Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Saturday, July 27, 2013

When Dinosaur Movie Palaces Ruled The Earth


A Lost Cleveland Theatre Presents The Lost World in 1925

Jack Pickford and Norman Shearer were fine, I suppose, and Anita Stewart would do, but whoa, how did Clevelanders react to sight of a brontosaurus on Now Playing pages? Movies were news in 1925, many papers devoting pages ... sections ... to programming tendered by temples of the shadowplay (to borrow verbiage of that era). Didn't Joni Mitchell lament paving paradise to put up a parking lot? Well, that was fate of the Stillman, a Loew's venue seating 1,800 that was torn to rubble so that apartment dwellers could be closer to their cars. How long are periods of mourning for a great theatre sacrificed to the heavy ball? I've not yet had to endure the Liberty's wreckage, and could visit its bisected-since-70's remnant any time, though said change to the auditorium keeps me at bay. Still, I wouldn't want to see it wrecked. The Stillman lasted till 1965, and like many a monolith, had flirtation with 70mm and even Cinerama before value of real estate tempted fate. Old theatres everywhere have fallen like so many dinosaurs of a past century, but ad art survives to tell what a long-lost Stillman did with The Lost World and others we call classic. Imagination alone  tells us what the stop-motion masterpiece was like in 1925 when brand new and truly a fresh thrill. Dinosaurs on screen? Impossible!


So this raises my question: Had moviegoers seen prehistoric animals before? There was The Ghost Of Slumber Mountain in 1919, with effects by Willis O' Brien, but that was a short subject. Certainly The Lost World was a first big production with dinosaurs. How did 1,800 patrons at the Stillman react? Was it like French folk in 1895 whooping it up over trains that rushed toward them from a hung sheet? Did youngsters think the creatures were real? (one of these days I'd like to get around to answering some of endless questions asked here) We're running out of people who'd know. In fact, I'd say it's already too late. What lore surrounds The Lost World in earlier incarnation is limited to memory of Kodascope prints in 16mm, home movie reels like what I had in 1964, and Eastman House dig that turned up footage gone missing since 1925. It's a lot like recover of dinosaur bones constructed to semblance of how the monster appeared a million years ago. Cleveland's crowd might as well have lived in primordial time for access they had to a Lost World so nitrate-clear as to look like stone-age documentary. For myself and others who care, 8mm was grand, and digital reconstruction is better, but they'll not approach "The One Kind Of Photoplay YOU Never Saw Before" at Leow's Stillman.

More of The Lost World HERE at Greenbriar Archive, and another vanished Cleveland venue, the New Lyceum, HERE.

2 Comments:

Blogger Dave K said...

THE GHOST OF SLUMBER MOUNTAIN has most assuredly survived... was a favorite for 8mm collectors back in the 60's. You can find several postings on YouTube.

11:07 AM  
Blogger John McElwee said...

Donald Benson considers tricks of the Hollywood trade:


A big thing to remember is not just the novelty of dinosaurs in 1925, but the general unawareness of how many ways film could lie. Nobody questioned when a Keystone film was edited to imply a row of seedy storefronts were directly across the street from a mansion with acres of lawn. Or when a low-budget movie asserted we were in London.


Today even a casual viewer knows what trickery is available. We also have an idea of what's technically and financially rational (Did anybody believe the 1970's Kong was the heavily hyped giant robot and not a guy in a suit?). At the same time we can still be fooled by artful use of stock footage as well as painted mattes and detailed miniatures, even in old films. Careful, plausible lies still convince us.


In 1925, a sophisticated adult might well believe that Hollywood had at least built full-sized robots, just as he might assume Doug Fairbanks' "Robin Hood" castle was as tall as it looked. After all, Hollywood pushed the idea that money and moderation were no object in the manufacture of dreams.


For the more innocent, it was real because you could see it was real, period. It's not as if they had other dino footage -- or even that much exposure to, say, elephants -- to question how it looked.

4:54 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024