Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Various Characters from "Shake, Mr. Shakespeare"

“Shake, Mr. Shakespeare.” Dir. Roy Mack. Perf. Carolyn Marsh, Allan Mann, William Hall, and John Bohn. 1934. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Dir. William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt. Perf. Mickey Rooney, James Cagney, Verree Teasdale, Olivia de Havilland, and Hugh Herbert. 1935. DVD. Warner Video, 2007.

In our last post, we saw a dozen or fifteen dancing Hamlets from the short film “Shake, Mr. Shakespeare.” In this installment, we turn to the way the short film presents Falstaff, Richard III, Romeo, Julius Caesar, and Macbeth. [Note: Othello is there, too, but the presentation of his character strikes me as racist, so I've not-so-silently excerpted his section.]

In this clip, each character get a quick rhymed couplet to indicate his desire or fitness for Hollywood performances:


For those of you who would like to have the lyrics as you watch, here they are!
Falstaff:
As Falstaff, I made them laugh for centuries. Ho, ho!
But with my art in Guy Kibbee parts—Forsooth, I'll steal the show.

Richard III:
As Richard the Third, I must be heard. I'm Hollywood-bound, of course.
My talent leans to those Wild West scenes; my kingdom for a horse.

Romeo:
Romeo in Hollywood! What sublimity!
Does anyone know if Miss Garbo has a balcony?

Caesar:
Who art thou, Durante? Thou knave with monsterous beezer.
Thy flickering is ended—Hachachacha!—make way for Julius Caesar.

Macbeth:
Macbeth will make them cringe in parts so dark and eerie.
I will make them all forget that weakling, Wallace Beery.

Bardfilm is ineluctably indebted to a reader called "mepalmer" for providing explanations to some unintelligible (to me, though not to mepalmer) lyrics. The comment (see below) clarified both what Falstaff sings and what Caesar sings. Before I read the comment, I thought Falstaff was singing "But with my art in 'Guy, give me' part," but I couldn't make reason or rhyme out of that at all. "With my art in comedy parts" would have made a lot of sense, but he's clearly (or unclearly?) not singing that.

Thank you, once again, mepalmer!


Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

    

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

So Many Dancing Hamlets!

“Shake, Mr. Shakespeare.” Dir. Roy Mack. Perf. Carolyn Marsh, Allan Mann, William Hall, and John Bohn. 1934. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Dir. William Dieterle and Max Reinhardt. Perf. Mickey Rooney, James Cagney, Verree Teasdale, Olivia de Havilland, and Hugh Herbert. 1935. DVD. Warner Video, 2007.

The short film “Shake, Mr. Shakespeare” was made in 1934 and appears as a special feature on the DVD of the 1935 A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is, to draw a quote out of the air completely at random, "the silliest stuff that ever I heard" (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, V.i.210).

Yet it has its charm. The plot centers on an overworked Assistant Production Manager who, according to the memo in the image above, is asked by a production manager to "read all Shakespeare's plays tonight and let me know tomorrow morning what they are all about."

After an attempt, the Assistant Production Manager falls asleep and has a dream (does this sound a bit too much like Piers Plowman?)—Shakespeare's characters walk out of the books he has scattered over his desk and declare their happiness at being bound for Hollywood.

The following is the Hamlet segment. When Hamlet realizes that the silver screen desires multitudes of Hamlets, he snaps his fingers and a dozen or so female Hamlets (is this a place to study the long history of women appearing in the role of Hamlet?) appear behind him (all in recognizable Hamlet garb) for a big dance number:


It really is some of the silliest stuff produced.

And it was produced in a period noted for its silliness.

There's some interest, I suppose, in the way Yorick's skull has become part and parcel of the costume of Hamlet—if you want to suggest Hamlet, you need a black outfit, a dagger (optional, but helpful), and a skull.

Perhaps it's a bit reductive, but it does make for some amusing stage business.

In any case, this short film, however ridiculous it might be, is not quite as silly as the biographical shorts made in the period—about which, more anon!

Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

    

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Shakespeare was from Texas

Dark Command. Dir. Raoul Walsh. Perf. John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Walter Pidgeon, Roy Rogers, and George “Gabby” Hayes. 1940. DVD. Maple Pictures, 2007.

John Wayne's Character in Dark Command suggests that he was, at least.

In the film, the John Wayne Character, Bob Seton (No relation to Macbeth's Bob Seyton), displays an almost Lyle-Lovett-like devotion to his home state of Texas. And he continually spouts aphorisms, prefacing them with "We got a saying down in Texas—" nearly every time.

At the end of the film, Lawrence, Kansas, is burning, but the good guys (I hope this isn't a spoiler) have pulled through, and the male and female lead have (Warning! Spoiler approaching!) found love.

Shakespeare comes in just once—in the last thirty seconds of the film. The female lead's younger brother, Fletcher "Fletch" McCloud (yes, that is Roy Rogers), who is recovering from his injuries, provides a quote from—as well as the title of—All's Well that Ends Well. For Bob Seton, it's irresistible:


"Shakespeare, huh? Well, he musta come from Texas. We been saying that down there for years."

And, with that, the western comes to a close. The sun never sets on Shakespeare—except when the cowboys are riding off into that sunset.

Note: Scott Simmon guided me to this Shakespearean / Western moment. He uses part of the quote from the John Wayne character as the epigraph for the chapter on Shakespeare in Western Films in The Invention of the Western Film: A Cultural History of the Genre's First Half-Century.

Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

    
Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
All material original to this blog is copyrighted: Copyright 2008-2039 (and into perpetuity thereafter) by Keith Jones.

The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest