Mamba in Denmark

August 28 will see the Danish premiere of Mamba at Paradisbio in Aarhus. Paul Brennan will be flown in to present the film.
September 1 it's time for Copenhagen to get the Mamba treatment at the Cinemateque of the Danish Film Institute. Both Paul and myself will be present at the second date.

The US showing of Mamba at Cinefest in March had a great impact in the classic film community. Many prominent people attended the showing, among them legendary critic Leonard Maltin and Chris Horak, the director of the Film and TV arcives at UCLA. Both Maltin and Horak wrote articles about the event:

The Maltin Review
Chris Horak's impressions of Mamba

Me, Chris Horak, Paul Brennan and Bob Birchard (AFI) at Cinefest

At Cinefest Paul and I also made it official that the nitrate print of Mamba was to be donated to the Archive at UCLA as soon as transportation could be arranged.

In August 2012 the nine reels of Mamba magic was shipped to USA where it belongs.
The next chapter in the Mamba adventure will be the release of a restored print. It will take about two years to restore it once funding has been provided. Until then the nitrate reels will be stored in the UCLA vaults.

Mamba at Cinefest, March 17, 2012

Tomorrow morning I'm leaving Stockholm to attend Cinefest in Syracuse NY where Mamba will see it's US premiere Saturday, March 17. Paul and I have been invited to present the film at the festival. Mamba has not been shown in the US for over 80 years so it is indeed an event not to miss.

Director Al Rogell (left) and the Mamba cast

There has been some rather negative comments in the Nitrateville forum concerning the fact that Mamba will be shown in digital form and not on 35mm film as some apparently expected. Maybe this is the best place to explain why and also give some technical notes on the work that has been done.

First of all, the nine reels of Mamba magic today resides in Sydney, Australia. It will be very difficult to get them over to the US on such a short notice.

Production still of the set

The second reason is that the nitrate print is silent. The Australian print have only four of the nine TiffanyTone disks intact. I don't have a Vitaphone equipped work station at home so I simply had to keep the synchronization in the digital realm. Todd Weiner and Bob Gitt at the UCLA kindly provided us with a copy of the complete soundtrack. This was the only solution available for me to produce a complete version of the film. For the restoration of Mamba all original film and sound elements will of course be used.

Mamba has NOT yet been restored. This is very important to make clear. The print we will show at Cinefest is a work in progress, straight out of the can. The picture elements are far from perfect and the soundtrack is noisy, still this doesn't hide the fact that the nitrate print is in very good condition. There is no apparent damage or anything apart from the usual scratches, uneven lightning and some loose splices. The digital print was made out of curiosity and the sole purpose with it is to be able to show this believed long lost film to the world.

Director Al Rogell at work on the set

For the synchronizing I started with the nine reels as separate video files transferred by the Australian Film Institute. The film was scanned at 480p PAL which is normal TV resolution but it still looked good. I edited the film elements together leaving out leaders, act signs and stuff normally left out on projection. I also tried to tighten some of the cuts and splices that were particularly jumpy. I did nothing to improve the image quality, no color correction or stabilizing was performed.

The soundtrack was delivered to me on CD. Every reel had its own sound file. The TiffanyTone disks had been digitally transferred for us by UCLA. No filtering or processing had been made to the audio, it came straight off the original disks. I'm not sure about the pre-equalization on TiffanyTone disks so I decided not to apply anything out of the blue. The sound is rather shrill and noisy. I have good experience in restoring 78's but the soundtrack disks seems to be a bit different, and they should be. I did however apply a slight pop-filter to eliminate the most apparent pops and crackles. I also lowered the over all noise level with about 6dB to make the dialogue stand out, but that's all.

Jean Hersholt, Will Stanton and Noble Johnson on the set

The sound elements were then matched to the film elements, a very difficult and time consuming task. One of the problems is that the frame rate of the DVD is standard 25 fps whereas the audio is supposed to play in sync with a film that runs at 24 fps. This meant I had to speed up the soundtrack with about 4% to make it fit. Then I basically ran into the same problems as the Vitaphone projectionists ran into. If a single frame is missing in the film the sound goes out of sync after a while. Thus I had to compensate for this here and there.

The Australian print have a missing scene of about four minutes at the beginning of reel four. As far as I see it this particular scene had been cut by the local censors in Australia in 1930. The soundtrack however still had this scene intact so I decided to keep the sound and replace the picture elements with stills. I used frames from an earlier scene in the film for this. Another oddity about this missing scene is that the first thirty seconds of it was found between two scenes in the middle of reel five where it clearly didn't belong. I corrected this and put it back where it was intended to be.

Paul and I are very proud and honored to show Mamba at Cinefest Saturday night and we hope everyone will have a splendid time, I'm sure we will.

The Cinefest 2012 program can be found here:
Cinefest, TheVitaphone Project

More about Mamba, how it was found and the people who made it can be found here: Mamba Lost and Found
Mamba World Premiere at the Astor in Melbourne: Part 1, Part 2

The production stills in this post courtesy of the Robert S. Birchard collection.

Mamba at the Astor in Melbourne - Part 2

This post is continued from last weeks post about the Mamba world premiere at The Astor in Melbourne on Nov 21 at 8pm.

In the first post I wrote about Mamba's and Tiffany Pictures historical background. In this post I will write about the actors in the leading roles of the film. Unfortunately they are almost forgotten today, at least if you compare them to superstars like Garbo or Gable.

Mamba was very well received by the audience as well as by the press.  Tiffany had made sure the film would become a smash hit by hiring some of the most prominent actors at the time for the lead parts.

Jean Hersholt 1927

August Bolte - Jean Hersholt
Jean Hersholt was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1886, the son of Clair and Henry Hersholt, both actors at the Danish Folk Theatre. From an early age young Jean went on tour performing with his family all over Europe. Back at home in Copenhagen he went to art school and soon got recognition for his fine pencil drawings.

Hersholt drawing von Stroheim (1923)

But it was the acting that really got him. After some years at the art school he went on to acting school at the Dagmar Thaatre in Copenhagen. In 1906 he had roles in three of the earliest films produced for the Danish market. Those were all short comedies, very typical of the times. At 22, in 1908 he left Denmark for Canada and settled down first in Montreal then on to New York. In 1914 he left New York for Hollywood. In 1915 he was hired as responsible for the Danish pavilion at the Pan Pacific exhibition in San Francisco. It was at this time he met Thomas Ince, a Hollywood producer and director. Ince soon realized Hersholt was made of the right stuff and hired him as one of his regulars. Hersholt played in most of Inces films 1918-22. He even got to direct some of the films he played in. Ince is mostly known today because of the scandal surrounding his death in 1924 when he suposedly was killed aboard W.R. Hearst’s yacht.

Thomas Ince

Hersholt’s career took a big leap in 1922 when he got one of the leading roles in John S. Robertson’s Tess of The Storm Country with Mary Pickford. Then on to von Stroheim’s giant epic Greed, in which he played Marcus Schouler, the villain. Showing he was capable to shine in almost any role given to him he quickly became a regular first at Goldwyn and Paramount and later at MGM.

Greed (1924)

Hersholt made the transition to talkies without any difficulties, his Danish accent was no problem. With the arrival of the talkies his roles shifted from villains to caring father figures, teachers and European noblemen. At MGM he had big supporting roles in prestige productions like Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner At Eight (1933). He was Shirley Temple’s grandfather in Heidi (1937).

Grand Hotel (1932)

But it was the role as a doctor that would provide a continuing vehicle for Hersholt and something of a fateful direction for the actor. The mid-30s were abuzz with the births of the Dionne Quintuplets in Canada. Hollywood jumped on, highlighting the story and the officiating obstetrician, Dr. Dafoe, who was translated into Dr. John Luke, in The Country Doctor (1936). Hersholt brought the right ingredients to the part of Luke and two years later a sequel followed, Five of a Kind (1938). Hersholt was enthusiastic about a series of movies, but Dafoe himself blocked this idea. Nevertheless, in 1937 Hersholt had already germinated a new radio series to continue portraying a dedicated and kindly small town doctor. For a character name Hersholt turned to his most beloved author, his countryman, literary light Hans Christian Andersen, for a name-Dr. Christian. It was a hit and, and he convinced RKO Radio Pictures to bankroll a series of six Dr. Christian films (1939-41). The radio series stayed on the air every week for 17 years, about 800 episodes.

In the early 1940's Hersholt more or less left the movies but stayed in the business working with many different charity projects. In 1939 he funded The Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization that helped to support industry employees with medical care when they were down on their luck and was used to create the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA. This led to the creation in 1956 of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian an honorary Academy Award given to an "individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry". Hersholt was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 1945-49. Another lesser known function he had was as Chairman of the Hollywood chamber of commerce in the early 1950’s and as such he helped negotiate the rights for the Scandinavian Airlines transatlantic flights in 1954. He was very proud of being Danish, throughout his life he helped spread Danish and Scandinavian culture to the world. One of his major achievements was translating all of Hans Christian Andersens stories to the English language. His translations are still regarded as the best.

Jean Hersholt's home in Hollywood

Jean Hersholt made 443 films, got two honorary Oscars and is one of few who has two stars at the Hollywood walk of fame. One for his contributions to Motion Pictures, the other for his extensive radio work. Jean Hersholt died of pancreatic cancer in 1956, only months after having introduced Dr Christian to TV.

Eleanor Boardman - Photoplay January 1928

Helen von Linden - Eleanor Boardman
Born in Philadelphia 1898 to strict, Presbyterian parents. After graduation from The Academy of Fine Arts in her home town she left for New York hoping for a career on Broadway. When that didn’t work out as expected, she became a model for Kodak. This worked out splendidly and she eventually became the official Kodak Girl. With her face on posters all over the country she was of course hoping for some movie mogul to spot her and take her to Hollywood.

Eleanor Boardman early in her career

After some time as Kodak girl she heard that the Selwyn Organization, a major producer of Broadway plays, was looking for girls with no stage experience. Since she was more than qualified in that respect, she tried out for the job and before she knew it she was in the chorus line of a production called "Rock-a-Bye-Baby" until the show closed three months later. Unfortunately she caught laryngitis and temporarily lost her voice, making it difficult to continue on the stage. It was at this time that a casting director for Goldwyn Pictures hit the Broadway scene looking for new faces. She tested for him and impressed him enough that he finally picked her out of a pool of more than 1000 young girls who tested for the opportunity to go to Hollywood.

Well in Hollywood followed months of fruitless effort until one day Rupert Hughes saw her riding a horse and gave her a part in a film and she quickly began to attract audiences. She was chosen by Goldwyn Pictures as their "New Face of 1922", through which she signed a contract with the company. After several successful supporting roles, she played the lead in 1923's Souls for Sale. Her growing popularity was reflected by inclusion on the list of WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1923. Her contract was renewed in 1924 when Goldwyn merged with Metro and became MGM.

Souls For Sale (1923)

She appeared in fewer than forty films during her career, achieving her greatest success in Vidor's The Crowd in 1928. Her moving performance in that film is widely recognized as one of the outstanding performances in American silent films. She ultimately stayed with MGM until 1932. Boardman retired in 1935, and retreated completely from Hollywood and public life. Her only subsequent appearance was in an interview filmed for the Kevin Brownlow and David Gill documentary series Hollywood in 1980.

With James Murray in The Crowd (1928)

1926-31 Boardman was married to the film director King Vidor, with whom she had two daughters, Antonia born 1927, and Belinda born 1930, just before shooting of Mamba started . In September of 1926 fellow actors John Gilbert and Greta Garbo had planned a double wedding with them, but Garbo broke off the plans at the last minute. Boardman's second husband was Harry d'Abbadie d'Arrast to whom she was married from 1940 until his death in 1968. She died in Santa Barbara, California at the age of 93.

Eleanor Boardman and King Vidor

Eleanor Boardman has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to Motion Pictures.
Mamba was her first talkie and the only film she made in color.

Ralph Forbes by Clarence Sinclair Bull (1928)

Lieutenant Karl von Reiden - Ralph Forbes 
There is a lot of confusion about Forbes birth date. The date varies from 1896, 1901 to 1904. According to the Civil registration records in the UK, September 30, 1904 is the correct date. Born in an acting family in London, England. Both his parents and little sister were stage actors so the choice of profession might have been easy for young Ralph. He started his career on stage as a teenager in London. This led to some roles in British films, among them the early color movie His Glorious Adventure, shot in Prizmacolor 1922, and also a Swedish version of Charley's Aunt shot in England and Sweden between 1922-26 before leaving for Hollywood in 1926 to play fellow Englishman Ronald Coleman's brother in the Paramount big budgeter Beau Geste.

Beau Geste (1926)

In 1924 Forbes married the celebrated Broadway actress Ruth Chatterton who was eleven years his senior. The couple settled down in Hollywood and Chatterton soon also made her debut on the silver screen.

Ralph Forbes and Ruth Chatterton

Forbes striking looks made things easy and he got quite important roles almost immediately. He was cast against many of the biggest names right from the start. Norma Shearer, Lon Chaney, Dolores Del Rio, Clara Bow, Corinne Griffith and so on.

Forbes and Clara Bow in Her Wedding Night (1930)

Ralph Forbes was perhaps not one of the bigger names in Hollywood, some might even describe him as an MGM bit player, but considering he made about five films a year throughout the 30's and who he made those films with I think it's fair to call him a true movie star.

Forbes about to hit John Barrymore in the face in 20th Century (1934)

Forbes and Chatterton divorced in 1932. Forbes Movie career basically ended in the early 40's but got some new life with the arrival of TV and the Playhose series. In 1951 Forbes fell ill and passed away far to early, he was 46.

Eleanor Boardman and Jean Hersholt in Mamba

Mamba is a phenomenal early all color talkie that deserves its place in Movie history. Come see for your self and have a chat with me on Monday night at the Astor in Melbourne. Tickets are still on sale!

Mamba World Premiere in Melbourne Nov 21

It's not without pride I can announce that Tiffany Pictures 1930 all color triumph Mamba will be shown in public for the first time in about 80 years. This very special event will take place at The Astor Theatre in Melbourne, Australia November 21.

My collaborator Paul Brennan and I will be there in person to present the film together. It was Paul who found the long thought lost nitrate reels in 2009, I then edited the whole thing together into a presentable format. Since 2009, when Mamba was found, the complete soundtrack has been added to the film elements thanks to a kind contribution from the UCLA Film & Television Archives.

With all the different elements in place Mamba is now ready to be properly restored. However, when the opportunity to present the film before a live audience came about, and at such a wonderful place as The Astor we immediately decided to share this remarkable discovery even though it's still a work in progress.

"The Astor was built in the 1930s and still retains the art-deco charm of that period. The theatre is a classic, single-screen cinema with stalls and a dress circle, the overall seating capacity of 1,150 is reduced from the original 1,700 - and the auditorium has the same, soft ambience that you will have enjoyed in the foyers. Beautiful curtains cover the screen - there are no jarring, advertising slides to greet you!

But there is nothing "old-fashioned" about The Astor's facilities. The fully air-conditioned cinema boasts a state-of-the-art sound system and now has Australia's first installation of the superb, Barco 4K Digital Projector which is capable of providing resolution that is up to four times higher than the industry standard." Thus a splendid venue for such an important event.

This is the first of two articles about Mamba, it's importance in film history and more information about the people who made it. The story about how the film was found can be found here.

Mamba is one of the earliest all talking all color features ever made that also survives complete. The use of color throughout an entire talking feature was something completely new in 1929 and for such a small studio as Tiffany it was unheard of. It’s clear Tiffany decided to take a risk with hopes to become a bigger player in the Hollywood studio system. In the fall of 1929 Hollywood was not only a turmoil of sound but also color. Every studio of note was wiring for sound and the bigger players also wanted color in their productions, if only just short sequences.

One should note that at this time only about a dozen Technicolor cameras were available in Hollywood altogether. The studios had to battle to use them and the schedules were tight. The big studios monopolized the color cameras quite thoroughly but Tiffany got lucky, probably by some sort of divine intervention and could shoot an entire feature in color. All color talkies was clearly the next big thing and Tiffany decided to go all in right from the start. They were even planning to take technology a step further and shoot it in 3D according to this article in the Film Daily published Nov 12, 1929

Mamba was shot during approximately 10 weeks, from the end of September to early December 1929. At the time production begun, only two all talking, all color features had been released. Those were two backstage musicals from Warner Bros, On With The Show! released in July and Gold Diggers of Broadway in late August. None of the two have survived intact.

 When production wrapped in December, two more WB musicals were ready for release. The two hour extravaganza The Show Of Shows opening late November and the Jerome Kern operetta Sally starring Marilyn Miller just before Christmas 1929. These two have survived in black and white only, save from short fragments in color.

The fifth all color talkie The Vagabond King from Paramount had its NYC gala premiere late February 1930 (it wasn’t released to the general public until April). It has survived and has been restored by UCLA. Then comes Mamba, released March 10, which makes it the sixth all color talkie ever produced, and the earliest known all color talkie that wasn’t a musical or came from a major studio. It is intact and in quite good shape but it needs to be restored.

Tiffany Pictures was formed in 1921 as an independent production company by silent superstar Mae Murray and her then husband and director Robert Z. Leonard. Probably inspired by United Artists, formed two years earlier by Pickford/Fairbanks/Chaplin/Griffith, Tiffany's main goal was to produce Mae Murray vehicles, distributing them through Metro. After having made eight features together, Mae Murray divorced Leonard and left Tiffany for MGM in 1925. She eventually came back to Tiffany in 1929 to remake her 1922 success Peacock Alley as a talkie. It didn't work out well and Murray's talkie career was more or less over within a year. She sued Tiffany accusing the company having ruined her career. She lost the case and eventually left the movie business. The rest of her life is a mentally unstable, rather sad story. Mae Murray left us in 1965, a year after her last attempt for a come-back at 75. She was the real Norma Desmond.

Mae Murray in The Merry Widow 1925

What happened to Tiffany Pictures right after Murray's departure is somewhat unclear. My guess is that it was in limbo for a while until someone decided to pick up the pieces. There are indications of Tiffany being reformed from the scraps of the MGM merger in 1924. Considering its close relationship with Metro, many redundant people left over from Metro (and Goldwyn) who wasn't transferred to MGM was probably hired by Tiffany. With a new management and a staff of skilled craftsmen the company was ready for big business.

Tiffany is often referred to as a poverty row studio. I'm not sure if the term poverty row is a correct label for a company like Tiffany. I think independent studio would be more suitable. After all, they had their own studio from 1927, The Reliance Majestic Studios which had been the home of DW Griffith. The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance and Broken Blossoms were all partially or fully shot at the studio.

The Tiffany-Stahl Studio 1929 

Poverty row units normally had to lease facilities, often cameras and other equipment, sets and sometimes even actors from other studios when they wanted to make a picture. The classic poverty row production was generally a poorly funded venture with very unclear distribution. In an era when the bigger studios also owned the major theatre chains, getting an independent picture into movie houses was a challenge. I guess the Tiffany studio may have served as a base for other smaller companies, thus linking it to the poverty row epithet.

With the acquisition of the Reliance Majestic in 1927 came the new boss the MGM director and producer John M. Stahl who stayed in power until 1930 when he sold his interest in Tiffany and became a director at Columbia. I guess Stahl was largely responsible for the "New expanding Tiffany" as it coincides exactly with his time as CEO. Stahl was generally considered a really competent and nice man, liked by both staff and actors.

From August 1929 Tiffany had a very lucrative agreement with RCA. The deal was very straight forward - If a cinema owner agreed to book a block of 26 Tiffany films, RCA would wire the theatre for sound for $2,995, which was a bargain for most managers. By February 1930 no less than 2,460 theaters had signed up for the deal. Tiffany had thus a distribution network, at least for a while.

John M. Stahl

After Stahl left Tiffany in 1930 the company sunk back among the B-players concentrating on westerns, shorts and cheap monkey movies. They finally went out of business in 1932, much because of the ongoing depression, a general lack of funds and a hard time getting their films out to the theaters. According to my sources the main reason for their demise was because "they had no profitable distribution network." So I guess the departure of Stahl also ended the profitable RCA distribution agreement. The studio was sold and the main part of the Tiffany legacy, including most of the original negatives went up in smoke during the filming of Gone With The Wind in 1939.

John M. Stahl later directed several great pictures for Columbia in the 1930's and later for 20th Century Fox, his best known film is the brilliant Technicolor noir Leave Her To Heaven. 1950's melodrama master Douglas Sirk remade no less than three of Stahls pictures from the 30's. Magnificent Obsession is one of them.

My next post will give you more Mamba magic. Stay tuned!

Paramount On Parade 1930 - A lost Swedish version

80 years ago, in January 1930 a huge movie revue was in mid production at the Paramount lot. Paramount on Parade was their contribution to the revue craze that was going on at the time. The movie was made in several different languages, a quite common procedure, except this time they decided to make a Swedish version (!). This fact is not very well known here in Sweden since the Swedish version of the film is considered lost since the early 30's. The Swedish film institute has no idea where the film took off, there's no trace of it here apart from a box of stills. In some Swedish filmographies it's even stated that the film was never made. I know for sure it was made, shown and reviewed in the Swedish papers. The US version opened in April '30 and the Swedish version somewhat later. Below is a publicity for it dating from May'30, saying it "will certainly be the attraction the coming fall".


In 1929 Paramount had approached Ernst Rolf, the Swedish king of entertainment since almost 20 years. In many ways he was the equivalent to Florenz Ziegfeld with the distinction he also was a performer. Rolf signed a lucrative contract with Paramount running for two years. In January 1930 he and his soon to be wife Tutta Berntzen boarded the liner Annie Johnson heading for Hollywood. They were to stay about ten days in Hollywood shooting some six to ten numbers for the production. Rolf was given Skeets Gallaghers's role as Master of Ceremonies in the Swedish verson. According to the reports Rolf raised hell on the sets, running around blowing in some sort of navy whistle in a very demanding manner. This behavior so impressed the Paramount executives that he was soon allowed to shoot stuff for his own use while he had the technology at hand. For this task Paramount appointed no other than George Cukor as Rolf's personal director.

Rolf and Tutta in Hollywood 1930

Paramount on Parade was a giant production, it was Rolf's third movie and it had been five years since his last. He was by no means an actor. I will even extend that to say he couldn't act at all. He was mainly a singer, made around 900 recordings and was gifted with a photographic memory for lyrics. He had a fantastic sense for finding hits and spotting talent. He discovered many of Sweden's top entertainers for years to come. Rolf always kept a notebook where he jotted down text lines and ideas for others to materialize for him. British band leader Jack Hylton once said he had only met one true entertainment genius in his life, that genius was Ernst Rolf.

Rolf and Clara Bow on the Paramount lot.

Unfortunately Paramount On Parade was the only movie Paramount made with Rolf due to the depression and the studio halting or cancelling all planned musicals during the summer 1930. Since Rolf was a song and dance man who couldn't act he stayed on the roster as long as he could as he got a steady income from it anyway and without being forced to be available in Hollywood.

Rolf, Mitzi Green, Clive Brook and Tutta.

Another thing which is intersting is that Paramount really loved Rolf's wife Tutta and apparently offered her an even better contract which would make her the new Nancy Carroll. Rolf however, didn't allow her to accept it. I guess he couldn't stand the idea of his wife becoming a bigger star than himself.

Rolf and Tutta fraternizing with the Paramount stars.

My main interest is to locate all the "Swedish" footage. Some of it have survived but about two thirds is missing and has been missing since the thirties. Was something shot in color? Since Rolf had a total craze for anything modern and any possible trends, I'm absolutely sure he at least tried to persuade Paramount to shoot a scene or two in color, but maybe he didn't manage, I don't know. I know he bought some novelty shorts in 3D to show in his 1930 summer revue though.

Anyway, The Swedish version of Paramount On Parade was definitely made and shown here but flopped hard. Whatever happened to the film after this is completely in the dark.
Let's take a look at a snippet of the survivning footage from the Swedish version of Paramount on Parade directed by George Cukor. Ernst Rolf singing "Jag Är Törstig Efter Kyssar (I'm thirsty for kisses)" written by Rolf and Fritz-Gustaf.



Unfortunately Rolf died from a suicide attempt that ended up successful on Christmas day 1932. Tutta Rolf later married choreographer Jack Donohue whom she had met in Hollywood. Her son with Ernst Rolf, Tom was about four when he followed his mother to Hollywood in 1935. Tom Rolf later became an award winning film editor and is still living in Hollywood. I'm sure Tutta would have made it in Hollywood but she didn't get a second chance.

Stills from one of the lost Swedish numbers -

Gör Någonting

Until 1996, the only available prints of the American version of Paramount on Parade were missing all the color sequences, each of which was a major musical number: "Sweeping the Clouds Away" with Chevalier; "Isidore the Toreador" with Harry Green; "Nichavo" with Dennis King," "Come Drink to the Girl of My Dreams" with an all-star cast; and "Torna a Sorrento" with Nino Martini. (Fortunately, "Sweeping the Clouds Away" survived in a black and white version.) The running time of this cut version is about 77 min. This version is the one doing the rounds among collectors today.

Rolf presenting "Dancing To Save Your Soul"

In 2007 the UCLA reconstructed a nearly complete print, using new-found sound track recordings and most of the missing color footage. (One scene has soundtrack only plus still photos, another has image only without sound.) Please read Jeff Cohen's walk-thru of Paramount on Parade here. Until we get it on DVD it's the best description available of it.

What happened to the Swedish version is a complete mystery. Here's a song that Rolf and his wife recorded for the movie but where the footage is lost.
The song is "Gör Någonting! (Do something!)" written by Karl Wehle and Tor Bergström.

An early talkie Christmas - Part 2

Just when we thought we had seen it all Warner Archive is releasing yet another batch of four totally brilliant early talkies to add to your wish list in the "must have" section.

The Show Of Shows (1929) was Warner's contribution to the revue craze that had begun a few months earlier with MGM's Hollywood Revue. However, this revue is probably the least magnificent of them all. It's incredibly stagy and drags on for just over two hours. All of it but the prologue was originally in color but the only color sequence still present in most prints is the Chinese Fantasy featuring Nick Lucas and Myrna Loy. I have heard rumors of more existing color footage but I have never seen any of it. Winnie Lightner's rendition of Singing In The Bathtub surrounded by a troupe of all male bathing girls is probably the most memorable number from it. So Long Letty (1929) This is a must for all of us fans of Charlotte Greenwood and it's her talkie debut. There are actually two So Long Letty movies based on the same play by Oliver Morosco and Elmer Harris. The original play opened at the Broadway Shubert Theatre in 1916. Charlotte Greenwood did Letty on stage and the role was something of a breakthrough for her. In the first movie version made in 1920, Greenwood was overlooked and the role instead went to Grace Darmond. I guess Charlotte may have been located at the east-coast at the time. The 1920 version is still very interesting as it is one of Colleen Moores earlier pictures. As far as I know it's believed to be lost, like so many other of Colleen's movies are. Both movies are pure farce. The basic plot is a wife-swapping game. Two couples are next door neighbors. Although Harry loves his sweetly domestic wife Gracie, sometimes he longs for somebody a little more festive. On the other hand, Tommy wants nothing more than a lot of well-cooked meals while his spouse, Letty would rather go dancing. The two men get together and decide they'd be better off if they switched wives and work on encouraging their better halves to get divorces. But Letty and Grace catch on to their plan and spoil it by suggesting a one-week trial. During that week, they treat their temporary husbands so abominably that the men are more than glad to have their original wives back. The 1920 version sticks fairly close to the Oliver Morosco play on which it was based. The talkie version directed by Lloyd Bacon adds a few plot twists, is slightly modernized and contains some catchy songs. Here's Charlotte in one of them, My Beauty Shop.

Let me see your bald spot - it fascinates me!

We move on to some pre-code grit with Ann Dvorak, one of our favorite pre-code actresses who just a few years earlier had been one of MGM's leading chorus girls and dance director Sammy Lee's assistant. In the spring of 1932 Ann Dvorak made three movies that definitely made her go from chorus girl to character actress. Scarface, The Crowd Roars and The Strange Love of Molly Louvain. The last of them is now finally out on DVD. Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), it is an odd story about a woman torn between different but equally bad guys. Lee Tracy is memorable as the reporter who tries to save poor Molly from the gutter.

Ann Dvorak as Molly Louvain

The best thing with Molly Louvain is the theme song written by Val Burton and Will Jason, When We're Alone or Penthouse Serenade as it often is called. An absolutely beautifully written song with clever lyrics. Please listen to this fine rendition by The Arden-Ohman Orchestra with vocal stylings by Frank Luther.

Today's last entry is They Learned About Women (1930) Real-life vaudevillians Gus Van and Joe Schenck, whose piano act carried them to fame in the Ziegfeld Follies footlights and on early-radio airwaves, headline this spirited 1930 musical that combines World Series heroics with the quest for romance (The Broadway Melody’s Bessie Love plays the female lead). This is a unique opportunity to see vaudeville veterans Van and Schenck in action. It's their only full length feature and also their last joint effort on film. Six months after the premiere Schenck died of a heart attack in Van's arms at the age of 39. During production it changed title several times like the ad below indicates. Other working titles were "Take It Big" and "Playing The Field". They Learned About Women served as blueprint for Take Me Out To The Ball Game (1949)

Publicity material for They Learned About Women

Warner's are on a roll! Will there be even more?

An early talkie Christmas!

Today Warner Brothers announced the release of some really interesting titles in the fantastic Warner Archives series. In this latest batch we find some absolute necessities for the early talkie fan. Below I have selected seven titles I would buy at once if I resided in the US (which I don't) as the Warner Archives series is only available to film fans in the US.

The Hollywood Revue Of 1929 A very prolific movie, instrumental to the movie revue and musical craze of 1929-30. It is unique in many ways. It was the first attempt at filmed musical revue and features all your favorite MGM stars except Lon Chaney and Greta Garbo. It is also the only movie in which you get a good glimpse of Queen Norma Shearer and John Gilbert in living color. Cliff Edwards is performing the original version of Singing in the Rain, a song that was written for this film. Be sure to get a copy of it!

Next in line and equally important is the first all color talkie ever made, On With The Show! (1929) Unfortunately, all color prints are lost since long but at least the film survives intact. Among the many great songs we find Am I Blue performed by Ethel Waters.

"With unpaid actors and staff, the stage show Phantom Sweetheart seems doomed. To complicate matters, the box office takings have been robbed and the leading lady refuses to appear. Can the show be saved?"

A personal favorite I have mentioned many times on this blog. Rio Rita (1929) was the biggest hit of the 1929-30 season. This is the 1932 re-release print I wrote about in my last post, but until the original 1929, 140+ minute version resurfaces it will have to do.

Rio Rita helped put RKO on the map and paved the way for a string of no less than 22 Wheeler & Woolsey comedies between 1929 and 1937. It was much thanks to the success of those early films RKO was able to give us all the fantastic Fred & Ginger movies during the later part of the 1930's. Say thanks by getting yourself a copy of Rio Rita, the film that started it all!

We move on to two movies which both opened in December 1929. The first It's A Great Life (1929) Starring Rosetta & Vivian Duncan (in their only full length feature) and Lawrence Gray. A very typical 1929 musical including three great Technicolor sequences. Let's hope the last of them hasn't been cut like it has been on several occasions when aired on TCM.

Sally (1929) Ziegfeld superstar Marilyn Miller in her first film of three. Sally was a no expenses saved all color talkie which used the biggest indoor sets ever built to that date. Sadly the color prints are lost except for a fragment of four minutes I hope is included in this Warner Archive print.

Show Girl In Hollywood (1930) See Alice White play Dixie Dugan. A totally charming musical showing how a musical talkie was made from the inside. Don't miss it! The final reel was originally in color but now we'll have to do with Alice White in grayscale.

Golden Dawn (1930) Another all color talkie musical. Golden Dawn is probably the most bizarre musical ever made and deserves a post of its own. Set in German East Africa we get Noah Beery in blackface singing a strange song to his whip. Marion Byron beating up her beau Lee Moran etc. Good score and wonderful songs by Stothart and Hammerstein but it stays a very peculiar picture.

More on Golden Dawn soon, stay tuned...