Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball

Noel Harrison - Windmills of Your Mind (via The Thomas Crown Affair: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) 

“The original script called for Crown (Steve McQueen) to go sky-diving as a release from his post-robbery tension. I changed skydiving to glider-flying. The scene was simple, just a glider drifting and rolling against the blue sky. As we were shooting it, I knew it would need a particular kind of song behind it, something like the Beatles’ Strawberry Fields.

Michel Legrand produced a melody that was, like Strawberry Fields, on the baroque side. Listening to the melody, one had a sense that it would go on forever, just like the flight of the glider. Alan & Marilyn Bergman picked up on this quality in their lyrics. The images they conceived were all circular: “Like a snowball down the mountain / Or a carnival balloon / Like a carousel that’s turning/ Runnings rings around the moon.” The song was called The Windmills of Your Mind and I loved it.

-excerpted from This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me by Norman Jewison. 

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969, dir. Bill Melendez) “Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969, dir. Bill Melendez)

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’
Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”

Vince Guaraldi Trio - Linus and Lucy (A Boy Named Charlie Brown: The Original Sound Track Recording)

Werner Fuetterer as the Archangel in Faust (1926, dir. F. W. Murnau)  “I think Murnau’s imperturbable calm in the studio was due not only to a sense of discipline, but also because he possessed that passion for ‘play’ itself which is necessary and essential to any kind of artistic activity. For instance, I’d made a steam apparatus for the heaven scene in the Prologue to Faust. Steam was ejected out of several pipes against a background of clouds; arc-lights arranged in a circle lit up the steam to look like rays of light. The archangel was supposed to stand in front and raise his flaming sword. We did it several times, and each time it was perfectly all right, but Murnau was so caught up in the pleasure of doing it that he forgot all about time. The steam had to keep on billowing through the beams of light until the archangel — Werner Fuetterer — was so exhausted he could no longer lift his sword. When Murnau realized what had happened, he shook his head and laughed at himself, then gave everyone a break.” -Faust art director Robert Herlth, quoted in Lotte Eisner’s Murnau. The scene Herlth is discussing is online here.

Werner Fuetterer as the Archangel in Faust (1926, dir. F. W. Murnau) 

“I think Murnau’s imperturbable calm in the studio was due not only to a sense of discipline, but also because he possessed that passion for ‘play’ itself which is necessary and essential to any kind of artistic activity.

For instance, I’d made a steam apparatus for the heaven scene in the Prologue to Faust. Steam was ejected out of several pipes against a background of clouds; arc-lights arranged in a circle lit up the steam to look like rays of light. The archangel was supposed to stand in front and raise his flaming sword. We did it several times, and each time it was perfectly all right, but Murnau was so caught up in the pleasure of doing it that he forgot all about time. The steam had to keep on billowing through the beams of light until the archangel — Werner Fuetterer — was so exhausted he could no longer lift his sword. When Murnau realized what had happened, he shook his head and laughed at himself, then gave everyone a break.”

-Faust art director Robert Herlth, quoted in Lotte Eisner’s Murnau. The scene Herlth is discussing is online here.

Quincy Jones & His Orchestra - Bob’s at Gunpoint  (The Deadly Affair: Original Soundtrack Album)

Art deco lobby set for Grand Hotel (1932, dir. Edmund Goulding) Set design by Cedric Gibbons (via)

Art deco lobby set for Grand Hotel (1932, dir. Edmund Goulding) Set design by Cedric Gibbons (via)

Gort escorts Patricia Neal to his space shuttle in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, dir. Robert Wise)

Gort escorts Patricia Neal to his space shuttle in The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, dir. Robert Wise)

Bernard Herrmann - The Elevator/Magnetic Pull /Study/Conference /The Jewelry Store (The Day The Earth Stood Still: 20th Century Fox Film Scores)

Robert Mitchum in publicity still for Night of the Hunter (1955, dir. Charles Laughton) “You’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil? H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other.”

Robert Mitchum in publicity still for Night of the Hunter (1955, dir. Charles Laughton)

“You’re staring at my fingers. Would you like me to tell you the little story of right-hand/left-hand? The story of good and evil?

H-A-T-E! It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. L-O-V-E! You see these fingers, dear hearts? These fingers has veins that run straight to the soul of man. The right hand, friends, the hand of love. Now watch, and I’ll show you the story of life. Those fingers, dear hearts, is always a-warring and a-tugging, one against the other.”

Chorus girls in Dancing Lady (1933, dir. Robert Z. Leonard) Photo by Ted Allan.

Chorus girls in Dancing Lady (1933, dir. Robert Z. Leonard) Photo by Ted Allan.

Scenes from The Golden Beetle (1907, dir. Segundo de Chomón), a 3 minute fantasy trick film notable for its spectacular use of color, which was done by hand. Online here. (via)

Scenes from The Golden Beetle (1907, dir. Segundo de Chomón), a 3 minute fantasy trick film notable for its spectacular use of color, which was done by hand. Online here.

(via)

Ennio Morricone - The Big Gundown (The Big Gundown/La Resa dei Conti: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

“I was having lunch and [Frankenstein director] James Whale sent either the first assistant or maybe it was his secretary over to me, and asked me to join him for a cup of coffee after lunch, which I did. He asked me if I would make a test for him tomorrow. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘For a damned awful monster!’ he said. Of course, I was delighted, because it meant another job, if I was able to land it. Actually that’s all it meant to me. At the same time I felt rather hurt, because at the time I had on very good straight makeup and my best suit - and he wanted to test me for a monster!”  -Boris Karloff, on being offered the role of Frankenstein’s monster (via)

“I was having lunch and [Frankenstein director] James Whale sent either the first assistant or maybe it was his secretary over to me, and asked me to join him for a cup of coffee after lunch, which I did. He asked me if I would make a test for him tomorrow. ‘What for?’ I asked. ‘For a damned awful monster!’ he said.

Of course, I was delighted, because it meant another job, if I was able to land it. Actually that’s all it meant to me. At the same time I felt rather hurt, because at the time I had on very good straight makeup and my best suit - and he wanted to test me for a monster!” 

-Boris Karloff, on being offered the role of Frankenstein’s monster (via)

via The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958, dir. Karel Zeman), an adventure film based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and other Verne tales: “This is a live-action black and white movie — but it uses every camera trick and every form of animation known in 1958…Methods include stop-motion, paper cutout, drawing and painting animation, drawn foregrounds and backdrops, dissolves, miniatures and models, double exposure (probably in-camera and superimposition), still images, traveling and stationary mattes — they’re all here. There were at least eight people watching; someone yelled out at one point ‘There are at least seven different things going on in this scene!’ (I counted eight.) And all this before the invention of blue screens! …There are lines drawn on sets, and even on people, to keep the original steel-engraving feel. The scenes of ships of the water have been treated with some sort of light, striped screen that makes the moving waves of real water take on the appearance of the engraved lines in a 19th century drawing of the sea. There’s a scene of a train coming down a track — the train is drawn; the wheels and the tracks are animated; the (real) engineer stands on an open platform in the engine’s cab and (real) people lean out of the (drawn) passenger car. (It’s so simple and powerful it takes your breath away.) Actors walk through back-projected sets; at the same time they’re walking behind animated full-sized paper cutouts of spinning flywheels and meshing gears, all this in front of a painted set in the middle-background. For maybe five seconds of screen time. There’s a scene of an animated shark attacking a real diver in a model set with painted water. We could go on…”  -excerpted from Locus magazine review (via) Trailer for the film here/ full film online starting here. 

via The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958, dir. Karel Zeman), an adventure film based on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Mysterious Island and other Verne tales:

“This is a live-action black and white movie — but it uses every camera trick and every form of animation known in 1958…Methods include stop-motion, paper cutout, drawing and painting animation, drawn foregrounds and backdrops, dissolves, miniatures and models, double exposure (probably in-camera and superimposition), still images, traveling and stationary mattes — they’re all here. There were at least eight people watching; someone yelled out at one point ‘There are at least seven different things going on in this scene!’ (I counted eight.) And all this before the invention of blue screens!

…There are lines drawn on sets, and even on people, to keep the original steel-engraving feel. The scenes of ships of the water have been treated with some sort of light, striped screen that makes the moving waves of real water take on the appearance of the engraved lines in a 19th century drawing of the sea. There’s a scene of a train coming down a track — the train is drawn; the wheels and the tracks are animated; the (real) engineer stands on an open platform in the engine’s cab and (real) people lean out of the (drawn) passenger car. (It’s so simple and powerful it takes your breath away.) Actors walk through back-projected sets; at the same time they’re walking behind animated full-sized paper cutouts of spinning flywheels and meshing gears, all this in front of a painted set in the middle-background. For maybe five seconds of screen time. There’s a scene of an animated shark attacking a real diver in a model set with painted water. We could go on…” 

-excerpted from Locus magazine review (via)

Trailer for the film here/ full film online starting here. 

Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray on the set of Double Indemnity (1944, dir. Billy Wilder) Wartime food shortages meant that security guards were posted to protect the real cans of food in the grocery store from sticky-fingered cast & crew members. Despite this, the aggrieved store owner reported to the LA Times that some scoundrel had managed to pinch a can of peaches & four bars of laundry soap.  (via)

Barbara Stanwyck & Fred MacMurray on the set of Double Indemnity (1944, dir. Billy Wilder)

Wartime food shortages meant that security guards were posted to protect the real cans of food in the grocery store from sticky-fingered cast & crew members. Despite this, the aggrieved store owner reported to the LA Times that some scoundrel had managed to pinch a can of peaches & four bars of laundry soap. 

(via)