The art of Matte Painting in films really fascinates me.

Imagine a location which had open fields and a hill with horse riders going up the hill. The story calls for a castle on the hill BUT there is none – so a castle is painted on to a glass in front of the camera and exactly and painstakingly matched up to the action below. The result on screen is that we see the riders heading up hill toward the castle which we see as a wonderful shot when half of the picture or more is painted.

Above: Matte Shots by Peter Ellenshaw on ‘Darby O’Gill’ – a film with astonishing special effects set in Ireland – Filmed in Hollywood.

Being able to marry painted backgrounds on glass to real action foregrounds opened up a new world to film makers.  To get it right this is a very complex operatioin requiring  hours of painstaking labour with many retakes to obtain perfection.

Peter Ellenshaw was the Matte genius that Walt Disney signed up on a lifetime contract to work on his films starting with Treasure Island in 1950. He made a career out of mixing fantasy with reality to make make-believe worlds come to life

Walt Disney began to make period feature movies in England – from funds which were effectively ‘locked in’ to this country after the war.   He used English actors in his films  Treasure Island, The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose, and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue.  Peter Ellenshaw joined Disney at this time and  worked on all four. He began as a matte artist and special effects artist, and later in his career became a production designer. It was the start of a long association with Walt Disney.  Over the next four decades, Ellenshaw worked on the largest and most-challenging projects the Disney studios made—and won two Academy Awards for his work.

He was born in England  in 1913.   A neighbour Walter Percy Day a famous matte artist of his time, discovered Ellenshaw’s talent and took him on as an assistant. Mattes are realistic paintings done on glass and then matched to live action shots – the result can be breathtaking – see below The Black Narcissus which was done by Percy Day

Above – The incredible matte painting on Black Narcissus done by Percy Day.

During his amazing film career, Ellenshaw has been nominated for four Academy Awards.

Ellenshaw regarded Walt Disney as a source of inspiration and a wonderful friend.         “Walt had the ability to communicate with artists.” Recalls Ellenshaw. “He’d talk to you on your level – artist to artist. He used to say, ‘I can’t draw, Peter.  ‘ But he had the soul of an artist, and he had a wonderful way on transferring his enthusiasm to you.”

In 1964Peter  Ellenshaw won the Best Special Visual Effects Academy Award  for his astounding matte work in Walt Disney’s beloved line-action musical-fantasy Mary Poppins  and in this he created some beautiful vistas of Victorian London which gave a wonderful style to the film.

On Mary Poppins above – the top picture shows the small segment of the picture  that had  David Tomlinson walking on a wet studio floor BUT the lower one shows how we saw the film on screen – he is walking through a London Park – Thanks to a matte painting and we never knew !!!

In 1993, Ellenshaw was officially designated a “Disney Legend” by The Walt Disney Company.

Black Narcissus    –   The above shots just shows how good this process was – The top picture shows how the film was shot in the studio and below – the matte painting around the action then takes us to a Himalayan Convent with the wind whistling around us –  Astonishing but so real.

Percy Day.

Maybe I should have the title to this post  Percy Day – Matte Artist Genius because he certainly was and taught Peter Ellenshaw  all he knew. Percy Day had worked on silent films and found some fame here.    Much later he worked for Michael Powell and Emric Pressburger on such films as  ‘I know Where I’m Going’ (1945) which contains a sequence in which the hero and heroine’s boat gets sucked into the Corryvreckan whirlapool.   In his autobiography Powell recalled that Day created the whirlpool out of plastic material resembling gelatine, mounted on an eccentric arm which could be whirled around at varying speeds in a tank of water filmed with a high-speed camera running in reverse.

Incredibly Black Narcissus ( 1947) was shot entirely on the Pinewood Studios backlot with matte of the Himalayan mountain range painted by Percy Day and his assistants and illustarted above.

Black Narcissus was voted in a 2005 poll organised by The Times newspaper as the best British film of all time.

 Another matte above – Anyone like me with a fear of heights would go dizzy on viewing this on the large cinema screen.

These films were enhanced by this wonderfully thought out process.

Louis Armstrong ( OR as he was billed  MR. Louis Armstrong ) opens the film singing the song ‘High Society’ on a bus travelling to the wedding destination where we will meet Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Celeste Holm and many others.

Tracy Lord (Grace Kelly)  who, having been through one marriage to likable musician C.K. Dexter Haven (Bing Crosby)  is about to enter another with a rather stuffy, boring social climber.    Dexter and Mike Connor (Frank Sinatra)  a reporter covering the wedding  help Tracy  realise whom she really should marry.

Who could ever forget Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby singing ‘What a swell Party this is’   with that memorable line –  ‘Have you heard it’s in the stars -Next July we collide with Mars’

Grace Kelly (12 November 1929–14 September 1982)

One of the most beautiful women in movies or indeed anywhere come to that although her film career was very short it was very memorable.

Even more than thirty years after Grace Kelly’s  untimely death she remains an embodiment of beauty and glamour both royally and on film.

Admirers recognise her as the embodiment of how we percieve royalty  to be – as well as a critically-acclaimed actress and the elegant consort of  Monaco,  a loyal friend  and of course  loving mother.

Grace Kelly was born in Philadelphia USA  to John and Margaret Kelly.  John Kelly her father, was a wealthy contractor.  At a young age,  Grace decided she wanted to become an actress, and studied acting – mainly in the theatre at that time – at New York City’s American Academy of Dramatic Art and worked as a stage actress and model before moving to Hollywood.   During her time in New York Grace  appeared on the covers of magazines such as Cosmopolitan and Redbook and even promoted Old Gold cigarettes.

Grace made her film debut  in a minor supporting role, but then starred in legendary western High Noon in which she played a Quaker bride alongside Gary Cooper.

Grace next  appeared in Mogambo along with Clark Gable.  Rumours had it that she had a romantic involvement with him during the making of this film

They were out in East Africa together for a number of weeks while filming – Will probably come back to Mogambo in a later post.  For this part she got an  Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

 Above – Clark Gable and Grace Kelly in Mogambo

She then sparked  the interest of director Alfred Hitchcock, who made  Grace into his ideal of the elegant, beautiful blonde and then cast her in three of his finest films of the fifties  –  Dial M for Murder,  Rear Window  and To Catch a Thief.

She also made Green Fire in 1954 with Stewart Granger but apparently she was somewhat less than impressed by him.

The Country Girl  then won her the Golden Globe and the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role of 1954.

Grace received a golden record for the hit song True Love from High Society.

Above: Grace Kelly

Later that year, she married Prince Rainier Grimaldi III of Monaco to become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.  She gave up her successful acting career in which she had made only eleven films –  very few really for such a well remembered actress although I do think that she was very lucky to be chosen for the films she appeared in and the Directors and Actors she worked with.

She had three children –  Princess Caroline, Prince Albert, and Princess Stéphanie. Grace died on 14 September 1982 after her car went off a road in the cliffs of Monaco.

Norman , a lowly stock clerk at Burridge’s department store,   has fallen in in love with another employee, Sally Wilson played by Lana Morris  but he hasn’t been able to pluck up the courage to let her know how he feels. When he falls out  with the new head of the store, Augustus Freeman  played by his long time film straight man Jerry Desmonde he is promptly fired. As he is leaving the store he sees an older lady (Margaret Rutherford) seemingly struggling with a very lareg suitcase and he goes to help her . Freeman sees Norman assisting a “customer” and rehires him.

Meanwhile, Peggy Drew played by Moira Lister the store’s personnel manager is plotting to rob the store along with her boyfriend Gerald (Derek Bond) . Norman is fired and rehired again and again but his escapades somehow manage to benefit the store.

He thwarts the robbery in the end and wins the girl but not before some ‘intersting’ escapades.

Lana Morris

Lana Morris was described as a  bright-eyed brunette who  brought a refreshing liveliness and sense of humour to British films in the Fifties.

For some reason that I cannot rationalise I love Denham Film Studios – probably because as a child we would holiday down in St.Albans and would travel to Windsor on many occasions, always in my Dad’s car,   and we would  pass by these studios. Films were very much of interest to us all at the time and we sort of viewed these studios as a magic place which in a way it was.  Sadly though by the time of our journeys everything was coming to an end there – in fact the very last film was made in the summer of 1951.

The Studios were built in 1936 and the founder Alexander Korda planned to outsize anything Hollywood could offer and he nearly pulled it off.   The Second World War  came at the wrong time for this venture though.

Denham Film Studios – below

Situated on a 165 acre site near to the village of  Denham in Buckinghamshire  it was at the time  the largest facility of its kind in the UK and Europe.    In the picture above you can see behind  the River Colne and to the left the Denham lake.  These areas proved ideal locations for such films as The History of Mr. Polly and Treasure Island.

Something remains of the studios though in that a short ten minute film called A Day at Denham – and a Link is below to enable you to see it:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9y2YGbacZM.

 Ken Annakin directed the very last film made at Denham in the summer of 1951.  In his autobiography he writes ‘ I drove through the gates of Denham Studios, gazing in awe at the four large sound stages which had been built by Sir Alexander Korda, for his great series of British movies from The Private Lives of Henry VIII (Charles Laughton) through The Thief of Baghdad (Conrad Veidt and Sabu) to Things to Come (H.G.Wells).

Two of the stages were over 200 ft long and both would be filled by enormous sets for his film.

During this time Princess Elizabeth our future Queen visited Denham and watched some of the scenes being filmed and was taken round  the outside sets by Walt Disney who came over to England during that summer to oversee the filming.

Alexander Korda’s house in Denham – below

Below is the house in Denham Village which was owned by Alexander Korda and his wife Merle Oberon and which was later purchased  by John Mills and his wife.

The studios were known by various names during their lifetime including London Film Studios, the home of Korda’s London Films  and later the D&P Studios after the merger with Pinewood which is just up the road.

A place that had been a dream factory is now virtually gone except for the Rank factory on  the front.   The vast majority of it was demolished around 1976. That would have been a very sad time for film fans the world over.

Six Days to Bellus ….

Five Days to Bellus ….

Four Days to Bellus …..         and so the tension builds as Bellus is on collision course with the Earth.

I remember this film being released when I was at junior school and recall my fascination with it at the time and maybe even now.   There was some kind of colour strip preview in the press or whatever releases they did and there was a picture of a very large planet – Bellus – coming in to collide with the earth – it certainly scared me at the time.

This was another George Pal special effects film but apparently the budget was so low that they had to use  an enlarged print when the spaceship lands in the new world and it did not look at all realistic. It should have been a good quality matte painting – Oh for a Peter Ellenshaw working on this film – we would have seen something really special and then I think the film could have been a classic.

 When Worlds Collide is a 1951 science fiction film starring Richard Derr  and Barbara Rush.     Here we have  a ninety minute adventure as new star Bellus is discovered, but found to be on a collision course with Earth.  There is though  a slight chance of  avoiding certain  destruction by building a spaceship to journey  to planet Zyra in orbit around Bellus.    Millionaire, Sydney Stanton, played by John Hoyt   funds the escape project and attempts to pull all the strings.  As they all go to board the spaceship  Dr. Cole Hendron,  played by Larry Keating  prevents Stanton along with himself from embarking.   Stanton attempts to walk in a desperate and vain effort to board as the ship blasts off.  When Worlds Collide is filmed in Technicolor.

Above – The New World

See the Trailer to When Worlds Collide on this link below :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VXeT-yHNcFI

Barbara Rush we have already mentioned in a previous post – Harry Black. This though was one of her very first films  and she looked good in it.

Richard Derr

This film gave him perhaps his only starring role but he had acted from the early forties and continued into the eighties initially in film and then a lot of TV. He looks to have appeared in nearly all the US TV series that we used to see such as Charlies Angels, Cannon, The Outer Limits, Streets of San Fransisco, Perry Mason, The Phil Silvers Show, Starsky and Hutch, Barnaby Jones, Dallas, and Star Trek.

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee !

The film was effectively  three television episodes stitched together.   It remains to this day Walt Disney’s most successful television film project.  The Davy Crockett phenonemon sparked a national (and later transatlantic) craze for all things related to the character.

The success of the film prompted Walt Disney to create a prequel entitled Davy Crockett and the River Pirates

Actor Fess Parker  became so identified with the role that in 1964 he starred in a successful television series Danel Boone about another American frontiersman.

Davy Crockett took the world by storm in 1956. All the young lads in England at least ran around in Davy Crockett hats and the song from the film was on the radio all the time.

Above – Picture of the Fess Parker Hotel, Santa Barbara.

Fess Parker was never that comfortable with the role. He didn’t care for horse riding and wearing buckskin made him uncomfortable. He was himself more at home in a lounge suit in the modern day world and was quite sophisticated. However fate sometimes casts you into a different mould and that certainly happened here.  He invested his earnings very shrewdly and purchased a lot of property and land in and around Santa Barbara which was a bit out of the way in those days.  Another actor who had discovered the area had been the wonderful English film actor Ronald Colman who had purchased the San Ysidro Hotel near there and in fact retired and died there in 1958.Fess Parker’s investments really paid off – he did still own the Fess Parker Hotel right down close to the beach there – which is now run by a hotel chain. He bought a farm close by and created a vineyard and became an international supplier and expert on wine.

Fess Parker died of natural causes on March 18, 2010, at his home in Santa Ynez, California, near the Fess Parker Winery.

He was buried with his parents in Santa Barbara Cemetery, in Santa Barbara, California.

Buddy Ebsen

Played Davy Crockett’s sidekick in the series but had originally been a song and dance man – and actually had been cast as the scarecrow and then switched to play the Tin Man by MGM in The Wizard of Oz  but he suffered a paint allergy and had to withdraw from the classic film.

Above – Buddy Ebsen in an earlier western with Rex Allen. 

He later became well known for his role as Jed Clampett in The Beverley Hillbillies and after this he played the title role in the 1970s TV detective series Barnaby Jones. He died in 2003.

Walt Disney

This is someone who  we will be coming back to again and again on this Blog because he in many ways he defined the film industry with his ability to pull out the unexpected and the successful and who could combine so many talents in  order to reach the final product which he instinctively knew that his audience would want.

My own view is that it was his visit to England in 1950 for Treasure Island and then The Story of Robin Hood  that coincided with the company moving forward into very profitable times.  I think the films he made here – particularly those two – proved a very lucky break for him and it then catapulted him into Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea  and Davy Crockett among others.

But it was the two films at Denham Film Studios here in England with its huge area sloping down to the River Colne,  that I am going so far as to say, were THE most important ones he ever made.

Below – Another view of the Fess Parker Hotel, Santa Barbara.

Who could ever forget Doris Day in this film.  The Film is so exuberant, so joyous and so colourful that it cannot help but cheer you up!
Doris Day plays the role of her career as Calamity Jane  the wildcat tomboy of Deadwood City.   The fun starts when Calamity is sent to Chicago to find a vaudeville beauty who will perform at the local bar.     Instead she ends up with the star’s maid, Katie, who decides try to impersonate the star but with less than good results – although things turn out well in the end.

Together the two find fun, love and along the way some wonderful songs.

Above – Front of House Stills from the film. We used to look at these each time we passed the cinema as a sort of taster of what to excpect

My daughters loved this film and even now we watch it on occasions.

There is also Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickock.  I remember Howard Keel came to England to film Floods of Fear in 1958 which was a change from the films we had come to know him for but it was not a box office success although very good in it’s own way.

I hadn’t realised but there was also a low budget film made in 1950 called The Texan meets Calamity Jane.

The Texan meets Calamity Jane 1950 – above

That was the title and it was filmed in TruColor.    In this one the depiction of Calamitiy Jane’s love for the late lamented Hickock and her reluctance to be caught up in a flirtation with lawyer Eliison give the film an air of gravity and romance missing from most B westerns of the era. It starred Evelyn Ankers as Calamity Jane who after this film quit the movies for married life and motherhood  . She was 32- years-old and was married to Richard Denning.    She had the previous year appeared with Lex Barker in Tarzans Magic Fountain which is one of my favourites among the Tarzan movies.

Back to Doris Day – she was one of the most successful films stars of all time really – certainly during the 50s and to a lesser extent the 60s she was around in some great and enjoyable films and was able to play in musicals like this one as well as light comedies with Rock Hudson and even Clark Gable as well as dramatic roles such as The Man Who Knew Too Much AND  a lesser known one called Julie where she was being hunted down by her husband played in sinister form by Louis Jourdan culminating in a tense ending where she has to land an  airliner full of passengers.

The maniacal husband-as-stalker was a new kind of character for films in 1956.
Doris Day plays the role of a terrorized wife trying to escape from the husband who is trying to kill her, and this is such a well-done film that even audiences of today would respond to it.

Doris Day – Julie 1956

The climactic scene in which Doris Day lands the passenger plane with help from the control tower is riveting, because it is supposedly  based on fact.

Whenever I read a review of this film it always seems to be a poor one BUT I thought it was a very good adventure film beautifully filmed in India.

Any  exotic locations such as Africa or India proved a great backcloth for any adventure story of this type and particularly for a colour film in Cinemascope. .   Stewart Granger looked the part in this one – very much in the same mould as Allan Quartermain in King Solomons Mines.  His character in the film  Harry Black is far from infallible –  he is a man who survived WWII – albeit with a badly damaged leg – but is still at war with his personal demons as well as a man-eating tiger.  At times in the film there are flashbacks which are integral to the plot, and the on screen chemistry between Harry (Granger) and Christian (Barbara Rush) is palpable.  Anthony Steel plays Christian’s husband – not a very appealing role for him.

The landscape and wildlife photography is terrific and the movie does a fine job of showing the people of India and their culture.

I particularly enjoyed the depiction of the relationship of Harry and his gun-bearer Bapu (I.S. Johar – another role for him was in North West Frontier as the train driver a year later) – which appeared to be built on mutual respect.  All in all this film is definitely a “must see” for fans of classic action/adventure films.

Stewart Granger and Barbara Rush search for the man-eating tiger – above.

Stewart Granger had by this time had the best years of his film career which took him to Hollywood to star in some big budget films.

Harry Black and the Tiger was produced and financed by John Brabourne who was the Son-In-Law of Earl Mountbatten who had an interest in film making and decided on this one. I do remember on a This is Your Life show featuring the life of Lord Brabourne back in October 1990 that Stewart Granger was one of the main guests – and the family seemed to be very good friends with him – and he re-counted experiences on this film. This was obviously well after the film had been made and in fact this was the first film he did produce.

Anthony Steel  was a British actor best known for his appearances in British war films of the 1950s such asThe Wooden Horse 1950. He was described as the perfect Imperial actor, born out of his time, blue-eyed, square-jawed, clean-cut. As another writer put it, “whenever a chunky dependable hero was required to portray grace under pressure in wartime or the concerns of a game warden in a remote corner of the empire, Steel was sure to be called upon – maybe typecast but at the time successful.    This was the case in Where No Vultures Fly and Harry Black – films which were made at each end of the decade.

Think he was in the original ‘Crossroads’ TV series for a while much later in his career. Also he was in a brilliant episode of Tales of the Unexpected in 1980 with John Mills called ‘Galloping Foxley’. I really liked that one.

Barbara Rush

She played the female lead in this film after her film career got off to a good start in 1951 when she appeared in When Worlds Collide and Black Shield of Falworth and Taza Son of Cochise among many others.

                               Above – When Worlds Collide – Barbara Rush. 

Barbara Rush married actor Jeffrey Hunter in 1950 and had a son, Christopher but they divorced in 1955.

She then married publicist  Warren Cowan in 1959 and their  daughter Claudia  is a journalist with Fox News TV.

My daughter Joanna loved this film when it was shown on British TV in the 80s and we have kept a video copy of it to this day – in fact only this very day did Joanna ask me for a DVD copy  to share with her little girls – I am sure they will love it too.

In a dream sequence Esther Willams as  Katie does an underwater ballet with cartoon characters Tom and Jerry. Must admit I couldn’t see why this sequence was in the film but it was great fun anyway !!!

Dangerous When Wet 1953

Katie Higgins played by Esther Williams  is the  daughter of a dairy farmer. The entire family (Pa, Ma, Suzie, Katie, and Junior) start the day with a brisk song titled ‘I got out of bed on the right side’ and then in for a morning swim. One day, Katie meets traveling salesman Windy Weebe  who is instantly smitten. Weebe sells an elixir that purports to turn the user into a  fit-as-a-fiddle specimen, and upon noticing the entire family’s strength in the water, suggests that they all attempt to swim the English Channel. The family and Weebe head off to England whereupon they learn that the distance to be conquered is 20 miles “as the seagull flies” but with the currents, can be up to 42 miles. Katie is the only one in the family strong enough to attempt this so she begins training with Weebe as her coach.

On a foggy day, Katie, in the water, is separated from Weebe, in a rowboat, and is rescued by a handsome Frenchman,  Andre Lanet played by Fernando Lamas who falls for the Katie (Esther)  and begins trying to woo her. Katie tries to stay focused on her swim but is being pulled in different directions by the two men.

The film ends happily.

Esther Williams.

Williams has been married four times. She met her first husband Leonard Kovner while she was at college but she admitted that after a time she found him very dull and she didn’t need him. They dicorced in 1944

She then married singer/actor  Ben Gage in Nov 1945 and had three children to him. They separated  in 1952 and she said that he was an alcoholic who squandered 10 million dollars of her earnings. Seems a heck of a lot of money for the films she had made up to that time. They eventually divorced in 1959.

Victor and Esther – Million Dollar Mermaid – above.

She  disclosed  in her autobiography  that she had  an affair  with  actor Victor Mature while they were working on Million Dollar Mermaid because she said  that at the time her marriage was in trouble and, feeling unwanted she turned to Mature for love and affection, and he gave her all she wanted.

Earlier than this she had said that Johnny Weissmuller had been fondling round her in some kind of water show they did together – this is all in her autobiography which I have to say stretches the bounds of believability. In his book Tarzan, My Father Johnny’s son is critical of Esther William’s account of this and many of other of her claims.

The most outrageous allegation concerned her liaison with actor Jeff Chandler who she says was a cross dresser something that his friends totally refute.   Jane Russell described this as absolute rubbish.

Above – Jeff Chandler in one of his famous western films

She then married actor Fernando Lamas and they lived together until he died.         She now lives in Beverley Hills with her fourth  husband Edward Bell, whom she married on October 24, 1994.

Her autobigraphy gained much interest mainly because of the bizarre claims she made – as featured above – and it must be regarded more as piece of fiction and outrageous fiction at that – always against stars who were already dead and had no means of denying such preposterous allegations.

To be fair to Esther Williams though she was a very popular film star of the late forties and fifties and her films did well and cinemagoers of the time seemed to love them.     Someone once – I can’t remember – who is quoted as saying  that when she was wet she was a star but dry she wasn’t   – maybe that just goes to show that the studios were able to find enough material to make sure she was always wet  – because she had a very successful  film career.

In all  Esther Williams appeared in more than 25 films.

I have to say also, that  from a personal point of view,    I rather liked Esther Williams.

Herbert Lom – who I have mentioned before in a film featured here earlier ‘Third Man On The Mountain’    has died at the age of 95

 The headlines show him as one of the stars of The Pink Panther but I will recall him for all those roles throughout the fifties like in North West Frontier from 1959 which conicidentally I have just been preparing for a post very shortly.  There were  others –  The Ladykillers ,  Fire Down Below and War and Peace among many.  He was a prolific film actor of the time and a very good one at that.

But my main memory will be of him as Dr. Roger Corder in one of my favourite TV series of all time The Human Jungle from the sixties

Above – Herbert Lom in North West Frontier 1959

The above still from North West Frontier I feel really captures the style of Herbert Lom in this role as Van Liden in a thrilling railway escape through India.

His son Alec  said: “Like many actors, he never wanted to be pigeon-holed in a particular role and, after having played the role of East European gangster in many films, it was a delight to him later in his career to be cast by Pink Panther producer and director Blake Edwards in a comedy role opposite Peter Sellers, and he hugely enjoyed that move.

“He had many funny stories about the antics that he and Peter Sellers got up to on the set. It was a nightmare working with Peter because he was a terrible giggler and, between my father and Peter’s laughter, they ruined dozens and dozens of takes.” 

                                         —————————————-

Something I didn’t know was that in the early 1950s, Herbert Lom had a huge stage success as the King of Siam in the original London production of musical hit The King And I at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane opposite Valerie Hobson. It was the part that had been made famous by Yul Brynner on Broadway who also starred in the film version.