Movie Industry History

When free-lance writer Chuck Wheeler relaxes at his Santa Ana home, seated on his living-room sofa with a cup of coffee and the stereo turned on softly, he's always among old friends. Gable and Harlow look down from the top of the fireplace mantle. Astaire and Rogers dance across one wall. Dietrich slinks in an entryway corner next to a scowling Cagney and a guitar-toting Autry. Dear friends. Famous friends. Of course, they aren't for real.

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!'

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.

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.

Clara Bow was the screen's first sex symbol--cinema's "It" girl who exuded sex appeal, enticement and excitement. But having "It" didn't bring her any real happiness. In fact, "It" ended up becoming a burden for Bow, who was never really embraced by Hollywood's elite because she was not perceived as a "serious" actress.

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.

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.

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.

When fresh-faced 18-year-old Dennis Hopper was cast to play a gang member in the classic 1955 drama "Rebel Without a Cause," he thought he was "the best young actor around." That was until he witnessed "Rebel" star James Dean in action. Hopper was flummoxed by Dean's commitment to realism and intensity. He recalls confessing to Dean: "I don't have a clue what you are doing, but I know how great you are. What should I do? Should I stop my contract [at Warner Bros.

1912: Carl Laemmle joins with a half-dozen small motion picture companies to create Universal Pictures. Three years later, he moves the studios to a 230-acre former chicken ranch in North Hollywood, where he builds bleachers and charges visitors 25 cents each to watch silent films being made. 1924: Julius Caesar Stein founds Music Corp. of America in Chicago. with an initial stake of $1,000.

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.

His lantern jaw looks like something out of the Paleolithic Era. His hair is a wayward mass of greasy strands. His nose is as unavoidable as Pinocchio's. His bulk is positively Falstaffian. Welcome to Hollywood's new heartthrob--Gerard Depardieu. In "Green Card," Depardieu plays a rumpled French drifter who, in order to become an American citizen, enters into an arranged marriage with a yuppie-ish horticulturist, played by Andie MacDowell.

Four pioneer women filmmakers--directors Alice Guy, Lois Weber and Dorothy Arzner and writer Frances Marion--are the subject of AMC's "Reel Models: The First Women of Film,' which airs Tuesday night. Executive produced by Barbra Streisand--who also hosts--and Cis Corman and directed and produced by Susan and Christopher Koch, the hourlong documentary features clips and interviews with various film historians, including Anthony Slide, about these trailblazing women.

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."