Mother And Child Reunion.

Today's featured "Swell Dame" character actress is funny gal Helen Broderick:

She was an RKO girl that you'll doubtless recall as one of the brilliant Astaire/Rogers team from "Top Hat" and "Swing Time".  This hand-on-hip wise cracker set and perfected the template that would later be enjoyed by Eve Arden.

What you may not know is that before the pictures found her she had a long and successful career on the New York stage that went all the way back to 1907 as a Ziegfeld girl in the very first Follies.  Not a bad start at all.

Another successful production of Helen's was being the mother of tough guy, Broderick Crawford:

Here's the big surprise though, Mom never wanted Brod to be an actor.  Her idea?  He should take a course in commercial advertising!

But inevitably one night in November of 1937, she found herself trudging the stairs backstage at the Music Box Theater to the same dressing room she had occupied four years earlier in "As Thousands Cheer" to congratulate her son on his career-making performance as Lennie in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice And Men".

Claire Luce and Broderick Crawford, "Of Mice And Men"

They did have a terrific relationship that was often based on practical jokes. When he was cast in his first play, she showed her true feelings about his chosen profession by gifting him with a very tiny tin of stage lip rouge say that she hoped it would last him through his "entire theatrical career."

He found his payback one night, when Helen was at the peak of her career, while sitting in Walter Huston's dressing room.  Broadway legend George M. Cohan walked in and Huston performed introductions.  "This is Helen Broderick's son," he told Cohan. Cohan looked blank. "Helen who?" he said. "Helen Broderick." Cohan still looked blank. "Oh," he said. Crawford left the theater for Western Union and sent his mother a wire: "Get in touch with George M. Cohan immediately. He admires your work. Love, Brod."

Another legend of the Great White Way figured into both their lives.

While trying to smooth out some unruly dialog during the rehearsals for "The Band Wagon", George S. Kaufman looked up on stage and commented distractedly, "Helen your slip is showing." "George," replied Helen, "your show is slipping."

Fast forward five years.  A few weeks into the run of "Mice" Broderick was feeling cocky and bored and started goofing around with his performance.  He couldn't have picked a worse night - Kaufman was in the theater and promptly sent him a telegram backstage: "Am sitting in the back row. Wish you were here. George S. Kaufman."

Adoring son, proud mother

Monkey-ing Around

In the history of Hollywood product, the 1930s remains a favorite of mine.  The breadth of pictures is astonishing:  Delicious, naughty pre-coders like "Female" and "Baby Face", terrific and beautifully made series like "The Thin Man" and "Tarzan", screwball gems like "My Man Godfrey" and "It Happened One Night" and full costume spectacles like "Marie Antoinette" and "Gone With The Wind".

In case you'd like to know, here is a list of Top Ten Worldwide Box Office hits for the decade:

Gone With the Wind (1939)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Frankenstein (1931)

Tom Sawyer (1930)

Ingagi (1931)

Shanghai Express (1932)

Top Hat (1935)

I'm No Angel (1933)

Camille (1936)

Wow....hey...wait a sec...what's that at number six?  In-what-gi?

In the film family ancestory "Ingagi" is sort of like that crazy uncle of yours a few generations back that you'd rather not talk about.  But talk about it we shall, and it goes a little somethin' like this.....

Filmed in 1930 by Congo Pictures, this documentary* depicts a safari* into the Belgian Congo made by Sir Hubert Winstead*, a Briton, and his American counterpart Capt. Daniel Swayne*.  Their quest?  A little known tribe of Ape Worshippers who reportedly offer their tribeswomen as sexual sacrifices to the Apes*.  While enroute, they come upon a fascinating, and heretofore unknown, reptile species called the tortadillo*.  Horrified viewers also watched while a camera man was mauled to death by a wild lion*.

Once arrived on the tribe's land they were shown pygmies and the hairy little children* that were the products of the interspecies couplings*.  At the climax, a nude tribes woman is being carried away by a large ape* and our white heroes kill the beast and save the girl.  A group of other naked women encircle the dead beast in mourning while the cameras cranked away.

The title, Ingagi, is an African word for Gorilla*.

By now, I should think, you're a little curious (and annoyed) by my liberal use of asterisks.  Well, I placed them after each word or statement about the picture that was faked, a lie.  The scam started to unravel at a screening here in Hollywood, when several members of the audience recognized the victimized African girl as an African American girl from Central Casting who did a lot of extra work.

By the time the Hays Office launched a full scale investigation, an embarrassed RKO dropped it's original distribution deal with Gongo Pictures.  The picture was banned from being shown in any major theater chain (a boon for indie houses, tent shows and the like).

What the investigation uncovered was:

* the persons of Winstead and Swayne were unkown to exist.

* this was no documentary.  The African footage had been lifted from an actual 1915 documentary, Lady Mackenzie's "Heart of Africa," and the rest was filmed at the Selig Zoo here in LA.

* there was no such God Of The Apes tribe.

* the 'tortadillo' was actually a turtle with scales, wings and a tail glued on.

* the lion mauling was performed by a trained and doped lion from Seligs Zoo (reportedly the same one used in the MGM logo)

* both the pygmies and the gorilla children were play by local black kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.

* the star gorilla was a guy in a monkey suit.

* the word 'ingangi' is not known to exist in any of the African languages.

Out of gulibility in the beginning and titilated curiosity later, people flocked to see the picture wherever it showed giving it a final estimated gross of over 4 million dollars!

 
One has to wonder though, just how embarrassed RKO was, considering they went with the whole Big-Ape-With-Girl-In-Peril just a couple of years later!