The OldMan is Still Alive

Fritz Lang 1959-1970 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 2) /  by Karina Longworth

Fritz Lang from an interview with William Friedkin, 1975

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

In the mid-1930s, Fritz Lang fled Hitler and left a successful film career in Germany behind to come to America. After a 20 year career in Hollywood, Lang went back to a much-changed Germany to make two films that he had first developed in the 1920s, set in India but largely cast with non-Indian performers in brownface. Even Lang’s collaborators were concerned that these films, The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb, were politically incorrect and out-of-date. How did the director behind some of the most influential films ever made end up here, and how can we understand his late movies – and his appearance as himself in Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt – as the culmination of all that came before?

Still from Der Tiger von Eschnapur, 1959, Fritz Lang, Director

Fritz Lang and Jean-Luc Godard

Music:
The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca.  

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

"Temperance” - Eltham House

"Cran Ras” - Vermouth

"Krok” - Simple Machines

"Blue Feather” - Kevin MacLeod

“Borough” - Molerider

“Peaceful Piano” - Musique Libre de Droit Club

“Jat Poure” - The Sweet Hots

“Song at the End of TImes” - Limoncello

“The Maison” - Desjardins

“Cobalt Blue” - Marble Run

“Coquelicot” - Magenta

“El Tajo” - Cholate

“Heather” - Migration

“Mosic” - Textiles

“Vdet” - Fjell

“Gale” - Migration

This episode was written, narrated, edited and produced by Karina Longworth.

Our editor this season is Evan Viola.

Research, production, and social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Fritz Lang in a 1972 interview

Frank Capra 1959-1971 (The Old Man is Still Alive, Part 1) /  by Karina Longworth

Frank Capra Interview | Cinema Showcase (January 30, 1979)

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

The director of It’s a Wonderful Life, who won five Oscars in the 1930s for films that embodied the pre-World War II notion of American exceptionalism, was pushed into semi-retirement by the early 50s by changes in tastes and political priorities. Capra was brought back to the Hollywood director’s chair by Frank Sinatra in the 1960s, but Capra quickly became embittered by an industry that he felt had left him behind, and in 1971 published an autobiography airing grievances about an industry that he believed was “stooping to cheap salacious pornography in a crazy bastardization of a great art to compete for the 'patronage' of deviates and masturbators.”

SHOW NOTES:  

Sources:

Five Came Back by Mark Harris

Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success by Joseph McBride

Fay Wray and Robert Riskin: A Hollywood Memoir by Victoria Riskin

“Profiles: Thinker in Hollywood,” Geoffrey T. Hellman The New Yorker, February 24, 1940

The American Cinema: directors and directions 1929-1968 by Andrew Sarris

“Sinatra, Sellers, Matthau: One Weekend, Fifty Stars!” by Kim Goodrich, American Movie Classics Magazine, July 1998

Hollywood: The Oral History by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson

“Capra Production Packs Plenty of B.O. Appeal; Well-Acted” by Jack Moffitt, Hollywood Reporter, May 19, 1959

“Capra Once Again Shoots For Laughs” by Philip K. Scheuer, LA Times, November 28, 1958

“Return of a Native: Mr. Capra Does it With A Hole in the Head” by Bosley Crowther, NY Times, June 26, 1959

Sinatra: The Chairman by James Kaplan

The Name Above the Title by Frank Capra

“Crusade Forgotten” by Peter Bogdanovich, Frontier, 1959

“Ford, Bette Davis in Upbeat Comedy” by Hedda Hopper, Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1961

“Film Rates Kudos as Uplifting Fare” Hollywood Citizen-News, December 26, 1961

“‘Miracles’ Another Frank Capra Ditto” by Kay Proctor, Los Angeles Examiner, December 26, 1961

“Capra’s Formula for Farce Again Enlivens Movie” by Dick Williams, LA Mirror, December 26, 1961

“Is Sweet Corn of Yore Palatable to Moderns?” by Dick Williams, Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1961

“TradeViews” by Don Carle Gillette, Hollywood Reporter, 11-15-61


Please note: as an Amazon Associate, Karina earns from qualifying purchases. #ad

Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Parker in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head, 1959

Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Parker in Frank Capra’s A Hole in the Head, 1959

Music:
The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca.  

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

"Temperance” - Eltham House

"Au Coin de la Rue” - Marco Raaphorst

"Coquelicot” - Magenta

"House of Grendel” - Lemuel

“True Blue Sky” - Bitters

“Vdet” - Fjell

“Gusty Hollow” - Migration

“Guild Rat” - El Baul

“Base Camp” - K2

“Kalsted” - Lillehammer

“Levanger” - Lillehammer

“Vik Fence Haflak” - The Fence

“Rasteplass” - Oslo

This episode was written, narrated, edited and produced by Karina Longworth.

Our editor this season is Evan Viola.

Research, production, and social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Frank Capra on The Dick Cavett Show in 1972. From Left to Right: Peter Bogdanovich, Dick Cavett, and Frank Capra

Flashback: The African Queen, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn /  by Karina Longworth

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts.or Spotify

This episode was originally released on March 1, 2016. Listen to help prep for the next episode of our new season, The Old Man is Still Alive.

In the late 1940s, as the country was moving to the right and there was pressure on Hollywood to do the same, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart and John Huston all protested HUAC in ways that damaged their public personas and their ability to work in Hollywood. Hepburn’s outspokenness resulted in headlines branding her a "Red" and, allegedly, audiences stoning her films. Bogart and Huston were prominent members of the Committee For the First Amendment, a group of Hollywood stars who came to Washington to support the Hollywood Ten -- and lived to regret it. With their career futures uncertain, the trio collaborated on the most difficult film any of them would ever make, The African Queen.

Show notes:

Here is a list of published sources that the entire season draws from:

The Red and the Blacklist: An Intimate Memoir of a Hollywood Expatriate by Norma Barzman

Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical by Larry Ceplair and Christopher Trumbo

Trumbo: A biography of the Oscar-winning screenwriter who broke the Hollywood blacklist by Bruce Cook

When Hollywood Was Right: How Movie Stars, Studio Moguls, and Big Business Remade American Politics by Donald T. Critchlow

Odd Man Out: A Memoir of the Hollywood Ten by Edward Dmytryk

City of Nets by Otto Friedrich

Hollywood Radical, Or How I Learned to Love the Blacklist by Bernard Gordon

I Said Yes to Everything by Lee Grant

Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War by J. Hoberman

Naming Names by Victor S. Navasky

Sources specific to this episode:

West of Eden by Jean Stein

By Myself and Then Some by Lauren Bacall

Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart by Stefan Kanfer

Kate: The Woman who was Hepburn by William J. Mann

Me: Stories of My Life by Katharine Hepburn

An Open Book by John Huston

John Huston: Courage and Art by Jeffrey Meyers

“As Bogart Sees it Now” Milwaukee Journal, December 3, 1947

“I’m No Communist” by Humphrey Bogart, Photoplay, May 1948

Please note: as an Amazon Associate, Karina earns from qualifying purchases. #ad

Special thanks to our special guest, Rian Johnson, who reprised his recurring role as John Huston.

This episode included excerpts from the following videos:

Episode 1 of Hollywood Fights Back:

The Committee for the First Amendment was an action group formed in September 1947 by actors in support of the Hollywood Ten during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It was founded by screenwriter Philip Dunne, actress Myrna Loy, and film directors John Huston and William Wyler.

Bogart on Episode 2 of Hollywood Fights Back:

The Committee for the First Amendment was an action group formed in September 1947 by actors in support of the Hollywood Ten during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It was founded by screenwriter Philip Dunne, actress Myrna Loy, and film directors John Huston and William Wyler.

Katharine Hepburn’s speech at the May 1947 Henry Wallace rally:

In 1947, Katharine Hepburn got involved in politics when she gave a speech on May 19 during the Henry A. Wallace tour, the Progressive Party's presidential candidate. Afterwards, she was labeled a communist by certain newpapers and accused of attending communist meetings and raising money for them.

Humphrey Bogart’s Oscar acceptance speech:

Humphrey Bogart wins the Oscar for Best Actor for The African Queen at the 24th Academy Awards. Greer Garson presents the award; hosted by Danny Kaye.

This episode was edited by Henry Molofsky, and produced by Karina Longworth with the assistance of Lindsey D. Schoenholtz. Our logo was designed by Teddy Blanks. 

Introducing: The Old Man is Still Alive /  by Karina Longworth

John Ford by his Pool in Bel Air dressed in his Admirals uniform, 1973. Photo by Allan Warren

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

A preview of the new season of You Must Remember This, which covers the late careers of Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks, Vincente Minnelli and ten other directors who began their careers in the silent or early sound eras, and were still making movies in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, in spite of the challenges posed by massive cultural changes and their advanced age. In this mini-episode we’ll discuss the parallels between this history and today, from the tech industry takeover of Hollywood to the late work of Coppola and Scorsese; the interview with George Cukor that inspired the title of this season; the Orson Welles-Peter Bogdanovich-Quentin Tarantino connection that informs the way we think about “old man” movies, and much more.

An older man (Vincente Minelli) and younger woman (Liza Minelli), both in the height of 70s fashion, her in a sort of leisure suit with a scarf tie, and him in a black suit and light tie

VIncente Minnelli with daughter Liza Minnelli, 1978

Music:
The music used in this episode, with the exception of the intro, was sourced from royalty-free music libraries and licensed music collections. The intro includes a clip from the film Casablanca.  

Excerpts from the following songs were used throughout the episode:

"Coquelicot” - Magenta

"Cloud Line” - K4

"Cobalt Blue” - Marble Run

"Bask VX” - Limoncello

This episode was written, narrated, edited and produced by Karina Longworth.

Our editor this season is Evan Viola.

Research, production, and social media assistant: Brendan Whalen.

Logo design: Teddy Blanks.

Frank Capra on Late Night with David Letterman, November 22, 1982