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.

Mysteries of New York #2

From PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ, “starring” Harry Richman and a peroxide Joan Bennett. James Gleason and Lilyan Tashman add comedic hemoglobin. Director Edward Sloman lives down to his name, but check the crazy designwork of William Cameron Menzies ~

This rendition of the title song predates Astaire by some years — this is 1929. It also anticipates Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle’s spirited rendition in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN — this may be where the idea of coupling the Irving Berlin number’s elegance and grace with some good old-fashioned grotesquerie and strangeness came from.

“I don’t like that wailing,” protested Fiona, happening by. I do! Perhaps it’s the inspiration for Peter Boyle’s howl. In any even, it meshes well with the overall scariness — the Fleischer Bros cartoon buildings looming from the backdrop, the overall grainy DARKNESS of this print (a BBC2 off-air recording from the 80s), and the moody pounding of the piano…

However, this creep factor is but a foretaste of the movie’s climactic production number, a song about Alice in Wonderland, in which Menzies gets to rehearse his subsequent Norman Z McLeod feature. Being a condensed version, this is maybe even more nightmarish, alienating and fizzy-facky than the full-length atrocity. When we cut to the ecstatic audience at the end, it’s amazing to see that they have not, en masse, torn out their kneecaps and stuffed them into their eye sockets just to blot out the terror.