Movie Night

The Tarpon Springs Area Historical Society will be showing the movie Beneath the 12-Mile Reef Thursday, September 25 at the Depot Museum. The film starts rolling at 7 pm.

Beneath the 12-Mile Reef was filmed on location in Tarpon Strings in 1953, and starred a young Robert Wagner. The story is a tale of young lovers from rival sponge fishing families, a Florida Romeo and Juliet.

Florida Flicks

It's the weekend -- time to head over to the local movie rental store.

Key Largo : Bogie and Bacall, Edward G. Robinson -- gangsters, Seminoles, and a war veteran gather at a hotel in the Florida keys as a storm approaches.

Sunshine State: Families and communities in transition as developers make big plans for some Florida towns. Filmed on Amelia Island, and features American Beach. Director: John Sayles.

Cocoon: A group of retirees discover the fountain of youth -- and something rather unexpected. Ron Howard directed this lite sci fi comedy filmed on location in St. Petersburg. See how many places you recognize.

Bad Boys: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence are buddies in this Miami cops and robbers action film. The sequel, Bad Boys II, didn't get such great reviews ("Whatcha gonna do?") but it did get made into a video game.

The Cocoanuts: The Marx Brothers run a hotel in south Florida in the 1920s land boom. Best line: "You can have any kind of home you want. You can even get stucco. Oh, how you can get stucco."

Vernon, Florida: According to director Errol Morris' website, this "is an odd-ball survey of the inhabitants of a remote swamp-town in the Florida panhandle." Last month, the St. Petersburg Times ran an article about this "swamp-town" : "Dismembered Again."

Jane Wyman and Ma Baxter

Actress Jane Wyman died in California yesterday, after a long life and celebrated career. (Her obituary in the New York Times). Back in the 1940s, she was a rising Hollywood star, married (at the time) to another rising star, Ronald Reagan. She was getting better and better roles when in 1946 she played Ma Baxter in MGM's adaptation of The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' novel of Cracker life on the Florida frontier. Ma Baxter had it hard, scratching out a living isolated in the piney woods, and burying all of her children but one.

Wyman was not the first actress chosen for the role -- that had been Anne Baxter, when the studio first tried to film The Yearling in 1941. The logistical challenges of filming on location in the Ocala National Forest with a cranky Spencer Tracy (as Penny Baxter) led to a long delay in the production. When it resumed, Gregory Peck was cast opposite Wyman. The make-up crew had some work to do making the young Wyman look like a worn-down pioneer woman, but that was only part of the effort. The rest had to come from Wyman herself, and she received an Academy Award nomination for her work.

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Reference:
"Fawn Bites Lion: Or, How MGM Tried to Film The Yearling in Florida," by William Stephenson. In The South and Film, edited by Warren French, pages 229-239. University Press of Mississippi, 1981.

This Week's Florida Happenings

"Rosen Shingle Creek Opens New A Land Remembered Restaurant" World Golf News, June 22, 2007. Resort opens upscale restuarant inspired by Patrick Smith's novel about Florida Crackers.

"Forgotten Indiana Jones Was Man of Many Mysteries" The Villages Daily Sun. The story of archaeologist Dr. Edgar J. Banks, who discovered ancient relics and made bad movies.

"Treasure Island Resident Wants to Protect Architecture." Beach Beacon, June 20, 2007. Will Treasure Island be the next South Beach?

"Reviving Rose Bay: Port Orange Estuary's Rebirth" Orlando Sentinel, June 23, 2007. Remains of old bridge pulled out of bay as part of restoration project.

"Present Meets Past at FSC -- A Cyber Cafe Coexists with Frank Llyod Wright Buildings." Orlando Sentinel, June 23, 2007.

"Explosions Demolish Towers" Florida Today, June 17, 2007. Cape Canaveral Air Force Base demolishes two launch towers. Includes links to video.

"Study Casts a Light on Shade." St. Petersburg Times, June 17, 2007. Study completed to analyze shadow that would be cast by proposed 32-story building.

Frogs!

"Time's fun when you're having flies." -- Kermit the Frog

In a state closely associated with with reptiles, the amphibians are sometimes overlooked. However, organizations such as the Southwest Florida Amphibian Monitoring Network and the Hillsborough River Watershed Alliance's Frog Listening Network are keeping their eyes - and definitely their ears - open. It's important work, since amphibians can be indicators of the health or decline of our environment.

But for those of you who aren't the type to be convinced by gentle green throat-clearings, there is the movie Frogs!, starring 1970s vintage Sam Elliot, Ray Milland, and Joan Van Ark. Filmed in part at Eden Gardens State Park and Panama City Beach, Frogs! shows what happens when you spray too many chemicals on the hoppy creatures. That's right, nature gets even. The film's poster is a bullfrog with a severed hand in its mouth.

Perhaps those amphibians are just upset because they just read Ralph Stoutamire's 1952 publication, Bullfrog Farming and Frogging in Florida. Florida's frog industry was but a tadpole, but Stoutamire gave advice on the design and management of commercial frog farms. The best chapter is the "Statement of F. B. Cramer, Sr., President of the Southern Industries, Inc., Frog Farm Located Just North of Tampa, Florida." Page 35 shows Mr. Cramer himself, a respectible looking man wearing a tie, with his spectacles tucked into his shirt pocket as he holds a large spotted dangly-legged frog. To feed his frogs, he relies heavily on fiddler crabs found on bay beaches (Page 37 shows his special crab-catching apparatus). He sells the legs and arms to canners, and tans frog skins to be made into leather "ladies shoes, belts, purses, key rings, the covering of artificial bait for fishing and other novelties." The photos are great -- to illustrate how big the frogs are, a lovely lipsticked young lady holds two enormous amphibians by the feet. On the next page, four grim frog hunters pose with headlamps and gigs. Evidently Wauchula was the centrepointe for catching wild frogs, with 29,000 pounds shipped out in just 5 months of 1941. Stoutamire: "As a wild bullfrog seldom weighs more than 2 pounds, even the pessimistic must admit that is a lot of frogs."

Stoutamire's pièce de résistance is 16 pages of "Famous Ways to Serve Giant Frogs." Yes, 16 pages of 1950s frog recipes such as "Giant Frog Sandwich Spread," "Jellied Great Bullfrog Creamed Salad," and "Giant Bullfrog Fondue." I kid you not.

Florida Movies

I just used a gift card to buy Sunshine in the Dark: Florida in the Movies, by Susan J. Fernandez and Robert P. Ingalls (University Press of Florida, 2006). I've been wanting to read this for awhile, since I was a student in Dr. Fernandez's "Florida in Film" class at USF when the book was still a draft. I'm not a big movie goer, but my favorite Florida flicks are The Cocoanuts, Sunshine State, and Adaptation.

Here's a St. Petersburg Times review of Sunshine in the Dark, and a link to video of the authors discussing their book on the Olde Florida Network (scroll down to entries for Oct. 8 through 12, 2006).