Back With Brooklyn Gorillas

A guy named Steve Calvert played the titular gorilla in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. He'd bought the skin from Ray "Crash" Corrigan, a previous ape-enactor. Steve tended bar for a day job, according to the Tom Weaver/Herman Cohen sit-down. How many tavern keeps kept gorilla pelts for such moonlighting occasion? Alex Gordon assumed majordomo duty for Lugosi, holding his cigar off-camera and such. Alex was acutely sensitive to indignities visited upon his idol, Duke/Sammy being a continual affront. To my eyes, "Poor Bela" was here well in front of Poorest Bela of Black Sleep and state in-patient ordeal. He's in command and dwarfs the comics (tall guy, that BL). Maybe there was adlibbing on their part, but Lugosi grooves with it. He also streams pages of gobbledygook dialogue without a hitch. Unlike Alex, I never found myself pitying an old duffer ritually degraded. To the contrary, Bela seemed equal to whatever Gals, Goofs, and Gags (see the trailer) got thrown at him.

Scott MacGillivray and Ted Okuda did a nifty interview with Sammy Petrillo for Filmfax # 53. SP remembered Duke being "like a father" and about eight years his senior. Unlike Dean and Jerry, these two stayed friends. Herman Cohen said Jerry came over to Realart and got in a cuss fight with Jack Broder. Big-shot Hal Wallis wanted a piece of Jack too for imperiling jack the former was hauling out of Martin/Lewis tills. But for Broder's integrity (and the fact Wallis didn't offer enough for the negative) BLMBG might have been sold to the senior-league producer and destroyed. That certainly was Hal's objective. Reflect then, upon Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla sharing with Citizen Kane more than mere greatness. Both came perilously close to being lost forever to us!



A Pressbook So Hurriedly Done As To
Mix Up The Photo Captions

 1952 trades treated Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla like something smelly in the punch bowl. Wagons circled to deny legitimacy to Broder's effort. Variety saw "irony" in Jerry having given Sammy Petrillo a spot on his Colgate Hour, and now comes the upstart  poaching Lewis (and Paramount) preserves. Hal Wallis' calling for a print of BLMBG was reported, much as President Truman might have ordered his next White House screening. Well after all, 'twas players like Wallis and Paramount who were buying ad space in Variety, not low spades of Broder ilk (I looked, but found no trade ads for BLMBG). Carbon copies never pay off, said I Love Lucy scribe Carroll Carroll to Variety columnist Jack Hellman. He was put out with Lucy/Desi and other acts being aped: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis will still be great when Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo are just two names in the phone book, said the truculent team-player.

Jack Broder managed a tail-end of August '52 opening for Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla at Broadway's House Of Horror, the Rialto. Duke and Sammy were thrilled enough to head down on their own dime from Jersey club-dates for fan signings and patron greets. Hadn't Dean and Jerry lately stopped traffic on Broadway? Hal Wallis office this week was reported doing a burn over the promotion build-up given (the) indie pic, said Variety, and insult to injury here was the Rialto blowing up news articles about the tiff and lobby displaying them. Broder boasted of legal threats he'd gotten, and Duke/Sammy had temerity to deny "any resemblance" between their act and Dean/Jerry's. Broder called the mirror images "coincidental," and said he'd like to do follow-ups with Realart's new fun-makers. Duke Mitchell showed his magnanimity thus: We're not trying to take anything from them (Martin and Lewis). We plan to continue in this business and we think the public accepts us on our own talent.

Variety's review put the stiletto in deep, calling BLMBG a  clumsily titled film that reaches hard for laughs which seldom eventuate (sez them!). M&P's copy of M&L was totally without success. They said Sammy lacked Jerry's "polish" (Wha?). Jack Broder meanwhile sought a co-feature to support wider release of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. What he got was Brit-made House Of Darkness, "a psychological murder film" with Laurence Harvey and Leslie Brooks. Broder wanted into first-run Los Angeles sooner, but faced a seeming embargo on "B" product in that crowded territory. Other low cost pics were finished but unable to get bookings, RKO's Tim Holt western Overland Telegraph and Bob Lippert's Tales Of Robin Hood among small-fry that would wait a year for LA playdates. Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla squeezed into four houses for mid-October play with Untamed Women, an independent with perhaps more marquee sizzle than plainer House Of Darkness. Grosses for the pair were strictly from hunger ... a first week the last week at three of the venues, with a "thin" $9,500 counted (compare that with $60,000 MGM's Ivanhoe took in two theatres during the same frame).

Soft was most subsequent biz, Buffalo in November with $8,000 or close, Denver doubling BLMBG with Yankee Buccaneer for $6,500. Showmen that used Realart oldies might take Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla  --- others wouldn't be bothered. It all had faint aroma of a boxoffice freeze-out. Was Paramount applying pressure upon theatres not to book Mitchell and Petrillo? The frolicsome team meanwhile sought gigs where they could be found. Duke and Sammy appeared with BLMBG in Philly, then were Vegas Flamingo bound to appear with other impressionist acts. Two lads suffer from weak material, and after Petrillo's first Lewis image palls, nothing happens of yock-worthy humor, said Variety. An unkindest cut was Duke and Sammy's from a Los Angeles supper club that had booked them for two weeks during January 1953. Proprietor Larry Potter of same-named night-spot became somewhat ired over the boys' sandwich bit when a piece of bread fell on a salad, spattering a young customer. According to trade reportage, Potter did a burn and the verbal battle ended in an early exit for (the) team.

Duke and Sammy Go Ape! --- Part One

Somewhere during the nineties, Mike Cline and I ventured up to another Meadowlands, New Jersey confab where celebs who'd finished in Gotham exchanged what was left of name recognition plus an autograph for fame's momentary renewal and maybe a ten-spot from middle-agers (like us) who still cared. Into this garden of wilting flora came Sammy Petrillo, late (very late) of a comic team that fifty years earlier photo-finished Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sammy's partner Duke Mitchell having filled club dates in the beyond since 1981. Petrillo got a table because he and Duke once did a movie (in 1952), their only starring movie, with horror icon and off-screen epic tragedian Bela Lugosi. That alone made Sammy's ink and handshake valued currency.

I'm not of those who'd call Mitchell/Petrillo pathetic and no-talented for carving careers from Dean/Jerry stone. Sammy in Meadowlands twilight was among nicest guys I met who'd once known of-a-sort stardom (certainly nicer than I'd expect Jerry Lewis to be). He was proud of what career there'd been and generous with anecdotage. Still working in a coarsened 90's (and in his 70's), Sam handed me flyers for an act he and partner Suzie Perkovic (what a great handle for Jersey marquees --- Petrillo and Perkovic!). There were samples from their joke trunk reminiscent of back pages in Scholastic Readers we'd been issued during fifth grade (Sammy liked his humor clean --- well, good for him). Still a willing mimic of both Jerry and Bela, Sammy was like a time-traveler touching down on hotel ballrooms to give glimpse of what stand-up had long-ago been. I wouldn't trade encountering him with any celebrity alive or gone.

The last survivor of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla might have died a few months ago if you choose to believe Cheetah obits that declared him the genuine article and veteran of endless soundstage safaris. Others of the crew and sideline participating have departed but did leave impressions of a nine-day shoot in May 1952 that cost somewhere north, but not by much, of $50,000 (or was it $100K, as some claimed?). Each were tied to low-budget and exploitation filmmaking. Herman Cohen and Alex Gordon reminiscence was included in last year's published A Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde, a standout interview collection by genre expert Tom Weaver (get this book if you haven't --- it's a fab read).

Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla was brainstormed by Jack Broder, whose Realart Pictures began life reissuing Universal vaulties, including many with Bela Lugosi. Jack and his brother got rich mining horrors back to 1931's Dracula, theirs a one-shop for budget bills and drive-ins that didn't care from age of product. Lugosi stayed a name in the Broder household, for groceries he indirectly supplied, if not current value of a faded rep. How badly washed out was Bela by '52? Laughs at his expense via TV comics enabled a title change once Lugosi was set --- April's announced Women Of The Lost Jungle became May's Bela Lugosi Meets The Gorilla Man. Odds are eight to five that Bela wins the decision, jested Variety. At least, it will be easier than meeting Abbott and Costello. Not so, as things turned out ...

Ann ventured to my viewing cave as Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla unspooled and asked, Is that Jerry Lewis? --- a question tens of thousands might have put forward over a past sixty years, in her case followed by, How could Bela Lugosi have done a picture like this? That second I barely answered short of turning to see she'd left (and there I was happy to continue the lecture for what was left of BLMBG's run time). Concern had already risen for my earlier sitting through Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Valley Of The Dragons. So how do we justify time spent with these? My boast of having met Sammy Petrillo wouldn't excuse my watching him now. Must ours be a secret order of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla fans?

I confess liking it more than even before, having firmly switched loyalties from Dean and Jerry to Duke and Sammy. Given acquaintance of real-life guys named Duke, I'd gladly go Hey, Dookie! when approaching one, but alas ... don't know any. Sammy said he was seventeen when the pic was made. I was still waiting for a first shave at that age. He's got Lewis down to a split-hair. No wonder the McCoy blew fuses and tried suing. Dino was more sanguine re Duke. Wish there were CD's of the latter growling Deed I Do and Too Soon from Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. Indeed, platters couldn't be had even in 1952. Ones who'd call BLMBG "So Bad It's Good" doubtless fall short of others who'd just stop at "So Bad" --- but all must admit it's a slick (just over a) week's work. Real pros behind scenes knew how to max out dollars spent. Director William Beaudine had done silents back to 1915 and guided Mary Pickford besides. Image's first-quality DVD gets the most out of nicely photographed sound stage jungles (why do I prefer these over locationing real thing?).

Marion Davies Rehab Goes On

TCM all-nighted Marion Davies this month to remind us how slammed this actress/comedienne was by the second Mrs. Kane and lasting impressions from said 1941 caricature. Was W.R. Hearst defending Davies' honor as much as his own by applying hammer and tong to Orson Welles? There must be record of how Marion Davies felt over RKO's grim impersonation, but I guess for then-obvious reasons, she kept quiet. Writers have since defended this one-time movie star among Welles' collateral damage. They'll cite Show People and The Patsy as silent proof of Davies' talent. I'd at least add talking Blondie Of The Follies, equal delight The Floradora Girl, and precode time capsule Five and Ten to ones doing her credit, each an obscurity and all better than you'd expect.



Wealthy Partygoers Make Their Own Movie In a Sequence Deleted From Five and Ten's Final Print.

Five and Ten was based on a Fannie Hurst novel. That name resonates for 30's hits derived from her output. Around a same time and also based on Hurst was Back Street, Imitation Of Life --- later came Four Daughters. Was it quality of this author's yarns or pizzazz contract dialoguers added? She lived to 1968 and age 78, past relevance her novels once had, but for at least a decade's time and place, they spoke well to readers, and later, picture-goers. Five and Ten lacks pavement grit of Warner precodes, conflict here arising from snobbery directed at nouveau riche by older money, neither likely to evoke sympathy in a then or present economy. Davies was more effective on light setting, this apparent in Gay-90's The Floradora Girl, maybe the first (1930) talkie to celebrate simpler times of a century (more recently) past. There's better evocation here of a vanished era than all Fox's decade-later Betty Grable/Alice Fayes could muster. Not a musical per se, The Floradora Girl was for me among happier vintage discoveries lately made.

Among Blondie's Many Virtues ... Vivid Depiction of Backstage Life

Blondie Of The Follies is also less about music, being hung over from a 1932 public's exhaustion with All-Sing, Dance, Etc. Just-off Grand Hotel director Edmund Goulding goes near-Euro-vérité with backstage reveals to show he'd thoroughly known settings depicted. So had Davies for that matter. She'd been a Follies girl Hearst picked up, then set down in luxury for what was left of his life. Goulding's camera is adventurous as anyone's covering 30's theatrical life --- Metro really turned him loose here, maybe as reward for how well Grand Hotel came out. I wondered why he didn't vault higher and sooner before reading Mark Vieira's tattle of orgy stagings at chez Goulding that surpassed even sock the director put before cameras. Blacklist placement must have calmed him, for when EG resurfaced a couple years later (for Riptide), he'd calmed down to a career's balance of tasteful megging.



It's Less a Game of Backgammon Than Mistress Trading Between
 Precode Rogues Bob and Doug 


Robert Montgomery engages Precode's art of gentle predation after Metro pattern set by Adolphe Menjou, Gable, Franchot Tone, innumerable others, all seducers so expert as to make present-day impressionables wonder if such technique might still work. Blondie's Montgomery and membership of the roué brotherhood swap mistresses and compromise innocents without our once getting a cue to disapprove, such behavior in Post-Codes would have set off seat buzzers and put moral compensation into resolute third-act play. Marion Davies' pairing off with oily oil baron Douglas Dumbrille in exchange for deco-ed digs isn't emphasized, but lying down is clearly what sets her up in luxury, Blondie honest enough not to side-step price-tags on said lifestyle.



Another Precode Delicacy --- Girl Fights That Were Really Fights



A Precode Dropout That Might Have Become One Of The Era's
Brightest Lights --- Billie Dove

 Good as everyone is, Billie Dove takes honors doing the Anita Page (misguided) part better than Page, or Joan Crawford, for that matter,  themselves achieved. Dove was a looker too, scorching in fact, and I don't wonder at Hearst demanding her part be denuded upon seeing rushes that left Marion in the shade. Did Dove complain? Certainly not where anyone could hear, she didn't. To buck Hearst and Metro would amount to a livelihood forfeit. She'd step off the carousel instead and marry ... 1932's loss, and ours since. Gal-pal themes were rife in precode, Davies and Dove a scrappy pair raising dukes as coda to every argument. It's fun watching love rivals go to the mat as opposed to civilized exchange Code-compliant Bette Davis, Mary Astor, Miriam Hopkins, et al confined themselves to in 40's bouts. Those latter were verbal at best, whereas Davies/Dove slug each other silly, few quarrels between them ending short of physical combat.



1932 Patrons Looked Longingly at Davies,
 But What I Covet Is That Deco Stair Bannister!



Is Billie Dove Putting Marion On Notice That Blondie
 Is Her Movie To Steal?


Marion Davies' Blondie gets off a stinging impersonation of Garbo during a specialty with Jimmy Durante. He's Jack Barrymore and they're spoofing Grand Hotel, only she clamps deep into GG's Achilles with make-up, expression, and voice to reveal baseline absurdity of the Swedish sphinx's act. Was Marion first to nail lampoon potential of I Vant To Be Alone? Don't know, but I'm guessing Garbo was not amused at send-up so close to the bone. Davies had done these caricatures before --- in 1928's The Patsy, she laid several dramatic divas to rest, most devastatingly Lillian Gish. I'd love to have observed commissary meets between Davies and less-than-good-sport targets of her spot-on satiring. Did her own impressions prepare MD for the cruel jape Citizen Kane later played on her?

UA Makes Crime Pay

Like a lot of obscurities from MGM's On-Demand label, Vice Squad has crept on cat's feet to Screen Archives and lately, Warner Archive listings. Viewers know it, if at all, from late PM slots, then infrequent TCM play, VS having otherwise pulled 1953 duty filling cop/robber dates between adrenalin shot of 3-D and grenade burst of Cinemascope, square in that summer of hope's renewal for a beat-down industry. United Artists distributed and was part investor in this venture thought promising thanks to tyro trio Arthur Gardner, Jules Levy, and Arnold Laven, whose first (so far only) feature, Without Warning, had been bought by vet producer Sol Lesser, then sold to UA, everyone coming out rosy. G,L&L, plus Vice Squad's exploitable title and micro-budgeting, looked to be safe bets for hot weather exploitation.

Trade sources pegged Gardner as administrator, Levy a point-man for deals, with Laven pulling much of creative duty. Whatever sold was catnip to this team. All were young and a two of three vote guided policy. They'd tried getting Invaders From Mars off the ground, but lack of funds saw rival Ed Alperson grabbing those marbles. Profit G,L&L made off Without Warning enabled Vice Squad. Edward G. Robinson was had for comparative pittance ($50K according to co-star Paulette Goddard's biographer Julie Gilbert), his stock HUAC-diminished to what Robinson later called "a B picture phase of my career." Fallen name Goddard, says Gilbert, received $15,000 for three day's work on Vice Squad. Hard times weren't theirs alone --- many off contract payrolls took work where it could be had for whatever they could get.

Gardner, Levy, and Laven understood the value they'd gotten in Edward G. Robinson. Life has shaped Eddie, the three told Variety. People who really know him, love him for what he is. He doesn't have to ham it up any longer. That's for kids practicing to be mimics. So we asked him to play himself. Much to their credit and Vice Squad's good was said recognition of Robinson's icon status and how to make a most of it. Walk through this, Eddie, G,L,&L were quoted as saying, and you'll be great. Vice Squad does show a relaxed star, Robinson doing what we most enjoy, whatever his own appreciation of reduced circumstances. This was an actor incapable of a poor or indifferent performance. Mature players, said the producing team, are not types. Their years of experience have made them into believable people, which was, added Variety, what these documentary mellers need more than anything else.

Shooting of Vice Squad was like camera conducted tour of Los Angeles circa '53, always a best feature of budget thrillers set on streets. Gardner, Levy, and Laven even scored access to the new Hollywood Freeway just days before it opened to traffic, a fifty-five million dollar set, according to trades. Vice Squad was less noir than police procedural, an insider peek at law enforcement wheels on the grind. Civil liberties take a hike under detective Robinson's command. He's for rousting suspect/civilians alike, ordering frame-ups and illegal arrests like black coffee. Those fed up with soft on crime must have rocked balconies cheering. Being it's vice we're examining, there's B-girl round-upping and inventory of underthings gathered during raids. That last, plus Paulette Goddard's winking maintenance of an "escort service," amounted to spice denied home viewers of tamer Racket Squad and closer-quartered precincts at home. Even cheap fare like Vice Squad paced way ahead of TV competition by getting outdoors more and clearer spelling out of blotter content, this being fresh meat to a 50's audience, and not a little titillating.

Trade reviews were good, with emphasis on "exploitation facets." One of these was television spotting, United Artists committed now to spend largely (Variety) after ad-fueled success of Moulin Rouge, High Noon, and The Moon Is Blue ($600K was sunk in Moulin promotion alone). Trailers for TV had become a must-do since rapturous response to 1952's Sudden Fear and a King Kong reissue the same season, but it does not fit all products, said the trade. Best results seem to come where actual scenes from the negative have a high "teaser' appeal. Melodrama and horror subjects make up into potent come-on, but lush musicals in Technicolor are not advantageously sold on a tiny black-and-white parlor receiver. Vice Squad was singled out by Variety for its title which was a lulu for home shock value (as were "gruesome scenes" in another TV-spot-made hit, The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms).

Vice Squad sold beyond even optimist outlook. Bookings finessed in "A" houses more than returned bacon, and holdovers were rife. Patronage voted at ticket windows for Eddie back in holsters. To hammer the point, ad design even borrowed key art of Robinson from 1937's Bullets Or Ballots to let everyone know he'd conduct business-as-usual. Trade trumpets by late August pegged Vice Squad as a sleeper, and major studio heads keep asking to see the picture, according to columnist Frank Scully. The William Morris agency put together a Vice Squad pilot with Edward G. Robinson for hopeful vid placement, but showing that around got no bites. The feature returned $918K in domestic rentals and $722K more foreign, one of United Artists' best performers among small budget titles that year (only I, The Jury in 3-D topped it). For their profit-making effort, Gardner, Levy, and Laven got another UA ticket punched with Code File: FBI, released in September 1954 as Down Three Dark Streets, also a crackerjack police job available from MGM On Demand DVD.