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Hal Erickson

Robert E. Sherwood's weekly review in the old LIFE magazine was prominently titled "The Silent Drama." Also, movie trade magazines of the period referred to the Stage as "The Spoken Drama."

Hal Erickson

.[/quote]In the Betty Boop version of "You Rascal You," Armstrong clearly sings, "You gave my wife a bottle of Coca-Cola to let you play on her vagola."[/quote]

Funny, I have two copies of that cartoon, and on both the word is "Victrola." The meaning is clear, however.

Hal Erickson

I'm sorry if pointing this out is pedantic of me, but I believe Finlayson actually says "You'll suffer for this!" Speaking of L&H, there's an emphatic "hell" from the warden in PARDON US and one from the other warden in the picture it sends up, THE BIG HOUSE. And I'm pretty sure Charley Chase sneak...

Hal Erickson

And of course Edgar Kennedy uses a vulgar term for fecal matter when he sees the parson coming in Laurel & Hardy's The Perfect Day (1929). Not really, but it sure sounds like he does. Oh yes he does! He does indeed. I first verified this when I purchased a super-8 sound print of PERFECT DAY about 3...

Hal Erickson

I saw The Better 'Ole on TCM recently, and they used the word "Damn" in an intertitle. Was this inoffensive at the time? Was "Damn" used frequently in silents? I'm confused because of the apparent ruckus over Clark Gable's line in Gone With The Wind 15 years later. The phrases "You've got a hell of...

Hal Erickson

I would have said the 1929 NOTIHNG BUT THE TRUTH...until I finally saw it.

ROGUE SONG of course, and the 1930 HIT THE DECK.

Hal Erickson

When Elmo Lincoln was hired to appear in HOLLYWOOD STORY, he went public with complaints about how little he was being paid. His point was that he and several other old-timers had been cast in the film for publicity value, but that only Francis X. Bushman, William Farnum, Betty Blythe and Helen Gibs...

Hal Erickson

You can always press the little button on the remote that changes the picture to the "normal "aspect ratio. Otherwise, it's like watching a normal-gauge picture in the middle, widened out on each side (and I'm not being facetious. It isn't "stretched", but it isn't "standard" either--at least not on...

Hal Erickson

Ephraim Katz used to list Annabeth Gish as the granddaughter of Lillian Gish.
Welllll, Annabeth's grandma is named Lillian...but she's not THE Lillian Gish, who never had grandchildren, never had children, never got married...

Hal Erickson

The team also made a 1923 DeForest Phonofilm and a 1933 NYC filmed feature BEER IS HERE.[/quote]

And of course both appeared in 1940's TIN PAN ALLEY.

Hal Erickson

Grave? I thought he was buried under a ton of his own memorabilia. That was the scuttlebutt here in Milwaukee.

Hal Erickson

That particular letter began circulating around 1960 in TV Guide and similar publications. Though there were variations, the body of the letter was almost always the same: I caught my two kids hitting each other, whereupon they replied "The 3 Stooges do it, mommy." Another effort by well-meaning fat...

Hal Erickson

Just came across some new info vis-a-vis TRENT. Howard Hawks always claimed he was sore because he was forced to make the "only silent film" at Fox while the studio was gearing up to make talkies. In fact, TRENT was completed on Feb. 15 1929, nearly six weeks before Fox officially announced announce...

Hal Erickson

Inasmuch as my last name is Erickson, I demand the wholesale banning of all films featuring El Brendel and Wally Walrus.

Hal Erickson

The original director was different, too: Ben Stoloff did the talkie version (maybe Cummings was too busy on IN OLD ARIZONA). Fox was ALWAYS thinking in terms of "love teams": beyond the more famous one of Charlie Farrell and Janet Gaynor, the studio also teamed Albert Ray and Ellinor Fair, Johnnie ...

Hal Erickson

I can't find any evidence of its physical existence; UCLA and other sources list it as lost. What I do know is that it featured on-location (with direct-sound) scenes of Grand Central Station, Madison Square Garden, and Belmont Park. One of two teamings at Fox of Lola Lane (her first film) and Paul ...

Hal Erickson

A few more: Saul Bass really directed the shower scene in PSYCHO. Orson Welles was caught eating his lunch in costume by the camera crew of CITIZEN KANE, and he had to use the scene to show he was a good sport (courtesy Pauline Kael). ALL of Gary Cooper's baseball scenes in PRIDE OF THE YANKEES were...

Hal Erickson

Everyone talks to the camera in THE MATCHMAKER (1958), but that's how Thornton Wilder wrote the original play. Doesn't work quite as well on film, however.

Hal Erickson

The story of Murnau's fateful last car ride as related to his 'riding shotgun' so to speak, with his chauffeur. I really would like to know where Kenneth Anger got the source from that, or if he dreamed it up. I'm guessing most of Hollywood Babylon is filled with 'real' gossip, as opposed to pure i...

Hal Erickson

Wings won the first Best Picture Oscar. When I was a kid, Jack, there was a whole article in my local paper (wire service I'm sure) about a guy who had played the gorilla in King Kong. I happened to have the George Turner book with its many photos of the stop motion process, but to my surprise, whe...

Hal Erickson

Where to begin.... Probably the one about John Gilbert's voice. TCM's Gilbert festivals notwithstanding, that one is still circulating. I even read in a 1973 book on Will Rogers that Gilbert committed suicide after seeing his first talkie. Also, Ronald Reagan was no more a B-picture actor in the 195...

Hal Erickson

In the episodes of Universal's THE COLLEGIANS that I've seen, the football coach addresses the audience at the beginning and end of the film, not so much to explain things as to take us into his confidence. A neat trick when you're working with subtitles. Also, Lou Costello speaks directly to the au...

Hal Erickson

And despite the excellent recent biographies of Theda Bara, in which it has been thoroughly chronicled that virtually everyone with half a brain knew by mid-1915 that she was really Theodosia Goodman of Cincinnati, "experts" who wish to expose the gullibility of the American public in the early 20th...

Hal Erickson

Todd McCarthy is one of the "conventional wisdom" guys. I don't remember the others, but I have read that TRENT was not shown in the US. According to the New York TIMES in 1971, the first New York showing for ARE YOU THERE? occured that very year thanks to Miles Kreuger. I've also read that it wasn'...

Hal Erickson

I know it's been shown in the US at several festivals since its rediscovery in the mid-1980s. But there was some doubt--at least in the sources I've read--as to whether it was shown domestically in 1929. Or if was, there was some question as to whether it received widespread release. I would think t...

Hal Erickson

Conventional wisdom has it that Howard Hawks' and Raymond Griffiths' TRENT'S LAST CASE (1929), which Fox was forced to make as a silent film because of a legal entanglement involving the talking-picture rights, was never released in the US, and shown only on a limited basis in the UK. However, while...

Hal Erickson

Critics loved Peggy Hyland, especially her "fast, eccentric" behavior (and she was no Spring chicken when she played all those ingenues). The Fox actors would seem to have the worst survival rate of all...Theda Bara, George Walsh, June Caprice, Evelyn Nesbit, Buck Jones, Jane & Madeline Lee, Albert ...

Hal Erickson

CALL OF THE WILD (actually a 20th Century-UA release) currently exists in the reissue version sent out by 20thCF in the 1940s--note the "Buy War Bonds" slug in the closing credits. Even when it first came out, there were changes. Originally Jack Oakie's character was killed, but preview audiences re...

Hal Erickson

(The same situation occurs after the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and that studio's initial release, HE WHO GETS SLAPPED In 1924. For nearly two years all advertising referred to "Metro-Goldwyn", with Mayer unmentioned except in the film's credits). I think the easiest solution to your Fox dile...

Hal Erickson

"I'll wager you'd gnash the same teeth trying to determine the last official First National Picture pre-Warner Brothers." [RICHARD ROBERTS] The FN-WB thing doesn't bother me too much (mainly because I'm not considering a book about that dichotomy). Because of some complicated tax issues, a certain n...

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Re: Naughty Lyrics

Re: Give a Damn?

TRENT'S LAST CASE (1929) Americans DID see it.