Showing posts with label The City Gone Wild. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The City Gone Wild. Show all posts

Monday, October 28, 2019

Louise Brooks in Australia - now and then

A major film retrospective, "Enduring Modernity: The Transcontinental Career of Louise Brooks," is currently taking place in Australia at the Melbourne Cinémathèque. The retrospective, which runs through November 6, features seven of Louise Brooks silent films, including the majority of her iconic performances from the United States and Europe profiling her working under such noted directors as William Wellman, Howard Hawks, and G. W. Pabst. More information, including newly added links to articles, may be found HERE.

Coincidentally, for the last year, I have been working on a two volume book project, Around the World with Louise Brooks, in which the nation of Australia is something of a star! (The first volume looks at Louise Brooks, the actress. The second volume looks at Brooks' 24 films. As of now, I have about 850 pages completed, and hope to have the books done by the end of the year... fingers crossed.)


In a nod to Australia and its ongoing appreciation of the actress... what follows are a couple three highlights from my work in progress

Notably, one of the films to be screened at the Australian retrospective is the surviving fragment of Now We're in the Air. The Louise Brooks Society had a hand in the preservation of the film, and no doubt, the Melbourne Cinémathèque screening marks the first time the once popular comedy has been shown in Australia in nearly 90 years. 


The above newspaper advertisement appeared on the front page of April 14, 1932 edition of the Wooroora Producer, a newspaper based in Balaklava, Australia (95 km north of Adelaide) and circulating in nearby Port Wakefield, Bowmans, Long Plains, Avon, Erith, Whitwarta, Mount Templeton, Everard Central, Nantawrra, Hamley Bridge, Mallala Stockyard Creek, Barabba, Alma, Owen, Halbury, Hoyleton and other communities in South Australia. The advertisement documents what may well have been one of the last recorded public screening of Now We’re in the Air anywhere in the world, a 1927 film which today survives only in incomplete form. This ad is unusual in that it is specifically dated, informing locals a couple of days in advance of the small community’s once a week screening – in this instance two five year old silent films. The other film is IT, starring Clara Bow and Antonio Moreno. The venue, the Balaklava Institute, was likely the local town hall. It still stands.


A 1927 Brooks' film which is now considered lost is Rolled Stockings. It too had what is likely its last recorded public screening anywhere in the world in Australia. The otherwise unremarkable newspaper advertisement pictured below documents the occasion, which took place in October 1931. Four years after its American release – and well into the sound era, Brooks’ 1927 “youth picture” was paired with William Wyler’s action adventure film, The Thunder Riders (Universal, 1928). This silent double-bill was shown at a theater in Darwin, Australia known as The Stadium (aka Don Stadium or Don Pictures), an approximately 100-seat open-air sports and entertainment venue largely used during the dry months of the year. Below left is an exterior view, and below right is an interior view.

Image source: Northern Territory Library
Darwin, the former frontier outpost named after the British naturalist, is situated on the Timor Sea and is the capital of the Australia’s Northern Territory. Far from just about everywhere but the closest port to the Dutch East Indies, Darwin was an alternative entry or departure point for entertainment companies coming to or departing from the Australian mainland. Consequently, the Stadium theatre also hosted occasional vaudeville shows, including vaudeville and silent pictures, or vaudeville and boxing. I can't quite tell, but it appears there might be a boxing match going on in the interior view on the right.


And yet another lost 1927 Brooks' film which had what was likely it's last documented public screening in Australia is The City Gone Wild. It too was shown in Darwin in the Don Pictures Stadium theatre. The newspaper advertisement shown below dates from September 1931, four years after its initial American release. And again, well into the sound era! Back in the 1930s, Darwin, Australia was pretty far from everywhere and it was where "old" silent films went at the end of their exhibition life. Where they went from there is anybody's guess....

Thursday, November 15, 2018

CMBA Fall Blogathon featuring the 1927 Louise Brooks' film The City Gone Wild

The theme of the 2018 CMBA Fall Blogathon is Outlaws, which I am stretching to include gangsters and the criminal underworld (i.e. those outside the law). The focus of this blog is the 1927 Louise Brooks film The City Gone Wild.


Now considered a lost film, The City Gone Wild is a terse crime drama, with gangsters, gangs, and gunfights, in which a criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge the death of a friend. As she did in The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise Brooks plays a moll, this time the deliciously named Snuggles Joy, the “gunman’s honey.”

The story, by Charles & Jules Furthman, goes like this: “With the outbreak of city gang wars between Gunner Gallagher and Lefty Schroeder, criminal lawyer John Phelan, feared in the underworld, brings temporary peace, while district attorney Franklin Ames investigates. Nada Winthrop, daughter of a powerful capitalist, is sought by both men. Though Nada loves John, she disapproves of his criminal practice; and when he frees Gunner Gallagher on bail, she announces her engagement to Ames. When Ames discovers that her father is the secret brain of the underworld activities and Winthrop has him killed, John takes the district attorneyship to avenge his friend. Snuggles, Gunner’s girl, threatens to inform on Winthrop unless John releases Gunner, and he concedes; John is about to resign when Snuggles, rejected by her man, confesses.” Screenplay credits went to Charles Furthman, and title credits to Herman J. Mankiewicz.

The “gangster film” (as we know it today) more-or-less began with Paramount’s Underworld (1927). Though there were earlier crime films, the Joseph von Sternberg directed Underworld set the tone for many of the genre films which followed, namely Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932).

With the surprising success of Underworld, Paramount quickly put another crime film into production, namely The City Gone Wild. The film, originally titled First Degree Murder, was meant as a vehicle for leading man Thomas Meighan, who in 1927 saw his star start to fade. To boost his career, Paramount paired Meighan with a topical story “ripped from the headlines,” a first rate director (James Cruze), and popular supporting actors (including Louise Brooks). Also assigned to The City Gone Wild were individuals who had worked on Underworld, namely writer Charles Furthman, cinematographer Bert Glennon, and tough-guy actor Fred Kohler.

The two films, not surprisingly, were sometimes compared. Intoning the slang of the time, Variety wrote, “The gang stuff is a la Underworld — machine guns and plenty tough. The two main yeggs each have a moll carrying their gat in the pocketbook. Very authentic in these little details ….” Many focused on the acting and actors. The noted critic Ward M. Marsh of the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated, ” . . . pitting her against crookdom’s love of Louise Brooks brings out the worst in all of us. On the credit side is Miss Brooks and also Fred Kohler in a role paralleling his Mulligan in Underworld. They do excellent work.” The San Antonio Express echoed Marsh, “Although Meighan is featured in the cast, he has his co-stars, Louise Brooks, one of Paramount’s niftiest, and Fred Kohler, remembered for his great crook work in Rough Riders and Underworld.”



Critics noticed Brooks’ hard-boiled character, and the edge she brought to an otherwise atypical role. Radie Harris of the New York Morning Telegraph wrote, “Louise Brooks is in the cast and that is something to grow ecstatic about. Christened with the preposterous name of Snuggles Joy, she is the most entrancing crook that ever pulled a Holt. No wonder the city went wild.”

Gordon Hillman of the Boston Daily Advertiser wrote “Another distinct ornament of the cast is Louise Brooks, who lends considerable vividness to her portrait of a lady of the underworld. In fact, she gives so good an interpretation of the part that Marietta Millner, supposedly the feminine lead, actually relapses into only secondary importance.”


Brooks was so good that she out shown Millner, who had appeared earlier in the year with Meighan in the Cruze directed film We’re All Gamblers. “Louise Brooks, who plays the crook’s girl, is better looking, more attractive and a better actress than Marietta Millner, the district attorney’s jeune fille, and in real life Tommy probably would have preferred her to Marietta,” wrote Stanley Orne in the Portland Oregonian. “Louise Brooks, the pert flapper, completely shadows the more important role allotted to Marietta Millner, and the ‘girl of Gunner Gallagher’ brief as her part is, is a far more intriguing character than the society girl of Miss Millner,” added Leona Pollack of the Omaha World Herald.

The City Gone Wild was officially released November 12, 1927, with a stated length of 6 reels (5,408 feet), or approximately 60 minutes. [Pre-release Paramount production records list the film length at 6 reels (5,601 feet) for the domestic release, and 6 reels (5,390 feet) for the foreign release.] The film opened across the United States on November 6, 1927, with screenings in Atlanta, Georgia, Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California and elsewhere.


The City Gone Wild is considered lost. The film was shown in Fairbanks, Alaska as late as January, 1930, and was largely extant as recently as 1971. In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow wrote, “David Shepard, then with the American Film Institute’s archive program, had a list of 35mm nitrate prints held in a vault Paramount had forgotten it had. He asked me which title I would select, out of all of them, to look at right away. I said The City Gone Wild. He called Paramount to bring it out of the vaults for our collection that afternoon. The projectionist went to pick it up. ‘O, there was some powder on that,’ said the vault keeper ‘We threw it away.’ The film had been unspooled into a tank of water (recommended procedure for decomposing nitrate). Shepard complained officially to Paramount, who promised it would not happen again. He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.” In June of 2016, I spoke with David Shepard about the demise of the film. He confirmed this account, and  recalled grimly that Paramount would, at the time, discard any film which showed any degree of decomposition.


Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Canada,* China, Dutch Guiana (Suriname), Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (including England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). The film was occasionally shown in the United States as City Gone Wild (and at least once in Scotland under the title A City Gone Wild).

In the United States, the film was advertised under the title A Cidade que Enlouqueceu (Portuguese-language press).

Elsewhere, The City Gone Wild was shown under the title The City Gone Mad and La ciudad del mal (Argentina); Der Verbrecherkönig von Chicago (Austria); La cité maudite (Belgium); A cidade bulicosa (Brazil); La ciudad del mal (Chile); Mesto uplynulý divoký (Czechoslovakia); Storstadens svøbe! (Denmark); Het Kwaad eener Wereldstad (Dutch East Indies – Indonesia); La cité maudite and La Ville Maudite (France);  狂乱街 (Japan); Die Gottin der Sunde (Latvia); La onda del crimen (Mexico); Boeven en Burgers and Het Kwaad Eener Wereldstad (The Netherlands); Piraci Wielkiego Miasta (Poland); A Cidade Ruidosa (Portugal); Gonosztevok kiralya (Romania); La ciudad del mal (Spain); and La cité maudite (Switzerland).

* Except in Quebec, where the film was banned due to “too much shooting.”


The cast of The City Gone Wild is certainly an interesting one: it includes Thomas Meighan as John Phelan, Marietta Millner as Nada Winthrop, Louise Brooks as Snuggles Joy (Gunner Gallagher’s girlfriend), Fred Kohler as Gunner Gallagher, Duke Martin as Lefty Schroeder, Nancy Phillips as Lefty’s Girl, Wyndham Standing as Franklin Ames, Charles Hill Mailes as Luther Winthrop, King Zany as Bondsman, (renown boxer) Gunboat Smith as a Policeman, and Shirley Dorman in an uncredited role.


Interestingly believe-it-or-not, Meighan was Louise Brooks’ “uncle-in-law.” Meighan was married to Frances Ring, a Broadway stage actress and the sister of the popular entertainer Blanche Ring. Director Eddie Sutherland — Brooks’ husband at the time, was the nephew of both Meighan, as Sutherland’s mother, Julie, was a sister of Blanche and Frances Ring.


In the mid-1920s, Meighan became interested in Florida real estate after talking with his brother, who was a realtor. In 1925, Meighan bought property in Ocala, Florida (where scenes for the Eddie Sutherland-directed It’s the Old Army Game were shot). In 1927, he built a home in New Port Richey, Florida. It was there that he spent his winters and helped support a local movie theater, the Meighan Theatre, which was named in his honor. The Meighan Theatre opened July 1, 1926, with a showing of the Meighan movie The New Klondike, a film set against the backdrop of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Today, the renamed Richey Suncoast Theater is home to the annual Thomas Meighan film festival.

Notably, Meighan was involved in two of the more sensational happenings of the silent film era. In 1916, he was the sole witness to Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas’ secretive wedding. And in 1923, Meighan put up a large chunk of the bail money, and with the help of June Mathis and George Melford, and got Rudolph Valentino out of jail after he was charged with bigamy.

Monday, November 7, 2016

In Honor of Film Preservationist David Shepard

Later Today, the American Film Preservationist David Shepard will be honored at a special event at Dartmouth College. Shepard has done as much as anyone to both preserve and promote our film heritage, especially the silent era.

At the event, the famed DVD producer and historian of silent classics speaks to his tireless work to preserve world cinema. Recent restorations by Shepard include Raoul Walsh’s early gangster saga, Regeneration (1915) with Philip Carli’s piano music, all of Charlie Chaplin’s Essanay and Mutual comedies, and Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 with Ciné Salon’s Bruce Posner. More information about the event can be found HERE.

A special tribute video featuring fellow film archivists and historians Serge Bromberg, Leonard Maltin and Kevin Brownlow was made to mark the occasion.


As is evident from the video above, David Shepard is greatly admired by his fellow archivists, preservationists, film historians, and film buffs. That admiration come across in this snapshot, which I took in 2010. For a film buff (such as myself), this was a magical moment. Pictured here is a photograph of colleagues - from left to right that's Kevin Brownlow, Diana Serra Cary (aka Baby Peggy), David Shepard, and Leonard Maltin.


Born in 1940, and raised in New Orleans and the suburbs of New York, David Shepard has had a lifelong love of film, having devoted most of his life to film preservation. Through teaching and shcolarship, through his company, Film Preservation Associates, through his ownership of the Blackhawk Films library, and through his film and video restoration efforts, Shepard has long worked behind the scenes helping save early films. Just as importantly, Shepard makes these films available to the home video market, first through laserdisc and VHS formats, and now through high-quality DVD releases, "where the clarity and beauty of these early motion pictures can really be fully appreciated."

In the words of Mike Mashon, Head, Moving Image Section, Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress, “David is a giant in the field of film preservation, one of those rare talents who exemplifies the scholar’s rigorous research, the archivist’s attention to detail and the fan’s unabashed love and enthusiasm for movies.”

I have had the pleasure of being acquainted with David Shepard for more than a decade. He is a fine fellow. I appreciate having seen the films which he has preserved and brought to DVD as well as the silver screen. I also enjoyed reading and treasure my autographed copies of his books on movie legends King Vidor and Henry King. I was also honored to have my picture taken with David Shepard earlier this year.


David Shepard's involvement with silent film also extends to Louise Brooks, and whose now lost 1927 film, The City Gone Wild, he almost saved.

In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow wrote about an incident in the 1970s. “David Shepard, then with the American Film Institute’s archive program, had a list of 35mm nitrate prints held in a vault Paramount had forgotten it had. He asked me which title I would select, out of all of them, to look at right away. I said The City Gone Wild. He called Paramount to bring it out of the vaults for our collection that afternoon. The projectionist went to pick it up. ‘O, there was some powder on that,’ said the vault keeper ‘We threw it away.’ … He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.”

For more about David Shepard and all that he has done, check out these interviews.

Northwest Chicago Film Society: A Conversation with David Shepard

Digitally Obsessed: A Conversation with David Shepard

Silents are Golden: Interview with David Shepard

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Louise Brooks in China, part 2

Here are a few more items I found while scouring a couple of English-language newspapers from China for any and all Louise Brooks material. As mentioned in the prior post, the actress and her films received a good deal of coverage. Witness these couple of clippings, the first for The City Gone Wild (1927), and the second and third for A Girl in Every Port (1928).




Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Louise Brooks: Greetings from Poland, part 4

A continuation of the three previous posts, the results of my look through a few online Polish archives in search of any and all Louise Brooks clippings or advertisements. Here is some more of the material I found.


The film showing at the Kino Quo-Vadis in this 1929 advertisement is Ludzie Bezdomni, or Beggars of Life (1928). Ludzie Bezdomni was also the title of a popular book on the subject of homeless people, which makes keyword searching for material on the film a bit complicated. (Again, this ad is a splendid example of a mix of different typefaces.) As is this.



This 1929 ad promotes a screening of Piraci Wielkiego Miasta, the 1927 film The City Gone Wild, with Marietta Millner and Louise Brooks. Unlike the ad in a previous post, star Thomas Meighan is not mentioned. The City Gone Wild focusses on gangsters in Chicago. Piraci Wielkiego Miasta translated back into English renders as "Pirates of the big city".














Few newspapers ads pictured a film star. This one from 1929 did. It's for a Kochanek mial sto!, the 1928 film A Girl in Every Port, starring Victor McLaglen. Brooks, center, stands out with her sleek bobbed hair.

Monday, June 29, 2015

Louise Brooks: Greetings from Poland, part 3

A continuation of the two previous posts, the results of my look through a few online Polish archives in search of any and all Louise Brooks clippings or advertisements. Here is some of the material I found.


On the right is a photograph of Louise Brooks and her brother Ted, as pictured in Robotnik, the newspaper of the Polish Socialist Party. Go figure. Brooks is identified as an actress for Paramount. A handful of her early American silent films were shown in Warsaw and elsewhere around the country.


This 1930 piece promoting Gdy mlodosc szumi (or Gole Kolanka) at the Kino Apollo is for the lost 1927 film Rolled Stockings, with Richard Arlen. It notes that the film is about American college students. Maybe there is a copy still somewhere in Poland?

 

This 1929 advertisement, also for the Kino Apollo, promotes Piraci wielkiego miasta, the lost 1927 Brooks film known as The City Gone Wild, which stars Thomas Meighan. Maybe there is a copy still somewhere in Poland?

Sunday, June 29, 2014

Another rare Louise Brooks related comic

This rare 1930 cartoon featuring the "life story" of Thomas Meighan also mentions the 1927 Louise Brooks film, The City Gone Wild. I have other examples of this strip featuring other Brooks' co-stars like Richard Arlen, James Hall, Neil Hamilton, Esther Ralston, and Carole Lombard.


Friday, January 25, 2013

Louise Brooks in Fairbanks, Alaska - better late than never

I am continuously researching Louise Brooks and her films. And recently, I came across a couple of clipping (one of which is shown here) which merit mentioning. My findings are notable on a few accounts.

In January, 1930 two of Louise Brooks' silent films - The City Gone Wild and Now We're in the Air -  were shown in Fairbanks, Alaska. The "Screen Life" column details the event. These screenings are not the first instances of Brooks' films showing in Alaska, then an American territory. (Alaska did not achieve statehood until 1949.) A Social Celebrity (1926), for example, was shown at the Empress theater in Fairbanks in April, 1927.

What is notable about these particular screenings is that each took place long after the films were released. Both films debuted in the Fall of 1927, and these two screenings took place more than two years later. That is a long time for a film to be in circulation during the silent film era. Notably, they are also the very last screenings I have come across for these two now lost films.

What is also notable is that theaters in Fairbanks were still screening silent films well after the sound era had started. For the record, a 1929 sound film featuring Brooks, The Canary Murder Case, was shown in Fairbanks in April, 1930, about 14 months after it first debuted. And another, It Pays to Advertise, also with Brooks, was shown in Fairbanks only nine months after its release in November, 1931. 


For the record, I have also come across a handful of screenings of various Louise Brooks' films in Honolulu in the territory of Hawaii during the 1920s, decades before it gained statehood. Hawaii seems to have gotten films sooner than Alaska. But, better late than never.
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