MonsterGirl Asks Writer, Film & Television Historian: Gary Gerani –

Gary Gerani is one of the writers of (Pumpkinhead 1988, creative consultant on Pumkinhead II Blood Wings 1993, writer on Vampirella 1996, the short story Convention 2017, and Trading Paint 2019 with John Travolta)

PUMPKINHEAD combined gritty verisimilitude with the landscape of a dark evocative allegory. “I loved the demon creature Stan Winston and his guys created so much, I actually have him created from the original mold standing in the corner of my living room!” … listen once a MonsterKid always a MonsterKid” says Gary Gerani to this MonsterGirl!

“Gary Gerani is a screenwriter, author, noted film and TV historian, and children’s product developer. He is best known for his contribution as co-writer of the Stan Winston-directed horror classic “Pumpkinhead,” and his groundbreaking 1977 nonfiction book “Fantastic Television.” This book is a real treasure, and there was and still is absolutely nothing like it out there as a bountiful of info for us nostalgic fans of vintage fantasy, sci-fi and horror television!

Over the years he’s created various comic books and a record number of trading card sets, working for the famous Topps Company. His graphic novels include “Dinosaurs Attack!” (inspired by his own Topps cards) and “Bram Stoker’s Death Ship,” an untold story of the Dracula legend. He also has his own publishing unit, Fantastic Press, in partnership with the popular comic book company IDW.”

Gary Gerani also contributes his humorous and thoughtful commentaries on several television anthology Blu-ray editions for The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Boris Karloff’s Thriller.

From Top 100 best horror films intro. What makes a good horror film special?

"Let's look at the genre itself, and how our most imaginative filmmakers have approached and defined it. Whether an artist is working in color or black and white, silent or sound, widescreen or the latest version of 3D, he faces an infinite number of creative ways to involve and ultimately terrify a movie audience. Sometimes viewers are rudely jolted by visceral shocks, as with Terence Fisher or William Friedkin thrillers, other times they are gently escorted into darkly unsettling, dream-like environs that confound, intrigue and captivate (think Roman Polanski or Val Lewton) What all these approaches have in common is that they somehow manage to replicate the fragile, visceral quality of nightmares, transcending reality and touching us intimately in a way that no other genre can.''-Gary Gerani

From the intro by Paul H. Schulman-"As a writer of science fiction articles and a collector of television art. Gary is recognized in New York Sci-Fi circles as the last word on the subject…(…)… Fantastic Television is the most complete and detailed treatment of the occult and science fiction TV shows existing anywhere. If you caught these shows the first time around, this book will be a visit from old friends. If you were too young to stay up that late, Fantastic Television will introduce you to a world of new friends!"

Incredibly concise and informative. Gary lists the credits for each of the series episodes. Extensive and valuable to any fantasy, sci-fi horror fans. There is nothing quote like this book released at that time, nor currently. Gary Gerani’s incredible book published in 1977 Fantastic Television -A Pictorial History of Sci-Fi, The Unusual and the Fantastic from Captain Video to the Star Trek Phenomenon and Beyond is filled with wonderful images. It is a complete overview of a precious world so many of us feel a longing and nostalgia for.

This fantastic book, covers some of my favorites The Twilight Zone, Boris Karloff's Thriller, The Outer Limits, One Step Beyond, Irwin Allen Productions, Batman, Star Trek, The Invaders, The Prisoner, Rod Serling's Night Gallery, Kolchak, The Night Stalker, Made for TV Movies, British Telefantasy, (The Avengers ) American Telefantasy. (Dark Shadows)

Highlighting concise backstories and filled with descriptive plot summaries for each episode! Gary has added his voice to some of the most enigmatic, innovative and engaging television shows of fantastical historical relevance. Since it’s publishing in 1977 there has been nothing like this collection in print…

FANTASTIC TELEVISION -A Pictorial History of Sci-FI, The Unusual and The Fantastic from Captain Video to the Star Trek Phenomenon and Beyond…

With an introduction by Roger Corman!

Top 100 Horror Movies by Gary Gerani (Nov 9 2010)

–

THE STRIKING RETRIBUTION OF PUMPKINHEAD (1988)  Fairy Tale vérité

“That old woman scares the piss out of me!”

“For each of man’s evils a special demon exists…”

Directorial debut by creature creator & special effects guru Stan Winston (Winston who passed away in 2008 was a frequent collaborator with director James Cameron, owned several effects studios, including Stan Winston Digital. Winston’s expertise were in makeup, puppets and practical effects, and owned his studio which branched out to include digital effects as well… creating work in the Terminator series, Jurassic Park films, Aliens, the first two Predator movies Iron Man and Edward Scissorhands. Winning four Academy Awards for his work.)

With a screenplay by Gary Gerani and Mark Patrick Carducci, based on a story by Carducci, Winston and Richard Weinman. The origin of the story was a poem written by Ed Justin. Film Editor Marcus Manton. Cinematography by Bojan Bazelli (Body Snatchers 1993, Kalifornia 1993, Sugar Hill 1993, The Ring 2002), set direction by Kurt Gauger and music by Richard Stone. Creature effects designed and created by Alec Gillis, Richard Landon, Shane Patrick Mahan, John Rosengrant, and Tom Woodruff Jr.

Critical Reception

“A pleasant surprise is the characterization, which are well-developed for this genre… Even the teenagers, usually little more than cardboard monster horror fodder in horror movies, have shades of performance…”Louis B Parks, “Pumpkinhead brings new life to Spook Shows-The Houston Chronicle, October 14, 1988

“It does have heart. If you like your monster movies with a touch of sweetness, Pumpkinhead may be just your cauldron of blood … Henriksen has some affecting moments as the bereaved father.”–Philip Wuntch “If You Dig Homespun Horror, Check Out Pumpkinhead”-The Daily Morning News, October 14, 1988

Credits:

Cast: Lance Henriksen (The Right Stuff 1983, The Terminator 1984, Aliens 1986, Millennium 1996-1999 ) as Ed Harley, Jeff East as Chris, John DiAquino as Joel, Kimberly Ross as Kim, Joel Hoffman as Steve, Cynthia Bain as Tracy, Kerry Remssen as Maggie, George Buck Flower as Wallace, Brian Bremer as Bunt, Billy Hurley as little Matthew Harley, Lee De Broux as Tom Harley, Peggy Walton Walker as Ellie Harley, Richard Warlock as Clayton Heller, Devon Odessa as Hessie, Joseph Piro as Jimmy Joe, Greg Michaels as Hill Man, Madeleine Taylor Holmes as Old Hill Woman, Mayim Bialik as Wallace kid, Jandi Swanson as Wallace kid, Mary Boessow as Mountain Girl, Robert Frederickson as Ethan and Tom Woodruff Jr. as Pumpkinhead.

IMDb Trivia fun facts:

The dog actor, Mushroom, who played Ed Harley’s dog, Gypsy, also played Barney in Gremlins (1984).

Lance Henriksen gathered all of the silver dollars himself by visiting several pawn shops. He said that most of them fell through the floorboards of Haggis’ shack, where they may still lie.

Lance Henriksen had a set of dentures made to give him a more rural look. He also gathered all of his own props and wardrobe, including a WWII pump-action shotgun, his cap worn throughout the film and the silver dollars which he gives to Haggis.

The costume Florence Schauffler wore as Haggis weighed about 65 pounds.

The one scene that made Lance Henriksen most want to take the role was where the deceased Billy sits up and asks his father what he’s done.

Because of Stan Winston‘s request, the screenwriters made both Pumpkinhead and Haggis (the old woman), much darker than in the original script.

Stan Winston‘s two children can be glimpsed as members of the Wallace clan.

Pumpkinhead doesn’t really resemble a pumpkin. It gets its name from the fact that summoning it involves digging up a corpse that’s been buried in a pumpkin patch.

‘Fun’ was, in fact, the prevalent mood on the Pumpkinhead set. Despite many additional burdens and responsibilities, Winston brought the same sense of humor and lighthearted spirit to directing Pumpkinhead as he had to his creature effects assignments. “Stan was a blast as a director,” recalled Alec Gillis. “He was fun and completely relaxed on the set, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I remember one day when we were in this cramped cabin set, and I was very tense and tired because Shane and I had just spent three hours applying makeup to the actress playing the witch. But then I looked over and saw Stan standing across the room, staring at me, with his glasses cocked at a weird angle on his head — just to make me laugh. There was my director, making an idiot of himself for nobody’s benefit but mine. That isn’t something most directors would do!”

From the sculpture, studio artists and mechanics created a suit and head, which was worn on the set by Pumpkinhead performer, Tom Woodruff Jr., To avoid wear and tear on the suit, Woodruff was glued into it at the start of the shoot day, and remained in the foam rubber construct for up to eight hours at a time.

The incantation:

“For each of man’s evils, a demon exists. You’re looking at vengeance. Cruel, devious.. vengeance.” Haggis (Florence Schauffler )the witch introduces Ed Harley (Henriksen) to the demon

The legacy of the demon of vengeance to be reborn with each time it’s called upon. Pumpkinhead is a meditation on vengeance, tragedy and loss within a darkly spun fairy tale.

Pumpkinhead is merely the hand of retribution and fate and a lesson in “be careful what you wish for”.  Pumpkinhead is a well written, Americana Gothic mountain magic mythology, and if you love Boris Karloff’s Thriller episode  – The Hollow Watcher– you’ll be mystified and moved by this contemporary telling of a rural boogeyman!

Pumpkinhead is a beautifully crafted story that merely illustrates what happens when the humble and quiet lives of innocent people who inhabit a world far from the city, and whose lives are shattered by the sudden intrusion of irresponsible and rude outsiders, who happen to be teenagers.

In the 1980s it is the given aesthetic that teenagers are the fodder in the slasher film or monster movie, they make for fun victims. Once again the teenagers wind up being the victims here as well with no differentiation between accountability or innocence. It is Pumpkinhead’s mission to purge the menace of outsiders.

When Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen who is a marvelous and underrated actor) was a boy in 1957 he caught sight of a mythical folklore creature called Pumpkinhead, a thing of local legend that can be summoned up in the name of vengeance. In the present, Harley wishes to call up this vengeful demon to exact retribution against the reckless teenagers who accidentally kill his little boy. When the irresponsible dirt biker Joel (DiAquino) runs down Harley’s son Billy, all hell will break free from the top of a rustic hill.

Harley pays a visit to the old witch Haggis (Schauffler) to help her bring his boy back to life. Haggis rasps and whistles as she incants using Harley’s blood to resurrect the demon, for she cannot raise his dead son, Haggis: Who are you? Ed Harley: Um, Ed Harley. I’ve come… Haggis: I’m afraid raising the dead ain’t within my power.

But she sure can conjure up the spirit of retribution in the form of Pumkinhead, who manifests the rage and wrath Harley feels. Haggis tells him to go to the old graveyard in the pumpkin patch and dig up the corpse of the body that is buried there, which she can use to embody the vengeful demon.  Be careful what you wish for, as Harley unleashes a creature that is unstoppable and leaves bodies in the wake of it’s ire. It’s a bloody night of fate coming to bear when Pumpkinhead begins to kill everyone in sight. And because Ed Harley’s blood has been infused with the creature, he feels it in his soul every time it kills, he is doomed to a sorrowful fate. Ed Harley: God damn you! God damn you! Haggis: He already has, son. He already has.

It’s too late once Ed Harley realizes that he has become transformed himself, a certain symbiosis has occurred between him and Pumpkinhead, and that his actions have consequences. Once summoned Pumpkinhead cannot be sent back to the pits of dark justice and and the hell fire of reprisal makes no distinction between the teens who are truly guilty of killing the young boy and the others who are complicit by proximity. 

Not unlike a Grimm Fairy Tale or a great rendition of backwoods boogeymen and American folklore does Pumpkinhead evoke a nightmarish landscape of cause and effect. Stan Winston’s Pumpkinhead is a superb cautionary tale that warns against being thoughtful of others but moreover not allowing our blood lust for revenge to take control of our moral guidance Lance Henriksen is a good father and mild mannered until the swell of hatred takes hold and he develops an appetite for retribution. The film contemplates the unacceptability of death and a parents inability to mourn the loss of their child. The loss becomes a monster itself that inhabits Ed’s consciousness. In that way Pumpkinhead is just a manifestation of Ed Harley’s grieving. Like Walter Pidgeon’s Dr. Morbius in Forbidden Planet (1956) Ed Harley has unleashed his rural id.

The early scenes show him as kind and gentle, quiet and peaceful, almost living a dreamy life far away from the fast pace of the city –the torrid and declining American morality of urban living. This can seen when Ed and his son Billy are sitting at the kitchen table a poignant scene that sets up contrast from the brutality to come. When it comes to invade their quiet space, it sparks the series of events that spiral out of control. 

Pumpkinhead is fatalistic law, not really about evil, or a demon, that is why he took on the face of the person who chose to raise him up for their purpose. Ed Harley has a psychic connection with Pumkinhead. The colors are a fairy tale palate of vibrant strokes. The set pieces are extremely well thought out. The film is painted with the coldest blues and the hottest reds, that lend to the grim atmosphere and fantastical alternative surrealism. Gary Gerani was truly inspired by the work of the maestro director Mario Bava!

The sets designed by Kurt Gauger are perfectly creepy and effectively moody as with the old cemetery with it’s backwoods Gothic ambience. Pumpkinhead rises from a mound of putrid grass, his rustic grave covered pumpkin patch with its gnarled torment of trees and decaying earth lend to the moodiness of the film.

About GARY’S ANTHOLOGY COMMENTARIES:

The TV SERIES commentaries, being monster kids AND Gary Gerani sounds just like Gary Gerani

Jo: I figured I'd just ask you a few things and then you called me and I thought WOW he sounds just like Gary Gerani (having listened extensively to his commentaries on dvd box sets–We both Laugh hysterically)

Gary: And we determined that's a very good thing"¦

Jo: And we determined that's a very good thing. And I get to continue to listen to you (as he referred to himself as the living commentary) talk when I just re-watch the episodes. That's the beauty of these anthology shows is that  you know you can watch them over and over again you always get something else it just brings you back to a place that just makes you feel, you know, good and familiar.

Gary: that's probably where it starts right… we want to be in a place where we feel comfort and at home and what ever peculiar person we are we find that place for ourselves. You know all of us who found our way into horror and monsters, let's face it we were mostly outcasts.

Jo: We're outsiders yeah.

Gary: We related to the monsters cause they were outcasts.

Jo: That's exactly it.

Gary: We got Frankenstein immediately.

Jo: I sympathized with him, I knew his pain. I knew we were both "˜the other' You know when you become the other, then you start to relate to the characters that are outsiders and that's why we start to fit in and we put ourselves in those stories, those spaces. You know because we belong there. We found a place for ourselves so"¦.

Gary’s enormous knowledge has a way of cutting through any extraneous detail and manages to bring you not only into the story but provide so many interesting background tidbits, making history and insight accessible. With Thriller I never knew the staff of the show used to call the graphics that open the show “The Sticks” I hadn’t read that Douglas Heyes had doubts about Boris Karloff hosting the show initially because the first episodes were more crime based. It wasn’t Richard Widmark’s Thriller it was Boris Karloff’s Thriller. And they were competing with Alfred Hitchcock’s formatted suspense series. I knew from reading Stephen Jacob’s incredible authorized biography of Boris Karloff that Alfred Hitchcock was not too happy about Thriller that much I did know.

Douglas Heyes either based episodes on Robert Bloch’s stories or episodes he wrote. Hr told them it wasn’t working (the show) because the first episodes weren’t hosted by Richard Widmark. That’s when they brought Douglas Heyes in to make the show work. To get away from Hitchcock’s province of crime/suspense. They transformed Thriller into creepy tales and it evolved into the show with it’s original macabre vibe. 1) Hitchcock was pressuring the studio. 2) Twilight Zone at the time was perhaps fantasy 3) and ratings were suffering and no one was happy with the original approach.

There was such a confusion about the identity of the show, that they producer Hubbell was upset and embarrassed. Finally they brought in Robert Bloch and what they decided on was horror tales with a supernatural underscore and violent crime thrillers. The first was produced by recruiting Maxwell Shane for the crime stories and William Frye for the horror tales. And it worked…

Boris Karloff’s THRILLER:  anthology television series that aired during the 1960"“61 and 1961"“62 seasons on NBC

Gary added his commentary to the following Thriller episodes…

The Prediction with Lucy Chase Williams, The Hungry Glass with Marc Scott Zicree, Well of Doom with David Schow, Trio of Terror with David Schow, Mr. George with Lucy Chase Williams, Pigeons from Hell-solo commentary, The Grim Reaper with Ernest Dickerson, Tim Lucas and David Schow, The Weird Tailor with Daniel Benton, The Return of Andrew Bentley with David Schow, Waxworks with Ron Borst, La Strega with Steve Mitchell and Craig Reardon, The Hollow Watcher with Larry Blamire and David Schow and The Incredible Doktor Markesan with David Schow.

In talking about THE CHEATERS...

I love referential commentary and analysis. Gary compares the story of The Cheaters with Winchester ’73 in the way that both stories center around an object that flows from one character to the next and their individual outcomes. How we follow those peculiar glasses and how we follow the trail of the gun in each person’s possession. It’s a fascinating point and I love how he picked up on that. You can watch a beloved episode 100 times and you’ll always find your own slight slant on it at times, but commentaries imparted to us by historians like Gary Gerani help bring an even wider perspective.

It’s obvious to me, that Gerani is a huge fan of writer Robert Bloch. But who isn’t right. So another interesting point that Gary Gerani brings out, is that Robert Bloch’s story didn’t have the alchemist in the opening, the way Thriller adapted it showing veteran character actor (with the unusually carved rock features), Henry Daniell as inventor/alchemist Dirk Van Prinn creating the lenses that would become The Cheaters. The glasses that give the wearer the ability to see the truth about themselves. They also give the wearer the power to hear the thoughts of those around them. Which winds up being not only problematic but murderously fowl!

In Bloch’s actual written story, there’s a series of accounts by the people who wore the cheaters who met their deaths by wearing them. Their accounts are virtually told from beyond the grave. Again Gerani in his artful insightful way compares it to Joe Gillis (William Holden) in Sunset Blvd. Thriller changes this perspective by working in these graveside accounts by allowing Harry Townes the writer Sebastian Grimm to tell the story. He discovers the true powers of the cheaters, and writes a book about the origin and the ultimate end to the journey of these magical lenses marked Veritas on the bridge. He tells their stories to his wife surmising exactly what happened as we see it on screen.

In addition Gary Gerani mentions that people compare The Cheaters to Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Essentially because Gray’s painting told the real story of what was lying beneath the surface of the man who never ages. It shows the truth about yourself. “And that truth isn’t very pleasant”- as Gary Gerani says. But Gerani says one of the main differences between this teleplay and “Bloch’s original story was even “bleaker” There is the same suggestion that the glasses and the painting tells the true nature of the person. “In Bloch’s story it’s much more universal, it’s made very clear it’s not just like Dorian Gray where there’s just one sinner–this is in all of us… It is perhaps the most dire perception of the human condition ever done, during a prime time show certainly here in this period…It seems to suggest that knowing thyself is knowing evil… within yourself or even the people around you…. Pretty much what Block is saying is that WE ARE THE MONSTERS… That’s essentially what The Cheaters is about-and There is no hope!

The Outer Limits original series 1960s (broadcast on ABC from 1963 to 1965)

Gary Gerani’s commentaries include:

The Architects of Fear, The Man with the Power, The Man Who was Never Born, The Zanti Misfits with David J. Schow, and The Special One with Michael Hyatt.

The Twilight Zone original Series (anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964.)

One For the Angels, The Lonely, The Four of Us are Dying, A Stop at Willoughby with Marc Scott Zicree and A Passage for Trumpet.

Gary Gerani and I had a pleasant conversation on Sep 18th after I watched Pumpkinhead, I emailed him and we instantly hit it off, carrying on an exchange. Gary commented on a piece I wrote at The Last Drive In about one of the episodes of Boris Karloff's Thriller, in which Gary has done numerous commentaries as you now know, he’s added his voice to some of the BEST television anthology box sets. We share a mutual love of Thriller as well as The Outer Limits.

A hell of a nice guy with a very keen mind and wonderful sense of humor. I wish we had known each other as little monster kids we could have enjoyed the same kinds of fantastical indulgence without me getting called MonsterGirl said with a pejorative connotation and being locked in a basement all day by a neighborhood bully! Don’t get me wrong it helped mold me into the sympathetic person I am who developed empathy for others. It’s always nice to discover another person out there who could wear Monster Kid as a badge of honor!

Gary Gerani had stumbled upon my blog by accident. and told me he was struck by the intelligence of my piece on The Cheaters. I of course was extremely flattered by this. He told me Pumpkinhead was influenced by Thriller, with the rural spookiness and atmosphere. Also The Outer Limits’ episode The Galaxy Being as Pumpkinhead also sort of gave off "psychic turbulence" very much like The Galaxy Being, with his electro magnetic windstorm.

Both are creatures who are what they are. One accidentally falls out of it's orbit which is forbidden on his planet, as he winds up being transported on earth by radio basement scientist Cliff Robertson. Pumpkinhead however is summoned by the pain and lust for vengeance by Lance Henricksen after a band of outsiders riding their dirt bikes kill his beloved little boy. The local witch knows how to raise up Pumpkinhead who's job it is to exact the law of revenge and judgement. He is a creature who serves the cosmic law.

I private messaged Gary on Facebook after I saw his lovely comment on The Last Drive in. I told him that I was a HUGE fan of his 1988 Pumpkinhead a moody atmospheric rustic boogeyman morality play. It had traces of our mutually inspired The Hollow Watcher for Thriller. A bucolic Boogeyman who exacts vengeance on the sinners of a small minded and tucked away rural town with it's own creepy mythology.

I suspect Jeepers Creepers (2001) was influenced by Pumpkinhead which I believe is one of THE best dark fairy tale, cautionary tales of the 1980s. Pumpkinhead is a self contained dark little Americana Gothic story with it's color filters that frame scenes that are at times a cold cold blue or a fiery red.

I stumbled onto the outrageously unusual film Pumpkinhead (1988) as most of us Monster kids do, we are lured by the uncanny on film since we were wee Monster folk. One of the true statements that can be said about Gary Gerani’s somber and atmospheric film, the American Gothic arcane back woods allegory is that it still embodies what made classical horror films work on an empathetic level and unlike today’s films that are like a buzz-saw to the synapse & sympathetic nervous system with all it’s pageantry of various body violations and torture. Back in the day even the gore somehow managed to set apart the artistic narratives with a story and at times the kernal of the moral message that lies withing the tale still came through. Pumpkinhead, attracts the monster lovers in us. Though Lance Henriksen regrets his brand of punishment, which cannot bring his little boy back to life, we somehow still cheer for Pumpkinhead as he acts as cathartic release for us.

I remember feeling excitement when Pumpkinhead coming to life as a little Pumpkin baby then rose out of his dirt hill grave, Stan Winston imbues him with a sort of gargoyle like smile. Does it look like Gary Gerani and Lance Henriksen  or perhaps Stan Winston — Gary supposes!

Gary-"We got really lucky with Pumpkinhead, in that everyone was on exactly the same page about what we wanted to achieve. "Deliverance in the daytime and Mario Bava at Night. Was our idea an attempt to combine gritty reality with evocative dark fairy tales. I loved the demon creature Stan Winston and his guys created so much, I actually have him made from the original mold standing in the corner of my living room!' Once a Monster Kid, always a Monster Kid!

MONSTERGIRL ASKS:

About Stan Winston, Lance Hendricksen, and the colors of Mario Bava:

Gary: "Basically when we did Pumpkinhead originally Stan Winston wasn't involved we had Armand Mastroianni director (He Knows Your Alone 1980, the Clairvoyant 1982, Tales from the Dark Side 1984-1987, Friday the 13th 1989-1990) he did a few other movies including several horror movies and he was our direct and it was like okay um, and one day the producers decided to go with Stan Winston partially because it was like Stan wanted to direct, we'll let you direct this it'll be your directorial debut just give us a state of the art monster that would normally be in a big budgeted film and if you can pull that off that would be great, well, that was part of the reason why they really wanted Stan is that they knew they would get a creature on the level of an alien or what ever. But Stan had shot second unit on Aliens and demonstrated his ability so we kind of felt oh okay he's a great monster maker and he knows how to film too so oh so great so and then the next thing we heard was that Lance was gonna play Ed Harley. And Mark Carducci and I were ecstatic as I said anyone from The Right Stuff (1983) astronauts at any rate he was one of them and he had just been in Aliens and he made a real impression in that film so we were really ecstatic to get Lance. Uhm after that it really was finishing the script working with Stan Winston we really didn't interact at all with Lance and not only that we were New York based at that point and uh so were our producers they were New York producers who did Pumpkinhead so we worked with Stan and he came out and we flew out and he came to see us and and we did all that and the next time that we got involved with Lance on the set of this film. Um Mark had come to L.A. to spend more time in L.A. to be around the production of the film I still had my full time job at Topps so I was limited in my time so I finally got out there at least for a week or how ever the hell long it was to at least be on the set and that's when I met Lance and again a very very warm friendly complimentary empathetic kind of an individual.

We spent time just kind of walking with him around the set and he said uh "guys I wanted to congratulate you on the script I see a lot of scripts and this one I felt had something that really spoke to me and I wanted to tell you it doesn't happen that often" He was saying all kinds of stuff like that. And we were so like Oh Thank you!! We were so so flattered So he instantly established himself with us as a guy that we really liked as friends and of course his performance was spectacular. Here's the thing with Pumpkinhead this is something that has come up a few times uh there are people the people who have, the people who have problems with Pumpkinhead who have issues with it don't really get it what we wanted and what Stan delivered was kind of an almost pseudo documentary kind of flavor and overview and almost objective and emotionally detached overview of an event of what happens when a crime occurs out in the "sticks" how do people deal with it, what goes on in this other little world? We almost wanted a procedural so we wanted the camera or the soul of the movie as it's looking at these events to almost be impartial otherwise whenever you have a story of a man losing his son, it's always very sentimental heavy with the emotions I said no no no no we wanted it almost to be dry that way it doesn't slip into the pathos of the over sentimental plot it's so easy to happen to a picture it will retain it's dignity and be special.

And Stan, was a perfect director for that because Stan god bless him Stan was something of a cold fish in a lot of ways he was he was kind of a dry guy okay and it was perfect! for Pumpkinhead Ironically the second movie he made he was exactly the wrong guy emotionally he did the Gnome Named Norm aka Upworld which was an E.T rip off warm and fuzzy and (emphatically) he was the exact wrong guy and that's exactly what we didn't want in Pumpkinhead we wanted to be like I say an overview and let those emotional events just happen as you observe them and you can be able to react to them. We didn't want to push that sentimental angle so Stan was perfect. And in keeping with that Lance played it that way too it wasn't a big blubbery "oh my son" no he internalized all of that stuff and that's why it's powerful. When his son dies in his arms it's really could have been an opportunity to be John Williams type music soar and the sadness to hit you over the head and no no it's underplayed and the little boy just dies in his arms and says "˜daddy' and he just kind of dies and ya know Lance caresses the body and you see his eyes looking outward and you say this is exactly right, it's just what you need to feel, what you need to feel without being overdone or sentimental and Lance kept it that way all the way through and I think in my opinion that's why the movie is good. Because of that angle it could have just degenerated into a Charles Band emotional over done or one of these other movies but because Stan wasn't a guy like that and because we wrote it that way.

We sat down and discussed that with Stan because that's what we had in mind. Originally in the script Ed Harley was out of the story in the first third after the accident happened he goes to witch sets it in motion and then it's just a procedural you almost wanted it to be that detached . Finally I said no no it's about this guy it's about a story we got to bring him back and this will be about him. Uh but yeah and Stan was right on the same page with us, and that's the movie being made. And we're grateful to Stan in sense for being Stan you know every movie that's being made is the director's soul and persona and essence that comes out. I have a theory that the story, every time you see a movie that what ever personality or tone of the movie is, not only is it the director coming through but if he's doing his job right I always felt it's the id of the main character that determines the personality of the movie.

If you watch a Star Trek episode it's Captain Kirk's souls his id, it's like a dream that the Captain is having in that particular adventure. So I always felt the main character in any story kind of determines you're almost in his head and that determines the personality the story. And with Lance with this character it all fit together perfectly. And you have the right director, his personality was so right for it, so that was kind of lightning in a bottle. It isn't like it hit the whole world in that way, you know people who love it, love it within the context of a fairly limited kind of universe but we're very very proud of it. After we saw it we thought, we got so lucky, that we had all that in place in that point in time. We had the essence of the James Cameron troupe those guys when they were hot as a pistol. When they were the thing that was happening. Back then those were the guys within a horror picture a supernatural story, they'd been doing their science fiction stuff Aliens and Terminator. Here is the horror version of that whole flavor. And the fact that our creature even resembles the alien kind of idea. I loved that I said look he's a life form we didn't want anything melodramatic or phony or the devil in a traditional way, no he's a creature, it's suggesting that he comes from a different environment and maybe Hell art of rules but there's a physicality there you can recognize as opposed to just a demon with the horns or usual bullshit. It was Lovecraftian having a creature like that walking around farm houses. How cool is that!”

Jo: It's very cool. I love him (Pumpkinhead) And the interest thing is you know there's a sympathy, you know, we cheer for him. When I first saw the film I fell in love with him. I said, you know I really like this guy. It’s true he's picking off these teenagers but who cares! (laughs from the guts, Gary howls) They're invading this quaint space. They're intruding on this very closed universe , they're invading the world. They came in and they brought their noise and their disrespect and they invaded this beautiful quaint little world and now they're gonna pay for it. It doesn't matter who ran Billy down. It really just mattered that they were all there in the way. And Pumpkinhead was just a manifestation of the rage. And it's like a fairy tale. To me it's a fairy tale. But I do see what you're saying.”

Gary: You're absolutely right that fairy tale thing it's kind of interesting because on the one hand we really wanted a sense of reality in the daytime, we tell people we wanted deliverance in the daytime and Mario Bava at night. Where that whole otherworldly fairy tale beautiful horror kind of stuff can shine. But in the day as real and gritty as possible, so it winds up being a dark fairy tale and that kind of what it is and yet it was a nice mixture of gritty realism and also the way our cinematographer ( Bojan Bazelli )lit the film, our cinematographer lit the witches hut with oranges and all that.

Jo: Oh yeah the hottest reds and the cold blues they were beautiful.

Gary: Ohhhh god isn't that beautiful! We had said listen our big influence was the tv series Thriller and The Outer Limits. If you can give us Conrad Hall's photography in color we'd be so appreciative. That's why you got those episodes that were noir, Orson Welles type compositions you know the beautiful black and white– all that kind of thing. And then The Outer Limits flavor comes through too because it was kind of like The Galaxy Being who brings his own lightning by accident sort of having a little bit of that flavor.

Jo: Right he comes out of an alternate space.

Gary: (after running into Lance at the florist in L.A.) –The next significant thing that happened with Lance he was giving an interview with somebody and they were talking and he mentioned that the thing that convinced him to do movie was one particular scene, okay, that when we wrote the picture when you're collaborating with your writing partner in the script you're both constantly pulling ideas back and forth and the end result is a combination of your thoughts and your partners thoughts. Some scenes he came up with, some scenes you came up with.

The scene that convinced Lance to do the movie happened to be a scene that I came up with I was so tickled. And the particular scene we're talking about is when Ed Harley is driving back and he sees his little boy sit up, his dead little boy sits up in the car and says "What'd you do daddy?"

You know it's a little hallucination and then he looks and of course the body of the boy is, and all that his conscience is rearing, it's like his little boy is saying what have you done you know and that was my idea you know what ever and that was the scene that convinced Lance to do the picture. Good old Lance I'm so happy it was a scene that I came up with"¦ And I remember coming up with it thinking how cool it would be to show his guilt by having a little shot of his son like that and the fact that that made the difference in Lance's mind was like how cool is that.

And this is funny, the whole thing where the kids, the boy and the girl are getting into a car and what ever they're doing they're and the guy shows up with the shotgun. And basically tells them that they're marked and that's when they first think "marked" what do you mean whatever and then all of a sudden Pumpkinhead shows up, yeah it's the guy with his dog right okay yeah the guy with his dog he fires a shot you know and says something like "˜empty your hands son' or what ever which is he line he stole in reverse from True Grit where John Wayne say's "Fill your hands you son of a bitch" I don't know if that's ever been said (laughs) but anyway, that guy with the shot gun no matter how many times like a dozen takes the gun wouldn't fire and the gun expert was there and it just wouldn't work and finally it finally worked and it's amazing when you make a movie like half a night can be taken up with problem's like this. Actually Lance comes into that scene and he fires at the creature but he wasn't in that particular scene.

Jo: Where was it filmed?

Gary: it was in the Hollywood hills somewhere We managed to find locations that looked rural enough I just remember at the time that we just went all the way out to the hills there. Actually it's amazing cause it does it does seem authentic. I though we faked it pretty nicely.

Jo: And I love the set designer, whoever designed the mound with the pumpkin patch and the gnarled trees

Gary: Isn't that great talk about something out of a Mario Bava movie. You have the swirling mists you have It's like Black Sunday

Jo: Or Black Sabbath, the composition of colors in Black Sabbath

Gary -Oh yeah the colors in Black Sabbath. The cinematographer knew how to use color the way you use black and white with darks and lights and all that stuff we were very lucky with Bojan Bazelli our cinematographer who went on to do very important movies not that this isn't important but you know what I mean…

Jo: Yeah, Pumpkinhead's important!

Gary: I feel much of what makes that movie good is that look that he gave us. In all fairness to Stan you think about that mound that we're talking about, the burial mound and the grave yard and all that the shot that introduces that is this fantastic shot that starts the camera on Lance and this was Stan right umm obviously the cinematographer is achieving this shot for Stan but you got Lance walking almost knee level you're on the level with the ditch coming toward you and then eventually he comes into sort of close up looks up and then the camera which is following him then rises high high high high so you see what he's looking at which is the mound and then it keeps rising until you're almost in the trees looking down at the mound "”all in one shot and it was Stan who wanted that shot. And the cinematographer gave it to him. Fantastic shot absolutely beautiful shot. And in the burned out church with the camera following Pumpkinhead as the kids are running out of the church as the camera remains and you see through the slats in the side of the building as something is entering as one beautiful long continuous shot there are a few of those gorgeous camera moves throughout the picture. And that I give credit to Stan.

I HAD A FEW MORE QUESTIONS!

JO GABRIEL — Question #1) Since you're basically still a Monster Kid in an adult's body like me, is there another interesting character, science fiction themed, mythological or fairy tale based that is burning a hole in your brain waiting for you to bring it to life on screen? A departure from PUMPKINHEAD of course but as potentially ICONIC in its design (although sadly Stan Winston is no longer with us.)

GARY GERANI– About fifteen years ago, I tried to sell an animated musical based on THE GOLEM, with music by Billy (DUEL) Goldenberg. The theme of oppressed people resonated, and the amount of black magic involved really made it a great supernatural tale… kind of like FAUST meets FRANKENSTEIN. The Golem itself gradually takes on demonic features the longer it remains in existence after fulfilling its primary function as a super-warrior for justice. The creature’s relationship with Rabbi Lowe’s little boy provided the story’s emotional punch. Another classic demon I wanted to re-visit was Guy de Maupassant’s THE HORLA, which had been adapted into a reasonably effective 1963 Vincent Price movie, DIARY OF A MADMAN.

“So glad you enjoyed my THE OUTER LIMITS chats.  "Architects of Fear" turned out well, I thought.  The ZONES were a ball to do.  The ol’ Blu-ray sets won both Rondo and Saturn awards, so I guess fans were happy with them.”

JO GARBIEL — Question 2a) You've done commentaries for the groundbreaking 1960s anthology series The Outer Limits, Boris Karloff's THRILLER and Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. What is your favorite episode for each and what makes it special for you?

PUMPKINHEAD has that wonderful rural boogeyman atmosphere like The Hollow Watcher episode of THRILLER which you lent your insightful commentary to!

Question 2b) Would you ever take a story from either of those three shows and put your own spin on it or adapt it in a more contemporary manner using sock puppets (just kidding) or feature film?

GARY GERANI –“Twilight Zone: Probably a toss-up between "Eye of the Beholder" and "Walking Distance."  They were so many, many good episodes.  "Eye" hit all major ZONE areas: great central set-up, relatable, heartfelt humanity explored, social comment, incredible twist.  "Distance" gets right into your soul, and Gig Young, who was sorta burned-out in real life, was fantastic.  On top of everything else, both have brand new Bernard Herrmann scores to die for.
THRILLER: 1a)"The Cheaters" and "Pigeons from Hell."  "Cheaters" is a tight, episodic scary tale, brilliantly executed, and with one hell of a horrific payoff.  "Pigeons" is atmospheric and dreamlike from beginning to end, a one-of-a-kind experience (although director John Newland's "I Kiss Your Shadow" for BUS STOP around the same time comes close).  Once seen with her hatchet-arm raised, the zvembie is never forgotten!
THE OUTER LIMITS: "The Forms of Things Unknown" (final episode of S1 OL) is probably my favorite because it pushed cinematic storytelling to the max.  It was where Stefano's sensibilities were going after a year of OL, as it was the pilot for a never-launched anthology.  If I had to pick a full-fledged OL, it would probably be "The Man Who Was Never Born."  I differentiate between Seasons 1 and 2, by the way, since they were almost different shows.  Harlan Ellison's "Demon with a Glass Hand" would be my favorite S2 show, followed by the two-part "The Inheritors.”  
2b)-When I was the West Coast Editor of Topps Comics in the 1990s, we were developing an OUTER LIMITS comic book in connection with UA.  The idea was to create sequels, prequels and remakes of classic episodes.  "The Galaxy Being Returns," "Spawn of the Zanti Misfits," "The Seventh Finger" and others were just some of the possible concepts I suggested.  Also in the 90s, my late writing partner Mark Carducci had briefly gotten the rights to WEIRD TALES magazine, and I was set to write a new version of "Pigeons from Hell" for a TV anthology along the lines of TALES FROM THE CRYPT.  Nether one of those projects came to fruition, sad to say.”
JO GABRIEL – Question #3-The 3rd question addresses what you said the other night when we chatted, that struck me as one of the truly interesting themes running through PUMPKINHEAD

PUMPKINHEAD is a self contained dark little Americana Gothic tale with it's color prisms that frame the ethereal landscape at times –a cold cold blue or a fiery red.

I loved the way you talked about your vision of PUMPKINHEAD as "˜Deliverance' by day and Mario Bava by night combined to make a gritty reality with a dark evocative fairy tale.’ So maybe you could expand on how that came together and/or working with Stan's creation.

GARY GERANI – “Mark and I sat down with Stan Winston and discussed the project.  We were all monster kids, so we understood the old movie references instantly.  We all wanted that atmospheric look; I asked for "Conrad Hall-style cinematography, but in color," and we had fun thinking of PUMPKINHEAD as a kind of OUTER LIMITS meets THRILLER in color.  It even had a main monster that, like the Galaxy Being, gave off his own lightning storm, what we called "psychic turbulence," as he prowled the area.  Our original version of the witch was a bit more normal and seductively verbose (think "Jess-Belle” from TZ), but Stan wanted the primal, basic essence of a witch, more of a symbol than a real person, and asked that we reduce Haggis’ dialogue to what we wound up with ("Now it begins, Ed Harley").  When we talked about Pumpkinhead appearing in the doorway of the burned-out church, Stan said, "I want The Thing in the doorway," referring to the iconic silhouetted moment in the 1951 sci-fi classic.  Like I said, we all knew the movies.  Our very talented cinematographer fully understood the special flavors we were trying to achieve, and delivered big-time.”

TRAILER

A Trailer a Day Keeps The Pumpkinhead Away! (1988)

This has been your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl saying it’s been an absolute gas getting to know Gary Gerani, a regular guy with an enormous wealth of knowledge and nostalgia tucked into that endearing voice. And say — this Halloween–don’t avoid that pumpkin patch… if you’ve got nothing to feel guilty about that is…!

 

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! The Devil Bat (1940)

THE DEVIL BAT (1940)

He’s Trained His Brood of Blood-Hungry Bats to Kill on Command!

Directed by Jean Yarborough, The Devil Bat stars Bela Lugosi at his best as a scientist Dr. Paul Carruthers who develops formulas for a cosmetic empire that makes two families their fortunes– the Heaths and the Mortons, while he remains a measly worker in his lab.

To exact revenge he creates a race of giant bats to attack and kill off those who have slighted him. Anyone who wears his strong-smelling after-shave lotion is doomed to die!

Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl saying maybe lay off the shaving lotion til after Halloween!

Feature Guest Post: Aurora from Once Upon a Screen…

It is my honor to host this guest post from friend and blogger Aurora from the prestigious Once Upon a Screen… always known for her thorough, thoughtful, and witty reviews of diverse selections of classic film, television, and radio. For this month of Halloween Aurora shares with us a piece about one of my favorite figures of classic horror!

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954)

Three score and five years ago the Gill-man stepped out from the murky waters of the Black Lagoon located in the Amazon’s Northern region. Defending his territory against human intrusion, the Gill-man, named Creature on marquis across the country, became legend spawning two subsequent feature movies and numerous appearances in media. The Creature, with tall sleek, humanoid frame, was Universal's classic horror swan song, and he presented a fabled studio a lasting monster with unique elegance.

The adventure in Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon begins as geologist Dr. Carl Maia (Antonio Moreno) discovers a fossilized webbed hand in the Amazon. Realizing the find is an important one, Maia leaves two locals to watch over the camp as he asks for support from the team at the marine biology institute in Brazil. The team is made up of Maia's colleagues all of whom possess an impressive knowledge of the Devonian Period, which is commonly referred to as the age of fishes and occurred approximately 400 million years ago. Significant evolutionary changes is believed to have happened during the Devonian Period so it’s no surprise the group quickly decides to accompany Maia into the Amazon.

The group includes ichthyologist David Reed (Richard Carlson), a former student of Dr. Maia's and an expert in the study of fish as is his colleague and love interest Kay Lawrence (Julie Adams as Julia). The money man is Mark Williams (Richard Denning), David's boss and the one who green lights funding further study of the area where the hand was found. There’s a Dr. Edwin Thompson whose expertise is unclear, but who immediately recognizes the fossilized hand is that of an amphibian creature who spends a lot of time in the water. Thompson is a peripheral character, but he plays an important role later in our story as he is the only person attacked by Gill-man who survives.

Examining the fossilized hand at the Maritime Biology Institute: Dr. Reed, Kay Lawrence, Dr. Williams, and Dr. Thompson

On the small ship Rita, captained by Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the group is drawn to the Black Lagoon about which all sorts of scary stories have been told through the years, including ones about a half-man half-fish creature. Unbeknownst to the group the Creature, who is in fact half-man half-fish, has been watching them closely with eyes on Kay in particular. Once in the Black Lagoon, they are in the Creature’s territory and he's calling the shots as we see when Mark and David dive for rocks. The Creature doesn't hurt them, instead he lurks nearby watching the intruders.

Things are different, however, when Kay decides to go for a swim. The Gill-man, fascinated by the woman who likely looks unlike anything he's ever seen, approaches her from below to create a dance in the water reminiscent of Tarzan and Jane's decades before. Julie Adams called it a love dance during which you can feel the Creature’s heart. This one though makes one’s hairs stand on end with danger at hand as his fascination compounds. We are out of our depth and this fan cannot help the palpitations that increase in intensity as the swim advances. This is all thanks to James C. Havens who directed the underwater sequences, among the most memorable in the movies.

Gill-man covets Kay and she becomes his sole interest while he defends his territory against the others. Slowly, as we get to know him, our allegiances switch sides in support of the unique creature, as Marilyn Monroe’s does after she and Tom Ewell watch the picture in The Seven Year Itch. “All he wants,” she says, “is to be loved and needed and wanted.” Several messages in Creature from the Black Lagoon support an audience’s support for Gill-man and his environment. He is misunderstood as Marilyn states, because we are not the sole inhabitants of this planet, but somehow we are always intent on causing harm. The embodiment of that idea in the picture is Mark Williams who sees the Gill-man as a ticket to fame and fortune while automatically ascribing to the creature no feeling. Mark's determination to capture Gill-man against David's protestations causes Mark's death and we are not sorry. This scientist's intent is selfish, against the broader good.

The battle between Gill-man and the group on the Rita intensifies as the creature proves himself a worthy opponent by trapping the interlopers in the Black Lagoon. Efforts to free the boat are fruitless until David manages to render the Gill-man helpless with some kind of gas. By this point, however, the creature has escaped captivity, killed members of Lucas' crew, severely injured Dr. Thompson, and eventually kills Mark who thought himself a match for Gill-man under water. It’s difficult to understand why anyone would deem himself a worthy opponent of a creature that took two actors to bring to life: Ben Chapman plays the creature on land and Ricou Browning and his impressive swimming skills portray him under water. Legend of horror Glenn Strange was considered for the underwater shots as the Creature, but he couldn’t swim.

As the remaining scientists struggle to free the Rita, Gill-man abducts Kay taking her to his lair resulting in an exciting climax, but which results in his demise. One cannot help but be saddened by the vision of the elegant man-fish sinking into the depths of the Black Lagoon, the end of an ancient creature that reminds us of the importance of our past. We are not alone and we are not better. Why do we always forget the first and think the last?

"It makes for solid horror-thrill entertainment," the Hollywood reporter reviewer wrote of Creature from the Black Lagoon upon its original release. That is certainly true on several levels as the beauty and beast trope is as satisfying here as is the fiction in the science presented with screenplay by Harry Essex and Arthur Ross, from a story by Maurice Simms. As is the case for many others, this fan thinks the Gill-man himself is the main reason to watch even though the story is well-adapted and entertaining. For kids who grew up in the 1950s, as David Skal states in his 2002 documentary Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle, the Creature from the Black Lagoon was the only monster that counted. Previous Universal monster heavyweights like Dracula, the Monster, and the Wolf Man had yet to appear on television, which is how the rest of us fell in love with them.

Audiences across the country first laid eyes on Gill-man on television when Abbott and Costello met him on an episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour. On February 21, 1954 in a parody of their many meetings with Universal monsters, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello are in the Universal props department for the big Creature reveal. As expected, Costello is left alone with monsters appearing only to him when Ben Chapman as the Creature pops out of the chest to end the skit. No doubt audiences were impressed with this new monster, but that cannot compare to the thrills children must have felt when they watched Gill-man in 3-D in the local theaters that offered the new, if short-lived, gimmick along with the unforgettable score and high-pitched screeches every time Gill-man appears.

Bud Westmore, head of Universal’s make-up department took the credit for the creature’s look, but all historians credit actor, special effects designer and animator Milicent Patrick for truly discovering Gill-man’s legendary look. Patrick sketched the Creature and was referred to as “The Beauty Who Lives with Beasts.” Patrick took part in Creature from the Black Lagoon‘s World premiere in Detroit, Michigan on February 12, 1954 where special 3-D screenings were scheduled the following night at midnight. Audiences went crazy for Gill-man and the movie far exceeded studio expectations. On its wide U.S. release that March, Creature was offered in theaters across the country in 3-D and 2-D (flat) versions and it did so well that it remains the only 3-D movie to warrant a 3-D sequel, Revenge of the Creature, which began production in late June 1954. That one was followed by the flat The Creature Walks Among Us in 1956. (3-D Film Archive) It should be noted that as a classic Universal monster, Gill-man has (perhaps) the most interesting character arc in his trilogy of films than any of the other monsters.

From the day he stepped out beyond the Black Lagoon, Gill-man had the weight of four decades of Universal monster legacy on his shoulders and he nurtured that with gilled expertise. The future would honor him with great respect offering him everything from familial bonds as Uncle Gilbert on The Munsters to an Oscar for Guillermo del Toro’s homage in The Shape of Water. 

Narrator: In infinite variety, living things appear, and change, and reach the land, leaving a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end.

Except the Creature never ends.

Aurora

@CitizenScreen
Once Upon a Screen (aurorasginjoint.com)

Postcards from Shadowland Halloween 2019

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! Ape Women & The Boogie Woogie Boogie Man

JUNGLE CAPTIVE (1945)

Another Universal horror film starring Vicky Lane who resurrects Paula Dupree – the Ape Woman who is brought back to life, by a mad scientist Otto Krueger as Mr. Stendahl who then dispatches Moloch the Brute (Rondo Hatton) to kidnap his female lab assistant Ann Forrester (Amelita Ward) in order to use her blood for the Ape Woman. Co-stars Jerome Detective W.L. Harrigan.

Murder in the Blue Room (1944)

This is a remake of Secret of the Blue. Room (1933) The blue room is the key to the whole mystery! It’s got music by The Three Jazzybelles and mayhem at a party thrown at a haunted mansion, with an unsolved murder twenty years prior. People go missing and are murdered, as Larry Dearden (Regis Toomey) who spends the night in the locked “blue room” first disappears and is then found shot to death.

With a ghost who walks the property asking for a light and directions to the cemetery!

Directed by Leslie Goodwins with a screenplay by I.A.L Diamond and Stanley Davis. Stars Anne Gwynne as the lovely Nan, Donald Cook as Steve, John Litel as Frank Baldrich, Grace McDonald as Peggy Betty Kean as Betty “I don’t like dead people they’re not my type!” and June Preiser as Jerry. Regis Toomey plays Larry Deardan, Nella Walker as Linda Baldrich, Andrew Tombes as Dr. Carroll and the ubiquitous Ian Wolfe as Edwards the butler. Milton Parsons is the creepy chauffeur!

The lively music and laughs are jammed packed with great lines and a few good chills…

This is your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl Joey sayin’ boogey woogie on over to The Last Drive In again and grab yourself some chills!

A Trailer a Day Keeps the Boogeyman Away! The Uninvited (1944)

THE UNINVITED 1944

Directed by Lewis Allen (The Unseen 1945, So Evil My Love 1948, Chicago Deadline 1949) with a screenplay by Dodie Smith and Frank Patros based on the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle.

The Uninvited is an extraordinarily superior ghost story (four years earlier Paramount released The Ghost Breakers comedy with Bob Hope) about a composer Ray Milland as Rick Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela (Ruth Hussey) who wander from their London flat and stumble onto a quaint estate on a cliff purported to be haunted. An estate that has lay unoccupied for twenty years. Their little dog Bobby chases a squirrel into the house and when they follow after him, they fall immediately in love with the place. Rick and Pamela are carefree siblings who take life as it comes, Rick is more cynical and Pamela believes that “Life is not that cruel!”

They discover that the reason they are able to buy this Gothic Cornish seacoast mansion for such a reasonable price of 1200 pounds is that its owner Commander Beech (the wonderful Oscar-winning character actor Donald Crisp)wants to rid himself of the tragic past attached to the place and protect his granddaughter Stella Meredith(Gail Russell)from its evil legacy. Cornelia Otis Skinner plays a sinister character, Miss Holloway who is obviously obsessed with the late Mary Meredith (Stella’s mother) a la Mrs. Danvers, whose sanitarium is scarier than the haunted house which is inhabited by two ghosts, one benevolent and the other evil.

The Commander is all too eager to rid himself of the house that holds too many dark family secrets. He worries that his granddaughter “suffers with a general delicacy; she is not strong enough to make new friends. Stella is not going back inside that home.” Rick replies “Great Scott, you really believe the place is haunted!” 

One of the most haunting qualities about the film is the premiere performance by the broodingly beautiful Gail Russell, portraying the sadly reflective Stella who is inevitably and eternally drawn to the house she spent her first three years in. The house represents all connections and memories of her mother who fell off the cliffs outside Windcliff. “She lived there for three years, my years… I love that house. It’s not right to hate it because somebody died there.”

Rick falls for the beautiful Stella, composing the exquisite melody Stella By Starlight written by Victor Young.

THE UNINVITED, Gail Russell, Ray Milland, 1944.

There are some wonderful scenes, with eerie mechanisms that work well to create a chilling and atmospheric moodiness. A flower that wilts by the touch of a cold unseen presence, the inextricable smell of mimosa, shadows, and candle-lit rooms, the family dog that runs away and the cat who refuses to go upstairs, and the nocturnal crying, uncanny mists, and a spooky séance. Paramount insisted on using shots of ectoplasmic manifestations of disembodied spirits, swirling luminous clouds that hint at the feminine form — in order to market the film as more of a commercial ghost story, informing the audience that these were real ghosts and not implied imaginary shivers. With the exception of The Haunting, Curse of the Cat People, The Innocents based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, and Dead of Night, the Hollywood true ghost story is quite rare and specialized, where the actual ghosts may be nightmarish, malevolent and sinister. And while The Uninvited is not as menacing as the other films, there is a sweetly romantic quality that earns its place among them.

Lewis Allen’s The Uninvited is a story of relationships, some healthy and others quite twisted. The mood is set by the voice-over-narrative beginning the movie juxtaposed to the visual display of wildly frolicking waves crashing over the rocky Cornwall shore reinforcing this haunting narrative: we are told of “haunted shores… mists gather, sea fog, eerie stories” Once we listen to the pound and stir of waves, all senses are sharpened” which will prepare us for the “peculiar cold, which is the first warning.” a cold which is “a draining of warmth from the vital centers of living.” – Gary J. Svehla Cinematic Hauntings.

This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying you’re always invited to The Last Drive In!

Rod Serling’s Night Gallery 9 Terrifying Halloween Treats!

*THE CEMETERY -PILOT TV movie AIR DATE NOV.8, 1969
*THE DEAD MAN-AIR DATE DEC. 16, 1970
*CERTAIN SHADOWS ON THE WALL-DEC.30, 1970
*THE DOLL-AIR DATE JAN.13, 1971
*A FEAR OF SPIDERS -AIR DATE OCT. 6, 1971
*COOL AIR-AIR DATE DEC.8, 1971
*GREEN FINGERS-AIR DATE JAN.8, 1972
*GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES AIR DATE OCT.1, 1972
*SOMETHING IN THE WOODWORK AIR DATE JAN.14, 1973

Next time up, The Tune in Dan’s Cafe, Lindenmann’s Catch, A Question of Fear, The Sins of the Father, Fright Night and There Aren’t Any More McBanes.

Available on DVD: with Season 2 Audio Commentary from Guillermo Del Toro and from historians Scott Skelton and Jim Benson and Season 3 also with Audio Commentary from historians Scott Skelton and Jim Benson.

There will be no need for spoilers, I will not give away the endings "¦

The way the studio wants to do it, a character won't be able to walk by a graveyard, he'll have to be chased. They're trying to turn it into a Mannix in a shroud."”Creator Rod Serling

“Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collectors’ item in its own way – not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, and suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare.”-Rod Serling Host

With the major success of The Twilight Zone (1959-1964), after it was canceled in 1964, Rod Serling continued to work on various projects. He wrote the screenplays for the movie versions of Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes and The Man based on the novel by Irving Wallace. In 1970 he created a new series, Night Gallery which was tales of the macabre based on various mystery/horror/fantasy writers, H.P Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood and even Serling himself. The show was produced by Jack Laird and Rod Serling. The show ran six episodes each, part of four dramatic series under the umbrella title Four-In-One. In 1971, it appeared with its own vignettes on NBC opposite Mannix. In 1971 the Pilot for the show had three of the most powerful of the series. The Cemetery starring Ossie Davis, Roddy McDowall, and George Macready. Eyes star Hollywood legend Joan Crawford plays an unpleasant tyrant who is blind and is willing to rob the sight of another man in order to see for a short period of time. The segment was directed by Steven Spielberg. The last playlet starred Norma Crane and Richard Kiley as a Nazi who is hiding out in a South American country and dreams of losing himself in a little boat on a quiet lake depicted in a painting at the local art museum.

Then Night Gallery showcased an initial six segments and the hour-long series consisted of several different mini teleplays. In its last season from 1972-1973, the show was reduced to only a half hour.
Night Gallery differed from The Twilight Zone which was comprised of science fiction and fantasy narratives as it delved more into the supernatural and occult themes. The show has a unique flavor in the same way Boris Karloff introduced each one of Thriller's divergent stories, Rod Serling would introduce each episode surrounded by his gallery of macabre and morbid paintings by artist Gallery Painter: Tom Wright Serling would open his show with a little soliloquy about life, irony and the upcoming tale of ghoulish delights.

Rod Serling was not a fan of Night Gallery and did not have the revelatory passion and inducement to plug the show the way he did for The Twilight Zone, in fact, the series was panned by the critics. Two of the shows Serling wrote were nominated for Emmys, "They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar" starring William Windom and Diane Baker, and The Messiah of Mott Street " starring Edward G. Robinson.

From Gary Gerani-Fantastic Television: A Pictorial History of Sci-Fi, the Unusual and The Fantastic
"No stranger to the interference of sponsors, networks and censors, Serling once again found himself locked by contact into an untenable situation..{"¦}"¦ He owned Night Gallery, created it and it was sold to network and audience on his reputation . The competitor on CBS was Mannix, a formula private-eye shoot-and rough-"˜em up. Serling felt that NBC and Universal were doing their best to imitate Mannix, with an emphasis on monsters, chases and fights. They turned down many of his scripts as "too thoughtful" Serling lamented. "They don't want to compete against Mannix in terms of contrast, but similarity." Not only was Serling unable to sell them scripts he was also barred from casting sessions, and couldn't make decisions about his show"”he had signed away creative control. As a result he tried to have his name removed from the title, but NBC had him contract-bound to play host and cordially to introduce the parasite to the TV audience."

 

Continue reading “Rod Serling’s Night Gallery 9 Terrifying Halloween Treats!” →

Happy All Hallows Month of October! –💀

IT’S OCTOBER AT THE LAST DRIVE IN AND HALLOWEEN IS ALMOST HERE!!!!!

There’s a lot ahead so hold onto your head for the month of October here at The Last Drive In!

We’ll walk quietly into the dangerous 1980s to chat with director/writer Jack Sholder about his masterpiece Alone in the Dark 1982, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddie’s Revenge 1985  The Hidden 1987 and more. NOW COMING IN NOVEMBER!!!!

We’ll explore the vengeful spirit of Pumpkinhead 1988 with Director / Screen Writer / Historian Gary Gerani

And we’ll move to the exquisitely complex body language of Mark Steger–

choreographer / actor / performance artist / stuntman and creature extraordinaire! who dwells inside the suit of the Demogorgon on Stranger Things and choreographed the voodoo ritual dance with Miss Angela Bassett in American Horror Story’s 3rd installment COVEN!

Then there’ll be plenty of Trailers a Day to Keep the Boogeyman Away! And my special overview of 10 favorite Rod Serling Night Gallery episodes.

So keep those Jack ‘O Lanterns lit and trick or treat bags ready for some Drive In goodies! Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl is very bloody excited over this Halloween Season’s specials!

“Out Loud” Part 2– My Extraordinary Conversation with the Legendary Lee Grant…

See first: "Out Loud" Part 1"“ A Biography of the Legendary Lee Grant

10th July 1970: Studio portrait of American actor Lee Grant, wearing a flower-patterned dress in front of a light backdrop, (Photo by Jack Robinson/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The audio version of our wonderful chat-

LEE GRANT at the 63rd annual Writers Guild Awards at the AXA equitable Center 2-5-11-Photo by John Barrett/Globe Photos, INC.2011

Jo: Hi, Lee. It's Jo, how're you doing?

Lee: Hi Jo!

Jo: What's going on? How's your day?

Lee: Good so far.

Jo: So hopefully it'll just even get better now. [laughs]

Lee: Of course!

Jo: Are you ready to talk a little bit?

Lee: Sure!

Jo: Ok, great! Um, God, I don't even know where to start because I'm just really excited and very grateful that you're spending time talking to me.

Lee: Sure!

Jo: Um, so, before I start asking you any questions, I mean I guess I could just start asking you some questions. We spoke a little yesterday, and you know how much I love your work. I've just followed you for such a long time. And I'm kind of in awe of you, so I'm a little starstruck. [laughs]

Lee: Oh, good! [laughs] You're so cute and I don't think there are many people who would say that anymore. So it's yummy.

Jo: No, that's not true, let me tell you, you've got fans! There are so many people who just adore you. You are memorable! You are a beautiful spitfire. You're complex, you're powerful, you're evocative, and very memorable. So don't think I'm the only one. [laughs]

Lee: Ok, I give in!

Jo: Ok, you give in!

Lee: I give in, I am memorable!

Jo: You are memorable, you really really are. I mean, seriously, it's like every time something would come on TV, a show or a movie, and I would say "Oh, Lee Grant is in this!" I would get so excited. No matter what it was, I would watch it. If it was like a television program, even if I wasn't familiar with the show or the film, I'd be like "Well, Lee is in it, I've got to see this now!" So I'm going to start asking away and hopefully, they're good questions.

Lee: Where's Wendy?

Jo: Oh, Wendy's here, too.

Wendy: I'm actually here, Lee. Hi! I'm the technical person so I'm here to make sure everything goes ok.

Lee: Hi Wendy. Ok!

Wendy: And I do have a question for you at the end, too. I couldn't resist!

Jo: The sociologist in her!

Lee: You know, I'm just glad to hear from you girls. You were so alive and interested and interesting when we met, and here we are, what is it 3 months later? You meet someone on an airplane and you see somebody and you sit and you talk for 6 hours and then you get off and you never see them again. So this is nice!

Jo: It was really amazing to just walk into this big room with all these people fluttering about, swarming about like a hive. And then to see you standing there [Lee laughs] and you're like this legend. This utter legend, stuck in the corner of a room!

Lee: Yeah, and you know, I've been writing a lot. And that deserves its own story.

Jo: It does. It definitely does… To walk over and just talk to you like that"”I wanted to grab a big pot of coffee and a couple of chairs and just sit. So now we're doing it, really.

Lee: We're doing it! And I have the coffee, too. I'm not sure it counts, though.

Jo: So, I'm going to just start asking questions. And I think I told you yesterday that I do these little setups because it helps me bridge to the question.

Lee: Whatever, just go honey!

Jo: You were in films with diverging mainstream audience appeal"¦ showing the wide range and versatility of your acting such as In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger which dealt with racism. Valley of the Dolls became a cult pop sensation, and Plaza Suite where you were sublimely hilarious in Neil Simon's timeless comedy at its best. What is it that makes you such a versatile actress?

Lee: Well, I was a very compelled actress. You know I was blacklisted for 12 years, and those were the years from age 24 to age 36. I couldn’t work in film or television because I was married to a writer who was called a communist and therefore I was asked to name my own husband in front of the Unamerican Activities Committee, and my loathing"”I was going to say fear and loathing, but there was no fear. My loathing for that kind of activity and McCarthyism. You know, I can feel it in my stomach as I'm talking to you, it's so great. It's the feeling I have about Trump and that little lawyer Roy Cohn. You know, I was taken out of the acting system for the most important years of my life, I thought at the time. So when I came back, you know, they hired me for Peyton Place, and let me see, it would've been 1952-1964. Peyton Place at that time was the biggest television show in the country.

Jo: Yes, I just finished binge-watching it.

Lee: I went from near obscurity to being the bad girl"”Stella Chernack"”on Peyton Place which was seen by America three times a week. And not the same show three times a week. The appetite for it was so great that they did three new shows each week. So all of a sudden I was everybody's bad girl. You know, and my hunger for work, for acting, for reestablishing myself, for getting back at the bad guy was so intense, that all the film or TV show had to say was "Do you want to?" And I said yes. That was the title of my book, I said yes to everything. Yes, yes, yes because the appetite was unfillable, to work, to act. And with each part, you know you talk about my first movie, the movie that Norman Jewison directed, the one with Sidney Poitier and Rod Stieger.

Jo: Of course, In the Heat of the Night…

Lee: You know, when Norman interviewed me, he knew my background. This was a decade of intensely liberal filmmakers in Hollywood. Intensely liberal filmmakers. And the producer of Peyton Place, too. It was like they couldn't wait to hire me. They couldn't wait to make up for"”and it makes me cry a little bit"”all the years I didn't work. Their generosity, their kindness, their focus, their need to say "You're ok now, we got you." And for them to see that as an actor I was ready to take on the kind of roles that they were ready to give me. And I was.

Jo: And with an extra fierceness. You probably had an extra fierceness to show yourself because you had this fuel, this anger. This impetus.

Lee: It wasn't to sell myself, it was to act. It was to drop into that character and live that new life. After all, I'm a method actress. And I was starved to act. So I just couldn't get enough after wanting to act for all those young years. And I had to lie about my age because I was 36 when I got back in, so I got Mayor Yorty to change my driver's license. We had no computers then so nobody would know. You know, it was like everything to get back that they took away.

 

Jo: Everything that they stole from you! You mentioned being a method actress"¦

When you act what are you tapping into, beyond the acting Method you studied, and beyond the imagination of little Lyova Rosenthal? You take words in the script and make them come to life like no other actor. Lee Grant has her own unique way of expressing herself. You bring a unique identity to each role. Did it come from starting out with Meisner, or teaching at Uta Hagen's studio working with improvisation? Where does your genius come from?

Lee: It absolutely came from Meisner, because I was 17 when I went into the neighborhood playhouse. I was a failing high school student, and all I wanted were boys, boys, boys, and all I did was flirt, flirt, flirt. And when I went into that class and he gave me an objective. Jo, you know what an objective is"”it's to want something.

Jo: Oh yeah, yeah.

Lee: And the situation he set up with another boy in class was to get him out of the room, that he'd been a boyfriend and he wanted to get him out of the room. Well, this, there's a Jewish word for it"”a guerilla, a goomba, whatever it is, came out of me so this boy had no chance. The rage that I never knew"”I never knew I had– this impulse, this fierceness, of carrying out that objective to get that poor guy out of the room. With my voice, with my hands, it overwhelmed me. It overwhelmed him. And my strength was born. My strength was born in that first improvisation at 17. And to be given the benefit of saying "I want to do this" and then within safe circumstances, which is the play, you get to carry it out. You may not carry it out in life, but in that room, for that moment you can do anything because you have the objective.

Jo: That's incredible. That's an incredible background story. And I understand it's like that moment, that epiphany when there it is, it's born.

Lee: That was it. And that became my life. That was it.

Jo: Well thank god for that because we've enjoyed the outcome of that.

Lee: Thank god for that is right! I could've gone anyway, I could've been breaking up marriages.

Jo: Well, now I have a fun question"”You are our favorite Columbo murderer"¦ you were also in the Balcony with Peter Falk"¦

This is a 2 part question. You worked with Peter Falk in several roles, from plays like Prisoner of 2nd Ave. to an emotional episode of Ben Casey (you both gave a wonderfully passionate and heart-wrenching performance!), to the very post-modern The Balcony, and then, famously, as our favorite Columbo murderer the lady lawyer Lesley Willams in Ransom for a Deadman. What was it like to work with him? How did you end up working with him so much?

Columbo was one of those shows that were set up in such an interesting way because there were certain murderers who were "˜sympathetic', and you were one of them. You could tell Columbo had a lot of respect for your character's savvy. Did you enjoy playing cat and mouse with each other (like when you say to him "It's always the jugular he's going for" and then when you take him for that terrifying joy ride in your airplane and he doesn't want to talk for a while, and you're enjoying his discomfort)? How much fun were you both having on the set?

Lee: Oh, you're so funny! [laughs]

Jo: And I promised myself I wouldn't ask you about Shelley Winters (co-star in The Balcony), but maybe if we have time I'll ask you about Shelley"¦ [laughs](back to Peter Falk)

Lee: It was a good marriage.

Jo: That's a good way to put it.

Lee: Yeah, it was a good marriage. All of the parts we played, or were thrown in to play together, since it certainly wasn't planned. Peter was in it and I was hired, or I was in it, and then Peter. And we found ourselves each time within a new situation with a new role to play with each other. Never the same role. And we were not friends.

Jo: You weren't? Oh, that's what I was curious about because it almost seemed like you had such a natural flow together.

Lee: I think that’s one of the things that worked for us. That we were familiar as actors and felt each other as actors, but we had no history that would get in the way of whatever that character was. Whoever he was playing went through many versions certainly, and in his big show, I was the enemy. So it was fun to attack him freshly in whatever character he was and whatever character I was at the time"”friend, enemy, enemy, friend. And at each time find an actor who could spar with you, you know, fence with you.

Jo: And you did it so well. I mean it's funny because with Columbo there are several instances in the series where there are sympathetic murderers. And Wendy and I both think that you're one of them. You, and Joyce Van Patten, I loved her character. ( actually, Lee was one of the more ‘ruthless’ murderers – maybe I just love her so much that I was on her side!)

Lee: Oh, Joyce is one of my best friends.

Jo: Ah, love her! And Ruth Gordon, we love the one with Ruth Gordon. If Ruth were here Wendy and I would try to get you three to sit and have lunch with us and celebrate the best Columbo murderers.

Lee: I would do it any time, to have lunch with Ruth Gordon any time. And Joyce is one of my three very very very very best friends.

Jo: We love her. She's another one, we just light up when we see her. She's so wonderful. That's so nice to hear that you are such good friends. Tell her we said hi.

Lee: I knew Joyce Van Patten when I saw her on stage as a child actor. I saw her on stage when she was about 13 or 14.

Jo: Really? Wow, so you have a long history together.

Lee: We have a long history.

Jo: Awwww that's wonderful. And it's interesting that you both were that sympathetic murderer, and he really had that kind of respect for you. Because no matter what hell you put him through, like flying in that plane and making him suffer, you can tell he says, "Don't talk to me for a few minutes."

Lee: Well the thing is also that I'm the worst driver in the world. I have no sense of direction. So getting me to fly a plane like I knew where I was going and I knew what buttons to push was such a kick for me.

Jo: Oh, that's great! This is an interesting question and something I really wanted to know."¦

Do you feel that your roles in non-mainstream films (pause) or television series like Peyton Place Do you feel like they were less constrained for you as an actor?

Lee: Than what?

Jo: Thank doing a major motion picture. The smaller television series.

I wish there were more roles for you like Stella Chernak or the wandering mother/wife in The Neon Ceiling. Or Mrs. Enders, the mother in the Landlord, or Marilyn Kim Novak's neighbor in Middle of the Night. One of my favorites and you’re going to laugh at this, but sassy Edna from Storm Fear. They were very complex, and reflexive, quirky, and substantive roles for women?

Lee: Wait, Storm Fear? (wonderful laughing hysterically)

Jo: Storm Fear directed by Cornel Wilde. It was that… ok I'm glad you're laughing"¦ I'm going to ask you about that now.

Lee: [laughs] Where did you ever get to see it?

Jo: Well I've seen most all your work anyway, but because I knew I was going to talk to you I started re-watching a lot of your films again because I just wanted to spend time with Lee Grant.

Lee: Oh honey, that's funny.

Jo: Ok, I have my question about Storm Fear"¦ this will make you laugh even more"¦

I get the sense Cornel Wilde didn't give a lot of direction in Storm Fear. But Edna was a very bright light in an otherwise conventional heist movie. Edna was rough around the edges, likable, and kind. There's a great scene where she's walking in the snow, in her fancy boots and snow shoes, swinging her purse. And she says about her mink coat "If it gets left behind, I'm gonna be in it." And in the end, they leave Edna dying in the snow with her two broken ankles, a wad of cash, and her mink coat. We were so upset at the end for you! Is Edna still out there in the snow? What was your experience working on that film?

Lee: "I'll kill ya!" Do you remember his reading of "I'll kill ya!"? Cornel Wilde would say "ok, cut. Now listen to me Steve (Steven Hill), "I'll kill you." "I'll kill you. Now you try it." And Steve goes "I'll kill you." And Cornel would say "ok, you've got it, Steve. Alright, and action!" And Steve would say "I'll kill YA!" "I'll kill YA!" [laughs]

Jo: [laughs] That's too hilarious! So I suspected right"¦ that you two did your thing and were the highlight of the film. There's the great scene"”you'll remember this"”where you're walking in the snow in your fancy shoes. And you're swinging your purse and you're wearing the mink coat. And you say "If this gets left behind I'm going to be in it!" And that's exactly what happens. They leave you dying in the snow with two broken ankles and a wad of cash in your mink coat.

Lee: [laughs] Falling down into the ravine.

Jo: You had fallen into the ravine. And Wendy and I are "“ I'm the kind of person, I yell at the television set"”And Wendy and I were like "Where's Edna?" I'm like "What about Edna?!"

Lee: Thank you! Thank you! I needed that!

Jo: I’m like all upset, what are you leaving her down there in the snow for? Give some closure. Where is she? Rescue her! Dammit! Rescue her! She's got broken ankles!

Lee: That is so funny.

Edna-“I hate you, you creep! I hate you!!!!”

Jo: But you were great in that. And those are the kind of roles that I really do love.

Lee: Well you know the thing about that is, historically speaking, that was an absolute crossover moment in my life because I was still blacklisted. Cornel Wilde who was a really, really decent guy hired me as a blacklisted actress in an important part in which he wanted to introduce his wife, the non-actress, as the lead. With Dan Duryea, who is no small pickings. Dan Duryea is one of the great character actors of all time.

Jo: Yes, I love him.

Lee: Now Cornel hired me when I was still deep on the blacklist and nobody else would hire me. And we made enough money to have my daughter. She was conceived in Hollywood at that time because we had enough money to have another baby, and to have my baby, as I had two stepchildren. So you know it was a ridiculous thing, stomping in the snow with these big snowshoes and a black satin dress, and my blistered scalp because they dyed my hair from dark red to platinum blonde. So my head was all blistered. But bless Cornel Wilde. He did a remarkable and wonderful thing, and I had the most important thing in my life. Dina saved me through that whole blacklisted period. Having a little girl to take care of and to be there. And she was the best, the funniest, the sweetest, the most interesting. So she saved my life, and that came out of Storm Fear. I mean, it's so interesting when you think about it.

Jo: It really is. And your performance is almost bright and glowing. There's something emanating from Edna. I just love Edna. And maybe that's what I was picking up on.

Lee: Oh yes, sweetheart. But having daughter Dina was the thing that held me together through the whole thing.

Jo: And she's a hoot.

Lee: She's the best. The best. I just came back from being with her.

Jo: I love that she's in that episode of The Golden Girls when Blanche, Rue MacLanahan, keeps slamming the door in her face. It is just so hilarious. The comedic timing between the two of them is brilliant. I mean, she's got your"¦ she's got the gift.

Lee: Yes, she does.

Jo: It's in her genes. Ok, now we'll move on and I'll ask you another question"”I'm glad we had a good laugh"¦

I loved the scene in Hal Ashby's film The Landlord when you and Pearl Bailey are getting drunk on pot liquor, and you walk out with the ham hock in your bag. Mrs. Enders is such a fabulous character, did you have any particular inspiration for her character? Did you enjoy working with Pearl? And, do you have any great stories from that film? He's a great director, and Mrs. Enders is another fabulous character that you've played.

What was the inspiration for her character"¦?

Lee: Yes! [laughs] Well, my mother and my aunt, yes. And I had just finished doing In the Heat of the Night which was all about losing my first husband who died of a heart attack, Norman Jewison knew that and Hal Ashby was his editor at that time, so they knew that I would come in to do In the Heat of the Night with an experience that they knew I had, and Sidney and I really improvised that scene. But that's how they knew me. And then as a friend they let me read The Landlord, and I said I can do that part and their whole image of me was of the grieving widow. And I said, "Let me just do it for you because that's my mother, that's my aunt." And they told me that they had Jessica Tandy attached to it and I found some blonde wig, and I stood under the lights in the hallway so that I looked older. And I did it for them and they got it. And they gave it to me. So you know to go from the first, In the Heat of the Night, to Mrs. Enders was just everything I ever wanted. To plumb both of those things. So it was just thrilling for me. First of all, the movie is a masterpiece. And it was Hal's first directing job.

Jo: So it Was his first movie.

Lee: Yes, then he did the one with Ruth Gordon.

*Hal Ashby on the set of Harold and Maude with Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon.*

Jo: Wendy and I were sold on him after he did Harold and Maude.

Lee: Harold and Maude is one of the great masterpieces ever made.

Jo: It absolutely is"¦

Lee: And I wanted to do Ruth Gordon's part, too. It shows you how hungry and stupid I was at the same time.

Jo: I wouldn't say stupid.

Lee: Well, how hungry and ambitious.

Jo: Right.

Lee: Not ambitious, how starved I was. I was so starved that when you showed a piece of marrow bone, like Ruth Gordon's part, I was like "Let me have it, let me have it" but I never saw a piece of work as brilliant as her"¦

Jo: Oh yes, she is a whole other subject"¦ she's something else!

Lee: She is. She is to be worshiped.

Jo: I think so. But I mean so are you, really!

Lee: Oh, ok!

Jo: We're worshiping you today! [laughs]

Lee: Worship away! [laughs]

Jo: Ok I'm going to ask you about Shampoo"¦ I think there should've been more of you"¦

You won an academy award for Shampoo. We're huge fans of the brilliant filmmaker Hal Ashby. People experience this movie as the 1970s, romanticized, sexual freedom film.

I experience the film as a deification of Warren Beatty's insatiable sexual prowess running around with his phallic blowdryer. I just think there should have been a lot more of you. Do you think the film would've benefited from more development of the women characters and their sexuality? You also mention in your wonderful book that Warren Beatty tried to direct you and you almost quit the film. Do you think the film needed more of your vision and direction to bring the women characters more into focus?

Lee: Well I think there should've been more of me!

Jo: I think so!

Lee: I think there should've been a lot more of me in everything that I've ever been in. But unfortunately, there are other actors and there is a plot and there are other ramifications. So while I always think there should be a lot more of me, practically speaking it's not the thing to do. I think that the woman I played was sound. I think her needs, her bitterness. The rejection of her within the Hollywood framework of that time. And that glowing gorgeous daughter played by"¦

Jo: Carrie Fisher.

Lee: She was the most beautifully white-skinned little girl, Carrie Fisher. And for me to be a mother who was hungry and rejected and to have that child right downstairs in the house. My character was just filled with conflict and unfulfillment. And all I seem to care about in that film was my coat and my hair and getting shtupped. And grabbing at whatever I could that would fill this emptiness. I hated Hollywood at that time.

Jo: But you were more interesting and intricate than Warren Beatty's character. I didn't find his character as complex as I did yours.

Lee: I don’t think that he intended to be"¦ to be"¦ you know, Warren wrote that with Robert Towne. A great, great, great writer. And the character he wrote was a very simple guy who likes to please. He likes to please everyone. He likes to please the Jack Warden character as much as he does with the women whose hair he does, his customers. He is guaranteed to please. Because certainly, he's not that attracted to me. Right before he goes to bed with me, my daughter seduces him. And you know one of the real arguments that Warren and I had in that film was that right before the scene when I come home and I go to Carrie's door, and I'm expecting him to be there. I'm expecting him to go upstairs and make love to me. The day before we do that scene he sits me down at the table and says "You know Lee, Felecia (which is the character I played), Felicia does not know when she opens the door to her daughter’s room that the daughter and he has"¦" And I was so enraged that he would tell me what to think before I open that door that I quit the next day.

Jo: I read that in your book!

Lee: Yes, I quit the next day. And of course, he apologized and we moved on with the scene but I said "If you ever tell me what I'm supposed to think, I won't be there." But the thing was, that I opened the door and of course I knew that they had gone to bed. I mean, I'm no dummy!

Jo: Of course!

Lee: And my own need was so ferocious that it didn't matter! And that's the way I played that scene when I went upstairs. I kept on my coat. I kept on my curlers in my hair. I just pulled down my stockings and pulled him over to me. You know, it was my need.

Jo: Right, yes. And it's a powerful scene and a powerful role. And that's why you won the Academy Award for it!

Lee: Well, you know I'd been nominated a lot of times.

Jo: Oh, I know.

Lee: So usually when you're nominated and you don't win then you're just a thing in the way after that. At first, it's like "Lee, Lee, look this way!" And then when you don't win, they want you out of the way.

Jo: That's rotten!

Lee: But I knew even when I went up to get the award finally that I was now at the age where they wouldn't hire me. That I was going into 50, and this was probably the last big movie.

Jo: But it wasn't.

Lee: Only one more.

Jo: What was the movie after?

Lee: Oh, the Jewish"¦ the boat"¦

Jo: Oh, yes, Voyage of the Damned.

Lee: Yes, Voyage of the Damned.

Jo: I watched the scene where you cut your hair. It's a very difficult movie for me to watch. And, I had a relative on the ship.

Lee: What?

Jo: Yes, she was a child and she survived it. She made her way back.

Lee: Where?

Jo: Eventually she made her way to France and she is now a biochemist and a professor at Harvard. I lost relatives in the Holocaust but she was on the ship and I don't have her name in front of me. This is terrible. My brother has been doing historical research to find our relatives and where we came from in a small town that is now part of Poland.

Lee: That's where my father came from.

Jo: Yes, and it was Austria at the time.

Lee: We're little strong Polish Jews!

Jo: Yes, yes, and we came to New York and it made us even stronger.

Lee: Oh yes.

Jo: We're tough.

Lee: Something about us makes us tough.

Jo: And my mother was Russian.

Lee: So was mine! My mishpocha, honey! [laughs]

Jo: My mishpocha, yes! [laughs] That's why I called you Bubbie (short for bubbles-friend not grandmother) yesterday and then felt bad. I said, "I'll talk to you later, bubble!" [laughs] And then I was like "Oy, should I have said that?"

Lee: [laughs] I'll be your bubbie!

Jo: Oh, good, good! Ok, so now I'm going to ask you about Stella Chernack because we were talking about that bad girl you played. Again, you won a much-deserved Emmy for that. And I did watch the entire show, because of you, and I knew you were in it. So I watched Peyton Place"¦ now, Stella is amazing. An amazing character.

Again, you won a much-deserved Emmy for your portrayal of Stella Chernak. Stella leaves her working-class background in Peyton Place to become a biochemist, returning when her brother gets into trouble. This is when the writing and the show were the most cohesive and well thought out. It's one of my favorite roles. Stella is very complex and there are lots of layers to your performance. She is a bit of a Tennessee William's character, even in the way she struts the dusty streets of the town. Did you channel any of that feeling in her character? It was an intense character study and one hell of a performance. What did Stella mean to you?

Lee: Well, the whole thing was like stepping into heaven. First of all, Stella's an angry girl.

Jo: Yes

Lee: And I was an angry girl. And Stella was fighting the unfairness of the things around her. And I had been fighting. So this was a funnel through which all of Lee and Stella's resentment and anger and feeling of unfairness in the world around her could go. It was like made for me.

Jo: It gave you a place to channel that anger.

Lee: It channeled it. It channeled everything. And don't forget that I went from obscurity into America's favorite program.

Jo: Right, and one of the greatest characters, I think. Very complex. She was angry but she was also very sympathetic. You understood where she was coming from, you know?

Lee: Yup.

Jo: And that's what I loved about her. That's what you brought to the show. The show is really good. After you left, things just kind of went a little crazy but still I watched the whole thing. I love Barbara Parkins, and I love a lot of the actors on the show, too.

Lee: Barbara Parkins was given her first shot in that movie"¦

Jo: Yes, Valley of the Dolls

Lee: Valley of the Dolls, where I played Stella again as Sharon. You know, and Patty Duke. Those were their first shots after television. And of course, it went down like a log.

Jo: The film is such a pop culture icon. I mean, people are fanatical.

Lee: That's because it's so bad.

Jo: Did you know that it was going to become a pop religious experience for some people?

Lee: [laughs]

Jo: It is, I'm telling you!

Lee: Because it's so bad. [laughs]

Jo: But it is and it isn't. I mean, yes, it is. [laughs] But it's bad in a good way.

Lee: [laughs] It could be worse, but people embrace those things and raise them up.

Jo: I can see why. You do need that kind of alternative to the heavy stuff that's out there. You need that counterbalance of the delicious–

Lee: It was pop.

Jo: It was pop. And the acting was still good!

The name of your book is "I Said Yes to Everything." And you did say yes to films like Visiting Hours, The Swarm, and Airport '77"” the last two big-budget disaster films. I was sad you ended up floating face down in Airport '77. Did you at least have fun making these films and working with actors like Olivia de Havilland and Jack Lemmon? Do you have any good stories to tell?

I watched you in Visiting Hours with the parrot.

Lee: Oh no! tisk tisk tisk! Don't even talk about it!

Jo: Ok, I won't talk about it. I won't talk about Visiting Hours. We'll bury it. Can I talk about The Swarm and Airport ’77 where you played Christopher Lee’s wife who’s a lush?

Lee: Ohhh, absolutely! [laughs]

Jo: Ok [laughs]

Lee: Visiting Hours was what made me absolutely shut down as an actor and turn to directing.

Jo: I understand why.

Lee: You know, one of my very best friends, a writer, I took to see it in the movie house. And he wouldn't talk to me on the way home"”"You can't need money that much." And I knew that I couldn't do"¦

Jo: Look, every actor has done that. Every single actor has done a movie like that.

Lee: Yeah, yeah. Well, Airport ’77– I loved doing Airport ’77.

Jo: Well, that's what I was going to ask you.

Lee: I loved it. [laughs]

Jo: I mean, you ended up floating face down in the water. And again, Wendy and I were yelling "No!"

Lee: [laughs] Well I have to tell you I had it in my contract that I didn't have to jump in the water. They had a double. But, when the water scene came up, 60-year-old Olivia de Havilland raised her hand and said "Let me be the first! Let me!"

Jo: [laughs] Oh my god!

Lee: I was so shamed that when it came time for me to do it

Jo: You had to do it!

Lee: They said "Well let's get Lee's double" and I went "No no no I don't have a double!" I didn't want them to know what a coward I was.

Jo: [laughs] So you did it.

Lee: So I just jumped! Because I wanted to be like Olivia, you know. She's just so amazing.

Jo: Yes, she is.

Lee: What a hero Olivia de Havilland is. I mean, think about it.

Jo: We share the same birthday so every time it's my birthday I always toast Olivia. Because, wow we have the same birthday and she loves cats.

Lee: I do too.

Jo: Oh, you do? I thought you were a dog person.

Lee: Yes, we have 2 cats. But what a woman, what a spirit! Let me be the first, she said, climbing down from the rafters.

Jo: [laughs]

Lee: All through Airport '77 she sat in the rafters with the lighting guys and chatted with them.

Jo: Do you know Wendy was a lighting designer before she was a sociologist.

Lee: Of course she was! Wendy the lighting designer sociologist, of course!

Jo: Same thing, right?

Lee: Same thing! Shed the light someplace!

Jo: Exactly, beautifully put. See, leave it to you. I have a few more questions, is that ok?

Lee: I'm just lying here on the chaise lounge in my nightgown as comfortable as somebody who just woke up.

Jo: That sounds lovely!

Lee: And having a wonderful time with you.

Jo: Oh good! We're having a blast, too! There are several performances of yours I've never seen and that makes me upset because I'm a completist. I want to see everything you did. And in your book, you write about the show The Defenders. I love the show, but that episode is unavailable. The particular episode that you did is not out, or not yet at least.

Like a few others, there are several performances of yours that I haven't been able to see because they're unavailable. For example, there's an episode of The Defenders in which, as I read in your book, director Stuart Rosenberg lit you in a way that was your favorite. There was The Doctors and the Nurses, another incredible dramatic television series. And then there is the motion picture An Affair of the Skin (1963) where you co-starred with the brilliant Diana Sands, who died tragically at 39. I would love to see your work in that film. Can you tell me about the film and about working with Diana?

Lee: I know, she was in"¦ Raisin in the Sun.

Jo: Raisin in the Sun

Lee: Yes, and the other movie with Pearl Bailey"¦ The Landlord

Jo: Yes! She was The Landlord, too, that's right. So you worked with her twice. What did you think of the film Affair of the Skin, because I don't know much about it?

Lee: I don't remember it. Vivica Lindfors was in it. And I just don't remember it. I don't remember what I did or anything.

Jo: Maybe somebody will find the film.

Lee: I hope not!

Jo: Ok, then maybe they’ll find a way to get it buried so it never comes out. Did you enjoy working with Diana I love her work and I find it so tragic that she died so young. She was kind of one of the first Black women who had a much different kind of persona. She wasn't doing the roles"”well maybe Ruby Dee and Cicely Tyson did"”but she wasn't playing the maids and she wasn't playing the nurses.

Lee: Well, also Hal Ashby didn't get them maids and nurses to play. The Landlord was a brilliant script and it highlighted the difference between the Long Island whites and Harlem. And Bo Bridges, I mean he was astonishing in it. His sweetness, his openness. You know, that was a script for the ages. And I personified again that kind of closed-minded rich stupid mother.

Jo: Well, insulated maybe.

Lee: Yes, totally insulated. You know no idea beyond the house and the garden and the friends what life was about at all. And it's such an astonishing piece of work.

Jo: Yes, it was. Did you get to work much with Diana in that?

Lee: Yes, well, we hung out. And after the film was over I gave a party at the apartment in New York, as we all stayed in New York, and Diana and I were sitting there waiting for Hal because we both had a crush on him. And his girlfriend, who he later married, at the time she would not let him come.

Jo: Possessive! Oh really [laughs]

Lee: So Diana and I sat and drank wine and talked about how mean she was and how much we loved him. [laughs]

Jo: Did he help you pick out clothes, did I read that right?

Lee: Yes, he did. In the Heat of the Night.

Jo: Yes, in the Heat of the Night he helped you pick out the clothes. He was the editor on the film.

Lee: Yes, yes.

Jo: Ok, you might not want to talk about this movie either, and if you don't want to you don't have to. But first, I noticed recently you did an interview for a documentary on Boris Karloff. You worked with him on "Even the Weariest River" on the Alcoha Hour. And I haven't been able to see it. A lot of the Alcoha Hour and those dramatic television performances from the 50s are hard to get. But Boris Karloff is my idol. I've always said I wanted him to be my grandfather because he's the most gentle soul. And I met his daughter Sarah and she's just wonderful.

You worked with Boris Karloff in 1956 on the Alcoa Hour "Even the Weariest River" It hasn't been released so there's no way to see it. I have to ask you what was it like to work with him? Do you have any stories about working with him?

Lee: Well, you know, I just remember that when I was blacklisted and he was playing on Broadway, maybe it was St. Joan, I don't know but there was something so gracious and so magnanimous, and so grandfatherly, and beautiful about him. And he would always sign all my petitions. I was the little girl who couldn't work. And, you know, it was dangerous to sign petitions, you know you couldn't work either if you did. And Kim Stanley and Maureen Stapleton were the ones who were always working on Broadway and also signed my petitions. But you know I hadn't remembered working with him in this television movie. I know they brought it to me, and the people in it"¦ I was the only girl. And it was during the blacklist so the director had to be a very very brave guy. A very brave guy. Because I was the only woman and he cast me in it.

Jo: So you stood out.

Lee: Yes, it was with Boris Karloff and Christopher Plumber. It's a terrible movie.

Jo: Oh is it really? [laughs]

Lee: Yes, but very interesting. I mean because it's all packed. In those days you shot on set. There wasn't a closeup. You kind of walked into the shot.

Jo: Right, it was live theatre, really, right?

Lee: Yes, it was shooting live theatre. So it had that kind of rushed feeling. But the story was meaningful, and I was just so surprised to see me there. And I've just forgotten a lot of what I did.

Jo: Well I didn't even realize you had done something with Boris Karloff.

Lee: I didn't, either. [laughs]

Jo: [laughs] Well, you know he's so iconic, and thinking of you and him together is such an interesting confluence. Ok, so I'm going to ask you about a movie you might not want to talk about"¦

Lee: Which could that be?

Jo: Ah, The Mafu Cage?

Lee: [laughs] Oh, yes!

Jo: Because you worked with Carol Kane. She's brilliant, she's such a noodlehead. She's just something else.

Lee: Yes, she is.

Jo: I thought that The Mafu Cage, directed by Karen Arthur, is a very primal and dark film. It seemed like a difficult and disturbing narrative for both you and Carol Kane to step into. It's a psycho-sexual minefield, almost filmed like a stage play, about captivity and dependency. It must have been a tough movie to film. Was it difficult for you two seasoned actors? Can you tell me what the process was like for you?

Lee: Oh, of course! Oh, I don't know, there must've been some spare time to do it. And it was a woman director, Karen Arthur. And I don't remember what year it was. But I know I thought, why not? It was Carol Kane, who was a delicious friend. And it was an absurd concept. You know, for her to have this relationship with a"¦

Jo: An orangutan maybe?

Lee: It was a gorilla, you know, Carol and the gorilla. So I mean it was absurd enough to say why not? It didn't take very long and so it was like going to a bad nightclub, you know what I'm saying?

Jo: Yes! [laughs]

Lee: Oh, let's go in there and see what happens.

Jo: Yes, dark and scary and there's a little journey in there.

Lee: Yes, yeah. It was a why not, you know?

Jo: But the thing is it's an interesting, disturbing film but there's a lot in it. And your performances, you made it a good film. I think it's really kind of an unsung horror/ psychological thriller. I don't think it's a bad film at all, maybe it could've been a stage play.

Lee: The thing is that Karen Arthur conceived it and directed it and she got Carol Kane and me, and James Olson, to do it. Wow! I would like to be able to say that I did that. That I pulled it off and made that movie. So it's really Karen Arthur's triumph.

Jo: Yes sure.

Lee: And any time a female director"”especially at that time"”with that concept, to pull it off and make that movie. You know, my hat off to her!

Jo: Yes, absolutely! She did a really amazing job because I walked away from the film kind of speechless. And thinking about things, and when a movie sends you away thinking about something, speechless, you know that there's something going on there.

Lee: Yes and don't forget there were no women directors then. There were like 2 in New York and that's it.

Jo: Right, that's another reason to applaud the film, the fact that her vision was realized. It's very good. And then, this is one is probably one of my favorite performances of yours, The Neon Ceiling, where you play the mother who leaves her husband and just drives into the desert. It's a special film"¦

In The Neon Ceiling, you play a mother who leaves her husband and just drives "” winding up in the desert with her teenage daughter. It's a very unusual and special little film co-starring Gig Young and Denise Nickerson, a talented young actress. Wendy and I were really enchanted by it. I found your performance as Carrie Miller profoundly moving because it was so un-selfconscious and powerful. At the risk of sounding contrived, what was your inspiration for bringing that character to life?

Lee: Well, first of all, that character was the part of me I never got to play.

Jo: In real life?

Lee: In real life, yeah. The part of me in my first marriage where my husband fault with me, that I wasn't this enough, or that enough, or, or, I was never enough. And I wasn't smart enough. And so that whole beginning with the husband that I run away from. Where I can't do anything right, I can't even shop for groceries"¦

Jo: It kind of paralleled"¦

Lee: Yes, yes, and I had a daughter. I had Dina. So Denise was Dina. And so if I could've known how to run away, in my early years I would have. And going into the desert"¦ the desert was a very new experience for me as a person. I'd never been in the desert. And the peace. Sitting on the back porch of this gas station and just looking out at the desert became, it became a totally new experience for me. And something that I needed but didn't know that I need. And there was an Indian tribe there who would come and ask for the lunch that we had every day. It was like the small remnants of what 20 people didn't eat. And a woman in the tribe who was leading the tribe became a mentor. So she was so strong and so calm. And the things that she asked for were so real. That she became somebody I admired and wanted to be like. And she gave me a puppy.

Jo: That's right, I read about the puppy Nusski given to you by the Sioux.

Lee: Yes!

Jo: Who was with you for many many years?

Lee: Yes, who came with us to New York. And Gig, he was so attractive and so hurt someplace.

Jo: I know, it's so tragic.

Lee: He needed caring for. You know, and so did Denise in her way. She asked for it, he didn't. And somehow me, tickled as I was, I felt a soul there that I connected with. And it was so beautiful and the writer created something that nobody else created.

Jo: Was that Carol Sobieski who also wrote for Peyton Place?

Lee: Yes, Carol Sobieski. She was extraordinary.

Jo: Yes, she's a great writer.

Lee: She's a great writer and I felt it was a privilege"”a privilege of all the things I've done"”being able to go there.

Jo: Yes, there's something"¦ I guess that's what we're doing, witnessing a lot of your transformations on screen. We're seeing, you know, you're in the desert and you're having this transcendence. And it's coming through to your character, Carrie.

Lee: Yes, yes.

Jo: It's such a beautiful performance. It's so subtle and so quiet and so beautiful. And so painful.

Lee: Yes.

Jo: You convey all of that and that's hard to do and you do it. You just pull it off like nobody else could. And that's the thing I love are these other women that you play, are these roles and these women that deserve to be looked at. And I've certainly been having a great time delving into your work.

Lee: And have you! Wow!

Jo: Maybe I've been digging too deep!

Lee: You've found things I've forgotten. That one I knew is just so special. It's interesting because Frank who directed it"”Frank Pierson. A very very close friend, too. He also, much later did The Life of Roy Cohn.

Jo: Oh, Frank Pierson.

Lee: Yes, Frank Pierson. On HBO, he called me then and he said "Do you want to be Roy Cohn's mother? Or do you want to be the one who was killed? The spy." Anyway, he was the writer who became the director, because he had nothing to do with writing that, Carol wrote it. And he came to be the night before and said, "You know, I'd like to do some changes in this. And you know she really isn't as good as all that." And I said, "Well, hire another actor. Because if you touch this script. (The Neon Ceiling) " You know why would you do that? Why, why? And he said "Oh, I"¦" and I said "You don't like women. You don't like women." And in that particular incidence, he didn't. And in everything else"”because I worked with him many times"”he's a great writer and a great director"”but this was too simple for him.

Jo: I know of his work and have seen a lot of it. So they kept it the same way?

Lee: Absolutely, he took it back. And we left the next day.

Jo: We just have a couple more questions. And Wendy wanted to talk with you. You know, I saw a scene you directed"”we'll get into your directing in a minute"”I watched a scene from Tell Me a Riddle with Melvin Douglas and Lela Kedrova that you directed. And just the little scene that I saw ripped my guts up. I just—

Lee: Mine too.

Jo: It's so heartbreaking. I know that you're a wonderful director and I know it's probably not hard to direct Melvin Douglas and Lela Kedrova, but you absolutely created this poignant journey. But Wendy here is a sociologist who teaches social movements and she shows documentaries in classes and has used your documentaries in classes. And she wanted to ask you about the documentaries that you did, you know back in the day when they became movies of the week and there was a wide audience for them. And you started asking socially relevant questions.

Wendy: Hi Lee, I teach sociology classes and I use documentaries all the time. So I'm always looking for ones that are good and well done. And I was really intrigued by the ones you did in the 1980s. The ones that really gave voice to marginalized individuals. So you did the film about poverty"”Down and Out in America"”which is still unfortunately relevant today.

In the early 1980s, you started directing documentary films, specifically films that give voice to marginalized individuals way before others were doing so Down and Out in America (the poor, transgender individuals WHAT SEX AM I, women in prison who killed their abusive husbands in self-defense, the Willmar 8, etc.). Some of these were released as movies of the week to very large audiences. What led you to start making these kinds of documentaries? Were there social and political triggers?

Lee: Yes, unfortunately, it's still relevant.

Wendy: And it was also, to me, when it came out in the mid-80s, very much a response to Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics. You can really see it situated in that.

Lee: You put your finger right on it.

Wendy: And I talk about that when I teach inequality so it's good to give students that context and history. Then there's the documentary you did in the 1980s on transgender individuals, which no one had really done yet.

Lee: Yes, What Sex Am I?

Wendy: The Women in Prison, the Willmar 8, about women bankers who went on strike and I cannot find that one anywhere but I would love to use it because I teach about activism and social movements so I'm always looking for things about activism and I couldn't find that one anywhere so I haven't seen it. I was just curious about what made you switch, to not just directing, but directing these documentaries about marginalized populations. Like what were the social and political triggers of that for you?

Lee: Well, you know during the early years and not being able to say anything. And even when I was in LA, I was careful about what I said about it. You know, I acted in things that said things. And I have a best friend, Marybeth Yarrow, who had been married to Peter Yarrow. And in her small town in Willmar, there were 7 women who went on strike at the bank because the bank president there would have them train these boys in the bank, and then have them be the women's bosses. So these little boys that they would train would suddenly tell them what to do and get a higher salary. So the women went out on strike. And Marybeth read that to me, and I had just been at AFI and had taken a women's directing workshop. Their first women's directing workshop. I said let's go there and make a documentary. And that kicked open the whole tunnel. Her husband, Peter, raised like 30,000 dollars and went to Willmar. It was the middle of the winter. So cold that you couldn't open your mouth to ask a question.

Jo and Wendy: [laugh]

Lee: I mean your mouth froze. And those 7 women were out there on strike in front of the bank. They could hardly walk it was so cold. And you know it kicked open a door in me that had said, don't talk, be quiet. You know, save yourself, don't talk, be quiet. And I thought you know, thank God, I can do this. I can get away with this. I can put it on film. Finally, I've found my voice. I have found my voice. And it just meant everything to me. Finally, I'd landed on my feet and there was no fear. So I was just starved for that. And I made one after another after another after another. I loved that I had to go to all different places and open all kinds of doors. You know our second film was in the prison system

Wendy: Yes, we saw parts of it.

Lee: You know, what a revelation! I was free! I was free! I was really free of the blacklist finally! And not only that, I had tools that could fight the blacklist. I could show what the truth was.

Wendy: Right, which is why I love showing documentaries because it shows students individuals"”gives voice to individuals"”who I can't bring to the classroom.

Lee: Right, exactly.

Wendy: Especially the women in prison film, I don't think anybody was talking about whether or not women should be in prison for killing an abusive spouse in the 1980s no one was covering that. And Down and Out in America is also unfortunately still relevant but also shows how devastating politics was in the 1980s while we tend to misremember it as being some golden era in America, right? Well compared to what we’re living in now"¦

Lee: Well, I don't know whether you were able to get hold of my Texas film?

Wendy: I don't think so.

Jo: No"¦

Lee: HBO was sued so it was only shown once.

Jo: Oh, about the children being taken away from their mothers"¦?

Lee: It was judges in Texas who took children away from the mothers and gave them to the fathers who were suspected of abusing them.

Jo: Oh my God! Wow.

Lee: Yeah.

Jo: You were sued for that?

Lee: HBO got sued, and that show was only on one time.

Wendy: I wonder if it's in any college libraries someplace still?

Lee: I have it! So at some point, I can lend it to you to make a copy of and you can use it.

Wendy: Oh that would be wonderful.

Lee: But also if and when this documentary thing happens in October and my films are shown.

Jo: Yes, the retrospective!

Lee: Yes, I can't wait for the documentaries to be shown.

Wendy: And I have so many sociologist friends in and around NYC who would totally be there for it. We're all big fans of well-made interesting documentaries.

Jo: And we'll be there.

Wendy: Yes, I love to nerd-out on documentaries. Jo watches her classic films and I'm watching 13th on Netflix"¦

Jo: Yes, she's watching her serious and depressing documentaries. I mean, I'm just so dark because of what's going on in the world in politics, because it's like a Stanley Kubrick nightmare that you imagine would never happen in real life.

Lee: Yes, it's so disturbing, this nightmare. It's like having Roy Cohn as president, you know, because"¦

Jo: It's dystopian"¦

Lee: Yes, and there aren't words and there's just no way to describe it"¦ This is a nightmare.

Jo: And there's a collective depression and angst that people are feeling in their lives.

Lee: And there is. It is.

Jo: And that's what's tragic and it's America's Id so then you've got the people that support him"¦

Wendy: I like to focus on"”because I study social movements and activism"”I like to focus on activism.

Jo: Yes, she's the glass-half-full person.

Wendy: Yes, I focus on the people making the change. That's what my research is about and that's what I try to teach my students to raise some hell. And voting. Because otherwise, I'd just lose my mind.

Lee: Yes, all of us. I mean living within this screenplay, being a character within a screenplay that we loath and detest and want to get out of. And are trapped in.

Jo: Yes, exactly. That's scary. Thanks for scaring us, Lee! [laughs]

Lee: [laughs] But it really has an effect.

Jo and Wendy: Yes, it does.

Lee: I mean, especially since we had Obama.

Jo: Yes, Well, is there an end in sight? When will we get out of this madness? We need relief.

Lee: Yes, it's madness.

Jo: We need to be able to breathe again!

Lee: And I'm overwhelmed. It's overwhelming. Everywhere I look is horror. And it's not like oh this is something that really has been addressed, it's not like we need to just shake this or show people"¦ this is horror.

Jo: Yes, it’s organic horror.

Lee: And it's death. It's killing people.

Jo: If not only in body but also in spirit.

Wendy: And actually in the body.

Lee: Yes, it's killing people. All over the world. Yesterday I was listening to the television and Saudi Arabia hires African soldiers to kill other Arabs. Instead of doing it themselves, they hire African soldiers into that Arab conclave that's left"”Yemen. It was like wow, hired professionals.

Wendy: We would just sleep better if we knew there were people in the office trying to make things better instead of worse.

Jo: I just don't understand, how we got here.

Lee: We got here in a minute.

Jo: Yes.

Lee: And watch out for this. I feel that the way Bernie Sanders treated Hillary Clinton"¦

Wendy: Oh yeah don't even get me started.

Lee: It was the beginning of the end. Kicked open the door for Trump.

Jo: Yes. When I saw his scowling face at the convention, I wanted to smack him.

Lee: Bernie, yes. He was so abusive to her. And of course, all my leftie friends are like "But Bernie's the best, Bernie's"¦" But look how he's treating her. It was like how my communist husband treated me. Like she's a dummy, she's Wall Street.

Jo: Yeah, we're in agreement!

Lee: And I think there was a democratic disaffection"”20% of democrats voted for Bernie and that's what pushed this bully"¦

Wendy: Yup, and we can thank them for the Supreme Court and a lot of crap.

Lee: That's right. You're the only ones who get it!

Wendy: There are others that get it, but it seems like we're few and far between. There are a lot of us who are not Bernie fans for good solid reasons. I'm happy Bernie's light seems to be dimmer this time around and he's not polling as well as he did before. People don't seem as excited about him now.

Lee: I'm just worried about it.

Wendy: Yeah, like are we going to get our acts together on the left?

Lee: Yes, are we?

Jo: Oh, but we should not totally veer off into politics. We should close with a good film or acting question! I wanted to ask you about your performance in Electra. I was reading your book and almost peeing my pants laughing as you're describing wearing that crimson red velvet gown. And it's raining and you get drenched in the rain.

I read in your book about how you worked with Joe Papp on Shakespeare in the Park, playing Electra by Sophocles. I can visualize this powerful performance, the method training, that rainy day, you dragging Theoni's Aldridge's crimson gown, the heavy fabric soaked through across the stage. And there's the audience floating away in the deluge as devoted as ever. You said it was the most risky, challenging role. Alfred Ryder a wonderful actor played Hamlet before this and his performance was televised, but it was a disaster, and it nearly ruined his acting career. Do you regret that your performance of Electra was not televised and recorded so that we could see it today? I would've loved to see you on stage, even in the flood.

Lee: And the whole audience is drenched!

Jo: And the papers are floating away, and you're out there shouting. And the show's ended and they're still out there clapping in the rain.

Lee: Talk about a switch from bleak and bad, to emboldened and powerful playing Electra!

Jo: Yes, we needed some Electra!

Lee: Jo Papp gave me Electra and saw that I was ready to spew and all lessons he gave me, the teachers who came in to correct my language so that I was ready to take on that role. And to let go of all that rage and fierceness, under the cover of the state at Central Park. It was such a release for me to play that.

Jo: Yeah, you said it was a very risky role for you. Challenging.

Lee: Very. And he handed it to me.

Jo: Wow.

Lee: And what a thing to do.

Jo: A gift.

Lee: Yes, what a gift. What a thing to do. The most powerful theatre man in New York and the most liberal and radical, and gorgeous.

Jo: Gorgeous?

Lee: Gorgeous, gorgeous [laughs]

Jo: He knew you could do it. So in your book, you mentioned that Alfred Rider had done Hamlet. And when they televised it and it didn’t go over very well. Electra… It doesn't exist. Do you regret that there is no visual evidence of that performance?

Lee: No, no.

Jo: I wish I couldn't see you on stage. Even in Prisoner on Second Avenue I wish I could've seen you on stage. So you’re really not sorry that they didn't televise it?

Lee: No. No, it's an experience.

Jo: It's one of those moments it exists like a firefly.

Lee: It was a live experience. Like a marriage. And you know it lifted me.

Jo: So you're laying on your chaise, did you finish your coffee?

Lee: Oh, it's half finished. I'm still in my nightgown. [laughs]

Jo: I could talk with you all day like this!

Lee: I know!

Jo: What is a great way to end this?

Lee: What's a great way to end this?

Jo: Is there something you want to talk about? That we didn't cover. You've got such an impressive career in theatre, film, and television. On both sides of the camera. You've worked with amazing people. You have great friends.

Lee: How about Al"”who's the one who was thrown out of office? Al Franken? How about Al Franken? He didn't have a choice to leave but I want him back. And that's what I want to write about.

Wendy: What are you working on for writing?

Lee: I've just been writing in spurts, just things that I have to get out of my system, as you can hear when I talk to you. There are things I have to spew, and get down on paper to get it out of me. And so what's I'm going to do, I'm going to write about the stupidity and short-sightedness of getting rid of the only one in Congress that I know of who could go up against Trump and just demolish him, with his humor and his knowledge. That was the stupidest action that could be taken.

Jo: I was so mad at him for messing up because we needed him. And so mad at him for stepping down.

Lee: He was pushed out. He was forced out. Did you read that New Yorker article about the woman who came to his defense?

Jo: No, we haven't seen that one.

Lee: It's like 2 weeks ago. So you can read it.

Wendy: I'll look it up. I keep more up on the political stuff than Jo does. Jo likes to live in her classic film bubble.

Jo: I like to live in my classic film world and if I don't"¦ I'll go mad.

Lee: Oh, I understand. And I'm sorry to break through that.

Jo: No, no. It's fine. And I don't want to give the impression that I'm not proactive. I do what needs to be done.

Lee: Oh, I'm not accusing you, I'm just opening my arms and pulling you into my world.

Jo: Oh I love your world, and I know that. And it's Wendy's world. I hear about it"¦ all about it, and friends who are very active.

Wendy: And we have friends who go to the TCM movie festival and a couple of years ago you were there and made a speech, and they were all tweeting and texting about it, saying oh my God, this is so awesome! And I was like, of course, it's Lee Grant! And that makes her even more amazing that you would give this really political speech!

Lee: It does, girls, it just makes me more amazing! Every single day.

Wendy: Hell yeah! People have to speak out!

Lee: On that note, we will end this.

Jo: Ok.

Lee: But I've had such a great time and I love you.

Jo: Oh, we love you too, Lee!

Lee: And I've had fun. And so we may not be still doing your thing, but we can still talk and still have a relationship.

Jo: We would love to stay in touch.

Wendy: And if you have copies of any of your documentaries, I would love it. If they would be easy for me to copy because I would show them in class.

Jo: Maybe someday soon we could come into the city and have coffee with you.

Lee: Yes, maybe you can do that and take things and make copies if you know how to do that. Because I don't know how to do anything.

Wendy: Ok, I'm good with the technical stuff.

Jo: So next time, we’ll come into the city and do it.

Lee: Yes, we'll do that. You're both adorable.

Jo: Lee speaks truth to power and wants to be heard.

Wendy: Great, so we'll be in touch.

Lee: Have a good day, girls!

Jo: Take care, Lee!

This has been YourEverlovin’ Joey saying what more is there to say… but I love you, Lee Grant!