Meeting in the Middle

This is the 30th Anniversary of the American release of Sergio Leone's epic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Ambitious and full of memorable setpieces, it has remarkable dramatic and cinematic flourishes, but I still prefer the leaner, meaner The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, perhaps largely because Claudia Cardinale and Charles Bronson don't really have the chops to breathe life into largely totemic parts; Leone always seems more comfortable exploring "Good" on a morally relative continuum, and while West succeeds in some of its broader brushstrokes, Jill & Harmonica are still plaster saints, making them dull compared to Frank & Cheyenne (Henry Fonda & Jason Robards, respectively). While the Dollars trilogy is driven by character complexity and shifting group dynamics, West feels overly reliant on the symbolic weight Leone invests in his heroes, forcing them to do the heavy lifting while the the villains succeed in evoking a greater range of emotions. The film's helped immeasurably by composer Ennio Morricone (who finally won a long overdue Honorary Oscar two years ago), who adds just the right amount of operatic sweep when the film needs it, bringing a sense of electricity and balance to what might otherwise seem ponderous or lop-sided. Overall, it's fun, reverent (perhaps to a fault), and the artistic highpoint of Leone's career.

The FDC here is Fonda's from 2005 (Scott #3911). Along with it is the 1944 stamp commemorating the transcontinental railroad (Scott #922), currently the oldest stamp I've included on the blog and a key plot point for the film (in fact, the film was released in the US almost 100 years to the day of the driving of the Golden Spike, completing the connection of the two ends of the line). This is also the last illustrated postmark for the Legends of Hollywood that doesn't involve the star's autograph (a three-year trend thus far which I suspect may be a permanent one). And given the largely international flavor of the rest of the cast and crew, it seems unlikely that I'll ever have any additional USPS stamps to add to this card later.

Louder Than Words

I first worked for the San Francisco International Film Festival back in 1998, and have been a faithful attendee for long before that (enough for my wife to know, even before we were married, that she’d be a Festival widow for a good week every year). The Festival always comes within a few days of Westpex, so late-April always represents the annual sweet spot for the Filmatelist.

My very first FDC was for these Silent Film Star stamps (Scott #2819-28). I bought my own postcards of Chaplin, Lloyd, and Valentino and had them postmarked right in the lobby of the legendary Castro Theater, a beautiful art deco palace in San Francisco. But since those didn’t turn out so hot (a blog post for another day), I picked up one of these caches as well. There was also a special screening of Safety Last that day, the first time I’d ever seen that film.

People often ask if I ever want to go to Cannes or Sundance one day. And I tell them if I could only visit one film festival in the world, it would be the Pordenone Silent Film Festival near Venice, Italy. For while I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to preferring to see any movie in a theater over TV or video, silent movies in particular benefit from the live music, the energy of the crowd, and the beautiful evocation of a time long past, preserved in those indelible flickers on the screen.

Although there are still plenty of silents I haven't seen, I try to seek out as many as I can on that big screen, and the Bay Area is certainly an embarrassment of riches in that department. For those who've never experienced a silent film in a theater before, they are often surprised by how raw, funny, sophisticated, and emotionally complex films from that time could be. The technology may be dated, but the sensibility and artistic vision on display rarely is. And while most of the stars in this USPS issue don't appear in my personal Top 10 (below), that's just a tribute to how many wonderful silent films are with us (despite so many still having been lost over the decades)--and all well worth discovering.


My Top 10 Silent Films
1. The General (Keaton/Bruckman, 1926; w/Buster Keaton)
2. Sunrise (Murnau, 1927)
3. Pandora’s Box (Pabst, 1929; w/Louise Brooks)
4. Man with a Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
5. Greed (von Stroheim, 1924; w/Zasu Pitts)
6. The Italian Straw Hat (Clair, 1928)
7. The Freshman (Newmeyer/Taylor, 1925; w/Harold Lloyd)
8. The Wind (Sjostrom, 1928; w/Lillian Gish)
9. Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
10. The Lighthouse Keepers (Gremillon, 1929)

Vertigo Redux

I just received back from the USPS one of my Vertigo postcards with a new FDC, so I thought I’d post it because it’s unique for a couple of reasons. I’ve already discussed my great love for the film, and while the one-sheet is the same as the previous post, the cancellations and stamp combinations are different.

First of all, this postcard has six different First-Day-of-Issue postmarks on a single card, as many as exist in my collection (in chronological order):

Alfred Hitchcock (Legends of Hollywood series; Scott #3226)
Bernard Herrmann (Film Composers issue; Scott #3341)
Film Directing (American Filmmaking issue; Scott #3772b)
The Coast Redwoods (Wonders of America issue; Scott #4063)
Jimmy Stewart (Legends of Hollywood series; Scott #4197)
And now, the Redwood Forest priority mail stamp (Scott #4378)

You can see by the dates that this spans 12 years from the first postmark to this most recent one.

This card also has the most stamps of any non-Disney postcard I have, for in addition to those listed, I also used four other stamps. The Golden Gate Bridge and Palace of Fine Arts stamps were featured in the previous Vertigo blog post, to which I’ve added the two oldest stamps on the postcard: Forest Conservation (1959; Scott #1122) and the bicentennial of the California settlement (1969; Scott #1373)


I used so many of the redwood tree stamps because of the visit Scottie and “Madeline” make to the redwood groves in the film. As big a movie buff as I am, I never quote movies in my everyday life, but if I’m ever in a museum or national park and encounter a large tree cross-section, I will always say, “Here I was born, and there I died. It was only a moment for you. You took no notice”. It’s a haunting moment in a haunting film.

As for the California stamp, nothing could be more perfect for the film than its depiction of a mission belltower, which, sadly, doesn’t really exist if you visit San Juan Bautista in real life. The mission is there but the tower in the film is a matte painting.

The dollar value of all the stamps is also by far the most of any in my collection, because this most recent postmark was for a priority mail stamp, putting the total face value of the card at $7.37.

I think this card is also ready for retirement. There’s very little real estate left to fit any other stamps, and I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone else associated with the production who will be recognized by the Postal Service. The film features Kim Novak’s best performance (Stewart’s too, incidentally), but I don’t see her ever getting a stamp. The brilliant Herrmann thankfully has already been acknowledged, and while Saul Bass (title credits), Robert Burks (cinematography) and George Tomasini (editing) also make invaluable contributions to this masterpiece, it seems likely that this will be about it--unless the film itself gets its own stamp one day. Who knows?

But I’m really happy how this one turned out—a real prize in my collection commemorating an even more special movie.

My Oscar Ballot

Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Actor: Sean Penn, Milk

Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight

Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Director: Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

Original Screenplay: In Bruges

Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire

Cinematography: Slumdog Millionaire

Art Direction: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Editing: Slumdog Millionaire

Costume Design: Milk

Score: WALL-E

Song: “Jai Ho”, Slumdog Millionaire

Sound Mixing: WALL-E

Sound Editing: WALL-E

Visual Effects: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Make-Up: Hellboy II: The Golden Army

Foreign Language Film: Waltz with Bashir

Documentary Feature: Man on Wire

Animated Feature: WALL-E

2008 Yearly Wrap

Bette Davis, Scott # 4350

Black Cinema series, including The Sport of the Gods, Scott #4337

Disney: The Art of Imagination issue, including 101 Dalmatians, Scott # 4342

Frank Sinatra, Scott # 4265

Yes We Can

When Do the Right Thing came out 20 years ago this year, did Spike Lee have any idea that a day like this would happen as soon as it has? I doubt it.


In Lee's masterpiece, it's not the heat but the humanity that ignites a racial firestorm in a colorful Bed-Stuy community one summer's day. The fashions may have changed, but the film is still as volcanic and mesmerizing as ever, from the opening credits of "Fight the Power" to that final image of the photo of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, pinned to the wall of the burned-out Sal's pizzeria. And even though he may be more of an icon than a firebrand these days, I've enjoyed Lee's films since that Oscar-nominated effort--nowhere near as incendiary, but just as ballsy, opinionated, and unapologetic in its political and stylistic perspective.


The lyrics of the opening Public Enemy song includes the lines:

'Cause I'm black and I'm proud

I'm ready and hyped plus I'm amped

Most of my heroes don't appear on no stamps 

Certainly the USPS has done a great deal to tackle diversity in its stamp issues, but plenty of people of color hadn't made the cut when the film was released.  That line is also a testament to how people perceive postage stamps as historical markers--a symbol of what our country self-identifies as important to commemorate and celebrate.

Given that photo that Smiley tries to sell in the film, positioning the stamps of King and Malcolm side-by-side was too irresistible for the postmark, though back in 1999, I was still cagey about using the front of the one-sheet postcards for the FDCs, which is why I used the back. The King stamp (Scott #3188a) was part of the Celebrate the Century series, and Malcolm X (Scott #3273) was issued the same year.

When the Vintage Black Cinema series came out in 2008, I used that opportunity to put some additional stamps up front--the original USPS MLK Jr. stamp (Scott #1771) from 1978, as well as one of him released by the People's Republic of Benin the same year. I've never seen The Sport of the Gods (Vernot, 1921) but it was the stamp that best matched the others so that's the one I used.

I don't think anybody believes the next four years will be easy. But it'll be nice to have a POTUS who will indeed (one hopes) Do the Right Thing.

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...