Chaplin Comes To Carolina

I made a Chaplin odyssey to Durham last week to see 35mm prints of six short comedies plus The Circus. The drive was two hours, but worth it. Brochures said this was the only such Chaplin festival in North Carolina. There were ones nearly four decades ago after CC received his special Academy Award, at which time features he owned were put back in theatres. I attended those lots during the seventies, and wondered if this trip might rekindle excitement of seeing them then. Well, of course, it couldn't. I'd watched many times over intervening years, and too often alone, to be aware of how folks today respond to Chaplin. Indeed, much of last weekend was spent judging the presentations and counting heads in attendance. The sense of wonder is long gone enough that I don't grieve over it anymore, yet part of me wanted to be nineteen again to see these for a first time, rather than clocking laughs from crowds a fraction of what used to come out for old films. Seems I'm to a point where revival shows are more stress than fun ... will people show up? ... have they got the screen ratio right? These weren't concerns when Charlie roared back to big screen life in 1972 with Greensboro's Janus Theatre offering first look since forever at the best and rarest of his comedies, a perfect moment and place for introduction to Chaplin at his peak.

The Janus, opening doors in 1968, merged a beatnik coffee house atmosphere with hippie commune aesthetics to redefine moviegoing for a changed culture. Various rooms had screens no larger than home theatres now, and new ones were carved out often. You could sit on seats, couches, beanbags, or the floor. They'd run oddities like Freaks and Un Chien Andalou for late shows. It was the perfect site for a Chaplin fest and highlights like Modern Times and City Lights squeezed patrons into aisles. All this amounted to thrill of something new. None of the Chaplins, outside scratchy shorts, had been on television, and theatres had mostly shunned him since before we were born. Was there something about 60's/70's sensibilities that made young people more receptive to old films? I remember howls of delight going up among Janus-ites when Charlie did his cocaine gag in Modern Times. Here was drug humor thirty years ahead of Saturday Night Live. Chaplin was with-it and needed no allowance for vintage of his work. The Janus scored big with the package and leased it outright for a year, during which Chaplin was in near-constant rotation among the theatre's ever-increasing screens. I suppose circumstances that made these click are long past now. The Janus was torn down for condos and its successor, The Carousel Cinemas, presently runs what's called a "Mixed Tape" series of great CLASSIC movies, full of thrills, chills, spills, and laughs (their promotion), including The Breakfast Club, Army Of Darkness, Die Hard, and Boogie Nights. Only two of the thirty-five scheduled were released before 1970.

I wish everyone who loves Chaplin could have been in Durham last week. The Carolina Theatre, housed in a historic downtown building (above), did splendidly presenting the nine programs. All were 35mm and looked brand new. Thirty-eight people besides me watched The Circus, enough for Charlie to light up and earn spontaneous applause for the finish. I reflected on my 8mm bootleg print from 1971, followed in 1974 by a renegade 16mm upgrade. So much personal history with The Circus made Durham's revisit all the more gratifying. The fact a 2010 audience (including teenagers) laugh anew at a comedy made eighty-two years ago is remarkable even if not unexpected (The Circus tends to play well with crowds). For such care taken by distributor Kino Films and Chaplin's estate, this festival resembles a traveling art exhibit. Interesting how sharp original prints can compensate for weakness of a film. We saw six of CC's First National shorts, all of them, in fact, save The Idle Class, and I realized again what a mixed bag these are. Coming after a winning streak that was his Mutual series, you'd have thought Chaplin's FN's would be his best yet, and based on the first one, A Dog's Life, merit of shorts to come must surely have looked to be onward and upward, but somehow, for me at least, they falter from there forward. Shoulder Arms seems disjointed now, with parts excellent but not necessarily the whole. No Chaplin had been so popular in its time. It was sort of the Great War's Buck Privates, only much more so.

Remaining First National shorts, including Sunnyside, A Day's Pleasure, Pay Day and The Pilgrim, were released between 1919 and 1923, which meant they played in competition with the best two-reel comedies from Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, and others gaining fast on Chaplin's lead. Considering how good theirs were, and how much his had slipped, it may have been more necessary than expedient for CC to get into features where he could dominate once again (and did, of course, with The Kid). The one that surprised me this time was The Pilgrim. Next to A Dog's Life, I think it's the best of his late short subjects, although at four reels, running time was not far shy of The Kid. Was Chaplin finally weighed down by adulation, a forced marriage, and pressure to devise gags? He said later that the Mutual period had been his happiest. Maybe success got out of hand by the time he linked with First National. Buster Keaton was asked once what he and Chaplin talked about when they got together. Mostly gags and how difficult they were to dream up, was Buster's recollection. Sunnyside and A Day's Pleasure made me wonder if maybe Charlie was approaching a wit's end for humor, yet these, along with his other FN's, were promoted to skies (as reflected by original ads here) and topped bills wherever they played. I've read of a then-public's disappointment at the drop-offs and can't help speculating how long Chaplin would have stayed aloft had he continued doing shorts only. The Durham audience I was with voted with their laughter and chose A Dog's Life and The Pilgrim as two best of the six. I might have guessed preference would go that way, but how can you really know without sitting among live bodies? Durham's festival was opportunity to do just that and appreciate once again Chaplin's timeless way with an audience.

Looking Through Dark Windows

Stranger On The Third Floor has been long dear to hearts of those who gave up sleep to catch it on forlorn late shows. From such midnight rendezvous came underground renown for this cast-off broadcasters wouldn't use in day or prime time. Here was the first film noir, said letters to journals with limited subscriber base, while others of us hoped RKO's 1940 obscurity might turn up within range of our own televisions. I read about it first in Don Miller's B Movies paperback. That came out in 1973 and soon gathered cult following to equal Stranger's. Miller was a New Yorker who must seldom have seen sunlight for so many low-budget films he chased over wee hours, researching them all when that meant real work in libraries and various trade almanacs. Miller wrote a bible for those wanting to know more about shows a larger public long ago forgot. Only trouble was binding fell apart as if one read was all we'd be permitted, B Movies' pages falling out like autumn leaves gone brown. There was thankfully a 1988 reprint of heartier stock (Amazon available from $5.05), and I'd still call Miller's an essential film reference book. The author considered Stranger On The Third Floor to be perhaps Greatest Of All B's. Prints always looked murky though. Whatever there was of a camera negative probably fed fish decades ago. Warner Archive has lately finessed as good a DVD as Stranger's obscure reputation will justify, their remaster clearing in part blizzards of wear this woebegone six-reeler fell victim to over seventy years of pleasing a small but dedicated following.

Stranger On The Third Floor was made for a paltry $171,000, but still lost money ($56,000). Variety thought it derivative, which made me wonder just what pics they felt Stranger leeched off of, as I can't think of anything before remotely like it. You could say RKO was scrounging German thrillers (a few critics thought so), or maybe it was Stranger's largely émigré crew taking inventory of dark Euro memories from their own pasts. Whatever the origin, Stranger comes off like probing engaged while supervisors weren't looking ... but why should they, with stakes and expectation so low? Peter Lorre was the putative star among an unremarkable cast. He was still as much known for perverse villainy as Mr. Moto sleuthing, even as his part was minimal with dialogue concentrated in final minutes. Suspense was inherent in Lorre's weird persona. His was a brand of sinister American thesps didn't even attempt, and certainly there was no duplicating that face and past tortures it suggested. A whole 40's trajectory for RKO was forecast with Stranger On The Third Floor, as though someone announced this would be house style for a coming ten years. Bill Everson said Stranger anticipated Val Lewton thrillers, and I'm wondering if Orson Welles peeked in while readying Kane. Certainly staff labored here that would go on to distinguish both Lewtons and RKO noirs, including camera genius Nicholas Musuraca, who did five for VL and Out Of The Past besides. Some have labeled Stranger On The Third Floor a horror film, not untoward if only for a nightmare sequence as chilling as any the studio devised, and come to think of it, I did see Stranger a first time on Channel 8's Shock Theatre. That was a weekend from which I returned to find college hall mates who'd also watched and were now improvising their own Lorre dialogue. I like to hurt women with knives, one murmured ... not a line from the film, but withal a fit for this player truly one-of-a-creepy-kind. Interesting how people with then-limited viewing choices saw a late movie and spent a following week in reflection over it. Do TCM broadcasts make such impression now?

WWII servicemen had hands full enough whipping Axis aggressors without coming home to ritual abuse of psychiatry and new fangled truth serums. High Wall is a Metro noir that documents what horrors lay in wait for vets in need of rehab from war traumas, these a walk in parks compared to effects of Sodium Pentothal, a diabolic cure-all touted as express lane toward mental health and even gentle prod to murder confessions where needed. Those needles seemed a fastest means of restoring order and dogged if they don't square away Bob Taylor and plot contrivances you'd have needed three more reels to settle otherwise. Of all movies made in the forties, High Wall is loudest to proclaim Drugs Are the Answer! Was this an agenda MGM meant to promote? I wonder how Code police viewed it. Of course, these were "good" drugs for being relatively new to extensive use, and hospitals were flooded with troubled men out of uniform, so why not seek cures via straightest line? Noir had its way of revealing cracks, however. Asylum staff that treats Taylor in High Wall remind me of Dr. Moreau amidst maddest experimentation, yet these aren't the bad guys and indeed 1947 viewers were cued to regard them as benign healers. Use of hallucinogens in High Wall plays now like fad treatment that surely would have led to dreadful outcome in real life, as I'm told truth serums at the least seldom worked as reliably as movies have us believe.

High Wall is also available from the Warner Archive. Quality is so good I'd have to assume they originally slated it as part of a next Noir box. Wall starts provocatively with Robert Taylor fleeing police in company of a woman he's apparently just murdered and suicide careening his auto off a bridge, conduct unbecoming a matinee idol of then-established standing, but not untypical of new direction this actor took once home from war. Taylor resonates among those engaged by fuller vistas of Hollywood's experience, never mind his contribution to performing arts (more considerable, I'd aver, than he's been given credit for). What gets folks revving about Bob is memory of tall timber he laid to industry subversives as friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee. This cast real-life noirish shadows across Taylor's image not unlike ones dogging Elia Kazan's legacy, marking him Exhibit A in a post-war trauma syndrome we've yet to resolve. Such current still generated by a star long gone is rare and to be cherished, whatever a viewer's own politics. For that and a grim countenance Taylor brought back from service, expressed as could-be killer of High Wall, may-be corrupt federal man of The Bribe, or sure enough dealer in death of Undercurrent, I'd nominate Taylor for placement among Most Intriguing Personas of noir's classic era. A lot of writers say never mind all that and label him villain whatever the part, thanks to treachery they say he engaged offscreen, a resolute position sure to enhance modern interest as more of Taylor's work surfaces on DVD (Warner Archive has so far released, in addition to High Wall; The Bribe, Party Girl, and Devil's Doorway, with worthies including Rogue Cop and The Last Hunt hopefully to come).

Metro's (Deadly) Trail Of '98

Untold stories are seldom really that. Especially when they involve Hollywood. I’ve had an ongoing curiosity about on-set incidents where lives were lost, especially ones that took place during the silent era. My imagination conjures accidents and bodies carried off with everyone agreed to say no more about it. Crews were smaller then and unions toothless or non-existent. What we actually know about casualties on Noah’s Ark or the 1927 Ben-Hur might fill a thimble. A few participants talked many years later, well after a point of worrying over lost jobs for doing so. I've not heard of anyone brought to account for negligence or indifference to safety. Surely these factored into risk taking we associate with much of early filming. Metro’s fatality list from The Trail Of ’98 was the last thing they wanted publicized. I’m still trying to figure numbers lost on that misfired 1928 epic. Three we can be sure of. That many more was suggested by a reliable source three decades on. Did that make MGM's a record? Here’s a trivia question maybe not so trivial. What movie did claim the most lives in its making? I’ll stand on The Trail Of ’98 for now, remaining open to other candidates should anyone submit them.

The Trail Of ’98 was conceived to surpass Ben-Hur, with even more cast/extras promised and delivered. Production units were dispatched to seemingly every inch of frozen ground between California and Alaska. Chief ramrod was Clarence Brown. This would be the second feature he’d direct for Metro. Brown said the ordeal lasted a year and was ungodly harsh, but crews were tougher then and stood hardship better (my impression of silent movie-folk in general). Actual shooting days as indicated by records total 116, from March 7 to July 13, 1927. For director Brown, half that time spent in below zero conditions must have seemed like a year. One of several crews was sent to Cordova, Alaska to get footage of stuntmen shooting the rapids. At least five of them were set upon the treacherous Copper River in primitive boats. The idea was to replicate conditions during Gold Rush days. Three of the group were killed, one in an effort to save the others. There was brief coverage published in The New York Times on July 1, 1927, their first mention of The Trail Of ’98 and the last time the accident would be mentioned, despite a number of later NYT articles focusing on MGM’s project. Another contemporary account mentioned assistant director Harry Schenck as having been in charge of the Copper River shoot. Schenck would later be mentioned in studio publicity for second unit direction in Skagway, Alaska and Lake Bennett, but no mention was made of his participation in the Copper River mishap. Metro-generated publicity for The Trail Of ’98 omitted any reference to the deaths, emphasizing safety measures taken by the company and perilous situations where accidents were avoided. Those early mentions of Harry Schenck intrigued me. I’m guessing he was related to Loew’s boss Nick Schenck. A sometimes actor, writer, and assistant director (according to imdb), Harry died in 1953, presumably taking the truest account of what happened on the Copper River with him.

Metro was intent upon The Trail Of ’98 doing Big Parade business on Broadway. The latter had played 96 weeks at the Astor Theatre. With even greater investment in Trail’s negative ($1.538 million), MGM devised a roadshow policy with tickets selling for two dollars. Irving Thalberg told reporters in February 1928 of Trail’s Astor premiere set for late March and his enthusiasm for the company’s newest SuperSpecial. Well-known manager of high-profile attractions J.J. McCarthy would take charge of the opening. He had guided past roadshows Way Down East, The Ten Commandments, and The Big Parade. This kind of exhibition was strictly boom or bust, however. Overhead to maintain roadshows could be ruinous. Only one out of four broke even. Less than twenty percent saw profit. The Trail Of ’98 had Dolores Del Rio for marquees, but little else. Its epics scale was bolstered by the Astor’s installation of a Fantom screen, yet another variation of Magna-scoping Paramount tried on specials down the block. Variety described the Fantom as a device on rollers where the picture can double its size by moving down front and then reduce to normal as it retreats up stage. The stunt was used twice in The Trail Of ’98, both times filling the entire proscenium as audiences marveled at snow slides and raging rapids. Astor’s live orchestra performed a score which was later recorded for music and effects versions made available on general release prints. A love theme, I Found Gold When I Found You, was compensation for human-interest qualities that Variety felt were lacking. Sheer size, it seemed, left characters on the margin. Several reviews mentioned this as a possible barrier to a public’s embrace needed to sustain extended runs. Also, it was long. Variety referred to a running time of 127 minutes, minus intermission, on the Astor’s two-a-day schedule. Length was later trimmed to under two hours. What’s left today is 87 minutes with several obvious story gaps and chunks missing.

Variety prophesied The Trail Of ’98 would roadshow through Fall 1928, and did not foresee disappointing returns on two-dollar admissions at the Astor. Motion Picture News reported Trail going at a brisk pace as of April’s first week and predicted it would continue to pile up gratifying grosses for some time to come (MPN also ran, and was compensated for, weekly multi-page MGM ads). Harrison’s Reports filed a positive review and initially saw bright numbers for The Trail Of ’98, but was apparently unaware of what had taken place on the Copper River: It seems as if those who rode the rapids did so at the actual risk of their lives … one can see fully the danger to the lives of those in the frail boats. By early July, Harrison amended placement of The Trail Of ’98 among safe two-dollar admission bets and warned exhibitors that roadshow prospects were shaping up grim. Not that the picture is bad, but … there are many things that work against it, he said. For instance, pictures with Alaska as locale have been done to death. Indeed they had. Numerous Klondike actioners based on James Oliver Curwood stories were in circulation, and Universal's Grip Of The Yukon nibbled at potential playdates. Even MGM’s own Tide Of Empire appeared to offer a too-similar bill of fare. It began to look as though the company was in agreement that The Trail Of ’98 would play better as a program picture at regular prices, per Harrison’s tip from showmen’s grapevine: I understand that Metro-Goldwyn have abandoned the idea of of roadshowing it. Going forward minus special handling meant MGM could save considerable amounts in promotion and weekly theatre overhead. Now came the challenge of selling The Trail Of ’98 to doubtful exhibitors aware of its having stumbled as a SuperSpecial. Would they agree to advanced rentals MGM sought for the film’s general release?

Paid special price for this and it wasn’t worth a cent more than program, said Avard J. Sloat of the Roseland Theatre in Pleasant View, RI. Metro hooked me plenty on this … don’t let them tell you it’s a world-beater because it isn’t. Didn’t draw film rental, was A.L. Lighter’s Orpheum Theatre experience in Mellen, Wisconsin. Such were realities behind puffed-up trade ads like ones shown here. MGM salesmen promised the moon, but results were closer to parched earth. You could charge more armed with the perception of a hit off Broadway, and the Astor’s ultimate letdown with The Trail Of ’98 was well concealed by fact it had played there to much hoopla and promotional noise. January 1929 proved to be less than ideal time for this silent film to go into general release. Urban and first-run curiosities were better satisfied with talking screens. Consequent avalanche of failure for The Trail Of ’98 was as ruinous as those that swept away characters therein. Domestic rentals of $839,000 came nowhere near replacing moneys spent, and foreign was worse ($739,000). MGM’s loss of $756,000 was surpassed only by disaster that was Mysterious Island of the same year. Like so many final season silents, The Trail Of ’98 faded into memories retained by increasing few. Looking back from 1940, director Clarence Brown maintained that his crew suffered a good deal more than original Gold Rushers that swarmed Alaska. Was he smarting yet over Metro’s abandonment of roadshowing efforts? Story rights complication kept The Trail Of ’98 out of circulation for years to come. We can probably be thankful that it survives at all. A big reveal came in the mid-sixties when Kevin Brownlow went to interview Brown for The Parade’s Gone By, which was published in 1968. Maybe enough time had passed for the director to fess up as to full extent of casualties from The Trail Of ’98. We went to Alaska to do the rapids scenes, he remembered, an interesting departure from 1927 accounts that placed traveling units at Klondike locations, including the one supervised by Harry Schenck where the three deaths occurred. Most startlingly, Brown referred to other crew members that perished on the film’s Colorado location: When I left Denver, part of the company stayed behind. A large section of snow fell and two or three more men were killed. That’s a total of five, maybe six, people lost on The Trail Of ’98. All for a picture that wasn’t too hot, according to Clarence Brown. Storywise, directionwise, and actingwise, I was never too happy with it, he said, It was just one of those conglomerates. Whatever his indifference to The Trail Of ’98, Brown put enormous effort into researching for authenticity. When I visited the University of Tennessee’s Clarence Brown Collection in Knoxville, there were banker boxes filled with vintage photographs he’d collected of Alaskan scenes and Gold Rush participants taken in the 1890’s. At least for that year Brown spent preparing and shooting The Trail Of ’98 (and losing twenty pounds in the laborious process), this director was as committed as he would ever be to a project. The film endures today as his most spectacular and evocative of a vanished time and place, one of the silent era’s great unsung epics.