Ruan Lingyu (April 26, 1910 – March 8, 1935) was a Chinese silent film actress. One of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s, her suicide at the age of 24 led her to become an icon of Chinese cinema.

Ruan was born Ruan Fenggen in Shanghai in 1910 to a working-class family. Her father, a worker, died when she was young, and her mother brought her up working as a housemaid.

In 1926, to help make ends meet, Ruan signed up for the prominent Mingxing Film Company. She made her first film at the age of 16. The film, A Married Couple in Name Only (掛名的夫妻/挂名的夫妻), was directed by Bu Wancang.[1]

In 1928, she was signed by Da Zhonghua Baihe Company (大中華百合公司/大中华百合公司), where she shot six films.

Ruan Lingyu: Her Life & Career | Author Interview:

Ruan’s first big break came in Spring Dream of an Old Capital (故都春夢 or Reminiscences of Beijing, 1930) which was a massive hit in China. It was Ruan’s first major work after signing with the newly formed Lianhua Studio in 1930. In it she played a prostitute by the name of Yanyan.

Thereafter, Ruan became Lianhua’s major film star. Her most memorable works came after 1931, starting with the melodrama Love and Duty (directed by Bu Wancang). Ruan had by then gained popularity owing to a string of lead roles, and in 1933 Ruan was voted second runner-up in a poll held by Star Daily (明星日報) for China’s “movie queen”. (Hu Die emerged the winner and Chen Yumei was first runner-up).[3]

Beginning with Three Modern Women (1932; dir: Bu Wancang), Ruan started collaborating with a group of talented leftist Chinese directors. In Little Toys (1933), a film by Sun Yu, Ruan played a long-suffering toy-maker. Her next film, The Goddess (1934; dir: Wu Yonggang), is often hailed as the pinnacle of Chinese silent cinema; Ruan sympathetically portrayed a prostitute bringing up a child. Later that year, Ruan made her penultimate film, New Women (directed by Cai Chusheng, where she played an educated Shanghainese woman forced to death by an unfeeling society.

Her final film, National Customs, was released shortly after her death.

At the age of 16, Ruan became acquainted with Zhang Damin (张达民/張達民), whose family her mother worked for. Zhang was later driven out of his wealthy family due to his spendthrift ways and became a chronic gambler, supported by Ruan’s salary. Unable to tolerate Zhang’s gambling ways, Ruan split with him in 1933.[4] Ruan began living with Tang Jishan, a tea tycoon. In 1935, Zhang filed a lawsuit asking for reparations from Ruan. The tabloids seized on this opportunity to probe into Ruan’s private life and put her under intense pressure.

Following the completion of New Women, Ruan’s life began to unravel. The film opened in Shanghai, February 1935. Cai Chusheng was under massive pressure from tabloid reporters, who were extremely hostile, owing to the scathing depiction of the Shanghai tabloids in the movie. Cai was forced to make extensive cuts to the film. Even after that, Ruan’s private life was mercilessly seized upon by the tabloids and her lawsuit with her first husband, Zhang Damin, became a source of vindictive coverage.

Faced with these public issues, as well as with intense private problems, Ruan poisoned herself with an overdose of barbiturates in Shanghai on March 8, 1935, at the age of 24. Her suicide note apparently contained a line which says, “Gossip is a fearful thing” (人言可畏). Even China's preeminent intellectual, Lu Xun, was appalled at the details surrounding Ruan's death and wrote an essay entitled "Gossip is a Fearful Thing", denouncing the tabloids.

Her funeral procession was reportedly 3 miles (4.8 km) long, with three women committing suicide during the event. The New York Times called it "the most spectacular funeral of the century." WIKIPEDIA

Now, her best films:

The movie THE GODDESS (In China as well as many other nations, the conversion to sound was expensive and resisted into the 1930’s!)

Sun Yu 孙瑜 • Little Toys 小玩意 (1933✦X) • Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 • Playthings (Xiǎo wányì) • English Subtitles

“Little Toys” (小玩意 • Xiǎo wányì), also known as “Playthings” or “Small Toys”, is a Marxist war melodrama directed by poet, translator and filmmaker Sun Yu (孙瑜 • March 21, 1900 – July 11, 1990), with cinematography by Zhou Ke. Sun Yu is also famously known for the films “Wild Rose” (1932) and “Daybreak” (1933). The film stars popular Chinese actress Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉 • April 26, 1910 – March 8, 1935), and was produced by the leftist film production company Lianhua Film Company. It was released in China on October 10, 1933.

Made after Hirohito's imperialist Japan illegally invaded China, “Little Toys” contains the elements of drama, melodrama, war, westernization, motherhood and sacrifice. The story follows a village toy-maker, Sister Ye, who urges a group of villagers to continue making traditional playthings despite immense competition from foreign toy factories. Synonymous to many other films made during the same time period, “Little Toys” expresses skepticism towards China's rapid urbanization and industrialization. Today, the film is widely recognized as one of the best Chinese films of the 20th century.

The Peach Girl 桃花泣血記 (1931) with English subtitles

Ruan Lingyu (Lily Yuen) co-stars with Jin Yan (Raymond King) in this silent film about a young couple whose love is thwarted by the class divide. The son of a rich landowning family and the daughter of a herder who works for them are friends as children. As they grow up, the boy's mother insists that he stop socializing with poor village kids, but the childhood friendship blossoms into romance!

Here at CLASSICS OF THE SILENT SCREEN, I am proud to offer to our readers and viewers, discovery. Perhaps you have heard of Ruan Lingyu before. But I doubt you have seen her best films or understand why she died so young. This is the film that destroyed her life. New Women 新女性 (1935) with English subtitles

What is the reality women face in Chinese society? What should it be? This “problem film” dramatizes the perils facing women seeking a public role in society, especially a predatory news media that treats them like commodities for public consumption. The film became a sensation when lead actress Ruan Lingyu committed suicide on March 8, 1935--International Women’s Day. Ruan was no coward. She defied the invasion by Japan of China. But she had no idea, because she was working class, the press decided she should be punished and destroyed for this film. Was this kind of thinking only in China? I have two words for you. CLARA BOW.

This scene shocked the tabloids and led to them calling the film porn:

Please do become a paid subscriber and let the discoveries continue! BEHIND THE PAYWALL: Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (1931) with English subtitles UNRESTORED 未修復版

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Before film, photographs captured the harsh realities of what life was really like in America and Europe. Like the above photo of children taken out of schools to work in coal mines. How hard was the work? Play this and hear:

The very first silent films did not show drama or comedy. They showed work.

Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory:

Then theater began to creep in. This unusual Edison film is a dramatic piece set around steelworkers in New York as they build a skyscraper and deal with a criminal. Nothing more than an excuse to shoot some dizzying shots from the top of some of the tallest buildings in New York at the time. But it shows how the workers worked with no safety equipment at all.

By 1912, films began showing the plight of children who worked:

In 1911, a horrific fire would claim many workers lives:

As unions began to rise anto union shorts began popping up before the main feature :

The Industrial Workers Of The World rejected the racism of socialists and were probably the last truly American until the 1960’s new left, protest movement. The Soviet Union would overtake unions and protests and turn all goals towards helping the Soviet Union. Here is what the IWW believed:

The socialists hated the IWW. The socialists believed there could be no reforms. A capitalist nation would never have an 8 hour work day. Workers could never own their own home. The idea of profit sharing was a joke. Only class war could bring about change. Capitalism could never allow social security, pensions, in fact- capitalism would never go beyond the industrial age.

But it happened.

Let’s give Charlie Chaplin the last word on work in our Labor Day special:

Become a paid subscriber for more in depth looks at silent films and the era! Behind the paywall: Charlie Chaplin: His Life and Work

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Buster, who was named by Houdini as he watched Buster’s parents throw him around the stage, was acting onstage at age 3, he would never leave the stage.

At the age of 3, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He first appeared on stage in 1899 in Wilmington, Delaware. The act was mainly a comedy sketch. Myra played the saxophone to one side, while Joe and Keaton performed center stage, both wearing slapsoles, bald-headed wigs and "Irish" beards. The young Keaton goaded his father by disobeying him, and the elder Keaton responded by throwing him against the scenery, into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. A suitcase handle was sewn into Keaton's clothing to aid with the constant tossing. The act evolved as Keaton learned to take trick falls safely; he was rarely injured or bruised on stage. This knockabout style of comedy led to accusations of child abuse and, occasionally, arrest. However, Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones. He was eventually billed as "The Little Boy Who Can't Be Damaged", and the overall act as "The Roughest Act That Was Ever in the History of the Stage". Decades later, Keaton said that he was never hurt by his father and that the falls and physical comedy were a matter of proper technical execution. In 1914, he told the Detroit News: "The secret is in landing limp and breaking the fall with a foot or a hand. It's a knack. I started so young that landing right is second nature with me. Several times I'd have been killed if I hadn't been able to land like a cat. Imitators of our act don't last long, because they can't stand the treatment."

Keaton said he had so much fun that he sometimes began laughing as his father threw him across the stage. Noticing that this caused the audience to laugh less, he adopted his famous deadpan expression when performing. The act ran up against laws banning child performers in vaudeville. According to one biographer, Keaton was made to go to school while performing in New York but only attended for part of one day. Despite tangles with the law, Keaton was a rising and relatively well-paid star in the theater. He stated that he learned to read and write late and was taught by his mother. By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Keaton's career quickly moved from vaudeville to film. ^{- Wikipedia}

In 1917 he met Fatty Arbuckle and was hired after appearing in BUTCHER BOY becoming Fatty’s gag master and co-star in 14 short films. Here is BUTCHER BOY:

A scandal would lead to his work with Fatty being taken off the market:

After his success with Fatty he had the chance to create his own shorts- ONE WEEK to this day is amazing. Made when people could actually order a home to be delivered by rail in pieces and then put the house together- themselves.

Buster took incredible risks - in Sherlock Jr he broke his neck when he was hit by a flood of water. Yet he didn’t realize it until years later!

The film that ended his creative freedom, was THE GENERAL. The film was over budget, and it didn’t find an audience until years later:

In 1928, silent comedy star Buster Keaton made what he would later call “the worst mistake of my career”: against the advice of fellow silent comedy auteurs like Charlie Chaplin, he gave up his independent production shingle and signed a contract with MGM. A vaudevillian who got his start working with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, by the late 1920s Keaton had established himself as a solo writer, director and star who was known for doing his own spectacular but reckless stunts. Keaton joined MGM with a promise from his friend Joe Schenck that nothing would change, only to find himself in his new situation demoted from artistic boss to employee of a corporation interested in protecting its investment above all. The lack of agency and ability to personally control the quality of his own work within the confines of Mayer’s studio drove Keaton to alcoholism, which further doomed his tenure at MGM. Keaton’s experience is perhaps the first major example of an indie filmmaker “selling out” to a big studio, only to be swallowed up by the system.

This is a fantastic podcast about what happened:

Buster Keaton's biggest mistake

The sound era was a mixed bag. This is probably his best sound short:

In 1948 Buster appeared on THE ED WYNN SHOW and suddenly he had a career again!

This appearance led to a TV show:

Kids loved the slapstick. With a movie coming out on his life, THE BUSTER KEATON STORY, Buster was surprised by and appeared on THIS IS YOUR LIFE:

The result of the movie was a new chapter in his life. Advertisers wanted him and were willing to give him freedom to create. He appeared in three drive-in beach movies: 1964’s “Pajama Party,” and in 1965, “Beach Blanket Bingo,” and “How to Stuff A Wild Bikini.” We’ve included a fourth, “Sergeant Deadhead,” but even though this one has the same team, there isn’t much in the way of a beach, or even all that much Buster. By all accounts, and despite these films being as far removed from high art (and, some might say entertainment) as possible, Buster Keaton really enjoyed making these ridiculous movies with their young, excitable, and friendly cast.

In 1960, Studs Terkel interviewed Buster Keaton, only six years before Keaton passed away from lung cancer. They talked about the creative prozess of making silent films and discussed things like his childhood, why Buster never smiled in his movies or the influence of Charlie Chaplin on film.

Behind the paywall: Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow

This is a British documentary series from 1987 made for Thames TV. This was remastered by me into 4K. Along with Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd, Keaton was one of the most successful comedians of the silent film era. Because of his deliberately serious, stoic expression, he has been nicknamed "The Great Stoneface" and "The Man Who Never Laughed". Another trademark was his porkpie hat, a round, flat hat made of felt.

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Creighton Tull Chaney with his father Lon Chaney. The studio would change Creighton's name to Lon Chaney, Jr. He wasn’t a Junior and Lon wasn’t a senior.

It is hard to imagine how big a star Lon Chaney was in the 1920’s. Part of the reason it’s hard to imagine is that Lon didn’t give interviews, avoided openings and did not like candid photos of himself. The photo at the top of page is one of only 2 known to exist of Lon with his son who of course would go on to make THE WOLF MAN.

Outside the Law is considered to be one of the first psychologically driven films in the gangster genre. The picture was the second film on which Browning worked with Lon Chaney. The contrasting dual roles Browning wrote for Chaney as a heroic Chinese servant and an evil gangster are considered to have solidified the long-lasting collaboration between the two. Outside the Law is one of only a handful of Browning's films that is not a horror film. The film has been commended for its strong female lead, saying actress "Priscilla Dean in this picture is a film revelation... [she] goes to the fore and remains there..." In contrast to many films of the period, it generally depicts its Chinese characters favorably, most notably by having characters invested in the Confucian teachings of the teacher character, Chang Lo.

Browning, a Freemason, frequently used religious themes in his pictures. Film historian Alfred Eaker describes Browning’s cinematic handling of Silky Moll’s redemptive epiphany:

"It is not until Silky sees the shadow of the cross in her apartment that her tough facade gives way. Browning is not one to allow for a genuinely supernatural mode of transformation and reveals that the cross shadow is merely a broken kite, but its psychological effect is manifested in her actions, and her beauty... as Silky begins to drift away from a life of bitterness and crime, towards redemption, she physically grows more beautiful (a transformation achieved through soft lighting and composition). It is not the inspired symbology of the cross alone, but the prophecy of Chang Lo that frames the outcome.”

Film critic Alec Charles remarks upon the significance of the “cross-kite” imagery that may foreshadow Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein’s use of crucifix configurations in Battleship Potemkin (1925) where two condemned sailors hang from the yardarms:

“Five years earlier than Eisenstein, Browning had employed a similar piece of [Christian] symbolism (in the form of a shattered kite) suggesting that the film’s two thieves [Dapper Bill and Silky Molly] might, in a squalid, broken and unglamorous way, find their own salvation...and escape the fate of [crucifixion]...the possibility of advancing an athletic comparison...authorizes a reading of Browning’s discontinuities as intentional [and] anticipating Eisenstein…”

You can watch OUTSIDE THE LAW here:

Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor and makeup artist. He is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted, characters and for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup. Chaney was known for his starring roles in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). His ability to transform himself using makeup techniques that he developed earned him the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces". - Wikipedia

Photo: Lon Chaney and his make-up kit

You can watch a documentary about his life here:

THE WICKED DARLING

A gentleman's kindness convinces a pickpocket (Priscilla Dean) to go straight. Lon Chaney. This Lon Chaney film was considered to be a lost film until a copy was found in Europe in the 1990s. Cast: Lon Chaney, Priscilla Dean, Waldemar Young Director: Tod Browning. Watch it here:

When Lon Chaney died it made headlines all over the world. Even though he had avoided the press, every year for decades THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA are still shown by silent film societies but he did so many great movies I hope today’s post inspires you to look at more of his work.

Behind the paywall: Hollywood (1980) Episode 2 “In the Beginning” [Celebration of the American Silent Film] [LaserDisc]

HOLLYWOOD isn’t just the best documentary series on silent films, its one of the best documentaries about Hollywood ever made. The first episode is re-posted in case you missed it as well.

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Quote: An enchanted Arabian Nights fantasy unfolds in a dazzling Art Deco kingdom as a lowly thief quests for the love of a dainty princess. Flying carpets, winged horses, fearsome beasts and an invisibility cloak are a few of the state of the art special effects, the main one being Fairbanks’ boisterous athleticism and joyful smile. You can watch it here:

Jeanine Basinger points out in Silent Stars, “few realize Fairbanks began as a comedy star, and that it is his comic timing and energy that makes his adventure movies great.” In the twenties, each of his spectacular films had to top the last one, and after the thrilling Mark of Zorro and a magnificent Robin Hood, the bar was set high. But, Fairbanks was always prepared to leap over it. Robin Hood and The Three Musketeers, while delightful, seem a bit overwhelmed by spectacle to modern eyes. The sheer physical beauty of The Thief of Bagdad, coupled with its shimmering magical atmosphere, ranks it among the very best of the Fairbanks classics, and my personal favorite of his twenties films.

Raoul Walsh’s directorial career stretched from 1912 to 1964. He’d been working as a Texas cowboy in the waning days of the frontier when he was recruited off the street to ride a horse on a treadmill in a travelling production of The Clansman. Bitten by the stage bug, he went to New York, where he rode horses in a series of Westerns filmed on location in New Jersey. Spotted by pioneering director DW Griffith, he followed him to California, working both behind and in front of the camera. He observed Griffith carefully, and began directing his own films with a distinctive rough and tumble flair gleaned from his own experience. The Thief of Bagdad was his first major film as a director, a job he got because he ran and boxed with the athletic Fairbanks. Walsh’s glory days were at Warner Brothers in the 1940s, where he directed James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Erroll Flynn in some of their signature films. Perhaps his masterpiece is the brutal and subversive gangster drama starring Cagney, White Heat.

Photo: Before CGI, if you wanted a massive set- you built it!

Anna May Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong, Cantonese for “Frosted Yellow Willow,” in Los Angeles’ Chinatown in 1907. Movie-struck by the Perils of Pauline serial, she broke into pictures by way of an agent who specialized in hiring Asian extras for crowd scenes. She starred in the Madam Butterfly-ish The Toll of the Sea, the first 2-color Technicolor feature, when she was only 16 years old. Shortly afterwards, Fairbanks chose her to play the Princess’ treacherous lady-in-waiting in The Thief of Bagdad.

Art Director William Cameron Menzies began his career in advertising, designing layouts for Hardware Age magazine. He worked as a design assistant at the Fort Lee NJ film studios with Raoul Walsh, who invited him to Hollywood. Menzies first major assignment was designing Seville, Spain, on the back lot for Mary Pickford’s Rosita. Douglas Fairbanks thought Menzies too inexperienced to do The Thief of Bagdad, but Menzies made a collection of extraordinary detailed set drawings. “Menzies created one of the most superb fairytale worlds ever seen on the screen. The minarets reflected in the shining streets of Bagdad, the princess’s bedroom with its staircase sweeping round the domed and canopied bed, the giant’s cavern, the dragon’s lair and the superbly excecuted glass shots of the under sea scenes are brilliantly concieved. Menzies’ personal vision of this world can be traced from the first rough sketches, through his beautiful paintings and drawings, right onto the screen.”

Mitchell Leisen started designing in the extravagant silent Cecil B. DeMille era, admonished by his boss never to design anything an audience member could buy in a store. Leisen told David Chierichetti, “We had 3,000 extras a day for The Thief, and I had to design different costumes for all of them. Western Costume made them, and they charged us the full cost of making the costume as a rental and they got them all back when it was over. The costumes were much more complicated than Robin Hood (his previous Fairbanks film) had been. We had a hundred Chinese soldiers’ uniforms, all identical and very intricate. There were a hundred copies of something else. The principal problem with the extras on this was to keep the men from wearing long trousers rolled up under their costumes, which would suddenly unroll in the middle of a take and spoil everything.” Raoul Walsh’s recollection of his costume designer was succinct: “Yes, an arty fellow, very arty–had to have beautiful drapes all around, plush carpets and real silver.” (Bogdanovich.)

The special effects and stunts for The Thief of Bagdad were so groundbreaking that they were detailed in scientific magazines of the period. But, many of the effects relied on that staple of the Keystone comedy lot, piano wire, and the Keystone stunt genius, Coy Watson. Watson rigged everything personally, and without him there would be no giant spider, no invisibility cloak and no Fairbanks being bucked off a horse into a rose bush. Watson’s son, Coy, Jr., wrote, “Dad always appreciated the confidence that Doug and he had for each other. A mishap during the taking of such a scene could have meant serious injuries to Doug, a man Dad had come to know and to regard as a dear friend. The athlete and gymnast in Doug often came out between scenes when he was hung up on wires. He liked to clown, pretending to fly and do impossible gymnastic tricks as he swung himself through the air. This caused Dad concern and he often had to remind Doug that he was not rigged to do circus stunts and he was playing without a net below. Dad said, “Doug’s trust in my work sometimes worried me. I never knew what he’d do next.”

Vachel Lindsay extolled this enchanted childhood dream as “The greatest movie so far in movie history.” Jeanine Basinger in a more recent appreciation writes, “On the one hand, The Thief of Bagdad is a movie you want to have seen as a kid, when its wonderful special effects can work their best magic. On the other hand, its magnificent design, its sophisticated sense of Arabian Nights fantasies, and its tongue-in-cheek star may be best appreciated by adults. It’s a film for all ages and for all decades. It’s a feast for the eyes, a humor-filled adventure story and a great star vehicle.” Unquote

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Watch the movie here:

Behind the paywall: CINEMA EUROPE - THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD (Episode 3: The Unchained Cinema)

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Coke Ennyday, the scientific detective played by Douglas Fairbanks, divides his own time in periods for "Sleep", "Eat", "Dope" and "Drink". In fact, he's used to overcome every situation with drugs: consuming it to increase his energies or injecting it in his opponents to KO them. To help the police he discovers a contraband of opium (which he eagerly tastes) transported with "Leaping Fishes", and the blackmail of a mysterious man who wants to marry the "fish blower" girl. Will Coke be able to free the girl ? Director: John Emerson Writers: Tod Browning, Anita Loos (titles) Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Bessie Love, Allan Sears

Charlie Chaplin gets cocaine by accident, click on WATCH ON YOUTUBE:

In 1912 America felt that absinthe was more dangerous than heroin, cocaine, pot, booze and tobacco combined. Protestants feared their children would become creative and artistic instead of getting a "real job". In those days actors and actresses weren't allowed in the "better places", artists were considered to be avoiding work! The first prohibition in the U.S., was absinthe. A few years ago absinthe was made legal in the U.S. and America braced for a wave of creativity... but it didn't happen. A nation breathed easier.

Photo: Although women were not allowed in most bars, absinthe was served in coffee houses and considered lady like. In bars government workers like firemen would often gather to drink absinthe.

Absinthiana are the trappings and accessories associated with the drinking of absinthe. This anise-flavoured spirit is made from the flowers and leaves of wormwood, green anise, sweet fennel and other herbs. Absinthe has a natural green colour and was referred to as the Green Fairy, although it can also be colourless. Absinthe has a high alcohol level and is normally diluted with water for drinking. It’s also very bitter and was often poured into a glass of water over sugar on a perforated spoon.

Cocaine was banned in the United States for an odd reason. It was said at the time that negroes could not be stopped by police bullets while on cocaine. That’s it. That was the reason. No one asked for proof, no study was done, there wasn’t even an example. But terrified whites demanded it be banned.

Easy Street called on its cast to deal with much darker issues than custard pies in the face and slips on banana skins.
For example, Chaplin saved the beautiful heroine from a local addict after accidentally sitting on the junkie's syringe and being charged with super-human strength and energy.
And, shockingly, the evil addict is shown "shooting up".

Playmates, screened in 1918, is also drenched in drugs. Charlie Chase plays a gay drug addict with an endless supply of cocaine. Best friend Billy West persuades him to throw away his stash - then retrieves the cargo for his own use.

Watch PLAYMATES by clicking this link

Harry Lloyd classic Get Out and Get Under clearly shows the legendary funnyman filling his charabanc with cocaine. The motor immediately springs into life, even leaping down the carriageway.

For His Son dealt with drug use in a much darker way. The plot revolved around a man inventing a soft drink laced with cocaine, Dopocoke. He markets the drink hoping it will secure his son's future, but the lad becomes hopelessly addicted. Coca Cola actually had cocaine as an ingredient when it first started being sold.

Cocaine use was encouraged by the studios during the silent era to keep cast and crew working all night. When cocaine was made illegal, amphetamines took its place. Subscribe for Part 2: The Damage done.

I would like to thank our subscribers for your support and urge readers to become paid subscribers. Please feel free to repost the pages you like, and each one teach one. Share the movies you like, have friends and family over to watch a silent. AI is coming, and while I love how it will make everything immersive, I also know we as Americans have a tendency to drop the old for the new. My fear is AI will be so overwhelming that everything before it will be dropped, the way silents were tossed to the side when sound came in, or black and white films fell out of favor when color came in. In the beginning we will see studios using AI to enhance older films, but what they fear is not what they should be worried about- scripts and stars images being used. What is coming is a writer being able to create a movie as they write and distribute it without any help from any studio.

Every year I notice that Best Movies Ever Made lists, have fewer and fewer silent films. That isn’t fair and it isn’t right. But no one ever said life was fair. If you can become a paid subscriber, thank you for your support. If you can’t, don’t let that stop you from spreading the word. There is magic in silent films, and CLASSICS OF THE SILENT SCREEN can prove it. Thank you.

Behind the paywall: SADIE THOMPSON starring Gloria Swanson

Sadie Thompson (1928) follows a spirited woman seeking a new life in the South Seas, only to clash with a rigid missionary determined to reform her. As tensions rise, moral hypocrisy, romance, and inner conflict unfold against a tropical backdrop. Gloria Swanson’s magnetic performance, strong supporting cast, and lush cinematography make this silent-era drama a celebrated classic, though the final reel is lost.

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Will Hays and the MPPDA in the 1920s
Will H. Hays had been Chairman of the Republican Party National Committee in 1920 and had organized Warren Harding's successful Presidential campaign. In 1921 he was Postmaster General in Harding's Cabinet, and industry leaders chose him for the job partly because he was the most respectable Protestant politician industry leaders could buy, but also because of his political connections and organizational skills. He presented the MPPDA as an innovative trade association at the forefront of corporate development, largely responsible for the industry's maturation into respectability, standardizing trade practices and stabilizing relationships between distributors and exhibitors through Film Boards of Trade, arbitration and the Standard Exhibition Contract.

The Association's stated object, to establish "the highest possible moral and artistic standards of motion picture production" was in one sense simply an extension of this practice, but it also implicitly accepted that "pure" entertainment and amusement that was not harmful to its consumer was a commodity comparable to the pure meat guaranteed by the Food and Drug Administration. Resisting the spread of state censorship and regulating movie content was only one aspect of the MPPDA's overall task of internally reorganizing the industry's affairs. The disputes between distributors and exhibitors during the process of vertical integration had been exploited by reform groups and had also undermined the confidence of Wall Street in the competence of industry management. Much of what the MPPDA did in the 1920s in negotiating a standard form of contract to govern the 500,000 contractual agreements signed between distributors and exhibitors every year, and in establishing a system of arbitration for settling trade disputes arising from these contracts, for example, was aimed at securing the confidence of finance capital for the industry's continued expansion.

Hays also persuaded industry leaders that they needed a much more effective public relations operation to reorient the industry's public image. He argued that the industry could not "ignore the classes that write, talk, and legislate." The movies had not merely to provide a satisfactory level of entertainment for their diverse audiences, but also to offend as small a proportion of the country's cultural and legislative leadership as possible. His public relations policy, implemented in large part by his assistant Col. Jason Joy, affiliated the MPPDA with nationally federated civic and religious organizations, women's clubs and parent-teacher associations, aiming to make "this important portion of public opinion a friendly rather than a hostile critic of pictures," and contain the legislative threat posed by their political lobbying power.

The MPPDA's activities in the production and promotion of educational and medical films, its contributions to Americanization campaigns and its provision of movies for schools, charities and other institutions were all part of this public relations campaign to demonstrate the industry's respectability and social utility. They were not, in practical terms, as important as the MPPDA's role in maintaining internal industrial harmony, or its constant work on legal and legislative issues. The association's central concern was that legislation or court action might impose a strict application of the anti-trust laws on the industry, and force the major companies to divorce production, distribution and exhibition from each other. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the industry was also subject to a constant barrage of hostile local and state legislation, proposed by politicians who saw Hollywood's fabled riches as a potential source of local revenue. Through its General Counsel, Charles C. Pettijohn, the MPPDA maintained an extensive network of political alliances at a municipal and state level to prevent the passage of such legislation, as well as conducting the industry's dealings with the federal government and its foreign policy in negotiations over treaties and quotas with other countries.

The late 1920's represented the pinnacle of the MPPDAs achievement.

Although the MPPDA succeeded in preventing the spread of state censorship after its establishment, more than 60% of domestic exhibition was affected by what Hays always referred to as "political censorship" by either state or municipal authorities, together with virtually the entire foreign market, and the association failed to abolish any of the existing boards or to have sound films recognised as 'speech' protected by the First Amendment. The MPPDA's mechanisms for self-regulation therefore comprised an additional, rather than a replacement, structure for the control of content. To establish self-regulation as a form of industrial self-determination, the industry had to demonstrate that, as Hays put it, "the quality of our pictures is such that no reasonable person can claim any need of censorship." In part he achieved this by conceding that there was no dispute over the need to regulate entertainment or over the standards by which it should be regulated, only over who possessed the appropriate authority to police the ideological apparatus of representation.

In 1924, the MPPDA established a mechanism for vetting source material, known as "the Formula," in order "to exercise every possible care that only books or plays which are of the right type are used for screen presentation." In 1927, the Association published a code to govern production, administered by Col. Joy as Director of its Studio Relations Committee (SRC) in Hollywood. The "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," as this code was familiarly known, was compiled by a committee chaired by Irving Thalberg, and synthesized the restrictions and eliminations applied by state and foreign censors. Films were modified after production but before release in order to assuage the concerns of civic, religious, or manufacturing interests, but until 1930, the SRC's function was only advisory.

The technological complexities of sound production necessitated a more exact arrangement. Unlike silent film, talkies could not be altered by local censors, regional distributors or individual exhibitors without destroying synchronization. Producers began to demand something firmer than advice from the SRC, but at the same time they wanted to establish a more permissive code for sound, since with dialogue characters could, they argued, "delicately" discuss subjects the silent picture was forced to shun. The studios' heads of production sought to evade authorial responsibility for the moral standards of their output. Arguing that the civic groups demanding reform exaggerated the effect movies had on their audiences, Thalberg insisted that 'the motion picture is literally bound to the mental and moral level of its vast audience.' But in claiming that they reflected rather than created public taste, the producers surrendered the terms in which the cultural function of movies was being debated by the press, religious and civic groups, and legislators. Their desire to "bring Broadway to Main Street" provoked the hostility of an increasingly insecure Protestant provincial middle-class seeking to defend its cultural hegemony from the incursions of a modernist, metropolitan culture that the provincials regarded as "alien." Combining opposition to monopoly with a barely concealed anti-Semitism, provincial Protestantism regarded movies as a threat to the ability of small communities to exercise control over the cultural influences they tolerated.

In the second half of 1929 the MPPDA was the subject of heavy criticism for reasons only tangentially connected to movie content. Its relationship with the federal government had been strained by a wave of mergers and theatre-buying among the major companies and by their "steady policy of aggrandizement, discrimination and exclusion" in dealing with independent exhibitors. At the same time, the stability of the public relations edifice Hays had constructed during the previous seven years disintegrated in the wake of the association's failure to establish a cooperative relationship with the Protestant churches similar to that they enjoyed with organized Catholicism. In the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash, the movie industry provided a highly conspicuous target for critics of the business culture of the 1920s, and the campaign against Hays and the "meretricious" business practices of the "shrewd Hebrews" who ran the major companies by the Protestant religious press gave independent exhibitors the chance to combine their attack on the majors' trade practices with a complaint about their morals. Confronted with local criticism about the moral standards of the movies they showed, small exhibitors often defended themselves by arguing that the majors' insistence on block booking forced exhibitors to show "sex-smut" regardless of their own or their community's preferences. They insisted that the only way to secure decency on Main Street was through extensive Federal regulation of the industry.

Under attack from several directions, Hays recognized that the regulation of film content represented the one area of industry activity where the Association might be able to demonstrate its usefulness to both the public and its members, and initiated the revision of the 1927 code in September 1929. A committee of producers chaired by Irving Thalberg produced a draft code in November. A quite separate document emanated from Chicago, where C.C. Pettijohn was working to repeal the city's censorship ordinance. His campaign led to the involvement of Martin Quigley, a prominent Chicago Catholic and trade paper publisher, in the Code's rewriting. Quigley proposed a much more elaborated Code enunciating the moral principles underlying screen entertainment, and recruited a prominent Jesuit, Father Daniel Lord, to draft it.

Joy spent January 1930 attempting to compromise the two drafts and their differing ambitions, and a meeting of the producers' association discussed the texts at length in February. After that meeting, a producers committee wrote a "condensed" version, and Lord and Hays rewrote Lord's draft as a separate document entitled "Reasons Underlying the Code." The text of the Code itself provided a list of prohibitions rather than the moral arguments of Lord's draft. Its "Particular Applications" elaborated the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls," and added clauses on liquor, adultery, vulgarity and obscenity. With the consent of both parties, Catholic involvement in the Code remained secret. So did its implementation procedure, the Resolution for Uniform Interpretation, which did not make submission of scripts to the SRC compulsory, and placed responsibility for making changes in finished films with the companies concerned. It also appointed a "Jury" composed of the heads of production of each of the member companies as final arbiters of whether a film conformed "to the spirit and the letter of the Code." Hays's caution in publicly committing the Association to the Code's enforcement had as much to do with his recognition of the practical problems to be solved in the Code's application as it did with a scepticism about producers' intentions.

Secret alliances with the Catholic Church, open antisemitism, out of control business practices is how Hayes would begin to clean up Hollywood. By the 1930’s it would be battles over content. And strong, non-conformist women became the first target.

Information for today’s post from the MPAA Archives.

Behind the paywall: Sapphic Center of Hollywood: Alla Nazimova

Known for her Garden of Alla and her production of an all-gay Salome, Alla Nazimova was once the greatest of the early Hollywood actresses. She was heralded as the first modern actress in America and as the new Eleonora Duse – that Italian actress who was the rival of Sarah Bernhardt. But as America grew less tolerant of gays and lesbians, she vanished from Hollywood history.

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KOKO THE CONVICT

Click here for 1926 cartoons

The photo is from the oldest claymation known to exist, LONG LIVE THE BULL!

click this link for LONG LIVE THE BULL & more

Felix The Cat TWO LIP TIME

Alice’s Orphan

click this link for playlist of cartoons

Toys of the silent film era:

Click this link for toys of the silent film era

Behind the paywall: Ladislaw Starewicz

Incredible single frame animation often using insects and taxidermied animals must be seen to be believed. And even then, you may not believe it!

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When Chinese immigrants came to America to find work they dreamed of being able to earn enough money to bring over their wives and families. They had been promised high paying jobs and a life of leisure, but what they found was back breaking work and low pay. Then as they scraped and saved to bring over loved ones stories began circulating of the danger and threat they posed to “real Americans” and laws began being passed to make sure they would never see their loved ones again.

Some tired of the work and decided if the odds were stacked against them, and they clearly were, they would bring the Chinese gangs- Tongs, to America. America has always had a problem with “downers”, but it wasn’t the Chinese who brought heroin to America. You might be surprised who did:

Bayer works wonders! As opium began being spread in the Chinese community to alleviate the pain of Chinese workers not allowed to date white women or bring their families here, white women began showing up at illegal opium dens.

As white men and women began going to Chinatowns to get high, stories spread that the women were taken against their will, turned into addicts and then became sex slaves. Make no mistake, sex slavery is a real thing then and now and will probably remain as long as sex work is illegal (in countries where prostitution is legal such as Costa Rica and Germany, pimping is illegal and can result in long prison sentences), the vast majority of women at the opium dens were there of their own free will. Just as the vast majority of women who became hookers did so of their own free will. This was impossible for people to believe however, because churches taught that sex could not be pleasurable to a woman. No one considered that if faced with low paying jobs, no chance of opening their own business, getting a loan from a bank, some women would figure out men’s weakness and exploit it.

And if they were caught, by claiming to be victims of white slavery they would be faced with a small fine at best or just released. If they promised to go to church. It may seem odd no one accused white men in the dens of being slaves, but that was the morality of the day.

Films began to reflect these fears.

Den hvide slavehandel (1910) The White Slave Trade 

 Anna is a young girl from a poor but honorable home in Denmark. When her father finds in a newspaper an ad for a well-paid job as a company lady in a mansion in London, she goes to the interview in a Copenhagen hotel and is happy to get the job. Her childhood friend and now fiancé Georg is somewhat worried but Anna dismisses his distrust and travels to England. On arrival, to Anna's horror, she is taken into a luxury brothel. Anna manages to chase away her first customer, but cannot escape.

From Wikipedia: When Nordisk, in line with it usual practice, decided to distribute the film outside of Denmark, notably in Germany, he faced initially the reluctance of German distributors to present a film with of such a long duration, the standard for films being at the time one reel of about 15 minutes. Ole Olsen threatened a Hamburg cinema owner to stop supplying any Nordisk production to him if he did not program The White Slave Trade. According to Olsen, the result was an unprecedented success. "The next day the cinema was packed and on the third day, it took twenty police officers to retain order since people were queuing around the block to get tickets." 103 copies were sold worldwide in comparison to a 1910 average of 40 copies per film. In the United States however, the film could not be released as it was forbidden by censorships boards. Apparently the censors, shocked by the brothel scenes, were not convinced by the argument that the film exalted the innocence of the heroine, and that white slavery had the power of metaphor "to reduce the complex problem of prostitution to a simple story of villain and victim."

In the hands of impostors 1911

Click on WATCH ON YOUTUBE

This was the sequel to THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE which had been a huge hit in Europe.

The.Inside.of.the.White.Slave.Traffic.1913.720p.BluRay 

Quote:  In the case of The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, the movies purported to show the workings of organized prostitution as a way of warning poor women away from the traps of shadowy criminal gangs. The fact that it showed crime in loving detail was neither here nor there.

The film follows the process by which a hardworking young woman is tricked into prostitution by means of a drugged drink, a false marriage and a network of spies and informants. When the young woman stays out all night thanks to that drugged beverage, her father throws her out of the house and into the arms of the procurer who caused all the trouble in the first place. The film directly instructs parents not to throw out their daughters in such situations but the “Leave my house!” trope would remain in films for a good long while. Unquote More here:

The Inside Of The White Slave Traffic

In the early 20th century women who were out all night or who had been raped were kicked out of their homes as an act of Christian forgiveness. Yeah, I don’t get it either. In Russia a film came out which showed the father protecting his daughter after she had been raped by her boss, but this was very rare for the time and caused controversy. Here is what remains of that film:

Film itself was having an impact on society no one could have predicted. The image of actors was so bad that they were refused entry to better hotels and restaurants, all actresses were thought of as prostitutes, the early days of films the actors names weren’t even in the credits (resulting in some recognized faces beloved by the public to be identified by their studio “the Biograph girl” etc.), World War 1 would change that as actors sold war bonds. People would line up by the thousands to see their favorite actors. Here is Charlie Chapli selling war bonds:

The image of women was changing. First came the recognition that some women enjoyed sex. They were portrayed as bad girls, vamps, fallen women and home wreckers. The most famous of these actresses who portrayed such women, was Theda Bara. Her name, a concoction of early publicity spelled out Arab Death. She was supposedly from the Middle East, but actually she was from Ohio. Her story is next.

Behind the paywall: Singlebeds and Double Standards

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The film L’Odissea in 41 minutes has more key scenes from the story than the 3 hour THE ODYSSEY currently astonishing the world. The same year this first Italian feature film was made a short came out THE FALL OF TROY that was overshadowed by the feature in Italy but became a huge hit in the U.S. and Europe.

The film was co-directed by Giovanni Pastrone, who later became a pioneer of historical epics, and Luigi Romano Borgnetto. It was approximately 600 meters long, projected continuously for about half an hour YouTube. The production was notable for its large-scale sets, use of 800 extras, and realistic battle sequences, which were unprecedented at the time. Pastrone even reconstructed parts of Troy to enhance authenticity and employed deep-focus cinematography, allowing both foreground and background action to remain in focus IMDb. This approach set new standards for epic filmmaking and influenced later historical and fantasy films.

Here is the 30 minute short THE FALL OF TROY:

Studios worried that any film over 30 minutes long could hold an audience. L’Odissea with a 41 minute running time was a test to see if an audience would stay engaged in a longer form of storytelling. This was 4 years before D. W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION. In 1911 his films clocked in at 20 minutes or less. L’Odissea was released in Italy in the Fall of 1911, but quickly became the first blockbuster movie. If it had been released in Summer, it would have been the first Summer blockbuster! Audiences not only lined up to see it- they paid more money!

The Odyssey (1911) [English subtitles] / L’Odissea:

"The Odyssey," composed around the 8th or 7th century BCE, is one of the oldest surviving works of Western literature and is traditionally attributed to Homer. It is divided into 24 books and follows Odysseus, king of Ithaca, as he attempts to return home after the ten-year Trojan War. The poem is a cornerstone of Greek literary tradition and was originally performed orally by bards known as aoidos or rhapsodes, using formulaic epithets and repetition to aid memorization and performance.

Roundtable Discussion on Homer’s “The Odyssey” featuring Christopher Hitchens:

In 2000, C-SPAN’s Book TV hosted Professor Lombardo and other panelists to discuss his latest translation of Homer’s Odyssey and talked about the enduring importance of the work. During the course of the discussion Mr. Lombardo read passages in English and Greek and panelists responded to viewer telephone calls and electronic mail.

In 1905 the first known film based on Homer’s tale L’ile de Calypso ou Le Géant Polyphème / Ulysses (1905), just 5 minutes long, Georges Melies showed the story of the cyclops!

I would like to thank our subscribers for your support and urge readers to become paid subscribers. Please feel free to repost the pages you like, and each one teach one. Share the movies you like, have friends and family over to watch a silent. AI is coming, and while I love how it will make everything immersive, I also know we as Americans have a tendency to drop the old for the new. My fear is AI will be so overwhelming that everything before it will be dropped, the way silents were tossed to the side when sound came in, or black and white films fell out of favor when color came in. In the beginning we will see studios using AI to enhance older films, but what they fear is not what they should be worried about- scripts and stars images being used. What is coming is a writer being able to create a movie as they write and distribute it without any help from any studio.

Every year I notice that Best Movies Ever Made lists, have fewer and fewer silent films. That isn’t fair and it isn’t right. But no one ever said life was fair. If you can become a paid subscriber, thank you for your support. If you can’t, don’t let that stop you from spreading the word. There is magic in silent films, and CLASSICS OF THE SILENT SCREEN can prove it. Thank you.

Behind the paywall: Giovanni Pastrone’s Tigre reale [The Royal Tigress] (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916)

In this film, Giovanni Pastrone successfully applies to the melodrama genre the innovative cinematographic language that he had developed in Cabiria. As in Cabiria, there are ellipses in the action to cover a long period of time; in addition, there is here a long flashback where the Countess tells the story of her dramatic first love. Cross-cutting is used efficiently and filming combines camera movements and alternating between wide shots, medium shots and close-ups. Numerous indoor and outdoor sets are used with spectacular scenes involving a troika sledge in deep snow and a theatre and hotel engulfed in fire. Orange, yellow, green, blue and red tainting is used to convey the atmosphere of the various scenes. Pina Menichelli, one of the great italian stars of the time is wonderful as a femme fatale and all men around her are only sidekicks, although Febo Mari is quite convincing as the polish outlaw desperately in love with the beautiful countess.

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There are several threads to the saga of Chaplin and his exile from the United States. Here’s a great documentary on Chaplin and his years spent in Switzerland, click on WATCH ON YOUTUBE:

Or you can watch here by clicking the following link (but the Petula Clark song THIS IS MY SONG has been removed for copyright):

Watch Chaplin The Forgotten Years by clicking here

Chaplin broke his foot during the filming of A COUNTESS IN HONG KONG. Tippi Hedren described Chaplin's directorial technique in the following way: "Chaplin’s method was to act out all our different roles, which was brilliant to watch. Instead of directing, he’d get out there on set and say: 'OK, do this,' and show us how. He’d become Sophia Loren. He’d become me and Marlon. It was really unusual and I’d never seen it happen before." Although many members of the cast appreciated Chaplin's approach, Marlon Brando felt insulted and wanted to quit before Chaplin was able to persuade him to finish the picture. Brando came to consider Chaplin a "fearsomely cruel man", claiming that Chaplin: "was an egotistical tyrant and a penny-pincher. He harassed people when they were late, and scolded them unmercifully to work faster." Brando was particularly angered by what he regarded as the cruel way that Chaplin treated his son Sydney, who had a supporting role in the picture: "Chaplin was probably the most sadistic man I’d ever met."

Reports on set working for Chaplin sounds like a nightmare to me, days and weeks spent filming someone opening a door sounds painful to me yet I don’t deny the end results were more often than not magnificent, the cost of Chaplin’s reshoots would keep the profits low. This is why Harold Lloyd made more profits off his films than Chaplin did.

J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI was a hypocritical, overzealous head who actually threw out a spy that brought him Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor- without even looking at the plans. Hoover lectured the spy about his habit of sleeping with women he just met, often 2 at a time. He would rather have an attack at Pearl Harbor, than even look at the evidence Japan was going to attack- and how, from a spy with “low morals”.

FBI vs Charlie Chaplin: The Hidden Political Scandal That Shook Hollywood - Documentary:

Chaplin had worked for over 2 years on THE GREAT DICTATOR a satire of Hitler and Mussolini and that caused Hoover to investigate him:

Hoover investigated everyone but he also didn’t like Chaplin’s relationships with teen age girls and went to Louella Parsons a feared gossip columnist for dirt on Chaplin.

Chaplin announced that he was taking his family on a long European vacation leaving the U.S. on September 17, 1952. The reentry permit in Charlie’s British passport was valid for one year. The Chaplins were two days at sea before the then Attorney General of the United States, James P. McGranery, tossed off a bombshell statement that he had instructed the Immigration authorities to hold Chaplin for a hearing to determine whether he would be allowed to reenter the country. What were the charges? That, hinted the Attorney General, would tip off Mr. Chaplin. McGranery then went on to add, “If assertions about Mr. Chaplin are true, he is, in my judgment, an unsavory character… . He has been publicly charged with being a member of the Communist Party, with grave moral charges and with making statements that would indicate a leering, sneering attitude toward a country whose hospitality has enriched him.”

Quote: But the real reason American audiences would not see A King may not be censorship, as Chaplin has been hinting for European boxoffice purposes, but a private quarrel between Chaplin and the Internal Revenue Service. If Chaplin made money on any picture in the United States, the tax collectors would immediately grab it, because of the wholesale cheating they say he has done in the past.

The revenuers regard Charlie as “a hard, shirking man” and claim getting taxes out of him is like trying to open an oyster with a spoon. Down through the years the epic battles between Chaplin and the Treasury have become textbook classics in the art of the tax maneuver. On one occasion the Treasury found Chaplin more than $1,000,000 in arrears and forced him to pony up. In a return engagement, Chaplin proved that the Treasury owed him $18,000—one of those giddy victories that Charlie rather unwisely boasted too much about. In the third showdown, it is the Treasury that is enjoying the old boffola.

How an old master like Chaplin got his neck in the wrong loopholes is an involved affair, although the law is simple enough. Through the autumn of 1952, as he moved from capital to capital and triumph to triumph, Charlie’s plan seemed to be simply to play things by ear. Then, one fine spring day in 1953, came the tax notice from the United States, and Charlie whipped off to the nearest American consulate, in Geneva, and tossed in his reentry permit like a hot grenade. He apparently thought that possession of it was what made him liable for United States taxation.

Too late. This time the Treasury had Chaplin in a three-way bind: If Charlie claimed his reentry permit was valid, then he was taxable on the usual basis, as an alien still legally resident in the state of California; if he claimed he was no longer a resident or had been deprived of his right to be a resident, then he was taxable on all income and profits made in the United States. For a nonresident alien, British, the flat rate is 30 percent; the one status Chaplin could not claim was the popular “18-month exemption clause” under which other Hollywood directors and stars had made films in Europe free of U.S. tax. That clause applied to American citizens only.

The amount due, said the Treasury, was $516,167. Chaplin refused to pay. A penalty fee brought the amount to $1,400,000, roughly. And then Chaplin got so mad he sat down and wrote that song: “When I think of a million dollars—”. Unquote

Click this link for full Saturday Evening Post Chaplin article

Louella Parsons discovered rumors that Chaplin had a secret love child and the FBI confronted him about this before Chaplin announced he was going abroad. He had been through paternity suits before, he had no desire to repeat that in court.

Let’s add it up so far. Chaplin could no longer make money off his movies- once released in the U.S. the IRS could take all the proceeds. The FBI confronted him about a love child and he was asked about any communist leanings. It certainly must have looked like Hoover and Truman were out to destroy him. I have read Chaplin’s ideas for social change- no communist would have ever accepted his naive beliefs and would have labelled them as utopian.

Chaplin vowed never to return to the U.S., but when he did..

Charlie Chaplin's Honorary Award | 44th Oscars (1972)

He received a 12 minute standing ovation. "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot."

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Behind the paywall: Unknown Chaplin - Episode 1 (My Happiest Years)

The first episode in a 3-part documentary series. Using in part rare out-take footage, the film-making methods and techniques of Charles Chaplin are explored. Created by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Fantastic.

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Alice Guy (1873-1968) was a French filmmaker who is widely considered to be the world's first female film director. She began her career in the film industry at the age of 21, working as a secretary for the Gaumont Film Company in France. In 1896, she made her directorial debut with "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy," which is now recognized as one of the first narrative films ever made. She went on to direct and produce hundreds of films over the course of her career, including comedies, dramas, and even a few westerns.

Click this link for her early short films:

Alice Guy short films playlist

When I discovered there were far more women than men running studios in the early days of film my first thought was, how were the women driven out?

Sadly, it turned out to be because of men in almost every case. In her case she had married Herbert Blaché who after marrying her and working for a time at Gaumont Studio volunteered to run the companies business side while she wrote scripts. She agreed, partly because he envied her success and she wanted to keep him happy.

When he wasn't sending out press releases on himself he fancied himself a genius at the stock market. He might as well should have taken all her money and flushed it down the toilet. She divorced him but it was too late. All the money was gone. He had destroyed her studio.

Alice got a job with William Randolph Hearst's newsreels and she wrote novels based from film scripts. Today she is regarded not just as the founder of a film studio, but for having created the first narrative film.

Alice Guy-Blaché was a filmmaker before the word even existed. She made her first film at the end of the last century, when cinema was still a newborn. After directing, producing and/or writing more than 700 films, she slipped into oblivion. The Lost Garden rescues the story of one of cinema's most fearless pioneers. By 1910, married and with her first baby, she founded her own production company in America. Solax became the biggest pre-Hollywood studio on the continent. But at 49, she lost her husband, her company and her illusions. The Lost Garden looks at the life and times of a woman who, with two words, changed the art of screen acting forever. "Be natural," she used to tell her actors. Television interviews from the sixties reveal Guy-Blaché to be witty, articulate and elegant. Her films are cleverly edited to illustrate the events occurring in her personal life. Granddaughter Adrienne and daughter-in-law Roberta offer photographs and press clippings from her private albums, while film historians point out the artistry and innovativeness of her work. The Lost Garden eulogizes a woman whom history tried hard to forget. Watch the documentary about her here:

Click this underlined link for a playlist of her earliest short films:

Alice Guy short films playlist

Behind the paywall: Hollywood (1980) Episode 9 “Out West” [A Celebration of the American Silent Film] [LaserDisc]

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This 10-part silent-era serial from 1915 exploits the power of horror imagery to great effect. Almost a quarter of a decade before Batman hit upon a similar idea, writer/director Louis Feuillade created his criminal gang, the Vampires, who play upon their supernatural name and style to instil fear in the public and the police who desperately want to put a stop to them.

The gang, including femme fatale (and easily decoded anagram) Irma Vep (played by Musidora – the stage name of silent-film actress Jeanne Roques), meet in underground caves, travel across Paris via rooftops and hidden tunnels and passages and dress head to toe in black robes with masks covering their identities. In short, they are the stuff of nightmares. While it’s through the detective work of newspaper journalist Philippe Guérande (Edouard Mathé) and his comical sidekick that we follow the crimes, it’s clear that Feuillade’s heart is more with the gang. And who could blame him: they are unutterably cool and clever – and several episodes were banned in France, for many years, for glamourising criminal behaviour. In this case it’s a fair cop.= THE GUARDIAN Read the Guardian article here

Subscribe to CLASSICS OF THE SILENT SCREEN not just for the films- but a look at life as it was in the silent era.

Behind the paywall: From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses

A fascinating and immersive account of German cinema in the 1920s when Berlin studios were second only to Hollywood in resources and whose creepier ('expressionist') output reflected the trauma of WWl and the ensuing social chaos - the DNA of film noir.

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Final 2 episodes
LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 9 The Poisoner

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 10 The Terrible Wedding

The film has since come under re-evaluation and is considered by many to be Feuillade's magnum opus and a cinematic masterpiece. It is recognised for developing thriller techniques, adopted by Alfred Hitchcock and Fritz Lang, and avant-garde cinema, inspiring Luis Buñuel, Henri Langlois, Alain Resnais, and André Breton.
It is suspected that production of Les Vampires began when Gaumont learned that rival company Pathé had acquired the rights to release the serial The Mysteries of New York,[10] known in America as The Exploits of Elaine, and felt they had to fend off competition. Another American serial, The Perils of Pauline, had become massively popular since the release of Fantômas.

The film was mostly shot on location in Paris, and is said to have been strenuous, some actors having to leave due to the wartime efforts. It was shot inexpensively, evidenced by the utilization of painted flats for doors, re-use of furniture in the film's sets, and its reliance on stock footage for more elaborate shots such as a ferry exploding in "The Thunder Master". The episodes were also produced very quickly; estimations have been made that there would have been a three- to four-month period between the filming of an episode and the release. Feuillade makes little use of popular cinematic techniques, most of the film consisting of long takes with stationary cameras with the occasional use of a close up to show plot details such as photos or letters. This was done to give the film a more "real look". Due to a lack of scripting by Feuillade many of the scenes were improvised on the days of shooting. Musidora, a former acrobat, did all her own stunts. Work on the film was done at the same time as of his later serial Judex.

The film employs tinting to describe the lighting: amber for daylight interiors, green for daylight exteriors, blue for night and dark scenes and lavender for low-lit areas (such as nightclubs or dawn). It is noted for its length, just under 400 minutes, and is considered one of the longest films ever made.

Despite World War I limiting the audience for the film (unlike Feuillade's earlier work Fantômas) it was a huge success in France, massively outshining the original competition from Pathé and the serial The Mysteries of New York. Much of the film's success is said to have been from the inclusion of Musidora as the antagonist Irma Vep, who fit well with the archetypes of "vamp" and "femme fatale", often being compared to Theda Bara. The police force, however, condemned the series for its apparent glorification of crime and dubious morality. Some of the episodes were temporarily banned, but these bans were retracted after a personal appeal from Musidora.

In 1987, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum called it "one of the supreme delights of film."
In 2003, Slant Magazine gave it four stars, calling it "remarkably attuned to the morality of the time" and "exhilarating". French poets André Breton and Louis Aragon calling it "the reality of this century. Beyond fashion. Beyond taste." In 2010, The Guardian named it the 25th "Greatest Horror Film of All Time".

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The idea of the criminal gang was possibly inspired by the Bonnot Gang, a highly advanced anarchist group who went on a high-profile crime spree in Paris during 1911–1912. Feuillade wrote the script himself, but did it in a very simplistic way, usually writing the premise and relying on the actors to fill in the details. Later episodes were more scripted, however. The style has been compared to that of a pulp magazine (which it was later serialized as.) In an essay on the film, Fabrice Zagury stated "...Feuillade's narrative seldom originates from principles of cause and effect... Rather it unwinds following labyrinthine and spiral-shaped paths." None of the episodes employ the cliffhanger mechanic, popularised by The Perils of Pauline.

The film was mostly shot on location in Paris, and is said to have been strenuous, some actors having to leave due to the wartime efforts. It was shot inexpensively, evidenced by the utilization of painted flats for doors, re-use of furniture in the film's sets, and its reliance on stock footage for more elaborate shots such as a ferry exploding in "The Thunder Master". The episodes were also produced very quickly; estimations have been made that there would have been a three- to four-month period between the filming of an episode and the release. Feuillade makes little use of popular cinematic techniques, most of the film consisting of long takes with stationary cameras with the occasional use of a close up to show plot details such as photos or letters. This was done to give the film a more "real look". Due to a lack of scripting by Feuillade many of the scenes were improvised on the days of shooting. Musidora, a former acrobat, did all her own stunts. Work on the film was done at the same time as of his later serial Judex.

If you missed past episodes:

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 7 Satanus

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 8 The Thunder master

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Behind the paywall: Silent shorts by Les Vampires Louis Feuillade

Louis Feuillade's "The Nativity" (1910)

Louis Feuillade's depiction of the birth of Christ in a barn, and King Herod's attempt to have him killed, tells a different Nativity Story than we're used to following from the Bible. In 9 scenes inspired by paintings, various groups hear of the birth of a new Messiah, react, and venture out to see the small child. This story skips over the Annunciation and scenes of Mary and Joseph traveling, and taking refuge in a manger because of poverty and intolerant inn-keepers.

Erreur tragique 1913 Tragic Error

An aristocrat is taken murderous jealousy after seeing his young wife by chance in a movie with another man.

Bout de Zan vole un éléphant 1913 Bout de Zan Steals an Elephant

Bout de Zan is a very precocious young man! When the circus comes to town, he does what any kid might do in this situation--he steals the circus' elephant!

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If you missed Part 1:

Mysterious posters began to appear on the streets of Paris in November 1915. They showed a row of three masked female faces, each circled by a question mark like a hangman's noose, and beneath each one, the same four unanswered questions: "Who? What? When? Where...?". A year into the Great War, those Parisian streets were daily growing more empty, but further enigmatic details could be found in the morning papers: "Of the moonless nights they are kings, darkness is their kingdom. Carrying death and sowing terror, the dark Vampires fly, with great suede wings, ready not only to do evil... but to do even worse..."

It was the beginning of the latest serial-play by Louis Feuillade, the man who just a year before had brought the immensely popular exploits of the master criminal Fantomas to the cinema screen. In Les Vampires, the authorities and the bourgeoisie were forced to contend with not just one, but a whole gang of homicidal black-masked villains, their identities constantly changing, their methods employing ingenious gadgetry and foul murder weapons.

Feuillade's most accomplished work was a crime drama shrouded in a cloak of gothic horror. The world of the Vampires is a world of midnight intruders, of trap doors and vanishing corpses, high-speed chases and daring escapes across the rooftops of Paris. Semi-improvised and filmed at a ferocious speed, the serial was mocked by contemporary critics and almost banned outright by an incensed police force, though it soon found favour with a public eager to escape from the less palatable horrors of war, and with a whole generation of artists and poets who revelled in its depiction of a recognisably real world infused with mystery and danger

Les Vampires
LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 4 The Spectre

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 5 Dead Man's Escape

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 6 Hypnotic Eyes

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Les Vampires is a 1915–16 French silent crime serial film written and directed by Louis Feuillade. Set in Paris, it stars Édouard Mathé, Musidora and Marcel Lévesque. The main characters are a journalist and his friend who become involved in trying to uncover and stop a bizarre underground Apache gang, known as The Vampires (who are not the mythological beings their name suggests).

Musidora became a huge sensation in France

Much of the film's success is said to have been from the inclusion of Musidora as the antagonist Irma Vep, who fit well with the archetypes of "vamp" and "femme fatale", often being compared to Theda Bara. The police force, however, condemned the series for its apparent glorification of crime and dubious morality. Some of the episodes were temporarily banned, but these bans were retracted after a personal appeal from Musidora.
In 1987, film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum called it "one of the supreme delights of film."
In 2003, Slant Magazine gave it four stars, calling it "remarkably attuned to the morality of the time" and "exhilarating". French poets André Breton and Louis Aragon calling it "the reality of this century. Beyond fashion. Beyond taste." In 2010, The Guardian named it the 25th "Greatest Horror Film of All Time".

I will be presenting several episodes a post so make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss any episodes. This will kick off our Month Of Horror for October.

Classics Of The Silent Screen LES VAMPIRES 1-3
LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 1 The Severed Head

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 2 The Ring That Kills

LES VAMPIRES 1915 Episode 3 The Red Codebook

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Behind the paywall: Metropolis - 1927 - The Metropolis Case Documentary

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MOONLAND 1926

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Un Chien Andalou

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Maya Deren, MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON

Felix The Cat Dines And Pines

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The Nutcracker, it was not. Conservatives were scandalized that Berber dared to make her addiction into art but respected writers like Max Hermann-Neiße were blown away, “In the short period of time her performance lasts, she has mounted a revolt.”

Then Droste got arrested for passing a forged credit note for 50 million Kroner. They found a lawyer who managed to convince the court to let them work until the debt was paid. After settling this mess, it turned out that Droste had signed ‘exclusive’ contracts with three different theatres. The International Actors Union got involved and banned them from performing on any continental variety stage for two years. A few weeks later, Droste got arrested again for stealing from two countesses (because apparently one wasn’t enough). This time, Berber had to put up her furs and jewels to get him out on bail. When she attempted to steal the furs and jewels back, a porter tried to stop her and she punched him in the face. Droste and Berber were both deported from Austria.

They returned to Berlin, where Droste stole Berber’s jewels and bailed. He was next seen in New York, pretending to be a baron and trying to get D.W. Griffiths interested in a film project. In 1927, he returned to his parent’s house in Hamburg and died of tuberculosis. Berber wouldn’t live through the decade either.

Anita’s drug habit was now out of control, thanks to two years with Droste. Still banned from high-end variety stages, she took to cabarets where she began to raise eyebrows for her belligerence. In 1923, she hit a disrespectful audience member at the Weiss Maus on the head with a champagne bottle and then urinated on his table. It seems that Berber believed she was giving him art but the philistine wanted a lap dance. In an interview with the Berlin journalist Fred Hildenbrandt, she sneered, “We dance death, illness, pregnancy, syphilis, madness, dying, infirmity, suicide, and nobody takes us seriously. They just stare at our veil to see if they can see anything underneath, the pigs.”

A bright spot in her life was gay dancer Henri Châtin-Hofmann. They were married in 1924 two weeks after they met. Châtin-Hofmann took over the management of his wife’s career and attempted to get her to clean up her act, but there were no brakes on this train. In 1925, Otto Dix painted his famous portrait of Anita Berber in a slinky red dress. Dix’s wife Martha recalled that Berber “spent an hour putting on her make-up and drank a bottle of cognac at the same time.” The writer Klaus Mann remembered, “People were pointing the finger at her, she was outlawed. Even for post-war Berlin she had gone too far. One went to see her on the cabaret stage to get the creeps; apart from that, she was ostracized.”

Unable to find performance spaces to book them, Châtin-Hofmann and Berber went to Yugoslavia in 1926 with a revamp of Dances of Vice. In Zagreb, Berber allegedly insulted the Yugoslavian king and was jailed for several weeks. From there, they went to the Netherlands to perform in a new revue, with Châtin-Hofmann finally succeeding in getting Berber to stop drinking. They then set off on a Middle Eastern tour from Damascus to Cairo to Beirut. At the end of a show in Beirut, Berber collapsed onstage and was diagnosed with advanced pulmonary tuberculosis.

The journey back to Berlin took four months with Berber needing to rest at every leg of the journey. In Prague, they ran out of money and friends took up collections at cabarets to get Berber back home. A week after arriving at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin, Berber died at the age of 29. “She never did half a thing,” Klaus Mann wrote in 1930, “Her crash, rapid and catastrophic, seems magnificently stylized, pathetically heightened like her triumph before.”

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they classified Dix’s painting of Berber as degenerate and buried all mention of queer and radical Germans. It was only in the 1980s that interest in her revived. Since then Anita Berber has regained her cult status as poster child for Weimar decadence. As she herself wrote in Dances of Vice,

 “I kissed and tasted each one until the end / All all died of my red lips.”

About the writer: Born to a Taiwanese family in NYC’s Lower East Side, Victoria Linchong grew up with a natural instinct to investigate obscure history and secret places. Her mission in life is to rewrite Western history to include women and people of color, after which she will retire to an alpaca farm with a hundred stray cats. As burlesque performer Viva Lamore, she performs internationally and hosts historical web series in vintage drag. Copy Via MESSY NESSY.

Anita left behind a film that would introduce a whole new genre of horror film. EERIE TALES was the very first horror anthology movie, long before TALES FROM THE CRYPT, THE VAULT OF HORROR, TRILOGY OF TERROR, etc.

This film started a horror genre still with us today.

Anita Berber, Reinhold Schünzel, and Conrad Veidt in EERIE TALES.

From Wikipedia:

Unheimliche Geschichten (EERIE TALES) was directed, produced and co-written by Richard Oswald. The film stars Anita Berber, Reinhold Schünzel and Conrad Veidt as the Harlot, the Devil and Death in the opening sequence, but they also play various other roles in each of the five stories. Each story was based on an author's work, including Anselm Heine (The Apparition, 1912), Robert Liebmann (The Hand), Edgar Allan Poe (The Black Cat, 1843), Robert Louis Stevenson ("The Suicide Club", 1878) and Richard Oswald's own contribution (Der Spuk/ The Spectre).

Watch the movie here:

Behind the paywall: Fashions Of The Weimar Years
People often ask me which moment in the past do I think has had the greatest impact on fashion today. Without hesitation, I answer; 'The Weimar Republic!' The 'divine decadence', cabaret scene, sexualization and 'the outsider as insider' of Germany 1919-1933 gave birth to some of fashion's most immediate signifiers. So WILKOMMEN to this Ultimate Fashion History special.

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BERLIN SIN CITY
A must see look at Berlin, Germany in the 1920’s the ‘sex capitol’ of Europe!
An eye-opening look at Berlin in the 1920's in the 'Weimar Republic' before Hitler came to power
NSFW
CLICK THIS LINK FOR BERLIN SIN CITY NSFW

Photo: Legal prostitution without restrictions meant there was no "red light" zone in Berlin. The entire city was a red light zone!

17 Reasons Why Germany’s Weimar Republic Was a Party-Lovers Paradise

Germany emerged from the First World War broken and disillusioned. Defeat in the Great War heralded the end of the monarchy, with the Kaiser giving way to the Weimar Republic, named after the small German city that had once been a hotbed of both artistic and scientific progress. Before long, American money was pouring into the new-look country, and people weren’t afraid to spend it. Whether because they wanted to simply forget the trauma of the war or because they realized that such peace and relative prosperity was bound to come to an end sooner rather than later, the German people partied hard. Indeed, from 1923 onwards, the ‘golden age’ of the Weimar Republic was characterized by its decadent parties just as much as it was for its economic troubles and weak governments.

The cabaret scene of 1920s Berlin is still famous to this day. Here, in dance halls and cabaret clubs, the old rules were tossed aside. Prussian conservatism gave way to sexual liberation, equality and hedonism. Gender rules were not just bent but smashed altogether. Indeed, some of the things that went on would even be shocking today. So, from drugs and sex to underage prostitution, gangsters and murders, here are some of the most scandalous aspects of this decadent decade:

Germany’s Weimar Republic Was a Party-Lovers Paradise

Anita Berber, renowned for her nude dances, thumbed her nose at censorship by taking it all off.

Born in 1899, Anita Berber came of age during the Great War. Her bohemian parents divorced when two and she was raised by her maternal grandmother. At 15, she began taking classes with famed contemporary dancer Rita Sacchetto, eventually becoming the star of the company. As war and the Spanish Flu ravaged Europe, Berber began working as a fashion model and made her first film. She was on tour in Bucharest when Armistice was declared.

Back in Berlin, the country was in mourning for two million people, food shortages continued unabated, and inflation increased to such an extent that by 1923, a wheelbarrow of money couldn’t buy a loaf of bread. In response, desperate Berliners reached for any available means to medicate their trauma or increase their chances of survival. The streets were awash in cocaine, heroin, and prostitution. Variety shows, gambling dens, gay bars, and transvestite clubs sprang up on every corner. Berber however, was coming up in the world. She was also an actress, seen in six films in 1919 alone, including Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others), one of the first silver screen offerings with a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality. (1) You can watch the film here:

On the cabaret circuit, she began booking Expressionist solo shows at high end venues and choreographing her own performances, including one about a transgender Roman emperor Heliogabulus (the one history conveniently forgot to tell us about). In another dance, she appeared as Salomé emerging from an urn of blood, wearing nothing but a purple cloak. Disrobing, she painted her nude body in blood to the lush strains of Richard Strauss’ opera before sinking back into the urn.

With nudity such an everyday part of German culture now, it’s hard to believe that Berber’s Salomé was shocking to Berliners. There’s even a five syllable word for German nudist culture – Freikörperkultur or FKK for short. But the FKK movement didn’t start until 1919 when the newly established Weimar Republic abolished censorship in everything except film.

Much has been written about Berber’s nude dances, a lot of it salacious. “I’m not a nude dancer,” insisted Berber in a 1922 interview. Nudity was definitely part of her dances, but the eroticism in her movements were always tied to death, despair, and the grotesqueness of life. In other words, she was a Goth. Or an Expressionist, as they called it in those days. Still, she is quoted as once saying,” “If everyone had a body like me, everyone would be walking around naked.”

In 1919, when she started stripping on stage, she also married into aristocracy. Nothing is known of her husband Eberhard von Nathusius except that he was the grandson of a Prussian politician. With von Nathusias’ money, she moved into a suite at the Hotel Adlon with her pet monkey. She openly continued seeing both men and women, including, it is said, a young Marlene Dietrich who had just ditched violin conservatory for a place on the kick line at Guido Thielscher’s Girl-Kabarett. (3)

By then, Berber was a style icon and she set off a trend in 1921 when she appeared at Rudolf Nelson’s musical revue Bitte Zahlen! (Please Pay!) wearing an impeccably cut double-breasted tuxedo and a monocle. “For a while, the fashionable women in Berlin copied everything. Except for the monocle,” said Austrian author Siegfried Geyer. Dietrich apparently caught tuxedo fever from Berber and ran with it all the way to Hollywood:

Berber’s career on the ascent, she performed regularly at renowned director Max Reinhart’s cabaret Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke). She then scored an uncredited role in Fritz Lang’s film Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler where she can be seen in her signature tuxedo doing high kicks and suggestive shoulder jiggles. (4)

Anita Berber whispering sweet nothings in the ear of a dance partner in “Bitte Zahlen!” 1921.

Berber and Nathusius divorced in 1921 and she moved in with her girlfriend Susi Wanowsky, who later opened the lesbian bar Le Garconne. Then, for better and for worse, Berber ditched Susi for queer con man, eyeliner enthusiast, and Expressionist dancer Sebastian Droste.

With Droste as her partner and manager, Berber’s life and career jumped tracks and veered off into a rollercoaster ride that is still giving people whiplash. The two brainstormed a program of macabre choreographies over copious amounts of cocaine and began rehearsing what they called Dances of Vice, Horror and Ecstasy. Berber created her best-known works: Morphine, Cocaine, Martyrdom, Suicide, The Corpse on the Dissecting Table. They also collaborated on a book of poems and illustrations to give another dimension to their artistic intent. (5)

Dances of Vice premiered in Vienna at Great Konzerthaus-saal in November 1922. According to Czech choreographer Joe Jenčík who was in the audience, Morphine began with Berber in an armchair injecting herself with a syringe, whereupon she “thrust her body in an incredible arch, like a morbid rainbow.” As drug-induced visions arose before her, she performed hazy, broken, incomplete movements. Then the drug finally “stabbed” her and she contorted into the arch again, before sinking into the chair and dying. Let’s just remind ourselves – this was 1922.

Coming in part 2: She does a horror movie that launches a genre that still exists today!

Behind the paywall: OPIUM from 1919

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