Hiya Kiddies! It's Friday, and that means it's time for a comedy. And has Professor Damian got a corker for you today! In 1940, director Howard Hawks set out, with screenwriter Charles Lederer to adapt for the big screen a play called The Front Page which had been written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. The play involved Newspaper editor Walter Burns's efforts to keep his star reporter Hildy Johnson from leaving the paper in order to get married and get a "repectable" job. During casting for the movie, however, Hawks reportedly had his secretary read Hildy's lines and decided he liked the sound of the words coming from a woman. The script was quickly re-written so that "Huldy" became short for Hildegard, (and became Burns's ex-wife) and the previously female fiancee became Bruce Baldwin.
As one watches the movie, it quickly becomes apparent that there are still sparks between Burns (played by Cary Grant) and Johnson (the lovely Rosalind Russell). It also becomes apparent that despite her continued protestations, Johnson is still drawn to the reporting life. Once escaped convict Earl Williams almost drops into her lap and then convinces her of his innocence, she is almost literally helpless to do anything but follow up on the story, even as her fiancee Bruce comes to realise that he has lost her.
The film maintains an incredibly quick pace throughout its 92 minute running time, containing plenty of verbal jabs between the two main characters along with Hawks' trademark fast-cut dialog which often sees characters stepping on each others' lines and repartee that shoots briskly along. Hawks himself said about the dialogue "I had noticed that when people talk, they talk over one another, especially people who talk fast or who are arguing or describing something. So we wrote the dialogue in a way that made the beginnings and ends of sentences unnecessary; they were there for overlapping." Quite a bit of the dialog was ad-libbed, and there are also plenty of inside jokes, such as Burns's remark that "the last man that said that to me was Archie Leach just a week before he cut his throat" (Archie Leach is, of course, Grant's birth name.)
Grant is in top comedic form in this flick, perhaps his funniest outing until 1944's Arsenic and Old Lace, and Russell proves well able to hold her own against his manic whirlwind, despite her disappointment with not having been Hawks' first choice for the role and her feeling that Grant had most of the truly good lines. They are ably supported by a fine cast that includes Ralph Bellamy as Hildy's fiancee Bruce and Alma Kruger as his mother. There can really be no argument, though, that Grant and Russell are driving this particular train and the rest are just there as passengers.
Ok, feels like it's about trailer time, and thanks to archive.org, we have a nice almost three minute preview of the movie. Enjoy!
And now, as usual, here's the skinny:
Title: His Girl Friday
Release Date: 1940
Running Time: 92 min.
Black and White
Stars: Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell
Director: Howard Hawks
Producer: Howard Hawks
Production Company: Columbia Pictures
The film is available to watch or download for free here
It can also be purchased on DVD from amazon. Just click here: His Girl Friday
It's also available both as a DVD rental or to "Watch now" from Netflix: His Girl Friday
How soon is too soon? That's the question asked (and answered?) by Jimmy Stewart and Carole Lombard in today's feature. Though the real question may well be "how sweet is too sweet?"
Released in the same year that Mr. Smith was sent to D.C. (Stewart actually had four movies come out in 1939, the second of three years straight that would see him perform that feat), and seven years before George Bailey found out how angels get their wings, one can't help but wonder if Frank Capra didn't see this film and figure that Stewart would be perfect to play the over-blown, overly-earnest saps that he was trying to cast, because that's certainly what he brings to the table here.
From the premise (A lawyer is sent to represent to represent his firm in D.C.. While there, he meets a beautiful woman and after a single day of courtship, they get married. When he's suddenly called back home by his demanding boss, they must return to meet not only the boss, but the groom's extremely disapproving mother, and to try to figure out how to make a go of this new life together.) you might expect a broad comedy along the lines of the movies Cary Grant was making with any number of leading ladies at the time, but if you go into this film expecting that you are going to be sorely disappointed. Instead the film quickly turns maudlin as Stewart is passed over for a partnership in his law firm, Lombard can do nothing to please her harridan mother-in-law, and their newborn baby falls ill to a disease which requires medicine to be flown in from 5000 miles away through a horrendous storm, which of course the young couple can't afford without Stewart begging his boss for a loan.
Throughout the movie, Lombard is, of course, radiant and stalwart, and Stewart plays the part of the earnest, stammering, put upon husband with his usual style and grace, but in the end the script simply falls too much into melodrama that at the end the relief that the viewer feels is not that of joy that these two have finally found that their love can conquer any hardship, but that we don't have to endure those hardships with them any longer.
Still, there is certainly an audience for this film. If you are one of those who believes that the people of Bedford Falls were right in bailing out George Bailey after he almost drove his savings and loan company into bankruptcy by overextending loans to those who had no way to repay them, or if you believe that Jefferson Smith was right in staging a filibuster that was only stopped by his collapse and another senator attempting suicide in order to get his pet earmark passed, then you'll probably also enjoy this romance.
Again, there doesn't appear to be a proper trailer online, so I've embedded the first few minutes of the movie below to give you a taste:
Ok, time for the skinny again:
Title: Made for Each Other
Release Date: 1939
Running Time: 92 min.
Black and White
Stars: Jimmy Stewart, Carole Lombard
Director: John Cromwell
Producer: David O Selznick
Studio: Selznick International Pictures
You can watch or download the movie here.
The movie is also available for purchase on DVD from Amazon: Made For Each Other.
Or you can rent the DVD from Netflix: Made for Each Other.
Ok, pop quiz, hotshots! When does Old Blue Eyes not have blue eyes? When the Hal Roach Studios gets ahold of a classic Frank Sinatra gangster movie and decides to colorize it. In doing so, they made the odd decision that Sinatra's eyes should be brown. Off course, this was in the early days of colorization, so honestly there were a lot of colors that weren't very well done, but this seemed a particularly egregious mistake. Fortunately, for those of us who prefer our noir in black and white, it's also available both online and on disk in its original format.
For those who only remember Sinatra from later years when he was best known as a lounge singer or a member of the rat pack, Suddenly may come as quite a surprise. As he had already shown inthe previous year's From Here to Eternity, and would again in 1962 with The Manchurian Candidate , Sinatra was quite the dramatic actor.
In this very dark outing, Sinatra plays a hitman named John Baron who has been hired to kill the (unnamed) American president as he pulls in for a whistle-stop speech in the small California town of Suddenly. (Yeah, the town is called Suddenly. Because "That's the way things used to happen here." Wanna make something of it?) Weaseling their way into the Benson home by pretending to be FBI agents, Sinatra and his henchmen set about getting ready to put their plan into action. Once the Bensons realise who Baron and his men really are, they attempt to talk them out of the killing, and then Pop Benson (played by James Gleason) tries to sabotage the proceedings. There's also a confrontation with Sheriff Tod Shaw (played by Sterling Hayden) and a real Secret Service agent (Willis Bouchey). But nothing and no-one is going to stop a determined Baron from fulfilling his contract.
The movie, with its true sense of desperation and inevitability is very much in the film noir genre, and Sinatra proves a very creditable lead as the odds mount against him but he remains determined to pull the trigger. not even losing one of his men in a gunfight with the police or the unexpected appearance of a television repairman who quickly becomes a hostage. In a review at the time of the film's release, The Hollywood Reporter stated "As an assassin in the piece, Sinatra superbly refutes the idea that the straight role potentialities in From Here To Eternity was one shot stuff. In Suddenly, the happy-go-lucky soldier of Eternity becomes one of the most repellent killers in American screen history."
Again, as with Mclintock, this is a case where the copyright simply wasn't renewed after the first 28 year period, so the movie fell into the public domain. Some say that one reason the copyright wasn't renewed was that Sinatra (and distributer United Artists) wanted to disassociate himself from it after rumors that Lee Harvey Oswald watched it shortly before he killed President Kennedy.
I wasn't able to find an official trailer online for this film, but here's one apparently created by youtube user publicdomaintheatre that gives a good sense of what the movie is like (though I've got to admit i don't really like the overlay filter):
Ok, time for the skinny:
Title: Suddenly
Release Date: 1954
Running Time 75 min.
Black and White (though colorized versions are available - they're not recommended, but they're available.)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, James Gleason, Sterling Hayden, Nancy Gates
Director: Lewis Allen
Producer: Robert Bassler
Studio: United Artists
You can watch (or download) the movie for free online by clicking here.
It's also available on DVD from Amazon: Suddenly (Yes, this disk includes a colorized version, but it is not the horrendous Hal Roach version - this one is newly remastered and also includes an incredibly sharp (also remastered) b/w version. And yes, Frankie's eyes are blue in this one.)
The movie is also available to "Watch now" from netflix: Suddenly
Until next time, Happy Treasure Hunting
-Professor Damian
Hello?! Is there anyone out there? Oh, thank goodness. For a moment I was afraid that there was no one left but me and Richard Morgan. (Morgan! Morgan! Come out Morgan!) Who's Richard Morgan, you ask? Why he's the character played by Vincent Price in today's feature. He's The Last Man on Earth.
In 1964, Italian director Ubaldo Ragona and American Sidney Salkow set out to adapt Richard Matheson's 1954 novel I Am Legend to the big screen. Hiring Matheson himself to write the screenplay (though he eventually decided he was disappointed with the outcome and had the credit changed to "Logan Swanson") and Vincent Price to star, the duo felt they had a sure-fire hit on their hands. Unfortunately, the film was hampered by an obviously low budget and some of the Italian actors were very badly dubbed, and it wasn't until later years that the film came to be seen as anything more than a minor Price effort. Now, however, it has a 73% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes, and is considered by many to be the best of the three major adaptations of the novel. The other two being the 1971 Charleton Heston starring The Omega Man, and 2007's Will Smith actioner I Am Legend .
Set in the then-near-future time of 1968, Price stars as Dr. Richard Morgan, the last survivor of a plague that has turned most of humanity into near-zombie like vampires. Since the plague hit, Morgan now finds himself spending each day making wooden stakes, hunting the vampires, and burning them in a communal pit. Each night is a torment to be endured as he tries to keep the continually persistent vampires from breaking into his home, which has become his last refuge.
Morgan, as played by Price, becomes a very sympathetic figure as we learn that he has not only lost his daughter to the plague, but he has had to put a stake through the heart of his wife who returned as one of the vampires after he could not bear to throw into the fire pits when she, too, succumbed to the disease.
When he finally encounters another living human, a woman, who seems to also be immune to the disease, Morgan is at first elated, but his joy soon turns to suspicion and then fear as he learns that she is hiding a dark secret. Will she be the key to helping him resurrect humanity, or will she be the final nail in the coffin of the last true man?
As you can perhaps tell from the above, this is a movie that i like a great deal. Yes, the budget was minimal, but it simply forced all involved to come up with more creative solutions to the presentation. Plus, Price injects a great amount of humanity into a role that would in lesser hands be very flat. We not only hear the increasing desperation of the character in the voice-over narration that guides us through the film, but we see it on his face to an extent that becomes almost palpable.
So, again we have to ask, how did a movie from 1964 starring one of terror-dom's greats come into the public domain. Again, the answer is simple. Before the law was changed so that everything that is produced is automatically copyrighted, a notice of copyright had to be filed, and that was never done. Therefore, automatic Public Domain.
And here's the trailer:
Ok, the skinny:
Title: The Last Man on Earth
Release Date: 1964
Running Time: 86 min.
Stars: Vincent Price
Directors: Ubaldo Ragona, Sidney Salkow
Producers: Robert L. Lippert, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Harold E. Knox
Distributed by: American International Pictures
Hello, kiddies! Or perhaps today I should say "Howdy, Pilgrims!" It's your humble host Professor Damian with today's offering from the public domain treasure chest, and we're starting off with a great one!
In 1963, 13 years after they had first appeared together in the John Ford epic Rio Grande and 11 years after they both appeared in what may be Wayne's greatest non-western movie, The Quiet Man, John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara came together once again to bring the story of The Taming of the Shrew to the wild west.
In the movie, Wayne plays George Washington McLintock, a cattle baron, mine owner, lumberyard boss, and generally the biggest man (physically and financially) in a town that has even been named after him. However, no matter how big McLintock may be, his biggest challenge may have just arrived on the morning train. No, it's not a gunslinger come to challenge the rancher. Or even one of the new settlers who are intent on farming land given to them by the government. No, the true challenge to McLintock's power (and his sanity) is his estranged wife, Katherine (O'Hara) who has just returned to town to meet up with their daughter, Becky, (Stephanie Powers) who is coming home from college. Katherine plans to take Becky east to start a new life, but McLintock is, shall we say, less than thrilled with the idea.
The sparks soon begin to fly, but the question soon becomes: will the two exes simply burn each other up, or are the sparks merely a prelude to renewed romantic fireworks?
The film definitely has its ups and downs. The chemistry between the two leads is immediately obvious, and they are backed by a supporting cast that not only includes Powers and Wayne's son Patrick and daughter Aissa, but also the lovely Yvonne De Carlo (yes, Lily Munster herself), Jerry Van Dyke, Bruce Cabot, Strother Martin, and Chill Wills as Mclintock's right hand man Drago.
The highlight of the movie has to be the oft highlighted "mud fight scene", which begins with Drago trying to calm his boss down. "I know, I know. I'm gonna use good judgement," Mclintock says through gritted teeth. "I haven't lost my temper in forty years, but pilgrim you caused a lot of trouble this morning, might have got somebody killed... and somebody oughta belt you in the mouth. But I won't." He begins to turn away. "I won't... The HELL I won't!"
And with that he belts the other man, knocking him down a hill and into a mud pit. Donnybrooking soon ensues. (The entire scene can be seen here.)
On the negative side, the movie is definitely a product of its time and attitudes. One of the reasons that I chose to feature the poster above is that it highlights one of the scenes that has been, in later years, highly criticised. Actually there are two spanking scenes in the movie, one in which Mclintock turns Katherine over his knee, another which involves Becky and her fiancee. For those who are offended by that kind of thing, I can only say that it seems to me sort of part-and-parcel with the whole Taming of the Shrew theme, and also that throughout the movie, it seems that both women for the most part give as good as they get.
Then there is the portrayal of Native Americans. I'm not even going to try to defend this one, though I will say that it seems at least a bit more enlightened than some of Wayne's earlier "Injun Fighter" westerns. At a couple of points, McLintock is shown as a fighter for indian rights and rescues a Comanche friend from hanging for a crime he didn't commit. At one point, one of the characters even has the dialogue "Yes, I know I'm an Indian. But I'm also the fastest runner in town. I've got a college education and I'm also the railroad telegrapher. But does anybody say 'Hello Runner' or 'Hello College Man' or 'Hello Telegrapher'? No! Not even 'Hello Knothead'! It's always 'Let the Indian do it.'"
So how did a movie from 1963 with a major star like John Wayne, produced by his own Batjac production company wind up in the Public Domain? The answer is simple. When the movie was made, in 1963, the term for copyrights was 28 years with a possible 28 year extension. When the time for renewal came up in 1991, Wayne's son, Michael, who was in charge of Batjac at the time, failed to file for the extension. Therefore it automatically fell into the Public Domain.
And now, just to whet your appetite and give you a taste of this gem from the Public Domain, here (thanks to reelzchannel.com) is the trailer for McLintock!
Title: McLintock!
Release Date: 1963
Running Time: 127 min.
Color
Stars: John Wayne, Mureen O'Hara, Patrick Wayne, Stephanie Powers
Director: Andrew V. McLaglen
Producer: Michael Wayne
Production Company: Batjac
Distributed by: United Artists
You can watch the entire movie (in widescreen) for free by clicking here. A full screen version is available here.
Or, you can purchase the deluxe edition of the movie on DVD (complete with commentary, a history of Batjac productions, interviews, and even a history of the corset(!) ) from Amazon by clicking here: McLintock! (Authentic Collector's Edition)
The movie is also available to "Watch Now" or rent from Netflix:McLintock!
Until next time, Happy Treasure Hunting
-Professor Damian
Welcome to Professor Damian's Public Domain Treasure Chest. Each day I, your humble host, will post information on a movie or T.V. show in the public domain along with links to where you can watch them online (for free) or purchase them on DVD. For more information on the public domain check out my public domain primer (to be posted soon, keep watching this spot for a link) or the public domain entry at wikipedia. Also be sure to check out the great resources available at The Internet Archive. Also each week I'll update The Master List of Public Domain movies and shows I've discussed so you can easily find them. Also, you can contact me with comments, suggestion, complaints or praise by clicking here.
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, and would again in 1962 with 
, Sinatra was quite the dramatic actor.
(Yes, this disk includes a colorized version, but it is not the horrendous Hal Roach version - this one is newly remastered and also includes an incredibly sharp (also remastered) b/w version. And yes, Frankie's eyes are blue in this one.)
, and 2007's Will Smith actioner 
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