Harlow In Hollywood Is Here

There sometimes are books you don't want to end. One for me is Mark Vieira's newest, with Darrell Rooney, Harlow In Hollywood, just out for the actress' hundredth birthday and laying down a rarest and most dazzling array of JH images ever gathered between two covers. Vieira has written before on Garbo, Irving Thalberg, Golden Age horror, and precode. Each fit coffee tables and are visual treasure finds. What he and Rooney achieve via Harlow is a screen legend in day-to-day context with a gone Hollywood she'd briefly thrive in. JH was as much about places as persona, being habitué to glamour spots we associate with Hollywood in prime years. The authors tour us by luxury hotels, horse tracks, chic bars, sundry sighting along Deco boulevards since condo-converted and parking decked. I've never felt so close to events of Harlow's era. Vieira and Rooney make it vivid as something you might step into and experience now. If only!

There are revelations aplenty here. Seems Harlow had gangland assist getting early parts at Columbia, thanks to unsavory coupling with a Mob figure. I want to buy JH as good-hearted victim of studio and rapacious family scheming, but this was no babe in woods ... in some ways she was anyone's equal for cunning. I actually like Harlow's offscreen mix of saint and sinner, all of us human and being of such combine after all. She'd be a bore as mere naïf ground down by Mayer, Mother, and attendant pitiless system. Harlow played trollops too well to be so clueless of their nature as interviews implied. Trouble early on was parts defined by her hair. So long as it shone porcelain white, there'd be no casting beyond "sex vultures" she'd grow to despise. Maybe an industry laughed at Harlow because they felt threatened by her forthright allure. And yes, she seems to have been regarded a joke much like Clara Bow. You could put Harlow's mop on a clown and it would look no less unreal. Code enforcement extended her career for making MGM humanize Jean's persona, a switch-to-brownette ideally timed to an industry's Code-changed circumstance.

Natural looks would calm Harlow's approach. She'd seem less agitated and blend in easier with co-players. Wife vs. Secretary shows how things might have gone had Harlow lived. The Bombshell was all of a sudden serene, a welcome switch. Interaction with Gable is relaxed, both maybe knowing positions were secure by 1936, so why light Red Dust fireworks for a public to whom they'd become old friends? I think Harlow would have gone increasingly Carole Lombard's way given longer life. The latter calmed down too in dramatic roles/subtler comedy of Made For Each Other, To Be Or Not To Be sort before her own tragic and premature exit (for me, 20th Century/Lombard resembles Libelled Lady/Harlow --- way loud). Harlow was headed for image transition not unlike a Joan Crawford, though I'm less sure JH had JC's determined, if not ruthless, survival instincts. Surely there'd have been a move away from Metro --- what 30's actress survived their early 40's purge? --- maybe a switch to Warners or Fox. I picture Harlow doing easier-going comedies with Fred MacMurray at Paramount, maybe easing back to Metro for guest mom spots with Jane Powell, though a surviving Lombard is more readily imagined than a transitioning to middle-age Jean Harlow, that largely for CL's more stable life choices and avoidance of private life predators. There's something doomed about Jean Harlow's very countenance, as if there was just no way she'd make out it out of the thirties (or her twenties). Vieira and Rooney capture beautifully the glamour and ultimate sadness of a life excitingly, but shortly, lived.

Addison Takes Miss Casswell On a Date

I've got this great idea for a comedy team --- Addison De Witt and Miss Casswell --- only it's sixty years too late. Should George Sanders have credited Marilyn for some of his Oscar win? This one's for both of us, Girlfriend. Couldn't have done it without ya! I wonder if GS or anyone realize what a help she'd been toward George/Addison's win? Monroe wasn't invited to the Academy's ceremony, being still on the slow climb up and regarded around town as a "hustler." Like Jean Harlow before, her va-voom distracted from comic aptitude there from the start. If the breathy sex kitten was an act all along (bios say it was), wouldn't Marilyn have looked on her own career as one long laugh routine? Had sex not been taken so seriously then, or better put, regarded as a threat, she might have been a next generation's Gracie Allen. I'm just sorry Fox didn't reteam Sanders and Monroe in a Joe Mankiewicz penned follow-up farce, Addison a Mr. Belvedere of Broadway (look at the series 20th and Clifton Webb got from that!), with dizzy but knowing Miss Casswell to return serve his sardonic quips. Now Joe would have had to give up Julius Caesar and The Barefoot Contessa to set himself properly upon the task, but wouldn't you swap those for more Sanders and Monroe? When the two walk off All About Eve, I want to follow them, my interest greater in where their date heads or what happens at that TV audition they're bound for, potentially lots more fun than continued squabbling among Eve's other characters.

According to records, Marilyn Monroe showed up in six 1950 releases, two of them permanent classics, and none without interest. Stars before had arrived in  clumps. Clark Gable was everywhere in 1931 before a public could pause and take stock. Monroe would be seen in bits for a seeming eternity after The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve should have put her on stardom's fast route. I looked at several of these starter guns to see how clear she'd register as a comet ascending, enjoying luxury of how could they have been so blind? hindsight. Seems everyone who worked with Marilyn that formative year had to answer questions about her later, no matter how large their own status and customary focus on me, me, me. I doubt Groucho Marx got through conversations on Love Happy without someone saying, Yes, Yes, Grouch, but what was she really like? Bette Davis, John Huston, Mickey Rooney ... all got the same inquisition, answers predictably to form: Just a scared kid, didn't seem like anything special, etc. Fellow celebrities on the topic of Marilyn Monroe tended to be self-serving first, revealing second, how reliable always the larger question. She'd become more a legend than most and that had to spur resentment well past MM's 1962 passing. Even George Sanders was compelled to address the Monroe phenom in a memoir, wherein he'd prove more generous than most.

Asphalt Director John Huston claimed he sort of discovered MM. Others write he cast her only to clear a boarding debt for horses. Hollywood really did run on chance and luck, I suppose. Marilyn's first scene in The Asphalt Jungle is reminiscent of Harlow seducing Ben Lyon in Hell's Angels, gloves-off torrid for Code-shackled 1950 in spite of Monroe's objective being solemn Louis Calhern (looking as she did here could arouse a wood Indian). Metro, they say, opted out signing Marilyn because they already had Lana Turner ... well yeah, since 1938. Was there a doghouse at Culver for those who'd missed this bet? All About Eve circulated within months of Asphalt --- two great writer-directors and both showcased Monroe in scenes among best in respective pics. You wonder how she went from these to running in place of cheesecake parts in throwaway shows, and two more years at that. I notice Monroe didn't get before color cameras until 1953's Niagara, not a little unusual for a rising 50's name. The (minor) one that followed Asphalt and Eve was The Fireball, which I happily saw thanks to good offices of Warner's Archive. This was a roller-derby-set Mickey Rooney vehicle, a word not used inadvisably for it's being wall-to-wall Mick and maybe a trial for those not warm to the mighty mite. I perversely found it terrific, another of those scratch-penny independents waded into postwar market where theatres could buy freer now that big distributor block-booking was on the run. The Fireball came of a Thor Productions, their clenched fist logo throwing off lightning bolts, and the moment where I knew this would be a great picture.

Mickey Rooney wrote of how he got Marilyn Monroe her Fireball break. Being MR's was biggest noise on hand, I'd not dispute him. The project was joint between veteran director Tay Garnett, around since hand-cranking, and a producer named Bert Friedlob (the very name suggestive of cigars and racing forms), whose first credited job this was. Exploiting a heated-up roller-skating fad was The Fireball's mission. Seventeen million skaters and seven M more watching Derbys on TV were there for taking, said Friedlob to Variety, just a fraction of these would surely give him a hit (though worldwide rentals ended at just $831K). 20th Fox agreed to distribute, being short of home-grown product and needing to grease distrib wheels. The Fireball was familiar stuff of mixed-up kid Rooney (thirty when he made it) letting skate fame go to his head. Pat O'Brien's along in yet again priestly robe. Co-writer Garnett pillaged Boy's Town for an opening reel, with milder rework of Angels With Dirty Faces to effect Mickey reforming at the finish. Rooney did much of race action himself and briefly interacts with stadium seated Marilyn Monroe (your eyes can't help scanning every crowd shot --- she's there for many of them). Clad in a same sweater-dress from All About Eve, MM makes most of here/there lines and reaction shots. A not unexpected Fireball footnote: Garnett fell out with partner Friedlob over what Variety labeled a coin dispute, seemingly last chapter to most independent producing sagas back then.

A (finally) contract for Marilyn Monroe at Fox yielded one after another small parts in/out of swimming and other brief attire. One was Let's Make It Legal, seen of late at Netflix and highlighting Monroe poolside and on a dance floor. Would anyone ever watch this movie if not for her fleeting presence? Let's Make It Legal was entertainment folks might as easily have duplicated on new televisions at home, being divorce/reconcile porridge of the kind star Claudette Colbert mixed over a last twenty years. She was less Fox's interest than young players grooming for prominence to come. Studio systems even in 50's decline were peas in pods for doggedly developing fresh faces, these tougher selling to a public increasingly tilted toward free-vee. 20th decorates Let's Make It Legal with Robert Wagner and Barbara Bates in addition to Monroe. Bates would prove an even harder luck case than Marilyn, notwithstanding those hundred + books so far on the latter's troubled life. MM doesn't glow here as in Asphalt/Eve, difference being Huston/Mankiewicz v. Legal's Richard Sale. Fox offers pretty near all the Monroe run-ups on DVD, including Love Nest, We're Not Married, O. Henry's Full House, others. They're interesting as much for other participants as MM, and as barometers of 20th trying to stay afloat in hard times just ahead of Cinemascope and temporary salvation.

The Black Pirate Sails Again

Grandmother had one of those window seats you could lift up to find all sorts of treasure stacked within. That's how I came upon copies (first editions?) of Rafael Sabatini novels about pirates and buccaneers, a few of which were adapted for movies and so were familiar to me. Had my uncle read these in youth? There was a long ago when boys sought adventure in books rather than video games, to which I'll not condescend for investing childhood on James Bond and spacefolk. Point is those novels once mainlined fascination in open sea and freebooters who sailed (does anyone read likes of Sabatini other than academics under a microscope? --- and where/when was last time kids played pirate?). I'd like to identify what generation took with it desire to grow up and be Captain Kidd (some of us did get to engage piracy by becoming film collectors). An illustrator named Howard Pyle drew for late 19th century mags and made a specialty of seagoing art. A book compilation of his best was Howard Pyle's Book Of Pirates, published in 1921, a copy making ways to child star Jackie Coogan, who'd show same to Doug Fairbanks and suggest he make a movie spun off blood-tipped images within. Then Boy King of Hollywood spoke years later of a sleepover at Doug and Mary's where The Black Pirate was conceived amidst DF horsing around and pillow fights with Mary, dawn finding Jackie in receipt of $10,000 for having presented the idea. This anecdote's a little precious to altogether believe, vanished era history as we'd like to envision it, but who's to say there's not truth there?

I can't imagine Fairbanks not thinking pirates from the moment he picked up Zorro's sword. As he played strongest to boys of America (nay, the world), what was fitter than taking inspiration from fan membership? We'll never know what a hero and role model DF was for followers now passed on behind him. I met a few who spent lives collecting Fairbanks, their devotion singular and unswerving from a 20's start. John Wayne was on continual lookout for Dougamabilia, and Burt Lancaster took cues from watching first-run Fairbanks that would illuminate his own Crimson Pirate. The last (as in final) fan cluster might have been generated by 8 and 16mm releases from Blackhawk Films, though I'd assume most of these were boys-to-men who'd come of spending age by time home editions made possible a go-back to when Doug's output was new. I first saw The Black Pirate via public library borrow of abridged 8mm and tried imagining currents running through forebear crowds. But how to duplicate pastel glories of its original two-color Technicolor? --- a version Blackhawk nor anyone else at the time had available.

Two-color's odd look appeals to me more as samplings turn up on DVD, granted many not authentic to what folks saw back when. The Black Pirate was recently released on Blu-Ray by Kino. Theirs seems closest to original burnished look of the show. Two-color's named in recognition of fact it could register only so much of nature's palette. Red and green sort of come off, but yellow and blue are a nix. Fairbanks' knowing crew finagled impressions of missing hues and did so artfully. The Black Pirate has a pleasing look of tinted postcards I might have found elsewhere in Grandmother's cupboard. First-run prints were actually two strips of film cemented together in order to wed green with red and make the thing look something like natural color. Did a single copy finish its run unscathed? What United Artists got back from theatres must surely have been whacked beyond hope of repeat use. Technicolor had miles to go from March 1926 when The Black Pirate opened. Had its use been worth Doug's while in a long run?

There was value in a public's knowing Fairbanks was on to something new. Others had tried color, but his embrace was assurance the process had arrived. Grosset and Dunlap's Photoplay Edition enticed with "colored illustrations" promising a few more shades than The Black Pirate could deliver, but who'd carp so long as Doug was giving us a fresh sensation like this? (samples of G&D plates from the book here). The Black Pirate was a hit and well-remembered if not seen much after 20's play-off. Doug Jr. had notions of reissuing it to an early 50's market along with twenty-one other of his father's films then preserved by the Museum Of Modern Art (Fairbanks Senior donated the library to MOMA shortly before his death in 1939). Junior and venture partner Sol Lesser had first to buy out interests of widow Sylvia Fairbanks Gable and the daughters of Robert Fairbanks. The deal was wrapped in January 1952, Variety announcing that the films will be made available primarily for theatre distribution, although some of the minor ones may be sold for TV. More promising among the lot would be re-scored with commentary added. October '52 saw Fairbanks/Lesser's Odyssey Pictures announcing a theatrical reissue for seven, which included The Black Pirate. Within weeks, the number was shaved to six (Don Q, Son Of Zorro being dropped), with release set for an initial two in March 1953. At this point, The Black Pirate was figured for black-and-white only.

Odyssey tested a combo of The Iron Mask with Mr. Robinson Crusoe at a Modesto, California theatre. Scheduled for March, it went forward despite no deal set for national distribution. Robert Lippert's company stepped up to handle the pair in June 1953 with fresh campaigns in support of refurbished versions for which Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. supplied narration. Nothing, however, came of proposed reissues beyond Crusoe and Mask. I found no indication of The Black Pirate being back other than to non-theatrical venues. Same goes for others of the Fairbanks inventory. Just guessing, mind, but methinks Lippert laid eggs with Mask/Crusoe. In whatever event, by March 1955, Doug Jr. and Sol Lesser, doing business as Major Television Productions, Inc., announced syndication of four DF titles as part of an eighteen feature package (others mostly British pics Junior produced). The Black Pirate was there (in B/W) along with Mr. Robinson Crusoe, The Gaucho, and The Iron Mask.

One footnote, kind of a sad one. Several Pirate photos above you'll notice are of the scalloped edge variety, once a popular means of giving images a vintage, if not distressed look, like old trunks had been opened and there they lay. To me, scalloped looks plain damaged. I use to come across them in dealer's rooms and wonder who'd been careless storing. Turns out lots of movie people retained these from shows they worked on and estates sold what survived to collectors. Keepsakes once property of W.S. Van Dyke and Marion Davies surfaced like this. I ended up with Billie Dove's Black Pirate set, which interestingly contained only shots wherein she appears (what, no Sam De Grasse portraits?). I'd guess Ms. Dove had not family to care about and preserve these lovely scenes. A bleak lot of many celebrities is to finish alone. What Billie Dove treasured went to four winds, same as Lili Damita's stuff my friend Mike Mazzone found in a Disney World gift shop, of all places. Like Charlie Kane's sled tossed to the furnace, it all comes down to refuse sooner or later.