“The pair at the Fifth Avenue this week go into a
disagreeable number with a degree of vivid detail that is almost medical…”
"Rush", Variety, July 1909
In July 1909 dancers Alice Eis and Bert French put on their "Vampire Dance" at the Fifth Avenue theatre. The act featured Eis as "a Parisian woman of the streets" striking "a particularly snaky posture…” culminating in the removal of a "thin red veil", revealing a tight-fitting dress with "a skirt slashed almost to the waistline and the only underdressing is a covering of fleshings." The New York Dramatic Mirror was equally outraged at this “vulgarity…” - “…to call it a dance is a libel against the name of art." 1
Despite or let’s be frank, because of this Eis and French
were very popular and were still packing out halls in February 1913 when they
were arrested for giving an “indecent performance” at Hammerstein’s Victoria in
New York’s Times Square. Such were the double standards of the press and the public
during an era when Vaudeville, as Andrew L. Erdman2 notes, became an
excuse for showing audiences more flesh in the name of art. Naturally the new
medium of film wanted to get in on the act and perhaps looking at Italian films
showing classical tales, looked for ways to illuminate stories with
morally-defensible artistic statements.
So it was that Robert Vignola captured the dance on film
for this three-reel morality tale that – as per Richard Koszarski’s excellent
sleeve notes accompanying Milestones’ epic two-disc collection – he fleshed out
this film to act as a pretext for showing Eis and French. I’d come across the
film when the dace section was screened at the Kennington Bioscope as part of
Tony Fletcher’s evening covering the release, one of 2025’s most essential and
a most thorough compilation of the films made in New Jersey, before and after
the move to Hollywood.
This film is a standout because, all salaciousness apart,
the dance is very interesting, capturing the kind of movements you’d expect
from the, sadly never filmed, Isadora Duncan and other modern dancers such as Ruth
St. Denis and Ted Shawn who are seen in Griffith’s Intolerance and who
would later feature a young Louise Brooks in their Denishawn company. It’s also
possible that the producers had seen Asta Nielsen’s outrageous dance with her
cowboy, leather dress and whip in Urban Gad’s Afgrunden (1910) and
wanted some home-grown source. I don’t know, who really understands how the
Marketing Mind works?
It’s not all about “art” though and you can also blame
Rudyard Kipling who wrote his poem, The Vampire after being inspired by a
drawing by his cousin Philip William Burne-Jones. This was was included in the frontispiece of
the first edition published by Boston Press in 1898…
A fool there was and his goods he spent,
(Even as you
or I!)
Honour and faith and a sure intent
(And it wasn't the least what the lady meant),
But a fool must follow his natural bent
(Even as you or
I!)
The picture and the poem, first impression for sale on Abe Books...
Anyone who has seen the Theda Bara film, A Fool There Was
(1915) will have seen this Vampire/Vamp role perfected but Vignola’s film
remains the earliest known attempt to capture the essence of the lady who
drains her victims of their wealth, energy and pride. Whether the Baronet Burne-Jones
or his cousin had first hand experience of such company one could only guess
but whether in art, literature, stage or screen sex sells and sex-witchery especially
is always popular with the patriarchy.
I am going to the city to make my fortune…
For the film, the story begins in the countryside just north
of New York City as it was in the days when Hackensack was still countryside. A
hardworking young couple, Harold (Harry F. Millarde) and Helen (Marguerite
Courtot) are saving up to get married and the former decides to head off to New
York to get work after tiring of rural life. Cue fond farewell and a train ride
from the sepia tinted countryside to monochromatic Manhattan where Harold finds
digs and an office job for which his agricultural experience serve him well.
Six months’ later he has saved $500 and she $100 and they’re
close to affording that wedding until one day spending his hard-earned in an
expensive café he encounters a woman in a tight-fitting dress with a jewelled
armband and an eye for men with fulsome wallets. Her name is Sybil (Alice
Hollister) and she is the Vampire your mother may have warned you about. Soon
she has set her sights on the hapless Harold and the only way is down. For
those who love Reel Streets, Sybil’s is on Claremont Avenue just off Broadway
after you pass Columbia University on the Upper West Side.
Harold’s letters home tail off as does his commitment to the
farm products trade with the result that he loses his job and Helen, concerned
about his lack of communication, comes to the Big City to find him. She’s soon
facing her own difficulties as a man tries to lure her into sex work, in a line
freely borrowed from many a tale of trafficking and the white slave trade such
as the hit Traffic in Souls released a month after this film in November
1913. Another Dane, August Blom, made Den hvide slavehandel (The White Slave
Trade) in 1910 and this was followed by two sequels such was its popularity
(although banned in the US…).
Helen thinks on her feet though and makes a daring escape
down the fire escape against a backdrop of New York clothes lines – it’s a well-made
film with camerawork that whilst static does capture the atmosphere and action
well. Helen get’s a job in a hat shop just as Harold hits rock bottom… Rejected
by Sybil and with no money he plans to rob a rich theatre goer but, bored of waiting,
he goes inside and watches the performance that will turn his life around.
The dance was performed at Cliffside Park near to the Kalem
Studios under natural light as the stills show even as the camera framed it as being
in the music hall. Harold watches the Vampire Dance and realises what a fool there
was…. Thus, the importance of public arts programmes is proven and well, you
can only imagine what happens next!
Philip Carli accompanies and is completely in tune with this
entertainment as you would expect. The picture quality is exceptional and
Milestone have done a splendid job with this set which I can’t recommend highly
enough.
You can purchase direct from Milestone/Kino Lorber in the US and Canada whilst those overseas can find the Blu-ray in all the old familiar
places!
1 From Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals, and the
Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915, Andrew L. Erdman, City University
of New York
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