High hopes… Stranded (1927), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter

 

I’m a sucker for a film about film and whilst many might think of Show People I go back to Eleanor Boardman in Souls for Sale (1923) and also the lost film Merton of the Movies (1924) the source novel for which, by Harry Leon Wilson, thankfully survives along with a few plates showing the film’s stars, Glenn Hunter and Viola Dana (born Virginia Flugrath). The novel allows your mind to run wild with the ideas of Merton sleeping out on the set hoping for his big break, the film craze was in full flight and people did indeed make desperate attempts to make it big against all the odds.

 

This film, transferred in lovely 2k from the Library of Congress’ 35mm copy, is Edward Lorusso’s 25^th Kickstarter project and it was once again successful enabling Ed to enlist David Drazin to provide a lively jazz-aged new score for this delightful slice of life story. The story came from Anita Loos, who was a big enough draw at tis point to get mentioned on the promotional material, assisted by Frances Guihan with witty titles from West Indian writer Wyndham Gittens. Loos’ next film project was the first production of her novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928).

 

The star here is one Leonie Flugrath, aka Shirley Mason who is the younger sister of the aforementioned Viola and bears more than a passing resemblance as you’d expect. I’d say she was more of a classically good-looking star and with a “leading lady” persona that lacks Viola’s intensity and spunk. I have seen more of Viola and she’s a more rounded actor but then who knows what else young Shirley had in the tank.

Shirley Mason and the Godlike Genius that was Gale Henry!

Here she’s very sweet and sympathetic as Sally Simpson, a young woman in a small town who has reached a crisis point in her life, stranded between her love for Johnny Nash (William Collier Jr.) and her dreams of “making it” in Hollywood. Johnny can offer her security as well as love and yet she wants to try her hand at fame, eve though she’s very little preparation for this endeavour… The American Dream is a bit vague but that doesn’t stop her mother played by the great Florence Turner – yes, "The Vitagraph Girl" who spent time in Britain making Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914) and others.

 

Despite protests from Grandmother (Lucy Beaumont) and falling out with Johnny – who, not unreasonably, suggests that acting training as well as talent may be necessary – Sally duly heads off West, with a young boy sent by Johnny to hand over chocolates and an apology note, just missing his mark. Sally is on her own and Johnny doesn’t know if she got his peace offering or not.

 

In Hollywood Sally gets an early break and meets up with a host of extras earning $5 a day. One of the older heads, Lucille Lareaux played by the marvellous Gale Henry, knows the ropes and tries to advise the younger woman as well as to set expectations but when she does engineer a big chance for Sally she completely blows it… she just can’t act and it’s painful to watch.

 

So, unlike Show People et al, Stranded is dealing with the downside of Hollywood and it’s now not so much will Sally make it but will she manage to avoid the salacious scheming of Grant Payne (John Miljan) a self-styled friend of the stars and man in the know who trues to seduce the young woman with great promises…

 

Directed by Phil Rosen, the story races along and Shirley Mason makes for a winsome leading lady just as John Miljan excels at the evil. It’s the kind of film that would please cinema goers at the time and a reminder of the nature of so much cinema during this high-volume period. As the saying goes: they can’t all be classics… but in its way, Stranded is, a classic example.

 

Very few of Mason’s films survive and it’s to Mr Lorusso’s credit that he’s made this one available as well as Shirley’s The Apple Tree Girl (1917) and The Awakening of Ruth (1917) along with two of Viola Dana’s films. In addition to working on a number of Marion Davies films, Ed’s also written the definitive book on her cinematic works which I can highly recommend.

 

I’ve said it before, “blessed are the Kickstarters” but everything is driven by curious and determined characters like this and I commend Mr Larusso’s ongoing efforts just as I back his next project, The Enchanted Cottage (1924) – details here! The funding stage is completed but if you missed that it should be available later through Grapevine Video.

 

Mary Pickford, J. Farrell MacDonald and John Harvey

There’s an added bonus of a delightful and very rare short film, The Lighthouse Keeper (1911), directed by Thomas H. Ince and staring young Mary Pickford as Polly, a young woman caught in a tug of love between honest Tom Atkins (John Harvey) and the no-good Bert Duncan (William E. Shay) who tries to get his revenge after the two are married. Unluckily for him, Polly’s steadfast father, Nat (J. Farrell MacDonald), won’t let his lighthouse be used to doom his daughter and son-in-law.

 

As with Stranded, this was transferred from a Library of Congress print and has its original tints, some new (?) title cards and some cracking shots of the raging sea. Ed Lorusso provides the music this time and it’s a job thoroughly well done! 

Ed’s films have been broadcast on TCM and screened elsewhere. Grapevine Video have also made some available on home media which is what I hope will happen in this case: Shirley Mason and her co-stars deserve to be recalled and their skills appreciated anew by the silent film curious and around the world. We just can’t get enough of new old stuff!

Florence Turner

Would you trust this man? 

Forbidden colours… The Red Lantern (1919), Costas Fotopoulos, Kennington Bioscope

“East is East, and West is West… and never the twain shall meet.”

Anna May Wong makes a brief and almost impossible to spot, film debut in a film in which a Russian and an American play the two Asian leads. The Red Lantern is “of its time” and yet it is not unsympathetic to these characters whose lives are limited by Caucasian prejudice. The eye make-up is jarring and makes for awkward viewing but whilst attitudes have shifted there were those even at the time who found this unacceptable… in a time when Sessue Hayakawa was a bona fide star. But this is about love and prejudice and whether the lines quoted from Kipling should still be true some twenty years after the Boxer Rebellion led to the deaths of over 30,000 in Peking.

The film features Alla Nazimova in dual roles as Mahlee the illegitimate, mixed-race daughter of Sir Philip Sackville (Frank Currier) and half-sister to his pure English rose Blanche. Nazimova proves again her ability as the most stylised protean performer of the time and you’d scarcely recognise her as her own sister – blonde wig and a lighter touch – vs the taught angularity of Mahlee.

Alla Nazimova, also known as Naz (natch).

The Boxer Rebellion was not old news at this point as the Great War ground out its last days, and issues of self-determination drove the post-war agenda. China had been the subject of many international hands and the “allies” opposing the uprising had been a mix of British, American, German and Japanese who by the time of this film had assumed the lead role.

June Mathis’ screen play was based on Edith Wherry’s novel, written in 1911 and described in The Spectator review on release as an extra-ordinarily “vivid” account of missionary life and as “… a statement of existing conditions it is of the very highest interest.”

In this context it’s fascinating that Noah Beery’s Doctor Sam Wang is not an out and out baddie; firstly, he’s a Doctor, committed to heling and secondly, he too is “Eurasian” – mixed race – and has been humiliated by his attempts to integrate in the West. He gets involved in the uprising as he wants to earn his place in the East… he’s also a bit too fresh with Mahlee, just to push him into “bad guy” territory, behaviourally. As the book reviewer noted, the two best realised characters are Mahlee and Wang.

Another Beery baddie? Also the father of Noah Beery Junior of the Rockford Files!

Mahlee herself is got at for not having had her feet bound – the express wishes of Sackville as he abandoned her as a baby, little realising it would mark her as an outcast. So much so that when her grandmother is dying she asks her to cut her feet so that she may be accepted into heaven by the gods (tough gods!). But, nor can she truly find a place with the Christian Europeans, even as she works as a nurse in the Mission.

 

“Hush, child! You are like a cat treading on my heart. You have the foreign devils’ fear of death… my time is near and I am not afraid.”

She falls for Andrew Templeton (Darrell Foss), the son of the mission leader Reverend Alex Templeton (Winter Hall), but the son's admiration is tempered by her mixed race as indeed is that of his father and mother; as much as they like and admire Mahlee, she is not for their son.

Naz and Darrell Foss

Things become even more pronounced when the Stackville’s arrive and Andrew is automatically drawn to the Caucasian version of the woman he has felt such an uncomfortably strong attraction for. This is not good news and naturally Wang plays the rejection as another reason for Mahlee to help the Boxer rebellion by pretending to be the Queen of the Red Lantern.

Again, it’s of interest that the story doesn’t leave it there and there is still a chance for the Westerners to redeem themselves by accepting Mahlee for who she is and not how she was made but no… they can’t even manage that and so it is that Mahlee joins the revolt. What else has she got left and, despite her efforts to save them and repeated offers of friendship they just can’t get over her skin colour… even her love and even her father.

The imperliasts aren't budging!

So, by now we’re rooting for the Boxers… and so – probably - were many of the audience in 1919 which is an extraordinary thing.

 Veteran Albert Capellani directs… and there are some excellent crowd scenes and luscious mise-en-scene: it’s an epic and I’m not surprised it was one of the biggest films of the year and established Nazimova as: ”The star of a thousand moods… in a drama of a thousand delights.” I wasn’t counting and that may well have been hyperbole but there were many delights…

Costas Fotopoulos accompanied and, sight unseen, did a marvellous job matching the dramatic and emotional pace of a film that does lead its audience along a twisted path to the denouement.

Now THAT. Is a hat.

Illegal drug frenzy at South London Silent Film Speakeasy!!

Before all this we were treated to Coke Enneyday (Douglas Fairbanks) and his opioid adventures trying to break up a gang of evil-doers using inflatable fish to smuggle. Lovely Billie Love is caught up in all of this and I especially liked the moment when one of the – Chinese – henchmen trapped her and said he could now do what he wanted with her… she beats him up and ties him up in his arms.

Anita Loos probably added the Girl Power and Todd Browning (you know, him!) summoned all the rest coming down from one bad trip on Venice Beach. Maaaann!

John Sweeney played along, as sober as a Judge m’lud! He had to be: Doug takes no prisoners and in amidst the fun drugs, he clearly forgot to take his worming tablets.

The men in a boat. 1910.

There was also some beautiful colour footage of the Italian Lake Garda taken in 1910 using the innovative British Kinemacolor process which, as the Bioscope’s expert projectionist, Dave Locke, explained, used a spinning disc, with red, green and clear plastic to synchronise with film shot using tinted stock. The result was simply stunning and “colour fringing” aside, when someone moved a little too fast for the camera to follow, it was something to behold.

If you travel down to Brighton and Hove, you can still see the Kinemacolor sign on the side of the building where it was developed.

One of the most remarkable shorts ever shown at the Bioscope or, indeed, anywhere else.

The Red Lantern was the recent Belgian restoration and was screened on 35mm. It is avialable from the Belgian Cinematek as an extraordinary extras-laden DVD with a 200 page book which tells you all you could possible imagine about Naz, the Boxer background and the making of this film. Highly recommended!

Slapstick and Bristol fashion… The Kid (1921), Colston Hall, Slapstick Festival Day Two

There was a moment during this gala screening when I looked along the line to see the faces of my family lit up with smiles. Both generations had already been laughing at Buster Keaton chased by hundreds of cops and Charley Chase pursuing a woman he doesn’t know is his wife but then Charlie Chaplin comes along to offer something more complex: a comedy about poverty, loss and fragile chance.

If Charlie had been set a test to cope with this scenario without being mawkish… he couldn’t have passed it better. The Kid is a sentimental film but Chaplin steers perfectly clear of the obvious dangers and those moments, and there are those moments, when the emotionalism is switched dangerously high, are handled with exquisite ease. There's a look between mighty five-year old Jackie Coogan and his surrogate father that is searing and not soppy. It is the look of a man who knows parental loss and a supernatural performance from young Jackie.

But then... there is a dream of a dog flying on angel wings as Charlie and his angels fly around the Slums of Heaven with manic abandon. It comes just at the right moment in the film a sequence designed to undermine overt sentimentality.  So, right back 'atcha 21^st Century Cynics: this is mad fun and our Charlie deliberately flies towards the Sun on waxen feather wings but he doesn’t crash or burn he glides straight to the heart of funny.

I’d never seen The Kid, on purpose, holding off for a live screening and tonight the Colston Hall, the Bristol Ensemble, ably conducted by Timothy Brock and the fulsome support of an open-minded and good-humoured Bristol audience delivered wonderfully well.

If today’s sessions at the Slapstick Festival proved one thing it is that watching comedy is always – always – better as a group exercise. Live music creates new connections with the films and a joke shared is often laughter squared.

In the splendid, care-worn, space of the Colston Hall, the European Silent Film Ensemble played along to Keaton’s massed Cops (1922) and Charley Chase’ Mighty Like a Moose (1926) – what a title! Then came the main feature with the Ensemble playing the UK premier of Charlie’s own score, conducted by Mr Brock.

The most striking thing about the main feature is how cinematic the writer, director and star’s vision was. The film is told with supreme economy - a narrative that could be convoluted and strained is perfectly paced and key moments fall as lightly as feather’s dropped from dog angel’s wings…

The performance of Coogan is like that of a man four times his age – his father was on hand to help gear him up for the emotional moments but he winked at Charlie and told him he knew what he was doing. Edna Purviance as the mother who gains a career and loses her child, shows just why Chaplin rated her so highly whilst Chaplin himself is not the focus of the film you might expect – he’s almost ever-present but is smart enough to under play and generous enough to let the other leads and some super support actors take the limelight.

Compere Robin Ince had said he’d once been asked to write an article on whether Charlie was still funny: his response was that it could be a very short piece beginning “Yes…”. Of course he is, and my family and the two thousand-strong audience proved it.

The Colston Hall

This was my first day at the Slapstick Festival – now in its 12^th year – and it was a rewarding one – work commitments meant I missed out on the opening day a mistake I won't make next year!

I arrived left foot still hot from the M4, just in time to see David Robinson’s session on Mack Sennett – a man who made over a thousand films and who brought so many talented comedians to screen. Robinson focused on “four and a half” plus a few more…

Ford Sterling and Mabel Normand

First up was Mack himself in heavy disguise playing a French interior designer (of sorts) intent on delivering the eponymous item in D. W. Griffith’s A Curtain Pole (1909) – Dutch Talmadge’s  climactic chariot charge from Intolerance clearly had its origins here although she never worked out how to put the horse into reverse.

Then we had marvellous Mabel Normand bouncing her way through a choice of racers in The Speed Kings (1913) with “father” Ford Sterling trying to force her to choose his favourite for some un-specified reason. Everything feels improvised but Sennett films the - actual – races very well. He learned with DWG at Biograph and knew how to throw a film together, ad hoc and energised thanks to his dynamic performers.

Charlie as a Cop: Ford's not in this one as well?!

We had the one and only glimpse of Charlie Chaplin as a Keystone Cop in A Thief Catcher (1914) again featuring Ford Sterling – David Robinson warned that it wasn’t the best film but conceded that John Sweeney’s piano improvisations turned it into something more: audience plus expert live accompaniment equals pure joy!

Don’t Weaken (1920) again featured Ford Sterling just as I had probably seen enough of the ham of the hour but this was a different side to Sterling who played a convincingly-graceful dance teacher trying to impress newly-enriched Charles Murray’s daughter played by Harriet Hammond. The two men box and Murray is getting pasted until the Dancing Master is distracted by Harriet’s pins. Way more sophisticated than Benny Hill.

Hurry up Harry... 

Finally there was Harry Langdon in His Marriage Wow (1925) with the deeply-unsettling Vernon Dent as A Pessimist - Prof. Looney McGlumm trying to dissuade him from marrying Nathalie Kingston. I’m still haunted by Dent’s soul-sucking stare of disapproval…

Next up was a session on writer Anita Loos from Lucy Porter who bounded on stage with all the energy of a Mabel Normand clutching a handful of written notes and Loos’ two autobiographies. Loos played fast and, er, loose with the facts but was spot-on viscous in her observations on contemporaries – especially poor Norma Shearer.

Anita... there's one huge flaw in your argument...

 In her defence, Anita could be just as hard on herself plus she could write! We watched The New York Hat (1912) with accompaniment from harpist, Elizabeth – Jane Baldry who played in complete sympathy with the emotional cadence of Mary Pickford’s performance – I’ve never been so shocked by a father’s demolition of a feathered hat.

Then we were treated to the inexplicable The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916) written by Tod Browning with intertitles by Anita Loos. Here again the redemptive power of a comedy audience was proved as – having previously been a bit Home Counties about the drug taking, I just saw  a stoner comedy performed with self-depreciating zest by Douglas Fairbanks and Bessie Love as the little fish blower…

Coke Ennyday's on the case!

Only Fairbanks could possibly follow that and so he did in Wild and Woolly (1917) written by Anita Loos and directed by her water-carrying husband-to-be John Emerson and filmed by some bloke called Victor Fleming.

It is a splendid romp about a rich boy wannabe cowboy who gets sent out to scope out an investment opportunity for his pa. The western townsfolk get wind of the greenhorn’s delusions and make like it’s 1880 all over… Plans are set to entertain his fantasy with a train robbery and an Indian uprising but soon the fake bullets turn real and, delightfully, Doug turns out to be just as brave as he wants to be…

Tip of the ten gallon hat to Mr Sweeney – westerns must be murder on the keyboards with the relentless rhythm of trains and horses always interrupted by contrapuntal gun fights and saloon brawls!

Then came the evening and the pun-fight at the Colston Hall…

Cops on the run

Buster’s Cops! (1922) was a massed symphony of un-policed chaos that builds exponentially towards one of the most existentially bleak comedy climaxes in silent film.

But then what could be more post-structurally challenging than the battle Charley Chase has with himself in Mighty like a Moose (1926)… one to watch our Charley: a reputation on the rise!

The Mooses: Vivien Oakland and Charley Chase

Superb accompaniment was provided by the European Silent Screen Virtuosi comprised of Gaunter a Buchwald on piano and violin, Romina Todisco on double bass and Frank Blockhouse on percussion.

There was also a surprise appearance from St Helen’s favourite son (sorry Johnny), Bernie Clifton who, in the spirit of Slapstick, not only showed that comedy is for life and not just Christmas (he’s 79) but also sang Charlie’s Smile – two minutes in which the World slowed and Chaplin again reminded us that humour is often the only hope we have.

The Slapstick Festival continues until 25^th but watch their website for 2017…

Breaking bad… The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916)

It’s all so easy to laugh at this one and to shake your head in condescension – what were they thinking; making a comedy based on a drug-addled “scientific detective” who solves his crimes through frequent use of narcotics? Didn’t they know that stuff was dangerous; had they no idea that these ultra-addictive drugs would soon be out-lawed, Hollywood would stand to be accused of institutionalized decadence and that one of the film’s cast, Alma Rubens, would later die of addiction?

Sadly, unlike pretty much every one of the drugs involved, hindsight just wasn’t readily available over the counter and the involvement not just of Douglas Fairbanks but also Anita Loos (the titles), Tod Browning (the script) and even DW Griffith ( a little), showed just how “accepted” recreational drug use was as a source of humour... I don’t think the team was advocating drug use nor even the opposite – in the manner of The Devil’s Needle (1915) – just taking the idea of a self-medicating Sherlock to its extreme.

Everything the modern "scientific detective" needs...

In fact they didn’t really mean anything: it’s a joke albeit an odd one. Not to judge then but to understand…

Fairbanks later disowned the film after a lot of water passed very quickly under this particular bridge: after drugs had clearly become a killing joke. But even on release the film was banned in Boston and elsewhere: cocaine was available on prescription or over the counter from pharmacies but it had been otherwise made illegal by the the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914.

The Ennyday-Mobile in "street disguise" mode...

Directed – eventually - by John Emerson (after Christy Cabanne was fired…), The Mystery of the Leaping Fish was made during a period of consolidation in Fairbank’s burgeoning career but clearly before his action adventure persona was solidified. He plays Coke Ennyday a man whose clock tells only four times: "EATS, DRINKS, SLEEPS, and DOPE" and generally goofs around as the tripping detective. He’s pretty good but sometimes quite annoying but when he takes on the baddies near the end, bouncing around in perpetual motion he’s “our Doug” alright.

Allan Sears is rolling in it!

Coke is roused from his reveries by the arrival of the local police chief I.M. Keene (Tom Wilson), there’s a gentleman on the loose who is rolling in wealth – literally – and with no visible means of having earned it (Allan Sears) time to get the needle in and set off in pursuit of this mystery millionaire.

The Bad Men and their fish

Coke dons his ‘tec-togs, a fancy check suit that is matched by his car – a superbly-stenciled vehicle with the driver’s footman (Joe Murphy) – without whom Coke might not make it through any day -  positioned at the back in matching suit.

They arrive at the beach where the man was last seen and here the mystery of the leaping fish is revealed as the “fish” in question are inflatables loaned out to bathers…

Bessie on the blower

A Little Fish Blower (Bessie Love) is employed to blow the fish up – very slowly from the looks and size of her – and she is also having pressure applied to marry the boss of the blow-ups (William Lowery) a mean character – she could do better.

Eagle-eyed Coke spots his target frolicking in the waves and sets off in pursuit of him and his accomplice (Alma Rubens) enabling what is perhaps the first sea-based inflatables chase in cinema history… Coke’s flying fish springs a leak after he tries to inject it with cocaine and he spins off out of control enabling the dodgy duo to make good their escape.

Doug's mustache is detached and they just keep on filming... Bessie can't stop laughing!

Coke befriends the pretty little fish blower and maintains his watch on the beach… it’s surely only a matter of time before inspiration is chemically-induced and the flying fish get fried.

The Mystery of the Leaping Fish is well made, energetic, wacky and slightly shameful… It’s probably not responsible film-making but it also fails to be funny for long stretches abandoning Doug’s natural charm for bad moustache twirling and repetition of the same injection jokes… Granted the hero’s recourse to drugs eventually saves the day in unexpected ways but that’s more by accident than design.

"You are at my mercy woman..." Nope, not a bit of it!

In a cop-out twist at the end we see the real Fairbanks having his “idea” turned down by the studio head who suggest he sticks to acting and not scripting. They knew… they knew very well.

The film is available on Kino’s excellent Modern Musketeer DVD set, either direct or from Amazon. 

That'll be a no then...