Creepy Graveyards

[NeverMore]

I was afraid Mike would think I was being a jerk. In case he didn't make the connection... it was a play on the famous line from 'Gone With the Wind' which took place around the time of the war with the north.

[Pumpkin_Man]

neverMore, I did sort of pick up on that Rhet Butler line from "Gone With the Wind."

Murf, I was not familiar with those other words, but I am familiar with the word "belligerant." I've know quite a few belligerant individuals in my day. Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Anytime!

[VanHelsingStandIn]

You'd be surprised how many people come to Atlanta looking for Tara. They ask where the movie was filmed, and when you say Hollywood, they go bonkers. Tara was never real although in Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell puts it in Jonesboro, Georgia area. Today that is about 20 miles South of Atlanta and close to the airport. People forget that Atlanta sits at the begining of the Appalachian mountain range and the city and surrounding areas northward are quite hilly. Plantations were never found this far north in Georgia because the soil and terrain were not suited for plantation style economics.

[Murfreesboro]

Funny that Mitchell got the geography wrong.

I grew up driving through plantation country several times a year when my mother would drive through the Mississippi Delta on our way up to visit her family in Arkansas.

[Pumpkin_Man]

VanHelsing, there was a scene in "Gone With the Wind" depictign the burnig of Atlanta, so I allways figured that the Tara had to be south of that town, BUT, I also knew that it was totaly ficticious, and that the rolling medows that made up the Tara plantation were actualy a Hollywood studio back lot. In fact, I actualy visited it years ago when I was a pup. It didn't look at all like it did in the movie, because it was used for a whole host of other movies after "Gone With the Wind."

Interesting side note (at least to movie geeks like me) "Gone With the Wind" was among the very first major movie productions to be done using the Technocolor technique of shooting on 3 films simultanously, and required a special technocolor camera to shoot, AND special technocolor projectors to show them, as reversal film was almost unheard of in the movie industry. The projectionists who screened "Gone With the Wind" nad to syncronize three 35mm motion picture prints, a cyan, a megenta and a yellow to gether, being sure that each frame was lined up properly and in synk, AND that all had to be syncronized with a phonograph record for the audio. Ever wonder why professional cinema operators made IBEW Union Wages?

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

That's interesting, Mike. I didn't know all that technical stuff about GWTW.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's the reason why color movies were so few and far between back in the day of GWTW. When it became possible to produce 35mm color prints on one film, then color movies were more common. I think it was the same deal with "The Wizzard of Oz." In fact, Technocolor was so 'nef-fangled' back when that movie was made that they started it out in black & white when Dorothy was in Kansas, and when she arrives in the Land of Oz, it's goes to color. That must have been a NIGHTMARE for the projectionists to synk that up properly, or maybe it was one of the very first movies that was made availableon an actual color print instead of the 3 strip color method.

Mike

[VanHelsingStandIn]

Its hard to believe how far movie making has progressed over the years. Today you can get a camera at Walmart that has more bells and whistles than what they had to make Gone With the Wind.

I'm with you on movies. I'm a fanatic pretty much for all types. We have a few artsie type theaters here that play the more avant garde movies and every so often I'll sneak down and watch one. The last time I did it was to see the movie "Che" with Benecio Del Toro. The movie was 270 minutes long with a 15 minute intermission. Knowing a bit about the real Che and this period of time, I thought it was too pro Che than objective. The real Che was a cold blooded killer. But I'm glad I saw it!

Hey Murf, what part of Arkansas did your family live?

[Murfreesboro]

My mother's family lived in Pine Bluff (about 40-45 miles SE of Little Rock) for generations, starting in the mid-19th century. I don't think anyone of her people is still there since my aunt died in 2007 (cousins have gone elsewhere in the state), but there is an old cemetery there that is filled with generations of my family. I never lived there myself, but we used to go up to Pine Bluff every summer for about 6 weeks, every Christmas, and most Easters. My father was dead and his family scattered all over the US., so my extended family was all in Pine Bluff. I had real roots there.

Oh, now that I think of it, of course I have relatives there still. I have a second cousin & her family, also a whole bunch of folks descended from my mother's aunt, who had 13 children. But I never knew those people very well.

Mike, Gone With the Wind & The Wizard of Oz were both produced the same year, 1939. Film buffs consider that year the pinnacle of Old Hollywood, before WWII came along and changed everything.

My mother lived in southern California in the 1930s as a young woman. She always said it was a totally different world out there back then. Once, when I was in grad school, I was talking to an elderly professor who had taught in CA in the '30s. As I had just returned from a trip out there myself, we were talking about the state. He remarked, "WWII ruined California." I told my mother what he'd said, and she responded, "He's right, it did."

[Pumpkin_Man]

I couldn't say one way or the other whether or not WWII ruined California or not, but I do know that the studio back lots where a lot of those old classic movies were made, are no longer there. Most have been built up by land developers by now. The one I visited, which was back in 1974, didn't look a nything like what I saw in the movies, and I doubt it's even there any more.

So if "The Wizzarf of Oz" was made the same year as GWTW, then that same technocolor methodology had to be used, with the projectionist having to sync 3 strips with a photograph record, AFTER the black & white intro. Well, the way I heard it, is that 1930s were the 'hay day' of movie making, but then I've heard others tall me that silent era movies were the 'hey day,' and others still say that the Bible epics (i.e. "The Ten Comandments" "The Greatest Story Ever Told," and others of it's ilk) were the 'hey day of movies. Every century of the 20th century had it's share of great movie classics. "E.T the Extra Tarresterial" was every bit the classic as was "The Wizzard of Oz." "A Nightmare on Elm Street" was every bit as scary, if not more so, then "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man." I also think "The Passion of the Christ" is at least every bit as good, if not in some ways even better then "The Greatest Story Ever Told." I actualy liked "Ghettysburh" better then "Gone With the Wind." And while the 1931 "Dracula" starring Bela Lubosi will allways be THE archypitical Count Dracula portrayal, there's no denying that "Bram Stokers Dracula" is in it's own right a classic.Anyone remember "A Night To Remember?" It was an old black & white classic Hollywood telling of the sinking of the Titanic. "Titanic," was every bit as much a classic, every bit as god, acting, production and cinematography wise, and actualy a more accurage depictionof the sinking.

Television did NOT, in any way, put movies out of business. On the contrary, it made the movies better because it represented stiff competition for the entertainment market. I think the entire 20th Century was the "hey day" for movies.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, I have seen A Night to Remember, and even read the book on which it was based, many years ago. I prefer it to the more popular Titanic of recent years.

My mother said that southern CA was unique in her youth, that you saw things there you wouldn't see anyplace else on earth at that time. It also wasn't over-run with people. She said that during WWII, many people were stationed there, people from the interior parts of the U.S., who had never been to CA before or even much thought of it. Afterward, many of those people liked it so much they decided to stay. The population explosion changed it.

I think it is fair to say that film, movies, whatever you want to call them, were the predominant art form of the 20th century. Each decade had its own style and technical innovations. And I do think TV changed movies. Those 1950s epics were a direct response to the small screen, a way to entice people to come back to the movie theater to see something they couldn't see at home.

I am not a person who automatically assumes that everything made in the old days was better than today. I think there are great movies and trashy ones made every year, from the beginning. But I do think you can get an insight into what our society was like in the successive decades by watching the movies that were popular over the years.

BTW, I like Gettysburg quite a lot, too, and have certain reservations about GWTW. The latter film holds my interest up through the burning of Atlanta, but after that, it becomes too much of a soap opera for me. To be fair, though, those movies are really not comparable. Gettysburg is historical, while GWTW is more of a romance.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I agree. I probably should have compared "The Red Badge of Courage" to "Gettysburt" instead of GWTW,and you'r right. It's more of a story of romance with the Civil War taking place in the background.

Tv did make the movies what they are today, and a lot of the major studios, such as Universal, Paramount, and Columbia also jumped on the televsion band wagon by producing a lot of the syndicated programs that we all knew and loved back in the day. In fact, most of the popular tv shows were produced by movie companies, not the tv networks themselve.

Mike

[VanHelsingStandIn]

My grandmother lived in Fordyce back in the late 60s and my family and I had flown into Memphis from overseas less than 2 weeks after Martin Luther King had been killed in that city. We rented a car and drove south to Fordyce, having to go through Pine Bluff to get there.

Pine Bluff was and still is home to the historically black U of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. I'll never forget the National Guard troops on every street corner and manning the fire station. It was like we were the only car on the road. In hindsight, it was stupid for us to have done what we did, but I guess even at the age of 8 my father was getting me ready for my time in the army and becoming a cop. In truth, there were no problems while we were there.

These days most of my family that is still alive, live in Little Rock, Hot Springs, Newport, Jonesboro and Searcy. But, it seems like I'm related to just about everyone in northeast Arkansas.

[Murfreesboro]

Oh, we used to vacation every single summer at the Majestic Hotel in Hot Springs. I hear that beautiful old hotel is closed now. Too bad.

The Univ. of AR-PB was historically black, but it has been integrated for a number of years now.

That must have been something, to be in that part of the country so soon after MLK was killed. I was growing up in Jackson, MS, during that time. I remember the event, but it was farther away from me geographically.

Nowadays I have cousins living around Little Rock, as well as Russellville, up in the Ozarks.