4/26/23
Newsletter #318
The Crack of Dawn
The English language wholly incorporates words from other languages. As an example, in English we use the French words: chauffeur, critique, and Déjà vu. From German we got: kindergarten, angst, and zeitgeist. From Spanish we borrowed: breeze, ranch, guerrilla, patio, and stampede. However, the oldest borrowed word in the English language, by far, is pundit. The word is used constantly on TV news for anyone who has an opinion about the topic. Pundit originates from the Sanskrit term pandit (paṇḍitá पण्डित), meaning “knowledge owner” or “learned man,” and is at least 3,000 years old.
In Japan in 1954 Toho Studios released a monster movie called Gojira, which is actually the combination of two Japanese words: gorira, which means gorilla, and kujira which means whale. The star of the film is the great Takashi Shimura, who starred in many of Akira Kurosawa’s best films. Takashi Shimura is the lead samurai in Seven Samurai (1954). Gojira was a huge success in Japan and was immediately followed by a sequel, Godzilla Raids Again (1955), which was also a big hit.
[I’m stepping out of the narrative for a moment. Getting into the film business is extremely difficult, to say the least. Getting into the film business and being successful right away is rare. Therefore, guys in rubber suits stomping on miniatures of Tokyo is all well and fine, and impressed me as a child. But what impresses me more is that someone who saw an opportunity and immediately seized it. Therefore, enter the Jew.]
To me, Joseph E. Levine looks like a Jewish producer is supposed to look. Joe Levine was a poor Jewish kid from the streets of Boston. Was he a genius? No. Not even close. But he was smart enough to see an opportunity, seize it, and knock it out of the park. And thereafter, he had a real Hollywood career. Among a hundred pieces of crap — including Italian Attila and Hercules movies — Joseph E. Levine produced A Lion in Winter (1968), The Graduate (1967), and The Producers (1968).
Because he was paying attention, Levine saw that Gojira and its sequel were big hits in Japan. He purchased the U.S. rights for peanuts, cut 16-minutes out of the movie, mostly Takashi Shimura’s performance (reducing him to a supporting character). Levine then hired an up-and-coming young character actor named Raymond Burr (who had a very showy scene as a lawyer in a big movie, A Place in the Sun [1951], which would ultimately get him the TV series, Perry Mason), for two days. Levine surrounded Raymond Burr with Japanese extras, gave him Takashi Shimura’s dialogue, then had him cut into the film. Joseph E. Levine then released, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! (1956), and the world was never be the same.
Although Raymond Burr never appeared again, Toho Studios cranked out 33 more Godzilla movies. That’s when I was a kid, and I saw as many of them as possible. My personal favorite was Destroy All Monsters! (1968), where they put all the Japanese monsters together.
Then Toho sold the rights to several American companies, and Godzilla movies have never stopped coming out. The last one was in 2021, Godzilla vs. Kong, and Godzilla vs. Kong II (2024) is coming soon to a theater near you.
But what nobody knows — not even fucking Google — is that there were two feature versions of Godzilla in the 1930s, in 1934 and 1938. In the 1930s they hadn’t gotten as far with rubber suit technology (which they called Suitmation); it’s just a big guy in crappy-looking makeup. Only still photographs remain (I actually could find them, but as Homer Simpson said, “That smells like work,” and the dawn is cracking).
80% of all the silent movies produced between 1889 and 1927 are “lost.” They’re really gone, not lost, because 99% of them were burned because they were hazardous – nitrate film stock was extremely flammable. But there’s still 1% out there that they keep finding in oddball places, like in eastern Europe – a reel here, a reel there – so all hope is not lost. Surprisingly, I think, 70% of all the movies from the 1930s are gone, too, for the same reason – nitrate stock. But those, too, turn up every now and then. These films were being released around the world, hundreds of prints, so there is hope that there might possibly be a responsible person somewhere who kept a print. It’s not only possible, it keeps happening, so one can still be hopeful that lost films will be found.
However, in the case of those two Japanese Godzilla movies from the 1930s, the chances of finding them are zero. Here’s why:
The United States Army Air Force conducted “Operation Meetinghouse” on the night of March 9-10, 1945, which is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. 16 square miles of central Tokyo were destroyed – completely decimated, and it didn’t help that the Japanese built there houses out of paper – leaving an estimated 100,000 civilians dead and over one million homeless. Neither atomic bombs was as destructive as this bombing raid. This event is often referred to as “The fire-bombing of Tokyo” because it was the first full-scale use of napalm.
Guess where they stored all the negatives and prints of the entire history of Japanese cinema? That’s right, Tokyo. So the chances of finding those ‘30s Godzilla movies isn’t great.
Did you know, by the way, that the name Tokyo was derived from the much older city’s name, Kyoto? It’s the same letters scrambled around.
It’s clear and sunny, and there’s frost on grass. It’s 31 degrees. I may have to go back to L.A. for a week. I checked, it’s 80 there like always.
Well, I did something today; I wrote this. Now I can fuck off for the rest of the day and still feel like I did something.
Be here now, if you can.