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Day 1 - Friday Any day that includes a screening of Frank Capra's The Bitter Tea of General Yen is bound to be dominated by that delirious Orientalist melodrama. The picture was chosen to open the Radio City Music Hall in 1933, but it performed so poorly that Music Hall management yanked it halfway through its contracted two-week run. The fervid theme of interracial sexual attraction packs a punch even today, even with the "Chinese" warlord played by Scandinavian Nils Asther, and it made 'em positively squirm 80 years ago -- those who showed up at all. Barbara Stanwyck played the naive American missionary in the thrall of Asther's General Yen (that picture on the poster doesn't look much like her, does it?), but it's the all-but-forgotten Asther who dominates the picture, in a performance of grace, intelligence and dignity that (like Luise Rainer's O-Lan in The Good Earth four years later) wins over all but the most rigidly PC viewers today.
Other highlights of the day (for me, at least):
The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T ('53), the Dr. Seuss fantasy that, in its way, was just as delirious as General Yen -- and just as big a flop. (As film historian and biographer Scott Eyman said as we discussed the picture over breakfast that morning, "Yeah, [producer] Stanley Kramer lost a lot of money for Columbia.") Still, Dr. T has found its audience over the last 60 years (though too late to do Columbia any good), and I've always had a soft spot for it. I still laugh out loud when, after the "whammy duel" between Peter Lind Hayes and Hans Conried, the two men collapse exhausted into each other's arms: Conried: "Where did you study??" Hayes: "I just picked it up."
The 1932 Fox western The Golden West, with an epic Zane Grey story that strained at the picture's modest 74-minute running time, told the saga of two generations of star-crossed lovers, with George O'Brien playing the male half in both generations (and with an ultimately happy ending). This one featured an unusual supporting character: an Irish-Jewish peddler named Dennis Epstein (played by Bert Hanlon). There was also a buffalo stampede that was a real pip -- thanks to the generous insertion of stock footage from The Iron Horse, The Big Trail and other Fox westerns.
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Day 2 - Saturday
Saturday's headliner looked at first to be the 1926 silent The Sea Beast, even though it's exactly the kind of movie that gives Hollywood a bad name. The Sea Beast was ostensibly an adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick,
which by the 1920s was finally coming into its own as a pinnacle of
American literature. But no pinnacle is so high that somebody can't be
knocked off of it, and that's what writers Bess Meredyth and Rupert
Hughes proceeded to do, supplying Melville with all the things he
neglected to write back in 1851. Capt. Ahab's last name for example:
they decided it was Ceeley. And what's a man without a woman, right? So
they gave their Ahab (John Barrymore) a sweetheart named Esther, who by a
remarkable coincidence was played by Barrymore's real-life squeeze (and
future ex-wife) Dolores Costello. Then, to add the dramatic conflict
that was missing in all that business about the White Whale, they
invented Derek Ceeley (George O'Hara), Ahab's brother and rival for
Esther's affections. The result was, as Richard M. Roberts succinctly
put it in his Cinevent program notes, "a REALLY Stupid movie." Having
seen the later (1930) talkie remake Moby Dick (also starring Barrymore, and where the title
was the only shred of Melville to be restored), I thought I'd give this
one a look for the sake of completeness. Alas, I wasn't man enough. I
got only as far as Ahab's first run-in with Moby Dick and the line (in
an intertitle, of course) "My leg! My leg! He tore it off!" -- and
decided I simply didn't need to see any more. The Sea Beast and
its 1930 remake may well represent the rock-bottom worst of Hollywood in
general, and of Warner Bros. in particular: They got two chances
to have John Barrymore, the greatest actor of his age, play Melville's
titanic Capt. Ahab -- and they blew it both times. (To be fair, The Sea Beast was
a box-office hit, whereas when Warners and director John Huston tried
to do right by Melville 30 years later, that version of Moby Dick flopped. So you have to blame the audience as much as Hollywood or Warner Bros.)
Based on Somerset Maugham's play The Land of Promise, The Canadian was
actually a remake; it was first filmed in 1917 under Maugham's original
title, with Thomas Meighan playing the same role (opposite Billie
Burke). By 1926, Meighan was a well-established and popular star, billed
above the title (and with the title changed to give him the title
role), and he's certainly good in The Canadian.
But
the picture belongs entirely to Mona Palma as Nora (shown here with
Meighan's Frank early in their hasty marriage). She gives one of the
most remarkable performances of the entire silent era -- subtle,
sensitive and finely tuned; her face is as immobile as Buster Keaton's,
and yet (as with Keaton) you always know exactly what she's thinking.
Frankly, for much of the first half of the picture, those thoughts
aren't pleasant, and Nora Marsh isn't very sympathetic; as she gradually
grows up and shoulders the responsibilities of her new hardscrabble
life -- as Nora Marsh becomes Nora Taylor -- she wins our sympathy just
as she wins over the other characters in the picture. It's simply an
amazing performance. Alas, it's virtually all we have of Mona Palma. She
made only seven pictures in her four-year career (three under her real
name, Mimi Palmieri). The Canadian was her big break and first lead, but she made only one more picture (Cabaret, 1927) before retiring from the screen at age 29. She lived to the ripe old age of 91 but never made another movie.
The Canadian survives almost by accident, according to Richard Roberts's program notes. Paramount's nitrate print was donated in 1969 to the fledgling UCLA Film Archive, who refused it because it was a silent; it went instead to the American Film Institute, who preserved it. The AFI screened it at the L.A. County Museum of Art in February 1970 as part of its "Rediscovering American Cinema" program. The guest of honor was director Beaudine, seeing the picture for the first time ever. At the thunderous standing ovation afterward, Roberts tells us, the old man wiped away a tear. "I'm very surprised. I was quite a good director once." A month later, William Beaudine was dead. (I wonder if anybody thought to drive up to Oxnard, Calif. and invite 72-year-old Mrs. Mimi P. Cooper, the former Mona Palma, to the screening as well. Evidently not.)
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Day 3 - Sunday
By Sunday, things are generally beginning to wind down at Cinevent; this year, certainly, The Canadian cast a shadow that the rest of the film program was hard-pressed to live up to. There were a couple of high-profile silents on view this day.
First was The Nut (1921), Douglas Fairbanks's last modern-dress comedy before devoting himself entirely to the costume swashbucklers that began with The Mark of Zorro ('20), and for which he's best remembered today. The Nut was...well, if somebody asked me what was the big deal about Doug Fairbanks, this isn't the picture I'd refer them to to find out. The Obnoxious Schmuck would be a better title, I think, as Doug plays an overbearing inventor whose every effort to win the heart of his beloved backfires in spectacular and embarrassing fashion. The program notes called the picture "episodic"; I'd call it "monotonous", with the irrepressible Doug's character decidedly off-putting.
Then there was Stella Maris (1918), one of Mary Pickford's biggest successes. She plays a dual role: as the title character, a cheerfully sheltered and pampered heiress confined to a wheelchair by some mysterious unnamed disability; and as Unity Blake, a pitifully mistreated orphan whose harsh life contrasts sharply with that of the silver-spooned Stella. It's a very well-made picture and Pickford is excellent in it, plus there are some first-rate effects when both her characters appear on screen together. But the story itself, from a 1913 novel by William J. Locke, is a specimen of the kind of sickly Victorian melodrama that was going out of fashion even then, and that only a star of Pickford's caliber could pull off.
Probably the highlight of the day -- and certainly the most fun -- was Hold That Co-ed, a 1938 musical with John Barrymore as a Huey Long-ish governor running for the U.S. Senate while simultaneously (and corruptly) trying to wangle a national championship for his pet college football team. Barrymore is a full-throated hoot, the songs are pleasant, and the supporting cast (George Murphy, Marjorie Weaver, Joan Davis, Jack Haley, George Barbier) delightful.
Other memorable Sunday titles: Nazi Agent ('42), with Conrad Veidt (Casablanca's Major Strasser) as a naturalized German-American taking the place of his Nazi spy identical twin brother; The Man Who Lost Himself ('41), another lookalikes-switch-identities drama, this time with Brian Aherne replacing his double, the tycoon husband of Kay Francis; and The Disciple ('15), one of William S. Hart's early westerns, more a strong domestic drama than shoot-'em-up, with Hart a frontier parson determined to clean up a sinful town, even as his wife succumbs to local temptations.
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Day 4 - Monday
And so we come to the last day -- or half-day, really. As usual, most of the dealers have packed up and left, as has a large percentage of the attendees. Still, there are pleasures to be had for those (like me) who choose to stay to the bittersweet end. I think my favorite was The House of Fear (1939) -- not to be confused with the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes picture with the same title. This one is a niftly little mystery with police detective William Gargan posing as a theater producer to crack a year-old cold case in which an actor was murdered onstage during his opening night performance. Other titles on Monday were The Social Secretary ('16), a silent romantic comedy with Norma Talmadge at her most charming; and Henry Aldrich, Editor ('42), in which our Andy Hardy/Archie clone hero (Jimmy Lydon) tries to run his school newspaper, only to get in hot water over an arson investigation. These Aldrich comedies have been running for a couple of years now at Cinevent, and they're always pleasant, well-made comedies. This one, according to the program notes, is widely considered the best of the series, and I'm not surprised.
The movies are only part of the fun at Cinevent, of course. There are also the dealers' rooms, where you can find a vast array of items for sale -- film, video, books, stills, posters, lobby cards, magazines, sheet music, souvenir programs and other memorabilia. As always, I stocked up on much of this -- and, as always, I didn't realize how much I'd bought until I had to pack it all up to come home. I get quite a bit of exercise dragging my luggage through airport security and heaving it up into overhead compartments.
Then there are the people themselves, who have become good friends, a cozy community united by their shared love of classic Hollywood. Two such are John McElwee (left) of Greenbriar Picture Shows and Richard M. Roberts. Both are major contributors to Cinevent's program notes, and both were there this year selling their recently published books: John's Showmen, Sell It Hot!: Movies as Merchandise in Golden Era Hollywood; and Richard's Past Humor, Present Laughter: Musings on the Comedy Film Industry 1910-1945, Vol. One: Hal Roach. I'll have more to say about both books next time.
10 comments:
Just so people don't think I'm a two-fisted soda drinker, the other soda in front of me belongs to my just off-camera better half, Linda Shah.
Nice words on Cinevent Jim, it was a pleasure to see you and all who attended for what is indeed one of the most pleasant of the Cinephile Conventions.
RICHARD M ROBERTS
Hi Jim --- Great seeing you at the show, as always, and appreciate the pic and your mention of "Showmen, Sell It Hot!" at Cinedrome.
This sounds really interesting! I sure would like to attend next year!
John: Rest assured, the mention in this post is just a teaser. I'm still enjoying your terrific book (and Richard's,too) preparatory to doing them full justice in my next post.
BTW, I meant to tell you before the party broke up in Columbus. Right there on page 2 of your gloriously illustrated tome, there's a picture that put me in mind of my inspiration for the name of this blog. I had originally toyed with calling it "I Wake Up Screening", only to find the name was taken (not by a blog, but a book). Then some friends showed me pictures of their vacation in Cornwall. In the town of Penzance (if memory serves) there was a little storefront cinema not unlike the "Dream" in that 1914 snapshot in your book. This quaint little establishment, however, bore the lofty name "Cinedrome". Eureka!
Karen: Welcome, my CMBA colleague! I'm sure you'd have a great time at Cinevent; if you do attend next year, be sure to look me up and say hi. Meanwhile, I encourage my readers to check out your excellent Shadows and Satin blog.
"The Canadian" sounds amazing. Thanks for letting us know about it.
Very interested to hear what you have to say about John McElwee's book ""Showmen, Sell It Hot!", My copy arrived last week and I've just been awestruck by its contents. I'm savoring slowly, reading a chapter an evening, but I admit to jumping ahead to revel in all those amazing photos throughout the book.
The picture of the theater showing the double feature of "Isle of the Dead" and "House of Dracula", where the front of the theater is covered with posters and lobby cards from the two movies, is just amazing. For me it would have been like seeing a triple feature back then - watch the two movies and then go outside and take in all those stills and lobby cards for another hour.
What an event, Jim! Thanks so much for sharing a bit of it with us.
I'm jealous but mostly at the fact that you got to see Sea Beast on the big screen and in such a fun setting. Lot's of Barrymore at this event which is a good thing. : )
I've never heard of The Canadian but it looks like a great get.
Enjoy your weekend!
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I read your posts out of order, but now that I see the great films that are offered at Cinevent, I'm even more chagrined that I didn't know about this.
You see what a valuable public service you're offering here?
Silver: It's Cinevent that provides the public service; I'm just the messenger. I hope you'll consider joining us next year; if you do, as I told Karen, be sure to look me up and say hi.
Now I'm bummed that I didn't see The Canadian. But it is hard sitting for so long, especially know there are so many people there to talk to, and so much memorabilia to see.
Samantha: Don't feel too bad; I almost skipped The Canadian myself. Who knew? (I have to thank Richard Roberts for piquing my interest with his program notes.) It was great seeing you again in Columbus, and I look forward to seeing you yet again next year.
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