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Charles Chaplin’s ZEPPED Found

In the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips reports that a long-thought lost Charles Chaplin film has been accidentally found after a film collector made an eBay bid on a nitrate film canister.
Phillips explains that "the footage turned out to be the obscure Chaplin short [Zepped], a World War I propaganda effort designed to buck up British morale, combining stop-motion animation and outtakes and unused alternate shots from films Chaplin made for both Keystone and Essanay studios.
"The hybrid, over which Chaplin apparently exercised no creative control, includes a shot or two from His New Job, the short film Chaplin made for the Chicago-based Essanay during his 23-day residency here in late 1914 and early 1915."

D.W. Griffith in California

Los Angeles Filmforum will present "D.W. Griffith in California," on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 pm. at the Echo Park Film Center. At the screening, film scholar Tom Gunning will discuss D. W. Griffith and his early Californian films.
Six of those Griffith productions will be screened: Man’s Genesis (1912, 17 min); The New Dress (1911, 17 min.); The Massacre (1914, 20 min); The Unchanging Sea  (below right, 1910, 14 min.); The Sands of Dee (1912, 17 min); and The Female of the Species (1912, 17 min).
All in 16mm, with live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.
Among the early stars featured in those shorts are Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Arthur Johnson, Wilfred Lucas, and, [...]

THE PONY EXPRESS – Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez

The Pony Express (1925)
Direction: James Cruze
Screenplay: Walter Woods; from Woods and Henry James Forman’s story
Cast: Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez, George Bancroft, Ernest Torrence, Wallace Beery, Al Hart
 

The Pony Express is a rousing James Cruze Western depicting the founding of the Pony Express with a backdrop of political ambitions concerning a senator’s plans to get California to secede from the United States so he can build his own empire.
A great cast and Cruze’s direction keep this one interesting — even though Ricardo Cortez in a period film seems woefully out of place and pretty Betty Compson’s role is more or less that of an ingenue, merely requiring her to look good while reacting to the things going [...]

THE RAVEN – Henry B. Walthall – d: Charles Brabin

The Raven (1915)
Direction: Charles Brabin
Screenplay: Charles Brabin; from George Cochran Hazelton’s novel and play The Raven: The Love Story of Edgar Allan Poe
Cast: Henry B. Walthall, Warda Howard
 

Starring Henry B. Walthall, The Raven is an Essanay feature depicting the life of Edgar Allan Poe, starting with his childhood and going all the way to his marriage to his cousin (played by the little-known Warda Howard).
Charles Brabin’s direction is uneven: At some points it’s stagy and rudimentary; at other points, Brabin creates some remarkably striking and eerie visual effects, including a bravura scene for Walthall in which he descends further and further into madness following the death of his wife. Brabin visualizes this with a barrage [...]

M’LISS – Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan

M’Liss (1918)
Direction: Marshall Neilan
Screenplay: Frances Marion; from Bret Harte’s story
Cast: Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan, Theodore Roberts, Tully Marshall, Charles Ogle, Monte Blue, Winifred Greenwood
 

Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan in M’Liss
 

Directed by Marshall Neilan and written by Frances Marion – two frequent Mary Pickford collaborators — M’Liss is one of Pickford’s very best films. In this comedy-drama, Pickford plays a spirited and unruly mountain girl, that’s the M’Liss of the title, who falls in love with the new schoolteacher (Thomas Meighan) — who is later falsely accused of murder.
Pickford, by then already a superstar, gives a sterling performance; she is ably supported by (future star) Thomas Meighan as the schoolteacher, as well as a fine collection of character actors including [...]

THE GREAT WHITE TRAIL – Doris Kenyon

The Great White Trail (1917)
Direction: Leopold Wharton and Theodore Wharton
Screenplay: Gardner Hunting and Leopold Wharton
Cast: Doris Kenyon, Paul Gordon, Richard Stewart, Thomas Holding, Louise Hotaling, Hans Roberts, Edgar Davenport
 

Some films have "everything except the kitchen sink" as the saying goes. Well, the 1917 melodrama The Great White Trail has a plot that has everything and about three kitchen sinks as well, as it briskly makes its way from one improbable situation after another before everything is happily resolved in the final reel.
Doris Kenyon plays a happy young wife and mother. When her irresponsible brother appeals to her for help, her husband (Paul Gordon) misunderstands the situation, believing her to be unfaithful. He turns her out of the [...]

HER NIGHT OF ROMANCE – Constance Talmadge, Ronald Colman

Her Night of Romance (1924)
Direction: Sidney Franklin
Screenplay: Hans Kräly
Cast: Constance Talmadge, Ronald Colman, Jean Hersholt, Albert Grand, Robert Rendel
 

Directed by Sidney Franklin and written by frequent Ernst Lubitsch collaborator Hans Kräly, Her Night of Romance is certainly on my list of top three favorite films at Cinesation 2009.
Constance Talmadge, whose extant films are hard to come by, is always a delightful comedienne. In Her Night of Romance, Talmadge plays Dorothy Adams, a wealthy young woman who goes about in hideous disguises to ward off fortune hunters only interested in her money. Eventually, Dorothy meets and falls in love with an impoverished English Lord (Ronald Colman), who is mistaken for a doctor. The "doctor" goes along with [...]

A COTTAGE ON DARTMOOR d: Anthony Asquith

A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929)
Direction: Anthony Asquith
Screenplay: Anthony Asquith; from a story by Herbert Price
Cast: Norah Baring, Uno Henning, Hans Schlettow
 

Uno Henning in A Cottage on Dartmoor
 

Very little in a career overview of filmmaker Anthony Asquith prepares a viewer for the brilliant thriller A Cottage on Dartmoor, released by Kino, which he both wrote (from a story by Herbert Price) and directed. Asquith’s wonderful but straightforward adaptations of Pygmalion (1938) and The Browning Version (1951) — and, to a lesser extent, The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) and Libel (1959) — do not really speak to the dynamics of this 1929 film.
The director fully embraces the tale of obsessive love in terms of silent [...]

PILLARS OF SOCIETY – Henry B. Walthall – d: Raoul Walsh

Pillars of Society (1916)
Direction: Raoul Walsh
Screenplay: From a novel by Henrik Ibsen
Cast: Henry B. Walthall, Mary Alden, Juanita Archer, George Beranger, Josephine Crowell, Olga Grey
 

Pillars of Society is a film about hypocrisy, having its basis on a story by Ibsen. The Birth of a Nation hero Henry B. Walthall (right) plays the son of a Norwegian shipping company; in his youth, he goes to Paris to study and has an affair with a married Bohemian actress. However, his brother-in-law is falsely accused of having said affair with the actress; he protects Walthall by accepting the blame and leaving for America.
Years later, the brother-in-law returns and demands that Walthall clear his name. Fearing that if the [...]

CROOKED STREETS – Ethel Clayton

Crooked Streets (1920)
Direction: Paul Powell
Screenplay: Edith M. Kennedy; from a story by Samuel Merwin
Cast: Ethel Clayton, Jack Holt, Clyde Fillmore, Josephine Crowell
 

 

Beautiful Ethel Clayton, a major star in the 1910s, plays a young woman who takes a job as secretary to a Professor of antiquities about to embark upon a trip to China. Clayton, however, has a secret motive for wanting to get to China.
Crooked Streets is an excellent action-packed drama with a particularly impressive lengthy chase sequence in which Clayton rides alone to a dangerous part of town and is attacked by a massive crowd of Chinese locals. The film also offers a great fight sequence between Jack Holt and a Chinese thug who [...]

O MIMI SAN – Sessue Hayakawa, Mildred Harris

O Mimi San (1914)
Direction: Charles Miller
Screenplay: Thomas H. Ince (unconfirmed)
Cast: Sessue Hayakawa, Mildred Harris, Tsuru Aoki
 

O Mimi San is historically important as Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa’s first film. In it, Hayakawa plays a prince who goes to a retreat after an attempt on his life is made; once there he falls in love with a young woman (Mildred Harris, future wife of Charles Chaplin) but then finds himself torn between love and duty as a leader of his nation. Compounding matters, an arranged marriage (with Tsuru Aoki, Hayakawa’s own future wife) awaits him.
Directed by Charles Miller and allegedly written by Thomas H. Ince (a studio head best remembered for his "mysterious" death in 1924), O Mimi San [...]

THE DEVIL’S CLAIM – Sessue Hayakawa

The Devil’s Claim (1920)
Direction: Charles Swickard
Screenplay: J. Grubb Alexander
Cast: Sessue Hayakawa, Rhea Mitchell, Colleen Moore, William Buckley
 

In The Devil’s Claim, Sessue Hayakawa plays an Indian (!) novelist who uses his experiences with women as inspiration for his novels. Next, he encounters a young American woman (Rhea Mitchell) who tells him a story about Satan-worshipping societies and evil talismans. Her real motive, however, is to reunite the novelist with Indora (future 1920s superstar Colleen Moore), a young Persian girl whom he had abandoned.
Directed by Charles Swickard from a screenplay by J. Grubb Alexander, The Devil’s Claim is an excellent drama — and so is Hayakawa’s performance. Much of the plot is told in the "story within a story" mode, [...]

Ramon Novarro III: Anita Page, Murder, Life As a Gay Man

Anita Page, Ramon Novarro in The Flying Fleet

Ramon Novarro: Allan Ellenberger Interview II
Ramon Novarro and Anita Page. Do you believe he actually asked her hand in marriage as she claimed later in life?
I do, and the main reason is that I knew Anita Page and interviewed her extensively for over a year before her health really began to decline. At that point, she would have short-term memory loss due to a stroke, which made interviewing her more difficult. That, and the image that she presented to the world in some ways made her appear unreliable. All I know is that I was able to prove most of the stories she told me with secondary [...]

Ramon Novarro II: Best Films, Rex Ingram

Jeanette MacDonald, Ramon Novarro in The Cat and the Fiddle. Photo: Courtesy Matias Bombal Collection.

Ramon Novarro: Allan Ellenberger Interview I
How would you describe Ramon Novarro the actor?
Novarro was a first-rate actor – maybe not an Olivier, but a good solid actor. Even in bad films such as Laughing Boy (1934), he had his moments. He was excellent in dramatic roles such as the aviator Alexis Rosanoff opposite Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931), or as the rapist-suitor of Myrna Loy in The Barbarian (1933). He excelled in light comedic moments, especially in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and in several of his musicals including The Cat and the Fiddle (1934) and The [...]

Ramon Novarro: Q&A with Author Allan Ellenberger

I first contacted author Allan Ellenberger shortly before the publication of his book on Old Hollywood star Ramon Novarro, as at the time I was working on my own Novarro bio. Instead of treating me like a pesky rival, Allan generously shared the information he’d amassed throughout about a decade of research — and for that I was very thankful.
We’ve since become good friends (but Allan, you need to buy me pizza more often), so I’m glad to report that his Ramon Novarro (McFarland, 1999) is now available in paperback at online bookstores. In his carefully researched book (I’ve read it about four or five times), Allan discusses Ramon Novarro’s life and career from his early beginnings in [...]

Lon Chaney’s THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA Halloween Screening

The 1925 silent classic The Phantom of the Opera, starring Lon Chaney (above) in the title role, will be screened on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 2:30 pm at the San Gabriel Mission Playhouse. This Halloween Special presentation by the Los Angeles Theatre Organ Society will feature live musical accompaniment on a Wurlitzer theatre organ restored with the support of the Peter Lloyd Crotty Charitable Fund.
Directed by Rupert Julian, The Phantom of the Opera is perhaps Lon Chaney’s best-known movie role. At about that time, Chaney became a contract player at MGM, where he would star in a number of highly successful productions, some of which have popped up on Turner Classic Movies.
Based on Gaston [...]

Pordenone 2009: THE MERRY WIDOW

Mae Murray shows her legs in The Merry Widow

At The Bioscope: Pordenone Film Festival Day I
"The main event, though, is the Erich Von Stroheim version of The Merry Widow (USA 1925), introduced by Leatrice Joy Fountain and featuring a new orchestral score by Maud Nelissen. The film itself is almost a checklist of Von’s obsessions; militaria, aristocrats at play, wedding processions, grotesques, fetishes and matters of honour; how close it all is to the source material I’m not qualified to say, but it’s a superior piece of froth; the score, using Lehar lightly but effectively matched it to perfection. And every new film I see John Gilbert in, my perception of him changes; [...]

Karl Dane Biographer Interview

Allan Ellenberger interviews biographer Laura Petersen Balogh, whose book on silent-film comedian Karl Dane has just been published by McFarland.
Here’s a brief snippet:
Why Karl Dane? What is it about him and his story that moved you to write a biography?
I had always known who Karl Dane was, being a silent film buff my whole life, but he never really made that much of an impression on me. I had read different Hollywood scandal books which said his voice was not suited to the talkies, but pretty much thought that was the end of the story. It wasn’t until December 2005, when my husband Dan and I were watching the 1933 early sound serial The Whispering [...]

LLoyd Hamilton: Poor Boy Comedian of Silent Cinema

In the San Francisco Examiner, Thomas Gladysz talks about the recently released biography of silent-film comedian Lloyd Hamilton:
"Chances are, if you’re a fan of early film or early comedic actors, you’re only dimly aware of Lloyd Hamilton. Though he was never as popular as his silent film contemporaries Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Charley Chase, he was admired and even praised by those same greats. Some have called Hamilton a ‘comedian’s comedian.’ And pretty much everyone who has seen his films agrees he was an original talent.
"The reputation of Lloyd Hamilton – a once popular baby-faced comic with a trademark checkered cap – has not fared well since his death at the age [...]

Bette Davis, Barbara Steele, ALIEN: Library of Congress Packard Campus’ Fall Series

 
Oscar winners, horror movies, and silent shorts are all part of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation’s fall film series in Culpeper, Va., starting Oct. 8.
Among the Oscar winners is best actress Bette Davis in Jezebel (1938), William Wyler’s classic romantic melodrama that was Warner Bros.’ answer to Gone with the Wind. (The film was based on a flop play that starred Miriam Hopkins, Bette Davis’ future archrival.) Davis was one of the top contenders for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, but had to content herself with playing Jezebel’s wilful Southern belle — who dares to wear a red dress (in black and white) at a ball much to the shock and [...]

Cinesation 2009

Mary Pickford, Thomas Meighan in M’Liss

Cinesation 2009 is currently taking place at the Lincoln Theater in Massilion, Ohio. The four-day festival, which ends on Sunday, will screen a number of hard-to-find titles, including:

James Cruze’s 1925 political-historical Western The Pony Express, starring Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez, Wallace Beery, and George Bancroft in a tale of powerlust and media manipulation. Hey, sounds like life in the early 21st century? Well, that’s a mere coincidence, as The Pony Express is set in mid-19th-century California, a time when Sen. Glen (Al Hart) and his Knights of the Golden Circle scheme to have the state secede from Union, annex another chunk of Mexico, and form a new empire.
The 1918 Mary Pickford vehicle M’Liss, in [...]

NOAH’S ARK – George O’Brien, Dolores Costello

Noah’s Ark (1928)
Direction: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Anthony Coldeway; from Darryl F. Zanuck’s original story
Cast: George O’Brien, Dolores Costello, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Noah Beery, Louise Fazenda, Malcolm Waite, Paul McAllister
 

 

Of all the films from that magical moment when silent movies merged into sound, nothing is as effective as Michael Curtiz’s Noah’s Ark: it has a romantic story, splashy scenes, and plenty of disasters. Add to that some Biblical babble and you have what can be best described as an "epic."
In Noah’s Ark, two American chums bumming around Europe on the eve of WWI get personally involved in the drama when their country enters the conflict. Travis, played by handsome male lead George O’Brien, and his best friend, Al (Gwynn [...]

Harold Lloyd on TCM

Silent-comedy fans will be rejoicing today, as Turner Classic Movies‘ "Summer Under the Stars" series continues with a day dedicated to Harold Lloyd, one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1920s.
Personally, I’m not a fan of knockabout silent comedies, which usually leave me as stone-faced as Buster Keaton. That said, Lloyd’s go-getter was a pleasant character (even if a tad creepy-looking, what with those geeky glasses and all that makeup plastered on his face), and some of his stunts remain as remarkable today as they were more than eight decades ago. Particularly memorable is his spider-man bit in Safety Last! (1923), in which he scales the side of a Los Angeles building.
Speedy (1928), directed by Ted [...]

San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2009

The Fall of the House of Usher (top); John Gilbert, Eleanor Boardman in Bardelys the Magnificent (middle); Douglas Fairbanks, Lupe Velez in The Gaucho (bottom)

Douglas Fairbanks, John Gilbert, and Lillian Gish are only a few of the superstars to be found at the 14th San Francisco Silent Film Festival, which will take place July 10-12 at the Castro Theatre. Among those scheduled to provide musical accompaniment to the on-screen action are the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Philip Carli, Stephen Horne, Dennis James, and Donald Sosin.
Among the San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s highlights are:
The Gaucho (1927), an adventure tale involving faith and redemption, starring Douglas Fairbanks and Lupe Velez in her first important film role.
"A daring departure," is how [...]

UNDERWORLD Screening

Evelyn Brent, Clive Brook in Underworld

Josef von Sternberg’s 1927 crime classic Underworld will be screened on Friday, June 19, at 8 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences‘ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The Alloy Orchestra will perform their score for the film, starring Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, and George Bancroft. This will be the Boston-based orchestra’s only Los Angeles performance of Underworld this year.
Underworld, called the precursor — or at least the most notable precursor — of the gangster genre of the 1930s, features a ruthless mobster (Bancroft), his mistress (Brent), and his lawyer (Brook). Inevitably, romance and bullets ensue.
In 1929, at the first Academy Awards ceremony, Underworld won an [...]

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