| Intl. Notebook | Nov 20 2022 |
In show business the camera never sleeps.
Night and Day, for which you see the cover of an issue—its very first issue, actually—that was published this month in 1948, billed itself as America's Picture Magazine of Entertainment. It was launched in New York City by Alho Publishing, and as you'll see it came out of the gate swinging for the fences with its visual content, from its bisected cover featuring burlesque dancer Lili St. Cyr and actress Ramsey Ames, to its tongue-in-cheek feature on the twenty-seven types of kisses, to its approving look at George White's Scandals revue at Hollywood's Florentine Gardens. Interesting side note on Scandals—Wikipedia says it ended in 1939. Well, obviously not quite. Elsewhere Night and Day touches on college hazing, professional football, and the Greenwich Village art scene. In total, it's a gold mine for vintage photos.
Our favorite offering in the magazine is its quiz on Hollywood stars and their stand-ins. You just have to take a good look at twenty performers, and try to determine which twenty random people are their stand-ins. To score well on such a quiz you'd have to be either the biggest Hollywood head in history or someone who has the opposite of face blindness, whatever that would be. Face unforgettability, maybe. Even though we don't expect many people to try the quiz, we worked hard to put it into internet-usable form. In the magazine the photos were five-across on the page, which made them too small for the column width of our website. So we rearranged them to be two-across, and thus enlarged, they're clear, though you have to do a lot of scrolling. Nevertheless, it's there if you want, along with fifty other panels to eat your time with marvelous efficiency. Please enjoy.
The Hollywood movie star stand-in quiz begins below. First you get twenty famous actors and actresses:
And below are their twenty stand-ins. If you get more than half of these right you're a human face recognition algorithm. Quit your day job immediately and report to the FBI.
Below are the answers.
New York CityHollywoodAlho PublishingNight and DayGeorge White's ScandalsGeorge WhiteLili St. CyrRamsey AmesBetty ArlenXavier CugatLorraine AllenMicheline PresleBob ChappuisJuliette GrecoEstelle DanfrayEvelyn KnappCharles BickfordGreta GarboConrad NagelFay WrayJoel McCreaLana TurnerRobert YoungJean HarlowJames CagneyLupe VelezJohn HollandRochelle HudsonWalter Byronburlesque
| Vintage Pulp | Sep 16 2022 |
Tired of checkers, chess, and cards? Has he got a game for you.
Man hunted in the wild by a supposedly more intelligent and powerful foe is a concept used numerous times in Hollywood with great success, perhaps reaching its pinnacle with 1987's sci-fi actioner Predator. The idea goes all the way back to The Most Dangerous Game, a pre-Code chiller starring Joel McCrae, Leslie Banks, and Fay Wray. When a luxury yacht of upper crust types runs aground off the Pacific coast of South America, only McCrae survives. He's landed on a jungle island owned by a mad Russian named Count Zaroff, played with walleyed fervor by Banks, who hunts humans for kicks.
Zaroff's creepy ole stone mansion doesn't look like a place where one might hope to find aid, but McCrae has no choice but to go there. He isn't the only stranded raw meat hanging around. Boats occasionally crash because the Count moved the channel markers that are supposed to warn boaters away from the rocks. With each shipwreck he has new game to hunt. Wray is already on the island, having run aground before McCrae. She has an inkling things are not kosher, and she turns out to be correct.
The movie is stagy and clunky in its expository sequences, like most pre-Code productions, and Wray's acting is a sheer hoot, but there are positives. There's striking outdoor footage shot around Rancho Palos Verdes, which adds excellent imagery to a film that is indisputably a high visual achievement, and that in turn helps the action sequences come across as both gripping and believable. And of course the basic idea always works. Hunter and hunted, a battle of wits, a match to the death. The Most Dangerous Game premiered today in 1932.
*sigh* I'm getting mighty fucking bored on this island. Even my best formal wear doesn't lift my mood anymore.
My God. I suddenly have the most dastardly idea.
And now we shall play a very dangerous game! Staring like cats! We'll be in danger of enjoying ourselves!
Stand against the wall and I'll throw this knife at you. I mean—not at you. Close enough to be dangerous. I mean— Okay, I can see you're not into it.
How about a little Russian roulette? That's a fairly dangerous game.
Erm... Joel? I think we should flee before he gets to the most dangerous game.
We're lost aren't we? I said flee. I didn't say flee with no goddamn idea which way you were going.
Are you sure we shouldn't have turned left back there at the bog of doom?
Just admit you're lost, Joel. And not to add to your worries, but I'm getting pretty hungry. If I'm snippy it's your fault.
Okay, now we're just going in circles.
See? He's found us! You never listen!
Count! Can you hear me? I'll make you a deal! Take her, and let me leave!
RKO Radio PicturesHays CodeThe Most Dangerous GameJoel McCreaFay WrayLeslie BanksRobert Armstrongposter artcinemamovie review
| Femmes Fatales | Jun 13 2020 |
My last boyfriend? Actually, he was a bit of a beast.
Canadian actress Fay Wray was cinema's first true scream queen thanks to her appearances in early 1930s horror movies and her star turn in 1933’s King Kong. Though she is known mainly for that movie, she appeared in many worthy productions, most notably the excellent thriller The Most Dangerous Game. She’s seen here circa 1936.
| Vintage Pulp | Mar 2 2010 |
You can't go wrong if your poster has Kong.
The original King Kong took cinema by storm with its tale of a fantastic lost world, and its revolutionary visual effects. It also had the most consistently wonderful promo posters of possibly any film in history. All were great, but the best, in our opinion, is the version made for the world premiere at Radio City Music Hall, above. The numerous other versions are below, and all are stunning. King Kong, one of the most enduring movies ever made, opened in New York City today in 1933.
