WHAT SILENTS & PRE-CODES HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[silentscreen]

Wild Boys of the Road looks like an excellent precode and history lesson about Depression era America.Wellman's real life wife stands out as the young girl. I've yet to watch the entire movie though I do have the set.

As regards Rosita, I'd venture a guess that someone is selling a poor quality bootleg. I've asked about it on another site and I'll let you know what response I get. I'm assuming that the original is in an archive somewhere, and that would be the only place you could see it besides at a festival some where. I've seen bootlegs with someone holding a camera while watching a film. Atrocious!

[charliechaplinfan]

I've seen one of those movies, a film of a screening, it's not good. You must watch the end Brenda, it's brilliant. I noticed it was William Wellman's wife, in the film she does not look old enough to marry anyone.

I needed a lift, I opted for Kiss and Makeup part of a Cary Grant boxset, costarring Genevieve Tobin, Helen Mack and Edward Everett Horton. I guess this qualifies as a precode seeing as Genevieve's character divorces for new husbands twice. It's a good little comedy about a beauty doctor famed for his beauty salon where he advises on diets, cold cream, surgery, he grows to realise that his regime does not lead to happy marriages, it takes him a while but he gets there. I think in this film 'Cary Grant' was fully developed on screen a lovely chance to hear him sing on screen, he sounds exactly like he talks, a bit like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady. Edward Everett Horton always delights me. Toby Wing does a walk on spot as a woman who removes her clothes in the reception. Definetly a precode.

[MichiganJ]

JackFavell wrote:

With all the talk of Mary Pickford, I just wanted to say that the Frances Marion documentary that aired on TCM a couple months ago was very good, and talked a bit about Mary's professional and personal relationship with the writer. It is well worth seeing for insight into how Mary and Frances worked out her movies.

This documentary is terrific and is available on DVD accompanied by an early Mary Pickford/Frances Marion collaboration, A Little Princess, which itself is a great film, and features a heart-wrenching performance by ZaSu Pitts.

I'd also highly recommend the book the documentary is based on (also called Without Lying Down). It naturally goes into greater detail than the documentary.

Parade' s Gone By is one of the great silent film books, but I'd also recommend Brownlow's Behind the Mask of Innocence. It details many of the social films from the silent era, and I find myself returning to it often, especially since many of the films he writes about are now available on DVD.

[silentscreen]

A little update on Rosita. It turns out that the only surviving print was Russian. Mary got rid of hers. However, a friend of mine says that it's owned by the Mary Pickford estate and has been shown at film festivals with English intertitles. Wonder how someone got a hold of one with Russian intertitles?

LOL, Alison, I'm so bad about watching movies part of the way through. I'll make sure I watch all of Bad Boys of the Road soon. Honestly, I got to the part where one of the boys loses his leg and and it depressed me. Now I've begun to watch one from the Murnau/Borzage set, Bad Girl. The lead actress has some really good come backs for guys trying to flirt, but I don't think she's really a "bad girl." I don't know how they came up with some of these titles! I'll write up a review of it later. I think Borzage won an Acadamy Award for this one, though thus far I don't see why.

[JackFavell]

I'd also highly recommend the book the documentary is based on (also called Without Lying Down). It naturally goes into greater detail than the documentary.

Thanks, MichiganJ. I had no idea there was a book as well, but now I am going to go find it. I found it fascinating.

[silentscreen]

I watched Bad Girl from the Murnau/Borzage/Fox collection. Though an excellent little slice of life film from the Depression Era, I definitely wouldn't say that it compares with Borzage's timeless silent romances, though Borzage's recurrent theme of love conquering all is here to.The lead actors,Sally Eilers, and James Dunn, both do fine jobs, especially Dunn, who paints a very realistic portrait of a "regular Joe", decent kind of a guy. His performance rings true, and he later made a comeback, winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (1945)

This is the story of a young couple's struggle to make it through marriage, finances, and becoming parents. The background story of what was considered "making it" in a poor economy is especially pertinent today. Dunn's character, Eddie Collins, thought it was opening his own radio shop, providing his wife with an elaborately furnished apartment, and getting her the best doctor for her delivery. Not so different from what young couples are facing today!

The film is sometimes a bit too wordy, but the slang of the time is a hoot! As one of Borzage's smaller films, it's worth a watch.

[charliechaplinfan]

JackFavell wrote:

With all the talk of Mary Pickford, I just wanted to say that the Frances Marion documentary that aired on TCM a couple months ago was very good, and talked a bit about Mary's professional and personal relationship with the writer. It is well worth seeing for insight into how Mary and Frances worked out her movies.

This documentary is terrific and is available on DVD accompanied by an early Mary Pickford/Frances Marion collaboration, A Little Princess, which itself is a great film, and features a heart-wrenching performance by ZaSu Pitts.

I'd also highly recommend the book the documentary is based on (also called Without Lying Down). It naturally goes into greater detail than the documentary.

Parade' s Gone By is one of the great silent film books, but I'd also recommend Brownlow's Behind the Mask of Innocence. It details many of the social films from the silent era, and I find myself returning to it often, especially since many of the films he writes about are now available on DVD.

[phil noir]

I haven't seen the documentary or read the book about Frances Marion, but one thing which has always puzzled me about her career is that although she was incredibly prolific in the teens and twenties, from the early thirties onwards, her credits thin out considerably. I believe she won an Oscar around this time, and was an influential figure at MGM, so it wasn't as though she was washed up. Was she in more of a supervisory role, and involved only in prestige projects?

Can anyone throw any light on this?

[JackFavell]

Marion was instrumental in starting the Screen Writer's Guild, and the MGM studio higher ups did not like that. They dropped her contract. Irving Thalberg got in touch with her and said he would let her write, produce, and direct her own films. Marion went to England, to work on two pictures in the meantime. She got a cable a few months later saying that Thalberg had died, and with his death, all her plans went out the window. Frances started painting and sculpting, since she was fairly well off. She wrote a lot, including many stories, and the first screenwriting textbook.

Many women worked in pictures in the early days, but were thrust out or forgotten by the mid-thirties, when the studios became big business. Their legacy would be buried, the names of these women would only be footnotes to the history of film.

[phil noir]

Ah, right. Thank you, JackFavell (big fan of your work in Rebecca, by the way).

I know she wrote an autobiographical novel, Off with their Heads, in the seventies about her time in Hollywood. I remember looking at it on various second-hand book websites, and it isn't exactly cheap. I wish someone would republish it.

[JackFavell]

I'll have to keep my eye out for it, thanks, Phil.

Love your genre....

[charliechaplinfan]

I had trouble making that post above and I realise it deleted my post and left only the quote.

What I was going to say was I'm glad The Little Princess is out on DVD. Without Lying Down the book can be found quite cheaply, you are right Phil, Frances Marion's book is always expensive when I look for it. So is Behind The Mask of Innocence but I too highly recommend this book, it's superbly written and informative, an ideal companion to Parades.

[phil noir]

Last night I had the pleasure of watching Marion Davies in The Red Mill (1927), which I thoroughly enjoyed. For eighty minutes I sat with a smile on my face except for when I was laughing out loud. She is such a clever comedian. The plot was quite Cinderella-like: Davies played a put upon servant in backlot Holland who falls in love with a visiting Irishman (Owen Moore). Her only friend is a mouse, Ignatz (played, according to the credits, By Himself).

For some reason, I didn't think I'd like Owen Moore - maybe I'd read something about him when he was married to Mary Pickford, and dimly or wrongly remembered it? - but he was very good: deft and charming, and not trying to outshine the star. There were also funny supporting performances from Louise Fazenda, Karl Dane and Snitz Edwards (does he have the best film survival rate of any silent actor? I seem to spot him all over the place). The sets were terrific and the climax in the haunted mill of the title was marvellous.

My favourite scene was where Marion had to pass herself off as the Louise Fazenda character. MD's character was initially quite a plain Jane (she seemed as though she wasn't wearing any make up in the early scenes), but hovering around LF's dressing table, she picked up a jar of mud-pack. Apply and peel off for instant beauty, said the label. So she did, and when she removed the mask, the lighting was suddenly much more flattering, there was the suspicion of softening gauze over the camera lens, and there she was in full make up, complete with 'twenties cupid bow on her lips.

[charliechaplinfan]

Marion is underrated and often overlooked, I've always enjoyed her performances. I've seen Owen Moore in a few films and like you I was unprepared to like him, I suppose liking Mary Pickford so much and reading from her side of the story all the time, they were mismatched but I don't think he was abusive to her. I saw Coquette recently and costarring was one of Owen's brothers, Matt I think, so relations can't have been that bad between them. By the time of The Red Mill Owen would have been in movies for at least 15 years, he didn't look too bad for it.

Snitz Edwards is in every second silent I watch, he is everywhere, in everything, he survived being sidekick to Buster Keaton and Douglas Fairbanks, he could probably survive anything.

[MichiganJ]

I watched Where the North Begins starring ol' Rin-Tin-Tin! In this one, Rinty is raised by wolves, saves the life of a man, who then adopts Rinty and takes him back to his town up north (when he "speaks", the inter-tiles are written with a goofy "French accent" that is quite annoying but seems to indicate they are somewhere in Canada or Alaska). Not surprisingly, Rinty is the best performer in the film, doing amazing stunts and even over-emoting!

Despite its B-Western plot (bad guy boss steals furs and is in love with the good guy's gal), Where the North Begins is really great fun. (Odd, though, that this time Rinty was played by a Dachshund.)