CATCHING UP

My apologies for letting so much time go by without updating this site. I’ve been on deadline for this year’s edition of my annual paperback Movie Guide, which is always a stressful time, but now the book is locked up and on its way toward publication at the end of summer. Whew! Incidentally, without trying (or meaning) to, we wound up with 400 new entries instead of our usual 300.

I’m also on deadline for a new wave of Walt Disney Treasures. Last year the folks at Walt Disney Home Video had assured me that our series was over. Naturally I was disappointed, but I could scarcely complain, having had a successful six-year run. Then, just a short time ago, they decided that the Treasures would be a natural outlet for two projects that were already in the pipeline: the first-ever collection of Walt Disney’s silent Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, with newly-commissioned music scores by Robert Israel, and a new feature-length documentary about Disneyland prepared for the park’s 50 th anniversary. Oswald will be accompanied by Leslie Iwerks’ feature about her grandfather Ub, The Hand Behind the Mouse, and the Disneyland doc will be supplemented by a number of vintage shorts and TV shows about the park—including some genuine rarities. Add to that Volume 3 of The Chronological Donald [Duck, that is] and you have our three newest volumes, which will be released on December 11. More details to come.

Photo by Lindsay Trapnell, USC

I wrapped up my spring semester at USC at the end of April with a visit from Kevin Costner, who brought his upcoming thriller Mr. Brooks. My class of 20-somethings aren’t Costner’s strongest fan base, but he won them over with his unabashed enthusiasm for filmmaking. They’re not easily impressed, but the students responded to a man they only know as a movie star who turns out to be a lifelong movie-lover.

We had an unusually strong semester, given the dearth of good movies to screen at this time of year. As usual, the late winter/early spring studio releases rolled out, one mediocre thriller after another; they’re followed now by the season of sequels, which hasn’t gotten off to an encouraging start.

I can’t complain when the public shows its approval of a movie, even when I disagree with that opinion. What bothers me about the pre-sold success of a film like Spider-man 3 is that it earns a ton of money just by showing up—and not necessarily because people like it. (Having genuinely loved Spider-man 2 I was especially disappointed.)

My weekly show Secret’s Out continues chugging along at ReelzChannel, and we’ve had some wonderful guests in recent weeks, including Bill Paxton, who discussed his under-appreciated movie The Greatest Game Ever Played, and Sarah Polley, the gifted young actress who has just made an impressive debut as the writer and director of Away From Her. A new show debuts every Friday. If you subscribe to DirecTV it’s on Channel 239; if you have DISH Net it’s on Channel 299. And if you’re curious to see excerpts from the show, please go to the show website and check out Secret’s Out.

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My perk for interviewing Ellen Burstyn? Getting her to sign
my copy of her book, of course!

I’ll admit I did play hooky from my work schedule a number of times over the past month. I was asked to interview an actress I’ve always admired, Ellen Burstyn, at this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. In preparation for our conversation I read her recently published autobiography, Lessons in Becoming Myself (Riverhead Press), which was a revelatory experience. I knew nothing of her background, growing up in an abusive home, which sent her out into the world with a terrible image of herself. This led to bad decisions in her choice of men, including her third husband, who made her life a living hell just as she achieved her greatest success in the 1970s. It’s a fascinating and utterly candid book, well written (by the actress herself) and well worth reading.

Meeting her and spending time together on stage, before a sell-out crowd at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, was a delight. One audience member asked if there was any role she still longed to play and she replied that it hadn’t been written yet: a juicy part for a still-sexy seventy-five year old woman. The crowd cheered its approval.

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W.C. relaxes outside the Paramount soundstage
where he was shooting Poppy in 1936.

In mid-May I was pleased to host an evening honoring W.C. Fields at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Randy Haberkamp organized the program, which coincided with the closing night of a stunning gallery exhibit drawn from the archive of personal memorabilia recently donated to the Academy by the Fields family. The building was kept open for at least an hour after the end of the program downstairs in the auditorium, which allowed scores of audience members to get their first (and last) look at this cornucopia of material, curated by Joe Adamson and Howard Prouty. The Great Man’s granddaughter, Harriet Fields, told me she hoped the exhibit would tour the country, and I share that hope: it’s a gem.

So was the panel I got to moderate, with Joe Adamson, Ron Fields (W.C.’s grandson), veteran comedy writer Hal Kanter, who had a brief but memorable encounter with Fields in the early 1940s, and three former juveniles who worked in Fields movies: Jane Withers, Delmar Watson, and Jean Rouverol Butler.

I wondered how clear their memories would be of something they experienced more than seventy years ago. I needn’t have wondered. Jane Withers has almost total, photographic recall, and regaled us with the story of how she was chosen on a “cattle call” to play a brief scene with Fields in It’s a Gift. (The scene is now just one line, but Jane remembered shooting much more, and her memory was borne out by a production still in the Academy gallery.) Fields took a liking to the precocious child and predicted great things for her; he even told Jane’s mother to keep him posted on her progress. Sure enough, when she got her big break later that year in Shirley Temple’s Bright Eyes, they wrote him a letter and he responded in kind...then sent her a huge basket of flowers when she was about to shoot her first starring vehicle at Fox in 1935.

Does that sound like a man who “hated” children?

Rouverol played W.C.’s teenage daughter in It’s a Gift who makes it almost impossible for him to shave in his own bathroom mirror. Her most vivid memory involved Fields and writer Jack Cunningham poring over Fields’ copy of Roget’s Thesaurus to find the most “effulgent” adjectives they could work into the screenplay. Indeed, we heard him utter that very word in The Old Fashioned Way, which screened after the panel discussion.

Jane Withers reacts as Delmar Watson demonstrates a slingshot for the audience. (Photo courtesy AMPAS)

Delmar Watson, every inch the show-business veteran, broke up the crowd by bringing along a prop to tell his story of being hired for one scene in You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. Like Jane, he was on a cattle call, but his father always dressed him as a ragamuffin, which often helped him stand out from the crowd. He was asked if he knew how to use a slingshot, and when he said yes, a voice that he recognized as Fields’, from the back of the room, challenged him further by inquiring how he would hold it. At this point, Delmar drew a slingshot from his inner jacket pocket and illustrated how he responded, putting his thumb and forefinger on the two spokes of the Y-shaped device to steady it. That impressed Fields back in 1938 and won him the job in a funny scene with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. (Delmar’s brother Harry won a role in The Barber Shop years earlier by showing Fields that he could carry a drink from one end of a room to the other without spilling a drop.)

When I was a boy I read Robert Lewis Taylor’s delightful book W.C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes, which perpetrated many legends about the comedian that scholars like Joe Adamson and Ron Fields (in his groundbreaking book W.C. Fields By Himself) have spent years attempting to debunk. They both came to the same conclusion: the more you understand the real W.C. Fields, the more sympathetic he becomes.

Ronald Fields, W.C.'s grandson, greets Jane Withers and
Jean Rouverol Butler. (Photo courtesy AMPAS)

Ron also made the point that Fields’ life is reflected in his movies. Because of his contentious relationship with his wife Hattie, he never really got to be a father to his son (Ron’s father, W. Claude Fields, Jr.). That’s why in several of his films his son is portrayed as a wiseguy or a dolt, while his daughter is presented in idealized terms.

Joe recalled that writer Everett Freeman, whom he interviewed for his and Bob Weide’s Emmy Award-winning documentary W.C. Fields Straight Up, recalled that Fields kept complaining about Universal removing his wife’s death scene from You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man. This puzzled Adamson until he found a copy of Fields’ original script. Sure enough, in this film, as in several others, he made a point of including a scene that would allow him a moment of drama, to humanize his character.

An unlikely trio: Fred MacMurray, W. C. Fields and George Arliss.
The occasion was a testimonial dinner for The Great Man held
on February 18, 1939 at the Masquers Club in Los Angeles.

Sure enough, as we all settled back to watch a beautiful 35mm print of The Old Fashioned Way on the huge Academy screen, we saw Fields as he wished to be seen: not just as The Great McGonigle, a lovable rogue, but also as the loving father of Judith Allen who even sacrifices his own future in show business for her sake at the end of the picture. That scene had added poignancy after listening to Ron Fields’ remarks.

Incidentally, while Universal’s recent boxed DVD set brings to ten the number of Fields features available in sparkling copies, there is nothing to compare with the experience of watching one of his best movies with seven hundred like-minded people. It was a glorious evening.

[For more photos of the Fields exhibit and panel discussion, click HERE]

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Another recent event introduced me to a museum I didn’t know existed at Forest Lawn Memorial in Glendale. In this unusual (but beautiful) hilltop setting is an impressive collection of art and artifacts, as well as a temporary gallery that is currently hosting a wall show devoted to Herbert Ryman and students from Ryman Arts.

As any dyed-in-the-wool Disney fan can tell you, Herbert Ryman was one of the key people Walt Disney relied on to conceptualize ideas for Disneyland in the early 1950s. In fact, he drew the fanciful map of the park—over the course of one weekend—that helped Walt “sell” the idea to his bankers.

Herbie Ryman became an inspiration to a generation of Imagineers, mentoring young artists and helping them solve problems with his enormous knowledge of perspective, composition, and color. When he died, his sister Lucille, Walt Disney’s daughter Sharon Lund, and Imagineer Marty Sklar joined together to create a foundation that would perpetuate Herbie’s name—and address his concern about the lack of good art education in our country. Ryman Arts now sponsors classes for hundreds of high-school students in Southern California every year.

The Forest Lawn show incorporates the impressive work of Ryman Arts alumni, in a variety of media, along with a generous helping of canvases by Herbert Ryman himself. These paintings are knockouts, and well worth seeing in person. For details about the show, which runs through July 22, go to the event website.

If you’d like to know more about the Ryman Arts program, go to their website. If you don’t already own a copy of the beautiful coffee-table book The Art of Herb Ryman: A Brush With Disney, contact them by e-mail. (The Ryman Arts site is worth visiting, but it’s in the process of being overhauled, and the automatic link to purchase the book isn’t working right now; however, they will be happy to help you on an individual basis.)