Love This Lost World Or Leave It!

Full disclosure obliges me to say here and now that when discussing The Lost World, merit doesn't matter. I'll not tax anyone's patience by arguing it's a worthwhile film. What TLW means to this viewer has everything to do with pleasant associations the 1960 version calls up, ones I unfortunately cannot gift to those coming cold to what's generally regarded a dreadful show. Others have argued the latter case, persuasively so. Read Bill Warren's denunciation in Keep Watching The Skies (seen the recent Second edition? --- it's magnificent) and be assured I'd not dispute any of his salient points. By all standards of science-fiction filmmaking, The Lost World really blows. And yet it was there for a lot of us at impressionable age when dinosaurs ruled a youngster's earth. I wasn't blessed by wherewithal to see it theatrically, but had enjoyed accounts by friends who did. NBC's Monday Night At The Movies came to albeit black-and-white, panned/scanned rescue in 1963, the network lending gravitas for mere fact they drew The Lost World for prime time placement, a rare honor accorded lowly genre pics and an event this nine-year-old called noteworthy. Was it perfect alignment of ideal childhood circumstance that put The Lost World's broadcast on a snow night with impossibility of next day school-going? We went sledding afterward on a hill among thirty kids and a warming barrel bonfire, a scene Currier and Ives might have drawn. So am I going to renounce a picture that calls up memories like that? Not likely.

The Lost World was absolutely made-to-order for 1960 kids as Fox envisioned them, which is to say they weren't flattering us. Still, it was very early on for dinosaurs in scope with color (at least advertised as such ... never mind contempo reptilian casting). 1956 had seen a Beast Of Hollow Mountain in wide rainbow format, but this was a singular dino, seen but briefly. A larger goal had been approached by 1957's The Land Unknown, but Universal stopped short of color and aroused ire of showmen (This was spoiled by black-and-white Cinemascope, which makes a good picture look like a rose on a manure pile, said one). What Fox gave patrons was a candy-coated thrill circus minus rings 1959's Journey To The Center Of The Earth had boasted, The Lost World being filmic equivalent of limitless concession refills, with a bellyache to follow upon reasoned reflection (was there any youth dumb to the fact they were being royally ripped by the film's lizard stand-ins?). Fox had laid pipe with much better Journey from the holiday period previous and hot grossing The Fly of a year before that. Those suggested potential of annual lease on fantastic subjects, so long as costs stayed minimal. Journey To The Center Of The Earth had run up a negative cost of $3.4 million, an astronomical flyer on fanciful fare (never were so many chips put on sci-fi), but a worldwide $7.5 million in return rentals endorsed the gamble, and so, cheap as it ended up looking, The Lost World got a $1.5 million sand pile to play in, still considerably more than majors generally staked on kid fodder, but short enough of the previous investment to leave Irwin Allen sweeping behind the elephant that was Journey To The Center Of The Earth.

Still and all, The Lost World ended with a loss. Nearly everything Fox released in 1960 bled red (television's grip was solid and tightening). Losses of $285,000 would be recorded for this one. Sure, a lot of youngsters went ... just not enough to cover the negative plus considerable prints and advertising ... also which fact of The Lost World's larger public getting in for mere change (the Liberty was then charging under-12's a dime). To sell movies by 1960 meant spending much more than before, vid saturation being a must and by no means cheap. It surely was fun, though, to sit in crowded matinees with juve mobs free to laugh at The Lost World rather than with it. Here may have been birth of post-modernism among show-going youth. TLW's blown-up lizards were a slothful lot, no more committed than Fox players who'd suffered similar indignity (were lethargic iguanas thinking of Alice Faye's disillusionment toward the end of her tenure there?). Irwin Allen pushed matched pairs onto soundstage arenas without even a hint as to their motivation. At least Monty Clift got that much consideration from Elia Kazan doing Wild River on a neighboring stage. Here it was just director Allen yelling, Let's you and him fight!, with stagehands dangling incentive of beetles and horse-flies just off-camera. And where's a lizard's pride decked out like a customized hot rod, all fins and hood ornamented, lurching about as though having blown a tire? Never mind Claude Rains mis-identifying varied species with Encyclopedia Brittanicish pomp. If these are Brontosauruses and T-Rexs, then I've got problems in the woods behind my house that need immediate attention.

There was a penalty Fox paid for short-changing its Lost World and entrusting same to Irwin Allen. Word of mouth can't have been good, certainly not in comparison with Journey To The Center Of The Earth, which earned far more than TLW (the trade ad here being a deceptive one). Considering The Lost World was a property defined by its special effects (with a lot more patrons around in 1960 to remember sensation of the original), why deliver such lackluster visuals here? Willis O'Brien had been brought aboard early (and got a credit) for technical consulting --- one can imagine his enthusiasm over prospects of remaking a previous triumph with sound and color --- but at the bitter end, this grand veteran would be benched yet again in favor of hands (far) less gifted (the list of frustrated O'Brien projects after King Kong was sadly a long one). Another participant signing on who might have known better was Claude Rains. He'd just railed in a late 1959 interview about the unabashed appeal (of horror filmmaking) to the sick tendencies in modern society, which they (scare merchants) hope to titillate at a profit. Rains lodged forceful protest over debauchery of entertainment mediums in this crude manner. Imagine then, the distinguished actor's reaction upon delivery of The Lost World's script wherein fellow cast members are snacked on by dinosaurs. Convictions melt fastest when paychecks are dangled, and a slipping Rains had greater need of these than less tangible reward of artistic integrity. Many parents forbid children to see this junk on TV, said the proud thesp, perhaps not aware he'd be headlining a taller heap of refuse in theatres.

Two Lost Worlds --- Part One

Last night, I came across the 8mm reel that started it all. The Lost World was one we (cousin, neighbor, and myself) pooled resources to order out of Famous Monsters #29 (aka Flesh Eaters edition). Should my purchasing partners come calling for respective third interests, it is here and ready to run. My viewing was a first in forty years. Somehow the image had dimmed, as though its black-and-white found a means of fading. We'd sent $4.95 to Captain Company in that summer of 1964. FM's ad promised The Lost World's dinosaurs to be the most realistic ever put on film. As of that year it was true, and easily borne out by inspection of a then-recent (1960) remake. Our Lost World was made in 1925 and effects were supervised by Willis O'Brien, King Kong's creator. We realized that going in thanks to Professor/FM editor Forrest Ackerman, and so bought with confidence. Those two hundred feet of The Lost World (originally a feature) accommodated four battles to the death among its prehistoric cast, so respective ten-eleven-fourteen year old dollars were wisely spent indeed. We ran it for nickel and dime admission in my parent's basement, sometimes in combo with Castle Films' Dracula, our accompanying purchase that season. I was surprised to find that The Lost World had been prepared for 8mm by Encyclopedia Britannica, an entity not otherwise given to endorsement of dinosaur battling, thus my explanation to parents that its acquisition was justified for educational values therein. Would Encyclopedia Britannica lend its imprinteur otherwise? Remarkable the efforts we made to legitimize a beloved, but disreputable, genre.

The Lost World's creatures were menacing but somehow personable. They snarled but also wagged tails (the Allosaurus subsequently broke his First National contract after losing too many parts to Dick Barthelmess). You knew the Brontosaurus would come a cropper for not being carnivorous (that's meat eating, ya know). He's noble but has a brain the size of a pea so gets eased over a precipice by the habitually anti-heroic Tyrannosaurus Rex. 8mm titles indicated the Bronto would die slowly in swamps below, but FM's FJA assured us that selfsame brute was not only revived, but let loose to flatten London bridge in a fuller dish Lost World he saw back in prehistoric 1925 (when people maybe had real dinosaurs to contend with). FJA alerted us as well to missing link ape-man Bull Montana, also resident of an unexpurgated LW lost to ages (mine at least). Ackerman published stills to verify what I might have discarded as myth. For years, there was no more Lost World for me than what that 8mm reel contained. Serious film collecting, which really just means more dollars spent chasing thrills that can't help diminishing as one gets older, finally yielded a dupe from a dupe off a Kodascope, the latter being authorized 16mm prints once sold for home entertainment. These boasted improved visuals and longer running time. Still, they were short by nearly half from what Forry J and kinsmen saw. The Lost World had been trimmed to essential bone by a distributor set upon adapting merchandise to saleable length. More than one fan developed O.C.L.W.S., which was Obsessive Compulsive Lost World Syndrome, a malady wherein the afflicted spend lives in search of missing Lost World footage, their quest as frustrating as Professor Challenger's for his elusive plateau. The stunner here was fact they actually scored the 1925 original ... well, at least most of it ... and reliable authority suggests even more Lost World nitrate has revealed itself since.

Forever, it seemed, The Lost World was anybody's show. Having gone Public Domain long ago, it's been plundered for nips and clips that even in truncated circumstance can delight newcomers. Like with Ray Harryhausen's output, these stop-motion puppets correspond to beats of our hearts. My generation (and ones before me) love them with greater fidelity than later crops are likely to maintain for impersonal Jurassic Park residents. Blackhawk Films and Griggs-Moviedrome sold what they could pull off Kodascope copies through the sixties and seventies. A grand culmination arrived with a near-full length Lost World unveiling at 1998's Syracuse Cinefest, said restoration having originated with George Eastman House. That version surfaced later on DVD as an extra with 20th Fox's remake, a bargain disc whatever one's reservations about the 1960 version. Now with more footage having turned up since the 90's rescue, it seems somehow appropriate that a fully intact Lost World remains beyond reach ... at least of any institution's willingness to spend yet more revisiting it.

So here's what dogged me for years about The Lost World: Why didn't Hollywood make more dinosaur movies? Well, we could ask the same thing of King Kong. You'd figure Willis O'Brien's phone would ring off its hook in wake of those two. I don't know how The Lost World sold in 1925, but assume it was a hit. Some patrons are said to have thought the dinos were genuine. At the least, First National had stock footage I'd think could be spun off into a hundred low-budget replicas, plus there was FX test film (included on Fox's DVD) that could by itself satisfy demands of a poverty row contender. Instead it was Hal Roach's One Million BC in 1940 that became one stop shopping for monster scraps, but his were blown-up lizards no more or less convincing than ones Irwin Allen decorated in 1960. I did read Scott MacQueen's American Cinematographer account of how rights to The Lost World shifted around after 1925, so I'm not sure what if any ownership Warner Bros. would have inherited after they absorbed First National, but wouldn't it have been neat seeing O'Brien's creatures popping up in sci-fi adventures right through a black-and-white 50's? I'm picturing Frank Lovejoy and Paul Picerni leading a Warners-backed expedition, with Joan Weldon or Phyllis Kirk lending girl scientist assist. Maybe Frank could wear a beard and look scruffy so as to match up better with Wally Beery's stuff. He and Paul could fight over Joan/Phylis just as volcanoes erupt and all those million plus thirty year old dinosaurs stampede across process screens to amaze a new generation of filmgoers. Somebody send me back to JL's office around 1953! I could give as persuasive a pitch as Daffy did in The Scarlet Pumpernickel.

Coming in Part Two: Irwin Allen's Immortal 1960 Remake of The Lost World.

Billy Wilder's Old-Fashioned Way

How soon they forget came home recently when a friend described his meeting with a studio development person who'd never heard of Star Wars. So is that where we are in 2010? Imagine then, how Billy Wilder felt when his 20's jokes and references fell flat before since born onlookers in 1974's The Front Page. Looking back ten years is chancy enough now ... imagine Wilder gag mentioning Leopold and Loeb, fifty years after the two made news. To him, these were current events. Billy the insider excluding us outsiders disdained a 70's zeitgeist and fell in the trap we all do of thinking our old days were the best days. He declared as much during interviews that got testier as decades and decline wore on: They say Wilder is out of touch with his times, said Billy, Frankly, I regard it as a complement. Who the hell wants to be in touch with these times? Fair enough ... unless you're asking other people to finance movies for a mass and, damn-them-all, modern audience. Billy had skated a cutting edge before. In fact, he'd done so longer than most any director working. I was looking over 1959 trades just yesterday: Some Like It Hot was just out and folks were raving. It was 20's set too but ahead of that time, as well as the decade when it was made. Wilder being fifty-three in 1959 had more patience with youth and maybe better idea of what they'd come to see. His winning streak of the period suggested he knew what all of us wanted to see. Some Like It Hot opened as Witness For The Prosecution came off months of hit-making and would be followed in a year with BW's redefinition of serio-comedy that was The Apartment. When in this business did any director measure so precisely the pulse of his public?

There were earlier setbacks that might have foretold The Front Page's fate had Wilder chosen to recall. His Spirit Of St. Louis reached back thirty years for its history and took lumps from kids who didn't know Charles Lindbergh from Krazy Kat. That had been 1957's miscalculation. It seemed to Universal in 1974, however, that a paying public was ripe for nostalgia. Hadn't The Sting struck oil? Well, yes to its customer's embrace, but no to their willingness for old-timers to broadcast memories of so far back minus ironic distance young(er) director George Roy Hill managed with characters distinctly hip despite their period garb. I watched that again recently and noted a little of the freshness Some Like It Hot once brought to snap brims and running boards, then calculated that Wilder was about Hill's age when he'd made SLIH. Where is the cut-off for directors being relevant? Not many in their late sixties ring bells for current youth (though I watched Frenzy last week, and well ... AH sure did with that one). Billy Wilder was like a lot of veterans who felt alienated by seventies' tastes alarmingly changed. It had taken that long for a counterculture to shake cobwebs (including his) out of an industry down for counts. The Front Page was pre-blockbuster era (that is, Jaws and Star Wars) when it still seemed possible adults would go to movies, thus Universal celebrated Wilder as Hollywood's last great apostle of the written word. Might The Front Page flash back to retro-fueled grosses The Sting enjoyed?

The Front Page wasn't a flop. It just wasn't enough of a hit. Wilder slowed down dialogue so he wouldn't lose current beneficiaries of public education (that very level Star Wars would seek and conquer), but misjudged appetites for profanities and vulgarity he'd been blocked from using over most of a career till then. Suddenly there were swear words flying every which way, so much so as to blunt the effect of a closing line Wilder treasured from the source play (The son-of-a-bitch stole my watch!). A lot of sex gab laid heavy on attempts at gaiety, something The Sting had neatly avoided by keeping its humor nearly G-rated. Wilder clearly enjoyed having the leash off ... too much so, in fact. Still in all for his efforts to be outrageous, any solid precode from forty years before seemed more authentically so. Walter Matthau felt Wilder leaned too hard on salty talk and said so to a USC class he visited during summer of 1975. We were on the Universal lot to learn how pictures got made. With W.C. Fields and Me and Gable and Lombard in production, it seemed U was still drunk on days past. Offices around the lot confirmed as much for being occupied by Alfred Hitchcock, Hal Wallis, Don Siegel, and yes, Billy Wilder. I kept waiting for the Laemmles to show up in the commissary. Matthau was quite free telling what Billy did wrong with The Front Page. I remember wondering if someone in the group might go and tell Wilder what his friend was saying about him. By then, The Front Page had come and gone. There wouldn't be any more Billy Wilder movies for Universal. He wanted them to back Fedora, but got the air and wound up having to make it with German money. The Front Page is around on DVD and showed up recently on Cinemax HD. Not having bothered to go in 1974, I did penance and watched. Well, there's nothing so terribly wrong with it was how I came away from the viewing. Could there be fainter praise than that?