HAZEL COURT - HORROR QUEEN reviewed

HAZEL COURT - HORROR QUEEN
An Autobiography
by Hazel Court
Tomahawk Press (www.tomahawkpress.com), 152 pages, $25.00, trade softcover

British actress Hazel Court passed away earlier this year, on April 15, just a month or two before the announced publication date of her long-promised autobiography. A copy of this sadly timed Tomahawk Press release arrived here yesterday, courtesy of Amazon.com (now offering the book for the sale price of $16.50), and I read it straight through in an evening.

The book's advance word of mouth has been beating the drum about the fact that it contains a never-before-seen color image of Hazel topless, as she was filmed for a continental release of THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (1959). The photo is in the book, and different to the four sequential filmstrip images previously seen on the inside cover of LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS #16, but not printed large enough to permit much detail. Even so, it's neither the most beautiful or ravishing image in the book, which is loaded with lovely images of Hazel at all the different stages of her life. The two that particularly took my breath away can be found on the Acknowledgements page (which appears to be post-retirement) and page 38 (a photo from her first professional session at age 16).

As loath as I would be to say this to the dear lady's face, pretty pictures and a nice interior layout aside, I found the book a disappointment. Why? Because the opening chapters are so arresting, so complete and vivid a recreation of her early years, and so revelatory of an unexplored gift for writing, that the later chapters about her life in movies seem sketchy and shallow by comparison. There is an almost palpable feeling of difference here between chapters written by hand and others that might have been obtained otherwise, as through a transcribed tape or ghostwriter. I don't know how difficult a book it was for her to write, if other duties were in the way of her concentration, but the early chapters give us dense, delicious portraiture while the later ones give us snapshots.

The early chapters do offer the reader some insight about how this working class girl from Birmingham acquired her regal bearing onscreen and how she wore those period costumes with such ease. There is also a heartbreaking story about her first love, identified only by his initials, who went off to war and died in 1941, but not before taking the photographs (by gaslight) that led to Hazel's first screen test. Her first marriage to actor Dermot Walsh is almost elliptic in its modest coverage, and none of the reasons for their "painful" divorce are gone into, nor really is the story of how she came to fall in love with second husband, actor/director Don Taylor (obviously the great love of her life). A strange emphasis of photos showing Hazel in the company of artist Fred Yates, with whom the text mentions only one brief anecdotal meeting, begs curiosity. There are also odd instances of padding, with surprisingly detailed film synopses added in (complete with dialogue), and quotes taken from recklessly identified sources. One quote, allegedly from TV GUIDE, is far too long and critical in character to have ever appeared there, and it's an embarassment when the book reaches out to the IMDb for information anyone could find there for themselves. The text is also guilty of some inattentive editing (repeated information, etc) and proofreading (Edgar "Allen" Poe, "Heaven's" no!, etc).

Despite these unworthy birthmarks, it's still a pleasure to spend time in her thoughts and reveries, and a shade of her book's early substance eeks into its latter pages, which focus on her development as a sculptress, her widowhood, and her last years in a log cabin in the High Sierra Mountains. But my abiding feeling about the book, after closing it, is that it makes me wish that Hazel Court was still here with us, so that she might be coaxed into sharing even more details of her life and times as ably as she began to put them down here.

Also included are loving and observant Forewords by her daughter, animation art authority Sally Walsh, and Vincent Price (signed with a "V" I've never seen in his signatures before) and notes of affection and respect from Roger Corman, Ken Annakin and producer Harvey Bernhard.

First Look: VIDEO WATCHDOG #140

Though the prevailing tone of this blog has recently been one of crisis and mourning, things are looking up now that another exciting (and surprisingly upbeat) issue of VIDEO WATCHDOG is at the printer!

This issue is unusual for presenting, for what I believe is only the second time in our 18-year history, a feature article licensed from an existing book. When I read Rikke Schubart's SUPER BITCHES AND ACTION BABES: THE FEMALE HERO IN POPULAR CINEMA 1970-2006, I was greatly impressed by the quality of its writing and analysis -- but also frankly surprised by it, considering the book's unabashedly exploitative title. I was particularly pleased by its chapter on Japanese actress Meiko Kaji, whose work in the "Female Prisoner Scorpion" and "Lady Snowblood" films I admire, so I decided to license it from McFarland and Company, in the hopes of introducing Ms. Schubart's work to an audience that might otherwise overlook it. It was a treat to subject such quality writing about such a picturesque subject to a full color layout. Also in this issue is David Del Valle's heartfelt tribute to the equally colorful Hazel Court, whom he befriended for many years. With our focus given over to these two actresses this month, VW #140 is particularly rich in images of dazzling feminine beauty -- but there is a good deal else to recommend it.

For proof, in the form of a near-complete list of contents and free sample pages, visit the "Coming Soon" page at our website here.

Bewitching Hazel

I took this photo of Hazel Court in her living room,

surrounded by her art, in 1993.

Actress Hazel Court died yesterday morning at the age of 82 -- which, to me, is a sentence of which neither half makes sense. Wasn't it only fifteen years ago that I had the good fortune to visit her at her home in Santa Monica, California, to kiss her hand, to drink her tea?

I took this photo of her that day, as she showed her gentleman callers around her living room: she stands surrounded by family photos and some of her own works of art, her hands at rest on the dorsal fin of one of her sculptures. Also on display in the room was a beautiful white sculpture of a nautilus shell, so perfectly smooth and proportioned that I told her it looked like something truly made by the sea. She liked that compliment, she told me, being an Aquarian.

I had always admired her as an actress; she was as comfortable in period pictures as in contemporary ones, she could be prim, saucy or serious. Also, I had always admired her as a woman -- and I do mean always: I have vivid memories of being dazzled, in my single-digit years, by the galaxy of freckles revealed by some of the low-cut gowns she wore in some of the Poe pictures. (Thankfully, these can be seen once again in the latest DVD and HD presentations, proving they were not figments of my overactive young imagination.) So my expectations before meeting her were great, but the woman I met that afternoon was extraordinary. Warm, civilized, artistic, full of humor, bawdy in the nicest possible way, completely charming. I sent her roses the next day, so that she might remember me a little longer, but we never spoke or met again.

One meeting fifteen years ago, yet the news of her death has touched me surprisingly deeply. I can't really process the news as yet, nor am I ready to pay her achievements proper tribute. I watched THE RAVEN in HD tonight, mostly to spend some time with her in semi-lifelike resolution. She was fun and in her saucy mode, she looked enchanting as always, but it was just a performance; it wasn't her. The people in her life were fortunate.

Coming out later this year from Tomahawk Press is her autobiography, which carries the misleading title HAZEL COURT: HORROR QUEEN. "Horror Heroine," absolutely -- she's up there with Fay Wray, Gloria Stuart and Valerie Hobson. To my mind, "Horror Queen" suggests something that Hazel Court was not and perhaps could never be. She played some duplicitous, conniving, and downright evil women, but they were always warm-blooded. This small criticism aside, I'm very much looking forward to reading her book and pretending that it's just her and me, listening as she recounts her life story.

There is a second photograph that I had planned to include here, a photograph of the two of us together. I don't think of myself as particularly handsome, nor do I feel I photograph well in my own opinion, but, in this photograph, I do look handsome -- perhaps because I was aspiring to belong in a photograph beside Hazel Court. As I say, I had planned to post that photograph here, but on second thought, I'm keeping it to myself, for myself. I don't want anything to detract from the singularity of photo above.

Today is for Hazel Court alone, with my affection.