The Glenda Farrell Project :: Take 6 :: A Life and Legacy In Her Own Words.

After becoming completely and obsessively twitter-pate'd with her, when I first started digging into the career and personal life of Glenda Farrell to find out all I could for this highly sporadic but completely heartfelt tribute series, it's sad to say there really wasn't a whole lot out there to find. A few web blurbs here; a fan page there; a PDF of an old magazine article -- if you were lucky; but no written biography to consult, or even speak of, sadly, for one of the most under-appreciated film talents of the 1930's.

Thankfully, an extremely informative vein was finally struck when several posts and photos on a Glenda Farrell thread were unearthed at the Silver Screen Oasis; with the majority of posts composed by Hardwicke Benthow, who was kind enough to reach out to me several posts back to compliment me on these efforts to shine a light on Farrell's career. And so, in kind, I am happy to report that Benthow has collected all of those posts and, after embellishing them even further, has published them again for all to enjoy, including a brand new page of Glenda quotes as she talks about her career in her own words.

Glenda Farrell: Her Life and Legacy.

Glenda Farrell: In Her Own Words.

Precious stuff, folks. Now click on over and get to reading!  

"You see, I tried – every agent tried to get me into pictures, but I never was a very pretty girl. I always had deep circles under my eyes, and lines down beside my mouth. I’d test, and they’d say, “You don’t photograph.” So I’d come back to New York, to the stage. So at the time they called me for Little Caesar, I thought: 'Oh—what’ll I use for a face?'” 

One of the things I am most thankful for from 2012 is getting a crash course on the life and times and film career of Glenda Farrell. And the more I dig, the more I love. And so, to share that love, we're kicking off The Glenda Farrell Project for 2013 and beyond, as I will do everything in my power to share my Glenda love in the usual, obsessive compulsive fashion in all matters and means and ways. Stay tuned! Lots more to come.

Larry Buchanan's Fractured Fairy Tales :: A 15 Vid-Cap Look at Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976)

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"That's the last cock I'll ever have to suck."
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According to legend, cinema schlockmeister Larry Buchanan was friends with the newly minted Marylin Monroe when they were both contract wage slaves for MGM in the early 1950's. And Goodbye, Norma Jean was the first chapter of his scathing indictment on the Hollywood machine that, according to Mr. B., forced her to sleep her way to the top, chewed her up, and then spat her back out with the follow up flick, Goodnight, Sweet Marylin. Truthfully, I'm not a huge Monroe fan, whose off-screen mystique tends to blot out and overshadow some real talent onscreen, or buy into the many conspiracies surrounding her life and death; but this film isn't really about Marylin and tries to tear asunder the manufactured and exploited image that has always rubbed me the wrong way.

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"Larry Buchanan's Goodbye, Norma Jean is more than a lurid celebrity biography. It shatters many illusions about the movie business, and attempts to demystify the cultural creation of Marylin Monroe, questioning the cultural mythology of which not only obscures but consumes the person (or its subjects, in both senses of the term). Her struggles show the entertainment industry as a callous, dehumanizing system, a conglomerate of ruthless individuals prepared to exploit anyone in order to produce more product for an insatiable audience [and] specifically seeks to lay bare the pleasant, preposterous banalities of how the public traditionally views a movie star's ascension to fame and fortune. In Norma Jean's case the road to success was not merely rocky, but criminally abusive..."

Rob Craig xxxxxxxx
The Films of Larry Buchanan x

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And thus, once more, Larry Buchanan has managed to suck me back into his static, no frills world of entertainment. (And for this I blame Mr. Craig and his excellent, critical study of our boy Larry.) But, You know what? As far as revisionist B.S. bio-Buchanan flicks go? This one wasn't half bad, but it has less to do with the guy behind the camera and more to do with an arresting performance by Misty Rowe as Norma Jean, whose combination of fragility and dogged determination will surprise a lot of folks who wrote this film off with a Hee and a Haw ... Now I just need to find a copy of the The Loch Ness Horror and I can finally put Mr. Buchanan away for good. Yay, me!


Goodbye, Norma Jean (1976) Austamerican Productions / EP: Mark Josem / P: Larry Buchanan / D: Larry Buchanan / W: Larry Buchanan, Lynn Shubert / C: Robert A. Sherry / E: John Buchanan, John S. Curran / M: Joe Beck / S: Misty Rowe, Terence Locke, Patch Mackenzie, Preston Hanson, Adele Claire

The Roar of Ballyhoo and the Thunder of Bullshit :: A 22 Vid-Cap Look at Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007)

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"There is no God but gimmick. And [Castle is] his prophet."

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And when I say bullshit, Boils and Ghouls, I mean it most reverently...























Truthfully, Jeffrey Schwartz's biographical take on William Castle probably won't tell any hardcore fans anything they didn't already know. However, all that ghoulish info has been beautifully and lavishly packaged together with an eye-popping amount of publicity stills, background details and minutiae that makes this thing an absolute must see for any fans of Castle's gimmicks and bag of tricks.


Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story (2007) Automat Pictures :: Sony Pictures / EP: Sonja Nelson / P: Jeffrey Schwarz / AP: Taryn Teigue, Jack Mulligan / D: Jeffrey Schwarz / C: Adam Cindric, Steve Coleman, Robert Elfstrom, Matt Faw, Eugenia Fiumi, David A. Ford, David Hallinger, Chris Meagher, Jim Newport, Mark Putnam, Matt Stell, Clay Westervelt / E: Philip Harrison, Jeffrey Schwarz / M: Michael Cudahy / S: Terry Castle, Robert Bloch, Bob Burns, Forrest J Ackerman, John Badham, Diane Baker

Blasts from the Past :: A Beer-Gut Reaction to Telstar -- The Joe Meek Story (2008)

The first time I heard "Telstar" through the courtesy of The Magic Organ 8-track in my grandparents Catalina cruiser many, many moons ago I had no idea who Joe Meek was. What I did know was the song was hideously infectious, and I tended to get excited whenever the track cycled around again on those long road trips of yore, and its been stuck in my head ever since. Now, some thirty years later, I've been sufficiently schooled in The Unified Meek Theory and am equally dumbfounded by the number of golden oldies that always stuck with me over the years that had the eccentric producer's fingerprints all over them. Yeah, I'm one of those freaks with the genetic defect who prefers the Tottenham Stomp over the Mersey Beat. Give me The Dave Clark Five over The Fab Four any day of the week -- or better yet, the righteous reverb and ethereal echos of RGM Sound Ltd.

For those of you uninitiated, Joe Meek was a British record producer who rose to fame and infamy in the early 1960's. He was tone-deaf, couldn't read music or even play an instrument, but what he had was a knack for mixing and kit-bashing sounds together -- most famously in his studio split over several rooms, including the toilet, nestled above a leather-goods store. And as with most eccentrics, Meek often blurred the line between mad genius and insufferable prick. Possessing a volatile temper, the man was also highly paranoid (-- in some instances, rightfully so, but others not so much --) and had a bad habit of attacking his musicians when they didn't play things to suit him just right.

Between these extreme mood swings, the producer, always looking for a certain "sonic signature" for each track, hammered out several hit tunes; his biggest being inspired by the launch of the Telstar-1 communications satellite, which served as the opening salvo of the impending British Pop Invasion of America. Alas, after several missed opportunities, and plagued by several personal demons, including a malignant relationship with one of his proteges, along with an addiction to narcotic diet pills, Meek's career, like a faulty halogen light, flashed big and bright but inevitably burned out too quickly, leading to his untimely end with a murder (his landlady) and (his) suicide in 1967.

Nick Moran's terrific bio-pic, Telstar -- The Joe Meek Story, begins here, at the end. Based on Moran's stage play, co-authored with James Hicks, the film then utilizes a series of flashbacks to tell Meek's (Con O'Neill) story, a tragic love story, really, beginning with the hectic recording of John Leyton's "Johnny, Remember Me". From there, it rapidly tics off the highlights and low-lights that followed, fast and furious, as Meek burns the candle at both ends while taking a Dexedrine-fueled acetylene torch to the middle. With the majority of his royalties locked up in litigation and back-taxes, leaving his company to flounder, and his relationship with Heinz Burt (JJ Feild), who was just pulling the honeypot on a man too blindly in love (and perhaps too vainly stubborn) to see it, falling apart, though it may be hard to sympathize with the "mad old bastard," one can definitely empathize with Meek as his world cracks up and falls apart around him both professionally and personally as the movie plays out. And if you already know how this story tragically ends, this will only add another layer of melancholy as we wait for this runaway train to self-destruct and go off the rails, taking several innocent bystanders with it.

Released in the UK in 2008 and on DVD in 2009, unfortunately, as far as I know, there are still no plans for an American release, which is too bad because Moran's tale is a highly kinetic and frenetic assault on your eyes and ears that is well worth your time. As for Joe Meek, well, his unique sound was perfect for the time when it first exploded on the scene. But time, as always, marches on and left the man behind. Behind in an era where science and sound and a hope for a better future were forever linked. Linked in an infectious memory of a song that can be tapped into and replayed. And replayed forever.


Telstar: The Joe Meek Story (2008) Aspiration Films / EP: David Groves / P: Adam Bohling, Simon Jordan, David Reid / D: Nick Moran / W: Nick Moran, James Hicks / C: Peter Wignall / E: Alex Marsh / M: Ilan Eshkeri / S: Con O'Neill, Kevin Spacey, Pam Ferris, JJ Feild, James Corden, Tom Burke, Ralf Little