Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
On the birth of Vampira: “I eventually became Vampira because Vampira is a kind of entity, what we call a woman, even though she’s androgynous, who survives in this carnal world. I, Maila Nurmi, am not. Early in my growing years, being poor, skinny, scrawny, wearing secondhand clothes, having very low self-esteem, I needed to have something to cling to so I created an imaginary image. One who was imperious, invulnerable, extremely beautiful - I was extremely ugly, you know. And she was curvaceous, where I was anorexic. She was everything wonderful. She started to form in my fantasies when I was a shy, friendless little child. And then I saw outward images of her as I grew older. The Dragon Lady in Terry & the Pirates…the Evil Queen in Snow White…Theda Bara from the silents. [Vampira] was that - it’s an anima that’s existed since the beginning of time. She’s just another form of it. But nothing had really formulated for me until I saw Sunset Boulevard and that Norma Desmond character rammed itself deep into my subconscious. I believe artists borrow from all sources and they should. But I think I borrowed way too much from Norma Desmond because a year & a half after I saw her on the screen, Vampira erupted. ‘They had faces in my day’ - and Vampira was a face.” -via Chiller Theatre interview, 1994

On the birth of Vampira:

“I eventually became Vampira because Vampira is a kind of entity, what we call a woman, even though she’s androgynous, who survives in this carnal world. I, Maila Nurmi, am not. Early in my growing years, being poor, skinny, scrawny, wearing secondhand clothes, having very low self-esteem, I needed to have something to cling to so I created an imaginary image. One who was imperious, invulnerable, extremely beautiful - I was extremely ugly, you know. And she was curvaceous, where I was anorexic. She was everything wonderful.

She started to form in my fantasies when I was a shy, friendless little child. And then I saw outward images of her as I grew older. The Dragon Lady in Terry & the Pirates…the Evil Queen in Snow White…Theda Bara from the silents. [Vampira] was that - it’s an anima that’s existed since the beginning of time. She’s just another form of it.

But nothing had really formulated for me until I saw Sunset Boulevard and that Norma Desmond character rammed itself deep into my subconscious. I believe artists borrow from all sources and they should. But I think I borrowed way too much from Norma Desmond because a year & a half after I saw her on the screen, Vampira erupted. ‘They had faces in my day’ - and Vampira was a face.”

-via Chiller Theatre interview, 1994

George A. Romero on set with his daughter & suspiciously curious zombie onlooker (via) On the future of zombie-human peace talks: “I’ll never live long enough to arrive at some sort of peaceful coexistence of some kind. That’s probably the only way you could end [my zombie film series] on a note of promise, which would mean the zombies would learn how to eat Spam or chicken livers, instead of your liver. But I’ll never get to that point.”

George A. Romero on set with his daughter & suspiciously curious zombie onlooker (via)

On the future of zombie-human peace talks:

“I’ll never live long enough to arrive at some sort of peaceful coexistence of some kind. That’s probably the only way you could end [my zombie film series] on a note of promise, which would mean the zombies would learn how to eat Spam or chicken livers, instead of your liver.

But I’ll never get to that point.”

Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir. George A. Romero) “Josephine Streiner, 92, is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She is also the oldest living ghoul from the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead. ‘It was definitely one of the highlights of my life,’ says Mrs. Streiner, who appeared in several scenes as short-haired ghoul, or zombie, walking in a nightgown with her arms outstretched. Like many of the original zombies, now in their 70s and 80s, Mrs. Streiner never imagined that a few minutes on a grainy black-and-white film would, decades later, bring her requests for autographs and other trappings of near-celebrity. But that’s show business. [Ella Mae Smith], 78, & her husband, Phil, who has since died, were drinking iced tea in their front yard when someone from the movie asked if they wanted to be ghouls. Phil said ‘No.’ Ella Mae said ‘Yes,’ & later persuaded her husband to join her. The movie became a special part of their family. Her youngest daughter, Lois, wrote a report on it, taping photos of her parents sitting at a kitchen table, having blood applied to their face. She got an A, Mrs. Smith says. Mrs. Smith still has a poem she wrote in 1968 in honor of the film, called Our Movie. We will always remember and never regret, No matter how old and feeble we get. The time we spent acting like silly old fools, and got in the movies, resembling two ghouls. -“Elderly Zombies Win the Undying Loyalty of Their Fans”, Wall Street Journal (via)

Night of the Living Dead (1968, dir. George A. Romero)

“Josephine Streiner, 92, is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. She is also the oldest living ghoul from the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead.

‘It was definitely one of the highlights of my life,’ says Mrs. Streiner, who appeared in several scenes as short-haired ghoul, or zombie, walking in a nightgown with her arms outstretched.

Like many of the original zombies, now in their 70s and 80s, Mrs. Streiner never imagined that a few minutes on a grainy black-and-white film would, decades later, bring her requests for autographs and other trappings of near-celebrity. But that’s show business.

[Ella Mae Smith], 78, & her husband, Phil, who has since died, were drinking iced tea in their front yard when someone from the movie asked if they wanted to be ghouls. Phil said ‘No.’ Ella Mae said ‘Yes,’ & later persuaded her husband to join her.

The movie became a special part of their family. Her youngest daughter, Lois, wrote a report on it, taping photos of her parents sitting at a kitchen table, having blood applied to their face. She got an A, Mrs. Smith says.

Mrs. Smith still has a poem she wrote in 1968 in honor of the film, called Our Movie.

We will always remember and never regret,

No matter how old and feeble we get.

The time we spent acting like silly old fools,

and got in the movies, resembling two ghouls.

-“Elderly Zombies Win the Undying Loyalty of Their Fans”, Wall Street Journal (via)

Elsa Lanchester on the set of Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir. James Whale) (photo by Universal Studios/Getty Images) “The swans in Regents Park in London inspired me in my performance. They’re really very nasty creatures, always hissing at you. So I used the memory of that hiss. The soundmen ran some of my hisses and screams backwards to add to the strangeness. I spent so much time screaming that I lost my voice and couldn’t speak for days.”

Elsa Lanchester on the set of Bride of Frankenstein (1935, dir. James Whale) (photo by Universal Studios/Getty Images)

“The swans in Regents Park in London inspired me in my performance. They’re really very nasty creatures, always hissing at you. So I used the memory of that hiss. The soundmen ran some of my hisses and screams backwards to add to the strangeness. I spent so much time screaming that I lost my voice and couldn’t speak for days.”

JS Bach - Cello Suite No. 2 in D Minor IV. Sarabande (performed by Yo-Yo Ma) (featured in Through a Glass Darkly)

“[During a seminar about Ingmar Bergman’s films], an audience member purportedly shouted out: ‘What do you believe in, Ingmar?’ The director responded: ‘I believe in other worlds, other realities. But my prophets are Bach and Beethoven; they definitely show another world….[Bach] gives us the profound consolation and quiet that previous generations gained through ritual. Bach supplies a lucid reflection of otherworldliness, a sense of eternity no church can offer today.’

…Of the ten [Bergman] films that feature the music of Bach, half of them employ a Bach sarabande. The sarabande mirrors the director’s tendency to construct a film out of a series of duets, searching dialogues between characters that greatly need to communicate with each other but only manage to engage in a hopelessly desperate dance; they conform as best they can to the societal constraints that surround them but they at all times threaten to emit a cry that cannot be contained, that somehow escapes those confines.

The characters reach out to each other from across an abyss. What better way to represent that than through Bach’s music reaching out to us across the abyss of so much time and so much lost faith?

-Chadwick Jenkin, The Profound Consolation: The Use of Bach’s Music in the Films of Ingmar Bergman

This lovely black tie event is brought to you by The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927, dir. GW Pabst) (via)

This lovely black tie event is brought to you by The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927, dir. GW Pabst)

(via)

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964, dir. Robert Stevenson) (via drmacro)

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964, dir. Robert Stevenson) (via drmacro)

Julie Andrews & Dick van Dyke - Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (via Mary Poppins:Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

“It was on purpose that I started looking miserable, humiliated, hounded, and haunted, bedeviled, bewildered, and at my wit’s end. Some other comedians can get away with laughing at their own gags. Not me. The public just will not stand for it. And that is all right with me. All of my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, ‘Look at the poor dope, wilya?’ Because of the way I looked on the stage and screen the public naturally assumed that I felt hopeless and unloved in my personal life. Nothing could be farther from the fact. As long back as I can remember I have considered myself a fabulously lucky man. From the beginning I was surrounded by interesting people who loved fun and knew how to create it. I’ve had few dull moments and not too many sad and defeated ones.” -Buster Keaton, in his autobiography My Wonderful World of Slapstick (1960)

“It was on purpose that I started looking miserable, humiliated, hounded, and haunted, bedeviled, bewildered, and at my wit’s end. Some other comedians can get away with laughing at their own gags. Not me. The public just will not stand for it. And that is all right with me. All of my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, ‘Look at the poor dope, wilya?’

Because of the way I looked on the stage and screen the public naturally assumed that I felt hopeless and unloved in my personal life. Nothing could be farther from the fact. As long back as I can remember I have considered myself a fabulously lucky man. From the beginning I was surrounded by interesting people who loved fun and knew how to create it. I’ve had few dull moments and not too many sad and defeated ones.”

-Buster Keaton, in his autobiography My Wonderful World of Slapstick (1960)

Buster Keaton & Kathryn McGuire in Sherlock, Jr. (1924, dir. Buster Keaton) (click to enlarge) In Sherlock Jr., Keaton’s character, a film projectionist, looks to the movie he’s showing for guidance on how to woo the woman he loves. Imitating the actors works like a charm until the film suddenly jumps forward in time. The lovers in the movie are now the proud parents of twin babies, leaving our hero quite perplexed about how to replicate that. Scene here, full film can be seen here /here.

Buster Keaton & Kathryn McGuire in Sherlock, Jr. (1924, dir. Buster Keaton) (click to enlarge)

In Sherlock Jr., Keaton’s character, a film projectionist, looks to the movie he’s showing for guidance on how to woo the woman he loves. Imitating the actors works like a charm until the film suddenly jumps forward in time. The lovers in the movie are now the proud parents of twin babies, leaving our hero quite perplexed about how to replicate that.

Scene here, full film can be seen here /here.

Dorothy Devore in Hold Your Breath (1924, dir. Scott Sidney) (via Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture)

Dorothy Devore in Hold Your Breath (1924, dir. Scott Sidney) (via Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and the Triumph of Movie Culture)

Lalo Schifrin - Main Title (via Bullitt: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Jacques Cousteau & his team descend into “the world of rapture” in The Silent World (1956, dir. Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle) (the opening shot of the film, pictured above, can be seen on youtube here) The Silent World, Cousteau’s first feature-length documentary, was groundbreaking in its use of full-color underwater cinematography. Unfortunately, the film is now equally famous for the damage Cousteau & his divers inflicted on marine life during filming - they blow up a coral reef, kill hundreds of fish, leave no sea turtle unmolested (they are especially fond of hitching joyrides on the backs of the turtles, who struggle under the extra weight to reach the surface to breathe), and fatally injure a baby whale with their ship. The blood attracts several sharks, who promptly devour the whale. Enraged by this, the divers harpoon all the sharks, pull them up to the ship, & proceed to brutally hack them to death with axes. “The crew becomes angry with the sharks, and fight to avenge the baby whale,” narrates Cousteau - this time it’s personal. Cousteau later became much more environmentally conscious & was a pioneer in the marine conservation movement - his behavior during the filming of The Silent World simply reflects the sensibilities of the time. Notably, most of the reviews published in major American newspapers upon its initial release in 1956 are full of praise & don’t even mention the above incidents as problematic.

Jacques Cousteau & his team descend into “the world of rapture” in The Silent World (1956, dir. Jacques-Yves Cousteau & Louis Malle) (the opening shot of the film, pictured above, can be seen on youtube here)

The Silent World, Cousteau’s first feature-length documentary, was groundbreaking in its use of full-color underwater cinematography.

Unfortunately, the film is now equally famous for the damage Cousteau & his divers inflicted on marine life during filming - they blow up a coral reef, kill hundreds of fish, leave no sea turtle unmolested (they are especially fond of hitching joyrides on the backs of the turtles, who struggle under the extra weight to reach the surface to breathe), and fatally injure a baby whale with their ship. The blood attracts several sharks, who promptly devour the whale. Enraged by this, the divers harpoon all the sharks, pull them up to the ship, & proceed to brutally hack them to death with axes. “The crew becomes angry with the sharks, and fight to avenge the baby whale,” narrates Cousteau - this time it’s personal.

Cousteau later became much more environmentally conscious & was a pioneer in the marine conservation movement - his behavior during the filming of The Silent World simply reflects the sensibilities of the time. Notably, most of the reviews published in major American newspapers upon its initial release in 1956 are full of praise & don’t even mention the above incidents as problematic.

Jacques Cousteau (1967, via) wearing the aqualung, the first commercially successful SCUBA set, which he co-invented with Emile Gagnan In the following excerpt from his 1954 book, The Silent World, Cousteau describes his first dive with the aqualung, which allowed him to swim underwater as freely as a fish for the first time (prior to the aqualung, standard deep sea diving dress looked like this): “To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.) I thought of the helmet diver arriving where I was on his ponderous boots and struggling to walk a few yards, obsessed with his umbilici and his head imprisoned in copper. On skin dives I had seen him leaning dangerously forward to make a step, clamped in heavier pressure at the ankles than the head, a cripple in an alien land. From this day forward we would swim across miles of country no man had known, free and level, with our flesh feeling what the fish scales know. I experimented with all possible maneuvers of the aqualung -loops, somersaults, and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy I flew around in space.”

Jacques Cousteau (1967, via) wearing the aqualung, the first commercially successful SCUBA set, which he co-invented with Emile Gagnan

In the following excerpt from his 1954 book, The Silent World, Cousteau describes his first dive with the aqualung, which allowed him to swim underwater as freely as a fish for the first time (prior to the aqualung, standard deep sea diving dress looked like this):

“To swim fishlike, horizontally, was the logical method in a medium eight hundred times denser than air. To halt and hang attached to nothing, no lines or air pipe to the surface, was a dream. At night I had often had visions of flying by extending my arms as wings. Now I flew without wings. (Since that first aqualung flight, I have never had a dream of flying.)

I thought of the helmet diver arriving where I was on his ponderous boots and struggling to walk a few yards, obsessed with his umbilici and his head imprisoned in copper. On skin dives I had seen him leaning dangerously forward to make a step, clamped in heavier pressure at the ankles than the head, a cripple in an alien land. From this day forward we would swim across miles of country no man had known, free and level, with our flesh feeling what the fish scales know.

I experimented with all possible maneuvers of the aqualung -loops, somersaults, and barrel rolls. I stood upside down on one finger and burst out laughing, a shrill distorted laugh. Nothing I did altered the automatic rhythm of air. Delivered from gravity and buoyancy I flew around in space.”

Dinah Washington - Mad About the Boy (written by Noël Coward)