The Silent Movie Blog

     Sorry this entry's a little late, folks... it would've appeared Saturday night, but there was some sort of technical glitch at blog.com.


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    In 1927, producer Madeline Brandeis announced her upcoming production, a two-reel subject featuring the children of Hollywood stars.

     Slated for the cast were the real-life sons and daughters of Wallace Reid, Reginald Denny, Pat O’Malley, Jack Holt, Erich von Stroheim, William Desmond and Hobart Bosworth.

     One of the seven young hopefuls did go on to become a film star: Jack Holt’s son Tim.

(Photoplay, September 1927, page 117.)


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     Evelyn Brent was born to a fourteen-year-old.

(Anthony Slide, Silent Players, page 39.)


I guess when people told Evelyn and her mother that they looked like sisters, they really meant it.


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     Florence Lee, who played the blind girl's mother in Chaplin's City Lights, was the ex-wife of Jack Dempsey's trainer.

("Wife Assails Social Life of Fight Circles," Los Angeles Times, 9/29/25.)


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     It’s a lost and forgotten film today, but one of the biggest hits of 1920 was Over the Hill to the Poor House, the tragic story of an impoverished family led by a brave, beleaguered mother. Mary Carr played that role, and if contemporary reviews are any indication, she gave a heartbreaking performance in a powerful tear-jerker that we'll never get to see.

     Eleven years later, this mother of six played a very similar role in real life. She'd co-signed a note for a friend who needed to borrow money. The friend couldn’t pay it back, so Mary had to come up with it. She hadn’t saved much, and after her salary was attached and other creditors came calling, she had no choice but to declare bankruptcy.

     Against liabilities of $13,000, her meager assets included a wedding ring valued at five dollars, and clothes valued at forty dollars.

(Motion Picture Classic, July 1931, page 32.)


Life's consolation prize to Mary Carr was life itself: she lived to be 99 years old, passing away in June 1973.
    
     That same year, Fox produced a remake of her triumph, Over the Hill. It was the perfect opportunity for a comeback.

     Are you sensing a Hollywood ending to this story? If so, you're mistaken. The studio gave the role to Mae Marsh.

     
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     Kate Lester had once been a glamorous beauty on the stage, a member of the famous Empire Theater Stock Company in New York.

     Her sister Cora was even more beautiful. But as the novelist Rupert Hughes recalled, "A sudden accident enveloped her in flames and so marred her features that she never appeared in public again, and even shrank from her friends. For nearly thirty years, Kate Lester lived with her and took care of her. She would go out only at night, and heavily veiled."

     Kate's sister passed away in early 1924. By that time, Kate had become an established character actress in silent films, specializing in mother roles. Among her credits were Lon Chaney's Quincy Adams Sawyer (1922), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), and John Barrymore's Beau Brummel (1924).

     On October 11, 1924, Kate's dressing room at Universal was the scene of a sudden tragedy.

     It was an accident. She’d been trying to warm the room by lighting the gas stove, and didn’t notice that gas had been escaping from it. She lit a match and there was an explosion.

     Help came quickly, but since her room had been locked from the inside, precious time was wasted getting in. The 67-year-old actress died at the hospital a day later, from severe burns about the face and upper body.

(Picture Play, January 1925, page 109; Internet Movie Database; "Fire Victim Eulogized by Hughes," Los Angeles Times, 10/19/24.)


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Centenary: Betty Boyd
May 11, 1908 - September 16, 1971



     No, this isn't the return of the Charmingly Suggestive Photo of the week. I just don't have any other photos of Betty Boyd, a beautiful starlet born a hundred years ago.
     Betty appeared in just a few small roles before the silent era ended, and she really never made it in talkies either. But she did land the female lead in a fun B-western starring silent veteran Jack Hoxie, Gun Law (1933).
     Also appearing in that film, playing an elderly mother, was... (do I have to tell you?)... Mary Carr.


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     And that's the fade-out for this week! See you next weekend!


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     This week, the Silent Movie Blog recoils from its usual morass of sordid stories and risque photos to reach back across the years, to a time when even Hollywood was part of a simpler era.



Love by the Barrel

     Not content to just send a fan letter, or a Christmas card, a farmer in Utah sent Bessie Barriscale a barrel of apples in December 1914.

(Moving Picture World, January 23, 1915, page 503.)

     When the Motion Picture Directors’ Association gave its annual ball on Thanksgiving, 1923, a policeman appeared and put a stop to it.

     The reason? There was a city ordinance at the time that forbade public dances to continue after midnight.

(Motion Picture, March 1924, page 63.)

The Eternal Sweetheart


A vintage hand-colored postcard of Mary Pickford.




Somewhere, Marc Wanamaker is Salivating


An impromptu baseball game, and Bessie Love calls the runner out. See that odd structure in the background? It's the Babylon set for Intolerance, still under construction.



 

     Lois Wilson starred in Miss Lulu Bett (1921), an unexpectedly feminist film about a young woman who breaks away from a confining domestic life, leaves a loveless marriage, and ultimately lives independently, and happily, as a career woman.

     She told an interviewer in 1923 that it was her favorite film. But she also said, "When I meet the man I love and decide to marry him, I shall leave the screen. How could I make a home for my husband, if I come back to it at night worn-out from work in the studio?"

(Movie Weekly, March 31, 1923, page 11.)

 

The Lost Chord



I miss the evenings
That we spent alone
The sweet "good mornings"
On the telephone

How I yearn to just return to
The days beyond recall
And the kisses that you gave me
I miss them most of all

     Well, this week I thought I'd crack open the ol' postcard album, and share a few unusual cards with you.

     Now this isn't anything earth-shaking, but many of you are familiar with Niles, California. It's where the Chicago-based Essanay company had a studio, and Chaplin worked there for a few months in early 1915. G. M. Anderson owned about half of the company and presided over the studio, starring in dozens of short westerns as "Broncho Billy." He even found time to manage the studio's baseball team. 

     Here's a postcard view of the town, as it looked then:



     A guy named Jack bought this penny postcard, jotted a note to the folks back home, and mailed it off. It was postmarked August 2, 1914.

     On the back, he mentions a baseball game, and that he "met the wonderful G. M. Anderson." And across the face of the postcard, you can just make out the pencilled remark, "went thru the S & A studio."  

     So who was Jack? Was he just passing through, or did he have business to conduct concerning the studio? 

     The message on the back of the card begins "Dear Folks," and the card was addressed to Mrs. E. D. Doud of Ben Lomond, California. More than that... I don't know.

 


     By the way, this is what that street scene looks like today:






     Speaking of Essanay, here's a Charlie Chaplin card from the summer of 1915. (He'd left Niles at this point, and was working in the Los Angeles area.)  

     This is one of a good handful of images that Essanay licensed for sale on postcards. This particular card must be a bootleg, because somebody erased the Essanay Indian-head logo out of that box in the lower left corner before printing the card.)



     Every other card in that series is from an easily-recognizable Chaplin film, like Work, The Bank and A Woman. But this scene doesn't appear in any film. Is it an out-take, from By the Sea, perhaps? Or did somebody just happen to ask Chaplin to hold her baby and to smile for her camera? We may never know.

     The sloppily-retouched face of that man standing at far left gives me the creeps. Otherwise, it's a cute card.




     Now here's another Chaplin card, a photo of his studio as it looked in the early 1920s.

     I found it at a postcard show for four bucks, and I snapped it right up, because I love a mystery. Read it for yourself:



  
     At first glance, the writer seems to be a tourist. ("Saw Charlie Chaplin / He is Strange guy"). But the writer is "staying here at [the] studio," as if he (or she?) were a guest. And there was a good-sized house on the studio property; it was already there when Chaplin bought the lot, and his brother Syd moved into it.

     The writer also mentions an excursion to Santa Catalina Island, which happened to be a favorite getaway of Chaplin's in those days. And there's lobster... and a boar hunt. The writer seems less like a tourist and more like some sort of VIP, at least in Chaplin's circle. On the other hand, the writer is hoping "to get work soon."

     But... who was this "Lee"?

     Don't ask me. I don't know!


The Charmingly Suggestive Photo of the Week


Yes, that's really her, and I was lucky enough to buy this card cheap from a dealer who hadn't begun selling on eBay yet. Why in the world is Louise in that outfit? Why is she shackled up like that? Once again... I don't know.




     Well, that's the end of the reel already. Come on back next weekend!


 

     During a 1923 interview, Claire Windsor discussed the male "vamps" she knew in Hollywood. When the interviewer mentioned her former flame Charlie Chaplin, she exclaimed, "Oh, he is the most insidious of all! He is the most dangerous he-vamp in the world!"

     She explained, "There is no deep feeling under it all. Any little thing can change him toward you in a moment! But he can seem so thoroughly in love for the time being!"

     She concluded, perhaps diplomatically, "I really believe he is capable of deep friendship, though."

 

(Movie Weekly, "Male Vamps I Have Known, By Claire Windsor," article/interview by Grace Kingsley, July 28, 1923, page 30.)


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Now I've got to dig up this issue, and see how her baby made Mae Marsh a better actress.


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     Ah, Movie Weekly. One of my favorites.

     There were plenty of fan magazines during the silent era, but Movie Weekly was something special. During its early-'20s heyday, this tabloid offered absolutely nothing of substance. But every all-too-thin issue was packed with gossipy stories beneath loopy headlines. 

      Those irresistible headlines get me every time. Here are some of my favorites:

"Are Bow-Legs a Barrier to the Screen? YES! Says George Melford" (January 26, 1924)

"Why the Public Does Not Mind Bad Pictures," by director John S. Robertson (July 7, 1923)

"Hollywood is a Hick Town, Says Conrad Nagel" (April 7, 1923)

"Why a Prudish Girl Can’t Be Popular," by Claire Windsor (June 2, 1923)



"Lying in Wait to Shoot Up Harold Lloyd," by still photographer Gene Kornman (July 15, 1922)

"Does a Comedienne Make a Good Wife? NO! Says Louise Fazenda" (July 7, 1923)

"You Use Too Much Rouge! Says Lillian Gish" (July 21, 1923)

"Why I Love Money," by Mae Murray (June 9, 1923)

"Are All Women Gold Diggers? YES! Says Hope Hampton" (October 13, 1923)

"Why Was Thomas Meighan Stoned in Chinatown?" (January 19, 1924)

"Lewis Stone Tells How Women Can Be Fooled" (February 24, 1923)

"Rudolph is Not Bald! Says Mrs. Valentino" (January 19, 1924)


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"Movie School Students Forced to Endure Petting"?! Come on... how could you NOT want to read that article?


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     A lot of the fan magazines had regular "Answer Man" columns, where fans could ask how tall May McAvoy was, or whether Theda Bara was married. Movie Weekly did that too, but what set it apart from the rest was its willingness (its eagerness, even) to give out the private home addresses of the stars. Here are a few examples:

Tom Mix: 5841 Carlton Way, Hollywood

Madge Kennedy: 82 Riverside Drive, New York, NY

Jack Mulhall: 5857 Harold Way, Hollywood

Jack Hoxie: 1325 North Hobart Boulevard, Hollywood

Wesley Barry: 4634 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles

Norman Kerry: 1745 McCadden Place, Los Angeles

Kenneth Harlan: 1327 Le Moyne Street, Los Angeles

Buck Jones: 1954 Crasena Drive, Los Angeles

Irene Rich: 703 North Gramercy Place, Los Angeles.

Dorothy Davenport: 8327 De Longpre Avenue, Hollywood

Jack Mulhall: 5857 Harold Way, Hollywood

Colleen Moore: 7119 South Grand View, Los Angeles

 

     Charlie Chaplin, the last of the silent stars to talk on screen, may have been the first one to talk on the radio.
 
     He made an appearance over station WOR in New Jersey in 1923, introducing himself to an audience that had never heard his voice before.
      
     After some introductory remarks, he announced that he would imitate a violin. At that point, a studio violinist played a bit of music. Then Chaplin announced he would imitate a saxophone, and another studio musician played a passage on the sax. Chaplin then announced he would imitate an entire jazz band, and an entire jazz band promptly played a burst of music.
    
     Finally, he advised his audience, "If you have nothing else to do, go to see my new picture, which I directed, A Woman of Paris."


(Leonard Maltin, The Great American Broadcast, page 9.)


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Centenary: Lita Grey
April 15, 1908 - December 29, 1995


Lita Grey was Charlie Chaplin's leading lady in The Gold Rush (1925)... or at least she was until she got pregnant and had to be replaced. She did win the role of Mrs. Chaplin, but that didn't last very long either. Here, he bids an enthusiastic farewell as his 18-year-old wife sails for Honolulu without him (November 1926). They divorced in 1928.


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     Chaplin’s divorce from Lita Grey was so nasty, and full of so many shocking and intimate disclosures, that it threatened to derail his career. 

     It was feared that his films would be banned in some parts of the country, and the Hays Office considered disciplinary action against him. 

     But "Charlie Chaplin’s domestic troubles are none of our business," conceded a Hays representative, who also admitted that Hays held no authority over the comedian. "Chaplin is not even a member of our organization," he admitted. "Neither is the United Artists releasing firm, which handles Chaplin’s films."

(Motion Picture Magazine, March 1927.) 


 
Chaplin Studio manager Alf Reeves owned a nominal stake in the company, and here's the stock certificate to prove it. It's even endorsed... by Alf Reeves.


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     Harry Myers, the film comic and supporting actor best remembered for playing the millionaire drunk in Chaplin’s City Lights, was a real-life hero. 

     Back in 1913, while playing a scene at the Lubin studio in Philadelphia, a fire broke out on the set. Myers’ quick action saved the life of his co-star, Rosemary Theby.
 
     The following year, another fire broke out, this time in Lubin’s main film vault. The blaze consumed much of the Lubin studio and the surrounding neighborhood. Once again, Harry Myers was credited with saving a life, pulling a young boy out of harm’s way.

(Rob Stone, Laurel or Hardy, page 18.)


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This little rarity popped up on eBay nearly a decade ago: a candid snapshot of Chaplin and crew on location. I need my fellow Chaplin buffs to help me out here. Which film were they shooting?


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     Linda Wada announces the publication of a new book on The Sea Gull (1926), also known as A Woman of the Sea. That rather mysterious film was produced by Chaplin, directed by Josef von Sternberg, and starred Edna Purviance. Chaplin disliked the finished film and didn't release it. He did save a print throughout his life, but his widow Oona seems to have destroyed it, so we'll never get to see it for ourselves. 

     Happily, Edna saved over 50 unseen production stills from The Sea Gull, and those have been combined with the text of the film's intertitles to create the closest recreation of the film we'll likely ever see. Visit http://ednapurviance.com/ and take a look.



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Centenary: Virginia Cherrill
April 12, 1908 - November 14, 1996


That's right, she and Lita Grey were born only three days apart. Virginia Cherill played the blind girl in Chaplin's masterpiece City Lights (1931). She was also briefly married to Cary Grant (1934-1935), a union that only lasted a quarter as long as Chaplin's disastrous marriage to Lita.


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     The original publicity photos issued to promote City Lights had this message rubber-stamped on the backs: "Charlie Chaplin as he appears in the greatest picture of all time, City Lights."


(Motion Picture, September 1931, page 16.)


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The Silent Era Ended Here


A few years ago, my friend Gerald Smith discovered the exact location where the famous closing shot of Modern Times (1936) was filmed. And when John Bengtson was preparing an entire book of Chaplin Then-and-Now locations, I visited the site to snap a pic for his project. (And thanks to David Totheroh and Bonnie McCourt for taking me there!) Want to visit the location yourself?  Check out John's amazing, fascinating and delightful book, Silent Traces, for all the details.


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Gone 50 Years


Estelle Taylor, who passed away on April 15, 1958: a glamorous star of the 1920s, and the wife of boxing legend Jack Dempsey.


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Charmingly Suggestive Photo of the Week


Madge Bellamy, queen of the Fox lot.


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     That's the end of the reel for another week. See you again next weekend!

 
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     If ever a film had a curse upon it, it was Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927).

     The film was a hit at the box office and with the critics. But nearly everyone involved in the film suffered some sort of calamity within a few years of making it.

     By 1931, actors James Neill (James), Robert Edeson (Matthew), Rudolph Schildkraut (Caiaphas), and George Siegmann (Barabbas) had all died, as had assistant director Frank Urson, casting director William Crothers and business manager Lou Goodstadt.

     Others found their marriages finished by that time, including actors Dorothy Cumming (Mary), Jacqueline Logan (Mary Magdalene), Joseph Schildkraut (Judas), and cameraman Peverell Marley.

     DeMille himself wasn’t immune. Shortly after finishing the film, his house was robbed, and soon after that, his palatial yacht burned to the waterline.

 

(William H. Swigart, "The Death Films of Hollywood," The New Movie Magazine, October 1931, pages 60-61.)


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Charmingly Suggestive Photo of the Week


Here's Mae Busch, and it's all the fun you guys are going to get from this week's blog. It gets real depressing real fast. Get ready!


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     Another great silent proved to be a wellspring of misery: King Vidor's The Big Parade (1925).

     It was a huge hit with the public, out-grossing everything that had come along up until then (except possibly The Birth of a Nation), and kicking off an entire cycle of films about the First World War. 
    
     It also catapulted several of its players into brief, bright stardom. But after that stardom flickered out, a lasting darkness overtook each one of them.

     Karl Dane's performance as "Slim" so pleased M-G-M that he was teamed with George K. Arthur for a whole series of successful comedies. But troubles began mounting almost immediately. A broken shoulder on the set. A failed relationship. A nervous breakdown. Even before the studio let him go in 1930, a swift decline was well underway for a man who'd already endured a lot of unhappiness in his life (one example being the 1923 death of his wife and baby girl in childbirth).

     Dane continued to take movie jobs when he could get them, but he realized that he needed to find something else. A solo vaudeville act flopped. A fledgling mining business went broke.

     A 1933 venture was sad enough to become Hollywood legend: operating a hot dog stand outside the M-G-M studio gate. This too ended in failure. Attempts to get work as a carpenter or a waiter were unsuccessful. He offered to play bit parts, even to work as an extra for a few dollars a day, but he was rejected, probably because he was just too large and distinctive-looking to melt into a crowd scene.

     In April 1934, a pickpocket lifted eighteen dollars from him. It was almost all the money Karl Dane had left in the world. The next day, April 14, he sat alone in his apartment, next to a scrapbook of mementos from his screen career. There was a gun in his hand. He raised it to his head and pulled the trigger.

     His body lay unclaimed at the morgue until actor Jean Hersholt stepped in and arranged for a burial.



Karl Dane, in happier days.

     The Big Parade had been the turning point for Renee Adoree, too. The part of the French girl was a natural for her, as she'd grown up there herself. M-G-M put her in leading roles immediately, often teaming her with Ramon Novarro or her Big Parade co-star, John Gilbert.      
    
     A loan-out to Universal for Back to God's Country prompted an unexpected tragedy. The events that set the stage (if there were any) are unknown. But on February 25, 1927, the film's director, Lynn Reynolds, arrived home after an exhausting three weeks of location filming. Friends were over for dinner. The director's wife, the former actress Kathleen O'Connor, needled him about his attention to Adoree, accusing him of having shared his lunch basket with her. Mrs. Reynolds later claimed these remarks were made in a light-hearted way.

     The two began arguing instantly, and left the room together. The argument turned physical. A dinner guest got up and followed the sounds of battle to a sunroom in the rear of the house, where he found a puffy-eyed Mrs. Reynolds on the floor, pleading for her life, her husband above her with a .38 in his hand. Reynolds turned the gun on himself, raising it to his head and firing. He died in the hospital the next day, and Irvin Willat finished Back to God's Country.

Lynn Reynolds, a specialist in westerns. He was promoted from directing Universal's Hoot Gibson series to make Back to God's Country. His wife Kathleen O'Connor had acted in films with Marie Prevost, William S. Hart and Larry Semon.



     After that, Renee Adoree returned to M-G-M, and soon she was working with John Gilbert again in The Cossacks for director George W. Hill. (Hill would later commit suicide too, in 1934.) But it was clear to the front office that her stardom was fading, and her contract would not be renewed.

     But she had a bigger problem; or, more literally, a microscopic one. After what may have been many years of latency, TB bacilli in her body overcame her immune system, and she developed a very active case of tuberculosis.

     She entered an Arizona sanitarium for treatment. After three years or so, she seemed strong enough to live in her own home again, and returned to Southern California. But she soon relapsed, and death came on October 5, 1933, just a few days after her 35th birthday.

     At the funeral service, a song was sung that she had written herself, "What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You." Her sister, Mira LaFonte, told the Associated Press that Renee's wish had been for her ashes to be scattered over the Pacific. But they reside to this day at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.



Renee Adoree.

     Another actress from The Big Parade was Kathleen Key, who was a featured player in the mid-1920s without ever really finding stardom. Relatively little is known about her private life, apart from a violent confrontation with Buster Keaton at his bungalow on the M-G-M lot in February 1931, a rare case of the studio failing to keep an ugly event out of the newpapers.

     Keaton and Key had been having an affair; both of them being hard-drinking, unstable people at the time, it was bound to end badly. Marion Meade's often-but-not-always-accurate Keaton biography says that Key was given $10,000 to go away quietly. The money didn't last very long. She died at the Motion Picture Country House in 1954, just 51 years old.



Kathleen Key.

     When a man kills himself with a gun, everyone calls it suicide. But if he does it with alcohol, somehow that's different. John Gilbert's slide into oblivion is already pretty well-known, so I won't go into a lot of detail here.

     Legend has it that Gilbert's decline began after a run-in with Louis B. Mayer, at the wedding of Big Parade director King Vidor. That altercation probably never actually happened, though. Another legend has it that audiences hated his voice in his talkie debut, and that his fall began right then, but I don't really believe that either.

     Gilbert's career was already a little shaky before the talkies began. Routine silents like Twelve Miles Out (1927), Four Walls (1928) and Desert Nights (1929) had generated little interest. Tod Browning's macabre The Show (1927) is interesting, but wasn't very well-received. The tragedy Man, Woman and Sin (1927) is a superb film, but again, it wasn't what audiences wanted from the hero of The Big Parade. 
    
     In talkies, Gilbert could deliver excellent work; Downstairs (1932) is one of his best films, but by that time, hardly anyone was paying attention. He was announced for the lead in Red Dust (1932), but was replaced almost at the last minute by Clark Gable, who vaulted to stardom in the role.

     Gilbert would spend the 1930s watching a different big parade, one that was passing him by: life itself. Again, this story's been well told elsewhere, and it's a bleak one, punctuated with the tragic ends of friends and associates. His Man, Woman and Sin co-star Jeanne Eagels went into convulsions in October 1929, and suddenly died; an autopsy blamed an overdose of chloral hydrate. Gilbert had been directed by Lynn Reynolds and George W. Hill, discussed earlier. His close friend, the writer and M-G-M executive Paul Bern, was found shot to death in September 1932, officially a suicide (though that verdict seems questionable to me). Gilbert had been best man when Bern married Jean Harlow earlier that summer. He would attend his friend Renee Adoree's funeral the following year.

     Gilbert's one-time reported lover Lupe Velez would commit suicide in December 1944. But by then, Gilbert himself had been long gone. His heart failed on January 9, 1936, after too many years of too many drinks, too many heartaches, too much lonesome brooding, and just too many losses. He was 38 years old.



It ended here. Vintage postcard of John Gilbert's Beverly Hills home.

(Sources for this essay include David K. Frasier, Suicide in the Entertainment Industry; Marion Meade, Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase; Movie Classic, September 1932; and Laura Petersen Balogh's excellent Karl Dane website (http://www.karl-dane.com). The only worthy John Gilbert biography is Leatrice Gilbert Fountain's Dark Star.)


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     That's the end of the reel for another week. See you next weekend! It won't be so depressing next time. I promise.



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     Reuben Deisler had been a railroad engineer. For fourteen years, he was the man at the throttle for the Pennsylvania Railroad, criss-crossing his home state of Ohio.

     That all ended one night in 1910. His train racing through the darkness, he leaned out of the cab window to make sure the track ahead was clear. And precisely at that moment, the locomotive reached a bridge with a clearance of only fourteen inches.

     Reuben's head hit the bridge with devastating-- nearly deadly-- force. He spent weeks fighting for life; then months more, fighting to recover.

     He started over. With settlement money from the railroad, Reuben had a movie theater built in the little town of Plymouth, Ohio. As theater manager, he did all the booking, and manned the ticket booth himself. His wife was projectionist, and the two of them lived on the upper floor of the building.

     Reuben Deisler was the only exhibitor in the country who never watched the movies he ran in his theater. He couldn't. He was blind... ever since that night on the bridge.

(Moving Picture World, February 14, 1925, page 649. At the time of the article, Deisler's theater had been in business for a dozen years.)



Reuben Deisler, in his engineering days.


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     Back in April 1905, a wild west show at Madison Square Garden took a very unexpected turn when a wild steer broke loose and charged up an aisle, panicking the audience.

     One of the cowboys in the show ran up another aisle to head off the steer, and succeeded in roping it, getting himself dragged "over seats and down the stairs" in the process, in the words of the New York Herald. Joined by a couple of other cowboys, he helped run the steer back into the arena. Nobody was injured.

     The publicity that resulted from all this led the cowboy to try a few appearances in vaudeville. Audiences liked him, and he began a new career entertaining folks on stage, just speaking his mind and performing rope tricks. By 1918, he was starring in silent movies. He was Will Rogers.

(Ben Yogoda, Will Rogers: A Biography, page 85; W. K. Stratton, Chasing the Rodeo, pages 162-163.)


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     The November 1925 issue of Photoplay claimed that Buster Keaton had recently hosted an unusual tea party at Los Angeles' Hotel Ambassador.

     Miss Brown Eyes, his bovine co-star from Go West (1925), was the guest of honor, and she was served a platter of hay. Among those present were the canine stars Peter the Great and Cameo, as well as a monkey actor named Jimmy and a parrot actress named Polly.

     Well, I've always found Photoplay's news items to be pretty accurate, but somehow I'd always been a little skeptical about that one. And then I found this photo:


Buster Keaton (in cap) hosts a tea party, 1925. One of his guests will be seen in Unknown Video's Silent Comedy Mafia #2 soon. Well, pretty soon.


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Pop Quiz!

     How did these silent screen legends propose to their wives? See if you can match each star with the essentially-correct marriage proposal!

    
     1. Charlie Chaplin, to Mildred Harris in 1918

     2. Harold Lloyd, to Mildred Davis in 1923

     3. Charlie Chaplin, to Lita Grey in 1924 
 

     A. "You're having a what?!"

     B. "You're having a what?!"

     C. "You're having a what?!"


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April is the Cutest Month

     April is National Charmingly Suggestive Photo Month, at least here at the Silent Movie Blog. We might as well get started right now, so here's our first Charmingly Suggestive Photo of the Week:


Bessie Love, late 1920s

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     It's the end of the reel for this week. See you next weekend!


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Centenary: Brigitte Helm

     Brigitte Helm, most famous for Metropolis (1927), was born a century ago, on March 17, 1908. She may have been the most successful European star of her era not to make the leap to Hollywood. She just wasn't interested. 

     She remained in Germany, a highly successful actress, until the advent of Hitler prompted a dramatic change in her life. She married, retired from the screen and moved to Italy, then Switzerland. Her film career became a closed chapter in her life, and to the end of her days she refused to discuss it. She passed away in 1996.

     One of the most legendary films of classical German cinema, Metropolis wouldn’t have been made if not for M-G-M and Paramount.

     The only German film company capable of bankrolling such an expensive project was UFA, the country's dominant film producer. But UFA was nearly bankrupt by the autumn of 1925, until it was saved by a $4,000,000 loan from those American companies.

     Metropolis was produced the next year, nearly bankrupting UFA all over again, but it became one of the most acclaimed films of the entire silent era.

 

(David Puttnam, Movies and Money, pages 90-91.)

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     In March 1927, Paramount distributed an edited version in America. Reviews were mixed. I've seen positive reports from theater men in Exhibitors Herald, but the leading movie fan magazine of the time, Photoplay, was less than pleased:

     "Technically gorgeous, but almost ruined by terrible acting and awful subtitles. The settings are unbelievably beautiful; the mugging of the players is unbelievably bad."


(Photoplay, May 1927.)



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Less Than Flattering

     Thousands of publicity photos were taken of the silent stars, and they helped create an enduring aura of glamour. But inevitably a few bad ones slipped out. Here's the first installment in an occasional series of un-retouched photos that should never have left the darkroom.


Our Hospitality has left Buster Keaton looking a little haggard.


Agnes Ayres, in what I think is some sort of hat.


Colleen Moore, who normally looked cuter than this. Much cuter.

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     Thanks as ever for checking out the Silent Movie Blog, folks. See you next weekend!

 
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     Small-town theaters in the silent era weren’t always actual theaters.

     For example, in Smyrna Mills, Maine, Tarbell’s Theater was operated by the local undertaker. His funeral parlor did double duty as a picture parlor.

(Kathryn H. Fuller, At the Picture Show, page 43.) 

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     In November 1928, a few children watching a movie at the Vista Theatre in Minneapolis, discovered a smoldering bomb tucked beneath one of the seats. Help was summoned, and one of the owners of the theater grabbed it and threw it into the street, where it exploded. No one was injured. 

     The Vista had only been open for a week. It was the latest of nearly a dozen theater bombings in that city since 1920.

(Motion Picture News, November 10, 1928, page 1450.) 

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     One of the worst disasters of the silent era occurred on January 9, 1927, at the Laurier Palace Theatre in Montreal. The theater was packed above its capacity with children attending a matinee, when fire broke out in the crowded balcony.

     Exits flanked either side of the balcony, but one of them was clogged with children, and the other was locked. 77 children died within minutes.

     The film being screened at the time? The unfortunately-titled Hal Roach short Get 'Em Young.

(An excellent essay on this tragedy can be found at http://32elvismovies.livejournal.com/2008/03/08 , referencing the Montreal Gazette, Jan 10-15, 1927; Toronto Daily Star, Jan 10-13, 1927; and La Presse de Montreal, Oct 25, 1927.)

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A 1920s view of San Francisco's Tivoli Theatre.


The demolition of the Tivoli. June 9, 1950.

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An interior view of what may have been the last of the silent-era picture palaces: the legendary San Francisco Fox, said to be the most spectacular theater west of the Mississippi. It opened in the spring of 1929.


The demolition of the Fox. February 1963.

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     See you next weekend!

     In the silent era, there were a couple of major trade magazines, serving the distribution and exhibition end of the business. One of them, Exhibitors Herald, included a regular feature called "What the Picture Did for Me," in which theater managers all over the country wrote in to say how well they liked the new releases, and whether those films pleased their customers.

     I always love reading their little reviews. Those straight-talking small-town theater men had a whole different perspective from that of the big-city film critics.... or modern-day film historians. 

     Here's a sampling, pulled from a couple of different issues.


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August 14, 1926


TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP:  Harry Langdon -- Not a boxoffice knockout but to an intelligent theatre going audience it is a wow. I liked it better than For Heaven's Sake, because of its originality and cleverness. Small towns who depend on farm trade don't pay much. Most of your patrons won't get it. Six reels. -- R. E. Palmer, Postville Theatre, Postville, Iowa.

TRAMP, TRAMP, TRAMP:  Harry Langdon -- Not a good comedy. Did not please here. Do not pay anything extra for this one. Six reeels. -- Rae Peacock, Mystic Theatre, Stafford, Kan.

THE BLACKBIRD:  Lon Chaney -- Lon Chaney wonderful actor and all that, but his pictures do not please my crowd. We had several ladies tell us they do not like these crook pictures. Six reels. -- L.C. Bolduc, Bijou Theatre, Conway, N. H.

THE UNHOLY THREE:  Lon Chaney -- A wonderful, wonderful picture but not for a small town audience. Just a little bit over the heads of my audience and the drawing power of Chaney's name is very limited. Lost money, but a wonderful picture. Seven reels. -- R. E. Palmer, Postville Theatre, Postville, Iowa.

THE UNHOLY THREE:  Lon Chaney -- This is better than Black Bird, but crook pictures do not please. Seven reels. -- L. C. Bolduc, Bijou Theatre, Conway, N. H.

GO WEST:  Buster Keaton -- Buster sure made my patrons laugh in his funny western. Cattle stampede through the city is a scream. Get it and make your people go home happy. Seven reels. -- L. C. Bolduc, Bijou Theatre, Conway, N. H.

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE:  Harold Lloyd -- A great comedy, almost as good as The Freshman. Made no more than the average Starurday show. People will not pay 40 cents to see Lloyd when they can see Hines and Keaton for 30 cents. Maybe Harold will give us small town patrons a chance some day. Six reels. -- R. E. Palmer, Postville Theatre, Postville, Iowa.

FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE:  Harold Lloyd -- For heaven's sake why did I buy this picture? Paid all the money to [the] exchange. Mr. Lloyd will have to come down off his high seat if I ever play another one of his pictures, and if all exhibitors will stick to this we can make him come on down within reason. Five reels. -- E. D. Luna, Cozy Theatre, Wagoner, Okla.

GRASS:  Special cast -- Can't see where they call this a feature. Is nothing but a tribe going over a mountain to find grass. The cattle should have eaten up the picture before it was released. Pleased very few, about 2 per cent. Three reels. -- John Stoll, Lion Theatre, Bellevue, Ohio.

COBRA:  Rudolph Valentino -- Poor picture, poor photography. The only real acting, to our notion, in this one was where Rudy knocked a couple of fellows down. However, it takes more than that to make a real picture. We were disappointed in this one from box office receipts also. Seven reels. -- D. B. Dyer, Dyer's Amuse Theatre, Grover, Colo.

SALLY OF THE SAW DUST:  Special cast -- If Dave Griffith directed this picture, then I dug the Panama Canal. Can't believe Dave ever had a hand in it. Terrible! Slow, draggy, mechanical, comedy forced; poor actors, all miscast. Fields does a few interesting tricks but fails to get the laughs. Circus scenes very ordinary. Story dull. Court scene a joke, and acting of Miss Dempster awful. The children and a very few enjoyed it. My best patrons panned it and many walked out. Don't buy it. -- Philip Rand, Rex Theatre, Salmon, Idaho.

LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY:  Mary Pickford -- This is the best Mary has made since Through the Back Door and Tess of the Storm Country. And how it did draw and please. Drew more than twice as good as Doug's Don Q. If Mary will stay in this sort of stuff, instead of wasting her time and talent on the costume bunk, she will always remain the World's Sweetheart. Boys, you can raise your price on this one and you'll never hear a squawk. Ten reels. -- Wm. E. Tragsdorf, Trag's Theatre, Neillsville, Wis.

 THE RADIO DETECTIVE:  (Universal) Special cast -- Seemed to us too much hand to hand fighting in each episode. Apart from that, seemed to be liked. Almost all the one sheets sent us showed fighting. Little more acting and comedy interest would help all of these serials. Two reels. -- P. G. Estee, S. T. Theatre, Parker, S. Dak.


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August 18, 1928


LITTLE SHEPHERD OF KINGDOM COME:  Richard Barthelmess -- Patrons disappointed due to insincere acting by all concerned. Dick's name will pull 'em and we think this picture will jeapordize his prestige. Eight reels. -- Geo. Cohen, Princess Theatre, West Union, Ia.

HOME MADE:  Johnny Hines -- Good and my patrons like it for a change from Westerns on Friday and Saturday. Hines has a good line of comedy, light but amusing and his pictures are clean most of the time. -- Ray W. Musselman, Princess Theatre, Lincoln, Kan.

SEVENTH HEAVEN:  Special cast -- A little late, yes. We turned this picture over to the local American Legion on a percentage and showed it to over 600 people. The population of the town is officially 640. Use your own judgment. Our gross on this picture will never be surpassed. Compared with our previous high gross, this picture would rate at about 250 per cent. -- Frank Johnson, Opera House, Louisville, Neb.

HANGMAN'S HOUSE:  Victor McLaglen -- A fair picture, but not good enough with a star like McLaglen. Personally, I thought it punk. Seven reels. -- John Kamuda, Grand Theatre, Indian Orchard, Mass.

THE DIVINE WOMAN:  Greta Garbo -- Just a fair picture. Not much good for small towns. Metro wants too much for these pictures. Seven reels. -- Andrew Rapp, Theatorium, Emlenton, Pa.

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT:  Lon Chaney -- A very good mystery story based on impossible facts. Pleased and business was fair. Seven reels. -- S. R. Cook, Althea Theatre, Dunseith, N. D.

LOVE:  Gilbert-Garbo -- Not bad, but certainly has no box office kick. -- Russell C. Dey, Reedville Movies, Reedville, Va.

FOOLS FOR LUCK:  Chester Conklin, W. C. Fields -- Just a very ordinary program picture. Seven reels. -- Giacoma Bros., Crystal Theatre, Tombstone, Ariz.

RED HAIR:  Clara Bow -- All it takes to make a Clara Bow picture a howling success is to have her take off a few clothes. In this picture she takes everything off-- so you know it must be good-- and it is. In fact it's her best picture since It. Clarence Badger did a neat job of directing. Seven reels. -- P. G. Vaughan, Sun Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.

THE CIRCUS:  Charles Chaplin -- This is a flop in a small town. Believe this is due partly to the fact that as a circus picture it is too drab and depressing and it is not what people expected. Also had frequent criticism of Charlie's domestic troubles. I will not play him again.-- Geo. E. Fuller, Playhouse Theatre, Fairhope, Ala.

THE CAT AND THE CANARY:  Laura La Plante -- Very good program picture, but did not draw. Seven reels. -- John Kamuda, Grand Theatre, Indian Orchard, Mass.

Short Subjects:

DUMB DADDIES:  Max Davidson -- Whoop la! Another one that tickled their funnybones. One of the best we have had from Max. "Spec" O'Donnell is entitled to some of the laurels. Two reels. -- Tivenan & Wolfe, Screenland Theatre, Nevada, O.

THE FIGHT PEST:  Charley Chase -- One of the best comedies I've played this year. It certainly got the laughs. Two reels. -- P. G. Vaughan, Sun Theatre, Kansas City, Mo.

FIGHTING FATHERS:  Max Davidson -- Good. Too expensive for small towns. Two reels. -- Andrew Rapp, Theatorium, Emlenton, Pa.

LEAVE 'EM LAUGHING:  Laurel-Hardy -- It did-- and pepped up an otherwise mediocre program. Would perhaps have been better if this expensive pair could have pulled a few laughs from our pessimists in the first reel. They got most of the kick out of the traffic cop's unruly pants in the second reel. Two reels. -- Tivenan & Wolfe, Screenland Theatre, Nevada, O.


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Star Babies



Dolores Costello and John Barrymore, with baby son John, 1932. Yes, that's Drew Barrymore's father.



The Hearst papers announced this as the first published photo of little Joseph Keaton, 1922.



Universal's new star Conrad Veidt arrives in America, with wife Felicitas and baby Viola. 1927.



Rin-Tin-Tin with a litter of his sons and daughters, June 1927. Rinty was the only silent star whose descendents can be purchased on the internet (http://www.RinTinTin.com)... or at least, the only one I know of.


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Thanks

   Just wanted to say thanks to all of you who've e-mailed me or posted comments to the blog. I appreciate it! The Silent Movie Blog gets updated every weekend, so come on back!


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