Exclusive
Interview with musician/author Jan Alan
Henderson
and his
new book coming out this fall:
The
Legendary Lydecker Brothers
The
Godfathers of Special Effects
Bifulco
Books: Publisher
To
order send $24.95 check or money order (plus $5.05 for
priority mail shipping):
Mike Bifulco
1708 Simmons N.E.
Grand Rapids, MI 49505
OR contact Mike at:
mjbbooks5@comcast.net
(**Word of advice: If you
send by check, it will take three weeks to clear. All money orders are
processed immediately.)
Foreword
by Michael H. Price
Author of:
Forgotten Horrors w/George
Turner & John Wooley
Human Monsters
w/George Turner
Southern Fried Homicide, To Name a Few
ABOUT THE BOOK:
Theodore and Howard Lydecker
worked in the Hollywood film industry
long before the advent of computer
generated imagery (CGI). In those days,
exciting and realistic action scenes had
to be filmed in real time. Known
throughout the industry as the
Miniature Men, they were in fact
giants in their field of creating
detailed scale model ships, trains,
planes and automobiles. While these
carefully crafted models performed on
large-scale landscapes or backlot water
tanks, all manner of mayhem and chaos
would be inflicted upon them as the
cameras rolled at carefully calculated
film speeds. The Lydeckers
produced some of the most thrilling and
authentic action sequences on a
shoestring budget.
Primarily
remembered for their outstanding visual
effects in the Republic Pictures
cliffhanger serials, they were often
required (it was their job) to enhance
the studio’s feature films. When the
script called for spectacular
destruction, the Lydeckers delivered on
screen production value with economy the
executives of other picture studios
could only imagine.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR:
Glass House Presents is
pleased to announce a new book from
musician/author Jan Alan Henderson that
will be available this fall entitled,
The Legendary Lydecker Brothers, The
Godfathers of Special
Effects. Jan’s published book
works include, Speeding Bullet,
The Life And Bizarre Death of
George Reeves, co-author of
Behind The Crimson Cape, The
Cinema of George Reeves with
Steve Randisi. Jan made
significant contributions in
Harvey Kubernik’s, Canyon
of Dreams, The Magic And
The Music of Laurel Canyon published in
2009. Jan has decades of
periodical contributions and articles
that include published works in such
magazines as American
Cinematographer, FilmFax,
Cult Movies and
Television Chronicles, Little Shop of
Horrors. He was also sought
after by the BBC for an
interview in 2008 concerning the history
of Laurel Canyon and music scene in
Southern California and again by
BBC 2 in May of 2010 which was
broadcast in August of 2010. Jan was
seen as a recurring guest on,
Sinister Cinema from 1986-88.
From the 80s to mid 90s he was a
consultant to the Universal Laser
Disc Division. He was credited
on the sci-fi thriller Creature-1985,
Trans World
Productions for Special
Effects & Creature Wrangler.
1999 to 2000 saw Henderson appearing on
Mysteries & Scandals and
A&E Biography George
Reeves episodes. He worked at Don
Post Studios, 1977-78, as a
maskmaker for Star Wars, Disney
Characters, and General Masks. In
cooperation with Warner Brothers,
he assisted and was interviewed on
season’s 2-6 of the Warner releases,
The Adventures of Superman
DVDs with George Reeves
2005. That would be followed up by
another appearance on the release of the
Superman serials of 1948/50 that starred
Kirk Alyn and Noel
Neill 2006. Jan is
credited with Kit Parker Films,
Capricorn Entertainment
and VCI Entertainment for
his special features contribution in the
restored versions of Thunder In
The Pines and Jungle
Goddess with George
Reeves and Ralph Byrd
2006. In that same
year he was also included as a
consultant with Pomethius
Productions on Look Up In
The Sky, and appeared on
America’s Most Wanted to discuss
the mysterious death of George Reeves,
television’s first Superman, in
conjunction with the release of
Hollywoodland.
CG:
Jan, I wish to thank you for giving me
the opportunity and time, (as it is a
premium for you) to talk to you about
what I feel will be an engaging,
entertaining and in many respects
historical look into the early to mid 20th
century film production of special
effects with your upcoming book,
The Legendary Lydecker Brothers, The
Godfather’s of Special Effects.
JAH: I
hope I can be of service.
CG: No
doubt, our reading audience will want to
know, why a book on the Lydecker
Brothers now, and what were the
circumstances that motivated it.
JAH:
Let me answer the second question
first. Mike Bifulco and I have been
doing projects together since 1999, and
as is our habit, we communicate
frequently by phone. On one such phone
call we were kicking around ideas and it
seemed that we were getting nowhere.
Michael suggested the Lydeckers, and I
said I’d give that a try. To this day,
I don’t know if Mike was aware or is
aware that I did an article in American
Cinematographer in December of 1991 on
the Lydeckers. But I said, “OK, I’ll
give it a try.” A couple days later we
were talking and Mike mentioned to me
that there was going to be a celebration
of Republic’s 75th
Anniversary at the Republic lot on
September the 25th, 2010.
Originally I had asked for ten months
for a writing period, but this squeezed
it down to four and a half. All I could
say to Mike was, “I’ll try, but I don’t
know if I can do it.” With twelve
double spaced pages from 19 years ago as
the only footing and foundation for this
project, I hadn’t a clue as to how to
pursue this. But I said I would try.
The first couple of
days I read and reread the original
article, and came up with absolutely
nothing in the way of structure. I
watched a bunch of the early serials and
took some notes, which upon reviewing
several days later I found completely
inane. About five days into the
process, I threw caution to the
wind and just started writing. That’s
really the basis of this book. I did an
awful lot of personal proofing (a lot
more than I have done on previous
projects) and when Mike and I got into
production four months later, we had
Bruce Dettman take a look at it and give
his opinions. To pull something like
this off (writing and production) in
four and a half months, to my mind is
something akin to a miracle. I really
would have liked to have had two years
to do it, but we wanted to have
something ready for the Republic 75th
Anniversary.
To answer your
first question, why now, I can only say
- why not? The Lydeckers’ work has been
a constant in my life since first seeing
the Commando Cody television
series on TV in 1955, and going to
matinees at my local theater ( the
Oriental) in 1957, which were my first
unsupervised cinema experiences. God,
if our parents only knew what went on in
those theaters other than movies! We
had the time of our lives, and got to
watch things that were released in our
parents’ time. The Oriental for me was
like being in a time machine.
CG:
What can we expect in the format and
chapters in the book?
JAH: In
some ways I approach it the same way
that I did Speeding Bullet and
Behind the Crimson Cape with Steve
Randisi. In other ways, I tried to take
a completely different path, which
because of my childhood theater going
was more personal. Whereas I was not in
the narrative of George Reeves, I am in
the narrative of The Legendary
Lydecker Brothers. That’s
probably because nine years after I
first started going to the Oriental, I
met Theodore Lydecker’s son at Hollywood
High School, George Lydecker, and have
remained friends with him all these
years. When we did the 1991 article,
George and his mother allowed me to see
the story of the Lydeckers from a family
perspective, which could not have been
achieved by research alone. So it is
not only a history of the Lydeckers, but
a little bit of my personal history and
appreciation for their work.
CG:
Will the reader get a good measure of
how the Lydecker Brothers
and cinematographer Bud Thackery
pulled off these astounding effects?
JAH:
Yes. While this is by no means a
definitive work, I think it comes as
close as one can get, given the time
restraints. It’s not anywhere near what
Jack Mathis did in his Republic books
Valley of the Cliffhangers, Valley of
the Cliffhangers Supplement, or
Republic Confidentials 1 and 2.
And in no way was I trying to
compete with Jack Mathis’ work. I tried
the best I could to put a different spin
on what he did, although there are
several quotes from his books to clarify
for the readers how these effects were
achieved. A lot of it was based on my
interviews with George Lydecker, who I
can’t thank enough for his
contributions. George was the Rock of
Gibralter on this project. Another
participant who was integral to the
project is Bob Burns, whose
reminiscences of meeting Howard Lydecker,
photographs, and overall appreciation
for Republic serials were the
spiritual foundation of this. Had he
and his wife Kathy not been supportive
of this project, it never would have
happened. There are so many other
people who came on board and need to be
thanked, which they are in the
Acknowledgments. People like Earl
Blair, Jim Plummer, Jerry Mezerow, Herb
Harris, just to name a few. They were
all absolute musts in achieving what you
will hopefully hold in your hands very
soon.
CG:
Screen Thrills Illustrated
which came out on the comic and
newsstands in the early 60s brought back
the excitement of the serial and film
noir era of the late 30s, 40s and early
50s, reintroducing our generation to
Super-heroes, masked heroes, serial
westerns, plots to take over the world,
cops and robbers, heroines, espionage
agents and of course, the villains. Some
of these serials such as Columbia’s
Superman & Atom Man vs.
Superman with Kirk Alyn
were said to never be seen again. You
mentioned to me your viewing experiences
at The Oriental Theater and your
interest in Screen Thrills. Did the
magazine become a supplement for you in
those viewing years?
JAH:
The magazine became a validation of what
I experienced at the Oriental Theater.
In the late 50s and early 60s, publisher
Jim Warren, whose groundbreaking
Famous Monsters of Filmland, Spacemen,
Wildest Westerns, Monster World, and
Screen Thrills, had his
finger on the pulse of the teen market
in America. I’m really surprised to
this day that he didn’t put out a rock
and roll magazine. He was the publisher
of Screen Thrills for ten issues, and
did a Supplement called Superheroes
in the mid 60s. His groundbreaking work
in these areas was vital and way ahead
of the curve, and validated what we were
seeing in B-movie houses and on
television. Don’t forget Screen
Thrills also covered comedy teams
such as the Marx Brothers and Bowery
Boys, and was a well-rounded catchall
for the golden age of cinema.
The Kirk Alyn Columbia Superman serials
were not seen after the final run of
Atom Man vs. Superman in 1950.
While Screen Thrills wrote
articles about those serials, they were
not available for anyone to see until
1988.
CG:
Did Howard and Ted Lydecker have any
kind of formal training in the art of
special effects? I do know their father
John had quite a successful career as an
engineer. And as they say, “The apple
doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
JAH:
John Howard Lydecker, as well as being
an engineer, worked on Douglass
Fairbanks Sr.’s production of Thief
of Bagdad, as well as working
on Lon Chaney Sr.’s Phantom of the
Opera. Without giving too
much away, Howard and Ted like film
makers of their day, drew their
experiences from their real lives. Ted
was an honest to goodness cowboy in
Idaho during the depression until Howard
called him back to Hollywood to work at
Mascot Studios shortly before Republic
Pictures Corporation was formed. There
were no film schools in those days. The
Lydeckers and other early movie pioneers
took their experiences from real life,
and it shows in their work.
CG:
After the US entry into World War II,
the movie industry was hit economically
and budget constraints were the order of
the day. It didn’t faze Howard and Ted’s
quality of work at Republic.
What do you attribute that to?
JAH:
Ingenuity, common sense, craftsmanship,
and stock shots.
CG:
Republic seems to have had a
winning formula with directors Bill
Whitney, John English,
actors/stuntmen David Sharpe, Dale
Van Sickel, and Tom Steele.
Bud Thackery FX
Cinematography and of course the
Lydecker brothers. Have you ever seen
another group with so much talent and
chemistry as this?
JAH:
Not another group that stayed together
as long as they did. One thing that
should be noted is that Bud Thackery did
general cinematography as well as
process cinematography on many features
and serials. Republic used many other
cinematographers on the serials, but Bud
Thackery not only did the process
cinematography but shot many of the
pictures as the general
cinematographer. The closest thing you
could get to that is some of the teams
that Universal Pictures assembled, and
some of the teams that Monogram Pictures
used in the 40s. Most people who worked
at Republic considered it a family
atmosphere. A lot of the actors and
actresses would turn down small roles at
major studios to get more screen time
over at Republic. A lot of these people
stated that due to the budgetary
considerations, that they got more film
time, more screen time at Republic than
they would have gotten at the majors.
One has to remember the critics
unmercifully beat up Republic, and my
personal feeling is they were envious
because Republic produced pictures that
looked like “A” pictures on “B” or “C”
budgets, and that rankled not only
intellectually prone producers, but
critics of the day who were stuffed full
of themselves.
CG:
What was your impression viewing
The Adventures of Captain Marvel
with Tom Tyler for the
first time? How did it compare with the
Kirk Alyn Superman serials
and The Adventures of
Superman TV show with
George Reeves?
JAH:
Let me put it this way - the Kirk Alyn
were not on offer. We only saw the
photographs in Screen Thrills,
which looked totally cool. As far as
comparing it to The Adventures of
Superman, there was no
comparison. Apples and oranges. The
budget on a Republic serial with twelve
to fifteen episodes was the same
approximate money that was spent on an
entire season of The Adventures of
Superman. The point that needs to
be stressed is that each production
company didn’t even have peanut money to
work with. Ingenuity, common sense, and
poverty were the requirements of making
these pictures. All of these
craftsmen must be praised for their long
hours and unyielding dedication to
getting these things done. But at best,
in those days they were considered
disposable entertainment - kiddie
fodder. And yet, the Lydeckers and
their contemporaries took this work
seriously enough to unknowingly produce
works that have stood the test of time.
I think the crew of The Adventures of
Superman and the Lydeckers would
honestly be surprised that they’re still
being talked about in 2010. I know Ted
Lydecker would have been.
CG:
David Sharpe, one of
Hollywood’s greatest stuntmen, really
shone in this serial, and has
demonstrated the most superior leaps,
dives and acrobatics in cinematic stunt
history. David Sharpe goes back to the
silent era of film. What made David
Sharpe so unique and valuable to the
film industry?
JAH:
Well, Carl, you just said it, didn’t
you? Back in 1986 when I first met
Jocko Mahoney, I mentioned my admiration
and appreciation for Dave Sharpe. He,
like so many others, said to me, “He was
the king of stuntmen.” Now if you look
at Jocko’s work, for example in the
Range Rider television series
produced by Gene Autry, you’ll see that
Jocko and his partner Dick Jones did an
awful lot of acrobatics in their stunt
work. Jocko told me that Dick loved to
fly. A great example of Jocko flying
was in The Adventures of Don Juan,
where he doubled for Errol Flynn, doing
a leap down a flight of stairs. Now you
ask what makes Dave Sharpe unique. I
suggest you go back and look at the
leaps in Captain Marvel and
Rocket Man, the fights in the
Dick Tracy serials, his work
doubling Robert Wilcox in The
Mysterious Doctor Satan. When Dave
would do a leap, you could always tell
it was Dave because he arched his back -
it was like an exaggerated swan dive.
That’s a unique part of his work that
others didn’t have - almost a signature
trademark if you prefer. He was an
Olympic athlete, an acrobat, a tumbler,
and the unfortunate thing is Lou
Gehrig’s disease cut him down way before
his time.
CG:
David Sharpe acknowledged Tom Tyler’s
flying sequences as painful and Tyler
having endured them without complaint.
What did Mr. Tyler have to endure that
Kirk Alyn and George
Reeves didn’t?
JAH:
First of all, George Reeves wore
a harness with two piano wires attached
to it for his liftoffs. This was
similar to what Tyler had to endure,
only the special effects man Danny Hayes
did not have the skill or proficiency of
the Lydeckers. As far as Kirk Alyn
goes, even though he said there was
footage shot of him in some sort of
harness which caught fire while he was
flying next to a plane with a burning
bomb, there is no evidence in any of
those serials that this ever took
place. The angles and various positions
Tyler had to assume with only a harness
were much more difficult than anything
George or Kirk had to endure. An
example of this is where he is flying
horizontally, he turns his torso at
angles. This wasn’t dreamt of until Si
Simonson’s flying harness, where the
crew could turn him at angles with the
steering mechanism that was hooked to
his flying spatula. Tyler merely wore a
harness, and with the aid of the
Lydeckers had to perform these body
twisting feats. So I believe that’s
what the difference is between the two
Supermans and Tom Tyler as Captain
Marvel.
CG:
After viewing the Captain
Marvel serials, how did that
affect your view of The Adventures
of Superman with
George Reeves?
JAH:
It didn’t. It’s apples and oranges. I
saw Captain Marvel three years
after George died. From the age of 8 ½,
which I was when George died, to the age
of 12, I had experienced Universal
horror movies, a plethora of western
shows with popular and not-so-popular
western stars, I played all manner of
sports - football, baseball - and was in
training with Bob Mathias at his Bob
Mathias Sierra Boys Camp to possibly
have a career as a high jumper. And
then there was discovering girls. I
remember seeing eleven chapters of
Captain Marvel and then being
shipped off to camp. So I never got to
see the final chapter until I was 22
years old at the Vagabond Theater near
downtown L.A. on a summer afternoon. It
was playing with a hideous
Czechoslovakian film called The End of
August at the Hotel Ozone. I had to sit
through this repugnant piece of doodoo
to see Chapter 12 of Captain Marvel.
That was a test of endurance, to be
sure! Anyway, I saw it, even though I
went to the ozone for the two hours
before viewing the last chapter!
CG: I
would be remiss if I did not mention
Frank Coghlan Jr. as Billy
Batson. You’ve met Frank along with
William Benedict who played
Whitey Murphy, Billy’s sidekick. Can you
give us some of their thoughts and
opinions working on the Marvel serial?
JAH: I
met Frank in the middle 80s at my late
friend Bob Colman’s store, Hollywood
Poster Exchange. I walked in looking
for some material (stills, posters, what
have you) for a project I was doing for
FilmFax Magazine at the
time. And there he was, Frank Coghlan,
Jr. Bob introduced us and immediately
we struck up a conversation, with me
mostly babbling admiration for his work
in The Adventures of Captain Marvel.
I asked him whether he would care to do
an interview for FilmFax
Magazine, and much to my surprise he
agreed to it. He even suggested he
bring his buddy Billy Benedict! Believe
me, I was more than thrilled when I
walked out of Bob’s store - in fact, I
don’t think my feet hit the floor for
another week! We met up at the old
Hungry Tiger restaurant in Hollywood in
what is now the CNN building, and had a
great lunch and a great interview, with
the exception of waitress and busboy
interruptions. The interview appeared
in The Best of FilmFax, Issue
#9. Now a lot of what Frank told me was
in his autobiography, which is quoted in
the book, so your readers are just going
to have to wait for this little
surprise. I would suggest to all of
your readers if they can go on eBay or
Amazon.com or even order directly from
McFarland that they pick up Frank’s book
They Still Call Me Junior, where
he recalls in his own words his entire
career.
Now William
Benedict was another story. Like Frank,
we struck up a rapport immediately, and
he was so gracious and generous with his
time. As it turns out, he lived in my
neighborhood! Interviewers and
journalists think they’re so damned
smart, but more than they wish to
realize, the answers are sitting right
under their noses, and Billy Benedict
was one of those for me. At the end of
our Hungry Tiger interview, we had
pretty much coordinated the proximity of
how close we lived, and he said to me
with a complete straight face, “The next
time you drive down my street throw a
brick through my window and come on in
for a visit!” Frank invited my wife and
myself, as well as my friend John
Antosiewicz and his then wife Linda to a
Sons of the Desert banquet in the late
80s, and Billy was in attendance for
that. So was Hal Roach and Sunshine
Sammy Morrison from the East Side Kids.
We also went to an East Side Kids film
festival at the Vista Theater in
Hollywood, where Huntz Hall was reunited
with Billy, and after the screenings and
a Q and A, we went across the street to
the Acapulco Restaurant and had dinner
with Huntz and Billy.
CG:
Republic did consider
doing a Superman serial in
1940. I can only imagine how great that
work would have been with the talents of
the Lydeckers. What were the factors in
Republic holding back? And
from what I understand, Republic went
with an alternative serial, The
Mysterious Doctor Satan.
JAH:
Legal squabbles. In their contracts,
Republic always reserved the right to
change whatever they needed to suit
their serials. Bill Whitney wrote that
he and John English were highly
enthusiastic about this serial, in his
autobiography. D.C. probably wanted to
exert their own control on what was done
with their character. So it is most
likely that they came to loggerheads
over this, and money could have been an
issue as well. After Republic had
produced The Adventures of Captain
Marvel, according to Bill Whitney,
D.C. tried to stop the project. As Bill
Whitney reported in his autobiography,
he was deposed about who was borrowing
from whom in terms of the concept of
Captain Marvel vs. Superman. As Whitney
recalled in his autobiography, he
thought that Captain Marvel and Superman
had both ripped off Popeye the Sailor
Man. Superman runs into a phone booth
and changes from Clark Kent into
Superman. Billy Batson says the magic
word ‘Shazam’ and turns into Captain
Marvel. Popeye the Sailor Man cracks
open a can of spinach, and turns into
both of them! So in the end, I guess it
was all down to a can of spinach! Leo
Gorcey in the Bowery Boys called
espionage agents ‘espinach agents.’ The
malaprop didn’t turn Leo into anybody
other than Leo! There was to be
animated robots attacking the township
of Metropolis. It was rumored that Tom
Tyler was up for the Superman role.
This single event would have changed the
history of all three characters. Enough
said.
CG:
Thugs and henchmen were key to scores of
plots in serials. There are too many to
name, but standout thugs and henchmen
come to mind, Kenne Duncan,
Anthony Warde, I. Stanford Jolley,
Hal Taliaferro, John Merton, Lane
Bradford, Bud Geary, Robert Wilke
and Roy Barcroft.
Duncan was dubbed as a mean looking
Hopalong Cassidy or
William Boyd. Kenne had 120 film
credits with Republic and
22 of those in serials. Could you
elaborate a little on Kenne’s life and
career?
JAH:
Kenne was the go-to villain. He was an
amazing actor that ended up at Republic
because he got more screen time there.
His first serial was Flash Gordon’s
Trip to Mars at Universal, and he
can be seen in Buck Rogers for
Universal. In my travels I ran into
people that knew him, and they said he
was a great guy. He ended up doing
pictures for Ed Wood and passed away in
1972. Ed Wood held a memorial for him,
at his house in North Hollywood by the
pool. He was one of the unsung villains
and should have gotten a better shake in
Hollywood. One of my all time
favorites.
CG: The
Lydecker Brothers masterfully created
spectacular aerial battles, explosions
and crashes down to the minutest detail,
in such Republic films as
The Flying Tigers, The Fighting
Seabees and Sands of
Iwo Jima with John Wayne.
These films were physically demanding
for the actors. How involved were the
brothers in choreographing the scenes,
and what was their commitment to the
safety and welfare of the cast in these
films?
JAH:
The Lydecker Brothers were hands-on.
They went through every scene with every
actor involved to ensure that safety was
first. Richard Webb and John Agar give
testimony to this in the book. Safety
was always first. 
CG: You
shared a quote with me from your late
friend, actor John Agar
that said, “It’s what you don’t see
that scares you; the implication of what
could happen that is terrifying.”
That is from first hand experience and
an enormous tribute to the Lydecker
Brothers wouldn’t you say? It defines
greatness in their work on such ‘edge
of your seat’ classic serials as
Darkest Africa,
Daredevils of The Red Circle, Spy
Smasher, Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc.,
Captain Marvel, The Masked
Marvel, Captain America, Zorro’s Black
Whip, and many more.
JAH:
No, I wouldn’t say that. The
fact of the matter is, John was
not referring to Republic serials in any
way, shape, or form. I knew John Agar
from 1986 until his death in 2002, and
had breakfast with him almost every
Saturday during that period of time.
One morning I came into breakfast having
suffered a severe bout of insomnia, and
I was bitching about some slasher film
that I was trying to watch to send me
off to dreamland. I think I made the
comment that dammit they show everything
now, and there is nothing left to the
imagination. Any my meaning was, the
audience does not get to participate.
There was no imagination left to the
audience, having seen the horrendous
deed
in full color and stereophonic sound.
That’s when he made that comment. Such
things were not allowed at Republic, and
the Lydeckers never engaged in those
kinds of
effects.
CG: Did
Republic give the ladies
and heroines their due in the serials?
One of my favorites is Kay
Aldridge from Perils of
Nyoka with Clayton Moore,
Charles Middleton, Lorna Gray,
William Benedict and
Tristram Coffin.
JAH: Of
course. Republic was way ahead of its
time in including the fairer sex in
action pictures, western pictures,
musical pictures. They had to get in
there and be rough and tumble with the
boys, with Linda Sterling, Lorna Gray,
and others leading the way. Even though
it was grueling for the ladies, they
gave equal time and equal merit to their
talents.
CG:
Kane Richmond, star of the
terrific, action packed Republic
serial Spy Smasher playing
twin brothers Alan and Jack Armstrong
had a good amount of film work prior to
the serial. He even played one of the
Four Horsemen in Knute
Rockne All American. With his
leading man good looks and talent, you’d
think his career would really take off.
But after 1948, he refrained from
acting. Did Kane Richmond ever come to
appreciate his place in serial history?
JAH:
Absolutely not. He expressed
disappointment to my friend Jerry
Mezerow at a convention in the 70s, that
his career had gone no further than a
handful of B films, slight appearances
in A films, and serials.
CG: The
seven foot long dummy used in
Captain Marvel was brought out
from the Republic once
again for King of the Rocket Men
(Tristram Coffin), Radar Men From
The Moon (George Wallace), and
Zombies From The Stratosphere
(Judd Holdren) were big hits for
Republic with the Lydecker Brothers once
again providing the action. How did this
serial inspire a TV series, and please
sew a thread between Coffin, Wallace and
Holdren?
JAH:
There’s no thread to be sewn. Each
player had their own unique
interpretation of the Rocket Man roles
they were given. As to the dummy, if
you read my book you might come to the
conclusion that after 8 ½ years a
papier-mache dummy wouldn’t be worth a
hoot. The bottom line is I (and this is
speculation) believe they built an
altogether different dummy for Rocket
Man. Even though it cost the studio
more money, papier-mache and wire decays
over the years. If you look at Captain
Marvel and the Rocket Man work, you’ll
see that Rocket Man has no arch in his
back, as the Captain Marvel dummy did.
But once again, this is only speculation
on my part.

CG: And
finally, was there anyone in the
Lydecker family who was a good source
for the book?
JAH:
Yes, George, who I met at Hollywood High
School in 1966 when we were doing a play
called Plain and Fancy (which was more
plain than fancy.). He was on the sound
crew; I was operating the Strong Trouper
Follow Spot. Bob Burns was absolutely
vital to this project. He opened up his
files and he and his wife Kathy were
what I called the spiritual backbone of
the project. Earl Blair, the former
supervisor of Nostalgia Merchant, was a
great source, as was Jerry Mezerow, Jim
Plummer, and all the other
aforementioned people who I have quoted
in the book. This project was done in a
most intense way, as I didn’t have the
luxury of years to put this together.
Between the first written word and the
production of the book, we spent 122
days on it. But the aim is never
achieved without suffering, as so many
wise men have said.
CG:
Jan, I can’t thank you enough for taking
the time to get the Glass House Presents
audience informed and ready for this
book that I can’t wait to get my hands
on!
JAH:
Carl, I hope you and your readers enjoy
the book!
August 2010
The Moody Blues
Live
Lovely To See You
Image 2005
The Moodies toured
this year, so if you missed them, you
can hope they put out a DVD collection
culled from their tour, or you can pop
this highly satisfying show into your
player. On The Threshold of a Dream
was released in the spring of 1969,
which contained the title track of this
DVD, but the Moodies have traveled a
long road since this almost
four-decade-old track was popular.
They’ve lost two members (Mike Pinder in
1978, and Ray Thomas, who retired at the
turn of the twenty-first century), and
have carried on quite nicely with a
series of backup musicians. For this
incarnation, they have employed two new
members, Norda Mullen (flute, vocals,
and guitar) and Bernadette Barlow
(vocals and keyboards), as well as long
time collaborators Paul Bliss
(keyboards) and Gordon Marshall (drums).
This gig was
recorded at the Greek Theater in Los
Angeles, California, and has the notable
concert favorites along with some lesser
known gems. The first of these blue
nuggets is from In Search of the Lost
Chord. “The Actor” is a rarity
which may have been performed here for
the first time. The next seldom heard
track is “Forever Autumn,” from the non-Moodies
album War of the Worlds, a
concept LP by Jeff Wayne released in the
70s.
But the highlight
of these little-heard live tunes is
Graham Edge’s From Our Children’s
Children’s Children opener, “Higher
and Higher.” When this record was first
released in the fall of 1969, we used to
giggle ourselves into convulsions when
Edge would sing the line, “10 billion
butterfly sneezes,” and to watch Edge
dance around while reciting this
never-before rendered song is worth the
price of admission - proof being that
veteran cosmic rockers do have a sense
of humor. While there are no orchestras
backing the lads on this outing, the
band is in top form, and delivers as the
Moodies always do.
So get out your
tie-die T shirts, brew up some green
tea, put out a plate of Buddha
biscuits, sit back and relax - for this
is the soundtrack of our lives, brought
to us once again by the Moody Blues.
June 2008
Just in from Jan Alan Henderson:
For those
of you who missed the Classic Sci-Fi
Universal box sets 1&2, There’s good
news. Universal, on Tuesday, May 13th
released 1&2 as a combined set
of 10 Classic Sci-Fi films on one disc
at all major outlet stores. Included in
this set are:
Tarantula (1955, 81 min.)
John Agar, Mara Corday, Leo G.
Carroll
The Mole People (1956, 78 min.)
John Agar, Cynthia Patrick, Hugh
Beaumont,
Alan Napier
The Incredible Shrinking Man
(1957, 81 min.)
Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April
Kent,
Raymond Bailey
The Monolith Monsters (1957, 76
min.)
Lola Albright, Grant Williams, Les
Tremayne
Monster on the Campus (1958, 76
min)
Arthur Franz, Joanna Cook Moore,
Judson Pratt,
Whit Bissell
Dr.
Cyclops (1940, 78 min) in
COLOR!
Albert Dekker, Thomas Coley, Janice
Logan, Paul Fix
Cult of the Cobra (1955, 80 min)
Faith Domergue, Richard Long,
Marshall Thompson,
Kathleen Hughes, William Reynolds,
David Janssen
The Land Unknown (1957, 79 min)
Jock Mahoney, Shirley Patterson,
William Reynolds
The Deadly Mantis (1957, 79 min)
Craig Stevens, William Hopper
The Leech Woman (1960, 77 min)
Coleen Gray, Grant Williams, Phillip
Terry, Gloria Talbot
GEORGE
OLLIVER
ALWAYS LOOKING UP!
It’s a December night in
1966, and I’m standing in line outside
The Hullabaloo with friends, waiting to
see this week’s offering of musical
entertainment. The Hullabaloo, formerly
the Earl Carroll Theatre, became The
Moulin Rouge, and went Rock and Roll in
December of 1965, thanks to KRLA disc
jockey Dave Hull (the Hullabalooer). The
first event staged at The Hullabaloo was
the KRLA Beat Awards twelve months
before, and the word on the street was
this nightclub was bigger, better, and
allowed all ages admission. Later The
Hullabaloo became The Kaleidoscope for a
brief period, and then played host to
the Midnight Special television
show, which was MC’d by the late DJ
Wolfman Jack.
The original house band was The Palace
Guard, which by this time had been
replaced by The Yellow Payges and The
East Side Kids. Both bands produced
albums and singles, most notably The
East Side Kids single “Take a Look in
the Mirror,” which at the time I
couldn’t get enough of. The club had a
roving cast list of headliners, which
included The Seeds with their hit single
“Pushin’ Too Hard,” The Music Machine w ith
their local hit “Talk, Talk,” Love with
their atomic blast-off “7 and 7 Is,” and
The Iron Butterfly with their hit “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”
That December night, we were lined up to
see The Mandala, a Canadian group that
had caused a great stir at the Whiskey A
Go-Go the month before. None of us had
heard of The Mandala, but we got word
through the grapevine that it was an act
that would truly blow our minds. We
filed in and took our seats. The usual
opening acts were announced and came out
on the revolving stage. After sets by
the Yellow Payges and phenomenal East
Side Kids, the announcer asked the crowd
to put their hands together and welcome
the fabulous Mandala from Toronto,
Canada. The lights dimmed, the stage
revolved, the curtains opened, and like
a pin-striped lightning bolt out of the
darkness came The Mandala, pumping the
tightest rhythm and blues soul barrage
onto the tripping Hollywood hipsters,
propelling these happy hippies into
another dimension beyond their drug
addled states.
The
heavens opened up that night for these
concert goers. First off, this wasn’t
the music of the Sunset Strip, this was
a music from the founding fathers and
mothers of the root of all Rock and
Roll. Their versions of Aretha
Franklin’s “Respect,” and James Brown’s
“Think”, were stellar renditions, topped
by their own compositions “Opportunity”
and “Lost Love,” “Opportunity” was a
narrative, especially aimed at the Los
Angeles audience with its opening line
“We came three thousand miles from
Canada to L.A. to get our opportunity.”
The message wasn’t lost on the audience
that night. “Lost Love” was the
universal story of unrequited love
pushed to the max by the tightest band
to grace the Hullabaloo stage.
At the center of this was lead singer
George Olliver’s dancing, augmented by
Carmello Palumbo’s strobe light madness
and Dominic Troiano’s burning guitar.
Olliver’s voice hit notes not heard
before in the mayhem of 60s psychedelia
and the rhythm section of Don Elliot on
bass and Whitey Glan on drums (whose
bass drum was turned upwards) provided a
sound totally unlike anything the Sunset
Stripsters had heard before. This,
coupled with Josef Chirowski’s massive
organ stylings, was a bastion of light
that engulfed and transformed the
teeny-boppers into what The Mandala
called “The Soul Crusade.” If this
wasn’t enough, the band literally
brought the audience on stage to testify
to the meaning of soul. This was an
experience that has yet to be equaled in
the history of Pop Music, or any other
kind of music for that matter. This was
a monumental evening for all in
attendance; a religious experience if
you like.
As I filed out of the Hullabaloo with
the crowd, my first thought was to go to
Wallich’s Music City to grab The
Mandala’s single “Opportunity” and “Lost
Love,” which I did sometime later. I
must have played that record a couple
thousand times, reliving that evening’s
“Soul Crusade.”
A few months later I heard that The
Mandala’s strobe light had been swiped
by a schoolmate of mine. This was
alarming to me, as the strobe gave
visual punctuation to the show, and now
my friend was melting his mind and eyes
with this potent device. The Mandala
were due to return in the spring of 1967
for more local dates, so I devised a
plan for its return without
repercussions to my friend. The plan was
set in place by a family friend who was
an operative for the Nick Harris
Detective Agency, who contacted The
Mandala’s PR firm in the U.S.,
Contemporary Public Relations in Beverly
Hills, who would then in turn contact
the Mandala’s manager Randy Martin, and
arrange a date and time to retrieve the
strobe light. All the kid had to do was
place the machine in the alley in back
of the Hullabaloo thirty minutes before
Randy Martin and Carmello Pulumbo would
be there to pick it up. No harm, no
foul. It went off without a hitch!
A few days later, the phone rang. It was
my friend from Nick Harris Agency,
telling me that The Mandala wanted to
meet me. I asked with great hesitancy if
I could bring two of my Soul Crusade
friends. The answer was yes, much to my
surprise, and a few days later in a
Beverly Hills hotel the meeting took
place. We were met by manager Randy
Martin and Carmello Palumbo.
Pleasantries and thanks were exchanged,
and soon we ended up in Don Troiano’s
room, and someone brought in a newly
purchased copy of Sergeant Pepper’s
Lonely Heart’s Club Band. As we were
leaving, Randy Martin stopped us in the
hallway and asked us if we would like to
hand out some flyers for the upcoming
Mandala gigs. You didn’t have to ask us
twice! Randy pulled out a roll of bills
and gave us a hundred bucks. We were in
heaven, ‘cause we would have done the
job for nothing - and believe me, we
went out and hustled those flyers like
mad!
At this juncture, I should mention my
two friends. Hank Dandini and the late
Gilbert Santana were front and center at
the Hullabaloo for The Mandala’s
spectacular multi-night engagement. And
we were brought up on stage to testify
and dance the night away. Heady stuff
for 16 year olds enamored with the
mighty Mandala.
George left The Mandala in 1967, and
started George Olliver’s Children. In
1969, he recorded an album with a band
called Natural Gas. In 1970, George
could be found gigging with the Toronto
band The Royals. In the 1980s, George
owned the Blue Note Night Club, which
played host to R&B luminaries as well as
giving George a home stage for his own
performances. He cut two albums,
Dream Girl, and Live at the Blue
Note during this period.

After all these years, The Mandala still
reverberates in my mind. Early this
year, a close friend passed away and
through a set of circumstances I got
back in touch with Hank Dandini, and we
reminisced about the old days, including
The Mandala. A few days later, while
trolling the internet, I came across
www.ErickNelson.net
which featured
postings about George Olliver and The
Mandala. George is still doing music in
Canada, and has given his life to the
Lord. On top of that, he has put out
two of the most dynamic inspirational
CDs on the planet. The collection is a
riveting soul workout that showcases
George’s golden voice, that has all the
soul that was present in The Mandala’s
Soul Crusade days, only more so. The
twelve piece band is an accomplished,
tight tuneful outfit that is funkified
to the max, yet handles ballads with an
emotional sensitivity that is seldom
heard these days.

The companion CD is George’s studio
outing called George Olliver’s Gospel
Soul - Look Up. With a lot of the
same musicians involved in the project,
the music is top flight and a cut above
the run of the mill Christian rock
that’s out there. This music is full of
love, goodwill toward man, faith, and
hope that is so very lacking in today’s
society, and was the basis of the Soul
Crusade of The Mandala.
We have George Olliver to thank for not
only providing inspirational music, but
keeping the dynasty of The Mandala
alive! George can be contacted at
www.georgeolliver.com - and whatever
you do, say it with Soul!
May 2008
The
Man Who Named Speeding Bullet
As of 6 pm Pacific Daylight Time, I have
just been informed that my good friend
Dave Stevens, who designed the cover of
Cult Movies #14, has passed
away after a long battle with leukemia.
He came up with the idea of calling it
Speeding Bullet. Originally
this was to be entitled George
Reeves, The Man, The Myth, The Mystery,
which became the subtitle.
I met Dave in 1986 in a friend's home,
with Yvette Vickers, when Yvette became
part of Nyck Varoom's Tomb and did
upwards of 18 gigs with us as a guest
vocalist. I remember the first time
that Yvette played with us at the Zombie
Zoo, and Dave coming and showing his
support not only for Yvette but for the
band. She sang my song "Leeches" on
stage with us that evening. I hadn't
seen Dave in many years, but he went on
to great things with his Rocketeer
comics, and his loving care of Bettie
Page. In my mind, for his contribution
of the title Speeding Bullet, I
can owe him no greater gratitude than
contributing to the success of this
project. He was a great friend, and
shall forever be missed by me and the
people who knew him.
In our lives, if we live long enough, we
experience grief, failure, and death.
To me, Dave Stevens was a consummate
professional, an innovative creator (The
Rocketeer), and an all around good
guy that never succumbed to the star
trip mentality. To me, this is truly a
loss of a great friend, and there shall
never be another who will walk in his
shoes.
God bless Dave Stevens, and may his
memory serve as an example to all of us
who wish to touch the heavens.
Jan Alan Henderson
March 2008
IN SEARCH OF THE LOST CHORD
Deluxe
Edition 2006
The Moody
Blues
So much has
changed, yet so much remains the same.
Technology has made our world a faster place,
and in some ways it’s robbed us of our
humanity. Some of us pine for the Sixties, but
fail to realize that our days of future may have
passed us by. It was a simpler time, so it’s
hard to believe that four decades have passed
since the summer of 1968. For sure, 2008 is a
different world, but strangely the same as
1968. We still are on involved in wars
overseas, we still are on the oil standard, and
there is still enough violence to fill every
neighborhood.
The spring of
‘68 had the Beatles telling us a tale of woe in
“Lady Madonna,” Richard Harris was watching
Jimmy Webb’s layer cake melt in the rain in the
opus “MacArthur Park,” while The Zombies were
contemplating the cosmic calendar with “Time of
the Season.” Summer unfolded with the
refurbished Iron Butterfly’s own take on the
Garden of Eden fable, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and
the Moody Blues were searching for their “Lost
Chord.” After they gained fame with Days of
Future Past, the Moodies were presented with
the challenge of producing a follow-up album,
which would be no mean feat considering the
world wide acclaim of Days.
On this second
offering, the Moodies took a self-reliant
approach, abandoned the orchestra, and played
every note themselves (on 31 instruments). The
result? A classic.
From the
opening “Departure” to the last note of “Om,”
The Moodies found their Lost Chord and gave the
world a soundtrack of the times that will never
be forgotten.
The two disc
Deluxe edition (re-released in 2006 by Universal
Music Company) features “The Lost Chord” in
remixed stereo, and the 5.1 version is culled
from the 1972 quadrophonic mix by Moodies
long-time producer Tony Clarke and engineer
Derek Varnals. The 5.1 version reveals nuances
that were barely audible on the standard
version, and a sonic dimension that transports
the listener into that four decade timezone rich
with shimmering guitars, regal mellotrons, and
angelic voices in the sky.
Disc Two is
loaded with alternate mixes, out takes, and BBC
Radio broadcasts, all of which see the light of
day for the first time on this Deluxe Edition.
For those
familiar with the Moodies, this collection is a
must-have. For newcomers, the Definitive
volumes released in 1996 might be a better bet.
One thing is
certain: In Search of the Lost Chord
is a progressive rock classic.
More than
highly recommended!
March 2008
AMAZING
JOURNEY
THE STORY OF THE WHO
If the Beatles wanted to
hold your hand and the Stones wanted to burn
your town, the Who want to tell you about their
generation and then drive a limo into their
hotel swimming pool. And who could blame them if
they nailed all the furniture to ceilings of
their hotel rooms? Touring can make anyone
crazy.
But there is so much more
to it than that, and things are not always what
they appear to be. Sure, there’s plenty of road
craziness tales, but within this two DVD set the
viewer is treated to the full story, told here
for the first time ever in all its glory.
Amazing Journey is
seen through the eyes of Pete Townshend, Roger
Daltrey (the two surviving members of the
original lineup), Chris Stamp (original
manager), Glyn Johns (Engineer/Producer), and
long time minder Bill Curbishley. From their
fledgling days as The Detours, and The High
Numbers when the late Kit Lambert and Chris
Stamp stumbled upon the quartet in the Railway
Hotel’s pub back room (while looking for a band
to illustrate the mod phenomenon for their
unfinished film) The Who have always been
maximum excitement. Proof is the two existing
songs included here for the first time, which
demonstrate that The Who have always been a
powerhouse unit.
Notwithstanding, there are
some tender moments which especially reveal Pete
and Roger, but also how important John
Entwhistle and Keith Moon were to the band. It
would be an understatement to say this would be
the definitive rockumentary on The Who, because
just when you think you’ve seen or heard it all,
the show delivers another Who fact that’s new to
the general public. There are also plenty of
insights from family members, and a plethora of
rare footage to entice one into multiple
viewings—and this is just the first disc.
Disc Two is comprised of
Six Quick Ones, a detailed bio of each of
the original members, plus features such as
Who Art You and Who’s Back, by famed
film makers D.A. Pennebaker, Nick Dobb, and
Chris Hegedus. Who’s Back glimpses The
Who at work in the recording studio on a track
called “Real Good Looking Boy.” Backed by such
stellar players as drummer Zak Starkey, bassist
Greg Lake (from King Crimson and Emerson Lake
and Palmer), keyboardist John “Rabbit” Bundrick,
and Pete’s brother Simon Townshend on guitar.
The Scrapbook
segment is a five part essay of some of The
Who’s most memorable and infamous moments. The
standout of these five parts is “Dinner With
Moon”—it’s simply hilarious.
For Who fans, this DVD
collection is a must; for the curious, this is a
mighty fine introduction to the legendary Who.
March 2008
GEORGE WALLACE INTERVIEW
BY JAN ALAN HENDERSON in JULY, 1997
Sitting
in the Oriental Theatre in Hollywood, California
in 1957, a crowd of Saturday Matinee kids are
cheering the latest
Rocketman
serial offering. The Oriental was a second-run
movie house, and this week debuts the first
chapter of the newly reissued serial Radar
Men from the Moon, introducing a new
character,
Commando
Cody. Some of the kids are confused. Hadn't
they seen Commando Cody on television? And
didn't the TV Commando wear a "Lone Ranger"
mask? In 1957 there were no film magazines
providing serial chronologies, and more often,
audiences saw series pictures out of sequence.
Rocketman was
created by Republic Pictures in 1949, and
brought to life by special effects wizards
Howard and Theodore Lydecker. King of the
Rocketmen was the first entry of the
quartet, mostly a crime drama with science
fiction overtones.
Radar Men from the Moon,
the second serial, was an 'Earth invades the
Moon, to prevent the Moon from invading the
Earth.' Radar Men sported two debuts,
Commando Cody in the person of George Wallace,
and the premiere of
Commando Cody's rocketship (which is in the last
three Rocketman films.
The last Rocketman
serial was Zombies of the Stratosphere
(Republic 1952), and a year later, Commando
Cody, Sky Marshall of the Universe was
released to the theaters as twelve 26-minute
featurettes in 1955. It premiered again on
television on NBC, as syndicated episodes run
and rerun on Saturday mornings. Both starred the
late Judd Holdren.
George Wallace was born
June 8 1917 in New York City. Raised in New
Jersey, he spent eight years in the Navy, and
saw action in both Pacific and European
theaters. After the service, Wallace made his
home in Hollywood, and began his show business
career. Wallace’s first cinematic appearance was
in Submarine Command (1951), quickly
followed by roles in such film favorites as
The Fat Man (1951), The Big Sky
(1952), The Million Dollar Mermaid
(1952), Destry (1954), The French Line
(1954), Night of the Hunter (1955),
Forbidden Planet (1956), Texas Across the
River (1966), Skin Game (1971),
The Stuntman (1980), Things Are Tough All
Over (1982), Protocol (1984), Just
Between Friends (1986), Punchline
(1988), Postcards From the Edge (1990),
Rage in Harlem (1991), Defending Your
Life (1991), and My Girl (1994).
George Wallace had a stage
career that is as extensive as his movie career.
When a New York production of Pajama Game
needed a replacement for John Riatt, George
Wallace filled the role. On Broadway, he also
appeared in Pipe Dream by Rogers and
Hammerstein (which was his Broadway debut),
and New Girl in Town with Thelma
Ritter. With his wife, Jane Johnston, he
appeared in Hal Prince's Company. (He met
Jane during the production of Most Happy
Fella.) He appeared in The Jackie
Robinson Story, with David Allen Greer in
the title role.
So, here I sit with George
Wallace in his palatial condo overlooking a golf
course, on a breezy July afternoon. With
memories of the Oriental Theater, and my first
exposure to Radar Men to the Moon, I ask
him how he got into show business.
WALLACE: I got into show business in a
very strange way. I was a bartender here in
Hollywood, in a place called the Sand Bar, up
where Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard
meet.
Before that, I was in the
Navy for eight years, during World War II. I
stayed in California after I got out of the
Navy. I took up singing in the Navy. In off
hours, there would be some guys with guitars,
and we would have musical interludes. When I
became a bartender, I used to sing with the
jukebox. The customers would come in and ask for
requests, and tip me a quarter or whatever. One
night a couple people came in, had a drink, and
left. One man gave me his card and said "Call
me tomorrow." It turned out to be a man named
Jimmy Fiddler, who was a famous Hollywood
columnist. He was like the Walter Winchell of
the West Coast. I went to see Jimmy Fiddler, and
he said, "How would you like to sing at a Jewish
benefit?" I said, "I'm not Jewish." He said,
"Who cares?" He introduced me to Mickey Katz,
the father of Joel Gray. Mickey used to play a
wailing clarinet, and he used to play for City
of Hope, and B'nai Brith benefits. Mickey taught
me a couple of songs in Yiddish, and we started
doing all the benefit shows. That's how my
career started.
JAH: You were in
Rock Hudson's first picture, called The Fat
Man?
WALLACE: Yes, that was Rock Hudson's
first film. Rock had been discovered by a
director in Las Vegas, where he was working as a
security guard. I believe this director took him
to Universal, because he was such a tall,
good-looking guy.
I also did The Lawless
Breed with Rock. There was a scene between
an actor by the name of Race Gentry, myself, and
Rock. Rock played an outlaw, who kept a small
pistol in his belt. I'm giving his son a bad
time in a saloon, telling him what a louse his
old man is, and then into the saloon comes
Hudson and a big fight breaks out. After that
picture, I ran into him quite a few times.
JAH: Around this
time, you did some crew work at MGM, didn't
you?
WALLACE: I was a greensman, which they
don't have any more. The greensman was the guy
who looked after all the plants used in the
films. Anything to do with set dressing with
plants or lawns, or what have you. We had our
own nursery on the lot, and grew everything
there from scratch—trees, grass, flowers,
plants—every time you saw a leaf or plant or
anything, that was the greensman's job. I worked
on a movie called The Kissing Bandit,
with Frank Sinatra. There was a big Spanish
lawn. We cut sod that we had grown, three inches
thick, and we laid down this enormous lawn. The
lights in those days were so hot, that the grass
would grow overnight, and we'd have to mow the
grass the first thing in the morning.
I got the
greensman's job because I had left the bar to go to
work at the Florentine Gardens, which was a
Hollywood night spot—and still is. It was owned by a
man named Frank Rooney. I got into bouncing work
because in the Navy I used to box. I was the light
heavyweight champ of the Pacific Fleet from 1939 to
1940. One of the customers was the head of the
Nursery at MGM. He was an ex-Navy man, as I was,
and he said, "Why don't you quit bouncing and come
out to MGM and get a real job!"
JAH: Sounds like you
had quite a detour, before you started acting.
WALLACE:
After the gigs with Jimmy Fiddler, I took singing
lessons. The singing teacher was a friend of
Jimmy's, and after about three months, he said to
me, "You're going to be a famous singer. Now let's
go out and make a lot of money." So the first gig
was an amateur night in Glendale, and I laid a bomb.
It was terrible! After that evening, the teacher
gave up. I started studying with another teacher,
named Lillian Sloan. Jan Clayton, who later played
the mother in the original Lassie series, and
starred in Carousel, was one of her students.
I had a great arrangement worked out with her. She
knew I had been a greensman at Metro, and at the
time her husband was getting on in years and ailing,
so she asked me if I would take care of the grounds
around their home for two free lessons a week. She
said, "I think you have talent, and I'd like to try
to bring it out." For four years, I trained. She
also recommended that I take drama classes, and find
out about acting. So on my GI Bill of Rights, I went
to dramatic school at Ben Barnes Dramatic School in
Hollywood. Stuart Whitman was in my class, Nicky
Blair, who later became the restaurateur. Ross
Hunter taught classes there.
JAH: You got into
pictures in the early fifties, didn't you?
WALLACE:
Yes, I did. Submarine Command was my first
picture for Columbia in 1951, with Bill Holden,
Nancy Olsen, William Bendix. Holden was a great guy.
Our scenes were filmed aboard an actual submarine at
the Naval Base in San Diego. Holden was easy to work
with, and thoroughly professional. They'd take the
sub out about five miles, with the cast and crew and
the minimum naval personnel. We shot exteriors out
there, as well as doing interiors. One time, the
special effects man was supposed to have two
Japanese bombers come in on either side of the sub.
The effects guy had rigged charges on two booms on
either side of the submarine, so when the planes
made their descent, and dropped their dummy bombs,
there would be explosions. We shot this sequence for
a couple of days, and on the last day, the effects
guy put such a potent charge on these boom arms,
that it shattered glass inside the sub! We had to
quit and go back in for the day, so they could make
repairs on the sub! There wasn't much time for fun,
because we were either on the exterior of the sub,
or we were down inside the sub, filming. With the
equipment and cameras, and just trying to move
around, we were sweaty and hot.
JAH: You did an Esther
Williams picture called Million Dollar Mermaid.
WALLACE:
Victor Mature was in that. It was a circus type
picture, and I played a daredevil pilot, which led
me to be cast in The Big Sky with Kirk
Douglas, directed by Howard Hawks. That was
fantastic; Howard Hawks was one of the greatest
directors who ever worked in Hollywood. My parts
were shot at night, out on the old Fox lot. There
was an old Western street that was kept muddy. It
was all watered down so the wagons and horses had to
pull through it.
Howard Hawks always spoke
softly. If there were a thousand people on the set,
he would still speak softly. I had a scene in a
general store. I was a local tough guy hanging
around. Kirk Douglas comes in and orders some
supplies. Howard had blocked out the scene for me so
while Kirk was at the counter giving his order, I
would come up to him and look him up and down, like
'what the hell are you doing in town?' Just before
Howard called "Action" there was a broom hanging
down, so I took one of the straws out of the broom
and started chewing on it. Howard called "Action," I
walked over to Kirk Douglas, and I walked up to him
and looked at him with the straw in my mouth, walked
away, and " Cut!" So Kirk Douglas went to Howard
Hawks, and after that Howard took me aside, and I
figured, "Oh, boy, I'm in trouble now!" He said,
"The piece you did with the straw, it was just
great. Leave it in! It's wonderful! Only this time,
take a slow count of three while you're sucking on
the straw before you make the turn."
Well, Kirk Douglas had a
magnificent wardrobe in that picture, all leather,
and he was wearing a tiger tooth or something on a
chain around his neck. I go up to Kirk Douglas, and
I'm sucking on the straw. I count a three, and he
takes the tooth he had hanging around his neck on a
chain, and puts it up to his lips. He used my
business to dismiss me.
JAH:
You were the first actor to portray Commando Cody,
Sky Marshall of the Universe, in the Republic serial
classic Radar Men to the Moon.
WALLACE:
My agent at the time was Maureen Oliver, a sweet
little Irish lady who started representing me when I
was in dramatic school. She sent me out to Republic
for a role as a heavy in some new picture they were
doing. So I arrived at 10:00 a.m., and I read for
the producer and director. After I read, they asked
if I had any footage of myself on me. I had just
started in the business, but luckily I had a
Fireside Theater episode with Frank Whizbar,
Isabelle Jewell, Ann Savage, Jim Mitchum (who was
Bob's brother). So I gave them the film and they
said "Hang around, we want to take a look at it." So
after waiting a couple of hours, I began to get a
little upset. I was there till about 3:00, and I was
getting ready to go home. Finally they called me in
and said, "We saw the film. We're doing a serial
called Commando Cody, Sky Marshall of the
Universe, and we think you'd be right for the
part of Commando Cody." Now the part I originally
auditioned for was the heavy in this serial, that
Clayton Moore ended up playing. After playing the
Lone Ranger for four years, Clayton ended up playing
the heavy that I auditioned for.
The funny thing about Clayton
Moore and the whole Lone Ranger thing was,
all the actors I knew, including myself, went out
for that part at the time. That was a massive
casting call. They had us all do the test in the
mask. We'd stand in a corner, with a mask and a
cowboy hat on, and we'd go through this dialogue
with some guy off camera feeding us Tonto lines
like, "We must go to the West now, Kemo Sabe." Damn
silly when you think about it now! I think I went
on the audition for The Lone Ranger when they
were trying to replace Clayton, and Johnny Hart got
it, and did it for one season. You know, I can
empathize with Clay on this, because I never got an
answer why I was never asked back to reprise my
character of Commando Cody in the series of short
films which became the television series, two years
after it was released to theaters in the East. I
think it was because I was doing a play in New York
at the time, and that's how they got Judd Holdren to
do Zombies of the Stratosphere and then carry
on with Commando Cody.
JAH:
One would imagine that making a Republic serial was
a bit more of a physical workout than it was an
acting workout.
WALLACE:
In those days, we accepted these parts for what they
were. We didn't question story, script, motivation
or continuity, that's for sure. To us, it was a job,
and we were thankful to have a job. Radar Men to
the Moon was a physical challenge. All the moon
scenes were shot in Red Rock Canyon, and it was 111
degrees, and here I am in a big leather jacket, with
an aluminum helmet, some kind of rocket packs on my
back, and regular woolen slacks. It seemed
interesting to me that they would costume this
character in regular woolen slacks, which could have
caught fire in the first take-off, rather than
devise some special fireproof pants for their hero.
It was something I was happy to
do. I was just starting in the business, I had a
job, and it was a lead, everybody was great in it,
everybody treated me beautifully.
There
were some difficult special effects sequences, like
when they put me on a platform in front of the
production screen. The platform they built was about
four feet high, and there was a 2x4 that laid flat.
I would lay down on the 2x4, and then the crew would
put the Rocket Man suit on me, and zip up the jacket
around me and the board, so it wouldn't show. As I
recall, we did all of that in one day. I believe
this rear screen projection system was a process
called techna-process. The same process probably
still exists now, under a different name. They took
footage of clouds that had been shot from a plane—I
believe they do it with helicopters today—stock
shots, if you will, and they rear-projected it onto
a cyclorama, and put me on a platform in the Rocket
Man costume in front of it, and I did the flying
sequences.
JAH: What was Roy
Barcroft like?
WALLACE:
Roy was a big, wonderful, moose of a guy! A total
sweetheart. If we were sitting around the set after
a long day, he'd just sit beside you and massage
your neck, and tell you, "Hey George, you're a
little tense today." Roy had a long career at
Republic. He did everything from heroes to heavies
to looping voices, the consummate character man. And
he was just great to be around. Always interested in
how YOU were doing—and that's a rarity these days.
That
huge ray gun I steal from Rettick's laboratory was
heavy as hell out there in that Red Rock sun. The
other thing I remember is the special effects guys
rigging a gun with twine and pulling it out of my
hand in one of the episodes. The Lydecker Brothers
were great to work with. They knew the score. I
remember the miniature of Commando Cody's rocket
ship which is about 3 or 4 feet long, that you see
in its actual size at the end of the show, when it
plows through the window and hits Billy Bakewell in
the stomach. That miniature rocket was flown on sets
that were made to scale by the Lydecker brothers.
The Lydecker brothers had everything down to a
science. If you shot a certain explosion on land or
sea, their techniques would vary between both
situations, right down to how many frames per second
would be shot on a particular gag. Those two guys
were amazing.
I did a good amount of the
takeoffs and landings on the moon surface myself. I
started off doing them in front of the actual
Republic Administration offices. I did that exactly
the way David Sharp did it, by having them bury a
spot trampoline right in front of my intended
takeoff position. Then they had charges wired in the
tanks, with some mattresses on the other side so I
didn't break my neck. I would run, hit the dials,
hit the trampoline and go sailing past the camera,
and land on mattresses on the ground on the other
side. The director said, after we had done a good
amount of these takeoffs, "George, I need to see you
more at an up angle." So I said, "Great, put a
rocket up my ass and I'll see if I can get up that
high for you!" So they incorporated a parallel bar,
so after I hit the trampoline I'd catch the parallel
bar, and give the cameramen the right angle.
These
things were shot out of continuity, so we would have
a takeoff day, and that's all we would shoot, is
takeoffs—my takeoffs and Tom Steele's takeoffs. In
those days, those pictures were put together quicker
than any schedules these days.
I never wore the stunt helmet
for Commando Cody. I wore the full-on helmet. So
when there'd be a fight scene and I'd take a punch,
or I'd fall, or something would collide with that
helmet, I'd hear "Boionnnggg!" The sound of the blow
was magnified inside the helmet. There would always
be a loud ringing in my ears after any blow to the
helmet.
JAH: You worked with
legendary stuntman David Sharp on other shows?
WALLACE:
I knew Davey from so many other films we worked on
together. He was the best stunt man in the business.
He was sensational. He was a wonderful guy, and a
great athlete and acrobat. I heard a story about him
that took place in World War II. He was a
bombardier, and his plane took a hit, and one of the
engines was disabled—it was smoking. The pilot was
trying to take it in for a crash landing out in the
desert somewhere. Davey opened the bombay doors,
precisely judged his jump from the plane, hit the
ground and rolled and tumbled on the ground, and he
was fine. The plane went on ahead of him and
crashed.
JAH: Tell us about Dale
Van Sickel.
WALLACE:
The thing I remember about Dale, is Dale would
choreograph the fights. I did most of my own fights,
under Dale's supervision. In today's terminology,
Dale was the Stunt Coordinator, or at least the
fight stunt coordinator. I had a fight scene with
Clay Moore without the helmet, in a restaurant or
something. Dale set the whole fight up like a
ballet. Well, either Clay threw one when he
shouldn't or I didn't duck in time, but he popped me
in the nose, and laid it over to one side. I kept
right on going, and the director called "Cut!" After
realizing my nose was swelling, they piled me into
the company station wagon and took me over to St.
Joseph's Hospital in Burbank. The doctor gave me a
shot of Novocain, popped my nose back in place. I
was driven back to the lot, and was given a cup of
coffee and a sandwich. After the short lunch, they
told me the remainder of the day's scenes would be
done in the helmet so they wouldn't have to worry
about shooting my proboscis. We did scenes with me
with the helmet on for the next four or five days,
so we wouldn't lose any time because of my swollen
nose.
Tom Steele and I were also in
the James Garner/Lou Gosset, Jr. picture Skin
Game. That just shows you Tom's longevity in the
business.
JAH: What was it like
working with the late Bob Mitchum?
WALLACE:
I did two features with Bob. One was Night of the
Hunter. Charles Laughton directed, Shelley
Winters was in it. Bob Mitchum was the same at home
as he was when the camera rolled. Bob Mitchum was
Bob Mitchum.
I heard a great story about
another picture Bob was on. There was a director on
there who gave the cast and crew a bad time—he was a
screamer. Mitchum comes in one morning, and the
director tells Mitch the scenes they're going to do
first thing that morning. So Mitch asks him again
which scenes they're doing, and the director says,
"Scenes 43, 44, 45." Mitch says, "OK, I'll go study
my sides." The director says, "Study it!? " Bob
says, "Yeah!" The director says, "Wait a minute!
You're supposed to know your lines when you come to
work in the morning. You study at home the night
before!" Mitch says, "Wait a minute, wait a minute!
Nobody pays me to work at home! I get paid when I
come on the set! That's when I learn the dialogue!"
He already knew the dialogue, and he just took a
half hour to teach the director to behave himself!
Mitch had a photographic memory.
I heard there was another
incident when he was up in Colorado doing a Western.
He was at a bar after the shoot one day, with the
crew, and some local comes up to him and says, "Oh,
you're the tough guy from Hollywood." Mitch says,
"Go away, I'm trying to have a drink and relax." The
guy kept baiting Mitch, saying stuff like, "Let's
see how tough you are!" So finally Robert turned
around and cold-cocked him. Next day the headlines
of the local paper read, "Hollywood Actor Assaults
Local!" Two days later, in the same paper, on the
back page, was a small blurb that the guy Mitch
decked was a heavyweight boxing champ in the Army.
JAH: You did a picture
with Jane Russell—Drums Across the River.
WALLACE:
Yes, that picture drew a lot of controversy because
of the dance sequence. It had to be heavily edited
because of the wardrobe. But wardrobe was always a
problem when you had a Jane Russell picture—and I
mean that in the nicest of ways. My wife and I did a
show on Broadway with Jane Russell called Company.
Jane Russell replaced Elaine Stritch. The play ran
for 6 months—the New York audiences loved her. There
was that period in the history of film making right
around the time that Jane had done The Outlaw,
where they'd really hassle you about wardrobe and
provocative dances.
JAH:
You were in the remake of Destry over at
Universal, weren't you? How was Audie Murphy to
work with?
WALLACE:
We shot Destry up in Lone Pine. Audie Murphy
was a very quiet young gentleman. He kept to
himself, didn't make friends. He was dedicated to
acting, always there on time, knew his dialogue. He
always had a thin piece of rope with him, a piece of
rope about two feet long. He'd walk around and tie
knots in this piece of rope, and you could tell he
was going over his dialogue in his head. I got to
know him a little better when we had a scene
together. After the scene, I'm standing there and
he's looking down, tying the rope in knots. He said,
"George," and I said, "Yes, Audie." He said, "The
scene that we just rehearsed—is that the way you're
going to do it in the take?" I said, "Yes, sir,"
realizing the whole time that I'm talking to the
star of the show and getting a little flustered. And
then I muttered, "Yes, I think so." He said, "Uh,
just wanted to know," as he continued tying knots in
the rope. He was putting me on, and as he walked
away he was smiling. It was just his way of having
fun.
While out on location, some of
the guys in the cast and crew found out that you
didn't dare knock on his door after a night of
revelry at 2:30 in the morning or so. If you did,
you could bet on some hot lead coming through the
door! He had a bit of a temper. When I worked with
him, it was hard for me to grasp the fact that he
had killed something like 160 or so of the enemy
during World War II. He did superhuman things like
jump on top of an enemy tank, turn the gun around
and annihilate the enemy crew in their own tank.
From my point of view, I saw this quiet man, just
walking around the set, doing his job.
JAH:
Tell us how you got involved in Forbidden Planet
(1956).
WALLACE:
There was a man named Leonard Murphy who was one of
the top casting guys at MGM. He remembered that I
was a chief boson mate in the Navy. The character in
Forbidden Planet was the boson. Because of
that, I was called into his office, and that’s how I
got the part.
JAH:
The original ending of Forbidden Planet was a
marriage scene, with you conducting the wedding
between Anne Francis and Leslie Nielsen.
WALLACE:
That’s right. We shot that first, as the conclusion
of the picture. Later, the studio heads felt that it
didn’t play well, and cut the scene. They went back
and shot the ending again. It was my understanding
that the wedding scene was not somber enough for the
ending of the picture.
JAH:
That film had a great group of actors in it.
WALLACE;
Most people today think that Leslie Nielsen has
always been a comedian—a comedic actor, that is.
When we did Forbidden Planet, he was a
serious actor—very straight. He did loads of
straight roles after that, both on television and in
the movies, everything from heroes to heavies. He
was excellent at what he did, but when I saw him
doing the comedy things, I couldn’t believe it! It
opened up a whole new career for him.
Walter Pidgeon was a very
distinguished gentleman. He had the air of an
aristocrat and was very nice. He was one of the
reasons why I later appeared on Broadway. (Composer)
Richard Rodgers was on the lot doing Oklahoma.
He came over to visit Walter—they were friends—and
Rodgers mentioned that he was going to do a Broadway
musical called Pipe Dream based on John
Steinbeck’s book Sweet Thursday. Walter told
him, “Well, you should hear George sing! He’s
great!” So one day during my lunch break, I went to
Rodgers’ office—with my Forbidden Planet
costume on—and auditioned for him. I got the part
and, when they finished the movie, I started in
Pipe Dream.
JAH:
Frankie Darro played Robby the Robot.
WALLACE:
In the morning, until the lunch break, Robby the
Robot was great. After lunch, Robby would do his
scenes a little slower. He’d hit his marks, and
finally he’d start falling over. They put up with
that for about three days, then they replaced (Darro).
Frankie Carpenter finished the picture as Robby.
(Marvin Miller provided the voice for Robby.)
JAH:
You appeared with Dean Martin and Joey Bishop in
1966 on a show called Texas Across the River.
WALLACE:
Our call would be 6:30 a.m. We were on location, and
the cast and crew would be sitting around waiting.
Around 9:30, Dean would appear, he would take a golf
bag out of the back of his car, remove a mess of
golf balls, get his driver from the bag and start
hitting them into the middle of nowhere. He's
fooling around and taking his time getting his
makeup done during his golfball hitting ritual, and
around 11:00 a.m. we'd actually start shooting.
There was one scene with Joey
Bishop, who played a character called Cronk. He had
a black wig on. During rehearsal, a guy is supposed
to get shot by an Indian's arrow, and someone was
supposed to come to this guy's aid, and pull out a
knife and cut his pants and take the arrow out of
him so he didn't bleed to death. So during
rehearsal, the guy would make a sound like tearing
cloth, instead of actually cutting the guy's
clothes. When the cameras rolled on the first take,
he made the cutting sound instead of doing the
actual cutting! In the meantime, there's 100 Indians
coming down the hill. So after the poor guy blew the
take, everyone had to go back up the hill, and that
took an hour.
Dean would crack up during the
takes, he'd just look over at Joey Bishop and start
to laugh, so take after take went by, with 100
Indians going back up the hill again! This went on
for hours and hours! The director had a big white
circle around his mouth, from all the antacid
tablets he ate, because he was so upset that they
were doing take, after take, after take! They had
sequences they had to shoot of cattle who were
thirsty, going to a pond and drinking water. And the
cattle, who were anything but thirsty, wouldn't go
near the pond! They tried to throw feed on top of
the water to get the cattle to drink, and the cattle
couldn't have cared less. The poor director was
going out of his mind! The cows just stood there,
and instead of drinking, just mooed at the
wranglers!
JAH:
You worked with James Garner and Louis Gosset, Jr.,
on a classic 70's film called Skin Game.
WALLACE:
That was a classic flim-flam con artist comedy. The
premise of that film was a white guy and a black guy
used the emancipation of the blacks to do certain
shady dealings with slave traders, with both of them
profiting, and cooking up the scams. Lou and Jim
were just great to work with. I played a slave
auctioneer. I had a big handlebar mustache. There I
am, the skin scalper, raffling off Lou Gosset. So
I'm taking bids, and 'round the corner comes John
Brown (a historical character who went around the
country freeing the slaves), with all of his men,
and whips the hell out of me with a horsewhip.
Wallace,
at the time of this interview had just completed
work on a new Warner Brothers sitcom, All Right,
Already, and it would seem that there is no end
to the high-flying adventures of the screen's
original Commando Cody.
In 2005, this writer had the
pleasure of spending time with Mr. Wallace at the
Hollywood Collectibles Show. He was hale and hearty,
but unfortunately things would change quickly.
While on holiday in Pisa, Italy, he was injured in a
fall, and succumbed from complications of this
injury on July 22, 2005.
George was a great guy, a
person you would want to have met and spent time
with. He should always be remembered as a great
character actor, and a great friend, and of course
above all else, the original Commando Cody, Sky
Marshall of the Universe, in a universe that we have
no control over.
February 2008
THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MARVEL
A Republic Serial in 12 Chapters, 1941
Starring Tom Tyler, Frank Coghlan, Jr.,
Louise Curry, William Benedict
Now if I were stranded on a
desert island and I could only see a flick from each
genre of Hollywood's Golden Age, when it came to the
serial department this is the one I'd reach for
every time. This could be the best sound serial ever
made, and I know some would be willing to debate
this point, but CAPTAIN MARVEL has everything a
serial should have, and a little more.
The story is a simple one: An
archeological expedition in Siam locates the tomb of
the Golden Scorpion, who was a symbol of the god
Scorpio. This golden idol had the power to transform
mere granite to solid gold, as well as wielding a
mean death ray that could melt mountains, and cause
small explosions and earthquakes. Each member of the
expedition except for the wise but youthful Billy
Batson (effectively played by Frank Coghlin, Jr.),
is given a lens from this curio to safeguard. Soon
after, the party is attacked by the dastardly
Scorpion, and his Siamese/Arabic henchmen.
Back in the tomb, Billy Batson
was paid a visit by a wiser-than-wise man, Shazam
(Nigel DeBrulier), who pronounces him the new
Captain Marvel, whose duty it is to protect the
Golden Scorpion from evil-doers. This origin of
Captain Marvel of the films is far different than
the comic book origin of Captain Marvel, which took
place in an abandoned subway tunnel.
The camp, after taking flaming
spears and a wicked machine gun barrage, evacuates,
leaving Billy to try out his new powers, showing the
Scorpion's henchmen who's the boss by generally
putting on a one-man annihilation expedition. This
is some of the most thrilling serial footage ever
shot, and the flying sequences (staged by the
legendary Lydecker Brothers), mixed with the stunt
work by the amazing Dave Sharpe, have never been
duplicated, either by the ROCKETEER or the modern
day Christopher Reeves SUPERMANs.
Some of CAPTAIN MARVEL's
methods may be considered too violent for today's
politically correct audiences. The fact that Captain
Marvel thinks nothing of picking up his enemies'
machine gun and using it to mow them down, holding
his antagonist over a bed of nails, or throwing them
off cliffs, through doors (preferably closed!), or
pulling their escaping elevator back up to the top
floor of a multilevel garage and terrorizing them,
might offend some. For action/adventure
hounds, this is the lure.
William Benedict and Louise
Curry are effective yet restrained in their
portrayals of Captain Marvel's sidekicks. John
Davidson adds Eastern intrigue in his portrayal of
the archeological expedition's only Siamese member.
Each of these twelve chapters
never fails to thrill. This is well photographed,
beautifully directed, serial fare at its best. If
you've never seen a movie serial, we would recommend
that this be your first outing into the genre.

January 2008
THE BLACK DAHLIA AVENGER

by
Steve Hodel
Reviewed By Jan A Henderson
Death, the largest of all life’s mysteries—the
unsolvable conclusion, the bringer of grief and
pain. The death of a parent or a child leaves family
members devastated with uncontrollable anguish. Most
families begin the comforting with stories of the
lost loved one, often reminiscing over photographs.
But what if the process of grief revealed that the
dearly departed had led a life that even the closest
family members were unaware of? What if the loved
one’s effects became a treasure trove of evidence
that would unveil secrets so deep, so dark, so
unbelievable, that truth in reality would be
stranger than fiction? Add the backdrop of 1940s Los
Angeles, artist, actors, and hedonistic life styles,
highly trained medical professionals, booze, drugs,
and what do you have? You have the journey that
Steve Hodel began May 17, 1999; a journey that would
lead Mr. Hodel to the most famous of all murder
mysteries in Los Angeles history, “The Black
Dahlia;” a mystery whose roots are firmly implanted
in the Hodel family tree.
The irony of this
is that of all the people in the universe that this
could have happened to, it was Steve Hodel, who just
happens to have had an extensive career in law
enforcement (over 23 years as a homicide detective
at Hollywood Division, as well as a patrol officer
on robbery detail for the LAPD, and a private
investigator). If the saying is true that lightning
never strikes twice in the same place, the saying is
wrong in Mr. Hodel’s case because the object of his
search is none other than his most revered father,
Dr. George Hodel! At this point, most folks would
have had a mega-meltdown and would seek out the
nearest mental health care professional, but not
Steve Hodel. Instead, he began a cathartic
quest which produced one of the most compelling true
crime tomes of the new millennium. Meticulously
researched (both visual evidence and documentation),
Black Dahlia Avenger was not only a compelling
page-turner but an obsessive read for this reviewer.
This is due to the fact that each revelation was so
shocking that the reader assumes that the
information is so horrible that it can’t be topped,
and that’s where the literary rug gets pulled out
from under them.
This reviewer read
the first edition of Black Dahlia Avenger (in
hardback from Arcade Books 2003) several years ago
and was thoroughly mesmerized. But this Harper
paperback edition has so many additions and updates
and corrections, that this is the version that true
crime fans will want in their libraries.
Steve Hodel’s
writing style is both informative and innovative,
and the reader will feel that they are a part of the
investigation as they are propelled through the
seedy streets of Los Angeles of the late 1940s.
There’s a Who’s Who
list of Los Angeles and Hollywood heavyweights, and
a James Ellroy Forward that proclaims “Now we know
who killed her and why.” Even Thad Stefan (a former
LAPD, LASD, and private investigator who Helen
Bessolo hired to find out who killed her son George
Reeves) makes an appearance in the Dahlia fable.
There aren’t enough
words to recommend this highly acclaimed book. I can
only say for this writer…it blew the top of my head
off!
January 2008
ATOMIC TERRORISTS OR
MONSTERS OF THE ID
AND BEYOND?
Part Two
By Jan Alan Henderson
At the end of World War II, it seemed
the nation was singing "Happy Days Are Here Again"
while the forces of evil on both sides were massing
for a secret attack. The security that our soldiers
fought and died for has always been fleeting at best
(no fault of these gallant men and women who gave
their lives). But as the late 40s and early 50s
prove, we as a civilization split more than the
atom.
The "P" word (paranoia) silently
dominated the American psyche. Suddenly there were
communists, leftover Nazis, bug-eyed monsters from
space, and atomic war mutants rampaging across
cinema screens. Here are a few examples of atomic
terror and other fallout in the late 40s to the
not-so-nifty 50s. The parallels between today’s
headlines and those of yesterday prove nothing has
changed.
The Purple Monster Strikes
Republic,
1945, 15 chapters.
Leave it to Republic Pictures to
stage one of the first low budget (yet highly
effective due to the Lydecker Brother’s special
effects) "invasion from another planet" flick.
Veteran Western and serial actor Roy Barcroft plays
the chief alien, who upon landing on planet Earth,
kills one of America’s leading scientists, and
animates his body to carry out his dastardly deeds,
as a vanguard for an invasion from planet Mars.
Republic had the forethought to stage
this kiddie paranoia the same year World War II
ended. Was this merely a coincidence? Or had the
atomic age really begun quite innocently at Saturday
matinees (and quite brutally on the world stage)?
A fun serial for people who haven’t
seen it, with Linda Sterling and Dennis Moore in
support of Barcroft and the animated corpse of James
Craven.
Out of print, Republic Video
The Monster and the Ape
Columbia 1945, 15 chapters
Enemy agents out to steal a super
robot powered by an element called "metalogen"
must have terrified post-war preschoolers, but
this wouldn’t draw flatulence in contemporary times.
While this has better production values and superior
photography from most of the Columbia serials, the
premise is flimsy, and probably didn’t hold water in
1945.
The best thing in the serial is Ray "Crash"
Corrigan’s ape portrayal, and all the mad lab
equipment. Robert Lowery, George MacReady, Ralph
Morgan, Carole Mathews, and Jack Ingram fare better
than the script, and the pace is moderate, not
anywhere near the pulse-pounding Republic serials of
the day. In the end, the terrorists either watching
or in this show fell asleep in the third episode.
No video availability
The Crimson Ghost
Republic 1946, 12 chapters
The Cyclotrode, an anti-nuclear device, is at the
center of this Republic chapter play. A highly
entertaining, atmospheric romp, with a guy in
bitchin’ ghost (Crimson, that is) costume, that
resembles a 1970's Don Post mask.
Why the stills of The Crimson Ghost shooting
up a hapless Kenne Duncan were so popular is
anybody’s guess. Maybe it was a case of Holmes
asking Watson for the needle.
A better than average mid 40s Republic serial, with
all the thrills one would expect from Hollywood’s
most accomplished thrill factory. While soft
on the foreign terrorist angle, the domestic fiddle
is well played, with shadowy figures with
microphones dispensing orders from remote hideouts.
Henchmen, high jinx, and special effects are the
focus of this serial. The post-war paranoia is
almost a given, which makes this show less than
terrifying. The usual serial format is employed (a
group of contemporaries is plagued by a saboteur in
their midst). Still, jam-packed with action, and
definitely worth a look.
Out of print, on Republic Home Video.
Brick
Bradford
Columbia 1947, 15 chapters
The U.N. hires Brick Bradford (traveler of space and
time) to thwart an evil genius from swiping an
anti-missile device, in this typical Sam Katzman
serial. Bradford, officially known as "The Amazing
Soldier of Fortune," transports himself to the moon
and the 18th century, throughout the
not-so-steady course of 15 chapters.
The question is, did the United Nations get their
money’s worth in the last reel? Probably not!
Especially when time and space are being manipulated
by Sam Katzman. Serial star Kane Richmond does an
admirable job keeping a straight face.
Not available on commercial video.
Jack
Armstrong, The All American Boy
Columbia 1947, 15 chapters
Another offering from Sam Katzman’s serial universe,
but a marked step up in story and content. John Hart
plays America’s favorite high schooler, who gets
tangled up with a mad scientist, his ray gun, and
cartoon space ship. No one then or now is going to
believe John Hart was anywhere near high school age
when this was made, but to Hart’s credit, his
performance is thoroughly convincing (despite
Katzman's cheapo production values).
Wallace Fox, who directed The Corpse Vanishes
five years prior, is at the helm for these 15
chapters of mayhem.
Charlie (Ming the Merciless) Middleton has an
unbilled (a clerical error) villainous role in this
show, and walks away with it. Ming without makeup!
Available on V.C.I. DVDs.
Bruce Gentry—Daredevil of the Skies
Columbia 1948, 15 chapters
This third flying soldier of fortune serial is one
of the better Katzman efforts. Centered around a
plot to destroy the Panama Canal, Tom Neal is in top
form, equaling his performance in Republic’s
cliffhanger classic Jungle Girl (Republic
1941). Directed by the team who brought Superman to
life on the serial screen (Spencer Bennet and Thomas
Carr), and featuring animated flying saucers which
were re-used in Katzman’s Atom Man vs. Superman
(Columbia 1950), this is one of the more realistic
of the Columbia serials.
No video availability.
Dick Barton—Special Agent
Hammer 1948
An early offering from the budding Hammer
films. This picture lends no insight to the great
heights that Hammer would gain in the late 50s to
the mid 60s, and comes nowhere near the late 50s
science fiction films such as The Creeping
Unknown (Quatermass I), Enemy from Space (Quatermass
II), let alone their Gothic color series of
classic Universal remakes.
Routine at best, it’s connection to terrorism, old
and new, is germ warfare, aka bio-terrorist attacks.
Unseen germs are more terrifying today than
yesterday, but this hearkens to the attacks on the
Japanese subways in the 1990's
No video availability.
King
of the Rocket Men
Republic 1949, 12 chapters.
It’s a sure bet that most everyone can identify with
Old Bullethead. The great-grandfather of The
Rocketeer was created in this 12 chapter science
mystery that once again entertained Saturday matinee
audiences. Set in the middle of post war paranoia,
King of the Rocket Men provides a hero who
needs the rocket suit for his heroics. In some ways
like the Batman character, the science must outweigh
the physical ability of the mortal man.
Jeff King, aptly played by veteran character man
Tristram Coffin, battles with the mysterious Doctor
Vulcan (I. Stanford Jolley) in what without the
super-duper rocket suit, would have been a boring
generic non thrilling thriller. I. Stanford Jolley’s
Dr. Vulcan is a revamp of his "Crimson Ghost" in the
serial of the same name, including the shadowy
figure issuing orders to his subordinates.
Special effects are the selling point. Watching the
Rocket Man perform aerial feats, which had only been
seen in The Adventures of Captain Marvel
eight years previous, is a delight for fans of
antiquated scotch tape fishing line analog special
effects.
Out of print on video and laser disc; available on
DVD.
The Next Voice You Hear
MGM 1950
Ever wonder what the voice of God would sound like?
Isn’t that what everybody is interested in? The
Next Voice You Hear is a film that seems to
examine all of these possibilities, and comes up
with no answers. The plot is kind of simple: God
decides to broadcast ambiguous messages at 8:30 p.m.
on every night for 6 days. The messages were peace
and love, and vague. We get one reaction from a
family, aptly portrayed by James Whitmore, Nancy
Davis, with a nice supporting role awarded to Jeff
Corey.
This picture gives powerful implications of
professing divine wisdom, but in the end it becomes
a diatribe of 50s morality. An interesting look back
in time, but could be offensive to some members of
contemporary audiences. The terror lies in the fact
God bothered to talk to the people of Earth in the
first place. I wonder who paid for the airtime?
From MGM/UA Home Video on cassette.
Destination
Moon
George Pal Productions 1950
While the majority of the story concentrates on the
rigors of building a moon rocket, launching it,
getting to the moon, and then getting back, the
beginning of this show is brimming with paranoia
about your-know-who and you-know-what’s getting to
the moon before our Amerika. It also boasts the idea
of cooperation between corporate America and the
United States government, with a bit of an Orwellian
spin. The astronauts don’t trust government, so they
do it themselves. The start of multi-national
corporations?
The space voyage and adventures on the moon more
than make up for the paranoid pontifications at the
start of the film, although being stuck on the moon
is terrifying in and of itself.
Available on cassette and DVD.
The Flying Saucer
1950
Much ado about nothing in this show. The Russians
are accused of having developed the UFOs that
America is deep in hysteria over. Here is another
film that is a flight of fancy, and not much else.
A secret agent tracks down a flying saucer factory
somewhere in Alaska, run by a mad scientist who
hopes to sell the technology of the flying disc to
the American government. (And we wonder why we have
such gaping state and local deficits!) Flying
saucers, indeed!
An interesting curio, and available on DVD and
videocassette.

The Day the Earth Stood Still
Fox 1951
In today’s hip-hop culture, most of the inhabitants
of Washington, D.C., would think a true landing of a
UFO was most probably staged by a fast-food chain as
a publicity stunt. But in 1951, Robert Wise brought
to life in some ways the second coming of Christ.
Or, in this case, Klaatu.
Loaded with atmosphere, superb dialogue and
delivery, there is not one dead frame of film in
Day the Earth Stood Still. The message is as
contemporary as it was in 1951, and it would be
reassuring if a Klaatu type landed in Washington,
D.C. in 2004, and maybe delivered half the message
of this powerfully well-crafted film.
Available on 20th Century Fox Video and
DVD.
The
Thing from another World
Winchester Pictures 1951
As inspirational an entry of sheer paranoia as
Day The Earth Stood Still, but for completely
different reasons. Day the Earth Stood Still
sported an alien who landed in the middle of the
United States of America’s capitol, and walked
freely among its inhabitants. The Thing from
another World is the reverse—based in a remote,
icy retreat. A visitor from another world who wishes
not to be found is unearthed by prying
military men and an obsessed scientist hell-bent on
communicating with a vegetable from beyond our
galaxy.
The claustrophobia and taut acting and directing
make this entry a classic pixel of Red Menace
Fifties paranoia. Was the carrot from Mars due to be
a star witness at the House of Un-American
Activities? Not likely.
Available on videocassette and Warner Brothers DVDs.
Superman
and the Mole Men
Lippert 1951
This is the first Superman offering that was
ever taken in a serious, adult manner. Clark Kent
and Lois Lane are assigned to cover the deepest oil
well in the world, in Silsby, Texas. It quickly
becomes apparent that something more than oil is
migrating northward from this geological expedition.
Paranoia is rife as the townsfolk and the
interloping reporters engage in verbal jousting
matches that are camp today, and biting within their
own time.
If you are a Superman fan, it is essential.
If you’re a fan of the witch hunts of the McCarthy
era, it could lend an interesting point of view,
which most mainstream consciousness ignores. Check
out the 1951 season of The Adventures of Superman
(shows like "The Monkey Mystery," "Double Trouble,"
"The Human Bomb") for super examples of 50s paranoia
resolved by the planet Krypton’s favorite son.
The Forties, the Fifties, the Sixties, and beyond
the new milloonium, what’s the difference? The
message is the same, yet delivered in different
guises and accouterments. The rich get richer, the
poor get poorer, and paranoid get crazier, and we
pay three times as much as we did a year ago to put
up with this crap. What are we to do? Learn better
anger management skills? Watch more movies and
become anesthetized? Or, do we take a moment and
take a look inside to see who we really are, who we
could be, and what is real at the end of the day.
There is nothing new about terrorism, international,
national, statewide, citywide, or the most
terrifying of all, in between our ears, let alone
the schoolyard bully who started us all on the road
of terror. You be the judge. After all, we all have
to live in our own realities.
December 2007
ON
THE GOOD SHIP
HOLLYWOOD
by
John Agar as told to L.G. Van Savage
Reviewed by Jan Alan Henderson
The
late eighties—Charlie’s Restaurant, Studio City,
California; a Saturday morning like so many others.
The Jock Mahoney Breakfast Club is scarfing down
sumptuous breakfast delicacies. Jocko is holding
court as usual, surrounded by Richard Webb, Herb
Harris, Don Durant, John Russell, Ron Roloff, Sharon
Carter, John Church, Pat Buttram, Jack Iverson, and
John Agar.
I’m sitting next to
John Agar, pondering my umpteenth cup of coffee,
when a young girl walks up to the table and begins
asking questions about John’s ex, Shirley Temple.
This is a subject that none of us have ever broached
with John, because everyone in the group knows that
it’s a painful subject for him. With grace, charm,
and a smile, John answered all her questions without
one negative comment about the former child star.
It was more than I could take; I said to the girl
(trying hard not to lose my temper), “Why don’t you
ask John about all the great work he’s done?
Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Revenge of
the Creature, The Mole People, Sands of Iwo Jima,
Tarantula.” I turned to John, who shot me an
all-knowing wink and quickly shut my big mouth.
Later John told me it was OK, and the girl had not
offended him, but that it wasn’t easy to be in a
marriage with one’s in-laws sitting on your
shoulder.
Flash Forward—April
2002, Riverside National Cemetery.
Legendary movie
producer A.C. Lyles is delivering John’s eulogy.
Before the mourners is a large urn containing John’s
and his wife’s ashes. Loretta was the love of John’s
life, and the marriage lasted almost forty-nine
years when she died suddenly in 1999. My mind is
racing through the sixteen years of friendship John
and I shared. The good times, the hard times, and
everything that life has to offer in between.
One image that
popped into my mind was John’s birthday party a
short time after his beloved Loretta had passed
away. All his friends and family were there when
John stood up and announced that he lost Loretta,
but he knew it would have been her wish to carry on
with his birthday party. Needless to say, there
wasn’t a dry eye in that room.
I remembered the
first time I met John and the handshake that could
bring any man to his knees.
John and his
friends had some great times, and he told lots of
stories of his glory days in Hollywood. Now thanks
to L.C. Van Savage and John’s son, Martin. John’s
story in his own words is available for all to
enjoy. Generously illustrated with photos from all
phases of his career and plenty of personal
snapshots, this is John’s story of his journey
through Tinseltown and beyond. To add another
perspective is an article about John by his good
friend Ed Lousararian, the editor and publisher of
Wildest Westerns magazine, and two interviews
with top flight science fiction scribe Tom Weaver.
There’s
a complete filmography, as well as a comprehensive
listing of all of John’s television credits, as well
as miscellaneous projects.
It’s been five
years since John passed away, and I’m sure all of
his friends miss him the way I do. But with On
the Good Ship Hollywood, we all can relive
John’s life through his eyes.
Good night, sweet
prince!
December 2007
ARE MAD SCIENTISTS, MANIACS, AND
MADMEN OF YESTERDAY
THE ANCESTORS OF TODAY’S TERRORISTS?
By Jan Alan Henderson
According to Webster’s
Dictionary, “Terror” is from Latin “terreo,” to
frighten. “Terrorist”: one who rule by intimidation.
“Terrorize”: to impress with terror; to repress or
domineer over by means of terror. “Terrorism”: a
system of government by terror; intimidation.
Everywhere we go, in everything
we do today, we are confronted with terror! Switch
on the television for your daily dose of news,
paranoia, and sports, and like it or not, you’ll get
a dose of foreign, domestic, and technological
terrorism. The question this column poses is: are
the latter day mad doctors. Maniacs, and madmen the
great grandfathers of today’s terrorist paranoia?
Or, has everything remained the same? Has the
passage of time merely changed the accouterments
through technology? Or, were Osama bin Ladin and
Saddam Hussein raised on Chiller Theater, Creature
Features, Weird, Weird World, and Shock Theater in
the late night of their desert minds? Could
these Western cinematic delicacies have driven them
to a life of crime with religious sanctuary either
here or in the afterlife as the ultimate reward?
How many of our modern day domestic terrorists, many
of whom probably had wet dreams and zombie fetishes
over the late night shockers, actually acted on
these impulses, or ended up blowing up government
buildings and shooting up high schools? Could they
be suffering from indigestion of the imagination? Or
maybe just delusions!
Since the beginning of popular
culture (cinema, records, books, plays, etc.),
strong warnings have been voiced against what each
generation (or its government) considered deviant,
morbid, and unsuitable material. Despite the
warnings, some social observers believe that horror,
science fiction, and fantasy lead consumers and its
creators into the devil’s domain. Many such critics
have social, religious, and political backgrounds
which are the origins of their criticism. In short,
does media (or lack of it) influence (even if in an
unconscious way) the wrongs that men do? If so, what
part do the antics of our ancestors play in any of
all of this? Here is a baker’s dozen checklist of
wild and wacky flicks that (if stretching the
imagination to the limit) could have a slender
thread between the terrorists of yesterday and
today. Judge for yourself!
Creeps From World War II!
1. Black Dragons (Monogram 1942)
Here is a film that is over 60
years old, that reflects World War II schizophrenia.
Here, poster boy Bela Lugosi appears in a movie that
seems to, and in reality does, make absolutely no
sense. (Or could make perfect sense in a
convoluted netherworld such as we live in in the
present day). Lugosi is in fine form in this
hair-brained monster drama, as he waxes
philosophical about the world condition that is as
strangely ironic and cryptic as our present day
headlines. Clayton Moore, known to most on the
celluloid range as the Lone Ranger on television and
in the movies, has one of his most visible
supporting roles in a forgotten horror—which in the
present day one still comes away with a different
meaning after each viewing. Released on DVD by
Alpha Home Video, Black Dragons is a tour de
force of Poverty Row propaganda featuring Nazi Agent
Lugosi’s quickie facelift in a Japanese prison.
Even better, the Black Dragons were a real Japanese
spy ring. This film must be seen to be
believed!
2. The Mad Monster (PRC 1942)
This
is a war time delicacy from the cinema of the absurd
files. There is no other movie (well, maybe 10 or
12) that in the first seven minutes has a mad
scientist hallucinate his former colleagues/enemies
and give them a lecture on his new werewolf serum,
as his helpless handyman struggles on a
psychiatrist’s couch after world famous bad man
George Zucco injects him with his lycanthropy juice
and delivers a diatribe (to his audience of
hallucinations) on how his werewolves will win World
War II (with fanatical fury). What if there was an
individual in the wilds of suburbia who, as we
speak, was breeding a horde of werewolves to conquer
our terrorist enemies in the new millooneyum?
The problem with this film is,
after Zucco’s hallucinatory speech, Glenn Strange as
the hapless blond werewolf of Oshkosh does nothing
more for the war effort than run around the swamps
and whack out the neighbors. So much for WWII
propaganda. But it’s Zucco’s performance that puts
this show over the top. Johnny Downs as the
long-suffering boyfriend and Anne Nagel as Zucco’s
daughter are suitably terrorized. Available on Alpha
DVD and Retro-Media DVD with bonus material.

3. Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
(Universal 1942)
The first of the twelve
Sherlock Holmes films produced by Universal, after
acquiring the rights to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
master detective from 20th Century Fox.
Originally titled Sherlock Holmes Saves London,
this first adventure is close to our modern day
terrorism insofar as the terrorists communicate by
sound recordings (records as opposed to audio and
video tapes). The difference is that the messages
warn of specific acts of violence, as opposed to
today’s messages which are vague threats, and
monologues laced with zealot ideology.
Universal’s reigning scream
queen Evelyn Ankers turns in a stand-out performance
as the doomed Kitty, who spies on the Nazi spies who
are sabotaging prime locations in the U.K.
Henry Daniell is wasted in this show, as a member of
the British Council. His talent for villainy
is better served in his other Holmes films. Playing
a good guy doesn’t give Daniell much room to shine.
Based on the Conan Doyle Holmes
story His Last Bow and updated to the World
War II era, this flick has an ample helping of
patriotism, some of which is taken directly from
Conan Doyle’s pen.
Voice of Terror has been
restored and released on MPI DVDs along with all the
other Holmes films.
4. Sherlock Holmes in Washington
(Universal 1943)
The weakest of the three World
War II Homes mysteries, and not based on a Conan
Doyle story, Washington is a predictable but
enjoyable picture. Here the mystery revolves around
missing microfilm hidden in a Victory match folder,
passed around in a train and in the wilds of wartime
Washington, D.C. (Lighting half the cigarettes in
the nation’s capital). A good amount of footage is
devoted to a motor tour of D.C. via Universal’s
stock footage library. The dialogue is at times
routine, and the comic relief is a bit dated.
A fine cast, again featuring
the talents of George Zucco, Henry Daniell, Marjorie
Lord (pre-Danny Thomas), John Archer (who
played The Shadow on radio for a brief time), and
Holmes Herbert. Fun World War II fodder with
little similarities between the terrors of the
second World War and today’s War on Terrorism.
5. Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
(Universal 1942)
Here
is the last of Homes’ great battles of good vs. evil
during World War II. Holmes is pitted against his
most dastardly enemy, Professor Moriarty, in a
wartime drama based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
The Dancing Men. Calligraphy plays a large part
in this mystery. Could Saddam and Osama be using
calligraphy? Or better yet, coded messages in their
audio tapes? Body language in their videos?
This movie proves that Saddam and Osama aren’t
really innovators, but merely recycling ideas that
maybe even they read as small children, like the
rest of us. Or maybe due to their belief
systems, these materials were off limits, and they
snuck a read when their parents weren’t looking.
Lionel Atwill is superb as
Professor Moriarty. His reptilian eyes during his
speech, where he is setting Holmes up for a reverse
blood transfusion that will rob Holmes of his last
drop of blood, are as exhilarating as his
performance in the Universal classic Son of
Frankenstein (where he portrays the one-armed
Inspector Krog who as a child had his arm “torn out
by the roots” by the Frankenstein monster); or Dr. X
in the midst of a two-strip technicolor pile of
“synthetic flesh;” or better yet, the crazed,
crippled wax sculptor in Mystery at the Wax
Museum.
Holmes and the Secret Weapon
is one of the best entries of that series, and
conveys the paranoia of World War II.
6. The Superman Cartoons (produced by
Max and Dave Fleischer 1941-1943)

These animated seven to ten
minute shorts from the Man of Steel’s golden age
reflect the furor and intensity of today’s
contemporary news reports regarding
terrorism—possibly because the news reports are the
same lengths and with as much exaggerated
information as these Superman cartoons. In the three
years since Superman’s comic book debut, the world
around him, as documented in these seventeen Super
Adventures, had become out of control and riddled
with sloth and the paranoia of World War II.
With titles like The Bulleteers, Terror on the
Midway, The Japoteurs, Destruction, Inc.,
and
The Secret Agent, it is certain that Superman in
his early years through WW II was barely a shade
left of a vigilante. Mad scientists,
mechanical monsters, iron plated cars, reanimated
dinosaurs, domestic terrorists, threats from outer
space, threats from inner space (as in earthquakes),
and mummies, oriental enemies, and a Nazi or two
inhabited the First Citizen of Metropolis’s life on
Earth in these lushly animated Technicolor
adventures.
Restored and re-released on
Bosko Video and distributed by Image Entertainment.
7. The Invisible Agent (Universal
1942)
Fifty-nine years before the
Twin Towers fell, Universal took the war to the
enemy. They sent contract player Jon Hall to foil a
planned attack on New York City. While one can
visualize the parallel universe possibilities, the
emphasis of this film is war time heroics, rather
than the Invisible Man legend. It’s a grand showcase
for special effects wizard John P. Fulton, none the
less.
Ilona Massey plays a double
agent who fools Jon Hall up til the show’s climax,
and Hall fools Third Reich officers Sir Cedric
Hardwicke and J. Edward Bromberg. Peter Lorre has a
choice character role as a high ranking Japanese
official who takes the honorable way out after
failing to defeat Jon Hall’s Invisible One. All this
from the imaginative brain and screenplay of famed
storyteller Curt Siodmak.
Available on DVD from Universal
Home Video on the Legacy Invisible Man Collection.
8. The Batman (A Columbia Serial in 15
Chapters, 1943)
The
Batman makes his cinematic debut among Japanese
spies and horrendous racism. In its day, this was
hardcore propaganda, but today it plays as
antiquated silliness. When it was re-released in
1966 to hype the Adam West Batman TV show, it
was shown under the banner of An Evening with
Batman and Robin (all 15 Bat Chapters at one
sitting).
Running over four hours in
length, the audiences hooted, howled, and rolled in
the aisles as Batman and Robin made hilarious
attempts to battle the (over emphasized) oriental
evil of villain Doctor Daka, played by J. Carrol
Naish (an Irishman, not from the Irish section of
Tokyo). Some of the fights are amateurish to
say the least. In one, Batman steps on his
cape, tears it off, and continues fighting sans
cape, as if nothing had happened. Holy Continuity,
Batman! It looks as if these fights were
free-for-alls instead of the gloriously
choreographed fights featured in Republic serials.
Naish, while participating in
this lowest of low art forms (movie serials), was
nominated for an Academy Award for his work in
Sahara, the same year as Batman.
Naish essayed Charlie Chan for television in the
early 50's, and was a member of the Devil’s Brood as
the hunchback Daniel in Universal’s eternally
popular
House of Frankenstein.
In
a semi-logical subplot, veteran bad guy Charles
Middleton pays Batman and Robin a visit. Rich
from a Radium strike, Ken Colton (Middleton) dies
doing battle with Dr. Daka’s thugs, providing
viewers with some of the best Batman action in this
serial, which over the decades has been labeled
everything from laughable to racially offensive.
What does this have to do with
terrorism of the present day? Doctor Daka’s
operation was run from an innocent-looking Tunnel of
Love ride in plain sight! A World War II terrorist
cell in Gotham City. Holy Paranoia!, Batman,
the Tunnel of Love!
Available on Columbia DVDs
9. The Return of the Vampire (Columbia
1943)
This
film has to be high up on Lugosi fiends’ top ten
lists. Here is one of the first examples of the
teaming of two titans of terror under one cinematic
awning. While the year before,
Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman pit mechanical
monster (Frankenstein) against mythology (the
Wolfman), Return of the Vampire might be the
first teaming of a lycanthrope and a vampire. This
far-out scenario revolves around two civil defense
workers cleaning out a bombed-out London graveyard,
and reanimating Lugosi, who in turn re-lychanthropes
the protagonist’s assistant, making this a most
unique World War II horror flick. It’s hard to
imagine that any readers haven’t seen Return of
the Vamp but if you haven’t, the blend of the
Columbia backlot’s London and this werewolf and
vampire tale is sure to amuse, if not become a
favorite.
The propaganda is kept at a low
profile, while the lighting, art direction, and
cinematography are top-notch. Some Lugosi fans
have told this writer over the years that they feel
Return of the Vampire is a more effective Lugosi
film than Dracula (an opinion I do not
share). It is a definite top ten Lugosi
favorite, effectively blending a horror story within
the World War II ambiance.
Available on Columbia DVDs.
10. King of the Zombies (Monogram
1941)
One of the first pictures to
feature renegade Nazis on a remote island (others
being She Demons and Madman of Mandoras,
aka They Saved Hitler’s Brain.). Dick
Purcell, John Archer, and Mantan Morland are
stranded on Henry Victor’s Zombie infested island,
which in the reality of the Monogram jungle is a
Nazi outpost. Victor’s role of Dr. Miklos
Sangre was originally intended for Lugosi. Instead,
Lugosi did Invisible Ghost, which originally
had working titles of The Maniac, Murder by the
Stars, The Phantom Monster, and began production
as The Phantom Killer. King of the
Zombies was released a month after The
Invisible Ghost (May 1941), and could be
considered a horror comedy, due to Mantan’s
buffoonery and semantic samurai antics. The
wartime Nazi angle hovers on the periphery of the
plot, which revolves around Mantan’s frantic
attempts to avoid being “zombified.”
Purcell and Archer are highly
effective in their dual good guy roles, and the
production and cinematography are of better than
average Monogram vintage.
Available on VHS from various
companies, and on DVD from Roan (out of print) and
Alpha DVD.
11. Ghost on the Loose (Monogram 1943)
Once again the Germans get
hammered, verbally, physically, and metaphorically,
when they meet up with Monogram’s best homeland
security (or insecurity if you prefer), the Eastside
Kids. Led by Leo Gorcey, who has a shotgun
mouth full of malaprops, Lugosi and his Poverty Row
Nazis are run ragged by the world’s oldest
teenagers. The plot would seem to be born out of
leftover bathtub gin from Prohibition. The unwitting
Nazis live next door to some nosy neighbors who just
sold their house to Huntz Hall’s sister (played by
Ava Gardner in one of her first screen roles) and
Rick Vallin. The nasty Nazis are cranking out
propaganda leaflets on a mini printing press, and
seem to have no more threatening weapons of mass
destruction other than the press and the subversive
literature. Sam Katzman most probably wouldn’t have
coughed up the dough for any WMDs. From Ghosts on
the Loose there is the only Lugosi blooper known
to exist, where the black kid, played by Sunshine
Sammy Morrison (Hal Roach alumni), is dusting what
he thinks to be a picture, but is in truth Lugosi
spying on him through an empty frame. Lugosi
sneezes and proclaims “Oh, shit!” While it sounds
like Lugosi’s voice, at the same time it definitely
sounds looped. This could have been Bela’s way to
express his opinion about the quality of this movie!
We’ll never know.
If you’re a fan of the East
Side Kids, it’s a fun romp, highlighted by Leo
Gorcey laying out some of his most delicious
mutilations of the King’s English. Example: Stanley
Stash Clemens and Sunshine Sammy steal a funerary
wreath from a gangster’s wake. They present it to
Leo, who after close examination (and finding out
the truth), proclaims “It’s sacrilerious!”
Another In-joke is Huntz Hall’s visit to the police
station, talking to veteran character man Jack
Mulhall about the need for security at his sister’s
wedding, due to threats “by the Katzman mob”.
Another film with low boilage on the World War II
propaganda, and more concentration on the sight
gags.
Available on VHS from several
companies, DVD from Roan (out of print) and from
Alpha DVD.
12. Spy Smasher - a Republic serial in
12 chapters (1942)
Nazi
saboteurs are infiltrating our America, and
softening our defenses. Luckily for our side, Spy
Smasher is on the job. Based on the Spy
Smasher character’s appearance in Whiz and
Spy Smasher comics, the story takes place
shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
Serial veteran Kane Richmond
plays a dual role as Spy Smasher and his twin
brother, Jack, who take on Nazi super-villain The
Mask. This serial is loaded with Lydecker special
effects; some of the greatest fight scenes ever
committed to chapter play film; and a taut,
believable story (insofar as movie serials are based
on very little plot and high action content). One of
this reviewers top three Republic serials, with an
unusual twist that one of the protagonists actually
dies, stays dead, and is not revived in a future
chapter.
Video availability is dodgy.
Nostalgia Merchant released it on video in the early
80's. Republic Video and N.T.A. Video released it
several times after that. It is now a well out
of print, and a sought after item on eBay.

13. The Masked Marvel - a Republic
serial in 12 chapters (1943)
After
losing the rights to produce a Superman
serial (the plot for which Republic wisely recycled
into The Mysterious Dr. Satan, which
substituted The Copperhead, a Republic creation, for
the Superman character), Republic created their
second original character with the Masked Marvel.
In his one and only serial outing, the Masked Marvel
battles the dastardly Japanese spy Sakima, played by
Little Rascals veteran Johnny Arthur (
non-Oriental), in what is basically a reworking of
the plot line of the first Lone Ranger serial
(Republic 1938).
Five insurance investigators,
who all happen to be wearing the same gray suit
throughout the 12 chapters, are the focus of the
mystery of which one is the Masked Marvel, while
doing battle in a myriad of some of Republic’s
standout fights, pulse-pounding effects, and
somewhat dubious original ideas for a Republic
homegrown character. If the viewer can get into a
40's vibe while watching this serial, the rewards
are great.
A terrific supporting cast,
including Louise Currie (co-star of The
Adventures of Captain Marvel, The Ape Man,
and Voodoo Man), William Forrest, Anthony
Warde, and due to a clerical error, the unbilled
stunt man/character actor Tom Steele, who portrayed
the Masked Marvel throughout the 12 chapter
duration.
Another example of enemy cells
creeping into the Homeland, only to be repelled by
the homegrown superhero, the Masked Marvel.
While pretty straightforward and lacking the
propaganda and inflammatory racial content of
Columbia’s The Batman serial, The Masked
Marvel can be viewed for sheer thrills alone.
The Masked Marvel, like
Spy Smasher, was released on videotape in the
80s and is highly collectible, with no planned DVD
release.
END BIT : So what does
all this editorial diatribe mean at the end of the
day in our terror-stricken new millennium? What it
means is that there is nothing new under the sun.
There are only different ways to view information.
While the terrorism of World War II seemed to follow
the Queensbury Rules of Boxing, the terrorists of
modern times have no rules at all. This includes
domestic terrorism, international terrorism, and the
terrorism that is in between our own ears. For
all of our technological advances, a review of
cinema culture and other archeological information
reveals as a civilization, we haven’t progressed
that much. Or should we say, not as much as
our collective conscious egos would have us believe.
In reality, the only changes we can make to end
terrorism of all sorts, begins within.
November 2007
BEYOND
LOIS LANE
by Larry Thomas Ward
With Halloween over with, and the holidays upon
us, Larry Thomas Ward and Noel Neill have given us a
beautiful holiday present in Beyond Lois Lane. A
visual history of Noel's career outside of and
including the Superman mythology, this coffee table
hardback book is going to be a must for every Noel
Neill fan worldwide.
Illustrated in glorious color with reviews and
anecdotes punctuating these to-die-for photographs,
this is more than a coffee table book, but a grand
tribute and an inside look into Noel's multi-decade
career.
Reasonably priced at $24.95 (while most coffee
table volumes command $50) this is sure to please
all GR fans and Noel Neill enthusiasts for years to
come.
Released this week, and available from Nicholas
Lawrence Books, this tome is a classic cornerstone
in Larry Thomas Ward's Noel Neill biographies, which
now have become staples on the collectible market.
So thank you, Larry and Noel, for sharing your
memories, photographs, and giving Lois Lane and
Superman fans an inside look at the life and times
of the First Lady of Metropolis.
More than highly recommended. Here's where to
order: The Adventures Continue Web Site:
beyond_lois_lane
For Halloween Viewing
Halloween is on a Wednesday this year, so a lot of folks
will be watching films instead of being out partying. So,
here’s a brief list of cinematic Trick or Treats:
 1.
The 75th Anniversary editions of Dracula
and Frankenstein, Universal Home Video.
Volumes have been written about these flicks over the years,
but these are the cornerstones of modern horror films.
Always sure pleasers, these 2006 remasters are the ultimate
presentations in Hi-Def and the most complete versions of
these classics, plus several great special features and
trailers to round out your viewing pleasure. A great
way to start a Halloween evening.
2.
Alfred Hitchcock Presents Seasons 1-3, Universal
Home Video.
In its
ten year run, Alfred Hitchcock Presents gave
television viewers clever stories with wry humor and that
Hitchcock touch which had enthralled movie goers for
decades. With star studded guest casts, Hitchcock
Presents re-popularized Alfred with his own line of
digest books, comic books, pocket books, and hard cover
anthologies; and his profile became as famous as the
legendary actor John Barrymore. These one hundred seventeen
episodes are proof of why.
On
Season One, there is a great featurette called Looking
Back, which features Pat Hitchcock, actress and daughter
of Alfred; Norman Lloyd, producer/director/actor; and Hilton
Green, the assistant director of Alfred Hitchcock
Presents, giving their heartfelt memories of the
production of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Superman
fans will get a thrill out of the 1956 episode “Mink” which
features Veda Ann Borg from the 1951 Superman episode
“The Stolen Costume.”

3.
Return of Dracula and The Vampire, MGM
Midnite Movies
These
two Gramercy Productions from 1958 and 1957 are fast paced,
well directed vampire thrillers. Return of Dracula is
an old-school take on the Dracula legend, while The
Vampire is a science-gone-wrong approach. Both rely on
high tension and tight story lines, as well as atmospheric
musical scores from veteran composer Gerald Fried.
When
released to television, Return was titled Curse of
Dracula, and The Vampire was known as Mark of
the Vampire, sending Bela Lugosi fans scurrying for the
remote control and TV Guides.
Great
for bobbing apples, with a great pick-up line: “Sorry, my
fangs are in your neck!”
4.
Icons of Horror: The Sam Katzman
Collection, Columbia Home Video
The
back cover of this four film collection boasts, “Jungle Sam
Schlockmeister” and indeed he was. Face it, who else would
have the cojones to make George Reeves Sir Galahad, and
produce the only movie serial based on a live television
show (Captain Video). Kicking off with The Giant
Claw (in which, if you’ve never seen it, the word
“turkey” takes on a whole new meaning), this box sets proves
that Jungle Sam was truly the King of B-Pictures. The
Giant Claw is one of those shows that has to be seen to
be believed. From sci-fi to unintentional laff riot,
the plot, actors (Jeff Morrow, Mara Corday, Morris Ankrum,
and everyone’s favorite inspector Robert Shayne), and
audience didn’t survive the wrath of this high-flying
buzzard with the bulging eyes.
Creature With the Atom Brain
is an improvement after
being clawed with giggles, and has TAOS guest cast members
Terry Frost, Tristram Coffin, and Larry Blake along for the
nuclear mind melt.
Zombies of Mora Tau
features a cast of
horror/sci-fi favorites, with Gregg Palmer, Morris Ankrum,
Gene Roth, and the sizzling Allison Hays in a story of
diamonds, zombies, and African intrigue, filmed for the most
part in Gower Gulch.
The
Werewolf, on the
other paw, was filmed with great effect at Big Bear Lake,
California. Starring Don Megowen, Joyce Holden, and
Harry Lauter, this is another technology-gone-berserk tale
of woe in the Atomic Age of the 50s. A better than average
plot and some docu-drama elements provide the audience solid
entertainment, and newcomer Steven Ritch’s performance adds
to the ambiance. The makeup is dynamic, and Fred Sears’
direction make The Werewolf a satisfying Halloween
entry.
This
box set’s special features include Chapter Two of Sam
Katzman’s super-serial Mysterious Island, a Mr. Magoo
cartoon called Terror Faces Magoo, and Midnight
Blunders, a rare Ted Kennedy, Monte Collins short which
sports the Three Stooges production team of Jules White and
Del Lord.
5.
Fox Horror Classics, 20th Century
Fox Home Video
This
box set could have been called The John Brahm collection,
with three of his finest films showcased, The Undying
Monster, The Lodger, and Hangover Square.
If you want to talk classic horror and suspense, these
titles would be way up on the list.
The
Undying Monster
could have been made by Universal Studios combining their
Wolfman and Sherlock Holmes series. The writing
is top flight, the art direction is superb, and Brahm’s
direction is as masterful as Alfred Hitchcock’s. It’s hard
to believe this was considered back in the day, a B picture.
Not so
for Brahm’s The Lodger, a retelling of the Jack the
Ripper fable, with an all-star cast that includes Merle
Oberon, George Sanders, and Laird Cregar in the title role.
Cregar becomes an overnight sensation with his portrayal of
the madman of London, and was almost type cast in villainous
roles.
Hangover Square
once again stars Cregar, this time one hundred pounds
lighter, but no less psycho! As a crazed songwriter
George Harvey Bone, he suffers from amnesia. It seems people
end up a little bit dead when he lapses into blackout mode.
A
songstress (Linda Darnell) cons Mr. Bone into penning hit
tunes for her, and even dangles marriage (like a sensual
carrot), but ultimately does him wrong, sending poor old
George into a murderous rage. Another stellar cast with
George Sanders, Alan Napier (Alfred on TV’s Batman
series) and Glenn Langan (who starred as The Amazing
Colossal Man in 1957).
This
trilogy of horror has plenty of special features, with bio
featurettes on Laird Cregar and John Brahm, plus radio plays
of The Lodger and Hangover Square, both
starring Vincent Price.
These
five releases should give you all plenty of Halloween
entertainment, should you be stranded in your crypt! If you
should hear a knock on your door while viewing any of these
cinematic wonders, beware—it could be this humble reviewer,
who might be playing more tricks on you than the treats you
have to offer!
Happy
Halloween!
October 2007
Zacherle
Halloween Radio Show
‘Tis the season to
be scary! Hopefully all you Glass House readers are
carving your pumpkins and listening to tunes in your crypts.
While all these festivities commence, I am proud to announce
that a Halloween tradition, after many years of absence, has
been reinstated.
That is, Zacherle,
the Cool Ghoul Himself, will be doing a Halloween radio show
on WCBS-FM (for those of you in the tri-state area who can
pick it up) and on
www.WCBSfm.com for computer listeners, this Wednesday
night (October 31st) beginning at 8:00 p.m.
Eastern time (5:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight time).
After an absence
from the airwaves, Zach’s show was brought back by popular
demand on WCBS-FM, who have returned to a 60s and 70s music
format. For those of you who are familiar with Zach’s
Halloween shows, you won’t want to miss this latest edition.
For those of you who are not familiar, this is a
once-in-a-lifetime audio experience.
Zach promises to
pull out some Golden Oldies, and the listeners can be
assured of a classic Halloween radio extravaganza, which
unless one has experienced this previously, is an absolute
mind-blower!
For those of you who
wish to experience more of Zacherle’s audio magic, I would
recommend that you check out the fabulous Internment For
Two (which has been reviewed on GHP) and Spook Along
With Zacherle, which has been released on Critics Choice
CDs, as well as Halloween Hootenanny, a compilation
put together by world famous ghoul himself Rob Zombie, which
is available at
www.oldies.com at killer cutthroat prices.
Having given you
this spiel, there’s only one thing left to say:
Good night,
whatever you are! Tune in on your radio or your
computer and experience all things Zacherle!
THE
GHOUL
Gaumont-British 1933
2003 release on DVD
from MGM Home Entertainment
Rediscovered in the 80's, The Ghoul was a most
interesting cornerstone in Karloff’s career. The VHS copy
was perfectly serviceable, and a welcome addition to any
Karloffophile’s collection. With this 2003 release, we
finally get a look at the way this movie was intended to
play. The DVD source material seems to be a pristine 35mm
print, complete with the British logo, and music strangely
echoing classic James Bernard Hammer themes from a decade
and a half later.
A
highly intriguing movie to VHS viewers in the 80's, through
this new print the subtleties and accouterments of this 1933
Karloff classic are revealed. The art direction is
top-notch, and the screenplay by Rupert Downing, Roland
Pertwee, and John Hastings Turner is paced like the
aforementioned Hammer films, with not a moment’s dead space.
The makeup by Heinrich Heitfeld is in some aspects
reminiscent of Jack Pierce’s mummy makeup on Boris Karloff
when he is Ardath Bey, yet strangely and effectively
original in its own way. The cinematography by Gunther
Krampf is, to put it simply, stunning. Krampf’s lens
illuminates Karloff, his fellow players, and these
Universalesque sets, to put this British film in league (and
beyond) with any classic Universal horror flick of the 30's.
This
reviewer’s only criticism is the packaging of this DVD,
which is grossly misleading. Instead of a classic shot
of Karloff and a 30's art deco design with Karloff’s name
featured predominately, the art department at MGM have seen
fit to try to sell the DVD with a large nondescript amber
eyeball in a green setting, the title The Ghoul and
the pitch line “an ancient curse is about to be unleashed”.
Upon turning the DVD over, we get a shot of Karloff in the
makeup and a full lowdown on this DVD. So readers who have
an interest in this Karloff classic need be aware that this
is not a packaging for the 1974 The Ghoul starring
Peter Cushing. Not that that would be a bad DVD to pick up
at the reasonable price MGM is asking for this DVD.
It’s
not every day one finds a pristine horror classic from the
30's.
Most
highly recommended
October
2007
PHANTOM
RANCHER
(1940)
Starring Ken Maynard, Dorothy Short,
Dave O’Brien, Harry Harvey, Ted Adams,
and Tarzan the Horse
Available from Alpha Video
www.oldies.com
Ken Maynard rides into a mess of bad luck
and trouble as he inherits his uncle’s ranch and seedy
reputation. Seems the dear departed uncle stampeded
his herd over his neighbor’s crops, causing catastrophic
destruction and horrendous monetary loss. So, as
unsuspecting Ken (as Ken Mitchell) shows up with a valid
will and positive attitude, his soon-to-be-neighboring
farmers shun him like the plague. Ken hatches a plan to help
the farmers, and ends up spying on the outlaw gang who are
responsible for the dastardly deeds pinned on him and his
late relative.
At this point is where we get into the
Phantom business. Ken trades in his white hat for a black
ten-gallon and a Lone Ranger mask, and voila’, we have the
Phantom Rancher. Now, at this junction contemporary
viewers will most likely take a pass, having had no exposure
to “B” westerns, or western pictures. One has to remember
that at one time in Hollywood’s golden history the western
movie was a staple of the picture business.
The Phantom turns out to be more of a
vigilante with a “Zorro” mask than a supernatural rider. Ken
Maynard’s fury at the injustice done to him and his uncle
kicks up the voltage of what could have been an average
western programmer.
Dave O’Brien of The Devil Bat fame
(the same year Lugosi’s bat flew the Hollywood skies) turns
in a solid performance, and Maynard’s horse “Tarzan” proves
he might be the best actor in the whole bunch. (Check out
his lame act!)
While not for all tastes, The Phantom
Rancher is 61 minutes of B western bonanza, with acting
and story evocative of its time. People who read Cosmo
won’t get this film!
October 2007
MANTAN
THE FUNNYMAN
The Life and Times of Mantan Moreland
by
Michael H. Price
Midnight Marquee.com
9721 Britinay Lane
Baltimore MD 21234
Back
in the day, the only way to view vintage films was on
television (the late night movies), going to revival movie
houses (now mostly extinct), or to collect 16mm films, which
is what this reviewer did.
One
day in the mid 70s, I acquired a 16mm print of a movie that
had somehow escaped me, and that would leave an everlasting
impression on my cinematic sensibilities. The film was
King of the Zombies, which introduced me to the magic of
Mantan Moreland. To put it mildly, Mantan stole the
show; and for that matter, he stole every show he ever
appeared in, no matter how large or small his part was.
In
King of the Zombies, Mantan transforms what could have been
a routine B-horror flick from the Monogram catalog into a
tour de force laugh riot, in which the victim outwits the
villains with a verbal barrage and sight gags galore.
I
remember that wonderful afternoon when my friends and I
discovered that King of the Zombies was really a
domain ruled by Mantan. We laughed until we were lumps of
human flesh on the living room floor at Mantan’s witticisms,
his observations of the state of zombieism, and his refusal
to take crap from the living or the undead. His banter about
old crones who belong in a museum, that Harlem was never
like this, and about being de-zombified, and the two things
he didn’t want to be “and zombies is both of them” renders
the film’s other dialogue stilted and matter of fact.
Needless to say, my friends and I ran King of the Zombies
again that long ago afternoon, and fell all over the
floor (much to the chagrin of the females present, who
thought we were plagued with St. Vitus Dance).
In the
succeeding years, I caught as much of Mantan’s motion
picture work as I could: the Monogram Charlie Chan
pictures, Universal’s The Strange Case of Dr. RX, and
whatever else was available. Alpha Video has recently
unearthed many of Mantan’s features for a whole new audience
to enjoy, which brings us to the focus of this essay.
Mantan the Funnyman
is the first and definitive
volume on the life of Mantan Moreland. Author Michael
Price takes the reader behind the scenes to chronicle all
phases of Mr. Moreland’s extraordinary life—from his origins
to his first stage appearances, to his exploits in the
motion picture business. Adding to the effectiveness of the
tome are the reminiscences of Mantan’s daughter Marcella
Moreland Young, whose loving memories paint a picture of her
father that goes way beyond the usual movie star biography.
Mantan was first and foremost a family man, and his
professional ethics were above those which are acceptable in
the film business today (which is the business of show, and
not show business). Mantan’s generosity to his coworkers and
fellow players was legendary, and he blazed the trail for
such contemporary artists as the late Redd Foxx, Bill Cosby,
and the late Richard Pryor.
Author
Price’s research gives the reader a clear picture of the
social and economic environment of the times, which has a
direct influence on the creation one of Mantan’s most famous
verbal somersault routines, the “Indefinite Talk” (created
for Moreland by his frequent partner, Flournoy E. Miller).
“Indefinite Talk” was included in the Charlie Chan mystery
The Scarlet Clue with Ben Carter as Moreland’s second
banana, and widely performed on stage and radio by Mantan
and various sidekicks over the ensuing years.
Price
also offers the comments of fellow performers Frankie Darro,
and main Stooge man Moe Howard, giving readers a deeper
understanding of Mantan’s artistry and unrealized
opportunities. There’s an extensive film, disc, and
radiography, and a bonus CD of rare appearances and
performances, to make this the definitive and only biography
of Mantan the Funnyman.
More
than highly recommended.
October 2007
MONSTER
KID MEMORIES
by BOB BURNS
as told to TOM WEAVER
DinoShip Press 2003
In 2000, Bob Burns in partnership with
John Michlig published It Came From Bob’s Basement
(Chronicle Books), a wonderful tribute to Bob and his
collection, and his life. This high art coffee table book is
a fine full color and black and white representation of all
of Bob’s magical mementos. It continues to sell well, and is
a must for anyone who is interested in all things Burns.
But lo and behold, three years later,
Bob and frequent Cult Movies contributor Tom Weaver have
teamed up for a more in-depth march down Bob Burns’ monster
memory lane. Bob has always been the king cool of monsters,
and within these pages of Monster Kid Memories we get
the full and complete stories of Bob’s adventures in the
horror capitol of the world.
Topics touched on in It Came From
Bob’s Basement are presented here in the depth that Bob
experienced them. His friendships and encounters with
Republic bad guy Roy Barcroft, ace stunt man David Sharpe,
Glenn Strange, Lon Chaney, Jr., Boris Karloff, Elsa
Lanchester, and George Pal are all revealed here for the
first time in their entirety. Also included are Bob’s
tributes to makeup master Jack Pierce and ape man Charlie
Gemora. His adventures on Shock Theater in Texas, carousing
with William Castle, creating his signature character Major
Mars, and giving fandom one of the most highly regarded
monster magazines, Fantastic Monsters of the Films,
affectionately known as “Fan-Mo” are chronicled as well.
Tom Weaver captures every nuance of
Bob’s journey through the Hollywood catacombs, including his
feelings of elation meeting his heroes, and the
heart-wrenching process of saying good-bye to his heroes who
had become personal friends.
This is a highly touching account of a
man who has been a staple of monsterdom since the word
“cool” was invented. With a forward by Leonard Maltin and
introduction by famed horror director Joe Dante, this book
is a must read for anyone who is interested in Bob or his
endeavors. Richly illustrated with photos from Bob’s
personal archives, this book is the stuff nightmares are
made of.
October 2007
THE UNIVERSAL
HORROR MOVIE ARCHIVE
The
Black Cat 1941
Man Made Monster 1941
Horror Island 1941
Night Monster 1942
Captive Wild Woman 1943
If
Universal’s second sci-fi box set was a pre-Halloween gift,
then The Universal Horror Movie Archive is a terrific
jack-o-lantern stuffer—five terrifying flicks from the 1940s
guaranteed to provide thrills, chills, and a trick-or-treat
bag full of black cats, foggy island adventures, swamis,
skeletons, and ape women gone bananas!
First
up is The Black Cat, which should not be confused
with the Karloff/Lugosi classic from 1934. Starring Basil
Rathbone, Broderick Crawford, Hugh Herbert, Bela Lugosi,
Gail Sondergaard, Gladys Cooper, Superman guest star
John Eldredge, Claire Dodd, Anne Gwynne, and a young Alan
Ladd, The Black Cat offers a spook house, cat
infested, murder mystery with plenty of hilarious fur balls,
sure to please all members of the family.
The
plot centers around a feline obsessed old lady living on her
expansive estate with a bunch of money-hungry relatives and
servants, waiting for the old gal to be roasted in her own
crematorium (along with her herd of cats). The old lady
believes that black cats are the symbols of death, so hence
the picture’s name. (Neither the 1934 Black Cat nor this one
have anything whatsoever to do with the Edgar Allen Poe
tale.) This black cat turns out to be a red herring, and the
real murderer is someone the audience would never suspect.
Hugh
Herbert supplies the comedy, with a barrage of one-liners
and goofy giggling, and Alan Ladd has some snappy sides, but
Brod Crawford has the great in-joke when he quips to Anne
Gwynne that Basil Rathbone’s character “thinks he’s Sherlock
Holmes.”
The
art direction is highly imaginative, and Stanley Cortez/s
cinematography adds wonderful ambience to the show.
Three
years later, Rathbone and Gale Sondergaard would team up to
do battle in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman.
Poor Lugosi has little to do, other than flash his Dracula
eyes and pout routine dialogue.
Man
Made Monster was
Lon Chaney Jr.’s first film under his contract at Universal.
Originally a Karloff and Lugosi vehicle from the 30s from
Astor titled The Electric Man (which was the U.K.
title), it was to be filmed under the unlikely title
The Man in the Cab. Good thing clear heads
prevailed.
The
story centers around Chaney, whose carnival Electro Man act
proves a god-send when he’s the only survivor in a
horrendous bus accident. After the accident, world renowned
electro biologist Dr. Lawrence (played by Samuel S. Hinds,
who practiced law for three decades before turning to
acting) begins his researches on Chaney, with the assistance
of the evil Dr. Rigas (played by long time villain Lionel
Atwill).
Chaney’s characterization of Dan McCormick is that of a blue
collar everyman who Dr. Rigas addicts to high voltage doses
of death. When not on the juice, McCormick becomes a
zombie-like joltless junkie, only at the film’s conclusion
to become an amped-up diabolical electrocution machine,
similar to Boris Karloff’s character in the Universal’s
The Invisible Ray five years earlier. Chaney’s acting is
never better, and his usage of pathos ranks up there with
Karloff’s characterization of the Frankenstein monster in
his most innocent moments. Chaney’s Dan McCormick only
becomes tragic under the influence of the diabolical Dr.
Rigas, and Corkey the family dog’s loyalty toward Dan at the
film’s wind-up will no doubt bring mist to some viewers’
eyes.
The
scripting is more than adequate for this budget show, and
Atwill turns in an arresting performance, proving he is once
again that he is the maddest of all the mad doctors!
First
rate
direction by
George Waggner, standout special effects from John P.
Fulton, and eerie makeup contribution from the legendary
makeup wizard Jack P. Pierce, ensure that Lon Chaney Jr.’s
first horror flick for Universal is, and always will be, a
classic! It was re-released in 1953 as The Atomic
Monster.
A
phantom, a treasure map, a foggy island, and a doubloon, are
the ingredients that comprise
Horror
Island. This flick re-teams Dick Foran and Peggy Moran
(who starred together in 1940s The Mummy’s Hand) for
a fun-filled romp of mystery, mayhem, and pirate
skullduggery.
Foran is a jack of all trades
excelling at none, selling tours of Morgan’s Island for 50
bucks a pop, so one and all can hunt for buried
treasure—that is, until the passengers start turning up as
stiffs. There’s plenty of secret passages, crossbows, and
other assorted high jinks to keep you on the edge of your
seat in this one.
If
you’re near Ingston Manor and suddenly the frogs stop
croaking, you know you’re in trouble! Eastern intrigue is at
the heart of The Night Monster. Old Man Ingston is an
invalid, and has called his former physicians together to
demonstrate his new-found mobility and other deadly things.
Blood stains on the rug, skeletons materializing, and long
shadows abound, with a body count that almost rivals a small
town in Everywhere USA.
Bela Lugosi is top billed, but
Night Monster is really a Ralph Morgan film, with
great support from Lionel Atwill, Irene Hervey, Don Porter,
and Nils Asther. Leif Erickson is especially sleazy as the
chauffeur, and Frank Reicher (of King Kong fame) is
on hand in this atmospheric shocker.
When mad doctors tire of
transplanting brains, they most often take up the practice
of transfusing blood from human beings to animals, just for
fun! This is the premise for the last feature in this fright
fest, Captive Wild Woman.
John Carradine plays the
sinister scientist who comes up with this wacky idea, and
the ravishing Acquanetta is a result of blood mixing, with
Milburn Stone (who played Doc on TV’s long-running
Gunsmoke) handling the wild animals and wild women.
Evelyn Ankers (Universal’s most frequent leading lady) is on
hand to make the female gorilla jealous, and copious use of
stock footage from the 1933 Clyde Beatty picture The Big
Cage provides the animal action. Clyde Beatty was the
star of the first Republic serial Darkest Africa, and
a world famous animal trainer.
Director Edward Dmytryk guides the
cast of humans, simians, and felines through the twists and
turns of one of Universal’s most unusual horror entries.
Captive Wild Woman spawned two other sequels, 1944's
Jungle Woman, and 1945's
Jungle Captive.
In the 1960s in Los Angeles, the
first three films were shown on Saturday and Sunday
afternoons on “Weird, Weird World” presented on the old KTLA
Channel 5. This reviewer can remember Sundays spent in front
of the old Zenith, eating Swanson’s Mexican TV dinners, and
having blissful indigestion of the imagination. Of these
three flicks, Horror Island is the rarest, having
never been released on videotape or laser disc.
The
Night Monster
was seen by this reviewer on the original “Shock Theater” in
1958, and scared the living yell out of this young scribe!
This
five film box set should provide all the tricks and treats
any vintage horror film fan should want this Halloween.
Once
again—available at Best Buy on Tuesday October 2nd.
October 2007
VAMPIRA—THE MOVIE
From
Alpha New Cinema
Oldies.com
ALp1033D
Starring:
Maila “Vampira” Nurmi, Sid Haig, Bill Moseley, Forrest J.
Ackerman, David J. Skal, Jerry Only, Debbie Rochon, Lloyd
Kaufman, Cassandra Peterson, Penny Dreadful, The Double D’s,
Jami Deadly, Svengoolie, Kevin Eastman, Julie Strain, and
Zacherle. Young Vampira played by Jezabelle X.
Maila
Nurmi has often been interviewed about her famous (or
infamous) friends James Dean, Ed Wood, and Marlon Brando.
But until now, no one had dared to chronicle her fascinating
story. Producer/Director Kevin Sean Michaels has
compiled the ultimate documentary on “Vampira” the Glamour
Ghoul. Culled from interviews from friends, musicians,
writers, film historians, and TV horror movie hosts, this is
the definitive telling of the First Lady of Horror’s journey
through life in Tinseltown.
The
focus is on Vampira, who tells her story with candor and
honesty that is like a fresh breeze from the Hollywood
Cemetery. There are stories that are totally priceless
(which this writer won’t give away) that paint a picture of
how fame and fortune are such easily fleeting phantoms, in
anyone’s life who attempts to embrace them.
There
are times where you can see the deep sadness in Vampira’s
eyes, only to be replaced by a million dollar twinkle that
only she possesses. While such icons as Forrest J. Ackerman,
Sid Haig, Zacherley, and Cassandra Peterson weigh in on
Vampira’s early days and cultural impact, this is clearly
Vampira’s story as told by her. This is not to demean
the contributions of the other interviewees who are all
effective and highly informative.
Jezabelle X’s interpretation of Vampira’s formative years is
uncanny, and Ari Lehman’s haunting musical score lends
credibility to the overall ambience of the show. Other
atmospheric musical contributions come from the Merry
Widows, and Count Smokula’s tune kicks off the film. The
Count also has a music video in the Special Features section
of this DVD, which has a director’s commentary, comments
from cinema legend Ted V. Mikels, and interview segments
with Joe Flynn, Eva Von Slut, and Jonny Coffin.
The editing is artfully
handled by Alexia Anastasio, with animation by Mike Gaiss,
and title logo by Daniel Reeve. With dynamic artwork and
packaging, this long overdue tribute to the First Lady of
Horror should be a big hit with all the ghouls and guys.
September 2007
THE CLASSIC
SCI-FI
ULTIMATE
COLLECTION
Volume 2
Cult of the Cobra, Dr. Cyclops, The Land Unknown, The
Deadly Mantis, The Leech Woman
From Universal Pictures
‘Tis the season to be scary, the
Halloween season, that is! And Universal Studios has given
us an early gift of creepy sci-fi classics, sure to please
everyone.
The first offering on this five film
box set is Cult of the Cobra. Imagine you’re on leave
in the Orient in the last days of World War II, and just for
kicks you crash a secret sect meeting of the Cobra Cult, and
of course the high priest curses you, your friends, and
anyone else you come in contact with. Well, this is the plot
of the 78 minute thriller. Highlighted by a cast who
are not strangers to 50s horror and science fiction film
goers, this show was heavily panned upon its release.
Fifty-two years later, it delivers the entertainment it was
intended to. And after all, isn’t that what we’re after,
something to give a little relief from the world we live in?
Second on the bill is an outright
classic, Dr. Cyclops. Starring Albert Dekker (whose
demise in real life was more bizarre than any film noir ever
written), directed by King Kong creator Ernest B.
Schoedsack, and scripted by Tom Kilpatrick, this is a story
of science radically wrong. Set in the Peruvian jungle,
where Dekker shrinks everything he can get his hands on, and
masterfully presented in glorious Technicolor, this one will
keep you on the edge of your seat (if it doesn’t get shrunk
out from under you).
The effects are first-rate (by Farciot
Edouard and Albert Hay), four decades before the CGI
revolution. This is a stand-out classic from the Golden Age
of Hollywood.
With global warming a hot topic in
today’s work-a-day world, is it any wonder that 50 years ago
film makers chose to use this as the subject of The Land
Unknown? Starring Jock Mahoney and Shawn Smith (formerly
Shirley Patterson, who was the female lead in Columbia’s
Batman serial), this adventure takes place under the
Antarctic, where there is a tropical paradise complete with
a flying pterodactyl, a tyrannosaurus rex, and an
elasmosaurus thrown in for thrills and chills.
The special effects lend to the overall
enjoyment of the show, and Henry Brandon’s performance as
the mad scientist left over from Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic
expedition adds an air of menace. Jock Mahoney was an ace
stunt man (doubling for the likes of Errol Flynn) turned
actor, who had successful TV series and later went on the
play Tarzan twice in the 1960s. The Land Unknown is a
guilty pleasure for those who remember the grand old days of
Saturday matinees and drive-in movies.
Craig Stevens of Peter Gunn fame
heads up the cast of the next offering, The Deadly Mantis.
The prehistoric ancestor of the praying mantis is frozen
forever in the icy regions of the North Pole, when an
earthquake releases it from its frozen tomb. William Hopper,
who played Perry Mason’s sidekick in the classic TV series,
is along as the paleontologist who tries to make sense of
the catastrophic destruction caused by the mantis, while
sexy siren Alix Talton adds to the boilage factor.
While we wait for our planet to succumb
to the effects of global warming, one thing is for sure—this
society is fashion and youth obsessed. It’s a safe bet no
one wants to grow old, and this is the theme of The Leech
Woman. Colleen Gray plays the boozy wife of an
endocrinologist, who spirits her off to darkest Africa to
perform a dastardly experiment involving tribal rituals—and
in the process turns his spouse into a man-murdering babe
who kills to maintain her artificial youth. The cast
features Grand Williams (Shrinking Man and
Monolith Monsters) and Gloria Talbot, who was “The Girl
Who Hired Superman.” The Leech Woman was released on
a double bill with Hammer Films’ The Brides of Dracula,
which is also available from Universal.

For those viewers who remember these
five films when they came out, this is like meeting old
friends. For new viewers, this box set is a look at
the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Available at your local Best Buy
stores.
September 2007
Webmaster Note: For the review of THE
CLASSIC SCI-FI ULTIMATE COLLECTION Volume I, go half way
down this page! Also, Jock Mahoney is on the far right with
Jan on the far left!
THE CAVES THAT COULDN'T DIE!
(A Troglodyte’s Adventures in Bronson Caves
and Brush Canyon)
BY JAN ALAN HENDERSON
Body-snatching pods used to hang out in
them! Serial Superman Kirk Alyn’s arch enemy The Spider Lady
took up residence in them. There have been missions that
required an SOS Coast Guard signal. IT
tried to conquer the world from them. Killers from Space
brainwashed Peter Graves in them. Adam West’s Batman
called them home! The loneliest Texas Ranger was bushwhacked
in them! More than one Lost Horizon has been
seen from them! Flash Gordon battled the great god of
Tao on the Planet Mongo, and Charles (Ming, the Merciless)
Middleton died in this Hollywood hot spot in 1936.
Probably the most photographed pile of
rocks on the entire planet, they stand stoically silent.

Nestled high in the Hollywood Hills,
below the legendary Hollywood sign, is an
indestructible landmark, Bronson Caves. Originally known as
Brush Canyon, located in southern Griffith Park, it was
developed by the Union Rock Company in 1907, as the Union
Brick Quarry. The granite was first removed by truck, but
the neighbors objected to the truck traffic, and a rail line
was installed. This line ran through the main chamber
of the cave to the street below, and ran during restricted
hours in the morning and evening. The main cave and its two
tributaries were drilled through the mountain to expedite
the removal of granite from the back portion of the quarry.
The
first cinematic appearance of the caves was the National
Pictures serial Lightning Bryce, starring Jack Hoxie
and Ann Little. Made in 1919, this Western adventure was
directed by Paul C. Hurst, who also costarred as the
villain, 'Powder Solvang.' It is open to speculation
whether the method of ore removal (truck vs. rail) is the
reason for the first appearance of the quarry in this early
film. It is possible that Union Rock rented the
facility to National Pictures during its conversion from
rail to truck in 1918, as a means of supplementing their
income during the quarry downtime. The rail tracks and
trains in the quarry itself remained, and are evident in the
serial.
Taking place in the 1919 Old West,
Lightning Bryce could almost be classified as a horror
Western. It features an ethereal mystery woman, Indians with
sacred gold and crystal balls, and a visit to the Los
Angeles Chinatown district, to an opium den run by Dopey
Sam. Mixed in with primitive auto chases and western locales
is Bronson Caves, as the stone quarry and canyon where the
action in Chapters 8 to 10 takes place. Union Rock Company's
equipment, outbuildings, scaffolding and conveyor belts are
a major part of this serial scenery.
There are chases and captures, which
result in the capture of a sinister Indian played by Steve
Clement (a full blooded Yaqui Indian, also known as Esteban
Clemente or Steve Clemento), who constantly tries to rob
Lightning of the sacred gold nuggets. Clement, who was
billed as the world's greatest knife thrower in Vaudeville,
played a unique part in the formulation of the scenario for
the classic jungle thriller, King Kong, in which he
played the witch doctor. Clement had an experience in real
life close to that of the fictional Carl Denham, while
looking for an assistant for his knife throwing act. Playing
the character role of Zaroff's Mongolian servant in The
Most Dangerous Game, he related this tale to
screenwriter Ruth Rose, of a scruffily dressed young maiden
in a lunchroom, and an agent who refused to supply Clement
with girls for his act. Steve Clement was also shot in
the face by one Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) in the
classic Civil War drama, Gone with the Wind).
One of the cliffhangers involves the
heroine and the Indian being hung from the top of Brush
Canyon, only to be saved by Lightning Bryce. Bryce
quickly dynamites the canyon, which is captured explosively
by cinematographer Herbert Glendon.
Glendon gives the viewer a panoramic
view of Brush Canyon through a series of long shots, filmed
on the highest Eastern ridge of the canyon. There are
magnificent silhouette shots of the principal players
exploring the caves, with cave dust and smoke adding an
eerie dimension to this silent serial gem.
It is interesting to note that in 1919,
there was a rock ledge above the cave openings at the rear
of the canyon. This ridge was approximately 10 feet wide,
and looked as if it could hold three automobiles.
Operations ceased in the quarry in the
late Twenties, and all the buildings, rail trains and
scaffolding were removed. The ledge above the tri-opening
cave was chiseled off, and the caverns have remained as they
are today.
By the early 1930's, Bronson Caves was
a featured landscape In the new medium of Talkies.
1931 saw the caves play host to Nat Levine's Mascot serial
unit, for the production of King of the Wild. This
'all talking serial' features a pre-Frankenstein Boris
Karloff as the African sheik Mustapha. Involved with two
cohorts in the murder of an Indian rajah, this serial
features a letter written in invisible ink, a diamond field
in a volcano, jungle animals, and a mysterious old man and
woman. Photographed effectively by cinematographers Benjamin
Kline and Edward J. Kull, this convoluted multi-genre serial
is typical of what would be Nat Levine and Mascot's serial
output of the early 30's.
Levine and Company next visited the
caves at the end of 1931, for The Lightning Warrior,
starring canine favorite Rin-Tin-Tin. Rin-Tin-Tin, then an
elder statesdog, required a stunt double, and died in his
master's arms shortly after the completion of this serial.
Rinty had made silent films for Warner Brothers, which kept
the studio afloat in the late 1920`s. The dog was
found on a French battlefield by trainer Lee Duncan.
A madman agitator known as the Wolfman
(ten years before the Lon Chaney, Jr. classic) triggers an
Indian uprising. When Jimmy Carter (played by Frankie Darro)
is killed, the intrigue intensifies. Through twelve complex
chapters, Rinty and his pals dodge peril at every turn.
Bronson Caves play a vital scenic role in The Lightning
Warrior, as the Wolfman's lair. Cinematographer Ben
Kline moved into the co-director's chair, which he shared
with Armand Schaefer. The show was photographed by Ernest
Miller and William Nobles (who later worked at Republic).
John Wayne, Glenn Strange, Charlie King
and Eddie Parker fought their way through the caves in the
railroad action serial Hurricane Express (Mascot
1932). Hurricane Express is the second of John
Wayne's trio of Mascot serials. The third and most popular
of these chapter plays to showcase the rugged exterior of
Bronson Caves is The Three Musketeers (Mascot 1933).
This Foreign Legion thriller boasts a supporting cast of
Jack Mulhall, Western favorite Raymond Hatton, Francis X.
Bushman, Creighton Chaney (later changed to Lon, Jr.), and
Noah Berry, Jr. The Duke plays an American pilot named Tom
Wayne, who rescues the Three Musketeers (Mulhall,
Hatton, and Bushman) from a group of Arab terrorists. These
bandits, known as the Devil's circle, threaten the
legionnaires through twelve suspense packed episodes,
photographed by Ernest Miller and Tom Gulligan. Released as
a serial and a 90 minute feature version, it was re-issued
in 1948 as a 70 minute feature entitled Desert Command
by Favorite Films.
The fantasy film Deluge (Admiral
Productions, Inc., 1933) spotlights the caves with dramatic
photography by Norbert Brodine. Brodine (on loan from
MGM) gives the audience a preview of the photographic
possibilities of Bronson Canyon and Caves, to be realized in
1950's science fiction features - most notably, Invasion
of the Body Snatchers.
The star of Deluge is its
breathtaking special effects. Often, but incorrectly,
credited to Willis O'Brien, these effects were the work of
Ned Mann and Russell Lawson (who constructed the
miniatures), and Billy N. Williams, co-cinematographer.
While Deluge remains largely unseen (Englewood Video
did provide a limited VHS release), one can glimpse portions
of the dynamic New York destruction sequence in Republic
Productions' Dick Tracy vs. Crime, Inc. (1941),
S.O.S. Tidal Wave (1938), and Republic's first
'Rocketman' serial, King of the Rocketmen (1949).
It was replayed in the Commando Cody, Sky Marshall of the
Universe episode entitled “Nightmare Typhoon”.
Two
examples of effective night photography in the caves are in
The Vampire Bat (Majestic, 1933) and The Monkey's
Paw (RKO 1933). The Vampire Bat is a lurid
tale of vampirism through Scientific means. With an all-star
horror cast of Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvin Douglas, and
Dwight Frye, this crude yet atmospheric thriller was shot on
the sets of the Frankenstein village and castle at
Universal. Dwight Frye, once again playing a lunatic, Herman
Gleib, whose nocturnal bat-keeping antics earn him the
number one murder suspect moniker, is chased down by the
torch wielding vigilante villagers. They corner him in
Bronson Caves, which becomes an interior set that does not
resemble the interior of the caves. It should be noted
that Ira Morgan's eerie photography of the exterior/interior
of the cave adds greatly to the Universal Gothic feel of
this Majestic feature.
Morgan had a long career at Columbia
Pictures in the 40's in Sam Katzman's serial unit. The
Monkey's Paw features stunning night-for-night
photography by second unit cinematographer Jack Mackenzie.
This night time battle sequence was filmed in one evening in
the caves and canyon on October 19, 1932, and wrapped at
5:00 in the morning. Special effects man Harry Redmond
detonated the charges, which kicked up the dust in the
canyon, adding to the overall effect of the photography. The
last charge of the battle was detonated directly in front of
the camera.
In 1934, Bronson Canyon returns in
Western serial-fare. Mascot Pictures' production of
Mystery Mountain starring Ken Maynard and his wonder
horse Tarzan, made dual usage of the canyon and caves.
A railroad camp occupied one end of the quarry, while the
other end was the villain's hideout. Mystery Mountain
was photographed by Mascot regulars Ernest Miller and
William Nobles.
Ernest Miller and William Nobles also
photographed the caves and canyon for Gene Autry's
Western/science fiction/musical /fantasy/serial, The
Phantom Empire (Mascot 1935). This show features the
futuristic city of Murania melting via Jack Coyle and Howard
Lydecker's stereopticon plates. This effect utilized a 4x5
stereopticon plate with soft emulsion, heated from
underneath. Phantom Empire offers an ample helping of Gene
Autry music, the cornpone of Frankie Darro and the Radio
Ranch Regulars, and "Smiley" Burnett's hilarious harmonica
solos. The art direction and photography involving the
canyon and caves are spectacular.
Soldiers riding through the canyon are
photographed in much the same style as the exterior of Red
Rock Canyon was, for the Universal Pictures' Flash
Gordon's Trip to Mars, and Buck Rogers serials.
With an Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves style trap door
installed on the back main tunnel, and stunning floor to
ceiling laboratory equipment inside the caverns, Phantom
Empire's science fiction/musical/Western elements
make this a unique serial jewel.
Condemned to Live (Invincible
Pictures, 1935) is another tale dealing with vampirism which
utilizes the caves and cliffs of Bronson Canyon. By
inter-cutting ocean shots with those of the rock strata of
Bronson Canyon, the audience is led to believe that the
caves and canyon are part of this European shoreline.
Condemned To Live was filmed on Universal's backlot, as
was Vampire Bat (with Bride of Frankenstein
having just completed production). Condemned To
Live
also used the bell tower set of Lon Chaney, Sr.'s The
Hunchback of Notre Dame, (Universal 1923), with Ted
Billings in his Tyrolean costume from The Bride of
Frankenstein as the bell-ringer.
Comic adventure strips were the rage in
the 30's. The Sunday and daily appearances of these cartoon
features were a sure sell at the box office. Flash Gordon
premiered on Sunday, January 7, 1934, in Hearst newspapers
throughout the country. Distributed by King Features,
Flash Gordon was created by Alex Raymond, a former Wall
Street brokerage clerk turned cartoonist. Raymond
simultaneously created Jungle Jim to serve as an
introduction piece to the new science fiction cartoon.
Flash and Jim were created as competition for early
favorites Buck Rogers (created in 1929) and Tarzan (created
in 1912 by Edgar Rice Burroughs). In an ironic twist of
fate, Johnny Weismuller, who originated the role of Tarzan
in the Talkies in 1931 for MGM, ended up playing Jungle Jim
for 'Jungle Sam' Katzman and Columbia's "B" picture unit.
The Jungle Jim feature Mark of the
Gorilla and several other features make use of Bronson
Canyon. Two years after Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim and
Flash Gordon successes, Universal attained the rights to
Raymond's strip. The serial, a highly successful
medium in the 30's, would be the format for the
interplanetary adventures of
Flash Gordon. A radio show of Flash Gordon had
been a success, running simultaneously with the comic
strips. One of the reasons for Flash Gordon's
success was a highly sex-charged story line.
The interior tunnels of Bronson Caves
are among some of the most striking backgrounds for Flash's
battle with two of mighty Mongo's greatest beasts. The Gocko
was the first of these Herculean terrors to be
encountered by Flash. Played by Glenn Strange, this
monster was aided by wire riggings hooked into the ceiling
of the caverns. The suit was reconstructed for the Fire
Dragon in later chapters. The Caves also provided the
scenery for the climactic ending of Flash Gordon,
where Ming the Merciless enters the Sacred Temple of the god
Tao. A false perspective was utilized in the tunnel to make
the Gocko appear larger than Flash in these battle
sequences. A carefully disguised small person stood in
for Buster Crabbe as Flash to make these scenes seem larger
than life.
Ming's soldiers traveled through the
caves in often repeated footage throughout the thirteen
interplanetary episodes of Flash Gordon. The success
of Flash Gordon prompted two equally successful
serials, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (Universal 1938,
presented in green tints, as were the reissues of
Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Old Dark House)
and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (Universal
1940). The success of Flash Gordon led Republic
Pictures to the comic strips. They purchased the
rights to the Dick Tracy strip for $10,000. Hiring unknown
bit player Ralph Byrd at $150 per week to play Chester
Ghoul's protagonist, Republic was off and running in the
serial sweepstakes of popular comic heroes.
With the box office popularity of
Dick Tracy, Republic cast Byrd opposite Bela Lugosi in
S.O.S. Coast Guard (Republic 1937). This well
mounted episodic Coast Guard adventure featured effects by
Jack Coyle, Howard Lydecker, and the new West Coast
transplant, Theodore Lydecker. Most rewarding of these
effects is the stereopticon plate gag, recreated with the
rock walls of Brush Canyon.
Bela Lugosi's character Boroff has
developed a gas that will quite literally melt anything on
contact. With his mute assistant, played by serial
veteran Richard Alexander, (Prince Barin from the first two
Flash Gordon serials), Lugosi wreaks havoc on all who dare
defy his new world order. In the serial's climactic
sequences, Ralph Byrd and troops deal with Lugosi's
monstrous mystery gas and save the day with only a small
part of Bronson Canyon and Caves being melted in the
process.
Columbia Pictures and Peter Lorre paid
a visit to Brush Canyon in the seldom seen Island of
Doomed Men (Columbia 1940). Lorre plays a sadist named
Steven Denel. Denel would arrange for parole for an inmate,
then have him shipped off to Dead Man's Island to work his
secret diamond mine (Bronson Canyon). Cameraman Ben Kline's
moody photography adds to the bleak desperation of this
picture. Lorre leers at his wife (played by the sexy Rochell
Hudson), and gleefully flogs the hero (Robert Wilcox) by
lantern light in the Canyon.
By 1940, Columbia and Republic Pictures
had their own in-studio caves (exteriors and interiors).
Both studios continued to use the Canyon exterior as well as
the Caves interiors and exteriors.
In Chapter 5 of The Adventures of
Captain Marvel, Republic revisits the Canyon and repeats
the stereopticon plate melting effect of the entrance to the
main tunnel. The Scorpion and his henchmen lure Captain
Marvel to the back of the Cave by using a dummy of the
Scorpion rigged with a loudspeaker. Marvel discovers the
wire and follows it to his mannequin foe, only to find that
the walls of the cave are rapidly melting around him.
The Scorpion has aimed the Sacred Golden Scorpion (which is
a powerful weapon with the potential of turning ordinary
rock into gold) at the opening of Bronson Cave, turning the
opening into molten liquid. With waves of lava about to
consume him, Marvel spies a hole in the cave ceiling and
springs through it, avoiding the molten destruction.
Cinematographer William Nobles and
Directors William Whitney and John English mix interiors of
the in-studio cave and exteriors of Bronson Caves for a
highly imaginative result. In one sequence, when the
Scorpion is describing his devilish plans to his henchmen,
the lighting and photography seem to give the interior
studio caves an eerie golden glow. The stereopticon plate
effects are again handled masterfully by Howard and Theodore
Lydecker, and this effect is repeated in countless Republic
serials, most notably King of the Rocketmen and
Radar Men To The Moon. Shot in a mere 39 days, and
released to standing room only crowds in March of 1941,
Captain Marvel is classic serial fantasy. It may
be the best sound serial ever produced!
This chapter play might well have been
The Adventures of Superman. In 1940 Republic
had optioned the Superman story and character, but due to
legal complications with D.C. Comics, Republic ceased
negotiations with D.C. and turned to Fawcett Comics, which
owned Captain Marvel, Spy Smasher, and Captain America.
Eight years later, Sam Katzman and Columbia's serial unit
brought Superman to the screen in 15 chapters of glowing
sepiatone.
While heavily relying on their
in-studio caverns, the first Superman serial uses front and
back cave entrances of Bronson Caves. The entrance to the
Spider Lady's hideout is the front single tunnel of the Cave
(in 1966, this opening served as the entrance to the bat
cave in 20th Century Fox's popular Batman television
program, starring Adam West and Burt Ward), while the back
trio of tunnels serve as the backdrop for a mining disaster
in Chapter 2, entitled Depths of the Earth. For the
interior of the mine, Columbia used their studio cave
interior. While cinematographer Ira H. Morgan's low
angle photography enhances Bronson Caves as a mine front,
there is little his photography can do to save the cheapness
of the interior cave sets.
The late 1940's saw a declining movie
industry, the emergence of television, and more location
shooting for Bronson Caves.
The Lone Ranger had long been a popular
character on radio, and its transference to the T.V. screen
surprised no one. With veteran Republic player Clayton Moore
assuming the title role of The Lone Ranger, and Jay
Silverheels as his faithful sidekick, Tonto, this program
was an instant success. Bronson Caves and Canyons provided
most of the exterior scenery for the first three episodes,
which were entitled The Legend of the Lone Ranger.
Butch Cavendish, played by the veteran Western/horror actor
Glenn Strange, ambushes a group of Texas Rangers in Brush
Canyon. After the ambush, Tonto, the Lone Ranger's faithful
companion, finds him wounded and nurses him back to health
in Bronson Caves.
Bronson Caverns, Canyon and surrounding
area played an indispensable part of the 50's science
fiction film craze. One of the early visitors to the
cave was Robot Monster (Astor Pictures, 1953). This
barely watchable, no-budget feature sports a monster which
is basically a man in a gorilla suit with a space helmet on,
and a bad case of fleas, gyrating around the back entrance
of the cave, with feathers blowing madly throughout
sequences of long spaced-out embellishments from this furry
asinine alien.
Low budget monsters slithered in and
out of Bronson Caves throughout the 50's. Some
memorable - or unmemorable, depending on the viewer's
perspective - monsters the caves were invaded by were the
Killers From Space, Teenage Caveman, The
Cosmic Man,
The Brain From Planet Arous, She Demons,
Invisible Invaders, and The Return of Dracula.
Of
these troglodytes from other worlds, and demons from the
center of our own world, Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(Allied Artists, 1956) photographically captures the
majesty of Bronson Caverns more than any other picture that
featured the Caves. The plot is simple 50's paranoic
fare. The hero and heroine are confronted by their
hometown friends and family who cultivate pods from another
world. These pods are placed next to the sleeping
townsfolk, and produce an exact replica of that person.
Once the soul integrates with this alien horticulture, the
zombie-like subject becomes free of all material strife, and
is in a state of blissful euphoria produced from their
new-found plantlike immortality. Fleeing the
townsfolk, the two heroes, Miles Bennell -aptly played by
Kevin McCarthy - and his former sweetheart Becky Driscoll -
sensually played by Dana Wynter - take refuge in a mine
shaft (Bronson Caves), complete with a secret crawl space
specially dug into the cave floor, covered over with a board
walkway. The two struggle to stay awake, after being awake
for several days. They hide beneath the false cave floor as
the townspeople thunder over them.
The photography of Ellsworth
Fredericks, ASC, makes this entire series of scenes
horrific. Especially effective is the low angle
photography of the two protagonists, soaking wet, trying to
keep still as the townsfolk run across the planks merely
inches above their heads. After the townsfolk have
gone, hearing music the hero goes to check out the Canyon,
and the heroine falls asleep. When he returns, he is unaware
that she has slipped into slumber and has been possessed.
Frederick's intense camera work conveys Kevin McCarthy's
reaction of terror, as sweat and mud-soaked schizophrenia,
as McCarthy rants and raves to his heroine Wynters, who has
been taken over by her pod double.
Fredericks'
camera conveys, through a series of low-angle shots, the
paranoia of a love lost in a matter of minutes. McCarthy's
character runs hysterically into the midst of a traffic jam.
He approaches one truck, pulling the canvas backing off the
trailer, finding it loaded full of pods, and shortly finds
himself in the psychiatric ward. Ellsworth Fredericks'
photography of the Caves and this entire low budget thriller
is stunning.
The Return of Dracula is another
50's B horror/thriller set in Brush Canyon. In this
Gramercy Pictures effort, the Caves play a main part in
establishing the atmosphere of this low-budget venture. This
descendent of Dracula, expertly played by Francis Lederer,
after disembarking from a local train, transplants his
coffin deep in the Canyon, in the bowels of Bronson Caves.
With many fog-laden coffin openings, this budget filmed saga
of Dracula featured a pulse-pounding musical score by
composer Gerald Fried.
The amount of Westerns made in Bronson
Caves would be incalculable, let alone the amount of
television shows. The location is more often booked
than not. It served as the backdrop for the conclusion
of the John Wayne classic The Searchers, and was used
extensively in the Western TV favorites Bonanza and
Gunsmoke. The pilot for The Adventure of Superboy
was shot in the canyon by Superman TV. producer Whitney
Ellsworth.
With its 90-plus year history, it is
highly unlikely that Bronson Caves will be torn down to
accommodate a mini-mall. In our ever-changing world,
it's nice to know some thing of Hollywood history will
remain until the end of time.
This article appeared in
American Cinematographer Magazine in June 1993, in a
different form. It was revised in May of 2005.
September 2007
“It’s a Perfect Night
for Mystery
and
Horror!”
THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
Revisited By
Jan Alan Henderson
 In
the late Fifties and early Sixties television was a vast wonderland,
filled with imagination, unreality, and pure unadulterated simple fun!
Today such entertainment doesn’t exist! Our monsters are complex,
relentless, and digital. They attack us in 5.1 sound from a flat
plasma TV, and there’s enough blood, puss, and slime to make one
grateful this home theater doesn’t include “smell-o-vision.”
But back in the day when there were
three networks which the highbrow Mecca of television was
represented by, there were also wonderful local stations
that provided blue collar fare. Kiddie shows with un-funny
clowns, mythical train engineers, sheriffs who didn’t carry
guns; and all of them drank their milk, ate their veggies,
and said their prayers every night (or so we were led to
believe). Then there was the programming on these stations
that was questionable for young viewers (unlike today where
no holds are barred). The monster movie shows! Where
one finally got to see the great stuff we read about in such
‘zines as Famous Monsters of Filmland, Fantastic
Monsters, and Castle of Frankenstein. Most
monster boomers will remember the classic Bride of
Frankenstein in FM #21 in early 1963.
Shortly after reading that classic
issue, the Million Dollar Movie ran the Bride
nine times in one week - five times on the week days and
twice a day at the weekend. Million Dollar Movie
was a showcase for old movies. After seeing dynamic
photographs and all the reading I had done, to see this
sequel to
Frankenstein was more than amazing - to see these images
come to life, and to hear the quirky dialogue, with a music
score that opened the heavens. Needless to say, I watched
the Bride as many times that week as my parents would
allow.
One
thing that struck me at this tender age was how odd the
characters were in this show. Frankenstein and
Dracula had their share of weirdos. The Old Dark
House and The Invisible Man were populated by
James Whale’s gallery psycho comics, but the Bride is
a whole world of twisted eccentrics, led by Dr. Pretorius.
The combination of horror and comedy
has always been a dicey proposition for film makers. Some
moviegoers prefer not to mix these two elements, which has
produced more than a few failures at the box office.
Historians usually categorize the Abbott And Costello Meet
the Monsters films as horror/comedy classics. But
Universal's Bride of Frankenstein (1935) could be
considered the first horror/comedy classic.

The Laemmles had been pestering James
Whale with their newest project, The Return of
Frankenstein. Whale felt that he had exhausted all the
possibilities of Mary Shelley's creature in the first film.
Both he and Karloff considered the original the best. Whale
confided to his friend and collaborator R.C. Sheriff that he
wished to in no way be a part of a dreadful Frankenstein
sequel, and that he was using Sheriff's magnificent
script of The Invisible Man to placate the Laemmles.
Whale insisted that Carl Laemmle, Jr., take Sheriff's
script home, and after a good dinner to read the script in
its entirety. Whale knew this would irritate junior Laemmle,
as his habit was to not work after his evening meal.
Whale's production of The Invisible
Man displays his love for macabre humor, but also
introduces the audience to the sadistic side of James Whale.
While Una O'Conner's portrayal of Mrs. Hall and E. E.
Clive's constable seem to be the prototype of their
characters Minnie and the Burgomaster in The Bride,
the "invisible one" portrayed by Claude Raines is a cackling
sadist. Most of the comedy in The Invisible Man turns
to dark tragedy, most often inflicted by the "invisible
one." His mental torture of his former colleague, Kemp,
contains not one ounce of comedy, while his adventures in
the small village of Eiping reek of comedy. It is possible
that Karloff and Whale would have differed on the "Invisble
One's" character. No doubt Karloff would have been
uncomfortable with Whale's sadism. Author H.G. Wells
objected to R. C. Sheriff's and Whale's take on his
"Invisible One," specifically the use of a drug that causes
invisibility and madness. Whale's response to Wells was,
anyone who would crave invisibility would have to be a
maniac.
Boris
Karloff, like Whale, had reservations about reprising his
role as the monster. Karloff rarely complained about the
ordeals of, as he called it, the makeup shop; but in a 1958
radio interview with Clive Edwards (which took place in
Carmel, California), he recalled the rigors of making the
first film. "The makeup took about four hours to put on. It
was a terrible job. I worked every day in the film, the film
took eight weeks to make, and I remember one awful occasion
when I got into the makeup shop at half past three in the
morning, to be ready to go out on location, and we went out
and we worked in the hot sun at the edge of the lake, the
scene with the little girl. We came back to the studio in
the evening to have some supper, and we went out onto the
back lot, and I worked all night until five in the
morning. I had the makeup on for twenty-five hours!
That was a long pull. The carbon lights were dreadful. They
hurt your eyes. The boots weighed about sixteen pounds
apiece. All told, the outfit weighed between forty and
forty-five pounds."
It has been reported that Boris Karloff
had to carry Colin Clive up the hill to the windmill in the
first Frankenstein, without the aid of stuntmen,
dummies, or doubles, to the point of straining Boris'
already fragile back. According to Elsa Lanchester, Whale
referred to Karloff as "that truck driver," and at times
would become jealous of all the attention Karloff received
on the set of the sequel. There are many publicity
photographs of James Whale hamming it up with Karloff's
dummy stand-in, and Karloff himself, to show that James
Whale was not about to be ignored. Whale believed
that he was the "Puppet Master" when it came to Karloff's
monster. He had originally sketched and then screen tested
the future star. Karloff and Whale disagreed often.
It has been widely reported that
Karloff had the scene with little Maria at the lake cut in
the first film. This seems unlikely, and many accounts about
the censorship of the original Frankenstein have been
reported over the decades. One was the Laemmles had ordered
the cuts, most of all Junior. After a preview in the
fall of 1931 in Santa Barbara, Junior was terrified that the
audience would be revulsed by the picture.
In 1993, author David J. Skal reported
that the censorship issue was a matter decided by the
individual states where the film was to shown. The
state of Kansas cut the film heavily, while Skal maintains
that
Frankenstein appears to have been shown complete in
California (with additional shots of Maria drowning, not
included in the 1980's restoration of Frankenstein). He
also reports that in June of 1937, cuts were required for
the film's announced re-release, and that the "Now I know
what it's like to be God." sequence was mentioned in a San
Francisco review of the show's original release.
The Return of Frankenstein would
have as many problems with moral issues and censors. These
facts contradict the story of the Regina Theatre in Los
Angeles, California. The problem with The Return of
Frankenstein was story. Laemmle, Jr., was dissatisfied
with an early treatment prepared by Robert Florey, entitled
The New Adventures of Frankenstein - The Monster Lives. It
bounced around the Universal story department from December
of 1931, and in February of 1932 his treatment was finally
rejected. It was announced that Florey was in pre-production
on The Wolfman and The Invisible Man. Florey
had no contract with Universal, and was subsequently aced
out of all three pictures. Universal staff writer Tom Reed
(who co-scripted Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue
Morgue) wrote an early treatment. Some of Reed's scenes
remain in Bride, but the majority of the screenplay
was written by William Hurlbut, with the Mary Shelley
prologue from an unacceptable John L. Balderson script.
One source reports that there was a
treatment by L. G. Blechman that had Henry and Elizabeth
traveling with a circus under the alias Heinrich. The
monster finds them, and Henry creates a Bride in a circus
wagon, with electricity bootlegged from a power pole. Henry
completes the female creature, only to have her perish. The
monster, after losing his only chance at happiness, is
killed by one of the circus lions.
 Perhaps
the wildest conception of the sequel was John L. Balderson's. His
was the most gruesome and potentially offensive. In his story, the Bride
was created from morgue leftovers and female parts rifled from
trainwrecks. The most outlandish element of Balderson's version was the
Bride's head and shoulders were taken from an Amazon circus freak with
water on the brain.
Whale carefully crafted the script with
Hurlbut to suit his sense of the bizarre. Whale told his
life partner, David Lewis, that if he had to make this
Frankenstein picture, it would be a send-up!
The proposed scripts met severe
opposition from the production codes' Joseph Breen. Whale
wrote a solicitous letter to Breen, assuring him that
matters such as necrophilia, sacrilegious images, and
entrails, would be modified to suit the production
code. Whale outsmarted Breen with his use of
subtlety. Religious images remain, and most film historians
point out the Christian symbolism, but fail to note that Dr.
Pretorius seems to be wearing an oversized yarmulke when
unveiling his miniature creatures to Henry Frankenstein.
 Whale
had Colin Clive back to reprise his role as Henry
Frankenstein. Karloff was back, deprived of his first
name in publicity, as the monster. Valerie Hobson was
brought in from the U.K. to take Mae Clarke's place as
Elizabeth, but the most ingenious bit of casting is Ernest
Thesiger as Doctor Pretorius. Thesiger as Pretorius is an
extension of Thesiger's Horace Femm from The Old Dark
House. He is bitchy, camp, unpredictable, and has a
weakness for gin. For years, modern writers have pigeonholed
Pretorius and Thesiger as gay. Whether Whale envisioned the
doctor that way is debatable. In real life, Thesiger was
married to the same woman for 50 years, and had an
impressive record in World War I, but as to his
homosexuality, it’s anyone’s guess and no one’s business. He
brings the sinister tone to the film, as he crows to Henry
(before the creation), that once they "would have been burnt
at the stake as wizards" (for their experiment) and he
fancies himself a bit of a devil. A delicious
character in Whale’s cinematic circus.
Una O'Connor's character, Minnie, is as
over the top as Thesiger's Pretorius. Her shrieks,
utterances, and witticisms, accent the manic comedy through
the body of the show. E. E. Clive's interpretation of walrus
mustached, mumbling burgomaster is the third comedy element.
His muttering of "No rioting," and "Merely an escaped
lunatic," add to the ambience of the show.
Charles
D. Hall's art direction is vividly atmospheric, with moody
skyline scrims, burnt out windmills, and authentic Tyrolean
villages.
Cinematographer John Mescall's
photography is fluid, and highlights the sets and players to
maximum effect. Utilizing low angle photography, Mescall
captures Whale's vision of a demented European village
inhabited by twisted misfits, and gods and monsters. Mescall
worked well with Whale. He never troubled the director with
trivial details, and worked fast. The brass at Universal had
cause for concern when it came to Mescall. He was a
chronic alcoholic, whose work did not suffer while he was
drinking. It was getting to and from work that was the
problem.
John Mescall was born January 10, 1887,
in Litchfield, Illinois, and despite his drinking, had quite
a celebrated career. He began his association with James
Whale on The Invisible Man as an assistant to special
effects man John P. Fulton. He collaborated with director
James Whale on five of Whale's productions. Drinking finally
got the better of Mescall, and other than rumors of his
dreary life after show business on skid row, nothing is
known about him.
In 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein
was nominated for an Acadamy Award for best sound
recording.
In
1982, editor Ted Kent described the creation scene in
The Bride of Frankenstein to James Whale biographer
James Curtis. "The Special Effects and Electrical
Departments made up numerous meaningless gadgets, switches,
indicators and the like, and Whale chose the most
interesting. In a sequence of this sort, where so many cuts
are required, the burden of constructing it has to be the
editor's. Procedure is slow and one has to feel his way
through an abundance of film. The length of the cuts
is important. The gadgets and paraphernalia interspersed
with the subject must be interestingly used so as to avoid
repetition. The effect is made to hold the audience's
attention to the extent that they forget that they are
watching nothing but film. The director, of course, can and
does have a say in its overall length. The sound effects are
an important factor, but in my opinion, the most valuable
contribution to this sequence was made by Franz Waxman for
his imaginative musical score."
Like Max Steiner's magnificent score
for King Kong, Franz Waxman's music for The Bride
of Frankenstein was a classic example of music being as
important as the visuals for setting the tone of what many
regard as classic fantasy films. Whale insisted that Waxman
compose a number of unresolved themes, which would lead up
to the creation theme for the final visual and musical
send-off of the film. This must have impressed American
composer Richard Rodgers, because themes in his hit musical
South Pacific are a little too close to Waxman’s
score for The Bride of Frankenstein
The set was a pleasant one, yet
serious. Many publicity photos have the English cast
taking tea together, with Elsa Lanchester in a wicker chair
due to her bandages. Werewolf of London was shooting
at an adjacent stage, and a corridor was constructed so that
Valerie Hobson could make her way between stages, as she was
appearing in both features. This was done for security
reasons, as Universal did not wish photographs of either
monster to be circulated in the press before their scheduled
releases.
Cortlandt Hull, the great nephew of
Henry Hull, star of The Werewolf of London, remembers
his great uncle telling him of an interesting incident that
happened to his wife while visiting him on the set. "Henry's
wife came to visit him on the set, and somehow she was
directed to the wrong soundstage. She walked onto The
Bride of Frankenstein set by mistake. A technician told
her that no, Henry was not on the set, but was on another
set. 'You don't have to go around the buildings, because
there's a connecting corridor that has been set up between
the two sets. The corridor was dimly lit. As she proceeded
down the other end of the corridor, she heard, "thump,
thump, thump." Halfway through, she saw Boris coming down
the corridor in full Frankenstein makeup, smoking a
cigar. As they met, he said, "Good morning, Mrs. Hull."
She went "Aiee, aiee, aiee." One must remember that she and
Henry knew Boris, but that day in the corridor in the full
Frankenstein get-up, she didn't recognize him. To see that
make-up in person, she had never realized how impressive it
was."
 The
success of the laser and tape release of the restored
Frankenstein prompted Universal in 1986 to begin a
search for the missing footage from Bride of Frankenstein. Technical
Director of Universal Home Video, Ron Roloff, recalls, "In
1985 MCA did a world-wide search on any prints of Bride
of Frankenstein that might exist in any of the foreign
vaults. We were looking for longer prints, longer
negatives, odd reels, any of that kind of stuff. The search
drew a blank. In 1992, it was rumored that the Library of
Congress had unearthed a complete print of Bride, an
original nitrate that had been copyrighted in 1934. This
supposedly complete print was first shown at the Director's
Guild. Our feedback at the time was that it didn't contain
anything extra, yet a year later at the Alex Theater in
Glendale, California, it was advertised as the 92 minute
version. Before any of these rumors started, we had the
print at the Library of Congress measured, and compared it
to what we have on the lot, and they were the same."
Many modern day authors and critics
have tried to put a psycho-sexual backspin on The Bride
of Frankenstein. 70 years later, The Bride of
Frankenstein, as its star Boris Karloff described it, is
more like a Grimm's Fairy Tale.
Back in the pages of Famous Monsters,
there was a column called “The Graveyard Examiner.”
Fans were asked to poll their favorite horror films, and
The Bride was on most every fan’s list. In 1999 The
Bride
was released on DVD, and five years later it was
re-issued as part of Universal’s Legacy DVD Box Sets.
Each year, fans discover and rediscover The Bride,
and in the crazy world we live in, it’s nice to know we can
always visit a fantasy world of gods and monsters!
AUTHOR’S NOTES:
Portions of this article were published
in American Cinematographer Magazine in January, 1988. The
article was written by the late George E. Turner and this
writer. Mr. Turner’s portion of the article does not appear
here, as his estate owns the copyright to his work. This
article is dedicated to the memory George and Jean Turner.
September 2007
THE CLASSIC
SCI-FI
ULTIMATE
COLLECTION
From Universal Home Video
3 DVD Set
With
Warner Brothers’ 1954 big bug extravaganza Them, the
flood gates opened for insects, multi-legged creatures, and
all varieties of radioactive slime. It seems that the atomic
karma of World War II was on a hellbent path to stomp the
Nifty Fifties into oblivion (at least on theater screens).
Some of these apocalyptic revolutions were stirred up by man
meddling in things better left alone, or cosmic critters
from the deep recesses of cinematic space.
This
five film set showcases Universal International’s shining
moments in the Sci-Fi genre. The kick-off of the collection
is a John Agar double bill of Tarantula (1955) and
The Mole People (1956).
With
Them (Warner Brothers 1954), the ants of Los Angeles
went berserk in an all-out formic acid bloodbath. With
Tarantula, man’s quest to save humanity runs amok, with
devastating effects on humans. And spiders.
Despite the glorious 50s special effects and Bud Westmore’s
makeup on Leo G. Carroll, Tarantula oozes with desert
creepiness, an omnipresent stillness that draws the viewer
through the sandy wasteland, where nothing is what it seems
to be! The performances of all cast members are solid, and
the atmosphere is the selling point for the action.
In Los
Angeles’ late night talk show land (in the 50s and 60s), we
had a guy names Joe Pine. His shtick was to humiliate his
less-than-brain-surgeon guests, and audience members who
questioned his views. One night Pine was interviewing a man
or a woman who was covered head to toe in aluminum foil,
about his/her civilization called the “Ls,” which live at
the center of the earth.
Now,
this recycled individual might have been the screenwriter of
the next feature, starring the late John Agar and the
ravishing Cynthia Patrick. This is a tale of a long-lost
civilization of albinos, with mole men (not to be confused
with George Reeves’ pint-sized buddies of five years
earlier). Cynthia Patrick plays the Marked One (who has the
only normal pigmentation in this cavernous domain), and Alan
Napier, who essays the villain, became Batman’s butler
Alfred ten years later. A lot of critics have panned this
flick over the years, but this is solid 50s, with Hugh
Beaumont on board as Agar’s right hand scientist.
In
this new millennium, the erosion of personal liberties is a
fact of life. Our shrinking import as individuals is a
horrifying thought. So imagine what would happen if our
physical bodies began to diminish along with our God-given
rights. This is the scenario of Universal’s The
Incredible Shrinking Man. Taken from Richard Matheson’s
second novel, this tale of personal terror is as effective
today as it was when it was first released. With a
terrific cast featuring Grant Williams (who also co-starred
in the Warner Brothers TV hit Hawaiian Eye three
years later), Randy Stuart, Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale of
Beverly Hillbillies fame), William Schallert (of The
Patty Duke Show) and mole man Billy Curtis. Shrinking
Man is a class A science fiction thriller with a tragic
ending, that emphasizes the futility of life. The script is
dynamic; written by Richard Matheson, who is now known as
Richard Christian Matheson.
With
all the natural disasters plaguing our world today, it could
be said that The Monolith Monsters is a prophetic
film. Grant Williams is once again the leading man, with
solid support from Lola Albright, Les Tremayne, and “Be a
Million Butler” Trevor Bardette for the 1950 The
Adventures of Superman episode “The Human Bomb.” This
film quite literally rocks, as a meteor shower turns
ordinary landscape into deadly mobile rocks.
The
last offering in the five film box set is Monster On The
Campus. At the center of this flick is a
million-year-old fish and its strange powers, and the
downfall of a college professor, both physically and
mentally. Resembling 1953's The Neanderthal Man
starring Robert (Inspector Henderson) Shayne, Monster On
The Campus is a wonderful drive-in romp, showing that
the Fifties were truly nifty, especially when you’ve got
monsters, mayhem, and teen heartthrobs all going nuts in the
halls of higher learning.
Troy
Donahue plays an anguished teen (type casting), who tries to
make sense of all the collegiate madness, while Arthur Franz
(no stranger to Sci-Fi fans) delivers the chills as the
teacher who instructs his students in the fine art of
terror.
This
box set was originally offered by the Best Buy chain, and is
now available on Amazon.com. Along with It Came From
Outer Space, Creature From the Black Lagoon, and
This Island Earth, these five flicks prove beyond a
shadow of a doubt that Universal International produced the
most stellar science fiction films of the Fifties.
Watch
out for Volume Two, coming in September to a Best Buy store
near you!
Photo: Jan and Mary Lue
Henderson with John Agar
August
2007
GOOD NIGHT,
WHATEVER YOU ARE
My
Journey With Zacherley, the Cool Ghoul
by Richard Scrivani
Available from
Dinoship Books, Inc.
www.dinoship.com
The
late 50s in America were the best of times and the worst of
times. While the parents of the Baby Boom Generation
were digging up their back yards and installing bomb
shelters, their carefree offspring were bopping to the new
sounds of Rock and Roll recently cascading through the
airwaves, and about to embark on a historical journey from
the distant past.
In
1957, while kids of all ages were wishing upon stars and
hanging out at their favorite malt shops, a creepy
phenomenon was about to be unleashed upon these space aged
children, who already had ample cases of indigestion of the
imagination. Shock Theater!
Blasting into un-living rooms coast to coast, Shock
Theater was a force as powerful as rock and roll, and a
Kong-sized headache for boomer parents, who were still
looking under every stone in the bomb sheltered back yard
for the Red Menace.
Four
years earlier, Vampira (Maila Nurmi) introduced the horror
movie host/hostess format on Los Angeles KABC, showing
public domain horror flicks and screaming like a banshee,
sending the audio engineer’s meters into the red zone.
But
something magical was about to happen in the Town of
Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. It all began with a
western soap opera called Action in the Afternoon,
where one John Zacherle (a native of Philly) was co-starring
as a nutty traveling undertaker selling coffins in the Old
West. Quickly the station brass developed a ghoulish
character christened “Roland” to host their Shock Theater
package debuting in the fall.
Consisting of the Universal horror classics, the show as
premiered as Million Dollar Movie presents The
Shock Theater on October 7, 1957, which aired
Frankenstein, and the original Dracula the next
night. Oddly, no mention of “Roland” was made on the
WCAU channel ID ads for these two shockers. The
original makeup featured Roland with stitches on his lips
similar to a shrunken head, but was dropped in favor of the
classic look which has endured for half a century.
WCAU
held an open house to see just how popular Roland was, and
it turned out to be a mob scene. This led to Zach
cutting a 45 called Dinner With Drac on the Cameo
Parkway label, which became a smash hit. With a hit
show and a hit record under his belt, Zach was profiled in
the long-gone
Saturday Evening Post, and soon the greener pastures of
the Big Apple beckoned the Cool Ghoul. Zach was
introduced to New York viewers with a big ballyhoo buildup
counting down the days to the September 28, 1958 premiere on
New York’s ABC affiliate WABC. He made appearances on
the
Jack Paar Show and Pat Boones’ show, and before anyone
could count tombstones in the graveyard, Zach was the toast
of New York.
Viewers tuned in each week to revisit their favorite
Universal shockers. Some positioned their rabbit ears
to view these classics for the first time, hosted by
Philly’s Roland, now dubbed Zacherley (his real name was
Zacherle).
One
viewer from Bergenfield, New Jersey was Richard Scrivani,
the writer of this wonderful tome.
Good Night Whatever You Are
chronicles Zacherle’s
career and exploits as the “Cool Ghoul” from the early days
to the present, with rare photographs and an insider’s view
which only Mr. Scrivani could provide, having knows Zach
from the Disc-O-Teen days back in 1965.
Disc-O-Teen was an American Bandstand style dance
show, featuring live bands from the New Jersey area, and up
and coming hit makers of the day. Scrivani’s writing
is crisp, informative, and highly personal, painting the
complete picture of this legendary gentleman, on and off the
video screen.
Highlights include his wild and hilarious experiments with
cauliflower brains, Jello™ and amoebae, the infamous Dracula
Fizz, and his fiendish cast of characters: Gasport, My Dear,
and the Man in the White Coat (who at the end of each season
carted Zach off to the Loonie Bin!)
Of
special interest was the Disc-O-Teen section.
In June of 1967 amidst the “Summer of Love” this reviewer
made a pilgrimage to Manhattan and for a week resided at the
Roosevelt Hotel on 42nd Street. Leafing
through the hotel TV Guide I discovered a certain
dance show called Disc-O-Teen was hosted by none
other that the Cool Ghoul himself, on Channel 47 (UHF).
This writer checked out the reception in the Big Apple,
which was, to say the least, limited. So I devised a
four coat hanger antenna to bring in the signal from far
away New Jersey. By hanging this contraption out the
hotel window and turning the television at a 45 degree
angle, for five glorious days I could boogie with the
Disc-O-Teen kids, all emceed by Zacherle.
This
book also brings back memories of this writer’s two
experiences of seeing Zach’s WOR shows on local station KHJ,
before this author’s eggshell mind was even a poached egg.
Culled
from Zach’s personal archives and interviews, Good Night
Whatever You Are is a joy to behold. Richard
Scrivani has written the most complete and definitive
history of a man who is a legend of multimedia, and best of
all a fitting tribute to Transylvania’s favorite son!
This book is a must-have for folks interested in early live
television, and a grand addition to any Boomer’s library.
August
2007
Addendum
The Weasel Stole the Cheese
and Jan's King Crimson LPs
In FilmFax, the Magazine of Unusual Film,
Television, and Retro Culture, Issue 115, which
should be on the stands shortly, Don Glut writes
that contrary to popular opinion, Vampira, (Maila
Nurmi) was not the first television horror show
host, as I had erroneously written in my review of
Good Night Whatever You Are.
This honor must go to Alan Harvey as swami Drana
Badour, who hosted Murder Before Midnight
on Chicago television.
I stand corrected. History must be reported
accurately, or else we repeat the sins of the past.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all
the people who have shown overwhelming interest in
the review of Good Night Whatever You Are,
and thank you from the bottom of my transplanted
heart for your interest in my good friend, John
Zacherle.
Also in this issue of FilmFax is my
interview with "Gabe Dell, Jr.: Lookin' For Pop!
From Zen
 to
Dead End Through His Son's Eyes," which gives us
another glimpse of the inner workings of the Dead
End Kids, East Side Kids, and Bowery Boys.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank
Colette and David Keye, John Antosiewicz, Bob Socci,
and Len Getz for making this interview possible.
And also, to Gabe Dell, Jr., who took time out of
his busy schedule to sit down with me and have a
wonderful chat.
If you can't find the mag on the newstands, you can
contact FilmFax at
www.filmfax.com or call the FilmFax
office directly at (847) 866-7155. Photo
Caption: The humble reviewer and the Cool Ghoul
in the early 1990s after viewing a 3-D segment of
The Rolling Stones IMAX show in the Hollywood Hills.
August 2007
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