X-rated summer

If I remember to do so, I intend to post lots of summer movie ads here for the duration of the season. I'll feature two kinds of summer movies: 1) those about or set in the summer (though may not have been released in a summer month--following the same Hollywood logic that had the Christmas classic Miracle on 34th Street originally released in June); 2) those released in or the near the summer--they may not have seasonal content, but I associate them with summer, like Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies.

First up is Last Summer, a menage-a trois coming-of age melodrama which was both set in and released in summertime. On its initial release, it was rated X (mostly for a brutal sexual assault scene, though it was later trimmed slightly for an R). What follows are: a full color ad for the R version, a New York City ad for its premiere engagement in June, and an for its first-run wide showing (at Christmastime, no less) in Des Moines, Iowa. I tried to find an ad that didn't center on beach breasts, but no luck.

St. Francis' moment in the sun

Brother Sun, Sister Moon, playing in Columbus in June of 1973. The story of St. Francis of Assisi presented with a bit of a flower child vibe (the score is by Donovan), but not overpoweringly so, Not a bad movie. Below is a full-color poster with a shot of Graham Faulkner's nude scene.

Movies on D-Day, part 4

Here's another batch of ads for movies playing across the country on or about D-Day, June 6, 1944: In Shreveport, Louisiana, Erich von Strohiem starred in the B-horror picture The Lady and the Monster, based on the novel Donovan's Brain. It was remade more famously under the novel's title in 1953 with Lew Ayres and Nancy Reagan (known then as Nancy Davis); Uncertain Glory, a wartime thriller, was playing in Tucson, Arizona.
 

 

Waterloo, Iowa had a reissue of Disney's Snow White--oddly paired with a Nazi melodrama, The Yellow Canary.

The appropriately celebratory military musical This is the Army by Irving Berlin was in Provo, Utah, along with what seems to be a lost B-comedy, The Good Fellows.

Move movies playing on D-Day

More movies playing during D-Day week. In Honolulu, a good old-fashioned double feature of The Strange Case of Doctor RX (marketed as a horror movie, but really a crime mystery) and B-western Pride of the Plains with Bob Livingston (who took over from John Wayne the role of Stony Brooke in the Three Mesquiteers movies).

In Los Angeles, The Eve of St. Mark, a war movie which seems to have gone missing in action, and Between Two Worlds, a remake of the 1930 supernatural film Outward Bound; an afterlife movie, a genre which, along with angel movies, really picked up in the post-war years.


In Billings, Montana, the colorful Maria Montez fantasy Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and some B-film double features, including one all-Spanish bill.

In Minneapolis, the war film None Shall Escape and Gaslight, followed by a Gaslight ad from Boston (a little classier than the Midwest got)
 

D-Day week in Ohio

Playing the week of June 6, 1944 in Ohio: Betty Grable in Pin-Up Girl ("Some zing for the boys!") was in Cincinnati.

Dayton had a B-movie double feature: The Lady and the Monster with Erich von Stroheim and the Sherlock Holmes film The Scarlet Claw (set in Canada).

Dayton also had the "adult" crowd covered with Sins of Bali ("Wild virgins see men for the first time!"). This was actually a 1932 movie originally called Virgins of Bali. According to the New York Times review, it's basically a travelogue/documentary that follows a native couple courting and marrying.

The second feature is She-Devil Island, apparently some folderol about men invading an all-female island--it seems to be a lost movie but a fabulous original poster for it follows.

Playing on D-Day in New York City

For the 75th anniversary of D-Day, I'll be posting some ads for movies playing in theaters that week. Today it's New York City with ads from the New York Times. Below is an ad for RKO theaters. Passage to Marseille (with Bogart and some Devil's Island escapees fighting Nazis) and Buffalo Bill with Joel McCrea. Both had musical second features. Note the newsreel featurette "Eve of Invasion" playing with the movies.

Radio City Music Hall was showing The White Cliffs of Dover, with a plotline that encompasses both World Wars, accompanied by a "spectacular" live revue. At the Rivoli was Cecil B. DeMille's The Story of Dr. Wassell about a real-life war hero; the New York Times review says, "Imagine a De Mille war picture in New York on D-day!" Note the reference to the "latest invasion news broadcast from stage"--in a pre-TV, pre-Internet world, there was only radio, newsreels, and these live updates to keep up with the invasion.

Tender Comrade, a teary wartime melodrama with Ginger Rogers, was at the Capitol, with an "all-girl orchestra" providing live entertainment. I'm not sure when live acts quit appearing at movie theaters, but clearly they were still an attraction during the war.

Not all the movies were war-related; also playing first-run were Mr. Skeffington and Make Your Own Bed, and a second-run of Lady in the Dark.

First week of June, 1970: Laurel, Hardy, Fields & Cash

Two interesting ads from the first week of June, 1970, in Columbus. The first, at a local art house, was a Laurel and Hardy compilation film along with some W.C. Fields silents. When I was a college student in the mid-70s I assumed that the classic-movie revival started about 1974 when I became aware of it, but from my local newspaper research, I see that oldies were being revived with some regularity as far back as the mid-60s, probably coinciding with the Batman/camp craze.

The second, Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music, is a tour documentary shot in the late 60s when he was at his commercial peak. It seems to have become a lost (or at least, ignored) movie. Not sure why it was paired with The Christmas Tree in June, but...