Same Year, Same Subject Matter: Cinematic Happenstances

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Performing arts, Popular Culture

With hundreds and hundreds of feature films being churned out of Hollywood every year, I suppose it shouldn’t surprise too much when two separate and unrelated production companies find themselves working on a version of the same thing. Nonetheless it does seem something of an oddity, or at least a novelty, when it does occur, which isn’t very often in cinema history.

Source: pastposters.com

At least three instances of identical subjects being simultaneously made into features spring to mind. Who doesn’t know that the mythical or semi-mythical (depending on your point of view) English hero of Medieval fable and legend, Robin Hood, has been the subject of American and British feature films almost too many times to count? Ever since the early days of silent movies the silver screen (and later the TV screen) has been awash with iterations of Robin and his Lincoln green-daubed coterie of “Merry Men” locking horns with the Sheriff of Nottingham, Sir Guy of Gisborne and other assorted knaves and villains. But in the year 1991 moviegoers got two Robin Hood sagas🄰 to choose from, a big budget Hollywood number, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves with Kevin Costner in the eponymous role. In a film stolen by Alan Rickman’s outrageously over-the-top, campy Sheriff of Nottingham🄱, apple pie American Costner’s non-attempt as an appropriate English accent was a talking point of the film. The behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt was that his initial plan to try to pull off a passable English accent was vetoed by the director (‘Actors who gave up on accents halfway through a movie’, Ben Falk, Yahoo, 13-Nov-2020, www.uk.movies.yahoo.com).

𝕐𝕠𝕦𝕣 𝕔𝕙𝕠𝕚𝕔𝕖 𝕠𝕗 𝕒𝕔𝕖 𝕓𝕠𝕨𝕞𝕒𝕟: 𝔹𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕚𝕤𝕙 𝕠𝕣 ℂ𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕟𝕚𝕒𝕟 ℝ𝕠𝕓𝕚𝕟?

𓃰𓃰𓃰

Flashy ‘Prince of Thieves’ vs gritty, shadowy ‘Robin Hood’
The other 1991 RH vehicle, simply entitled Robin Hood, a UK production, was a smaller scale, more modest affair than ‘Prince of Thieves’. The two filmic versions—Hollywood vs Britain, Kevin Costner vs Patrick Bergin—were expected to go head-to-head in a battle at the box-office, but this was averted when the producers of the UK Robin Hood decided to send their version straight to cable (Fox) TV.

A surprising lack of rivalry existed between the two concurrently-working production teams. Because a number of the shoot locations were reasonably close to each other (Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, West Yorkshire, North Wales) there was a good bit of collaboration, eg, crew swaps between each movie’s SFX and stunt teams (‘The Surprise Cooperation between 1991’s two Robin Hood films’, Dan Cooper, Film Stories, 09-Apr-2021, www.filmstories.co.uk).

🏹 🏹 🏹

𝔻𝕦𝕖𝕝𝕝𝕚𝕟𝕘 ℍ𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕠𝕨𝕤: ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕠𝕝 𝕧 ℂ𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕠𝕝𝕝

𓃯𓃯𓃯

Two films about Hollywood’s original “Platinum Blonde”
1965 saw the release of two biopics about Jean Harlow, star Hollywood actress and screen sex symbol of the 1930s, both were titled simply Harlow. The first, a Magna Distribution Corp TV biopic starred Carol Lynley in the titular role and the second, from Paramount released five weeks later with a budget more than double. Carroll Baker played the Thirties sex siren. Magna and Paramount subsequently countersued each other alleging unfair competition. Both movies were critical and box office failures with nary a good word to say by anyone about either of them…DVD Talk summed them up as “two smutty movies” with little resemblance to the real Jean Harlow (‘Harlow (1965) v Harlow (1965)’, www.realtoldmovies.blogspot.com).

𓃭𓃭𓃭

Dual Doomsday message
The third concurrent double act on the screen has the most interesting relationship. In 1964 Hollywood made two Cold War-inspired films with a storyline about the US military launching a Doomsday bomb aimed at the Soviet Union. The tones of the respective movies are diametrically opposite however, Dr Strangelove is a farce and satire, comically lampooning the absurdity of the global nuclear standoff, whereas Fail Safe is a grimly serious dramatic thriller which plays it very straight. Dr Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick was alarmed to discover that Sidney Lumet was making a near identical movie…so concerned was Kubrick that Fail Safe with its similar content might undermine his pet project he got the production company Columbia Pictures to buy the distribution rights to Lumet’s film in order to delay its release for nine months. The wash-up from this head-start was that Dr Strangelove did far better business at the box office than the similarly themed Fail Safe and is the much better-known of the two movies today.

Images: Columbia Pictures

______________________________
🄰 there were actually three Robin Hoods in the works simultaneously at that time. The third RH intended to have Liam Neeson in the role ended up being canned prior to production starting

🄱 as one critic summed it up, “While Costner had been robbing from the rich, Rickman had been stealing the movie“, ‘Behind-the-scenes trouble during ”Robin Hood”’, Garth Pearce, Entertainment Weekly, 21-Jun-1991, www.ew.com

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Wonder Woman’s Oscillating History in Comics

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Cinema, Creative Writing, Gender wars, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Society & Culture

After Wonder Woman’s creator Bill Marston dies in 1947, Robert Kanigher takes over the writing duties, the first of many subsequent writers to take on pop culture’s most famous female superhero. DC Comics wastes little time in ringing the changes with Wonder Woman, both to her physical appearance and to her abilities, disposition and purpose.

There are several reasons for the change. One motive is simply commercial, Wonder Woman like her male superhero counterparts, experiences a fall-off in popularity after the war. Another relates to expectations of gender roles in America. So much of America’s manhood is away during the world war on the front line engaging the enemy. Born of necessity, American women move into the work force, invading traditional male domains of employment as never before. With the war’s end, men return to their jobs relegating thousands of women back to unpaid work in the home. There is a re-solidifying of the traditional gender roles. A casualty of this is Wonder Woman herself. In Marston’s hands she reflects empowerment, ie, freedom from male domination. The feminist overtones she embodies are a challenge as the US attempts to re-establish the status quo ante order [‘The Fitful Evolution of Wonder Woman’s Look’, (Diana Martinez), The Atlantic, 07-Jun-2017, www.theatlantic.com].

Superhero Nazi hunters
Wonder Woman’s superhuman exertions and physicality—as with everyone else in the superhero comic universe—have an aptness during WWII. The superheroes in the comics spearhead the fight against the Nazis, promoting a patriotic agenda and helping to boost morale. When the war is won, this agenda loses its relevance for the American readership [‘Women of Comics: Objectified, Sexualize and Disempowered’, (Nia Aiysha), Wild Black Orchids, 07-May-2016, www.wildblackorchids.wordpress.com].

Making the iconic feminist warrior a bit less super
In wanting to rein in Wonder Woman’s powerful persona DC Comics are responding to prevailing (male) society’s anxieties about women’s independence. By 1950, the toning down is well underway, WW’s crime-fighting exploits are taking second fiddle – in Sensation Comics #97 she is the editor of a newspaper lonely hearts column❋. During the decade WW becomes a reluctant superheroine, love-struck and longing to settle down with her beau Steve Trevor [‘Publication history of Wonder Woman’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Wonder Woman Unbound: The Curious History of the World’s Most Famous Heroine, Tim Hanley (2014)].

Wonder Woman is not just a feminist, she’s also a sexy feminist! Accordingly, there is a lot of scrutiny on her salacious attire as well by the “morally self-appointed” in society. Eventually, the raunchy bathing suit and sexually-confident red boots will be traded in for a more demure look. Psychologist Fredric Wertham’s full-on crusade against the deleterious effects of comics on children in the early 1950s includes WW in its cross-hairs. WW’s sexually provocative bondage fetish (involving herself or other females) leads Wertham to ‘blacklist’ the depicted character as a promoter of lesbianism (which he took as evidence of misandry)(Martinez), pressuring DC Comics to remove Marston’s message of WW as a harbinger of matriarchy (Hanley).

The Amazonian princess returns to ‘civies’ – “Emma Peeled”
In the 1960s other comic book action heroines come forward such as secret agent Modesty Blaise. Reflecting the early rumblings of what would evolve into the second wave feminism of the Seventies, Blaise exhibits Wonder Woman-like “badass fighting capabilities” to triumph in a male world. At this time however WW loses that same original verve✪, getting a Sixties ‘mod’ makeover which transforms her into an Emma Peel clone (from the cult British TV series The Avengers), complete with martial arts moves, jumpsuits and Carnaby Street attire〥 [‘Four-Colour Yesteryears: Wonder Woman – the Emma Peel Years’, (Rob N), Paradox Comics Group, 22-Aug-2009, www.paradoxcomicsgroup.com; Hanley].

1970s, the women’s movement and empowerment
Gloria Steinem and the burgeoning women’s movement comes into the story at this time. Steinem, dismayed at DC Comics’ relegation of Wonder Woman to a “powerless 1950s car hop”, lobbies DC to restore WW’s superheroine stature. Steinem puts WW on the cover of the first edition of Ms. magazine in 1972, tagging it “Wonder Woman for President”. [‘How Gloria Steinem Saved Wonder Woman’, (Yohana Desta), Vanity Fair, 10-Oct-2017, www.vanityfair.com]. WW in Ms. becomes a kind of masthead to promote sisterhood and equality among women (the magazine depicts WW confronting store owners who deny their female employees equal pay and defending abortion clinics against male thugs [‘How A Magazine Cover From The 1970s Helped Wonder Woman Win Over Feminists’, (Katie Kilkenny), Pacific Standard, 21-Jun-2017, www.psmag.com]. Steinem and Ms.’ agitation on behalf of WW forces DC to restore her special powers including the “Lasso of Truth” and re-draw her in her original voluptuous form.

With the critical spotlight turned on DC’s portrayal of Wonder Woman, DC made further concessions to the comic. Diversity was introduced —a nod to the Black Power Movement in the US and perhaps belated recognition of a lack of ethnic diversity in its comics—with the inclusion of Nubia, WW’s African half-sister (Martinez). The perception of Wonder Woman as a feminist icon is given a further boost along by the cult success of the 1975-79 television series. WW, played by Lynda Carter, embodies the qualities of strength, fearlessness, wisdom and determination, restored in the comics post-1972✧.

PostScript: The Wonder Woman comic books over the past 40 years has seen the WW character and image undergo sundry transitions, a procession of “conflicting and seemingly incompatible versions” of WW – alternating between ramped-up raunchiness and less overt sexuality, between a muscular Amazonian physicality and a “heroin chic” fashion model (Martinez).

◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘ ◦ ∘

❋ in other Fifties comics Wonder Woman or her alter ego Diana Prince appears as a model and a film star

〥 WW becomes younger and thinner too. She also gets labelled as a “female James Bond” during this period

✪ DC Comics’s hegemony in the superhero comic popularity stakes in the late Sixties is seriously being challenged by Marvel Comics, a factor in the decision to revamp WW along with the entire ‘stable’ (Rob N)

✧ subsequent interpretations of Wonder Woman on the screen follow, the most recent in 2017 (with a sequel slated for release this year) sees WW reconnect with her Amazonian roots

DeMille’s Lost “Egyptian City” Found in the Sand-dunes of Central Coast, CA

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Archaeology, Cinema, Environmental, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Memorabilia, Popular Culture

Mention “The Ten Commandments” to cinephiles and almost invariably they’ll think of the 1956 epic with Chuck Heston as the resolute Moses. But that was Cecil B DeMille’s second attempt at filming the Old Testament story, or his (Cold War-inspired) interpretation of it at least. Back when Hollywood was still in it’s adolescence, 1923, DeMille made a silent version of The Ten Commandments, in black and white with some sequences in Technicolor.

(Image: www.bestplaces.com)

The location chosen by DeMille for his first go at shooting the biblical epic was a barren 18-mile stretch of sand some 170 miles north of LA, at Guadalupe on California’s central coast. Today, the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, as they are called, are a protected sea coast and wildlife refuge (eg, for the endangered western snowy plover) and largely unchanged, but for three months in 1923 it was a hive of mega-budget movie-making activity as DeMille transformed the empty dunes into a reconstruction of an ancient Egyptian city. DeMille chose the Guadalupe dunes for the movie set because he thought it might pass for the Egyptian desert (or at least the Sahara Desert) [‘Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes’, Atlas Obscura, www.altasobscura.com].

𐅉 ‘10 Commandments’ of California in glorious “techni-tint”

Hollywood scale extravaganza
The set was massive scale, destined to become the director’s trademark – 120 foot high by 720 feet wide, erected by 1,500 construction workers, a twelve-story tall “Egyptian city” of plaster, wood and straw. The city’s human population comprised a further 3,500 actors✖and technicians plus 125 cooks to feed the assembled masses. Add to these impressive numbers some 5,000 animals, 300 chariots and 21 plaster sphinxes. Statues of Pharaoh Rameses were eleven metres tall and the facade had a 110-foot high gate enclosure✧ [‘The Ten Commandments, (1923 film)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; Bob Brier, Egyptomania: Our Three Thousand Year Obsession with the Land of the Pharaohs, (2013); www.lostcitydemille.com].

(Source: G-N Dune Center)

A Virtuous Camp DeMille?
DeMille had a huge makeshift tent city erected (nicknamed “Camp DeMille”) to house all of the personnel on the set. Perhaps, in keeping with the overtly religious theme of the film⊡, DeMille laid down strict rules of non-engagement for everyone involved on the production…men and women were billeted separately with no fraternisation allowed, no gambling, no alcohol and no coarse language [‘The Ten Commandments of 1923: The Exodus, Take One’, Patheos, 20-Apr-2012, www.patheos.com]. The alcohol ban adhered to the Prohibition rules in place in America at the time, but subsequent generations of beach-combing visitors to Guadalupe’s dunes have discovered evidence that participants on the movie set found a way round that…the debris of empty bottles of alcohol-laced cough syrup strewn all over the dunes [PJ Grisar, ‘How DeMille made his ‘Ten Commandments’ Jewish again’, Forward, 08-Apr-2020, www.forward.com].

A vanishing “Egyptian metropolis”
After filming of The Ten Commandments on the Central Coast finished in August 1923✥, what DeMille did next astounds. Instead of dismantling and hauling the costly set (the overall budget for the movie was a staggering $1.5M or more) back to Hollywood, DeMille had it bulldozed and buried in the Guadalupe dunes. The film-maker just didn’t want to be bothered with the logistics or expense of an enormous removal task and/or he didn’t want rival Hollywood film-makers or studios to get their hands on the set.

(Photo:www.fws.gov)

Unearthing cinematic artefacts
And there it sat—or shifted around in the constantly swirling winds of the dunes—for sixty years, one of Hollywood’s most expensive-ever film sets. Then in 1983 film-maker Peter Brosnan became intrigued after a chance encounter with the story, got hooked on it and spent the next 30 years searching for the site, finding it and trying (frustratingly) to excavate it. The project is ongoing, and has taken this length of time due to a combination of factors – local “red tape” (jurisdiction of the dunes falls under two separate counties); the site is a bird-life sanctuary with limited, seasonal access; plus there’s the extremely high cost of funding excavations. Over the years, archaeologists, both professional and amateur, have joined the quest to dig up DeMille’s treasure-trove. Buried replicas from DeMille’s Lost City have been unearthed including a 300-pound plaster sphinx which now resides in the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center [‘There’s a Fake Egyptian City Buried in California’, (Marissa Fessenden), Smithsonian Magazine, 15-Oct-2015, www.smithsonianmag.com]. Brosnan compiled his years of research, including interviews with surviving actors, extras and other crew members, into a documentary film, The Lost City of Cecil B. DeMille, screened in 2016.

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✖DeMille also bused in some 250 Orthodox Jews as extras to give the movie a more authentic Hebrew look
✧ Rameses’ ‘temple’ contained recreations of hieroglyphics copied from the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922
⊡ certainly in keeping with the sternly moralising tone of DeMille’s film
✥ only part of the film was made on the Guadalupe dunes, the wonky parting of the Red Sea scene was shot at Seal Beach in Orange County, and a modern-day morality tale DeMille tacked on to the film was shot back at the studios

The Struggle for California’s “White Gold”: The Making of LA’s Modern Metropolis

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Environmental, Natural Environment, Popular Culture, Regional History


In 1900 the population of Los Angeles was 102,479, the 36th largest city in the USAⓐ. A couple of years into the new century the name Hollywood resonated only as a hotel, Hollywood’s legendary preeminence as the epicentre of the world’s film industry was still over a decade away. Nonetheless the city’s growing numbers were already putting pressure on the water supplies. LA’s location on a water-poor, semi-arid plane magnified those pressures. A lack of rainfall and groundwater and droughts was making the situation worse (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct and the Owens and Mono Lakes’ (MONO Case), Case No 379, (TED Case Studies), www.web.archive.org).

Mulholland in the valley (Photo: LA Times)

A couple of ambitious engineers in the city’s water company (later the LA Board of Water and Power)—Fred Eaton (also the LA mayor) and William Mulholland—cast their eyes round for a more reliable source of water to accommodate Los Angeles’ continued growth and development. The solution lay to the northeast, in the Owens River Valley which backs on to the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. If Los Angeles owned the land here the water could be diverted to the city. The obstacle was that this was farming land with hundreds and hundreds of farmers legally ensconced on small plot-holders. The farmers’ land-holdings also gave them water rights and they had their own agenda regarding the Owens valley, they were backing a national valley reclamation project to irrigate the valley farmlands.

Mulholland (pointing), with members of his syndicate (Photo credit: www.latimes.com)

It was former mayor Eaton who started the ball rolling, at the same time setting the ethical standard for Mulholland, by securing options on riparian lands under the pretense of establishing cattle ranches (Marian L Ryan, ‘Los Angeles Newspapers Fight the Water War, 1924-1927’, Southern California Quarterly, 50(2) (June 1968)). Soon Mulholland was driving the scheme and the Los Angeles water authority set about buying up as much of the land around the Owens River as they could. Mulholland, Eaton and other local business notables including Harrison Gray Otis and Henry Huntingdon formed a business cabal which became known as the San Fernando Syndicate. The syndicate allegedly used inside knowledge (the plan to build a aqueduct connecting the valley to the city) to buy up land that would become highly profitable (‘William Mulholland’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org).

Cottonwood Creek diversion conduct and Owens Lake in background (wwww.owensvalleyhistory.com)

Mulholland’s vision for LA’s prosperity was dependent on the monopolisation of the valley’s water, but he was completely unscrupulous in the way he went about it, “employ(ing) chicanery, subterfuge, spies, bribery, a campaign of divide-and-conquer, and a strategy of lies” to secure the water LA needed (‘Reading Los Angeles.: Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert’, (Christopher Hawthorne), LA Times, 29-Jun-2011,  www.latimesblogs.latimes.com). The cagey, Belfast-born Mulholland deceived Owens Valley farmers and also misled the Angelenos as well by grossly understating the quantity of water that would be taken for LA.

Route of the LA aqueduct (Image: www.owensvalleyhistory.com)

The syndicate, from 1905 on, bought up strategic parcels of land piecemeal in the valley (by 1928 90% of the water rights were in Mulholland’s hands). The City of Los Angeles meanwhile built a 375km-long aqueduct (completed in 1913) to siphon off the water from the Owens River. Some of the water was diverted to irrigate the San Fernando Valley but most went via the aquifer to service the needs of the LA metropolis. (‘The Water Fight That Inspired “Chinatown”’, Felicity Barringer, 25-Apr-2012, (Green),  www.green.blogs.nytimes.com).

The problem with the proposed Owens Valley Reclamation Project, which had it gone ahead would have stymied Mulholland’s plans, was already taken care of. Mulholland through his political connexions in Washington lobbied the US president, Theodore Roosevelt, who squashed the project (‘The Los Angeles Aqueduct’). This was viewed by the farm settlers as a public act of betrayal (‘The Valley of Broken Hearts’, C.E. Kunze, The San Francisco Call (1924), in ‘Owens Valley’s – Los Angeles Aqueduct’, (Owens Valley), www.owensvalleyhistory.com). In time the Owens Valley farmers amd ranchers realised the enormity of the threat to them…by 1926 Owens Lake was completely dry. Frustrated, angered and rebellious, they attempted to retaliate through acts of sabotage, in 1924 blowing up the aqueduct. Mulholland responded by calling in armed guards, conflicts occurred and tensions ran high over water access. A second flashpoint occurred when Owens Valley activists aided by a local scofflaw element commandeered the Alabama Gates section of the aqueduct resulting in a four-day standoff. Afterwards Mulholland hired Pinkerton private detectives to track the ‘culprits’ and ‘ringleaders’. Other incidents escalated the conflict including more dynamiting of the infrastructure in 1927ⓑ (‘The Water War that Polarized 1920s California’, (Gary Krist), Literary Hub, 17-May-2018,  www.lithub.com ; ‘New Perspectives on the West’, ‘William Mulholland (1855-1935)’, www.pbs.org).

Detectives investigating the scene (Photo: LA Times)

Mulholland eventually came out on top in the ‘war’ due to a combination of factors, “determination and deceit” on his part, but also because the Inyo County Bank folded , taking with it most of the ranchers and farmers’ savings. Personally for Mulholland though, he had just a modicum of time to savour his victory. In 1928 the collapse of St Francis Dam cost nearly 500 lives and caused widespread devastation of property and crops. As he had been project engineer, Mulholland was blamed for the disaster and forced to resign in disgrace (‘New Perspectives’, PBS). By 1930 the handful of remaining farm-owners, with unviable land having lost their irrigating water—the “white gold” as they called it—and confronted with droughts, their only one recourse was ultimately enforced migration (Kunze, ‘Owens Valley’).

Mono Basin, Cal.

The Los Angeles Water Department (even after Mulholland’s esclipse) continued the search for new sources of water, one scheme sought to extend the LA aqueduct to the Mono Basin. Local farmers after eventually realising that Mono Lake was staring down the same fate as Owens Lake, took action to save it from destruction (‘Mono Lake’)ⓒ.

The Los Angeles water authority’s and Mulholland’s diverting of the Owens River and the incorporation of the San Fernando Valley into LA’s municipal boundaries, paved the way for LA’s eventual growth into a mega-sized city by any standardsⓓ (Hawthorne). But this achievement was at devastating and irreparable cost to the Owens Valley environment which became no longer viable as a farming community… the Owens River was reduced to a trickle and the Owens Lake ecosystem destroyed (Barringer).

Endnote: Chinatown backdrop

The story of the LA water wars and the Californian “water czar” William Mulholland’s machinations inspired the 1974 cult neo-noir mystery film Chinatown. Polanski’s film uses the historic 1920s conflicts as backdrop for a fictional detective story in which the persona of the larger-than-life Mulholland is represented by two characters: the visionary and straight dealing Hollis Mulwray, and the Machiavellian über-schemer Noah Cross (Barringer).

ᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽᴽ

ⓐ ‘Population of the 100 Largest Urban Places: 1900’. United States Census Bureau, June 15, 1998
ⓑ prompting LA newspaper of the day The Gridiron to report that “Civil War Threatened” as “L.A. Faces Water Famine”, (11-Jun-1927)
ⓒ Mulholland and Los Angeles also looked at tapping into the Colorado River to replenish the city’s water supplies but this proved logistically too difficult even for Mulholland
ⓓ 9,000,000 people by 1994