Swim On In, The Art Is Fine

Ice Or Ice-Age Movies, Take Your Pick

I include both these ads to show vary of entertainment put before Washingtonpopulace on 11-18-52. Also there was Billy Eckstine performing live at the National Guard Armory, Loretta Young and Jeff Chandler in Because Of You at the Ontario Theatre, and Van Heflin on stage in The Shrike for two weeks only. Ice Capades or Ice Follies hit seemingly all towns of any size back then. The Capades took fifty years to die, wrapping up in the mid-nineties after a public finally had enough. The DuPont Theatre opened as an art house, maintained that policy for years. To tout "Two Memorable Silent Films" was bold for no-talk being much as smallpox warning in 1952. Critic laud was a given for The Last Laugh and Caligari, each earning reams of praise since the 20's, but how much of common clay came to watch? Arties got by thanks to subscriber types who'd show for whatever they ran, hence "season tickets" that were popular. We could wonder what the prints looked like, a certainty that Caligari for one wouldn't approach amazing Blu-ray we now have. Folks felt refined for watching art flix, like obligatory stop at galleries or a poetry reading. Note The Lady Vanishes on its last day before the silent combo lands. United Artists was distributor for that Hitchcock reissue, and picked up $88K in domestic rentals for their pains, a nice number for a pic confined mostly to sure seaters (but wait, The Lady Vanishes also played our Liberty Theatre that year, so there were some mainstream bookings). The DuPont and similars got things seen that would not have been otherwise, and who knows but what lifelong fans and historians got born as result of being dragged there by friends or family. The Last Laugh is a foreign fave of mine. Shouldn't there be a Blu-Ray out on Region One by now?