Thirty million horsepower!

The narrator cannot make up his mind what this film is about, so he tries to keep up with the rush of onscreen images, covering Indians, Oakies, bears, salmon, orchards, forests, deserts, the War Effort, aluminum, and hydroelectric plants. See if you can keep up with him.

Woody Guthrie was hired by Bonneville Power Authority PR man Steven B. Kahn in 1941 to write songs for a promotional film about dams on the Columbia. WWII delayed production — but you can learn all that from watching the film. You hear Guthrie at times on the soundtrack. He doesn’t appear on screen.

I hereby claim The Columbia as an Oregon film, on the basis of the subject matter and the location shooting.

“This film belongs to you and me.”

Portlander Mel Blanc provided the voice of Private Snafu in a series of WWII army training films written by Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Suess. Portlander Dennis Nyback first presented The Dark Side Of Dr. Suess to  audiences at the Clinton Street Theater, and has since taken it around the world.

This promotional video was made by Madcap Theaters in Tempe, Arizona.

I hereby claim all of the films in which Pvt. Snafu appears as Oregon films, on the basis of Mel Blanc’s contribution as voice artist.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute.

Snoopy teen daughter, played by Portlander Jane Powell, believes the worst about her own dad (Wallace Beery) in A Date With Judy (1948).

Imports

Abe Lincoln In Illinois 1940 (Raymond Massey, Ruth Gordon)

Golden Earrings 1947 (Marlene Dietrich, Ray Milland)

Rachel and the Stranger 1948 (Loretta Young, Robert Mitchum)

Exports:

A Wild Hare 1940 (Tex Avery, Mel Blanc)

Early Abstractions 1946 (Harry Smith)

A Date With Judy 1948 ( Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor)

King of the Rocket Men 1949 (DP Ellis Carter)

Dual Diagnosis:

Canyon Passage 1946 ( Jacques Tourneur, Ernest Haycox)

Rachel and the Stranger is about a woman purchased as a bondservant during Colonial times by a widower who wants his son to have a mother. An extremely peculiar picture! William Holden plays a man so distracted by grief he fails to notice his new wife is Loretta Young. Then Robert Mitchum comes along.

Rachel and the Stranger is a Western which takes place in the East. Its original title was Tall Dark Stranger.

I claim it as an Oregon film because it was shot here.

Loretta Young initiated this project, which was shot in Eugene.  Written by Waldo Salt, who later won an Oscar for Midnight Cowboy, Rachel and the Stranger was a RKO box office hit.

Oregon cinematographer Ellis Carter shot this twelve chapter Republic Movie serial, which followed the adventures of atomic energy scientist Jeff King, “a jet-suited do gooder who soared the air to restore justice. His suit displayed three knobs. One said “on” and “off.” Another said “up” and “down.” And the last said “fast” and “slow.” From www.imagesjournal.com.

A better view of King’s suit, for you DIY rocketeers. My favorite part: the shoes.

]]> http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2008/11/king-of-the-rocket-men-1949/feed/ 0 http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2008/11/a-date-with-judy-1948/ http://www.talltalestruetales.com/2008/11/a-date-with-judy-1948/#comments Sat, 08 Nov 2008 05:00:14 +0000 Anne Richardson http://mufilmfest.episodecreative.com/?p=241

Click here to view the embedded video.

See this movie if you would like to double check your suspicion that Elizabeth Taylor never went through an awkward phase on her way to becoming the most beautiful woman ever to bat a pair of false eyelashes.

Yes, this is Taylor at 16.

Or see this movie because it stars Oregon’s most successful export to Hollywood (before Jon Heder).

Portland singer Jane Powell (seated on couch, above) was top billed in A Date With Judy. Wallace Beery plays her dad, and Carmen Miranda plays the MacGuffin. A Date With Judy was Elizabeth Taylor’s last turn as a supporting actress.

Front row (from left): Herbert Biberman, attorneys Martin Popper and Robert W. Kenny, Albert Maltz, Lester Cole. Middle row: Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, Samuel Ornitz. Back row: Ring Lardner Jr., Edward Dmytryk, Adrian Scott

On Nov. 25, 1947, the above artists, each found guilty of contempt during interrogation by the House on Un-American Activities Committee, were fired and/or suspended without pay, and told they would not work again until they signed a statement swearing they were not Communists.

Oh, and they also went to prison.

Thus began the Hollywood blacklist. It would be in operation for the next decade.

The result for Portland: In 1957, blacklisted filmmaker Andries Denium, unable to work in LA, moved here. His work as a film educator set in motion the chain of events which resulted in the magnificent Northwest Film Center.

The Hollywood blacklist ended, effectively, in 1960 when Dalton Trumbo (pictured above), who had been working under a pseudonym, was openly credited for his work on two hugely successful films:  Exodus and Spartacus.

Before Sammy Davis, Jr. was a big Hollywood star, he played nightclubs with his father and uncle, as part of the Will Mastin Trio. The Will Mastin Trio spent some time in Portland, playing a club located across from the down town Central Library.

I have never seen Sweet and Low, the musical short made in Hollywood which showcased the Will Mastin Trio.

I include it as an Oregon film not because it was shot here, but because it was made during/around the period of time Sammy was in Portland.

If you lived in Paris, you would know all about Mitchell Leisen because they’ve been running a retrospective of his films at Le Cinematheque Francaise since August. Leisen joins a number of American directors – Jerry Lewis, Brian De Palma, and Bill Plympton come to mind – who the French regard as prophets without honor in their own country.

Leisen films I can personally vouch for include Easy Living and Remember The Night, both from scripts by Preston Sturges. (Remember The Night, a Christmas movie for adults, starts off with Barbara Stanwyck shoplifting a diamond bracelet.) 

He began as an art director on a number of Cecil B. DeMille films including Sign of the Cross and Dynamite, a film I’ve never seen, but would like to, now that I’ve read the tag line, which is “She Denied Him Her Love, So He Took It! She Stole His Name, Tricked Him, Humbled Him and – in the end – Worshipped Him!”

That’s DeMille’s daughter, Katherine, above with Leisen. They’re at the races, in 1932.

Mitchell Leisen came to Oregon to shoot Golden Earrings in 1947. I claim him as an Oregon filmmaker on that basis.

David Melville writes about Golden Earrings in Senses of Cinema:

A story of a stiff-upper-lip British spy (Ray Milland) and a glamorous gypsy (Marlene Dietrich) in Hungary on the eve of World War II, it is a film “universally despised by spoilsports and the humourless.”

Oregon Moves, A to Z joins the club.  

Click here to view the embedded video.

Strange but true: Golden Earrings was shot in the Columbia Gorge. Marlene Dietrich learned to play the zither for the part.

Strange but true: The same year Marlene Dietrich was fighting Nazis in Oregon, the House on Un-American Activities Committee was sending to prison Hollywood writers, directors and actors who refused to supply names of suspected Communists.

Strange but true: Willie Nelson covered the theme song of Golden Earrings. Ten times better than the movie itself!