Selling Shanghai --- Part Two

Orson let cameras caress Rita where practicable. Boss-man Cohn inserted more beyond that, acting on no more than conviction that one displays merchandise he's selling. What's probably a record for number of stills taken of a star ... 900 during 28 days ... was established by still lensman Eddie Cronenweth, shooting Rita Hayworth on location in Mexico for Columbia's The Lady From Shanghai, reported Variety in November 1946. Did Cohn dismantle Welles' crazy house highlight (intended to last fifteen minutes) for Hayworth's being absent in that sequence? She was bundled to what male customers thought excess in the famed mirror scene that finished LFM. Lads, seeing that slick chick black gown with the lace top which star wears in newspaper and billboard ads, are solely disappointed when they discover sensational gown is entirely missing in picture, noted trade observers. Welles having lost interest in his wife and leading lady translated too well to conservative way he'd present her in The Lady From Shanghai. Filling gaps would be the lot of Columbia ad staff handed sizzle shy of steak. Euro artists would go them better draping a bare-ly clad Rita in director and co-star's arms for posters (like below) that auction for plenty among collectors today even as they laughably misrepresent content of the film.

Orson at least flattered the Lady in having her speak fluent Chinese during climactic reels (wonder who dubbed Rita here). The funhouse frustrates for being cut-off mid-sentence. As Welles screened The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari in preparation, we can only imagine what his nightmare encompassed over an intended quarter-hour (but again, isn't that a bit much, whatever visual merits?). The Chinese opera was supposed to be longer too. Did Orson forget that a thriller generally speeds pace as it approaches finish line? Wellesian ideas again bore fruit for others later on. Would Doris Day and Rock Hudson have entered their Lover Come Back aquarium had OW not gone there first? The latter's LFS parting line, Everybody Is Somebody's Fool, would ultimately benefit Connie Francis more than Orson Welles, its transition to song almost certainly result of lyricist exposure to The Lady From Shanghai (not unlike Buddy Holly bringing That'll Be The Day away from The Searchers).

Columbia tossed LFS to wolves in April 1948 after a year plus gathering cobwebs. The trade was onto meat spoilage: Columbia's The Lady From Shanghai has been hesitating for months between two endings and hasn't landed yet, said Variety, The lady can't make up her mind. 86 minutes the company shipped were less comprehensible than what Welles submitted, yet there was no dumping Rita Hayworth's newest, however poor it was figured to be (over-stylized was Variety's tactful sum-up). Los Angeles got earliest dates --- at both the Pantages and Hillcrest Theatres, LFS taking a mild $37,300 in its first week (competing The Big Clock grabbed $45,500 down the block). Shanghai's second week dropped to $21,000. There wouldn't be an intended third. That originally hoped for extension, said Variety, saw Pantages-Hillcrest booking instead a reissued pair out of Warners, The Fighting 69th and Valley Of The Giants, these adjudged a safer bet than seven more dispiriting days of The Lady From Shanghai.

Chicago's State-Lake Theatre backed their first-run with song and vaude to drag The Lady From Shanghai past two hours and hopefully an admission ticket's worth of entertainment. Top-lining Lina Romay was known for having sung with Xavier Cugat's Orchestra, then supporting Clark Gable in 1945's Adventure. This would be her first theatre tour in four years. The Wiere Brothers were comedy vets recently off extended cameo-ing with Bob and Bing in The Road To Rio, a tip-top 1947 grosser. Back in Chicago Jackie Green, a favorite in this city said trade reviewing, did song parodies and mimicked Jolson, Cantor, plus assorted betters. Thus was the State-Lake's a reasonably strong live bill even as they placed it below The Lady From Shanghai in newspaper advertising, this indication that Columbia's feature was regarded the program's top attraction (really big performing names, like Jane Powell or The Andrews Sisters, were routinely placed at the top of ads, with the screen show in a lower "second feature" corner). Opening week for The Lady From Shanghai at the State-Lake brought a lean take of $33,000, Chicago's bigger earner The Naked City commanding $40,000 at the Palace. As with Los Angeles, Shanghai croaked after its second week and a mild $24,000. The film would lead New York first-runs during an otherwise slow frame in early May, but according to Variety, was no ball of fire at the Criterion. Domestic rentals for The Lady From Shanghai totaled $1.3 million, a big drop from Rita Hayworth returns of late (Gilda at $3.5 million and Down To Earth $2.3).

Orson and Rita Do The Lady From Shanghai --- Part One

Citizen Kane was the only film Orson Welles made in Hollywood that didn't get hacked up by others. That's a sad record best not grieved over. Let's instead take pleasure in what's left. Consider The Lady From Shanghai. I did recently ... three times. Netflix streamed it in HD, so resistance was futile. This one's a crazy house fershure, too much so for Rita Hayworth's following in 1948. Her audience wasn't Orson's. I don't wonder at Columbia being fit to be tied. Here was what they regarded a mess that had to be made coherent. Rita's fans weren't for experimentation. Welles said he wanted The Lady From Shanghai "to be satirical," but selling noir murderess Hayworth in those terms? --- impossible. I've read OW did the shoot sans sleep, a not unaccustomed way for him, but worse here to point of near-collapse. What is percentage of geniuses who are also over-programmed? There was press hoopla over Rita's hair being cut for the pic, and Harry Cohn apoplectic upon finding out. But wait --- he didn't know in advance of a well-publicized trim and dye job witnessed by a roomful of photogs and "directed' by chief barber Welles?

Everything Rita Hayworth did just after Gilda got noticed, lots more so than a Welles better known as husband and object of male envy for said status. He got the Shanghai job because she'd be in it. The story came out of Orson's grab bag, via B director William Castle who sort of got euchred out of fuller participation he'd hoped for, not unlike Kirk Douglas putting shaft to Barry Sullivan in The Bad and The Beautiful (did producer of that 1952 show John Houseman recall Bill's treatment and suggest the storyline to pinprick now estranged Welles?). Castle got an associate producer credit on Shanghai and played go-fer on location, secure, I suppose, in knowledge that without his discovery of the source novel, there'd be no Lady From Shanghai. Several Welles books claim Columbia assigned a $2.3 million budget for LFS. I think that's high, especially when same accounts cite the writer-director having gone over-budget past two million. So did he or not? John Kobal said the figure was $1.25, one I'm more inclined to accept, and yes, Welles did evidently go way past that.

There were locations, exotic ones at a time when studios did less along such lines. Acapulco was a port of filming call, San Francisco's Chinatown another ... LFS was all over maps, this working to good of visual variety and easing onus off cracked storyline further jumbled by Columbia cutters. There were weeks aboard Errol Flynn's rented (at $1,500 a day!) yacht. Here was not one of Orson's better ideas, as Errol proved a real-life Captain Blood adding another studio to his poach-list for overhead-busting Zaca repairs, renamed Circe for Lady's voyage. Welles worked customary magic with sound for LFS, only to see it recorded over by Columbia tin-ears. This may be the worst hit Lady took. A song any of us might compose in a bath tub was spotted throughout and against his wishes. Please Don't Kiss Me aspired to Hit Parade status, and I did find Les Brown and Margaret Whiting covering it at the time, though Billboard made no mention of the tune climbing charts. It's being there was a must for Rita-opportunity to sing as she had (or was dubbed) in Gilda. Getting a saleable "theme" off movie tracks was tactic increasingly set in stone by 1948.

Busy sound and grotesque characters were endemic to OW projects. Sometimes it could get exhausting. Bizarre, of course, is what we like and anything but what convention-bound Hollywood needed then. Orson's wilder-than-wild set-pieces are what's sustained The Lady From Shanghai past noirs less adventurous and certainly all of what else Rita Hayworth did. She later claimed knowing all along it would be a classic. Shanghai's easier to repeat-watch because it's only 86 minutes long. I can't believe a showman like Welles expected any company, let alone Harry Cohn's Columbia, to release 155 minutes said to have been turned in. Even big a fan as me would have a rough time with that much Lady From Shanghai, even as I regret so much lost footage (none appear to survive). Lady is one you can take for a lark Welles intended, being pure fun minus nasty overlay that distances me more from Touch Of Evil. And was it his own kooky idea to cast Orson as Irish-brouged leading romantic man? He'd crash diet getting in shape for that. Were there also free-for-all lessons from Republic stunt artists? --- because serial sock-fests are very much what Lady From Shanghai fighting evokes, that being very much a good thing for ones of us eager to see OW (and his double) bust up furniture.

Waterfront's Boxoffice Deluge --- Part Two

It's easy to forget ruthless means by which most movies get made, that industry having always best served meat-eaters. On The Waterfront producer Sam Spiegel promised Frank Sinatra, fresh off a From Here To Eternity supporting actor win, that he would star. There were even costume fittings. Everyone shook Frank's hand and told him how great he'd be. Then Marlon Brando got belatedly back in touch and said okay to Waterfront. Sinatra could get mad, but not afford getting even. Brando aboard meant a cheap picture along lines of Suddenly (Frank's next) would now become a fittingly bankrolled important venture, one that Columbia tabbed for 1954's Eternity. There is conflicting info as to what On The Waterfront ultimately cost. Variety said in November '54 it was $820,000, Kazan would claim years later a figure of $880,000. Either reflect bargain rate by a period when A pic tags were generally much higher. Chase National Bank staked half the production for Spiegel's Horizon company, with Columbia guaranteeing completion, this being the lender's first dip into movie financing for years: It's (Chase) policy now to accept only gilt-edged deals, with assurance that a major producer-distributor is backing the indie filmmaker, said Variety. All concerned appreciated Marlon Brando's having supplied gilt to Waterfront's edge for this borrowing occasion.

It was bold of Columbia to send a black-and-white flattie into boxoffice combat against color-wide opponents. Also B/W and standard ratio From Here was out a year's eternity ago and just before Cinemascope drew lines away from conventional screening. Fox had, in fact, dropped Waterfront in part because of a new season's switch to anamorphic. Columbia would rely on character and content to put On The Waterfront over. Sneak-previewing to generate word-of-mouth was means of heating up the summer release, a hopeful twin for The Caine Mutiny, already in circulation and doing socko. Talk was Waterfront hitting censor snags for rough language. Brando tells a priest to Go To Hell! (the PCA ordered that cut, despite similar epithets in Hal Wallis' recent Cease Fire). Buzz convinced Eastern metropoli that Waterfront was their kind of hard-hitter. Philadelphia's Stanley Theatre snuck it with Dean and Jerry in Living It Up and turned away crowds at said 2,900 seat palace. By July and On The Waterfront's siege of New York, must-see was label firmly attached. The Astor Theatre's old single week record of $59,500 for Battleground fell to a Waterfront $68,000, that partly owing to increased ticket prices for Columbia's attraction. Lines (as above) paid from $1.25 to $1.85 for seats, with Saturday's a highest rate at $2.30. This was way bigger admission than any other Broadway house commanded, but crowds paid willingly. Elia Kazan would remember snaking queues and patrons not unlike rough customers populating On The Waterfront itself. Like home movies this must have been for a beleaguered working class!

Toward everything old being new again, you can't help wondering if Marlon Brando was Jim Cagney reborn for this urban congregation. He was surely among first since Cagney they'd truly identify with. Ads called Waterfront "Going My Way with Brass Knuckles," a refer-back to that massive 1944 hit and not so inapt, what with both film's priestly presence and reform agenda. Response to Waterfront was enough for Columbia to try shoehorning it in among entries to the Venice Film Festival, August a late date to apply, but who imagined OTW would take off so hugely? Sam Spiegel pushed Venice placement hardest. He'd been in Europe for $ to launch more projects. I've never seen such a flood of money being offered, he told Variety. Harry Cohn announced ten million dollars Columbia would invest in forthcoming independent productions, this in addition to studio-made product. Much of that cash would be provided by Chase Bank thanks to On The Waterfront's showing. They'd even advance funds toward Sam Katzman's yearly B slate for Columbia. Success not unexpectedly bred lawsuits. United Artists came after Sam Spiegel's Waterfront share for $459K they'd advanced him back in 1952 for a flop called Melba, while AFL dockworkers in Chicago sued Columbia for portraying membership as thugs and hoodlums. Those who'd (briefly) been in on developing On The Waterfront also wanted a share now that it was paying off. Several filed claims and more could have. Darryl Zanuck waived recompense for time and $40,000 by which Waterfront was Fox-enriched, satisfying himself instead with stern rebuke to ex-creative partners for bad hand he felt they'd dealt him.

On The Waterfront stayed a remarkable 21 weeks at the Astor. Columbia would ballyhoo that engagement to justify rich terms for subsequent play. Showmen feared a same raw deal they'd gotten on The Caine Mutiny. Why charge so much for product brought in for such a modest sum? --- word being out that Waterfront cost Columbia less than half Caine's total. OTW held long enough at the Astor to push would-be opener A Star Is Born down streets to the Paramount. Broadway houses were at a premium in days when a film's reputation lived or died on how it was received there. Unexpectedly long runs often meant reshuffling merchandise, or delaying bows. On The Waterfront Astor grossing might have continued into 1955 but for ironclad December 19 start on Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. An eight Oscar Waterfront win kept the film in circulation and back at first-run venues where it was combo'ed with The Caine Mutiny (as at the drive-in above). Columbia meanwhile pursued a buyout of profit participants Spiegel, Kazan, and Schulberg, rumor being their selling price totaled three million (Columbia called that figure "too high"). The company later followed up a successful From Here To Eternity reissue in 1958 with another Caine/Waterfront parlay for 1959-60, the pix ... will be handled as if they were new films, said Variety, with new advertising and promotion campaigns. Television release came in 1963 among 210 post-48 titles syndicated by Columbia. By April 1964, the package cleared the Top 50 viewing markets and would play that year on 153 stations nationwide.