Why Be Good? (1929) by Jonas Nordin

The late silent film Why Be Good? (1929) was considered lost for many years. Not only has it been found but also restored and released on DVD much to the delight of classic film fans across the globe. The film stars Colleen Moore as Pert Kelly. She’s a shopgirl by day and a wild flapper by night. Pert’s reputation as as partier is all smoke and mirrors. She’s a good girl at heart and only wants the appeal the flapper lifestyle provides. Pert has caught the eye of Winthrop Peabody Jr. (Neil Hamilton). He’s mesmerized by her vivacity and beauty but equally perplexed by her reputation. Winthrop is now the head of staff at his father’s department store. Little do the pair know that Pert is a shop girl at the same store and it’s against the rules for him to date the staff. With added pressure from his father to seek out a virtuous girl, Winthrop sets a trap to find out of Pert is virtuous or if she’s just like all the other flappers.

The film is a morality tale but also a showcase of all the fun excesses of the flapper era. Fans of the 1920s will delight at all the party scenes, the dancing, the booze and the flapper dresses. Why Be Good? (1929) is in a very awkward spot in history. The film industry is transitioning to talkies and silent films are falling out of favor with the public. However, the silent films of the late 1920s have become more sophisticated in their story telling and their use of sound effects and music. It’s an often overlooked era in film but one that should be given plenty of attention. Also, the movie was released in early 1929 and serves as one big party before the stock market crash later that same year which sets off the Great Depression.

Below is a wonderful article by Jonas Nordin of All Talking! All Singing! All Dancing!. He'll be posting it on his site but is giving me the pleasure of sharing it here first! His article gives a lot of background about actress Colleen Moore's career just before she made Why Be Good?, the making and critical reception of the film, details of the once lost film's discovery and restoration.

Why Be Good? (1929) by Jonas Nordin

On February 28, 1928 Colleen Moore signed what was going to be her last contract with First National. Moore had been the company’s prime money maker since her big break in Flaming Youth back in 1923. Her previous contract had included four films made 1927-28, Her Wild Oat, Happiness Ahead, Oh Kay!, and the blockbuster Lilac Time.

The Swedish poster for Lilac Time

Early 1928 Colleen Moore was in a very good position to renegotiate her contract. One could say that the contract she was to sign was quite favorable. It stipulated that Colleen was to have final say over scripts, continuity, directors, photographers, male leads and cutting. She was obliged to make four photoplays and receive $150,000 per film. This made her just about the best paid actress in Hollywood at the time. Her husband and producer John McCormick who also was included in her contract didn’t believe in the coming of talking pictures so there was no mention of any singing or talking in the contract. One must also keep in mind that in February of 1928 talking pictures were just The Jazz Singer and some vaudeville shorts, nothing else.

The first film to be produced within her new contract was Synthetic Sin, a script which she approved of in March 1928. The script itself had been under development for over six months and Colleen was eager to shoot it. She still had to finish work on the last two films in the old contract first, Happiness Ahead and the silent version of the Gershwin musical Oh Kay!. Both were made during spring 1928 and opened in May and August respectively. Lilac Time was already finished and waited for the fall season with an August premiere and a general release in October. With its enormous sets and multitude of extras, Lilac Time had cost more than the other three films together, so it was crucial it became a hit. By the end of its lengthy run it turned out to become the second most grossing film during the 1920’s. The biggest money maker until 1939 was The Singing Fool which coincidentally went up side by side with Lilac Time in the fall season of 1928.
Work on Synthetic Sin started in September 1928 but the other three films in the new contract were not yet decided. Normally the studio had a fair amount of forward planning, and when a four picture deal was settled it was often known which films were to be produced. Scripts were usually approved and directors appointed well in advance. Sometimes things didn't run as smoothly. McCormick had a script called The Richest Girl in the World which he thought suitable as Colleen’s next offering. William A. Seiter was to direct it. Even a starting date for it was set to November 5th.

Colleen Moore in Synthetic Sin (1929) - Film Poster

Hollywood movie making was quickly changing and with the thundering success of Warner’s second talkie, The Singing Fool in late September 1928, the other studios quickly had to reconsider their shooting schedules. First National decided that it would be favorable if Colleen agreed to do a talking picture since that was the new thing everyone was talking about. Colleen was the biggest star of the studio but her contract also granted her complete control and the possibility to refuse to talk on film if she felt like it, she had at least no contractual obligation to comply with this request. The studio cancelled The Richest Girl In The World because the script wasn't sufficiently developed (it was later revised into a 1934 Miriam Hopkins talkie, still with William A. Seiter directing it). First National suggested several titles to replace it, including When Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Funny Face and Dangerous Nan McGrew, and it had to be a talkie. That was if Colleen would agree to renegotiate her contract.

In October 1928 Warner Brothers bought two thirds of First National and since Warner’s was the leading studio of the talkie craze the demand to release talking pictures grew day by day. Before renegotiating Colleen’s contract the studio wanted to make sure she had a voice. She recited the nursery rhyme Little Bo Peep as her voice test. Colleen’s voice recorded just fine and was indeed considered suitable for talkies. However, she still had to go to a voice coach and even take singing lessons like everyone else who wanted to be a star of talking pictures. The coming of talkies was clearly a way of the studios to clean out all sorts of disadvantages and put pressure on their stars.

By this time Synthetic Sin was almost finished and a script for a second silent comedy was quickly decided, probably to buy some time to prepare for Colleen’s first talkie. The script was initially called That’s A Bad Girl but the studio finally settled on Why Be Good? as the title. Mid November, just as shooting of Synthetic Sin wrapped, Colleen and McCormick took a week off and went through the heaps of suggested scripts to find the next film, Colleen’s first talkie. The choice fell on When Irish Eyes Are Smiling later renamed Smiling Irish Eyes, but it needed a lot of work to be turned into a working talking picture. Well home again, work on Why Be Good? started immediately. With the success of MGM’s Our Dancing Daughters that had been running since September, First National wanted a similar vehicle to cash in on the youthful shop girl movie fad.

In January 1929 Colleen agreed to renegotiate her contract with First National. The revision consisted in that the final two films left on her February 1928 contract were to be all-talking. She would get an additional $25,000 for each talking picture which meant she would get $175,000 per movie. McCormick who still was included in his wife’s contract was to get $35,000 per movie, a raise with $2,500. The contract more or less settled that the last silent picture Colleen was to appear in was Why Be Good?.

Magazine ad for Synthetic Sin

Magazine ad for Why Be Good?

Magazine ad for Why Be Good?

Synthetic Sin opened January 6th 1929 but wasn't a big success according to period reviews. However it wasn't exactly a bomb either as the public quite liked it, even more so with Why Be Good? that opened two months later. It was clearly considered the better of the two. Why Be Good? was basically an updated remake of Flaming Youth and was marketed as such. The press called it “peppy and entertaining”. None of the two films were seen as remarkable or outstanding by any sense, just typical Colleen Moore comedies.

Synthetic Sin and Why Be Good? were shot almost back to back late autumn 1928, both had a synchronized score and sound effects but no dialogue. They were no high budget melodramas but quickly produced rapid paced comedies. Like so many other of Colleen’s comedies they were directed by William A. Seiter. As silent pictures quickly were falling out of fashion, the fan magazines and the press in general mostly neglected this type of movies in favor of bigger productions and all talking extravaganzas. We should be grateful that these two films have survived at all. Both actually did very well at the box office, each earning more than $750,000 against an initial cost of about $325,000, which was outstanding for silents in 1929, especially considering not very favorable reviews.

At the time when Why Be Good? was released there were rumors running that Colleen would make one talkie and then end her career. This may very well have been her initial thought but to fulfill her contract she had to make two talkies before she could bow out. Smiling Irish Eyes and Footlights and Fools, shot during the spring and very hot summer of 1929. Both were lavish all-talking productions that included big production numbers and several Technicolor sequences. Sadly, neither of the two survives today. Colleen was not at all pleased with how she turned out in them. She later said that especially Smiling Irish Eyes was a frightfully dull film and she wasn't surprised it flopped. Looking back this may explain why both her 1929 talkies were unsuccessful. She was clearly uncomfortable with the new way of making movies even though she had a voice. After fulfilling the contract Colleen took a break from movie making concentrating on dollhouses, successful investments and personal matters. Her days as a movie star were over.

Colleen divorced John McCormick in 1930. She returned to the screen briefly in 1933 and made four films for four different studios of which the first film, The Power And The Glory (Fox) is the one she liked best according to her memoirs Silent Star (1968).

The Restoration
Until the late 1990s both Synthetic Sin and Why Be Good? were thought to be lost. There is an extremely high mortality rate for films released during the 1927-29 transition period. A large fire at Warner Bros. in the 1950s destroyed the then-known prints.

Fast forward to 2002 and New York's Film Forum. Prior to a screening, Ron Hutchinson of The Vitaphone Project updated the audience on the project’s latest activities. He casually mentioned that he recently acquired all the soundtrack disks for Colleen Moore's Why Be Good?, and said something to the effect that "unfortunately, this is a lost film."

Film historian Joe Yranski, who ran the film library at the Donnell Media Center, had been a longtime friend of Colleen Moore's and knew more about this film than probably anybody on the planet, yelled out "No it's not! I know where it is!" The full house at Film Forum cheered.

Ron Hutchinson of The Vitaphone Project

Ron immediately connected with Joe, and learned the sole known 35mm nitrate prints for both Why Be Good? and Synthetic Sin were in an Italian archive, donated to them decades before by actor Antonio Moreno. Thus began a decade long effort to negotiate the loan of both films for full restoration and synchronization with the existing Vitaphone disks. While the entire soundtrack to Why Be Good? survived in Ron’s collection, only the disk for the last reel and exit music was known for Synthetic Sin. Fortunately, a full list of Vitaphone music cues existed and was used to recreate the soundtrack.

Ned Price, Warner Bros. Chief Preservation Officer and the driving force behind the studio’s support of nearly 150 Vitaphone short restorations, personally interceded with the Cineteca di Bologna and negotiated a mutually agreeable arrangement to have both films restored and copies of both finished efforts given to the archive.

Work began late in 2012, with the professional transfer of Ron’s Why Be Good? disks and the lone disk for Synthetic Sin by sound engineer Seth Winner. The restoration effort represents a true partnership between Warner Bros., UCLA Film and Television Archive, Joe Yranski, and The Vitaphone Project, and was completed in June 2014.

Synthetic Sin and Why Be Good? were recently screened, for the first time in over 80 years, in 35mm and sound. The 2014 screenings in Bologna, Pordenone, London, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York were all literally packed to the last seat. One could assume that Colleen Moore's fan base is growing with these discoveries.

Seen today both films are definitely well budgeted, have strong First National art direction with a heavy art deco slant. In the case of Why Be Good?, there is the added attraction of Jean Harlow as a prominent dress extra (seen making out with a guy on a couch), and a super musical score with top jazz musicians of the period.

Jean Harlow in the background as an extra in Why Be Good? (1929)

Why Be Good? is available on DVD-MOD from Warner Archive Be sure to get a copy of it.

The preservation state of the movies discussed above:
Her Wild Oat (1927) - Survives complete
Happiness Ahead (1928) - Lost
Oh Kay! (1928) - Lost
Lilac Time (1928) – Survives complete

Synthetic Sin (1929) – Survives with sound fragment
Why Be Good (1929) – Survives complete
Smiling Irish Eyes (1929) – Lost, sound survives
Footlights And Fools (1929) - Lost, sound survives

Disclaimer: I received a copy of Why Be Good? (1929) from Warner Archive for review. I promptly mailed that copy off to Sweden to Jonas and bought a separate copy for myself. Thank you to Warner Archive for the review copy!

The Lady Vanishes - A Guest Post by Mark Zero

I'm very proud to present a guest post by one of my closest and dearest friends Mark Zero. Mark and I met on Goodreads several years ago and became fast friends. We both share a passion for good books and good movies. Mark even officiated my wedding making that special day even more special to me.

Mark's new novel The French Art of Revenge just released and I implore you to check it out. It's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and it's the perfect sort of book for any Francophile who likes a good art heist.

In this guest post, Mark takes a look at three different versions of The Lady Vanishes starting with Hitchcock's version from 1938. Thank you so much Mark for such an informative post! Enjoy.

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The Lady Vanishes by Mark Zero

When it appeared in 1938, Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller The Lady Vanishes became the highest grossing film ever in England, and the New York Times named it one of the year’s ten best pictures. It won Hitchcock the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Director (the only directing award he ever received), and its success convinced David O. Selznick to bring Hitch to Hollywood, where he would make the many films we know and fear him for today.

The Lady Vanishes is rarely mentioned among Hitchcock’s best, but The Guardian’s Philip French recently called it his all-time favorite, and last year’s BBC remake prompted a flurry of reappraisals. In this post, we’ll take a look back at the three cinematic versions of this classic story—Hitchcock’s blockbuster, the 1979 remake with Cybill Shepherd, and the 2013 BBC version—but let's begin with the original source material for all three films, Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel The Wheel Spins, and how Hitchcock drastically alters its story.

White wrote seventeen novels, one every year starting in 1927; the majority were mysteries, and most are now out of print. The Wheel Spins combines political intrigue in the Balkans with Victorian sentimentality in an uneven but entertaining psychological thriller. The story revolves around vacationing heiress Iris Carr and her ill-fated encounter with a British governess, Winifred Froy, on a train bound for Trieste.

It is the prim Miss Froy’s last day of employment in the service of the ruling family of an unnamed, unstable Balkan country. As she is preparing for her return journey to England, the governess has the misfortune of running into one of her employers, a Baron who is supposedly in Vienna but has, in fact, just murdered his chief political rival in a hunting lodge on his own property. Miss Froy is the only witness who can place him at the scene of the crime, but she knows nothing of the murder or the fact that she has spoiled the Baron’s alibi, so she innocently wishes the Baron well and trots down to the train station. Fearing that the chatty Miss Froy will unintentionally implicate the Baron in the murder, and not wishing to cause an international incident with England by abducting or killing Miss Froy in their Balkan homeland, the Baron and Baroness devise a diabolical plan to make the governess disappear in transit to Trieste while also absolving themselves of any suspicion for her disappearance.

Enter Iris Carr. Iris is an English aristocrat who has been on holiday with a group of ne’er-do-well high society friends. Bored with her companions, Iris decides to travel back to England alone, but at the train station she falls unconscious—whether from a mysterious blow to the head or sunstroke, the novel keeps us in doubt. Iris feels quite unwell by the time she takes her seat on the train opposite Miss Froy, in a compartment also occupied by the scheming Baroness!

Classic movie fans will instantly recognize the appeal of such a setup to Hitchcock, many of whose films feature an innocent Everyperson caught up in dangerous intrigues by being in the wrong place at the wrong time (think Cary Grant in North By Northwest, Robert Cummings in Saboteur, and Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man, just for starters).

Miss Froy invites Iris to join her in the dining car for tea, where she unwittingly lets slip the critical morsel of evidence that will convict the Baron of murder and perhaps overthrow his family’s regime. When they return to the compartment they share with the Baroness, Iris drifts off to sleep in her conked-head/sunstroke stupor and awakens some time later to find that Miss Froy and her luggage have disappeared! Worse still, the Baroness and all of her companions claim that Miss Froy never even existed!

The novel then becomes a taut, sometimes nightmarish psychodrama, in which Iris’s sense of self and sanity depend upon finding anyone at all who will corroborate the fact of Miss Froy. For the Baroness and her family, keeping Iris from discovering Miss Froy’s existence and whereabouts on the train is a matter of political survival, so they use all of their resources to encourage her to slowly go mad, and their plot is unwittingly abetted by several English travelers, who each have private and unrelated motives for pretending that they never saw Miss Froy.

At this point, Hitchcock's version veers radically away from the novel. In fact, the untangling of the mystery of Miss Froy’s disappearance becomes the main point of disagreement among the various versions, and how each one solves the mystery drastically changes the meaning of everything that has come before.

In the novel, after much intrigue, Iris discovers that the unfortunate governess has been bound and gagged and bandaged head to foot to resemble a burn victim in transit to a Trieste hospital for “emergency surgery.” Iris tears Miss Froy’s bandages off, revealing her true identity; the Baron’s intrigues are discovered; and Miss Froy returns to her home in the English countryside, where her parents and her loyal dog greet her. In fact, the main focus of the story shifts at the very end of the novel from Iris to Miss Froy, and what had been the harrowing tale of Iris’s fight to maintain her sanity becomes, in the end, a sentimental, slightly xenophobic story of the dangers of foreigners and the safety of home—a moral that Hitchcock wanted nothing to do with. He was more interested in cheeky dialogue and romance:

Hitchcock and screenwriters Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder radically reworked great chunks of the middle, adding characters and inventing situations mainly for comic effect but also reshaping the narrative into a broader political thriller. Hitchcock’s version retains the novel's sense of British superiority; the unnamed Balkan country becomes the goofy fictional nation of Bandrika (with a made-up, infantile, gobbledygook language), and Miss Froy is no longer the innocent governess of the novel but rather an undercover operative of the British Foreign Office charged with delivering a vital secret message about Bandrika back to London. Thus, the Baroness’s plot to abduct and kill Miss Froy becomes an attempt to thwart the British Foreign Office, and a pitched battle between British passengers on the train and Bandrikan soldiers takes up most of the final third of Hitchcock's film. Iris’s psychodrama becomes a MacGuffin played mostly for laughs and used as an excuse to spark a romance between Iris (the fetching Margaret Lockwood) and the Cambridge-educated stranger she meets during her adventures, the upper-crusty Gilbert (a charming, blasé Michael Redgrave, in his first film role).

Most reviewers point to the wit of the screenplay and the elegant economy of Hitchcock’s direction as primary pleasures of the 1938 The Lady Vanishes, and many of the jokes do still seem fresh. Two characters invented out of whole cloth for the film, Charters and Caldicott—dry, cricket-obsessed Oxford men played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne with exquisite comic timing—were so popular with audiences that the screenwriters wrote them into two subsequent films (1940’s Night Train to Munich and 1943’s Millions Like Us), and they became something of a cottage industry afterward, appearing together in ten more films and a slew of BBC radio programs.

All the comic high jinx, however, make the tone of Hitchcock’s film wildly uneven, and the movie ultimately becomes a farce with no emotional depth or satirical bite (imagine a Duck Soup in which the Marx Brothers try to make us actually care about the politics of Freedonia). When Charters is shot in the hand by Bandrikan soldiers, he reacts as if he’s merely been insulted, without even flinching at the bloody wound; and the other characters are quite nonchalant despite the flying lead, as if the pistols were popguns. Hitchcock plays one minor character's death (the philandering Mr. Todhunter's) as a joke, so that we can’t take Mrs. Todhunter's supposed grief seriously, no matter how melodramatically the beautiful Linden Travers acts it out; and Iris’s equally melodramatic fear for Gilbert’s life during the shootout feels put on. We have stopped suspending our disbelief: it’s all just playacting. A nun is shot in the back, soldiers fall mortally wounded next to the train, and when the English characters ultimately escape, the Baroness and her closest collaborator shrug and smile and actually wish them well, as if none of it ever mattered at all.

This dodgy tone is the guiding principle of the 1979 remake, which exaggerates the most farcical elements of Hitchcock’s version into a slapstick comedy so awful that it’s nearly impossible to stop watching it. Cybill Shepherd stars at the height of her beauty, a miscast Elliott Gould takes Michael Redgrave’s place, and Angela Lansbury plays Miss Froy as a dry run for her Jessica Fletcher character in the tv series Murder, She Wrote. This version sets the action in 1939 Bavaria, which is crawling with Nazis, and it opens in a German beer garden with Cybill Shepherd in a slinky white evening gown drunkenly mocking Der Fuhrer by wearing a black greasepaint mustache and yelling at SS soldiers in gibberish German. Shepherd keeps the mustache on for more than ten minutes of screen time, and it’s almost impossible to describe the mixed feelings you have watching this sublimely beautiful, statuesque blonde yipping ridiculous dialogue in a sexy gown and Hitler mustache. My advice is to drink your cocktails before you watch it. The film is unavailable in its original English on DVD, though you can still watch it online dubbed into German or Italian.

Surprisingly, the best version of The Lady Vanishes is the recent BBC remake, which is better even than the original novel, because it finds the story with the highest psychological stakes and sees it through to a satisfying ending, in which the main character genuinely changes as a result of her tribulations.

Where Margaret Lockwood played Iris as a pouting debutante, Tuppence Middleton plays her as a contemptuous, entitled snot who is selfish to the core when the story begins. The BBC narrative mainly cleaves to the plot of the novel (changing only the very ending); it dispenses with Hitchcock’s gunfights and spies and sticks to the story of a simple governess caught in politics over her head and a spoiled little rich girl who finds her own humanity by having it tested to the limit.

Though this telling lacks the wit of Hitchcock’s version, its tone is pitch-perfect and it homes in on Iris’s existential crisis, refusing to conclude with either the novel’s sentimental celebration of jolly old England or Hitchcock’s perfunctory wedding bells for the two stars. The BBC version is more typically Hitchcockian even than the Hitchcock version, since it makes the political intrigue the MacGuffin, while the real story is the heroine's emotional coming of age (much in the way the Nazi plot in Notorious is the MacGuffin for Cary Grant's transformation from cad to lover).

The novel The Wheel Spins is richly evocative line by line, keenly observant of Iris, and incredibly cinematic. You can read it for free at The Hitchcock Zone. Hitchcock's 1938 version of The Lady Vanishes rewards your ninety minutes’ investment with some sharp wit and genuine laughs, and you can watch it for free at The Internet Archive. And you can buy the BBC version at the BBC Store (or any number of other places) or watch the full film on YouTube with optional Portuguese subtitles.

My 5 Favorite Underrated Dramas

Check out my guest post on the Rupert Pupkin Speaks blog! I share my list of my five favorite underrated dramas and why I love them.

2013 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge: Second Roundup

We are past the second month mark so I'm sharing some new entries for the 2013 Summer Reading Classic Film Book Challenge.

Everyone can chose to read up to 6 books but if you read a total 6 and review them by September 15th, you are eligible to win a prize. The prize in question is your choice of any single disc movie from the Warner Archive and up to $30 worth of books from Barnes and Noble or your favorite Independent Bookstore (or a gift certificate). The prize can be modified if the winner is from outside the U.S.!

How is everyone doing? I have 3 books read, 2 books reviewed, I'm almost done with my 4th book and I'm half way through my 5th. I'm starting to feel the time crunch but I'm confident I can finish the 6 before the deadline of September 15th.

If you are behind, don't be discouraged. Make a plan. Figure out how much reading you have to do, how long you have and try to make daily goals. You can do it! Also, be realistic. If reading 6 books isn't going to happen, lower your number.

On to the reviews!

Lê of Crítica Retrô
Lembranças de Hollywood, de Dulce Damasceno de Brito (There is a Translate button for those of you who are not fluent in Portuguese!)

Margaret of The Great Katharine Hepburn
Beyond Casablanca: 100 Classic Movies Worth Watching by Jennifer C. Garlen
Movies and the Battle of the Sexes by ZetMec
The Private World of Katharine Hepburn by John Bryson

Raquel of Out of the Past
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles

Rich of Wide Screen World
Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star by Dick Moore

Sara on Goodreads
My Lunches with Orson: Conversations Between Henry Jaglom and Orson Welles
The Making of The African Queen, or: How I went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and almost lost my mind by Katharine Hepburn


Travis of Cinemalacrum
 British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda and Consensus
Killer Kaiju Monsters

(Editor's Note: If you have posted since July 15th and your review is not included above, let me know in the comment section below and I'll add it.) 

Interview with Tom DeMichael, author of James Bond FAQ

Carlos: Which are your least favorite Bond movies? Why?

Tom DeMichael: As I mentioned in my book, I find the 1967 version of Casino Royale to be intolerable - but as I also noted, it's not considered to be an "official" Bond film. Of the 23 Bond films produced by Eon Productions, my choice for least favorite Bond film would be a tossup between Moonraker and A View to A Kill. Moonraker, because I think Michael Lonsdale - despite his normally fine abilities as an actor - completely underplayed his role of Hugo Drax. Plus, the whole scene with Jaws and his newly-found girlfriend Dolly saving Bond and Holly Goodhead aboard a space shuttle makes me want to turn off the whole film at that point. A View to A Kill forces us to believe that Tanya Roberts is a geologist, villainous May Day is stronger than Oddjob - a character portrayed by a former Olympic weightlifter, and that Roger Moore - bless him - could still be a sexy and action-packed 007 at the age of 58. Both films suffered from a weak script and a general lack of creative direction and inspiration.

Carlos: Who is your favorite Bond girl? Why?

Tom DeMichael: This is a great question, dependent on whether I answer from my own feelings of attraction, or my opinion of theatrical performance. Perhaps I'll touch on both.

For my own tastes, Jill St. John from Diamonds Are Forever was a wonderful combination of stunning beauty, pure sexiness, and brains - at least in real life. With an IQ over 160, she's proved herself to be a very capable and attractive performer over the years. From a standpoint of pure beauty, it's hard to get past blonde Ursula Andress and dark-haired Eunice Gayson, both from Dr. No.

In terms of character, and portrayal in the films, I would have to say Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore in Goldfinger gave a wonderful performance as a tough and independent woman - something unusual in the year of 1964. She was a skilled pilot, took very little guff from anyone and Blackman nailed the character.

I thought Sophie Marceau was very strong as Elektra King in The World Is Not Enough, a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome. Olga Kurylenko was very good in Quantum of Solace, playing a woman who had been hurt many times and one of the few women who did not succumb to Bond's charms.

Carlos: What is the future of the franchise?

Tom DeMichael: The James Bond film franchise is very unique in the history of cinema. It's relatively unprecedented for a literary character to be brought to the Silver Screen managed by the same production team for fifty years. Certainly, you have Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Chan - like Bond, portrayed by different actors over the years - but none of those series were controlled in total by a single creative entity. The Broccoli family members - first Albert, with partner Harry Saltzman until he split in the mid-70s, then stepson Michael G. Wilson and soon after daughter Barbara Broccoli - have maintained the roles of producer since 1962. Today, Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli continue to successfully push the buttons for the franchise. Waiting in the wings is Wilson's son, Gregg, who has been involved with the Bond films since The World Is Not Enough and was most recently an associate producer on Skyfall. It's generally assumed that he will take over the executive reins at some point in the future. But Michael Wilson is in his early 70s and Barbara Broccoli is only in her early 50s, so they have many years left before turning over the keys to the 007 offices to Gregg.

In terms of the films themselves, you need only to look at the fact that the most recent Bond film, Skyfall, brought in more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. That doesn't include Blu-Ray, DVD, on-demand, and all the merchandising. I don't think there's any doubt that James Bond will return - for many, many years to come.

Carlos: Which actor will play the next Bond?

Tom DeMichael: Daniel Craig, who has brought to the screen much of the rough and cold demeanor that Ian Fleming's original James Bond had, is contracted to star in the next two Bond films - known currently as Bond 24 and Bond 25. At 45 right now, Craig would be only near age 50 when that arrangement is completed. Seeing how Roger Moore lasted until age 58 and Sean Connery returned as Bond at age 53 in Never Say Never Again, it's not unreasonable to think that Daniel Craig could re-up for another tour of duty as Bond toward the end of this decade.

So, considering that Craig is going nowhere in the foreseeable future, the gossip still rages as to who the "next" James Bond will be. Initial thoughts have tagged Robert Pattinson - from the Twilight movies - as a possible candidate, along with actors like Christian Bale and Guy Pearce. Considering the latter two would be 45 and 50 when Craig finishes his shift, they are unlikely. Henry Cavill, only 30, has also been mentioned as a possibility and actually tested for the role of Bond in 2006's Casino Royale.

Despite their varied abilities, all six actors who have played Bond were relatively unknown, and certainly not A-list performers, when chosen for 007. Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan had made their names in television series prior to taking the iconic role, and the rest came to the table with experience ranging from print model, stage performances, and secondary roles in feature films. It's very likely that next James Bond will come from similar backgrounds.

Carlos: Do you see a JB movie filmed in 3D?

Tom DeMichael: Knowing that the Bond producers have already stated that they really don't believe the 007 franchise is suitable for, or needs to be in, three dimensions, I would think the possibilities of James Bond in 3-D are very, very slim in the foreseeable future.

Carlos: Do you see Bond continuing to use the Walther PPK?

Tom DeMichael: A flippant response would be, "Dance with the partner that brought you to the party." The Walther PPK has been most reliable, and recognizable, for the last 50 years, remembering that the puny Beretta 418 was its predecessor in Dr. No (actually the prop used was a Beretta M1934). Walther was able to convince the producers of both Octopussy and Never Say Never Again to feature their new P5 in 1983, and 007 used a P99 in three of Brosnan's films and Craig's first.

The producers made a strong statement in Skyfall by featuring a new quartermaster, yet still entrusting Bond with a Walther PPK, albeit retrofitted with a hand signature grip. Right there, I believe the Walther PPK was reaffirmed as the weapon of choice for 007.

Carlos: Which of the Ian Fleming books/short story is the next Bond film?

Tom DeMichael: Story development for Bond 24 has already been underway for three months. As all twelve Ian Fleming novels have already made it to the screen, it it's unlikely any of those will be remade in the near future. Fleming wrote nine short stories, five of which have become films, even if by title only. Portions and snippets from three of the remaining four stories have appeared in one form or another in the Bond films over the years.

When one looks at the fact that much of the source material from Fleming is now 50 to 60 years old, I would be surprised to see any major plot points and/or characters from the original Fleming catalog show up in any of the upcoming Bond films.

Carlos:  How long did it take to write the book?

Tom DeMichael: Sticking to a rigid and well-planned schedule, the James Bond FAQ - all 140,000 words of it - was researched and written in six months.

Carlos: For how long did you want to write the book?

Tom DeMichael:I have always been an avid Bond fan, ever since I saw Thunderball at the age of 10. The format that the FAQ series from Applause Books established seemed perfect for the summation of all cinematic things 007, especially considering the timing of the landmark 50-year anniversary.

Carlos: Why was Dr. No the first novel made into a film?

Carlos:  How is the order of novels/short stories made into movies determined?

Tom DeMichael: I have combined these last two questions, since their answers have quite a bit of overlap.

Fleming wrote Casino Royale in 1953. The story was purchased by the CBS television network and produced as a one-hour drama in 1954. As the author continued to write his Bond novels, much thought was given to turning them into an on-going series for CBS. When that didn't happen, producers Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Harry Saltzman formed Eon Productions and purchased options on Fleming's current and future Bond stories. The exception was Casino Royale, the rights to which he had already sold (which is why it was never produced as an Eon Productions film until 2006, when alternate arrangements could finally be made. When made in 1967, the film was shot by other producers as pure parody, in order to avoid any legal wrangling with Eon.)

The reason Dr. No - the sixth Fleming novel - became the first Bond film was largely economic. James Bond was an unknown commodity in 1962. While the books had been big sellers in Britain, America knew little about 007. Studios in Hollywood were hesitant to back a film about a secret agent from England (note that in CBS's 1954 TV production of Casino Royale, Bond was an American agent, echoing the thoughts that a British agent was of no interest to American audiences.) United Artists finally took a chance, agreeing to back seven films in the series.

Thunderball, a novel adapted from an aborted screenplay Fleming had written with several others, was supposed to be the first Bond film. But when one of the other writers went to court to block the production, Dr. No was deemed to be a story that could be shot within the budget of under $1 million. When it turned out to be a big hit, budgets were increased and Fleming's stories were selected on the basis of predicted commercial appeal and potential financial success.

You Only Live Twice - the fifth film, but actually the 11th novel - was the first to really stray far, far away from the Fleming novels. With the Space Race between America and the USSR going full throttle, it was believed a story about hijacking spacecraft was superior to Japanese castles and Blofeld disguised as Dr. Shatterhand. The next film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service - the novel actually BEFORE You Only Live Twice - returned to stick close to the original story, despite the inexperienced George Lazenby replacing Sean Connery. After that, the Bond films relied on Fleming titles and very little else from books.

When Casino Royale was released in 2006, it was a pleasant return to much of the original Fleming story, featuring characters and scenes from the novel that had come out more than 50 years before.


----


You can find my husband Carlos on his blog Live Fast Look Good or on Twitter @livefastlookgd . Check out Carlos' review of James Bond FAQ.

James Bond FAQ
All That's Left to Know about Everyone's Favorite Superspy
by Tom DeMichael
978157838568
Paperback
Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (Hal Leonard)
December 2012

Find the book on:
Barnes and Noble
Powell's
Indie Bound
Amazon

James Bond FAQ by Tom DeMichael

James Bond FAQ
All That's Left to Know about Everyone's Favorite Superspy
by Tom DeMichael
978157838568
Paperback
Applause Theatre and Cinema Books (Hal Leonard)
December 2012

Find the book on:
Barnes and Noble
Powell's
Indie Bound
Amazon

This is a guest post by Carlos Stecher.


My earliest recollection of going to a James Bond movie was, Never Say Never Again (1983). I would later find out NSNA wasn’t even an “official” JB movie. More on that later. Over the years I would end up watching almost all of the James Bond movies. My favorite movies are, For Your Eyes Only (1981), Goldfinger (1964), and Quantum of Solace (2008). My favorite Bond is, of course, Sean Connery. Daniel Craig was the perfect choice for the modern Bond. I am curious to see who will replace him. James Bond almost did not return in 2010. MGM, the studio makes the films, was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was a period of 4 years without a movie being made. There was a similar situation with Timothy Dalton in the late eighties and early nineties where a period of 6 years went by without a movie. From 2002-2006, there was no Bond film as Pierce Brosnan’s contract had expired and the search for a new James Bond was on.

Who does not have a fascination/intrigued with the following scenario: a well-dressed handsome British secret agent who seduces beautiful women as he travels around the world while driving exotic automobiles?

The British secret agent was the creation of Ian Fleming. The character was loosely based on his life as he was also in British Intelligence, enjoyed the company of women, and loved to gamble and golf. He wrote the novels and short stories at his Jamaican winter home named Goldeneye, which would become a movies in 1995. He wanted the name to be, “suitably flat and colourless”. The honor went to a famous ornithologist, James Bond.

Tom DeMichael is the author of, James Bond FAQ, an exhaustive anthology of the James Bond franchise. The book is almost 400 pages of everything Bond. I was impressed of the depth of the research. The actors who play Bond, the villains, the famous Bond girls, his gadgets, his friends, title songs, the films themselves, unofficial projects, and the people behind the scenes each get their own chapter. Mr. DeMichael delves into each character and the person who plays that character with a detailed synopsis. Important props and gadgets all receive several paragraphs of information. Mr. DeMichael counts nine composers who have worked on 23 movies. I have a playlist with 27 songs from the Bond movies aptly named, Shaken, Not Stirred. Chapter 8 breaks down all the movies with year of release, director, original music, production design, and cast. Each movies’ synopsis explains the plot points and names minor characters with their roles. As a men's wardrobe specialist, I would have liked to have seen the author include a chapter detailing the suits and watches James wears. His outfits demonstrate his level of sophistication. There are two pieces of trivia I would added to the book: One, Caroline Cossey plays an extra in the pool scene in, For Your Eyes Only (1981). She was one of the first transsexual models in the world. Second, in the TV series, The Simpsons, the nuclear power plant Homer works in is sector 7G. This is homage from, Diamonds are Forever (1971).

Last year Bond 50 was released on Blu-ray. All 23 movies on high-definition with 130 hours of extras and a empty spot for Skyfall (2012). I immediately went to blu-ray.com to take a closer look. I looked through the movie titles and realized they “forgot” a movie! I distinctly remembered watching a James Bond movie with Kim Basinger and Barbara Carrera. The movie was Never Say Never Again. I looked again and did not see it in the set. Some research online and the book revealed since NSNA was not produced by Eon Productions it was not included in the set. NSNA was produced by Warner Brothers and does have the words, “James Bond”, “007”, or “Secret Agent” in the title.

You can find my husband Carlos on his blog Live Fast Look Good or on Twitter @livefastlookgd .

Stay tuned because coming up Carlos will be interviewing author Tom DeMichael about the book and all things James Bond!

Disclaimer: Thank you to Hal Leonard publishing for sending us a copy of this book for review.

Michael Douglas: A Biography by Marc Eliot

Michael Douglas: A Biography
by Marc Eliot
Hardcover, 352 pages
9780307952363
Crown Archetype (Random House)
September 2012

Find the book on:
Powells
Indiebound
Barnes & Noble
Amazon

Thank you to my husband Carlos for submitting this book review of Marc Eliot's latest biography on actor Michael Douglas!


My wife knowing how much I admire Michael Douglas secured a copy of his biography and suggested I review it.

From the time I saw Michael Douglas in Romancing the Stone (1984) he became one of my favorite actors. I have seen 22 of his movies, with Wall Street (1987) as my favorite movie for his acting and The Game (1997) as my favorite for the plot.

As I read the book, I came to realize how complicated Michael is as a person and how his life evolved. He was very much a product of his famous father, Kirk Douglas. Not only did he only did he follow his father’s footsteps in his profession but also in his relationships with women. They were both married twice, had numerous affairs and his mother’s name and first wife’s name are almost identical (Diana and Diandra respectively). They both have been awarded accolades for their vast bodies of work over many decades. Unlike his father Michael was involved in drugs and alcohol for a time.

Michael’s first acting break was the television series, The Streets of San Francisco, with Karl Malden. However it was not acting that made Michael famous, it was producing. Michael’s big producing break came courtesy of Kirk. Kirk was acting in a play called One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for several years. Several attempts were made over the years to take play from the stage to the screen with no success. There was a growing interest in the book and he wanted to capitalize on it. Kirk was practically giving the movie away to anyone just as long he had the main part. No studio would touch it due to the depressing and sad story. Finally Michael interjected and convinced Kirk to let him take over the project. This is where Michael’s life would change forever. Now it had been several years and Kirk was looking for film work. Kirk assumed that since Michael was now producer that he would get the role of McMurphy as he did in the play. The only glitch in the project was that Kirk Douglas was deemed to old for that role. Michael agonized about this decision and the role ultimately went to Jack Nicholson which would win him his first Oscar.

After the monster success of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and the subsequent Oscar for Best Picture, the movie industry was at Michael’s feet. He now had the power to star and/or make any movie he wished. Then in 1986 he starred in his definitive role of Gordon Gecko, in director Oliver Stone’s Wall St. His command performance of the financier would win him his second Oscar, this time for Best Actor.

His life was marred by personal setbacks and tragedy. He suffered the incarceration of his son, Cameron, for drug possession and the death of his half-brother, Eric, to a drug overdose. His first marriage ended in a contemptuous divorce. He even had a brush with stage IV throat cancer. Although through all the tribulations he did manage to find love again with fellow actor, Catherine Zeta-Jones. They married in 2000 and have two children.

Michael Douglas: A Biography by Marc Eliot is an engrossing and intimate look into the life of one of the most popular contemporary actors. The biography details the childhood of Michael growing up with a famous father and how his fragmented upbringing shaped him. The biography moves chronologically through childhood, college, starting in movies, having a child, divorce, and remarrying. Mr. Eliot details the ups and downs of Michael's life with concise thoughts. This book is an informative read for any movie buff or anyone looking to learn more about the famous actor. I was also impressed with Mr. Eliot's biography of Steve McQueen.

You can find my husband Carlos on his blog Live Fast Look Good or on Twitter @livefastlookgd .

Disclaimer: Thank you to Crown Archetype for sending a copy of the book for my husband to review!

Guest Post ~ Carlos' Indiana Jones Adventure

Hello! I am Raquelle’s husband, Carlos. Raquelle and I share a great passion for movies. She primarily reviews movies made in the 1920s though the 1960s. I concentrate on movies mostly from the 1960s to the present. Between the two of us we have every decade covered!

The Indiana Jones movies have been a passion of mine since 1981, when Raiders of the Lost Ark was released. All four Indiana Jones movies were being shown for one Saturday only. The reason for the rerelease was to drum up business for the upcoming Blu-ray box set. These movies were extremely well received by audiences who were treated to exotic locations, a wise-cracking archaeologist, and nearly unattainable ancient artifacts.

I asked my manager for a Saturday off. This is a rare treat in the world of retail. Saturday’s is the busiest day of the week so it is all hands on deck. I joke with customers who ask if I work on Saturdays. I tell them if  I’m not at work on a Saturday it means I am either on vacation or dead! He gave me the ok and I purchased two tickets, one for myself and my Dad. I invited Mrs. S. but she declined. 

Knowing the popularity of the movies and not having been shown in the theaters for a quarter century, I wanted to get there as early as possible. We arrived at the movies around 9:45 am and the gate to the entrance was down. There were about 40 people waiting to get in. I was expecting more fans of the movie to turn out for this once-in-a-lifetime event. At 10 am the gates were raised and everyone shuffled in. We were corralled into a line, so we could be given a commemorative poster and lanyard. The lanyard was more functional as it was an indicator of our paid admission. There was a 30 minute break between movies which gave us the opportunity to eat and stretch our legs. 

Back of the Lanyard

Front of the Lanyard - This is the idol that Indiana Jones almost acquires in the first movie.

Movies:

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)'

As a movie buff where I plant my ass in a theater is of utmost importance. Almost to the extent of where and why Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory sits. I need to sit in the center of the theater about three quarters of the way up. In this location my eyes are level looking at the center of the screen. Also my ears are treated to a perfect balance of sound. I located the most centrally available seats and settled in with my Dad to my left. 

The lights go down...Raiders starts! It was a thrill to watch this movie again after so many years. We stayed for the first three movies, but we skipped “Kingdom of  the Crystal Skull”. I had seen it in 2008 when it came out.

Before “Last Crusade” an Indiana Jones trivia contest was held. The prizes were commiserate with the questions. Here are the questions:

1. What is Indiana afraid of? 
2. What is Indiana full legal name?  
3. How does Indiana get the grail? 
4. How did Indiana get the scar on his chin? 
5. How did Indiana get the fedora? 

(See answers at the bottom of the post)

The best prize was the box set of all the movies on Blu-ray. I only knew the answers to questions 1 and 3. 

Sunday previous I trekked to the same theater for a special screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was being promoted for a special screening on Imax for one week only. I know what you are thinking: you went to see Raiders of the Lost Ark on  Imax and a week later you go back to see Raiders of the Lost Ark AGAIN and the three more Indiana Jones movies! 

Watching a movie on an Imax has no equal as it represents the zenith of current digital movie technology. It is engineered for the highest degree of high definition and 6 channel uncompressed audio. There is a catch however. The are two types of Imax’s: Classic Design and Multiplex Design. Classic Design is built in a certain manner to take full advantage of the experience. This is not your grandfather’s movie theater. Important features include seats set at a steep incline, a very large screen,  72 x 52.8 feet, and the seats placed much closer to the screen.  Multiplex Design is a regular theater has been turned into an Imax. It does not contain the important attributes needed for the full experience. As I entered the “Imax theater” I stopped in my tracks and wondered if I went into the wrong theater. I was expecting a Classic Design Imax, but I was in a regular theater. I went back out and asked the man who took my ticket if I was in the right theater. He explained it was “technically an Imax”. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and went back in and found my seat. The movie started and I kept waiting for the Imax experience to kick in. Within five minutes I realized that was not going to happen. I stayed through the entire movie, disappointed. When I returned the next weekend for the marathon, I explained what happened to a supervisor and she returned the cost of the ticket, $16. Lesson learned! If you want to see a movie on an Imax, it must be on a Classic design not a Multiplex design.

Answers:

1) Snakes

2) Dr. Henry Walton Jones Jr.

3) The notes in his father’s diary

4) A whip used to hold back the lion

5) Given to him by the treasure hunter who found the Cross of Coronado