In 1970, when Hollywood was on really hard times, with color TV and auteur directors turning out crap nobody wanted to see, Columbia moved on to the Warner Bros. lot, and the two resided together for twenty years, until…businessmen…convinced Sony entertainment that Columbia and Jon Peters (Peter Guber?) was worth a billion dollars and getting off the lot.
There’s a book about it, even.
The parties on the lot when they got rid of Columbia were substantial.
I read that book when it came out. We now live in a world where Bradley Cooper played someone who later married Pamela Anderson.
As much as I love MST3K, I love movies more. Columbia made classic after classic and I must respect that. The Criminal Code (1931), The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), Lady for a Day (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), Lost Horizon (1937), The Awful Truth (1937), Holiday (1938), You Can’t Take It with You (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Golden Boy (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), The More the Merrier (1943), Sahara (1943), Counter-Attack (1945), All The King’s Men (1949). When they were on. They were on. Hawks, Capra, Cukor, Zinnemann, Preminger, the talent had complete control or seemingly and it showed. The product was sound and the pictures age very well. For that, I salute the end result if not how they got there. This is true of the whole industry. When it works it works. But behind the scenes, it’s sausage making.
You’re not wrong. Yet I would caution not to dismiss the accomplishments. The Laemmles were victims while their movies are the foundation of Universal’s continued relevance. Were it not for Jr’s horror movies would we be talking about them today? Columbia treated the Stooges unfairly much like Warners hampered Bogart’s career and then failed to appreciate him. Much of the greatness we love are accidents born at being at the right place at the right time. Working past the injustice and producing lasting work despite the jabs, slights, and mistreatment is what greatness really is. Staying the course and allowing the work to speak for itself. Everyone is flawed and in our best and worst moments this comes out and you can see it throughout history.
I long to watch the original ending of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) or the 2 1/2 hour cut of The Lady from Shanghai (1947). They are lost to decisions of the time that reacted to “the needs” then versus the perspective now. Welles’ work may have been marred but we still have Citizen Kane (1941) reminding us why we care. The magic of film is the illusion that’s achieved and when it is that lives on even more so than the stories we hear. When I think of Columbia, their output is what I remember and the rest is The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. I note the past but I won’t lose sight of why I care and too often these days one thing crowds out everything. The Stooges deserved better though how they live on is a testament to them. Their immortality is the last laugh.
This 1975 Columbia Lady FOREVER is tied Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The music seems to link to the movie itself. Which is a rare sensation but this is one. Star Wars (1977) and the Fox Fanfare another.
Agreed. There’s a seeming paradox between the cretinous execs and their severe and arbitrary uses of power, and the greatest era in movie history. In Chuck Jones’ memoir Chuck Amuck he talks about Leon Schlesinger, Fred Quimby and other producers of the time, and how the artists loathed them and needled them—all while creating immortal six-minute gems.
And you wonder, when you look at times when artists have been “free” from more worldly concerns and you see some of the results, whether some constraint produces better art. We can understand Jones’ seething at Eddie Selzer collecting the Oscar for Pepé Le Pew (“a stupid ******* idea”) but his oppressiveness was a goldmine of material for anarchist cartoonists.
I don’t pull on the threads of history.
MOD HAT: Moved this to the Off topic section as it really isn’t about MST content, but the studio itself.
That just brings to mind the famous story of Eddie Selzer sticking his head into the office and declaring that bullfights weren’t funny, inspiring Jones to create a cartoon focused on just that.
Or them giving Daffy Duck’s Schlesinger’s voice, and realizing what they had done while they were screening the cartoon, only to have him turn around and exclaim:
“Thay, fellath! Where’d ya get the thwell voith?”
