Apparently however, this fail-safe device does not apply to
VHS tapes. I have It’s in
the Bag! (1945) on videocassette, and I was able to make a duplicate DVD
of that with relative ease. This, of course, might be due to many
factors—one being that the tape predates the whole Macrovision process, for example.
I will, however, hang on to this videocassette—unless Artisan or whoever owns
the Republic Pictures catalog releases it on DVD
in the near future. (There are actually two different versions of Bag, one of which presents a sort of
running commentary by star Fred Allen that obliterates most of the film’s
dialogue. I think—although I’m not 100% on this—that I may have taped
this version off of AMC a good many years
back, and it’s currently cooling its heels in “The Urban Attic,” the storage
place for much of my stuff. I’ll be making a pilgrimage there Tuesday
morning to get some VHS tapes to dub off, so if I run across it I’ll check it
out to make sure.)
Today’s dubbing project was a movie that I’ve always enjoyed
watching but for some reason or another gets dismissed a lot in conversations
about film comedies—the 1971 satire Cold Turkey, which I believe is
the only theatrical film (filmed in 1969 and released two years later) directed
by television pioneer Norman Lear. A slimy P.R. man named Merwin Wren
(memorably played by Bob Newhart) creates a campaign designed to put the
tobacco industry in a better light (similar to Alfred Nobel’s peace prize
scheme, which made people conveniently forget that the guy made his fortune in
dynamite and munitions). The cigarette folks will offer $25 million to
any town in America
that can quit smoking for thirty days, and the only taker is a small Iowa
community named Eagle Rock, headed up by the crusading Reverend Clayton Brooks
(Dick Van Dyke). The movie is a minor masterpiece, with its pointed
satire directed at many societal taboos including addiction, religion, the
media, the tobacco industry and small-town America, and many of the familiar
faces from Lear’s television shows are on hand, including Vincent Gardenia,
Barnard Hughes, Graham Jarvis (hilarious as the leader of a John Birch
Society-like organization), Jean Stapleton and Paul Benedict. The
brilliant Bob (Elliott) and Ray (Goulding) are also featured; enjoying one of
their finest film showcases as they send up various personalities in Walter
Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley, Paul Harvey and Arthur Godfrey; the cast also
includes Pippa Scott, Tom Poston, Edward Everett Horton (in his last film
role), Barbara Cason, Sudie Bond, Judith Lowry (who was the feisty Mother
Dexter on the otherwise lackluster Phyllis,
a spin-off of The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
and Helen Page Camp. Cold Turkey also features one of my favorite Randy
Newman songs, “He Gives Us All His Love” during the opening and closing
credits. Why this film hasn’t received its due is still a mystery to
me—although there’s a dog-kicking incident that might put off a few animal
lovers in the audience.
