Award Winners

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Lassie Come Home (1943)

You’ll be surprised at which cast member earned the biggest bucks on this set.
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2. Red River (1948)

Two of this film’s principal stars almost weren’t cast due to fears they wouldn’t get along—which turned out to be true!
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3. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

One of the most popular Westerns ever made—and it could have happened without John Wayne!
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4. The Quiet Man (1952)

A famous actress broke her hand while slapping away her co-star’s advances during the production of this film.
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5. Lili (1953)

Though it predates the age of email, this movie is credited with the first use of a popular emoticon.
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6. The Sand Pebbles (1966)

You’ll never guess what famous movie this director was working on at the same time he made Sand Pebbles.
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7. Death on the Nile (1978)

Sometimes filming on location is a treat … and sometimes, it’s a cramped, sweltering ordeal.
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8. Fail Safe (1964, 2000)

This movie might have been more successful if it hadn’t been for a poorly timed satire with a strikingly similar plot.
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9. True Grit (1969, 2010)

Two famous actresses turned down the role of Mattie Ross in the 1969 adaptation.
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Popular Films

1. Call of the Wild (1935)

You’d never know this story was supposed to be about the dog, thanks to this wildly popular debonair male lead.
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2. And Then There Were None (1945)

Perhaps one of the most copied plot lines of all time, you’d be surprised at which popular TV shows have retold the tale.
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Oscar Winners Inspired by the Post The Saturday Evening Post

© RKO

“Command” by James Warner Bellah was fist published by the Post in June of 1948 and tells the story of Capt. Nathan Brittles, who is forced to evacuate the commanding officer’s wife and their niece, Olivia Dandridge, from the fort after the fall of Custer and the 7th Cavalry. Olivia catches the eyes of two young officers, and when she starts to wear a yellow ribbon in her hair—a sign that she has a beau in the Cavalry—but refuses to reveal who she’s wearing it for, trouble ensues.

The story was adapted for the big screen in 1949 under the name She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Directed by John Ford, the film starred Joanne Dru, John Agar, Harry Carey Jr., and John Wayne as Captain Nathan Brittles. It has become one of the most popular westerns ever made, and on a $1.6 million budget, one of the most expensive. TCM’s Leonard Maltin rated it 3 and a half out of four stars.

It’s also one of Wayne’s most popular westerns, although ironically, Ford only cast John Wayne in the lead after seeing his performance in another western—and another Post original—1948’s Red River. Ribbon won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1950.

She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) The Saturday Evening Post

© Paramount Pictures

Written by author Charles Portis, “True Grit” appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1968 as a three-part serial, was published as a novel in 1969, and then adapted to film in the same year. Starring John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, Robert Duvall as “Lucky” Ned Pepper, Glen Campbell as La Boeuf, and Kim Darby as heroine Mattie Ross, the film garnered a Golden Globe win for Best Motion Picture, two Oscar noms, and one Best Actor win for John Wayne—his only Academy Award.

Sallie Field and Mia Farrow were both considered for the role of Mattie Ross but turned it down, a decision Farrow later called the worst mistake she ever made.

In 2010, the Cohen brothers’ remake, starring Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Matt Damon, and newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, grossed more than $100 million and earned ten Academy Award nominations, but failed to take home an Oscar.

True Grit (1969, 2010) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Widely considered one of Agatha Christie’s best who-dunnits, “The Ten Little Indians” first appeared in the Post on May 20, 1939, and ran as a six-part serial before it was published in book form in 1940.

The murder-mystery tale featuring ten strangers who are slowly picked off, one by one, by a mysterious killer made a gripping story for the big screen. Starring Barry Fitzgerald, Walter Huston, and Louis Hayward, the film adheres to the ending of the Ten Little Indians play rather than the novel, which had a considerably darker ending that audiences disliked, and which Christie re-wrote herself to include a romance and a happier resolution. In fact, only the 1987 Soviet film version kept the novel’s original ending.

The 1945 incarnation is the most true to the book, however, and is typically the most popular film adaptation, earning a four-star rating from Leonard Maltin and Turner Classic Movies.

While none of the seven film versions has ever attracted Academy attention, the story’s plotline has been referenced more than fifteen times in popular media, including episodes of Gilligan’s Island, Golden Girls, Supernatural, and in horror flick Friday the 13th.

And Then There Were None (1945) The Saturday Evening Post

© Distributed by Paramount Pictures

The Post first ran Agatha Christie’s “Death on the Nile” on May 13, 1937, and completed the series in eight parts. In 1978, John Guillermin directed the highly successful film adaptation starring Mia Farrow, Lois Chiles, Bette Davis, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, and Peter Ustinov in the first of his six appearances as the deductive hero, Hercule Poirot. Cybill Shepherd was originally offered the role of the ill-fated Linnet Ridgeway but she turned it down.

To ensue the film’s authenticity and adherence to Christie’s storyline, it was shot on location in Egypt for seven weeks, four weeks entirely on a riverboat steamer. The mid-day heat often rose to more than 130 degrees, halting production until temperatures cooled off. Due to the size of the boat, no one was allowed to have their own dressing room, so all five leading actresses had to share a single room (how that went over, one can only speculate.)

The film was nominated for several awards, including a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film (England), one BAFTA for Best Actor (Ustinov) and two for Best Supporting Actress (Lansbury and Smith), and it won an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Costume Design.

Death on the Nile (1978) The Saturday Evening Post

© Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Drawing on his own experience aboard a Yangtze gunboat in the 1960s, author Richard McKenna set the time of his oriental tale a decade earlier, during the Northern Expedition in China. The three-part story first appeared in the Post in November 1962 and made its film debut in 1966.

Pat Boone had campaigned hard for the role of protagonist Jake Holman, but director Robert Wise’s first choice was Paul Newman. In the end, the role went to Steve McQueen.

Initially slotted for nine weeks of filming, the production took seven months to complete thanks to a series of unfortunate delays, including a capsized camera boat which ruined the soundboard, monsoons in Taipei, an abscessed molar that caused McQueen to fall ill, and rumored “hostage taking” of several cast member passports by the Chinese government until additional taxes were paid from filming. At the studio’s insistence, Wise reluctantly occupied the downtime with a “fill in” project he had originally rejected for being “too saccharine”—1965’s The Sound of Music.

For its troubles, Sand Pebbles was nominated for eight Golden Globes, including a win for Richard Attenborough for Best Supporting Actor, and eight Oscar nods, including Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, and Best Actor—the only Academy Award nomination of Steve McQueen’s career. Wise was said to be so proud of the film that he held annual parties with surviving cast members to commemorate its completion.

The Sand Pebbles (1966) The Saturday Evening Post

© Columbia Pictures

The first film adaptation of Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler’s “Fail-Safe,” which was serialized in the Post in October 1962, was released in 1964 and starred Walter Matthau, Frits Weaver, and Henry Fonda as the American president. While it failed to gain much critical acclaim, the 2000 made-for-TV remake lured several award nominations, including a Golden Globe for Best Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for TV, three Emmy nods, and two Emmy wins.

Set during the Cold War, the remake stared Walter Cronkite, Noah Wyle, Brian Dennehy, George Clooney, and Richard Dreyfuss as the president scrambling to avert World War III when the United States accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on Moscow. Filmed in black and white, the mini series was actually broadcast live to television audiences, a feat since the set took up two sound stages on the Warner Brothers lot. Harvey Keitel was often running between the two stages just to make his cue.

Despite its positive critical reception, the mini series didn’t do so well with audiences, who had seen Columbia Pictures’ Cold War satire, Dr. Strangelove, earlier the same year. With its strikingly similar plot, audiences assumed Fail Safe was equally ridiculous and stayed away.

Fail Safe (1964, 2000) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Hailed as “one of the all-time great family films” by Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin, Lassie Come Home was the first film adaptation of Eric Knight’s story by the same name, which ran in the Post on December 17, 1938.

The first of seven Lassie movies produced by MGM, the film starred Roddy McDowall, Donald Crisp, Dame May Whitty, and a young Elizabeth Taylor, who replaced Maria Flynn in the role of Priscilla. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1944, though it failed to win a statue.

Fans may know that while the Lassie of Knight’s stories was in fact female, the dogs who played her on screen were always male, the first being Pal. For his debut film, Pal earned a salary of $250 a week—more than any of his two-legged cast mates. Every collie that has since been used in a Lassie movie has been a direct descendant of Pal.

Lassie Come Home (1943) The Saturday Evening Post

Starring Mel Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Jean-Pierre Aumont, and Leslie Caron as “Lili,” this admittedly strange musical—about a man who can only express himself through his puppets and a runaway French girl who sees nothing abnormal about talking to them as if they’re real people—was based on Paul Gallico’s short story “The Man Who Hated People,” published by the Post on October 28, 1950.

The movie was nominated for a Golden Globe, two BAFTAs, and six Oscars, including an Academy win for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. It earned a four-star rating from TCM’s Leonard Maltin, and in 2004 The New York Times included Lili in their Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.

Perhaps more accomplished is the fact that the first known appearance of the “smiley” emoticon occurred on March 10, 1953 in an ad for the movie that was placed in the New York Herald Tribune. It read: “Today You’ll laugh :-) You’ll cry :-( You’ll love <3 ‘Lili’.”

Lili (1953) The Saturday Evening Post

© Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Bordon Chase’s “The Chislom Trail” was a six part series that first ran in the Post in December 1946. Brought to the silver screen in 1948 under the name Red River, the movie starred John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Harry Carey. Director Howard Hawks had initially offered the role of Thomas Dunson to Gary Cooper, who turned it down for fear that the character’s ruthless nature would damage his screen image.

The film was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Writing, and was officially preserved by the National Film Registry and the Library of Congress in 1990 for its cultural, historical, and aesthetical significance. In 2008, it ranked fifth on the American Film Institute’s list of the 10 greatest films in the “Western” genre.

Despite its moderate success, fans might never guess at the behind-the-scenes tension between Wayne and Clift that almost prevented the actors from being cast together. The two were polar opposites politically, and despite a rumored pact to avoid all discussion of politics on set, the actors eventually disliked each other so much that they avoided one another when not filming. Co-star Walter Brennan didn’t mesh well with Clift either—so much so that Clift later turned down the role of “Dude” in Rio Bravo to avoid the two actors. The role eventually went to Dean Martin.

Red River (1948) The Saturday Evening Post

©Republic Pictures

“The Quiet Man” originally appeared in the Post on February 11, 1933, and was written by Maurice Walsh.

Director John Ford tapped “River” castmate John Wayne to play Sean Thornton, an Irishman returned home to escape his past who falls in love with Mary Kate Danaher, played by Maureen O’Hara, earning the ire of her ill-tempered brother Will, whose antics to keep the lovers apart form the main plot.

Earning four stars from Leonard Maltin and TCM, it’s a fan favorite for its sweeping shots of the Irish countryside and an intense—although comical—fist fight between two principal characters. Little known is that O’Hara filmed most of the movie with a broken hand. During the wind-swept cottage scene, an indignant Mary Kate slaps Thornton for a brazen kiss, but O’Hara’s hand landed incorrectly against Wayne’s open palm, breaking a bone. Unlike most movies today, Quiet Man was being filmed in sequential order, and O’Hara was unable to wear a cast until after filming had finished.

The film grossed $3.8 million in its first year, and garnered two Golden Globe nominations and seven Oscar nods, including two Academy wins for Best Cinematography and Best Director. It’s even referenced in the 1982 movie E.T., when the eponymous alien discovers the television.

The Quiet Man (1952) The Saturday Evening Post

© United Artists

Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” was first serialized in the Post in 1908. Later published as a novel, it’s now an American classic that has been adapted to film no less than seven times since 1908.

The 1935 adaptation, starring Clark Gable as Jack Thornton, Loretta Young, and Frank Conroy, is widely considered the best adaptation thus far, despite its broad interpretation of London’s original story, and earns a 3.5 out of 4 stars from Turner Classic Movie’s Leonard Maltin. Gable is portrayed as the story’s protagonist, relegating Buck, the sled-dog-turned-St. Bernard, to a minor character who does little more than help Jack win a lucrative bet and serve as the catalyst for a romance between Gable and Young’s characters. Despite its popularity, the movie was never nominated for a single award.

In an ironic twist of life imitating art, Gable and Young had an affair on set, resulting in a hidden pregnancy and the birth of their much-speculated about love child, Judy Lewis, who confirmed the long-standing rumor in a 2004 memoir.

Call of the Wild (1935) The Saturday Evening Post

There are several hundred thousand, perhaps several million, moviegoers of all kinds and flavors in the United State who continue to protest in this late spring of 1929 that they do not like talking pictures and will not have them.

Though grousing and whining about the end of silence in movie theaters reminded Stout of a movie theater he visited as a boy. Each night, a small audience would gather, slump into the seats, and snooze through the night while the projectionist changed reels and showed the same movie over and over. “The only comment from the house was a contented snoring,” Stout said.

[I suspect] the outcry against talking pictures is being led by those patrons who have found the dim cathedral light, the overstuffed upholsteries and the easily ignored entertainment to be the perfect soporific. They resent having their sleep interrupted.

Technicians move a microphone boom closer to Renee Adoree.

A majority of whom, until recently, rarely have had a kind word to say of pictures… [Now they] look upon the least silent celluloid as the Ark of the Covenant about to be profaned by vulgar hands.

Not that long ago, Stout reminded readers, silent movies arrived with images of the world without sound.

When pictures first were shown, audiences felt this lack. Lips moved, traffic flowed, shots were fired, horses galloped, pies were thrown, and the Empire State Express flashed through Tarrytown in a world suddenly become stone deaf.

In the course of years we adjusted our ears to this unnatural silence and, creatures of habit that we are, it is the returning sound that now offends our senses.

Now, Stout declared, American audiences would adapt again.

Freed from the constraints of silent filming, studios began producing lavish musicals.

Here is a prediction:

The silent picture will be as dead as the souvenir teaspoon within a very short time, and none but professional adopters of lost causes will mourn at its tomb…

Talking pictures will produce better entertainment for considerably less money.

When the hisses and the catcalls have subsided, we shall proceed…
 
 
 
 
 

The addition of speech, music, and sound-effects to moving pictures has expanded their entertainment and artistic possibilities beyond anything the most farsighted can foresee today.

Talkies wouldn’t just offer talk, they’d bring along their own musical accompaniment— and not just a theater organ or piano, but full orchestras, famous singers, and choruses.

Millions have never seen a real musical comedy or revue. Such entertainment has been confined for years to the larger cities and played at prices prohibitive to John and Mary. Shortly they will be available at movie prices to any town large enough to support a wired movie house.

In Stout’s experience, the sound quality of movies already surpassed the best theatrical production. In 1927, he had seen “Show Boat” performed onstage at New York’s Ziegfield Theater. Even though he sat in the tenth row, “I distinguished no two consecutive words of Helen Morgan’s song “Bill.” Then he saw a film version of the play.

I again saw Miss Morgan, just as on Sixth Avenue, New York, except that I saw her more clearly… And I heard every word of the lyrics of “Bill” — lyrics very well worth hearing.

She was in New York and I in Salt Lake, but, the illusion being complete, I forgot that at her first note.

The arrival of talkies, Stout continued, would let comedies move beyond the limits of sight gags. And in drama, the ability to speak lines would enable movies actors to add depth to their performances, and touch audiences as never before. A theater manager had recently told Stout,

Mary Brian prepares for her voice test. She was one of the actresses who successfully moved from silents to sound.

“[in silent movies] the story was unimportant because the real drama went on in [the viewers’] own imaginations.

“All they asked was a push to start them off, and the regulation clinch at the end… They identified themselves with the stars.

“The screen reached them only with images; the actors had no more reality than the watcher invested them with.

“But once an actress spoke, the real woman broke through. Her personality reaches out and shakes the audience out of its private dreams. They are forced to take note of character now.”
 
 
 
 

The added dimension of speech, according to this manager, would have a “profound effect on daily life.” Movie-makers would be forced to write intelligent dialogue. And youngsters would stop imitating the shallow characters they’d seen in movies because they would see true personalities in movies.

As a prediction, it contained a large dose of wishful thinking. Sound didn’t force movies to become more intelligent and youngsters didn’t stop mimicking insipid role models they saw in movie melodramas. But the potential for sound pictures was still immense— so immense that Stout himself was tempted into making a rash prediction.

Sound recording was soon moving out of the studio onto elaborate backlot stages like this one for "Hearts in Exile."

 

Very probably the stage —musical, vaudeville and legitimate—oh, yes, legitimate! —will not survive the new competition long.

No pencil can figure how the stage of Shakespeare and his successors can compete with them, even under the highly special conditions of Broadway.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Stout fell into the trap that has swallowed up many other prophets. He believed that the latest innovation in entertainment meant the extinction of any older style.  Radio was supposed to bring the death of newspapers. Television would kill radio. The internet would bury television. E-books will replace books in print. And ‘talkies’ meant the end of live theater.

Americans, however, are hungry for entertainment, and never fully abandon any diversion. In a culture where long-playing records continue to survive amid CDs, no medium ever disappears.

Speaking Up For the Talkies in 1929: ‘Silent Movies Are History’ The Saturday Evening Post