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

Saturday, November 5, 2016

Louise Brooks, at the corner of Brooklyn Avenue and 16th Street

In the 1920s, movies were advertised in all manner of ways -- in newspapers and magazines, on posters and handbills, in window displays, and even by individuals walking down the street wearing a sandwich boards. And like today, they were also advertised on billboards.

In the past, I have seen only one image of the billboard promoting a Louise Brooks' film, namely The Canary Murder Case, as it appeared in a distant and grainy photograph in a Winnipeg, Manitoba newspaper.

Recently, I came across something very special -- a photograph of a billboard promoting A Social Celebrity in Kansas City, Missouri. To me, it is a remarkable image, as it is not in a downtown setting (as in the Canary Murder Case image I had seen), but rather, in a city neighborhood. What's more, I found the image on an African-American history website -- the Black Archives of mid-America, which leads me to guess but not know for sure that the neighborhoods depicted below were African American neighborhoods. [It's not surprising that Brooks films were advertised in Black neighborhoods. In fact, I have come across a handful of instances when Brooks films were shown in theaters that catered to African Americans, one in Harlem, and one in Baltimore.]

Here is the first image I found, followed by a close-up of the billboard itself.





The billboard depicted above promotes a showing of A Social Celebrity at the downtown Newman Theater in Kansas City, commencing the week of May 1. One might ask, "Why was this picture taken?" Most likely, I would guess, to prove to Paramount or the film's local distributor or exhibitor that the film was in fact advertised as per an agreement.

I also happened to come upon another photograph from the time (all of which were credited to the Merritt Outdoor Advertising Co.) which depicts another billboard promoting A Social Celebrity in Kansas City! It's the on the far right. This photo is set at Broadway and 35th Street.



Just as I began to wonder it there had been a city wide campaign to promote the film, I came across another image of a billboard promoting A Social Celebrity. This one located at 15th and Holmes Streets in Kansas City.



And here is another, where the billboard is on the left of the three billboard construct. This picture was shot 4025 Troost Avenue.




I found four more images of billboards promoting A Social Celebrity, including the picture below. Unfortunately, this photograph, which is typical of the others, shows the billboard either distant or obscured (here behind a tree at the corner of Independence Avenue and Maple Boulevard). Nevertheless, that makes eight photographs of eight billboards promoting the same showing of A Social Celebrity.


Incidentally, the Newman showed many of Brooks' films when they were first released. The Newman was a major first run theater in a major metropolitan area. In fact, it was the "largest motion picture theater to be built in the downtown district and the most costly theater of any sort" erected at the time in Kansas City. Seating capacity was 2,000. There was also a big organ installed.

Named after Frank L. Newman and opened in 1919, the Newman theater was later sold to and operated by Paramount Pictures starting in 1925, when Newman left to manage theaters in Los Angeles for the Famous Players-Lasky Film Corporation. After another change of name and a renovation in 1969, the theater was closed for good and demolished in 1972. Here is a vintage postcard view of the theater.


These historic billboard images got me wondering. If they exist for one film in one city, where are others like them from other major cities? The search continues....

I wasn't able to find much about Frank Cambria's Garden Festival, which was the opening act for A Social Celebrity at the Newman in Kansas City. Seemingly, he/it was a traveling act, turning up in 1926 in Buffalo, Detroit, St. Louis and elsewhere. When Cambria's Garden Festival was staged that same year in Brooklyn ahead of the Richard Dix's film, Let's Get Married, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described it as "a lovely presentation, staged in good taste and has as its theme song Schubert's Serenade."

Incidentally, I did find a few other images depicting billboards for other films starring the likes of Norma Shearer, Zasu Pitts, Helen Chadwick and others. Here is one of them, for the Priscilla Dean, Lon Chaney film Outside the Law at the Liberty theater. (Another image I came across, of a four billboard construct, depicts both Outside the Law and A Social Celebrity. That image is the fourth image from the top, though the billboard for Outside the Law is a hard to make out.)


Friday, November 4, 2016

New 2K Restoration of Beggars of Life Heading to Theaters

BIG news: Kino Lorber Repertory has just announced that a new restoration of the 1928 William Wellman-directed film, Beggars of Life, will be heading to theaters and festivals sometime next year. Based on the 1924 autobiographical novel by Jim Tully, the film stars Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery, and Richard Arlen. This is a new 2K restoration from materials held in the archives of the Library of Congress. Not known is whether or not this new restoration will include an of the film's original audio elements, which are thought to have been lost (but in fact may not be, completely).

Additionally, a Blu-ray release is expected to be announced for next year. According to knowledgeable sources, Beggars of Life is one of a handful of Paramount-produced silent films considered for release. Stay tuned for more on this developing story.


This is BIG news. And not only because Beggars of Life is Louise Brooks' best American silent film, a designation otherwise held by default by the Howard Hawks directed A Girl in Every Port (1928). It's fun, but not really so significant of a work, despite the high regard it is held in France.

Why is Beggars of Life big news? Because with this restoration and revival comes renewed attention to Brooks entire body of surviving work. For years, Louise Brooks was a largely forgotten actress remembered, if at all, only for her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box (1929). Once that film was established as a masterpiece, Brooks other G.W. Pabst directed film, Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), soon followed. Brooks moved from a one-hit actress to an actress with two great films to her credit. In the last few years, Prix de Beaute has also found favor, and now Brooks is known for what she accomplished with her "European trilogy." And now comes recognition for Beggars of Life, a fourth film, further putting Brooks front and center in film history. Now, if only The Show Off (1926) or Love Em and Leave Em (1926) would come back into circulation to round things out..... or one of her best lost films, like The City Gone Wild, were to be found.... or....

ADDENDUM: I for one would like to see Beggars of Life released on Blu-ray with the equally gritty The Street of Forgotten Men (1925), Brooks first film.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Today: "Lost Creatures," new play about Louise Brooks, in Denver, CO

Lost Creatures, a new play about Louise Brooks by Melissa McCarl, will be staged for the first time later today in Denver, Colorado. (A public reading of the play was given last year.) Here are the details about this new project.


WORLD PREMIERE -- Thursday, November 3 at 7:30 PM MDT -- The play runs November 3rd through November 19th, 2016

Directed by Patrick Elkins-Zeglarski
Starring
Mark Collins as Kenneth Tynan,  Billie McBride as Louise Brooks, and Annabel Reader as Lulu 

About the play: Lost Creatures follows the evening in May of 1978 when British theatre critic Kenneth Tynan met his long time cinematic idol Louise Brooks. He travels to her dingy little apartment in Rochester, NY where she has sequestered herself for many years. He is there ostensibly to write a profile on Brooks for the New Yorker, but he discovers that they are kindred spirits, and in spite of an age gap of twenty years, theirs becomes an unlikely love story discovered through a marathon dialogue about sex, philosophy, art, and criticism. There is also a silent third character, Lulu, (based on Louise’s role in her most famous silent film Pandora’s Box) who drives the action of the play.


Set/Sound Design-Darren Smith
Light Design-Emily Maddox
Costume Design-Susan Lyles
Stage Manager-Lauren Meyer

Venue: The Commons on Champa, 3rd Floor Studio, 1245 Champa Street. Support provided by The Next Stage NOW


About Melissa McCarl: Author of Painted Bread, a full-length play named Best New Work by the Denver Post, about the tumultuous life of Frida Kahlo (recently produced by the Aurora Fox.) Commissioned by the Mizel Arts Center to write Poignant Irritations, celebrating the unorthodox life and love of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Commissioned by the Curious Theatre Company to write for the War Anthology directed by Bonnie Metzgar of the Public Theatre. Winner of the Steven Dietz award for the one act Carlene Yakkin’. Melissa has been named best local playwright by Westword newspaper and the Denver Post.


Those interested can check out an interview profile of Lost Creatures actor Mark Collins. The former Boulder, Colorado theatre critic is playing renowned theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in Melissa Lucero McCarl's play.



Tuesday, November 1, 2016

TONIGHT: Prix de beauté in 35 mm at the Kennington Biograph / Cinema Museum in London

The UK premiere of the restored silent version of the 1930 Louise Brooks film, Prix de beauté, will be shown tonight in 35 mm at the Kennington Biograph / Cinema Museum in London. This special screening, part of "Silent to Sound in Europe," is an event not to be missed! More information can be  found HERE. And what's more, the great Stephen Horne will accompany the film.



According to the Kennington Biograph webpage, "This event is presented in conjunction with the AHRC-funded project ‘British Silent Cinema and the Transition to Sound’. Using clips from British, French and German films, historian Geoff Brown investigates the turbulent European scene in the period of transition, 1929/1930. Studios struggled to shift from silent feature production to films that talked, sang, and made noises. Britain briefly won the technological advantage, but which country used the technology most imaginatively? The feature in the second half will be the UK premier of the original restored silent version of Prix de Beauté (1930), featuring Louise Brooks, courtesy of Cineteca Bologna. Doors open at 18.30, for a 19.30 start. Refreshments will be available in our licensed cafe/bar."

Prix de beauté was, in fact, one of the very first French sound films, and not without reason, music and sound are recurring thematic, visual and auditory motifs in both the silent and the sound versions film.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Spooky film history books for Halloween

I know people, myself included, who, every Halloween watch classic horror films movies like Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), and The Mummy (1932). I just watched the latter for about the tenth time—it still satisfies. I also watched the terrific UK thriller, The Clairvoyant (1935), with Claude Rains and Fay Wray. If you haven’t seen it, find a copy. I predict you’ll love it.

With Halloween just a few days away, there’s no better time to pick up some horror-themed film history. Might I recommend two recently released books from BearManor Media? One is London After Midnight: A New Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources, by Thomas Mann. It is an intriguing work of literary-filmic archeology.

Tod Browning’s silent horror film, London After Midnight (1927), starring Lon Chaney, has intrigued silent movie fans for decades. The movie is considered lost, and remains one of the most famous and sought after of all lost films. Every April 1st, it seems, somebody announces they have found it. Eureka!

The last known copy of London After Midnight was destroyed in a vault fire in 1967. Today, all that remains are surviving film stills, an illustrated novel, scripts, and other ephemera which give some feel for the actual film; however, gaps in the plot and other inconsistencies and missing elements leave viewers wondering how the actual film unfolded. (This, despite the fact that Turner Classic Movies aired a valiant reconstructed version, using the original script and film stills, in 2002.)

In London After Midnight: A New Reconstruction Based on Contemporary Sources, Mann offers a reconstruction based on his transcription of a rediscovered 11,000-word fictionalization of the film published in Boy’s Cinema, an English publication, a year after the film was released. Mann’s detailed comparison of surviving sources sheds new light on various “unsettling” aspects of the film, like the discovery of a second murder victim, a plot element not in the final film. Mann’s transcription of the story is included in the new book.

Another intriguing book from BearManor Media is Ed Wood and the Lost Lugosi Screenplays by Gary D. Rhodes. Here, noted film scholar and Bela Lugosi authority Gary D. Rhodes brings to light two of Ed Wood’s unproduced scripts for the famed Dracula star, namely The Vampire’s Tomb and The Ghoul Goes West. Rhodes is ably assisted by horror movie expert Tom Weaver, Lugosi biographer Robert Cremer, and Hollywood historian Lee R. Harris. Each dig deep into these unfilmed films, and in doing so, unearth all manner of previously unknown information and visual artifacts. Ed Wood and the Lost Lugosi Screenplays reproduces the two screenplays, and puts these horrific treasures on exhibit for the first time.

Another recent title well worth checking out is Expressionism in the Cinema, edited by Rhodes and Olaf Brill. Published by Scotland’s Edinburgh University Press (and available in the United States), this wide-ranging collection reworks the canon of Expressionistic cinema—which means it goes beyond the handful of German titles likely familiar to film buffs.

The book’s fifteen essays revisit key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922), and The Hands of Orlac (1924), and also provide new consideration of more obscure titles like Nerven (1919), The Phantom Carriage (1921) and other films produced outside Germany—notably in France, Sweden, Hungary, Austria and elsewhere.

For me, the real eye opener is Rhodes’ contribution to the book, “Drakula halála (1921): The Cinema’s First Dracula.” Yes, you read that right. There was a “Dracula film” before F. W. Murnau’s classic Nosferatu (1922), and before Tod Browning’s familiar Dracula (1931).

Drakula halála, or Dracula’s Death (sometimes translated as The Death of Drakula—following the Hungarian spelling), is a Hungarian horror film written and directed by Károly Lajthay. Like London After Midnight, it is presumed lost.

Drakula halála tells the story of a woman who experiences frightening visions after visiting an insane asylum, where one of the inmates claims to be Count Drakula. Echoing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the woman has trouble determining what is real and what is not, and whether the inmate’s visions are real, or merely nightmares. The film stars Paul Askonas as Dracula, with Carl Goetz as the "funny man" or "meat man." At the other end of the decade, Goetz played the important role of Lulu's pimp in the expressionist-tinged Pandora's Box.

Though the plot of Drakula halála does not really follow the narrative found in Bram Stoker’s famous novel, Dracula (1897), the film marks the first screen appearance of the vampire character we know as Count Dracula.

Released the following year, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (translated as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror) was in fact an unauthorized adaptation of Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to Stoker’s novel (for instance, “vampire” became “Nosferatu,” and “Count Dracula” became “Count Orlok”). In his fascinating essay, Rhodes argues that Drakula halála beat Nosferatu to the punch. Or should I say, it got the first bite.


A variant of this piece originally appeared on the Huffington Post.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

A Magical Mystery Tour: New Book Surveys Jules Verne on Film

As a kid, two of my favorite sci-fi flicks were Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) and Mysterious Island (1961). Whenever they came on TV, I was sure to watch—because as a kid, that was the only way I or just about anyone could see their favorite films. This, of course, was well before video tape and DVDs and the internet hurtled us into the future and changed everything.

A hidden place and a lost land, where in each noble characters used bravery and wit to battle strange creatures and adverse circumstance: I loved each of those stories because they took me somewhere else, somewhere elusive and fantastic beyond the regularity of suburban Detroit, where I grew up. For me, there is something resonant, almost mythic about those two film stories. Off course, I didn’t feel that way back then—I just loved the sheer adventure. Today, Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island remain favorites, and as an adult I have watched them more than a few times, having purchased the DVDs. (These two films, like other Verne stories, have been filmed on more than one occasion. I have watched the more recent remakes, but don’t find them as satisfying.)

What those two films have in common is that both were based on books by Jules Verne (1828-1905), the great French novelist often called the “Father of science fiction.” Along with Shakespeare and Agatha Christie, Verne is one of the most translated authors in the world. And, it’s not surprising, he is also one of the most filmed authors. Going back to the earliest years of the silent era, more than 300 film and television adaptations of Verne’s stories have been made. The most recent are an animated Japanese film, The Lost 15 Boys: The Big Adventure on Pirates’ Island (2013), and a French production, Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir (2014).

Each of these adaptations and many others are surveyed in Brian Taves’ fascinating new book, Hollywood Presents Jules Verne: The Father of Science Fiction on Screen (University Press of Kentucky). Film buffs and science fiction enthusiasts, as well as anyone drawn to steam punk will want to own a copy.

Besides Journey to the Center of the Earth and Mysterious Island, how many of us have not seen one or another version of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea or Around the World in Eighty Days (out of which sprang such immortal characters as Captain Nemo and Phileas Fogg)? Each is included in this Taves’ book, along with less familiar film adaptions of works like From the Earth to the Moon, Michael Strogoff, Master of the World, and others. They’re all here, feature films, box-office hits, low budget productions, shorts, serials, television shows and miniseries.

Taves knows of what he writes. He is author of a handful of books popular culture and film history (including highly recommended studies on directors Thomas Ince and Robert Florey - the director of the 1937 Louise Brooks' film, King of Gamblers), and works as a film archivist with the Library of Congress. Over the last 30 years, Taves has also written numerous articles on Verne, and co-authored The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (1996). Taves is currently editing “Jules Verne - The Palik Series,” stories and plays by the author never before translated into English, produced by the North American Jules Verne Society and published by BearManor Media.

If you’ve never seen Journey to the Center of the Earth (the 1959 version, starring James Mason, and with Pat Boone in his finest role) or Mysterious Island (the 1961 version), search out a copy today. Also, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (the 1954 version, with Kirk Douglas and James Mason) is also quite good.

And while you are at it, sign up to follow Taves work. He is always into something interesting.


A variant of this piece first appeared on Huffington Post
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