Movies that had Great Initial Success and, then, Chirp, Chirp, Chirp

[Fading Fast]

It's interesting to look up the top-grossing films year-by-year thru the Era to see which ones have stuck and which ones have disappeared into the 2am time slots on TCM. Consider, for example, 1934 -- a pretty good year for pictures, all things considered. What was the top grossing film? "It Happened One Night?" "The Thin Man?" "The Gay Divorcee?" All pictures which are still well-known, at least among film buffs, to this day -- but none of those were the top grossers for the year.

No, the picture that had the most people beating feet to the box office was -- "Viva Villa," a ripe biopic about Pancho Villa starring that suave bandito himself, Wallace Beery. You may be excused for not having seen it. Not too many people have who don't stay up till 2am watching TCM.

Love the 2am comment. Sometimes a gem pops up then - I remember watching "Judgement at Nuremberg" at around that time of night during a bout of insomnia several years back - but more often than not, you are spot on with the selections they air at that time.

Lizzie, what percentage of movies of the period, say '30s - '50s, does TCM show in an annual or even 2 year rotation? Occasionally, on some obscure channel that shows old movies, a decent old one will pop up that I don't believe has ever been shown on TCM, so I'm just wondering how much of the the total universe of mainstream movies does TCM cover?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can't give you a percentage, but observation tells me it's a lot less than it used to be. When TCM first started in the '90s, it was overwhelmingly 30s-40s films, with selected 50s films, and occasional 20s films. Once in a great while you might see something from the early sixties, but there weren't many of these, and when there were they were always MGM, which were the only post-1948 films Turner owned. All of the features shown were from the Turner-owned MGM, pre-1948 Warner, United Artists, and RKO libraries, and it seemed to me like the most common films shown were MGMs from about 1935-1945. When early-talkie era films, 1928-31, were shown, they were usually shown on the overnight shift.

The big changes started when Turner was merged into Time-Warner in 1996. This brought the entire Warner film library under one roof, along with various other libraries that Warner had come to control, and gradually you started to see sixties films working into the schedule. They also began leasing packages from other distributors, so once in a while you'd see pre-1948 Paramount or Columbia pictures showing up, along with selected British or other foreign films. This seems to be the way they still work today -- the core of programming is the studio libraries owned by Time Warner, with additional titles drawn from leased packages from other libraries. In addition to Paramount-Universal-MCA and Columbia, they've also leased parts of the Fox and Hal Roach libraries at various times, but they don't actually own any of these films which is why they don't turn up as often as the ones they do own.

If I had to pinpoint the very moment when the Old TCM ended for good and became what we have now, it would be about ten years ago, when the animated "retro" interstitials and bumpers -- "Sunny Side of Life," "One Reel Wonders," etc. -- were eliminated in favor of the current "urban hipster" interstitials. That was part of a specific repositioning of the channel away from its previous identity a "Golden Era" *movie* network to a modern "cinephile" *film* network. Since then the variety of 30s-40s pictures has dropped substantially -- the rarities show up far less often and the more popular ones are shown on a much shorter repeat cycle, and the channel has been flooded with sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties pictures. There are certain early talkies I saw on Old TCM several times as recently as the early 00s, but they haven't reappeared since 2006 or so.

TCM is still the best option there is for casual viewing of 30s-40s pictures, but it's a far cry from what it was. I couldn't sleep last night and turned it on to see if there was anything on worth watching, and was greeted by "Foul Play," an obnoxious Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn picture from the '70s that was repeated ad infinitum on HBO in the early '80s. I didn't need to see it more than once then, and I certainly don't need to see it now.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ Lizzie, thank you, as always, great information and insights. Not having your industry knowledge, at a more basic level, everything you said coincides with what I've experienced as a regular viewer since the early '90s (I think, trying to remember exactly when I started watching as I used to, mainly, watch AMC when it played, mainly, GE movies).

I'm glad TCM added in movies from the '60s, but I'd trade every '70s and newer movie they show for more selections from the '30s - '50s as I'm finding fewer and fewer ones form that time period that I haven't seen and, as you noted, the more popular ones are on so often, I'm burning out on some of them. I read just enough about Hollywood and films of that period and, as noted in my prior post, catch some old movies on other channels, to "feel" that there are more movies from the '30s - '50s than what TCM shows.

I'm sure you are right, but it is hard to believe that "The Sunny Side of Life" and its ilk have been off the air for about ten years - feels much more recent than that. I miss them.

And some movies, like "Foul Play" that you noted, feel so out of place on TCM that it's silly. I understand why they show "Remains of the Day," even though relatively modern, it has a GE feel, but I don't need TCM to see stupid Warren Beatty movies like "Shampoo." And I'd gladly sacrifice the few good '70s and later movies - along with all the bad ones - for more '30s - '50s ones.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Another factor involved here is the fact that movies, in general, have become increasingly rare on over-the-air TV channels -- you might still have an independent station that programs movies in obscure weekend time slots, but the days when every local station had a movie package are long gone. It became cheaper to show syndicated talk shows or infomercials in those fringe time slots than movie programming, so "The Great Money Movie," "Coffee Cup Theatre," and "The Late Show" went away. The sort of 70s, 80s, and 90s films that would be run to death in these sorts of time slots if the old local-channel-movies model still existed now go to cable, and TCM has become the default outlet for stuff that's worn out its welcome on HBO or Cinemax.

And a Disturbing Thought to consider. When TCM began, 1940s movies were fiftysome years old. Now 1960s movies are fiftysome years old. Seventies pictures are to today's TCM what fifties pictures were to 1990s TCM.

 

[Fading Fast]

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of TCM's numbers and demographics. How popular are the '30s movies vs. the '40s vs... and with which demographic? I was born in '64, so the first movies I saw in the theater growing up were '70s movies, yet my favorite TCM movies are '30s - '40s.

My fear, implied in your post, is that younger generations just won't care at all about movies prior to the '60s or '70s (away from film buffs). And to be honest, except for some really spot on ones, there is an "acquired taste" aspect to understanding and enjoying a lot of the movies from those time periods especially if you bring an "I want to be entertained the way modern movies entertain me" view to them.

TCM does try to address some of this with its introductions, but there are a lot of things competing for (using modern "The Boys From Marketing" speak) eyeballs today.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I've had this conversation with one of my co-workers, who can't stand to watch pre-seventies movies. He's a few years younger than I am, and his prime moviegoing years were the late seventies/early eighties. A prime member of the "Star Wars Generation," in other words, a person for whom movies are supposed to be larger-than-life spectacle. But his main beef with "old movies" is that he hates the way the characters talk -- he doesn't find the writing or acting style something he can relate to, he can't handle the "speeches" characters tend to make because he finds that it breaks the illusion of reality. Giant creatures on faraway planets and armored space warriors fighting with laser-swords, no problem. But a character delivering Sturges-like speeches, no way.

 

[Fading Fast]

I have a good friend - only 8 years younger than me - who used to think that black-and-white movies were like eating vegetables. He couldn't sit through them as they felt "fake and stilted" to him.

So I got him to watch "North By Northwest" and "To Catch a Thief -" plenty of color, two gorgeous blondes (I know what he likes) and, overall, pretty fast paced dialogue and story. From there, I worked him through movies like "The Philadelphia Story -" dialogue moves and the story has a lot of modern elements. I curated ones for him for about another year until he started searching old movies out on is own. Now he's a fan.

But it was work both on his and my part that - in truth - is not very scalable to the general public.

N.B. I can't even tell you how much he hated "Casablanca" when I first met him ("stupid story, boring, nobody acts like that in real life, she's (Bergman) cute though") - but when I fit it into his movie "education" at the right time, he loved it. If you don't happen to take to old movies like I did, they are an acquired taste for most.

 

[Harp]

I've had this conversation with one of my co-workers, who can't stand to watch pre-seventies movies. He's a few years younger than I am, and his prime moviegoing years were the late seventies/early eighties. A prime member of the "Star Wars Generation," in other words, a person for whom movies are supposed to be larger-than-life spectacle. But his main beef with "old movies" is that he hates the way the characters talk -- he doesn't find the writing or acting style something he can relate to, he can't handle the "speeches" characters tend to make because he finds that it breaks the illusion of reality. Giant creatures on faraway planets and armored space warriors fighting with laser-swords, no problem. But a character delivering Sturges-like speeches, no way.

ahh kids. "Show me the steep and thorny way...." Hamlet 1;3

 

[LizzieMaine]

I count myself lucky for growing up around theatres, where there was no question of "art" when it came to movies. Movies were product, and when one went off the screen another one was there to take its place. I got exposed to all kinds of pictures in that environment, from Great Artistic Achievements to the worst kind of bottom-drawer schlock. And local TV was the same way -- they didn't "program" their movies as much as they threw them on at random, so you might get The Grapes of Wrath followed immediately by Francis The Talking Mule. That kind of unplanned eclecticism is an excellent way to learn about movies, without having a "film curriculum" shoved down your gullet. I miss the days when TCM catered more to the "I just wanna watch an old movie" viewer than to the goatee-stroking cineaste viewer, because you never knew what to expect next.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Lizzie, say what you will about "Viva Villa," James Wong Howe's B&W cinematography was superb.

On the subject of classic vs. forgotten, anybody know which of the Oscar nominees for Best Film of 1952 won? Was it "High Noon" or "The Quiet Man," long recognized classics? Was it "Ivanhoe" or "Moulin Rouge," hokey but colorful and enjoyable films? No, the Oscar went home that night with "The Greatest Show on Earth," an overblown circus yarn by C.B. DeMille. It sort of puts the value of the Oscars in perspective.

 

[Harp]

On the subject of classic vs. forgotten, anybody know which of the Oscar nominees for Best Film of 1952 won? Was it "High Noon" or "The Quiet Man," long recognized classics? Was it "Ivanhoe" or "Moulin Rouge," hokey but colorful and enjoyable films? No, the Oscar went home that night with "The Greatest Show on Earth," an overblown circus yarn by C.B. DeMille. It sort of puts the value of the Oscars in perspective.

Although I consider Saving Private Ryan error-ridden tripe, Shakespeare in Love had even less substance but won Oscar.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It was, you will pardon the expression, the "politically correct" choice. DeMille was a favorite of the 100 Percent All-American Red Baiter faction that ran Hollywood in the early fifties, while High Noon was written by a dirty pinko (ex) Commie, and Quiet Man was directed by a man long considered to have "fellow traveler" sympathies. And that foreign stuff, bah, let them compete in their own countries.

Pretty much anything inexplicable that occured in the late 1940s and early 1950s in movies, television, or radio, from abrupt cancellations to weird distribution patterns, to cast changes, to failed careers to suicides can be explained once you consider the impact the Red Panic had on show business.

 

[Bushman]

I've had this conversation with one of my co-workers, who can't stand to watch pre-seventies movies. He's a few years younger than I am, and his prime moviegoing years were the late seventies/early eighties. A prime member of the "Star Wars Generation," in other words, a person for whom movies are supposed to be larger-than-life spectacle. But his main beef with "old movies" is that he hates the way the characters talk -- he doesn't find the writing or acting style something he can relate to, he can't handle the "speeches" characters tend to make because he finds that it breaks the illusion of reality. Giant creatures on faraway planets and armored space warriors fighting with laser-swords, no problem. But a character delivering Sturges-like speeches, no way.

I personally cannot stand people who refuse to watch a movie based purely on the fact that it was made before they were born. I once encountered a person who refused to watch any movie made before the year 1995, simply because she refuses to watch any movie older than 20 years. In bewilderment, I asked her if she realized that over 90% of films, including most of the greatest films ever made, were made over 20 years ago. She instantly became indignant and evaded my question.

 

[Fading Fast]

I count myself lucky for growing up around theatres, where there was no question of "art" when it came to movies. Movies were product, and when one went off the screen another one was there to take its place. I got exposed to all kinds of pictures in that environment, from Great Artistic Achievements to the worst kind of bottom-drawer schlock. And local TV was the same way -- they didn't "program" their movies as much as they threw them on at random, so you might get The Grapes of Wrath followed immediately by Francis The Talking Mule. That kind of unplanned eclecticism is an excellent way to learn about movies, without having a "film curriculum" shoved down your gullet. I miss the days when TCM catered more to the "I just wanna watch an old movie" viewer than to the goatee-stroking cineaste viewer, because you never knew what to expect next.

While I didn't go to a lot of movies in the theater growing up, I watched them constantly on local channels (we got NYC local channel signals and there were several, so plenty of "old" movie opportunities). Since your entertainment options were limited, I watched what was on which meant I could be watching giant ants attacking a city followed by a gun fighter reluctantly saving a town followed by Errol Flynn fighting for England as a pirate in the 17th Century owing to some complicated political machinations - no curating, no "contextualizing," just movies - take 'em as you will.

I doubt if I was a kid today, with so many entertainment options and so many ways to "personalize" your entertainment and pursue a specific passion that I would have seen all those diverse movies. That said, I can't image my Dad buying cable, tablets, computers, streaming subscriptions in any robust way that would have allowed me to avail myself of those options (I only saw those old movies on my grandmother's 1950s TV after she passed away and we inherited it in the early '70s), so, even today, I might have been the one kid left on earth watching over-the-air TV.

But being such an old movie fan as a kid in the '70s, I remember occasionally being in middle or high school history class and realizing, "oh, that's what 'The Sea Hawk' was loosely based on "or, oh, "'The Letter' is part of the bigger British Colonialism story." Very funny when that would happen. Also, I had seen the early movie versions of movies like "The Red Badge of Courage" and "The Picture of Dorian Grey" before reading them in English class.

 

[LizzieMaine]

We had one local station that owned the Warner/UA pre-1948 package, and ran random films every afternoon at 4pm with a host who drew phone numbers out of a barrel. If he called you, and you were watching the movie and could answer a question about it, you won cash prize, fifteen or twenty dollars or so. And they really didn't care what movies they screened. A typical week's schedule might include "To Have and Have Not," a Bonita Granville Nancy Drew picture, a second-rank Busby Berkeley musical, a Dick Foran western, and Al Jolson in "Mammy." They seemed to just reach into the crate and pull out whatever was at the top of the stack of film cans. All films were shown in 16mm, with plenty of scratched cue marks, splices, and tramlines. But I lapped them up, and got more of a film education that I ever could have gotten in a school.

Another station had the MCA Universal-Pre '48 Paramount package, and it was the same kind of deal, except without the cash prizes. They ran all the Zeppo-era Marx Brothers picures, all the W. C. Fields talkies, all the Bob Hope and Hope-Crosby pictures, all of the Abbott and Costello pictures, and most of the Sturges pictures, along with all the cheap series things like Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule. Since my primary interest was and is comedy, it was like a graduate course. I had seen all of this stuff, repeatedly, before I was fifteen years old.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Reminds me of a theory of Frank Zappa's. He said when he started in the music business in the late fifties, early sixties, there was a lot of good records being published. There was a lot of cheap rubbish but there was some good new music too. The industry was in the hands of old guys with cigars who would publish anything if they thought it would sell and they weren't greedy, if they could sell 20,000 or 30,000 copies they were happy. So, they would give practically anybody a chance .

Then in the mid sixties they were replaced with a new, young, hip generation of record executives whose motto was "I know what the kids want".

After that, nothing good stood a chance.

I wonder if something like this happened in the movie business? When movies were everybody's entertainment and they were churning out a steady stream of product there was always a chance a director or writer could sneak in something good. There were so many movie fans of all ages they could take a bit of a chance. Then came television and killed the movies. Now it seems 3/4 of all movies are about blowing shit up and the rest are labored comedies all aimed at a level of taste and intelligence exhibited by high school dropouts on drugs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The whole economic model of moviemaking in the Era was based on block booking. Theatres would contract with distributors for an entire season of pictures -- and they had no choice in what those pictures were. As part of the agreement, the distributor would agree to provide X number of "A" pictures, and within that category X number of pictures featuring specific popular stars, X number of "B" pictures, and a package of shorts and cartoons which might include X number of series comedies, X number of cartoons starring whatever popular character that studio handled, a twice-weekly newsreel release, and X number of miscellaneous shorts. And the exhibitor was guaranteed to get that season's worth of product and planned his or her program for the year accordingly.

This system was heavily stacked in the favor of the studios -- as long as they met the quotas specified in their contracts with the exhibitors, the quality and content of the films themselves was irrelevant. The exhibitor was the one who took the heat if there were more dogs than hits in the package -- and sometimes, as with the "box office poison" article in 1938, the exhibitors could band together and fight back to demand that the producers give them better product. But in general, it was a "take what we give you" business. It was in the interests of the studios to make good pictures, of course, but there was really no sense of "art" in the front office, any more than a butcher looked at a table full of sausages and considered them "art."

The exhibitor also couldn't cherry pick the studio's product -- you either took the whole season's output or you took nothing. In order to get the Cagneys and the Davises from Warner Brothers, you also had to take the Lee Dixons and the Bonita Granvilles. When and how you scheduled these films was up to you -- if a picture was a dog, you could run it for a day or two and then move on, which is the main reason why neighborhood theatres tended to change their programs two or three times a week in the Era. But you couldn't reject a picture if it was part of the package you'd contracted for, no matter how much it stunk.

This whole system meant a rapacious appetite for material, and in a lot of studios the quality didn't really matter -- the suits left the creative types alone as long as they didn't go overbudget, get too involved in the unions, or make Joseph Ignatius Breen angry. It was much easier to break in as a screenwriter in the 1930s than it is today -- you didn't need to go to film school, you didn't need to go to college, you didn't even need to have finished high school if you had basic writing ability. Failed playwrights, pulp writers, unemployed newspaper reporters, cartoonists, hacks of every description found their way to Hollywood, and got jobs on the production line cranking out product according to formula. It was about as creative a process as working in a fish cannery, but every once in a while, someone with particular ability would transcend the system -- a Sturges, a Trumbo, a Mankiewicz -- and a picture of real quality would result. Those are the ones we remember today, while the thousands and thousands of eighty-minute time-fillers lie in vaults disintegrating.

What changed everything was that exhibtors got sick of being the fall guys for this system and started banding together in lawsuits against the studios. Season-long block booking was abolished in 1940, but block booking of packages of films continued until 1948, when the entire system of block booking was finally ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. Exhibitors gained the right to book films individually without having to buy any kind of packages, and suddenly the whole system changed. This is when you started to get the crass, bloated Technicolor Vistavision spectaculars that characterized the 1950s -- because suddenly the studios had to find new ways to move product. Bigger was better, and the bigger it was the better it sold. That was the germ of the "summer blockbuster" mindset that took over in the 1970s, and is still the dominant model for the business today.

 

[Fading Fast]

⇧ As always, a lot of great information. The distributors were part of the studios themselves - is that correct? Hence, did each little theater owner negotiate directly with each studio for films or, as you explained, packages of films?

If so, would a theater book films from multiple studios or stick with just one or two studios? I'm just wondering if a local theater would have the capacity to show films from more than one or two studios if they only had one screen?

I'm just trying to think through the pressure points, so, for example, if a small theater only booked from one or two studios, then I would assume the studios would campaign for that business, but it doesn't sound like that was happening at all.

Also, didn't the gov't force the studios to sell their theater chains at some point in the early part of the last century?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Theatres in the Era were usually part of regionally based "theatre circuits." The purely independent mom-and-pop theatre was actually an anomaly, and hundreds of them were driven out of business by the arrival of sound when they couldn't raised the money to change over. But even a small-town neighborhood theatre could be part of a "theatre circuit," which would negotiate contracts with the studios thru the studio-owned distribution office. Distribution was based, for the most part, in New York, and the distributors maintained exchange offices around the country from which the actual film prints were circulated. The individual exhibitor had no contact with Hollywood at all.

The big showplace theatres in the cities were usually directly controlled by the studios -- Loew's theatres were operated by Loew's Incorporated, which was the corporate parent of MGM, the Stanley and Warner theatres were controlled by Warner Brothers, the Balaban and Katz, Publix, and Paramount theatres by Paramount, the RKO theatres by RKO, and the Fox theatres, naturally, by Fox. But the studios even had their hands in the theatre circuits that handled small-town markets -- M&P, the New England based chain to which my home theatre belonged, was controlled by Paramount. Of the "Big Five" studios, only Universal controlled no theatres at all.

Theatres would give primacy in booking dates to the product of the studio which owned them or controlled them, but could also book the packages of other studios to fill out their calendar. This was another reason why two or three-day bookings were dominant -- there were so many films out there, and so many contracts floating around, that it was a very rare thing for an individual production to be held over for a long run away from the big cities, where the showplace theatres might run a prestige picture for a month or more. It was very common for a theatre to be primarily,say, a Warner house, but also to carry the Universal program to fill less desirable dates on the calendar. After 1940, it became more common for theatres to select specific film packages from the bigger studios to fill in those dates, which nearly threw Universal into bankruptcy again until Abbott and Costello saved their bacon.

The few mom-and-pop independents often couldn't afford to negotiate with the big studios and had to make do with "States Rights" product -- these were the Poverty Row pictures which didn't have national distribution, and were handled on a territorial basis by regional independent distributors who bought rights on a state-by-state basis. Most of these pictures were schlock westerns, formula mysteries, foreign pictures, and exploitation films, but occasionally something worthwhile might turn up on the "States Rights" market, especially in the way of foreign stuff. It was these States Rights films that made up the bulk of movies shown on television in the 1940s and 1950s until the big studios, looking to improve their cash flow, dumped their pre-1948 product on that market.

Divestiture of theatre chains was part of the same Supreme Court ruling that eliminated block booking -- it was all part of a sweeping antitrust ruling against the movie industry.

 

[Benzadmiral]

. . . Another station had the MCA Universal-Pre '48 Paramount package, and it was the same kind of deal, except without the cash prizes. They ran all the Zeppo-era Marx Brothers picures, all the W. C. Fields talkies, all the Bob Hope and Hope-Crosby pictures, all of the Abbott and Costello pictures, and most of the Sturges pictures, along with all the cheap series things like Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule. Since my primary interest was and is comedy, it was like a graduate course. I had seen all of this stuff, repeatedly, before I was fifteen years old.

Yup. Sunday morning Bowery Boys and Abbott & Costello movies, Saturday night the Universal horror films.