I look forward to Turner Classic Movies’ 31 Days of Oscar every year in the month before the Oscar telecast. It is so much fun to see the nominees and winners from past years, not just for the big acting, directing, and screenplay awards but also the nominees and winners for costume design, cinematography, editing, and more.
And they’ve made it even more special this year! This will be a lot of fun for movie nerds like me. Each movie will have a connection with the one that follows it by an actor in common. It will be a lot of fun to follow along and trace the careers of some of our favorite performers.
The Moon Film team tells the story of cinema: After a brief overview of the processes that led to Cinema, from Nicéphore Niépce’s oldest surviving photograph in 1826 or 1827 to Charles-Émile Reynaud’s Théâtre optique in 1892, you’ll find 75 movies by 75 different directors starting with La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon) which opened the first commercial public screening in Paris on 28 December 1895. Though the first film was an obvious choice, we don’t have the necessary perspective to choose the last one objectively. By selecting Avengers: Age of Ultron we simply acknowledge the fact that the comic book movies have dominated the box office in the past decade.
Copyright MGM 1940She also has great write-ups on some of my favorite films like The Major and the Minor, with Ray Milland and Ginger Rogers, directed by Billy Wilder, and I Love You Again, with William Powell and Myrna Loy. Her write-ups are detailed, thoughtful, and illuminating.
I am very grateful to Cameron for taking time to answer my questions and I look forward to keeping up with her blog.
Has the availability of old films via Netflix, TCM, and other outlets widened the audience for vintage movies?
I definitely think so! Old films are more available now than ever, which is wonderful. TCM has been especially instrumental in reviving interest in old movies, and I use a great site called ClassicFlix.com that stocks just about anything you might want to rent. Although Netflix doesn’t have a huge selection, their streaming service has helped introduce people to classic movies. For example, a lot of my readers first find my site because they search for some variation of “classic movies to stream on Netflix” and land on my “Netflix Instant: Five Classic Films” posts.
Blogs and social media outlets like tumblr and pinterest have also helped spike interest in these classic films and stars. There is a thriving community of classic movie fans online, and it’s great that people are interested and that these films are so accessible today.
Do you have an example of a movie that was popular when it came out but has not stood the test of time? What about one that was neglected on its release but now is appreciated by audiences?
I immediately think of Esther Williams, a national champion swimmer who was discovered by MGM when she was performing in the Aquacade, a live water extravaganza. She became a huge star, and her films were incredibly popular for over a decade, but today she’s not nearly as well known as some of her contemporaries. Her movies are big Technicolor musicals with lavishly produced “water ballets,” and although I still find them delightful, audience tastes have changed quite a bit from Williams’ heyday. Films like Neptune’s Daughter (1949) or Easy to Love (1953) made MGM a healthy profit, but they aren’t as timeless as other classics.
A famous flop-turned-classic is Bringing Up Baby (1938), which is one of my favorites. It stars legends Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, and was directed by Howard Hawks, but when it was released, audiences weren’t nearly as enamored with it as people are today. For one thing, Hepburn had recently been named “box office poison,” and she wasn’t bringing in the crowds at that point in her career. But its lackluster performance was also due to its over-the-top wackiness. Its one of the most “screwball” of all the screwball comedies, so if you expect the characters to make rational sense, you’ll be disappointed. But if you embrace the crazy, you’ll probably have a great time. Fortunately, it’s now adored as the screwball masterpiece it is.
How did you begin to get interested in old movies and which were the ones you first loved?
We didn’t watch much TV when I was little, but my parents would take me to the public library and let me check out VHS tapes of old movies. I don’t know why, but I was hooked immediately. I first fell for 1950s musicals like Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), but I watched anything I could find. And at the time, there wasn’t much! I exhausted the library’s collection and my local video store’s “Classic” section, and became a Turner Classic Movies addict. I also read everything I could find about classic Hollywood, and the more I learned and watched, the more fascinated I became.
I find that it is immediately obvious when you are watching a film whether it was made in the 1930’s or 40’s or 50’s or made later and depicts an earlier era. Do you agree? What are the giveaways?
I absolutely agree. I think that no matter how hard we try, the current age sneaks in. You can see that happening in the classic era, too—for example, in The Harvey Girls (1946), which is set in the 1880s, Judy Garland and the other actresses sport 1940s hairstyles and makeup. Today we prize historical accuracy far more than they did in the studio era, but it’s still impossible to be perfect. If a filmmaker went for complete accuracy, the movie might become cartoonish or odd just because styles, fashion, architecture, language, etc., have changed so much. Also, the technology is so different; sound, color design, special effects, and other elements make movies look and sound differently depending on when they were made. In the 1940s, for instance, Technicolor films often featured a bright, saturated, bold palette with plenty of hot pinks, cyan, and chartreuse, but you don’t see that look today, even in films set in the 1940s. Part of this disjuncture is because movies don’t present “reality”—and especially not in the studio era! But that’s one reason I love old movies so much. When you watch one, especially a musical, you’re watching a dream world, not real life. But you can learn a lot about how people lived and what they enjoyed watching from the vision that movies presented. But don’t always trust their version of historical events!
How did you get interested in tracing technology and culture by watching old movies?
I can remember being confused by a lot of what I saw in old movies when I first started watching them as a kid. The clothes, homes, telephones, cars, and even the language seemed incredibly foreign. I didn’t understand why women were traveling to Reno to get divorced, or why American characters spoke in British accents, for example. But those disconnects fascinated me. After all, these are the films my grandparents went to see in theaters! I’m not that far removed from that era, but the world onscreen looks so different! As I continued watching I realized I was accidentally picking up a lot of information about things like fashion, courtship, travel, and even doughnuts.
Old movies are a great way to learn about the past, and I love writing about that in my “History Through Hollywood” series. I think of classic movies as inadvertent time capsules, packed with little details that find their way into films just because they were a normal part of life. It’s really interesting to me to learn why characters drink champagne out of shallow-bowled coupes instead of flutes, for instance, or why telephone numbers included words until the 1960s.
And sometimes what is left out of movies can tell you a lot, too. Our rating system only dates from 1968, and before that, the Production Code Administration, which was Hollywood’s self-censorship body, governed what could and could not be onscreen from 1934 until the 1960s. The Code was designed to keep anything “objectionable” out of the movies, and covered broad topics like violence and sex, but also stretched to tiny details such as how many seconds a kiss could last or the use of specific words. (The Code helped make classic movies a great option for kids today.) It’s important to remember that sometimes old movies do not necessarily reflect the reality of the time, but instead show the power of the Code and an era’s social mores and values.
I also try to make old films more accessible and watchable, so I like to provide context and explain why these movies seem “tame” or different from today’s films. I think that if a viewer comes to them cold, he or she can get confused, bored, or just find the movies silly because the world onscreen can seem really foreign. I hope that by tracing cultural and technological change, and trying to explain why an old movie looks and sounds the way it does, viewers who are new to classic films might enjoy them even more.
If you could keep one aspect of early telephone technology, what would it be?
There isn’t anything quite as glamorous as a gorgeous, sculpted white handset in the perfectly manicured hand of a legendary star! And although I love the convenience of my smartphone, it might be fun to rely on an operator once in a while!
Interview: Karina Longworth on the “You Must Remember This” Podcast, Now on Panoply
Posted on September 17, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Karina Longworth is the creator/narrator of the brilliant “You Must Remember This” podcast, which covers Hollywood history. Last season was entirely devoted to a mesmerizing narrative about the Charles Manson murders. The show has now moved to Slate’s Panoply podcast network and the new season responds to listener requests. Longworth answered my questions about the show.
What led you to tell these stories via podcast rather than a book or series of articles? How does that format change the way you present the stories?
The simple and practical answer is that I started the podcast because I found myself increasingly wanting to consume information that way myself. I still read a lot of books and longform reporting, but I find that there’s too much of that stuff, and potentially interesting things either fall through the cracks altogether, or else I don’t get around to them as quickly as I would like. But I’m always “running out” of podcasts to listen to, so I figured if I made one that was unique I figured there might be people like me who would be willing to take a chance on it.
The more complicated answer is that on some level, I’ve kind of been waiting for this format to come around and become viable for nearly 20 years. When I was in art school as an undergraduate I studied experimental non-fiction film and video, and the work I was making was basically 19 year-old me’s version of this podcast, except that I was editing together montages of mostly found imagery in order to give it a visual element. Now I don’t have to have the visual element.
Hollywood pioneered the idea of press agents and personal brands, and even scandal magazines often suppressed negative stories in exchange for access. How does that affect your ability to research what was really happening?
A big part of the show is about that process, and that uncertainty. In most cases, I don’t think we can know without a shadow of a doubt what really, truly happened. It’s the conflicting stories, and the gaps between the facts we know and the ways in which the stories were or continue to be spun, that I think are really interesting. My hope is that through the process of sifting through all of this, larger truths will emerge.
What was it about the Manson stories that inspired you to delve into such an extended retelling? What do you think made him such a compelling leader? Do you consider him a reflection of his era?
I wanted to talk about a time and a place in which no one suspected Charles Manson was going to orchestra multiple murders — and even after the murders, no one thought he was involved for awhile — because he and everything he was doing simply wasn’t considered to be weird. It was also really clear to me after a little bit of reading that his story was kind of the worst case scenario version of a really familiar Hollywood tale, of the pilgrim who comes to Southern California thinking they’re going to “make it,” only to have their hopes dashed, and then have them respond, shall we say, ungracefully.
What kinds of resources do you use for your research?
Because I’m pressed for time, these days I primarily use biographical books and other mass-published Hollywood histories, but for various different episodes I’ve done more in-depth archival research at places like the Margaret Herrick Library, the Warner Brothers archive at USC, and the BFI Library in London, where I’m currently living.
Can you give us a hint of what some of the listener requests are that you’ll be reporting on this season?
There were so many compelling requests, but as I was weeding through them all, it became clear that multiple people were interested in the stories of the studio moguls, and how the studio system was run during the classical Hollywood era. Also, there were requests for the stories of many individual stars who were associated with MGM. So in the end, I chose 15 stories that would allow me to explore a number of different facets of how the studio worked, why it was so dominant for so many years, and how the system it mastered of creating and promoting stars ultimately fell apart.
he “Mostly Lost” film festival, which has become a pilgrimage for a subset of movie fans who revere the era long before the advent of computer-enhanced animatronic dinosaurs.
For four years, the event at the State Theatre on the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus has attracted historians with advanced degrees, old men with stacks of even older film tins in their basements and self-taught aficionados who can quickly determine a car’s model year or identify a never-famous actor by the shape of his posterior. This year, an 11-year-old boy, who has appeared on Turner Classic Movies to introduce Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” missed two days of school to be here.
What they all had in common was an obsession with a time when movies were made without color, sound or social media campaigns.
The Packard Campus, about 90 minutes from Washington, D.C., near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, houses the largest and most comprehensive film collection in the world.
The 125 films screened over three days in June were mere fragments — five- to 10-minute clips — mostly from movies so obscure that even top film archivists could not decipher the titles, name the actors, or determine the year they were made.
The clue from the 1922 calendar turned out to be a clincher. It matched the film to a publicity photograph — found in an online database called Lantern — from a film called “Small Town Hero,” which involved a woman who works alongside a chimpanzee at a general store. (Chimpanzees show up often in silent movies, as do men in bowler hats.)
