Lillian Randolph

Lillian Randolph must have been a warm and lovely lady, for there is something in her portrayals that goes beyond talent and is supercharged by perhaps empathy or a deep sense of knowing.  She is instantly relatable and somehow more genuine than the stars she supports.

Taking a break from the Christmas series today to join in on the 10^th Annual What a Character Blogathon hosted by Kellee of Outspoken & Freckled, Paula of Paula’s Cinema Club, and Aurora of Once Upon a Screen.  Stop by any of their blogs for a full list of great bloggers participating in this wonderful event that celebrates our cherished character actors.

Likely, most classic film buffs are familiar with Lillian Randolph’s brief role as the cook and housekeeper Annie in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  When George Bailey is down and out, she laughingly donates her life savings to him, money she was saving for a divorce in case she ever got married.

As with African-American actors of the day, Miss Randolph spent most of her career playing domestic servants, and that was unfair, but in her talented grip, not a tragedy.  She made these characters interesting and threw her whole self into them. 

We discussed her role in the comedy Once More, My Darling (1949) here in this previous post.  The movie stars Ann Blyth and Robert Montgomery as a pair of eccentric misfits, and Lillian Randolph is the maid of Montgomery’s wealthy mother, the only person in a house of sophisticates who understands ditzy Ann Blyth and supports her with bemused fascination.  Quoting just from a bit of that essay:

"The only one she connects with is Mamie, the maid, wonderfully played by Lillian Randolph.  Miss Randolph has a stronger role in this film than most domestics, and not stereotyped.  She has a personality of her own, and is clearly amused and delighted with Ann.  She seems to be the only one who is not repelled by her perfume." 

While it is true that the Black servants of the movie world were stereotypes, as noted above, Lillian Randolph never played them that way.  She seemed to understand them as personalities and to get a kick out the roles she played. There is sense of joy in her work.

She began in radio, and her work stretched across many decades through film, television, and suppled the voice for the now notorious Mammy Two-Shoes in several Tom and Jerry cartoons.

Blessed with a gloriously rich contralto singing voice, she also performed as a blues singer. We can hear her sing in several episodes the long-running radio comedy The Great Gildersleeve.  As the cook and housekeeper Birdie, Miss Randolph was a mainstay of the house, really a main character in the family of bumbling bachelor Gildersleeve and his niece and nephew.  As the series progressed, she was more like the counterpart of Gildersleeve.  They were not spouses, but they were domestic partners in running the house and raising the children in every other sense. The Gildersleeve series later became adapted for television and a few movies.

Have a listen here to the Easter 1952 radio episode where Lillian Randolph sings “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”  beginning about 23:02.  (We discussed her Gildersleeve co-star, Walter Tetley, in this previous post.)

In another episode, Birdie’s singing talent is discovered by a visiting impresario, and he wants to send her away to study voice, Randolph sings “Goin’ Home” at about 10:54 and reprises the song later in the show.  It is a stirring, beautiful piece. (Her daughter Barbara Randolph also became a singer.)  She would also sing the “Coventry Carol” on many Gildersleeve Christmas episodes.  She recorded “Were You There” also in 1956 on a 45-rpm record.  Later on in life she reportedly taught acting, singing, and public speaking.

“What a fine woman!” Gildersleeve remarks of Birdie, and in an era where African-American performers were relegated to playing characters that were not often afforded much dignity, Lillian Randolph’s appealing and loveable personality, her vibrancy, silliness, and canny playing off her castmates made her a star in her scenes if not on the marquee.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.  Her new book, a collection of posts from this blog - Hollywood Fights Fascism - is available here on Amazon.

Public Domain Day - 2020

January 1st has become yet another reflection of our media-conscious society in its being heralded as Public Domain Day.  

This achieved widespread attention last year in 2019 when the creative works of 1923 passed into public domain (in the U.S. and many other countries--not all nations have uniform copyright codes). There had been a period between 1998 and 2018 when, in the U.S., the Copyright Term Extension Act kept works from entering the public domain.  With that expiration, it is expected that each year will bring a new crop of creative works -- books, music, art, and film -- into public domain.

This year, we welcome the works of 1924 into public domain.  For us classic film fans, that includes the following films:

Harold Lloyd's Girl Shy and Hot Water (which we discussed here)
Erich von Stroheim's Greed
Buster Keaton's The Navigator and Sherlock, Jr.
Raoul Walsh's The Thief of Bagdad
Herbert Brenon's Peter Pan starring Betty Bronson

To enter into public domain is a double-edged sword, as we know.  It can mean more accessibility to films and thereby increasing their popularity (perhaps the most famous example of this is the annual showing on TV of It's a Wonderful Life when it had been previously listed in public domain -- it is no longer), but it can also mean a lower likelihood to be restored and preserved if being in public domain appears to devalue it.

In an era where it seems much of our cultural heritage on film is being preserved by classic film fans and bloggers, we can be happy that a little more classic film is in our hands.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year, and thank you again for the pleasure of your company.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

Lionel Barrymore - The Spirit of Christmas Past and Present

Lionel Barrymore was Ebenezer Scrooge for a generation.  For another generation, he became Mr. Potter, perhaps a deeper, more disturbed, and more modern Christmas villain.

In 20 years, he was absent only twice from playing Mr. Scrooge on the radio every Christmas Day; once because of tragedy, and once because of his great generosity.

He began the role on radio in 1933.  He admitted in his crusty fashion that he took the job because radio work paid well, but according to author Hollis Alpert in his biography of the three Barrymore sibling actors: “But it was customary for Lionel to mask the sentimental side of his nature.  Not only did he like Dickens as a writer, but he harbored hopes that Scrooge’s transformation might spark a few good or noble impulses among his hearers.”

In 1936, however, his fortitude was tried and his sentimental side nearly destroyed him.  His wife Irene, to whom he was deeply devoted, died on Christmas Eve. His brother John Barrymore stayed up with him that night to comfort him, and then he took Lionel’s place the next day at the microphone to play Scrooge.  The annual radio event was done live.  Lionel attended Christmas Mass, then collapsed from grief and spent several weeks in isolation at a sanitarium.

It was a horrible end to a bad year.  It was in this year that Lionel broke his hip at home while leaning on a metal drafting board on which he was working, pursuing his other interest and talents as an artist.  The board was heavy, and toppled over, and Lionel fell.  His recovery period was long and painful, but though he managed to walk again with a limp and with a cane, it would be the beginning of his handicap that would eventually put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. 

He worried most about his career, expecting this would end it.  MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, whose reputation for ruthlessness is the stuff of legend, was truly kind and magnanimous to Lionel Barrymore, keeping him on the payroll when the accounting department questioned it, and found him work in movies simply as a wheelchair-bound character, first in the Dr. Kildare series, and then in a number of other major films. Not only did Lionel’s career not end, it actually thrived and he arguably became the most famous and successful wheelchair-bound person in the U.S., especially when we consider the irony that most Americans in the 1930s were not aware how dependent President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was on his wheelchair.

In 1938, Lionel Barrymore had the second accident that was to put him in a wheelchair for good this time.  Once again, Louis B. Mayer came to his rescue and promised that the screen version he intended to make of A Christmas Carol would star Lionel as Scrooge as soon as Lionel was able to do the picture.

Lionel knew there would be no recovery this time.  He also had a generous streak behind his famous crusty exterior, and suggested that MGM go ahead and make the movie on schedule but with Reginald Owen in the role.  Lionel made himself available on set to coach Owen.  To help promote both the film and Owen in the role, Lionel insisted Reginald Owen do the Christmas radio broadcast as Scrooge that year.

The following year, 1939, Lionel was back at the mic for A Christmas Carol and would continue this annual role for the remainder of his life.  He died in November 1954.  

Today, Christmas for classic film fans is more to be identified with Lionel Barrymore in another role:  the evil Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).  Unlike Scrooge, Mr. Potter never had an epiphany or change of heart.  Interestingly, author Hollis Alpert’s book, The Barrymores, which is a wonderful collection of research and stories of John, Ethel, and Lionel Barrymore, was published in 1964, long before the annual Christmastime television broadcasts of It’s a Wonderful Life, so the author was just as ignorant as Lionel was of his future importance to classic film fans as Mr. Potter.  The film does not even rate a mention. It was Mr. Potter, and not Mr. Scrooge, that became Lionel Barrymore’s Christmas legacy.

Scrooge embodied a Victorian Christmas, and Charles Dickens is often said to be the creator of the modern Christmas, but Mr. Potter, perhaps, is a figure much more symbolic of our 21^st century era—cynical, greedy, unrepentant, and unpunished, reveling in his meanness and feeling that his very self-interestedness gives him actual omnipotence. It is a veil he dare not drop lest he lose his power.

George Bailey is the one with the epiphany in the movie, and if he does not vanquish Mr. Potter in the old movie fashion of destroying the villain, he does something through his epiphany which is perhaps more realistic—he renders Mr. Potter totally irrelevant. 
Becoming irrelevant is a deeper punishment to someone as power-hungry as Potter than even time in prison.  

Here’s wishing you all a very happy holiday season and in the happy new year to come, may all the villains become rendered irrelevant.

Listen here for Lionel Barrymore's final radio performance as Scrooge.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

90th Anniversary of the 1929 Stock Market Crash

James Stewart's dazed expression at the panicked customers demanding all their deposits in the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash speaks volumes to the audience who remembered the crash and lived through its aftermath.  His quick decision and energetic parceling out of meager funds saves the bank with two dollars to spare at closing time.  Today we mark the 90th anniversary of the 1929 stock market crash.

Many movies of the 1930s reflected and illustrated the Great Depression with unblinking frankness despite, as Mary Astor noted in her memoir Mary Astor--A Life on Film:

“The national situation was tragic, but it wasn’t our tragedy.  It was something that was happening ‘out there’ and wasn’t it awful, but did you read Variety today?  People stood in line at the employment agencies but they also stood in line at the theaters.”  (p.81)

“These were the years called by the extravagant name of the Golden Years, maybe because nobody ever had it so good as the movie-makers.  In our fortress of films we were safe from dust bowls and grinding poverty, breadlines and alphabet agencies.”  (p. 109)

The buildup to the Crash was also extensively covered by Hollywood in its 1920s pre-Code party mode -- the vamps, the lascivious key-hole views of wild parties, and occasionally, a look at the even more wild spree on Wall Street.  The Marx Brothers capped the madness by adding more of their own in The Cocoanuts from 1929 a few months before the crash, which we covered in this post.

The Roaring Twenties (1939) attempts to cover it all -- the boom, the bust, the gangsters that appeared to usher the era in and out again, but takes the Crash with a clearly clichéd and nostalgic view.  It's easier to put a label on an event or an era when we are looking at it in the rearview mirror.  Here 90 years on from that event, from which we have only a few images of people swarming to the Stock Exchange when the panic began, we still dismiss it with a bemused and somewhat condescending eye.  We cannot imagine ourselves running to our local banks and screaming for our money, and not getting it (not all banks were so fortunate as to have George Bailey and his two dollars left).

We covered The Roaring Twenties here in this post -- ten years ago on the 80th anniversary of the Crash.  Have I really been writing this blog for twelve years?  We were coming down off a financial crisis then, ten years ago.  I have, I confess, feelings of more ominous foreboding for the one we're entering right now, but I can still take comfort in George Bailey's desperate and gusty response to a crisis. 

The timeline of the crisis that ultimately launched us into all those great Great Depression movies was this:

On Wednesday, October 23, 1929, the stock market fell about 4.6 percent, but rallied on Thursday the 24th in heavy trading.  Bankers stepped in and bought up shares, similarly to what the Fed is doing today, to prop up the market.  By Friday the 25th, the crisis seemed to have been averted.

But Monday, October 28th, when the market reopened, stocks dropped again.  Tuesday, October 29th, "Black Friday," the bottom fell out and the stock market collapsed.

That event is what we like to peg the beginning of a new era, but the market did not actually stop falling.  It slid down a bit more through several months and did not actually hit its bottom until July 1932, when 90 percent of its 1929 value had been lost.

Of course, as devoted investors like to point out, if one had bought stocks in August 1932 and held them, they would be rich because the stock market went up after that.  Well, yes, but it did not reach its 1929 level until 1954 -- 25 years later.  Fine if you're young and bought in (not a whole lot of people had the money, let alone confidence in Wall Street, to buy stocks in the depths of the Depression), but if one was middle-aged or a senior, the ball game was over.  What was lost was never to be recouped.

History, as is said, does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes, in a quote often attributed to Mark Twain.  I like to take a lesson from charts and graphs, from the testimony of people who experienced an event -- and from George Bailey, who always seemed to be behind the 8-ball but who thought fast and stayed on his feet.

May we all be here in ten years, marking the 100th anniversary of the start of the Sound Era with curious, bemused, and somewhat condescending commemorations of the Crash of 1929.

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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Memories in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century. Her newspaper column on classic films, Silver Screen, Golden Memories is syndicated nationally.

Joy Cometh in the Morning

I think that classic film fans are idealistic.  We may differ in our lives in many ways, but we share that basic element of idealism that is likely the result of watching films from a more unabashedly idealistic -- and yet, no less troubled -- era of history.  "Watching" perhaps isn't a strong enough word; we absorb these films through a wonderful intellectual and emotional osmosis.  They give us ideas, stir up our feelings, add value to our lives in ways which I think we are actually acutely aware.  They also give us inspiration and courage.

James Stewart in the above photo comes with hat in hand to Lionel Barrymore, the Scrooge-like villain of Bedford Falls.  The great difference between Mr. Potter and Mr. Scrooge is that Scrooge will undergo redemption and become a decent human being again at the end of the story.  Mr. Potter will not.  

James Stewart as George Bailey is demoralized, defeated, crawling to him for money, for mercy.  He is at the end of his rope.  It is George, not Potter, who undergoes an epiphany with the help of supernatural aid. When his brother Harry announces at the end of the film, "A toast to my  big brother George, the richest man in town!" -- we cry, the church bells in our heads ring, and it is a moment to rejoice.  His family, his friends, his community have come to his rescue.

We are lucky to be classic film fans; those who are not may have more difficulty swallowing the idea that good can triumph over evil through something so simple as all of us helping each other.  We will need that lesson, and that kind of inspiration and courage to get through the years to come.  Fascism is evil, and it is with us in the White House, in the Senate, in the House of Representatives, and is bleeding downward to state and local offices.  There may be a time when a black and white movie about a wealthy man who strips the poor of what they have, destroying any possibility of their climbing into the middle class will be banned.  Consider how during the infamous House Un-Amercian Activities committee, which we covered in this previous post, a film like The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) could be criticized because it showed a character who was a wealthy banker merely for showing him in a less than flattering light; and for showing a character who embraced far right-wing politics being punched in the face.

We've had the draconian tax bill destroying our future.  We've had the encouragement of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis.  We've had the protections stripped away, the rules broken, the nation sold out to the highest bidders, foreign and domestic.  Now look for censorship, and erasing the Bill of Rights.

Let's remember our idealism in the face of this, and have courage, and help each other.

To all who visit this blog, may I wish a Merry Christmas for those who celebrate it, and a very Happy New Year to all.  May we discover, as George Bailey did so hopefully expressed in Psalm 30:5:  "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."

We'll see you next on Thursday, January 4, 2018, for another year of Another Old Movie Blog.

End of an Era - Classic Film Fan Series - Final Episode

There are many issues under discussion today among classic film fans: the discovery of lost films, the expense of restoration, and most especially: what constitutes a classic film?

This last issue is, oddly, the most contentious.  It is often divided among age groups (though not always) that a classic is a movie made during the period of the studio system, i.e., from the early days of the twentieth century through the 1960s.  I have maintained that a classic film is one made before 1965.  I am not in favor of turning the word “classic” to mean something good, or beloved, or timeless (some of the best classic films are “dated” and this makes them valuable for study) but rather as it pertains to film, should only be a label to categorize a movie by its era.  Is a Three Stooges short better than The Godfathermovies?  Of course not. 

If someone enjoys Rocky (1976) better than they enjoy Golden Boy (1939), does that make Rocky the classic film instead of Golden Boy?  No.  Rocky is an Oscar-winning film from the 1970s.  It carries its own prestige.  But it is not a classic film.

I’m sure many classic film fans will read the above sentence and their heads are even now exploding in anger.  Sorry, but the point isn’t that your opinion is as good as mine, or that mine is as good as yours.  The point is to get beyond opinion and draft some sort of objective criteria so we may catalogue, describe, and share our information on classic films with future generations without muddying the waters about what we mean.  History has, for the most part, clear demarcation on eras:  the Jazz Age, The Restoration.  Art has clear demarcation on eras based on prominent style:  Impressionism, Dada, Modern Art.  Do we call an impressionistic painting Modern Art because it was painted in the 1960s?  No.  It’s an impressionistic painting produced in the 1960s.

This is the twelfth and final post in our year-long monthly series on the current state of the classic film fan.  We began this series musing on the unlikely campaign of Donald Trump. Our last post in November brought us to the stark and devastating realization that fascism is alive and well in America.  That’s quite a journey, one I had not expected to take.  Our movies, old and new, whether they address social issues or present fantasy, are a clear barometer of our pop culture, which makes them so important for study.

The label “classic” should be the least of our problems in our mission to promote these films, but if we can’t agree on even that, we won’t agree on which films to be worth saving.  We won’t be able to save them all.   

But to be honest, I must confess that my own definition of “classic” as films made before 1965 is only partly an objective assessment; in part, it is also a reflection of my age.  I was born in the early 1960s, and so when growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, the movies made in these decades were not classic; they were new.  In my middle-aged woman’s eye, they will always be in that vague category of “new”.  (With the same prejudice a younger fan will consider a 1970s movie as “old” because it was made before they were born.  The criteria is personal, and not objective.

When The Sound of Music (1965) was first shown on television in 1976, it was a monumental prime time event—but not because it was a “classic”, but because it was a modern blockbuster.  That will seem ludicrous to younger fans, I know.  When I was growing up in the Baby Boomer’s joyous embrace of “Nostalgia”, the old movies we resurrected were just old (and some not very old at that).  Nobody called them classic films.  Classic was a label that came much later, like Film Noir.  Nobody called it Film Noir when I was growing up.  We were not a cadre of geeks—pop culture was still in the backwash of the Golden Age of film, which was still the gold standard of entertainment.

These movies were shown on every channel (even if there were only four channels) at any hour of the day.  The stars and character actors and bit players of those old movies were, for the most part, not retired and they were still working on television.  They were still part of popular culture.

The deaths of Judy Garland and Bing Crosby rocked mainstream society—not just old movie buffs.  Conversely, we had not yet entered the age of deep mourning for the loss of anyone connected with classic films as we are today, when it seems that each year we cling to the fewer and fewer left, and it is we, not they, that do not go gentle into that good night.  Today our classic film fandom is one part celebration of discovery, and one part mourning the “in memoriam” reel.

Baby Boomers were spenders and collectors, and most of the books, posters, kitsch, VHS and DVD classic film releases were meant for their consumption.  Younger generations will take over, and their exploration of classic films, their expression of their fandom will take different forms.

But there will be less of them. 

We’ve discussed in previous posts in this series that Turner Classic Movies is, with few exceptions, the main source of classic film viewing in this country.  Current discourse on whether TCM is diluting its brand by showing modern films to the detriment of classic film programming (while recommending wine from the TCM Wine Club) will be a moot point if younger generations do not even subscribe to cable television, as seems to be the case.

Many younger people get most of their entertainment online, and most of what is offered them through streaming and download services are modern films.  Their choice of viewing becomes narrower as they veer towards only current movies and TV shows.  They will be exposed to little that does not already interest them.  TCM’s venture into streaming cannot yet replace the range of its network offerings.

The Warner Archives release of films to the home market is very welcome, and we may continue to wonder if Universal will ever get on board, but even these may have a limited future commercial exposure.  Future generations will not have developed an interest in them enough to make it financially worthwhile to producers of DVDs and Blu-ray, or streaming, in a world where future generations have not been exposed to classic films on a scale grand to begin with -- enough to once again make these movies a force in pop culture and consumerism.

It has been noted that the collectibles market is currently depressed because the Boomers, who were tremendous consumers and are now at a point of downsizing in their lives, are not finding buyers for their “stuff.”  Younger generations are not interested.

We classic films buffs naturally attempt to share our love of these movies with younger friends and members of our families.  That will have a huge influence in their lives, and is a great gift to them.  But this is not the same as being exposed to classic films not as a special event or peculiar hobby, but as mainstream entertainment—something not just their parents are talking about, but their friends as well.

I had suggested in an earlier post in this series to teach classic films in school.  Another way to broaden the exposure of these movies to younger viewers might lie with the Internet, where they turn anyway for their entertainment.  We’ve seen how TCM and others are streaming and making available films for download, but these are still paid services.  There may still be another and more effective way to get new classic film fans.

YouTube, Internet Archive, and other free Internet channels.

Paramount has already set up a channel currently showing 91 of its classic films for free viewing.  The beauty of YouTube is not only is it free, but the operation is such that the viewer is immediately exposed to a number of other similar choices.  We’ve all spent hours on YouTube, not intending to, just because we were looking for something particular and got sucked in to watching several other videos.  The search engine is also effective.  YouTube has the power to expose us to old movies and old TV shows we had not known existed.  It is a smorgasbord of video pop culture history.

The video quality on YouTube obviously does not lend the best viewing experience—it’s not like sitting in a restored Art Deco theater watching a shimmering nitrate film—but it’s something free and easy to obtain, to spread the experience of enjoyment and knowledge of old movies, and is a channel that younger generations already know about and use frequently.  Classic film buffs—and the corporations which have a library they’d like to monetize—would be well advised to create new fans by building up in them a taste for their product.

The Wizard of Oz (1939) would be forgotten today had it not been shown yearly on broadcast television for a couple of generations.  Its popularity spawned VHS and DVD releases, toys, games, books, clothing—a variety of merchandise that came in the wake of its popularity, which came in the wake of its familiarity.

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) would be forgotten today had it not been shown yearly on broadcast TV, and became so popular that not only is it firmly established in pop culture, but the copyright, which had lapsed, was scooped up again, making it once again a valuable product.

We see the same scenario with A ChristmasStory (1983), which is not a classic film, but has become a beloved Christmas tradition, and again, firmly part of pop culture, with annual showings on the cable network TBS, which runs a 24-hour marathon every Christmas.  Because of this we can shout out lines from the movie.  Houses on the street where it was filmed have been turned into tourist attractions.  You can buy the iconic lamp, for heaven’s sake.

The popularity came with familiarity: an audience was not found, or mined, or marketed to—it was created from scratch.

The Boomers grew up watching movies on free broadcast television, became classic film fans in an era of a nostalgia craze fueling it.  However, the movies they watched were fading prints cut up for commercials.  The art houses showing them on the big screen were few and far between.  The only media by which favorite films could be owned and shown at home whenever they wanted was with 16mm film, a screen, and a projector.  Despite these challenges, an army of old movie buffs kept alive their interest enough for the media conglomerates to have a built-in consumer base when the technology developed to produce films on VHS and DVD for a new, huge home market.

To say that classic film fans have it easy today by comparison is not entirely true.  Yes, they have a better quality video experience, a large assortment of movies available for the home market, but their challenge is twofold:  having the money to purchase product that is continually being improved, restored and re-released (how many copies of our favorite films can we own?); and second, just being exposed to these films on a scale that enables them to digest them as part of their American heritage.

This last notion is, I think, something on which we need to focus more attention.  I am concerned not only on the astounding idea that a nation so passionately devoted to defeating fascism should recently embrace it—fascists used to be the bad guys, on that we could at one time all agree—but if a younger viewer cannot absorb a movie in the context of its era, then all the message, the art, the power, or even the technical beauty of a classic film will not penetrate their sensibilities.  They will consider classic films to be remote, incomprehensible, and merely weird relics of a primitive age.

In practical terms, there is a real disconnect for younger viewers in what they see in classic films—for instance, the racism, the sexism (as if these things have ceased to exist in their modern world), among so much else that they are unable to accept in a film when they looking for images that affirm their own experience.  It becomes not just a matter of taste—“my classic is not your classic”—but actually being intellectually or emotionally unable to critique the art form.  Finding little they can relate to in it, it becomes as lost to them as if they had never discovered it.

Take, for example, this review of a new release this year for the first time on DVD of A Woman’s Vengeance (1948), a movie we covered in this previous post.  The young reviewer is, as with many Internet writing gigs, reviewing the product, which is the new DVD.  She is not really writing an essay on the movie, though she attempts to discuss the plot as part of her product review.  She sounds as if she were reviewing a new gadget or cleaning product.  She displays an ignorance of the film, the era, the actors and classic films in general as an art form.  As a result, her tone is flippant, dismissive, lapsing into vulgarity in the modern attempt at communication that tries hard to be clever, and her judgment on the product is based on whether she feels is it a worthwhile purchase.  This is the most shallow and sophomoric “film criticism” that can be produced (not counting IMDb reviews, which are frequently baffling in their obtuse triteness and often rife with errors), yet it is now the prevailing style on Internet product sites.  Future classic film fans, however many they may be, will be getting the bulk of their information from such product surveys (assuming classic film blogs are not still floating around on the Internet and the algorithms are kind to us to generate at least some traffic).

There are a lot of movies still hidden in studio vaults, university archives, and a basement or two.  Will future generations seek them out, donate to have them restored?  Will they see any worth in even pursing this?  If Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight (1927) is ever found, will future generations care?

Are we, the current classic film fans—from Boomers to Millennials—the last audience? 

There is, as those who have attended the TCM Classic Film Festival and other such events know a joyous and exciting social aspect among gatherings of classic film fans.  My hope is that many more of these festivals will pop up around the country, or just in the form of small regional clubs, so that it may be easier for fans to connect in person with others who love old movies.  This breaks barriers between generations and demonstrates the genuine camaraderie and inclusiveness that exists among classic film fans—even if we can’t agree on what a classic is.  How much the corporations cater to our interests, based on their ability to profit from it, will largely depend on our numbers and our demonstrated passion.  It will also depend on their ingenuity to create a market for their product.

One hundred years from now, someone just discovering Buster Keaton, Myrna Loy, or Humphrey Bogart will be captivated.  We know that.

But how many like-minded fans will there be left to share the joy?

This ends our year-long series on the state of the classic film fan.  I wish I could end it on a more hopeful note, but hope is a fleeting thing these days.  This will be my last post this year.  I have a new book to get out, and so I need some time.  I’ll see you back here on Thursday, January 19^th for a new year of blogging.  I hope to accentuate the positive next year and find some hopeful and inspirational moments in classic film to discuss.  We’re going to need them.

Until then, may I wish all of you who celebrate a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah, and very happy and hopeful New Year.  Thank you for the pleasure of your company.

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Previous posts in this series are below:

Part 1 of the year-long series on the current state of the classic film buff is here: A Classic Film Manifesto. 

Part 2 is here: Cliff Aliperti’s new book on Helen Twelvetrees.

Part 3 is here: An interview with Kay Noske of Movie Star Makeover.

Part 4 is here: Evolution of the Classic Film Fan.

Part 5 is here: Gathering of the Clan at Classic Film Festivals.

Part 6 is here: John Greco’s new book of film criticism: Lessons in the Dark.

Part 7 is here: Tiffany Vazquez, new TCM host.

Part 8 is here:  Planet of the Apes at the Cineplex.

Part 9 is here:  Aurora & Classic Movies and More Interview.

Part 10 is here: A Canadian's Perspective: A Visit from Paddy Nolan-Hall.

Part 11 is here: Naïve Idealism.

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The audio book for Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is now for sale on Audible.com, and on Amazon and iTunes.

Also in paperback and eBook from Amazon.