Just Imagine (1930) Directed by David Butler.

El Brendel, Maureen
O'Sullivan, John Garrick, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson (102 min.)
http://www.moviediva.com/MD_root/reviewpages/MDJustImagine.htm
Buildings 250 stories high!Traffic on nine levelsRockets that shoot from star to
starAirplanes that land on the roofs of buildingsA whole meal in a capsule that
can be swallowed in one gulpNo--this isn't a Jules Verne dream induced by a welsh
rarebitIt's New York in 1980, as foretold in the new Fox picture, "Just Imagine!"A
picture of the great set showing the metropolis fifty years hence--the most intricate
setting ever created for picturesit took 205 engineers and craftsmen five months to
build it, at a cost of $168,000it was designed after longer conferences with noted
artists and scientists who dare peer far into the futureThe sets stands in a balloon
hangar at a former Army flying field twenty miles from HollywoodSeventy-four
5,000,000 candle power sun arcs light the set from aboveFifteen thousand electric
light bulbs illuminate its buildings and streetsDeSylva, Brown and Henderson, the
trio responsible for "Sunny Side Up" conceived "Just Imagine!"The leads are
played by John Garrick, Maureen O'Sullivan, El Brendel and Kenneth ThomsonIn
1980--people have serial numbers, not names, marriages are all arranged by the
courtsProhibition is still an issueMen's clothes have but one pocket. That's on the
hipbut there's still love! Don't laugh! Our grandaddies laughed at the thought that
men might fly! Fantastic? Certainly--but stranger things have come to pass than
those which have been portrayed in this dream of New York of A.D. 1980! --(From
Nov 1930 Photoplay, reprinted in The Talkies, by Richard Griffith.)
What did 1980 look like from the depths of the Depression? Why, it looked like a
musical, perhaps the only science fiction musical ever made. Zapped by a bolt of golf
course lightning in 1930, El Brendel wakes up 50 years later. People have numbers
instead of names, babies are born from vending machines, but Prohibition has NOT
been repealed. Teen-aged Maureen O'Sullivan stars, not yet Tarzan's Jane.
Fox, before it became 20th Century Fox (and now Fox Entertainment) was more
careless with their film library than any other studio. Many late silents and early
talkies were believed junked, until a careful inventory revealed at least some of these
treasures mislabeled and misfiled in the vault. Enticing still photos made Just Imagine
among the most hotly sought titles. It resurfaced around 1970, just a few years before
Single 0, the film's hero would have reawakened.
DeSylva, Brown and Henderson composed such standards as "Sweet Georgia Brown"
and were billed by Fox as "the three wise men of entertainment." After a smash hit
with Sunny Side Up, they turned their talents to a truly nutty concept, a musical
version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Just Imagine's futuristic city, designed in miniature

in a dirigible hangar 20 miles outside Hollywood, was even more elaborate and
expensive than the one Lang built in Berlin, costing Fox a reputed quarter million
Depression dollars. The art director, Stephen Goosson and the mechanical effects
director Ralph Hammeras "drew inspiration from a number of sources: from the
proposals of New York architect Harvey Wiley Corbett, from the visionary drawings
of the Italian Futurist Antonio Sant'Elia, and especially from the work of the
architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss, whose book Metropolis of Tomorrow, published
the same year as the miniature's design, reiterated the vision of widely spaced towers
rising from lower buildings, all linked by multi-level walkways and bridges (Sanders).
Fifteen thousand tiny light bulbs brought this futuristic city to glittering life. Celluloid
Skyline also points out that "where Metropolis seems inspired by lower Manhattan,
with its angular streets and closely packed towers, Just Imagine's city suggests
midtown, its layout of buildings and avenues more regular and widely spaced." It's
incredible to think that in 1930, except for Chicago, New York was the only
skyscraper city on earth.
Goosson and Hammeras are credited with the first completely successful use of a rear
projection system in this film and received an Academy Award nomination for Best
Interior Decorationthe only category remotely describing their accomplishments.
Kenneth Strickfaden's Art Deco lab was also praised, although his crackling electrical
masterpiece was still to come in Frankenstein (to be reused by Mel Brooks in Young
Frankenstein). Just Imagine was a flop when it was first released, partly because the
first cycle of musicals which began in 1927 with The Jazz Singer was coming to an
end. But, Fox made money for years selling stock footage of the futuristic sets,
recycled in the 1939 Buck Rogers serial and many others.

Maureen O'Sullivan and John Garrick

"The Martian costumes could start new fashion trends if this got widely shown.
Lightning bolts, spikes and metallic print bikinis mixed with ridiculous wigs and eye
make-up are part of the wackiest outfits in film history." (Michael Weldon). The
costume design team was Sophie Wachner (active 1923-31), Alice O'Neill (who was
Wachner's assistant from 1929-30; this was her last film) and Dolly Tree. This was
Tree's first film, during her career she worked mostly at MGM, doing a combination
of A and B pictures, including The Thin Man, David Copperfield and the MGM Marx
Brothers movies. The Queen of Mars (and her evil twin) played by Joyzelle, wear an
outfit promoted as the first--and no doubt only--movie costume made entirely of mica.
She looks like a giant lion fish, and her spikey dress makes a satifying rattling sound
as she flounces around. The men's double breasted lapel-less suits, buttoned on the
hip, reinforce how little male dress has changed over the century. And, sadly, in the
real 1980, LN would not be lounging in sexy fluttering chiffon, but in a jogging suit.

Pre-Code humor: "She's not the Queen, HE is!" Joyzelle in her mica costume.

The hero is played by Swedish dialect comedian El Brendel. His humor may be
puzzling to the modern-day viewer but he was wildly popular in 1930. Motion Picture
magazine had just called him "the most irresistible man on the screen." Early 20th
century comedians were fascinated with the American melting pot experience. Many
of them were first generation immigrants like their audiences, and a variety of comic
accents like Chico Marx's "Italian" accent were common. Brendel was from
vaudeville, where a performer could tour the country for years with the same routine,
but soon discovered that movies ate up a lifetime of jokes in a few months (and he
does one of his routines here). He made some silent films, he was a comedy mechanic
in Wings, but under contract to Fox seemed to appeared in many of their early talkies,
even supporting John Wayne in his first crack at stardom in The Big Trail.

Richard Barrios in his marvelous book, A Song in the Dark, despises Brendel, whose
jokes, he asserts, "wore out their welcome about the time of Charlemagne." Brendel
doesn't bother me, perhaps because I don't have to watch a lot of his films in quick
succession. Those audience members who have been coming to my screenings know
how interested I am in comedy archeology and the mystery of topical humor. A little
bit of vaudeville never hurt anyone, and many current comedians will be considered
unfunny 70 years from now. Leonard Maltin appears to have a soft spot for Brendel,
but deplores the 2 reel Vitaphone comedies that succeeded his featured status, saying
he devolved from a simpleton to an idiot. He fell further down the ladder into a series
of Columbia shorts, where he subbed for the Three Stooges when the Three Stooges
were unavailable, although one of his shorts "The Blitz Kiss" was nominated for an
Academy Award in 1945. Joke deconstruction: the cars all have Jewish model names
as a dig at Henry Ford, a notorious anti-Semite.

"Maureen O'Sullivan and Tommy Clifford, two little shamrocks from the land of Erin
who were brought to this country to play with John McCormack in his first talkie."

As far as I can tell, this film has never been on VHS or DVD, although one of my
moviediva correspondents informed me that it appears occasionally on the Fox Movie
Channel. I saw it for the first time with my audience. There is no other movie like
Just Imagine and the crowd loved it for its wacky humor (intentional and otherwise)
and boggling bizarrity without judging its faults too harshly. It's hampered a bit by the
glacial pace of those early talkies, and the straight leads (Garrick and O'Sullivan) are
pretty stiff. But the comedy romantic couple, Marjorie White and Frank Albertson are
a couple of sparkplugs, and their duet, "Never Swat a Fly" is the musical highlight. As
science fiction, it concentrates on the visual in a an eye-popping swirl of MetaDeco.
But, like lots of early SF, the fundamental attitudinal changes of the century regarding
gender and race are unimaginable. Moviediva, jr. pointed out, "there are no African
Americans in the future" nor any other minority, and feminism is a non-issue. And, we
still don't really want those darned Picture Phones, do we? My brother sent me a mix
tape of novelty songs from his collection of 78s. One song (from the teens?) "In 1999"
proposed three laughable developments of the future: we'd have a woman president, it
would be easy to get a divorce, and we won't be singing "Mammy" songs. Just
Imagine!

The "Old Fashioned Girl" was a flapper, of course.

*
(Sources include Richard Barrios' A Song in the Dark, The First Hollywood Musicals
by Edwin M. Bradley, Celluloid Skyline by James Sanders
(www.celluloidskyline.com)The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, listing by
Michael Weldon, The Great Movie Shorts by Leonard Maltin (I think this is the title,
my brother read it to me over the phone) and The Talkies, edited by Richard Griffith.
Production Still from Jerry Ohlinger's Movie Materials Store, Joyzelle photo from
Film Architecture, an exhibition catalogue edited by Dietrich Neumann, fan magazine
photos from the February, 1931 Screen Secrets, sheet music from moviediva's
collection.)
c.moviediva2002UpdatedOctober2003)