Metro's Romance with Radium

I don’t suppose Greer Garson will ever come back into vogue. Her kind of movie’s as gone as the pharaohs. Working through the forties, you’d at least expect her to have turned up in a few film noirs, as even Katherine Hepburn was able to manage with Undercurrent, but Garson brooked no allowance for neuroses or anti-social behavior. Her screen persona expired as certainly as ration tickets issued during a war for which she exemplified homefront struggle and sacrifice. Once it was over, so was Garson. Nearly all her post-conflict MGM shows lost money (The Miniver Story had a horrific 2.3 million deficit). Warners quietly released 1943’s Madame Curie on DVD a few months ago, having been among winners (according to WB) in a buyer’s poll of most wanted discs. So how many of us ordered? Surely not so many as stood on line when it played Radio City Music Hall from late 1943 into Spring 1944. Those patrons needed a Greer Garson. Our diminished interest shouldn't reflect on an actress who rallied spirits and faced uncertainty alongside her audience. She may have had a short run, but who since connected so intensely with viewers in a shared crisis? Eyewitnesses, and I’m referring to those who experienced Mrs. Miniver, Random Harvest, and Madame Curie first-run, are fast taking leave of us. Soon there’ll be but bemused generations to look upon these time capsules and wonder (if not doubt) how any of them could have been so wildly popular. I’d like to think there’s still some entertainment life left in Madame Curie before it’s buried among similar artifacts.

MGM had explored The Romance Of Radium in a 1937 short released a year before Eve Curie’s published biography of her famous parents. Dramatic potential was recognized and development underway before Metro acquired rights in the book. Radium was considered an exotic, if dangerous, healer, like something Flash Gordon might bring home from the planet Mongo. It glowed in the dark and there were but tiny fragments so far harvested. This was science that would play like science fiction, and the Curies promised a love story to remove the stigma of test tubes and laboratories. Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, and Ann Harding were each announced for the lead. Ironic that real-life inventor Hedy Lamarr wasn’t considered, for even as Madame Curie was in pre-production, she and composer George Antheil developed a classified communication system that led eventually to our modern cellular phones, receiving their patent before the picture was released. As it is, Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon were well cast. Eve Curie provided family photos and costumes were scrupulously duplicated, as was the spartan workshop where radium was discovered. Latter-day critics cite shows like Madame Curie as evidence of MGM’s bent toward over-decorative production and needless frou-frou. Contract director Clarence Brown confirmed zealous competition that went on among departments anxious to call attention to themselves. Metro was the sort of outfit that would set plush chairs at a breakfast table. Decoration for its own sake at times, but how else to impress the front office with your department’s enterprise? Period and costume subjects were best served by said opulence. Who needed European locations with resources so grand as these?

It helps to know a little science if you’re going to watch Madame Curie. I didn’t, though Metro writers saw me through by way of accessible dialogue and a Physics For Dummies approach much appreciated by this habitual underachiever (my summer school "C" in chemistry was tendered in exchange for my promise to attend class each day and not otherwise annoy the instructor). The real Marie Curie treated her radioactive isotopes like pet rocks and enjoyed watching them shimmer in unlighted rooms. You have to wonder how she lived long as she did carrying the things around in her pocket as though they were Hershey Kisses. First cousin to radium poisoning Aplastic anemia finally killed her in 1934. Hazards of such discomfiting sort are touched on but briefly in Madame Curie. Greer Garson develops a burn on her arm, but it doesn’t hurt so much, and that pair of rubber gloves she henceforth wears provides stout resistance to further encroachment. A compromise with realism, perhaps, but imagine a 1943 exploration of physical and psychic horrors associated with radiation poisoning --- directed by Von Stroheim, with Martin Kosleck (anticipating his own The Flesh Eaters by twenty years) as Pierre. Would Madame Curie have realized its eventual million-dollar profit under those circumstances? Metro was cited at the time for its sober adherence to fact over romantic embroidery. Side issues are avoided in favor of the radium drama, and suspense along these lines is nicely maintained despite a 124 minute running time. Walter Pidgeon was never a conventional romantic lead. He was mature before stardom came and so could play thoughtful types. I enjoyed his give-and-take dialogue with Garson as they searched for the elusive element. Imagine a mainstream release today with major stars discussing scientific theory and exclaiming over the content of petri dishes …

There’s a vanishing ink quality about Herbert Stothart’s music. Always there, but you never really hear it. Would these scores play better isolated? A few have been released on CD, but I’ve not listened. There were segments of Madame Curie when I concentrated, with some effort, on Stothart, but within moments, my attention drifted. If film music is indeed most effective when unobtrusive, then Stothart must truly be one of its great practitioners. His cadence matches that of many MGM features he scored. Relaxed, measured, unassuming. Modern viewers might choose less charitable words. Ann walked in the room during my screening of Madame Curie, looked at the picture but a few seconds, said This Looks Boring, and left. In an increasingly corporatized world, perhaps viewers sense modern chokeholds to come in Metro forties output --- they're very much like studio product today. No company was so stripped of individual voices. After Thalberg’s death in 1936, creative decisions were sifted through committees. Everyone was second-guessed --- a real-life parallel to The Fountainhead with the Howard Roarks out and the Ellsworth Tooheys firmly in command. Movies were beautifully polished, but often at the loss of their soul. Compare the latter four Thin Man mysteries with the first two … consider Tarzan after 1934. Laurel and Hardy at Metro was their nadir, and what of The Marx Brothers there? We either make peace with company policy of the time, or leave their pictures alone. Disney in the forties ran along similar tracks. Were the same efficiency experts servicing both lots? Based on filmic evidence, it seems you could work at Warners or RKO without finding pods under your bed, though just when you’re ready to dismiss Metro generally, there’s a Minnelli (The Clock --- seen recently, and great), some Clarence Browns, and yes, Madame Curie, which I might never have revisited but for Warner’s consideration. Maybe it’s time someone took up the gauntlet and reexamined more MGM product, even if that means watching Air Raid Wardens again!

Photo Captions

Note justifiably proud studio artisans showing off their handiwork to up-and-coming star Robert Walker, and later Walter Pidgeon, on the set. That's the real Curies on bicycles alongside screen counterparts, and again, check out similarities in respective portraits of same. Verisimilitude is also maintained by way of Metro's art department recreation of the Curie laboratory, as both shown here demonstrate. Finally, that's Madame Curie director Mervyn LeRoy and producer Sidney Franklin conferring with Greer Garson during shooting.

Citizen Kane --- In and Out Of The Warehouse

Following its general release during the 1941-42 season, Citizen Kane went into hibernation that would last nearly fifteen years. While Orson Welles struggled to resurrect a Hollywood career, exhibitors with bitter memories of Kane in first-run shunned it like a plague. Despite maintaining one of the industry’s heaviest reissue schedules, RKO couldn’t be bothered with this one. European audiences discovered Citizen Kane after the war, but hosannas published in foreign language publications were not enough to revive interest stateside. Further impediments arose when nitrate-based film was phased out in favor of safety stock. This had been a major safety issue largely ignored during interims between disastrous booth fires wherein projectionists sometimes lost their lives. An economic alternative was needed, and by the late forties, industry heads had one. Most were converting by 1950. Within a few years, nitrate was out, along with thousands of features and shorts previously printed on the unstable stock. Extant prints of Citizen Kane would be cleared from RKO exchanges along with the rest. 35mm prints of old titles were available in the event of a (safety-based) reissue, but who needed the expense of new prints where the feature wasn't wanted? Proven hits naturally lent themselves better to grindhouse situations on the lookout for cheap program filler. Cat People showed $65,000 profits for a 1952 revival, over and above $183,000 it garnered in black ink during the original release ten years earlier. Cost-conscious RKO used low-grade newsreel stock to generate 35mm safeties for these fifties engagements, compromising visual splendors otherwise to be had in Val Lewton’s horror series and Astaire/Rogers musicals. It would be 1956 before Citizen Kane was back on release schedules, just in time for RKO to take its place as exhibition’s supreme pariah …

December 1955 saw an announcement that RKO’s film library would be sold to television. Shock waves went through exhibition corridors, but it wasn't an altogether unexpected move. Studios had been hinting possibilities along this line for several years. Howard Hughes sold the caboodle (742 features) to General Teleradio, who quickly firmed a deal with the C&C Super Corporation. Paying $15.2 million for rights, C&C soon had 75% of existing television sets within range of RKO movies, and broadcasts began as of March 1, 1956. Prints were even muddier than ones RKO generated for theatres, South American labs having been commissioned to deliver thousands of them in 16mm at bulk rates. As for the movies themselves, industry observers noted elderly specimens of the same poor quality that most stations want to retire among the 741 offerings, many dating back to early days of sound. C&C sweetened the deal by licensing the group in perpetuity. Member stations could run RKO forevermore, with no limit as to the number of airings. After fifty years, I wonder how many present-day managements are even aware of that ongoing privilege? A number of stations could be running Citizen Kane right now, as those 1956 contracts would likely remain in effect, despite Warner’s eventual purchase of the library (there was a Midwest channel that dumped their 16mm prints nine years ago, and titles I ended up with included note cards with a record of broadcasts over the years. The Body Snatcher print had run nineteen times between 12-30-58 and 1-6-98). Exhibitors in 1956 felt betrayed by RKO and said so loudly in print, stopping just short of a boycott against the company’s product. A handful of reissues nevertheless emerged that year. Showmen asked why they should book RKO product that might show up on free television the very night of their engagement. C&C included a rider with TV contracts in which listed titles were withheld from the initial group sold, including ones designated for 1956 theatrical release --- King Kong, She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, and Citizen Kane, among others. New campaigns were prepared for these, RKO reasoning perhaps that fresh posters might lessen hostility among theatremen. Availability for TV was promised no sooner than July 31, 1956 --- no later than December 22, 1957, a pretty indefinite window for exhibitors already taking grief from patrons asked to pay for shows they’d just seen at home. Citizen Kane was back in exhibition news when Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey, Jr., former operators of Harvard’s Brattle Theatre, acquired the 55th Street Playhouse in New York and booked Kane there for an "exclusive" revival in February 1956. The renovated art house was the setting for a benefit performance of the 1941 release, with proceeds going to the Film Preservation Fund of The Museum Of Modern Art. Their effort raised $500 for MOMA and favorable publicity for newly viable Kane in theatres. RKO announced a limited art-house re-release for March. Engagements would be carefully selected, said vice-president in charge of worldwide distribution Walter Branson. We are satisfied that there is public acceptance of this unusual picture in the proper theatres, and we feel that by continued careful handling on a very selective basis, appreciative revenue can be realized by exhibitors. Would theatres other than art-houses be considered? Drawing power, location, or policy would determine that, said the RKO executive. One mainstream house did break records with Citizen Kane in 1957 by preceding its run with four days of radio saturation and commercial copy emphasizing the Hearst/Kane link (Hearst had died in 1951). The Casa Linda in Dallas was rewarded with triple the theatre’s best receipts since opening. As with any attraction, exploitation was everything.

RKO closed its exchanges in 1957. Remaining prints went to independents. These small depots scrounged for whatever coin was left in pictures now heavily saturated on television. RKO titles continued playing kid shows and grind schedules well into the sixties. My examination of theatre ads for the Winston-Salem/Greensboro territory found many turning up years after late night TV would have presumably wrung them dry. Mighty Joe Young was an evergreen for triple features at Greensboro’s National Theatre. I found three bookings for it there in 1964 –65. Winston-Salem’s Carolina Theatre regaled youngsters with rock and roll on stage and Gunga Din on screen in 1965. WBTV’s horror host Dr. Evil popped in at the Lincoln a few blocks down and I Walked With A Zombie accompanied his live show. All these would have been booked for no more than fifteen to twenty dollars flat. The situation overall was much the same as it had been ten years earlier. Action and monsters were what sold. Citizen Kane was for art houses and television. With its running time of 119 minutes, Kane came in for particularly brutal treatment by station editors. Two-hour slots were as much time as movies generally got for daytime or early evening telecasts. Imagine whittling twenty or so minutes out of Citizen Kane for a Saturday afternoon run. The opening newsreel was usually first to go. It’s self-contained and easily snipped. The mutilation attendant upon Citizen Kane’s placement in a ninety-minute time frame can only be imagined, yet this is how many viewers saw the film between 1956 and the nineties. Its placement on various ten-best lists assured pride of place among revival house booking sheets, but for distributors, it was hardly worth shipping a 35mm print. Manhattan repertories were paying just fifty dollars flat to play Citizen Kane for three days in 1965. Rentals earned have barely covered the cost of handling, said The New York Times. The tide turned in March 1966 when Janus Films acquired theatrical rights for Citizen Kane (and King Kong) from RKO General, Inc. Withdrawing the two from theatres, Janus partner Saul J. Turell promised their reappearance will be backed by a promotion campaign aimed at the growing audience of what the trade calls film buffs. A fresh campaign might obtain higher prices from exhibitors as well. The existence of this audience is reflected by six theatres devoted almost exclusively to the showing of film classics, as well as in the proliferation of university courses and film societies, said Turell. Citizen Kane would now command $175 against fifty-percent of all gross receipts, whichever was higher. Janus control did not extend to free showings. These were still handled by Films, Inc., the 16mm distributor supplying non-theatrical venues. Their 1971 Rediscovering The American Cinema catalogue labeled Citizen Kane a "special", with prices on a sliding scale. $50 to $100 for schools and convents, $65 to $250 for colleges, universities, museums, and film societies (depending on audience size). Thanks to these, Citizen Kane would at last get back some of its lost prestige.

Digital magic has spoiled twenty-first century Kane watchers. For a cold splash of what patrons settled for three decades (plus) ago, check out grisly frame blow-ups Pauline Kael offered in her groundbreaking (and controversial) The Citizen Kane Book in 1971. Revisionist as to text, her illustrations only emphasized the film’s appalling (and ongoing) state of preservation. Still years away from restoration efforts and DVD (near) perfection, audiences for Kane took what they could get, and often what they got were prints murky as those images Kael relied upon for her book. The fact we can now enjoy home theatre presentations far superior to anything seventies patrons had in public spaces (on discs we can own as well) is something none of us should take for granted. Of course, it was video that would once again banish Citizen Kane from theatres. Why drive across town and pay an admission when you could stay home and watch your Nostalgia Merchant VHS tape (even if it was poorly mastered from 16mm)? These began appearing in the late seventies. As had been the case in 1956 with television, RKO’s library would be among those first available to collectors. Having succeeded to theatrical rights in Citizen Kane, Paramount tried another reissue in May of 1991. Their total gross was a rewarding $1.585 million, unusually good for any library title in our age of video. Projection TV has largely overtaken film as the format of choice for institutions and groups lacking equipment and resources to book 35mm. Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. licenses titles for most of the film companies. Virtually all the other rental houses have gone by the wayside. I wonder if Swank even offers Citizen Kane on 16mm anymore, never mind condition of the print in the event they do. Television runs of Kane are mostly limited to TCM, a good thing as they’re always complete, uninterrupted, and look wonderful --- not so good, however, if your cable service doesn’t offer TCM, or you don’t have cable at all. Minimal effort can put us all by way of an excellent DVD. Incredible you can have something this good starting at $9.81 used on Amazon. Those days of watching it chopped in syndication, riding subways to distant art houses, pursuing worn 16mm costing hundreds of dollars --- all seem remote indeed. Orson Welles lived long enough to see the beginning of this transition. Would he be pleased by its culmination?

Campaigning For Kane --- Part One

Citizen Kane lost $160,000. Historians recall both the film and its star as having gotten a raw deal. Opinions differ as to how much grief Orson Welles brought upon himself. Controversy he invited did hobble the boxoffice. First-run bookings were lost as a result of RKO’s war with William Randolph Hearst as well as profits Kane might otherwise have earned. It was hard enough for this company to score hits even in the best of times. Welles might have had a smash had he dealt with MGM rather than RKO, but Metro would never have given untried talent such carte blanche, nor backed him in a showdown with Hearst. RKO president George Schaefer hungered for, and was willing to gamble on, prestige names that would help RKO grab a bigger market share. 1939’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame pointed the way with $3.1 million in worldwide rentals. Could Orson Welles deliver unique product RKO needed to compete with powerful majors like Paramount, Fox, and MGM? Welles promised something new in screen entertainment --- plus longer lines and runs in downtown palaces Schaefer coveted. Big companies owning said temples had little reason to court unpredictable talent like Welles, despite remarkable strides he’d made onstage and in radio. RKO’s production machinery was not so well oiled as these monoliths in control of all the best theatres. Orson Welles would team with a studio losing money on pictures that might have clicked with stronger distribution muscle --- Vigil In The Night, Swiss Family Robinson, Abe Lincoln In Illinois, Dance, Girl, Dance --- all handicapped coming out of RKO gates. Their sole money star was Ginger Rogers. She and bandleader Kay Kyser supplied most of the black ink on company ledgers. The 1940-41 product annual called for two Welles productions, the first of which would be John Citizen, USA, among those several preliminary titles for Citizen Kane. It should have been released early in 1941, but for sundry threats, legal and otherwise, made by Hearst once he found out the story was based largely on him. This was where RKO’s express toward greater prestige and profit jumped the track …

As Winter 1941 dragged into Spring, Citizen Kane missed scheduled opening dates and bestirred much speculation as to whether it would be shown at all. RKO was sufficiently intimidated by Hearst interests as to delay public exhibition, though ongoing press previews assured a kettle boiling as corporate heads dithered. Orson Welles suggested they show it in circus tents, and volunteered to take Citizen Kane on the road like an old-fashioned medicine show. He’d even buy the negative! That idea still appealed to him decades later when interviewed by Peter Bogdanovich. If they’d only sold it to me --- they would have gotten out from under, and I would have been independently wealthy for the rest of my life --- everybody would have been happy. At least Welles had a role model in Charlie Chaplin. He’d threatened to hire halls, if not tents, to show The Great Dictator when circuits refused to come to (his) terms the previous year. Was Welles just posturing here? The practical realities of trying to seat audiences in makeshift auditoria for gerryrigged movie presentations was alright if you were running 16mm for school groups, but well-intentioned filmmakers doing battle with theatre monopolies stood little chance playing first-run million dollar investments in venues with sawdust for floors. Samuel Goldwyn actually tried it a few years after Kane when he opened Up In Arms with wooden chairs and telegrams from independents applauding his Quixotic gesture, though audiences for that Reno, Nevada "premiere" still preferred the comfort of plush theatre seats. Welles finally went public and threatened to sue RKO unless they released Citizen Kane forthwith. Radio City Music Hall backed out of a prior agreement to host the premiere, necessitating a quick overhaul of an old two-a-day vaudeville house RKO had owned since the twenties. The Palace Theatre was dressed out in a wall of light, four stories high (shown here). A lavish front cost $26,000 to dress, while other advertising and ballyhoo expenses stood RKO $53,000 before the doors opened on May 1, 1941. For all the confidence on display at the Palace, RKO remained tentative as to playdates for Citizen Kane elsewhere. "A few test showings" was all they’d promise --- these would include Chicago (a lackluster engagement as Welles would later recall), Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington. They called it a roadshow, and surely Citizen Kane was that in terms of limited bookings and a long, hot summer in which to lose momentum before the belated general release set for September 5.

Citizen Kane topped an indifferent slate RKO identified as the First Five For 1941-42. Trade ads were colorful and replete with critical plaudits. Runner-ups on the schedule included Parachute Battalion, Father Takes A Wife (remembered, if at all, as Gloria Swanson’s pre-Sunset Boulevard attempt at a comeback), All That Money Can Buy (stylistically similar to Kane), and Lady Scarface. Block-booking obliged small and independent exhibitors to play all of these. Parachute Battalion (eventual profit --- $128,000) held far greater promise for showmen than Citizen Kane. It was close as they could get to the blockbuster everyone wanted, Warner’s Sergeant York, which would go into general release September 27. Kane was getting a black eye from theatremen hearing crickets and fielding patron complaints as it wound through small towns. Negative comment in the trades was virulent. You’d think Anna Sten was making movies again. There was a World Premiere At Popular Prices in Reading, Pa., complete with parade and baton twirlers --- fresh ad art sexed up Citizen Kane and assured customers they’d not pay the $2.00 asked of roadshow attendees. Pressbooks offered a revised campaign abandoning cartoonish ad art and de-emphasizing an uninspired tagline, It’s Terrific! New one-sheets at last suggested quality product, but they came much too late. Major circuits refused to play the film. Fox West Coast Theatres contracted for Citizen Kane, then opted not to exhibit it, effectively shutting out runs in areas they controlled. Welles had indeed underestimated the enemy he’d made in Hearst. That deluxe trailer for Citizen Kane was a production in itself, and much as it delights us today, chances are Welles' confection baffled viewers unfamiliar with the screen newcomer and whatever it was he was selling. RKO’s season was thus a sinking ship, and George Schaefer would go down with it. Father Takes A Wife lost $104,000. Excellent though it was, All That Money Can Buy (now known as The Devil and Daniel Webster) was down by $53,000. Citizen Kane took $990,000 in domestic rentals and $300,000 foreign. That loss of $160,000 was not so egregious in comparison with other RKO features bleeding as much every year, and surely it was dwarfed by the blow Welles would take with his next, The Magnificent Ambersons, a loser to the tune of $620,000, and one of the worst lickings RKO sustained that decade.

One critic described Citizen Kane as the picture of a man who is not really worth depicting, and here is the film’s weakness, but was it Kane he rejected, or the actor playing him? Welles was at the least unfamiliar as a screen presence. That voice was known well, but could it have become too overpowering (intimidating?) when combined with Welles’ looming physicality? He’s surely no leading man in the conventional sense. Rubber-necked masks and skull caps do not a romantic leading man make --- and what of those not ready for prime-time Mercury players? Joseph Cotten would break into romantic leads. The rest were at best character support, and few fulfilled the bright promise Welles foresaw in his Citizen Kane trailer. I could suggest revisionist casting that might have turned the commercial tide had the picture been made but months later. Consider the young man among reporters wandering amidst Xanadu treasures in the final sequence. Attentive listeners will identify that unmistakable Alan Ladd voice as it’s heard several times near the end (the still shown here finds him standing in clear view with other players). What if Ladd had played Kane, just after This Gun For Hire? Imagine following the sensation of his breakout role in that Paramount thriller with Alan Ladd as Charles Foster Kane! Welles would have had an unqualified hit and juice enough to stay on and direct no telling how many more RKO projects. At the very least, Welles and Mankiewicz might have rewritten Citizen Kane to accommodate a shared lead with Ladd. Consider this for instance --- Two-fisted enforcer (Ladd) for Big Jim (more sinned against than sinning) Gettys goes after C.F. Kane (Welles), but falls in love with Emily (Ruth Warrick) just as he’s closing in on that love nest his quarry shares with "singer" Susan Alexander. For Emily’s sake, Ladd lets Kane off with a warning, exacts his promise to lay off Gettys and stay out of politics, then decamps with Emily, who’s decided she prefers this bantam with the heart her venal husband lacks. Think they’d have bought that in 1941?