"Newman, Kim - The Pierce-Arrow Stalled, And..." - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

of the 'Jungle Jiggle' cycle were Victor Fleming's Red Dust, with Gable
joined in a muddy monsoon threesome by Harlow and Mary Astor; James
Whale's She, with Louise Brooks, greatest star of the age, as the
ancient princess whose embrace reduces Randolph Scott to a smoking
skeleton; and von Sternberg's The Rape of Helen, with Marlene Dietrich
extensively abused by Ronald Colman at the outset but slowly
emasculating him into her self-destructive slave. When Harry Cohn
insisted Frank Capra shoot scenes of the tantric rites of Shangri-La for
Lost Horizon, James Hilton unsuccessfully sued Columbia for besmirching
his novel. A consequence of the popularity of these pictures was a
polarisation of public taste. More sophisticated audiences responded
less to the films than to satire at the expense of their absurdities in
Busby Berkeley's Roman Scandals, Dinosaur Dames and Ziegfeld Cavegirl.
In 1939 Hal Roach produced One Million B.C., the most elaborate of its
genre since King Kong. He neglected to provide much in the way of
special effects monsters, knowing fans would mainly be attracted by an
artistic recreation of the times before clothes were invented, with
superb specimens Victor Mature and Carole Landis demonstrating the
rough-and-tumble love-making of Piltdown Man. While receipts for Roach's
movie in the cities were slightly disappointing, the appetite for
exotica held up in suburban and rural theatres, prompting the
much-quoted Variety headline 'Nabes Crave Cave Babes'.
Catriona Kaye, Libido in America: A Social History of Hollywood (1953)

After shooting the President, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an unemployed
carpenter who'd recently broken with the Silver Shirts, took refuge in a
New Jersey picture house. Jack Warner was perversely proud the assassin
chose a double bill of Warners reissues, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
and Wild Boys of the Road. Warner deemed his studio's output a force for
change and debate, on a par with the New York and Washington press.
Orson Welles listened to the sales pitch. Warner strolled about his
office, which was the size of the Union Station Men's Room and smelled
about the same, pausing under framed posters for notable releases,
commenting on each like a Long Island host introducing his ancestors to a
social-climbing guest.
'After Fugitive, Robert Burns was granted an unconditional pardon and
chain gangs were abolished throughout the South. After Little Caesar and
Public Enemy, the President - God rest him, the sonofabitch - appointed
Elliot Ness head of the Federal Strike Force. That means Capone got nailed
because we made a picture. After Waiting For Lefty, membership of the
American Federation of Labor almost doubled ...'
That might be true but Warner would rather cut his throat than let a union
get real power on his lot. An ex-bootlegger who knew the underworld score,
Kennedy had helped keep IATSE off the moguls' necks by having Ness indict
Benjamin Siegel and the other mugs who tried to muscle in. Some said that
was why the President had been knocked off. That was what Howard Hawks was
rumoured to be alleging in JPK, the hush-hush project he and Howard Hughes
had shooting at RKO, with Cary Grant as Ness and Karloff as Hauptmann.
'President Coughlin has personally asked us to make a picture about the
way they're treating priests in Mexico,' Warner declared. 'We've got