6/26/22
Newsletter23
At 4:34 AM it’s still the dead of night. The 1945 British film, “Dead of Night,” scared the hell out of me as a kid.
The first “Rat Pack” movie is “Some Came Running,” with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine, directed by Vincent Minelli, and it’s is a serious drama. Dean Martin gives what may well be his best performance, and young Shirley MacLaine is so good she was nominated for an Oscar. Although it’s not a great film, it’s completely different than all the other Rat Pack movies.
In a nutshell, in 1919 a low-budget British film company opened in Hollywood called Robertson-Cole. In 1926 Joseph Kennedy (father of John, Bobby, and Ted) acquired the company and it became FBO (Film Bookers Organization). In 1928 Kennedy arranged a merger with RCA and Keith-Orpheum that owned 100 theaters, and the company became RKO. In 1948 RKO was purchased by Howard Hughes for $23.5 million. Hughes managed to produce nothing but stinkers for seven years and ran the value of the company down to nothing. However, due to advent of TV in the early 1950s, and the fact that RKO had a big film library, including “King Kong” and the Astaire-Rogers musicals, Hughes sold the company at a profit to General Tire in 1955. General Tire had no idea how to run a film company, and sold it to Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in 1957 and it became Desilu for the next ten years. Desilu’s biggest success was the TV show, “Star Trek”
Director Norman Jewison’s film, “In the Heat of the Night,” won Best Picture in 1967. Suddenly he was the hot-shit director in town. When the hit play, “Fiddler on the Roof,” was about to be made into a movie, Jewison was brought before the film executives and offered the job of directing. He said, “I’d love to direct the film, but you know I’m not Jewish, even though it sounds like it.” Well, they didn’t know he was not Jewish, but they had already made the offer and he took it.
In 1915 D.W. Griffith shot his epic film “Intolerance” at his own studio at the east end of Hollywood Blvd., where it hits Sunset Blvd. in Silverlake. That’s where he shot the Babylon scenes on one of the biggest sets ever constructed. That Babylon set sat there rotting on Hollywood Blvd. for next 23 years until it was finally torn down in 1938.
Francis J. Feeney started as an actor in the movie business in 1909 in New York. He went to Hollywood in 1910 to work for the pioneer film producer, Thomas Ince, making short westerns. He did so well that three years later he sent for his little brother Sean to come out. By then Francis had changed his name to Francis Ford. Following suit, Sean changed his name to John Ford.
Ayn Rand (real name, Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum) immigrated from the Soviet Russia to the U.S. in 1926. She moved to Hollywood and met director Cecil B. DeMille who was shooting his Jesus epic, “King of Kings.” DeMille put Ayn Rand in the film and she’s a very obvious extra in the Jerusalem scenes. She then wrote some stories and screenplays for DeMille, but none were produced. She quickly gave up on Hollywood, decided to be a novelist instead, and was never heard of again.
The first light of dawn has arrived.