Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark David Jansen

But the way Hollywood of the classic era liked it best was for the actor to be “discovered.” That’s right. You’re sitting at Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard in 1937 and the next thing you know, you’re Lana Turner and making $1000 a week. By the way, it wasn’t Schwab’s, it was the Top Hat Malt Shop. Hollywood even has a genre for this, the films of “You’re going to be a star, kid.” As an example, all twenty versions of A Star Is Born, under various titles. Singin’ In The Rain. Day Of The Locust. Hearts Of The West. The Aviator. The Artist. Busby Berkley musicals. It’s the old story. A kid with talent and heart moves to Hollywood from Nebraska or Kansas and waits tables, or parks cars, sells newspapers, or is a hat-check girl, until their big break. Someone hears them sing or sees them smile. Or sometimes they end up like the Black Dahlia --- that’s a different kind of movie. But generally, it’s the old hokum…

It really happened. It happened to a 6’ 5” blonde-haired guy who was built like a tank, with a voice like a foghorn, who really was a skilled sailor. Who, by the way, became one of the great actors of film noir, of Westerns, war films, even delving, almost unintentionally, into black comedy and films that are now acknowledged classics, no matter the genre. It happened to Sterling Hayden. And he ducked and bobbed and weaved away from his fate as an actor, as do so many film noir protagonists. But he was caught up in Hollywood’s web, for better or worse. From his life storm emerged one of film’s most interesting and talented actors. 
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Take that impossible set of circumstances to make a film described at the top. Now, place over those hurdles the desire to change up a recognized genre. To take a fixed idea and make it new, fresh, and vibrant. Not so easy, is it? Try to make something old work in a new and exciting way in any part of life, let alone something as evanescent as film. It doesn’t happen often. When it does, it hits like an explosion. By the end of the 60s, the Western had exploded, again. It was once more in full bloom, taking up a large part of world studio output, which continues, almost uninterrupted, to the present day. Why the renaissance? It was due to an unlikely source and director --- the Italian, Sergio Leone. It was a craze and wave that became known as the Spaghetti Western.
email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.com

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Scary Season Part Two! The guest hosts and I spent some time last week on a true classic of the horror genre, House Of Wax… now let’s be frightened out of our wits by… well, it’s actually a Scary Season “so bad, it’s good” classic from the master of inexpensive horror, the Orson Welles of the Bs, the ne plus ultra employer of marketing gimmicks --- it’s a William Castle film! And it’s one of his greats --- The Tingler! Even the title is great! Released in 1959 and distributed by Columbia, it's a tight 80 minutes of terror and fun. Starring that wonderful purveyor of thrills and chills, during his rise as the King of the Terror Bs, Vincent Price.
email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.com

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

It’s Scary Season here on the pod and we have a double feature to frighten you this year, two classics of the screen that star the inimitable Vincent Price. The first is a true classic, that helped to launch a trend in film in the 50s and Price’s career as the King of the Horror Bs. The second is so bad it’s good --- a thriller that was even more impactful in its marketing than in its making, but still a lot of fun to watch. Plus, we have guest hosts to help dissect, laugh, and scream at this year’s selections.
 We’re starting with the 1953 classic House Of Wax, released by Warner Brothers and helmed by director Andre DeToth. Not only is it headlined by Price, in one of his best performances in horror, it’s stuffed with a veritable museum of great B picture actors, and a few who went on to better than B work. The backstory and reason for the artistic and commercial success of House Of Wax is fun and interesting in itself. It begins, as do many good scary movies, in the mists of the 1930s.
email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.com

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

Picture Show is absolutely authentic, due to two behind-the-scenes craftspeople and two actors who transform the film. The story of Picture Show began with the novella of the talented, but at the time, little-known author, Texan Larry McMurtry. McMurtry worked on the screenplay with the director, who had only released one pretty good previous film, after moving on from researching and writing about film --- Peter Bogdanovich. Bogdanovich was brilliant in utilizing the talents of two disparate actors to underline the film --- an old cowboy who’d been in the John Ford film company and never stretched as an actor, Ben Johnson, and an actor who had worked primarily in TV and a few minor film roles such as in the noir Kiss Me Deadly, who would go on to a long career in film and TV, Cloris Leachman. And they were in the supporting cast!
email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.com

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark

The person of Orson Welles is a loaded one for an observer of film --- he was so many things in his lifetime, he wore so many hats. Welles had incredible triumphs and unbelievable lows in his chosen work. He was such a consummate actor that it was hard to tell when he was serious and when he was still acting, when seen outside a theater, radio studio or soundstage. If you ask him to be recalled by people in the 21st Century, many will be able to cite two aspects, at polar opposites of his life and story. Orson Welles wrote, directed, produced, and starred in what many regard as the greatest film ever made --- Citizen Kane. He was also, near the end of his life and in search of funds, a spokesperson for the lower- and medium-priced wines of Paul Masson, with the catchphrase, “We will sell no wine before its time.” In other words, these aren’t grapes we just pressed, bottled and shipped. It’s not garbage. That’s what Masson was paying him for. He intoned this, the words emanating from his obese body but still in his beautiful, modulated baritone. He became a punch line. 
email: David@thosewonderfulpeople.com

Website and blog: www.thosewonderfulpeople.com
IG: @thosewonderfulpeople
Twitter: @FilmsInTheDark