Beggars of Life is the story of a teenage girl (Louise Brooks) who kills her stepfather in order to avoid being raped. Disguising herself as a young boy, she escapes with a passing vagrant (Richard Arlen, co-star of the first movie to win the Oscar for best picture, Wings) only to fall into the hands of Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery), the ruthless leader of a "hobo jungle" who wants the girl for himself.
The story by novelist Jim Tully was based on his own experiences riding the rails during a period of unemployment and homelessness. Well before the Depression would acquaint much of this film's audience with the life they were seeing on screen, Tully hoped to demythologize poverty, showing, for example, the brutality of "hobo jungles" and the ruthless treatment of the poor at the hands of arbitrary authorities.
Although the film stars the now-legendary Brooks, the screen really belongs to Wallace Beery. He makes his first appearance during the movie's second act, arriving at the camp singing and carrying a keg of beer on his shoulder (some prints have Beery's growling singing voice on the soundtrack of this otherwise silent movie, others do not).
Beery discovers Brooks, who has disguised herself as a boy, is a fugitive with a $1000 bounty on her head. Beery helps her escape from the others and from the police, but whether it's an act of altruism or pure self-interest becomes the central question of the film.
Even with the lovely Louise Brooks on screen, Beery is the one your eyes are drawn to.
This phenomenon — the supporting performance that makes you forget the rest of the movie — was typical of Beery's career. Admittedly, sometimes he could be a distraction, but here he breathes life into a story that had threatened to grind to a halt.
Co-star Louise Brooks was blunt in her criticism of the movie: "[William Wellman] directed the opening sequence with a sure, dramatic swiftness that the rest of the film lacked."
But of Beery, Brooks said, "His Oklahoma Red is a little masterpiece."
She's right. Beery plays Oklahoma Red as complex man rather than as a stock villain and watching his internal contradictions play out is the main reason to track down this film. It's probably his most overlooked performance in a career that included starring roles in Grand Hotel, Dinner At Eight, Treasure Island and Min And Bill, and Oscar nominations for The Big House and The Champ, the latter a winner for Beery in 1931.
But Brooks was also right about the film overall. The action is repetitive, the acting outside that of Beery and Brooks is amateurish and for a movie inspired by a desire to show what riding the rails was really like, its insights sometimes feel shallow and cliched.
Still, Brooks is very good in the movie and her performance brought her to the attention of German director P.W. Pabst.
The story of a girl from the country who makes it big in Hollywood was a staple of the silent era — see, e.g., A Girl's Folly, Souls for Sale, The Extra Girl, Ella Cinders — so much so that when Marion Davies (with King Vidor directing) spoofed the genre in the 1928 silent comedy Show People, everybody in town was in on the joke.
Look for cameos from just about everybody who was anybody including Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert and even Marion Davies and King Vidor as themselves.
While she is mostly remembered now as the inspiration for the no-talent opera singer in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane — a grossly unfair characterization if that's what Welles really thought of her — Marion Davies was actually a very good comedic actress and this movie was the best showcase of her talent.
In Tod Browning's West Of Zanzibar, Lon Chaney is crippled in a quarrel with his wife's lover (Lionel Barrymore) and takes his revenge on the daughter he believes to be theirs. First he forces her to work in a brothel. Then he arranges for cannibals to burn her alive. Then he really gets mad.
As with most Lon Chaney movies, it starts out weird then rides the twists and turns to a bloody and bizarre conclusion. Like an O. Henry story written by a psychopath.
One of the most enduring tropes of the early sound era is that of the silent film star who finds his career in ruins when his voice proves unsuitable for the new medium. Isn't that what Singin' in the Rain is all about?
More often than not, the tale of an actor's vocal woes was simply a cover story for a studio's own greed, spite or incompetence (see, e.g., Louise Brooks, John Gilbert and Clara Bow, respectively).
But in the case if Russian-born Olga Baclanova, the myth is right on the money.
A native of Moscow, Baclanova was a star of stage and screen in the early days of the Soviet Union, and received the title of Merited Artist of the Russian Federation, the USSR's highest honor for artistic achievement.
In 1925, Baclanova toured the United States with the Moscow Art Theatre then stayed behind to try her luck in Hollywood.
She made a handful of films in the two years before talkies — including a pair of classics (below) — then found herself, thanks to a thick Russian accent, limited to "exotic" parts and B-pictures.
Baclanova abandoned Hollywood for the Broadway stage in 1933 and had at least one big hit, Claudia, which ran for two years. Baclanova returned to Hollywood briefly in 1943 to make a screen version of her Broadway hit and then permanently retired from the movies.
She died in Switzerland in 1974 at the age of 81.
Although her movie career was relatively brief, Baclanova made three classics which have stood the test of time:
The Man Who Laughs is a macabre little love story that begins with a decadent king's order to carve a permanent grin into the face of a boy whose father has been convicted of treason. The boy grows to manhood earning an unhappy but lucrative living as a circus attraction, shunning all human contact but that of the young blind woman who travels with him.
Through a series of twists plotted by the great Victor Hugo, whose novel L'Homme Qui Rit was the basis for this movie, the man (Conrad Veidt in a first-rate performance) finds himself elevated to Britain's House of Lords and ordered against his will to marry a brazen duchess (Baclanova) with a fetish for his ruined face.
Depending on who you believe, either Bill Finger and Batman creator Bob Kane concocted the Joker from a photograph of Veidt in full Man Who Laughs makeup; or illustrator Jerry Robinson conceived the Joker from a playing card and then fleshed out the character based on a photograph of Veidt that Finger provided.
In The Docks Of New York Baclanova plays Lou, an abandoned wife making ends meet as a prostitute in a waterfront bar.
Two of Hollywood's most successful writers, Jules Furthman and John Monk Saunders, wrote this story in the style of Eugene O'Neill, with all the action taking place in one evening and the following morning. A sailor on shore leave (George Bancroft) pulls a suicidal young woman (Betty Compson) out of New York's harbor and over the course of an evening, takes a liking to her and proposes marriage.
It sounds like the stuff of Hollywood fantasy, an early stab at Pretty Woman, say, but everyone involved handles the story soberly and realistically and the movie reminds me more than anything of O'Neill's Anna Christie which would be adapted the following year as a vehicle for Greta Garbo's first talkie.
Baclanova in particular breathes life into what could have been a stock character, playing Lou as a hardened cynic when plying her trade in the dive bar that sees most of the movie's action but as a beaten down survivor in private, defeated and without illusions.
"Do you think he can make you decent by marryin' you?" she asks Compson after hearing of Bancroft's proposal. "Until I got married, I was decent!"
While The Docks Of New York is not as visually interesting as von Sternberg's later work featuring his greatest star, Marlene Dietrich, it's more relatable and moving. Here — before he descended into wretched excess and maybe even madness — von Sternberg was still in touch with the needs and interests of his audience, still trying to tell a story, still trying to connect with real universal human emotions. I think it's possibly the best work of his career.
Finally, you don't want to miss Freaks, which is wildest and most modern of all the horror movies that were released during the early sound era.
Helmed by Tod Browning, who not only directed Dracula but also ten Lon Chaney vehicles, Freaks is a story of exploitation and revenge centering on the lives of those circus performers once described as "sideshow freaks."
In this one, Baclanova plays the cruel circus performer Cleopatra. She seduces and marries the star of a traveling carnival (little person Harry Ealres), hoping to loot his fortune. Things don't work out quite like she planned.
Despite Browning's sensitive treatment of his stars, the combination of sex, horror and forbidden love proved too much for audiences and censors alike, and after a brief release, the film was withdrawn from circulation for more than thirty years.
Admittedly the acting is at times amateurish, but if you like your horror genuinely disturbing, this is a must-see movie. And I don't mean faux disturbing like Hostel or Saw or any of those other slaughterhouse cheesefests with stock characters and recycled plot lines. Freaks is too real to dismiss as playacting and no pose of ironic detachment can shrug off the violence done to the "freaks" and in turn by them. It's a movie that will get under your skin — or anyway, it got under mine.
Let's call this the Great Reconciliation. No, not between the Republicans and the Democrats — as if! Even the Monkey's not that good!
No, this is the reconciliation between what I used to call the Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (read about them here) and my alternate Oscar polls. I stopped working on the former seven or eight years ago as I took up the latter and now the two lists have greatly diverged. So I'm reconciling the two.
Blah blah blah ...
Follow the highlighted links to read about the movie or nominee in question.
1927-28 PICTURE (Drama) winner:Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox) nominees:The Crowd (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Last Command (prod. Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor); Laugh, Clown, Laugh (prod. Herbert Brenon); The Man Who Laughs (prod. Paul Kohner); Wings (prod. Lucien Hubbard)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical) winner:The Jazz Singer (prod. Warner Brothers) nominees:The Cat and the Canary (prod. Paul Kohner); The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin); My Best Girl (prod. Mary Pickford); Speedy (prod. Harold Lloyd); The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
PICTURE (Foreign Language) winner:Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat) (prod. Alexandre Kamenka) nominees:Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grosstadt (Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City) (prod. Karl Freund); Oktyabr (October (Ten Days That Shook The World)) (prod. Sovkino); Spione (Spies) (prod. Erich Pommer)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Charles Chaplin (The Circus) nominees: Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer); Harold Lloyd (Speedy); Albert Préjean (Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat))
ACTRESS (Drama) winner: Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven; Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans and Street Angel) nominees: Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd); Gloria Swanson (Sadie Thompson)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner:Mary Pickford (My Best Girl) nominees: Marion Davies (The Patsy); Norma Shearer (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)
DIRECTOR (Drama) winner:F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) nominees: Paul Leni (The Man Who Laughs); King Vidor (The Crowd); Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command); William A. Wellman (Wings)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical) winner: Charles Chaplin (The Circus) nominees: René Clair (Un chapeau de paille d'Italie a.k.a. An Italian Straw Hat); Paul Leni (The Cat And The Canary); Ernst Lubitsch (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg); Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights); Ted Wilde (Speedy)
SUPPORTING ACTOR (Drama) winner: Lionel Barrymore (Sadie Thompson) nominees: Gary Cooper (Wings); Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Spione); William Powell (The Last Command); Bert Roach (The Crowd)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Drama) winner:Clara Bow (Wings) nominees: Olga Baclanova (The Man Who Laughs); Evelyn Brent (Underworld and The Last Command); Gladys Brockwell (7th Heaven); Mary Philbin (The Man Who Laughs)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical) winner: Eugenie Besserer (The Jazz Singer) nominees: Louise Brooks (A Girl In Every Port); Martha Mattox (The Cat and the Canary); Olga Tschechowa (Un chapeau de paille d'Italie (The Italian Straw Hat))
SCREENPLAY winner: Herman J. Mankiewicz (titles) and John F. Goodrich (writer), from a story by Lajos Biró and Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command) nominees:King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd); Elizabeth Meehan; titles by Joseph Farnham; from a play by David Belasco and Tom Cushing (Laugh, Clown, Laugh); Raoul Walsh; titles by C. Gardner Sullivan; from a story by W. Somerset Maugham (Sadie Thompson)
SPECIAL AWARDS
George Groves (The Jazz Singer) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Toot Toot Tootsie" (The Jazz Singer) (Best Song); Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) (Cinematography); Roy Pomeroy (Wings) (Special Effects)
The most popular movie of 1927 was The Jazz Singer, which introduced synchronized sound to the movies at last. Audiences were thrilled not just to see Al Jolson singing but to hear him singing — and I can't say I blame them.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute, I tell you — you ain't heard nothing yet!" He wasn't kidding.
Even though "Toot Toot Tootsie" had been a hit for Al Jolson a couple of years before, its appearance in The Jazz Singer was a pivotal moment in the history of motion pictures. As co-star May McAvoy put it "In that moment just before 'Toot, Toot, Tootsie,' a miracle occurred. Moving pictures really came alive. To see the expressions on their faces, when Joley spoke to them ... you'd have thought they were listening to the voice of God."
Great moment.
Do you know the movie's story? Jolson plays Jakie Rabinowitz, who defies his father to become a vaudeville performer. While Jolson, now performing as Jack Robin, becomes a huge Broadway success, his father disowns him for defying his insistence that that his son succeed him as cantor at the local synagogue. There's lots of good singing and a tearful reconciliation at the end.
Audiences ate it up.
No doubt modern audiences will squirm as Jolson performs many of his numbers in blackface. This is one instance where I'd recommend you power through it. As film historian Corin Willis wrote:
"Of the more than seventy examples of blackface in early sound film 1927–53 that I have viewed (including the nine blackface appearances Jolson subsequently made), The Jazz Singer is unique in that it is the only film where blackface is central to the narrative development and thematic expression."
Blackface here plays as a metaphor for the mask Jack Robin wears to hide his Jewish heritage. Ironically, by putting on the makeup, Jolson can assimilate into a white Anglo-Saxon society that would otherwise reject him.
Only at the end, however, when he strips off the mask to sing "Kol Nidre" in the synagogue for his father does Jolson again become a complete man — the Jewish son and the jazz singer.
Well, at least that's the theory. Blackface may have been a staple of vaudeville and early Hollywood but it tends to take me out of a movie even as I understand the historical context.
Your mileage may vary.
Some notes of historical interest:
● Vitaphone, Warner Brothers' system for pressing sound onto 16-inch discs, was not the first technique for synchronizing sound and film but it was the first practical technology to do so, generating a sound loud enough for an audience to hear and with a higher fidelity than sound-on-film technologies could produce.
● Contrary to popular belief, the first feature-length film using the Vitaphone process was not The Jazz Singer but a John Barrymore movie, Don Juan, released on August 6, 1926. Don Juan, however, included only a recorded score and sound effects and the film was not enough of a hit to make back the costs of using the Vitaphone process. Only the persistence of producer Adolph Zukor convinced the Warner brothers — Harry and Sam — to make another feature-length sound film.
● The technology used to record The Jazz Singer was so primitive, no sound editing was possible. Al Jolson's songs were recorded and mixed as he performed them and what you saw was what you got. Except for a couple of spontaneous ad-libs — including the immortal line "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet!" spoken by Al Jolson as a bridge between "Dirty Hands, Dirty Face" and "Toot Toot Tootsie" — there's no spoken dialogue in the movie. Technician George Groves is credited with recording the sound.
In his career, Groves received eight Oscar nominations, winning twice, an incredible track record considering he only worked on twenty movies.
● Ironically, despite the enormous success of The Jazz Singer, the Vitaphone disc technology itself proved to be too uneconomical for large-scale use. The studio had to distribute a separate disc with each copy of the movie and each theater needed an operator skilled enough to synch the recording with the film, driving up costs. In addition, because assembling and editing a Vitaphone picture was not just a simple matter of cutting and splicing film, but also of mixing and pressing new recordings, directors and film editors found the technology difficult to use. In 1932, Warner Brothers gave up on the Vitaphone process and instead opted to add sound recordings to optical tracks that were laid over the edge of the film negative.
● Left to the voters, The Jazz Singer probably would have cleaned up at the first Oscars ceremony. But in a smoke-filled backroom, the powers that be figured that handing a bunch of awards to the most popular movie of the year wasn't going to help sell extra tickets — to The Jazz Singer or anything else — so they arbitrarily declared it ineligible and handed its producers an honorary Oscar instead. (Read the story here.)
And last but certainly not least, a bit of personal history involving Al Jolson and my wife Katherine's great-grandmother.
In 1912, on a whim, Katherine's great-grandmother decided she, her daughter and her chauffeur should take the Packard on a cross-country drive from New Jersey to California — a nutty idea, actually.
As recently as 1908, the United States only had some 600 miles of paved road. Conditions weren't much better in 1912.
Perhaps they could find a traveling companion to go with them, someone suggested. The New York Automobile Club hooked them up with a guy named Al Jolson.
Yeah, that Al Jolson.
Katherine's great-grandmother sent her chauffeur to meet this Jolson character who had recently headlined the Winter Garden in Manhattan, New York.
The daughter (Katherine's great-aunt) tells the story:
"Fred went to Jolson's suite where Jolson and a couple of pals were entertaining or being entertained by some girls.
"The next morning, Jolson left before we did. Fred's brief encounters were the only near contact we had with Jolson. He reached Chicago a couple of days ahead of us and reached San Francisco in two weeks while it took us a month!"
The story has a happy ending though — the daughter married the chauffeur!
Billed as the first "all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing" musical, The Broadway Melody is the story of two sisters (Bessie Love, Anita Page, pictured below) who go to New York and fall in love with the same guy (Charles King).
Self-sacrifice follows, set to peppy songs and dance numbers which in addition to the title tune, featured future chestnuts "You Were Meant For Me" and "Give My Regards To Broadway."
Out of necessity, sound man Douglas Shearer invented the concept of the "playback" — pre-recording a song that performers would then dance and lip-synch to — when the choreography on a huge dance number that had already been performed and recorded was deemed unsuitable. Rather than bring the orchestra back to the sound stage, Shearer figured out how to reuse the sound from the previous take, and the cast performed the dance number with its new choreography to a playback of the song.
This technique became the industry standard for decades.
The Broadway Melody was the top grossing movie of 1929 and the first sound film to win the Academy Award for best picture. Its success further cemented sound's commercial future.
So after all that, it's got to be a great movie, right? Uh, no, not even a good one.
The Broadway Melody is quite probably the weakest best picture winner ever, and that's saying something. As musicals go, it did feature the aforementioned classic songs, but the story is trite, the pacing is leaden, and the acting, especially among the supporting cast, is too awful to be believed.
And despite Douglas Shearer's technical innovations, the early sound equipment just wasn't up to the task. Lyrics get muddled, shoes hammer like cannon fire and the rustling of the actresses' dresses drown out the dialogue.
Which is a shame because Anita Page is as cute as a bug's ear! (Read more about her here.)
Today is the 60th anniversary of the network television premiere of the science fiction cult classic, Lost in Space. Can you believe it? Why, only ten years ago it was the 50th anniversary of Lost in Space!
Time flies.
I wrote extensively on the subject then — some eleventy jillion words, by my count — and if you want, you can read every one of them here (and here and here and here — it was in four parts, an epic!).
I won't rehash that mammoth exercise in boomer nostalgia except to say I think Lost in Space was much better than its detractors gave it credit for and its catchphrase "Danger, Will Robinson" is still part of the culture. Why, it even got a laugh on Young Sheldon a while back. Take that Petticoat Junction!
The original is available to stream on Hulu, may be purchased digitally from Amazon-Prime and shows up for free every Saturday night on MeTV. The Blu-Ray box set is pretty nifty, too! (Note: In 2019, the series was digitally remastered in widescreen for DVD. I don't own this set so I can't review it but I am intrigued ...)
But for Pete's sake, you don't want to watch all of it — even Will Robinson isn't that fond of the show.
Instead, allow me to recommend a single season's worth of the best Lost in Space has to offer, my highly subjective list of 24 Grade A to B-plus episodes in the order that they originally aired.
The Reluctant Stowaway — The first episode. Set in the distant future of 1997, the Robinson family and their pilot Don West (Mark Goddard) blastoff on a five-and-a-half year voyage to colonize the Alpha Centauri star system. A saboteur, Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris), is trapped on board and when the mission's environmental control robot goes berserk, the ship becomes hopelessly lost in space!
The Derelict — The Robinson family encounters what appears to be a derelict spaceship in deep space. This episode features the best special effects sequence in the series' history — and maybe anybody's history.
Island in the Sky — Thanks to sabotage at the hands of the villainous Dr. Smith, first John Robinson (Guy Williams) then the Jupiter 2 crash land on an alien world.
There Were Giants in the Earth — As the Robinsons struggle to survive on their new home, they encounter a giant cyclops, mutant snap peas, and a malfunctioning robot hellbent for murder. This episode and the next one rely heavily on re-purposed footage from the unaired pilot.
The Hungry Sea — More challenges face our intrepid band of pioneers including earthquakes, electrical storms, cave-ins and an ocean cruise that makes the Titanic look like The Love Boat. This was the last of what I call the Origin Story Miniseries, five interlocking episodes that established the foundation of the show.
My Friend, Mr. Nobody — A rare episode that centers on Penny (Angela Cartwright), this is a poignant fairy tale about a lonely little girl and her not-so-imaginary imaginary friend. The sort of thing Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone excelled at.
Invaders from the Fifth Dimension — Mouthless, disembodied aliens need a brain to replace a burned-out computer component and notice Will (Billy Mumy) has a pretty good head on his shoulders. So they task Dr. Smith with bringing it to them on a metaphorical plate. The show would recycle this plotline over and over but the first time out, it feels fresh. Plus their spaceship is cooler than anything Star Trek ever served up.
The Sky Is Falling — Paranoia and xenophobia is the order of the day when colonists from another planet arrive on the Robinsons' world. Wait until ICE hears about this!
Wish Upon a Star — Filled with the first season's signature elements, this is a top-notch morality tale about the dangers of getting everything you want. Features wonderfully weird expressionistic cinematography, unexplained alien artifacts, and Dr. Smith's self-absorbed jack-ass-ery.
One of Our Dogs Is Missing — Way back in the series' first episode, June Lockhart's character is introduced as "Dr. Maureen Robinson." Apparently she got her PhD in Space Laundry because aside from baking the occasional chocolate cake, washing clothes is all you ever see her do. This is just about the only episode centered on Maureen, here battling an unseen monster terrorizing the camp. It's not perfect — the men are condescending [jerks] and Dr. Smith has never been sillier — but June Lockhart is one tough cookie.
Attack of the Monster Plants — As daughter Judy, Marta Kristen rarely got a chance to shine but here she showed off a saucy bite as her own evil doppelgänger. Like much of season one, there's a dream-like quality to the mood and cinematography that papers over some of the episode's nuttier flights of fancy.
Return from Outer Space — Will borrows an alien transporter and beams himself to 1997's equivalent of Mayberry RFD. Apparently the internet is down because nobody recognizes Will or believes his story that his family is lost in space. This is probably Bill Mumy's best work on the show and maybe the best thing he did after that Twilight Zone episode where he kept wishing people into the cornfield.
The Keeper (Parts 1 and 2) — The only two-parter during the show's run, this one stars Michael Rennie (The Day the Earth Stood Still) as an intergalactic zookeeper looking for two new specimens for his exhibit — Will and Penny! This was the high watermark of the show's original (serious) concept of a family struggling to survive in a hostile environment. After this, the camp crept in with mixed results.
War of the Robots — The first episode where the Robot crosses over from a mere machine, no matter how clever, into a fully-conscious Turing-Test artificial intelligence. Featuring Forbidden Planet's Robby the Robot. If Will was the show's hero, and Smith its plot-driving irritant, the Robot was its soul.
The Magic Mirror — Penny falls through a magic mirror into a dimension with a population of one — a boy (Bonnie and Clyde's Michael J. Pollard) who promises she'll never have to grow up. A beautiful and bittersweet fairy tale about coming of age on the final frontier.
The Challenge — Kurt Russell plays a young prince from a warrior planet trying to prove to his father (Michael Ansara) that he's worthy of his respect and love. A good story about father-son relationships, plus Guy Williams gets to show off the fencing skills that earned him the title role as Disney's Zorro.
A Change of Space — Will takes a ride in an alien space ship and winds up with the most brilliant mind in the galaxy. And still he has to brush his teeth before bedtime! This is one of those episodes that underscores my contention that not all of the trouble Will found himself in was of Dr. Smith's making.
Follow the Leader — The spirit of a long-dead warrior possesses Professor Robinson and turns this warm, rational man into a vicious, unpredictable bastard. Dark, moody, occasionally terrifying. Pop-culture critic John Kenneth Muir called this episode a parable of "alcoholism in the nuclear family." The last episode of season one, and the last in glorious black-and-white, this was one of the series' very best.
Wreck of the Robot — The only season two episode on my list, here three faceless aliens in bowler hats lust after the Robinson's robot for undisclosed and no-doubt nefarious purposes — I'm guessing as research for Elon Musk's next sex partner. Who knows. But it's a good episode and for once it's not Dr. Smith's scheming that drives the plot.
Condemned of Space — The Robinsons are captured by a prison spaceship and Major West winds up hanging by his thumbs. With Marcel Hillaire as a charming murderer who strangles his victims with a string of pearls.
Visit to a Hostile Planet — The Robinsons finally make it back to Earth only to discover it's 1947 and everyone thinks they're alien invaders. A cross between Star Trek and any given day on Fox News.
The Anti-Matter Man — An experiment gone wrong transports Professor Robinson into a parallel dimension where he meets his own evil self. The scenery is summer stock by way of Dr. Caligari, and Guy Williams (having the most fun as an actor since Zorro) gets to chew on all of it. The best episode of the show's third and final season.
The Great Vegetable Rebellion — Featuring a giant talking carrot played by Stanley Adams (of Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles" fame), this is, in the words of Bill Mumy, "the worst television show in primetime ever made." TV Guide respectfully disagrees, ranking it 76 on its list of the 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. This is either the apotheosis of camp or gloriously awful must-see tv. Don't miss it.
Trivia: Originally, the episode was to co-star a trained llama but it kept biting Jonathan Harris and he refused to work with it. Watching with me one day, the long-suffering Katie-bar-the-door muttered, "This would make more sense with an actual llama!" It was that kind of show.
And check out these episodes on your own time:
Season one — All That Glitters.
Season two — The Prisoners of Space, Trip Through the Robot.
Season three — Flight Into the Future, Space Creature, Target Earth, Time Merchant.
Well, that's it. Gosh, I sure do hope I'm around in ten years to do this all again!
June Lockhart is 100 years old today. And, yep, she's still with us!
A personal favorite of mine, she was in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol, 1944's classic Judy Garland musical Meet Me in St. Louis, played Timmy's mom on Lassie ...
And here's a little known fact — the Allman Brothers, when they were known as the Hour Glass, were the house band at June Lockhart's wild parties in the 1960s!
Katherine and I saw her on stage at the Kennedy Center in Steel Magnolias, 35+ years ago.
But for me, I'll always love her best as Dr. Maureen Robinson on television's Lost in Space. Week-in and week-out, she lived a marginal existence on the raggedy end of the final frontier, cooking dinner, folding space laundry, and fretting on cue as her precocious son Will, the troublesome stowaway Dr. Smith, and a wisecracking Robot stole the show out from under her. All without a discouraging word.
One of the few episodes that featured her was "One of Our Dogs is Missing." Although set in 1997, the show usually ignored the fact that Betty Friedan was already a household name by 1965, but here June Lockhart got to show off her acting chops when Maureen is left in charge of the ship while the men are away. Threats abound and she handles them all with brains, bravery and quiet resolve.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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