Smile… Kennington Bioscope Silent Laughter Weekend 2022, Day One, Cinema Museum

 

Sitting in the Cinema Museum, it’s like we’ve never been away and yet… those communal laughs feel fresher, the films more visceral and the accompaniment, richer and more poignant than ever. There were tears as well as laughter and a fulsome amount of surprises… reputations restored to living memory as well as reanimated shadows on screen. A reminder also that even films you are familiar with carry additional weight when viewed on the big screen with an audience and with live accompaniment.

 

Buddy and Mary

My Best Girl (1927) with Costas Fotopoulos

Mary Pickford’s last silent film, My Best Girl, is also one of her best and, famously, features her romancing future husband Charles “Buddy” Rogers. It’s romantic comedy of the highest order, pulling at the heartstrings as one of the masters of cinema runs through her gears form slapstick to the most intensely dramatic closing sequence that, as I fully expected, brought a tear to my eye. Can you see Mary falling in love with Buddy during this film? Maybe… but it was also her day job and to see her in her mid-thirties, playing her age, is a delight.

My Best Girl’s cinematographer was Charles Rosher who deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography, he lost it for this but won it for Sunrise and, there were moments such as the opening montage and the emotional scenes amongst the traffic when you were reminded of the earlier film.

Costas Fotopoulos provided spirited accompaniment of his own tapping into rich romantic and dramatic themes as well as tripping the comedy lightly and fantastically through the pots and pans, family rows and cultural clashes as the poor little shop girl wins the heart of the poor big rich boy. Peak Bioscope!!

Walter and the runaway tank... plus two pigs.

 

Would You Believe it? (1929) with Lillian Henley

Walter Forde’s last silent film is packed with inventive routines: a baby and a doll mix up in the toy store, serving up toy soldiers just like chips on newspaper with oil for gravy and trying to wrap balloons in brown paper for a bespectacled Rees-Mogg-esque junior toff. Forde’s an inventor, he’s not sure what of, but it seems to work until it blows his landlord’s house up. He gets a job in a toy shop and meets a rather attractive young woman Pauline (Pauline Johnson) who just happens to work for the War Office, he invites her for dinner cooked by his uppity roommate, Cuthbert (Arthur Stratton) who, in a constant battle of wills, refuses to act the role of his butler.

Walter’s invention of a remote-control tank could be a game-changer but a group of spies finds out and set’s off to stop him demonstrating the kit to the Minister for War. Their leader is modelled on a similar mastermind in Fritz Land’s Spies and sits at a huge desk, pushing buttons for everything he needs, drinks, photographs, cigarette and lighters… the first but not last time, I was reminded of Wallace and Gromit on the day’s programme.

A super spy and his target

There’s a very funny bit of business on the Underground as the baddies chase Walter up lifts and down emergency spiral staircases in scenes reminiscent of Keaton in The Cameraman and elsewhere. The gags are mostly good and Forde controls events enough to not interrupt the broader narrative.

He gets his chance to demo for the Minister but the enemy agents kidnap him and Pauline, and, as Walter pushes his pal Cuthbert too far, the real-life tank runs amok to comic effect. The filmmakers were clearly delighted to get the loan of kit and crew and it shows with crushed cars, walls and buildings to show for it.

Forde later went on to direct the legendary Arthur Askey in The Ghost Train, his sense of comic timing and seamless story advancement was to stand him in good stead in his long career behind the camera.

 

Rediscovering Roscoe with Steve Massa and Lillian Henley

The second programme was a video essay from film historian Steve Massa who gave an overview of the unfairly maligned Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle based on his recent book. Roscoe was an exceptional talent who understood cinematic comedy better than most using his expressive wit, supernatural timing and extraordinary athleticism to become one of the leading players in the 1910s. Steve discussed numerous examples of Roscoe’s comic invention, quick fire physical comedy which exhibited his grace and timing and his ability to fall headfirst and backwards in a 180-degree flop.

Roscoe enjoyed a successful run of seventeen films with Mabel Normand at Keystone and worked with Chaplin, Lloyd and his nephew, Al St John before setting up his own production company, Comique Film Corporation, with Joseph Shenk (Mr Norma Talmadge) in 1917. Steve showed a clip from the company’s first film, The Butcher Boy (1917) which also introduced a young vaudeville performer by the name of Keaton.

Of course, Roscoe’s life was turned upside down by his unjust prosecution for the death of Virginia Rappe, but even before he was completely exonerated, he carried on working with Buster in Sherlock Jr and other films. He stayed active and made a successful series of shorts in the early thirties that as Steve said, left his life on the up…

There was a full screening for His Wife’s Mistake (1916), one of Arbuckle’s best starring shorts, with Al St John. There was swinging piano accompaniment from Lillian Henley who caught the mood as always and syncopated perfectly with the pandemonium on screen.

 

Almost Lost Laughs… Charley’s Bowers and Chase plus EE Horton, Meg Morley

 

Charlie Bowers' house...

Many a Slip (1927) The Non-slip Banana

This was the inventive Charley Bowers at his most surreal, struggling to invent a non–slip banana peel at the behest of a potential rich benefactor. As with Walter Forde, Bowers is an inventor in search of a cause and he finds it when offered the seemingly impossible task of removing that staple slippiness from Slapstick’s most valuable fruit.

This being Bowers, the cause of the slippiness was not the texture of the skin but tiny bugs only viewable through one of his “Pat Pending” tele-microscopes. Cue a series of Bower’s amazing stop-motion animations along with repeated efforts to go the long way round in order to test the solution. As Matthew Rose, who runs The Lost Laugh digital magazine and website, pointed out Bowers may not have been the best comedic performer but he was an extraordinary animator and film director. Many a Slip is great fun and it’s good news that more of Bowers’ work is being found and released on home media by Lobster Films.

There’s an article on Charley from Matthew on his site here.

 

Stan is the best lawyer Charley can afford...

Now I’ll Tell One (1927) when Ollie met Stan and Charley

Before they were officially a team, Laurel and Hardy feature in a few films together including this one, which features more of the former as Charley Chase’s lawyer in an outlandish divorce case. Charley’s wife is played by Edna Marion who accuses him of all kinds of outrageous crimes against her, including having shot her dead. Quick as a flash Stan the Lawyer asks how this could be given that she is still alive, only to provide her with an unlikely explanation; “perhaps the bullet hit a bible you kept over your heart. It’s typical Chase, fast paced, comedically vindictive and stylishly silly. In addition to being a legal loose cannon, Stan also dismantles clocks and watches… and I still don’t know why. Every lawyer needs a hobby.

Horton hopes for a honeymoon?

 

Dad’s Choice (1928)

Edward Everett Horton (forgotten until recently as a silent star) made a series of highly polished two reelers at the end of the silent period before establishing himself in talkies for the next two decades. He’s another class act and plays it earnestly deadpan through this comedy of manners, as he tries to elope with his sweetheart (Sharon Lynn) whose father (Otis Harlan) certainly does not approve of the match. There’s a lovely confusion between Charlie and his girl’s mother (Josephine Crowell) who keeps on been presented with accidental winks and other signals that she’s the one he’s after.

It's very polished and Horton shows all the comic calm that made him a staple of such later classics as Top Hat, Arsenic and Old Lace and The Ghost Goes Wild. Again, there’s a set of his comedies out on Blu-ray this time from Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions - link here!

 

Meg Morley accompanied all three films in slightly different styles, responding with an effortless range of themes and tempos to suit the rhythms of the comedy on screen. A jazz player perfectly suited to the jazzed action on screen.

 

Unfortunately, I was then called away by a prior appointment at the Royal Albert Hall and so I missed the Harry Langdon in Frank Capra’s The Strong Man (1926) – his first film as director - with more Meg and then the headlining Harold Lloyd in Safety Last! (1923) accompanied by John Sweeney.  One of the all-time classics of silent comedy and the Fourth Musketeer of twenties male comedians. I’ve seen the Lloyd film and will catch up with the other Harry later on… he made some great films with Capra writing including Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) with Joan Crawford, and was on a roll to rival even the Big Three… the more the merrier.

 

Good to have the laughter days back at the Bioscope and, as the Cinema Museum’s future now looks assured in Kennington, here’s to many more!

 

AND, this is why bananas are so slippy...

And why mice truly are the smartest species on Earth... Charley Bowers was there first!

When Buddy met Mary … My Best Girl (1927)

This was Mary Pickford’s last silent film and was produced at the technical high point of the form with Sam Taylor directing and Charles Rosher’s camera generating those smooth “european trick shots” Hollywood had come to love. Like all films of the late period, they feel more modern than they should do given our exposure to the dulled ice age of early talkies which left events stuck in studio, actors huddled around immobile microphones… But here, the camera swoops, travels on speeding motorcars and, most importantly, shows us two people falling in love.

Whether or not the two stars began their relationship with this film is open to debate and it would be a full ten years before they tied the knot to begin their 42-year marriage, but it feels like it.

The future Mrs and Mr Pickford...

Now, for the sums… Mary Pickford was 35 – just a little older than Zooey Dechannel and a little younger than Amy Adams – and still able to carry off the shop girl ingénue. Charles “Buddy” Rogers was just 22… considerably younger than Mary’s hubby Douglas Fairbanks who was 44 at the time.

Regardless of the events off-set, the film stands as one of Pickford’s best and most enduring: a thousand rom-coms have followed in its footsteps including those still featuring Zooey and Amy.

Pots and pans

Pickford produced and it’s hard not to imagine that she also co-directed parts of the film. Our first glimpse of her is of her feet as she attempts to carry too numerous a collection of pots and pans in the department store in which she works. As one pan is picked up another falls to the floor until she has to resort to sticking her feet in them to lift them along – it’s inventively daft and shows us all we need to know about the brave and gutsy shop girl, Maggie Johnson.

Maggie works in Merril’s Department Store – I have a penchant for films set in 1920s department stores: think of Clara Bow in It! or Brent and Brooks in Love ‘em and Leave ‘em… places where society mixes almost on a level and where there’s always the possibility of unexpected dalliances across the class divide.

Are you being served?

A young man sidles up to Maggie’s counter and starts to ask her flirty questions about the various items for sale… turns out he’s the new guy 'Joe' Grant (Rogers) who eventually gets assigned to Maggie for ad hoc induction to the world of the store.

The two get on well and soon share their lunchtimes sitting cosy in a packing crate in the staff room. It is here where we see Mary’s first prolonged screen kiss: a side-on affair that conveys much delicate passion.

Maggie invites Joe home, where he gets to meet the family: Pa Johnson (Lucien Littlefield) a man disorientated by the curious position in which life has left him, not least of which is his easily-shocked and narcoleptic wife (Sunshine Hart) whom he frequently has to rouse with smelling salts.

Then there’s sister Liz (Carmelita Geraghty) a jazz baby hanging around with decidedly-dodgy men and, as a result, in constant conflict with her parents.

Sunshine Hart, Carmelita Geraghty, Mary, Pat Harmon and Lucien Littlefield

Maggie is ashamed of their bad humour and pretends that they are rehearsing for a play, leaving Joe waiting on their porch for their first date.

But she’s not the only one hiding something… “Joe” is actually Joseph, the son and heir to the Merrill fortune who has been assigned to the shop by his father Robert (Hobart Bosworth) in order to learn the business without his name giving him advantage.

His mother Esther (Evelyn Hall) also has ambitions and wants to see him married off to the winsome and wealthy Millicent Rogers (Avonne Taylor). Joe doesn’t appear to have any strong feelings about this social arrangement, at least not yet at any rate.

Buddy Rogers

Joe does well at the store and is soon being promoted but he’s also getting closer and closer to Maggie. To two spend a blissful journey in the back of a truck after walking through traffic as if it wasn’t there: totally absorbed in each other’s presence. This section reminded me strongly of the closing sequence of Sunrise (made some months earlier…) with the couple walking through the staged street traffic…

Joe and Maggie go on a rain-sodden date as he ignores his parent’s request to dine with them – they are planning to announce his engagement. He persuades Maggie to venture to the Merrill’s house to see if the family’s oft-pronounced equal treatment would extend to their being offered dinner.

Winking his way past the doorman and butlers he gets them to lay on a meal whilst Maggie looks around in nervous amazement: even more delighted by her dazzling young man than before. But, they are rudely interrupted by Joe’s parents as they arrive back home with the decorative Millicent in tow… the game’s up!

Meanwhile, Liz’ fella has really dropped her in it and they are being processed before the night court. Unable to contact the brains of the family, the Johnson’s are helpless to prevent their younger daughter from being locked up.

As luck would have it, Maggie, having tearfully made her excuses and left, encounters Ma and Pa downtown as they enter the court: she goes into battle for her sister in front of a Judge played by Mack Swain.

But Joe isn’t done yet and goes out in search of his “best girl” – he’s not going to be swayed. A helpful hobo spots events and directs him to the court where he is in time to see Maggie’s eloquent defence and to end up in clink after thumping Liz’s no good boyfriend.

Maggie brings order to the court

It makes the papers and there’s a big stink but, will class barriers be broken and will true love run smooth… We been here before my friends and I have no intention of revealing what happens.
 
My Best Girl is a lovely film and one to file under heart-warming. Rogers is good in the same way he was in Wings: wholehearted and sincere… my teenage daughter recognised those regular features instantly!

But he’s not the one you watch. It’s Mary’s show and she demonstrates an undimmed intensity with a face and a voice that can almost be heard… so close is she to the talkies. She performs particularly well in the ending section I’m not mentioning and there was hardly a dry eye in our living room: how can she do that when we can almost see it coming!? Amazing skill: a wizard and a true star!

The look of love...

I watched the Milestone DVD which comes with some precious home movie footage showing Mary and Buddy’s wedding and their honeymoon – a nice touch. Whatever the ups and downs of the decades to follow this was one of those Hollywood marriages built to last. It may have started here in front of our very eyes.

My Best Girl is available direct for institutional use from Milestone or from Amazon’s second hand sellers – seems it’s out of print and becoming collectable. Hopefully the good folks at Milestone have a Blu-ray in the works, this is indeed amongst the very best of Pickford.

Trivia: Carole Lombard has an uncredited appearance as a Flirty Salesgirl whilst Charles Rosher deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography. He shot so many of Pickford’s films not to mention his other projects with Herr Murnau.

Carole Lombard and Buddy