Silent Film Sources - Jan-Apr 1998

News for April, 1998

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Upcoming Releases Announced by Kino on Video

The finest, and one of the largest libraries of silent films on video is offered by New York-based Kino on Video. Their video releases are often from archival materials of remarkable quality, with innovative music scores and colorful boxes. Their many exclusive titles include films by Buster Keaton, Harry Langdon, and Cecil B. DeMille.

Kino has announced their new releases for the remainder of 1998. The series include

Summer 1998

They Had Faces Then is Kino's title for a four cassette series featuring stars of the silent era. While that provides a somewhat tentative thread to connect the four films, each title is of interest for its star. Kino notes that the series is "digitally mastered from archival 35mm material." Each tape is $25.
 

•  Mal St. Clair's The Show Off (1926) features Louise Brooks in a supporting role. Ford Sterling is a railroad clerk who poses as an important executive to impress his girlfriend Lois Wilson. This Paramount comedy was partially filmed on location in Philadelphia. The period music score is compiled and conducted by Tim Brock and performed in the original arrangements.
 
• Rudolph Valentino's appearance in Cobra (1925) was the star's first independent production. Valentino plays an impoverished Italian Count who comes to New York, finds success and falls in love. The source for this release was a 35mm nitrate fine grain master, which was received still wrapped in the original wax paper from the laboratory. This release features a score compiled by Rodney Sauer and performed by the Mont Alto Theater Orchestra.
 
• William S. Hart was the quintessential star of the old west in the silent era, and The Toll Gate (1920) was one of his finest films. The original release of this film was beautifully tinted and toned, and captured by the color preservation negative. The tape includes the Mack Sennett short comedy His Bitter Pill, with Mack Swain in a parody of Hart and his films. The score of period music is performed on electronic orchestra by Eric Beheim.
 
•  One of the finest of all silent films is Henry King's Tol'able David (1921). Richard Barthelmess is a youth growing up in the Virginia mountains who has to fill the role left by his ailing father. The film features an excellent score performed by chamber orchestra, compiled and conducted by Robert Israel. You can read the Silent Film Sources review of the laser disc release of the same edition from Image Entertainment.
Kino on Video also distributes a number of documentaries on early film, and they will be releasing Charles Musser's excellent Before the Nickelodeon (1982), which focuses on the career of Edwin S. Porter, director of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and other films for Thomas Edison. The documentary includes 18 of Porter's films in their entirety, including a fascinating comparison between editing of two versions of Life of an American Fireman. Like Kino's The Lumiere Brothers First Films (1996) and the series The Movies Begin, this video is apparently priced for sale to schools, since it is $50.

Last year was the 75th anniversary of Nanook of the North (1922), Robert Flaherty's groundbreaking documentary of life among the Eskimos. Flaherty's deceptively simple film follows Nanook and his family and their struggle for survival. While there are many shortened reissue versions of Nanook, the film has been restored to its premiere length. The video will feature the same tints as the original release, with most of the film in black and white, amber when the scenes are illuminated by oil lamps, and blue for night exteriors.

Despite what is listed in Kino on Video's catalog, this release will feature a newly composed score by Timothy Brock performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. This tape will be $30, and include an eight minute interview with Flaherty's widow, Frances, talking about the film.

Fall 1998

The Silent Scream is a series of silents from the horror genre. Each title is $25.
 

• A welcome addition to video will be the finest available version of Paul Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927), the quintessential old dark house mystery. Read the Silent Film Sources review of the laserdisc release by Image Entertainment.
 
• While the major studios avoided the horror genre, The Bells (1926) was independently produced with top cast of Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff. The video release is transferred from a 35mm tinted nitrate print.
 
• Certainly the best of Lon Chaney's early features, The Penalty (1920) offers a terrific Chaney portrayal of a legless gangster focused on revenge.
 
• Kingdom of Shadows (1998) is a newly produced 85 minute documentary on "the evolution of the horror film, from the turn of the century to the end of the silent era," with clips from 45 films of the era. This is directed by Bret Wood, who made Kino's earlier Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask (1995), a documentary on the actor's early years.
More Details on The Slapstick Encyclopedia

As previously announced in this column, Kino on Video will be releasing an eight tape series of silent film short comedies. Titled The Slapstick Encyclopedia, the series represents both a "best of" and an overview of silent comedy. The first four tapes will be available on May 19, with the second four tapes in July.

With literally hundreds of titles to choose from, series producer David Shepard told me that his goal was to choose representative films that were humorous, had quality master materials and then to present them with good music scores.

Kino has certainly not been shy on giving full value, as the tapes average two hours, and the Keaton/Arbuckle tape runs a full 135 minutes. The music scores in the first set are all new for this series, and include the Robert Israel orchestra, theatre organ, electronic orchestra and the photoplayer.

The Kino on Video catalog mistakenly lists these tapes as $30 each. The actual price is $25 per tape, with the four tape box for $90. The laserdisc edition with all 28 of the short films contained in volume one has been announced by Image Entertainment, and will be $125.

Volume One: In the Beginning: Film Comedy Pioneers
 

One Too Many (1916; Oliver Hardy)
The Wrong Mr. Fox (1917; Victor Moore)
Mr. Flip (1909; Ben Turpin)
Alkali Ike's Auto (1911; Augustus Carney)
Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913; Mabel Normand, Mack Sennett)
Fox-Trot Finesse (1915; Mr. & Mrs. Sidney Drew)
A Cure for Pokeritis (1912; John Bunny and Flora Finch)
Be My Wife (1921; Max Linder)
A Natural Born Gambler (1916; Bert Williams)
Volume Two: Keystone Tonight! The Mack Sennett Comedies
 
Saturday Afternoon (1926; Harry Langdon)
Super-Hooper-Dyne-Lizzies (1925; Billy Bevan, Andy Clyde)
Wandering Willies (1926; Billy Bevan, The Keystone Kops)
A Muddy Romance (1913; The Keystone Kops, Mabel Normand)
A Movie Star (1916; Mack Swain, Harry McCoy)
Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (1913; Normand, Sennett and Sterling)
Volume Three: Funny Girls
 
Mighty Like a Moose (1926; Charley Chase)
The Detectress (1919; Gale Henry)
One Wet Night (1924; Alice Howell)
Know Thy Wife (1918; Dorothy Devore)
Rowdy Ann (1919; Fay Tincher, Harry Depp)
Hearts and Flowers (1919; Louise Fazenda, Ford Sterling)
Volume Four: Keaton, Arbuckle and Al St. John
 
The Rounders (1914; Charles Chaplin, Roscoe Arbuckle, Al St. John)
Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916; Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, St. John)
Oh, Doctor! (1917; Roscoe Arbuckle; Buster Keaton, Al St. John)
The Garage (1920; Roscoe Arbuckle, Buster Keaton)
The Boat (1921; Buster Keaton)
The Iron Mule (1925; Al St. John)
 
Image Entertainment Announces New Titles

The laserdisc medium is the next best thing to having a 16mm projector in the house. It is hard to disagree that you can get a lot more titles for your money with a laserdisc box set like The Slapstick Encyclopedia (discussed above), than buying the films in 16mm- even if you could find them. While many collectors would rather have a 16mm print of a silent classic than a laserdisc of the same title, there are a number of considerations to keep in mind.

16mm has better resolution than laserdisc (in terms of the number of lines of information), and 16mm can be projected to a larger audience. However, the 35mm original used for the laserdisc transfer may be of significantly better quality than available for 16mm. Also, most film copies have no music score, while laserdisc releases often have newly prepared music in stereo. And finally, many laserdisc titles are simply not available in 16mm.

This is especially apparent with the Image Entertainment announcement of the laserdisc release of Atlantis, a 1913 Nordisk production. Denmark was in the forefront of world film production prior to World War I, and this was one of their most ambitious releases. Adapted from a Danish novel written just after the Titanic disaster, Atlantis featured the sinking of an ocean liner as the centerpiece of its story and a dream sequence featuring the legendary city of the title. Advertisements in Moving Picture World emphasized the ship sinking as "one of the most remarkable and realistic ever produced in films." The film was also praised for its authenticity with the use of real locations for the scenes at sea and location filming in New York and Berlin. Atlantis was originally released in a shortened version in America in mid-1914, but it is the original full-length version that survives.

This film is largely unknown in this country, other than a screening at the 1997 Cinecon in Los Angeles. Some of the viewers were disappointed, but those who had seen the film before pointed out that the accompanist was playing without preparation. Also, the film was shown at sound speed of 24 frames per second (fps), which can really destroy such early features.

The laserdisc edition was transferred at an appropriate speed of 20.5 fps, and features a music score performed by Robert Israel. The music is compiled from the works of Scandanavian composers and a certain amount of motion picture stock music of the period. Remarkably, according to producer David Shepard, the 35mm print used for the transfer was made directly from the original negative and is of outstanding quality. The price for Atlantis is $40.

Other upcoming releases from Image Entertainment include The Show-Off and Cobra ($40 each) on laserdisc (the video editions are discussed above from Kino on Video), and the $30 DVD offering The Cat and the Canary (released with Harold Lloyd's Haunted Spooks). Read the Silent Film Sources review of the laserdisc edition.

Well-Known Films from Unknown Cinema

The low-profile San Francisco video distributor Unknown Video prides itself on offering a choice selection of less familiar, yet no less entertaining, films of the silent era. The releases are carefully prepared, with music scores chosen to fit the films.

There releases to date have been a mixture of major studio titles recently added to the public domain: Rex Ingram's The Conquering Power, John Ford's Just Pals and the more obscure programmers: Below the Deadline, The Road to Ruin, Through the Breakers, The Unknown Soldier, and Westbound Limited. High points including several William S. Hart titles: The Narrow Trail and The Return of Draw Egan.

While most public domain distributors are limited by the titles they can access, Unknown Video has announced a special arrangement to license master materials held by Blackhawk Films. Through the early 1980s, Blackhawk was the largest distributor of 16mm and Super 8 prints of silent films to public libraries, schools and collectors, and held a well-deserved reputation for quality. Many of these specific titles are available from other distributors, who often simply transfer from used prints purchased by collectors, removing Blackhawk's trademark historical introductory titles.

It is very promising that Unknown Video will be able to offer titles that are probably not sufficiently high profile for release by Blackhawk's primary VHS distributor, Kino on Video. All of the transfers for this series will be from Blackhawk's fine grain master prints, two generations closer to the original than the prints offered for sale.

Each tape is $18, and features a new organ score by Bob Vaughn.
 

• The Silent Man (1917) One of the rarer and better William S. Hart starring features.
 
• The Primitive Lover (1922) stars comedienne Constance Talmadge. Never a lost film, this has been extremely hard to see. Director Sidney Franklin guided comedienne Constance through an delightful, if improbable story.
 
• The Beloved Rogue (1927) features one of John Barrymore's finest roles, and is presented with tinted scenes. Remarkable production design by William Cameron Menzies.
 
• Broken Hearts of Broadway (1921) features Colleen Moore in one of her early starring roles. An Irving Cummings production, Moore plays a stage-struck country girl headed to the big city to become a star. According to Unknown Video, "Blackhawk's master print was struck from the film's original camera negative."
Nosferatu As You Have Never Seen It Before

Depending on your point of view, the Giorgio Moroder version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis destroyed the film with a soundtrack of rock songs, or was an intelligent approach to make a silent film classic accessible to modern audiences.

Arrow Video has taken a similar approach with another German classic, Nosferatu (1922), F.W. Murnau's version of the Dracula story. This edition of the film is hosted by David Carradine, who discusses the making of the film. The alternative rock group Type O Negative provides the soundtrack (which one review called "screeching"). Type O Negative is best known for one of their songs that appeared on the soundtrack to last year's I Know What You Did Last Summer. The tape also includes a music video for their song "Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All). The tape has a list price of $30.

New and Upcoming Releases from Critics' Choice

Popular distributor Critics' Choice is continuing its releases from the Killiam Collection, including many films produced by William Fox.
 

• The Girl Who Stayed At Home (1919) is a rare D.W. Griffith film starring Griffith favorite Carol Dempster and Richard Barthelmess.
 
• The Great K&A Train Robbery (1926) is one of Tom Mix's best films. Filmed on remarkable locations in Royal Gorge, Colorado, Mix is a railroad detective trying to uncover who is behind a string of robberies. Music score by William Perry.
 
• The Iron Horse (1924) is John Ford's epic of the construction of the transcontinental railroad starring George O'Brien and Madge Bellamy. Tinted, with a piano score by William Perry. This is the American release version of the film with an introductory tribute to Abraham Lincoln. The British release version is shown on American Movie Classics.
 
• Little Annie Rooney (1925) is one of the most enjoyable Mary Pickford films as she plays a rambunctous Irish girl in New York City. When her policeman father is killed, she has to clear her boyfriend of the crime. Features an excellent score by William Perry.
 
• 7th Heaven (1927) is Frank Borzage's timeless love story starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell. Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in this film, Sunrise and Street Angel. All three titles are available from Critics' Choice.
 
• A Silent Christmas contains nine silent era shorts on the subject of Santa Claus and Christmas. The titles include Santa Claus (1925, Capt. F.E. Kleinschmidt), A Christmas Carol (1910, Edison), The Night Before Christmas (1905, Edison), A Holiday Pageant at Home (1901), A Winter Straw Ride (1906), A Trap for Santa (1909, Biograph), A Christmas Accident (1912, Edison), The Adventure of the Wrong Santa Claus (1914, Edison) and Santa Claus vs. Cupid (1915, Edison). The quality of the Biograph and Edison shorts is especially fine. Electronic music score by Jim Roberge.
 
• A Tale of Two Cities (1917) is one of the few surviving William Farnum epics in a good telling (by director Frank Lloyd) of the familiar Charles Dickens story. Piano score.
 
• Three Bad Men (1926) was John Ford's last western until he made Stagecoach 13 years later. Again starring George O'Brien, the film features magnificent photography filmed on location in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and in the Mojave Desert. The film includes a masterful recreation of the Oklahoma land rush. The organ score is uncredited.
 
• The Toll Gate (1920) with an abridged version of Hell's Hinges (1916) offer two of the best from William S. Hart.
Upcoming releases from Critics' Choice
 
• Street Angel (1928) was produced as a followup, to 7th Heaven with the same director (Frank Borzage) and leads (Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell). The result was a magical love story of a young girl who finds refuge in a traveling circus. A memorable orchestral score by Erno Rapee.
 
• A Girl in Every Port (1928) will be snapped up because it features Louise Brooks as the ingenue. The film is more important as an early example of the filmmaking of Howard Hawks, as sailor Victor McLaglen competes with Robert Armstrong in the pursuit of girl friends in various ports of call.
 
• Sunnyside Up (1929) is not a silent film, but one of the first talkies from the Fox Film studio. Starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell, the film has a remarkable amount of charm, as director David Butler works within the constraints of early sound equipment for some remarkable moving camera work and directional dialogue. Also featuring El Brendel.
 
• The Clinging Vine (1926) with Leatrice Joy as a secretary for the president of a paint company who is the real brains behind his success. Despite the flat direction of Paul Sloane, this film is a real eye-opener for those who think that woman played roles that were submissive to men. Piano score by Philip Carli.
 
• The Beloved Rogue (1927) features John Barrymore in a remarkable performance as Francois Villon, the poet of Paris, and tormentor of Louis XI, portrayed with gusto by Conrad Veidt. Piano score by William Perry.
The annual Cinefest was held the first week of March in Syracuse, New York, and including the showings of numerous rare silent films. Leonard Maltin covered the convention for Cinemania, and his appraisal is posted at http://cinemania.msn.com/InFocus/Article/819 Elias Savada took a different perspective for the Nitrate Online site. His two-part evaluation can be found at http://www.nitrateonline.com/fcinefest98.html
 

We are pleased to host a survey of the early films of Lon Chaney by Christopher Clotworthy. Chris uses the opportunity of the 1995 Kino on Video release of six early Chaney films and a documentary to evaluate Chaney's career, acting style and place in the pantheon of silent actors.
 

Lon Chaney by Christopher Clotworthy

In his best-known work, Lon Chaney favored highly theatrical make-ups and bizarre characterizations. He would put on long noses and false beards, portraying depraved souls in a vivid game of make-believe. It isn't clear whether this was due to his deep love of theatrical makeup, his understanding of popular taste, in order to stand out from the crowd or perhaps,for other reasons.

But it's interesting to note that flamboyant weirdness also happened to be the theatrical preference of Chaney's great contemporary, John Barrymore. Whereas Barrymore was an inspired poet with a romantic sensibility, Chaney was essentially a master craftsman. He built characters as if laying brick. Each gesture, mannerism and (bit of business) was methodically chosen to bring both a character and an audience to life. Chaney's work was blunt, prosaic and workmanlike -- especially compared to Barrymore's. But though not as beautiful, it is arguably more accessible and affecting. Chaney was a superb actor, and he remains a mysteriously enduring star today.

Chaney's biographer, Michael Blake, claims that Chaney was not a horror star per se having only appeared in a handful of movies obeying the conventions of horror. But both Chaney's myth and popularity rest on his gift for personifying physical and spiritual deformity. It's probably splitting hairs to distinguish between a supernatural context (A Blind Bargain) and a realistic but morbid one (West of Zanzibar). They're both based on the allure of fear, and they both appeal to the same discerning people. And there is often a compelling reason for an actor to become "typed". For instance, Boris Karloff's gaunt face and clammy complexion made him a natural as a reanimated corpse. In Chaney's case, the strong, lined face, mesmerizing eyes and toothy leer could be disturbing with little makeup. (It's a little ironic that he never played The Man Who Laughs.) You could say that Chaney simply made brilliant use of his basic physical equipment. His iconographic status is assured, as demonstrated by his presence on two commemorative U.S. postage stamps and by the availability of most of his surviving films on tape or on laserdisc.

Chaney was arguably the most human of monster specialists. As an actor, he wanted the audiences's love. He delicately shaded his performances -- hardboiled or horrific -- with a tenderness and vulnerability that derived from the logic of the script. Besides complexity, brutish characters, such as "Blizzard" in The Penalty or the one-eyed rogue in The Road to Mandalay, are given a sense of mystique. You sense that nobody really knows them.

He is important to us film buffs for sentimental reasons. Legions of male movie nerds trace their interest in silents to the grisly stills from Chaney pictures published in the kid's magazines, "Famous Monsters of Filmland" and "Castle of Frankenstein," or else in Carlos Clarens' "An Illustrated History of the Horror Film." Young men and boys attracted to Chaney's weird makeups, bizarre characters and contortionist acrobatics became lifelong fans for more complex reasons. He's a genre star who provided his male fan base with clues on being a man. (He's not unlike Peter Cushing that way but is very different in character.) The makeup-free Chaney is a diamond in the rough. He projects bluff, no-nonsense masculinity and steely will. He's a force to be reckoned with. Undoubtedly, the source of his penetrating gaze was a radiant self-confidence. These qualities found their way into all his best-known performances. But fans were especially high on him as a no-nonsense father figure in "straight" roles such as the tenacious engineer in Thunder and the tough-but-fair sergeant in Tell It To the Marines. Outside of the bizarre, Chaney revealed himself as what he probably was -- an unpretentious but intractable working guy.

Kino on Video released a series of early Chaney starring roles on video, titled "Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask." Reviews follow for Nomads of the North (1920), Outside the Law (1921), Oliver Twist (1922) Shadows (1922) The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and Kino's original documentary: Lon Chaney: Behind the Mask (1995). (Introduction © 1998 Christopher Clotworthy)

 

News for March, 1998

Copyright, Public Domain and Silent Films; The Life of William Haines; Greta Garbo: A Life in Two Parts; More on The Slapstick Encyclopedia By David Pierce
Copyright, Public Domain and Silent Films

As 1997 came to a close and thousands of people assembled in Times Square to ring in 1998, a second annual event occurred- one that affects what silent movies people can buy on video. All of the films originally released in 1922 fell into the public domain in the United States at the end of their maximum 75 year term of protection. Titles which have been in existence, but difficult to see, such as Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North, Rex Ingram's Scaramouche, Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood, are no longer the exclusive property of their owners. Anyone with legal access to a copy of one of these films, can show it and release copies to the public.

What does this mean for fans of silent films?

A year ago it was 1921 films that fell in the public domain, and the result has been both subtle and dramatic. Public domain distributors have enhanced their offerings to include several Rudolph Valentino films: The Sheik, Camille, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Conquering Power (the latter two directed by Rex Ingram), D.W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, and The Nut and The Three Musketeers with Douglas Fairbanks at budget prices. And the owners of some of these films apparently haven't been dissuaded from releasing their better quality versions at higher prices. Image Entertainment offered the Photoplay Productions restoration of Four Horsemen and Orphans and The Nut were in recent Kino on Video and Image releases.

Is there a loser in this story? Well, perhaps. The owners of the films argue that it is the exclusivity of copyright that makes it financially possible for them to invest in making their films available. A possible example would be Paramount Home Video's video offering of Wings with a list price of $15. Certainly few public domain companies could match Paramount's quality and price on that title when its copyright expires. However, that is a pretty thin argument considering that so few of the major studio silent films were released on video and laserdisc last year. Kino's Orphans and The Nut were licensed from independents, not the studios. It is the public domain sector that has provided the lion's share of the newly available titles on video.

It is one thing for these studios to lose exclusive rights to these relatively obscure films. In a discussion of public domain, a Paramount studio attorney told me that the company really only cared about protecting their rights to a handful of the silent releases- The Ten Commandments, for example. For the rest of the titles, they are happy to cash the checks when archive prints are loaned out.

Will the owners continue to allow their films to fall outside their control?

But if the studios don't care about their silent films, they can see the clock ticking away on their much more valuable sound films. A article in the January 26 issue of "The Hollywood Reporter" called the Mickey Mouse cartoon Steamboat Willie "Mickey's Poster Boy for a Longer Copyright Term." The article points out that if the current copyright law remains unchanged, the 1928 copyright on Steamboat Willie will expire in 2003, with other cartoons to soon follow. Of course, Disney's primary concern is not income from the cartoons, but their exclusive hold on merchandising the image of Mickey Mouse.

Using a mixture of valid and deliberately misleading arguments, the groups in favor of term extension are the music publishers, heirs of major Tin Pan Alley composers like the Gershwins, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern, and the film industry. They point out that Europe has recently extended terms of copyright protection by 20 years, and that the U.S. should do the same. Since foreign countries won't protect American works once they are in the public domain in the U.S., American companies will lose out on the income from overseas, affecting the balance of trade. While there are elements of truth in this argument (entertainment remains America's second largest export, after aerospace), it is mostly a smokescreen. After all, what owner wouldn't want another 20 years of income from their distribution monopoly for no additional cost?

The bill would likely have passed in the previous session of Congress if not for opposition from the religious broadcasters (opposing term extension to gain leverage with the music publishers on something else), and from screenwriters, who get no residuals for films or television programs produced prior to 1960, and want their share of the income from the extra twenty years.

Changes to the copyright law such as term extension mean real money to companies. These changes are not decided on the issues, they are decided in favor of those who hire lobbyists- and there is no one lobbying for the public domain. Copyright term extension will pass in the next session of Congress, if not this Congress because there is too much money at stake, and this is a pro-business administration and a pro-business Congress. And copyright has evolved from being the part of the law that protects authors, to being a tool of international trade. And the public is often the loser.
 
We are very glad to welcome our guest reviewer, Christopher Clothworthy to Silent Film Sources.

The Life of William Haines

Why would anyone care to write a biography of the forgotten 20's star, William Haines, and why would Viking publish it? Haines was a charming but inconsequential comic star with a routine career. I mix up his credits with those of Charles Ray and Buddy Rogers. It's surprising to learn from "Wisecracker: the Life of William Haines, Hollywood's First Gay Star" that Haines was actually wildly popular from 1927 to 1930. He was MGM's biggest male star of the period after Lon Chaney.

Brown of Harvard (1926) made him a star, and gave his plots their unvarying formula. He played a boorish football star who reforms into a swell fellow after a public humiliation. Haines made an enormously appealing prodigal. His wet spaniel take, following his character's comeuppance, ensured stardom for a number of years. Exhibitors insisted that MGM stick to the formula. (Check out the exhibitors' reports on Excess Baggage and Telling the World in The Silent Film Bookshelf -- they testify to both Haines' popularity and to how quickly the mighty can become the forgotten.) MGM's policy kept Haines from developing beyond smart-aleck juveniles; so when his looks went (and they went quickly) so did his career.

The world's only movie star turned interior decorator was an earthy, witty, outgoing fellow, largely without hypocrisy. Haines was brash and irreverent, much his screen character. He offended Louis B. Mayer by claiming, in the course of defending his appeal to both sexes, that he'd been "kept by the best men and women in New York". Haines later said, "he never quite forgave me for that". Haines was a black sheep from a middle class Virginia family but preferred to claim he was FFV (First Families of Virginia). He once opened a seamy dance hall in a backwoods boomtown after running away from home at fourteen. Later he lived in Greenwich Village when that area was first enjoying its identity and freedom as a gay mecca. His biographer, William J. Mann writes that "a self-identified, affirming, even bourgeois gay culture, set the tone for the rest of Billy's life". Over the course of five decades in Hollywood, Haines kept his lover, his friends and his sense of perspective. He was one of the best-liked of silent stars. If nothing else, "Wisecracker" provides the rare pleasure reading a movie star bio without recoiling in horror.

"Being gay was no big deal in Hollywood," when Bill Haines first arrived there after winning a 1922 New Faces contest sponsored by Samuel Goldwyn. "In the Hollywood of the twenties…lifestyles were undisguised and rarely apologized for. Radical politics, drug use, heterosexual cohabitation and homosexuality were all part of the scene--integral parts, no more or less unusual than anything else. Certain things weren't acknowledged in public, of course, but…Hollywood offered authenticity for many people for whom it would have been difficult to achieve anywhere else." Silent stars such as Alla Nazimova, Eugene O'Brien, J. Warren Kerrigan and Haines were well known to be gay and sometimes lived so openly (Haines wasn't literally "the first"). This was tolerated by studio executives and went unreported by the tame entertainment press of the time. A silent conspiracy left the stars' private lives unmolested. The times were also sufficiently free and easy that press reports of Nazimova's all-girl pool parties drew little comment.

Mann's thesis is that all this changed gradually as the Depression led into an era of moral conservatism. All those who refused to "play the (heterosexual) game" saw their careers destroyed. This included Haines as well as Dorothy Arzner and, arguably her fellow director, James Whale. Compliant gay stars either married each other (i.e., Edmund Lowe and Lilyan Tashman) or some trusting soul (supposedly Cary Grant and Virginia Cherrill). Haines had enjoyed a few flings with women (including Norma Shearer, according to "Wisecracker") so he could have tried marriage. However, his heroic insistence on remaining loyal to his lover, Jimmie Shields cost him an acting career. Of course by 1931, Haines no longer resembled a juvenile, his BMOC screen character had become outmoded and almost each of his films was making less money than the last. So who knows? Maybe Haines failed to bridge to character parts because his skills were perceived as limited. At least, talkies weren't a problem. He had a fine speaking voice reflecting his warm, breezy personality.

It didn't really matter in the long run, though. Haines had a greater talent for design, as well as many friends who wanted to help him out -- Joan Crawford foremost. George Cukor, Carole Lombard and Crawford established Haines as a decorator to the stars and, much later, to the parvenu captains of American industry. His valedictory commission in 1972-73 was the residence of the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Walter Annenberg. Haines rightly considered his acting career a youthful adventure and his forty years as a designer more distinguished and fulfilling.

So many gay stars sought cover marriages in the thirties that Mann seems on firm ground with his theory of a growing heterosexual tyranny. This agenda gives "Wisecracker" its purpose. But Mann might have illustrated it better with someone else, perhaps the earnest Dorothy Arzner (although that would have cost the book its sex appeal). It's hard to take Billy Haines seriously as a victimized artist. "Wisecracker" could also have benefited from a little more sociology to explain the notion of this spreading conservative force.

Mann is at his strongest using primary research to describe the tone of Hollywood's gay demimonde. Harry Hay, the pioneering gay activist (and one-time actor) remembers underground "pansy clubs" patronized by Hollywood's smart set c.1929. These speak-easies operated out of basements or peoples' apartments. They served bathtub gin and featured chorus boys in drag and female impersonators from New York. The pansy clubs had a half-life of little more than two weeks. Then they would be raided, and the floating party moved elsewhere. All this was duly noted in the "Hollywood Reporter." The gay clubs were permanently closed by 1933 through a local ordinance that effectively outlawed drag.

The era of informality was followed by a more glamorous and more ironic arrangement. A loose group of overlapping gay and straight social circles emerged in the thirties. Each revolved around a particular prima donna host . The most prominent, George Cukor and Cole Porter, would open their doors to film industry people, to out-of-town visitors (i.e., Elsa Maxwell and Gertrude Lawrence), to sailors on leave, etc. Cukor and Porter's competing soirees were prized invitations, in spite of their hosts' roles as sexual outcasts. Mann gets a lot of mileage out of the differing codes of conduct within these circles. For instance, Porter loved loud music and party games but hated sloppy drunks (eventually this forced out Billy and Jimmie). Cukor hated ribald stories and allowed neither music nor the theft of anyone else's date (eventually this forced out Billy and Jimmie). Cukor's sound reasoning was, "the fun of [the gatherings] is that that we get all these new faces. If somebody starts stealing them, then people aren't going to bring new faces around anymore." Handsome young men thus passed invisibly from one member to another. Not so unlike life today.

It should now be clear why Viking published this book. Mann knows just how to depict the elite gay Hollywood to which Bill Haines belonged. He is very frank about everybody's friendships, rivalries and -- to the extent it's possible -- sexual arrangements. And has any author ever outed so many conveniently dead movie stars? Mann clearly has strong feelings on this matter (and that couldn't have hurt him with Viking). Just some of the performers whom Mann describes as gay or bisexual include Jack Benny, Claudette Colbert, Charles Farrell, Dolores Del Rio, Janet Gaynor and Gary Cooper. Tracing these claims to the sources listed in Mann's lengthy attribution section should keep people busy for a long time to come. The only source I'd actually read, Axel Madsen's Stanwyck, was a bit more circumspect than Mann on the sexual orientation of its subjects, Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck. Presumably, the survivors of Haines' circle (Mann interviewed several) helped to fill in the gaps with decent verification.

Despite the fun of all this gossip, "Wisecracker" can be pretty tiresome. Mann insists on portraying silly Billy Haines as a hero despite the man's failure to see himself as part of anything larger than Billy Haines. The author just won't stop returning to that won't-play-the-game stuff. It's good that Haines was true to himself, but Mann never makes a distinction between courage and egotism. Long stretches of the book (particularly the early chapters) read like an impressively-researched fan letter. And at a few points, the writing veers into a uniquely tasteless combination of fan rag floridness and gay rag Boy Worship. For instance, "Both Billy and Jimmie would have stood out from the crowd: young, attractive men, their eyes locking through the darkness. Jimmie was handsome, with a strong jaw and classic profile. Shorter than Billy, he was nonetheless well-muscled, freshly twenty-one and eager." Down boy. Be careful the next time you're tempted to personalize your biographical writing.

This is overall a highly readable book. Haines is almost as good company in print as he was in life. Mann doesn't make a sufficient case for his victimization. But the evocation of Hollywood's gay subculture is vastly entertaining and sheds light on a shadowy part of Hollywood sociology. Here's hoping other books will further explain such little-known phenomena of oppression as cover marriages. It might be necessary to look beyond Hollywood to do it, though.

William J. Mann's book will make you want to catch some Billy Haines films. Unfortunately, it helps to know a video pirate. Only three of his movies seem to be out on tape. One is likely both his best film and best performance, King Vidor's Show People with Marion Davies, released by MGM/UA. Brown of Harvard is available from a 16mm print from Critics’ Choice. Another is the sturdy Mary Pick ford favorite, Little Annie Rooney. It is available through Video Yesteryear. Perhaps Turner will put out Tell It To the Marines, co-starring Lon Chaney, if enough people ask. (review © 1998 Christopher Clotworthy)
 

The Great Garbo

Greta Garbo has always held a near-mystical appeal for her fans. This enthusiasm is not necessarily a product of her films, although several are very good. But good or bad, each one is enhanced by her presence. Candid photos show a handsome woman, but seen through the portrait lens of Clarence Sinclair Bull and the cinematography of William Daniels, Garbo's face was made for photography. And in those images, she has the special ability for all viewers to unconsciously project their own emotions onto her.

Garbo was enormously popular in the late 1920s and much of the 1930s, and many of her films were very profitable for MGM, even after her salary soared from $400 a week to $250,000 a picture. Her film reputation now largely rests on her first film with John Gilbert, Flesh and the Devil (1926), the all-star Grand Hotel (1932), and her sole comedy, Ninotchka (1939). For a while in the early 1930s, Garbo's' films, never strong on plot, shifted from a focus on character to decor. As a result, Mata Hari and The Painted Veil are more enjoyable as stills than cinema.

Garbo's silent films have received less attention than her more available sound films. Fortunately, this has been addressed by the recent biographies by Karen Swenson and Barry Paris and the Image Entertainment laserdisc release of The Garbo Silents, including three of her films, and an excerpt from a fourth.

Karen Swenson's "Greta Garbo: A Life Apart" offers an insightful and well researched investigation and appreciation of into the life and career of Greta Garbo. Swenson writes that "It was appropriate that Garbo made her way into films at the end of the silent era. Her subdued acting foreshadowed a less melodramatic, more natural style on screen." And Garbo made a seamless transition to sound films.

Born Greta Gustaffson in Stockholm, Sweden in 1905, Garbo always felt like an outsider, even within her own family. A fascination with the theatre represented a partial escape from reality. Traumatized by the death of her father when she was 14, she withdrew further into herself. A job at a local department store led to modeling work, and some small movie roles. The turning point was acceptance into the Royal Theatre Dramatic Academy acting school. Then as a protégé of director Mauritz Stiller, she played second leads in several important European films.

In Swenson's portrait of the actress, it is Garbo's Swedish upbringing that proves to be the foundation of her character. As the biography develops, we see how she seemed like an outsider and a loner, since she was not motivated by money or fame. To the extent that Garbo was a sphinx, she was Swedish and stayed Swedish, following that people's tradition of humility and self-restraint. It wasn't that Garbo wanted to be alone, but she wanted to be left alone- a fine point that was not appreciated by fans who felt that Garbo had an obligation to them. Garbo had an astonishing affect on the public both as an actress and through her image. Garbo's longtime friend and probable paramour Mercedes De Acosta "fixated on Garbo as soon as she saw her photograph," even before her first American film was released.

Garbo was a listener, rather than a talker, but she had close friends and wrote to them. Swenson uncovered previously unpublished letters of Garbo to and from Mauritz Stiller, Salka Viertel and friends and relatives in Sweden. These are the backbone of the book, and show Garbo's state of mind in her own words. It is a challenge to profile an actress who gave very few interviews, and without those letters one could only view Garbo's activities through the external elements of her life that Swenson provides- where she goes, what she eats, and how her house is arranged.

Swenson's research is impressive in both the wide variety of sources, and her insightful use of them. Primary sources include MGM studio records and internal memos on the production of Garbo's films. Swenson's visits to Sweden were productive with school and hospital records, Garbo's student notebook from her days at the dramatic school, and many obscure Swedish language sources. There is remarkable detail on Garbo's 1949 comeback film for Walter Wanger, canceled when funding collapsed on the eve of production.

Swenson does an admirable job of synthesizing all of these sources into a cohesive whole, developing Garbo's personality, and providing continual surprises along the way, either with intimate detail or drawing unexpected conclusions. Swenson recounts the story of how John Gilbert was stood up by Garbo at the wedding of King Vidor and Eleanor Boardman. Gilbert expected it to be a double wedding, yet Garbo never appeared. At the event, Gilbert got into a fight with Louis B. Mayer, who later helped sabotage the actor's career. Swenson discounts this story, pointing out that Gilbert and Garbo had known each other all of three weeks, and both worked that day (on Flesh and the Devil). She traces the story back to interviews Eleanor Boardman gave in the 1970s, and notes that the account was never verified by anyone else who attended the wedding.

Elsewhere in the book, Swenson fills in aspects of Garbo's personality from the autobiography of longtime Garbo friend and probable paramour Mercedes De Acosta. By comparing early drafts of Acosta's book with the final published version and with other facts, Swenson manages to find telling contradictions and discount many of De Acosta's most outrageous stories, while accepting Acosta's insights into Garbo's personality. Similarly, she notes the changes Cecil Beaton made to his original diaries for their publication when they affect his relationship with Garbo.

Part of Garbo's appeal was her androgynous quality, and she appealed equally to men and women. The gossip columns in the early thirties would refer to the "ambidextrous foreign star" or call a current companion Greta's "gal pal." Or as one movie magazine noted, "the most talked-about woman in Hollywood is the woman no wife fears." With no proof one way or the other, Swenson discusses each of Garbo's relationships (whether with men or women) in detail, yet lets the reader draw their own conclusions.

If Swenson omits anything in this thorough analysis of an exceptional career and a rather unremarkable person, it is Garbo's acting style. It is both deceptively simple, and uncatalogable. One critic wrote, "Her range is not wide .... Yet she never grows tiresome, even in tiresome roles, probably because, unlike most of her rivals, she has personality and intelligence as well as physical beauty." Melvyn Douglas,, her co-star in Ninotchka noted that "she wasn't a trained actress and she was aware of that herself, but she had extraordinary intuitions, especially in the realm of erotic experience."

Garbo benefited from some of the best directors at MGM, including Clarence Brown, George Cukor, Jacques Feyder, Edmund Goulding and Sidney Franklin. But Swenson argues that most of her directors, including Clarence Brown, were little more than traffic cops, as Garbo developed her characters by herself, acting most of her scenes with the set cleared. Certainly, she was helped immeasurably in her Hollywood work by her experience working for Stiller and G.W. Pabst.

The subtitle for the book is "A Life Apart," but Garbo's life also falls into two parts. After retiring from films in 1941, the private Garbo often went by the name Harriet Brown to avoid the public. But the public Garbo shifted from being a movie star, whose accomplishments understandably attracted fans, to become a celebrity- that modern creation who is famous for being famous- no talent required. The latter part of Garbo's life is of interest mostly for the high caliber of people she associated with- a lengthy fling with Leopold Stokowski, and a lengthy tug of war between two protectors, designer Cecil Beaton and businessman George Schlee. Garbo's life in later years seemed to consist of the back and forth of frequent travel, and the occasional betrayal, as she was victimized by friends who exploited their connection to her.

"Greta Garbo: A Life Apart" is a serious, thoughtful, introspective and insightful look at one of the silent era's most spellbinding actresses and screen personalities. It will remain the definitive work on the actress for many years.

Swenson's website for her book is located at  http://members.aol.com/svenska918.

This just in: Image Entertainment announces the future laserdisc release of The Slapstick Encyclopedia- described in detail in last month's issue.

News for February, 1998

The Chaplin Mutuals; Rare Oscar Micheaux feature from Kino; Slapstick Comedies Come to Video; Silent Westerns From a Sinister Source By David Pierce
The Chaplin Mutuals

While video has extended the life of films, many recent theatrical releases seem to emerge from nowhere and rapidly vanish into video oblivion when they fail to find an audience. That was true in the silent era also, with many studios releasing a film a week. But some films had extended lives, and continued to reach audiences through continued reissues.

The record for longevity almost certainly belongs to the twelve films that Charlie Chaplin made in 1916/17 for the Mutual Film Corp. These films have been popular for over 80 years.

At the end of Chaplin's one-year agreement with Essanay, he was besieged by bidders who wanted him to work for them. The Mutual Film Corporation bid the highest because they had the best idea of Chaplin's value. They distributed Chaplin's films made for Keystone, but because of a dispute with Triangle Film Corporation, the owner of the negatives, Mutual could not get replacement prints. Mutual knew the great demand and earning power of Chaplin films, yet their prints of the Keystones were wearing out.

In February 1916, Mutual's John Freuler signed the twenty six year old Chaplin to a contract. Chaplin committed to produce 12 two reel comedies, the same number of two reelers he had produced at his previous employer, Essanay. There he had been paid $1,250 per week plus a $10,000 signing bonus. Chaplin settled with Mutual for $10,000 per week and a $150,000 signing bonus, for a total one-year compensation of $670,000. Unlike his later agreements, Chaplin did not have to pay the cost of production out of his salary.

The production company was Lone Star Film Corp., so named because Chaplin was its "lone star." Mutual was anticipating the films at a rate of one per month, but always aiming for perfection, Chaplin took 16 months. From May 1916 to January 1917, the monthly releases were The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Vagabond, One A.M., The Count, The Pawnshop, Behind the Screen, The Rink and Easy Street. The pace slowed, with The Cure in April, 1917, The Immigrant in June and The Adventurer that October.

The twelve Mutual comedies were Chaplin's best sustained work. In his autobiography, Chaplin called the time spent making the films "the happiest period of my career," probably because he was largely left alone, was romancing leading lady Edna Purviance, and didn't have Mary Pickford as a business partner.

While many of Chaplin's later films were extremely difficult to see over the years, his films for Mutual have been in near continuous distribution since their original release. After making millions for Mutual, the negatives were sold in 1919 for $25,000 each to the Clark-Cornelius Corporation, operated by two principals of Exhibitors Mutual Distributing Corporation. The contract noted that the sale included all negatives and prints of "all cut-outs on the twelve Chaplin pictures." The company held onto the outtakes (production footage not used in the final release), but given Chaplin's litigious nature, they could not use them to make additional Chaplin films. The agreements also noted that there were two negatives of each subject, with the foreign negative stored in London.

After a successful run, Clark-Cornelius sold the shorts in 1922 to Chaplin Classics, Inc. In 1932, Amedee Van Beuren bought the shorts for $5,000 each. He removed many intertitles to de-emphasize that these were silent films, while adding new soundtracks of effects and orchestral music scores by Win Sharples. The scores were added for projection at sound speed, which meant that the action was shown faster than originally intended. RKO handled the theatrical release for Van Beuren.

Reissue distributor Commonwealth Pictures Corporation bought the shorts in 1941 for distribution to theatres and later, television. Commonwealth sold their film library in 1969 to Teleprompter Corp., an owner of television stations and cable tv systems. The films were rescued in 1975 when Blackhawk Films, the famed distributor of 8mm and 16mm prints to libraries and collectors, bought the Teleprompter library with the primary purpose of gaining access to the Mutual negatives. Blackhawk restored the shorts, incorporating missing scenes, restoring the text and placement of the original intertitles, editing the Win Sharples music scores to fit.

The original theatrical releases in 1916/17 had the sparsely designed intertitles that were typical of the time. There were at least six different sets of intertitles used by various distributors over the years, and since Blackhawk had their own title shop (with movable type and a printing press), they chose to follow the well-designed titles used for the initial Kodascope home library releases in 1925.

Blackhawk had previously sold good quality public domain copies of the Mutual shorts, but these releases were a revelation in their image quality. In the Blackhawk Bulletin of December 1975, Blackhawk's David Shepard reported on the film materials:
 

When we began our work on The Pawnshop, The Floorwalker, The Fireman, The Count, The Adventurer, and Behind the Screen, we found the best preprint material for each of these films to be a 35mm silent dupe negative which according to the Eastman Kodak code information available to us, had been manufactured in 1921. Had it not been for the Kodak date and the fact that some scene changes were not physically spliced in the negative, we could have been convinced that we were dealing with original negatives on the subjects, so fine was the picture quality. ***

Some of these negatives were lacking shots, but these were found in 35mm fine grain masters which had been printed years ago, or in other 35mm dupe negatives of later vintage. Sections were thus added to Behind the Screen, The Fireman, The Floorwalker, and The Rink, and substantial additional 35mm material was secured for The Adventurer from other sources. ***

The original negative for One A.M. was destroyed early in the history of the Mutuals by a fire at Pathe laboratories, and for protection, a nitrate lavender master print was carefully preserved. The Cure, The Rink, The Immigrant, Easy Street and The Vagabond were available in 35mm fine grains of more recent vintage.

The restored Mutuals and some of Chaplin's films for Keystone and Essanay were reissued to theaters in 1984 by Kino International as Chaplin Lost and Found. The Mutuals had the Van Beuren soundtracks.

While there have been no completely satisfactory video releases of Chaplin's Keystone and Essanay work (in terms of comprehensiveness or historical accuracy), the releases of the Mutuals from the Blackhawk material have always looked pretty good. The first video and laserdisc release from Media Home Entertainment in 1984 had the shorts shown at the proper speed, with the Van Beuren music scores adapted to the longer running times. The next release came in 1989 on video from Kino on Video and laserdisc from Image Entertainment with new music scores by Michael Mortilla.

This was supplanted in 1995 with new transfers from "premiere quality 35mm negatives" and new performances of Michael Mortilla's music scores. This was released on laserdisc as "The Chaplin Mutuals" containing all 12 of the films, and most recently on DVD. The $100, three disc laserdisc set features a printed insert including Chaplin's 12 page contract with Mutual, reproductions of trade magazine advertisements, a chapter guide, and a well-researched essay by Sam Gill that originally accompanied the 1975 Blackhawk release.

The Sam Gill essay is on the Internet as part of the AFI Online Cinema at http://www.afionline.org/cinema. This was discussed at length in one of the articles in our February 1997 issue. While the image quality depends on the speed and reliability of your Internet connection, the music by Michael Mortilla comes through clearly. An excerpt from each short in Quicktime format is available at http://www.uno.edu/~drcom/Slapstick/Chaplin.

When the films were playing in theatres, there was a limit on how exhibitors were willing to pay for shorts, so the Mutual two reelers were also distributed as feature-length programs with a new main title followed by the complete shorts. Charlie Chaplin Festival included The Immigrant, The Adventurer, The Cure and Easy Street. Charlie Chaplin Cavalcade consisted of One A.M., The Pawnshop, The Floorwalker and The Rink. Charlie Chaplin Carnival incorporated The Count, The Vagabond, The Fireman and Behind the Screen. These configurations were also used when the shorts were distributed to television by Commonwealth.

That division into three programs of shorts has been followed for the DVD release by Image Entertainment. Each program is $30 and features four shorts for a running time of about 100 minutes. The DVD of Chaplin Mutuals Volume 1 is Charlie Chaplin Festival, and Volume 2 is Charlie Chaplin Cavalcade, while Volume 3 is Charlie Chaplin Carnival. Each DVD package includes a fold-out panel with Sam Gill's essay, a chapter guide, and a few stills for the films in that particular volume. The presentation matches the laserdisc set, except that on my particular copy of Volume 1, the music score had some slight, but noticeable, distortion.

As with the laserdisc release, the image quality is startlingly good, with the films looking better than if they were shot yesterday. Modern labwork could produce an image as sharp as this, but would have difficulty matching the contrast (the blacks are deep and textured, but the whites are not washed out).

The films provide a variety of pleasures, and their lack of pretentiousness keeps Chaplin's sentimentality or occasional crudeness from offending. While the films are funny, a modern audience's response is more likely to be amazement at Chaplin's grace and ability to engage audience sympathy one moment, then throw it away the next. Each short is arguably better than most silent features, because Chaplin has to sustain a mood for only two reels. Even the weakest of the Mutuals is better than any of the two reelers that Chaplin would later produce for First National (Pay Day, A Day's Pleasure).

Some of the films, especially The Adventurer, are obviously pieced together from multiple sources, and as they shift from excellent to adequate quality, often the side shifts. The silent releases were trimmed by the addition of a soundtrack on one side, which threw the compositions slightly off balance. The shorts are windowboxed to include the entire silent aperture image, but insert shots to replace missing footage show the extent that footage would be trimmed.

The Chaplin Mutuals are among the type of films that many feared would not make the transition from laserdisc to DVD. It is fortunate that these shorts are now available in definitive editions that accurately represent the films, which are arguably the purest expression of Chaplin's art. (thanks to Jon Mirsalis for research help in preparing this essay).

Rare Oscar Micheaux feature from Kino

This is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Paul Robeson, and Kino on Video and Home Vision Cinema are offering the initial home video release of several of Robeson's British sound films. Kino offers Song of Freedom (1936), Big Fella (1937) and Jericho (1937). Homevision is releasing another British film, Proud Valley (1940). Each of these offer several opportunities for Robeson to sing. Unfortunately, there is no sign of Robeson's enjoyable adventure King Solomon's Mines (1937).

For film historians and fans, the highlight of the Kino series is the rare 1925 silent film Body and Soul, from famed black director Oscar Micheaux. This release is available February 10, at $25.

This release is transferred from a very nice 35mm print off of the preservation negative at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. Kino licensed the film from the Rohauer Collection and it was the 1979 Rohauer version with a Lee Erwin score that was broadcast on American Movie Classics.

As with the Buster Keaton films, Body and Soul had endured some modifications by Raymond Rohauer, and these were duly removed by Kino. The 83 minute AMC version was transferred at sound speed of 24 frames per second, and Kino chose the more appropriate speed of 20 frames for a running time of 102 minutes. Rohauer had taken out the original titles, and added a textual prologue explaining in great detail the importance of the director, the star and the distributor. Kino substituted a written prologue discussing Micheaux's battle over the film with the New York State Censor Board. The inter-titles were reset in a typeface which is more historically accurate, with the text remaining the same as the original release. Finally, Kino added a slight amber tint, while window boxing the image. The result is a significant improvement in quality over the broadcast version, demonstrating the difference that a careful production can make when working from the same film material.

Always innovative in their approach to silent film music, Kino selected a score by the post-modern jazz quintet Honk, Wail and Moan, who have accompanied the film as part of touring Robeson Centennial programs.

Slapstick Comedies Come to Video

Kino on Video is supporting the renewed interest in silent short comedy with The Slapstick Encyclopedia, an eight tape tribute to silent film comedians. The best known silent comedians are those that made features, but for many critics, the best work of Chaplin and Keaton were their short-comedies. And many other talented comedians never ventured into features.

The first half of the series will be released in April, with four tapes at $25 each or in a box set for $90. While the final line-up of titles on each tape still has not been confirmed, the rough outline is available. The first four tapes will include Film Comedy Pioneers, with popular, but nearly forgotten comedians including John Bunny and Max Linder. Keystone Tonight will focus on the films from the teens and twenties that made Mack Sennett the king of comedy. Chaplin and Company will look at the tradition of the English music hall (where Chaplin originated), featuring Chaplin, Stan Laurel and Chaplin imitators. Keaton and Arbuckle will cover the early work of these two, both together and individually.

The final four tapes will be released in July, and Silent Film Sources will provide more information when it is available. The music scores for these films will be varied. Musicians and composers include Robert Israel, Brian Bennison, Christine Elliot, the Photoplayer, Donald Sosin, Michael Mortilla, the Mont Alto Theater Orchestra, and Vince Giordano.

Silent Westerns From a Sinister Source

There is no true believer like the newly converted, and Greg Luce, the proprietor of Sinister Cinema has found meaning in his life through B westerns. I have known Greg for many years, and had always appreciated, though not shared, his interests, until his newly found obsession with B westerns. Sinister Cinema is the long-time distributor of mostly public domain horror and science fiction films. A few years ago, access to a cache of rare westerns led to a side-line called "Sinister Six-Guns."

Now, Sinister is offering "Silent Six-Guns," a 22 film series of silent westerns. With the exception of two Tom Mix films, and one with William S. Hart, these are the silent equivalent of sound B westerns, with uncomplicated plots, second string players, and lots of action and filming in outdoor locations. Each tape is $14 postpaid.

This is obviously a labor of love, as each film has been transferred from 16mm home library prints, most dating back to the 1930s. Also, each release has music scores newly compiled from stock music libraries, often the same stock music libraries that supplied music to later sound westerns.

 Here is a look at the highlights from this series.
 

• Hal Roach Westerns. It is not remembered that Roach made westerns in the 1920s for release by Pathe, often including his comedy players in supporting roles. The Devil Horse (1925) stars Yakima Canutt, and the wonderful No Man's Law (1928) features Barbara Kent, Oliver Hardy (in a villain role), and James Finlayson. King of Wild Horses (1924) and Black Cyclone (1925) feature Rex, the Wonder Horse. These films are much better than you would expect, with top-notch technicians (including cameraman George Stevens).
 
• Tom Mix features. Two of Mix's best films for Fox recently fell into the public domain, so 1922's Just Tony and Sky High are newly available. An earlier release, The Man From Texas (1917), was cobbled together from several of Mix's starring short films.
 
• Yakima Canutt was a frequent star in the silent era, though he only had one lead in sound westerns. In addition to The Devil Horse (discussed above), he played the lead in Desert Greed and The Outlaw Breaker for Goodwill Pictures.
 
• The Old Oregon Trail (1928) has been called "an amazing mini-epic" by historian Sam Sherman in "Hollywood Corral" the comprehensive tribute to B Westerns published in 1993 by Riverwood Press. Independent producer Victor Adamson hit the road for Oregon with $900, his wife, a cameraman with camera and film. With the support of local businessmen in various small Oregon towns, he filmed the settling of Oregon against beautiful natural backgrounds.
 
• Other B Western Stars. Jack Hoxie stars in Back Fire (1922, missing reel two) and The Back Trail (1924); Ken Maynard in The Demon Rider (1926, missing the final reel); Dick Hatton in Western Courage (1926); Jack Perrin in Border Vengeance (1925), Cactus Trails (1926) and Guardians of the Wild (1928);

News for January, 1998

The Year in Review; Classics of Soviet Cinema; Early Film and Very Early Film; Paramount lowers price on Wings; A Review of Silent Film Sources; Reviews of Battleship Potemkin, Storm Over Asia and Turksib By David Pierce

The Year in Review

It has been a mixed year for silent films on video, laserdisc and DVD. The video market has shrunk and the laserdisc market is on its last legs. DVD is cherry picking the best laser titles, and will probably supplant laserdisc within the next 18 months. DVD proponents hope that it will replace VHS, but it is too early to say if that will occur.

Last year we reported that there were exactly zero silent film releases from the major studios- the companies that 70-80 years ago produced the silent films that people would most like to see today. Paramount had given up on silents, Fox lost their shirts with the special edition Chaplin laser releases, and MGM/UA had seemingly gone to sleep.

This year has seen a few laserdisc releases from MGM/UA (and more promised), since Image Entertainment took over distribution (all MGM/UA has to do is cash Image's royalty checks). Silent Film Sources added a page of upcoming releases, and can happily report the 1997 laser availability of Show People (1928) with Marion Davies and the Photoplay Productions restoration of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) with Rudolph Valentino. It's not much, but it is two more releases than last year. Promised for next year from Image is a box set of Garbo silent films.

In the Sunday book section of The Washington Post, there was an end of year analysis of the book business citing the "continuing crisis in book publishing." The article blamed the fairly small number of people who buy books, and that the book superstores order lots of copies of books, then return the unsold copies to the publisher for full credit. Author David Streitfeld concludes that "most books, even those that are prominently reviewed, sell fewer than 10,000 copies, sometimes much less. At a budget-conscious publisher, which is just about all of them, a tougher line is being taken toward these titles. HarperCollins axed dozens this summer, realizing it was better off canceling today than losing money tomorrow."

Similar market forces are affecting silent films on video, with the same chilling result. Purchases by collectors are fairly steady, which is why the sales of silents on laserdisc have not experienced the same decrease as popular titles on laser (there is virtually no rental market for laserdiscs). However, the VHS business was based on sales to video stores either as rental items or for sell-through as impulse purchases. That business is down.

The overall video rental business is flat at best, and the industry is focusing more on recent hit releases than their catalog titles. If they have any at all, most video rental stores have enough silent films and feel no need to buy more. The titles are treated as an interchangeable genre. The places like Tower Video and book superstores that used to buy silent film videos and keep them on the shelf until they sold, are now sending them back after six months. Even when title sells out, they don't reorder that title.

I talked to Don Krim, the president of distributor Kino on Video for his view of the market. He noted that "1997 wasn't our best year, but we still did well." Kino released six tapes of D.W. Griffith Masterworks Volume Two, three of Harry Langdon: The Forgotten Clown, six of Cecil B. DeMille: The Visionary Years 1915-1927, and five tapes of Classics of the Soviet Avant Garde Cinema. He noted that Kino will be cutting back a bit.

Ironically, the reason is the remarkable success of the Art of Buster Keaton video series in 1995. "We are not as optimistic as we were the day after we released the Keatons," Krim said. "After the Keatons, the [chain store] buyers were enthusiastic and wanted everything." But the market has changed. According to Krim, "I read it as less confidence by the store buyers to buy any silent title in the enthusiastic confidence that followed the Keaton films. They discovered that the lesser titles don't sell as well as they expected." The result is "some tightening of their willingness to stock films deeply."

I feel that the problem that underlies all of this is that there really aren't all that many people interested in silent films, and that potential audience is not growing. That is one of the challenges that Silent Film Sources and the Silent Film Bookshelf try to address. While a greater number of silent films and of better image quality are available for home viewing (on video and cable) than ever before, there has been no proportional increase in general interest.

As David Streitfeld concludes about the crisis with books, "If there were a larger market for books, the crisis wouldn't be as severe, but none of the publishers seem to have the will or the imagination to go after the tens of millions who, this year and every year, regard reading as work." And as long as most potential viewers of silent films ignore them, we face that challenge too.

Classics of Soviet Cinema

A second series of silent films from the U.S.S.R. have been released by Kino on Video as Classics of the Soviet Avant Garde Cinema. These six features and one short are newly restored from 35mm elements with new music scores. Most of these films and a few more will be included on Classics of Early Soviet Cinema, a new laserdisc set announced by Image Entertainment.

For the casual fans of silent films, the motion pictures that emerged from the Soviet Union pretty much start and stop with Sergei Eisenstein. Filled with agit-prop, his Battleship Potemkin told of a failed worker uprising in 1905, while Ten Days That Shook the World celebrated the Bolshevik victory in the Russian revolution. The films were designed to convince the Russian people of the evils of the Czarist regime (probably not too difficult), and the glories of the workers' state (a much more challenging proposition). As for the other films produced by the Soviets, relatively few were available, making it easy to assume they were stirring dramas on the importance of meeting the five year plan for rye production, and inspirational girl-loves-tractor stories.

The truth is different. The Soviet system actually paralleled the American approach to some extent. There were a number of Soviet film studios, and they each had their own directors and players, and certain types of films could be expected from each one. In her "Soviet Cinema in the Silent Era, 1918-1935," Denise Youngblood identified 23 studios, many based geographically. Goskino produced Battleship Potemkin and By the Law; Mezhrabpom-Russ made Chess Fever, Mezhrabpomfilm made Storm Over Asia and Deserter; Sovkino produced Ten Days That Shook the World; the independent Ukrainian studio VUFKU was the source of Arsenal, Earth and Man With the Movie Camera. Vostok-kino produced Turksib, and Goskinprom-Georgia produced Salt for Svanetia. Of course, certain filmmakers were associated with each company.

In addition, there were more genres of Soviet films than in America. Comedies such as The Cigarette Girl of Mosselprom, The Girl With the Hat Box and The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West would be a credit to Rene Clair or Mal St. Clair. The Fall of the Romonov Dynasty and Turksib are classics of the documentary genre and compare favorably to Chang. There are stark dramas like Mother and By the Law. Historical dramas such as Storm Over Asia. Experimental films like Man With the Movie Camera tested the bounds of narrative cinema. Filmmaking style aside, the propaganda films are not more nationalistic and jingoistic than American films like Old Ironsides and The Yankee Clipper. In her review of 1,319 films, Youngblood identified nine genres. The most popular was contemporary drama, followed by animated/children's films. In third place was films of the revolution and civil war, which peaked at 30 films released in 1926.

Against that background, the prospect of a half dozen avant garde films may not sound too promising, but that label may be needlessly off-putting. Films were once labeled 'avant garde' to try to give them the same cachet and respectability as fine art. While a few of these filmmakers may have been the Andy Warhol of their day, these are not experimental films. With the exception of the dazzling Man With the Movie Camera, these are genre films with flashes of experimentation added during key dramatic sequences to emphasize a narrative point.

At times, it is difficult to watch these films without a sense of sadness. Many of the films (including several in this series) show brave Russian people fighting outsiders and capitalists, so that they can set up the workers' state. The irony, of course, is that they were just making way for a different oppression, in the form of that state they had worked to hard to bring about.

Many of the better Soviet films were released over the years in the United States through a couple of channels. Some were offered by the New York-based (and Soviet owned) distributor Amkino and Artkino to theaters to serve ethnic Russian audiences and to support Soviet political aims. These films were fixed up in New York with English language intertitles or subtitles, and reedited (i.e. shortened) with great care to make them more palatable to American audiences used to films with more action, and less meditation. These were subsequently distributed in 16mm to schools and libraries.

A second source of these films was the Museum of Modern Art Circulating Film Library. Starting in the mid-1930s, the Museum distributed several titles based on their artistic value. Releases in 1941 were By the Law and Mother, four years later they released Arsenal, Fragment of an Empire, Storm Over Asia. Added in 1952 were the more political The End of St. Petersburg and Ten Days That Shook the World, and Strike was added in 1959. The master material for these prints came directly from the Soviet Union, and as near as I can determine, the inter-titles were newly translated into English.

The print quality of these films was generally pretty good, but the new Kino editions are still a revelation. The 35mm prints used for the series are from archival sources, contain the original Russian language titles, and are usually of outstanding image quality. Man With the Movie Camera comes from the George Eastman House archive print and is just stunning.

Here is a listing of the series.
 

• The jewel is Storm Over Asia (1928). The story tells of the fight of communist partisans to seize control of Mongolia from the British, through the story of a Mongol tribesman who is exploited by British traders, and is then selected by the British military to present to the people as "the son of Genghis Khan." This version is 30 minutes longer than any before seen in this country, including an extended sequence of a Buddist religious ceremony. The fast-moving story is enhanced by an orchestral score by Timothy Brock performed by the Olympia Chamber Orchestra. This edition is reviewed in this issue.
• Man With the Movie Camera (1929) is a 75 minute display of cinematic artistry by director Dziga Vertov. Somewhat similar to Berlin, Symphony of a Great City in concept, the effect is quite different as this film celebrates life, while the German film delighted in the effects of technology on life. The tape has a score by the Alloy Orchestra which follows Vertov's instructions for the type of music he wanted throughout the film.
 
• By the Law (1926) is a tough drama, at times reminiscent of von Stroheim's Greed in its gutter realism. Based on a short story by Jack London, By the Law follows a small group of gold prospectors. A falling out leads one of the group to murder, and the survivors then have to deal with the killer in their isolated location. The film reminded me of the Coen brothers' Blood Simple (1984), as the focus is on the aftermath of the event, the dynamics of the killer and survivors, and the mundane disposing of the bodies, not the motivations that drove them to that point. The tape also includes Chess Fever (1923), a moderately interesting comedy of a chess-mad Moscovite and his frustrated girlfriend.

 
• Turksib (1929) and Salt for Svanetia (1930) are double featured on the same tape. They are labeled as "documentaries," which is true as far as it goes, but they are far better, and more innovative, than that label indicates. Turksib celebrates the accomplishment of building a railway connecting two equally barren parts of the Soviet Union, while Salt for Svanetia documents life in an isolated mountain village. Both feature gorgeous images, frequently dazzling editing, and completely different approaches to their subject. They also share outstanding new scores by Zoran Borisavljevic. Turksib is reviewed in this issue.
• The Deserter (1933) is a sound film by Vsevolod Pudovkin (the same director as Storm Over Asia) which is supposed to be quite good.

 
Early Film and Very Early Film

I am always annoyed when books or documentaries discuss cinema as if filmmaking began in 1927 either with the coming of sound or with the first Academy Award presentations. Reference books such as "Poverty Row Studios: 1929-1940," and Phil Hardy's "The Western: The Complete Film Sourcebook" (the earliest film is 1929) seem to view films made during the first three decades of the century as somehow different, and of less interest than those that followed.

In turn, fans of the silent era are quick to dismiss the period before silent features as years of either experimentation or stagnation. Judging from the number of films and level of interest, you might conclude that prior to 1915, numerous theatrical shorts were ground out by filmmakers who had neither the technique nor the technology to produce films of interest to any other than the most determined academician. At best, these films are treated like the early journalism of Ernest Hemingway, of interest not for their own merit but for glimpses of what is to come.

One reason for this is that after features became the standard, distributors didn't know what to do with early short films. Their acting style and technique betrayed their age. Warner Bros. recycled clips from various Mack Sennett films to create new comedy shorts from 1939-45. In the late 1940s shorts produced by Biograph were used in Flicker Flashbacks and a few other series produced for theaters. These were presented with wisecracking narration which spoofed the action on the screen.

The first serious attempt to use early silent short films on television was Movie Museum, produced for television in 1954-55 by Paul Killiam and Saul Turrell. They bought rights to the Biograph films and licensed the Edison library of short films that had been acquired for archival purposes by the Museum of Modern Art. The series was prepared in 16mm with added narration, with many of the scripts written by William K. Everson but the narration always spoken by Paul Killiam. This was a sincere attempt to create a commercial market for these early films, many of which had never seen the light of day since their initial release. The producers felt that the old shorts needed narration to be accepted. Some of the shorts had to be trimmed to meet the requirements of their time slot.

The 10 minute format allowed stations to use the shorts as filler, or combine them to create a half hour program. When the series was revised for rerelease in the 1980s, the major change was to reduce the amount of narration. Many of the original Movie Museum shows were shown on American Movie Classics a few years back.

In fact, the films of the pre-feature era are valid as history and even entertainment if taken on their own terms. In the 1990s, there has been a revival of interest in this material. Domitor is an association of historians focused on early film. The Live Cinema Calendar published Eileen Bowser's article on the group at http://www.cinemaweb.com/lcc/domitor.html. Their website is at http://mistral.ERE.UMontreal.CA:80/~simardde/Domitor/en/. They are having a conference June 1-5 at the Library of Congress on sound and film. More information on the conference is available at the Domitor website.

The recent video and laserdisc releases of films from the early era have been far more respectful of the original films. They are more likely to be presented from 35mm materials, with original hand coloring or tinting, and transferred at an appropriate speed.

The best example of this so far is The Movies Begin, a five-tape set from Kino on Video. This set included over 120 films from 1894-1914, and each cassette contains a printed insert with extensive notes. The only regret is that Kino recognized that the largest, and perhaps only, audience for this was schools, so the tapes are premium priced at $50 each, or $200 for the set of five. Experimentation and Discovery and The European Pioneers were produced by the British Film Institute, and feature narration by Barry Salt. The other three programs, The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works, The Magic of Melies and Comedy, Spectacle and New Horizons were produced by David Shepard.

The best of the Shepard material was released on laserdisc by Image Entertainment as The Magic of Melies and Landmarks of Early Film. The latter title was recently released on DVD.

The material in Landmarks of Early Film seems tailor-made for classroom use, as it provides a survey of films from 1894-1913. There are examples from Edison, Biograph, Melies, Lumiere. Quality is generally very nice and the films have a variety of music scores.

The disc includes 40 different titles. A documentary on photographer Eadweard Muybridge covers his successive exposure of action. Eight Edison Kinetoscope films from 1894-96 include The Kiss, Serpentine Dances and Sandow all familiar from documentaries, and several less common titles. There are 15 Lumiere films, including at least six that are repeated in the Lumiere program discussed below. Six actualities from 1897-1910 include San Francisco: Aftermath of an Earthquake. The expected titles include a nice hand colored print of The Great Train Robbery (1903), an Edison comedy, a Pathe comedy, a hand-tinted Pathe ( The Golden Beetle), Max Linder, Winsor McCay, a D.W. Griffith Biograph drama, a Keystone Kops comedy, and an Italian import.

The disc's highlight is a unique presentation of George Melies' A Trip to the Moon (1902). In the past the film was a tableaux of successive scenes. This presentation has restored the original narration, which with a nice score makes it much more of a multimedia presentation.

While undoubtedly directed toward school film history programs, this program still offers two hours of entertainment with the finest versions of these films that are likely to be seen for quite a while.

In 1996, Kino sponsored a tour of Lumiere films, and that program has now been released by Kino on Video as The Lumiere Brothers First Films: 1895-1897.

Auguste and Pierre Lumiere arguably invented filmmaking. Their first film, Workers Leaving the Factory, was filmed on March 19, 1895 and the first public exhibition was December 28 of that year in the Salon Indien of the Grand Cafe in Paris. Their innovative camera could be used for both filming and projection. It could only hold 17 meters of 35mm film, so the Lumiere films could only run about 50 seconds.

The Institute Lumiere in France has restored many of the films and the earliest Lumiere films are included in the program. A few of the live shows had French director Bertrand Tavernier as a guest, and his English language commentary is included on the 62 minute tape, which also features a piano score by Stuart Oderman.

You might think there isn't much you can do with less than a minute of screen time, but the Lumieres didn't know that and these films have a fascinating documentary quality. One friend was transfixed by the films- calling it like "watching the invention of fire." The films are not technically primitive, but conceptually primitive. In other words, while they were bounded by what they knew could be done with the camera, the Lumieres were working with a limited vocabulary, but they added to their language with each film.

The films begin with the famous Train Arrival in the Station of La Ciotat and there are multiple versions of Workers Leaving the Factory. You quickly get into the rhythm of the films and can see the growth and experimentation.

Films had to have movement, so you have a fixed camera with action that merits viewing such as children playing or a parade float. The other type is where something happens, such as the demolition of a wall.

Recognizing the limited variety of events and landscape in France, in 1896 the Lumieres sent filmmakers around the world to film and show films. There was a documented screening in August 1896 in Shanghai. Other films document countries around the world, including London, Dublin, Venice, Moscow, Egypt, and Dublin.

This program provides a delightful overview of the accomplishments of the Lumieres, supported by the insight of a top film scholar and director. The work of these early filmmakers still exceeds the image quality and content of most home camcorders for all the improvements in technology and awareness of the capabilities of modern cinema.

Paramount Lowers VHS Price on Wings

As part of a promotion called "Best Show in Town" Paramount Home Video has lowered the list price of Wings to $15. William Wellman's Wings is best remembered as the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. This World War I flying epic follows two friends to the front, and their flirtation with good girl/bad girl Clara Bow. With a production cost of $1,992,000, Wings was the third most expensive silent picture, and features outstanding battle scenes.

While it is doubtful that anyone at Paramount remembers it, the "Best Show in Town" slogan dates back to the twenties and possibly the teens, when advertisements read "If it's a Paramount Picture, it's the Best Show in Town." Back when Paramount was releasing a film each week, this was intended to encourage audiences to go to any Paramount film, as indicating a certain level of quality.

A Review of Silent Film Sources

We try not to blow our own horn, so it is nice when someone else does it for us. Silent Film Sources received a very nice write-up in the New York Times in December. The only possible pan was that the author, Peter Nichols, referred to my writing style as "meandering." I finally decided that it was a compliment.
 

Home Video Notes and News: Run Silent

Out on the Web, rental rankings don't interest movie buffs visiting sites like Silent Film Sources (http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm). Here one alights for some study and a lingering appreciation. In fact, the two major reviews currently on display, long essays about the 1925 "Ben-Hur," with Ramon Novarro, and "The Black Pirate" (1926), with Douglas Fairbanks, are about videos released a year ago.

Nevertheless, as written by the site's proprietor, David Pierce, a copyright researcher and film historian, the meandering stream of information eventually does get around to divulging much about the state of silent film on video. And that, Pierce said in an interview, is better than ever, thanks to the high visual and audio quality of new issues on laser and digital video disk. "Silent films have a lot going against them, because they demand so much concentration and emotional involvement," he said. In theaters, audiences got into the mood and swept themselves along. That ambiance being next to impossible to generate at home, the next best way to get viewers in a frame of mind to focus on a silent film on video is to clean up and smooth out the image and provide restored musical accompaniment. All of this is best done on disk. At the site, new releases are described and sources and distributors listed.
 

Peter M. Nichols
The New York Times
Friday, December 12, 1997
For an announcement of the posting of each month's Silent Film Sources news and updates, send an email to sunrise@dc.infi.net asking to join our mailing list. You can cancel at any time.

Remember to visit this month's edition of The Silent Bookshelf, the companion site of Silent Film Sources. This month features excerpts from the series of exhibitor reports "What the Picture Did For Me" from Exhibitor's Herald-World, with sometimes insightful, often wildly off the mark reviews of the commercial value of silent films by small town exhibitors.

This issue's reviews include three Soviet Classics: Battleship Potemkin, Storm Over Asia and Turksib.

 The links for past issues of Silent Film Sources News are:

1996: November - December 1997: January - April | May - August | September - December

 

Your input is invited. Send your comments on silent films, or notes on upcoming releases to David Pierce, sunrise@dc.infi.net

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Send additions, suggestions, comments or questions to David Pierce, prizma@onetel.com

© 1998 David Pierce