We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
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We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
Warner acted from the 1910s to the 1940s. He became known for his role as the Cisco Kid in the 1928 film In Old Arizona, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor at the 2nd Academy Awards.
Initially Raoul Walsh was cast as the Cisco Kid as well as being the director but during a return drive to Los Angeles from Utah a jackrabbit jumped through the windshield of Walsh’s car with both the rabbit and the broken glass hitting Walsh in the face. (Safety glass was added to cars the following year.)
The damage to Walsh’s right eye necessitated replacing him in the lead role and re-writing the script and re-shooting some scenes with a different director while Walsh recuperated. Walsh thereafter wore the eye patch for which he was known and eventually lost the eye entirely. Some footage of Walsh in chase scenes and long shots remains in the film.
Baxter reprised his Cisco Kid role between 1930 and 1939 in The Arizona Kid/The Stolen Jools/The Cisco Kid and Return of the Cisco Kid. His last film was the prison drama State Penitentiary released in 1950 but clip of him as The Cisco Kid was in the 1952 all-star ensemble movie O’Henrys Full House which featured the likes of Monroe and Richard Widmark and Charles Laughton.
Before his talkies career Warner Baxter had made 45 silent films including a 1925 version of The Awful Truth in which he played the role that Al Leach took in the 1937 talkies version Warner was a close friend of William Powell . In his later years Warner suffered from chronic arthritis and in 1951 he underwent an operation to relieve the massive pain that the affliction was causing him.
TOP 21 POSTER SETS IN BAXTER VIDEO
1/Barricade
2/first one for Kidnapped
3/Robin Hood of El Dorado
4/Behind that Curtain
5/first one for White Hunter
6/2nd one for Renegades
7/Stand up and Cheer – very leggy!
8/To Mary with Love – both ones***
9/Return of the Cisco Kid
10/first one for The Cisco Kid
11/first one for King of Burlesque
12/two for the saucy Lady in the Dark
13/2nd one for Adam Had 4 Sons
14/FL for Penthouse***
15/West of Zanzibar
16/two for Slave Ship
17/FL for Road to Glory
18/two for Prisoner of Shark Island
19/In Old Arizona
20/entire naughty set for 42nd Street
21/Broadway Bill***
***In these 3 The Thin Woman was Warner Baxter’s co-star and HE got top billing in all 3. Your posters definitely “tell it as it is” Steve!
If my memory serves me well this is your shortest video in some time. It matters not because those old vintage posters and stills and lobby cards are always a strong quality selling point with me regardless of quantity so a 98% personal satisfaction rating from yours truly.
BEST STILLS/LOBBY CARDS
1/Renegades
2/Barricade
3/In Old Arizona
4/The Robin Hood of El Dorado
5/Cisco Kid
6/A very daring Lady in the Dark
7/Adam Had 4 Sons
8/I’ll Give a Million
9/Penthouse with that 2nd billed Thins again – not even equal billing with Baxter this time.
10/two for Broadway Bill with “also ran” Thins once more
11/Slave Ship
12/Prisoner of Shark Island.
13/42nd Street
“Little nifties from the fifties
Innocent and sweet
Sexy ladies from the eighties
Who are indiscreet.
Side by side, they’re glorified
Where the underworld
Can meet the elite
Forty-Second Street
Naughty, bawdy
Gaudy, sporty
Forty
Forty-Second Street.” [Note I have Ruby Keeler’s version in my record collection]
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info, trivia and song lyrics, much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed the picture gallery.
The Lovely Miss Loy did ‘co-star’ in a bunch of Baxter’s films, so I couldn’t resist adding some extra lobby cards for the many Myrna fans on this site, including ‘closet’ Myrna fans like yourself. [Bob snarls]
I noticed that Baxter was second billed in his first Cisco Kid film ‘In Old Arizona’ lead actor was Edmund Lowe, but in the sequel ‘The Cisco Kid’ the roles were reversed, Baxter was billed first and Lowe second.
Yep I never gave a cr*p about billing until you started going on about it a few years ago, it’s all your fault Bob! [bursts into tears] 😉
Only one Warner Baxter movie scored 10 out of 10 from my sauces, no guessing which one… oh alright it was 42nd Street “Come and meet those dancing feet on the avenue. I’m taking you to Forty-Second Street.”
One film scored 9 – Prisoner of Shark Island, five films scored 8 including Slave Ship and The Road to Glory.
42nd Street tops both IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes charts.
“I was a failure and a success three times in Hollywood, I have even had trouble paying my rent. Three depressions were suddenly ended by three pictures, each of which boosted me higher than I had ever been. ‘In Old Arizona’ ended a two-year slump. ‘The Cisco Kid’ brought me back into public favor after a series of bad stories. And ’42nd Street’ revived me after ‘The Cisco Kid’ had worn off. Like most actors, I wanted to cling to juvenility to the bitter end. But after I had repeated ’42nd Steet’ several times, it occurred to me that actors, drugged by pride, can make first-class asses of themselves.”
HI STEVE: Fine feedback as always. My own additional comments are:
1/Even IMDB and Wikipedia make comments about billing that illustrate they accept its importance. Only the Cogerson site seems behind the times in the matter.
2/Your posters have in fact revealed that importance. You comments about Warner and In Old Arizona illustrate that point. Also your recent John Payne montage of posters as well highlight the matter: in Footlight Serenade with Betty Grable John was top billed but in the ones released after that Grable now a big star was 1st billed.
3/In 1935’s Wings in the Dark the Thin Woman got billed above Archie but in the subsequent Bachelor Knight and Mr Blandings Archibald was the top billed star. Also in the early Katie Hep/Al Leach movies Katie’s name came first but Leach took over the top spot in their later film together [Philadelphia Story in which apparently Leach INSISTED upon top billing]. I’m sure that The Work Horse would not have asked the studio to insist on a “ladies first” policy regarding those particular teamings!
“Spence, Bogie and I were great friends. I acted with both in separate films and there were always hypothetical plans for the two boys to do a picture together. I remember many occasions when I sat round the table with them and various potential projects were discussed but the sticking point was always billing. Their respective agents would lay out designs for all kinds of billing compromises but neither guy would give up the exclusive top spot!” – Katherine Hepburn[laughing] in interview.
4/Even Thins can’t spoil a good poster.
5. I’ve mentioned that Warner and Bill Powell were great friends and when Bill was grieving over the death of Harlow Baxter was constantly by his side.
“Following a short third marriage to cameraman Hal Rosson, Jean Harlow finally found happiness with William Powell. She longed to play opposite him in the type of roles her friend Myrna Loy did. She did co-star with Powell in Reckless (1935) and with both Powell and Loy in one of the great screwball comedies Libeled Lady (1936).”
Which brings us quickly back to Thins again. Bill and Harlow and The Thin Woman used to socialise regularly together and in her autobiography Thins would recall some of those happy times.
HI STEVE Thanks for your feedback and additional information and isn’t it amazing how mention of a relatively obscure B movie like Payne’s Hells Island can lead to a wider talking point?
No question that Chuck’s The Ten Commandments was by far the bigger audience puller and commercial success but I have to qualify that by saying –
1/The massive audiences who went to see 10CMTS sixty five years ago have either passed on or like yours truly have grown old so that it would probably not loom large in the minds of audiences today.
2/Conversely Hitch’s Vertigo is constantly raved over by movie scholars and historians and critics including the Joel types who never consider that the opinions of mass audiences are worth a d**n anyway. It is usually listed nowdays as being among the 10 best movies of all time and I’ve seen lists ranking it No 1. ie more people possibly hear about Vertigo today that they do about The 10 Commandments. The money that the latter film made is all spent whereas the enormous artistic reputation ov Vertigo lives on. That’s the kind of thing that Rosie Clooney’s great nephew meant when he said “I want to be rememberd for more that one summer’s blockbuster.”
I think that the statement in Wiki about Vertigo being the most well know Vista Vision movie is probably based on those types of considerations. My Ladd-hating son who can be contrary to please when it comes to movies used Vertigo as the subject of the long thesis that among other workhe submitted for his university degree where he provided an in depth annlysis of what he perceived to be the technical and psychological brilliance of the film which included such aspects as the mental state of Stewart’s character Scottie.
Finally in IMDB’s self proclaimed “ultimate list of The 100 Greatest Movies of All Time Vertigo is ranked 11th; Rear Window 96th; North by Northwest 99th; and 10CMTS not al all.
Bob, for your delectation an excerpt from Time magazines 1953 review of Julius Caesar:
“Julius Caesar is the best Shakespeare that Hollywood has yet produced. For one thing, Julius Caesar is a play that lends itself fairly easily to filming. Melodramatic rather than introspective, it is a sort of gangster picture with an ancient (44 B.C.) Roman setting. Its political thriller plot—a bloody conspiracy, and the tyranny that is bred by lust for power has obvious modern parallels.
The star spangled cast recruited from both stage and screen exhibit a wide variety of acting styles. Marlon Brando gives a flamboyant performance in the showy role of Mark Antony, Caesar’s ruthless avenger.
Cinemagoers who saw Brando in The Men and A Streetcar Named Desire may be surprised to hear him, minus his slurring Stanley Kowalski speech mannerisms, clearly enunciating the famous rabble rousing funeral oration. Brando’s smouldering, sullen personality adds excitement to a crucial role.”
HI STEVE: Thanks for sharing that Julius Caesar material with me. It supports my view that Brando “slurred” in a movie when he considered that the character he was playing would have done the same. Stanley in Streetcar would never have spoken like Archie Leach or the highly educated Orson Welles or Mark Antony.
As I’ve already told WH Marlon used to hang about cafes and grocery stores like WH’s own one to observe how different types of people acted and spoke. Joel types who were imbued with the dialogue styles of Gable in the likes GWTW and Gagney in gangster films and The Duke in westerns were probaly bemused by Brando’s approach and most likely never fully understood it.
I think that a lot of that was to do with class snobbery and prejudice [and often political bias] because some of the characters the young Brando played didn’t behave like cultured Al Leach or Bill powell “drawing room” figues. When Joel wrote that Brando mumbled in Guys and Dolls he was either [frankly] lying or needed a hearing aid or most probably either didn’t know what he was talking about or was simply parroting conventional prejudice.
Elvis when he first appeared met with a similar massive wall of contempt and prejudice from many quarters and according to some historical movie and musical scholars a lot of the bias had to do with the fact that Elvis’ voice [one of the best I’ve ever peronally heard] had a gospel sound to it at times similar to that of African American gospel singers.
STEVE: Further to my previous post it’s a pity that YOU too don’t have a copy of Joel’s book and you know WH kindly sent me one. It is actually an excellent reference book and I value it and a lot of it is well written; but it does illustrate how inconsistent Hirsch can be.
For example he says on page 57 that ‘Frank Sinatra was justifiable in referring to Brando derisively as “Mumbles”’. It does speak volumes to me that JFK distanced himself from Sinatra because of the latter’s rumoured dubious personal connections and yet Joel sees nothing wrong in using Frankie as a stick with which to beat Brando. Conversely when Marlon died George W Bush publicly praised Brando.
However my main point is that Joel gives each of these early Brando performances 4 stars-
The Men
Streetcar
Zapata
The Wild One
Waterfront.
Yet as your Time article and a review of Zapata that you sent me recently suggest those are the performances for which Brando is most consistently accused of resorting to mumbling. If Joel believed that to the point where he was happy to support Sinatra’s opinion of Brando as a mumbler why did he give all those flicks 4 stars?
Conversely nobody has ever accused Marlon of mumbling in Julius Caesar and he won rave reviews [like the one you have reproduced] and an Oscar nom for that performance; yet Joel gives him only 3 stars!
`Curiouser and curiouser!’ cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). [Alice in Wonderland Chapter 2 The Pool of Tears].
HI STEVE: See what beast you allowed out of its cage when you sent me that JC review! It now has pride of place in my archives. I have been thinking that when down through the years the Hirschhorn types have been piling on the insults about Brando’s alleged mumbling they have never seemed to understand the irony in what they were alleging which they might have done if they had stopped for a moment to look at the highest 3 entries in the American Film Institute’s One Hundred Greatest Movie Quotes currently fully listed on Wikipedia-
Frankly my dear I don’t give a damn [GWTW] – No 1
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.” [Godpop] -No 2
“You don’t understand! I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I could’ve been somebody instead of a bum which is what I am.”[On the Waterfront] -No 3
And Stellaah! Hey Stellaah! – No 45
Tinseltown’s accredited “beautiful speakers” or the Al Leach types with their peculiar contrived clipped Transatlantic accents are largely absent from the list and indeed Archie himself doesn’t get a look in at all. It wasn’t Archibald who said “Why don’t you come up sometime and see me?” [No 26 on the list] and it wasn’t the suave Leach who said “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” that WH quotes at the start of his Mae West page.
Indeed it’s not until we get to Ranking 70 that Lord Olivier [whose voice I loved] makes his appearance with “Is it safe?” from Marathon Man and none of Larry’s great classical lines such as “A Work Horse a Work Horse my kingdom for a Work Horse!” get a mention.
Yet Brando is supposed to be the great diction eschewer; Gable spoke in a gruff probably cultivated masculine tone and Mae used language and put on a voice that was a cross between that of a screen hooker and a Damon Runyon character such as Harry the Work Horse and Brando’s Sky Masterson in Guys & Dolls whom Joe seemed to think should speak like Rex Harrisom.
Tellingly the notes accompanying the AFI 100 say that the rankings were often based on not so much the content of what was being said but the DELIVERY.
“Sister Sarah would you be open to a proposition?” Sky Masterson very clearly asks in 1956’s screen version of Guys and Dolls. For a while in the mid sixties all us young guys were torturing pretty girls with that line!
[whispers] psst Bob, I do have a copy of that book [Bob gasps] I picked up a copy from Amazon about a year ago, a well worn used copy for less than a fiver. To prove it ‘the mumbling continued’ on page 57. 🙂
It’s definitely an interesting book though I’ve only perused it a couple of times, at least Hirschhorn tried something different in attempting to rate performances rather than the movie itself which is what I’m doing with the videos. I agree he was a bit harsh with Brando, maybe he just didn’t like him much. It’s all opinion in the end.
But there was a precedent for that format, British film critic Leslie Halliwell in his massive Halliwell’s Movie Guide (my bible for a couple of decades) was italicizing actors names he thought were particularly effective and noteworthy in each capsule review.
For example- A Streetcar Named Desire has Vivien Leigh and Brando’s names italicized but not Kim Hunter or Karl Malden.
HI STEVE
You kept THAT a big secret. Were you ashamed to acknowleged that you were a closet Joelateer? Beware though as that book like the Neocronomicon can enslave people of normally sound opinions!
I’m just about to post Part One of my comments on your Warner Baxter video. Parts 2 and 3 will have to wait until later this evening or tomorrow as I am off soon to the movies to watch Will Ferell in Downhill though WH and IMDB give it dire ratings of 41 and 49% respectively.
However W o Bob wants to see it and as Bruce Willis and Bruce Cogerson could tell you who can argue with THAT?
Bob, I picked the book up out of curiosity because it loomed large over this website, and almost forgot I had it until I saw your recent post.
Off to the cinema? Will you be wearing a face mask? I’d just heard that the new Bond movie has been pushed back to November this year because of fears the virus might keep people away from cinemas. Hopefully it will be contained or under control by then.
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Cogerson
March 3, 2020 at 8:02 am
Just uploaded Steve’s latest video….my thoughts are found below.
I love John Wayne! He was one of the first movie stars that I actually knew by name as a kid. The Duke made so many great movies, I can only guess it was a tough decision to pick his number one movie…The Searchers, The Quiet Man or…..oh…. wait a minute this video is on John Payne….lol. Hmmm….don’t nearly as much about as I do about Wayne. I have not seen many of his movies….only 6. Favorite would be #1 Miracle on 34th Street and #6 Kansas City Confidential. I have seen 4 of his Top 5….but neither #2 Dodsworth or #3 The Razor’s Edge really impressed me. Voted up and shared at UltimateMovieRankings.com. It is our post of the day. Good stuff.
Hi Bruce, you’ve seen more than I have, I only managed 2, Flora has seen 10. I only really knew this actor from that Kris Kringle film but his name had been popping up a lot on various movie posters on my videos.
Should be worthy of a UMR page if you can find all the stats on Payne. This video already has more views than the more well known Burgess Meredith, my last video. Thanks for the comment, vote and share, much appreciated.
HI GUYS
“The Razor’s Edge really impressed me.” – The Work Horse speaking of Power/Payne’s version.
“The Razor’s Edge with Bill Murray was better.” – Dan
Opinions vary and I hesitate to come down on one side or the other in even a friendly disagreement between two such long-established Giants of this site like you pair and it would be a big under statement of me to say that I vlaue the great array of marvellous information that you both continually provide on this site.
However I like to “tell it as it is” or at least as I see it and goodness knowsI have contradicted WH enough times but on this occasion I have to say that I support his sources which give 1946s Razors Edge a 79% and the Murray 1984 version a 59% one.
Indeed I would go further than that as the Power/Payne Razors Edge is a film that I have watched many times down the years as it is one of the most atmospheric films that I have ever seen and if anything 79% whilst excellent does not do it justice in relation to the pleasure it has given me personally.
Conversely whilst I am a big fan of Bill Murray I was very disappointed with his version and feel the slightly less than good Cogerson rating of 59% is spot on. The black and white photography in the 1946 film added to the atmpspherics in my estimation whereas the colour which was called Rankcolor diluted the atmospherics of the 1984 version for me.
PS: I have mentioned before that I have a personal friend who as a secondary job dablles in theatricsal work and a few years back he was actually hired for a period as Murray’s stand in on a movie. My friend tells me that Bill was very easy to work with on the movie concerned and when interacting with actors and other co-workers away from shooting scenes he was highly sociable and became just “one of the boys”
Maybe because I saw Murray’s version first.
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Dan
March 3, 2020 at 9:28 am
And you haven’t done a page on him, you should be ashamed. He’s billed higher than some others you’ve done pages on like Dan Duryea, Clifton Webb, Maureen O’Hara.
I’ve seen all these films years ago. The last John Payne stuff I saw was some episodes of Restless Gun, a TV series he had in the late 50’s on METV or some other retro TV channel.
I believe he owned the rights to the James Bond books and he pitched them to studios who had no interest in them at the time. He gave up and sold the rights to Cubby Broccoli and the rest is history.
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Anonymous
March 3, 2020 at 1:25 pm
DAN Well spoken. However John Payne was an action/adventure star whose flicks sometimes were on the bottom half of double bills and consequently often critics and other types of movie people adopt a snobbish attitude to those stars and their movies and yet drool over performers who never carried either an A or B movie. For example:
1/According to Larry Buster Crabbe B movie adventure and serial movies star the A list stars like Spencer Tracy wouldn’t sit at the same canteen dinner table as the action stars who weren’t A list performers like Flynn, Ty Power etc.
2/Joel Hirschhorn in his book even ignores Audie Murphy presumably because Audie was largely confined to B westerns. Yet not only did Audie give 50s audiences great years of entertainment especially young boys like me back then but he was America’s most decorated soldier because of his bravery in war.
Maybe Murphy’s service to his country cut no ice with Hirschhorn because the likes of Joel and others weren’t “real Americans” to use one of The Duke’s descriptions of some of his fellow citizens.
However to be fair to Bruce he HAS done a Murphy page at least and indeed took the trouble to buy and post me a very fine book on Audie’s films.
Aloha Bob aka A. Nonymous, John Payne seems to have plenty of fans, the video has already passed my last three in views. Or maybe folk are wondering who this Payne guy is and are looking out of curiosity? 😉
HI STEVE Your videos are in my opinion rewarding viewing regardless of who the subject is. Artistic posters and stills have a life of their own.
I loved the John Payne films in my youth and if I had one of your time machines I would go back and watch them all over again. However today’s action and adventure films are usually so frantic and repetitive that they bore me easily.
I was watching an episode of the television sitcom Frasier the other night and in it Frasier and Niles go to see an old classic foreign language movie that I have found so appealing that I have watched it several times over the years. It is called Da Drussen Im Dufden and it has won many prestigious awards at art festivals such as Cannes.
It tells the story of the passage of a long standing aristocratic German dynasty down the centuries and is seen through the ‘eyes’ of an antique chair in the family’s ancestral home. If one sits in the chair the family’s history flashes by one in a vision.
It is a great favourite also with the thinking men and women in a movie buffs group that I belong to but from what I can glean from comments of yours that I have seen I suspect it might be a bit slow for you; and it is probably slightly too deep for that Bruce fellow and the author of that 1983 book who they say is his mentor.