man of the old west. *A major difference, in addition to the modern setting, was that the Green Hornet -- who also wore a mask to conceal his identity, armed himself with a special weapon, a gas gun, and had a specially designed and ultra fast automobile which he called Black Beauty -- was the secret identity of the character Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher and bit of a playboy, whereas the Lone Ranger was always himself (save on those occasions when he adopted a disguise). Moreover, whereas the Ranger could often be initially construed as a bad guy because of his telltale mask, he usually emerged from his stories as unquestionably on the side of law and order. The Green Hornet, on the other hand, was almost universally perceived by the authorities as being a criminal, albeit of the lone wolf variety. Playing it this way, however dangerous, allowed Reid to work against the criminal element -- particularly those who had through various means alluded capture -- and not be hamstrung by the laws and procedures that often hindered the official authorities. For his campaign against crime the masked Green Hornet enlisted also the aid of Kato, a young man with superior fighting, scientific and automotive skills who Reid had met in Japan.

 

 

Debuting on the air waves in 1936, The Green Hornet had a long and successful run into the early 1950s. He appeared in two Universal serials, The Green Hornet and The Green Hornet Strikes Back and later, after a failed TV pilot, was the star of a later video series starring Van Williams and Bruce Lee which ran in 1966 for one disappointing season. Although it appeared too late to be discussed in this volume, a new major motion picture, The Green Hornet starring Seth Rogen, has just been theatrically released to mixed reviews.

 

 In addition to tracing the origin and development of the Green Hornet, the authors supply radio and television episode guides which provide data on all aspects of each individual production. There are also fascinating photos of all the principles, from directors and producers to the actors and writers who helped make The Green Hornet such a media success and great addition to celebrated higher hierarchy of twentieth century fictional heroes.

 

As in his many earlier works on popular culture, author Grams, aided by co-author Terry Salomonson, has done an unbelievably thorough job in piecing together the sometimes convoluted but always fascinating history of the character. It would be a real challenge to over exaggerate the meticulous and painstaking research that the authors undertook to produce this remarkably definitive volume. Every aspect of the Green Hornet on radio, film, comics, TV, even advertising (there was, for instance, a Green Hornet cocktail mix) and promotional campaigns is covered in precise and documented detail and it is impossible to not believe that this will remain forever the ultimate and definitive sourcebook on the character.

 

Bruce Dettman

 

* As has been recounted on numerous occasions, The Green Hornet is a direct descendent of The Lone Ranger.

___________________________________________________________________

 

 

The Complete Three Stooges

By John Soloman

Comedy III Productions

2001

 

 

Respectability of a kind has slowly caught up with The Three Stooges. This is not to suggest that this growing acceptance is an across-the-board sort of thing. There remain large and often quite vocal factions of the viewing public who continue to experience a near visceral reaction of disdain and even violent repulsion when simply hearing their names, but to many discerning critics of celluloid slapstick -- and the immense challenge of creating comedy -- the Three Stooges have come under a new light. While it is doubtful that this light will illuminate their physical brand of eye-gouging slapstick and broad physical mayhem with the same marked and nearly reverential intensity as it has Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers or W.C. Fields, there is certainly a growing understanding and appreciation of their work and an acknowledgment -- behind many doors that were so long closed on them -- that they should be taken a lot more seriously than had been the case in the past. Longevity alone should have spoken volumes about their immense popularity and ability to change with the times. Their careers spanned four decades -- theirs was reportedly the longest contract in Hollywood history -- and many changes in their personnel. Moe, Larry and Shemp begot Moe, Larry and Curly, who begot Moe, Larry and Shemp again until the final teaming of Moe, Larry and Curly Joe in the early 1960s when their sagging careers received an adrenalin rush thanks to the hundred plus shorts they made for Columbia Studios between 1934 and 1959 having been released to television and which suddenly found a new and exuberant audience with youthful Baby Boomers. Their popularity given this unexpected lift they subsequently found work in a series of full-length films which traded more on their past comedic glories than their existing talents which had admittedly deteriorated with age.

 

While over the last decade a good many books have come out on the trio’s career, it would be hard to imagine a more comprehensive and definitive study of their work than The Complete Three Stooges by Joe Soloman.  Encyclopedic in both structure and scope, this 552 page work examines in minute detail each Three Stooges appearance, not only their familiar Columbia shorts and later feature films but their earlier work with their creator and mentor Ted Healy, most of it of the cameo variety in which they shared screen time with such luminaries as Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Jimmy Durante.

 

The book is divided into four sections: perspective, visual humor, verbal humor and other notes in which Soloman covers every conceivable aspect involved in the creation and execution of the shorts and feature films. In addition, he supplies countless behind the scenes revelations and historical background on the separate features plus highlighting those other individuals – directors, writers and supporting players – who so contributed to the success and durability of these timeless efforts.

 

Profusely illustrated with a myriad of photographs, many never before published, The Complete Three Stooges is an absolute treasure trove for Stooge fans.

 

Bruce Dettman

___________________________________ 

 

JESSE JAMES AND THE MOVIES

Johnny Boggs

McFarland Books

2011

 

 

Next to Billy the Kid, Jesse James is probably the most famous true life western bad man history and motion pictures have bestowed upon the American culture. The nomadic and solitary nature of the Kid, often depicted in near existential terms as a killer with both a six shooter and a brooding angst, has made him a shade more popular with fans of the misunderstood school of miscreants, but Jesse, a criminal blue collar figure with his brother Frank backed by a changing cast of supporting players in the bank and train robbing business, has done pretty well for himself in the fame department as well.

Jesse had only been in his grave a scant 26 years when in 1908 Hollywood came calling, the result being an eighteen minute effort titled The James Boys in Missouri. His daring exploits were subsequently presented on the nascent silent screen a number of times including two occasions when he was portrayed by none other than his very own son, Jesse James Jr., whose acting skills did not add a great deal to the James family legacy.

 

Although Jesse Sr. would continue to be seen in a wide variety of cinematic productions, mostly of the “B” grade variety during the sound era, with very few reflecting historical fidelity, it was 20^th Century Fox’s big budgeted Jesse James, produced in 1939 and starring Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda as Jesse and Frank, that truly cemented the outlaw’s reputation among cinema goers. Most films after this borrowed at least partially from this movie, its own historical accuracy often highly questionable, and Jesse, as portrayed by such actors as Audie Murphy, Wendell Corey, Robert Wagner and Robert Duvall would continue to be a fixture on westerns both in the movies and on TV for the next sixty years, his most recent incarnation being Brad Pitt in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

 

In his new book Jesse James and the Movies, film historian Johnny Boggs has done an outstanding job of exploring and describing the extensive Jesse James film canon. His meticulous and impressively balanced examination of these forty odd movies, where Jesse’s participation ranges from central character to simply a name foisted on a secondary character to add more color to an otherwise drab screenplay, is heightened by the author’s in-depth research into the true historical facts which the cinema has attempted, rarely with great success, to emulate.

 

Jesse James and the Movies is an extremely entertaining and informative book on all fronts.  In addition, this reviewer is most gratified to learn that Mr. Boggs is currently at work on a similar volume detailing the celluloid career of Mr. William Bonney, AKA Billy the Kid.

 

Can’t wait.

 

Bruce Dettman

_____________________________________________

 

FESS PARKER: TV’s FRONTIER HERO

Bill Chemerka

BearMedia Books

2011

 

For a very short period in the early 1950s Fess Parker was the most famous, the most talked about and the most easily recognized actor in America. His meteoric rise to fame really had no rival. One day he was just a young struggling actor trying to make ends meet doing small bits on early TV and in “B” movies and the next his likeness was not only appearing on nearly every magazine cover in the country but was the undisputed hero of the nation’s children. This overnight transformation was the result of his starring role in the three-part Walt Disney production Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier which aired on the ABC network’s Disneyland series in 1954.

 

Some fifty years later it is nearly impossible to convey to anyone but those who lived during this period the extent of the so-called Davy Crockett Craze. Perhaps the individual most surprised was none other than Walt Disney himself who hadn’t an inkling of the impact this show would have on the kids of America. The Davy Crockett trilogy was simply intended to have been one installment of a series Disney envisioned on the life of famous native frontiersmen. He attached no particular significance to Davy or his exploits and was completely taken aback when millions of children were suddenly clamoring for Davy Crockett coonskin caps, Davy Crockett plastic knives, powder horns, T-Shirts, lunch pails and dozens of other items that would soon be merchandised.  And at the center of all of this, his likeness stamped on nearly every product, was lanky and handsome Fess Parker.

 

Despite his instant fan recognition and the monumental success of the show, the Texas-born Parker did not go on to have an extensive post-Crockett theatrical career. Disney was always more interested in promoting his products than his personnel and his subsequent use of the actor in Old Yeller, The Great Locomotive Chase and Westward the Wagons was hardly impressive or career-building although he did eventually appear in other non-Disney projects such as Climb an Angry Mountain and Hell Is For Heroes as well as achieving success with the long-running Daniel Boone TV series.

 

Writer, editor and historian Bill Chemerka managed over the years to engage the usually taciturn actor in numerous conversations concerning his life and career. In Fess Parker: TV’s Frontier Hero he traces Parker’s fairly traditional boyhood in the Lone Star State, his false starts career-wise and his slow and often frustrating attempts to break into show business which eventually, through a series of unforeseen steps (including a minor role in the classic science-fiction film Them where he was spotted by the Disney people and selected for the Crockett role over James Arness) led to his immense fame and world-wide popularity.

 Parker played Crockett, a frontiersman, later United States Congressman and finally martyr at the battle of the Alamo, with a kind of backwards cagey charm that resonated with audiences of all ages. In many ways Parker was much like the role he most became associated with. He was on the outside a rather simple man, friendly and generous, never surrendering to Hollywood posturing and excesses. Yet beneath the surface he was also keenly intelligent and self-assured with core values that served him well throughout his life and successful business career, which included California real estate developments and a winery he operated with his son near Santa Barbara.

 Relying on interviews with Parker’s many friends, both from the world of Hollywood and his business and private associations, Chemerka produces a highly engaging and informative glimpse of the actor who went in the blink of an eye from being a relative unknown to the heights of stardom and fame, yet never in the process losing sight of where he came from.

 

The book benefits from a forward by actor Ron Ely, an introduction by musician Phil Collins and a wide array of family and career-related photos.

 

Bruce Dettman

_______________________________

HOLLYWOOD’S HELLFIRE CLUB

By Gregory William Mank

With Charles Heard & Bill Nelson

Feral House, 2007

 

 

Time, with its uncanny power to alter and revise memory and reflection, also has a distinct and remarkable ability to transform the once eccentrically tainted and universally maligned into figures of bygone charm and likeability.

 

It is highly unlikely that the individuals covered in author Greg Mank’s book Hollywood’s Hellfire Club would be candidates for sainthood by even the most liberal of theologies. Model citizens,  loyal husbands or  doting fathers would also be descriptive stretches for a group of men who -- their numerous creative powers aside – were widely known by both intimates and onlookers alike to be misogynistic, alcohol and drug-abusing, anti-social, wife-cheating, absentee fathers, nasty tempered, opinionated, arrogant, boastful, self-pitying and on occasion crude and  hygienically challenged.

 

Nonetheless, the years have been good to this coterie of misfits, at least those who are still recalled at all. For the most part, the mangier aspects of their character and behavior has been pretty much expunged from the public’s collective consciousness to be replaced by a general perspective which notes with satisfaction, tolerance and blind nostalgia their errant ways, contrary dispositions and undeniable talents.

 

Their numbers varied – there were no true rules or membership ritual to this group, no Roberts Rules of Orders for structure or dues to fork out – but in the main this very lax organization included celebrated actor and “Great Profile” John Barrymore, the misanthropic Sadakichi Hartmann, artist John Decker, celluloid curmudgeon W.C. Fields, film swashbuckler and Olympic-level womanizer Errol Flynn, and writer Gene Fowler who later wrote his own highly personal account of this group titled The Minutes of the Meeting.  Lesser kibitzers would also include actors Thomas Mitchell, Alan Mowbray, Anthony Quinn and John Carradine plus screenwriter Ben Hecht.

 

Greg Mank, one of the best film historians around who has numerous superb books on cinema to his credit, has -- aided by Charles Heard and Bill Nelson -- produced a highly entertaining and impressively researched book documenting the perversely unorthodox social history of these figures detailing both their individual misanthropic careers and their many salacious parts as cast members in this bizarre assemblage. He has done his best to separate Hollywood myths from the true story of what went on with this brood of roisters who one critical wag has described as making “the rat pack look like Boy Scouts.”

 

The stories of their activities, both communal and solitary, are outrageous, sometimes actually cruel and uncomfortable to read about even from the standpoint of our own jaded age with its seemingly endless accounts of lurid yet cookie-cuttered celebrity misconduct.  Still, amidst the unsettling debris of their lives, most of which ended poorly and even tragically, there emerges a coterie of divergent, highly unique and always fascinating individuals devoted, if nothing else, to being their colorful and unrepentant selves no matter what the eventual consequences.

 

Bruce Dettman

October, 2011

___________________________

 

Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton:

Man In The Shadows

Written and Directed by Kent Jones

A Turner Production, 2008,87Minutes

 

 

Between 1942 and 1946 Val Lewton produced a series of horror films for RKO Studios, movies which would be celebrated not only for their own unique execution and thematic complexity, but also for taking what had become an over formulized product – particularly as practiced by Universal Studios with their Frankenstein, Wolfman and Mummy franchises – and breathing new creative life into it. While the Russian born Lewton, a former production assistant to mega producer David O. Selznick, was primed to helm RKO’s new horror unit, he was not always so enamored with the projects and storylines that landed before him, some little more than titles and/or the sketchiest of concepts.  With Orson Wells no longer reigning supreme on the lot and new production head Charles Koerner calling the shots for the financially ailing company, it was decided that emphasis would be placed on showmanship before genius. Nonetheless, Lewton opted to go for something different and new in his horror pictures, to gamble on a more psychologically sophisticated approach to his characters and plots.

 

The series opener was Cat People, directed by Jacques Tourneur with a screenplay by DeWitt Bowden.  Like all the features to come from the Lewton unit it bore the producer’s indelible creative stamp both in conception and in its dramatic execution and was a critical and financial triumph for the studio. The pressure of success, however, was a difficult one for the mercurial and doubt-marinated Lewton to come to terms with, particularly as RKO was anxious if not obsessed with his being able to deliver the goods on a regular and timely basis.  His products were budgeted $125,000 per picture and he was subject to a demanding, backbreaking and often nearly impossible schedule. While one film was in full production and another was undergoing pre-production analysis a third was already being envisioned. Still, Lewton’s team, which would come to include writers Arday Wray and Clifford Siodmak and directors Robert Wise and Mark Robson, rose time after time to the occasion turning out a string of films which, if not always flawless, were consistently intriguing and compelling including The Seventh Victim, The Ghost Ship, The Leopard Man, Curse of the Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie and Lewton’s three collaborations with the screen’s greatest bogeyman, Boris Karloff (who he initially balked at working with but who he later came to greatly admire and respect), Isle of the Dead, Bedlam and The Body Snatcher.

 

Following his tenure at RKO, Lewton would go from one studio to another, usually involved in projects that either never saw the light of day or working on disappointing efforts such as Please Believe Me (for Metro), My True Love (Paramount) or Apache Drums (Universal). In 1951 he signed a two-picture deal with independent producer Stanley Kramer but died shortly afterwards.

 

Lewton’s legacy has been the basis for a number of books including Joel Siegal’s seminal Val Lewton: Reality of Terror, Edmund Bansak’s Fearing the Dark , and Icons of Grief by Alexander Nemerov in addition to several DVD documentaries which have appeared on  Lewton film collections.

 

Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: Man In The Shadows is the most recent and best of the latter. Produced by Turner Productions and written and directed by Kent Jones, the 87 minute documentary is not so much a routine, linear history of Lewton and his body of work as much as it is an exploration of the creative instincts and artistic vision which he, along with the help of his talented writing and directorial staff, introduced into his films. Jones is to be congratulated for his narrative prose, effectively delivered by Martin Scorsese, which possesses a textural quality and poetic ambiance which nicely compliments the subtlety and evocative nature of Lewton’s own work.

 

The documentary is helped along by interviews with a number of critics, film scholars and filmmakers including directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Jacques Tourneur and Roger Corman and author Geoffrey O’Brien who pretty much add the requisite interpretative and historical commentary. More interesting, but regrettably fleeting, are appearances by director Robert Wise and one-time child actress Ann Carter who gave such a memorable performance as Amy in Curse of the Cat People and who was located after years of searching. More camera time for Ms. Carter would have greatly enhanced the viewing experience.  Fortunately, Lewton’s son, Val Lewton Jr., has a generous amount of footage and contributes much to a fuller understanding of his father’s life and the myriad of forces, artistic and personal, that combined to shape him.

 

 Small reservations and minimal complaints aside, Martin Scorsese Presents Val Lewton: Man In The Shadows, is an impressive and compelling documentary work which contributes significantly to the much-deserved legacy of this remarkable filmmaker.

 

______________________________________

Frankenstein: A Cultural History

By Susan Tyler Hitchcock

W.W.Norton & Company, 2007

 

The figure is instantly recognizable, one of the 20^th century’s most famous iconic images. Yet ironically, the anatomical excesses and physical abnormalities that combine to create this universally famous appearance have little if anything to do with the original literary creation that would eventually spawn it. The jagged hairline, protruding brow, sunken cheeks, dead-looking eyes and neck bolts (conductors for the electricity that would give it life) came not from the ripe imagination of eighteen year-old Mary Shelley who would pen – or at least begin to pen – the novel that would ultimately become Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus in 1816, but rather from Jack Pierce, head of Universal Studio’s makeup department. In 1931 Pierce would be given the juicy and challenging assignment of creating an effective makeup for the film’s artificially created creature. Working with the actor assigned to the role, the veritably unknown Boris Karloff who had, according to cinematic legend, been specifically selected by director James Whale, Pierce set to work to come up with something memorable. This he certainly did.  As eventually fashioned after numerous failed concepts, the monster did not emerge as some unrecognizable bogey man totally removed from a physical relationship with humankind, but instead a crazy-quilt replication of a man, both familiar and not so familiar and which in turn allowed the talented Karloff to invest all of his considerable acting skills in manipulating audiences not only by the creature’s violent actions but also by its misery, vulnerability and humanity.  It was a tour de force for Whale, Karloff and Pierce, and would not only set in motion the usual Hollywood penchant for remakes and sequels (most, save Karloff’s three outings in the part, of a lesser quality) but place an indelible stamp on the identity and personage of the monster that through successive films, radio plays, theatrical productions, cartoons, TV shows and merchandizing would never recede.

 

Lost in all of this, of course, was the original novel, its immediate history and prior to the advent of the cinema, the various interpretations and slants utilized in the book’s name, sometimes to entertain and simplify, other times used to promulgate political, scientific or philosophical viewpoints.

At the time of the initial writing, Mary Wollstoncraft and her lover, the boy poet Percy Shelley in league with Lord Byron, his much put upon physician/companion Dr. John Polidari and Mary’s half sister Claire Clairemont, religious skeptics and expatriates on tour of Switzerland, were intrigued by the advancing strides in science and the subsequent novel (written as part of a group competition to create a scary tale) would reflect this fascination and, to some horrified critics, heretical interest in a godless universe manipulated, often haphazardly, by man.

Later interpretations, however, would often deviate from such a pro-science stance and  particular theatrical versions throughout the remainder of the next century would re-cast the philosophical intention of the work in various directions, many undoubtedly never conceived by the authoress, from a treatise on the presumption of man dabbling in God’s regimented universe to a diatribe against the encroaching industrial revolution which would mark, to some, the mechanical regimentation and subjugation of an enslaved working class of mindless drones.

The advent of film would minimize and to some degree diminish much of what had gone on before in defining, showcasing and exploiting Shelley’s work. The first cinematic version was produced by Thomas Edison’s studios in 1910, a streamlined short reel production featuring Charles Ogle as the monster which boasted a clever creation sequence.

It was the aforementioned Frankenstein, produced by Universal, that not only set in motion the simple moral tapestry of the story, but which would make the creature a kind of horrific trademark for all time and in the minds of most – because ironically for all its fame the novel is rarely read anymore – the essence of Frankenstein (the nomenclature between the creator and creation having long ago disappeared).

Ms. Hitchcock’s effort is an entertaining one, nicely packaged with a myriad of illustrations and certainly provides a good introduction to the subject, particularly for the uninitiated. However, as an academic and occasionally dry overview rather than an attempt to create a definitive examination of the book and its later manifestations in pop culture, there are gaps along the way (for instance she fails to mention an additional silent version of the book, LIFE WITHOUT SOUL, produced in 1915 and starring Percy Darrel Standing as the creature as well as declining to discuss some of the early TV adaptations such as ex-boxer Primo Carnera’s video stint in the lead).  Moreover, diehard horror fans will undoubtedly quibble with some of her cinematic pronouncements and observations particularly about Son of Frankenstein which she is somewhat dismissive of.

Still it’s a good and well intentioned effort and provides an intelligent and well executed overview of the endless and multi-faced saga that is Frankenstein.

 

   

 ______________________________________________________________

 

July 2011

      Horror Noir:

Where Cinema’s Dark Sisters Meet

By Paul Meehan, MacFarland Books

Review by Bruce Dettman

Available at Amazon

No less an expert than Boris Karloff once expressed his displeasure with the term horror which he associated with all things revolting. He much preferred the word terror feeling it more accurately conveyed the sort of psychological impact the films he had become so associated with had on people. Nonetheless, over the years the general public has continued to embrace the all-encompassing label of horror films as a sort of indefinable umbrella moniker covering a wide variety of motion pictures, both thematically and stylistically, from Frankenstein to Psycho to Nightmare on Elm Street and beyond.

 Film noir, for all the books and articles written on it over the last twenty years, is also difficult to pigeon-hole. One of the main reasons for this is that there never was a true school or artistically defined discipline of filmmaking called noir. What is usually referred by to by this term -- which was coined in a later decade by the French -- emerged after WWII when American filmmakers began to shine their creative lights on subjects far removed from the more frivolous and romanticized themes that had for so long dominated Hollywood studios.  Society’s rank and gritty underbelly was more and more examined and probed, often using criminal elements as the hook for these stories.

Film scholar Paul Meehan, in his illuminating and most entertaining work Horror Noir, makes the case that there is a direct, although often subtle, link bridging the early classic --- and occasionally not so classic -- horror films that were churned out in the 1930s and early 40s, productions ranging from early silent efforts such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Waxworks and the cinematic world of noir which largely was represented by films produced during the post war period. Whereas Hollywood, which had fallen victim to an ethical and moral compass dictated by a strict production code -- itself heavily influenced by the Catholic Church -- made certain their mainstream films  stayed clear of darker and provocative subtexts -- relegating crime, as an example to broad canvas strokes of simple good versus evil scenarios -- horror films were given free reign, albeit often metaphorically, to explore a plethora of uncharted thematic territories such as alienation, loneliness, perversion, sadism, sexual desire, abandonment and depravities of every sort. Later noir would tackle these same areas of human conflict and concerns although more directly.

 Meehan’s job of connecting the cinematic dots begins with the early silent efforts of German filmmakers such as Fritz Lang (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and F.W. Murneau (Nosferatu) who brought their bag of dark European film tricks to Hollywood where they would influence many of the pictures produced during America’s first talkie cycle of horror including Murders in The Rue Morgue, Frankenstein and The Black Cat. The human themes inherent in these early productions -- but discreetly camouflaged beneath a veneer of fantasy and horror in such vehicles as producer Val Lewton’s RKO offerings Cat People and I Walked With A Zombie -- would eventually be incorporated under the banner of film noir, a melting of themes and subtexts which continued to expand and take on new coats of celluloid paint in the decades to follow.

 While horror assumed many faces in the succeeding decades of filmmaking  -- from mixes with teenagers to the re-treads of classic monsters fashioned by England’s Hammer Studios in the 1950s -- noir would borrow more liberally from the darker recesses of horror, omitting the supernatural elements but maintaining the unsettling shadows of the human psyche in films like Night of The Hunter, The Collector, Peeping Tom and Hitchcock’s ground-breaking Psycho, movies that  set the stage for a wave of more recent psychological thrillers such as Silence of the Lambs.

 Meehan has produced an entertaining and thought-provoking book on the fusion of horror and noir. Undoubtedly the inclusion -- or absence -- of certain films will rankle and be questioned by many in the horror film community who will challenge or find tenuous the connecting celluloid tissues the author sometimes makes a case for in supporting his overall thesis of the relationship between the two genres.

A minor complaint would be the careless mislabeling of several of the stills which accompany the text but this aside,  Meehan has provided a lot  to chew on here, much of it fascinating and certainly worthy of our attention and consideration.

________________________

July 2011

The Last Gunfight

by Jeff Guinn

Simon and Schuster,  2011

Review by Bruce Dettman

Available on Amazon 

The Gunfight at the OK Corral, otherwise known by historical purists oddly sensitive about such things as the “Street Fight in Tombstone,” has come to be viewed as the quintessential expression of frontier violence. If eclipsed at all by such larger and more historically relevant events as Custer’s Last Stand or the Battle of the Alamo, its reduced scale, intimacy of events and cast of colorful characters — both as active participants and background kibitzers — has made it more readily accessible to western writers and armchair aficionados anxious for the latest new angle, allegation or theory regarding the confrontation. While only marginally reported by the contemporary press of the time, this 1881 incident involving Earp Brothers Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan plus confederate Doc Holliday allied against the Clanton and McLaury siblings in a gun battle that left three of the outlaws dead, is, if anything, more hotly debated one hundred and twenty years after the fact than in its day, with modern champions of each side verbally battling it out — not always so cordially — on websites and in print.

 In addition to numerous motion pictures being devoted to the story, a veritable cottage industry of historical literature has been created around the shootout which has often reflected a certain marked bias on the part of authors favoring one side over the other. Most books on Tombstone, the Earp brothers and the OK Corral have been black and white efforts designed to promote a specific point of view, few willing to acknowledge gray and shadowy areas of the story. Further muddying the waters has been some bogus and unsupportable history which had gone unchallenged for years and which regrettably was viewed as the unquestionable truth by many chroniclers of the Tombstone saga as a means to support their works.

 Author Jeff Guinn’s latest contribution to dissecting the convoluted story that is Tombstone is The Last Gunfight, a curious title since this was hardly the last such altercation in the Wild West.   Nonetheless, his difficult task is attempting to piece together the myriad of tales, personal accounts and published memoirs which have come down to us and weave them into a cohesive tapestry that makes sense and offers credible answers to many of the questions that have plagued frontier chroniclers for many years.

 The story of Tombstone is unfortunately characterized by Rashomon-like qualities with important testimonials by many of the principal players being diametrically opposed to each other. The problem for the historian wishing to untangle these blatant contradictions is to ascribe motivation and intent without taking sides in what has often been treated as a black and white universe. Passionate factions have traditionally either embraced the Earps as law enforcing saints pitted against unruly miscreants or as gun toting thugs with badges on their vests and homicide in their hearts.

Guinn wisely straddles a sometimes arduous middle ground. Neither ascribing halos nor horns to any of the book’s main characters, he instead systematically attempts to explore this convoluted business utilizing as many of the historian’s tools -- depositions, journals, eye witness accounts, court transcripts -- as are available to separate the bogus from the believable.

Critics -- of which there will undoubtedly be many -- will certainly question Guinn’s occasional attempts to get into the heads of the main players, to lend motivation and pre-orchestration to movements and methods. Some of these even troubled this reviewer, yet in piecing together the crazy quilt story of Tombstone, the Earps and the Clantons, it is nearly impossible not to attempt to bring some subjective and qualifying elements to such a difficult reconstruction.

 Whichever side of the Wyatt Earp/Tombstone fence you might be on or if you are simply interested in the history of the American frontier, The Last Gunfight will be well worth your time.

_____________________________________________________________________

 

DARK CITY

Simon Read

Ian Allen Publishing, 2010

 

There is a fuzzy school of thought suggesting that  due to the enormity of its scope and impact, war minimizes if not totally obliterates all other  arenas of human conflict and interaction.  The reality, of course, is something quite different. As armies march and bombs fall life goes on pretty much as it always has. And with that life there is always room for crime and mankind’s baser concerns. Sometimes, in fact, war, with its potential for creating disharmony and chaos, actually escalates these things, allows more wiggle room for society’s miscreants to operate unsupervised and with less restraints placed upon them.

This was certainly true during the London “Blitz” of World War II.  While this great metropolis fought for its very life against skies marinated with the German Luftwaffe intent upon its utter destruction, crime was given no time off, quite the contrary. With a background of leveled and gutted buildings, decimated neighborhoods and hundreds of the dead and dying, corrupt individuals still murdered and robbed, raped and pillaged.

 Such is the focus of Simon Read’s fascinating new work, Dark City, which  vividly describes, sometimes with bone chilling vividness and detail, the story of a handful of  particularly shocking crimes which stunned London during  its wartime years.

 The cases Read elects to document include that of the so-called “Blackout Ripper,” who went on a short but deadly killing spree in 1942, murdering four women yet denying any memory of the fatal attacks, “The Cleft-Chin Murders” committed by a Bonnie and Clyde-like couple, the celebrated case of wife murderer John Reginald Christie whose crimes led to the execution of an innocent man and finally the gruesome 1949 career of George Haigh whose vampire-like tendencies made headlines around the world.

In addition to Read’s solid storytelling gifts, the author does an impressive job in capturing the mood and flavor of London during this tumultuous period.

 Dark City is a most entertaining and exhaustively researched effort which should appeal to true crime buffs, historians and readers just interested in this fascinating sidebar to WWII.

 Bruce Dettman - April 2011

____________________________________________________

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers

By Eric Burns

Templeton University Press, 2010

Remarkably, despite its nearly overnight ascension in becoming a world-wide phenomenon, it still took most people time to take television seriously. Certainly, in the early days of its meteoric rise, there were a few lofty critics and academic pundits who preached caution regarding the potential dangers of the nascent medium suggesting a possible downside of this new-fangled gizmo that seemed to be demanding a bit too much time and attention from its growing number of viewers, particularly impressionable children. But in the main, most people were just too plain fascinated by this new kid on the entertainment block to give much thought to its possible negative repercussions. 

During its first decade of life television pretty much went its own merry way largely perceived as a pesky kid brother to motion pictures though more intimate and seductive in its slow but undeniable impact on audiences. It ultimately became as much of a part of the average household as the toaster, furnace, clock on the wall and family Bible. It was seen initially as an almost magical thing, a device in ones very own living room that could deliver for free the comedy of a Sid Caeser, Lucile Ball or Milton Berle, the lightning fast draws of western heroes Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke, Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger, the domestic suburban family bliss of Ozzie and Harriet, the Cleavers of Leave It To Beaver and the Andersons of Father Knows Best, as well as the hard-line crime investigations of Joe Friday, as portrayed by the emotionless Jack Webb on Dragnet.  It could provide an hour’s worth of  singers, dancers, acrobats and comedians on the Ed Sullivan Show, serious live drama on productions like Playhouse 90 and U.S. Steel Hour or take audiences to the heavens on space operas Caption Video and His Video Rangers and Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

On a more serious note, TV also brought into American homes news and information, not only nightly  broadcasts of the day’s happenings (originally aired as fifteen minute shows) but such historically significant events as the so-called Army-McCarthy hearings and the McClellen Commision on Crime which riveted the nation for weeks.

 Even religion became a fixture on the small tube. With the airing of the immensely popular Bishop Fulton Sheen’s weekly broadcasts which garnished huge ratings, a myriad of religious-based shows began to be broadcast on Sundays mornings. This in turn gave rise to the mega crusades of evangelicals Billy Graham and Oral Roberts whose ministries soared in popularity as they reached new and highly receptive audiences.

Tackling the history and impact of the small screen on American culture during this embryonic period is Eric Burns whose highly informative as well as engrossing book Invasion of the Mind Snatchers traces the development and rise of television from the early days of its technical creation through its introduction as fledgling source of popular entertainment and information.

 Burns has done a terrific job in researching and documenting this book. For those who actually lived through television’s first decade, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers, in addition to supplying an informative history of the early development of the medium, recalls a myriad of shows and performers from the TV’s so-called Golden Age. On the other hand, the author delivers more here than simply a pleasurable and nostalgic stroll down video memory lane. Never totally shying away from the controversial effects of television on society, Burns takes a sharp and penetrating look at the sizable role this global medium has played not only reflecting but often helping to shape the modern world, sometimes with mixed results.

Invasion of the Mind Snatchers is a wholly entertaining, intelligent and thought-provoking work, one which will appeal to both media historians intent on tracing and understanding the impact of television as well as those more interested in reliving the bygone faces and shows of an earlier era.

 Bruce Dettman - April 2011

__________________________

ERROL AND OLIVIA

By Robert Matzen

Goodknight Books, 2010

Review by Bruce Dettman

 

Despite what many in the greater cinematic-going public of the late 1930s and early 40s viewed as a fairly one-dimensional persona, one projected both on the big screen and in his private life, there was actually more to the actor Errol Flynn than the swashbuckling roisterer who saved fair damsels on celluloid and bedded their real-life counterparts in willing droves away from the studio lights. 

Flynn was in reality a complex figure though not always an admirable one. Even if his autobiography My Wicked, Wicked Ways is only half true he still stuffed enough life into his fifty years to have prematurely buried men half his age. As it was, he went downhill fast, dying of a full medicine cabinet worth of afflictions in 1959.  

Flynn was born in Tasmania. His father was a marine biologist of some repute, his mother a one-time champion swimmer. An intense love/hate relationship with the latter led to a stormy childhood. He was good at athletics and charming the girls. Not so good at other things such as school and following rules.  He left home early, worked on ships, managed a copra plantation in New Guinea, ended up in London in a theatrical group where he was spotted by a talent agent for Hollywood’s Warner Brothers and brought to the States. He appeared in only a couple of films as an extra  -- one time actually appearing as a corpse -- before fate stepped in and handed him overnight stardom and fame. Actor Robert Donet had bowed out of appearing in the big budgeted film, Captain Blood and Warners decided to give the unknown Flynn the chance of a lifetime in the starring role. The rest, as they say, is cinematic history. Ironically, his female co-star in the film was the young and radiant Olivia de Havilland, herself at age nineteen a relative Hollywood neophyte as well. Their careers and lives would continue to cross for many years.

In short order Flynn was cast in a succession of highly successful films, most taking advantage of his good looks and athleticism, many being costume period pieces such as The Sea Hawk, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Prince and the Pauper and The Adventures of Don Juan. He was a big money-maker for the studio. He was also irreverent, stubborn, undisciplined and difficult to deal with. He could be the most charming of friends and gallant to women. He could also be spiteful and cruel, even vengeful to both. He knew the movie-going public did not take him any more seriously as an actor as he did himself. In private he had always wished to be a writer and over the years he would continue to try his hand at this, producing several books, Beam Ends and Showdown. Disappointed and bored with film-making he surrounded himself with a seemingly non-ending source of amusement and distraction, abusing his body and mind in the process.

Olivia de Havilland meanwhile, had gone from an unhappy upper middle class upbringing (with an unpopular stepfather) to a life of escape in the theatre, first at college and then in professional companies. She was spotted for film work and made a handful of movies before being paired with Flynn in Captain Blood, the first of five cinematic projects they would be involved in. 

Their relationship, however, went beyond the world of celluloid, a fact Robert Matzen brings to life in his most lively, entertaining and wonderfully informative new book Errol And Olivia: Ego and Obsession in Golden Era Hollywood.

Much has been written on Flynn in the past, dozens of books covering his career, some reliable, others nothing more than salacious  and totally unreliable gossip fests,  and so it is to Matzen’s credit that he has brought to the subject a fresh eye coupled with brilliant and credible new material. Ms de Havilland’s life and career have not been covered to such an extent but again Matzen’s research and feel for the subject shine through. 

This is a breathtakingly beautiful effort, designed in a visually stunning manner with many heretofore unseen photographs of the principals, many behind the scene shots. In addition, through his detailed research and investigation of the lives of both performers, the author has managed to piece together what has until now been many puzzling aspects of their separate as well as combined lives. While there is undeniably room for speculation – and perhaps argument – in some of the conclusions and voices that he occasionally gives Flynn and de Havilland -- author Matzen manages to create, and for the most part impressively document, the colliding lives and careers of these two major stars from Hollywood’s Golden years.           

Errol and Olivia deserves a place in every representative library of Tinsel town’s bygone and illustrious history. It is simply a treasure.

February, 2010

______________________________________________________________

CHARLIE CHAN:

THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE HONORABLE DETECTIVE AND HIS RENDEZVOUS WITH AMERICAN HISTORY

By Yunte Huang

W.W. Norton,2010 

Charlie Chan, literature and filmdom’s most famous --and long-running -- Asian detective, has not fared well of late.

There have been a number of serious campaigns to erase his likeness from the airwaves, to prevent the showing of his many films, interpreted by several different actors -- all of them Caucasian -- on television.  Much like the earlier banning of the old Amos and Andy TV series from the 1950s due to complaints from the African-American community regarding offensive stereotyping, proponents of erasing the Chan character are prompted by the steadfast belief that the racially motivated trademarks of his physical and verbal makeup (specifically his broken English and quaint sayings) reflect the Chinese character in a demeaning, negative and one-dimensional manner.  

Chan was the brainchild of American writer Earl Derr Biggers who created the character in 1923 basing it in part on a real life Honolulu detective named Chang Apana who served on the police force the early years of the 20^th century. Despite Chan’s small role in The House Without A Key, the first of what would become a six-book series, the wily and sagacious detective somehow resonated with readers who clamored for Biggers to write more stories with Chan elevated to central character status which he did over the next several years to popular acclaim.

Hollywood soon beckoned and after a few early and not too successful stabs at fitting Chan into an appealing celluloid mold, Twentieth Century Fox selected Warner Oland, a Swedish-born actor who had already played Asian characters including the evil Fu Manchu, to portray the detective. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice and Oland went on to play Chan in sixteen films before dying of liver-related complications. He was succeeded by Sydney Toler, who lent a slightly different interpretation to the role but was still effective in the part and who also played Charlie until his own demise. A third, Roland Winters, was less successful in some low-budged Chan efforts until the great detective’s long-running series was retired from the big screen in 1949.

The debate over the Chan character, feverish at times, has waged between two rival factions, one stemming primarily from the Chinese community, which asserts that the character is derogatory and an insult to Asians, and the other which steadily maintains that in his depictions, both on screen and in books, Chan is the smartest, the most loyal, the cleverest and the most worthwhile figure in the stories, usually making a monkey out of the Caucasians, and that those of Asian extraction have actually nothing to complain about.

Whatever the reality there is just no getting around the fact that the character of Charlie Chan is one of the most famous detectives in fiction and on film. On the screen he is second only to the immortal Sherlock Holmes in total appearances and despite the controversial attempts, some successful, to prevent his films from being aired on television, the recent packaging of Chan films in DVD boxed sets has proven very lucrative for the present distributors.

            In his book Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous With American History author Yunte Huang, a professor of English at the University of California, has taken a look at the whole panoramic story of the character, its antecedents, development, immense popularity with the public via both books and film depictions, and the on-going debate regarding its cultural influence both positive and negative.

Yunte Huang

            Broken into sections, the author moves from a biographical portrait of Chang Apana, the true inspiration for Chan, to the story of how Earl Derr Biggers created the character to a study of the detective in the media and finally an overview of the current Chan controversy which he examines objectively without taking either side.

            It’s a brilliantly researched and highly entertaining look at one of the most well-remembered and still popular characters to have emerged from the 20^th century.    

February 2011

_______________________________________________________________

Peyton Place:  The Television Series

by James Rosin

Review by Bruce Dettman

 

Every period, it seems, has literary works which scandalize and shock the reading public, books which push the envelope and challenge the moral and ethical sensibilities of the times. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Madame Bovary and Ulysses are just a few of the long list of such creations, all of which are now recognized in most circles as great classics of literature.

In the 1950s, a period which to some degree has been whitewashed and sanitized as a happy-go-lucky and  ethically pristine decade -- when in truth the growing tensions of the 1960s were merely taking root beneath the calm exterior -- the book Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, published in 1956, would appear and succeed in shaking things up quite a bit.

The novel told the story of the small New England town of Peyton Place where, much like the 1950s themselves, things weren’t always as calm and tranquil as they first appeared on the surface. Beneath the carefully crafted veneer of respectability are hidden dark and unpleasant people and unsettling events which are slowly revealed in what many readers, civic groups, moral custodians and critics of the time deemed a scandalous and salacious manner.

 Nonetheless, Peyton Place was a huge financial success -- even if a large portion of the country never admitted to having read it -- and prompted a major motion picture in 1957, also immensely popular, starring Lana Turner. This in turn was followed by a less successful sequel, Return to Peyton Place, sans Turner.

The idea of turning the scandal-ridden novel into a weekly television series fell to William Self, in charge of television production for Twentieth Century Fox, who would subsequently hand the reins over to Paul Monash assigned to both write the pilot episode as well as  serving as executive producer should the series find a network niche.

 Obviously, given some of the grittier ingredients of both the novel and film -- in concert with the more conservative nature of television at the time -- the book was revamped with many of the racier elements either significantly altered or toned down.

 The result was a highly popular half hour series which debuted on September 15, 1964 and which was aired twice a week, Tuesday and Thursdays, a highly unusual move on the part of the ABC network. The show starred Academy Award winner Dorothy Malone in the lead role of Constance MacKenzie and co-starred Ed Nelson as Dr. Michael Rossi. While during its five season run  it would feature a large number of well-known guest and supporting players including Warner Anderson, Lee Grant, Dan Duryea, Gina Rowlands, Mariette Hartley, John Kerr, George Macready, Ruth Warrick, Susan Oliver, Lana Wood, Leslie Nielsen and Barbara Rush, it was the introduction of two young key players, both relatively unknowns, who would grab the attention of audiences, Ryan O’Neal as the volatile  and often misunderstood Rodney Harrington, and newcomer Mia Farrow as Allison MacKenzie. Ms. Farrow, daughter of director John Farrow and actress Maureen O’Sullivan, in particular registered with viewers not only for her waif-like looks, shy demeanor and understated sexuality but for her off-screen antics including a much publicized romance and later marriage to Frank Sinatra.

 Actor, screenwriter and television historian James Rosin, already the author of over a half dozen other books which have targeted specific ground-breaking shows including Wagon Train, Route 66 and Naked City, has once again risen to the occasion in his study of this memorable and often controversial series.

Numerous individuals, both in front and in back of the camera, have been interviewed in attempt to tell the entire story of Peyton Place. The book also includes a large selection of photographs, summaries of the plotlines of each season and mini-bios of many of the key figures responsible for its success. 

 

October, 2010

 

Home | Mollie Speak| Celebrity Photo Gallery| Photo Gallery |  Links