With a name like Juano...

Juano Hernandez may not be a household name, certainly not like that of Sidney Poitier, but Poitier in many ways has benefited from the film career of Juano Hernandez. Born in Puerto Rico, Hernandez moved and grew up in Brazil where he joined the circus at a young age to work as an acrobat. After emigrating to New York City, without a formal education he learned to speak English by studying Shakespeare which with his perfect diction landed him a job as an actor on the radio. He starred in the first all-black radio soap opera, We Love and Learn, which then led to a role in the original 1927 Broadway production of Showboat. The role caught the attention of pioneering black filmmaker, Oscar Micheux who cast Hernandez in his first film role in The Girl from Chicago (1932). By 1949, Hernandez starred in his first mainstream film for MGM as the lead in Intruders in the Dust. The role won him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. Hernandez never took a role that he felt was demeaning or stereotyped. One of my favorite films of his was the 1950 Warner Brothers film, Young Man With A Horn, starring Doris Day, Kirk Douglas and Lauren Bacall. Loosely based on the life of trumpet player, Bix Beiderbecke portrayed by Douglas and renamed Rick Martin in the film, Hernandez portrays Art Hazzard, a jazz trumpeter who practically raises Martin from childhood. A controversial move by Warner Brothers in 1950, Hernandez portrays a strong African male in the role of surrogate father to a white child. I first saw the film as a kid and was instantly drawn to Hernandez's patience and kindness towards the young Martin character. When Douglas grows into a man and has a successful musical career of his own, it is Hernandez who resurfaces later in the film trying to prevent Douglas' spiral downward into alcoholism. Doris Day also shines in one of her first film roles as the wide-eyed band singer who watches Douglas as he slowly throws away his career and marriage with Bacall. It is Bacall's character which is the most confusing in the film. As Douglas' tortured wife, her motivations are unclear, and her jealousies towards Doris Day's character, Jo Jordan are equally fuzzy. A possible lesbian relationship has often been the explanation by film historians, but it remains unspoken on film. Day performs many standards including With A Song In My Heart, all lovingly orchestrated by Ray Heindorf, Max Steiner and performed by Harry James but all are uncredited in the film. Hernandez went on to appear in many films and on tv, and starred along Sidney Poitier in his last film, They Call Me Mr. Tibbs. He would die in his native country later that year, but remains one of the first Black Hispanics to achieve stardom in early Hollywood.

Trivial Pursuits

During the last few years that our store was open, we instituted a weekly trivia question that was much loved by our clientele. The store manager, Mark had found a small dry erase board lying around unused and so he came up with the idea of posting a weekly movie related trivia question. If the customers correctly guessed the answer to the question, they received a free rental coupon. It was a challenge each week to think of something obscure, yet film related to keep the minds of our customers working to win the coveted prize. Well, as always something as fun as our weekly trivia question brought out the worst in a few of our more jaded customers. It soon was obvious that certain customers would answer the question correctly receive their free rental, and then send their wife or kids in another day with the same answer. We tried keeping a list of the customers who answered each week, but they were determined to rip-us-off and found a way to do so. In the end we had to stop the weekly trivia question which was disappointing to many, but I must admit it was funny to see how innocent the weekly perpetrators acted when told their free ride was over. One of my favorite questions we had along the way was ....Name the World War II Purple Heart winner who also won a Peabody award for directing ABC News programs and then went on to be nominated for an Academy Award as an actor and also star in a successful TV series? (If you know the answer feel free to place it in the comment file on this page. I'll post the correct answer some time next week. And no, you do not get a free rental!)

Disaster in the making!

Saturday nights were often the most enjoyable times to work at our video store. To deal with the hustle of customers stocking up on films for the weekend, we would usually run some of our favorite films on the tv sets throughout the store. One of our all-time favorites was the 1972 disaster classic, The Poseidon Adventure. What a cast! Ernest Borgnine, Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Stella Stevens, Jack Albertson, Carol Lynley and of course, Shelley Winters. Based on the novel by Paul Gallico and written for the screen by Stirling Silliphant, The Poseidon Adventure was the top grossing film at the box office in 1972. Audiences flocked to see the all-star cast struggle and argue with each other as they made their way through the capsized ocean liner. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards including a best supporting Oscar nod for Winters. She lost the award to Eileen Heckart (Butterflies are Free), but over thirty years later it is Winters' performance as an overweight Jewish grandmother, that is so fondly remembered. With the success of films like Titanic, and the advent of CGI digital effects it is no wonder that Hollywood decided to crank out another big screen adaptation of Poseidon. In fact two re-makes were made in the last two years, a TV remake starring Steve Guttenberg, and now the Warner Brothers film starring Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas and Richard Dreyfuss. The tv version was almost unbearable to watch, a ripped-from-the-headlines plot capitalizing on post 9/11 terrorism fears, had terrorist bombs responsible for capsizing the ill-fated cruise ship. The big-screen remake fares little better, the digital effects make for a dazzling 4 minute capsizing sequence, but the additional 90 minutes of unmotivated and uninteresting dialogue make the short running-time seem like an eternity. Dreyfuss gives it his best trying to fill his role of a grieving elderly gay man with a few moments of thoughtful insight, but the script fails him as well as the rest of the cast. So many questions linger throughout the film over many of the characters motivations and backgrounds, that it is hard even by the end of the film to remember many of the characters names. It is hard not to compare the re-makes to the original, but when the original is so memorable for it's broadly drawn characters, and often camp-filled dialogue, it is hard not too. One of the reasons the original film works so well, is that by the time the ship turns over the characters are all so broadly drawn and their relationships to each other so well known to the audience, that you can't help but be taken in regardless of the absurdity of the plot. What seems missing from the new film is that conflict of wills that was so prevalent in the original. Borgnine vs. Hackman was the fight you witnessed throughout the struggle to make it out alive, a struggle that is missing in the 2006 version. And despite the big budget and digital effects on hand in the new film, the interiors of the original films ship are much more realistic and convincing. Often in the new Poseidon, sets don't appear to be much different upside down from when they appeared right side up! Re-makes like Poseidon seem to be following a trend in movie making these days. A trend that seeks only to fill seats in movie theaters. Bigger is better in Hollywood. The updated computer wizardry is utilized to re-make the beloved films of the past bigger and better for today's young audiences. Although Wolfgang Petersen is a skilled director and handles most of the action sequence well-enough in the new version, he could have taken a page from Peter Jackson's playbook. When Jackson updated the legendary 1933 classic King Kong much reverence was paid to the original, and great care was taken in presenting its cast along side a mammoth CGI character. In Petersens' case the mammoth ocean liner sank his characters too fast, for what remains for them to discover is just plain dull. While watching this most recent update, somewhere in the back of my head I swear I could hear the faint cries of Shelly Winters yelling soulfully throughout the new ship...."Manny, Manny I'm stuck on this boat!"