The Hero of 34th Street

Miracle on 34th Street (Seaton, 1947) remains one of the best-loved Christmas films, and with good reason: it has a terrific cast (led by Oscar-winner Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle), a story that deftly balances seasonal uplift with modern skepticism, and a tone that never takes itself too seriously.  It's one of the few films I try to catch around this time each year.

But the film also stands out as probably the finest cinematic moment for the United States Postal Service.  As you remember, late in the film, the trial over Kris's sanity isn't going well, so Susan (Natalie Wood) decides to write him a letter, which her mother (Maureen O'Hara) mails to the county courthouse, via those vertical mail chutes you'd find in high-rise buildings from that era.

Note that the total postage is 16 cents--significant overkill since first class postage back then was only 3 cents! In fact, there wasn't a 13-cent US stamp issued in the entire 1940s and I can't find any evidence (based on the image) that this stamp we see ever existed at all.  Was it created by the production department specifically for this shot?  Very curious.  The 3-cent stamp looks like the Thomas Jefferson issue of the Presidential series (Scott #807).

We then cut to one of the New York City mail sorting centers, where a post office worker (we never learn his name) calls to his co-worker Lou to observe that of all the Santa letter's he's seen, none has been addressed like this one.  Lou has a newspaper and shows his friend the story of the court case, and this anonymous worker gets an epiphany:

“Hey Lou, how many Santy Claus letters we got down at the dead letter office?”

“I don’t know, there must be about 50,000 of ‘em—bags and bags all over the joint and there’s more comin’ in every day.”

“Yeah.  Hey, uh…Hey Lou…it’d be kinda nice to get rid of ‘em, wouldn’t it, huh?”

I've always enjoyed this sequence because of one particular detail--the incredibly casual way the workers would throw mail up in the air and over their shoulders, to have them caught in overhead circulation paths that route the various letters to their specific destinations.  It's such a great old school detail.

So, as we know, this brainchild proves to be the deciding factor in Kris's exoneration.  But before we get the familiar image of the contents of the mail bags--21 in total--being thrown on the bench of Judge Harper (Gene Lockhart)--the USPS also gets its own little public relations boost, as orated by lawyer/leading man John Payne:

“The Post Office department was created by the second Continental Congress on July 26, 1776.  The first Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin.  The Post Office department is one of the largest business concerns in the world.  Last year under Robert Hannigan, it did a gross business of $1,112,877,174....Your honor, the figures I’ve just quoted indicate an efficiently run organization.  Furthermore, the United States postal laws and regulations make it a criminal offense to willfully misdirect mail or intentionally deliver it to the wrong party.”

And so with that combination of kismet and lawyerly quick-thinking, Kris is off the hook and Christmas is saved--all thanks to the USPS and its official recognition of Kris as the one-and-only Santa Claus!

This shot comes from the pile on the judge's desk (we soon see him clear them out of frame to make his ruling).  Note the Jefferson stamp again, as well as the (insufficient postage) 1-cent Washington stamp (Scott #804) from the same series.  I like that there are different 1946 postmarks, too--though if you look closely, one of the postmarks is from Indianapolis!.  If there's no other address besides "Santa Claus", how did a letter from Indiana end up in a dead letter office 700 miles away?  Maybe they're not quite so efficiently run after all...

 

Hearts and Minds

I was 8 when Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter came out 30 years ago, so too young to appreciate the cinematic division that year between the two major Vietnam movies, the other being Coming Home (Ashby). I don’t remember my family ever discussing Vietnam once when I was growing up, though given my dad’s conservative bent, I think it’s safe to assume where he stood on the conflict.

But these two films were my first exposure to the war. And while it’s easy to see what the fuss was about politically, it’s also bewildering to understand the critical love for the two. Hunter grounds itself in realism and community in the heartfelt extended wedding setpiece at the beginning, but feels compelled to lay on the barbarism and contrivance absurdly thick once the friends are reunited by the Viet Cong. Coming Home wants to make itself an updated version of The Best Years of Our Lives, but lets the love story and liberal self-loathing overwhelm any complexity with predictable and schematic character arcs. There are powerful supporting performances in both, and perhaps even some valuable lessons, but each would’ve benefited from far less of a heavy hand.

The best Vietnam film that year is also the least well-known, for Go Tell the Spartans (Post) doesn’t have an axe to grind or a soapbox to stand on, but its portrayal of conflicting loyalties and absurd demands on an Army base ring true emotionally, while staying committed to the idea that smart, capable soldiers are often the most primed to have their dedication evolve into disillusionment. It’s a terrific film.

The Vietnam Veterans memorial (itself an enormously moving monument to visit) has had two stamps issues: the landscape depiction (Scott #2109, on the front of the card) and one part of the Celebrate the Century series (Scott #3190g, on the reverse side). The Vietnam War stamp is also part of the Celebrate the Century series (Scott #3188g), while the Appalachians and Pennsylvania stamps (Scott #4062 & 3733) are part of the Wonders of America and Greetings from America series, respectively. Hunter famously won 5 Oscars (to Home’s three), including Best Sound (Scott #3772j), another installment of the American Filmmaking series.

Top 10 Films of 1978

1. The Last Waltz (Scorsese)
2. Dawn of the Dead (Romero)
3. The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Olmi)
4. Fingers (Toback)
5. Straight Time (Grosbard)
6. Go Tell the Spartans (Post)
7. Blue Collar (Schrader)
8. A Wedding (Altman)
9. Days of Heaven (Malick)
10. House Calls (Zieff)

Stranger in a Strange Land

I’ve ridden on the Ferris Wheel in Vienna featured in Carol Reed’s The Third Man.  I’ve visited the Trevi fountain in Rome that is so memorably eroticized in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.  But despite being to New York City several times, I’ve still never been to the top of the Empire State Building.

I don’t know what the lines were like to reach the landmark’s scenic heights 75 years ago, but poor Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) took the express route when King Kong (Schoedsack/Cooper, 1933) saw fit to use the world’s tallest building (at the time) as the site of his last stand.  It’s a tremendous climax to a film that may show its age around the edges, but has not dated a bit in its rich, creative vision and sense of dread and fantastic awe.

There have been, of course, remakes since then, but for some reason, the subsequent versions have meddled with what I’ve always felt was the horrific center of the story.  They’ve tried to make Kong more “human”, assigning more external emotion to his story when the point has never been, to these eyes, his unrequited “love”, but his own primal sense of mystery and, by extension, his larger alienation in a world hostile to him.

Both Jessica Lange’s vapid heroine and Naomi Watt’s spirited one attempt to draw a real connection with Kong, one that’s trusting and protective.  But in seeing it as a relationship to nurture, the subsequent versions reduce his frightening grandeur, making him less mythic and more mere monkey.  But Fay Wray can’t get free of him fast enough, and there’s never a sign of remorse or loss at his death in her eyes.  Because the world, including her, sees him simply as a monster, in all its imposing ferociousness.  There is nothing sentimental in how Schoedsack & Cooper portray his plight or his demise.

But that doesn’t mean his final fall isn’t any less poignant, because through the incredible craftsmanship of visual effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, we the audience are able to see what Carl Denham & co. can’t—that Kong is a tragic figure as well as an epic one.  Denham’s last line “It was Beauty killed the Beast” frames the story in cultural parameters he can’t resist, as huckster and showman.  But it’s also laced with contempt and pity, not reverence, for while Kong was ruler of his world, he was only of value in ours as a captive for the curious.  Kong is Denham's meal ticket, but nothing more than a dumb animal, easily conquered and reduced to a sound bite or facile metaphor.  A freakish anecdote laying dead on the NYC boulevard.

But we know differently.  And it is this insight, this privilege at a larger view of Kong and his story, which makes the film so sad, and so glorious.  Because Kong's level of expressiveness was only possible through a triumph of technology, and all the behavioral quirks that he shows, all the attention to detail that the stop-motion photography brings to remarkable life, are testament to cinema’s power to terrify, transfix, and enchant.  And in that world of the imagination, Kong does remain king.

Kong has yet to get his own US stamp, but the Empire State Building one was part of the Celebrate the Century issue for the 1930's (Scott # 3185b).  The wonderful score for Kong was written by Max Steiner (Scott # 3339), while the Special Effects stamp and Disney's Beauty and the Beast stamp are Scott #s 3772i and 4027 respectively.  The Chinese Year of the Monkey stamp was Scott # 3895l while Canada's Fay Wray stamp came out in 2005.

My Top 10 films from 1933

1. Man's Castle (Borzage)

2. Footlight Parade (Bacon)

3. King Kong (Cooper/Schoedsack)

4. Snow White (Fleischer; Betty Boop short)

5. Las Hurdes (Bunuel)

6. Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy)

7. Zero de Conduite (Vigo)

8. Duck Soup (McCarey)

9. Queen Christina (Mamoulian)

10.  Dinner at Eight (Cukor)

1 

In the Beginning...

I've discussed a little about how I buy first-day-of-issue caches to supplement the customized postcards I create--particularly when they apply to film stamps that were issued before I began collecting.  This means that I've done my fair share of research poring through old stamp catalogs to see what kind of stamps (US and otherwise) are out there. 

The earliest stamp I ever found that specifically referred to the art of cinema was this 1944 US release, commemorating the 50th anniversary of motion pictures.  Presumably, they use the creation of the first film (Fred Ott's Sneeze) in 1894 as a benchmark, though the first public cinema, a Kinetoscope parlor in New York City, also opened that year.  Because it's such an important philatelic issue given my "topical" interest, I've picked up more caches for that issue that I would've ordinarily.

You'll notice that some of these were postmarked in LA and some in NY.  While there is now a central office that handles First Day of Issue postmarks for any newly released stamp, it still appears that back then, some post offices would take it upon themselves to have a special postmark because of the demand and popularity of these kinds of collectibles. 

All these caches were mass-produced, so none of them is unique and I've seen other examples of the exact same illustration at subsequent conventions.  The more rare examples would actually be the bottom two, since they incorporate a later issue (The Films of 1939) to supplement the original--something which I'll be doing more of with samples in my collection in the future.

Even decades later, this 1944 stamp (Scott #926) remained very unusual and cinema-themed releases were few and far-between, outside of the occasional movie star.  So because the pickings were really slim for many years, it actually seemed conceivable that I could collect every cinema-related stamp made worldwide.

Then, the market exploded with souvenir sheets (usually from third world countries) specifically targeting collectors with appetites for celebrities and movie stars, and this ambition of mine became prohibitively expensive.  So while my collecting habits were two pronged for a while, I no longer worry about any new cinema stamps that are outside the US.  There are too many and the souvenir sheets are designed to be pricey. 

But what I do have, I'll begin to post here, too, even though the cards and postmarks are my primary emphasis.

The Beau Geste and Stagecoach stamps are Scott #s 2447 & 2448 respectively.

Stamp of Disapproval

Sometimes, things don’t always go as planned when it comes to getting the postmarks back from the USPS—whether through a mistake on their end or lack of planning on mine.

For the James Dean issue back in 1996, it never occurred to me that I needed to ask for a special postmark.  I didn’t for the Marilyn issue the year before and they all came out uniform, clean, and sharp-looking.  But lo-and-behold, when I got them back, a majority of them looked like the one above: no special design and no indication that it’s even a First-Day-of-Issue.  As generic and undistinctive a postmark as you can imagine.

Curiously, a few of them were given a different postmark, as you can see below.  This design looks great.  Unfortunately, none of the ones with the stamp on the front of the postcard with the image were given this nice postmark.

So clearly, since both postmarks were applied to my shipment, it was the choice of the person in the Postmaster’s office to use the crappy stamp for most of my cards, perhaps thinking it didn’t matter.

Now, every single time I send in a collection to be stamped, I include the following message on a post-it on every single rubber-banded bundle of cards:

Please Apply Illustrated First-Day-of-Issue Postmark on EACH card.  Thank You.

Of course, with many of these James Dean cards, the damage is done, so they sit together in a box, of negligible interest or value, testament to a lesson learned.

Westpex

Westpex is the annual postage stamp convention that I attend every spring—-the biggest on the West Coast and held near the San Francisco International Airport (it used to be in downtown SF back when I first started going). It’s always interesting going because my brand of covers and collecting doesn’t have much credibility among the old schoolers in attendance. In fact, even though I’m in my late 30s, I still skew in the youngest 10th percentile among the attendees. While there are efforts to outreach to youth, it still remains essentially an old person’s hobby (and, from the looks of the attendees, predominantly male as well).


It’s pretty rare to find a postcard FDC like the ones I create at these things, but sometimes I do find something else interesting that has a cinematic connection. This Marilyn Monroe cache and cover is a good example. The idea of using older stamps that have some kind of thematic relationship to the subject never really occurred to me until I ran across this item years ago. Now, the reason you see so many other, older stamps tied to the First-Day-of-Issue postmarks I collect is because I was inspired by this piece.

Monroe was, of course, the first Legends of Hollywood stamp release (Scott #2967). The numerous Monroe postcards I created for that issue is a story for another day, but nothing I did was as inventive as this Kennedy collaboration, using both JFK (Scott #1246) and Robert (Scott #1770) to sandwich the tragic starlet, though I'd like to think the card with her and Ronald Reagan (Scott #3897) has its own charm.

Parting the Red Sea

Growing up, Charlton Heston was a perpetual fixture in our household (where he was affectionately known as “Chuck”). This was largely because of the annual Easter broadcasts of The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. It was the movie star my mom talked about the most, and years before I saw the film, I knew how El Cid ended because of my dad’s vivid description.

It was later that I discovered the various apocalyptic films of his later career, from the atrocious Earthquake to the priceless Soylent Green and The Omega Man, which found their own perverse redemption in his totemic campiness. Always square-jawed and overly-committed to whatever catastrophe he was facing, from ant armies in The Naked Prey to circus train derailments in The Greatest Show on Earth (a misnomer if you ever heard one), he might be great fun, but I never considered him a good actor.

But he could be. Probably the greatest surprise of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet was that, among a cast of legendary British thespians, the best performance was Chuck’s as the Player King, full of authority and gravity, his commanding voice so beautifully suited for the Bard when I had become accustomed to hearing him quote sword-and-sandal scripture-lite. I’ve owned the beautiful soundtrack for Antony & Cleopatra for years but have never seen it, though one day I hope to.


Though Orson Welles' brilliant Touch of Evil remains his best film, a personal favorite is Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968), a film that could easily lose itself in the premise and prosthetics if not for Chuck, who grounds the film as Everyman, a sci-fi Adam who sells the confusion and absurdity of his predicament with the type of commitment the film needs. I won’t necessarily argue that it’s a great performance, but it’s calibrated exactly to the picture’s benefit, and be it his artist’s instincts or just the result of astute casting, that final moment on the beach is iconic for a simple reason. It works. RIP, Chuck.

Chuck may get his own stamp one day, which is why I’ve saved the front of the postcard for him. But the makeup was much celebrated at the time (it won a special Academy Award since the category didn't even exist yet) and it seemed a perfect opportunity to add as many Statue of Liberties as I could muster: Scott #2599 , 3451, and especially 1599, which itself appears to be peeking its head out from some futuristic horizon.