Class leaves the airwaves: GSN drops b&w programs

I often lament on the program how it is IMPOSSIBLE to find black and white television and movies anywhere on cable these days, aside from the very visible and extremely welcome Turner Classic Movies. True, there is the one trio of vintage shows that is always allowed to remain on in reruns, even as George Lopez, that godawful Tim Allen show, and other substandard Eighties/Nineties/2000s sitcoms fill the schedules of the “classic TV” networks. The three that are allowed to stay on? (Yes, I think of it that way) I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and The Twilight Zone. Aside from those three, the one shining example of a tie with Television Past was the Game Show Network’s “Black and White All Night” block of programs. It began as two hours when the network signed on, then was reduced to one a few years ago and, as of tonight, is off the air.

Game Show Network is, of course, a pretty poor excuse for a channel: their originals are threadbare and mundane, and their recent reruns (the ones they’re staking the bank on) are as stale as yesterday’s news (yeah sure, Slumdog was based on the Millionaire concept — but has that gotten anyone at all to endure those rancid reruns of the Regis Philbin shows? If there’s anything certain about a craze, it’s that it ages very, very quicky and quite badly). The nightly airing on GSN of What’s My Line from the show’s very beginning in 1950 until its signoff on a sad night in 1967, has been the one way in which the banner of 1950s TV has been held aloft on cable, albeit in a very tiny little late-night niche. Nostalgia is very much out of fashion, but it was nice that one network had chosen to stick with real classic TV, and to acknowledge that, yes, there WAS indeed television before The Brady Bunch, Three’s Company, and the absolutely execrable sitcoms that make up the Nick/TV Land rerun schedule (those two channels have had about as much connection to classic television in the last decade as American Movie Classics has had to respect for classic moviemaking).

And so the opportunity to regularly follow a classic program like What’s My Line? is now snatched away, in the manner that all other good Fifties and Sixites (and now Seventies) shows have been eradicated from cable. Cable and satellite TV are touted to offer limitless possibilities: if you like sports, Christian broadcasting, mediocre TV series, insipid TV movies, and painfully bad multiplex flicks, you’ve got a helluva selection. If you like foreign movies, tough luck (Sundance Channel and a handful of movies each month on TCM should do ya); if you like vintage television, really good shows from the past, forget it and just try to find them on DVD (boxed or bootlegged), or visit the Paley Centers in NYC and LA, the only place where this programming will ultimately be available.

For those that weren’t watching it, the joy of catching WML on GSN was the immediate connection to a lost world — one where urbane and really intelligent people played a silly parlor game, but with such sincerity you couldn’t help but be charmed. The cycle begins with an early, early 1950 kinescope of the first show — with a poet who was later blacklisted on the panel, Phil Rizzuto as the “mystery guest,” and the stalwart Arlene Francis wearing so much makeup for the cameras she looks like a Kuklapolitan player. (I hope that made three fans of Fifties TV smile.)

As the cycle moved on, I was mesmerized not only by the amazing A-list caliber of the mystery guests, but also the amazing intelligence of the panel (sure, sure, there is still Jeopardy on TV for armchair eggheads, but WML showed that yesterday’s celebs were a damned savvy bunch compared to today’s reality show camera-hogs). Also a gift to behold: the fourth chair, from which they pushed out a guy named Hal Block (comedy writer) for a young “humorist” new to NYC, Funhouse deity Steve Allen (who coined the oddball query "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" on the program). After Steve hit it big with The Tonight Show in 1953, radio legend (and TV failure) Fred Allen took over the seat. When he died, the array of AMAZING men that sat in that chair was a laundry list dear to my heart: in addition to the many Random House authors Bennett Cerf called upon when someone couldn’t show up, there were class-acts like David Niven and James Mason, raconteurs like Peter Ustinov and Victor Borge, sui generis comic gods like Groucho and Ernie Kovacs, and young comics like Mort Sahl, Dick Cavett, Peter Cook, and Woody Allen (who spoofed the show brilliantly as "What's My Perversion?" in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex...) — so yes, you had a seat in which three generations of fucking genius comics with the name Allen (natal or chosen) sat: Fred, Steve, and Woody.

A number of newspaper articles were written about the fact that GSN was still running this “relic” of TV past on a nightly basis. In fact, I have the feeling the reason it stayed on for so long — I had the unmistakable impression it was too good to last — was because some writers from The New York Times and elsewhere were addicted to it, and wrote generous pieces that kept the public aware of its existence. On the GSN.com message board, posters indicate that the network’s licensing deal with Goodson-Todman had expired, but I could find no official acknowledgement of that. That would seem to not be the case because, as I write this, a color 1960s rerun of Password is airing in what used to be the second b&w show’s timeslot — yes, that b&w show, To Tell the Truth, was a creaky rerun, but the other G-Ts, most especially I’ve Got a Secret when they were at their best, were like spun gold to nostalgia buffs. Password was a G-T production, as was Match Game, which is an “acceptable” piece of Seventies nostalgia (for the moment).


The loss of What’s My Line? specifically, and the “black and white hour” on GSN more generally, is extremely sad for those of us who feel that, out of a cable dial containing a thousand choices, it would be only fitting to devote one network to real classic TV. Couldn't one channel contain the programming created in the thirty-five-year span before the truly awful sitcoms of the mid-Eighties took hold?

Farewell, Arlene, Bennett, Dorothy, urbane fourth panelist, and John Charles Daly — you remain class acts, although you are now truly reduced to museum pieces.

And for the clips...
As you might have guessed, the hardcore nostalgia-buff audience has posted some beautiful clips from the show on YouTube, about 700 thus far. Among them are a breadbox maker coming on (to see if Steve is savvy), the appearance of the other Goodson-Todman hosts (including Gene Rayburn, from the then-fledgling Match Game), and some nice double entendres from the show.

One of the rarer early mystery guests, the only one I know of who used a translator on the show, Anna Magnani:


The immortal Dali:


Ernie Kovacs on the panel, talkin’ some Hungarian to Zsa Zsa:


The one, the only, Groucho as the MG. He did it more than once, but this is one of the best:


Sammy, rockin’ that eyepatch:


Jerry Lewis, on the panel, bein’ rude to a large lady:


Since this is the Fifties, there must be Liz Taylor:


Nichols and May:


The inimitable Peter Ustinov:


A comic god who’s still with us, Jonathan Winters:


Brian Epstein gets figured out pretty quickly:


The cast of Broadway’s Luv: Alan Arkin, Eli Wallach, and Anne Jackson:


And one of the great latter-day guests, Judy Garland, who seems like she’s a little hyper (she’s readying herself for the role in Valley of the Dolls):


And the single best find on YouTube, some wonderful gent’s posting of a 1975 ABC special on which John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly, Arlene Francis, and Mark Goodson present their favorite clips. The show starts off with three killers: Groucho, Fred Allen, and Woody, and then moves onward to other great things. The fourth part starts out with a clip we never saw on GSN: the Martin and Lewis appearance (my assumption as to why that kine was listed as "missing" by the GSN folks: Jer purchased it from G-T or Viacom?).

One of the best "worsts" ever: Can Hieronymus Merkin...

I’ve been very proud of the many obscure film clips I’ve shown on the Funhouse, but some demand that I return to them again and again, to confront the usual question, namely “what the hell were they thinking???” In the canon of really big and really crazy-bad (so bad they’re imminently rewatchable) late Sixties films, few titles loom as large as Anthony Newley’s ego-trip Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?

The film’s title sums up a major part of the plotline, but you’ll never believe the tripped-out weirdness that Tony N. presented us with in this film, which has, natch, never seen the light of VHS or DVD. Newley stars as a daydream/nightmare vision of himself — the ultimate song-and-dance man, a man highly desired by women, and the kind of a guy who would tell his life story (in excruciatingly egomanical) style to his two kids and mother on an empty beach, while a film crew (run by, who else... Anthony Newley!) makes a modernist musical sex-comedy out of it. Newley’s wife Joan Collins (who pretty much made on the argument on a British profile of her that the film was the goodbye kiss for their relationship) performs a musical number with Tony, while Milton Berle (as the Devil) and Georgie Jessel (as Death) contribute the “laughs.”

Here I offer a quintet of clips from the film. First, the film’s set-up, and intros of Georgie and Uncle Miltie:



The full “Chalk and Cheese” number, a duet between a nude Newley (thankfully seen only from the back) and his then-wife, Joan Collins. I’m not going to explain the dummy Hieronymus. Because I can’t.



Hieronymus meets Mercy, his Lolita-like object of fascination (played by Playboy Playmate Connie Kreski, who was 23 at the time).



The trippiest moments in the film and the ones wherein Newley’s Fellini influece is felt (to the detriment of ol’ Federico’s legacy). Includes a bloody Satanic mass presided over by Berle (Abe Lastfogel was a noted Hollywood agent):



One more trippy bit, and the latter half of the film’s dopiest sequence, a long fairytale song that appears out of nowhere called “Trampolina Whambang.”

Big Boy in the big town: B.S. I Love You

Deceased Artiste Peter Kastner (who died in September of last year) was best known for his starring role in Francis Coppola’s You’re a Big Boy Now(1966), but he also had a few featured roles after that — except the films and series weren’t very good. Case in point: the derivative schlemiel-makes-good comedy B.S. I Love You(1971). The film has some wonderful NYC location shots, and features the lovely Joanna Cameron, better known as the Saturday morning superheroine “Isis” seducing our hero. The film has never been out on VHS or DVD.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be: Warner's roll-out of "made to order" titles

So the biggest "nostalgia" movie news that got mainstream attention this week was the fact that the just-awful Farrellys are planning a ridiculous resurrection of the Three Stooges. You know, since the two resurrections of Laurel and Hardy — the Gailard Sartain/Bronson Pinchot For Love or Mummy and Blake Edwards’ lunk-headed idea to remake the sublime Music Box with Ted Danson and Howie Mandel as A Fine Mess — and the sideways redo of the Marx Bros. (Brain Donors with John Turturro), did so phenomenally well….

The news that caught my attention, though, was the decision by Warner Brothers' DVD label to put 150 of their titles up for sale, on a “made to order” basis for 20 dollars per. What’s interesting about this is that it both acknowledges the fact that people aren’t buying DVDs in great numbers anymore, and it also shows that while DVD was going to be the medium-to-end-all-media in the home-entertainment arena, VHS actually was.

The Dark Horizons site notes that Warner’s library contains 7,000 titles and only 1,200 have been released thus far on disc. If you go to the site that Warner has put up, you’ll see a list of very interesting “marginal” titles. Sure, the finest titles have already been put out or are being prepped for release. Sure, there a few major clunkers in this group — things like Yes, Giorgio and at least two Kristy McNichol titles. What’s most interesting is that these titles, which, obviously are not anywhere “in the pipeline” for DVD, were pretty much all out on VHS. Sure, there might’ve been a few that slipped through the cracks and have never been issued in any format, but the films with major names included here were definitely out in that now-forgotten format that still remains the best method of obtaining obscure titles instantly (should you have a store in your town that still rents old tapes; most public libraries do, because that's the machine older folks still use regularly).

I’ve already written about my status as a fan who has a big library of both tapes and discs, and still relishes the experience of laying hands on a film quickly by renting from a “brick and mortar” store, meaning your standard video-rental emporium. Thus I’ve never been one to rush to buy things outright — if I can get it on discount, or rent it and (yes, I’ll be the first to admit) dub the damned thing, I then have it for the collection and the hoped-for repeat viewings (but, do they ever really happen…? That’s an issue for another time…).

It’s noted in the information online that the 150 titles offered initially will be supplemented by 20 titles per month, and that the films will also be available as a digital download for 15 dollars. What is interesting about the titles they’ve made available initially is that they are in a way announcing that the cults of Clark Gable, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo are greatly diminished, to put it kindly — there are a number of titles starring at least one of the trio (and Chained has both Gable and Crawford).


For an auteurist like myself, I lament that Robert Altman’s unsuccessful but still watchable Countdown, Budd Boetticher’s only non-Columbia Western with Randolph Scott Western Westbound, and especially, Francis Coppola’s terrific The Rain People will not be released on DVD.


I also actually really liked one of several underrated John Heard films from the early Eighties, Heart Beat(1980), wherein Heard, Sissy Spacek, and Nick Nolte play out the triangle between Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Carolyn Cassady.

In any case, if I liked any of these pics, I do have them in my still-overwhelming VHS collection. I guess I should be satisfied to simply dub over the old copy to DVD-r when the time comes — that time being when I’ve gotten the “primaries” transferred (every film fan with a collection spends much time cataloging, finding space for, and then redubbing for "archival purposes," the same list of favorite movies). I’ll be very curious to see what shows up on the Warner site, and will in the meantime rely on my own meager copies of the films. And hope that TCM — which essentially has the rights to air any and all of these titles — will show the restored versions very soon....

Thanks to Paul G. for pointing me toward the complete list of titles available here.

Deceased Artiste Natasha Richardson: the Actress

Natasha Richardson’s sad, premature death this week was a big story in the news, but I’m not sure that people reading the tragic tale had actually seen her in anything besides one children’s picture. Like many talented performers, her screen work had been inconsistent due to the quality of the movies she appeared in, but she had shown range and presence, and I thought I’d post just a few clips to give an idea of what she was like during her most interesting period as a film actress, in the late Eighties and early Nineties. After that, her stage work was heralded, and she was raising her children while doing “easier” parts in things like the Jennifer Lopez vehicle Made in Manhattan and, in what appears to be her best-known role among mainstream moviegoers, as Lindsay Lohan’s mom (one of the twin Lindsay Lohans) in the remake of The Parent Trap.


Thus, although the press depicted her as Liam Neeson’s wife and, for those who remember, Vanessa Redgrave and director Tony Richardson’s daughter, she did have a pretty solid movie career for at least a decade. From that period, I’ve provided three of the four clips in this montage. I decided to leave out another interesting starring role from this era, Volker Schlondorff’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1990). It’s a good, interesting film, but isn’t anywhere near as compelling as the novel it was based on, and is more of an interesting technical challenge (how to mount a modernist sci-fi “message pic” — of the sort that never sells any tickets in theaters) than a showcase for performances.


Thus we start out with Richardson’s first starring film role, in Ken Russell’s gleefully over-the-top fantasy based on the famous evening that spawned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, titled Gothic (1986). “Uncle Ken” has worked with three of the “Redgrave girls” — mother Vanessa (The Devils), Natasha, and sister Joely (Lady Chatterley). This was the first time most of us saw Natasha, and it was apparent from the first that she was an uncommonly beautiful version of her mother — not quite equipped with Mom’s immaculate talents as a performer, but a fine actress nonetheless, and pretty sexy to boot. She never disrobes entirely, quite a surprise in a Russell feature of that time, but does spend most of her time in the film not writing Frankenstein, but running around being terrorized by primal fears in a nightgown.


From her work with “Uncle Ken” (who was
interviewed on the Funhouse), she went on to do two very challenging roles with director Paul Schrader. The first of the two, Patty Hearst (1988), is certainly the bigger tour de force, as the film is hers entirely. The only problem is that the film’s perception of Hearst’s character is muddy – motivations are cloaked or missing, and her life before the kidnapping is only referred to in passing. It was apparent that Ms. Hearst dictated how the film should view her participation in “the Symbionese Liberation Army” and their crimes (and lifestyle), and so the film was one I believe Schrader was ultimately frustrated by. Nevertheless, it is excellent on a stylistic level (with its depiction of the kidnapping from the victim’s point of view) and, even though the lead role is a mess of contradictions, Richardson did her best to “find” the character, and wound up giving a terrific performance.


Her next film with Schrader, The Comfort of Strangers(1990), is a total success, a menacingly kinky melodrama that, while based on a novel by Ian McEwan, has the feel of Sixties English movies like The Servant. This is perfectly natural, since Harold Pinter wrote the screenplays to both films. Strangers is completely and utterly stolen by Christopher Walken in his scenes, but the featured characters are the dissatisfied but still horny couple played by Richardson and Rupert Everett. The conversation included in this montage is a weird little exchange that gives a feel for the film’s toying with the viewer — it’s apparent that both members of the young couple are desirable (especially to creepy Chris), but which one is more desirable? Well, they’ll just have to argue about that, won’t they?


And, since Richardson’s career did continue up until the present day, I decided to include a later clip, but one that I think of generally as a sort of “comic relief.” She starred in the final Merchant-Ivory collaboration The White Countess (2005), which is a terribly corny evocation of Hollywood’s Golden Age that finds Ralph Fiennes as a blind American in 1930s Shanghai dreaming of opening a nightclub. He does, and has Russian Natasha work for him, as the two slowly, ridiculously circle around each other in a romantic sense. The film is camp of the finest sort (unintentional, that is), and is notable because it has scenes where Natasha interacts with the aristocratic (now poverty-stricken) family of her dead husband. The two matriarchs in the family are played by her mother Vanessa and aunt Lynn, who do their best “Rooshian” accents, and while the two are tremendous performers, the whole thing has the feel of a Von Sternberg pic, missing the savvy and style (and brevity) that old Joe would’ve brought to the project.

Richardson’s best work is supposed to have been on the stage, but she did establish herself nicely on screen in her two-decade career. The strongest British performers generally have had weird filmographies — the tremendous generation that flourished in the sixties and early Seventies (her mom, Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, Oliver Reed) did wind up diluting their legacy in some ways, or just tainting folks’ memory of their work, by appearing in blatant crap. However, since their work ethic meant that these actors made great movies in amongst the dross (unlike, say, our own breed of great-actor-turned-multiplex star, like De Niro), they could be forgiven many, many cinematic “sins.” Natasha Richardson had a film career that was not exactly as stellar as that of her mother and aunt, but she did show herself to a seasoned, extremely talented actress in the movies she left behind.

The Elusive Genius: Chris Marker

As we speak about arthouse films starting to “disappear” into odd legal limbos (see below), we needn’t worry about one genius French auteur. Chris Marker’s films have always been hard to see in the United States. Sure, there is the one excellent Criterion Collection release of his two most famous films, the perfect La Jetee(1962) and the unclassifiable documentary/essay/travelogue/memoir Sans Soleil(1982). Recently a group of four other Marker films were put out on DVD in conjunction with the Wexner Center in Ohio (from which someone posted a comment on this blog, back on this entry.

Here’s a snippet from the most recent Marker slice of brilliance The Case of the Grinning Cat(2004):


Aside from the odd inclusion on a Criterion disc (his A.K. can be found on the Ran package) all of Marker’s other films (he’s made over 40, and collaborated on several more) can’t be obtained over here. And thus, we depend on (where else?) YouTube for some exposure to the missing work. His very first feature, Olympia ’52(1952), can be found
here.

That is a rare find, as are these two items, a piece of
recent Marker computer animation and a gorgeous study of a woman's face (in this case, actress Catherine Belkhodja, the mother of actress Isild Le Besco) made for a gallery exhibition.

Also a piece of space-art from our favorite Marker of time and space:


For those who are Marker initiates, there’s always been a desire to see the reclusive, secretive master at work. Well, YouTube gives that away that mystery too (don’t look if you’d rather preserve the enigma of the man who was described by his friend Alain Resnais as perhaps being “an alien” – spoiler alert!):


The two most interesting things I’ve discovered recently (besides the above “spoiler”) concerning Chris the brilliant is the original version of one of the films described above, namely Chats Perches which is an alternate version of Grinning Cat minus the very poetic but top-heavy English narration. In France it was apparently shown as a silent film with intertitles (imagine any American filmmaker doing that in 2009 – although I wish they’d try….):


And finally, the piece de resistance, one of only three other film projects Marker worked on (besides his masterpiece La Jetee) that belongs to the sci-fi genre (these are his only overtly fictional scenarios, btw). Here we have a nice slice of history, Marker’s collaboration with Polish filmmaker Walerian Borowczyk (best known for his later erotic features). It’s called Les Astronauts(1959) and is a wonderful cut-out animation short. It is not subtitled, but it doesn’t need to be:

The future of art cinema’s past is unwritten

To keep you folks up on the strange and sad stories of how the rights to great arthouse pics of the past are slowly "disappearing," let me pass on this odd tale from The New York Times in which it is revealed that the owners of a movie theater in Aspen, Colorado now own the rights to the films made by Svensk Filmindustri. Yes, that’s the right, the back-catalogue of the late great Bergman, plus everything else the company made, including such famous titles as Elvira Madigan and My Life as a Dog.

You can read how this ridiculous situation came about in the article. It makes a nice add-on to the death of New Yorker films (which I wrote about below, on this same blog). The latest news on that front? There will be an auction for the rights to some of New Yorker’s holdings tomorrow. To wit:

On March 12, 2009, Technicolor, Inc. and certain of its affiliates will be conducting a secured party auction sale of certain of the assets of New Yorker Films. The winning bidder(s) at the auction will purchase some or all of the available assets but not assume any of New Yorker Films' liabilities. If you are interested in participating in the auction as a potential purchaser, please contact *** of Technicolor - New York at 110 Leroy Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10014, telephone number ****; email: ***

It is New Yorker Films' sincere hope that the purchaser of our assets will be a well qualified distributor with the intention and ability to manage and distribute the fine films we have had the privilege of distributing in a manner consistent with New Yorker Film's 43 year history in the independent film world.

So certain arthouse masterpieces of the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies are now sitting in a legal limbo. Sure, the best-known Bergmans are out on DVD (with dozens more available only if you hunt through troves of old VHS). But this indicates what one viewer-friend had called “the telescoping” of American culture. We have a view of things that has gotten very, very limited over the past thirty years, and as far as most moviegoers these days are concerned, foreign movies are a rarified taste (best ingested only if the film in question is critically heralded, and preferably based on a famous novel), or in film class. Sad, sad, fucking world….

Cult movies available for free download: Cultra Rare Videos

UPDATE: This site went from offering free films as .avi files, to charging a small amount for them, to disappearing entirely. More's the pity.

I’ve noticed over the past few years that the usual public domain film titles have been joined by a crazy amount of Seventies TV movies that somehow fell into the dark pit of copyright-less-ness which allows low-end home-entertainment companies to crank out “dollar discs” without being prosecuted. Now, a site has appeared that offers free downloads of some really fun cult titles that are languishing in the gap that appeared when the DVD format took over from VHS, Cultra Rare Videos.


The owner of the site maintains that the films he’s making available are all in public domain. Who am I to question, but among the titles are things that at some point, way back when, were films released by major studios, including Peckinpah’s Convoy (silly as hell, but not as bad as its reputation), Simon (really enjoyable, but falls apart near the end), and W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings.

I do know that the films this gent (why can I pretty sure this is a gent running this site?) is offering are currently not readily available on DVD in the U.S., and so he is offering a service to cult-movie buffs. The films can be watched on his site (if the thing takes off, I don’t know how he’ll pay for the bandwidth), or you can download them as .avi files. He gives directions for PC-owners, but I own a Mac and had no trouble downloading two films and getting them to play on the all-purpose VLC player (decent resolution too, even in full-screen mode).

Again, I’m not sure why this person is making these films available but I know the Funhouse audience will enjoy. I’ve just included a short list of things that deserve your attention — just as my last post was Sixties-obsessed, this list is extremely Seventies. I’ve omitted the TV-movie titles, but the most notable in that category are Boy in the Plastic Bubble (never could take old Johnny) and Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway (Cultra also has the boy version of the tale, Alexander: the Other Side of Dawn and a Charlene Tilton runaway telefilm). I think I prefer Tony Perkins in How Awful About Allan (and from that title, you just know Henry Farrell wrote the sucker…). Here is a segment from the unnecessary but still well-acted TV-movie remake of Les Diaboliques starring Tuesday Weld.


Andy Warhol’s Bad, Russ Meyer's Blacksnake, Circle of Two, Coonskin, Claudia Jennings fans, indulge: Gator Bait AND Truck Stop Women (what, no Unholy Rollers?), House of the Long Shadows, Imprisoned Women (ain’t this the late-night staple Cage without a Key?), Rolling Thunder, The Runner Stumbles, Tunnelvision, Willard, and the film that asks the musical question, “when did Gene Hackman, Max Von Sydow, and Catherine Deneuve all work together on a foreign legion movie?” (March or Die). All found here.

The site master gives high marks for sheer campiness to the masterwork du crap, Black Devil Doll From Hell.


I, however, would also like to draw your attention to this stroke of genius, the backwoods, homoerotic, very nutsy, Susan Tyrrell-blessed Night Warning. It’s quite, quite special (and can also be watched on YouTube).

The Sixties: The gift that keeps on giving...

Am glad the page views are growing by the week. And what pray tell brings people to this here blog — or any website for that matter? Well, the first two answers are always sex and music, but you can forget about the first one until the second clip below (then resume your unwholesome gaze). I offer you music from that "rupture in time" that was the Sixties — of course, that decade in reality ended somewhere around 1974 when Tricky Dick left office, and so we have a broad field in which to play in. And we find such odd moments as this, wherein two singers on the staid and oh-so-square Lawrence Welk Show warble a tune that I don't believe they understood:



Offering a nice cross-section of certain interests in the era, we have this poster, who has done some nice work setting girlie reels to excellent Sixties tunes:


Here’s another nice one. And another one that, yes, includes nudity. On YouTube (gasp!).



I’m assuming most of you have seen this wonder, the all-too-trippy Raquel Welch special from 1970:


I’m sure some’a you also know where this groovy scene originated, but I don’t.

I recognize Annie Girardot in this beyond-mod scene, but I don’t know what film it’s from. It is another slice of unabashed Sixties.

New Yorker Films unspools its last

Arthouse film fans with long memories were depressed this week by the announcement of the closing of New Yorker Films, a firm that has been one of the key U.S. distributors of some of the greatest European filmmakers of the Sixties through the Eighties. I have very mixed feelings about this. Firstly, of course New Yorker owner Dan Talbot and company did an invaluable service to all of us in getting the work of these filmmakers (including Godard, Straub and Huillet, Fassbinder, Herzog) to the public when it counted. However, as VHS/DVD purveyors, New Yorker has not exactly been a fan-friendly label. It's not the lack of supplements on their discs — I can't fault a company for not having the dough (or the Criterion-like reputation) to acquire the rights to extras.

However, as a VHS label, New Yorker was the first company to introduce the dreaded MacroVision copyguard process that not only prevented copying of the tape, but also made the viewing experience pretty dreadful (the picture "breathed" if you had a lower-cost VCR). They also had a practice of putting out quite little of their back-catalogue on tape and DVD, concentrating primarily on their latest releases. I’d be surprised every time MOMA or another rep house would do festivals with extremely rare European films of a certain vintage, seeing a “New Yorker Films Presents” logo right before the “lost” picture began. The question “why the hell has this been kept on the shelf?” constantly came to mind — with individual titles, like Agnes Varda’s Les Creatures, as well as entire filmographies, like that of Jean-Marie Straub (two of his films have been released on disc by New Yorker, none on VHS, despite the fact the company had seemingly acquired almost all of his output).

As DVD became the medium of choice, I think that one of the central factors to New Yorker-distributed films “disappearing” was the issue of print condition. DVD is a format that has touted “perfection” since it first appeared, and as one looks back at some New Yorker VHS releases, it becomes apparent that, for a DVD release to have materialized, the company would have had to have acquired a pristine copy of the film from its country of origin, restored it if wasn’t already restored, and then re-subtitled it. Thus an essential title like Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (seen at right) just disappeared in the transition from medium to medium. The company would return to its back-catalogue sporadically (as with the latter-day releases of Herzog’s shorts, Godard’s Week-end and Straub’s Moses and Aaron), but mostly the label seemed to be staying away from the older titles, even as DVD was offering a new life for classic foreign films.

It also came to light when the Fassbinder films were eventually put out in pristine prints by other labels, that New Yorker’s video label had *re-framed* the films for their VHS releases to turn them from 1:33 "square" films to 1:66 "letterboxed" titles — presumably in an effort to make them look less than “television shows” and more like “art movies.”


But back to the efforts of Talbot and co. back in the Sixties, which are indeed worthy of gratitude from American cinema buffs (Talbot's purchases seemed like a "wish list" of items lauded by the great Susan Sontag in her essays and reviews). As for the theater that gave the company its name, I only went there when it was in its final years of existence (when this picture of it was presumably snapped), but it was a grand theater when it was around. The 88th and Broadway movie palace (below) is now best-remembered as the place where Woody introduces Marshall McLuhan to the know-it-all in Annie Hall.

A list of some of the filmmakers whose works were distributed by New Yorker (besides those named above) would include Ozu, Bertolucci, Losey, Bresson, Rohmer, De Antonio, Pereira dos Santos, Tanner, Sembene, Rocha, Diegues, Oshima, Wenders, Schlondorff, Fellini, Wajda, Rossellini, Kieslowski, Pialat, Handke, Malle, Chabrol, Kurys, and Skolimowski. From the high-water marks set by these releases, we come to the point where stories circulated about the poor quality of New Yorker prints that were leased to local film festivals, and arguments over money required for the rentals of certain key films in a director’s oeuvre. They were not pretty stories, and not worthy of a company considered the “best friend” in America of these same filmmakers.


It will be interesting to see who acquires the company’s catalogue; it doesn’t say in this New York Times article about the company biting the dust. Perhaps we do stand a chance of finally seeing new prints of New Yorker’s key European films (like Jean Eustache's amazing The Mother and the Whore, right) on DVD — or whatever medium rules in the years to come.

Dead End Kid: Deceased Artiste Robert Mulligan

Robert Mulligan’s career is a bit of an enigma. A director who is best known for one film that occurred rather early in his career, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Mulligan evidenced a Bronx Irishman’s melancholy in his best pictures.

His career began in the fertile field of television drama in the 1950s. He made his directing debut with a film starring everyone’s favorite nervous actor, the late, great Anthony Perkins, Fear Strikes Out (1957). After he scored a genuine Oscar-certified hit with Mockingbird, he continued through the Sixties making films with the most charming male and female movie stars of the decade, Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood, and even cast them in a somewhat unlikely but still winning NYC romance, Love with the Proper Stranger (1963).


My own favorite from this period is the atmospheric and, yes, melancholy ode to teaching in the inner-city school system, Up the Down Staircase (1967) with another of the greatest “edgy” (in several senses of that word) actresses of the period, Sandy Dennis.

In the Seventies, Mulligan scored a major box-office hit with a rather sentimental bit of smarm, The Summer of ’42 (1972) and his career began to go off the rails a bit afterward. The films appeared sporadically, and by the final years he was essentially making Mockingbird-esque “lonely kids” movies like Clara’s Heart and his final pic, The Man in the Moon with the young Reese Witherspoon.


In the midst of the Seventies, though, Mulligan directed a film that has the tone of the time as it looks back to the classic film noir. The Nickel Ride (1975) features Jason Miller as a connected “key man” who runs various institutions owed by the mob in the sleazier portion of Los Angeles. Miller was a talented, forgotten performer (best known for, natch, The Exorcist) who wrote the play That Championship Season, and who seems to be one of Mulligan’s best alter-egos on screen. Miller was another Irishman who looked as if time had weighed heavily on him (he was only 35 when Nickel was shot, but looks much older), and who seemed as if, yes, the Irish scourge of “havin’ a few” had had some part in his life.

The film was never released on VHS, and has never shown up on DVD. I offer these two scenes to provide a bit of its flavor. I’m going to ignore the fact that the screenwriter who wrote this wonderful forgotten gem later on turned into a mainstream Hollywood scribe who gave us two “concept” pieces that were very popular and hold no interest at all for me….

In the first, we learn that our antihero had a past on the carny circuit:


And in the second, we see him confronted in his get-away mountain cabin by the man brought in by the mob to replace him, a cowboy hotshot played by the always wonderfully sleazy Bo Hopkins. The scene has the same tone as many in the work of Funhouse favorite Robert Altman, who took his cues from the greatest melancholic filmmaker of all, Ingmar Bergman:

Jerry, meet Oscar...

We've been following the minutiae of Jerry Lewis's career -- the great, the very bad, and the nasty -- on the Funhouse since the show started and now, finally, there is some big news while the Jer is still inhabiting this mortal coil. He's slated to receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award this Sunday at the Oscars, and already there is controversy. It was of course brought up that Jerry liberally comes out with the "f-word" (fag) out of the blue, but it won't be a gay group that is planning on protesting him before the Oscars begin -- the organization known as "Jerry's Orphans" has once again surfaced, to address the notion that Jerry raises funds for those with muscular dystrophy primarily through the use of pity.

There are arguments to be made on both sides here, but I thought it would be best to let Jerry speak for himself -- that usually does lead to him saying things that can be diplomatically described as "unscripted." The MDA has occasionally had to distance itself from his statements -- if I remember correctly, they issued a statement disapproving of him having said on a Sunday morning news program, “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!” Jer's attitude and approach will be protested by folks outside the Oscars, and you can actually follow the action on the website called The Trouble With Jerry. (Thanks to Rich Brown for keeping me apprised of that event.)

In this interview, conducted for a primetime news magazine, he's very pissed off at the "Orphans" and does come up with some odd lines (as with the bit about "running down the hall"). All we can say is that Jerry is never dull. We wish him well on Sunday and, yes, I must do it: Salut l'artiste! (Those Tashlin movies and the first seven years of his solo work are pretty terrific....)

Carol Lynley on her stays on Fantasy Island and her friend Roddy McDowall

Veteran performers usually have a raft full of stories about the people they've worked with, but most of them save 'em for their autobiographies (and even then, some of them never come out with the good stuff). I did a delightful interview a few years back with veteran actress Carol Lynley, who was more than willing to share her honest opinions about her experiences in show business. In addition to discussing her work with Otto Preminger (with whom she made one of the finest thrillers of the Sixties, Bunny Lake is Missing, and one of the campiest mellers, The Cardinal), she also talked about her work as a teen actress, and her starring role as a damsel in distress in Radley Metzger's The Cat and the Canary.

Two of my favorite portions of the chat were about her friend Roddy McDowall:



and her many visits to Fantasy Island:

My favorite Satan: Roddy McDowall

Since it is currently not being rerun anywhere on cable, and because they stopped after one damned DVD box set, I offer up the following short segments from one of my all-time favorite Fantasy Island episodes, to honor the memory of god... er, Ricardo Montalban. Feast on this bit of classic camp TV, played entirely straight by the participants. Roddy McDowall is Lucifer (looking like a roadshow Sky Masterson), Carol Lynley is the wife who has made a deal with him (unbeknownst to her hubby, played by the ever-hesitant Mr. Adam West), and Ricardo is, well, he's Mr. Roarke taking on the mantle of Daniel Webster. This show may have been patently ridiculous, but it damned well knew it was patently ridiculous!

Wally Cox and his friend "Dufo"

This week on the show I'm doing a review of the new Mr. Peepers box set, and so I present my fave bit of Wally Cox's stand-up comedy (in fact the only bit of Wally's stand-up that I've heard). It's a terrific single called "Dufo (What a Crazy Guy)" that clearly demonstrates that Marlon Brando's one-time roommate and childhood chum could play things other than a milquetoast, buttoned-down egghead (although that's what brought the dough in, at various times). I wish he had pursued his stand-up a bit more, as Tony Randall, Steve Allen, and other friends of his said his initial routines were very funny. Take a listen -- the visual is just the cover of a Wally-related book, as I have no "Dufo" imagery to go with this audio.

How Far Can Too Far Go?: Deceased Artiste Lux Interior of the Cramps

It’s a magical sound, the sound of the Cramps. The band has been written off for some time as punk legends who got stale, but they never were as simple as punk (all the best punk acts were never as simple as that label implied). The Cramps have been the foremost purveyors of garage and rockabilly and psychedelia and surf and wonderfully overdone stage theatrics and unforgettably brilliant bad B-pictures and Bettie Page-like chix shimmying in revealing outfits, while the guitar twang was produced by an equally alluring woman sporting a revealing outfit. The lead singer and man who put the brain into the monster died yesterday, one Lux Interior, a guy who was never afraid to look utterly ridiculous on stage, and who exuded his love for this pretty much lost music every single time he sang a cover tune, or an original that seemed like it had already been written….


The Cramps have been one of the best “gateway” acts to discovering the lost world of garage music, which is now in the process of being celebrated and codified by Little Steven in the Underground Garage. I am a listener of that show (and the Sirius network when I have a “free pass”) and love what he’s doing in the UG, but I’ve noticed since I started listening that the Cramps have been played a sum total of once on his syndicated radio show, and have only shown up on the Sirius channel when someone else (Billy Kelly, Handsome Dick Manitoba) plays them (one spin of "Bikini Girls" does not a tribute make). This has been a big gap in the "garage” handbook, as it’s pretty evident that Lenny Kaye may have indeed kickstarted the entire garage phenomenon with his sacred 2-LP Nuggets compilation, but for many of us, the Cramps were a lifeline to this music, playing it, riffing off it, and collecting it, with Lux all the time pointing his bony finger backward at the guys who originally wrote and sang the tunes.


I first heard about the Sonics, Hasil Adkins, and many others through Cramps covers of their work (and once you’ve heard “She Said” or “Strychnine” you do not forget them), and perhaps the single best compilations of cool garage and raucous rock ‘n’ roll besides the Nuggets collections are the bootlegs titled Songs the Cramps Taught Us. The Songs... are three long CDs that contain all the orginals the group covered. The range is there, from Charlie Feathers and Slim Harpo to Roy Orbison and Rick Nelson to the Count Five and the Third Bardo. The 45s loved and performed by Lux and his wife/guitarist “Poison Ivy” Rorschach were, indeed, to borrow a term from Little Steven’s playbook, “the coolest songs in the world.” (The original Cramps-inspired rock classix collections Born Bad are also great, but not as thorough as Songs....)

The Cramps also constantly pointed the way back to some of the most enjoyably strange and silly movies ever made, from Russ Meyer’s brilliantly twisted sex comedies to the Ed Wood films, Herschell Gordon Lewis’ gorefests and biker-babe pics to (again) Irving Klaw’s Bettie Page loops to totally forgotten softcore pics (you don’t think Lux came up with the title “Hot Pearl Snatch” on his own, didja?).

I was turned on to Lux and Ivy’s crazed genius by my college friend Dave, who recommended the 1983 compilation Off the Bone as a good place to dip into the band. It’s an excellent collection that I’ve played way, way too many times, which mixes tracks from their first two LPs, debut EP, and a live song. Lux and Ivy were a married couple who shared a love for vintage vinyl (check out the Incredibly Strange Film Book for a delicious view of their collection), and their initial albums contained delectable covers (in fact whenever Ivy graced them, the albums had delectable covers) peppered with new songs written by the “Interiors.” As time went on, the band turned mostly to their own tunes, which indeed did sound like the older tunes. Thus the charge went that the act “had lost its steam.” Besides the fact that even their meagerest albums (and remember, friends, every band’s got ’em) were still imminently playable, it’s a fact that their stage show was always pure distilled madness by the now late Lux.


The set-up was simple: a tight group of three musicians, led by the terrifically attractive (and truly ageless) Ivy — who also happens to be a top-notch musician — behind a tall thin madman sporting an androgynous/movie-monster/pre-goth look. As the show progressed (and particularly as they reached the older tunes), Lux would move into Iggy territory, but with a twist. Instead of simply hurling himself into the audience like the Ig, Lux would ascend the speakers, usually to the balcony, clad only in skin-tight pants (usually vinyl) and high-heels. He would swig from a liquor bottle (that obviously contained something non-alcoholic) and would perform a song or two to the balcony or the rafters, or whoever the hell was in the uppermost reaches of the club. As Lux did all this, Ivy and the other two musicians would hold down their end, her looking as bored as she could be (while still keeping to the Link Wray model of crisp perfection). It seems weird to me to be putting all this text into the past tense, as I have looked forward to the Cramps’ gigs in NYC for about 25 years now, and can’t quite conceive of the fact that the lecherous, slightly mad gent in the heels was actually, the last times I saw him on stage, a man in his 50s with a heart condition. There was no way to know that, but you always thought he'd slip in those damned shoes....

The band remained a killer act on stage not because of Lux’s shtick, but because of the songs they performed and their love of them. The first half of the show would of necessity be a big plug for the new album (the audience in the club were all marks like myself who would, of course, acquire it on vinyl, long into the CD era). The second half would be things from the band’s first five immortal albums and covers that lent new life to those Songs the Cramps Taught Us.

It’s best to always hear vinyl-crazy performers on the medium they so loved, but MP3s will work if you’re just interested in encountering the band for the first time. Here is the discography, as it is available online. The first five are indispensable:

Songs the Lord Taught Us
Psychedelic Jungle
Smell of Female
Off the Bone
A Date with Elvis
Stay Sick
Look Mom No Head
Big Beat from Badsville
Fiends of Dope Island—not online
Confessions of a Psychocat
Rockin ’n’ Reelin’ in Auckland New Zealand
The official rarity comp How To Make a Monster
Live at CBGBs

And the most interesting find of all: an upload of a one-shot radio special that Lux did where he played his fave wax. It's a very groovy (and influential -- I can i.d. one local radio host here in NYC who might've heard it) program called, in honor of the late Ernie Anderson's "Ghoulardi" character, The Purple Knif. Download it here.

And here are the compilations that will make life a hell of a lot more entertaining, and give you a fucking AMAZING crash course in rockabilly, garage, "psychobilly," novelty records, and truly the coolest records on this spinnin' orb!

Songs the Cramps Taught Us, Vol. 1
Songs the Cramps Taught Us, Vol. 2
The whole damn Born Bad series!
And for those in search of a really thorough trip through the backwoods, the garage, and the insane asylum, check out the most exhaustive compilations, the series compiled by rabid fans on the Net (which I just discovered and will be sifting through for weeks to come!) called "Lux and Ivy's Favorites". The rest of the volumes can be found here. The compiler of these awesome collections goes by the nick "Kogar the Swinging Ape" (what a Rat Pfink!), and I offer him my undying admiration.

HERE is a link to a piece of memorabilia I remember I didn't have the dough to purchase back in the Eighties: a really fine tour booklet that has some nice pics, the story of visiting Ed Gein's home by Lux Interior, and Ivy's list of her fave movie quotes. The way the booklet is uploaded, you'd need some kinda Photoshop technology to zoom into the pages but what the heck, it's free! UPDATE: Here it is again, this time as a download, thanks to Ride Your Pony

ANOTHER UPDATE: There is an entire blog containing great pics and rarities called Brain-Steak Bikini, maintained by a Belgian fan. It reveals, among other things, that books on the Cramps are available overseas. Makes perfect sense to me as, again, America never really recognizes its finer talent until it goes away. Lux's death made the Yahoo! front page, and was prominently featured on rollingstone.com and mtv.com, but most folks you talk to have never even heard of the Cramps. The group's act did have a solid amount of campy humor, but they were never cute like the B-52s or cuddly-grungy like the Ramones. Perhaps their logo will now become a popular item on T-shirts worn by poseurs who barely know of their music (I can't tell ya how many Ramones shirts I see now on the streets of NYC).

But, we need to get back to the music. Here are the clips that rate as the best Cramps material on YouTube (I’m not including the Urgh! A Music War performance of “Human Fly” because that is everywhere on that site and others):

Super-rare Super-8 of the group in the early days. This YouTube poster deserves a major thank-you from the afflicted fans:


The band’s seminal publicity film, “Garbageman” (every single goth band in the universe has stolen this look and mood):


The band at CBGBs, shot for a Japanese punk documentary, a great raw performance of “Human Fly” and “I was a Teenage Werewolf”:


One of their finest covers, “Goo Goo Muck”:


Lux celebrates Halloween with bad gag items. Lovely Ms. Ivy wisely remains in the background:


There aren’t many interviews on YT, but this one is probably the most intriguing, as they both talk about their interest in the seedy side of L.A., where they moved to after living in NYC during (yes) the punk era.


A song I’d like to call a personal anthem, “People Ain’t No Good.”


The band’s “answer song,” another bit of well-worn wisdom, “All Women are Bad.” Here's a dancing babe shimmying to the tune:


Lux and Ivy’s compositions would spell out the sexuality that was hinted at in the songs they covered. One of the band’s finest albums, A Date with Elvis, featured plenty of tunes devoted to worship of the vagina. One of the snappiest is “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”:


The band reached its biggest-ever audience, in the U.S. at least (they have a giant following overseas, as always happens with genuine American talent), when they appeared on a Halloween episode of Beverly Hills 90210:


The uncensored (yes, there breasts in here, but don’t tell YT) version of “Ultra-Twist”:


On the topic of covers, only Lux and Ivy could rock the fuck out of “Muleskinner Blues”:


And they gave many of us our first glimpse at the twisted brilliance of Hasil Adkins. Here is the Haz performing his original tune (covered by the Cramps), “She Said.” Haz likens the woman whom he wakes up to a “dyin’ can of commodity meat” — pure country poetry.

The Cramps cover Dwight Pullen’s “Sunglasses After Dark” with a riff blissfully stolen from Link Wray’s “Fatback”:


And since Ivy deserves infinite appreciation, too, let us see the husband pay tribute to his wife. The video for “Like a Bad Girl Should.” Yes, Ms. Rorschach is in her 50s here (and I think the glass table is a reference to the lovely rumor that persists about Otto Preminger):


The toughest questions are always the best. ”How Far Can Too Far Go?”


Thanks much for all those years of wild, unforgettable entertainment, Lux. My sympathies to his collaborator and life partner, Ivy.

Olivier Assayas on the allure of the catsuit

There's nothing like an artist willing to discuss his preoccupations openly and honestly. Here is a segment from my 2003 interview with French filmmaker Olivier Assayas on the subject of the catsuit fetish, as displayed in his pics Irma Vep and demonlover.

You need this record (so take it)

Sammy Davis was one of the most ubiquitous performers in show business from the Fifties to the Eighties. He particularly had a strong tie with the medium of television, showing off his skills as a consummate nightclub and cabaret entertainer on TV variety and talk shows (not that that stopped him from appearing on sitcoms, gameshows, and even anthology dramas). In the period of his busiest TV activity, the Seventies, he also recorded an album that included an incredible amount of TV themes. I have never found the alternate version of this LP (purported to be called "Sammy Sings the Great TV Tunes"), but one of our recommended blogspot colleagues has put the better-known variation of the record, called Song and Dance Man, up for public consumption in MP3 form. Grab it immediately, and hear Sam offer his Wham on the themes from "Baretta" (natch), "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Kojak" (yes, someone wrote lyrics to it), "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" (with Sam appropriately sniffing and singing her name over and over and over, astounding!), "Hawaii Five-O" (with a menacing lyric about "Devil's Day"!), and "Chico and the Man"). Someday I will find the other variation of this album, which supposedly contains the "Maude" theme. In the meantime, rock out on this gem. Thanks to Stephen for pointing this one out.

CLICK HERE: Sammy Sings a Whole Mess of TV Tunes, Making Us All Much Happier in the Process