Lost Hollywood

All the evidence we have left of the failed venture are some stray photos. Luckily, they got some good shots of Hope in the nearly completed Batsuit, though they never figured out the mask.

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Kennth Anger reported that Bob Hope had tried everything he could think of to land a role as a villain on the TV show in the 60’s. He even showed up at the studio dressed as a character he invented called The Clown, but it was too close to The Joker, and nobody would buy Hope as a bad guy.

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When Crosby’s agent insisted that the Robin character would play the role in various disguises (but not the Robin costume) the project was quietly abandoned.

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Test shots of their Batcave were as camp as the 60’s show, but the production would be black and white like the 1940’s serial.

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The script was far less high tech than the 60’s version. In Road to Gotham City, they rode down to their lair in a basket instead of sliding down poles. The writers added many funny bits of dialog as they rode the swinging baskets down to the cave.

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Both stars had appeared in drag, but the more subtle undercurrents of a homosexual relationship between the characters caused both of their agents to nix the idea. Activities as mundane as working out in the Batcave to stay in shape became radioactive to censors.

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Crosby had appeared in tights for Connecticut Yankee, and his build was more suited to the Robin role, anyway.

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When Crosby asked why he couldn’t play Batman, the producers asked the two stars to lift each other. Hope could lift Crosby, but Crosby couldn’t lift Hope. The script called for Batman to carry Robin, so the matter was settled.

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Hope had never met a costume he wouldn’t wear, so he was easily convinced to don a Batsuit. Crosby was more reticent to don the Robin costume.

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Before the Batman TV show in the 1960’s there was almost another even campier version starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby called Road to Gotham City.

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According to Kenneth Anger, after Von Stroheim’s death in 1957, footage of a circus orgy that he had shot for Capitalism was making the rounds of the various studio heads’ stag party circuit. If that footage exists, it is all that survives of the project.

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As he grew more dispirited about funding the project, he even injected a meta-subplot about a famous scientist who was unable to please the capitalists. He planned to play the role of the scientist as well.

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He was never able to tweak the scripts to the satisfaction of any Capitalists who could afford to fund the venture, despite over 100 rewrites.

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He lugged the script of his new venture to meetings with the head of every studio, but being forced to take jobs he hated caused him to acquire a reputation for being difficult.

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He also played his own inner demon with a split faced makeup that reflected the Capitalist’s inner-conflict as a sort of Jekyll Hyde character.

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He had honed his skills as a ventriloquist when he played The Great Gabbo, and the foreman of his factory was to be played by a ventriloquist dummy that he controlled.

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The film was rumored to be a how-to manual for workers to subvert their shackled existence.

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Von Stroheim would play the owner of the circus and would instill his Capitalist with all of the villainy that he gave to his other unsympathetic portrayals.

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Capitalism would be set in a circus and would be a most unsubtle critique of the actual greed of the ruling class.

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After his film Greed was butchered for release, and he was scolded by one too many critics for his critique of greed, Erich Von Stroheim set out on a now lost follow up movie called Capitalism.

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Ultimately Kelly’s legacy had enough early live action/animation to secure his legacy as a pioneer in the field, so he left well enough alone.

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According to Kenneth Anger, Kelly met secretly with Ralph Bakshi to discuss a more adult version of his snake encounter in Invitation to the Dance, twenty years after it was filmed. Kelly was busy cementing his legacy, and begged off when he saw the X-rated concept art.

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Kelly did reteam with Hanna Barbera, who had done the sequence in Anchors Aweigh for his animated segment in Invitation to the Dance in 1956.

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Kelly considered his Lautrec dance sacred and worried about repeating himself. He also didn’t see any dance opportunities in the Hirschfield sketches.

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An indie producer hired Hirschfield to mockup some rough sketches of Kelly. He wanted Kelly to come to life out of the sketches the way that he had in the Toulouse Lautrec painting in An American in Paris.

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Disney eventually landed Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews for a live action animated hybrid, but Gene Kelly still haunted him.

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Kelly had initially planned to dance with Mickey Mouse in Anchor’s Away, but Disney had turned down his offer. After Anchors Aweigh won an Oscar, Disney realized his mistake and called Kelly to arrange a meeting. A furious Kelly waited until Disney’s death to even visit Disneyland.

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Disney had released Song of the South in 1946, but it didn’t have the kind of star power that Gene Kelly would add to an animated film.

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Max Fleischer had been interacting with cartoons in his Out of the Inkwell series since the 1920’s. The technology existed early on.

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When Gene Kelly danced with the cartoon mouse in Anchors Aweigh in 1945 it was a paradigm shift. Every studio in Hollywood wanted to imitate that success, and the offers poured in. Today we explore the lost cartoons of Gene Kelly.

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