The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965)

Good afternoon!

Here I am agazin, slinking over to Blogger in the middle of the late afternoon to send you a missive from the library trenches...once again, we are relocating service desks, avoiding adhesive patches where the new carpet's going, and generally trying to keep business rolling in a workplace in flux! I've been listening to what I think is a circular saw for the last forty minutes, and people...I'm ready to go home already. However! I wouldn't dream of not checking in with you of a Thursday. With the scant time I have left in the day, let me spread the good word about The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

So you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's masterworks like Notorious, Vertigo, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Psycho (I love ALL his movies, but those are my top five). You've probably seen a couple episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which bonded his name inextricably with the "Funeral March of a Marionette" by Charles Gounod (one of the most genius uses of public domain classical pieces as theme music, um, ever). BUT! Have you seen the three seasons of his last television series, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour? If not, goody for you, as I've found a slew of them on the world wide internet, free for all to see, that I thought I might tell you about. I've been watching the hello out of these lately since we cancelled our Hulu, and they stand up admirably well compared to a lot of other programming from the same time period!

Tell you what though...can you spot the celebrity (or celebrities!) in each one of the stills from the episodes below? Click on each of the titles to see the episode on Youtube, and scroll down to the bottom to see if your answers were correct! Ready...steady...go:

1) The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Captive Audience" (1962)

IMDB description: 

A mystery novelist sends a series of weird audiotapes to his publisher. On the first tape, the author boasts that the publisher won't be able to discern if the story he narrates is the history of an imminent murder - or a mere fantasy.

Who's the mystery movie star and mystery blonde in the screen cap?

2)The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "A Tangled Web" (1963)

IMDB description:

A very sweet French maid runs away with, and marries a professional burglar with hopes of making him honest.

Recognize the hunk of handsome in the suit, center?

3) The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Ride the Nightmare" (1962)

IMDB synopsis:

A perfect couple's content suburban world is interrupted by a telephone threat ("I'm going to kill you") against the cocksure husband. His past misdeeds unravel his new life, terrifying his unknowing wife.

Who is this well dressed, unknowing wife? Also, will she let me borrow that dress?

4) Alfred Hitchcock Hour - The Gentleman Caller (1964)

IMDB synopsis:

Gerald Musgrove shoots and kills a night watchman while stealing $100,000 from a bank. On the street nearby, while eluding police, he meets elderly Emmy Rice, and befriends her. Since he is on parole, he must launder the loot, so he stows it in some of Emmy's old magazines...

I'm sure that works out well for him. Who's the murderin' bank robber in the tender scene above?

5) The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "Bonfire" (1962)

IMDB synopsis:

A lonely young woman moves into her newly-deceased aunt's home in a small town. A way-too-helpful next-door neighbor becomes her guardian angel. He's a lay preacher, who's determined not to go back to being a coal miner.

And the preacher/coalminer iiiis.....?

Did you guess 'em all? 

Bet you already knew this one

Answers:

1. Angie Dickinson (left) and James Mason (swoon, right).
2. An impossibly young Robert Redford, center.
3. Gorgeous Gena Rowland (star of several of husband John Cassevetes's ground breaking independent films; also, a little movie called The Notebook).
4. Roddy McDowall, English child star, lifelong friend of Elizabeth Taylor, veteran film actor, and Cornelius of Planet of the Apes fame.
5. Peter Falk, who you might know as titular star of Columbo (hard to recognize him without the trench coat).

How'd you do? Now, go watch the episodes and tell me what you think of them! Did you ever watch Alfred Hitchcock's television properties either when they aired or in reruns? What is it about the devilish sense of irony or turnaround that makes these great even fifty years later?

I've gotta run, but have yourself a wonderful little Thursday night, and I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday! Take care; til then! :)

Charles Gerhardt Conducts (Classic Hollywood Film Scores on Freegal/Spotify)

Good morning!

I hope you had a good Monday. It's quiet as the grave this morning at the library-- a welcome change of pace from the clattering and clamouring of yesterday's shift on the nonfiction desk. Renovation waits for no man! Or woman, hoping to squeeze by on a non-eventful hour in the library. Too bad! Speaking of sound though, I made the best discovery online while trying to redeem my seven free downloads from the library's subscription to Freegal, a legal music download site. Folks, have you heard the good word about Charles Gerhardt's Hollywood film score records?

Nothing to get your heart pumping first thing in the morning like an Errol Flynn movie poster! (source)

Trying to recover from the disappointment of finding that Cameo's "Word Up" was only available in a weird, aftermarket 1990's re-recording of the song, I searched Freegal this weekend "Hollywood" to see if I could pull up any oddball stars-who-sing recordings (more on that later, because THE THINGS I FOUND, PEOPLE). In doing so, I came across a series of records with "Charles Gerhardt" listed as the artist, and with a few of my favorite movie titles splashed across the covers. Captain Blood (above) was the first that caught my eye, but twelve more entries in total appeared under Gerhardt's listings. People! I had struck Freegal paydirt. Bette Davis! Errol Flynn! Humphrey Bogart! Many names that are writ bold across my movie collection and my little movie loving heart, were definitely present and accounted for in Gerhardt's movie score collections, and danged if I didn't spend the rest of a productive/unproductive evening to the sounds and scores of some of my favorite movies.

Turns out, I actually had borrowed the album on the left (reissued as the album on the right) from the library in high school, having duped it on a cassette which was played when I got ready in the morning. You try choosing an outfit to the strains of the theme from Now, Voyager, and see if you don't go for an ensemble a little more dramatic than mere silence or early morning radio would encourage. It was checked out and never returned by a later patron (booooo, hisssss), and I would have just figured I'd never see it again were it not for this chance run-in with it on the Freegal site. Thanks, Freegal! Along with the aforementioned title track, there are themes on that record from Oscar winning films like Jezebel and All About Eve, as well as less well-known pictures like In This Our Life (a favorite of mine) and even the noir flop Beyond the Forest (which provided Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of the Virgina Woolf and drag impersonators everywhere the classic Bette line "What a dump..."). And Iiiiiiiiii love it. Expect me to be pinning up my hair tomorrow for work and adopting a cer-TAIN diction whilst I do so, in a fit of love for the divine Miss D. Nostalgia! It floods over me!

One of my all time favorite Bette coiffures from Now, Voyager (wikipedia)

Scanning Wikipedia, I was able to find out that Charles Gerhardt was a record producer for RCA and Reader's Digest in the sixties' and seventies'. Yep, he's the one responsible for those multi-record set Treasury of Music album folders you often find at estate sales (because everyone's grandmother had a copy of one of the other of these). Between 1972 and 1976, Gerhardt directed the National Philharmonic Orchestra through a popular series of twelve movie score albums, aimed at forties' nostalgia audiences and cinephiles alike. Those titles include:

• The Sea Hawk: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold 
• Now Voyager: The Classic Film Scores of Max Steiner
• Classic Film Scores for Bette Davis 
• Captain from Castile: The Classic Film Scores of Alfred Newman
• Elizabeth and Essex: The Classic Film Scores of Erich Wolfgang Korngold
• Casablanca: Classic Film Scores for Humphrey Bogart
• Gone with the Wind
• Citizen Kane: The Classic Film Scores of Bernard Hermann
• Sunset Boulevard: The Classic Film Scores of Franz Waxman
• Spellbound: The Classic Film Scores of Miklós Rózsa
• Captain Blood: Classic Film Scores for Errol Flynn
• Lost Horizon: The Classic Film Scores of Dimitri Tiomkin

And guess what? Each and every one of those is on Freegal and Spotify! I die. The film composers listed on these records represent some of thethe most influential movie score makers of the 20th century. Hermann, Steiner, and Tiomkin in particular are responsible for themes that will not leave your head after watching a movie-- Adventures of Don Juan and Spellbound stick out to me as ones I could hum on command. The music is as much a part of the movie as the stars in most of these cases! 

This card is from Bogart's fourth and last picture with wife Lauren Bacall, Key Largo (1948). The score is, as you would imagine, wonderful. source

I thought of something while I was listening to this film scores at home-- Matthew and I watched the movie Escape from Tomorrowland  in the last of our Netflix subscription days. I'd been excited to see the independent movie mainly based on the publicity surrounding its production-- the movie is set and largely filmed on location at Walt Disney World, shot guerilla-style on hand held digital cameras without the permission of the park itself. Fascinating, right? What really stayed with me after watching the movie, besides how surprisingly well done it was for a movie largely marketed on that anarchic quirk of its filming, was the jarring and evocative use of traditional, non-diegetic film scoring throughout the movie. You don't realize how much you miss a tender scene in a classic movie being scored to the "Love Theme From..." version of the movie theme until you see what a difference it can make in even a simple exchange on screen. 

source, source

There's a scene where the main character, a dad losing his grip on reality on the last day at the theme park's resort, is talking to a buxom parent on a park bench. The scene uses rear projection, an old Hollywood way of shooting on set but making it (kind of/sort of/not really) look like it was shot on location, and a swelling string score...and while it's not Hitchcock in the slightest, it immediately reminded me of a similar scene in Notorious, where Cary Grant talks to Ingrid Bergman on a park bench, among swelling strings, in a rear-projected setting of Rio de Janiero. The surrealness of the music, and suspension of disbelief that they are where the movie is telegraphing they are, are the same in either scene, and the music builds the tension in each way more than the actual acting could do. And reminded me of what we lose in movie magic when all movie are scored with these limp, unprepossessing ambient tracks. A bold, classic Hollywood score does a lot of the dramaturgical heavy lifting for the movie narrative! And adds, again, to the "magic" of old Hollywood studio films.

More rear projection, non-digetic sound, and Ingrid Bergman in Spellbound (source)

But I digress! You should hie thee hither and check out the recordings either through your local library's Freegal, if they have it (Nashvillians, here's ours), or Spotify if they don't! Most of these cds are available on Amazon as well. I'll get you started with Bette Davis's film scores here, but be sure to check out the rest, I promise it will make you want to watch or rewatch the pictures they represent. Also, you can read more about Gerhardt and his movie score series here.

                                             

Anyway, I've ranted and railed long enough, what do you think? What are your favorite movie scores? Do you have a soft spot for the movies of any particular classic Hollywood star (aHEM, why am I not seeing more Joan Crawford representation on this movie music series)? Have you seen any modern movies lately with aspects of classic movies that made you pine for the silver screen of old? Let's talk!

Well, I'm off to go raid the dvd collection downstairs for a few Bogart movies I need to see again. That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow (possibly with more old movie talk? You know once I get on a tear, I stay on a tear). Have a great Tuesday! Til then. :)

Medieval Bestiary: My New Favorite Website (13th-15th century)

Good morning!

Man, have I got a headful of hammers this morning-- not enough sleep and too much Jack Daniels makes Lisa an irritable reference associate of an AM shift! It couldn't be helped-- we were over at Ciciley and Bobby's apartment yesterday kickin' butts at Mario Kart (see photo) and tellin' it like it was up until way later than my normal bedtime, but paying the devil his due was worth the good times, laughs, and UHmazing vegan dinner Ciciley made-- they are good hosts!! :) Several Jack and Diets into the night, I hazily remember trying to explain to them the hilarious thing I'd found on the internet during my last shift at the nonfiction desk yesterday. "It's this thing where," I began eloquently, "They take all these medieval texts and put them together to show what medieval scholars knew about animals. And then sometimes there's an allegory to it, and sometimes, I think they just make stuff up. WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE THE ONE ABOUT THE BEAVER."

Does that make sense to you? It's about to. Folks, have you heard the good word about medieval bestiaries?

Caption: "The fox plays dead to lure birds to within reach of its jaws." Oh, right, sure. (source)

It started innocently enough yesterday afternoon when I read on Facebook that our friend English Rob was running a 10k in the winter...I was trying like heck to find a tapestry or medieval drawing of a man running from a tiger, bear, or other animal to illustrate what his training must look like (because Rob is English, it never stops being funny to me to discuss his birthplace as if my only knowledge of that culture is a cross between Hogwarts and Arthurian legend). As I was searching tapestries, my coworker Carole suggested that I look up mosaics as well. Google image search turned this up when I searched "medieval lion", and I about died for how pleased I was with this result:

source

Better than even this charming illustration is the description on the website that follows, culled and compiled from several different medieval sources that are both quoted and cited at the bottom of the entry

The lion has three natures: when a lion walking in the mountains sees that it is being hunted, it erases its tracks with its tail; it always sleeps with its eyes open; and its cubs are born dead and are brought to life on the third day when the mother breathes in their faces or the father roars over them. Some sources add more natures: a lion only kills out of great hunger; it will not attack a prostrate man; it allows captive men to depart; it is not easily angered; the lioness first has five cubs, then one less each year...A sick lion cures itself by eating an ape, eating on one day and drinking the next; if the meat does not digest properly the lion pulls it out of its stomach with its claws. Lions are harmed by scorpions and killed by snakes.

What exactly had I stumbled across? Bestiary.ca sounds like a website that would get you kicked off the network at work, but is in fact a delightful online compendium of medieval publications on the subject of animals. As per their introduction:

Animals had been written about for centuries before the Christian era, but it was Christianity that took the stories and made them into religious allegories. The first known text to do this was the Physiologus, written in Greek in Alexandria in the second or third century CE. This collection of animal lore is explicitly Christian; it briefly describes an animal, and continues with an Christian allegorical interpretation. The Physiologus was a "bestseller" that was translated into most of the major languages of Europe and western Asia; it is said that it was the most widely-distributed book in Europe after the Bible. [...] When the Physiologus combined with the [zoological text] Etymologiae and other texts, the book known as the bestiary was born.

The bestiary, or "book of beasts", is more than just an expansion of the Physiologus, though the two have much in common. The bestiary also describes a beast and uses that description as a basis for an allegorical teaching, but by including text from other sources it goes further; and while still not a "zoology textbook", it is not only a religious text, but also a description of the world as it was known.

So pretty much, bestiaries would combine what was known, scientifically, about the creatures of the world, and combine that information with allegorical teachings. At the time, this would be a natural match, as the Bible encourages learning from nature, as it is made by God: "All of Creation was said to reflect the Creator, and to learn about the Creator one could study the Creation." I'm not very up on my biblical knowledge, but I am OBSESSED with the quaint, sweet, plain-spokenness of these 15th century and earlier entries about what, exactly, different members of the animal kingdom are like and do.

Let's start, for example, with the ape:

source

The female ape always gives birth to twins, one of which she loves and the other she hates. When she carries her young, she holds the one she loves in her arms, but the one she hates must cling to her back. When the ape is pursued by a hunter, she tires from running while carrying her two children; when she is in danger of being caught, she drops the child she loves in order to escape, but the one she hates continues to cling to her back and is saved....Apes are happy at the new moon but grow sad as it wanes. At the equinox they urinate seven times. Apes are said to be ugly, dirty beasts with flat and wrinkled noses; their rear parts are particularly horrible.

Imagine the new mother ape going, "This one, I love. This one...not so much. Take a hike, kid!" to her twin baby simians, the lesser of which clings to her back in spite of its  rejection. Also, the thing about their rear parts made me laugh out loud. As I was reading the description to Matthew, he asked for me to determine exactly what kind of animal he was based on these bestiaries, and I put the entry on "ape" as one of the forerunners in that competitive category. How funny is the somber tone? We were cracking up over each animal more than the last.

Another thing I CANNOT get over in these illustrations is how either human, dog like, or dragon like each and every animal is in spite of its individual characteristics. I wish the world really looked like the pictures (OR MAYBE IT DID BACK THEN...oooOOooooh...). On the subject of hyenas, who look pretty dadgum ghoulish to me:

source

According to the law, hyenas must not be eaten because they are dirty. Hyenas can change their sex; sometimes they are male, other times female. They live near tombs and eat the dead bodies they find there. There is a stone in the hyena's eye (some say in the stomach of its young) that will give a person the ability to predict the future if the stone is placed under the person's tongue. Hyenas will circle a house at night, calling out words with the voice of a man; anyone who is deceived and goes out to investigate is eaten. A dog that crosses a hyena's shadow will lose its voice. The hyena's spine is rigid, so to turn it must move its entire body. The result of a mating between a hyena and a lioness is the beast called leucrota.

Hyenas cannot change their sex, to my knowledge, nor do they have a stone in their to predict the future, but I do wonder if medieval people were like "Pliny? Pliny, is that you? Are you drunk again?" to the sound of the hyena, only to be eaten by the duplicitous creature! Seriously, could the modern world even MAKE UP something I liked this much?

One of the best entries has to do with the beaver. Study this illustration closely, then read the description:

source

The beaver is hunted for its testicles, which are valued for making medicine. When the beaver sees that it cannot escape from the hunter, it bites off its testicles and throws them to the hunter, who then stops pursuing the beaver. If another hunter chases the beaver, it shows the hunter that it has already lost its testicles and so is spared.

This was the turning point from me going, "Oh, this is interesting," to me being 100% invested in reading every article on the website. The beaver does WHAT! And then WHAT! Again, the explanation is that this is an allegory about casting sin from you so the devil won't chase you, but I just like reading it as a straight story about this animal being like "Spare me! I have no testicles!" (God help the person who ends up at this website with those search terms...hi, bye!)

Beeeeees:

source

Bees are the smallest of birds. They are born from the bodies of oxen, or from the decaying flesh of slaughtered calves; worms form in the flesh and then turn into bees. Bees live in community, choose the most noble among them as king, have wars, and make honey. Their laws are based on custom, but the king does not enforce the law; rather the lawbreakers punish themselves by stinging themselves to death. Bees are afraid of smoke and are excited by noise. Each has its own duty: guarding the food supply, watching for rain, collecting dew to make honey, and making wax from flowers.

The crocodile is scary as heck in any incarnation but this one is particularly horrifying...my feet!

source

The crocodile is a four-footed beast, about twenty cubits long, that is born in the Nile River. Its skin is very hard, so that it is not hurt when struck by stones. It spends the day on land and the night in the water. It is armed with cruel teeth and claws; it is the only animal that can move the upper part of its jaw while keeping the lower part still. Its dung can be used to enhance a person's beauty: the excrement (or the contents of the intestines) is smeared on the face and left there until sweat washes it off. Crocodiles always weep after eating a man. Despite the hardness of the crocodile's skin, there are two animals that can kill it. The sawfish (serra) can cut the crocodile's stomach, and the hydrus can crawl into the crocodile's mouth and kill it from the inside.

And last but not least, the panther, which has my favorite illustration that isn't a lion of the this whole bunch.

source

The panther is a gentle beast; only the dragon is its enemy. It is a beautiful, multicolored animal; its coat is spotted with white or black disks. After the panther has feasted, it goes into a cave and sleeps for three days. When it wakes up it gives a loud roar, and while it is roaring a sweet odor comes out of its mouth. Any animal that hears the roar follows the sweet smell to reach the panther. Only the dragon stays away, hiding in a hole because it is afraid of the panther. The female panther can only give birth once, because the young in her womb tear at her with their claws, wounding her so that she can no longer conceive.

Here are just some illustrations of animals I would like as my album cover(s) when I do record that metal as anything debut recording of mine. See if you can figure out what animals are what (click the source to check your answers)!

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source

source

Do you love, I mean LOVE, how it gets some things wrong, and some things are just...did you make this up? Where did this intel come from? I could honestly reproduce each and every entry, but that's what the original website is for! Go check it out and tell me which of the animals and their origin stories are your favorite. Can you imagine what the world would have been like back then if this was 100% scientifically accurate in each case? Which one did you laugh about the hardest (can't get over the beaver's story; won't get over the beaver's story)? Let's talk!

That's all for today, but I will see you back here tomorrow with more (hopefully endearingly?) quirky stuff that caught my eye this week. Have a great Wednesday! Talk soon.

The Happy World of Huell Howser (1973)

Good morning!

How's your Tuesday treating you? Well, if you were having a lousy workaday morning, I do have JUST THE THING to cheer you up... Matthew and I cut Netflix out of our monthly subscription list because God love it, we do not ever see anything we like on Netflix. In the meantime, I've been scouring Youtube for things I've meant-to-watch-but-never-sat-down-and-committed-to-watching-because-we-have-Netflix. Well! Did I ever find what I was looking for!

Folks, have you heard the good word about Huell Howser?

I think I first heard of Huell Howser in January of 2013-- his untimely passing at the age of 67 sparked a number of heartfelt memorial posts about the California-based newscaster, who began his career right here in his home state of Tennessee.Either because of or in spite of my precocious childhood, my Nashville native mom does often treat me like I should remember local fixtures and events that happened long before my life began...and in asking her about Huell Howser, you'd better believe I invited a harangue of that exact nature to be rained down upon me. She's not hateful so much as incredulous, but it went something like: "Oh HUELL HOWSER, YOU know who he i-i-i-is! The news reporter!!! He used to be on WSM, channel four!"  Huell was born in Gallatin, TN and worked for WSMV for most of the seventies' before moving to California in 1981 (cough: four years before I was born), where he became as beloved a human interest reporter on the west coast as he had been in the Southeast.

In 1973, when he was still in the Volunteer State, The Happy World of Huell Howser ran locally on channel four, and my biggest regret about watching the clips I could find of this show on Vimeo and Youtube is that it has now ignited a deep interest in a tv show I probably won't get to see more of anytime soon. Come watch along and see if you agree with my naked delight at the real life people and stories of Tennessee, through the folksy, friendly lens of Huell Howser:

#1 Minnie Pearl episode (part one, part two) 

Thoughts:

• I think the music is supposed to swell to a dramatic crescendo at the end of the introduction, but I also think the timbre and pitch they chose is UNIQUELY UNSUITABLE to its particular task. I feel less like jumping out of my seat and cheering at the 1:25 mark and more like Cary Grant in North by Northwest's cornfield scene....I escaped! But barely! What menace!
• Sponsor Commerce Union Bank seems to have borrowed a vocal piece, voice over, and visuals from an unproduced Dario Argento helmed version of 1984. "It's our new identity...but we still want to identify...with you. Commerce Union Bank-- we'll change, as you change."
• "Porky the Pig's Birthday Party" carries this bombshell:
• Huell: What do you feed him normally?
• Owner: Well, normally, he eats just whatever we do. Whatever we have for breakfast, dinner, supper, he does. But, uh, his main food is hamburgers. He loves hamburgers. And he loves Pepsi-Colas to drink and--
• Huell: What about pork? Does he eat pork? I hate to ask that question.
• Owner: Yes, he don't realize it anyway. He eats pork, sausage, bacon...ham...he eats anything like that, he don't know the difference.
• Huell: You think he  might be eating one of his brothers or sisters...
• Owner: He could! [laughs]
• ((then they fed him a Pepsi out of a bottle and some birthday cake; for my own part, I managed to tamp down my horror long enough to be delighted by how human-like a pig like Porky can be))
• "Well, if she wants a pig, I say, every feller to his likin'...everybody has a right to a pig if it wants to," Minnie opines when Huell asks her what she thinks about the house-pig segment.

• "Huell Gets Kissed by a Bear" is a pretty amazing example of this good natured man suffering for his art...for starters, he's in Lewisburg, TN, having a burly, squat man in an apparently unisex sequined leotard explain to him how the bear act in this local show works. When said man offers Huell the opportunity to feed the bear some little jerky stick, Huell reasonably assumes he's going to feed the bear from his own hand. When the bear trainer sticks the jerky in Huell's mouth like a cigar...well, let's just say you're a braver man than I, Gunga Din. His "Whoooooooaaaaaaa!" is about as sincere as any you'll ever hear. He lived to tell the tale at least!

• Huell asks Minnie Pearl about the most unusual pet she'd heard of someone keeping, and she outs Roy Acuff and his wife Mildred as having had a pet monkey. "Roy Acuff had a monkey when I first came to the Opry and he was crazy about that monkey! So was his wife Mildred-- some people just like odd pets!" You tell 'em, Minnie. And this excerpt from a book on Acuff  backs her up on that monkey story (not that Minnie Pearl would have any reason to lie, but it's funny to find that that's not another of her "tall tales"). 
• "Charlie the Wonder Dog" of Shelbyville, TN puts the Romney Family Dog Incident to shame...the heck with a crate, Charlie just rides on top of the car, "up to speeds of 65 MPH" (!!!!!!!!!). No, seriously, it's not that bad. Owner Mr. Peacock recounts, "I usually picked up the children, meet the grandchildren, when it was rainin', and this particular time-- Charlie he always follow, he always went with me when I went to get 'em, but this particular time, it was rainin', and I wasn't aimin' for Charlie to go." Charlie took matters into his own paws and hitched a ride on the roof of the car, where he's "been goin' up there ever since" (two years and a half years [!!] at the time of the broadcast). And he's never fallen off! "When he first started to ride to town, well, sometimes it'd be four or five different cars would try'n blow me down, 'It's a DOG on your roof! It's a DOG on your roof!' And Shelbyville soon got kindly used to it, but now, every time a car blows me down, that's just 'bout everytime I come to town, it's always an out of town car! 'It's a DOG on your roof!'"

• Sadly, the program breaks before we could see the chitlin festival that ended the episode. Maybe it'll surface someday (along with some more episodes, I hope I hope?).

Conclusion:
Think about all the daytime talk and Judge So-and-So shows they show on Channel Four now...couldn't we spare twenty five minutes a couple times a week to show these old episodes of truly odd/endearing local programming? Also, I wonder if a DVD will ever come out of this.

Miss Rebecca and Rosa episode (whole episode here)

Thoughts:

• In this, the only other episode of HWHH I found online, Minnie Pearl has been replaced as a co-host by Miss Rebecca (left) and Rosa (right), who otherwise enter without introduction with Huell to a set outfitted with rocking chairs. "Well, what do you think of about these rocking chairs?" Huell asks. Miss Rebecca replies, "Oh, they're great. I'm just gonna sit here and rock all my troubles away." As they discuss the gas crisis, Rosa mentions how she got to the studio that day, "Welll, so far I've been able to get as you see I got up here tonight by my good friends Mr Ms Williams, I thank the Lord for that, but I hope my taxi driver down there don't run out of gas-- if he did, maybe I couldn't get anywhere!"
• I CANNOT get OVER the people's accents in this and the last episode. I can hear traces of my mom, my granddaddy, my third grade teacher...all manner of native Tennesseeans are represented in the friendly Southern burrs that color their speech. Finally! Folks who say "olll" instead of "oy-yul" for "oil", and "wudn't/dudn't" for "wasn't/doesn't". I could listen to this all day.  Someone show this to the actors in ABC's Nashville? Please?
• How do you like the ladies' dresses? Rosa's in particular! She's also wearing a rhinestone pendant on a chain, catseye glasses, jangly gold earrings and a brooch, an overall look which I wholeheartedly endorse:

• "Mrs. Hattie Lyles and Her Car" is a ninety-two year old woman from Hartsville, Tennessee (my great-grandparents' hometown) who isn't affected at all by the gas crisis-- she's had this electric car for fourteen years, and by Godfrey, it gets her where she needs to go. Examine first-- this woman was born in 1881. She celebrated her twentieth birthday at the turn of the twentieth century. And here she is in her coal black wig and electric-powered car, getting by just as fine as you please. As for the speed and upkeep "You go tol'able fast when you're on level ground...I don't know just how much...downhill...but when you start uphill, it slows down...but it goes on up....the charger comes with it and I keep it charged...you plug it in, and let it...it'll click off when it gets thoroughly charged. I never have noticed my bill running up at all."

• Tojo Whitefield, 68, of Smithville, TN gets Huell's good samaritan award for passing out trinkets and treasures to the children in his neighborhood as an act of neighborly good will. He says he's given away little pieces of sunshine to around 185 children in a several mile radius of his home. What I love is how grandfatherly the little treats are-- whereas today, a kid would probably hold out for Hot Cheetos, holographic Naruto stickers, and name-brand Hi-C "juice" boxes, Mr. Whitefield's inventory includes bananas, tablets, pencils, stick candy... probably the same kind of thing an nine year old Tojo would have liked himself as a child in 1914. DO YOU UNDERSTAND THIS MAN WAS A NINE YEAR OLD CHILD IN 1914. It's amazing to think about walking around in the world with people old enough to remember a pre-WWI America.

• The next segment, after some back and forth about Rosa and Miss Rebecca's husbands' fishing habits, features a whale of a tall tale from a dentist...I don't want to ruin the story for you, but it ends on a visual punchline that is...well, just you look, and then tell me if you don't want to hear the story, because if the guy on the right doesn't convince you to listen to the guy on the left, there's just no convincing you!

• Act like I wasn't tickled to death to see a flea market held on the town square in Lewisburg, a city about an hour south of Nashville. One of the vendors came from Frankewing, TN, which I initially thought was spelled "Frankenwing, TN" and which I got overly excited about until I realized my mistake. That town is an even more rural community, about twenty miles from Fayetteville, which I've been exploring through the magic of Google Maps. While the people selling are delightful in and of themselves, I keep trying to wrap my head around the cheap and plentiful bounty that must have been antiques back then. Just the idea of things that were antique in 1973. The one woman is selling model T wheel rims, for goodness sake! 

• At the twenty minute mark, Miss Rebecca has brought cammelias from a flowering bush in her yard. She says wherever she goes when they're in bloom, she always brings a big bowl of them with her because everyone loves the smell. When I was little, my grandmother had three roses bushes in the front yard that bloomed yellow, red, and pink roses, big, luscious blooms-- she would cut some and send them with me to school to give my kindergarten teacher, which I always hated to do because my kindergarten teacher was totally mean. "Here, my grandma told me to give these to you," was the tender sentiment I remember expressing as I handed her the gorgeous roses. They're still there today but I don't think they flower as hardily as they used to.

• Last but not least, we have a senior citizen center where the two ladies to the right (in the blue and olive drab print) do a rooster crow along with the song at decided upon time (I still don't know how the time was decided upon, but there you are). The one in blue says she crows like a "young rooster" and the other like a loud rooster, but watch out for the lady in stripes to the left...she gets the biggest laugh of the segment with her own, secret part in this chicken business. :)

Huell went on to produce many successful segments throughout the rest of his career-- I am so excited that this is just the tip of the Howser iceberg for me to explore, and that living in the internet age would make this possible. What a great guy. See more on his website here and on his youtube channel, here.

So! Watch and tell me what you think! Which segment is the best (trick question: they're ALL the best)? Do any of these people remind you of members of your family or community? Do you have any stories about cute-itude-to-the-max Huell Howser to share? How do you get such an awesome job as shooting the breeze with a bunch of lively senior citizens? I wish they could bring something like this back without the "reality tv" angle of today ruining the earnestness of these people that makes the show so special. And when do they put this out on DVD!

For your viewing pleasure:

          

         

          

I gotta run, but I will see you tomorrow! Have a great Tuesday, talk then! :)

Warner Instant Archive (1920's Movies on Streaming!)

Good morning!

I hope you had a good weekend! I'm here today to spread the good word about Warner Instant Archive. Brother, have you heard the news?

I was looking over some Clark Gable tribute page on Facebook (like you do) and ran across a posting that mentioned several CG movies were up on the Warner page. Nerts to that, I thought-- while Warner Archive has a slew of old movies that either never reached DVD or VHS and are made up on an on demand basis at their warehouse, at $24.99 a pop, the prices are a little too high to indulge my curiosity in career highlights and footnotes of stars I've read about. Even if it makes my little heart sad. HOWEVER! Warner now has a streaming service that allows you, for $9.99 a month, to watch hundreds of old movies under two kingpin classic Hollywood studios, as Warner acquired the MGM back catalog along with their own motion picture releases. WHAT. WHAT. I signed up immediately and can't keep my eyes off the screen in my idle moments. What have I been watching? WHAT HAVEN'T I BEEN WATCHING. I started with the twenties', and have been working my way through. Here are some highlights from my jolly spree:

1) Untamed (1929), starring Joan Crawford and Robert Montgomery

In Untamed, Joan Crawford's talking picture debut (!!), she plays "Bingo", a wildcat of a girl brought up in the jungles of South America alongside her oilman father. When the pater familias passes in the first reel, Joan is left in the hands of one of her dad's old pals, who is determined to turn the now very rich Bingo into the kind of lady her station in life behooves her to be. They set sail for America, but unfortunately, run into the very young, very louche Robert Montgomery (popular costar of many early thirties' "women" pictures, usually with Norma Shearer, and later father of Elizabeth Montgomery, tv's Samantha from Bewitched) on the boat over. She arrives in the States and makes an overnight transformation into a lady of great taste and elegant restraint, but the one thing she can't change is her feelings for Robert Montgomery... various squabbles about fidelity, money, and matrimony ensue, but Bingo gets her guy by the last title card.

What's interesting to see in this movie is Joan at the very, very beginning of her forty year career. She'd notched something like twenty-five movies in the silent era, but this is really the make-or-break moment for whether or not the popular, saucer-eyed dancer would make it in the new era of the movie industry. And does she even look like herself, yet? No! The picture opens with Joan playing a song on the ukuele, as if the producers are saying "Look! We have sound, people!", and a wild flapper dance in what is essentially a tropical mini-dress that gives her plenty of free reign to show off the moves that won her a closetful of Charleston trophies in her teens (you can see the whole scene here). Still, the lithe-bodied, harsh mouthed girl on the screen is still somehow a light year away from the shopgirl's idol she would become in just two or three years later. She's not "there" yet, but she's on her way. And isn't that exciting to watch? YES. YES IT IS. Thank you, Warner Archives!!

2) Show People (1928), starring Marion Davies and William Haines

Show People is a FAN.TASTIC. silent movie about the motion picture industry...if you ever wanted a backstage pass to MGM circa 1928 (me, sir! Please, sir, me sir!), here's your ticket. King Vidor (the filmmaker behind The Crowd, which was also released that year) helms a light comedy about Miss Peggy Pepper of Georgia (Marion Davies), who arrives in Hollywood in an open touring car with her father, the Colonel, and the intention of breaking into the movie business. At the studio commissary, Billy (William Haines) barges in and makes a seat at the Peppers table, all gangly good looks and likeability. A Keystone-cop-style comedian himself, he offers Peggy a leg up in the business by promising to get her on set in a slapstick one-reeler being made the very next day. After some pretty hilarious hiccoughs (Peggy thinks she's going into a drama, so her reaction when she is hit in the face with a pie, sprayed with seltzer, etc, is completely real rather than the inspired comedic acting the director thinks he's seeing), Peggy's star begins to rise, and you have to watch to see if she goes all A Star is Born on poor Billy (spoiler alert: she does, then she doesn't)...there are some really sweet moments in between the slapstick.

Marion Davies, if you weren't familiar with the name, was a Ziegfield Follies girl who became the longtime mistress of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. She moved to Hollywood with him in 1919 to build one of America's own "castles", San Simeon, as a west coast love nest, and make a break for herself in movies. Hearst bankrolled a number of historical romances starring Davies and gave them the FULL publicity treatment in his many newspapers-- some film critics say that she might have done all right for herself just on the strength of her acting, but having that "someone else's money" pall cast across her career made her talent seem a lot weaker than her lover's belief in it. Citizen Kane (you might have heard of it) was biographically based on WRH, and having the nightclub singer turned would be opera star character of Susan Alexander Kane parallel Davies's role in Hearst's life might have been the last word in the "was she or wasn't she talented" argument-- yet Show People is directly refutes Davies detractors. You're wrong, boys! Marion Davies is adorable as Peggy Pepper, and is a real canny comedienne-- she makes faces and mimics stars of the day (an imitation of Mae Murray's bee-stung lips slash overbite is the focus in a particularly hilarious scene) and generally endears herself to the viewer from the first scene.

William Haines, Davies's Show People costar, was a popular leading man of the silent era, always the cheery collegiate or nattily dressed gadabout quick with a boyish smile or a good natured hi-jink. Haines's refusal, in the 1930's, to enter into a "sham" marriage with an actress on the lot to camouflage his homosexuality led to his being ousted from the motion picture community. However, he and his partner Jimmie Shields, with the help of old friend and co-star (you guessed it!) Joan Crawford, launched his second and just as successful career as an interior designer to-the-stars. He's GREAT as Billy as in the movie, 110% charm. I hope they add some more of his movies to the streaming service (West Point was up long enough for me to see it, but has been removed now-- fickle, fickle Warners!).

Something to watch for? The twenty-or-so-strong cameos in the movie! At one point, this tiny guy (below) comes up to ask Marion Davies for her autograph after her first successful preview screening, and she shoos him away. Billy, recognizing the bantam movieman, signs his signature book and waves as the stranger gets into a very, very expensive town car. "Who was that little man?" she asks in a title card. "Charlie Chaplin!" replies Billy in the next card. Marion, relatably, falls out. And it is! Real life friend (possible paramour?) of Marion Davies and the Little Tramp himself...I've seen plenty of pictures of him out of makeup and with various Hollywood stars, but I will say it was jarring to see how actually tiny he is when in civilian clothes rather than his trademark, ill-fitting tramp clothes.

At a dinner with other Hollywood types, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., John Gilbert and wife Leatrice Joy, Anita Page, and  Karl Dane all make uncredited guest appearances (cue me shrieking, "Look! Look, it's John Gilbert! That's his wife!" with unchecked glee), and at one point, Peggy Pepper runs into Marion Davies on her way to a tennis match! Talk about meta, people. Here's the dolled up, feminine Peggy watching the much more casual, boyishly blonde bobbed Davies take off across the studio lot.

A first rate flicker, folks! Go check it out!

3) The Show (1927), John Gilbert and Renée Adorée

The Show is a horror (ish?) movie by Freaks director Tod Browning, and knowing his reputation for making movies that are a little sinister, a little "off", I was super excited when this was added to the streaming site just this weekend. Dreamy John Gilbert is the carny barker in a Bavarian traveling show, Renée Adorée plays the title role in the skit production of Salome which features as the main attraction in their set-up. The sketch follows the story of dancing girl Salome demanding the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter when she is offered "anything she desires" by King Herod...there's a thrilling part where a bearded, be-wigged Gilbert is involved in a fool-the-eye trick where he is apparently "beheaded" on stage. Lionel Barrymore (great-uncle of Drew, brother of John and Ethel, you might remember him as the heartless bank owner Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life) plays a gangster type who might be part of a triangle between Gilbert and Adorée. Barrymore make good use of the theatrical "trick" in the Salome sketch to try and economically dispatch his rival. That doesn't work, so the plot plods on with Gilbert having stolen some money from an overly trusting orphaned shepherdess and hiding out in Adorée's attic.

Do you blame her for being a sap? Look at this man:

John Gilbert and Clara Bow share those same exclamation point eyes, particularly suited to the silents. I can't get over how vivid and alive he looks onscreen. I might not have done a good job grabbing stills, but trust me, this is no "ironically handsome" crush, he's really the real-deal heartbreaker when you see him in action. Usually, John Gilbert plays, at worst, a somewhat debauched or less than angelic bachelor, an irresponsible but irrepressible romantic interest...but almost never someone with an actual current of negative energy running through him. This role is that, kids! Cock Robin (seriously, that is the dude's name in the movie) enjoys a pitch black characterization by Gilbert, redeemed only in the last twenty minutes or so by his softening at Adorée's continual "goodness". And when he melts, people, he melts! It really just feeds my sentimental heart to see these bold-print emotions play across the screen.

Here's Adorée, fragile and wet-eyed throughout. She also starred with John Gilbert in The Big Parade (a WWI movie with real punch, even almost a hundred years later) and La Bohème (with Lillian Gish). Isn't she darling?

Last but not least the iguana below serves as the bad guy in the picture-- really, he gets bad rap, as iguanas aren't poisonous, and that's the whole point on which the plot is predicated, but suspension of disbelief is kind of a given in these scenarios. Look how sinister he looks crawling out of Barrymore's suitcase!

Anyway, I've gone on WAY TOO LONG FOR TODAY, but I was just that excited about getting to see these early motion picture gems! Check them out if you get a chance- Warners' offers a two week trial period risk free! Think of how many movies like this you could watch in two weeks!

How about you? Seen any good old movies lately? Have any favorites of the silent screen? Which of these would you most want to see or what are some things you've always heard about but never gotten a chance to watch? Let's talk! 

That's all for today, but I'll see you back here tomorrow. Have a great Monday! Til then.