Yuku free message boards

What a fabulous roundup of talent! I love 'em all (even wrote to Sheldon Leonard) but I'm especially crazy about Mel Blanc, who left his indelible impressions on several generations of Americans. I was listening to his WB cartoon recordings around 1950, when I was a toddler, and first started drawing by carefully copying the characters on those record sleeves. Mel spoke on the Penn State campus in the mid-70s when we lived in State College PA, and I took my youngest son to see him. I was tremendously proud when Dawson, about 7 or 8 at the time, left his seat near the back of the auditorium and bravely marched alone up to the front to stand in front of the podium. He was so small that Mel didn't see him, but was finally noticed when the crowd yelled "Get the kid!" Mel bent down to hear and grant my son's request for an impression, surprised that it was for such an obscure old-time character: Beaky Buzzard! Making sure my boys were raised on the right cartoons and movies was at least as important to me as their school homework, so Mel Blanc was one of their mentors too.

I thought Warner Bros. rather missed the boat when they lamely named their Bugs Bunny CASABLANCA spoof featurette "Carrotblanca." A few years earlier I did a funny animal strip inspired by the Bogart film that was published in HIGH TIMES magazine: "CasaMelBlanca." You have to give credit where credit is due.

I'm not sure what this has to do with John Barrymore, Craig, but great acting is great acting, eh? Did Barrymore ever appear with Mel on the radio? I vaguely remember a few WB cartoons with an over-the-top ham thespian (wolf? cat?). Not sure if Mel did that voice or not.

On the subject of broad Barrymore impressions, DRACULA candidate Ian Keith seems to be laying it on very thick as "Vitamin Flintheart" in a couple of the Dick Tracy feature films -- but Chester Gould's character is himself an obvious caricature of the late, self-parodying Barrymore. A wonderful character!

Geezermonster wrote:

---

There's a Three Stooges short in which (as I recall it) the boys are traveling in a railroad car. Curly gets up to do something and there's a photo of Jack pinned to the wall. Curly contorts his face trying to give himself the classic Barrymore profeel. Anyone remember which Stooges flick this is?

The Magic Eightball (Google) says it's MOVIE MANIACS (1936).

p.s.
IMDb and Wikipedia both have info about the ham actor character I remembered from WB cartoons, who may have been based on Barry-more or less (haven't seen him in years, but would love to). No name is given but he was a "Shakespearean dog" who appeared in several "Goofy Gopher" (prissy, elegant Mac 'n' Tosh) cartoons in the late 40s and early 50s. IMDb gives Mel Blanc credit for his voice, along with Mac's.

Digging through Mel's long, long list in IMDb, I noted that Mel voiced three characters in the terrific cartoon BIRTH OF A NOTION: Daffy Duck, Leopold the dog, and the Joe Besser duck at the end -- but not the wonderful Peter Lorre mad scientist who wants to experiment on Daffy ("I didn't know Leopold could daaannce..." "GIVE ME YOUR WISHBONE!"). That was Stan Freberg (!), who also did the voice of Tosh the Gopher.

Here's another photo of Gwymplane wooing Violet Kemble-Cooper in CLAIR DE LUNE, this time showing his "Great Profile" on the other side:

Clementine promises to scan and send a few more items from the play, including a clear full front shot and the cover of the sheet music for the "Clair de Lune Waltz"!

Meanwhile, Barrymore fans will find many, MANY other things to marvel over, both on her website:

JOHN BARRYMORE CO.UK

and Barrymore Family MySpace.

It appeared to me that the grotesque, livid scar on the other side of Gwymplane's face was either completely missing or considerably diminished on the side shown in this photo. I inquired about it and Clementine confirmed that the makeup in the play was scarred on just one side, which might have been very effective for dramatic purposes.

This very different approach to his facial deformity might make Hugo's character the spiritual antecedent of not one but TWO Batman villains -- "The Joker," reputedly inspired by a photo of Gwynplaine in the photoplay edition of the novel, and "Two-Face," like Gwymplane, handsome on one side and hideously scarred on the other. Not to mention the deep impression Barrymore himself must surely have made on at least some of those talented actors who played villains on the BATMAN TV series...

Bill -- I made the statement vague ("might make" .... "spiritual antecedent") because it seems extremely unlikely to me too that Barrymore's Gwymplane was well-known enough to have been any sort of direct inspiration for Two-Face.  But he could be placed in the same sort of historical context that sees the Scarlet Pimpernel and Zorro as the literary forefathers of Batman, Superman and every other superhero who hides his identity with an unheroic alter-ego. Perhaps Kane, Finger, Robinson, or whomever knew about those stories from books or pulps or movies (likely for Zorro), and perhaps not -- but every comics historian seems duty bound to cite the literary lineage.

I agree with you that the Tracy Jekyll/Hyde poster art looks directly connected to the earliest drawings of Two-Face, particularly considering the time frame. Wikipedia claims that Bob Kane said the Fredric March movie itself was the inspiration, along with the pulp magazine weird hero the Black Bat, disfigured by acid. ???

Just for comparison, here are a couple of New York Times ads for the world premiere of the Tracy film at the Astor Theater on Broadway:



I don't know how the box office returns were nationwide, but it apparently was a smash at the Astor, packing them in for months.

Here are the promised goodies from clementinemonkey's fantastic collection of Barrymoriana --

Sheet music! :



Another clear left side shot (again with Violet Kemble-Cooper), sent with this comment:

I'm inclined to agree -- the right side's grinning scar makeup seems to have been continued a bit on the left side as a slight frown. But what do you folks think?



And finally, the best yet -- a clear full front closeup! :

Fowler's books are always fun reads, and I pick them up whenever I find them. I've had the Barrymore bio for many years but had never gotten around to reading it through until I found a copy in a dust jacket for a buck in a bookstore in SC. My wife Jeanne worked there in the first years of our marriage, but it's closing its doors now after nearly 40 years, no longer able to compete with B&N and Amazon, etc. Sad, sad -- in its heyday "The Open Book" hosted book signings with heroes of mine like Louis L'Amour and Criswell (whose books of loopy predictions were published in nearby Anderson SC)!

Barrymore fans will find a lot of other stories about him in another terrific Fowler tome called THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING, centered on Sadakichi Hartmann and the Bundy Drive gang that Greg Mank also wrote a book about recently.

Had I world enough and time, I think it would be very rewarding to track down every book ever written by old-time newspapermen like Fowler and Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Mark Hellinger, Sam Fuller and many others. What storytellers! Perhaps in my next incarnation I'll get an earlier start. After that, I'll move on to every adventure novel ever written by all the greatest writers of the 19th century. So much to read, so little time...