A Darling of the Twenties
Well, last week the blog offered a little challenge: to identify the silent-era stars shown in five photos. Despite some valiant and persistent efforts, nobody was able to name all five.
The stars were:
1. Bebe Daniels (Swim, Girl, Swim, 1927)
2. Madge Bellamy
3. Ramon Novarro (Son Daughter, 1932)
4. Janet Gaynor (1926)
5. Clara Bow (Dangerous Curves, 1929)
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Madge Bellamy isn’t well-remembered today, partly because as a Fox star much of her work is lost, and partly because her best film (John Ford’s epic The Iron Horse, 1924) doesn’t give her much to do but stand around and look pretty.
But she was that studio’s leading female star, at least until Janet Gaynor soared into the firmament with Seventh Heaven (1927). She wasn’t the greatest of actresses, but she was beautiful and versatile.
Early on, she was generally cast in melodramas, with occasional interludes of prestige drama, as in Lorna Doone (1922) and The Iron Horse. But as the Twenties really got roaring, she began to be cast in the sort of films that Clara Bow was doing over at Paramount– saucy romantic comedies (Summer Bachelors, 1926; Ankles Preferred, 1927; The Play Girl, 1928, etc.).
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Composite: Madge Bellamy in Summer Bachelors (1926); detail from a lobby card for Silk Legs (1927); and an unusually revealing Max Autrey pin-up.
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Madge wasn’t very happy with the cutie-pie roles. She saw herself as a serious actress, and as something of an intellectual as well. (She wasn’t alone in that opinion: “Madge Bellamy is one of the most intelligent girls I know,” gushed a Picture Play writer in 1926. “She is a rare instance of pure beauty combined with intellect.”)
She complained to the studio brass about the roles she was getting, with mixed results. Initially slated to star in Seventh Heaven, she was bounced from that project because director Frank Borzage, recalling her prickly temperament during the making of Lazybones (1925), opted for Janet Gaynor instead. The studio promised to find her something equally prestigious.
Meanwhile, the Hollywood high life was hard to resist. Easy money was easy to spend. There were parties, a marriage that began and ended within a few weeks, a touring car with chauffeur, and “a twenty-gallon bottle of gin in my bedroom closet,” as she recalled in her autobiography.
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Ankles Preferred, 1927.
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Still, she had no close friends, and remained under the thumb of a domineering mother. It was the mother’s idea to purchase a massive estate in Beverly Hills called the Cedars, a replica of the Duke of Alba’s Spanish villa. Among its features were a billiards room, a music room, a breakfast room, dressing rooms, formal gardens, fountains and a pond. While the quarter-million-dollar estate was lavish, Madge found it cold and lonesome as well; she later described her years there as the unhappiest of her life.
The Cedars.
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The rapid shift to talkie production at Fox created the opportunity that Madge had been promised. It was Mother Knows Best, the story of a young actress struggling to escape her mother’s control, one struggling also to develop a personality of her own and to find love and real happiness. The film’s story was so close to Madge Bellamy’s daily reality that one would think it had been written with her in mind, but in fact it was adapted from a 1927 Edna Ferber novel.
The film was a hit, and its success emboldened Madge to resume her demands of the front office. When she didn’t get what she wanted, she quit.
Fox’s West Coast chief Sol Wurtzel, recognizing a train wreck unfolding before his eyes, asked her in a gentle way to reconsider, to come back and talk it over. She did; and to her surprise, the studio had a new contract prepared, offering a bump up in salary. But the studio would still make the creative decisions. She turned the offer down. Wurtzel sadly asked her to think it over. She left the studio. It was 1929.
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Madge waited for other studios to present their offers. But while her marquee value was recognized, studio executives were also familiar with her obstinate reputation. Apart from a one-picture deal at Universal (at half her former salary), there was little interest in her. Then the stock market crashed, bringing the industry’s rapid expansion to an end. The phone stopped ringing.
She still owed $150,000 on the Cedars. In the spring of 1931, it fell upon the auction block. But the Depression had destroyed the value of luxury estates, and the property finally sold for less than the original value of its foundation. Its contents were sold off as well, right down to the rare art books that Madge loved. They sold for a dollar an armload.
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Madge Bellamy, in more comfortable (if not happier) times.
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This same scenario would soon play out for another star of the late silent era, Esther Ralston. As she recalled:
“On February 27th, 1933, George [her husband] hired an auctioneer and put our castle and all our treasures up for sale. Almost all day, I lay in the grass beside my pool, listening to the voice of the auctioneer droning on and on, while friends, strangers, and fans wandered through my house, fingering my beloved possessions, bidding on them and carting them away.
“I put my head down on my arms and wept, then gazed up at my castle and whispered, ‘I’ll miss you. There’s a drop of my blood in every inch of you, but I’ll never let myself care for money or possessions again.’”
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Esther Ralston bounced back. Stardom was finished, but she stayed busy in smaller roles, worked outside the industry as a saleslady, and spent the rest of her life happily nestled among family and friends.
But, like a roller coaster in the dark, Madge Bellamy’s life swerved through a dozen years of chaos. She milked the last of her screen fame with a string of personal appearances, landed a role in Bela Lugosi’s camp classic White Zombie (1932), killed a budding career in radio by gulping down a mouthful of perfume and sleeping through her live broadcast, and began a “three-year course of bed hopping” and chasing millionaires, ultimately being jailed in 1943 for firing three pistol shots at one of them. She then settled into several decades of near-poverty, but completed her autobiography.
A Darling of the Twenties alternates between openness about her years of celebrity and conspicuous silence about the years that followed. Proud of her independence and survival, and suggesting a somewhat misplaced faith in her intellectual powers, she also confesses herself incapable of intimacy, profound feelings of inadequacy and a hatred of men.
The book concludes with a paragraph in which she wishes she’d had different parents. A month before it was published, Madge Bellamy passed away, on January 24, 1990.
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- – - Christopher Snowden
Pandering to the Audience
This week, the Silent Movie Blog is all about you… the reader! So far this year, there’s been some film history and some gossip, some photos and some reviews. But here’s a fresh assortment of the things that have drawn the most interest.
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5. Spanking
This took me a little bit by surprise. A few weeks ago, I posted one harmless little photo of Doris Day getting a spanking, and the page-view count exploded.
I didn’t realize you saucy rascals were so interested in this sort of thing, but that’s all right. Fortunately I’ve got another example for you.
This image appeared in (of all places!) the Photoplay novelization of My Best Girl (1927). Carmelita Geraghty’s on the receiving end; Mary Pickford feels her pain.
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4. Snark
What would the Blog be without cruel humor?
Separated at birth: The Phantom of the Opera… and Wilson Mizner?
Most of you have never heard of Mizner. He was a terrific screenwriter, best known for his Pre-Code Warner Bros. pictures. Here he is with Texas Guinan in November 1928.
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3. Unusual Photos
Once or twice a month, I try to come up with a few stills you guys haven’t already seen.
Here’s another batch. And just to make it interesting, I’m offering a prize to the first person who guesses the identities of these five silent stars:
Guess Who? #1
Guess Who? #2
Guess Who? #3
Guess Who? #4
Guess Who? #5
The first person to correctly name all of these stars (use the comment link below) gets a free DVD from UnknownVideo.com. Winner gets to choose, and the postage is on me.
No, you don’t get any hints, but I will say that each of these was an actual star of the 1920s (no character actors, or starlets you’ve never heard of). Good luck! If no one’s guessed them by the weekend, I’ll post the answers then.
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2. Pin-Ups
Here’s a photo you may not have seen before. How long before this one goes viral all over the internet?
Jean Harlow, photographed by Edwin Bower Hesser, 1929
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1. Sex
There was a tidal wave of page views for the creepily salacious Rudy Vallee letter: further proof that nothing captures the public’s attention like the sex lives of celebrities. There’s no changing it, so we might as well enjoy it.
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Quote:
“My God, to see that man on the screen, you’d never imagine he’s been chasing everything on the M-G-M lot but the goddamned lion!”
(Source: Lionel Barrymore, referring to an unnamed actor “famous for his roles of high moral standing,” quoted by Tim McCoy in Tim McCoy Remembers the West, page 238.)
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Quote:
“Joe Kennedy was a real son of a bitch. He was dictatorial and demanding and mean and wanted his fun when he wanted it, even if I was having a damn period or were otherwise indisposed.”
(Source: Nancy Carroll, temporary mistress of studio executive and political dynasty-founder Joseph P. Kennedy, interviewed by Lawrence J. Quirk in Quirk’s The Kennedys in Hollywood, page 66.)
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- – - Christopher Snowden
The Rudy Vallee Letter
From 1980: Rudy Vallee proposes “the album to end all albums.”
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It would seem that Rudy Vallee’s greatest love was Rudy Vallee. But here are a few “Girls of the Vallee” who reach back to the silent era:
Lenore Ulric, seen here in Frozen Justice (1929)
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Dolores Del Rio
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Lupe Velez, in The Gaucho (1927)
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Fay Webb’s film career never caught fire… but in 1931 she did become Mrs. Vallee.
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- – - Christopher Snowden
(with thanks to Rob McKay)
Traditional Marriage
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- – - Christopher Snowden
M-G-M’s Surprising New Discovery
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M-G-M’s New York talent scout in the 1920s and 1930s was Al Altman. According to his daughter Diana Altman’s fine 1992 book Hollywood East, he was given a tough assignment late in the silent era: find another Greta Garbo.
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It’s well known that Garbo was a particular aggravation of Louis B. Mayer’s. He was usually able to keep his stars in line (and their salary demands reasonable) by employing a combustible mix of flattery, argument, bluster, threats and sometimes tears, but Garbo seemed immune to all that.
She was never comfortable in the public eye, and genuinely homesick for her native Sweden besides; from time to time she threatened to leave M-G-M forever, and Mayer knew she was serious. He also knew she was a powerful box-office attraction that he couldn’t afford to lose.
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Greta Garbo in Torrent (1926)
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But what if she could be replaced? What if there was an aspiring actress out there with the same mystique: the beauty, the passion, the brooding sensitivity and elegance?
Al Altman, the studio’s man in New York, knew that the assignment was hopeless, but it was his job to try. He ran announcements in the theatrical tabloids, offering an M-G-M screen test for the right young actress. About a hundred hopefuls showed up, but none of them had what Altman was looking for.
Mayer told him to keep trying. More announcements went out, and at the next casting call Altman was approached by one aspirant who was worth a second look. The sad eyes, thin lips and angular figure embodied the Garbo look; the world-weary manner was there too. Altman was intrigued.
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The genuine Garbo, 1927. Accept no substitutes.
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As he later recalled, the applicant’s name was Rhoda, and the next day it was Rhoda who got that screen test. Altman didn’t think it went well. Garbo could really act, but Rhoda wasn’t in that league.
Still, Mr. Mayer wanted to see the test, and when it arrived at M-G-M, he was thrilled with it. Rhoda really did look like Garbo, and M-G-M could make a star out of almost anybody. Mayer told him to put Rhoda on a train, so the dubious talent scout kept his skepticism to himself and sent Rhoda to Culver City.
About a week later, Altman received a blistering phone call from one of M-G-M’s producers, who accused the talent man of trying to make a fool of him.
Altman hung up and put in a call to Mayer, who explained what had happened.
Diana Altman’s book tells the rest of the story:
“The outraged producer was one who took advantage of his position to seduce young women at the studio. Joan Crawford began to get good roles after she agreed to sleep with this man.
“The producer promised to advance Rhoda’s career. She refused his advances. He insisted. They wrestled and the producer discovered that Rhoda was a man. ‘She’ was driven to downtown Los Angeles and dumped. What became of Rhoda no one knows.”
And just who was that producer? Altman doesn’t say, but if you’ve read the better biographies of Joan Crawford, you’ll recognize the name of Harry Rapf.
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Harry Rapf with the young and no-longer-innocent Joan Crawford, 1925. The smirk says it all.
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- – - Christopher Snowden
No, No! You’re Spanking Doris Day All Wrong!
Glimpses of silent-era directors at work.
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Mabel Normand visits the set of The Splendid Sinner (1918), as Edwin Carewe directs Mary Garden in what must have been a mighty dramatic scene, judging from Mabel’s expression.
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Turnabout’s fair play for a gag photo, and in this one from the filming of Beyond the Rocks (1922), Sam Wood takes direction from Rudolph Valentino. Elinor Glyn performs the sort of love scenes she often wrote, and Gloria Swanson doesn’t care much for the other side of the camera.
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On the other hand, Rollie Totheroh’s right at home behind a movie camera. Charlie Chaplin directs The Gold Rush (1925) from a mountain slope outside Truckee, California, in the spring of 1924. Nearly all of these outdoor scenes would be scrapped and re-shot in the studio, after leading lady Lita Grey became pregnant and was replaced.
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Director Clarence Brown (far left) and producer John Considine (far right) watch a distinguished visitor to the set of The Eagle (1925). Erich von Stroheim demonstrates the art of gentlemanly bowing to stars Rudolph Valentino and Vilma Banky.
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Here’s Stroheim on the set of his own film, The Wedding March (1928). Early in its production, cinematographer Hal Mohr met this extra, Claire Del Mar, and they became engaged. Here they are in October 1926. Later, they were married on the film’s beautiful cathedral set, with Mr. and Mrs. Stroheim serving as man and matron of honor. Sadly, the marriage lasted only a few years. Sadder still, Del Mar would be murdered in her own home in 1959, beaten and stabbed by an unknown assailant described by the Los Angeles Times as a “sex sadist,” as her bedridden mother lay helpless in the next room.
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Fred Niblo directs Dream of Love (1928). These set musicians might as well be playing their swan song: there was a revolution going on, and the talkies were winning it. July 11, 1928.
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And speaking of talkies, here we see the silent-era veteran Roy Del Ruth directing Gordon MacRae on the finer points of spanking Doris Day, as the crew pays very close attention. (On Moonlight Bay, 1951.)
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- – - Christopher Snowden
Quiet on the Set
In Paramount’s 1927 film The Way of All Flesh, Emil Jannings played the role of a proud banker who hits the skids, ending up a seedy old derelict. The wardrobe department tried to find a shabby suit of clothes that would meet with Jannings’ approval, but the star rejected everything presented to him.
Wardrobe man Arnold MacDonald started making nightly visits to Los Angeles’ Chinatown, buying clothes off the backs of skid-row inhabitants, but still Jannings was unsatisfied.
Finally, MacDonald presented him with a particularly ragged, dirty old suit. The star approved these clothes, and he wore them in the film.
They had come from the corpse of a derelict MacDonald had found at the Los Angeles morgue.
(Photoplay, September 1927, page 56)
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A colored advertising slide of Jannings and his second-hand suit.
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Selig actress Adele Lane was attacked by a bear in downtown Los Angeles.
The Los Angeles Times reported that she was on the fire escape of an apartment building near Angels’ Flight doing a scene. For whatever reason, there was also a bear in the scene, and it was supposed to follow her. Then she and the bear would wrestle.
Evidently, the bear hadn’t been told that it was all in fun, because it suddenly reared and lunged at her, catching her hand in its mouth. Before help could intervene, the actress’ hand was “fearfully mutilated,” in the words of the Times. A later article described her hand as “severely torn.”
Lane recovered and signed on with Universal, but she suffered a nervous breakdown in the summer of 1915 and soon retired.
(Los Angeles Times, 9/23/14, 10/27/14; New York Dramatic Mirror, 8/4/15, page 26.)
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After his breakthrough success playing a twisted paralytic in The Miracle Man (1919), Lon Chaney was quoted as saying, “I don’t want to play another crippled or grotesque role before the camera. I am an actor—not a contortionist.”
(Motion Picture, March 1930, page 92.)
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Lon Chaney and his make-up kit.
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Bob Rose, a stuntman of nineteen years’ experience, recalled his career for a Los Angeles reporter in 1934. Of serial queen Ruth Roland, he had this to say:
“Ruth Roland only used me for stunts which she was physically unable to do. She is the bravest woman I have ever encountered and never called on me because of fear on her part.”
(Los Angeles Times, 9/30/34.)
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Tough cookie: an elegant Ruth Roland.
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In The Street of Sin (1928), Emil Jannings played “Basher Bill,” a former boxer turned street thug. One scene called for this character to smash his fist through a window.
Jannings being Jannings, the actor smashed a real window for the scene. As his gashed wrist was being bandaged in Paramount’s miniature hospital, he chuckled, “See? I am no fake actor.”
(Picture Play, June 1929, page 25.)
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“Basher Bill” makes a point in The Street of Sin, as a Salvation Army lass (Fay Wray) looks on.
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Here’s a gratuitous pin-up for you track and field fans: Viola Richard, on the grounds of the Hal Roach Studio.
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- – - Christopher Snowden
Inflation Goes to the Movies
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Five cents: Typical admission price at a movie theater in 1907
($1.14 in 2009 dollars.)
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$5000: Annual price the Biograph Company was paying to lease its studio at 11 East 14th Street, New York in 1908
($118,374 in 2009 dollars)
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$25: Amount Biograph paid Anita Loos for a script that became Mary Pickford’s one-reel drama The New York Hat in 1912
($550 in 2009 dollars)
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$1000: The cost of the fine for a criminal conviction of transporting prizefight films across state lines in 1912
($22,036 in 2009 dollars)
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$26,000: Mary Pickford’s annual salary in 1913
($566,836 in 2009 dollars)
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$7800: Charlie Chaplin’s annual salary in 1914
($168,350 in 2009 dollars)
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$52,000: Mary Pickford’s annual salary in 1914
($1,122,336 in 2009 dollars)
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Fifteen cents: The cover price for a copy of Photoplay in 1914
($3.24 in 2009 dollars)
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Bank of America’s Sweetheart.
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$2: Top price for a seat at the premiere of The Birth of a Nation in 1915
($42.74 in 2009 dollars)
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$104,000: Mary Pickford’s annual salary in 1915
($2,222,449 in 2009 dollars)
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$520,000: Charlie Chaplin’s annual salary in 1916
($10,296,667 in 2009 dollars)
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$675,000: Mary Pickford’s annual salary in 1918 (besides a 50% cut of the profits from her films)
($9,648,208 in 2009 dollars)
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$15,600: Harold Lloyd’s annual salary in 1918
($222,980 in 2009 dollars)
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$100,000: The price Charlie Chaplin paid for his initial stake in United Artists in 1919
($1,247,595 in 2009 dollars)
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$13,000: Buster Keaton’s annual salary in 1920
($140,292 in 2009 dollars)
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$39,000: Harold Lloyd’s annual salary in 1920
($420,876 in 2009 dollars)
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Temporarily happy with his salary is Harold Lloyd (left), with his boss Hal Roach in December 1920. The year before, Lloyd had been in the hospital with serious injuries, during which time Roach cut his salary from $400 to $100 weekly.
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$800,000,000: The annual combined grosses at American theaters in 1920
($8,633,000,000 in 2009 dollars)
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$300: Cost per seat to construct a prestigious movie theater in 1920
($3,237 in 2009 dollars)
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$2000: Lon Chaney’s weekly salary at the time he made The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1923
($25,243 in 2009 dollars)
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$782,000: Cost to produce The Covered Wagon in 1923
($9,870,303 in 2009 dollars)
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Col. Tim McCoy with Arapaho Indians, his co-stars in the live stage prologue performed during the original run of The Covered Wagon, 1923. The Indians lived in tepees they’d pitched in the Cahuenga Pass overlooking Hollywood.
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$2,000,000: Estimated cost of a nitrate fire in Mexicali, Mexico which also killed fourteen people in 1923
($25,243,742 in 2009 dollars)
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$5,000,000: Price paid in stock by Loew’s Inc. to purchase Goldwyn in 1924
($63,109,356 in 2009 dollars)
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$78,000: Louis B. Mayer’s annual salary at M-G-M in 1924
($984,505 in 2009 dollars)
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$11,000: Value of the Wurlitzer pipe organ donated to Hollywood’s new Church of the Good Shepherd by May McAvoy in 1924
($138,840 in 2009 dollars)
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Bless you, May McAvoy.
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$150,000: Budget for the typical Tom Mix western in 1925
($1,850,005 in 2009 dollars)
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25 cents: Cover price for a copy of Photoplay in 1928
($3.16 in 2009 dollars)
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$3000: Buster Keaton’s weekly salary as a star at M-G-M in 1928
($37,865 in 2009 dollars)
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$9,386,000: Gross earnings for M-G-M’s 1925 hit Ben-Hur, through 1931
($133,277,495 in 2009 dollars)
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$200: Buster Keaton’s weekly salary as a gag writer at M-G-M in 1937
($2,997 in 2009 dollars)
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Ramon Novarro takes the reins. Ben-Hur (1925).
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$1,100,000: Approximate price collected by Charlie Chaplin for the sale of his remaining 25% interest in United Artists in 1951
($9,131,438 in 2009 dollars)
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$380,000,000: Price paid by MGM to purchase United Artists in 1981
($902,280,000 in 2009 dollars)
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- – - Christopher Snowden
The Trouble with Sleeping Geezers
I don’t buy a lot of lobby cards, but when I saw this on Bruce Hershenson’s site, I had to bid on it. This is Mabel Normand in Sis Hopkins (1919). Oddly, Goldwyn promoted its films with photos that don’t actually tell you the title of the film!
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Here are some of the search-engine phrases that somehow brought visitors to this blog last month:
“sex club membership card”
“Mary Miles Minter fat”
“Olive Thomas fat”
“Chaplin wept for an hour”
“Charley Chase porn star”
“androgynous figures in music”
“1860s pin up girls”
“1960s hair salon”
“brunette teenage girl squinting”
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Thanks to a Laurel and Hardy porno cartoon that I posted a few months ago, people have been visiting the blog looking for more of those “Tijuana Bibles.” Sorry, folks… that well’s run dry.
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Cinecon 45 Review
I think I was a little harsh in my comments last week concerning Cinecon. The films I saw didn’t have a very high batting average for quality, but in fairness I left in the middle of the festival, and other folks reported themselves much more pleased with it than I was.
I skipped most of the talkies, and I had to miss a William Desmond Taylor silent, because I was tracking down western swing CDs in Pasadena at the time. But here’s a little run-down of what I did see at Cinecon:
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Trial Marriage (Columbia, 1929). Starring Sally Eilers, Norman Kerry, Jason Robards, Thelma Todd.
When the Cinecon programmers hear of a rare title that’s become available to them, they often book it for the festival sight-unseen. Sometimes the film turns out to be a winner (The Canadian, The Dixie Flyer), but just as often it ends up being a real dog, and Trial Marriage belongs in that kennel. A meandering, predictable story filled with annoying, shallow characters you want to smack in the head, this film did have one remarkable thing going for it. That’s the theme of experimental pseudo-marriage, in which people shack up for the time being with wedding rings on their fingers: a marriage in name only. Like Companionate Marriage from the same year, Trial Marriage explores fairly uncharted social territory, and my inner history student would love to overhear the comments of 1929 audiences after watching this thing. Middle-American audiences must’ve been fairly hostile to it. For that matter, so was I, but more because it’s a dull movie and its characters are hard to like. Thelma Todd displays her familiar million-dollar smile, but she’s surprisingly chubby in this, with a dumpy wardrobe. Sally Eilers has her beat for beauty, and she executes some manic ’20s dance moves that put Joan Crawford and Our Dancing Daughters to shame, but beyond that, this movie is as stiff as Norman Kerry’s over-waxed moustache.
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Reeling from the reviews are Thelma Todd, Sally Eilers and Norman Kerry in Trial Marriage (1929).
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Love Detectives (Columbia, 1934). Starring Frank Albertson, Betty Grable, Tom Dugan.
This spicy little pre-Code musical two-reeler was a wonderful treat, and I’d love to see more of them. Apart from being shot in black-and-white, this was just as good as the similar novelties that Warner Bros. was making at the time.
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Cavalcade of Broadway (Columbia, 1951).
Another novelty short, this shows us the headline acts at New York’s China Doll nightclub. The performers are all Asian, and they’re all terrific, though the hillbilly comedy of Ming and Ling wore a little thin after a while.
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Easy Living (Paramount, 1937). Starring Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold, Luis Alberni, Franklin Pangborn.
Some of us attend Cinecon hoping to see films that are more good than rare, and one or two familiar “warhorses” are added to the program to suit us. This particular film is from an era that doesn’t appeal to me much, so while it was an old favorite for many people, it was another mystery title to me. Even after the 80-minute mark, I couldn’t quite get used to that voice of Jean Arthur’s (and how she ever survived the transition to talkies I’ll never know), but she’s lovely and appealing, with a good talent for comedy. Edward Arnold pretty much steals the film from her, but after a while, scenes of Arnold shouting alternate with scenes of Luis Alberni shouting, and the shouting gets to be a bit much. Good film, though.
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Spuds (Pathe, 1927). Starring Larry Semon, Dorothy Dwan, Kewpie Morgan.
Larry Semon tried like hell to make the jump from two-reelers to features, and never quite succeeded. His persona in short comedies had been that of a cinematic clown, with pasty white make-up and pants hiked up to his chest, and his films were full of slapstick, zany gags and spectacular stuntwork. To my mind, that’s a great combination, and I really like Larry Semon. But to make features in the 1920s, you had to slow it down. You had to build a story, establish relationships between characters and keep things fairly realistic.
Spuds shows that Semon just couldn’t make that leap, and what we have here is a small mountain of footage that cries out to be edited down to a two-reeler. Instead, at five reels that feel like eight, it’s a real mish-mash, each idea abandoned for something new before it has a chance to grow into anything substantial. Set in World War I, you could say the plot is episodic, but it’s probably fairer to say that Semon just couldn’t decide what he wanted the plot to be: for a while it’s about “Spuds” and his doughboy buddy, then it’s about conflict with his sergeant, then it’s about fighting Germans in the trenches, then it’s about spies, then it’s about something else. It’s a real mess, and what’s worse is that it isn’t very funny at all. There was only one really great gag (a frightened guy jumps into a painting on the wall of a scenic lake and swims away), but it comes in the middle of Semon’s traditional black stereotype sequence. (Don’t count on Larry Semon to win any posthumous NAACP Image Awards.) All of that off to one side, though, let me add that smack in the middle of Spuds is a really delightful sequence in which Larry sketches little caricatures and makes finger puppets out of them. It’s a completely charming scene, pointing to what he could have accomplished in features, if he’d only had the confidence to abandon the conventions of his slapstick beginnings, and if he’d worked with a good creative team instead of going it alone. A year after the release of Spuds, Semon was bankrupt, exhausted and dying: a sad finish for a talented funnyman.
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Paid to Love (Fox, 1927). Starring George O’Brien, Virginia Valli, J. Farrell MacDonald, William Powell.
Best-known for his anomalous role in Sunrise, George O’Brien was a natural all-American type, with a beefy build and a warm, crooked grin. Unfortunately, he found himself badly miscast in this film as a European prince, and burdened with a ridiculous story as well. Director Howard Hawks conjured enough of the Lubitsch touch to create a handful of very witty and/or sexy scenes, but nothing could bring this film to life for very long. William Powell was terrific as a Stroheimian rogue, and if the film had been about him instead of the O’Brien character, it might’ve been a treasure. As it is, it’s easy to see why the studio kept this on the shelf for a year. Virginia Valli, a second-tier actress who was nevertheless ubiquitous on 1920s movie screens, plays the female lead here. She’s pretty good, too, and sports a daringly short haircut for the times.
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Trick for Trick (Fox, 1933). Starring Ralph Morgan, Victor Jory, Sally Blane and Tom Dugan.
Cinecon presented this film again, since it was a hit at the festival nearly twenty years ago, before I began attending. Ordinarily, I’d eat this kind of thing up and ask for more: it’s a rare pre-Code, dark and moody with supernatural overtones. But somehow I wasn’t feeling the magic this time. Maybe I was just tired, but this felt like it was all style and no substance. I began to lose interest in the first reel, then I began to lose track of the plot, then I began debating whether to stay, run out to Mel’s for a late-night slice of cake, or just head back to the hotel for some sleep. I ended up bailing on this about an hour into it. And I didn’t stop at Mel’s for some cake. That’s my one regret.
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Good Time Charley (Warner Bros., 1927). Starring Warner Oland, Clyde Cook, Helene Costello.
Once again, the programmers booked an unseen rarity, but this time the gamble paid off. I liked this better than any other feature I saw at this year’s Cinecon, and it was completely unexpected. Warner Oland (for once not playing a Chinese detective or exotic villain) stars as a song-and-dance man who never quite finds success. Clyde Cook plays his loyal partner, and he’s truly a revelation: known chiefly as a rubber-jointed slapstick comedian, Cook moved into supporting roles in dramatic features late in the silent era, and his skill here certainly shows why. His acting is superb, but Oland is just as good in a role that has “Emil Jannings” written all over it. As much as I love to see action, stunts and explosions, I’m also a sucker for silent-era hokum, and this film was quite moving. At times it tried too hard and simply became maudlin, but for the most part this was a touching little weepie, much better than its obscurity would suggest. Unfortunately for us at Cinecon, its emotional climax was deadened somewhat because that’s when an electronic device on the person of a sleeping geezer on the right-hand aisle suddenly went off with a screechy beep-beep-beep that didn’t even wake him up.
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“Screen Snapshots.” Starring Clara Bow, George Beban, Lloyd Hamilton.
This “restoration” was nice to see, but it’s not actually a Screen Snapshots short. It’s a hybrid, using one segment of an actual Snapshots reel (featuring George Beban of The Italian fame), and segments lifted from other sources. One extract featuring Lloyd Hamilton is from a Life in Hollywood short released in 1927; another, featuring a young Clara Bow at the Schulberg Studio, couldn’t date from 1923 as announced, because she wasn’t working there that early.
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The Dawn of a Tomorrow (Famous Players, 1915). Starring Mary Pickford, David Powell, Forrest Robinson.
This early Pickford feature was thought lost, until a print turned up in Sweden fairly recently. Produced before she had any control over the creative side of things, this five-reeler was a slapdash effort. I can well imagine Adolph Zukor rushing his expensive star through one hastily-produced film after another, maximizing the return on his investment. There isn’t much to this one: Mary’s an orphan in the London slums, helping out her fellow unfortunates, trying to put her shifty boyfriend on the straight and narrow, and generally keeping the faith. The only remarkable thing about the film was that Mary is consistently shot from her right side, whereas in her later films and publicity photos she’s nearly always photographed from her left side. Of course, at this point in her life Mary was beauty personified, and she could have been covered in Spaghetti-Os and still look stunning. The print we saw still had its Swedish intertitles, which were translated live during the screening. The film concluded with the Swedish equivalent of “The End,” which turns out to be the word SLUT: truly the last thing you expect to see in a Mary Pickford movie.
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- – - Christopher Snowden
Magical Misery Tour
Well, this weekend was the 45th annual Cinecon film festival in Hollywood. I’ve been to about a dozen of them, and like everything else in Hollywood, Cinecon has seen better days. The festival was originally conceived by 8mm film collectors as a celebration of silent movies: both the classics and the rarities. Later, it presented live appearances by the greatest stars of the vintage era, and the film schedule expanded to include early talkies.
This year, the big guest was Stella Stevens (?!?) and the film program extended deeper than ever into the 1940s-1960s era. I watched a number of mainly disappointing films for a couple of days, then bailed on the festival. If not for the chocolate cake at Mel’s, the stack of western swing CDs I bought at local music shops, and seeing old friends, it would’ve been a pretty empty weekend.
But of course, Hollywood has long been the place where wonderful things go into decline or disappear altogether. So before leaving town, let’s make tracks through its past.
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Norma Talmadge’s estate… as it was. 7269-7289 Hollywood Boulevard.
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Now: just another condo development.
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The home of Louis B. Mayer’s first star: 7425 Franklin Avenue.
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Richard Alleman writes in Hollywood: The Movie Lover’s Guide, “Today, it stands abandoned, a crumbling hulk with an uncertain future in a no longer fashionable neighborhood.” When I took this photo last year, someone had begun fixing the place up.
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One of the hot spots of Hollywood’s 1930s night life was Clara Bow’s It Cafe, just off the lobby of the Plaza Hotel at 1637 Vine. Here’s a somewhat distracted Martha Raye with the still-vivacious Clara, in 1938.
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When I visited the site last year, paint was peeling off the building and forlorn hotel residents were shuffling out of the lobby. A coffee shop has moved into the space once occupied by the It Cafe.
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Tough-guy actor Paul Kelly with Dorothy Mackaye.
In 1927, Dorothy Mackaye was married to the stage actor Ray Raymond, while carrying on an affair with another actor, Paul Kelly. Eventually Raymond caught on, and protested. On April 15, a gin-fueled Kelly appeared at Raymond’s home. The unhappy husband invited him in to talk, but Kelly wanted action.
Raymond wasn’t looking for a fight, and he was no match for the six-foot Kelly, who was considerably heavier and a decade younger. There was no fight. There was a beating. The hot-tempered Kelly began by slapping his victim around, then punched him, knocking him to the floor repeatedly as Raymond’s terrified maid begged for the beating to end. It finally did, after a vicious shot to the left eye knocked Raymond unconscious.
Several days later, Raymond died at the hospital. The doctor’s verdict was death by natural causes and a speedy burial was arranged. But someone at the hospital tipped off reporters that the deceased had clearly taken a nasty beating before his demise. The press tipped off the coroner. The burial was suspended, an investigation took place, and Kelly was sent to prison.
He was out after just a couple of years (this is Hollywood, remember?), and the studios welcomed him back with open arms.
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It happened here: 2261 Cheremoya.
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Then there’s the story of Lou Tellegen. A celebrated actor of the European stage, he was the lover of the famed Sarah Bernhardt, with whom he starred in the key 1912 film released in the United States under the title Queen Elizabeth.
More triumphs followed, on stage and screen. He was starring in American silents by 1915; later he married his new co-star Geraldine Farrar, whose own screen career was just a sideline to her opera stardom.
But the self-centered, egotistical Tellegen was not good husband material, as a total of four wives would discover in turn.
Over the years, age and injury diminished his stature, and his reputation was eclipsed by a new generation of stars. His best-remembered American silent came along fairly late in his career (John Ford’s 3 Bad Men, 1926), and his day was nearly over.
Starring roles had already turned to character parts, but after talkies arrived, the phone stopped ringing. Reportedly, the former matinee idol turned to plastic surgery, but it made no difference. His money ran out. He developed cancer, then began fearing for his sanity.
On October 30, 1934, Tellegen was living in a room provided by the wealthy Mrs. J. P. Cudahy at her mansion. When he was missed at breakfast, she asked the butler to summon him. Tellegen was found on the floor of his bathroom, bleeding from seven self-inflicted stab wounds to the left side of his chest. A pair of scissors lay nearby. He was rushed to the hospital but died an hour later.
Later that day, Geraldine Farrar answered her phone and heard a reporter tell her of Tellegen’s death. “Why should that interest me? she snapped. “It doesn’t interest me in the least!”
Click.
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The Cudahy mansion is long gone, but it stood here, where 1844 Vine used to be. Say hello to the Hollywood Freeway.
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On a table outside the dealers’ rooms at Cinecon was a stack of flyers announcing a new event to be held this November at the little Spielberg Theatre inside the Egyptian (on whose big screen the Cinecon films were shown).
The event is “Retro Format: Rare Silents on 8mm.” A number of reasonably rare and reasonably good silent movies will be screened for fans. There’ll be a William S. Hart western, a Griffith Biograph, a Sennett two-reeler and my favorite Melies short. Sounds like a good show.
Hmm. Imagine! From a humble beginning like this, something really special might grow. It’s happened before. From the ruins can come revival.
That’s Hollywood for you.
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