Get Off The Earth

From arch-Shadowplayer Mark Medin, this poster for a Raymond Griffith comedy that never got made — I think the coming of sound stymied it, since Griffith famously had damaged vocal cords and couldn’t speak above a whisper. In any case, it looks like a gigantic project ~

The sensational comedy novelty of

1926, from “The Ship That Sailed

to Mars” by W.M. Timlin.

THE high-hat comedian absolutely tops every-

thing he has ever done in his life before in this

startling surprise offering! Hurrying down Fifth

Avenue, New York, to his wedding, Raymond sud-

denly spins right off the earth up into a dizzy but

delightful paradise of beautiful damsels, mon-

strous-sized animals and more fun than twenty

normal worlds like ours! Of course Raymond

comes back to earth and marries the girl but — ?

Clarence Badger directed PATHS TO PARADISE which, though sadly incomplete, is perhaps the best surviving R.G. comedy. I recommend it. And if you should find yourself in a parallel universe where GET OFF THE EARTH was made (perhaps with FX by Willis O’Brien, but more likely using the animatronic dinosaur approach put together by William Cameron Menzies and his team for Howard Hawks’ FIG LEAVES), please check it out and report back to me.

Poster was originally uploaded by Bruce Calvert, to whom thanks are due.

The Sunday Intertitle: Primeval Genius

Howard Hawks was probably right to reckon that his movies came into their own when they started talking, but that doesn’t mean his silents are devoid of interest — they’re just damned hard to see. A GIRL IN EVERY PORT at least ought to be more widely available, but it was made at Fox and so has vanished into a black hole (not even light can escape, though the great Ford & Borzage box set did manage to make it out, a lone blip alas). And so to FIG LEAVES –

A nice dinosaur with long eyelashes.

We open in the Garden of Eden, envisaged as part of stone age times, so Darwin and Biblical Creation co-exist happily. The scene-setter is a cave-man getting walloped by a giant chimpanzee, leant height by forced perspective sets courtesy of William Cameron Menzies. In fact, that might be one of the giant chimps from the Menzies-designed THIEF OF BAGDAD, minus the fetching black satin shorts Mitchell Leisen provided. How many chimpanzees in Hollywood were there willing to be subjected to optical illusion growth?

From there we go to Adam’s love shack, where he (George SUNRISE O’Brien) and Eve (Olive “the Joy Girl” Borden) snooze in their twin beds, a trickling sand device eventually tipping a coconut onto George’s noggin to wake him. This delightful prelapsarian Flintstones fantasy world segues into a slightly less interesting contemporary section, essaying standard domestic comedy situations with a pronounced sexist slant surprising and disappointing in Hawks (and his male and female writing partners).

I kind of wish they’d kept it all stone age — the main advantage of the modern stuff is some snazzy fashion show bits of catwalk finery by Adrian. I guess cro-magnon times offered fewer opportunities for flapper garb, although I did admire George’s fur mankini.

Generally, Hawks romcoms can be divided into those which have goofy gimmicks, and those that have strong, interesting and convincing story worlds. This one is firmly in the same category as MONKEY BUSINESS, which — hey! — had a chimp in it too. And begins with Hawks’ offscreen voice directing Cary Grant. I like MONKEY BUSINESS. It’s not great or anything, but it’s fun. And so with FIG LEAVES.

A Show Called Fred

I think — bear with me now — that Fred Zinnemann might be underrated. Oh, I know he won four Oscars, but that cuts no ice with the auteurists. It doesn’t really matter much to me, either, come to that. And I know HIGH NOON gets listed on all the AFI top 100s and all that, or I assume it does, because I haven’t looked. And I know FROM HERE TO ETERNITY is celebrated in the same circles. THE NUN’S STORY and OKLAHOMA! and DAY OF THE JACKAL have their rabid fans, but I’m not sure they’re really considered “director’s films,” which is ridiculous. And THE MEN was Brando’s first film, and there’s always A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS. But they’re not that impressed by that down the auteurist pubs I drink in.

I wonder if it’s because he was at MGM, or because he had “white elephant art” tendencies, or because Howard Hawks didn’t like HIGH NOON, but Zinnemann seems to get short shrift, and I don’t think it’s right. Hawks’ objections to HIGH NOON are interesting, by the way, solely for what they tell us about Hawks. Considered by themselves, they’re crazy.

Hawks, as you may know, objected to the way Gary Cooper spends the film trying to get help to fight the four men coming to kill him, then defeats them single-handedly. Why did he need to ask for help in the first place? “Man’s not a professional,” grumbled HH.

Well, I don’t give a damn whether he is or not. Professionalism is the prime virtue in Hawksian cinema, but not in Zinnemann’s, where it is evinced by the Nazis fought in THE SEVENTH CROSS and the assassin in DAY OF THE JACKAL. Cooper’s nobility is what counts in HIGH NOON, and it’s not the kind of movie where one man can be assumed to defeat four, just by being noble, so it’s understandable he should ask for help. Hawks made RIO BRAVO, he claimed, as an antidote to HIGH NOON, and I’m really glad he did — it’s the high water-mark of his late career. But the scene where Wayne refuses help from amateurs is pretty silly from a tactical viewpoint. He could’ve used them to create a distraction, at least.

Anyway, I’m going to be concentrating, as much as possible, on lesser-known Zinnemanns. It’s my contention that his reputation would be higher if some of his early films were held aloft more regularly, perhaps rather than some of his later films. And the techniques and themes which bind his varied body of work together need shouting about too.

To explore why I think Fred Zinnemann is very much worth bothering with is going to take a little time — maybe a week.

So here it is — Fred Zinnemann Week on Shadowplay.