Day two of the Five Day Hiatal Lacuna, or whatever you want to call it. Today: 1927 newspaper movie ads.
Sunrise. It’s a remarkable movie.
Wait a minute wait a minute - Quinn Martin? The 60s / 70s TV producer? No: different guy. The Quinn Martin whose name was on the cool shows (Invaders, FBI, Fugitive) was born Irwin Cohn, but changed his name. I wouldn’t be surprised if he lifted it.
But who was the original Quinn? He quit the reviewing racket in 1931 and moved to Hollywood to write pictures instead of reviewing them.
I wonder how that worked out. No imdb stats as far as I can tell.
Summary: “Boisterous gangster kingpin Bull Weed rehabilitates his former lawyer from his alcoholic haze, but complications arise when he falls for Weed's girlfriend.”
It’s an early gangster pic, and set the tone for the rest.
Take a look at the Associate Producer credit:
Yes indeed. Budd’s father.
Watch the first few minutes. The 20s seem quite immediate, no? I can imagine myself in the theater watching this.
I think I used this one elsewhere, at some point. Or not. A reminder that people have been complaining about lurid violent amoral movies for a century. SEX LOVERS
It’s a silent musical!
A WWI Comedy: “Two American soldiers are captured by the Germans on the Western Front during World War One and escape a POW camp only to stumble into further life-threatening adventures when they come across an Arabian king's daughter while on the lam.”
I suppose they could do comedy about the war from a distance of nine years. Comedies come out of every war.
One of the soldiers, William Boyd, would go on to play Hopalong in the 50s. The other, Louis Wolheim, is instantly recognizable to anyone who saw the first “All Quiet on the Western Front” - he’s Kat, the veteran soldier.
No one seems particularly happy to be passionately in love. You wouldn’t guess that it’s set in a traveling circus.
"Popular prices" = we wrung 'em dry in the first week in the big houses, and now it's moving down a notch for the rest of its run.
Boxing / rich swell comedy:
IMDB Review: “I found this entire movie immensely contrived. The two separate relationships between the main characters (as prizefighter and manager, and then as uncouth servants in a posh household) never mesh properly. “
IMDB Trivia: “Despite the fantasy review, this is a lost film and hasn't been seen by anyone in a century.”
It’s based on a play. A year before, there’d been a song with the same name. It’s fun.
Wouldn’t be 1927 without . . .
From the sound of it (hah, sorry) you’d think this was the only movie made in 1927, and it put everything else in the shade. I suppose it did, inasmuch as no one talks about the movies above. But “Underworld” is better. “Sunrise” much better.
But this really was remarkable. Not the song sound sync, but the speaking, and the naturalness of smilin’ Al - and a line that broke the old paradigm while insisting that this is just the beginning.
Al will be there!
Imagine the reception. The stamping and whistling and shouting and clapping, a deafening wave of love and approval.
Today it's Beech-Nut. The innuendo on this one is just brilliant
Nowadays they’d be chastised for planet-killing reproduction:
The Brecker Quads, eh.
Woodmere native Allison Shearmur was one of the “Brecker Quads” and became a film studio executive responsible for such hits as “The Hunger Games” and the “American Pie” movies.
It’s an obit, alas.
For the teens who are way past that mush, some rock and roll, with confused abstractions that eventually resolve into theater marquees:
The Folk Craze would’ve been unendurable without these guys, although I think Tommy’s laying on the act a bit thick.
The mod swinging’ sound of today’s youth. I can only imagine how this irritated the older generation. That’s Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, but they’ve gone electric dagnabit
Once you’d outgrown gum and wanted something more manly: ptui!
Different company, though. This stuff was made by Lollilard, and they’d beaten Beech-Nut in a trademark case in 1927. Went all the way up to the Supreme Court.