One of My Favorite Films: ABB OTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN

I am watching one of my favorite movies, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Considered at the time of it's release as an over budgeted B-Movie and the death knell of the Universal Classic monsters, it was well received by most critics and audiences alike making it one of the comedy duo's most financially successful films, and one of Universal's top grossers of 1948.

The beauty of this movie, now considered a classic, is that all the verbal word-play works well and is well serviced by Bud and Lou (remember Who's On First) as are the zany sight gags, all through to the end with a verbal cameo from Vincent Price as the Invisible Man.

Probably the best sight gag in the movie is when Lou goes into Lon Chaney's hotel room to return something after Chaney has transformed into the Wolfman, barely missing Lou at each opportunity.

Here's a little history from Turner Classic Movies on the making of the film, which Lou hated, even though it is probably his best comedic performance of all time.

TCM Archive notes on ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN
by Michael Fozzi Stewart on Saturday, April 14, 2012 at 2:11pm ·

During the 1930's and early forties, Universal Studios rode the crest of a horror film craze that made them rich and famously established them as the home of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy and other screen monsters. But the fear factor was lost over time as their signature creatures were paraded through a series of inferior B-movie sequels. And in the minds of some horror film fans, the genre hit rock bottom with the release of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948. Once capable of terrifying their audiences, the Universal monsters were now reduced to playing "straight men" to Abbott and Costello's slapstick antics. Who could ever take them seriously again? Yet, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is both a first-rate horror-comedy that ranks as one of the comedy team's finest efforts (and most profitable) and an affectionate homage to the screen horrors who gave us nightmares as kids. It not only marked Bela Lugosi's return to his original role of Dracula after 17 years (the 1931 film had made him a star) but it featured Lon Chaney, Jr. once again playing the Wolf Man, the voice of Vincent Price in a closing gag as the Invisible Man, and Boris Karloff in an off-screen stunt - he agreed to help promote the film and was seen in publicity photos, admiring the poster art and standing in a long movie line waiting to buy a ticket.

The tongue-in-cheek plot of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein features Bud and Lou as Chick and Wilbur, respectively, two railway porters who end up transporting a pair of mysterious crates to a wax museum. Inside the crates are the Frankenstein monster (Glenn Strange) and Dracula (Bela Lugosi) who is in league with evil female scientist Sandra Mornay (Lenore Aubert). Together Dracula and Mornay plan to use the monster for their own nefarious purposes but he proves to be uncontrollable so they decide to give him a smaller brain. And guess who the perfect donor is? Wilbur soon finds himself being alternately stalked by Dracula and seduced by Mornay with Chick oblivious to any danger until the duo is trapped in Dracula's castle. Luckily they have an ally in Lawrence Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.), who has just arrived from London where he had previously tracked the crates. The only problem is that Talbot is as much a threat as Dracula or the Frankenstein monster during a full moon.

The idea of Abbott and Costello parodying horror films certainly wasn't a highly original concept at the time Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was made. After all, the comedy team had already appeared in Hold That Ghost (1941) and other comedians had made similar forays into this territory with Wally Brown and Alan Carney in Zombies on Broadway (1945) and The Bowery Boys (starring opposite Bela Lugosi) in Ghosts on the Loose (1943). The actual script for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein went through as many transformations as Lawrence Talbot. First, screenwriter Oscar Brodney (The Glenn Miller Story, 1953) came up with a story outline and then Bertram Milhauser, who penned numerous Sherlock Holmes's films for Universal, delivered a more detailed treatment which recycled plot elements such as a search for some secret microfilm from his Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943) screenplay. That was abandoned in favor of a new scenario from writers Frederic I. Rinaldo and Robert Lees, who later stated in Abbott and Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo, "You know it was a very complicated plot for an Abbott and Costello picture. We had two women - one was a heroine and one was a villain. And nobody could figure out why these two beautiful girls were after Costello." But Lees and Rinaldo eventually delivered a screenplay (the working title was "The Brain of Frankenstein") that pleased everyone - except Costello. "Lou hated the script," [producer] Robert Arthur recalled. "In fact, he came charging in the office one day and said, "My [five-year-old] daughter could write a better script than this. You're not serious about making it, are you?" Arthur managed to convince him by appealing to his financial interests and promising him his favorite director, Charles Barton.

The making of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was highlighted by card games, exploding cigars, and daily practical jokes on the set. It was just Bud and Lou's way of battling boredom and having fun with the cast and crew. Not everyone enjoyed the horseplay, however, according to Barton (from Bela Lugosi: Master of the Macabre by Larry Edwards): "To be honest, there were times when I thought Bela was going to have a stroke on the set. You have to understand that working with two zanies like Abbott and Costello was not the normal Hollywood set. They never went by the script and at least once a day there would be a pie fight. Bela of course would have nothing to do with any of this. He would just glare at those involved with his famous deadly stare and the only emotion he would show physically was one of utter disgust." Lugosi, for his part, took the role very seriously and told The New York Times, "There is no burlesque for me. All I have to do is frighten the boys, a perfectly appropriate activity. My trademark will be unblemished."

Unlike the comedy team's previous films, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was a big-budget production, costing almost $800,000, a hefty sum for a Universal B-movie. Part of the expense went toward the atmospheric sets such as Dracula's castle, a cartoon title sequence, special effects (the scene where Dracula changes into a bat was created by animator Walter Lantz of "Woody Woodpecker" fame), and makeup. Instead of going with Jack Pierce's original monster makeups for Frankenstein and the Wolf Man, which were too time-consuming and uncomfortable for the actors, makeup artists Bud Westmore and Jack Kevan used rubber sponge masks that could be applied in an hour and still retained the monsters' famous look. "One day, Lenore Aubert, wrapped in a mink, put a leash on Strange and, accompanied by Bud, Lou, and Lon in full make-up, took the Monster out for a stroll on the lot just in time for the studio tour tram." Bud and Lou also allowed their children to visit the set and meet the "monsters" which made quite an impression on the kids. Paddy Costello recalled, "Glenn Strange was so sweet - 'Frankenstein' was always walking around with a smile. I always got a big kick out of that...seeing the monsters between scenes, sitting in a chair reading a newspaper or chewing gum, or laughing and smoking like regular people" (from Abbott and Costello in Hollywood by Bob Furmanek and Ron Palumbo).

When Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein was released, it received possibly the best reviews of any of their films. The Variety review set the tone when it said "The comedy team battles it out with the studio's roster of bogeymen in a rambunctious farce that is funny and, at the same time, spine-tingling." The Hollywood Reporter proclaimed it "a crazy, giddy show that combines chills and laughs in one zany sequence after the other" and the New York Star commented that "Nobody excels Costello at strangulated, speechless terror. Nobody can top Abbott at failing to see the cause for it. Nobody can beat Frankenstein, Dracula, The Monster, and Dr. Moray at engendering it separately and together behind Abbott's back, but always in Costello's full view." Not everyone was a fan though, and the New York Sun complained that "it was a grand idea, but it was too bad that it could not have been attended to by persons capable of satire rather than pie-throwing comedy." While Bud and Lou and director Charles Barton never made any claims about the film's status as a masterpiece, it was nevertheless selected in 2001 for future preservation by the National Film Registry. And the film's cult status continues to grow over the years; Quentin Tarantino is a big fan and at one time both Elvis Presley and Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia counted it as one of their favorite movies.

Naysayers who blamed Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein for killing off the horror film are simply misinformed. The much maligned genre became the rage again in the late 1950s with the arrival of Hammer Studios' The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958), films which once again put the horror back in horror films and transformed Hammer into a cottage industry for a time.



Producer: Robert Arthur

Director: Charles Barton

Screenplay: Robert Lees, Frederic Rinaldo, John Grant

Cinematography: Charles Van Enger

Film Editing: Frank Gross

Art Direction: Hilyard Brown, Bernard Herzbrun

Music: Frank Skinner

Cast: Bud Abbott (Chick Young), Lou Costello (Wilbur Grey), Lon Chaney, Jr. (Lawrence Talbot), Bela Lugosi (Count Dracula), Glenn Strange (The Frankenstein Monster), Lenore Aubert (Dr. Sandra Mornay).

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Television Review: Fox Television's "TOUCH"

FOX TV's new series "Touch" starring Kiefer Sutherland and created by Tim Kring (Heroes), also starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Undercovers), Danny Glover, and David Mazouz as Sutherland's son "Jake". Premiering March 19th.

Sutherland plays widower Martin Bohm whose eleven year old son Jake, who has never spoken, and considered autistic, is obsessed with numbers. But Jake's fascination with numbers goes much farther.

Martin desperately is trying to cope with his disconnection to Jake, who will not allow anyone to touch him, so any physical bond is impossible. But through Jake's numbers a different kind of bond exists.

After running away from his school for the third time and climbing a cell tower, child services comes into Martin's life in the form of Clea Hopkins (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) who is forced to take Jake to an evaluation center. Martin's search for answers leads him to Professor Arthur Teller (Danny Glover)who believes that Jake is unique, that he sees everything, past, present, and future and that he sees the connections and patterns between people, that Jake discovered the famous Fibonacci mathematical sequence on his own, seeing the mathematical designs in nature.

But Jake's number sequences forces Martin's life path to intersect directly and indirectly with people across the globe: an aspiring pop singer in Dublin, a seller of restaurant supplies from England, a Japanese hooker, a young Muslim boy, and most importantly, a former and broken firefighter who tried to rescue Martin's wife from the World Trade Center.

"Touch" is based on an ancient Chinese myth of "The Red Thread of Fate", that Gods tied a red thread around the ankles of everyone whose lives are destined to touch. it may stretch or tangle, but it will never break.

This is an absorbing of drama, action, and mysticism that is terrifically fascinating. Created and written by Tim Kring and directed with great care and sensitivity by Francis Lawrence, "Touch" is a mid-season winner and I wish it a long
run. The only down side is we have to wait until its March 19th launch.

The Works of Georges Melies

These are some of the amazing films of Georges Melies one of the subjects of Martin Scosese's "HUGO". Enjoy.

MUSIC REVIEW: MAROON 5 “MOVES LIKE JAGGER” and KARAOKE by Michael David Stewart

Moves Like Jagger Lyrics at elw

Okay, so I’m an old geezer who hasn’t listened to a lot of rock and pop music full time since 1970. Yeah, I’m an old “Classic Rocker” (although I’m sure most of my younger friends think of it as more “Fossil Rock”).
My eras were the 1950’s and 60’s. But once in a while a single song would come along and I’d be hooked.

Maroon 5’ “Moves Like Jagger” just seems to grab me and makes me want to dance (which would most likely end with me in and E.R. with more herniated discs!) I first heard the song in total on this past Tuesday’s episode of “GLEE” (I’m a GLEEK!, So what, ya wanna make something out of it?)

Downloaded the single the other day, and just found the music video which is brilliantly edited and it just moves. It’s one of those songs that is so infectious you want to dare yourself to give it a try on Karaoke Night. It’s a challenge and would be a surprise to everyone who knows me.

I used to perform (sing) when I was younger. I love it. Go away from it for a long time. After my heart attack five years ago, it was one of the first social experiments I tried and kept it up for a long time. I’d find a song, an old favorite from my performing days and download the lyrics then sit in my apartment with the words in front of me, my ear buds firmly in place, and crank up the old iTunes and rehearse.

Since I don’t drink, it was about the performance for me. And I’d challenge myself by picking songs I’d always wanted to try but never dared to. In fact the first night I decided to go do Karaoke I was terrified, kept thinking “What if I forget the lyrics?” And the little voice in the back of my head said, “You can’t forget the lyrics, stupid! It’s Karaoke!”

So I became accustomed and truly enjoyed Karaoke Night. But reader beware, there are pitfalls to Karaoke. In my case I’d rehearse a particular version of a song by a specific artist, find it in the Karaoke book and discover the version they had on the computer was not what I’d rehearsed regardless of what was written in the book. It quickly became Karaoke Improvisation Night!

Eventually I had two songs in my vast repertoire that became very popular with the audiences. One is the classic Be-Bop ballad by the great Cab Calloway “Minnie The Moocher”. It always seemed to surprise the audiences (translation: inebriated bar patrons) and I could get them to sing along on the “Hi De Hi DE Hos”.

The other is “Rainbow Connection” from “The Muppet Movie”. And I would sing it in character as Kermit The Frog (even though my nickname is Fozzi-Story for another time). The first time I performed it was at Sardo’s Grille & Bar in Burbank on

Pornstar Karaoke Night (better known as PSK). When I began to sing, the crowd was pretty noisy, but then I began to notice that the conversation level was slowly diminishing almost to the point of silence.

My first reaction was to look around the room to see if some like Jenna Jameson had come in. But, nope, there was a bar full of pornstars and civilians actually listening. When I finished, there was such an ovation I was embarrassed. As I returned to my table I was being high-fived, patted on the back, and getting hugs from Porn Chicks I didn’t even know. It was quite the night. Now, if I ever show up on PSK Night, I get asked if I’m going to sing it again. It’s very weird.

And I’m also up to taking a dare. One night a dear friend dared me to sing a particular song and I said I would. I think she wanted to see if I would really do it. So when my name was called I got up, grabbed the mic, and performed a version of “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story” that would have made Billy De Wolf proud (Google him!).

I mean, why not? Some of the best songs from Broadway were written for women. (I’ve always wanted to get up and do “You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun” from Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun”. I think it’d be a hoot and a surprise). So now I’m toying with the idea of getting back out there and doing Karaoke again, so who knows? We’ll see.

A PERSONAL POST-SCRIPT. RE: “HUGO” AND BEING AN ARTIST

Martin Scorsese’s “HUGO” is the first film in a long time that genuinely moved me. Many of you know how difficult the last several years have been for me. Now I’m beginning to see a glimmer of light.

What I took away from “HUGO” was that an artist, no matter what their personal situation or age, should never give up on their dreams. Is it worth the trek along that road less traveled? Well, each journey is as individual to the artist taking it.

We can’t all be George Clooney, but then George (an old softball buddy) appeared first on his father’s show in 1968, then a decade later was an extra in “Centennial” before admittedly appearing in a litany of every “unsold pilot” that came down the pike, suffering through two seasons on “Facts of Life” and three seasons on “Roseanne” before landing “e.r.”.

There is no such thing as an over-night success. Every artist has to pay their dues and learn their craft. Sometimes the dues are costly and lengthy, as in my case. People who know me know the story, what I have had to endure.

I’ve been on the edge of success from time to time and am there again now. But how do we measure success? Personal success is the most difficult to master because it seems, at least in my case, that maybe I expected too much of myself. But I also believed I had to be a success in my chosen field, not necessarily to please others, although I fretted about disappointing my mother; who, although doesn’t fully understand show business (who really does), has been exceptionally supportive.

I worried about friends and family, too, letting them down. Not living up to their expectations, when it was my own expectations I was subconsciously feeling I wasn’t living up to. The belief in me offered by others, although genuine, only depressed me more and sometimes sounded hollow.

So no matter if you are an aspiring actor, writer, director, dancer, painter, novelist; whatever “label” falls collectively under the title ARTIST, stay the course. Yes, you’ll have doubts at times. You’ll feel isolated and alone from the rejection you’ll have to deal with, no matter how many friends and family are rooting for you. There will be those who will try to talk you out of your dream.

I have often referred to my writing as MY BLISS. Half the time, I surprise myself with what comes out on paper, or the computer screen, asking myself “where the hell did that come from?”.

My writing is my addiction and my solace. After my heart attack writing was my therapy and got me through. In my worst depressions, I could still write. The ideas just keep coming. At times, I can have two or three projects going simultaneously. It just keeps coming.

There is an adage that says “A boy’s best friend is his mother”. That is certainly true in my case. My mother is still with us and my greatest wish is that she stays around long enough to see me succeed in either a small or large way. My parents both loved and respected The Arts and I firmly believe that augmented whatever talent I possess.

So how does this relate to “HUGO”, you ask? Sir Ben Kingsley portrays pioneer film maker Georges Melies who was not recognized for his enormous contributions to the cinematic arts until 1931 when he was awarded France’s Legion of Honor. Eventually the artist is recognized, by audiences, by their peers. Remember all the impressionist artists who were never recognized during their lifetimes. So there is hope for us all yet. Some sooner, some later, but eventually. All we can do is what we have chosen to do and do it to the very best of our abilities and never stop learning.

Michael David Stewart

1/16/2012

Los Angeles, CA

MOVIE REVIEW: “HUGO”

Martin Scorsese (Image via RottenTomatoes.com) MOVIE REVIEW: “HUGO” (3D). DIRECTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE.WRITTEN BY JOHN LOGAN BASED ON THE BOOK THEINVENTION OF HUGO CABRET BY BRIAN SELZNIK STARRING SIR BEN KINGSLEY, ASA BUTTERFIELD, CHLOË GRACE MORETZ , CHRISTOPHER LEE, SACHA BARON COHEN, EMILY MORTIMER, HELEN MCCRORY, MICHAEL STUHLBARG, RAY WINSTONE AND JUDE LAW. CINEMATOGRAPHY BY ROBERT RICHARDSON.

Golden Globe recipient MARTIN SCORSESE’S“HUGO”, goes far beyond the story of young Hugo Cabret, portrayed brilliantly and heartfelt by ASA BUTTERFIELD (The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas) and French pioneer film maker Georges Méliès, played with equally striking depth by SIR BEN KINGSLEY, but also speaks to what cinema used to be, and, to some degree of what they still are for the most part: magic, wonder, awe, adventure, and most importantly story telling.

“HUGO” tells the story of the orphan Hugo Cabret who secretly lives in the Paris train station maintaining all the clocks while he tries to repair an automaton his late father (JUDE LAW), a watch and clock maker, discovered abandoned in the attic of a museum.The sophisticated device, unlike any Hugo’s father had seen before, was designed to write.

After the death of his father Hugo is taken in by his drunkard of an uncle Claude (RAY WINSTONE) who maintains the clocks in the Paris train station. The rusted and neglected automaton is one of two of Hugo’s possessions and links to his father who also passed down his passion and talent for fixing things, as well as surviving and eluding the train station agent (SACHA BARON COHEN).

In his attempt to repair the automaton, Hugo is forced to steal clockwork parts and tools, including stealing and being caught by a sad, embittered and forgotten Méliès who runs a toy concession in the train station. Upon catching Hugo, Méliès forces the boy to empty his pockets, discovering Hugo’s father’s notebook. The notebook contains notes, sketches, and even a “flip book” animation of the automaton. Méliès is enraged when he discovers the notebook, claiming it’s his, confiscating it and telling Hugo he intends to burn it.