Helmut Arlt (1930–2010) in memoriam

Michael Curtiz: The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956). "The Birth of the Blues" prison dance number with Sheree North and Jacques d'Amboise. Choreography: Rod Alexander. A scorching number hidden in a mediocre musical, a typical discovery in Helmut Arlt's video evenings.

Michael Curtiz: The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956). "The Birth of the Blues" prison dance number with Sheree North and Jacques d'Amboise. Choreography: Rod Alexander.

Michael Curtiz: The Best Things In Life Are Free (1956). "The Birth of the Blues" prison dance number with Sheree North and Jacques d'Amboise. Choreography: Rod Alexander.

Helmut Arlt, a man of the cinema from Berlin, died on Friday, 15 October 2010, at age 80, after a brief hospitalization. His daytime job was as the film projectionist at the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB) tv station until his retirement. He also had a home cinema on the Schlüterstrasse, Ecke Kudamm, in the heart of Berlin complete with 35 mm projection and a CinemaScope screen. He was a notable collector with holdings of 35 mm film prints and a large and well-catalogued video and dvd collection. He loved Hollywood, German cinema until the 1960s, and especially musicals. His ambitious German collections included rare recordings of Reichsvorbehaltfilme (banned films from the Third Reich).

I knew Helmut since 1983 and had the pleasure to attend his video evenings and film screenings. Helmut was a master of ceremonies who could find fun and inspiration in mediocre German melodramas of the 1950s and even in daily television news programmes. "Mein Bundeskanzler!" he would exclaim when Helmut Kohl appeared, as if he were a major entertainer, and burst into that infectious laughter of his.

Helmut was not born in Berlin, but to my foreign ears he had a Berliner Schnauze, a direct and insolent way of talking, and some expressions I still hear in his voice, such as "hamwa nicht" ("that one we don't have"), "kommt keiner" ("nobody will come" [to see a certain film], or "viel Spass!" ("have fun!", often with irony). He had a special fondness for Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder's Berliner Witz (Berliner wit) which they never lost in Hollywood.

"Kiss me I'm gay" was the motto on his coffee mug when I first met him. I never did, but I introduced to him my girlfriend and many other friends. He was always a generous host, but it was almost impossible to return the favour because he preferred to stay at home and entertain there. I used to compare him with Nero Wolfe. He had a cat, called simply "Katze" (= cat in German) who had a long life and eccentric appetites. I asked him how he could always have such high spirits. He told that he didn't but that when he was sad he preferred to be alone.

Helmut admired Kevin Brownlow, and Helmut is the "generous German collector" of the restoration credits of Ben-Hur (1925) restored by Kevin at Photoplay. But in Helmut's collections I learned to appreciate also the great ZDF reconstructions by Jürgen Labenski and Gerd Luft. For instance the restored The Wedding March with the original, electrifying sound-on-disc integral to the film according to Erich von Stroheim, himself.

During the last couple of weeks I have reminisced the evenings at Helmut's. Watching a nitrate print of Gone With the Wind (possession of nitrate film was banned in Germany since the 1950s due to a fundamental misconception of nitrate in German law). Fast-forwarding boring parts of musicals and relishing the production numbers such as Sheree North's prison dance in The Best Things in Life Are Free, the sexiest dance number I have seen in a Hollywood musical. Watching in CinemaScope I Will Go on Singing, the last film of Judy Garland, Helmut's special favourite star. Helmut would also show on his cinema screen scope-format slides taken at his favourite holiday target, the mountains of Mallorca. A specialty of Helmut's cinema was that smoking was required ("in meinem Kino muss geraucht werden").

Helmut's collection of Hollywood musicals was almost complete, but one film was missing: Paramount on Parade, which has not been preserved in a complete version with the full soundtrack. This year he managed to acquire a copy from e-Bay. One of his missions was accomplished.

Helmut was also a big fan of German musical comedies before Hitler (the very film wave that Siegfried Kracauer discusses in his chapter called "Songs and Illusions") and also during and after Hitler. They brought enormous joy to him.

In our talks on the telephone last February Helmut stated bluntly that it's no fun (macht kein Spass) being old. There will be no more of those unique film evenings. No more of that laughter which was sarcastic on the surface but tender underneath.

Helmut's many friends will never forget him.

PS. Kari Lempinen, thanks for the correction. Helmut stated that it's ok getting older but it's no fun being old.

PS 2. When Teuvo Tulio (1912–2000) died without inheritors, the rights to his films reverted to the Finnish government, and we used the proceeds of their television sales to buy film prints. Among them, two rare 35 mm film prints from Helmut. One was Frank Capra's Here Comes the Groom in what looked like a first generation print, perhaps salvaged from the occupation period distribution circuit. Another was The Love Goddesses (US 1965), by Saul Turell and Graeme Ferguson, with William K. Everson, Paul Killiam and Gideon Bachmann among the contributors, an enchanting history of female stars of the screen from May Irwin till Sophia Loren. I remember when the sequence of Pola Negri wielding a horsewhip on a small town's hypocritical men in Malcolm St. Clair's A Woman of the World (1925) was shown in Helmut's cinema, a member of the audience yelled: "More! More!".

PS 3. David Bowie was an occasional guest at Helmut's cinema during his Berlin days (1976–1979), falling asleep on those comfortable 1950s cinema armchairs within reach of a vintage Nierentisch equipped with an ashtray. Who knows what he was smoking.

Nunnally Johnson: How to Be Very, Very Popular (US 1955), a Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp. production starring Betty Grable (in her final movie role) and Sheree North (in her first leading role) as the burlesque dancers Stormy Tornado and Curly Flagg from San Francisco on the run because they are eyewitnesses to a murder of their colleague. In desperation, they hide in a college fraternity near Los Angeles disguising as boys. Marilyn Monroe refused to be cast, but four years later she starred in a film with a similar plot that became the most successful comedy in film history.