Calendar: June 26

A Year: Day to Day Men: 26th of June

The Art of Concentration

June 26, 1925 marks the release of the Charlie Chaplin film “The Gold Rush”.

The 1925 American comedy “The Gold Rush” was in every respect the most elaborate undertaking of Charlie Chaplin¹s career. For two weeks the unit shot on location at Truckee in the snow country of the Sierra Nevada. Here Chaplin faithfully recreated the historic image of the prospectors struggling up the Chilkoot Pass. Six hundred extras, many drawn from the vagrants and derelicts of Sacramento, were brought by train, to clamber up the 2300-feet pass dug through the mountain snow.

For the main shooting the unit returned to the Hollywood studio, where a remarkably convincing miniature mountain range was created out of timber (a quarter of a million feet, it was reported), chicken wire, burlap, plaster, salt and flour. The spectacle of this Alaskan snowscape improbably glistening under the baking Californian summer sun drew crowds of sightseers

In addition, the studio technicians devised exquisite models to produce the special effects which Chaplin demanded, like the miners’ hut which is blown by the tempest to teeter on the edge of a precipice, for one of the cinema’s most sustained sequences of comic suspense. Often it is impossible to detect the shift from model to full-size set.

“The Gold Rush” abounds with now-classic comedy scenes. The historic horrors of the starving 19th century pioneers inspired the sequence in which Charlie and his partner Big Jim are snowbound and ravenous. Charlie cooks and eats his boot, with all the airs of a gourmet. In the eyes of the delirious Big Jim, he is transformed into a chicken – a triumph both for the cameramen who had to effect the elaborate trick work entirely in the camera; and for Chaplin who magically becomes a bird.

The lone prospector’s dream of hosting a New Year dinner for the beautiful dance-hall girl provides the opportunity for another famous Chaplin set-piece: the dance of the rolls. The gag had been done before, by Chaplin’s one-time co-star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle; but Chaplin gave unique personality to the dancing legs created out of forks and rolls. When the film was first shown audiences were so thrilled by the scene that some theaters were obliged to stop the film, roll it back and perform an encore.

“The Gold Rush” was the first of his silent films which Chaplin revived, with the addition of sound, for new audiences. For the 1942 reissue he composed an orchestral score, and replaced the inter-titles with a commentary which he spoke himself. The film today is accepted to be one of Chaplin’s most perfectly accomplished films and declared by him to be the one by which he wanted to be remembered.

Calendar: June 22

A Year: Day to Day Men: 22nd of June

A Horticultural Marvel

June 22, 1920 was the birthdate of the American voice actor and comedian Paul Frees.

Paul Frees was born Solomon Hersh Frees in Chicago, Illinois. He had an unusually wide four-octave voice range. In the 1930s, he first appeared on vaudeville as an impressionist, under the name of Buddy Green. He began his career in radio in 1942; but it was cut short when he was drafted into World War II. Frees was wounded in action and returned to the United States for a year of recuperation.

Frees appeared frequently on Hollywood radio series, playing lead roles and alternating with William Conrad as the announcer on the 1940’s “Escape”. One of his starring roles on radio was as Jethro Dumont (the Green Lama) in the 1949 Series “The Green Lama”, a show about a caped crime fighter with mystical powers. Frees in that year voice all the parts in the “The Player” syndicated anthology series.

Frees was often called upon in the 1950s and 1960s to “re-loop” the dialogue of other actors, often to correct for foreign accents, lack of English proficiency, or poor line readings by non-professionals. These dubs extended from a few lines to entire roles. Frees read fo Toshiro Mifume’s performances as Admiral Yamamoto in the movie “Midway. He also provided much of Tony Curtis’ female character in the film “Some Like It Hot”. Frees also dubbed Humphrey Bogart in his final film “The Harder They Fall”. Bogart was suffering at the time from what would be diagnosed as esophageal cancer and thus could barely be heard in some takes, hence the need for Frees to dub in his voice.

Frees worked extensively with at least nine of the major animation production companies of the 20th century. He was a regular presence in the Jay Ward cartoons, providing the voices of Boris Badenov in “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show”, Inspector Fenwick in “Dudley Do-Right”, commissioner Alistair and Weevil Plumtree in “George of the Jungle”, Fred in “Super Chicken”, and many others. Frees portrayed the radio-reporter in the 1953 film “War of the Worlds”, where he is seen dictating into a tape recorder as the military prepares the atomic bomb for use against the invading Martians. Memorably, his character says that the recording is being made “for future history… if any”

Although Frees was primarily known for his voice work (like Mel Blanc, he was known in the industry as “The Man of a Thousand Voices”), he was also a songwriter and screenwriter. His most notable screenwriting work was the little-seen 1960 film “The Beatniks”, a screed against the then-rising Beat counterculture in the vein of “Reefer Madness.

Calendar: June 18

A Year: Day to Day Men: 18th of June

Not Clark Kent

June 18, 1969 was the release date of Sam Peckinpah’s western “The Wild Bunch”.

In 1967, Warner Brothers-Seven Arts producers Kenneth Hyman and Phil Feldman were interested in having Sam Peckinpah rewrite and direct an adventure film. At the time, William Goldman’s screenplay “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” had recently been purchased by 20th Century Fox. It was quickly decided that “The Wild Bunch”, which had several similarities to Goldman’s work, would be produced in order to beat “Butch Cassidy” to the theaters.

Peckinpah’s epic work was inspired by his hunger to return to film work, the violence seen in 1967’s “Bonnie and Clyde”, America’s growing frustration with the Vietnam War, and what he perceived to be the utter lack of reality seen in Westerns up to that time. He set out to make a film which portrayed not only the vicious violence of the period, but as well the crude men attempting to survive the era. Multiple scenes involving slow motion action sequences inspired by Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, characters leaving a village as if in a funeral procession, and the use of inexperienced locals as extras, would become fully realized in “The Wild Bunch” film.

The film was shot in the anamorphic format, a technique of shooting a widescreen picture on a standard 35 mm film. This arose from the desire to maximize the overall image detail while retaining the use of standard cameras and projectors. Telephoto lenses were used by cinematographer Lucien Ballard to compress foreground and background images in perspective. The editing of the film is notable in that shots from multiple angles were spliced together in rapid succession, often at different speeds, placing greater emphasis on the chaotic nature of the action and the gunfights.

Peckinpah would film the major shootouts with six cameras, operating at various film rates, from 24 frames per second stepping up to 120 frames per second. When the scenes were eventually cut together, the action would shift from slow to fast to slower still, giving time an elastic quality never before seen in motion pictures up to that time. By the time filming wrapped, Peckinpah had shot 333,000 feet of film with 1,288 camera setups. Editor Lou Lombardo and Peckinpah remained in Mexico for six months editing the picture.

The violence that was much criticized in 1969 remains controversial. Peckinpah noted it was allegoric of the American war in Vietnam, the violence of which was nightly televised to American homes at supper time. He tried showing the gun violence commonplace to the historic western frontier period, rebelling against sanitized, bloodless television Westerns and films glamorizing gunfights and murder: “The point of the film is to take this façade of movie violence and open it up, get people involved in it so that they are starting to go in the Hollywood television predictable reaction syndrome, and then twist it so that it’s not fun anymore, just a wave of sickness in the gut … it’s ugly, brutalizing, and bloody awful; it’s not fun and games and cowboys and Indians.”

Calendar: June 16

A Year: Day to Day Men: 16th of June

Beachwear

June 16, 1924 was the birthdate of Faith Marie Domergue, the American television and film actress.

While just a sophomore at high school, Ann Marie Domergue signed a contract with Warner Brothers and made her first on-screen appearance as a walk-on in the 1941 “Blues in the Night”. After graduating high school in 1942, Domergue pursued her career in acting; but after sustaining injuries in a near fatal automobile accident, she put her plans on hold. While recuperating, she attended a Howard Hughes yacht party.

Howard Hughes, emanored with her, bought her contract from Warner Brothers and signed her to a three picture deal with RKO Pictures. She was cast as the lead in the 1950 thriller “Vendetta”. The film had a four year troubled production period and, after its release in 1950, was dismissed as a trivial, slow paced period piece. After the film release, Domergue separated from Hughes and freelanced as an actor.

Domergue played a femme fatale in the 1950 film noir “Where Danger Lives”, opposite Robert Mitchum and Claude Rains. Signing a contract with Universal Pictures in 1953, she appeared opposite Audie Murphy in the western adventure “The Duel at Silver Creek”. In 1955, she appeared in another western, “Santa Fe Passage” playing Aurelie Saint Clair, an ammunition retailer on a wagon train, opposite John Payne and Rod Cameron.

Domergue then appeared in a series of science fiction films which earned her the reputation as an early “scream queen”, the films’ damsel in distress. The first was the “Cult of the Cobra” released in 1955 where airmen discover a cult of snake worshippers. Faith Domergue played the female lead role of the cult leader who transforms herself into a deadly cobra.

The next role was in the now famous sci-fi movie “It Came from Beneath the Sea” produced by Columbia Pictures. This 1954 film about a giant octopus was a major commercial success, grossing almost two million dollars at the box office and later becoming a cult classic. She played marine biologist Lesley Joyce who helped destroy the creature with an atomic torpedo. The following year, Domergue starred in the first color sci-fi film “This Island Earth”, which received praise for its writing and inventive special effects.

By the late 1960s, Domergue was appearing mainly in low-budget “B” horror movies and European productions. She relocated to Europe permanently in 1968, moving from Rome to Geneva, Switzerland, and Marbella, Spain. Her final film credit was for the 1974 “The House of Seven Corpses”, an independent horror film shot in Salt Lake City. Faith Domergue spent her later years in retirement in Palo Alto, California. She died on April 4, 1999, of unspecified cancer at the age of 74.

Calendar: June 15

A Year: Day to Day Men: 15th of June

Black and Yellow Plaid

On June 15, 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge used high-speed photography to capture a horse’s motion.

Former California Governor Leland Stanford was an imperious, headstrong captain of industry who had helped build the transcontinental railroad and would later found the university that bears his son’s name. He retired to the life of a country horse breeder; and he wanted proof of what his eyes told him: that a horse has all four feet in the air during some parts of his stride.

Many photographers at that time were still using exposures of 15 seconds to one minute. Automatic shutters were in their infancy: expensive and unreliable. Eadweard Muybridge, a successful landscape photographer at that time, devised more-sensitive emulsions and worked on elaborate shutter devices. He also rigged a trip wire across a racetrack, letting the horse’s chest push against the wire to engage an electric circuit that opened a slat-shaped shutter mechanism to make the exposure.

This system produced an “automatic electro-photograph” on July 1, 1877. It showed Occident, a Stanford-owned racehorse, seemingly with all four feet off the ground. The press and the public failed to accept this as proof, however, because what they actually saw was obviously retouched. (The photo had been reproduced by painting it, then photographing the painting, then making a woodcut of the photo for the printing on paper.)

Muybridge continued his labors with the engineering help of Stanford’s Central Pacific Railroad. They installed 12 evenly spaced trip wires on Stanford’s Palo Alto racetrack. When a horse pulled a two-wheeled sulky carriage over the wire, the wheels depressed the wire, pulling a switch that opened an electrical circuit that used an elastic band to open a rapid-fire sliding shutter mechanism in the side of a purpose-built shack. Inside the shack, behind a row of 12 shutters, was a row of 12 cameras. Opposite the shack was a white wall with vertical lines matching the distance of the trip wires and cameras.

So, on June 15, 1878, before assembled gentlemen of the press, Stanford’s top trainer drove Stanford’s top trotter across the trip wires at about 40 feet per second, setting off all 12 cameras in rapid succession in less than half a second. About 20 minutes later, Muybridge showed the freshly developed photographic plates. The horse, indeed, lifted all four legs off the ground during its stride. Remarkably, this was not in the front-and-rear-extended “rocking-horse posture” some had expected, but in a tucked posture, with all four feet under the horse.

Muybridge refined his invention, increasing the cameras from one to two dozen, and developed an electromagnetic timer that opened shutters independently of any trip wires. That allowed him to study the nonlinear motions of other four-footed animals, human athletes, a nude descending a staircase and even birds. Muybridge went on to publish a series of finely printed, large-format books of his stop-motion photographs.

Calendar: June 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of June

The Toucan in the Forest

June 14, 1933 was the birthdate of Józef Lewinkopf, a Polish-American novelist known by the name Jerzy Kosinski.

Józef Lewinkopf was born to Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland. As a child during World War II, he lived in central Poland under a false identity, Jerzy Kosinski, which his father gave to him. A Roman Catholic priest issued him a forged baptismal certificate, and the Lewinkopf family survived the Holocaust thanks to local villagers who offered assistance, often at great risk. After the war ended, Kosinski and his parents moved to Jelenia Góra, in southwestern Poland.

By the age of twenty-two, Jeerzy Kosinski had earned graduate degrees in history and sociology at the University of Lodz. He became an associate professor at the Polish Academy of Sciences. In order to immigrate to the United States in 1957, he created a fake foundation, which supposedly sponsored him. In the United States Kosinski worked odd jobs to get by, eventually graduating from Columbia University. He became an American citizen in 1965.

Kosinski’s first novel was the controversial “The Painted Bird”, published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin. The story originally introduced as being autobiographical was the story of a World War II boy wandering around Eastern Europe. Assumed by reviewers to be a memoir of a Jewish survivor to the Holocaust, the book received enthusiastic revews. However, within twenty years it was discovered to be fictional. The book was banned in Poland from its publication until the fall of the communist government in 1989. When it was finally printed in Poland, thousands of Warsaw residents waited as long as eight hours for an autographed copy.

Kosinski’s 1970 novel, “Being There” was one of his most significant works. It was a satirical view of the absurd reality of America’s media culture. It is the story of Chance the gardener, a man of few distinctive qualities who emerges from nowhere and suddenly becomes the heir to the throne of a Wall Street tycoon and a presidential policy advisor. His simple and straight forward responses to popular concerns are praised as visionary despite the fact that no one actually understands what he is really saying. “Being There” was made into a movie in 1979 and starred Peter Sellers as the gardener Chance and Shirley MacLaine as Eve Rand, the wife of the business tycoon who advises the President..

Kosiński suffered from multiple illnesses toward the end of his life, and he was under attack from journalists who accused him of plagiarism. By his late 50s, he was suffering from an irregular heartbeat, as well as severe physical and nervous exhaustion. He committed suicide on May 3, 1991, by ingesting a lethal amount of alcohol and drugs, and wrapping a plastic bag around his head, suffocating to death. His suicide note read: “I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity.”

Calendar: June 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of June

A Scattering of Suds

June 10, 1971 marks the passing of the English actor, Michael Rennie.

A meeting with a Gaumont-British Studios casting director led to Michael Rennie’s first acting job, a stand-in for Robert Young in the 1936 film “Secret Agent” directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He put his film career on hold for a few years to get some acting experience on the stage, working mostly in repertory theater in Yorkshire. Rennie eventually became a lead actor with the York Repertory Company.

Rennie played minor roles in films during this period including “Conquest of the Air” in 1937, “Bank Holiday” in 1938 and the 1939 “This Man in Paris”. After the outbreak of war in September of 1939, he began to receive offers for larger film roles, in particular Leslie Howard’s 1941 anti-Nazi thriller “Pimpernel Smith” which became one of the most valuable films of British war propaganda.

With the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Rennie was given his first film break, when cast alongside Margaret Lockwood, who was at the peak of her popularity, in the 1945 musical “I’ll Be Your Sweetheart”, for Gainsborough Studios. Rennie was billed below Lockwood and star Vic Oliver and given an “introducing” credit; but his character was the actual protagonist of the film. Although the movie was not a large hit, Rennie received excellent notices for his perfomance.

After moving to Hollywood in 1950, Rennie was signed to a 20th Century Films contract by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. In 1951, Robert Wise became the director of the first post-war, large budget science fiction film “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, Originally cast with Claude Rains in the lead, Rennie received top billing when Rains turned down the role. The film was a serious, high-minded exploration of mid-20th century suspicion and paranoia, combined with a philosophical overview of humanity’s coming place in the larger universe. Rennie’s portrayal of the spaceman Klaatu is arguably his most popular role and a classic in the science fiction genre.

After the film’s release, Rennie worked as a supporting actor for eight years until his return to England in 1959. At that time, he took the lead role of Harry Lime in the 1959 television series “The Third Man”. Throughout his career, Rennie made numerous guest appearances on television, particularly on American programs. He completed what amounted to guest roles in two films, “The Power” and “The Devil’s Brigade”, both filmed in 1968, before moving to Switzerland in the latter part of that year. Rennie’s final seven feature films were filmed in Britain, Italy, Spain and, in the case of the film “Surabaya Conspiracy”, the Philippines.

Michael Rennie journeyed to his mother’s home in Harrogate, Yorkshire, following the death of his brother. It was there that he died suddenly in June of 1971 of an aortic aneurysm almost two months before his 62nd birthday. After his cremation, Rennie’s ashes were interred in Harlow Hill Cemetery, Harrogate, England.

Ogle Winston Link and Thom

Photographer Unknown, “Ogle Winston Link and Thom”, 1940, Silver Gelatin Print

This 1940 photograph shows O. Winston Link with his assistant Thom with their lighting equipment.

Ogle Winston Link was an American photographer known for his black and white photography and sound recordings of the last days of steam locomotive railroading on the Norfolk and Western lines in the United States in the late 1950s. He was a pioneer in night-time photography. He used a 4 x 5 graphic View view camera with black and white film, from which he produce silver gelatin prints.

Calendar: June 5

A Year: Day to Day Men: 5th of June

La Pièce de Résistance

June 5, 1895 was the birthdate of American film actor William Boyd.

William Boyd’s breakout role was Jack Moreland in Cedil B DeMille’s silent 1925 “The Road to Yesterday”, Boyd’s performance in the film was praised by critics, while movie-goers were equally impressed by his easy charm, charisma, and intense good-looks. Due to Boyd’s growing popularity, DeMille soon cast him as the leading man in the highly acclaimed silent drama film, “The Volga Boatman”.

Boyd’s role in that film firmly established him as a matinee idol and romantic leading man; he began earning an annual salary of $100,000. He acted in DeMille’s big lavish production “The King of Kings” and later in the 1928 DeMille production “Skyscraper” playing the lead role of Blondy. In 1931 his picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor, William “Stage” Boyd, on gambling charges. This story damaged his career, despite having been shown false; and Boyd became virtually bankrupt.

In 1935 William Boyd was offered the supporting role of Red Conners in the movie “Hop-Along Cassidy”. He asked for the title role and won it. The original role of tlhe Hop-Along Cassidy character, written by Clarence E. Mulford for pulp magazine serials, was changed from a hard-drinking, rough-living red-headed wrangler to a cowboy hero who did not smoke, swear, or drink alcohol and who always let the bad guy start the fight. Although Boyd never lived in real life as a cowboy and disliked Western music, he became indlibly associated with the Hop-Along character and, like the cowboy stars Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, gained lasting fame in the Western film genre.

The films were more polished and impressive than the usual low-budget “program westerns”. The Hop-Along Cassidy adventures usually boasted superior outdoor photography of scenic locations and name supporting players familiar from major Hollywood films. Big-city theaters, which usually wouldn’t play Westerns, noticed the high quality of the productions and gave the series more exposure than other cowboy films could hope for.

The series of films ended in 1948 as interest in the character waned and fewer theaters were showing the films. William Boyd bought all the rights to all the Hop-Along Cassidy movies, mortgaging almost everything he owned to meet the price of $350,000 for the rights and the film backlog. He offered a print to a local NBC television station; it was so well received Boyd released the entire library to the national network, beginning the long-running genre of Westerns on television. Boyd’s gamble paid off, making him the first national TV star and restoring his personal fortune.

William Boyd estimated in 1940 (after only 5 years of the thirteen-year role) that he had starred in 28 outdoor films in which he fired 30,000 shots and killed at least 100 villians. He wore out 12 costumes and 60 ten-gallon hats, rode his horse Topper more than 2000 miles and rode herd on 5000 head of cattle. A score or more of heroines had been saved, but were never kissed.

Calendar: June 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of June

Truly Blessed

June 2, 1904 was the birthdate of the competition swimmer and actor, Johnny Weissmuller.

Johann Weissmuller was an ethnic German, the elder son of Peter and Elisabeth Weissmuller, immigrants who entered the United States through Ellis Island in New York. At the age of nine, young ‘Johnny’ Weissmuller contracted polio. At the suggestion of his doctor, he took up swimming and eventually earned a spot on the YMCA swim team. As a teen, while working at the Illinois Athletic Club, Weissmuller began training under swim coach William Bachrach. In August 1921, he won the national championships in the 50-yard and 220-yard distances.

Although foreign-born, Weissmuller gave his birthplace as Tanneryville, Pennsylvania, and his birth date as that of his younger brother, Peter Weissmuller. This was to ensure his eligibility to compete as part of the United States Olympic team, and was a critical issue in being issued a United States passport. On July 9, 1922, Weissmuller broke the world record in the 100-meter freestyle. He won the title for that distance at the 1924 Summer Olympics, beating the current champion, Duke Kahanamoku, for the gold record.

Johnny Weissmuller, in his life’s swimming competitions, won five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, fifty-two United States national championships, and set sixty-seven world records. He was the first man to swim the 100-meter freestyle under one minute and the 440-yard freestyle under five minutes. Weissmuller never lost a race and retired with an unbeaten amateur record.

Weissmuller’s acting career began when he signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In his first film, he played the role of Tarzan in the 1932 “Tarzan the Ape Man”. The movie was a huge success and Weissmuller became an overnight international sensation. The author of “Tarzan”, Edgar Rice Burroughs, was pleased with Weissmuller as his book’s hero, although Burroughs hated the studio’s depiction of a Tarzan who barely spoke English. Weissmuller starred in six Tarzan movies for MGM with actress Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane and Cheeta the Chimpanzee. The last three also included Johnny Sheffield as Boy.

In 1942, Weissmuller went to RKO and starred in six more Tarzan movies with markedly reduced production values. Sheffield also appeared as Boy in the first five features for RKO. Brenda Joyce took over the role of Jane in Weissmuller’s last four Tarzan movies. In a total of 12 Tarzan films, Weissmuller earned an estimated two-million dollars and established himself as what many movie historians consider the definitive Tarzan. Although not the first Tarzan in movies, Weissmuller was the first to be associated with the now traditional ululating, yodeling Tarzan yell.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Johnny Weissmuller”, 1934, Gelatin Silver Print

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Johnny Weissmuller”, circa 1930, Gelatin Silver Print

Calendar: June 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of June

Jumping Rope

June 1, 1890 was the birthdate of the American character actor, Frank Morgan.

Frank Morgan was an American character actor whose career spanned four decades, most of it under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He was born in New York City, the youngest of eleven children. His family earned its wealth h distributing Angostura bitters, allowing him to attend Cornell University. Both Frank and his brother Ralph Morgan went into show business, first on the Broadway stage and later into motion pictures.

After Morgan’s film debut in the 1916 “The Suspect”, he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in the 1917 “Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman”, an independent film produced in and about New York City. Morgan’s career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good hearted middle-aged man. By the mid-1930s, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, impressed by his performances, signed him to a lifetime contract.

Morgan’s best remembered film performances, playing six roles, are in the 1939 “The Wizard of Oz”: as the carnival huckster “Professor Marvel”, the gatekeeper at the Emerald City, the coachman of the carriage drawn by “The Horse of a Different Color”, the guard who initially refuses to let Dorothy and her friends in to see the Wizard, the Wizard’s scary face projection, and the Wizard himself. Morgan was cast in the role on September 22, 1938, after the studio tired of negotiating the salary of W.C. Field for his possible participation in the role.

An actor with a wide range, Morgan was equally effective playing comical, befuddled men such as Jesse Kiffmeyer in the 1937 “Saratoga” and Mr. Ferris in 1944’s “Casanova Brown”, as he was with more serious, troubled characters like Hugo Matuschek in “The Shop Around the Corner” and Professor Roth in “The Mortal Storm” released in 1940. A musical-comedy film centering on Frank Morgan was released by MGM in 1946 entitled “The Great Morgan”. The film is a compilation of unrelated short subjects and musical numbers built around the premise of Morgan trying to produce a movie.

Morgan died of a heart attack on September 18, 1949, while filming “Annie Get Your Gun”. He was replaced in the film by Louis Calhern. His death came before the 1956 premiere televised broadcast on CBS of “The Wizard of Oz”, which would make him the only major cast member from the film who would not live to see the film’s revived popularity and its becoming an annual American television institution.

Frank Morgan was nominated twice for Academy Awards: Best Actor for his role in the 1934 “The Affairs of Cellini” and Best Supporting Actor fo “Tortilla Flat” released in 1942. He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for his work in radio and one for motion pictures. Both were dedicated in 1960.

Calendar: May 30

A Year: Day to Day Men: 30th of May

Sitting in a Field of White Cotton

May 30, 1896 was the birthdate of American film director, producer and screenwriter Howard Hawks.

By the end of April in 1917 Howard Hawks was working on De Mille’s “The Little American” and later on on the Mary Pickford film “The Little Princess” directed by Marshall Neilan. Hawks began directing at age 21 after he and cinematographer Charles Rosher filmed a double exposure dream sequence with Mary Pickford. He worked with Pickford and Neilan again on another film before joining the United States Army Air Service. After the war he returned again to Hollywood.

Hawks first major film was the 1926 “Road to Glory”, the story of a young woman going blind and trying to spare her loved ones of the burden of her illness. Ir was filmed in two months and premiered in April of 1926, It received good reviews from critics but Hawks was dissatisfied with the film. Immediately after completing the film, he began writing his next film, his first comedy “Fig Leaves”. It was released in July of 1926 and was Hawks’ first hit as a director.

In March 1927, Howard Hawks signed a one-year, three-picture contract with 20th Century Fox and mad “A Girl in Every Port” in 1928. This film is considered by film scholars to be the most important film of Hawks’ silent career. It is the first of his films to utilize many of the distinctive themes and characters that would define much of his subsequent work.”A Girl in Every Port” was his first “love story between two men,” within which two men bonded over their duty, skills and careers and, as a result, considered their friendship to be more important than their relationships with women. Hawks wrote the original story and developed the screenplay with James Kevin McGuinness and Seton Miller. The film was released in February 1928, successful in the US, and a hit in Europe.

Over his career Howard Hawks directed and produced many important films in a wide variety of genres. He was a versatile director, whose career included comedies, dramas, gangster films, science fiction, film noir and westerns. His most popular films include” the 1932 “Scarface”, “Binging Up Baby” with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, the 1940 “His Girl Friday”, “The Big Sleep” with Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, the western “Red River” starring Montgomery Clift and John Wayne, the sci-fi classic “The Thing from Another World”, and the 1959 “Rio Bravo” with John Wayne and Dean Martin.

Howard Hawks popularized a particular female archetype in his films; women were portrayed as strong, less effeminate characters. Such an emphasis had never been done in the 1920s and therefore was seen to be a rarity. Hawks’ directorial style and the use of natural, conversational dialogue in his films are cited as major influences on many noted filmmakers, including Robert Altman, John Carpenter, and Quenton Tarantino. Howard Hawks received his only Oscar in 1975 as an Honorary Award from the Academy.

Calendar: May 28

A Year: Day to Day Men: 28th of May

A Small White Space

The musical film “On with the Show!” by Warner Brothers Studio was released on May 28, 1929.

Filmed in Two-strip Technicolor, “On with the Show!” is noted as the first all-talking, all-color feature length movie. Warner Brothers promoted the film as being in “natural color”. This would be the first of a series of contracted films by Warner Brothers to be made in the Technicolor process. The film generated much interest in Hollywood; and other studios began shooting films in the process. The film, though a success, was eclipsed by the success of their next color film “Gold Diggers of Broadway”.

“On with the Show!” was a combination of a backstage musical using the ‘show within a show” format, a comedy and a mystery. The story and dialogue were written by Robert Lord with the music and lyrics by Harry Akst. William Bakewell was in the role of the head usher eager to get his sweetheart played by Sally O’Neil. Betty Compson played the temperamental star and the whiny young male star of the show was Arthur Lake. The vaudeville actor Joe E. Brown had a role as a comedian in the show; through this role his career shot to stardom status.

The film was a box office hit, with a worldwide gross of over two million dollars. Reviews from critics were mixed. Many thought the length was too long and the story was bad; however, most were impressed with the color process. Josh Mosher, the first regularly assigned film critic of the New Yorker magazine, wrote that the film was “completely undistinguished for wit, charm, or novelty, except that it is done in color. Possibly in the millennium all movies will be colored. In these early days of the art, however, not much can be said for it, except that it is not really distressing.”

The original color print of “On with the Show!” is lost, a fate of many of the early films printed on a nitrate film base. Only black and white prints of the film have survived. A 20 second fragment of an original color print surfaced in 2005; it was found in a toy projector. Other original color fragments have been discovered in 2014. The Library of Congress has long held a copy of the black and white version in its collection.

Calendar: May 27

A Year: Day to Day Men: 27th of May

The Path of Roses

May 27, 1922 is the was the birthdate of the English actor Sir Christopher Lee.

Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee was perhaps the only actor of his generation to have starred in so many films and cult saga. Although most notable for personifying bloodsucking vampire, Dracula, on screen, he portrayed other varied characters on screen, most of which were villains.

After attending Wellington College from age 14 to 17, Lee worked as an office clerk in a couple of London shipping companies until 1941 when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Following his release from military service, Lee joined the Rank Organization in 1947, training as an actor and playing a number of bit parts in such films as the 1948 “Corridor of Mirrors”. He also made a brief appearance in the Laurence Olivier’s 1948 film “Hamlet”.

Lee had numerous parts in film and television throughout the 1950s. However, playing the monster in the 1957 Hammer film “The Curse of Frankenstein” proved to be a blessing in disguise, since the film was successful. It led to him being signed on for many future roles in Hammer Film Productions. Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing often than not played contrasting roles in Hammer films, where Cushing was the protagonist and Lee the villain, whether it be Van Helsing and Dracula respectively in “Horror of Dracula”, or John Banning and Kharis the Mummy respectively in “The Mummy”.

Lee continued his role as “Dracula” in a number of Hammer sequels throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s. During this time, he co-starred in the Sherlock Holmes film “The Hound of the Baskervilles”. Lee also made numerous appearances as Fu Manchu, most notably in the first of the series “The Face of Fu Manchu”. By the mid-1970s, Lee was tiring of his horror image and tried to widen his appeal by participating in several mainstream films, such as; “The Three Musketeers” in 1973 and the 1974 James Bond film “The Man with the Golden Gun”.

The success of these films prompted him in the late 1970s to move to Hollywood, where he remained a busy actor but made mostly unremarkable film and television appearances, and eventually moved back to England. The beginning of the new millennium relaunched his career to some degree, during which he has played Count Dooku in two Star Wars movies (2002 and 2005). He also had the role of Saruman the White in the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

On June 16, 2001, Christopher Lee was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of his services to drama. He was created a Knight Bachelor on June 13, 2009 in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List for his services to drama and charity. Lee died at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital on June 7, 2015 at 8:30 am after being admitted for respiratory problems and heart failure, shortly after celebrating his 93rd birthday there.

Calendar: May 25

A Year: Day to Day Men: 25th of May

Afternoon in the Bayou

May 25, 1969 was the release date for the film “Midnight Cowboy”.

“Midnight Cowboy” is a drama film based on the 1965 novel by James Leo Herlihy with the screenplay written by Waldo Salt. It was directed by the English film and stage director John Schlesinger and starred Jon Voight as the young Joe Buck alongside Dustin Hoffman playing the con man Enrico Salvatore “Ratso” Rizzo.

Jon Voight was paid “scale”, or the Screen Actor Guild minimum wage, for his portrayal of Joe Buck, a concession he willingly made to obtain the part. The director John Schlesinger was reluctant to hire Dustin Hoffman because Hoffman was associated by the public with the clean-cut image of Benjamin Braddock in “The Graduate”. Schlesinger checked out Hoffman in an Off-Broadway play in which he was performing. He saw Hoffman in a scruffy beard, disheveled clothes and speaking with a Bowery accent; he gave Hoffman the role of Ratso Rizzo.

The famous scene in which Joe and Ratso attempt to walk across the street and almost get hit by a cab was filmed guerilla-style, with a camera in a van across the street. The scene was a difficult shoot, logistically, because those were real pedestrians and there was real traffic. Director Schlesinger also wanted to do it in one shot—he didn’t want to cut the scene. After several attempts, the two actors figured out how to properly time the walk but then almost got run over by a cab. Dustin Hoffman yelled the line ‘I’m walking here’ at the cab meaning, ‘We’re shooting a scene here, and this is the first time we ever got it right.” That improvised, out-of-script, now famous yell remained in the film.

Upon initial review by the Motion Picture Association of America, “Midnight Cowboy” received a “Restricted” (“R”) rating. However, after consulting with a psychologist, executives at the United Artists studio were told to accept an “X” rating, due to the “homosexual frame of reference” and its “possible influence upon youngsters”. The studio refused to edit anything out; so the film was released with an “X” rating. The MPAA later broadened the requirements for the “R” rating to allow more content and raised the age restriction from sixteen to seventeen. The film was later rated “R” for a reissue in 1971. The film today retains its “R” rating.

The film won three Academy Awards in 1970: Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. It was the first gay-related Best Picture winner and the only X-rated film ever to win Best Picture, although such a classification no longer exists. At the British Academy Film Awards it won in six categories: Best Film, Best Direction, Best Leading Actor – Dustin Hoffman, Best New Leading Newcomer – Jon Voight, Best Screenplay and Best Editing.