6/17/2022
Newsletter 14
Not a hint of daylight at 4:38.
This is an old Hollywood chestnut. Harry Cohn, head of Columbia Pictures, was infamous for his bad temper and foul mouth. When he died and was buried at the Hollywood Cemetery (now Memories), there was an enormous crowd. Danny Kaye turned to Red Skelton and quipped, “You see, you give the people what they want and they show up.”
Movies were invented and patented in 1889 – by three different people (in order of their patents): Louis Le Prince, William Friese-Green, and Thomas Edison. Inventing new things is fabulous, but part of what made Edison a genius is that he could figure out how to make money with these new invention. Since the projector had net yet been invented, how do you make money showing movies to one person at a time? In 1895 Edison released the Kinetoscope. It was a four foot wooden box with a viewer. You looked into it, paid a nickel, and saw a 90 second movie. The establishments with Kinetoscopes were called Nickelodeons. It sounds quaint now, and a momentary step in the history of movies. However, the first movie theater didn’t open until 1907 in Ogden, Utah. It then took several years for movie theaters to proliferate around the world. Therefore, for almost twenty years the only way to see a movie was on a Kinetoscope. Edison sold nearly a million of them. And for about ten years the only person in the world who “manufactured” movies and distributed them was Thomas Edison. If you wanted a new movie for your Kinetoscope, you had to get it from him.
Everybody hated The Beatles’ 1970 movie, “Let It Be,” except me. It was never released on VHS or DVD. About fifteen years ago I finally found it on DVD – properly packaged and not a bootleg – in Russia. What struck me was that John, Paul and George didn’t call Ringo Ringo; they all called him Rich. Richard Starkey.
In 1967 movies and TV went completely color. The black and white cinematography category in the Oscars was eliminated. Suddenly, the dull black and white Vietnam War footage on the TV news every night included bright red blood. It was so disturbing that anti-war protests erupted all over the country. Though it took six more years, and 50,000 U.S. soldiers killed, the war ended in 1973. But seeing red blood was a game-changer.
In the misheard lyric department: In Creed’s great song “Higher.” “Can you take me higher/ To a place where blind men see/ Can you take me higher/ To a place with golden streams?” Well, “golden streams” is a porno term and Creed is a Christian band. I looked it up and it’s actually, “Golden streets.”
In the 1940s Harry Cohn called a general meeting of all his top people – producers, directors, and even writers – at Columbia Pictures and yelled at everybody. He hollered, “We have to get the people into the theaters!” Noted wit Herman Mankiewicz said, “That’s easy. Show your movies in the streets and it will force people into the theaters.” Harry Cohn fired him on the spot.
At 5:55 it’s day, but the sun has not arisen. It’s just turning a hint of orange above the house across the street.
And yet another beautiful day.