|
From April 28, 2000 |
 John Stanley |
|
 |
 |
A summer of lions in laps,
tobacco spit & Vincent Price
of TheColumnists.com
Psychologists and hopeless romanticists tell us that we have, at some time in our childhood, a "Golden Summer," a wondrous time when we make discoveries about the world and ourselves that fill us with a new sense of wonder, that make us realize how wonderful it is to be alive, that create newfound sensations on which we will groove for the rest of our lives.
Ain't I lucky: I had two "Golden Summers." The first was the summer of 1951, when I spent June through September as a pitcher for a little league hardball team out of Bakersfield. I had dreams then of being a pitcher, and I thrived on taking to the mound like I had never thrived on anything before. My uncle Eddie, with whom I was staying that summer, thought I had a remarkably incredible fassssstttt (wham!) ball, and prophesied I would become a famous left-handed hurler; he really believed I was destined for the big leagues. But it wasn't to be. All I ever ended up pitching was woo to a blonde-haired German vixen I would marry. And ideas to various editors for stories I wanted to write.
But that "Golden Summer" pales in comparison to what came next.
My second "Golden Summer" was from April through December of 1953, an unforgettable time when I discovered that movies were better than ever. Hollywood had tried to sell that idea to me in 1950 with that very slogan: "Movies Are Better Than Ever," in an effort to draw me and millions of other people back into the movie theaters and away from our newfound TV sets. I was wise to the fact it was a phony pitch, because there was really nothing different about the movies. Same old Westerns, same old melodramas, same old comedies, same old musicals. I made up my own slogan: "There's Nothing Nifty About 1950."
The reason I knew movies were really better
than ever occurred on a hot Sunday afternoon in April '53, when
I ducked into a theater in downtown Vallejo, Calif., to see something
called "House of Wax." The marquee ballyhooed the film
to be in something called "3-D." I had no idea what
I was in store for, and the lobby poster didn't help either with
its proclamation: "Warner Bros. Bring You Every Thrill of
Its Amazing Story in . . . Natural Vision."
 |
|
Natural Vision? Hell, I was more curious about the poster art: a chorus girl in a brief costume was doing a can-can kick, with the seam of her hosiery running upward through the flesh of her upraised leg. To me that was a natural vision--something far more important at that moment than "Natural Vision."
I dismissed the other poster tagline--"Nothing That Has Gone Before Can Compare With This!"-- as the usual Hollywood hype, not realizing how wrong I could be. The tagline was right--there never had been anything in my life to compare with this.
For that one screening was to revolutionize my love and need for movies and set me on a course seeking every 3-D movie I could lay my double-barreled eyes on for the rest of 1953. In fact, I couldn't believe my eyes: "House of Wax" gave an illusion of depth that made me feel as if I had been picked up from my seat and hurled at the movie screen, and was about to plunge headlong into the dark and eerie settings which stretched out before me.
The 3-D experience started when an usher handed me a pair of cardboard glasses that I slipped over the glasses I was already wearing. (They weren't about to call me "Six Eyes" for nothing.) The lenses were made of a strange dark shade, which only seemed to add to the mystery. It was called a polarized filter, better known as "polaroid," but I wouldn't learn that until much later. I didn't have my glasses on when the picture started and for a moment all I saw were fuzzy, overlapping dual images on the screen. But the instant I slid on the polaroid glasses, the fuzziness went away and the separated images magically joined together and suddenly there was one solid image that conveyed a sense of the way I saw things in real life--width, breadth, height, depth. The main titles began with the letters seeming to hang out over the front of the screen, as if someone sitting in the first row could have stood up and grabbed the "W" out of "Wax" and still have left it a horror film called "House of Ax."
The next remarkable thing was a turn-of-the-century street hawker outside a wax museum with a paddleboard and a ball connected to it by a string. The hawker kept hitting the ball into my face. Or so I first thought. But in reality it only seemed to fly from the screen and barely stop just in front of my face, then recede back. It took my breath away. The effect was so real I wanted to reach out and ward off the rubber ball with my hand. At that moment, I knew my life was never going to be the same again.
I was totally captured from then on as a tale of horror unfolded in a museum of wax figures designed like Madame Tussaud's of London, chamber of horrors and all. I was so enthralled by the viewing experience that I remained oblivious to the fact that Warner Bros., in an effort to add another "dimension of realism," had recorded the film with enough soundtracks to fulfill the needs of 22 speakers. How many were in the theater that day I don't know, but it was a time when "stereophonic" sound was just coming into use in theaters. Me, I was lost in the visual excitement up there on the screen.
Vincent Price had not yet become a horror icon. He was just another actor to me that fateful afternoon. What impressed me about him most was the horrific make-up he wore after a sequence in which he is terribly burned in a fire that destroys all his wax figures. As "The Phantom," he lurked on foggy streets, pursuing the hapless heroine played by Phyllis Kirk.
Another aspect of this movie that appealed to me in a rather perverse fashion--and it had nothing to do with 3-D--was the climactic scene when Ms. Kirk is tied down to a table as the mad doctor (Price) prepares to finish her off. It was made clear that he had stripped all her clothing off and she now lay there with nothing on. It was a fascinating image to contemplate for a 12-year-old, even if all I got to see were Kirk's bare shoulders.
(Years later, when I interviewed Ms. Kirk
and described this scene to her, I swear she blushed a little
. . . but that is another story.)
|
|
 |
Later I would find out that "House of Wax" was a faithful remake of a 1933 thriller entitled "Mystery of the Wax Museum." The "Ygor"-like assistant to the crazed Price was an actor named Charles Buchinsky--later he would become better known as Charles Bronson.
A year later Vincent Price would star in another 3-D horror film, "The Mad Magician" but the film never came to my town. That and "House of Wax" would completely change the direction of his career and lead to a career as a horror icon that would last the rest of his life.
For me, the real star of "House of Wax" was not any of the actors but that mysterious "Natural Vision" system that gave me this incredible feeling of being there, of being a character in the excitement. This remarkable illusion of depth was like some strange form of black magic come true. When the movie ended I wanted more. I had to see another 3-D movie. I had become a "Natural Vision" junkie, and there was absolutely no hope for me.
I got curious at this thing called "Natural Vision." I sought out stories in the Napa Register and in the weekend copy of The San Francisco Chronicle mom and dad always had. I came to find out, over the next few months, that "Natural Vision" was a projection system made by Milton and Julian Gunzberg, who had created a two-camera system of photgraphing the scenes. A lot of the details I didn't understand, but when the film was played in a movie theater on a corresponding two-projector system, the illusion was affected. The brothers Gunzberg had first seen their process used by radio-writer turned movie-maker Arch Oboler for "Bwana Devil," a movie with Robert Stack hunting lions in Africa that never came to my town during the year-long fad. It had been released in late 1952 to devastating reviews but great box-office, and had set all the studios in town into motion to make their own 3-D movies.
I finally saw "Bwana Devil" in the 3-D format at a revival theater in Los Angeles in the early 1990s, and was appalled at how poverty-stricken the whole thing was, and it made me realize how desperate Hollywood had been in fighting back against television. The thought that American audiences, when it came to gimmicky tricks, were rather lacking in discretion started to cross my mind--until I remembered I had been the first guy in line at the 3-D movies, so I discarded my sociological thought as being too self-incriminating.
I'm still glad the trend happened, because back in '53, I needed and wanted "Natural Vision" and I didn't have to wait long for a fix. The week after I saw "House of Wax," the Uptown Theater in Napa opened "Man in the Dark," a Columbia release starring Edmond O'Brien and Audrey Totter as characters caught up in an underworld story of mixed identity. This time I absolutely believed the proclamations on the one-sheet poster outside the theater, especially the promise that "Terror Stalks the Carnival in 3 Dimensions." And I also liked "New Scene-Sations: You Ride with Death on the Roller Coaster! The Walls of the Horror House Close in on You! You Dodge the Bullets! And You Do the Loving!" I wasn't quite sure how the last promise was going to be carried out, but it sounded good and I sensed some hormonal activity kicking in as I entered the Uptown.
A few years back I saw this film on TV in two-dimensions, and I wasn't impressed. I've even read a critical assessment that "Man in the Dark" was the worst of the 3-D movies of the period. Maybe that should be reserved for "The Nebraskan" with Phil Carey. But back in '53 "Man in the Dark" was everything I needed now that I was a hopeless 3-D junkie. I was knocked out by the scalpels that were wielded during an operation sequence. They were pointed directly at me and, like the paddle board ball of "House of Wax," seemed to be probing their way into my nostrils. I can remember covering my nose and pushing as far back in the seat as I could. There was also a spectacular car crash with the car sticking out over the audience, and then there was the rollercoaster ride, which I thought was "neat," although one critic of the day pointed out that the rear projection scenes for the background were flat as a pancake and therefore the full impact of the scene had been diminished. Sometimes it's better not to know all that technical stuff.
From week to week, I couldn't wait for the next 3-D'er. And they were coming in rapid succession, now that the trend had really caught on and films like "Man in the Dark" and "House of Wax" were making big bucks at the box office. For the moment the public was clamoring for more, and I wanted to clamor as loudly as anybody.
The next release was "Fort Ti," ballyhooed as "the first outdoor 3-D movie." Starring George Montgomery, who normally appeared in Westerns in those days, It was a depiction of the war between American frontier scouts and French troops and clearly appealed to me as I had always loved "The Last of the Mohicans" and other "outdoor" adventure films that featured heroes in buckskin armed with long-barreled rifles. Indians, being influenced by the French to unleash their evil on white settlers, threw tomahawks at me. I had to duck their flaming arrows, too. The only way to describe "Fort Ti" was "neat."
(Years later, when I met its director William Castle, he leaned back and laughed his head off, recalling "That was nothing but a B-movie in 3-D. We shot that thing in a few days on the back lot of Columbia and made it for almost nothing. The public never knew the difference. They came out of the theaters thinking it was a sensation. The only sensational thing about it were the sensational bucks it earned.")
Next came the film I had read about in the San Francisco papers and was waiting anxiously for: "It Came From Outer Space." I had just had my eyes dilated during an optometry examination that week and was worried sick that when the film opened something would prevent me from experiencing the 3-D effect.
However, my fears fell away as the greatest experience yet unfolded before my happy eyes, and I knew that the poster promise--Fantastic Sights Leap at You!"--was true when a meteor came whizzing through space and was all set to blow up the Uptown Theater--at least that's what I thought as the film opened. Then came the strange trail of glistening stuff that an unseen alien was dropping on the ground, and to my amazement the glistening stuff vanished.
And I would never forget the bug-eyed monster
with the crazy eye in the center of its extraterrestrial head--it
would give me nightmares in the weeks to come, because movies
with monsters were few and far between, and my naivete was at
its all-time highest. But it was a small price to pay for the
3-D thrill of the moment.
|
|
 |
I also liked the star, Richard Carlson, who was then starring in a TV series, "I Led Three Lives." He was a likeable guy who made me feel comfortable. Barbara Rush, the heroine, made me feel more than comfortable. She was the most beautiful creature in a movie full of creatures, especially in the scene when she rushes across the desert in a cocktail gown.
(Years later, when I interviewed her in San Francisco when she was doing "Love Letters," I told her about my crush on her. This time I was the one who blushed.)
I began to notice that the 3-D tricks were more clever in "It Came From Outer Space," not the obvious stuff in the other pictures. I knew I was watching a classier film (I've seen it many times since, and it holds up as one of the best of all the 3-D movies I grooved on that year.) Gee, I thought, I'm beginning to develop a critical judgment. Gosh, it is possible I might write about movies some day . . . ? (Be careful, kid, your dream might come true!)
The movies kept coming and even when they
weren't the best they were still grand. One of the better efforts
was Fox's "Inferno," which had been filmed almost entirely
in the desert, making terrific use of scenery and location, and
I thought Robert Ryan was great as a city guy with a broken leg
left to die in the desert. His struggle to survive was so convincing
that it didn't matter that there were fewer things thrown at
the audience. I still liked the poster promise of "The Greatest
Leap In 3-D History!" . . . but I didn't quite get what
"Myriad-Wondered" meant.
The first real 3-D western was "The Stranger Wore a Gun"
with Randolph Scott and an odd Mexican actor who spoke in a distinctive
style. (I would learn later that it was Alfonso Bedoya, the actor
who played the bandido in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"
and delivered the classic line: "Badges? We don't got no
badges. I don't got to show you no stinking badges." "Stranger"
had a lot of action and one good saloon fire sequence, with the
fiery debris falling on all of our heads.
Another Western was "Hannah Lee" with John Ireland and Joanne Dru, although it moved slowly and the characters didn't throw many things my way, and the projectionist kept having trouble and had to shut down one of the projectors, resulting in 2-D instead of 3-D. I was becoming more discerning all the time about the 3-D movies, but I still wanted to see each and every one of them.
"Arena" with Gig Young . . . I totally missed that one when, against my will, my mother took me out of town for a whole week for a vacation at Lake Tahoe. I was miserable the whole time.
Back home I read about a science-fiction movie called "Robot Monster" but for some reason it never came to Napa. (I didn't know how lucky I was.) There were some I don't have many memories about, but I was the first guy in line at the Uptown to see them: Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck in "The Moonlighter," Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl in "Sangaree," Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell in "Second Chance." The latter had a "neat" sequence with a mountain cable car trapped above a deep gorge, and the characters hanging onto the edges of the gondola for dear life.
In the early fall I knew I was in for a good one with "The Charge at Feather River." When I saw the Warner Bros. name on the poster outside the theater I remembered that was the studio that had made "House of Wax." The Brothers really did it up good, right from the start, with a horse soldier swinging his saber at a dummy target, followed soon by ample action with arrows, spears, tomahawks, knives, fists and bodies flying out of the screen in some well-staged battles between cavalry and Indians.
The most memorable moment, though, was when Frank Lovejoy fired a mouthful of tobacco cud at a coiled rattlesnake. It was the first and only time I thought I was going to be covered with spittle at a 3-D movie. No doubt this was one of the best scenes! (I'd find out years later that this idea was first used in a radio episode of "Gunsmoke" in which Parley Baer's Chester Proudfoot spits into a snake's eye at the urgings of Bill Conrad's Matt Dillon. This episode predates "Feather River" by a few months, suggesting that maybe the screenwriter might have been listening to radio. I would also come to realize years later that "Charge at Feather River" had one of Max Steiner's most rousing Western scores, including the comedic "Guardhouse Brigade" theme defining the band of horse-soldier misfits who are selected to chase after the Indians.
"The Maze" didn't do a lot for me except I recognized Richard Carlson as being the same actor who had starred in "It Came From Outer Space" and I liked the scene where the toad monster threatened to fall into my lap as it plunged to its death at the end of the film.
I guess I was a little young for the mature themes of "I, the Jury," an adaptation of a Mickey Spillane novel (a taboo subject because my mother had forbidden me to read any of his books). I went with a lot of anticipation, but the 3-D effect was minimal and the thing I liked best was on the poster: "Mickey Spillane's Kind of Fury, Savagery, Temptation and Man-Woman Violence in 3-D!"
One of the high points of the viewing year was John Wayne's "Hondo," which now stands as one of his best westerns, being the film that clearly defines the Wayne cowboy character. At the time the unusual and oft-poetic romance between Wayne and Geraldine Page seemed less important than the John Farrow-directed action sequences. There were terrific on-location chase sequences as Wayne tried to outride a band of blood-thirsty Apaches across the buttes of Arizona, all the while galloping to keep up to the exciting music of Hugo Friedhofer.
Warner Bros. had designed an improved camera system that allowed better quality of close-up shots, and there was a knife duel between Rodolfo Acosta (as an angry Apache) and Wayne that kept bringing the blades close to my throat. This is also the film in which you actually hear Wayne cry "Circle the wagons!" during the covered-wagon sequence that concludes the film.
"Hondo" made almost as much money as "House of Wax" and helped to keep the novelty going--but not for long.
The 3-D fad was coming to an end, but what an ending: "The Creature From the Black Lagoon," which, to my amazement, brought back Richard Carlson again. I couldn't believe that one man could be so busy, and still pop up each week on TV in "I Led Three Lives." I could sense that the poster promise on this one--"Sheer, Stark Terror Grips you in Underwater 3-D!"--was going to be kept. And it was.
This made all the other monsters I'd seen that year, even the grand, bug-eyed one in "It Came From Outer Space," pale in comparison. Never once did I think that the Gill-Man was just a guy in a rubber suit. I believed that it was an amphibious creature and every time the monster reached out for me I was left breathless. The underwater shots, often featuring duels between skin divers and the monster, were fantastic. (I now have a photograph on my wall signed by one of the stuntmen who wore the suit, Ben Chapman.)
Like all the other young guys in the audience, I became entranced with the "Beauty and the Beast" sequence when Julia Adams in a virginal white bathing suit leaps casually into the dark waters of the lagoon, ignoring the fact that a lot of guys have already been killed in and around the lagoon, and everybody knows the creature is down there in the primordial ooze, waiting. I was aware of the very eerie music that accompanied this unusual underwater ballet, but it wouldn't be until years later that I would learn, during an interview with Henry Mancini, that he had written parts of the "Creature" soundtrack at a time when he was a workaday composer at Universal-International, helping out with Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule movies as well. It was the training ground that would lead him to "Peter Gunn" and great fame as the composer of the "Pink Panther" movies and "Breakfast at Tiffany's," among many others.
By late 1953 3-D movies were finished. Audiences were growing tired of wearing the cumbersome glasses, and a lot of the latter-day productions weren't making anywhere near the kind of money that "Bwana Devil" and "House of Wax" had garnered during the heyday. Instead of using 3-D to enhance good productions, most of the studios had thrown away opportunities by turning out cheap, grade-B productions.
By the end of the year, some theaters weren't even bothering to show 3-D movies in 3-D. They were reverting back to the old-fashioned 2-D format, so some 3-D films were shown flat. That happened to "Kiss Me Kate" and "Gorilla at Large" and Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder."
The fun days, for me, were over.
But I'm glad the trend happened when it did. It sparked an interest and fascination with 3-D that persists to this day. In later years, I always attended the infrequent attempts to revive the fad--Arch Oboler's "The Bubble," a 1966 science-fiction thriller with an improved 3-D process that the public couldn't have cared less about. It was as if the public had gotten wise to the fact that most 3-D products were inferior, and the wearing of the glasses was a royal pain, and so everybody stayed away in droves.
But you can be sure I'll always be there when a new one comes along. Like when "Comin' at Ya!" spearheaded a new interest in 3-D in the early 1980s. There was a "Jaws" 3-D movie and even an "Amityville Horror" entry. I was always excited, but the rest of the world wasn't. And yeah, the rule still seemed to apply: Most 3-D projects were not good ones. And the gimmick couldn't carry any longer.
Disappointing, isn't it, when you're the only member of a marching formation who's in perfect step, and everybody else doesn't know the left foot from the right.
© 2000 by John Stanley
You can comment on this column or contact John Stanley with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
| Home | About Us | Archives | Talkback | Shopping Mall |