Hotchka Movies by the Decade feature #193 :: April 4•10

Constantin Film

There were quite a few films released this week across the past century with a few being notable as debuts for directors who went on to bigger and better things. Two films this week also mark the debuts of an actress and actor who also went on to much bigger and better things. There are a handful of films that have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry, and a few that have been nominated for or won Oscars, Golden Globes and BAFTAs. There are also a whole lot more films this week that are barely remembered, so scroll down the list to see what films made their debuts, pick up a little trivia along the way, and tell us if any of your favorites are celebrating milestone anniversaries this week!

1924

• April 5 – The Marriage Cheat (USA, Thomas H. Ince Corporation)
• April 6 – Second Youth (USA, Distinctive Pictures)
• April 7 – A Boy of Flanders (USA, Jackie Coogan Productions)
• April 7 – The Dancing Cheat (USA, Universal Pictures)
• April 7 – The Law Forbids (USA, Universal Jewel)
• April 7 – Who’s Cheating? (USA, Lee-Bradford Corporation)
• April 8 – Crossed Trails (USA, Independent Pictures)
• April 8 – The Martyr Sex (USA, Phil Goldstone Productions)

The Marriage Cheat and The Martyr Sex are considered lost films.

Second Youth features one of the rare silent film appearances of husband and wife team Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. Prints of the film are held in the collections of Cinematheque Royale de Belgique in Brussels and the Library of Congress.

A Boy of Flanders is based on the 1872 novel A Dog of Flanders by Ouida. A print exists at the Gosfilmofond in Russia. An incomplete copy of The Law Forbids is held in a film collection in the Netherlands.

1934

• April 6 – Men in White (USA, Cosmopolitan Productions)
• April 7 – Registered Nurse (USA, First National Pictures)
• April 7 – The House of Rothschild (USA, 20th Century Pictures)
• April 9 – Glamour (USA, Universal Pictures)

Men in White is loosely based on the Sidney Kingsley Pulitzer-Prize-winning play of the same name. The pre-Code film, which suggested illicit romance and abortion (even though there were no overt references to abortion), was declared unfit for public exhibition by the Catholic Legion of Decency.

Registered Nurse featured Bebe Daniels in her final role for Warner Bros. The film is preserved at the Library of Congress.

The House of Rothschild is based on the play by George Hembert Westley. The film was produced as an attack on Nazism and anti-semitism following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933. Two scenes were used in the German antisemitic propaganda film The Eternal Jew (1940) without the permission of the copyright holders. The film’s final sequence was one of the first to be shot with the three-strip Technicolor process. The film was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Prints of Glamour are held at the UCLA archive and Library of Congress.

1944

• April 4 – Outlaws of Santa Fe (USA, Republic Pictures)
• April 6 – Cover Girl (USA, Columbia Pictures)
• April 6 – Hey, Rookie (USA, Columbia Pictures)
• April 6 – It Happened Tomorrow (Canada, Arnold Pressburger Films)
• April 7 – Call of the South Seas (USA, Republic Pictures)
• April 7 – Up in Mabel’s Room (USA, Edward Small Productions)
• April 8 – Shine On, Harvest Moon (USA, Warner Bros. Pictures)
• April 8 – Tick Tock Tuckered (USA), short, Leon Schlesinger Studios)
• April 9 – Rosie the Riveter (USA, Republic Pictures)
• April 10 – Heaven Is Round the Corner (UK, British National Films)
• April 10 – Tampico (USA, Twentieth Century Fox)
• April 10 – The Negro Soldier (USA, documentary short, U.S. War Department)

Heaven Is Round the Corner has no known US theatrical release date.

Cover Girl stars Rita Hayworth, with Gene Kelly as Danny McGuire. Kelly would reprise the role of McGuire in 1980’s Xanadu which itself was based on Hayworth’s Down to Earth. Kelly was on loan to Columbia from MGM, and the studio promised he’d be able to choreograph which his home studio had not allowed him to do. Kelly worked with Stanley Donan on some of the dance routines. The film is considered the one where Kelly hit his stride. The film’s success caused MGM to give Kelly a closer look, allowing him to devise his own dance routines in future musicals. It was Hayworth’s fourth musical, though her singing voice is dubbed by Martha Mears. It was Columbia’s first Technicolor film. The film earned five Oscar nominations, winning for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture. Because of the film’s success, Columbia bought the rights to the Broadway musical Pal Joey for Kelly and Hayworth, but MGM refused to loan him out again so the film was made with Frank Sinatra.

It Happened Tomorrow, based on the one-act play The Jest of Haha Laba by Lord Dunsany, opened in the US on April 7, 1944. The film earned Oscar nominations for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and Best Sound Recording.

Up in Mabel’s Room, a remake of the 1926 silent film of the same name, was Oscar nominated for Best Original Score. Shine On, Harvest Moon includes a Technicolor sequence at the film’s finale.

Tick Tock Tuckered is a color remake of the black-and-white Porky’s Badtime Story, with Daffy Duck replacing Gabby Goat.

The Negro Soldier was produced by Frank Capra as a follow-up to his successful film series Why We Fight. The film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2011.

1954

Columbia Pictures

• April 4 – Pride of the Blue Grass (USA, Hayes Goetz Productions)
• April 4 – Due notti con Cleopatra (Italy, Excelsa Film)
• April 5 – Dangerous Voyage (UK, Merton Park Studios)
• April 5 – Prince Valiant (USA, Twentieth Century Fox)
• April 6 – Knock On Wood (USA, Dena Productions)
• April 7 – Casanova’s Big Night (USA, Paramount Pictures)
• April 7 – The Lone Chipmunks (USA, short, Walt Disney Productions)
• April 7 – The Mad Magician (USA, Columbia Pictures)
• April 8 – The Man on the Flying Trapeze (USA, United Productions of America)
• April 9 – Lucky Me (USA, Warner Bros. Pictures)

Pride of the Blue Grass is also known as Prince of the Blue Grass. Due notti con Cleopatra opened in the US on April 4, 1964 as Two Nights with Cleopatra. Dangerous Voyage was released in the US on September 3, 1954 as Terror Ship.

Prince Valiant is based on the King Features syndicated newspaper comic strip of the same name by Hal Foster. Fox bought the rights to eight years of the published comic strip stories but only used the 1937 storyline. Robert Wagner was cast in the title role and had his hair cut to match the character’s signature look, resulting in ridicule and teasing that has left a bad taste in his mouth to this day (although he does think the film was good).

Vincent Price makes a cameo appearance in Casanova’s Big Night as the real Casanova. Paramount built a 400 foot-long full-scale imitation of the Grand Canal in Venice together with bridge and 16 buildings for the film.

The Lone Chipmunks is the third and last of the short-lived Chip n’ Dale cartoon series, and is the last cartoon of the Golden Age of Animation to feature the character Black Pete.

Lucky Me was the first movie musical produced in CinemaScope and filmed in Warnercolor. It was also announced to be in 3D, but the process was not used. Angie Dickinson makes her film debut in an uncredited role which she won as the result of a television contest. Hal Derwin dubbed Robert Cummings’ singing voice. Star Doris Day suffered from panic attacks before filming and production was delayed so she could recover from, as the studio release stated, ‘nervous exhaustion’.

1964

• April 6 – The Best Man (USA, Millar/Turman Productions)
• April 7 – Adorable Julia (USA, Wiener Mundus-Film)
• April 7 – Saddle-Sore Woody (USA, Walter Lantz Productions)
• April 8 – FBI Code 98 (USA, Warner Bros. Pictures)
• April 8 – From Russia with Love (USA, Eon Productions)
• April 8 – Paris When It Sizzles (USA, Richard Quine Productions)
• April 9 – The Carpetbaggers (USA, Embassy Pictures)
• April 10 – Everybody Loves It (USA, Unique Productions Inc.)
• April 10 – French Dressing (UK, Associated British Picture Corporation)
• April 10 – Panic Button (USA, Yankee)

Adorable Julia originally opened in France in June 1962, and in Germany on August 10, 1962 as Julia, du bist zauberhaft. FBI Code 98 originally opened in France on January 4, 1963. From Russia with Love originally opened in the UK on October 25, 1963. Paris When It Sizzles originally opened in Austria in March 1964. French Dressing was released in the US on September 11, 1964.

The Best Man was written by Gore Vidal, based on his 1960 play of the same name. Lee Tracy was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actor in the role he originally played on stage. It was the first American film to feature the word ‘homosexual’.

Adorable Julia is based on the 1937 novel Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham, and the subsequent play that Guy Bolton and Marc-Gilbert Sauvajon adapted from the novel.

FBI Code 98 was originally produced as a TV pilot, with a cast of Warner Bros. contract players, that received a theatrical release instead. The real FBI cooperated with the filming, with scenes shot in Washington D.C. and Quantico. The film’s working title was Headquarters F.B.I., the title under which a novelization was published.

From Russia with Love is the second film in the James Bond series. The film won the BAFTA for Best Cinematography. Sean Connery’s salary for the film was $54,000 and he received a $100,000 bonus. The film was chosen as the follow-up to Dr. No because President John F. Kennedy named the novel among his favorites of all time. It was the last film he saw at the White House on November 20, 1963 before going to Dallas. The film introduced many elements that would become a regular part of the franchise including a pre-titles scene, the Blofeld character (though the credits only list him as ‘?’), a secret weapon gadget for Bond, a helicopter sequence (The Man with the Golden Gun is the only film to not have one), a theme song with lyrics (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service does include a ‘theme song’ but it’s not used in the opening credits), and the line ‘James Bond will return’ in the end credits. Desmond Llewelyn took over the role of Major Boothroyd from Peter Burton, who was unavailable, but only receives credit at the end of the film. The character is never mentioned by name but is introduced as being from ‘Q Branch’ and became known as Q from then on with Llewelyn playing the role until his death in 1999.

Paris When It Sizzles is based on the 1952 French film Holiday for Henrietta by Julien Duvivier and Henri Jeanson. The working title was Together in Paris. The film features uncredited appearances by Tony Curtis, Marlene Dietrich and Mel Ferrer, who was married to the film’s star Audrey Hepburn at the time. Hepburn and William Holden had previously worked together on Sabrina ten years earlier where the two had an affair, with Holden in love with her ever since. Both were under contract to Paramount which forced them to make the picture. Holden was battling alcoholism at the time, and tried unsuccessfully to rekindle a romance with the married Hepburn, both situations which made production difficult. Curtis was brought in during a week when Holden was undergoing treatment for his alcoholism. Hepburn’s chosen cinematographer, Franz Planer, was unavailable so she agreed to Claude Renoir, but demanded he be replaced after she saw what she considered to be unflattering dailies. Charles Lang took over the job. Hepburn shot the film back-to-back with Charade. The film was deemed unreleasable after an October 1962 screening.

The Carpetbaggers is based on the best-selling 1961 novel by Harold Robbins. The character played by Carroll Baker is loosely based on Jean Harlow. The film was a landmark of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, venturing further than most films of the period even though the film had to adhere to the still-enforced Production Code. Baker filmed a nude scene which was used for publicity purposes, and it only appeared in the European version of the film. Baker wears a robe in the US version, and later said that it was a mistake not to show the scene in the US version. Elizabeth Ashley earned BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress.

French Dressing was the feature directorial debut of Ken Russell following an established career in television. Russell had originally been offered the musical Summer Holiday but turned it down. He was offered French Dressing with the promise that it would not be a musical. Russell was hoping to make the film a Jacques Tati-style comedy but was never happy with the screenplay, saying it had not a single funny line to the point that it made the Crucifixion look like a Mack Sennett farce.

Filmed in Italy, Panic Button was one of several international films Jayne Mansfield was forced to make after her contract was dropped by 20th Century Fox in 1962.

1974

The Coppola Company

• April 4 – Herbie Rides Again (UK, Walt Disney Productions)
• April 4 – Mahler (UK, Visual Programme Systems)
• April 5 – Deadly Weapons (USA, Juri Productions)
• April 5 – Foxy Brown (USA, American International Pictures)
• April 6 – The Great Masquerade (USA, Union Artists Productions)
• April 7 – Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (UK, Hammer Films)
• April 7 – The Conversation (USA, The Coppola Company)
• April 8 – Lost in the Stars (USA, The American Film Theatre)
• April 10 – Our Time (USA, Richard Alan Roth Productions)
• April 10 – Thomasine & Bushrod (USA, Columbia Pictures)
• April 10 – Where the Lilies Bloom (USA, Radnitz/Mattel Productions)

Herbie Rides Again opened in the US and Canada on June 6, 1974. Mahler opened in the US on February 14, 1975. Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter was released in the US on June 14, 1974.

Herbie Rides Again is the second film in the Herbie series which began with The Love Bug in 1968. Keenan Wynn reprised the villainous role of Alonzo Hawk, which he originated in The Absent-Minded Professor and Son of Flubber although the character is billed as Alonzo P. Hawk in the earlier films and Alonzo A. Hawk in the Herbie film making it unclear if the two series are part of a shared universe or if the two characters are related (or if someone just goofed up with the middle initial). The film uses both 1963 and 1965 VW Beetles, which makes for some continuity errors as the windows on the ’65 models were larger.

Mahler was written and directed by Ken Russell, a decade after the failure of French Dressing. The film was to be the first in a series of six films about composers, but only this and Lisztomania were produced.

A clip from Deadly Weapons is seen in John Waters’ Serial Mom.

Foxy Brown was seized and confiscated in the United Kingdom under section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. The film was originally intended to be a sequel to the hit Coffy, titled Burn, Coffy, Burn, but at the last minute AIP decided they didn’t want to do a sequel so it’s never said what kind of job Foxy Brown had. Director Jack Hill was initially against the clothing designed for Foxy, which was meant to be more glamorous and trendy than the clothing in Coffy, feeling it would almost immediately date the film. He eventually changed his mind with Foxy Brown‘s ascent into pop culture and the ’70s nostalgia movement of the 1990s. He also felt Foxy was a symbol of female empowerment that transcended the time period of the film.

The Great Masquerade is also known as Murder on the Emerald Seas and The AC/DC Caper. The film was thought to be lost until 2014 when it was released on DVD by Vinegar Syndrome in a run limited to 500 copies.

Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter was intended to be the first in a series featuring the title character. It was the only film directed by Brian Clemens. Julian Holloway dubbed the voice for Captain Kronos, who was played by Horst Janson.

The Conversation won the Palme d’Or at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, and it received three Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Original Screenplay and Sound. It also received five BAFTA nominations (winning two) and four Golden Globe nominations. It was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry in 1995. Director Francis Ford Coppola cited Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up as a key influence for the film’s themes. Coppola was unaware that the recording equipment used in the film was the same used in the Watergate scandal, calling it entirely coincidental as the screenplay was completed in the mid-1960s and the equipment was discovered through research and technical advisers, and filming had completed before the most revelatory Watergate stories broke. Audiences, however, interpreted the film as a reaction to the scandal and its fallout. The music score by David Shire was created before the film was shot.

Lost in the Stars is a film adaptation of the Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson musical adaptation of the Alan Paton novel Cry, the Beloved Country. Due to the film’s criticism of apartheid it could not be filmed on location in South Africa, so exteriors were filmed in Cottage Grove, Oregon.

Our Time had working titles of Basic Training and The Girls of Penfield, and is also known as Death of Her Innocence. Stars Pamela Sue Martin and Parker Stevenson would go on to star in The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries with co-stars Edith Atwater and George O’Hanlon Jr. having recurring roles on the series.

1984

• April 4 – The Stone Boy (USA, International Productions)
• April 6 – Conquest (USA, Clemi Cinematografica)
• April 6 – Hard to Hold (Universal Pictures)
• April 6 – House of the Long Shadows (USA, London-Cannon Films)
• April 6 – Moscow on the Hudson (USA, Columbia Pictures)
• April 6 – Oddballs (USA, Maurice Smith Productions)
• April 6 – The NeverEnding Story (West Germany, Constantin Film)
• April 6 – Up the Creek (USA, Orion Pictures)
• April 6 – Where the Boys Are ’84 (USA, Incorporated Television Company)

Conquest originally opened in Italy on June 2, 1983. House of the Long Shadows originally opened in the UK on June 17, 1983. The NeverEnding Story opened in the US and Canada on July 20, 1984.

House of the Long Shadows is notable for featuring four iconic horror film stars — Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine — together for the first and only time. The screenplay is based on the 1913 novel Seven Keys to Baldpate by Earl Derr Biggers.

Moscow on the Hudson was the American film debut of Maria Conchita Alonso. Robin Williams took a crash course in Russian for the film and also learned to play the saxophone.

The NeverEnding Story was the first English-language film for director Wolfgang Petersen, who replaced original director Helmut Dietl. The screenplay is based on the 1979 novel The Neverending Story by Michael Ende, adapting only the first half of the book. Ende acted as an adviser and helped Petersen with the script, but the final film deviated so far from his work that he requested production be halted or the title of the film be changed. When neither happened, he sued but lost the case. At the time of its release, it was the most expensive film produced outside the United States or the Soviet Union.

Where the Boys Are ’84 (the onscreen title omitted the ’84) was the last film directed by Hy Averback. It is a remake of 1960’s Where the Boys Are. Wendy Schall, one of the film’s stars, admitted they were smoking real marijuana in the beach funeral scene. Russell Todd’s singing voice was dubbed by Peter Beckett, vocalist with Little River Band.

1994

• April 8 – Holy Matrimony (USA, Hollywood Pictures)
• April 8 – Leprechaun 2 (USA, Planet Productions)
• April 8 – Red Rock West (USA, Propaganda Films)
• April 8 – Threesome (USA, Motion Picture Corporation of America)

Red Rock West originally opened in Italy on May 14, 1993. Holy Matrimony was the final film directed by Leonard Nimoy.

Leprechaun 2 is known as One Wedding and Lots of Funerals in the UK. It was the last film in the series to get a theatrical release.

Threesome is based on the college memories of writer-director Andrew Fleming. The character of Eddy, played by Josh Charles, is based on Fleming.

2004

WT2 Productions

• April 7 – The Alamo (Mexico, Touchstone Pictures)
• April 7 – Johnson Family Vacation (USA, Hallway Pictures)
• April 9 – Blind Flight (UK, Makar Productions)
• April 9 – Ella Enchanted (UK, Miramax)
• April 9 – I’m Not Scared (USA, limited, Colorado Film Production)
• April 9 – Shade (USA, limited, Cobalt Media Group)
• April 9 – Shaun of the Dead (UK, WT2 Productions)
• April 9 – The Girl Next Door (USA/Canada, New Regency Productions)
• April 7 – The Whole Ten Yards (Iceland, Nine Yards Two Productions)
• April 9 – Twentynine Palms (USA, limited, 3B Productions)

Blind Flight has no known US theatrical release date. I’m Not Scared was originally released in Brazil on March 14, 2003 (the Italian title is Io non ho paura). Shaun of the Dead was released in the US on September 24, 2004. The Whole Ten Yards, a sequel to The Whole Nine Yards, opened in the US and Canada on April 9, 2004. Twentynine Palms originally opened in France on September 17, 2003.

The Alamo lost more than $146 million for Disney. Robert Rodriguez was under consideration for director but the studio went with John Lee Hancock. The Alamo set in Austin, Texas was the largest set ever built in North America at the time. The film’s original cut ran three hours which was trimmed to two hours, removing certain scenes and characters. Fifteen minutes were restored shortly before the film’s release but Dennis Quaid’s role as General Sam Houston had been significantly reduced. The film is the first to show Davy Crockett executed as a prisoner of war, based on memoirs written by José Enrique de la Peña, an officer in Santa Anna’s army. This has been accepted as fact by many historians but other works depicted him dying in battle. Many Alamo enthusiasts and historians criticized this depiction given the disputed nature of its origins.

Johnson Family Vacation marks the feature film debut of Jason Momoa.

Blind Flight is based on the true-life story of the kidnapping and imprisonment of the Irish academic Brian Keenan and the English journalist John McCarthy, two of the hostages in the Lebanon hostage crisis. The film is based on Keenan’s memoir, An Evil Cradling, and Some Other Rainbow by John McCarthy who was a screenplay consultant.

Ella Enchanted is loosely based on Gail Carson Levine’s 1997 novel of the same name. The film was criticized for changes made to the source material and the addition of new characters. Star Ann Hathaway has said there was a version of the script that was much closer to the book but it didn’t work as a film.

Shaun of the Dead is the first installment of Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg’s ‘Three Flavors Cornetto’ trilogy, followed by Hot Fuzz and The World’s End, all of which star Pegg and Nick Frost. The film was inspired by ideas used in Pegg and Wright’s TV series Spaced. Wright and Pegg wrote the screenplay in eight weeks. Helen Mirren was approached to play Shaun’s mother Barbara, but she turned it down with a note saying she would enjoy playing other funnier characters. Cameos in the film include Martin Freeman, Tamsin Greig and Coldplay members Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland. The film earned two BAFTA nominations including Outstanding British Film.

2014

• April 4 – 10 Rules for Sleeping Around (USA, limited, Thinkfactory Media)
• April 4 – Alan Partridge (USA, limited, Baby Cow Productions)
• April 4 – Goodbye World (USA, Gather Films)
• April 4 – In the Blood (USA, limited, Lleju Productions)
• April 4 – Island Of Lemurs: Madagascar (USA/Canada, limited, IMAX)
• April 4 – Jinn (Canada/USA, limited, Exxodus Pictures)
• April 4 – On the Other Side of the Tracks (USA, limited, Mandarin Cinéma)
• April 4 – The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (USA, limited, documentary, Geller/Goldfine Productions)
• April 4 – The Players (USA, limited, JD Prod)
• April 4 – Watermark (USA, limited, documentary, Sixth Wave Productions)
• April 7 – Hot Guys with Guns (USA, limited, H.G.W.G.)
• April 8 – Perfect Sisters (USA/Canada, limited, Stan & Deliver Films)

Alan Partridge originally opened in the UK on August 7, 2013 as Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. On the Other Side of the Tracks originally opened in France and Belgium on December 19, 2012 as De l’autre côté du périph. The Players originally opened in France and Belgium on February 29, 2012 as Les infidèles. Watermark originally opened in Canada on October 11, 2013.

10 Rules for Sleeping Around holds a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes from eight critics.

Perfect Sisters was released in the UK as Deadly Sisters. It is based on the novel The Class Project: How to Kill a Mother, which itself was based on the real-life murder of Linda Andersen. The film has been criticized for depicting the teenage murderers as far too sympathetic.