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Hey, wanna take a look inside the prop house at Universal Studios? You won’t believe all the stuff they have stuffed away to use in movies! Unreality magazine has a gallery of photos from the warehouse. Some of it is real, some is made just for the movies, but if they do their job right, you’ll never know which is which! Link
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We are awed by special effects in movies; the more destructive, the more exciting. For example, anyone who saw Apocalypse Now in a theater was impressed with at the disturbing opening scene in which an entire Vietnamese forest was set ablaze with napalm.
Most people are probably too distracted by one of the finest opening shots in film to actually contemplate how it was achieved.
After all, it’s an impressive special effect for 1979. How did they go about making it look like a huge section of forest had been burned to the ground?
Surprise! They did it by actually burning a huge section of forest to the ground.
That’s pretty much it. Around 1,200 gallons of gasoline were poured over the splendid palm trees and then set alight. Tires were also burned to generate more smoke for the shot, while canisters were dropped onto the area to look like falling napalm. Acres of the forest were destroyed in a matter of seconds. Fitting, for a shot that was supposed to visually demonstrate the mindless, indiscriminate destruction of war.
But that’s just the beginning. Read stories of four other disturbing movie shoots at Cracked. Link
The Panavision PSR 35mm camera used to film the original Star Wars movie sold for over $600,000 at auction this week, a sale price which broke the record for highest selling price for a camera ever.
The camera was refurbished back to its original state, was said to be in full working order, and now the new owner can get to work filming Episode 4 all over again! Just kidding, but wouldn’t it be hilarious if someone bought the camera then remade such a beloved movie?
No matter how much you love or hate these celebrities, you never want to see them this close up, believe me.
Some of the images in this gallery will give you a good laugh, others are the stuff nightmares are made of (Iggy Pop). Check out the rest of the gallery at the link below. I didn’t realize that Zooey Deschanel is so fuzzy!
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was a million-dollar movie star in 1921, when there weren’t all that many million dollar movie stars. After a Labor Day weekend party, a young actress named Virginia Rappe was hospitalized and later died. Arbuckle was the prime suspect in her death. The prosecution’s evidence came from the testimony of Maude Delmont, a woman with a shady past who kept changing her story.
The newspapers never questioned Delmont’s version of events, and they kept flogging Arbuckle. His reputation was in a shambles, even after his friends Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin vouched for his character.
But Arbuckle’s lawyers introduced medical evidence showing that Rappe had had a chronic bladder condition, and her autopsy concluded that there “were no marks of violence on the body, no signs that the girl had been attacked in any way.” (The defense also had witnesses with damaging information about Rappe’s past, but Arbuckle wouldn’t let them testify, he said, out of respect for the dead.) The doctor who treated Rappe at the hotel testified that she had told him Arbuckle did not try to sexually assault her, but the prosecutor got the point dismissed as hearsay.
No matter what happened in court, Arbuckle also went through “trial by newspaper.” Find out what happened to Fatty Arbuckle, legally and professionally, at Past Imperfect. Link
This funky Frankenstein sculpture looks good enough to eat! Created as part of the It’s Alive Project, this is one of 80 busts created by different artists striving to show the monster in a different light. Look out for the FrankenBieber, and the hilarious FrankenSpock!
The following is an article from Uncle John’s All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader.
A few years ago one of our BRI writers saw the classic 1931 horror film Dracula for the first time …and thought it was terrible. He never knew there was a story behind why the film had so many problems -or even that other people agreed with him that this Hollywood classic was flawed- until he came across this story in a book called Hollywood Gothic by David J. Skal, a leading authority on the history of monster movies.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
One of the nice things about silent films is that everyone can understand them, regardless of what language they speak. Of course, they needed title cards to help explain the plot, but it was easy -and cheap- to write new cards for each foreign market.
As a result American films found their way into countries all over the world, and silent films became a truly universal art form: American studios made half of their revenues from foreign film sales; silent screen stars like Charlie Chaplin and Jackie Coogan became the most recognized human beings on the face of the earth.
SILENT TREATMENT
But the advent of talking pictures changed everything -and not just for silent-screen stars whose thick accents quickly consigned them to the Hollywood scrap heap. Suddenly, American films became incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t speak English. American film studios faced the prospect of losing up to half of their business overnight.
Bela Lugosi
Foreign countries that had become used to a steady stream of Hollywood films found themselves left out in the cold; some threatened to retaliate by slapping tariffs on films with dialogue in English, or by boycotting American films entirely.
Making matters worse, sound recording and synchronization technology was still very primitive, and dubbing foreign-language dialogue onto English-language films was all but impossible. Besides, one of the things that attracted audiences to the first “talkies” was the thrill of hearing their favorite actors speak for the very first time. Even if dubbing had been practical, it might not have been very popular. There was no easy solution to the problem, and as a result many foreign language markets were left out of the early years of the talkie era -except for the Spanish-language market. Spanish was too popular, and Mexico, Central, and South America were too close for Hollywood to ignore.
THE DOPPELGÄNGER ERA
No film crew works 24 hours a day. At some point everyone goes home, leaving the soundstage and the expensive sets unused until morning. So, reasoned Hollywood studios, why not bring in a second cast and crew at night to film foreign-language versions of the same films that were being made in English during the day?
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Visitors at Stefan Da Costa Gomez’s gallery show viewed acrylic paintings of Bogey and other classic Hollywood stars through 3D glasses. He achieves the effect with anaglyphic layering, a technique placing contrasting colors on top of each other to make an image pop.
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Did you know the Star Wars films still haven’t made a profit? That’s because the studio distributes the film although the distribution branch is considered a separate company. The distributor charges the studio (itself) whatever fees it wants, so even after the film earns billions of dollars, it might still be billions of dollars more away from turning a profit.
And that’s just one of the dirty little movie-making secrets the industry doesn’t want you to know about. Find out more over at Film School Rejects.
Organizations like the CIA and Department of Defense have been assisting with blockbusters like Transformers for years. However, there have been complaints from insiders over potential security privacy leaks, raised during talks over an untitled film about the killing of bin Laden. Whether they have reason to be concerned or not, spokespeople insist there is a pragmatic reason for the comradery between Hollywood and national security: image control.
If you want to make a war film and need a fleet of F-22s, a crowd of Marines, or a Navy aircraft carrier, just call up the Department of Defense’s entertainment media office and they’ll tell you if the Army can spare that M1A1 Abrams tank you’ve always wanted for a day or two of filming.
“The scripts we get are only the writer’s idea of how the Department of Defense operates,” Vince Ogilvie, deputy director of the Defense Department’s entertainment liaison office, told Danger Room. “We make sure the Department and facilities and people are portrayed in the most accurate and positive light possible.”
Dialogue from the XtraNormal video featured on Wired explains things a bit differently:
Secret Agent Woman: “I’m glad you’re going to make a movie about how awesome the Central Intelligence Agency is. Everybody that works here is very smart and we never mess up and most people are extremely good-looking too.”
Michael Bay: “I agree because I want you to help me. Kaboom!”
Link | Image: XtraNormal Video
Behind-the-scenes footage of anything is usually interesting (if you’re interested in that sort of thing), but these screen tests from classic movies are more fun than most. Above, a probably-intoxicated Judy Garland testing for the role of Helen Lawson in Valley of the Dolls. She won the role, but was replaced by Susan Hayward after coming to the set drunk. Check out nine more on Flavorwire. Link
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Great Big Bathroom Reader.
Ask any film buff to name the worst directors of all-time, and you can be sure Ed Wood’s name will come up. He’s become a legend for films like Plan 9 From Outer Space -a movie so bad it needs to be seen just to be believed. This piece was written by someone who knew him -in fact, the reluctant star of Plan 9, Gregory Walcott.
The Connection
Early in our marriage, Barbara and I lived in a cottage just across the street from the First Baptist Church of Beverly Hills. Ed Reynolds, a chubby little man who attended the church, had come out to Hollywood from Alabama to make Biblical films. He talked to me occasionally, knowing I was in the movie industry, about his “calling” to produce religious movies with life-embracing themes. I tried not to encourage him, knowing he had no background in film production. Naive individuals like Reynolds are easy bait for Hollywood hucksters.
Reynolds’ Big Break
About a year later, Reynolds came to me and said he was going to finance a film starring Bela Lugosi. He wanted me to play the young romantic lead. I said to him, “But Ed, Bela Lugosi is DEAD!”
Reynolds said, “Well, that’s not a problem. There’s a very ingenious director, Ed Wood, who has some excellent footage of Lugosi, and he has written a very clever screenplay around that film.”
“But Ed, I thought you wanted to make religious pictures!”
Ed Wood
“Yes! That’s the ultimate plan. But Biblical pictures with big sets, large casts and costumes are very expensive. This fellow, Wood, has convinced me that by making a few exploitation films, I can build up my bankroll to where I can then make big budget Biblical films.”
I had never heard of Ed Wood, so I asked to see the script. It was the most atrocious piece of writing I had ever seen. A child could have written better dialog. I said, “Ed, this is a terrible script, and I hate to see you get involved in this project and lose your money.”
“No, no! I want you to meet the director,” he insisted. “I’ll arrange a luncheon.”
Reynolds was dazzled by Hollywood and couldn’t be dissuaded.
Before the meeting, I looked into Wood’s background, and discovered he had done a few cheesy low-budget pictures. It was incongruous that sweet, sincere Reynolds, who wanted to produce inspirational Biblical motion pictures, would be connected with Wood, whose movies could only be booked in fleabag theaters on back streets.
Meeting the Auteur
At the luncheon, I found Wood to be a charmingly handsome man, who gushed about how perfect I would be working with a top-notch Hollywood crew and a good cast.
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If you’ve ever wondered where all those cat videos came from, now you know. Here’s a look behind the scenes at the magic of Kittywood Studios. -via Metafilter
Kid Casting is a blog that looks at adult movie and TV characters and the children who play those same characters as youngsters, whether in flashbacks or in earlier parts of the narrative. Oddee has collected the best examples of well-done kid casting in their latest list. Shown here are the characters of George Bailey and Mary Hatch from the movie It’s A Wonderful Life as both kids and adults. Link
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader.
After World War II, the U.S. and Soviet Union engaged in a “cold” war: an ideological conflict that was waged through political rhetoric, military posturing, espionage, and an arms race. Would it lead to WWIII? It didn’t, but at the time, people weren’t so sure. Here’s an incredible story from that era.
THE PEACE CONFERENCE
In the late 1940s, Joseph Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union, ordered a prominent Russian film director named Sergei Gerasimov to go to New York to attend a left-wing gathering called the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace.
Gerasimov dutifully attended the conference, and that’s pretty much all there was to the story for the next 50 years. Then in 2003, British film critic Michael Munn wrote a book entitled John Wayne: The Man Behind the Myth, in which he tells a more sinister tale of Gerasimov’s trip to the United States and its aftermath. Munn says he got the story from actor/director Orson Welles, who heard it through contacts in the Soviet film industry.
MARKED MAN
According to Munn, while Gerasimov was in New York he learned of the leadership role that John Wayne, one of America’s biggest movie stars, was playing in driving communists out of Hollywood. Wayne was the president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a right-wing group dedicated to compiling a “blacklist” of communists working in the film industry. The blacklist was used to destroy the careers of hundreds of actors, screenwriters, and directors, either because of alleged communist sympathies or simply because they refused to testify before Congressional investigating committees.
When Gerasimov returned home and reported the havoc that Wayne was wreaking on communist efforts to infiltrate the film industry, Munn’s story goes, Staling became so angry that he dispatched a team of KGB hit men to California. Their orders: kill John Wayne.
BACKLOT JUSTICE
The KGB killers really did come to California, Munn writes, and they even made it onto the Warner Brothers lot, where “Duke” Wayne had an office. Disguised as FBI agents, they checked in at the front gate and were given directions to Wayne’s office. (This part of the story, says Munn, was told to him by Yakina Canutt, a Hollywood stuntman and one of Wayne’s closest friends.)
Luckily for the Duke, FBI informants had already learned of the plot. As the fake FBI agents made their way across the studio lot, real FBI agents hid in the back rooms of Wayne’s office whle he and a screenwriter named James Grant sat in the front room, pretending to be working. When the hit men entered, the FBI agents pounced, disarming and handcuffing the killers before they could harm Wayne.
Those G-men must have been big John Wayne fans, because they let him deal with the killers his own way: at Wayne’s direction, the FBI men loaded the KGB agents into cars and drove them to a secluded beach north of Los Angeles. At the beach the KGB men, still handcuffed, were marched down to the surf and were made to kneel in wet sand. Then as the FBI agents looked on approvingly, Wayne and Grant drew pistols and aimed them at the heads of the KGB men. “On the count of three,” Wayne told Grant. “One…two…THREE!”
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We are all familiar with the classics like Snow White and Hansel and Gretel but what are some of the original Grimm Fairy Tales that would make great (Non Disney) movies? My favorite from the title alone is “The Devil’s Smelly Brother.” Link
If your movie pitch got rejected, perhaps you weren’t using the right buzzwords. Mike Jacobsen of See Mike Draw explains the secret of pitching a blockbuster to Hollywood: Link
See also Mike Jacobsen’s T-Shirt designs at the NeatoShop
Herschel Geguzin was born in Lithuania, but he eventually became Prince Michael Alexandrovitch Dmitry Obolensky Romanoff, the toast of Hollywood. His extensive travels, friendships, and brushes with the law left him with enough experiences to pull the wool over the eyes of many wealthy Americans. However, many others saw through him or found out about his masquerade, and didn’t mind because he was so entertaining! Actor David Niven remembered the prince:
Niven, who was himself a man of preternatural charm and roguish tendencies, recognised a kindred spirit, and his account of Mike is notable for its penetrating insights. For Niven, the root of Prince’s unquestionable likeability was a humorous talent for the not-quite-plausible improvisation, the half-truth and the flamboyant gesture. When the British actor left Hollywood for Britain in 1939 to fight Hitler, Mike delighted in discussing his own alleged experiences of war, making him a present of a hand-knitted balaclava helmet (“Saved me near St Petersburg, old boy”) and a large blue and white spotted scarf with a burn in the centre (“mustard gas… Cambrai… silk is the only thing against it.”) The balaclava helmet Niven lost, but the scarf he kept long enough to consult a laundress about the mysterious mark of mustard gas it bore. “She told me that careless ironing was responsible for the burn.” [Niven p.154]
Eventually Romanov went legit and opened a restaurant in Beverly Hills that catered to his famous friends, many of whom invested in the business. How Romanoff achieved such acclaim is a fascinating story. Link
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Deviant Art member Joep Gerrits created 100 simplified but clever renderings of movie characters from 68 classic films. Can you name them? See all 100 and a list of movies at the gallery. Link -via Gorilla Mask
Mainstream Hollywood movies can always use new talent, as actors/actresses from the states tend to have a short shelf life. So what’s keeping them from using foreign actresses that shine in their debuts, only to get a token role before saying adieu? Cinematical’s Christopher Campbell investigates, starting with Audrey Tautou.
She was allegedly warned against doing the Hollywood thing by Amelie director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (who had his own failure with Alien: Resurrection) and even seemed to obey him for a while there. But five years after winning the hearts of film geeks the world over, she cashed in big time by starring opposite none other than Tom Hanks in one of the most anticipated films of the decade, The Da Vinci Code. The mainstream audiences didn’t fall as hard for her in that, but she doesn’t seem to mind, preferring to maintain permanent residence in Paris while at least being a member of the Academy.
Four similar examples at the link, including Franke Potente and Monica Belluci. These girls are great actresses, so why don’t they make a splash with American audiences?
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader.
With 221 episodes filmed over more than two decades, Our Gang/Little Rascals is the most successful, longest-running film series in Hollywood history. Here’s how the Little Rascals found their way onto the silver screen.
STICKS AND STONES
One day in 1921, a Hollywood producer named Hal Roach spent a frustrating morning auditioning girls for a part in one of his movies. It wasn’t going well-the kids sounded too rehearsed and their stage makeup made them look like little grown-ups. In those days child actors were supposed to act like adults, not like normal kids. They were usually well scrubbed and well behaved, and because the adult characters were almost always the center of the story, the kids interacted with the grown-ups more than they did with each othr. They were often little more than props.
That afternoon when the auditions ended, Roach sat in his office and stared at the lumberyard across the street. He noticed a group of kids that had snatched a few sticks to play with, and were now arguing over them-the smallest kid had grabbed the largest stick, and the biggest kid wanted it.
Roach was fascinated. “I knew they would probably throw away the sticks as soon as they walked around the block,” he recalled more than 60 years later, “but the most important thing in the world right then was who would have which stick. All of a sudden I realized I had been watching this silly argument for over fifteen minutes because they were real kids.”
FORMING THE GANG
Roach thought movies about “kids doing the things that kids do” might make interesting viewing. As he told Leonard Maltin in The Life and Times of the Little Rascals: Our Gang, “I thought if I could find some clever street kids to just play themselves in films and show life from a kid’s angle, maybe I could make a dozen of these things before I wear out the idea.”
Roach started putting together a cast of archtypical kids that audiences would be able to relate to: the leader of the pack, the pretty girl who gets teased by the boys, the tomboy, the nerdy smart kid, the chubby kid, the spoiled rich kid, etc.
Roach also decided to cast black kids in some of the parts. That may not sound like a big deal, but in the 1920s it was unheard of. In fact, he was the first Hollywood filmmaker to depict black kids and white kids playing together, treating each other as equals, even going to the same schools. (The integrated school scenes were cut whenever the films played in the South.)
Characters like Farina, Stymie, and Buckwheat have since been criticized for perpetuating ethnic stereotypes, and ethnic humor was common in the series, especially in the early days. But the fact that the cast was integrated at all was a milestone. Hollywood films of the 1920s never portrayed blacks and whites as social peers, and wouldn’t for years to come. But Roach was determined that his kids would be peers.
Casting that first group of little kids was a snap-Roach just asked around the studio lot. Everybody, it seemed, either had a kid or knew one that would be good for a part. An eight-year-old black child actor named Ernie “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison was already appearing in Roach comedies, and his family knew of a one-year-old named Allen Hoskins. (Allen, better known as “Farina”, would go on to appear in 105 Our Gang comedies-more than any other kid) Photographer Gene Kornman’s five-year-old daughter Mary was interested; so was her friend Mickey Daniels. Roach also hired a six-year-old child actor named Jack Davis, a three-year-old named Jackie Condon, a chubby four-year-old named Joe Cobb, and a few other kids as well.
TESTING THE WATERS
The very first film, titled Our Gang, was shot twice with a different director each time because Roach didn’t think the first version was funny enough. The second film, a 20-minute silent short, directed by an ex-fireman named Bob McGowan, was a hit with test audiences, critics, and movie exhibitors alike. When Roach received repeated requests for more of those “Our Gang comedies,” he decide that would be the name for his series. The kids themselves were billed as “Hal Roach’s Rascals”; the name “Little Rascals” came much later.
The fourth Our Gang movie to be filmed, One Terrible Day, was actually the first one released to the public; it hit theaters in September 1922. Our Gang (the first film) was released two months later.
These films were unlike any that audiences had seen before. Kids were the stars, but the films were designed to appeal to people of all ages. And they were a hit from the start-kid actors were acting like real kids, arguing, getting dirty, and getting into all kinds of mischief. The acting was so natural that audiences forgot they were watching a movie.
ACT NATURALLY
How was Our Gang director Bob McGowan able to coach such authentic performances out of actors as young as two years of age? He didn’t have many options-reading scripts and memorizing lines was out, since many kids were too young to read. So McGowan made acting a game: he explained the scenes to the kids as carefully as he could, then he filmed them as they play-acted their parts. (One unintended consequence: as the kids grew older and became more aware of themselves as actors, their acting style sometimes became less natural.)
Because the Our Gang films were so successful, it wasn’t long before every child star in Hollywood-not to mention thousands of aspiring kid stars all over the country-started clamoring for a part in the series. Mickey Rooney came to Hollywood just to audition for Our Gang. He didn’t make the cut, and neither did the biggest child star in Hollywood history, Shirley Temple.
On June 16th, 1960 -fifty years ago today- moviegoers were treated to a new Alfred Hitchcock film that would change the idea of horror films forever. It was the release date for Psycho, the psychological thriller that introduced us to Norman Bates and The Bates Motel. The simple act of taking a shower become a frightening experience for those who saw the movie. Open Road Media selected this anniversary date to release an ebook version of the nonfiction masterpiece Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho by Stephen Rebello, which takes a deeper look at Hitchcock’s masterpiece.
Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is a behind-the-scenes look inside the classic suspense shocker—and the creative genius who revolutionized filmmaking.
Author Stephen Rebello explores the creation of one of Hollywood’s most iconic films, from the story of Wisconsin murderer Ed Gein, the real-life inspiration for the character of Norman Bates, to Hitchcock’s groundbreaking achievements in cinematography, sound, editing, and promotion. Filled with insights from the film’s stars, writers, and crewmembers, Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho is a riveting and definitive history of a signature Hitchcock cinematic masterpiece.
The ebook (available now) covers every step of the story of Psycho, from the crime that inspired the novel and then the movie, financing, casting, filming, special effects, trivia, to the reception the public gave the film. Read about the many versions of the story Hitchcock rejected and the writers tweaked, the careful planning that allowed shooting to be completed in just a month, and the trademark suspense Hitchcock used to hype the unveiling of the finished product.
Reprinted here with permission is the very first chapter, the story of murderer Ed Gein, which inspired novelist Robert Bloch to write the story that became the movie Psycho.
THE AWFUL TRUTH
There was a young man named Ed
Who would not take a woman to bed
When he wanted to diddle,
He cut out the middle
And hung the rest in a shed.
ANONYMOUS, 1957
In late November 1957, no one would have marked Plainfield as unlike any other hardscrabble, rawboned Wisconsin farm hamlet. That winter was especially raw. Ask any of the friendly townies of third- and fourth-generation German and French stock. In flat, laconic tones, they recite litanies of burst water mains and permafrost; of nights spent hunkering down against slashing winds and rains that blew east along Canada’s border. But that November also saw Plainfield mentioned in newspapers across the country. Remind these dairyland types about that little bit of business and their open faces wall up. They begin to study their shoes or make excuses before they beg off. That month, in 1957, Plainfield police smoked out an oafish fifty-one-year-old, odd-job-and-errands-man named Ed Gein (rhymes with mean) as one of the grisliest mass murderers America ever spawned.
Long before the headlines were to brand Gein as a bogeyman, his rural, God-fearing community of seven hundred had chalked him off as a crank. A perpetually grinning, unmarried recluse, Gein rambled over 160 ruined acres once farmed by his parents and brother. Even locals who never gave a second thought to hiring Gein for errands or baby-sitting had wearied of his harebrained theories. He liked to rag on the whys and wherefores of criminals who fouled up, or yammer endlessly, and pitifully, about women. Plainfield-ers recall his clinical obsession with anatomy and with the sex-change operation of Christine Jorgensen. But there was more to Gein than loony talk. That came home with a vengeance with the discovery of bloodstains on the floor of Bernice Worden’s general store on November 16.
Flickr user Ambrosia Voyeur found a fascinating map published in 1927 that Hollywood studios used to find relatively nearby locations to film far-away places. As you can see, certain spots in California were considered good for filming places like Siberia, Sherwood Forest, the Sahara Desert, and other movie settings. The source is The American Film Industry by Tino Balio. According to the book, the variety of available geography in southern California is one of the reasons Hollywood became the center of the film industry. Link to image. Link to book. -via Buzzfeed
Charlie Chaplin was one of the greatest directors and actors the cinema has ever seen, but, like most great artists, his life was filled with controversy and struggle. While most people in modern times only know about his brilliant works, his private life and public scandals were equally fascinating. To celebrate this great man, let’s take a look at all those little things you may not have known about Hollywood’s favorite Tramp.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London to two music hall actor/vocalists on April 16, 1889. His parents separated when he was only three and he lived with his mother and younger brother.
When Charlie was only five, he got his first taste of acting when he had to take stage to fill in for his mother, Hannah Chaplin, after her voice went out in the middle of a show. Throughout his childhood, he had to help his mother scrimp and save, particularly when she started losing her voice and increasingly began suffering from mental illness. The family was so poor, Hannah even pawned off her children’s spare clothing just to help make ends meet. By the time Charlie was seven, the family was forced to go to a workhouse and after only a few weeks, Charlie and his brother were sent to an orphanage. Hannah regained control of the boys soon after, but when she suffered from a serious mental breakdown, they were forced to live with their father and his mistress for a while.
This was when Charlie joined up with his first acting troupe, the Lancashire Lads. Only a few years later, his father died of cirrhosis of the liver. By 1910, Charlie had established a strong reputation in the local acting scene and he was able to tour the U.S. as a featured player in the Fred Karno Repertoire Company.
Upon traveling to America, he quickly became a favorite performer in the troupe. He returned home to England for a short while before touring America a second time in 1912. This was where Charlie got his big break. When the troupe was seen performing by director Mack Sennett and actors Mabel Normand, Minta Durfee and Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie was spotted and offered a contract with the Keystone Film Company.
Funny enough, one of the biggest names of film history actually had a hard time adjusting his acting methods to translate to film. Originally, Sennett thought he had made a big mistake after working with Charlie on his first film, Making a Living. Fortunately, Mabel Normand convinced the director to give Chaplin another chance and soon enough, a star was born.
Charlie’s best known role was as the iconic “Tramp” character, which he portrayed in a number of films throughout the silent era of film and even in a few pictures after “talkies.” He first developed the character for his second movie role in Mabel’s Strange Predicament.
Mack Sennett had told Charlie “get into a comedy make-up,” but Chaplin didn’t really know what that meant, so he freestyled it. Charlie put together a cane, baggy pants, a tight coat, huge shoes and a small derby hat. Because his character in the movie was supposed to be old, he added a small mustache so he could look older by still show expressions. Charlie said the character of the Tramp came as soon as he was dressed:
“the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”
If you’re wondering just where Charlie got the Tramp’s clothing, you have his friends on the movie set to thank. Fatty Arbuckle provided the pants and the hat was Fatty’s father-in-law’s. Chester Conklin gave him the coat and the shoes belonged to Ford Sterling. The shoes were so large that Charlie had to wear them on the wrong feet just so they would stay on.
Interestingly, Charlie’s first movie featuring the Tramp character wasn’t the first one released to the public. Instead, it was his second film, Kid Auto Races at Venice. Also interesting, the Tramp was in the first ever movie trailer shown in an American theater.
Charlie’s sense of humor and immaculate comedic timing led to his quickly being trusted to direct and edit his own films at Keystone. In his first (and only) year with the company, Chaplin made 34 shorts and a feature film.
In 1915, signed with Esseney Studios where he was also able to direct his own pictures, but he left their company within a year to begin working with the Mutual Film Corporation who gave him an even larger salary and nearly complete creative control. He started producing films in 1916 and when he started working with First National in 1917, he was given complete control of all of his projects.
He was a self-taught musician and played the cello and violin and even started composing the music to his films in 1918.
In 1919, Chaplin decided he had enough of the existing Hollywood studios and he co-founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith. This allowed him complete creative control on all of his projects for the rest of his life.
In July of 1925, Charlie was the first actor to be featured on “Time Magazine.”
One of the reasons Charlie’s Tramp character did so well was that it was able to transcend language barriers and cultural differences. People from all over the world could view a Chaplin film and identify with the gentlemanly vagrant and laugh at the bumbling authority figures.
Charlie was so good at filming silent pictures that he continued to do so for years after the public demanded movies with dialogue from all of his peers. Some of his best known silent classics, including The Circus and Modern Times, were actually made after talking became commonplace in movies.
Modern Times even does contain talking, although it is still considered a silent movie. It’s just that the only things that really talk are inanimate objects like radios. At the very end, audiences were able to hear Chaplin’s voice on film for the first time, while he sang gibberish lyrics. This was the last film Charlie made with the Tramp and it let the character take a quick step into modern movie history while staying true to his silent roots.
Charlie was considered a difficult director to work with because he was so intent on ensuring everything looked perfect on the film. He was notorious for shooting several takes of every scene during the silent films era, a time period where it was rare to reshoot even one scene. Some people even said that he was willing to shoot the same scene more than one hundred times until he was satisfied. He was known to get so upset about the wasted time and film that he would lash out at his actors and crew members and often would shut down production in a fury.
At the same time though, Charlie almost never used scripts until he started working on talking pictures in 1940. He developed a method where he would start with a vague premise and then build a set and start working on gags and plot devices. He often would work out the ideas on film and then end up having to redo whole scenes because the narrative structure ended up making a scene no longer make sense in the context of the story.
Strangely, no one in the general public knew about his filming techniques until after he died and the film Unknown Chaplin was released with outtakes and cut sequences showing his filming style.
While The Great Dictator is considered a classic these days, it was somewhat controversial when it came out in 1940 because the U.S. was still following a policy of pacifism. Chaplin’s Adenoid Hynkel infuriated the person it was based on, Adolf Hitler, and, unsurprisingly, the film was banned in Germany. While the movie was nominated for Academy Awards in the Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor categories, it did not bring home any awards, which many people believe had more to do with the politics of the film than its actual timing.
Although Chaplin was obviously against Hitler and was encouraging the U.S. to join the war long before Pearl Harbor, he was still the subject of public anger when he declined to support the war effort once it did get started.
The biggest reason he did not help drive the sales of bonds, like he had in the first World War, was that he was in the middle of a political scandal that involved both civil and criminal charges. In 1942, he had a brief affair with a young actress named Joan Barry, and at one point, he may have paid for her to go to New York City, where they shared a hotel room together.
Unfortunately, Joan got pregnant in the next year or so and publicly claimed that the child was Chaplin’s (it wasn’t). When the news went public, it meant that Charlie had to go to court for child support hearings and it meant that federal investigators could chose to try him under the Mann act.
The Mann Act made it a crime to transport a woman across state lines for immoral purposes. While it was created to prevent prostitution, it ended up being used as a way to prosecute people who were seen as immoral.
Charlie beat the criminal charges, but he lost at the civil trial and was forced to pay child support even though a blood test proved that the child wasn’t his. This case was largely responsible for a change in California law stating that blood tests could be used as evidence in civil trials. Even if he had won though, the damage to his reputation could never be removed.
Speaking of Charlie’s love life, he was always attracted to women who were far younger than he was. When he spent the night with 22 year old Joan, Chaplin was 53, and that wasn’t the largest age gap of his relationships. In fact, biographer Joyce Milton claims that Charlie was the inspiration for the book Lolita.
His first marriage was to a 16 year-old actress, Mildred Harris (seen above), and took place when Charlie was already 29. Chaplin’s next wife was also 16 when they started dating, only at this point, he was 35. When he was 43, he started dating his next wife, 22 year old Paulette Goddard. The worst age difference though was between Chaplin and the wife he stayed with until death, Oona O’Neil. Charlie was 54 years old at the time of the wedding, while the bride had just turned 18.
Modern Times was considered to be a bit critical of capitalism and when Charlie urged America to set up a second European front to support Russia, it was more than enough to convince J. Edgar Hoover (seen above) that Chaplin was a communist. The fact that he married two 16 year old girls by this time hadn’t helped improve his image with the feds.
Hoover ordered the FBI to keep detailed reports on him and tried to end his U.S. residency. At one point, congress tried to bring him in as a witness during the McCarthy hearings, but they kept pushing the date back and eventually canceled the order.
In 1952 though, Chaplin visited the U.K. to help push his newest film, Lamplight, and Hoover took the opportunity to exile him for good. He was able to pull some strings and get Charlie’s re-entry permit denied so he could not return to America. Rather than fight the decision, he got fed up and decided to instead move to Switzerland, saying:
“Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America’s yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.”
Chaplin didn’t let a little thing like relocation stand in the way of his work though, he instead started making films in Europe instead. Unsurprisingly, his first of these movies, A King in New York, was a satire of the political prosecution he had recently undergone.
Ten years later, he made his final film, A Countess from Hong Kong, which starred Sophia Loren and Marlon Brando. Charlie’s only appearance in the film was a brief cameo where he played a seasick man. He also composed the music for this film and the theme became a number one hit in the U.K.
His health started to fade around this point and he then started writing his autobiography, which was published in 1964. Next, he worked on composing original scores for his early silent pictures and re-released them. He also created a pictorial autobiography that was published in 1974.
Charlie was first suggested for knighthood in the thirties, but he was never actually knighted until 1975, when he was 85 years old. He also was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1970 after many people were angered that he was not one of the people originally honored in 1961. Funny enough, he had his handprints and footprints immortalized in the cement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater, but after all the scandals, the section of cement was removed and now many believe it is lost.
Although Chaplin won one Academy Award at the first ceremony in 1929, he never one another until 1972 when he was awarded an Honorary Award. It was his first visit to the U.S. since he was denied re-entry and he received the longest standing ovation in the award show’s history.
In the late 60’s, Chaplin’s health began to deteriorate and he eventually died on Christmas Day 1977 at the age of 88. All in all, his entertainment career lasted over 75 years.
Unfortunately, his trip underground wasn’t the last of his travels. His body was stolen in 1978 in an attempt to extort money from his family. After the robbers were captured, Charlie was buried under 6 feet of concrete to ensure this never would happen again.
Sources: Trivia Library, Wikipedia #1, #2, Time, BBC #1, #2, CharlieChaplin.com, Biography, Herald Sun, and IMDB.
Many people watched the Academy Awards last week and noticed that Best Actress winner Sandra Bullock never changed her expression. New York Magazine asks the question, if you can’t move your face, can you still act with it? Aging Hollywood stars have always resorted to plastic surgery, but Botox injections are faster, cheaper, and less invasive -and they have become almost required for an actress to look young enough for starring roles. How has this affected the art of acting?
Some actors appear to be underplaying their characters, consciously making them cool, without affect. If you can’t move your face, why not create an undemonstrative character? Others have taken the opposite approach: On two cable dramas starring actresses of a certain age, the heroines are brassy and expansive, with a tendency to shout and act out, yet somehow their placid foreheads are never called into play. Usually, when a person reenacts a stabbing or smashes a car with a baseball bat, some part of the face is going to crease or bunch up. Not so with these women. As though to compensate for their facial inertia, both perform with stagy vigor, attempting broad looks of surprise or disappointment, gesticulating and bellowing. If you can’t frown with your mouth, they seem intent on proving, you can try to frown with your voice.
The bright side is that public opinion may eventually turn to a preference for naturally aged thespians. Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: Hannah Whitaker)
Forget heroes. I find villains much more interesting. Here’s a wonderful montage titled: Heart of Darkness, a Montage, Cinema’s Top Human Villains, by YouTube user hh, listing 45 of the best (worst?) Hollywood baddies.
The music, East Hastings by Goodpseed You! Black Emperor, certainly contributed much to the awesomeness of the clip.
I’m glad that Kathy Bates’ character Annie Wilkes from the movie Misery made the list. Who do you think is the best Hollywood villain?
Link [embedded YouTube clip]
Let Hollywood Saloon take you back to a time before Stanley Kubrick was "Stanley Kubrick", before Spielberg was "Spielberg" and Scorsese was "Scorsese".
The folks at Hollywood Saloon have gathered together the early directorial efforts of some of cinema’s biggest and most acclaimed names, ranging from Stanley Kubrick and James Cameron to Paul Thomas Anderson.
These early works, consisting of 16mm student productions, Super 8 and VHS films, give us a glimpse of the youthful talent that would go on to produce some of the most important films of the 20th century.
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What is it about Hollywood and mentally challenged people? (I wanted to write "crazy people", but realized that’s not PC).
Cineleet has an interesting post about movies that depict mentally challenged characters, from those who suffer from mental retardation, savant syndrome, to plain ol’ derangement, and analyzed what made these movies so great:
The 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder highlights an inconvenient Hollywood truth: Oscar loves mental disabilities. In the film, Ben Stiller’s action hero character, Tugg Speedman, wishing to expand beyond his stereotype, attempts to court Oscar sympathies by playing a mentally challenged farmhand. It ends up being a critical failure. This is because, as Tugg’s co-star Robert Downey, Jr warns him, “You never go full retard”. And he has a point.
The most critically acclaimed performances by characters with disabilities still retained something the audience could emotionally relate to.
For instance, take Dustin Hoffman’s award-winning portrayal of the "idiot savant" Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man (1988):
Character: Raymond Babbitt as played by Dustin Hoffman
Mental Disability: Autism / Savant Syndrome
Barry Levinson’s film features Hoffman as an “idiot savant” who possesses a phenomenal capacity to count toothpicks and cheese balls (and later, cards in Vegas). Hoffman’s performance arguably is one of the most ‘affected’ of all the characters on this list, and as such, the hardest to emotionally connect with, particularly for his brother (Tom Cruise), who’s self-centered and primarily interested in the estate their father left Raymond. But in the midst of his worst autistic episodes, Raymond’s primal instinct to care for his younger brother is the touchstone that makes this performance resonate.What the Critics Thought: The Los Angeles Times called Hoffman’s performance made the film “hypnotically interesting”, and Newsweek’s David Ansen said the film was “made with care, smarts, and a refreshing refusal to settle for the unexpected”.
How it Paid Off: It took home four Oscars that year, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Hoffman.
The following is reprinted from The Best of The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. From Hollywood's earliest days, directors have sought to leave their individual marks on their films. Some have devised small "signatures" that identify a film as their work. Can you spot them? MAKING THEIR MARK The French have a word for it: auteur (author). It's the name for a theory of filmmaking - the idea that a film director is like a book's author and is responsible for the film's vision, form, and content. Many director's films are easily recognizable as theirs, based on the themes and style that recur in their movies. But some directors also add small signature touches or in-jokes that - if you recognize them - add to the audience's enjoyment. FRANK CAPRA In the Christmas classic, It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Jimmy the raven sits on Uncle Billy's desk in the Bailey Building and Loan.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK Psycho: About four minutes into the film, Marion (Janet Leigh) returns to her office. You can glimpse Hitchcock, wearing a cowboy hat, through the window. Don't blink or you'll miss him - he's only on-screen for a few seconds. Rear Window: About 30 minutes into the film, Hitchcock is winding a clock in the songwriter's apartment. Dial M for Murder: This one is of Sir Alfred's trickier cameos. Roughly 13 minutes into the film, a class reunion photo is shown. That's him on the left of the picture. Strangers on a Train: Right at the start of the movie, Hitchcock can be seen boarding the train, carrying a double bass. Lifeboat: Hitchcock appears briefly as the "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper ad for weight-loss program. Around the time of this movie's filming, Hitchcock had crash dieted and dropped 100 pounds. QUENTIN TARANTINO Each also has an ad for Red Apple cigarettes (a fictional brand.) Tarantino almost always has one or more of his characters barefoot - it's Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies. MARTIN SCORSESE Cape Fear: Scorsese's mother plays a customer at the fruit stand. The Color of Money: Scorsese is walking a dog in the casino scene. The dog was actually his own dog, and received a credit as Dog Walkby. Goodfellas: Scorsese's mother plays Tommy's mother. The director let her ad-lib her entire scene. His father plays the prisoner who put too many onions in the "gravy" (tomato sauce). Raging Bull: Scorsese can be seen asking Jack to go onstage. Also in Raging Bull, Scorsese's father is part of a mob at the Copa Nightclub. Taxi Driver: Scorsese is sitting in the background of the campaign headquarters as Cybill Sphepherd walks in. |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of the Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader. The Bathroom Reader Institute handpicked the most eye-opening, rib-tickling, and mind-boggling articles from everything they have written over the last ten years and carefully crammed them into 576 pages of the book. Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute has published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts. Check out their website here: Bathroom Reader Institute.
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Previously on Neatorama: Stories Behind Hollywood Studio Logos
What happens when Bollywood combines Harry potter and Home Alone? Here’s Hari Puttar – A Comedy of Terrors, directed by Lucky Kohli.
The movie is about a ten year old Indian boy named Hari Prasad Dhoonda, nicknamed Hari Puttar (Puttar means "son" in Punjabi), who was left home when his parents go on vacation. Just like Home Alone, Hari soon has to face burglars who wanted to steal his father’s secret formula.
Given the similarity to its movies, Warner Bros. decided to sue but the case was thrown out by Indian courts on the grounds that the public would be able to tell the difference and Warner had waited too long to file their case.
Hari Puttar’s official website | Trailer of the movie at Clipser: Link
Capra
had a pet raven named Jimmy, and he found a place for him in several of
his movies, starting with You Can't Take It With You (1938).
Probably
the best-known of all director signatures, Hitchcock famously placed himself
in many of his films - his unmistakable profile appears briefly in 37
out of 54 of them. To help you out, we've sniffed out Hitchcock sightings
in some of his most familiar films.
Tarantino
is best known for violent films with a healthy dose of black humor. And
there are several signatures to watch for: Each movie contain a "trunk
shot," during which the camera is set deep in the trunk of a car
so it can capture the actors as they lean in and over it. 
Taking
a leaf from Alfred Hitchcock's book, Scorsese appears in cameos in almost
all his films. Going Hitchcock one better, Scorsese also puts many members
of his family in small roles.
