SPECIAL FROM L. FRANK BUNTING, GRAND BEND, ON. 8/9 JULY 2023. We’re supposed to be getting some light rain tonight.. But I’m not worried. I’m safe in our place here, watching TV on a Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Right now I’m into a recording I made of a TCM movie from this past Friday night — the 1937 version of King Solomon’s Mines, with Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young, John Loder, and Anna Lee.

King Solomon’s Mines in the Movies

This 1937 movie of the 1885 novel by Henry Rider Haggard is in black and white. And on this ground alone it cannot compete with the 1950 remake — shot moreover both in brilliant colour and on romantic location in Africa. This 1950 movie also has Stewart Granger playing the role performed by Cedric Hardwicke in 1937, and Deborah Kerr in the part played earlier by John Loder (with a gender change to accommodate the large ambitions of Ms Kerr!).

On the other hand, Paul Robeson (logically enough) had star billing for the important role of Umbopa in 1937. But the African amateur actor Siriaque who strikingly played the role in 1950 apparently remains little known beyond this one movie. And as one critic has complained : “An Oscar nominee for best picture, MGM’s 1950 adaptation of H. Rider Haggard’s adventure novel dazzled audiences with its Technicolor images of African wildlife and exotic natives. However, the film more closely resembles a nature documentary than a work of narrative cinema.”

As best as I can quickly make out for the moment, there have so far been two further movie-like versions of King Solomon’s Mines. The first was a straight-out third movie in 1985, with Richard Chamberlain in the Cedric Hardwicke/Stewart Granger role, and Sharon Stone in yet another variation on the large ambitions of Deborah Kerr. The second was a two-episode 2004 TV series with Patrick Swayze in the traditional male lead, Alison Doody in still another large female lead, and Sidede Onyulo as Umbopa (and Hakeem Kae-Kazim as Twala).

It seems that early 21st century efforts to turn the lead male Rider Haggard character of King Solomon’s Mines and some suitable update of Deborah Kerr 1950 into big mass market movie and TV stars in the global village today have landed on the rocks And this is hardly surprising. Whatever else, Haggard’s altogether benign view of the now fallen British empire on which the sun once never dared to set has become altogether obsolete in the 2020s.

Top 10 Historical movies, early July 2023

In any case, the TCM movies of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s that I most warm to (as a now aging guy born at the end of the Second World War) are the ones that say something directly about American (or as we say in Canada North American) life during the same now vanished decades.

And in present circumstances I can only say that if I’d had absolutely nothing else to do over the past week I would have watched all 10 of my personal Top 10 TCM Movies of The Week That Was, from the mid 1930s to the mid 1950s more or less (with only a limited single stop in the late 1940s along the way) :

(1) Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). Musical. Three chorus girls fight to keep their show going and find rich husbands. Director Mervyn Leroy. Cast Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline Macmahon. (Also Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers, and choreographer Busby Berkeley himself as “Call Boy”.)

(2) Ah, Wilderness (1935). Comedy. In his only comedy, Eugene O’Neill captures the trials of growing up in small-town America. Director Clarence Brown. Cast Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Aline Macmahon.

(3) Gone With the Wind (1939). Epic. Classic tale of Scarlett O’Hara’s battle to save her beloved Tara and find love before, during, and after US Civil War. Director Victor Fleming. Cast No Cast Information Available.

(4) On the Town (1949). Musical. Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York .Director Gene Kelly. Cast Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett (and many more).

(5) Angels in the Outfield (1951). Drama. The short-tempered manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates mends his ways in return for a little … Director Clarence Brown. Cast Paul Douglas, Janet Leigh, Keenan Wynn.

(6) The Naked Spur (1953). Western. A captive outlaw uses psychological tactics to prey on a bounty hunter. Director Anthony Mann. Cast James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan.

(7) Small Town Girl (1953). Musical. A sheriff’s daughter falls for a playboy arrested for speeding. Director Leslie Kardos. Cast Jane Powell, Farley Granger, Ann Miller.

(8) Safari Drums (1953). Adventure. A group of movie makers arrive in Africa to make a film about jungle wildlife. Director Ford Beebe. Cast John[ny] Sheffield, Douglas Kennedy, Barbara Besta.

(9) The Night of the Hunter (1955). Suspense/Mystery. After hearing an about-to-be-hanged murderer’s story about some hidden money he left in … Director Charles Laughton. Cast Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish.

(10) Forbidden Planet (1956). Horror/Science-Fiction. A futuristic version of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” Director Fred Mcleod Wilcox. Cast Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen.

Somehow these people still seem real etc

What most intrigues me, as I spend far too much time watching these (in one sense or another) diverse reflections of a new American culture (that suddenly moved to a central role in the new “world order” after the Second World War) is what somehow seems their ongoing reality even today — long after virtually everyone involved with most of these old movies has gone on to their great reward, in whatever may or may not lie ahead.

The Janet Leigh who appears in both Angels in the Outfield (1951) and The Naked Spur (1953) unhappily passed away on October 3, 2004 in Beverly Hills, California. But in both these movies, and perhaps especially on my 2020s big-screen TV, she still seems to me quite real.

The phenomenon no doubt bears some resemblance to what has long been true of characters in books of fiction — which like Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines often enough go on to become the foundation of great (if also subsequently and rightly politically incorrect) movies. See also eg Gone With the Wind above!

Yet other movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s pointed in what might reasonably be called more progressive directions.

And of course I’d foolishly urge that both my number 1 and number 10 movies on this list, compliments of the enterprise that Ted Turner created and then sold to what is now WarnerMedia in 1996, underline this point.

I actually found Gold Diggers of 1933 a surprising case in point.! As much as I hate sounding like a TV commercial, for me TCM today is delivering a product I value — a pathway to a place where all the people in the 10 historical movies above and far beyond still somehow seem real (and even instructive about how the world today has become what it is!).