Love thy neighbour… The Cohens and Kellys (1926), Barbican with Dermot Dunne, Nick Roth, Cora Venus Lunny and Adrian Mantu

"An Uproarious Knockout! -- A Thousand Laughs!"

Well. That was a right laugh! I hadn’t high hopes to be perfectly honest, having just completed a small tour of the half-dozen or so Irish bars between Liverpool Central Station and Lime Street (karaoke city mate and if you’re still sober by midday they kick you out) but this plastic paddy needn’t have worried. This film is far more sensitive than you’d expect and is more about the character’s than their ethnicity and certainly not their religion. It’s not especially deep but it’s heart-warming and imbued with the message Hollywood repeats over and over again: we simply must learn to get on with each other.

Head of Irish Film Programming, Sunniva O’Flynn, introduced and explained that this was the film that kicked off an seven-film franchise during which the Cohens and Kellys found themselves variously in Paris (1928), in Atlantic City (1929), in Scotland (1930), in Africa (1930), in Hollywood (1932), in Trouble (1933) but, almost never in agreement. These kinds of stereotypes were well known by audiences at the time and accepted as being a celebration of recognisable community types by a wide audience and, indeed the film did well with both Irish and Jewish audiences.

Charles Murray and Kate Price

You can understand why the series worked with the four leads being so strong and it’s still funny helped in no small measure by the most agile of live scores that mixed both Irish and Jewish Folk music traditions often at the same time along with jazz and Klezmer. The players not only watched the film, they synched music and musical effects precisely with the action: this was a score rehearsed to within a sprocket hole of perfection.

The quartet featured multi-award-winning Irish accordionist Dermot Dunne, saxophonist Nick Roth (of the Yurodny Ensemble), improvising violinist Cora Venus Lunny and cellist Adrian Mantu (from the RTÉ ConTempo Quartet). There were times when Cora scratched her strings or bowed atonally to mimic the dogs and Adrian did the same in tandem with Dermot and Nick to replicate speech patterns or rather an argument. The music was building on top of the images and with such vivid character on screen it worked exceptionally well: it’s rare to hear a score that gets as many laughs as the film but it deserved it and I can see both Cohen and Kellys laughing their socks off in rare agreement.

George Sidney

The Cohens and Kellys has been beautifully restored by the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique and the IFI Irish Film Archive and the resultant digital transfer looked fantastic and very “warm”. It was being presented in partnership with The Irish Film Institute in association with Irish Film Festival London and UK Jewish Film Festival and the Barbican Cinema 1 was packed with many Cohens and Kellys not to mention at least one Joyce.    

Now the two families are neighbours down in the lower East-Side on opposite sides of a tenement building, and we’re introduced to the nature of their relationship as the two family pet dogs fight in the hall to be soon joined by the youngest sons, Sammy Cohen (Robert Gordon) and Terence Kelly (Mickey Bennett - who was also in Mary Pickford's Sparrows) two lads who just want to knock each other’s block off.

Jason Robarts' Dad

Their mothers, hearing the racket, come out onto the hall Mrs. Cohen (Vera Gordon) who is perhaps a potential peacemaker and rather over-matched by Mrs Kelly (Kate Price from Cork, the only Irish-born player) who is fearsome indeed. But this fight starts and ends with the heads of the family, Patrick Kelly (Charles Murray) a policeman (natch) and Jacob Cohen (George Sidney) a draper (also, natch!) – two stubborn middle-aged tyrants with little sense of their own ridiculousness.

The exceptions to all of this are the Kelly’s eldest, Tim (Jason Robards Sr. – yes, that Jason Robart’s dad!) who is completely besotted with the Cohen’s daughter, Nannie (the rather striking Olive Hasbrouck). Naturally they keep their romance secret and there’s be hell to pay if either father finds out which, of course, they will…

Olive Hasbrouck 

There’s a funny subplot in which Cohen, his poorstore overshadowed by two larger ones both of who are discounting, decides to repaint his signage to say “Main Entrance” which results in a fracas requiring the attention of a particular police man.

Cohen’s in debt and struggling and tries to avoid a lawyer, Milton J. Katz (Nat Carr) who is seeking him out. He finally gives himself away to find he has inherited two million dollars from his Great Aunt… Now everything changes as the family moves to a mansion seemingly leaving the Kelly’s all behind but, frustrated by their parents’ intransigence, Nannie and Tim have got married. Cohen goes through a nightmare of feints and stress-gurning and is sent away to recover at a sanatorium. He returns nine months later to find another Cohen now in the house, one who is also a Kelly!

The families who can’t avoid each other are now forced together in ways they had not expected and someone needs to find a way to make it work. Luckily there’s a crooked lawyer and unexpected complications to finally bring out the best.

Harold A. Pollard directs with skill, alighting on every argument without telegraphing intent any more than necessary. There is some lovely fluid camera work from Charles Stumar – very European which occasionally made me think of Emil Jannings playing Mr Cohen… with lots of pullbacks as the Cohens or, indeed, the Kellys absorbed the latest outrageous twist of fortune.

It was funny in 2018 and funnier in 1926 but this is how our great grand uncles and aunts laughed at themselves and the enduring obsession with things not being as they should be. In the end, kick back and if you have to row make sure you always make up.

So, raise a glass: l'chaim and sláinte to us all!

A shot of the rehearsal shared by the Irish Film Institute

Before the bob… Broken Hearts of Broadway (1923)

I have to confess that probably the first time I was aware of Colleen Moore was through Barry Paris’ references to her in his Louise Brooks biography. Colleen was the first to really popularise the bob haircut that Louise was to epitomise for modern audiences from Henri Langlois onwards, yet she was without doubt one of the stars of the twenties and operated at a level of far greater popularity than her younger, sassier, competitor: she’s just less now… or is she?

There’s no good reason for Colleen Moore not to be remembered and recognised as even this routine back stage drama demonstrates. She had energy and great timing, lighting up her face at will with far greater impact than any of her co-stars and pulling the viewer down with her after every set back. Yes indeed, what we have here is an actress of controlled natural expression who wouldn’t be out of place living in the adjoining dwelling to your own. Not glamorous, super-natural or overtly sexual (hi Clara!)… just a bit real.

Colleen Moore

You can see why she was so popular - her apparent modesty, implicit good nature and sheer lack of threat would win over viewers with a sustainability beyond those with higher levels of impact and vogue. Mind you, this was the film before Flaming Youth after which the hair and the dresses got shorter and she became The Flapper… I shall have to find out more about Moore.

For Broken Hearts of Broadway Moore plays a small town girl come to New York to make her mark. From the film’s opening framing sequence we learn that she does but for much of the narrative we find it hard to work out how.

Tully Marshall and Creighton Hale

It’s a rainy night on Broadway where, clearly, the lights are not always bright…  An Outcast (Creighton Hale) is so on his uppers he’s having to stuff newspaper down his jacket to keep warm, a cab draws up and the driver Barney Ryan (Tully Marshall) quickly recognises an old buddy. Barney sizes up his old pal and realises he’s nearly done… he’d tried writing and looking up at a neon sign reckons only bad luck has stood in his way. Not so, says Barney eyeing the sign: he knows the story behind the success it advertises: Broken Hearts of Broadway, starring one Mary Ellis… and he sets out to explain and inspire...

He’d first encountered Mary Ellis (Colleen Moore) on a similar rainy evening. She was yet another small-town amateur who’d come to find her fortune. His wife set her up as a room-mate for another wannabe, the aptly named Bubbles Revere (Alice Lake) full of vim and a vigorous willingness to do what it takes to “make it”. Bubbles is – loosely-speaking  – committed to a young painter who also rooms in the house, Tony Guido (Anthony Merlo). His room-mate is a song-writer named George Colton (Johnnie Walker)

Katie Price

They are struggling artistes and for all Mrs Ryan (a fearsome Katie Price) tries to keep them in order they are always late with their rent.

Bubbles gets Mary a gig at her theatre whilst Mary meets George after helping him complete a song by playing the logical ending after overhearing his struggles above… a sequence requiring considerable wit in a silent film. George manages to sell their song: things are looking up!

George and Mary tune up

As the four go out to celebrate they meet two of Broadway’s most powerful show-runners Barry Peale (Arthur Stuart Hull) and Frank Huntleigh (Freeman Wood). These guys know “talent” when they see it and the girls are soon installed in one of their productions. But such promotion comes at a price and as the girls open their after show gifts it slowly dawns on Mary what the quid pro quo will need to be… whilst Bubbles is happy to take her chances Mary is chaste and wants to stay loyal to George.

Meeting the money men...

So far so backstage movie convention but the course of honest success is not to run quiet so smoothly as you might expect. Bubbles goes from strength to strength whilst Mary’s principles guarantee her months more of penury. George gets a gig at a Chinese nightclub which looks perfectly fine to me but which leads to an assault on Mary and the pair getting fired after their first engagement.    

As the money runs out he loses his piano and Mary has to address how ambitious she actually is… Can she go through with the exchange of favours or will talent somehow win out? A breathless closing section neatly provides the answer albeit with a convoluted denouement that lacks the cutting edge of uncertainty.

An offer she can't refuse?

This aside, Broken Hearts of Broadway is entertaining enough and there are good turns from Tully Marshall, Katie Price and Alice Lake who does indeed bubble away with energy.

Alice Lake

Irving Cummings’s direction is perhaps a little static especially for the sequences on stage, then again he could have been masking the leads' lack of dance training. His story telling is efficient and there are a couple of memorable close ups of Colleen Moore as she looks up through the roof of Barney’s cab and again as she sees Bubbles head off for a life of “sponsored” showbiz success.

Breakfast al fresco

This being my one and only Moore film to date I look forward to seeing how she developed by, say, Orchids and Ermine from 1927… on this showing, in which she‘s comfortably the standout, I’m expecting great things!

Broken Hearts of Broadway is available on a Grapevine DVD, other versions are available from Amazon which probably use the same source – I think it’s public domain now?

PS Flaming Youth is largely lost but there's a tantalising eleven minutes preserved by the Library of Congress and available on YouTube... Here's a sample with Colleen getting dolled up: ready to help make the twenties roar.

Edward Sloman & Sophie Solomon... His People (1925), London Barbican

George Lewis and Blanche Mehaffey

Edward Sloman’s silent films are mostly lost and to see one on the big screen is a rare treat, especially when it’s accompanied by a new live score.

Made in 1925, His People, was rated by Sloman as his personal favourite, when tracked down by Kevin Brownlow, and it was also one of his most successful films. Presented here as part of the UK Jewish Film Festival, the film was introduced by “Ted’s” Great Nephew, Anthony Sloman, who also happens to be a respected and multi-skilled film figure. Tony was sound producer of In the Company of Wolves and many other films and is a noted critic and film historian. He recalls that no one in his family had really mentioned his great uncle’s trade, the Sloman family invariably being tailors…but, no doubt, very talented ones!

If self depreciation whilst in possession of considerable talent is a Sloman family trait, Anthony’s great uncle certainly seemed to share it. He came across as humble in the Brownlow interview and this film, alongside the others I have watched, displays great visual control and superb narrative economy. Sloman moves the viewer and his actors effortlessly around the screen and everyone is always in action even when they’re not the centre of attention.

Rosa Rosanova , Rudolph Schildkraut and Albert Bushaland

There’s a moment when the Cominsky family are sitting down for their Friday night meal and we suddenly notice Sammy’s sweetheart through the window in her apartment across the block, we follow his gaze… she’s intruding in the story and that’s what he wants.

The opening scenes, set when the Cominsky boys were just boys…is a whirl of rapid cutting and movement showing the hectic life of the ghetto and introducing the characters as they interact with this rough and tumble world. Morris hides behind his books whilst Sammy takes life by the scruff of the neck – honest and brave. He fights his brother’s corner against an older boy and in winning gains a dollar from a boxing gym owner, thereby triggering a life-long interest..

Their father David Cominsky (a quite superb Rudolph Schildkraut) is a Russian émigré who was an academic back home… he sees learning as the way forward and naturally favours the bookish Morris. His wife, Rosie (Rosa Rosanova another excellent performer), holds them all together, seeing the good in Sammy but deferring to her husband.

Rosa Rosanova and Rudolph Schildkraut

They live in a crowded tenement block and their next door neighbours are the Shannon family, culturally different but very much in the same boat. Kate Shannon (Kate Price) is the matriarch and has to keep her gossip mongering husband in check. Their pretty daughter Mamie is already the apple of Sammy’s eye.

Move forward a decade and the boys are fully grown. Morris (Arthur Lubin) is training to be a lawyer with eyes set on the daughter of the judge who runs his law firm. Sammy (George Lewis) is still chasing money from boxing but tells his folks he’s selling newspapers… The family dynamic is little changed with pop favouring Morris and continuing his disappointment with Sammy. But his younger son is happy and in love with the grown-up Mamie (Blanche Mehaffey)… another disappointment in the eyes of his strict father.

There are serious issues in the slums, there’s little money and life’s a struggle, but the family and the film are funny. The intertitles are witty and the timing of the leads is impeccable: I heard more laughter in this film than in any silent features I can recall outside of straight-ahead comedies.

Blanche Mehaffey and George Lewis

But gradually, the family drifts apart. David learns from Mr Shannon that Sammy is boxing under an assumed Irish name and kicks him out whilst Maurice also leaves to pursue his upward mobility. So ashamed is he of his background that he claims to be an orphan to impress his intended Ruth (Virginia Brown Faire) and her father – his boss – Judge Nathan Stein (Bertram Marburgh). It’s a sad moment and drew some gasps from the audience (honestly people… what happened to your cynicism?).

But Morris needs money and forces his father to sell his prized bearskin coat in exchange for a formal dinner suit… his father catches a cold in the snow en route and falls ill. Morris – who threw the suit away as all he really wanted was money – is too busy seeing his intended to visit his sick father.

Sammy is mistaken for Morris by his delirious father and it seems like this will be a kind lie to end his father’s life… But, the old man pulls through remaining none the wiser, however, the doctor informs Rosa that he must be moved to a warmer climate if he is to carry on much beyond six months. There is no money but in desperation Sammy persuades his trainer to let him fight for a big purse against a much more experienced boxer… he has little chance and as the fight begins, Mamie brings Rosa along to watch…

At the same time Mr Shannon (tellin’ tales again!), shows David a newspaper announcing the engagement of “orphaned” Morris Cominsky – who has made his own way in the world – to Judge Stein’s daughter. Horrified, he resolves to find out the truth and visits the Judge’s house yet, in one of the most moving scenes in the film, Morris claims not to know his father who lets his son off the hook… if this is the way he has chosen then he is willing to let him go.

Meanwhile things look very bad for Sammy as he is battered from pillar to post… think Rocky in the opening rounds only more one sided! Just as things look hopeless as he lies senseless on the canvass and Rosa comes to him shouting encouragement. He bounces up and within a few blows has sent the champion unconscious to the deck!

They have the money to save David and now Sammy goes and drags his brother away from his society friends and home to face a reckoning…

Rudolph Schildkraut and George Lewis

His People is good family fun and a film which is strong on the simple benefits of family, friends and community. To all immigrants it seems to be saying, help each other and make your way however you can, whether it’s via a profession or through your wits. This was very much a welcome message for the thousands of struggling émigré families in the United States and elsewhere: opportunistic flexibility even if this meant moving away from traditional values…or reinterpreting them.

The improvised score from Sophie Solomon was energetically inventive throughout without ever over facing the film itself. She is a highly-skilled violinist (and Artistic Director of the Jewish Music Institute), and was ably accompanied by Quentin Collins (trumpet), Ian Watson (accordion) and Grant Windsor (piano and occasional percussion!).

Some live scores can counter-point a silent film – rubbing modernity up against the old - but others support and move in tandem. Solomon’s group gave one of the best examples of the latter I’ve seen this year (up there with Stephen Horne and The Manxman). My uncle was a pro violinist, playing for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic for 30 years… he loved Jascha Heifetz and I am sure he would have loved Ms Solomon’s playing – strongly emotional and yet never sentimental with a line of steel resilience throughout and more than a hint of gypsy wildness!

Blanche Mehaffey and George Lewis

Sight and sound combined with a receptive and knowledgeable audience to produce a worthy tribute to a classic director and the culture he helped celebrate.

The UK Jewish Film Festival continues until 18th November and is an annual event: more details here.
His People is available on DVD from the US National Center for Jewish Film and no where else as far as I can see. Let’s hope for wider Sloman releases sooner rather than later!

Edward Sloman discusses the script with Rudolph Schildkraut