The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour (212)

Before our feature presentation, ACME would like to start the evening with another Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny cartoon, the 1955 Sahara Hare (featuring Yosemite Sam,) directed by Friz Freleng.




The beginning scene with Bugs mistakenly ending up at the Sahara Desert believing it was Miami Beach was reused footage taken from Frigid Hare. The gag with the panicked elephant using Sam to swat a wind-up mouse was also used in Acrobatty Bunny.


We've picked another entry from the excellent reference book, 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Schneider for today's feature. Today's choice is Alfred Hitchcock 1951 psychological thriller film noir, based on the Patricia Highsmith's novel, Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock, wanting a big name to adapt first time novelist Highsmith story, approaching such luminaries as Thornton Wilder, John Steinbeck, and Dashiell Hammett to flesh out the treatment of the novel that he'd commissioned. But those three rejected him, as did several others. Hitchcock got the mystery novelist Raymond Chandler to write a draft of the screenplay, and then a second draft, but the two men disagreed on almost everything and had wildly different working styles. They parted ways acrimoniously. Three other people wrote the bulk of the screenplay, including his wife, Alma Reville. Warner Bros. wanted Chandler's name as a selling point, so his credit remained. So we would like you to relax (quick, find the most comfortable seat on the sofa,) get a snack (perhaps, some grilled cheese sandwich,) and a beverage (a Coke,) and join The ACME Eagle Hand Soap Radio Hour in watching this very dark film, Strangers on a Train.




Hitchcock sped up the film to make it look like the merry-go-round was merry-go-rounding faster than it actually was, but it was a perilous stunt even at the slower speed. The carousel operator—not a professional stuntman—volunteered to be the one to crawl under it, and he really did have to crawl with a whirling carousel just inches from his head. "If the man had raised his head even slightly," said Hitchcock, "it would have gone from being a suspense film into a horror film."

A wonderful piece of trivia involves carol Burnetts association with the film. When Carol Burnett received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the 1970s, she asked for the star to be placed at 6439 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of the Hollywood Pacific Theatre. Burnett had been an usher at that theater as a college freshman, when Strangers on a Train was playing, and was fired for advising patrons to wait for the next showing rather than enter the theater late and have the ending spoiled.



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