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? 

Brutish and short… Open All Night (1924), BFI with Meg Morley

“I hate him, he lets me do whatever I want! Why does marriage spoil men? It makes them just husbands… “

Viola Dana is another hugely successful silent film star who is not as widely recalled as her contemporary fame might have suggested. As with Mabel Normand, Norma Talmadge and even Lois Webber, she’s fallen from a collective memory dominated by those with longer – post-talkie – careers, better preserved archives and the twists of fashion. As with Pickford and Swanson, Dana was a post-Victorian waif – undernourished and frail in parts such as Children of Eve - and just about five feet in heels. But, as with Mary and Gloria she was also a very fine actress and highly adept at comedy.

In Open All Night she’s part of a splendid cast including two of the great gentlemen of sophisticated silent screwball, Raymond Griffith and Adolphe Menjou and the excellent Jetta Goudal who pretty much steals the show as Lea the aggressive lover of cycling champ Petit Mathieu (Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn). It’s an amusing rather than hilarious film, well made but with a conflicted message about love and physicality that won’t play well with most modern audiences and must have met with disapproval from some at the time: I can’t imagine my Nan putting up with any of this nonsense from any man she decided was worthy of her time… although this is a little balance at the end: big tough guys also need tough women.

“A woman may be fascinated by a brute but she can’t respect him…”

Adolphe Menjou

Set in Paris, the story is essentially about two couples at a cross-roads and we start with Mr and Mrs Duverne played by Menjou and Dana, in their splendid apartment on the Ile du France… He’s watching the couple across the way with his binoculars and she’s reading a romantic novel in an extensive scene in her bath tub. Edmund sees the attractive woman across the way being pushed around and shakes his head as he decides no man could keep a woman’s love if he treated her violently.

Meanwhile Therese, reading a book that equates rough-handling with ecstasy… goads her husband to smash the door down and force her to come out with him. Their friend Isabelle Fevre (Gale Henry) arrives with her latest escort, and American called Igor (Griffith) who is drunk and incapable… Griffith is intermittingly amusing in the film but is under-used.

Isabelle decides that her friend needs taking out of herself and that some sauce must be found for the gander with which to prick the conscience of the over-gallant goose… The conclusion of a marathon cycle race in the velodrome will provide the opportunity.

Viola Dana

At the race, local favourite Petit Mathieu is ahead of a world-class field including a continent (Africa), a country (United States) and a city (New York) … he’s a rangy fellow covered in grease who seems to tower over the rest. Director Paul Bern (yes, Jean Harlow’s tragic Paul…) films the velodrome well with Bert Glennon’s cameras at a low angle, tracking ahead or alongside the racers and generally putting the viewer in amongst it.

In the stands is his girl Lea who snarls her support and gives the films best performance with a swagger that subverts sexual/gender stereotypes mores than anything in the narrative. Hers is no cheap-shot like the reference to the sexuality of the Gendarme swooning over Igor’s signed photo, but a genuinely strong women who knows what she wants – and that is more attention from her man Mathieu.

Lea goes to the Café des Boulevards to drown her sorrows and there’s quite the scene as she downs glass after glass of Pernod or possibly Absinth while repulsing numerous polishes-but-dull men in evening suits. Edmund is impressed – he’d obviously prefer a tipsy lass with attitude to a demanding wife. The two get on and end up at the Velodrome.

“So, you want this pin-point of a woman, do you?!”

Adolphe Menjou and Jetta Goudal

By this time Therese has taken her own interest in the hunky cyclist – far taller, muscular and greasier than her husband and is applying more oils and leg massage between stages of the race. She’s not entirely sure that size matters until, inevitably, their other halves discover them… and, as Griffith valiantly attempts to squeeze out some slapstick laughs by drunkenly dancing with the arcing bikes on the track, the marriage square must resolve itself to a circle…

This was enjoyable if not hilarious as the reviews of the time seemed to suggest with  Film Daily saying: “The story is slight… Whilst the excellent characterisations and the skilful direction is important, it is a question whether or not the picture fans care sufficiently about this.”

Meg Morley’s accompaniment was a jazzed as you’d expect and she enlivened the narrative throughout with period-appropriate flourishes and the light-touch assurance you’d expect from a Kennington Bioscope alumnus!

All in all, a precious flicker for the so many now-familiar faces who starred in it.

Raymond Griffith

After the film, Viola decided to marry her cyclist “Lefty” – who was a former football player – at least up until 1929 after which she made the switch to golf with Jimmy Thomson with whom she was married to for 15 years.

Dana was not one of those who continued into sound but she was a star for twenty years and more. In January 1922, Screenland Magazine reported that she and Bebe Daniels were more popular in Japan than Mary Pickford and Mary Miles Minter. Now we have more of her films being rediscovered by modern audiences such as this one - us and it - and there’s also a new DVD for The Cossack Whip (1916) from a Kickstarter project initiated by Edward Lorusso.

Let's have more Viola (and Jetta too).

Viola Dana in The Cossack Whip (1916)

The lost world… Merton of the Movies (1924)

"This is such a good picture that we intend seeing it again at the first opportunity we have."

New York Times, September 8, 1924

Recent research from the Library of Congress has concluded that up to 75% of American films made before the advent of sound have been lost. How much does this add to the allure of silent film and do we count ourselves especially lucky to be able to watch that which survives? There’s no way of knowing how many classic have been dumped and whether what remains is almost by definition the best, the most watched and the most cherished? But, without doubt, many great films will never be seen again and many entertaining films that might have added to our appreciation of the period and its entertainments.

Aside from bemoan their loss, what can we actually do about non-extant films? Maybe the answer is to try and put them in context and to try and give them some kind of existence in memory.

Maybe, like Bradbury’s characters in Fahrenheit 451, we should all task ourselves with committing to memory at least one silent film so that it lives on in some way… maybe by drawing together the available information we can somehow resurrect them at least enough to catch a glimpse of what might-have-been and what actually-was…

Viola Dana and Glenn Hunter

Merton of the Movies is a lost film from 1924 directed by James Cruze, starring Glenn Hunter (who had earlier featured in Smilin' Through) and Viola Dana (star of many dozens of films from 1910 onwards including Children of Eve)  and which enjoyed some success being nominated as one of the top ten films of the year by the New York Times.

It was based on a 1919 book written by Harry Leon Wilson who also wrote The Ruggles of Red Gap which was later turned into a film starring Charles Laughton... In 1922, the book was adapted into a Broadway play by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly and a tie-in novel was published including stills from that production.

My copy of the 1922 edition, issued to tie in with the play's success: thanks Mary!

My friend Mary found a copy for 75c in a bookstore near where she lives in Santa Barbara and kindly sent it to me knowing it would be just my cup of tea. So now, ladies and gentlemen, I am able to re-tell the story of the book that led to the play and then onto the film and let your imaginations fill in the rest with the aid of the few shots that remain…

The book begins with some very dense, florid prose as cowboy Buck Benson does battle with one Snake le Vasquez for the honour of city girl Estelle St. Clair… you wonder if this is just aged creaky style but its Wilson’s post-modern humour poking fun at not just the movies but also our dreamy devotion to them.

Buck confronts Snake le Vasquez

 The participants turn out to be two showroom dummies and one stock room one: Merton Gill (Glenn Hunter) who whiles away his working hours daydreaming of being a western film star. He is employed by Mr Gashwiler (Charles Sellon) at his general store and is saving every penny for his big chance in Hollywood.

Merton has an ally in Tessie Kearns (Gale Henry) who writes scenarios in her spare time – none yet published – as well as accompanying Merton on frequent trips to the local movie house. He worships BB the star of dramatic serials and rather looks down on the slapstick shorts served on the undercard: real drama was worth more than laughter.

Soon Merton heads off to chance his hand with his savings and the promise of his old job back if things don’t work out - Mr Gashwiler obviously seeing nothing much to lose in the extension of such generosity…

Merton finds room and board and begins a daily routine of looking for work as an extra at the Holden Studios where BB films her serials… part-stalker, part-dreamer, you wish Merton the best but you’re not convinced he’ll get very far.

Flips buys Merton a square meal (image thanks to Jay Parrino...)

He encounters others on the fringes of the business including Mr. Montague (Charles Ogle) and his daughter Sally – nicknamed “Flips” (Viola Dana) who seems to have a finger in every pie and to know everybody and everything. Merton decides he doesn’t like her “frivolity” he prefers that movies are taken more seriously.

Wilson’s construction of cohesive inner dialogue for Merton is expert and you wonder how this could ever be translated onto the silent screen – a voice-over would help explain the young man’s nativity and an earnestness that blinds him to neuro-typical responses almost throughout the whole book.

Flips sees something in him and she persuades slapstick specialist  Jeff Baird (DeWitt Jennings) that his unflinching seriousness will have hilarious results when placed in the context of the latter’s silly comedies. Young Merton also bears more than a passing resemblance to  Harold Parmalee (Elliott Rothe), a successful and serious dramatic actor.

The formidable Flips

So it is that Merton gets into the movies thinking that he’s filming the start of a new serious strain of from the joker and his wobble-eyed cast (any resemblance to Ben Turpin is entirely deliberate…). But it’s vital that in order to be the joke, Merton mustn’t get the joke and Wilson works very hard to enable Baird’s hood-winking to succeed. His every improvised excuse for how things look is rapidly assimilated as justification for some of the extremes Merton must endure.

Things go well but Flips worries about how he’ll react when he discovers the truth… in spite of it all she’s going soft on the guy.

But Bairns thinks only good can come from being successful and even laughter is better than no applause at all… He rushes Merton into his next feature and aims to complete that before the cat is let out of the bag.

No spoilers… you can’t see the film but you really should read the book! There’s also a remake featuring Red Skelton in 1947 but it’s also fair to say that Show People owes more than a little to Merton.

Merton is so well-informed about the movies, how they’re made and how the effort in front of the camera can only truly be appreciated once all of the editing, cutting and post-production has been completed. Merton’s nights on the lot show evidence of Wilson’s depth of research and it’s especially fascinating to get a glimpse of the production process. Most of all, the attitude of the film-makers to what was already a massively successful business, is so revealing: the clichés were already in place probably a decade before the book was written.

Glenn Hunter in the play

The play was a huge success and Glenn Hunter had starred in one of the touring products. You can imagine he’d do very well in this role but Photoplay thought Charlie Ray would have been better. The New York Times was rather more enthused:

"Mr. Hunter's performance is all that could be wished. He makes Merton wistful and hopeful... While he is pathetic, he is persistent, and his frowns and smiles, his puffed-out chest and speaking eyebrows keep one constantly interested, and often stir one to hilarity."

Glenn Hunter as Merton as Buck

The Times described Viola Dana as splendid and you can imagine how she’d cope very well with the wise-cracking Flips, always addressing life on the balls of her feet – up for anything!

Ultimately, it’s hard to do anything other than imagine which bits of the 335 page novel would have informed the film and perhaps the play might provide a closer fit (it’s downloadable from the Internet Archive). But the book, as all source materials, stands on its own right and is stillavailable from Amazon. Second hand copies are also on eBay, later editions without dust-jackets are quite affordable, but a mint copy of the first edition could set you back over $2,000.

Maybe one day the celluloid will be found… it’s a slim chance but every so often, cinematic dreams do come true as Merton himself would attest.

Viola Dana in Children of Eve (1915)

Viola Dana

The New York City Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, resulted in the deaths of 146 workers most of them women and girls with some as young as eleven. The management had locked doors to the stairwells and exits in order to prevent theft – common practice at the time but a major contributor to the scale of the tragedy.

The fire gave rise to legislation providing better safety standards and various attempts to prosecute the company owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris. It also inspired the growth of organised labour and a fight for better working conditions in “sweat shops”.

Children of Eve was the first full-length feature to be directly influenced by the tragedy and is an uncompromising depiction of class divergence: the American dream and the blindness of some to the costs of ambition.

Written and directed by John H Collins for the Edison Company, it stars his wife, Viola Dana as Fifty-Fifty Mamie a woman from the New York slums who, as her name perhaps suggests… can go either way in life.

The film starts in a modest apartment block in which one Henry Clay Madison (Robert Conness) studies hard to better himself. Next door lives a good time girl called Flossy (Nellie Grant) who is an actress at the Follies who, when we first see her, is by far the worse for drink and being pursued by one of her admirers. The neighbours begin an unlikely relationship with the Christian man trying to prevent the woman from falling. 

Yet, just a he is attaining success, Flossy leaves him after deciding that she is not worthy of him and also, after what we later understand to be, getting pregnant… not such a chaste young man perhaps?

She falls deeper and deeper into the mire of poverty and after she perishes, her baby is taken for adoption.

Cut forward and we find that baby grown up as Mamie, making her way in the underside of society and mixing with crooks and felons such as her chum “The Gyp” (Tom Blake) with whom she frequents bars and low-rent dance competitions – which she often wins, her petite frames (Dana was just under five feet), allowing Gyp to throw her around most impressively!

Across town, Madison has become a huge success and immensely rich. His adopted son, Bert, is a Christian reformer who frequents the part of town in which Mamie lives, cannot change the attitude of his hard-hearted step-father. Whether the pain of Flossy’s leaving helped create this is not known but the situation can hardly be unconnected.

So far so… typical. But, where the film really begins to hit home is when Bert meets Mamie and gradually persuades her to change the course of her life. He gives her a bible and tries to persuade her to help others.

At the same time, Gyp is asking her to enjoy the craic with their pals and, shockingly, to help hide him from the law after he kills a copper.

Mamie is strong enough to choose the right path and is selected to become a factory inspector – her looks and physique making her the ideal candidate to merge in with child labour!

The film’s fateful final sequence is superbly directed by Collins and is genuinely thrilling as well as moving. A fire starts in the factory and it is soon clear that there is no where for the largely teenage workforce to easily escape to.

  

Collins positions his camera at ground level and also on a raised platform as he films the flames in what looks close to real time. The raised camera shows the front of the factory with flames and smoke belching through doors and window and then, in one horrible synchronised movement, the windows on the upper floors are all open by terrified children.

The fire-fighters arrive and work the building best they can but soon the bodies begin to pile up on the ground in front… horrific and all the more so because of the tragedy that inspired the film.

I won’t go too much into the aftermath as too much will be given away… needless to say it is unflinching and its message is clear. I know little of progressive American politics from this era but I can see that the injustice of the tragedy was widely recognised and that this film would have found wide support.

Hopefully it played some small part in helping the reformers case and the subject matter remains vital to this day with child labour still an issue in parts of the World.

Collins showed lots of energy and control in his direction and would have gone on to make many interesting movies. Sadly he lost his life in the 1918 flu pandemic.

His wife is easily the film’s standout performer. I knew nothing about Viola Dana before this film but she was a highly competent actor – not to mention dancer... with Gyp’s help! She copes with the full range of comedy to tragedy without overplaying. Not as cheeky as Pickford or as winsome as Talmadge, she nevertheless wins your sympathy from the get-go.

Dana went on to make films up until the early talkies and survived long enough to give a number of interviews about the glory days. She died in 1987 aged 90… almost 70 years after narrowly avoiding the flu which killed her husband.

The centenary of the Triangle Fire was commemorated by the Remember the TriangleFire Coalition an alliance of more than 200 organizations and individuals formed in 2008. They continue their program of education and remembrance.

  

Children of Eve is available as part of the Kino Blu-Ray set, The Devil’s Needle and Other Tales of Vice & Redemption, along with two other films… of which more anon. The print is very good for its age and there’s also extensive out-takes from the fire sequence. Kino and the Library of Congress are to be applauded for preserving such social commentary.