Salvador Dali, Buster Keaton Fan

When we read about history, it’s easy to forget how often various worlds would collide. For example, Harold Lloyd’s Speedy and Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc came out the same year, and Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford once had Albert Einstein over for dinner (Chaplin was invited too, and Pickford remembered him and Doug listening to the famed professor in awed “befuddlement”). And an artist like, say, the iconic Salvador Dalí would have grown up with silent comedies, and would’ve had his favorite comedians like everyone else.

It’s fairly common knowledge among classic comedy fans that Dalí was a Marx Brothers fan–or rather, fanatic. Once he gifted Harpo a custom-made harp with barbed wire strings, covered with spoons (as historian Joe Adamson humorously explained, Harpo “didn’t drop spoons, he dropped knives, that’s why Dalí used spoons”). He also presented the Marx Brothers with a screenplay called Giraffes on Horseback Salad, basically a living series of his paintings but with Marx Brothers. (They somewhat respectfully declined.) But not everyone knows that Dalí was a Buster Keaton fan, too.

Frostbite And Ice: Nell Shipman’s Hair-Raising Adventures In The Great White North

There are many legendary behind-the-scenes tales from early cinema, an era of dangerous stunts performed with the faintest shrugs at safety measures, and of stubborn trekking to remote location shoots where risk of frostbite–or heatstroke–or severe storms–was de rigueur. Authenticity was king, to the point of mania. Von Stroheim famously insisted on filming a pivotal scene from Greed (1924) in Death Valley, when temps soared to 120. Buster Keaton nearly drowned in a swift-moving river while shooting a sequence for Our Hospitality (1923). And the stories behind the difficult shoot of Ben-Hur (1925) could fill a whole article by themselves.

Nell Shipman’s adventures filming in the Canadian wilderness are a lesser-known but equally fascinating saga from early film history. A native of British Columbia, Shipman was a theater actress who was also passionate about animal welfare. She married Ernest Shipman when she was 18 (they would have a son named Barry), and they would move to Hollywood where Nell would write scripts and act for companies like Selig and Vitagraph. Having an adventurous spirit, Nell wanted to star in wintery adventure-themed films set in the “great white North” of the Canadian wilderness. Accordingly, Ernest set up the Canadian Photoplays Ltd. company in 1919 and they would trek to remote areas of Alberta to work on Nell’s film Back to God’s Country (1919)–notable today for being Canada’s biggest silent box office hit.

What Films Did People See In The Nickelodeon Era?

A version of this article was first published on Classic Movie Hub–I hope you enjoy it!

We’re all at least somewhat familiar with nickelodeons, the tiny 1900s-era theaters where patrons paid a nickel to take in a few films. And we all know that these quaint little storefronts evolved into the familiar neighborhood theaters and big city “movie palaces.” But not everyone knows exactly what nickelodeon-era motion pictures were like–aside from the usual Georges Méliès films, little clips of ladies dancing, and famous early works like The Great Train Robbery (1903).

A typical neighborhood nickelodeon.

So if you could travel over a century back in time and pop into the nearest nickelodeon, what films were you likely to see? The subjects were as endless back then as they are on YouTube today–everything from travelogues to comedies to military films to, yes, films of funny animals. 

Heroic animals, too. See: Rescued by Rover (1905).

“My Eccentric Roommate”–Stan Laurel’s Early Memories Of Charlie Chaplin

Goodness, is it really July already? Why does the lovely month of June always fly by like it was shot out of a cannon?! Anyways, let’s kick of July with this amusing reminisce from the great Stan Laurel, recalling a time back in the early 1910s when his music hall troupe “Fred Karno’s Army” toured the U.S. What other famed comedian was also in that exact same troupe? Charlie Chaplin!

Image credit of the cheery troupe: CharlieChaplin.com.

This essay is from a 1982 book called The Legend of Charlie Chaplin, compiled by Peter Haines, which I used for a post once before. This is a collection of essays and interviews by Chaplin’s friends, fellow actors, and other contemporaries, reprinted from hard-to-find publications that ranged from the 1910s-1970s. If you love Charlie, it’s well worth seeking out. Parts of this essay are probably familiar, being pretty widely quoted, but there’s other parts that might be new to you–especially a funny story at the end that sounds like something from a slightly lowbrow 1910s comedy!

“The Divine Sarah” Bernhardt–Sculptress

Very few names in the theater are as legendary as that of Sarah Bernhardt, nicknamed “The Divine Sarah” by her legions of admirers. Born in 1844 to a high-powered French courtesan, she first started acting while in boarding school and continued to pursue acting on the advice of family friend Charles de Morny, Duke of Morny–the half brother of Emperor Napoleon III (quite a contact!).

Her rise to fame was swift and suitably dramatic for an actress who loved romanticism and grand gestures. Studies at the Paris Conservatory lead to joining the Comédie Française, which she left for less prestigious theaters after butting heads with another actress. While continuing to make a name for herself she befriended great writers, screenwriters and aristocrats, taking some as her lovers. At age 20 she gave birth to her only child, Maurice, rumored to be the son of Belgian Prince Henri de Ligne.

The Silent Movie Day Blogathon

Happy Silent Movie Day, everyone! (Man it feels good to say that…! Dream come true, and all.) Me and In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood are happy to be celebrating it with you all with you today! The founders of this new holiday–one of the best since Christmas–wrote:

“National Silent Movie Day is an annual celebration of silent movies, a vastly misunderstood and neglected cinematic art form. We believe that silent motion pictures are a vital, beautiful, and often powerful part of film history, and we are united in the goal to advocate for their presentation and preservation.”

Couldn’t agree more! So let’s get to it.

Bloggers: Please send us the link to your post whenever it’s ready today–if you signed up with me, send me the link, if you signed up with Crystal at In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood, send it to her. Our rosters will be updated periodically throughout the blogathon.

Readers: Please drop by often today to check out the latest posts–and don’t forget that we bloggers live for comments!

The Roster:

Silent-ology | What is the greatest silent film?

Silent Locations | Honoring the Chaplin-Keaton-Lloyd Alley

MovieMovieBlogBlogII | The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (1991)

RealWeegieMidget Reviews | Silent Movie (1976)

The Classic Movie Muse | Hot Water (1924)

Hometowns to Hollywood | Girl Shy (1924)

Cinematica | Coney Island (1917)

Better Living Through Television | The relationship between silent film and television

Nitrateglow | The hit films of 1921

Caftan Woman | The Last of the Mohicans (1920)

Silver Screenings | The Hoodlum (1919)

The Story Enthusiast | The Scarlet Letter (1926)

The Thoughts of One Truly Loved | The Circus (1928)

Laurel and Hardy Blog | The Battle of the Century (1927)

Strictly Vintage Hollywood | The lost silent Uncharted Seas (1921)

Grace Kingsley’s Hollywood | “What Does Hollywood Think of Herself?”

Wild About Harry | The silent cinema of Harry Houdini

MovieRob | The Conquest of the Pole (1912)

Critica Retro | Souls For Sale (1923)

Brooksie at the Movies | “Who Taught Valentino to Tango?”

The Classic Movie Muse | Hot Water (1924)

LA Daily Mirror | The first permanent studio in Hollywood

Silent Film Music | Article on silent film projection speeds

Century Film Project | The Nut (1921)

Taking Up Room | Show People (1928)

The Everyday Cinephile | Pre-1920 cinema

Lokke Heiss | The Crowd (1928)

What Is The Greatest Silent Film?

This is my own post in honor of the Silent Movie Day Blogathon. Hope you enjoy!

When it comes to talking about great movies (in the Roger Ebert sense of the word), I’ve always loved making and sharing lists: top tens, top fives, your “essential threes”–they always seems to prompt interesting discussions. Face it, you’re asked to list what you think are the Top 10 Best Movies Ever Made and it’s hard to resist, isn’t it? Even the top film critics and directors in the world famously contribute to Sight & Sound‘s “Top 10 Greatest Films” lists once every decade. It’s enlightening to see how certain films will fall a bit out of favor while others remain universally praised–often for generations.

Image credit: Owen Temple

But your average carefully-compiled lists, hard as they can be to put together, are one thing. Trickiest of all is picking a single “greatest of the great” film from a given genre or era (putting aside the immense difficulty of choosing “The Greatest Film, Period”–phew!). So with that in mind, and since no one asked me, I thought I’d ponder: “What is the greatest silent film?”

The “Arbuckle Scandal” Turns 100–Some Facts And Trivia

Today marks 100 years since the news broke about the infamous Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle scandal. Even if you’ve never seen an Arbuckle film (or aren’t too sure what the comedian even looked like), you’ve probably heard about his “wild Labor Day party” that took place in a San Francisco hotel back in 1921. While the exact sequence of events is rather mysterious to this day, actress Virginia Rappe became ill at the party and passed away a few days later. An autopsy determined the death was due to a ruptured bladder and the resulting infection. Arbuckle, who apparently had been alone with her when she first became ill, was accused of having assaulted her in some way that lead to her death. Several sensational trials later he was acquitted, but his career would never be the same. Nor, you could argue, would Hollywood.

In court.

I’ll be going into more detail about this case in a later post, so for now, here’s some trivia about the scandal. It just might contradict what you’ve often heard! My main source is Greg Merritt’s thoroughly-researched Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood. He did a fine job digging into the details of the case, and while it’s a bit melodramatic in spots and his theory on what actually happened in room 1219 isn’t super persuasive to me, it’s head and shoulders above other books on the scandal (like The Day the Laughter Stopped, which is basically a novel).

“Home Folks” And The Picture Shows–Rural America During The Dawn Of Cinema

The day of the “show” came. The courts adjourned. Stores closed, the blacksmith dropped his tongs, and school “let out” at noon. The people went in droves, even the ministers and their wives…The opera house was packed, with an eager, expectant and mystified audience. The house was darkened, and suddenly a glimmering light began to play on a canvas dropped like a curtain across the stage. And the first moving scene “thrown” was one of a lazy policeman trying to hurry an old man and a crippled mare across a street. The town wag let out a whoop, everybody caught the spirit–the moving pictures were a go!

–Reminisces about an 1897 small town motion picture show,
Conestoga Magazine, 1907.

Could cinema have been invented at a more fortunate time? Once an impressive novelty viewed for a few cents a pop, it also inadvertently documented intriguing glimpses of the “old,” traditional way of life. And those glimpses were something more than the general, exciting changeover from horse-drawn buggies to automobiles, or how the cities slowly lit up with electric lights. It was the passing of using those horses to plow fields, the end of drawing water by hand from a well, the dwindling away of kerosene lamps and flickering candles. It all happened in the mere span of a generation or two.

Image credit: loc.gov