Screen Acting As Taught Early

Mae Marsh Shows How To ... For Silent Picture Players

I didn’t know until recently that Mae Marsh wrote a book called Screen Acting back in 1921. Now having read it, I’m put to wondering if any other silent era player took serious account of the profession they chose; I mean other than whatever they said to interviewers or wrote in memoirs. Marsh would seem to be an only one who gave vent to whole of a volume (129 pages, illustrated), her emphasis on screen performing, though she draws distinction between skill as practiced for a stage and that necessitated by movies. Some of prose dates, what of those times doesn’t?, but Marsh throughout Screen Acting tells what she learned before cameras up to veteran (for her) year of 1921. By then, she had been in films a decade (age 15 the start). Seems less remarkable to modern eyes until we realize that acting for cameras was then a recent application, ten years hardly enough to graduate past infancy, and here’s Mae Marsh filling a tall order of explaining it all to us.

The book is in the Public Domain and is everywhere, online and even audio-read on You Tube. Mae Marsh is known for work with D.W. Griffith, but did plentiful star parts afterward. DWG was a cult director, as in players following his lead like terriers let in/out of a kennel daily. Marsh credits his unerring eye for falsity in performance. He liked her to pull drama from past personal experience to shade work done in a present, like The Birth Of A Nation’s cabin siege where Marsh unexpectedly laughs rather than cries as doors are being kicked in toward she and a helpless Cameron clan. This was acting way ahead of teens curve, which to that add low-key work Marsh and Henry B. Walthall self-devised where he returns home to find her in a shabby dress festooned by scraps of cotton, a sister’s pathetic attempt to keep style stripped away by war and desolation. A great moment still, and Griffith let Marsh/Walthall develop and play it their way. Based on this book, maybe it’s time we recognize DWG as truest progenitor of the Method.

Screen Acting may be an earliest detailing of Griffith technique as told by one of his stock company in a book. Marsh addresses too the use, and sometimes overuse, of close-ups, and how some players abuse the privilege. She admits all actors crave them, but often neglect to tone down for cameras drawn near. To value of story, Marsh is clear: “Motion picture actresses prosper almost in exact ratio to the inherent worth of their scenarios.” Narrative matters, folks, then, now, always. Griffith sent Mae and others on “observation tours” to taste real life before trying to recreate it on screens. That included slums and “baby hospitals” (Marsh’s stop for prepping her Intolerance part). Acting must show, she said, “a thing as it is, not as we think it ought to be.” Modern technique? Sure looks that way to me, and bear in mind Griffith was applying it early as Biograph days, his followers like Mae Marsh doing so thereafter. She had a nice stay on top, did character work for talkies, was a small-part mascot at 20^th Fox for decades, same for John Ford as valued member of his thesping group. Mae Marsh lived till 1968, knowing well her worth, even if others were slow (still are) in recognizing pioneer strides her generation made in the art of film performance.

Being Alive in 1943 Probably Means You Saw It

The Human Comedy a Home Front Of Our Dreams

Firstly, what a title. Sounds like would-be majestic literature, importance writ all over it. Suppose someone may have suggested Andy Hardy Delivers Telegrams? Didn’t matter, The Human Comedy was a hit, a large one, as in $1.5 million profit. Here was absolutest proof of Mickey Rooney stardom. What a tumble he took after the war. No wonder Mick got a little cracked, redefining truculent at late-in-life autograph shows. Beg pardon, we’re about The Human Comedy here, and it’s about much more than Mickey, in fact it was all-caps Celebration Of American Life circa 1943, when outcome of a World War was by no means assured. A little worry came with fun of showgoing then. Is that what makes movies of the time seem a little manic now? The Human Comedy ducks that, in fact aims for subdued, pastoral, thoughtful, all of things Hollywood came at reluctantly, if at all. Reason Metro made exception was prestige of Human writer, William Saroyan, a biggest literary noise of the day who was said to stack even with Hemingway, Steinbeck, and Faulkner, names we know better today than Saroyan’s. For MGM to score him as a screenwriter for hire was lassoing the moon, and they would bow deep in appreciation of it. The Human Comedy was Saroyan written for the screen, not a translation from text, though the author did what amounted to a novelization which flew up Best Seller lists just in time to be a Book-Of-The-Month selection with The Human Comedy movie at eve of release.

If I Can't Go Back and Attend the Astor, At Least I Can Keep On Posting Images Of It Here at Greenbriar

The home front was never so inviting, The Human Comedy’s small-town a nearest Heaven to be had this side of the Veil. Had anyone in uniform known life like this? And yet The Human Comedy proposes that they all did. Setting here is like a Carvel with no need of a Judge Hardy because there’d be no crime nor conflicts to resolve. Police are there mostly to bring lost little boys home to Mother. The Human Comedy held that we must protect such way of life with all the fight we had. Postwar noir would supply bitter antidote, that a possible reason why The Human Comedy won’t be revived outside TCM broadcast. Had you told folks in 1943 that this Greatest Of All Motion Pictures would become so obscure, they would have reacted like devil horns were sprouting from your head. The Human Comedy had as much to do with wartime reality as Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, and there was its strength --- this is what we wanted the struggle and surely-to-God outcome to be. So what if it is as remote as pyramids now? The Human Comedy needed a nationwide suspension of disbelief in 1943, and presumably got it. None but Metro could have woven such reassuring tapestry, and no matter the fantasy, a need was met. Of course there are bathos, emotion like syrup out of Vermont trees, but there is magic too that can overcome barrier of our most cynical selves. Save your view of The Human Comedy until a next Up With People moment. Surely we still have those, if not in such abundance as audiences in 1943.

Director Clarence Brown with Author William Saroyan

Army camp scenes, focused on Van Johnson as Marcus Macauley, the brother sent to serve, are all kinds of ludicrous, and I wonder if soldiers of the time mocked, or went tender, for them. This is a doting mother’s idealized notion of what military life is like, being a time of heightened emotion, as in lives at stake, many lives, so let's forebear surrender to The Human Comedy and films like it (but wait, there were no films quite like this one). Johnson serenades canteen pals with homey tunes, as well because there’s not a juke box in sight. In fact, The Human Comedy shuns swing in any capacity, its pristine setting devoid of taint modern fashion would impose. There is also song aboard the troop train, church songs, which all of personnel enter into. Marcus has a buddy named Toby George whose orphan status makes him an almost Holy Man, or Boy, in search of family he might call his own. Toward that, he co-opts the Macauley’s to disturbing extent, his decision to love and eventually marry Bess Macauley (Donna Reed) based on a photo in Marcus’ wallet. Creepiest element is Marcus accepting the plan on face value. Long memories could evoke Henry B. Walthall doing a same swoon over Lilian Gish posed on a daguerreotype from The Birth Of A Nation. At least Walthall kept the crush to himself, Toby doing an opposite in blabbing that he’ll go home with Marcus and take his seat at the family table. Even the loss of Marcus in combat won’t deter Tobey, who heads right to the Macauley's for a finish, expecting to enter and be embraced, which he does/is at Homer’s invite. Worse still is Homer carrying the telegram reporting his brother’s death, which he now wads up and throws away (Is he not going to tell his family of Marcus’ death?). I wonder if 1943 viewership was as nonplussed by this as me. Of all things in The Human Comedy, it sits most uneasily now.

Book and Film Go Hand-In-Hand

Hometown girls are right and virtuous, on-leave soldiers their counterpart for gallantry. A “pick-up” of Bess and her neighbor friend by a trio of G.I’s amounts to nothing but a shared trip to see Mrs. Miniver, frisson not apparent in 1943 supplied by Robert Mitchum as one of the guys (others are Barry Nelson and Don DeFore). There is no thought of improprieties beyond a chaste kiss the boys get when they part from girls they’ll have no access to again. Far from frustrated, they leapfrog (yes, leapfrog) down the sidewalk and back to camp. All this Eden is overseen by those who’ve departed, not just to war, but to eternal reward, which in this case amounts to coming back home and monitoring progress survivors make. Here was reassurance for those who had lost dear ones. Wartime’s benign ghost cycle could fill a dissertation, perhaps already has. In this instance, it is Ray Collins as father Macauley, materializing for us, but not family members he visits. The dead are not gone in The Human Comedy, maybe not even dead for all of participation they enjoy. If it all seems formless, be advised that this was intent, from a start and throughout making. Director Clarence Brown and staff writers had pared down Saroyan’s script, but kept essence, which avoided pic-formula. The Human Comedy was a lofty venture that did a colossal click, and when had that happened before? I think a lot of Meet Me In St. Louis’ uncluttered story and tempo were enabled by success The Human Comedy had.

Maybe Metro needed trimming for excess hubris (review ads gushing praise), because here came James Agee and critic elites who pooped The Human Comedy for every valid reason, but their notices read like sour milk (“Most of my friends detest it,” said JA). Agee could love-hate a movie to insensibility, ours, that is, for following him. I still enjoy Agee, his a prose to aspire to, but he can sure knock foundation from under a favorite. Just remind yourself that he was seeing all this stuff new and not yet absorbed into sacred canons. Agee admits to fright of tearjerkers, aware that the rest of us are “too eager to be seduced.” That there are “unforgivable lapses of taste and judgment” is a given ---possibly even remotest hicks sensed that. Agee said the only sound performance came from Jack Jenkins, the five-year-old who plays Ulysses Macauley. Agee adored movies, but was always frustrated that they couldn’t be his idea of better. He was sorry to see “unfortunate young man” Mickey Rooney cast in the leading role, but took all actors to task for representing a tradition that was “worse than dead.” So how could studios be expected to fix a problem vast as that? “Why did they bother to make the film at all,” he asks. “Why, for that matter, do they bother to make any?” You could ask why pic personnel would bother coming to work at all if they followed Agee. Cash register attendants fortunately did, as note lines to the Astor; word was they lined up even in driving snow. We have it easier (but less vivid) what with The Human Comedy on TCM in HD, and there is a DVD from Warner Archive.

Bring Back Blockbusters ...

What a 1950 Exhibitor Could Request ... and Get

Mutiny Revived for 1957 Dates

The best showmen were not averse to risk. Harry Brandt was such a showman, July-August 1950 being instance of his taking bit in teeth to revive a pair of way-back oldies and triumph with them. Brandt explained himself in “very expensive” ads he ran in the New York Daily News for a double-bill of Mutiny On The Bounty with A Day At The Races, these dated 1935 and 1937, respectively. “When I was planning the best film show anybody could see, I made a list of the ten most spectacular dramatic pictures and the ten funniest comedies,” wrote Brandt in his “double-truck” display (a pair of facing pages in a newspaper or magazine, with content that stretches over two pages). “Here is a show that stacks up with the best films they are making today,” to which Brandt added a money-back guarantee in the unlikely event audience members disagreed with him. Brandt, controlling Broadway’s venerable Globe Theatre, along with numerous other venues, was no stranger to reissues. He had lately seen success with Chaplin’s City Lights, and so knew value of top-tier encores. Getting MGM permit to use two of their past hits was surely a cinch, few exhibs so strongly positioned as Harry Brandt (he was, among other things, president of the Independent Theatre Owners Association).

A 1962 One-Sheet for Races Reissue

Further incentive for Metro was Brandt and the Globe as test lab for what might be a national spread for Bounty/Races. Let him throw dice, spend for promotion (the Motion Picture Herald figured Brandt laid out upwards of $5,000, maybe as much as $8K, for the Daily News splash), then take the fall should his combo crash. Except Harry Brandt did not fail. In fact, he had “a best opening stanza in many weeks,” $25K of “smash” business, according to Variety. The bill opened in July 1950 and stayed for six weeks, “a surprisingly big, long run for oldies,” according to the trade. Receipts for each frame are worth noting: After that first week of $25K came $15K for the second, $12K in a third, $11K the fourth, then, and surprisingly, back up to $12K in the fifth week. Sixth and final frame took $8,500. Credit for this went in large part to the films, naturally, but there too was high energy Brandt poured into promotion. Not only the imaginative ads, but the Globe marquee and front to dazzle passer-bys. MGM distribution was convinced --- they put Mutiny On The Bounty and A Day At The Races out nationwide. If Harry Brandt made a hit of such relics, couldn’t anyone? The answer would be hard reminder that one man’s success at selling might not translate to another.

Half-Sheet, and Below, a 30X40, for Mutiny's 1957 Bring-Back

First obstacle: The combo ran to four and a half hours, both pictures unusually long (Mutiny at 132 minutes, Races 111). This meant fewer programs, less audience turnover per day. Also missing was the kind of handling such product needed, and Brandt knew how to apply. You couldn’t just toss these on the board and expect them to move. Had Harry Brandt traveled with the show and supervised each stop, then flow of gravy might have run from the Globe’s boxoffice to each stop thereafter, but Brandt had neither time or inclination to follow MGM’s caravan, being independent, and very independent-minded. He had conceived the notion, now let them run with it. In this case unfortunately, most of runners stumbled, Variety’s key date evaluations going thus: slim, slow, weak, a best report indicating “better than expected” biz. It took skill to move atypical merchandise, and however popular Mutiny and Races had been, they were still from 30’s stock and had to be sold anew to a fresh generation. The scheme could work, did work, four years later when New York’s Holiday Theatre, managed by Mike Rose, paired Little Caesar with Public Enemy to sensational response. That combo had juice to thrive from coast-to-coast. Here then, was proof that not all such ventures were created equal --- for each Caesar/Enemy sock, or She/Last Days Of Pompeii, a 1949 mop-up reported previous at Greenbriar, there were fizzles like Mutiny On The Bounty and A Day At The Races, which however deserving of wide business, just couldn’t rate it, largely because they didn’t have selling acumen like Harry Brandt’s to see them across a finish line.

Fashions and Fraud in '34

Fashions Of 1934 Is a New Twist On Old Cons

Bill Powell has a new racket. He’ll steal dress designs and get knock-offs on the street before legit importers can do the same. Evidently there was a rush to get ahead of rivals at intro of French fashion to US buyers, an exotic concept as how many moviegoers in 1934 could afford simplest gingham, let alone Paris creations? For Powell to bamboozle this crowd was nobody’s idea of crime. They deserved victim status just for indulging such fool luxury. Warner con men were careful to prey upon those who had too much to start with, and underserving of half that. It was a matter of small crooks doing in worse crooks. Audiences enjoyed Powell, Cagney, Lee Tracy, as ambassadors for have-nots, seizing a high life from the idle rich. An awoke Code dropped curtains on that, but hard-won cynicism gave up less easy. Go-getting, as in climb past the other guy by whatever means, was too ingrained for movies to drop. A Too Hot To Handle in 1938 kept precode philosophy in play, the me-first principle still an easiest for viewers to connect with.

What Women of Means Might Wear, or Aspire To Wear, in 1934.

Powell’s idea is sound enough to make me wonder if it might actually have worked in 1934. Here was eternal hope that Depression films dangled before their public. However broke you were, it would take but a single sock idea to turn tides. We all have in us the resource to get rich, or so the movies promised. Powell in Fashions Of 1934 is never without a scheme to get back in chips. Imagine how reassuring such a character was when folks had barely enough to sustain. There was never a giving in to waves by precode swimmers. Even carted to jail, they’d not get there for knowing a trick or two to get loose, and yield a check for thousands in the bargain. 78 minutes in any case was too brief to indulge self-pity. Would a William Powell work as therapy for those who’d otherwise throw in towels? He surely puts a spring in my step. All obstacles seem lowered in the face of Bill’s example. Are there films today so cheerful as Fashions Of 1934 and kin?

Everything it seems, was a “racket,” a word we scarcely hear now. Has everyone realized that honesty is a best policy? I think not. Is mine a cynicism bred by precode watching? Powell pulls his flim-flam topper by selling a boatload of diseased ostrich feathers. What sort of weed were writers smoking to come up with that? Still, there is plausibility to Powell ploys. He and designing partner Bette Davis buy an old book from a Parisian street vendor that shows attire as worn through history. She then updates and adapts fashion from past eras to current styles, which struck me as an inspired notion, for 1934 or now. Maybe I picked a wrong profession, because this one looks plenty creative and rewarding. Fashions Of 1934 would double nicely with Cover Girl or Funny Face. Note ad at left where the theatre exhibited styles on stage with the movie. Amusing wind-up to Fashions Of 1934: Powell and Davis finally marry, them approached on shipboard by an inventor with another million-dollar idea, which Bette makes Bill turn down, that is, quit chasing money, in 1934. Now there’s prosperity having turned a corner and back again. Would that those watching at the time have had life the same. Fashions Of 1934 is available on DVD from Warner Archive, and TCM played it recent in HD.

Capturing A Moment No One Else Did

Russell Merritt Collars a Bone-Chilling Hound in 1959

If challenged to name a healthy addiction, I submit … Sherlock Holmes. Is there another fictional character to demand such fan devotion for over a hundred years? Surely it gratifies Robert Downey, Jr. more to play Holmes than Iron Man. I watch Rathbone/Holmes when I’m not in the mood for anything else, which is often. There are those who have duplicated 221-B Baker Street in their home, exact to a last fleck of dust. Retrieval of thought-lost Holmes films has been a last couple year’s detective story, so far yielding William Gillette in a 1915 feature, then a German-made Hound Of The Baskervilles (Der Hund von Baskerville) that never played theatres in America and wasn’t expected to surface again. A lead rescuer was writer/historian Russell Merritt, an avid Sherlockian who contributes interview insights plus a booklet essay to Flicker Alley’s just-out Blu-Ray. The climb toward restoration was steep: a nitrate source here, surviving 9.5 footage there, and stills to bridge a minor gap in the second reel. Result is an impossible dream of Holmes devotees fully realized. Extras include an even earlier Hound brought up from depths. It’s an extraordinary package for mystery mavens.

And speaking to extraordinary, here are highlights I am privileged to share from scrapbooks maintained by Russell Merritt when he was a teenager living in New Jersey. Priding myself for clipping ads from early-on childhood, imagine humbling sight of all-encompassing save that Russell made of Gotham’s first-run of Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles in summer 1959. He didn’t preserve one ad from the Victoria Theatre’s Broadway open --- he got them all --- each different, of course, with the group a summation of how Hound was promoted for NY premiere play. Kept too was press coverage, reviews, publicity plants, a trade ad, and get this for remarkable: young Mr. Merritt, age sixteen, took his camera to the Victoria and photographed the marquee and entrance. I don’t believe such images exist elsewhere. Certainly they were not to be had ten years ago when I searched trades for NY marquee shots to illustrate a Greenbriar Hammer Hound post. What Russell Merritt captured in 7/59 was unique and remains so. This is scholarship with sleeves rolled up, and done in the field. Precocious on one hand (how many teens carried cameras with them to movies?), far-sighted beyond what any other fan would attempt on the other, let alone sixty years ago when films were figured disposable at best by most.

I’ve pondered these images a lot since Russell sent them. Note the Astor next door with The Horse Soldiers. A massive billboard heralds the playdate for John Ford’s Civil War saga starring John Wayne and William Holden. Both it and Baskervilles hailed from distributor United Artists. UA bet more of ad/pub on The Horse Soldiers, figuring a wider public would embrace the starry cast and setting over a UK import with less certain prospects. In fact, the Ford film fell down wickets-wise, despite the massive push, big spending not returned by a less enthused attendance. The Victoria hangs key art of the Baskerville’s Hound on the marquee, plus banners ringing the theatre front. UA was committed to a “Horror-Phonic” sell from the start. You’d not know from advertising that Sherlock Holmes was even involved in this venture. Did the “Howl-and-Horror” campaign help or hurt receipts? A disappointing domestic outcome suggests the latter, but how else to exploit Hound Of The Baskervilles but on shocker terms? Baskervilles is Broadway-dwarfed by The Horse Soldiers, but we can be grateful that Russell Merritt chose Holmes/Hammer for his scrapbook and photog emphasis, his a most complete record by far of how this Hound howled in 1959 Gotham. Much thanks then, for his sharing these marvelous images with us.

Precode, Meet Vaudeville

Stage Mother (1933) and Cruel Climb To Show Biz Top

Alice Brady takes the lead as a hard-bitten climber up vaudeville, and then B'way revues, daughter Maureen O'Sullivan the object of machinations that don't stop at blackmail/extortion. Vaude was seldom sugared by 30's Hollywood, hardships of the life too fresh for writers of which many had served in variety trenches, or knew well those who did. So had Alice Brady, who did oodles of stock work, then prestige starring parts, and came from prosperous biz background besides. Title character here loses an acrobat husband in the first reel, his fall from high off a stage an event that must have happened often among small and big timers. Ted Healy is a second spouse, loud-mouthed and ultimately a faithless drunk, a near-home portrayal by Ted, who has but one stooge for company (Larry Fine with but a single line). Brady is a sort of Stella Dallas of the stage that no polite society wants part of, this a same way variety performers were treated when they tried breaking out of life on the road. Boarding house signs that read "No Actors or Dogs" were no joke. Vaudeville acts as shown in Stage Mother are strictly from hunger. We're given to understand why the tradition fell to ruin well before this movie came along. Movies served themselves with such unflattering depiction, as in look how much better our entertainment is than what you used to sit through. So long as vaudeville was dead, Hollywood wanted to make sure it got decent buried. Stage Mother benefits too for precode arrival, a lot of situations here would not have survived even a year's later scrutiny.

Fluff Given Flair Of Color

Brits Serve Saucy in Divorce Of Lady X (1939)

Fluff from England in easy-on-eyes Technicolor, hues subdued and particularly pleasing for that. Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon are the romancing pair, Lady X spun off misunderstanding that could be cleared up in moments had anyone bothered. Whomever the device nags is best advised to duck Lady X, as this Divorce needs endless complication before being granted. You could say silly-ass comedy was not the great Larry's forte, but he'd done plenty such on Brit stages; how else to win matinee idol status? He falls down, is dispossessed of his bed by "slip of a girl" Merle, she posing as notorious vet of multiple marriages. There are lovely views of fog-bound London at night, shot in natural dark through Technicolor lenses, care obviously taken by producer Alexander Korda to cater a worldwide viewership. Oberon had been a name over here, Olivier less so, but that was about to change with Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. Divorce Of Lady X came at bargain neg cost of 486K to Korda, was US-released by United Artists for stateside rentals of $286K. It plays, HD-beautifully, on TCM, and is US controlled by Criterion. We could hope for a Blu-Ray were it not so obscure.