CineSavant Column
Hello!
We found something interesting while spooling through a better-than-average compilation of 1930s travelogue pictures of Hollywood and environs … you know, those YouTube things that show up optimized and colorized.
This one has some pretty good items, such as the still-standing radio buildings and the Earl Carroll theater on Sunset, the Griffith Observatory on mostly undeveloped hills, the Hollywoodland Sign, etc. Also, (at 8:04) we see some really handsome shots of the Pan Pacific Auditorium and its distinctive pylons, from right in my neighborhood. The present day replacement building has but one pitiful pylon.
The big surprise was seeing, on the Columbia Ranch Lot, a glimpse from afar of the giant set for Frank Capra’s 1937 Lost Horizon. The shot pans right from a fake mountain until we see the distinctive art deco towers poking out over the edge of a wall. The really impressive set looks even bigger on screen. (beginning at 7:22 )
Looking online for a good photo, we came across these Instagram movies of the stars posing for pictures on the huge Lost Horizon set — Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, John Howard, H.B. Warner. Jane can’t have been happy bundled up in that costume.
Then, CineSavant correspondent Phil Smoot responded to last week’s column picture of Vincent Price, to write to tell me about seeing a screening of A.I.P.’s Vincent Price horror show The Last Man on Earth with a completely different main title card … The Damned Walk at Midnight.
CineSavant’s go-to authority on all things A.I.P. is Gary Teetzel, so I asked him if he knew anything about such a title change. It wasn’t rare for distributors and theater owners to ‘invent’ new titles for movies, especially far away from Hollywood. The title might be changed for print ads, but the movie itself would usually retain the original title. John McElwee brought up this subject at least once on his Greenbriar Picture Shows page, about Major Dundee.
Gary had heard about the title The Damned Walk at Midnight. He forwarded a picture from the web, supposedly taken at a drive-in theater. Not only does Last Man have a new title card, it’s obviously a studio-produced job. The lettering matches the original design, and the text is cleanly matted over the correct background scene.
My idea of deep research, reviewer’s style, is a double-click to the IMDB. It indeed lists The Damned Walk at Midnight as an alternate title …. but where, how, and why? No doubt about it, CineSavant is a treasure trove of important mysteries to be solved.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson