A 1960 Memphis Scream-iere

The Malco Theatre in Memphis, Tennessee might have seemed an unlikely place to jumpstart a nationwide campaign for Brides Of Dracula, yet this is where the Hammer horror classic had its world premiere, on Friday, June 3, 1960. Three thousand patrons, most of them teen-agers, lined the block around Main and Beale Street, then jammed the house to capacity. Combined efforts of Malco staff and Universal field agents brought them there. Evidence at hand suggests moviegoing reached a state of grace that night. Film history books don’t have a lot to say about that fraternity of men at the vanguard of selling pictures we call classics today. Their bows were taken at ticket booths and deposit windows --- where success counted most. It’s fun, said Malco vice-president Richard Lightman as he coordinated the arrival of Count Dracula in a mule-driven antique hearse he’d found in a Kentucky junkyard. You can’t just take a horror thriller and put it on the screen. This type of picture must be ballyhooed. Lightman understood the need for novelty to merchandise monsters, especially when so many of them competed for a kid’s allowance dollar. The very week he played Brides Of Dracula, Warner’s palace up the street was head-to-head with Circus Of Horrors. Universal's challenge was to differentiate its shocks from those served up by others. Already there had been complaints about the plethora of Dracula themes. Harrison’s Reports rebelled two years before when confronted with the triumvirate of Blood/Return, and Horror Of Dracula, all in simultaneous circulation and causing no end to confusion among patrons and promoters. The average moviegoer, unlike those of us who are in the motion picture business, does not remember the exact title of a picture he or she has seen unless it happened to be a truly exceptional film, said Pete Harrison. There is no telling how many moviegoers who will see one of them will unwittingly pass up either one or both of the other pictures in the mistaken belief that they are one and the same. Now schools were letting out for a 1960 summer that much more saturated with horror subjects, and here was Universal entering yet another contestant in the Dracula sweepstakes. An expert would be needed to sell this one, so they called A-Mike Vogel …

A-Mike (or did they just call him Mike? --- anyway, that’s the unusual way he spelled his first name) was an exhibition genius from way back. He’d conducted the Manager’s Round Table section for The Motion Picture Herald from 1933 to 1942. A-Mike could pound ad copy in his sleep, a dangling cigarette and crumpled hat his trademarks (shown hovered over a typewriter, he looks to have merged Walter Winchell, Billy Wilder, and A Star Is Born’s Matt Libby into one flamboyant package). By 1960, Vogel had his own advertising and exploitation agency in San Francisco. Let’s get in and pitch said he to exhibitors as Universal turned this merchandising whirlwind loose on Brides Of Dracula. Find a newly married couple willing to spend their wedding night in the graveyard! fairly captured the spirit of A-Mike’s strategy. His Dracula Bat-Flying Derby foresaw kid-built kites looming over marquees. Science and shop classes from school would be certain to tie in, promised Vogel. Book merchants were assured that Monarch’s paperback novelization would feature a cover impregnated with special-type perfume. Having acquired my own copy several years ago, I reexamined that just now, only to find it sans odors (other than musty ones owing to encroachments of age). Potential hit singles on the Coral label included Brides Of Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha and Transylvania Polka, complete with David Peel and Yvonne Monlaur on the sleeve (talk about latter-day collectibles!). I’m A Mummy had been Universal’s pop single accompanying a previous Hammer horror they’d distributed, and who better than airwave disc-spinners for getting the word out to kids? Saturation openings were planned for June, and Memphis would lead off. Lightman and the Malco had been angling for this premiere since a proposed bow for The Mummy fell through a year before. Malco’s reputation was built selling chillers. Now they’d establish a template for showmen nationwide to follow.

Getting capacity audiences was tougher by 1960. A barn like the Malco gathered lots of dust among three thousand often empty seats. Only a monster movie will fill the house, said management. One local reporter noted teenagers who flock to these goosebump spectacles with glowing eyes, as if it were something wonderful. News coverage of the Brides Of Dracula premiere revealed a condescending tone typical of mainstream attitudes toward horror films (and their audience). The picture was about what one would expect, sniffed Memphis’ Commercial Appeal. One of those creations which are completely ridiculous but which will quiver your spine anyway if you aren’t careful. Richard Lightman (shown here beside his antique hearse) understood the reality of pushing thrillers --- It has been our experience that with a show of this type, the business just won’t hold up over a week. Long runs were unknown where films like these were concerned. Many "A" venues avoided them altogether. Horror favorites we revere today opened as drive-in second features in many major cities. Hardtops usually burned them off in two or three days max. Lightman’s prophesy would be fulfilled yet again with Brides Of Dracula, as it too would exit after seven days, ceding place to a reissue of The Greatest Show On Earth. Films like Brides Of Dracula were all about heavy exploitation and a quick play-off. Silly stunts such as those recommended by A-Mike Vogel worked best. The Malco wasn’t alone when it came to sidewalk ballyhoo, as evidenced here. Pedestrians barely flinched at the sight of vampires and festooned femmes on various city corners. Such things were more commonplace in those days of busy downtown shopping. A man walking the streets in a barrel, his sign proclaiming I Just Saw Brides Of Dracula and It Scared The Pants Off Me!, heralded Malco's premiere night. "Werewolf whistles" and a Do-It-Yourself Vampire Kit were available in advance of the opening. Accessories included two sharpened stakes, a small wooden mallet, a silver bullet, garlic cloves, and wolfbane, all for a quarter.

The stage show was pushed hardest. Advertising director Watson Davis’ efforts were abetted by Universal "technical expert" Heidi Erich, a self-proclaimed descendent of Elizabeth Bathory, history’s only legally convicted vampire (I Googled her, and yes, Bathory was a notorious vampiress during the 1500’s). Members of the Memphis Little Theatre would perform a ritual of unholy matrimony wherein assorted girls were accompanied down the aisles by a German band (shown here), while the Malco’s mighty Wurlitzer rose up from below floor level to herald the arrival of Dracula himself. Brides inclined to resist were tied to props of various medieval torture instruments to await the ceremony, while a "heckler" plant in the audience was dragged from his seat and beheaded on a guillotine to college glee club accompaniment. Ushers working in the guise of Frankenstein, Quasimodo, and the Wolf Man doubled as stage performers (a complete script of the pageant was made available to exhibitors wishing to stage their own effort). The Vampire Gift Shoppe shown here was sold out an hour before the premiere (that’s theatre manager Elton Holland at left and Watson Davis on the right). Davis specialized in horror film promotion (he constructed a twenty-foot high Tyrannosaurus Rex to promote the Malco's subsequent booking of Dinosaurus), and would later assume hosting duties for WHBQ’s Fantastic Features, wherein he was billed as Sivad. That series of Memphis TV horrors lasted from 1962 into the seventies, and made Davis a legendary local figure. The Malco thrives to this day, albeit restored to its original name, The Orpheum, which was given birth in 1928 as a vaudeville and variety site. Now a performing arts center, the venerable house hosts concerts and special events. Friend of the Greenbriar John Beifuss, Jr., curator of that outstanding website, The Bloodshot Eye, provided much background on the Malco and Memphis environs (Thanks, John!).

UPDATE (9-17-07): Some interesting financial info on the 1966 combo reissue of Brides Of Dracula with King Kong vs. Godzilla. Brides took $130,000 in domestic rentals and Kong brought $161,000 (the latter had earned $1.219 million in domestic rentals during its initial 1963 release). I'd suspect the reissue was profitable as it's doubtful Universal made new 35mm prints of either feature. As far as I know, there was no combo pressbook prepared and no new campaign material.

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?