Movie Industry History

With the phenomenal success of the Al Jolson musical "The Jazz Singer" in 1927, Hollywood quickly made the transition from silents to talkies. However, injecting color into movies was a much harder sell. In fact, it took the founder of Technicolor more than two decades to convince movie makers about the viability of color. The new Turner Classic Movies documentary "Glorious Technicolor," premiering Monday, examines the tangled history of color movies, as well as the life and career of Herbert T.

Having your first film as a director hailed as one of the funniest comedies in movie history is heady stuff. But when, more than 20 years later, the accolades continue--when the American Film Institute ranks it among America's all-time 10 best laugh-fests--does the rush continue? Well, maybe the adrenaline doesn't pump as fast. But for Jerry Zucker, the idea of being one of the warped brains that begat "Airplane!" is still something to be savored. "The legacy of 'Airplane!'

He was a bad guy gone good, and naturally he ended up in Hollywood, where he shaped one of the film industry's most enduring genres, the Western. Onetime gunslinger Emmett Dalton's fame rested on 10 minutes of rapid gunfire on a street in Coffeyville, Kan., but the legacy he wanted to leave behind was that of an outlaw who became a crime-fighting crusader, helping to keep boys out of prison and to keep villains from being glamorized as heroes.

He was a bad guy gone good, and naturally he ended up in Hollywood, where he shaped one of the film industry's most enduring genres, the Western. Onetime gunslinger Emmett Dalton's fame rested on 10 minutes of rapid gunfire on a street in Coffeyville, Kan., but the legacy he wanted to leave behind was that of an outlaw who became a crime-fighting crusader, helping to keep boys out of prison and to keep villains from being glamorized as heroes.

Gripping the seats in the small, darkened theater, the audience is engrossed in the action on the screen. The room is vibrating, and eyes as wide as gramophones are fixed on the high-definition video. Disneyland's Star Tours? Not quite. . . . Debbie Reynolds' Hollywood Movie Museum. It's a little high-tech for a museum, but this is a Hollywood museum, and it is in Las Vegas. The star-studded opening is tonight--on Reynolds' 63rd birthday.

Hollywood, which gave Southern California its glamorous image around the world, is rapidly moving from supporting player to star of the region's economy on the strength of exploding global demand for its movies, TV shows and new entertainment technologies.

Today marks the opening day of the 50th Cannes Film Festival. To mark the occasion, staff writers Elaine Dutka, Claudia Puig and Robert W. Welkos asked Hollywood Cannes-goers to reminisce about their favorite memories of the glittery resort, where star power is at its highest concentration in the world for two weeks every May. Here are a few highlights from 50 years of Cannes: * Kirk Douglas, actor: I equate Cannes with great friendships and a very special romance.

Mary Pickford is a bit of a surprise. Everyone knows the legendary actress' name and her famous Beverly Hills mansion Pickfair, but not many know exactly what she accomplished. "Basically, she was one of the most important women in film history," says Elaina Archer, who manages the Mary Pickford Library for the Mary Pickford Foundation. "It's kind of sad that people are just starting to realize it just now in a lot of ways."

When Nikita Khrushchev made his historic visit to the United States in 1959, the Soviet premier made two requests upon arriving in California. One was to visit Disneyland, that fantasy-inspired mecca of American capitalism; the other was to meet John Wayne. Security concerns prevented Khrushchev from meeting Mickey Mouse, but the world's most powerful Communist did get to meet one of America's most outspoken anti-Communists.

Fifty-nine years ago, 124 midgets arrived by bus, plane and car from all over North America to the Culver Hotel in Culver City. It was only a few short blocks from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where "The Wizard of Oz" was going into production. They had been cast as little people called Munchkins. Many had never seen another midget before, let alone been away from home. All but one had never been in a movie.

Ancient Egypt holds out three magnets for movie makers: its connections to the Bible through Moses and Joseph, the eternal allure of Cleopatra and, above all, the mystery of mummies. It is the last of the trinity that brings forth one of the summer's big sequels, "The Mummy Returns." The grandeurs of early civilizations gripped the minds of filmmakers since the days of the early Italian cinema and the first epic by D.W. Griffith, the 1913 "Judith of Bethulia."

No one wrote about sex with more breathless comic verve than Preston Sturges, the ringmaster of 1940s screwball comedy. In "The Palm Beach Story," Mary Astor, who plays a ditsy socialite, throws herself at Joel McCrea, the failed inventor of a midair airplane landing strip. (Screwball comedies are full of ditsy socialites and madcap inventors, two characters you don't get to see much of in, say, a Rob Schneider movie).

What if you woke up one day and every movie portrayed Americans as dumb, dirty and ignorant? What if every TV show you tuned into showed Americans as fat, lazy and inbred? What if every actor was cast as The Ugly American--greedy, materialistic and arrogant? Welcome to how the rest of the world feels when it watches Hollywood portray its countries and cultures. No one is as good--or as persuasive--at making other cultures look as simplistic and backward as Hollywood.

Fay Wray will always be remembered for being carried by King Kong as he scales the Empire State Building, but the real high mark of her long career occurred early in Erich von Stroheim's late silent-era masterpiece "The Wedding March" (1928). The American Cinematheque is screening it at the Egyptian Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 5 p.m. with live musical accompaniment.

Director Stanley Kramer's comedy smorgasbord, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World," will be shown Saturday at the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro. "Mad," released in 1963, was the late director's extravagant, slapstick caper movie featuring a who's who of comedians, including Milton Berle, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Sid Caesar, Dick Shawn and Mickey Rooney, part of a ragtag bunch chasing after a bank robber's buried cash. Spencer Tracy also stars as Captain C.G. Culpeper.

Four women who came to California to become the most powerful actresses of early Hollywood are being saluted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Film Department over the next two weekends. As part of the continuing "Made in California" exhibit, the careers of Mary Pickford, Norma Shearer, Marion Davies and Gloria Swanson are being recognized with two films each beginning tonight and continuing Saturday, next Friday and Jan. 20 in the Powerful Actresses of Early Hollywood Film Series.

Think of it as a tawdry and tarnished golden age, a five-year period, unprecedented in Hollywood history, when a single studio turned out dozens of raffish, exuberant films made with a frankness not seen before or since. It's an era that's become known as "Forbidden Hollywood," and it's easy to see why. Though they were produced only from 1930 to 1934 and usually lasted barely more than an hour on screen, the films turned out by Warner Bros.

All but unnoticed in the excitement of the Alfred Hitchcock centenary (marked by his birthday last Friday) has been the revitalization of a few of the director's most significant American works of the 1940s, specifically his four-film partnership with David O. Selznick, the legendary producer responsible for bringing Hitchcock to this country and helping him launch the second and most important half of his illustrious career.

American Movie Classics' first series, "Remember WENN," was a sweet, affectionateportrait of the golden age of radio. But "The Lot," the cable network's latest nostalgia-tinged series, has a much harder edge. In one case a studio executive gets a handsome young man hooked on morphine so he'll stay under contract. An aging actress is forced to sell hosiery on the side in order to keep her house. A flamboyant gay actor is told to "straighten" up his act or he'll be cut from the studio.

Night, New York, mid-1950s. In the lobby of the legendary "21" club, a darkly handsome young man enters a phone booth and dials the number of a table just inside the crowded dining room. "J.J., it's Sidney," he says, creasing a worried forehead with his thumb. "Can you come outside for one minute?" "Can I come out? No." "I have to talk to you, alone, J.J., that's why." "You had something to do for me--you didn't do it." "Can I come in for a minute?" "No. You're dead, son--get yourself buried."