OH! OH! CLEOPATRA (1931) sound AND film

[Rob Farr]

The final Wheeler & Woolsey holy grail. Thanks Gino Cuddy, Joseph Blough, and the British Film Institute. https://youtu.be/s4kbRLpNV_M

[Ed Watz]

Here I am, big Wheeler & Woolsey advocate and all that, just having watched OH! OH! CLEOPATRA, and my question is: does anyone know whether Tom Wilson had a glass eye? His eyes often appear slightly crooked in his major silent roles but the bit he performs with them here (if this is indeed Tom Wilson) looks mighty weird.

[Rob Farr]

He may just have been wall-eyed. But Ed, I'm interested in what you thought of it? Even considering that Masquers' shorts had to cram in as many out-of-work comics as possible, to my eyes its prime pre-Code W&W.

[Steve Rydzewski]

Hello Film Friends! Hope all of you are well.

Joseph Blough has been posting some great and RARE stuff over the last couple years!

Ed! I tried to post an article from January 5, 1918 titled: TOM WILSON LOSES EYE IN ACCIDENT
But will have to give you some of the text instead. In part:
(Wilson) "met with an accident while hunting with friends last week, in which a shot penetrated his eyeball and made necessary an operation in which the eye was removed... Wilson was recently loaned by the Lehrman company to go with the Mary Pickford company to appear in one subject, and it was while working at the Pickford film that he was injured."

That film was possibly 'Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley"

- SteveR

[Ed Watz]

Rob Farr wrote:

He may just have been wall-eyed. But Ed, I'm interested in what you thought of it? Even considering that Masquers' shorts had to cram in as many out-of-work comics as possible, to my eyes its prime pre-Code W&W.

I'm with you Rob, this is top-notch Wheeler & Woolsey all the way. The dialogue is unrelentingly risqué, Dorothy Burgess is a smokin' Cleo, Bert and Bob's performances are nigh-perfect, and all the gags are laugh-out-loud funny. I like that the team reprised their face-slapping bit from RIO RITA but also that they varied the actual comic business. The POV chase scenes in New York City looked like stock footage from SPEEDY.

Variety was dead wrong when they reviewed the short and claimed that "some of the chariot racing sequence which is strong-armed into the picture could be cut to advantage." I thought the entire chariot race was hysterical, especially when The Boys were racing against that steam locomotive. Note that the Special Effects were achieved through The Dunning Process, not rear screen projection. Dunning Process required a great deal of effort to matte the foreground negative onto a background negative. Rear screen projection wouldn't come into general use until the following year.

It's always great to see the fellow Masquers, what a terrific pan of those character actors and comics at the banquet dais! Bobby Vernon appears in so many of the early Masquers shorts, I'm surprised they missed including him in the credits. Comedy writers Eddie Welch and Lew Lipton were frequent contributors to the early Wheeler & Woolsey features so they knew the kind of racy material to furnish here.

Given how incredibly rare this film is, I'm not sure if Leonard Maltin actually saw it or was relying on someone's vague memory when he wrote in The Great Movie Shorts that Max Davidson was "particularly funny as one of the royal musicians." Max doesn't really do anything interesting in his fleeting shot, but it's Maurice Black with the giant lyre who gets a laugh.

Back at Cinecon in 1979 an attendee from Connecticut said he had a 16mm print of CLEO but that was the last known sighting for many years. I believe that same print did show up at a much later Cinevent but I could be mistaken.

Thanks to all involved for bringing back CLEO, and on YouTube, no less!

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[Ed Watz]

Hello Film Friends! Hope all of you are well.

Joseph Blough has been posting some great and RARE stuff over the last couple years!

Ed! I tried to post an article from January 5, 1918 titled: TOM WILSON LOSES EYE IN ACCIDENT
But will have to give you some of the text instead. In part:
(Wilson) "met with an accident while hunting with friends last week, in which a shot penetrated his eyeball and made necessary an operation in which the eye was removed... Wilson was recently loaned by the Lehrman company to go with the Mary Pickford company to appear in one subject, and it was while working at the Pickford film that he was injured."

That film was possibly 'Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley"

- SteveR

Steve, thank you so much for this information about Tom Wilson! Poor guy, at least he was able to keep his sense of humor about this awful misfortune in his bit as "August The Third" in CLEO. Hope all is well with you!

[Rob Farr]

I haven't seen Armilly in quite some time. Is there a scene with a slingshot or a gun being fired in Tom's direction?

[Louie Despres]

I was very fortunate to see this years ago as Jerry Haber had the 16mm print and he'd run it for you, if you went to his house for a visit. He wouldn't loan it out to have prints made but apparently there is a VHS of it floating around somewhere. Jerry did allow Richard Finegan to make an audio recording of the soundtrack, which was partially used for this YT video. The original 16 still exists in another collection, probably never to see the light of day until that collector passes.

The funny thing, to me anyway, is that for years this was known to exist at the BFI in incomplete form. I guess it only took some elbow grease, discussion with the right person, and some green to make it available to everyone.

[Ed Watz]

I haven't seen Armilly in quite some time. Is there a scene with a slingshot or a gun being fired in Tom's direction?

Not that I recall, Rob - but if memory serves Tom Wilson wears an eyepatch over his right eye in AMARILLY - something I had previously attributed to his "tough guy" role in the movie.

Wasn't AMARILLY OF CLOTHESLINE ALLEY also the film Eric Campbell was appearing in when he died in an automobile accident?