It's Snowing! Making Celluloid Winter Wonderlands

What do you first think of when you see this scene? Did any of you think asbestos? How about cornflakes? If you're like me you most likely thought, "Christmas in Connecticut! I love that scene! The snow is so pretty."

Well, you're right, it IS Christmas in Connecticut and the snow is pretty! Wait, did I just say snow?

Everyone knows that Hollywood, California, is where movies are made. Everyone ALSO knows it doesn't snow there. So how did scenes like the one in Christmas in Connecticut come about? Did the entire movie set pack up and head to where the real snow was? Did they bring the snow to Hollywood? Or did they make their own?

Click here in case you now need to listen to "Snow."

Silent, and not so silent Snow

Snow scenes in films have been around since the beginning of movies themselves. In order to have them be as realistic as possible, the whole cast and crew would pack up in search of snow and ice.  And while it looked nice on film, there were numerous problems and accidents associated with it. Camera's froze, actors fell into ice waters or suffered hypothermia leading to lost toes and rheumatism, got lost in snow storms, fell down mountains... pretty much anything that could happen, did.

A popular silent film, The Gold Rush (1925) starring Charlie Chaplin, featured both real snow and fake. The film was shot in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and made to look like the famous Chilkoot Pass in Alaska. However, after Chaplin came down with pneumonia, the crew headed back to Hollywood and constructed snow-covered mountains with timber, chicken wire, and burlap covered with salt and flour. Other early snow scenes used everything from white pine sawdust, scraps of paper mixed with salt (thrown in front of a wind machine it made very convincing snowfall), cotton wool, paraffin (for ice) and crushed gypsum (from their own mine), the last of which probably contributed to the early death of actor Lon Chaney, who died of lung cancer in his mid-forties.

UPDATE (from a tweet by the TCM account: "The fake ice and snow consisted of 200 tons of plaster, 285 tons of salt, and 100 barrels of flour. The blizzard scenes required four cart-loads of confetti."

The most popular form of early movie snow was cornflakes painted white or bleached, mixed with shaved gypsum. Yes, cornflakes. However, once sound entered the picture, cornflakes posed a huge problem: when the actors walked on it you couldn't hear what they were saying! Dialogue had to be added later.

Hey, I've got an idea!

In the late 1920s, a firefighter had a "bright" idea. Why not use Asbestos? The chrysotile asbestos fibers were cheap, versatile, and thought to be harmless (we now know it causes mesothelioma as the loose fibers were easily inhaled). A huge plus was that it didn't make noises when actors walked on it, an important feature once synchronized sound in film was the norm. It also wouldn't catch fire, something that cotton batting was in danger of doing (though in reality not much of a threat). Films such as The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Holiday Inn (1942) feature the harmful substance, sold under the harmless sounding names of "Pure White" and "Snow Drift." It was used not only in movies, but on the stage, department store window displays, and as decoration in homes throughout the 30s and early 40s. The product was popular up until the start of WWII, when asbestos was needed instead for ships, planes, and other military equipment. However, the product was still used all the way up until the mid-50s.

Don't breath it in, Bing!

It's a Wonderful Idea

In the summer of 1946, a new "snowstorm" was brewing. The film was the now iconic classic It's a Wonderful Life starring the just-returned-from-the-war veteran James Stewart and it needed snow... lots of it. Shaved ice could be used for icy paths and plaster would be used for snowbanks and spryed on trees but for the snow they wanted something different. Russell Sherman, RKO studio's head of special effects and a much more brilliant man than that fireman, used his engineering skills and some post-WWII technology to come up with silent, unmeltable, and realistic-looking fake snow. The chemical mixture he came up with used foamite—a material used in fire extinguishers—and mixed it with sugar, water, and even soap flakes. It was sprayable and could be quickly blasted over set pieces using wind machines. The film used 6,000 gallons of the substance, which "clung convincingly to clothing and created picture-perfect footprints, while generating nothing like the sound of trod-upon breakfast cereal." Sherman, along with the rest of the RKO Special Effects Department received a Class III Scientific or Technical Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for "developing a new method of simulating falling snow on motion picture sets."

Sherman's snow, called Phomaide, revolutionized snow in film, yet as time went on, other methods were developed to meet different needs. Dr. Zhivago (1965) called for Siberian ice. Since filming in Russia was out of the question, special effects guy Eddie Fowler used hot wax and marble dust to create a glittering, frozen tableau.

Snowmaking Today

Today, the majority of snow in films comes from one company: Snow Business, located in Britain. They boast over 200 different types of eco-friendly snow made from a variety of materials, including recycled paper and plastics, that is both safe and comfortable for actors. Looking at all of the different types of "snow" on their website is amazing; one would swear it is real. There are pages for settled snow, falling snow, ice, frost, falling ash, icicles, dirty snow, clean snow, indoor snow, the combinations are endless! They also provide real snow, which can last up to three days if stored properly.

Digital Snow

The last kind of movie snow is digital snow. Technology has advanced so far since the advent of films. Where once studio workers would painstakingly make an entire field of individual poppies (The Wizard of Oz), now huge vistas, fields, mountains, building, bridges - all can be created digitally using green-screen technology. So when you see huge icy mountains in a film, they could be real or they could be digital! We've come a long way!

Sources:

Popular Mechanics: Snow Job - How Hollywood Fakes Winter on Film. 2013.

GIZMODO: Hollywood Invented a New Type of Fake Snow to Film It's a Wonderful Life. 2011.

Mesothelioma.com - Fake Snow

Wonderful Engineering: This is how they make snow in movies. 2013.

ImagineMDD: Fake Snow Bringing Winter to Silent Movies. 2014.

BLDGBLOG (Building Blog): The Snow Mine. 2014.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

This post is part of the Classic Movie History Project Blogathon focusing on the System (How movies are made) hosted by Movies Silently, the Films (the movies themselves) hosted by Silver Screenings, and the People (the folks who made the movies) hosted by Once Upon a Screen.

Day 1: The Studios & the Publicity Dept.

Day 2: The Production Code & the Magic of Animation

Day 3: The Groundbreakers & Before They Were Stars

Day 4: The Technical Dept. & the Wardrobe Dept.

Day 5: Movie Disasters & the Wonderful World of Color

Day 6: The Family Business & a Foreign Affair

Monthly Movie History: The Legion of Decency

If you are a fan of Classic Movies you probably know about the Production Code, which was put into effect in 1934 by Will Hays (also known as the Hays Code).

 

The Legion of Decency was organized the year before, in 1933, by the Archbishop of Cincinnati, John T. McNicholas. It sought to  identify and combat objectionable content, from the point of view of the Catholic Church in the United States, in motion pictures. For the first quarter-century of its existence, the legion wielded great power in the American motion picture industry. It had it's own rating system and would publish lists of what films were suitable to watch and what films should be boycotted.

 

 

Rating System:

 

A: Morally unobjectionable

• A-I: Suitable for all audiences
• A-II: Suitable for adults; later — after the introduction of A-III — suitable for adults and    adolescents
• A-III: Suitable for adults only
• A-IV: For adults with reservations

B: Morally objectionable in part
C: Condemned by the Legion of Decency

Legion Approved List for 1938

 

Legion Pledge:

 

I condemn all indecent and immoral motion pictures, and those which glorify crime or criminals. I promise to do all that I can to strengthen public opinion against the production of indecent and immoral films, and to unite with all who protest against them. I acknowledge my obligation to form a right conscience about pictures that are dangerous to my moral life. I pledge myself to remain away from them. I promise, further, to stay away altogether from places of amusement which show them as a matter of policy.

Here is the Legion of Decency banned films list. I've seen three on this list (Psycho, Some Like it Hot, and Miracle on 34th Street) and there are four more that I want to see. If you're wondering why Miracle on 34th Street (1947) is on there, it's because it deals lightly with divorce, something that was more shocking in the 40s.

How many movies on this list have you seen?

 

Hays Code Cartoon

 

All images found via Google Images

70th Anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima and so I thought this would be a great opportunity to share with you some trivia about the John Wayne movie: Sands of Iwo Jima (1949).

Summary: After his wife takes their son and leaves him, Sgt. John Stryker is an embittered man who takes his misery out on the men under his command. They're a bunch of green recruits who have a hard time dealing with Stryker's tough drills and thicker skin. Even his old friends start to wonder if he's gone from being the epitome of a tough Marine Sergeant to a man over the edge.

 You gotta learn right and you gotta learn fast. And any man that doesn't

want to cooperate, I'll make him wish he had never been born.

~ Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne)

• Actual combat scenes taken during fighting on Tarawa and Iwo Jima were used in this film.

Trailer

• Mostly unnoticed is the homage this film pays to a real Marine, "Manila" John Basilone. Basilone was a Sergeant and hero on Guadacanal, winning the Medal of Honor. He was sent home for war bond drives but requested to be returned to combat. He did so and died on Iwo Jima. There is a famous (to history buffs, anyway)photo of his body on Iwo Jima, face down and with his name visible, that is almost exactly the same pose that Wayne is in at his death on film. Also, "Jonathan M" Stryker has more than a passing resemblance to "Manila (or M) John".

• This film recreates the famous Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima scene as known famously from an historic photograph which was taken on the 23rd February, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. The three surviving flag raisers make a cameo appearance during this scene in the film. These three men who were part of the flag raising (made famous by the photograph Joe Rosenthal had taken) and survived the battle for Iwo Jima, appear in this scene only. Rene A. Gagnon, Ira H. Hayes and John H. Bradley are seen with with John Wayne as he instructs them to hoist the flag (Wayne gives the folded flag to Gagnon). The flag used to recreate the incident is the actual flag that was raised on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. It was loaned to the movie by the US Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia.

Left to right: Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes and John Bradley

 

John Wayne and John Bradley, who played himself (he's quite a looker!)

 

• This film was so highly regarded by the Marine Corps that it was required viewing to all recruits during basic training into the early '80s.

Thank you letter signed by John Wayne to the Marines for their help

• The New York Times reported on 5 February 1950 that Republic Pictures was developing a sequel to this movie entitled "Devil Birds", again to star John Wayne, but nothing came of it.

 Read the original New York Times review here

• John Wayne received his first ever Academy Award nomination for this movie. He wouldn't be nominated again for 20 years for True Grit (1969), for which he would win the Best Actor Oscar.

 You’ll never win anything.
You’ll always be taken for granted.
It’s just a cross you’ll have to bear.
 

~ John Ford on Wayne's loss 

• Following the success of the movie, John Wayne was invited to place his footprints in cement outside Grauman's Chinese Theater. As part of the event, actual black sand from Iwo Jima was flown to Hollywood and mixed into the cement in which The Duke left his footprints and "fist print".

• Kirk Douglas was considered for the role of Sergeant Stryker before director Allan Dwan realized he could get John Wayne to play the part [A perfectly natural reaction].

1965

• John Wayne turned the film down at first, since at 42 he was rather old for the part and because he felt the public had had enough of war films.

 

To the United States Marine Corps whose exploits and valor have left a lasting impression on the world and in the hearts of their countrymen. Appreciation is gratefully acknowledged for their assistance and participation which made this picture possible.

 

Premiere: John Wayne (far left) and Major General Graves B. Erskine (5th from right) - source

  

Source: IMDb

All images found via Pinterest

 

Upcoming Posts...

So many things to post: Winter Fun in Hollywood, Winter Films, Countdown to the Oscars (and how to throw the ultimate Oscars party) and a list of Romantic Comedies for Valentine's Day... I'm exhausted already.