Tuesday, July 5: High-Heeled Gumshoe
SEXY! THRILLING! TRAILERS GALORE!
by Melodie Johnson Howe
I love the old black and white movie trailers where they wrote in big script across the screen words such as Daring! Sexy! Brutal! Heart Stopping! Spine Tingling! Then the deep male voice sounding oddly like a Presbyterian minister spoke the words as if the audience couldn’t read.
One of my favorites is the movie Sirocco, starring Humphrey Bogart. The male voice-over, sounding like fire and brimstone, says, “Bogart meets destiny in a low-cut gown”
Wait. Is Bogart wearing a low-cut gown when he meets destiny? No problem! They show his female co-star on the screen in a low-cut dress and we know exactly what they mean. SEXY! TROUBLE! DANGER!
Movie posters were even better than the trailers because the frustrated writers who created them could use longer sentences. In this day and age of tweeting and text you might even consider it prose.
The poster for the B movie “Desperate” starring James Brodie and Audrey Long reads like this:
“TORMENT . . . TENSION . . . TERROR! GUILTLESS TWO . . . HUNTED BY HIGHJACKERS . . . HOUNDED BY THE LAW . . . READY TO KILL TO LIVE!”
I’m sure, Dear Reader, you noted that Hollywood loves alliteration and exclamation points. Sometimes Hollywood liked to kill two birds with one stone by subtly reminding the viewers of the movie star’s previous film or the famous writer’s previous book.
JOHN GARFIELD PUTS BODY AND SOUL INTO FORCE OF EVIL
Blood Red Kisses
White Hot Thrills
Mickey Spillane’s Latest H-Bomb Kiss Me Deadly
With the “Brother Orchid” poster Hollywood even tried to get down with the real folk, usually referred to as the audience. Here they attempted to reach out to those from Brooklyn or parts of New Jersey.
WE’D LIKE YOUSE TO MEET BROTHER ORCHID. (Italics mine)
There is so much on this movie poster that they had to abbreviate the star’s name down to Edw. G. Robinson. (I’m glad I hadn’t yet added Howe to my name when I was acting.)
There were many different posters for the movie “Out of the Past” starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. Maybe Hollywood smelled success. Alas the one I’m showing does not have the any descriptive writing on it. In any event here are some examples from ones that do.
IT’S LIKE LIGHTNING KISSING THUNDER WHEN MITCHUM MAKES LOVE TO A GIRL WITH A GUN.
HIGH-POWERED ROMANCE THAT BEGINS WITH A DOUBLE-CROSS AND ENDS IN DOUBLE-TROUBLE FOR A GUY WITHOUT A PAST AND GIRL WITH TOO MUCH PAST.
SO BLINDED BY LOVE HE COULDN’T SEE MURDER COMING.
They even quoted dialogue from the movie:
“You don’t need a gun to make me say yes!” (I love this.)
“Don’t try to get rid of me for another woman it won’t work.”
There are many old movie posters and all of them are great. The next time you’re watching TCM take note of the trailers and enjoy them. They don’t make them like they used to.
I’ll end with two of my favorite poster quotes from the movie “The Ride To Hangman’s Tree,” starring a very young actress, Melodie Johnson.
HALF DANCER . . . HALF DEVIL . . . SHE DROVE MEN TO THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW.
HER DARING DANCE SET MAN AGAINST MAN AND FRIEND AGAINST FRIEND!
When Bones gets testy with me (rarely happens), I point to my posters just to remind him whom he’s dealing with.
I miss the bodice-ripper, heaving-bosom hype of the old posters.
That’s a cool poster for any writer’s office!
I found The Ride to Hangman’s Tree a couple months ago, on the Internet — Hulu.com, I think. (Netflix doesn’t have it, at the moment at least.) It was fun watching you, Melodie!