Accidents Will Happen

A couple of weeks ago, I was blogging about the photographer Tim Davis and mentioned in passing his series of photographs of paintings in which the play of light on the varnish gives the original work new photographic meaning. Then yesterday I went to the Met to hear Scott Schuman speak on a panel about fashion and blogging. With a few minutes to spare I took a quick spin around the second floor and came across one of my favorite paintings that had unexpectedly been relocated. I pulled out my camera and took a picture not realizing that the flash was on (a big no-no as the Met guard was quick to tell me). However, in the instant I saw on the viewfinder what I had captured, I realized I had made a Tim Davis!

Does this picture have any validity? Based on a position I've taken many times, the answer is absolutely and unequivocally no. Which is frustrating - because as objectively as I can judge it I think it's a pretty good picture, but without context, history, background, etc., it has little meaning. Much of its meaning, in fact, comes from Davis's prior insight and work.

I recently saw a photographer as a favor to a friend and he came in to the gallery, young, confident, and with a totally mediocre portfolio. I made an effort to be as polite as possible. At the end of his presentation he pulled out a little envelope and with a flourish showed me a group of snapshots of sky, horizon, water. At this point I thought it would be doing him a favor to point out that this notion (the appreciation of the ever changing but always formal abstraction of horizons) had been ably expressed by Joel Meyerowitz and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Unless he had some radical new insight into how to re-imagine this kind of picture he was unlikely to end up with a one person show in New York. He looked at me incredulously and as though explaining it to some idiot said "But this is The Ganges."!

(FYI - my picture is on top and Davis's below.)

Musicals and Comedies Go Pre-Code

Busby Berkeley musicals for Warners were always noted for skin they displayed. Girls bumped off in mystery and private eye novels written after the thirties were often said to have danced in a couple of Berkeley musicals (and how many LA prostitute résumés included stints as a Golddigger?). It seemed every chorine and star hopeful began on a Warner/Busby stage. We’re impressed with the near naked lineup of one hundred sitting By A Waterfall. Imagine how that looked in silvery 35mm before a 1933 audience of thousands. Berkeley and his Golddiggers became brand names forever associated with pre-code cheesecake and mathematical displays of bodies beautiful. Lobbies adorned with these became magnets for male patrons otherwise indifferent to musicals. Warners’ formula wed street-smart comedy in book sections directed by interchanging studio personnel with spectacular production numbers only Berkeley could mount. Pictures like 42nd Street, Golddiggers Of 1933 and Footlight Parade truly gave the best of several worlds. Audiences for one or the other gladly crossed over when they merged. James Cagney in a pre-code vehicle would reliably bring domestic rentals averaging $350-400,000, but Cagney in pre-code fettle plus song and dance in Footlight Parade took the biggest rentals of all his early pics --- $1.6 million domestic. The best plan for selling Golddiggers was via art stills turned out in bushels by Warner publicity. The ad shown here let exhibitors choose favorite pin-ups from the many generated to promote entries in the series. Most of these girls never had speaking parts in the films, but they were every bit as crucial for merchandising the Golddiggers brand. Fans could gauge Code enforcement’s curtain lowering with each installment that followed Footlight Parade. From Dames on, there was more fabric on the dancers and less fun to be had checking out lobby displays. Golddigging at Warners became less profitable as a watchful PCA bled the cycle white. Profits for Dames were down from the high of Footlight Parade ($959,000) to $206,000. Less would be spent on ones to come. Golddiggers Of 1935 had a negative cost of $567,000, down from Footlight Parade ($703,000) and Dames ($779,000). By Golddiggers In Paris, profit became loss as that 1938 release ended $473,000 in the red. Unlike Metro and its musicals tailored to elegance, Warners needed pre-code freedoms to put over song and dance as shorthand for sex.

It seemed every actress short of Edna May Oliver sat for art stills eventually. Certainly at Warners they all did. Serious dedication to their craft didn’t excuse Barbara Stanwyck or Loretta Young from baring assets for the stills department. Ginger Rogers and Jeanette MacDonald must have looked back with no small embarrassment at poses they’d struck before major stardom demanded they be taken seriously for thespic and/or singing skills. Some used pre-code freedom to consolidate positions made uncertain by transitions to sound. Norma Shearer might have faded had she maintained ingenue status her silent vehicles conferred. Again it was stills and their heavy circulation that assured success. The image shown here, blemished and worn survivor of a fan’s long-ago scrapbook, yet manages to convey the sizzle Shearer conjured to become and remain a pre-code icon. Stars then had to make the best with what they had. There were not the surgical options and digital tweaks to confer eternal youth such that we have today. Norma was said to possess short, chubby legs and the pose here finds them peeking uncertainly from behind a provocative gown (contrary to rumor, they look fine --- could there have been retouching?). Shearer got it said with clinging silks and dialogued suggestion. An inventory of her pre-codes finds this actress for the most part discreetly covered. She’d never have drawn a week’s pay at Warners. The most revealing scene Shearer played would be at the tail end of the pre-code era when she dressed as an insect for a bizarre costume party sequence in Riptide. MGM maintained a rigid caste system among contract actresses. With a major enough name, you’d be spared indignities of beach posing and on camera lingerie fittings. Those who’d stalled on the ladder were soon redirected off soundstages and into art stills. An actress knew she was on the way out once appearances in magazines began outnumbering those on marquees. In lieu of film work, she’d be lighting giant firecrackers in her underwear for Fourth Of July or wearing a fur lined diaper as one of Santa’s elves. Dropped options and back pages in Film Fun beckoned from there. Our Dancing Daughters became Modern Maidens and Blushing Brides, but only one of them made the trip back from cheesecake oblivion. There’d be moving pictures of Joan Crawford for the next forty years, while Anita Page and Dorothy Sebastian remain for the most part frozen in stills, minimal clothing preferred. Commercial tie-ins and loan-outs eventually took the place of performing at MGM before they’d be let go and eventually forgotten (that's Dorothy below as an underdressed Indian squaw, by the way).

Pre-code ribaldry served comedy best. Wheeler and Woolsey played like the opening act at a men’s smoker. Their stuff was sufficiently blue as to propel them to top spot among feature comedy teams for as long as Code police were napping. With patter traveling at speeds censors were hard pressed to keep up with, Wheeler and Woolsey, like Mae West, were weakened by eventual Code enforcement, their comedies subsequent to 1934 being shots diluted. Pretty soon people forgot how funny they'd once been, especially since pre-code W&W features were either halted at the reissue gate or trimmed to the point of incoherence. So This Is Africa (shown here) was one we saw at a Cinecon some years back. Program notes forecast no-holds-barred gaiety, but the 35mm print furnished by Columbia was unexpectedly Code-cut and drained of what we knew were the spiciest bits. This colorful trade ad from RKO sums up Wheeler and Woolsey’s essential appeal. They were the bawdiest act in town and profits reflected it. Other comedians would mimic their burlesques. Nearly as uninhibited were The Marx Brothers, who seized a pre-code advantage as each of their Paramount comedies emerged racier than the last. By Monkey Business, they’d stake claims in Thelma Todd’s stateroom and were boudoir bound with her in Horse Feathers. Both were popular enough to be revived through the thirties and forties with all the scissoring those later playdates implied. I’m betting all five of their Paramount comedies are currently missing something, as each played heavily in art and revival houses and must certainly have fallen under shears over those thirty years the Code was enforced. To this date, the Marxes’ best sequence with Todd in Horse Feathers is so jumbled as to make little sense at all. Modern audiences wonder why characters fairly leap about the room. Well, that’s not acrobatics --- it’s splices --- and these look to be permanent fixtures in every print of that film to come. Other comics indulged abandon pre-code allowed. His circumstances compromised for having signed with MGM, even Buster Keaton became the object of vampish wiles in many of that comedian's talking features. Would Buster at the creative helm have sanctioned stills like this one from What, No Beer, wherein his (yet-another) Elmer falls prey to seductress Phyllis Barry? She was among actresses primarily utilized to model undergarments for studio photographers and if not for happenstance of appearing with Keaton, we might not remember her at all.

Flesh-peddling as handmaiden to pre-code was addressed head-on by Paramount in a 1934 comedy few remember called Search For Beauty. I doubt if it’s been shown much of anywhere since I was in elementary school (if then), but it’s a pip and sure enough lays things on the line where vulgar exploitation practices are concerned. Though not about Hollywood, Search For Beauty reveals more about that town’s inner workings, and unholy alliance with sleazy press, than most any pre-code I can think of. The title refers to a contest launched by unscrupulous publishers. In fact, Paramount held its own nationwide search for beauties to fatten contract rosters and call attention to the film. The story revolves around male and female athletes ensnared by con artists Robert Armstrong and James Gleason, whose plan is to expose their pulchritude in a trashy magazine (clearly inspired by Film Fun, Saucy Movie Tales, and the like) before prostituting them outright at a hotel and resort to be frequented by drunks and libertines. A sleaze factor less apparent then fairly shouts to us now that we’re better informed as to shenanigans going on behind studio walls in the thirties. Photographers seduce innocents into compromising poses to accompany confession stories, and though it’s played (mostly) for comedy, I’m guessing a lot of what we’re seeing was the goods, however much Paramount yoks it up. Straight arrow swim champ Larry "Buster" Crabbe breaks up the racket with minimal effort, but we know the real exploitation machine would have spat him out well chewed. So-called winners of Paramount's Search For Beauty tour appear throughout the film in glimpses and montage. Recognizable among them is Ann Sheridan. She talked about the contest and her start at Paramount in late interviews. Virtually all the young people coming west on the train washed out and headed home within the year. Ones who persisted chanced the likes of real-life Armstrongs and Gleasons. The hotel/resort in Search For Beauty hints as to what might happen to those less cautious. I wonder how many exhibitor conventions played out just like these tawdry (and not a little disturbing) scenes in Search For Beauty, minus a Buster Crabbe to come to the rescue. Writer-director David Stenn tells a harrowing story of such an occasion in his recent documentary Girl 27. I’d recommend it as a sobering companion feature with Search For Beauty.

Speaking of hotel bacchanals, what of Convention City? Will we ever get to see it? Did Jack Warner really order it destroyed? My guess (and mind you, all any of us can do is guess) would be a hopeful maybe to the first and an informed yes to the second. I’m told Convention City was indeed junked, as that was the word entered on studio records. Junked 12/27/48 is how it reads. The question, of course, is why? Again I’m guessing, but I’d say it was nitrate decomposition. Warners had destroyed a number of negatives during the late forties and fifties for that reason. They were useless as pre-print and increasingly dangerous to maintain. Nitrate in good condition can be a hazard. Jelly and/or powdered remnants are that much more incendiary --- and why bear expense of storing a thing gone bad? A lot of hotly sought titles went this way. Harry Langdon’s Heart Trouble was similarly junked, probably for the same reason. As to stories of Jack Warner destroying Convention City for reasons of content, I don’t think so. This was an "A" feature that cost $239K to produce. It realized $384K in domestic revenue and $138K foreign. There was an eventual profit of $53K. Certainly this was a corporate asset no one, including Jack Warner, would dispose of so casually. Any heat surrounding Convention City would certainly have cooled by 1948, except for that generated by a nitrate fire should it combust and take out hundreds of other negatives sharing space in a warehouse. A little sad to think a pre-code totem like Convention City should be disposed of for such prosaic reason, but what of surviving foreign negatives? There was one sent to Warner facilities in Spain on 4/18/34. Was it eventually junked as well? Our best hope may lie in 35 or 16mm prints shelved and forgotten here or abroad. If Convention City exists on safety stock, it would almost have to be 16mm, as that 1948 destruction date of the US negative predated the common usage of 35mm safety stock. Would Convention City have been printed in 16mm, and if so, why? I’m convinced it was never available for non-theatrical rental. Possibly one of the cast or crew members got a print out of Warners sometime after the film was released, but obtaining those wasn’t easy, even for the biggest names on contract rosters (ask Errol Flynn). Still, a print might have been generated for in-house use and eventually smuggled out, but who’d have it now? Assuming some individual, or estate, were in possession, would they realize the value of a Convention City in their garage, or care if they did? Historians assume the film disappeared after its general 1933-34 release, but Ron Hutchinson of the Vitaphone Project discovered at least one booking in 1937, three years after Code crackdowns would presumably have taken Convention City out of circulation. Mark Vieira confirmed Warner’s application for a reissue and the PCA’s rejection of same, so that 1937 engagement was likely enabled by a local WB exchange with a print still on hand and willingness to make same available for minimal cost. Chances are exhibitor/exchange was unaware of the film's banishment from release charts. We could wonder how many years such stragglers lasted before the last Convention City was bandsawed, though we're safer in assuming none of these exchange prints are left, particularly in light of fact that Warner depots are themselves pretty much gone. My hopeful maybe for Convention City's eventual sighting is inspired by unexpected discoveries still being made of seemingly impossible quarry. Who’d have dreamed Beyond The Rocks and Bardelys The Magnificent would turn up? An uncut Baby Face sat quietly on Library Of Congress shelves before someone happened to examine it. What else remains to be exhumed there? Imagine if someone extended money and manpower for a truly exhaustive inventory of such facilities. Is Convention City yet hiding in some archive’s plain sight?

Weekend Video - Touch My Body

The catchiest song of the moment, Mariah Carey’s “Touch My Body”, has a video so excruciatingly bad there was no option but to resort to the Warholian tribute videos that blossom on You Tube like a thousand flowers! And it would be fun to get some reader response with a vote for best rendition.

The lyrics are not always easy to decipher but as you can see from the brief transcription below, they’re about as up to date as they can be.

If there's a camera up in here
Then it's gonna leave with me
When I do (I do)
If there's a camera up in here
Then I'd best not catch this flick
On YouTube (YouTube)
'Cause if you run your mouth and brag
About this secret rendezvous
I will hunt you down.

A final warning - if you listen to all the versions posted, it's impossible to walk around without the song on perma-loop in the back of your head.

Pear Blossom Time with Strawberries Too

Today I found two new plants blooming with beautiful white flowers. The first is our pear tree with the delicate white and pink blossoms. (click on the photos to enlarge them)

Look at this close-up of the pear blossom, so delicate.

Then in my son's garden box, I found that the strawberries are beginning to blossom and fruit...we may be able to enjoy these if the birds do not get to them first. :)

See the little berries forming?


From the Handbook of Nature Study, page 610,
"The strawberry plant has two methods of perpetuating itself, one by the akenes which are growing on the outside of the strawberry fruits, and one by means of runners which start new plants wherever they find place to take root."

Pages 608-611 cover the strawberry plant, including 12 suggestions for observation.

I love the spring.
Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Outdoor Hour Challenge #7 Your Own Field Guide

“If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he or she needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in.” Rachel Carson

One nature activity that our family has worked on together is to start and maintain a personalized field guide to birds that frequent our birdfeeder and backyard. We started a few years ago and have added each new kind of bird as we come across it. The instructions are for bird cards but you could easily adapt the idea for trees, wildflowers, insects, flowerless plants, or garden flowers.



How to Make Field Guide Cards

Materials:

5 x 8 index card

Bird photograph

glue stick

Optional: Blank bird information form,lamination, binder ring



1. We take a photo of the bird we want to add to our field guide or if we can’t take a decent photo, we find one on the internet and print it out on our color printer.



2. Glue the photo on one side of the 5 x 8 card.



3. We fill in the blank bird information form with information from our field guide.

4. Glue the information onto the back of the card.



5. Optional: Laminate the card.



6. Optional: We hole punch the corner of each card and attach it to a binder ring.



Here is a copy of the blank information form we use.

PDF of bird field guide blank

Please note: I want to clarify the idea of picking a focus area. The focus area is a topic in the Handbook of Nature Study that your family is choosing to learn about in more depth. Challenge #5 suggested making a list of things you found within your focus area that you might come into contact with in your local area. I suggested that you work in a specific focus area for six to eight weeks so you could really get to know a certain aspect of nature. Each week I am suggesting that you read about one item from your list in the Handbook of Nature Study. This gives you some ideas for observations when you go outside with your children. If on your nature walk you find something else to be interested in, please feel free to go with that interest. I am not trying to limit you but to have some sort of way to direct your nature study. In my experience, as I change our family's focus, we are hyper-sensitive to finding things in that focus area to learn about because we are more aware. It narrows down our vision a little so we can really get to know our own backyards. I hope that clears up any misunderstanding.

Outdoor Hour Challenge #7
Your Own Field Guide

1. In your focus area, turn to the table of contents and pick a new subject in your section to read about before your nature walk. Make sure to read the observation suggestions to have them in mind before your time outdoors. Take your 10-15 minute walk, looking for things to add to your list of focus area items in your nature journal. Spend some of your time quietly observing and try to encourage your child to look closely at something they have seen before to recognize any changes or new aspects of the item. For example, if you are focusing on flowerless plants, see if you can find some differences between flowerless plants and garden plants. [lack of leaves, petals, or roots]

“Children should know the correct name for parts of things, such as petals, sepals, etc, to help them describe what they see. They should be encouraged to group things together by leaf shape, or leaf vein pattern, or number of flower petals, or whether they keep their leaves all year, or animals that have a backbone, or animals that eat grass or eat meat, etc. Collecting and sorting plant specimens is fun and good practice.” Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 63

2. After your outdoor time, take time to discuss the outing with your child, helping them to find words to describe their experience. Add anything new to your list of items observed in your focus area that you are keeping in your nature journal. Make note of any additional research that needs to be done for things your child is interested in.

“The ability to group things together by type and find differences is one of the higher orders of intellect, and every opportunity to use it first-hand should be encouraged.” Charlotte Mason, volume 1, page 64

3. Give an opportunity for a nature journal entry. Remember this can be a simple drawing, a label, and a date. Challenges 2 and 3 have ideas for alternatives to drawing in the nature journal.

4. Add any items to your collection that you discovered during your nature time. If you need more information on making a collection, see Challenge #6. Or if you are choosing to start making a field guide with your children, gather the materials and make your first card.
5. Post an entry on your blog sharing your experiences and then come back to the Outdoor Hour Challenge post and add your blog link to Mr. Linky. All the challenges are listed in a drop-down menu on the sidebar of my blog.

Please note: Mr. Linky is for linking to your Outdoor Hour Challenge blog post only. Please do not link to your blog in general because then when others want to read your challenge post, they have to dig around in your blog to find it.


If you would like to have the first ten challenges in eBook format, click the cover and read more about it here on this blog.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Not Just a Pretty Picture

I was browsing Artnet and came across two pictures which I presumed were Julius Shulman photographs. I was trying to figure out where they were showing until I realized it wasn’t the pictures that were being sold, but the actual houses!

While interest in Ezra Stoller and Shulman’s photographs (the two great photographers of modernist architecture) continues to grow, the boom market in 20th-century design has now brought entire modernist houses to the auction block! The top photograph is Richard Neutra’s 3,200-square-foot Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, a glass, steel and stone structure designed by Neutra in 1949 as a desert getaway for Philadelphia department-store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. (who was also the client for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater a decade earlier). The house is estimated to sell for $15 million-$25 million, and is included in Christie’s big evening sale of postwar and contemporary art on May 13, 2008. The home was purchased for $1.9 million in 1993 by Brent and Beth Edwards Harris, who spent another $5 million on a five-year-long restoration. The couple is divorcing.

The second picture is Louis Kahn’s Esherick House in Philadelphia, which is being sold by the Wright auction house in Chicago at its design sale on May 18, 2008. The two-story, 2,500-square-foot, one-bedroom structure, located in the Chestnut Hill area of Philadelphia, carries a pre-sale estimate of $2 million-$3 million. The house is being sold by Dr. and Mrs. Robert Gallagher, who bought it in 1981. For the sale, Wright has published a deluxe catalogue with photographs by Todd Eberle.

Happy house hunting!

Collections: Pressing Flowers: Outdoor Hour Challenge #6

We have had a busy week and although we have been outside everyday, we haven't really cracked the Handbook of Nature Study at all. Some weeks our nature study is like that but then we will make up for it other weeks.

The boys have been busy weeding the garden and my youngest even planted a few spinach seedlings hoping that they will make it through until the weather really warms up.

We have been busy birdwatching because our feeders are still full of birds. I think some of the birds are nesting and we will be putting out some things for them to nest with. We saw this idea for a bird nesting project and we are going to give it a try and keep you posted.

Our focus area is garden flowers so we took a trip to the Home Depot to see what we could add to the garden. Guess what they picked? Marigolds. Lots of marigolds.

We also picked up a few packets of seeds: Sunflower (Mammoth), Peas, and Green Beans (Kentucky Wonders). We are going to wait a bit before we put the seeds into the garden because we are still having a little frost each morning.

My son decided that for his collection he would like to press garden flowers.

We started with pansies and violets.

They are now slipped into a sheet protector and they will go into his binder. We are still working on a way of adhering them to the paper without damaging them. I will keep you posted. (in a future challenge we will be learning how to press flowers)

So that was our week, not as exciting as some but still VERY enjoyable.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

The Labourer

This statue of a man with a ladder is outside one of the two tube stops called Edgeware Rd.

What Happened to the Sun

Snow during Easter. Rain and wind since then. The daffodils have disappeared. What has happened to Spring?

California Quail Story with Video

Last night I was sitting at the table when I heard an unusual bird call just outside my window. It was something so distinct that I was alert right away. I called my husband over and we cracked the window and listened...he heard it too.

We were peeking out the window but couldn't see anything out there. It called again. This time I recognized the call from the other day. Chi-CA-Go, Chi-CA-Go. It is sounds so clear once you recognize it.

California Quail.

This morning I heard it again and was determined to go outside and find the bird to confirm my identification. I quietly stepped out onto the deck. Quiet. Then I decided to head down the stairs to look around the yard. Quiet. Next thing I know, a bird flies right over my head and lands on the deck railing. It was a quail! Big, beautiful, gorgeous California quail. He sat there for maybe 30 seconds and then he flew up into our tree. I decided to go inside and get my video camera to try to capture him on film.

Of course he wouldn't come out of hiding again for me but he did sing me his song. Here is a very short edited video of his call. Listen for the Chi-ca-go call and that is him among the chorus of other morning birds in my yard. You might need to turn your speakers up.

California Quail Video

So that is my very exciting new bird to our yard story. We have lived here for over 21 years and this is the first time I have seen a quail in our yard. Wahoo!

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Showmen --- Sell It Hot!

When my mother was 11 or so, her favorite actress was Clara Bow. One day they were all sitting in the yard and she asked my grandmother's permission to go see Clara’s newest for 1928 at the within walking distance Joy Theatre. Just then my aunt and some other kids showed up and reported seeing a poster in front of the Joy with Clara Bow taking a bubble bath. That slammed the door on anyone’s trip to the Joy for that day. My grandmother could scarcely have shielded her daughters from the avalanche of pre-code once talkies unleashed those sights and sounds of moral abandon. It might have been as well for staunch Victorian folk to forbid children to attend movies altogether during the early thirties (and indeed, the only film Grandmother had let my mother see as a small child was Mary Pickford's Pollyanna). Never would youth be exposed to such sustained attack upon convention and morality as with pre-code. What they learned on screens represented polar opposites of lessons taught at home. With sound’s arrival, Clara Bow made way for Helen Twelvetrees in my mother’s scrapbook. Something about her must have appealed to a by now 14-year-old girl fascinated by the infusion of adult themes in movies learning to talk. I’d have to assume an ad like this for the Twelvetrees vehicle Millie (Treat ‘em like tramps…they’re all alike!) wasn’t published in their local Kings Mountain Herald, as such lurid graphics and tag lines would certainly have inspired parental edicts against youngsters wanting to attend. Times were sufficiently hard as to disallow lavish promotions for theaters serving smaller markets. It was all most of them could do to buy space just for announcing titles and start times. American movies lost a third of their audience during 1930. The Depression and eroding novelty of sound put theatre going among lower leisure-time priorities. You could listen to radio a lot cheaper and outdoor activity during summer months appealed more than sitting in theaters without air conditioning. The only way out for Hollywood was product with sex and confession themes. How else could someone like Helen Twelvetrees have sustained a career? Indeed, her success would last no longer than the pre-code era itself. Naughtiness too could be staged with greater economy. Negative costs on sex dramas were minimal. RKO spent $338,000 and $339,000 respectively on Constance Bennett vehicles Born To Love and The Common Law, with eventual profits of $90,000 and $150,000. An epic like Cimarron took 1.4 million to finish and lost $565,000 despite its Academy Award for Best Picture. You might gamble a reputation making sex dramas, but they were otherwise a near sure thing. Producers hastened to lay in a supply for the 1931 season once lines began forming. It was plain enough they’d be testing boundaries in order to survive. Trade ads borrowed leaves from lurid magazine covers and pulp illustrators to stimulate patronage. The Bird of Paradise announcement shown here promised island beauty Delores Del Rio au naturel and indeed delivered through much of the feature as released in 1932. That inspired ever-escalating lures and announcement of a follow-up teaming for stars Del Rio and Joel McCrea in Green Mansions, this startling trade ad of which is all that survives of a film RKO never produced.

Exhibitors not boarding up (and many did) called for spicier fare. Adapt or perish, whatever the punitive measures of local censors and bluenoses. If Mae West filled houses, damn the complaints. Small exhibitors doubling as community centers and presumed safe haven for local youth took some knocks. Urban centers were more concerned with dollars pouring forth from largely anonymous patrons. Mae West and She Done Him Wrong shot down Mr. Low Gross on behalf of downtown palaces needing to fill thousands of seats daily just to keep such barns open. Everyone played a wink and nod game. Showman shorthand told customers what to expect. Give Me A Job --- At Any Price, says Loretta Young to Warren William in this teaser ad for Employee’s Entrance, and by February 1933, customers knew Warners wouldn’t let them down. Hold Your Man bade audiences to Learn How To Do It In One Easy Lesson, with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow more than capable instructors. These were the sorts of come-ons that got crusaders hottest under collars. After all, kids were checking out newspapers and heralds given away, even if Mom and Dad prevented them from seeing such films. States Rights hustlers went beyond even relaxed protocol observed by the majors. Things like Blonde Captive hurled kerosene upon community standards already aflame. A White Woman "Gone Native" Among Descendents Of The Oldest Human Race. Venues hawking such product fairly begged for padlocks, but as long as doors stayed open, thrill seekers rewarded them where it counted most (and note this Blonde Captive ad promises Red Headed Woman to open Friday!). Things got bad enough as to oblige showmen to acknowledge over-the-line outrage and make even that pay, leading to backhanded selling clever if insincere. With Shame Our Screen Unfolds The Worst Picture Ever Made was how Robert S. Guiterman of Manitowoc, Wisconsin’s Capital Theatre peddled Freaks. The scheme filled Guiterman’s house. Well, he warned them! Free and easy screen content attracted lots of kids, especially the horror shows. Will Burns managed the Princess Theatre in Joliet, Illinois. He mounted a four-day run of Freaks with full circus trappings. Barkers out front promised never before witnessed monstrosities inside, as a local midget rendered cornet solos for passers-by. Barker and midget then drove a pony cart to visit schools and playgrounds during recess time, urging youngsters to catch Freaks on Saturday. Cunning then was this ad for the engagement, which expressly forbade kiddie attendance. Warning! Children Positively Not Admitted --- Adults Not In Normal Health Advised Not To See This Picture. Of course, Burns had no intention of enforcing that. We haven’t heard of anyone dying from heart failure, he laughed … but were parents and city fathers amused? Studios and their racy output weren’t alone in bringing on the inevitable crackdown. Showmen turned cynical by the wild and wooly stuff they played invited civic scrutiny even as Freaks, Blonde Captive, and the rest kept wolves of bankruptcy and closure at bay. Wiser heads had to know chickens were not long to come home.

There were two kinds of fan magazines in the thirties. Photoplay, Screen Romances and dozens of like formula served readers with movie news, star profiles, and reviews of upcoming films. Their disreputable cousins went by names like Stage and Screen Stories, Saucy Movie Tales, and Film Fun. With these you got the same bang for your dime and quarter that pre-code movies gave in the theaters, only more so. Trashy movie mags went for outright cover nudity and hotter-than-hot stories within. Hollywood As It Really Is pervaded text, which emphasized perils awaiting young girls should they venture west in search of film fame. Femmes braving Hollywood jungles laid bare shames of the casting couch and off-set seductions. Studios furnished legit fan publications with dope on stars and films in release but there were also supply lines open to the scavengers. This is where naughtier pre-code images got their first exposure. Portraits and even swimsuit art of Carole Lombard appeared routinely in Photoplay, but this tawdry pose of she and Virtue co-star Mayo Methot was more to the rarified tastes of Film Fun readers and was seasoned further with a spicy limerick as accompanies it here. Teen girls and single women mostly bought Photoplay. Dad and little brother snuck Film Fun. They’re hard to find today, as most were left behind in corn cribs, outhouses, and whatever hiding place beckoned to periodicals you’d rather not bring indoors. No telling what neat stuff a complete run of these would reveal. Sometimes in old scrapbooks I find snaps of contract players way edgier than what mainstream publications were using. Stars were the stuff of fantasy after all, and who could blame pre-code viewers wanting to take fantasies to the next level? Venturing to that ninth ring included stops under newsstand counters where notorious Tijuana Bibles took pre-code licensure to its (sometimes un) natural conclusion. These comic speculations fed darker patron appetites titillated to distraction. Monitors stumbling across such magazines and drawings would naturally figure movies to be an industry badly in need of fumigation.

National Screen Service called it LOVE in the trade ad shown here, but this was purest sex their trailers were selling, and talk about wiring into fantasies! When Lupe Valez throws those lips against the hot ones of her lover, every guy in the house is imagining he’s right there (that’s Lupe in her slip adorning this Hal Phyfe portrait, by the way). Trailers had been staid affairs prior to talking pictures. A lot of theatres didn’t use them and preferred glass slides to announce coming attractions. Independents supplied graphics only previews with still glimpses of stars and tentative appeals on behalf of coming attractions. NSS baited their hook with actual scenes and naturally used ones likeliest to excite (emphasis there) anticipation for pre-codes to come. Trailers as we now know them would blossom here. Some turn up as extras on DVD’s, including Tarzan, The Ape-Man, Footlight Parade, and others almost productions in themselves. With its newly streamlined preview service, NSS had red meat it could toss to sensation hungry lions. That’s the real thing --- the pulsing, vitalized action that will get every femme in your audience --- flappers, matron, and grandma. Most trailers produced during the pre-code era are lost now. No telling how many of these would have been censorable once Code enforcement took effect in July 1934. Racy previews walked hand-in-hand with posters out front. There were days you’d think those were burlesque houses on small town Main Streets. Parents did complain and often forbade movies altogether for offspring. Exhibitors took heat for little ones venturing too near a Mae West (but look at this half-sheet beckoning them in!). Comments in the trades acknowledged scenes and dialogue a little warm, but seldom did showmen attack product they played. Maybe those running and watching films on a regular basis got used to being treated as thinking adults. Theatres advertising in 1931 credited readers for knowing the facts of life. No Limit and Inspiration played competing venues here, yet both address interests their patrons shared, knowing specific curiosities to hone in on. She gets "her man" --- but is he worth the price? (No Limit). She Will Fascinate You Again As the Woman With a Past Who Meets Real Love at Last (Inspiration). Our ancestors didn’t come away from these without a few worldly tips. It was the ones who seldom (if ever) attended movies that stirred up trouble. Urban markets had organized censor bodies ready to pounce when offending product hung in their net. Rural houses played shows through for a night, maybe two, spat them out and threaded up the next. Even dedicated community crusaders had not the time to flag down exchange trucks delivering half a dozen or more shows a week to the local Bijou, thus pre-codes played mostly uncut in underpopulated territories. When church ladies and town counsels took action, it was mostly confined to Blue Laws closing theatres on Sunday.