Deja View: Disastrous Designs

If you looked at the tale end of my most recent post, then you know I had the glorious opportunity not long ago to see two of my top ten favorite movies on the big screen: The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974.) I thoroughly enjoyed watching them this way (in the case of Poseidon, it was my first time seeing it in a theater.) In fact, I'm still not over Inferno and over the last couple of evenings have been re-immersing myself in all the extras to be found on the Blu-ray. (If you've ever met me - or even if you haven't! - you know that I am totally obsessed with Faye Dunaway in said movie and can hardly believe how much of her footage was cut from the release print, thankfully saved in blurry, cropped form for the 4-hour network TV premiere in 1980.) 

My partner-in-crime for this foray into disaster on the big screen was longtime pal Joe, who did me one better than most anyone I know by once portraying Belle Rosen in "Poseidon! An Upside Down Musical" and bringing down the house with his shenanigans. Note "Nonnie" in the background with a stuffed figure meant to be her brother Teddy...!

Anyway, today, we're going to take a gander at a couple of the set design features of these two classic disaster epics and point out why they might seem familiar to loyal 20th Century Fox moviegoers. 

The extraordinary set for the S.S. Poseidon ballroom was symmetrically designed so that it could be used both before and after the stirring capsizing of the luxury liner. It just needed some materials to be reversed or relocated to the opposing point of the film stage. As you glance at the photo above, do take notice of the gilded panels in the back-left near the Christmas tree.  

Sprinkled throughout the dining salon are various large, gold panels depicting any manner of old-world activity from hunting to harvesting and the offering of said revenue to the gods, be it vegetation, fowl or who knows what else.

Though the ship is the S.S. Poseidon and so far as I know that was a GREEK god, the various etched panels are not!

Though it really only stands out after one closely inspects the artwork, these panels seem less self-contained than a designer might intend and appear more as if they are culled from a different far more elaborate overall scheme. Perhaps one like this...

Here we find one of the elaborate rooms to be found in the palace of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra! You may be aware of the 1963 movie which bore her name? 

I'm hard-pressed (and, in truth, don't exactly have the time) to match up specific bits of these pieces of wall art from film to film, but they were definitely recycled from Cleopatra to Poseidon.  

What I believe was done is that the Poseidon production designers wisely chose portions from the massive montage of etchings that were either just beyond camera range or otherwise less featured than some of the examples seen here. 

With that said, there's no mistaking the presence of the huge gent seen to the right of the door in back, with his bow drawn.  

He and the opposing figure were used for the Poseidon ballroom, but switched sides so that they were oriented to face one another rather than have their backs to each other. 

Once the overturning was complete, these panels were flipped the other way so that they'd be part of the upside-down effect. 

This is, of course, where the water eventually began pouring into the ballroom, drowning everyone who didn't climb upstairs with Gene Hackman's bombastic reverend. 

Thus, regardless of their initial design, they suddenly became topsy-turvy water-bearers to the hapless victims of the capsizing!

By the way, on the subject of deja "view," raise your hand if you knew that the attractive brunette seen here in-between The Rosens is Elizabeth Rogers a close friend and frequent cast member in Irwin Allen projects. She also happens to be (albeit with a totally different look) ----

-- one of the ten ladies selected at random to be rescued by helicopter in The Towering Inferno (1974.) 'Course, that doesn't exactly go according to plan. So the same ten ladies, along with two additions, are supposed to then be the only ones able to descend in the disabled scenic elevator. So conceivably she would be among them. 

However, the elevator takes off and, inexplicably, Rogers is left in the Promenade Room and now is primed to be the first woman to escape the fire with that method! (See her standing at the far left of this grouping.) 

Paul Newman asks who is the first to go and she raises her hand...

...then proceeds to make a whole spectacle out of being placed in the chair and lowered to presumed safety. See? Ya shoulda stayed with the elevator! LOL

For this exercise, Rogers received billing in the credits as "Lady in Buoy" at a time when not everyone in a movie got their name on screen! Rogers is but one of many people who appeared in both films. Some of the staff at The Glass Tower were crew members of the S.S Poseidon and there are many crossover party guests as well. 

But back to the subject at hand, which is set pieces being recycled, not people! Take this gargantuan tiered planter situated in the corner of the Promenade Room near the windows. It's HUGE and we're only seeing a small part of it. (The set was built eleven feet off the ground so that cameras could aim upwards towards the skyscraper's inhabitants and also so that water could drain off without collecting - and potentially drowning someone! - during the big finale.)

In the aforementioned finale, Jack Collins (as the mayor of San Francisco) has tied himself to a post near the planter, but the force of the water coming towards him quickly knocks him from his position. 

Soon he, having already signaled a possible heart issue, finds himself being washed over to the edge of the pit which is holding the planter. 

And he's hurled into the abyss, presumably drowned. (We're not expressly shown this, but William Holden seems to indicate that he was lost and he's never shown again.) This towering plant holder was not dripping with water for the first time, however... 

It can be spied here in 20th Century Fox's 1969 release Hello, Dolly! There, it was part of the eye-popping Harmonia Gardens restaurant set. (In fact, there wasn't just one. There was a set of them.) 

Thus, the "planter" which wound up serving as Mr. Collins' watery memorial headstone had once been a fountain in the vast splendor of a movie released five years prior. 

Who'da thunk that this hefty background piece (understandably being overshadowed by La Streisand during the title number!) would one day find itself on the 135th floor of the world's tallest building!? 

To bring this post fully around 360 degrees, the windows seen behind Dolly and the waitstaff in the prior pic are the same ones used to form the skylight-style fixtures on the "ceiling" of the Poseidon ballroom, one of which was the recipient of the legendary fall by Ernie Orsatti! And with that I'll say goodbye till next time. 

Thanksgiving Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving! You know, in The Underworld, we really don't celebrate in the traditional manner, so when we carve up and serve a turkey, we're not dealing with white or dark meat or wings or legs. We're giving you movies that were real turkeys... at least to some of the people involved with them, if not the public at large. These fifteen pieces are from the delightful book "Hollywood Talks Turkey," which we have offered up once here and then revisited here. But there is still some meat stuck to its bones, so we're digging in AGAIN! Enjoy. And I hope you're holiday is great.

CAROL BURNETT: After my first film, Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (1963), I should have been given the award for "Worst Performance Ever Given in Movies by an Actress." I was confused, bored and I missed the [live] audience. Nothing was spontaneous. If CBS ever shows that turkey on their late show, I'll break my contract.

OLEG CASSINI: Despite the boycott [allegedly begun by Darryl Zanuck who was angry that his star Gene Tierney wed the designer], I did get some free-lance design jobs during this time. The first was one of Gene's films, The Shanghai Gesture (1941.) ... But the film was an overwrought turkey destroyed by the critics, who gave Gene her first bad reviews. ... As a souvenir of the experience, Gene had brought home carved figurines of each character of the film - they had been used in a particularly absurd dinner scene near the end. When the picture opened and bombed, I took the figurines out to the backyard, lined them up along the top of our fence and executed them with a hunting rifle. "How could you do it?," Gene screamed when she learned about the firing squad. "You know I wanted to keep them!" "Those characters deserved to die," I told her. "Now at least we won't be constantly reminded of that dreadful movie."

JOSEPH COTTEN: The Radio City Music Hall haunted me. Somehow, I felt I had been cheated out of a childhood ambition [to have a film open there]. Imagine my delight when, some 40-odd years later, my dream came true. I appeared in Heaven's Gate (1980), which cost over $40,000,000 and was the most expensive picture ever to open in the Radio City Music Hall. It was such a disaster that it closed the Music Hall.

VINCE EDWARDS: Frankly, I was discouraged by the poor previews for Mr. Universe (1951.) I never liked the plot in the first place. But I took it because it spelled opportunity. After I saw the picture, I was convinced I had done the wrong thing. It was a lousy way to make a debut in movies--as a big, dumb, blond kid. That kind of character gets you labeled.

JANE FONDA: Everyone has to start somewhere. But after Tall Story (1960), there was nowhere for me to go but up.

PAUL NEWMAN: I had the privilege of doing the worst motion picture filmed during the fifties--The Silver Chalice (1954.) ... How many other actors have you spoken to who can say with complete objectivity that they were in the worst motion picture made in the fifties--a film that cost $4,500,000? That makes me very special. When they ran The Silver Chalice on Los Angeles television three or four years ago, I took out ads in the newspapers apologizing for what was going to happen on channel nine that night. But it backfired. Everybody wanted to know what I was apologizing for, and the picture ended up with the second or third highest rating of any picture that station had ever shown.

ROSALIND RUSSELL: The first lead I played at Metro--it was forced on me, I went down hollering--was a B movie called The Casino Murder Case (1935), with Paul Lukas. It was so bad, and I was so bad in it, that it gave my maid Hazel ammunition for seasons to come. "If you don't behave," she'd say, "I'm going to tell people about that Casino Murder Case."

DINAH SHORE: Making movies was so boring. You sat around interminably. And I never thought I was photogenic. I thought I looked horrible on the Technicolor screen. To this day, if I hear some of those recordings and see those movies my knees start knocking. Now those monumental successes are played on TV at three o'clock in the morning. I've become and insomniac's nightmare! Anyone who'd stay up to those ungodly hours to see Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick (1952) deserves what he gets.

LEA THOMPSON: The "H" word--that's how I refer to Howard the Duck (1986.) I'd never seen the press go after something like that. I was in such shock. I wasn't prepared. You can say anything about the movie--I'm not defending it--but you have to realize how much work it was, six months, every single day. I was so committed to that duck--I had to fall in love with a mechanical ILM effect, and in order to do that you have to believe. So, yeah, it was really disappointing.

ELIZABETH TAYLOR: The final humiliation was to have to see Cleopatra (1963.) The British Embassy trapped me into it. They requested me to take the Bolshoi Ballet as my guests to a screening of Cleopatra. I couldn't very well say no. When it was over, I raced back to the Dorchester Hotel and just made it to the downstairs lavatory before I vomited. I'm being sued by 20th Century-Fox and one of their complaints is that when somebody asks me what I think of their film, I tell them.

MARLON BRANDO: The Freshman (1990)--it's going to be a flop, but after this, I'm retiring. I'm so fed up. This picture, except for the Canadian crew, was an extremely unpleasant experience. I wish I hadn't finished with a stinker. [Brando went on to further gems such as Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992), The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) and Free Money (1998). his last movie actually being The Score (2001.)]

DIANA DORS: They brought me here as a sex bomb, a supposed threat to Marilyn Monroe. And who did they give me for leading men? George Gobel in I Married a Woman (1958) and Rod Steiger in The Unholy Wife (1957)! I should have had Bill Holden or Cary Grant. I had to carry the whole burden myself, and the pictures fizzled. I was a sex bomb, all right--with the accent on "bomb." [The Unholy Wife did also have Tom Tryon as Dors' lover.]

ROGER MOORE: It's a period in my life I just laugh about now. I remember my biggest part was opposite Lana Turner in a bomb called Diane (1956.) Time said, "Lana Turner as Diane de Poitiers walked on the screen in a clattering of heels and a fluttering of false eyelashes, followed by a lump of English roast beef." I was the English roast beef. The they [MGM] asked me to leave. "Just check your wardrobe and clear out" is the way they put it. I arrived in America on April Fool's Day, 1954. I should have known that meant something.

VICTORIA PRINCIPAL: I think I have an irrational fear of features. I did something called The Naked Ape (1973), which is arguably one of the 10 worst movies ever made. That began such a painful period in my life, and I always connect it to features.

  
And this was my favorite! ~~~~~
 

MARGUERITE CHAPMAN: The Amazing Transparent Man (1960) was filmed in Dallas, Texas, with oil money. They needed a money loser, and they sure got it. It was never publicized. I don't know of any theaters that played it, though a few little fleatraps somewhere may have had a death wish. When I arrived in Dallas, Les Guthrie, our director, had just done three films in a row for these people and told me, "I've never had so much trouble. All I need now is for the motel to burn down." Later that evening...the roof of the motel caught fire and it was spreading to where I was. Quick as a flash, Les rushed in--to save me, I thought. Instead, he grabbed my studio clothes lined up by the drapes and ran out with them. A minute later, James Griffith, one of the actors in the film, hollered in, "I've got to save my guns! I'll be back for you!" ... The motel was saved. ... The odor from the fire was so foul that I asked if I couldn't please be moved to a hotel. So they put me on the 13th floor of a Dallas hotel. I no sooner got settled in than a waiter blithely announced, "Oh, this is the room where a lady jumped to her death from one of the windows"! Everyone who came in said this to me. The day after the picture finished, I called a couple I knew in Fort Worth and pleaded with them to come and get me. "I can't stay in this room a minute more," I said. ... After a while trouble popped up there, too. My friend's husband tried to rape me! ... What do I think of The Amazing Transparent Man? What would you think of The Amazing Transparent Man?! Pukesville! It was my last movie.

Wishing all my Poseidon's Underworld readers a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving!