CineSavant Column
Hello!
We received a great little note over the weekend. I assume that many Column items are old news to some CineSavant readers, but I suspect they might interest folk that don’t necessarily stay current with everything in disc / film – related web blab.
Last Saturday we posted three frame grabs from old films shot on Los Angeles streets, of movie marquees on Sunset Blvd., Wilshire Blvd. and Downtown. I could roughly guess the year they were taken, but nothing more.
The note is from ‘Murderous Ink,‘ who describes himself as “a sort of movie blogger living in Japan, and researching and writing about old films esp. prewar/postwar Japanese films and classic Hollywood film noirs.” His English-language website is called Enic-CinE, with the tagline, ‘Images of the past, if we can find them.’ One of M’s articles that was news to me, is about the use of Uranium in old-style Sepia Tone film prints.
Anyway, Murderous took it on himself to follow up on our time machine trip to the early 1950s. You will want to enlarge his newspaper image captures:
Hi Glenn, I am an avid fan of your website and always enjoy your insightful and very entertaining posts and reviews. I was particularly fascinated by your recent post with the frame grabs from the L.A. street cruising films from the ‘fifties. This may or may not be of interest to you, but I tried to identify the specific date of these films.
First, the giant Warner Theater in downtown L.A. showing Young Man with a Horn: Searching the movie ads in Los Angeles Times archive, I found that it started on March 3, 1950 at three Warners houses (Hollywood, Downtown, and Wiltern) and ran for 2 weeks, ending on March 16. In your screen shot we can read “LAST 2 DAYS” on the smaller display under the large movie title marquee. This ad from March 15, 1950 says “LAST 2 DAYS!” Their main ad is for Perfect Strangers, which would start two days later. So, that street cruising film must have been shot on March 15, 1950.
The second screen shot of the little Oriental Theater on Sunset in Hollywood: 
Browsing through L.A. Times ads again, I found that the Oriental Theater ran Singin’ in the Rain and The Pride of St. Louis between June 11 and 13, 1952. It was also booked as a Saturday kid matinee on the 14th. From the 15th forward they ran Singin’ with Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious. So, the uninterrupted ‘trip down Sunset Blvd.’ take was filmed between June 11 and 13, 1952. The ad below is from June 11, 1952.
The last image is of the smallish El Rey Theater on Wilshire, in the Miracle Mile district. Again, searching through L.A. Times ads from 1951, I found that the El Rey ran The Frogmen and Fugitive Lady between July 27 and August 9, 1951. Trying to narrow it down further, I thought, “how about the weather during this week? It seems a nice clear day.” I consulted the NOAA database, which reported that there was no precipitation between June 27 and August 8, 1951. Of course, it’s Los Angeles, so it’s always a clear nice day. The ad below is from July 27 L.A. Times.
Anyway, keep up good work! — Murderous Ink
Pretty neat, huh? What a nice surprise. Before the Internet, this research would require Murderous to fly across the Pacific and spend a day in our central library.
For a chaser, correspondent Michael McQuarrie circulated this clip from The Ed Sullivan Show, and we couldn’t resist.
When the music starts, we think ‘oh no, he’s lip-synching. But then it becomes apparent that Jones is singing live to a recorded orchestra. The fever was BIG for Thunderball over Christmas that year — at age 13, I was grabbed by a color ad in the comics section of the newspaper.
Jones belts it out really well, methinks … the end of his vocal on the soundtrack was always a laugh, the way he holds the final lyric “BA-A-A-L-L-L” until his voice finally gives out. He found a good compromise finale for this performance … and kept a straight face.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson