Do actors dream of electric sheep? The Creation of the Humanoids (1962), what Wesley Barry did next...

Mankind is a state of mind. Man is no more or less than he thinks himself to be.

 

This film was produced and directed by Wesley Barry who was a silent film child star featuring in films such as Dinty (1920) with Colleen Moore, Noah Beery and Anna May Wong. Four decades later he was an experienced assistant director in his mid-fifties having worked consistently behind the camera since his acting roles dried up in the thirties; not a “victim” of the switch to sound perhaps just growing up and the more competitive environment.

 

This film is one of those he’s chiefly remembered by as a director and, having expected a cheesy low budget generic sci-fi shocker, The Creation of the Humanoids turns out to be rather more thoughtful and interesting. It’s a very dialogue-heavy production and more than a tad slow, but the acting is of a fair standard, there’s plenty of strangeness including an electronic score from co-producer Edward J. Kay and it raises some interesting questions about artificial intelligence, the laws of robotics and the future of mankind. Philip K Dick wouldn’t publish Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? until six years later and it shares the central concerns of Jay Simms original story and script.

 

Wesley Barry worked on a budget and his experience shows in getting the most out of an obviously limited spend for sets and costumes; there’s the odd special effect – a robot arm flopping on a laboratory table – but mostly it’s just lighting and acting. Barry worked in TV a lot and it shows with a film that could easily have been condensed into an episode of The Twilight Zone. Still, it’s fascinating to see what the freckle-faced youngster from Dinty did next.

 

It’s the near-ish future and mankind has almost mutually assured its own destruction following a nuclear war. As birth rates decline scientists develop more and more sophisticated robots to fill the gaps in human capital. They make these more and more like humans in order to make integration easier but there are some who worry that this assimilation will lead to domination and The Order of Flesh and Blood has been set up to undermine the development of more “human” robots, resorting to terrorism and subterfuge in the battle against the so-called “clickers”.

 

You hold meetings. Wear ridiculous clothes. You tell yourselves how superior we are to the robots, because you know we're not.

 

Our nominal hero is Captain Kenneth Cragis (Don Megowan) a senior member of the Order who holds a high rank in society. The film plays with our expectations throughout; is this an “Invasion” from within by advanced humanoids and are they intent on replacing “us” or just enhancing our existence. Cragis is arrogant and forceful, certain of his mission to defend the purity of the human race against the advances of non-human science.

 

David Cross, Don Megowan and Frances McCann

At one point he discovers that his sister, Esme (Frances McCann) has formed a relationship with a humanoid and there’s a very odd discussion in her apartment as the three of them discuss this with the clicker, Pax (David Cross) switching between subservience and reasoning with his partner’s brother. All quite off hand in a way and yet quite astonishing for the time when you think of the mechanics…

 

The problem for the Order and Cragis is that the science is moving far to swiftly for them and a scientist, Doctor Raven (Don Doolittle, who’s shock of grey hair make him look like a boffin from EC Comics' Weird Science). Raven has worked out how to transfer the consciousness of recently deceased humans into advanced robots – a "thalamic transplant" – which creates a hybrid that, mechanics aside, is an exact replica of the person. With the humanoids, Dr Raven is secretly replacing the human population with these replicas; some of whom may not be aware of what they are…

Don Doolittle and Dudley Manlove

The leaders of the Humanoids are emotionless and see only the logical imperative for their actions as they convert more and more in their “temple”. George Milan is Acto and Dudley Manlove plays Lagan, both acting impassively through their blue/grey "synthe-skin", metallic contact lenses and grey body suits.

 

As if to emphasis Cragis’ “last man on earth” qualities he meets a young woman, Maxine Megan (Erica Elliot) and the two very quickly fall in love. What could be more human as Man fights for the survival of the race….

 

Don Megowan and Erica Elliot look to the future

It’s probably not too much of a stretch to see this film carry echoes of the civil rights movement of the time. A segregated society concerned with assimilation and an underclass that two objected to being nicknamed as the “clickers” were. It’s interesting to see what Wesley “did next” and, this film is worth watching for novelty value alone. Like all good science fiction/fantasy it’s not really about tomorrow, it’s about today.

The gang’s all here… Dinty (1920), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter DVD

This was a vehicle for the remarkable young performer Wesley Barry and yet, it is perhaps more historically notable for providing one of Colleen Moore’s biggest breaks. Moore’s extraordinary energy comes through as she plays a young “colleen” (how many times? Etc…) who leaves Ireland for America where her new husband is making a new life. She’s striking and vibrant in these scenes but when fate takes a nasty twist and she falls ill with tuberculosis, she offers up one of the most believable performances in her sick bed. There’s a stillness to her expression, hardly the energy or will to even smile at her son and there’s no flicker of hope in her drained eyes. That’s acting and that’s range; and there’d be far more to come.

 

At the time 13-year-old Wesley was the star and he’s also very good, displaying a winning youthful pluck that would lead to a string of “our gang” type successes throughout the twenties. He was one of the leading freckled performers of the age, Marshall Neilan being one of the first to deploy them to full effect in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – no grease paint and no credit in Mary Pickford’s film, but it got him noticed! Wesley grown up was less of a proposition for Hollywood and after the films dried up in the thirties he went behind the camera and was assistant director for a number of films including Roger Corman's 1967 film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Barry also directed films and his most notable effort was The Creation of the Humanoids (1962), apparently Andy Warhol’s favourite film, depicting a future society in which robots are persecuted by the fanatical humans of The Order of Flesh and Blood (1962) that’s gone straight to the top of my watch list!

Wesley Barry contemplates what he must do to impress Andy Warhol

Such things were probably far from Wesley’s mind in 1920 and he’s very engaging in a film that packs a lot of action and simple fun in with the melodramatic. Marshall Neilan created the film for his freckled friend with a script co-written by Marion Fairfax which allows the lad to show his own range.

 

Not quite knowing what to expect the early scenes in Ireland lead me to expect a romance in the old country as good catholic girl Doreen Adair (Colleen Moore), falls for protestant Danny O'Sullivan (Tom Gallery). Whilst her father disapproves of the Orangeman, he’s got plenty of get up and go and after getting approval marries Doreen and sets off to America, the land of Irish opportunity.

 

Colleen Moore knows the score

But as Doreen and their baby, Dinty, follow months later, she arrives in San Francisco just in time to find that her love has died in a car accident. Doreen works all the hours at menial jobs and brings up Dinty in a poor but decent way and we move forward twelve years we see her painfully ill in bed whilst the spunk kid is out selling newspapers as their breadwinner.

 

There’s a rival paper gang trying to muscle Dinty’s boys out of their corners but Dinty’s a determined lad and sets about the bigger bullies as you’d expect with superior vim and strategy. It’s all good fun and presages a more adult battle between local mobsters and the police. I do like Dinty’s multi-ethnic band of younger brothers with African American Aaron Mitchell as Alexander Horatius Jones and the Chinese American Walter Chung as Sui Lung, and, whilst it’s a precursor of Our Gang (1922–44), it also reminded me of the gang in Penfold and Sam (1923), itself a follow up to the now lost Penrod (1922) which starred Barry. It’s so interesting that the good guys are multi-racial whilst the bad guys are all bigger and white? Hollywood liberals eh? Hold on…

Noah Beery... bloomin' 'eck!!

Anna May Wong was just 15 and only two years older than Wesley Barry, yet she gets to play Half Moon, not the public house in Putney, but the wife of Wong Tai (an improbable Noah Beery) an opium smuggler and head of a Tong gang. Wong Tai – that leery, Beery look in his eye – is cruel and ruthless, employing a sharp-edged pendulum in his secret den to torture and otherwise ensure compliance with his commands. He can do nothing though when his son (Young Hipp) is sent down by Judge Whitely (J. Barney Sherry) but kidnaps his daughter (see-saw Marjorie Daw, … one of the great silent film stage names) with the intention of freeing his boy.

 

The police are involved but they need the help of Dinty’s newsboy legion who, through their work and cultural diversity have an insight into the workings of the Chinese underworld. It’s one thing for the baddies to take on the men in blue but when the youngsters get involved… things move too fast.

 

Anna May Wong was two years older than Wesley Barry

It’s "feel good" in excelsis and everything works out through collaboration and trust just the kind of message families and children most wanted to here in the land of second chances. Unsurprisingly Dinty was a success and one of the films of the year according to Photoplay magazine and box office returns. It also provides some excellent shots of contemporary San Francisco all of which add an element of realism to the film as well as glimpses of the city 100-years past.

 

This is Edward Lorusso’s tenth Kickstarter funded presentation and the source film came from a private collector. The print quality is very good and the experience is enriched by Ben Model’s practiced piano accompaniment which matches the flow of the film’s pace and tone to a tea.

 

Aaron Mitchell is ace too!

The production is now available from Grapevine Video on Blu-ray and DVD and you can buy direct from their site here. It comes with the comedy short A Two-Cylinder Courtship with Billie Rhodes and Edward Lorusso providing accompaniment.

 

Mr Lorusso is also on another project now, Marion Davies in Zander the Great, a new scan of the original 35mm nitrate print by Library of Congress. There’s still time to support this very worthwhile project and the link is right here… please support if you can!

Mary, Lottie and Jack… Fanchon the Cricket (1915), Flicker Alley Blu-ray/DVD

It’s 1915 and we’re approaching peak Pickford in the second of eight feature films she made in the year of her old mucker DW’s Birth and one of six to be directed by James Kirkwood with scenarios from Mary’s pal Frances Marion also in the majority. Pickford was not yet in full command of the means of production as Cari Beauchamp notes in the Flicker Alley booklet, but she was fiercely protective of her career and determined to put in a typecast-proof performance as the wildcat “waif” that – now – we view as exemplary.

 

Fanchon provides an abundance of opportunities for Mary to demonstrate her winning ways and to explode out of the screen against the gorgeous backdrops of Delaware Gap, Pennsylvania. Some have criticised Kirkwood’s pacing but he certainly knew how to make the most out of his friend Mary; just pick the right location and let her roll. So many times, Mary demonstrates her extraordinary energy with her bodily ability to express emotion standing out amongst the dense woodland, against river and lake and a cast who are quite unable to draw the eye away from her.

 

Mary Pickford sits on the fence

Beauchamp describes the waif as an “inspirational” character in amongst a contemporary cinematic universe of matrons, vamps and adventuresses; “… there is a modernity to the waif with her backbone of steel as she stands up against hypocrisy, bullies and entitlement.” Watching with my Gen-Z daughter she would agree and it’s striking that such characters were on screen for the majority of cinema goers who were women yet to gain the vote.

 

Mary’s Fanchon is girlish but knowing and she knows what she wants in her man; someone who choses to love her and who is steadfast; she takes charge of her romantic situation and having worked her opportunity, expects the men to be honourable. If not… she’ll go her own way. She, genuinely, does not need a man to define herself and – according to our count – Fanchon passes the Bechdel test on a number of occasions.

 

Frank Standing and Lotte Pickford

Set in Eighteenth Century France and based on George Sand’s novel La Petite Fadette, the narrative is fairly light for first half of the film before fitting in – some – of the source material’s complexities. That strikes me as good work from Frances Marion (and Kirkwood) which allows the focus to be on Fanchon the free spirit and her pursuit of Jack Standing’s Landry Barbeau. Landry is from a family of good standing while Fanchon lives in a woodland hut with her grandmother (Gertrude Norman) who’s old and wizened enough to be regarded as a witch.

 

Fanchon’s problem – apart from lack of contemporary fashions – is that Landry is seeing a more respectable women called Madelon played by Lottie Pickford. Lottie was her sister’s junior by one year and, on this display, not in the same league as an actress (who was?) but she does a decent job as the spoilt brat determined to hold on to her man as much for pride as anything else. There’s also a cameo from Jack Pickford as a local bully who Mary has to fight in scenes that surely must have taken place in the family home in Toronto.

 

Jack vs Mary

Jack picks on Landry’s brother Didier (Richard Lee) who is described as a “half-wit”. It is interesting to see how films from this period treat mentally disabled characters and whilst Didier is a sympathetic character, the only one who treats him as an equal is Fanchon with the local youngsters tiring of him and chasing him away when it suits and his father (Russell Bassett) pushes him around. Are we supposed to see Didier and Fanchon as similarly outcast, he for neurodiversity and she for outrageous independence and “poor” blood? That’s maybe a stretch but why not?

 

 

Cinematography is from Edward Wynard and there are breath-taking shots of the locations – most of the action is outside adding a string sense of place to the action – as well as the lead. Kevin Brownlow is not the only one to have pointed to the visceral impact of Mary Pickford in this film; her hair is as long as I’ve ever seen it and sometimes forms a sunlit halo over her supercharged features and she’s definitely not the “the girl with the curls” but someone wiser and more artful.  Even with a dearth of clos-ups, the actress conveys an emotional impact few could hope to match and here it’s so very natural. How many scenes are just made up of her reacting to events off screen in well-chosen locations or amusing herself by playing with her shadow or just skipping with arms aloft, powerfully pantomiming joy and resilience.

 

The locals don't know what to make of Fanchon

Gradually the story solidifies as Fanchon starts to impress Landry, as someone with more spirit than Madelon but he must overcome not just his own doubts but the approbation of their peers and his own father. The gap between them seems too large to cross but Fanchon is nothing if not irrepressible but she’s also totally honest; she wants happiness on her own terms…

 

Fanchon is the only film to feature all three siblings and it’s very sad that at the time of her death, Mary thought it was lost. The Mary Pickford Foundation found a nitrate duplicate at Le Cinémathèque Française and combining this with an incomplete nitrate print at the BFI, a multi-national effort led to this crystal-clear restoration.

 

The MPF commissioned a new score in modern style from Julian Ducatenzeiler and Andy Gladbach which moves along very well with the film if occasionally foreshadowing the emotional journey. We enjoyed it, it’s upbeat and inventive and has the spirit of Pickford’s character. Those looking for organ or piano traditionalism may not agree but as a package this is a fun film and a side of Pickford we really need to see more of.

 

The Flicker Alley set is available direct from their site and really does the MPF proud in making available more of the work that explains her status as one of the founders of cinematic acting and one of the first superstars.

Tears of two clowns… Klovnen (1917) and Klovnen (1926), DFI online streaming

I believe it was Samuel Johnson who said that when a man is tired of films about sad clowns, he is tired of life; for there is in films about sad clowns, all that life can afford… Even if it wasn’t, whoever it was, is almost certainly correct. There’s simply no end of fascination in close ups of strained pasty made up faces, tears trickling slowly through layers of greasepaint as he who laughs last, last laughs, desiccated heart cracked by tragedy and lost love. You know.

 

Danish director AW Sandberg certainly agreed as he made this story twice, once in 1916 with Danish superstar Valdemar Psilander and again in 1926 with Swedish heartthrob, Gösta Ekman with the English title of The Golden Clown. Both are exceptional films and I’m not here to grade them because each is as equally impressive even if technique, story and length vary. Sandberg knew this was a pure and powerful tale and worked with major talents to present timeless tales of ambition, sexual distraction and love’s labour’s lost.

 

Valdemar Psilander

I watched 1926 first before turning back to 1917 and the fact it stood up so well is testament to how well it was made and also its extraordinary energy; this really feels like a passion project.  This script was co-written with Laurids Skands and features cinematography from Karl Storm Petersen who captures the thrills of the circus along with the emotional intensity from the performers. Sets are from Axel Bruun who worked with August Blom on Atlantis, The End of the World and Trip to Mars and presents the backstage dread and circus sawdust equally well.

 

Psilander plays Joe Higgins, a clown in a small regional circus run by ringmaster Bunding (Peter Fjelstrup) and his wife (Amanda Lund). Their daughter Daisy (Gudrun Houlberg) performs tricks whilst riding a horse and, is a wonderfully natural performer as well as, possibly, rider – it’s hard to tell whether she’s actually on the horse; great editing and stunt work combined. I particularly liked the off-stage excitement as the performers crowd around in preparation, clambering over themselves to watch the action in the ring; excitedly waiting their turn.

 

Excitement in the wings: Peter Fjelstrup, Valdemar Psilander and Gudrun Houlberg 

Having caught these moments, it’s easy to warm to Joe’s act, a singing clown who radiates good humour to the crowd as he follows his sweetheart’s horseplay. It’s a happy circus but, inevitably, this clown will have to run away as he’s talent spotted by showrunners from the big city. He doesn’t leave alone though as he insists that Daisy and her parents accompany him on his adventure, little realising that of the four of them, she will be changed the most.

 

Fast forward a year and Joe’s a huge success, delighting audiences in the major theatres but Daisy’s attention is being drawn by rich philanderer Count Henri (Robert Schmidt) who flatters her for his own amusement as Joe performs. Their dalliance in the wings of the hall is revealed as a section of scenery is removed revealing their embrace in a mirror as Joe sits in his changing room. He smashes the mirror and whilst he covers his devastation for the cast and crew, refuses to stand in the way of what he, tragically, believes is Daisy’s new love.

 

Robert Schmidt's Count tempts Gudrun Houlberg's Daisy

But the Count is less than impressed when Daisy arrives on his doorstep and is soon bored with her, she tries to return to the life she knew but her father’s pride stands in the way of allowing his disgraced daughter back. Has Daisy’s distraction ruined her and Joe’s life for nothing and what, if anything will be the revenge of a clown scorned?

 

The tragedy and most of the story remains the same for 1926 when Sandberg along with new co-writer Poul Knudsen, and a much bigger budget, produced a more elaborate film of twice the length. This time it’s Gösta Ekman ‘s turn, fresh from staring in Murnau’s Faust (1926) and many more, including Victor Sjostrom’s brilliant Vem dömer (1922) – with fellow Swedish genius Jenny Hasselqvist. Ekman was a hugely influential performer and whilst his looks and style are more recognisably “modern” than Psilander the latter, along with compatriot Asta Nielsen, played a key role in the development of cinematic acting, recognising that: “You can probably learn how to become an actor, but you can't learn how to stand in front of the camera… Cinema requires frankness and sincerity in a ruthless way.”

 

Valdemar played guitar...

Psilander tragically took his own life – Klovnen was released after his death - and so we didn’t get to see how his career progressed. No doubt Ekman learned from him how to translate his theatrical expertise on camera and here he gives an eye-wateringly powerful performance infusing his “Joe” with circus strangeness as well as an open-hearted brittleness – the honesty Psilander spoke of.

 

His Daisy is the rather fine Karina Bell who was in The House of Shadows (1924) as featured on this blog last year – also streaming from the DFI site. She’s a more intricate performer than the more robust Gudrun Houlberg, but then she has not only that decade of screen acting evolution but also technical and stylistic advances enabling the capture of her compellingly winsome emoting.

 

Karina Bell, always ready for her close-up

Christen Jørgensen is the cinematographer and he captures the stars in close ups as we as larger scale productions – Joe’s performances in the larger theatres are on a grand scale, with clowns stacked up around him as he sings, it’s enough to make Busby Berkley blush – whilst there’s also excellent footage of Paris, that gives a real sense of place and more substance to the difference between the bucolic world of country circus and the bigger business of show in the city.  

 

Daisy’s distraction by the wolfish Marcel Phillipe (Robert Schmidt), this time a fashion designer - is presented in subtler ways and just about her first surrender to his insistence at the theatre is the moment exposed, again, by the moving scenery – this time by a jealous stagehand – and revealed in Jim’s mirror. Jim takes Marcel and Daisy for a walk to discuss the infidelity and, with nothing really to say, the Count peels off to allow the couple’s romantic wires to cross and detach through moments of painfully sad reticence.

Gösta Ekman, funk to funky...

A moments weakness ends up costing them their happiness and Daisy is gradually disappointed by Marcel’s inability to commit as he humiliates her by flirting with one of his younger models, highlighting her mistake in ever trusting in his heart or fidelity. Meanwhile Joe’s focus and career nosedive as he drinks himself down the rungs of his profession little suspecting that he and Daisy had more to unite them than he ever realised.

 

There are good supporting performances from Maurice de Féraudy as Daisy’s father and Circus Director James Bunding as well as Kate Fabian as his wife. Both characters have more to do than space allowed in the first film all of which makes Daisy’s rejection all the more heart breaking. The finale plays out with more complexity and with an extra twist that I shall not reveal. Hopefully I’ve steered clear of too much spoiling and have encouraged you to watch both films.

Rural bliss

 

Klovnen (1917) is on the DFI site here and Klovnen/The Golden Clown (1926) is here… the latter has English title cards which will help you understand the former which has only danish. The 1926 film also has ace accompaniment from Ronen Thalmay which fits the emotional journey like a big red pair of clown shoes, weaving lovely sad lines across the scenario as delicately as Gosta’s tears transcribe his character’s misery.

 

Thank you DFI. So many films to see, and rather more time on our hands than we ever expected!