CineSavant Column
Hello!
A very nice Hollywood Reporter article by Thomas Doherty begins by reporting on Francis Coppola’s latest exploits with Megalopolis. It then offers a nice look-back at his saga from the ’70s, when he risked all in the quest to make Apocalypse Now.
Only a world-class filmmaker with a firm cinematic ‘mission’ could have done what Coppola did. We remember well all the snarky press coverage during the four-year lead-up to the release of Apocalypse — and then were blown away by the result. The Doherty article calls the Cinerama Dome premiere engagement booklet a collector’s item; I saved my copy with my ticket attached as seen above on the right. The article:
An appendum to the article gives us a couple of nice paragraphs of sound designer Walter Murch explaining Dolby 5.1 sound, aka ‘six track with split surrounds.’ What fun that format was. In 1989 I cut a 20-minute exhibitor’s promo for The Abyss which was printed in 70mm and and given full 6-track audio. We had no final music score for the promo — so we cut in music from Die Hard!
The CineSavant review of the Apocalypse Now 4K disc tries to express the impression it made on us back in ’79. Good, bad, or indifferent, it was really something — very few movies kept us up talking until 3 in the morning.
The ever-resourceful Michael McQuarrie has come up with a particularly maddening piece of archival film, misidentified by the archivists themselves. They describe it as shot by an ‘unknown amateur filmmaker.’ It’s 19 minutes of Hollywood home movies that alternate between images on a golf course, at various parties, and even some footage in Gibraltar and Spain. Nobody’s going to confuse them with my home movies. The important footage is about 9 minutes of film taken at a Hollywood pool party, and on a sailboat.
It’s pretty good amateur work, in focus with good color. A viewfinder parallax problem is present — many shots are framed way high.
The ‘Periscope Film’ people don’t know what they’ve got.
Periscope Film’s text identifies Julie Newmar, Jamie Farr (incorrectly) and Henry Silva, and that’s about it. I did better, spotting Howard St. John, Saul Chaplin and Hope Holliday. The many young women at the pool party threw us … are they real starlets, or just the party host’s very attractive relatives?
The piece everybody wants to see is the sailboat excursion. Comedian Robert Strauss burlesque-clowns at 10:16 and is soon making a nuisance of himself with Julie Newmar, who is wearing a leopard print bikini. On the deck of a sailboat, she can’t just walk away. At 11:17, Strauss really starts asking for a punch in the nose — although Newmar takes the molestation in stride. The rights owner has no idea who Robert Strauss is — they only identify him as ‘uncouth fellow seafarer.’
Then Michael McQuarrie made the key ID of Peter Palmer, the clue that made it all come together: this is the cast of Paramount’s 1959 Li’l Abner. That means that the footage is from 1958 or 1959. The page says ‘the 1960s,’ but clothing in general and especially the kid’s clothing at a party look very ’50s to me.
So, after taking far too much time trying to identify people in the video, here’s what we’ve come up with:
Peter Palmer (Li’l Abner) at 01:45
Carmen Alvarez Block (Moonbeam McSwine) with Palmer at 01:45
Hope Holliday at 01:52 and 02:45 (flashing midriff)
Saul Chaplin at 02:02
Howard St. John at 02:09
Joe E. Marks (Pappy Yocum) at 02:12;
Al Nesor (Evil Eye Fleagel — not Jamie Farr) at 04.26
Norman Panama (producer, co-screenwriter) at 05:09
Melvin Frank (director, co-screenwriter) at 05:09, 11:09
Henry Silva at 05:23
Henry Silva appears to be a guest with no direct connection to Li’l Abner. Songwriter, arranger and music supervisor Saul Chaplin may have been an unbilled consultant on the movie. Assuming I’ve identified Norman Panama and Melvin Frank correctly, it looks like Frank is the ‘host’ of these home movies. I wonder how many of my I.D.s will prove to be incorrect?
So can anybody I.D. more of these faces?
I know I’m missing people I shouldn’t miss, like the man on the boat at 10:53 … ? Others look equally familiar. Many pose as if they expect to be recognized. I see one guy who looks a bit like Al Capp, but not enough. Identifying the pretty actresses is very difficult. We didn’t spot Stella Stevens or Leslie Parrish, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t fooled.
Any help with any of these names? I know I should recognize some of these … Babbette Bain, Lesley-Marie Colburn, Carole Conn, Donna Douglas, Bonnie Evans, Marianne Gaba, Valerie Harper, Maureen Hopkins, Fran McHale, Mabel Rea, Dolores Starr … ?
CineSavant has readers much more informed than I … we’ll update this column if more Identifications are made.
[ First Find, 04 23 24: Correspondent Walt House named the man on the boat at 10:53, and it is someone I should have recognized: the noted songwriter Johnny Mercer. He’s easily the most famous & talented person on the boat, and the lyricist for all of Gene de Paul’s songs for the musical Li’l Abner. ]
Here’s the link to the Internet Archive page with the home movies:
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson