FredCDobbs

See the review down at the bottom of this page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055026/ The mix of ?trad? (traditional ((Dixieland)) jazz) music with the newer pop songs is quite interesting. This is post-1950s rock and roll, and pre-Beatles. Very interesting. These pop songs represent a very short period in popular music history. The way the British bands are mixing them with ?50s rock and roll and 1920s New Orleans and Memphis Jazz is quite interesting.

I?ve never heard of this film before, but I find it interesting. Much of the Jazz music being played is a copy of the Pete Fountain New Orleans jazz band style of the 1960s. His style was modeled after the old-time Jazz players from early in the 20th Century. Some of these old guys still played in Jazz bands at Preservation Hall well into the 1960s. Part of one of the bands can be seen in ?The Cincinnati Kid?. The lady at the piano in that film was known as ?Sweet Emma the Bell Gal? (she had bells strapped to her knees). By the late ?70s all the old-timers were gone, and Pete Fountain carried on their tradition, although a lot of Jazz critics said that Fountain?s band sounded too ?mechanical?, which was a common complaint about white Jazz bands that tried to imitate the old original Black Jazz bands. Some of the other types of modern music in this film is quite similar to a new era of American ?rock? music which came out during what some of us used to call ?The Kennedy Era?, when JFK was President. I think we called it that because it started around 1960 and ended around ?63-?64. Then the Beatles took the world by storm in ?64 and all of a sudden American teens began to listen to the British versions of this new ?rock? music. The joke about the British police trying to stop the big ?Jazz Show? is similar to the stories about how some city governments tried to stop ?rock festivals? and shows in the late ?50s and early ?60s in the US.

I saw it when it was first released in theaters and I saw it a few years ago. I liked it. It's not a big-budget film, but the plot is interesting. I think it takes place in a remote area of Scottland. A strange guy from outer space lands in the moors in a round space ship. Kinda spooky.

IMDB shows it as "China's Little Devils", 1945 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037594/

Paint Your Wagon should have used ?Takin? a Break?.

Lol, yes I saw that on Saturday Night Live years ago. Maybe TCM should run that segment as a short after airing It's a Wonderful Life. Lol. Very satisfying.

Are you talking about the intro that TCM sometimes uses with the guys in the band sitting on large wooden boxes, and they are playing as the stage hands move the boxes into place?

I agree with Iz on this. Potter was ultimately unsuccessful since Bailey lived and triumphed in the end. Anyway, Potter ?found? the money rather than stealing it outright. Although I would like to see a bunch of people in town beat the heck out of Potter, or maybe see him go to jail, but there is not a good place to put such a sequence in the film and it might distract from all the success of Bailey in the end. There were a few exceptions to the code such as ?Frankly my dear, I don?t give a damn? in Gone With the Wind. Also, in ?Watch on the Rhine? in 1943, Paul Lukas takes a guy out in the garden of a wealthy person?s house in Washington and shoots him, and he gets away with it. The guy he shot was going to inform on him to the Nazis, but Lukas still did not have the legal right to kill the guy in DC in 1943. However, since we were at war with the Nazis at that time, the code people let that one slip by. On the other hand, notice in the opening scene every week in TV?s Gunsmoke, Marshal Dillon met a bag guy in the street and he always let the bad guy draw first. Then Dillon drew and killed the guy. This was the TV code rules, since it would make Dillon always defending himself. The TV code rules were quite similar to the movie code rules. You might notice in many Western movies they make a big deal about who draws first. If whoever draws first succeeds in killing someone, then that?s murder and it?s illegal, but if the guy who draws second kills the bad guy, then that?s self defense and it?s legal. That?s why they made such a big deal out of being able to ?fast draw? in the old cowboy movies. Whereas in real life, many bad guys were shot in the back or ambushed by law enforcement like in the Bonnie and Clyde case. I think the FBI allowed Dillinger to ?go for his gun? before they shot him outside the theater.

Operator 13 is a very good but rare Cooper film. I taped it off TCM years ago. It's actually a Marion Davies film with Cooper in it. She plays a Civil War spy for the North. He plays a Southern military soldier. It's a clever film and a pretty good spy film.

My family group are three old people now. We can buy anything we want (except expensive cars) and we are very particular about what we like. So we came to an agreement a few years ago to give each other packages of fancy food for Christmas, especially decorative multi-packs with different surprises in them. Fancy cheese, imported candy, unusual stuff, things that we like but we don?t usually buy for ourselves, things like expensive imported olives. Then we all share this stuff well into the year. Then, after Christmas, we all go down and shop at the sales and buy for ourselves stuff we personally want. Lol, it?s fun.

Muni was great in Juarez. He looked just like Juarez.

> I want to say it one more time before I can no > longer... > > MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! > > I have restricted access as well, so I'll keep mine > short... Dang! Are you on death row in the Big House? Can we call the governor for you?

Thanks for the info. I found this link to more interesting trivia. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/trivia

> Fred...is the TCM ad similar to a 1950's commercial? > If 1950's style is again popular... Yes, there were some like this in the '40s, '50s, and early '60s. Usually kids waking up in the middle of the night and seeing Santa flying through the sky, or waking up on Christmas morning and seeing all the presents under the tree. Lots of happy smiling faces. Lol, the kids first introduction to consumerism. A great annual American celebration. The theaters would run these and then run a bunch of commercials for local stores.

Ok, I've just seen the scene in question. It starts with a wide shot of Stewart and dollies in to a close up. Then after a few seconds it creeps in for a closer close up. It must be this creep-in that they are talking about being printed optically.

Personally, I don't know. I wonder if it's because the film runs so long before the exciting stuff starts to happen? I might have never watched it, except that I eventually saw part of the angel story while channel surfing. So I decided to watch the whole thing so I would know what led up to that great ending.

Oh, there might have been another way they could have zoomed in on the film. See this low-budget optical printer. http://www.jkcamera.com/optical_printer.htm The camera is on the left, and the projector part is on the right. Note that the camera bed has two hand crank things at the very rear of it. This can be used to zoom in on the projected frame by moving the camera forward. It can be done all at one time on this machine, but on the older machines it might have required a slight camera movement and a lens re-focus after each frame was shot. In other words, set and focus the camera part, shoot one frame, then move the camera a little closer, set and focus again and shoot the next frame, then move the camera closer, set and focus again and shoot the next frame. This would produce a ?zoom? effect as the camera gradually zooms in on the projected movie frames. When the final film is finally projected, the zoom would not appear to have been shot one frame at a time, and it would look like a zoom-in as if the original studio camera had used a zoom lens, except that the grain quality of the film would be enlarged and the quality would suffer as the optical-printer camera moves in, since the camera is enlarging the original movie film. I think that's what the article is talking about: "To remedy the situation, during postproduction the director and his editor manually and painstakingly moved in ? frame by frame. It created what appears to be an optical zoom."

I've been trying to think of the earliest movies in which I've seen a zoom shot. I saw one on TCM a few months ago that was made in 1940. It was about a family running a remote motel in Arizona and they had some trouble with some bank robbers hiding out there. The film started with zoom in on the bus on the road, then it zoomed back to a wide shot, then it panned left and zoomed in on the motel. I just about fell out of my chair seeing a zoom shot in an old movie like that.

There were basically two types of printers back in those days: 1) contact printer, 2) optical printer. In a contact printer, the emulsion of the exposed and developed film came in contact with the unexposed raw film stock being printed to. With an optical printer, a small high-quality lens was located in-between the developed film and the raw film stock being printed to. I don?t know when an optical zoom lens was invented for optical printers, but the old printers had a way to enlarge the picture. They might have had a series of lenses of different focal length, or separate magnifying lenses, to get various degrees of enlargement. They would basically photograph a tiny portion of the original 35 mm film that had already been developed. If this is the case and they wanted to make an optical printer ?zoom?, then they would print one frame at a time, change to a longer focal length lens (or a stronger magnifying lens), and then print another frame. If they had enough lenses, they could carry this out one frame at a time for a second or two, and when shown on a projector, it would look like a zoom in. I don?t remember the exact scene, but I?ll watch for it tonight on NBC (starting 8 pm Eastern), 7 Central and Mountain. The scene could be a straight cut from the original wide-angle to and optical close-up. We can tell if the film gets grainy during the close up, because an optical close-up basically enlarges a small portion of the original film. We can also tell if it is a ?zoom?, either with a zoom lens in the optical printer or printed frame by frame by using different magnifying lenses in the printer and advancing the developed film one frame at a time. When they ?remove frames? from a film, by means of an optical printer, that speeds up the projected action. This is sometimes used when someone hits some, such as in one scene when Orson Welles hits a guy in the fight scene in the park in ?The Lady from Shanghai?. With an optical printer, they can print each frame twice or more, and that slows down the action when projected. This is used in the scene where Cary Grant realizes Shirley Temple is in his apartment, and her sister and a lawyer are banging on his door. He does a ?take? with a surprised look on his face, and that ?take? is slowed down (to make it last longer on the screen) by means of optically printing each frame 2 or 3 times. Since some old silent films are damaged, they will sometimes make an optical print of the titles and freeze-frame one of the title frames. They will use the cleanest and best of the title frames. Sometimes you can see the dust spots frozen since they are duplicating that one frame for a few seconds. Another way to extend a short scene in length is to run it forward in an optical printer, then backward, then forward again while the raw film stock keeps rolling forward. On the screen you will see the actor appearing to move (lets say, to the) left, then right, then left again, and an expert can tell that his two moves to the left are exactly the same, made from the same short piece of film, and his move to the right is a reverse motion of his move to the left. Let?s study that scene of Jimmy Stewart tonight and see if we can tell how the close-up was made. Fred Oh, after reading your interesting article, I found this: http://employees.oxy.edu/jerry/rkoranch.htm

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Welcome to the group.

Bill, you are right. I know what you are talking about. I don?t think I?ve told any of my horror stories about those days in the South, in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. The South changed quite a lot in the ?60s through the ?90s, so I don?t want people today to have any bad opinions about the South now. And even back in the ?50s and ?40s most people down there were good people. But the mood of the worst of the **** was just like what was shown in the film ?Intruder in the Dust?, and quite a lot of what was shown in ?Fury? was accurate, although I think ?Fury? was set in some Northern town. The films ?Flamingo Road? and ?Pinkie? were quite accurate too. And most white people were simply downright afraid of the meanest of the **** and the local county political bosses and the police and Sheriffs they controlled. Most cops I came across were good and quite polite. But I was a polite white boy. I never gave them any trouble... not until I started doing freelance news work for CBS News in the early ?60s. When I first saw ?Intruder in the Dust? in a theater back in ?49, when I was a kid, I wasn?t shocked at all. That was ?home? to me. That was a ?docu-drama? to me. You might notice, when you see the film now, look for something that is a hold-over from the old days. It?s actually an attitude that William Faulkner had, and even the director, producer, and the studio had the same attitude. They blamed the old black man, played by Juano Hernandez, for his own troubles. The white ?hero?, the lawyer, blamed him for making all the white guys mad at him because he was so ?arrogant?. But the old man wasn?t arrogant at all. He was a normal human being and he knew it. And that was not his fault. He didn?t need to kiss any white feet or say ?yas sir? to all the white guys. I consider the character to be quite brave, but not arrogant. I knew several brave ones when I was working news for CBS, back in the early ?60s. One was Medgar Evers. He was eventually shot and killed by Byron de la Beckwith. But Medgar knew... he knew all along that such a thing could happen. I think Medgar was the bravest and perhaps greatest man I?ve ever known. Unfortunately he wasn?t well known enough by the national media to have been turned into a public media hero.

No problem. Feel free to rant any time.

Disney could solve all it?s ?Song of the South? problems with an introduction like this. I mentioned this earlier in the year, and I specifically mentioned black actors like Morgan Freeman doing the special intro.... i.e. talking to some black kids who are gathered around a family TV in a nice upper class home, telling them about the old days in film and about how black characters and voices weren?t used in cartoons very much in the old days, and telling them they are about to see a rare treat because there are black characters and voices in the cartoons in the movie they are about to see. Something like the introduction to ?Green Pastures? where the preacher was introducing the upcoming story to the kids in the church. That introduction was handled so well, everyone in the audience was anxious to see the rest of the film. Here is my post: Morgan Freeman has a special talent of now being seen as a wise old man, like a wise grandpa, and his ?race? is now ?universal?. TCM should do more black-kid promos and feature scenes from the films of Sidney Poitier, Juano Hernandez (?Intruder in the Dust?), Rex Ingram (?Green Pastures?, ?The Thief of Baghdad?, ?Sahara?), Mildred Boyd (?Out of the Past?), Daniel Haynes and Nina Mae McKinney (?Hallelujah?), Paul Robeson (?Jericho?, ?Big Fella?, ?Song of Freedom?), Josephine Baker (speaking French in ?Zouzou? and ?Princesse Tam Tam?), and plenty of others that I?ve already seen in these classic films on TCM.

Here it is: Tennessee Vs. Garner, 1985: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=471&invol=1 ?The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable. It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect.?

I just finished watching the movie. The point was the three boys were trying to steal something and they almost got caught. It was supposed to be a ?lesson? for teenagers in the audience. Something to frighten them. The fine for speeding back in those days would have been maybe $20 or less, but I think some towns could send people to jail for 30 days for speeding. Some towns could also put the passengers in jail. Back in the old days, there were no major ?Civil Rights? laws in effect, so the feds had to stay out of state and local affairs. Some small towns had stiff fines and jail terms for minor crimes, especially if the cops suspected the kids were ?up to trouble?. They didn?t always apply the stiff fines and jail terms, but they were reserved for special circumstances. Also, back in those days.... in fact, right up until the late 1970s, cops could shoot people who ran away from them. The cops could ?assume? the people were ?fleeing felons? and they could shoot them dead, but a Supreme Court ruling finally outlawed that. That?s why we see so many police pursuits on TV news today. In the old days, the cops could have shot the people in the speeding cars. There is one TCM movie that shows two people trying to elude two California cops, around 1948. One of the cops pulls out a Thompson machine gun and shoots the car full of holes. Ahh, the good old days.