Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

from July 2, 2007

Bradford B. Jacobs had sold the movie rights to The Big Ape. Literally anyone with a camera could make a Big Ape film because the rights had become so muddied and legally entangled that it was virtually public domain. Bradford didn’t care. He was richer than he could ever imagine and set to become even richer.

Although he sold the movie rights, he still maintained the merchandising rights. As the 1940’s opened there was a Big Ape merchandising bonanza in the making. Unlike other fictional characters, The Big Ape appealed universally. Men, women, children, of all ages loved the Ape and, more importantly, were willing to spend money on him. Businessmen wore Big Ape neckties. Women wore Big Ape embroidered skirts. Children went to school with Big Ape lunchboxes and read from Big Ape textbooks. Even the normally staid Wall Street investor was likely to be seen with a Big Ape pen and pencil set.

There were Big Ape comic books, Big Ape silverware sets, Big Ape costumes, dolls, toys of every type and even expensive Big Ape diamond jewelry. During this time, The Big Ape  also conquered the world of television, hosting The Big Ape Variety Hour. Although TV, still in it’s infancy, was only in a handful of homes, it seemed as though everyone tuned in at 9 pm on the DuMont Network every Thursday evening. Long before The Cosby Show, this was Must See TV.

Films, however, were where The Big Ape shown the brightest. It should be noted, however, that because there was no one central force overseeing The Big Ape, his characterization often varied wildly from film to film. In some he could talk. In others he could fly. In still others he was average height while in others he was over 100 feet tall. The lack of consistency did not deter the audience. Nearly every single one of The Big Ape films produced in this era made huge amounts of money at the box office.

What follows is a list of some of the more notable Big Ape films of the 1940s.

The Big Ape Meets Hitler (1942) This was a propaganda film produced by the U.S. War Department. The Big Ape went behind enemy lines to kill Hitler. In this movie, The Big Ape was portrayed by a marine in a regular uniform, plus a gorilla mask.

The Big Ape Vs. The Little Dinosaur (1944) Largely played for laughs, The Big Ape found himself shrunk down to microscopic size to fight a similarly shrunken dinosaur.

The Big Ape Vs. Doctor Verlucci (1946) Astor Pictures had produced a very popular series of Doctor Verlucci movies in the 1930s and early 1940s. Doctor Verlucci was a scientist who often tried to dominate the world with assorted death rays and giant robots. After six films, the series had run its course. Doctor Verlucci was a villain and again and again he would get to the brink of victory when the hero would finally defeat him in the last reel. The public had just had enough. Looking to turn their fortunes around, the producers turned Doctor Verlucci into a hero and made The Big Ape his nemesis. To show how evil The Ape was, he wore a handlebar mustache and tied a girl to the railroad tracks.

Gorilla of Doom (1947) Wearing a space suit, The Big Ape came from Mars to steal all of Earth’s bananas.

Throughout the 1940s, The Big Ape could be seen virtually anywhere. Bradford B. Jacobs, however, could not. Bradford was busy with first the war effort, then post-war European reconstruction.

General Bruce E. Freedkin, from his Congressional testimony before the HUAC:

            There wasn’t another man like Bradford B. Jacobs. No sir, he was a patriot. Whether it was the bullets he sold the army or the rafts he sold the navy, no one did more for victory than that man. I personally  remember when he visited the front. He brought with him enough ammunition for every soldier to fight for another month. And if the soldiers couldn’t afford the ammo, he was ready to offer a generous line of credit.

While it wouldn’t be accurate to call Bradford B. Jacobs a war profiteer, it wouldn’t be all that far off. While he never sold anything to the enemy, he did keep close at hand a German-English dictionary, “if the need should ever arise.”

During this time he also met the man who would become his right hand. Literally. For a brief period of time Bradford refused to touch anything with his right hand. This was due to a Chinese fortune cookie which Bradford very badly misinterpreted. Reggie Van Der Leek could always be found at the right of Jacobs ready to do anything from shake a hand to lift a fork. This made for some very interesting meals, but BBJ, as Van Der Leek referred to him, was so filthy rich that no one would say a word.

Reggie Van Der Leek eventually became an executive of Jacobs Colossal Studios. JCS had evolved from making pictures to making supplies for the military to making whatever else Bradford could make a few bucks on. Reggie worked very closely with Jacobs as the years went on.

Reggie Van Der Leek, interviewed from his West Texas rest home in 2006:

           Man whee-oh, that BBJ was weird. He insisted on calling everybody “Buck.” I was with him when he met the President and he said “watch it Buck, you’re blocking the buffet.” Hee, we all had a laugh. The President, he wasn’t so amused, but BBJ was more popular with the public so he had to shut up. I once saw a poll around 1948 or so that said that ol’ BBJ would win the Presidency if he ran, so that took the wind out of ol’ Buck’s sails a might.

            Yeah, the public loved BBJ. Of course, he gave them The Big Ape, an’ that woulda been enough for any man, but not ol’ BBJ. He personally came out every Thanksgiving an’ shot a turkey for a poor family. On February ninth it was the anniversary of some relative of his, some ol’ Civil War hero or something. He’d get up in this gray Confederate uniform an’ take out this ol’ rifle an’ take the whole crew down to his family’s ol’ home in Jacobs Landing, West Virginia or someplace. Bought the town presents. Every gol-darned person there got an autographed Big Ape glossy photo.

Reggie wasn’t exaggerating about “the whole crew.” Bradford surrounded himself with a  group of leeches and hangers-on that would make Elvis jealous. (When the two met in 1965, Elvis would profess his jealousy over Bradford’s crew in person.) Many of the people around Bradford had a legitimate business purpose. There were people whose sole job was to film his every move. There were other’s whose sole job was to film the people filming Bradford. There were still other’s whose sole job was to film the people were in the general area of Bradford while he was being filmed. This was not paranoia- in 1948 a crazed Big Ape fan tried to kill Bradford because he imagined that The Big Ape was ordering him to kill.

Other people around Bradford were there because they either amused Bradford, or Bradford thought they might amuse him in the future, or they had amused him in the past.

Bradford also became the host of Gravesend Radio Theater, hosting a series of spooky stories aired over WOR in New York. He didn’t need the money, he did it because he thought it would be fun. In fact, Bradford was motivated by only three things- money, fun, and money, in that order.

As the 1940s ended and the 1950s began, both Bradford B. Jacobs and The Big Ape were poised to make even bigger splashes.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART THREE: THE ADORING PUBLIC

from July 1, 2007

My great-grandfather, back in the 1930’s had an idea. It wasn’t an original idea, no sir. Not by any stretch of the imagination. That wasn’t his style.

You see, Bradford B. Jacobs was President, Founder, and Chief Cinematographer of  Jacobs Colossal Studios, a shabby and financially shaky movie production company based out of Patterson New Jersey. Bradford B, (it is he for whom I am named), did pretty well for himself in the silent film era. JCS was known for nature films and documentaries. At the height of the silent era, JCS cameras roamed the world to bring home the most thrilling nature footage ever seen. From Emperor Penguins of the South Pole to shaggy llamas of Tibet, there was no place on Earth not lensed by a Jacobs camera. Most famously, he persuaded Harold Lloyd to cameo in a Borneo-filmed short featuring playful marsupials. Bradford also had a pretty profitable sideline making “exotic native features” available for private viewing, but the less said about that the better. Bradford accumulated a sizeable catalog of various shorts and features which he often sold for use as stock footage in longer “A” movies by various studios.

However, with the coming of the “talkie” era, Bradford B. Jacobs found himself without a market. No one would buy his soundless films, and few would see them when the wonders of sound were in the next theater. Jacobs Colossal Studios was forced to downsize, and Bradford fired most of his staff and sold most of his equipment. Throughout the 1930’s he limped along by making extremely low budget “B” and even “C” features starring Wolfie the Yiddish Hound. This was in the era of the ethnic comedy, and no one milked that market better than JCS. In one month alone, Wolfie starred in no fewer than 13 shorts, and had a cameo in two Stepin Fetchit films. There were few residents of the Lower East Side who had never seen a Wolfie short.

Sadly, the Wolfie product was barely enough to keep the creditors away. Bradford was looking for his next big animal star, and most of his ideas were not going to work. (Foremost among them was Seamus  the Squirrel, an Irish immigrant rodent who loved potatoes.) Often, Bradford would take his camera and wander, almost aimlessly, just to see what might strike his fancy. This resulted in Bradford amassing perhaps the most comprehensive collection of chorus girl footage on the East Coast. One day he found himself in Times Square and was awed by the sight of a movie poster. Rushing inside, he watched the film that would forever change his fortunes: King Kong.

I now quote from his 1967 biography, I Did It, So Sue Me:

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was this ape on the screen, a great big ape. And as I sat there I was moon-struck by two things. First, look at the tits on that Fay Wray. Second, this ape looks fake. I got all this real footage of real apes locked away in my vaults. This Kong fella, he don’t look none too real to me. Look at what he does. Climbs buildings. Eats trains. Bullshit! I got footage of real gorillas that make him look like a nancy-boy.  My apes, they climb trees. They eat bananas. They fight each other. They throw their shit around. When did you ever see King Kong do that? My Big Ape, he threw his shit around in all three films I made in 1941!

Bradford B. Jacobs decided then and there that his company would produce its own big ape film that make King Kong look puny. Ingeniously called The Big Ape, Bradford’s film was shot on the cheap. Using most of his stock footage and cut in with real actors who always craned their necks to the sky, JCS marketed a film that promised to deliver “the thrills the 1937 theater-goers demand!”

On paper, it doesn’t sound like a good idea. The filmed characters would do all their acting with each other, but when it came time for them to be in the same scene as The Big Ape, the film would cut  to stock footage. There was a lot of pointing off-screen. However, Bradford had a lot of faith in his production. He knew that King Kong had stirred something in the public and they were starved for more Ape films.  He was determined that JCS would milk it for all it was worth.

The Big Ape was a smash hit. Maximillian Dubois was the male lead, and Doreen Vernon was the love interest, but it  was the stock ape footage that really shined. Bradford was right when he reasoned that a real ape would look better. On the big screen his old nature footage looked lush and vibrant. It really made King Kong seem drab. It also helped that Doreen Vernon was instructed to go braless in the jungle river scene, and in fact wore only the filmiest of tops throughout.

Despite having a plot that was lifted nearly scene-for-scene from Kong (the ensuing legal battle would drag on until 1958) and dialogue that consisted of things like “Look at that Big Ape! He’s bigger than that Ape I saw last year in that other movie,” the Big Ape made more money than Bradford ever dreamt of. (And this was no mean feat, as I remember growing up hearing stories of how my great-grandfather dreamed of enough money to overthrow Castro.)

Again, I quote from I Did It, So Sue Me:

I knew this would be big. It had a great formula:  rip off a good film, add a sexy blond (who later became ex-wife number three) and give the public Big Ape action. Kong ate a train? My Ape ate an Edsel factory. Kong fought airplanes? My Ape fought 92 airplanes. Kong had Carl Denham, my film had a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator. It couldn’t miss!

It didn’t miss. In fact, it was the biggest money maker of the decade. Bradford B. Jacobs had more money than he ever had. First, he decided that it would be a good idea to buy his own zeppelin. Then he put on his payroll anyone whom he thought might be fun to have around. Sure, he had 237 people on his personal payroll, and another 43 who worked at the movie studio, but it didn’t matter because the money was rolling in and he was hard at work on the first sequel to The Big Ape, The Son of The Big Ape. Just one problem- he had used all the gorilla footage he had in the first film.

Bob “Bobo” Bigguns, interviewed by Barbara Walters in 1973:

Da Boss had hit into a fortune with that flick. Da public was bonkers ’bout dat Ape. Mr. J, he was walkin’ ’round with a solid gold fedora on his head an a four or five thousand dollar pair of socks on his feet. He never did wear no shoes. The trouble was that he used all of da gorilla and monkey footage in dat first film and had nothin’ left for the next. Well, lucky for Da Boss, I owned one of the best gorilla suits in West Hollywood at the time. I had a little act outside of da Hollywood Bowl that made me a few bucks on the weekends. Dat was when Mr. J hired me. He liked the way I swung from the lamp posts. Dat Mr. J, he was always hangin’ ’round with colorful people.

Not only did Bradford B. Jacobs have the best gorilla impersonator in L.A., he also hired a team of people to take care of the suit. Before filming even started, he had hired two men to comb the fur, a man to shampoo the fur, and two women to blow dry the fur.

Later that month, alighting from his Zeppelin, “The Jacobs Zephyr,” Mr. Jacobs made this announcement to the crowd gathered at Forbes Field: “Folks, there’s a new Big Ape film coming out soon. See it!” He then turned around and took off. While the announcement might not have set the crowd abuzz, they certainly became excited when Bradford began tossing silver dollars from his zeppelin.

Son of The Big Ape was released the following month. Variety ran the headline “Big Ape Boffo in Great Lake” above a story about the film selling out the Michigan Ave. Cinema for thirteen straight weeks.

Despite being billed as Son of, this was clearly meant to be the same ape. This film began just as the first one ended. Laying on the cement after falling to his death, the Big Ape simply stood up, dusted himself off, and ate some police officers. This film, freed of needing to cut away for stock footage, had the ape leaving New York and swimming (yes, swimming) to Cleveland to destroy another city. Bradford choose to film in Cleveland because it was cheap. It was in this film that, in a scene thankfully deleted by the film censor board, Bradford tried to live up to his pledge of having the Big Ape throw feces.

Audiences again went wild and Bradford made so much money that he gave it away to anyone who would do a funny dance for him.

Big Ape fever went so wild that these next films were all released by Jacobs Colossal Studios over the next three years. Shockingly, they all made money:

• The Big Ape vs. Giganto the Super Dinosaur
• Island of the Big Ape
• The Big Ape Escapes
• The Big Ape Meets Dracula
• Death to The Big Ape!
• The Big Ape takes a Wife
• The Big Ape goes to Washington
• The Big Ape vs. Nazi Ape

Around this time, the public, which loved both The Big Ape and its oddball creator, began to wonder why the quality of the films was starting to drop. Internally, many suspected it had to do with the fact that JCS had rushed out ten films in a four year span. Even the suit was beginning to look ratty.

Bradford B. Jacobs had also become a little, shall we say, eccentric. It became clear that he loved being rich. He wore a tuxedo wherever he went. If he had to drive, it was in a car which he claimed he won from FDR in a poker game. If he had to fly, he did it in a zeppelin. If he had to walk, he didn’t. He spent money as fast as he made it, which wasn’t a problem since the Big Ape films were guaranteed many makers. Famously, he once bought the Brooklyn Bridge and was later forced to sell it back to New York City. At a profit.

But as much fun as he had being rich, he was as bored making the Big Ape movies. After ten films, he sold the rights to the Big Ape to another studio, Maxwell Picture Corporation, headed by Luther Maxwell. Bradford B. Jacobs would never make another Big Ape movie.

For the first time. Jacobs was not the creative voice behind The Ape.

However, Luther Maxwell wasn’t alone with the franchise. Unbeknownst to him, Bradford also sold the rights to MGM, Paramount, RKO, Cinescope, Tohoscope, Artes D’France, and, without exception, every major or minor movie company in the world.

The lawsuit would drag on for decades but in the meantime, every one of those companies made  Big Ape movies, television shows, cartoons, puppet shows, etc.

Film critic Jeffrey Lane:

You’d logically expect this flood on the market to lead to the end of The Big Ape, but such was the love for that character that every single thing made money. Meanwhile, Bradford B. Jacobs was fast becoming a fixture on the national scene. It didn’t matter to him that the quality of the Big Ape films ranged from genius (1963’s romantic Passions of The Big Ape) to moronic (1951’s Satan’s Sadists vs. The Big Ape.) From Christmas specials to political thrillers, there was not a genre untouched by the Big Apes furry paws.

 TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO: THE BIG APE RISES TO GLORY