7/27/22
Newsletter54
The Crack of Dawn
I start in the dark of night.
The only aspect worth remembering about the unfunny 1951 comedy, You’re in the Navy Now, is that it was the film debut of both Lee Marvin and Charles Buchinski, who later became Charles Bronson. I watched an interview with Lee Marvin from the late 1970s, with his shaggy white eyebrows covering half of his eyes, and puffing away on one cigarette after another. When he was asked about You’re in the Navy Now, and that it was both his and Bronson’s debut, Marvin chuckled, and only said, “Buchinski.”
25 years before I encountered Leonard Maltin at the Detroit Jewish Center, I bought his new, 1992, movie guide. I had been buying Maltin’s film guides yearly since they started in 1969. For those of you who don’t know, Mr. Maltin rated movies on a four star system, with four stars being the best, and BOMB being the worst. Year after year he gave The Godfather three-and-a-half stars, and The Godfather Part II four stars. I finally wrote to him and asked what was it specifically that caused of The Godfather to lose a half-star? The next year The Godfather got four stars. In that same 1992 guide, Maltin gave Pulp Fiction three-and-a-half stars. I asked, “So, you think that Pulp Fiction is as good as The Godfather?” He promptly wrote back and said, “I don’t compare one movie to another, I take each one on its own merits.” I wrote back saying, “I’d accept that explanation, except the definition of ‘rate’ is the comparison of one thing to another, and you use a four star ‘rating’ system.” He didn’t write back.
I heard Robert DeNiro tell this old actor joke. An actor develops terrible stage fright that gets so bad he quits the theater. His actor buddy, seeing his friend’s predicament, says, “I can get you a one line part in a play, and maybe that will help you overcome your stage fright.” The actor takes the part, and his one line is, “Hark, is that cannons I hear?” Backstage on opening night, the actor keeps repeating over and over, “Hark, is that cannons I hear? Hark, is that cannons I hear?” Finally, his entrance arrives, he steps out on stage and there’s a loud BOOM. The frightened actor yells, “What the fuck was that?”
When I attended the University of Michigan in 1976 they had a wonderful retrospective of the work of photographer and cinematographer, Karl Struss. Struss won the very first Oscar for cinematography in 1927/28 for Sunrise (with Charles Rosher). On opening night I went and saw two films he photographed: The Story of Temple Drake (1932) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932; Oscar nominee). After the movies I went to the exhibition of his breathtaking photographs of New York City from 1910-20. Suddenly there’s a hubbub and a crowd of about ten noisy people with cameras all surrounding an elderly couple come in. The old couple are Karl and Ethel Struss, and among the crowd is the president of U of M. Karl has a 1928 Leica camera in an open leather case in his hands. They go to take the official photo of the president and Karl and Ethel Struss, and the president, without asking, just takes the camera right out of Karl’s hands, to his obvious consternation. The president looks around, sees me, and hands me the camera in its open leather case. As they take the pictures, I try to close the leather case, but it's kind of complicated so I stopped. As soon as they were done taking pictures, the president and everyone else quickly left, leaving Karl and Ethel behind. I just looked it up, Karl was 90 in 1976, and Ethel was a bit younger. They both looked befuddled and lost. I stepped up and handed Karl his camera, saying, “I couldn’t figure out how to get it into the case.” He was incredibly thankful and had no difficulty putting it in the case. He told me it was a ’28 Leica, and Ethel filled in his sentences, and together they made perfect sense. I said that I had just seen two of his films, thought they were both gorgeously photographed, and how on earth did they transform Fredric March into Mr. Hyde? Karl and Ethel spent the next fifteen minutes happily and excitedly explaining how it was done, which was ridiculously complicated.
Great, that was in the winter of 1976. At the end of the semester I moved to Hollywood. I made friends with my movie buddy, Rick Sandford, who went to see movies at the L.A. County Museum so often that they always let us both in for free. In the preceding year the Karl Struss exhibition had traveled across the country and was now in L.A. Rick and I were there to see Aloma of the South Sea (1941) because Karl Struss’s photography was nominated for an Oscar. As we entered the museum I told Rick about meeting Karl and Ethel Struss in Ann Arbor. Rick and I had just met within the month and he still wasn’t sure if I wasn’t totally full of shit. As Rick and I were looking at Karl’s great photographs mounted in the lobby, an old man with a cane hobbled around the corner coming toward us. I said, “That’s Karl Struss.” I swear to God, Karl Struss pointed his crooked finger at me and said, “Aren’t you that nice boy I met in Ann Arbor?” I looked at Rick and he was impressed.
I end in the light of day.
That is a great story, man. I loved reading that.