Rare Movies: Alla Nazimova, Mammoth Musical

Rare movies: Director Allan Dwan, actor George O’Brien, cinematographer George Webber on the set of East Side West Side

Are you a movie lover in Los Angeles, unable to travel either to Venice or Telluride? Don’t despair. L.A. has its own glamorous film festival this weekend. It’s called Cinecon, now in its 47th year.

What’s more: unlike the vast majority of movies screening at the more highly publicized Venice and Telluride – which will shortly be made available at theaters, DVD stores, or online streaming services – most Cinecon movies are nearly impossible to be seen anywhere else. In other words, it’s September 1-5 at the Lloyd E. Rigler Theatre at Grauman’s Egyptian (website) on Hollywood Boulevard or (quite possibly) never.

This year’s Cinecon rarities includes the following:

• The first Los Angeles area screening in eight decades of Allan Dwan’s East Side, West Side (1927), a risque silent drama starring Sunrise’s George O’Brien and Virginia Valli, the leading lady in Alfred Hitchcock’s first feature film.
• Mitchell Leisen’s Practically Yours (1944), a hard-to-find Claudette Colbert–Fred MacMurray romantic comedy about a secretary who makes up a tragic romance with a fallen World War II soldier – who, quite inconveniently, may be alive.
• The early Marion Davies vehicle Beauty’s Worth (1922), directed by Robert G. Vignola. In this romantic drama produced by William Randolph Hearst’s Cosmopolitan Pictures, Davies plays an unsophisticated Quaker girl. The now forgotten Forrest Stanley is her leading man.
• A newly restored print of the Alla Nazimova drama Stronger Than Death (1920), as per the IMDb directed by Nazimova’s lover Charles Bryant (who also costars), Herbert Blaché, and future The Great Ziegfeld helmer Robert Z. Leonard. In Stronger Than Death, Nazimova plays an ailing dancer who, in order to help put down an uprising in the East Indian frontier, decides to risk death by dancing. Sounds silly? That’s nothing compared to the pathetic fact that Nazimova’s old estate, The Garden of Alla, is now one of Los Angeles’ myriad ugly mini-malls and its adjacent parking lot.
• And finally, a non-Hollywood rarity: Marcel L’Herbier’s Le Bonheur / Happiness (1934), starring Charles Boyer, Gaby Morlay, Michel Simon, Paulette Dubost, and frequent L’Herbier collaborator Jaque Catelain. Both Boyer and Simon reprise their stage roles in Henri Bernstein’s play about an actress (Morlay) who falls in love with an anarchist (Boyer) after he shoots her. It certainly sounds like a must-see. As per N. T. Binh’s essay “Le Bonheur: la plus belle mise en abyme”, the film is also historically important as L’Herbier, claiming authorship of his work, won a legal battle against Le Bonheur’s producing company. Thus, L’Herbier became France’s first official auteur.

This year’s Cinecon honorees are Julie Adams, best remembered as the object of the Creature’s affection in The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Jimmy Lydon, among whose credits are several Henry Aldrich movies, and supporting roles in Life with Father and The Time of Your Life; and Gene Autry leading lady Fay McKenzie of Sierra Sue and Home in Wyomin’.

For more information on Cinecon 2011, visit the Cinecon website.

Thursday, Sept. 1
7:00 PM HOLLYWOOD RHYTHM (1934)
7:15 PM HOLLYWOOD STORY (1951)
Director: William Castle.
Cast: Richard Conte, Julie Adams, Richard Egan.
77m
8:35 PM Q&A WITH JULIE ADAMS
9:10 PM BLAZING DAYS (1927)
Director: William Wyler.
Cast: Fred Humes.
60m
10:40 PM SHE HAD TO EAT (1937)
Director: Malcolm St. Clair.
Cast: Jack Haley, Rochelle Hudson, Eugene Pallette, Arthur Threacher.
75m

Friday, Sept. 2
9:00 AM SIGNING OFF (1936)
9:20 AM MOON OVER HER SHOULDER (1941)
Director: Alfred L. Werker.
Cast: Dan Dailey, Lynn Bari, John Sutton, Alan Mowbray.
68m
10:40 AM THE ACTIVE LIFE OF DOLLY OF THE DAILIES (1914)
Cast: Mary Fuller.
15m
10:55 AM STRONGER THAN DEATH (1920)
Directors: Herbert Blaché.
Cast: Alla Nazimova, Charles Bryant.
1:45 PM OPEN TRACK (1916)
2:00 PM ON THE NIGHT STAGE (1915)
Director: Reginald Barker.
Cast: William S. Hart, Rhea Mitchell.
60m
3:15 PM 50 MILES FROM BROADWAY (1929)
23m
3:45 PM CINERAMA ADVENTURE (2002)
Director: David Strohmaier.
7:55 PM COLLEGE RHYTHM (1934)
Director: Norman Taurog.
Cast: Jack Oakie, Joe Penner, Lanny Ross, Helen Mack, Mary Brian, Lyda Roberti.
75m
9:30 PM HANDS UP! (1926)
Cast: Raymond Griffith, Marian Nixon, Virginia Lee Corbin.
70m
10:55 PM THE NIGHT MAYOR (1932)
Director: Benjamin Stoloff.
Cast: Lee Tracy, Evelyn Knapp, Eugene Pallette.
68m

Saturday, Sept. 3
9:00 AM MANY SAPPY RETURNS (1938)
20m
9:20 AM AN ARABIAN KNIGHT (1920)
Director: Charles Swickard.
Cast: Sessue Hayakawa, Lillian Hall, Jean Acker.
60m
11:20 AM ALWAYS A BRIDESMAID (1943)
62 min
1:30 PM THEY ALL FALL (1925)
Cast: Bobby Ray, Oliver Hardy.
20m
1:50 PM EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (1927)
Director: Allan Dwan.
Cast: George O’Brien, Virginia Valli.
90m
3:40 PM HENRY ALDRICH, EDITOR (1942)
Cast: Jimmy Lydon.
73m
4:53 PM Q&A WITH JIMMY LYDON
6:50 PM SUNDAY (1961)
20m
7:15 PM PRACTICALLY YOURS (1944)
Director: Mitchell Leisen.
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Fred MacMurray.
88m
9:00 PM FINDERS KEEPERS (1928)
Cast: Laura La Plante, John Harron, Jack Oakie.
70m
10:20 PM HARRY LANGDON HOME MOVIES
10:20 PM LET’S FALL IN LOVE (1933)
Cast: Ann Sothern, Edmund Lowe.
73m

Sunday Sept. 4
9:00 Little Billy’s Triumph (1914)
9:15 THE HOPE (1920) 75 min. Jack Mulhall, Marguerite De La Motte, Ruth Stonehouse, Lillian Langdon. Director: Herbert Blaché.
10:45 DOWN MEXICO WAY (1941) 72 min. Gene Autry, Smiley Brunette, Fay McKenzie, Sidney Blackmer.
11:57 Q & A with Fay McKenzie
12:20 Lunch Break
1:30 Song Of Victory (1942)
1:40 ONE WILD NIGHT (1938) 71 min. Dick Baldwin, June Lang.
3:00 The Hobble Skirt (1910) 7 min
3:10 BEAUTY’S WORTH (1922) 80 min. Marion Davies, Forrest Stanley. Director: Robert G. Vignola.
4:40 THE BRASHER DOUBLOON (1947) 73 min. George Montgomery, Nancy Guild, Conrad Janis. Director: John Brahm.
5:53 Q & A with Conrad Janis

Monday, Sept. 5
9:00 AM THE SERGEANT (1910)
Director: Francis Boggs.
Cast: Hobart Bosworth, Iva Shepard, Tom Santschi.
9:10 AM DIPLOMACY (1926)
Director: Marshall Neilan.
Cast: Blanche Sweet, Neil Hamilton, Arlette Marchal, Matt Moore.
80m
10:40 AM THE MAD MARTINDALES (1942)
Director: Alfred L. Werker.
Cast: Jane Withers, Marjorie Weaver, Jimmy Lydon, Alan Mowbray, Gig Young.
68m
11:45 AM Q&A WITH JANE WITHERS & JIMMY LYDON
1:15 PM THE COWARD (1915)
Director: Reginald Barker.
Producer: Thomas H. Ince.
Cast: Charles Ray, Frank Keenan, Gertrude Clair.
60m
2:25 PM GLAMOUR BOY (1941)
Director: Ralph Murphy.
Cast: Jackie Cooper, Susanna Foster, Walter Abel, Darryl Hickman.
81m
4:00 PM LE BONHEUR (1934)
Director: Marcel L’Herbier.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Gaby Morlay, Michel Simon, Paulette Dubost, Jaque Catelain.
98m
5:45 PM STORMY WEATHER (1943)
Director: Andrew L. Stone.
Cast: Lena Horne, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Cab Calloway, The Nicholas Brothers, Fats Waller.
78m

Luise Rainer as Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld.

Best Picture Academy Award winner The Great Ziegfeld (1936) will be screening tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theater in Santa Monica. Robert Z. Leonard directed this sumptuous MGM production, starring William Powell as theatrical showman Florenz “Flo” Ziegfeld, Myrna Loy as Ziegfeld’s wife Billie Burke (the good witch Glinda in The Wizard of Oz), and Luise Rainer as Anna Held.

For her performance – which amounts to a supporting role, including a highly effective telephone scene – Rainer won the first of her two back-to-back Best Actress Oscars. The following year, she would take home the statuette for her Chinese peasant in Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth. Rainer, by the way, is the oldest Oscar winning performer around. The London resident turned 101 last January.

Featuring cinematography by Oliver T. Marsh and others, art direction by Cedric Gibbons, costumes by Adrian, and choreography by Seymour Felix, The Great Ziegfeld is a feast for the eye. However bloated and tacky some may find it, Felix’s Oscar-winning dance number “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody” – sung by future Warner Bros. star Dennis Morgan – deservedly remains a classic of its kind. (The Best Dance Direction Academy Award was discontinued in 1938.)

Unfortunately, The Great Ziegfeld is as dramatically conventional as a movie biopic has the right to be. Perhaps more so. The cast also includes Virginia Bruce, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, and Ziegfeld stage veterans Fanny Brice and Ray Bolger.

Besides its three Academy Award wins, The Great Ziegfeld was nominated for three more Oscars: Best Director, Best Film Editing (William S. Gray), Best Art Direction (Gibbons, Eddie Imazu, Edwin B. Willis), and, bafflingly, Best Writing, Original Story (William Anthony McGuire).

Note: There’ll be a drawing tonight for free tickets to Center Theatre Group’s production of Funny Girl, the story of Fanny Brice, at the Ahmanson Theatre. Barbra Streisand played Brice in the 1968 film version directed by William Wyler. The Great Ziegfeld 35mm print courtesy of the Academy Film Archive.

The Aero Theatre is located at 1328 Montana Avenue.

The Great Ziegfeld image: American Cinemathque.

Kay Francis and William Powell in Jewel Robbery.

Kay Francis & William Powell + Myrna Loy & Jean Harlow Movies: LoC Screenings

Kay Francis, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, John Barrymore, and Mary Astor are some of the stars featured in September at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia.

Kay Francis and William Powell can be seen together in Jewel Robbery (1932), a charming pre-Code comedy directed by, of all people, William Dieterle. Dieterle would become closely associated with some of Warner Bros.’ most tedious biopics, usually starring Paul Muni. The year of 1932 was a good one for the Francis-Powell combo, who also starred in Tay Garnett’s highly successful – and quite moving – melodrama One Way Passage.

William Powell can also be seen in another charming comedy, Libeled Lady (1936), costarring Powell’s frequent screen partner Myrna Loy, in addition to Spencer Tracy and future Powell fiancee Jean Harlow. Deftly directed by the underrated Jack Conway, Libeled Lady went on to receive a Best Picture Oscar nomination; Powell himself was nominated that year for Best Actor, but in another charming comedy: Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey.

Also at the Packard Campus in September 2011: John Barrymore is legendary seducer Don Juan (1926), while Mary Astor – at one point Barrymore’s lover in real life – is one of his seducees in this enjoyable silent comedy-drama directed by Alan Crosland (of The Jazz Singer fame); Joan Crawford delivers one of her greatest performances as a self-sacrificing mom in Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce (1945), which also features great acting turns by Ann Blyth and Eve Arden; and a young James Franco can be seen in an episode of the television series Freaks and Geeks.

Of special interest: a screening of Sergei Paradjanov’s 1965 Ukrainian family drama Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

Titles are subject to change without notice. All screenings start at 7:30 p.m. unless otherwise noted.

Thursday, Sept. 1
THE WANDERERS (1979)
Director: Philip Kaufman.
Cast: Ken Wahl, John Friedrich, Karen Allen.
117m
Set against the urban jungle of 1963 New York’s gangland subculture, this coming of age teenage movie is set around the Italian gang the Wanderers.

Thursday, Sept. 8
MILDRED PIERCE (1945)
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Ann Blyth, Eve Arden, Bruce Bennett.
111m
A housewife-turned-waitress finds success in business but loses control of her ungrateful teenaged daughter.
National Film Registry 1996.

Friday, Sept. 9
PRE-CODE DRAMA DOUBLE FEATURE
JEWEL ROBBERY (1932)
Director: William Dieterle.
Cast: Kay Francis, William Powell.
68m
A wealthy, married woman becomes captivated by a debonair jewel thief.
HEAT LIGHTNING (1934)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
Cast: Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly.
63m
In the Mojave Desert, a woman and her kid sister run a gas station, lunch counter, and auto camp. One day their humdrum lives are shaken when jewel thieves and mysterious strangers arrive on the scene.

Saturday, Sept. 10 – 2:00 p.m.
HONEY, I SHRUNK THE KIDS (1989)
An inventor accidentally shrinks his children with his latest contraption. Directed by Joe Johnston. With Rick Moranis and Marcia Strassman. Family, sci-fi, comedy. Color. 93m

Thursday, Sept. 15
TV BACK TO SCHOOL NIGHT
FREAKS AND GEEKS (NBC-TV, 1999) Color, 44 min. With James Franco.
OTHER TITLES TBA

Friday, Sept. 16
THE BLACK HOLE (1979)
Director: Gary Nelson.
Cast: Maximilian Schell, Anthony Perkins, Yvette Mimieux, Robert Forster, Joseph Bottoms, Ernest Borgnine.
98m
A research vessel in outer space in the year 2130 finds a missing ship commanded by a mysterious scientist on the edge of a black hole.

Saturday, Sept. 17
HOW THE WEST WAS WON (1962)
Directors: Henry Hathaway, John Ford & George Marshall.
Cast: Gregory Peck, Debbie Reynolds, Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, George Peppard, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Robert Preston, John Wayne, Lee J. Cobb, Karl Malden.
Narrator: Spencer Tracy.
162m
Three generations of pioneers take part in the forging of the American West.
National Film Registry 1997.

Thursday, Sept. 22
KNUTE ROCKNE ALL AMERICAN (1940)
Director: Lloyd Bacon.
Cast: Pat O’Brien, Ronald Reagan, Donald Crisp.
98m
The story of legendary Notre Dame football player and coach Knute Rockne.
National Film Registry 1997.

Friday, Sept. 23
LIBELED LADY (1936)
Director: Jack Conway.
Cast: William Powell, Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy.
98m
A newspaper man, his jilted fiancée, and a suave ladies’ man hatch an elaborate scheme to turn a false news story into the truth, before a high-society woman can sue for libel.

Saturday, Sept. 24
DON JUAN (1926)
This swashbuckler about the legendary lover who fights to survive intrigue in the court of the Borgias is notable as the first silent film released with Vitaphone music and sound effects. Directed by Alan Crosland. With John Barrymore and Mary Astor. Adventure, romance. Black & White, 112m

Thursday, Sept. 29
THE LIVING DESERT (1953)
True-Life Adventure feature with dazzling footage of the American desert and its inhabitants. Directed by James Algar. Narrated by Winston Hibler. Family nature documentary. Color. 69 min. Selected for the National Film Registry in 2000.

Friday, Sept. 30
SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS (1965)
A heartfelt family tragedy set during the early part of the 20th century in the Ukrainian Carpathians. Directed by Sergei Paradjanov. With Ivan Mikolajchuk, Larisa Kadochnikova and Tatyana Bestayeva. In Ukrainian language with English language subtitles. Historical drama. Color. 97m