“Oh, jeez …. why can’t WE have a Sampo?”

 

Hello!

The generous David J. Show links us up with yet another excellent web item. Frank Frazetta’s granddaughter Sara Frazetta gives us a detailed account of the illustrator’s work for the National Lampoon magazine in the early 1970s. The brisk 12-minute video piece is snappy, engaging, and packed with FF’s stirring artwork.

National Lampoon’s art director Michael Gross figures in quite a bit. It’s all fun and fresh and Ms. Frazetta is an excellent hostess:

 

Frazetta & the National Lampoon 

The video is one of a series, attached to an all-things-Frazetta website, Frazetta Girls.

 

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Ah, CineSavant doesn’t like rumors, and naturally never web-publishes unsubstantiated rumors, because that’s not good journalism. All of America in 2025 is making a big effort to stay aboveboard and honest about everything!

… which is why we’re intrigued to hear rumors about the film collection of the late Wade Williams … Mainly, that it may be in the hands of new owners sooner than later.

If the new rights holders (the made up, fantasy rights holders of rumorville) exploit and release that library properly, a nice chunk of 1950s Sci-fi and horror could finally see the light of day in decent restored quality. Anything is possible.

We’re of course thinking of movies that need serious revisits, like our favorite originals  Rocketship X-M and  Kronos.  ↑  Our latest, up-to-date reviews of those two pictures are now 25 years old. Here’s hoping the rumor has weight. The joke that’s going around is,

“Yes, the whole collection went to an eager buyer: Susan Hart!“ 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

“There goes my last lead. I feel all dead inside. I’m backed up in a dark corner and I don’t know who’s hitting me.”

 

Hello!

Well, ignoring the world for the moment, we go forward with movie fun as best we can.

First up is a gem posted by Matt Bucy on Vimeo, relayed to us by the unsinkable David J. Schow. What Mr. Bucy has done is to re-edit  The Wizard of Oz, but in a way nobody expected … actually, a few years back we saw this same insanity applied to Star Wars ….

Bucy’s method is to break the film down by words — every word in the entire movie, and then rearrange the entire movie alphabetically. That explains the altered title, for starters, and then the very perplexing credits. The movie is the same length, only rearranged. At ten minutes in, I’m listening to a number of ‘arounds;’ Dorothy must say the word ‘auntie’ 20 times. The movie goes back to normal when nobody’s talking, which puts some transitional scenes in the clear. Early on we get a full minute of the film’s screams, listed as ‘aieee.’ It’s maddening, but also brilliant in its way. Flurries of words like ‘but’ may only be 2 or 3 frames in duration.

Frankly, the words heard in Of Oz The Wizard are more interesting than those in Star Wars …. George Lucas doesn’t know winners like ‘Cellophant.’

 

“of OZ The WIZARD 

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CineSavant doesn’t review many Silent Movies, and we’re happy not to be criticized for it, but a close collaborator on silents lately has been Jonathan Gluckman, who clued me into good discs of some silent Sci-fi I should have reviewed long ago.

I asked him for a good link or two, and Jonathan steered me directly to the page of the  Mary Pickford Foundation, which has dozens of authoritative articles, accompanied by rare photos, of Pickford’s career, her associates, publicity sidebars, and topics relevant to her partnership in the United Artists corporation.

Newly uploaded is an article by I think Cari Beauchamp on the production of the silent Ernst Lubitsch production Rosita, a Spanish Romance, from 1923. It’s great history … Pickford brought Lubitsch to America, a move that was resisted by some that still had it in for anything German.

Jonathan notes that the only Rosita disc he can find online is from a company called Grapevine; at the  Nitrateville page is an in-depth collectors’ bulletin board that discusses the film, Grapevine’s disc and a new restoration. Sourced from elements with Gosmofilm, The Pickford Foundation and two other entities, it’s supposed to premiere in Venice in August.

 

Lubitsch, Pickford and the making of Rosita 

I haven’t heard so much about silent film personalities since taking classes with David Bradley at UCLA. The director would bring his personal 16mm prints to screen, and rhapsodize over the lost art of this and that. He invited his movie celebrity friends to a New Years’ party every year.

Another J. Gluckman link is to a 2011 piece about Mary Pickford’s fairly controversial brother Jack, at Steve Vaught’s historic Hollywood page  Paradise Leased. Jonathan writes that Jack Pickford is often portrayed as an example of Hollywood at its worst. But Steve Vaught doesn’t agree and comes to the defense.

 

You Don’t Know Jack: A Second Take on Jack Pickford 

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And Michael McQuarrie found this short article from 2013, on a page called Movies and Mania, that gives us the bad news about a film company we remember from the 1970s, Tyburn. Written by David Flint, we start off learning that Tyburn did not only not inherit the crown of Hammer Films, it wasn’t even as successful as Amicus and Tigon.

There’s a lot of information here that’s new to me, not being a full-time follower of the impressive Klemensen Dynasty of fine reporting, mainly on Hammer Films.

The article asserts that none of Tyburn’s films were successful!

 

Tyburn Films: A short-lived British horror production company 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Pesci and Hershey, still a good show.

 

Hello!

We received this funny little toy the other day … Criterion is using them to promote its Criterion Closet Van, which is presumably roaming the country spreading joy and video discs wherever it goes.

The vehicle is a mobile copy of the ‘Criterion Closet’ in the company’s New York office, where they’ve videotaped many celebs going on happy shopping sprees, as shown at this page.

The Criterion article about the roving van is here:

 

The Criterion Closet Is Hitting the Road 

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And just a few days ago, animation expert Jerry Beck posted a great ten minute YouTube video about the animation giant Tex Avery:

 

Tex Avery at Chapman College, 1974. 

It’s an audio recording of Avery, illustrated with animated overcuts … ten minutes of fascination. It’s from Jerry Beck’s authoritative blog Cartoon Research, home to a multitude of insights on the world of animation.

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

One of the more disturbing photos Famous Monsters published — too bad the movie isn’t as scary.

 

Hello!

What better way to commemorate the great Michael Schlesinger than with a week’s tribute at Trailers from Hell for his favorite movies, introduced by Mike Himself.

And there’s no greater (or more obvious) choice for the people at TFH to start with than Michael’s favorite film, the one he kept assuring us was the best ever made. We are not going to be forgetting this special movie fan:

 

Michael Schlesinger  on  It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Bigger-than-life, talented, funny, friendly … Michael Schlesinger is gone.

 

Hello!

Thanks for all the notes and emails. CineSavant Central is not close to any of the fire sites (the ones up ’til now), although the Hollywood (Sunset) Fire a few nights back had us checking the news every twenty minutes. As of this writing the firefighters’ battle rages. The winds in some places have subsided enough to allow effective firefighting.

Wednesday morning we woke to some really strange lighting … dark billows of smoke directly above (from Altadena, we think) but clear skies to the West. The combination threw colors off — white things had a bluish cast. The ‘key light’ was from the side, which added to the artificial look. Definite End of the World lighting. The photos are just as they came off my phone; they enlarge.

We don’t make light of this — entire communities burned, so many lives kicked into the street — and the threat continues mostly unabated. Some really good firefighting saved West Hollywood. Lots of power outages; so far we’re not affected. Can’t let this lucky feeling make me feel complacent … most everything burns under the wrong conditions.

 

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And our friends at Classic Flix have finished several years of work on their disc set

The Little Rascals – The Restored Silents, Volume 1.The Classic Flix ad copy tells us that there were 220 Our Gang comedy short subjects, later re-titled Little Rascals. This is the silent series begun in 1922.

The company has put a restoration comparison up on YouTube. The shows had to be rescued from 16mm copies, and the demo shows how improved they are:  The Restored Silents, Volume 1 Restoration Comparison.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

See the 30 frames-per-second Todd-AO version — it’s fresher and brighter!