Silent Film Quarterly Issue 4 by Silent Film Quarterly

The Silent Film Quarterly・!1

The Silent Film Quarterly ——————————————————————————

Volume I, Issue 4 Summer 2016

Table of Contents Editor’s Message

Departments: In Their Own Words

“Watch Your Feet!” by Bebe Daniels, “40 Best Films of 1926,” “A Chat With Dorothy Gish,” “D.W. Griffith Would Preserve Old Sets,” “Parts I Have Played” by Lon Chaney, “Feed the Brute” by Harold Lloyd, “Ten Best Films of 1928”

Silents In Review

It (1927), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Cohens and the Kellys (1926), Gribiche (1926), Beau Geste (1926)

Celluloid Collectibles

Timothy Dean Lefler

Rachael Grant

Grosset & Dunlap Photoplay Editions

Original Features: Catching Up With Mabel:

Scenes From A Remarkable Life

Silent Star Who Spoke Volumes:

Rudy Cecera

The Life and Legacy of Mabel Normand

Treasure in the Junkpile:

A Firsthand Account of Silent Film Discovery

The Man Behind the Myth:

Donna Hill

A Look at Rudolph Valentino’s Varied Hobbies

“Is That ME…Or My Ghost?”: The Two Baby Peggys

Mark Pruett

The Silent Film Quarterly・!2

On Early Actresses :

Mark L. Evans

Asta Nielsen, Lillian Gish, and the Spread of European Naturalism

Classic Feature: How The Movie Is Made:

D.W. Griffith

Chuck Harter

“Inside Dope On The Movies”

Interview: Little Elf:

Reflections on the Life and Career of Harry Langdon

Subscribe to

Silent Film Quarterly! Print subscriptions beginning at $40, digital subscriptions starting at just $20! ! Visit silentfilmquarterly.com for more information Coming Soon: The Silent Film Quarterly Year 1 Omnibus! All four issues, collected in hardback for the first time; PLUS bonus content!

The Silent Film Quarterly・!3

Editor’s Message

Silent Film Quarterly has made it to the end of its first year! It was around this exact time in 2015 that I began laying the groundwork for the magazine. I purchased the domain for silentfilmquarterly.com and sent a few emails to friends of mine to see if they might be interested in contributing to such a project. I never expected the response that I received. Every issue that I produce becomes my favorite until that time, and this one is no exception. In Issue 3, Claire Inayat Williams reviewed the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s “Day of Silents;” in this issue, Carrie Pomeroy (whose wonderful piece on Jackie Coogan appeared in the last issue) reviewed the Kansas Silent Film Festival’s 20th anniversary lineup. It is my hope that this trend of reviewing film festivals will continue in future issues. It is also worth nothing that this is the first issue of Silent Film Quarterly in which I did not write any of the content (I only conducted the interview with Chuck Harter which appears). I believe that this is evidence of the continued growth of the magazine and its warm reception from silent film fans around the world. I’d also like to thank everyone who has contributed content to the first four issues; without you, this magazine would obviously not be possible. The cover of this issue features Mabel Normand, and two of the articles contained herein are about her life and legacy. Normand’s fleeting life is shrouded in myth and mystery, and the contributions from Timothy Lefler and Rudy Cecera will hopefully prove insightful for readers. The silent film community was shocked and thrilled by the discovery of several films in a British junkyard; I am thrilled that Rachael Grant, who made the discovery with her father, as contributed a firsthand account of the remarkable find. Also particularly special to me is an article by Mark Pruett about Baby Peggy (real name Diana Serra Cary). I was recently fortunate enough to sit down with Ms. Cary for a lengthy interview, which will be appearing in Issue 5. Mr. Pruett’s article is the perfect introduction to Baby Peggy’s career for those who are unfamiliar. Issue 4 is rounded out with an article by Valentino expert Donna Hill, a study of Asta Nielsen and Lillian Gish’s craft, an interview with Harry Langdon biographer Chuck Harter, and an article written by D.W. Griffith that has not been reprinted in over a century. It is my sincere belief that all fans of the silent era will find something that interests them in this issue. I’ll wrap this up by saying thank you once again to everyone who everyone who has played a part in the success of this magazine’s first year. It is my hope that year two will bring even bigger and better things! Your editor, Charles Epting

! !

————————————————————————————————————

Write for Silent Film Quarterly!

Want to write for Silent Film Quarterly? The magazine is always looking for interesting original content about the silent era, including feature articles and reviews of silent films. Please contact the editor at charleseptingauthor@gmail.com if interested or for more information.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!4

In Their Own Words Primary sources from the silent era ・・・

Watch Your Feet! By Bebe Daniels

From The Picturegoer, January, 1921 One hundred-and-fifty pairs of stockings, and sixty-five pairs of shoes. It sounds very extravagant, I know, but I must confess that my hosiery-and-boot cupboard contains this quantity of footgear. And I confess it unblushingly. Why? Because I consider shoes and stockings the most important features of a woman’s attire. Nine women out of ten fail to make the best of their looks because they neglect to give proper care to the little things of the wardrobe. Without this profusion of limb apparel I could not possess the well-dressed, perfectly groomed appearance that is essential to a kinema star. I have seen scores of women with expensive and beautiful gowns who looked like frumps because their shoes were run down at heels and lacked a shine. And, on the contrary, one often comes into contact with those who gain admiration with a simple little dress, just because they take the utmost pains in selecting suitable hose and shoes, whose perfect cut gives full opportunity to the beauty of the foot. For my work on the screen I always have two pairs of shoes and stockings for each gown. To gain the full savour of a beautiful dress one must practise variety of this sort. Of course, to many people the expense would be prohibitive; but it is absolutely necessary to us of the screen world, if we are to hold our places in the favour of the public. Lack of money, however, need not be a bar to woman’s desire for a charming appearance. Good things are always more economical in the long run than articles

cheap in their first cost. By proper care one good dress and its accessories may retain their beauty long after a whole assortment of cheap; shoddy things have gone into the discard. And it is also sound economy to have as extensive a wardrobe as your purse will allow. If you ring the changes on your attire, and take proper care of your things, you will get a life-time’s wear out of them. Always avoid extremes of fashion, so that no part of your wardrobe may have to be permanently discarded because it is out of date. ・・・

40 Best Films of 1926

From Billboard, January 15, 1927 Selected by the National Board of Review and listed alphabetically (for some reason, only 39 films were listed by Billboard). 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

The Amateur Gentleman Beau Geste An Alaskan Adventure Ben Hur The Black Pirate The Blackbird Diplomacy Don Juan The Exquisite Sinner Everybody’s Acting Faust For Heaven’s Sake Gigolo God Gave Me Twenty Cents The Gorilla Hunt The Greater Glory Hotel Imperial La Boheme Mare Nostrum Michael Strogoff Nell Gwynn The Marriage Clause Oh, What a Nurse! Potemkin The Quarterback The Return of Peter Grimm The Scarlet Letter

The Silent Film Quarterly・!5 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

The Sea Beast The Secrets of the Sea The Show-Off Siberia Silence Sorrows of Satan The Strong Man The Temptress Variety The Waltz Dream What Price Glory The Winning of Barbara Worth ・・・

A Chat With Dorothy Gish

From The Arcadian Observer, August 31, 1918 Of all the various types of acting, by far the hardest and that which requires the most skill is high comedy. For this reason, therefore, the hardest working actor or actress, and the one who must pay the greatest attention to the thespian art is the comedian or his feminine co-worker, the comedienne. In this respect today the one that stands out completely as the peer is Miss Dorothy Gish, who achieved the zenith of the art in her characterization of the “Little Disturber,” a role which she created in the “Hearts of the World.” The scenes from this masterpiece were taken in battle-torn Flanders, and as the “Little Disturber” intermingled with the troops of the Allies, practically living their lives, I knew when she returned to the States she would bring some message to the American soldier in training. It was between scenes of her new piece that I interviewed Miss Gish, and asked her if there wasn’t something in particular that she had in mind to say to the men of the Balloon School. “What can I say to a soldier boy? That’s a question that is not so easily answered as you might imagine. Of course, I can say ‘Hurrah! Go get ‘em, fellows; bring me back the Kaiser’s mustache, or something just as good.’ But every one tells

you that, and I would like to say something just a little bit different. “I wonder how many of you fellows are writing to your mothers, your sisters, or your sweethearts? And I wonder if, right down in the part of your heart where you feel things most; I wonder if you know just how much a letter means to those same people. Do you know how a girl likes to open a letter with that little red triangle or K. of C. on it, or with the insignia of some branch of the service ? You don’t, just because you aren’t a girl. But I can tell you, because I have opened some of them. It feels like nothing else on earth, and just between ourselves, there isn’t a girl in the country who doesn’t like to do it in the presence of company. Of course, she won’t show your letter, but she will read a paragraph or two to an intimate friend, and the way she does it is ample proof that she is going to take a pen and ink and some paper and sit down for a few minutes and send your answer post haste. And while I have no accurate information on the subject, I am told that you like to get letters. “I don’t need to tell you how much your mother likes to hear from you. You know that she is proud of the fact that you are wearing the colors of your country and that you are under the flag wherever it goes; but there is a deeper feeling, and the always present fear that you may be hurt, wounded or sick. You ought to write to that mother just as often as you can get to the materials. “And about your own letters; if you will just write home as often as you can, you’ll get all kinds of mail. I know that, because I write a lot of it myself. “So, as I don’t know anything else to tell you, I do want to say again, ‘write home and do it often.’ And after that you will be in better shape to go and get that mustache you have promised to somebody —you know you have.” “Sincerely yours, Dorothy Gish.” ・・・

The Silent Film Quarterly・!6 D.W. Griffith Would Preserve Old Sets From Variety, August 24, 1938

Editor, Variety: I thought you might be interested in the following wire which I just received from D.W. Griffith from his home in La Grange, Ky.: I have heard that Samuel Goldwyn is tearing down all the old Pickford and Fairbanks sets on the United Artists lot dating back to ‘The Thief of Bagdad,’ in order to replace them with sets for his next Gary Cooper picture, ‘The Last Frontier.’ Samuel Goldwyn is a great moving picture producer and undoubtedly ‘The Last Frontier’ will be another big hit for him, but those old sets which will be torn down and sold as scrap are part of the history of Hollywood and I believe they should be preserved. There is nothing personal in this, but I think your fine museum, which has done so much to perpetuate the meagre traditions of the American motion picture, should request Mr. Goldwyn to turn these old sets over to your museum as part of a permanent collection so you will at least receive some of the more tangible memories of an important day in the evolution of the film industry. Regards, D. W. Griffith. I think Mr. Griffith’s stand is well taken and I have forwarded a copy of this telegram to Samuel Goldwyn in the hope that the Film Library may have his cooperation. John E. Abbott, Director, Museum of Modern Art Film Library. ・・・

Parts I Have Played By Lon Chaney

From Pictures, December 10, 1921 People who know me only on the screen must be surprised when they see me

as I really am. For without my make-up I’m quite an ordinary chap—maybe not handsome, but certainly not the repulsive figure that I’ve so often been in camera characterisations. I began picture work eight years ago with Universal. My first part was a had one-the crook in Hell Morgan’s Girl. So well did I interpret villainy, that since my early efforts I have seldom been allowed to reform; as a rule I come to a bad end long before the final fade-out of the picture. I have portrayed every age, from a boy of eighteen to an old man of ninety, but with very few exceptions have I died peaceably in bed. I was not quite such a thorough-paced “bad egg” in my earlier films. In Dorothy Phillip’s Paid in Advance, Priscilla Dean’s Wicked Darling, W. .S. Hart’s Riddle Gawn, and H. B. Walthall’s False Faces I was only mild in comparison with my later characterisations. My part of “The Frog,” in The Miracle Man, gave me my great opportunity. I very nearly failed in this, but at the last moment I remembered a grotesque dance I used to perform when I was on the stage in “The Mikado,” and that, combined with my really terrible make-up, saved the day. As picturegoers will remember, I gave up my evil ways under the influence of the “Miracle Man,” and played later on as my own normal self. I was “Pen” in Treasure Island, and used up all my stock of facial contortions in my efforts to terrify poor little “ Jim Hawkins.” In Victory I was the sinister and evil “Ricardo”; and in The Penalty I had another terrible cripple part—“Blizzard.” This was even more exacting than “The Frog,” for I had to endure agonies while my legs were bandaged up behind me so as to simulate stumps. After these two parts I went from bad to worse, and in supporting Priscilla Dean in Outside the Law, I played “Black Mike Silva,” an out-and-out villain of San Francisco’s Chinatown. I also doubled as

The Silent Film Quarterly・!7

an old Chinaman in this film, for they could get no one else to look the part. In Ace of Hearts I play the part of “ Fa r r a l o n e, ” a fanatical social r e f o r m e r, w h o amuses himself with bombs. Practically all these parts have been “character” roles, but I am now being starred by my o l d c o m p a n y, U n i ve r s a l , i n a series of big features. The first Lon Chaney in and out of costume as “The Frog” in 1919’s The Miracle of these is called Man. Wolf Breed, and in t h i s I h ave ve r y place them in a double boiler over a hot different adventures from my usual ones. I fire. Cook until the mixture begins to get even have a good and beautiful leading very thick, stirring constantly. Then take lady who returns my love. from the stove and beat until the whole ・・・ assumes a creamy texture. Spread between Feed the Brute! the layers of any cake. This recipe makes enough filling for two thin layers, or one Famous Recipes by Famous Men thick one—which I prefer. It can be Lemon Layer Cake doubled, tripled, and so on—ad infinitum By Harold Lloyd —depending entirely on the number of From the Boston Daily Globe, September 13, layers in the cake. 1922 ・・・ This, when properly gummy, is as good Ten Best Films of 1928 for a comedian to throw as a custard pie, From the Austin Statesman, January 8, 1929 only it’s too good for that sort of treatment. The layer cake doesn’t interest me 1. The Patriot especially. After all, it’s only an excuse for 2. The Singing Fool the frosting. Any sort of layer cake recipe 3. The Barker will answer—and, according to the best 4. Our Dancing Daughters cook I know, my grandmother—there are a 5. Four Sons hundred such recipes. It’s the filling that I 6. The Jazz Singer find important. Here is the role, and it 7. White Shadows of the South Seas sounds too simple to be true: 8. The Racket Take one beaten egg, one cup of sugar, 9. The Man Who Laughs the juice and grated rind of one lemon. 10. Speedy Mix them all together, hit or miss, and

The Silent Film Quarterly・!8

Silents in Review: 2016 Kansas Silent Film Festival by Carrie Pomeroy ・・・ Last issue, Silent Film Quarterly featured a review of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s Day of Silents by Claire Inayat Williams. This issue we’re thrilled to feature a set of reviews written by Carrie Pomeroy (whose article on Jackie Coogan appeared in Issue 3). Pomeroy recently attended the Kansas Silent Film Festival (February 25-27), and provided Silent Film Quarterly with this exclusive review. ・・・ Since 1997, the Kansas Silent Film Festival at Washburn University in Topeka

has offered programs packed with hard-tofind cinematic gems and old favorites, all accompanied by distinguished live musicians. It’s a festival with a strong sense of community, with many people returning year after year. This year, the Kansas Silent Film Festival celebrated its twentieth anniversary—quite a feat for an allvolunteer operation. Topeka librarians Jim Rhodes and Jim McShane organized the first Kansas Silent Film Festival as a free, one-day showing at Washburn University’s White Concert H a l l ; o r g a n i s t M a r v i n Fa u l w e l l accompanied all the movies shown that day. White Concert Hall has remained the festival’s primary venue ever since, and the festival, which is always held the last weekend of February and now stretches over three days, remains free except for a few ticketed special events. Many founding

Marvin Faulwell accompanies The Call of the Cuckoo. Photo by Karl Mischler..

The Silent Film Quarterly・!9 volunteers still work with the festival, including mistress of ceremonies Denise Morrison, accompanist Marvin Faulwell, and the festival’s first assistant projectionist Bill Shaffer (now the festival’s president, treasurer, and all-around good will ambassador). Shaffer acknowledges that putting on a film festival every year for two decades isn’t easy. What keeps Shaffer going are “the people who come every year,” as he puts it, adding, “I get the sweetest, most gracious letters.” Mistress of ceremonies Denise Morrison has her own take on what makes putting on the festival rewarding: “Turning on people to the films, the personalities, technicians, it's educational and entertaining and I love it all.” I missed a few films at the festival this year—notably the Soviet-era comedy short Chess Fever and Battleship Potemkin—but I was attending with my ten-year-old daughter and needed to pace myself. I did get to enjoy most of the films screened. Here are capsule reviews of some of the festival’s feature-film highlights. —Carrie Pomeroy ・・・

It (1927) Length: 72 minutes Release date: February 19, 1927 Director: Clarence Badger and Josef von Sternburg (uncredited) Cast: Clara Bow as Betty Lou, Antonio Moreno as Cyrus T. Waltham, William Austin as “Monty” Montgomery, Jacqueline Gadsdon as Adela Van Norman, Gary Cooper as Newspaper Reporter, and Elinor Glyn as Herself ・・・ This year’s festival kicked off with a special Thursday evening showing of Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short The Immigrant, D. W. Griffith’s 1909 Those Awful Hats, and Clara Bow’s feature film It at Topeka’s historic Jayhawk Theatre. Built in 1926, the Jayhawk Theater closed in the Seventies but is now the focus of a

restoration campaign. With its ornate carved Jayhawks symbolizing Kansas’s history as a slavery battleground and a large mural of Demeter representing Kansas’s agricultural heritage, the theater offered festival-goers a rich sense of place. And as mistress of ceremonies Denise Morrison pointed out, we were probably the first audience to watch a silent at the Jayhawk since the end of the silent era. The plot of It is undeniably flimsy: department store salesgirl Betty Lou (played by Clara Bow) sets her sights on her handsome boss, wins his heart, then almost loses him. Among It’s biggest charms— besides the magnetic Clara Bow herself— are the snappy, period-perfect title cards by George Marion, Jr. “Hot socks! The new boss!” declares a sales clerk to Bow’s Betty Lou when leading man Antonio Moreno enters the scene. “Sweet Santa Claus, give me him!” sighs Betty Lou. The film’s suggestion that a girl like Betty Lou could have a lusty appreciation for the opposite sex and still be nice was, in its own way, quietly revolutionary. For my daughter, William Austin’s scene-stealing performance as the boss’s lecherous but ultimately good-hearted society pal Monty was a highlight. Monty’s the one who introduces the concept of “It” into the picture. After reading a magazine article by Elinor Glyn describing “It” as

The Silent Film Quarterly・!10 “that quality possessed by some that draws all others with a magnetic force,” Monty assesses himself critically in a mirror, grins, and declares, “Old fruit, you’ve got IT!”

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

Length: 154 minutes Release date: March 18, 1924 Director: Raoul Walsh Cast: Douglas Fairbanks as The Thief of Bagdad, Snitz Edwards as The Thief ’s Associate, Julanne Johnston as The Princess, Sojin Kamiyama as The Mongol Prince, and Anna May Wong as The Mongol Slave ・・・ Douglas Fairbanks’ tale of a thief in love with a princess is one of the most eyepopping spectacles of the silent era, with lavish sets by William Cameron Menzies and dazzling special effects. Douglas Fairbanks definitely brought his beefcake A-game to this film; as MC Denise Morrison joked, “We’re only going to give you a ten-minute intermission because we want to get back to Douglas’s abs—I mean, his acting.” The feature was paired with the Max Davidson comedy short Call of the Cuckoo, with cameos by Laurel and Hardy, James Finlayson, and Charley Chase.

Two of the film’s most enjoyable performances are by supporting players Sojin Kamiyama as the villainous Mongol Prince and Anna May Wong as the slave girl secretly aiding him. Though their roles were stereotypical, both actors managed to imbue the parts with charisma and campy fun. As a fan of character actor Snitz Edwards’ work with Buster Keaton, I also enjoyed seeing Edwards paired with Fairbanks as the thief ’s “Evil Associate.” The film was accompanied by the Colorado-based Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a five-piece chamber ensemble who appear regularly at the TCM Classic Film Festival and the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Their Thief of Bagdad score weaves together pieces from RimskyKorsakov’s Scheherezade and IppolitovIvanov’s Caucasian Sketches with original silent-era “photoplay music” from the quintet’s extensive collection. You can hear that score on the Kino Lorber DVD release of The Thief of Bagdad.

The Cohens and the Kellys (1926)

Length: 80 minutes Release date: February 28, 1926 Director: Harry A. Pollard Cast: Charles Murray as Patrick Kelly, George Sidney as Jacob Cohen, Vera Gordon as Mrs. Cohen, Kate Price as Mrs. Kelly, Jason Robards, Sr. as Tim Kelly, and Olive Hasbrouck as Nannie Cohen ・・・ I didn’t go into The Cohens and the Kellys with high hopes, but it turned out to be a festival favorite for me and my daughter. The film tells the story of two feuding Lower East Side families, one Jewish and one Irish. A romance between the Irish family’s oldest son and the Jewish family’s oldest daughter forces the families to make the peace—but only after plenty of sparks fly. Festival president Bill Shaffer at White Concert Hall. Photo by Karl Mischler. The film’s storyline is quite similar to

The Silent Film Quarterly・!11 the plot of the long-running play Abie’s Irish Rose by Anne Nichols; so similar, in fact, that Nichols sued Universal Pictures over The Cohens and the Kellys. The court ruled against Nichols, however, stating that copyright protections didn’t extend to stock characters. Stock characters the Cohens and the Kellys may be, but the actors playing them brought real commitment and warmth to their portrayals. As Mrs. Cohen, stage actress Vera Gordon was particularly memorable. It was also fun to see longtime Keystone comedian Charlie Murray as the Kellys’ irascible patriarch and George Sidney as Mr. Cohen. Kate Price, known to many silent film fans for her work in Mary Pickford’s Little Lord Fauntleroy and Buster Keaton’s My Wife’s Relations, was a bit under-utilized as Mrs. Kelly, but as likable as always. Org anist Marvin Faulwell and percussionist Bob Keckeisen accompanied the film, blending Jewish folk music themes with Irish tunes to accentuate the cultural differences between the two families. In one especially funny touch, Keckeisen filled in with convincing sound effects when the Cohens’ family dog howled along with a weeping Mr. Cohen. Though this comedy is rarely shown now and is not currently available on disc, it was so popular in its day, it inspired six sequels, two silent and four sound, with the Cohens and the Kellys leaving their New York tenement behind and taking cinematic forays to Hollywood, France, and Africa, a forerunner of sitcom families like the Ricardos and the Bradys traveling to exotic locales in search of fresh plotlines.

Gribiche (1926)

Length: 112 minutes Release date: December 22, 1928 (USA) Director: Jacques Feyder Cast: Jean Forest as Antoine “Gribiche” Belot, Rolla Norman as Philippe Gavary,

Françoise Rosay as Edith Maranet, Cecile Guyon as Anna Belot ・・・ Gribiche tells the story of a workingclass Parisian boy named Antoine Belot, nicknamed Gribiche (played by the extraordinary child actor Jean Forest). The plot is set in motion when Gribiche notices an American socialite and do-gooder named Edith Maranet dropping her pocket book in a department store and runs to return it to her. Charmed, Edith Maranet (director Feyder’s wife and creative collaborator Françoise Rosay) offers to adopt Gribiche from his war-widow mother and pay for his education. Gribiche knows his mother wants to marry her boyfriend but that she is hesitating because of how her marriage might affect her son. Wanting his mother to be happy, Gribiche tells her that they have to take advantage of Mademoiselle Maranet’s offer, even though mother and son are secretly heartbroken over parting ways. Mademoiselle Maranet is a proponent of the “scientific” method of child-rearing in vogue in America in the 1920s, and she puts Gribiche on a rigid routine of exercise, meals, and lessons—a regimen in sharp contrast to the relaxed, open-air life Gribiche once enjoyed with his mother. Not surprisingly, Gribiche rebels, with results that are both funny and touching. Feyder effectively used outdoor Paris locations and fabulously detailed Art Nouveau sets to accentuate the contrast between Gribiche’s two very different worlds. As film preservationist David Shepard pointed out in his introduction to the film, Gribiche may be the only film that gives major screen credit to the people who made the film’s plumbing fixtures! In his introduction, Shepard also shared the movie’s real-life back story, which in some ways mirrored the story told in Gribiche. Director Jacques Feyder and Françoise Rosay discovered their young star Jean Forest on the streets of

The Silent Film Quarterly・!12

Montmartre when they were casting for their film Crainquebille (1922). Since Forest’s parents already had eight other children to feed, they gladly handed Feyder and Rosay their son’s acting services for that film and the 1925 Faces of Children. As David Shepard noted, Forest proved to be an exceptionally natural and engaging child actor. Near the beginning of production on Gribiche, Forest’s biological mother died, and Feyder and Rosay adopted the boy. Luckily, Feyder and Rosay’s real-life arrangement with Forest went much more happily than the adoption depicted in the film.

Beau Geste (1926)

Length: 101 minutes Release date: August 25, 1926 Director: Herbert Brenon Cast: Ronald Colman as Michael “Beau” Geste, Neil Hamilton as Digby Geste, Ralph Forbes as John Geste, Alice Joyce as Lady Patricia Brandon, Mary Brian as Isabel Rivers, Noah Beery as Sgt. Lejaune, and William Powell as Boldini ・・・

The final evening of the festival featured a showing of Beau Geste with Buster Keaton’s Cops and Louise Fazenda and Ford Sterling in Her Torpedoed Love, as well as rare World War I documentary

The Silent Film Quarterly・!13

Kansas Silent Film Festival emcee Denise Morrison at the Jayhawk Theater. Photo by Karl Mischler.

Festival president Bill Shaffer at White Concert Hall. Photo by Karl Mischler.

footage shot by Topeka native Donald Thompson. Beau Geste begins with a perplexing series of mysteries: A troop of French Legionnaires rides across the desert to aid a French fort they’ve heard is under attack by Tuaregs. They discover an eerily silent fort, with dead Legionnaires propped against the ramparts. A scout goes over the fort’s walls to check out the macabre scene and promptly vanishes. When more Legionnaires go up to investigate, they find the fort’s commander Sergeant Lejaune murdered by one of his own men, and the Legionnaire they assume has killed Lejaune dead beside him. The mysteries only multiply when the two bodies disappear moments later. Via flashback, the film reveals the events that led up to this series of puzzling occurrences. My daughter was hooked by the mystery immediately and gasped with delight as the pieces fell into place in the film’s final moments. Along with its puzzle-box of a plot, Beau Geste features magnificent scenery, beautifully photographed by J. Roy Hunt, with the sun-bleached deserts outside Yuma, Arizona filling in for the dunes of Arabia. The film also boasts memorable supporting performances, including Noah Beery as one of the most sadistic villains ever to inspire boos and hisses and William Powell as a thieving conniver of a Legionnaire. Unfortunately, the film is not

currently available on disc, so if you have a chance to see it screened at a theater, you should jump on the opportunity.

Saturday Night Cinema Dinner Besides the many free movie showings held during the festival weekend, the K a n s a s S i l e n t F i l m Fe s t i v a l a l s o traditionally features a ticketed Saturday night Cinema Dinner. Past guest speakers at the Cinema Dinner have included film historian Annette D’Agostino Lloyd, New Hampshire-based musician and composer Jeff Rapsis, and Melissa Talmadge Cox, granddaughter of Buster Keaton. This year’s Cinema Dinner guest speaker was film preservationist David Shepard, a longtime friend of the festival who has frequently loaned the festival films from his collection at no charge. Shepard discussed his recent work producing digital versions of the films of Studio Albatros, including the film Gribiche shown earlier that day. Albatros was a highly acclaimed production company set up in France by Russian expatriate fi l m m a k e r s a f t e r t h e C o m m u n i s t revolution. Headquartered at the glass studio once used by French film pioneer Georges Méliès, Albatros’s “alumni” include directors Alexandre Volkoff, Jacques Feyder, Eugène Lourié, and René Clair. At the Cinema Dinner, Shepard

The Silent Film Quarterly・!14

The 2016 Kansas Silent Film Festival musicians, left to right: Jeff Rapsis, Emily Lewis, Rodney Sauer, April Johannesen, Dawn Kramer, David Short, Marvin Faulwell. Not pictured: musician Bob Keckeisen. Photo by Bruce Calvert.

showed clips from several Albatros films, including an excerpt from director Alexandre Volkoff ’s The House of Mystery, a 1921-1923 serial. The sequence that Shepard highlighted depicted a wedding celebration shot entirely in silhouette. The ten-part series is available from Flicker Alley on the DVD The House of Mystery (2015). Shepard also showed excerpts from the 2 0 1 3 F l i c k e r A l l ey re l e a s e Fre n ch Masterworks: Russian Emigres in Paris 1923-1928, including a mesmerizing dance sequence from Kean, a 1924 biopic of Shakespearean actor Edmund Kean directed by Alexandre Volkoff and starring Ivan Mosjoukine, one of the most important actors in pre-revolution Russia. The Kean clip used rapid-cut edits to striking effect to dramatize Kean’s emotional disintegration. I left the Cinema Dinner with a new appreciation for Albatros and a desire to see more of the studio’s films. ・・・

After this year’s festival, I asked emcee Denise Morrison what she thought made the Kansas Silent Film Festival special. She responded, “It’s still free. Plain and simple. This allows everyone to come and try it out, so it’s wonderfully satisfying to see young and old, first-timers and old-timers, at the screenings.” I left this year’s festival grateful to have had such an affordable opportunity to share classic silents with my daughter. We departed Topeka with a list of new-to-me silent films and filmmakers to seek out, a fresh perspective on some old favorites, and great memories of time shared with other silent film fans. Here’s to at least twenty more years of the Kansas Silent Film Festival preserving and celebrating silent cinema!

Photographs for the article were provided by Karl Mischler and Bruce Calvert. For more information about the Kansas Silent Film Festival, visit: www.kssilentfilmfest.org

The Silent Film Quarterly・!15

Celluloid Collectibles Artifacts from and about the silent era ・・・ Grosset & Dunlap was one of the most prolific publishers of the 1920s. What differentiated them from many of their competitors, however, was their line of “Photoplay” editions for many titles, which were authorized by the film studios and contained stills illustrating various scenes. Some books, such as Rafael Sabatini’s The Sea Hawk, had been published previously without motion picture images, while others, like Russell Holman’s Speedy, were novelized and published exclusively as “Photoplay” editions by Grosset & Dunlap. Grosset & Dunlap produced such books for a number of studios and for nearly every major silent film star. Fortunately for collectors, examples of most A typical title page for a Grosset & Dunlap “Photoplay” edition.

The dust jacket for Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman.

can be found without their dust-jackets for relatively inexpensive prices. There are, however, certain titles that command significantly more. The novelization of Lon Chaney’s lost London After Midnight, for example, costs between $200 and $400 without a dust-jacket; an example in good condition can easily exceed $1,000. Other rare titles include The Phantom of the Opera, Cobra, and The Return of Peter Grimm. But for fans of Harold Lloyd, Lillian Gish, Douglas Fairbanks, or numerous other stars, there are dozens of affordable options which can greatly enhance a silent film book collection. It is worth nothing that there is a company called Facsimile Dust Jackets LLC (www.facsimiledustjackets.com) which reproduces exact replicas of the dust jackets of many titles—turning your secondhand copy into one that looks brand new.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!16

Catching Up With Mabel: Scenes of a Remarkable Life From Mabel Normand: The Life and Career of a Hollywood Madcap by Timothy Dean Lefler Timothy Dean Lefler’s book Mabel Normand: The Life and Career of a Hollywood Madcap was published by McFarland books in early 2016. Never before had such an extensive biography of the actress been undertaken, and Lefler’s book contributes greatly to the understanding of Normand’s life and career. In this article, Lefler has highlighted key moments from Normand’s life that help to shed light on her fleeting career. They are told in a series of “scenes,” often humorous and always insightful. Following the article, Silent Film Quarterly conducted a Q&A with Lefler about his new book. ・・・

When 37 year old movie star Mabel Normand died from tuberculosis on February 23, 1930, she left behind almost 200 films and a legacy of laughter to millions of fans around the world. But, she also left behind an indelible imprint upon her times and upon those who loved her. What was so special about the beauty from Staten Island? Perhaps we can tell from the stories left behind. From 1910 to 1911, Mabel worked at Vitagraph Studio in Flatbush, New York. Mabel’s stay at Vitagraph was shortlived. Fed up with the elevated trains that were incessantly rattling her make-up mirror as it rumbled past her dressing room window, she exposed train passengers to a side of herself that they weren’t expecting. Amid heated complaints from the railroad, Vitagraph decided to reprimand the young actress. But Mabel went on the attack: “What do those dirty dogs want to look in my dressing room window for anyway?” she demanded. Mabel was fired, but totally unrepentant. Mabel and Marie Dressler both appeared in the feature film Tillie’s Punctured Romance (1914). It sparked a fierce rivalry. Finally, Mabel stood up in the studio cafeteria and challenged Marie to an auto race. Mabel was an expert (and reckless) driver and was sure that Marie would back down. But Marie stood up and barked back that she accepted the challenge. Word got out, and soon the bookies were in business. Bets were taken at both Mabel’s Keystone and Marie’s Broadway. The race was set at Ascot Park in Santa Monica. Mabel was in her Stutz Bear Cat. Marie was in her Fiat. But, rain caused a postponement and that gave Mack time to emphatically call the whole thing off, warning the combatants that they had no right to kill each other in the middle of his shoot. One day, the elegant Dutch actor, and man-about-town, Lou Tellegen, decided

The Silent Film Quarterly・!17

that he had to meet Mabel Normand. Or, more to the point, that Mabel had to meet him. He was certain that, unlike the others, his charm would open doors. Impeccably dressed and groomed, he found his way to Mabel’s dressing room. He gently tapped on her door and called out, “Are you in there, my lovely creature?” “Yes indeedy.” “May a devoted slave come in?” “Not at the moment dearie,” Mabel sang out, “I’m on the chamber pot!” One night at the Vernon Country Club Mack said something in anger, and Mabel pulled away and angrily trotted off. Sulking in a chair by the wall, Mack sat up when he saw Mabel spinning around the dance floor with former model, and newlyminted leading man, Jack Mulhall. At song’s end, someone announced that Mabel and Jack had won the trophy as the evening’s best dancers. Jack graciously accepted the cup and handed it to a

delighted Mabel who held it up it to great applause. Red-faced, Mack stood up, slammed his fist against the wall, and advanced on the happy couple. Roughly pushing Mabel aside, he knocked Mulhall flat with a crushing right-hand. Mabel rushed to grab Mack’s right arm, but slipped and landed flat, careening her trophy across the dance floor. Mabel helped out with the war effort by appearing at a New York Bond Rally. When Mabel Normand appeared from the wings, wolf whistles and all manner of whoops and shouting continued for well over a minute. The entrance was pure Mabel. She was beautifully dressed and terribly late. She greeted John Case with a hug. Mabel was secretly afraid of large crowds and would often embrace her host just to steady her nerves. After some minutes of tumult, the audience was seated. Mabel

The Silent Film Quarterly・!18 held up a gloved hand to quiet the crowd. Turning to the committee chairman, she announced, “Mr. Case, I pledge to buy a bond for $5,000!” Thundering applause greeted her announcement. “And,” she continued, “If it means anything at all, I will give a kiss to anyone who buys a bond of any amount.” A gasp hushed the crowd, as audience members exchanged wild eyed looks of sheer astonishment, “Did she just say…?” Immediately, one man stood up. And, then another. A few men began quick-stepping toward the stage, while others gave chase. And then, the dam burst. Pandemonium erupted; elbows were thrown, money was dropped. Theatre manager Arthur Hirsch and his assistants tried to restore order, but no one was listening. All over the theater, wives, and girlfriends were deserted as their loving companions bolted toward Mabel Normand. But, Mabel kept her bargain. She was escorted down the steps of the stage and stood next to the donation table wearing a not-so-innocent smile. Predictably, most men arrived with big grins and wildly beating hearts, ready to give Mabel some extra appreciation. But Mabel could handle it. After each man bought a bond, she gently touched his chin with her thumb and forefinger, turned his face to one side, and gave him a peck on the cheek. Then, she did it again, and again, for two hours. The event raised over $12,500 ($210,000 in today’s money) for the Liberty Loan Campaign. Mabel signed with Goldwyn in 1917. But as much as he tried, he could not tame her. Her excuses for being late in the morning became legendary. She once claimed to have stopped to pick up a group of soldiers in her limousine to keep them from being AWOL at Camp Merritt. “There’s a war on!” Mabel explained. “I only did my patriotic duty. Whose side are you on anyway?”

A 1918 portrait of Normand.

Finally, Sam had no choice but to deal with her himself. He sent studio janitor Herbert Terrell to Mabel’s dressing room to fetch her. Mabel immediately sent Herb back to fetch him. Growing angry, Sam called the front gate and announced that Mabel could not leave the lot until she came to see him. When Mabel heard about it she called her chauffer and said that she was leaving the lot at once. Terrell was dispatched again to Mabel’s dressing room to bring her to Sam. The huffy star sat with her arms crossed and refused to budge from her chair. Terrell, seeing his own quitting time held up indefinitely, picked Mabel up, chair and all, carried her across the lot, and deposited her in front of Sam. Mabel’s grim expression never changing. On the Goldwyn lot Mabel developed an intense competition with actress Geraldine Farrar. With the fixed purpose of annoying her, Mabel began haunting Geraldine’s sets, and, quite openly staring at her. Geraldine complained that she couldn’t act with Mabel staring at her, and Sam asked

The Silent Film Quarterly・!19 Mabel to leave. But, Mabel refused. Finally, Geraldine Farrar had a fence built around her set, only to discover Mabel staring at her through a knot hole. After Geraldine had the knot hole plugged up, she was shocked to look up and see Mabel waving at her from the rafters overlooking the stage.

What are some of the biggest misconceptions or myths about Normand that you hope your book will clear up? The biggest misconception about Mabel was that she had murdered someone. People to this day believe it. She should have gone down in history as a beloved star. Instead she was branded a criminal.

Pauline Frederick also got on Mabel’s nerves. Pauline insisted that she needed a violinist on If you could view any lost Timothy Lefler’s Mabel her set. When Pauline got Normand film, which would it Normand Viewing List her violinist, Geraldine be and why? Farrar claimed that she Mickey (1918) I would like to see the 1919 needed a string quartet on Molly O’ (1921) lost Goldwyn film Jinx. her set. When Geraldine Tomboy Bessie (1912) The story was tailor-made The Extra Girl (1923) got her string quartet, for her Mabel. She Mabel and Fatty’s Simple Life (1915) Mabel demanded a 17 portrays a circus girl A Mender of Nets (1912) piece jazz band for her set. nicknamed Jinx because And, when she got her jazz her boss thinks she brings band, she ordered it to bad luck to the company. When a happily blast away, drowning out both serpentine dancer quits, Jinx takes her Pauline’s violin, and Geraldine’s quartet. place with disastrous results. Jinx runs away

Long before her illness, the people who knew Mabel best, noted that her frenetic enthusiasms seemed to suggest a race against time. As writer James R. Quick noted, “That was the keynote of her life—her avid eagerness for all that life held. It was as though she realized in some dim way that she had not long to live.” But Mabel did live for 37 years, in her own inimitable way. And that was long enough to make memories. ・・・

Q&A with Timothy Lefler What made you choose Mabel Normand as the subject for a biography? I had always admired Mabel. I found that next to nothing was written about her. It piqued my interest. When I discovered why this amazing woman was expelled from Hollywood history, I knew I had to write a book.

to escape her boss but she is ultimately rescued by Slicker, a fellow circus performer who secretly is in love with her.

What role do you feel Normand played in the development of Charlie Chaplin's career? Without Mabel there would have been no Chaplin. Mabel and Mack spotted Charlie in a New York revue. Mack didn’t see much potential. It was Mabel who took him in and trained him in silent screen pantomime.

What were the most difficult aspects of researching and writing your book? The most difficult part of researching and writing this book was that so little of the surviving material was accurate. I found that the earlier I went back in time the better.

Timothy Lefler’s Mabel Normand: The Life and Career of a Hollywood Madcap is now available wherever books are sold.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!20

Silent Star Who Spoke Volumes: How a Queen Crowned Three Kings and Influenced a Century of Films, Laughs, and Culture by Rudy Cecera While Timothy Lefler has chosen to honor Mabel Normand through his writing, Rudy Cecera has decided to commemorate the actress’s legacy through the medium of film. Cecera has produced, written, and starred in two films about Normand’s life: Madcap Mabel (2010) and Mabel’s Dressing Room (2013). In this article, Cecera examines Mabel Normand’s comedic career as well as her continuing influence on popular culture. A Q&A about his filmmaking follows. ・・・

Who was Mabel Normand? Those who’ve never heard of her would obviously have no opinion and those who have heard of her may say she was just a silent film actress. Of course both groups would be doing her an injustice for my answer to “Who was Mabel Normand” is “The most underrated person in show business history.” Without her, Hollywood, filmmaking and especially comedy would not be what they are today. Unfortunately thanks to scandals, unfair press (which will not continue in this article), and a life cut short (she died at 37), she has never truly been given her proper place in history. Born and raised on Staten Island at the turn of the century Normand’s career started out humbly. As a former spokes model for such products as Coca-Cola, her comely face and big brown eyes were shooins for the then new medium of talking

Normand in 1922’s Head Over Heels.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!21 pictures. It’s no surprise that D.W. Griffith of Biograph Studios immediately hired her as an extra. This quickly led to bigger parts, mostly of a comedic nature where she would excel to become the genre’s first Queen. Unbeknownst to her at the time it is in this area where, in a Forrest Gumpesque way, she would begin her influence for generations to come. To prove it, we need only to examine her relationship with three comedy Kings. Mack Sennett began his career at Biograph studios where not surprisingly he was in charge of the comedy division. He was a competent writer and director and had made a name in that regard but not until he met a teenage Normand, circa 1911, did he truly become immortal. Her appearance and talents in his films made them so creatively and financially successful that he eventually created Keystone, the first, biggest and most famous comedy studio in the world. There Normand flourished as Hollywood’s first female comedienne engaging in screwball, romantic and slapstick comedy. Sennett himself claimed she was the most natural comic in the world and credited her with being his muse and inspiration. She was a damsel in distress to the famed Keystone Kops in films like Barney Oldfield’s Race for Life, a sexy role model for Sennett’s Bathing Beauties in films like The Water Nymph and the first to throw a pie on screen (an idea she supposedly improved) in the film A Noise From The Deep. The latter would become Keystone’s trademark and give Sennett the title of “The King of Comedy”. So without Sennett’s Keystone, there are no Kops, Beauties or slapstick devices that are still used today. But without Normand…there may not have been a Keystone which, in addition to creating early screen comedy, would influence future comedy films and actors. However Normand would eventually meet two other “Kings” that thanks to her would influence more than just comedy.

Pie gags were a Keystone staple.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle came to Keystone after a stint in vaudeville. He was initially hired at Keystone as one of the Kops (and perhaps because his wife Minta Durfee already worked there). Although his three hundred pound size certainly made him a presence on screen, rumor had it that Sennett thought he was too theatrical for film…enter Mabel Normand. Having a natural eye for what was funny she believed in the big man and encouraged Sennett to keep him with the proviso that she herself would work with him. The result… Hollywood’s first successful comedy team that would be the prototype for such, both man and woman (Burns & Allen) and fat and skinny (Laurel & Hardy) for years to come. Normand of course was already a star but after films like Mabel & Fatty’s Wash Day, Mabel and Fatty’s Simple Life and Wished on Mabel the same would be true of Arbuckle. In fact, not only did Normand make him acceptable as a comedian, but as a leading man. Thanks to the talent and fame he achieved from working with Normand he would eventually leave Sennett, start his own studio and become the highest paid movie star in the world. With his new found wealth and prestige he would hire another fellow vaudeville performer named Buster Keaton. So once again Normand’s influence is felt for if one believes without Normand there would be

The Silent Film Quarterly・!22 no Arbuckle and without Arbuckle no Keaton, it stands that without Normand… no Keaton. This trend would not only continue but with her influence on the next “King”…change cinema and culture. In 1914 Normand and Sennett attended the theater where they would see an unknown thespian playing a drunk. Sennett, not impressed with theater actors, dismissed him as just another music hall dancer. Of course in keeping with her eye for talent and comedy, Normand saw something more and insisted Sennett hire the young Englishman named Charlie Chaplin. Like Arbuckle, he would start at Keystone as a Kop and like Arbuckle, Sennett was unimpressed. Once again, enter Mabel Normand who so believed in Chaplin that when Sennett refused to work with him she herself agreed to direct him, a decision which alone would be a

groundbreaking one. In doing so Normand not only opened the door for future female directors, but created a legend. Chaplin’s “Tramp” outfit was first seen in the Normand film Mabel’s Strange Predicament as it was the result of her suggestion that he wear the outfit for comic effect. The large pants, rumored to be a pair of Arbuckle’s, would also cause his signature walk which in all probability was also influenced by Normand, having done it to perfection in other films. From this moment on Chaplin’s career, and film history was made. He became the “Tramp” not only visually but under Normand’s tutorage, emotionally and would later star with her in several films including Mabel at the Wheel, Mabel’s Married Life and Hollywood’s first full length feature comedy Tillie’s Punctured Romance. Like Arbuckle he too would leave Keystone and go on to use his look and his

Rudy Cecera pays tribute to Mabel Normand with his movie camera.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!23 comedy knowledge, both gained through Normand, to become the most famous film comedian in history. As noted by many, Chaplin came to Keystone as an extra but left a legend and during that process, who held his hand? Mabel Normand did. Chaplin would in turn influence hundreds, p e r h a p s t h o u s a n d s o f p e o p l e fo r generations to come. For example, comedian Lou Costello of Abbott & Costello fame claimed Chaplin is the reason he entered show business. So once again, without Normand there is no Chaplin, without Chaplin there’s no Lou Costello so therefore without Normand… would we have a “Who’s On First” routine or the classic horror satire “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein”? The influence of Sennett, Arbuckle and Chaplin alone would be enough to secure Normand’s worth but by osmosis, if we were to list the people influenced by Normand’s influence… it would be a who’s who of show business. Of course by herself Normand’s talents were vast. As the Queen of Comedy she was funny, did her own stunts, wrote many of her own scripts and eventually produced her own feature film Mickey at her own studio. Her comic talents opened the doors for other witty woman like Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett and Tina Fey. In addition, her accomplishments as director, which were recently recognized by the Library of Congress by naming her film Mabel’s

Blunder to their National Registry, did the same for female directors like Nora Ephron, Penny Marshall and Katheryn Bigelow. In fact, one can even speculate that actress Berenice Bejo’s resemblance to Normand in the Oscar winning film The Artist, a movie about the silent movie era, could be homage to her somewhat forgotten predecessor. Bottom line, when now asked the question “Who was Mabel Normand”…you’ll know. So the next time you see an image of Chaplin, watch a male/female or fat/skinny comedy team, laugh at a pratfall or pie-in-the-face or just buy a Coke…think of the young, pretty, talented Queen from Staten Island who helped make it all possible. ・・・

Q&A with Rudy Cecera How were you introduced to Mabel Normand and her films? I found out about Mabel peripherally while reading up on Mack Sennett and Keystone. Of course this was before the internet and DVDs. When I heard there was a silent movie actress that was doing stuff like Chaplin, Arbuckle and the Keystone Kops, I wanted to know more about her. At the time the only resources available to me were old, fuzzy and expensive VHS tapes that contained some of her films. I bought them, watched and fell in love with Mabel and her talent.

Kristina Thompson in Mabel’s Dressing Room (left), emulating the actual Mabel Normand (right).

The Silent Film Quarterly・!24

The posters for Rudy Cecera’s two Mabel Normand films.

What is your background in filmmaking? Did you always anticipate using the art form to pay tribute to the silent era? I have always been interested in film but other than a few courses in college, I never had any formal training for it. I basically learned by doing. I bought a camcorder back in the day and began making funny videos and when I finally decided to make my own film I hired a director and we filmed a script I wrote. It wasn’t about the silent film era but it contained lots of broad, physical comedy. After that I decided I to do something on what inspired that type of comedy… Mabel.

Madcap Mabel deals with the issue of Normand’s legacy. Do you think she has been treated fairly by fans and the media in the century since her heyday? Unfortunately, I do NOT think Mabel has been treated fairly. In fact, I feel she is the most underrated person in

entertainment history. Yes, there is a core group of people that know and love her but many still do not. The problem is as she died so young, she never even made it to the sound era so she didn’t really carry over. Also, by surrounding herself with such larger than life characters like Chaplin, Arbuckle and Sennett, all of whom outlived her, she kind of gets lost in the shuffle. A real shame considering she helped all of their careers.

What were the most difficult aspects of channeling the Keystone comedies in your work? The most rewarding? Well when you enjoy something, nothing about it seems difficult but one of the challenges in making my short films was learning the slang and language of that period and more importantly, having the actors deliver it in a believable matter. Try saying “the bee’s knees” without sounding corny. The most rewarding aspect, other than the six festivals my films made, was getting

The Silent Film Quarterly・!25

Another photo of actress Kristina Thompson channeling Mabel Normand in Mabel’s Dressing Room.

viewers may not have noticed them, these things made it feel like Mabel was there in spirit.

Do you have any future plans to help preserve and perpetuate the legacy of Miss Normand?

things to actually look the way that they did back then. I recreated the keystone lot complete with vintage cars and costumes, William Desmond Taylor’s bungalow complete with a piano and candlestick phone and Mabel’s dressing room complete with furniture and objects on her vanity table. In fact, I had some of her actual belongings on loan to me from the collection of film historian Marilyn Slater. They included her eye-brow pencil holder, gloves and cigarette box. Even though

Yes, this summer I will be doing an offBroadway play on her which is based on my short film Mabel’s Dressing Room. Of course my ultimate goal is to get a feature length movie made about her life and career for which I’ve already written the screenplay titled Madcap Mabel which of course is the title and long version of my other short film. If anyone’s interested in knowing more about please let me know!

For information on how to obtain copies of Rudy Cecera’s short films Madcap Mabel and Mabel’s Dressing Room, please contact him at: RJC722@aol.com

The Silent Film Quarterly・!26

Treasure in the Junkpile: A Firsthand Account of Silent Film Discovery by Rachael Grant In the middle of 2015, the silent film community was stunned by the news that a collection of century-old film reels had been discovered in Sidmouth, England. Rachael Grant and her father, Mike, were responsible for recognizing the importance of the films that were languishing in a local recycling center. The story was picked up by such publications as the Daily Mail, and silent film fans around the globe chimed in on the significance of such a find. Shortly after the announcement of her discovery, Silent Film Quarterly reached out to Rachael. In this exclusive article, she shares the story of the remarkable discovery. ・・・

I was brought up by my dad to hunt for treasure in junk piles and at car boot sales, and have done regular rounds of second-hand shops and local dumps since I was a child. We have found many weird, wonderful and exciting things, with finds ranging from 18 th century books to personal letters exchanged between longdead people who have only left their first names, defunct addresses and correspondence behind for scrutiny. However, while all of these finds are exciting in their own ways, none could measure up to what my dad and I found at our local dump in June 2015. I won’t take credit for the find, since my dad—Mike Grant—was the one who followed the clues and made the big discovery. Our local recycling centre— known as ‘the dump’—had a large shed of sorts where salvaged items could be sold to the public. Now, most of what was there

The Silent Film Quarterly・!27 was junk: waterdamaged books, old VHS tapes, moldy rag dolls, etc. But long years of experience have taught us to look past what’s immediately on display, and dig deep. M y d a d fi r s t caught the trail when he noticed two reels of 16mm color corporate films from the 1950s. While interesting, they w e r e n’t e s p e c i a l l y exciting, given the rather dry nature of their contents. What’s most important is that they drove him to have an unusually close look

A still from the 1909 Pathé short Jane Is Unwilling to Work—previously thought lost.

The Glove, a 1910 Italian film previously unknown with English intertitles.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!28

Another still from The Cardboard Lover (1928).

around the shed—and that’s when he spotted a large, rusting metal barrel wedged behind a metal bookcase. After pulling the barrel free, Dad forced it open and discovered that it was packed full of films. We couldn’t fully examine the films there and then, but I swiftly realized that some of them were old —very old indeed. Even more importantly, some of the films were on 35mm nitrate film stock, and I knew precisely how special that made them. I have loved silent film with a passion ever since getting a free DVD of Metropolis with a weekend newspaper when I was a teen, and while I was no expert I immediately realized that we had discovered something amazing. Making such a find in one of our regular haunts was almost surreal. It was a struggle to contain my excitement! Playing it as cool as we could, we took the films to the man at the counter. Clearly

completely ignorant about what he was looking at, the man shrugged his shoulders and told us he’d charge £10 for the lot. I’ve never handed over a note as fast in my life! We weren’t able to take stock of what we’d found until we returned home after the mundane business of the day. I remember gingerly handling the films in the backseat of my parents’ car as they did the weekly shop, anxiously attempting (and failing!) to wind fragments of stray centuryold film back onto the right reels. The first order of business upon returning home was to assess what we had, and to try to figure out how best to store and protect the films. It’s difficult to describe what a complete mess they were in when we first found them. The top half of the barrel was occupied by five 16mm films, most of which were stored within individual tins. A few of these 16mm films had labels—one, for example, was a black-

The Silent Film Quarterly・!29 and-white print of the animated short Little Buck Cheezer (which we would later learn still exists in color). These films were pretty well preserved. The reels beneath, unfortunately, had fared less well. At the bottom of the barrel was the real treasure: five reels of 35mm nitrate film. It quickly became clear that the reels represented different films from radically different eras—in one, we caught glimpses of an exotic coastal landscape; in another, elegantly dressed nobles paraded through a distinctly fake-looking set. The nitrate films were horribly tangled up, and none were in tins; their only protection had been the rusted barrel. Their condition got worse towards the bottom of the barrel, with the final reel a sticky, unsalvageable mess. Also at the bottom were fragments of footage from various films in torn and crumbling fragments. At this point, my dad and I hit a stumbling block. We were both complete

a m a t e u r s w h e n i t c a m e t o fi l m preservation, and while my dad had an old home movie projector, it wasn’t fit to show any of the films we had found—besides, we knew it would be a bad idea to even attempt to play the films ourselves, on account of their age and fragility. Quick research into nitrate film quickly yielded troubling findings—most pertinently, the fact that our house insurance would be invalidated if we kept the films indoors! To my not-inconsiderable distress, we were left with no choice but to pack the films into a robust cardboard box and store them in a garden shed! I’m not the maternal type, but while the films were stored outside, I developed the habit of checking on them constantly in the manner of an anxious mother hen. I even sacrificed my waterproof coat so it could be used to protect the films in the event of rain! In the meantime, we had two key breakthroughs in quick succession. The

One of the reels discovered by the Grants remains unidentified, despite the best efforts of experts.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!30 first involved the Doctor Who Missing Episodes Facebook group, where I posted about the find to ask for advice. The members of the group were extremely helpful, and were able to give me contacts at the BFI—the only organization I knew of that had the resources to properly care for the films. The other breakthrough, and the really exciting one, will probably horrify anyone familiar with how archive film should be properly handled. My dad had the idea of using a commercial slide convertor to take high-quality scans of individual frames from the reels (before, we had only been able to hold the film up to the light and take clumsy camera photos). This yielded some truly extraordinary and exciting images, with the screencaps accompanying this article being the products of this method. The scans brought the films vividly to life. Suddenly, we could make out faces, intertitles and locations. From this point forward, things started moving quickly. We began getting IDs on the films, with contributors from various silent film Facebook groups and the Nitrateville forums using their extraordinary knowledge to achieve the remarkable feat of matching the films to old newspaper listings. The film with the extravagantly costumed actors turned out to be Il Guanto (The Glove), a 1910 Italian film from Ambrosio Studios. While it later emerged that the film already existed, our copy is the only one with English intertitles. Another film was a humorous 1909 Pathe short titled Jane Is Unwilling To Work. To the best of my knowledge, it is the only copy to survive in any form. Perhaps most excitingly for American silent film fans, one of the reels contained the beginning of The Cardboard Lover, a 1928 Marion Davies film. While a copy of this film is held by the Library of Congress, our copy had a crisper image and intertitles localized for English viewers.

Things snowballed. A local newspaper picked up on the find, and soon we were getting enquiries from the national press. We were overwhelmed by the attention, and ended up turning down some offers of interviews and coverage. I was in the middle of moving to another part of the country at the time for a new job, and there was too much going on to handle! Most importantly, however, all of this attention and interest finally made the importance of the find—and the urgency of the requirement for preservation—clear to the right people. Specialist couriers were arranged, and after much trial and error, the films were finally safely sent to the BFI nitrate archive, where they remain to this day. We haven’t found out much more about the films since they were received by the archive, but what we have discovered has been fascinating. There is far more to the reels than what my dad could unwind and pass through his slide scanner, and it turns out that some of the reels are patchworks, combining footage from several completely different films. One of them, for example, is said to have contained a fragment of red-tinted film showing a female firefighter tackling a blaze! My contact at the archive has explained that the reels probably represent the personal collection of a cinema projectionist, since some hobbyists would hold back damaged fragments from reels at the end of a film’s run, patch them together and keep them for private use. We’ll probably never know who the films belonged to or how such precious material ended up being thrown onto a junk pile in Devon. But what I do know is that it’s miraculous that they survived. I’m very proud of what my dad and I achieved in finding the films and getting them to the right people, and am delighted to have helped save some precious pieces of film history. I hope this story gives others hope that similar finds are still out there, just waiting for the right people to make them.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!31

The Man Behind the Myth: A Look At Rudolph Valentino’s Varied Hobbies by Donna Hill Perhaps more than any other star of the silent era, Rudolph Valentino is steeped in so much myth and lore that it is sometimes difficult to remember that he was a real person. In this article, biographer and researcher Donna Hill exposes the more human side of the “Latin Lover” by looking at his numerous (and often times relatable) hobbies. ・・・ Today it is difficult to separate the mythology of Rudolph Valentino the film sheik from the man hidden behind that myth; his screen persona is legendary. Nearly every volume or article devoted to Valentino from the time of his passing in 1926 to now has examined the mythology. The myth obscures the truth. Rudolph Valentino was an extraordinary screen personality and a very ordinary man. Unlike the stereotypical Italian immigrant coming to the United States, Valentino was neither poor nor uneducated when he docked in New York on December 23, 1913. Valentino came from a comfortable middle class family who had suffered a common tragedy, the loss of his father, the family breadwinner. Valentino’s youth was not misspent, nor was he kicked out of the family. He was the indulged middle boy of three children, charming, and by all accounts more than a bit of a rascal. He was educated, but he was by no means an academic. He spoke Italian, French, English, Spanish and, later on, a little German. Nonetheless, he was no angel and his journey to the land of dreams was designed, by the architect himself. His brother later said of him, “He always said Italy is too small for me.” He was correct, Valentino needed a bigger stage and certainly got it.

Valentino’s first loves stayed with him his entire life, and many became bona fide hobbies. Among them was a fascination with mechanical things such as automobiles and cameras. He also loved horses and riding; he enjoyed this part of the curriculum at the Istituto di Agraria de Sant’Illario in Nervi, near Genoa where he studied in his early teen years. There, he got high marks for his penmanship and was bored by mathematics. The military-style schooling appealed to him, the regimental style, not so much. He was regularly disciplined for one infraction of the rules or another. He loved football (soccer) and fencing; a skill later revisited for Monsieur Beaucaire. After he became a star, a man of means, Rudolph Valentino had many interests besides making the best films he could. He was a man who was interested in everything. As fame brought him wealth, he was much able to indulge his whims and interests. When Valentino traveled from Italy to America in 1913, he upgraded his passage from second class to first so he could hobnob with the class of people he sought to associate himself with. He spent the time wisely improving his command of English and charming American girls, but his choice didn’t improve his nest egg. He also met more experienced Italians who proffered sound advice for life in America —advice he very likely did not take. O n e t r a i t Va l e n t i n o c a r r i e d throughout his short life was to spend whatever he had in his pockets, and sometimes more than he had in his pockets. This and the lack of a job initially caused him some heartache in his first year in America. Once he started earning a good living, one of his indulgences was fine clothing. In his career as a dance partner to Bonnie Glass and later to Joan Sawyer he needed fine clothes. Records indicate he bought suits at Brooks Brothers in New York. Later, after he became a high paid and high powered movie star, he visited

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!32

Fine clothing was one of Valentinoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

Athletic Club. Valentino (again, like Fairbanks) went so far to pen (or a ghostwrite) a book on fitness entitled How You Can Keep Fit published by Physical Culture Magazine owned by Bernarr MacFadden (media magnate and bizarre health fanatic of the teens and twenties). Valentino had few vices with regard to his physical health. He was a serious chain smoker. He smoked unfiltered and imported, specially made monogrammed cigarettes. He liked odd smoking devices and he also enjoyed smoking a pipe and had several in his collection. He had numerous cigarette cases, all silver or gold, monogrammed and well used. It is a rare photo of him where he does not have a cigarette in hand. He did consume alcohol, and drank wine, even with prohibition in full swing. Other than this, he prided himself on being in superb shape.

Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s famed Bond Street and patronized Anderson Sheppard and other purveyors of fine duds. Like Douglas Fairbanks, he enjoyed his reputation as a bit of a clotheshorse. He lounged in silk pajamas, wore handmade and monogrammed silk shirts and had drawers full of monogrammed pocket squares. After his death, his estate catalogue listed among the many lots of clothing, 60 pairs of gloves, 10 business suits, 7 Palm Beach suits, 10 dress suits, 22 vests, 28 pairs of spats, 111 assorted ties, 146 pairs of socks and 59 pairs of shoes. Also up for auction were his many pairs of silk drawers. Valentino also kept some costumes from his films, and spent upwards of $15,000 in 1926 for some of the accoutrements wore in his final film The Son of the Sheik. Another avocation Valentino shared with Douglas Fairbanks was a love of the outdoors and exercise. Valentino was a notable health addict, long before a buff body was something that was both fashionable and demanded of our screen idols. He worked out at home, at the studio and was a member of the Los Angeles

Fitness was a shared hobby of Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks.

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!33

Valentino with one of his unique smoking devices.

He loved cars! From his earliest days he had a fascination with all things mechanical. In Italy he ran around in a beat up Fiat. One of the enduring legends is of one of his first failed jobs in the U.S. was working for Cornelius Bliss as a

gardener. He got himself fired by stealing and wrecking a motorcycle. When he arrived in Hollywood, he drove what he could and borrowed money to purchase a 1915 Cadillac which he immediately took apart and rebuilt. He was proud of his work and drove the car into the ground. If fame had not come his way, he may well have ended up as a mechanic in a garage. He likely would have been just as happy and contented. He was a notorious fast and somewhat reckless driver, with a need for speed. He also was also nearsighted, which caused plenty of close shaves driving when he visited Europe in 1923. Of course, being a simple mechanic would not have allowed Valentino to indulge in very expensive cars, like the Voisin and his enormous and enormously expensive Isotta Fraschini ($28,000 in 1925). His three car garage at Falcon Lair

Valentino was fascinated by cars from his earliest days.

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!34

Valentino is seen with his Isotta (above) and Voisin (below).

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!35 had a deep pit to work under the car and a gas pump so he would not have to buy his gas from the local Flying A. Valentino also drove a Franklin Coupe around town and had a Ford truck for work on the property. Valentino enjoyed donning a pair of coveralls and taking everything apart down to the chassis. It was a good day that allowed him to play like this. Valentino was also able to indulge his whims and passion for horses and dogs. There is no evidence of his loving cats except Natacha's pet lioness cub Zela and a fondness for their pet monkey. Valentino's favorite of his many dogs was likely the Doberman, Kabar. Many legends have arisen about Kabar, including stories that he haunted Falcon Lair. I suspect the truth was he loved his master and mourned him deeply after his passing. Valentino cared for all his pets: numerous dogs of various breeds and four horses in the stables. Valentino loved riding, and according to Lillian Gish, he designed riding clothes for both Lillian and her sister Dorothy. Before he could purchase and house his own stable of four, he rented horses and enjoyed cantering the path running down Sunset Blvd. He also loved riding through the canyons of Palm Springs and the hills surrounding Falcon Lair in Beverly Hills. The stables at Falcon Lair were quite posh, by horse standards and also housed kennels for his numerous dogs. He recorded his travels and adventures by taking photographs. He had a brownie, or some other camera from his earliest days

Valentino and his crashed automobile.

Rudy and Kabar.

in America. Many candid photos of him posing on walks, in NY, and on tour survive. His own snapshots were preserved in his own meticulous scrapbooks; although not always well composed, his photographs do show a flair. As his personal wealth grew, he was able to invest in much more expensive camera and movie equipment, such as top of the line Debrie cameras from France. He is using a Debrie to film Natacha in the photo shown here. He also shot home movies while traveling and even on the sets of his movies. The mechanics of photography fascinated him. Nobody was safe. When Valentino wrecked his Isotta Fraschini, he did not waste time while waiting for his handyman to bring another car and a trailer to get the wreck to the mechanic, he took photos of the banged up vehicle and the crowd of interested locals to pass the time. Valentino also had the opportunity to travel, which he enjoyed, but did not get the chance to do all that much. He stayed in America from 1913 to 1923 when he was finally able to return to Italy and also see Great Britain, where he visited Crabbet Stables to attempt to purchase his own Arabian horse. In 1924 he visited Spain on his summer trip to Europe. He hobnobbed with the rich and famous, the peerage and the royals as often as he could. He had a love of the finer things in life and being one of the biggest movie stars of the era

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!36

Valentino films a home movie on the set of A Sainted Devil (above), and photographing his wife Natacha Rambova (below).

The Silent Film Quarterlyă&#x192;ť!37

The interior of Falconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lair.

enabled him to do that. He did not have to shelves of his library. He spent his salary seek out the rich and famous, they flocked freely, but when he died, his carefully to him. curated collections were scattered to the Valentino collected four winds to pay his many books, armor, weapons and debts. other beautiful things he Valentino tried to make displayed at his home friends where ever he was. Fa l c o n L a i r. H e t o o k Although he sought to particular care in placing improve his station in life, he each item, be it an antique was also an ordinary man, gauntlet, a knife or sword, who liked nothing better or statue, he knew where than putting on a pair of everything was, and coveralls and taking his car designed the display areas apart just to figure out how himself. His collection of it ran. b o o k s i n c l u d e d fi n e numbered sets of the works Donna Hill is the author of of Flaubert and books on Rudolph Valentino, the heraldry and costumes. Silent Idol: His Life in Travel books on Spain and The always opulent Valentino. Photographs.â&#x20AC;Š Arabia also graced the

The Silent Film Quarterly・!38

“Is That ME…Or My Ghost?”: The Two Baby Peggys by Mark Pruett Diana Serra Cary, better known to silent film fans as Baby Peggy, is the last surviving silent film star. Despite her brief time in Hollywood (she had all but retired by the age of six), she has remained a beloved figure to fans. Her books have shed invaluable light on working as a child actress during the silent era. In this article, Mark Pruett explores Baby Peggy’s career, through her own writings and archival documents. The next issue of Silent Film Quarterly will feature an exclusive interview with Diana Serra Cary; it is my hope that this article will serve as an introduction for those who are unfamiliar with her story, and a refresher for those who are. ・・・

“It seemed there was no end to the uses one could make of a child star in the complex world of grownups.” —Diana Serra Cary, Hollywood’s Children It is a lovely paradox that as the era of silent film recedes ever further into the past, its scattered artifacts only clamor more urgently for our attention. Several crucial fragments of the film legacy of Baby Peggy—a jigsaw puzzle no one expects to complete—dropped into place l a s t O c t o b e r w i t h t h e re l e a s e o f Undercrank Productions’ DVD of The Family Secret. Restored from 35mm materials by the Library of Congress and buoyed by a new score composed and performed by Ben Model, the 1924 Universal feature gives us our clearest glimpse yet of this extraordinary child star, already nearing the peak of her film career. The speed of her development is revealed in two accompanying Century shorts, released when she was just three and five years of age. In new restorations by The

The Silent Film Quarterly・!39

Museum of Modern Art, Circus Clowns (1922) and Miles of Smiles (1923) document the leap in Peggy’s ability to fine-tune her performance, a skill made necessary not only by Century’s demanding five-day shooting schedule but by her father’s insistence on strict obedience to his (and the director’s) on-set commands. We can see why Peggy charmed audiences when these films were new. Her goggle-eyed double takes in comic scenes, her startling self-possession in dramatic ones—the DVD is filled with examples of her winsome appeal. In the plots of the films we may notice something else: remnants of Victorian melodrama so similar that they suggest a recurring theme. For while the films collected on the

Undercrank DVD span two and a half years in Peggy’s career (reflecting the vagaries of silent film survival), they share one constant. All three, comedy or drama, make separation and loss the heart of Baby Peggy’s predicament. In Circus Clowns, the earliest short, she performs in a circus act with Brownie the dog, having been kidnapped and put to work by an unscrupulous ringmaster. Her distraught parents hire a detective to find her. In Miles of Smiles, she’s a lost child, a twin who strays from her wealthy family’s home in infancy and is rescued by the operator of a lakeside railroad attraction. Having no clue to her real identity, he takes her in and raises her as his own. In The Family Secret she is alienated from both her

The Silent Film Quarterly・!40 parents, denied the physical presence of one and the emotional presence of the other. A vengeful grandfather has had her father imprisoned to keep him away from her mother. The mother, grieving over her husband’s inexplicable disappearance, languishes in bed while her attending nurse keeps Peggy at bay: “You’ve been told to keep out of here—you make your mother nervous!” The separation of the child from her family was not the only, or even the most common, plot device in the Century tworeelers, of course—they were comedies! Those that survive run the gamut from slapstick to satire. But as the adult Peggy, Diana Serra Cary, explains in her autobiography, What Ever Happened To Baby Peggy (1996), her ability to move an audience to tears was already in Carl Laemmle’s mind when her father went to see the head of Universal late in 1922 to complain about her salary. Universal was then earning upwards of ten times what it paid Century for the distribution rights to Peggy’s comedies, but Laemmle believed her true potential had yet to be tapped. He was eager to sign her to Universal for a series of feature-length weepers, confident that her ability to shed tears on demand would have moviegoers sobbing along. “To be taken seriously,” Laemmle said, “a child star should make you cry.” The sudden increase in her salary from $750 to $10,000 per week gave new meaning to Baby Peggy’s publicity value. Century’s Julius and Abe Stern had laid the groundwork by inserting their tiny star into society events, banquets, and organized amusements (like a beachfront beauty contest) where she was sure to be photographed. By the time Laemmle signed Peggy to Universal, parents accustomed to reading about “the youngest star in the world” in movie magazines and newspapers were buying Baby Peggy dolls for their children. Glowing reviews of her films had been commonplace in the studio’s own Moving Picture Weekly (now

Universal Weekly). As Peggy’s first “Universal Jewel,” The Darling of New York, was readied for release in late 1923, Laemmle put the studio’s full weight behind trade-journal spreads aimed at exhibitors. The little girl in the glare of this spotlight, we now know, was experiencing a peculiar and far-reaching estrangement from herself. Fame imposed a kind of solitude that no one seemed willing to acknowledge. Why would they, when her mother insisted to reporters that Peggy regarded her eight-hour-a-day, six-day work week as mere play? Doubts and uncertainties aboutthe effects of unrelenting public scrutiny on a five-yearold child surfaced in popular movie magazines like errant bubbles on an ocean of ballyhoo. Myrtle Gebhart (Picture-Play Magazine, Jan. 1924) was vaguely troubled by what she termed Peggy’s “machine-like response to instructions.” She explained: “I doubt that she feels what she is doing so very much. She opens her eyes pop-wide on order, she smiles, she cries.” Still, film work “hasn’t squashed her. She is, despite the rôle assumed for the moment, always Peggy, a quaint, lovable child.” Gebhart declared it a good sign that Peggy “takes everything very seriously.” Even the frankest of such articles tempered any misgivings about Peggy’s long hours and punishing promotional schedule with assurances that she was enjoying a normal childhood. In “What Will Become of Baby Peggy?,” published in Picture-Play a month later, Helen Klumph wrote a critical, though kind, assessment of Peggy’s father, Jack Montgomery, who described (not for the first time) his unstinting efforts at “managing her affairs.” Having already cited Mary Pickford’s disdain for parents who would trade a child’s nurturing home life for the cold comfort of studio artifice, Klumph skewered Montgomery in a single line:

The Silent Film Quarterly・!41 “For Peggy has been not only the darling of his heart—she has been his gold mine.” When she turned to look at Peggy, however, the writer could see only the blissfully contented subject of her parents’ long- running fairy tale, a series of fan-ready anecdotes invented to hide the family’s unglamorous past. Not only was she “one of the healthiest, most unspoiled, most perfectly normal children I have ever met,” Klumph wrote, but “Peggy does not know that her experience has been any different from most other children’s.” Diana Cary’s autobiography exposes the sad irony of that assessment. Peggy believed most other children worked to support their parents, as she did. In fact she had no friends her own age. Catching a cold—or worse, a serious illness—from another child would spell disaster to her work routine and publicity obligations. Her parents saw to it that her time was spent in the company of adults. Shaping an identity in the absence of playmates was difficult enough. It was further complicated by the magnified presence of the little girl she saw onscreen. Cary writes, “I was self-aware enough to realize that in a certain sense she was not the real me. She was the larger- than-life projection of Baby Peggy these moviegoers saw but whom they did not know. I was made uncomfortable by their adulation because it was not being lavished on me for anything I had done, but as though merely being a child were somehow a noble achievement, deserving in itself.” When her mother read her fan mail to her (estimated to have reached 10,000 letters a week by 1924), what Cary describes as “this odd, one-sided human connection around the

globe” had a curiously alienating effect on little Peggy. “These total strangers,” she says, “all wrote as if they knew me well…” In reality, she told Tim Lussier in a 1999 interview, “nobody knew who I was—I mean me. So I had this terrific personality that the whole world knew, and then I had me to deal with.” Peggy would star in three features for Universal: The Darling of New York (1923), The Law Forbids, and The Family Secret (both 1924). But even before the first of these films was in theaters, Jack Montgomery would move Peggy from Universal to Principal Pictures, signing her with Sol Lesser in the fall of 1923. On the Universal lot, her well-appointed dressing room, like the studio’s pretty Spanish architecture and city-like setting, was tangible evidence of the colossal boost in Peggy’s salary that had so invigorated her parents’ social standing. Now the stakes were staggeringly higher. Sol Lesser was paying $1.5 million, plus a $500,000 signing bonus, for three pictures in the first year. The contract set in motion a juggernaut of personal appearances that would shuttle Peggy from one photo opportunity to another, from teeming cities

The Silent Film Quarterly・!42 to remote whistle-stops, month after month, for much of the year to come. It got under way the week she turned five, in late October 1923. Principal’s publicity director, Harry Wilson, writing in Exhibitors Herald a month later, proudly documented the first nine days of her New York launch. He and his staff had worked nonstop for two weeks, he said, concocting “dignified exploitation stunts” that would keep Peggy in the public eye. One dignified stunt had her photographed while touring children’s hospitals. “No one had prepared me,” Cary tells us, “for the emotional ordeal—especially for a young child—of going from ward to ward, bed to bed, trying to cheer up children that I could see were chronically ill, crippled, or even dying, although I gave it my best.” She was left little time to reflect. From the moment she arrived in New York, she was beset by news photographers (Wilson counted seventeen at the train station). They were waiting for her at the Biltmore

Hotel amid a “huge throng of admirers and fans.” After facing the cameras for an

hour and a half, she spent the remainder of the day “consumed by interviews.” And so it went. An early morning haircut: “Cameramen advised and appear for more pictures.” A birthday banquet in the Biltmore’s grand ballroom boasted five hundred guests, anchored by members of the National Press Association, and a dozen photographers. Sol Lesser spoke, as did moneyman Joseph Schenk and Jack Montgomery, while Peggy posed for pictures alongside a mountainous birthday cake. The top layer of the cake was photographed a second time when Peggy shared it with children at the New York Foundling Home. Thanks to Wilson’s pledge to exploit Peggy “from every angle possible,” reporters and cameramen lay in wait at Macy’s, at F.A.O. Schwartz, at Gimbel’s, in the editorial offices of newspapers, fan magazines, and radio stations, at parks and sightseeing venues, and at arranged meetings with prominent New Yorkers, including the banker A. H. Giannini and the popular columnists Rose Pelswick and Nellie Revell. For a week she performed nightly with a costumed chorus at the majestic Hippodrome Theater. At the conclusion of each toy-themed extravaganza, she stood alone on stage and delivered a speech to the mass of spectators beyond the footlights. The “In Person” tour lasted nearly six months. Upon the release of Captain January, brothers Sol and Irving M. Lesser inserted a twenty-page “Baby Peggy Campaign Book” in Exhibitors Trade Review (July 19, 1924), trumpeting the product tie-ins (or “TieUps”) lined up for exploitation. “FIFTEEN manufacturers are putting out Baby Peggy

The Silent Film Quarterly・!43 Products,” Irving Lesser had announced in the previous two issues of the weekly. Now, on the introductory page of the Campaign Book, Sol crowed, “More than 30 Baby Peggy products are on the market.” And on the next page: “There are no fewer than fifty nationally advertised products definitely linked to Baby Peggy—and bearing her name.” Whatever their number, there seemed no limit to the national appetite for cashing in on Captain January’s diminutive star. Peggy’s name and photos were attached to ads for hats, dolls, paper dolls, underwear, socks, coats and suits, handkerchiefs, security blanket fasteners, stationery, books, and Westphal’s Egg Shampoo Cream and Auxiliator. Theater owners were encouraged to mount window displays showing off these products alongside Principal’s own Captain January artwork: lithographs, lobby cards, photos of Baby Peggy on tour, oil paintings, and—an unwitting stroke of symbolism—a cardboard cutout of a life preserver, with Peggy’s face at the center. Despite the publicity schemes, the months of touring, and the Lessers’ assurance of the “stupendous pulling power” of product tie-ins, Principal’s profits on Captain January were…reportedly nil. When Sol Lesser informed Peggy’s father that her second feature, Helen’s Babies, had likewise shown no profit, Jack Montgomery exploded. He was certain that Lesser had used the balance sheet to hide the profits of Peggy’s pictures amid the losses of inferior productions, but his heated dispute with Lesser led nowhere. In anger Montgomery cancelled his daughter’s contract. The break with Lesser marked the beginning of the end of Peggy’s silent film career (she would make April Fool for poverty row studio Chadwick a year later). It also signaled the onset of what Cary calls “grim times” for the family. In the struggle for money that recalled the earliest days of t h e i r m a r r i a g e, t h e M o n t g o m e r y s redoubled their efforts to exploit Baby

Peggy’s residual drawing power. Before Peggy could conceive of a life apart from her public persona, “the Baby”—she turned seven in 1925—was propelled into the first of four grueling years in vaudeville. More years would pass before she could jettison Baby Peggy—and decades before she could embrace her again, willingly this time and on her own terms. It is our knowledge of this long-delayed but healing acceptance that makes watching those early silents so moving. A film like Miles of Smiles, the Century short about twin girls separated in infancy, now seems remarkably prescient. When the lost twin is led fortuitously back home, she spies her identical twin sister and exclaims, “Is that ME…or my ghost?” In the closing shots, with the family at last intact, the two Peggys look at each other as if for the first time, astonished, perplexed, then overcome by laughter. Reconciled. ・・・ My thanks to the Media History Digital Library for its wonderful scans of the early movie magazines and trades referenced here. Additionally, Diana Serra Cary’s books Hollywood’s Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979) and What Ever Happened To Baby Peggy (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), and Tim Lussier’s 1999 interview, “Baby Peggy: An Interview with Diana Serra Cary” (silentsaregolden.com).

Mark Pruett is the author of Dead Wax, a novel. His short story “Extras,” set during the heyday of Hollywood movie serials, appeared in Issue Eight of Thuglit, available on Amazon. A recent appreciation of Chaplin, “The Awakening Heart: Chaplin’s The Vagabond,” may be read online at www.silentsaregolden.com.

The images in this article are glass slides from the personal collection of Kevin John Charbeneau, whose collection was previously featured in Issue 3 of Silent Film Quarterly.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!44

On Early Actresses: Asta Nielsen, Lillian Gish, and the Spread of European Naturalism by Mark L. Evans Silent films can be appreciated in a number of different ways—as pure entertainment, as a time machine to the past, or as a serious art-form. Mark L. Evans takes the latter approach in this article on one of Europe’s most famous silent film stars who is unjustly forgotten in America. Asta Nielsen’s craft was incredibly influential, not only on her home continent but also across the Atlantic, where one of Hollywood’s greatest stars emulated her distinctive style. ・・・ By the end of the silent cinema era, most would agree, the acting—as well as production values—of the medium had grown leaps and bounds to reach a real zenith. Sadly, these later gems are not what usually come to mind when silent films are mentioned. Many moder n viewers associate silent acting with the wild theatrical gestures of the stage (which, indeed, were already becoming outmoded in the legitimate theater even then) and many middle aged and older today immediately think of bizarre, plotless excerpts shown on television from the 1950s through the 1970s, almost always at too fast a film speed. “The very thought of silent-film actors sends some people into hysterics,” film historian Kevin Brownlow wrote in his seminal 1968 book, The Parade’s Gone By. “They imagine the acting of those days having as much subtlety as a cavalry charge.” Yet he admitted that, at least in the early days, “Popular illusion often contains a germ of truth.” The quality of American films showed steady, sometimes meteoric

growth from Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery in 1903 until another seminal film, D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation in 1915. During that time, acting was transformed to something much more akin to today’s art. The question of which actress introduced naturalistic film acting in the United States is intriguing. It would appear that the most influential actress of the yearly years on an international basis was Danish star Asta Nielsen. Considered the first European (maybe even international) movie star, Nielsen burst onto the scene with the highly impressive Afgrunden (or The Abyss) in 1910 and followed it with such films as Die Arme Jenny, all platforms for her quite restrained and elegant technique. Film historian and preservationist James Card lauded her influence in his Seductive Cinema: The Art of Silent Film. “In 1911 Asta Nielsen’s pictures began to arrive in this country. The contribution

Asta Nielsen on the cover of a 1920s booklet.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!45

Nielsen in what is perhaps her most famous role: 1921’s Hamlet, a radical interpretation of Shakespeare’s story.

of Asta Nielsen to the art of acting was profound and lasting; she was the first great actress of the screen whose work commanded the respect accorded to talented performers of the theatre.” Nielsen, usually working under the direction of her husband Urban Gad, worked in both Denmark and Germany, turning out more than a decade of memorable performances. Know by her first name like more contemporary celebrities such as Cher and Madonna, she worked under the name die Asta. “Miss Nielsen has put the naturalism of truth into her pictures,” Hanford Judson wrote in Moving Picture World in `1914, reviewing Behind Comedy’s Mask. “With one emotion in it opening the door to another. In her clown’s queer dress she has not a

whisper of direct help in her portrayal of grief. Her dress and make-up are both against her, but as Asta Nielsen makes the grief-stricken mother rush from the theater to the bedside and pray in her agony, it is like a cry from the depth of the spirit. The impression rings true with no counter suggestions and is carried to us solely by facial expressions.” “Asta Nielsen created more than fortyfive film roles,” Card noted, “many of them are glowing performances that still illumine the motion picture’s past.” Others agree. “Asta Nielsen’s film debut in 1910 occurred at a time of radical changes in the cinematic public sphere,” Thomas Elaesser wrote in A Second Life: German Cinema’s First Decades. “As the cinema was

The Silent Film Quarterly・!46

A Dutch poster for 1927’s Agitated Women.

leaving behind its connection with traveling fairs and the variety theater, where it had originated, it entered into competition with the theater and prepared itself to be the mass medium of the 20th century. The Nielsen persona intervened in this process of transformation.” Her work in Germany was matched with “…realistic reproduction technologies (that) promised the audience encounters to match their dreams and nightmares.” “She awakens in the audience a longing for the pleasures of the real, in opposition to those of illusion,” Elaesser said. Anyone watching Thanhouser shorts or other 1910-13 era American shorts, who then views a decent restored version of Afgrunden or Die Arme Jenny would likely agree that die Asta was the early innovator. One only wishes that more of her work after the close-up shot became popular had been restored for American audiences.

(Most of her restored works must be viewed on an all-region DVD player). She was not alone for long, though. In America, some were starting to catch on. D.W. Griffith, father of the American feature film, had a huge impact on his young charges. Two of them immediately began paying dividends, good friends Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford. While Gish and Pickford later broke with Griffith and Gish was known for her artistic disagreements with Griffith, who wanted her and his other ingenues to “hop around as if I had St. Vitus’ Dance,” they did pick up the basis for their naturalistic art from the old master. “He made it clear to us that acting required study,” Gish wrote in her autobiography. “‘No matter where you are, watch people,’ he told us. ‘Watch how they walk, how they move, how they turn around.’” Elsewhere, the talented Frances Marion, having honed her craft under early female filmmaker Lois Weber, found a similar encouragement at World studio, ran by Thomas Brady and Joe Stern. “World (Studio) became Frances’ workshop to study how far characters could be pushed, what eccentricities could be developed and how actions, pantomimes, or even glances could tell a story by themselves,” Cari Beauchamp wrote in Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. “She tried to add quirks to her characters that would give them complexities and a depth that would distinguish them.” When Marion and Pickford later teamed up, of course, it was pure magic and “America’s Sweetheart” was born. Even early-on, however, both Pickford and especially Gish showed signs of adapting the restrained style that Nielsen was using in Europe. “D.W. Griffith is almost a total loss as an artist,” Dan Callahan wrote in Bright Lights Film Journal in 2006. “So where does this leave Lillian Gish, his constant leading

The Silent Film Quarterly・!47

In both An Unseen Enemy (1912, left) and The Mothering Heart (1913, right), Lillian Gish seems more modern than her contemporaries.

lady and muse? She herself was a powerful, seminal artist, from her first film in 1912 to her last in 1987.” Callahan was quite taken by Gish’s debut, The Unseen Enemy, in 1912 and even more so by her The Mothering Heart from 1913. Seen in its entirety (23 minutes) on YouTube, the latter does indeed show Gish looking more modern than her co-actors. “Gish seems relaxed, secret and sly, with listlessly sad eyes and formidably lyrical arms and hands (Gish’s expressive fingers are a marvel),” Callahan wrote of An Unseen Enemy. “She suffers her first Griffith ordeal, locked in a room with her sister, a gun is waved at them through a hole in a door. The next year, in The Mothering Heart (1913), Gish gave her first great performance, probably the finest performance by an actor in the whole embryonic teen decade.” Gish was definitely off and running. She seemed to have naturally intuited much more natural acting method than Griffith ever imagined. “As a frumpy wife in a floppy hat, Gish seems much older than she is (she was 20 at the time, but her face is almost elderly in spirit),” Callahan said. “Walter Miller, who plays her husband, uses his hands like a theater actor of the time, making clear points, sawing at the air. By contrast, all of

the things Gish feels run directly out to her hands. Early on, she throws her arms up in sheer happiness, as if she is so filled with joy that she has to fling some of the surplus out to us (it radiates out of her eyes, too).” She was definitely developing her legendary skills. “Gish was learning what worked and what didn’t on film, and we learned along with her,” he said, adding that “She had a freakishly realistic gift for playing death.” Of course Gish improved with maturity and experience. “A twitch of her expressive mouth, a shift of expression in her eyes, and she had accomplished what in the old days it took all the resources of her body to achieve less perfectly,” Glenn Hughes wrote in 1927 in his “Lillian Gish, An Interpretation.” Gish may well have been silent film’s best actress. “The part and the actress are one; there is nothing extraneous,” Hughes wrote. “In a very deep and very true sense, she is the profoundest kind of actress: that is to say she does not ‘act’ at all; she is.” That skill was developed over time, but Gish seems to clearly have been the first major American actress to take the same naturalistic path Nielsen had forged in Europe.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!48

How The Movie Is Made by D.W. Griffith Originally appeared in the Washington Post, February 28, 1915 In 1915, D.W. Griffith was unrivaled in his filmmaking. Griffith was instrumental in elevating cinema from a curiosity to an art-form; The Birth of a Nation, released only three weeks before the following article ran, remains one of the most influential films ever produced. This article, which originated as a speech, is not a cut-and-dry look at filmmaking. Instead, in a pretentious style that is characteristic of Griffith, it is obtuse, confusing, yet invaluably insightful. Following a brief introduction (italicized) by a Washington Post writer, Griffith presents his “inside dope” on the state of moviemaking in 1915. ・・・ What are the qualifications necessary for a successful producer of moving pictures? A man capable of directing large groups of individuals, a sort of peace-time Napoleon; a man with the inventive faculty well developed so that he can contrive ways and means to overcome innumerable mechanical difficulties; a man with a constitution which enables him to endure the physical strains which he must demand of his actors; a man of resource, of patience, of thoroughness; a man with that quintessential quality —“the infinite capacity for taking pains.” Yes, all these things must be the equipment of the motion picture director, and then something. He must have imagination; he must have a dreamer’s vision, such vision and appreciation of the beauties of the nature world as are reflected in the following interesting address delivered before the members of the National Press Club Thursday night by Dr. D.W. Griffith, the foremost American producer in the motion picture world, and the man who has recently completed “The Birth of a Nation,” generally conceded to be the most pretentious film drama ever made, a veritable miracle of the movies. Mr. Griffith’s subject was “Inside Dope on the Movies.”

I don’t know that we are qualified to give the “inside dope” on motion pictures because I am not quite sure that there is any inside dope. If we knew of a shop where such a thing could be obtained we should lose no time in hastening to the aforesaid shop and acquiring the “dope” in a large sufficiency. I suppose what you are most interested in is not my opinions on this or that subject, but rather in getting at the root of the details of production. I am at a loss just how to explain this. Say, perhaps, we discover a peace-loving Buddha, stirring from an East Indian dream into a thought —an idea—a brain action; or a Confucius; a cold and austere Plato, or a disciple of the Master of Christianity, or further back,

D.W. Griffith in 1921.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!49 the first man-animal emerging from a dark cave, maddened by jealousy or a prehistoric instinct for self-preservation: stirred in some unknown new way by some equally unknown and hitherto undreamed of death, stalking through the gray twilight of a primeval day…something stirs within him, into what we term a thought—an idea —a beginning of imagination. This man would in his strange, crude language express his thought in sounds. His first descendants might carve it upon stone. The Buddha, Confucius, the old forgotten philosophers of Egypt, a Caesar, an intellectual Greek, a more rugged Roman, down into England, a Shakespeare or Milton, Darwin, Huxley, and not to leave one friend for another, into Germany, a Goethe or Kant or still more recent, the father of the power to will—cold and

unyielding like a Teuton sphinx, watching over some twilight sea, exclaiming, not as we Christians have done through so many hundred years in the excess of emotional strain, “God,” but instead, “superman”… Nietzsche—Nietzsche, the author of the long gray machine as it stands with its back against Germany and its face against the world, or to the bleak northern shores of Ibsen or Bjornsen, across to our own land, an Emerson or Edgar Allan Poe—I am only picking names at random and don’t expect to qualify as a judge of genius or brain service, but I say should any of these men, excepting our primordial relative, have an idea to express he had the written word—the idea in his mind, or brain or whatever we wish to call it, and then language to express the idea; that great thing which really makes our modern

Griffith visits the White House with Lillian and Dorothy Gish.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!50 world…the written word—that form which you of the press know and realize so well the power it holds. No Word to Aid Pictures. But for the “inside dope” the motion picture man has not the spoken word of the stage, and not your weapon of the written word. Say, if as Edwin Arnold draws the story, for example, the young Lord Buddha walks out, down the garlanded street. Buddha has never seen or known suffering; only youth has been around him; all pain and ugliness have been kept away from his eyes. This, you would know well how to express in writing; this the stage would bring upon one scene and explain with spoken words. He comes to a certain street; there is a pause in the procession of youth. In the show of beautiful draped or undraped womanhood, in the glory of the scented flowers; in the moan of sweet music; in the lilt of yonder sunshine, oriental pavements gleaming; perhaps better than all, the pulsing of youth itself…but, as I say, there in a lull in the sound of laughter, a pause in the chant of music, and from behind some closed door and draped window my lord Buddha hears a scream of agony. That is the first time in his life he hears that sound. You imagine what it means to him. The lord, protecting him from suffering and sorrow, tries to get him on his way, but fails. This new, unknown thing must be investigated. Again he hears the scream. He has the doors opened. There is a suffering woman screaming at death that gapes in the window. He comes into the dark rooms. He will not be denied the answer to his question of what this means. He sees, from room to room, poverty, suffering, death… the end of Lord Buddha’s youth and the beginning of his wisdom. What the Director Does. That you could explain, as you readily see, in words. You would tell about it. The stage would tell it. The motion picture

director would have a story written up as you would explain it. Then our scenario man would take it and make it into moving picture scenes. The moving picture script is given to the director, the director in turn consults with property men, stage carpenters, &c. The best appointed studios are those in California, generally buildings with light cloths over the tops serving as diffusers. Those are sunlight studios. Most of them have, besides, electric light studios where pictures may be taken in weather that prohibits sunlight work. As a rule the idea of the motion picture to be made is carefully rehearsed after the director has cast people for the different parts, much as a stage play is rehearsed; this at least is followed with companies with which I have had dealings. What Buddha Does. While they are rehearsing their various parts in the story of Buddha which we are following the costumers are making costumes to go with the story. The scene builders are building various sets, which are very similar to those used by the stage. At last, when the whole thing is finished to the satisfaction of the director and those concerned, the day of taking begins. While the background of a set may be perhaps as large as that of an ordinary stage set, the foreground of a moving picture set most commonly accepted is only about 6 feet across This is one of the surprising and difficult limitations that stage people have to encounter in moving pictures. Well, Buddha would make his entrance, come to the foreground so his expressions might be readily photographed. Instead of pointing off and telling what was happening, the chances are he would merely stand smiling. Then his expression would change from a smile to that of a listening attitude, then that of listening to one of horror, after which he would rush off this scene. That would be the entire story as the camera would take

The Silent Film Quarterly・!51

began the scenario, only instead of it being the written one it is visualized before you on the screen. Motion pictures can be used for better purposes than the common run. It is a rare and broad stage when you come to do it; it may be narrow in the front, but it runs back almost to the end of the world. Much as we may be at fault with our story and action in the foreground we can’t help, however hard we try, but get very nice things in the Griffith on the set of America (1924). backgrounds, at least, it. Then another scene would have to be set and on the sidelines. I even think that, up showing the interior of the house more than the cheap prices and the novelty, whence the scream came, and the has had to do with the success moving occupants of this room. This would require pictures have won. another scene entirely, with a different On the Side Lines. setting of the camera. Then, on the other I often think that if we did reply, which hand, you would want the expression, and so far we have never done, to the stage and the dramatic action, full of the youth and its attacks on the motion pictures, that this beauty with which Buddha was supposed might be a good answer in a way to a part to be surrounded. That would also need an of its charge—though the story may be entire and separate setting. slender, the treatment crude, and our To the Negative Factory. characters do not quite deport themselves When these scenes are finished with as they should to fit the rigid limits of art the taking they are sent to the negative and drama when they occupy the center of factory, where the negative is developed. our foreground…most often, whether we From this developed negative they go will or not, there are roses on the side lines through much the same process of being or waving green things and beneath their rephotographed through the printing feet God’s own green grass that stretches machines, until the finished positive is back sometimes to cliffs and shores, done. These scenes, of course, are all on sometimes to mountain tops with white separate pieces of celluloid. These are then snow upon their crest; back from our poor run through an ordinary projecting foreground almost always there is beauty. machine, while the editor, as he is termed, There is the blowing of flowers and the recuts them and splices the scenes together, wind, and, of course, there is often in the so that when you get the finished story you worst things we give you waters running can go back to about where you originally through green meadows.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!52

The Little Elf: Author Chuck Harter Reflects on Harry Langdon Interview by Charles Epting Harry Langdon has never had a particularly kind legacy. Rarely ranked amongst the biggest names in silent comedy, he usually falls into a category with such men as Larry Semon and Charley Chase. But in the not-so-distant past, Langdon was considered to be onpart with Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd— not the “big three,” as is commonly referenced today, but rather the “big four.” When it comes to the life of Harry Langdon, the definitive guide is Little Elf: A Celebration of Harry Langdon, written by Chuck Harter and Michael J. Hayde and published by BearManor Media in 2012. The book’s physical size more resembles a phone book than a traditional biography, and once you crack it open it becomes apparent why: there are countless photographs, magazine clippings, and other bits and pieces related to the life and career of Langdon. What Harter and Hayde accomplished with their book is truly remarkable. I recently had the opportunity to get lunch with Chuck Harter and discuss his monumental book. Chuck was also kind enough to donate the images that appear herein, as well as the portrait of Harry Langdon that appears on the cover of this issue. ・・・ Can you tell readers why you decided to write such an in-depth book about Harry Langdon? In the 1960s, when I was young, I read a few books on silent comedy. And I liked Laurel and Hardy from television reruns, although they were talkies. So I started to buy short, 8mm silent films from Blackhawk films. I started to get Chaplin, Arbuckle, some Keaton. I heard about Harry Langdon. I got ahold of an old Life

magazine called “Comedy’s Greatest Era” from 1949, by James Agee. He listed the “big four”—Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and Harry Langdon. He described Langdon as being kind of a baby, innocent-type character, and I thought ‘Oh, I’d like to see some of his films.’ So I ordered a few and watched them, and I thought he was a very interesting character. And it wasn’t even that he was that funny. It was that he was so incongruous, because he was a baby, a boy, a young man, and a middle-aged man, sometimes all at the same time. He was an odd creature. He also was very slow, where the other comedians of the day were very fast. So I liked him. And subsequently I read the one book on him in the early 1980s, which was okay. Flash forward to 2011. One nice thing about living in Los Angeles is if you want to visit the graves of deceased stars, a lot of them are around here. You can go pay your respects. So I went over to Glendale on a Sunday afternoon to see Harry. And when I got there the gates were locked up, and the whole cemetery was in disarray. It was

The Silent Film Quarterly・!53 in a nice neighborhood, so I thought, ‘What’s this?’ So I called a number and found out that the owners of the cemetery had done a lot of terrible things, and subsequently there were lawsuits in effect and the cemetery was closed. Apparently relatives of people who were there complained, so they opened it a couple of Sundays a month for two hours with volunteers. I went back the next Sunday, and a volunteer said ‘Harry Langdon, we know where he is.’ So we went to a mausoleum that had no electricity. They even had to force the door open because it was creaking. It was creepy, it was weird. There were cobwebs everywhere, and there was just enough light coming in the windows to kind of see where we were going. I said, ‘Where is he?’ and they said ‘He’s down there.’ His little plaque was

down on the bottom row, with dirt and dust and everything. I looked at it, and it was the only one on the wall that was discolored and scraped and basically rotting. And I went, ‘Holy mackerel, this is terrible.’ So I said hello and paid my respects, and on the drive home I was thinking, ‘Harry Langdon is kind of forgotten, and has never gotten his due as a great artist and certainly a big comedy star and a lifelong performer who was versatile.’ So I called Michael Hayde up in Virginia, and I told Mike what I saw, so he suggested we start a blog or a website on Langdon. About a week later we almost literally were calling each other at the same time going, ‘We’re not going to do a blog, let’s do a book on him!’ So that’s how the book happened, we wanted to honor him, show

A scene from 1925’s There He Goes, now a lost film.

The Silent Film Quarterly・!54 his career both as a live performer and a movie star, and do a really good book. For the next year-and-a-half I handled the west coast research, at the Margaret Herrick Library and the downtown library, and Mike handled the Library of Congress and the Museum of Modern Art. So we bicoastally pooled our research efforts. We put the thing together, and as it was nearing completion we thought ‘We’ve gone crazy here, this is a phone book!’ And it is, it’s huge, but we really wanted to make it definitive. The day I got my copies was a Sunday, so I loaded the book in the car, went back to the cemetery, found the volunteer, and went back to the mausoleum. I sat it down there, and said ‘Here you go!’ and took a picture. Kind of like, ‘We did it Harry.’ ・・・ How do you feel your book changes the public’s understanding of Langdon’s career? We really showed that Harry Langdon was a very versatile person. He wrote

A publicity still of Langdon at the height of his fame.

Langdon in Shanghaied Lovers (1924).

songs, he was a sculptor, he could play any instrument, he could dance, he wrote sketches for people, he had a 20-year career on the stage and was quite a big star, and then had a 20-year career in film. So while it is true that his absolute superstardom years were only a few, when he fell from grace in 1928 or so he did bounce back rather quickly. Until his death in 1944 he worked a lot in talkies—he starred in shorts, he had guest shots—and if the movies were sometimes not of very good quality, it was still work. He gave his all, and it kept him in front of audiences that still liked to see him. He was a working actor that applied his craft and basically died an artist. He was doing a song and dance routine, didn’t feel well, went home, and within a day or so died. He literally died doing what he loved. When historians view the “big four” of silent comedy, oft-times they say, ‘Charlie and Harold had mansions and millions and controlled their films and were really successful, while poor Buster and Harry had to do commercials or be in crummy movies or had to do cheap stage

The Silent Film Quarterly・!55

An early scene from The Strong Man (1926), perhaps Langdon’s most celebrated film.

productions. So the real happy guys are Charlie and Harold.’ I tend to disagree, because from what I know both Chaplin and Lloyd ended up being bored in their mansions and not working and not acting and not plying their craft. While the “poor” guys had the next show, the next plane flight, the next stage, the next filming, and it was something to do and look forward to. They kept busy. So who are really the successes here? Langdon’s fortunes went up and down over the years, but he was a survivor. Every time he fell he got right up again, and that’s the key to dedication to your acting craft. ・・・ Few people realize that Frank Capra got his start directing Harry Langdon. Can you discuss that relationship?

One of the things that Michael Hayde and I talked about early on was dispelling the myths about Harry Langdon. Since there was so little written about him, these myths grew and became history. Frank Capra was a great director, but he was also a v i n d i c t i v e, a n g r y m a n . I n h i s autobiography, The Name Above the Title, he paints Langdon as basically a guy who was struggling in vaudeville, Capra came along, gave him his character, molded him, was responsible for his success in film completely, Harry ego-ed out, fired Capra, fell, and never did anything good again. That sort of became law. Whenever Langdon was mentioned, Capra’s story was repeated. The truth is, Harry Langdon was in live theater for 20 years before films. He started in medicine shows, graduated to

The Silent Film Quarterly・!56

v a u d e v i l l e, w e n t t o b i g g e r s t a g e Dent was a very, very popular character productions, and by the end was quite actor who was a close friend of Harry’s. successful and popular. He developed his They did a lot of films together, and in own innocent, naive character. What many cases they were sort of teamed. It’s Capra did do was mold him more for the almost like how Harold Lloyd had “Snub” medium of film. But Capra’s ego was so Pollard—they weren’t a team necessarily, stunned when Langdon fired him that he but they were often together. wrote vendettas later. One of the reasons ・・・ Harry did fire him is because he had Lastly—and perhaps most importantly: does become his own producer, and Capra was Harry Langdon deserve to be considered one of the spending too much money on the film Long “big four” of silent comedy? Pants. There were egos on both sides. He I would say Harry Langdon is directed a few unsuccessful films on his definitely the fourth of the own, and by 1928 he fell. “big four.” He deserves to But he had a successful Chuck Harter selects his be there, although the “big tour in 1929. Then he’s in top five Harry Langdon three” had popular success shorts with Hal Roach. films for beginners: and greater films for a Then he’s in shorts with 1. The Strong Man (1926) longer time. So he’s a Educational. Then he’s in 2. Saturday Afternoon (1926) lesser guy to the “big features with people like Al 3. Remember When? (1925) three,” but he still rates. Jolson. So while he never 4. Lucky Stars (1925) It’s remarkable because he came back to that peak of 5. Long Pants (1927) was only a big celebrity for stardom, it was never as a few years. After his initial grim as Capra portrayed success in 1925, he was a fad. At that time it. Chaplin wasn’t making many movies, ・・・ Lloyd was making features, and Keaton Langdon’s on-screen persona reminds me most of was making features. So suddenly there Stan Laurel. Would a comic pairing have helped wasn’t a monthly film with those big guys. his career? Well, here comes Harry. And Mack Harry was great on his own, and your allegory of him being similar to Stan Laurel is most apt. They both played childish, dim, slow, boyish characters. In a way Langdon did have a partner. Vernon

Sennett liked him so much he was lauding him as a new Chaplin. Oft times what happens with a fad is they come out of nowhere, and within a year they’re megasuper stars. They’re like a comet streaking across the sky, and what happens to a comet? It flares and falls. Langdon got so big and so saturated for that two or three years, he overdid it. It wasn’t his fault. But he still fell.

To purchase a first edition copy of Little Elf signed by both authors, contact: Chuck Harter 3124 Hutchison Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90034 The cost is $50 plus $5 shipping and handling, check or money order.

Harter and Hayde’s book at Langdon’s grave.