6/3/23
Newsletter #356
The Crack of Dawn
Forget about all those silent and early-sound nitrate movies that have been lost, because they really are lost. Nobody wanted that nitrate film stock around: it was flammable, it was uninsurable, and it cost money to store it, and all those companies went out of business. It’s a shame, but that’s what happened.
Since then, and of much more consequence to those who came after nitrate stock, which went out of use in 1950, so that’s all of us, is the unfortunate reality that thousands of movies never made it from film to video tape. Thousands. The transfer from film to video also costs money, and since nobody gives a shit about most old movies, there was nobody to pay for the transfer on many, many movies, so they never even made it to VHS tape. Then DVD came out, and maybe half the films that were on tape got retransferred to DVD. Now the delivery system is streaming, and I swear, maybe a quarter of the films on DVD have made it to streaming. Somehow, in the course of my life, not more and more, less and less movies that I know exist (and so does Leonard Maltin, of course) are available. They are not only unavailable, it’s as though they never existed.
Way back when, the weirdest, most obscure movies would show up on TV, often late at night. Given this, I saw a lot of movies that you just can’t see anymore. In some cases, you can still find some of them, but in the most awful versions imaginable. An example of this the 1940 version of Swiss Family Robinson with Thomas Mitchell. When Disney remade it in 1960, they made the old version go away (as a note, the remake is better than the original). But the only extant copy available is unwatchable.
This phenomenon also occurred with One Million B.C. (1940) starring Victor Mature. When it was remade in 1966 as One Million Years B.C., with Raquel Welch (a very popular poster from my youth), the earlier version was made to disappear. With some effort, I tracked it down on VHS, and it’s a much better movie than the remake.
I’ve already brought up Stanley Kramer a number of times, and I will continue to because I am a great admirer of his, and I don’t think his reputation has held up, partially due to him working too long, then living too long. Had he retired in 1967 after the success of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? I believe that he would be much more fondly remembered. But why would he retire at the age of 54 after a big hit? So, he made another decade of bad, bad, bad movies, and was considered something of a joke by his demise in 2001.
Be that as it may, as I’ve mentioned before, Stanley Kramer had a wonderfully unprecedented deal with Columbia Pictures from 1951 to 1955. Columbia was owned and run by two Jewish brothers, Joe and Harry Cohn, who hated each other. Harry ran the west coast studio operation; Joe ran the New York business side, and they were mostly able to avoid each other.
Young whippersnapper Stanley Kramer got back from WWII and made in short order several low-budget, independent movies that were really good, and were big hits, the first being Champion (1949), with the intense newcomer named Kirk Douglas. Then bam, bam, bam: Home of the Brave (1949), Cyrano de Bergerac (1950), The Men (1950), Marlon Brando’s first movie, then High Noon (1951). Kirk Douglas became a huge star, Jose Ferrer got the Oscar for Best Actor for Cyrano, then the next year Gary Cooper won for High Noon (which won even more Oscars) and made a lot of money.
Stanley Kramer was incredibly hot shit for a Hollywood minute. He was in the proverbial catbird seat. But he was also smart, and get this, he actually had really good taste. So, he made this crazy deal, playing Joe Cohn off Harry Cohn. Stanley Kramer signed a 10-picture deal with Joe in New York, for – I don’t know exactly – $10 million for ten films, and as long as he didn’t go over budget, Harry couldn’t say or do anything. Nothing. Joe forced Harry, who was known as the foulest loudmouth in Hollywood, to shut the fuck up. I think it was worth every cent of that ten million to Joe, and I don’t think he cared what the movies were.
Meanwhile, Stanley Kramer Pictures set up under Harry’s nose at the studio on Gower St. Then, bam, bam, bam, Stanley knocked out 9 amazing movies (better and worse), in four years that all bombed at the box office. Every single one of them. Even the best, The Wild One (1954), with Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin, which Harry hated and gave a poor release.
Among those films are some wonderful movies, like Member of the Wedding (1953), The 5,000 Finders of Dr. T (1953), and The Juggler (1953) but they all bombed. Harry Cohn hated the sight of Stanley Kramer and would always make snotty comments when he saw him. Kramer took it and took it.
Stanley Kramer’s last picture for Columbia was The Caine Mutiny (1954) starring Humphry Bogart and it was a huge success. In Hollywood, one big success cleanly erases nine failures. Kramer left Columbia a hero, and immediately became a formidable director in his own right. But Kramer had done his time and proved himself to be a great producer. There are many who would argue that he wasn’t a great director, and I would heartily disagree. And as I said, if he had retired after Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? his reputation would be unassailable.
Alas.
But luck, the favor of the gods, good taste – if you ever have any of them to begin with – are all fleeting. And having lived through it and watched all of the movies as they came out – The Secret of Santa Vittorio (1969), R.P.M (1970), Bless the Beasts and the Children (1971), Oklahoma Crude (1973), The Domino Principle (1977), and finally, the appropriately titled, The Runner Stumbles (1979), then Kramer mercifully retired, it was a painful thing to watch. As he appeared on a talk shows, trying to sell those last shitty movies, he was a relic of the old studio system, and a white-haired square.
But I managed to not get to my point, where this idea began – the missing movies. The ones that didn’t make it to VHS, let alone DVD, let alone streaming. One of those is Stanley Kramer’s very first movie, So This is New York (1948), which I had on VHS that I recorded myself, but have since lost. Here’s Leonard Maltin’s review, “So This is New York (1948) 79m. *** D: Richard Fleischer. Henry Morgan, Rudy Vallee, Leo Gorcey. Cheaply filmed but hilarious adaption of Ring Lardner’s The Big Town. Morgan’s wife inherits money and they decide to go to N.Y.C. encountering strange ways. Ingenious script by Carl Forman and Herbert Baker; radio/TV star Morgan fares well in screen debut, helped by top supporting cast.”
Henry Morgan is not Harry Morgan from M*A*S*H. Anyway, if I regret anything in my life, it’s losing the VHS tape of this movie. Perhaps I’ll explain later.
It’s dawn all right. Gone is the night. A new day is here, so we don’t have to worry about that.