Christmas, Garbo, and Como At Williamsburg

Of many and interminable learning tools applied to us in elementary school, there was but one I'd remember. Williamsburg --- The Story Of A Patriot differed from likes of Bacteria and You for being lavish and Hollywood-produced. How many classroom subjects on 16mm carried a Paramount/VistaVision credit (with sound by Todd-Ao)? The VV startled sixth grade me for overlap with NBC Saturday Night Movies then displaying weekly Para wares and a same "Motion Picture High Fidelity" process. So how did VistaVision make its way onto schoolday schedule? The best we'd done to this point was Jiminy Cricket lecturing on how not to catch a cold (bacteria again!). Williamsburg was 38 minutes of pro filmmaking in rich color, probably 16mm IB Tech on that 1966 occasion, with familiar name George Seaton as director and a music score by Hitchcock's own Bernard Herrmann. For this event at least, it seemed worthwhile coming to school.

Williamsburg --- The Story Of A Patriot was produced in 1956 and premiered at the historic site in 3/57. They customized a pair of theatres for horizontal projection per ideal view of VistaVision. Subsequent to this came smaller-gauge prints to fan out among seats of learning, these supplied by the state (ours from Raleigh's film library). Patriot, to my knowledge, was never shown in theatres, nor on television (please correct me if I'm wrong). It played to visitors at Williamsburg, said numbering thirty million since 1957, making it the longest running movie ever (the historic town's claim --- is it accurate?). We've been to Williamsburg twice this 2012 and my forty-six year wait to re-see Williamsburg --- The Story Of A Patriot came to fruition in a theatre setting unlike any I've been in before. New prints, restored by master hand Robert Harris, unspool all day of every day and there is a DVD available that includes documentary data on Patriot's recovery from faded elements.

Our last Williamsburg visit was this past week. The place till early 30's was a small town like any other with historic underpinnings, colonial buildings being lived in yet by locals. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. transformed the "sleepy Southern town" into a Revolutionary-era duplicate by salvaging the old and reconstructing what time and neglect had let disappear. Phone poles and power lines came down, gas stations were bought, then leveled. One thriving business made dark was the Imperial Theatre. It's a playhouse still, but mostly for stage work, the front having been made congenial to three-cornered hat patronage, not uncommon to present day Williamsburg where even visitors don period headgear to get into 18th century spirit.

The Imperial thrived during a late silent and early talkie period, the site surrendered to restoration crews in March 1934 as the project took over what local businesses were still in operation. The Imperial had served town folk and students at the College Of William and Mary, which was just up Duke Of Gloucester Street where the venue stood. An Imperial photo I found (above) dates from 1928 and on microscopic inspect shows its current attraction to be The Divine Woman, a now lost (or should I say "currently missing") Greta Garbo silent, the only one of her features unaccounted for. Seems somehow appropriate that a town in search of vanished past should host an attraction which would itself evaporate in fumes of nitrate. My imagination leaps toward hope that Laurel and Hardy's single AWOL comedy, Hats Off, may have played a same engagement in support of The Divine Woman. I can sure think of unlikelier scenarios.

Finally, there was pre-trip appetizer of a Perry Como special from 1978, Early American Christmas, got from a dealer in televised rarities. Besides being shot in toto at Williamsburg, Early American Christmas has one of the last appearances by John Wayne, who walks/talks among citizenry and sings with Perry. There are patriotic asides by the venerable star: he seems truly taken by history relived at Williamsburg and I wondered if this was JW's first and only trip there. Wayne makes a point to be gentle and self-effacing among townfolk to whom he cedes spotlight as they exhibit crafts and period ware. He and Como join tavern carolers to evoke not just colonial merry-making, but a gone era when entertainers like Perry Como were as reliable holiday TV fixtures as Christmas itself. I did ask around Williamsburg for recollection, if any, of the Como crew and John Wayne visiting there, but no luck. Even old-timers drew a blank. Was 1978 really so long ago?