:19:03
Duncan Renaldo's silly sidekick in the
early-'50s TV show The Cisco Kid.
:19:08
It takes a sense of history to know
that the Spanish-Italian Carrillo
:19:11
was the son of the first mayor
of Santa Monica,
:19:14
that his great-grandfather Carrillo was
the first provisional governor of California,
:19:18
and that his family once owned all of
California from Monterey Bay to Mexico.
:19:24
Universal would boast that this remake
of Phantom cost $1,750,000,
:19:29
which is an exaggeration. Director Lubin
told me it was probably $990,000,
:19:34
but definitely not more than
1,250,000 with overhead.
:19:38
Still, when you remember that Waggner
had made Man Made Monster for $90,000
:19:42
and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves was
made in Technicolor the following year
:19:46
for $554,000,
:19:49
you see what a risk a
million-dollar Phantom was for Universal.
:19:52
Cliff Work and Nate Blumberg
were nervous.
:19:55
They would send functionaries to the set
to rush Lubin along to finish the setups.
:20:01
"They'd come late
in the afternoon" he said.
:20:03
"'You've got one more setup to do.
Get the hell out of here!"'
:20:06
One of the biggest cost savings
was Stage 28,
:20:10
where the original opera-house interior
had been built for the 1925 film.
:20:14
As a standing set it had serviced
scores of pictures for Universal
:20:18
and as an outside rental over the years.
:20:20
"All it needed" said Lubin "was painting,
new drapes, a new front curtain
:20:24
and a new backstage."
:20:29
At the same time that John Jacoby was
writing his treatments in the fall of 1941,
:20:33
Eric Taylor was put to work preparing
a new treatment and a first-draft script.
:20:38
Taylor also uses the idea of Claudin's
symphony built on a provincial lullaby -
:20:43
ideas that we have to presume emerged
from the Henry Koster story conferences,
:20:48
as they're common to both
the Taylor and the Jacoby work.
:20:52
In Taylor's, Christine's boyfriend, Raoul,
was an inventor of phonograph records,
:20:57
supplying the opera with "noises off"
via acoustical discs.