All the World Is Waiting for You

Despite the remarkable ascendancy, critically and commercially, of the Marvel Comics cinematic Universe in the last decade, there is no denying that it has largely been one big sausage party.  Growing up as a Marvel comics fan, this was also true of the publisher itself.  Women heroes, when represented, were usually part of a team (Sue Richards, Scarlet Witch, Jean Grey) and there weren’t any female icons with the heft to carry their own title in any significant way.  When the USPS released a set of Marvel stamps ten years ago, the interests of gender parity meant including marginal characters like Elektra and Spider-Woman over far more famous heroes like Thor and Daredevil.  This was because Marvel simply didn’t have any females as big as their counterparts at DC, Wonder Woman or Supergirl.

And so the films have followed-suit, with Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow (incredible ass-kicker but essentially power-free) doing most of the heavy lifting across five appearances to date.  Even when staffed with Oscar-winners like Halle Berry, Jennifer Lawrence and Anna Paquin, the Marvel films have rarely known what to do with them.  In fact, the only female-driven Marvel film so far has been Elektra, Jennifer Garner’s incarnation who got her own movie after first being introduced as a secondary character in a film where Ben Affleck played an urban vigilante.  Sound familiar?

So Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman is far overdue, especially when you consider that her DC colleagues Superman and Batman have had a combined total of 16 appearances in films since Christopher Reeve first began the modern era of superhero movies almost 40 years ago.  That’s one every 2.5 years.  And that’s not even counting The LEGO Batman Movie (2017’s fifth highest money-maker currently).

They say to never let the perfect be the enemy of the good, and Wonder Woman is good.  The business on Exposition Island is clunky (most origin stories are) but rich with Amazon badassery.  There’s not enough of Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) or Antiope (Robin Wright), though there is something delicious about having Princess Buttercup unleash her inner warrior.  The third act reveal of Ares is smart and well-thought out, but what it means is that through most of the film, there really isn’t a truly menacing villain as counterpoint to Gal Gadot’s imposing presence.  Danny Huston was a bigger threat in the Wolverine offshoot movie as a mere mortal, and is definitely no Red Skull.

For of course, Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) is the obvious analogue to Wonder Woman, a pair of noble neophytes waging war in the German (or Belgian) woods via historical flashback.  But the film that Wonder Woman more closely resembles, and a comparison I haven’t seen anywhere yet, is Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year.  For like Diana, Milla Jovovich’s Leeloo is fierce but gentle, naïve but strong-willed, and doesn’t need anyone’s help to take out a room full of assailants.

But more importantly, their arcs are similar because they are their own McGuffin.  Diana thinks she’s carrying the God-Killer (her sword), but she actually *is* the God Killer, just like Leeloo is herself the Fifth Element.  Both have, late in the game, serious bouts of disillusionment with mankind and its propensity for war and violence.  But both overcome this despondency and very explicitly choose to manifest Love—not merely Eros (the stock & trade of comic book fantasy), but Agape, a higher spiritual extension of compassion, generosity and self-sacrifice.

In this sense, I think it resembles Man of Steel (Snyder, 2013), a film I’ll still argue is--while also flawed--underrated and misunderstood.  Both heroes are not mere saviors, but also a means to inspire those around them.  But while that film is cloaked in a brooding melancholy, Wonder Woman has clear-eyed optimism, even in the face of man-made horrors.  After Chris Nolan’s excellent but dark Batman trilogy set the tone for DC’s moody temperament, WW is exactly the shot-in-the-arm this comic series needs.  Which is why I worry about the upcoming Justice League movie, which will depict Diana a hundred years later.  Will she be more jaded and cynical?  She was the best thing about the bad Batman v Superman because she brought warmth and sass and energy.  But as the new movie demonstrates, her real heroic power is Love.  How much of that will survive when she joins this Super Boys Club with a different director at the helm?

The same weekend I saw Wonder Woman, I attended the SF Silent Film Festival.  And it was a welcome reminder of how the movies weren’t afraid of strong women back then, even if the times were far more conservative.  In Filibus (Roncoroni, 1915), the title role is a female mastermind—exceptional thief, daring impostor, and the head of a motley crew of outlaws with gadgets that would make James Bond green with envy.  In Outside the Law (Browning, 1920), Lon Chaney may have two roles (one heroic, one villainous) but it’s Priscilla Dean who calls the shots when she inherits a criminal empire from her father.  She balances being a reformist and a resourceful crook with equal aplomb.

But the real eye-opener for me was The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), a remarkable collaboration between famous Russian dancer Anna Pavlova and pioneering director Lois Weber.  The first American woman to direct a feature-length film, Weber had dozen of titles under her belt by this time, but she was still known for contemporary dramas and social issue pictures.  This was a film on a completely different level—an epic period piece with a higher budget and bigger scale than she’d ever worked with before.  It reminded me of the talk of giving Patty Jenkins such an expensive tentpole picture after just one feature (the Oscar-winning Monster) and some TV work.

The final result?  Portici is a glorious achievement, with incredible tableaus, jaw-dropping camera movement, and a wonderful sense of drama amidst the herculean (or perhaps, Amazonian?) task of managing so many moving parts within a single frame.  The film isn’t perfect (it still suffers from some stiff dramaturgy typical of the time), but the achievement is impressive: a gorgeous restoration of a film that deserves to be better-known.

Which got me thinking: Why isn’t there a US postage stamp of Weber?  Or of any woman filmmaker for that matter?  Body and Soul (1925) was also featured at the festival, and both Oscar Micheaux and Paul Robeson, the film’s director and star respectively, have well-deserved US postage stamps.  In fact, there’s a wonderful series of stamps commemorating Black Cinema and a handful of film directors have been honored on stamps starting with D.W. Griffith.

 

But the only women who have been honored from the American film industry have been actresses—amazing, powerful, influential actresses, but still ones who never really worked outside the confines of that craft.  No directors or producers, no screenwriters or below-the-line artists.  Douglas Fairbanks has a US stamp, but not his wife Mary Pickford, one of the biggest stars of the silent era and a co-founder of United Artists.

No Lois Weber or Mabel Normand or June Mathis.  No Maya Deren or Dorothy Arzner or Ida Lupino (as important a director as an actress).  Not yet, at least. 

But I’ll keep hoping that one day, I can add a Frances Marion stamp to my Anna Christie card (part of her prolific writing career) or an Edith Head stamp to my Roman Holiday card (one of over 400 films to her credit as costume designer).  Or any number of women who were essential in making the movies magic.  History was often not kind to their placement in the industry or the opportunities afforded them.  Which makes their achievements that much more worth celebrating.  Wonder Women all.

These are the Scott #s for the stamps pictured:  

The Wonder Woman stamp from the DC Comics issue (lower right on Lynda Carter card) is #4084c.  The three stamps from the Wonder Woman issue a decade later are #5149, 5150, & 5151.  The other stamps pictured from the DC Comics issue are Superman (#4084k), Green Lantern (#4084b), the Flash (#4084p), Green Arrow (#4084d) and Hawkman (#4084j).  The Batman stamp was from the issue for that character (#4934).  On the Justice League card, you can see all 3 different types of postmarks.

The two stamps pictured from the Marvel Comics issue are Captain America (#4159o) and Elektra (#4159i).  The movie stars pictured are Paul Robeson (#3834), Greta Garbo (#3943), Audrey Hepburn (#3786) and Gregory Peck (#4526).  Oscar Micheaux is #4464.  Mary Pickford's Canadian stamp was issued in 2006.

The stamp for Charles Demuth's painting "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" is #4748a.  The textile worker (#4801k) is from the Building America series.  The Field Day stamp (#5182) is part of the brand new WPA posters series.

Kringle All the Way

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My first associations with Fred Astaire were with Christmas.  One of the first films I remember him starring in was the family-friendly TV movie The Man in the Santa Claus Suit (1979), where he is an ever-present holiday sprite in NYC as three different men find unlikely solutions to their respective problems through a Santa suit they rent from Fred.  Of course, there was the ubiquitous Holiday Inn (Sandrich/1942), which first introduced the song "White Christmas" (sung by co-star Bing Crosby).  But the earliest thing I remember was the Rankin-Bass Christmas special Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, narrated by Fred, which first aired in 1970, the year I was born.

Rankin-Bass, of course, were the producing pair (Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass) who created a series of animation specials, mostly Yuletide but other holidays too, that were prevalent when I was growing up.  Quite a few used puppets and stop-motion, including the first, 1964’s Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which received a postage stamp issue last year.  That’s an origin story for Rudolph, with Santa an established character and Burl Ives (as a North Pole snowman) acting as singing narrator.  SCIC2T follows the same template, with Fred a mailman who uses the letters from Santa he encounters as a springboard to explain Kris Kringle’s backstory.  He makes a terrific storyteller and even sings the title tune, a bonus pleasure.

Like Gene Kelly, the other legendary male dancer from Hollywood’s Golden Age, Fred Astaire doesn’t have a US postage stamp yet.  It’s always curious how the decision-making process is conducted for which film stars get memorialized by the USPS, either in the Legends of Hollywood series or an offshoot issue.  Certainly, he’s a profoundly influential figure in popular culture, both as singer & dancer, and while Bing has a stamp, as do Fred’s co-stars of the classic musicals Easter Parade (Judy Garland) and Funny Face (Audrey Hepburn), he's still waiting for one.  Fred’s only Oscar nomination was for the very unmusical The Towering Inferno (Guillerman/1974) and his co-star there, Paul Newman, also has a stamp.

In fact, the closest thing to a postage stamp in the US that Fred has is actually in his Rankin-Bass Xmas special, where all the credits are formatted as postal letters, with the characters depicted as stamps.

Though no longer mainstays on network TV, these specials still get rotation in December on other cable channels, like ABC Family.  Perhaps their best facet were the songs, which had nice memorable little hooks.  But revisiting Santa with my mom recently, I noticed something unusual: they cut one of the tunes, and a rather central one, since it’s the musical motif for Santa himself (whose theme recurs throughout the show).  The internet being what it is, it was easy enough to find the missing song, which has the following lyric, sung by Kris: 

If you sit on my lap today,

A kiss, a toy is the price you pay.

When you sit on my left knee, don’t be stingy.

Be prepared to pay.

While the song itself is innocently karmic (the love you give comes back to you), the quid pro quo aspect of coercing affection with the promise of gifts sends a very different message these days.

It’s also interesting that Kris and the future Mrs. Claus (the gorgeous redheaded school marm, naturally) are also essentially a common law union, never getting legally married, but finding  their vows to each other sufficient in a ceremony that’s spiritual but not “religious”.  It’s a curiously progressive stance that’s perfectly in sync with Jessica’s surprisingly adult torch song of non-conformity and sensory awakening “My World Is Beginning Today” (which also indulges in some heavy abstract animation, very unusual for these kiddie specials).  Her voice was done by Robie Lester, who only has a handful of credits but, curiously enough, did provide the singing voice for both of Eva Gabor’s Disney flicks: The Aristocats (1970/Reitherman) and The Rescuers (1977).

I’ll admit that I liked the rudimentary but charming animation style as a kid, and it served as my first introduction to quite a few classic film stars: Jose Ferrer and Greer Garson (The Little Drummer Boy, 1968), Shirley Booth and Dick Shawn (the latter as the hilarious Snow Miser in The Year Without a Santa Claus, 1974), and Jimmy Durante (the cel animated Frosty the Snowman, 1969).  Mickey Rooney--another legend one suspects has a stamp in his future--played Santa in both SCIC2T and Year Without...

But even memories of some of the more obscure specials linger.  Nestor, the Long-Eared Donkey (essentially, a Biblical Rudolph from 1977) had a four-legged parental death that moved me far more than Bambi’s mom did.  Jack Frost (1979) was a primer in how a girl can say she loves you but not, you know, love-loves you (leaving the title character in a bittersweet frozen friendzone).  And the awkward, skeptical, bespectacled kid mouse in Twas the Night Before Christmas (1974) was easily relatable given what I saw in the mirror every day.

Perhaps the best loved holiday special is the one that got a stamp this year: A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965/Melendez), which is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary.  The Charles Schulz museum in Santa Rosa, CA, isn't far from where I live and well worth the visit.  It always has wonderfully-curated collections that show how savvy he was in observing human behavior through these kids who always had childish impulses and very adult sensibilities.  The TV special is no different in its critique of commercialism at the expense of more simple and compassionate priorities (and all with a terrific Vince Guaraldi score).

Personally, my favorite remains How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966 and my first exposure to Boris Karloff) so if these TV specials are a trend with the USPS, I hope it gets an issue next--though as you can see, Dr. Seuss has gotten a few stamps from them already.

Santa from the Rudolph issue is Scott #4948.  The original Peanuts stamp is #3507 while Charlie Brown w/his tree is #5021.  Dr. Seuss is #3585, "The Cat in the Hat" #3187h and "Fox in Socks" #3989.  Paul Newman is Scott #5020 and the skyskraper stamp (#4710n) is from the Earthscapes issue. 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp are #4342 and #4028 respectively.  And Elvis is Scott #5009.

My 10 Favorite Fred Astaire films

1. Shall We Dance (Sandrich, 1937)

2. Swing Time (Stevens, 1936)

3. You Were Never Lovelier (Seiter, 1942)

4. Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935)

5. The Band Wagon (Minnelli, 1953)

6. Easter Parade (Walters, 1948)

7. Follow the Fleet (Sandrich, 1936)

8. Royal Wedding (Donen, 1951)

9. Silk Stockings (Mamoulian, 1957)

10. Funny Face (Donen, 1957)

Horse Feathers

The immense outpouring of affection recently at the loss of Maurice Sendak filled me with joy and sadness—joy at the abiding legacy he left with so many people, and sadness because I was not one of them.  I never grew up with Where the Wild Things Are, or any of his other books.  I was probably in high school before I was even aware of who he was, and while that wasn’t too old to appreciate his genius, the opportunity his books had to tap into my childhood impulses of defiance, giving tacit approval to less decorous desires, was past.

Mine was a childhood of “Children should be seen and not heard”, of bedtime Bible stories and Little Golden Books.  Maurice Sendak, Judy Blume, were simply not on my radar at all.  The only element of subversive role modeling in my life, embracing anarchy and reveling in chaos, were the Marx Brothers.

To my parents, they were silly.  Cartoonish.  With cute musical numbers.  In short—harmless.

But while other classic comedians I was allowed to watch might fall into that characterization—Bob Hope or Danny Kaye, say—I knew the Marxes were different.  For they weren’t cowards.  They weren’t clowns.  They were jesters, fearless in the face of authority.  They were brazen with women, insulting toward tough guys, and irreverent towards anyone who told them what to do.  They were one-of-a-kind and hilarious.

And I loved them.  For they were a balm in a landscape of suburban propriety I had around me.  And the fact that my parents didn’t seem to get it—the satire, the innuendo (much of which went over my head, too), the blatant disrespect they represented—made them that much richer to me.  In a still water world, they were my din and tonic.

A Day at the Races (Wood, 1937) may be their last largely satisfying movie.  Once they moved to MGM, they began to gradually lose their fizz, but this was only their second film at the studio and their energy was still suitably manic and unrestrained, though some telltale warning signs (overly produced musical numbers, an increased sentimentality) are there, too.

While the Marxes would usually run rampant in the corridors of the elite (opera circles, ivory tower universities, luxury cruise liners), Races is unusual in that it straddles itself between a highly formal environment (the Shelton sanitarium) and the racetrack, where shysters, con men, and rascals like Groucho, Chico & Harpo are right at home.  

The horse in Races is High Hat, the final hope for the financially strapped hospital that has just recently acquired Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho) as its chief-of-staff, at dowager Margaret Dumont’s insistence (though no one knows he’s actually a horse doctor).  That the racetrack adjoins the sanitarium means the action can move back and forth, with jockey Harpo and co-conspirator Chico prepping the horse for the big race.  The less said about Allan Jones, colorless love interest to sanitarium owner Maureen O’Sullivan, the better.

There are some memorable comedic setpieces. The legendary Tootsie-Frootsie ice cream negotiation between Chico & Groucho is still fantastic, and Chico & Harpo’s game of charades is fun, as are the boys’ examination of Dumont & foiled seduction of floozy Esther Muir.  And the climactic race is in the boisterous spirit of the football game in Horse Feathers, which takes a lot of the conventions of the sport and turns them on their head (and unlike most horse racing films, this is a steeplechase, which is fundamental in a final twist).  

But the film really belongs to Groucho.  His phone conversation with Leonard Ceeley is a miniature masterpiece, and his rumba number alternating between Dumont & Muir has its own perverse grace.  None of the other Marx boys could hold the screen on their own, for Chico perpetually needs a partner and Harpo risks becoming too precious left to his devices alone.  But give Groucho a dance floor or an empty hotel room and he’s master of the house. 

And speaking of dance numbers, Races is unique in Marx Brothers history as being the only one of their films nominated for an Oscar—Best Dance Direction for the genuinely bizarre “All God’s Children Got Rhythm”, which manages to combine terrific jitterbugging with unfortunate blackface in a bizarre tangent that has nothing to do with anything in the story (though the number is still a step up from another turgid Jones ballad).

The Marxes did end up getting an Oscar—an Honorary Achievement one in the early 1970s, when only Groucho was left alive.  One can only imagine the chaos they would’ve caused at a ceremony, worthy of Races’ gala or the climax of A Night at the Opera (still my favorite of their flicks).  But they had to become elder statesmen of comedy to finally get their due.

Which still, curiously, has not happened with the USPS yet.  For while Laurel & Hardy, Abbott & Costello, and W.C. Fields have gotten their stamp, the only mention they’ve gotten has been Groucho in the You Bet Your Life stamp (seen here as part of the Early TV Memories series, Scott #4414; coupled with horse racing, Scott #1528).  But their real impact as a group, making them still quite contemporary while the other artists I listed have dated some over the years, continues to go unrecognized.  Having a slate of stamps, with the mirror scene from Duck Soup, the stateroom scene from Opera, and the barrels in Monkey Business (to throw Zeppo a bone) would be perfect. And throw Tootsie-Frootsie in there, too.  For the Coconut in all of us.

For more entries in the Classic Movie Horse Blogathon

The Curious Case of "Bringing Up Baby"

Thanks to Hell On Frisco Bay for letting me guest blog on the upcoming PFA Howard Hawks retrospective and on the wonderful Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938) in particular.

Here are a couple different Baby posters, both with the Hepburn FDC (Scott #4461) along with the Grant stamp (Scott #3692) and each with a different international stamp--a snow leopard from Afghanistan (c.1985) and a Zanzibar leopard from Tanzania (c.1984).

It's interesting that Grant looks like Clark Kent--though in a female's robe--in one of the poster's illustration, but in the opposite one, he's rendered like his more debonair self and nothing like how he appears in the film.

The back of the cards have Grant's FDC on one, and the FDC of the screenwriting stamp of the American Filmmaking series (Scott #3772a) on the other, with Grant piggybacking on that postmark. There's also an FDC of the Connecticut stamp (Scott #3702) from the Greetings from America series, the oldest of all the FDCs depicted here. Note also that the home Post Office for the Hepburn stamp is in Old Saybrook, CT, where Hepburn was raised and the state where the film takes place.

Gotta Dance!

The Frank Sinatra stamps (Scott #4265) I used on these two musicals, On the Town (Donen/Kelly, 1949) and Anchors Aweigh (Sidney, 1945), only serve to remind us that Gene Kelly has yet to receive a stamp from the USPS. The fact that Fred Astaire also hasn’t been recognized made me think...are they preparing a Great Dancers issue? Still, the omission is quite conspicuous, especially since Judy Garland has gotten two already, completing the triumvirate of the most important actors in the history of the American musical.

I’ve always been a much bigger fan of Kelly, not because he was a better singer than Astaire (he wasn’t) or dancer (it’s a tie), but because he always seemed far more accessible. In his films, Astaire usually played a dancer. But Kelly played a soldier, sailor, ball player, actor, artist, ordinary working Joe. He wore khakis, not tuxedos. He was graceful, but also athletic. And while Astaire was usually kept apart from his love interest by circumstance, contrivance, or crossed wires, Kelly’s worst enemy was typically himself. He didn’t mind playing the heel, being unctuous and pushy. And sometimes, that shit-eating grin can annoy as much as charm. An American in Paris (as beautiful as it is overrated) makes him a little too insufferable for my taste, stalking, rather than seducing, poor Leslie Caron.

But more often than not, that smile was a façade to darker recesses, for he was a far better actor than Astaire, tapping into his characters’ emotional depths and neuroses that played out in choreography that often was as tortured as it was jubilant. Astaire had a delightful, feather touch that played counter to what felt natural if forced to portray a bad guy (Exhibit A: Yolanda and the Thief). But Kelly understood that such brazenness was a double-edged sword, that he could steamroll you with his energy, and that self-awareness makes his best performances (The Pirate, Singin’ in the Rain, It’s Always Fair Weather) both charming and provocative.

A great comparison is between Town and Aweigh, for while he’s mostly a goof and a jerk in the latter, he’s wonderful in the former, finding a perfect pairing with Vera-Ellen while still being exceedingly generous with his hugely talented co-stars: Sinatra, Betty Garrett, Ann Miller, and Jules Munshin. Town was the first film he co-directed with Stanley Donen (himself, vastly underappreciated for his contributions to so many 50’s musicals), but except for the ballet sequence, Kelly plays to the strengths of the ensemble instead of hogging the show. Town is also the far better musical, despite abandoning huge chunks of the original stage show, with one boisterous number after number. Aweigh is now mostly remembered for the inventive dance Kelly has with the animated Jerry the Mouse.

I was lucky to find two related stamps that fit perfectly with both the theme and the color scheme of the respective one sheets. The New York Skyline is an Air Mail stamp from 1947 (Scott #C35) and the Navy stamp (Scott #435) is from a year earlier. Note how Jose Iturbi gets prominent billing in the latter, because the one-sheet itself is Spanish.

Postage Overdue

This is the first in a series, exploring cinematic subjects who have not yet received a stamp but seem overdue.

Lillian Gish was as big a female silent film star as existed, and while the Stars of the Silent Screen issue found space for the likes of the completely worthy Clara Bow and Zasu Pitts, Gish was MIA. It’s often hard to account for these absences other than that the estates of the deceased are very protective of their images and haven’t yet given the USPS permission to use them for a postal issue.

I haven’t seen The Whales of August (Anderson, 1987), but it was Gish’s last film and on my (incredibly long) To See list. But I have seen Maine. The best road vacation I probably ever had was my wife and I driving from Boston, through Vermont, across New Hampshire, B&B’ing all the way. This was years ago, in October when the foliage was in full bloom. It was a gorgeous drive and I remember driving along, never turning on the radio, just absorbing the sheer beauty around every turn. Because of the tree cover, you couldn’t even see any signs of civilization on the highway so it was just trees and mountains and vistas. Amazing.

But perhaps the best part was when we drive across Maine and hit the coast. We fell in love with it instantly, the entire stretch north of Portland (before you hit all the old money estates), and swore that if we ever got tired of the Bay Area and chose to retire in a small cabin with some cats, that we would do so in Maine. One of my favorite documentaries of all time is Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour Belfast, Maine (1999) which is epic in length but thrives on the intimacy of examining daily life in this small town, in all its variety of cultural, industrial, and personal settings. It’s an absolutely exquisite film.


When Gish finally does get her stamp, she’ll join Bette on the front here. In the meantime, The Blue Whale (Scott #4069) from the Wonders of America series was an excuse to also include the 1970 Maine statehood stamp (Scott #1391), while a separate Maine stamp (Scott #3579) from the Greetings from America series also features a lighthouse (they’re everywhere in Maine and great fun to visit).