Tag Archives: Mischa Auer

Dreamin’ on Poverty Row

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Movie Night!

I’ve been watching a number of films made in the 1930’s by studios of which I’ve barely heard; Chesterfield, Invincible, Allied, Mayfair, Imperial-Cameo, et al. These were low-low-low-budget operations that I see described as “poverty row pictures”.

These films have flimsy sets. Sometimes rooms are simply indicated by a pool of light and a cloth background. Sometimes the sets (and the scripts) are recognizable as recycling efforts from other films (i.e. the village depicted in Chesterfield’s Condemned to Live looks remarkably like the village in The Bride of Frankenstein or Son of Frankenstein).

I suppose the costumes are cheap as well, but they look pretty sweet to me. People in these films dress for dinner. The ladies wear evening gowns and heels whether they’re night-clubbing or traipsing around secret caves with perfectly flat, dirt floors. The gents all wear sharp suits, ties, and snappy hats. And they know how to use their suits! These guys could say more with how they removed their hats than they possibly could with the cheesy dialogue they were probably given to memorize the morning of the shoot.

And cocktails! Ubiquitous at any occasion or time of day!! For any reason or no reason at all!!!

I’m thinkin’ I shoulda been around in the thirties workin’ at a speakeasy in a sharp suit, tie, and a snappy hat…crackin’ wise wit’ de clientele.

Fortunes coulda been made.

Sharp suits…

…snappy hats…

…secret caves…

…cheesy things to say…

…sigh.

Flash the Wonder Dog…Meh

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janie 86 chloe-futon

Movie night!

I confess. After ten years, I still keenly feel the loss of my movie-watching canine partner, the late and lamented Lilly the Pup. Lil boasted a voluminous film-watching resumé. She watched anything and everything with me and usually had a trenchant point or two to make about each flick. I pretty much granted her opinions great deference, whether about how she would have made a better “Asta” in the “Thin Man” movies, or whether the mailman was making far too many uninvited visits to our front porch.

Hey! That’s why you have a dog in the first place. Capiche?

Curiously, Sprite, my “dumb blonde” tortie, had physically assumed Lilly’s movie-watching spot (two blankets on the futon). I was not deceived by this into thinking the kitten might have hidden depths. I suspected she also missed Lilly.

Chloe, Lilly’s clueless and constantly ecstatic successor, tries as best she can but…well…she’s clueless and constantly ecstatic. She’d like a play date with Asta.

Lil would have been thrilled with our film selection tonight; The Flaming Signal. This super-cheap 1930’s flick features Flash, a Rin-Tin-Tin knockoff, and airplanes, and jungle islands. You can’t miss with a combo like that.

Moments of wonder abound;

  • Flash (a dog, remember) breaks out of his shack/prison, fetches his own parachute, crawls under airplane propellers, and stows away on his master’s solo endurance flight to Hawaii.
  • As the plane plunges to destruction in a storm, Flash’s master puts the parachute on his disobedient pooch and watches from the cockpit as Flash floats to safety on an uncharted island whose roadways (on an uncharted island) are perfectly visible in the camera shot. So…the island is uncharted, but there could possibly exist a road map of the area.
  • Flash’s master has obviously confused his role as airplane pilot with that of a ship’s captain and goes down with his plane. Clearly, the dog is the brains of this duo.
  • Never fear. Flash, having shucked his chute (try saying that three times real fast), leaps into the stormy ocean and drags his master to shore where they immediately encounter an alluring white woman gleefully and provocatively bathing in a sun-drenched jungle pool. Where did the storm go?

It just keeps gettin’ better from there.

But none of that is as historically important as Mischa Auer’s role in the show. Mr. Auer plays Manu, the tribal leader of the natives of the island. He makes dour pronouncements by the tribal fire, leads torch-bearing islanders in revolt against the evil trader (who does he trade with on this uncharted island?), gets killed, comes back to life, and gets killed again. I’m convinced that this resilient fellow is the inspiration of the legendary film so admired by Walter Tunis; Manos, Hand of Fate.

This is all essential stuff to know and why you keep me around.

By the way, Flash (a dog, remember) eventually saves the day (if not the film) by carrying a torch to a convenient but unexplained (and I assume uncharted) pile of combustible material. The resulting “flaming signal” attracts a passing ship…because of course no other passing ship has ever noticed tribal fires or torches on the island before and thought they perhaps should investigate.

It was great. I loved it.

Chloe now wants a play date with Flash.