2022 UCLA Festival of Preservation/Passings #6: Betty White by Kymm Zuckert

This past weekend, the UCLA Film and Television Archive held their first Festival of Preservation since 2019, at the Billy Wilder Theatre at the Hammer Museum. I was able to see several of the programmes, and rather than just pick one to write about, I thought I’d say a little bit about all of them.

Buzzy Boop at the Concert (1938)

Buzzy Boop, Betty’s country cousin, is brought to a soprano’s recital and is bored out of her mind. So is the entire audience and they all fall asleep, except for little Buzzy who sneaks onto the stage and starts jiving and tap dancing. The soprano decides if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Clearly influenced by the Judy Garland/Deanna Durbin shorts from a couple of years earlier, pitting jazz v. classical.

Super fun, and seen for the first time in over 80 years, since the film had been lost, and was only recently discovered in Russia. This was a very exciting screening, and the animation nerds were out in full force, as nothing is better than a lost film being recovered!

Inner Sanctum (1948)

I am a fan of old time radio, as both of my parents worked in the medium and thus I was lucky enough to be introduced to it as a child. I was well aware of Inner Sanctum as a radio show, but apparently it was also a movie series.

A mysterious man (Fritz Leiber) on a train tells a story about a woman who doesn’t follow advice to a woman who doesn’t follow advice, and strange things happen. A man (Charles Russell), gets off a train and is followed by a woman who attacks him (after being told not to get off the train, see: doesn’t follow advice), and he accidentally kills her.

Instead of turning himself in and taking his medicine, he dumps her body onto the back of the train as it leaves the station, and pats himself on the back for not being seen, except that he totally was seen by a boy. He tries to get out of town, but there is a flood and the bridge washes out, so he ends up in a boarding house with the kid who saw him, without realizing that he saw him.

It’s a very twisty noir, with excellent performances by Lee Patrick (who played Effie in the Maltese Falcon a few years before), child actor Dale Belding, and gorgeous blonde (though not a femme fatale) Mary Beth Hughes.

Sinbad the Sailor (1935)

Another restored cartoon, though not lost, was Sinbad the Sailor by Ub Iwerks, who co-created Mickey Mouse with Walt Disney, and worked on the early Disney cartoons before leaving and starting his own studio.

In this cartoon, Sinbad is attacked by pirates, there is much fighting and silliness, and he triumphs at the end, because of course the pirates aren’t going to triumph! There is a lot of typical Ub Iwerks personification of inanimate objects, and the whole thing is really fun.

Topper Returns (1941)

Topper was a series of comedy films starring Roland Young as Cosmo Topper, a rather stuffy man who could, unfortunately, see ghosts. In the first movie, the ghosts were Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, in the sequel it was only Constance Bennett, and in this second sequel, an all-new ghost situation.

Joan Blondell and Carole Landis are visiting a mysterious house when one of them gets killed. Of course, in the Topper films, that’s no tragedy, because they pop up as a ghost and still get to be in the movie! The ghost (no spoilers) gets Topper to help her solve the mystery, which is not something that Topper wants to do AT ALL, but in screwball comedies, the thing you don’t want to do is the thing you will be forced to do for the whole runtime of the picture.

This film is extremely charming and funny, with co-starring turns by Billie Burke as the frazzled and silly Mrs. Topper, Patsy Kelly as the maid, and the wonderful Eddie “Rochester” Anderson (from the Jack Benny show) as Eddie the chauffeur, who says at one point, “Doors closing by themselves, people talking to nothing and getting answers, I’m going back! Back to Mr. Benny! Ain’t nothing like that ever happened there!” It’s a real treat to see him instead of only hearing him, I’m a huge fan of the Benny radio show.

Loads of fun, and now I’m going to seek out the two earlier Topper films, which I have never seen.

Hallmark Hall of Fame: The Fantasticks (1964)

The Fantasticks is the longest running musical, having run continuously from 1960 until 2002, and I lived in NY for the last twenty years of its run and never saw it until it was revived in 2006. It’s not a bad little show, a couple of excellent songs, but no reason at all for it to have run for 42 years, except for the fact that it was probably a pretty cheap show.

This restored Hallmark Hall of Fame special used both the 2” tape it was recorded on, and the kinescope from the broadcast for the commercials and credits, so it goes back and forth between colour and black and white. The commercials are important to keep for historical purposes, but my goodness, they were deadly dull.

The cast is entirely remarkable, with Ricardo Montalban as El Gallo, the narrator and singer of Try to Remember, originally played by Jerry Orbach. I would have loved to see him in the role, but Montalban was both great and, frankly, more appropriate for a character called El Gallo. As the two fathers, we have two great character actors, Bert Lahr and Stanley Holloway, aka The Cowardly Lion and Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza’s dad. The young couple, Luisa and Matt were played by a couple of complete unknowns, though one would quickly become a star, Susan Watson and John Davidson. It’s a shame that Susan Watson didn’t become a star as well, as she is just wonderful.

Everyone is great, the show is as slight as it always was and always will be, but charming, and great to see all of these performers pour their hearts out.

United States Steel Hour: Scene of the Crime (1962)

They screened this show as a tribute to Betty White, so I decided to use it as my Passings for her, watching something new in tribute to the decedent, even though she didn’t die this year, one day early is close enough for jazz.

“Scene of the Crime” was a live episode of the TV drama anthology, United States Steel Hour, a barn-burner of a title if I’ve ever heard one. The commercials were even longer and more boring than the Hallmark ones. All that, and this was probably the best thing I saw in the whole festival, and our Betty White was an excellent dramatic actress, too bad she wasn’t able to show that off more.

It takes place in a boarding house, where the landlady (Patricia Collinge), goes out for an overnight visit, and while she’s gone, a man (Harry Townes), comes to rent a room. He says that he was last there twenty years before, and the other boarders are reminded of the fact that there had been a murder there twenty years before. I wonder if that will have something to do with the plot?

It turns out that yes, he did murder the girl, but he was drunk and doesn’t remember it and wants to find out about what happened & why he did it. Betty decides to help him, and they work on the mystery of uncovering his past.

It’s a really good mystery with an excellent twist and strong performances, and the film was restored beautifully, like everything else they showed over the weekend.

The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947)

The final screening was of the last film that Harold Lloyd made, directed by Preston Sturges, produced by Howard Hughes. It was not the greatest of films made by Lloyd or Sturges, and it bombed on first release. Hughes then pulled it, recut it, added a talking horse, and re-released it as Mad Wednesday, and it bombed again.

The film has not been seen in its original cut for quite a while, and the restoration was performed using Sturges’ personal print.

Lloyd plays, well, Harold Diddlebock, and it starts with the football game from The Freshman, Lloyd’s silent comedy from 1925, where he, as the school team’s waterboy, ends up going in the game and winning it. Sorry for spoiling The Freshman, it’s an excellent film, you should see it.

The old footage is intercut with new crowd shots, including E.J. Waggleberry (Raymond Walburn), and when 1925 Harold Lloyd is carried off the field in triumph, it’s 1947 Harold Lloyd who is carried into the locker room, where Mr. Waggleberry tells him to come to him for a job when he graduates.

Harold does (graduate), and he does (go for the job), and he is put into the dullest corner of the bookkeeping department, which grinds him down and grinds him down, until twenty-two years go by, and Harold Diddlebock is called into Mr. Waggleberry’s office and fired for being a boring old man, which is frankly what the job turned him into, and given the money that the job had saved for him, which is $2946.12.

Harold leaves, despondent, and meets a squirrely little guy called Wormy (Jimmy Conlin), who takes Harold to a bar. Harold has never had a drink, and the bartender takes it as a challenge to give him something really special for his first drink, which is what really starts the plot of this comedy, where drinking that amazing drink, The Diddlebock, makes Harold lose all his inhibitions, not to mention his money, betting on horses, buying a hansom cab, also a circus, but also bringing back the bright, excited guy who won the football game. So remember, kids, drinking to excess is much better than working in an office!

As I said, it’s no hidden masterpiece, but absolutely worth seeing, with some very funny set pieces. No talking horse, but a real lion!

If you are in the LA area, the UCLA Film and Television Archive screens items from its collection all the time, and they are all for free due to the generosity of an anonymous donor. They have all kind of programmes coming up, and are well worth your time.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog