Guide to the Silent Years of American Cinema (Reference Guides to the World's Cinema)

GUIDE TO THE SILENT YEARS OF AMERICAN CINEMA

Reference Guides to the World's Cinema Guide to the Cinema of Spain Marvin D'Lugo Guide to American Cinema, 1965-1995 Daniel Cur ran Guide to African Cinema Sharon A. Russell Guide to American Cinema, 1930-1965 Thomas R. Whissen

GUIDE TO THE SILENT YEARS OF AMERICAN CINEMA DONALD W. MCCAFFREY AND CHRISTOPHER P. JACOBS

Reference Guides to the World's Cinema Pierre L. Horn, Series Adviser

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McCaffrey, Donald W. Guide to the silent years of American cinema / Donald W. McCaffrey and Christopher P. Jacobs. p. cm.—(Reference guides to the world's cinema, ISSN 1090-8234) Includes bibliographical references, filmographies, and index. ISBN 0-313-30345-2 (alk. paper) 1. Silent films—United States—History and criticism. I. Jacobs, Christopher P., 1954- . II. Title. III. Series. PN1995.75.M33 1999 791.43'09—dc21 99-10111 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 1999 by Donald W. McCaffrey and Christopher P. Jacobs All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-10111 ISBN: 0-313-30345-2 ISSN: 1090-8234 First published in 1999 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

@r The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We dedicate this book to our parents, Francis and Dorothy Jacobs and John and Maude McCaffrey

This page intentionally left blank

CONTENTS

Series Foreword by Pierre L. Horn

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction

xiii

The Development of the Cinema: From Scientific Novelty to a New Art and Entertainment Industry by Christopher P. Jacobs Films and Filmmakers

1 15

The Legacy of the Silent Screen and the Birth Pangs of the Sound Film by Donald W. McCaffrey

305

Appendix: 160 Additional Films and Filmmakers of Note from the Silent Era 319 Selected Bibliography 323 Index

327

Photo essays follow pages 14 and 304.

This page intentionally left blank

SERIES FOREWORD

For the first time, on December 28, 1895, at the Grand Cafe in Paris, France, the inventors of the Cinematographe, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, showed a series of eleven two-minute silent shorts to a public of thirtyfive people each paying the high entry fee of one gold Franc. From that moment, a new era had begun, for the Lumiere brothers were not only successful in their commercial venture, but they also unknowingly created a new visual medium quickly to become, throughout the world, a half popular entertainment, half sophisticated art of the cinema. Eventually, the contribution of each member of the profession, especially that of the director and the performers, took on enormous importance. A century later, the situation remains very much the same. The purpose of Greenwood's Reference Guides to the World's Cinema is to give a representative idea of what each country or region has to offer to the evolution, development, and richness of film. At the same time, because each volume seeks to present a balance between the interests of the general public and those of students and scholars of the medium, the choices are by necessity selective (although as comprehensive as possible) and often reflect the author's own idiosyncrasies. Andre Malraux, the French novelist and essayist, wrote about the cinema and filmmakers: "The desire to build up a world apart and selfcontained, existing in its own right . . . represents humanization in the deepest, certainly the most enigmatic, sense of the word." On the one hand, then, every Guide explores this observation by offering discussions, written in a jargon-free style, of the motion-picture art and its practitioners, and on the other provides much-needed information, seldom available in English, including filmographies, awards and honors, and ad hoc bibliographies. Pierre L. Horn Wright State University

This page intentionally left blank

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to acknowledge the excellent work of Joann McCaffrey and Dorothy Jacobs in the proofreading and preparation of the manuscript. Also, the Fogelson Library of the College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico, for its cinema collection that has added a great deal to researching the "Legacy of the Silent Screen . . ." concluding chapter.

This page intentionally left blank

INTRODUCTION

This one-volume critical survey of key films, actors, directors, and screenwriters focuses on the silent era of the American cinema from its development in the last decade of the nineteenth century to the birth of sound film in the late 1920s. An introductory chapter explores the early growth of the infant art medium while the final chapter of this encyclopedic study examines the sophistication of the silent cinema in the final decade of film before the arrival of what were called at the time "talking pictures." These two chapters are distinctive features not found in the usual directory or compilation on the cinema. They provide an outline of film history from its beginnings until the perfection of synchronized sound, and a reflection on how themes and techniques established by the silent cinema were continued into the sound era through modern times. Between these two chapters is an alphabetic directory of films and personnel, including brief bibliographies and filmographies of varying scope. The reader might wish to explore both the first and last chapters before examining the essays that provide the bulk of the authors' evaluation. While the essays, with their abundance of facts and figures, represent the reader's main resource feature of this book, there is a strong focus on the nature and quality of the films. Most of our concentration on individual movies has been on the silent narrative feature picture, generally accepted to be four or more reels in length, produced mainly between 1912 and 1929. Many of the discussions of films and filmmakers include additional historical background on film production, trends of the time, or business practices during the silent era. The authors stress the contribu-

XIV

INTRODUCTION

tions of actors, directors, and screenwriters to the development and future of the film art. With its combination of key data and subjective interpretations in one place, we hope that this work will be a useful addition to the reference shelves of film historians, as well as a good introduction to the period for students and casual readers. In a concise encyclopedic work of this size, it is inevitable that many difficult choices must be made as to who and what will be included. In some cases, separate entries have been avoided when a film or person is discussed under another entry. An appendix lists additional notable films and persons, with some basic data. Thus, despite the book's alphabetical arrangement, the index will prove a useful tool for finding additional information. We have tried to balance the important late silent period of 1924-29 with significant discussion of films and personnel from the 1910s, especially the time during and right after World War I. The period from 1890 through the First World War is a rich field for further research. Likewise there is much yet to discover about various types of short films throughout both the silent and sound eras, including comedies, dramas, newsreels, animated cartoons, and documentaries. With a few exceptions, persons who worked in both silent and sound films but achieved their greatest prominence after the coming of sound have been omitted. Those exceptions (such as John Ford, Henry King, and Raoul Walsh) had extensive and notable silent careers. Separate entries on a number of foreign-born directors active in Hollywood have also been omitted from this volume. Directors Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, Paul Leni, Maurice Tourneur, and Victor Seastrom, for example, receive initial prominence in their native countries. However, the influence of some of their techniques and approaches to dramatic material is noted in the introductory and concluding chapters, as well as certain film essays. The authors of this guide focus strongly on such prominent filmmakers of the silent era as D. W. Griffith, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Cecil B. DeMille, Lon Chaney, Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and William S. Hart. These directors and actors had unusually close control of their film productions, and can be credited with significant innovations for the medium during the silent period. The evaluators recognize the faults and accomplishments of various film artists and try to put both in proper perspective, notably with directors, D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. These two filmmakers have a substantial body of surviving work available for analysis. A variety of other creators have been evaluated in order to show the reader the full range of cinema in these two main decades of the silent screen, the 1910s and 1920s. Stars gave dimension to their films by their distinctive acting styles and personalities. Directors developed the art in

INTRODUCTION

xv

its formative years. While the most discerning film evaluators often overlook the importance of the screenwriter, this skill early on became fundamental for a superior film. Four women —Anita Loos, Jeanie Macpherson, Frances Marion, and June Mathis — proved to be among the most prolific writers of the silent screen. When stars possessed full control of their films in the silent period, they were often actively engaged in writing. Essays on these actors usually indicate this contribution. Leaders in this activity included Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, William S. Hart, Tom Mix, Edward Cline, and Buster Keaton. And they also directed their films. Authors Christopher Jacobs and Donald McCaffrey have evaluated the silent film for decades. They have collected data by other critics, viewed a wide range of silent films in the formats of 35mm, 16mm, and 8mm film (and, if necessary, video recordings), and published their evaluations promoting appreciation of the silent cinema. As the importance of film history gains wider public awareness, more and more titles once considered lost forever are being located in foreign archives, but also in some long-forgotten storage places and private collections. The reappearance of some of these films may require a reassessment of the importance of actors and directors long ignored due to the simple fact that their work was not a part of the few major collections of silent films available to scholars. Some of the works included in this book have only come to light in the past two decades. The amazing growth of home video in the 1980s and 1990s has made silent films easily available to a much wider audience than before. Readers of this guide may view many of the extant films evaluated in this study on tape or may see silent film presentations on television —especially on the Turner Classic Movies and American Movie Classics cable channels. At various venues around the country many silent pictures are also presented regularly on film with live piano, organ, or full orchestral accompaniment—a phenomenon that has increased dramatically over the past two decades. The authors recommend that the best way to view silent movies is at a showing of a film for an audience. Both have presented screenings of silent films for groups and can bear witness to the fascinating experience of a crowd reacting to a film with a live musical score.

This page intentionally left blank

GUIDE TO THE SILENT YEARS OF AMERICAN CINEMA

This page intentionally left blank

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA: FROM SCIENTIFIC NOVELTY TO A NEW ART AND ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY Christopher R Jacobs

BEGINNINGS The American silent cinema really came into its own during and immediately after the First World War, although it flourished from the mid18908, and may be traced back as early as the work of Muybridge in the 1870s and 1880s —this before even the invention of film as a medium for recording photographic images. The " prehistory" of cinema has been treated in other works, recounting the concept of "persistence of vision" and how early experimenters applied it to various toys that produced an illusion of motion from still images. These generally had pictures drawn on cylinders or disks lined with slits, which when spun acted as shutters and created the apparent motion of the pictures. The 1826 invention of photography brought the potential for using actual objects rather than simply artists' impressions. For a number of decades the low sensitivity of emulsions required exposure times of several seconds to many minutes, but some enterprising photographers would shoot subjects in a series of poses that imitated the actual motion when viewed in these devices. After the American Civil War, photographic sensitivity gradually increased to the point where an exposure could be made in a fraction of a second. Nature photographer Eadweard Muybridge developed a passion for recording the individual elements of various animal and human motions photographically, reputedly after being hired to settle a bet on whether a galloping horse had all four feet off the ground at one time. He positioned a row of cameras, each of which was capable of a single exposure on a glass photographic plate, along side a track with strings stretching across it connected to

2

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

each shutter. The horse running past tripped each shutter in succession, recording a series of progressive images of its movement. Then he decided to control the interval between exposures with a clockwork mechanism instead of trip cords for a more even spacing of 12 to 24 images. The experiment proved that horses did have all feet off the ground at some point, but more important, Muybridge realized that he could view these frozen slices of life in motion by means of one of the popular toys. He rigged up a large disk containing glass plate copies of his pictures with another disk of slits that could spin in front of a lantern slide projector, and was projecting the animated photographs to scientific gatherings throughout the 1880s. Then came George Eastman's introduction around 1888 or 1889 of a flexible plastic base for the emulsion, making possible long strips of what was now called "film" that could hold a row of thousands of separate images. Developments in the laboratories of Thomas Edison and others in both America and Europe soon resulted in practical systems for recording and reproducing motion using only one camera by the early 1890s. William Kennedy Laurie Dickson was the Edison researcher who was apparently responsible for the first major breakthrough. Edison first exploited the seemingly miraculous achievement of moving pictures with individual coin-operated arcade machines throughout 1894 and 1895. In December 1895 the French brothers August and Louis Lumiere projected their films on a screen before a paying audience, creating an immediate sensation. Edison quickly followed by buying the patents of Americans Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins, who had developed their own projection machine to run Edison's films. Many experimenters around this time created their own cameras and projectors using a variety of film formats and mechanical methods, but the Edison format of vertically running 35mm film that had a row of rectangular perforations along each edge for the sprocket drive and an image that stretched between them exactly four sprocket holes high rapidly became the most prevalent. With minor variations it is still in use today and a film from the 1890s, if in good physical condition, could be shown on any modern theatrical projector. For several years audiences flocked to exhibitions of moving pictures, many of which toured the country, a few setting up business in permanent storefront locations. People were fascinated at first by the mere fact that pictures could move. The earliest films ran from several seconds to a minute or two in length, and ranged from mundane subjects documenting everyday life, to views of exotic foreign locales, to newsworthy events of the day, all of which could now be seen in motion. Short comic scenes performed before the cameras also proved quite popular, as did risque dancing acts and professional boxing. Special visual effects like

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

3

slow motion, fast motion, and backwards motion had a novelty appeal, and filmmakers like the French magician George Melies made great use of the medium's potential for trick effects such as double exposures, subjects appearing and disappearing, and perspective illusions. By the turn of the century mere novelty was beginning to wear thin and Melies, Edwin S. Porter, and other filmmakers turned to short narratives as the main basis for their pictures. The popularity of Porter's 1903 The Great Train Robbery showed the cinema's potential as a major form of narrative entertainment, using such sophisticated techniques as matte shots, a moving camera, outdoor filming with greater depth of staging, and editing back and forth from one scene to another. Its length of almost a full 1000-foot reel established a new standard that would last about a decade until the emergence of multi-reel "feature" length productions. A full reel for one story allowed more complex stories to be told in a running time of 10 to 20 minutes (depending upon the cranking speed), rather than the few minutes that had previously dominated film releases usually shown with several subjects spliced together on a reel. Nevertheless, many of these early story films, such as Uncle Tom's Cabin (1903), still emphasized the new medium's documentary beginnings, proudly advertising that they were "reproductions" of popular stage plays or famous scenes from them, now recorded for posterity on film for viewing anywhere a projector could be set up. These look primitive from a modern point of view because their purpose was to record a performance, usually in one long take for each scene, rather than to express the story in a new cinematic form. Many filmed dramas also used simple painted backdrops like those of stage shows and were careful to keep the entire set in a long shot of the scene with actors moving from side to side in the frame as they would on stage. Very early on, however, filmmakers used cinema's photographic potential to recreate visual devices from another popular narrative form, the lantern slide show. Since the mid-nineteenth century, performances of dual "magic lantern" illustrated lectures had been a common medium for both education and entertainment. Very often short dramatic stories would be posed by actors as a series of stage tableaux. These would be photographed for lantern slide showings and presented with a narrator or live actors reciting the lines. Elaborate "trick effect" slides were developed, allowing parts of a scene to change while it was on the screen. The use of two projectors also permitted one image to dissolve into the next or on top of another to indicate a flashback or a character's thoughts. Filmmakers quickly appropriated the dissolve for the same use, as well as the ordering of scenes according to a preplanned structure. As filmmakers gained experience doing dissolves and double exposures, a fad developed for a time of

4

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

having the same actor play two or more roles and appear on the screen at the same time. During the late 1910s, stars Mary Pickford and William Farnum, among others, took advantage of the technique to act scenes opposite themselves. COLOR Lantern slides were usually hand colored to various degrees, and until the perfection of natural color photography motion pictures utilized a number of different methods to add color to the black and white image. Especially in the early years, the 1890s through the 1900s, a surprisingly large number were painstakingly hand painted one frame at a time — the manual precursor to computer colorization. The Pathe studio developed an elaborate method of stenciling to mass produce color copies once stencils had been cut by hand for each color. The most common methods of introducing color in silent films was by tinting and toning. Tinting a film involved running the desired footage through a bath of color dye, resulting in an overall color for the image. Toning was a chemical process that replaced the black silver image with a different colored metallic compound. When used in combination, tinting a toned image, a twocolor appearance could be obtained. The most commonly used color tints were blue for night scenes, red for fire scenes, yellow for sunlit scenes, green for forest scenes, and so forth. The most common tone was probably the brown or sepia appearance, especially effective with Westerns, but often used throughout an entire movie. Films that used more than one color had to be cut into separate rolls, run through the dye or toner, and spliced together in the proper sequence. This had to be done for every tinted or toned print, so the films were generally printed in tinting order and then reassembled once the colors had been added. There were a number of experimenters searching for a practical method of natural color cinematography from the very beginning. The properties of light and primary colors were understood, and full color images could be taken by photographing the same thing three times through different color filters, but it was not until the 1930s that Technicolor developed its cumbersome but effective "three-strip" subtractive process. Nevertheless there were processes that obtained limited but sometimes spectacular results using additive color. As early as 1912 the Gaumont company was making demonstration films that had three successive frames photographed and later projected through separate color filters using normal black and white film. The color was vividly realistic but the film had to run through a special projector at a very high speed to project three frames at once, and there was difficulty in overlapping the images on the screen without color fringes. An easier method that had a

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

5

brief vogue used two complementary colors rather than the three primary colors. With the Kinemacolor process, persistence of vision was used not only to blend the still images into motion but to blend alternate orange-red and blue-green frames, again using black and white film, but projected through alternating filters connected to the projector's shutter. This technique worked well for static scenes, but even though the film ran twice as fast as standard black and white movies, fast-moving subjects were in different positions for each color record, again creating fringes of color. The Prizma Color process achieved more popularity, for while it was similar, it actually dyed the alternate frames on the print rather than using a special projector with colored filters. Later they were printed on opposite sides of the film, using a subtractive process that permitted both a standard projector and a normal projection speed. In 1917 the Technicolor company produced an entire feature with an additive process, but abandoned it for a more practical two-color subtractive process. This photographed the reddish and greenish images simultaneously on adjacent frames, but they were printed onto separate strips of black and white film that were then dyed the appropriate color and glued together back to back. The Toll of the Sea (1922) was the first feature film using this process throughout, and films like The Ten Commandments (1923), Ben-Hur (1925), and The Phantom of the Opera (1925) used it for certain scenes. Only a few full-length silent features were produced in Technicolor, notably The Black Pirate (1926) and Wanderer of the Wasteland (1925). By the end of the 1920s, Technicolor improved on its system by introducing a dye-transfer process (also used by a later stage of Prizma Color), printing the colors one at a time onto a strip of clear film instead of having to glue two rolls together. Many early sound features used this process, as well as a few late silents issued with synchronized music and sound effects like The Viking (1928) and part-talkies like The Mysterious Island (1929), a trouble-plagued adaptation of the Jules Verne novel that had actually been started as a silent production in 1926. CINEMATIC TECHNIQUE Over the first decade of the twentieth century a "grammar" of film gradually evolved. Through improvisation, trial, and error, certain techniques and practices became accepted as conventions for expressing certain ideas, indicating sequence of action, and developing characters. D. W. Griffith was one of the first directors to recognize how effective these techniques could be and was instrumental in refining them to manipulate audience response to the stories he told. Closeups had been used sparingly from the earliest days of movies to let the audience see details that might not be noticed in long shots. The very first Edison movie copy-

6

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

righted, A Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1893), was a closeup of a man sneezing, although in general Edison's cinematographers and other early filmmakers tried to compose the frame so people could be seen head to foot. Once theatrical presentation superseded peep-show devices, the larger-than-life projected image even caused some to view closeups as unnatural distortions of life. However, not long after making his first film in 1908 Griffith intuitively used them much more frequently than before to emphasize the facial expressions of his actors, thus permitting more subtle performances. Many directors not only used long shots to present a theatre-like composition in most of their scenes but they moved the actors from side to side as on the stage. Griffith gradually had more and more scenes in which actors moved toward or away from the camera and staged action on several different planes of depth within the scene rather than in one straight line. He also regularly broke scenes down into several shots, with the camera in different positions or focused on different characters, giving them a greater intimacy. More important, he pioneered the use of cross-cutting between actions happening in different places at the same time. He learned and his work taught others how to build tremendous suspense and excitement by controlling the pacing of the editing, rather than simply splicing scenes together in chronological order. In addition he pushed for longer and more complex films, often undercranking the camera to squeeze more action into the arbitrary one and then two reels of film his employers would permit. In five years at the Biograph company (1908-13) he moved from The Adventures ofDollie, a crude one-reel melodrama running about ten minutes and filmed mainly in long shots and long takes, to fast-paced two-reel featurettes like The Battle of Elderbush Gulch, running a half hour to 45 minutes, and finally an hour-long, four-reel biblical epic, Judith of Bethulia. Once free of the restrictive Biograph hierarchy, he was able to create a series of three-hour masterpieces of cinematic style, beginning with The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). If Griffith was a major force in helping advance film drama, Mack Sennett, who worked at Biograph for and with Griffith from 1908 to 1912, helped create a frenetic new style of film comedy. Leaving Biograph in 1912 for the Keystone company, he adapted his experience in burlesque theatre to the new opportunities offered by film. His editing was even faster paced than Griffith's and gave his chase scenes a manic, even chaotic sense that distinguished his comedies from others (and quickly gave rise to imitators). Some of the shots in his films lasted mere fractions of a second while many other filmmakers were still staging scenes in single long takes of several minutes each.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

7

THE RISE OF FEATURES American directors before the First World War faced formidable competition from foreign filmmakers. Artistic uses of lighting, dramatic photographic compositions, daring themes, elaborate and realistic sets, and, most important, longer films imported from Europe caught the attention of audiences and critics. It did not take long for American filmmakers to pick and choose and incorporate what impressed them most into their own productions. The French Queen Elizabeth (1912) starring Sarah Bernhardt did not break new ground stylistically, but its use of a world-famous stage actress and its hour-plus running time helped give a new prestige to motion pictures in America. Until 1913 most American films were one or two reels in length, with a few three-reel productions being made after 1911 or so. Motion picture exhibition was based on the concept of variety. Even after dramatic and comic narratives superseded the multitude of documentary and trickfilm subjects that had dominated the cinema's first decade, distributors did not think audiences would sit through an hour or more of a single story. As a result they would release multi-reel films like The Life of Moses (1909) and From the Manger to the Cross (1912) one reel at a time to be shown on consecutive nights or even consecutive weeks. At that time movies in the United States were largely attended by immigrants and the working class who could afford their five-cent admission and easily follow the short, simple, visual stories. The middle and wealthy classes were more likely to spend their entertainment money on vaudeville, live theatre, and the opera. The imported feature-length films were often exhibited in legitimate theatres, rather than the small "nickelodeon" movie houses, in a conscious attempt to win over a new audience. Italian film spectacles like Cabiria (1914), with its fluidly moving camera rolling through gigantic sets, were especially influential. Movie theatre managers began to "feature" multireel productions as the main attraction for the evening, with a few shorts to round out the program instead of having an hour or more featuring a variety of short films only. As this became more and more prevalent, studio production patterns changed to accommodate the practice. Trade journals from 1912-14 reveal mixed reaction from both producers and exhibitors about some of the new directions in filmmaking. For some time, many directors steadfastly believed that films should be well photographed but should concentrate on recording the actors' performances. They found breaking up scenes into medium shots and separate closeups of the different characters to be too distracting unless done for some special purpose (e.g., an extreme closeup of a letter, locket, ring, etc.). Many also resisted the trend towards feature-length films of an

8

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

hour or longer, but by 1914 public support at the box office made feature attractions the rule rather than the exception. Although it was by no means the first feature or even the first popular epic film, the release of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in March of 1915 was a major milestone due to its overwhelming commercial success. From then on, short films were simply an added attraction in nearly every theatre and might be dispensed with altogether in the case of such a long feature. From then on, people from all walks of life and levels of income developed the habit of moviegoing. The Birth of a Nation, controversial as it was, was the "must-see" film that everybody went to, and substantial numbers went back to see it again and then went to see other films. Producers like Cecil B. DeMille responded with stories that would appeal to a more educated and urbane audience. SOUND FOR "SILENTS" Crowds got even bigger, and by the late 1910s new movie palaces were springing up as large or larger than traditional legitimate theatres. The "silent" cinema was presented with a musical background, just as earlier forms of entertainment had been, from slide shows to stage melodramas to grand opera. Big city theatres that could sell thousands of tickets a day had their own full-sized house orchestras to play the musical accompaniment to their films. Smaller theatres had smaller orchestras or perhaps a two- or three-piece combo. Still smaller theatres invested in one of the newly developed musical instruments especially for movies: a "unit-orchestra," as a theatre pipe organ was termed, or a "photoplayer," a hybrid piano/pipe organ with built-in percussion and sound effects. Only the very smallest movie houses and traveling shows would use a solo piano, or possibly a small reed organ. A few major studio releases had new musical scores composed especially for them, and a large number had scores compiled from existing mood music plus a few newly composed themes for the particular film. Virtually all had "cue sheets" prepared, breaking the film down into notable scenes with suggestions for the musical mood or an actual piece that a theatre might use. An individual pianist or organist would often improvise the score while watching the film, using no printed music. By the mid-1910s there were already large sheet music collections published of themes labeled as suitable for certain types of motion picture scenes. These were available in a variety of arrangements, usually for solo piano, organ or piano-conductor (with indications of instrumentation), small orchestra, and large orchestra. Besides a musical accompaniment, a number of theatres in the early years employed "lecturers" who would narrate the stories, read the in-

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

9

tertitles (if any), and improvise additional dialogue. Some films during the "nickelodeon" period of one-reelers had printed story outlines or scripts that clarified character relationships and motivations that might be otherwise difficult to ascertain. In ethnic neighborhoods of larger cities this practice of lecturing lingered on well after the arrival of featurelength productions. Its practitioners pointed out that new immigrants learned how to speak and read English at these movie houses without the need for formal education. Instead of undergoing the pressure of a classroom situation, they could learn simply by listening to the language while following the words and story on the screen. Not only were they being entertained at the same time they were learning English, but they could absorb the American culture and customs depicted, hastening their assimilation into society. ACTORS AND ACTING By the early 1910s, around the same time as the move toward featurelength films, came a new emphasis on the performers in films, who had previously been anonymous. As their faces became familiar and names promoted, a "star system" quickly arose, with popular actors guaranteeing an audience no matter what the story or title. As feature length dramatic films became firmly established, directors and actors (some to a greater degree than others, it must be admitted) understood the medium of silent cinema was a distinctive art form requiring a different approach from other types of performance. It could not use the spoken word like the theatre, and its nature of editing and differing perspectives required new techniques in staging the actors in front of the camera. It needed a new style of acting that recognized and exploited the absence of sound. In addition it now had to be able to adapt a performance to be effective in extreme long shots, medium shots, and close-ups. Actors had to be skillful enough at pantomime to convey thoughts and emotions but had to avoid exaggerating when the camera was close to them. Many developed a habit of acting with their eyes and subtle facial twitches even more than with their bodies, William S. Hart being especially notable in this regard. It was a new convention for audiences to become accustomed to, and when stage actor Frank Keenan used deliberately slow and underplayed facial expressions in The Coward (1915), one critic accused him of "mugging" for the camera. As late as 1929 some critics were put off by the more naturalistic acting style that motion pictures permitted, as evidenced in accusations of Louise Brooks' subtle portrayal of Lulu in Pandora's Box being wooden and expressionless. A large number of films, especially those of the 1915-1920 period, contain a mixture of acting styles, some actors being relatively restrained,

10

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

while others in the same scene might be flamboyantly overstated. Examples of this include such notable titles as the first starring film of Theda Bara, A Fool There Was (1915), and the large-scale studio epic Ben-Hur (1925). Nevertheless, the silent cinema rapidly developed a recognizable acting style that transcended the need for extensive dialogue or descriptive titles. This helped cinema become truly an international medium of expression for three decades until the dominance of talking pictures in the 1930s. A technical factor in film production and exhibition, but one that continues to have an impact on both the actors' performances and the overall artistic impression of silent films, is the speed at which the movies were photographed and projected. Both cameras and projectors originally had variable speeds. Early experiments proved that 12 to 14 images per second were required for smooth motion, and the faster the speed, the smoother the action would appear. Some early films from the 1890s were photographed at about 48 images per second, but in order to save film most camera operators standardized a theoretical ideal speed of 16 images per second, whether cranked by hand or using an electric motor. When projected at the same speed at which the images were filmed, the action appears normal. Scenes cranked slower in the camera would appear faster on the screen, an effect often used for fights and comic situations. However, theatre operators would sometimes run all films at a slightly faster speed in order to fit in an extra show each day, with more potential income from admissions. As filmmakers realized this, they began to crank the camera faster, to 18, 20, or 22 frames per second. Theatres, of course, sped up projection speeds even more. When the Vitaphone sound system was introduced in 1926, a single set speed had to be established for maintaining synchronization with the separate disk that contained the soundtrack. Sound that was recorded on film, as with the Movietone system, had to maintain a single constant speed for proper reproduction. The average speed prevalent in theatres at the time of 24 frames per second was chosen as the new standard and has remained in effect ever since. As a result, when silent films made before 1926 are shown on modern projectors, the motion often appears unnaturally fast. On the other hand, when a silent film from the late 1920s is mistakenly shown at 16 or 18 frames per second because it is supposed to be the "silent" speed, the action and pacing becomes unnaturally slow. Ideally a variable speed projector must be used, and adjusted to match the most natural action on the screen, just as was done in the most reputable theatres of the silent era.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

11

POSTWAR DEVELOPMENTS The outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 severely hampered the European film industry, both in resources available for productions and in export markets. Over the next few years this paved the way for the American cinema to dominate the world market. By the war's end in 1918, American film techniques, once lagging behind, had equaled or surpassed those of foreign competitors and American stars had won large folio wings throughout the world. After the war, films became more refined not only in cinematic technique but in story material. Motion picture production had become one of the nation's leading industries and began to adjust to mass tastes on a large scale. Previously there had been a wider range of subjects treated and a larger likelihood of daring elements or tragic endings. Tastes also changed to prefer more sophistication and contemporary themes, and intertitles developed their own recognizable style of writing. Instead of straightforward descriptions they began to pack both exposition and character information into carefully worded prose poems. In feature comedies but even in some light dramas they often relied heavily on puns related to topical events and trends, and self-consciously clever and abstruse sexual innuendoes. The "jazz age" of the 1920s may have ushered in a more flippant approach to tradition and morality, but the moviegoing public still wanted its heroes to have at least the appearance of propriety. Scandals involving sex and murder destroyed the careers of more than one superstar, even when nothing could be proved to implicate any wrongdoing on the part of the star involved. The heavy sensationalism by the press of the most lurid aspects, even when information was distorted, out of context, or completely false, created public outrage and calls for film censorship. The most notorious case involved popular rotund comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, whose main indiscretion turned out to be that he hosted and was present at the drinking party at which a promiscuous young starlet died. He was finally acquitted of murder after three trials but was shunned by producers. At the same time the Arbuckle trials were going on another prominent case exposed the private lives of popular actresses Mary Miles Minter and Mabel Normand. Both were linked to the unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor, with whom one or both had been having an affair. Normand's career was damaged, but that of 19-year-old Minter, who had been an audience favorite since a child, was devastated. A vocal segment of the population decried both the private lives of Hollywood celebrities and the increasing suggestiveness and promiscuity portrayed on the screen. To avoid official government censorship, the

12

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

major studios appointed former postmaster Will Hays to oversee the newly formed Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA), a self-policing board that would approve scripts and finished films before they were released to the public. Studios started inserting "morality clauses" into contracts of major stars. Hays even banned Arbuckle from appearing on screen. The "Hays Office," as it came to be known, was widely followed by filmmakers and seemed to satisfy critics. Films of 1921 and before would occasionally include tasteful nudity and judicious use of profanity in the title cards, although sometimes excised by various state or local censorship boards around the country. After the Hays Office this became extremely rare. Towards the end of the 1920s, however, especially after the coming of sound, films ventured further and further into previously taboo areas and a new 1930 production code was widely ignored until strict enforcement began in 1934. Another development in American cinema during the 1920s was an influx of major foreign filmmakers to Hollywood, many of them from Germany. Directors like Ernst Lubitsch, F. W. Murnau, and Paul Leni had a profound influence on the "look" of American films that would last well beyond the silent period. The European directors popularized a new fluidity to cinematography and editing. Although they had been used before, moving cameras — dolly and crane shots —became much more commonplace, as did subjective shots that showed the audience the same point of view as one of the characters. Lubitsch and Murnau became a part of the Hollywood establishment, changing the fashions in filmmaking as much as they adapted to those already prevailing. Lubitsch is best remembered for his witty use of double entendres and themes of playful sexuality, but his productions like The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) also were highly polished exercises in cinematic technique. Murnau's Sunrise (1927) was essentially a stylized studio-bound artfilm along the lines of his German productions such as Nosferatu and Faust. His City Girl (1929) looks more American, while incorporating a European pastoral sensibility, but in Tabu (1931) he downplayed plot and character to accentuate the visual as he had done in the German The Last Laugh. Americans like King Vidor and Frank Borzage exploited the new freedom of movement in such late silent masterpieces as The Croivd and Street Angel (1928). Lighting and set design took on aspects of German expressionism, as in Rex Ingram's The Magician (1926), Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Last Warning (1929), and again, Borzage's Street Angel. A number of American films in the late 1920s even tried to return to the tragic endings that were more common in foreign imports and in American pictures before 1920. Directors a n d / o r studio executives would often make alternate happy endings, as in the case of The Croivd,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

13

The Torrent (1926), Love (1927), and others, and give theatres the choice of which version to show. Other times, as in the case of The Wind (1928), a 1927 preview with the original tragic ending impressed critics but proved so unpopular with exhibitors that only the happy ending was used for its general release, which did not come until a full year later (and included a synchronized soundtrack of music and sound effects). A VARIED AND ENDURING ART The last few years of the American silent cinema coincided with the last few years of the 1920s. This period is sometimes called the highest point of cinematic artistry. Certainly motion pictures produced at this time were technically polished, with a confident and effortless use of editing, an artistically accomplished visual imagery, and an expressive, stylized mode of acting. They were also a lucrative industry, and just like the film industry of future generations, catered as much as possible to as wide an audience as possible. As in any era, individual films stand out as superior works of art while a large majority can be described better as competent works of craftsmanship. By the mid to late 1920s, Hollywood films often had a slick, refined style that adhered to conventional and successful formula. Ten to 15 years earlier, at the beginning of the feature film period, the styles were somewhat different, but again certain formulas and conventions predominated. In this earlier period, however, there seemed to be a greater experimentation with subject material, character types, and cinematic techniques as filmmakers struggled to determine the surest formulas for financial success. The result today is that many of the earlier films can appear quaint and primitive when their conventions did not become the prevailing style of later years. However, the same films can often have a fresher approach to their content and tell surprisingly sophisticated stories that were simplified and homogenized in later silent and sound productions. Another interesting characteristic of films made before 1920 is that many more adaptations of classic literature and theatre were made than in any other period of filmmaking, except perhaps the first years of talking pictures. Part of this was due to the struggle to prove cinema was a respectable form of entertainment. By 1920 there were more stories written expressly for the screen, but there was also a greater tendency to adapt popular literature — short stories and best-selling novels — rather than famous works of the past. The cinema by then was fully established and did not need to borrow its respectability from another medium to attract viewers. In short, the silent years of American cinema produced an incredibly large number of films that exhibit a gamut of styles, subjects, and techniques. Over a period of only three decades a new art form emerged

14

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CINEMA

from a simple toy designed to demonstrate a scientific principle and from inventions that were intended simply to provide a permanent record of real life. As filmmaking developed into an art it preserved not only a record of how actors and settings appeared, but of how writers, directors and audiences looked at their everyday world, how they felt about society and about life in general. Never before could someone from a remote culture a n d / o r time have such a vivid picture of how another group of people lived and thought. The American silent cinema reflected life as it was at the time it was created, but because of its wide reach it also became a part of life, and as such, was a molding force in setting trends, fashions, and new ways of thinking. With certain exceptions, cinema always emphasized its entertainment aspects over its artistic pretensions. It was a popular art form that people went out of their way to see. Its influence as the first form of mass media and mass art was profound, as it did not rely on literacy or the necessity for extensive travel to be experienced. By the mid-1910s, less than a generation after its invention, the cinema had matured to an extent that very little of its basic properties would ever change. Such future developments as color, sound, and wide image ratios were merely refinements of earlier experiments. Changes in styles of acting and story subjects merely indicated changing public tastes. The most effective of films produced after the silent era still rely heavily on the silent cinema's ability to convey information visually. Over a century after the first films were exhibited, the standards of photographic composition, editing, and story length that became established in the 1910s are still applied, whether a story be presented by means of a film, video, or computer format.

While shooting the pioneer one-reel Western The Great Train Robbery (1903) on location, Edwin Porter moved his actors to provide depth to the scene. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

The popular and polite A Cure for Pokeritis (1912), with John Bunny and Flora Finch, was an example of the genteel comedy that appeared in the one-reelers of the 1910s. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

This still from the wild Mack Sennett comedy burlesque of the old-fashioned melodrama, Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (1913), shows Mabel Normand chained to the track and villain Ford Sterling holding the sledgehammer over her. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

D. W. Griffith's Intolerance was a massively produced epic that told four separate stories set in different time periods. The Babylonian episode had the most spectacular sets and action sequences and was later released as a separate film. From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

In 1919, already prominent as actors, directors, and producers of their own films, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith formed their own company, United Artists. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

John Barrymore played a dual role in the 1920 screen adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novelette, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Here character actor Louis Wolheim (left) interacts with Mr. Hyde. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

In this scene from Safety Last (1923), Harold Lloyd, a comedic icon of the silent cinema, is a desperate man hanging from the hand of a clock eleven stories up from the street. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

The lonely soul on the edge of society—Charles Chaplin as the Little Tramp—looks forlornly through a window at the New Year festivities in The Gold Rush (1925). From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

Douglas Fairbanks (right) confronts pirate captain Anders Randolf in The Black Pirate (1926), one of Fairbanks' most action-packed adventures and one of the few full-length silent features filmed entirely in Technicolor. From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

This page intentionally left blank

FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

This page intentionally left blank

A ACORD, ART. Born April 17, 1890, in Glenwood, Sevier, Utah (some sources say Stillwater, Oklahoma). Died January 4, 1931, Chihuahua, Mexico. Actor, stuntman. A prolific cowboy star throughout the silent era, Art Acord had his greatest popularity in smaller towns, where he rivaled Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, and Buck Jones. Like them he often mixed comedy with melodrama in western settings. Unlike many Western stars, he actually worked on a ranch as a young man, and for a time performed in rodeos and wild west shows. Starting in 1909 Acord did stunt work in films and had a few cast credits by 1910-12. He had a small part in The Squaw Man (1914) and starred in a series of western shorts that started with Buck Parvin in the Movies (1915). In 1917 Acord had a supporting role in Fox's spectacular Cleopatra, and along with friend Hoot Gibson, had a bit in Douglas Fairbanks 7 Headin' South the following year. Then he fought and was decorated in World War I, returning to sign a contract at Universal in 1919. He stayed at Universal for most of his career, starting in shorts and serials through the early 1920s, moving into features in 1924-25 at independent studios and then back to Universal. The height of his success was from 1926-27, but chronic alcoholism caused Universal to cancel his contract. After several low-budget westerns for small companies in 1928-29 his career was over. Acord's drinking led to numerous bar fights and an arrest for bootlegging, and he finally drifted to Mexico and Central America trying to make money from personal appearances. Little over a year after his last film he was found poisoned in Mexico. Whether it was suicide or murder was never positively determined. Selected Filmography: The White Medicine Man (1911), The Indian Massacre

18

ADOREE, RENEE

(1912), The Claim Jumper (1913), The Squaw Man (1914), Buck Parvin in the Movies (1915), Margy of the Foothills (1916), Cleopatra (1917), Headin' South (1918), The Wild Westerner (1919), The Moon Riders (1920), Winners of the West (1921), Ridin' Through (1922), The Oregon Trail (1923), Fighting for Justice (1924), Looped for Life (1924), The Circus Cyclone (1925), The Wild Girl (1925), Three in Exile (1925), Pals (1925), The Call of Courage (1925), Western Pluck (1926), TTie Silent Guardian (1926), S/cy H/'^/z Corral (1926), Rustler's Ranch (1926), 77a? Sef-np (1926), The Scrappin' Kid (1926), 77ze Terror (1926), The Ridin' Rascal (1926), T/ie Man from the West (1926), Lrtzy Lightning (1926), Loco Lwc/c (1927), Set Free (1927), H^ni Fzste (1927), Spurs and Saddles (1927), The Western Rover (1927), Tzuo Gun O'Brien (1928), His Lasf Battle (1928), Tfa? White Owf/aw (1929), Bullets and Justice (1929), The Arizona Kid (1929), /An Oklahoma Cowboy (1929), Wyoming Tornado (1929), Fighters of the Saddle (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. ADOREE, RENEE. Born September 30, 1898 (some sources say 1896, 1901, or 1902), in Lille, France. Died October 5, 1933, in Sunland, California. Actress. Fiery French actress Renee Adoree became a major star with her touching performance as the romantic lead in The Big Parade (1925), the most memorable role in her short career. Born Jeanne Renee de la Fonte into a French circus family, she worked with the circus all over Europe as a child and became a dancer as she got older. She danced specialty numbers in England, France, and Australia, coming to New York around 1919. Her first film appearance was the lead in Raoul Walsh's The Strongest (1920), and after a few minor parts she had another starring role in 1922 with Honor First and signed a contract with Louis B. Mayer in 1923. She played opposite John Gilbert in a number of pictures besides The Big Parade, most notably in Tod Browning's The Show (1927). Many of her roles were those of strong-willed foreign-born characters, often French, Mexican, Russian, or Gypsy women. With the coming of sound her

ANDERSON, G. M.

19

heavy French accent reinforced this practice, but she developed tuberculosis and died after only two all-talking productions. Filmography: The Strongest (1920), Made in Heaven (1921), Monte Cristo (1922), A Self-Made Man (1922), West of Chicago (1922), Honor First (1922), Mixed Faces (1922), The Six-Fifty (1923), The Eternal Struggle (1923), Women Who Give (1924), A Man's Mate (1924), Defying the Law (1924), The Bandolero (1924), Excuse Me (1925), Man and Maid (1925), Parisian Nights (1925), Exchange of Wives (1925), The Big Parade (1925), The Black Bird (1926), La Boheme (1926), 77a? Exquisite Sinner (1926), Tin Gods (1926), Blarney (1926), 77a? Flaming Forest (1926), 77a> S/ZOZP (1927), Heaven on Earth (1927), Mr. Wu (1927), On Ze Boulevard (1927), Bac/c to God's Country (1927), TTie Cossacks (1928), A G?rtein Yowrz^ A t e (1928), Tne Michigan Kid (1928), Forbidden Hours (1928), TTze Mating C«// (1928), The Spieler (1928), T ^ Pagan (1929), Tide of Empire (1929), Redemption (1930), Ca// o / f e F/es/z (1930). Selected Bibliography: Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. A N D E R S O N , G. M. "BRONCHO BILLY." Born Gilbert Maxwell Aronson in Little Rock, Arkansas, March 21,1880. Died January 20,1971, in Woodland Hills, California. Actor, writer, director, producer. As a precursor of William S. Hart and Tom Mix, Broncho Billy proved to be the first star of the Western. While he played several minor roles in The Great Train Robbery (1903), that hardly brought distinction to his acting ability. However, the one-reeler became a hit. In order to get the job, he told director Edwin Porter that he know how to ride a horse, but the eager young man, Gilbert Anderson, had trouble even mounting one. Later he would develop a character he called Broncho Billy that would capture the imagination of the public. This cowboy portrait vacillated between the good and bad man so that he established the so-called "good badman" as critic William Everson noted when he described Anderson's 1915 Broncho Billy and the Baby. "The story was a pleasing mixture of action and sentiment, with a 'good badman' hero who gives up his chance of freedom to aid a stricken child. The film was an instant sue-

20

ARBUCKLE, ROSCOE

cess. This main departure from all previous Westerns was in its concentration on a colorful 'hero' —a man who was rugged and a law unto himself, but who also possessed the nobility and courage of the Arthurian knights" (A Pictorial History of the Western Film, p. 18). Anderson played the lead, writing and directing hundreds of shorts, often using the name of Broncho Billy. Many of his one-reel works were produced for Essanay, a studio he cofounded with George Spoor in 1907. For ten years Essanay became noted for its Westerns and comedies, even releasing and sponsoring Charles Chaplin's two-reelers in 1915 and 1916. By the time the studio folded in 1917, Anderson's films had given way to the strong competition of William S. Hart and Tom Mix who would eclipse his position as a leader in the development of the Western. Eventually the Hollywood community recalled his early efforts and in 1957 the Academy of Motion Pictures presented Anderson an honorary Oscar designating this award "for his contribution to the development of motion pictures as entertainment." Critics now realize Anderson established the icon of the colorful, independent Western hero with shifting allegiances between the sides of the lawless and the law. Filmography: Selected shorts — The Great Train Robbery (1903), Raffles, the American Cracksman (1905), The Bandit King (1907) Broncho Billy's Adventure (1911), Broncho Billy and the Baby (1915), Broncho Billy and the Parson (1915), Broncho Billy and the Revenue Agent (1916).

Bibliography: Everson, William K. "The Beginnings — and Broncho Billy." A Pictorial History of the American Film. New York: The Citadel Press, 1969. Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson, The Western from Silents to Cinerama. New York: Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers, Inc.), 1962.

ARBUCKLE, ROSCOE "FATTY." Born Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle March 24, 1887, in South Center, Kansas. Died June 29, 1933, in New York City. Stage actor in stock companies, vaudeville, burlesque. Film actor, director, writer. Arbuckle's contribution to the film medium proved to be greater than his acting skills. While he was an excellent comic actor with the physical dexterity necessary for a player in the humorous movie in its formative period, he also became an effective director and writer. Most significant of all, he urged Buster Keaton, who would become one of the kings of comedy, to leave vaudeville and enter motion pictures. He became Buster's mentor by teaching him the way to direct, write, and act in this fledgling medium. His own career advanced when he took over for one of the first American silent screen male stars, John Bunny, who, like Arbuckle, was an obese comedian. He received star status by acting as a

ARZNER, DOROTHY

21

lead with Mabel Normand, under the supervision of producer Mack Sennett. Arbuckle formed his own film studio, Comique Film Company, and played the lead in many shorts, sometimes supported by Buster Keaton. Just as he entered feature films in the twenties with such works as Brewster's Millions (1921), a sex scandal ruined his career. The charge was rape and manslaughter. While a jury acquitted him, he never was able to recover the position of a star actor. Nevertheless, his extant films, when viewed today, reveal a comedian with exceptional physical adeptness in creating humor as well as the mental skills to supervise all aspects of the film production. Filmography: Selected shorts — The Sanitarium (1910), Fatty's Flirtation (1913), The Rounders (1914), The Knockout (1914), Mabel and Fatty's Married Life (1915), Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916), The Butcher Boy (1917), The Hayseed (1919). Selected features — Brewster's Millions (1921), Leap Year (1921, unreleased). Bibliography: Oderman, Stuart. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silent Screen Comedian, 1887-1933. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., Inc., 1994. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. American Film Comedy: From Abbott and Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.

ARZNER, DOROTHY. Born January 3, 1897, in San Francisco, California. Died October 1, 1979, in La Quinta, California. Director, editor, screenwriter. Remembered mainly for the fact that she was one of the few women to have a successful career as a Hollywood director, Dorothy Arzner developed an interest in film through her exposure to the numerous movie personalities who frequented her father's Los Angeles restaurant. After driving an ambulance during World War I and working briefly on a newspaper, she got a job as a script typist at Paramount in 1919. After about six months she became a film cutter and gained her initial reputation as a film editor on such major pictures as Blood and Sand and The Covered Wagon. In late 1924 and 1925 she did script work and continuity on productions at small and independent studios, returning to Paramount to work on the screenplay and edit Old Ironsides. When she was given the chance to write and direct her own film at Columbia, the more prestigious Paramount decided to woo her with a directing assignment, which Arzner accepted. She directed four silent features and was entrusted with directing Paramount's superstar Clara Bow in her talking debut, The Wild Party, which was also released in a silent version. Arzner went on to direct a number of major films in the sound era, produced

22

ARZNER, DOROTHY

Women's Army Corps training films during World War II, and later taught film for a time at UCLA. Filmography as Editor or Story Adaptation/Continuity: Blood and Sand (1922), The Covered Wagon (1923), Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), Merton of the Movies (1924), Inez From Hollywood (1924), The No-Gun Man (1924), The Breed of the Border (1924), The Red Kimono (1925), When Husbands Flirt (1925), Old Ironsides (1926). Filmography as Director: Fashions For Women (1927), Ten Modern Commandments (1927), Get Your Man (1927), Manhattan Cocktail (1928), The Wild Party (1929), Sarah and Son (1930), Paramount on Parade (1930), Anybody's Woman (1930), Honor Among Lovers (1931), Working Girls (1931), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Christopher Strong (1933), Nana (1934), Craig's Wife (1936), The Bride Wore Red (1937), Dance Girl Dance (1940), First Comes Courage (1943). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Slide, Anthony. Early Women Directors. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1977. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

B BADGER, CLARENCE. Born June 8, 1880, in San Francisco, California. Died June 17,1964, in Sydney, Australia. Director, writer. An active director of comedies throughout the silent era, Clarence Badger did not enter the film industry until his thirties. He moved to Los Angeles after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed his art and photoengraving business and began submitting scripts to various film companies as a sideline. After several scenario credits from 1913-14, Universal finally hired him as a full-time writer and Badger penned numerous Joker Comedies in 1915. By the end of that year Keystone lured him away, and he quickly advanced to directing shorts for Sennett. His first feature was a codirecting assignment on A Modern Enoch Arden (1916), which was a Sennett parody of a D. W. Griffith-produced feature released several months earlier. One of his better-known Sennett pictures is the two-reel short Teddy at the Throttle (1917), with Gloria Swanson and Bobby Vernon. Badger preferred a less frenetic comedy style and moved to Goldwyn in 1918 to direct lower-key comedy-dramas including Will Rogers' Jubilo (1919) and other Rogers pictures. In the early 1920s he worked at a number of studios before settling at Paramount for the remainder of his silent career. There he made two of comedian Raymond Griffith's best pictures, Paths to Paradise (1925) and Hands Up (1926), as well as many popular comedy vehicles starring Bebe Daniels, such as Miss Brewster's Millions (1926) and Senorita (1927), and two major Clara Bow hits, It (1927) and Red Hair (1928). With the coming of sound, Badger moved to First National studios, where he made a number of early talkies from 1929 to 1931 including the French-language version of Mervyn LeRoy's Showgirl in Hollywood (1930). Thereafter he made two

24

BAGGOTT, KING

pictures for C o l u m b i a in 1933 and 1936 (the latter filmed in Australia) and then retired from filmmaking to live in Australia. Filmography: Features—A Modern Enoch Arden (1916), The Floor Below (1918), The Venus Model (1918), Friend Husband (1918), The Kingdom of Youth (1918), A Perfect Lady (1918), Day Dreams (1919), Sis Hopkins (1919), Daughter of Mine (1919), Leave It to Susan (1919), Through the Wrong Door (1919), Strictly Confidential (1919), Almost a Husband (1919), Jubilo (1919), Water, Water Everywhere (1920), The Strange Boarder (1920), ]es' Call Me Jim (1920), Cupid, the Cowpuncher (1920), Honest Hutch (1920), Guile of Women (1921), Boys Will Be Boys (1921), An Unwilling Hero (1921), A Poor Relation (1921), Doubling For Romeo (1922), Don't Get Personal (1922), The Dangerous Little Demon (1922), Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922), Your Friend and Mine (1923), Red Lights (1923), Potash and Perlmutter (1923), Painted People (1924), The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), One Night in Rome (1924), New Lives for Old (1925), Eve's Secret (1925), Paths to Paradise (1925), The Golden Princess (1925), Hands Up (1926), Miss Brewster's Millions (1926), The Rainmaker (1926), The Campus Flirt (1926), If (1927), A Kzss m a Taxi (1927), Senorita (1927), Man Power (1927), Swim, G H Szwm (1927), She's a Sheik (1927), Red Hair (1928), The Fifty-Fifty Girl (1928), Ho* Nez<7s (1928), Three Week-ends (1928), Pan's (1929), No, No, Nanette (1930), Murder Will Out (1930), Sweethearts and Wives (1930), Tne Bad Man (1930), Le Masane d'Hollywood (1931), Tfo? Ho* Heiress (1931), Woman Hungry (1931), Party Husband (1931), When Strangers Marry (1933), Rangle River (1936, U.S. release 1939). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. BAGGOTT, KING. Born October 21,1879 (some sources say 1874), in St. Louis, Missouri. Died July 11, 1948, in Hollywood, California. Actor, director. A stage actor who moved into films around 1909, King Baggott was a star of numerous shorts for the Imp studio (Universal) throughout the 1910s. Some of these include adaptations of The Scarlet Letter (1911), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913), and The Corsican Brothers (1915). His first feature-length appearances were in Universal's early efforts to impress the public with major location productions. As one of the studio's leading

BAGGOTT, KING

25

stars he was given the title role in Ivanhoe (1913) and the lead in Absinthe (1914), filmed by Herbert Brenon in England and France, respectively. Baggott also wrote occasional scenarios and from 1913 turned increasingly to directing. Towards the end of the decade he left Universal, appearing in a couple of serials, The Eagle's Eye (1918) and The Hawk's Trail (1919) and acting in some features for Metro and other companies. During the 1920s he worked primarily as a director back at Universal and then other studios. His best-known film and one of his few that survive is Tumbleweeds (1925), the last feature starring William S. Hart (who somewhat resembled Baggott physically). With the coming of sound Baggott went back to acting in character parts and bit roles. Selected Filmography as Actor: Irony of Fate (1910), The Brothers (1911), The Scarlet Letter (1911), His Other Self (1912), The Loan Shark (1912), King the Detective and the Smugglers (1912), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1913), Ivanhoe (1913), Absinthe (1914), Jim Webb, Senator (1914), The Marble Heart (1915), The Corsican Brothers (1915), The Suburban (1915), Half a Rogue (1916), The Man From Nowhere (1916), The Blazing Secret (1917), Kildare of the Storm (1918), The Man Who Stayed at Home (1919), The Cheater (1920), The Forbidden Thing (1920), The Butterfly Girl (1921), The Thrill Chaser (1923), The Czar of Broadway (1930), Once a Gentleman (1930), Sweepstakes (1931), Fame Street (1932), Mississippi (1935), Come Live With Me (1941). Selected Filmography as Director: King the Detective in the Jarvis Case (1913), King the Detective in the Marine Mystery (1914), Crime's Triangle (1915), So This Is Paris (1916), Cheated Love (1921), Luring Lips (1921), Moonlight Follies (1921), Nobody's Fool (1921), Kissed (1922), Human Hearts (1922), The Kentucky Derby (1922), The Lavender Bath Lady (1922), A Dangerous Game (1922), The Love Letter (1923), The Town Scandal (1923), Crossed Wires (1923), Gossip (1923), The Darling of New York (1923), The Whispered Name (1924), The Gaiety Girl (1924), The Tornado (1924), Raffles the Amateur Cracksman (1925), The Home Maker (1925), Tumbleweeds (1925), Lovey Mary (1926), Perch of the Devil (1927), The Notorious Lady (1927), Down the Stretch (1927), The House of Scandal (1928), Romance of a Rogue (1928). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

26

BALDWIN, RUTH ANN

BALDWIN, RUTH ANN. Birth and death data unknown. Director, screenwriter. Ruth Ann Baldwin is an obscure figure who flourished in the film industry from 1914 to 1921. A former journalist, she started writing screenplays for Universal in 1914. Her first credit was as cowriter on the ancient Greek-era drama Damon and Pythias, which opened with aerial views of the Acropolis in Greece. For the next few years she wrote shorts and serials released under various of Universal's brand names (such as Rex, Imp, Gold Seal, Powers, Butterfly, Big U, Bison, Star, and Victor). Several of them she also directed, and she directed two features for Universal in 1917. In 1919 she moved to Fox, where she wrote screenplays for feature films, and she wrote two features for Metro in 1921. Many, though not all, of her scenarios dealt with problems faced by a female central character. Filmography: Features - Damon and Pythias (1914), A Wife on Trial (1917), 49-17 (1917), The Sneak (1919), Cheating Herself (1919), Chasing Rainbows (1919), Broken Commandments (1919), The Devil's Riddle (1920), The Marriage of William Ashe (1921), Puppets of Fate (1921). Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. Amerian Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

BARA, THEDA. Born July 29, 1885 (some sources say 1890 or July 20, 1889, or July 22, 1892), in Cincinnati, Ohio. Died April 7, 1955, in Hollywood, California. Actress. An icon symbolizing the extremes both of silent screen melodramatic excesses and the image of woman as seductress, dark-eyed Theda Bara brought the term "vamp" into the American vocabulary after her first important role made her a star overnight. A Fool There Was (1915) was a surprisingly suggestive morality play based on a stage hit that had been suggested by the Kipling poem "The Vampire" (quickly shortened to "vamp" by the public), about an erotic, destructive woman. Bara's reputation still suffers from a combination of the flamboyant studio publicity that arose after the film's surprise sensational success and the fact that almost none of her other major films have survived for reappraisal. Originally Theodosia Goodman, the daughter of an upper-middleclass Cincinnati tailor, she was always interested in performing. She dropped out of college in 1905 to pursue a stage career, sometimes using

BARA, THEDA

27

the name Theodosia De Coppett. In 1914 she was hired to star in the Fox production of A Fool There Was and rechristened Theda Bara (which advertising copy writers gleefully pointed out was an anagram for "Arab Death"). After a couple of minor parts in other Fox films, the studio rushed her into numerous pictures capitalizing on her new "vamp" image that had taken the country by storm. Bara played the title roles in Carmen (1915), Cleopatra (1917), Du Barry (1918), and Salome (1918), among numerous other "bad girls." She also starred in other important, nonvamp roles, such as East Lynne (1916), Romeo and Jidiet (1916), a version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame concentrating on the Esmeralda character and retitled The Darling of Paris (1916), and Kathleen Mavourneen (1919), based on an old romantic ballad. Bara's films were largely responsible for establishing the independent Fox alongside companies like Paramount, Metro and Universal as a major studio that would survive in various forms through the present day. By 1919 her exotic image was so ingrained into the public's consciousness that when their tastes changed to the more modern stories of the 1920s she could no longer get roles. Her image came to represent a stage of cinema's early years, nowembarrassing tastes and cares of a prewar generation. Her image had by then overshadowed her acting abilities. In the romantic tearjerker East Lynne she plays a straight dramatic role as well as any star of the era and even in A Fool There Was she is considerably more restrained than her male costar. The public, however, could not forget her reputation as a vamp. Decades later her line "Kiss me, my fool!" was used to poke fun at melodramatic excesses of an aggressive lover. Her last two films were parodies of her old image and included a short Hal Roach comedy directed by Stan Laurel. She married director Charles Brabin and lived an obscure but contented, wealthy life, all but forgotten by movie audiences. Filmography: The Stain (1914), A Fool There Was (1915), The Kreutzer Sonata (1915), Anna Karenina (1915), The Clemenceau Case (1915), The Devil's Daughter (1915), Lady Audley's Secret (1915), The Two Orphans (1915), Sin (1915), Carmen (1915), The Galley Slave (1915), Destruction (1915), The Serpent (1916), Gold and the Woman (1916), The Eternal Sapho (1916), East Lynne (1916), Under Two Flags (1916), Her Double Life (1916), Romeo and Juliet (1916), The Vixen (1916), The Darling of Paris (1917), The Tiger Woman (1917), Her Greatest Love (1917), Heart and Soul (1917), Camille (1917), Cleopatra (1917), The Rose of Blood (1917), Du Barry (1917), The Forbidden Path (1918), The Soul of Buddha (1918), Under the Yoke (1918), When a Woman Sins (1918), Salome (1918), The She-Devil (1918), The Light (1919), When Men Desire (1919), The Siren's Song (1919), A Woman There Was (1919), Kathleen Mavourneen (1919), La Belle Russe (1919), The Lure of Ambition (1919), The Unchastened Woman (1925), Madame Mystery (1926).

28

BARBED WIRE

Selected Bibliography: Golden, Eve. Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. Vestal, New York: The Vestal Press, 1996. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BARBED WIRE (1927). World War I drama. Directed by Rowland V. Lee; with Pola Negri, Clive Brook, Einar Hanson, Claude Gillingwater, Charles Lane, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Clyde Cook, Ben Hendricks Jr.; screenplay by Jules Furthman, based upon novel The Woman of Knockaloe, a Parable by Hall Caine. During World War I, a French girl's farm is requisitioned as a prisoner of war camp. She hates the Germans because her brother is missing in action. A sensitive German prisoner, however, tries to befriend her, and gradually she falls in love with him. When her neighbors discover her love, she is ostracized from the community and even her own father turns against her. The second Hollywood film by German producer Erich Pommer, best noted for collaborations with Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau and other greats of the German cinema, its strong antiwar theme and the prisoner of war plot closely parallel Cecil B. DeMille's 1915 picture, The Captive. Very few serious silent dramas seem able to hold the attention of present-day audiences who are unaccustomed to the style and conventions of the period. Barbed Wire, however, transcends its times and absence of audible dialogue. Lee's skillful direction and the sensitive performances by the two leads give the film an enduring power to draw viewers into its story and get them caught up in the emotions of its characters. In this it ranks along such other classics as The Croivd, Tol'able David, Greed, Fhe Wind, and Pandora s Box. Interestingly, contemporary critics found Pola Negri's performance unimpressive, whereas it now appears quite naturalistic. BARKER, REGINALD. Born 1886 in Bothwell, Scotland (one source says Winnipeg, Canada). Died February 23, 1945, in Los Angeles, California. Director. After emigrating to California at age ten, Reginald Charles Barker be-

BARKER, REGINALD

29

gan acting in stock as a teenager around 1901. By 1910 he was working in movies, directing short films for the Essanay studio. Soon Barker was a key director for producer Thomas H. Ince, graduating to feature-length productions in 1914 with The Wrath of the Gods and The Typhoon, both starring Sessue Hayakawa. Later that year he helmed the first feature starring William S. Hart, The Bargain, and directed another strong early Hart feature in 1915, On the Night Stage. This was Barker's most prolific period, with nine features in 1915 and ten in 1916. Barker's work even at this early date in the feature film era shows a solid understanding of how to combine superior camera placement with effective editing for maximum story impact. He also was able to elicit more subdued performances from many of his actors than was prevalent at the time. His first release of 1915, The Italian, is a moving dramatic study of the immigrant experience in New York City. It has a gritty realism and emotional power that stand up well today, aided by its location shooting on city streets and its sensitive acting. He guided star Charles Ray in one of his best surviving features, The Coward, also 1915. In 1916 he was a codirector with Raymond West and Thomas H. Ince on Ince's ambitious and pretentious antiwar film Civilization. Barker married actress Clara Williams, who frequently starred in his productions. Along with her and several other notable actors and directors of the period he was signed to a contract at the short-lived Paralta film production company in 1917-18. He continued to direct throughout the silent era and into the sound period but tapered off on his productions by 1920. He received story credit on three low-budget Westerns in the mid-1920s, and a large percentage of his own films were Westerns, although he directed all sorts of stories. Barker's first all-talkie was a 1929 remake of his own 1925 silent, The Great Divide, and he filmed the first sound version of the perennial comedy-mystery Seven Keys to Baldpate (1930). From 1931 to 1933 he did not direct, and then made four more pictures over 1934-35 for Monogram and Republic. Two of them were socially conscious dramas —the script of one was supervised by and the other film was produced by Dorothy Davenport Reid. He was scheduled to direct another picture in 1936, but was replaced before production started. Selected Filmography: Under Western Skies (1910), Broncho Billy's Adventure (1911), Broncho Billy's Bible (1912), The Wrath of the Gods (1914), The Typhoon (1914), The Bargain (1914), The Italian (1915), The Devil (1915), On the Night Stage (1915), The Iron Strain (1915), The Coward (1915), The Golden Claw (1915), Civilization (1916), The Reward (1916), The Man From Oregon (1916), The Criminal (1916), Golden Rule Kate (1917), The Iced Bullet (1917), Happiness (1917), Carmen of the Klondike (1918), Madame Who? (1918), The Hell Cat (1918), The One Woman (1918), The Turn of the Wheel (1918), Shadows (1919), The Brand (1919), The Crimson Gardenia (1919), Flame of the Desert (1919), Bonds of Love (1919), The Woman and the

30

BARNEY OLDFIELD'S RACE FOR A LIFE

Puppet (1920), Dangerous Days (1920), Godless Men (1920), Bunty Pulls the Strings (1921), Snowblind (1921), The Old Nest (1921), The Poverty of Riches (1921), The Storm (1922), Hearts Aflame (1923), The Eternal Struggle (1923), Pleasure Mad (1923), Women Who Give (1924), Broken Barriers (1924), The Dixie Handicap (1925), The Great Divide (1925), Tne White Desert (1925), Tfie F/amzng Forest (1926), T/ze Frontiersman (1927), Body and Son/ (1927), T/ze Toilers (1928), T/ze Rainbow (1929), A/ew Orleans (1929), Trie Greaf Divide (1929), T/ie Mississippi Gambler (1929), Seuen Keys to Baldpate (1930), Hide-Out (1930), T/ze Moonstone (1934), Women Mnsr Dress (1935), T/ze Healer (1935), Forbidden Hours (1935). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BARNEY OLDFIELD'S RACE FOR A LIFE (1913). One-reel comedy. Directed by Mack Sennett; with Mabel Normand, Barney Oldfield, Mack Sennett, and Ford Sterling; screenplay by Mack Sennett. This lively, humorous film remains as one of the best examples of a lampoon of the stage melodrama of the nineteenth century employing a hero, heroine, and villain. The climactic sequence employs the cliche of the heroine chained to railroad tracks by the villain with, of course, a rescue by the hero. In this case the liberation of the woman was aided by an automobile racetrack driver Barney Oldfield —a real-life champion of many races in the early part of the century. The tone of this work obviously proved to be the opposite of the genteel comedies created by John Bunny and the comedy team of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. The polite humorous work of these actors seldom ventured into broad comedy, remaining light comedy with a strong helping of sentiment. Sennett's Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life becomes not only a burlesque of the stage melodrama, it also seems to be a takeoff of a staple of a film studio, Eclectic Company, which in 1913 churned out works with such excessive titles as Doom of the Ocean, Fatal Plunge, Message of the Dead, and Toils of Villainy; later, in 1914, this company produced the famous serial The Perils of Pauline, starring Pearl White. Sennett's lampoon of such works has many crude, stock devices of burlesque; however, the film cannot be accused of dullness. The acting is artless even for this formative age of cinema when actors in serious films often aped the broad style of the stage. Ford Sterling as the comic villain

BARRYMORE, JOHN

31

struts and hops around as if he were playing to a theater audience of two thousand. Mack Sennett as the country bumpkin who loves the heroine (played by Mabel Normand) slips in and out of character with each changing of locality and situation. Nevertheless, there is a broad, childlike spirit of fun that lifts this work above some of the polished wellacted efforts of the genteel comedies. Action is cinematic — the actors move in depth, toward and away from the camera; the editing of the rescue scene assists the pace greatly. Three parallel actions are skillfully blended in this chase: the villain is shown trying to kill the heroine; the rescuers, Barney Oldfield and the comic oaf (Sennett's character), speed in a racer; and the embryonic Keystone Cops struggle with a railroad handcar to rush to the scene of the assault. BARRYMORE, JOHN. Born John Blythe Barrymore February 14, 1882, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died May 19, 1942, in Hollywood, California. Stage and screen actor. In a movie premiere of Don Juan August 5, 1926, John Barrymore's performance in the title role indicated his skill as a mime even though he possessed the vocal skills of his training on the stage. The work employed a synchronized recorded music score and sound effects. Furthermore, the actor's handsome features fit perfectly the role of the lover of many women. However, Barrymore often preferred to portray bizarre characters on the stage and screen. For his live drama acting he enjoyed the part of Shakespeare's Richard III; for the silent film role he relished the enactment of Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920). Later, with the arrival of sound, he would star in the mesmerizing title role in the movie Svengali (1931) and portray the character of "The Mad Monk" in Rasputin and the Empress (1932). Part of the actor's magnetic inclination toward the grotesque probably developed from his early desire to achieve success as an artist in the mold of Gustav Dore. While he took a job as illustrator for the New York Evening Journal late in the year 1900, his career as an artist did not develop. John Barrymore came from two theatrical families, the Barrymores and the Drews, so he was lured into the profession of his dynasty. John's father, Maurice Barrymore, introduced him to the theatre world January 14, 1901, in a stage sketch called Man of the World. At the age of nineteen he acted with his father in this short drama and soon found the profession of his clan more interesting than sketching for newspapers. John would appear in a number of light comedy plays and some serious works. By 1912 he would combine his stage and screen acting as he appeared in mostly onereel films from 1912 through 1914. Although Barrymore was cast in feature comedy cinema from 1915 through the year 1919, his career would

32

BARRYMORE, JOHN

change to serious works in the 1920s. Part of the switch may have resulted in his stage appearances in Shakespeare's Richard III in 1920 and Hamlet in 1922. Barrymore's move to serious films started with his portrayal of dual roles in the 1920 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other serious portraits included starring roles in Sherlock Holmes (1922), Beau Brummell (1924), and The Sea Beast (1926). In The Sea Beast, an adaptation of Melville's Moby Dick, Barrymore created an effective portrait of Captain Ahab. By the end of the silent age of the cinema in the 1920s, he achieved the rating of an outstanding screen actor with both critical and popular acclaim. Barrymore's distinctive stage presence, plus his impressive personality, helped assure his success as an actor. Some evaluators considered his stage enactments of Hamlet and Richard III as the best interpretations in the early part of the twentieth century. Part of this status might have been due to his heroic style of acting —that is, a broad stylized approach to the art. This elevated style worked in his stage portrayals but sometimes seemed to present a level too high for the screen. Even his eccentric or fantastic roles such as Hyde in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seem overdone when viewed today. With the coming of sound Barrymore began to moderate his broader style of acting. This became evident in Grand Hotel (1932) and Topaze (1933). In his return to comedy films from the early silent days, his portrait in Twentieth Century (1934) of a scheming stage director who feigns despair and indignation with those he feels are against him becomes a superior example of his acting in the 1930s. However, his contribution to the art of cinematic acting began to fade. His best film work was obviously in the 20s and the early 30s. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Dream of a Motion Picture Director (1912), An American Citizen (1914), The Man from Mexico (1914). Selected silent features — The Dictator (1915), Here Comes the Bride (1919), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), The Lotus Eater (1921), Sherlock Holmes (1922), Beau Brummell (1924), Don Juan (1926), The Sea Beast (1926), The Beloved Rogue (1927), Tempest (1928). Selected sound features -The Show of Shows (1929), Moby Dick (1930), Svengali (1931), Grand Hotel (1932), Rasputin and the Empress (1932), Topaze (1933), Dinner at Eight (1933), Twentieth Century (1934). Bibliography: Fowler, Gene. Good Night, Sweet Prince: The Life and Times of John Barrymore. New York: Viking Press, 1944. Garton, Joseph W. The Film Acting of John Barrymore. New York: Arno Press, 1980. Norden, Martin E. John Barrymore: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995.

BARTHELMESS, RICHARD

33

BARTHELMESS, RICHARD. Born May 9, 1895, in New York, City. Died August 17,1963, in Southhampton, New York. Actor, producer. A major leading man from the late 1910s into the early 1930s, Richard Barthelmess had the dramatic skill to play a wide range of roles but was usually cast as a manly, yet warm and sensitive hero. His greatest achievements were the title role in his own company's Tol'able David (1921) and in two of D. W. Griffith's most important films, Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920). In Tol'able David he is an adolescent boy who is violently thrust into the responsibilities of manhood. Broken Blossoms features him as a sensitive Chinese shopkeeper in a London slum who tries to help an abused girl in the face of extreme racial prejudice. In Way Down East he is a more conventional hero, defying puritanical family members to love a young woman who has been seduced and abandoned. Barthelmess was the son of an actress and performed in college plays, entering films at the urging of family friend Alia Nazimova in 1916, appearing in her production, War Brides, that year. His appearance in several Griffith films in 1919 and 1920 increased his box office potential dramatically, and he formed his own production company with director-producer Henry King, Inspiration Pictures. After Tol'able David one of his more impressive roles was in The Enchanted Cottage (1924), and he was nominated for an Oscar for the 1927-28 season for The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose. Barthelmess had a good voice and continued making films after the introduction of sound, notably the original version of The Dawn Patrol (1930). Even in a part-talkie like Weary River he appears as comfortable in the dialogue scenes as in the silent sequences, but he soon became too old for the heroic roles he had been playing. He played a few character parts in the late 1930s and retired from films altogether in 1942. Selected Filmography: Gloria's Romance (1916), War Brides (1916), For Valor (1917), Bab's Diary (1917), Hit-the-Trail Holliday (1918), Rich Man Poor Man (1918), Boots (1919), Peppy Polly (1919), Broken Blossoms (1919), Scarlet Days (1919), The Idol Dancer (1920), The Love Flower (1920), Way Down East (1920), Experience (1921), Tol'able David (1921), Sonny (1922), The Bond Boy (1922), Fury (1923), The Bright Shawl (1923), The Fighting Blade (1923), The Enchanted Cottage (1924), Classmates (1924), Soul-Fire (1925), Shore Leave (1925), Ransom's Folly (1926), The Amateur Gentleman (1926), The Patent Leather Kid (1927), The Drop Kick (1927), The Noose (1928), The Little Sheperd of Kingdom Come (1928), Wheel of Chance (1928), Scarlet Seas (1929), Weary River (1929), The Show of Shows (1929), Son of the Gods (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Finger Points (1931), The Last Flight (1931), Alias the Doctor (1932), Cabin in the Cotton (1932), Central Airport (1933), Heroes for Sale (1933), Midnight Alibi (1934), Four Hours to Kill (1935), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), The Spoilers (1942), The Mayor of 44th Street (1942).

34

BAYNE, BEVERLY

Honors: Academy Award Nomination, Best Actor for The Patent Leather Kid and The Noose, 1928, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

BAYNE, BEVERLY. Born November 22, 1892, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Died August 18,1982, in Scottsdale, Arizona. Actress. Some sources report her birth date as November 11 and the year as 1893, 1894, or 1895. A popular star of romantic dramas during the 1910s she was one-half of the movies' first major movie couple, teamed with Francis X. Bushman in numerous films. Most of her pictures were as costar with Bushman. In 1915 the two left Essanay, where the greater part of their films were shorts, for Metro, where they became even bigger stars, playing the title roles in Romeo and Juliet (1916), among others. They also made an 18-episode serial together, The Great Secret (1917). In real life she secretly married Bushman in 1918 (his second marriage), causing a slight decline in their popularity when it became revealed. They continued appearing together at Metro through the end of that year, although the following July the studio put out God's Outlaw, a neverreleased 1917 production they had filmed, adding new titles to turn it into a comedy. The two made one film for Vitagraph in 1919, and then one final film together for an independent studio in 1923, Modern Marriage, before their divorce the following year. Bayne made only five more silent pictures, her starring career finished. She acted in vaudeville and on stage into the late 1940s, having tried unsuccessfully to return to the screen in sound films in the mid-1930s. Selected Filmography: The Loan Shark (1912), A Good Catch (1912), The Magic Wand (1912), The Pemtant (1912), Dear Old Girl (1913), The Toll of the Marshes (1913), Through the Storm (1914), One Wonderful Night (1914), Under Royal Patronage (1914), The Great Silence (1915), Graustark (1915), Pennington's Choice (1915), The Great Secret (1916), Romeo and Juliet (1916), Man and His Soul (1916), A Million a Minute (1916), The Adopted Son (1917), Red White and Blue Blood (1917), Their Compact (1917), Social Quicksands (1918), A Pair of Cupids (1918), Poor Rich Man (1918), With Neatness and Dispatch (1918), Under Suspicion (1918), God's Outlaw (1919), Daring Hearts (1919), Modern Marriage (1923), The Age of Innocence

BEERY, NOAH

35

(1924), Her Marriage Vows (1924), The Tenth Woman (1924), Who Cares (1925), Passionate Youth (1925), Once In a Lifetime (1932), As Husbands Go (1934), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1935). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BEAU GESTE (1927). Adventure drama. Directed by Herbert Brenon; with Ronald Colman, Neil Hamilton, Ralph Forbes, Alice Joyce, Mary Brian, Noah Beery, William Powell, Victor McLaglen; screenplay by Paul Schofield; adapted by John Russell, Herbert Brenon, from novel by P. C. Wren. A company of French Legionnaires arrives at a desert fort to find every man at his post, but dead. A flashback reveals the circumstances that led up to this strange situation, starting with the childhood of three English brothers who grow up to find their family in dire economic straits. Each joins the French Foreign Legion to take the blame for a missing family jewel. There they encounter a sadistic officer who wants the jewel for himself, as hostile desert raiders meanwhile plan to attack the fort. One of the most consistently entertaining adventure films ever made, Beau Geste is a perfect blend of exotic adventure, action, and romance. It is the archetype of all desert adventure Foreign Legion films, the 1939 remake being almost a direct shot-by-shot copy. Ronald Coleman is perfect in the title role, with strong support from Neil Hamilton and Ralph Forbes. Noah Beery plays his sadistic villain to the hilt, yet always is menacing, never comical. William Powell often played villains before he became a leading man and is fine as a slimy traitorous legionnaire. BEERY, NOAH. Born January 17, 1884 (some sources say 1882), in Kansas City, Missouri. Died April 1, 1946, in Hollywood, California. Actor. A character actor in films for three decades, Noah Beery is best known for his villainous roles and as the older brother of comedian and comic villain Wallace Beery. He acted on stage for about 15 years before switching to motion pictures in 1916. In 1910 he married Marguerite Ab-

36

BEERY, NOAH

bott, the leading lady of one of his stage plays, and their son, Noah Jr., also became a prominent character actor. He was at his most prolific during the silent and early sound eras, with 17 films in 1923 alone. After appearing in a couple of films for a Florida film company, Beery made films for Paramount from 1917 to 1919 and then acted in pictures for a wide variety of producers, working again primarily at Paramount from 1923 to 1927. In 1924 he was in one of the first all-Technicolor feature films, Wanderer of the Wasteland. His best-remembered role is the ruthless Sergeant Lejaune in Beau Geste (1926). Beery was notable in The Mark of Zorro, in which his young son made his screen debut; was the lead heavy in remakes of The Sea Wolf (1920) and The Spoilers (1923); and played a despicable character in The Vanishing American (1926). In Linda (1929) he had an atypical sympathetic role. With the coming of sound, his resonant bass voice was ideal for the early recording systems and he appeared in several musicals. He soon settled into minor roles and character parts, especially in westerns, and did additional stage work. Selected Filmography: The Social Highwayman (1916), A Morman Maid (1917), The Hostage (1917), The Clever Mrs. Carfax (1917), The Whispering Chorus (1918), Believe Me Xantippe (1918), The Squaw Man (1918), Too Many Millions (1918), Johnny Get Your Gun (1919), The Woman Next Door (1919), The Valley of the Giants (1919), In Mizzoura (1919), The Fighting Shepherdess (1920), The Sea Wolf (1920), Go and Get It (1920), The Mark of Zorro (1920), Dinty (1920), Bits of Life (1921), Call of the North (1921), Tillie (1922), Wild Honey (1922), The Crossroads of New York (1922), Ebb Tide (1922), Omar, the Tentmaker (1922), Quicksands (1923), Main Street (1923), The Spoilers (1923), Hollywood (1923), The Heritage of the Desert (1924), The Fighting Coward (1924), Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), North of '36 (1924), East of Suez (1925), The Thundering Herd (1925), The Coming of Amos (1925), Wild Horse Mesa (1925), Lord Jim (1925), The Enchanted Hill (1926), The Vanishing American (1926), The Crown of Lies (1926), Padlocked (1926), Beau Geste (1926), Paradise (1926), Rough Riders (1927), Evening Clothes (1927), The Love Mart (1927), Beau Sabreur (1928), The Dove (1928), Two Lovers (1928), Hellship Bronson (1928), The Passion Song (1928), Love in the Desert (1929), Linda (1929), The Godless Girl (1929), False Fathers (1929), The Four Feathers (1929), Noah's Ark (1929), Careers (1929), The Isle of Lost Ships (1929), The Show of Shows (1929), Glorifying the American Girl (1929), Mammy (1930), Under a Texas Moon (1930), Song of the Flame (1930), Golden Dawn (1930), Tol'able David (1930), Riders of the Purple Sage (1931), The Kid From Spain (1932), She Done Him Wrong (1933), David Harum (1934), The Bad Man of Brimstone (1937), The Girl of the Golden West (1938), The Tulsa Kid (1940), This Man's Navy (1945). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. , executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 1931-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

BEERY, WALLACE

37

Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BEERY, WALLACE. Born April 1, 1885 (other sources have 1886 or 1889), in Kansas City, Missouri. Died April 15, 1949, in Beverly Hills, California. Often cast as a lovable rascal in sound films, Wallace Beery played diverse character parts throughout his career, from slapstick farce to eccentric heroes to medieval kings to menacing villains. He was the younger brother of Noah Beery Sr. but surpassed him both in popularity and in range of roles in major films. While still a teenager, Beery joined a traveling circus, soon leaving for a higher-paying job as a chorus boy on the New York stage, gradually getting larger roles in musicals. Summers in the early 1900s he returned to his hometown of Kansas City to act in stock theatre, gaining experience in a wide variety of roles. While on tour in Chicago in 1913 he filmed a screen test for Essanay and soon was the star of a comedy series as a female impersonator. He made about two dozen short films playing the title character of "Sweedie," a Swedish maid. In 1915 Beery moved to California and after a few more films for Essanay, left to direct shorts for Nestor and Universal in 1916, among them a ten-film series called "Timothy Dobbs, That's Me." At this time he also made a few comedies for Mack Sennett and was briefly married to Gloria Swanson, whom he had met at Essanay. He went to Japan to try producing films but nothing came of this plan and he returned to California to play villains in feature films, especially World War I propaganda stories like The Unpardonable Sin and Behind the Door. After Douglas Fairbanks cast him as a heroic King Richard rather than the villainous Prince John in Robin Hood, Beery began to overcome the villain typecasting and show his range. Many of these new parts had comic overtones, such as his Professor Challenger in The Lost World (1925) and Rhode Island Red in The Pony Express (1925). He became half of a popular comedy team with Raymond Hatton in several films, starting with the war comedy Behind the Front (1926) and including We're In the Navy Now (1926), Now We're in the Air (1927), and The Big Killing (1928). In Beggars of Life (1928) he had a memorable straight dramatic role.

38

BEERY, WALLACE

With the coming of sound, Beery was hugely popular in character roles, sometimes teamed with Marie Dressier or child star Jackie Cooper, and was a top draw for MGM from 1930 until he died, winning an Oscar for The Champ (1931). His last film, Big Jack (1949), was released two days after his death. Selected Filmography: His Athletic Wife (1913), Curing a Husband (1914), Sweedie the Swatter (1914), Sweedie and the Lord (1914), Love and Soda (1914), The Slim Princess (1915), Sweedie's Finish (1915), The Broken Pledge (1915), The Janitor (1916), The Janitor's Vacation (1916), Sweedie the Janitor (1916), Patria (1917), Teddy at the Throttle (1917), Johanna Enlists (1918), The Unpardonable Sin (1919), Soldiers of Fortune (1919), Victory (1919), Life Line (1919), Behind the Door (1920), The Virgin of Stamboul (1920), The Mollycoddle (1920), The Last of the Mohicans (1920), A Tale of Two Worlds (1921), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Rosary (1922), Wild Honey (1922), Trouble (1922), Robin Hood (1922), The Flame of Life (1923), Bavu (1923), Drifting (1923), Three Ages (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), White Tiger (1923), The Sea Hawk (1924), Madonna of the Streets (1924), So Big (1924), The Night Club (1925), The Lost World (1925), The Pony Express (1925), The Wanderer (1926), Behind the Front (1926), Volcano (1926), We're In the Navy Now (1926), Old Ironsides (1926), Casey at the Bat (1927), Fireman, Save My Child (1927), Now We're In the Air (1927), Wife Savers (1928), Partners in Crime (1928), The Big Killing (1928), Beggars of Life (1928), Chinatown Nights (1929), Stairs of Sand (1929), River of Romance (1929), The Big House (1930), Way for a Sailor (1930), Billy the Kid (1930), Mzrz and Bill (1930), The Champ (1931), Hell Divers (1932), Grand Hotel (1932), Flesh (1932), Tugboat Annie (1933), Dinner at Eight (1934), Viva Villa (1934), Treasure Island (1934), The Mighty Barnum (1934), China Seas (1935), Ah, Wilderness (1935), A Message to Garcia (1936), Slave Ship (1937), The Bad Man of Brimstone (1937), Stablemates (1938), Sergeant Madden (1939), The Man from Dakota (1940), Barnacle Bill (1941), Jackass Mad (1942), Salute to the Marines (1943), Barbary Coast Gent (1944), This Man's Navy (1945), Bad Bascomb (1946), The Mighty McGurk (1947), A Date with Judy (1948), Big Jack (1949). Honors: Academy Award, Best Actor, The Champ, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1931. Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. , executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 1931-1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BEN-HUR

39

BEGGARS OF LIFE (1928). Drama. Directed by William Wellman; with Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen, Wallace Beery, Edgar Washington Blue, Robert Perry; screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, Jim Tully, based on novel by Jim Tully. Jim, a young vagrant, helps Nancy, a girl who has just killed her abusive stepfather, escape from the law. With her dressed as a boy, the pair hop a freight train and join a hobo camp where a power struggle is going on for leadership between two ruthless rivals. When they realize Nancy is a girl, the hoboes prepare to rape her until Jim reveals she is wanted for murder. The arrival of detectives inspires the tramps to help Jim and Nancy, but once they are all on a moving train tensions in the group continue to build to a powerful climax. Released at the very end of the silent era, Beggars of Life illustrates the silent drama at its peak, with tight, moody direction by William Wellman (who had made Wings the year before) and realistic, low-key performances by the cast. Louise Brooks has her strongest role in an American film, and Richard Arlen also is at his best. Wallace Beery gives a fine dramatic performance after having had a long string of comic roles. Although the film concludes on a relatively romantic note, the story is unexpectedly grim from beginning to end. Made while the stock market was still rising wildly, it ironically foreshadows the more widespread hobo subculture that would develop with the Great Depression just over a year later. Reaction from audiences at the time was decidedly mixed, many appreciating its atypical story line and strong acting, others finding it disappointing and slow moving. BEN-HUR (1925). Historical religious epic. Directed by Fred Niblo; with Ramon Novarro, Francis X. Bushman, May McAvoy, Frank Currier, Mitchell Lewis, Carmel Myers, Charles Belcher, Nigel De Brulier, Claire McDowell, Betty Bronson; screenplay by Bess Meredyth, Carey Wilson; adapted by June Mathis, from novel by Lew Wallace. At the time of Christ, young Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur and Roman soldier Messala are close friends but have a falling out that leads to the arrest of the entire Ben-Hur family. Ben-Hur is made a galley slave but after saving the life of a Roman commander he is adopted by the wealthy and powerful man. Ultimately he returns to Palestine where he searches for his family and finally confronts his former friend, now a bitter enemy. At various times he meets and is profoundly affected by Jesus Christ. In its time and for many years after, the most expensive movie ever made, this version of Ben-Hur set the standard for spectacular biblical epics. The best-selling novel and long-running hit play was filmed previously in 1907 as a crude one-reel production by the Kalem company, which had not bothered to purchase the rights. In a landmark court case,

40

BEVAN, BILLY

Kalem was forced to pay the copyright owners $25,000 and motion pictures from then on had to clear the rights to previously existing works. The 1925 production was beset with problems. Footage filmed on location in Italy was scrapped, the director and much of the cast were fired, and production was begun anew back in Hollywood. The resulting film was immensely popular but lost money nevertheless because of its high costs. It still holds up reasonably well, despite some now campy performances by vamp Carmel Myers and slightly chunky former matinee idol Francis X. Bushman. Ramon Novarro is quite sensitive in the title role, the most famous of his career. Several scenes were filmed in the early two-color Technicolor process, which gave a pleasing if not entirely naturalistic look to the scenes it was used in. These were scattered throughout the picture, making it seem as if more screen time was in color than there actually was. The most memorable sequences from Ben-Hur are the sea battle and the chariot race, both of which compare favorably with the 1959 remake. The thrills of an unexpected crash during filming inspired the remake to stage even more chariot wrecks and more spectacular ones, but it otherwise copied the photography and editing of the 1925 race closely. In 1931 Ben-Hur was shortened and reissued with synchronized music and sound effects, but this version is less affecting than the full-length original with its color scenes restored. BEVAN, BILLY. Born William Bevan Harris September 29, 1887, in Orange, Australia. Died November 20, 1967, in Escondido, California. Stage, film comedian. With one of the longest careers in the movies —in length similar to Charles Chaplin's —this comedian started in 1917 and continued in minor roles in sound films until he retired in 1952. His stage experience was with the Pollard Opera, which may account for his stylized makeup, a kind used by the British D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Eric Campbell, a foil for Charles Chaplin's Mutual two-reel films of 1916 and 1917. Bevan came into prominence as an actor in Mack Sennett7s Keystone Studios. The warmth of his tramp-clown that appeared in his bit roles during the 1930s and 1940s could hardly get a foothold in the onedimensional portraits that Sennett allowed him. A 1926 production entitled A Sea Dog's Tale, under the direction of Del Hanson, provides an example of such a one-dimensional portrait. Bevan's unusual appearance made him one of Sennett's grotesques. His oversized brush mustache dominated an oval face punctuated with arched eyebrows. Since his covered mouth was diminished in its ability for expression, he conveyed emotions with rolling eyes and arms and

BIRTH OF A NATION, THE

41

legs sticking out from a pear-shaped body. Selected Filmography: Shorts -The Quack Doctor (1920), Inbad the Sailor (1923), Lizzies of the Field (1924), A Sea Dog's Tale (1926). Features (silent)-A Small Town Idol (1921), The Extra Girl (1923). Sound features -Journey's End (1930), Alice in Wonderland (1933), The Long Voyage Home (1940). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Samuel Gill. "Billy Bevan." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, New York, 1970. Miller, Blair. "Billy Bevan." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BIG PARADE, THE (1925). War drama. Directed by King Vidor; with John Gilbert, Renee Adoree, Hobart Bosworth, Claire McDowell, Claire Adams, Tom O'Brien, Karl Dane; screenplay by Harry Behn; story by Laurence Stailings. Upon the entry of the United States into World War I, a diverse group of men enlist and find themselves in the same unit. One of them, a young blueblood who has never worked before, gains a new maturity from the experience. Stationed near a farm in France, he befriends and soon falls in love with the farmer's daughter but must soon leave for battle, where events take a traumatic turn. A powerfully acted story focusing on one individual's wartime experiences, The Big Parade was hailed as a great antiwar film, although some modern critics find its attitude more ambivalent. The army camaraderie in the first portion and the playful soldier's romance with one of the locals may be comparable to lesser films like Wlmt Price Glory? and Lilac Time, but the last half gives it an overall tone that is far more somber than most other war pictures until more overtly antiwar films like Barbed Wire, The Enemy, and All Quiet on the Western Front. Gilbert is superb as a wealthy slacker who gets caught up in patriotic fervor and enlists, then goes through life-changing circumstances that literally turn his hair gray. The famous scene in which his French farm girl lover is chasing his troop transport truck as he is pulling out remains poignant today and was often copied. The soldiers' march into the forest to meet the enemy and the battle in the trenches at night have gut-wrenching emotional intensity. The film's semi-happy ending cannot take the edge of bitterness from the story. BIRTH OF A NATION, THE (1915). Historical epic. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Henry B. Walthall, Lillian Gish, Miriam Cooper, Mae

42

BIRTH OF A NATION, THE

Marsh, Ralph Lewis, George Siegman; screenplay by D. W. Griffith, based upon novel The Clansman by Thomas W. Dixon. The American Civil War interrupts the friendships and budding romances between members of a southern family whose patriarch is a proud colonel and a northern family ruled by an antisecessionist U. S. senator. During the war, younger sons from both families meet on the battlefield, fighting on opposite sides, and die in each other's arms. Another southern son is wounded in battle, rescued by his northern friend on the opposing line, and taken to a hospital, where he meets his friend's sister, a nurse there. After the war the south is plagued by self-serving politicians led by the father of the southerner's new sweetheart. The young southerner, meanwhile, founds a night riding terrorist group known as the Ku Klux Klan to reassert the rights of southern landholders against the white northern carpetbaggers and the new black puppet government they have set up to crush any future rebellion. The Birth of a Nation is rightly credited with being the single motion picture from the medium's formative years that established film as a method of artistic self-expression, a means for political propaganda, and a form of mass entertainment that would soon become one of the country's major industries. It was not the first feature-length film, nor was it the first widely popular feature film. It was not the first film to use many of the now commonplace techniques it is sometimes said to have pioneered. But no film ever captured the public's imagination or created such an effect on the industry like The Birth of a Nation. Director D. W. Griffith was able to use the film medium so well and manipulate audience emotions so effectively that the picture quickly became a "must-see" production among all social classes, whereas previously film attendance was largely by lower income people. Griffith's rhythmic use of editing and cross-cutting to build excitement, his emphasis of small details in characters' mannerisms, and his painstakingly authentic-looking recreation of the period he portrayed impressed viewers immensely. These aspects remain remarkable today, although Griffith's flair for floridly worded explanatory intertitles now seem intrusive and dated. Increasing the impact upon its initial release was the film's specially commissioned musical score and the "roadshow" manner of presentation, although again it was not the first to use either. So powerful was its effect on audiences that Griffith's parochial and condescending racial attitudes incited violent protests about racism, pickets, widespread print campaigns against the film, and demands for censorship. Even today the film's controversy has all but eliminated screenings outside of controlled classroom settings. Griffith's naive assertion was that he was merely recreating historical events and did not intend to provoke or cast aspersions upon

BLOOD AND SAND

43

any present-day people, yet his picture inspired a national revival of the KKK as well as, ironically, strengthening the fledgling National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and creating public awareness of African-American concerns. The Birth of a Nation set both production and exhibition trends, and had a significant impact on America's sociopolitical and historical consciousness for decades to come. BLACK PIRATE, THE (1926). Adventure. Directed by Albert Parker; with Douglas Fairbanks, Billie Dove, Anders Randolf, Sam de Grasse, Donald Crisp, Tempe Piggot, Charles Stevens, Charles Belcher, Fred Becker, John Wallace, E. J. Ratcliffe; screenplay by Lotta Woods, Jack Cunningham; story by Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks). Ruthless pirates attack a ship that a young Spanish nobleman and his father are traveling on. The father is killed and the son (Fairbanks) vows vengeance on those responsible. When he meets up with a band of pirates he beats their best fighter in a duel and joins their crew as a ploy in bringing them to justice. Along the way he meets a princess and becomes heavily involved in a variety of adventures. The Black Pirate is one of Fairbanks' best-known and most popular films and is especially notable as one of the first full-length feature films made entirely using natural color photography. It set the standard for all of the pirate adventure movies that followed, being less epic-oriented and more concerned with action than Frank Lloyd's popular The Sea Hawk of two years earlier. The Errol Flynn sound remake of The Sea Hawk actually had more in common with The Black Pirate than with its own namesake. Such later pirate movies as Captain Blood, The Crimson Pirate, and Steven Spielberg's Hook also owe much to the Fairbanks film, particularly its elements of self-parodying comedy. In its time, The Black Pirate was considered extremely violent and shocked a number of critics with its moments of Technicolor gore. The color photography contributes immeasurably to the film's impact, as does the original orchestra score by Mortimer Wilson. Without the color it comes across as merely another swashbuckler with a predictable plot and touches of tongue-in-cheek humor. It is the scenes of subtle black comedy, mostly involving Anders Randolf as the bloodthirsty pirate leader, that today seem the most modern. The rest of the film remains an energetic but stereotypical action picture. BLOOD AND SAND (1922). Drama. Directed by Fred Niblo; with Rudolph Valentino, Lila Lee, Nita Naldi, George Field, Walter Long, Rosa Rosanova, Leo White, Charles Belcher, Jack Winn, Marie Marstini, Gilbert Clayton, Harry La Mont, George Periolat, Sidney De Grey, Fred

44

BLUE, MONTE

Becker, Dorcas Matthews, William Lawrence; screenplay by June Mathis, based on novel by Vincente Blasco Ibanez and play by Tom Cushing. A young Spanish matador rises quickly to fame and fortune. He marries his childhood sweetheart but is led astray by a voluptuous and passionate vamp. When he realizes that he is not her exclusive lover, tragedy ensues. The theme of Blood and Sand is a variation on the story of Carmen and a precursor to the films noir of the 1940s. Valentino has one of his most memorable roles as the protagonist who is irresistibly drawn to and destroyed by a sensual, self-centered woman, a stock noir situation. In the tradition of silent melodrama and unlike film noir, Blood and Sand pounds home its moral message by having a minor character in the story follow the career of Valentino's matador and comment on it. Nevertheless, there are some powerful scenes and striking photography by one of Cecil B. DeMille's greatest cameramen, Alvin Wyckoff. This was Valentino's first major production after he had shot to stardom in The Sheik and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse the previous year and remains among his strongest performances. BLUE, MONTE. Born January 11, 1890, in Indianapolis, Indiana. Died Feburary 18,1963, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Actor. A romantic lead during the 1920s, Monte Blue broke into movies as a day laborer around 1914 after an extremely varied life of blue-collar jobs. Raised largely in an orphanage after the death of his father, he earned a living as everything from railroad fireman to coal miner to ranch hand to circus clown to lumberjack, and drifted across the country by hopping freight trains. While doing construction work for a studio and complaining to a fellow worker about their pay, he caught the attention of D. W. Griffith and was given a bit part as a labor agitator in The Absentee (1915), directed by William Christy Cabanne. He worked as well on The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) in a variety of capacities. Able to ride a horse, he was soon made a stunt man and then played villains for a few years until Johanna Enlists (1918), in which he played the romantic interest for Mary Pickford. By 1921 he was getting major roles in major films like DeMille's The Affairs of Anatol and Griffith's Orphans of the Storm. Two of his notable roles were in the Ernst Lubitsch comedies The Marriage Circle (1924) and So This is Paris (1926). Possibly the high point of his dramatic career was as the alcoholic doctor in Wliite Shadows in the South Seas (1928). In sound films he played mainly supporting roles, character parts, and bits, often Arabs, Mexicans, and Indians, acting in numerous pictures through the mid-1950s. Possibly his one-sixteenth Cherokee Indian

BORZAGE, FRANK

45

background gave him enough of an exotic look that he became typecast as he reached middle age. Selected Filmography: The Absentee (1915), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Hands Up! (1917), The Man From Painted Post (1917), Wild and Wooly (1917), Johanna Enlists (1918), M'Liss (1918), In Mizzoura (1919), The Thirteenth Commandment (1920), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), The Kentuckians (1921), Orphans of the Storm (1921), My Old Kentucky Home (1922), Peacock Alley (1922), Brass (1923), Defying Destiny (1923), Lucretia Lombard (1923), Main Street (1923), The Purple Highway (1923), The Tents of Allah (1923), Being Respectable (1924), The Dark Swan (1924), Daughters of Pleasure (1924), Her Marriage Vow (1924), How to Educate a Wife (1924), The Lover of Camille (1924), Loving Lies (1924), Mademoiselle Midnight (1924), The Marriage Circle (1924), Revelation (1924), Hogan's Alley (1925), Kiss Me Again (1925), The Limited Mail (1925), Recompense (1925), Red Hot Tires (1925), Across the Pacific (1926), T/ze M^zt Upstairs (1926), Otfzer Wbzrzen's Husbands (1926), So TTH'S IS Pans (1926), Bitter Apples (1927), T/ze Black Diamond Express (1927), Brass Knuckles (1927), T/ze Bnzte (1927), The Bush Leaguer (1927), One-Round Hogan (1927), WbZfs Clothing (1927), Across f/ze Atlantic (1928), Wfa'fe Shadows in the South Seas (1928), From Headquarters (1929), T/ze Greyhound Limited (1929), No De/ezzse (1929), S/czn Deer; (1929), Tiger Rose (1929), Conquest (1930), Js/e of Escape (1930), Tfiose Wrzo Dance (1930), The F/oorf (1931), The Stoker (1932), T/ze Irzrnzder (1933), GMe« (1935), T/ze Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Dodge City (1939), Jzzarez (1939), Sullivan's Travels (1941), Road to Morocco (1942), T/ze Mas/c of Dimitnos (1944), Lz/e Wz'z7z Far/zer (1947), Johnny Belinda (1948), Key Largo (1948), Apache (1954). Selected Bibliography: Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American. Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BORZAGE, FRANK. Born April 23, 1893 (some sources say 1890, 1892, 1894), in Salt Lake City, Utah. Died June 19, 1969, in Hollywood, California. Director, actor. An active director from the time of World War I throughout the silent and sound eras until 1959, Frank Borzage is remembered for tender, sentimental romances, especially 7th Heaven (1927) for which he won the

46

BORZAGE, FRANK

first Academy Award as Best Director. He labored as a miner while still an adolescent, but the teenaged Borzage ran away from home in Utah to become an actor in stock and touring companies. He entered films around 1913 as an extra with Lubin and Universal, quickly getting leading roles, especially after he joined the Thomas Ince company in September. In 1915 he moved to the American Film Company (whose films were distributed through Mutual), where he starred in a comedy series and was given the chance to direct western shorts starring himself by the end of the year. Borzage7s first feature-length directing efforts were released in the fall of 1916, Land O' Lizards and Immediate Lee. After that he stayed in feature films, acting, directing, or both —and switched solely to directing by 1919. Late that year his big break came when screenwriter Frances Marion recommended he direct her adaptation of the Fannie Hurst tearjerker, Humoresque. The finished film opened in New York in May 1920, playing to packed houses, with a similar response at its Chicago debut in August. Its general release in September was a spectacular success. Photoplay magazine chose Humoresque for its gold medal award as the best picture of 1920, and for years afterwards Borzage's films were often touted as by "the director of Humoresque." His films over the next few years received mixed reaction from both public and critics, some of his highest praise coming for Secrets (1924) and The Lady (1925), both starring Norma Talmadge. His greatest film achievements were his last four silent pictures, 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), The River (1928), and Lucky Star (1929). Lucky Star, a part-talkie also released as a silent, is strong despite some flaws. Street Angel, especially, is a powerful blend of European-styled cinematic artistry and Hollywood romanticism. He went on to do a number of important sound films, such as Bad Girl (1931), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Little Man What Now? (1934), History Is Made at Night (1937), and The Mortal Storm (1940), but his later work generally was less distinguished than his silent career. Selected Filmography: When the Prince Arrived (1913), The Mystery of the Yellow Aster Mine (1913), A Woman's Stratagem (1913), Claim Number Three (1914), A New England Idyll (1914), A Romance of the Sea (1914), Desert Gold (1914), The Geisha (1914), The Ambassador's Envoy (1914), A Tragedy of the Orient (1914), A Relic of Old Japan (1914), The Wrath of the Gods (1914), A Romance of the Sawdust Ring (1914), Stacked Cards (1914), Parson Larkin's Wife (1914), The Typhoon (1914), Nipped (1914), A Crook's Sweetheart (1914), A Romance of Old Holland (1914), The Panther (1914), In the Land of the Otter (1915), The Girl Who Might Have Been (1915), The Mill by the Zuyder Zee (1915), In the Switch Tower (1915), The Fakir (1915), Molly of the Mountains (1915), The Disillusionment of Jane (1915), The Cup of Life (1915), The Spark From the Embers (1915), Her Alibi (1915), The Scales of Justice (1915), The Tavern Keeper's Son (1915), The Secret of Lost River (1915), His Mother's Portrait (1915), The Tools of Providence (1915), The Hammer (1915), A Knight of the Trails

BORZAGE, FRANK

47

(1915), A Child of the Surf (1915), A Friend in Need (1915), Mixed Males (1915), Alias James-Chauffeur (1915), Touring With Tillie (1915), Out to the Minute (1915), Her Adopted Father (1915), Almost a Widow (1915), Anita's Butterfly (1915), Cupid Beats Father (1915), Making Over Father (1915), Nobody's Home (1915), Aloha Oe (1915), Two Hearts and a Thief (1915), The Clean Up (1915), The Pitch O' Chance (1915), The Cactus Blossom (1915), Settled Out of Court (1916), Mammy's Rose (1916), Life's Harmony (1916), The Silken Spider (1916), The Code of Honor (1916), Two Bits (1916), A Flickering Light (1916), Urz/wc/cy Luice (1916), Jack (1916), T/ze Pz'/grzm (1916), The Demon of Fear (1916), Nugget Jim's Pardner (1916), Quicksand of Deceit (1916), That Gal of Burke (1916), The Courtin' of Calliope Clew (1916), Nell Dale's Men Folks (1916), The Forgotten Prayer (1916), Matchin' Jim (1916), Land O'Lizards (1916), Immediate Lee (1916), A Mormon Maid (1917), A School for Husbands (1917), FZyiwg Co/ors (1917), Wee Lady Betty (1917), Fear Not (1917), Until They Get Me (1917), The Curse oflku (1918), The Shoes That Danced (1918), Innocent's Progress (1918), Society For Sale (1918), An Honest Man (1918), Who Is To Blame? (1918), The Ghost Flower (1918), Toton (1919), Whom the Gods Would Destroy (1919), Prudence On Broadway (1919), Humoresque (1920), The Duke of Chimney Butte (1921), Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford (1921), Back Pay (1922), Billy Jim (1922), The Good Provider (1922), HairTrigger Casey (1922—revised reissue of Immediate Lee), Silent Shelby (1922— reissue of Land O'Lizards), The Valley of Silent Men (1922), The Pride of Palomar (1922), The Nth Commandment (1923), Children of Dust (1923), Age of Desire (1923), Secrets (1924), The Lady (1925), Daddy's Gone A-Hunting (1925), Lazybones (1925), The Circle (1925), Wages For Wives (1925), The First Year (1926), The Dixie Merchant (1926), Early to Wed (1926), "Marriage License?" (1926), 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), The River (1929), Lucky Star (1929), They Had to See Paris (1929), Song o' My Heart (1930), Liliom (1930), Doctors' Wives (1931), Young As You Feel (1931), Bad Girl (1931), After Tomorrow (1932), Yowng America (1932), A Farewell to Arms (1932), Secrete (1933), Man's Casf/e (1933), No Greater Glory (1934), Little Man What Now? (1934), Flirtation Walk (1934), Lruwg orz Velvet (1935), Stranded (1935), Shipmates Forever (1935), Desz're (1936), Hearts Divided (1936), Greerz Lz'g/z£ (1937), History Is Made at Night (1937), Bz'g City (1937), Mannequin (1938), T/zree Comrades (1938), T/ze S/zz'rzz'rzg Hour (1938), Disputed Passage (1939), Strange Cargo (1940), T/ze Mortal Storm (1940), Flight Command (1941), Smilin' Through (1941), The Vanishing Virginian (1942), Seven Sweethearts (1942), Stage Door Canteen (1943), His Butler's Sister (1943), Till We Meet Again (1944), The Spanish Main (1945), I've Always Loved You (1946), That's My Man (1947), Moonrise (1949), China Doll (1958), The Big Fisherman (1959). Honors: Academy Awards, Best Director, 7th Heaven, Bad Girl, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1929, 1933; D. W. Griffith Award, Directors Guild of America, 1961. Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

48

BOSWORTH, HOBART

Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Turconi, Davide, editor. Griffithiana 46 (December 1992). Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. BOSWORTH, HOBART. Born A u g u s t 11, 1867, in Marietta, Ohio. Died D e c e m b e r 30, 1943, in Glendale, California. Actor, director, p r o d u c e r , writer. R e m e m b e r e d m o r e as a character actor of the 1920s a n d 30s, H o b a r t Bosworth w a s a stage star of the early 1900s (having acted since the 1880s) w h o switched to m a k i n g films in his early forties, a r o u n d 1908. A t the Selig C o m p a n y h e acted in, directed, p r o d u c e d , a n d w r o t e n u m e r o u s short films until forming his o w n p r o d u c t i o n c o m p a n y in 1913 to m a k e films b a s e d u p o n Jack L o n d o n stories. His first i n d e p e n d e n t p r o d u c t i o n w a s a seven-reel a d a p t a t i o n of The Sea Wolf. Bosworth wrote, directed, starred in, a n d e v e n distributed himself until contracting w i t h n e w distributor W. W. H o d k i n s o n (whose self-named c o m p a n y soon became k n o w n as P a r a m o u n t Pictures a n d later m e r g e d w i t h Lasky's a n d Z u k o r ' s p r o d u c t i o n companies). B o s w o r t h ' s p r o d u c t i o n c o m p a n y w a s n o t successful a n d by 1915 h e r e t u r n e d to acting as his chief occupation, p r o d u c i n g a couple m o r e films in 1921. Bosworth h a d r u n a w a y to sea at age 12 a n d s o m e of his m o s t m e m o r a b l e roles w e r e as seafaring m e n , notably besides The Sea Wolf, the leads in t h e lurid p o s t w a r p r o p a g a n d a film, Behind the Door (1919), and the sentimental family favorite, Captain January (1924). W h e n s o u n d c a m e in, his stage experience stood h i m in g o o d stead a n d h e h a d m a n y roles in 1930-31 at a w i d e variety of studios. Selected Filmography: In the Sultan's Power (1909), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1910), Monte Cristo (1912), The Sea Wolf (1913), The Country Mouse (1914), John Barleycorn (1914), An Odyssey of the North (1914), Fatherhood (1915), A Little Brother of the Rich (1915), Oliver Twist (1916), Joan the Woman (1916), The Little American (1917), The Woman God Forgot (1917), The Border Legion (1918), Behind the Door (1919), Below the Surface (1920), Blind Hearts (1921), The Sea Lion (1921), White Hands (1922), The Stranger's Banquet (1922), The Man Alone (1923), Vanity Fair (1923), Little Church Around the Corner (1923), Rupert of Henzau (1923), The Common Laze (1923), The Eternal Three (1923), In the Palace of the King (1923), Name the Man (1924), Captain January (1924), Bread (1924), The Silent Watcher (1924), Hearts of Oak (1924), Sundown (1924), If I Marry Again (1925), My Son (1925), Chickie (1925), Zander the Great (1925), Winds of Chance (1925), The Big Parade (1925), The Golden Strain (1925), The Far Cry (1926), The Nervous Wreck (1926), Spangles (1926), Three Hours (1927), Annie Laurie (1927), The Blood Ship (1927), The Chinese Parrot (1927), My Best Girl (1927), Freckles (1928), The Smart Set (1928),

BOW, CLARA

49

After the Storm (1928), Hangman's House (1928), The Sawdust Paradise (1928), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Eternal Love (1929), General Crack (1929), Mammy (1930), The Devil's Holiday (1930), The Office Wife (1930), Abraham Lincoln (1930), Dzz Barry-Woman of Passion (1930), /ns£ Imagine (1930), T/ze Third A/arw (1930), Dirigible (1931), Shipmates (1931), T/zz's Modern Age (1931), T/ze MiracZe Man (1932), County Fair (1932), The Phantom Express (1932), Lady For a Day (1933), The Crusades (1935), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935), One Foot in Heaven (1941), Sin Town (1942). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. BOW, CLARA. Born July 29, 1905, in Brooklyn, N e w York. Died S e p t e m b e r 27,1965, in W e s t Los Angeles, California. Actress. Bow's onscreen e x u b e r a n t vitality belied her troubled personal life a n d by the e n d of the 1920s she w a s the m o s t p o p u l a r star in America. In 1927 r o m a n c e novelist Elinor Glyn, a n influential society trendsetter, declared her the "It" girl —the e m b o d i m e n t of magnetic sensual appeal. Even w h e n she a p p e a r e d in small parts in m i n o r films she m a d e a distinct impression, bringing scenes to life —a characteristic as noticeable t o d a y as it seems to h a v e been w h e n the films w e r e m a d e . The personification of the free-spirited, m o d e r n w o m a n or "flapper" d u r i n g the last half of the 1920s, Clara Bow g r e w u p k n o w i n g only poverty, child abuse, a n d t r a g e d y , forced to leave the eighth g r a d e to find w o r k . At age 16 she entered a fan m a g a z i n e ' s b e a u t y / s c r e e n test contest, w i n n i n g the first prize. A bit p a r t in a m o v i e soon followed, a l t h o u g h her scenes w e r e cut before its release (and later restored after she b e c a m e a star). A s u p p o r t ing role in her v e r y next movie, Down to the Sea in Ships (1923), i m m e d i ately c a u g h t the attention of critics a n d filmmakers. It ultimately led to both s t a r d o m a n d financial exploitation by e m p l o y e r s of the naive teenager. A p p r e h e n s i v e a b o u t m a k i n g talkies, Bow nevertheless h a n d l e d the transition well, despite her o w n fears. Unfortunately the stress of the early s o u n d period coincided with notorious scandals involving her sex life, a libel suit, a n d a m i s u n d e r s t o o d blackmail threat by her accounta n t / b e s t friend. This all led to w e i g h t gains, n e r v o u s b r e a k d o w n s , a n d

50

BRENON, HERBERT

her retirement from movies in 1933 to devote herself to her marriage and children. In 1931 she married western star Rex Bell and moved to his Nevada ranch. Making only two films that year, she was still exhausted from the pressure and agreed to make one each of the following years before deciding to give up her career for good. Both her mother and grandmother had gone insane, and her own mental health remained precarious from this period until the end of her life. Selected Filmography: Beyond the Rainbow (1922), Down to the Sea in Ships (1923), The Daring Years (1923), Black Oxen (1924), Daughters of Pleasure (1924), Helen's Babies (1924), The Adventurous Sex (1925), My Lady's Lips (1925), Parisian Love (1925), Eve's Lover (1925), Kiss Me Again (1925), The Primrose Path (1925), The Plastic Age (1925), The Keeper of the Bees (1925), Free to Love (1925), Two Can Play (1926), Dancing Mothers (1926), Fascinating Youth (1926), Mantrap (1926), Kid Boots (1926), It (1927), Children of Divorce (1927), Rough House Rosie (1927), Hula (1927), Wings (1927), Get Your Man (1927), Red Hair (1928), Ladies of the Mob (1928), The Fleet's In (1928), Three Week-ends (1928), The Wild Party (1929), Dangerous Curves (1929), The Saturday Night Kid (1929), Paramount on Parade (1930), True to the Navy (1930), Love Among the Millionaires (1930), Her Wedding Night (1930), No Limit (1931), Kick In (1931), Call Her Savage (1932), Hoopla (1933). Selected Bibliography: Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Start New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Stenn, David. Clara Bow Runnin' Wild. New York: Doubleday, 1988.

BRENON, HERBERT. Born January 13, 1880, in Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire), Ireland. Died June 21, 1958, in Los Angeles California. Director, producer, screenwriter. Herbert Brenon was born into an artistically-minded upper-class Irish family and moved with them to America at age 16. He soon embarked on a stage career and within a decade was married with a son. He and his wife bought a theatre around 1908 where they increased their profits by running films. After selling out at a profit, Brenon decided to try writing scenarios for Imp (also known as IMP) in 1911, and the following year was directing them as well. On occasion he also acted in his own films. He worked briefly at Fox, directing six features including four starring Theda Bara. Brenon then produced independently, going to Europe for several productions before returning to the United States and studio films for Fox and Paramount. A director often more acclaimed by critics than the public through most of the silent period, Brenon found great success with the Annette

BRENON, HERBERT

51

Kellerman vehicles Neptune's Daughter (1914) and A Daughter of the Gods (1917), and the pacifistic War Brides (1917), starring Alia Nazimova. He reached his peak in the mid-1920s with films like Peter Pan (1924), A Kiss for Cinderella (1925), Dancing Mothers (1926), and Beau Geste (1926). He did not wish to make films with sound, although his first couple of alltalking efforts received good notices. One, The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930), was another strongly antiwar picture that received mixed reaction on its release but was still fondly remembered by some viewers over half a century later. He made sound pictures in England through most of the 1930s and retired from filmmaking in 1940. Filmography: Three reels or longer — Leah the Forsaken (1912), Robespierre (1913), Ivanhoe (1913), Time Is Money (1913), Love or a Throne (1913), The Watch Dog of the Deep (1914), Absinthe (1914), The Price of Sacriledge (1914), Neptune's Daughter (1914), Love and a Lottery Ticket (1914), Across the Atlantic (1914), When the World Was Silent (1914), The Tenth Commandment (1914), Life's Shop Window (1914), Sfze Was His Mother (1915), The Heart of Maryland (1915), The Kreutzer Sonata (1915), The Clemenceau Case (1915), The Two Orphans (1915), Sin (1915), The Soul of Broadway (1915), A Daughter of the Gods (1916), War Brides (1917), The Eternal Sin (1917), The Lone Wolf (1917), The Fall of the Romanoffs (1918), Empty Pockets (1918), The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1918), Victory and Peace (1918), 12.10 (1919), La Principessa Misteriosa (1920), // Colchico e la Rosa (1920), Beatrice (1920), The Passion Flower (1921), The Sign on the Door (1921), The Wonderful Thing (1921), Any Wife (1922), A Stage Romance (1922), Shackles of Gold (1922), Moonshine Valley (1922), The Custard Cup (1923), The Rustle of Silk (1923), The Woman With Four Faces (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), Shadows of Pans (1924), The Breaking Point (1924), The Side Show of Life (1924), The Alaskan (1924), Peter Pan (1925), The Little French Girl (1925), The Street of Forgotten Men (1925), A Kiss For Cinderella (1925), The Song and Dance Man (1926), Dancing Mothers (1926), Beau Geste (1926), The Great Gatsby (1926), God Gave Me Twenty Cents (1926), The Telephone Girl (1927), Sorrell and Son (1927), Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928), The Rescue (1929), Lummox (1930), The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930), Beau Ideal (1931), Transgression (1931), Girl of the Rio (1932), Wine, Women and Song (1933), Royal Cavalcade (1935),

Honours Easy (1935), Living Dangerously (1936), Someone at the Door (1936), The Dominent Sex (1937), Spring Handicap (1937),T/ze Live Wire (1937), Housemaster (1938), Yellow Sands (1938), Black Eyes (1939), The Tlying Squad (1940). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Turconi, Davide, editor. Griffithiana 57/58 (October 1996).

52

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS

Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BREWSTER'S MILLIONS (1921). Comedy. Directed by Joseph Henabery; with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Betty Ross Clarke, Fred Huntley, Marian Skinner, James Corrigan, Jean Acker, Charles Ogle, and William Boyd; screenplay by Walter Wood, from novel by George Barr McCutcheon. There exist some popular plays and novels whose adaptations could result in big bucks at the box office. This became true of a stage play by Brandon Thomas, Charley's Aunt, with ten film adaptations, one of the best of which was silent. In 1925 Sydney Chaplin — Charles Chaplin's brother — enacted a young man who helped his friends by impersonating his dowager aunt. That farce evidently has been more popular than Brewster's Millions, which had only four adaptations to the movies. These adaptations from the novel concern the attempts of an heir to spend a large sum of money in a short time in order to receive an even larger inheritance—obviously another farce with distinctive and innovative appeal for a movie audience. Producer Jesse Lasky and director Joseph Henabery thought they would have a hit movie when they cast Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle as Monte Brewster in the second film version of Brewster's Millions. If disaster had not struck the career of the comedian, this captivating combination of a an appealing story and a very popular actor might have been a box office success. On Labor Day of 1920 a woman, Virginia Rappe died, presumably from a sexual act by Arbuckle. Eventually the jury cleared the comedian of all wrongdoing. However, the feature had been released soon after the scandal, in January of 1921, and the film could not draw an audience. The public would reject an actor whom they previously admired because most people did not believe in his innocence. Consequently, the 1921 version of Brewster's Millions faded into an unrecognized silent screen comedy — all because of a scandal that existed on a slim premise of Arbuckle's guilt. Also, other already completed features were not be released and the comedian could only reappear as a director under an assumed name, William Goodrich. The comedy derived from the plot of Brewster's Millions springs from the difficulty that Brewster had trying to get rid of millions. Foolish investments pay off so that the task of getting to the zero mark at an allotted time produces comedy frustration in the character of Monty Brewster. It was a type of humor Arbuckle could handle with ease. Ironically, a takeoff on this plot using a woman, played by comedienne Bebe Daniels and called Miss Brewster's Millions (1926), would be successful.

BRONSON, BETTY

53

BROKEN BLOSSOMS (1919). Drama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Richard Barthelmess, Lillian Gish, Donald Crisp, Arthur Howard, Edward Peil, Norman Selby, George Beranger, Ernest Butterworth; screenplay by D. W. Griffith, from story "The Chink and the Child" by Thomas Burke in Limehouse Nights. An idealistic young Chinese man comes to England to preach his eastern philosophy of peace, but soon finds himself a disillusioned shopkeeper in a London slum. There he befriends and helps shelter an abused adolescent girl who is regularly beaten by her prizefighter father. When the father learns of the situation his narrow mind and violent temper lead to a terrible confrontation. Acclaimed by critics from the time of its release through the present day as Griffith's greatest film, Broken Blossoms may well be the first tragic masterpiece of the cinema. Far more intimate than the epic The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance, it is a delicate story of characters and ideals caught up in an inexorable destiny. Many critics also find the eloquent plea for racial tolerance less embarrassing to embrace than the controversial The Birth of a Nation. Setting the mood brilliantly, the beautiful cinematography is accentuated by subtle pastel color tints that soften the harshness of the story's London Limehouse setting. The specially composed musical score by Louis F. Gottschalk, a rarity for its time, complements the action even more. The only real drawback to the film is the exaggerated performance given by Donald Crisp as the brutish father, in stark contrast to the underplaying by Richard Barthelmess. Lillian Gish gives perhaps the most sensitive performance of her career, playing a girl almost half her age. Griffith adapted a short story from the book Limehouse Nights, by the florid English writer Thomas Burke, while he was working for Adolph Zukor's Artcraft Pictures (a division of Paramount). Zukor is said to have found the finished film too poetic and gloomy for general release. Griffith decided to premiere the film in a few large cities in May of 1919, but even after a glowing critical reception, Zukor still wanted to delay release until more bookings had been contracted for. Griffith, however, decided to purchase the film for his newly formed United Artists distribution company. It went into national release in October, and within three months had earned almost double what UA had paid to acquire it (which itself was over three times what it had cost Zukor to finance its production). BRONSON, BETTY. Born Elizabeth Ada Bronson November 17,1906, in Trenton, New Jersey. Died October 19,1971. Film actress.

54

BROOKE, VAN DYKE

On the screen the charming, beautiful pixie-like woman became the ideal heroine for movie audiences in the 1910s and continued into the early 1920s. However, the flapper as a charmer emerged as a movie icon by the end of the decade. Mary Pickford, who specialized in petite girls in her many films, had grown too old for these roles. Paramount believed Betty Bronson would take over for this very popular actress. She reached star status with her portrait of the title role in Peter Pan (1924) and would repeat her success with A Kiss for Cinderella (1926). Both films were adaptations from British author James Barrie's stage plays and the playwright gave Paramount an endorsement to cast Betty Bronson for the parts. Critics praised the vitality of the actress in handling the leads in these two films and the New York Times listed the films with the "Ten Best" movies for the years of their release. Unfortunately for Miss Bronson, taste for the diminutive, sweet young woman faded and the jazz age flapper caught the fancy of audiences in such works as Clara Bow's Dancing Mothers (1926) and The Wild Party (1929). Betty Bronson continued acting into the sound period, but her star status had faded after a brief career. Filmography: Selected silent features — Java Head (1923), Peter Pan (1924), Are Parents People? (1925), The Golden Princess (1925), Ben-Hur (1925), A Kiss for Cinderella (1926). Selected sound features — The Singing Fool (1928), The Medicine Man (1930), The Midnight Patrol (1932), Pocketful of Miracles (1961). Selected Bibliography: Franklin, Joe. "Betty Bronson." Classics of the Silent Screen. New York: The Citadel Press, 1959. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. 1987.

BROOKE, VAN DYKE. Born 1859 in Detroit, Illinois. Died September 17,1921, in Saratoga Springs, New York. Director, actor. After working in the theatre, Van Dyke Brooke (occasionally spelled Brooks) directed, acted in, a n d / o r wrote numerous short films for Vitagraph from 1908 through 1917. Major stars of the period he worked with include Maurice Costello, John Bunny, and Norma Talmadge. He directed two feature films at Vitagraph in 1916 and made two for Thanhouser in 1917. Brooke has no credits listed for 1918, and when his career resumed in 1919 it was as an actor only, sometimes in a starring, sometimes in a supporting role. Filmography: Selected shorts-The Gypsy's Revenge (1908), The Witch (1908), Led Astray (1909), The Lost Sheep (1909), Capital vs. Labor (1910), A Dixie Mother (1910), Captain Barnacle's Courtship (1911), Captain Barnacle's Baby (1911), Ida's Christmas (1912), Mrs. Carter's Necklace (1912), A Modern Psyche (1913), Better Days (1913),

BROOKS, LOUISE

55

Cupid Versus Money (1914), The Peacemaker (1914), Tried For His Own Murder (1915), The Dawn of Understanding (1915), Lisa's Brother (1915), The Primal Instinct (1916), Captain Jinks, the Cobbler (1916), Captain Jinks' Alibi (1917), Captain Jinks' Love Letters (1917). Features — The Crown Prince's Double (1916), The Lights of New York (1916), An Amateur Orphan (1917), It Happened to Adele (1917), The Moonshine Trail (1919), The Fortune Hunter (1920), The Sea Rider (1920), What Women Want (1920), The Passionate Pilgrim (1921), Straight Is the Way (1921), The Crimson Cross (1921), A Midnight Bell (1921), The Son ofWallingford (1921). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BROOKS, LOUISE. Born November 14, 1906, in Cherryvale, Kansas. Died August 8,1985, in Rochester, New York. Actress. A beautiful but minor actress in Paramount pictures the last half of the 1920s, Louise Brooks was just beginning to get larger roles that demonstrated her talent at the end of the silent era but, after disagreements with the studio, left for Europe to make the three films that won her immortality—Pandora's Box/Die Biichse der Pandora (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl/Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929), and Prix de Beaute (1930). She had started in show business as a member of the Ruth St. Denis dance company and appeared in "George White's Scandals" and the "Ziegfeld Follies" before landing a movie contract. Her most important American role, and the only one showing the same domination of the screen so evident in her German and French films, was the young drifter disguised as a boy in Beggars of Life (1928). Other notable American screen appearances were in Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port (1928) and with W. C. Fields in It's the Old Army Game (1926). She returned to the United States in 1930 but partly due to her difficult reputation (she had refused to come back to dub own her voice when Paramount decided to release The Canary Murder Case as a talkie), was cast only in bit parts or as leads in a few B-westerns. She gave up films by the end of the thirties. In her later years she wrote extensively about film and very frankly on her own career from her home in Rochester, New York, and patronized the George Eastman House film screenings there. Selected Filmography: The Street of Forgotten Men (1925), The American Venus

56

BROWN, CLARENCE

(1926), A Social Celebrity (1926), It's the Old Army Game (1926), Love 'Em and Leave 'Em (1926), Rolled Stockings (1927), The City Gone Wild (1927), Now We're In the Air (1927), A Girl in Every Port (1928), Beggars of Life (1928), Tfze Canary Murder Case (1929), Die Biichse der Pandora (1929), Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929), Prix de Beaute (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), The Steel Highway (1931), Empty Saddles (1936), Overland Stage Raiders (1938). Selected Bibliography: Brooks, Louise. Lulu In Hollywood. New York: Knopf, 1982. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Paris, Barry. Louise Brooks. New York: Knopf, 1989.

BROWN, CLARENCE. Born May 10, 1890, in Clinton, Massachussets. Died August 17,1987, in Santa Monica, California. Director. A favorite director of actress Greta Garbo, Clarence Brown was noted for his romantic films in both the silent and sound era. Although his education at the University of Tennessee was in engineering, at age 25 he became an assistant to French film director Maurice Tourneur, who worked in the United States from 1914 to 1926. After an apprenticeship of five years earning credits as assistant director and editor, he got a chance to direct The Great Redeemer (1920), co written with John Gilbert and produced and supervised by Tourneur. Later that year when Tourneur was injured during the filming of The Last of the Mohicans, Brown took over, directing much of the picture. After one more codirected film with Tourneur, he started directing on his own with The Light in the Dark (1922), which he coscripted. The last half of this film was later reedited into The Light of Faith and distributed nontheatrically for church and school viewing. Brown soon became an important director, with major pictures of Valentino, Garbo and Norma Talmadge to his credit. The three films he directed in 1925, all of which concern an older than usual female character, show his mastery at wringing emotion and nostalgia from his material. He went on to a long career directing sound films. Brown's own visual sense and preference for romantic subjects was greatly influenced by his association with Tourneur, with whom he worked from 1915 to 1921. Filmography (silents, as director or co-director): The Great Redeemer (1920), The Last of the Mohicans (1920), The Foolish Matrons (1921), The Light in the Dark (1922), Don't Marry for Money (1923), The Acquittal (1923), The Signal Tower (1924), Butterfly (1924), Smouldering Fires (1925), The Eagle (1925), The Goose Woman (1925), Kiki (1926), Flesh and the Devil (1926), The Trail of '98 (1928), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Wonder of Women (1929).

BROWNING, TOD

57

Selected Filmography (sound): Anna Christie (1930), Romance (1930), A Free Soul (1931), Emma (1932), Anna Karemna (1935), Wife Versus Secretary (1936), National Velvet (1945), The Yearling (1947), Angels in the Outfield (1951). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

BROWNING, TOD. Born July 12, 1880, in Louisville, Kentucky. Died October 6,1962, in Hollywood, California. Director, actor, screenwriter. Tod Browning is perhaps best remembered for a handful of horror films he directed in the 1930s, primarily Dracula (1931), Freaks (1932), Mark of the Vampire (1935), and The Devil Doll (1936), but the bulk of his work and his most interesting films come from the silent era. Many of his pictures share a dark, twisted view of humanity and a fondness for the blackest of ironies that reached their culmination in films like The Unknown (1927), West of Zanzibar (1928), and of course the infamous Freaks. Browning ran away from home to join the circus as a teenager, where he was a contortionist and clown, subjects he would later incorporate in a number of his stories. He left the circus to enter vaudeville and by 1914, still in his early twenties, was acting in one-reel comedies for the Komic Film Company. He directed a few shorts in 1915, played a small part in the modern sequence of Griffith's Intolerance in 1916, and started writing scenarios for Triangle. One of these was a bizarre satire of drug addiction and Sherlock Holmes called The Mystery of the Leaping Fish and was produced by Keystone starring Douglas Fairbanks. Browning turned back to directing in 1917 with feature-length films, often writing his own stories and screenplays. Many of his features for the next several years were for Universal. He liked to work with the same actors repeatedly, notably Priscilla Dean and Lon Chaney. An important early success was a lavish romantic adventure for Universal called The Virgin of Stamboul (1920), starring Priscilla Dean, Wheeler Oakman, and Wallace Beery. He followed this up with Outside the Law (1921), a gangster-reformation story with Dean and Oakman once more in the leads and featuring Lon Chaney in a key dual role. Browning's big break came when MGM let him film a story he had wanted to do about a gang of criminals made up of three circus sideshow performers. The Unholy Three (1925) starred Lon Chaney and was a huge hit. All but three of his next ten films starred Chaney, many of the gruesome aspects of his stories disturbing audiences of the time and even today. A film like The Unknown would revolve around themes of sexual dysfunction and amputation that were intri-

58

BROWNING, TOD

cately linked to love, revenge, and self-sacrifice. His collaborations with Chaney gave them a chance to build upon each other's partiality to weird and unsavory subjects. The oddness of Browning's vision might be compared to that of David Lynch a half century later, both of them preoccupied with characters exhibiting criminal and freakish behavior as well as freakish physical characteristics. Ultimately the Browning vision proved too much for MGM. His first talkie, The Thirteenth Chair (1929), was a dull mystery based on a stage play. A 1930 sound remake of The Unholy Three again starred Chaney, but MGM assigned Jack Conway to direct rather than Browning. Browning then made three films for his old studio, Universal, remaking his own Outside the Law (1930) before his memorable if sluggish Dracula (1931). At the end of the year he returned to MGM, where his first film was the controversial Freaks (1932). In 1935 he remade his offbeat horror-mystery-satire London After Midnight (1927), which had starred Lon Chaney. This time it featured Bela Lugosi under the title Mark of the Vampire, but its second-rate execution suggests that the high reputation of the now-lost silent original is undeserved and based largely on some tantalizing production stills. After two more films Browning retired in 1939 a wealthy man, but lived in seclusion until his death at age 80. Filmography: Features— Sunshine Dad (1916), Intolerance (1916), Atta Boy's Last Race (1916), Jim Bludso (1917), A Love Sublime (1917), Hands Up! (1917), Peggy, The Will o' the Wisp (1917), The Jury of Fate (1917), The Eyes of Mystery (1918), Which Woman (1918), The Deciding Kiss (1918), Revenge (1918), The Legion of Death (1918), The Brazen Beauty (1918), Set Free (1918), The Unpainted Woman (1919), The Wicked Darling (1919), The Exquisite Thief (1919), A Fetal on the Current (1919), Bonnie Bonnie Lassie (1919), The Virgin of Stamboul (1920), Outside the Law (1921), No Woman Knows (1921), The Wise Kid (1922), Man Under Cover (1922), Linger Two Flags (1922), Drifting (1923), White Tiger (1923), The Day of Faith (1923), The Dangerous Flirt (1924), Silk Stocking Sal (1924), The Unholy Three (1925), The Mystic (1925), Dollar Down (1925), The Black Bird (1926), The Road to Mandalay (1926), The Shozv (1927), London After Midnight (1927), The Big City (1928), West of Zanzibar (1928), Where East Is East (1929), The Thirteenth Chair (1929), Outside the Law (1930), Dracula (1931), The Iron Man (1931), Freaks (1932), Fast Workers (1933), Mark of the Vampire (1935), The Devil Doll (1936), Miracles for Sale (1939). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane. "Tod Browning," The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

BUSCH, MAE

59

Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

BUNNY, JOHN. Born September 21, 1863, in New York City. Died April 26, 1915, in Brooklyn, New York. Vaudeville, legitimate theatre, film actor in serious and comic works. While the French actor Max Linder was considered the first international comedian, Bunny became the first comic star in the United States. He started in vaudeville and graduated to stage plays such as Midsummer Night's Dream and Tom Jones. In the 1910s, a period that most people today think had only the slapstick films of such director-producers as Mack Sennett, Bunny appeared in genteel humorous movies. For example he appeared in the work entitled A Cure for Pokeritis (1912) with his frequent costar, dour comedienne Flora Finch. Bunny plays the jovial, obese husband who is addicted to the minor vice of cardplaying. With other wives, Finch stages a bogus police raid on the den of poker players and then they get the husbands out of a presumed prison sentence. Such weak comedy plots are replete with gentility — far from the capers of Sennett's group of grotesques who engaged in comic, melodramatic mayhem of fights and car crashes. Today a viewer seeing A Cure for Pokeritis will hardly get a flicker of a smile from a showing. Nevertheless, Bunny's development of a comic character and his skill in acting may be applauded. He became so popular he could produce in 1913 a three-reel version of Dickens' s Pickwick Papers, playing the lead for $1, 000 a week Selected Filmography: Of more than 200 shorts created—Neighboring Kingdoms (1910), The New Stenographer (1911), Bunny at the Derby (1912), A Cure for Pokeritis (1912), Bunny as a Reporter (1913), Pickwick Papers (1913), Pigs Is Pigs (1914), How Sissy Made Good (1915). Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Samuel Gill. "John Bunny." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1995

BUSCH, MAE. Born January 20 or 21, 1897 (other sources list 1891 or 1902), in Melbourne, Australia. Died April 19, 1946, in San Fernando, California. Actress. A leading lady in dramatic films of the 1920s, Mae Busch is perhaps more familiar from her many appearances with Laurel and Hardy after

60

BUSCH, MAE

the coming of sound. The daughter of an orchestra conductor and an opera singer, she moved to the United States with her parents as a child and was educated at St. Elizabeth's convent in Madison, New Jersey. Upon graduation, the teenage Busch acted on the New York stage and then got into vaudeville. While on tour in California she left the troupe to sign with Mack Sennett and played in Keystone comedies in 1915-16. She married a struggling actor at this time and cut back on her career to cook and clean until they separated a few years later. She started acting again in 1919 as an extra and bit player, getting larger parts after appearing in von Stroheim's The Devil's Passkey (1920) and Foolish Wives (1922). After a major role in The Christian (1923) she had supporting and starring roles in other important films and signed a contract with MGM, where she played opposite Lon Chaney in The Unholy Three (1925). She became dissatisfied with the studio's loaning her out to other producers at high rates but paying her the same flat salary, and she broke her contract in 1926. A nervous breakdown and virtual bankruptcy resulting from her spendthrift habits soon followed. Humbled and feeling her age, she began her career anew with minor roles in sound films and returned to her comedy roots in numerous Laurel and Hardy shorts. Selected Filmography: A One Night Stand (1915), Settled at the Seaside (1915), A Rascal's Wolfish Way (1915), A Favorite Fool (1915), The Best of Enemies (1915), The Worst of Friends (1916), Because He Loved Her (1916), Better Late Than Never (1916), Wife and Auto Trouble (1916), A Bathhouse Blunder (1916), The Fair Barbarian (1917), The Grim Game (1919), The Devil's Passkey (1920), Her Husband's Tnend (1920), A Parisian Scandal (1921), Her Own Money (1922), The Love Charm (1921), Foolish Wives (1922), Pardon My Nerve (1922), Brothers Under the Skin (1922), Only a Shop Girl (1922), The Christum (1923), Souls For Sale (1923), Name the Man (1924), The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), A Woman Who Sinned (1924), Bread (1924), Broken Barriers (1924), Married Flirts (1924), The Tnflers (1924), Frivolous Sal (1925), The Unholy Three (1925), Camille of the Barbary Coast (1925), Time, the Comedian (1925), The Miracle of Life (1926), The Nut-Cracker (1926), Fools of Fashion (1926), The Truthful Sex (1926), Tongues of Scandal (1927), Husband Hunters (1927), Perch of the Devil (1927), Beauty Shoppers (1927), San Francisco Nights (1928), Fazil (1928), Black Butterflies (1928), While the City Sleeps (1928), Alibi (1929), Unaccustomed As We Are (1929), A Man's Man (1929), Young Desire (1930), Wicked (1931), The Man Called Back (1932), Scarlet Dawn (1932), Blondie Johnson (1933), Sons of the Desert (1933), Beloved (1934), Stranded (1935), The Bohemian Girl (1936), Daughter of Shanghai (1937), Prison Farm (1938), Nancy Drew, Detective (1938), Women Without Names (1940), The Mad Monster (1942). Selected Bibliography: Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

BUSHMAN, FRANCIS X.

61

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley. University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. BUSHMAN, FRANCIS X. Born January 10, 1883, in Baltimore, Maryland. Died August 23,1966, in Pacific Palisades, California. Actor. An extremely popular romantic lead during the 1910s, especially in the films in which he co-starred with Beverly Bayne, Bushman had been a child actor on the stage, entering films in 1911. Fie had a husky build and for a time had been a sculptor's model. His film career began at the Essanay studio, where he made numerous shorts and featurettes. Near the peak of his popularity he signed with Metro in 1915, one of his most popular roles being Romeo and Juliet (1916), again with Bayne, whom he secretly married. Also in 1916, Bushman wrote and directed one of his pictures, In the Diplomatic Service. When news of his marriage leaked out, he lost some of his appeal with the public (mainly with female fans), and his later films were fewer and generally less memorable. One notable exception was his role as Messala in the 1926 Ben-Hur, which he played with an appealing if melodramatic (and now somewhat campy) flourish. Bushman lost his sizable fortune in the stock market crash of 1929 and made only sporadic screen appearances after the coming of sound. He built a new career in radio, however, and also did some television, regaining a comfortable income. Selected Filmography: His Friend's Wife (1911), The Rosary (1911), The Melody of Love (1912), The Passing Shadow (1912), White Roses (1912), The Fall of Montezuma (1912), Neptune's Daughter (1912), The Farmer's Daughter (1913), Let No Man Put Asunder (1913), A Brother's Loyalty (1913), The Toll of the Marshes (1913), The Other Girl (1914), The Moon's Rays (1914), The Countess (1914), Trinkets of Tragedy (1914), One Wonderful Night (1914), Under Royal Patronage (1914), Blood Will Tell (1914), Stars Their Courses Change (1915), The Great Silence (1915), Graustark (1915), The Slim Princess (1915), The Second in Command (1915), The Silent Voice (1915), Penmngton's Choice (1915), Man and His Soul (1916), The Wall Between (1916), A Million a Minute (1916), Romeo and Juliet (1916), Izz the Diplomatic Service (1916), Their Compact (1917), Red Wute and Blue Blood (1917), The Brass Check (1918), Cyclone Higgins D. D. (1918), A Pair of Cupids (1918), The Poor Rich Man (1918), God's Outlaw (1919), Daring Hearts (1919), Modern Marriage (1923), The Masked Bride (1925), Ben-Hur (1926), The Marriage Clause (1926), The Lady in Ermine (1927), The Thirteenth Juror (1927), The Grip of the Yukon (1928), Midnight Life (1928), The

62

BUSHMAN, FRANCIS X.

Charge of the Gauchos (1928), Hollywood Boulevard (1936), Dick Tracy (1937), Wilson (1944), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), Sabnna (1954), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

c CABANNE, CHRISTY. Born April 16, 1888, in St. Louis, Missouri. Died October 15,1950, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Director, actor. William Christy Cabanne was an important director in the formative years of feature films, and worked throughout the silent and sound eras until his death. He was competent but never distinguished, despite working often with major stars like Lillian Gish, Wallace Reid, and Douglas Fairbanks, and later Mae Murray, Francis X. Bushman, Lew Cody, and Ramon Novarro. In a trade journal, Exhibitors Herald-World, a small-town theatre manager described his Johnny Mack Brown vehicle Annapolis (1928), as "the best picture Pathe has made this season . . . this is nothing to rave about," another rating it "fair." On the other hand managers found his Restless Youth (1928) quite popular with their patrons, rating it "excellent. . . clean and entertaining." Cabanne started in motion pictures at the Biograph company, acting in short films such as The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch (1912), A String of Pearls (1912), The Lnformer (1912), The Wanderer (1913), and The Yaqui Cur (1913). He soon started assisting director D. W. Griffith and began writing and directing his own films, including A Chance Deception (1913), The Chieftan's Sons (1913), and By Man's Law (1913). When Griffith left Biograph, Cabanne followed, continuing to write and direct under Griffith's supervision at Reliance-Majestic and then Triangle. There he remade Griffith's Enoch Arden in 1915 as a pleasant if lackluster full-length feature starring Lillian Gish and Wallace Reid. His Sold For Marriage (1916), starring Gish, is a slow-paced curiosity hardly living up to its lurid title. Cabanne also directed the first screen appearances of Douglas Fairbanks, The Martyrs of the Alamo and The Lamb (both 1915), as well as two other Fairbanks comedies, Reggie Mixes In and Flirting With Fate (both 1916).

64

CAMERAMAN, THE

The latter two appear to have more of Fairbanks' personality contributing to their entertainment value than Cabanne's direction. In 1917 Cabanne filmed an all-star theatrical pageant that was staged to raise money for the Red Cross, and may have been the first time John, Lionel and Ethel Barrymore appeared in the same movie. Even at the time, however, critics complained that the film was crudely assembled. He directed a few major films for MGM in the 1920s, taking over The Masked Bride (1925) from Josef von Steinberg, and was a second unit director on Ben-Hur (1925) but soon wound up doing lower budget productions for Pathe and Columbia. After the coming of sound he directed mainly Bmovies until 1948. Filmography: Silent features — The Great Leap; Until Death Do Us Part (1914), The Dishonored Medal (1914), The Life of General Villa (1914), The Lost House (1915), Enoch Arden (1915), The Outlaw's Revenge (1915), The Absentee (1915), The Failure (1915), The Lamb (1915), The Martyrs of the Alamo (1915), Double Trouble (1915), Daphne and the Pirate (1916), The Flying Torpedo (1916), Sold For Marriage (1916), Reggie Mixes In (1916), Flirting With Fate (1916), Diane of the Follies (1916), One of Many (1917), The Slacker (1917), Miss Robinson Crusoe (1917), Draft 258 (1917), National Red Cross Pageant (1917), Cyclone Higgins, D.D. (1918), Fighting Through (1919), A Regular Fellow (1919), The Pest (1919), The Mayor of Filbert (1919), God's Outlaw (1919), The Beloved Cheater (1919), The Triflers (1920), Burnt Wings (1920), The Notorious Mrs. Sands (1920), Life's Twist (1920), The Stealers (1920), Wliat's a Wife Worth? (1921), Live and Let Live (1921), The Barricade (1921), At the Stage Door(192l), Beyond the Rainbow (1922), Till We Meet Again (1922), The Average Woman (1924), The Spitfire (1924), The Sixth Commandment (1924), Lend Me Your Husband (1924), Youth For Sale (1924), Is Love Everything? (1924), The Midshipman (1925), The Masked Brute (1925), Monte Carlo (1926), Altars of Desire (1927), Nameless Men (1928), Driftwood (1928), Annapolis (1928), Restless Youth (1928) Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University' of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. CAMERAMAN, THE (1928). Comedy. Directed by Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton; with Buster Keaton, Marceline Day, Harold Goodwin, Harry Gribon, Sidney Bracy, Edward Brophy, Vernon Dent, William Irving; screenplay by Richard Schayer; titles by Joseph Farnham.

CAMPBELL, COLIN

65

A tintype portrait photographer falls for a secretary at a newsreel company. To impress her he trades his camera for a movie camera and tries to prove he can be an ace newsreel journalist. Naturally, everything that can possibly go wrong does before he gets his chance to prove himself both a valuable cameraman and a hero to his girlfriend. Wonderful sight gags and beautifully timed bits of business make The Cameraman one of Keaton's funniest features, a sentiment shared by contemporary small-town exhibitors who often found Keaton films commercially risky. He had refined his stone-faced character to perfection by this film, able to elicit sympathy despite his ineptitude, and his deadpan expression belying an amazing expressiveness. Made just as sound films were gaining in popularity, The Cameraman and Spite Marriage were his first two films under his MGM contract and rank among his best. The Cameraman was also highly popular with audiences, more so than his previous features, including Steamboat Bill, jr., College, and The General. At MGM, however, Keaton rapidly lost creative control over his work and when talkies took over completely he had little to say (literally and figuratively) in the content of his films. As a result his career declined quickly. CAMPBELL, COLIN. Born October 11, 1859, in Scotland. Died August 26,1928, in Hollywood, California. Director, screenwriter. A prolific director in the pioneering years of commercial filmmaking, Colin Campbell is best known for his hugely popular 1914 feature, The Spoilers, and a number of shorts plus the first feature-length film of popular western star Tom Mix, In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914). He also did other elaborately produced films at the Selig company, including a three-reel version of Cinderella in 1911. He wrote a number of his own films. Campbell's directing style was functional and conservative, with few technical innovations or flourishes. No relation to the younger, Scottish-born actor of the same name (March 20, 1883-March 25, 1966), he made well over a hundred films for Selig from 1911 until it disbanded in 1918. He then found work briefly at Universal, before moving from studio to studio, often directing for independent production companies, including the first film produced by Dustin Farnum, Big Happiness (1920), and several pictures for Sessue Hayakawa in 1921. His last few films were four 1923 Dustin Farnum Westerns for Fox and a couple of low-budget melodramas released through Selznick. Selected Filmography: Cinderella (1911), Monte Cristo (1912), The Coming of Columbus (1912), The God of Gold (1912), Kings of the Forest (1912), Sammy Orpheus (1912), Old Songs and Memories (1912), The Little Organ Player of San Juan (1912), Greater Wealth (1912), Alas! Poor Yonck! (1913), In the Long Ago (1913), A Wise Old

66

CAMPBELL, ERIC

Elephant (1913), An Old Actor (1913), A Wild Ride (1913), Thor, Lord of the Jungles (1913), Alone in the Jungle (1913), The Salvation of Nancy O'Shaughnessy (1914), The Tragedy of Ambition (1914), Vengeance Is Mine (1914), The Lily of the Valley (1914), Hearts and Masks (1914), The Losing Fight (1914), Her Sacrifice (1914), The Spoilers (1914), Chip of the Flying U (1914), The Story of the Blood Red Rose (1914), In the Days of the Thundering Herd (1914), The Wilderness Mail (1914), In Defiance of the Law (1914), The Carpet From Bagdad (1915), The Rosary (1915), The Runt (1915), The Vision of the Shepherd (1915), Sweet Alyssum (1915), The Smouldering Flame (1916), The Crisis (1916), The Ne'er-Do-Well (1916), Thou Shalt Not Covet (1916), Beware of Strangers (1917), Who Shall Take My Life? (1917), The City of Purple Dreams (1918), The Still Alarm (1918), A Hoosier Romance (1918), The Yellow Dog (1918), Little Orphan! Annie (1918), Tongues of Flame (1918), The Sea Flower (1918), The Railroader (1919), The Thunderbolt (1919), The Beauty Market (1919), The Corsican Brothers (1920), When Dawn Came (1920), Moon Madness (1920), Big Happieness (1920), The First Born (1921), Black Roses (1921), \Yhere Lights Are Low (1921), The Swamp (1921), The Lure of Jade (1921), Two Kinds of Women (1921), The World's a Stage (1922), Three Who Paid (1923), The Buster (1923), Bucking the Barrier (1923), The Grail (1923), Pagan Passions (1924), The Bowery Bishop (1924). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. CAMPBELL, ERIC ALFRED. Born April 26, 1878, in Dunoon, Scotland. Died December 20, 1917, in Los Angeles. Stage actor in music halls and stock companies in England. Film actor, writer, producer. Before he came to the United States this six feet four inch, 296 pound actor appeared with the Karno comedy troupe and the Lyric Theatre Stock Company and performed as a lead in Gilbert and Sullivan light operas for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in London. His size made Campbell a perfect foil for the diminutive five feet and a few inches Charles Chaplin when he appeared as the villain in Mutual Comedies in 1916 and 1917. He portrayed one of his most effective comic brutes in the 1917 two-reeler, Easy Street. Captured by the police through the help from the little tramp (Chaplin) who has taken a job as a policeman, the bully played by Campbell breaks loose and beats up the whole police force who try to stop him. In this short film the towering actor has stylized makeup that appears to be a type he used for the D'Oyly Carte pro-

CAREY, HARRY

67

duction of The Mikado. Oddly enough, this makeup seems to work for one of his villains. Critics have pointed out that the death of Campbell in an auto accident forced Chaplin to change the plots of his films when he moved on to First National Films in 1918. He no longer could find such an effective heavy for his comedies — Eric Campbell was the best he had in the 1910s. Filmography: Two-reel films with Charles Chaplin—The Floorwalker (1916), The Fireman (1916), The Vagabond (1916), The Count (1916), The Pawnshop (1916), Behind the Screen (1916), The Rink (1916), Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), The Immigrant (1917), The Adventurer (1917). Selected Bibliography: Gehring, Wes D. "Both Sides of the Screen: Chaplin's Biography.' 7 Charlie Chaplin: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983. Siegel, Scott and Barbara Siegel. American Film Comedy: From Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice Hall, 1994.

CAREY, HARRY, SR. Born Harry DeWitt Carey II January 16, 1878, in Bronx, New York. Died September 21, 1947, in Brentwood, California. Stage, screen actor; film writer, director, producer. With a career that spanned thirty-eight years, Carey emerged as an important western star in the late 1910s. One of his significant films was Straight Shooting, a 1917 movie featuring him as a hired gun. Portraying the leading character Cheyenne Harry under the direction of John Ford, Carey enacts an independent soul who switches sides from ranchers to farmers. He discovers a cattleman was guilty of killing a farmer's son. This work illustrates his close association with Ford. With this director he created more than twenty silent works, sometimes writing and directing with Ford. Unlike the character created by Tom Mix, Carey's cowboy hero (who was often called Cheyenne Harry) followed the realistic tradition that William S. Hart attempted to establish. Like Hart his portrait had the ambiguity of the loner who was often a law unto himself, a type that would be an icon of the western hero carried on by present-day Westerns. Toward the end of his silent film period Carey became cast in older character roles, even appearing in two lightweight 1927 films of comedian William Haines, A Little Journey and Slide, Kelly, Slide. Fortunately, Harry Carey recovered critical acclaim as the lead, Aloysius Horn, in his first year of the sound film, Trader Horn (1931). One unnamed critic stated: "Mr. Carey gives a capital impersonation of his role, never overacting" (New York Times, February 4, 1931). With more than 50 silent features to his credit, the actor continued his profession with more than

68

CARMEN

30 sound films, enacting a variety of roles. Fie returned to the western occasionally in such films as The Spoilers (1942), Duel in the Sun (1946), Angel and the Badman (1947), and Red River (1948). John Ford dedicated his 1948 Three Godfathers to his first silent, western, leading man with the inscription: "To the memory of Harry Carey —bright Star in the early Western sky." Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Bill Sharkley's Last Game (1909), The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), An Unseen Enemy (1912). Selected silent features— Judith of Bethulia (1913), Cheyenne's Pal and Straight Shooting (1917), The Phantom Riders (1918), The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1919), Desperate Trails (1921), Man to Man (1922), Roaring Rails (1924), The Bad Lands (1925), Silent Sanderson (1925), A Little Journey (1927), Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927). Selected sound features- Trader Horn (1931), The Last of the Mohicans (1932), Law and Order (1932), The Last Outpost (1935), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Shepherd of the Hills (1941), The Spoilers (1942), Duel in the Sun (1946), Angel and the Badman (1947), Red River (1948). Bibliography: Everson, William K. A Pictorial History of the American Film New York: The Citadel Press, 1969. Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western from Silents to Cinerama. New York: Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers, Inc.), 1962.

CARMEN (1915). Drama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMilie; with Geraldine Farrar, Wallace Reid, Pedro De Cordoba, William Elmer, Horace B. Carpenter, Jeanie Macpherson, Anita King, Milton Brown; screenplay by William C. deMille, from novel by Prosper Merimee. A soldier newly assigned to a small town abandons his career when he falls in love with a strong-willed but fickle, self-centered, and amoral woman, whom he has arrested after a brawl with another woman at the cigarette factory where she works. They run off to join a band of smugglers, but she soon becomes enamored of a popular bullfighter. The soldier's extreme jealousy leads to passion and tragedy. The Lasky Company obtained a coup when it signed opera diva Geraldine Farrar to a film contract, and in this case the attempt to turn a famous stage star into a movie star paid off. By summer and fall of 1915, DeMilie had developed a confidence and proficiency in his directing, well aware of the differences and advantages of cinema over the stage. He convinced Farrar to make a full-length "test" film (Maria Rosa, released in 1916) before starting production of Carmen, so she would become accustomed to acting for the camera instead of a live audience. Indeed, Farrar brings a natural magnetism and dominating screen presence to her role, her slightly stylized performance attributable to the flamboyance of the title character. Carmen also presented Wallace Reid to the public in his first major role (not counting Maria Rosa, finally released

CARMEN

69

after both he and Farrar had been seen in several films), and it made him an instant star. DeMille's staging of the actors and skillful use of artificial lighting is more artistic and dramatic than before, especially in the interior and night scenes. Because the opera was still under copyright, William deMille based his screenplay directly on the original novel to avoid paying heavy royalties. Before its release, however, Lasky was able to negotiate acceptable compensation in order to use Bizet's music for the film's live orchestral accompaniment. The fight scene in the cigarette factory was one of the film's highlights, with enhanced realism from the fact that DeMilie encouraged Farrar and Jeanie Macpherson, who did not like each other, to fight for real, as William Farnum and Tom Santschi had done in The Spoilers a year before. The fight itself was not originally depicted in the opera, but Farrar's enthusiastic improvisation with Macpherson inspired her to add it the next time she performed Carmen on stage. Since then the fight was often included in other productions of the opera. The popular DeMille-Farrar film was reissued to theatres in 1918. CARMEN (1915). Drama. Directed by Raoul Walsh; with Theda Bara, Einar Linden, Carl Harbaugh, James A. Marcus, Elsie MacLeod, Fay Tunis, E. De Varny, Joseph P. Green; screenplay by Raoul Walsh, Isabel M. Johnston, based upon novel by Prosper Merimee. A soldier visiting his mother and sweetheart arrests a strong-willed but fickle, self-centered, and amoral woman after she slashes another woman at the cigarette factory where she works. Under her charms he abandons his family and career to run off with her and join a band of gypsy outlaws. She soon becomes enamored of a popular bullfighter, however, and the soldier's extreme jealousy leads to passion and tragedy. After the announcement that DeMille would film opera star Geraldine Farrar in her great success, Carmen, director Raoul Walsh decided to make his own version with Fox's leading star, Theda Bara. The plot and character of Carmen were tailor-made for Bara's public image as an exotic, scheming woman, or "vamp." The studio greatly exploited this image after her sudden stardom in A Fool There Was, released at the beginning of the same year. Walsh's version of the story includes the subplot of Don Jose's girlfriend Michaela, which is in the opera but omitted in the DeMille adaptation based on the original novel. Walsh also gives the story's downbeat ending a more spectacular romantic image by having Don Jose ride his horse over a cliff after he kills the unfaithful Carmen, instead of merely stabbing himself and falling across her lifeless body as in the DeMille version. Both films were released to theatres on

70

CAT AND THE CANARY, THE

November 1, 1915, and each had its own supporters. In 1927 Walsh filmed the story again for Fox under the title Loves of Carmen, starring Dolores Del Rio and Victor McLaglen. CAT AND THE CANARY, THE (1927). Mystery-comedy. Directed by Paul Leni; with Laura LaPlante, Creighton Hale, Gertrude Astor, Flora Finch, Tully Marshall, Forrest Stanley, Lucien Littlefield, Martha Mattox, Arthur Edmund Carewe, George Siegmann; screenplay by Robert F. Hill, Alfred A. Cohn. After the death of a rich but eccentric old man, family members gather in his mysterious mansion for the reading of the will. A young woman in the group is revealed as the heir on the condition she is legally sane. Then strange things start to happen, with the report of an escaped lunatic in the neighborhood, people disappearing in the house, and bodies turning up until the survivors discover the reason behind it all. A popular stage melodrama, The Cat and the Canary set the standard for the "old dark house" genre of thriller. Written with generous doses of comedy relief, it made the most of its self-consciously spooky setting for comic effect, yet it kept just enough serious overtones to deliver genuine suspense. German director Paul Leni was assigned the film as his first American project, precisely because it was virtually an automatic hit. Universal needn't have worried. He is able to take the familiar stage play and turn it into a visual tour-de-force of moody lighting and camera work, if anything improving upon the original. On occasion he even makes some of the dialogue visual by using animated intertitles. The sliding panels, insane killers, and frightened houseguests were used time and time again after this film, sometimes played strictly for laughs and sometimes played straight but now appearing unintentionally funny. Few ever achieved the careful balance of comedy, mystery, and suspense as The Cat and the Canary. Leni repeated the formula with even greater success two years later in The Last Warning, set in an old, abandoned theatre. CHADWICK, HELENE. Born November 25, 1897, in Utica, New York. Died September 5,1940, in New York City. Actress. Star of minor features throughout the silent era, Helene Chadwick made her film debut at 19 as the lead in The Challenge (1916), an Astra Film Corporation production released through Pathe. She continued there in a variety of roles until 1919, when she started working at other companies including three features for Paramount. Then she made films for Goldwyn for a few years, by the mid-1920s acting at various studios, many of them small or independent, or in lesser films at major studios.

CHANEY, LON

71

She played opposite Tom Mix in Hard Boiled (1926). The last three years of the decade she worked largely at Columbia, including a role in Frank Capra's Say It With Sables (1928). In sound films she played a few supporting roles in the early thirties, but died after an accident in 1940. She was married to director William Wellman for a time. Filmography (silents): The Challenge (1916), The Iron Heart (1917), Blind Man's Luck (1917), The Last of the Carnabys (1917), The Angel Factory (1917), Vengeance Is Mine (1917), Go Get 'Em Garringer (1918), Caleb Piper's Girl (1919), Gz'Ws (1919), The Solitary Sin (1919), A Very Good Young Man (1919), Heartsease (1919), The Long Arm ofMannister (1919), An Adventure In Hearts (1919), The Cup of Fury (1920), Scratch My Back (1920), Cupid, the Cowpuncher (1920), Godless Men (1920), Made in Heaven (1921), The Old Nest (1921), Dangerous Curve Ahead (1921), From the Ground Up (1921), Yellow Men and Gold (1922), The Dust Flower (1922), The Glorious Fool (1922), The Sin Flood (1922), Brothers Under the Skin (1922), Gimme (1923), Quicksands (1923), Reno (1923), The Masked Dancer (1924), Why Men Leave Home (1924), Love of Women (1924), Her Own Free Will (1924), T.N.T. (The Naked Truth) (1924), Trouping With Ellen (1924), The Border Legion (1924), The Dark Swan (1924), The Re-creation of Brian Kent (1925), The Woman Hater (1925), The Golden Cocoon (1926), Pleasures of the Rich (1926), The Still Alarm (1926), Hard Boiled (1926), Dancing Days (1926), Stolen Pleasures (1927), The Bachelor's Baby (1927), The Rose of Kildare (1927), Stage Kisses (1927), Women Who Dare (1928), Modern Mothers (1928), Say It With Sables (1928), Confessions of a Wife (1928), Father and Son (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. CHANEY, LON. Born April 1,1883, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Died August 26, 1930, in Los Angeles, California. Actor, makeup artist, director. Known as "the man of a thousand faces," Lon Chaney was one of the most versatile actors of the screen, playing characters not only widely diverse in personality but in physical appearance. He was noted for distorting his body and even his face to sometimes unrecognizable extremes, most famously in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). In The Penalty (1920) he played a criminal

72

CHANEY, LON

mastermind whose legs had been amputated. In The Unknown (1927) he was an armless circus performer. In Shadows (1922) he had a dual role as a criminal and as a heroic old Chinese man. A large percentage of his parts were villainous or menacing figures who had certain sympathetic qualities. When he played straight roles without elaborate makeup he would often be a rough-edged heroic character who would sacrifice his own happiness when he realized the girl he loved loved someone else. Chaney's parents were both deaf-mutes, and he grew up communicating largely through pantomime. He knew his own strong and weak points, and by the 1920s would often direct his own performances in his pictures. He also directed a half dozen films for Universal in 1915. His breakthrough film was as a fake cripple in The Miracle Man (1919), leading to larger parts and more important films, with his Quasimodo clinching his stardom. He had a fruitful partnership with director Tod Browning, as both were enamored of unusual characters and bizarre plot twists. Chaney was able to make only one talking picture before his death from cancer. This sound remake of his silent hit The Unholy Three (1925) showed he was as adept at altering his voice as his physical appearance and would likely have had a long, successful career. Selected Filmography: Poor Jake's Demise (1913), The Trap (1913), The Embezzler (1914), The Fobidden Room (1914), The Oubliette (1914), Such Is Life (1915), The Millionaire Paupers (1915), Stronger Than Death (1915), The Gilded Spider (1916), The Grasp of Greed (1916), Beyond the Winds (1916), Hell Morgan's Girl (1917), A Doll's House (1917), Triumph (1917), Broadway Love (1918), The Kaiser-Beast of Berlin (1918), Riddle Gawne (1918), The False Faces (1919), The Miracle Man (1919), When Bearcat Went Dry (1919), Victory (1919), Treasure Island (1920), Nomads of the North (1920), The Penalty (1920), Outside the Law (1921), Bzfs of Life (1921), The Ace of Hearts (1921), The Trap (1922), Flesh and Blood (1922), The Light in the Dark (1922), Shadows (1922), Oliver Twist (1922), A Blind Bargain (1922), All the Brothers Were Valiant (1923), While Paris Sleeps (1923), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Next Corner (1924), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Monster (1925), The Unholy Three (1925), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Tower of Lies (1925), The Black Bud (1926), The Road to Mandalay (1926), Tell It to the Marines (1927), Mr. Wu (1927), The Unknown (1927), Mockery (1927), London After Midnight (1927), The Big City (1928), Laugh Clown Laugh (1928), While the City Sleeps (1928), West of Zanzibar (1928), Where East Is East (1929), Thunder (1929), The Unholy Three (1930). Selected Bibliography: Blake, Michel F. Lon Chaney; The Man Behind the Thousand Faces. Vestal, New York: The Vestal Press, Ltd., 1993. Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

CHAPLIN, CHARLES

73

Ross, Nathaniel L. Lon Chaney: Master Craftsman of Make Believe. Los Angeles, California: Quality RJ, 1988. Thomas, Dan. "The Life Story of Lon Chaney/' Classic Film Collector 49 (winter 1975), pp. 24-26.

CHAPLIN, CHARLES SPENCER "CHARLIE." Born April 16, 1889, in London, England. Died December 25, 1977, in Vevey, Switzerland. Actor, director, writer, composer, producer. By 1900 Chaplin was following the career of his parents, Charles and Hannah Chaplin, as a music hall performer. He also appeared as a youth called Billy in the stage play Sherlock Holmes from 1903 to 1906. When Fred Karno hired him for a music hall comedy troupe, he toured with the group in Canada and the United States in the years 1910 and 1912. It was on the second tour that agents for the comedy film producer-director Mack Sennett, who had established his Keystone studios in Hollywood, discovered him. Chaplin appeared in 46 films for Sennett, sometimes writing and directing short films as well as serving as the leading actor. When the comedian moved to other studios — Essanay, Mutual, and First National —he received complete control of his films. In 1921 he created his first feature, The Kid, a film that made Jackie Coogan a child star. Worldwide popular and critical acclaim made Chaplin a star early in his career when he acted in one- and two-reel movies and the six-reel Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914). When he wrote, directed, and acted in his own works for Mutual Films, Chaplin created near-perfect two-reel comedy films — especially The Cure and Easy Street in 1917. While the comedian rehearsed scenes over and over, even in these two-reelers, his acting and that of the cast he directed remained fresh and seemingly spontaneous — as if the film drama were a first-time performance. When he moved to his first feature, The Kid, the full richness and depth of his comic character emerged. Serious moments blended with comic ones. The same dimension of a comic character would continue in other silent features — The Gold Rush (1925) and The Circus (1928). Furthermore, this king of silent screen comedy produced two more features in the sound era that followed in the silent tradition, using sound effects and musical underscoring. These two works, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936), proved to be box office successes — bringing Chaplin millions. It testified to his popularity and creative skills which remained when other comedians were switching to sound in the transitional period of 1929 and 1930. Chaplin was a master of both broad, acrobatic pantomime and simple routines that demanded slight hand movements and facial expressions. He was able to make smoking a cigarette and counting money extremely funny — slight things to be sure — but firmly based on the eccentricities of

74

CHAPLIN, SYDNEY

the little tramp. His comic invention sprang from the unusual way this clown faced the world — whether battling a bully or spreading butter on his pancakes. Furthermore, Chaplin had an acting intensity that was unique. He seemed to believe in his little tramp and to become so much a part of the strange world he created for the character that almost everyone thought that it could hardly be an actor playing the role. In fact, he became so identified with the character that many of his fans and critics were disappointed with his sophisticated comic role of Henri Verdoux in the 1947 Monsieur Verdoux, a film with only a ghost of any mannerism of the little tramp. Filmography: Representative one- and two-reel comedies — Making a Living (1914), Kid Auto Races at Venice (1914), Caught in the Rain (1914), The Knockout (1914), The Property Man (1914), The New Janitor (1914), The Tramp (1916), The Bank (1916), A Night in the Show (1916), One A.M. (1916), The Pawnshop (1916), Behind the Screen (1916) Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917), The Immigrant (1917), Shoulder Arms (1918). Features - The Kid (1921), A Woman of Pans (1923), The Gold Rush (1925), The Circus (1928), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), The Great Dictator (1940), Monsieur Verdoux (1947), Limelight (1952), A King in New York (1957), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967). Honors: Chaplin received a Best Actor Award in 1940 from the New York Film Critics for his leading role in The Great Dictator; his 1952 Limelight received a Best Film Award from the Foreign Language Press Film Critics; an honorary Oscar was presented to him in 1972 by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In 1975 he was knighted by Elizabeth II, Queen of England, and a statue of Chaplin was erected in London's Leicester Square in 1981. Bibliography: Gehring, Wes D., Charlie Chaplin: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983. Huff, Theodore. Charlie Chaplin. New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1951. McCaffrey, Donald W., editor. Focus on Chaplin. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Robinson, David. Chaplin: His Life and Art. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1985.

CHAPLIN, SYDNEY. Born Sydney Hawkes (half brother of Charles Chaplin) in Capetown, Africa, March 17, 1885. Died April 16, 1965, in Nice, France. Stage, film actor. Business manager for Charles Chaplin. This silent screen comedian had his first success in the music halls and the Karno touring comedy troupe based in London. He introduced his half-brother Charles as an actor in the Karno Company. Then Sydney's future in films in the United States was sealed when the brother assisted him in becoming an actor for producer Mack Sennett in a number of Keystone one-reelers. For his start in movies he appeared with

CHASE, CHARLEY

75

Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in the 1914 Fatty's Wine Party. When Sydney joined brother Charles, who had become so popular that he produced his own films, he appeared in the 1918 films A Dog's Life and Shoulder Arms. In the twenties Sydney emerged in his own feature films as a lead in such important works as Charley's Aunt in 1925 and The Better 'Ole in 1926. Whereas Charley's Aunt is an effective translation of the classic stage farce to the silent screen, The Better 'Ole looks more like an episodic comedy short that has been padded out to feature length. To a degree Sydney Chaplin sacrificed his own career by handling the business affairs of Charles. However, there is no doubt that the little tramp portrait of Charles Chaplin would prove a more lasting popular and critical success than, for example, Sydney's effective female impersonation portrait of Charley's Aunt. Filmography: Selected shorts— Fatty's Wine Parly (1914), A Submarine Pirate (1915), A Dog's Life (1918), Shoulder Arms (1918), Pay Day (1922), The Pilgrim (1923). Features— King, Queen, Joker (1921), The Rendezvous (1923), Her Temporary Husband (1923), Charley's Aunt (1925), The Man on the Box (1925), Oh, What a Nurse! (1926), The Better 'Ole (1926), The Missing Link (1927), The Fortune Hunter (1927). Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Samuel Gill. "Sydney Chaplin." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Miller, Blair. "Sydney Chaplin." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

CHASE, CHARLEY (PARROTT, CHARLES). Born Charles Parrott October 20, 1893, in Baltimore, Maryland. Died June 20, 1940, in Hollywood, California. Film actor, writer, director. Anyone who has viewed some movies from the golden age of the silent film comedy might recognize that Charley Chase created a character along the same lines of the more famous comedian of this period, Harold Lloyd. There was none of the tramp-clown in his character. He was the young man next door or the middle-aged man at the office who got into a number of troubles — often by accident. There was a dash and a pleasant disposition in this laughable figure who could be easily embarrassed and frustrated. These facets show his kinship with Lloyd and the polite comedians whose struggles usually came from everyday situations. For example, a comedy short, All Wet (1924), focuses on hapless Charley's attempt to drive his automobile through a mudhole. When a tow truck driver attempts to pull the car from its nearly buried condition, the cable attached to the axle yanks the axle and wheels from the front of the car.

76

CHEAT, THE

Frustration humor reigns in this two-reel movie, and the fussy character of Chase's creations displays comic despair. As a skilled writer, actor, and director, Chase possessed triple talents similar to the big four of the period — Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. Evaluator James L. Neibaur believes Chase has been neglected and underrated. This is a valid concept since some of the comedian's two-reel works are humorous classics that some critics might call masterpieces. Neibaur writes: "If Charley had been given the same freedom in the feature series as he had been given in short films, in fact, if Chase had been given a feature series at all, he just may have proven himself eventually. That he was not given the chance is perhaps the greatest injustice in film history." (Movie Comedians: The Complete Guide, p. 59). Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Masquerader (1914), The Rounders (1914), His Musical Career (1914), Why Husbands Go Mad (1924), All Wet (1924), His Wooden Wedding (1925), Mighty Like a Moose (1926), Long Fliv the King (1926), Limousine Love (1928), Movie Night (1929). Sound features: Sons of the Desert (1934), Kelly the Second (1935). Bibliography: Neibaur, James. Movie Comedians: The Complete Guide. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1986. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. "Charlie Chase." American Film Comedy: From Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1994.

CHEAT, THE (1915). Drama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Fanny Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean, James Neill, Utaka Abe, Dana Ong, Hazel Childers, Judge Arthur H. Williams; screenplay by Hector Turnbull, Jeanie Macpherson. A flighty socialite who loves spending her husband's money loses Red Cross funds in the stock market. A wealthy oriental ivory merchant who is attracted to her agrees to lend her the money to hide her mistake on the condition she have an affair with him. After her husband's own investments pay off, she wants to get out of her agreement and the plot thickens, involving a branding, a shooting, and a trial. Released in December of 1915, The Cheat represents a great advance in cinematic artistry from the first of more than a dozen films the prolific DeMille had made that year. Several lighting effects are especially memorable, such as silhouettes on a paper screen door and dramatic low-key night scenes. In staging, photography, and editing, it is well above the standard film of the period and the story (an original screenplay) foreshadows DeMille's talent for exploiting sex and sin among the wealthy. While he was filming The Cheat by day, DeMille also was mak-

CHRISTIE, AL

77

ing The Golden Chance, shooting at night. That film, unjustly overlooked, was released a month after The Cheat and is even more polished a production, with more subtle performances. Stage star Fanny Ward is slightly mannered but makes an effective film debut as the flaky protagonist of The Cheat. Hayakawa's controlled performance makes his character both villainous and somewhat sympathetic, although it still incited racial prejudice at the time it came out. The surviving version is the 1918 reissue, which changes Hayakawa's role from Japanese to Burmese, since Japan was an ally during World War I. The film was later remade with Pola Negri, and again with Tallulah Bankhead. It was also turned into an opera, La Forfeiture. CHRISTIE, AL. Born November 24, 1879 (some sources say 1886), in London, Ontario, Canada. Died April 14,1951, in Hollywood, California. Producer, director, writer. Noted for his prolific comedy film studio, which competed successfully with Mack Sennett and Hal Roach, Albert E. Christie started working in films at the Nestor company in 1909. He made a series of western shorts there, with directing and writing credits by 1912. In 1916 he formed his own film company devoted to short comedies, with his brother Charles Christie as vice president and general manager. Some of their early stars included Bobby Vernon, Betty Compson, Billie Rhodes, Eddie Lyons and Lee Moran. Christie was a strong believer in the short comedy as a critical part of the movie-going experience, comparing it to the comic strip in a newspaper. After a while he also made occasional features, usually only producing, but directing as well Mrs. Plum's Pudding (1915), So Long Letty (1920), See My Lawyer (1921), and the sound remake of Charley's Aunt (1930), which he had produced as a hit silent in 1925 starring Syd Chaplin. During the 1920s he devoted most of his time to producing rather than writing and directing. He continued producing short comedies for Columbia and Educational throughout the 1930s. Selected Filmography: As director — The Flower of the Forest (1912), The Girl and the Sheriff (1912), An Elephant on His Hands (1913), Locked Out at Twelve (1913), A Baby Did It (1914), Sophie of the Films (1914), The Baby's Fault (1915), The Downfall of Potts (1915), Mrs. Plum's Pudding (1915), All Over a Stocking (1916), Some Honeymoon (1916), Almost a Bigamist (1917), Love and Locksmiths (1917), Busted Hearts and Buttermilk (1918), Five to Five (1918), Rowdy Ann (1919), Sally's Blighted Career (1919), Go West, Young Woman (1920), A Roman Scandal (1920), So Long Letty (1921), See My Lawyer (1921). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

78

CITY GIRL

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

CITY GIRL (1929). Drama. Directed by F. W. Murnau; with Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, David Torrence, Edith Yorke, Dawn O'Day (Anne Shirley), Tom Maguire, Dick Alexander, Jack Pennick, Ed Brady; screenplay by Berthold Viertel, Marion Orth; story by Elliott Lester. A Minnesota farm boy is entrusted with selling his family's wheat crop in Chicago at a price that will allow their struggling farm to survive. While in the big city he meets and marries a streetwise, world-weary waitress who longs for a happier, simpler life. The boy's father is greatly displeased at his choice of bride, and her arrival on the farm also provokes unrest among the hired help. She must attempt to fit into a new kind of life for herself and the boy must learn to assert himself as a man. Murnau's Sunrise has been widely considered to be his masterpiece, a stylized tour-de-force in silent storytelling and moody cinematography. City Girl has been unjustly neglected but is no less a masterpiece, rooted more in the realistic conventions of silent cinema than the artificial European world of Sunrise. The characters are plain, ordinary people, and the setting is the gritty, everyday life of the American farm and the American big city. An attention to details worthy of von Stroheim is balanced by scenes of visual lyricism reminiscent of John Ford. The sensitive, character-oriented story bears favorable comparison with such works as King Vidor's The Crowd and Paul Fejos' Lonesome (a silent with a few notreally-necessary talking sequences). City Girl was not released until 1930, its last half reshot by another director with sound and drastically condensed. Ironically that butchered version remains a "lost" film, whereas Murnau's original silent version (which was never released to theatres) has survived intact. CITY LIGHTS (1931). Comedy. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Charles Chaplin, Virginia Cherrill, Harry Myers, Hank Mann, and Henry Bergman; screenplay and music by Charles Chaplin. Another masterpiece, City Lights, came from the famous comedian's effort to continue with the silent screen tradition when others had abandoned it. This early thirties film illustrates how Chaplin defied warnings

CITY LIGHTS

79

about the financial risk —that the audiences wanted films with spoken dialogue. With stubborn determination, the actor-writer-director banked on his fame to carry his work in the infant years of the "talkies." Consequently, City Lights became a 1931 release using only a musical score with limited sound effects for the soundtrack. Despite the lack of the human voice, few people objected to Chaplin's first silent feature of the decade. And, City Lights turned a profit of $5 million in a depression age when admission to many movie theaters ranged from ten cents to a dollar. The comedian's silent movie in the age of sound also proved to be a critical and popular success. In many ways this film is the equal of the best-known comedy classic by Chaplin, The Gold Rush (1925). While City Lights has the initial look of a contemporary film on a contemporary subject, it definitely is not. The romantic-sentimental spirit dominates. The big city seems like a far-off place — somewhere in Europe, possibly. The home of the young blind woman, who became the object of the little tramp's love, has the look of a poor Spanish courtyard; the city square looks somewhat like a portion of Paris. In short, it was a synthesized environment that suited Chaplin's romantic view. It should be noted that the comedian used this subtitle for the movie: A Comedy Romance in Pantomime. Some of Chaplin's best comic innovations develop when he is befriended by a drunken millionaire and becomes inebriated himself. In a nightclub combined with a restaurant, the little tramp orders spaghetti. The celebrating crowd throws confetti and a streamer of paper lands in his plate. Drunkenly intent on eating, he chews away on what appears to be a long piece of spaghetti and rises from his chair. He stretches and nibbles on the paper as if he were headed for the ceiling. By far the most physical and laughable portion of City Lights occurs when Charlie takes a desperate step to provide money for an operation for the blind women he loves. Chaplin revives and refurbishes material from his comic shorts with boxing themes, the 1914 The Knockout and the 1915 The Champion. Pitted against a seasoned prizefighter, the little tramp avoids the attack of his opponent by dancing away from him and by hiding behind the referee. The whole sequence is lively, colorful, and extremely funny. The final sequence provides the contrast that Chaplin could handle better than comedians Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. What some critics call pathos —more aptly designated as sympathy —is developed for the little tramp by Chaplin. Charlie meets the blind woman who has recovered her sight and, on seeing him, feels sorry for the tattered, lonely little fellow. She touches his hand when she gives him a flower and recognizes who he is. As the two exchange forced

80

CLARK, MARGUERITE

smiles, the film ends in a powerful, ironic moment —one of the most poignant ever created on the silent screen. CLARK, MARGUERITE. Born February 22, 1883 (some sources say 1887), in Avondale, Ohio. Died September 25, 1940, in New York City. Actress. An immensely popular star of early features, small and delicate Marguerite Clark rivaled Mary Pickford in popularity, at times surpassing her in polls by movie fan magazines. Like Pickford, her youthful appearance and height of under five feet led to many child roles well into her thirties. Unfortunately very few of her films have survived. She embarked on a theatrical career in 1899, managed by her older sister, within a year after the death of their parents in an accident. Soon she became a member of DeWolf Hopper's touring company and was starring in hit shows on Broadway by 1909. Both Sam Goldwyn and Adolph Zukor vied to sign her for their productions, with Zukor winning on the condition that he loan her services for The Goose Girl, to which Goldwyn and Jesse Lasky had just purchased the rights. (Lasky and Zukor's Famous Players Company soon merged to become Paramount, anyway.) During a war bond tour in 1918 Clark met a lieutenant from a wealthy New Orleans family and married him that summer. Two years later she an-

nounced her retirement from the screen, but to repudiate criticism that

she had lost her touch she bought screen rights to a hit play, starring in

and producing it herself for release through First National. After that film, Scrambled Wives (1921), she left the screen for good near the height of her popularity. Two of her surviving films, Prunella and Snow White, are generally considered among the best work of her career. Even though it is essentially a filmed stage play, her Snow Wliite inspired Walt Disney to use the same story when he decided to try making a feature-length animated cartoon, and he incorporated some of the elements from her film into his work.

Filmography: Wildflower (1914), The Crucible (1914), The Goose Girl (1915), Gretna Green (1915), The Pretty Sister of Jose (1915), The Seven Sisters (1915), Helene of the North (1915), Still Waters (1915), The Prince and the Pauper (1915), Mice and Men (1916), Out of the Drifts (1916), Molly Make Believe (1916), Silks and Satins (1916), Little Lady Eileen (1916), Miss George Washington (1916), Snow White (1916), The Fortunes of Fiji (1917), The Valentine Girl (1917), The Amazons (1917), Bab's Diary (1917), Bab's Burglar (1917), Bab's Matinee Idol (1917), The Seven Swans (1917), Rich Man, Poor Man (1918), Prunella (1918), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1918), Out of a Clear Sky (1918), Little Miss Hoover (1918), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1919), Three Men and a Girl (1919), Let's Elope (1919), Come Out of the Kitchen (1919), Girls (1919), Widow By Proxy (1919), Luck in Pawn (1919), A Girl Named Mary (1919), All-of-a-

CLEOPATRA

81

Sudden-Peggy (1920), Easy to Get (1920), Scrambled Wives (1921). Selected Bibliography: Davis, Richard Alan. "Marguerite Clark, Forgotten Silent Superstar/' Films of the Golden Age no. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 62-66. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Marguerite Clark," The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ ClassicFilms/ FeaturedStar/ > Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

CLEOPATRA (1912). Historical drama. Directed by Charles L. Gaskill; with Helen Gardner, Mr. Sindelar, Harley Knoles, Mr. Waite, Mr. Howard, Miss Winter; screenplay by Charles L. Gaskill, from plays by William Shakespeare, Victorien Sardou, and Emile Moreau. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, sets free an escaped slave who is in love with her. Later, she meets Roman general Marc Antony and falls in love with him, but he marries the Roman emperor's sister for political reasons. When Antony commits suicide after Cleopatra's desertion results in his defeat at Actium, she has her dying lover brought to her tomb and joins him in a romantic death. This hour-and-a-quarter version of the oft-filmed romantic tragedy is one of the first feature-length films produced in America. Its star Helen Gardner is today an obscure name from the earliest days of filmmaking, yet the one-time pantomime instructor may have been the first woman to start her own movie production company and was a pioneer in making full-length feature films (along with her writer-director husband, Charles Gaskill). They turned out several films but in 1914 returned briefly to Vitagraph, where they had worked before setting out on their own. After the early 1920s they seem to vanish from the movie industry. Their Cleopatra was presented in opera houses and legitimate theatres as a special traveling roadshow in 1912, with an advance man, a lecturerprojectionist, and a manager. They filmed additional scenes in 1917 and reissued it in 1918 to compete against the new Theda Bara version, boasting that theatres could "exhibit a big $2.00 feature for 25C and make a big profit." Only the 1912 original appears to have survived. Both the production values and acting in Cleopatra show a strong in-

82

CLEOPATRA

fluence of the theatre. The sets are mainly well-painted backdrops that become less distracting if one thinks of the film as a recorded stage performance. The costumes and art direction are more art nouveau than Egyptian. The slightly Rubensesque Miss Gardner projects an appealing screen presence and definitely dominates the picture. The actors' stylized performances are not always so exaggerated as one might expect and actually are understated at times, especially Gardner's. Besides the fact that the crucial sea battle is presented via titles and cutaway shots, it is the film's lack of closeups that is its major weakness from today's perspective. Like other films of its era it suffers from a paucity of intertitles and a tendency for descriptive rather than dialogue titles. Many of the dialogue titles it does have are in the florid tradition of nineteenthcentury melodrama. Nevertheless it remains an interesting curiosity, especially if viewed in a color tinted print. CLEOPATRA (1917). Historical romance. Directed by J. Gordon Edwards; with Theda Bara, Fritz Leiber, Thurston Hall, Albert Roscoe, Herschel Mayall, Dorothy Drake, Dell Duncan, Henri de Vries, Art Acord, Hector V. Sarno, Genevieve Blinn; screenplay by Adrian Johnson, based on plays by William Shakespeare and Victorien Sardou, other works. Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, easily makes conquering Roman Julius Caesar into her lover and ally. After his assassination Mark Antony likewise falls under the allure of Cleopatra but eventually returns to Rome to marry Octavia, sister of Octavius, for political reasons. Then he rejoins Cleopatra to fight against Octavius for the possession of Egypt but is defeated in a spectacular sea battle at Actium. In shame, he kills himself, and Cleopatra upon learning the news holds a poisonous snake to her breast so she can join him in death. The Fox production of Cleopatra was one of the most notable historic spectacles of the silent era, running two and a half hours or longer, but unfortunately no prints have been known to survive. Theda Bara was Fox's biggest star after her overnight success as the amoral temptress of A Fool There Was (1915), and the studio exploited her "vamp" image in numerous films over the next four years. Cleopatra was a good excuse to promote the cinema as an educational method of historical recreation and literary adaptation while using the vamp craze to pull in crowds hungry for sexual intrigue and scantily clad females. Actually, the J. Gordon Edwards film displayed surprisingly accurate architecture of ancient Egypt, constructed on an immense scale in a California desert. The interior art design, however, while not as improbable as that of the 1912 version, also had a more stylized contemporary "nouveau" look

CLINE, EDWARD

83

with an Egyptian flavor and little attempt to use authentic hieroglyphs. The climactic naval battle, which occurred off screen in the primitive 1912 production, was vividly staged off the California coast for the 1917 version. Bara's performance received mixed but generally favorable reviews. Widely circulated publicity poses may distort the impression she actually conveyed on the screen, for Bara was capable of a natural subtlety that belied her image. Contemporary comments, however, do refer to "much rolling of eyes and many other maneuvers," that support the stereotyped notion of her acting. The release of the Fox Cleopatra in October 1917 inspired actressproducer Helen Gardner to reissue her relatively crude 1912 production with hastily filmed additions. It must have suffered greatly by comparison to the elaborately mounted Fox version. As the fine Fox costume drama A Tale of Two Cities released earlier that year demonstrates, the new Cleopatra would also have benefited from the far more sophisticated editing techniques in common use just five years after Gardner's pioneering effort. Except for an attractive but small-scale short Technicolor demonstration film in the late 1920s and a few short comedy spoofs, the Cleopatra story would not be produced again in the United States until the coming of sound. CLINE, EDWARD ("EDDIE") F. Born Edward Francis Cline November 7,1892, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Died May 22,1961, in Los Angeles, California. Film director, writer, and actor. With some stage experience before he became a Keystone Cop in 1913 for producer Mack Sennett, Eddie Cline moved into a director's chair within three years. While most of Cline's short comedy films in the years between 1916 and 1919 were rather routine fare, he would soon learn the profession of directing — and also screenwriting — in a way that would lead to some superior work in the future. It would make him one of the most important comedy graduates from the Keystone Film Company. In the early 1920s Eddie Cline codirected and coscripted more than 15 shorts with Buster Keaton, films such as One Week (1920), The Haunted House and The Playhouse (1921), Day Dreams, The Electric House, and Cops (1922). These two-reel comedies remain as some of the best shorts created in that decade. Cline would also direct one feature for Keaton, Three Ages, an innovative spoof of D. W. Griffith's 1916 Intolerance. After this important contribution to the career of Buster Keaton, the director-writer moved back to Keystone to direct comedy for entrepreneur Sennett. There Cline guided the talented comedy actors Ben Turpin, Andy Clyde, and Carole Lombard. Director Cline would make his last

84

CODY, LEW

significant contribution to the c o m e d y film w h e n he piloted the eccentric W. C. Fields s o u n d features: You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), My Little Chickadee and The Bank Dick (1940), and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). With his b a c k g r o u n d in silent c o m e d y E d d i e Cline translated to the s o u n d m e d i u m s o m e the rush-to-the-rescue a n d chase elem e n t s of the older tradition. A n d , of course, h e allowed W. C. Fields to execute s o m e of his delightful, wacky, verbal h u m o r . The director a n d actor w o r k e d in h a r m o n y to p r o d u c e s o m e classic s o u n d comedies. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Knockout (1914), Sunshine (1916), His Busted Trust (1916), Hide and Seek (1918), Cupid's Day Off (1919), Uncle Tom Without the Cabin (1919), One Week (1920), The Haunted House (1921), The Playhouse (1921), Cops (1922), Day Dreams (1923), The Electric House (1923), A Harem Knight (1926), When a Man's a Prince (1926), A Blonde's Revenge (1926). Selected silent features - Three Ages (1923), The Head Man (1928), The Crash (1928). Selected sound features- Cracked Nuts (1931), Million Dollar Legs (1932), Peck's Bad Boy (1934), You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), My Little Chickadee (1940), The Bank Dick (1940), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), Crazy House (1943) Ghost Catchers (1944). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. C O D Y , LEW. Born February 22, 1884, in Berlin, N e w H a m p s h i r e . Died M a y 31,1934, in Beverly Hills, California. Actor. A p o p u l a r leading m a n t h r o u g h o u t the silent era, Lew C o d y p l a y e d s m o o t h , sophisticated villains as well as romantic leads. H e g a v e u p a p l a n n e d medical career to go into stock theatre a n d vaudeville. His film credits go back as far as 1914, a b o u t the time of his divorce from stage actress D o r o t h y Dalton, soon to be a m o v i e star herself. H e p l a y e d a villain o p p o s i t e childhood friend Mabel N o r m a n d in Mickey, which started p r o d u c t i o n in 1916 b u t w a s not released until 1918 w h e n both w e r e m u c h bigger stars. In late 1919 a n d 1920 he h a d his o w n p r o d u c t i o n c o m p a n y , Lew C o d y Films Corporation, which c o m p l e t e d four pictures. H e played the title role in the Selznick p r o d u c t i o n of Rupert of Hentzau (1923). In 1926 he m a r r i e d Mabel N o r m a n d , w h o s e life a n d career h a d taken a t u r n for the w o r s e a n d w h o died of p n e u m o n i a a n d tuberculosis in 1930. C o d y m a d e a successful transition to s o u n d films b u t died in his sleep of a heart ailment in 1934. Selected Filmography: The Harp of Tara (1914), The Floating Death (1915), The Mating (1915), Comrade John (1915), Should a Wife Forgive? (1915), The Crime of Circumstance (1916), The Grinning Skull (1916), The Cycle of Fate (1916), The Bride's

COMPSON, BETTY

85

Silence (1917), Southern Pride (1917), A Game of Wits (1917), A Branded Soul (1917), Painted Lips (1918), Daddy's Girl (1918), Treasure of the Sea (1918), For Husbands Only (1918), The Bride's Awakening (1918), The Demon (1918), Mickey (1918), Playthings (1918), Borrowed Clothes (1918), Don't Change Your Husband (1919), As the Sun Went Down (1919), Men, Women, and Money (1919), Our Better Selves (1919), Are You Legally Married? (1919), The Life Line (1919), The Broken Butterfly (1919), The Beloved Cheater (1919), The Butterfly Man (1920), Wait for Me (1920), Occasionally Yours (1920), The Sign on the Door (1921), Dangerous Pastime (1922), The Valley of Silent Men (1922), The Secrets of Paris (1922), Jacqueline, or Blazing Barriers (1923), Souls for Sale (1923), Within the Law (1923), Rupert ofHenzau (1923), Lawful Larceny (1923), Reno (1923), The Woman on the Jury (1924), The Shooting of Dan McGrew (1924), Revelation (1924), Three Women (1924), So This is Marriage (1924), Man and Maid (1925), The Sporting Venus (1925), A Slave of Fashion (1925), Exchange of Wives (1925), Time, the Comedian (1925), His Secretary (1925), The Gay Deceiver (1926), Monte Carlo (1926), Adam and Evil (1927), Tea for Three (1927), The Demi-Bride (1927), On Ze Boulevard (1927), The Baby Cyclone (1928), Beau Broadway (1928), Wickedness Preferred (1928), A Single Man (1929), What a Widow! (1930), Divorce Among Friends (1930), Dishonored (1931), The Crusader (1932), A Parisian Romance (1932), Undercover Man (1932), Sitting Pretty (1933), Wine, Women and Song (1933), Private Scandal (1934), Shoot the Works (1934). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. " L e w C o d y / ' The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ ClassicFilms/ FeaturedStar/ > Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. COMPSON, BETTY. Born March 18, 1897, in Beaver City, Utah. Died April 18,1974, in Glendale, California. Actress. Star of numerous silent dramas, Betty Compson made her screen debut in short comedies at the Nestor studio in 1915, many for director Al Christie, having previously performed as a violinist in vaudeville. Her first feature film appearance was a starring role in a Pathe western, The Border Raiders (1918). The following year she made a seven-episode Pathe serial, The Terror of the Range, and achieved major critical notice with her dramatic role in Paramount's Fhe Miracle Man, which also brought fame to Lon Chaney. Nevertheless, she has no film credits for the year 1920.

86

COMPSON, BETTY

Other important films featuring Compson include Clarence Badger's Paths to Paradise (1925) costarring with Raymond Griffith; James Cruze's The Pony Express (1925); Tod Browning's The Big City (1928) with Lon Chaney; Josef von Sternberg's The Docks of New York (1928); and George Fitzmaurice's The Barker (1928), for which she received an Oscar nomination. Through the last half of the 1920s Compson was married to James Cruze, who directed a number of her pictures. She continued making films after the coming of sound, with key roles in The Great Gabbo (1929), The Spoilers (1930), and The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930). Several of her early talkies were released in silent versions. Her parts soon diminished in importance, however, and most of her later career was in lesser roles in low-budget features until her retirement in 1948. Selected Filmography: Silent features — The Border Raiders (1918), The Prodigal Liar (1919), The Light of Victory (1919), The Little Diplomat (1919), The Devil's Trail (1919), The Miracle Man (1919), Prisoners of Love (1921), At the End of the World (1921), For Those We Love (1921), Ladies Must Live (1921), The Little Minister (1921), The Law and the Woman (1922), The Green Temptation (1922), Always the Woman (1922), The Bonded Woman (1922), To Have and to Hold (1922), Kick In (1922), The Rustle of Silk (1923), The Woman With Four Faces (1923), Hollywood (1923), The White Flower (1923), The Stranger (1924), Miami (1924), The Enemy Sex (1924), The Female (1924), The Garden of Weeds (1924), The Fast Set (1924), Locked Doors (1925), New Lives for Old (1925), Eve's Secret (1925), Paths to Paradise (1925), The Pony Express (1925), Counsel for the Defense (1925), The Wise Guy (1926), Palace of Pleasure (1926), The Belle of Broadway (1926), The Ladybird (1927), Say It With Diamonds (1927), Temptations of a Shop Girl (1927), Cheating Cheaters (1927), Love Me and the World Is Mine (1928), The Big City (1928), Masked Angel (1928), Court Martial (1928), The Docks of New York (1928), The Barker (1928), Scarlet Seas (1929), Weary River (1929), The Time, The Place, and the Girl (1929), Skin Deep (1929), The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930), The Czar of Broadway (1930), Those Who Dance (1930). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Betty Compson. // The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ClassicFilms/FeaturedStar/> Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

CONKLIN, CHESTER

87

CONKLIN, CHESTER. Born Jules Cowles January 11, 1988, in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Died October 11, 1971, in Van Nuys, California. Stock theater, vaudeville, circus actor, film comedian. After an actor on the stage and in the circus, Conklin began his film career upon entering producer Mack Sennett's movie studio in 1913. He was enough of a physical oddity to quality for one of many unusual body types of the Keystone cops. Conklin had a long career as a movie comedian—fifty-three years —until his retirement in 1966. This short, moonfaced actor sported a large walrus mustache when he played both villainous and mild-mannered comic portraits. In his early works he performed as a minor character in Charles Chaplin 1914 short films. He received a more prominent role as a villain opposite Mack Swain in the "Ambrose" series developed by Keystone Company. What is unusual about this minor comedian, when compared with many other comedians, is that he appeared in so many important films from the silent era into the sound era: Tillie's Punctured Romance and Uncle Tom's Cabin (1914); Anna Christie (1923); Phantom of the Opera and Greed (1925); The Virginian (1929); two Chaplin films, Modern Times (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940); and two Bob Hope films, My Favorite Spy (1951) and Son of Paleface (1952). Conklin's comic, hangdog look in Modern Times punctuated situations that go wrong with a bungling helper, played by Chaplin. Chester is a master mechanic in who added much to an elaborate sequence in a factory. In a shorter scene in The Great Dictator, Conklin is a baffled customer of a barber, a character enacted by Chaplin, who has a wacky way of shaving the hapless, puzzled man to the tune of a Hungarian rhapsody. This type of confused comic reaction from a tortured soul, a victim, made his latter efforts as an actor distinctive — much better than his early efforts as a diminutive, leering villain in the "Ambrose" series with Mack Swain. Filmography: Selected short films — Making a Living (1914), Mabel's Strange Predicament (1914), Ambrose's Sour Grapes (1915), Love, Speed, and Thrills (1915), A Tugboat Romeo (1916), A Clever Dummy (1917). Selected silent features — Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Anna Christie (1923), Greed (1925), Phantom of the Opera (1925). Selected sound features — The Virginian (1929), Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933), Modern Times (1936), Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), The Great Dictator (1940), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), The Perils of Pauline (1947), Fancy Pants (1950), My Favorite Spy (1951), Son of Paleface (1952). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Chester Conklin." Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons,

COOGAN, JACKIE

88 Studios, and Terminology. Company, Inc., 1995.

Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland &

COOGAN, JACKIE. Born John Leslie Coogan, Jr. October 26, 1914, in Los Angeles, California. Died March 1,1984, in Santa Monica, California. Vaudeville, film actor. Charles Chaplin witnessed the Coogan family's vaudeville sketch with the boy Jackie Coogan and saw the acting potential of the child. The famous comedian hired the boy and his father in order to use the boy in a short comedy, A Day's Pleasure (1919). This two-reel work did not effectively show Chaplin's young discovery, however. But the comedian's first feature, The Kid (1921), gave Jackie Coogan a career opportunity that would make the boy the most lauded child actor in the last decade of the silent cinema. Many of the pictures Jackie acted in after The Kid were variations of the lost child or orphan that Chaplin exploited in this well-received first feature. In fact, The Kid has many characteristics of a nineteenth-century Charles Dickens novel. Consequently it became evident why director Frank Lloyd wrote his adaptation of Oliver Twist (1922), a lost boy novel by Dickens. In this film Coogan played the title role opposite Lon Chaney's Fagin. Three years later Coogan played a street urchin befriending a man of limited means in The Rag Man (1925). To achieve genteel humor the film story shows the boy becoming the aggressor when he meets a timid "junk man" played by the self-effacing comedian Max Davidson. In a few ways this pairing followed one similar to that exhibited in The Kid. This film spawned the boy actor's career. By 1925 Jackie had grown up to the moppet stage and the chemistry between a child and a adult became different, more serious and less comic. As a sixyear-old actor, Jackie Coogan in The Kid proved to be humorous because he tried to ape the actions of his mentor with laughable results. He became a miniature version of Chaplin's little tramp. When sound arrived, Coogan as a teenager would play in two Mark Twain adaptations, Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931). In both films Jackie enacted the role of Tom Sawyer. Coogan would experience a second career as an adult from the 1940s through the 1970s as a character actor. He was especially known for his comic role as Uncle Fester in the television comedy series based on the ghoulish Addams family magazine cartoons. Filmography: Selected shorts — Skinner's Baby (1917), A Day's Pleasure (1919). Selected silent features - The Kid (1921), Peck's Bad Boy (1921), Oliver Twist (1922), Circus Days (1923), The Rag Man (1925), The Bugle Call (1927), Buttons (1927). Selected sound films — Tom Sawyer (1930), Huckleberry Finn (1931).

COSTELLO, DOLORES

89

Selected Bibliography: Huff, Theodore. "The Kid." Ch. 15. Charlie Chaplin. New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1951. Langman, Larry. "Jackie Coogan," Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

COSSACK WHIP, THE (1916). Drama. Directed by John H. Collins; with Viola Dana, Grace Williams, Bob Walker, Frank Farrington, Richard Tucker, Sally Crute; screenplay by Paul H. Sloane; story by James Oppenheim. A peaceful Russian village is raided by Cossacks trying to stamp out revolutionaries. In the process a young woman is whipped to death and her sister escapes the country, vowing revenge. Later she becomes a famous ballerina and her company travels to Russia. There she is wooed by the prefect of police responsible for the pogrom and she plots her revenge. Besides being a well-photographed and skillfully edited romantic melodrama, The Cossack Whip is notable as one of the few surviving films of director John Collins and one of the few surviving features from the Edison studio. Made before the Bolshevik revolution, it has a strongly prorevolutionary point of view, including scenes and filmmaking techniques that suggest postrevolutionary Soviet cinema. The art direction is particularly evocative of its Russian winter setting. The film also takes its subject far more seriously than slick studio formula pictures of a dozen years later like MGM's The Cossacks (1928). Collins was a major directing talent the last half of the 1910s. He worked for the Edison and then the Metro studios, most of his films for both companies starring his wife, Viola Dana. His career was cut short by his tragic death at age 28 in the influenza epidemic of October 1918. His final film, a romantic comedy of manners called Satan Junior, was completed by Herbert Blache and released in March 1919. COSTELLO, DOLORES. Born September 17, 1905, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Died March 1,1979, in Fallbrook, California. Actress. A popular blonde star of the 1920s, Dolores Costello acted in Vitagraph films as a child from about age four through ten, often with her sister Helene and matinee idol father, Maurice Costello. She then concentrated on school and professional modeling for six or seven years, reentering films at age 17 with a small part in her father's The Glimpses of the Moon. She and Helene danced together in the "George White Scandals" of 1924 and then both accepted film contracts at Warner Brothers. Acclaim and more major roles followed her appearance opposite John Barrymore, whom she later married, in The Sea Beast (1926). Dolores and

90

COSTELLO, HELENE

Helene appeared in two feature films together, How Cissy Made Good (1915) and The Heart of Maryland (1927). Leaving films briefly after the coming of sound to raise her children, she again resumed her screen career in 1936, playing character parts in such films as Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) until retiring in 1943. Selected Filmography: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909), The Telephone (1910), A Geranium (1911), The Meeting of the Ways (1911), The Child Crusoes (1911), Her Sister's Children (1911), Ida's Christmas (1912), A Juvenile Love Affair (1912), The Money Kings (1912), The Troublesome Step-Daughters (1912), The Llindu Charm (1913), Some Steamer Scooping (1914), The Evil Men Do (1915), Haw Cissy Made Good (1915), The Glimpses of the Moon (1923), Lawful Larceny (1923), Greater Than a Crown (1925), The Sea Beast (1926), Mannequin (1926), Bride of the. Storm (1926), The Little Irish Girl (1926), The Third Degree (1926), When a Man Loves (1927), A Million Bid (1927), Old San Francisco (1927), The Heart of Maryland (1927), The College Widow (1927), Tenderloin (1928), Glorious Betsy (1928), Noah's Ark (1928), The Glad Rag Doll (1929), The Madonna of Avenue A (1929), The Show of Shows (1929), Hearts in Exile (1929), Second Choice (1930), Expensive Women (1931), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), Yours for the Asking (1936), The Beloved Brat (1938), Breaking the Ice (1938), King of the Turf (1939), Whispering Enemies (1939), Outside These Walls (1939), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), This Is The Army (1943). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. COSTELLO, HELENE. Born November 18, 1902 (some sources say June 21, 1903), in New York City. Died January 26, 1957, in Hollywood, California. Actress. Like her younger sister Dolores, Helene started acting in her father Maurice's 1909 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and appeared in many Vitagraph films as a child until she was 13 or 14. After school and a New York modeling career she and her sister had a dancing act in the "George White Scandals" of 1924. She then joined her sister at Warner Brothers, where she appeared in the Syd Chaplin vehicle, The Man on the Box (1925), in Don Juan (1926), starring future brother-in-law John Barrymore, and other films. She acted once more with her sister in The Heart of Maryland (1927), the second remake of a play first filmed back in 1915, the last time they had appeared together in films. Her popularity

COSTELLO, MAURICE

91

was on a par with her sister's for a time, but she faded from the screen after the coming of sound. Interestingly she starred in the very first alltalking feature, The Lights of New York (1928) as well as acting in the first Vitaphone synchronized sound feature, Don Juan (1926). Selected Filmography: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909), A Geranium (1911), The Child Crusoes (1911), The First Violin (1912), The Troublesome Step-Daughters (1912), Rip Van Winkle (1912), The Night Before Christmas (1912), The Doctor's Secret (1913), The Barrel Organ (1914), Some Steamer Scooping (1914), Lifting the Ban of Coventry (1915), The Evil Men Do (1915), How Cissy Made Good (1915), Billie's Mother (1916), Ranger of the Big Pines (1925), The Man on the Box (1925), Wet Paint (1926), Don Juan (1926), The Honeymoon Express (1926), The Love Toy (1926), Millionaires (1926), While London Sleeps (1926), The Heart of Maryland (1927), Good Time Charley (1927), The Broncho Twister (1927), In Old Kentucky (1927), Husbands For Rent (1927), Finger Prints (1927), The Fortune Hunter (1927), Lights of New York (1928), The Midnight Taxi (1928), Burning Up Broadway (1928), Comrades (1928), The Circus Kid (1928), Broken Barriers (1928), The Fatal Warning (1929), When Dreams Come True (1929), Riff-Raff (1935). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

COSTELLO, MAURICE. Born February 22, 1877, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Died October 29,1950, in Hollywood, California. A stage matinee idol through the 1890s and early 1900s, Maurice Costello made films at Edison in 1907 and then moved to Vitagraph, where his name brought prestige to numerous short films, including several adaptations of famous stage plays and novels. His starring role in the three-reel A Tale of Two Cities (1911) is one of his more notable of this period. In 1913-14 he directed and codirected several of his films. He stayed at Vitagraph until 1920, by which time his popularity had declined. Throughout the 1920s and well into the sound era he played in numerous low-budget and independent films, with a few character parts at major studios, including MGM's Camille (1927). His daughters Helene and Dolores appeared as children in some of his Vitagraph films, and later went on to become major stars themselves.

92

COVERED WAGON, THE

Selected Filmography: Salome (1908), Richard III (1908), Antony and Cleopatra (1908), Julius Caesar (1908), The Merchant of Venice (1908), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909), King Lear (1909), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910), A Tale of Two Cities (1911), My Old Dutch (1911), The Night Before Christmas (1912), Cupid vs. Women's Rights (1913), The Ambassador's Disappearance (1913), Mr. Barnes of New York (1914), The Man Ww Couldn't Beat God (1915), The Crown Prince's Double (1916), The Captain's Captain (1919), The Cambric Mask (1919), The Man Who Won (1919), The Girl-Woman (1919), The Tower of Jewels (1919), Human Collateral (1920), Deadline at Eleven (1920), Conceit (1921), Determination (1922), The Glimpses of the Moon (1923), Fog Bound (1923), Man and Wife (1923), None So Blind (1923), Let No Man Put Asunder (1924), Roulette (1924), Week End Husbands (1924), Virtuous Liars (1924), Love of Women (1924), The Story Without a Name (1924), The Law and the Lady (1924), The Mad Marriage (1925), The Last Alarm (1926), T/ze Wives of the Prophet (1926), Johnny Get Your Hair Cut (1927), Wolves of the Air (1927), Camille (1927), The Shamrock and the Rose (1927), Spider Webs (1927), The Wagon Show (1928), Eagle of the Night (1928), Black Feather (1928), Hollywood Boulevard (1936), A Little Bit of Heaven (1940), Lady From Louisiana (1941). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. COVERED WAGON, THE (1923). Western. Directed by James Cruze; with J. Warren Kerrigan, Lois Wilson, Ernest Torrence, Charles Ogle, Alan Hale, and John Fox; screenplay by Jack Cunningham; based on novel of the same name by Emerson Hough. In a short John Steinbeck novel, The Red Pony, a wife explains to her husband why her father had become a bore when telling the same stories of his past over and over again: "He led a wagon train clear across the plains to the coast, and when he finished, his life was done . . . . He lives right by the ocean where he had to stop" (The Red Pony, p. 177, Penguin Books, 1986 edition). Steinbeck wrote this novel ten years after The Covered Wagon was released in 1923. As late as Steinbeck's day many pioneers who settled the west were still alive and proud of their accomplishment under great hardships. James Cruze directed this movie that

COVERED WAGON, THE

93

became a critical and popular success in the golden twenties of the silent film. There was an even more ready audience in that decade. The Covered Wagon reinforced the more conservative values of the past in the wake of a more cynical climate following World War I when there was disenchantment among many veterans and others who found financial problems in the 1920s. In a 1924 Palmer Institute of Authorship stressing film screenwriting, Scott O'Dell wrote about the "sturdiness and quiet heroism" of these pioneer farmers. And this evaluator notes one of the most important elements of the film: the dramatic visualization. "What is left of these purposeful colonists constitutes the wagon train which finds its way to Oregon. The end is indeed impressive, and, in a sense, it is a dramatic end —the arrival of weary travelers in the snowfields." (Representative Photoplays Analyzed, p. 131). The Covered Wagon possesses memorable scenes as does its 1924 successor, The Iron Horse. However, both films are burdened with "human interest" cliche plotting that has plagued the Western throughout time. Both of these westward movement epics have triangle conflicts with two men struggling for the affections of one woman. In this earlier work the hero is played by one of silent screen's leading men, J. Warren Kerrigan, and Alan Hale enacts his rival (who evolves into a villain bent on killing the hero). Further complicating the plot is a conflict with Native Americans, called simply "Indians" in the twenties film. This conflict in The Covered Wagon has a clear-cut motivation for the attacks by Indians, which does not exist in The Iron Horse. The Native Americans know that this wagon train holds a community of farmers. The plow becomes a symbol —a visual close-up is used throughout the movie —with the Native Americans viewing it as a threat to their existence. Use of this key concept adds depth to The Covered Wagon's portrait of the white man's conquest of the west in the nineteenth century. Other merits also exist in this 1923 epic. Probably the most important is the visualization of the trek, featuring the long curving line of covered wagons stretching to the horizon. At one point in the journey a conflict develops when one group wishes to seek gold in California. As one group of wagons moves to the left, or west, the other train of wagons climbs up a hill, or north — an image effectively framed in one long shot. This film on the wagon train moving west also featured a good performance from the lead, Kerrigan and an excellent comic performance from Ernest Torrence. Furthermore, The Covered Wagon proved to be a precursor of the epic Western and a new incentive for the Western genre in general. Three times as many regular length westerns were created in 1924 as were created in 1923, a total of nearly 150.

94

CRISP, DONALD

CRISP, DONALD. Born July 27,1880, in Aberfeldy, Scotland. Died May 25,1974, in Van Nuys, California. Actor, director. Although he was active as a director throughout the silent era from 1914 until the coming of sound, Donald Crisp is today remembered primarily as a character actor of the sound era with a couple of notable acting roles in major silent films. Crisp joined the British army, serving from 1899 to 1902 and fighting in the Boer War. Following this he did theatre and opera for a few years in London before moving to the United States in 1906, where he spent another two years on the stage with George M. Cohan and John Barrymore, among others. He started work at Biograph in 1908, acting often for D. W. Griffith and sometimes assisting him. His first directing credit appears to be for the Biograph one-reeler, Her Father's Silent Partner (1914). He then followed Griffith to the RelianceMajestic studios where he continued acting but began directing in earnest, sometimes acting in his own films. Crisp also assisted Griffith on The Birth of a Nation at this time as well as appearing as Ulysses S. Grant in the film. In 1915 he acted in several features for Famous Players (Paramount) and the following year directed two epics for the short-lived Clune Film Producing Company, formed by W. H. Clune, whose auditorium had premiered The Birth of a Nation. One of these was the first feature version of Ramona, which Crisp also acted in under the name of James Needham. In 1917 Crisp went to work for Paramount as a director, helming more than 30 films for the studio until 1921, the last few filmed in England. In 1919 he stopped directing long enough to work in Griffith's Broken Blossoms as the villainous father of Lillian Gish, a film produced at Paramount but sold by the studio to Griffith and released through United Artists. Throughout the rest of the 1920s Crisp directed for a variety of studios, including such notable films as The Navigator (1924), codirected with Buster Keaton, and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), starring Douglas Fairbanks. Crisp also acted with Fairbanks in that film and in The Black Pirate the following year. In 1928 he directed two films and then returned to acting full time, directing one more picture, Runaway Bride, in 1930, his only talkie as a director. He appeared in numerous films in a wide variety of parts until 1963, and did occasional television roles as well. Upon D. W. Griffith's death in 1948, Crisp was one of the few Hollywood notables to attend his memorial service and delivered the eulogy for his old mentor. Selected Filmography as Director: Her Father's Silent Partner (1914), The Mysterious Shot (1914), The Idiot (1914), Paid With Interest (1914), Ramona (1916), The Eyes of the World (1917), The Marcellim Millions (1917), The Countess Charming (1917), The Clever Mrs. Carfax (1917), The House of Silence (1918), Believe Me Xantippe (1918), The Goat (1918), Under the Top (1919), The Poor Boob (1919), Johnny

CROWD, THE

95

Get your Gun (1919), A Very Good Young Man (1919), It Pays to Advertise (1919), Venus in the East (1919), Too Much Johnson (1920), The Six Best Cellars (1920), Mz'ss Hobbs (1920), Held by the Enemy (1920), The Barbarian (1920), Appearances (1921), The Princess of New York (1921), The Bonnie Briar Bush (1921), Ponjola (1923), The Navigator (1924), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), Sunny Side Up (1926), Young April (1926), Man Bait (1926), Nobody's Widow (1927), Vanity (1927), The Fighting Eagle (1927), Stand and Deliver (1928), The Cop (1928), Runaway Bride (1930). Selected Filmography as Actor: Effecting a Cure (1910), The Diving Girl (1911), The Battle (1911), The Squaw's Love (1911), The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), The Mothering Heart (1913), The Blue or the Gray (1913), The Battle of the Sexes (1914), Home Sweet Home (1914), Over the Ledge (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Commanding Officer (1915), A Girl of Yesterday (1915), Ramona (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), The River Pirate (1928), The Pagan (1928), Trent's Last Case (1929), The Viking (1929), The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929), Svengali (1931), Red Dust (1932), The Crime Doctor (1934), The Little Minister (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Mary of Scotland (1936), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), A Woman Rebels (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Jezebel (1938), The Dawn Patrol (1938), Wuthering Heights (1939), /tzarez (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Gay Sisters (1942), Lassie Come Home (1943), T/ze Uninvited (1944), Son o/ LflssH? (1945), Bright Leaf (1950), Pn'rzce Valiant (1954), T/ze Las£ Hwrra/z (1958), A Dog of Flanders (1959), Pollyanna (1960), Greyfriar's Bobby (1961), Spencer's Mountain (1963). Honors: Academy Award, Best Supporting Actor, How Green Was My Valley, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1941. Selected Bibliography: Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. CROWD, THE (1928). Drama. Directed by King Vidor; with James Murray, Eleanor Boardman, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark, Daniel G. Tomlinson, Dell Henderson, Lucy Beaumont, Freddie Burke Frederick, Alice Mildred Puter; screenplay by King Vidor, John V. A. Weaver, Harry Behn. A young office worker meets and marries a working girl, they honeymoon at Niagara Falls, and settle down to raise a family. Five years later, they have two children in their small apartment and the man is still plugging away at the same routine. Then he wins an advertising slogan contest and believes events are finally turning in his favor, but a tragedy strikes that tests both his love for his wife and his will to live at all. A commercial failure upon its release, King Vidor's The Crowd was too depressingly realistic for audiences a year before the stock market

96

CRUZE, JAMES

crash heralded the Great Depression. Its story of the trials and tribulations of a common, everyday man who cannot get ahead no matter how hard he tries was the antithesis of the glamorous larger-than-life world generally shown in Hollywood movies. Starting out as a sweet, whitecollar working class romance, the story gradually introduces frustrations and tragedies into its characters' lives. Six different endings were filmed, but the one generally circulating today is Vidor's preferred bittersweet conclusion that simply shows life going on —no better, no worse than before. The film today remains one of the most powerful silent dramas ever created. Tragically, star James Murray would never achieve the success promised by this, his first major role, and he died unemployed and alcoholic several years later. CRUZE, JAMES. Born March 27, 1884, in Five Points (Ogden), Utah. Died August 3,1942, in Hollywood, California. Director, producer, actor. A prolific film director throughout the silent and into the sound era, James Cruze began as an actor, but a fewr years after feature films replaced shorts as the main studio product, he moved into directing. He was interested in the theatre as a child, went to dramatic school, and was acting professionally at age 16. By age 22 he was in the Belasco company acting on Broadway but within a few years had switched to films. He acted in numerous Thanhouser shorts, serials, and five feature-length films from 1911 to 1915, and then appeared in Lasky, Metro, Fox and Gold Medal releases before settling in at the Lasky studio in mid-1917. There he continued to act for more than a year before directing his first picture, Too Many Millions (1918), a sure-fire comedy starring Wallace Reid. He made a large number of comedies, including several Reid action vehicles and slapstick farces of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle but worked in all different genres. The Roaring Road (1919), starring Reid, is a slick, polished comedy-drama that looks as if it could have been made five to ten years later. Leap Year (1921) is one of his Arbuckle features that was never released because of Arbuckle's infamous scandal, yet viewing this comedy today reveals it to be an entertaining film, slow starting with a fastpaced slapstick final half. Cruze is noted especially for reviving major studio interest in large-scale Westerns with his epic The Covered Wagon (1923), following it up two years later with The Pony Express (1925). He served as producer as well as director on most of his films from 1923 un-

til the early thirties. Cruze was not afraid to try off-beat material, such as Hollywood (1923) and an extended fantasy sequence in Beggar on Horse-

back (1925). His historical naval epic Old Ironsides (1926) was impressive but lacked some of the spirit of his two big westerns and was not a big hit. Nevertheless, by the end of the silent era Cruze is said to have been

CRUZE, JAMES

97

the highest-paid director in H o l l y w o o d . H e m a d e the transition to s o u n d w i t h o u t m u c h p r o b l e m , a l t h o u g h his talkie o u t p u t w a s m o r e u n e v e n t h a n his silent work. His first talking film, The Great Gabbo (1929), h a d a m o r e interesting t h a n u s u a l backstage plot a n d a d o m i n a t i n g performance by Erich v o n Stroheim. It w a s not a big success, h o w e v e r , suffering from the sluggish pacing c o m m o n to m a n y early s o u n d pictures a n d an uneasy mixture of musical numbers with heavy melodrama. Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932) was a dark, hard-hitting, precode political satire. 1/7 Had a Million (1932), / Cover the Waterfront (1933), David Haruni (1934), a n d Slitter's Gold (1936) are also of interest. C r u z e often w o r k e d with his actress wife, Betty C o m p s o n , a n d h a d previously been m a r r i e d to his frequent T h a n h o u s e r cos tar M a r g u e r i t e Snow. Selected Filmography as Actor: She (1911), The Pied Piper of Hamlin (1911), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1912), The Arab's Bride (1912), Lucile (1912), Undine (1912), Cymbeline (1913), The Snare of Faith (1913), The Legend of Provence (1913), Frou Frou (1914), Joseph in the Land of Egypt (1914), Cardinal Richelieu's Ward (1914), The Million Dollar Mystery (1914), The Adventures of a Diplomatic Freelance (1914), Zudora (1914-15), The Patriot and the Spy (1915), Armstrong's Wife (1915), The Snowbird (1916), Nan of Music Mountain (1917), Hidden Pearls (1918), Wild Youth (1918), Believe Me, Xantippe (1918), The City of Dim Faces (1918), Less Than Kin (1918), The Source (1918), Under the Top (1919), Johnny Get Your Gun (1919). Filmography as Director: Too Many Millions (1918), The Dub (1919), Alias Mike Moran (1919), The Roaring Road (1919), You're Fired (1919), The Love Burglar (1919), Valley of the Giants (1919), An Adventure in Hearts (1919), Hawthorne of the U. S. A. (1919), The Lottery Man (1919), Mrs. Temple's Telegram (1920), Terror Island (1920), A Full House (1920), The Sin of St. Anthony (1920), What Happened to Jones? (1920), Always Audacious (1920), The Charm School (1921), The Dollar-a-Year Man (1921), Food For Scandal (1921), Leap Year (1921-unreleased), The Fast Freight (1921unreleased), Gasoline Gus (1921), Crazy to Marry (1921), One Glorious Day (1922), Is Matrimony a Failure? (1922), The Dictator (1922), The Old Homestead (1922), Thirty Days (1922), The Covered Wagon (1923), Hollywood (1923), Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), To The Ladies (1923), Merton of the Movies (1924), The Fighting Coward (1924), The Garden of Weeds (1924), The City That Never Sleeps (1924), The Enemy Sex (1924), The Pony Express (1925), Beggar on Horseback (1925), The Goose Hangs High (1925), Marry Me (1925), Welcome Home (1925), Waking Up the Town (1925), Mannequin (1926), The Waiter From the Ritz (1926), Old Ironsides (1926), We're All Gamblers (1927), The City Gone Wild (1927), On to Reno (1928), The Red Mark (1928), The Mating Call (1928), The Duke Steps Out (1928), A Man's Man (1928), The Great Gabbo (1929), Once a Gentleman (1930), She Got Wliat She Wanted (1930), Salvation Nell (1931), If I Had a Million (1932), Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932), Racetrack (1933), Sailor Be Good (1933), I Cover the Waterfront (1933), Mr. Skiteh (1933), David Harum (1934), Their Big Moment (1934), Helldorado (1935), Two-Fisted (1935), Slitter's Gold (1936), The Wrong Road (1937), Prison Nurse (1938), Gangs of New York (1938), Come On, Leathernecks! (1938).

98

CURE FOR POKERITIS, A

Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. "James Cruze." All-Movie Guide 1997. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

CURE FOR POKERITIS, A (1912). One-reel comedy. Directed by William V. Ranous; with John Bunny, Flora Finch This typical John Bunny vehicle has all the characteristics of a one-reel comedy replete with gentility. While Bunny's development of a comic character tied to his acting skills may be applauded, the story and comic invention of his film are trite, labored, and overly sentimental. The humor of this work leans heavily on the minor foibles of a husband who is addicted to cardplaying. The husband's attempts to outwit his wife in order to carry on his vice are thwarted when a kindly young man called Cousin Freddie gets his Bible class to imitate policemen and raid the poker-playing den of erring husbands. Since the wives of the offenders are part of this conspiracy, they stage a feigned rescue after their husbands are collared by Freddie's mock police force. The "sinners" are grateful and repent as the last scene of the film fades to black. By today's standards, this work is so bland that it scarcely produces a flicker of a smile from a viewer. It is slow moving and theatrically oriented. The humorous situations obviously reflect an age in the grip of Victorian codes of behavior. At best the film could be credited as a polite poke at such standards; but there seems to be a half caress in the jab. Sentiment produces creampuff humor. Only Bunny's performance plus the acting of Flora Finch as his wife make this one-reeler interesting today.

D DANCING MOTHERS (1926). Society drama. Directed by Herbert Brenon; with Alice Joyce, Conway Tearle, Clara Bow, Donald Keith, Dorothy Cumming, Norman Trevor; screenplay by Forrest Halsey; based upon play by Edgar Selwyn and Edmund Goulding. A neglected wife does little but sit at home while her womanizing husband and wild teenage daughter both prefer to go out partying every night. When the mother learns that her daughter has become involved with a notorious playboy she decides to break them up by seducing the man herself. Her hypocritical husband and daughter find this disturbing, but the newly liberated wife is now making decisions for herself instead of only for their benefit. This soap-opera type drama is a lively reflection of life among the moneyed classes during the wild and carefree "Jazz Age" of the 1920s. Somewhat controversial in its own time, it remains remarkably modern in its treatment of both the generation gap and family values. The beautiful Alice Joyce has a very strong role as the woman who decides finally to do something about her own happiness. Clara Bow is vibrant as the fun-loving daughter, showing the screen charisma that made her a superstar and the personification of the decade by the end of the following year. DANIELS, BEBE. Born Phyllis Daniels January 14,1901, in Dallas, Texas. Died March 16,1971, in London, England. Stage, film, radio actress. As a daughter of a theatrical company manager, Bebe Daniels became a child actor in touring stage dramas. She would act in her first film, The Common Enemy (1910) when she was a nine-year-old. Hired for $50 a week at age 14 by comedy producer Hal Roach, Bebe achieved the status

100

DAVENPORT, DOROTHY

of Harold Lloyd's leading young woman for more than two hundred one- and two-reel films. She would learn the art of comedy acting that would assist her greatly in her total career. However, the actress desired to become a performer in serious film drama. She left Hal Roach's comedy for a $1,000 a week contract to act in features for director Cecil B. DeMille. Her first role with him was a small part in Male and Female (1919), a screen adaptation of British playwright James M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton. Soon Daniels would become a rising star for DeMille and Paramount —almost the equal of Gloria Swanson, one of the favorite actresses for the company and director DeMille. She took another step with higher status when she appeared in The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1924), playing opposite the leading actor of the decade in the latter, Rudolph Valentino. Actually, Daniels acted in less prestigious films more often: such light fare as The Dancin' Fool (1920), The Speed Girl (1921), and The Campus Flirt (1926). Daniels amazed Hollywood with her ability to meet the challenge of the transition to sound pictures. She proved she could talk, sing, and dance when she was cast in the 1929 Rio Rita. With the deluge of musicals in the early thirties she proved her mettle with Reaching for the Moon (1931) and 42nd Street (1933). When she married Ben Lyon, Bebe and her husband returned to the stage and toured in plays, moving to London where the couple established another career — on stage, plus a radio and TV show that captivated the audiences in England. Filmography: Selected silent screen shorts — The Common Enemy (1910), Luke's Society Mixup (1916), The Flirt (1919), Lonesome Luke's Honeymoon (1919), Stop! Luke! Listen! (1917), Bumping Into Broadway (1919), Captain Kidd's Kids (1919). Selected silent features-M«Z
DAVENPORT, DOROTHY. Born March 13, 1895, in Boston, Massachussets. Died October 12, 1977, in Woodland Hills, California. Actress, producer, director, writer.

DAVENPORT, DOROTHY

101

Working mainly under the name of Mrs. Wallace Reid since her 1913 marriage at age 18, and especially after her husband's untimely death ten years later, Dorothy Davenport was born into a theatrical family. She appeared in films as early as 1910 at age 15, and acted on stage from age 16. Her father, Harry Davenport (1866-1949), was himself a veteran stage performer who worked in films as both director and actor from 1914 until his death. Dorothy Davenport Reid was a leading lady in numerous short films and more than a dozen features of the 1910s, often acting with her husband. His accidental addiction to morphine and death from it in 1923 inspired her to star in and help produce Human Wreckage, an antinarcotics film dedicated to his memory and released five months (almost to the day) after his death. Its positive reception led to Broken Laws (1924), which she also starred in and produced, about parents who overindulge their children and neglect proper discipline. The following year she formed her own production company, making The Red Kimono, a true-life story of a young woman drawn into a life of prostitution. After another independent production, Davenport Reid continued to act occasionally. Her first film as a director was Linda (1929), a sensitive drama of a young girl forced by her father to marry an older man. In the sound era she directed a few more films dealing with sensitive social issues and then turned primarily to screenwriting in the mid-1930s into the 1950s. Many of her scripts were light dramas and comedies for director Arthur Lubin, including the Francis the Talking Mule series. As late as 1966 she coproduced a low-budget melodrama of youth gangs, Terror in the City. Selected Filmography as Actress: A Mohawk's Way (1910), The Best Man Wins (1911), Her Indian Hero (1912), The Cracksman's Reformation (1913), The Spark of Manhood (1914), Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo (1915), Barriers of Society (1916), The Girl and the Crisis (1917), The Fighting Chance (1920), Every Woman's Problem (1921), The Test (1922), The Masked Avenger (1922), Human Wreckage (1923), Broken Laws (1924), The Satan Woman (1927), Hellship Bronson (1928), Man Hunt (1933). Selected Filmography as Producer or Director: Broken Laws (1924), The Red Kimono (1925), The Earth Woman (1926), Linda (1929), The Dude Wrangler (1930), Sucker Money (1933), The Road to Ruin (1934), The Woman Condemned (1934), Honeymoon Limited (1935), Women Must Dress (1935), Paradise Isle (1937), Rose of the Rio Grande (1938), Terror in the City (1966). Selected Bibiliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

102

DAVIDSON, MAX

Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Slide, Anthony. Early Women Directors. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1977, pp. 73-82. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

DAVIDSON, MAX. Born May 23, 1875, in Berlin, Germany. Died September 4,1950, in Woodland Hills, California. Actor, comedian. Max Davidson was a familiar face in character parts and bit roles in a film career that spanned thirty years with shorts as early as 1912 and major features from D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916) and Mauritz Stiller's Hotel Imperial (1927) to Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm (1940) and Cecil B. DeMille's Reap the Wild Wind (1942). He also had an active career as a star of comedy shorts in the 1910s and 1920s. Capitalizing on his ability for vivid facial expressions, most often he played a comic Jewish stereotype, sometimes a sidekick to such comedy stars as Charley Chase, Harry Langdon, and Mabel Normand. After emigrating to the United States he found work in stock theatre and vaudeville and acted with D. W. Griffith in the 1890s. He made several short comedies between 1913 and 1915, possibly debuting in a Griffith-directed Biograph short in 1912, and his first feature film appearance was as Sancho Panza in Don Quixote (1916). Other notable silent features included two pairings with child star Jackie Coogan in 1925: The Rag Man and Old Clothes. Both of these had similar plots casting Davidson as a Jewish junk dealer who has a little Irish boy as his partner. In 1927-28 he had his own starring series of two-reel comedies at the Hal Roach studio, memorable examples of which include Jewish Prudence (1927), Don't Tell Everything (1927), Should Second Husbands Come First? (1927), Pass the Gravy (1928), and The Boyfriend (1928). At least a dozen of them were promoted specifically as "Max Davidson Comedies" and others under the banner of "Roach Star Comedies." In his best films Davidson was able to exaggerate the stock stereotypical qualities of his poor, put-upon nebbish character for humorous effect, while retaining a sense of universal human nature that transcended the cliches. Beneath the gags dealing with greed, kosher food, and Yiddish dialect, Davidson was always an individual and often a sympathetic one. Filmography: Features — Don Quixote (1916), Sunshine Dad (1916), Mr. Goode, the Samaritan (1916), Intolerance (1916), The Heiress at Coffee Dan's (1916), A Daughter of the Poor (1917), The Hun Within (1918), The Mother and the Law (1919), The Hoodlum (1919), No Woman Knows (1921), The Idle Rich (1921), The Right That

DA VIES, MARION

103

Failed (1922), Second Hand Rose (1922), Remembrance (1922), The Ghost Patrol (1923), The Extra Girl (1923), The Rendezvous (1923), The Darling of New York (1923), Fool's Highway (1924), Untamed Youth (1924), Hold Your Breath (1924), The Rag Man (1925), Justice of the Far North (1925), Old Clothes (1925), Hogan's Alley (1925), T/ze Johnstown Flood (1926), Into Her Kingdom (1926), Raggedy Rose (1926), Sunshine of Paradise Alley (1926), Hofc/ Imperial (1927), Cheaters (1927), Pleasure Before Business (1927), So This Is College (1929), T/ze Lottery Brz'de (1930), T/te Doc/cs of San Francisco (1932), T/ze Wet Parade (1932), Daring Danger (1932), The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble (1933), The World Gone Mad (1933), The Cat and the Fiddle (1934), The House of Rothschild (1934), Straight Is the Way (1934), Law Beyond the Range (1935), Princess O'Hara (1935), Metropolitan (1935), Roamin' Wild (1936), Rogue of the Range (1936), Kelly the Second (1936), The Plainsman (1937), Exclusive (1937), The Girl Said No (1937), Union Pacific (1939), The Mortal Storm (1940), Kitty Foyle (1940), The Great Commandment (1941), Rear; the Wild Wind (1942). Selected Bibliography: Farr, Robert. "Hollywood Mensch: Max Davidson/' Griffithiana, No. 55/56, September 1996, pp. 107-149. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Maclntyre, Diane. "Max Davidson/' The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ClassicFilms/Featured Star/ > Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. DAVIES, MARION. Born Marion Cecilia Douras January 3, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York. Died September 22, 1961, in Hollywood, California. Stage and film actress, film producer. In the 1928 Show People Marion Davies seemed to be playing the role she lived in real life. The plot of the film depicts a successful comic film actress named Peggy Pepper who wishes to become a high-class dramatic actress in period movie dramas. Present-day evaluators of the silent film find the comedy films of Davies effective while her serious movies, often period pieces, tend to be weak vehicles for her talent. Since she spent years as the mistress of William Randolph Hearst, she came under his control as a sponsor of her career. This newspaper tycoon invested millions attempting to have her portray pure, innocent women who often lived in a romantic past. Davies appeared in many expensive costume dramas that did not return the money at the box office to be as successful as her comedies. Therefore, Show People possesses an element of autobiographical truth. Near the end of this film the char-

104

DAVIS, MILDRED

acter of Peggy returns to comedy movies that prove to be her forte. In this work the leading man employed is William Haines, an important genteel comedian of the decade. One of the costume dramas that did promote the acting career of Davies appeared in the early part of the twenties, When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). Her character in the film has comedy facets. As a young sister of King Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, Davies had the chance to play a feisty sixteen-year-old with humorous traits when she stands up to her tyrannical brother. With a budget of $1.5 million, a sum that was high for this age, the picture made only a slight profit. Her less pretentious comedy films were box office successes. Part of Davies' skill lay in her charismatic personality and youthful charm, traits that her paramour, Mr. Hearst, lacked. Her fans loved her. Also, many celebrities found her a responsive, effective hostess when they were visitors at San Simeon, a mansion also called Hearst's Castle. Ironically, Marion Davies made money with her humble comedies so that she gave Hearst a loan of a million to bail out his empire that almost suffered financial ruin in the 1930s depression. Another irony developed in the 1940s when Orson Welles directed, helped write, and starred as a character called Charles Foster Kane, a newspaper magnate who supported a career of his mistress. In this fictionalized but thinly disguised version of Hearst's life, Kane tried to promote his girlfriend's career as an opera singer. Citizen Kane (1941) now is considered one of great films of all time. Filmography: Selected feature films — Runaway, Romany (1917), The Belle of New York (1919), Getting Mary Married (1919), The Dark Star (1919), The Restless Sex (1920), When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), Little Old New York (1923), Janice Meredith (1924), Lights of Old Broadway (1925), Tillie the Toiler (1927), The Fair CoEd (1927), The Patsy (1928), The Cardboard Lover (1928). Selected sound featuresThe Five O'Clock Girl (1928), Show People (1928), Not So Dumb (1930), Polly of the Circus (1932), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Cain and Mabel (1936). Bibliography: Guiles, Fred Lawrence. Marion Davies. New York: McGraw Hill Company, 1972. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994.

DAVIS, MILDRED. Born January 1,1900, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died August 27,1969, in Santa Monica, California. Silent film actress. Mildred Davis as the object of affection for comedian Harold Lloyd's films and Edna Purviance as the love interest for Charles Chaplin's movies played secondary roles for these two kings of silent screen comedy. Unlike Mabel Normand these two women usually portrayed

DEAN, PRISCILLA

105

straight, noncomic roles, confined to reacting to the antics of the comic characters around them. They provided a position of normalcy for the deviant position of the comedians that existed in the worlds of Lloyd and Chaplin. Normand, on the other hand, evolved into a comedienne with a clear-cut, feisty, humorous character. In 1919 Davis replaced Bebe Daniels as the leading lady for Lloyd when he was still cranking out many two-reel comedies each year. Daniels possessed a sparkling personality much like Mabel Normand's. Mildred, however, proved to be a more demure, decorative woman of reaction. When Lloyd started producing features in the early twenties, greater breadth of character began to emerge in her performances as well as that of Lloyd's portrayals. Davis appeared in three important Lloyd features: Grandmas Boy and Doctor Jack (1922) and Safety Last (1923). In this last full-length movie she depicted a naive, sweet, young woman who adored Harold's attempt to be a business success. She is confused when he tries to hide the fact that he is a lowly department store clerk and by various deceptions cleverly sidesteps exposure. Her confusion shows her developing comic sense. In 1923 Mildred married Harold Lloyd, and she only appeared in several more features for other film studios and without Lloyd as her leading man. Filmography: Selected silent screen shorts— From Hand to Mouth (1919), Number Please (1920), High and Dizzy (1920), Get Out and Get Under (1920), I Do (1921), Never Weaken (1921), A Sailor-Made Man (1921). Selected silent featuresGrandmas Boy (1922), Doctor Jack (1922), Safety Last (1923). Selected Bibliography: D' Agostino, Annette. "Mildred Davis." Harold Lloyd: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. Miller, Blair. "Mildred Davis." An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

DEAN, PRISCILLA. Born November 25, 1896, in New York City. Died December 27,1988, in Leonia, New Jersey. Actress. A major film star in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Priscilla Dean started acting on stage as a small child with her parents' traveling stock company. She appeared in short films by 1911, working at Biograph and other studios before joining Universal, where she was to stay and rise to stardom playing strong-willed, sometimes ruthless women. Two of her early features were directed by Lois Weber. Several of her films were directed by Tod Browning, and she married sometime costar Wheeler Oakman. In 1920 the two costarred to great acclaim in Browning's exotic melodrama The Virgin of Stamboul. Later that year they worked together

106

DEMILLE, CECIL B.

again on Outside the Law, with Dean billed above both rising star Lon Chaney and director Browning, while costar Oakman was not even mentioned in some publicity. Dean fell from popularity in the midtwenties, and when Outside the Law was rereleased in 1926, Chaney was promoted as the star. Dean made only a few sound films in the early 1930s. Selected Filmography: Mother (1914), Love, Dynamite and Baseball (1916), Even As You and I (1917), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1917), The Brazen Beauty (1918), Kiss or Kill (1918), She Hired a Husband (1918), Wildcat of Pans (1918), The Wicked Darling (1919), The Exquisite Thief (1919), Silk Lined Burglar (1919), Paid in Advance (1919), The Virgin of Stamboul (1920), Outside the Law (1921), Reputation (1921), The Conflict (1921), Wild Honey (1922), Under Two Flags (1922), The Flame of Life (1923), White Tiger (1923), Drifting (1923), Storm Daughter (1924), The Siren of Seville (1924), A Cafe in Cairo (1924), The Crimson Runner (1925), West of Broadway (1926), Speeding Venus (1926), Forbidden Waters (1926), The Danger Girl (1926), Birds of Prey (1927), The Dice Woman (1927), Jewels of Desire (1927). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

DEMILLE, CECIL B. Born August 12, 1881, in Ashfield, Massachusetts. Died January 23, 1959, in Los Angeles, California. Director, Producer, Editor, Writer. Cecil Blount DeMille, whose career spanned the very beginnings of silent feature film production through the emergence of Technicolor, wide screen, and stereophonic sound, was one of the few film directors of the silent era whose name alone could sell a movie. His habit of wearing boots and riding pants, and his firm, commercial-minded directing style inspired a common caricature of the typical Hollywood director. He is remembered most for his lavish historical epics, often using religious or biblical themes, but with the exception of King of Kings (1927), the prologue to his first version of The Ten Commandments (1923), and Joan the Woman (1916), these all belong to the sound era. DeMille's silent works covered a wide range of subject matter, from morally ambiguous Westerns to grim social melodramas to sophisticated sex comedies of manners to spectacular romantic adventures. After a substantial number of mod-

DEMILLE, CECIL B.

107

estly produced, even experimental films, he shot to fame with a series of morality tales that gloried in presenting pictures of vice and corruption, but with virtue always triumphing in the end. A number of them illustrated his fondness for parallel plots set in different historical periods, sometimes using the same actors to drive home their connections with each other. Many of his silent pictures, especially the earlier ones, dealt with conflicts between upper and lower classes, with romances between the classes resulting in each person finding happiness only with others of his or her own social status. Much of DeMille's earliest work (pre-1920) is more varied than the formulaic pictures that were designed to be surefire financial successes. By 1919 and 1920 he knew what the public liked and made sure he gave it to them. His earlier output was more prolific, including some of his most interesting work, but is not as widely known. From 1900 a Broadway actor and playwright involved with his brother and mother's theatrical troupe, DeMille suddenly decided to help found a new independent movie production company in 1913 with partners Jesse Lasky, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), and Arthur Friend. Their firm would later merge with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players production company and then with distributor Paramount Pictures, but DeMille remained a primary creative force. He codirected his first film, The Squaw Man (1914), with Oscar Apfel. At six reels, it was the first feature-length production made in Hollywood, and DeMille's continuing success rapidly helped establish the small Los Angeles suburb as the new world center of filmmaking. His first few films were as theatrical and technically crude as many other productions of the period, but DeMille was an

incredibly fast learner in cinematic techniques. Even his first solo film as a director, The Virginian (1914), showed occasional uses of closeups,

source lighting, and parallel editing between two simultaneous actions. In the year 1915 alone he made a dozen films, each showing obvious improvement over the last. His December productions of that year, The Cheat and The Golden Chance, rank among the most artistically advanced of the decade and can stand on their own against any other silent film. By 1916-17, with Joan the Woman, DeMille was already venturing into the large-scale historical/biographical epic for which he would become famous nearly two decades later. Male and Female (1919) showed him at a turning point. At its root it was another story of class conflicts, but DeMille now exploited the sex angle with a glamorous Gloria Swanson appearing in a nude bathing scene as well as a pseudo-Babylonian flashback showing her scantily clad and menaced by a lion. In 1925 he broke with Paramount over disagreements about his budgets and subject mate-

rial, forming his own studio which released through Producers Distrib-

uting Corporation (P.D.C.). It was there he made the film he had always

108

DEMILLE, CECIL B.

longed to make, and one which was destined to be seen by more people worldwide than any other film ever made— The King of Kings (1927). His next film was another modern-day parable of religious reformation, The Godless Girl (1928). It would be his last silent (also released with a synchronized sound track) and his last independent production. He signed briefly to direct for MGM, where he made three talkies, and in 1932 returned to the studio he helped found, Paramount, for the remainder of his long career. Filmography: Silents — The Squaw Man (1914), The Virginian (1914), The Call of the North (1914), What's His Name (1914), The Man From Home (1914), Rose of the Rancho (1914), The Girl of the Golden West (1915), The Warrens of Virginia (1915), The Unafraid (1915), The Captive (1915), The Wild Goose Chase (1915), The Arab (1915), Chimmie Fadden (1915), Kindling (1915), Maria Rosa (1915), Carmen (1915), Temptation (1915), Chimmie Fadden Out West (1915), The Cheat (1915), The Golden Chance (1916), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916), The Heart of Nora Flynn (1916), The Dream Girl (1916), Joan the Woman (1916), A Romance of the Redwoods (1917), The Little American (1917), The Woman God Forgot (1917), The Devil Stone (1917), The Whispering Chorus (1918), Old Wives For Nczv (1918), We Can't Have Everything (1918), Till I Come Back to You (1918), The Squaw Man (1918), Don't Change Your Husband (1919), For Better For Worse (1919), Male and Female (1919), Wliy Change Your Wife? (1920), Something to Think About (1920), Forbidden Fruit (1921), Affairs of Anatol (1921), Fool's Paradise (1922), Saturday Night (1922), Manslaughter (1922), Adam's Rib (1923), The Ten Commandments (1923), Triumph (1924), Feet of Clay (1924), The Golden Bed (1925), Road to Yesterday (1925), The Volga Boatman (1926), The King of Kings (1927), Chicago (1928, credited to Frank Urson), The Godless Girl (1928). Honors (selected): George Eastman House Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Motion Pictures 1915-1925 —Festival of Film Artists Medal of Honor; David Wark Griffith Award, Screen Directors' Guild; Academy Awards —Special career achievement award, Irving G. Thalberg Award, "Best Picture" for The Greatest Show on Earth, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Grand Prix, Film Francais, for Samson and Delilah; Photoplay Magazine Awards, for The Greatest Show on Earth and The Ten Commandments; Grand Order of the Republic of Italy; Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, France; Foreign Press Association Award, "Master Showman." Selected Bibliography: DeMille, Cecil B. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1959. Essoe, Gabe, and Raymond Lee. DeMille: The Man and His Pictures. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1970. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Ringgold, Gene, and DeWitt Bodeen. The Complete Films of Cecil B. DeMille. Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press, 1969.

DIX, RICHARD

109

DEMILLE, WILLIAM C. Born July 25, 1878, in Washington, D.C. Died March 8,1955, in Playa del Rey, California. Director, writer. A successful playwright, the elder brother of Cecil B. DeMille first declined to leave the theatre to invest in a new film company, but within several months changed his mind about the movies and moved to Hollywood. His first film directing or codirecting credit is in question, but may have been The Only Son, released in June 1914. Most of his initial motion picture work consisted of writing original screenplays and adapting his stage plays into film scenarios. The 1913 play After Five, which he co wrote with his brother was made into a 1915 film by Cecil B. DeMille with Oscar Apfel, and a decade later was reworked into a vehicle for Raymond Griffith as The Night Club. An important early script was his adaptation of Carmen from the original novel, so as to avoid copyright payments on the story of the opera for the film directed by his brother. By 1916 he was doing more directing, and had a successful career if not so flamboyant as his brother's, although one of his films, Peg o' My Heart (1919), was never released because of a legal dispute with the original playwright. Few of his pictures have survived for modern reappraisal, but those that do show a confident command of film technique and a superior sense of character development. Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920) is a touching, nostalgic look at a man's mental exhaustion. Miss Lulu Bett (1921) is a sensitive character study of a woman's escape from her life of drudgery. Selected Filmography: as director—An ton the Terrible (1916), The Ragamuffin (1916), The Soul ofKura San (1916), Hashimura Togo (1917), The Ghost House (1917), The Secret Game (1917), One More American (1918), The Honor of His House (1918), Peg O' My Heart (1919), Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920), What Every Woman Knows (1921), The Last Romance (1921), Miss Lulu Bett (1921), Bought and Paid For (1922), Nice People (1922), The World's Applause (1923), Grumpy (1923), Don't Call It Love (1923), The Marriage Maker (1923), Icebound (1924), The Bedroom Window (1924), Locked Doors (1925), Men and Women (1925), New Brooms (1925), For Alimony Only (1926), The Little Adventuress (1927), Craig's Wife (1928), The Doctor's Secret (1929), This Mad World (1930), Two Kind of Women (1932), His Double Life (1934). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor, The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

DIX, RICHARD. Born Ernest Carlton Brimmer in St. Paul, Minnesota, July 18, 1893. Died in Los Angeles, California, September 20, 1949. Stage, film actor.

110

DIX, RICHARD

In the silent period of his career Dix proved himself an eclectic performer—one who could master a variety of roles. His most distinguished enactments were his convincing Native American roles in The Vanishing American (1925) and Redskin (1929). Both films illustrate how major films in the 1920s could attempt to give a sympathetic portrait of the Indian, an approach that would not be employed by the film industry until the release of a similar film decades later, Broken Arrow (1950). Prior to these two films Dix played an important lead in the modern story of DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923). The rugged, square-jawed actor proved fortunate enough to obtain meaty roles early in his career. Two years after his Broadway debut in 1919 he moved to the screen and received a lead role as an ex-convict in Fools First (1922) who, through the love of a woman, is reformed just as he intends to return to a life of crime. In The Ten Commandments Dix plays the role of an exemplary young man to a younger brother bent on becoming rich and powerful by any means possible. By strong contrast, two years earlier Dix played a scheming, greedy businessman, a broker, in The Sin Flood (1921). While he appeared in a number of Westerns, he never became a star in this genre as his contemporary Jack Holt did. Beside his Indian portraits in The Vanishing American and Redskin, one of his Westerns, To the Last Man (1923), depicted a feud between two frontier families in Arizona. He received critical acclaim in another western, the 1931 sound film Cimarron, an adaptation of a very popular Edna Ferber novel. Dix developed the colorful character Yancey Cravat, a lawyer, editor, marksman, and poet. Dix received his one nomination for an Oscar for this portrayal. The picture and the adapter of the screenplay received Academy Awards. Dix would appear as a character actor in many works during the sound period. His last films were effective, although low budgeted. He gave a memorable performance as a villain in The Ghost Ship and appeared in seven Whistler series features. Once more Dix's portrait illustrated his versatility. Each of these dramatic films displayed a different character, reflecting the ability that made him one of the most fascinating actors of the silent period. Filmography: Selected silent features — Dangerous Curve Ahead (1921), The Sin Flood (1921), Fools First (1922), Yellow Men and Gold (1922), The Call of the Canyon (1923), The Christian (1923), The Ten Commandments (1923), Icebound (1924), The Vanishing American (1925), The Quarterback (1926), Shanghai Bound (1927), Redskin (1929). Selected sound features — Cimarron (1931), The Arizonian (1935), Cherokee Strip (1940), Badlands of Dakota (1941), Tombstone (1942), The Ghost Ship (1943), The Whistler (1944), Secret of the Whistler (1946).

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE

111

Selected Bibliography: Franklin, Joe. "Richard Dix." Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury. New York: Crown Publishers, 1962. Hilger, Michael. "The Silent Film," [Evaluation of The Vanishing American] The American Indian in Film. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1986.

DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1920). Horror drama. Directed by John S. Robertson; with John Barrymore, Martha Mansfield, Brandon Hurst, Charles Lane, J. Malcolm Dunn, Nita Naldi, George Stevens, Louis Wolheim; screenplay by Clara S. Beranger, from novelette by Robert Louis Stevenson. Henry Jekyll, an idealistic nineteenth-century London doctor, runs a free clinic and does scientific research. His fiancee's father, outwardly respectable but inwardly depraved, tells him he cannot hope to control his baser nature unless he can first fulfill his inner desires. Jekyll then develops an obsession with the innate human capacity for good and evil and prepares a drug to separate the two natures, allowing people "to yield to every impulse, yet leave the soul untouched." Experimenting on himself, he turns temporarily into an evil persona with no moral inhibitions he names Mr. Hyde, hoping to purge any wicked desires from his mind. The more he uses the drug, the more antidote it takes to return to his normal personality until finally the Mr. Hyde character takes over without chemical stimulation. When Jekyll realizes he can no longer control himself as he had hoped, he takes poison. Robert Louis Stevenson's 1886 story was one of the first works of literature to deal explicitly with the psychological concept of split personality, and ever since then it has been immensely popular with numerous reinterpretations and variations on the theme. In 1920 alone there were two other film versions, a low-budget American production with an altered happy ending, and a German film by F. W. Murnau. The Paramount version starring John Barrymore was preferred by contemporary critics and even today has its advocates over the two most important remakes in 1932 and 1941. With a few exceptions, most of the later productions tended to be remakes of the Barrymore version rather than the book itself. Released under Paramount's prestigious Artcraft label, the film was not only a showcase for Barrymore but was a good excuse for depicting a certain amount of suggestive and violent material under the hallmark of classic literature. Barrymore begins the film in a subdued manner, but as soon as he begins experimenting with the drug he allows his flamboyant melodramatics take over, much as Hyde takes over Jekyll. Like later versions, the film uses dissolves to an exaggerated makeup in the Hyde per-

112

DON JUAN

sona, extending his teeth, the back of his head, and his fingers, as well as hunching his back and affecting odd arm movements. In an interesting shot, a double-exposed giant spider (Barrymore in Hyde makeup) crawls onto Jekyll's bed and dissolves into his body, giving a literal visualization of the extent of his personality shift. Once the film gets past its opening scenes, a viewer needs a stronger historical perspective to appreciate the Barrymore version as an effective story than one does for the Fredric March or Spencer Tracy remakes. DON JUAN (1926). Romantic adventure. Directed by Alan Crosland; with John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Willard Louis, Estelle Taylor, Helene Costello, Myrna Loy, Warner Oland, Montagu Love, Josef Swickard, Hedda Hopper, Gustav von Seyffertitz; screenplay by Bess Meredyth A Spanish nobleman discovers that his wife is unfaithful and bitterly raises his son to mistrust and exploit women for his own ends. When the boy grows up he becomes noted for his numerous romantic entanglements, often several at the same time, until he falls for a pious young woman who does not immediately succumb to his charms. Then he finds he must deal with a wicked rival and the dangerous Borgia family. Don Juan is best remembered as the film that introduced the Vitaphone synchronized sound process to the public, through an introductory program of shorts and a prerecorded orchestral score by the New York Philharmonic. The Vitaphone system was to make it possible for even small towns to hear full orchestras accompany silent films, but it failed to generate widespread interest until a year later when The Jazz Singer included a few bits of improvised dialogue with its songs. Whereas that sentimental tearjerker relies on the charisma of Al Jolson's voice in a few scenes, Don Juan is fully a silent drama and can stand on its own as a superior swashbuckling adventure. The music score is good, but any experienced live accompanist could improvise one as good or better. Despite some scenery chewing (especially playing Don Juan's father in the prologue), John Barrymore's performance as the title character drives the story, which is surprisingly cynical and bitter for its first half until Don Juan experiences true love for the first time. Barrymore's flair for romantic adventure and swashbuckling roles, which also included The Sea Beast, The Beloved Rogue and Tempest, surpasses for sheer exuberance the popular Errol Flynn in similar roles a decade later. Fine production values, notably in the glistening backlit cinematography and the impressive sets, make Don Juan a prime example of 1920s Hollywood at its best. DREW, SIDNEY. Born August 28,1864, in New York City (some sources say September 28,1863). Died April 9,1919, in New York City. Actor.

DREW, SIDNEY

113

A member of the illustrious theatrical family that included the Drews and the Barrymores, Sidney Drew toured with his actress-writer wife, the former Gladys Rankin. They were well known in many comic plays, billed as Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. He did not enter motion pictures until already middle-aged, beginning as early as 1911, and writing and acting in a number of films in 1913 for the Vitagraph studio. He devoted himself to a film career in earnest after his wife's death in January 1914. Just four months later he married Lucille McVey, a young writer at Vitagraph who was not quite half his age. She also acted under the name Jane Morrow. The couple immediately began a prolific collaboration on a series of "Mr. and Mrs. Drew" comedy shorts starring themselves and on which they shared writing and directing duties. By 1916 they set up their own production company, Drew Comedies, releasing their films through Metro. They made only three feature-length films. Two were for Vitagraph, including an unusual sex-change fantasy, A Florida Enchantment (1914), and a more subtle romance, Playing Dead (1915). One feature was for Metro, Pay Day (1918), in which they play themselves producing a movie, including the film-within-a-film as part of the story. Very few of

their numerous films have survived, but those that have (and descrip-

tions of others) reveal a comic style the antithesis of Mack Sennett's fast-

paced slapstick. The "Mr. and Mrs. Drew" comedies anticipated the sophisticated comedy of the 1930s in that they were urbane, witty, and

could use understatement to counterbalance incongruous and sometimes

outrageously dry comic situations. For example in a melodrama parody, after the woman finally is reunited with her philandering and nowmarried wealthy boyfriend, she kisses him and informs him she has leprosy, so he will now be forced to live with her in a leper colony the rest of

his life. Sidney Rankin Drew (1892-1918), Drew's son by his first wife, was also a successful film actor and director from 1913-17, and his first feature film was from a script by his late mother. His death during World War I devastated the elder Drew, and he died the following year. His wife then lost interest in films, as well, tapering off her career and dying young herself in 1925 at age 35.

Filmography: Selected shorts — Beauty Unadorned (1913), Jerry's Mother-in-Law (1913), A Lesson in Jealousy (1913), Auntie's Portrait (1914), Goodness Gracious or Movies as They Shouldn't Be (1914), Innocent But Awkward (1914), Jerry's Uncle's Namesake (1914), Pickles, Art and Sauerkraut (1914), The Royal Wild West (1914), Too Many Husbands (1914), All For the Love of a Girl (1915), Beautiful Thoughts (1915), Between the Two of Them (1915), Cupid's Column (1915), Diplomatic Henry (1915), The Hair of Her Head (1915), The Homecoming of Henry (1915), The Honeymoon Baby (1915), Mzss Sticky-Moufie-Kiss (1915), The Professional Diner (1915), At a Premium (1916), Childhood's Happy Days (1916), Duplicity (1916), Help (1916), Henry's

114

DREW, SIDNEY

Thanksgiving (1916), Hzs Rival (1916), The Model Cook (1916), Nobody Home (1916), Sweet Charity (1916), Too Clever By Half (1916), As Others See Us (1917), The Aivakening of Helene Minor (1917), Caveman's Buff (1917), The Dentist (1917), Handy Henry (1917), Henry's Ancestors (1917), Her First Game (1917), Her Lesson (1917), Her Obsession (1917), His Little Spirit Girl (1917), His Perfect Day (1917), The Hypochondriac (1917), Music Hath Charms (1917), Their Burglar (1917), After Henry (1918), Before and After Taking (1918), Help Wanted (1918), His First Love (1918), Special Today (1918), Their Mutual Motor (1918), Under the Influence (1918), Why Henry Left Home (1918), A Youthful Affair (1918), Financing the Fourth (1918), Harold, the Last of the Saxons (1919), Romance and Rings (1919). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Witt, Arlene K. "Sidney Drew/' Internet Movie Database 1998.

E EASY STREET (1917). Two-reel comedy. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Chaplin, Edna Purviance, and Eric Campbell; screenplay by Charles Chaplin. Comic innovation by the most famous comedian of the silent era of cinema makes Easy Street one of the best humorous one-reel works of this mode of the art. Inspired by his love of a beautiful woman, the little tramp moves from his vagrant distrust of the law to take a job as a policeman. Nevertheless, part of this reversal of roles creates humor by the character's reluctance to change his old habits of breaking the law. He fights crime without any conventional rules. He outwits and even outfights a gang of thugs with his oddball approach to combat. The little fellow transforms by force the slums of Easy Street to an ideal world, pressing the gang into attending the church that had civilized him. This film was created during one of Chaplin's most fertile periods, when he made twelve short works for the Mutual company that would provide a springboard to his move to feature films in 1921 with The Kid.

F FAIRBANKS, DOUGLAS. Born May 23, 1883, in Denver, Colorado. Died December 12, 1939, in Santa Monica, California. Actor, screenwriter, producer. Throughout the 1920s Douglas Fairbanks was the epitome of the childhood fantasy that existed in nearly all moviegoers seeking to escape from day-to-day cares. He was a larger-than-life, always cheerful and always triumphant hero, set in an exotic past the way everyone figured it must have been, or at least should have been. From nineteenth-century California to Renaissance France to medieval England to ancient Persia to seventeenth-century pirate ships, he bounded across the screen righting wrongs and winning the love of a virtuous woman. Before Fairbanks became synonymous with swashbuckling adventure in The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926), and other popular pictures, he was equally admired in a series of lighthearted, action-packed comedies in a contemporary American setting. From 1915 to 1920 he was the all-American hero, personable and enthusiastic, sometimes an average guy struggling to make good and sometimes a wealthy fellow trying to find some excitement in an otherwise dull life. Always he was extremely athletic and did much of his own stunt work. Some of his best screen work comes from this pre-1920 period, with especially memorable titles being Manhattan Madness (1916), His Picture in the Papers (1916), A Modern Musketeer (1918), His Majesty the American (1919), and When the Clouds Roll By (1919). In The Habit of Happiness (1916), he created an odd but interesting combination of his lighthearted tone with a serious social welfare theme. In Flirting With Fate (1916) he found dark humor in the subject of suicide

FAIRBANKS, DOUGLAS

117

with a plot concept reworked a decade later by comic Raymond Griffith in The Night Club (1925). When he married "America's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford, the couple became the symbol of Hollywood success, virtually reigning over the social scene from their mansion, named "Pickfair." In 1919 he went into a business partnership with Pickford, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith to form United Artists Pictures so that they could distribute their own films independently of the existing Hollywood studios. Fairbanks' last silent feature The Iron Mask (1929) was a well-made sequel to The Three Musketeers, released with a synchronized music score and a spoken introduction. For his first talking film he adapted Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew the same year, playing opposite his wife. It was an appropriate title, for their marriage was showing signs of strain and would soon be over. In 1932 Fairbanks made a low-budget comedyadventure that featured him trying to survive in style on a deserted island. Little more than a glorified home movie, Mr. Robinson Crusoe nevertheless gave the public the old Fairbanks that they loved, fun-loving and full of energy even in his fifties. Interestingly for a film of its date, it was released in both a dialogue version and a silent version with synchronized music and sound effects. It thus can truly be called his final silent, although the silent version was prepared for foreign distribution. After this came one last attempt at a costume picture, The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), filmed in England. It was weak, both in his performance and in its filmmaking style. Fairbanks died unexpectedly of a heart attack as he was preparing a film project with his son, Doug Jr. Filmography: The Lamb (1915), Martyrs of the Alamo (1915), Double Trouble (1915), His Pictures in the Papers 1916), The Habit of Happiness (1916), The Good Mad Man (1916), Reggie Mixes In (1916), Flirting With Fate (1916), The Mystery of the Leaping Fish (1916), The Half Breed (1916), Intolerance (1916), Manhattan Madness (1916), American Aristocracy (1916), The Matrimaniac (1916), The Americano (1916), In Again-Out Again (1917), Wild and Wooly (1917), Down to Earth (1917), The Man From Painted Post (1917), Reaching for the Moon (1917), A Modern Musketeer (1918), Headin' South (1918), Mr. Fix-It (1918), Sayl Young Fellow (1918), Bound in Morocco (1918), He Comes Up Smiling (1918), Arizona (1918), The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919), His Majesty the American (1919), When the Clouds Roll By (1919), The Mollycoddle (1920), The Mark of Zorro (1920), The Nut (1920), The Three Musketeers (1921), Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), The Black Pirate (1926), A Kiss For Mary Pickford (1927), The Gaucho (1928) Show People (1928), The Iron Mask (1929), The Taming of the Shrew (1929), Reaching For the Moon (1931), Around the World in 80 Minutes (1931), Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Selected Bibliography: Carey, Gary. Doug and Mary: A Biography of Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1977.

118

FARNUM, DUSTIN

Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Douglas Fairbanks Sr." The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Tibbetts, John C , and James M. Welsh. His Majesty the American: The Films of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. South Brunswick, New Jersey: A. S. Barnes, 1977. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. FARNUM, DUSTIN. Born May 27, 1874, in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Died July 3,1929, in New York City. Actor. The older brother of actor William Farnum, he acted on stage from the time he was 15 and was a veteran of the theatre by the time he made his first film appearance in 1913. For a time, he and his brother toured in a vaudeville act. Cecil B. DeMille recruited him for his first film, The Squaw Man (1914), which Farnum had starred in as a stage play. He also reprised his stage performance in the title role of DeMille's The Virginian. Farnum was noted as a star of western pictures, but occasionally made films in other genres. The height of his career was during the mid to late 1910s. Selected Filmography: Soldiers of Fortune (1914), The Squaw Man (1914), The Virginian (1914), Cameo Kirby (1914), Captain Courtesy (1915), The Iron Strain (1915), The Gentleman From Indiana (1915), The Call of the Cumberlands (1916), David Garrick (1916), Ben Blair (1916), Davy Crockett (1916), The Parson of Panamint (1916), A Son of Erin (1916), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1917), The Spy (1917), Durand of the Bad Lands (1917), The Light of the Western Stars (1918), A Man's Fight (1919), The Corsican Brothers (1920), Big Happiness (1920), The Primal Law (1921), The Devil Within (1921), Strange Idols (1922), Oath-Bound (1922), The Yosemite Trail (1922), Three Who Paid (1923), The Buster (1923), The Man Who Won (1923), The Grail (1923), Kentucky Days (1923), My Man (1924), The Flaming Frontier (1926). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor, The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

FARNUM, WILLIAM

119

Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. FARNUM, WILLIAM. Born July 4,1876, in Boston, Massachussets. Died June 5,1953, in Hollywood, California. Actor. A major star throughout the silent era, the younger brother of Dustin Farnum also started on the stage before 1890. His first year in movies saw him star in The Spoilers (1914), a huge hit, and a year later he was one of the highest paid screen actors. Besides Westerns he also starred in early Biblical epics and other significant films including A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables (both 1917) and played such historical characters as poet Francois Villon and Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean. His roles in the latter half of the 1920s were limited due to an injury he received during production of The Man Who Fights Alone (1924). It took him years to recover sufficiently to perform again, but he went on to play many character roles in talking pictures, acting in films through 1952. Selected Filmography: The Redemption of David Corson (1914), The Spoilers (1914), The Sign of the Cross (1914), Sampson (1915), The Plunderer (1915), The Nigger (1915), A Man of Sorrow (1916), A Tale of Two Cities (1917), The Conqueror (1917), American Methods (1917), The Heart of a Lion (1917), Les Miserables (1917), The Rainbow Trail (1918), True Blue (1918), Riders of the Purple Sage (1918), The Male Hunter (1919), The Last of the Duanes (1919), Wolves of the Night (1919), Jungle Trail (1919), // J Were King (1920), The Adventurer (1920), Drag Harlan (1920), His Greatest Sacrifice (1921), Perjury (1921), A Stage Romance (1922), Shackles of Gold (1922), Moonshine Valley (1922), Without Compromise (1922), Brass Commandments (1923), The Gunfighter (1923), The Man Who Fights Alone (1924), DuBarry Woman of Passion (1930), Ten Nights in a Barroom (1931), The Painted Desert (1931), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1931), Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), Supernatural (1933), The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), The Crusades (1935), If I Were King (1938), Kit Carson (1940), The Spoilers (1942), The Mummy's Curse (1944), The Perils of Pauline (1947), Samson and Delilah (1949), Jack and the Beanstalk (1952). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor, The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

120

FARRAR, GERALDINE

FARRAR, GERALDINE. Born February 28, 1882, in Melrose, Massachussets. Died March 11,1967, in Ridgefield, Connecticut. Actress. A popular international opera star from 1901, Geraldine Farrar proved equally talented in acting without the use of her voice and she had a five-year career as a silent film star during the height of her operatic fame. When the war in Europe canceled Farrar's 1915 summer tour, her manager convinced her to try her hand at film acting. Jesse Lasky offered her a lucrative contract based on her great celebrity status, as well as the prestige it would bring to his pictures. He planned to introduce her to the screen in a film version of one of her greatest opera successes, Carmen. Director Cecil B. DeMille was not certain how her operatic theatrical style would translate to the screen, so he filmed her in another story as a "warmup" even though it was not released until the following year. That film, Maria Rosa (1916), proved she had a natural and powerful screen presence completely independent of her vocal abilities and in Carmen she easily dominates the other characters, especially her rising co-star Wallace Reid. Farrar made a total of six films for DeMille and Lasky, including the big costume spectacle Joan the Woman (1916). Although she seemed both to enjoy and appreciate her association with the film studio, she left after The Devil-Stone (1917) because her husband Lou Tellegen, a stage star also under contract to Lasky, was being eased out when his pictures proved unsuccessful. She then signed with Samuel Goldwyn, who had himself just left his partnership with Lasky after the company merged with Zukor's Famous Players. Seven films later, a combination of falling ticket sales and Farrar's dissatisfaction with the stories she was given led to her tearing up her contract. Her final film was The Riddle: Woman, a downbeat romantic melodrama produced independently by Associated Exhibitors, Inc., and released by Pathe in October of 1920. Thereafter she returned exclusively to her operatic career. Filmography: Carmen (1915), Temptation (1915), Maria Rosa (1916), Joan the Woman (1916), The Woman God Forgot (1917), The Devil-Stone (1917), The Turn of the Wheel (1918), The Hell Cat (1918), Shadows (1919), The Stronger Vow (1919), The World and Its Women (1919), Flame of the Desert (1919), The Woman and the Puppet (1920), The Riddle: Woman (1920). Selected Bibliography: Birchard, Robert S. "Gerry in Hollywood." The Silents Majority 1996. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

FLESH AND THE DEVIL

121

Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

FINCH, FLORA. Born June 17,1869, in Sussex, England. Died January 4, 1940, in Hollywood, California. Stage and film actress. Genteel comedy became popular in the 1910s with the help of two comedy teams: John Bunny and Flora Finch, and Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. As this type of drama took a firm grip in this decade, a wealth of light comedy actresses came into the limelight. Such famous women stars as Mary Pickford, Dorothy Gish, ZaSu Pitts, and Mabel Normand found light comedy shorts and features their province. Flora Finch abandoned the theatre for the Vitagraph Film Studios in Brooklyn in 1909. When she had the good fortune to play opposite John Bunny, the first comedy star of film in the United States, her fame grew to the point that she became as popular as Bunny. Audiences wanted "Bunnyfinches" because they liked the humorous, cream puff struggles of a married couple as illustrated in their 1912 A Cure for Pokeritis. Viewed today such films are much like the radio and television situation comedies of the 1940s and 1950s. Minor foibles of the husband and wife, not very important misunderstandings, and the introduction of an irritating third party formed the essence of the humor used in the comedies by Flora Finch. When John Bunny died in 1915, Finch lost her most important partner. Forming her own company to create comedy shorts, she lost her effectiveness. A similar fate fell on Stan Laurel in the sound age —when Oliver Hardy died, Stan could no longer be the star comedian. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Nezv Stenographer (1911), Bunny and the Twins (1912), A Cure for Pokeritis (1912), Pandora's Box (1912), The Classmates Frolic (1913), Father's Flirtation (1914), Bunny Buys a Harem (1914), The Starring of Flora Finchurch (1915). Selected silent features — When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), Orphans of the Storm (1922), Monsieur Beaucaire (1924), A Kiss for Cinderella (1926), The Cat and the Canary (1927). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926). Romantic drama. Directed by Clarence Brown; with John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, Lars Hanson, Barbara Kent, William Orlamond, George Fawcett, Eugenie Besserer, Marc MacDermott, Marcelle Cor day; screenplay by Benjamin F. Glazer.

122

FOOL THERE WAS, A

Two boyhood friends swear lifelong friendship and join the military together. On leave they meet a seductive married woman, whose husband one kills in a duel, asking his friend to take care of her when he is banished for the deed. Returning in a few years he finds them married to each other and a duel between the two friends ensues. Greta Garbo and John Gilbert were at the height of their offscreen relationship during the filming of Flesh and the Devil, and their love scenes in this film are still used as examples of romantic passion at its most glamorous. Gilbert actually received top billing, however, and at its core the film is more concerned with the male friendship than with the romance that breaks it up. Gilbert and Lars Hanson show as much if not more affection for each other than either of them does for Garbo, whose destructive intrusion into their lives is the plot's main catalyst for action. Director Clarence Brown is a master of using the image to set moods, with stunningly photographed duels at dawn, romantic rendezvous, and climactic winter storm. FOOL THERE WAS, A (1915). Romantic drama. Directed by Frank Powell; with Theda Bara, Edward Jose, Mabel Fremyear, May Allison, Runa Hodges, Clifford Bruce; screenplay by Roy L. McCardell, based on a play inspired by Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Vampire." The release of A Fool There Was made an instant star of young Theodosia Goodman, renamed Theda Bara by William Fox, and turned the Fox production company from a struggling independent into a major studio. It also made the term "vamp" (short for "vampire") into a household word to describe a seductive, scheming woman. Bara was rushed into an amazing number of films over the next four years. She became the archetype of the movie vamp who would plague innocent heroes with temptation, even though a substantial number of her parts were straight dramatic, often sympathetic characters. A Fool There Was is often derided as the archetype of overblown melodrama with wildly overacted performances and turgid moralizing. Frank Powell's direction is not outstanding but is comparable to other 1914 productions released early in 1915. A closer look reveals moments of surprising depth and a character study of a selfish man who cannot escape the consequences of his obsession. Bara's character is a woman of remarkable self-assurance and self-determination, yet equally as selfish as her weak-willed male victims, some of whom commit suicide when she abandons them. She is the prototype of the destroying female of films noir nearly half a century later, and of the free-spirited, amoral characters who began to populate European films by the 1960s and American films after the ratings system was established in 1968. Bara shows a strong and

FORD, JOHN

123

strangely appealing screen presence that makes her vamp more interesting than the other characters. Scenes of her luxuriating in the demise of her victim —who, after all, got only what he deserved — seem almost out of place after her earlier performance and may well have been added to insure that audiences saw her as a villain rather than an anti-hero. Stage star Edward Jose's scenery-chewing death scene would be more appropriate on the stage, seen from a distance. Nevertheless, audiences and critics of the time found it to be a powerful moral tale. Fox rereleased it in 1918 and remade it in 1922. The film remains a valuable document of public taste just prior to World War I, as well as a highly detailed record of upper middle-class family life of the period. FORD, JOHN. Born Feburary 1, 1894, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. Died August 31,1973, in Palm Desert, California. Director. Born Sean Aloysius O'Fienne (some sources say O'Feeney, or O'Fearna), he changed his name to Jack Ford when he followed his brother Francis into the film industry. Francis Ford was a stage actor who entered films with the Centaur company around 1908 and later became a director and writer under Thomas Ince at Universal. By 1913 he had formed a popular partnership with actress-writer Grace Cunard, with whom he often costarred in pictures they collaborated on. The couple found great success with action shorts and serials. That same year Francis got his younger brother work in films doing various tasks, including stunt doubling for him. By 1914 Jack Ford was acting in his brother's films as well as serving as assistant director and doing some writing. Jack Ford became a director in his own right in 1917 with several shorts and the feature Straight Shooting. Most of his early films were westerns or action pictures. In 1923 he started billing himself as "John" Ford, and the following year made his first major Hollywood production, the Western epic, The Iron Horse. Another important Western, Three Bad Men (1926), received even better reviews but was not as commercially successful. In the non-Western The Blue Eagle (1926), Ford handled characters and themes he would return to time and again in the sound era. Rival gang leaders in love with the same girl eventually fight it out and resolve their differences under the guidance of the tough parish priest who was their chaplain during the war. Four Sons (1928) focused more strongly on the war, its heavily dramatic and sentimental story pleasing audiences and critics alike. His next film, Hangman's House, was a well-made melodrama involving an Irish outlaw, yet another of Ford's recurring motifs. Ford would guide its star, Victor McLaglan, to an Academy Award in a similar role seven years later with The Informer. Ford's long and prolific career during the sound

124

FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE, THE

era (through the 1960s) earned him a reputation of one of the greatest directors of the cinema, yet his style and subject material were already well-developed by the end of the silent period. Unfortunately only a few of his silent works are known to have survived. Selected Filmography: Silent features — Straight Shooting (1917), The Secret Man (1917), A Marked Man (1917), Bucking Broadway (1917), The Phantom Riders (1918), Wild Women (1918), Thieves' Gold (1918), The Scarlet Drop (1918), Hell Bent (1918), A Woman's Fool (1918), Three Mounted Men (1918), Roped (1919), A Fight for Lane (1919), The Outcasts of Poker Flats (1919), The Ace of the Saddle (1919), The Rider of the Law (1919), A Gun Fightin Gentleman (1919), Marked Men (1919), The Prince of Avenue A (1920), The Girl in Number 29 (1920), Hitchin' Posts (1920), Just Pals (1920), The Big Punch (1921), The Freeze Out (1921), The Wallop (1921), Desperate Trails (1921), Action (1921), Sure Fire (1921), Jackie (1921), Little Miss Smiles (1922), Silver Wings (1922), The Village Blacksmith (1922), The Face on the Barroom Floor (1923), Three Jumps Ahead (1923), Cameo Kirby (1923), North of Hudson Bay (1923), Hoodman Blind (1923), The Iron Horse (1924), Hearts of Oak (1924), Lightmn' (1925), Kentucky Pride (1925), The Fighting Heart (1925), Thank You (1925), The Shamrock Handicap (1926), Three Bad Men (1926), The Blue Eagle (1926), Upstream (1927), Mother Machree (1928), Four Sons (1928), Hangman's House (1928), Riley the Cop (1928), Strong Boy (1929). Honors: Academy Awards, Best Director for The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1935, 1940, 1941, 1952; Academy Award Nominations, Best Director for Stagecoach (1939), Producer (Best Picture) for The Quiet Man (1952), Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Selected Bibliography: Bogdanovich, Peter. John Ford. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. FOUR HORSEMEN OF FHE APOCALYPSE, THE (1921). Epic drama. Directed by Rex Ingram; with Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, Pomeroy Cannon, Josef Swickard, Brinsley Shaw, Alan Hale, Nigel De Brulier, John Sainpolis, Stuart Holmes, Jean Hersholt, Wallace Beery, Mabel Van Buren; screenplay by June Mathis, based on novel by Vicente BlascoIbanez. An Argentinean ranching family, the daughters of which have married into French and German backgrounds, sell the estate and move to

FRESHMAN, THE

125

Europe after the death of their patriarch. Julio, son of the French side, becomes an artist and has an affair with Marguerite, the wife of a senator. The outbreak of World War I, when the senator must leave for the front, prevents their having a duel. His guilty wife joins the nursing corps and ironically finds herself caring for her blinded husband who does not recognize her. Julio's family home, meanwhile, is occupied by the Germans, coincidentally under the command of his cousin on the German side of the family. Throughout the remainder of the story Marguerite and Julio are both torn between their love for each other, their sense of duty, and their feelings of unworthiness. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was the first major role for Valentino and his breakthrough performance made him a star. The Metro production was also the most important film director Ingram had made to that time and remains arguably his best work. The film has a novelistic, almost European feel to it, devoting a great deal of screen time to establishing the characters and setting before the main plot begins. Many of Ingram's other films with the same traits merely seem slow, but Four Horsemen has a richness of style and naturalness to most of the acting that pull the viewer into the story (greatly aided by a compelling musical score). The power and irony of the concluding scenes have rarely been equalled in the silent cinema. FRESH1S4AN, THE (1925). Comedy. Directed by Sam Taylor and Fred Newmeyer; with Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston and James Anderson; screenplay by Sam Taylor, Ted Wilde, John Grey, and Tim Whelan. Financial success was the focus of Lloyd's 1923 Safety Last. The comedian returned to the theme of social success in The Freshman, a striving that he employed in his first feature-length film, Grandma's Boy (1922). As in most of his works, it is not outstanding skill that makes his character accepted by his peers — it is an almost manic drive to succeed in all his endeavors, plus a lot of luck that pushes him from a low state in society to a high level of acceptance. Audiences note today how innovative Lloyd and his rivals were in the silent comedy of the 1920s. Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton developed a string of gags from one basic situation. They did so in a way that a long sequence built laughs in a logical way to a high point in each portion of the dramatic story. With the same skill he exhibited in all his work, Lloyd incorporated a clean-cut method of building toward the funniest material in each sequence of The Freshman. A series of embarrassments with a faulty tuxedo at the prom dance led to the comic protagonist's loss of his pants. He carefully motivated and refurbished this common comic disaster so that such a happening became a fresh topping

126

FRESHMAN, THE

gag. Lloyd also worked up a detailed chain of gags burlesquing the last minute touchdown that was employed by so many football heroes in the slick, serious movies of the twenties. Critics now believe no finer film burlesque of the college hero has been made. Imitations of comic touchdowns appeared in the next decade, notable versions featuring the Marx Brothers in Horse Feathers (1932) and Joe E. Brown in The Gladiator (1938).

G GENERAL, THE (1926). Comedy. Directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman; with Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Charles Smith, Frank Barnes, Frederick Vroom, Glen Cavender, and Jim Farley; screenplay by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, adapted from William Pittenger's The Great Locomotive Chase. A southern railroad engineer who tries to enlist in the Confederate army at the outbreak of the Civil War is turned down. Because he is not told that the reason is the strategic importance of his job, he believes he is inadequate and others, including his girlfriend, believe he is a coward. He gets a chance to prove himself when he must recapture his train after it is stolen by the enemy with his girlfriend aboard. This ninth feature by Buster Keaton has the virtue of a very strong conflict. Like Sherlock, Jr. (1924) the leading comic character played by Keaton has a strong obsession that promotes plot development in an intense, clear-cut way. In the opening sequence of the film, a direct narrative title indicates that Johnny Gray (Keaton's character) has two loves in his life: his train (the locomotive called "The General") and his girlfriend, Annabelle Lee. The viewer of this movie soon realizes which object of Johnny's affections he loves best of all. When Union spies steal his locomotive, of which he is engineer, he exerts Herculean efforts to recover the stolen train from the enemy's camp. The novel feature of this film lies in its elaboration of a heretoforeconfined chase sequence — often as the climactic portion of the comedy. While many features of the 1920s employed the chase as a concluding portion of the picture, the bulk of the film comedy's material in The General revolves around a chase to recover the locomotive and an escape from the Union army's territory. There is another distinction to this

128

GILBERT, JOHN

movie. The comedy has an epic style that ventures into the realm of the spectacular. This happens not only with the use of an elaborate chase. Some of the events prove to be awe inspiring. A scene shows the collapse of a trestle as a train goes across the bridge after the locomotive. And the climactic Civil War battle provides still more spectacle. But most of all, the comic action of Buster Keaton, as he scampers about on his train and jumps around throwing log and pieces of wrood obstructions on the track, trying to stop the pursuit of enemy soldiers in another train, becomes more important to the humor of this important work by one of the kings of silent screen comedy. GILBERT, JOHN. Born July 10, 1899, in Logan, Utah. Died January 9, 1936, in Los Angeles, California. Actor. A popular leading man throughout the 1920s, Gilbert became a superstar during his years at MGM the last half of the decade. He is especially remembered for his acclaimed role in The Big Parade (1925) and his romantic teaming with Greta Garbo (with whom he had an offscreen romance that ultimately failed) in Flesh and the Devil, Love, and A Woman of Affairs in 1927-28. Yet he gave solid and often quite good performances in a variety of parts, such as a shady carnival barker in The Show (1927) and a sharp-witted diamond mine manager kidnapped by thieves in Desert Nights (1929). Born John Cecil Pringle into a theatrical family, he started his film career for Thomas H. Ince as an extra and bit player in 1916, gaining larger roles by 1919, when he co-starred with Mary Pickford in Heart o' the Hills. Another important early major role was the lead in Monte Cristo (1922). With the coming of talking pictures his career took a sudden decline that has yet to be explained satisfactorily, although his personality is reported to have irked a number of important people. As were those of many silent stars, Gilbert's first talkie (not counting Hollywood Revue of 1929, in which he played himself) was stagey and clumsily directed. Nevertheless, his performance is as good or better than the other stars of His Glorious Night (1929), a saucy sex comedy whose biggest failing besides its static direction is an overly serious first half. His voice was perfectly adequate and as the sound period progressed his roles became darker and more interesting from a modern point of view, especially Downstairs, which he also scripted. It is possible these antihero parts turned off the movie fans who preferred him as the dashing hero they remembered from the silent screen. Interestingly, a 1930 New York Times article reported that Charles Chaplin was planning to produce several silent films a year with a stock company (a project never realized) and intended to put John Gilbert under contract. Lack of his former box office drawing

GISH, DOROTHY

129

p o w e r contributed to Gilbert's alcoholism a n d early d e a t h by h e a r t attack b e t w e e n the ages of 36 a n d 40 (different sources list his birth year as 1895,1897, or 1899). Selected Filmography: Hell's Hinges (1916), Golden Rule Kate (1917), The Dawn of Understanding (1918), The Busher (1919), Heart o' the Hills (1919), The Great Redeemer (1920), Deep Waters (1920), Ladies Must Live (1921), Arabian Love (1922), Monte Cristo (1922), The Madness of Youth (1923), Cameo Kirby (1923), Just Off Broadway (1924), His Hour (1924), He IVho Gets Slapped (1924), The Snob (1924), The Wife of the Centaur (1924), The Merry Widow (1925), The Big Parade (1925), La Boheme (1926), Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), Flesh and the Devil (1927), The Show (1927), Twelve Miles Out (1927), Love (1927), Man, Woman and Sin (1927), The Cossacks (1928), Four Walls (1928), The Masks of the Devil (1928), Show People (1928), A Woman of Affairs (1928), Desert Nights (1929), A Man's Man (1929), The Hollywood Revue (1929), His Glorious Night (1929), Redemption (1930), The Phantom of Paris (1931), Downstairs (1932), Queen Christina (1933), 77ze Captain Hates the Sea (1934). Selected Bibliography: Brown, Gene, editor. The New York Times Lncyclopedia of Film. New York: Times Books, 1984. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Lncyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Fountain, Leatrice Gilbert, with John R. Maxim. Dark Star. New York: St. Martins Press, 1985. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. GISH, DOROTHY. Born M a r c h 11, 1898, in Dayton, Ohio. Died June 4, 1968, in Rapallo, Italy. Actress. D o r o t h y Gish, like her sister Lillian, started as a child actress on stage a n d e n t e r e d films in Biograph's 1912 An Unseen Enemy, costarring w i t h Lillian in this a n d several other films d u r i n g their early careers. She d e v e l o p e d a m o r e o r d i n a r y , even earthy, girl-next-door kind of screen persona c o m p a r e d with Lillian's almost other-worldly, u n t o u c h a b l e , a n d u n a t t a i n a b l e ideal of w o m a n h o o d , a n d often s h o w e d a flair for c o m e d y w h i c h m a d e her quite p o p u l a r with audiences. D o r o t h y c a m e u p with a comic story idea a b o u t a w o m a n w h o teaches her u n a p p r e c i a t i v e h u s b a n d a lesson as the plot for a picture Lillian w o u l d direct her in, Remodeling Her Husband (1920). Dorothy actually m a d e m o r e films than Lillian b u t never g a i n e d the s a m e level of critical reputation. Nevertheless she w a s v e r y m u c h at h o m e in serious d r a m a , delivering a m o v i n g performance o p p o s i t e Lillian in Sisters, also k n o w n as Duel For Love (1914), a n d had good dramatic parts in Orphans of the Storm (1921) and Romola (1924), also starring w i t h her sister. H e r best silent screen a p p e a r a n c e to s u r v i v e is the title role in the British p r o d u c t i o n , Nell Gwynn (1926), in which she

130

GISH, LILLIAN

displays a sensual exuberance to rival Clara Bow. From that film on, she finished her silent career in English films, going back to live theatre after talkies took over. She made only five sound films between 1930 and 1963, also appearing on television occasionally. Selected Filmography: An Unseen Enemy (1912), Home Sweet Home (1914), Sisters (1914), An Old-Fashioned Girl (1915), How Hazel Got Even (1915), Old Heidelberg (1915), Little Meena's Romance (1916), Susan Rocks the Boat (1916), The Little School Ma'am (1916), Gretchen the Greenhorn (1916), The Little Yank (1917), Hearts of the World (1918), Boots (1919), Peppy Polly (1919), I'll Get Him Yet (1919), Remodeling Her Husband (1920), Little Miss Rebellion (1920), Flying Pat (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), The Country Flapper (1922), The Bright Shawl (1923), Romola (1924), Clothes Make the Pirate (1925), Nell Gwynn (1926), London (1927), Tip Toes (1927), Madame Pompadour (1927), WolvesA^anted Men (1930), Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), Centennial Summer (1946), The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951), The Cardinal (1963). Selected Bibliography: Gish, Lillian, with Ann Pinchot. The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

GISH, LILLIAN. Born October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Died February 27,1993, in New York City. Best-remembered for her films with D. W. Griffith, Lillian Gish had the longest acting career in film and possibly in stage history. She began acting as a small child on stage around the turn of the century, made her film acting debut under the direction of D. W. Griffith in 1912 (although she can be recognized as an extra as early as 1909) and her final film in 1987. Her stage career began after her father left the family and her mother joined a theatre stock company, soon allowing her daughters to act when children's parts were needed. Gish's delicate beauty and fine facial features won her many parts as a winsome heroine. Her ability to convey an inner strength and depth of emotion led to strong dramatic roles, notably the abused child of Broken Blossoms (1919), the wronged woman of Way Down East (1920), and the unhappy prairie wife of The Wind (1928). While working for Griffith she directed one film, Remodeling Her Husband, a comedy starring her sister. The Paramount release was a success, but she found directing to be more trouble than she wanted. After leaving Griffith's company in 1922, she had become such a star that she had control over what films she would make, including script and director approval. Many of these parts were strong woman characters with little or no need for men. At one point a dispute with her lawyer,

GISH, LILLIAN

131

who attempted to gain control of her career, resulted in a court case that vindicated her, but in the meantime lost her the title role in Peter Pan. Even her contract for MGM in 1925 gave her great power over her career, but by the end of the 1920s audiences were preferring more overtly sensual female stars like Clara Bow and Greta Garbo. MGM did not want to renew her contract unless she agreed to a contrived media scandal and she refused, returning to the stage. Her next planned picture, Anna Karenina, went instead to Garbo, released under the title Love. Gish made one talking picture in 1930 and another in 1933, but then abandoned films for a decade. From the 1940s through the 1980s she divided her time between the stage and occasional film or television roles. She also became a vocal proponent of film preservation and made numerous appearances at film festivals screening her or her sister's films. Selected Filmography: An Unseen Enemy (1912), The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), The Mothering Heart (1913), Judith ofBethulia (1914), The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1914), The Battle of the Sexes (1914), Home Sweet Home (1914), The Sisters (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Captain Macklin (1915), Enoch Arden (1915), Sold for Marriage (1916), Intolerance (1916), Pathways of Life (1916), Souls Triumphant (1917), Hearts of the World (1917), The Greatest Thing in Life (1918), A Romance of Happy Valley (1919), Broken Blossoms (1919), True Heart Susie (1919), The Greatest Question (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), The White Sister (1923), Romola (1924), La Boheme (1926), The Scarlet Letter (1926), Annie Laurie (1927), The Enemy (1928), The Wind (1927, finally released 1928), One Romantic Night (1930), His Double Life (1933), The Commandos Strike at Dawn (1943), Top Man (1943), Miss Susie Slagle's (1946), Duel in the Sun (1946), Portrait of Jennie (1949), The Cobzoeb (1955), Night of the Hunter (1955), Orders to Kill (1958), The Unforgiven (1960), The Great Chase (1963), Follow Me, Boys! (1966), The Comedians (1967), Warning Shot (1967), A Wedding (1978), Hambone and Hillie (1984), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1985), Szoeet Liberty (1986), The Whales of August (1987). Honors: Academy Award Nomination Best Supporting Actress for Duel in the Sun, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1946; Honorary Academy Award for superlative artistry and distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1970; Life Achievement Award, American Film Institute, 1984. Selected Bibliography: Gish, Lillian, with Ann Pinchot. The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

132

GOLD RUSH, THE

GOLD RUSH, THE (1925). Comedy. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Charles Chaplin, Mack Swain, Georgia Hale, and Henry Bergman; screenplay by Charles Chaplin. During the days of the Alaskan gold rush a little tramp tries his luck at prospecting, while contending with winter storms, starvation, and romantic rejection by a dance-hall girl with whom he has fallen in love. The director-writer-actor reached a peak with his skilled blend of the serious and the comic in this work. Chaplin's virtues overbalanced his faults. Some of the golden moments of the silent screen comedy were created in The Gold Rush. Stranded in a small cabin during a blizzard in the Yukon, the little tramp is forced by hunger to eat his own shoe. For this bizarre Thanksgiving Day dinner, Chaplin's skill in comic innovation comes into full play. The starved, weary little fellow carves and eats parts of his shoe as if it were turkey. A bent nail from the shoe becomes a wishbone; and, by an incongruous turn of the mind, a side dish on which he has deposited the shoestrings is transformed into a plate of spaghetti. Such comic transpositions became Chaplin's forte, and critics who viewed the film found that such invention would, in the words of Variety, "ring the bell." Many evaluators of this work since the first showing (and its revival release in 1942) have found this scene to be one of their favorites. In delicate, facile pantomime The Gold Rush has no equal. Furthermore, many of the actions of the little tramp when he was starving have a unique blend of the serious and the comic, which were rooted in the character of the lonely little soul. With understated, smooth body and facial expressions, Chaplin portrays the hollow-eyed, comic hero, eyeing the stub of a candle. Sadly, the little man picks it up and nibbles it with rabbit bites —as if the candle were a piece of carrot or celery. And with a deft touch that shows Chaplin's genius, he sprinkles salt on this morsel of wax, finds that it tastes better, and pops it into his mouth. With such actions a new depth in comic character was added, a dimension that was to make Chaplin the darling of the critics. The comedian was able to make us laugh and still feel sorry for this pathetic person on the far edge of society. The twentieth century, after The Gold Rush, seemed to house the reincarnation of the famous nineteenth-century French clown, JeanGaspard Dabureau, a renowned Pierrot, blended with the rollicking good spirit of the Clown created by the English music hall's favorite comedian, Grimaldi. Therefore, Chaplin carried on the musical hall tradition from the past, his heritage, and adapted this comedy mode to the cinema.

GOOSE WOMAN, THE

133

THE GOLDEN CHANCE (1916). Social drama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Cleo Ridgely, Wallace Reid, Horace B. Carpenter, Edythe Chapman, Ernest Joy, Raymond Hatton; screenplay by Jeanie Macpherson and Cecil B. DeMille. The attractive wife of an unemployed alcoholic takes a job as a seamstress for a wealthy woman. Her new employer persuades her to pose as an unmarried socialite to influence her husband's business deal with a visiting millionaire. This deception leads to conflicts between love and honor, additional deceptions, intrigue, and blackmail. In a virtual filmmaking frenzy, DeMille made The Golden Chance late in 1915 at the same time he was directing The Cheat, working on one film by day and the other by night, with brief naps in between. This slick, socially conscious melodrama was released a month after The Cheat and is an even better film, yet was generally overlooked. The acting, especially by Cleo Ridgely, is amazingly subtle. Wallace Reid, as the love interest, underplays his part almost to the point of blandness until the concluding race to the rescue. Few films from this period develop their characters to anything more than a superficial level necessary for the advancement of the plot. DeMille and Ridgely achieve a rare depth in the protagonist. Despite a generally melodramatic plot, the screenplay is nearly as grim and gritty in its portrayal of slum life as DeMille's Kindling, made earlier in 1915. Modern audiences unaccustomed to silent film conventions have found the histrionics of The Cheat mildly amusing, whereas the same crowd has been captivated by the unexpectedly naturalistic performances and highly polished direction of The Golden Chance. GOOSE WOMAN, THE (1925). Drama. Directed by Clarence Brown; with Louise Dresser, Jack Pickford, Constance Bennett, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Marc MacDermott; screenplay by Melville Brown. An alcoholic old woman who lives in a shack and keeps geese has always been bitter towards her son. When he wants to marry a young actress she relates how she bore him out of wedlock at the height of her own operatic career and that he is the cause of her current poverty and ruined voice. Then a wealthy patron of the same local theatre troupe where the actress works is murdered and the old woman claims to have witnessed it so she will once more have her name in newspaper headlines. Matters become complicated, however, when her story actually seems to implicate her son. Louise Dresser has one of her most powerful performances and Clarence Brown has one of his strongest films in The Goose Woman, an adaptation of a Rex Beach story. Brown's mise-en-scene and flashback structure along with Dresser's expressive face draw the viewer into the

134

GRANDMA'S BOY

emotional tale of tragic nostalgia. The dramatic use of lighting is particularly memorable. GRANDMA'S BOY (1922). Comedy. Directed by Fred Newmeyer; with Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Anna Townsend, and Charles Stevenson; screenplay by Hal Roach, Sam Taylor, Jean Havez When Harold Lloyd wrote his autobiography, An American Comedy, during the height of his popular and critical success in the late 20s, he explained how he developed his humorous character to provide more dimension for his first feature film: "Grandma's Boy had told much more of a story than we ever had put in a picture before. It was a psychological study of a boy, cowardly both physical and morally, transformed by a fable invented on the spur of the moment by his despairing grandmother. . . . Before the end the boy discovers, of course, that he triumphed only because he believed in himself" (An American Comedy, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971, p. 91). This focus on a theme of regeneration would seem comic only in the manner of the genteel comedy, but Lloyd, with his director and writers, used overstatement of the boy's original weakness and overstatement of his bravery after the transformation to achieve more laughable humor than that in the genteel mode. Thereby, he avoided the sentiment and cream puff humor of the polite tradition of the comedy film. A manipulator, or in this case a Mrs. Fixit, is found in this film —a character employed extensively in the sentimental comedy. The young man's grandmother tells of her husband's bravery when, in the Civil War, he single-handedly defeats a group of Union officers engaged in a war conference. The grandmother gives her grandson an amulet that she claims gave Grandpa, her husband, courage in battle. The boy takes this fib seriously and, with wild determination, pockets the amulet, catches a crook who has plagued the community, and fights his rival in love to win the admiration of everyone in the hamlet. Lloyd uses the plot material of the sentimental and genteel humor of the popular magazine short stories of the period. However, he incorporates the older slapstick tradition of the film medium in developing elaborate chase and fight sequences that were replete with many laughable gags in order to produce a superior comedy. GREAT K&A TRAIN ROBBERY, THE (1926). Western action comedy. Directed by Lewis Seiler; with Tom Mix, Dorothy Dwan, William Walling, Harry Grippe, Carl Miller, Edward Piehl Sr.; screenplay by John Stone; story by Paul Leicester Ford.

GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, THE

135

A detective poses as a bandit to investigate a series of train robberies. The railroad president's daughter falls in love with him, despite his seemingly unsavory status, in preference to her father's secretary who is actually behind the robberies. The detective thus has a new personal reason to complete his assignment, bring the criminal to justice, and win the railroad president's daughter. The Great K&A Train Robbery is prime action-adventure featuring the biggest western star of the silent era, Tom Mix. Mix's larger than life cowboy hero was pure escapism, the "Indiana Jones" of his day. The lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek tone of this film makes it just as enjoyable today for audiences as it was more than seven decades ago. Like Douglas Fairbanks, Mix bounded through his films with a smile on his face, ever confident against seemingly overwhelming odds. Of course, white-hatted Tom always had Tony the Wonder Horse to help him tame the West and win the girl. Mix knew that his action-packed Westerns were just a variation on the costume swashbucklers of Fairbanks, but when he tried to do a period adventure himself, audiences seemed to be confused by his change of image. As a result he returned to the genre that made him a star, and in which the public expected him to remain. In The Great K& A Train Robbery Mix pokes fun at his fans with an in-joke referring to his role as the legendary English highwayman Dick Turpin, which he had filmed the year before. In Dick Turpin Mix had used the same light-hearted, action-packed formula of his westerns in a period costume setting, but his fans preferred to see him as a cowboy. Another notable aspect of the film is that it was filmed on location in Colorado's spectacular Royal Gorge instead of in the Hollywood hills and a studio back lot. Photoplay magazine, which at the time was still a serious journal of film, commented that the picture was worth seeing for the scenery alone, besides being a "ripping railroad western." The review also remarked on its lighter than usual attitude. GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, THE (1903). Western. Directed by Edwin S. Porter; with G. M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson. While director Porter created two notable one-reel movies in 1903, his The Great Train Robbery proved to be more significant and more popular than the other pioneer effort, The Life of an American Fireman. The appeal of this former work rests in the more adventurous and exciting nature of the Western film genre. The plot elements in this work would be used decades later: in a robbery by four men, the forming of a posse to capture the crooks, a chase on horseback, and in the final shoot-out with the killing of the robbers. This simple tale by Porter evolved using a number of

136

GREED

locations — both interior and exterior scenes. The interiors were obvious stage sets and were photographed in one standard long shot with the actors usually moving horizontally. This was typical of directions used in live theater production. However, when Porter moved the action outside, the camera became more mobile and the actors sometimes moved diagonally in depth. Also, he condensed the sweep of the drama by editing, creating a pace that would be used in many future Westerns. The Great Train Robbery became the most popular short film in the first decade of the twentieth century. This one-reeler often appeared in the nickelodeon movie houses and even played as a novelty in the euphemistically labeled opera houses —which were more often theaters that touted vaudeville acts and stage productions. Ironically, by the 1930s the motion picture theaters presented feature-length Westerns as the main attraction while a brief, live-action vaudeville act was employed as a novelty before or after the feature film. GREED (1925). Drama. Directed by Erich von Stroheim; with Gibson Gowland, ZaSu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, Sylvia Ashton, Dale Fuller, Tempe Piggott; screenplay by Erich von Stroheim, from novel McTeague; A Story of San Francisco, by Frank Norris. McTeague, a burly young gold miner, takes up dentistry and sets up a practice in San Francisco, where he meets and woos Trina, the cousin of his friend Marcus. Trina wins a lottery, causing a rift between the couple and the bitter Marcus, who causes McTeague to lose his practice by revealing to authorities he has no license. Trina's new obsession with owning but not spending her money develops into a mania, increasing tensions with McTeague to a dramatic climax. McTeague finally leaves town and heads off alone across the desert, pursued by Marcus, who wants Trina's money. Cut from a reputed 42 reels (about 10 hours) to 10 (about two and a half hours), Greed is still von Stroheim's masterpiece. A relentlessly realistic story with Stroheim's typical attention to small details, it was despised by the moviegoing public as the antithesis of what the movie experience was supposed to be all about. Cynical, depressing, and at times graphically violent, with no particularly admirable characters, it repelled viewers and many critics who sought escapism in happy, uplifting, larger-than-life stories with heroes they might aspire to imitate. Today the film has a few dated elements but retains its dramatic power while the popular studio productions of its day often do not. The grimly ironic conclusion in the heat of Death Valley has rarely been equaled by any film. After a reading of the original screenplay, the film becomes even more powerful, as the gaps can be filled in mentally.

GRIFFITH, D. W.

137

GRIFFITH, D. W. Born January 23,1875, in Crestwood, Kentucky. Died July 23,1948, in Hollywood, California. Director, producer, writer. David Wark Griffith was perhaps the first film director who became a superstar in the popular media of his day, his name alone guaranteeing receipts at the box office from the mid-teens through the early 1920s. He was often credited with virtually single-handedly inventing modern motion picture story-telling techniques. He did not invent such concepts as close-ups and editing, which had been around for years when he started making films in 1908. But Griffith, unlike many filmmakers of the early years, was able to recognize and exploit the dramatic impact of these devices, developing them to the point that film became a genuine expressive art form. Unable to make a living at his chosen profession of stage actor and playwright, he accepted a job as a film actor and soon turned to directing. At the Biograph studio he directed well over 400 short films, experimenting with different techniques, acting styles, and subject matter, and gauging their effect on the audience. With the help of veteran cameraman G. W. "Billy" Bitzer (1872-1944), who had been at Biograph since its beginnings in the 1890s, he explored a variety of photographic effects that were soon copied by other filmmakers. He also helped pioneer filmed stories that lasted longer than about 15 minutes on the screen, or the amount of film that would fit on one 1,000-foot reel. Over the initial objections of his employers, by 1911 he was making two-reel films, and in 1913 secretly planned to make his production of Judith ofBethulia into a biblical epic that ran an hour, or four reels. It was not the first film of such a length, nor even the first four-reel American film (the French Queen Elizabeth and the American Richard III and Cleopatra are four- and five-reel productions from 1912 that have survived). Movie patrons were starting to develop a taste for "feature-length" attractions and Biograph officials were finally realizing this, but for defying their authority they demoted Griffith to a "supervisor" and delayed releasing the film for several months. In the meantime Griffith left Biograph to become production chief at Reliance-Majestic. There, in 1914, he directed four films while he privately planned his own independent production that would change the movie industry forever — The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915 as a touring roadshow attraction with its own traveling orchestra and stage effects crew. Again, feature films and even American epic feature films (such as Selig's 1914 eight-reel The Spoilers) were not entirely new. But the unprecedented success of Griffith's 12-reel Civil War and Reconstruction melodrama demonstrated the power of motion pictures as an artistic personal expression that could engage the emotions of viewers of all social and economic classes. Its popularity also appears to have af-

138

GRIFFITH, D. W.

fected other filmmakers' approaches to directing and editing. With a few notable exceptions, most features released before 1915 use consistently longer takes, fewer close-ups, and limited editing within scenes, whereas most films made after 1915 show markedly more sophisticated understanding of editing. The sociopolitical controversy generated by The Birth of a Nation, which he saw as basically an antiwar statement, surprised and upset Griffith. He decided to turn his next film, an intimate little anti-capital punishment drama called The Mother and the Law, into Intolerance (1916), a gigantic cinematic argument against bigotry, intolerance, and selfserving do-gooders who insist that their own values are the only correct ones. He even published a pamphlet advocating the right to free speech. His attempt at a World War I propaganda film, Hearts of the World (1918), comes across more as an antiwar story. Griffith was more concerned with filming stories he believed were cinematic, entertaining, and portrayed inner human truths than with maintaining a consistent politically correct attitude. This characteristic has troubled many of his supporters and earned him the ambivalence of critics who find it difficult to reconcile Griffith's obvious social consciousness with the equally obvious racial insensitivity that was a product of his upbringing. At his heart, Griffith was an unashamed romantic with a fondness for often overstated moral allegory. This is in greatest evidence in the lesser films he rushed through in order to support the major productions he was planning. At his best, in films like Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1922), and Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924), he was able to combine technical brilliance with emotionally moving artistic vision and cathartic popular entertainment. In America (1924) he had the surface appearance of his old touch but was falling into a standard formula. Even when his films were reasonably popular his insistence on continuing elaborate and expensive roadshow engagements made them unprofitable. By the early to mid-1920s his personal taste and portrayals of ideal womanhood no longer appealed to the mass population, who now were attracted to more worldly modern stories of the "jazz age." His didactic style did not fit in with the more matter-of-fact presentation of looser lifestyles becoming commonplace on the screen. When his films started to lose money, Griffith lost his independence and signed on to work for Paramount. The studio system of mass production clashed even further with his customary methods, and with his reduced input on what and how he could film, his productions suffered all the more. The Sorrows of Satan, originally designed for Cecil B. DeMille, still looks as much or more like a DeMille picture than a Griffith picture.

GRIFFITH, D. W.

139

Griffith made only two sound films, Abraham Lincoln (1930) for United Artists, and The Struggle (1931), produced independently. Abraham Lincoln pleased many critics and audiences of its day, but except for an opening crane dolly shot now appears technically crude by comparison to his other works, with lower production values. The only strong performance Griffith was able to obtain was from star Walter Huston, who remains worth watching. The Struggle, on the other hand, shows Griffith with a freedom of camera movement, confidence in editing, and gritty location realism that he had not shown since Isn't Life Wonderful or his "street" films for Biograph over a decade before that. Unfortunately audences and critics alike were turned off by its moralizing melodrama on the evils of alcohol, despite its cinematic flair and its sincere performances. Plans for future directing projects, including a British remake of Broken Blossoms, never materialized. Griffith never made another picture. During the 1930s, with an eye toward the future, he deposited prints of all his films with the Museum of Modern Art in New York, making him one of the few film artists of the silent period whose output has almost entirely survived. He was hired by Hal Roach to consult on the production of One Million B.C. (1940), in some ways a remake of his own short, Man's Genesis (1912). Some researchers believe he may even have directed a few scenes. After a brief, ill-fated marriage to a much younger woman, he lived the remainder of his life in hotel rooms contending with his own struggle with alcohol. Although never reduced to poverty, he was all but forgotten by the industry he helped create. Filmography: Selected shorts — The Adventures of Dollie (1908), The Lonely Villa (1909), A Corner In Wheat (1909), The House With Closed Shutters (1910), The Battle (1911), The Lonedale Operator (1911), An Unseen Enemy (1912), The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), The Mothering Heart (1913), The Battle at Elderhush Gulch (1914). Features -Judith ofBethulia (1913), The Battle of the Sexes (1914), The Escape (1914), Home Sweet Home (1914), The Avenging Conscience (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance (1916), Hearts of the World (1918), The Great Love (1918), The Greatest Thing in Life (1918), A Romance of Happy Valley (1919), The Girl Who Stayed at Home (1919), Broken Blossoms (1919), Trueheart Susie (1919), Scarlet Days (1919), The Greatest Question (1919), The Idol Dancer (1920), The Love Flower (1920), Way Down East (1920), Dream Street (1921), Orphans of the Storm (1921), One Exciting Night (1922), The White Rose (1923), America (1924), Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924), Sally of the Sawdust (1925), That Royale Girl (1925), The Sorrows of Satan (1926), Drums of Love (1928), The Battle of the Sexes (1928), Lady of the Pavements (1929),

Abraham Lincoln (1930), The Struggle (1931). Honors: Honorary Academy Award, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1935.

140

GRIFFITH, RAYMOND

Selected Bibliography: Geduld, Harry M., editor. Focus on D. IV Griffith. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1971. Gish, Lillian, with Ann Pinchot. The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Hart, James, editor. The Man Who Invented Hollywood: The Autobiography of D. W. Griffith: A Memoir and Some Notes. New York: Touchstone Publishing, 1972. Merrit, Russell. "D. W. Griffith's Intolerance: Reconstructing an Unattainable Text." Film History 4, no. 4 (1990): pp. 337-375. O'Dell, Paul. Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood. London: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Schickel, Richard. D. IV. Griffith: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Stanhope, Selwyn A. "The World's Master Picture Producer." Photoplay (January 1915): pp. 57-62. Wagenknecht, Edward, and Anthony Slide. The Films ofD. W. Griffith. New York: Crown Publishers, 1975.

GRIFFITH, RAYMOND. Born January 23, 1897 [or 1890], in Boston, Massachusetts. Died November 25,1957, in Hollywood California. Film actor, writer, producer. According to reports, Raymond Griffith's childhood inability to speak above a whisper was a handicap that led to his compensating skill in pantomime to express his ideas. Of course, having been born of theatrical parents may have promoted this art, since so-called dumb acts, skits using no dialogue, did occupy a place in the popular theatre of vaudeville. It has also been reported that he toured as a boy with a French troupe skilled in mime. Griffith began his film career with Vitagraph in 1914 and moved to Keystone where he exhibited writing as well as acting talent. Raymond Griffith became a star when he joined Paramount in the mid-1920s. Earlier, he became noted for his ability to take a secondary part and make it more attractive to an audience than a bland leading role. This seemed to be the secret of his success with First National and Goldwyn when he was employed for comic relief in The Eternal Three and Red Lights (1923). Two years later when he received a contract from Paramount, he created his most successful roles with Paths of Paradise (1925) and the following year with Hands Up! (1926). In Paths to Paradise Griffith plays a dapper confidence man with a woman accomplice played by Betty Compson. In Hands Up as a stylish, lively Southern Civil War spy, he blithely tackled an attempt to capture a Union gold shipment to benefit General Lee. Using the character of a man-about-town sophisticate, he drew on different types of gags than Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. A nonchalant demeanor by the comic character, despite the gravity of the obstacle en-

GRIFFITH, RAYMOND

141

countered, became the quintessence of Griffith's humor. Rival Harold Lloyd occasionally switched from his usual naive young-man-next door portrait to develop a type of comedy similar to Griffith's, such as when he played the sophisticated, wealthy, and spoiled young man in his films Why Worry? (1923) and For Heaven's Sake (1926). Like Griffith, to create comedy Lloyd would use a character with a devil-may-care air —an unflappable attitude in any stressful situation. Both Paths to Paradise and Hands Up! have the added dimension of using a good deal of dark, offbeat humor that gives the films a modern tone that we now witness in satirical movie comedies. In the sound period Griffith would move to screenwriting and producing because of his weak voice. However, he gave a last memorable performance as the slowly dying soldier, Gerald Duval, in a shell hole during World War I in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Raymond Griffith conveyed the subtle emotions of a person unable to speak as he dies. It remains as one of the best moments of pathos exhibited in a cameo performance in the history of cinema. Selected Filmography: The Follies Girl (1919), Red Lights (1923), White Tiger (1923), The Eternal Three (1923), Changing Husbands (1924), The Night Club (1925), Paths to Paradise (1925), A Regular Fellow (1925), Hands Up! (1926), You'd Be Surprised (1926), Wedding Bills (1927), Trent's Last Case (1929), All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Raymond Griffith," Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. "Raymond Griffith," American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

II HAINES, WILLIAM. Born January 1, 1900, in Staunton, Virginia. Died December 26,1973, in Santa Monica, California. Film actor. The twenties movie studios employed a deluge of actors who portrayed the go-getting, brash young man whose stereotype originated in the popular magazine fiction of the day. Two films starring William Haines illustrate the lightweight dramas containing mild humor that audiences enjoyed in this decade. Both works have sports-based plots. Brown of Harvard (1926) and Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927) focused, respectively, on the games of football and baseball. Haines enacted the role of a cocky, obnoxious player of the sport in both stories. The reform and regeneration of each devil-may-care character comes through the love and nurturing of a woman. This obviously used the material often found in the sentimental comedy. William Haines, who continued acting into the mid-thirties with The Marines are Coming (1934), is thought to have lost his popularity with the entrance of younger actors who could handle the same cocksure character more effectively. An example, of course, would be the energetic, charismatic actor James Cagney. Filmography: Selected silent features — Brother Under the Skin (1922), Soul for Sale (1923), Three Wise Fools (1923), Wine of Youth (1924), Little Annie Rooney (1925), Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), Tell It to the Marines (1926), Brown of Harvard (1926), Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927), West Point (1928). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

HARDY, OLIVER

143

HANDS UP (1926). Western comedy. Directed by Clarence Badger; with Raymond Griffith, Marion Nixon, Virginia Lee Corbin, Mack Swain, Montague Love; screenplay by Monty Brice, Lloyd Corrigan; story by Reginald Morris. During the Civil War, a dashing Confederate spy is assigned to keep a Union agent from obtaining a supply of gold for the Northern army. Along the way he meets and falls in love with two beautiful girls, is captured by Indians, and generally gets in and out of trouble. Hands Up, along with Paths to Paradise, is one of the best of the few Raymond Griffith films to have survived. Unusual for Griffith in that it is a period piece, it nevertheless contrived to get him into his trademark top hat and formal suit. In a manner not unlike that used by Mel Brooks half a century later in Blazing Saddles, the gag writers have fun throwing in modern-day (1920s) references and absurd anachronisms. Like other comedies of its era there is no lack of racial and other stereotype humor. What still seems very modern, however, is the unusual resolution of the story's romantic subplot. This surprise ending was unseen for many years, having been cut from the five-reel Kodascope abridgment for home use. Now available for viewing, its addition changes drastically the final tone of the film to nearly the opposite of the more Chaplinesque bittersweet feeling earlier critics had believed it to have been. HARDY, OLIVER "BABE." Born Norvell Hardy January 18, 1893, in Harlem, Georgia. Died August 7, 1957, in North Hollywood, California. Vaudeville and tent show entertainer. Film actor. Hardy's experience and theater background for his film profession proved to be much different from that of his colleague, Stan Laurel. "Babe," as he was sometimes called, delighted in taking holidays from the Atlanta Conservatory of Music to sing in theater quartets and minstrel shows. Laurel, on the other hand, had his apprenticeship on the British stage and in the music halls in England. Oliver entered his film career in short comedies in the 1910s with comic portraits of villains. He also appeared in features with Larry Semon as the Tin Woodsman in the 1925 The Wizard ofOz and the following year in Semon's The Perfect Clown. Then he moved back to shorts for Hal Roach's studio where he began to appear with Stan Laurel, and they formed a comedy team in 1927. Just before this team took shape, however, Hardy did have a straight villain part in the Roach feature Western No Man's Law (1927), in which he menaced Barbara Kent with gusto. A gradual development of the Laurel and Hardy comic team started with With Love and Hisses (1927). More than thirty two-reelers within two years helped speed the characterizations that created the best comedy.

144

HARDY, OLIVER

They released their films in silent and sound versions in 1929 to accommodate the transition to the talkies. The fleshed-out characters and their strained camaraderie began to solidify with Two Tars (1928), Men O' War and A Perfect Day (1929). In these three films Laurel and Hardy end up alienating everyone they meet since they are an accident-prone pair —a common plot device used throughout the duo's career. Critics and fans often have been impressed by the facile, subtle pantomime of Stan Laurel and are amazed to witness the comedian's artful employment of his talents as he adapted his skills to the sound film. There can be little disagreement among the critics and fans that Laurel's comic craft place him among the notable actors of the decades of the twenties and thirties. However the appeal of his portrayal resulted from its link, indeed, a meshing, a fusing with the character portrayal by the second half of the team, Oliver Hardy. During their heyday there was no comedy team as unified —one that worked as a perfect duet —in all of motion picture history. This coalescence existed in their character relationship, the story line, and the comic spirit of most of their works. A warm attachment between the two weak, struggling souls made them lovable to the audience. A great deal of the best humor developed in their films comes from Ollie's pretensions that often lead to a problem he cannot solve. Overly confident, he boldly tells Laurel, "Let me do it." And, of course he can't handle the obstacle and is humiliated. Also, he is often baffled by the actions of his friend and expresses a slow burn and sometimes a look of exasperation toward the camera. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Outwitting Dad (1914), Those Love Pangs (1914), Love and Duty (1916), The Fly Cop (1917), A Lucky Dog (1917), The Handyman (1918), Mules and Mortgages (1919), Long Fliv the King (1926), With Love and Hisses (1927), The Battle of the Century (1927), Putting Pants on Philip (1927), Sailors, Beware! (1927), From Soup to Nuts (1928), Their Purple Moment (1928), Two Tars (1928), Big Business (1929), Liberty (1929). Selected silent features - Three Ages (1923), The Wizard of Oz (1925), The Perfect Clown (1925), No Man's Law (1927). Selected sound shorts -Unaccustomed as We Are (1929), Men O' War (1929), A Perfect Day (1929), Another Fine Mess (1930), Chickens Come Home (1931), County Hospital (1932), The Music Box (1932). Selected Bibliography: Everson, William K. The Films of Laurel and Hardy. New York: Cadillac Publishing Company, 1967. Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Laurel and Hardy." Clown Princes and Court jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Maltin, Leonard, "Laurel and Hardy." Movie Comedy Teams. New York: New American Library, Inc., 1970.

HART, WILLIAM S.

145

HART, WILLIAM S. Born December 6, 1870, in Newburgh, New York. Died June 23,1946, in Saugus, California. Stage actor; film actor, writer, producer, director. While G. M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson developed the typical cowboy hero and villain in The Great Train Robbery (1903) and numerous short Westerns in the early 1910s, William Surrey Hart has been credited with a movement to create a more realistic Western film. A formidable Shakespearean actor on the Broadway stage, he was featured as Messala in Ben-Hur, plus lead roles in other period stage plays such as The Squaw Man and The Virginian. While William S. Hart's fame came from the legitimate theater in the East, his adopted home proved to be the Far West. He loved the vitality and beauty of this rugged world and wanted to create films that portrayed the locality in a more truthful film when he moved to this medium in 1914. The actor's approach to realism existed more as surface than as substance. However, even in the sound period such films as My Darling Clementine (1946) and Shane (1953) attempted to depict the western surroundings in more realistic detail while retaining melodramatic cliches. Hart pioneered the effort with rustic homes and the unkempt appearance of leading and minor characters. When he was more successful the persona looked like old tintypes with dress that used a mixture of eastern and western garb. Hart's dramatic approach and his reliance on sentimental and melodramatic devices reflected, however, the characteristics of the nineteenth-century popular fiction and stage play. While this star reigned in films for only about twelve years —from 1914 to 1926 —he, more than any other Western actor, established a prototype that would last throughout the twentieth century. His hero evolved into a bad-good man who often experienced reformation through the love of a woman. This character was a loner who did not fully respect the codes established by those in power — a personality type that began to be rediscovered in the so-called adult Western that emerged in the late forties and fifties. But underneath this rebellion, this individualistic spirit, was a man with the heart and soul of a knight of ancient times. Hart left a legacy for many male stars to imitate and, occasionally, develop in slightly different directions: John Wayne, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, James Stewart, Alan Ladd, Gregory Peck, and, more recently, Clint Eastwood. William S. Hart's most prolific period was from 1916 to 1919, during which he starred in 34 feature-length films, mostly Westerns and many of which he also directed. His best-known film remains his last, the 1925 Tumbleweeds which he rereleased in 1939 with a music score and a per-

146

HAWLEY, WANDA

sonal introduction in which the past star reflected o n his retirement in the 1920s a n d his love for his career as a w e s t e r n actor. Filmography: Selected shorts — His Hour of Manhood (1914), The Passing of TwoGun Hicks (1914), In the Sagebrush Country (1915). Selected features — The Bargain (1914), On the Night Stage (1915), The Darkening Trail (1915), The Disciple (1915), The Aryan (1916), The Return of Draw Egan (1916), Hell's Hinges (1916), The Apostle of Vengeance (1916), The Captive God (1916), The Patriot (1916), The Gun Fighter (1917), The Square Deal Man (1917), The Cold Deck (1917), The Silent Man (19l7), The Narrow Trad (1917), Blue Blazes Raw den (1918), Selfish Yates (1918), Riddle Gawne (1918), The Border Wireless (1918), Branding Broadway (1918), Breed of Men (1919), Square Deal Sanderson (1919), Wagon Tracks (1919), John Petticoats (1919), The Toll Gate (1920), Sand! (1920), The Cradle of Courage (1920), The Testing Block (1920), O'Malley of the Mounted (1921), The Whistle (1921), Three Word Brand (1921), White Oak (1921), Travelin On (1922), Wild Bill Hickok (1923), Singer Jim McKec (1924), Tumbleweeds (1925). Selected Bibliography: Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. "William Surrey Hart and Realism." The Western From Silents to Cinerama. New York: Crown Publishers, 1962. Franklin, Joe. "William S. Hart." Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury. New York: Cadillac Publishing, 1959. Koszarski, Diane K. The Complete Films of William S. Hart: A Pictorial Record. New York: Dover, 1980.

HAWLEY, WANDA. Born July 30,1895, in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Died March 18,1963, in Los Angeles, California. Actress. A major star of the late 1910s and early 1920s, usually as the romantic lead and sometimes as the rival to the romantic lead, Wanda Hawley had her first large roles in 1917 at the Fox studio. There she acted under the name of Wanda Petit and played opposite Tom Mix in his first starring feature, Cupid's Roundup (1918). The next few years she starred at Paramount, appearing in several films by Cecil B. DeMille and Sam Wood, among others, reaching the peak of her popularity paired with stars like Wallace Reid and Bryant Washburn. In 1919 she played the title role in William deMille's screen version of the popular play Peg O' My Heart, but the film was blocked from release by the playwright in a legal dispute over unauthorized changes. By the mid-1920s Hawley was acting at various studios, getting major roles in small pictures and minor roles in big pictures. In 1927 she made only two films, and at age 32 her career was suddenly over, except for a couple of B-westerns in 1931. According to one source she became a call girl in San Francisco in the early 1930s. Selected Filmography: The Derelict (1917), The Broadway Sport (1917), This Is The Life (1917), The Heart of a Lion (1917), Cupid's Roundup (1918), Cheating the Public

HELL'S HINGES

147

(1918), Mr. Fix-It (1918), Old Wives for New (1918), We Can't Have Everything (1918), A Pair of Silk Stockings (1918), The Border Wireless (1918), The Gypsy Trail (1918), The Way of a Man with a Maid (1918), The Poor Boob (1918), Greased Lightning (1919), For Better, For Worse (1919), Virtuous Sinners (1919), You're Fired (1919), Secret Service (1919), Told in the Hills (1919), The Lottery Man (1919), Everywoman (1919), The Tree of Knowledge (1920), Double Speed (1920), The Six Best Cellars (1920), Mrs. Temple's Telegram (1920), Miss Hobbs (1920), Food for Scandal (1920), Held by the Enemy (1920), Her Beloved Villain (1920), Her First Elopement (1920), The Snob (1921), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), The House That Jazz Built (1921), A Kiss in Time (1921), The Love Charm (1921), Her Face Value (1921), The Young Rajah (1922), The Woman Who Walked Alone (1922), Burning Sands (1922), Brass Commandments (1922), Masters of Men (1923), The Man From Brodney's (1923), The Desert Sheik (1924), Bread (1924), Reckless Romance (1924), The Man Who Played Square (1924), Barriers Burned Away (1925), Smouldering Fires (1925), Stop Flirting (1925), Graustark (1925), American Pluck (1925), A Desperate Moment (1926), Midnight Limited (1926), Hearts and Spangles (1926), The Smoke Eaters (1926), Eyes of the Totem (1927), Pirates of the Sky (1927). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. HELL'S HINGES (1916). Western drama. Directed by Charles Swickard; with William S. Hart, Clara Williams, Jack Standing, Alfred Hollingsworth, Louise Glaum, Robert McKim, J. Frank Burke, John Gilbert, Jean Hersholt; screenplay by C. Gardner Sullivan. An ineffectual minister tries to clean up the western town of Hell's Hinges against the opposition of a local gunslinger and the influential barkeeper. When the gunslinger falls in love with the minister's sister, the barkeeper frames the minister with a prostitute and has his church burned down, the minister being killed in the process. The gunslinger then avenges the death by setting fire to the saloon. Almost all of William S. Hart's pictures feature him as a "good badman" whose innate sense of decency overcomes a n d / o r redeems his criminal past. Hell's Hinges is one of the most archetypal of his subgenre of Western. It is a fine example of his striving for a surface realism in both settings and characters, and continues themes and motifs he explored earlier in films like The Bargain and On the Night Stage. This is not

148

HERSHOLT, JEAN

the clean, glossy small town seen in many B-Westerns of a decade or two later, nor does it have a simple hero versus villain plot. Its good characters have their bad points and its bad characters have their good points. It does, however, have its share of heavy-handed almost Griffithesque symbolism, as in the name of the town itself, the literal baptism by fire that redeems Hart's character, and in Hart's recurring idealization of a certain kind of woman. Hart himself is said to have directed portions of the film and it bears his personal stamp throughout. HERSHOLT, JEAN. Born July 12,1886, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Died June 2,1956, in Hollywood, California. Stage, film, radio actor. In Denmark Jean Hersholt gained both stage and film acting experience before he arrived in the United States in the early 1910s. Two of his first important films were The Disciple (1915) and Hell's Hinges (1916), both Westerns. He would be cast in other Westerns such as a Zane Grey adaptation of one of his novels, Man of the Forest (1921). However, most important of all the roles Hersholt would play throughout his career, regardless of the film genre, were professionals: physicians, professors, military officers, and wealthy patriarchs. This includes roles across his forty years in silent and sound movies. One of his most memorable roles remains his character of Marcus Schouler in an adaptation of the Frank Norris novel McTeague. With a movie title of Greed (1925) the film proved to be one of director Erich von Stroheim's most acclaimed silent screen works. In this film Hersholt enacted a part that shared prominence with two other leads played by Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts. He received parts in such important twenties movies as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), and Abie's Irish Rose (1928). In the sound film Jean Hersholt would continue playing professionals as a good share of his acting assignments, especially medical doctors. For example, he played a physician in a screen adaptation of the stage drama by playwright Sidney Kingsley, Men in White (1934). Two years later, in The Country Doctor, he depicted a doctor who delivered multiple births —a story of the real-life Canadian Dionne quintuplets. He would play a physician, Dr. Christian, in a popular radio series starting in 1937. Then he would enact this character for a series of six movies. Hersholt became noted not only for his acting of humanitarian physicians, but also for his contributions to a number of humanitarian causes. The Motion Picture Academy established a yearly Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He received an Oscar under this name in 1939 when the award was established. Filmography: Selected silent features — The Disciple (1915), Hell's Hinges (1916), Man of the Forest (1921), Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Stella Dallas (1925),

HINES, JOHNNY

149

Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925), Greed (1925), Abie's Irish Rose (1928). Selected sound features -Grand Hotel (1932), Men in White (1934), The Country Doctor (1936), Alexander's Ragtime Band (1939), Meet Dr. Christian (1939), The Courageous Dr. Christian (1940). Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994. Seigel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. New York: Avon Books, 1990.

HINES, JOHNNY. Born John Hines July 25, 1897, in Golden, Colorado. Died October 24,1970, in Los Angeles, California. Film actor, writer. The success of a two-reel Torchy comedy series gave Johnny Hines the popularity to star in a number of features. These humorous shorts were based on a character created in short stories by Sewell Ford. Nearly every vehicle for Hines reflected the breezy, likable boy-next-door character that filled magazines and popular, potboiler novels of the decade. In the twenties, this comedian acted in many features with titles that reflected the nature of the leading figure: Burn 'Em Up Barnes (1921), Sure Fire Flint (1922), Luck (1923), The Speed Spook (1924), and The Early Bird (1925). The devil-may-care protagonist in Burn 'Em Up Barnes becomes addicted to racing at great speeds in almost any location. And, of course, there is somewhat of a reformation of this charming fellow through the love of the banker's daughter. An advertisement in The Film Year Book 1925 makes capital of the exemplary nature of Johnny Hines' screen portraits. A promotional pitch reads that his character "typifies the American Go-getter," and announces that the comedian's films offer "clean, smart, wholesome comedy that will be an inspiration to the youth of the land" (Danneburg, Joseph, ed. Film Year Book 1925. New York: The Film Daily, 1925, p. 192). This was the type of public relations statement studios used to promote other light comedians, Douglas MacLean and Charles Ray. The humor of these genteel comedians has lost much that may have promoted genteel laughter in the 1920s. Part of the reason is the fact that the humor is topical and tied to the manners of the decade. Harold Lloyd and even Buster Keaton would use some popular fiction traits of the person striving for social or financial success, but would not embrace the material — instead, they lampooned this type of fiction. Filmography: Selected silent features - The Cub (1915), Tillie Wakes Up (1917), Yankee Pluck (1917), Burn 'Em Up Barnes (1921), Sure Fire Flint (1922), Luck (1923), The Speed Spook (1924), Conductor 1492 (1924), The Early Bird (1925), The Live Wire (1925), The Brown Derby (1926), Home Made (1927), The Wright Idea (1928).

150

HOLT, JACK

Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Johnny Hines," Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing Company, Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. "Johnny Hines." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

HOLT, JACK. Born Charles John Holt in Winchester, Virginia, May 31, 1888. Died in West Los Angeles, California, January 18,1951. Film actor. Both Jack Holt and Richard Dix were silent screen actors who played a variety of roles in careers that extended into the sound era of the movies. Both carved a spot as Western heroes; however, they also appeared in sophisticated comedies, domestic dramas and adventure melodramas. Holt, more than Dix, became a Western star in the mid-twenties playing heroes in a number of adaptations of Zane Grey's fiction, mostly popular novels in a western environment. Holt graduated from minor roles when he became a lead performer in a 1916 Western serial called Liberty. By 1919 he had appeared in a variety of roles, playing in seven films that year, which ranged from the sympathetic leads to negative supporting portraits. The scope of these films ranged from domestic stories and romantic man-meets-woman to adventure tales. With a horseman background in his native state of Virginia plus his cowpunching in Oregon, Holt began receiving leading roles in such Westerns as North of the Rio Grande (1922). An unnamed New York Times critic wrote, "Jack Holt, as the hero, shows himself a splendid horseman — unless someone doubles for him in the riding scenes, which doesn't seem to be the case" (May 15,1922, p. 20). Some of his most important Westerns of the twenties were Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924) and the 1925 films The Light of the Western Stars, The Thundering Herd, and Wild Horse Mesa, plus the 1926 Born to the West-all works based on a Grey novel or short story. Beside adventures in the old west, Holt appeared in melodramas tied to adventures in the sea and air: Sea Horses (1926), Submarine (1928), plus Frank Capra's early sound films Flight (1929) and Dirigible (1931). The actor went on to play in a number of adventure melodramas. During the 1940s and into the early 1950s, he returned to the western as a character actor instead of the heroic roles he played in the twenties. His son and daughter, Tim and Jennifer Holt, also received recognition in western films. Filmography: Selected silent films — Liberty-Daughter of the USA [a serial] (1916), The Marriage Ring (1918), The Squaw Man (1918), A Midnight Romance (1919), Victory (1919), Midsummer Madness (1920), The Call of the North (1921), The Lost Romance (1921), North of the Rw Grande (1922), While Satan Sleeps (1922), The

HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, THE

151

Marriage Maker (1923), The Lone Wolf (1924), Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), The Light of Western Stars (1925), The Thundering Herd (1925), Wild Horse Mesa (1925), Born to the West (1926), Forlorn River (1926), Sea Horses (1926), Avalanche (1928), Submarine (1928). Selected sound films -Flight (1929), Dirigible (1931), War Correspondent (1932), T/ze Lfff/esf Rebe/ (1935), San Francisco (1936), Car Peop/e (1942), They Were Expendable (1945), T/ze Wild Frontier (1947), T/ze Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Across the Wide Missouri (1951). Selected Bibliography: Buscombe, Edward, editor. The BFI Companion to the Western. New York: De Capo Press, 1988. Eyes, Allen. The Western. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1975.

HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, THE (1923). Historical drama. Directed by Wallace Worsley; with Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Ernest Torrence, Norman Kerry, Raymond Hatton, Brandon Hurst, Tully Marshall, Nigel de Brulier, Kate Lester, Gladys Brockwell, Edwin Wallock, John Cossar, Harry L. Van Meter, Eulalie Jensen, Winnifred Bryson, Nicolai de Ruiz, William Parke; screenplay by Edward T. Lowe. In fifteenth-century Paris, Jehan, the evil brother of an archdeacon, takes an interest in Esmeralda, a gypsy dancing girl who is the ward of the powerful Clopin, leader of the city's underworld of beggars and thieves. Jehan orders Quasimodo, deformed bell ringer at Notre Dame Cathedral, to abduct the girl, unwittingly setting into motion a sequence of events that will build to a frenzied climax out of his control. Lon Chaney's amazing performance and unforgettable makeup in the title role, combined with Universal's elaborate production values, give this version of Hunchback a scope and power that hold up well against several later remakes. Despite its title, the story in this version is less about the hunchback than the social-political conditions of the period. Veteran character actor Ernest Torrence, as Clopin, is often the main focus of the film, even with drastic cutting of his scenes after the premiere and roadshow release. The sound versions, most notable of which is the 1939 Charles Laughton film, would concentrate more on the hunchback character. A 1917 version of the Victor Hugo novel starred Theda Bara as Esmeralda and was released as The Darling of Paris.

I INCE, THOMAS H. Born November 6,1881, in Newport, Rhode Island. Died November 20, 1924, in Beverly Hills, California. Producer, director, writer, actor. Thomas Harper Ince was instrumental in founding the studio system of assembly-line film production, noted for its large amount of advance planning and high production values. The numerous films he produced were noted for their realistic touches, serious subject material, and superior production values. Talents he cultivated included William S. Hart, Charles Ray, Reginald Barker, Jack Conway, Frank Borzage, and Fred Niblo. He was born into a theatrical family, both his parents actors on the road. He and his brothers John and Ralph (both of whom also later went into film) began acting on stage as children. From 1906 he acted occasionally in films and in 1910 started directing for Carl Laemmle's IMP company. The following year he went to work for the New York Motion Picture Company's Los Angeles studio, where he made a large number of Westerns and hired a complete Wild West Show that provided him with genuine cowboys, Indians, and props as well as horses and buffalo. In less than a year he found he could not direct all of the pictures he wanted to make by himself, so he started training directors to follow the detailed scripts and schedules he continued to prepare. Ince personally supervised the production of all of his films and finally stopped directing them himself after making Civilization (1916). From 1915 to 1918 he was one corner of the Triangle Film Corporation, which he helped organize, along with D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett. That company's original, short-lived mission was to have each of the most famous directors in the country produce a film for a three-picture prestige program that would be shown in specially chosen theatres at the advanced prices charged for

INCE, THOMAS H.

153

roadshow attractions like The Birth of a Nation. Almost immediately, Triangle found it could not convince theatres to play what the exhibitors considered "standard product" under those conditions, although many would still book the Triangle programs one film at a time. Griffith and Sennett wound up supervising films the Ince way, in addition to their own directing projects, and quit the company in 1917. Ince left Triangle to build his own studio in 1918, forming an independent releasing company the following year with several other producers and directors, and merging with First National in 1922. His sudden and mysterious death after becoming unconscious while on a weekend yachting party with William Randolph Hearst has never been completely explained. Scandalous rumors implying a murder prompted an investigation, but no evidence ever was found to support them. He officially died of heart failure resulting from acute indigestion. Selected Filmography as Director: Little Nell's Tobacco (1910), Her Darkest Hour (1911), The Indian Massacre (1912), The Deserter (1912), Custer's Last Raid (1912), The Invaders (1912), The Mosaic Law (1913), The Drummer of the Eighth (1913), Days of''49 (1913), The Battle of Gettysburg (1914), A Relic of Old Japan (1914), The Golden Goose (1914), One of the Discard (1914), The Last of the Line (1915), The Devil (1915), The Alien (1915), Civilization (1916). Selected Filmography as Producer: The Military Judas (1913), The Gringo (1914), The Wrath of the Gods (1914), The Gangsters and the Girl (1914), The Typhoon (1914), The Bargain (1914), The Italian (1915), The Reward (1915), On the Night Stage (1915), Rumplestiltskin (1915), The Darkening Trail (1915), The Coward (1915), The Disciple (1915), Peggy (1916), D'Artagnan (1916), Hell's Hinges (1916), The Aryan (1916), The Deserter (1916), Paddy O'Hara (1917), The Clodhopper (1917), Golden Rule Kate (1917), Her Fighting Chance (1917), The Narrow Trail (1917), Blue Blazes Rawden (1918), The Vamp (1918), The Midnight Patrol (1918), The False Faces (1919), The Home Breaker (1919), The Busher (1919), Behind the Door (1920), Wagon Tracks (1919), Dangerous Hours (1920), Sex (1920), Homer Comes Home (1920), Home Spun Folks (1920), Lying Lips (1921), Beau Revel (1921), Hail the Woman (1921), Skin Deep (1922), Lorna Doone (1922), The Hottentot (1922), Soul of the Beast (1923), Human Wreckage (1923), Anna Christie (1923), The Marriage Cheat (1924), Barbara Frietchie (1924), Idle Tongues (1924), Enticement (1925), Percy (1925), Playing With Souls (1925). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

154

INGRAM, REX

INGRAM, REX. Born January 15, 1893, in Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland. Died July 21,1950, in Hollywood California. Director, screenwriter, actor. A strong visual artist who had studied sculpture at Yale, Rex Ingram brought a personal style to his films that generally appealed more to critics than to the moviegoing public, his imagery and production values often overpowering the story. He began his film career acting, writing, and designing sets for Edison and Vitagraph in 1913. By 1915 he was doing stories and screenplays for Fox and started directing as well the following year for Universal. Ingram's work came to the attention of powerful Metro screenwriter June Mathis. She recommended he direct The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and its huge critical and popular acclaim in 1921 gave him the power to produce his own films. However, in 1924 the studio passed him over when preparing to produce its immense spectacle, Ben-Hur (1925). That same year he edited the 40-reel version of his friend Erich von Stroheim's Greed (1925) down to 18 reels, but it, too was later cut to 10, ironically by Mathis. Ingram then set up his own studio in France, continuing to make films for release by MGM. His productions tended to have a European sensibility, a slower pace and tragic themes that made them hard to sell to American audiences. Much of The Magician (1926), especially its last portion, looks very much like the Universal horror films of the 1930s, themselves heavily influenced by German camerawork and set design. Ingram retired from filmmaking after one sound production, filmed in Morocco. Besides The Magician, his reputation rests mainly on the visual beauty of The Conquering Power (1921), The Prisoner ofZenda (1922), Scaramouche (1923), and Mare Nostrum (1926), but his highest achievement is arguably The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Filmography: Features — Should a Mother Tell (1915), The Song of Hate (1915), The Wonderful Adventure (1915), The Blindness of Devotion (1915), A Woman's Past (1915), The Great Problem (1916), Broken Fetters (1916), The Chalice of Sorrows (1916), Black Orchids (1917), The Reward of the Faithless (1917), The Pulse of Life (1917), The Flower of Doom (1917), The Little Terror (1917), His Robe of Honor (1918), Humdrum Brown (1918), The Day She Paid (1919), Under Crimson Skies (1920), Shore Acres (1920), Hearts Are Trumps (1920), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Conquering Power (1921), Turn to the Right (1922), The Prisoner ofZenda (1922), Trifling Women (1922), Where the Pavement Ends (1923), Scaramouche (1923), The Arab (1924), Mare Nostrum (1926), The Magician (1926), The Garden of Allah (1927), The Three Passions (1929), Baroud (1933). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

INTOLERANCE

155

Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. O'Leary, Liam. Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema. Le Giornate del Cinema Muto/British Film Institute, 1993. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

INTOLERANCE (1916). Epic drama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, Miriam Cooper, Constance Talmadge, Elmer Clifton, Alfred Pa get, Seena Owen, Margery Wilson, Spottiswoode Aitken, Josephine Crowell, Howard Gaye, Lillian Gish; screenplay by D. W. Griffith; titles by Anita Loos. Four separate stories dealing with intolerance are woven together, each developing and reaching a climax simultaneously. A recurring image of a woman rocking a cradle appears between many segments as a linking device. The modern story (later released separately as The Mother and the Law) follows the lives of a working-class boy and girl. When the boy is later falsely convicted of murder, the young wife must race against time to prove his innocence. The Babylonian story chronicles the fall of Babylon to Cyrus of Persia, from the point of view of a mountain girl who is infatuated with Babylon's prince. She discovers that their own high priest is plotting with the enemy to overthrow the empire and tries vainly to warn the prince before the attack. The French story depicts Catherine de Medici's plans to massacre the Protestant Huguenots by royal decree in 1572. Against this background a beautiful Huguenot girl prepares to marry her sweetheart. The Judean story is a brief summary of the life and death of Jesus Christ at the hands of the jealous religious establishment. In October of 1914, while he was still completing The Birth of a Nation, Griffith began a short feature entitled The Mother and the Law. By the time it was finished, the epic Birth of a Nation was already a smash hit and this new little social melodrama seemed too minor to be his next release. Griffith then envisioned a parallel sequence telling a grand, tragic tale of ancient Babylon, possibly inspired by a visit to the San Francisco Exposition and the box office success of the Italian spectacle Cabiria. As the gigantic sets were being constructed, he decided to add two more sequences and filmed the French and Biblical portions. The result was the three-hour epic Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages. Production stretched to nearly two years including the editing, and Griffith constantly reshot, revised, and rearranged scenes, even after its September 5, 1916 premiere. It remained essentially a "work in progress" until late February of

156

IRON HORSE, THE

1917. The film was a qualified hit when first released, but its attendance started to drop during 1917, due evidently more to a growing pro war sentiment that conflicted with its message of pacifism than to its unusual storytelling style. Numerous expensively mounted touring companies, with traveling orchestras and effects crews instead of a regular release, kept Intolerance from making the profit Griffith had hoped for. In 1919 Griffith released the modern and Babylonian stories as separate films, shooting additional scenes, revising the wording of subtitles, and further reediting sequences. Two years later he reassembled the original negative for a British release, and revised it once more in 1926 for its 10th anniversary. No two surviving original prints of Intolerance are exactly alike, and study of the film is a fascinating exercise in observing an artist at work. Despite some dated elements and sketchy character development, Intolerance still has an amazing impact. Its modern story (especially in its expanded two-hour incarnation as The Mother and the Law) is the most powerful of the four interlocking dramas. The film's impressive editing and art direction are its strong points, and its structure remains ahead of its time even today. IRON HORSE, THE (1924). Western. Directed by John Ford; with George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Fred Kohler, James Gordon, James Welch, Charles Edward Bull, George Waggner, Jack Padjan and Chief White Spear; screenplay by Charles Kenyon; story by Charles Kenyon, John Russell; titles by Charles Darnton. The film chronicles of the western movement in the United States became an important subject for the movie industry in the 1920s. One of the most important works of the decade appeared when director John Ford created an epic depiction of the building of the transcontinental railroad. A vital and dynamic event in nineteenth-century history, it featured one crew of railroad workers starting in the west and another crew in the east. The goal of the venture was to join the country with an important link for personal and commercial travel. The completion of this feat occurred on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah. The film drama, The Iron Horse, with its epic design incorporates an elaborate use of time, space, personalities, and spectacle. With the complex plotting of screenwriter Charles Kenyon and the help of John Russell's original story, the tale starts in a time before the Civil War. The initial portion is the idea of such a railroad spanning the nation and being developed by a visionary named David Brandon whose son, Davy Brandon, would carry out this dream when his father is killed. One of the features of The Iron Horse is the simulation of the indomitable pioneer spirit during the western trek to settle the continent. The

ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL?

157

encounter of many hardships and obstacles in the race to complete the difficult task is helped by the visual skills of a young John Ford — especially his depiction of the minor roles, the laborers working on the train tracks. The principle players, such as George O'Brien in the role of Davy Brandon, are saddled with a melodramatic plot of revenge for the father's death and a triangle love affair of another man and Davy with the leading woman role, Miriam Marsh, played by Madge Bellamy. A precursor to this epic, The Covered Wagon (1923), presented a similar problem by trying to handle a worthy national history theme weighted down by human interest material that had already been overworked in the stage drama of the late nineteenth century. Under the direction of James Cruze, this work also had the same merits of The Iron Horse: realistic location shooting and some striking visual scenes of the trek to the far west. William S. Hart, one of the leading Western stars of this period, would also show the scope and power of the Oklahoma land rush with exceptional visual depiction in his 1925 Tumbleweeds. ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL? (1924). Drama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Carol Dempster, Neil Hamilton, Erville Alderson, Helen Lowell, Marcia Harris, Frank Puglia, Lupino Lane, Hans von Schlettow, Paul Rehkopf, Robert Scholz, Walter Plimmer Jr.; screenplay by D. W. Griffith, based on story by Major Geoffrey Moss. In a Berlin suburb following World War I, an extended family of Polish refugees struggles to survive amidst the widespread famine, crippling unemployment, and rampant inflation. The elders discourage Inga and her sweetheart Paul from marrying under such conditions. Paul, after recovering from war injuries, finds a job that provides him with a small garden plot that would yield plenty of food for the whole family. However, the young couple must contend with roving bands of hungry and displaced workers who attack anyone they believe is profiteering from food. Griffith's last film of major importance is not a large scale epic or action-packed melodrama, but rather a simple tale of humanity. Its avowed intent is to portray how the power of love can conquer despair even against overwhelming misfortune. Isn't Life Wonderful? was filmed on location in Germany during one of the worst depressions in history and vividly depicts the situation of the common citizens. The film suffers from Griffith's fondness for romantic moralizing and overly descriptive intertitles. It also has a slower pace that sometimes seems European in style but more often seems to linger on certain scenes unnecessarily, especially in its first half. Beneath its faults, however, lies a moving portrait of common people scarred by a war they did not create, driven to extremes of behavior by distant actions of a privileged few. There are ech-

158

ISN'T LIFE WONDERFUL?

oes of the modern story from Intolerance in its elements of social commentary, although the conclusion of Isn't Life Wonderful? is more simplistic and naively sentimental, particularly the tagged-on epilogue Griffith was forced to add. The German production by G. W. Pabst, Die freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street), which was released less than a year later, is a more bitter and more powerful study of the same material, but Griffith's work manages to present a similar message in a framework designed around his irrepressible romanticism and optimism. An interesting minor feature of Isn't Life Wonderful? is the presence of comedian Lupino Lane, star of numerous short comedies, in a semidramatic role as a displaced itinerant entertainer. His primary function is to provide comic relief, yet he gives the part serious overtones that impart an uneasy edge to the humor.

J JAZZ SINGER, THE (1927). Drama. Directed by Alan Crosland; with Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer, Bobby Gordon, Otto Lederer, William Demarest, Anders Randolf, Roscoe Karns, Myrna Loy; screenplay by Al Cohn, from play by Samson Raphaelson. The son of an orthodox New York Jewish cantor prefers singing ragtime over his father's objections and runs away from home to become a successful entertainer under the name of Jack Robin. When he returns to New York years later for his Broadway debut, coincidentally on Yom Kippur eve, he learns that his father is too ill to sing at the evening service. His mother begs him to sing at the synagogue in his place, and he is torn between family loyalty and the most important night of his career. The Jazz Singer has gained a reputation as the first "talking" picture, but it is primarily a silent film and was designed as one. Warner Brothers chose to use its new Vitaphone sound-on-disk process to provide a prerecorded musical score and include several synchronized songs by popular singer Al Jolson. Even though synchronized scores for features and all-talking short subjects had been around for more than a year with little effect on silent film production, The Jazz Singer made a huge impact on audiences. This was due largely to Jolson's charismatic personality and the fact that he ad-libbed spoken introductions and bits of dialogue in many of the song sequences. It is obvious that Eugenie Besserer (playing his mother) is uncomfortable that he is talking to her when he is supposed to be singing, but she goes along with his ad-libs as best she can. When the old cantor (Warner Oland) hears his son talking, playing, and singing jazz in the house, he enters the room saying an audible, "Stop!" This electrifying moment of dramatic tension before the film switches back to the silent mode left viewers with a craving for more. As

160

JOYCE, ALICE

drama, The Jazz Singer was and remains a standard sentimental tearjerker about choosing between duty and desire, religion and entertainment, family and career. It is no worse and not particularly better than any other film on the same theme (including its remakes) but retains a certain power from Jolson's energetic performance. His spoken line, "You ain't heard no thin' yet," was to be virtually a battle call for the "talkie" revolution. Ironically George Jessell, who had starred in the stage version, turned down the film because he thought it might hurt his stage career. JOYCE, ALICE. Born October 1, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri. Died October 9,1955, in Hollywood, California. Actress. Referred to as "the Madonna of the Screen," Alice Joyce had a cool beauty and dignified demeanor that brought a depth to her performances. Most often seen today in her mature roles of the late 1920s, such as Dancing Mothers and Beau Geste (both 1926), she was a leading lady in more than 150 films between 1910 and 1920. After working as a telephone operator and model while still a teenager, Joyce started acting in short films for Kalem in 1910, making her feature debut in 1914 with A Celebrated Case and The School for Scandal. These were rare excursions of the Kalem company into multireel productions, and she continued starring in shorts until Vitagraph and Kalem merged in 1916. She had no film credits in 1916 until Vitagraph's December release of Whom the Gods Destroy and thereafter appeared in several feature films per year for Vitagraph through 1921. After a year with no movie roles, she made one film each at independent companies in 1923 and 1924, then started appearing as attractive middle-aged women in quite a few mid-twenties productions, tapering off again towards the end of the decade and into the early talkie era. Interestingly she played opposite George Arliss in both the 1923 silent and 1930 sound versions of The Green Goddess. Joyce was married for a time to actor Tom Moore and later to director Clarence Brown. Selected Filmography: The Miser's Child (1910), The Engineer's Daughter (1911), Freed From Suspicion (1912), Jean of the Jail (1912), A Bolt From the Sky (1913), The Octoroon (1913), Nina of the Fheatre (1914), A Celebrated Case (1914), The School for Scandal (1914), The White Goddess (1915), Whom the Gods Destroy (1916), The Courage of Silence (1917), Within the Law (1917), Womanhood, the Glory of the Nation (1917), The Question (1917), Richard, the Brazen (1917), An Alabaster Box (1917), The Fettered Woman (1917), The Woman Between Friends (1918), To the Highest Bidder (1918), The Song of the Soul (1918), Triumph of the Weak (1918), Find the Woman (1918), The Business of Life (1918), Everybody's Girl (1918), The Lion and the Mouse (1919), The Cambric Mask (1919), The Third Degree (1919), The Spark Divine (1919), The Winchester Woman (1919), Slaves of Pride (1920), The Sporting Duchess (1920), Dollars and the Woman (1920), The Prey (1920), The Vice of Fools (1920), Cousin Kate

JOYCE, ALICE

161

(1921), Her Lord and Master (1921), The Scarab Ring (1921), The Inner Chamber (1921), The Green Goddess (1923), White Man (1924), Daddy's Gone a-Hunting (1925), The Little French Girl (1925), Headlines (1925), The Home Maker (1925), Stella Dallas (1925), Mannequin (1926), Beau Geste (1926), So's Your Old Man (1926), The Ace of Cads (1926), Sorrell and Son (1927), The Noose (1928), 13 Washington Square (1928), The Squall (1929), The Green Goddess (1930), Song of My Heart (1930), He Kzzei(7 Women (1930), Midnight Mystery (1930). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

K KEATON, BUSTER. Born Joseph Francis Keaton in Piqua, Kansas, on October 4, 1895. Died February 1, 1966, in Woodland Hills, California. Vaudeville actor; film actor, writer, director. Even when he was in vaudeville with his father and mother in an act billed as "The Three Keatons," Buster was a hard worker. As a child star he was thrown about—upset and tumbled —in a comic "knock-about" sketch. It is reported that the famous escape artist and magician, Harry Houdini, gave the boy Keaton his nickname from what appeared to be a bone-breaking routine for this child. So "Buster" soon substituted for Joe. For this unusual act, father and son practiced long and hard to get the best gags from its slapstick material. Buster's acrobatics with his parents in vaudeville received so much attention that he eventually obtained top billing throughout their travels. When Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle developed his own film studio, he lured Keaton away from the vaudeville stage and used him as a support comedian for his leading roles, starting with The Butcher Boy in 1917. Most important of all, Arbuckle taught the stage comedian all the phases of the film medium: writing, directing, and acting in the mode of the motion pictures. After sixteen two-reelers with his mentor, Buster starred in his own two-reel comedies, starting in 1920. He moved to features as a lead with nearly complete control of his films in 1923 with Three Ages and Our Hospitality. Keaton produced his intriguing comedies in the 1920s, with much of his obsession for gadgets employed in their creation. Many of his tworeel films and his features focused on machines. In Our Hospitality and The General (1926) the locomotive seemed to become a coactor. The Navigator (1924) had an ocean liner that could have stolen scenes from Keaton

KID, THE

163

if the comedian hadn't been so closely enmeshed with "the machine." Each of the vehicles he used provided innovative gags — displaying the imaginative development of sight gags and his deft execution of physical humor, both broad slapstick actions and subtle bodily movements. No thorough analysis of Keaton's acting and the way it affected his works can overlook his acrobatic gags. He was surely the superior comedian in this activity (with Lloyd running a close second). Buster was daring in executing some of the most spectacular comic feats of all times. As far as we know, he never used a double. He could be swept from the top of a train to fall on the tracks in Sherlock, Jr. (1924) —only to jump up as if not harmed. In the 1928 Steamboat Bill, Jr. a hurricane brings down the two-ton front of a house that collapses over him like a giant fly swatter, with only inches clearance — since, fortunately, an open second-story window saves him. As a writer and director of his works, Keaton contributed greatly to the perfection of the silent screen feature comedy. Along with Harold Lloyd, he designed the progressive dramatic action of this genre of the 1920s as it ascended to its greatest height. Filmography: Selected shorts -The Butcher Boy (1917), A Country Hero (1917), The Bell Boy (1918), One Week (1920), The Boat (1921), Cops (1922), The Balloonatic (1923). Silent features - Three Ages (1923), Our Hospitality (1923), Sherlock, Jr. (1924), The Navigator (1924), Seven Chances (1925), Go West (1925), Battling Butler (1926), The General (1926), College (1927), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), The Cameraman (1928), Spite Marriage (1929). Bibliography: Blesh, Rudi. Keaton. New York: Macmillan, 1966. Meade, Marion. Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995. Rapf, Joanna, and Gary L. Green. Buster Keaton: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995.

KID, THE (1921). Comedy. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Chaplin, Jackie Coogan, Edna Purviance, Chuck Reisner and Tom Wilson; screenplay by Charles Chaplin. In his first feature with total control of the script, direction, and the leading role, Chaplin achieved a depth of character that had not been witnessed in his one- and two-reel works. Although he had a leading role in Mack Sennett's 1914 Tillie's Punctured Romance, there was little character development—only a caricature of a city slicker con man that Chaplin created before he moved to the little tramp character. Fortune must have smiled on the director-writer-actor when he conceived the idea of the little fellow adopting an abandoned baby who grew into the

164

KID BROTHER, THE

Kid. And, this five-year-old grew into a miniature version of the little tramp. In The Kid there are a number of moments and total scenes that show the surrogate father exhibiting strong love for the orphan that he takes under his wing. These portions reveal serious scenes that are distinctive in a Chaplin feature. Sympathy created for the leading characters in his films has led to evaluators' views that the comedian uses this serious dimension more effectively than any other comedian in the 1920s silent humorous movie. Better than he had ever done before, in The Kid Chaplin displayed a clown who could exhibit the slapstick of Harlequin with the moonstruck sadness of Pierrot, theater clowns from the eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury stage. The fusion of these two clowns' traits, however, was not complete until Chaplin created The Gold Rush in 1925. KID BROTHER, THE (1927). Comedy. Directed by Lewis Milestone and Ted Wilde; with Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, Walter James, Leo Willis, Olin Francis, Constantine Romanoff; screenplay by John Grey, Tom Crizer, Ted Wilde. The meek youngest son of a county sheriff becomes entangled in events surrounding the arrival of a traveling medicine show and plans of the town bully to steal public funds. He must use his ingenuity to overcome his shyness, defeat his foes, and win the love of the young woman who runs the medicine show. Harold Lloyd's contribution and his stature as a creator of comedy films will probably not be measured by his sound pictures even though many of his works of the thirties are superior to the average movie fare of the period. Grandma's Boy, Safety Last, and The Freshman, created in the years of 1922, 1923, and 1925, remain as the best of his films from the decade of the golden age of the silent film comedy. Now that his 1927 work, The Kid Brother, has been rediscovered that film also has regained the status that it held the year of its creation — since it proved to be a popular and critical success. His silent films measure up to the best of Buster Keaton's; for example, Sherlock, Jr. (1924) and The General (1927). Some critics believe Lloyd's films are even a match with Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921) and The Gold Rush (1925). Comedian Lloyd, who had full control of the content in his feature work in the 1920s, classified his films that had a specific focus: some concentrating on situations, others on character. Of course, both aspects come into play in most comic film dramas. While his Safety Last (1923) and Hot Water (1924) focus more on situation comedy, The Kid Brother, like the actor's first feature, Grandma's Boy (1922), stresses character hu-

KING, HENRY

165

mor. In both of these two character-based films a meek young man discovers he can conquer his shy, withdrawn traits by aggressively tackling his repressed desires for a girlfriend. As a result of this switch he can even physically defeat a rival and a villain. In The Kid Brother the comedian provides an effective integration of sympathetic facets of his protagonist with the comic traits, a combination that rivaled Charles Chaplin's to achieve comedy. KING, HENRY. Born January 24, 1886, in Christianburg, Virginia. Died June 25,1982, in Toluca Lake, California. Director, producer, actor. Although Henry King had a successful career making sound films for more than 30 years including Jesse James (1939), The Song of Bernadette (1943), and The Gunfighter (1950) among numerous others, his silent career was also highly distinguished, producing at least one masterpiece in Tol'able David (1921) and such other notable films as Romola (1924), Stella Dallas (1925), and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926). King acted in theatre, vaudeville, and burlesque as a young man, with his earliest film credits starting in 1913 for the Lubin Company. By the end of the year he was working for the Horkheimer brothers at Balboa. He starred in his first feature-length film for them late in 1915 and began directing some of his films, including a series of Baby Marie Osborne features in 1916-17. Later in 1917 he moved to the American Film Manufacturing Company, and gradually phased out of acting over the next few years in favor of directing. King started his own production company, Inspiration Pictures, with actor Richard Barthelmess and producer Charles Duell in 1921, and all three of them worked on their first production, Tol'able David. King filmed it on location in the mountains of Virginia near where he grew up, imbuing the film with a strongly felt respect for the rural American lifestyle and values that came through in so many of his later films. In 1923 and 1924 he went on location to Italy for the filming of The White Sister and Romola. These two visually impressive productions treated his inspirational themes in non-American settings, the latter during the Italian Renaissance. Stella Dallas (1925) proved to be another outstanding critical and commercial success, and The Winning of Barbara Worth the following year helped make a star of young actor Gary Cooper. King easily adapted to making sound pictures. His Over the Hill (1931), another powerful piece of Americana, is as fluid and polished as his best silent work and stylistically looks as if it could have been filmed ten or twenty years later. King directed films well into his seventies, retiring after Tender Is the Night (1962) and living until age 96. Filmography: Silent features — Shoidd a Wife Forgive? (1915), Little Mary Sunshine (1916), Pay Dirt (1916), The Power of Evil (1916), Shadows and Sunshine (1916), Joy

166

KING OF KINGS, THE

and the Dragon (1916), Twin Kiddies (1917), The Devil's Bait (1917), Told at Twilight (1917), Sunshine and Gold (1917), Souls in Pawn (1917), The Mainspring (1917), The Bride's Silence (1917), The Climber (1917), Southern Pride (1917), A Game of Wits (1917), The Mate of the Sally Ann (1917), Social Briars (1918), Beauty and the Rogue (1918), Powers That Pray (1918), The Locked Heart (1918), Hearts or Diamonds (1918), Up Romance Road (1918), All the World to Nothing (1918), Hobbs in a Hurry (1918), When a Man Rides Alone (1918), Where the West Begins (1919), Brass Buttons (1919), Some Liar (1919), A Sporting Chance (1919), This Hero Stuff (1919), Six Feet Four (1919), 23V2 Hours Leave (1919), A Fugitive From Matrimony (1919), Haunting Shadows (1919), The White Dove (1920), Uncharted Channels (1920), One Hour Before Dawn (1920), Dice of Destiny (1920), Help Wanted-Male (1920), When We Were 21 (1921), The Mistress of Shenstone (1921), Salvage (1921), The Sting of the Lash (1921), Tol'able David (1921), The Seventh Day (1922), Sonny (1922), The Bond Boy (1922), Fury (1923), T/ze I/VMe Sfster (1923), Romola (1924), Sackcloth and Scarlet (1925), Any Woman (1925), Stella Dallas (1925), Partners Again (1926), T/ze Winning of Barbara Worth (1926), Tne Magic F/ame (1927), The Woman Disputed (1928), She Goes to War (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane. " H e n r y King." The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ ClassicFilms/ BTC/ > Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. KING OF KINGS, THE (1927). Biblical drama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with H. B. Warner, Dorothy Cumming, Ernest Torrence, Joseph Schildkraut, James Neill, Joseph Striker, Robert Edeson, Jacqueline Logan, Rudolph Schildkraut, Sam De Grasse, Victor Varconi, Montagu Love, Wiliam Boyd, George Siegmann, May Robson; screenplay by Jeanie Macpherson. Courtesan Mary Magdalene is upset that her lover, Judas, is spending more time with a charismatic carpenter than with her, but when she meets Jesus in person she changes her life. A small boy named Mark is also attracted to this gentle man who has a crowd of followers. The major events of the canonical gospels are depicted, from Christ's preaching to his arrest, death, resurrection, and ascension. The "gospel according to DeMille" as it is sometimes called, remains faithful to the spirit of the original text, using many direct quotes from

KISS FOR CINDERELLA, A

167

the King James translation, yet elaborates upon the characters enough to make the film a genuinely interesting story. The opening scene and the Resurrection were filmed in Technicolor. The film is perhaps overly reverent at times at the expense of plot or character development, especially compared with the vivid characterizations in the 1988 retelling, The Last Temptation of Christ, or the imaginative science-fiction reinterpretation in the 1999 fantasy The Matrix. DeMille's film nevertheless plays more like a drama than simply a series of events. Many other biblical films, especially silent ones, are more like tableaux or reenacted episodes, rather than coherent, motivated narratives. A good example of this static type of production is the 1912 Kalem feature, From the Manger to the Cross, which relies heavily upon the viewer's familiarity with the story. Because of its use by missionaries, it has been estimated that DeMille's King of Kings has been seen by 800 million people, more than have ever seen a single film before. However, objections from various religious leaders influenced DeMille to reedit the picture shortly after it opened. The general release version that is currently available runs about a half-hour shorter than the one that premiered in 1927. KISS FOR CINDERELLA, A (1926). Fantasy drama. Directed by Herbert Brenon; with Betty Bronson, Tom Moore, Esther Ralston, Henry Vibart, Dorothy Cumming, Ivan Simpson, Dorothy Walters, Flora Finch, Juliet Brenon, Marilyn McLain, Pattie Coakley, Mary Christian; screenplay by Willis Goldbeck, Townsend Martin; from play by James M. Barrie. During World War I, a young girl works as an underpaid cleaning woman for an artist, but a policeman believes she is a spy when she allows a light to show during an air raid warning. Upon investigating he finds she cares for some even younger war orphans with a cheerful, optimistic attitude, despite their collective poverty. One winter night she falls asleep in the snow and dreams of a fairy tale existence, and is found near death when she awakens. Herbert Brenon's A Kiss For Cinderella is an even more engaging fantasy and certainly a more moving drama than his adaptation of Barrie's Peter Pan, also starring Betty Bronson. The sense of strangeness and mystery that begins the picture, combined with Bronson's compellingly odd character, has a fascination that holds attention until the end. The dream sequence is a charming representation of a poor child's fantasy. Although the ending seems somewhat of a letdown with its conventionality, the film as a whole is an offbeat gem.

L LA MARR, BARBARA. Born July 28, 1896, in North Yakima, Washington. Died February 2, 1926, in Altadena, California. Actress, writer. A beautiful vamp in films from 1920 to 1926, Barbara La Marr died at age 29 as a result of her fast-paced and overindulgent lifestyle, combined with addictions to both alcohol and painkilling drugs prescribed after an injury while making a movie. As a 14-year-old girl named Reatha Watson, she left home and found work as a burlesque dancer in Los Angeles. She was arrested for being underage but helped by newspaper columnist Adela Rogers St. John, who happened to be in the courtroom when she appeared before the judge. She continued to dance professionally, and began to write stories and poetry, but Mary Pickford told her she was "too beautiful" to stay behind the scenes, and recommended she act on the screen where her beauty and personality could be seen by more people. In 1920 she had several credits for original stories and story adaptations and finally appeared in front of the camera in Harriet and the Piper, released in September. La Marr then had a supporting role opposite Pickford's husband, Douglas Fairbanks in The Nut (1921) and appeared again in a major role in his The Three Musketeers later that year. She shot to stardom, acting with such notables as John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro, and Lon Chaney, but within another three years her health deteriorated drastically. She arranged with her close friend ZaSu Pitts to adopt her young son and died soon thereafter. Filmography: The Mother of His Children (1920), The Rose of Nome (1920), Harriet and the Piper (1920), The Little Grey Mouse (1920), The Land of Jazz (1920), The Flame of Youth (1920), The Nut (1921), Desperate Trails (1921), Three Musketeers (1921),

LANE, LUPINO

169

Arabian Love (1922), Domestic Relations (1922), The Prisoner ofZenda (1922), Trifling Women (1922), Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922), The Brass Bottle (1923), The Hero (1923), Poor Men's Wives (1923), Souls For Sale (1923), Saint Elmo (1923), Mary of the Movies (1923), Strangers of the Night (1923), The Eternal Struggle (1923), The Eternal City (1923), Thy Name Is Woman (1924), The White Moth (1924), Sandra (1924), My Husband's Wives (1924), T/ze Heart o/a Sz'ren (1925), The White Monkey (1925), The Girl from Montmartre (1926). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Barbara La M a r r / ' The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. LANE, LUPINO. Born Harry George Lupino June 16, 1892, in London, England. Died November 10, 1959, in London, England. Stage actor. Film actor, writer, director. British music hall comedians had the background necessary to become effective actors for the film studios in the United States. Two veterans of the Fred Karno Comedy Troupe, Charles Chaplin and Stan Laurel, achieved critical and popular success. Lupino Lane had only moderate recognition for his comic skills —some of which included amazing comic physical twists of his body. Besides his stage experience in his native country, Lane starred in short comedy films in England. In the United States he combined shorts with features. He made a few shorts for Fox in 1922, and from 1925 to 1929 had his own comedy production company where he made more than two dozen two-reel shorts released through Educational Pictures. Two of Lane's best features were a fivereel silent work, A Friendly Husband (1923), in which he played the leading harried husband and the sound feature with an important supporting role, The Love Parade (1929), directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Filmography: Selected shorts — The Fighting Dude (1925), His Private Life (1926), Naughty Boy (1927), Sword Points (1928), Roaming Romeo (1928), Only Me (1929), Good Night Nurse (1929). Selected silent features-A Friendly Husband (1923), Isn't Life Wonderful (1924), His Private Life (1928). Selected sound features - The Love Parade (1929), Golden Dawn (1930), Why Saps Leave Home (1932).

170

LANGDON, HARRY

Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Samuel Gill. Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

LANGDON, HARRY. Born June 15, 1884, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Died June 22, 1944, in Los Angles, California. Vaudeville actor; film actor, writer, director. Not as well regarded as a leading silent screen comedian as Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton, Harry Philmore Langdon nevertheless deserves a place in the king's row because of three top features: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), The Strong Man (1926), and Long Pants (1927). These films received popular and critical acclaim that gave the comedian his all-too-brief fame as a star. Part of the reason Langdon did not receive recognition in the silent period until these three films appeared was his late entrance as a film actor. Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton started in short films in the 1910s. Langdon had enjoyed a career in vaudeville for more than twenty-five years when Mack Sennett hired him in 1923. The comedian hit his stride when he became a leading actor for producer Hal Roach. With the help of director Harry Edwards and writer Frank Capra, he provided a style of acting that these creators understood, and they provided the material that gave Langdon his distinction as a silent screen comedian. In 1927 a New York Times reviewer wrote: "Mr. Langdon is still Charles Spenser Chaplin's sincerest flatterer. His short coat reminds one of Chaplin and now and again his foot work is like that of the great screen comedian." Other evaluators of the times compared him to Larry Semon and even saw, in his half hearted gestures, similarities to the acting style of comedienne ZaSu Pitts. While such observations have merit and some validity, they remain as oversimplifications. From a detailed study of Langdon's films, a person can note specific characteristics — characteristics that indicate a comic style linked with comic material tailored to his particular talents. The most obvious difference between Langdon's and Chaplin's characters is in mentality. Langdon falls into the class of naive, dim, or even "dumb" clowns. Most of the humor in his character springs from a childlike man who is lost in a sophisticated world. Unlike Chaplin's portrait, this simpleton seldom takes action; he is a sexless little fellow who concentrates on his bag of popcorn when a woman of ill repute makes eyes at him. Without a strong will, this frail creature evokes laughter and sympathy when he is pitted against physical and mental superiors. We chuckle at his intense curiosity as he examines objects such as machines, buildings,

LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE

171

and landscapes; or, animals, a very fat woman, or the beard of a dignified gentleman, with all the wide-eyed wonder of a four-year-old. This is certainly not Chaplin's character. Langdon's image is closer to the type of clown created by Stan Laurel. In fact, some awareness of the similarities led to an unsuccessful attempt to pair Langdon with Oliver Hardy in the 1939 Zenobia. Harry Langdon's career did not prosper with the coming of sound. He was more successful as a gag writer for Laurel and Hardy in the late 1930s. Filmography: Selected two-reel silent shorts — Picking Peaches (1924), The Luck of the Foolish (1924), All Night Long (1924), Saturday Afternoon (1926). Three-reel short— Soldier Man (1926). Silent features — Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), Ella Cinders (1926), The Strong Man (1926), Long Pants (1927), LIis First Flame (1927), Three's a Croivd (1927), The Chaser (1928), Heart Trouble (1928). Selected Bibliography: Kerr, Walter. The Silent Clowns. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. McCaffrey, Donald W. 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, London. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Schelly, William. Harry Langdon. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1982.

LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THE (1920). Historical drama. Directed by Maurice Tourneur, Clarence Brown; with Wallace Beery, Barbara Bedford, Albert Roscoe, Lillian Hall, Henry Woodward, James Gordon, George Hackathorne, Nelson McDowell, Harry Lorraine, Theodore Lerch, Jack F. McDonald; screenplay by Robert A. Dillon; from novel by James Fenimore Cooper. Two sisters travel to a fort where their father is commander during the French and Indian war, led by Magua, a renegade Indian feigning friendship. They come upon two Indians, Uncas and Chingachgook, and Hawkeye, a white scout who recognizes the renegade. He then flees, and one of the women becomes attracted to the dignified Uncas. Later the women are both captured by Magua, leading to confrontations, compromises, violence, and tragedy. Maurice Tourneur, renowned for the romanticism and visual beauty of his films, was injured during production and his assistant, Clarence Brown, wound up directing a large portion of The Last of the Mohicans. The Tourneur-Brown version of The Last of the Mohicans is quite faithful to its source novel and compares favorably with the ambitious 1992 remake. Wallace Beery, playing the villainous Magua, is striking. Tourneur and Brown do not shy from depicting the story's violence or tragic elements at a time when Hollywood preferred to rewrite classics for a more popular mass taste.

172

LAST WARNING, THE

LAST WARNING, THE (1929). Mystery. Directed by Paul Leni; with Laura La Plante, Montague Love, Roy D'Arcy, Margaret Livingston, John Boles, Burr Mclntosh, Mack Swain, Bert Roach, Slim Summervile, Fred Kelsey, Tom O'Brien; screenplay by Alfred A. Cohn; adapted by Alfread A. Cohn, Robert F. Hill, J. G. Hawks. The leading man of a play is murdered during a performance one night, shutting down the theatre, but neither of the two main suspects (the dead man's understudy and the leading lady) is proven to be involved. Five years later a producer plans to reopen the theatre, restaging the same play with as many of the original cast members as possible. Mysterious events happen throughout rehearsals, including a warning supposedly by the murdered man's ghost to call off the performance. The Last Warning (1929) was a part-talkie, also released in a silent version (the only version to survive). Even more visually impressive than Leni's The Cat and the Canary (1927), with a spectacular montage sequence, the film took place largely on the set used for The Phantom of the Opera. Laura La Plante again starred, and the well-paced plot centered more on its murder mystery aspects, with a nice blend of comedy relief that does not overpower the straight melodrama. LAUREL, STAN. Born Arthur Stanley Jefferson June 16, 1890, in Ulverston, England. Died February 23, 1965, in Santa Monica, California. Stage actor. Film actor, writer, director, producer. Playing the dimmer half of the duet, the Laurel and Hardy comedy team, Stan Laurel actually became the creative mind behind many routines that appeared in their short and feature films. He directed some films in his long career and even produced two of the team's features in the late thirties. Laurel came from a theatrical background similar to Charles Chaplin's. Appearing on the Glasgow, Scotland, stage when he was 16 years old, Stan eventually moved to the London-based Karno Company for which he played various roles in this troupe's music hall performances. Both he and Chaplin appeared in a collection of comedy sketches called A Night in an English Music Hall. This revue toured the United States in 1912 and provided Laurel and Chaplin exposure to movie producers who raided touring groups from England for acting talent from abroad. Both Chaplin and Laurel would be lured by excellent financial offers to stay in the United States to become film comedy actors. After a number of short comedies for various film companies, Stan proved to be very effective in several shorts that lampooned serious feature films such as Rudolph Valentino's Blood and Sand (1922). The comedian's spoof, Mud and Sand (1922), used a takeoff on Valentino's name, a

LAUREL AND HARDY

173

Latin lover called "Rhubarb Vaselino." Laurel developed some films that used a character that depicted an eager door-to-door salesman, more in the fashion of the genteel young men comedians of the humorous films of the decade of the 1920s. Later he would develop a childlike, dense character when he was teamed with Oliver Hardy. Laurel and Hardy appeared in several short works before their comic characters became linked in the 1927 With Love and Hisses. Gradually, with each two-reeler for producer Hal Roach in 1927 into their sound releases of 1929, the characters meshed even more effectively to provide the byplay and the distinctive humorous reactions that audiences loved from these comedians. Stan would outlive Oliver. His acting, writing, and directing talents were finally recognized with a special Academy Award. When he was presented with an Oscar, it was announced that he deserved the award "for his creative pioneering in the field of cinema comedy." Filmography: Selected silent shorts —A Lucky Dog (1917), Nuts in May (1917), Hoot Man (1919), Scars and Stripes (1919), Mud and Sand (1922), The Pest (1922), Week End Party (1922), The Soilers (1923), Under Two Jags, (1923), When Knights Were Cold (1923), Brothers Under the Chin (1924), Dr. Pickle and Mr. Pride (1925), On the Front Page (1926), With Love and Hisses (1927), The Battle of the Century (1927), Putting Pants on Philip (1927), Sailors, Beware! (1927), From Soup to Nuts, Their Purple Moment (1928), Two Tars (1928), Big Business (1929), Liberty (1929) Selected sound shorts— Unaccustomed as We Are (1929), Another Fine Mess (1930), Chickens Come Home (1931), County Hospital (1932), The Music Box (1932). Selected sound features- Sons of the Desert (1933), Our Relations (1936), Blockheads (1938). Selected Bibliography: Everson, William K. The Films of Laurel and Hardy. New York: Cadillac Publishing Company, 1967. Lahue, Kalton C. , and Sam Gill. "Laurel and Hardy." Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Maltin, Leonard "Laurel and Hardy." Movie Comedy Teams. New York: New American Library, Inc., 1970.

LAUREL AND HARDY. [See also separate entries, Laurel, Stan, and Hardy, Oliver.] One of the most famous comedy teams of both the silent and sound cinema enjoyed two and a half decades of popular acclaim. By developing complicated byplay and banter between two contrasting comic characters (thereby avoiding the hackneyed straight man and clown approach of vaudeville, these actors produced a distinctive team that created comedy employed by the big four leading comedians of the silent

174

LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, THE

film —Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. Although in the eyes of some critics, the dimwitted Stan Laurel executed comedy routines similar to Langdon's and utilized pantomimic skill parallel to Chaplin's in his continuance of the English music hall tradition, he nevertheless had much in his comedy that was not employed by other actors. His character was removed from the trampclown strata to a slight degree and placed on the fringe of society. His friendly, Cheshire cat grin proved to be an introduction to and a great asset to his comic portrait. Oliver Hardy's character comes from a different breed —in some ways less subtle and less inventive than Laurel's character. Nevertheless, he developed a character with warmth, even with the pretensions of a Mr. Know-It-AU, and a strong attachment to his feeble-minded colleague. His portrait did have dimension. Hardy proved to be skilled in presenting a person with an air of being on top of it all even as he disguised a pea-sized brain. His character often expressed a mild form of Edgar Kennedy-style exasperation at the stupidity of his partner in fortune when they confronted some obstacle. But the worm often turned when frail, wan Stan miraculously performed a feat of skill that Ollie could not fathom. The working of Hardy's rusty mind would turn inward, and his moonface, topped with puzzled brows, would look to the camera with utter confusion. LIFE OF AN AMERICAN FIREMAN, THE (1903). One-reel drama. Directed by Edwin S. Porter, assisted by James H. White. In 1903 pioneer filmmaker Porter created five films of which The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery were significant examples of early attempts to tell a story cinematically. The investigation of a professional firefighter has elements that show Porter and White attempting to develop a narrative style. Some historians have examined The Life of an American Fireman. For example, John Fell wrote of this work developed in seven scenes: "Between Shot 1 (fireman asleep) and Shot 3 (fireman aroused), Porter relates the fire alarm close-up to its context by implication. . . . What the Edison catalogue describes as "Scene 7, Arrival at the Fire" is still more instructive. It consists not of a single shot, like the preceding scenes and like all Melies' tableaux, but rather, action has been dismantled into separately staged, separately photographed components. . . ." (A History of Film, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979). Fell's analysis indicates that even the pioneers of the film art were learning the unique language of cinema. That is, this art possesses what

LLOYD, HAROLD

175

some evaluators have called "disembodied presence" — the shooting of portions that can be related in context and need not follow a type of observation that a single person might make of a scene. In The Great Train Robbery, Porter and his collaborator White would develop a more complicated narrative using parallel actions that took place in different locations at the same time, a technique that would be used in film dramas throughout the decades of the development of this art. LINDA (1929). Romantic drama. Directed by Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport); with Warner Baxter, Helen Foster, Noah Beery, Mitchell Lewis, Kate Price, Allan Connor, Bess Flowers; screenplay by Wilfred Noy; adapted by Maxine Alton, Frank O'Connor An abused girl is forced by her father to marry a middle-aged lumberman, but she has fallen in love with a young doctor. Her new husband realizes she does not love him but tries to please her, and she remains loyal to him despite her personal desires, her doctor friend supporting her decision. What could easily have become a standard love triangle melodrama or soap opera comes off instead as a delicate, touching romantic drama of honor and personal ethics. Noah Beery usually cast as a villain (notably in Beau Geste), plays the husband with a vulnerability and tenderness that is the opposite of one's initial expectations from such a character. Helen Foster carries most of the film with a strong performance reminiscent in some ways of Helen Munday in Stark Love. Warner Baxter does not yet have the screen presence he would develop in talking pictures at Warner Brothers a few years later, but does reasonably well with a rather bland character. LLOYD, HAROLD CLAYTON. Born April 20, 1893, in Burchard, Nebraska. Died March 8, 1971, in Hollywood, California. Stage, film actor. Film producer, comedy consultant for filmmakers. From 1915 to 1921 this comedian created almost 200 short films before he turned to feature-length films. As leading actor for the Hal Roach Studios the comedian controlled the content and design of his short and feature movies. Along with two other kings of comedy in the 1920s, Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton, he brought about the maturation and sophistication of six- and seven-reel silent screen humorous films. Present-day evaluators now view some of Lloyd's movies as among the most important works of this genre created in the twentieth century. Lloyd's comic character evolved from a circus or vaudeville trampclown called Lonesome Luke into a more realistic person: an eager, naive, young-man-next-door. With striking instinct and innovation, Lloyd combined some of the more laughable traits of the earlier slapstick com-

176

LLOYD, HAROLD

edy with the character-building facets of the genteel comedy, often with elements of the popular literature portrait showing a young man striving for success. Popular fiction influenced three important works by the comedian: Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last (1923), and The Freshman (1925). Each work presents a comic deviation from the common success story — social or financial success or a combination of both. Safety Last follows a conventional plot line with the protagonist attempting to achieve success in the business world. Grandma's Boy and The Freshman stress the young man's struggles to be socially accepted. While the genteel, sentimental comedians of the 1920s used this same type of success plot material, they employed only mild forms of humor that promoted less laughter than the comedy devices used by Lloyd. To achieve stronger risible material the comedian blended genteel and slapstick elements in certain set patterns. Genteel humor frames and develops the story. Then, modified, milder versions of slapstick comedy of the one- and two-reel films of the formative period of silent screen comedy evolve in many early comic sequences of his feature movies. Each film develops successive sequences with more laughable material, and the strongest comedy emerges at the climax of the story. Quite often a rush to the rescue, a big fight with a villain, or an extensively developed chase creates the most risible comedy in the climactic sequence. This pattern eventually became a standard way of developing features by the other major comedians —Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. Lloyd, like the eager character he portrayed, jumped into the sound film without the caution of his contemporaries, Chaplin and Keaton. He continued to be a box office attraction in the 1930s with the sound medium and he continued bringing in millions from his pictures. Filmography: Selected one and two-reel movies — Just Nuts (1915), Lonesome Luke (1915), Look Out Below (1919), Just Neighbors (1919), Get Out and Get Under (1920), Number Please (1920), Noio or Never (1921), Never Weaken (1921). Silent f e a t u r e s Grandma's Boy (1922), Dr. Jack (1922), Safety Last (1923), Why Worry? (1923), Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924), The Freshman (1925), For Heaven's Sake (1926), The Kid Brother (1927), Speedy (1928). Sound films - Welcome Danger (1929), Feet First (1930), Movie Crazy (1932), The Cat's Paw (1934), The Milky Way (1936), Professor Beware (1938), The Sin of Harold Diddlebock/Mad Wednesday (1947). Honors: Served as Supreme Imperial Potentate of Shriners 1949-1950, Received an Honorary Oscar for his life as a "master comedian and good citizen," 1952. Selected Bibliography: D' Agostino, Annette. Harold Lloyd: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. Dardis, Tom. Harold Lloyd: The Man on the Clock. New York: Viking Press, 1983.

LOOS, ANITA

177

McCaffrey, Donald W. Three Classic Silent Screen Comedies Starring Harold Lloyd. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc. 1972.

LONG PANTS (1927). Comedy. Directed by Frank Capra; with Harry Langdon, Gladys Brockw ell, Alan Roscoe, Pricilla Bonner, Alma Bennett, Betty Franscio; screenplay by Arthur Ripley, Robert Eddy. While this last successful feature by Langdon adds little that is new to the comedian's comic portrait, the total work displays a tighter plot with few of the diversions that adversely affect the unity of The Strong Man (1926). In eight sequences Arthur Ripley and Frank Capra have fashioned a story that best employs the character of the little boy-man in a big city. Interestingly enough, the little fellow does not succeed in the metropolis as Harold Lloyd's young man striving upward does. Harry comes home to the girl he left behind in a charming final scene that has all the earmarks of Frank Capra's use of sentiment at its best. More than any other work by Langdon, Long Pants shows the influence of the genteel comedy. A misunderstanding promotes the pursuit of an adventuress. This character discovers the woman's note to her boyfriend and assumes that he has captured her affections. This note spurs Harry to get rid of his small town girlfriend and journey to the big city. When he seeks the adventuress there, the conflict that was often used by Charles Ray and Harold Lloyd evolves to create the film drama. It evolves into the country boy against the city slickers. When Frank Capra moves from a writer to a director for Langdon, his hand is very evident in this film. Capra's control of the story, the camera, and the actors makes it one of the best silent screen comedies. Langdon dismissed Capra as a director. It was a fateful decision that spelled the rapid fall of the comedian's career. While Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton furthered their best efforts by taking firm control of their films, Langdon suffered greatly. He couldn't direct his own works. So, Long Pants remains a legacy to a short-term career in the feature silent film comedy with two other effective works beside this one: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and The Strong Man in 1926. LOOS, ANITA. Born Corinne Anita Loos April 26,1893, in Session [now Mt. Shasta], California. Died August 18, 1981, in New York City. Screenwriter, playwright, novelist. She became the screenwriter who started at a very early age, a person who became a prolific story and dialogue writer for film and the person who had one of the longest tenures in her profession. Anita Loos has been credited with these distinctions, although Frances Marion possessed a similar professional writing background. Marion started at a later age, 28, while Loos began her career with such films as The New York Hat

178

LOOS, ANITA

(1912) at age eighteen or nineteen. Marion wrote her first work in 1915 and continued her career into the early fifties; the last screenplay Loos wrote was for The Pirate, a 1948 release. However, Loos would return to theatre with English translations of Frenchwoman Colette's plays Gigi in 1950 and Cheri in 1957 —& writing career for screen and stage that spanned forty-five years. As a child Anita Loos acted in the theater that her father managed, which may explain her interest in writing dramatic works. Between 1912 and 1915 she created 105 scripts, sometimes credited with both the story and dialogue. She was, however, more often the creator of witty dialogue, a title writer of considerable talent. She has sometimes been called the Dorothy Parker of the screen. By 1916 she helped elevate Douglas Fairbanks Sr. to star status with a series of clever comedies such as His Picture in the Papers, The Matrimaniac, and American Aristocracy (1916), and Reaching for the Moon and Wild and Woolly (1917). Loos also provided vehicles for Constance Talmadge who starred with Fairbanks in The Matrimaniac. In fact, she would assist in providing vehicles for leading women in the 1920s with such screenplays as The Perfect Woman (1920) and A Woman's Place (1921). By the middle of the twenties Anita Loos began to feel "written out" because of her extensive creative output. She turned to a media of first, the magazine short story, and then the novel to create Gentlemen Prefer Blondes in 1925. The story of gold-digging women was adapted to the stage and screen. The novel moved through eighty-five editions and translations into fourteen languages. The creation of the so-called dumb blond, Loreli Lee, who used her sexual charms to get her man may have appeared to be the apex of Loos' career; however she continued writing into the sound age with a variety of genres, witty comedies (her specialty), musicals, and serious dramas. Filmography: Selected silent films — The New York Hat (1912), The Lady and the Mouse (1913), The Mistake (1913), The Gangsters of New York (1914), Hzs Picture in the Papers (1916), The Matrimaniac (1916), American Aristocracy (1916), The Americano (1917), Reaching for the Moon (1917), Wild and Woolly (1917), A Temperamental Wife (1919), A Perfect Woman (1920), A Woman's Place (1921), Dulcy (1923), Learning to Love (1925), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928). Selected sound films -Hold Your Man (1933), San Francisco (1936), The Women (1939), Susan and God (1940), Blossoms in the Dust (1941), The Pirate (1948). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Anita Loos." Encyclopedia of American Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. American Film Comedy: From Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1994.

LOST WORLD, THE

179

LOST WORLD, THE (1925). Adventure fantasy. Directed by Harry Hoyt; with Lloyd Hughes, Bessie Love, Wallace Beery, and Lewis Stone with Bull Montana; screenplay by Marion Fairfax, based on the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle; special effects by Willis O'Brien, assisted by Fred W. Jackman, Ralph Hammeras, Marcel Delgado. This film became the precursor of one of the most famous fantasy films of the sound age, King Kong (1933). Special effects director Willis O'Brien created many animation sequences with the first credible depiction of dinosaurs in a jungle of a "lost world" genre. This pioneer of stop-motion fantasy films developed a five-minute motion picture in 1915 called The Dinosaur and the Missing Link. Using his sculpturing skills, O'Brien employed miniature, articulated figures in a frame-byframe shooting process. When projected, these creatures, both man and animal, appeared to move. After selling a number of his short fantasy films to the Edison company, he eventually was able to swing a contract to provide elaborate sequences of dinosaurs for a screen version of Arthur Conan Doyle's popular novel, The Lost World. Because this 1925 film version developed into a ten-reel feature, O'Brien's animation sequences took fourteen months to complete. The main plot of the film focused on an adventure on a lost plateau in South America —a place untouched by modern civilization — a world stuck in time as it existed millions of years ago. Much of the movie's box office success rested on the novelty of the dinosaurs — much in the same ways the 1993 Jurassic Park and 1997 The Lost World appealed to audiences who like the novelty of this type of fantasy. Today's viewer of the 1925 The Lost World should maintain some historical perspective. The broader style of screen acting still persisted in some films and the use of blackface for white actors portraying natives must be accepted to enjoy a vintage fantasy. An ironic postscript should be set forth. O'Brien thought he was being hired for his animation skills for the 1960 remake of The Lost World. However, he was hired as an advisor for the mocked-up, live-action lizards that were shot in slow motion to give the appearance of size as these creatures fought on a miniature set. This became an insult to the skill and artistry of an animator who left a great legacy for those who followed him in this unique, creative field of the motion pictures.

M MACE, FRED. Born Fredrick Mace August 27, 1878, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died February 21,1917, in New York City. Stage and film actor, director. Next to John Bunny he became one of the earlier comedians to achieve a favorite status among movie audiences. While Bunny specialized in genteel humor Fred Mace employed broad, farcical slapstick comedy. After stage experience Mace moved to films with the Biograph Company. He appeared with a fellow player Mack Sennett in director D. W. Griffith's short A Tools Revenge (1909). A year later Mary Pickford joined actors Mace and Sennett in a Griffith film, The Call. When Sennett became a director Mace would be cast with Mabel Normand in The Water Nymph (1912). The comedian proved to be very versatile, enacting a number and variety of roles such as a comic crook, an ineffective detective, and a punchdrunk boxer. Mace tried to strike out as an independent by producing and directing films, sometimes without giving himself a role in the movie. He directed a four-reel film, Without Hope, in 1914 after appearing in much shorter works as an actor. This venture proved to be unsuccessful, and he returned to the stage. It was reported he wanted to make enough money to return to acting in cinema. However, a stroke brought about his death at the relatively young age of thirty-eight. Filmography: Selected silent s h o r t s - A Fool's Revenge (1909), The Call (1910), A Knot in the Plot (1910), The Baron (1911), Why He Gave Up (1911), The Water Nymph (1912), Cohen Collects a Debt (1912), The Bangville Police (1913), The Gangsters (1913), Mabel at the Wheel (1914), Without Hope (1914), My Valet (1915).

MACLEAN, DOUGLAS

181

Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C . , and Samuel Gill. "Fred Mace." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1970. Langman, Larry. "Fred Mace." Encyclopedia of American Film Company. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

MACLEAN, DOUGLAS. Born Charles Douglas MacLean January 10, 1890, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Died July 9, 1967, in Beverly Hills, California. Film actor, producer. Light comedians like Douglas MacLean, Charles Ray, Wallace Reid, and Johnny Hines advanced the genteel comedy in the 1910s and 1920s both in theory and practice. They were young-men-next-door types of characters. Often they strove for social or financial success and courted young women who had many of the innocent or naive traits they possessed. At times misunderstandings become farcical and are often tied to the romance-turned-sour between the young couple. And, of course, a rival often comes between the young man and young woman. Most of the plots and characters in these humorous works reflected the popular fiction of the period. Harold Lloyd employed similar material with considerably more skill because he avoided much of the sentimentality that plagued the genre. Douglas MacLean's comic character typified the American go-getter that Johnny Hines and Lloyd employed. In his One a Minute (1921) the actor had the role of young, efficient, hardworking promoter who discovers a panacea drug that cures everyone and makes him financially successful. In many of his films the leading character is placed in a series of situations deriving from his status in society. In 23V2 Hours Leave (1919) MacLean is in the army and in A Man of Action (1923) the actor is a rich, spoiled young man who is mistakenly thought to be a robber. Most contemporary critics classified him as a polite comedian. MacLean would eventually become a producer and writer for other comedians such as the team Wheeler and Woolsey in Cracked Nuts (1931) and W. C. Fields in Tillie and Gus (1933). Filmography: Selected silent features — As Ye Sow (1914), Fuss and Feathers (1918), Johanna Enlists (1918), Captain Kidd, Jr. (1919), 23Vi Hours Leave (1919), One a Minute (1921), The Hottentot (1922), A Man of Action (1923), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1925). Selected Bibliography: Golden, Eve. "Douglas MacLean: The Man with the Million Dollar Smile," Classic Images no. 262 (April 1997): pp. 16-19. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

182

MACPHERSON, JEANIE

MACPHERSON, JEANIE. Born 1887, in Boston, Massachusets. Died Augest 26,1946, in Hollywood, California. Screenwriter, actress. The talented screenwriter of most of Cecil B. DeMille's silent productions began her film career as a 21-year-old actress at Biograph in 1908, after having theatre and dance experience. As a girl she attended a private school in Paris, then the Kenwood Institute in Chicago, and studied dance under Theodore Kosloff. After a brief professional stage career, including a part in a touring company of William C. deMille's Strongheart, she acted in many Biograph shorts directed by D. W. Griffith from 1908 to 1911, and then at Edison and other companies, especially Universal, from 1911 to 1914. Her first feature film appearance was supporting Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley in their production of The Merchant of Venice (1914). Her first screenwriting credits were for shorts around this time, some of which she directed and acted in. She costarred in the World feature, The Outlaw Reforms, before moving to Lasky late in 1914, where she had a small role in Rose of the Rancho, a supporting role in The Ghost Breaker, and a small but key part in The Girl of the Golden West. Cecil B. DeMille allowed her to collaborate on the script of her next film, The Captive (1915), a psychological antiwar story in which she was cast in a supporting role. Her final screen appearance, except for an acting credit in a 1917 Universal short, was in DeMille's Carmen (1915), as the cigarette girl who gets into a violent fight with Carmen and is severely beaten. From then on the attractive actress devoted her energies to writing scripts with and for DeMille, working on Chimmie Fadden Out West, The Cheat, and The Golden Chance. In 1916 she scripted one more short for Universal, but thereafter remained at Lasky/Paramount, writing almost exclusively for DeMille. Her scripts and original stories included, among others, Joan the Woman (1916), Male and Female (1919), The Ten Commandments (1923), and King of Kings (1927). Macpherson was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She did less work for DeMille after the coming of sound and worked for a time in Rome as a supervisor for ERA Productions. DeMille asked her to work on Unconquered in 1945, but she was dying of cancer by this time and was not able to continue. Selected Filmography as Actress: Mr. Jones at the Ball (1908), Mr. Jones Entertains (1909), Mr. Jones Has a Card Party (1909), Lines of White on a Sullen Sea (1909), A Corner in Wheat (1909), A Flash of Light (1910), The Impalement (1910), Fisher Folks (1911), Enoch Arden (1911), Home (1911), Mother and Daughters (1912), Red Margaret, Moonshiner (1913), The Merchant of Venice (1914), The Undertow (1914), The Outlaw Reforms (1914), Rose of the Rancho (1914), The Ghost Breaker (1914), The Captive (1915), Carmen (1915), The Missing Wallet (1917).

MALE AND FEMALE

183

Selected Filmography as Screenwriter: The Lie (1914), The Trap (1914), The Captive (1915), Chimmie Fadden Out West (1915), The Cheat (1915), The Golden Chance (1916), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916), The Love Mask (1916), The Heart of Nora Flynn (1916), The Dream Girl (1916), Moonshine Blood (1916), Joan the Woman (1916), A Romance of the Redwoods (1917), The Little American (1917), The Woman God Forgot (1917), The Devil Stone (1917), The Whispering Chorus (1918), Old Wives for Nezv (1918), Till I Come Back to You (1918), Don't Change Your Husband (1919), For Better for Worse (1919), Male and Female (1919), Something to Think About (1920), Forbidden Fruit (1921), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), Don't Tell Everything (1921-uncredited), Saturday Night (1922), Manslaughter (1922), Adam's Rib (1923), The Ten Commandments (1923), Triumph (1924), The Golden Bed (1925), The Road to Yesterday (1925), Red Dice (1926), Young April (1926), The King of Kings (1927), The Godless Girl (1929), Dynamite (1929), Madam Satan (1930), Fra Diavolo (1933), Cleopatra (1934), The Plainsman (1937), The Buccaneer (1938). Selected Bibliography: C u r b o w , Dave. "Jeanie M a c p h e r s o n . " Internet Movie Database 1998. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane. "Jeanie M a c p h e r s o n . " The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. Amerian Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. MALE AND FEMALE (1919) Satire. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Thomas Meighan, Gloria Swanson, Theodore Roberts, Lila Lee, Raymond Hatton, Bebe Daniels; screenplay by Jeanie Macpherson, from play The Admirable Crichton by Sir James M. Barrie. A wealthy British family and friends on a pleasure cruise (with the servants, of course) are shipwrecked on an island. Helpless and afraid because they have never had to do anything for themselves, they must rely on the talents and ingenuity of the butler, Crichton. He very quickly assumes the role of leader and the former masters become subservient to him and his whims. Attractive young Lady Mary soon becomes attracted to him, now that he is in charge, whereas when he was her butler she barely glanced at him though he was secretly in love with her all along. Male and Female is an entertaining comedy of manners and a good example of DeMille in a transitional stage of his long career. It illustrates aspects and themes he had done before, included elements he was beginning to explore, and gave hints of what he would become famous for nearly 15 years later. The story pokes fun at class distinctions and tradi-

184

MARION, FRANCES

tional codes of behavior in "civilized" society. Male and Female was DeMille's sensationalist retitling of the popular James Barrie satiric play The Admirable Crichton. Barrie is said to have approved of the title change, saying "Why didn't I think of that?" Somehow, DeMille finds an excuse to insert a brief but lavish "Babylonian" flashback episode, inspired by a poem Crichton and Lady Mary enjoy with lines like "When I was king of Babylon and you were a Christian slave." It doesn't seem to matter to anybody that the kingdom of Babylon had fallen centuries before the birth of Christ, but it gives a good reason to show scanty costumes and a real lion pawing the bare back of actress Gloria Swanson (who did not use a double). The acting is relatively subdued and natural, with strong performances by Thomas Meighan as Crichton and Swanson as Lady Mary, and good support from the rest of the cast. Early in the film, DeMille also includes a risque bath scene with a nude but strategically covered Swanson, teasing the censors and pleasing the audiences of the day. Many if not most of DeMille's later films would include a bath scene. Modern audiences, primed for ship-sinking movies by James Cameron's Titanic (1997), might also appreciate the good production values (albeit on a much smaller scale) in the scene of the yacht's sinking, Lady Mary trapped inside and trying to wade to an exit. Much of DeMille's earlier work had more serious social commentary as its subject. Male and Female emphasizes the contrasts between classes, as did many previous DeMille pictures, but it makes greater use of sophisticated comedy and develops DeMille's trademark penchant for sex and sin within the framework of a morality play. Added to all this are outstanding cinematography, effective art direction, and a polished use of editing that demonstrate the full maturity of the medium of narrative filmmaking. After this film, DeMille would go to greater and greater lengths to appeal to the mass public, and with certain significant exceptions would gradually lose much of the strong critical reputation he had built up to that time. MARION, FRANCES. Born November 18, 1886, in San Francisco, California. Died May 12, 1973, in Los Angeles, California. Writer, director, actress. Few screenwriters have as many titles to their credit, especially as many major titles, as Frances Marion. She wrote many of her screenplays, stories, and adaptations for specific stars, such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, John Gilbert, Greta Garbo, her cowboy star husband Fred Thomson, and others. Some of her best scripts are for renowned classic films like Poor Little Rich Girl, Toll of the Sea, Stella Dallas, Son of the Sheik, The Scarlet Letter, Love, and The Wind. She excelled at creating popular ro-

MARION, FRANCES

185

mantic dramas and tearjerkers but was equally at home with heavy drama, sentimental drama, pure melodrama, light comedy, and action adventure. Her first directorial credit, The Love Light (1921), starred Mary Pickford and Fred Thomson in Marion's own story about a wartime romance between enemies. For the first third of the picture she tends to linger on the romantic portion, dragging out scenes another director might have tightened up. The remainder of the film, however, picks up both in pacing and in story interest, as she introduces more action and intrigue, then switches to heavy dramatic elements. Marion also directed films for Marion Davies and for her husband. She was born Frances Marion Owens and worked as an advertising illustrator, a model, and as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, actually covering battles in Europe after World War I broke out. She returned to America in 1915, getting a job in the film industry through director Lois Weber and writing many stories under pen names. She also acted occasionally. Towards the end of the silent era she helped revive the career of actress Marie Dressier, who had been blackballed a decade earlier for her activism in labor issues. Marion wrote a number of novels, a book, How to Write and Sell Film Stories, and her memoirs of working in Hollywood. Her last film credit was in the 1950s. Selected Filmography: Fanchon the Cricket (1915), Camille (1915), Friday the 13th (1916), The Heart of a Hero (1916), A Woman's Way (1916), A Girl's Folly (1917), Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), The Little Princess (1917), Stella Maris (1918), M'Liss (1918), Johanna Enlists (1918), Captain Kidd, Jr. (1919), Anne of Green Gables (1919), The Cinema Murder (1919), Pollyanna (1920), Humoresque (1920), The Flapper (1920), The Love Light (1921), Just Around the Corner (1921), Back Pay (1922), The Toll of the Sea (1922), The Nth Commandment (1923), The Song of Love (1923), Abraham Lincoln (1924), Secrets (1924), Cytherea (1924), Zander the Great (1925), Graustark (1925), The Dark Angel (1925), Lazybones (1925), Stella Dallas (1925), The Son of the Sheik (1926), The Scarlet Letter (1926), The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926), The Red Mill (1927), The Callahans and the Murphys (1927), Love (1927), Bringing Up Father (1928), The Cossacks (1928), Excess Baggage (1928), The Wind (1928), The Masks of the Devil (1928), Their Own Desire (1929), The Rogue Song (1930), Anna Christie (1930), The Big House (1930), Good News (1930), Min and Bill (1930), The Champ (1931), Emma (1932), Cynara (1932), Secrets (1933), Dinner at Eight (1933), The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), Going Hollywood (1933), Camille (1937), Knight Without Armour (1937), The Clown (1953). Honors: Academy Awards, Best Screenplay, The Big House and The Champ, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1930 and 1931. Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

186

MARK OF ZORRO, THE

Maclntyre, Diane. "Frances Marion." The Silents Majority 1997. Marion, Frances. Off With Their Heads. New York: Macmillan, 1972. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Slide, Anthony. Early Women Directors. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1977.

MARK OF ZORRO, THE (1920). Western adventure. Directed by Fred Niblo; with Douglas Fairbanks, Marguerite De La Motte, Robert McKim, Noah Beery, Charles Hill Mailes; screenplay by Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks), based on the short story "The Curse of Capistrano" by Johnston McCulley. The son of an aristocratic California family returns from his education in Spain to find the people being oppressed by a corrupt governor. He pretends publicly to be an effeminate fop, to the chagrin of his family and fiancee, but secretly carries on a counter-terrorism campaign as Zorro, a masked bandit who becomes a popular hero among the common people. The greatest importance of The Mark of Zorro is its initiation of Douglas Fairbanks' image as a swashbuckling hero of costume adventures. His previous films had been action-comedies, usually in a modern urban setting, or alternating between city life and rustic but contemporary frontier life. A foreshadowing of the genre he is best remembered for can be seen in A Modern Musketeer (1917), although it, too is basically a contemporary action-comedy of manners. After Zorro, Fairbanks made only one more film in his previous mode, then, starting with The Three Musketeers (1921), devoted the rest of the silent era to creating spectacular, often epic period pieces, and establishing himself as the screen's greatest hero of swashbucklers. The Zorro story has since been remade numerous times, most effectively with Tyrone Power in 1940. The Fairbanks original is a fairly routine formula melodrama, enlivened somewhat by Fairbanks' lighthearted performance. The comedy seems more forced than in some of his later films, and is in many ways an extension of his earlier screen persona. Five years later, Fairbanks filmed a sequel, Don Q, Son of Zorro, playing a dual role as father and son. The later film, directed by Donald Crisp, is a more satisfying action adventure than the first. This could be because Fairbanks was by then more at home with the persona he was just starting to develop in The Mark of Zorro, or it could be simply that Crisp was a more accomplished action director than Niblo. MARSH, MAE. Born November 9, 1895, in Madrid, New Mexico. Died February 13,1968, in Hermosa Beach, California. Actress.

MARSH, MAE

187

Mae Marsh was barely 15 when she appeared in her first film in 1910, the American Biograph production, Serious Sixteen. She rapidly became a favorite star of D. W. Griffith, acting in many shorts at Biograph, and stayed with him when he left to produce features independently. A few of her notable shorts include The New York Hat (1912), The Mothering Heart (1913), and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913). Her most memorable roles were as the "Little Colonel's" teenaged sister in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and the working-class girl who becomes a distraught young wife in the modern sequence of Intolerance (1916), later reissued separately as The Mother and the Law (1919). These showed her ability to project a childlike outlook yet a serious, even tragic undercurrent. Marsh acted in many films supervised or written by Griffith but directed by others at Reliance-Majestic in 1914-15 and then Triangle in 1916. Then she moved on to the Goldwyn studio in 1917, but her non-Griffith films were generally less successful. She made only a half dozen films in the 1920s, including one more for Griffith, The White Rose (1923). Her talking film debut as the lead in Henry King's Over the Hill (1931) showed her to be a sensitive and realistic performer in the sound medium. However, she felt uncomfortable memorizing lines and accepted only smaller character roles and bits thereafter, acting into the 1960s. Marsh's older sister Marguerite (1888-1925) was also an actress in early silent films up through the early 1920s, but died young of broncho-pneumonia after a nervous breakdown. Filmography: Silent features — Judith ofBethulia (1914), The Great Leap: Until Death Do Us Part (1914), The Escape (1914), Home Szoeet Home (1914), The Avenging Conscience (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), The Outcast (1915), The Outlaw's Revenge (1915), Her Shattered Idol (1915), Hoodoo Ann (1916), A Child of the Paris Streets (1916), The Wild Girl of the Sierras (1916), The Marriage of Molly-O (1916), Intolerance (1916), The Little Liar (1916), The Wharf Rat (1916), Polly of the Circus (1917), Sunshine Alley (1917), The Cinderella Man (1917), Fields of Honor (1918), The Beloved Traitor (1918), The Face in the Dark (1918), All Woman (1918), The Glorious Adventure (1918), Money Mad (1918), Hidden Fires (1918), The Racing Strain (1918), The Bondage of Barbara (1919), Spotlight Sadie (1919), The Mother and the Law (1919), The Little 'Fraid Lady (1920), Nobody's Kid (1921), Tz7/ We Meet Again (1922), The White Rose (1923), Daddies (1924), Tides of Passion (1925). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

188

MATHIS, JUNE

Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. MATHIS, JUNE. Born June 30, 1889 (some sources say 1892), in Leadville, Colorado. Died July 26,1927, in New York City. Screenwriter, studio executive, film editor. One of the most powerful women in Hollywood during the 1920s, June Mathis is credited with advancing the careers of Rudolph Valentino and director Rex Ingram, among others. She wrote well over a hundred screenplays between 1916 and her sudden, dramatic death while attending the theatre in 1927. Among her scripts are The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Camille (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), and Ben-Hur (1925). She also rewrote Erich von Stroheim's Greed and reedited Rex Ingram's cut of the film from 18 reels down to ten reels before it was finally released. After some stage writing experience she began writing scenarios for Rolfe Photoplays around 1915-16. The films were distributed by Metro, and by 1918 she was working directly for Metro Pictures Corporation. In the 1920s she also wrote scripts for Paramount and First National and often became involved in other aspects of production, making recommendations to the studio heads. Sometimes she oversaw editing on the pictures she was involved with. Selected Filmography: The Upstart (1916), The Dawn of Love (1916), A Magdalene of the Hills (1917), Miss Robinson Crusoe (1917), Blue Jeans (1917), Daybreak (1918), Social Hypocrites (1918), To Hell With the Kaiser (1918), Out of the Fog (1919), The Red Lantern (1919), The Brat (1919), Old Lady 31 (1920), The Saphead (1920), Hearts Are Trumps (1920), Polly With a Past (1920), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), The Conquering Power (1921), A Trip to Paradise (1921), Camille (1921), The Idle Rich (1921), Turn to the Right (1922), Kisses (1922), Hate (1922), Blood and Sand (1922), The Young Rajah (1922), In the Palace of the King (1923), Three Wise Fools (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), Name the Man (1924), Greed (1925), Sally (1925), The Desert Flower (1925), Classified (1925), We Moderns (1925), Ben-Hur (1925), The Greater Glory (1926), Irene (1926), The Masked Woman (1927), An Affair of the Follies (1927), The Magic Flame (1927). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996.

MEIGHAN, THOMAS

189

Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. MEIGHAN, THOMAS. Born April 9, 1879, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Died July 8,1936, at Great Neck, Long Island, New York. Actor. A popular leading man throughout his career, Thomas Meighan generally played a strong, thoughtful protagonist, at home in action films and Westerns as well as social dramas and more psychological stories. Starting in the theatre in the 1890s, he was a Broadway star from about 1900 but switched to film in 1913. In 1915 he delivered a powerful performance in Cecil B. DeMille's Kindling as a working-class husband who does not want to have children as long as he lives in the squalid city environment. His breakthrough screen roles were in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man and DeMille's Male and Female, both in 1919. Selected Filmography: Kindling (1915), The Fighting Hope (1915), Out of the Darkness (1915), The Secret Sin (1915), Blackbirds (1915), Armstrong's Wife (1915), The Immigrant (1915), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1916), The Sowers (1916), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1916), The Storm (1916), Sapho (1917) Mysterious Miss Terry (1917), Arms and the Girl (1917), The Land of Promise (1917), The Hearts of the Wilds (1918), The Forbidden City (1918), M'Liss (1918), The Heart of Wetona (1918), The Miracle Man (1919), Male and Female (1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920), Civilian Clothes (1920), Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920), The Easy Road (1921), City of Silent Men (1921), White and Unmarried (1921), A Prince There Was (1921), The Conquest of Canaan (1921), Ozzr Leading Citizen (1922), The Bachelor Daddy (1922), Back Home and Broke (1922), Manslaughter (1922), The Ne'er-Do-Well (1923), Homeward Bound (1923), Woman-Proof (1923), Pied Piper Malone (1924), The Alaskan (1924), The Confidence Man (1924), Tongues of Flame (1924), Coming Through (1925), The Man Who Found Himself (1925), Irish Luck (1925), The New Klondike (1926), Tin Gods (1926), The Canadian (1926), Blind Alleys (1927), We're All Gamblers (1927), The City Gone Wild (1927), The Racket (1928), The Mating Call (1928), The Argyle Case (1929), Young Sinners (1931), Skyline (1931), Cheaters at Play (1932), Madison Square Garden (1932), Peck's Bad Boy (1934). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

190

MICKEY

MICKEY (1918). Comedy. Directed by F. Richard Jones; with Mabel Normand, George Nicholls, Wheeler Oakman, Minta Durfee, Laura La Varnie, Lew Cody, Tom Kenney, and Minnie Devereaux; screenplay by J. G. Hawks. Within a decade of the turn of the century, some movie audiences began to prefer polite, light humorous dramas. The success of the genteel comedies increased with comedy teams such as John Bunny and Flora Finch, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, and Harry Myers and Rosemary Theby. As this type of drama took a firm grip in the 1910s, a wealth of light comedy actresses came into the limelight. Such famous women as Mary Pickford, Dorothy Gish, ZaSu Pitts, and Mabel Normand found light comedy features their province. Comic actress Miss Normand received her training in the rough and tumble world of producer Mack Sennett's slapstick school. She was known as a deft thrower and receiver of the custard pie. In August 1916 Sennett had Bob Jones, a heretofore slapstick director and stunt man, launch into a full-length film that was spiritually far removed from the wild capers of the 1914 Tillie's Punctured Romance. Mickey developed into a sentimental rags-to-riches movie that would have fit Mary Pickford perfectly. The basic material for the polite or genteel comedy is often lacking in a strong, central comic idea. Comedy seems to be grafted onto a serious plot. In Mickey, for example, some comic traits of a mild, humorous nature can be observed in the tomboy ish activities of the title character. In high society, Mickey's crude manners are a subject for comedy. When this comic heroine is going to be disciplined for misbehavior, she feeds the instrument for punishment, a razor strap, to a donkey. Writers for moppet actresses Shirley Temple and Jane Withers would employ such mild humor in the 1930s. In Mickey Mabel Normand develops a mischievous teenager. Her skill as a actress, her spark and charm, give merit to this movie that was finally released in August of 1918. MINTER, MARY MILES. Born April 1, 1902, in Shreveport, Louisiana. Died August 5,1984, in Santa Monica, California. Actress. With the encouragement of her formidable backstage mother, Charlotte Shelby, little Juliet Shelby (born Juliet Reilly) became a popular child star in the theatre. About the time she was a hit in the 1911-12 play The Littlest Rebel, she assumed the name Mary Miles Minter, a girl who had died at age eight the same year she was born, so she could pass as a 16-year-old to circumvent child labor laws. She made her film debut at age ten as the star of a 1912 short film for the Powers company, The Nurse, but continued acting on stage until 1915. Her mother appeared in

MINTER, MARY MILES

191

three of her earliest films, The Fairy and the Waif (1915), Always In the Way (1915), and Dimples (1916). Her sister, Margaret Shelby, also acted with her in a number of films and had a screen career of her own. By the end of her teenage years, Minter was an audience favorite, nearly as popular a star as Marguerite Clark and Mary Pickford, with a lucrative contract that gave her billing above the title. William Desmond Taylor directed a number of her major films, including Anne of Green Gables (1919) and Nurse Marjorie (1920), and the two developed a romantic relationship, despite a 25-year age difference and his reputation as a ladies' man. Taylor's still-unsolved murder on February 2,1922, destroyed her career and harmed that of Mabel Normand when the investigation revealed their involvement with the director. The public was scandalized that her private life was so different from her screen image and avoided her films. After the murder Minter made only four more pictures, with two additional titles released that had already been filmed. When it became obvious that the public no longer supported her, she retired from the screen, only 21 years old. Filmography: The Nurse (1912), The Fairy and the Waif (1915), Always in the Way (1915), Emmy of Stork's Nest (1915), Barbara Frietchie (1915), Rose of the Alley (1916), Dimples (1916), Lovely Mary (1916), Youth's Endearing Charm (1916), Dulcie's Adventure (1916), Faith (1916), A Dream or Two Ago (1916), The Innocence ofLizette (1916), The Gentle Intruder (1917), Environment (1917), Annie-for-Spite (1917), Periwinkle (1917), Melissa of the Hills (1917), Somewhere in America (1917), National Association's All-Star Picture (1917), Charity Castle (1917), Her Country's Call (1917), The Mate of the Sally Ann (1917), Beauty and the Rogue (1918), Powers That Prey (1918), A Bit of Jade (1918), Social Briars (1918), The Ghost of Rosy Taylor (1918), The Eyes of Julia Deep (1918), Rosemary Climbs the Heights (1918), Wives and Other Wives (1918), The Amazing Imposter (1919), The Intrusion of Isabel (1919), A Bachelor's Wife (1919), Yvonne from Paris (1919), Anne of Green Gables (1919), Judy of Rogue's Harbor (1920), Nurse Marjorie (1920), Jenny Be Good (1920), A Cumberland Romance (1920), Sweet Lavender (1920), Eyes of the Heart (1920), All Souls' Eve (1921), The Little Clown (1921), Don't Call Me Little Girl (1921), Moonlight and Honeysuckle (1921), Her Winning Way (1921), Tillie (1922), The Heart Specialist (1922), South of Suva (1922), The Cowboy and the Lady (1922), Drums of Fate (1923), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1923). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Long, Bruce. Tay lorology 199S. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

192

MIX, TOM

Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

MIX, TOM. Born Thomas Hezikiam Mix January 6, 1880, in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. Died in a car accident October 12, 1940, near Florence, Arizona. Circus, rodeo stunt horseman, Wild West Show performer. Film actor, writer, director. In an analysis of the Western, evaluators George Fenin and William Everson succinctly stated the importance of the most famous star of the genre: "If William S. Hart brought stature, poetry and realism to the Western Tom Mix unquestionably introduced showmanship, as well as the slick, polished format that was to serve Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson in the Twenties and Gene Autry in the Thirties " (The Western, from Silence to Cinerama, p. 109). Many of Mix's appearances and performances moved the Western away from the reality Hart strove to establish. He developed a flamboyant garb that hardly could be used on the dusty trails of the range-working cowboy. His white, ten-gallon, western hat or sombrero (according to the nationality he portrayed), fancy white shirt, and pants bottomed out with black boots were suited more for a parade, Wild West Show, or circus. His stunts, trick equestrian riding and roping with cliff-hanging fights, often became sprinkled liberally throughout a plot that could have been cooked up by a fan —a twelve-year-old boy. Tom appealed, especially, to the adolescent who demanded pure entertainment—fast action and daring exploits —and very little of "that love stuff," as a boy fan would put it. In fact, Mix's very popular, near fantasy Western films would spawn the B-Western of the thirties that featured show cowboys like William Boyd, Buck Jones, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers. One of the extant features of the Western star of the silents, The Great K& A Train Robbery (1926), illustrates his use of spectacular stunts to keep his audiences satisfied. Mix slides down on a cable to land in the saddle of his horse, Tony, in order to escape a crew of villains out to capture him. He also fights the gang on top a moving train. Daredevil feats of this kind prompted John Baxter to devote a chapter to the antics of "Tom (Mix) and Doug (Fairbanks)" in the study, Stunt: The Story of Great Movie Stunt Men. While there is some love interest in The Great K & A Train Robbery, romance remains discreet—almost remote, taking a backseat to the action of the film. While Hart seldom used comedy, Mix employed a light humorous touch in many of his shorts and features. About the only similarity existing between these Western cinema stars is the use of the faithful, super horse Fritz (Hart's steed) and Tony (Mix's

MOANA

193

mount). The smarter than the average horse remained a fancy of almost all cowboy stars in the 1930s. While William S. Hart had a respectable stage background, even appearing in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Tom Mix brought a minimal acting talent to the screen. The cowboy's world of show business came from the circus and rodeo entertainment. Mix's fans did not require subtle acting skills that often seemed to be lacking in most western heroes in the 1920s and 1930s. Fans wanted action. The cinema had not completely taken over the live outdoor presentation of the Wild West Show, but this show business genre faded in the 1910s and the circus still had some vestiges of such amusement. Mix, a man from the East, became fascinated with the world of cowboys at an early age and moved west. In 1906 he joined the Miller Brothers 101 Wild West Show after some wrangling on ranches in Oklahoma and Texas, and briefly serving with the Texas Rangers While working on a ranch in 1910 he entered the movies in a one-reel documentary, Ranch Life in the Great Southwest. Moving to dramatic works for the Selig Company, Mix acted, wrote, and directed more than a hundred short films until he moved to Fox to make features. Some of the actor's best works appeared in the 1920s, but his sound films were not so successful. Mix moved back in 1930 to appear with the Sells Foto Circus and with the Tom Mix Circus in which he toured from 1936 to 1938. He would be featured in five sound films plus his last work in 1935, acting in a low budget serial, The Miracle Rider. Filmography: Selected shorts — Ranch Life in the Great Southwest (1910), The Range Riders (1910), The Law and the Outlaw (1913), The Moving Picture Cowboy (1914), The Ranger's Romance (1914), On the Eagle Trail (1915), The Range Girl and the Cowboy (1915). Selected silent features — The Heart of Texas Ryan (1917), SixShooter Andy (1918), Western Blood (1918), The Cyclone (1920), Just Tony (1922), Sky High (1922), Dick Turpin (1925), The Rainbow Trail (1925), The Great K&A Train Robbery (1926). Selected sound films-Destry Rides Again (1932), My Pal the King (1932), Rustler's Roundup (1933), and a serial, The Miracle Rider (1935). Selected Bibliography: Baxter, John. Stunt: The Story of the Great Movie Stunt Men. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974. Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western: from Silents to Cinerama. New York: Bonanza Books of Crown Publishing, Inc., 1962. Nicholas, John. Tom Mix: Riding Up to Glory. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center, 1980.

MOANA (1926). Documentary. Directed by Robert J. Flaherty; with Fa'amgase, Pe'a, T'ugaita, and Takl'avale; screenplay by Robert Flaherty and Julian Johnson.

194

MODERN TIMES

As in his 1922 Nanook of the North director Flaherty used nonactors, natives of the region, in order to have them play their life roles. His examination of the South Sea inhabitants almost became a caprice since he had not studied the Samoan culture in the way he had examined the Eskimo world. In 1923 he took his family with him to make his second documentary, Moana. The biggest problem would evolve when the director could not find a theme in his examination of this primitive paradise. After some investigation director Flaherty decided to concentrate on some customs of the Samoans of which the most interesting or exotic had been abandoned with the crush of civilization. Much of the first part of the film chronicles food gathering as a function of the tribe. In the South Seas, the lush environment provides a search that does not present the struggle Flaherty witnessed in the far regions of his film Nanook of the North. Part of the drama develops with the capture of a wild boar which supposedly could turn on the capturers and harm them. The gathering also entailed fish and a huge turtle to be cooked and served with fruit in an evening feast by the villagers. The two pioneer efforts of Flaherty, Nanook of the North and Moana, exhibit two faces of the documentary. An evaluation of these works by Richard Barsan points this out: "it is evident that Flaherty's greater knowledge of the Inuit culture resulted in a more detached, objective record. Nanook, the more compelling film, reveals Flaherty's knowledge, while Moana, the more intimate one, reflects his fantasy" (The Vision of Robert Flaherty, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1988, p. 37). The subtitle of Moana indicates the director realizes he was dealing with myth: A Romance of the Golden Age. As a result of this perception, Flaherty established the other face, a prototype of the documentary. This precursor of a wealth of documentaries that would follow reveals a more popular approach to what sometimes would be called the dramadocumentary or "docudrama." One of the best examples would be The Silent Enemy (1930), a study of a Canadian North American Indian tribe's struggle to survive when faced with starvation. This work followed the design using the subjective method of Moana. MODERN TIMES (1936). Comedy. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Chester Conklin and Henry Bergman; screenplay, music by Charles Chaplin. With the audacity that seemed to go with his comic genius, Chaplin produced a silent screen work at a time when movie audiences had begun to expect "talkies" as routine and considered the silent tradition as a thing of the past. Sight or pantomime comedy remained a part of many

MOORE, COLLEEN

195

comedy films in a scene or two, but Modern Times was a mode of a decade earlier. This 1930s film does employ a series of sound effects and vocal elements that may be thought to be compromises with the talking picture: a sound of a factory whistle, a bell to signal central control urging workers to step up productions, sounds from an automatic feeding machine (to keep workers busy even during lunch periods), explosions from huge dynamos shorting out when the wrong switches are pulled, and a siren of an ambulance to take away the berserk little tramp when he suffers a nervous breakdown on the assembly line. These are sounds that existed as realistic ones tied to the drama. Not new to the sound or silent film media, of course, was the introduction of a symbolic music score — most significantly used when the speed of the assembly line machinery increased and when the little fellow's brain snapped under the strain of the repetitive work of tightening two bolts. What might seem to be more yielding to the sound tradition is the use of a closed-circuit television in order to portray the plant owner in his Big Brother reprimand of Charlie who took too long a break in the factory lavatory. But, it should be noted, all of the sounds mentioned are related to the mechanical — which becomes the object of the lampoon. Furthermore, the voice and image of the owner was an invasion of privacy on a mechanism that would only come about forty years later. Even in the mid-thirties Chaplin thought talking motion pictures were artificial, mechanistic departures from the superior art—the silent movie. Modern Times grossed nearly $2 million in the United States, a large sum for the depression years. Critical acclaim today places the film among the top three of Chaplin's works, with The Gold Rush (1925) and City Lights (1931) probably rated higher than his 1936 film. While this last masterpiece in the silent screen tradition does not have the unity of some of the earlier films, it is a fascinating Chaplin sampler — a series of comic routines refurbished from the past placed in juxtaposition with sympathetic touches. Also, this work contains the last complete version of the little tramp. The comedian was at his peak of maturity and perfection. Only a faint image of the tramp-clown existed in Chaplin's films from then on. Modern Times ends with an unforgettable scene. The little fellow, urging his girlfriend to smile and face a new dawn, walked down the road. This very human, warm little fellow shuffled toward far-off hills. MOORE, COLLEEN. Born August 19, 1900, in Port Huron, Michigan. Died January 25,1988, in Paso Robles, California. Actress.

196

MORENO, ANTONIO

During the last half of the 1920s Colleen Moore was one of the highest paid and most popular stars working in Hollywood. Beginning in 1923, her screen roles of the modern "flapper" — the carefree young woman of the "jazz baby" era with a short Dutch-boy haircut and a bubbly personality — defined the youthful image of the decade. She shot to stardom in a series of lighthearted pictures set in the contemporary, party-loving world younger viewers wanted to emulate. Despite intentionally risque titles, most of her films show Moore with an underlying innocence and charming naivete, even an airheadedness, with a wholesome appeal quite unlike the erotically charged charisma and self-determination Clara Bow displayed a couple of years later. Born Kathleen Morrison, she entered films as a teenager because her influential uncle, who was owed a favor by D. W. Griffith, arranged for the starstruck girl to work at Triangle. There, and then with Ince, Fox, and others, she played some small parts and leading lady parts in a variety of minor pictures, building up a reputation as a dramatic actress. After she married John McCormick, production head at First National, she demanded the leading role in Flaming Youth (1923), a drastic departure from her previous winsome heroine parts. Her decision changed the direction of her career, created a worldwide fashion trend, and ushered in the "roaring 20s." With its success, McCormick took charge of her career and built her into the highest paid star at the studio. Moore only made a few talking pictures. Retiring from the screen not long after divorcing her alcoholic, abusive husband, she wrote a book on investing and devoted her time to her elaborate miniature doll house, which she displayed to raise funds for charities. Selected Filmography: The Bad Boy (1917), Hands Up! (1917), Little Orphant Annie (1918), The Busher (1919), The Egg Crate Wallop (1919), Dinty (1920), So Long Letty (1920), The Lotus Eater (1921), The Sky Pilot (1921), Forsaking All Others (1922), The Wall Flower (1922), Broken Hearts of Broadway (1923), Flaming Youth (1923), The Nth Commandment (1923), Flirting With Love (1924), The Perfect Flapper (1924), So Big (1924), The Desert Flower (1925), Sally (1925), We Moderns (1925), Ella Cinders (1926), Irene (1926), It Must Be Love (1926), Twinklctoes (1926), Her Wild Oat (1927), Naughty But Nice (1927), Orchids and Ermine (1927), Happiness Ahead (1928), Lilac Time (1928), Oh, Kay! (1928), Footlights and Fools (1929), Smiling Irish Eyes (1929), Synthetic Sin (1929), Why Be Good? (1929), The Power and the Glory (1933), Social Register (1934), Success at Any Price (1934), The Scarlet Letter (1934). Selected Bibliography: Drew, William. Speaking of Silents. Vestal, New York: Vestal Press, Ltd. 1989. Moore, Colleen. Silent Star. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1968.

MORENO, ANTONIO. Born September 26,1886 (some sources say 1887 or 1888), in Madrid, Spain. Died February 15, 1967, in Hollywood, California. Actor.

MORENO, ANTONIO

197

A popular leading man, often in the image of the "Latin lover," Antonio Moreno began his screen career in 1912. He came to the United States as a teenager and found some work in stage plays, but hoped to gain larger roles in silent films where his accent would not matter. He spent a couple of years at Biograph, working under D. W. Griffith, among others, and then moved on to Vitagraph, where he made shorts, serials and features from 1914 to 1922, interrupted by a year at Pathe (1917-18). Moreno was a major star by 1924, and throughout the 1920s he acted at a variety of major Hollywood studios, primarily Paramount, First National, and MGM. He was paired with many of the leading actresses of the period, including Pola Negri in The Spanish Dancer (1923), Alice Terry in Rex Ingram's Mare Nostrum (1926), Greta Garbo in The Temptress (1926), Clara Bow in It (1927), and Colleen Moore in Synthetic Sin (1929). With the coming of sound, Moreno switched to Spanish-accented character parts and filmed numerous Spanish-language versions of American films as well as films in Mexico and Spain. In 1931-32 he even directed the first two talkies of the Mexican film industry. Moreno continued occasional character roles in American films through 1956 (John Ford's The Searchers) and acted in a 1958 Cuban-made comedy before retiring completely. Filmography: Silent features and serials — Classmates (1914), Judith of Bethulia (1914), The Island of Regeneration (1915), The Dust of Egypt (1915), A Price for Folly (1915), On Her Wedding Night (1915), The Supreme Temptation (1916), The Tarantula (1916), The Devil's Prize (1916), Rose of the South (1916), Her Right to Love (1917), Money Magic (1917), Aladdin From Broadway (1917), The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop (1917), The Magnificent Meddler (1917), A Son of the Hills (1917), By Right of Possession (1917), The Angel Factory (1917), The Mark of Cain (1917), The Naulahka (1918), The House of Hate (1918), The Fust Law (1918), The Iron Test (1918), The Perils of Thunder Mountain (1919), The Invisible Hand (1920), 77M? Veiled Mystery (1920), Three Sevens (1921), The Secret of the Hills (1921), A Guilty Conscience (1921), My American Wife (1922), Look Your Best (1923), Lost and Found on a South Sea Island (1923), The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1923), The Exciters (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), Flaming Barriers (1924), Bluff (1924), Tiger Love (1924), The Story Without a Name (1924), The Border Legion (1924), Learning to Love (1925), One Year to Live (1925), Her Husband's Secret (1925), Beverly of Graustark (1926), Mare Nostrum (1926), The Temptress (1926), The Flaming Forest (1926), Love's Blindness (1926), It (1927), Venus of Venice (1927), Madame Pompadour (1927), En la Tierra del Sol (1927), Come to My House (1927), The Whip Woman (1928), Nameless Men (1928), The Midnight Taxi (1928), Adoration (1928), The Air Legion (1929), Synthetic Sin (1929), Careers (1929). Selected Bibliography: Golden, Eve. "Antonio Moreno —The Tt' Man." Films of the Golden Age no. 7 (Winter 1996/1997): pp. 16-23. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

198

MOTHER AND THE LAW, THE

Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

MOTHER AND THE LAW, THE (1914-16/1919). Social drama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Miriam Cooper, Vera Lewis, Sam De Grasse, Clyde Hopkins, Fred Turner, Walter Long, Tom Wilson, Ralph Lewis, Edward Dillon, A. W. McClure, Lloyd Ingraham, William Brown, Max Davidson, Alberta Lee, Frank Brownlee, Barney Bernard, Luray Huntley; screenplay by D. W. Griffith. A working class boy and girl meet after a factory strike is put down by the militia and his father is killed. The boy becomes involved with gangsters but promises to reform for the girl's sake. He is framed for a crime and priggish social workers take away the couple's baby. The boy is ultimately accused and convicted falsely of murder, and his young wife must race against time to prove his innocence and obtain a pardon from the governor. The Mother and the Law is one of Griffith's most underrated works, overshadowed by the incredible achievement of Intolerance. It began as a short program feature in 1914, while The Birth of a Nation was still in production. After The Birth proved to be a smash hit, Griffith decided to combine the topical contemporary melodrama, inspired by recent newspaper headlines, with a parallel sequence set in the grandeur of ancient Babylon. He then added a retelling of Christ's crucifixion and a story of the French monarchy's massacre of the Protestant Huguenots, resulting in the epic Intolerance. Then, in 1919, Griffith removed the modern and Babylonian stories for release as separate movies. For these he restored footage he had deleted to keep Intolerance to only three hours, and shot additional scenes. The extra scenes in The Mother and the Law are not simply padding but develop the plot and characters to a greater degree than in its better-known fragmented form. Filmed earlier but released later, it compares well with such other vivid social problem pictures as Raoul Walsh's Regeneration and Cecil B. DeMille's Kindling, both made in 1915. MURRAY, CHARLIE. Born Charles Murray June 11, 1872, in Laurel, Indiana. Died July 29,1941, in Hollywood, California. Circus, vaudeville, repertory, film actor.

MYERS, HARRY

199

With a highly successful career in vaudeville, Charlie Murray toured with his partner Ollie Mack in the 1890s as a comedy team called Murray and Mack. Their sketches received popular acclaim for two decades. Moving to film in 1912, Murray started with a one-reeler for the Biograph Company called Like the Cat, They Came Back. For two years he appeared as a comedian in almost eighty films; then, he switched to Mack Sennett's Keystone Film Company with a two-reel comedy The Passing of Izzy (1914). He became one of the most important actors for producer Sennett until the early 1920s. As a Keystone Cop his features could be distinguished by the sliver-of-a-moon chin whiskers and his grumpy scowl. Toward the end of the twenties he received recognition for his Irishman comic role in a Cohens and the Kellys film series. Filmography: Selected comedy shorts — Like the Cat, They Came Back (1912), All Had to the King (1913), The Passing of Izzy (1914), Mabel's Married Life (1914), A Fatal Flirtation (1914), Hogan's Wild Oats (1915), Reilly's Wash Day (1919). Selected silent features — Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919), A Small Town Idol (1921), The Wizard of Oz (1925), The Cohens and Kellys (1926), Cohens and Kellys in Paris (1928). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Charlie Murray." Clown Princes and Court jesters: Some Comics of the Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

MYERS, HARRY C. Born September 5, 1882, in New Haven, Connecticut. Died December 25, 1938, in Hollywood, California. Film actor, writer, director. The most memorable roles created by Harry Myers may be seen in one of Charles Chaplin's great films, City Lights (1931), in the role of "The Eccentric Millionaire." In this part he depicts a character who, when drunk, literally embraces "The Little Tramp," but when sober, throws the little fellow out the door of his mansion. Records show Myers emerged at the Biograph Company in 1908 acting with Mack Sennett in the work, The Guerrilla, directed by D. W. Griffith. Then, in another Griffith film his coactors were Sennett and two future stars of light, sentimental comedies, Flora Finch and Mary Pickford. This work was called Her First Biscuits (1909). Harry Myers would soon become a leading player in the genteel comedy as a handsome man, who also had the talent of writing and directing movies for Universal. At 33 he created The Earl of Pawtucket (1915). While he took a secondary role in this film, he remained the sole creator who cast his wife, Rosemary Theby, in an important part in this and other films. Such refined,

200

MYERS, HARRY

humorous works sometimes reached feature length, in this case a fivereel movie. When Myers and his wife moved to Vim Comedy, they co-starred as husband and wife in humorous films as their predecessors John Bunny and Flora Finch often had done. During the period of two years, 1916 and 1917, Myers and Theby released many light comedies that had some resemblance to the television situation comedies of today. A more substantial work based on the famous satirical novel of Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1921), had Myers as the lead. Harry's wife, Rosemary, had the important role of Queen Morgan le Fay. Myers also was cast in a sophisticated comedy The Marriage Circle (1924), the second silent feature in the United States by the famous German director Ernst Lubitsch. After the release of Chaplin's silent film City Lights in 1931, when sound films dominated, Harry Myers' career faded. He received minor roles in a number of thirties features. In Harold Lloyd's The Milky Way (1936) he has an uncredited bit labeled by film historians as "Photographer at Apartment" and another bit called "Churchgoer" in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), his last movie. It was an unfortunate fall for a man who had written, directed, and starred in many of his own creations two decades earlier. However, we do have one of his best roles to view today, "The Eccentric Millionaire" in City Lights, as a legacy of a very talented comedian of sophisticated and genteel humorous films. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Guerrilla (1908), Her First Biscuits (1909). Selected silent features — The Earl of Pawtucket (1915), A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court (1921), The Marriage Circle (1924), Up in Mabel's Room (1926), Getting Gertie's Garter (1927), City Lights (1931). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Harry Myers." Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. "Harry Myers." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Caroline: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

N NALDI, NITA. Born April 1, 1897, in New York City. Died February 17, 1961, in New York City. Actress. Although her screen career was brief, Nita Naldi had starring roles in several major films of the 1920s as an exotic femme fatale. She was born Donna Dooley and educated in a Hoboken convent, but did modeling after leaving school, soon getting work as an actress and showgirl in New York stage shows. She broke into films in 1920 with a part in a short comedy and was picked by John Barrymore to appear in his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as the mistress Hyde abuses. Two years later her appearance as the sultry "bad girl" opposite Rudolph Valentino in Blood and Sand had a much stronger screen presence than Lila Lee's virtuous childhood sweetheart who was her character's rival. That film established Naldi's reputation as a temptress, and she quickly became typecast, also appearing in two later Valentino pictures. Another of her 1922 films, The Snitching Hour, was a comic spoof of films like Paramount's The Witching Hour (made the previous year), but Naldi still played a villainess. Soon after she married in late 1925, she decided to give up her film career. When the depression bankrupted her and her husband, she returned to Broadway and nightclubs, and did some television in the 1950s. Her last film was an independent production written by Natacha Rambova, whom she had known during her association with Valentino. Filmography: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), The Common Sin (1920), Life (1920), A Divorce of Convenience (1921), Experience (1921), The Last Door (1921), Reported Missing (1922), Blood and Sand (1922), The Snitching Hour (1922), Anna Ascends (1922), The Glimpses of the Moon (1923), You Can't Fool Your Wife (1923), Lawful Larceny (1923), Hollywood (1923), The Ten Commandments (1923), Don't Call It Love (1924), The Breaking Point (1924), A Sainted Devil (1924), The Lady Who Lied (1925),

202

NANOOK OF THE NORTH

The Marriage Whirl (1925), Clothes Make the Pirate (1925), Cobra (1925), Prater Mitzi (Austrian, 1926), La Femme Nue (French, 1926), The Miracle of Life (1926), The Unfair Sex (1926), What Price Beauty? (1928). Selected Bibliography: Golden, Eve. "Nita Naldi —Vamp Until Ready." Films of the Golden Age no. 6 (Summer 1996): pp. 32-35. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

NANOOK OF THE NORTH (1922). Documentary. Directed by Robert J. Flaherty; with Nanook, Nyla, Ann Little; screenplay by Robert J. Flaherty. Some evaluators of film question the technique of documentary directors who stage scenes rather than relying solely on recording events. However few documentarians follow a pristine approach of merely shooting subjects in a cinema-verite way, that is, shooting events without staging them or even editing the exposed film. Nevertheless, most documentaries need editing as a way of developing a point of view. Also, many directors of the genre need to create a reenactment of an event. There are scenes in Nanook of the North that employ staged events. The effort of Nanook to bring in a harpooned seal used exaggeration that would not depict a realistic struggle. Also, he used sets for the interior of an igloo that would be difficult to photograph if he used a real Eskimo dwelling. In spite of this type of staging, the detractors must admit the work has the integrity of a pioneer who admired the people of the far north and their ruthless tundra environment. Robert Flaherty established a prototype for documentaries that would be produced in three decades—the twenties, thirties, and forties. His next project reflected a much different culture that moved from the harsh world of the north to the peaceful world of the South Seas with Moana (1926). Director-writer-cinematographer Flaherty would be involved in two projects of the South Seas after Moana - White Shadows in the South Seas (1928) and Tabu (1931). The location and the culture proved to be less dramatic, nearly lacking in any human conflict, so the director's Nanook

NAVIGATOR, THE

203

of the North remains the formative, quintessence of the feature documentary. NARROW TRAIL, THE (1917). Western drama. Directed by Lambert Hillyer; with William S. Hart, Sylvia Bremer, Milton Ross, Robert Kortman, Fritz (the horse); screenplay by Harvey F. Thew, from story by William S. Hart. A California bandit captures and tames a wild pinto pony and later holds up a stagecoach carrying a San Francisco crime boss and his dancehall-girl niece on vacation. Not knowing their background, the bandit falls for the girl, poses as a wealthy rancher to meet her, and vows to go straight. When he travels to San Francisco and discovers the truth about her, he insults her and leaves for his mountain town to return to a life of thievery. She, however, hates her sordid life and longs to recapture the peace she felt when both she and the bandit were pretending to be respectable. They meet again in Saddle City, and both declare their intentions to follow the "narrow trail" of right, but he must find a way to escape local lawmen, who have recognized his horse. Typical Hart themes of evil redeemed by goodness (or in this case, perceived goodness) pervade this Thomas Ince production, beautifully photographed by Joseph August. Here, as often, Hart was guided by Lambert Hillyer, who directed and sometimes wrote many of Hart's best works, although the results were always obviously Hart projects. This story is even more melodramatic and naively moralistic than usual, but as always Hart includes enough rough edges to characters and a veneer of realism that elevate it above simple melodrama. These include realistic settings and location views of San Francisco, occasional use of profanity, both through dialogue titles and easily read lips, and a long, bloody fight scene (no doubt inspired by The Spoilers). It is calculated to appeal to the young men and boys who frequented the movie houses that specialized in Westerns, while instructing them in appropriate attitudes and behavior, with the moral that it is always possible to forgive, forget, and start over with a clean slate. NAVIGATOR, THE (1924). Comedy. Directed by Buster Keaton and Donald Crisp; with Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, and Frederick Vroom; screenplay by Clyde Bruckman, Joseph A. Mitchell, and Jean C. Havez. Both silent screen comedians Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton often employed either very poor or very rich humorous protagonists. Keaton's The Navigator is one of his best works using a rich young man —in this work, a person called Rollo Treadway. While a change from the usual poor young man may seem superficial, it is not. Keaton creates many

204

NAZIMOVA, ALLA

gags from the fact that this wealthy, spoiled boob cannot do anything for himself. In the early portions of the film he depends on his servants for council and for action on his own problems. Later in the developing story, he is forced to change his ways, to take his own action when he is cast adrift on a huge ocean liner with only his girlfriend to assist him in his plight. At the beginning of this story, he is obviously lacking in drive. As if he were going to buy a new suit, he tells his valet that he is going to get married; he marches mechanically up to a young woman who is a friend of the family and asks unemotionally: "Will you marry me?" She instantly and vehemently replies: "Certainly not!" Rollo looks blankly away from her, turns on his heels, takes his cane and hat from a servant, and leaves the woman without another word spoken. The Navigator remains as one of Keaton's elaborate uses of a machine to develop humor. In Our Hospitality (1923) an early nineteenth century train chugs along crooked tracks, forced to stop for many obstacles — such as a animal on the tracks; in Sherlock, Jr. Buster continues riding the handlebars of a motorcycle whose operator has been thrown off by a bump —as he rides in a rush to rescue an abducted woman; and, in the 1926 The General, the comedian almost has a mechanical co-protagonist in the form of a locomotive (called "The General") assisting him in an elaborate chase. This use of the machine was more fully developed by Keaton than the other kings of silent screen comedy, Harold Lloyd, Charles Chaplin, and Harry Langdon. NAZIMOVA, ALLA. Born Adelaide Leventon May 22, 1879, in Yalta, Crimea, Russia. Died July 13,1945, in Los Angeles, California. Stage and film actress, writer, producer. Probably one of the most fascinating, offbeat four-reel films created in the twenties can be witnessed at a showing of Salome (1923). Alia Nazimova, who starred in the title role, also produced this work with art nouveau style sets and costumes. The etchings of Aubrey Beardsley provided the inspiration for the design, which often looked like a merging of expressionism, surrealism, and oriental art. Nazimova matched the decor with highly mannered, dance-like acting for this piece. However, the theme of decadent, perverse love on the part of Salome and Herod in this movie version of Oscar Wilde's stage play probably motivated the actress-producer to create this work. Nazimova's Russian and European background in experimental stage works made her an unusual force in theatre and cinema in the United States. She would introduce such major dramas by Henrik Ibsen as A Doll's House which had themes too progressive for conservative America.

NEGRI, POLA

205

Her creative skills evolved during her association with, first of all, the Moscow Academy of Acting, and then the Moscow Art Theater under the directorship of Stanislavsky. Also, stage products by these two institutions featured the latest dramas by playwrights. After a decade of successful stage appearances in the United States, Nazimova turned her attention to cinema productions. Her first work, War Brides (1916), a screen adaptation of one of her stage play performances, possessed a controversial antiwar theme. She gave Richard Barthelmess, her protege, a role in this work thereby introducing him to a career in films. The story of an unwed mother in the film Out of the Fog (1919) also received her distinctive treatment because she was the producer and had the starring role. The scope of Nazimova's talent extended to screen writing for The Brat (1919), Madame Peacock (1920), and A Doll's House (1922). In 1921 Nazimova would influence the career of another man, Rudolph Valentino, when she costarred with him in her distinctive treatment of Camille. In the silent era and formative period of the cinema art, women had more impact than has been realized. Comedy films received a boast from the directing of Mabel Normand. Writers like Frances Marion and Anita Loos logged many important screenplays, and Alia Nazimova produced some of the most advanced, innovative features in the early part of the twenties. Filmography: Selected silent features — War Brides (1916), Toys of Fate (1918), Out of the Fog (1919), The Brat (1919), Madame Peacock (1920), Camille (1921), A Doll's House (1922), Salome (1923), Madonna of the Streets (1924), The Redeeming Sin (1925). Selected sound features — Blood and Sand (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1944). Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d. ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994. Seigel, Scott, and Barbara Seigel. The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. New York: Avon Books, 1990.

NEGRI, POLA. Born December 31,1897 (some sources say 1894 or 1899), in Lipno or Janova, Poland. Died August 1,1987, in San Antonio, Texas. Actress. For a few years a highly popular Hollywood star, Pola Negri epitomized the image of the exotic, larger-than-life celebrity. She began her career on stage and screen in Poland before World War I and became a major star of the German cinema in the late 1910s and early 1920s with films like Ernst Lubitsch's Carmen (1918), Madame DuBarry (1919), and Sumurun (1920). These three pictures were released in the United States

206

NEILAN, MARSHALL

under the titles Gypsy Blood, Passion, and One Arabian Night, their success instigating American studios to seek her talents. She finally came to work for Paramount Pictures, where she continued to play fiery, strongly independent women and was built up by heavy publicity of her flamboyant romantic life onscreen and offscreen. In films like Barbed Wire (1927) she proved she had real acting talent, but she often complained of the poor roles she was given. Despite this she ranked high in polls of movie fans and generated enough ticket sales to guarantee ever increasing contracts. Her accent limited roles after the coming of sound, and she returned to Germany until World War II, with rare American film appearances after that (turning down the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard as offensive to her former image). Selected Filmography: American silents — Bella Donna (1923), The Cheat (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), Shadows of Paris (1924), Men (1924), Lily of the Dust (1924), Forbidden Paradise (1924), East of Suez (1925), The Charmer (1925), Flozver of Night (1925), A Woman of the World (1925), The Crown of Lies (1926), Good and Naughty (1926), Hotel Imperial (1927), Barbed Wire (1927), The Woman on Trial (1927), The Secret Hour (1928), Three Sinners (1928), Loves of an Actress (1928), The Woman From Moscow (1928). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

NEILAN, MARSHALL. Born April 11, 1891, in San Bernadino, California. Died October 26, 1958, in Woodland Hills, California. Director, producer, screenwriter, actor. A skillful director noted especially for sentimental dramas and comedies featuring Mary Pickford, Marshall "Mickey" Neilan started in films around 1912 as an actor, after having been a chauffeur for D. W. Griffith. He acted in shorts for American, Kalem, Rex, Biograph, and other companies, starring in his first feature in 1914 — Biograph's four-reel adaptation of the William C. deMille/Margaret Turnbull play, Classmates. He then had major roles in a number of Paramount features for Zukor's Famous Players, sometimes playing opposite Mary Pickford, including the part of the callow Pinkerton in her Madame Butterfly (1915). Neilan had written and directed some short films at Kalem, and in 1916 returned to

NEILAN, MARSHALL

207

directing, making three features for the Selig company, as well as acting in Colin Campbell's The Crisis there. The following year found him back at Paramount (Famous Players having merged with Lasky) where his first assignment was Those Without Sin, a Civil War picture featuring Blanche Sweet, whom he would marry five years later. Later that year he would direct the first of many Pickford vehicles, including many of her best features such as Rebecca ofSunnybrook Farm (1917), The Little Princess (1917), Stella Mans (1918), and Daddy Long Legs (1919). This latter film he directed on the heels of finishing two vehicles for her box office rival, Marguerite Clark. Neilan also costarred in Daddy Long Legs with Pickford, who produced it herself independently after leaving Paramount. He briefly had his own production company and in the 1920s some of his important films included Dinty (1920), Penrod (1922), Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1925), and The Sporting Venus (1925). Neilan's drinking problems and late-night carousing began to affect his work by this time, and both his output and the quality of his work declined. After the coming of sound he worked sporadically with a productive year in 1935, but retired permanently after 1937 except for a small acting role in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957). Selected Filmography as Actor: The Reioard of Valor (1912), The Stranger at Coyote (1912), Saved From Court Martial (1912), The Animal (1913), The Harvest of Flame (1913), Two Men of the Desert (1913), The Wedding Gown (1913), The House of Discord (1913), The Sentimental Sister (1914), Classmates (1914), Men and Women (1914), The Commanding Officer (1915), May Blossom (1915), The Country Boy (1915), Little Pal (1915), Rags (1915), A Girl of Yesterday (1915), Madame Butterfly (1915), Mice and Men (1916), The Crisis (1916), Broadway Gold (1923), A Face in the Crowd (1957). Filmography as Director: Features — The Cycle of Fate (1916), The Prince Chap (1916), The Country God Forgot (1916), Those Without Sin (1917), The Bottle Imp (1917), The Tides of Barnegat (1917), The Girl at Home (1917), The Silent Partner (1917), Freckles (1917), The Jaguar's Claws (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), The Little Princess (1917), Stella Maris (1918), Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (1918), M'Liss (1918), Hit-the-Trail Holliday (1918), Heart of the Wilds (1918), Out of a Clear Sky (1918), Three Men and a Girl (1919), Daddy Long Legs (1919), The Unpardonable Sin (1919), Her Kingdom of Dreams (1919), In Old Kentucky (1919), The River's End (1920), Don't Ever Marry, (1920), Go and Get It (1920), Dinty (1920), Bob Hampton of Placer (1921), Bits of Life (1921), The Lotus Eater (1921), Penrod (1922), Fools First (1922), Minnie (1922), The Stranger's Banquet (1922), The Eternal Three (1923), The Rendezvous (1923), Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1924), The Sporting Venus (1925), The Great Love (1925), Mike (1926), The Skyrocket (1926), Wild Oats Lane (1926), Diplomacy (1926), Everybody's Acting (1926), Venus of Venice (1927), Her Wild Oat (1927), Three-Ring Marriage (1928), Take Me Home (1928), Taxi 13 (1928), His Last Haul (1928), Black Waters (1929), The

208

NEWMEYER, FRED

Awful Truth (1929), Tanned Legs (1929), The Vagabond Lover (1929), Sweethearts on Parade (1930), Chloe (1935), Social Register (1935), The Lemon Drop Kid (1935), This Is the Life (1935), Sing While You're Able (1937), Thanks for Listening (1937), Swing It Professor (1937). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane. "Marshall Neilan/7 The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

NEWMEYER, FRED C. Born August 9, 1888, in Central City, Colorado. Died 1970 [undocumented], in Woodland Hills, California. Film actor, director. While he remains noted for his directing of comedian Harold Lloyd, Fred Newmeyer handled a number of movies for other actors, of whom most were comedians: Larry Semon in The Perfect Clown (1925), Douglas MacLean in Seven Keys to Baldpate (1925), Leon Errol in Lunatic at Large (1927), and W. C. Fields in The Potters (1927). Newmeyer also directed a leading man and star of the twenties, Richard Dix, in two sports movies, The Quarterback (1926) and Warming Up (1928). Comedian Harold Lloyd benefited from Newmeyer's work on some of his best humorous shorts and features. Newmeyer, with unusual humility for a man in his position, said that Lloyd really directed himself. Some of the comedian's best features were handled by Newmeyer: Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last (1923), and The Freshman (1925). With sixteen sound movies to his credit, Newmeyer proved to be less successful with this medium. One curious entry in 1936 by the director was the only feature-length Our Gang comedy, General Spanky. The director may have died a year after making this film. However, it is not clear since he spent his last years in the Motion Picture County Home and Hospital. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Now or Never (1921), Among Those Present (1921), Never Weaken (1921). Selected silent features -Grandma's Boy (1922), Doctor ]ack (1922), Safety Last (1923), The Freshman (1925), Seven Keys to Baldpate (1925), The Perfect Clown (1925), The Quarterback (1926), Lunatic at Large (1927), The Potters (1927), Warming Up (1928).

NIBLO, FRED

209

Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Fred C. Newmeyer." Encyclopedia of American Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987.

NIBLO, FRED. Born Federico Nobile, January 6, 1874, in York, Nebraska. Died November 11,1948, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Director, producer. Fred Niblo was a solid and reliable if not particularly outstanding director with an extensive stage background. He switched to film about the time of World War I and worked throughout the remainder of the silent era. The success of his films led to his being assigned to direct several of the most popular pictures and stars of the 1920s, including Douglas Fairbanks' The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Three Musketeers (1921), Valentino's Blood and Sand (1922), Ramon Novarro's Ben-Hur (1926), Greta Garbo's The Temptress (1926), and Norma Talmadge's Camille (1927). One of his strongest works is the dramatic Lillian Gish vehicle, The Enemy (1928). In addition to directing these latter two, Niblo also served as producer, a function he held on two other of his later films. Niblo got his start in the entertainment industry through the vaudeville stage. He was a member of George M. Cohan's touring company, appeared on Broadway in Cohan shows, and married Cohan's sister, Josephine (1876-1916). Their son, Fred Jr. (1903-1973), became a Hollywood screenwriter. Niblo later married actress Enid Bennett, whom he directed in a number of films. His career waned with the coming of sound, and he turned to acting for several pictures. Filmography: As director —A Desert Wooing (1918), The Marriage Ring (1918), When Do We Eat (1918), Happy Though Married (1919), The Haunted Bedroom (1919), The Law of Men (1919), Partners Three (1919), The Virtuous Thief (1919), Stepping Out (1919), What Every Woman Learns (1919), The Woman in the Suitcase (1920), Dangerous Hours (1920), Sex (1920), The False Road (1920), Hairpins (1920), Her Husband's Friend (1920), Silk Hosiery (1921), Mother o' Mine (1921), Greater Than Love (1921), The Three Musketeers (1921), The Woman He Married (1922), Rose o' the Sea (1922), Blood and Sand (1922), The Famous Mrs. Fair (1923), Strangers of the Night (1923), Thy Name is Woman (1924), The Red Lily (1924), Ben-Hur (1926), The Temptress (1926), Camille (1927), The Devil Dancer (1927), The Enemy (1928), Two Lovers (1928), The Mysterious Lady (1928), Dream of Love (1928), Redemption (1930), Way Out West (1930), Donovan's Kid (1931), The Big Gamble (1931), Two White Arms (1932), Diamond Cut Diamond (1932), Blame the Woman (1932). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

210

NORMAND, MABEL

Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

NORMAND, MABEL. Born Mabel Ethelreid Normand November 9, 1892, in Staten Island, New York. Died February 23, 1930. Model for commercial illustrators, photographers. Film actress, writer, director. A beautiful young woman at the age of sixteen, Miss Normand's physical attributes led to a career as a model. Charles Gibson and James Montgomery Flagg, leading magazine artists in the early part of the twentieth century, employed her for the cover illustrations of such weekly publications as The Saturday Evening Post. Against her mother's wishes she moved to the Biograph motion picture studio because she could obtain a higher salary. Only 18 years old in 1910, she made her film debut with a one-reel short called Over the Garden Wall. After she appeared in twelve movies for Biograph, she moved to producer Mack Sennett's Keystone studio in 1912 as an actress in The Water Nymph. For a brief time Normand would be one of the Keystone bathing beauties cavorting with Keystone clowns. She became a leading player within a year. In the 1913 Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life she played the heroine in a lively lampoon of the old-fashioned melodrama of the nineteenth century. Ford Sterling as the villain has his henchmen tie Mabel to the railroad tracks. When Charles Chaplin joined Keystone Normand not only starred with him she also codirected with the comedian in such works as Caught in a Cabaret (1914). In 1914 she shared leads with Chaplin as comic villains, an unusual role for her. The work was Tillie's Punctured Romance - considered the first feature-length comedy. Mabel had acted in more than a hundred short films for Sennett by 1916 when he developed a genteel comedy for her titled Mickey. The film was so atypical of this entrepreneur's slapstick approach that he hesitated to release it until 1918, when more genteel comedies had begun to appear. The story, about a mischievous orphan mistreated by the people of a small town, resembled the typical plot of a Mary Pickford film, and when the film became a hit, Normand began to rival Pickford. The film, now considered first rate, was a good vehicle for Normand's performance, which had sparkle, warmth, and sincerity. In the early 1920s Mabel signed with Samuel Goldwyn to make similar features in the mode of Mickey. These works, such as Molly O' and The Extra Girl, proved the comedienne possessed a talent to portray characters with a depth of emotion as well as a keen comedy sense. Her career

NOVARRO, RAMON

211

was cut short by a scandal involving her in the still-unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor. Because Normand was one of the last people to see him alive, she had difficulty in convincing the public of her innocence. Despite this cloud hanging over her and subsequent personal problems, her films remind us of her sparkling gaiety. On screen she was the beautiful sunshine girl, the greatest comedienne of the silent era. Filmography: Selected shorts — Over the Garden Wall (1910), The Water Nymph (1912), Mabel's Adventure (1912), Mabel's Dramatic Career (1913), Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (1913), Mabel at the Wheel (1914), Fatty and Mabel Viewing the World's Fair at San Francisco (1915), Mabel's and Fatty's Simple Life (1915). Selected silent Features -Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Mickey (1916-1918), Molly O' (1921), The Extra Girl (1923). Bibliography: Fussell, Betty Harper. Mabel. New Haven: Connecticut, 1982. Lahue, Kalton C. and Gill, Sam. "Mabel Normand," Clown Princes and Court jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1970. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Person, Studios, and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

NOVARRO, RAMON. Born February 6,1899, in Durango, Mexico. Died October 31,1968, in Hollywood, California. Actor. A pleasant leading man from the early 1920s, Ramon Novarro was promoted as a Latin lover to rival Valentino, but he is most remembered for the title role in MGM's Ben-Hur (1925). The oldest of thirteen children of a Mexican dentist, he was born Jose Ramon Gil Samaniego and appeared under the name Ramon Samaniego as a dancer and Hollywood bit player in the late 1910s and into the 1920s. He had his first major role in Rex Ingram's The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), changing his name to Novarro for his next film, Trifling Women, the same year. Novarro had trained in vocal music and made a number of sound films, but the scripts he was assigned made little use of his talents. He was wealthy enough to retire from the screen except for occasional later character roles. He also directed three Spanish-language films. He resumed acting on television, making a number of guest appearances in various dramatic series. In 1968 Novarro was brutally murdered in his home by intruders linked to his discreet but promiscuous homosexual lifestyle. Filmography: Silent features — Joan the Woman (1916), The Little American (1917), The Hostage (1917), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Mr. Barnes of New York (1922), The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), Trifling Women (1922), Where the Pavement Ends (1923), Scaramouche (1923), The Arab (1924), Thy Name is Woman (1924), The Red Lily (1924), The Midshipman (1925), A Lover's Oath (1925), Ben-Hur

212

NOVARRO, RAMON

(1925), Lovers? (1927), The Road to Romance (1927), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), Across to Singapore (1928), A Certain Young Man (1928), Forbidden Hours (1928), The Flying Fleet (1929), The Pagan (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. O'Brien, Stephen. "Ramon Novarro: The Lighthearted Lover." The Silents Majority 1998. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

0 O'BRIEN, GEORGE. Born April 19, 1900, in San Francisco, California. Died September 4, 1985, in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Actor in silent films; actor, director in sound films. While Harry Carey's career as a Western star flourished in the silent period of the 1910s and 1920s, he turned to eclectic roles in the sound period of the 1930s and 1940s. O'Brien's profession as an actor in the silent period, on the other hand, concentrated on a variety of parts. In the sound period he became a Western star. Two of his works, however, indicated the eventual switch. John Ford introduced him as the hero in the 1924 The Iron Horse, a work that focused on the historical event of the building of the transcontinental railroad. While the New York Times reviewer saw his acting skills as limited in the role of a railroad construction engineer, this feature would elevate O'Brien from minor roles in contemporary dramas, such as the two 1923 films The Ne'er-Do-Well and Woman-Proof. In the August 28, 1924 Times, the critic found some virtue in the actor's portrayal: "While George O'Brien, who impersonates the heroic Davy Brandon, is quite good in most of his acting, the producers have permitted him too much of the show at certain junctures, especially when he heaves his manly chest." This happens during his fights with an opponent, according to the reviewer, when the actor becomes too "theatrical." Physically gifted, he would be cast as the hero in other films. After The Iron Horse he received a lead as an errant young man in a modern-day drama that same year, 1924, The Man Who Came Back. John Ford called on him for another Western two years later to play the hero in Three Bad Men. In 1927 O'Brien received a role from the famous German director F. W. Murnau in the highly acclaimed silent Sunrise. Critical reactions to

214

ORPHANS OF THE STORM

his performance as a philandering husband were generally favorable. Janet Gaynor, who played his wife, captured an Oscar for her performance and the critics hailed Murnau for his directing of the film. O'Brien would make the transition to the age of sound with the 1929 Noah's Ark, a part-talking feature with the mixture of a biblical tale and a modern story —a device used most by D. W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille. The silent screen star's move to Westerns became evident as he played leads in refurbished versions of the staples of the 1910s and 1920s. The Lone Star Ranger (1930) and Riders of the Purple Sage (1931), for example, are remakes of Tom Mix vehicles from the fiction of Zane Grey. O'Brien would appear as a character actor in three John Ford sound films: Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Cheyenne Autumn (1964). In his last role in this sixties film, he portrayed a frontier military officer for the director who made him a star in the hero role of the 1924 The Iron Horse. Filmography: Selected features-White Hands (1922), East Side-West Side (1923), The Ne'er-Do-Well (1923), Woman-Proof (1923), The Iron Horse (1924), The Man Who Came Back (1924), Shadows of Paris (1924), The Blue Eagle (1926), Three Bad Men (1926), Paid to Love (1927), Sunrise (1927), Masked Emotions (1929), Noah's Ark (1929). Selected sound films — The Lone Star Ranger (1930), Riders of the Purple Sage (1931), The Gay Caballero (1932), Life in the Raw (1933), Hard Rock Harngan (1935), Daniel Boone, (1936), Hollywood Cowboy (1937), The Arizona Legion (1939), Frontier Marshal (1939), My Wild Irish Rose (1947), Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Cheyenne Autumn (1964). Selected Bibliography: Everson, William K. A Pictorial History of the American Film. New York: The Citadel Press, 1969. Fenin, George N., and William K. Everson. The Western from Silents to Cinerama. New York: Bonanza Books (Crown Publishers, Inc.), 1962.

ORPHANS OF THE STORM (1921). Historical drama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee, Katherine Emmett, Morgan Wallace, Lucille La Verne, Sheldon Lewis, Frank Puglia, Creighton Hale, Leslie King, Monte Blue, Sidney Herbert, Lee Kohlmar, Adolphe Lestina, Kate Bruce, Flora Finch, Louis Wolheim; screenplay by D. W. Griffith, based on play Two Orphans by Adolphe d'Ennery, Eugene Cormon. In eighteenth-century France, two poor orphans raised as sisters, one of whom is blind (and unknowingly the daughter of a disgraced aristocrat), are forcibly separated during a trip to Paris. They then must survive in vastly different surroundings amidst the excesses, terrors, and turmoil leading up to and during the French Revolution. Griffith's massive melodramatic epic Orphans of the Storm was his last

OUR GANG

215

film with the Gish sisters and one of his last masterpieces before his career declined. It shows his work at its creative peak. Technically brilliant in its photography and editing, it also features his style of storytelling at its romantic best. Because of the film's high cost, Griffith had to sacrifice a larger percentage of the profits to obtain the money for completion. Moreover, he kept the film running in elaborate (and expensive) roadshow presentations for several months before its general release in mid1922. As a result, even though it was well received by both critics and the public, it did not generate the income Griffith needed to remain independent much longer. OUR GANG. Original silent screen gang: Mickey Daniels, Jackie Condon, Joe Cobb, Mary Kornman, Ernie "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, Allen Clayton "Farina" Hoskins. This collection of seven children engaging in a variety of practical jokes, group adventures, gang assaults, and innocent projects emerged in two-reel comedies through the efforts of producer Hal Roach. These moppets became a clutch of physical, ethnic, and emotional types of characters. The mischievous traits of this bevy of children probably originated in newspaper cartoon strips such as "The Katzenjammer Kids." The most deviant physical types of the silent screen gang were the obese Joe Cobb plus the stereotyped blacks "Sunshine Sammy" and "Farina," obviously ethnic types that differed from the other five children. In his early appreciation and evaluation of the comedy film, a young Leonard Maltin as editor of the Film Fan Monthly focused on the origin and development of the Our Gang series when he wrote: "The series was a success and ninety-six two-reelers were produced before the coming of sound. The basic appeal of these comedies is that the Our Gang kids do things that all of us would love to do ourselves, but cannot" (Film Fan Monthly, December 1966, p. 3). The manipulations of these children gave them the label of "The Little Rascals." This designation was given the gang in an attempt to revive the twenties and thirties popularity of the group. The 1994 feature, The Little Rascals, met with Maltin's negative reaction when he wrote that the movie was "no match for the original 1930s Hal Roach comedy shorts" (Leonard Maltin's 1998 Movie and Video Guide, p. 781). Several Our Gang members appeared in other films with the boys receiving a higher number of movies. Silent actor Mickey Daniels appeared in such features as Harold Lloyd's Dr. Jack (1922) and other features, even in the sound period of the thirties. Using a group called The East Side Kids, another original actor from the group, Ernie "Sunshine

216

OUR GANG

Sammy" Morrison, when he was twenty-seven year old, obtained sound screen roles in fourteen 1940s features. During the transition to sound Jackie Cooper joined Our Gang in such works as Boxing Gloves, a 1929 short that was released both as a silent and sound film. He would receive the title role in Skippy (1931) and in the sentimental movie, The Champ, playing with Wallace Beery. Cooper would continue as an older youth as Jim Hawkins in the 1934 Treasure Island. He continued as a teenager actor in the late thirties and much later as an adult actor and television director. The producer and creator of the Gang shorts, Hal Roach, would find his conception effective in the sound period. He focused on shorts, with only one feature, General Spanky (1935). This work and many shorts prominently featured two stars of the sound series, George "Spanky" MacFarland and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — One Terrible Day (1922), Our Gang (1922), The Big Show (1923), Backstage (1923), The Buccaneers (1924), Commencement Day (1924), Circus Fever (1925), Dog Days (1925), Uncle Tom's Uncle (1926), Shivering Spooks (1926), Love My Dog (1926), Barnum and Ringling, Inc. (1928), Little Mother (1929), Boxing Gloves (1929). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Our Gang." Clozon Princes and Court Jesters: some Great Comics of The Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Maltin, Leonard. "Our Gang." The Great Movie Shorts. New York: Bonanza Books, 1972.

p PATHS TO PARADISE (1925). Crime comedy. Directed by Clarence Badger; with Raymond Griffith, Betty Compson, Tom Santschi, Bert Woodruff, Fred Kelsey; screenplay by Keene Thompson, from original play The Heart of a Thief by Paul Armstrong. A male and a female con artist cross paths once too often, and decide to team up to steal a necklace from a millionaire's mansion. This results in one of the longest and funniest chase scenes in the movies, as the pair take off for the Mexican border with the police in hot pursuit. Paths to Paradise is arguably the best of Raymond Griffith's few surviving comedies and ranks high among the funniest comedies of all time. Griffith's facility for pantomime and facial expression here combine with magnificently timed sight gags, resulting in a film that can hold its own with the best of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Langdon. His debonair con artist in this film may perhaps be compared with the sophisticated roles played by William Powell during the 1930s, though the physical nature of his comedy is closer to Buster Keaton. Paths to Paradise in its entirety is a lost film. It originally ran about eight to ten minutes longer, but before it was copied to safety film the last reel had decomposed beyond salvation. Fortunately the story ends at a logical point, and actually seems more modern without the denouement in which the two leading characters decide to go straight, get married, and return the stolen jewels. PENALTY, THE (1920). Crime melodrama. Directed by Wallace Worsley; with Lon Chaney, Ethel Grey Terry, Charles Clary, Claire Adams, Kenneth Harlan, James Mason, Edouard Trebaol, Milton Ross,

218

PETER PAN

Wilson Hummel; screenplay by Charles Kenyon, Philip Lonergan; from novel by Gouverneur Morris. A young boy whose legs are unnecessarily amputated after an injury grows up embittered and becomes "Blizzard," the leader of the underworld. Once in a position of power, he develops an ambitious plan to destroy the government and another plot to revenge himself on the doctor who had needlessly crippled him. Ironically, the doctor's sculptress daughter finds Blizzard an interesting character and an undercover woman detective investigating Blizzard's operations starts to fall in love with him. The original novel was serialized in Cosmopolitan magazine from April 1912 through August 1913. Lon Chaney had been a character actor for several years when the film version was produced by Eminent Authors Pictures, Inc., and distributed through Goldwyn in August 1920. Just one year before, he had appeared as a con-man fake cripple in The Miracle Man, a performance that made him a major star. From then on he was best known for the parts, like this one, in which he distorted his body to one extreme or another. Chaney is in top form as the legless criminal mastermind. His cynical, dominating presence foreshadows the antiheroes of much later films. The dark plot and sometimes bizarre subject material are strongly suggestive of the type of film Chaney would soon be making with Tod Browning at MGM. Wallace Worsley, who would later direct Chaney in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, handles this story just as well as Browning could have. Although the stylization of some of the performances can seem somewhat dated, the various elements build skillfully to a climax, involving the viewer in the story's unexpectedly pessimistic and modern-seeming tone until the ending, which appears tagged on to appease censors. PETER PAN (1924). Fantasy-adventure. Directed by Herbert Brenon; with Betty Bronson, Ernest Torrence, Virginia Browne Faire, Mary Brian, Cyril Chadwick, Esther Ralston, Anna May Wong, Philippe De Lacey, Jack Murphy, George Ali; screenplay by Willis Goldbeck, based on play by James M. Barrie. Peter Pan, a boy who never grows up, meets Wendy, John, and Michael Darling when he is searching for his shadow in their nursery. He convinces the children to fly back with him to Never Never Land, causing the fairy Tinker Bell to become jealous of Wendy and try to kill her. In Never Never Land the Lost Boys adopt Wendy as their mother, but they are all captured by the villainous pirate Captain Hook. Peter must find a way to rescue them but after taking them home refuses to live in the real world with them.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, THE

219

The popular children's play has been a staple of professional and amateur theatre productions for nearly a century, and this first screen presentation had the playwright's approval. It was an overwhelming critical success, critics gushing over its whimsical charm, but it was only a modest commercial hit once the Christmas holidays were past. The Herbert Brenon film is essentially a cinematic record of a stage production, using artificial sets, obvious special effects, and the theatrical conventions of an actor in a dog costume and audience participation. Betty Bronson's performance in the title role is the picture's biggest asset. Her high energy level and slightly erotic appeal have won the film numerous fans who can look past both the picture's conscious artificiality and its sluggish pacing. Mary Brian is also memorable as Wendy. Ernest Torrence plays Captain Hook to the melodramatic hilt and the rest of the cast do adequate jobs. Peter Pan is a film that particularly relies on a receptive audience and a good musical accompaniment to be effective. A more interesting and arguably more satisfying Brenon-Bronson collaboration is their film of another Barrie play, A Kiss For Cinderella, made the following year. PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, THE (1925). Horror melodrama. Directed by Rupert Julian; with Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Gibson Gowland, Snitz Edwards, John Sainpolis, Virginia Pearson, Arthur Edmund Carewe; screenplay adapted by Raymond Schrock, Elliott J. Clawson, from story by Gaston Leroux. Strange things have been happening at the Paris Opera House, and there are rumors of a mysterious phantom. A rising young opera singer hears a voice through her dressing-room wall and is captivated by its promise to make her a star. When she attempts to meet the masked mystery man, he holds her captive in an underground maze below the opera house. Her soldier boyfriend must track her down with the aid of a detective and rescue her. The Phantom of the Opera is a slick, studio-produced melodrama aimed directly at the mass market of its day. Horror films were relatively rare in the silent era, and thus much comic relief was felt necessary with more being added after test screenings. Often campy and far-fetched even when first released, the movie remains impressive for some memorable visuals (especially the subterranean world of the Paris sewers) and for Chaney's expressive, ballet-like performance. The famous unmasking scene has become an icon of Hollywood history. Chaney almost singlehandedly carries the film. The other actors range from the stiff and wooden to the flamboyantly melodramatic. Snitz Edwards' broad comedy could almost be from a film parody of the story. Several scenes were filmed in Technicolor, notably the "Bal Masque" scene. In 1929 the opera

220

PICKFORD, MARY

scenes were refilmed with sound and the picture was somewhat reedited with some talking sequences added, although Chaney was not available to dub his own voice. Virginia Pearson, who played the role of opera diva Carlotta in the 1925 release, was turned into Carlotta's mother in the reissue and a singer was filmed doing the Carlotta arias. Some other characters were either recast altogether or even deleted from the story. A slightly different silent version of this revised reissue was also prepared for theatres that had not yet installed sound equipment and is today the most widely available. The story has inspired at least two stage musicals, as well as several film and television remakes and reinterpretations. PICKFORD, MARY. Born April 8, 1892, in Toronto, Canada. Died May 29,1979, in Santa Monica, California. Actress, producer. Known as "America's Sweetheart," "Little Mary," and "The Biograph Girl" at various times, Mary Pickford is perhaps the single most important actress in motion picture history. She was born Gladys Smith and began acting on stage as a young girl. Her brother Jack (1896-1933) and sister Lottie (1895-1936) also acted in films, and Jack was a popular star for a time. Moving from starring roles on the legitimate stage into a wide variety of parts in Biograph shorts in 1909 (many directed by D. W. Griffith), she immediately captured the public's attention even though actors' names were not billed at the time. Unlike a number of stars who were exploited by their studio employers, Pickford was an astute judge of her own worth and a skillful businesswoman who negotiated higher and higher contracts until she was the first woman to make a million dollars a year. She was one of Paramount's biggest moneymakers from 1914 to 1919, although rivaled in popularity for a time by fellow Paramount star Marguerite Clark. To gain more advantageous distribution of her productions, in 1919 she cofounded United Artists with soon-to-be-husband Douglas Fairbanks, one-time mentor D. W. Griffith, and fellow screen icon Charles Chaplin. Pickford produced several of her films and wrote a few of them. She also wrote the titles for one of her brother's pictures, Garrison's Finish (1923). Her roles most beloved by her fans were those of a spunky young girl with long, flowing curls, often involving a heartwarming, sentimental romance. Some of her best and most typical films include Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), The Little Princess (1917), Pollyanna (1920), Little Annie Rooney (1925), and Sparrows (1926). Especially early in her feature career Pickford tried at times to break free of this idealized image that had made her a superstar, but invariably she disappointed her public with straight dramatic roles like the tragic seduced and abandoned Japanese girl in Madame Butterfly (1915) or a woman in love with a

PICKFORD, MARY

221

spy w h o later goes m a d a n d gives u p her baby in The Love Light (1921). O t h e r s , like Tess of the Storm Country (1914 w i t h a r e m a k e in 1922) a n d Heart o' the Hills (1918) included e n o u g h of her t r a d e m a r k m a n n e r i s m s to please her fans while exploring m o r e d r a m a t i c story material a n d characters that w e r e not all sweetness. Stella Moris (1918) g a v e her a strongly d r a m a t i c d u a l role as both a beautiful b e d r i d d e n rich girl a n d a povertystricken, plain-looking laborer w h o leads a tragic life. In Suds (1920), she a g a i n p l a y e d a n unattractive y o u n g girl b u t kept s o m e of the s p u n k a n d cheerfulness of her u s u a l roles w i t h less effective results. With My Best Girl (1927), Pickford finally settled into a d u l t roles for good, h a v i n g p l a y e d children a n d very y o u n g w o m e n well into her thirties. The coming of s o u n d s a w her retool her screen image with movies like Coquette a n d The Taming of the Shrew (both 1929) a n d Kiki (1931). A l t h o u g h Kiki h a s its c h a r m s her n e w " b a d girl" i m a g e did not help her career, nor d i d her m a n n e r e d delivery of dialogue, a n d she never regained the overw h e l m i n g p o p u l a r i t y of her silent persona. H e r last acting role w a s in Secrets (1933), like Kiki a r e m a k e of a N o r m a T a l m a d g e silent b u t e v e n w e a k e r t h a n that p r e v i o u s effort. Pickford r e m a i n e d active in business v e n t u r e s , including f o u n d i n g a cosmetics c o m p a n y , as well as m a n y charity activities. She divorced D o u g l a s Fairbanks in 1936 a n d m a r r i e d third h u s b a n d Charles " B u d d y " Rogers, her costar from My Best Girl. H e r first h u s b a n d h a d been actor O w e n Moore. She w a s a r a n k i n g executive at United Artists until she a n d C h a p l i n sold the c o m p a n y in 1953. Filmography: Features —In the Bishop's Carriage (1913), Caprice (1913), Hearts Adrift (1914), Tess of the Storm Country (1914), The Lagle's Mate (1914), Such a Little Queen (1914), Behind the Scenes (1914), Cinderella (1914), Mistress Nell (1915), Fanchon the Cricket (1915), The Dawn of a Tomorrow (1915), Little Pal (1915), Rags (1915), A Girl of Yesterday (1915), Lsmeralda (1915), Madame Butterfly (1915), Poor Little Peppina (1916), The Foundling (1916), The Eternal Grind (1916), Hulda From Holland (1916), Less Than the Dust (1916), The Pride of the Clan (1917), The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), A Romance of the Redwoods (1917), The Little American (1917), Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), The Little Princess (1917), Stella Mans (1918), Amanlly of Clothes-Line Alley (1918), M'liss (1918), How Could You, Jean? (1918), Johanna Enlists (1918), Captain Kidd, Jr. (1919), Daddy Long Legs (1919), The Hoodlum (1919), Heart o' the Hills (1919), Pollyanna (1920), Suds (1920), The Love Light (1921), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921), Through the Back Door (1921), Tess of the Storm Country (1922), Rosita (1923), Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), Little Annie Rooney (1925), Sparrows (1926), My Best Girl (1927), The Gaucho (1928), Coquette (1929), The Taming of the Shrew (1929), Kiki (1931), Secrets (1933). Selected Bibliography: Eyman, Scott. Mary Pickford, America's Sweetheart. New York: Fine, 1990. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

222

PITTS, ZASU

Herndon, Booton. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks: The Most Popular Couple the World Has Ever Known. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1977. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Mary Pickford." The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

PITTS, ZASU. Born January 3, 1898, in Parsons, Kansas. Died June 7, 1963, in Hollywood, California. Film actress. Most people take the first name of ZaSu Pitts for granted, but for the curious who wish to know: she was named after two maiden aunts. Their names were Eliza and Susie, therefore a composite of the last of Eliza and the first of Susie created the unusual name of ZaSu. Her comic portraits evolved into something as strange as her name. It has been reported that prolific screenwriter Frances Marion discovered the comedienne viewing the filming of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm starring Mary Pickford. The film author introduced her to Pickford and Pitts became an extra for this 1917 film. The same year she received a larger role in Pickford's The Little Princess and a Douglas Fairbanks Sr. comedy, A Modern Musketeer. Part of her rapid rise as a film comedy actress developed because of her natural eccentric nature. Even in a crowd her mannerisms drew attention to her gestures. She would, of course, magnify these arm and body movements to produce comedy. ZaSu became famous for her flighty, bewildered humorous portrayals, and she prospered for nearly four decades as a distinctive comedienne —a one-of-akind actress. In his book, A Tree is a Tree, King Vidor reflects on his profession as a cinema director. He recalls that he met the enigmatic ZaSu while riding on a streetcar. Her odd behavior inspired him to write a film depicting a wallflower, loser woman who fell in love with a big league baseball player. The actress would obtain her first starring role in the director's 1919 film Better Times. She would appear in several more Vidor films such as Poor Relations and The Other Half in 1919. Director Erich von Stroheim took actress Pitts in a diametrically opposite direction. He proved that a superior comedienne could handle a portrait of tragic dimensions when she played the role of Trina Sieppe in Greed (1925). In this film she would play one of her most effective roles

POLLARD, HARRY

223

of the decade. ZaSu would appear in two more films directed by Stroheim: The Wedding March (1928) and Sins of the Fathers (1929). Pitts continued her career in many sound films. Some of the most important were The Guardsman (1931), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), and Life with Father (1947). She also provided the small screen audiences a view of her unusual comedy character for four seasons on "The Gale Storm Show" from 1956 to 1960. Filmography: Selected feature films — The Little Princess (1917), A Modern Musketeer (1917), Poor Relations (1919), The Other Half (1919), Better Times (1919), Three Wise Fools (1923), Greed (1925), The Wedding March 1928), Sins of the Fathers (1928). Selected sound features — The Guardsman (1931), Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), Life with Father (1947). Television-"The Gale Storm Show" series from 1956 to 1960. Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: HarperCollins Publishing, Inc., 1994. Seigel, Scott, and Barabra Seigel. The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. New York: Avon Books, 1990.

POLLARD, HARRY "SNUB." Born Harold Fraser November 9, 1889, in Melbourne, Australia. Died January 19, 1962, in Burbank, California. Stage, film actor. Possessing a walrus mustache, stylized comic eyebrows, and clown white makeup, Snub could easily be confused with his fellow Australian comedian, Billy Bevan. As a foil for Harold Lloyd in the 1919 Just Neighbors, he exhibited support for the more famous comedian as a neighbor who provides a climactic fight with all the slapstick comedy of the period. As Lloyd moved ahead into two- and three-reel films, Hal Roach gave Pollard his own series. In the mid-twenties leading comedians, Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, and Langdon who had graduated to featurelength works eclipsed his films. Filmography: Selected shorts — Lonesome Luke-Gangster (1915), The Flirt (1917), Just Neighbors (1919), Hzs Royal Slyness (1919), Hocus-Pocus (1921), It's a Gift (1923). Select Sound Features — East Lynne (1931), Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934), The Kid from Brooklyn (1945), Limelight (1952). Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C. and Samuel Gill, "Snub Pollard." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Miller, Blair, "Harry 'Snub' Pollard." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1995.

224

PONY EXPRESS, THE

PONY EXPRESS, THE (1925). Western. Directed by James Cruze; with Ricardo Cortez, Betty Compson, Ernest Torrence, Wallace Beery, George Bancroft, Frank Lackteen, John Fox Jr.; screenplay by Walter Woods; story by Henry James Forman. In 1859 a San Francisco gambler leaves California to escape a senator who wants to secede and form a new country. Meanwhile the Pony Express is being organized for cross-country mail delivery, and "Frisco Jack," as the gambler is known, becomes a rider. At the same time, influential California revolutionaries are plotting to keep eastern news from reaching the state. James Cruze's follow-up to his influential epic, The Covered Wagon, received far less public and critical notice, but its use of a more complex plot and more action makes it superior to its predecessor. Realistic details, a strong cast, and fine photography make The Pony Express a classic of the western genre. A major asset are its colorful characters, with George Bancroft's villain being particularly noteworthy. Surviving prints, unfortunately, are copies of a home version abridged to approximately half its original length. The story remains intact, but character development and interesting subplots are curtailed or eliminated. PORTER, EDWIN S. Born Edwin Stratton April 21, 1869, in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. Died April 30,1941, in New York City. Film director, writer, editor, cinematographer, engineer, inventor. There has been some question whether Edwin Porter stumbled on the cinematic narrative technique — the medium's distinctive way of telling a story, or whether his innovation developed from a conscious, calculated concept. Two of his early creations from 1903, The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery, employed a number of shots in a way that departed from other film pioneers who photographed scenes as they would appear on the stage, with the action moving in time and space as a tableau. In these early works Porter used shots to show parallel action, cutaways, medium shots that cut into the action, and even camera movement such as a pan. These techniques are more obvious when viewing his one-reel work, The Great Train Robbery, a Western released December 1,1903. Porter, an experimenter who had scientific leanings, later experimented with animation in The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906). He made few advances over his earlier movies even when he formed his own studio in 1910 with Rex Film Company. Later he was hired by producer Adolph Zukor to launch the concept labeled "Famous Players in Famous Plays," with leading stage actors. For example, Porter directed James K.

PURVIANCE, EDNA

225

Hackett in The Prisoner ofZenda and James O'Neill in The Count of Monte Cristo, both feature-length films adapted from the stage and released in 1913. With the Famous Players Company Porter made his fortune by directing and serving as cinematographer. With his control of the production he seemed to stray from his earlier experiments. Dealing directly with stage plays, he forgot his earlier cinema narrative techniques and merely photographed a series of scenes. He returned to some of his earlier inventions for the movie industry in 1916. He experimented with three-dimensional photography, talking movies, better movie cameras and projectors. When he died in 1941 at the age of seventy-one, his contributions had been forgotten until film historian revisionists decades later revealed his wide variety of innovations on behalf of the cinema medium. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Day at the Circus (1901), Romance of the Rails (1903), Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903), The Life of a Cowboy (1906), The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906), Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1907). Selected silent features — The Prisoner ofZenda (1913), The Count of Monte Cristo (1913), Tess of the Storm County (1914). Selected Bibliography: Hillstrom, Laurie Collier, editor. International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers 2. Directors. (3d ed.). Detroit, Michigan: St. James Press, 1997. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc, 1994. PURVIANCE, EDNA (OLGA). Born October 21, 1894, in Paradise Valley, Nevada. Died January 13, 1958, in Woodland Hills, California. Silent film actress. Edna Purviance and Mildred Davis shared a similar type of character for, respectively, Charles Chaplin and Harold Lloyd. Both provided these two comedians with love interest and a normalcy of character that contrasted with the eccentricities of the humorous leading men. Edna appeared in close to forty films with Chaplin. Most of these comedies were two-reelers. Her leading woman position would continue with two features, The Kid (1921) and A Woman of Pans (1923). In both of these full-length films her roles do not have significant humorous tone — the overall portrayal has a serious basis. In The Kid Purviance portrays an unwed mother who hides this from society. The focus of the film's story remains on The Kid, enacted by Jackie Coogan, and his relationship to the little tramp (Chaplin) who takes over, as a single parent, the raising of the boy. This relationship provides the humor in the movie. Chaplin, who wrote and directed these two features, cast Edna in A Woman of Paris evidently trying to help advance her professionally.

226

PURVIANCE, EDNA

However, it obviously did not provide the vehicle to revive and continue her career. Ironically, Chaplin would use her once more decades later, as he did with many silent-era actors. Unfortunately, it revealed the plight of a has-been. Edna Purviance could barely be seen as an extra in the comedian's controversial film, Monsieur Verdoux (1947). Filmography: Selected silent film s h o r t s - A Night Out (1915), The Bank (1915), The Tramp (1915), The Vagabond (1916), The Count (1916), Behind the Screen (1916), The Rink (1916), Easy Street (1917), The Cure (1917). Sunny Side (1919), The Idle Class (1921). Selected feature films -The Kid (1921), A Woman of Paris (1923). Selected Bibliography: Gehring, Wes D. "Edna Purviance." Charlie Chaplin: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: an Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland and Company, Inc., 1995.

R RAY, CHARLES EDWARD, JR. Born May 15, 1891, in Jacksonville, Illinois. Died November 23, 1943, in Hollywood, California. Film actor, producer, director. The bucolic nature of Ray's subject matter in a rural setting becomes evident even in the titles of many of his films, such as The Clodhopper (1917), Homer Comes Home (1920), and The Old Swimmin' Hole (1921). In 1919 the comedian appeared in a feature-length film, The Sheriffs Son, a work that displays many similarities to Harold Lloyd's Grandma's Boy (1922). In theme, the two works are strikingly similar. In The Sheriffs Son, Ray plays the role of a meek, cowardly boy who overcomes a gang of outlaws despite his timid disposition. However, the humor of most of Ray's work, unlike that of Lloyd's, was mild and not as laughable as that of the major comedian. Ray belonged in the league of other genteel humorous actors of the twenties: Johnny Hines, Douglas MacLean, and Wallace Reid. In The Coward (1915), Ray handled serious drama reasonably well as the son of proud Southern family who is afraid to fight during the Civil War, and who finally decides to redeem himself after his elderly father takes his place. However as a comedian Ray played so many small-town young men from his 1912 entrance into movies that eventually his portrait became hackneyed and he lost his star status. In the 1920 Homer Comes Home the plot had the protagonist moving to the city scene to become successful in business. As a go-getting clerk he impresses his boss and gets a managerial post in his hometown. He wins the girlfriend who has waited for him back home. Homer, the reviewer in The Dramatic Mirror of July 3, 1920, points out that the film was "another addition to

228

REGENERATION

Charles Ray's long string of country lads who make good in spite of tremendous odds." The comedian tried to change the rut he was in by producing and directing his own films in the twenties. His 1923 The Courtship of Miles Standish was a failure that sent his career into a downturn. Nevertheless, although he did not recover from this financial plight, he remains one of the leading comedians in the genteel tradition. Filmography: Selected silent features — The Coward (1915), The Clodhopper (1917), The Sheriffs Son (1919), Homer Comes Home (1920), An Old Fashioned Boy (1920), The Old Swimmin Hole (1921), Tailor Made Man (1922), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1923), Getting Gertie's Garter (1927). Selected sound features — Hollywood Boulevard (1936), Tennessee Johnson (1942). Selected Bibliography: Franklin, Joe, "Charles Ray." Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury. New York: Crown Publishers,1962. Katz. Ephraim, "Charles Ray." The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1994. REGENERATION (1915). Drama. Directed by Raoul Walsh; with Rockliffe Fellowes, Anna Q. Nilsson, William Sheer, Carl Harbaugh, James Marcus; screenplay by Raoul Walsh and Carl Harbaugh, from book and play by Owen Kildare and Walter Hackett. A young boy in the New York slums is drawn into the local underworld. By the time he is a young man he is the leader of his own gang. Under the influence of an attractive social worker he decides to pull himself out of his life of crime, despite strong ties to it and his criminal friends. The story is adapted from an autobiographical book and play, My Mamie Rose; The Story of My Regeneration by Owen Kildare, and is among the best of a number of pictures that tried to depict contemporary social problems in a realistic manner. The acting and directing are remarkably modern. Rockliffe Fellowes has the looks and mannerisms of a young Marlon Brando, and Anna Q. Nilsson is subtle and effective. Under Walsh's calculated direction they bring the story to life rather than merely pantomiming a chronological narrative for the camera. Few silent pictures make such an effort to focus on characters over action and more visually suited plot elements. Walsh's vivid pictorial sense and strong grasp of the power of editing appear to be influenced by Griffith, yet he takes things further, with an unusual grim starkness and realism for the period. Only a few aspects tend to date the picture, such as excessive makeup and the obvious use of sunlight on what are intended to be interior sets.

REID, WALLACE

229

REID, WALLACE. Born William Wallace Reid April 15, 1891, in St. Louis, Missouri. Died January 18,1923, in Hollywood, California. Stage actor; film actor, writer, director, photographer. Evaluators of the silent screen seldom give the very popular actor Wallace Reid his due. Part of the reason might be that he did appear in many lightweight cinema dramas. While he became versatile enough to handle a wide range of roles, he also became so important a star that he was often cast in popular films that would appeal to audiences with limited taste, a type of movie derived from the popular magazine and book literature of the day. For example, he applied his talent to a film that such genteel comedians as Johnny Flines, Charles Ray, and Douglas MacLean used in their movies. Reid portrays a young man from the country who looks for his fortune in the big city in The Dancin Fool (1920). It was the type of material that Harold Lloyd employed with considerably more skill in Safety Last (1923), a work that achieved both critical and popular acclaim. Reid's The Dancin' Fool, when it is viewed today, promotes very little laughter. With his 1920 Double Speed, another genteel comedy, he did not have a vehicle to promote him as a comedian. His leading serious role of Peter Ibbetson, from a novel by Du Maurier, did keep the actor in the limelight, and his popularity continued. In an historical evaluation of silent filmmakers, studios, and stars, Richard Koszarski's An Evening's Entertainment indicates adaptations of literary works that show the skills of the actor: "Reid was especially effective in such Cecil B. DeMille productions as Carmen (1915), Joan the Woman (1916), and The Affairs of Anatol (1921)" (p. 278). Unfortunately his importance as one of the best leading men of the period became overshadowed by a scandal not of his own making. While on location shooting Valley of the Giants (1919) Reid sustained a painful injury that led to a physician's prescription of morphine. With repeated doses, Reid became an addict. The public didn't understand the situation and believed he was responsible for his addiction. A number of scandals of the early twenties, of which the alleged rape and death of a woman brought Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle infamy, plus some stars' wild sexual episodes with drugs and alcohol, led to public outrage and censorship of Hollywood films. Only today do film historians attempt to exonerate Reid and look for his merits as an actor. Filmography: Selected shorts and features — The Phoenix (1910), The Leading Lady (1911), The Reporter (1911), Before the White Man Came (1912), The Indian Raiders (1912), The Deerslayer (1913), Fires of Fate (1913), The Mountaineer (191.4), The Way of a Woman (1914), The Wheel of Life (1914), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Enoch Arden (1915), Old Heidelberg (1915), Carmen (1915), The Golden Chance (1916), Maria Rosa (1916), Joan the Woman (1916), The Woman God Forgot (1917), Believe Me Xantippe (1918), Too Many Millions (1918), The Roaring Road (1919), The Valley of

230

RIN-TIN-TIN

the Giants (1919), Hawthorne of the U.S.A. (1919), Double Speed (1920), Excuse My Dust (1920), The Dancin' Fool (1920), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), Forever/Peter Ibbetson (1921), Across the Continent (1922), Clarence (1922). Selected Bibliography: Franklin, Joe. "Wallace Reid." Classics of the Silent Screen. New York: Cadillac Publishing Co., 1959. Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

RIN-TIN-TIN. A German shepherd, a super dog of the silent screen. While the sound screen touted a canine hero called Lassie — starting with the 1943 Lassie Come Home — the silent film of the 1920s boasted the wonder-dog, Rin-Tin-Tin, introduced in the picture, The Man from Hell's River (1922). By 1923 this German Shepherd reached star status. His ability to rescue people and fight villains captured the hearts of both young and old moviegoers. Rin-Tin-Tin had the brains of a human and a likable personality that seemed as important, if not more important, than that of his master. Some of the dog's abilities: running faster than any animal, such as a mountain lion; opening a lock, gate, or door; scaling almost impossible obstacles; and escaping from attempts by villains to kill him. The superdog image with all types of skills proved to be an illusion that can only be achieved by the motion picture medium. Rin-Tin-Tin needed a number of stand-in shepherds who proved to be mirror images of the star. One dog could not be trained to perform this many tasks. Rin-Tin-Tin, it is believed, might have been used for close-ups that seemed to register humanlike emotions. But, of course, most of this information did not reach a public that was amazed by one canine's talent. Western star Tom Mix's "wonderhorse" Tony also had a number of stand-ins with specific talents. A total of twenty-one silent features indicated the popularity of Warner Brothers canine film adventures starring Rin-Tin-Tin. From all reports this animal saved the studio from bankruptcy. However, Warner's experiments with sound pictures provided the novelty cinema works that also drew crowds and helped the company's shaky financial problems in the decade of the twenties. Selected Filmography: The Man From Hells River (1922), Where the North Begins (1923), The Lighthouse by the Sea (1924), Clash of the Wolves (1925), The Night Cry (1926), A Dog of the Regiment (1927), A Race for Life (1928), Frozen River (1929). Selected Bibliography: Franklin, Joe. Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury. Cadillac Publishing Co., 1959.

RIPLEY, ARTHUR

231

Higham, Charles. "Rise of the Dog Star." Warner Brothers. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1975. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. New York: Avon Books, 1990.

RIPLEY, ARTHUR. Born [day and month unknown] 1895, in Bronx, New York. Died February 15, 1961, in Woodland Hills, California. Film editor, screenwriter, director, producer. Working his way up the movie production ladder, Arthur Ripley went to work at the age of 14 in the film developing laboratory of Kalem Studio. Three years later he became an editor for Vitagraph. By the early twenties he became a gag writer for Mack Sennett. Another writer, Frank Capra, and Ripley would join forces to develop screenplays for Harry Langdon, one of the comedy kings of the silent cinema. Ripley served as writer for the comedian's nine shorts and six features. By most critical standards the contributions of Ripley and Capra produced three of Langdon's best features: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927). Comedian Langdon believed he could direct and produce his own movies, a practice employed by three other kings of silent comedy — Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton. However, his efforts to create three features — Three's a Crowd (1927) and The Chaser and Heart Trouble (1928) — did not have the audience appeal of his previous works. They were box office failures. The only important production staff the comedian took with him to form his own company was his screenwriter Arthur Ripley. In the late 1920s the screenwriter who had been so successful had difficulty recovering. He returned to producer Mack Sennett and directed two excellent two-reelers starring W. C. Fields, The Pharmacist and The Barber Shop (1933). However, in the sound period his talents faded. He would never match the storytelling and title dialogue skills he had exhibited in the silent cinema. Filmography: Selected short comedies — Remember When? (1925), Lucky Star (1925), His Marriage Wow (1925), Boobs in the Wood (1925), Soldier Man (1926). Selected silent features — Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926), The Strong Man (1926), Long Pants (1927), Three's a Crowd (1927), The Chaser (1928), Heart Trouble (1928). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1994. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987.

232

ROACH, HAL

ROACH, HAL. Born Harold Eugene Roach January 14, 1892, in Elmira, New York. Died November 2,1992, in Bel Air, California. Film producer, director, writer, actor. Two pioneers, giant entrepreneurs of silent screen comedy, emerged in the 1910s: Mack Sennett and Hal Roach. Producer Sennett introduced Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Marie Dressier, and Ben Turpin, plus a number of minor comedians as a dysfunctional police force, the Keystone Cops. The early works of Sennett's Keystone Studios focused on slapstick humor replete with fights, chases, and rushes to the rescue. Hal Roach, as a rival producer, to a degree employed slapstick humor in his early works. With a genteel touch as he served as writer and director, he created a distinctive human mode to his comedies. As a result, roughhouse farce began to disappear when he concentrated on more realistic plots and character than Sennett did. Sennett employed broad, stereotyped characters and loosely developed plots in his comedies. Roach's most famous comedians were Harold Lloyd, Laurel and Hardy, and Harry Langdon, plus less known comedians Charlie Chase and Edgar Kennedy. One of Roach's most effective innovations remains the group of seven children comedians called Our Gang. Roach started in his profession as a bit player in such films as Sampson (1914) with another extra, Harold Lloyd, who would become his first important one- and two-reel comedian. With limited funds the producer established the Rolin Company and developed two series, Willie Work and Lonesome Luke, starring Lloyd. By the time Lloyd moved to features in the 1920s it became apparent that he would become one of the Kings of Comedy of that decade which featured the leading actors, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. Roach served as financial manager and promoter of four Lloyd features: Grandma's Boy and Dr. Jack (1922), Safety Last and Why Worry? (1923). In this same period, as early as 1922, the producer launched one of his most successful series of short comedies featuring seven children with the title of "Our Gang," and much later on "The Little Rascals." The previous year, 1921, Roach had success with a "Sunshine Sammy" series using only one actor. Evidently a collection of varied types of children produced even more successful comedy shorts since the series continued into the thirties and forties sound period. Bored of Education (1936) gave the producer an Oscar for the best short of the year. When Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy became comedians for one of the best comedy producers of the 1920s silent films, Hal Roach, they were not immediately considered a team when they appeared in the same picture. However, by 1927 directors for Roach began employing them as a duo in Putting the Pants on Philip, The Second Hundred Years, and Battle of

ROBIN HOOD

233

the Century. From that year on Laurel and Hardy created comedy with almost effortless camaraderie, playing with and off each other's characters with exceptional skill. Roach would continue producing their comedy shorts and finally, in the 1930s, a number of their features. A threereel short by this team, The Music Box (1932), received an Oscar for the best short of the year. Roach can be considered the most important comedy producer through the decades because he continued from the silent age into the sound age. He even produced a number of serious works in these periods. For example, in the sound period he produced the critically acclaimed Of Mice and Men and directed as well as produced the fantasy, One Million B.C., both in 1939. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Bumping into Broadway (1919), His Royal Slyness (1919), Get Out and Get Under (1920), High and Dizzy (1920), Our Gang (1922), Putting Pants on Philip (1927), The Second Hundred Years (1927), Battle of the Century (1927), Two Tars (1928). Selected silent features -Grandma's Boy (1922), Safety Last (1923). Selected sound shorts-Men O' War (1929), Brats (1930), The Music Box (1932), Bored of Education 1936). Selected sound features — Pack Up Your Troubles (1932), Sons of the Desert (1933), General Spanky (1936), Kelly the Second (1936), Topper (1937), Of Mice and Men (1939), One Million B.C. (1939), Saps at Sea (1940). Selected Bibliography: Maltin, Leonard. "Hal Roach." The Great Movie Shorts. New York: Bonanza Books. 1972. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. "Hal Roach." American Film Comedy from Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1994.

ROBIN HOOD (1922). Historical adventure. Directed by Allan Dwan; with Douglas Fairbanks, Wallace Beery, Sam De Grasse, Enid Bennett, Paul Dickey, William Lowery, Roy Coulson, Billie Bennett, Alan Hale; screenplay by Lotta Woods; story by Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks). The Earl of Huntingdon, while serving with King Richard in the Crusades, receives word that Prince John is attempting to become king of England in his absence. The earl finds a pretext to return to England to get things under control. There he takes the name of "Robin Hood," leads a group of political dissidents, and gains a reputation as an outlaw who steals from the rich to feed the poor. After saving his fiancee from the prince's prison, he is captured until the arrival of the rightful king, who learns the real reason for the earl's supposed treason. The Fairbanks version of the classic English folk legend spends nearly as much time on the political intrigue surrounding the fight for the throne as it does on the action, romance, and adventure for which the later remakes are noted. As a result there is much stronger character mo-

234

ROGERS, WILL

tivation than in most Robin Hood films, but this sometimes disappoints viewers who don't want to wait so long for the action to start. The familiar part of the story doesn't begin until about halfway into the film. Although it has a strong sense of humor deriving from Fairbanks' character (most evident during the last half), this film is generally more dramatic in nature than either the Errol Flynn or Kevin Costner interpretations. Fairbanks' own exuberant personality drives much of the picture, assisted by spectacular art direction with gigantic, detailed sets. ROGERS, WILL. Born William Penn Adair Rogers November 4,1899, in Claremont Indian Territory, which would become the state of Oklahoma. Died August 15, 1935, near Point Barrow, Alaska. Wild West show, circus, vaudeville, stage musical comedy, radio performer. Film actor, writer, director, producer. Author of three books, humorous newspaper columnist. Raised on his father's cattle ranch in Oklahoma, a man who would become a humorist in all media developed horsemanship and cowboy roping skills. Rogers perfected many lasso tricks that he eventually displayed in Wild West shows, vaudeville, and the Ziegfeld Follies. On stage he began interjecting humor in his act and by the mid-1910s became a headliner on the variety stage. He would soon command a salary of $1,000 to $2,000 in vaudeville and the silent films. Rogers's first film, Laughing Bill Hyde (1918), contained the roots of the character he would portray, with variations, until he died in a plane crash in 1935. Whether he was a one-time thief (Bill Hyde), a hobo (Jubilo), a judge, a doctor, farmer, or lawyer, the homespun origins of his enactments meshed with the personality that he had established on the stage. In the actor's second feature, produced a year later, Jubilo, the title character is a tramp who goes to work for a rancher. He thwarts an attempt of bandits to implicate his employer in a robbery. Jubilo's assistance indicates the nature of the leading character in the genteel comedy. Rogers often played a middle-aged, likable, homespun character who helps people when they are in a difficult predicament—a Mr. Fixit, often used in the sentimental comedy. This type of character, a type that goes back to the eighteenth-century drama, may produce a warm, amiable kind of humorous work. Rogers would repeat this same hobo character, Jubilo, in the sound film, Too Busy to Work (1932). Another example of the closely linked portraits by Rogers in the silent period with those in the sound era of the 1930s can be witnessed in his cowboy portrayals. In a short film, The Ropin' Fool (1922), the actor displayed his unusual skill twirling multiple lariats. He elaborated on the

ROGERS, WILL

235

anachronism of a cowboy challenging a knight in the days of Camelot—a scene similar to that developed by Mark Twain in his novel, A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur. The New York Times printed an evaluation of the 1931 film adaptation called A Connecticut Yankee in which the reviewer described the action of the actor as the leading character Hank Martin, also called Sir Boss: "In a jousting affair with Sir Sagramor, Sir Boss appears as a cowpuncher with leather chaps and his useful lariat. Here Sir Boss's fine riding comes in useful, for he tantalizes Sir Sagramor, then whips off the knight's headgear and finally unseats the man in armor from his steed and pulls him around the arena as they used to do with horse thieves" (April 13,17:1). This work, A Connecticut Yankee, proved to be one of his few sound films that employed the cowboy allusion or the ranch locale, while many of the seventeen features and twenty-nine shorts of the silent period used Will's background. Rogers attempted a number of parodies of Western stars in his shorts —such as Uncensored Movies (1923), Big Moments from Little Pictures and Two Wagons - Both Covered (1924). Frequent targets were William S. Hart and Tom Mix. That same year, 1924, the actor and writer developed a lampoon of congressmen in a number of shorts like Going to Congress incorporating a character aptly named for his ineffectiveness, Alfalfa Doolittle. While he was not too successful with these little attempts at parody, a humorous, syndicated column that introduced him to a larger public assisted him in the popularity that would increase with his entrance into sound pictures with the 1929 They Had to See Paris. In the few years before his death in 1935, the humorist became the leading Hollywood actor with portraits in the genteel comedy tradition: an inventor in A Connecticut Yankee, a hobo in Too Busy to Work, a smalltown physician in Dr. Bull, a pig farmer in State Fair (1933), and a banker and horse trader in David Harum (1934). In all of these works he presents a convincing study of a small-town sage, brimming with goodwill, yet a person who was capable of righting a wrong. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Ropin' Fool (1922), Uncensored Movies (1923), Big Moments from Little Pictures (1924), Two Wagons-Both Covered (1924), Goz'ng to Congress (1924). Selected silent features — Laughing Bill Hyde (1918), Jubilo (1919), Cupid the Cowpuncher (1920), Jes' Call Me Jim (1920), Doubling for Romeo (1921), The Headless Horseman (1922), A Texas Steer (1927). Selected sound features — They Had to See Paris (1929), Lightnin' (1930), A Connecticut Yankee (1931), Too Busy to Work (1932), State Fair (1933), David Harum (1934), Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat 'Round the Bend (1935).

236

ROGERS, WILL

Selected Bibliography: Ketchum, Richard M. Will Rogers: hits Life and Times. New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., 1973. Rollins, Peter C. Will Rogers: A Bio-Bibliography. VVestport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1984. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. American Film Comedy: From Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1994.

s SAFETY LAST (1923). Comedy. Directed by Fred Newmayer and Sam Taylor; with Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Bill Strothers; screenplay by Hal Roach, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan. Anyone viewing Safety Last will soon come to the conclusion that Harold Lloyd and his collaborators were master craftsmen, gifted gagmen who could produce an amazing series of comic incidents from one basic situation. The climactic climb up the skyscraper proves to be the best "thrill-comedy" sequence of the silent screen. The other comedy kings —Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon — employed similar material, but never surpassed Lloyd's skill in conception and execution. For example, Chaplin handled a highwire circus act in The Circus (1928) where the comedian is plagued by runaway monkeys climbing all over him; Keaton rode the handlebars of a motorcycle without a driver over a collapsing bridge and many other hazards in his 1924 Sherlock, Jr. As inventive as these two actors were with such material, Lloyd remains the most innovative with a situation he labeled "thrill-comedy." He also used the dangerous plight of being caught on a high building in short films, Look Out Below (1918), High and Dizzy (1920), and the early sound feature Feet First (1930), plus his last work, Mad Wednesday (1947). The comedian created a comic icon for all time with his climb up the building. The October 5, 1990 Time magazine used a Safety Last cover photo of Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock on a tall building to illustrate the high anxiety of the American success s t o r y - a n d , in this case, the hazards of the 1990 economy in troubled times. This was a symbolic image of the famous comedian, depicting a young man struggling to get to the top with his wild promotional idea. Books about Lloyd's films and his life often use this photo for covers. And, this icon

238

ST. JOHN, AL

shows us a great moment in the history of cinema from the comedian's best-known work, Safety Last. ST. JOHN, AL. Born September 10,1893, in Santa Ana, California. Died January 21,1963, in Vidalia, California. Vaudeville, film actor. Some actors are obviously destined to receive supporting roles all of their careers. Al St. John might be the best example. However, he did star for a brief time in his own comedies in the twenties. More often he enacted secondary parts for Mack Sennett's Keystone Company and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle or Buster Keaton. One of the comedian's first brushes with a Western was a comedy called Out West (1918). He continued with a number of western leading men such as Tom Mix in Painted Post and Hello Cheyenne in 1928. It was a harbinger of Al St. John's future as a sidekick to a cowboy hero in 1930s and 1940s low-budget movies. He provided the sidekick role for B-Westerns heroes played by Robert Livingston and Buster Crabbe. For many movies, more than fifty in the sound age, he would be the stereotype grizzly comic relief character called Fuzzy Q. Jones. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — The Knockout (1914), Mabel's Busy Day (1914), The Rounders (1914), The Butcher Boy (1917). Selected silent featuresPainted Post (1928), Hello Cheyenne (1928). Selected sound features — Riders of the Desert (1932), TTze Outcasts of Poker Flat (1937), Billy the Kid in Texas (1940), Fuzzy Settles Down (1944), The Frontier Phantom (1952). Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Al St. John." Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. "Al St. John." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

SEA HAWK, THE (1924). Adventure drama. Directed by Frank Lloyd; with Milton Sills, Enid Benett, Lloyd Hughes, Wallace MacDonald, Marc MacDermott, Wallace Beery, Frank Currier, Lionel Belmore; screenplay by J. G. Hawks, from novel by Rafael Sabatini. Oliver Tressilian, a wealthy English nobleman plans to be married, but his hot-tempered half brother Lionel kills his fiancee's brother in a duel, blaming him for the deed. To avoid discovery, Lionel has Oliver shanghaied. When his ship is captured he is made a galley slave, later escaping and joining the Moors to become the notorious pirate Sakr-elBahr, "The Sea Hawk." When he learns his half brother has married his fiancee, he plots an audacious revenge. Closer to the novel than the Errol Flynn remake, this version of The Sea Hawk also has a rougher edge to the character of its hero. This is

SEMON, LARRY

239

partly due to the more mature Milton Sills in the role, who brings a more serious and less flamboyant interpretation, and partly to the stronger emphasis on the revenge aspects of the story. The basic plot line has strong similarities to Ben-Hur, with the eponymous hero betrayed by a loved one, sent to the galleys, proving himself to a foreigner of high rank, and returning a wealthy man to exact justice in the end. The film's pacing drags at times but overall is a very effective exotic adventure with some spectacular sea battles. Naval scenes from this film were used as stock footage for years by Warner Brothers. SEMON, LARRY. Born Lawrence Semon July 6, 1889, in West Point, Mississippi. Died October 8, 1928. Cartoonist, film actor, director, writer, producer. His popularity as a film comedian in film shorts seems to indicate he might eventually rival the big four in the 1920s —Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. These humorous kings of the silent screen had successfully moved to feature works by the midtwenties. They were able to have full control of these features. After his first feature, The Girl in the Limousine (1924), Semon directed and starred in a full-length film that could have secured his fame as a famous comedian of the silent screen. The work, The Wizard of Oz (1925), however, indicated he could not move from his effective two-reelers by merely loading the feature with gags. His attempt to sustain a plot and develop interesting comedy characters proved disappointing. Semon continued — like Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, and Langdon —to create his own features with the 1925 The Perfect Clown, the 1926 Stop, Look, and Listen, and with the 1927 Spuds. He evidently relied too much on a purely gag-based comedy —a technique that worked for a skillful comedian in one- and two-reel comedies. Also the budgets for his features were too high to bring in a suitable profit. While Semon became wealthy for this period, worth a quarter of a million dollars at one time, eventually he ended up with huge debts. His death in 1928 has been attributed to pneumonia after suffering a nervous breakdown. Filmography: Selected shorts — Boasts and Boldness (1917), Slips and Slackers (1917), Plagues and Puppy Love (1917), Noisy Naggers and Nosy Neighbors (1917), Boodle and Bandits (1918), Dunces and Danger (1918), The Star Boarder (1919), The Simple Life (1919), The Headwaiter (1919), The Grocery Clerk (1920), The Suitor (1920), The Sportsman (1921), The Sawmill (1922), The Sleuth (1922), No Wedding Bells (1923), Trouble Brewing (1924), Her Boyfriend (1924), The Clodhopper (1925). Features -The Girl in the Limousine (1924), The Wizard of Oz (1925), The Perfect Clown (1925), Stop, Look, and Listen (1926), Spuds (1927).

240

SENNETT, MACK

Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Larry Semon." Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Montgomery, John. Comedy Films. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1954.

SENNETT, MACK. Born Mikall Sinnott January 17, 1880, in Danville, Quebec, Canada. Died November 5, 1960, in Woodland Hills, California. Film actor, writer, director, producer. He became the self-styled "King of Comedy" or, as biographer Gene Fowler called him, "Father Goose." This celluloid comedy pioneer was the entrepreneur who launched reels of laughter into the remote areas of this country and the world in the early part of the century. Although he was crude and often naive, his raucous films brought happiness to many people and weaned a host of comedy stars such as Charles Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Marie Dressier, Edgar Kennedy, Charlie Chase, Harry Langdon, Charlie Murray, Ford Sterling, Slim Summerville, and Ben Turpin. Few of these actors and actresses remained with his Keystone company, but they got a toehold in the motion picture world, learned the art of slapstick, and moved on to other filmmakers to disperse their talents in and for an age that thrived on laughter and joy. After an apprenticeship as an actor with D. W. Griffith, a director for Biograph, Sennett became the fountainhead for the comic film in the 1910s. When he decided to produce his own comedies, he formed his own comedy troupe with the backing of Adam Kessel and Charles Baumann. One of his earliest Keystone Company products, Cohen at Coney Island, was released on September 23, 1912. He also acted in this work and in The Water Nymph this same year. Writer, director, and actor, totally involved in his works, Sennett existed in a world apart from the genteel, theatrical comedies of John Bunny, one of the first comedy stars of motion pictures. Also, Sennett's comedy was a world apart from the light comedy of Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and the team, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. These actors embraced the genteel tradition, with very small dashes of slapstick. With Sennett, on the other hand, the spice became the pudding. His works had all the wild antics of the chase and trick films of the early French and Italian producers —from whom he learned but developed his own brand of American slapstick. He often burlesqued the serious melodramatic films of his day with such works as the 1913 Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life. The recipe for the Sennett comic pudding was essentially simple and straightforward. His Keystone films brewed up a potpourri of broad, physical actions: fights, chases, accidental falls, relentless pursuits, and bungled rescues. The release of a feature starring Mabel Normand,

SENORITA

241

Mickey, in 1918 indicated he could, as producer, embrace elements of the genteel c o m e d y . H o w e v e r , h e assigned s o m e o n e else the job of directing the w o r k . Nevertheless, h e left a vigorous, freewheeling a p p r o a c h to c o m e d y that influenced the c o m e d y created for m o r e t h a n seven d e c a d e s to come. Filmography: Selected shorts as producer, director— Cohen at Coney Island (1912), The Water Nymph (1912). Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (1913), A Film Johnnie (1914), Mabel at the Wlieel (1914), Tango Tangles (1914), Love, Speed, and Thrills (1915), Fatty and Mabel Viewing the World's Fair in San Francisco (1915), Teddy at the Throttle (1917). Selected silent features — Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Mickey (1916-1918), Small Town Idol (1921). Sound shorts as p r o d u c e r The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933), The Barber Shop (1933), The Pharmacist (1933). Selected Bibliography: Fowler, Gene. Father Goose: The Story of Mack Sennett. New York: Covici Friede Publishers, 1934. McCaffrey, Donald W. "In the Beginning Mack Sennett... ." 4 Great Comedians Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Langdon. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1968. Miller, Blair. "Mack Sennett." American Silent Film Comedies An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios, and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Montgomery, John, "The Keystone Touch." Comedy Films. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1954. Sennett, Mack (as told to Cameron Shipp). King of Comedy. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co. 1954. SEISIORITA (1927). Romantic c o m e d y - a d v e n t u r e . Directed by Clarence Badger, w i t h Bebe Daniels, James Hall, William Powell, Josef Swickard; screenplay by John M c D e r m o t t , Lloyd Corrigan. A y o u n g California w o m a n , w h o s e father a l w a y s w a n t e d a son, is raised to excel in all the traditional H i s p a n i c male sports, including riding, shooting, fencing, a n d u s i n g the w h i p . W h e n her g r a n d f a t h e r ' s estate in S o u t h America is p l a g u e d by a treacherous rival family, h e s e n d s for his g r a n d c h i l d to help, n o t realizing her sex. She disguises herself as a boy, w h o m p e o p l e believe to be effeminate, b u t p r o v e s herself/himself with u n r i v a l e d action a n d resourcefulness. M e a n w h i l e an heir to the rival family falls in love with her female incarnation, u n a w a r e of her alter ego as his s w o r n e n e m y , a n d they m u s t later face each other in a duel. Senorita is an action-packed, tongue-in-cheek variation o n the Zorro story, with a delightful p e r f o r m a n c e by Bebe Daniels as the w o m a n w h o can outfight a n y m a n . The t i m e - h o n o r e d plot devices of mistaken identity a n d mistaken a s s u m p t i o n s are skillfully w o v e n into the equally familiar formulas of a child a v e n g i n g family h o n o r a n d persecution, a n d a rocky r o m a n c e b e t w e e n m e m b e r s of feuding families. W h a t m a k e s the

242

7TH HEAVEN

film of even greater interest today is its reversal of roles, with the strong female lead in a traditionally male genre. This had been done before, but often with primarily comic intent, with the woman unable to equal a man's abilities (the Westerns of actress and nightclub personality Texas Guinan being notable exceptions). Senorita, on the other hand, treats most of its melodrama in a straightforward manner, with the humor deriving from the interaction between the female hero and males who do not realize she is a woman. 7TH HEAVEN (1927). Romantic drama. Directed by Frank Borzage; with Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Ben Bard, David Butler, Marie Mosquine, AlbertGran, Gladys Brockwell, Emile Chauard; screenplay by Benjamin Glazer; based upon the play by Austin Strong. Chico, a Parisian sewer worker who dreams of becoming a street cleaner, takes in a slum waif named Diane to save her from arrest. Living together platonically, they gradually grow to love each other and he teaches her a new self-confidence. They create their own marriage vows, but the outbreak of World War I sends Chico to the front. The two meet in spirit every morning at the same time to renew their vows of love, a love that must sustain them through separation and tragedy and then reunite them in an emotional conclusion. 7th Heaven is a film saturated with romanticism and a heavily emotional depiction of true love. It pleased both audiences and critics, winning Academy Awards for the direction, screenplay, and the performance of Janet Gaynor (whose Oscar also covered her role in Borzage's Street Angel and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise, both released in the 1927-28 film season). It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to Wings. Frank Borzage continued to direct for more than thirty years, but 7th Heaven remains one of his finest works. Although it has a synchronized soundtrack of music and sound effects (including the film's popular theme song, "Diane," played almost nonstop towards the end), the absence of spoken dialogue is a major factor in the film's success in creating its romantic, other-worldly mood. A 1937 remake by Henry King was well acted and beautifully photographed but could not recapture the same atmosphere or spiritual feeling of the original that still drives some critics into rhapsodic praise. Gaynor's wistful innocence was perfect for the story and the onscreen chemistry between her and Farrell gained her major stardom and made the two of them a popular romantic team into the early 1930s. SHEARER, NORMA. Born August 11, 1902 (some sources say 1900 or 1903), in Westmount, Quebec, Canada. Died June 12,1983, in Woodland Hills, California. Actress.

SHEARER, NORMA

243

A pleasant if not particularly striking actress, Norma Shearer worked her way up from bits to a wide variety of supporting and costarring roles in the early 1920s. With the help of studio executive Irving Thalberg, whom she later married, she was a major star by the end of the decade and well into the sound era. She became so popular in the early 1930s that women would copy her dress and hairstyle. Born into a well-to-do Montreal area family, Norma Shearer moved to New York with her mother and sister after the family business failed during World War I. She appeared in a Vitagraph short, The Star Boarder, in 1919 and had small parts in several 1920 features including D. W. Griffith's Way Down East. When Thalberg noticed her work and signed her for MGM, her roles and films became more important, such as the part of Consuelo in the major Lon Chaney vehicle He Wlto Gets Slapped (1924). After her marriage to Thalberg in 1927 she was one of the studio's principal stars. She obtained the strong role of Kathi in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), opposite Ramon Novarro and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Her role figured far more prominently than the same character enacted by Dorothy Gish opposite Wallace Reid in the 1915 version. Shearer continued in popularity throughout the 1930s under her husband's guidance and was nominated for five Academy Awards. The main thrust of her portrayals became sophisticated women, in such major films as The Divorcee (1930), Private Lives (1931), and Strange Interlude (1932). One of her best roles of the decade proved to be the lead in Marie Antoinette (1938), a part conceived for her by her husband, producer Thalberg. After his untimely death in 1936, she made some unwise decisions and finally retired in 1942 following two box office flops in a row. Her brother Douglas became an important sound engineer at MGM. Filmography: The Star Boarder (1919), The Flapper (1920), The Restless Sex (1920), Way Down East (1920), The Stealers (1920), The Sign on the Door (1921), Channing of the Northwest (1922), The Bootleggers (1922), The Man Who Paid (1922), The Devil's Partner (1923), Man and Wife (1923), A Clouded Name (1923), The Wanters (1923), Pleasure Mad (1923), Lucretia Lombard (1923), Broadway After Dark (1924), Trail of the Law (1924), Blue Waters (1924), The Wolf Man (1924), Empty Hands (1924), Broken Barriers (1924), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Snob (1924), Married Flirts (1924), Lady of the Night (1925), Waking Up the Town (1925), Pretty Ladies (1925), A Slave of Fashion (1925), Excuse Me (1925), The Tower of Lies (1925), Hzs Secretary (1925), The Devil's Circus (1926), The Waning Sex (1926), Upstage (1926), The DemiBride (1927), After Midnight (1927), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), The Latest From Paris (1928), The Actress (1928), A Lady of Chance (1928), The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929), The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929), The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), Their Own Desire (1929), The Divorcee (1930), Let Us Be Gay (1930), The Stolen Jools (1931), Strangers May Kiss (1931), A Free Soul (1931), Private Lives (1931), Strange Interlude (1932), Smilin' Through (1932), Riptide (1934), The Barretts

244

SHEIK, THE

of Wimpole Street (1934), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Marie Antoinette (1938), Idiot's Delight (1939), The Women (1939), Escape (1940), We Were Dancing (1942), Her Cardboard Lover (1942). Selected Bibliography: Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930 Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

SHEIK, THE (1921). Romantic melodrama. Directed by George Melford; with Rudolph Valentino, Agnes Ayres, Adolphe Menjou, Walter Long, Lucien Littlefield, Patsy Ruth Miller; screenplay by Monte M. Katterjon, from novel by Edith Maude Hull. Diana, a free-spirited young Englishwoman, plans to explore the North African desert with only an Arab guide, against the advice of her compatriots. To gain entrance to a casino she poses as a dancing girl, but is discovered by Sheik Ahmed and ejected. He then secretly serenades her, rides off, and arranges to capture her later on the desert. Holding her prisoner in his tent, he hopes to break her spirit. Defiant at first, after attempts to escape and a near capture by a bandit chieftan, she gradually warms to the sheik but misunderstandings and more adventures threaten to keep them apart until the end. Although Rudolph Valentino had received critical notice in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he became an immediate star with the release of The Sheik. So popular was the film that "sheik" became the standard slang term of the decade for a man who could charm any woman he chose. The story is pure romantic escapism designed for female audiences. Its "liberated" heroine thrives on danger, is at first repelled by the brute force and attitude of a domineering male, but gradually detects another side to his character, a romantic side that attracts her. Stereotyped melodrama though it is, if accepted at face value the film has some powerful scenes and interesting characters. It ultimately decides to skirt perceived racial sensitivities, however, by explaining that the Sheik was actually an orphan son of an Englishman and a Spanish woman, adopted by an Arab chieftain.

SILENT ENEMY, THE

245

SHERLOCK JR- (1924). Comedy. Directed by Buster Keaton; with Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Joe Keaton, Ward Crane, and Erwin Connelly; screenplay by Buster Keaton, Clyde Bruckman, Jean Havez, Joe Mitchell. The projectionist/janitor at a small-town movie house takes a correspondence course in detective work. He tries to put his knowledge to work when he is framed for stealing his girlfriend's father's watch by the romantic rival who actually took it. While he is working in the projection booth he falls asleep and dreams he walks into the screen during the movie he is showing. In his dream he then becomes the famous detective, Sherlock, Jr., using amazing feats of deduction and cleverness to solve the crime. With the creation of Sherlock, Jr., Keaton produced one his best features. The plot development, drawing of comedy character, and imaginative, humorous incidents place it among the greatest screen comedies of all times. Critics who viewed the film when it was first released, as well as those who see it today, have found the "cinematic" comedy created by Keaton in the early portion of the dream sequence replete with innovation. As a projectionist in a movie theater, Buster dreams he enters the film he is showing to an audience. He becomes a victim of editing as one scene changes to another. For example, he takes a series of pratfalls from one scene to another. A front doorstep becomes a garden bench which is taller than the stairs, so when a shot moves from one to another, the comedian takes a tumble. From desert to seaside he ends up on a rock in the ocean. He dives from the rock as a switch occurs and ends up head first in a snowdrift. Consequently, he falls from one world to another as locations shift —a surrealistic nightmare for the little fellow as he struggles to gain a foothold in a whirlwind of events. In Sherlock, Jr. Keaton executes some of his most spectacular feats to achieve laughter. With amazing timing, he drops on a swing-down arm of a railroad-crossing barrier into the back seat of a car. Also, he actually learned to drive a motorcycle while sitting on the handlebars for a gagfilled rush to the rescue in a climactic sequence. The timeless nature of Keaton's films is based on the universal human traits tied to an antisentimental approach to his material. While he borrowed from the genteel comedy for plot material, the comedian often used a twist on the sentimental moment for a good gag to reveal the naivete of his character. For example, the ending of Sherlock, Jr. shows Buster taking instructions from a movie he is viewing as a projectionist to carry out his amorous approach to his girlfriend. SILENT ENEMY, THE (1930). Anthropological drama. Directed by H. P. Carver; with Chief Yellow Robe, Chief Long Lance, Chief Akawanush,

246

SMOULDERING FIRES

Spotted Elk, Cheeka; screenplay by Richard Carver. Baluk, an Ojibwa hunter, and Dagwan, the Medicine Man, both love Neewa, daughter of the chief. Chief Chetoga calls a tribal council to determine what action to take with the current shortage of food and the fast approaching winter. Baluk's plans seem reasonable but are opposed by Dagwan and turn out to be unfruitful. As the tribe moves farther north with no caribou in sight, events develop into a dramatic confrontation. The Silent Enemy was an attempt by producers W. Douglas Burden and William C. Chanler to document a lifestyle that had already all but disappeared, aided by those who once had lived it, before it was forgotten. The title refers to hunger, and the story is a fictionalized account of a Native American tribe's struggle to survive the harsh Canadian winter. The Silent Enemy can be considered an early example of what has come to be called a docudrama. Despite its beautiful location photography and detailed views of a Native American lifestyle, the film is not an objective, "true-life" documentary. Rather, it recreates customs, traditions, and practices of the Ojibwa culture before contact with Europeans within the framework of a standard plot—a personal power struggle and a romantic rivalry between two men. The acting by the nonprofessional, allnative cast is serviceable, if sometimes exaggerated, but it is always sincere. A poignant spoken introduction by Chief Yellow Robe in this otherwise silent drama sadly acknowledges that the film will be all that remains of this ancient way of life. SMOULDEMNG FIRES (1925). Drama. Directed by Clarence Brown; with Pauline Frederick, Malcolm McGregor, Laura La Plante, Tully Marshall, Wanda Hawley; screenplay by Sada Cowan, Howard Higgin, Melville Brown. A middle-aged woman has devoted her life to running a factory instead of marrying. One day she notices the initiative and good ideas of one of her young executives and promotes him to be her private assistant manager. She soon falls in love with him but he has merely a growing friendship and respect for her. The more they see of each other, the more the office staff gossips about them. He finally proposes marriage despite their age difference of about 15 years and her younger sister's belief he must be after her money and power. When the three take a vacation together, the young husband and his new sister-in-law get to know each other and fall in love, both feeling guilty. Meanwhile, the wife has been feeling her age and noticing that her young husband and sister have different kinds of friends and interests from hers. Smouldering Fires is especially noteworthy for its serious treatment of a relationship between an older woman and a younger man (and an em-

SPARROWS

247

ployer-employee at that), as well as its portrayal of a woman running a major corporation in an era considered male-dominated. Even though she has inherited the business from her father, she is shown to be competent and shrewd. The romantic angle is sensitively handled with fine performances all around, particularly Pauline Frederick. Nevertheless, with the problems it raises, the story implies that too large an age difference will likely doom a marriage, whatever the good intentions of its participants. The issues the film deals with make it appear very modern except for the fact that everyone involved behaves with more consideration of each other than would likely be the case in a current-day American production. SON OF THE SHEIK THE (1926). Romantic adventure. Directed by George Fitzmaurice; with Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, George Fawcett, Montague Love, Karl Dane, Bull Montana, Agnes Ayres; screenplay by Frances Marion , Fred De Gresac, based on the novel, The Sons of the Sheik, by Edith M. Hull. Young Ahmed, son of the sheik, falls for a dancing girl whose father runs a gang of thieves. When the thieves kidnap him he believes she is responsible. After his ransom is paid he then kidnaps her with the intention of raping her, but is prevented by his father, who lets her go. When he learns that someone else really had betrayed him, he rushes off to her and tries to fight off her father's gang, aided finally by his own father. The Son of the Sheik is the Valentino vehicle that is usually best received by modern audiences, primarily because its tongue-in-cheek humor is an intentional parody of his image and the role that brought him superstardom. Valentino plays the dual role of father and son, at times appearing in scenes with himself, and shows a range of acting ability. There are also large amounts of action and comedy more along the lines of a Douglas Fairbanks adventure —so much so that the New York Times observed as much in its review. Valentino's newly discovered flair for self-parody and comedy might have changed the direction of his career, but unfortunately he died soon after the premiere of The Son of the Sheik, ending his career at its peak. SPARROWS (1926). Drama. Directed by William Beaudine; with Mary Pickford, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Roy Stewart, Mary Louise Miller, Charlotte Mineau. On a "baby farm" run by a ruthless old man, his wife and sadistic son in a southern swampland, an adolescent girl looks after the other mistreated children. When their wicked guardian decides to throw a kidnapped toddler into the swamp to avoid police detection, Pickford's

248

SPOILERS, THE

dauntless character decides to lead the children through the alligators to freedom one night, and all are finally rescued by the police and the wealthy father of the toddler. Although its plot sounds relentlessly grim, Sparrows is still a familyoriented Mary Pickford vehicle, containing a great deal of juvenile situation comedy and self-consciously clever titles. It was the last time the 34year-old Pickford would attempt to play the spunky child character that had brought her such audience adulation for over a decade. The melodrama of the story provides some thrilling scenes (memorably the escape through the swamp) but overall it is softened greatly by a heavy dose of sentimentality and a cutesy conclusion that is drawn out just a bit too long. SPOILERS, THE (1914). Western drama. Directed by Colin Campbell; with William Farnum, Tom Santschi, Wheeler Oakman, Kathlyn Williams, Bessie Eyton, Frank M. Clark; screenplay by Lanier Bartlett, from novel by Rex Beach. Roy Glennister sails to Nome, Alaska, where he is a partner in a gold mine. There a conspiracy is being masterminded by land baron Alex McNamara to take over all mines in the area. Most of the action revolves around this conflict, leading to intrigues, confrontations, a spectacular explosion, and a climactic fistfight. A number of circular romantic conflicts also develop involving several characters including a gambler, a female saloon owner, and the niece of a crooked attorney. The Spoilers was a huge box office success when released. At a time when four- and five-reel films of an hour or so in length were just starting to gain precedence over cinema programs of several short films, it ran eight reels, or two hours on the screen. Even smaller towns would play the film for an entire week instead of the normal two or three-day run, and would bring it back several times for return engagements. Additional scenes were later shot and the picture was reissued at 12 reels in 1918. The sellout crowds generated by The Spoilers and The Birth of a Nation a year later were instrumental in the construction of large-capacity theatres designed specifically for showing motion pictures, rather than vaudeville or stage plays. Primitive directorial techniques — long, static takes with almost no closeups —and a few overly stylized acting performances detract from an otherwise ambitious production that remains impressive for its art direction and cinematography, as well as the complexity of its story and the number of major characters. There is a gritty sense of realism to the sets and costumes that give the film a documentary quality. The fistfight that was the film's most talked-about feature also has a realistic, unglamorized edge, but lacks the same impact today

SQUAW MAN, THE

249

because it was filmed in virtually one long take. The acting, although obviously stylized, is generally more subdued than in other films from the same period. A silent remake by Goldwyn in 1923, and sound versions in 1930 and 1942 may have been more technically polished, but the 1914 Selig Company original gave the most faithful rendition of the Rex Beach novel. In some ways the early talkie techniques of Paramount's Gary Cooper incarnation from 1930 resemble the Selig version, but that remake deletes a number of plot elements that the 1914 version had included. The 1942 Universal remake starring John Wayne has significant changes from the original story. SQUAW MAN, THE (1914). Western drama. Directed by Oscar C. Apfel, Cecil B. DeMille; with Dustin Farnum, Monroe Salisbury, Winnifred Kingston, Princess Red Wing, Billy Elmer, Mrs. A. W. Filson, Haidee Fuller, Dick La Reno, Foster Knox, Joseph E. Singletonscreenplay by Cecil B. DeMille, Oscar Apfel, based on play by Edwin Milton Royle. James Wynnegate, an English army officer, takes the blame for his cousin's embezzling because he is in love with his cousin's wife Diana and wants to save their family name. He moves to America, changes his name to Jim Carston, and buys a Wyoming ranch. There he comes into conflict with cattle rustler Cash Hawkins, and marries an Indian girl named Nat-U-Ritch, who saves his life and later bears him a son. Unexpected situations develop, however, which affect their future lives and reveal the depths of their feelings. This adaptation of the popular stage melodrama was the first production by the fledgling Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company formed late in 1913 by Lasky, Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Goldfish (later Goldwyn), and Arthur Friend. It was also the first feature-length picture made in Hollywood, filmed in a rented barn that later became a part of Paramount Pictures and was made into a movie museum in the 1980s. The location was a last-minute decision because DeMille felt their earlier choice of Arizona, once he saw it in person, was not as appropriate to the story. Dustin Farnum reprised his famous stage role, and DeMille cowrote and codirected the film with Oscar C. Apfel. As a cinematic drama, the 1914 version of The Squaw Man suffers from its makers' inexperience as well as the prevailing theatrical style of filmmaking that was still common at the time. The static camera, long takes, and broad acting styles would date the film as a primitive early work within only a couple of years. The story, however, was what audiences were looking at, and it was an unqualified success at the box office. De-

250

STERLING, FORD

Mille remade it only four years later, after he had developed a smooth and sophisticated command of film technique, and he made it a third time in 1931 after the coming of sound. An interesting anecdote connected with the 1914 production shows the camaraderie among pioneer film producers. The first showing of the completed film revealed that the picture was continually scrolling on the screen rather than remaining steady and the brand-new company thought their first project was a disaster. They consulted with veteran filmmaking rival Sigmund Lubin, who diagnosed that the perforations along the side were at a non-standard distance apart. He reperforated the film and their problem was solved. STERLING, FORD. Born George Ford Stich November 3, 1880, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Died October 13, 1939. Circus, vaudeville, legitimate stage, screen actor. Directed some of his short films. When Mack Sennett directed for Biograph, Ford Sterling signed on as one of his main actors for a variety of roles. Sennett soon formed his own company, Keystone, and Sterling moved with the producer to be his lead comedian. He portrayed characters on both sides of the law. For example, he enacted the villain in Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life (1913); he played a chief of police in the 1915 Our Dare Devil Chief The role of Chief Teheeza, head of the bumbling Keystone Cops, made him an audience favorite. He left Sennett to star in his own works, the Sterling Comedies. He also had important roles in such works as He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and Miss Brewster's Millions (1926), and starred as title character Aubrey Piper in The Show Off"(1926), directed by Malcolm St. Clair. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — Abe Gets Even with Father (1911), The Deacon s Troubles (1912), The Flirting Husband (1912), Barney Oldfield's Race for a Fife (1913), Betzoeen Showers (1914), Eove and Dynamite (1914), The Hunt (1915), Our Dare Devil Chief (1915), Hearts and Flowers (1919), Yankee Doodle in Berlin (1919). Selected silent features - The Spoilers (1923), Wild Oranges (1924), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), So Big (1924), Stage Struck (1925), The American Venus (1926), Miss Brewster's Millions (1926), The Show Off (1926), Casey at the Bat (1927). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Ford Sterling." Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982.

STREET ANGEL (1928). Romantic drama. Directed by Frank Borzage; with Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Alberto Rabagliati, Gino Conti, Guido Trento, Henry Armetta, Louis Liggett, Milton Dickinson, Helena Herman, Natalie Kingston, David Kashner, Jennie Bruno; screenplay by

STREET ANGEL

251

Marion Orth; titles by Katherine Hilliker, H. H. Caldwell; from novel Cristilinda by Monckton Hoffe. Angela, an impoverished Italian girl, is desperate to buy medicine for her dying mother. She decides to attempt prostitution to raise the money but is unsuccessful. Finally she tries to steal, is caught and sentenced to prison for theft while soliciting, but escapes and joins a traveling circus. She meets Gino, a struggling artist who is smitten with her and paints her as an idealized beauty. An art dealer later passes off the painting as a rediscovered madonna by an old master. Angela and Gino plan to marry, but she suddenly leaves without explanation when a policeman recognizes her and takes her back to serve her time. Feeling abandoned, Gino turns to drink and loses a major commission. He is even more angry and upset when he discovers that Angela's arrest was for streetwalking. Her release leads to an emotional and traumatic meeting for them both before their ultimate reunion. Frank Borzage is one of the few directors who could turn a strong social melodrama dealing with poverty and prostitution into a sentimental love story and still have it work. Much of the film, especially the first part, has a Germanic look reminiscent of F. W. Murnau. Heavy use of shadows, a fluidly moving camera, and sets that don't look quite real, combined with the story of common, working-class people, give Street Angel the appearance of the studio-bound artfilms produced by Universum Film Aktiengesellshaft (better known as UFA or Ufa) during the 1920s. At other times it calls to mind films that would be made by Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman a quarter of a century later. In the 1927-28 film season, film newcomer Janet Gaynor had the most impressive year of her career with her moving performances in Street Angel, as well as Borzage's 7th Heaven, and F. W. Murnau's Sunrise, deservedly winning the Academy Award for Best Actress. Gaynor is even stronger in Street Angel than she had been in 7th Heaven, effectively portraying a girl knowledgeable about the ways of the world, yet able to preserve her innocence and idealism under the burden of an inner guilt and fear of detection. Her Angela is a stronger and wiser character than the simple Gino acted by Charles Farrell, who had also costarred with her in 7th Heaven. The film as a whole is more powerful than that earlier work, balancing its unashamed romanticism with a little more credible blend of plot complications and resolutions. Released at the end of the silent era, Street Angel had a Movietone soundtrack with a fine, moody musical score and a few limited sound effects including the sound of the couple whistling to each other through closed doors. Its repetition of the "O Sole Mio"-like song "Angela Mia," sometimes with a vocal, is not quite as intrusive as the song "Diane" had been in 7th Heaven.

252

STROHEIM, ERICH VON

STROHEIM, ERICH VON. Born September 22,1885, in Vienna, Austria. Died May 12, 1957, in Maurepas, France. Director, actor, art director, screenwriter. Erich von Stroheim has come to represent the stereotype of the eccentric and autocratic Hollywood directing genius whose unorthodox stories and out-of-control spending first make him popular and then destroy his career. Stroheim was more than half a century ahead of his time in anticipating films that dwelt on sordid, unsavory topics, that had consistently downbeat themes and unhappy endings, and that ran as much as ten hours or more in length, intended to be serialized on successive nights. With each new film, Stroheim's plans became more grandiose and more expensive, causing serious disagreement with the studio heads responsible for financing and releasing them. His Greed (1925) has become a symbol of studio interference with personal artistic vision for commercial considerations. He directed eight silent features, only the first two of which were released as he envisioned them. One of the eight (Merry-GoRound, 1923) was given by the studio to another director to finish. Another (Queen Kelly, 1928) was abandoned by its producer and star less than halfway through shooting, although its initial episode was shown in Europe with a hastily-filmed conclusion. The other four pictures were drastically cut by the studios from their original lengths before they were released to theatres. Stroheim's only sound film (Walking Down Broadway, 1932) was never released, although major scenes were incorporated into another, happier version partially refilmed by another director and released under the title Hello Sister! (1933). Never again allowed to direct (a planned comeback film as a director in France was canceled by the start of World War II), Stroheim had a long career as an actor in the United States and France, and occasionally wrote or collaborated on screenplays. According to some biographers the son of Jewish immigrants from Prussian Silesia to Vienna, Erich Oswald Stroheim left his family's hatmaking business and a brief stint in the Austrian army while he was in his early twenties, hoping to seek his fortune in America. Thomas Curtiss, an intimate of Stroheim the final years of his life, tells that he was from a well-to-do Vienna family named Nordenwall that had come upon hard times, and Stroheim's extravagant spending habits finally caused his family in 1909 to pay off his debts only if he resigned his army commission and emigrated to America. After quite a variety of experiences, in 1914 he found himself in southern California getting jobs as a movie extra and bit player, starting as a stunt man in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. He also served as an assistant to Griffith on that picture and on Intolerance (in which he also played a bit), by then a part of Griffith's regular company. By 1915 he had landed a supporting role in John Em-

STROHEIM, ERICH VON

253

erson's Old Heidelberg (produced by Griffith), as well as serving as assistant director and military advisor. A nostalgic look at European royalty, commoners, and codes of military honor, that film had most of the elements he would use in his own pictures the following decade. He would act and assistant direct for four more Emerson films over the next year, three of them produced by Griffith, and was allowed to develop his talents as an art director on a number of films. To help his publicity he fabricated a n d / o r fostered the impression of an exotic past among European nobility. As World War I propaganda films became popular, Stroheim's roles became larger when he made a memorable public impression as "the man you love to hate," a stiffly formal and sadistic German officer. With some variations this character would remain his screen identity throughout his life. The image was already fully developed in such wartime and immediate postwar films as Griffith's Hearts of the World and Allen HoUubar's The Heart of Humanity. The latter film served as a springboard to his first solo directing job after he persuaded studio head Carl Laemmle to let him make his original story, "The Pinnacle," into a movie, which became Blind Husbands (1919). Stroheim not only wrote and directed, but designed the sets and played the starring role —a smooth and sophisticated Austrian army officer who seduces a young American wife dissatisfied with her husband's inattention. The attention to small details and the subject matter set a pattern for the rest of the films he would direct, or attempt to direct before control was taken from him. All of his pictures deal to a large degree with sexual desire, frustration, and rivalries. He is fond of contrasting extremes, blending cynicism with romanticism, and depicting degradation and depravity, using recurring character types. Most of his films are concerned with conflict involving European aristocracy and commoners, often Americans. Stroheim's undisputed masterpiece, Greed, stands out in stark contrast to his other work. The only one of his films he did not write himself, its characters are middle- and lower-class Americans, and it focuses more on lust for gold than sexual lust —although Stroheim manages to combine the two in the character Trina's sensual obsession with the gold she possesses. In addition, it is markedly more realistic than most of his other films, both in style and in content, yet one more instance of his being decades ahead of his time. Stroheim's best remembered screen appearance was the German prison commandant in Jean Renoir's La Grande Illusion. His last great acting role was the ironically semibiographical Max in Sunset Boulevard, a once-great silent movie director reduced to the position of servant to his former star, played by Gloria Swanson. Filmography as Director: Blind Husbands (1919), The Devil's Passkey (1920), Foolish Wives (1922), Merry-Go-Round (1923, completed by Rupert Julian), Greed

254

STRONG MAN, THE

(1925), The Merry Widow (1925), The Wedding March (1928), Queen Kelly (1928, completed by Gloria Swanson), Walking Down Broadway (1932, partly reshot by Alfred Werker and released in 1933 as Hello Sister I). Selected Filmography as Actor: Captain Macklin (1915), Ghosts (1915), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Old Heidelberg (1915), Intolerance (1916), The Social Secretary (1916), His Picture in the Papers (1916), Less Than the Dust (1916), Panthea (1917), In Again, Out Again (1917), Sylvia of the Secret Service (1917), For France (1917), The Unbeliever (1918), Hearts of the World (1918), The Hun Within (1918), The Heart of Humanity (1919), Blind Husbands (1919), Foolish Wives (1922), The Wedding March (1928), The Great Gabbo (1929), Three Faces East (1930), Friends and Lovers (1931), The Lost Squadron (1932), As You Desire Me (1932), La Grande Illusion (1937), Fz'z;e Graves to Cairo (1943), The North Star (1943), The Great Flammarion (1945), The Mask of Dijon (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950), La Madone des Sleepings (1955). Honors: Academy Award Nomination, Best Supporting Actor for Sunset Boulevard, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1950; special season of his films, National Film Theatre, London, 1954; French Legion d'Honneur, 1957. Selected Bibliography: Curtiss, Thomas Quinn. Von Stroheim. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971. Finler, Joel W. Stroheim. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Weinberg, Herman G. The Complete GREED. New York: Arno Press, 1972. . Stroheim: A Pictorial Record of his Nine Films. New York: Dover Publications, 1975. STRONG MAN, THE (1926). Comedy. Directed by Frank Capra; with Harry Langdon, Pricilla Bonner, Arthur Thalasso, Gertrude Astor, William V. Mong, and Robert McKim; screenplay by Arthur Ripley, Hal Conklin, Robert Eddy. A review of the feature Tramp, Tramp, Tramp in the May 1926 Photoplay fan magazine had this prophetic statement: "This picture takes Harry Langdon's doleful face and pathetic figure out of the two-reel class and into the Chaplin and Lloyd screen dimensions. Not that he equals their standing yet, but he is a worthy addition to a group of comedy makers of which we have entirely too few. Langdon has graduated and this picture is his diploma." The shifting of personnel in his production staff from his first feature in order to create The Strong Man seemed to secure the comedian's fortune and future. With Frank Capra as director and Arthur Ripley as

SUNRISE

255

writer, Langdon took the final giant step up the ladder of popular and critical acclaim. New York critics such as Richard Watts Jr. were rhapsodic in their praise of his work in this second feature, a film released in September 1926. The story line of the total film is divided into the war activities of the comic hero, his search in the big city for a woman he knows only through correspondence, his discovery of the woman in a small town, and his defeat of corrupt forces in the town. The desultory direction of the plot exists in the search by a mild, disoriented childlike man portrayed by Langdon. The comic portraits of many leading comedians' characters, with the exception of Harold Lloyd's, are woefully lacking in will. The power to take action is nearly nil in such lost souls, and on some rare occasions the characters fight their adversaries or succeed in eliminating an obstacle in their paths. Since comic weakness and dumbness is so great a facet of Langdon's character, his works are apt to have wandering plotlines. And the character is more likely to be acted upon rather than taking action. While The Strong Man proves to be an episodic work, there are many scenes that attest to Langdon's comic genius and account for his popular and critical acclaim in the late 1920s. For example, Harry is conned by a gangster's moll, Lily, who pretends to be the Mary Brown he is seeking in order to slip some stolen money into his coat pocket when she sees a policeman. Invited to her apartment, Harry thinks she is trying to seduce him when she attempts to retrieve the wad of cash from his coat. He recoils, horrified, and jumps around the room. When he opens the door to leave he says with a sheepish look on his face, "Don't let this leak out!" In The Strong Man Langdon proves he was the master of incorporating comic hesitation and the wistful curiosity of a child. SUNRISE (1927). Drama. Directed by F. W. Murnau. with George O'Brien, Janet Gaynor, Margaret Livingston, J. Farrell MacDonald; screenplay by Carl Mayer, based on novel Die Reise nach Tilsit by Hermann Sudermann. A simple farmer is seduced by the allure and excitement of a city woman who convinces him to murder his wife. Although he has become disenchanted with his wife and everyday routine, he still has feelings for her and is not sure he can go through with the plan. German director F. W. Murnau (Nosferatu, Faust, The Last Laugh) was brought to the United States by Fox studios and given free reign to make whatever kind of film he wanted. The result was Sunrise, a huge artistic, as well as commercial success. He made two other films for Fox, including the powerful, more realistic City Girl. In 1931 he was killed in a car accident a week before the premiere of Tabu, his final screen triumph and

256

SWAIN, MACK

one of the last silent films ever produced. Sunrise was made just as sound was coming into use, and Fox used its Movietone optical sound process to record an original music score compiled by Hugo Riesenfeld, as well as some limited sound effects. Art director Edgar G. Ulmer went on to become a director himself. Many critics consider Sunrise the peak of silent storytelling, a masterpiece of stylized studio settings, and among the best films of all time. Murnau retains his artificial, other-worldly European look in this production, telling a timeless story of human emotions. As in The Last Laugh (told with only one intertitle), the strong visuals carry the story. In Sunrise even the titles are part of the visual effect, at one point melting and sinking down off the screen. This stylization can sometimes seem a bit too quaint and artificial, as can the blend of music and sound effects, but it truly creates the poetic, fantasy world the director intended. The almost constantly moving camera and the subtle, emotional performances draw the viewer into the story. In the very first year of the Academy Awards, Sunrise won Oscars for its cinematography, for Janet Gaynor's performance, and a special award for Best Artistic Quality of Production, which was never awarded again. SWAIN, MACK. Born February 16, 1876, in Salt Lake City, Utah. Died August 25,1935, in Tacoma, Washington. Vaudeville, minstrel, legitimate theatre, film actor. Standing six feet two inches and weighing 280 pounds, Mack Swain, like a similar big man, Eric Campbell, made a perfect foil for the little tramp played by Charlie Chaplin. As the prospector Big Jim McKay in The Gold Rush (1925) he portrayed a starved, dazed hulk who imagines little Charlie Chaplin to be a chicken suitable for a dinner. It proved to be the huge comedian's outstanding performance of a long career in theatre and film. After many years touring in various theatrical ventures, Swain joined Mack Sennett's Keystone Company as a Keystone Cop. The next year, 1914, he played in a number of Chaplin's two-reelers. That same year he appeared in his own series as the leading character Ambrose: Ambrose's First Falsehood, Ambrose's Little Hatchet, and His Try sting Place. Swain's series would continue for years, with intervening films using other characters. His Ambrose portrait was so popular it continued for five years until 1919. In the early twenties Chaplin would employ Swain in four shorts and, of course, the famous The Gold Rush. Mack's career would wane after this feature although he had a few leads and played sidekick to John Barry-

SWANSON, GLORIA

257

more in The Beloved Rogue (1927). Swain would continue into sound pictures playing minor roles. Filmography: Selected comedy shorts — Caught in a Cabaret (1914), Ambrose's First Falsehood (1914), Ambrose's Little Hatchet (1914), His Trysting Place (1914), Our Dare Devil Chief (1915), A Movie Star (1916), Foxy Ambrose (1919), The Idle Class (1921), Pay Day (1922), The Pilgrim (1923). Selected silent features-The Gold Rush (1925), Hands Up! (1926), The Torrent (1926), The Shamrock and the Rose (1927), Finnegan's Ball (1927), Mockery (1927), The Beloved Rogue (1927), Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928), The Last Warning (1929), The Cohens and Kellys in Atlantic City (1929). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Mack Swain." Clown Princes and Court Jesters: Some Comics of the Silent Screen. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1970. Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987,

SWANSON, GLORIA. Born March 27,1899, in Chicago, Illinois. Died April 4,1983, in New York City. Actress, producer. During her reign as a Hollywood superstar throughout the 1920s, Gloria Swanson was the embodiment of movie glamour. She was as famous for her lavish clothing, flamboyant lifestyle including several marriages and affairs, and outspoken attitudes as she was for her screen performances. Born Gloria Josephine May Swenson, she spent much of her childhood on army posts. When her parents separated she attended classes in Chicago, and there began working at the Essanay film studio as an extra at age 15. By the next year she was getting major roles in short films, often playing women twice her actual age. In 1916 she moved to Hollywood with her new husband Wallace Beery (whom she would divorce very soon thereafter) to work for Mack Sennett at Keystone. There she was paired with the equally small-statured comedian Bobby Vernon for a series of slapstick romantic comedy adventures, many costarring a Great Dane named Teddy. By the end of 1917 she was tired of doing comedy shorts, especially Sennett's brand of vulgar slapstick, and spent 1918 making dramatic feature films for Triangle. Her films there were of variable quality, but she received generally favorable reviews even when critics disliked the productions. Swanson then went to work for Cecil B. DeMille at Paramount and her first release of 1919, Don't Change Your Husband, started her popularity skyrocketing. After four more films for DeMille in quick succession, she had become a superstar. By 1926 Paramount was offering her a new contract of a million dollars a year, but she preferred to become her own producer. After one flop (The Love of Sunya) and one hit (Sadie Thompson), Swanson allowed her lover Joseph P. Ken-

258

SWEET, BLANCHE

nedy to produce her next few films, the first of which was her final silent picture —the ill-fated Queen Kelly, written and directed by Erich von Stroheim. Swanson made several sound films during the early 1930s, but after 1934 made only one picture until her best-remembered role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950). After that she did a number of stage roles, made a few more films and television appearances, and kept herself occupied with her personal interests, publishing her autobiography in 1980. Selected Filmography: The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915), The Danger Girl (1916), Teddy at the Throttle (1917), You Can't Believe Everything (1918), Shifting Sands (1918), Don't Change Your Husband (1919), For Better, For Worse (1919), Male and Female (1919), Why Change Your Wife? (1920), Something to Think About (1920), The Great Moment (1920), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), Under the Lash (1921), Don't Tell Everything (1921), Her Husband's Trademark (1922), Beyond the Rocks (1922), Her Gilded Cage (1922), The Impossible Mrs. Bellew (1922), My American Wife (1923), Prodigal Daughters (1923), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1923), Zaza (1923), The Humming Bird (1924), A Society Scandal (1924), Manhandled (1924), Her Love Story (1924), Wages of Virtue (1924), Madame Sans-Gene (1925), The Coast of Folly (1925), Stage Struck (1925), Untamed Lady (1926), Fine Manners (1926), The Love of Sunya (1927), Sadie Thompson (1928), Queen Kelly (1928unfinished, released with new ending in Europe and South America in 1930s), The Trespasser (1929), Indiscreet (1931), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Airport 1975 (1974). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Quirk, Lawrence J. The Films of Gloria Swanson. Secaucus, New Jersey: The Citadel Press, 1984. Swanson, Gloria. Szoanson on Swanson. New York: Random House, 1980.

SWEET, BLANCHE. Born June 18, 1895, in Chicago, Illinois. Died September 6,1986, in New York City. Actress. Acting on stage with her parents by age four, Blanche Sweet (born Daphne Wayne) started appearing in films at the Biograph studio in 1909, and the teenager quickly became one of D. W. Griffith's favorite actresses. In his films she often played a strong, capable, and determined woman who was a focal point of the plot, the heroine of the story rather than a passive love interest who had to be rescued by a male hero. Examples include the title roles in The Lonedale Operator (1911) and Griffith's first feature, Judith ofBethulia (1914). Sweet signed with the Lasky Company in 1915, appearing in a variety of roles, and meeting actor-director Marshall Neilan, whom she later married. Her strongest roles were

SWEET, BLANCHE

259

probably the leads in Anna Christie (1923) and Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1924). With the coming of sound she made a few talking films but returned to the stage in the 1930s, although she appeared in one last film in 1959, The Five Pennies. Selected Filmography: A Corner in Wheat (1909), A Romance of the Western Hills (1910), The Lonedale Operator (1911), The Goddess of Sagebrush Gulch (1912), The Stolen Bride (1913), Classmates (1914), Home Sweet Home (1914), Judith of Bethulia (1914), The Escape (1914), The Avenging Conscience (1914), The Warrens of Virginia (1915), The Captive (1915), Stolen Goods (1915), The Clue (1915), The Ragamuffin (1916), The Blacklist (1916), The Sowers (1916), The Thousand Dollar Husband (1916), The Dupe (1916), Public Opinion (1916), The Storm (1916), The Evil Eye (1917), Those Without Sin (1917), The Silent Partner (1917), The Unpardonable Sin (1919), The Hushed Hour (1919), A Woman of Pleasure (1919), The Deadlier Sex (1920), Simple Souls (1920), A Girl in the Web (1920), Her Unwilling Husband (1920), That Girl Montana (1921), Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922), The Meanest Man in the World (1923), In the Palace of the King (1923), Anna Christie (1923), Those Who Dance (1924), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1924), His Supreme Moment (1925), The Sporting Venus (1925), Why Women Love (1925), The New Commandment (1925), Bluebeard's Seven Wives (1926), The Lady From Hell (1926), The Far Cry (1926), Diplomacy (1926), Singed (1927), The Woman Racket (1930), Show Girl in Hollywood (1930), The Silver Horde (1930), The Five Pennies (1959). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Blanche Sweet/ 7 The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

T TABU (1931). Romantic drama. Directed by F. W. Murnau; with Matahi, Reri, Hitu, Jean, Jules, Kong Ah; story by F. W. Murnau and Robert J. Flaherty. On a remote south seas island a young native couple is devastated when the girl is chosen to replace the sacred virgin of the islands, making her "tabu" to all male contact. The boy abducts her and the pair escape to an island managed by wrhite traders. There he gets a job as a pearl diver, but the agent of the island chief tracks them down, leading to the film's main climax. F. W. Murnau's final film was originally a cooperative project with famed documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, but the two had drastic disagreements and Murnau wound up making it himself. It nevertheless has a strong documentary flavor, recording Polynesian lifestyle, customs, and dances in between the dramatic segments. As in Murnau's The Last Laugh, the story is told without a single dialogue title, although there are a number of closeups of characters' journal entries and letters to advance the plot and explain situations. A beautiful film to look at (and Academy Award winner for Best Cinematography), it has a leisurely pace that might be too slow for modern viewers. The performances by the nonprofessional native cast are natural and believable. TALE OF TWO CITIES, A (1917). Historical drama. Directed by Frank Lloyd; with William Farnum, Jewel Carmen, Josef Swickard, Charles Clary, Herschel Mayall, Rosita Martstini, Ralph Lewis, William Clifford, Marc Robbins, Olive White; screenplay by Clara Beranger, based on novel by Charles Dickens.

TALMADGE, CONSTANCE

261

Near the time of the French Revolution two men who resemble each other, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, are in love with the same woman, Lucie Manette, but Darnay marries her. Her father, however, has been imprisoned in the Bastille by Darnay's father. After the revolution Darnay is arrested for treason and sentenced to the guillotine, but Carton takes advantage of their resemblance to substitute himself so that his beloved Lucie will be happy with Darnay. The 1917 version of Dickens' famous novel is just one of many, but it ranks among the better screen adaptations. Fox's high production values and Frank Lloyd's direction are comparable to films made at the height of the silent era a decade later. In fact some of the sets continued to be used by the studio for the next 50 years. A three-reel Vitagraph version in 1911 had starred Maurice Costello with another actor, Leo Delaney, in the other look-alike role. A few years later there was something of a vogue for using trick camera effects to show an actor playing two parts on screen at the same time. In the Fox remake William Farnum gives a strong performance in both roles, bringing a more earthy quality to the parts than did Ronald Colman in the definitive sound version. The scenes of the revolution and crowds remain impressive, surpassed only by similar scenes in D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm, made four years later, and Abel Gance's Napoleon a decade later. Lloyd also filmed Dickens' Oliver Twist in 1922 but did not capture as much of the spirit of the original as he was able to translate to the screen in A Tale of Two Cities. TALMADGE, CONSTANCE. Born April 19, 1897, in Brooklyn, New York. Died November 23,1973, in Los Angeles, California. Actress. The youngest of three movie actress sisters was a popular comedienne whose career, like that of her oldest sister Norma, spanned the years of silent feature filmmaking. Middle sister Natalie acted in only a few shorts and features, the last of which was Our Hospitality (1923), which starred her husband Buster Keaton. Constance appeared in comedy shorts from 1914-15 and in 1916 made a great impact as a major source of comedy relief in D. W. Griffith's Intolerance. Her role as the aggressive yet lovestruck Mountain Girl showed a fine skill for combining slapstick humor with dramatic overtones. She soon became as big a star in comic films as her sister Norma was in tearjerker "women's" dramas and like her sister had her own production company under the guidance of brother-in-law Joseph Schenck. Her later films were more sophisticated comedies. Surviving titles such as Her Sister From Paris, The Duchess of Buffalo, and Breakfast at Sunrise show her to have a pleasant screen personality, far more restrained than her Mountain Girl performance but also not so charismatic as she was in that early important role. When

262

TALMADGE, NORMA

talking pictures took over the industry, she s t o p p e d m a k i n g films rather t h a n s u b m i t to the t r a u m a of box office failures or her Brooklyn accent limiting potential roles. Selected Filmography: Buddy's First Call (1914), The Peacemaker (1914), The Egyptian Mummy (1914), The Vanishing Vault (1915), Spades Are Trump (1915), Captivating Mary Carstairs (1915), The Matrimaniac (1916), Intolerance (1916), Scandal (1917), The Honeymoon (1917), The Studio Girl (1918), A Lady's Name (1918), A Tempermental Wife (1919), A Virtuous Vamp (1919), Two Weeks (1920), The Love Expert (1920), Mama's Affair (1921), Lessons in Love (1921), The Primitive Lover (1922), Polly of the Follies (1922), Dulcy (1923), The Dangerous Maid (1923), The Goldfish (1924), Her Night of Romance (1924), Learnng to Love (1925), Her Sister From Pans (1925), The Duchess of Buffalo (1926), Venus of Venice (1927), Breakfast at Sunrise (1927), Venus (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Loos, Anita. The Talmadge Girls. New York: The Viking Press, 1978. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. T A L M A D G E , N O R M A . Born M a y 26, 1895, in Jersey City, N e w Jersey. Died December 24,1957, in Las Vegas, N e v a d a . Actress. A p o p u l a r star w i t h audiences, especially w o m e n , t h r o u g h o u t the era of silent features, N o r m a T a l m a d g e specialized in dramatic, e m o t i o n a l roles, very often w i t h tragic elements. She w a s the older sister of actresses Natalie a n d C o n s t a n c e T a l m a d g e a n d b e g a n acting in films in 1910 at the V i t a g r a p h Studio, playing m a n y a d u l t roles as a y o u n g teenager. In 1916 she m a r r i e d p r o d u c e r Joseph Schenck, w h o m a n a g e d her career into s u p e r s t a r d o m , setting u p her o w n p r o d u c t i o n c o m p a n y . Schenck also ran the careers of her sisters a n d brother-in-law Buster Keaton. M o s t of T a l m a d g e ' s greatest hits from the 1920s are unavailable for v i e w i n g today, b u t several films from 1916-18 reveal a c o m p e t e n t actress m o l d e d by the story material rather t h a n a charismatic star w h o shapes the tone of the film. In The Forbidden City and The Heart ofWetona (both 1918) she p r e s e n t e d a s y m p a t h e t i c v i e w of interracial r o m a n c e , p l a y i n g a Chinese a n d a N a t i v e American, respectively, both of w h o m m a r r y w h i t e men. She m a d e only t w o talking pictures, her romantic image, especially in c o s t u m e pictures like her final role as M a d a m e D u Barry, d a m a g e d by her Brooklyn accent. She retired i m m e n s e l y w e a l t h y a n d in later years isolated herself from publicity. S o m e theorize t h a t the character of Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard was inspired in p a r t by her.

TARZAN OF THE APES

263

Selected Filmography: Love of a Chrysanthemum (1910), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910), A Tale of Two Cities (1911), The General's Daughter (1911), The Troublesome Stepdaughters (1912), Casey at the Bat (1912), The Other Woman (1913), The Doctor's Secret (1913), Sawdust and Salome (1914), A Daughter of Israel (1914), Captivating Mary Carstairs (1915), The Battle Cry of Peace (1915), The Children in the House (1916), Going Straight (1916), The Devil's Needle (1916), Fifty-Fifty (1916), Panthea (1917), The Moth (1917), The Ghost of Yesterday (1918), The Forbidden City (1918), The Heart ofWetona (1918), The Way of a Woman (1919), Probation Wife (1919), The Woman Gives (1920), A Daughter of Two Worlds (1920), The Passion Flower (1921), Love's Redemption (1921), Smilin' Through (1922), The Eternal Flame (1922), The Voice From the Minaret (1923), Within the Law (1923), The Song of Love (1924), Secrets (1924), The Lady (1925), Graustark (1925), KM (1926), Camille (1927), The Dove (1928), New York Nights (1929), Dz^ Barry-Woman of Passion (1930). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Loos, Anita. The Talmadge Girls. New York: The Viking Press, 1978. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

TARZAN OF THE APES (1918). Adventure-fantasy. Directed by Scott Sidney; with Elmo Lincoln, Enid Markey, Gordon Griffith, True Boardman, and Kathleen Kirkham; screenplay by Lois Weber and Fred Miller, based on novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs. More than fifty film versions of a mythical superman of the African forest emerged over the decades of the twentieth century. The first movie Tarzan, Elmo Lincoln, starred in a version of Edgar Rice Burrough's popular novel. Audiences were so fascinated by this film adaptation of Tarzan of the Apes the picture celebrated an unusual milliondollar box office bonanza. With this high profit for the 1910s, Lincoln would star in two serials, The Romance of Tarzan (1918) and The Return of Tarzan (1920) plus a feature, The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), with variations on the popular Tarzan tale. An early narrative beginning of the total Tarzan fable indicates this initial version of the story follows the original conception by author Burroughs. As a baby, the future "Lord of the Jungle," Tarzan, is orphaned by the death of his parents in the wilderness of Africa. A female ape discovers the infant in his crib and adopts him as her own child. Here the fantastic element of the story begins and, as a boy, Tarzan learns the way of the apes, including the ability to swing through the trees. As a human he becomes superior to all the animals of the forest when he discovers a knife by which he can fight and even kill his animal enemies. The main part of the story focuses on an expedition of a cousin from England to

264

TAYLOR, SAM

find the heir to the Greystoke fortune who, of course, is Tarzan. Most sequences of this work, Tarzan of the Apes, show Tarzan as an adult and the expedition from England. Beefy Elmo Lincoln could not be credited with acting skills that matched some of his athletic abilities. Sound screen actors who followed—Johnny Weissmuller, Buster Crabbe, Bruce Bennett, Lex Barker, and Gordon Scott—also possessed limited thespian talent, more often hired for their handsome physique and athletic talents, most of them graduates from the Olympic games as medal winners. One film version of the Tarzan tale from the sound period that attempted to return to the original Tarzan of the Apes appeared in 1984, and like the 1918 version, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes was more faithful to Burroughs' original conception than the many movies over the nine decades of the story's popularity. TAYLOR, SAM. Born August 13, 1895, in New York City, New York. Died March 6, 1958, in Santa Monica, Califoria. Screenwriter, director, producer. After receiving a bachelor of arts degree from Fordham University, Sam Taylor took a job as a writer for Kalem Studios in 1916. His specialty proved to be gag writing for a company that specialized in creating comedy shorts. As a screenwriter for producer Hal Roach, Taylor would achieve high status writing two of Harold Lloyd's first two features, Grandma's Boy and Doctor Jack, in 1922. The next year he obtained the position of codirector with Fred Newmeyer for Lloyd's most famous feature, Safety Last. The same year, 1923, Taylor obtained full credit for the story and screenplay of another Lloyd vehicle, Wliy Worry? Sam Taylor became the sole director for Lloyd's For Heaven's Sake (1926). However, he would receive assignments to direct other stars during the last part of the twenties: Mary Pickford's My Best Girl (1927) and John Barrymore's Tempest (1928). Taylor also was given the task of directing Mary Pickford and her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, in their first sound film, a Shakespeare adaptation — The Taming of the Shrew (1929). The screenwriter-director may have revealed a bit too much ego when one of the screen credits read, "Based on William Shakespeare's Comedy with additional dialogue by Sam Taylor." Filmography: Selected silent features — Grandma's Boy (1922), Doctor Jack (1922), Safety Last (1923), Why Worry? (1923), Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924), For Heaven's Sake (1926), My Best Girl (1927), Tempest (1928). Selected sound features -The Taming of the Shrew (1929), The Cat's Paw (1934).

THIEF OF BAGDAD, THE

265

Selected Bibliography: Langman, Larry. "Sam Taylor." Encyclopedia of American Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. TEN COMMANDMENTS, THE (1923). Allegorical melodrama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Theodore Roberts, Charles De Roche, Estelle Taylor, James Neill, Julia Faye, Richard Dix, Rod La Rocque, Edythe Chapman, Leatrice Joy, Nita Naldi, Robert Edeson, Charles Ogle, Agnes Ayres; screenplay by Jeanie Macpherson. The persecuted Hebrew people in ancient Egypt are led by Moses out of captivity, through the Red Sea and into the desert, only to turn to worshipping a golden calf. In modern times, two brothers have opposite personalities, one selfcentered, fun-loving and dissolute, the other generous, hardworking, and upright. Both love the same girl, but she marries the outgoing one, who proceeds to make a fortune as a building contractor through bribery and cost-cutting by using substandard materials. The good brother steadfastly sticks to his Bible, believing honesty will always triumph in the end, and unsuccessfully tries to reform his brother before his degenerate habits lead to his own downfall. DeMille used a parallel story structure with a modern and historical episode many times, as early as Joan the Woman (1916), and had included a pseudo-biblical flashback in Male and Female (1919). With the hour-long prologue to The Ten Commandments, he had his most ambitious historical production to that time, anticipating the epics that would become associated with his name over a decade later. It is still entertaining Hollywood spectacle, magnificently mounted, broadly acted in the style of classic melodrama, with several scenes in two-color Technicolor. The main story of the film, on the other hand, is DeMille at his weakest. Routine direction, overwrought acting, and an outrageously heavy-handed morality tale as its story make it as forgettable as the first part is memorable. THIEF OF BAGDAD, THE (1924). Adventure fantasy. Directed by Raoul Walsh; with Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Anna Mae Wong; screenplay by Lotta Woods; story: Elton Thomas (Douglas Fairbanks). In medieval Bagdad, a happy-go-lucky thief who is accustomed to taking what he wants falls in love with a princess. Posing as a prince, he must perform all sorts of extraordinary deeds to win her hand, and learns in the process that "happiness must be earned." Fairbanks' 14-reel fantasy is indeed an epic, incorporating his irrepressible sense of humor and athletic bounding about the screen, as well as a number of magical special effects. It has still-impressive art direction

266

THOMSON, FRED

by William Cameron Menzies with spectacular stylized sets. So much did Fairbanks seem to like the sets, however, that the film tends to linger over scenes much longer than necessary merely to show them off. The slight story line is overpowered by all the visual splendor of the artificial fantasy world. Projected at "silent" speed it is deadly slow, but even run at 24 frames per second the pacing drags more than in any of his other silent pictures. THOMSON, FRED. Born February 26, 1890, in Pasadena, California. Died December 25,1928, in Los Angeles, California. Actor, stuntman. A popular cowboy star during most of the 1920s, Fred Thomson at one time was America's number two box office attraction behind Tom Mix. Trained as a clergyman, Thomson was an ordained minister in 1913 and served as a chaplain during World War I. He met film star Mary Pickford and screenwriter Frances Marion while recovering from a broken leg in an army hospital, and married Marion after the war. He gave up his religious career to make movies, many written a n d / o r directed by his wife. His reasoning was that he could have a positive influence on more children in movies than in the ministry. Thomson created a favorable impression in first film role, The Eove Eight (1921), a romantic spy melodrama that was also Marion's first film as a director. His next few films cast him in a variety of roles. After appearing in a 1923 serial for Universal, The Eagle's Talons, he was signed by Film Booking Offices of America (known as F.B.O.) for a series of Westerns. An athletic man, Thomson did many of his own stunts, planning out elaborate scenes in great detail before they were shot. Thundering Hoofs (1924), one of his very few films known to survive, gives a hint of his spectacular feats and lighthearted cowboy persona, which were not unlike that of rival Tom Mix. Thomson's popularity led to a contract with Paramount, and his first picture there, Jesse James (1927), was a huge box office hit. In 1928 Thomson developed tetanus after a wound from a rusty nail and died at the height of his screen career. Filmography: The Love Light (1921), Just Around the Corner (1921), Penrod (1922), Oath-Bound (1922), The Eagle's Talons (1923), A Chapter in Her Life (1923), The Mask of Lopez (1924), Galloping Gallagher (1924), The Silent Stranger (1924), The Dangerous Coward (1924), The Fighting Sap (1924), Thundering Hoofs (1924), That Devil Quemado (1925), The Bandit's Baby (1925), The Wild Bull's Lair (1925), Ridin' the Wind (1925), All Around Frying Pan (1925), The Tough Guy (1926), Hands Across the Border (1926), The Two-Gun Man (1926), Lone Hand Saunders (1926), A Regular Scout (1926), Don Mike (1927), Silver Comes Through (1927), Arizona Nights (1927), Jesse James (1927), The Pioneer Scout (1928), The Sunset Legion (1928), Kit Carson (1928).

THREE MUSKETEERS, THE

267

Selected Bibliography: Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Wyatt, Edgar M. More Than a Cowboy. Raleigh, North Carolina: Wyatt Classics, Inc., 1987.

THREE MUSKETEERS, THE (1921). Historical adventure. Directed by Fred Niblo; with Douglas Fairbanks, Leon Barry, George Siegmann, Eugene Pallette, Boyd Irwin, Nigel De Brulier, Marguerite De La Motte, Barbara La Marr, Adolphe Menjou; screenplay by Lotta Woods; adapt. Edward Knoblock, from novel by Alexandre Dumas. In the midst of political intrigue in seventeenth-century France, a brash young country boy arrives in Paris, hoping to join the king's musketeers as his father had before him. After first insulting and arranging to duel them, he befriends the three best swordsmen in the king's service. Later, through a romantic involvement, he is assigned to retrieve a piece of the queen's jewelry from her English lover before the king discovers it missing. Fairbanks' second swashbuckling epic was such a success that it led him to stick to that genre for the remainder of the silent era and most of his career. The film begins very slowly, building up the court machinations of Cardinal Richelieu to influence King Louis XIII against his Austrian-born queen and the English Duke of Buckingham. The picture does not pick up its pace until Fairbanks meets the musketeers, well into the story. The historical and character setup is much less interesting than the even longer exposition Fairbanks utilized in Robin Hood, his next film. As in all of Fairbanks' action pictures, the acting style is much broader than the fashion in other Hollywood films by that time. And despite his approaching middle age, Fairbanks nevertheless brings a playful sense and injects outrageously improbable feats of athletic ability that appeal to audiences, a formula revived over half a century later by Hong Kong actor/comedian/stunt man Jackie Chan. For his final silent film, Fairbanks made a sequel to The Three Musketeers. In The Iron Mask (1929), many of the same cast members return to pick up the story shortly after where it left off. Then it jumps forward twenty years for the tale of the aging D'Artagnan trying to deal with twin brothers vying for the crown. Again, the acting style is broad, but

268

TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE

Allan Dwan's direction is much tighter and The Iron Mask makes a fitting end to Fairbanks' silent film career. TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE (1914). Comedy. Directed by Mack Sennett; with Charles Chaplin, Marie Dressier, Mabel Normand, Mack Swain and Charles Murray; screenplay by Hampton Del Ruth, based on a stage musical comedy, Tillie's Nightmare. As the first feature-length comedy of the silent era, Tillie's Punctured Romance, a 6-reel film, was a financial success. However, viewed today the work has not weathered well. Part of the crudity of its humor can be blamed on director Mack Sennett. One-reel works under his direction do not measure up to the direction by his stars at Keystone, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, and Charles Chaplin. This was especially true when these leading players were given their own shorts and were fully in control of the material as writers and directors. Nevertheless, this film would promote Chaplin's career to the point that he would become the most popular comedian within one year, 1914. Of course, his many one- and two-reel works had already insured his fame as an international star. Freely adapted from Marie Dressier's successful musical comedy, Tillie's Nightmare, Sennett's movie version is a burlesque of the Cinderella story. It contains much-used plot elements from the stage and popular literature of the times. A crafty dandy lures an innocent country girl to the big city, rejects her after he has stolen her money, and rushes back to marry her when he hears she has inherited a fortune. During the nineteenth century such story material was usually treated sentimentally in the popular stage melodrama. Sennett's treatment, however, is antisentimental. Chaplin plays the dandy called The City Slicker and Dressier enacts the title role as the farmer's daughter who, unlike the usual sweet, young country girl in this type of story, is a huge horse of a woman who walks over clods in the field like a waddling bear. The con man, The City Slicker, appears to be half Tillie's size, and the director uses the contrast in size for comedy when the dandy woos her to get her money. Her affectionate touches are like a lady wrestler's — the little man gets repeatedly knocked over. Chaplin executes the slapstick with some skill, but Dressier, a stage actress, is too broad for the medium. So, this feature comedy proves to be a curiosity —an early effort to create a longer, humorous work in the 1910s. It would take ten more years for some of the kings of comedy —Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Buster Keaton—to perfect the feature comedy with effective character development and progressively varied and more laugh-provoking sequences.

TOLL OF THE SEA, THE

269

TOL'ABLE DAVID (1921). Drama. Directed by Henry King; with Richard Barthelmess, Gladys Hulette, Walter P. Lewis, Ernest Torrence, Ralph Yearsley; screenplay by Edmund Goulding, Henry King. David, a boy in a rural southern community, in love with the neighbor girl, dreams of becoming responsible and respectable like his older brother who drives the mail wagon. Then the girl's outlaw cousins take refuge with her and her grandfather, terrorizing the community, crippling David's brother, and indirectly causing his father to have a heart attack. David's mother pleads with him not to attempt revenge, but eventually the cruel cousins create a dramatic confrontation he cannot avoid. The time-honored story of a boy becoming a man has rarely been told better. King's film is a vivid portrait of rural American life, turning melodramatic story elements into a visual poem of Americana and an involving variation on the David and Goliath theme. King avoids the sentimentality of a D. W. Griffith, who had originally planned to film the story and whose similar Way Down East had starred Barthelmess the previous year. King is just as skillful as Griffith at staging action, picking out details, and building suspense, creating a silent drama with little need for intertitles, and one that packs much of the same intense emotion today as it did in 1921. Reviews of the time remarked on the film's unusual sense of realism. TOLL OF THE SEAf, THE (1922). Romantic drama. Directed by Chester M. Franklin; with Anna Mae Wong, Kenneth Harlan, Beatrice Bentley, Baby Marion, Etta Lee, Ming Young; screenplay by Frances Marion. A young Chinese woman rescues and falls in love with an American sailor who has washed up on the shore. He marries her, knowing he plans to return to his American fiancee. After his departure, the Chinese woman gives birth to a son, always longing for her husband's return. He eventually returns with his new American wife, who learns of their relationship and convinces the woman her son would be better off with them. The heartbroken Chinese woman reluctantly agrees, then walks into the sea. Filmed entirely in color, Toll of the Sea was important as the picture that demonstrated to the film industry both the beauty and practicality of the new two-color Technicolor subtractive photographic process. Earlier color processes had either less satisfactory results, were too technically complex for commercial use, or both. The film was produced by the Technicolor corporation itself, and released through the Metro studio. Delays in manufacturing color prints put off its general release until 1923. Expense, and possibly the mixed critical reception, resulted in only

270

TORRENCE, ERNEST

three other full-length features being filmed in the process during the silent era — Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), The Black Pirate (1926), and The Viking (1929) —but numerous directors incorporated brief Technicolor sequences into their works throughout the rest of the decade and the coming of sound inspired a short-lived boom of all-color features in 1929-30. The use of color, carefully chosen both to fit the story and to reproduce well in the limited palette available with the process, adds immensely to the impact of Toll of the Sea, but the film can stand on its own merits. The acting, particularly by the teenage Anna Mae Wong, is both subtle and powerful. The pacing is leisurely but deliberate, taking great pains to build up a mood (and to give the audience time to become accustomed to the fact that the film was all in natural color). The story itself is a superior reworking of Madame Butterfly, which had been filmed in 1915 by Mary Pickford. TORRENCE, ERNEST. Born June 26, 1878, in Edinburgh, Scotland. Died May 15,1933, in New York City. Actor. A popular character actor throughout the 1920s, Torrence was noted for his large size, expressive face, and ability to be convincing in villainous or sympathetic roles, heavy drama or light comedy. He continued acting into the talkie era, appearing in 15 sound films until complications from emergency surgery resulted in his death at age 54. He had studied music in Scotland, Germany, and England and had a successful career as an operatic baritone, a pianist, and a musical comedian. After 1911 he settled permanently in the United States. After a small film role in 1919, he continued acting on Broadway, where director Henry King saw him and cast him in Tol'able David (1921). From then on film acting became his career, his versatility keeping him in demand for numerous major character roles and occasional leads. His range can be seen from such parts as the irredeemably evil Luke Hatburn in Tol'able David; the crusty and crafty sidekick of the hero in The Covered Wagon; the scheming revolutionary king of the beggars, Clopin, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame; the broadly wicked Captain Hook in Peter Pan; a half-crazy, fanatic preacher in The Pony Express; the impetuous but sincere apostle Peter in King of Kings; and the comical, exasperated father of Buster Keaton in Steamboat Bill, Jr.

Torrence's older brother, David (January 17,1864-December 26,1951), also had an extensive American film career as a character actor. He rarely received such vivid and memorable roles as Ernest. A stage star in the early part of the century, David played key villains in the 1913 Famous Players film versions of The Prisoner ofZenda and Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but then dropped out of motion pictures until 1921, thereafter appearing

TRAFFIC IN SOULS

271

in numerous productions, including Sherlock Holmes (1922), Brown of Harvard (1926), Annie Laurie (1927), Disraeli (1929), and City Girl (1930). Filmography: Silents-A Dangerous Affair (1919), Tol'able David (1921), The Prodigal Judge (1922), Singed Wings (1922), Broken Chains (1922), The Kingdom Within (1922), The Brass Bottle (1923), The Trail of the Lonesome Fine (1923), The Covered Wagon (1923), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Ruggles of Red Gap (1923), West of the Water Tower (1924), The Heritage of the Desert (1924), The Lighting Coward (1924), The Side Show of Life (1924), North of'36 (1924), Peter Pan (1924), The Dressmaker From Paris (1925), Night Life in Nezo York (1925), The Pony Express (1925), American Venus (1926), The Wanderer (1926), The Blind Goddess (1926), T/ze Rainmaker (1926), Mantrap (1926), Lady o/ //ze Harera (1926), Kwg of Kings (1927), Captam Salvation (1927), Twelve Miles Out (1927), Across to Singapore (1928), Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), The Cossacks (1928), Desert Nights (1929), T/ze Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), Speedway (1929). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor, The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George. 80 Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane, editor, Spike Lewis, publisher. The Silents Majority June 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor, The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

TRAFFIC IN SOULS (1913). Melodrama. Directed by George Loane Tucker; with Jane Gail, Ethel Grandin, Fred Turner, Matt Moore, William Welsh, Mrs. Hudson Lyston, William Cavanaugh; screenplay by Walter MacNamara. Earnest, hardworking Mary, and her less motivated, more fun-loving sister Lorna work in a New York candy shop. While out on a date, Lorna is drugged and abducted by a white slavery ring that is secretly run by a wealthy social reformer. Coincidentally, Mary is hired to work in the reformer's office, and discovers suspicious goings-on. She tells her policeman boyfriend, who is working on the same case, and they ultimately free her sister and devise an ingenious way to convict the culprit. At six reels and running a good hour and a half, this late 1913 production is one of the pioneering feature-length films. Exemplifying an aspect of the movie industry that has never changed, the film is an unabashedly commercial attempt to cash in on hot topics in the public eye. Traffic in Souls is most remembered for its sensational subject material drawn from contemporary headlines about kidnapping for prostitu-

272

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP

tion rings. It even works cutting-edge technology of the time into its plot as a critical element. Yet it is also, for its early date, one of the most ambitious and technically polished pictures of its period, having the appearance of a film from at least two or three years later — a vast time span at this stage of the rapidly developing movie industry. There are sections where the film drags, but this is due mainly to an overabundance of unnecessary story detail and a surprisingly large number of subplots and extraneous characters. There seem to be two distinct story lines that might originally have been conceived as two separate films, for after one is resolved it's almost as if the film starts over again with another story. The dull stretches do not arise from a primitive or rudimentary sense of cinematic technique, however, as is the case in so many other early films. The acting is not objectionably melodramatic; the settings, many of them actual street locations, have a gritty realism, and both the camera work and editing are highly sophisticated. At a time when individual shots might last a minute or more, if not for an entire several-minute scene from a single, static vantage point, most shots in Traffic in Souls are five to ten seconds or less. And —quite rare for this period —there are even dolly shots at times, notably a scene with the camera moving past a series of prison cells. Strangely, with all of editor Jack Cohn's advanced use of editing both for cross-cutting and multiple camera setups within scenes, it is still sometimes difficult to keep all the characters straight on just one viewing. Tucker and Cohn seem so intent on cramming as much as possible into the story that they sometimes forget to make it clear to the viewer exactly who is doing what to whom and why. Occasional continuity gaps may be due Cohn's trimming of the picture from an original ten-reel cut down to six reels for release. The subject material provoked a number of calls for censorship when the film was released, most contemporary reaction to the film focusing strictly on the story content rather than its considerable cinematic craftsmanship. The huge commercial success of Traffic in Soids inspired a spate of hurriedly made sex exploitation pictures. Tucker had left the country by the time of his film's public controversy, and is said never to have seen it in a theatre. He directed wellreceived films in England from 1914 to 1917 and then returned to the United States, dying in 1921 at age 49 near the height of his career. It's unfortunate that almost none of Tucker's work has survived, especially his highly acclaimed The Miracle Man (1919), of which only fragments exist. TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP (1926). Comedy. Directed by Harry Edwards; with Harry Langdon, Joan Crawford, Tom Murray; screenplay

TUMBLEWEEDS

273

by Frank Capra, Tim Wheland, Hal Conklin, J. Frank Holliday, Gerald Duffy, Murray Roth. In the 1923 Safety Last Harold Lloyd employed a publicity stunt as a plot device —the climb up a twelve-story building —to develop a long, climactic sequence. Harry Langdon's first feature film had a plot line to push forward the total comic movie development. Meek little Harry enters a "cross-the-continent" walk-a-thon race to win a money prize to save his father's business (with the money he hopes to earn) and win the hand of a woman named Betty Burton, played by Joan Crawford in one of her early screen roles. This contest, sponsored by a shoe manufacturer, constitutes most of the film's story line and unifies Tramp, Tramp, Tramp more effectively than an evaluator can witness in any other Langdon feature. A number of obstacles during the coast-to-coast race face the hapless Harry and provide the fuel for comedy situations. His main problem exists with Nick Kargas, a superbly skilled walker who lacks scruples in the way that he seeks to win the race. Also, dimwitted and diminutive Harry gets arrested for stealing a watermelon from a farm and is put on a chain gang. Escaping from this predicament, he encounters a plight more confusing to his slow-working mind. He is caught in the middle of a tornado. Luck rains on this innocent as he throws a brick at the whirling funnel, and, as if cowed by the missile, it turns away from him. Of course, he wins the race by luck and marries Betty. Harry's attempt to win this type of contest in order to win money and the woman seems like derivative material used by the genteel comedians of the period — Charles Ray, Douglas MacLean, and Johnny Hines. However, with a battery of talented gag and plot writers, with Frank Capra and director Harry Edwards in the foreground, this material becomes tailored for the talent of their star comedian, Harry Langdon. And, these creators give the actor a wider variety of comic innovations than is used by the genteel comedians. TUMBLEWEEDS (1925). Western. Directed by William S. Hart and King Baggot; with William S. Hart, Barbara Bedford, Lucien Littlefield, Gordon Russell, Richard Neill; screenplay by C. Gardner Sullivan. Hart's last picture, Tumbleweeds, has a basic honesty and poetry that make it a popular classic. While the acting style and some of the plotting do show an antiquated method of dramatic creation according to present-day taste, the essence of the Western genre predominates. Great films have great moments, and one of the best is the hero's spectacular ride in the Cherokee Strip land-rush. As the leading character, Hart handles this ride and other stunts without a double. Visually this mass rush to claim

274

TURPIN, BEN

land in the Oklahoma territory becomes a poetic statement by this famous knight of the trail as he displays his superior horsemanship and his drive to right a wrong. The precursor to a new subgenre of the Western became apparent as early as 1916 with William S. Hart's five-reel feature Hell's Hinges. The loner hero who displayed all the facets of the so-called antihero or the bad-good man emerged. But in this case he developed as a person who could be redeemed by the love of a good woman —a sentimental feature of the star's films that might be thought to date many of Hart's movies. However, this aspect reappears in many films today. This romantic material plus the melodramatic plots reflects the popular dramas, short stories, and novels of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. This last film of one of the great stars of silent films proved to have some of the same qualities as Hell's Hinges. The leading role in Tumbleweeds, Don Carver, portrayed by Hart, illustrates how the actor-directorwriter created a prototype that would be revived with the many films labeled "adult westerns" which became a staple for Hollywood in the sound period of the late 1940s. Some of these works developed into what some critics called the "psychological western." This type of work, which emerged in the 1940s and 1950s popular film, often used as a protagonist a hired assassin who is trying to reform his way of life or outlive his past. One of the best examples of this was The Gunfighter (1950), a film with the leading role played by a young, craggy Gregory Peck. While Hart had the similar gaunt, but less handsome features of Peck, his portraits with realistic touches had more simple psychological character facets. Some of the melodramatic and sentimental qualities of Tumbleweeds and the star's other films worked against the realistic elements Hart introduced in his productions. Nevertheless, there remains an integrity that shines through the contrivances. Hart believed strongly in his films, and his sincerity proved he was never an exploitative, superficial, or money-driven filmmaker. TURPIN, BEN. Born Bernard Turpin September 19, 1869, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Died July 1, 1940, in Hollywood, California. Vaudeville, film comedian. After eleven years creating such comic portraits as "Happy Hooligan" on the stage, Turpin found a berth working in films with producerdirector Mack Sennett. For a brief time he moved to Essanay Films to play a sidekick for Charles Chaplin in three 1915 two-reelers: His New Job, A Night Out, and The Champion. Returning to Sennett's Keystone Studios, he often engaged in broad burlesques of serious films. Turpin had a distinct style and a character that did not ape the four kings of comedy

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

275

of the silent period — Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, and Langdon. His travesty of the lantern-jawed, muscular protagonist of serious films can hardly be forgotten. He was a cartoon version of the daring sheriff, the small-town hero, the dashing count. His physical appearance punctuated all of his comedy —his deformed, pear-shaped body, his turkey neck and pale, weak-jawed face dotted with wayward eyes present an outlandish portrait. Consequently, the lampoon of heroes and royalty depicted by the actors Tom Mix, Rudolph Valentino, and Eric Von Stroheim made the comedian a favorite for audiences in the 1920s. Selected Filmography: Silents — Slippery Slim Gets Square (1914), The Bell Hop (1915), The Iron Mitt (1916), A Clever Dummy (1917), Two Tough Tenderfeet (1918), East Lynne with Variations (1919), Uncle Tom Without the Cabin (1919), The Small Town Idol (1921), The Shriek of Araby (1923), Yukon Jake (1924), Three Foolish Wives (1924), The Marriage Circus (1925), When a Man's a Prince (1926), A Harem Knight (1926), The Eyes Have It (1927). Sound Films-Cracked Nuts (1931), Million Dollar Legs (1932), Saps at Sea (1940). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Samuel Gill. "Ben Turpin." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. "Ben Turpin." American Film Comedy: From Abbott & Costello to Jerry Zucker. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1994.

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1916). Adventure drama. Directed by Stuart Paton; with Allan Holubar, Jane Gail, Dan Hanlon, Edna Pendleton, Curtis Benton, Matt Moore, Howard Crampton, Wallace Clark, William Welch, Joseph W. Girard; screenplay by Stuart Paton, based upon novel by Jules Verne. A series of ship sinkings attributed to a sea monster prompts an American mission during the Civil War to hunt for the true source, in actuality a submarine. The submarine's owner/commander is a former prince of India who now calls himself Captain Nemo and is on a private quest of vengeance against the wealthy scoundrel Charles Denver, responsible for the disappearance of his daughter and suicide of his wife a decade earlier. The American team's search balloon crashes and they wind up on an island where a nature girl lives, and about the same time Denver's yacht eventually shows up, all while Nemo is in the area. Circumstances lead to romance, fatal confrontation, and an ultimate family reunion. The acting and melodramatics in Paton's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea are often dated but have a naive charm. An amazingly ambitious production for its time, this first version of Verne's prophetic novel is most notable for its pioneering underwater cinematography and authentic state of the art equipment. The film made use of a real submarine and

276

20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA

then-experimental diving suits with self-contained oxygen tanks rather than hoses to the surface. The new Williamson process of filming underwater led to several sequences that simply show undersea life and these compare favorably to modern oceanographic documentaries. They considerably slow the film's story, which ran close to two hours with an intermission, but were undoubtedly fascinating to curious audiences who had never seen their like. Nevertheless, eight years later Samuel Goldwyn recalled in a New York Times interview having overheard two young women behind him planning to leave long before it was over for a film with more romance.

u UNDERWORLD (1927). Gangster drama. Directed by Josef Von Sternberg; with George Bancroft, Evelyn Brent, Clive Brook, Fred Kohler, Helen Lynch, Larry Semon; screenplay by Ben Hecht (story), Charles Furthman, Robert N. Lee. The production of the gangster film genre seemed to fade during the early twenties when the adventure, Western, and comedy film had more audience appeal. However, in the 1910s and earlier some creators found the crime film to their liking — probably driven by the market. D. W. Griffith directed some short, early dramas with this theme between the years of 1908 and 1910. This pioneer director found social consciousness material in the breeding of crime in big city slums; as a result of his concern The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) became one of the first significant movies of this genre. He also supervised a four-reel crime drama, The Gangsters of New York (1914), and he employed criminal plot material in his modern sequence for the multistoried, famous Intolerance (1916) with a gang leader of the poor inner city who is called the "Musketeer of the Slums." Of course, if the gangster film can be broadly defined, then the 1903 The Great Train Robbery can be classified not only as a Western but also as a gangster movie. Director Josef von Sternberg's Underworld became the excellent precursor of the early thirties crime movies: Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), / Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Scarface (1932). Underworld received high critical acclaim in the late twenties, named in the "Top Ten Film List" for the year by the New York Times. This was a high accomplishment for the year 1927, which witnessed the creation of such superior features as The King of Kings, The Way of All Flesh, Wings, 7th Heaven, and Sunrise. Also, Ben Hecht received an Oscar for his original

278

UNKNOWN, THE

story at the first Academy Awards ceremony, given for movies created in 1927 and 1928. This gangster film had all the ingredients of the genre: escape from prison, betrayal, false accusation, gang fidelity, and individual conflicts. It helped establish a model for future films of this type. The quality of Underworld developed from Hecht's well-conceived story and the excellent direction of the actors by Sternberg. The critical and commercial success of Underworld would lead to another gangster film, Dragnet (1928) with Sternberg directing the lead of Underworld, George Bancroft, who had received the status of superstar for his portrait of the boss of his gang in the 1927 film. UNKNOWN, THE (1927). Melodrama. Directed by Tod Browning; with Lon Chaney, Joan Crawford, Norman Kerry, Nick de Ruiz, John George; screenplay by Waldemar Young, from story by Tod Browning. Alonzo is an "armless wonder" whose circus act features him throwing knives with his feet at a pretty girl to whom he is strongly attracted. She, in turn, is attracted to the circus strong man but has a psychological aversion to being touched by men. She therefore feels comfortable only with Alonzo, who unknown to her is actually a criminal in hiding. Since he has two thumbs on one hand, a dead giveaway to his identity, his disguise removes all suspicion from him and is known only to his hunchback dwarf companion, Cojo. This bizarre circus melodrama is a showcase for Lon Chaney's talent at unusual physical characterizations, which often included deformed or crippled villains with a sympathetic side to them. Joan Crawford is both appealing and effective in this early role for her, better even than much of her sound film work. Norman Kerry, as was often the case, is adequate but rather wooden. The picture features many themes common to Tod Browning's films. The concept of physically disfigured people having normal feelings and emotions while seemingly "normal" people can be abnormal in other ways especially foreshadows his legendary Freaks (1932). In Freaks, however, the characters' motives are more clearly defined, driven mainly by greed or revenge, with love and jealousy helping to drive the plot. Chaney's character in The Unknown is driven by love but is a bit more complex than the central figures of Freaks. He teeters on the verge of sanity, and like his "Blizzard" of The Penalty is both villainous and sympathetic to varying degrees. Crime, horror, deformity, frustration, and the circus were Browning's specialties, and some of his best films starred Chaney. The strangeness of the story continues to surprise unsuspecting viewers, especially those who tend to associate all silent films with Chaplin or Keystone Kops comedies. The Unknown was long thought to be a lost film and still does not exist in its original form. For many years it was only available in hard-to-find

UNKNOWN, THE

279

and grainy copies of a slightly abridged 9.5mm home version prepared for the French market. Then a full-length 35mm print was rediscovered in the Cinematheque Francais, after having been consistently ignored because the film cans were marked "unknown." Although its picture quality is substantially better, it includes very little additional footage and is actually missing some shots that are in the 9.5mm version. The English intertitles of both versions are not those seen by audiences in 1927. They are retranslations from French back into English, sometimes with awkward results, and they change the name of Crawford's character from the original Estrellita to the more French-sounding Nanon.

V VALENTINO, RUDOLPH. Born May 6,1895, in Castellaneta, Italy. Died August 23,1926, in New York City. Actor. A popular screen lover among female movie fans during the mid1920s, Rudolph Valentino became a movie legend with his untimely death at the very peak of his career while only 31 years old. He came to the United States as a teenaged immigrant, working at a variety of jobs and getting into trouble with the law until building a reputation as a dancer. He broke into movies around 1917, gradually moving from extra roles and bits into minor characters, usually cast as an ethnic villain. Sometimes he was billed as Rodolph or Rodolpho before his rise to cult status. Although he often had little to do, he could convey a distinctive screen presence. Powerful Metro screenwriter June Mathis saw an unrealized potential in his film appearances and had him cast as the central character in the big-budget epic, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). It remains possibly his strongest dramatic performance. Critical recognition and major roles followed that same year including The Conquering Power, also by director Rex Ingram, and Camille. Then later that year he was cast by Paramount in a trashy but exotic romantic melodrama that had a profound effect on his career, his image, and American culture itself. The film was The Sheik. Valentino's enthusiastic performance in the title role touched such a chord with the women in the audience that assertive boyfriends and lovers immediately became referred to as "sheiks," and the noun quickly became a verb referring to men flirting aggressively with women and/or putting on a macho persona. Even Valentino's name became synonymous with "great lover." As a result of his huge popularity, he was not always given scripts worthy of or suitable to his talents, on the assumption that his mere pres-

VANISHING AMERICAN, THE

281

ence would bring in viewers. Blood and Sand (1922) was probably his best film between Four Horsemen and the end of his short career. His second wife, Natacha Rambova, started managing his career but her business decisions and remolding of his image proved ill-conceived. He finally had another strong role in Clarence Brown's successful film, The Eagle (1925). In 1926 he poked fun at the picture that had made his reputation and at the same time showed a previously unrealized talent for comedy in The Son of the Sheik. It became a tremendous hit, but shortly after its release he was dead of a gastric complaint that some maintain he might have survived with prompt and proper treatment. Filmography: Alimony (1918), A Society Sensation (1918), All Night (1918), The Delicious Little Devil (1918), A Rogue's Romance (1919), The Home Breaker (1919), Virtuous Sinners (1919) The Big Little Person (1919), Out of Luck (1919), Eyes of Youth (1919), The Married Virgin (1920), The Cheater (1920), Passion's Playground (1920), Once to Every Woman (1920), Stolen Moments (1920), The Wonderful Chance (1920), The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), Uncharted Seas (1921), The Conquering Power (1921), Camille (1921), The Sheik (1921), Moran of the Lady Letty (1922), Beyond the Rocks (1922), Isle of Love (1922), Blood and Sand (1922), The Young Rajah (1922), Monsieur Beaucaire (1924), A Sainted Devil (1924), Cobra (1925), The Eagle (1925), The Son of the Sheik (1926). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Stiff, Lee Ann. "Rediscovering Rudolph Valentino." The Silents Majority 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

VANISHING AMERICAN, THE (1925). Western epic drama. Directed by George B. Seitz; with Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Malcolm McGregor, Shannon Day, Bert Woodruff; screenplay by Ethel Doherty, adapted by Lucien Hubbard. An extended prologue chronicles the history of human habitation of the American southwest from prehistoric times, before the modern-day story begins, set shortly before World War I. The Navaho's hereditary warrior chief attacks a crooked government agent after the agent harasses the reservation's attractive white schoolteacher. He then joins the

282

VIDOR, KING

army and becomes a war hero, returning to find his people in poverty under the corrupt agent's management. Still in love with the teacher, the young chief vainly tries to prevent an armed uprising and a climactic battle ensues. Unarguably an ambitious film, The Vanishing American is especially notable for its spectacular location scenery (filmed in Monument Valley) and vivid portrayal of abuses by white government officials. It received mixed reviews both when it came out and after its rediscovery in 1970. Many praised its motivation and pictorial values, but were disappointed by what they felt was an overly sentimental story that descended into mere melodrama. The opening prologue is the most blatant in its condescension and stereotypes, yet seems unaware that it could cause any offense by the way it shows an indolent, peaceful tribe overthrown by a fierce warrior tribe. If anything, the film reflects a long-held western cultural admiration for any conquerors' tactical superiority and disdain for any people who would prefer a life of ease to military preparedness. The bulk of the film deals with the general suffering of American Indians due to white bigotry, cautiously skirting the interracial love angle until the end. Then it motivates the final confrontation through a rather contrived religious conversion. The Native American characters nevertheless always maintain their dignity and are sympathetic, even heroic, despite their attack on the white settlement (if not because of it). Faults aside, The Vanishing American retains entertainment value and is impressive both as a film and as a social document of race relations. VIDOR, KING. Born February 8, 1894, in Galveston, Texas. Died November 1, 1982, in Paso Robles, California. Director, producer, screenwriter. Although he enjoyed a distinguished 30-year career directing sound films, King Vidor was also an important director of silents throughout the 1920s. Interested in movies from the time he was a child, in the mid19108 the young Vidor moved to Hollywood hoping to break into the business with his new wife, Florence. She became a successful actress almost immediately but he found only sporadic work acting, writing, and finally directing shorts by 1918. He wrote and directed his first feature independently, The Turn in the Road (1919), and soon founded his own studio called Vidor Village. There he made several films, specializing in stories of rural American life, such as The Jack Knife Man (1920) and Love Never Dies (1921). A number of his productions starred his wife. Within a few years his studio folded and after a few films for Goldwyn and Metro he eventually settled at MGM for the rest of the decade. By 1923 he already had a strong enough reputation that he appeared as

VIDOR, KING

283

himself in the all-star comedy-drama Soids For Sale, which dealt with the movie industry. Key silent titles include the psychological thriller Wild Oranges (1924), the war epic The Big Parade (1924), the realistic domestic drama The Crowd (1928), and two comic spoofs of Hollywood starring Marion Davies — The Patsy and Show People (both 1928). A number of his MGM films featured his second wife, Eleanor Boardman. Vidor pioneered the use of sound shooting on location rather than in the studio with Hallelujah (1929). That film was also released in a silent version, as was his next sound picture, the Marion Davies comedy, Not So Dumb (1930). Selected Filmography: Silent features — The Turn in the Road (1919), Better Times (1919), The Other Half (1919), Poor Relations (1919), The Family Honor (1920), The Jack Knife Man (1920), The Sky Pilot (1921), Love Never Dies (1921), The Real Adventure (1922), Dusk to Dawn (1922), Conquering the Woman (1922), Peg o' My Heart (1922), Alice Adams (1923), The Woman of Bronze (1923), Three Wise Fools (1923), Wild Oranges (1924), Happiness (1924), Wine of Youth (1924), His Hour (1924), Wife of the Centaur (1924), Proud Flesh (1925), The Big Parade (1925), La Boheme (1926), Bardelys the Magnificent (1926), The Crowd (1928), The Patsy (1928), Shaw People (1928), Hallelujah (1929), Not So Dumb (1930). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Vidor, King. A Tree is a Tree. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1953.

w WALSH, RAOUL. Born March 11,1887, in New York City. Died December 31, 1980, in Los Angeles, California. Director, actor, screenwriter, producer. Although a highly successful director of films in the sound era, especially of action-adventures or crime dramas including The Roaring Twenties (1939), They Died With Their Boots On (1941), and Wlnte Heat (1949), Raoul Walsh was also a prolific and skillful director throughout the silent period of feature films. He acted briefly on stage around 1910 and then started working as an assistant to D. W. Griffith at Biograph in 1912, acting in a number of films by 1914, including the role of John Wilkes Booth in Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. In 1914 he also began directing shorts for Reliance and Majestic and assisted Christy Cabanne on the docudrama feature, The Life of General Villa (1914). By the last half of 1915 he was at Fox studios as a director and screenwriter, only rarely acting from this point on. He also produced some of his own films. His first solo effort directing a full-length feature, Regeneration (1915), already shows a remarkably polished and effective command of cinematic style, including camera placement, editing, and handling of the actors. His next feature, Carmen, was an intentional and successful attempt to compete against Cecil B. DeMille's version of the same story (released the very same day) and starred Fox's biggest box office attraction, Theda Bara. Many of his films at Fox starred Miriam Cooper, his first wife. In 1920 Walsh supervised and may have partially directed Headin' Home, a baseball comedy-drama starring Babe Ruth as himself. Unfortunately most of Walsh's silent work is lost, but his major surviving pictures show an effortless ability to handle a wide variety of subjects with confidence. Titles include The Thief of Bagdad (1924), a Douglas Fairbanks adventure-

WALTHALL, HENRY B.

285

fantasy; The Wanderer (1926), a spectacular Biblical drama; Wliat Price Glory (1927), a popular war comedy-drama; and Sadie Thompson (1928), a notorious drama of sex and sin in the south seas in which he costarred with Gloria Swanson. Walsh was also scheduled to star in his first talking film, In Old Arizona (1929), which he codirected with Irving Cummings. However, a freak accident blinded him in one eye and resulted in the trademark eyepatch he wore for the rest of his life. Walsh continued to direct until 1964. Filmography: Silent features as director — Regeneration (1915), Carmen (1915), Pillars of Society (1916), The Serpent (1916), Blue Blood and Red (1916), The Honor System (1917), The Conqueror (1917), Betrayed (1917), This Is the Life (1917), The Pride of New York (1917), The Silent Lie (1917), The Innocent Sinner (1917), Woman and the Law (1918), The Prussian Cur (1918), On the lump (1918), Every Mother's Son (1918), Til Say So (1918), Evangeline (1919), Should a Husband Forgive? (1919), The Strongest (1920), From Now On (1920), The Deep Purple (1920), Headin' Home (1920), The Oath (1921), Serenade (1921), Kindred of the Dust (1922), Lost and Found on a South Sea Island (1923), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), East of Suez (1925), The Spaniard (1925), The Wanderer (1926), The Lucky Lady (1926), The Lady of the Harem (1926), What Price Glory (1926), The Monkey Talks (1927), The Loves of Carmen (1927), Sadie Thompson (1928), The Red Dance (1928), Me Gangster (1928). " Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Maclntyre, Diane. "Raoul Walsh." The Silents Majority 1997. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Walsh, Raoul. Each Man in His Time. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1974. WALTHALL, HENRY B. Born March 16, 1878, in Shelby City, Alabama. Died June 17,1936, in Monrovia, California. Actor. Forever remembered as "the Little Colonel" in D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, Henry B. Walthall was considered the greatest actor in motion pictures for a brief period in the mid-1910s. As he reached middle age he fell into character roles, acting until his death shortly after shooting completed on China Clipper. Short of stature, he always conveyed a deep inner strength and a sensitive dignity that meshed perfectly with Griffith's style.

286

WALTHALL, HENRY B.

As a boy and young man on an Alabama plantation he loved literature and often participated in local amateur dramatics. After an 11month stint in the army during the Spanish-American War in which he never saw action, he gradually made a name for himself on the New York stage. In 1909 he found himself making a film at Biograph for D. W. Griffith, but then left for England with the theatre production he was currently in. When the play closed he returned to Griffith in 1910, making numerous short films in a variety of roles, including bits, supporting parts and leads, with more of the latter as time went on. He left Biograph, along with Griffith, in 1913, making popular films at Griffith's company as well as shorts, features and a serial at Essanay from 1913 to 1917. Much of 1914 was spent working on The Birth of a Nation and its release in 1915 made his name a household word. In 1918 he had his own film production company, but like many actors who tried their hand at independence it was not a success. His popularity began to wane substantially after World War I when younger stars and spicier stories were on the upswing. The False Faces (1919), with Lon Chaney, was one of his last important silent roles as a major star, but he continued starring in minor films and having small parts in major films. Some of his notable later silents include The Plastic Age (1925), The Road to Mandalay (1926), The Scarlet Letter (1926), Wings (1927), London After Midnight (1927), and The Bridge of San Luis Key (1929). Walthall's stage experience helped him make the transition to sound films and is evident in his style of dialogue delivery. Filmography: Selected shorts — The Convict's Sacrifice (1909), The Slave (1910), A Strange Meeting (1909), The Mended Lute (1909), The Better Way (1909), With Her Card (1909), The Mills of the Gods (1909), Pranks (1909), The Sealed Room (1909), The Little Darling (1909), The Broken Locket (1909), The Russian Renegades (1909), In Old Kentucky (1909), A Fair Exchange (1909), A Corner in Wheat (1909), In Little Italy (1909), A Trap For Santa Claus (1909), The Call (1910), The Cloister's Touch (1910), One Night and Then (1910), In Old California (1910), Gold Is Not All (1910), Tenderfoot's Triumph (1910), Way of the World (1910), In the Border States (1910), Rose O' Salem (1910), The Banker's Daughter (1910), On The Reef (1910), Honor of His Family (1910), Thread of Destiny (1910), The Kid (1910), Thou Shalt Not (1910), The Gold Seekers (1910), A Child of the Ghetto (1910), The Face at the Window (1910), Ramona (1910), The Call to Arms (1910), The House with Closed Shutters (1910), The Usurer (1910), Sorrows of the Unfaithful (1910), In Life's Cycle (1910), Willful Peggy (1910), A Summer's Idyl, (1910), The Oath and the Man (1910), The Iconoclast (1910), A Little Child (1911), The Birthmark (1911), Appointed Hour (1912), The Quarrel (1912), The Press Gang (1912), The Yeggman (1912), The Better Man (1912), The Duel (1912), The Ruling Passion (1912), Jealousy (1912), Love is Blind (1912), Mother (1912), An Opportune Burglar (1912), The Burglar's Reformation (1912), District Attorney's Conscience (1912), Return of John Gray (1912), tola's Promise (1912), Home Folks (1912), A Change of Spirit (1912), Two Daughters of Eve (1912), The One She

WALTHALL, HENRY B.

287

Loved (1912), The Informer (1912), Three Friends (1912), Love in an Apartment (1913), Broken Ways (1913), The Sheriffs Baby (1913), Among Club Members (1913), The Battle ofElderbush Gulch (1913), The Perfidy of Mary (1913), If We Only Knew (1913), The Wanderer (1913), The Tenderfoot's Money (1913), The Little Tease (1913), The Mistake (1913), During the Round-Up (1913), Deal's Marathon (1913), Influence of the Unknown (1913), T/ze Mz'rror (1913), The Mysterious Shot (1914), O/d Man (1914), As/zes o/*7ze Pasr" (1914), The Soul of Honor (1914), Strongheart (1914), T/ze Odalisque (1914), T/ze Woman Hzzter (1914), T/ze Circular Path (1914), T/ze Outer Edge (1914), B/z'rzd Justice (1914). Features — The Gangsters [ofNeiu York] (1914), The Floor Above (1914), Home Sweet Home (1914), The Mountain Rat (1914), Classmates (1914), Judith ofBethulia (1914), Lord Chumley (1914), The Avenging Conscience (1914), T/ze Bz'rf/z o/ a Nflfz'on (1915), Beulah (1915), G/zoste (1915), T/ze Raven (1915), T/ze Bz'rrTz o/a Man (1916), T/ze Misleading Lady (1916) T/ze Srra^e Case of Mary Page [serial] (1916), Sft'ng o/ Victory (1916), T/ze Pz//ar o/ Society (1916), T/ze Trzzanf Sow/ (1916), Little Shoes (1917), Burning the Candle (1917), The Saint's Adventure (1917), His Robe of Honor (1918), Humdrum Brown (1918), With Hoops of Steel (1918), The Great Love (1918), And a Still, Small Voice (1918), Long Lane's Turning (1919), The False Faces (1919), The Boomerang (1919), Modern Husbands (1919), Long Arm of Mannister (1919), A Splendid Hazard (1920), The Confession (1920), Flozver of the North (1921), Parted Curtains (1921), One Clear Call (1922), The Long Chance (1922), The Marriage Chance (1922), The Face on the Barroom Floor (1923), Boy of Mine (1923), The Unknown Purple (1923), The Bowery Bishop (1924), Single Wives (1924), The Golden Bed (1925), Dollar Dawn (1925), Kentucky Pride (1925), Sz'raozz f/ze Jester (1925), T/ze P/asfr'c Age (1925), Three Faces East (1926), The Barrier (1926), T/ze Unknown Soldier (1926), T/ze Road to Mandalay (1926), T/ze Scarier. Letter (1926), Everybody's Acting (1926), T/ze Enchanted Island (1927), A Light in the Window (1927), Wings (1927), London After Midnight (1927), Love Me and the World Is Mine (1928), Freedom of the Press (1928), The Jazz Age (1929), From Headquarters (1929), Speakeasy (1929), The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), Black Magic (1929), River of Romance (1929), The Trespasser (1929), In Old California (1929), Temple Tower (1930), Abraham Lincoln (1930), Tol'able David (1930), Police Court (1932), Strange Interlude (1932), Cabin in the Cotton (1932), Chandu the Magician (1932), Whispering Shadows (1933), 42nd Street (1933), Dark Hazard (1934), Viva Villa! (1934), The Lemon Drop Kid (1934), Helldorado (1935), Dante's Inferno (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), The Garden Murder Case (1936), China Clipper (1936). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George. "Remembering the Great Silents." Classic Images no. 163 (January 1989): pp. 42-55. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

288

WASHBURN, BRYANT

Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. W A S H B U R N , BRYANT. Born April 28, 1889 (one source has 1884), in Chicago, Illinois. Died April 30, 1963, in W o o d l a n d Hills, California. Actor. A prolific star in a variety of roles t h r o u g h o u t the silent era, W a s h b u r n m o v e d from the stage to motion pictures. A g r e a t - n e p h e w of D w i g h t L. M o o d y , he w a s m o r e inclined t o w a r d the theatre t h a n formal Bible s t u d y (though years later his d a u g h t e r w o u l d become a n u n ) a n d w a s acting professionally by his late teens. A r o u n d 1910-11 he w a s recruited by H a r r y McRae Webster of the Essanay Film C o m p a n y w h o h a d seen h i m w h e n his stock c o m p a n y played in Chicago. W a s h b u r n started as a bit player a n d character actor, t h o u g h only in his early twenties, a n d p l a y e d n u m e r o u s villains at first. By 1915 he w a s given m o r e leading m a n roles a n d his p o p u l a r i t y increased dramatically. H e a p p e a r e d in m o r e t h a n 100 films at the Essanay studio from 1911 to 1917, including the p o p u l a r situation c o m e d y "Skinner" series of features. Eleven years later h e d i d another "Skinner" sequel for F.B.O. After Essanay folded in 1917, W a s h b u r n m a d e a few films for Pathe in 1918, before m o v i n g to P a r a m o u n t w h e r e he starred in m o r e t h a n a d o z e n features from 1918 t h r o u g h 1920. T h e n h e w o r k e d in m a n y i n d e p e n d e n t a n d small-studio p r o d u c t i o n s , w i t h occasional roles in major motion pictures. H e h a d his o w n p r o d u c t i o n c o m p a n y for a short time. His first film at P a r a m o u n t h a d been for Cecil B. DeMille a n d several w e r e directed by D o n a l d Crisp. H e w o u l d w o r k for both again after they also h a d split with P a r a m o u n t a n d w e r e releasing t h r o u g h P.D.C. In the s o u n d era W a s h b u r n p l a y e d character parts well into the 1940s, mainly in l o w e r - b u d g e t films including several serials. Selected Filmography: The New Manager (1911), The Eye that Never Sleeps (1912), The Thirteenth Man (1913), Under Royal Patronage (1914), Graustark (1915), The Prince of Graustark (1916), Skinner's Dress Suit (1917), Skinner's Bubble (1917), Skinner's Baby (1917), Till I Come Back to You (1918), It Pays to Advertise (1919), Wliy Smith Left Home (1919), Too Much Johnson (1920), The Six Best Cellars (1920), What Happened to Jones (1920), The Road To London (1921), Hungry Hearts (1922), Rupert of Henzau (1923), The Love Trap (1923), My Husband's Wives (1924), The Wizard of Oz (1925), Wet Paint (1926), Young April (1926), The King of Kings (1927), Breakfast at Sunrise (1927), Skinner's Big Idea (1928), Nothing to Wear (1928), Jazzland (1928), Swing High (1930), Kept Husbands (1931), The Preview Murder Mystery (1936), Slitter's Gold (1936), Stagecoach (1939), The Falcon in Mexico (1944), Sweet Genevieve (1947).

WAY DOWN EAST

289

Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Sz7ezzZ Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

WAY DOWN EAST (1920). Rural melodrama. Directed by D. W. Griffith; with Lillian Gish, Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman, Burr Mclntosh, Josephine Bernard, Kate Bruce, Edgar Nelson, Creighton Hale, Norma Shearer; screenplay by Anthony Paul Kelly, D. W. Griffith; based on play Annie Laurie by Lottie Blair Parker, revised as Way Down East by Joseph R. Grismer, William Brady. A poor country girl moves to the city to stay with wealthy relatives. She falls for a flashy city playboy who tricks her into a fake marriage and then abandons her when she becomes pregnant. After her baby dies she finds work at the farm of a patriarchal squire, whose son falls in love with her. A local gossip tells the squire about Anna's out-of-wedlock child, and he orders her from his house just as a blizzard starts. His son then pursues her into the storm, leading to a spectacular sequence on a partially frozen river. In Way Down East Griffith takes the kind of pastoral intimate human drama he was so fond of and elevates it to near epic form. Whereas in films like Trueheart Susie he sketched simple character types in a pleasantly sentimental story, in Way Down East he focuses on the heroine to a much greater degree. The character of Anna is not unlike a Dickens protagonist in her initial naivete, her sobering experiences, and her constant struggles against unsympathetic superiors. All the supporting characters, as well, have a Dickensian flavor in their eccentricities and broad stereotypes. Griffith here is able to control much of his tendency for oversentimentalizing. The combination of his superior editing, use of authentic locations, and sensitive handling of the actors gives the story just the right amount of emotion to put across the melodrama. Even at that time, the original turn-of-the-century stage production was considered oldfashioned, but the film became a resounding commercial success. Several versions of Way Down East have survived, including a drastically shortened sound reissue and what appears to be a rough workprint with extra

290

WEBER, LOIS

shots and mismatched editing. In the mid-1980s the picture was restored to its full length of over two-and-a-half-hours. WEBER, LOIS. Born June 13, 1881, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Died November 13,1939, in Hollywood, California. Director, producer, writer, actress. During the last half of the teens, Lois Weber was one of the most important directors working at Universal Pictures. Her films, many of which she wrote and produced, were always reflections of her personal beliefs and her conviction that movies should educate and uplift as well as entertain audiences. She dealt with such topics as abortion and birth control, capital punishment, self-righteous hypocrisy, racial prejudice, and social priorities that reduce those in idealistic professions like teaching and religious ministry to poverty. Of her few surviving films, The Blot (1921) is arguably her best work, although it was not well received upon its initial release. Weber had been a pianist and entered the entertainment business through musical comedy, then joining a stock melodrama theatre troupe. She married Wendell Phillips Smalley, its stage manager, in 1904, and a few years later both decided to enter the new moving picture industry. They worked for Gaumont, Reliance, and then Rex, which was absorbed by Universal in 1912. The husband-wife team collaborated on numerous two-reel shorts, with Weber usually writing the scripts that they would codirect and costar in. Weber was even elected mayor of Universal City in 1913. The two left briefly in 1914 for the independent Bosworth production company. There they produced several features through April 1915, including the controversial but popular Hypocrites, which included scenes of a nude actress (possibly Weber herself, according to some sources) as "The Naked Truth." Weber built her own studio in 1917, working there independently from 1919 to 1921. By that time her moralizing had lost favor with most filmgoers. Her studio and marriage both failed, and she returned to Universal to direct three more films between 1923 and 1927, quitting to direct one more silent feature for Cecil B. DeMille's production company. She made a single sound film, White Heat (1934), for a low-budget independent studio. Five years later Weber died in near poverty, all but forgotten. Selected Filmography: The Jew's Christmas (1913), The Merchant of Venice (1914), False Colors (1914), Scandal (1915), Hypocrites (1915), It's No Laughing Matter (1915), Jewel (1915), The Dumb Girl of Portia (1916) The People Vs. John Doe/God's Law (1916), Where Are My Children? (1916), The Price of a Good Time (1917), The Doctor and the Woman (1918), For Husbands Only (1918), Home (1919), Forbidden (1919), To Please One Woman (1920), What's Worth While (1921), Too Wise Wives (1921), The Blot (1921), What Do Men Want? (1921), A Chapter in Her Life (1923),

WEST, BILLY

291

The Marriage Clause (1926), Sensation Seekers (1927), The Angel of Broadway (1927), White Heat (1934). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Koszarski, Richard. Hollywood Directors 1914-1940. New York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Slide, Anthony. Early Women Directors. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1977. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

WEST, BILLY. Born Roy B. Weissberg September 22 1892, in Russia. Died July 21,1975, in Hollywood, California. Vaudeville, film actor. In the 1910s Charles Chaplin became so famous in his two-reel comedies that many would-be vaudeville and film comics imitated his tramp costume and mannerisms, while the famous actor tried to get the court to give him some type of copyright on his little tramp character. Chaplin could not achieve a monopoly on a portrait that proved to be so successful. Billy West became the most famous imitator by developing a copy of the little fellow on the edge of society with strange quirks. At first he developed this comic facsimile on the Chicago vaudeville stage, but finally this imitation caught the eye of film companies that realized how much money Chaplin movies could produce. Today evaluators of Billy West's Chaplin imitation find his comedy merely an acceptable carbon copy. West's portrait lacks the depth of the famous comedian — especially the serious touches that some critics call pathos, a quality found even in Chaplin's early two-reelers. In the early twenties West gave up his counterfeit little tramp and turned to a comic dandy, a man of the world. Ironically this switch proved to be similar to the early comic portrait Chaplin had abandoned for the little tramp character. Filmography: Selected silent shorts — His Married Life (1916), Boarders and Bombs (1916), His Waiting Career (1916), The Slave (1917), Backstage (1917), The Stranger (1918), The Barber (1918), The Rogue (1918), Sweethearts (1921), Don't be Foolish (1923). Selected Bibliography: Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. "Billy West." Clown Princes and Court Jesters. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. Miller, Blair. "Billy West." American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Persons, Studios and Terminology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

292

WEST OF ZANZIBAR

WEST OF ZANZIBAR (1928). Revenge melodrama. Directed by Tod Browning; with Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Mary Nolan, Warner Baxter, Jacquelin Gadson, Roscoe Ward, Kalla Pasha, Curtis Nero, Jane Daly; screenplay by Elliott Clawson, Waldemar Young; titles by Joe Farnham; story by Chester De Vonde. Flint, a London music hall magician-clown discovers that his wife is enamored of a visiting ivory trader. He gets into a fight with the trader, named Crane, and is thrown over a balcony, resulting in his legs being paralyzed, but he swears revenge on Crane. Soon after giving birth to a baby girl, Flint's wife dies, and believing the child to be Crane's, Flint sends her to be raised in an African brothel. Lie sets up house himself in a remote jungle village to await the ivory trader's appearance and even though crippled, rules the local cannibalistic natives with an iron hand. Two decades later, Flint delights in humiliating and torturing the nowgrown girl, and a young alcoholic doctor who looks after them both falls in love with her but lacks the nerve or energy to take her away. When Crane ultimately shows up in the area, circumstances and revelations lead to unplanned changes in Flint's bloodthirsty plans. Once more Lon Chaney pulled out all the stops in a role of a revengebent madman who controls his own little empire despite a physical handicap. Although the ending is somewhat more redemptive than in the previous year's The Unknown, it is far more brutal and less pat than Chaney's The Penalty (1920), which had similar elements. Small-town audiences across the country were repulsed by the story, according to theatre manager reports, one complaining that Chaney "is a good enough actor to draw without resorting to this kind of stuff." Nevertheless, Browning and Chaney impressed them with the film's power and effectiveness, and MGM remade it with sound four years later under the title Kongo, starring Walter Huston. Warner Baxter had one of his strongest silent screen roles as the dissipated doctor and a year later was cast in the part that won him an Academy Award —the Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona. The wistful, dignified performance by the lovely but tragic Mary Nolan makes one long to see her in larger roles. She had been a star in Europe and was seemingly at the beginning of a promising American career that was to be doomed by personal difficulties. These included persistent memories of a notorious scandal that developed after a rape and beating years before while she was a teenage Ziegfeld Follies girl, legal and health problems, and reputed drug abuse. WHAT PRICE GLORY (1926). War comedy-drama. Directed by Raoul Walsh; with Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe, Dolores Del Rio, William

WHISPERING CHORUS, THE

293

V. Mong, Phyllis Haver, Leslie Fenton; screenplay by James T. O'Donohoe, based on play by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings. Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt are hard-drinking, carousing marines who are bitter rivals for the local women from China to the Philippines, to France during World War I. They compete for the attentions of French farm girl Charmaine, who likes both of them. When major battles take priority over romance, their feelings for Charmaine and towards each other take a more serious turn. Famed as a supposedly antiwar film, What Price Glory does contain a few brief scenes that suggest the tragedy of war. These are in battles that come near the film's end which, impressive as they are, almost seem as if they belong to a different movie. The vast majority of the picture is a standard military comedy-romance about two tough-guy rivals who ultimately become buddies. Countless imitations would quickly rework the same plotline using two soldiers again, or two sailors, two truck drivers, two gangsters, two policemen, two firemen, two newspapermen, and so forth. The extensive comedy sequences seem more forced and less appropriate than in such less ambitious but more straightforward war comedies as Behind the Front and We're In the Navy Now, both of which were released the same year and were huge hits. With their approach to filming the popular stage play, Fox evidently wanted to capitalize on Paramount's war comedy success, while imitating as well MGM's acclaimed war drama The Big Parade (1925). A much-commented upon feature of What Price Glory, besides its heavy sexual innuendos, was the uncensored language used by McLaglen and Lowe, which was clearly visible to lip-readers, despite the rewording of the dialogue titles to more innocuous expressions. In 1929 Raoul Walsh filmed a talkie sequel with McLaglen and Lowe repeating their roles as rival womanizing pals. Entitled The Cockeyed World, it was an overlong musical-comedy-drama even more episodic than Wliat Price Glory. WHISPERING CHORUS, THE (1918). Psychological drama. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille; with Raymond Hatton, Kathlyn Williams, Elliot Dexter, Edythe Chapman, John Burton, Parks Jones, Tully Marshall, Guy Oliver, W. H. Brown, James Neill, Noah Beery, Gustav von Seyffertitz; screenplay by Jeanie Macpherson. A mild-mannered clerk in a large company becomes more and more dissatisfied with his station in life. After gambling away money he had hoped to increase so he could buy his wife's Christmas present, he decides to embezzle company funds. Then, paranoid that he will be caught and ashamed to face his concerned wife and mother, he hides out in a remote shack. When a body washes ashore, he switches clothes and identities with the corpse and tries to start a new life as a waterfront la-

294

WHISTLE, THE

borer. His family believes him dead and his wife remarries, but some years later he longs to see his dying mother and secretly returns home. Then in his assumed identity he is arrested for his own murder and is torn between desires for self-preservation and safeguarding his wife's new happiness. Until he made The King of Kings (1927), DeMille's personal favorite of his films was The Whispering Chorus, despite the fact that it was a box office disappointment. Besides a bitterly ironic and downbeat story, DeMille used experimental surrealistic techniques to indicate the protagonist's mental process. Throughout the picture "voices" in his head suggest courses of action and appear as superimposed faces whispering to him the thoughts printed in the intertitles — hence the film's title. These double-exposures seem somewhat quaint today, but the otherwise grimly realistic tone of the film gives it surprising power, aided by the expressive cinematography of Alvin Wyckoff. WHISTLE, THE (1921). Drama. Dir. Lambert Hillyer; with William S. Hart, Frank Brownlee, Myrtle Stedman, Georgie Stone; screenplay adapted by Lambert Hillyer, from story by May Wilmoth, Olin Lyman. Despite warnings of unsafe conditions, a factory owner does not make safety provisions requested by an old schoolmate who now works for him with his son, and the boy is killed in a machinery accident. The same night the car carrying his own child drives into the river because the crossing guard fell asleep during a 16-hour shift. Unseen, the factory worker rescues his boss's son but brings him up as his own boy until a dramatic confrontation six years later. A rare non-Western role for William S. Hart, The Whistle is one of his most powerful and remarkable films, a well-plotted morality play arguing for mutual understanding between capital and labor. The striking cinematography of Joseph August, the documentary realism of the factory scenes, the stark home life of the employees, and the grisly death of the boy portray more vividly than any newspaper editorial the need for labor reform. Though mild and sparse by modern standards, the unusually high amount of profanity used in the dialogue titles drives home the point further. The main message is for upper management to heed advice of those involved with the actual work. Like Hart's other films, "good" and "bad" are relative concepts. The film draws its main characters representing capital and labor so that neither is all bad nor all good, each with a home life and a conscience but each tending to act on selfish impulse. Redemption for both characters does not come easily, and the film's conclusion leaves a certain amount to the imagination. In common with most Hart films, his character's change of mind is influenced by a

WHITE, PEARL

295

motherly woman and concern for another's (in this case a child's) welfare over his own. WHITE, PEARL. Born March 4, 1889, in Greenridge, Illinois. Died August 4,1938, in Paris, France. Actress, producer. Because some leading actors and actresses in the formative years of the cinema embellished their background to romanticize their life, future biographers became thoroughly confused. For example, two top performers, Mabel Normand, a comedy star, and Pearl White, an adventure star, set forth myths difficult to untangle. White, whose popularity won her the title "Serial Queen," claimed a long stage background with her parents, starting with the role of Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin when she was six years old. Evaluator Kalton C. Lahue in his study of serials of the 1910s and 1920s, Bound and Gagged, points out that Pearl White's autobiography perpetuated myths about her life so that little is known for a certainty until she entered the movies with the Powers Company in 1910. White's early career focused on comedy and Western shorts. Not until 1914 when serials were casting women in the lead roles did her career blossom. While Kathlyn Williams appeared as a lead a year before in the first serial featuring a woman in distress, The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), the vehicle for White, The Perils of Pauline, proved to be the hit of the decade. She had been receiving the standard $30 a week given to an actress, but her success in her 1914 serial reached an audience of millions, pushing Pearl's salary to $250 a week and eventually to the phenomenal (for this period) $2,500 a week. The next year, 1915, she starred in another serial, The Exploits of Elaine, a series of 14 episodes that spawned 12 episodes of The Romance of Elaine and continued for another ten episodes in 1916 under the title The New Exploits of Elaine. Her later serials, however, never achieved the lasting fame of the 20-episode The Perils of Pauline. The many serials, a total of twelve, starring the "Serial Queen" plus other women competing with this genre —Grace Cunard, Ruth Roland, Kathlyn Williams, and Helen Holmes —may have saturated this continued-next-week type of adventure film drama. By 1919 the fad of women as stars in serials began to fade with the public. Almost all the episodes of this genre employed a woman in a dangerous situation — even employing the cliche of being literally bound and gagged. However, the dashing, adventurous female proved to be a match for the male villain. White retired in the 1920s to live in Paris with savings of two million dollars — a huge amount for this time. She lived a high life until her 49th year, when she died in 1938.

296

WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS

Filmography: The Fife of Buffalo Bill (1910) —a three-reel work. Other selected shorts — The Eost Necklace (1911), The Flaming Arrow (1911), Prisoner of the Mohican (1911), The Chorus Girl (1912), Oh, Such a Night! (1912), Heroic Harold (1913), The Girl Reporter (1913). Serials -The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Iron Claw (1913), The Fatal Ring (1917), The House of Hate (1918), The Black Secret (1919), The Eightning Raider (1919), Plunder (1923), Perils of Paris (1924), The Hooded Terror (1925). Selected Bibliography: Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneers of the Cinema. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1991. Lahue, Kalton C. Bound and Gagged: The Story of the Silent Serials. New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1968.

WHITE SHADOWS IN THE SOUTH SEAS (1928). Drama. Directed by W. S. Van Dyke, Robert Flaherty; with Monte Blue, Raquel Torres, Robert Anderson; screenplay by Jack Cunningham; based upon book by Frederick O'Brien. An American doctor, disillusioned with the white exploitation of native islanders, has slipped into the life of a drunken beachcomber. When he is vocally critical of a pearl-dealer's policies he is tricked into boarding a plague ship and cast adrift. He is eventually wrecked on another island where the natives have never seen a white man and think of him as a god after he saves the life of the chief's son. He marries the chief's daughter and lives in peaceful bliss, despite temptations to leave with a cache of pearls, until the arrival of the same pearl dealer who tried to kill him before. Almost as much a documentary about the unspoiled Eden-like life in Polynesia as it is a drama about the white man's greed and the destructive effects of "civilization," White Shadows in the South Seas was begun by famed documentarian Robert Flaherty (Nanook of the North, Moana). Filmed on location, long sequences record customs and daily life of the islanders, and the striking cinematography won an Academy Award. The MGM studio felt Flaherty was taking too long in production and replaced him with W. S. Van Dyke (known by some as "one-take Woody"). White Shadows in the South Seas is unusually strong in its indictment of modern commercialism and presents a moving drama of one man's struggle for a sense of contentment, with Monte Blue in his most memorable performance. In its attempt to present a sympathetic view of interracial understanding it nevertheless has its own inherent culturalracial bias. The contrast between the idyllic island existence before white contact with the introduction of modern vices and worker exploitation is rooted in inherent racial differences, according to the story. It shows whites to be more thoughtful and sophisticated but congenitally greedy, and the islanders to be simple-minded but naturally friendly, happy, and

WILLIAMS, KATHLYN

297

trusting. All this aside, it is still a powerful picture, strengthened by both its beautiful imagery and its refusal to have a pat, happy Hollywood ending. WHY WORRY? (1923). Comedy. Directed by Sam Taylor, Fred Newmeyer; with Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, John Aasen; screenplay by Sam Taylor. Displaying his use of variety in his comic characters, Harold Lloyd employs a rich hypochondriac instead of the boy-next-door portrait in this film. The small-town young man exists in some the comedian's best films: Grandma's Boy (1921), Safety Last (1923), and The Freshman (1925). This blase, wealthy youth, called Harold Van Pelham in Why Worry?, schedules a vacation in South America in order to find some peace from the stress of the big city but becomes embroiled in the middle of a revolution. Making friends with a strong man with the proportions of a giant, he fights the insurrectionists and, especially, the leader of the revolution because he has designs on the woman Harold has developed a fondness for. This young woman, a hired nurse, helps Harold with his supposed illnesses. He defeats this rival and rescues the woman he loves. With all the excitement he encounters, Harold finds he is cured of his hypochondria. Why Worry? possesses many characteristics of a plot-oriented farcecomedy. The comedy part of this genre relates to a less stereotyped leading character —a rich, spoiled, young man with the capacity to change character traits. This is the best of Lloyd's "rich men" works. This type of film often shows a wealthy man humanized by the love of a woman. His Harold in this movie is transformed from a detached, cold snob to a personable "regular fellow." Such a metamorphosis is often employed in the sentimental comedy. However, Lloyd gives this theme a twist to avoid the saccharine. Much of the value of this avoidance of sentimentality used in the genteel film rests with the high spirit and charm of Harold Lloyd's acting of the character, Harold Van Pelham. WILLIAMS, KATHLYN. Born May 31, 1884 (some sources say 1888 or 1895), in Butte, Montana. Died September 24, 1960, in Hollywood, California. Actress. A star for the Selig company from 1910, Kathlyn Williams is best known for her role as Cherry Mallot in the pioneering western feature The Spoilers (1914). In 1913 the popular star was in what may be the first 13-chapter serial, named simply The Adventures of Kathlyn, its 27 reels condensed and reissued in 1916 as a 10-reel feature. After the folding of Selig, Williams starred in films at Paramount including Cecil B. DeMille's

298

WIND, THE

The Whispering Chorus (1918) and Forbidden Fruit (1921), but declined in popularity by the mid-1920s. She continued in supporting and character roles through the rest of the silent period and into the sound era, including the 1931 version of Daddy Long Legs. Her last three silents were also released in sound versions. She retired from the screen after The Other Love in 1947. Filmography: Silent features — The Spoilers (1914), The Carpet From Bagdad (1915), The Rosary (1915), Sweet Alyssum (1915), Thou Shalt Not Covet (1916), The Adventures of Kathlyn (1916), The Ne'er-Do-Well (1916), Into the Primitive (1916), The Valiants of Virginia (1916), Out of the Wreck (1917), The Cost of Hatred (1917), The Highway of Hope (1917), Eost In Transit (1917), The Thing We Eove (1918), The Whispering Chorus (1918), We Can't Have Everything (1918), The Better Wife (1919), Her Purchase Price (1919), Her Kingdom of Dreams (1919), A Girl Named Mary (1919), The Tree of Knowledge (1920), Just a Wife (1920), The U. P. Trail (1920), Conrad in Quest of His Youth (1920), Forbidden Fruit (1921), Hush (1921), A Private Scandal (1921), Everything For Sale (1921), Morals (1921), A Man's Home (1921), A Virginia Courtship (1921), Clarence (1922), The World's Applause (1923), Souls For Sale (1923), Trimmed in Scarlet (1923), Broadway Gold (1923), The Spanish Dancer (1923), When a Girl Eoves (1924), Wanderer of the Wasteland (1924), Single Wives (1924), The Enemy Sex (1924), The City That Never Sleeps (1924), The Painted Flapper

(1924), Eocked Doors (1925), The Best People (1925), The Wanderer (1926), Sally In Our Alley (1927), We Americans (1928), Honeymoon Flats (1928), Our Dancing Daughters (1928), A Single Man (1929), The Single Standard (1929), Wedding Rings (1929), Road to Paradise (1930).

Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Maclntyre, Diane. "Kathlyn Williams." The Silents Majority 1997. < h t t p : / / w w w . mdle.com/ ClassicFilms/ FeaturedStar/ > Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. WIND, THE (1928). Western drama. Directed by Victor Seastrom; with Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle, William Orlamond; screenplay by Frances Marion, from novel by Dorothy Scarborough.

WINGS

299

Letty, a sensitive young woman, leaves her urban Virginia home to live with her cousin and her family on a Texas ranch. She does not adapt well to the harsh prairie life with its remoteness from refined civilization, plus its incessant wind and sand. Her cousin soon tells her to go get her own husband when she becomes jealous of the attention her husband and children give Letty while she must do the housework. Reluctantly she marries a shy but kind man she does not love and moves to his desert ranch. While he is gone during a sandstorm she must contend with the sudden arrival of a man who had made passes at her on the train out west and again in town. Lillian Gish's moving performance as the unhappy heroine of The Wind is the high point of her screen career. Swedish director Victor Seastrom created a masterpiece of visual drama that is a bleak and moving representation of life on the American plains, as well as a mentally draining psychological portrait of a woman struggling with depression and madness. Filmed in 1927 and shown sporadically to high critical acclaim, it was not released until November 1928 after MGM executives forced the director and cast to reassemble and shoot a less depressing ending to replace the original, which had Gish's character wandering off dazed into the sandstorm and disappearing. Even with its more "Hollywood" resolution, The Wind remains a powerful experience, the only drawbacks today being some overacting by villain Montagu Love and an intrusive vocal included in the musical score on the original Movietone soundtrack. WINGS (1927). War drama. Directed by William Wellman; with Charles "Buddy" Rogers, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow, Jobyna Ralston, Gary Cooper, Arlette Marchal, El Brendel, Gunboat Smith, Julia Swayne Gordon, Henry B. Walthall; screenplay by Hope Loring, Louis D. Lighton; story by John Monk Saunders. Jack and Dave both love Sylvia, who prefers Dave. Jack is really loved by his neighbor, Mary, whom he views mainly as a kid sister or pal. Jack and Dave both join the flying corps in World War I and become best friends through many adventures. Mary volunteers for the ambulance corps but in a misunderstanding is dishonorably discharged. Before a major battle, Jack and Dave get into a heated argument over Sylvia and have a falling out they must resolve during and right after a fateful aerial combat against the enemy. Wings was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its date is often confused because of its 1927 production and roadshow release, its Oscar for the 1927-28 "season" of films, and its 1929 general release with synchronized music and sound effects. It is a fairly standard

300

WIZARD OF OZ, THE

love story set against a typical war story, but its spectacular dogfight sequences filmed in the air, as well as expertly choreographed ground battle scenes set a new standard for power and excitement that has since been equaled but rarely surpassed even to this day. The constant threat of death in wartime is driven home in two separate emotional scenes, reflecting the antiwar trend in World War I pictures that would continue until the eve of World War II. The large-scale battles and the film's long running time (well over two hours) tend to overpower the main characters on occasion, but the actors all give solid performances, especially Clara Bow. The young Gary Cooper has a small but memorable part before he achieved stardom. WIZARD OF OZ, THE (1925). Fantasy-comedy. Directed by Larry Semon; with Larry Semon, Oliver Hardy, Dorothy Dwan, Bryant Washburn, Charles Murray, Mary Carr, Virginia Pearson, Joseph Swickard; screenplay by L. Frank Baum Jr., Leon Lee, Larry Semon; based on novel by L. Frank Baum. A number of stage and cinema versions of The Wizard of Oz have been created with the author of the famous novel exerting some influence on the nature of the adaptation. His son, L. Frank Baum Jr., had some hand in adapting the 1925 version that featured prominent roles for comedians Larry Semon as the Scarecrow and Oliver Hardy as the Tin Woodsman. As an adaptation from the original source it became a curious interpretation. Director-star Semon evidently influenced this film's wide deviation from the popular Oz stories, which many people do not realize were a series of novels that were sequels of the first one, The Wizard of Oz. The basic concept of the 1925 movie hinges on Dorothy from Kansas as heiress to the throne of the queen of Oz. Eventually, as this part of the plot gets moving into fantasyland, the bulk of the story focuses on life on a Midwest farm. A great deal of simplistic barnyard humor evolved in the minds of a trio of writers. This proved to be designed for the slapstick Semon used so often in his two-reel comedies. Two examples of this crude physical humor may be cited. As Dorothy, who is 18 years old in this story, swings high, up and down, from a swing attached to a tall tree, the hired hands on the farm get in the way on her downswing and are bowled over. The tornado that whisks the farm community off to Oz has the added threat of many bolts of lightning. These missiles zap all the comedians, including a black hired hand. A racial joke shows the crudity of this sequence: a series of bolts strike the head of the black without any reaction; then, a bolt hits his rump and he runs wildly away trying to avoid repeated torture from

WOLHEIM, LOUIS

301

the sky. When the hired hands reach Oz the black takes on the role of the Cowardly Lion. This mid-twenties adaptation of Baum's novel remains a curiosity piece. Fortunately, the author received an outstanding version of The Wizard of Oz with the 1939 MGM musical comedy. WOLHEIM, LOUIS. Born March 28, 1880, in New York City. Died February 18,1931, in Los Angeles, California. Film actor, director. Even though he had a background of a college education and actually taught at Cornell University, Louis Wolheim looked as if he were a wrestler or a boxer. His pug-ugly looks gave him the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play The Hairy Ape in 1922 and Maxwell Anderson's theatre work What Price Glory? in 1924. As a character actor he remains one of the best of his kind on stage and screen during the twenties. And he exhibited great promise when he entered the sound medium. His superior performance as he created the portrait of Katczinsky, the war smart survivor and teacher in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), illustrate this promise. Before he died the next year, some of his potential continued to be exhibited in a film he directed and played a leading role in, The Sin Ship (1931). Wolheim entered films in the middle of the 1910s with such features as The Belle of the Season and The Brand of Cowardice (1916). He played in a variety of movie genres, both serious and humorous works. In the 1920s he achieved much stronger roles when he played with one of the stars of the decades, John Barrymore — for example, Dr. jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Sherlock Holmes (1922), and Tempest (1928). With his strong acting skills in All Quiet on the Western Front, Louis Wolheim could have expected close to a star status as a character actor. Ironically, in his last film he attempted to depict a character possessing tenderness and sympathy —as schooner captain who protects a woman from those who would take advantage of her, a part played by Mary Astor. He falls in love with her. Wolheim would die in 1931 before the release of the film, The Sin Ship, so he didn't get to see how his new image as an actor would be accepted. Filmography: Selected silent features — The Belle of the Season (1916), The Brand of Cowardice (1916), A Pair of Cupids (1918), Poor Rich Man (1918), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), Sherlock Holmes (1922), America (1924), Tempest (1928). Selected sound features — All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Gentleman's Fate (1931), The Sin Ship (1931). Selected Bibliography: Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.

302

WOMAN OF PARIS, A

WOMAN OF PARIS, A (1923). Drama. Directed by Charles Chaplin; with Edna Purviance, Adolphe Menjou, Carl Miller, Lydia Knott (Chaplin appears in a cameo role as a railroad porter); screenplay by Charles Chaplin. The New York Times of October 2, 1923 carried a review that praised the actor-director-writer: "Our old friend Charlie Chaplin, the world's screen clown, has flung aside temporarily his shapeless trousers and his tiny derby, plucked off his eyebrow mustache, and in a well-tailored suit has graduated into Charles Spencer Chaplin, director par excellence. . . . This film lives, and the more that directors emulate Mr. Chaplin the better it will be for the producing of pictures." While the famous comedian would plan other serious works — such as a film on Napoleon in which he would star as the French general and dictator — this was his only noncomic feature. With A Woman of Paris Chaplin employed a rather standard plot of a misunderstanding between lovers. Edna Purviance played the heroine. The hero, enacted by Carl Miller, has a foil who disrupts their relationship, a dapper playboy portrayed by Adophe Menjou. However, the scenario conceived by Chaplin proved to be one of the more sophisticated love-triangle dramatic developments that rose above the average films of the 1920s. With a continental moral refinement, the woman, Marie St. Clair, becomes the mistress of Pierre Revel (Menjou). The arrangement doesn't cause the downfall or corruption of Marie even though a Victorian moral code in fiction often dictated the death of the woman who is considered tainted. The lover, Jean Millet (Miller), commits suicide because he cannot get Marie to return to him. Marie is greatly moved by Jean's death and leaves Pierre and Paris to live in the country. A Woman of Paris did not advance Purviance's career as much as it did Menjou's. Chaplin realized Edna was no longer the young, romantic interest that she played in his early short, mostly two-reel comedies in which she had a straight role to Chaplin's comic character. This serious work has aged a bit more than the actor-director-writer's humorous features. Those works have a stylistic quality that transcends more easily the serious works that seem tied to the mores or social attitudes of the time.

Y YOUNG, CLARA KIMBALL. Born September 6,1890 (some sources say 1891 or 1893, one says February 19, 1882), in Chicago, Illinois. Died October 15,1960, in Woodland Hills, California. Actress. An immensely popular star during the mid-1910s, Clara Kimball had parents who were both stage stars, and she started acting at age three. She married fellow actor-director James Young (1878-19??) and had a solid reputation in vaudeville and theatre by the time she made her first film in 1909, while still a teenager. Her husband joined Vitagraph, as well, sometimes acting in his own films and directing his wife until their 1916 divorce. They made numerous shorts, and he directed her first feature-length title, My Official Wife (1914), in which she starred as a nihilistic terrorist plotting to assassinate the Czar. This film featured Russian expatriate Leon Trotsky as a bit player and technical advisor. Her second feature, Eola (1914), also directed by James Young, featured her as a young woman brought back to life by mechanical means after a fatal accident, but whose personality is drastically different because her soul has already left her body. Both of these films were so successful they were reissued two years later. In 1916 she had her own production company but her former agent and new husband Harry Garson was not as astute a judge of her best interests as James Young had been. Her career soon declined, and she returned to vaudeville in 1925. Very few of her films survive, one of her most popular being Maurice Tourneur's Trilby (1915), a work that was successful enough to motivate two reissues, in 1917 and 1920. It was remade by her ex-husband (not starring her, however) in 1923 and filmed again in 1931 and 1955 under the title Svengali. Another surviving title, The Eyes of Youth (1919), also about a mystic, featured a young Rudolph Valentino in a small role. After the coming of sound

304

YOUNG, CLARA KIMBALL

Young revived her film career but was reduced to small parts and lowbudget films, including some Three Stooges comedy shorts. After one last film in 1941 she retired from the screen for good. Selected Filmography: Washington Under the American Flag (1909), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1910), Eady Godiva (1911), Cardinal Wolsey (1912), Eincoln's Gettysburg Address (1912), Eord Browning and Cinderella (1912), Beau Brummel (1913), The Eittle Minister (1913), Cupid Versus Women's Rights (1913), Delayed Proposals (1913), Fellow Voyagers (1913), Eove's Sunset (1913), Beauty Unadorned (1913), The Violin of M'sieur (1914), Happy-Go-Eucky (1914), My Official Wife (1914), Eola (1914), The Fates and Flora Fourflush (1915), Camille (1915), Trilby (1915), The Deep Purple (1915), Hearts in Exile (1915), The Yellow Passport (1916), The Feast of Fife (1916), The Easiest Way (1917), Magda (1917), The Price She Paid (1917), The Savage Woman (1918), The Marionettes (1918), The Claw (1918), Cheating Cheaters (1919), The Eyes of Youth (1919), The Forbidden Woman (1920), Mid-Channel (1920), Straight From Paris (1921), What No Man Knows (1921), Hush (1921), Charge It (1921), Enter Madame (1922), The Hands of Nara (1922), The Worldly Madonna (1922), Cordelia the Magnificent (1923), A Wife's Romance (1923), The Woman of Bronze (1923), Eying Wives (1925), Kept Husbands (1931), Mother and Son (1931), Women Go on Forever (1931), File No. 113 (1932), Probation (1932), The Return of Chandu (1934) She Married Her Boss (1935), Hzs Night Out (1935), The Black Coin (1936), Three on the Trail (1936), The Frontiersman (1938), The Roundup (1941). Selected Bibliography: Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. New York: Harper and Row, 1979. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995.

John Barrymore played the title role in Don Juan (1926), the swashbuckling adventure with a prerecorded musical accompaniment by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. This film introduced Warner Brothers' new sound-on-disk process, Vitaphone. From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

Actress May McAvoy, playing opposite Al Jolson, shares a moment with the star as he prepares to go onstage with his blackface act in The Jazz Singer (1927)—the first feature to use the spoken and singing voice for a few portions of an otherwise silent film. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

Ramon Novarro woos Norma Shearer in a tender moment from Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927). From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

This posed shot from The General (1927), showing Buster Keaton's puzzled look down the mouth of a Civil War cannon on a flatcar, illustrates his comic naivete in his attempt to bombard the enemy. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

Vivacious and sensual star Clara Bow had a difficult childhood and a deeply troubled personal life that is hinted at in this rare publicity still. From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

Lillian Gish gave one of her most dramatic performances as the lonely western farm wife who longs to return to the urban east in The Wind (1928). The release of the 1927 production was delayed for a year until MGM finally decided to shoot a happy ending. From the collection of Christopher P. Jacobs.

The monotony of fastening bolts on an assembly line causes comedian Charles Chaplin's character to run wildly crazy and try to tighten every bolt in sight. A scene from a successful silent screen comedy, Modern Times, released in 1936, seven years after the transition to sound. From Donald McCaffrey's private photo collection.

This page intentionally left blank

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN AND THE BIRTH PANGS OF THE SOUND FILM Donald W. McCaffrey

Since the struggle to develop sound for cinema took three decades, this narrative medium's sophistication fortunately reached its height during the silent period. If sound had been perfected at the inception of the art with the concentration on both the visual and aural potentials of movies, the film might have been thwarted or arrested in its visual strength. Instead, filmmakers generally preferred to stay with the tried and true — both in technology and techniques. In a manner similar to their conservative, slow development in handling plot and character material, most filmmakers remained reluctant to film experimental stories. However, several directors and producers from overseas employed innovative techniques of production and nontraditional themes in their creations. Producer-actress-director Alia Nazimova from Russia developed a highly stylized, sexually symbolic Salome in 1922. Swedish director Victor Sjostrom (Seastrom) employed Lon Chaney as the lead for the allegorical Russian stage drama He Who Gets Slapped adapted to the cinema in 1924. In his The Wind (1928) Sjostrom featured Lillian Gish in a symbolically developed theme showing the encroachment of nature in the desert. One very popular and successful U.S. director, James Cruze, did handle two works with surrealistic images, acting in the 1912 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and directing the 1925 Beggar on Horseback. However, most of his films were popular, conventional works. The power of the silent narrative cinema reached maturation in the twenties with such works as The Big Parade and Greed in 1925, Sunrise and Wings in 1927, The Crowd in 1928, and City Girl in 1929. These superior works did not show strong departures from conventional themes but were innovative in their avoidance of the standard sentiment and con-

306

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

trived, cliche plotting so popular in the fiction of the day. Leading directors of this period and these films, King Vidor, Eric von Stroheim, F. W. Murnau, and William Wellman didn't want to embrace sound pictures because they had achieved their success directing silent movies of high quality — films that gave them both critical and popular acclaim. Vidor, von Stroheim, Murnau, and Wellman worked well with actors to help them employ their facial and body movements to express the emotion of the scene with a minimum of captions of written dialogue. Furthermore, these directors utilized camera movements, varied shots, and editing to support the actors, employing a full range of the visual means of the medium. As the serious silent film developed into a superior art form, the comedy silent feature reached its zenith. For example, some of the best humorous screen works appeared during the twenties: Charles Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1925), Harry Langdon's The Strong Man (1926), Buster Keaton's The General (1926), and Harold Lloyd's The Kid Brother (1927). These four kings of the silent comedy, with the assistance of their production staffs, perfected the humorous feature by using well-developed, progressively funny gags; tight, developing plots; and subtle comic expressions as well as innovative, broader, more lively climactic sequences. Chaplin, one of the most independent of the four comedians, defiantly refused to switch to sound until 1940 with The Great Dictator. When all others, who created both serious and humorous works, had bowed to the sound medium, Chaplin produced two highly successful silent features in the sound age, City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936). NEW THEMES AND MORAL VALUES Social changes in the 1920s and the development of a variety of film drama genres made an impact on the importance and range of the art of the cinema. For example, producer-director D. W. Griffith handled a variety of genres: the historical epic, social consciousness drama, modern as well as period romance, and even the comic drama (earlier and later in his career). However, Griffith was saturated with his own brand of Victorian morality that began to lose significance in the flapper age. He produced the dated, sentimental Way Down East in 1920. The new morality, a livelier life style that was a social manifestation of the postWorld War I period, had not been accepted by the majority in the United States. Consequently, the public still was willing to accept the cliche plot of the "wronged woman" cast literally into the storm after she had unknowingly allowed her sexual propriety to slip. A lover and seducer had wooed her into a mock wedding. The master filmmaker could tell such a hoary-with-age drama using the skill of effective shot composition and

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

307

editing plus his ability to get a strong portrayal from Lillian Gish as the "more sinned against than sinning" young woman. Next to his 1915 The Birth of Nation it was Griffith's most financially successful creation. But the changing values that seem to follow every major war in the United States soon found the average citizen willing to view vicariously the debauchery of the middle and upper classes. Cecil B. DeMille launched a number of social dramas, typified by Manslaughter (1922) and The Ten Commandments (1923). These works often had two parts: an historical tale of a degenerate civilization and a modern story that parallels the other. Redemption comes about for at least a couple of leading characters, allowing the moviegoer to have sin as the main course and eat moral cake for dessert. There were many films in the last ten years of the silent film era that "played footsie" with sin and the wild world of night life on the town. Colleen Moore appeared in films whose titles indicated Hollywood's use of the party woman, Flaming Youth (1923) and The Perfect Flapper (1924). Clara Bow received the designated title of "the IT girl" when she starred in the 1927 movie It. Also, Joan Crawford achieved prominence as a flapper in Our Dancing Daughters (1928). Most of these cinema dramas end with convenient reformations of those who have strayed from the moral path. Redemption comes easily to a social miscreant, wayward husband, or wife who is forgiven with little ado. A more honest, realistic work was created in 1926, Dancing Mothers. While the title of married women with offspring choosing a high life in the 1920s sounds odd, Dancing Mothers, adapted from a stage play, reveals the wronged wife taking matters into her own hands. For her own dignity, she must counter the actions of a philandering husband and a self-serving, frivolous daughter who lives a wild night life. The middleaged mother, still very attractive, takes on some aspects of her husband's and daughter's life style and ends up handling this type of life with a style on a much higher plain. In a departure from the reconciliation scene in so many of this type of social drama of the period, the wife goes to Paris to start a new life, realizing her family relationships were beyond repair. An important fact exists in such socially conscious film dramas of this period. Dancing Mothers first appeared on the Broadway stage in 1924, two years before its release as a feature film. The realistic treatment of a dysfunctional family evidently was considered too advanced for the typical movie audiences in this last ten years of the silent period. The breaking of family ties by the wife had a precursor in the 1879 Henrik Ibsen play, A Doll's House. It proved to be a shocking concept for a Victorian audience. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts on the role of women as wives and mothers have, of course, not changed as much as one would expect.

308

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

SIGNIFICANT CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS The fact that women in the twentieth century became avid readers and women also were important writers of popular novels and magazine short stories provided an opening for female film authors. Anita Loos, Jeanie Macpherson, Frances Marion, and June Mathis created some of the strongest contributions in the areas of scenarios and continuity. Loos wrote screenplays for Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in the early part of her career, the 1910s. She adapted her own novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in 1928 and adapted such stage plays as The Women (1939) and Susan and God (1940). Cecil B. DeMille employed actress turned author, Jeanie Macpherson, for such important silent features as Male and Female (1919), The Affairs of Anatol (1921), and The Ten Commandments (1923). She would continue with her skill in adapting plays and novels to the screen with such sound movies as The Plainsman (1936) and The Buccaneer (1938), features directed by DeMille. An equal with Anita Loos in her productivity as a screenwriter, Frances Marion created such scripts as Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), The Toll of the Sea (1922), Stella Dallas (1925), Son of the Sheik (1926), and The Wind (1928). In the sound period she adapted Eugene O'Neill's stage play, Anna Christie, to the screen in 1930, Some of her other sound film credits were The Champ (1931), Peg O' My Heart (1933), and Camille (1937). Marion possessed the most versatile skills of almost any screenwriter for both the silent and sound film media. June Mathis developed her influence as both a writer and editor. She authored some of the most outstanding photoplays of the twenties with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Camille (1921), Blood and Sand (1922), and Ben-Hur (1925). Film historian Anthony Slide discovered that women stars had their own production companies, but few male actors did. He writes: "Between 1912 and 1920 there were more than twenty production companies controlled by their female stars" (From his The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, pp. 2-3). Some of the most popular actresses of the silent period, Mabel Normand —Mary Pickford, Marion Davies, Gloria Swanson, and Norma Talmadge — had more control over their films than their directors did. In fact, Normand and Pickford sometimes directed their own films. Normand also cowrote and codirected her one-and two-reel comedies with Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Charles Chaplin. While not as well known as the actresses listed above, Alia Nazimova produced, adapted, and acted in a number of innovative films with themes well ahead of the taste of the times. Some of these films were The Brat (1919), Madame Peacock (1920), and A Doll's House (1922). While she had no credits as director, she had strong influence on the dramatic style of her starring roles in War Brides (1919) and Salome (1922).

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

309

Women stars of the silent period of the 1910s and 1920s had more power in the industry than those who would follow them in the sound cinema of the 1930s and 1940s. Not until 1949 would one star of the period, versatile actress Ida Lupino, break the gender barrier of the studios by cowriting and directing Never Fear. She established her own company. At the same time she starred in seven films and wrote and directed six of her own films. Later, with her extensive directing of such successful television series dramas as Thriller, Have Gun Will Travel, and The Fugitive, she became one of the most important woman directors of the latter part of the twentieth century. It remains ironic that women stars, especially actresses of the silent period, had more power over the production end of the business than they did in the last half of the century. GRANDIOSE DRAMATIC PRODUCTIONS One of the most important legacies from the 1900 to 1929 period developed with the many works of epic and spectacular sweep. As early as 1912 the Italian biblical film Quo Vadis? received a receptive audience in the United States. Realizing the media of the novel and the motion picture could depict an elaborate story taking place in varied times and in varied places, D. W. Griffith created The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Many films using biblical and other historical stories followed. As indicated above, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments in 1923 met with box office success, as did his 1927 King of Kings. In 1925 director Fred Niblo directed the adaptation of the popular novel and stage play Ben-Hur. All of these films were elaborately mounted, stressing exotic settings and faraway places, with strong doses of romantic and sentimental traditions to appeal to the child-like wonder in the average movie audience. The grandiose legacy witnessed a revival in the 1950s and 1960s sound age, sometimes stimulated by the popularity of television. Quo Vadis? appeared in an updated version in 1951. The Robe (1953) employed CinemaScope and stereo sound. William Wyler directed a very popular new version of Ben Hur in 1959. Not all spectacles or epics in the silent period used religious material, although these works seem to be remembered best of all by historians — maybe because they have remakes in recent times. But works like those using famous rulers from thousands of years ago — for example, Cleopatra or fictional characters of the past such as King Arthur — became the subjects for films. Noted for her femme fatale roles, especially in A Fool There Was (1915), Theda Bara played the title role in the 1917 Cleopatra, an 11-reel work that was more than twice the length of the pioneering 1912 version and the average feature of the 1910s. Most personality sagas of this type have not been epic in scope — covering time and space with

310

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

many plot elements. Instead, such a work can be called a spectacle —a more strictly focused narrative. The screenplay for both the 1917 and 1912 productions of Cleopatra was borrowed from Shakespeare and a nineteenth-century French playwright, Victorien Sardou. Public relations releases for both of these pictures emphasized the use of a cast of thousands, and for the 1917 version a budget of half a million dollars, a large sum for that decade. Two important sound versions of Cleopatra followed the same spectacle approach. Claudette Colbert played the queen in 1934 and Elizabeth Taylor took on the role in 1963. Both of these movies employed large casts, elaborate sets, and colorful costumes. This illustrates that the silent tradition of staging carried on for over fifty years after the earliest feature-length film drama on the Egyptian queen. INTRIGUE, QUEST, AND EXCITEMENT After appearing in light comedies in the 1910s Douglas Fairbanks Sr. moved to swashbuckler, adventure spectaculars. Early in the 1920s the actor brought his own brand of athletic feats to the roles of Zorro and Robin Hood plus his sword play in The Three Musketeers (1921) as D'Artagnan. His most impressive spectacle appeared in 1924, The Thief of Bagdad. It stressed awe-inspiring fantasy scenes with sets that seemed to be a cross between surrealism and art deco. A rhapsodic review in the March 19, 1924 New York Times illustrates how a critic lauded the visual feast by writing about "mammoth scenes in this effort which add to the splendidly told story with a remarkably perfect atmosphere." Fairbanks relied heavily on the spectacle with three more films in the twenties: The Black Pirate (1926), The Gaucho (1928), and The Iron Mask (1929). All these works employed casts of thousands, colorful locations, and elaborate sets. The Black Pirate, most popular of the three, employed a two-color Technicolor process for this costume drama. The Iron Mask, a continuation of the earlier The Three Musketeers, proved less successful with a short introductory sound scene, a prologue showing the musketeers on a stage. A later reissue of this film removed the intertitles altogether and used a narrator to advance the story. Fairbanks moved into sound as Petruchio with his wife Mary Pickford playing with him as Kate in The Taming of the Shrew (1929). It was the end of the twenties career of the swashbuckler actor —he would not make a successful transition to the sound film of the thirties. Another type of adventure film, the Western, would emerge as a very popular genre of the mid-twenties. The 1923 The Covered Wagon stimulated the genre by doubling the creation of more than one hundred films with its theme of the westward movement. After this production of di-

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

311

rector James Cruze, audiences witnessed John Ford's The Iron Horse (1924) and William S. Hart's Tumbleweeds (1925). Each of these works fashioned its story from an epic situation: the westward movement by wagon train, the building of the Union Pacific across the continent, and the land rush to settle Oklahoma territory. Each helped to solidify the popularity of a movie spectacle using the westward migration for its theme —establishing what might be labeled a subgenre of the Western. Setting a box office record that usurped the popularity of Birth of a Nation, The Covered Wagon ran fifty-nine weeks at the Criterion Theater in New York. But a popular genre focusing on a protagonist would soon be represented in the films of Tom Mix, Hoot Gibson, Harry Carey, and Buck Jones. It was a type of film drama that almost dominated the "B" (low budget) market of the thirties. In the 1930s the adventure film legacy from the 1920s emerged once again in both the costumed swashbuckler and the Western. In this decade of the movement to the sound film, the 1931 Cimarron employed the setting and plot of the land rush in Oklahoma that actor William S. Hart used in the 1925 Tumbleweeds. An inheritance from the silent period developed in Errol Flynn's swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935) and The Sea Hawk (1940). These were shades of the spectacles Fairbanks created with his 1926 The Black Pirate. In the 1950s Burt Lancaster exhibited even more athletic feats than Flynn in the 1952 The Crimson Pirate. Pauline Kael, in a minireview of the film stated: "This wonderful travesty of the buccaneer film has the physical exuberance of the early Douglas Fairbanks Sr. pictures. Burt Lancaster and his old circus partner Nick Cravat tumble and jump with exhilarating grace" (from her book 5001 Nights at the Movies, p. 129). Lancaster proved himself as an actor who could handle a wide range of roles, and he scored well in a number of Westerns in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s-for example: Vera Cruz (1954), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The Hallelujah Trail (1965), The Professionals (1966), and Ulzana's Raid (1972). Even Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power appeared in a few Westerns while their silent screen predecessor, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., concentrated on the costume spectacular. Although he did several modern-day stories using a western setting in the 1910s, he made only a few forays into the historical Western genre in the 1920s, with two Zorro films and The Gaucho. Two important remakes of Fairbanks vehicles were The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), starring Errol Flynn in one of his best movies, and The Mark of Zorro (1940), with Tyrone Power as Zorro. Both of these actors revealed themselves as handsome and athletic heroes with effective fencing skills; however, they never matched Fairbanks' bravado and startling gymnastics.

312

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

With fewer athletic feats but replete with cliff-hanging situations, Harrison Ford came into prominence with the science-fiction adventure film Star Wars (1977) and in the 1980s with three Indiana Jones portraits. The incidents in his films of this type displayed many of the characteristics of the 1920s serials with an invincible protagonist who is plagued by many entrapments from which pluck and luck provide the hero with an escape. The three adventure, serial-influenced films of the 1980s were Raiders of the Post Ark (1981), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), and Indian Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Of course, this type of adventure film in the 1910s and 1920s often focused on the mystery, fantasy, Western, and spy genres. For example Harry Houdini starred in a serial called The Master Mystery (1919) and Elmo Lincoln appeared in the fantasy serial The Return of Tarzan (1920). Critics sometimes make the mistake of forgetting the socially significant films produced in the United States by lauding foreign films as superior. They often use the adventure film's popularity as an example of our industry's contribution to cinema. Also, these evaluators sometimes write that our directors hedge in the field of social problems. The seeds for a more serious treatment grew with a number of works created in the late tens and twenties. While some evaluators will find D. W. Griffith's approach to social issues significant, most of this director's views on our culture proved archaic and reactionary — seeming to draw conservative ideas from the Victorian period of the nineteenth century. However, one work seems to be an exception. Miscegenation as a theme in his 1919 Broken Blossoms appealed to the critics of the times and also obtained commercial success. Using a simple story, this feature displayed the often flamboyant filmmaker's skill at restrained storytelling and his ability in revealing the emotions of the actors (the leads were Lillian Gish and Richard Barthelmess) by impressive close-ups and effective editing. The following year director Henry King contributed to the elevation of this visual art with a bucolic environment that reflected the American values of a small community with his feature Tol'able David. Nineteen years later (in 1939) King would employ some of the same realistic rural details of this earlier work in Jesse James. In the early part of the twenties Charles Chaplin explored the combination of comedy with the serious in The Kid (1921) —as did comedian Harold Lloyd with a bit of rural Americana in his creation Grandma's Boy (1922). GENRES INITIATED IN THE SILENT AGE Several genres, such as the fantasy, gangster, and documentary films, did not become firmly developed as important types of the motion picture in the silent age. However, formative interest on the part of film-

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

313

makers and their audiences would produce some movies with these genre story lines and production techniques. Fantasy and horror films would herald future productions. The myth of the superman of the jungle was a daydream of author Edgar Rice Burroughs in his popular novels about a baby raised to a man by a tribe of apes. The fantastic upbringing of this hero called Tarzan would be the subject of both features and serial editions in the silent period. Elmo Lincoln appeared in several of these fantasies such as Tarzan of the Apes (1919). A fairy tale type of fantasy, The Thief of Bagdad (1924), starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr., employed some of the most spectacular sets and costumes of the decade. The horror subgenre of fantasy was realized in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), with the talented John Barrymore executing the dual role of a physician who changes from a saint to a devil. Another important horror film, The Phantom of the Opera (1925), employed the talent of Lon Chaney to create a man who was physically and mentally deformed. The Lost World (1925) had elements of horror and utilized stop-motion animation to bring dinosaurs to life in a screen version of Arthur Conan Doyle's fantasy novel. With the movement to sound the horror genre seemed to attract larger audiences. Leading this movement were such monster depictions as created by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1930), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). A few other examples of this type are Dracida and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), The Black Cat (1934), and The Devil Doll (1936). Examples of fantasies in the thirties with a focus on the astonishing or fantastic were Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932), and King Kong and The Invisible Man (1933). While the gangster film would flourish in the thirties, few movies of that genre would exist in the silent period. The 1927 Underworld provides the best precursor for the crime films that would be created in the early days of the sound motion picture. The depression brought about gangsters engaged in many illegal activities, such as the "protection" racket, gambling, and the sale of liquor during prohibition. Films that reflected such activities in the early thirties, Little Caesar (1930), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) became very popular with audiences. From the 1890s, a large number of films had recorded places and events in remote areas for presentation to viewers, but this embryonic form of the documentary faded in popularity rapidly with the shift to dramatic and feature-length works. The growth of a genre that saw relatively few reporting films in the 1910s developed in form and substance in the twenties. The evolution of the reporting and recording function of the film with a strong rhetorical basis developed as a kind of cinema that would be called a documentary. While this type of nonfiction approach may seem to have a distinctive distancing approach by its very nature,

314

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

the creators of the genre could not resist merging nonfiction with fiction. Therefore, filmmakers often used the reporting, rhetorical, and dramatic modes to achieve their creations. Writer-director-producer Robert J. Flaherty single-handedly gave birth to two different documentary models with Nanook of the North (1922) and Moana (1925). His earliest documentary employed some narrative techniques with some reenactments of the Eskimo Nanook's life. Fully researched, this film has a more objective approach than his South Seas exploration, Moana. This second work provides a type of model with both impressionistic and romantic approaches, resulting in a subjective storytelling method. However, as a documentary it also retains the rhetorical approach. In the twenties director Merian C. Cooper and photographer Ernest B. Schoedsack also created two important works, Grass (1925) and Chang (1927). In an approach similar to Flaherty's, their works explore foreign lands and stress the theme of survival. Survival also is the focus of one of the last silent films of the period, director H. P. Carver's The Silent Enemy (1930). This work, which can be called a docudrama, develops a story on the threat of starvation that plagued a Canadian Indian tribe before the coming of the white man. In the sound age the survival theme becomes an important part of examining depression problems in the United States. Director Pare Lorentz produced a study of the dust bowl catastrophe in his The Plato That Broke the Plains (1936) and an examination of flooding in the central part of the country in his The River (1937). These documentaries have many of the characteristics of those produced by Robert Flaherty. Lorentz's works are well developed in structure and employ powerful photography. Some of the most effective aspects of visual strength used by the best silent film creators of both fiction and non-fiction works, make the documentary an art form. EUROPEAN INFLUENCE The merger of the American and European cultures in the dramatic cinema probably can be witnessed best in the contribution of directoractor-writer Erich von Stroheim. Born in Vienna he started his career as an actor in the United States in 1914 and moved to assistant director for D. W. Griffith in whom he found a mentor for his desire to create his own features. In five years Stroheim left Griffith to direct and star in a tale of his own making regarding marital problems. Released in 1919 with the title of Blind Husbands, the work displayed a sophisticated, more cynical approach than the approach he witnessed under his apprenticeship with Griffith. Toying with the infidelity of an American wife vacationing in Europe, the film revealed a clash of cultures. However, this was only the beginning of the director's creative ventures. Three more features re-

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

315

vealed a maturation that would result in his masterpiece, Greed (1925). Stroheim discovered a work in American literature that had some of the darker less optimistic views of a good deal of the popular literature in the United States. His source, the novel McTeague, employed what some critics see as French novelist Emile Zola's "slice of life" approach to fiction. As a result Stroheim would combine detailed realistic scenes with some expressionistic inserted scenes to show the developing of greed in the protagonists played by Gibson Gowland and ZaSu Pitts. Stroheim, striving for his realistic base, used location shooting effectively — especially the final sequence in Death Valley, California. With the bravado of sound-age director Orson Welles (who was also a director, actor, and writer for his own films), Stroheim desired complete artistic control. Despite the drastic cutting of a ten-hour version by his own studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to a feature of about two hours in length, he created a masterpiece with Greed. This work, like Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), proved to be a magnum opus that would not be duplicated but would have considerable influence. Critic William Everson, in American Silent Film, traces the importance of the European influence on the American cinema —especially the style and content of German directors. He writes: "Virtually all of the basic Fox directors — William K. Howard, Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, and especially (but in the early sound period) William Dieterle — embraced Murnau's style" (pp. 327-328). Everson calls director F. W. Murnau's Sunrise the most influential picture of the period (p. 322). This impressive film proved to be predominant among prestige movies film companies created to appeal to the critics. By the end of the decade, the introduction of the Academy Awards made the prestige film necessary for all producers. This would spread the importance of more socially significant pictures to the general public. Two films developed by director King Vidor in the 1920s illustrate the mixed approach to film by American directors. Vidor's very popular The Big Parade (1924) reflected, to a degree, the optimistic spirit employed by directors John Ford and Frank Capra, filmmakers who established themselves in both the silent and sound period. Despite some of the struggles of a negative nature, the lovers in this war film are united. On the other hand, The Crowd has much of the old world's detached cynicism. This 1928 Vidor picture depicts the life of a young man trying to achieve the American dream. He fails because he cannot fight and win against a society that has no sympathy for him as an individual who is trying the best he can. The society is the crowd. Vidor would attempt to bring social consciousness films from the silent to the sound tradition with the 1934 Our Daily Bread by exploring the most distressing contemporary problem, unemployment during the depression.

316

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

Unlike German director Murnau, whose late 1920s film Sunrise seemed to reflect the environment of a European culture, his fellow countryman Fritz Lang absorbed themes from the American world with ease. His Fury (1936) is an expose of mob rule that dissects the actions of vigilantes; in You Only Live Once (1937) he related the futile efforts of an ex-convict to adjust to a world set against him. American director John Ford, who had established himself as a competent silent screen director, produced a study in The Informer (1935) of a man's moral and spiritual collapse after selling his friend, like Judas, to the enemy. Furthermore, Ford in 1940, with the assistance of screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, created a brilliant adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which displayed the plight of sharecroppers seeking work in the fields of California farms and ranches. ADAPTING THE COMIC SILENT SCREEN TRADITION The comic film left a legacy that could be as important as that of the serious cinema. In the preface to his The Silent Comedian, cinema evaluator Richard Dyer MacCann points out that academic critics sometimes praise literary work in the tragic mode and denigrate the comic mode. He rates the significance of humorous films and television works according to the corrective value of these media: "Comedy can help us to examine our attitudes and actions, most of all the adjustable areas of conflict between personalities and between society and the individual." MacCann also appreciates the joy that humorous works give us (p.14). To this I would add the kinetic energy that has been inherited from the silent comedy. For example, the major and minor comedians retained this spirit of play in the climatic sequences as the protagonists got involved in a chase, a rush to the rescue, a fight, a difficult feat, or an athletic event. The team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Our Relations (1936) got into a chase by a mob. A Night at the Opera (1935) featured the Marx Brothers in a wild dash around opera singers for a climax. A minor but important comedian of the thirties, Joe E. Brown, seemed to take over talking picture versions of Harold Lloyd's athletic feats in college (in the silent screen comedian's 1925 The Freshman). Brown became a track and field athlete in Local Boy Makes Good (1932) and repeated his role of a college athlete in The Gladiator (1938). In his sound age pictures he played a character who seems to be a loser but comes forward in a final dash to win the contest. And, usually, he wins the girl. It is, of course, a plot often lifted from magazine short stories that produces a light comedy about a meek boy-next-door who achieves social success against great odds.

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

317

While major comedian of the thirties W. C. Fields was never a comic football hero in college (he played mean games of pool and Ping-Pong), he carried over the silent screen tradition with many sight gags and even a climactic chase sequence in The Bank Dick (1940) and a climactic rush to the hospital in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). To the visual humor, Fields added an affected, nasal voice with effective timing, using a script he authored. A giant among comedians for this early sound period, he, more than any others, blended the silent and sound tradition. In the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a revival of interest in the serious and humorous silent films. College campus film societies and socalled commercial art movie houses would show foreign classics like Potemkin (1925) or Metropolis (1926) and an American film like the Griffith classic Birth of a Nation (1915) or von Stroheim's Greed (1925). Robert Youngson developed compilations of twenties comedians such as Wlien Comedy Was King (1960) that played at commercial movie theaters. Attempts were made to reintroduce silent screen material in such humorous works as It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World in 1963 and The Great Race and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines in 1965. Much later Mel Brooks created Silent Movie (1976) with limited results. Actually, two French comedians, Jacques Tati and Pierre Etaix, came close to recapturing the comic spirit and artful visual humor of the twenties with Tati's Mr. Hidot's Holiday (1953) and Etaix's The Suitor (1963). Because the silent screen tradition has a stylization and detachment from reality, its comedy seems to be a mode of film drama that translates effectively for our modern taste and appreciation. The serious film can often remain too tied to the mores of the period to be accepted easily by later audiences. THE MOVEMENT FROM SILENCE TO SOUND The transition to sound features concentrated on the serious film with some early experiments using comic vaudeville routines. During this movement from the silent tradition to the so-called "all-talkie" period of 1929, a number of influences led to confusion in the handling of the two media. There wasn't exactly the revolution that some early film historians reported. The silent film would leave a legacy of what some critics now call the visual supremacy of this older medium. As these same critics observe, the silent mode was never purely silent. Music supported the emotion and action of specific scenes. In fact, the first important "sound" film to receive wide acceptance was a film supported only by recorded music with titles instead of spoken dialogue. This work, Don Juan, premiered August 5, 1926, in a Warner Brothers New York theater. Playing the title character, John Barrymore executed one of his silent screen portraits of the romantic hero. But more important to show the attempt to

318

THE LEGACY OF THE SILENT SCREEN

move to sound was a series of filmed musical presentations with singing and dancing plus a filmed talk by the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, Will H. Hays, proclaiming the significance of sound to the cinema art. The next step was the premiere on October 6, 1927, of The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson. This movie became the precursor of all film musicals. It proved to be an important step that broke the silence. Odd as it may seem, this film still remained a silent movie sprinkled with six recorded songs by Jolson. Most of the dialogue and the bulk of the dramatic development remained in the tradition of the old silent screen —a work replete with titles. Near the end of the decade, a July release in 1928 touted the arrival of the first all-talking feature film, The Lights of New York. Another Warner Brothers production, this serious work with a gangster story presented a dull plot with weak performances by the cast. However, numerous short works plucked from vaudeville and stage revues provided more colorful fare, as did the feature-length musicals that were released the next year. Even at this time, 1929, there were many theaters that had not converted to sound. Silent as well as sound versions of such musical works as Showboat and Broadway Melody actually were created. Showboat followed the tradition of many of the sound films of 1928 and 1929, designed as a part-talking film. The herald for the merging of the two traditions, silence and sound, can be best illustrated by Lewis Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930, another picture created in both silent and sound versions. Innovatively the director shot many of the exterior battle scenes in the silent screen tradition with powerful visual depictions, then added sound to achieve one of the best early transitional film dramas. For his skillful work, Milestone received an Academy Award. Concluding his evaluation of the silent film transition to sound, William Everson wrote: "The year 1932 was stunning, offering so many 'definitive' films in so many genres — western, musical, comedy, gangster—that it has remained one of the key years in the history of cinema. Above all, it was the year in which Hollywood learned to harness sound and use it, but not be dominated by it" (American Silent Film, p. 347). Fortunately, the legacy remained —the image —the visual power from the silent screen.

Appendix

160 ADDITIONAL FILMS AND FILMMAKERS OF NOTE FROM THE SILENT ERA Anna Christie (1923)-dir. John Griffith Wray/w. Blanche Sweet Apfel, Oscar C. (1879-1938)-director Arlen, Richard (1899-1976)-actor Arvidson, Linda (18767-1949)-actress; wife of D. W. Griffith Astor, Gertrude (1887-1977)-actress Baker, George D. (1868-1933)-director Bancroft, George (1882-1956)-actor Barriscale, Bessie (1884-1965)-actress Beaudine, William (1892-1970)-director Behind the Door (1919)-dir. Irvin Willat/w. Hobart Bosworth Bellamy, Madge (1899-1990)-actress Blache, Herbert (1882-1953)-director Blackton, J. Stuart (1875-1941) —director, producer, writer Blind Husbands (1919) —dir. Erich von Stroheim/w. Erich von Stroheim Blot, The (1921)-dir. Lois Weber/w. Philip Hubbard Blythe, Betty (1893-1972)-actress Boardman, Eleanor (1898-1991) —actress Brian, Mary (1908) - actress Brockwell, Gladys (1894-1929)-actress Canutt, Yakima (1895-1986)-actor, stuntman Camille (1921) —dir. Ray C. Smallwood/w. Alia Nazimova Camille (1927) —dir. Fred Niblo/w. Norma Talmadge Charley's Aunt (1925) —dir. Scott Sidney/w. Sydney Chaplin Circus, The (1928) —dir. Charles Chaplin/w. Charles Chaplin Civilization (1916) —dir. Thomas Ince, Raymond West, Reginald Barker Clifton, Elmer (1890-1949)-actor, director Collins, John H. (1889-1918)-director Cooper, Miriam (1891-1976) —actress

320

160 ADDITIONAL FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

Cunard, Grace (1891-1967)-actress Dana, Viola (1897-1987)-actress Dawley, J. Searle (1877-1949)-director Dempster, Carol (1901-1991)-actress Dove, Bille (1900 or 1901-1997)-actress Dwan, Allan (1885-1981)-director Eagle, The (1925) —dir. Clarence Brown/w. Rudolph Valentino Edeson, Robert (1868-1931)-actor Edwards, J. Gordon (18657-1925)-director Fazenda, Louise (1889-1962) —actress Ferguson, Elsie (1883 or 1885-1961)-actress For Heaven's Sake (1926) —dir. Sam Taylor/w. Harold Lloyd Ford, Francis (1882-1953)-actor Ford, Harrison (1884-1957)-actor Four Sons (1928) —dir. John Ford/w. James Hall Frederick, Pauline (1883-1938)-actress From the Manger to the Cross (1912) —dir. Sidney Olcott Gaynor, Janet (1906-1984)-actress Graves, Ralph (1900-1977)-actor Griffith, Corinne (1894-1979)-actress Guy-Blache, Alice (1875-1968) —director, producer Hale, Creighton (1882-1965)-actor Hangman's House (1928) —dir. John Ford/w. June Collyer Hamilton, Lloyd (1887-1935)-actor Hamilton, Neil (1899-1984)-actor Harlan, Kenneth (1895-1967)-actor Harris, Mildred (1901-1944)-actress Harron, Robert (1893-1920)-actor Hatton, Raymond (1887-1971)-actor Haver, Phyllis (1899-1960)-actress Hearts of the World (1918)-dir. D. W. Griffith/w. Lillian Gish Henabery, Joseph (1888-1976) —director, actor Hillyer, Lambert (1889-1969)-director Holmes, Helen (1892-1950)-actress Hughes, Lloyd (1897-1958)-actor Hulette, Gladys (1894-1991)-actress Hurst, Brandon (1866-1947)-actor Ince, Ralph (1887-1937)-actor, director Italian, The (1915) —dir. Reginald Barker/w. George Beban Jefferson, Thomas (1857-1932)-actor Jolson, Al (1885 or 1886-1950)-actor, singer Joy, Lea trice (1893-1985)-actress Julian, Rupert (1879-1943)-director Kent, Barbara (1906 or 1909) - actress Kerrigan, J. Warren (1879-1947)-actor Kerry, Norman (18897-1956)-actor Lake, Alice (18897-1967)-actress

160 ADDITIONAL FILMS AND FILMMAKERS Landis, Cullen (1895-1975)-actor La Plante, Laura (1904-1996)-actress La Rocque, Rod (1896 or 1898-1969)-actor Last Command, The (1928) —dir. Josef von Sternberg/w. Emil Jannings Lawrence, Florence (1886-1938) —actress Lee, Lila (18957-1973)-actress Love, Bessie (1898-1986)-actress Love, Montagu (1877-1943)-actor Lovely, Louise (1885-1980)-actress Lowe, Edmund (1890-1971)-actor Lytell, Bert (1885-1954)-actor McAvoy, May (1901-1984)-actress McGuire, Kathryn (1903-1978)-actress Mantrap (1926) —dir. Victor Fleming/w. Clara Bow Mare Nostrum (1926) —dir. Rex Ingram/w. Alice Terry Marriage Circle, The (1925) —dir. Ernst Lubitsch/w. Adolphe Menjou Mason, Shirley (1900-1979)-actress Melford, George (1877-1961)-director Merry Widow, The (1925) —dir. Erich von Stroheim/w. Mae Murray Merry-Go-Round (1923) —dir. Rupert Julian, Erich von Stroheim Miller, Patsy Ruth (1904 or 1905-1995)-actress Miracle Man, The (1919) —dir. George Loane Tucker/w. Thomas Meighan Miss Lulu Bett (1921)-dir. William C. deMille/w. Lois Wilson Moore, Matt (1888-1960)-actor Moore, Owen (1886-1939)-actor Moore, Tom (1883-1955)-actor Moran, Lois (1908-1990)-actress Moran, Polly (1883-1952)-actress Mulhall, Jack (1887-1979)-actor Murray, Mae (18837-1965)-actress My Best Girl (1927)-dir. Sam Taylor/w. Mary Pickford Myers, Carmel (1900-1980)-actress Nilsson, Anna Q. (1888-1974)-actress Novak, Jane (1896-1990)-actress Oakman, Wheeler (1890-1949)-actor Olcott, Sidney (1872-1949)-director Our Dancing Daughters (1928) —dir. Harry Beaumont/w. Joan Crawford Our Hospitality (1923) —dir. Buster Keaton, John Blystone/w. B. Keaton Our Modern Maidens (1929) —dir. Jack Conway/w. Joan Crawford Owen, Seena (1894-1966) —actress, writer Philbin, Mary (1903-1993)-actress Pickford, Jack (1896-1933)-actor Polo, Eddie (1875-1961)-actor, stuntman Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) —dir. Maurice Tourneur/w. Mary Picford Prevost, Marie (18927-1937)-actress Prisoner OfZenda, The (1922) —dir. Rex Ingram/w. Lewis Stone Quirk, Billy (1873-1926)-actor

321

322

160 ADDITIONAL FILMS AND FILMMAKERS

Ralston, Esther (1902-1994)-actress Ralston, Jobyna (1900-1967)-actress Rhodes, Billie (1894-1988)-actress Richard III (1912) —dir. James Keene/w. Frederick Warde Roberts, Theodore (1861-1928)-actor Rogers, Charles "Buddy" (1904-1999)-actor Running Wild (1927)-dir. Gregory La Cava/w. W. C. Fields Scaramouche (1923) —dir. Rex Ingram/w. Ramon Novarro Scarlet Letter, The (1926) —dir. Victor Seastrom/w. Lillian Gish Shakedown, The (1929) —dir. William Wyler/w. James Murray Sherman, Lowell (1885-1934) —actor, director Show People (1928) —dir. King Vidor/w. Marion Davies Sills, Milton (1882-1930)-actor Sleeper, Martha (1907-1983)-actress Sloman, Edward (1886-1972)-director So's Your Old Man (1926) —dir. Gregory La Cava/w. W. C. Fields Stark Love (1927) —dir. Karl Brown/w. Helen Munday Starke, Pauline (1900-1977)-actress Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) —dir. Charles F. Reisner/w. Buster Keaton Stella Dallas (1925)-dir. Henry King/w. Belle Bennett Stella Maris (1918)-dir. Marshall Neilan/w. Mary Pickford Stewart, Anita (1895-1961)-actress Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The (1927) —dir. Ernst Lubitsch Surrender (1927) —dir. Edward Sloman/w. Mary Philbin Taylor, Estelle (1894-1958)-actress Taylor, William Desmond (1872-1922)-director Tearle, Conway (1878-1938)-actor Terry, Alice (1899-1987)-actress Torrent, The (1926)-dir. Monta Bell/w. Greta Garbo Tourneur, Maurice (1873-1961) —director Vidor, Florence (1895-1977) —actress Walsh, George (1889-1981)-actor Wedding March, The (1928) —dir. Erich von Stroheim/w. Fay Wray White Gold (1927) - dir. William K. H o w a r d / w . Jetta Goudal Wild Orchids (1929) —dir. Sidney Franklin/w. Greta Garbo Willat, Irvin (1890-1976)-director Wong, Anna May (1905-1961)-actress Young Romance (1915) —dir. George Melford/w. Edith Taliaferro

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRINT SOURCES A few items employed in the individual bibliographies for filmmakers are repeated here. The emphasis is placed on reference works, important first studies on filmmakers and film genre, and studies that show the silent age of cinema in historical perspective. Two valuable journals, Film History and Griffithiana, regularly feature detailed and meticulously researched examinations of particular film artists, studios, genres, films, and filmmaking or exhibition practices from the silent era. Acker, Ally. Reel Women: Pioneer of the Cinema, 1896 to the Present. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1991. Bardeche, Maurice, and Robert Brasillach. The History of Motion Pictures. Translated and edited by Iris Barry. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1938. Barnouw, Erik. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974. Barsam, Richard. The Vision of Robert Flaherty: The Artist as Myth and Filmmaker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Bowser, Eileen. The Transformation of Cinema: 1907-1915. No. 2 of series, History of the American Cinema, general editor, Charles Harpole. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Brown, Gene, editor. The Nezo York Times Encyclopedia of Film. New York: Times Books, 1984. Brownlow, Kevin. The Parade's Gone By. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968.

324

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

. The War, The West, and the I Vilderness. N e w York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Brundidge, Harry T. Twinkle, Twinkle, Movie Star! N e w York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1930 Butler, Ivan. Silent Magic: Rediscovering the Silent Film Era. N e w York: Frederick Ungar, 1988. Clarens, Carlos. Crime Movies: From Griffith to The Godfather and Beyond. New York: Norton, 1988. Crafton, Donald. The Talkies: American Cinema's Transition to Sound, 1926-1931. No. 4 of series, History of the American Cinema, general editor, Charles Harpole. N e w York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1990. D'Agostino, Annette. Harold Lloyd: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1994. Everson, William K. American Silent Film. N e w York: Oxford University Press, 1978. . The Films of Laurel & Hardy. N e w York: Cadillac Publishing Co, 1967. . History of the Western Film. N e w York: The Citadel Press. 1969. Franklin, Joe. Classics of the Silent Screen: A Pictorial Treasury. Cadillac Publishing Co., Inc., 1959. Garfield, Brian. Western Films: A Complete Guide. N e w York: Ada Capo Paperback, 1988. Gehring, Wes D. Charlie Chaplin: A Bio-Bibliography. Westport, Connecticut: G r e e n w o o d Press, 1983. Hampton, Benjamin B. History of the American Film Industry: from its beginnings to 1931. N e w York: Covici, Friede, 1931. Reprint, N e w York: Dover, 1970. Hanson, Patricia King, executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19111920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Huff, Theodore. Charlie Chaplin. N e w York: Henry Shuman, 1951. Jacobs, Lewis. The Rise of the American Film. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. Reprint, N e w York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1968. Katchmer, George A. Eighty Silent Film Stars: Biographies and Filmographies of the Obscure to the Well Known. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1991. Katz, Ephraim. The Film Encyclopedia. 2d. ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Kerr, Walter. The Silent Clowns. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975. Koszarski, Diane. The Complete Films of William S. Hart: A Pictorial Record. N e w York, Dover, 1980. Koszarski, Richard. An Evening's Entertainment: The Age of the Silent Feature Picture, 1915-1928. No. 3 of series, History of the American Cinema, general editor, Charles Harpole. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. , editor-in-chief. Film History: An International Journal. Sydney, Australia: John Libby & Company Pty. Ltd. Lahue, Kalton C. Continued Next Week: A History of the Moving Picture Serial. Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1964. Lahue, Kalton C , and Sam Gill. Cloum Princes and Court Jesters: Some Great Comics of the Silent Screen. N e w York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1970.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

325

Langman, Larry. Encyclopedia of American Film Comedy. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1987. . A Guide to Silent Westerns. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1992. Liebman, Roy. Silent Film Performers: An Annotated Bibliography of Published, Unpublished and Archival Sources for Over 350 Actors and Actresses. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. MacCann, Richard Dyer. Films of the 1920s. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 1996. Magill, Frank N., editor. Magill's Survey of Cinema: Silent Films, 3 vols. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Salem Press, 1982. McCaffrey, Donald W. 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Langdon. London, England: A. Zwemmer, Ltd. and A. S. Barnes, 1968. . Three Silent Screen Comedies Starring Harold Lloyd. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1972. Miller, Blair. American Silent Film Comedies: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. Montgomery, John. Comedy Films. London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1954. Munden, Kenneth W., executive editor. The American Film Institute Catalog 19211930. Reprint, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Musser, Charles. The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. No. 1 of series, History of the American Cinema, general editor, Charles Harpole. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994. O'Dell, Paul. Griffith and the Rise of Hollywood. London: A. S. Barnes, 1970. Oderman, Stuart. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle: A Biography of the Silent Screen Comedian, 1887-1933. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1994. Pratt, George C. Spellbound in Darkness: A History of the Silent Film. Revised Ed. Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1973. Ramsaye, Terry. A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1925.1926. Reprint, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Robinson, David. From Peep Show to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Schickel, Richard. D. W. Griffith: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984. Siegel, Scott, and Barbara Siegel. American Film Comedy: From Abbott and Costello to Jerry Zueker. New York: Prentice Hall, 1994. . The Encyclopedia of Hollywood. New York: Avon Books, 1990. Slide, Anthony. Aspects of American Film History Prior to 1920. Metuchen, New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1978. . Early American Cinema. New York and London: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1970. . Early Women Directors. South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1977. . The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, 1996. Slide, Anthony, and Edward Wagenknecht. Fifty Great American Silent Films: 1912-1920. New York: Dover, 1980. Spehr, Paul C. American Film Personnel and Company Credits, 1908-1920. Jefferson,

326

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996. Thompson, Frank. Lost Films: Important Movies That Disappeared. New York: Citadel Press, 1996. Turconi, Davide, editor, and Peter Lehman, English language editor. Griffithiana: Journal of Film History. Gemona, Italy: La Cineteca del Friuli. (North American distribution —Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.) Vazzana, Eugene Michael. Silent Film Necrology. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1995. INTERNET SOURCES The All-Movie Guide, The American Film Institute, American Widescreen Museum, Domitor, An International Association Dedicated to the Study of Early Cinema. Hooray for Holly woodland. Hundred Years of Film Sizes, The Internet Movie Database, Journal of Film Preservation. Library of Congress Motion Picture Division, Live Cinema Calendar. Tom Murray, editor, The Lon Chaney Home Page. Jon Mirsales, editor, The Mining C o m p a n y , National Film Preservation Foundation, Pordenone Silent Film Festival, The Silent Bookshelf. David Pierce, editor, Silent Movies. Glen Pringle, editor, The Silents Majority. Diane Maclntyre, editor, Taylorology. Bruce Long, editor. Taylorology 1998. Turner Classic Movies, TV Guide Movie Database, UCLA Film and Television Archive, Welcome to Silent Movies.

INDEX

Entries and page numbers in bold type refer to main entries in the guide. Abie's Irish Rose, 148,149 Abraham Lincoln, 49,139,185, 287 Absentee, The, 44, 45, 64 Absinthe, 25, 51 Acord, Art, 17, 82 Acting styles, 9-10, 13-14, 30-32, 68, 73-74, 81-83, 125, 133, 137, 170, 179, 184, 193, 204, 213, 228, 246, 248-249, 267, 270, 272, 273, 275, 299 Adoree, Renee, 18,41 Adventures ofDollie, The, 6,139 Adventures of Kathlyn, The, 295, 297, 298 Adventures of Tarzan, The, 263 Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The, 200 Affairs of Anatol, The, 44, 45, 100, 108,147,183, 229, 230, 258, 308 All Quiet on the Western Front, 41, 141, 301, 318 All Wet, 75, 76 Always In the Way, 191 Ambrose's First Falsehood, 256, 257 Ambrose's Little Hatchet, 256, 257 American Aristocracy, 114,178 Anderson, G. M. "Broncho Billy/' 19-20,135,145 Anna Christie (1923), 87,153, 259 Anna Christie (1930), 57,185 Annapolis, 63, 64

Anne of Green Gables, 185,191 Annie Laurie, 48,131, 271, 289 Apfel, Oscar C , 107,109, 249 Arbuckle, Roscoe "Fatty," 11-12, 2021, 52, 75, 96,162, 229, 238, 268, 308 Arlen, Richard, 39, 299 Armat, Thomas, 2 Arzner, Dorothy, 21 August, Joseph, 203, 294 Bad Girl, 46, 47 Badger, Clarence, 23, 86,143, 217, 241 Baggott, King, 24-25 Balboa studio, 165 Baldwin, Ruth Ann, 26 Bancroft, George, 224, 277, 278 Bank Dick, The, 84, 317 Bara, Theda, 10, 26-27, 50, 69, 81, 8283,122,151, 284, 309 Barbed Wire, 28, 41, 206 Bargain, The, 29,146,147,153 Barker, Reginald, 28-29,152 Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life, 30, 210, 211, 240, 241, 250 Barrymore, John, 31-32, 64, 89, 90, 94, 111-112, 201, 256-257, 264, 301, 313, 317 Barthelmess, Richard, 33, 53, 165, 205, 269, 289, 312 Battle at Elderbush Gulch, The, 131, 139,

328

187 Battle of the Century, 144, 173, 232233 Baum, L. Frank, 300, 301 Baxter, Warner, 175, 292 Bayne, Beverly, 34, 61 Beach, Rex, 133, 248, 249 Beau Brummell, 32 Beau Geste, 35, 36, 51,160,161,175 Beaudine, William, 247 Beery, Noah, 35-36, 37, 175, 186, 281, 293 Beery, Wallace, 35, 37-38, 39, 57, 124, 171, 179, 216, 224, 233, 238, 257 Beggars of Life, 37, 38, 39, 55, 56 Beggar on Horseback, 97, 305 Behind the Door, 37, 38, 48,153 Behind the Front, 37, 38, 293 Bellamy, Madge, 156,157 Belle of the Season, The, 301 Beloved Rogue, The, 32,112, 257 Ben-Hur, 5, 10, 39-40, 54, 61, 64, 145,154,188, 209, 211, 239, 308 Better 'Ole, The, 75 Better Times, 222, 223, 283 Bevan, Billy, 40-41, 223 Big Happiness, 65,118 Big Killing, The, 37, 38 Big Moments From Little Pictures, 235 Big Parade, The, 18, 19, 41, 48, 128, 129, 283, 293, 305, 315 Biograph studio, 6, 63, 94, 102, 105, 137, 139, 180, 182, 187, 199, 210, 220, 258, 284, 286 Birth of a Nation, The, 6, 8, 41-43, 44, 45, 53, 94, 95, 131, 137-138, 139, 153, 155, 187, 198, 229, 248, 252, 254, 284, 285, 286, 287, 309, 311, 317 Bitzer, G. W. "Billy/' 137 Blache, Herbert, 89 Black Cat, The, 313 Black Pirate, The, 5, 43, 94, 95,116, 117, 270, 310, 311 Blazing Saddles, 143 Blind Husbands, 253, 254, 314

INDEX Blood and Sand, 21, 22,43-44,172,188, 201, 205, 209, 281, 308 Blot, The, 290 Blue Eagle, The, 123,124, 214 Blue, Monte, 44-45, 214, 296 Boardman, Eleanor, 95, 283 Border Raiders, The, 85, 86 Bored of Education, 232, 233 Born to the West, 150,151 Borzage, Frank, 12, 45-46, 102, 152, 242, 250, 251 Bosworth, Hobart, 41,48, 290 Boyfriend, The, 102 Bow, Clara, 21, 23, 49-50, 54, 99, 130, 131, 296,197, 299, 300, 307 Boxing Gloves, 216 Brand of Cowardice, The, 301 Brando, Marlon, 228 Brat, The, 188, 205, 308 Breakfast at Sunrise, 261, 262, 288 Brenon, Herbert, 25, 35, 50-51, 99,167, 218, 219 Brewster's Millions, 21, 52 Brian, Mary, 35, 218, 219 Bride of Frankenstein, The, 313 Bridge of San Luis Rey, The, 205, 271, 286, 287 Broadway Melody, 318 Brockwell, Gladys, 151,177, 242 Broken Arrow, 110 Broken Blossoms, 33, 53, 94, 95, 130, 131,138,139, 312 Broken Laws, 101 Broncho Billy and the Baby, 19, 20 Bronson, Betty, 39, 53-54,167, 218, 219 Brooke, Van Dyke, 54 Brooks, Louise, 9, 39, 55-56 Brooks, Mel, 143, 317 Brown, Clarence, 56,121,122,133,160, 171, 246, 281 Brown, Joe E., 126, 316 Brown, Johnny Mack, 63 Broiun of Harvard, 142, 271 Browning, Tod, 18, 57-58, 72, 86, 105, 106, 218, 278, 292 Biichse der Pandora, Die. See Pandora's Box

INDEX Buck Parvin in the Movies, 17,18 Bunny, John, 20, 30, 54, 59, 98, 121, 180,190, 200, 240 Burden, W. Douglas, 246 Burn 'Em Up Barnes, 149 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 263, 264, 313 Busch, Mae, 59-60 Bushman, Francis X., 34, 39, 40, 61, 63 Butcher Boy, The, 21,162,163, 238 Cabanne, Christy, 44, 63-64, 284 Cabiria, 7,155 Call, The, 180, 286 Cameraman, The, 64-65,163 Camille (1921), 188, 205, 280, 281, 308 Camille (1927), 91, 92, 209, 263 Campbell, Colin, 65, 207, 248 Campbell, Eric, 40, 66-67,115, 256 Campus Flirt, The, 24,100 Canary Murder Case, The, 55, 56 Capra, Frank, 71,150, 170, 177, 231, 254, 273, 315 Captain Blood (1935), 311 Captain January (1924), 48 Captive, The, 28,108,182,183, 259 Carey, Harry, Sr., 67, 213, 311 Carmen (1915, DeMille), 68-69, 108,109,120,182, 229 Carmen (1915, Walsh), 27, 69, 285 Carmen (1918, Lubitsch), 205 Case of Sergeant Grischa, The, 51, 86 Cat and the Canary, The, 12, 70, 121,172 Caught in a Cabaret, 210, 257 Celebrated Case, A, 160 Censorship, 11-12, 42,184, 218, 229, 272, 293 Chadwick, Helene, 70-71, 218 Challenge, The, 70, 71 Champ, The, 38,185, 216, 308 Champion, The, 79, 274 Chaney, Lon, 57-58, 60, 71-73, 85, 86, 88,106,151,168, 217, 218, 219, 220, 243, 278, 286, 292, 305, 313

329 Chang, 314 Chanler, William C , 246 Chaplin, Charles, 20, 40, 52, 66, 67, 7374, 75, 76, 78-79, 87, 88,104,105,115, 117, 125, 128, 132, 140, 143, 163-164, 165, 169, 170, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 194, 195, 199, 200, 204, 210, 217, 220, 221, 223, 225-226, 231, 232, 237, 239, 240, 254, 256, 268, 274, 275, 278, 291, 302, 306, 308, 312 Chaplin, Sydney, 52, 74-75, 77, 90 Charley's Aunt, 75, 77 Chase, Charley, 75-76,102 Chaser, The, 171, 231, 232, 240 Cheat, The, 76-77, 107, 108, 133, 182, 183, 206 Cheyenne Autumn, 214 Chimmie Fadden Out West, 108,182,183 China Clipper, 285, 287 Christian, The, 60,110 Christie, Al, 77, 85 Cimarron, 110, 311 Cinderella, 65, 221 Circus, The, 73, 74, 237 Citizen Kane, 104, 315 City Girl, 12, 78, 255, 271, 305 City Lights, 73, 74, 78-79,195,199, 200, 306 Civilization, 29, 152,153 Clark, Marguerite, 80-81,191, 207, 220 Cleopatra (1912), 81-82, 83, 137, 309310 Cleopatra (1917), 18, 27, 82-83, 309310 Clifton, Elmer, 155 Cline, Edward, 83-84 Clodhopper, The, 153, 227, 228 Cockeyed World, The, 293 Cody, Lew, 63, 84-85,190 Cohn, Jack, 272 College, 65,163 Collins, John H., 89 Color, 4-5,14, 36, 40, 43, 53, 82, 83,106, 167, 219, 265, 269-270, 310 Columbia studio, 24, 77 Common Enemy, The, 99,100 Compson, Betty, 77, 85-86, 97, 140,

330

217, 224 Conklin, Chester, 87,136,194 Connecticut Yankee, A, 235 Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur's Court, A, 119, 200 Conquering Power, The, 154,188, 280, 281 Conrad in Quest of His Youth, 109, 189, 298 Coogan, Jackie, 73, 88-89, 102, 163, 225 Cooper, Gary, 165, 249, 299, 300 Cooper, Jackie, 38, 216 Cooper, Merian C , 314 Cooper, Miriam, 41,155,198, 284 Cops, 83, 84,163 Cossack Whip, The, 89 Cossacks, The, 19, 89,129,185, 271 Costello, Dolores, 89-90 Costello, Helene, 89, 90,112 Costello, Maurice, 54, 89, 90, 91-92, 261 Count of Monte Cristo, The, 119, 225 Country Doctor, The, 148,149 Courtship of Miles Standish, The, 48, 228 Covered Wagon, The, 21, 22, 92-93, 96, 97,157, 224, 270, 271, 310, 311 Coward, The, 9, 29,153, 227, 228 Crabbe, Larry "Buster/ 7 238, 264 Crawford, Joan, 272, 273, 278, 279, 307 Crimson Pirate, The, 43, 311 Crisis, The, 66, 207 Crisp, Donald, 43, 53, 94-95, 186, 203, 288 Crowd, The, 12, 28, 78, 95-96, 283, 305, 315 Cruze, James, 86 ; 92, 96-98, 157, 224, 305, 311 Cunard, Grace, 123, 295 Cupid's Roundup, 146 Cure, The, 67, 73, 74, 226 Cure for Pokeritis, A, 59, 98,121 Daddy Long Legs, 207, 221, 298 Dalton, Dorothy, 84

INDEX Damon and Pythias, 26 Dana, Viola, 89 Dancin' Fool, The, 100, 229, 230 Dancing Mothers, 50, 51, 54, 99, 160, 307 Daniels, Bebe, 23, 52, 99-100,105, 183, 241 Darling of Paris, The, 27,151 Daughter of the Gods, A, 51 Davenport, Dorothy, 29,100-101,175 David Harum, 36, 97, 235 Davidson, Max, 88,102-103,198 Davies, Marion, 103-104,185, 283, 308 Davis, Mildred, 104-105,134, 225, 237 Dawn Patrol, The (1930), 33 Day Dreams, 24, 83, 84 Dean, Priscilla, 57,105-106 DeMille, Cecil B., 8, 28, 44, 68-69, 76, 100, 102, 106-108, 109, 110, 118, 120, 133, 138, 146, 166, 167, 182, 183, 184, 189, 198, 214, 229, 249-250, 257, 265, 284, 288, 290, 293, 294, 297, 307, 308, 309 deMille, William C , 68, 69, 109, 146, 206 Dempster, Carol, 157 Desert Nights, 128,129, 271 Devil Doll, The, 57, 58, 313 Devil's Passkey, The, 60, 253 Devil-Stone, The, 120 Diary of a Lost Girl, 55 Dick Turpin, 135,193 Dickson, William Kennedy Laurie, 2 Dieterle, William, 315 Dimples, 191 Dinosaur and the Missing Link, The, 179 Dirigible, 49,150,151 Disraeli, 271 Divorcee, The, 243 Dix, Richard, 109-111, 150, 208, 265, 281 Docks of Nezo York, The, 86 Dr. Bull, 235 Doctor Jack, 105, 208, 264 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 24, 25, 95, 97, 305, 313 Dr. ]ekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), 31, 32,

INDEX 111, 201, 301, 313 Doll's House, A, 72, 204, 205, 307, 308 Don Juan, 31, 32, 91,112, 317 Don Q, Son of Zorro, 94, 95,117, 148, 149,186 Don't Change Your Husband, 85, 108, 183, 257, 258 Don't Tell Everything, 102,183, 258 Double Speed, U7, 229, 230 Dove, Billie, 43 Dozvn to the Sea in Ships, 49, 50 Doyle, Arthur Conan, 179, 313 Dracula, 57, 58, 313 Dragnet, 278 Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, The, 224, 225 Dresser, Louise, 133 Dressier, Marie, 38, 185, 232, 240, 268 Drew family, 31,113 Drew, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney, 30,113, 121,190, 240 Drew, Sidney, 112-114 Drew, Sidney Rankin, 113 Du Barry, 27 Duchess of Buffalo, The, 261, 262 Duel for Love. See Sisters Dwan, Allan, 233, 268 Eagle, The, 56, 281 Eagle's Eye, The, 25 Eagle's Talons, The, 266 Earl of Pawtucket, The, 199, 200 East Lynne, 27, 223, 275 Eastman, George, 2 Easy Street, 66, 67, 73, 74,115, 226 Edeson, Robert, 166, 265 Edison, Thomas A., 2 Edison studio, 5-6, 89, 91, 154, 174, 179,182 Edwards, Harry, 170, 272, 273 Edwards, J. Gordon, 82 Edwards, Snitz, 219 Electric House, The, 83, 84 Emerson, John, 252-253 Enchanted Cottage, The, 33

331 Enemy, The, 41,131, 209 Enoch Arden, 23, 63, 64,131,182, 229 Epic films, 6, 8,10, 39, 41, 43, 92-93, 96, 106-107, 124, 128, 137, 155-157, 214, 265, 267, 281, 289, 309-310, 311 Essanay studio, 20, 29, 37, 61, 257, 274, 286, 288 Etaix, Pierre, 317 Eternal Three, The, 48,140,141, 207 European influences, 2, 7, 11-12, 46, 122, 125, 154, 157-158, 204, 256, 314316 Exploits of Elaine, The, 295 Extra Girl, The, 41,103, 210, 211 Eyes of Youth, The, 281, 303, 304 Fairbanks, Douglas, 17, 37, 43, 57, 6364, 94, 116-118, 135, 168, 178, 186, 192, 209, 220, 221, 222, 233, 234, 240, 247, 264, 265-266, 267-268, 284, 308, 310, 311, 313 Fairy and the Waif, The, 191 False Faces, The, 72,153, 286, 287 Famous Players, 80, 94, 107, 120, 206, 207, 224, 225, 270. See also Lasky studio; Paramount Farnum, Dustin, 65,118,119, 249 Farnum, William, 4, 69, 118, 119, 248, 260, 261 Farrar, Geraldine, 68-69,120 Faust, 12, 255 Feature-length films, rise of, 7-9, 13, 24-25, 29, 42, 46, 65, 81-82, 96, 106107, 113, 137-138, 210, 224-225, 249, 268, 271, 284, 303, 313 Feet First, 176, 237 Fejos, Paul, 78 Fellowes, Rockliffe, 228 Ferber, Edna, 110 Fields, W. C , 55, 84,181, 208, 231, 317 Filmmaking techniques, 3-6, 9, 11-13, 42, 83, 89,107,137,175, 202, 224-225, 248, 250, 272, 294, 305 Finch, Flora, 59, 70, 98, 121, 167, 190, 199, 200, 214 First National, 23, 67, 73, 80, 140, 153, 188,196,197

332 Fitzmaurice, George, 86, 247 Five Pennies, The, 259 Flaming Youth, 196, 307 Flesh and the Devil, 56, 121-122, 128,129 Flight, 150,151 Flirting With Fate, 63, 64,116-117 Florida Enchantment, A, 113 Flynn, Errol, 43,112, 234, 238, 311 Tool There Was, A, 10, 26, 27, 69, 82,122, 309 Foolish Wives, 60, 253, 254, 275 Fools First, 110, 207 Fool's Revenge, A, 180 For Heaven's Sake, 141,176, 264 Forbidden City, The, 189, 262, 263 Forbidden Fruit, 108,183, 298 Ford, Francis, 123 Ford, Harrison, 312 Ford, John, 67, 68, 78,123-124,156, 157,197, 213, 214, 311, 315,316 Fort Apache, 214 42»d Street, 100, 287 Foster, Helen, 175 Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The, 38, 44,124-125,148,154,188, 211, 244, 280, 281, 308 Four Sons, 123,124 Fox, William, 122 Fox studio, 17, 26, 27, 50, 65, 69, 70, 82, 83, 96, 122, 123, 146, 154, 169, 193, 196, 255, 256, 261, 284, 309, 315 Freaks, 57, 58, 278 Frederick, Pauline, 246, 247 Friendly Husband, A, 169 Freshman, The, 125, 164, 176, 208, 297, 316 Freudlose Gasse, Die. See Joyless Street, The From the Manger to the Cross, 7,167 Fury, 316 Gangster films, 57, 198, 255, 277278, 298, 312-313, 318; filmography entries with "gangster" in the title, 153, 178, 180, 223, 285,

INDEX 287 Gangsters of Nezo York, The, 178, 277, 287 Gardner, Helen, 81-82, 83 Garrison's Finish, 220 Garson, Harry, 303 Gaskill, Charles, 81 Gaucho, The, 117, 221, 310, 311 Gaynor, Janet, 214, 242, 250, 251, 255, 256 General, The, 65, 127, 162, 163, 164, 204, 306 General Spanky, 208, 216, 233 Genres, 70, 93, 135, 147, 179, 186, 192, 202, 242, 247, 277-278, 295, 297, 306, 310-314. See also Epic films; Gangster films; Westerns Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 178, 257, 308 Ghost Ship, The, 110 Gibson, Hoot, 17,192, 311 Gilbert, John, 18, 41, 56,121, 122,128129,147,168,184 Girl in Every Port, A, 55, 56 Girl in the Limousine, The, 239 Girl of the Golden West, The, 108,182 Gish, Dorothy, 121, 129, 190, 214, 215, 243 Gish, Lillian, 41, 53, 63, 94, 129, 130131, 155, 184, 209, 214, 215, 289, 298, 299, 305, 307, 312 Gladiator, The, 126, 316 Glimpses of the Moon, The, 89, 90, 92, 100, 201 Godless Girl, The, 36,108,183 God's Outlazv, 34, 61, 64 Going to Congress, 235 Gold Rush, The, 73, 74, 79, 132, 164, 195, 256, 257, 306 Golden Chance, The, 77, 107, 108, 133, 182,183, 229 Goldwyn, Samuel, 80, 107, 120, 210, 249, 276 Goldwyn studio, 23, 70, 140, 187, 218, 249, 282 Goose Girl, The, 80 Goose Woman, The, 56,133 Gowland, Gibson, 136,148, 219, 315 Grande Illusion, La, 253, 254

INDEX Grandma's Boy, 105, 125, 134, 164, 176, 208, 227, 232, 233, 264, 297, 312 Grapes of Wrath, The, 124, 316 Grass, 314 Great Gabbo, The, 86, 97, 254 Great K&A Train Robbery, The, 134-135,193 Great Race, The, 317 Great Secret, The, 34 Great Train Robbery, The, 3, 19, 20, 135-136, 145, 174, 175, 224, 225, 277 Greed, 28, 87, 136, 148, 149, 154, 188, 222, 223, 252, 253, 305, 315, 317 Green Goddess, The, 160,161 Grey, Zane, 148,150, 214 Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, 264 Griffith, D. W., 5, 6, 8, 23, 33, 41, 42, 44, 53, 57, 63, 83, 94, 102, 117, 130, 137-140, 148, 152, 153, 155158, 180, 182, 187, 196, 197, 198, 199, 206, 214-215, 220, 228, 240, 243, 252-253, 258, 261, 269, 277, 284, 285, 286, 289, 306-307, 309, 312, 314, 317 Griffith, Raymond, 23, 86,109, 117, 140-141,143, 217 Guardsman, The, 223 Guerrilla, The, 199, 200 Guinan, Texas, 242 Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 311 Gunfighter, The, 119,165, 274 Gypsy Blood, 206 Habit of Happiness, The, 116,117 Haines, William, 67,104,142 Hale, Alan, 92, 93,124, 233 Hale, Creighton, 70, 214, 289 Hallelujah, 283 Hallelujah Trail, The, 311 Hands Up, 23, 24, 45, 58, 140, 141, 143,196, 257 Hangman's House, 49,123,124 Hanson, Lars, 121,122, 298

333

Hamilton, Neil, 35,157 Hard Boiled, 71 Hardy, Oliver, 121, 143-144, 171, 173, 174, 232, 300, 316 Harlan, Kenneth, 217, 269 Harriet and the Piper, 168 Harron, Robert, 155,198 Hart, William S., 9, 19, 20, 25, 29, 67, 145-146, 147, 148, 152, 157, 192, 193, 203, 235, 273-274, 294, 311 Hatton, Raymond, 37, 133, 151, 183, 293 Haunted House, The, 83, 84 Haver, Phyllis, 293 Hazvk's Trail, The, 24 Hawks, Howard, 55, 315 Hawley, Wanda, 146, 246 Hays, Will, 12, 318 He Wlto Gets Slapped, 72, 129, 243, 250, 305 Headin'Home, 284, 285 Heart o' the Hills, 128,129, 221 Heart of Humanity, The, 253, 254 Heart of Maryland, The, 51, 90, 91 Heart ofWetona, The, 189, 262, 263 Heart Trouble, 171, 231 Hearts of the World, 130, 131, 138, 139, 253, 254 Hecht, Ben, 277, 278 HelVs Hinges, 129, 146, 147-148, 153, 274 Hello Cheyenne, 238 Hello Sister!, 252, 254 Henabery, Joseph, 52 Her Father's Silent Partner, 94 Her First Biscuits, 199, 200 Her Sister From Pans, 261, 262 Hersholt, Jean, 124,136,147,148 High and Dizzy, 105, 233, 237 Hillyer, Lambert, 203, 294 Hines, Johnny, 149,181, 224, 229, 273 His Glorious Night, 128,129 His Majesty the American, 116,117,118 His Neiv Job, 27A His Picture in the Papers, 116,178, 254 His Trysting Place, 256, 257 Hodkinson, W. W., 48

334 Hollyzvood, 36, 86, 96, 97, 201 Hollyzvood Revue of 1929, 128, 129, 243 Holmes, Helen, 295 Holt, Jack, 110,150 Homer Comes Home, 153, 227, 228 Hook, 43 Horkheimer brothers, 165 Horse Feathers, 126 Hot Water, 164,176, 264 Hotel Imperial, 102,103, 206 Houdini, Harry, 162, 312 Hozo Cissy Made Good, 90, 91 Howard, William K., 315 Huckleberry Finn, 88 Hulette, Gladys, 269 Human Wreckage, 101,153 Humoresque (1920), 46, 47,185 Hunchback of Notre Dame, The, 27, 71, 72,151, 218, 270, 271 Hurst, Brandon, 111, 151 Hypocrites, 290 I Cover the Waterfront, 97 If I Had a Million, 97 Imp studio, 24, 26, 50,152 In Old Arizona, 285, 292 In the Days of the Thundering Herd, 65,66 In the Diplomatic Service, 61 Ince, Ralph, 152 Ince, Thomas H., 29, 46, 123, 128, 152-153,196, 203 Indiana Jones, 135, 312 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, 312 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, 312 Informer, The, 63,123,124, 287, 316 Ingram, Rex, 12, 124, 125, 154-155, 188,197, 211, 280 Inspiration Pictures, 33,165 Intolerance, 6, 44, 45, 53, 57, 58, 83, 102, 117, 131, 138, 139, 155-156, 158, 187, 198, 252, 254, 261, 262, 277, 309 Invisible Man, The, 313

INDEX Iron Horse, The, 93, 123, 124, 156-157, 213, 214, 311 Iron Mask, The, 117, 267-268, 310 Isn't Life Wonderful?, 138, 139, 157158 It, 23, 24, 50, 307 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, 317 It's the Old Army Game, 55, 56 Italian, The, 29,153 Ivanhoe, 25, 51 Jack Knife Man, The, 282, 283 Jazz Singer, The, 112,159-160, 318 Jenkins, C. Francis, 2 Jesse James, 165, 266 Jezvish Prudence, 102 Joan the Woman, 48, 106, 107, 108, 120, 182,183, 211, 229, 265 Johanna Enlists, 38, 44, 45,131,185, 221 Johnson, Nunnally, 316 Jolson, Al, 112,159-160, 318 Jones, Buck, 17,192, 311 Jose, Edward, 122,123 Joy, Leatrice, 265 Joyce, Alice, 35, 99,160 Joyless Street, The, 158 Jubilo, 23, 24, 234, 235 Judith of Bethulia, 6, 68, 131, 137, 139, 187,197, 258, 259, 287 Julian, Rupert, 219, 253 Jurassic Park, 179 Just Neighbors, 176, 223 Kalem studio, 39-40,160,167, 206, 231, 264 Keaton, Buster, 20, 21, 64, 65, 76, 79, 83, 94, 125, 127, 128, 140, 149, 162163,164, 170, 174,175, 176, 177, 203204, 217, 223, 231, 232, 237, 238, 239, 245, 261, 262, 268, 270, 275, 306 Kennedy, Edgar, 174, 232, 240 Kent, Barbara, 121,143 Kerrigan, J. Warren, 92, 93 Kerry, Norman, 151, 219, 278 Keystone studio, 6, 23, 31, 40, 57, 60, 73, 74, 83, 87, 140, 199, 210, 232, 238, 240, 250, 256, 274

INDEX Kid, The, 73, 74, 88, 89, 115, 163164, 225, 226, 312 Kid Brother, The, 164-165,176, 306 Kiki, 56, 221, 263 Kildare, Owen, 228 Kindling, 108,133,189,198 King, Henry, 33,165, 187, 242, 269, 270, 312 King Kong (1933), 179, 313 King of Kings, The, 106, 108, 166167, 182, 183, 270, 271, 277, 288, 294, 309 Kiss for Cinderella, A, 51, 54, 121, 167, 219 Knockout, The, 21, 74, 79, 84, 238 Lady, The, 46, 47, 263 La Marr, Barbara, 168, 267 Laemmle, Carl, 152, 253 Lamb, The, 63, 64,117 Lane, Lupino, 157,158,169 Lang, Fritz, 28, 316 Langdon, Harry, 76, 79, 102, 140, 170-171, 174, 176, 177, 204, 217, 223, 231, 232, 237, 29, 240, 254255, 272, 273, 275, 306 La Plante, Laura, 172, 246 La Rocque, Rod, 265 Lasky, Jesse, 52, 80,107,120, 249 Lasky studio, 68, 69, 80, 96, 107, 120,182, 207, 249, 258 Lassie Come Home, 95, 230 Last Laugh, The, 12, 255, 256, 260 Last of the Mohicans, The, 38, 56, 68,171 Last Temptation of Christ, The, 167 Last Warning, The, 12, 70,172, 257 Laughing Bill Hyde, 234, 235 Laurel, Stan, 27, 121, 143-144, 169, 171,172-173,174, 232, 316 Laurel and Hardy, 59, 60, 143-144, 171,172-173,173-174, 232-233 Leap Year, 21, 96, 97 Lecturers, 8-9 Lee, Lila, 43,183, 201 Leni, Paul, 12, 70,172 Les Miserables, 119

335 Letzte Mann, Der. See Last Laugh, The Liberty (1916), 150 Life of an American Fireman, The, 135, 174, 224, 225 Life of General Villa, The, 64, 284 Life of Moses, The, 7 Life With Father, 45, 223 Light in the Dark, The, 56, 79 Light of Faith, The. See Light in the Dark, The Light of the Western Stars, The, 118,150 Lights of New York, The, 55, 91, 318 Like the Cat, They Came Back, 199 Lilac Time, 41,196 Linda, 36,101,175 Linder, Max, 59 Little Annie Rooney, 142, 220, 221 Little Caesar, 277, 313 Little Journey, 67, 68 Little Princess, The, 185, 207, 220, 221, 222, 223 Livingston, Robert, 238 Lloyd, Frank, 43, 88, 238, 260, 261 Lloyd, Harold, 75, 76, 79,100,104,105, 125-126, 134, 141, 149, 163, 170, 174, 175-176, 177, 181, 200, 203, 204, 208, 215, 217, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 232, 237, 239, 254, 255, 264, 268, 273, 275, 297, 306, 312, 316 Local Boy Makes Good, 316 Lola, 303, 304 London After Midnight, 58, 72, 286, 287 Long Pants, 170,171,177, 231 Lone Star Ranger, The, 214 Lonedale Operator, The, 139, 258, 259 Lonesome, 78 Look Out Belozv, 176, 237 Loos, Anita, 155,177-178, 205, 262, 308 Lorentz, Pare, 314 Lost World, The, 37, 38,179, 313 Love, 13,128,129,131,184,185 Love, Bessie, 179 Love, Montagu, 112, 143, 166, 172, 247, 298, 299 Love and Hisses. See With Love and Hisses Love Light, The, 185, 221, 266 Love Never Dies, 282, 283

336 Love ofSunya, The, 257, 258 Love Parade, The, 169 Lowe, Edmund, 292, 293 Lubin, Sigmund, 250 Lubin studio, 46,165 Lubitsch, Ernst, 12, 44,169, 200, 243 Lucky Star, 46, 47, 231 Lumiere, August and Louis, 2 Lunatic at Large, 208 Lupino, Ida, 309 McAvoy, May, 39,159 Mace, Fred, 180 McGuire, Kathryn, 203, 245 McLaglen, Victor, 35, 70, 123, 292, 293 MacLean, Douglas, 149, 181, 203, 227, 229, 273 Macpherson, Jeanie, 68, 69, 76,133, 166,182-183, 265, 293, 308 McVey, Lucille (second Mrs. Sidney Drew), 113 Mad Wednesday, 176, 237 Madame Butterfly, 206, 207, 220, 221, 270 Madame DuBarry, 205 Madame Peacock, 205, 308 Magician, The, 12,154 Male and Female, 100,107,108,182, 183-184,189, 258, 265, 308 Man from Hell's River, The, 230 Man of Action, A, 181 Man Who Came Back, The, 231, 214 Man Who Fights Alone, The, 119 Man's Genesis, 139 Manslaughter, 108,183,189, 307 Mantrap, 50, 271 Mare Nostrum, 154,197 Maria Rosa, 68,108,120, 229 Marie Antoinette, 243, 244 Marion, Frances, 46, 177-178,184185, 205, 222, 247, 266, 269, 298, 308 Mark of the Vampire, 57, 58 Mark of Zorro, The (1920), 36, 116, 117,186, 209 Mark of Zorro, The (1940), 311

INDEX Marriage Circle, The, 44, 45, 200 Marsh, Mae, 42,155,186-187,198 Martyrs of the Alamo, The, 63, 64,117 Masked Bride, The, 61, 64 Master Mystery, The, 312 Mathis, June, 39, 44, 124, 154,188, 280, 308 Matrimaniac, The, 117,178, 262 Matrix, The, 167 Mayer, Louis B., 18 Meighan, Thomas, 183,184,189 Melies, George, 3 Melford, George, 244 Men in White, 148,149 Men O' War, 144, 233 Menjou, Adolphe, 244, 267, 302 Merry Widozv, The, 129, 254 Merry-Go-Round, 252, 253 Metro studio, 25, 26, 27, 34, 61, 89, 125, 154,188, 269, 280, 282 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 38, 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 89, 91, 108, 128, 131, 154, 197, 211, 218, 243, 282, 283, 292, 293, 296, 299, 301, 315 Metropolis, 317 Mickey, 84, 85,190, 210, 211, 241 Milestone, Lewis, 164, 318 Milky Way, The, 176, 200 Miller, Carl, 134, 302 Miller, Patsy Ruth, 151, 244 Minter, Mary Miles, 11,190-191 Miracle Man, The, 49, 72, 85, 86, 189, 218, 272 Miracle Rider, The, 193 Miss Brezvster's Millions, 23, 24, 52, 100, 250 Miss Lulu Bett, 109 Mr. Hulot's Holiday, 317 Mr. Robinson Crusoe, 117,119 Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934), 223 Mix, Tom, 17, 19, 20, 65, 67, 134, 135, 146, 192-193, 214, 230, 235, 238, 266, 275 Moana, 193-194, 202, 296, 314 Modern Marriage, 34, 61 Modern Musketeer, A, 116, 117, 186, 222

INDEX Modern Times, 73, 74, 87, 194-195, 306 Molly O', 210, 211 Monsieur Beaucaire, 10,121, 281 Monte Cristo, 19, 48, 65,128,129 Moore, Colleen, 195-196,197, 307 Moore, Matt, 271, 275 Moore, Owen, 221 Moore, Tom, 160,167 Morality in films, 12, 26, 107, 184, 265, 294, 306. See also Censorship Moreno, Antonio, 196-197 Morrow, Jane. See McVey, Lucille Mortal Storm, The, 46, 47,102,103 Mother and the Law, The, 102, 138, 155,156,187,198 Mothering Heart, The, 95, 131, 139, 187 Movietone, 10, 251, 256, 299 Mud and Sand, 172,173 Munday, Helen, 175 Murnau, F. W., 12, 28, 78, 111, 213, 214, 242, 251, 255, 256, 260, 306, 315, 316 Murray, Charlie, 198-199, 240, 268, 300 Murray, James, 95, 96 Murray, Mae, 63 Music Box, The, 144,173, 233 Musical accompaniment, 5, 8, 13, 31, 40, 42, 53, 69, 73, 79, 112, 117, 125, 145, 159, 195, 219, 242, 251, 256, 299, 317 Musketeers of Pig Alley, The, 68, 95, 131,139, 277 Mutual studio, 40, 66, 73,115 Muybridge, Eadweard, 1-2 My Best Girl, 48, 221, 264 My Darling Clementine, 145 My Little Chickadee, 84 My Official Wife, 303, 304 Myers, Carmel, 39, 40 Myers, Harry, 78,190,199-200 Mysterious Island, The, 5 Mystery of the Leaping Fish, The, 57, 117

337 Naldi, Nita, 43, 111, 201-202, 265 Nanook of the North, 194, 202-203, 296, 314 Napoleon, 261 Narrow Trail, The, 146,153, 203 Navigator, The, 94, 95, 162, 163, 203204 Nazimova, Alia, 33, 51, 204-205, 305, 308 Ne'er-Do-Well, The, 66, 189, 213, 214, 298 Negri, Pola, 28, 77,197, 205-206 Neilan, Marshall, 206-208, 258 Nell Givynn, 129-130 Neptune's Daughter, 51, 61 Never Fear, 309 Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, 84, 317 New York Hat, The, 177-178,187 Newmeyer, Fred, 125, 134, 208, 264, 297 Niblo, Fred, 39, 43, 152, 186, 209, 267, 309 Night at the Opera, A, 316 Night Club, The, 38,109,117,141 Night Out, A, 226, 274 Nilsson, Anna Q., 228 No Man's Laze, 143,144 Noah's Ark, 36, 90, 214 Nolan, Mary, 292 Noose, The, 33, 34,161 Normand, Mabel, 11, 21, 30, 31, 84, 102, 104, 105, 121, 180, 190, 191, 205, 210-211, 232, 240, 268, 295, 308 North of the Rio Grande, 150 Nosferatu, 12, 255 Not So Dumb, 104, 283 Novarro, Ramon, 39, 40, 63, 168, 209, 211-212, 243 Nozv We're in the Air, 34, 38, 56 Nurse Marjorie, 191 Nut, The, 117,168 Oakman, Wheeler, 57, 105, 106, 190, 248 O'Brien, George, 156, 157, 213-214, 255

338

O'Brien, Willis, 179 Old Clothes, 102,103 Old Heidelberg, 130, 229, 243, 253, 254 Old Ironsides, 21, 22, 38, 96, 97 Old Szvimmin' Hole, The, 227, 228 Oliver Twist, 48, 72, 88, 261 On the Night Stage, 29,146,147,153 One a Minute, 181 One Arabian Night, 206 One Million B. C, 233 One Week, 83, 84,163 Orphans of the Storm, 44, 45, 121, 129, 130, 131, 138, 139, 214-215, 261, 301 Other Half, The, 222, 223, 283 Other Love, The, 298 Our Daily Bread, 315 Our Dancing Daughters, 298, 307 Our Dare Devil Chief 250, 257 Our Gang, 208, 215-216, 232, 233 Our Hospitality, 162,163, 204, 261 Our Relations, 173,316 Out of the Fog, 188, 205 Out West, 238 Outlazv Reforms, The, 182 Outside the Laze, 57, 58, 72,106 Over the Garden Wall, 210, 211 Over the Hill, 165,187 Owen, Seena, 155 Pabst, G. W., 158 Painted Post, 238 Pandora's Box, 9, 28, 55,121 Paralta studio, 29 Paramount, 21, 23, 27, 36, 48, 50, 53, 54, 55, 70, 80, 85, 94,100,107,108, 111, 130, 138, 140, 146, 182, 188, 197, 201, 206, 207, 220, 249, 257, 266, 280, 288, 293, 297 Pass the Gravy, 102 Passing of Izzy, The, 199 Passion, 206 Patent Leather Kid, The, 33, 34 Pathe studio, 4, 63, 64, 70, 85, 120, 197, 288 Paths to Paradise, 23, 24, 86, 140,

INDEX 141,143, 217 Paton, Stuart, 275 Patsy, The, 104, 283 Pay Day, 75,113, 257 Pearson, Virginia, 219, 220, 300 Peg o' My Heart, 109,146, 283, 308 Penalty, The, 71, 72, 217-218, 278, 292 Perfect Clozon, The, 143,144, 208, 239 Perfect Day, A, 144 Perfect Woman, The, 178 Perils of Pauline, The, 30, 87, 119, 295, 296 Peter Pan, 51, 54, 131, 167, 218-219, 270, 271 Phantom of the Opera, The, 5, 71, 72, 87,172, 219-220, 313 Philbin, Mary, 219 Pickford, Jack, 133, 220 Pickford, Mary, 4, 44, 54, 80, 117, 121, 128, 168, 180, 184, 185, 190, 191, 199, 206, 207, 210, 220-222, 240, 247, 248, 264, 266, 270, 308, 310 Pirate, The, 178 Pitts, ZaSu, 121,136,148,168,170,190, 222-223, 315 Plastic Age, The, 50, 286, 287 Playhouse, The, 83, 84 Playing Dead, 113 Plozo That Broke the Plains, The, 314 Pollard, Harry "Snub," 223 Pollyanna, 95,185, 220, 221 Pony Express, The, 37, 38, 86, 96, 97, 224, 270, 271 Poor Little Rich Girl, 184,185, 220, 221 Poor Relations, 222, 223, 283 Porter, Edwin S., 3, 19, 135-136, 174175, 224-225 Potemkin, 317 Potters, The, 208 Powers studio, 26,190, 295 Prisoner of Zenda, The, 154, 169, 211, 225, 270 Private Lives, 243 Professionals, The, 311 Prunella, 80 Public Enemy, The, 56, 277, 313 Purviance, Edna, 104, 115, 163, 225-

INDEX 226, 302 Putting Pants on Philip, 144, 173, 232, 233 Quarterback, The, 110, 208 Queen Elizabeth, 7,137 Queen Kelly, 252, 254, 258 Quo Vadis?, 309 Rag Man, The, 88,102,103 Raiders of the Lost Ark, 312 Ralston, Esther, 167, 218 Ralston, Jobyna, 125,164, 297, 299 Rambova, Natacha, 201, 281 Ramona, 94, 95, 286 Ranch Life in the Great Southwest, 193 Rankin, Gladys (first Mrs. Sidney Drew), 113 Rasputin and the Empress, 31, 32 Ray, Charles, 29, 149,152, 177, 181, 227-228, 229, 273 Reaching for the Moon (1917), 117, 178 Reaching for the Moon (1931), 100, 117 Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, 185, 207, 221, 222, 308 Red Hair, 23, 24, 50 Red Kimono, The, 22,101 Red Lights, 24,140,141 Redskin, 110 Regeneration, 198, 228, 284, 285 Reggie Mixes In, 63, 64,117 Reid, Wallace, 63, 68, 96, 101, 120, 133,146,181, 227, 229-230, 243 Reliance-Majestic studio, 63, 94, 137,187, 284, 290 Remodeling Her Husband, 129,130 Restless Youth, 63, 64 Return of Tarzan, The, 263, 312 Rhodes, Billie, 77 Richard III, 32, 92,137 Riders of the Purple Sage (1931), 36, 214 Ridgely, Cleo, 133 Rin-Tin-Tin, 230 Rio Rita, 100

339 Ripley, Arthur, 177, 231, 254 River, The, 46, 47, 314 Roach, Hal, 27, 77, 99, 100, 102, 134, 139, 143, 170, 173, 175, 215, 216, 223, 232-233, 237, 264 Road to Mandalay, The, 58, 72, 286, 287 Roaring Road, The, 96, 97, 229 Roaring Tzoenties, The, 284 Roberts, Theodore, 183, 265 Robin Hood, 37, 38, 116, 117, 233-234, 267, 310 Rogers, Charles "Buddy," 221, 299 Rogers, Will, 23, 234-236 Romance of Tarzan, The, 263 Romeo and Juliet, 27, 34, 61,193, 244 Romola, 129,130,131,165,166 Ropin' Fool, The, 234, 235 Rose of the Rancho, 108,182 Ruggles of Red Gap, 22, 97, 223, 271 Rupert ofHentzau, 84 Ruth, Babe, 284 Sadie Thompson, 257, 258, 285 Safety Last, 105,125,164,176, 208, 229, 232, 233, 237-238, 264, 273, 297 St. Clair, Malcolm, 250 St. John, Al, 238 Salome, 27, 92, 204, 205, 305, 308 Satan Junior, 89 Say It With Sables, 71 Scaramouche, 154, 211 Scarf ace, 277, 313 Scarlet Letter, The, 24, 25, 131, 184, 185, 196, 286, 287 Schenck, Joseph, 261, 262 Schoedsack, Ernest B., 314 School For Scandal, The, 160 Sea Beast, The, 32, 89, 90,112 Sea Dog's Tale, A, 40, 41 Sea Hawk, The (1924), 38, 43, 238-239 Sea Hazvk, The (1940), 43, 95, 238, 311 Sea Wolf, The, 36, 48 Searchers, The, 197 Seastrom, Victor, 298, 299, 305 Second Hundred Years, The, 232, 233 Secrets, 46, 47,185, 221, 263 Selig studio, 48, 65, 137, 193, 207, 249,

340

297 Semon, Larry, 143, 170, 208, 239240, 277, 300 Sennett, Mack, 6, 21, 23, 30-31, 37, 40, 59, 60, 73, 74, 77, 83, 87, 113, 152, 153, 163, 170, 180, 190, 199, 210, 231, 232, 238, 240-241, 250, 256, 257, 268, 274 Senorita, 23, 24,100, 241-242 Seven Keys to Baldpate, 29, 30, 35, 181, 208 7th Heaven, 45, 46, 47, 242, 251, 277 Shadozos, 29, 79,120,166 Shane, 145 She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, 214 Shearer, Norma, 242-244, 289 Sheik, The, 44, 244, 280, 281 Shelby, Charlotte, 190 Shelby, Margaret, 191 Sheriffs Son, The, 227, 228 Sherlock Holmes, 23, 57, 73, 271, 301 Sherlock, Jr., 127,163,164, 204, 237, 245 Sherman, Lowell, 289 Should Second Husbands Come First?, 102 Shozv, The, 18,19, 58,128,129 Shozv Off, The, 250 Shozv People, 103-104,117,129, 283 Shozvboat (1929), 318 Shozogirl in Hollyzvood, 23 Silent Enernij, The, 194, 245-246,314 Silent Movie, 317 Sills, Milton, 238-239 Sin Flood, The, 71,110 Sins of the Fathers, 223 Sin Ship, The, 301 Sisters, 129,130,131 Sjostrom, Victor. See Seastrom, Victor Skippy, 216 Slide, Kelly, Slide, 67, 68,142 Smalley, Wendell Phillips, 182, 290 Smouldering Fires, 56,147, 246-247 Snitching Hour, The, 201 Snow, Marguerite, 97 Snozv White, 80 So This is Paris, 25, 44, 45

INDEX Sold for Marriage, 63, 64,131 Son of Frankenstein, 313 Son of the Sheik, The, 184, 185, 247, 281, 308 Sorrozus of Satan, The, 138,139 So's Your Old Man, 161 Souls For Sale, 60, 85,169, 283, 298 Sound processes and transition from silent films, 10, 13, 14, 31, 33, 36, 40, 49, 51, 73, 78, 79, 86, 91, 97, 100, 112, 117, 128, 139, 144, 159-160, 165, 176, 195, 197, 214, 220, 221, 230, 242, 251, 256, 270, 283, 299, 305-306, 310, 313, 317-318. See also Musical accompaniment Spanish Dancer, The, 38, 51, 188, 197, 206, 298 Sparrows, 220, 221, 247-248 Speed Girl, The, 100 Spite Marriage, 65,163 Spoilers, The, 33, 36, 65, 66, 68, 69, 86, 119,137, 203, 248-249, 250, 297, 298 Spuds, 239 Squaw Man, The, 17, 18, 36, 107, 108, 118,145,150, 249-250 Star Wars, 312 Stark Love, 175 State Fair (1933), 235 Steamboat Bill, Jr., 65,163, 270, 271 Steinbeck, John, 92, 316 Stella Dallas, 148, 161, 165, 166, 184, 185, 308 Stella Maris, 185, 207, 221 Sterling, Ford, 30, 210, 240, 250 Sternberg, Josef von, 64, 86, 277-278 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 111 Stiller, Mauritz, 102 Stop, Look, and Listen, 239 Straight Shooting, 67, 68,123,124 Strange Interlude, 243, 287 Street Angel, 12, 46, 47, 242, 250-251 Stroheim, Erich von, 60, 78, 97, 136, 148, 154, 188, 222, 223, 252-254, 258, 275, 306, 314-315, 317 Strong Man, The, 170, 171, 177, 231, 254-255, 306 Struggle, The, 139

INDEX Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, The, 12, 212, 243 Submarine, 150,151 Suds, 221 Suitor, The, 239, 317 Summerville, Slim, 240 Sumurun, 205 Sunrise, 12, 78, 213, 214, 242, 251, 255-256, 277, 305, 315, 316 Sunset Boulevard, 206, 253, 254, 258, 262 Susan and God, 178, 308 Slitter's Gold, 97, 288 Svengali, 31, 32, 95, 303 Swain, Mack, 87, 132, 143, 172, 256-257, 268 Swanson, Gloria, 23, 37, 100, 107, 183, 184, 253, 254, 257-258, 285, 308 Sweet, Blanche, 207, 258-259 Synthetic Sin, 196,197 Tabu, 12, 202, 255, 260 Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, Das. See Diary of a Lost Girl Tale of Two Cities, A (1911), 91, 92, 263 Tale of Two Cities, A (1917), 83, 119, 260-261 Talmadge, Constance, 155, 178, 261-262 Talmadge, Natalie, 261, 262 Talmadge, Norma, 46, 54, 56, 209, 221, 261, 262-263, 308 Taming of the Shrezv, The, 117, 221, 264, 310 Tarzan of the Apes, 263-264, 313 Tati, Jacques, 317 Taylor, Estelle, 112, 265 Taylor, Sam, 125,134, 237, 264-265, 297 Taylor, William Desmond, 11, 191, 211 Tearle, Conway, 99 Technicolor, 4-5, 36, 40, 43, 83, 106, 167, 219, 265, 269-270, 310 Teddy al the Throttle, 23, 38, 241, 258

341 Tempest, 32,112, 264, 301 Temple, Shirley, 190 Temptress, The, 197, 209 Ten Commandments, The, 5, 106, 108, 110, 182,183, 201, 265, 307, 308, 309 Terror in the City, 101 Terror of the Range, The, 85 Terry, Alice, 124,197 Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 207, 259, 270 Tess of the Storm Country, 221 Thalberg, Irving, 243 Thanhouser studio, 54, 96, 97 Theby, Rosemary, 190,199-200 They Died With Their Boots On, 284 They Had to See Pans, 47, 235 Thief of Bagdad, The, 116, 117, 265266, 284-285, 310, 313 Thirteenth Chair, The, 58 Thomson, Fred, 184,185, 266 Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, 317 Three Ages, 38, 83, 84,144,162,163 Three Bad Men, 123,124, 213, 214 Three Musketeers, The, 116, 117, 168, 186, 209, 267, 310 Three's a Crozed, 171, 231 Thundering Herd, The, 36, 65, 66,150,151. See also In the Days of the Thundering Herd Thundering Hoofs, 266 Tillie's Punctured Romance, 73, 87, 163,190,199, 210, 211, 241, 257, 268 To the Last Man, 110 ToVable David, 28, 33, 36, 165, 166, 269, 270, 271, 287, 312 Toll of the Sea, The, 5, 184, 185, 269270, 308 Tom Sazvyer, 88 Too Busy to Work, 234, 235 Too Many Millions, 36, 96, 97, 229 Topaze, 32 Torrence, David, 78, 270-271 Torrence, Ernest, 92, 93, 151, 166, 218, 219, 224, 269, 270-271 Torrent, The, 13, 257 Tourneur, Maurice, 56,171, 303 Trader Horn, 67, 68

342 Traffic in Souls, 271-272 Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, 170, 171, 177, 231, 254, 272-273 Treasure Island, 38, 72, 216 Triangle studio, 57, 63, 152-153, 187,196, 257 Trifling Women, 154,169, 211 Trilby, 303, 304 Trueheart Susie, 139, 289 Tucker, George Loane, 189, 271, 272 Tumbleweeds, 25,145,146, 157, 273274, 311 Turn in the Road, The, 282, 283 Turpin, Ben, 83, 232, 240, 274-275 Tzoentieth Century, 32 23V2 Hours Leave, 166,181 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 275276 Two Tars, 144,173, 233 Tzvo Wagons - Both Covered, 235 Typhoon, The, 29, 46,153 Ulzana's Raid, 311 Uncensored Movies, 235 Uncle Tom's Cabin, 3, 80, 87, 92, 263, 295, 304 Underworld, 277-278, 313 United Artists, 53, 94,117, 139, 220, 221 Universal, 17, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 37, 46, 57, 58, 65, 70, 72,105,123,151, 154, 182, 199, 249, 266, 290. See also Imp studio; Powers studio Unholy Three, The, 57, 58, 60, 72 Unknown, The, 57, 72, 278-279, 292 Unpardonable Sin, The, 37, 38, 207, 259 Valentino, Rudolph, 43, 44, 56, 100, 124, 125, 172, 188, 201, 205, 209, 211, 244, 247, 275, 280-281, 303 Valley of the Giants, 36, 97, 229-230 Vanishing American, The, 36, 110, 282-283 Vera Cruz, 311 Vidor, Florence, 282 Vidor, King, 12, 41, 78, 95-96, 222,

INDEX 282-283, 306, 315 Viking, The, 5, 95, 270 Virgin of Stamboul, The, 38, 57, 58, 105, 106 Virginian, The, 87,107,108,118,145 Vitagraph studio, 34, 54, 81, 89-91,113, 121, 140, 154, 160, 197, 231, 243, 261, 262, 303 Vitaphone, 10, 91,112,159 Walking Dozun Broadzvay, 252, 254 Walsh, Raoul, 18, 69-70, 198, 228, 265, 284-285, 292-293, 315 Walthall, Henry B., 41, 285-287, 299 Wanderer, The, 38, 63, 271, 285, 287, 298 Wanderer of the Wasteland, 5, 36, 150, 151, 270, 298 War Brides, 33, 51, 205, 308 Warming Up, 208 Warner Brothers, 89, 90, 159, 175, 230, 239, 317-318 Washburn, Bryant, 146, 288, 300 Washington Merry-Go-Round, 97 Water Nymph, The, 180, 210, 211, 240, 241 Way Down East, 33,130,131,138,139, 243, 269, 289, 306 Way of All Flesh, The, 277 Wayne, John, 145, 249 Weary River, 33, 86 Weber, Lois, 105, 182, 185, 263, 290291 Wedding March, The, 223, 254 Welles, Orson, 104, 315 Wellman, William, 39, 71, 299, 306 We're In the Navy Now, 37, 38, 293 West, Billy, 291 West of Zanzibar, 57, 58, 72, 292 Westerns, 4,17-18,19-20, 46, 65, 67-68, 77, 85, 92-93, 96, 106, 110, 118-119, 123, 134-136, 143, 145-148, 150, 152, 156-157, 186, 192-193, 203, 213-214, 224, 230, 235, 238, 242, 248-250, 266, 273-274, 281-282, 297-299, 310-311 What Price Glory, 41, 285, 292-293, 301 When Comedy Was King, 317

INDEX When Knighthood Was in Flozver, 104, 121 When the Clouds Roll By, 116,117 Whispering Chorus, The, 36, 108, 183, 293-294, 298 Whistle, The, 146, 294 White, Pearl, 30, 295-296 White Heat, 284, 290, 291 White Rose, The, 139,187 White Shadows in the South Seas, 44, 45, 202, 296 White Sister, The, 131,165,166 Why Worry?, 141,176, 232, 264, 297 Wild and Woolly, 178 Wild Horse Mesa, 36,150,151 Wild Oranges, 250, 283 Wild Party, The, 21, 22, 50, 54 Wilde, Oscar, 204 Wilder, Billy, 262 Williams, Clara, 29,147 Williams, Kathlyn, 248, 293, 295, 297-298 Williamson process, 276 Wind, The, 13, 28,130,131,184,185, 298-299 Wings, 39, 50, 242, 277, 286, 287,299300, 305 Winning of Barbara Worth, The, 165, 166,185 Witching Hour, The, 201 With Love and Hisses, 143,173 Withers, Jane, 190

343 Without Hope, 180 Wizard ofOz, The (1925), 143,144,199, 239, 288, 299-300 Wolheim, Louis, 111, 214, 301 Woman of Affairs, A, 49, 56,128,129 Woman of Paris, A, 74, 225-226, 302 Woman-Proof 189, 213, 214 Woman's Place, A, 178 Women filmmakers, 308-309. See also Arzner, Dorothy; Baldwin, Ruth Ann; Davenport, Dorothy; Gardner, Helen; Gish, Lillian; Loos, Anita; Macpherson, Jeanie; Marion, Frances; Mathis, June; McVey, Lucille; Nazimova, Alia; Normand, Mabel; Pickford, Mary; Swanson, Gloria; Weber, Lois Wong, Anna May, 218, 265, 269-270 Wrath of the Gods, The, 29, 46,153 Wyckoff, Alvin, 44, 294 Wyler, William, 309 You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, 84 You Only Live Once, 316 Young, Clara Kimbell, 303-304 Young, James, 303 Youngson, Robert, 317 Zenobia, 171 Zola, Emile, 95, 315 Zukor, Adolph, 48, 53, 80, 107, 120, 206, 224

About the Authors DONALD W. MCCAFFREY is Professor Emeritus of the University of North Dakota. He has written numerous articles about the silent and sound cinema. His first major work was 4 Great Comedians: Chaplin, Lloyd, Keaton, Langdon (1968); his most recent book-length publication is Assault on Society: Satirical Literature to Film (1992). CHRISTOPHER P. JACOBS is a part-time film lecturer at the University of North Dakota and the Movies Editor for the High Plains Reader, a weekly regional entertainment newspaper. In the fall of 1998, he was Script Supervisor for the independent feature film, Dead Dogs.