The overwhelmingly positive response to the North American cable premiere of Save Me the Waltz on WCC last year has encouraged us to take another look at actress Rita Farr. While her most well-known films – like the Mermaid movies and Queen of Thieves – are frequently shown on WCC and other cable channels, many of Farr’s movies show up in the rotation rather infrequently, and her last film, The Diminishing Lady, has been in the public domain for a long time and thus has been seen by most people through low-quality prints with bad sound that have frequently been haphazardly edited.

So we here at WCC have decided that it’s way past time to do right by Rita Farr. We have assembled the best prints we could find for all her films. Our print of The Diminishing Lady is from the film’s San Pedro premiere. It contains seven minutes that were cut from the film when it had its wide release a few weeks later. Many of Rita Farr’s fans may be surprised to see this much-maligned film looking so nice and crisp. For the most part, the film deserves its bad reputation, but some of the action scenes Farr filmed before walking off the set are remarkable.

In addition to programming this Rita Farr marathon, WCC has also produced Larger than Life, a documentary about Rita Farr’s life, from the Melbourne Olympics to her earliest films with Mega Studios to the accident that turned her into Elasti-Girl during the filming of The Crimson Hills of Thika and all the way to her tragic death as a member of the Doom Patrol. We are very proud of this production and we hope we have captured just a little bit of the magic of Rita Farr that made her such a fascinating and endearing personality as an Olympic swimmer, as a movie star, and as a super-hero.

6:00 AM Gather Ye Blossoms (1957) – Kay Johnson, Valerie Lange, Fred Lovett, Rita Farr. A nostalgic look back at life in a small town in Ohio in the years before World War I. Most of Rita Farr’s scenes were cut, allegedly at the insistence of star Kay Johnson, who reportedly grew very jealous of Farr’s budding star power.

8:00 AM All Wet (1957) – Sarah Dean, Tommy Landon, Rita Farr, Benito Barretto. The second film in the Dee Dee series. This time, Dee Dee (Sarah Dean) and the gang are in Argentina and Dee Dee thinks that longtime boyfriend Sam Sam is running around with a champion swimmer (Rita Farr).

9:45 AM Four Girls in a Tank (1958) – Tiz Larrett, Janice Lee, Rita Farr, Maria Reggio, Julie Madison, Beppo Hartz. Bizarre but often entertaining World War II comedy. Four women trapped behind enemy lines manage to procure a Panzer tank and then fight their way down the boot of Italy to reach the Allied lines. Julie Madison steals all her scenes as a WAC general. And Beppo Hartz as an Italian peasant is both funny and heart-warming in what turned to be his final film.

11:30 AM Waterproof (1958) – Rita Farr, Gregory Reed, Lewis St. John, Rosemary Lane. A Coast Guard lieutenant (Gregory Reed) finds his career in jeopardy when no one will believe his story that all the strange things going on along the coast are caused by a mischievous mermaid (Rita Farr). A breakout hit that put both Farr and Reed on the road to superstardom.

1:15 PM Mermaid on the Moon (1959) – Rita Farr, Gregory Reed, Lewis St. John. Conrad Birdie. An ancient grotto near Point Doom sends Lieutenant Dan (Gregory Reed) and mermaid Uwa (Rita Farr) into the middle of palace intrigue and civil war in the moon’s underground ocean. It’s all very silly and frequently very funny. Conrad Birdie’s underwater musical number is one of the weirdest scenes from an American movie from the 1950s.

3:00 PM Queen of Thieves (1959) – Rita Farr, Robbie Marlow, Roger Carlyle, Edna St. Germaine, Peter Lynn. For a lot of Rita Farr fans, this is her best movie. Robbie Marlow is a merchant captured by bandits in Central Asia in the 12th century. But he’s not so sure he wants to escape when he meets their leader, the Queen of Thieves (Rita Farr). Yes, that’s really Rita Farr hurling the bolas like a pro in the execution scene.

5:00 PM Larger than Life: The Rita Farr Story (2018) – From her humble beginnings in San Pedro to her golden performance in Melbourne in 1956 to her short but unforgettable movie career to her heroic membership in the Doom Patrol, this WWC documentary illustrates the life of Rita Farr through rare archival footage, newspaper accounts and personal interviews with those that knew her the best.

6:15 PM The Evil That Women Do (1960) – Rita Farr, Cara Vinson, Ronn O’Sullivan. A swimsuit model (Rita Farr) investigates her sister’s disappearance and follows a trail of clues to an island lighthouse … and danger … and surprising revelations. Rita Farr’s first movie for the Argus Motion Picture Company.

8:00 PM Mermaid Strike Force (1960) – Rita Farr, Gregory Reed. Lewis St. John, Kimberly Lark. In the third and final Mermaid movie, several underwater kingdoms join forces to oust the Communists when they take over the Caribbean island nation of Santa Rocha. The heavy propaganda aspect is somewhat minimized by some excellent musical numbers featuring Lupita Novarro and Gregorio Fernandez. Rita Farr’s last film for Mega Studios.

9:45 PM Fifteen Miles to Freedom (1961) – Rita Farr, Peter Strussmann, Hildegarde Berger, Sylvia Ekelsohn. Rita Farr stars as Mathild Kolchynka, the Polish swimmer who escaped the Iron Curtain by jumping ship and swimming through the icy Baltic Sea to a Finnish island. This mostly true-to-life film was a labor of love for Farr, and many film buffs consider it her best performance.

11:45 PM Blind Alley (1962) – Rita Farr, Christopher West, Wade Wheeler, Olaf Albemarle, Edna St. Germaine. A policewoman, blinded while defusing a bomb, is recuperating at home when she gets suspicious about the activities she hears in and around her apartment building. Soon she discovers that her survival depends on solving the mystery … fast! Not her best film, but you can tell Rita Farr enjoyed making these chiller films for Argus.

1:15 AM Save Me the Waltz (1962) – Rita Farr, Christopher West, Edna St. Germaine. A Southern belle (Rita Farr) marries a successful painter and eventually takes up ballet when she finds that living in the shadow of a highly publicized artist can be hollow and unsatisfying. This adaptation of Zelda Fitzgerald’s autobiographical novel is seldom seen in the United States but it is much admired in Europe. Rita Farr turns in her usual solid performance but the real standout is longtime Argus player Edna St. Germaine as the revered ballet teacher.

3:45 AM Streets of Blood (1963) – Rita Farr, Ronn O’Sullivan, Manny Torrence, Cicely San Marco, Julie Madison. A female private investigator finds that fighting chauvinism is just as tough as any of her cases. Until a debutante (Cicely San Marco) hires her to investigate some neighbors suspected of witchcraft and human sacrifice! A near-perfect blend of detective story and the supernatural with a chilling performance from Julie Madison that established her as the Queen of the Chillers for the next two decades.

5:30 AM The Crimson Hills of Thika (1964) – Rita Farr, Royal Flint, Thurmon Page, Michelle Mallory. The members of a scientific expedition to east Africa must flee into the interior to escape the Mau-Maus. They discover a beautiful but dangerous valley and a lost civilization with a deadly secret. Rita Farr’s famous accident occurred during filming but principal photography was almost finished so the cast and crew worked around her absence with a stand-in for a few scenes. The end result is a mixed bag but it’s worth watching for Farr’s action scenes with Royal Flint and the amazing special effects for the lost valley of Orota.

7:45 AM The Diminishing Lady (1964) – Rita Farr, Raymond Dunberry, Daniel Lance. A scientist’s wife starts shrinking after a freak laboratory accident. The only film that Farr made after she became Elasti-Girl. Farr left the production very early on and the film is a bit of a mess, but the action scenes, such as the typewriter scene and the conflict with the cat, are among the best action scenes of the 1960s.

9:15 AM Larger than Life: The Rita Farr Story (2018) – From her humble beginnings in San Pedro to her golden performance in Melbourne in 1956 to her short but unforgettable movie career to her heroic membership in the Doom Patrol, this WWC documentary illustrates the life of Rita Farr through rare archival footage, newspaper accounts and personal interviews with those that knew her the best.

Hoosier X , I love this write-up! And thanks for the plug! Definitely check out Challengers! Classc Silver Age action, a bit of melodrama as we get to the death of (I'm not telling!), and weirdo villains who seem to have wandered in from Doom Patrol. A lot like Fantastic Four, even aside from the make-up of the team (Rocky = Ben; Red = Johnny; Ace = Reed; Prof = Sue). There's Challenger Mountain; tons of schematics of Challenger Mountain; cool weapons and vehicles; constant threats to quit, break up, or walk away; etc., etc.

Greatest story titles ever, too:"Four Roads to Doomsday;" "Smash the Sponge-Man... Or Die!" "Two Are Dead... Two to Go!" (The Challs were forever dying!)

The Bob Brown art is just great, and the scripts are Haneyverse-awesome (Most early ones post-Kirby are unattributed, but I'm guessing France Herron, Haney, the usual Schiff/ Boltinoff/ Kashdan crowd.) Drake's are even better, though still weird enough to be fun.

How does one not buy this comic?!            Or this?!                                                Or this?

   

The Challenger-Haters are hilarious! 

I keep thinking of that Taylor Swift song. The next time I hear it on the radio I'm going to be thinking "Challenger-Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate ... Ace is just gonna shake shake shake shake shake ... shake it off ... shake it off."

Bob Brown's sketchy, sort of anti-muscular forms were never a fit for Batman. I've always thought he was to Batman what Don Heck was to Captain America: watered down the exciting elements that those characters' design demanded.

I love Bob Brown so much! He's among the first comic-book artists whose work I recognized. When I started reading comics regularly in the mid-1970s, the first comic book I read three issues in a row was Daredevil, and that was #126, #127 and #128, and he was the regular artist for a while after that.

Although I must admit that I didn't recognize his Silver Age work when I first came across it in reprints. His pencils in Daredevil were inked by Klaus Janson, and they look a lot different from something like "In the Coils of the Copperhead" from Brave and the Bold #78, which I saw in a 100-Page Super-Spec.

Hoosier X, I agree with Prince Hal, you should check out the Challs!