Most people who know about pre-war jazz know of me as the former bassist with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, the host band for the (now retired) public radio series "Riverwalk Jazz." These days I live in Soutwest Florida and work mostly with bands and singers of the Great American Songbook. A few years back, during a vacation to New York, I was invited by Jon-Erik Kellso to play one of the Sunday afternoons at the Ear Inn on the Lower West Side. I had lots of fun with Jon's "Ear Regualrs." The clarinet player, Dennis Lichtman, invited me to hear his Tuesday band at Mona's on the Lower East Side. My girlfriend and I found ourselves among the few people in the place with grey hair. The dominant style of jazz I heard was pre-war Swing. At midnight the jam session began, and there was a long line of young players waitng their turn to sit in. I heard very little post-war style jazz, and most of it was just swingin' like crazy. I was very happy to know that such a righteous bastion of pre-war jazz existed and was thriving. I hope it's still going strong.
And now I'm encountering quite a few youngsters interested in the old, Jurassic stuff. A cadre of 20- and 30-somethings in Austin led by cornetist David Jellema. The Parker Jazz Club donwtown run by a guy who remembered me from his High School days in San Antonio and visits to The Landing where we played 6 nights a week (I was there for 19 years).
Currently I've been working in Naples Florida with 26-year-old Decyo McDuffie, a gifted singer consumed with absorbing vast quantities of Songbook masterworks, interpreting them through the lens of his hero, Nat Cole. The group of us working with and mentoring him are all in our 60s and 70s. Last week Decyo led us in a Nat tribute in a nice auditorium in Ft. Myers. We got a standing ovation and played an encore.
If anything, it is easier to hear and see older stuff than ever. I remember going to a rep house to see a recently restored clip of Cab Calloway performing Minnie the Moocher. It was a save the date kind of thing. You can find it on Youtube along with a pile of his other stuff and that of his peers. If anything the past is more accessible than ever.
Invisible Man is one of my favorite books. I've read all the short stories of John Cheever, 5 or 6 Bellow novels (Augie March is in my top 25), All The King's Men and The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, The Natural and A Death In The Family would all be in books I strongly recommend. But I'm a screenwriter and a novelist with an MFA from Columbia, so I suppose I'm an exception.
What I would say is that the 1940s and 1950s are outside of the living memory of pretty much anyone alive, and so the work from that long ago that lives on is exclusively what's truly canonical (I'd guess Invisible Man because of race pre-CRA; Augie March because of Mid-Century Jews, and maybe All The King's Men because of politics. Definitely Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo, Paths of Glory, and The Seven Samurai are all heavily referenced movies that most film fans are familiar with, if only because the structure and style of those films defines the decades of films that follow, more than the literature defines the subsequent books.)
If you look at the book sales data, the opposite is the actual problem: contemporary novels are selling worse than any contemporary novels have, and you could probably make the same claim about film. The mania amongst young film buffs around the Criterion Collection and Letterboxd suggests a contemporary obsession with nostalgia (for great work, no doubt!) that is particularly novel to this moment. The problem seems to be not that we are forgetting too much, but that we are not in fact creating enough. If you look forward a few decades from the 40s and 50s--say the Boomers' adolescence and salad days--you'l find that this work is still hugely influential on the culture. PTA is adapting a Pynchon novel for his newest picture; many young film buffs prefer Space Odyssey, Godfather, Star Wars and Jaws to anything contemporary. Philip Roth is still considered the Jewish writer par excellence, Joan Didion the female writer, and James Baldwin the Black writer. As long as some of the audience that experienced the work in the moment is still alive, it is nearly as vital and part of the cultural consciousness as when it was first released.
Great mini reading list! Invisible Man is a wild ride of a book and I feel sorry for people that don't realize what an amazing writer Ellison is. The Heart is a Lonely hunter was one of the best reading experiences I had going to high school, it effected me strongly back then so I need to re-order this classic! And of course being from Chicago, I obviously dug Bellow more than most authors! Will clearly need to buy Cheever in the near future!
Is that the one with they made a movie of? I just saw a YouTube collection of under appreciated movies from the Sixties and The Swimmer was on that list. It’s actually a very creepy movie according to the reviewer!
The Swimmer ... Saw it as a young kid & always remembered it but couldn't remember its title or find it. Finally found & acquired it in the "modern age'. It held up. Very original & quite interesting.
Never had the "Its happening Now" mental problem. Who cares - if it is good ,it is good.
Even when young. Starting around 15 or 16 - (it was still the era of 3 maybe 4 channels) I would sit up all night ,many nights watching old B&W films. I never had the "its old" prejudice so many have. Saw All the classics & More. Then channel 13 showed (KONG TV I believe) up & a Real Hyper Host - Bob Corcoran & his rants along with Great Old movies. Later - Stanley Kramer retired to the Pacific NW & was on a local Station (13 ?) late at night. Showing great old movies & giving off the cuff monologues. It was great !
I'm betting others remember these "personalities".
I think here's the real data: people just like whatever was popular when Baby Boomers were young. In the mind of an average Boomer narcissist, there was none before them and there shall be none after. I don't think all the Baby Boomer stuff being popular is totally terrible, since some of it is actually good here and there, but it's still totally ridiculous how the only things that are allowed are generally what Boomers liked. On the other hand it probably doesn't really matter what's popular, and I'd rather have to ignore Star Wars and the Talking Heads than Sylvia Plath or whatever anyway, so maybe, to paraphrase Voltaire, we do live in the best of all possible worlds.
Netflix has not erased Casablanca and Citizen Kane. They’re both available on Amazon Prime Video at a reasonable price, as are very many B&W movies of the 40s and 50s. That said, I do worry that what is available to us in the age of streaming is determined by the whim (or business plans) of these corporate behemoths. So get the (‘obsolete’) DVDs while you can!
The Criterion Channel is a streaming service with rotating offerings of quality older (and newer) classic, independent, foreign, etc films throughout the year. I’ve found it’s worth it to give up several of the popular streaming apps for that single subscription.
> Netflix has not erased Casablanca and Citizen Kane. They’re both available on Amazon Prime Video
So, Netflix has in fact erased them... *from it's catalog*. It's not like Ted here meant you can't buy the DVDs or find them in this or that other platform anymore. But for a huge chunk of platforms like Netflix, it's as if those movies never existed...
Of course close to nobody under 40 has a DVD player... and nobody under 25 has ever seen a DVD after their teens
Content has licensing costs and sometimes the licenses are exclusive. Not every streaming service is going to provide every movie. If I have to jump from one provider to another to see something, that is a minor inconvenience.
Meanwhile this is an absolute golden age for people who are interested in back catalogues of anything: There are more opportunities and wider availability of historical content than anything that was available when I was a teenager and dissatisfied with cable TV and Blockbuster.
Sometimes I wish the quality was better. There can be very poor public domain copies of films floating around on free/budget streaming services. But if you compared trying to find legacy content, and watch *at your convenience*, between today and 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980.... this is by far the best time to be alive.
I just mute the commercials. One disappointment is when institutional apps are garbage. There's an app where we can rent things from the library and it barely works: pause, fast forward and reverse don't work (the functions are there, just broken).
I probably have ADHD and the break lets me get up and then refocus. Even if I'm watching a Blu-Ray I'll tend to break it up into 50 minute segments. So, yeah, I forgot the commercials are a deal breaker for a lot of people.
I buy alot of old dvds and cds and the prices of these have already started to go up. Im guessing bc people are buying them, not so much bc theyre becoming rare yet(although some rare cds will fetch a pretty penny).
Ofc i havent looked into this, its just an impression.
Whatevers going on, id suggest to anyone interested to buy them up now! They should only go up in value, *and* you can watch/listen to them!
I've found lots of CDs and DVDs on Ebay, and for peanuts. So many people seem to be liquidating their collections (or the collections of a friend/relative who has died)! Their loss, my gain. Many of them have never been played.
>I think many younger people have DVD drives (peripherals) for their computers, along with DVD players
Only a statistically insignificant niche. Less even than the niche that listens to vinyl.
> It's literally the only way people can watch a lot of films and TV shows that aren't licensed by any streaming service.
There is also piracy and digital downloads. But most people aren't rewatching Casablanca or classic noir, maybe like 1% or less is anywhere near doing that.
"There is also piracy and digital downloads. But most people aren't rewatching Casablanca or classic noir, maybe like 1% or less is anywhere near doing that."
Do you know that for a fact? It might be. But if it's so, I wonder whether running these movies on Netflix would change that.
So true. I’m one of them that never got rid of my old media and am reinvesting in stuff I never had or lost along the way whilst streaming, but I prefer the old format.
I think that is very wise advice (to get DVDs) if you love (and you should!) these classics. Amazon will probably endure as a company so digitally buying from them is probably a safe bet if you do not have a physical DVD.
There’s a danger in “buying” the digital editions, even from a company like amazon that will no doubt persist long past its deserved expiration date: you aren’t actually buying those digital products, you are licensing them, and that license is revokable. See the case of the edition of Orwell’s 1984 that disappeared from purchaser’s kindle libraries, or the edits made to Roald Dahl works. The only way to make sure you can hold on to a book or movie (in its proper version) you really like is to own a physical copy. We aren’t (yet) at the point where they will break down the door to your home to revoke or alter physical media.
That's right, and that's why I bought the actual "true" version of "Touch Of Evil," with Welles' edits and original opening sequence intact. (Jonathan Rosenbaum has stated that the opening sequence of "Touch Of Evil" is the greatest opening ever filmed.)
hah! But yes I think that people are really starting to worry about really keeping their purchased goods in the digital age because in the analog age once we got that vinyl in our hands it stayed in our hands!
"Stop Killing Games" is a massive effort aimed at this issue in the videogames space. Its been an interesting saga to watch so far - perhaps is the start of something bigger and more meaningful about digital entertainment ownership in general. You are right, people are definitely waking up to this.
Yes, but my point was that the consumer had no say in it. They may have “bought” the original version, but then had it swapped for the new version without any notice or consent. No one can do that to your physical copy.
I read and loved "Invisible Man" as a teenager. So much so that I reached back and read the "Notes from Underground" original by Dostoyevsky. Both remain so vital and fresh today, perhaps even more so in the 21st Century!
You've mentioned Carson McCullers several times on this thread, and I thank you because she'll definitely go on my TBR pile! Do you think her Library of America collection of novels is the way to go or just start with "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?"
Dear Ted -- Though I'm with you most of the way here -- and ALL the way, for huge chunks -- I just gotta say that great authors, musicians, and filmmakers go out of print all the goddam time. And what was best-selling in any given week will most likely be forgotten three decades hence, if not three weeks or months.
Hell, half the greats we DO remember today weren't remotely hits when they first came out. Meanwhile, unexpected crazes for shimmering gems of old get launched almost coincidentally, whenever someone starts spelunking around in the past and goes, "Oh my goodness!" or "Holy shit!"
From there, it all comes down to preservationists giving a hoot. For them, I thank God. And also, thank YOU!!!
Or look at a great book like Moby Dick. It was only a modest seller when it first came out but fans of good literature eventually rediscovered it and it now is regarded as a great book. Actually much of it was before its time so great books can defy that darwinian effect!
Good points. Hitchcock's "Vertigo" floundered at the box office originally; it rose to greatness in later years, is understood by most critics to be one the great movies of all time, but now?
When Paramount+ first debuted, it was delightful! Full of old movies. Then, in June of 2023, they took almost everything pre-1980 off the platform, wiping out 90% of my watchlist and leaving me with Sunset Boulevard and a handful of John Wayne movies. Now, it's even worse. Sunset Boulevard and John Wayne are gone, and the oldest title I can find is Perry Mason.
Amazon Prime is the only major streaming service with old movies now. And they only have a handful of silents. There are some free services with old stuff, like Plex and Tubi, and the Public Domain website, and some truly random Roku apps like Silent Movie Classics. And YouTube has a lot of silent movies, too.
I've been building up my collection of DVDs/Blu-rays. I currently have 563 titles in my library, 295 of which are pre-1975, and I will buy almost anything I find if it's in black and white, frankly.
You're right! I forgot about them because they don't have a standalone service, you have to add it to something else.
And to be fair, I did also forget HBO Max, but it's because I'm still mad at them for changing their UI and getting rid of the hubs, making it harder to find the good stuff.
Silent movies are few and far between on streaming services. YouTube is often the only source, and the quality there is far from ideal. I have a sizable, and growing, collection of silent films, and a lot of films from the '30s. I'm unfamiliar with the Roku app you named, but will look into it as a source for silent film.
I found it, and a few others, by searching for specific titles on my Roku TV, just in the Search section in the sidebar. It comes up with "X ways to watch" and each one has its own tile, and with silent movies there are always some weird random ones. They don't always work, you have to try to actually watch to make sure, but sometimes you get lucky.
While I still had access through my university, Kanopy had a large catalog of silent movies. It's been years, but I still think about *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,* which I had to watch for my German classes! Truly haunting visuals.
I believe various libraries are able to get Kanopy credentials, so you may investigate if your local library has Kanopy as a service for its patrons. If you live somewhere with a Virtual Library, you may also be able to access Kanopy through there.
Yep, there is this. I don't consider that a major streaming service, though. Just my opinion, but I see CC (and the TCM add-on) as niche options for movie lovers, and the fact that classic cinema is getting siloed out of the major players is a net loss in discovery and availability terms.
And hopefully they will continue to invest in that service. The problem with Google/YouTube or Netflix is they are do not seem to be consistently able to show older content and with YouTube, you have to rely on users who upload content. What happens when those users get a DMCA takedown notice? Right, it gone!😕
Yes! There's always that! The thing about silent films, though, is that at this point most of them (the ones we still have) are in the public domain (most films from 1929 entered the public domain this year, and that about covers the bulk of silents since sound took over rapidly in the late 1920s), so I'm very happy to see anyone uploading those anywhere they can. It's not foolproof, obviously, for a lot of reasons, but it's something.
I was floored at age 45 to hear music from my youth on the Oldies station. They even played XTC (a college indie band from the 1980s) at the grocery store. Crazy.
It's when you don't hear "your" music on the Oldies station any more; then it's time to worry a bit.
I remember thinking(bc i grew up with rap) would i eventually hear eminem on an oldies station? I dont think we're there yet, but its bound to happen, right? Assuming oldies stations last that long(which i think they will, radio still gets some play in my neck of the woods)
I knew I was past Prime when I was walking through a Grocery store - Many decades ago & Jefferson's Airplane "Somebody To Love" was playing. A tune I had really Dug playing in several Rock Bands all across the Western USA in the early 70's.
You forgot your OWN 80-year-rule: 80 years after the premiere of an artist, the artist is forgotten.
The rule now applies to everything - unless it actually is a cultural or political icon (eg Louis Armstrong) as you have noted. The great works or people you mentioned, like Saul Bellow, happened 70-80 years ago. Only "Gone with the Wind" will survive, and that's unless it's described as racist.
That period does seem a bit alien to us right now, especially since we don’t live in a “stable” consensus anymore
I actually find myself reading more and more modernist lit (1880s -1930s) now, like Robert Walser or Musil. Their anxious and lost sensibilities feel really contemporary
Many people only live in a perpetual now. I managed a record store in the 70s. Sometimes a customer would ask me for a 45 that was popular. I would give a title, and the response would be, "that's old," It was my best selling 45 two weeks earlier.
My solution to this is a personal library: I have about 5,000 LPs and CDs, mostly jazz, but also classical, rock, pop, ethnic, blues, soul. I have about 1,000 books, and about 300 DVDs.
A character in a Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel, when a detective notices her collection of 78 rpm records, easy "I listen to the past," Me, too. And read it and watch it.
And I wish i could convince my wife to cancel Netflix
Yes, isn't that "Its Old" idea ridiculous ? Luckily ,even as a young kid I was never burdened with that misguided idea. I always knew - if it's good -it's Good
I can really appreciate your approach. I have close to 3000 books, 1000 LPs, and a full wall of CDs and DVDs. Toss in some cassette tapes a few reel to reels, and a smattering of VCR tapes. I tried eBooks but about three years ago I put down my kindle in the middle of book 5 of a 9 book set and can’t go back. Years ago I made mixed CDs on DVDs so they will play for 12 hours straight. If you don’t like the genre give it a few minutes and something you do like will come on. Some of the album covers are still stamped “DJ COPY. NOT FOR SALE” They are from high school when I interned at the local radio station. Simpler times.
Make them on DVD blanks and they will play all day. I imagine today a radio station library is nothing more than a stack of hard drives and thumb drives. The people working there have no idea what they are missing. It was like Christmas everyday as the mail arrived with a new batch of 45s. And complete albums, when they came in that was like getting a new bike at Easter.
When I was in high school and college ('80s-'90s), we read a lot of work from the '20s and '30s — Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. I had a whole upper-division English class devoted just to Hemingway and Faulkner. And the '20s — the Jazz Age — was fondly remembered a time American cultural flowering.
The WWII generation has sort of been skipped, despite the enormous historical events, possibly in favor of the '60s. My kid now in high school has a mostly familiar traditional curriculum that includes many books I read at her age. The main addition this year is a book about Vietnam. The boomers dominate the culture and their parents get passed over.
Around the turn of this century (I don't recall the exact date), there was a short-lived opera company in the Berkshires of western Mass. (It was the precursor of the Berkshire Opera Festival, which began in 2015.). They did a wonderful presentation of Menotti's "The Consul." I recall the main set, which was a floor-to-ceiling array of filing cabinets (paintings, not real ones), to imply the stifling bureaucracy. I've suggested to various people that our current political moment would be a good time to revive that opera, but no takers so far.
I recall seeing Menotti's "The Saint of Bleecker Street" on TV once, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
For one, it isn't dumbed down. Second, if too many people saw the great movies (from all over the world), the music, the comedians (Mort Sahl, etc)., then they'd ignore whatever is going on today.
One reason they wont get it is that no mainstream platform or institution or even parents told taught them to "get it".
They shouldnt be "introduced" now as adults, they should have been shown them growing up, as part of a classical well rounded entertainment. Instead they're told that anything released 2 years ago or more is "antiquated".
My comment was a response to John Lumgair's comment up the thread.
He wrote: "Maybe, when I introduce people to classic black and white films people view them with a lot of trepidation, fearing *they* may not get it"
Those are the they. The people who don't get those old films when shown to them, that is, the average 40-ish and below person today.
These people were never introduced to older 20th century culture and films in any systematic way (from school, parents, the media, educators, etc). Hell, they weren't introduced to any classical "canon" works either, even if they were college educated. And those works were the bread and butter of an education until the mid-20th century.
Instead every random novelty and every latest franchize, reboot, and sequel is pushed into them with 100s of millions in marketing budget.
I'm making assumptions that are true of most - the vast majority of people under 40 don't have a DVD player anywhere near. A statistically insignificant percentage of such age groups do have one.
When we discuss the erasure of such past century culture and movies from modern view, we can't just say "thankfully, people today still have DVDs" as if that covers any meaninful amount of people.
I've learned that most people don't get it. They don't have the attention span or breadth of knowledge to enjoy black and white films. The film may as well be in a foreign language as far as they're concerned.
I'm not sure that would be true for most of the classics, in my experience people are surprised how accessible they are. But may be the people I have introduced them too are a more open.
It might take some getting used to but I think real movie fans who don't want just entertainment but a deeper experience that great films bring, they will appreciate these black and white classics! Hitchcock, Welles, Capra and many other classic directors made their best stuff in black and white!
But is this just part of the movement of culture? Genuine question - In 1950 how many novels and operas from 1905 were being consumed? Is there a natural shelf for culture, with things falling off all the time?
Some of the erasure has to do with the nature of time. Only the most notable of notable survive. Look at the top 10 composers when Beethoven was at his peak, you might recognize 1-2 others max.
Some of it is true innovation, or art versus repetitious pablum. The Beatles will probably still be known in 200 years for inventing so many new styles of music. The Stones.. Elvis … not so much, but memorable. Taylor? Not at all.
Some of it is sound or visual quality, or production style. Sometimes people just can’t slog through a grainy old picture and sound they can’t understand on old movie. Maybe regenerative AI restorations of picture and sound will help. This goes for photos too.
Some of it is just relatability. No matter what artistic expression, sometimes it’s just not relatable anymore without a fuller and perhaps more contemporary context. Or a guide to why something in a classic is shocking, or inappropriate, or desirable, or was groundbreaking.
Certain ways to embody the content in a presentation relevant to newer humans can’t always be done to contemporize and connect and make relevant older art or concepts. (That is a charge for new people.)
But perhaps most powerful relevant reason the seems sandblasted away, as Ted’s article suggests, is by the fire hose power of newer technologies for communication — particularly the Internet and all of its manifestations to date.
TV before it was also culpable, as in its life has had to straddle the vast gulf between ancient content and the newest styles of storytelling and technical production and delivery.
A forgotten front page household name from 50 years ago plus, media theorist Marshall McLuhan, actually predicted much of what we are experiencing and what this article is about — he foresaw the internet and its effects including… the “perpetual now”. Check him out.
He’s the guy that said “the medium is the message”, and he was correct.
That he has not been brought up in this conversation or comments is a testament in and of itself to the point of this article.
Many of the authors you mention would have works in the public domain if the copyright laws in force when their works were published remained in force today. This would allow their works to be republished and adapted freely, ensuring their ideas remained at the center of the cultural conversation. These authors are the casualties of draconian copyright laws that have extended the protections on their works *retroactively* so that the corporations that have a stake in the works can extract the maximum value from them.
I am 32 but I joke that I identify as a member of the Greatest Generation rather than a millennial because I so deeply love art and cinema and music from the 1940s and 1950s. I am obsessed with film noir, with Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra (including the Columbia years!) and Elvis. It makes me so sad to think that this history is disappearing. Music from the period is fairly accessible by comparison but movies are becoming a real problem. Ten years ago Netflix used to have a couple of the lesser Hitchcock movies and MGM technicolor musicals but now even those are gone. David Zaslav keeps trying to get rid of TCM even though there’s no way that channel is expensive to run. I’m concerned about what he will do with the WB archive and what Disney will do with the Fox archive.
Film noir is such a treat. Damn they really knew how to make a movie back then! Sometimes ill even be *shocked* by some scene or plot twist, and ill think "would this movie even be allowed to be made today? Would the audience even 'get it'?"
Maybe they will do the absolutely stupid & foolish thing studios did in the 80's & 90's when they threw out Everything ... Sets ,Props ,Prints , Costumes ,etc. Sold famous Lots & Locations for Housing Tracts - you name it. Now some of them realize (if only for Greed purposes ) there was "Gold in them Hills".
Debbie Reynolds tried to save some of it for a time ...
Most people who know about pre-war jazz know of me as the former bassist with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band, the host band for the (now retired) public radio series "Riverwalk Jazz." These days I live in Soutwest Florida and work mostly with bands and singers of the Great American Songbook. A few years back, during a vacation to New York, I was invited by Jon-Erik Kellso to play one of the Sunday afternoons at the Ear Inn on the Lower West Side. I had lots of fun with Jon's "Ear Regualrs." The clarinet player, Dennis Lichtman, invited me to hear his Tuesday band at Mona's on the Lower East Side. My girlfriend and I found ourselves among the few people in the place with grey hair. The dominant style of jazz I heard was pre-war Swing. At midnight the jam session began, and there was a long line of young players waitng their turn to sit in. I heard very little post-war style jazz, and most of it was just swingin' like crazy. I was very happy to know that such a righteous bastion of pre-war jazz existed and was thriving. I hope it's still going strong.
And now I'm encountering quite a few youngsters interested in the old, Jurassic stuff. A cadre of 20- and 30-somethings in Austin led by cornetist David Jellema. The Parker Jazz Club donwtown run by a guy who remembered me from his High School days in San Antonio and visits to The Landing where we played 6 nights a week (I was there for 19 years).
Currently I've been working in Naples Florida with 26-year-old Decyo McDuffie, a gifted singer consumed with absorbing vast quantities of Songbook masterworks, interpreting them through the lens of his hero, Nat Cole. The group of us working with and mentoring him are all in our 60s and 70s. Last week Decyo led us in a Nat tribute in a nice auditorium in Ft. Myers. We got a standing ovation and played an encore.
Crazy, baby!
At least we can hear greats like Nat King Cole on YouTube, his performance of Nature
Boy is a true earworm, especially if you love piano!
If anything, it is easier to hear and see older stuff than ever. I remember going to a rep house to see a recently restored clip of Cab Calloway performing Minnie the Moocher. It was a save the date kind of thing. You can find it on Youtube along with a pile of his other stuff and that of his peers. If anything the past is more accessible than ever.
Someone with a Criterion Channel subscription has an unprecedented access to film history.
His is still the finest "Stardust" ever recorded, to my ears.
Invisible Man is one of my favorite books. I've read all the short stories of John Cheever, 5 or 6 Bellow novels (Augie March is in my top 25), All The King's Men and The Heart is A Lonely Hunter, The Natural and A Death In The Family would all be in books I strongly recommend. But I'm a screenwriter and a novelist with an MFA from Columbia, so I suppose I'm an exception.
What I would say is that the 1940s and 1950s are outside of the living memory of pretty much anyone alive, and so the work from that long ago that lives on is exclusively what's truly canonical (I'd guess Invisible Man because of race pre-CRA; Augie March because of Mid-Century Jews, and maybe All The King's Men because of politics. Definitely Citizen Kane, 12 Angry Men, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo, Paths of Glory, and The Seven Samurai are all heavily referenced movies that most film fans are familiar with, if only because the structure and style of those films defines the decades of films that follow, more than the literature defines the subsequent books.)
If you look at the book sales data, the opposite is the actual problem: contemporary novels are selling worse than any contemporary novels have, and you could probably make the same claim about film. The mania amongst young film buffs around the Criterion Collection and Letterboxd suggests a contemporary obsession with nostalgia (for great work, no doubt!) that is particularly novel to this moment. The problem seems to be not that we are forgetting too much, but that we are not in fact creating enough. If you look forward a few decades from the 40s and 50s--say the Boomers' adolescence and salad days--you'l find that this work is still hugely influential on the culture. PTA is adapting a Pynchon novel for his newest picture; many young film buffs prefer Space Odyssey, Godfather, Star Wars and Jaws to anything contemporary. Philip Roth is still considered the Jewish writer par excellence, Joan Didion the female writer, and James Baldwin the Black writer. As long as some of the audience that experienced the work in the moment is still alive, it is nearly as vital and part of the cultural consciousness as when it was first released.
Great mini reading list! Invisible Man is a wild ride of a book and I feel sorry for people that don't realize what an amazing writer Ellison is. The Heart is a Lonely hunter was one of the best reading experiences I had going to high school, it effected me strongly back then so I need to re-order this classic! And of course being from Chicago, I obviously dug Bellow more than most authors! Will clearly need to buy Cheever in the near future!
And the sad thing these days is that kids aren't even reading complete novels in high school anymore. What a ridiculous idea!
Cheever was great. I've got a short story collection that (I think) has "The Swimmer" in it. Great stuff.
Is that the one with they made a movie of? I just saw a YouTube collection of under appreciated movies from the Sixties and The Swimmer was on that list. It’s actually a very creepy movie according to the reviewer!
The Swimmer ... Saw it as a young kid & always remembered it but couldn't remember its title or find it. Finally found & acquired it in the "modern age'. It held up. Very original & quite interesting.
Never had the "Its happening Now" mental problem. Who cares - if it is good ,it is good.
Even when young. Starting around 15 or 16 - (it was still the era of 3 maybe 4 channels) I would sit up all night ,many nights watching old B&W films. I never had the "its old" prejudice so many have. Saw All the classics & More. Then channel 13 showed (KONG TV I believe) up & a Real Hyper Host - Bob Corcoran & his rants along with Great Old movies. Later - Stanley Kramer retired to the Pacific NW & was on a local Station (13 ?) late at night. Showing great old movies & giving off the cuff monologues. It was great !
I'm betting others remember these "personalities".
Yes, same story. Haven’t seen the movie but don’t remember the story being creepy. On the other hand, it’s been a while so…
Find it and see it. Burt Lancaster is the lead. It haunts me.
Will do. Currently on evil amazon.
I’m like you & with you on all this. We will continually try to reinvent the wheel in our headlong pursuit of the endless NOW.
You're comment SO good
I think here's the real data: people just like whatever was popular when Baby Boomers were young. In the mind of an average Boomer narcissist, there was none before them and there shall be none after. I don't think all the Baby Boomer stuff being popular is totally terrible, since some of it is actually good here and there, but it's still totally ridiculous how the only things that are allowed are generally what Boomers liked. On the other hand it probably doesn't really matter what's popular, and I'd rather have to ignore Star Wars and the Talking Heads than Sylvia Plath or whatever anyway, so maybe, to paraphrase Voltaire, we do live in the best of all possible worlds.
My reply to this reply seems to have migrated somewhere. The gist of it was that blaming the “boomers “ for anything and everything is now compulsory.
I'm a Boomer & have blamed us since I was fairly young ... even though it is much more than that in Reality.
Netflix has not erased Casablanca and Citizen Kane. They’re both available on Amazon Prime Video at a reasonable price, as are very many B&W movies of the 40s and 50s. That said, I do worry that what is available to us in the age of streaming is determined by the whim (or business plans) of these corporate behemoths. So get the (‘obsolete’) DVDs while you can!
The Criterion Channel is a streaming service with rotating offerings of quality older (and newer) classic, independent, foreign, etc films throughout the year. I’ve found it’s worth it to give up several of the popular streaming apps for that single subscription.
HBO Max has some also. I scrolled past Casablanca last night when I was looking for something to watch.
Yes. It's odd that it didn't come up in this post.
Netflix isn't the only streaming service.
Love that channel.
> Netflix has not erased Casablanca and Citizen Kane. They’re both available on Amazon Prime Video
So, Netflix has in fact erased them... *from it's catalog*. It's not like Ted here meant you can't buy the DVDs or find them in this or that other platform anymore. But for a huge chunk of platforms like Netflix, it's as if those movies never existed...
Of course close to nobody under 40 has a DVD player... and nobody under 25 has ever seen a DVD after their teens
Content has licensing costs and sometimes the licenses are exclusive. Not every streaming service is going to provide every movie. If I have to jump from one provider to another to see something, that is a minor inconvenience.
Meanwhile this is an absolute golden age for people who are interested in back catalogues of anything: There are more opportunities and wider availability of historical content than anything that was available when I was a teenager and dissatisfied with cable TV and Blockbuster.
Sometimes I wish the quality was better. There can be very poor public domain copies of films floating around on free/budget streaming services. But if you compared trying to find legacy content, and watch *at your convenience*, between today and 2010, 2000, 1990, 1980.... this is by far the best time to be alive.
No one wants to (or should have to) subscribe to a dozen different services to get a broad and compelling choice of content.
I just mute the commercials. One disappointment is when institutional apps are garbage. There's an app where we can rent things from the library and it barely works: pause, fast forward and reverse don't work (the functions are there, just broken).
The one we have is Hoopla.
I probably have ADHD and the break lets me get up and then refocus. Even if I'm watching a Blu-Ray I'll tend to break it up into 50 minute segments. So, yeah, I forgot the commercials are a deal breaker for a lot of people.
I'm very encouraged that at least some fans of music and movies are getting analog gear like turntables, maybe DVD's will be next for a mini revival!
I buy alot of old dvds and cds and the prices of these have already started to go up. Im guessing bc people are buying them, not so much bc theyre becoming rare yet(although some rare cds will fetch a pretty penny).
Ofc i havent looked into this, its just an impression.
Whatevers going on, id suggest to anyone interested to buy them up now! They should only go up in value, *and* you can watch/listen to them!
I've found lots of CDs and DVDs on Ebay, and for peanuts. So many people seem to be liquidating their collections (or the collections of a friend/relative who has died)! Their loss, my gain. Many of them have never been played.
>I think many younger people have DVD drives (peripherals) for their computers, along with DVD players
Only a statistically insignificant niche. Less even than the niche that listens to vinyl.
> It's literally the only way people can watch a lot of films and TV shows that aren't licensed by any streaming service.
There is also piracy and digital downloads. But most people aren't rewatching Casablanca or classic noir, maybe like 1% or less is anywhere near doing that.
"There is also piracy and digital downloads. But most people aren't rewatching Casablanca or classic noir, maybe like 1% or less is anywhere near doing that."
Do you know that for a fact? It might be. But if it's so, I wonder whether running these movies on Netflix would change that.
So true. I’m one of them that never got rid of my old media and am reinvesting in stuff I never had or lost along the way whilst streaming, but I prefer the old format.
I think that is very wise advice (to get DVDs) if you love (and you should!) these classics. Amazon will probably endure as a company so digitally buying from them is probably a safe bet if you do not have a physical DVD.
There’s a danger in “buying” the digital editions, even from a company like amazon that will no doubt persist long past its deserved expiration date: you aren’t actually buying those digital products, you are licensing them, and that license is revokable. See the case of the edition of Orwell’s 1984 that disappeared from purchaser’s kindle libraries, or the edits made to Roald Dahl works. The only way to make sure you can hold on to a book or movie (in its proper version) you really like is to own a physical copy. We aren’t (yet) at the point where they will break down the door to your home to revoke or alter physical media.
That's right, and that's why I bought the actual "true" version of "Touch Of Evil," with Welles' edits and original opening sequence intact. (Jonathan Rosenbaum has stated that the opening sequence of "Touch Of Evil" is the greatest opening ever filmed.)
hah! But yes I think that people are really starting to worry about really keeping their purchased goods in the digital age because in the analog age once we got that vinyl in our hands it stayed in our hands!
"Stop Killing Games" is a massive effort aimed at this issue in the videogames space. Its been an interesting saga to watch so far - perhaps is the start of something bigger and more meaningful about digital entertainment ownership in general. You are right, people are definitely waking up to this.
Yes, but my point was that the consumer had no say in it. They may have “bought” the original version, but then had it swapped for the new version without any notice or consent. No one can do that to your physical copy.
Famous last words(about amazon lol)
Its always the things that seem the most enduring that disappear. Consider 'people walking'..
Definitely invest in physical media as much as you can while you can if you’ve got at least 40 more years of life possibly ahead of you.
I read and loved "Invisible Man" as a teenager. So much so that I reached back and read the "Notes from Underground" original by Dostoyevsky. Both remain so vital and fresh today, perhaps even more so in the 21st Century!
You've mentioned Carson McCullers several times on this thread, and I thank you because she'll definitely go on my TBR pile! Do you think her Library of America collection of novels is the way to go or just start with "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?"
Dear Ted -- Though I'm with you most of the way here -- and ALL the way, for huge chunks -- I just gotta say that great authors, musicians, and filmmakers go out of print all the goddam time. And what was best-selling in any given week will most likely be forgotten three decades hence, if not three weeks or months.
Hell, half the greats we DO remember today weren't remotely hits when they first came out. Meanwhile, unexpected crazes for shimmering gems of old get launched almost coincidentally, whenever someone starts spelunking around in the past and goes, "Oh my goodness!" or "Holy shit!"
From there, it all comes down to preservationists giving a hoot. For them, I thank God. And also, thank YOU!!!
Some work is great in its day because it speaks profoundly to audiences of the day.
The process of learning what is great because it speaks to audiences generations later is harshly darwinian.
Or look at a great book like Moby Dick. It was only a modest seller when it first came out but fans of good literature eventually rediscovered it and it now is regarded as a great book. Actually much of it was before its time so great books can defy that darwinian effect!
But fun to watch, when it works!
John Skipp? The Light at the End, Deadlines, that John Skipp?
YEP! That's me! HI!
Good points. Hitchcock's "Vertigo" floundered at the box office originally; it rose to greatness in later years, is understood by most critics to be one the great movies of all time, but now?
When Paramount+ first debuted, it was delightful! Full of old movies. Then, in June of 2023, they took almost everything pre-1980 off the platform, wiping out 90% of my watchlist and leaving me with Sunset Boulevard and a handful of John Wayne movies. Now, it's even worse. Sunset Boulevard and John Wayne are gone, and the oldest title I can find is Perry Mason.
Amazon Prime is the only major streaming service with old movies now. And they only have a handful of silents. There are some free services with old stuff, like Plex and Tubi, and the Public Domain website, and some truly random Roku apps like Silent Movie Classics. And YouTube has a lot of silent movies, too.
I've been building up my collection of DVDs/Blu-rays. I currently have 563 titles in my library, 295 of which are pre-1975, and I will buy almost anything I find if it's in black and white, frankly.
TCM streams old movies.
You're right! I forgot about them because they don't have a standalone service, you have to add it to something else.
And to be fair, I did also forget HBO Max, but it's because I'm still mad at them for changing their UI and getting rid of the hubs, making it harder to find the good stuff.
But TCM is part of HBO Max remember
It is hard to keep a spreadsheet on what is bundled with what. This is intentional and in the end all about $$$.
It also depends on who your cable provider is. My is unfortunately Verizon.
Silent movies are few and far between on streaming services. YouTube is often the only source, and the quality there is far from ideal. I have a sizable, and growing, collection of silent films, and a lot of films from the '30s. I'm unfamiliar with the Roku app you named, but will look into it as a source for silent film.
I found it, and a few others, by searching for specific titles on my Roku TV, just in the Search section in the sidebar. It comes up with "X ways to watch" and each one has its own tile, and with silent movies there are always some weird random ones. They don't always work, you have to try to actually watch to make sure, but sometimes you get lucky.
While I still had access through my university, Kanopy had a large catalog of silent movies. It's been years, but I still think about *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,* which I had to watch for my German classes! Truly haunting visuals.
I believe various libraries are able to get Kanopy credentials, so you may investigate if your local library has Kanopy as a service for its patrons. If you live somewhere with a Virtual Library, you may also be able to access Kanopy through there.
Kanopy is great. I have access through my library card.
Also, check out the Criterion Channel’s streaming service and app.
Yep, there is this. I don't consider that a major streaming service, though. Just my opinion, but I see CC (and the TCM add-on) as niche options for movie lovers, and the fact that classic cinema is getting siloed out of the major players is a net loss in discovery and availability terms.
How does one define a major streaming service? I mean, people who are into film history definitely know what Criterion is.
And hopefully they will continue to invest in that service. The problem with Google/YouTube or Netflix is they are do not seem to be consistently able to show older content and with YouTube, you have to rely on users who upload content. What happens when those users get a DMCA takedown notice? Right, it gone!😕
Yes! There's always that! The thing about silent films, though, is that at this point most of them (the ones we still have) are in the public domain (most films from 1929 entered the public domain this year, and that about covers the bulk of silents since sound took over rapidly in the late 1920s), so I'm very happy to see anyone uploading those anywhere they can. It's not foolproof, obviously, for a lot of reasons, but it's something.
https://archive.org/ a great source for old B&W movies
Also a great source for much more. And great old TV I couldn't find anywhere else. Who cares if it is not "Pristine" Modern age quality ?
It is an amazing resource. Make a donation
cool!
I was floored at age 45 to hear music from my youth on the Oldies station. They even played XTC (a college indie band from the 1980s) at the grocery store. Crazy.
It's when you don't hear "your" music on the Oldies station any more; then it's time to worry a bit.
I remember thinking(bc i grew up with rap) would i eventually hear eminem on an oldies station? I dont think we're there yet, but its bound to happen, right? Assuming oldies stations last that long(which i think they will, radio still gets some play in my neck of the woods)
I knew I was past Prime when I was walking through a Grocery store - Many decades ago & Jefferson's Airplane "Somebody To Love" was playing. A tune I had really Dug playing in several Rock Bands all across the Western USA in the early 70's.
When a guy plays the Super Bowl at around age 50, it probably won't be long.
The definition of "classic rock" seems to be getting more and more recent.
Mr. Giola,
You forgot your OWN 80-year-rule: 80 years after the premiere of an artist, the artist is forgotten.
The rule now applies to everything - unless it actually is a cultural or political icon (eg Louis Armstrong) as you have noted. The great works or people you mentioned, like Saul Bellow, happened 70-80 years ago. Only "Gone with the Wind" will survive, and that's unless it's described as racist.
My girlfriend recently read GWTW. She said it was racist crap but also the Great American Novel. That's sad but true.
That period does seem a bit alien to us right now, especially since we don’t live in a “stable” consensus anymore
I actually find myself reading more and more modernist lit (1880s -1930s) now, like Robert Walser or Musil. Their anxious and lost sensibilities feel really contemporary
Many people only live in a perpetual now. I managed a record store in the 70s. Sometimes a customer would ask me for a 45 that was popular. I would give a title, and the response would be, "that's old," It was my best selling 45 two weeks earlier.
My solution to this is a personal library: I have about 5,000 LPs and CDs, mostly jazz, but also classical, rock, pop, ethnic, blues, soul. I have about 1,000 books, and about 300 DVDs.
A character in a Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel, when a detective notices her collection of 78 rpm records, easy "I listen to the past," Me, too. And read it and watch it.
And I wish i could convince my wife to cancel Netflix
Nirvana's "Nevermind" came out in, what, 1990? That was 35 years ago. Led Zeppelin's first record came out in 1968, some 22 years before "Nevermind".
How many teenagers in 1968 were listening to the chart hits of 1946, 1933 or 1910? I suspect that damn few did.
But there are plenty of kids today who love Nirvana and Zeppelin.
Yes, isn't that "Its Old" idea ridiculous ? Luckily ,even as a young kid I was never burdened with that misguided idea. I always knew - if it's good -it's Good
I can really appreciate your approach. I have close to 3000 books, 1000 LPs, and a full wall of CDs and DVDs. Toss in some cassette tapes a few reel to reels, and a smattering of VCR tapes. I tried eBooks but about three years ago I put down my kindle in the middle of book 5 of a 9 book set and can’t go back. Years ago I made mixed CDs on DVDs so they will play for 12 hours straight. If you don’t like the genre give it a few minutes and something you do like will come on. Some of the album covers are still stamped “DJ COPY. NOT FOR SALE” They are from high school when I interned at the local radio station. Simpler times.
Yes, I make mix CDs for both myself, and for friends and families. Have DJ copies, too, sold to used stores by radio station personnel.
Make them on DVD blanks and they will play all day. I imagine today a radio station library is nothing more than a stack of hard drives and thumb drives. The people working there have no idea what they are missing. It was like Christmas everyday as the mail arrived with a new batch of 45s. And complete albums, when they came in that was like getting a new bike at Easter.
When I was in high school and college ('80s-'90s), we read a lot of work from the '20s and '30s — Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner. I had a whole upper-division English class devoted just to Hemingway and Faulkner. And the '20s — the Jazz Age — was fondly remembered a time American cultural flowering.
The WWII generation has sort of been skipped, despite the enormous historical events, possibly in favor of the '60s. My kid now in high school has a mostly familiar traditional curriculum that includes many books I read at her age. The main addition this year is a book about Vietnam. The boomers dominate the culture and their parents get passed over.
Get used to it. There was a time when J.S. Bach was pretty much forgotten, and Josquin Deprez still mostly is.
Around the turn of this century (I don't recall the exact date), there was a short-lived opera company in the Berkshires of western Mass. (It was the precursor of the Berkshire Opera Festival, which began in 2015.). They did a wonderful presentation of Menotti's "The Consul." I recall the main set, which was a floor-to-ceiling array of filing cabinets (paintings, not real ones), to imply the stifling bureaucracy. I've suggested to various people that our current political moment would be a good time to revive that opera, but no takers so far.
I recall seeing Menotti's "The Saint of Bleecker Street" on TV once, long ago in a galaxy far, far away.
For one, it isn't dumbed down. Second, if too many people saw the great movies (from all over the world), the music, the comedians (Mort Sahl, etc)., then they'd ignore whatever is going on today.
Maybe, when I introduce people to classic black and white films people view them with a lot of trepidation, fearing they may not get it.
One reason they wont get it is that no mainstream platform or institution or even parents told taught them to "get it".
They shouldnt be "introduced" now as adults, they should have been shown them growing up, as part of a classical well rounded entertainment. Instead they're told that anything released 2 years ago or more is "antiquated".
My comment was a response to John Lumgair's comment up the thread.
He wrote: "Maybe, when I introduce people to classic black and white films people view them with a lot of trepidation, fearing *they* may not get it"
Those are the they. The people who don't get those old films when shown to them, that is, the average 40-ish and below person today.
These people were never introduced to older 20th century culture and films in any systematic way (from school, parents, the media, educators, etc). Hell, they weren't introduced to any classical "canon" works either, even if they were college educated. And those works were the bread and butter of an education until the mid-20th century.
Instead every random novelty and every latest franchize, reboot, and sequel is pushed into them with 100s of millions in marketing budget.
I'm making assumptions that are true of most - the vast majority of people under 40 don't have a DVD player anywhere near. A statistically insignificant percentage of such age groups do have one.
When we discuss the erasure of such past century culture and movies from modern view, we can't just say "thankfully, people today still have DVDs" as if that covers any meaninful amount of people.
I've learned that most people don't get it. They don't have the attention span or breadth of knowledge to enjoy black and white films. The film may as well be in a foreign language as far as they're concerned.
I'm not sure that would be true for most of the classics, in my experience people are surprised how accessible they are. But may be the people I have introduced them too are a more open.
It might take some getting used to but I think real movie fans who don't want just entertainment but a deeper experience that great films bring, they will appreciate these black and white classics! Hitchcock, Welles, Capra and many other classic directors made their best stuff in black and white!
Right. They become scared!
how do people react when you show them old classic movies?
They love them. They are much more accessible then they expect.
Yes and people are surprised that they are not weird or esoteric, but actually very engaging.
And Lenny Bruce of course!
But is this just part of the movement of culture? Genuine question - In 1950 how many novels and operas from 1905 were being consumed? Is there a natural shelf for culture, with things falling off all the time?
1950 is 75 years prior to now. 75 years prior to that would have been 1875.
Some of the erasure has to do with the nature of time. Only the most notable of notable survive. Look at the top 10 composers when Beethoven was at his peak, you might recognize 1-2 others max.
Some of it is true innovation, or art versus repetitious pablum. The Beatles will probably still be known in 200 years for inventing so many new styles of music. The Stones.. Elvis … not so much, but memorable. Taylor? Not at all.
Some of it is sound or visual quality, or production style. Sometimes people just can’t slog through a grainy old picture and sound they can’t understand on old movie. Maybe regenerative AI restorations of picture and sound will help. This goes for photos too.
Some of it is just relatability. No matter what artistic expression, sometimes it’s just not relatable anymore without a fuller and perhaps more contemporary context. Or a guide to why something in a classic is shocking, or inappropriate, or desirable, or was groundbreaking.
Certain ways to embody the content in a presentation relevant to newer humans can’t always be done to contemporize and connect and make relevant older art or concepts. (That is a charge for new people.)
But perhaps most powerful relevant reason the seems sandblasted away, as Ted’s article suggests, is by the fire hose power of newer technologies for communication — particularly the Internet and all of its manifestations to date.
TV before it was also culpable, as in its life has had to straddle the vast gulf between ancient content and the newest styles of storytelling and technical production and delivery.
A forgotten front page household name from 50 years ago plus, media theorist Marshall McLuhan, actually predicted much of what we are experiencing and what this article is about — he foresaw the internet and its effects including… the “perpetual now”. Check him out.
He’s the guy that said “the medium is the message”, and he was correct.
That he has not been brought up in this conversation or comments is a testament in and of itself to the point of this article.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
And I'd rather not watch something than watch it with subtitles (if it's in English--I much prefer subtitles to dubbing of foreign media).
Operas and classical music are one thing. I'm sure that you could find a performance of Salome or Stravinskii in 1950.
Popular music is another animal altogether.
Many of the authors you mention would have works in the public domain if the copyright laws in force when their works were published remained in force today. This would allow their works to be republished and adapted freely, ensuring their ideas remained at the center of the cultural conversation. These authors are the casualties of draconian copyright laws that have extended the protections on their works *retroactively* so that the corporations that have a stake in the works can extract the maximum value from them.
I am 32 but I joke that I identify as a member of the Greatest Generation rather than a millennial because I so deeply love art and cinema and music from the 1940s and 1950s. I am obsessed with film noir, with Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra (including the Columbia years!) and Elvis. It makes me so sad to think that this history is disappearing. Music from the period is fairly accessible by comparison but movies are becoming a real problem. Ten years ago Netflix used to have a couple of the lesser Hitchcock movies and MGM technicolor musicals but now even those are gone. David Zaslav keeps trying to get rid of TCM even though there’s no way that channel is expensive to run. I’m concerned about what he will do with the WB archive and what Disney will do with the Fox archive.
Film noir is such a treat. Damn they really knew how to make a movie back then! Sometimes ill even be *shocked* by some scene or plot twist, and ill think "would this movie even be allowed to be made today? Would the audience even 'get it'?"
Criterion fan/subscriber?
I used to be! I stopped paying for streaming services but I was one of Filmstruck’s most devoted fans
Maybe they will do the absolutely stupid & foolish thing studios did in the 80's & 90's when they threw out Everything ... Sets ,Props ,Prints , Costumes ,etc. Sold famous Lots & Locations for Housing Tracts - you name it. Now some of them realize (if only for Greed purposes ) there was "Gold in them Hills".
Debbie Reynolds tried to save some of it for a time ...