MovieChat Forums > Tea for Two (1950) Discussion > Red smear in the credits

Red smear in the credits

posted 15 years ago by hobnob53
20 replies | jump to latest

No, I'm not talking about the Hollywood blacklist....

But in the opening credits of this film, when the screenplay credit for Harry Clork (this is a real name?) is shown, the credits underneath it have all been eviscerated -- it's just a big, red smear obliterating whatever or whoever was listed there. (The credits' lettering is all in red.)

I'm guessing that what's been smeared out (and "smeared" is the right word -- like someone wiped paint or nail polish all over wet ink) are the names of the original writers of the musical on which this film is based, No, No Nanette; or possibly, since that show had already been filmed twice before (in 1930 and 1940), it's the credit of someone connected with an earlier screen adaptation.

Then again, it may be something/someone else altogether.

I'd love to know two things: first, what was originally written there where it's now illegible; and second, why (and when) was this done? Is it a rights issue? (I doubt it.) Might it have been a blacklisting issue that arose the following year when the blacklist exploded in its full fury -- that somebody's name suddenly had to be removed? Or was it something else?

This is just a very weird thing to see, and with no ready explanation as to what was there or why it was erased. Not to mention that it was so clumsily done. This huge red smear, among other things, looks really, really ugly.

[–] movibuf1962 15 years ago

Wow. I thought I was the only person who noticed things like that. If I had to venture a guess, I'd go with your blacklist speculation- based on the fact that some screenwriters (like Dalton Trumbo for "Spartacus") did, in fact, have their credits removed from select films they did while under HUAC speculations. I recorded TF2 when it came on TCM a few months ago, and I was hoping that Robert Osborne or someone would explain that gross, OBVIOUS censoring of someone's name, but they never did. And in this age of digital and computerized remastering, you'd think that if they needed to clean something up in the graphics, they could've fixed it up a heckuva lot better than this.

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Hey movibuf1962 -- Don't worry, you're not the only one who notices things like this -- not as long as I'm alive. (Gee, maybe Warner Bros. has hired an assassin for my asking too many questions!)

But I had the same thought you had -- that Osborne (or, in the case of the last showing, Ben Mankiewicz) would explain this red glob. But no. Maybe we can email them at TCM's site.

Good point about using computerized graphics to clean this mess up. But maybe -- since they've restored or put on for the first time credits that were altered (or never put in in the first place), such as blacklisted writers' credits, in recent years -- they could put back whatever it was that was obliterated.

I think it's other writing credits because this site lists a bunch of people who had some sort of input (direct or indirect) in the screenplay, but whose names I don't see in the film's credits. That might indicate some sort of copyright issue, but this doesn't sound quite right either.

Have you (or anyone who looks in here) seen the new DVD release in the latest Doris Day box set? Is the smear still there?

[–] stan_c 15 years ago

I Googled Tea for Two missing credit and came up with this page that discusses the issue:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/sd-dvd-film-documentary/260772-tea-two-1950-missing-credit.html

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Thank you -- can you give us the gist of what it says?

[–] movibuf1962 15 years ago

If you paste in that webpage (and we thank you for this, 'Stan C!!'), it gives the following text on TF2...Note, however, that this is from two years ago, before TF2 was put on DVD. Apparently, the red smear has been around for sometime. There are no further messages regarding whether or not it was cleaned up for the 2009 DVD.

Re: TEA FOR TWO (1950) - Missing credit....

That card originally read:

Screen Play by Harry Clork

The smudged out credit read:

Suggested by the play "No, No, Nanette," by Frank Mandel, Otto Harbach, Vincent Youmans and Emil Nyitray

Notably missing is the name of lyricist Irving Caesar, who was co-credited as lyricist for the original Broadway score of "No, No, Nanette".

Yet also receiving credit are Frank Mandel and Emil Nyitray, who wrote the play "My Lady Friends" on which the libretto on "Nanette" was based.

Since the film's only connection to the original Nanette are some character names, and the use of several songs (either on screen or as underscore), Caesar didn't get an 'author' credit on that card, but Mandel and Nyitray did, I'd bet there was some kind of snit raised, and hence the smudge, which is probably on the original neg.

Given what TCM ran last night was the same master as the laserdisc (down to the dirt and scratches), It seems likely that Warner will restore TEA FOR TWO for another Doris Day set somewhere in the next year or two.

[–] hobnob53 15 years ago

Thanks, movibuf. I do remember this smear having been there for years -- it certainly isn't recent, though whether it dates to 1950 I doubt: if there had been a problem at the time you'd expect WB would just have done or redone the credits before releasing such a sloppy-looking print. It did seem likely the obliterated credits had something to do with the play and source material, but the question now is who or what put up a problem, and why.

10 to 1 the DVD still has the smear, only now it's digitally enhanced.

[–] ablau 15 years ago

The DVD still has the smear. I was confused by the smear and came to this discussion board in hopes of finding out what had been blurred out. I assumed it was the based on the original play credit as well.

[–] sobaok 15 years ago

After my partner and I both noticed the red smudge on screen for the new Doris DVD set, I decided to get out my old VHS copy. I taped Tea for Two off TV around 1989-1990. The smudge was missing, and, underneath "Harry Clork" it read: "Suggested by the Play No, No, Nanette by Frank Mandel, Otto Harbach, Vincent Youmans and Emil Nyitray." So, whatever the controversy, it must have occured after that date.

[–] Daisies5060 15 years ago

Thanks for the info, sobaok!

[–] miriamwebster 14 years ago

I remember being puzzled by this too during TV broadcasts of Sixties or Seventies that pre-dated home video cassettes. Glad someone else noticed too, although even now, I'm not sure what happened--except that lawyers probably entered the fray.

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] tbrittreid 13 years ago

First, soboak said his/her old VHS did not have the smear-out, and quoted the actual credits, even though they already had been via movibuf1962's quoting a web page which had had its address posted but not linked.

That aside, TCM ran it again last night (November 12, 2010), Osbourne again flatly described it as an adaptation of No, No, Nanette in his introduction, and the credits below the screenwriter's were hidden by a brown (not at all red) cloud! This prompted me to see if the IMDb had an explanation of it, leading me to this thread. A few "pages" after the smear, all the various songs and their respective lyricits/composers were credited (and quite a varied list it was), including Irving Caesar for what songs from the original play were used here, invalidating the blacklist theory. Hobnob53's argument that Warner Bros. could and would have simply replaced the visual material (and more centrally balanced the scripter's credit) is extremely well taken and also works against the smear being all that old. Within the time period of the film's existence, this almost amateurish credit alteration is certainly of fairly recent execution, proven by soboak's VHS copy. I think the thing to do is email TCM about this mystery and pretty much obligate them to deal with it the next time they run this film in a hosted slot.

BTW, what of William Jacobs? The IMDb puts him in an alphabetical list with the clouded-out people, but as "writer." He is also listed as the film's producer. Did he do an uncredited rewrite of Harry Clork's script? It's his first writing credit in seven years; that one was providing the story for a short subject, and was in turn his first writing credit in five years.

I am going to submit an alteration of the writing credits here per what's been reported as beneath the cloud and add a Trivia note about it.

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!

[–] tbrittreid 13 years ago

The promise made in my previous post's last paragraph has been kept and that information and ordering now shows on the page. Didn't email TCM about the situation yet, however, and know I won't have time to today either. But I will, I will. I'll try to include a link to this discussion, come to think of it.

The GREEN HORNET Strikes Again!

[–] The_Dying_Flutchman 14 years ago

Thought that was the title of an old love song, "Red Smear in the Sunset".

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

[–] hobnob53 14 years ago

That remark is well beneath your standards (old or otherwise), TDF/Yodz!

[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] bobo-29 9 years ago

I spotted that red smudge myself tonight. I don't think it was blacklist related . They didn't retroactively remove screen credits from blacklisted artists in 1950, they just stopped giving them credits (and work). Years later they relisted the writer's names on some films where they were never given a credit or had a front's name listed who never did the writing. Like later prints of The Bridge on the River Kwai, etc.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Yes, I think we all decided it was probably a rights issue...though what the problem is, we don't know. The smear appears to be of relatively recent (post-VHS days) vintage, maybe 15-20 years old, since apparently the credits are intact on the VHS release.

Luckily poster stan_c found a link to a page giving the blurred-out credit, and movibuf1962 transcribed it onto his post in reply. (Both posts are on page 1 of this thread, from May 2009.) So now we know what this credit said (it does have to do with the source material), and the entry does speculate on what the nature of the apparent rights dispute is -- though it doesn't have any detailed knowledge of precisely what has happened, or why the credit was suddenly eviscerated decades after the film's release.

I watched the credits of this film when it was broadcast on April 12, 2015, just to see if the smear was still there. (It is.) I wondered whether anyone would come here to discuss it. I hadn't realized it's been six years since I'd started this thread, and that it had been five years since anyone posted here.

[–] bobo-29 9 years ago

That's when I spotted it, the Saturday night Sunday morning showing on TCM April 12. I've watched the film before but never noticed it before, probably wasn't paying attention to the credits if it was smeared out earlier. I've seen an occasional black bar on the credit roll of some film credits but never a "smear" like this. I imagine it was someone's estate suing some studio. Sort of absurd 65 years after the film was made.

[–] hobnob53 9 years ago

Sort of absurd 65 years after the film was made.

That's true, but there are a number of instances of films being altered, cut or even withdrawn from circulation owing to decades-old disputes, or disputes that arose decades after the movie was made. Films like Night Flight (1932) and The Ghost Ship (1943) were locked away for well over half a century due to copyright or ownership disputes. Porgy and Bess (1959) was seen for about 15 years after its release but has been missing ever since due I believe to an estate claim. For a brief time in the early 1980s the portion of Knute Rockne - All American (1940) where George Gipp (Ronald Reagan) utters his famous last line, "Win just one for the Gipper" was cut out of all prints because of some obscure rights dispute concerning that very dialogue!

Political considerations sometimes intrude. The films Suddenly (1954) and The Manchurian Candidate (1962), both of which involve presidential assassinations, were withdrawn from circulation at the instigation of their star, Frank Sinatra, after JFK was killed. (Contrary to belief, Sinatra did not own those films and couldn't control their availability, but he used his clout to have them yanked for decades.) In Japan Toho has locked away the 1955 film Ju Jin Yuki Otoko (US version: Half Human, 1958) because its depiction of an inbred and deformed tribe allegedly gives offense to the Ainu of Hokkaido -- even though the people depicted are clearly not supposed to be the Ainu, or any actual people.

And as you say sometimes you see a black bar, like a piece of masking tape, put over a credit in a film, usually because the releasing company has changed. Prints of Marlon Brando's first film, The Men (1950), now have such a bar over the original credit line, "Released thru United Artists" for just that reason. Warner Bros. has deleted the original studio credits of films they now control but did not originally release (Seven Days in May, Advise & Consent, Zero Hour!), etc., and in most though not all cases has substituted a modern WB logo instead. When RKO's films first hit TV they did so under the aegis of a company called C&C Movietime, which laboriously deleted the RKO logo on every single film and changed the opening title card to a still with the words "C&C Movietime" instead of "RKO Radio Pictures", before reverting to the original, moving, credits. This seems an absurd waste of time and money, but there it is. Today almost all these films have had their actual credits restored.

The red smear showed up perhaps 45 years after Tea for Two's release, which does seem silly. You'd think at least they could find a better way of obliterating it. Maybe by doing such a terrible-looking job they were showing their anger at the person who's suing!