Train kept a rollin’… The Signal Tower (1924), Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne, San Francisco Silent Film Festival Streaming

“… so, remember… never think of anything but your duty, until the track’s clear and your train’s safe!”

I’d previously seen a screening of Kevin Brownlow’s own copy of this film with Cyrus Gabrysch accompanying ferociously at a breathless evening at the Kennington Bioscope and this was a chance to see the restored film Kevin had played a major role in constructing with the SFSFF. There were no 35mm copies and so Robert Byrne of the SFSFF, Patrick Stanbury and Mr Brownlow worked with surviving 16mm elements, scanning materials at 4k, digitally repairing and creating a new 35mm negative from which prints were struck that were then dye tinted by specialist chemists in Prague.

The results were screened at the 2019 SFSFF and are astonishingly good, crystal clear with the beauty of the Californian forests fully enhanced and the locomotives as impressively highlighted as the actors. What is it about boys and steam trains? The accompaniment from Stephen Horne, aided by Martin Pyne/Frank on percussion, brought out the full majesty of the setting and the mechanics as well as one of the most febrile of conclusions in silent film.

Virginia Valli wrote a letter to Picture Play magazine from location in Mendocino County “I’m… just about as deep into the wilds of Northern California as any picture player has ever ventured. It’s beautiful; great redwoods, the bluest sky I have ever seen and brown and yellow maple leaves lending a dash of colour to the deep green of the firs. It’s so beautiful it’s actually awe-inspiring.”

This restoration certainly confirms that former and emphasises the “awe” in terms of Clarence Brown’s setting – the entire movie was shot in situ with sets built near the railway tracks – but also his treatment of the locos. In his introduction the Bioscope event and his essay for the SFSFF festival, Brownlow emphasised Brown’s fascination with trains. Brown was an engineer by training and clearly relished filming these steam-powered giants, getting up at the crack of dawn with his cameraman, Ben F. Reynolds, to record the trains powering through the pines with steam billowing above them and into the narrow sunlight.

The company hade rented a stretch of track which had only one service a day and so were able to take their time in presenting the life of this remote outpost and, with plenty of time to stage the most explosive of life-sized stunts: no scale models were damaged in the making of this film.

You can understand Brownlow’s passion for this is a film to make the rail enthusiast’s pulse race that bit faster as this is a film to increase everyone’s BPM as Brown winds the tension to almost unbearable levels: a runaway train speeding down towards a defenceless passenger train, a signal man fighting the elements and time to dislodge the tracks and faced with the horrific dilemma of having to save the many whilst his wife is under imminent threat from a boozed-up Wallace Beery with only one thing on his mind; a very vulnerable Virginia Valli.

Rockliffe Fellows watches an actual train steam by in a signal towerpurpose built on location

Those misty Mendocino Mountains contain a signal box vital to the effective running of the railroads and manned by just two men each working twelve hour shifts. The always upstanding Rockliffe Fellowes plays one of these “Tower Men”, Dave Taylor, whose wife Sally (Virginia Valli of Wild Oranges and The Pleasure Garden fame) and young lad Sonny (Frankie Darro) live in an idyllic wooden house near the tower – three miles from the nearest town.

Dave’s partner Old Bill (James O. Barrows) is indeed old and one-handed and so is replaced by Joe Standish (Wallace Beery) a man who’s flash suit and polished shoes mark him out as self-obsessed from the start and who is referred to as a “railroad Sheik” by one of the company’s engineers.

Dave lets Joe take over old Bill’s old room and he soon sets his sights on Sally even though her cousin Gertie (Dot Farley) initially acts as a kind of shield for his unabashed “sheik-ness”. Sally sends Gertie away to pay more attention to her fiancé unwittingly removing her own last line of defence… Joe soon makes his move and Dave kicks him out.

Wallace Beery and Virginia Valli

A storm is brewing though and as events take a serious turn on the mountain, Joe arrives late and, drunk in the heart of a crisis, forces Dave to take over and, once again kick him out. But that’s not the end of Joe’s nuisance as Dave sees him heading towards his home through the wind and rain… As disaster looms he must choose between Sally’s safety and his responsibilities to protect the passengers.

Beery does his usual top-notch job – his intensity belying his lighter, more likeable edge whilst Valli was the perfect complement, with a vulnerability running alongside her desperate resolution to resist the demon in her house; the film would not work as well without her imbuing Sally with so much depth and without Beery’s ability to kid us that he’s just not going to be as bad this time. Rockliffe Fellowes meanwhile, is the perfect heroic straight man to the descending chaos, a natural straight-backed affability informing his character.

Full marks to young Darro as well, aided and abetted by Jitney the Dog.

The family under threat

Biographer Gwenda Young describes The Signal Tower as one of Brown’s most personal films and he even made an appearance as a switchman trying to stop the runaway train as well as being “Conductor Brown” the addressee of a telegram. The “home invasion” represented by Beery’s character cuts to the heart of every relationship and powerfully contrasts with the accelerating disaster without. For the many or for the crucial few?

It’s a dramatic scenario and one that required a great deal of precision musical engineering from accompanists Stephen Horne and percussionist Martin Pyne with the latter providing the locomotive power to the former’s heat and steam. Brown’s film is full of controlled rhythms and contrasts from the towering bucolic surrounds to the dynamic force of the locomotion and the wayward intensity of the human drama and the score successfully navigated this triple track escalation to the film’s pulsating closure.

For the musician, every note’s a dead man’s handle – for the train driver, everything stops if you release your grip but the music is dependent on the continuation of a thousand stabs of precise pressure: all the right notes and all in the right order with Beery’s leery menace as much a threat as the speed of those locomotives. Stephen’s themes were as strong as you’d expect and the rhythmic requirements brought out the forces pushing the ultimate dramas of family, lives and morality under threat.

So, now is exactly the right time to join the SFSFF and to experience this film which is online until the 4^th April. There’s also a collection of some previous restorations and the promise of more to come. Full details are on their website here.

A Tribute to David Shepard …. Regeneration (1915), John Sweeney, Kennington Bioscope

Rockliffe Fellowes' smiles a natural smile in Regeneration

Blessed are the restorers for without them we know not what we would miss… Chief amongst all of these, as that other great preserver Kevin Brownlow readily admits, was David Shepard who, sadly, passed away a few months ago.

Without David Shepard we’d have missed hundreds of films and he even played his part in helping Mr Brownlow restore Napoleon as well as having produced a four and a half hour restoration of Gance’s La Roue. He was, as Kevin said in his introduction, a “buccaneer” and a man of immense generosity as well as determination.

Tonight’s Bioscope was by way of a tribute to Mr Shepard and Kevin Brownlow regaled us with stories of their encounter with Miriam Cooper – who loaned them the only copy of her still-in-progress biography which they dutifully read out onto tape overnight before returning it to her in the morning. So many biographies never made it to print and these two were that anxious not to miss out... Miriam's wonderfully-acidic Dark Lady of the Silents did however make it to press.

David Shepard

On another occasion the boys were less lucky when taking their pick of a pile of unwatched nitrate, Kevin chose the Louise Brooks’ film The City Gone Wild (1927) – directed by James Cruze - which showed signs of decay and so was consigned to a watery grave by an over-zealous archivist… on such fleeting moments does eternity turn.

An excerpt was shown of the gorgeous Maurice Tourneur Lorna Doone; death on the beach as young Lorna is kidnapped by the ruthless Doones, all set in silhouette against the falling night-time sky, dynamic horse chases along impossible cliff paths and the frustrated rage of her would be young saviour who would spend half a lifetime finding his love again.

Shepard’s favourite silent film was Henry King’s T’olerable David and yet he was passionate about so much from the silent era investing a huge amount of time in producing an award-winning documentary on the role of silent film in the Great War. An excerpt from his film The Moving Picture Boys in the Great War (1975) was shown with Pickford, Fairbanks and Chaplin finally being mobilised to encourage American support for the war at a crucial juncture. The film was dedicated to Erich von Stoheim the Austrian who portrayed so many monacled Germans, helping to solidify an image of those who were to become the implacable enemy. Miriam later described Erich as "a foul-mouthed, terrible man", but she didn't always note the best in people...

This was the time when Hollywood grew strongest and cinema in the warzones suffered, the dream machine which benefited also did its best to help.

Our main film was Raoul Walsh’s genuine classic, Regeneration (1915) a film with an authentic feel even from the man his future ex-wife, Miriam Cooper, would say “never bored you with the truth…” Long believed lost, the film was found in a Milwaukee basement and restored by Shepherd to reveal a work Brownlow says is “head and shoulders” above any other crime film of the period. Walsh was to go on to “fulfil his potential” in this genre with talkies such as The Roaring Twenties (1939), but it all began here with an almost forensic realism.

Actual onlookers in Regeneration

Based on Owen Kildare’s autobiographical My Mamie Rose the film used actual locations and indeed actual hoodlums, prostitutes and other non-professionals – at least of an acting kind. This adds a roughness especially when contrasted with the sophistication of dreamy Anna Q. Nilsson, the Marie 'Mamie Rose' Deering who will inspire Owen – Conway not Kildare – to break with his criminal past and look for salvation.

Walsh cast well and whilst we have three Owen’s showing him at different ages, he found a real gem in Rockliffe Fellowes who plays him as an adult. Fellowes has an edgy presence and is one of those actors who looks out of time passing for mid-century method-Brando or even a modern-day stylist: he just is and is so relaxed in front of the camera and in his part that you hardly notice he’s acting.

I’ve previously raved about Regeneration and you can read all about it here if you want the chapter and verse.

A harsh upbringing for Owen

It’s a gem and whilst it clearly shows the influence of his previous employer, DW Griffith, Walsh was on his own journey and the story is there for the watcher to judge for himself; with residual shades of grey in Owen that you maybe wouldn’t find in Griffith?

Even District Attorney Ames (Carl Harbaugh) has an angle and that’s very much Marie but she sees beyond him and Owen’s desperate background to the man and his potential for good. Yes there’s a bit of religion but that was a common benchmark for good in the days before social media and opinion polls.

Rockliffe Fellowes and Anna Q Nilsson

To add to the cinema verite feel, the camera moves impressively in some scenes revealing the full extent of situation economically and reminding the audience of our safe remove… But when his former lieutenant Skinny (William Sheer) knifes a copper, his old world threatens to suck Owenback in and the true test of his faith and Marie’s belief in him comes. It’s not as neat as you might expect.

Tonight Kevin Brownlow shared his 35mm copy – obtained from David Shephard – and so there were no tints as on the 1995 David Shepard restoration most currently available on DVD. This mattered not as the print was very good quality.

“… this girl o’ mine …her soul, the noblest and purest thing I ever knew…”

We also had excellent accompaniment from Mr John Sweeney on piano who matched the film’s dramatic subtlety with his own restrained themes moving in perfect sympathy with the story from start to finish. I am sure David Shepard would have relished both the playing and the projection; one of so many films that will live on as a result of his passion and commitment.

There's an lovely obituary from Pamela Hutchison on the BFI site with a clip of Kevin Brownlow talking about his preservationist pal.

Mean streets… Regeneration (1915)

Raoul Walsh shot President Lincoln twice in his role as John Wilkes Booth and also as assistant director to DW Griffith on The Birth of a Nation. Within a few months he was directing his own feature and one that showed plenty of influences from his experience.

Regeneration is full of close-ups, dolly shots, juxtapositions, multiple and parallel narrative strands and a basket of cats that may or may not foreshadow what’s to come. He obviously learned quickly but the flair on display was all his own including his ability to get the best of a cast of professional and non-acting participants.

Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Skinny?

Regeneration is often described as the first gangster film but whilst I’m not sure on that it is certainly an attempt at realism way beyond some American contemporaries. Filmed on location in New York City, down on the docks and in the Bowery (before CBGBs livening things up…) it provides a precious view of the darker side of Manhattan enlivened by the appearance of actual member s of the criminal classes: drunks, punks and prostitutes.

Over the roofs of New York

Remarkably, Regeneration is also based on My Mamie Rose: The Story of My Regeneration (1903) an autobiographical book by one Owen Frawley Kildare who had been orphaned early in life and brought up the hard way first by abusive adopted parents and then using his own wits, made his way as a gangster until the chance for redemption came in a relationship with a Settlement House worker – Mamie Rose.

Spot the actors

Kildare’s version of his life has been challenged but there’s no denying the grit and darker edges  which permeate the cinematic interpretation.  It’s not just the locations and the extras that are tough, the story doesn’t go easy with the viewer either.

The boy's view of his mother's hearse

Walsh works his way through his characters’ formative years with economy and three actors… the ten year old Owen Conway (John McCann) is shown on the day of his mother’s funeral and there’s a moving point of view shot as he looks in sad shadows out of the window down onto the sunlit hearse carrying her body.

Mr and Mrs Conway have a disagreement

He is taken in by neighbours, the battling Conways – Maggie (Maggie Weston) and her abusive alcoholic husband Jim (James A. Marcus). For a while Owen dodges his way between their everyday conflicts but Jim just gets worse leaving him no option but to leave.

Owen grows up a fighter

Moving on to seventeen, Owen (Harry McCoy) is now working on the docks and stepping up to protect a disabled co-worker from abuse. He defeats the bully and gains the loyalty of the victim as well as the local hoods. By the time he’s a man, the superbly-monikered Rockliffe Fellowes, he’s head of a gang and looking a little like a young Marlon Brando: cock of the walk and yet with a warmth around the eyes… It’s surprising that Fellowes didn’t go onto to greater things as he gives a really excellent performance here.

Rockliffe Fellowes

Up 2nd Avenue 50 blocks or so and there’s a man who wants to eradicate the hoodlum problem – new District Attorney Ames (Carl Harbaugh) who has risen on a platform openly condemning the underworld. He entertains guests with talk of the dark side including Marie Deering (Anna Q. Nilsson – the Q standing for Quirentia) who is excited by all this talk of gangsters and would like to meet one.

Anna Q and Carl Harbaugh

Be careful what you wish for Marie… Ames can’t resist showing off and takes his party to Grogan’s Theatre. There’s more interesting work from Walsh as Owen’s table is shown enjoying the theatre alternated with the more civilised dining of Ames. Grogan’s has some fascinating acts from a trio of rag-time singers to a dancer and acrobats: genuine off-Broadway variety from 1915.

Good times at Grogan's

The focus shifts from the stage once the posh party arrives and, catching Marie’s imploring eye, Owen has to step in to prevent Ames being ruffed up by some of his delinquent targets. It’s a pivotal meeting of worlds though as Marie resolves to help the poor and Owen has seen a glimpse of wholesome beauty that will inspire him to better himself… in time.

Owen to the rescue

Marie joins the Settlement Movement and aims to help the destitute and disadvantaged better themselves through education, religion and respect – it’s the kind of stuff UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, still has dreams about.

“A new world – wherein Owen finds, education, inspiration and love…”

Owen becomes involved after a reformed member of his gang suggest he will be effective in intervening in a domestic situation involving the fighting Flanagan family (why always the Irish!?) who have a father very drunk in charge of a baby.  Marie goes to ask his help and dropping all at a no doubt vital card game he goes and impresses Pa Flanagan with the force of his argument delivered in the case by a straight right…

Marie persuades Owen to lay down his can of beer

Owen is pleased with his intervention and loves the atmosphere at the Settlement along with the attention he gets from the electric-eyed Marie… Soon he leaves the gang to Skinny and attempts to gain enlightenment and Marie’s heart.

But this cosy scene cannot remain undisturbed for ever: District Attorney Ames has his eye on this interloper who has seemingly stolen his Marie’s heart whilst Skinny and the boys are never likely to stay sensible for ever… Will the past catch up with Owen and Marie?

Flashpoint

“… this girl o’ mine …her soul, the noblest and purest thing I ever knew…”

The version I saw was from Image Entertainment and came with a considered new musical setting by Philip Carli from the 1995 David Shepard restoration…. It doesn’t match Griffith for length or actual invention but it tells this wholesome melodrama well and is unflinching in its own way. The gangster films to follow would not all be so careful in the moral  balance of their narratives.

The Signal Tower (1924) with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

Kevin Brownlow was in his element, retelling the tale of his pursuit of this print of The Signal Tower over many years with a recalcitrant collector, a self-made millionaire builder with a penchant for train films and fifties American TV shows. Mr Brownlow finally won over the covetous constructioneer who released his grip in the face of unrelenting enthusiasm and graciously agreed to pass on the treasure and all of his collection in his will.

You can understand the man’s own passion for this is a film to make the rail enthusiast’s pulse race that bit faster in fact, this is a film to increase everyone’s BPM as Clarence Brown winds the tension to almost unbearable levels: a runaway train speeding down towards a defenceless passenger train, a signal man fighting the elements and time to dislodge the tracks and faced with the horrific dilemma of having to save the many whilst his wife is under imminent threat from a boozed up Wallace Beery with only one thing on his mind with a very vulnerable Virginia Valli…

Rockliffe Fellowes and Frankie Darro

It’s a dramatic scenario and one that required a great deal of sinuous dexterity from accompanist Cyrus Gabrysch who provided the emotive musical fuel for this clash of metal, man and machines: a run-away pianist who matched the film beat for beat. For the musician every note’s a dead man’s handle – for the train, everything stops if you release your grip but the music is dependent on a thousand stabs of precise pressure: all the right notes and in the right order with Beery’s leery menace as much a threat as the speed of those locomotives.

The Signal Tower is a film of contrasts with glorious pastoral scenes of engine steam drifting through the mountainous woodlands being very reminiscent of Brown’s mentor Maurice Tourneur – the man KB reminded us he had approached for a job having virtually no experience: the former car salesman promising that he would become the perfect disciple an act of hutzpah that began the career of the man who would eventually direct so many Greta Garbo films.

Rockliffe Fellowes

Those misty mountains contain a signal box vital to the effective running of the railroads and manned by just two men each working twelve hour shifts. The splendidly-named, Rockliffe Fellowes plays one of those “Tower Men”, Dave Taylor, whose wife Sally (Virginia Valli of Wild Oranges and The Pleasure Garden fame) and young lad Sonny (Frankie Darro) live in an idyllic wooden house near the tower – three miles from the nearest town.

Dave’s partner Old Bill (James O. Barrows) is indeed old and one-handed and so is replaced by Joe Standish (Wallace Beery) a man who’s flash suit and polished shoes mark him out as self-obsessed from the start and who is referred to as a “railroad Sheik” by one of the company’s engineers.

Dave lets Joe take over old Bill’s old room and he soon sets his sights on Sally even though her cousin Gertie (Dot Farley) initially acts as a kind of shield for his unabashed “sheik-ness”. Sally sends Gertie away to pay more attention to her fiancé unwittingly removing her own last line of defence… Joe soon makes his move and Dave kicks him out…

A storm is brewing though and as events take a serious turn on the mountain, Joe arrives late and drunk in the heart of a crisis – forcing Dave to choose between Sally’s safety and his responsibilities to protect the passengers. In the wind and rain the family pull together as the tension bore down on the audience… we applauded long and loud relief expressed clearly in every clap of hands.

Wallace Beery and Virginia Valli

Beery does his usual top notch job – his intensity belying his lighter, more likeable edge whilst Valli was the perfect complement, resolution that cuts through febrile emotional response. Rockliffe Fellowes is the perfect heroic straight man to the chaos all around whilst young Darro plays well aided and abetted by Jitney the Dog.

A massive tip of the hat to cinematographer Ben F. Reynolds who had previously worked on Greed – no higher recommendation is necessary.

Jitney the Dog is on the right.

On the under card were a trio of curios from Mr Brownlow’s celluloid cellar… which broadly matched the themes of the main film.

First up was a British pastoral documentary A Day with the Gypsies (1920) directed and photographed by Cecil Hepworth. The film was a little treat featuring some lovely shots of twenties Sussex countryside although the location is uncertain and so felt they saw Kent?

A John Ford film was next, a confusing comedy called By Indian Post (1919) in which a love letter from gets stolen from Jode MacWilliams (famous Irish-American cowboy actor Pete Morrison) by a fellow ranch hand and only arrives at its intended target with the help of a native American called Two Horns much to the delight of intended target Peg Owens (Magda Lane).

The prelims were concluded with breathless final reel of The Lucky Devil (1925) featuring Richard Dix racing car number 13 to victory in a wacky race of relentless pace…  John Sweeney accompanied all three and may well have broken the speed limit on this last film.

Another splendid Wednesday evening in Kennington and, whilst here's a rough copy of The Signal Tower on Youtube and a cheap DVD available from Alpha on Amazon - neither will compare to seeing the film projected on screen...