Way out south east… Tumbleweeds (1925)/The Gunfighter (1917), with Dr Ilya Poletaev and John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Women ain't reliable - cows are…

 

That’s what you cowboys call yourselves, isn’t it, tumbleweeds?

 

See also:

 

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys

Don't let 'em pick guitars or drive them old trucks

Let 'em be doctors and lawyers and such…

 

That was Wayland Jennings advice but at this stage it’s way too late for those of us keen to ride alongside William S Hart as he blazed his trails across South East London in an evening celebrating this most accomplished of silent actors and a genre that seemed to emerge fully formed from the start. Recently we’ve been watching The English in which Emily Blunt’s mannered aristocrat forms an unlikely alliance with a native American and shows the kind of resilience and toughness required to survive and exert yourself in these primal united states. William S Hart was, if not the first to embody this spirit, certainly the first to comprehensively show the cinema audience the brutal realities only just passed.

 

William S Hart makes his point to young Jack Murphy

Tonight, we had two films from different stages of Harts’ career The Gunfighter (1917) and Tumbleweeds (1925), including an introduction he performed in a 1939 release of the latter which featured the former Shakespearean setting out almost his own eulogy not to mention that of the cowboy. Tumbleweeds was, at 61, Hart’s last film and, here he talks of the many injuries that stopped him continuing as an action hero, with his anguished cry about “the thrill of it all”.

 

Produced by Hart, Tumbleweeds is based on the last major events of the opening up of the West, the Cherokee Strip land rush of 1893. when a huge swathe of land owned by native Americans and used for grazing cattle, was made available for claim from a new wave of “homesteaders” from the East. This provides the film with a huge cinematic moment when the army gun fires at noon, setting off a race featuring thousands of horses, wagons and one man on a penny farthing. Director King Baggot tracks the whole event and you feel almost as much a part of the conflagration as you do in Napoleon’s charges or those of The Chess Player. It sends a chill when you consider this event was just thirty years earlier, as close to 1924 as the collapse of the old Soviet Union is to now. Time flies comrade… and the pictures below show how clearly audiences may have been able to imagine the actuality as it was reported.

For this sequence alone you can understand why some have called this his best film, although reviews were fairly mixed in 1925 and understandably so given a narrative that is slightly assumptive and coded with expectation; as if all of the other characters know exactly what will happen with Hart’s character, Don Carver and there’s not the fierce dynamic uncertainty of say Hell’s Hinges (1915). Hart is of course excellent as the principled foreman of the Box K Ranch, and there’s a humble wistfulness to his performance here as he looks out at the thousands of cattle taking his hat off with his men to declare the “end of the West”.

 

William S. Hart and Barbara Beford

All of the elements of the Western are here, faithful sidekick Kentucky Rose (Lucien Littlefield in what will become The Slim Pickens role), goofing but always coming up trumps, love interest, Molly Lassiter (Barbara Bedford) initially appalled but gradually warming and then the unacceptable faces of progress, men with capitalist intent who try to cheat their way to the money… honestly, America, you should have watched more of your own movies. The baddies here are Molly’s useless brother Noll (J. Gordon Russell) and his mate Bill Freel (Richard Neill), as cowardly as they are unscrupulous… emblems of the essential unfairness underpinning the dash for land something that could only be overcome by the decency and fight of men like Don and women like Molly. The good guys won or at least they did on screen.

 

It’s an engaging spectacle with the romance and resignation of Hart’s character at the centre as the whirlwind of history carries the hopes and schemes of the good, the bad and the greedy.

 

Accompaniment was provided by guest pianist Dr Ilya Poletaev, Associate Professor of Piano at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal, who graced the narrative with magnificent lines to accompany the epic sweep and the emotional minutia. Tumbleweeds is the precursor of other films based on the 1893 land rush, including Wesley Ruggles' Cimarron (1931), The New Frontier (1935) and Ron Howard’s Far and Away (1992) and the spirit of the 1890’s all the way to Emily Blunt. The end of the old West and Hart’s career, until that final introduction in 1939.

 

The Gunfighter (1917), Mr Hart requests that you raise both hands in the air.

The Gunfighter (1917), with John Sweeney

 

The KB’s Christopher Bird provided two excellent introductions to these films but it was this one that he had the most personal stake in, helping to construct not one but two restorations based on two slightly different 9.5mm home-movie condensed versions from the late 20’s and the recent discovery of one and a half reels of 35mm nitrate. This part of the picture had French intertitles but luckily his colleague at Photoplay, Kevin Brownlow, had a copy of the script, producer Thomas H. Ince being one of the few to insist in a thorough script in a time of so much improvisation.

 

The script was invaluable in reconstructing the narrative and the sense of the film but there was no way of matching the font used at the time. At this point enter Fritzi Kramer, graphic designer by day and runner of the esteemed Movies Silently blog by night. Fritzi went full method on the typeface volunteering to recreate the extinct font by analysing the title cards of two of Hart’s other films. She also mocked up a wanted poster for Hart’s character and lovingly created and aesthetic that, combined with Chris’ painstaking work, has helped to restore just over half of what was once considered a lost film.

 

The Gunfighter was screened at the Hart retrospective at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in 2019 and tonight was presented with even more improvements from Mr Bird. The sense of this movie is entirely there and it’s a fine example of his output in the teens, with Hart playing an anti-hero rescued by the love of a good, and much younger, woman, here played by Margery Wilson (20 at the time, Hart was 53, plus ca change).

 

Old Bill and Margery Wilson 

Wild Bill Hart plays Cliff “Killer” Hudspeth, leader of a band of outlaws who have achieved supremacy in the local area through his despatch of notorious gun-bullies. His reign is threatened by the mixed-race El Salvador (Roy Laidlaw) who wants to muscle into the territory using less principled means of extortion. Cliff meets Norma Wright (Wilson) a milliner on the door of her shop, as he is in the middle of a gunfight with one of El Salvador’s senior henchmen, 'Cactus' Fuller (Milton Ross) and even though the later cheats, turning, shooting, missing and being shot dead on the count of eight… she is appalled, calling Cliff a murderer.

 

Cliff disagrees and promptly carries Norma off to his gang’s base in the Gila Mountains of Arizona, although this does seem to reflect an almost charming naivete on the gunslinger’s behalf. That said, Norma can see there’s more to him than meets the eye… Cliff is fully aware of his inner conflict though and spends the night drinking whiskey and seeing visions of all of those he has killed. In the morning he agrees with Norma not to kill again… he has seen the light. Choices are not always this simple in the West and the town make Cliff their sheriff on the grounds he eliminates El Salvador using ultimate force if necessary and then the Mexican attacks the town and kidnaps Norma…

 

I love the artwork for this promotional ad

There’s a harder edge to this film than Tumbleweeds and a more fearsome protagonist. Hart himself is playing a more faceted character and not the first nor last outlaw pardoned in exchange for enforcing law in the USA.

 

John Sweeney rode along adding much dramatic accompaniment to further restore the film’s intent. The Western genre is so endlessly fascinating, with questions of morality, loyalty and bravery that never truly grow old, much like William S Hart who one hopes, died with his cinematic boots on.

 

Another special Bioscope evening, you just don’t see these films anywhere else, certainly not on 16mm from private collections. Still London’s Silent Speakeasy as Pamela Hutchinson said way back on Silent London, and full of passionate souls who pay all due respect and reverence to these wonderful films and their history.

Photographs from the actual landrush in 1893... 

But not least... The Last of the Mohicans (1920) with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

Shortly into production of The Last of the Mohicans, Maurice Tourneur suffered an injury leaving his assistant Clarence Brown to complete the film. Brown, a one-time car salesman, had decided the Frenchman was the best director in Hollywood and in 1915 had approached him directly to teach him everything he knew as a replacement for the assistant he had just fired… By 1920 Brown was Tourneur’s right hand and he later told Kevin Brownlow that it was like receiving an Oscar when the master commented on the finished film: “not bad, Mr Brown, not bad…”

On such relationships are great films made and Kevin Brownlow, introducing this screening of his own copy, recalled having to call in a favour from Henri Langlois in order to screen the same to Clarence Brown in the 60s, the latter pointing out every scene that should have been tinted so emphatically that Kevin had to be reminded by the Bioscopes projectionist, the mighty Dave Locke, that the copy if black and white.

It mattered not as the screen comes alive when Brown and Tourneur’s vision is projected. Apparently, Maurice was none too keen on location shooting and so Clarence had already plenty of experience which shows in the action on top and against huge mountain-scapes as well as the impressive and disturbingly blood-thirsty battles scenes. This is one aspect I was not expecting and the large-scale attacks on women and children by the rogue native American tribesmen is unsettling to say the least.

But this is not your usual story of cowboys and Indians… no matter how demonised the Huron tribe is we also have “good Indians” in the form of the diminished Mohican tribe not to mention inter-racial love that is remarkable for the time and the novel even has the extra twist of Cora Munro being mixed race. The book was the second of five James Fenimore Cooper wrote in the mid-nineteenth century about the battle for supremacy between the British, the French and the native Americans and was set in 1757, during the Seven Years' War with the French army aligned with the Huron tribe in a losing battle against British dominance (but don’t worry America, 1776 is just around the corner).

Barbara Bedford and Alan Roscoe

Cora (Barbara Bedford) and Alice Munro (Lillian Hall) are the daughters of British Colonel Munro (James Gordon) who commands Fort William Henry, south of Lake George in the colony of New York. The French are planning and attack and Uncas (Alan Roscoe) – the last Mohican warrior – is sent by his father Chingachgook (Theodore Lorch) to warn the Brits… Cora is immediately taken with the handsome fellow and her useless compatriot Captain Randolph (George Hackathorne) looks on jealously.

Wallace Beery, perhaps surprisingly, plays an Indian scout Magua who, of course, has a treacherous heart and is secretly going to lead the Munro girls into the hands of his pals in the Huron tribe… all the better to get his way with Cora. It’s not just Wallace and Alan in black-face though, there’s not a single native American in the film and as Brown quipped to Brownlow, there’s one called Murphy. Obviously, Daniel Day-Lewis wasn’t yet available… although Boris Karloff was, playing an, uncredited, native.

Wallace Beery who's actual wife is just below in the feathers...

Mohicans is a classic adventure story and the film does it justice with exceptional performances from Bedford, Roscoe and Beery – he’s just so good at being bad. Brown makes light of the novel’s complexities and strips the story down whilst moving the moral issues forward. The actual events are as much a backdrop as the scenery to the three-way tussle for Cora and she makes for a brave and action-oriented hero herself.

Cyrus Gabrisch made himself at home in the great outdoors, filling the valleys with mountainous chords and propelling the action ever onwards with fleet-fingered progressions that traversed the emotions as fluidly as Uncas scaled the sheer rock walls for his love.

Time's almost up lads...

Tonight’s shorts were also from Mr Brownlow’s collection and started off with a Biograph film, By Man’s Law (1913) which featured Mae Marsh taking yet another unfortunate fall as a society girl the local do-gooders want to “rescue”. The film board of Ohio apparently complained that “the rich should not be satirised…” Oh yes, they must!

Kevin revealed the astonishing statistic that Paramount, having made 1017 silent films, only managed to preserve 37 of them… although I’m not sure how many were found in other archives and stores? This partly explains why there is only one reel remaining of the fascinating A Trip to Paramount (1922), which featured a number of well-known stars working on and promoting their films. We had Rudolph Valentino going through his paces bullfighting in Blood and Sand accompanied by Nita Naldi doing her own “torrid-adoring”, then Cecil B Demille’s Manslaughter with Leatrice Joy in the splendour of the so-far-over-the-top-they’re-back-under… Roman scenes.

Maximum plumage, Swanson Overdrive

There was Wallace Reid with a mini-version of himself driving a toy racing car and Bebe Daniels showing off a mini-Bebe dancing on the palm of her hand and then a brief glimpse of Glorious Swanson in the now lost film Her Gilded Cage. So many we recognise but others we couldn’t as their films have gone…

Meg Morley accompanied with trademark assurance and captured the confident mood of these untouchables from the era of peak-cinema, masters of mood who confidently led our hearts astray for fleeting minutes as we sat watching in the dark.

Another splendid night in the museum… thanks Bioscopers and to the Cinema Museum staff and volunteers.

For updates on the campaign to save the Cinema Museum please check out the website and, if you haven’t already done so, please sign the petition to save this precious and irreplaceable community resource!

He who gets slapped… Mockery (1927)

This was the second Hollywood film directed by the great Dane Benjamin Christensen (who made Mysterious X – his astonishing debut  - Blind Justice and the uncanny Häxan) and it has to be said that it lacks conceptual weight in comparison to his European output. That’s not only “show-business” it’s also the pressure of a studio system which expected its talent to shine through the constraints of commercial imperatives and the freedoms of a much tighter brief than UFA and Dansk-Biograf Kompagnie would have offered.

The film was panned on release but did reasonable business not least because of yet another superb performance from Lon Chaney: even when the plot is so-so, Mr Chaney can move the stoniest of hearts with the bending of his back, the slump of his shoulders and a mournful flash of his defeated eyes. His face literally collapses in pain like some great missing link between thought and expression… there’s never been anyone quite like him.

Lon Chaney

When the film was “lost” it was no doubt much coveted but its discovery in the seventies shouldn’t leave us disappointed entirely. The story is “light” for sure but I think the New York Times was a tad harsh in describing it as “…lumbering, dull-witted and, on the whole, unconvincing...” nor was Moving Picture World entirely fair in describing Lon as being “…hopelessly encumbered by the amateurishness of the plot development and handling."

Then as now, audiences voted with their feet and this one may have edged a 7 on IMDB had the primitive telephony of the twenties been able to access the internet.

Barbara Bedford and Lon Chaney

Star power and backlash… plus ca change. It’s still interesting none-the-less to see an American film dealing with the Bolshevik Revolution ten years down the line and bringing out characters on both sides: aristo’s who are good and selfish, insurgents who are the same and Chaney’s character, simple, “slow-thinking and ignorant”, Sergei who gets caught up in events mostly because he hasn’t got a friend on either side. Beyond all politics and class, he ultimately wants someone to connect with whilst all around are simply taking advantage.

The story begins with a gruesome search for food among the bodies of fallen soldiers. A peasant Sergei (Chaney) roots through the pockets and bags of the dead, searching for scraps; he finds the remnants of a chop and gnaws on the bone before spotting someone still alive. Instinctively he moves to help, offering the man some water before he drifts away in his arms.

As Sergei sees her...

He hears a call from the bushes behind and sees a pretty peasant girl (Barbara Bedford) she needs help in getting to the safety of Novokursk and offers Sergei food and, more importantly, friendship, if he will brave the threat of soldiers to get her home.

For their own safety, Sergei agrees to play the woman’s husband but when they are discovered by soldiers their commander refuses to accept that she is a peasant – her hands are too white – or that they are man and wife. He whips Sergei savagely until government troops arrive on horseback forcing them to flee.

Capt. Dimitri unable to apologise for his heart...

Sergei recovers in a military hospital while we learn his “wife’s” true identity, Countess Tatiana Alexandrova. As she waits a young officer, Capt. Dimitri (Ricardo Cortez) who has been sent to collect her, mistakes her for the peasant girl she seems and tries to flirt… shocked at discovering her true identity he utters the immortal line… “Forgive me Countess. I came to escort you to headquarters… but I cannot apologise for my heart.” Dimitri, mate, you better be one heck of a dancer because that sort of stuff just won’t wash… or will it?

Ricardo Cortez

Back in Novokursk and the twentieth century… the Countess breezes around in stylish suede and with authority regained. She is staying at the house of one of the newly-rich war profiteer Vladimir Gaidaroff (Mack Swain) and his authoritarian wife (Emily Fitzroy) which is acting as a temporary headquarters for smiley Dimitri and his regiment.

One day Sergei follows the Countess’ familiar face into the house and, after she finally recognises him, asks if she is still his friend… she is and rewards him with a position on her staff. This is not quite what the simple man was expecting and when he sees her in the arms of the handsome Captain his heart sinks.

The Countess' superiority

Sergei is jealous and he is disappointed after all he saved the Countess’ life whereas all Dimitri has ever done is smile and be charming… his frustration is refined to anger by the careful promptings of Ivan, the Gatekeeper (the brilliantly-named Charles Puffy) whose dentures say so much about his politics… One day, come the Revolution, we will be the masters and they will be the slaves… he opines whilst laughing about Sergei behind his back.

Dimitri and his troop head off to fight the revolutionaries leaving the house poorly defended and, when the action moves closer to home matters come to a nasty head: the rich run running from the poor in what looks very much like a Bolshevik Brian Rix farce.

Mack Swain

In spite of the sometimes awkward shifts from slapstick to serious, Sergei’s transformation into a vengeful revolutionary willing to bring his mistress down is actually quite shocking and confounds the expected trajectory – surely a noble death; steadfastly protecting the fragile beauty beyond his reach is what is required? But no, Sergei is out to take what he wants with no apology…

But it won’t end there – of course – and this twist saves the story in the end and leaves the audience hanging on for a more satisfactory resolution…

The direction from Christensen is efficient more than inspired but there are subtle tones in there such as the heavenly halo around the Peasant Countess’ head and Sergei’s instinctive washing of her feet: his is a biblical love and redemption can always come after a fall.

Mack Swain and Emily Fitzroy make for excellent cartoon capitalists whilst the pantomime proletariat are just as mincingly-effective.  Barbara Bedford makes for an unconvincing peasant – her hands are indeed too white but perhaps that’s the point - she’s otherwise impressively compassionate and feisty and very… neat!

Barbara Bedford: very neat

But it’s the Lon Chaney show and he acts through his make-up with the usual skill – not among his major work but if this was the only performance you’d seen, the only film left, you’d have to give it more respect than the newspaper critics of 1927.

Mockery complete with a sympathetic new score from James Schafer is available from the Warner Archive on DVD-R either direct or via Amazon.

Lon's drunk face