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

[Fading Fast]

I know we have a thread for under-appreciated masterpieces and one for now-classic movies that initially flopped, but how about those movies that were initial successes - those that achieved both popular and critical acclaim upon release - but time has not been kind to and they, since, have seemingly, all but disappeared.

For example, I remember "Kramer vs. Kramer" was very popular and won a bunch of awards (including several Oscars) when it first came out. However, then it seemed to just disappear. Once in a blue moon, I'll see that it is on a cable channel, but that's about it.

I don't remember that last time anyone mentioned that movie or cared about it (personally, I think it is all but unwatchable). But the point is not so much my or anyone's opinion; the point is the arc of the movie's popularity, from being hugely successful to, then, all but fading away.

"Chariots of Fire" (a movie I like) falls into this category.

What are some other movies that fall into this category - especially cool would be to hear about some from the Golden Era? What movies had critical and popular acclaim back in the '30s / '40s / '50s upon release only to fade afterwards?

 

[scottyrocks]

I have found that many movies from the GE, even those that are considered classics, are just not broadcast on TV, and if they are, it's very very rarely. I have always attributed it to the idea of exclusivity - that they are such masterpiecical classics that they are held back from public viewing in the same way that anything super-important (whether real or imaged) is with held from public view.

 

[Benzadmiral]

I caught part of "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" from 1969 the other morning. I wouldn't have been able to get into the theatre to see it back then -- yet it seemed pretty innocuous, kind of talky, and not at all shocking to me now. Plus there were references that were very Sixties. Bob (Robert Culp) is asked if his pot is Acapulco Gold, and he retorts that it's "beautiful downtown Burbank Brown." The first 3 words of that wouldn't register nowadays on the pop-culture radar of anybody under 55-60. I submit that B&C&T&A has sunk into cricket territory.

"Ordinary People" might be another -- but I've never seen it at all, so I don't know.

 

[Fading Fast]

I caught part of "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" from 1969 the other morning. I wouldn't have been able to get into the theatre to see it back then -- yet it seemed pretty innocuous, kind of talky, and not at all shocking to me now. Plus there were references that were very Sixties. Bob (Robert Culp) is asked if his pot is Acapulco Gold, and he retorts that it's "beautiful downtown Burbank Brown." The first 3 words of that wouldn't register nowadays on the pop-culture radar of anybody under 55-60. I submit that B&C&T&A has sunk into cricket territory.

"Ordinary People" might be another -- but I've never seen it at all, so I don't know.

Never saw "B&C&T&A," but have "OP." Oddly, my high school class read the book and, then, we went to the movies as a class to see it (first and only time we did that).

I saw it again, I'm guessing, five years ago and thought it is a really good - really sad - movie, but I can see why it is fading. It's not sad in a big way, it's sad in a soul-crushing "small" Tolstoy way - "...every unhappy family...." People don't really enjoy seeing that and don't want to see it again and again.

 

[Fading Fast]

Hmm, no post yet from Lizzie.

There have to have been some "smash" hit movies in the '30s - '50s that were all the rage for the five minutes they were in the theater, but have since faded into obscurity.

And I expect (my hasn't the crowd become entitled) some insightful Lizzie commentary as to why the movie was so successful at the time, but has since faded - "during the war, there was a period of great interesting in (the theme of the movie - some obscure social or cultural touchpoint), but after the war, interest in that concern went away as America no longer wanted to think about that stuff.

 

[Doctor Strange]

When I get some time, I should be able to think of some movies for this thread. Regarding yesterday's...

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was a very of-its-time film, though it ultimately (and quite perceptively) showed its intended foursome - trying their hardest to be "cool and with it" - not really being able to go through with it, and not being changed by it in the ways that they expected. It's certainly a real period piece today. It was a period piece a year after it was made! Director Paul Mazursky was always on top of the zeitgeist... but that meant that many of his most popular films that caught a particular moment seemed overwrought and/or clichéd a few later. For example, An Unmarried Woman was the height of enlightened go-girl feminism in 1978... but it came off as strident and bogus just a few years later.

Ordinary People hit big when it was new for a lot of reasons: nobody expected Robert Redford to be such a skilled director... of an intimate family drama, no less; Judd Hirsch's mensch psychologist (a Jew in touch with his feelings, contrasted with the mega-repression of the WASP main characters) was something a bit different (even if it was an instant cliché); and the biggest shock of all, seeing America's sweetheart Mary Tyler Moore playing an ice-cold bitch. And using Pachelbel's Canon on the soundtrack wasn't yet a cliché either. Today, it's still an excellent film, but it doesn't look very different from other psychological family dramas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When Correll and Gosden, better known as the radio team of Amos 'n' Andy made their feature movie "Check and Double Check" in 1930, it was a huge success at the box office -- RKO's biggest hit of the 1930-31 season by far. But the main appeal was simply the novelty of seeing the nation's most popular radio program on screen. When audiences saw how bad a picture it was -- even by early-talkie standards -- repeat business fell off very sharply, Today it's remembered, if at all, only for the fact that Duke Ellington and his Orchestra were showcased in a party scene.

Correll and Gosden themselves hated the film, with Gosden refusing to let his children see it, and dismissing it later in life as "the worst picture ever made." It's slow moving, poorly-written, dully-photographed, ineptly directed, about half an hour too long, and captures none of the qualities that made the radio program popular. And yes, Amos and Andy are very obviously two white guys in makeup, who look nothing like the way listeners imagined the characters to look.

There are a great many pictures from the early-talkie era that offer similar disappointments when viewed from a modern perspective. Al Jolson's "The Singing Fool", a part-talkie made in 1928, held the all-time box office record until "Gone With The Wind," but I dare anybody today to sit thru it without wincing. The only saving grace to it at all is Jolson singing at the height of his powers, but even that is compromised by poor recording and the presence of the wretched tear-jerker "Sonny Boy" as the hit song of the picture.

George Arliss's biopic "Disraeli" from 1929 was one of the most critically-acclaimed films of the period, but viewed today it comes across as a stodgy, plodding stage play photographed from inside a large wooden crate. Which, in fact, like a great many dramas from the transition period, it actually was. Arliss is excellent, and you get some sense of why he was considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, but the picture itself is the difference between fresh ham and canned ham.

But for a star -- a mega-star, even -- whose entire output has pretty much dropped completely out of public consciousness, you'd have to consider the case of Greta Garbo. It's impossible to overstate how big she was in the late twenties and early thirties -- she was a pop-culture figure on a par with Tarzan or Mickey Mouse, as well as being a huge box-office draw. But very suddenly, around 1937, the bottom fell out of the Greta Garbo market. She was the most prominent of the stars condemned by an exhibitors' association as "Box Office Poison" in 1938, and she never really recovered from that. When she quit the screen in 1942 she already seemed like a has-been.

Many of Garbo's contemporaries are still reasonably popular and well-known today but despite the fact that she lived as "Manhattan's Most Famous Recluse" until 1990, I doubt that most people under fifty have much of an idea that she ever existed at all.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Anything with Shirley Temple in it. Popular beyond belief in the '30s, now they can only be watched as curiosities. I've found these movies to be a perfect demonstration of the fact that within the span of a generation a culture can change so radically that the former becomes incomprehensible to the latter. We now watch a Temple movie aghast at the thought that this was once thought to be suitable fare for grownups. It's like watching something made by people not from another culture, but from another planet.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lizzie, I feel that way about nearly all the prestige biopics of the thirties, like the ones with Paul Muni as Pasteur or Zola. They haven't aged well.

Just last night, I watched the promising-in-advance Adventures of Mark Twain (1944) with Fredric March. It was terrible! Not just in the hokey "he actually lived the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as a child, and was involved in a real jumping frog contest out west" plotting, but with a boatload of awful racial and class stereotypes that even I (with my longtime dedication to historical accuracy over political correctness) couldn't stomach. And that's not even getting to its largely bogus treatment of his later literary career and family issues, and a death scene where he walks off to a heavenly Mississippi River with his childhood buddies, Tom and N-word Jim. What a stinker.. but it was so unexpectedly awful that I couldn't stop watching!

 

[LizzieMaine]

Anything with Shirley Temple in it. Popular beyond belief in the '30s, now they can only be watched as curiosities. I've found these movies to be a perfect demonstration of the fact that within the span of a generation a culture can change so radically that the former becomes incomprehensible to the latter. We now watch a Temple movie aghast at the thought that this was once thought to be suitable fare for grownups. It's like watching something made by people not from another culture, but from another planet.

I dunno, "Stand Up and Cheer" still works for me, but that's not so much a "Temple picture" as a picture which she happens to be in. This is also the production that features Stepin Fetchit doing a rowdy comedy scene with a talking penguin that claims to be Jimmy Durante. It goes beyond offensive, beyond bizarre, into the realms of the nightmarishly surreal.

 

[Frunobulax]

Most of Woody Allen's output, especially the early films, came out to critical acclaim and in the case of some, were box office hits. It seems only film students watch them anymore.

 

[Fading Fast]

When Correll and Gosden, better known as the radio team of Amos 'n' Andy made their feature movie "Check and Double Check" in 1930, it was a huge success at the box office -- RKO's biggest hit of the 1930-31 season by far. But the main appeal was simply the novelty of seeing the nation's most popular radio program on screen. When audiences saw how bad a picture it was -- even by early-talkie standards -- repeat business fell off very sharply, Today it's remembered, if at all, only for the fact that Duke Ellington and his Orchestra were showcased in a party scene.

Correll and Gosden themselves hated the film, with Gosden refusing to let his children see it, and dismissing it later in life as "the worst picture ever made." It's slow moving, poorly-written, dully-photographed, ineptly directed, about half an hour too long, and captures none of the qualities that made the radio program popular. And yes, Amos and Andy are very obviously two white guys in makeup, who look nothing like the way listeners imagined the characters to look.

There are a great many pictures from the early-talkie era that offer similar disappointments when viewed from a modern perspective. Al Jolson's "The Singing Fool", a part-talkie made in 1928, held the all-time box office record until "Gone With The Wind," but I dare anybody today to sit thru it without wincing. The only saving grace to it at all is Jolson singing at the height of his powers, but even that is compromised by poor recording and the presence of the wretched tear-jerker "Sonny Boy" as the hit song of the picture.

George Arliss's biopic "Disraeli" from 1929 was one of the most critically-acclaimed films of the period, but viewed today it comes across as a stodgy, plodding stage play photographed from inside a large wooden crate. Which, in fact, like a great many dramas from the transition period, it actually was. Arliss is excellent, and you get some sense of why he was considered one of the greatest actors of his generation, but the picture itself is the difference between fresh ham and canned ham.

But for a star -- a mega-star, even -- whose entire output has pretty much dropped completely out of public consciousness, you'd have to consider the case of Greta Garbo. It's impossible to overstate how big she was in the late twenties and early thirties -- she was a pop-culture figure on a par with Tarzan or Mickey Mouse, as well as being a huge box-office draw. But very suddenly, around 1937, the bottom fell out of the Greta Garbo market. She was the most prominent of the stars condemned by an exhibitors' association as "Box Office Poison" in 1938, and she never really recovered from that. When she quit the screen in 1942 she already seemed like a has-been.

Many of Garbo's contemporaries are still reasonably popular and well-known today but despite the fact that she lived as "Manhattan's Most Famous Recluse" until 1990, I doubt that most people under fifty have much of an idea that she ever existed at all.

Lizzie - thank you - as always, informative, interesting and amazing. As a small Garbo connection, when we were looking at apartments to buy only a few years back, we looked at one in a building next to the one she lived in (a nicer building than most we were considering, but nothing fancy shmancy by Manhattan standards) that prominently advertised that it was "next to Greta Garbo's former apartment house" (The Boys from Marketing never let even the smallest of opportunities to connect to something famous slip by).

I was surprised as I didn't think her name held any meaning except for crazy people like me who love old movies. An even less related aside, but I love in the '80s hit song "Bettie Davis Eyes," there is a line, "She's got Greta Garbo's standoff sighs." Now that's how you want to be known - for you "standoff sighs."

... We now watch a Temple movie aghast at the thought that this was once thought to be suitable fare for grownups. It's like watching something made by people not from another culture, but from another planet.

Well said and the way I feel about Vaudeville - how was that ever popular, but it was and, my guess, I'd have loved it if I was born into the culture of that time.

Lizzie, I feel that way about nearly all the prestige biopics of the thirties, like the ones with Paul Muni as Pasteur or Zola. They haven't aged well....

Could not agree more. While we complain about how fast and lose they are with the facts today, many of those older biopics were worse. "The Story of Seabicuit," albeit about a horse, but a horse as famous as Babe Ruth, is all but made up - the story is fake (and the movie awful anyway).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Biopics, as a genre, have always been the bunk, and some of them aren't just bad, but stupid-bad. That whole string of show-biz biographies that came out in the 1950s went from bad to worse until it hit rock bottom with "The Buster Keaton Story," which, though it was reasonably successful at the box office, had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual life of its subject. Its only saving grace is that the money Keaton was paid for the rights enabled him to live the last years of his life in reasonable comfort and dignity.

Another historical biopic, sort of, the 1960s talkie remake of "King of Kings," is even more difficult than the Keaton picture to watch today. It's impossible to ignore the fact that Jeffrey Hunter, whatever his skills as an actor, looks like a man who got no closer to the hills of Palestine than the other side of a pastrami sandwich at Chasen's.

 

[Fading Fast]

It's impossible to ignore the fact that Jeffrey Hunter, whatever his skills as an actor, looks like a man who got no closer to the hills of Palestine than the other side of a pastrami sandwich at Chasen's.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I'm sure you guys know that when King of Kings was being made in the late fifties, Jeffrey Hunter was considered by many in the industry to be too young, lacking the gravitas required for the role. Hence it was waggishly referred to as "I Was A Teenage Jesus"!

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

"They Died With Their Boots On" is one of my favorite movies of the era for its sheer loopy energy and because it has Erroll and Olivia. But as a biography of Custer? Well, Cus befriends Winfield Scott (Sidney Greenstreet) by sharing a plate of creamed Bermuda onions, gets made a general, and wins the battle of Gettysburg single-handed with repeated cavalry charges. Conveniently, the terrain at Gettysburg looks just like southern California and thus ideal for cavalry. Scott remains the head general of the army throughout the war and always has Custer's back. And this is before he even got out west to fight Indians. The amazing thing is, this was made when there were still lots of people alive who had lived during that time. Hollywood never changes.

 

[Edward]

I remember back in 1983, when Christopher Reeves' thirs outing as Superman delayed my ninth birthday outing to see Return of the Jedi by a whole week, as the local cinema, then still a one-screen affair, found Superman III such a hit that they kept it running for a rare second week. not one you hear so much about these days, and that from a popular version of a still-big franchise... (every Superman actor since is inevitably compared to the late Chistopher Reeves).

"Chariots of Fire" (a movie I like) falls into this category.

I remember it was rereleased in the UK cinemas after its Oscar success; I seem to recall hearing it was much more popular on its second run than the first, though I'm too young to have seen it in cinemas. You don't hear of it so much now at all (probably owing to faith-based pictures in general being less popular these days - with notable exceptions, of course), though it is certainly iconic enough now that the main theme was able to be used in a visual gag during the opening of the 2012 Olympic Games, and the joke carried.

Anything with Shirley Temple in it. Popular beyond belief in the '30s, now they can only be watched as curiosities. I've found these movies to be a perfect demonstration of the fact that within the span of a generation a culture can change so radically that the former becomes incomprehensible to the latter. We now watch a Temple movie aghast at the thought that this was once thought to be suitable fare for grownups. It's like watching something made by people not from another culture, but from another planet.

Oh, indeed. Recnetly my other half rewatched Teenwolf - a film we'd remembered as a nostalgic piece of childhood fluff - and she was horrified at the rampant homophobia in it, all stuff which neither of us recalled because at the time, I suppose, it wa so normal. While movies rarely reflect real life, they certainly can tell you a lot about the popular culture and social mores of when they were made.

Lizzie, I feel that way about nearly all the prestige biopics of the thirties, like the ones with Paul Muni as Pasteur or Zola. They haven't aged well.

A lot of them were made when the relevant people were still alive, of course, which makes things very difficult. Aside from libel laws, theres also often an element of what the prevailing cultural narratvie will accept. Then there's politics, of course.... Hell, it's only in the last decade that people have been able to make successful films that portray Churchill as anything other than practically Jesus himself, and there's still a bit of cultural backlash at that... (I doubt that will change any time soon, given he's just ousted Elizabeth Fry, the only woman to appear on our current banknotes by merit, from the £5 note...).

Most of Woody Allen's output, especially the early films, came out to critical acclaim and in the case of some, were box office hits. It seems only film students watch them anymore.

I rather suspect - at least here in the UK, anyhow - a lot of that has to do with popular perceptions and gossip about Allen's colourful private life. I know a lot of folks simply won't touch his ouevre for that very reason. Oddly enough, despite an actual conviction (before he skipped the US while on bail), Roman Polanski doesn't seem to attract the same level of vitriol. Less well known now, I suppose.

Another historical biopic, sort of, the 1960s talkie remake of "King of Kings," is even more difficult than the Keaton picture to watch today. It's impossible to ignore the fact that Jeffrey Hunter, whatever his skills as an actor, looks like a man who got no closer to the hills of Palestine than the other side of a pastrami sandwich at Chasen's.

Reminiscnet of the criticisms flung at the last Moses picture, though the counter argument of the director of that (which amounted to "American audiences won't go and see a film without known stars in it") may also have something in it.

 

[Worf]

Another historical biopic, sort of, the 1960s talkie remake of "King of Kings," is even more difficult than the Keaton picture to watch today. It's impossible to ignore the fact that Jeffrey Hunter, whatever his skills as an actor, looks like a man who got no closer to the hills of Palestine than the other side of a pastrami sandwich at Chasen's.

Wow.... that's rough.... I personally don't know what I would've done if asked to play Christ on screen. I mean... it was taboo for a long time in H-wood to even show any representation of his face much less hear his voice. Given these reasons I don't know if any actor could've pulled it off.

Worf

 

[Doctor Strange]

I think Max von Sydow did a pretty good job a few years later in The Greatest Story Ever Told. (Of course, Jesus likely wasn't a big Nordic guy, but that's Hollywood glamourizing things for you.)

 

[Harp]

Wow.... that's rough.... I personally don't know what I would've done if asked to play Christ on screen. I Given these reasons I don't know if any actor could've pulled it off.

Worf

I was introduced to James Caviezel who played Jesus in The Passion of The Christ, a very exceptional and personable gentleman.