9/11/22
Newsletter94
The Crack of Dawn
The Pantages Theater on Hollywood and Vine opened in 1930. It’s a big, gaudy, 2,700-seat movie palace. From 1949-1959 the Oscars were presented there. When I first lived in Hollywood in the 1970s the Pantages had become a rundown, second-run theater. Luckily, the Neaderlander Organization (out of Detroit) bought it, refurbished it, and now it’s a beautiful legitimate theater. In 1984 the play Camelot opened starring Richard Burton. In the outside foyer were two 8”x10” hand-painted wooden billboards advertising the show with life-size depictions of Richard Burton at the center. Well, Richard Burton went and died on them right before the opening. They quickly hired Richard Harris. As I walked by the theater over the next couple of days I saw the billboard painter remove Richard Burton’s head with gray paint, then expertly replace it with Richard Harris’s head.
A fairly early Richard Burton (real name, Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.) movie that I’ve only seen once many years ago really sticks with me, and I think about it with some regularity though I don’t know why. It’s called Prince of Players (1955), and is the story of the actors Junius Booth (well-played by Raymond Massey) and his two sons, Edwin (Burton) and John (John Derek). The three of them tour the wild west in the 1850s putting on Shakespeare scenes for drunken gold miners. Edwin eventually becomes the biggest star on Broadway, but his brother John isn’t taken seriously, so he moves to the south where they do take him seriously. With his acceptance in the south, John completely embraces the southern cause as the Civil War begins, then loses his mind. John, of course, is John Wilkes Booth, and he shoots Abraham Lincoln. Even though it’s a big A-production in Technicolor, it’s not a very good movie, but it’s a fascinating hunk of history.
Buried in the cast of Prince of Players is the utterly wonderful actor, Paul Frees (real name, Solomon Hersh Frees). Paul Frees had a couple of decent roles in the 1950s, like the priest at the end of A Place in the Sun (1951) and the radio reporter in War of the Worlds (1953), where he walks through the mayhem and says, “This is for future generations . . . if any”). But what Paul Frees is best remembered for is his voice work. Frees was the top voice-over actor in Hollywood for 30 years, and once you clue into his voice, it’s in so many movies it’s ridiculous. More than half the time you think you’re hearing Orson Welles narrating, it’s really Paul Frees. He had a four-octave voice and could go from the voice of the Jolly Green Giant (“Ho-ho-ho, Green Giant”) to Poppin Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy (“Hoo-hoo-hoo, fresh cookin’ ideas”). Frees was the voice of Boris Badenov in Rocky & Bullwinkle (plus many, many other cartoon voices). Paul Frees was great at dubbing or looping, meaning revoicing actors on-screen. If you ever see the great Japanese actor, Toshiro Mifune, speaking English in a movie, like Shogun or Midway, it’s actually Paul Frees. In Humphrey Bogart’s last movie, The Harder They Fall (1957), Bogey had throat cancer and could only whisper his lines, so Paul Frees replaced his voice in most of the movie. But Paul Frees was utterly ubiquitous by doing both radio and TV ads for all of the big amusement parks. The big amusement park near Detroit is Cedar Point in Ohio. Paul Frees did their commercials for 20 years. Imagine Orson Welles giving his most dramatic performance. “Demon Drop! Plummet five thousand feet to certain doom . . .”H
Today is the first day or the rest of my life, or the last day of the first part of my life.