Newsletter Winter 1984-85

ROCHESTER II

Around this time a year ago the TFS Newsletter (Fall 1983, Vol. 27, No. 1 to be exact) included a lengthy article covering the TFS expedition to that excellent museum in Rochester, New York, the George Eastman House of Photography, on the long-weekend of July 30 to Aug. 1, 1983, when the thirty-odd hardy souls (masochists, if you like) congregated for a concentrated bash of film-viewing: eight feature films between nine in the morning and nine at night, on Sunday July 31.

It took a whole year to recover; but recover we did, and this past summer another expedition set forth from Toronto to Rochester–again on the Simcoe Day weekend–to indulge in still another 12-hour Sunday cinema orgy of goodies from the celebrated film archives of Eastman House.

As in the previous year, a TFS committee arranged all the details, including booking rooms for all of us at the East Avenue Inn, a motel slightly outside the downtown area but conveniently close to the Museum.  We all made our own way to Rochester–by bus, by train, or by private car–though the committee also helped to find rides for those that needed them.

The eight films we had seen in 1983 were all produced between 1915 and 1931, so it is not surprising that six of them were silent films; and as it happened, of these six, three were directed by Cecil B. DeMille.  This year (August 5) the program consisted of ten films; seven features and three shorts, the dates ranging from 1913 (maybe even earlier) to 1933–so again it is not surprising that there were only two “sound” films, including a musical; and once again, it happens, there were three films by Cecil B. DeMille.

So here is a report on what we saw–let me emphasize, it is a report, not a critical analysis; and furthermore, it’s a personal report: any opinions expressed are purely my own and do not represent a poll of the others who were there.  My chief qualification is that I did see all the films shown, which is more than some of the younger members of the group can claim.  (Young people need more sleep.)  I also claim the privilege of being unabashedly autobiographical in my report.  If you are too young to remember the things I remember, including actors and actresses who were big names in my youth,–well, it serves you right!

So here’s the line-up:

1)  DON’T CHANGE YOUR HUSBAND  (released January 1919)
Directed by Cecil B. DeMille, with Gloria Swanson, Elliott Dexter and Lew Cody.

This is obviously a companion piece to the DeMille picture we saw last year: Why Change Your Wife? (1920)–one of the hits of that session–but a glance at the dates reminds us that this is the earlier of the two.  Both have the same basic plot, except that for “wife” read “husband”, as in their respective titles.  This one opens with Gloria Swanson exasperated by her slob of a husband, a self-made millionaire (Dexter), though not yet attracted by the too obvious attentions of Schuyler Van Sutphen (Cody)–a name that looks like a misprint but isn’t.  However, her husband’s gaucheries become intolerable making Van Sutphen’s sophisticated blandishments seems positively charming.  So (in a subtitle, the details having been conveniently bypassed) she divorces her husband and marries Van Sutphen–only to find before long that he is even worse.  Whereas her husband’s passion for green onions had fouled his breath, so now does Van Sutphen’s fondness for whiskey; and even worse, she soon discovers that he is carrying on an affair with her ex-husband’s secretary (Julia Faye).  Meanwhile, the ex-husband, having got the message, has reformed himself and taken what we would call nowadays a Charm School course, thereby transforming himself from an ugly duckling into a magnificent swan.  By chance he encounters Leila (Gloria) during a period when she is most ulnerable, and he becomes her gentlemanly protector when she most needs him, her present husband being exposed as the two-timing rotter that he is.  Result: a second divorce and a remarriage to her first husband.

In that era, every DeMlle picture contained a “flashback” sequence, which permitted hi to indulge his passion for historical spectaculars while still obeying his bosses’ orders to stick to modern stories.  In this particular film the expected flashback sequence occurs during a preparation for a costume ball, in which Schuyler is to be dressed as a King.  He tells Leila that if he were a king in reality, he would bring her Wealth, Pleasure, and Love–and we get flashbacks to these three temptations.  The sequence depicting Pleasure is of historical interest to dance lovers, for the Faun was played by the celebrated American dancer of that period, Ted Shawn–whose identity I learned not from any credits on the screen but from having done my homework in “The Films of Cecil B. DeMille” before setting out for Rochester.  The film, presumably classed as “comedy drama”, was more drama than comedy; but in this brilliant 35mm print (though without the original tinted stock) it was one of the more admired films of the weekend.

2)  THE DAYS OF ’49  (released 1913)

This one-reel short, directed by Thomas Ince back in the days when all American movies were shorts, had already been seen by some of us in the TFS Silent Series on April 24, 1978 (on the program featuring Tol’able David).  The plot concerns a girl refugee from an Indian massacre, who seeks refuge with a pair of gold miners who take her in.  The arrangement is quite brotherly at first, but one of the two pals (Frank Borsage, as I’ve since learned: future director of Humoresque (1920), Seventh Heaven (1927), The Big Fisherman (1959) and innumerable other well-known films) discovers that the other two are in love, so he generously takes off.  But when the Indians attack, the “lucky” man turns out to be a coward and runs away, only to be killed.  The girl then realizes the other man is the better choice.

3)  THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE  (released March 1921)

This is a film I had been waiting to see for many years.  True, I had seen it once before, but that was many years ago–not as long ago as 1921, to be sure (though I am old enough to remember its being a highly-touted movie at the time), but during its release in 1926 in the wake of Valentino’s much-publicized death–which is still a long time ago.  (I also read the novel around that time.)  In more modern times the TFS Silent Series made several attempts to book a print, only to be frustrated each time.  So now at long last I have seen it again–surprised to find myself remembering at least a few things from both the movie and the novel.  My only disappointment was in the quality of the print that we saw–thought I mustn’t complain, for probably no better prints are extant.  It wasn’t simply that it was a 16mm print (most of the others we saw were 35mm), but it was very dark, as if it were a dupe of a dupe–as indeed maybe it was.  Actually only the earlier scenes were bad; the later reels were better; but coming immediately after the sharp and dtailed focus of the 35mm print of Don’t Change Your Husband and The Days of ’49, it was a dismaying let-down, and it took an appreciable time to adjust to it.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was originally a novel by the Spanish writer, Vicente Blasco Ibanez (1867-1928), which upon its publication in 1916 had become a phenomenal best-seller.  The film version, adapted by June Mathis and directed by Rex Ingram, thus had a ready-made audience, and the fact that it was also a very good film in its own right made it the box-office hit of 1921.  It also gave the break of a lifetime to a struggling young Hollywood actor, properly cast for the first time in a role that made his Latin face an asset instead of a handicap: Rudolph Valentino.

For those who are curious, here’s what this famous film was all about: The story begins in Argentina, and at first centers around the old Spanish patriarch whose daughters are married respectively to a Frenchman and a German.  The German and his three sons wear glasses–an obviously racist comment left over from wartime days, and reminding me of World War II days when all Japanese were similarly caricatured as wearing glasses.  The Frenchman’s son Julio, becomes the Grandfather’s favorite; but after the old man’s death both sons-in-law return with their families to Europe, where the Frenchman, Desnoyers, (about whom the story revolves), buys a castle on the Marne and fills it full of treasures acquired at auction sales, to the impoverishment of his wife and two children.  Julio (Valentino) is an art student, popular among his Parisian friends because he can do the currently-fashionable Argentine Tango.  He meets the young wife (Alice Terry) of one of his father’s friends, and they have an affair.  His upstairs neighbour, in the rooming house where he has his studio, is a strange and prophetic Russian (Nigel de Brulier) who is presumable the mouthpiece of Ibanez himself, and is interestingly reminiscent of the strange character, Don Joselito, in the 1922 film version of another Ibanez novel, Blood and Sand.  When the War breaks out in 1914, Desnoyers Sr. (Joseph Swickard) goes to his Marne castle, which is soon overrun by the German army, whose officers (one of whom is his own nephew) make it their headquarters.  (This whole episode is one of the major sequences of the film.)  In the meantime, Julio, being a citizen of Argentina, is not obliged to do war service, and he is quite content with this, and cannot understand why Marguerite chooses to become a Red Cross nurse.  In the course of her duties Marguerite finds herself nursing her blinded husband, with whom she inevitably becomes reconciled.  Julio eventually sees the light and joins the French Army, much  to the great pride of his family; and he dies gloriously in battle–killed by a bomb blast at the moment he and his German cousin find themselves facing one another (both are killed).  There is also a minor subplot of the love and eventual marriage of Julio’s sister and a wimpish young man played by a young Arthur Hoyt.  From time to time both stories halt in order to let us watch the activities of a pet monkey, who seems to mirror the moods of the human characters.  Presumably this was intended as “comic relief” in an otherwise sombre story, but the contemporary New York Times critic quite rightly objected strenuously to these silly interruptions in an otherwise admirable film.  In spite of its length, the film is indeed very impressive–even with the handicap of the dark print (which, as I’ve said, didn’t seem so bad in the latter part of the film).

4)  OLD HEIDELBERG  (released in 1915)

Old Heidelberg was originally a novel and subsequently a play (by one W. Meyer-Förster) which was popular on the stage for many years, and later became a Broadway musical, The Student Prince in Heidelberg (1924) with music by Sigmund Romberg.  (Ernst Lubitsch later remade it in 1927, with Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer, but it was released as The Student Prince to cash in on the current popularity of the operetta.)  All versions tell the now-familiar story of a young Crown Prince in some 19th century German kingdom, whose lonely life is brightened when he is permitted to enter the University of Heidelberg and live as a student among fellow students.  He also has a romance with Kathie, the barmaid at the tavern where the students gather.  This idyllic life is shattered when his father suddenly dies and the young prince must return home and assume the throne–and of course marry the princess who has been chosen for him.  This 1915 film version, with Wallace Reid as the student prince and Dorothy Gish as Kathie, was directed by John Emerson for the Triangle Company under the supervision of D.W. Griffith himself.  Its date is interesting, for the film was obviously made while the War was going on in Europe, though long before the United States was involved, and its maker goes out of his way to turn it into an anti-war film, though I’m willing to bet that there’s nothing of this in the original novel or play.

The film opens with Prince Karl as a little boy, escaping from his domineering manservant (played by “Erick” Von Stroheim) in order to play with other boys his won age, and meeting a picnicking family (including the young Katie) who give him the affection he craves.  Later we see him at the age of 12, played by Harold Goodwin, whom I vaguely seem to remember as a minor leading man in the twenties. Finally we have him grown up as Wallace Reid being sent to Heidelberg.  When he is eventually called away to assume his state duties, he finds himself up against the fact that his predecessor has been threatening war against his neighbours, and his loyal subjects are on the verge of rebellion at the prospect.  The Prince’s conversation with some outdoor-café habitués, who tell him their war experiences, results in a flashback sequence of battle scenes that look remarkably like leftovers from The Birth of a Nation (filmed only the year before), which they could easily be, though the spiked helmets convinced me that at least some of these scenes were shot for this particular film–probably by Griffith himself.  Anyhow, the result is that the Prince takes the part of the populace and calls off the war.  Dorothy Gish looks in many scenes surprisingly like her sister; in others, not at all.  And unfortunately her great gifts as a comedienne were not used in this film.

5)  TO RENT UNFURNISHED  (date ?)

A comedy short (35mm), and a beautiful print in spite of the absence of the original tinted stock which would have established certain important scenes as taking place at night; and in spite of the absence of the opening title (the name of the film was only to be gleaned from the fact that it appeared on every subsequent subtitle). I don’t know who the players were, and I had never heard of the film before, but its vintage is obviously pre-1915.  It’s about a girl who is so indignant at her boyfriend’s having bought the marriage licence before he had even proposed to her that she angrily breaks off with him.  A neighbouring couple are about to put their summer cottage up for rent, but when the wife learns the girl’s sad story, she persuades her to try to get away from it all by renting their cottage.  But the message to the real estate agent to cancel the posting gets lost, and the agent rents the cottage to…you’ll never guess…the young man, who likewise wants to get away from it all.  And thereby hangs the tale–till the girl, terrified at what she thinks is a burglar, is so happy to see the  young man that it’s instant reconciliation and engagement.  Lightweight but amusing.

6)  CARMEN  (released in 1915)

The Cecil DeMille version, with Geraldine Farrar, Wallace Reid, and Pedro de Cordoba. Geraldine Farrar (not to be confused with Geraldine Ferraro, the Vice-Presidential candidate) was a phenomenally popular opera star, idolized by her teen-aged fans.  As she was renowned as much for her dramatic ability as for her vocal prowess, Jesse Lasky shrewdly suspected that her popularity would follow her to the screen, silent though it was, and he signed her to a contract  to make three films for his company in the summer of 1915, one of which was to be Carmen, one of her big roles at the Met.  Lasky’s hunch paid off: her screen debut in Carmen was a huge success, and for the next few years Geraldine Farrar was a popular silent screen star in addition to being a popular and celebrated opera star.

The print of Carmen that we viewed this past summer was not the one that I had seen when I saw this film once before–likewise at Rochester in July, 1965.  At that time Eastman House had just acquired DeMille’s personal collection of all his own films, and the print we saw then was one of the original ones on tinted stock, which made for fascinating viewing, apart from the unfortunate fact that the blues had very much faded, so that the scenes meant to represent night were obviously shot in daylight…which is the way it looks in the black-and-white copy we saw (except that in the older print there was at least still a hint of the original blue).  Otherwise this was still an excellent 35mm print.

I was interested to note how the novel and the opera libretto were cleverly but freely adapted to the screen play (by Cecil’s brother, William, later an outstanding director in his own right).  The film opens with the smugglers arriving on shore, where someone assures them that although there’s a new officer on duty in charge of the soldiers who are patrolling the breach in the wall, he can be easily bribed.  But the new officer is Don Jose, who proves to be incorruptible.  In reporting this to his companions, the chief smuggler is challenged by Carmen, who claims that every man has his price, and she is confident that she is more than a match for the virtuous Don Jose.  She flirts with him a few times at the breach in the wall, and he is obviously susceptible.  To help clinch this advantage, it is considered advisable to get Carmen a job in the tobacco factory near the army barracks.  Eventually the contraband goods get through, but in the struggle Don Jose kills his superior officer, and is forced to join the smugglers to save his own life.  In the meantime, at Lillas Pastia’s tavern, Carmen has met the famous torero, Escamillo, with whom she falls in love.  (It is made clear in the film that, unlike the Carmen of the opera, she is never in love with Don Jose but is only vamping him as a means to an end.)  Escamillo coaxes her to join him in Seville, and eventually she does so.  Don Jose follows her; and the ending sticks to the opera rather than the novel (Escamillo, of course, is the invention of the opera librettists, though he does derive from a picador named Lucas, who gets mentioned frequently in the novel though he never actually appears.)  Geraldine Farrar doesn’t look like one’s vision of a gypsy Carmen, and this breach of type-casting disturbed many of the viewers.  Personally, however, I was so captivated by Farrar’s performance that I decided that although she may not have looked like my imaginary Carmen, the real Carmen most certainly must have looked like Geraldine Farrar.  Wallace Reid’s Don Jose was no surprise; but Pedro de Cordoba was such an attractive Escamillo that one could sympathise with Carmen’s preference.  In the famous brawl between Carmen and her fellow worker in the cigarette factory, the latter was played by Jeanie Macpherson, who soon afterwards gave up acting for screen writing, and became DeMille’s chief scenarist (e.g., Don’t Change Your Husband and The Golden Bed).

(Carmen ended the morning session–though to be exact, it was nearly 2:30 by the time it finished.  We broke for an hour to have lunch, and reassembled at 3:30 for the afternoon session.)

7)  REUNION IN VIENNA  (released in 1933)

This, you will notice, was the first “talkie” so far on the program.  Directed by Sidney Franklin, it starred John Barrymore and Diana Wynyard in the roles played on the stage by Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontanne, for whom indeed the play (by Robert Sherwood) was especially written.  (And having recently seen the Lunts’ only film The Guardsman–likewise directed by Sidney Franklin–it wasn’t hard to imagine them in these roles.)  The story devolves around a reunion of the Hapsburg survivors (in 1933, don’t forget, the Austrian Empire had ended only fifteen years before), including the heir to the defunct Hapsburg throne, an obnoxious overgrown brat who is such a troublemaker that the local police are trying to head him off, and he slips into town disguised in lederhosen and Alpine cap.  He is anxious to resume his relationship with his former mistress; she, on her part, is now happily married to one of Vienna’s outstanding psychiatrists–who himself urges her to attend the reunion, so that by meeting the Archduke as he is to-day, she will get him out of her system.  She does go–and the results are salutary for both of them.  Barrymore (then in his prime) was in his element as the flamboyant Archduke; and how wonderful to see the now-forgotten Diana Wynyard in top form.  Good, too, to see Frank Morgan in a non-comic role, before he became inescapably type-cast.

8)  THE GOLDEN BED  (released January 1925)

This was the third and last of the DeMille films on the program.  Historically, it was also the last film he made for Paramount, the company he had helped to found.  When  it appeared, Photoplay Magazine dismissed it contemptuously as “Cecil B. DeMille’s last and perhaps worst picture under his contract with this producing company.  A lavishly stupid spectacle.  A pearl onion in a platinum setting.”  And I have no doubt that many of our TFS group heartily agreed.  But today, sixty years later, when they don’t make movies like that anymore, and accordingly it no longer poses a threat, it was fun to go along with it, taking it on its own terms.

The story is about two sisters, daughters of a former plantation owner whose wealth is rapidly evaporating, and a boy whose widowed mother runs a candy shop.  Admah, the boy, adores Flora, the elder of the two girls, and gives her free candy whenever he delivers to the family mansion–much to the chagrin of the younger girl, Margaret, who in turn adores him.  These three children grow up to become Lillian Rich, Vera Reynolds and Rod LaRocque.  Flora is married off to a titled European; the father dies a penniless bankrupt; and Margaret, faced with having to make her own living, wangles her way into Admah’s modest confectionary shop, where her common sense advice helps it to become a highly successful candy factory.  But before she and Admah can get married, Flora returns, widowed and penniless, and discovering that Admah is now wealthy, goes after him, and easily elbows out her sister.  For me, the weakness of the film is that Flora is presented as such a selfish and extravagant monster with no redeeming features other than her beauty, that one is impatient with the devoted Admah for not seeing through her and for letting himself go bankrupt from her unrealistic spending sprees.  The climax, of course, is the magnificent Candy Ball–all the decorations being made of candy–which they throw on the same night as the Hunt Club Ball to spite the club for not having voted Flora as its official Hostess.  While the guests are dancing and enjoying themselves in all this extravagance, Flora openly spurns him for her latest lover (Warner Baxter–almost unrecognizable without his famous moustache); and the police arrive to arrest Admah for the misappropriation of funds (and he goes to  jail for five years).  It is difficult to feel much sympathy when at the end Flora returns, impoverished and dying (of what, no-one specifies) to her old family home, now a boarding house, to lie once again in the opulent golden bed that used to be hers.  By happy chance, Admah, on his way home to Margaret after his release from prison, finds her and she dies in his arms.  Perhaps the film would have worked better if Flora had been played by a great actress, which Lillian Rich never was.  Rod LaRocque, on the other hand, gave an excellent performance, while Vera Reynolds is fully as likeable as she is supposed to be.  Henry B. Walthall plays the charming but impractical millionaire father of the  two girls.  I liked Theodore Kosloff very much in his short role as Flora’s first husband.  Kosloff appeared in many DeMille films of this period, but this was the first time I’ve really seen him, though he did have a small role in Why Change Your Husband which we saw last year.  In The Golden Bed he displays such an attractive personality that one can only regret that he wasn’t groomed for leading roles a la Valentino.  (Kosloff was originally a dancer in the Moscow Imperial Ballet, and a member of the first Diaghileff Russian Ballet Company (1889), who eventually wound up in Hollywood where he founded a dance school in 1922 and continued to teach until his death in 1956.)  There is much to criticize in this long film, but at the same time plenty to enjoy.

9)  THE HEART OF AN INDIAN  (1912)

Another short film from the pre-feature era–and another variant of the theme of Indians vs. settlers.  This one opens in an Indian camp, where one of the squaws discovers that her baby has died, and she makes a great display of grief.  Later on, during an Indian raid on a settlement, the squaw’s husband (I presume; maybe he was just a friend of the chief) discovers a sleeping baby whose parents are absent.  He takes it home to the wife, who first rejects it, then, her maternal instincts taking over, she accepts it.  Later the real mother is captured and brought to the camp, where she recognizes the baby and pleads for it.  The foster mother at first clings to the baby, but later generously restores it to its mother.  I liked the subtlety of character in this short film, which took time to make both mothers human beings rather than one-dimensional types.

10)  THE LOTTERY BRIDE  (released in 1930)

Starring Jeannette MacDonald, with Joe E. Brown and Zasu Pitts adding comedy relief, and with a musical score by Rudolf Friml–composer of a stage musical such as The Firefly, Rose Marie, The Vagabond King, and many others.  I don`t know if this was an original screen musical or simply a screen version of a stage musical (I know it was adapted from something by Herbert Stothart–himself a composer–called `Bride 66`, but what that was I still haven`t found out.)  This is obviously one of the millions of musicals that Hollywood churned out in the days when it first discovered sound and the movie public first discovered music.  It`s not terribly good, but not without its interesting moments.  Jeannette MacDonald had made her film debut about a year earlier opposite Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade, which was followed by The Vagabond King and Let`s Go Native, both of which I remember with pleasure, and then this one, which I don`t even remember hearing about, which is probably significant.  Friml`s music was very pleasant, but very badly reproduced on the sound track.  (None of the tunes was familiar–they obviously didn`t make the 1930 hit parade.)

The story takes place in Norway, and Jeannette MacDonald is a singer in an Oslo night club frequented by students, one of whom, Chris (John Garrick), is in love with her and she with him…in a fit of unjustified jealousy he flounces off to disappear from her life.  In despair, she answers an advertisement and offers herself as one of the brides to be raffled off in a northern mining town…with the result (you won`t believe this) that she is won by Chris, who (not even so much as having glanced at her photograph) turns her over to his brother who is happy to marry her.  Paul is such a kind and lovable guy, while Chris is such a jerk, that she is really much better off; but unfortunately the writers don`t see it that way and go to extravagant lengths–including a polar expedition in a dirigible, and an unconvincing rescue operation in unconvincing Arctic ice and snow (you didn’t really expect realism in a musical, did you?)–to bring the original lovers together again.  (The concluding sequence in the Arctic was apparently originally in colour; but not in the print we saw.)

And thus ended another marvellous weekend at Rochester.  Our thanks to Charles Hofmann who, though he swore after last year’s gruelling session that he’d never do it again, was induced once again to play the piano for most of the silent films.  Our thanks to the committee, headed by Barrie Hayne, which not only chose the interesting program, but also saw to it that they gave us at least a couple of minutes break between films, with the lights on–instead of, as last year, letting each film follow the previous one immediately, with no time to catch our breath or collect our thoughts.  And thanks to Dr. Kuyper and other members of the staff at Eastman House for making our visit possible and so pleasant.

Our last visit, but the look of things.  For Eastman House, like many other institutions, has fallen on hard times–whether through mismanagement (as some aver) or simply as innocent victim of Reagonomics and the Recession–and there appears to be a distinct possibility that the marvellous Film Archives are to be transferred to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.  That might be fine for the collection–but not for us Torontonians.  Rochester is only just across the lake, but Washington is an impossibly long way off.

Please keep your fingers crossed!

by Fraser Macdonald