Hail, Columbia: Studio’s the Star in Film Survey

In Hollywood, even studios become stars.

The Disney Studio daily celebrates itself in Anaheim, Orlando, Japan and France and shopping malls everywhere. Universal discovered a form of stardom in its own back lot (and in Florida, too) with tours, stunts and rides. And the recent Ted Turner-produced book and television documentary about MGM, “The Lion That Roared,” were commercial celebrations of an old studio’s glory.

Now with Paramount buying up theme parks, “Camp Beam Me Up, Scotty” may be on someone’s planning table.

But will anyone ever honor 70-year-old, much-traveled Columbia, Sony’s gem of Culver City? Who will put a star in Miss Columbia’s crown?

Next week UCLA will try.

In an ambitious three-month, 35-movie program, the university’s Film and Television Archive is about to convey a certain prominence to the studio of Harry Cohn, the Three Stooges, David Begelman, Coca-Cola, “Ishtar,” but also the studio of Frank Capra, David Puttnam (briefly), “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Stanley Kramer, Ray Stark, Dawn Steel, “The Last Emperor” and last year’s “Boyz N the Hood” and this year’s “A League of Their Own.”

This is not showy footprints-in-concrete stardom.

To UCLA’s film archivists and the current executives at Columbia, this is serious business. It must be with an academia-inspired title like “Turning Points: Columbia Pictures and the Social Film.” More to the point, it’s a series not about “social films” (for some, Friday nights in Westwood) but about social issues--politics, violence, morality--issues that linger strongly, even in this year of re-evaluated values.

The first screening is Friday, Sept. 25, with a Library of Congress restored version of Capra’s “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” The series of A-title movies runs weekly through Dec. 12’s showing of “The Last Picture Show” and “The Wild One” at the campus’s Melnitz Theater. Except for the first night, the series is made up of double features that will play weekly under umbrella themes that run from populism to sexual mores to American lifestyles and to issues of race.

“Movies can engage our moral sensibilities and can provoke our consciousness,” says UCLA’s Bob Rosen, director of UCLA’s Film and Television Archive and chair of the department of film and television. “ ‘His Girl Friday’ and ‘On the Waterfront’ are wonderful film experiences that also cause us to walk out thinking about something, thinking about working women or politics or moral dilemmas. Serious films and entertainment can be strongly compatible, and are.”

Films also document certain periods. “The thing about movies,” Rosen says, “is that they tell us about ourselves.” “The Last Picture Show” reflected for many a growing up at a certain time. “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” was about new sexual themes and conflicts with the old.

But why this belated stardom for Columbia, charter member along with Universal and United Artists of old Hollywood’s “Little Three,” the studio whose Gower Street sound stages became $10-an-hour tennis courts in hard times, the studio forced to cohabit with rival Warner Bros. in Burbank in other hard times, the second studio to come under foreign ownership, the first to join with rival television in film production, the first to dabble with cable, pay television and home video?

The skeptic’s answer: After 70 years and almost 3,000 films produced or released, it shouldn’t be too hard to find 35 films worth talking about.

The rap may be a bum one.

While Columbia may not have been as productive as Warner Bros. during the ‘30s and ‘40s in examining social issues, it was no Universal or MGM in its escapist production schedules. The studio once called “Columbia, the germ of the nation,” has had its share of Capras, Kramers, Altmans, Quines, Zinnemanns and Pollacks. Orson Welles, too, of the troubled “The Lady From Shanghai.”

So the UCLA Film and Television Archive may be setting out to change some minds, to redo popular history and elevate Columbia. While other studios have been blessed with retrospectives at schools and museums, this may be the first studio retrospective that doesn’t just celebrate what was done but looks at what was done within a framework of specific themes, history, issues and events.

But there’s more to this 18-week series of “Turning Points.” The real, deep-in-the-heart issue is keeping the images up on the screen, the issue of film preservation.

When Columbia Pictures and its companion, TriStar, were bought three years ago for more than $3 billion by Sony and eventually were removed from their Burbank digs to the old MGM facility in Culver City, the new management did something no other studio had done. It set up a nationwide advisory committee on the health and safety of its film libraries, drawing archivists from New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the American Film Institute, the Library of Congress and nearby UCLA.

Sony wanted to make sure that a major part of its investment wouldn’t turn to dust.

In the new Hollywood, unlike the old, movies aren’t for one-time showing and then ingloriously shelved. New Hollywood is about life beyond life: television showings, cable, video, laser discs, licensing for advertising and in the future, all sorts of new uses, from high-definition TV to compact disc screenings.

Never have negatives held so much promise.

Even before the advisory committee, Sony had turned to UCLA for restoration work on the 1941 “Here Comes Mr. Jordan,” 1938’s “Holiday” and 1940’s “His Girl Friday,” which will be shown in newly restored form for the first time at the Columbia retrospective Oct. 6, along with “Washington Merry-Go-Round.”

Sony provides the old films, UCLA provides the expertise and costs of the restorations are shared. Sony gets a revitalized, secured negative, UCLA gets a print for its archival collection.

“Preservation,” Rosen says, “means going back to the best negative and putting it on something stable, to make the definitive copy which will be held in vaults and passed on to the future. Each year, we will do two or three of Columbia’s titles.”

Next up: a literal complete redo of 1961’s “The Guns of Navarone,” color, sound and picture. “Navarone” is not part of the Columbia retrospective. It’s for the next special event, another effort to make film preservation a high-profile matter, to exhibit originals on 35-millimeter film and on big theatrical screens, to keep the issue in front of the public and on the minds of studio heads.

To that end, the retrospective is an integral part of a new class in the UCLA film school, “American Studio System,” starting this month. Future producers and executives will study Columbia as a case study of an evolving and at times revolving studio.

While Columbia is the first to get this sort of retrospective and study, other studios may yet get their chance.

Maybe some day, “Turning Points: Mickey, Donald, Woody and the Social Film.”

‘Turning Points’ Screening Lineup

Following are films in UCLA’s retrospective “Turning Points: Columbia Pictures and the Social Film.” All screenings are at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater.

Politics, Populism and the Crisis of Confidence: “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Sept. 25, 7:30 p.m.; “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” and “The Whole Town Is Talking,” Sept. 26, 7:30 p.m.; “His Girl Friday” and “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” Oct. 6, 8 p.m.; “The Last Hurrah” and “All the King’s Men,” Oct. 8, 7:30 p.m.

Fame and Mass Society: “Cover Girl” and “The Goddess,” Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m.

Changing Race Relations: “School Daze” and “Boyz N the Hood,” Oct. 1, 7:30 p.m.; “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Oct. 3, 7:30 p.m.; “A Soldier’s Story” and “Watermelon Man,” Oct. 4, 7:30 p.m.

Lifestyle and Values: “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice” and “Theodora Goes Wild,” Oct. 15, 7:30 p.m.; “Shampoo” and “Loving,” Oct. 18, 7:30 p.m.

Violence in America: “In Cold Blood” and “Taxi Driver,” Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m.; “Crime and Punishment” and “The Dark Past,” Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.

Living With the Atom: “Dr. Strangelove” and “The China Syndrome,” Nov. 3, 8 p.m.; “The Lady From Shanghai” and “Fail Safe,” Nov. 5, 7:30 p.m.

Dictates of Conscience: “On the Waterfront” and “The Front,” Nov. 17, 8 p.m.; “Five Easy Pieces” and “Midnight Express,” Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m.; “Bridge on the River Kwai” and “From Here to Eternity,” Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m.

Growing Up in America: “The Last Picture Show” and “The Wild One,” Dec. 12, 7:30 p.m.

For more information: (310) 206-3456.