LFS & 21c Museum Foundation Presents
An Evening with Dennis Nyback
7:00 PM Hillbillies in Hollywood
9:00 PM The Effect of Dada & Surrealism on Hollywood Movies of the 1930s
The film screenings will be followed by a discussion with Dennis Nyback.
Free & Open to the Public
Join Us before and after the screenings at Proof!
The Effect of Dada and Surrealism on Hollywood Movies of the 1930s
Hollywood took Dada and Surrealism and cheerfully dumped them into American movies with no explanation or framing devices in the early 1930s. This program shows great examples of films that jumped on the Dada and Surrealism bandwagon to delight and mystify viewers reeling from the Great Depression.
Program List:
THE BIG BROADCAST (Paramount 1932)
Opening title and credits from INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (Paramount 1933)
Excerpt from, W. C. Fields arrives in China
DAMES (Warner Brothers 1934)
Excerpt from, Busby Berkeley sequence
LADY IN THE DARK (Paramount 1944)
Excerpt from, Surrealistic interlude
EVERYTHING'S RHYTHM (Gaumont British 1937)
Excerpt from, Harry Roy performs "Make Some Music"
NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK (Paramount 1941)
Excerpt from , W. C. Fields fights traffic
DAMES (Warner Brothers 1934)
Excerpt from, Busby Berkeley sequence
DUCK SOUP (MGM 1933)
Excerpt from , Battle finale
INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (Paramount 1933)
Ending scene and credits from
Notes:
In the 1932 feature film THE BIG BROADCAST there is a scene in a radio station. The first shot is of a clock at the end of a hallway. We can hear its slow “tick tock”. A black cat is seen walking down the hallway. An office boy comes out of a doorway and points to the ON THE AIR sign. The cat then slows down to almost no movement at all. The clock quits the “tick tock” sound. Three men poke their heads out of a doorway. They appear one at time in three jump cuts with their heads completely exposed with no sign of movement. An angry man appears. He is the head of the radio station. The clock throws up its hands in alarm. The three heads vanish one at a time: Pop Pop Pop. The cat runs for the door. It slams shut before the cat gets there The cat literally melts under the closed door and is gone. I absolutely love this example of surrealism in what is for all intents and purposes a straightforward movie. In the early 1930s there are many other examples of surrealism being dropped upon an unsuspecting audience. It is not explained. There is no framing device. An avant garde art movement is swallowed up by Hollywood and spit out with less fanfare than a fresh faced ingenue.
THE BIG BROADCAST was a Paramount Picture. Paramount accepted surrealism more readily than the other studios. It would pop up in the oddest places. It helped that they had W.C. Fields under contract. He starred in two surrealist tinged features: MILLION DOLLAR LEGS (1932) and INTERNATIONAL HOUSE (1933). Fields iconoclastic humor has been called eccentric, misogynist, ribald, absurdist, and many other things. What it is never called, and deserves to be, is surrealistic.
Over at MGM, Dada was coming to the big screen via the Marx Brothers. Dada was more than an art movement. It was an ardently political, antiwar and absurdist response to the senseless carnage of World War I. In DUCK SOUP (1933), Groucho goes to war singing “They got guns/We got guns/All God's chillun got guns”. He orders trenches readymade because there isn’t time to dig them , keeps track of the war tally with a pool hall counter, dresses in every conceivable form of military uniform, including that of a boy scout troop leader, and sends one soldier off to war with “You're a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember while you're out there risking life and limb through shot and shell, we'll be in here thinking what a sucker you are.” DUCK SOUP was a box office failure. The heads of MGM thought it failed because Harpo hadn’t played the harp. In all the rest of their films at MGM, the Marx Brothers would periodically have to stop their mayhem so Chico could do a piano solo. As soon as their momentum got going again, they would have to stop for Harpo to play the harp. The audiences returned. Maybe America was not ready for Dada.
Warner Brothers was known for hard hitting realism. They had Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson and that tough dame Bette Davis. So what saved them from bankruptcy in the dark bottom of the Depression? The great master of Hollywood Surrealism, Busby Berkeley. Warner Brothers didn’t call his movies surrealistic. They called them all kinds of other things, always with an exclamation mark. Sure, they had great songs! Great casts! Dick Powell! Ruby Keeler! Joan Blondel! Hundreds of chorus girls! But what put these films over the top was Busby’s grasp of surrealism. His greatest surreal masterpiece was DAMES (1934). It has two fabulous numbers. The first is for the song “Dames”. Impossible to describe - you will just have to watch it yourself. It ends with a salute to Man Ray. The second number is “I Only Have Eyes For You”. It begins with Dick Powell! and Ruby Keeler on a street car. As Dick sings all the girls in the advertising placards in the street car turn into Ruby Keeler. The camera then dives into one of the ads and comes out on a sound stage with a hundred chorus girls dancing who all look like Ruby Keeler. The real Ruby appears and the camera slowly moves toward her eye. Soon the eye covers the entire screen. The single most famous image in surrealist films is the slicing of the eye in Luis Bunuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929). In “I Only Have Eyes For You”, the iris of the eye opens like the iris of a camera and RUBY KEELER, LIKE NUCLEAR MISSILE SEEN FROM ABOVE , COMING OUT OF A MISSILE SILO, COMES OUT OF HER OWN EYE!
Hillbillies in Hollywood
Alternate title: "The Incredibly Strange Country, Western, and Rockabilly Film Show".
Over three hours of great music from 1927 to 1964, from the justly famous (Bob Wills, Jimmie Rogers, Spike Jones) to the unjustly forgotten (Hank Fort, Smoky Rogers, the Korn Kobblers), and many, many others.
Program List
Vitaphone Frolics (1936)
featuring Zeb Carver and His Cousins The Singing Brakeman (1929)
Jimmie Rogers
The Ranger Song (1928)
J Harold Murray
Barn Dance (1963)
Opening credits plus intro and production number The Jimmy Dean Show
Long Gone Blues (1963)
Hank Williams Jr. on the Jimmy Dean television show
I Didn’t Know The Gun Was Loaded (1949)
Hank (Henrietta) Fort
Play That Hootnanny (1942)
Texas Jim Lewis
Hank a Flyin’ (1939)
Freddy Schnicklefritz Fisher
Cow Girl Polka (1941)
Bobby Gregory
Everything’s Hotsy Totsy (1942)
The Le Donne Trio
Love Me Tender (1957)
Elvis
I Walk The Line (1958)
Johnny Cash
Dang Me (1964)
Roger Miller
There Stands the Glass (1954)
Web Pierce
Giddyup (1957)
Freddie Bell and the Bellboys
Baby Blue (1958)
Gene Vincent
Lonesome Train (1956)
The Rock and Roll Trio with Johnny and Dorsey Burnett
Flip, Flop, Fly (1958)
The Collins Kids
Blue Suede Shoes (1955)
Elvis and Milton Berle
Take Me Back To My Boots and Saddle (1940)
Carson Robison
I’m An Old Cowhand (1944)
Gus Van
Take Me Back to Oklahoma (1940)
Tex Ritter, Bob Wills feature film
Rediscovering Country Music (1970)
Patsy Montana
I’d Don’t Care if the Sun Don’t Shine (1952)
Mary Hatcher
Holo Kolokaa (1940)
Lani McIntire Blue Hawaii (1940)
Al McIntire
King Kamenmaha (1940)
Lani McIntire
Montana Plains (1942)
Emerson’s Mountaineers
We’re The Village Fire Brigade (c1942)
The Music Mixers
KP Serenade (1943)
The Hoosier Hotshots
Boxcar Rhapsody (1939)
Borah Minnevitch and his Harmonica Rascals
There’s A Hole in the Old Oaken Bucket (1941)
Florence Gill, Red Harper and the Gills
Listen To the Mockingbird (1940)
The Korn Kobblers
Pass The Biscuits Mirandy (1941)
Spike Jones
Clink Clink (1941)
Spike Jones
Mama Don’t Allow (1943)
Rufe Davis
Chattanooga Choo Choo (1946)
Smoky Rogers & His Cowboy Cavalry
Listen To The Mockingbird (1940)
Emerson’s Mountaineers
Texas Strip (c1944)
Unknown
One Man Band (St. Louis Blues) (1941)
Vince Blue Mundy
The Martins and the Coys (1942)
The Jesters
Beer Barrel Polka (c1938)
Unknown
That Red Hot Gal of Mine (c1938)
Bob Wills
Banjomania (St Louis Blues) (c1942)
Eddie Peabody
Hillbilly Hoosegow (1941)
Emerson’s Mountaineers
My Darling Clementine (1942)
The Fashionaires
Hillbilly Holiday (Hand Me Down My Walking Cane) (1941)
Chuck Palmer and his Rangers
Notes: It all started with a Soundie called "The Martins and the Coys" by a group called the Jesters. It is the tale of a hillbilly feud, modeled on the Hatfields and McCoys. Because of its ribald phallic symbol gag ending, I had used it in Stag Party Special. The germination continued when I acquired the feature film "Take Me Back to Oklahoma" featuring the great western swing band Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. I paired that feature with a bunch of cowboy Soundies to create a program called Cowboy Music Night. I premiered that program at the Clinton Street Theater in 1999. Around fourteen people showed up. In 2003 I was talking to a guy who worked around the corner from the theater. I mentioned my cowboy Soundies and he wanted to see them badly enough to promote another show. His name was Brian Murphy and he had a business he called Rock-it Entertainment. He knew I also had a bunch of hillbilly Soundies so he suggested calling the show Hillbillies in Hollywood. He wanted to know if I could put some rockabilly acts into the show. By the time the big night came around I had assembled over three hours of material. Thanks to Brian a huge sell out crowd showed up. They whooped and hollered through the night that lasted four hours with an intermission.
Experience Music Project (aka Jimi Hendrix Museum) in Seattle arranged for the show. They requested that I keep it under three hours. I dropped the feature and included everything else. A very nice crowd showed up. I was then contacted by the Northwest Film Center in Portland. They wanted it under two hours. I did some fine tuning and got it close to that. Another nice crowd appeared. I then decided to take the show to Europe. Since I would be carrying the program around in a back pack, I cut it to 90 minutes. I got a dozen bookings for the show in Europe. There it showed to big and small crowds, both comprised of many mystified people. If people in Europe were mystified by hillbillies, think how the show would go over in Korea! The Seventh Annual Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival booked the show, along with Road Show and Blaxploitation Cartoon Special, All three were billed as "Vintage American Slices of Myth and Reality". I also did shows in Japan. All in all Hillbillies appeared in several far flung corners of the world during the year 2003. The ending of The Martins and Coys always got a big laugh.