Another Fascinating Find: Dressed for Thrills

I've been sitting on this book for a while now, waiting for the Halloween season to be officially upon us.  Written by Phyllis Galembo, Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes & Masquerade, offers a pictorial history of what people used to wear for Halloween.  Let me tell you, most of the pictures featured in the book are far scarier than modern costumes.

Many of the costumes, especially those fabricated in the first half of the twentieth century have an especially creepy feel.  Perhaps, it is because many of them are homemade from waxed or starched fabrics that have been painted in a very unsettling way.  Perhaps, it is because they are all aged and dilapidated to the point where they look like the artifacts of some backwoods cult.  Whatever the reason, if I met up with someone in one of these costumes I would run the other way as fast as I could.

If you're into vintage creepiness, I urge you to check this book out.  Here are a couple of sample pictures (and these are pretty tame compared to some of the other ones!).

Mickey Mouse (circa 1930):

Little Orphan Annie (circa. 1936):

Musical Madness: Show Boat

There are two types of Hollywood musicals.  There are those that take a number of songs from a composer's catalogue and cobble a film around them, or there are those based on an original stage musical.  Today's selection is in the later group.  Show Boat (1951) is based on the 1927 Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's musical of the same name and was previously adapted for the screen in 1936.  As a result much of the sensibilities that are on display in this version are very much influenced by it's previous existence on the stage.

Directed by George Sidney, the main story in Show Boat is that of 18 year old Magnolia Hawks (Kathryn Grayson), the daughter of Cotton Blossom (the name of the titular show boat) captain Andy Hawks (Joe E. Brown) and her marriage to gambler and milquetoast river scoundrel Gaylord (yup) Ravenal (played by 50s musical mainstay and Dallas alumn Howard Keel). The trajectory of this storyline is typical: they meet, fall in love, her parents don't approve, they run off together and get married, he abandons her, and eventually they are reunited. It's probably the most uninteresting part of the film. The film's other major plot thread concerns the character of Julie Laverne (Ava Gardner), the lead actress on the show boat who is hiding the fact that she is mulatto from everyone, but her white husband Steve (in the late nineteenth century it was illegal for African Americans to appear on stage and to be married to a white man). A jealous former suitor reveals Julie's secret and she and Steve are forced from the Showboat, eventually causing their marriage to break up and Julie to develop a serious drinking problem and fade into obscurity.

As far as film musicals go, Show Boat is not particularly great.  With the exception of the musical numbers sung by Julie (which I will get to in a moment) and William Warfield's show stopping rendition of Old Man River, the musical numbers fall incredibly short.  Because both Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson were both trained operatic singers their numbers are sung in this manner, which makes them somewhat inaccessible to modern audiences.  The songs they do sing are unmemorable and so little to sell the core storyline.  There are also a couple of number performed by the Cotton Blossom's hoofer duo, played by Marge and Gower Champion.  But while charming do little for the film other than extend its run time.

At this point you are probably wondering why I am bothering to talk about this film?  While I think this is  one of the weakest film musicals I will talk about in this series, I think some of the backstage machinations illustrate the politics of the studio era.  For the part of Julie, MGM considered Judy Garland (who was on contract to another studio), Dinah Shore (not famous enough), and most interestingly Lena Horne. Lena Horne was especially interested in playing Julie, and actively campaigned for the part.  As the only African-American actress of the candidates and a famed vocalist, she would have been the ideal choice.  However, because it was against the production codes of the ages to show African Americans to be shown kissing or in romantic scenes with white actors, she was ruled out (much like Julie is cast off of the Cotton Blossom for her relationship with Steve).  In the end Ava Gardner was cast as Julie, who was on contract to MGM and was famous enough).

Just as Lena Horne was considered unsuitable for the role of Julie, Ava Gardner also experienced her own issues with regards to her musical numbers.  While not a famed vocalist like Horne, Gardner was more than a respectable vocalist in her own right, and practiced extensively for the role.  Though she originally sang along to the vocal tracks she recorded for her sequences, it was decided in post-production that her voice did not fit the overall tone of the film and vocalist Annette Warren's renditions of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man and Bill were added to the final film.  The likely reason is to match the Julie vocals to the operatic singing style of Keel and Grayson.  Unfortunate, seeing as in the play Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man is described as a 'coloured' song and as such should be performed more like a bluesy torch song.  Situations like this were very typical in Hollywood musicals, with many of the major actors and actresses of the day being dubbed by professional vocalists.  If you do a search on YouTube you can find a number of these musical sequences with the actress' original vocals re-dubbed onto the film sequences.  Ava Gardner's lost Show Boat sequences just happen to be my favourite of this phenomena.

So, without further adieu,  you can compare the original film version of Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man to the Ava Gardner version and see what you think.

Annette Warren:

Ava Gardner:

My Latest New Favorite Book: Edith Head

I'm extremely excited to have finally gotten my hands on a copy of Edith Head: The Fifty Year Career of Hollywood's Greatest Costume Designer by Jay Jorgensen.

For those who are unfamiliar with the name, Edith Head was the costume designer for innumerable films from the nineteen-thirties through to the nineteen eighties.  She designed costumes for practically every major Hollywood star of the classic Hollywood era, including Barbara Stanwyck, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Ingrid Bergman, and a host of others.  She was a favorite of Hitchcock who used her designs for the iconic costumes worn by Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954) and Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958)... and this is just me scratching at a VERY wide surface

So far, I've spent most of my time with the book ogling the various studio costume shots of the various actresses dressed in her frocks so I cannot vouch for the quality of the text.  I can say that with photos like this who needs text?

I'm Officially Excited About The Artist!

How cool is the trailer for Michel Hazanavicius' film The Artist?  Not only does it look to classic cinema for it's art direction.  It follows suit with it's sound design, mimicking pre-talkie soundtrack (it's silent!).  The film has been receiving rave reviews at all the film festivals that it has been presented at (it won a best actor award for lead actor Jean Dujardin at Cannes).  The unfortunate thing is that because it's considered to be a bit of an "arty" film, there won't be a set nationwide release and those interested will have to wait for their local art house cinemas to get a print.  Here's the trailer.  Try to see how many classic cinema references it makes.

Musical Madness: On the Town

Moving further into the musical abyss, I find myself five years later than my first entry into this series.  While there were many musicals made in-between Meet Me in St. Louis and today's feature, On the Town, many are difficult to find on DVD, Blue Ray, or by other conventional means, the ones that are don't really do it for me.  On the bright side, On the Town happens to ranks as one of my all time favourite movie musicals.  Co-directed by Stanley Donan and Gene Kelly and with a cast featuring Kelly and Frank Sinatra, On the Town (1949) represents the Technicolor musical at its most fun.

On the Town revolves around three sailors, Gabey, Chip, and Ozzie (Kelly, Sinatra, and Jules Munshin respectively), who are on 24 hour shore leave in New York City.  It's their first time in the Big Apple and they want to pack in all the sites and dames that they can, and as you would expect misadventures abound.  The main plot thread that extends throughout the picture is Kelly's pursuit of Miss. Turnstiles, aka. Ivy Smith (played by Vera Ellen), the New York Subway's flavour of the month pin-up.  As the sailors search the city for Miss Turnstiles, each picks up a lady friend to aid in their quest.  First, female cabby Brunhilde (the incredibly underrated comedian Betty Garrett) takes a shine to Chip and decided to give them access to her cab.  Then while searching the Museum of Natural History they happen upon anthropologist Claire (Ann Miller) who declares Ozzie to be a perfect specimen of prehistoric man;  unfortunately a lively song and dance number brings down an entire dinosaur skeleton, and puts the heat on our growing group.  They decide to split up with the two newly formed couples taking off with each other and Gabey left to search on his own.  Of course, he just happens to meet up with Ivy again and after melting her seemingly haughty veneer gets her to meet up with he and the group for a night on the town.  The rest of the film is devoted to their night on the town and the continued hijinks of the three sailors and their gals as they try to do it all and avoid the cops. 

On the Town is one of the more successful musicals in the fact that it does not sacrifice story for the musical numbers (a crime that many other musicals of the era are guilty of).  While the story is pretty light and fluffy, it is always enjoyable and the enthusiasm of the performers shine through and infect the viewer with joy.  The film never takes itself too seriously.  I also can't think of a bad musical number in the whole film.  The introductory number New York, New York might be one of the most fun musical numbers put on film (the song is also an incredible earworm) and the film's centrepiece On the Town is similarly enjoyable with the six main player singing and dancing their hearts out.

Where the film falters (only slightly!) is the five minute A Day in New York ballet number where Gene Kelly, Vera Ellen and four other dancers representing the other character in the group pantomime the exact story we've just seen (the group on their night on the town).  It's a bit redundant, but of the extended dance sequences in Kelly's movies (there is usually one per picture in the films where he has some creative control) it is probably the shortest and least jarring.  It's also the least visually interesting.  I'll get into Gene Kelly's obsessive devotion to the art of dance and the demands that he made of the actresses appearing opposite his in future musical madness articles (there are more interesting tales to be told with regards to other films).  Of these films this one suffers the least under these creative demands.

On the Town is a wonderful film that doesn't demand much of the viewer.  It is light and airy and presents the talents involved at their best.  Noteable also is that this the first Hollywood musical to film on location.  Just to infect you with a little bit of the fun, and show off some of those great on location shots, here's the great New York, New York opening...