INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION

I hope you’ll forgive me if I have 3D on the brain right now. First, proud USC alum Robert Zemeckis insisted on showing his new motion-capture film Beowulf to my class on campus–-in 3D! This meant erecting a special silver reflective screen and having a team of technicians working in our projection booth for twelve hours to install the proper equipment. Everyone agreed that it was well worth the effort. In fact, some of my students remarked that they enjoyed the 3D experience more than the film itself.

Beowulf may not be a perfect film, but I liked it on a visceral level, as a graphic novel come to life. I still have reservations about the motion-capture medium, which translates the actions, expressions, and body language of actors like Anthony Hopkins into the world of digital animation. (Zemeckis first used this in The Polar Express.) It’s still a work in progress: the faces of the female characters, played by Robin Wright Penn and Alison Lohman, look absolutely dead. But the staging of action scenes and the ability to have the camera fly in, out, over and under the various settings is truly impressive. The one character that stands out most is Beowulf himself, an imposing superhero who was fashioned entirely out of the filmmaker’s imagination, as he looks nothing like Ray Winstone, who provided his voice and movements.

John Ford visits director John Farrow and producer/star John Wayne on the Mexican location for HONDO in 1953. In fact, Ford wound up shooting some action scenes for the film. (photo courtesy of Batjac Productions)

Then, earlier this month, I was honored to be asked to host a screening of Hondo (1953) at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Hondo is one of the few major films of its time that couldn’t be shown at the World 3D Film Festival in recent years, so hardly anyone has seen it projected in 3D since its original release. There was a television airing in anaglyph red-green 3D in 1991, and of course the film itself is now available on DVD . This past spring, however, Gretchen Wayne, who now runs Batjac (the company her father-in-law founded and her late husband Michael Wayne headed), presented a new, state-of-the-art digital version of the 3D western at the Cannes Film Festival. Apparently it was a sensation, and completely sold out.

Similarly, the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater was full for this landmark screening, which used new, heavy-duty 3D glasses (with batteries inside) and didn’t require a silver screen. Since the showing at Cannes , a number of improvements have been made in the digital print, realigning some scenes that didn’t look right and repairing some halo problems. Batjac still thinks of this as a work in progress, but I must tell you, it looked sensational.

I began the evening by issuing a mea culpa on behalf of the Academy, which unwittingly believed, as Gretchen herself did, that Hondo had very few 3D engagements in its original release. 3D experts Bob Furmanek and Jack Theakston have posted an exhaustive article on the history of Hondo and 3D with many interesting active links that you can find at their website. I thanked them for bringing this to light. I also remarked that the high-flying predictions about a renaissance of 3D that I’ve been reading in the trade and consumer press over the past few months sound amazingly like the hyperbole of 1953: “It’s going to lure audiences back into theaters”...”It’s going to revolutionize big-screen entertainment,” etc. It seems to me that everything depends on the quality of the films themselves. People don’t pay to see technology; they want to be entertained. If they get to see movies even half as good as Hondo, they will be lucky indeed.

I interviewed Gretchen before the screening, and she was forthright and charming, recalling her husband’s experiences on location in Mexico . He was in his teens and courting her back then; he wrote letters home from the sun-baked location, where the temperature rose to 120 degrees, and where a torrential downpour destroyed the sets. She brought along behind-the-scenes props and a Hondo Lane outfit (which were on display in the Academy lobby) and behind-the-scenes photos which were projected on screen as we spoke. Some audience members gasped when they saw how incredibly bulky the 3D camera was that had to be transported from one setup to the next. Given that, it’s amazing how good Hondo looks and how seamlessly it plays, with sparing use of in-your-face gimmicks but incredible planes of action in its rugged western setting.

Gretchen hopes to finalize the restoration and reissue Hondo to theaters in 3D. I hope she does; I have a feeling people would pay to see it.

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I recently paid a visit to Western Costume, the venerable Hollywood institution that still makes and rents wardrobe for movies and television shows. It’s exciting just to walk into their headquarters near Burbank Airport , in a building that’s about the size of a giant airplane hangar. Proprietor Eddie Marks is unfailingly generous and helpful, as are his employees. While shooting a story for an upcoming episode of my ReelzChannel show Secret’s Out I came upon something I’d never noticed before in their special “star collection,” a fez actually used in the classic 1933 Laurel & Hardy Feature Sons of the Desert. I could barely believe my eyes! Eddie told me that they found a number of these hats and were able to authenticate them, although there is no way of knowing if either Laurel or Hardy actually wore the surviving headpieces. One of them was sold on eBay for more than $2000, but it’s hard to put a price on something that means so much to any die-hard L&H fan.

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I love old-time radio, which is why I spent many years researching and writing my book The Great American Broadcast, but I never dreamed that I would someday participate in a radio play directed by the great Norman Corwin. The occasion was a fundraiser for the American Radio Archives, slated to be built at the Thousand Oaks Public Library here in Southern California .

Norman (who is 97 and sharp as a tack) directed, and radio veteran Peggy Webber produced this live performance of a charming light comedy called The Strange Affliction, about a woman who can’t stop rhyming. The cast included Samantha Eggar, Carl Reiner (pictured at right) as her husband, Norman Lloyd as a quack psychiatrist, Marvin Kaplan as a loco witch doctor, Janet Waldo as an overly earnest poet, Gil Stratton as a televangelist, Linda Kaye Henning in a variety of roles, and such stalwarts as Peter Dennis, Shay Duffin, Sky McDougall, and announcer John Harlan. Most of these folks have worked with Peggy before in her productions for California Artists Radio Theater or CART, but no one was more surprised than I when she asked me to play the part of a television host in a climactic scene of the play. Naturally, I said yes, and had the time of my life during a table-reading rehearsal a week before the event, and then a run-through and performance for an invited audience.

There is nothing quite like the radio medium, and in addition to Norman’s witty words, we had live sound effects from Tony Palermo. I wish there were more opportunities for people to hear and also attend these re-creations; they’re an awful lot of fun. To see some more of my snapshots, click here.

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The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently screened Gloria Swanson’s first talkie, The Trespasser, which I’d always wanted to see. The film doesn’t have any particular reputation, but it has resonated for many years because in it, silent screen star Swanson revealed a lovely singing voice and introduced the standard “Love (Your Magic Spell is Everywhere).” It was written for the movie by actress Elsie Janis and The Trespasser’s writer-director, Edmund Goulding. (Swanson also sings “Toselli’s Serenade” and other incidental tunes during the course of the film.)

The Academy presented what is apparently the only surviving print, restored to its present condition by The George Eastman House. Unfortunately the original materials were not in the best shape, to judge from the final print; many scenes are incredibly grainy, though always sharp and clear. But it’s the film itself that matters and it’s a good, entertaining soap opera that must have been right in step with MGM ’s release of Madame X that year.

Swanson emotes with confidence, as if she felt right at home with a microphone hanging over her head, though she poses in her famous profile as often as possible. The picture opens with a tracking shot inside a busy office, capturing the ambient sound of workers as it makes its way through the room. Then there is a classic movie-star “reveal,” as we stop at the desk of a stenographer busily typing, with her back to the camera. Moments later we see that it’s Gloria herself.

Swanson and William Holden (no relation to the leading man of later movies) in a dramatic moment in The Trespasser. Photos courtesy AMPAS.

The use of establishing title cards (“Somewhere in the Loop ,” for instance) is one of the few dead giveaways that this was made early in the sound era.

Other pluses: the unbilled appearances of Stuart Erwin, Billy Bevan, and Richard Cramer as reporters, and a funny cameo by the beloved Henry Armetta as a flamboyantly gay barber!

At the Academy’s public screening, The Trespasser was introduced by Cari Beauchamp, who has spent the last five years writing a book about Joseph P. Kennedy in Hollywood . It sounds really juicy, and I can’t wait to read it.

The Paramount Theater on Times Square in its heyday

Lou Lumenick, chief film critic of the New York Post, is also a staunch old-movie buff, and sent along these comments about my last posting on movie theaters in Manhattan : “Your column brought back quite a few memories. Bill Kenly's Paramount medallion currently has a place of pride in the reception area outside the studio's third floor screening room in the Viacom Building . Much more recently, they have installed a mural in the elevator area listing ‘Paramount' titles that drives me crazy, since it includes none of the legendary Paramount titles owned by Universal but a few Republic titles that Paramount owns! 

“That artful reproduction of the Paramount Theater marquee you wrote about (the original was replaced in the 1950s, and the theater was gutted for office space in 1967) was built in 2001 for the World Wrestling Federation's short-lived restaurant; Hard Rock Cafe moved into the basement space a couple of years later. I don't believe  Paramount has any connection to or offices in  Paramount Plaza on West 51st Street on the former site of the Capitol Theater; the main tenant is Hachette Magazines. Sadly, there  is not a single movie theater left on Broadway in the '40s and '50s (nor on Seventh). The last of the dozens to close, in 2006, was a four-screen job in the sub-basement of the Virgin Megastore on the site of the old Loews State . The only surviving movie palace in Midtown is the astonishingly ornate (and beautifully restored) Times Square Church on West 51 St. just off Broadway, built as the Hollywood-Warner, where Casablanca had its world premiere engagement beginning on Thanksgiving Day 1942. I've heard Disney has been trying to buy it for several years to turn it into an East Coast version of the El Capitan .”

When I told Lou how fortunate we are to have so many surviving movie palaces in Los Angeles and described the annual Last Remaining Seats series run by the Los Angeles Conservancy, where classic films are shown in these great old theaters, he replied, “There are actually a handful of surviving movie palaces in New York City (and nearby) to support a program like that here. Besides the Hollywood Warner, Rev. Ike's Church keeps up the venerable Loews 175th Street and there is another old movie palace (Roxy's first in NYC) on 116th Street that's long been a church, as is the former Loews Valencia in Jamaica , Queens . After years of dormancy, the Loews Paradise is being restored and the Loews Jersey City, which still needs a lot of work, actually shows movies a couple of weeks a month. There is an old Paramount house on Staten Island that was recently reopened for concerts and recently showed movies. And yet another one in Asbury Park , N.J. The only ‘Wonder Theater’ that fell to the wrecker's ball was Loews Triboro, the site of my high school graduation.”