Back In The Saddle Again

My heroes haven’t always been cowboys, but lately I’ve formed attachment to several that rode early talking trails and dog-gone if they’re not becoming like family. What was it that kept B western fans loyal for lifetimes? Seems the oldest men roam cowboy cons, many up in their seventies. Lots around my state still convene in garage theatres for Saturday shows. Will horrors and comedies I’ve treasured endure for me like westerns have for them? Matinee cowboys worked a hypnotism that I want better to understand. Wherever you’re living, there are old-timers who still love them. Our mailman used to engage me as to preferred leading ladies for Roy Rogers, thirty years after the fact (he found Mary Hart distinctly wanting). There’s an ice cream shop mere yards from where I sit decorated with lobby cards and operated by a fan in his mid-eighties who still attends the Western Film Fair. Most of us recognize North, South, and West of The Rio Grande as distinct points geographically, but these guys know said landmarks better as three separate B’s featuring Hopalong Cassidy, Buck Jones, and Johnny Mack Brown, respectively. I point this out with due respect and awe for minds that have collated and maintained such data since these shows were new. The rest of us can forget about attaining their level of knowledge, but there’s a place we might go to begin an education. Sinister Cinema distributes a strong line of B westerns. Hundreds are available from their website. A recent 40% off sale sent me there shopping. What follows are some of trails I've rode so far ...

Like anyone trying to differentiate western titles, I get flummoxed. My latest Hoot Gibson was The Gay Buckaroo, but wasn’t he previously The Buckaroo Kid? And what of those Gay Caballeros (four with that moniker) or The Fighting Buckaroo? Not to be confused with The Battling Buckaroo, of course, let alone The Fiddlin’ Buckaroo. Don’t forget Tom Tyler was once The Rip Roarin’ Buckaroo. There were industry scribes whose job it was to find endless variation on a finite vocabulary that suggested outdoor action. There are only so many such words in any dictionary. Imagine how many similar titles they tripped over with hundreds of cowboy shows pouring out year after year. Next week I’ll pick up The Gay Buckaroo and forget I’ve already watched it. It may be fifteen minutes in before realization dawns. But that doesn’t stop my having a good time. The rules are different for watching B westerns. First you need to get over notions they’re all alike. Maybe this was somewhat a case when Republic got assembly lines perfected. I admit to one Rocky Lane being near clone of another (not to say his are bad), but also confess preference for cowboy action before streamlining took hold. Initial talkie westerns were disorganized affairs. Each represents experiment that rose or (often) fell on five-day (or less) schedules with money stretched beyond parsimony. Dust clouds obscure riders because who's got time to wet down dirt roads? Hoot’s dialogue, a struggle for him in any event, competes with offscreen barking dogs not otherwise germane to the story. Moments later, he stumbles and nearly falls coming down porch stairs. Bless these flubs being left in. I’d opt always for honest (if clumsy) effort of independent cheapies as opposed to polished studio trick rides.

The best in B westerns doesn’t necessarily revolve around action. Hoot Gibson shambles amongst villains and girl companions almost to a point of lethargy, but when he’s roused, it means something. Fights are awkward as in real life. Punches often don’t connect and un-choreographed falls look like they really hurt. Musical scoring doesn’t interfere with natural sounds because there’s virtually no music in these primitive oaters. Just something over the title and clip-clop of horse hooves afterward. Soothing is ambient sound of running water as Ken Maynard negotiates wild horse trading in Come On, Tarzan. That one (from 1932) is a honey. The heavies (referred to as hide-hunters) are rustling equines to be slaughtered for dog food, said conduct lower than a snake’s belly, according to Ken. He subdues a pair by leaping upon mounts galloping side-by-side and engaging both in fisticuffs with a foot on each saddle. Of course, Roman riding was something Maynard knew from cradle days, but how many have mastered it since? --- and whooped a pair of bad guys while doing so? B westerns always chose stunting over violence. Well, naturally. There were children watching, after all. Anyone could shoot a gun or fall down. Not many could ride or tumble like Maynard or dangerously lean Tom Tyler. The latter got round soon enough to playing villains and mummies, these perhaps his truer calling, but in starting days, Tyler roped and punched canyons-full of hombres without turning a neatly combed hair. One of his was called Rider Of The Plains (imagine infinite variants on that title). It’s a reformation story with a scrappy kid and kindly parson (once Tom’s outlaw pard) combining to soothe Tyler’s roistering ways. There’s barely a shot fired for these 57 minutes, but I was entranced. One scene has Tom standing alone outside a church listening to hymns from within that John Ford might proudly have signed. Such moments were not uncommon to westerns both modest and, for that, truer to life than cinematic roads bigger companies were paving.

I look at cast listings for B westerns and wonder. Who were these people and what became of them? I don’t mean the lead cowboys. We know the trailer park Ken Maynard sunk to, and of Hoot Gibson greeting in Vegas. What I reference are leading ladies and … what about that kid tagging alongside Tyler in Rider Of The Plains? According to IMDB, he was Andy Shufford, short-lived child actor in and out of movies between 1929 and 1933. He was born in Arkansas and died closeby there in 1995. Did Monteagle, Tennessee residents figure this retiree for once performing with Bill Cody, Bob Custer, and Tom Tyler? Would they, in fact, have recognized any of those names? Tim McCoy’s leading lady in 1939’s Straight Shooter was one Julie Sheldon. She’s decorative and gets out her lines, but that’s pretty near it. Lots of ingenues got no further than B westerns. Julie was in all of three films, one uncredited. IMDB doesn’t know when was she born or if she’s died. Somewhere there might be an elderly woman who’d tell you she once played opposite Colonel Tim. My parents came back from a dinner in Blowing Rock, NC back in the seventies and told me they met a woman who claimed to have appeared with Hoot Gibson, Buck Jones, and lots of other cowboys. I don’t doubt her story for a moment, whoever she was. I’ll bet there are (were) as many B western leading ladies living in obscurity as there were former Our Gangers, or offshoots from same. These were quintessence of folks who enjoyed fame's fifteen minutes and stepped off to private life from there.

Original negatives of most B westerns are as gone as horse harness. We’re lucky to have so many survive in 16mm. Reason these managed was television’s voracious appetite for product during early 50’s years prior to major studios offering backlogs. I remember getting lists from a warehouse in Tennessee back in the sixties that had buckets of westerns you could buy for $40-50 a pop. Sometime later, I heard the joint itself went pop, or rather boom for the explosion that took it and hundreds of irreplaceable titles out. Collectors scooped up prints programmers discarded when bigger movies came available for tube-cast. I never got onto that for lacking encyclopedic knowledge to spot good prospects from lesser ones. Who was I to recite the best of Buck Jones when I'd missed him altogether in theatres? Cheap westerns seldom had copyrights renewed (hate that word cheap applied to them --- it sounds pejorative --- and these cowboys deserve better). Small label video outlets will sell you infinite numbers so long as quality matters less. I shop with Sinister as theirs are nearly always best prints around. In many cases, they’ve transferred from all that is left on many titles. That Tim McCoy I watched had remnants of its original Victory logo, a small miracle in itself for a 16mm source that had survived any number of broadcasting assaults over sixty past years. No one’s lining up to preserve Straight Shooter, so those who want it will find their way to Sinister. Watching banged-up B westerns is OK with me. There’s noble tradition in that.

More of Selznick

Hindsight confers great wisdom. All of us realize what a disastrous mistake it was for David Selznick to sell his interest in Gone With The Wind less than three years after finishing that all-time smash, but how could he imagine any film would go on profiting for generations to come? There was tax necessity for that 1942 deal. DOS was bought out with $704,665 by his GWTW partner Jock Whitney and, of course, regretted it the rest of his life (Whitney later dealt the asset to MGM for considerably more). All this is recounted in David Thomson's Showman book. Imagine pouring life's blood into a venture of such magnitude, only to see revenues gone with someone else's less deserving wind. Selznick, it seems, was ruled by compulsion to work (a good thing, I'd suppose, for results he got), but was also dragged to near oblivion by vices that kept him often as not stony. Put aside imagining of rich movie producers when you read about this man! Selznick was under pressure movie folk still endure to create impressions of prosperity. His gambling losses alone surpassed annual income during years considered career peaks. Someone should write a monograph about Hollywood wealth lost at card tables. You wonder what it was about the picture trade that made these people such fools for betting. DOS was still paying off Eddie Mannix in the fifties for poker debts that went back years. I'll bet (that word!) accomplished players (Joe Schenck a recognized one) made better money gaming after hours than their movies yielded. Selznick was evidently high on the sucker list, his placement equal if not above that of chump colleague Howard Hawks.

Selznick was courageous for not fearing unemployment (always temporary), even during lowest Depression levels. He was known early on for having figured out the trick to movies, being a rare second generation industry man seemingly born to the craft. Memos Selznick wrote at age fourteen (for his father's company) are clear indicators he'd go far. There were firings and resignations from Metro, Paramount, RKO, then Metro again before better remembered entry into Selznick-International and independent producing. Columnists (plus DOS himself) suggested pics he handled for aforementioned firms were leagues better than average stuff they got out, and sure enough, a Selznick labeled RKO does represent higher grade of merchandise (King Kong is prime example here, even though DOS never tried taking credit for that, maybe out of deference to friend and oft-biz partner Merian Cooper). I wish Selznick had stayed longer at MGM during the thirties. For my time and amusement, his Metro offerings top Thalberg's. Wasn't it DOS who signed Dinner At Eight, Dancing Lady, David Copperfield, Manhattan Melodrama, and others of comparable quality? I'd call his a talent greater even than Thalberg's, though a Selznick lack of discipline otherwise closes the margin between them.

It was Selznick and partners that popularized Technicolor in the mid-thirties with early forays toward rainbow screens. Whatever The Garden Of Allah lacked in dramatic values was more than compensated by lush visuals far progressed from a two color process used in the twenties and earlier thirties. Coming on heels of Allah was A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, and grand culmination Gone With The Wind to show how Selznick-International had mastered richer palettes. The fact we're missing quality renditions of most points up indifference to Selznick titles by latter day owners. Nothing Sacred was another that went public domain, and last I saw, languishes still among off labels (twelve I counted at Amazon). The best of these might be Slingshot Video's, it having been made from a rare 16mm collector's print with better than expected color. Adventures Of Tom Sawyer's copyright was renewed, but it's not to be had on disc in this country (there's only a region 2 DVD at present). Selznick properties began scattering when Jock Whitney got out some of his partnership interest in negatives, these taking leave of inventory with no one entity possessing all of the library since. Selznick was never satisfied with efforts his distributors made, always convinced they failed to realize maximum profit potential. With Duel In The Sun, he set up his own exchange system and realized too late what a burdensome and impractical concept that was. The curse of all independent producers was inability to push merchandise through a world marketplace dominated by the major companies. Those latter had volume and a sales force long in place. Selznick tried but could not compete with that. In the end, I wonder if he'd not have been better off affiliated with a studio better equipped to realize (and better circulate) his increasingly ambitious projects.

Selznick was ahead of time and competition for recognizing postwar European filmmakers and aligning himself with same to merge Hollywood's machinery with art film's advances. For a producer so affixed to classical styles, these were bold challenges to isolationist policy maintained by US companies. Accounts of The Third Man's production enjoy portraying Selznick's as wrong-headed interference, but without him, there'd be no Third Man (and wasn't he the one who insisted on the film's bleak ending?). Same applies to Powell and Pressburger's Gone To Earth and De Sica's Terminal Station, even if both were re-edited (or better put, ruined) by Selznick for stateside release. They're since released to DVD in original versions and are testament to good intentions DOS began with, his panic over then-lack 0f-commercial prospects being less important now that we have access to complete and refurbished discs. A fascinating DOS venture into early television is less available. Light's Diamond Jubilee was Selznick's three-ring salute to electric bulbs that simulcast on all networks in 1954 and got near a biggest audience recorded to that night. The program beginning with his traditional logo was all-starred with everyone up to and including the United States president (Eisenhower's spot as directed by Bill Wellman). Of all TV spectaculars extant, this might be hardest to see. For uneven and now dated outcome of Selznick's effort, Light's Diamond Jubilee is not a jewel destined for rescue and revival, and I can't imagine much hope investors would have for getting back expense of putting it right. Still, this is must-see TV for seekers of an obscure, but notable, chapter in Selznick's playbook.

A Greenbriar Selznick Memo --- Part One

Friday, March 21, 1969 was a big television night for me. That's when NBC broadcast Hollywood: The Selznick Years, a documentary celebration of the producer's life and work. Were others among you there? I wanted clocks to tick backward through that hour. Never before had so many dynamic excerpts been marshaled to prove old films were the best films. I'd read of Selznick and seen Gone With The Wind by that time, but where were these others they spoke of? 1969 was well into banishment of older titles from television. Post-48's in color were more recently available and all the rage. Late shows once the province of Gable and Garbo now hosted Tony Curtis, Piper Laurie and others of post-war discovery. The Selznick special's bombardment of highpoints from Dancing Lady, Viva Villa!, Manhattan Melodrama, and so many more was exquisite torture for those of us states removed from channels playing them. Program directors answered my pleading letters with a promise to consider 30's and 40's features, even as they had no plans at this time to run any. I looked at Hollywood: The Selznick Years again yesterday, albeit a faded 16mm print. Now it seems we have access to DOS's movies, but none to Hollywood: The Selznick Years, a so-far no-show on DVD and likely to remain so for all those clips someone would have to clear in order to release it.

David O. Selznick made pictures that exemplified Golden Age Hollywood. His I thought of as prime exemplars of magic in movies. Odd samplings turned up for his library being so widely dispersed. The producer had spent inactive years peddling backlog to varied distributors. I'd see Intermezzo and Made For Each Other repeatedly but never The Garden Of Allah or Nothing Sacred. Some of the Selznicks played television very early. Charlotte's Channel 3 celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 1974 by re-running the first movie they ever broadcast. That was A Star Is Born back in 1949. The special arrangement made with negative owner Warner Bros. yielded a gorgeous color print of the 1937 classic that proved to be the hit of WBTV's celebration week and rare opportunity to see a film not only long out of circulation, but unavailable to television in anything other than black-and-white up to that point. Transferred ownership resulted in lapse of A Star Is Born's copyright in the mid-seventies and 16mm dealers everywhere began selling it. Public domain ash-heaps were soon piled high with dupes made from dupes made from ... well, you get the picture. It's thirty-five years later and no disc release I've seen does honor to Selznick's pioneering Technicolor effort. UCLA completed a wonderful restoration a decade or so back, but no one's made that available thus far. I'd have thought Warner's upcoming Blu-Ray of the 1954 remake would include the 1937 version as an extra, but that's evidently a no-go. Will we ever get Selznick's A Star Is Born on a proper DVD?

I've given up this post to rambling, it seems. Call it my homage to a Selznick memo. There are hundreds of thousands of those stored at the University Of Texas Library in Austin. Scholars could generate dozens more books in addition to ones already written on DOS. Rudy Behlmer compiled Memo From David O. Selznick back in 1972 and it's been standard text since. One thing I appreciate for reading DOS's dictation is how articulate this man was. He'd taken few college level courses, never graduated, yet I wonder if Ivy Leaguers today could express themselves so eloquently. Plenty suggests public education then, elementary and high school, was far more advanced than what earns diplomas now. Selznick and others of his generation supply evidence of truth in that. I read his memos and wish for half so much erudition. Selznick got started on a life story he never finished, but enough was there to provide summary in his own words of career highlights. This was a producer who respected Hollywood's history in addition to his own and wanted to preserve both. He even proposed, in the early forties, a first-ever pictorial summary of American films. Lack of a publisher's commitment unfortunately scotched the idea. Selznick also tried persuading RKO to donate a complete print of The Magnificent Ambersons, a film he was not connected with beyond an admiration for Orson Welles, to the Museum Of Modern Art for safe keeping, this according to David Thomson's splendid Showman bio. That idea also went nowhere, mores' the pity. I just finished a second Showman reading. If any of you know David Thomson, tell him he has a fan at Greenbriar. Same goes for Rudy Behlmer. His book remains an absolute must, as is Ronald Haver's monumental David O. Selznick's Hollywood, surely the most colorful and engaging of coffee table movie tomes. All three are available for songs at Amazon used books.

Here's a question that haunts my dreams. Is it possible that Duel In The Sun's censor cuts still exist? Numerous ones were made after its release in order to mollify the Legion Of Decency. Selznick instructed exchange operatives to physically remove offending footage from the 35mm prints and discard same. I keep thinking ... surely one among DOS employees squirreled these outtakes into drawers at home. After all, this was a movie's equivalent of French postcards and plenty hot stuff anyone would be tempted to smuggle out. Apparently, there's none of it left within Austin's Selznick archives, but I'd just bet a roll of contraband survives in someone's hoarded kit (this is, after all, how the King Kong snips managed a life after reissue cutting). A lot of prints went out on Duel In The Sun (being saturation opened in many territories) and lots were individually trimmed by exchange hands across the country. Too bad someone didn't track down former Selznick Releasing Organization minions twenty or thirty years ago, for chances seem more than good that one of them sequestered the goods (wouldn't you?). Alas, any still living would be well into eighties at the least. I mention (or obsess on) this for Duel In The Sun being a longtime favorite and thoughts of a fully complete version entice me yet. Could there be nitrate hidden somewhere to fill in those (obviously) missing pieces of the DITS puzzle?