Gender Wars and Some Big Ideas from Howard Hughes

The following is an excerpt from Film Noir FAQ by David J. Hogan, as posted on Bookgasm. Visit Bookgasm to read this entire excerpt.

One of the most highly regarded films noir, RKO’s The Narrow Margin (1952), came perilously close to oblivion after being completed. During thirteen days in May–June 1950, studio contract director Richard Fleischer shot the suspenseful story of a Chicago police detective who risks his life to transport a hoodlum’s wife to Los Angeles, via train, so that she can be a witness in a mob trial.

Most of The Narrow Margin is restricted to the train’s passenger cars, a marvelous construction of claustrophobic sets (by Albert S. D’Agostino and Jack Okey) with breakaway sections that allowed full camera access. The narrative is tense, and although many interludes are violent, the tale isn’t contrived. After the shoot was complete, RKO owner Howard Hughes suggested, with great enthusiasm, that the male protagonist, Detective Sergeant Walt Brown (Charles McGraw) leave his charge (Marie Windsor) in order to conduct a (literally) running gun battle with murderous mobsterson top of the train, as in innumerable westerns. Though cinematic, the added sequence would have removed the story from the realm of the plausible and turned it into a comic book adventure. Richard Fleischer thought it was one of the worst ideas he’d ever heard.

Well, Hughes abandoned that notion. Then he came up with a bigger one. Because The Narrow Margin had turned out so well, Hughes wanted to scrap all footage with McGraw and Windsor. The editors would salvage as many other sequences as possible, and the leads would be recast with RKO’s two biggest assets, Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. In a commercial sense, the idea wasn’t without merit, but it would obviously have meant the destruction of an exceptionally well-done B thriller. Fleischer, still typecast around the studio as a B-picture director, would probably have been cut out of the revamped project. He knew he could do Bs and ached to step up to the A-picture level. Hughes’s idea would be a setback to Fleischer’s career, particularly because rumors would spread that the McGraw-Windsor footage was deficient. Fortunately, the ceaseless activity of Howard Hughes’s mind brought with it some positive ramifications. Project ideas, endless memos with editorial revisions, a never-ending search for new starlets—all of that and more bubbled in his head like a stew. He eventually decided against—or simply forgot—the Mitchum-Russell idea, but time had passed. The Narrow Margin had been sitting on the shelf for nearly eighteen months.

Keep reading this excerpt on Bookgasm.com! 

Film Noir FAQ celebrates and reappraises some 200 noir thrillers representing 20 years of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Noir pulls us close to brutal cops and scheming dames, desperate heist men and hardboiled private eyes, and the unlucky innocent citizens that get in their way. These are exciting movies with tough guys in trench coats and hot tomatoes in form-fitting gowns. The moon is a streetlamp and the narrow streets are prowled by squad cars and long black limousines. Lives are often small but people’s plans are big – sometimes too big. Robbery, murder, gambling; the gun and the fist; the grift and the con game; the hard kiss and the brutal brush-off.

Three Stooges, an interview

Happy Birthday, Moe Howard!
Moe would have been 115 years old today.

Onstage and Backstage podcast from Hal Leonard is available on iTunes and Libsyn. Each episode authors and their guests have a chat about the topics of their books. Today, David J. Hogan talks about his book Three Stooges FAQ with FAQ series editor Robert Rodriguez.

Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Daivd J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ, chats with FAQ series editor Robert Rodriguez about everybody’s favorite “boys,” the kings of slapstick, and how they are a product of their time and an insight into American history.

>>>LISTEN HERE<<<

Three Stooges FAQ is an entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Interview with David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ

David J. Hogan is the author of Three Stooges FAQ.

Here’s a taste of the interview from Skewed ‘n Reviewed.

How did you get into the Stooges and become an expert on them?

Like a lot of Baby Boomers, I became a second-generation Stooges fan when the boys’ shorts (two-reelers) were sold to television by Columbia in the very late 1950s. Over the years, my interest in film grew. I’ve worked in Los Angeles as an entertainment journalist (spent many hours on film sets and locations), and have written three other film-related books besides THREE STOOGES FAQ.

(I’m at work now on another.) Published hundreds of film reviews and articles in various magazines for more than 35 years. Along with all of that, I guess my interest in the Stooges, and in the finer points of comedy, continued to grow and evolve.I struck up correspondences with Moe Howard and Larry Fine in the early ’70s, and began to watch their films very closely, from a fan’s perspective, and from that of a film & cultural historian.

What are your thoughts on the new film as well as the casting choices?

The very idea that the Farrelly Bros. would even attempt a new-version Stooges film is ballsy–and I give them credit for it. From what I can judge after seeing the trailers, the principal casting looks pretty inspired. I like the fact that none of the actors are established stars. Audiences will be better able to buy them as the Stooges than if some earlier casting notions, such as Sean Penn, had been pursued.

Since slapstick is considered a faded form of comedy, to what to you attribute the continued appeal of the Stooges?

I disagree that slapstick has faded. The term itself is a little antiquated, but there’s been no lack of outlandish physical humor in movies of the past 30 years. The Stooges’ continued appeal has to do with a lot of things: the boys’ impeccable professionalism (I never saw any of them turn in a lazy performance), their wonderfully individuated personas, the contributions of hugely experienced comedy writers and directors, the boys’ physicality and sheer enthusiasm, the slickness provided by Columbia, a large studio–and the fact that we still call these comics, who reached their peak as middle-aged men, and who continued to work into their golden years, the boys!

Keep reading on Skewed ‘n Reviewed…

Three Stooges FAQ

Seventy-five stills, posters, and other images – many never before published in book form – bring colorful screen moments to life and help illuminate the special appeal of key shorts. Exclusive sections include a Stooges biographical and career timeline; a useful, colorful history of the structure and behind-the-camera personnel of the Columbia two-reel unit; and personality sidebars about more than 30 popular players who worked frequently with the Stooges. Also included is a filmography that covers all 190 shorts, plus a bibliography, making this the ultimate guide for all Three Stooges fans!

The State of the Stooges, 2012

Guest Blogger: David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ (Applause Books)

Producer-directors Peter and Bobby Farrelly formally began their quest to make a Three Stooges feature film more than 15 years ago. The idea had commercial merit, but as often happens in Hollywood, years passed as the project was considered by numerous studios and went through many script drafts. Rumors swirled that such luminaries as Sean Penn and Jim Carrey were attached to the project, but windows of opportunity closed and those actors removed themselves from consideration. For a long while the odds were that the film would never be made at all.

Things finally came together when 20th Century-Fox involved itself and greenlighted the project. In a smart stroke, the Farrellys (best known for There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin, and Dumb and Dumber) selected relative unknowns to play the boys in the all-new Stooges comedy: Sean Hayes as Larry, Will Sasso as Curly, and Chris Diamantopoulos as Moe.

The actors don’t do interpretations of the Stooges—they become the Stooges. This is beyond homage, this is duplication, and your willingness to accept it will play a large part in your reaction to the movie.

There certainly was no crying need for new actors to become the Stooges, but they did, and they deliver energetic, astonishingly faithful performances. Hayes has mastered Larry’s Philly accent, Sasso nails Curly’s piping voice and physical antics, and Diamantopoulos channels not just Moe’s bark but the great comic’s pugnacious body language. The violently slapstick gags draw directly from the originals, and audio of those fabulous Columbia Pictures eye pokes and other sound effects are retained.

I saw the film with a mix of longtime Stooges fans, teenagers, and younger kids. My observation was that the younger the viewer, the more enthusiastic the response. (On the way out, a boy of about 12 happily declared, “That was the funniest movie I ever saw!”)

For my part, I laughed heartily at plenty of the gags, and the quick pace with which they’re delivered. A visual joke involving a pogo stick put me on the floor, and a sequence at the boys’ salmon farm is outlandishly funny. For much of the rest of the picture, I chuckled. Sometimes I merely smiled.

The Three Stooges is undone by a few hugely noticeable creative miscalculations. First, too much time is devoted to the Stooges as little boys, as they grow up in an orphanage. The three young actors go through their paces effectively enough, but I wasn’t interested in seeing the boys as real boys.

Another narrative speed bump is the serious financial plight of the orphanage after the Stooges are all grown up. The place is $830,000 in debt (mainly, it turns out, because of damage caused by the Stooges over the course of 35 years). Precious minutes are squandered on adorably cute, waif-like orphans who long to be adopted by nice families. It’s pretty sticky stuff, and at odds with the original Stooges, who seldom trafficked in sentimentality. (For that matter, they seldom worked with kids.) When they did go all gooey, as in Three Loan Wolves (1946) and the particularly dire Nutty But Nice (1940), the results were some of the weakest two-reelers the team ever made. So the Farrellys’ decision to go maudlin—there’s even a little girl who’s dying—openly defies one of the boys’ strengths.

Although the slapstick bits are ferociously fast and beautifully executed, the interludes between feel slack, as if the picture has too much plot and can’t support its slim 92-minute running time. The Farrellys’ idea to divide the film into three, clearly identified episodes is a good one, but even with that innovation the pace flags when the boys aren’t on the attack. The overall rhythm picks up during the film’s final third, but the energy just arrives a little late.

Finally, the film can’t avoid the evolution of film grammar. The Farrellys shoot their picture in the modern mode, with a highly mobile camera, frequent tight closeups, brisk cutting, heavy camera coverage from many angles, subjective-camera images, and complex (and expensive) physical effects, such as the incredible arc and distance achieved by a poor sap who’s hit by a bus.

These and other devices are part of every modern filmmaker’s storytelling repertoire, but when the original Stooges shot their two-reelers during 1934-57, film grammar was different, and budgets were low. In the vintage shorts, most camera setups are static three- and two-shots, with occasional cuts to medium closeups. The shorts’ directors hadn’t the time, money, or inclination to attempt a lot of camera movement or design sequences for slick edits. Instead of having the gloss of the Farrellys’ movie, most of the shorts display a pleasingly gritty, off-the-rack look. And they were in black and white, which firmly locks them—and the Stooges—into a particular era.

Naturally, no accountant (or whatever it is that passes for a studio executive these days) was going to allow the new Three Stooges to be shot in black and white (and that’s a shame), and the old film grammar is gone forever. We can still enjoy that style of filmmaking, but it won’t be duplicated on a studio film today. So although the new Stooges look and sound very much like the originals, the tech and stylistic aspects of the filmic world they inhabit have no relation to the world of the shorts. Up there on the big screen in 2012, the boys seem overwhelmed.

Lastly, I wish I hadn’t seen the trailers because a lot of the best gags are revealed in them. Males in the audience will be particularly disappointed to discover that the funniest and most audacious moment from the first trailer, curvy model Kate Upton’s Venus-like climb from a swimming pool, didn’t make the final cut. Instead, we get only a quick glimpse—in long shot, no less—of Upton seated in a lifeguard’s chair waay on the other side of the pool.

Fox apparently coveted the PG rating, but PG-13 would probably have worked out better.

Ask me later if I’ll buy the DVD. I’m still thinking about it.

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Further reading: Three Stooges FAQ in the New York Times

Three Stooges FAQ by David J. Hogan is available from ApplauseBooks.com, Amazon, B&N, and your local bookstores.

This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood. Seventy-five stills, posters, and other images – many never before published in book form – bring colorful screen moments to life and help illuminate the special appeal of key shorts. Exclusive sections include a Stooges biographical and career timeline; a useful, colorful history of the structure and behind-the-camera personnel of the Columbia two-reel unit; and personality sidebars about more than 30 popular players who worked frequently with the Stooges. Also included is a filmography that covers all 190 shorts, plus a bibliography, making this the ultimate guide for all Three Stooges fans!

War Bride Makes Movies

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Guest Blogger: David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ (Applause Books)

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Feline brunette Barbara Bartay was a Columbia contract player from 1953 to 1957. She worked with the boys in six shorts spanning 1953 to 1956: Pardon My Backfire, Stone Age Romeos, Hot Ice, Blunder Boys, Flagpole Jitters, and For Crimin’ Out Loud. Besides appearing with the Stooges, Barbara did two-reelers with Andy Clyde, Vernon and Quillan, and (in one of his solo shorts) Joe Besser. She also shows up in a 1956 Universal feature called Never Say Goodbye.

Details of Barbara’s work with the Stooges can be found in Three Stooges FAQ, but it’s worth noting here that she was a natural charmer who’s particularly funny in Pardon My Backfire, as a gun moll who seduces the boys in their commercial garage, only to end up with one of their greasy work gloves stuck to the seat of her dress. She’s also amusing, for a variety of reasons, as a Cockney “newsboy” in Hot Ice.

Barbara had a pleasing but heavy Eastern European accent that helped to make her film career a brief one. Thanks to ace film historian Frank Reighter, we know details of this immigrant actress who scored with the Stooges. Her birth name was Vari Komp. She was born in Bohemia, Crochwise, Czechoslovakia, on March 19, 1921. By the time she came to the United States in 1948 as an officially “stateless” war bride (destination: National City, California), she had changed her name to Barbara Bartay. She became a U.S. citizen in September 1951 but didn’t apply for a Social Security number until February 1953; Frank Reighter speculates that it may have been Columbia that told Barbara that she need a Social Security card in order to work.

Following her film career, Barbara married, in succession, two men connected with L.A.’s prosperous Utter-McKinley Mortuaries, Maytor H. McKinley (the business’s founder, who took Barbara as his fifth wife) and, after being widowed, Samuel McCormac, an attorney who handled the mortuary’s business.

Barabara was active in the Opera Guild, International Orphans Inc., National Art Association, and the Los Angeles Orphanage Guild. A laudable turnaround for somebody who arrived in this country “stateless.”

Vari Komp Bartay McKinly McCormac passed away in Los Angeles on August 20, 1986.

Three Stooges FAQ by David J. Hogan
This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Available from Applause Books and booksellers nationwide.

Stooges to Tarzan

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Guest Blogger: David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ (Applause Books)

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Actor Jock Mahoney was a lean and intelligent Tarzan in Tarzan Goes to India (1962), but as I watched the movie at the Sandusky (Ohio) Drive-In, I knew I’d seen him before—but a younger version. When Tarzan Goes to India was almost over it finally dawned on me: I’d seen Jock with the Three Stooges.

Jacques O’Mahoney was a tall stuntman whose good looks and willingness to be self-spoofing won him speaking bits in some Columbia shorts. Long and lean, he was built like a decathlon athlete, and was a skilled acrobat. He’s very funny as Elmer, the lamebrained and inept cowboy of writer-director Ed Bernd’s Punchy Cowpunchers (1950), but I like him best as the Anemian guard sent to keep an eye on atomic scientist Emil Sitka and the scientist’s pretty daughter, (Christine McIntyre) in Bernd’s Fuelin’ Around (1949). Foolishly aware of his nice features and wavy hair, he allows himself to be seduced by Christine’s outrageous compliments. By the time it’s all over, Jacques’ head is wedged between the bars of the cell and his keys have been taken. O vanity!

Mahoney went on to call himself Jacques Mahoney, and finally Jock Mahoney. He became a TV star as The Range Rider (1951-53), starred in The Land Unknown (1957), a middling-budget sci-fi adventure from Universal-International, and became a TV star a second time as the suave gunfighter named Yancy Derringer (1958-59).

Some of his subsequent work was in support (U-I’s Away All Boats) or leads in low-budget stuff that skated close to exploitation (Three Blondes in His Life). But he made an agreeable Tarzan in Tarzan Goes to India and an equally good one in Tarzan’s Three Challenges (1963).

And as a point of trivia, Mahoney appears as a sneaky bad guy out to kill Tarzan (Gordon Scott) in Tarzan the Magnificent (1960).

Three Stooges FAQ by David J. Hogan
This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Available from Applause Books and booksellers nationwide.

The Stooges Take Cleveland

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Guest Blogger: David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ (Applause Books)

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OK, there’s our favorite guy: Captain Penny, the lanky, smiling young train engineer come to visit with us kids daily from WEWS-TV, Channel 5 (“First in Cleveland” as the station unfailingly reminded everybody). On the menu? Cartoons, live guests like animal trainer Jungle Larry, and the big guns, the Three Stooges.

As Russ Meyer said years later, “Welcome to violence!”

The Stooges were TV’s Big Thing when their shorts were made available to television in 1958, and local TV stations snapped them up like prawns. The shorts often were broadcast as segments of established kiddie shows, which is how Captain Penny got lucky enough to show them. WEWS announcer and sometimes sportscaster Ron Penfound got the Captain Penny gig in 1955, and he’d ride it all the way to 1971. In the late 1950s he got the Stooges.

My recollection is that the shorts were shown unedited, with every face-slap, head-thump, and belly-banger on glorious display. I even recall the climbing-spike-in-the-head gag from They Stooge to Conga. Wow!

Like every kid I was fascinated by the eye-poke, which was sublime. The sudden violence of it, and the plucked-violin sound effect, were (in those pre-hippie days) mind-blowing.

I liked Captain Penny’s on-camera kindness but I was a little put off by his goodie-goodie point of view. He was low-key and well-meaning—quite in opposition to the Stooges—and he invariably looked right into our eyes at the end of every Stooges comedy and say (and I’m paraphrasing from the mists of memory), “It’s all right to laugh at the Stooges but not to do as they do.”

I guess that meant the eye-poke was out whenever my little brother wandered by.

Years later I learned that Ron Penfound had flirted with becoming a Protestant clergyman before his head was turned by broadcasting. But he remained a gentle soul who closed every show with these words: “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool Mom. She’s pretty nice and she’s pretty smart. Do what Mom says and you won’t go far wrong.”

Overflowing from the pores with the Stooges, I silently willed my mother to say, “David, if you want to give Tim the eye poke, well, that’s just fine.”

Never happened!

Three Stooges FAQ by David J. Hogan
This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Available from Applause Books and booksellers nationwide.

Love at First Bite – a Three Stooges FAQ excerpt

An excerpt of Three Stooges FAQ by David J. Hogan

Love at First Bite (1950) is about memory and anticipation. It’s about love, too, but for the Stooges, even when the course of love is smooth, it’s bumpy. The greater part of this uneven but often charming short is devoted to the boys’ flashback reminiscences about their first meetings with their European sweethearts. The girls are arriving today, together on the same ship, and the boys can’t wait to greet them. But when the Stooges get drunk, Shemp is given a concrete footbath by Larry and Moe. He’s held fast, and only a dynamite explosion engineered by Larry is powerful enough to propel all three boys to the ship in time.

Keep reading on LaughSpin…

Three Stooges FAQ (excerpt)

This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges, available now in honor of the act’s 75th anniversary, focuses on the nearly 190 two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-59. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Available now from Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.

An excerpt:

In 1934, at the beginning of the Stooges’ tenure at Columbia—and for one film only—executives were not completely sure of how to showcase them. As we’ve seen, Columbia was a “minor major” that hadn’t the resources to make use of the boys’ talents in the MGM manner. But Columbia had established a “Musical Novelty” shorts series in 1933, and had the services of a vivacious blonde starlet named Marjorie White.

A Canadian native who stood just 4’10”, White had energy and screen presence to spare. (She also had a wisecracking, New York-style attitude that belied her Canadian origins.) During 1929–31, she’d been under contract to Fox Film Corporation, appearing in nine pictures. White sang and danced, and knew her way around a page of dialogue. She’d had leads and second leads in comedies and musicals at Fox, and found similar success later in pictures for First National, Universal, Paramount, and RKO.

Continue reading on Bookgasm…

David J. Hogan has written about film since 1973. He has contributed essays to numerous multiauthor books and is a prolific magazine reviewer. A onetime entertainment journalist formerly based in L.A., Hogan has worked on the editorial side of Chicago book publishing for more than 25 years, conceiving, editing, and co-writing books on history, aviation, vintage cars, popular music, the military, politics, television, and yes, movies. He lives with his family in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Born on This Day in 1902, Larry Fine Finds Yet Another Reason to Appreciate Mothers!

Guest Blogger: David J. Hogan is the author of Three Stooges FAQ (Applause Books)

I spoke with Larry Fine for the first time in 1972, after we’d been corresponding for a while and he expressed curiosity about my family. I told him that my father was a commercial artist and that my mother had been a model. I enclosed some recent photos, and although Mom hadn’t been a model for twenty years she remained very beautiful—which is why I spoke with Larry Fine for the first time because he called me.

Well, he really called to talk with my mother. I felt rather abused. After all, I’d started the correspondence, and now my mother was hogging the phone and monopolizing precious time with my favorite Stooge.

I finally got the phone away and Larry chatted with me amiably, telling me all about vaudeville gigs he’d played in northern Ohio (I lived outside of Cleveland), and giving me a sense of life on the road before he and the boys hit it big.

We had other conversations and exchanged many more letters, but get this: Larry’s letters to me were on his standard orange stationery, but the letters he sent to my Mom were on special white stationery decorated at the top by a delightful caricature of Larry playing the violin.

I always figured that my mother was something of an operator, and here was proof!

Three Stooges FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Eye-Poking, Face-Slapping, Head-Thumping Geniuses

  Written by David J. Hogan
  Published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

This entertaining and informative study of the Three Stooges focuses on the nearly 200 career-making two-reel short comedies the boys made at Columbia Pictures during the years 1934-57. Violent slapstick? Of course, but these comic gems are also peerlessly crafted and enthusiastically played by vaudeville veterans Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe – arguably the most popular and long-lived screen comics ever produced by Hollywood.

Detailed production and critical coverage is provided for every short, plus information about each film’s place in the Stooges’ careers, in Hollywood genre filmmaking, and in the larger fabric of American culture.

Available for purchase now from Applause Books.