Benjamin A. Railton's Blog, page 55

January 15, 2024: Spring Semester Previews: First-Year Writing II

[As thisnew semester gets underway, it does so amidst a particularly fraught moment forteaching & learning the Humanities. So for this week’s Semester Previewsseries I’ll highlight one thing from each of my courses that embodies the valueof the Humanities for us all—leading up to a special weekend post on MLK Dayand the Humanities!]

First-YearWriting II, of which I’ll teach two sections this Spring as I do in most Springsemesters, is not quite part of “the Humanities” in the way that the otherEnglish Studies courses I’ll highlight in this week’s series are. This is arequired course for all first-year students, part of their gateway into collegein whatever their major/department might be, and as a result I (like all mycolleagues) teach in it a variety of skills, including multiple writing genresbut also reading, research and information literacy, critical thinking, andmore. But there’s a reason why FYW is so consistently part of, or at the veryleast attached to and allied with, English Studies and related departments:because writing and those writing-adjacent skills I mentioned are at the coreof English and the Humanities, of the ways those disciplines and all those whoare part of them think and talk and engage with our world. My FYW II syllabusfocuses quite overtly on “our world,” through aseries of Units and Papers that connect to different layers to our 21stcentury society, fromads to multimediatexts to digital/online identities and communities. But it does so, likeevery section of this course and every one within all Humanities departments,through reading and writing. Not sure I need to convince anyone here of theessential value of those things, but I’ll gladly go to the mat for them if needbe!

Nextpreview tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 13-14, 2024: Vaughn Joy’s Hollywood Histories

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ve AmericanStudied a handfulof Columbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up tothis special weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

I couldn’t write a weeklong series on aHollywood film studio without paying tribute to the most thoughtful current FilmStudierand historian of all things Hollywood: the business and industry, the politicaland social ramifications, and those fraught and fantastic films themselves. Youcan learn a lot more about Vaughn Joy’s work on her website and her prolific Twitter account; here I’lljust highlight a handful of exemplary examples:

1)     Vaughnwritten a couple of excellentarticles (both available at that hyperlink) on the Paramount Decrees,monopolization, and Hollywood for the University of Chicago Business School’sPromarket magazine;

2)     She’scompiled a number of vital Twitter threads on different aspects of the past,present, and future of Hollywood, with many compiled in this thread ofthreads…

3)     …anda newaddition to the list from December on the proposed and deeply problematicmerger between Warner Brothers and Paramount;

4)     Her articleon Miracle on 34th Streetfor a special ChristmasStudies issue of Comparative AmericanStudies makes clear how she connects her multilayered analyses of filmsto those historical, social, and political contexts;

5)     Andfor lots more examples of those multilayered analyses, make sure to subscribeto her weekly Review Roulettenewsletter!

I lookforward to learning a lot more about Hollywood’s histories and future fromVaughn in 2024! Speaking of, a Spring semester previews series start Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Hollywood histories or historians you’d highlight?

January 12, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Matt Helm and Casino Royale

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On twoways Columbia tried to capitalize on the popularity of the spy series that gotaway.

Mosthugely successful film series probably have at least a studio or two who canlook back regretfully at having passed on the chance to produce them—the Lord of the Rings films have ahandful, for example—and in the case of Columbia Pictures, I can’t imagine abigger “one that got away” in the studio’s century of history than the JamesBond films. Columbia apparently had the chance to partner with s EonProductions to produce the Bond films when they first began to be adapted fromIan Fleming’s bestselling novels in the early 1960s, but the studio passed, and theresult is only one of the longest-running and most successful filmfranchises of all time. (To be fair, Columbia did eventuallybecome attached to the series in its 21st century incarnation starringDaniel Craig as the superspy, as part of the studio’s partnership with SonyPictures; but still, that’s nearly 50 years of prior James Bond films that thestudio could have been part of.)

It didn’ttake long for Columbia to realize that they had missed out, and in 1965, withthe fourth Bond film in four years about to be released, they decided to jumpinto the spy film game, working with a former producing partner of Broccoli’s () just incase the Bond associations weren’t clear enough. But they did so in aninteresting way: purchasing the rights to a serious and clearlyFleming-inspired spy series, DonaldHamilton’s Matt Helm novels (the first 9 of which had been publishedbetween 1960 and 1965, with another 18 to come before the seriesconcluded in the 1990s); but deciding to make the film adaptations of thosenovels into silly spoofs, starring Dean Martin as awisecracking, light-hearted revision of Hamilton’s tough-as-nails character.Four of a planned five such films were eventually produced, beginning with1966’s The Silencers and Murderers’ Row and continuing with The Ambushers (1967) and The Wrecking Crew (1969); the films wererelatively unsuccessful, however, and Martin abandoned the character before thefifth and final film could be made.

Well, ifyou can’t parody them obliquely, parody them directly, as the saying mostdefinitely does not go. ProducerCharles Feldman had acquired the film rights to Fleming’s first Bond novel,Casino Royale (1953), in 1960, andhad tried unsuccessfully to make it for Eon Productions with Broccoli. SoFeldman decided to make the film into a satire instead, and with the Matt Helmfilms not really taking off Columbia came on board as the studio. The resulting 1967 film wasquite the sprawling affair, with five credited directors (including John Huston!),three credited writers, and a truly stunning list of actors on board, includingformer Bond girl UrsulaAndress playing one of six “James Bonds” and none other than Orson Welles playing Bond’schief adversary Le Chiffre. Casino Royalewas significantly more successful than the Helm films (it grossed over $40million worldwide, compared to the $7 million of the most successful Helm film),and, even more importantly I’m sure for the studio that had passed on Bond,became and remains a part of the James Bond cinematic legacy as well as thelong story of Columbia Pictures.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

January 11, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Jungle Jim

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On aB-movie film series that reflects Hollywood’s multimedia influences (in bothdirections).

One of themany ways that folks who are grumpy about the state of Hollywood films in the21st century (a perspective I get and in some ways share, but at thesame time every version of “Things used to be better”is almost always inaccurate at best) like to complain is to remark upon how many comicbook films there are. There are indeed a lot and the trend ain’t slowingdown, as that last hyperlinked article illustrates. But at the same time, comicshave provided a key set of texts for film adaptations for as long as film hasbeen around, and a case in point are two strips that were created by the same talentedyoung illustrator (Alex Raymond,just 24 at the time) and launched in the Sunday funny papers on the same day(January 7th, 1934): FlashGordon and JungleJim. Raymond named the latter character, an American hunter trekkingthrough the jungles of Asia, after his brother Jim, and Jungle Jim comics wouldappear in syndication every Sunday for the next twenty years, created bymultiple illustrators and artists after Raymond joined the Marines during WorldWar II (and before his tragically early death at the age of 46 in a 1956 carcrash).

Jungle Jim was an instant hit and was adaptedimmediately for other media, including a radioseries in 1935 and a UniversalPictures serial in 1937. But by far the most prolific and successful suchadaptation was from Columbia Pictures, in the form of a series of 16 B-movies producedbetween 1948 and 1955 (yes, that’s an average of two Jungle Jim movies a year, for those scoring at home!). Thosemovies, which began with 1948’s Jungle Jim andconcluded with two evocatively titled 1955 films, Jungle Moon Menand Devil Goddess (bothavailable in full at those YouTube links, although I confess I have not watchedthem), starred none other than JohnnyWeissmuller, the Olympic swimming champion turned actor who was just finishinghis 16-year run in the Tarzan films when JungleJim appeared. The presence of Weissmuller suggests another multimediainfluence on the Jungle Jim films ofcourse—even though the character and stories were hugely distinct from Tarzan,and the source material likewise, there’s no question that by castingWeissmuller Columbia was hoping that his sizeable Tarzan audience would directlyfollow the star into another character and series set in the jungle.

The lastthree films, those two from 1955 and 1954’s Cannibal Attack,actually did not refer to the character as Jungle Jim, naming him instead “JohnnyWeissmuller” (in case the association of performer with character was notalready strong enough). The reason for that shift is one more multimedia adaptationand influence: Columbia’s animation and TV studio, Screen Gems,had picked up the character for a television seriesthat ran for one 26-episode season in 1955-56 (and likewise starred Weissmuller,natch), and that series had exclusive use of the Jungle Jim brand. Therelationship between film and TV in the latter medium’s early years is a hugelymultilayered and complex one, but this particular brand and character certainlyreflect how one studio like Columbia could and did span the two media, withstories and even performers who bridged between the two and represented theinterconnections as well as the distinctions across them.

LastColumbia context tomorrow,

Ben

January 10, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Technicolor

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On threefilms through which Columbia finally entered the 1930s-40sTechnicolor age (it was the last major studio to do so, forfinancial reasons):

1)     The Desperadoes (1943): Columbia’slong-awaited and much-ballyhooed first Technicolor film was this epic Western,directed by the prolific and starring a who’s who of 1940s actors, including Randolph Scott,Glenn Ford, Claire Trevor, and many more. It’s pretty interesting that thestudio’s first use of this innovativenew technology was for a film in one of the most consistently historicaland nostalgic genres—Desperadoesspecifically is set during the Civil War, as many famous Westerns were; butwhatever the particular moment, the Western is a genre frequently dedicated to imaginedversions of the past, no small factor in its increasingly popularity in1940s and 50s America. Sothe cinematic future met the imagined past here in 1943, you could say.

2)     Cover Girl (1944): Desperadoes seems to have done fine, butColumbia’s first Technicolor hit was a much more modern film: this 1944 musicalromantic comedy, once again directed by the talented journeyman Vidor andstarring two of the period’s premiere screen icons, Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly. Asillustrated (literally and figuratively) by the film’s eye-poppingposter, Cover Girl made muchbetter use of the new technology than a historical Western ever could; it’sdifficult to imagine just how much such vibrant colors would hit audiences usedto watching black and white films, but I’m sure the experience was quitestriking, and one foreshadowed nicely by that poster.

3)     The Jolson Story (1946): Despitesuch successes most of the studio’s films in this era continued to be filmed andreleased in black and white, and that was initially going to be the case forthis musical biopic, starring Larry Parks as Al Jolson.But studio head HarryCohn (the source of the studio’s initial reluctance to use Technicolor) wasimpressed enough by the early work on the film that he changed his mind, andthe final product was entirely filmed and released in Technicolor. There’s aparticular irony in that, given that it was Jolson himself who famouslyperformed the first line of spoken dialogue in an American “talkie,” his “Waita minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet” in TheJazz Singer (1927). By the 1940s, film audiences had heard and seen agreat deal—but there was always more to see, in Technicolor and every otherway.

NextColumbia context tomorrow,

Ben

January 9, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: The Three Stooges and Friends

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming,rebranding, and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On why theStooges were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Columbia comedy.

I wrote aboutThe Three Stooges, both theirparticular brand of comedy and their reflection of Vaudeville and slapstickinfluences on American popular culture more broadly, inthis post comparing them to the Marx Brothers. I’d ask you to check thatone out before coming back for some further thoughts on the Stooges andColumbia comedies.

Welcomeback! As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Columbia was signing Vaudeville actsand producing short-subject comedy films with them even before the studio gotthat new name and famous rebranded logo in 1924. So it wasn’t a surprise whenstudio co-founder HarryCohn insisted in the early 1930s that they sign one of the era’s biggest Vaudevilleacts, The Three Stooges, who had been performing since 1925 and were readyto take the next step (although they did so without their original frontman Ted Healy, who signed withMGM instead). Between their 1934 signing and the end of their contract in late1957 (although the studio continued releasing shorts for another year and ahalf after that), the Stooges made 190 comedyshorts for Columbia, for a striking average of nearly 8 films a year. Forthose of us who grew up with the Stooges constantly on TV, extending theirpresence and legacy far beyond the end of their run, it was due precisely tothe sheer quantity of these shorts, a critical mass which benefitted both theact and the studio to be sure.

But here’sthe thing about Columbia shorts on TV—it wasn’t just the Stooges! By 1958 Columbiahad a total of 529produced comedy shorts (also known as two-reelers), and 400 of them weresold to television networks between 1958 and 1961 alone. The studio alsoemployed the legendary Buster Keatonto make such comedy shorts, as well as other noteworthy comics of the periodsuch as CharleyChase, AndyClyde, and HughHerbert. (For a lot more info, I can’t recommend highly enough the Columbia Shorts Departmentwebsite to pages on which those hyperlinks also take you.) The pipeline toTV ensured that these shorts and the performers who starred in them would crossover to yet another medium and new audiences in the process, and had a lot todo with their staying power on the cultural landscape. But it’s worth beingclear that when these short films were made, it was with no expectation of TVsales (or in many cases knowledge of TV as a medium yet)—these were simply amainstay of the studio, and of the Hollywood film system overall in the 1930sand 40s. That’s a largely overlooked (at least by this AmericanStudier) elementof mid-20th century American pop culture that the Stooges andfriends can help us better remember.

NextColumbia context tomorrow,

Ben

January 8, 2024: AmericanStudying Columbia Pictures: Three Origin Points

[January10th marks the 100th anniversary of the renaming, rebranding,and relaunchof Columbia Pictures, one of the foundational and most iconicAmerican film studios. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy a handful ofColumbia’s many film innovations over its first few decades, leading up to aspecial weekend tribute to one of our preeminent 21st centuryFilmStudiers!]

On three pre-1924efforts where we can see the studio’s humbler but unmistakable origins.

1)     Screen Snapshots (1920+): AHollywood film studio is an interesting entity—obviously its primary purpose isto help produce films, and I’ll highlight a couple early examples for thisstudio in a moment; but at the same time, it exists as part of the amorphousand ambiguous yet hugely influential (even in its earlier moments) communitythat is “Hollywood.” As last year’s 1923 anniversarypost on the Hollywood Sign reflects, that community was really beingcreated in this early 1920s period, and the studio that became Columbia playeda role in that creation through ScreenSnapshots: a series of documentary shorts, launched in 1920 and continueduntil the late 1950s, that sought to portray the realities of Hollywood stars,parties, and life behind the film curtain. Hollywood was always as much aboutimage as any concrete institutions or texts, and nothing contributed more tothe creation of that image in its early days than did Screen Snapshots.

2)     Hallroom Boys (early 1920s):No film studio could survive without actual films to put out (and thus artistsunder contract with the studio), of course, and in its early days this studiofocused, as many did in the 1910s and 20s, on translating Vaudevillecomedy and acts onto the silver screen. The most famous such translationinvolved a trio of violent brothers about whom I’ll write in tomorrow’s post, butthe first Vaudeville artists under contract to this studio were the Hallroom Boys,the act founded by performers EdwardFlanagan and Neely Edwards. In recent years, spurred by specific topicslike Blackface entertainment, I’ve started to think about just howinfluential Vaudeville was on 20th century American culture, and thecentral role of Vaudeville acts in early film is another example worth further thoughtfor sure.

3)     Moreto Be Pitied Than Scorned (1922): If Screen Snapshots and the HallroomBoys helped put this new studio on the map, it certainly needed actualfeature film productions to be recognized as a serious Hollywood player (andperhaps to get to the level of success necessary for the 1924 rebranding andrelaunch). The first such feature film produced by CBCFilm Sales Corporation (named in that earlier iteration for its co-foundersHarry and Jack Cohn and Joe Brandt) was 1922’s melodrama More to Be Pitied Than Scorned, a sadly lost silent film thatstarred (frequentscreen costar of another Vaudeville legend, Fatty Arbuckle). I obviously can’tsay much about this lost film, but it’s interesting to think about casting anotherfamous comic performer in a serious film seeking to launch a new side to theemerging studio. That balance would endure into the next decades, as we’ll seeall week.

NextColumbia context tomorrow,

Ben

January 6-7, 2024: 2024 Anniversaries: The 1824 Election

[As I’ve done for eachof the lastfew years, this week I’ve started 2024 by AmericanStudying a fewanniversaries for the new year. Leading up to this special post on the 200thanniversary of a frustratingly familiar election.]

I wrote atlength about the controversial 1824 election and what it might (and hopefullywon’t) foreshadow about the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections inthis post. Much of what I’d want to say today is captured there, so I’d askyou to check out that prior post if you would and then come on back here forone more thought.

Welcomeback! As that post and manyothers I’ve written reflect clearly, I’m no fan of Andrew Jackson, but Iwould nonetheless note a couple distinct differences between him and The FormerGuy who is hoping 2024 will be a repeat of 1824: I believe Jackson was trulydedicated to expanding democracy and opportunities to working-classwhite Americans; and as far as I know he never commissioned nor committedover acts of treason against the United States. The latter is why I believe allAmericans of conscience have to oppose Trump’s reelection campaign; and theformer is why it’s so frustrating to me that many working-class Americans seeTrump as someone who likewise has their best interests at heart, whereas he hasdemonstrated time and time again that his only interests are those of himselfand his close criminal cohort. And yet, the one definite commonality betweenthese two figures—full-throated endorsements of white supremacy at every turn—mightjust be enough to return Trump to the presidency that it already helped himgain once. Let’s hope that’s not a 2024 prediction!

Nextseries starts Monday,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 5, 2024: 2024 Anniversaries: 1974 Films

[As I’vedone for each of thelast few years, this week I’ll start 2024 by AmericanStudying a fewanniversaries for the new year. Leading up to a special post on the 200thanniversary of a frustratingly familiar election.]

On quick AmericanStudiescontexts for five films from one of the best years in cinematic history.

1)     TheGodfather Part II: Check out that post!

2)     Chinatown: Andcheck out that one!

3)     TheLongest Yard: And also out that one!

4)     BlazingSaddles: Okay, I haven’t written about every one of these 1974 films onthe blog already! I was pretty shocked to learn that Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles was the top-grossingfilm of 1974; not because it’s not one of the legendary director andcomedian’s best films (it certainly is), but because I expected a moreconventional blockbuster to take that title. Saddles is a particularly interesting comedy to occupy that spot, becauseit’s quite openly critical of the general American public, as illustrated byone of its best quotes: “You'vegot to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of theland. The common clay of the new West. You know...morons.” One of manymoments and ways in which Brooks’ film not only parodies the genre of theWestern, but satirizes overarching American narratives and images of the West,making it an excellent AmericanStudies film.

5)     TheParallax View: Full disclosure, I don’t believe I’ve seen this Alan J. Pakula film(I watched a lot of 70s movies with my Mom growing up, often before I was oldenough to quite get it all, but I don’t think this one was on the list). But a Watergate-erathriller about an organization devoted to political assassination (and implied to have assassinatedboth John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald) that uses the catchphrase“As American as apple lie” definitely has to be on a list of AmericanStudies-worthy1974 films, no? I thought about putting another phenomenal 1974 film, TheConversation, on this list, and I think it would make an excellentdouble-feature with Parallax,revealing a great deal about political conspiracies, real and imagined,believable and fantastic, and all, yes, as American as apple pie.

Specialpost this weekend,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?

January 4, 2024: 2024 Anniversaries: J. Edgar Hoover in 1924

[As I’vedone for each of thelast few years, this week I’ll start 2024 by AmericanStudying a fewanniversaries for the new year. Leading up to a special post on the 200thanniversary of a frustratingly familiar election.]

On what J.Edgar Hoover brought to his new role asDirector of the Bureau of Investigation, and two early examples of hisleadership style.

JohnEdgar Hoover (1895-1972) became a clerk with the Justice Department’s new WarEmergency Division in 1917, when he was just 22 years old, and within a fewmonths had taken on a leadership role with another new organization, the Alien Enemy Bureau.In that role, authorized by President Woodrow Wilson and the 1917Espionage Act, Hoover had the power to arrest and jail foreign nationalswithout trial. When the war ended those extreme powers most definitely did not,and two years later Hoover was able to expand them as head of the Bureau of Investigation’snew GeneralIntelligence Division, known as the Radical Division as it focused onrooting out supposed domestic radicals through actions like the PalmerRaids. All of that constituted Hoover’s resume was he was appointed theBureau of Investigation’s fifth Director in May 1924.

As hequickly demonstrated in that new role, Hoover’s extreme attitudes weren’tlimited to those he perceived to be direct threats (whether foreign ordomestic) to the United States. In 1924 the Bureau of Investigation had threefemale special agents; upon taking over the Director’s role Hooverfired two of them and transferred the third against her wishes from the Washingtonfield office to Philadelphia, after which she resigned. Hoover argued thatwomen’s “unpredictable nature” made them unfit for the role, even though heacknowledged that they “probably could learn to fire a gun.” He also believedthat they were far more suited for the role of secretary, since “a man’s secretarymakes or breaks him”—and his own executivesecretary, Helen Gandy, was indeed with him for his whole 50-year run asdirector. Hoover’s personal issueswith sex and gender have been well documented, but he was pretty awful withthem on a professional level as well.

Much ofHoover’s leadership of the FBI (as it came to be known) throughout his tenureas Director was very much in that discriminatory and exclusionary vein. But obviouslyhe did other things too across those five decades, and one of his more positiveinfluences was in connecting the agency to other layers of the federalgovernment, especially more symbolic ones. Hoover had an opportunity toshowcase that side of the Bureau in 1929, when members of the JapaneseNaval Delegation visited Washington on their way to take part in the 1930London Naval Treaty. Hoover volunteered the Bureau to serve as thedelegates’ protection detail, and the international recognition was animportant step in the FBI’s development from a facet of the Justice Departmentto its own, significant part of the U.S. federal government. The reality thatthat part has been pretty consistently awful is vital to acknowledge, but notthe only part of the Bureau’s story, nor of Hoover’s.

Lastanniversary tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think?