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by Anthony Slide
With this issue of CLASSIC IMAGES, I conclude ten years of writing this column. In those past ten years, I thought I had come across every conceivable type of book on every conceivable film-related topic. How nice it is, therefore, at this time, to welcome a totally unique volume in Florice Whyte Kovan’s "Rediscovering Ben Hecht: Selling the Celluloid Serpent."
To describe "Rediscovering Ben Hecht: Selling the Celluloid Serpent" as a book is like describing the Mona Lisa as just another painting. This is far more than a book. It is a work of art. As one turns the pages of this spiral bound volume, one is reminded not of an art book from Harry Abrams or Abbeville Press but rather a collage by Joseph Cornell or Marcel Duchamp. The text is varied in style—at one point typed—with the pages varying in color and the illustrations ranging from simple sketches through color postcards attached to the page. All is set off in a magnificent binder with a 1922 caricature of Ben Hecht by Erik Johan Smith on the cover.
Editor/designer Florice Whyte Kovan has gathered together a unique collection of essays by Ben Hecht, all relating to silent film and none of which I have previously read. Hecht writes of the movie double, of Moon Quan (who was a consultant on Broken Blossoms), or Kid McCoy (who is also associated with the D. W. Griffith film), of Mack Sennett, of Charlie Chaplin, of Harrison Ford, of Olga Petrova, and much more. There is even a not-too-kind tribute to Balaban and Katz, to be sung to the tune of "Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Shean." The parody and wit, for which Ben Hecht is rightly praised, is apparent throughout. The piece on Madame Petrova is, simply put, brilliant.
Interspersed between the original Ben Hecht writings is commentary by Florice Whyte Kovan. She notes that Hecht’s credited screen career began with Underworld in 1928, but, as these stories indicate, the writer had long held a fascination with the motion picture. She reveals (I believe for the first time) that Hecht provided the original screen treatment for the 1915 Triangle release, Double Trouble, starring Douglas Fairbanks, and that Hecht collaborated, uncredited, with Anita Loos on a number of other film projects, including Fairbanks’ The Americano. The book contains much more, including a poem written by Moon Kwan upon seeing D. W. Griffith’s The Greatest Thing in Life.
"Rediscovering Ben Hecht: Selling the Celluloid Serpent" is published in a limited collector’s edition of 200. I cannot guarantee, as of this month, that any copies are still available. But I do urge readers to rush their orders to the Snickersnee Press, 325 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Washington, D.C. 20003, together with a check for $59.95. The book can also be ordered by mail (202) 547-0132 or E-mail at acdmpubr@mnsinc.com. Do it!
Two or three months ago, I reviewed "Monsters in the Closet," which examined homosexuality in the horror genre. Now I have in front of me Michael William Saunders’ "Imps of the Perverse: Gay Monsters in Films" (Greenwood Press, $49.95), which is not about gays in horror films but rather how the film industry in recent years has portrayed gays as being monstrous. This slim volume—and it is much too slim for its subject, with the paucity of the index indicative of the slightness of the text—pays little attention to Hollywood history, relying entirely on the somewhat inaccurate and incomplete writings of Vita Russo and concentrates on films such as My Own Private Idaho, Cruising, Postcards From America, I Am My Own Woman, The Living End, and Querelle, together with a broad examination of the work of Jean Cocteau, Kenneth Anger, and Jean Genet. Too little attention is given to commercial Hollywood films, such as The Silence of the Lambs, to which the author devotes a mere seven lines, despite its being one of the most obvious examples of a feature in which a homosexual man is truly monstrous.
"Imps of the Perverse" also includes a transcript of a telephone interview with Todd Haynes, director of Poison, in which the author talks almost as much as his subject and along the way manages to tell us a great deal about both of them. You get to kind of like the author, and you only wish his book might have been more substantive.
"Comedy Stars at 78 RPM: Biographies and Discographies of 89 Artists, 1896-1946" by Ronald L. Smith (McFarland, $45.00) deals with a curious but interesting mix of performers. From America, the book includes (among many others) Abbott and Costello, Nora Bayes, Fanny Brice, George Jessel, Spike Jones, Ken Murray, and Oswald, Smith and Dale, and Mae West, along with the little known such as Butterbeans and Susie, Red Ingle and Robert J. Wildhack. The United Kingdom is well represented by Arthur Askey, Billy Bennett, Albert Chevalier, Flanagan and Allen, Reginald Gardiner, Billy Merson, George Robey, and others.
For each performer, the author provides a biographical sketch, which concentrates on the individual’s recording work, together with a list of recordings (on 78s and albums or CDs), a title and year listing of films and television appearances, and references to books, autobiographies and biographies. The author knows his subject well and provides some fascinating tidbits.
The films of the director of The Way We Were, Tootsie, Out of Africa, and other popular features of the 1960s through the 1900s are well covered in Janet L. Meyer’s "Sydney Pollack: A Critical Filmography" (McFarland, $35.00). This is not a biographical study, but rather a solid reference work. After a chronology, a brief biography, and a study of Pollack’s work as producer and actor, the author discusses each of the director’s films from The Slender Thread (1965) through Sabrina (1995). There is one chapter per film, broken down into categories: About the Production, Source Material, Synopsis, and Analysis. The book also includes a record of television work and the most detailed filmography I have ever come across.
Piotr Borowiec’s "Animated Short Films: A Critical Index to Theatrical Cartoons" (Scarecrow Press, $45.00) is a lightweight reference work. The author limits the book to cartoons currently available, and he lists each of them in alphabetical order with year of release, director, and studio, together with an extremely brief synopsis/critical comment. The book also includes a director and a chronological index.
The American experience in the work of John Ford, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Fred Zinnemann, Elia Kazan, and George Stevens is analyzed by Sam B. Girgus in "Hollywood Renaissance: The Cinema of Democracy in the Era of Ford, Capra, and Kazan" (Cambridge University Press, $59.95/$18.85). Somehow, it seems to me the era of Ford and Capra should not include Elia Kazan, but the author argues that the Hollywood Renaissance began in 1939 and ended in 1966. From 1967 onwards, he sees a break from the cultural and cinematic traditions of the classic Hollywood film. It is all very debatable, and the text is a little too heavy for most individuals to bother to pursue the argument further. Equally debatable is whether we need another academic text on the same old directors and their same old, much discussed productions.
The latest full scale study of a television series from Renaissance Books is David P. Kalat’s "Homicide: Life on the Street, The Unofficial Companion" ($16.95). This paperback book provides career overviews, with listings of film and television appearances, on each of the regular cast members, supporting cast, and production crew of the popular NBC series set in Baltimore, together with complete documentation and commentary on each of some 91 episodes, from 1993 through 1998, plus much more.
What the book does not contain is any photograph from the show itself. The producers would not apparently cooperate. At some point in the future, hopefully, film and television producers are going to realize that books such as this are not only important as a permanent record of a series and those associated with it, but also as valuable publicity. Perhaps, the book might even direct would-be viewers to the show. In all honesty, I think I have only seen one episode of this series accidentally on British television. David P. Kalat’s enthusiasm for Homicide: Life on the Street is sufficient to encourage me at least to seek out another episode.
Deborah Lazaroff Alpi’s "Robert Siodmak: A Biography, with Critical Analyses of His Films Noirs and a Filmography of All His Works" (McFarland, $55.00) delivers exactly what its subtitle promises. One or two to a chapter, all of the director’s films are discussed in detail, with the author devoting additional space to Siodmak’s films noirs classics, Phantom Lady, Christmas Holiday, The Suspect, The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, The Spiral Staircase, The Dark Mirror, The Killers, Cry of the City, Criss Cross, and The File on Thelma Jordon. The book also contains a highly detailed filmography, listing not only produced films but also uncompleted and aborted projects. The book is important not only as a study of a somewhat under-rated director of American "B" and films noirs from 1940-1951, but also because the author devotes equal space to Siodmak’s work in Germany both before and after the years in the U.S.
Neither the title nor the subtitle of Michael G. Ankerich’s "The Sound of Silence: Conversations with 16 Film and Stage Personalities Who Bridged the Gap Between Silents and Talkies" (McFarland, $42.50) make a lot of sense. There is little here on the silent film era, and the majority of the men and women interviewed had no careers in silent films. What the book does contain are essays, which are a blend of both interviews and career articles on Hugh Allan, Barbara Barondess, Thomas Beck, Mary Brian, Pauline Curley, Billie Dove, Edith Fellows, Rose Hobart, William Janney, Marcia Mae Jones, Barbara Kent, Esther Muir, Anita Page, Marion Shilling, Lupita Tovar, and Barbara Weeks. It’s a curious mix, with leading ladies, such as Mary Brian, Billie Dove, and Rose Hobart rubbing shoulders with performers, such as Hugh Allan and Thomas Beck, of whom, quite frankly, I have never heard.
Such complaints and comments aside, "The Sound of Silence" is well worth reading for some of the anecdotes and for the informative career summations, each of which concludes with a filmography. I did not totally like the manner in which the author ingratiates himself into the text, but that is the Ankerich style, and I was bothered that the author does not appear to have seen many of the extant films of his subjects. For example, a photograph of Rose Hobart is identified as being shot about the time she made Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But had the author seen Miss Hobart’s Liliom, he would have recognized that she is quite obviously in costume for that film.
For several years now, the British
Film Institute has been publishing a series of monographs on individual
films, under the heading of BFI Film Classics, all distributed
in the U.S. by Indiana University Press. The latest is "The
Birds" ($10.95), primarily of interest because the
author is cultural critic Camille
Paglia. I suspect she had some help, but the lady does
quite well in documenting the film’s history, and apparently
the book was so much liked by Tippi Hedren that she has ordered
multiple copies. As with all books in the series, the slim volume
is heavily illustrated with both black-and-white and color photographs,
and includes the complete credits for the film.
By Bob Dickson
Writer John Weld knew Walter Huston and his family for many years and had embarked on an earlier draft of "September Song: An Intimate Biography of Walter Huston" (Scarecrow Press, $39.95) with him several years before Huston’s death. The book is, therefore, highly detailed and intimate.
Weld does an excellent job of documenting Huston’s childhood and youth in Toronto, Canada, and his often arduous, acting apprenticeship with numerous impoverished traveling repertory companies. It is interesting to learn, for example, that Huston appeared in vaudeville for several years in a song-and-dance act with an older woman, Bayonne Whipple, whom he married after divorcing his first wife (and mother of John).
Huston’s first major success in the legitimate theater was in Mr. Pitt which was followed by leading roles in Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under The Elms and The Fountain. After a brief return to vaudeville, including a headliner spot at the Palace, Huston then starred for George M. Cohan in Elmer The Great, and eventually took that play’s leading lady, Nan Sunderland, as his third and last wife.
The movies beckoned and, after appearing in three shorts and two features for Paramount at their Astoria, Long Island studio, Huston headed west to play the role of "Trampas" in The Virginian (1929). After worthy roles in Abraham Lincoln and The Criminal Code, Huston found himself stuck in several largely undistinguished films and told Weld that he felt that he had "sold himself down the river to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer." Returning to the theater, Huston finally hit his stride in the dramatization of Sinclair Lewis’ Dodsworth, which later became one of his best film roles.
As a good biographer should, Weld not only delineates his subject’s triumphs, but also details some "disasters" along the way, including Robert Edmond Jones’ production of Othello, which closed after three weeks. Huston’s subsequent successes in films such as Summer Holiday and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and on stage in Knickerbocker Holiday are well covered. In the latter, he performed the immortal September Song, which was written specifically for him.
Weld’s book contains good stage and film chronologies and a useful index. Over the years, Huston and Weld had an almost father-son relationship and, to his credit, Weld has fashioned an eminently readable, thoroughly researched and, apparently, very fair assessment of the life and career of his friend.
"Joseph H. Lewis: Overview, Interview, and Filmography," by Francis M. Nevins (Scarecrow Press, $32.50) is a slender volume of some 120 pages of which less than half are devoted to an overview of Lewis’ career. The balance of the book includes a rudimentary filmography—although Lewis’s work in television is well covered—some photographs and an adequate index. The overview is based on an interview Nevins conducted in 1992 augmented by quotations from a 1987 German film about Lewis.
Lewis began his career in the 1930s as a film editor and director of "B" westerns, including several with Bob Baker and Charles Starrett. He also paid his dues on films at Monogram and at PRC. After making Army training films during the war, Lewis found a niche at Columbia, and when Harry Cohn saw his initial work on My Name Is Julia Ross, the picture was elevated from a 10-day "B" to an 18-day "A" picture.
Lewis is probably best known for his films Gun Crazy, The Big Combo, and Terror in a Texas Town, and it is evident from those films that he possessed considerable technical skills and a rare sense of style. Directors who graduated from editing and from "B" pictures often brought an ingenuity and economy of staging to their late work, and Lewis was no exception. Long before the days of Steadicams, Panaglides, and video monitors, Lewis was laying out the elaborate, fluid camera moves which became his trademark.
I suspect that author Nevins, a professor of law and mystery story writer, is perhaps unfamiliar with the "nuts and bolts" of low budget filmmaking. It appears that he was unable to elicit much information from Lewis about the on-the-set intricacies of setting up and executing his daring long takes. It would have been interesting to know, for example, how often the famous one take bank robbery sequence in Gun Crazy was rehearsed and shot. It is good to have this volume on Lewis available, but one wishes that it were more detailed.
Alcoholism, Blacks in American Film, Censorship, Cigarette Smoking, Color Processes, Distributors, Exploitation Films, Films For TV, Genre, Laboratories, Locations, Newsreels, Production Companies (large and small, contemporary and historic), Series Films, The South on Film, Studios (long gone and current), Three-Dimensional Films, Theatre Chains, Trade Associations, Widescreen Processes, Women Filmmakers and Zoom Lenses—all these topics and about 800 more are defined and discussed in "The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry" (Scarecrow Press, $55.00), a revised and updated version of Anthony Slide’s 1986 book, "The American Film Industry: A Historical Dictionary."
In common with many dictionaries, Slide’s epic volume makes for invigorating and illuminating browsing. The entries are succinctly explained in a very agreeable writing style, and the reader is likely to learn much from each page. As most of the material is decidedly arcane and ephemeral, it is, therefore all the more valuable to have it assembled here in one volume. This is a necessary addition to any film researcher’s library.