Modern love… An Old Fashioned Boy (1920) with Philip Carli, Le Giornate 40th Edition Streaming, Day Three

Great marital unhappiness believed to be due to apartment hotels and dogs…

 

This film only survives as a 16mm print at UCLA and was screened as part of the American women screen writers’ series having been penned by Agnes Christine Johnson who enjoyed a long career and collaborated with King Vidor on the fabulous Show People (1928) as well as writing for Pickford and many more.

 

Directed by Jerome Storm it stars Charles Ray at the relatively short-lived peak of his popularity, looking ten years younger and still the All-American Boy earning some $11,000 a week (approximately $142,000 today) according to his obituary in The Evening Independent of 20^th November 1943. He made a fortune and then lost it as a would-be film producer but from this film it’s clear his face was not the only contributing factor.

 

An Old Fashioned Boy is very much a new-fashioned film, being a light-hearted examination of gender expectations with mass appeal at the time. There was a shift in living choices and there was concern that women would be distracted from their traditional roles by too much being provided for them in so-called apartment hotels where food and laundry could be outsourced from the home. Not quite sure how dogs came to be a threat to the American family – personally I’d have put the finger on cats! – but there you go; many things today make less sense.

Charles Ray and Ethel Shannon

Johnson’s scenario involves two couples, or rather one potential couple and one married pair complete with a trio of “angels” of which more later… Ray is David Warrington who is the titular romantic who dreams of putting his Betty (Ethel Shannon) on a pedestal complete with stairs to enable her to run down to the kitchen every few hours as well as the washroom. He’s so convinced they’re the perfect couple that he even builds a new house for Betty before he has proposed. Some might say that’s presumptive and, well, we’ll see…

 

David’s friends the Smiths are married and not enjoying anything like his vision of contentment. Herbert (Wade Boteler) is cynical and perpetually grumpy complaining about loaning their living room out for David to court Betty. His wife Sybil (Grace Morse) is long-suffering and takes the slings and arrows of outrageous Herbert as well as providing for him and those aforementioned angels: Violet, Herbie and a baby played by Virginia Brown who is very good at crying and reaching out her arms.

 

Three kids and a baby!

David is successful in his proposal and takes Betty to see a house his “friend” has built for his fiancée. Betty likes the house but, oh dear, wouldn’t want to live there so wedded is she to the freedoms of apartments. And, when she hears that David built the house for her before even asking for her hand, takes against his rather odd behaviour and storms out.

 

Betty is pretty flighty as she’s soon seeing her former beau, Fast-Car-Ferdie, or at least Ferdie who owns a sports car, and forgetting all about Drippy Dave. Meanwhile Sybil has had enough and decides to go home to mother. Quite understandably she can’t take her three children… so… she decides to leave them with David telling him on no account to tell her potentially former husband, Herbert, where they are.

 

Now, this all sounds fine and the actions of a reasonable and balanced parent under stress but in reality, Sybil has left her kids in danger with David’s solution to childcare being to muck about and fill the three of them with home-made taffy. They eat so much they get sick and so David calls Betty’s father, Doctor Graves (Alfred Allen) who he then persuades to ask his daughter to come and help. Betty’s trained as a nurse and so puts the kids to bed like a pro before making to leave forcing David to get her father to put the house in quarantine and to make up a new medical condition, Black Measles.

 

Betty can’t leave now and nor can Ferdie when he arrives to take her home… there follows much high-spirited daftness as Betty’s emotional response to her would-be husband ranges from impatience, extreme anger and borderline psychotic.

 

All of this covers an interesting “debate” on the role of women and men even as it allows Ray to show his superb comic timing and winning range of expressions. One of my favourite moments comes as Herbert accuses David of having an affair with Sybil at which point, she decks him with an absolute haymaker of a right hook leaving him unconscious. Proof that these films were sophisticated and attuned to the sensibilities of their audience.

 

The daft premise and entire story arc play on audiences’ preconceptions and they were no less aware of the “joke” than we are now. There was much praise in the contemporary press according to film historian April Miller in the Giornate notes with Louis Reeves Harrison in Moving Picture World (13 November 1920) singling Johnson out for with creating a “flawless structure” for “this bright story”.

 

Miller also quote the author as saying “women have too much creative energy to spend it merely on housekeeping. You get neurasthenic if you have only one line…” even asserting she was “a much better tempered wife and mother” when working, “… so used to writing with the babies crying”. Very much the “new-fangled” woman Betty wanted to be!

Philip Carli played along with characteristic flare and deep understanding of "the argument", that American sense of humour is not to be under-estimated!

 

More in store streaming from Pordenone, details on the web.

 

Kickstarted… The Pride of Palomar (1922)

Crowdfunding has played an increasing role in securing the future and wider-distribution of silent films. It is indeed the internet done properly with like-minded people connected to projects that match with their specific interests just so long as the target group is big enough and the rights holders are pre-disposed.

This project, the clean up and release an early Frank Borzage film, The Pride of Palomar, was eventually able to also “rescue” a second film, Back Pay (1922) and to support an excellent pdf document on the director, Frank Borzage - A Dossier as well as a smaller document featuring contemporary details and much else on the main film.

I am very glad that I supported True Film’s project and impressed with how Patrick McInerney, John Heath and Patrick Ford Bowerin realised their objectives and then some more. Gentlemen, well done!

Crowdfunding?

These works may not feature the Frank Borzage who directed some glorious late period silents but they still show an interesting film-maker honing the vision and subtle emotional flavours he would display in Lazybones, The River and Seventh Heaven. Back in 2006 Slant magazine ran a career appraisal which mentioned “…embarrassments” in Borzage's career giving specific mention to “…a shameful anti-Japanese drama for William Randolph Hearst (The Pride of Palomar) …” but, whilst the racism is not comfortable (lazy Mexicans, scheming Japanese…) it’s not enough to damn the entire work 90 years on and Palomar is a fun film to watch with some lovely emotional peaks and enough narrative edge to leave you aching for the final resolution.

As Molly Haskell notes in her dossier essay, Borzage Soulmates, the director often features “…lovers who cannot be separated by distance or time…” and, whilst this is true of our two leading characters Don Mike Farrell (Forrest Stanley) and Kay Parker (see-saw, Marjorie Daw) – who are mostly blocked by family interests and the various arts of The Deal – it’s also the case with Don Mike and his father, Don Miguel (Joseph J. Dowling) who dies in mourning after hearing that his heroic son has been killed in the Great War.

There’s a terrific sequence when Don Miguel goes into the old mission at San Luis Rey to pray for his loss, he is connected to his son through his faith just as much as his housekeeper who believes that the still flaming lamp in his room, lit by his mother, shows he still lives.

Don Miguel in mourning

Indeed, young Mike is very much alive, a tragedy for father and son, and the film is as much about his saving the family honour as finding the love of his life… rights must be wronged and the Spanish-Irish Farrells must recover their ground to overcome both Yankee corporate manoeuvres and opportunist land-gabbing from Japanese property investors… specifically, and this is the difficult bit, Warner Oland in heavy make-up as Fuji Okada: a clumsy stereotype of the yellow peril.

“Land deals with Japs are not very popular in California…”

Okada’s business is buying up Californian land for “Japanese colonization” and he relies on the “shiftlessness” and “short sightedness” of the fun-loving but commercially incompetent Latinos… living la vida loca without managing cash-flow or sustainable business strategies. It is a bit rich but at least we have a baddie and injustice to be prevented.

Okada is travelling by train along with Kay Parker and her father John (Alfred Allen) who is going to foreclose on the mortgage on the Farrell’s El Palomar ranch, which the family has seemingly failed to manage. A young army officer joins them, instantly charming young Kay with his impressive character and firm jaw… he is, of course, Don Miguel “Mike” Farrell.

Travelling in style... Forrest Stanley, Alfred Allen, Warner Oland and Marjorie Daw

The two talk on the train and it’s only when he departs that she realises who he is and how he will be affected by her father’s business aims. A war moratorium means that Mike will now have twelve months to raise the $300,000 needed to settle the mortgage his father was forced to take. It’s a tough task but he soon finds that Loustalot, an ill-shaved local rancher (bad moustache) not only owed his dad over $100,000 but continues to graze his cattle on Farrell land. He’s a tricky customer backed by Parker and even more so by – boo! – Okada.

There’s also an irrigation project under construction which would, interestingly, turn the land into a bit of a goldmine  (worth $5 million!) if only Farrell could afford to keep it… so close yet so far from redemption. There’s also a rather splendid racehorse called Panchito that might, if I were you, be worth a few bob in the Kentucky Derby…

Now, I think you’ll be in little doubt how all of this will develop but its skilfully wrought by director, cast and crew. As Patrick Ford Bowering says in his essay The Path to the Summit, Palomar “demands to be seen” serving as “an important stylistic link for Borzage, with hints and treats not seen in Borzage’s prior feature films, but would appear again in his later work.” with the director’s “romanticized and gorgeous approach” in evidence, even amidst the stranger moments of the film. Back to those stunning visual set-pieces and an almost magical realist approach… life, death, balancing of the books, love and honour.

An almost mystical return...

I especially liked the repeated shots of the line of trees near the opening to the ranch; characters come and go through this tunnel as though to another world. When Mike walks back home for the first time, Kay waits for him behind a tree and as his faithful pet dog runs to greet him, the light is lovely and love is, indeed, in the air. Borzage stages some great set-piece action scenes, the pursuit of Loustalot is across stunning valley views and the horse racing scenes are genuinely exciting. It is a satisfying and well-made film.

Yes Don dresses up in disguise as a Mexican slobby gambler and he is wounded by a Chinese man with a grudge (they’re all in together these "orientals"…) and his house servant Pablo (Tote Du Crow) gets caught dozing a few times, but there are far more loyal and decent people all round than baddies. Mike even has a childhood sweetheart Anita Supvelda (Carmen Arselle) who Kay thinks will be his wife… Most importantly, the "Mexicans" win and the Gringo’s have to respect them.

I hope there are plans for The Pride of Palomar's wider release - I will try find out! I look forward to more such projects, would it be too much to ask if the Norma Talmadge/Borzage collaborations could be next? Maybe it’s time to get more involved - we're ready to help in any way we can silent compadres.

The revenant… The Grub-Stake (1923)

“… no one who has not gone for broke, all out, all of the way… knows what it means to watch the unreeling of twelve-thousand feet of film which carries his colours to victory or defeat.” Nell Shipman

A revenant is a “visible ghost” returned to haunt the living and in Nell Shipman’s case the spectre both inspires and amazes. This was a woman who not only overcame impossible financial odds to make this film but who relocated her crew, cast and zoo to the frozen wastes of Ohio before climbing 6,000 feet to film the climax in which she dangles herself off a sheer rock face. DeCaprio you’re a wimp!

The hills are alive

By the time Shipman and partner/co-producer/nominal co-director Bert Van Tuyle came to make this film they were on their uppers and their company was in deep financial trouble. They sold their house in California, their car and even their piano to help finance The Grub-Stake as well as raising contributions from 300 subscribers. Their final budget was $180,000 which for an undertaking of this scale was hopelessly inadequate but Shipman had a vision and she wanted it realized.

Nell’s spirit comes through in her written words and as the above quote shows, she had a sense of humour to match her drive. She needed it as this was the biggest risk imaginable for the “Girl from God’s Country”, as she was named after two successful films featuring her battling the elements of Ohio.

Nell Shipman: in the studio and out of doors

As she suggests below, Nell's script for The Grub-Stake has everything in it and the kitchen sink – which her character Faith Diggs uses to run a home laundry business. It’s a high energy film which cuts quickly and moves at pace, possibly reflecting the challenges of its low ratio of film shot to film required – just 50,000 feet from which to edit those precious “12,000”.

The breathless finale was filmed atop Lookout Mountain – at 6,727 feet the highest in the region and more than a couple of thousand up on Ben Nevis, Britain’s champion peak – having to lug equipment up on the backs of protesting pack horses. Honestly Nell, you could have picked an easier location but no she went high and it is rewarded as the views make for a stunning backdrop as she hangs onto a tree root on the side of a sheer cliff face. It’s a stunning conclusion that sets the emotions and the pulse racing – to all her other attributes add stunt-woman and her editing (who else) is superb.

Nell hangs on tight

As Nell later said: “…it had a sockeroo finish! It brought to customers that dimple we aim to create so it may cup their shed tears…”

The plot is how you hipsters say, “bat-dropping” crazy, and shows Nell’s lively mind in overdrive creating an improbable world just around the bend from our believable own. Nell plays Faith Diggs a woman who combines work in an artist’s materials shop with life modelling and a home laundry service.

Skipper watches the ships and waits...

She does all this to care for her ailing father, a retired mariner named Skipper (Walt Whitman – the other one) who spends his days looking out of his window at the tall ships in the harbour. He puts his light in the window to illuminate Faith’s way home and already you can see the richness of Shipman’s ideas with any florid over-invention being counterbalanced by a lightness of tone in the intertitles.

But Shipman’s acting provides the clearest signal of her intent. She stands tall as the model wrapped in white cotton, standing as a partially-exposed mummy in front of a class of eager scribblers, her face mock serious yet soon gurning in horror as she has to shuffle out to deal with a customer.

Bare shoulders!

Bizarrely that customer is the film’s villain popped into pick up some brushes and paint for a friend up in the Yukon – the script is full of such long shots and intricate connections and this won’t be the last we see of those brushes… Mark Leroy is a gambler and business man played by Alfred Allen (who Wikipedia wrongly makes 36 at the time of the film when he was actually 56 and he looks it!) but Faith can’t see that only a charmer who takes an interest in her.

Faith loses her two art jobs after the proprietor returns to find her bare-shouldered. She traipses the streets looking for work and runs into Leroy again just as she is on the point of selling her improbably long hair. He invites her round on the pretext of photographing said locks but when she arrives she reveals they’ve all been chopped for cash. No matter, he didn’t really want to take her pic… he has more business-like concerns.

Well, would you trust this man?

Looking to make a new start for her and Skipper, Faith jumps at Leroy’s offer of a “grub-stake” – an advance on adventure based on a share of the returns, but rebuffs his attempts to take an early payback in kind. They travel north by ship and in a moment of calm madness, faith accepts a marriage proposal from the middle-aged manipulator… let’s say Faith is green; let’s say she trusts too easily and that she has, indeed, too much faith.

Dawson Kate evaluates the greenhorn's fashion sense

Reality bites once they arrive not once but three times… Leroy provides Faith with a new dress and invites her to a “party” at the local dance hall. The folk there are mighty friendly, especially the men but not Dawson Kate (Lillian Leighton) the “he-woman” (according to the intertitle) who runs the saloon with a rod of iron and a heart of rare softer metal. He soon reveals to Faith that firstly this ain’t no party, secondly hubby already has a wife… and thirdly Leroy has bought Faith here to trade as a sex-worker.

Overhearing the truth Faith is shocked to the core but then she hears that Leroy’s set his manservant (Ah Wing) to poison her father…

Malamute Mike and his best friend

At the start of the film we’re shown an old but intrepid frontiersman atop a hill with his faithful hound but by the time we see the man again he has become the town drunk, Malamute Mike (George Berrell) trailing around the string he used to tether his four legged friend in the belief that old Tucson is still there. He’s kicked out of the dance hall just in time to head to Skipper’s house and to slow down the poison plot long enough for Faith to come to the rescue.

Leroy duly thwarted, the trio have to flee before he finds out. Mike, drunkenly-deluded that he found some gold high in the mountains and at the end of the rainbow… decides to take them there. They take Leroy’s dogs and sleds and head for the frozen North.

Faith climbs higher

Now Shipman’s love of nature takes over and there are glorious segments in the snow. Faith has to forge on alone after their sled runs out of snow and ends up going higher and higher, lost in the upper perma-frosts forests as Mike goes for help from Kate’s son Jeb (Hugh Thompson), who lives in their cottage practicing his art and is indeed the person for whom Leroy bought the materials for right back at the start.

Faith discovers the bear necessities

There follows an interlude in which Faith survives the cold in just a linen shirt and winter dress, wandering lost until seeking refuge in a cave already occupied with a friendly brown bear… The sequence shows Faith communing with all manner of creatures – more bears, raccoon, badgers, marmosets, deer and wolves. All are at peace with this gentle soul although in reality the wolf sent to snuggle up as Faith sleeps, lunged at Nell’s face and later had to be put down.

Jeb arrives from nature

Spring seems to have sprung and one day as Faith sits watching two bears play-fighting in the stream Jeb arrives and almost rescues her before being told there is no need.

Now the stage is set as the two youngsters fall for each other, Jeb spots Mike’s marker for the gold and they find his old dog still in his old shack! Lots of things fall into place whilst the tension is ramped up as Leroy comes looking for the girl and the gold!

Jeb and Faith bond over nature and the arts

“Fact is, viewing the scenario from the wrong end of time’s telescope, The Grub-Stake bears a strong resemblance to a Soap Opera!” Nell Shipman

She was not wrong but the opera is well produced and the soap not so soft once the action kicks in and a battle begins culminating in that real-life cliff-hanger. Before that Shipman battles Alfred Allen in a no-holds barred scrap that she looked like she could easily win.

Location shooting on frozen Priest Lake - same spot as the image at the top!

The Grub-Stake is packed full of Shipman’s determination and charm but whilst it initially did well its distributor, American Releasing Corporation – who hadn’t even paid an advance – went broke. Other, better, offers came in too late after Nell had signed the deal – almost as green as Faith.

Nell again“…this picture was a real grub-stake gamble for a proprietor who must strike it, must pan out!”

Y'see Leo... you have to work with the bear; don't fight it!

Luckily British rights were secured – not that Nell saw any of the money – which ensured that the BFI ended up with the only extant copy. This was used by Idaho Film to create the From Lionhead Lodge DVD which is part three of their Nell Shipman Collection which comes complete with surviving shorts from the Little Dramas of the Big Places series and a short documentary narrated by Shipman’s grand-daughter and great grand-daughter in 1987 – the family creative spirit lives on. There’s also a suitably homely accompaniment from John Hayes and Eberle Umbach.

My Amazon Shipman shipment

The disc is available sporadically from Amazon (I may have grabbed the last copy!) whilst there also an excellent biography by Kay Armatage, The Girl from God's Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema, from which I gleaned so much interesting background and lifted the quotes above – also available from Amazon.

Watching and reading about Nell was another inspiration from Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema Edited by Melody Bridges & Cheryl Robson and available from Aurora MetroBooks. It features much on Nell including a fascinating and exciting chapter from film-maker Karen Day whose documentary on Nell I can’t wait to see in full!