Old Hollywood
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Jabberwocky (1971, dir. Jan Švankmajer), a surrealistic short film loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky.

Jabberwocky (1971, dir. Jan Švankmajer), a surrealistic short film loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s poem Jabberwocky.

“The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one’s office for a job.” -Tennessee Williams, quoted in Kenneth Tynan’s Profiles

“The theatre is a place where one has time for the problems of people to whom one would show the door if they came to one’s office for a job.”

-Tennessee Williams, quoted in Kenneth Tynan’s Profiles

Carroll Baker & Eli Wallach in Baby Doll (1956, dir. Elia Kazan, screenplay by Tennessee Williams) Oh, Mr. Vacarro, you certainly are getting familiar. Time magazine’s 1956 review of Baby Doll begins by stating that it is “just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited. In condemning it, the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency has declared: ‘It dwells almost without variation or relief upon carnal suggestiveness.’” This assessment is entirely accurate; however, the most interesting thing about Baby Doll is that Tennessee Williams managed to impart this feeling of relentless “carnal suggestiveness” without the use of nudity or overtly sexual dialogue. The most well-known example of this is the swing scene pictured above, which can only be called a sex scene despite not featuring any actual sex; the effect is achieved through Wallach’s & Baker’s dialogue (the scene is online here). Director Elia Kazan claimed shock & surprise over the uproar that followed the immediate release of Baby Doll, rather disingenuously in light of the marketing campaign that preceded it (e.g. the scandalous block-long Times Square billboard featuring a nightie-clad Baker lying in a crib, sucking her thumb) Several Catholic archbishops forbade Catholics to see the film, “under pain of sin”.

Carroll Baker & Eli Wallach in Baby Doll (1956, dir. Elia Kazan, screenplay by Tennessee Williams)

Oh, Mr. Vacarro, you certainly are getting familiar.

Time magazine’s 1956 review of Baby Doll begins by stating that it is “just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited. In condemning it, the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency has declared: ‘It dwells almost without variation or relief upon carnal suggestiveness.’” This assessment is entirely accurate; however, the most interesting thing about Baby Doll is that Tennessee Williams managed to impart this feeling of relentless “carnal suggestiveness” without the use of nudity or overtly sexual dialogue.

The most well-known example of this is the swing scene pictured above, which can only be called a sex scene despite not featuring any actual sex; the effect is achieved through Wallach’s & Baker’s dialogue (the scene is online here).

Director Elia Kazan claimed shock & surprise over the uproar that followed the immediate release of Baby Doll, rather disingenuously in light of the marketing campaign that preceded it (e.g. the scandalous block-long Times Square billboard featuring a nightie-clad Baker lying in a crib, sucking her thumb) Several Catholic archbishops forbade Catholics to see the film, “under pain of sin”.

“Life seems to be a never-ending series of survivals, doesn’t it?” -Carroll Baker

“Life seems to be a never-ending series of survivals, doesn’t it?”

-Carroll Baker

Julie London - Go Slow


Jean Phillips & Macdonald Carey in Dr.Broadway (1942, dir. Anthony Mann)

Jean Phillips & Macdonald Carey in Dr.Broadway (1942, dir. Anthony Mann)

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972, dir. Woody Allen) (scene) “I’m not getting shot out of that thing. What if he’s masturbating? I’m liable to end up on the ceiling.”

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask (1972, dir. Woody Allen) (scene)

“I’m not getting shot out of that thing. What if he’s masturbating? I’m liable to end up on the ceiling.”

Woody Allen as Charlie Chaplin (photo by Irving Penn, 1972 (via) “People have trouble with conceptual comic ideas. I come up with one like a giant breast (in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask, a marauding 15-foot-tall breast terrorizes the population until Allen’s character lures it into a two-story-high bra) and they have trouble with it. They find it hard to say, ‘My God, what a funny concept that is, an enormous breast. It’s so ridiculous.’ They laugh joke by joke within it. So I feel discouraged in terms of presenting funny conceptual notions. Actually, I have a conceptual notion that I get a machine that projects me into a work of fiction because I’m in love with Anna Karenina or something, and I have an affair with her there, and finally she comes to New York and I stash her in a hotel room in town and cheat on my wife with her. I’ve been toying with that idea in different forms - that my wife is involved with J. Alfred Prufrock and I go to find her, or this guy has a machine that will project me into Anna Karenina, for instance, or Madame Bovary because I’m in love with her and it goes wrong and projects me into a French grammar book by mistake and there are no humans but only verbs and other parts of speech.* The problem with doing it is you say the concept in one line and it’s funny, but to show the concept you ultimately have to proceed joke by joke. You wind up still having to do a million jokes. It’s not that the audience says, ‘Oh, my God, how funny this idea is, to be in Anna Karenina.’ They say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re there. Now what? What’s the joke?’ -Woody Allen, 1974. *The finished story, The Kugelmass Episode, can be read here.

Woody Allen as Charlie Chaplin (photo by Irving Penn, 1972 (via)

“People have trouble with conceptual comic ideas. I come up with one like a giant breast (in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask, a marauding 15-foot-tall breast terrorizes the population until Allen’s character lures it into a two-story-high bra) and they have trouble with it. They find it hard to say, ‘My God, what a funny concept that is, an enormous breast. It’s so ridiculous.’ They laugh joke by joke within it. So I feel discouraged in terms of presenting funny conceptual notions.

Actually, I have a conceptual notion that I get a machine that projects me into a work of fiction because I’m in love with Anna Karenina or something, and I have an affair with her there, and finally she comes to New York and I stash her in a hotel room in town and cheat on my wife with her. I’ve been toying with that idea in different forms - that my wife is involved with J. Alfred Prufrock and I go to find her, or this guy has a machine that will project me into Anna Karenina, for instance, or Madame Bovary because I’m in love with her and it goes wrong and projects me into a French grammar book by mistake and there are no humans but only verbs and other parts of speech.*

The problem with doing it is you say the concept in one line and it’s funny, but to show the concept you ultimately have to proceed joke by joke. You wind up still having to do a million jokes. It’s not that the audience says, ‘Oh, my God, how funny this idea is, to be in Anna Karenina.’ They say, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re there. Now what? What’s the joke?’

-Woody Allen, 1974.

*The finished story, The Kugelmass Episode, can be read here.

Alfred Hitchcock receives a Screen Producers Guild Milestone Award from James Stewart & Cary Grant, as all three sport facial expressions worthy of any diabolical Hitchcock villain (AP, 1965) 

Alfred Hitchcock receives a Screen Producers Guild Milestone Award from James Stewart & Cary Grant, as all three sport facial expressions worthy of any diabolical Hitchcock villain (AP, 1965) 

Bernard Herrmann - Vertigo:Suite/I. Prelude (via Bernard Herrmann:The Film Scores)

“As I scored it throughout, I found myself entirely in sympathy with what was going on the screen. The story was so original, so haunting, that I knew pretty much what was called for, and I dredged it from my subconscious.”

-Herrmann, quoted in Steven Smith’s A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann

James Stewart in Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

James Stewart in Vertigo (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock) (via)

Giulietta Masina on the set of La Strada (1954, dir. Federico Fellini) (via)

Giulietta Masina on the set of La Strada (1954, dir. Federico Fellini) (via)

Impressively calm camera crew records Jackie the Lion for MGM studio’s roaring lion production logo (1929) (via)

Impressively calm camera crew records Jackie the Lion for MGM studio’s roaring lion production logo (1929) (via)

Night of the Hunter’s (1955, dir. Charles Laughton) river scene (online here).

Night of the Hunter’s (1955, dir. Charles Laughton) river scene (online here).

Betty Benson - Pearl’s Dream (via Night of the Hunter: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Composed by Walter Schumann.