Show Biz Storytelling

 

"Over The Top" Is What These Pioneers Were

Thinking about show biz memoirs led to my looking up “fabulist,” defined as follows: “A person who composes or relates fables,” or more damning, “A liar, especially a person who invents elaborate, dishonest stories.” That seems a harsh definition for a word that to me has cheerier implication, being derived, I assume, from “fabulous,” which we all know describes every aspect of the entertainment world and those who contributed to it. Is it churlish to be critical of them? A part of me says yes, especially where they tell life stories the object of which is to amuse and gratify us, seldom more. If they exaggerate or fabricate, where’s the hurt? Movies were never truthful, so why must people who worked in them be so? Their object was to please not just us, but each other. Old-timers especially were expected to be “colorful.” A lie is less a lie the more years after it happened, or likely didn’t. Those of the biz understood that truth was not merely flexible, but negligible.

Papa Says No To a Plea For Daughter's Hand in Marriage (A Vitagraph Romance, 1912)

Interviews are notoriously unreliable, but it's only us who would say “notorious.” To biz peers, it’s “Great Stories!” Expecting accuracy from an interviewee is a fool’s errand. These folks were in character especially when speaking as “themselves” (forgive all the words in quotation, but we are talking about show people after all). They permitted their names upon published profiles that were tissued in falsehood, their universe a fan fantasy where one pretended to be things one was not. Just because a career ended (almost never by choice) was no reason to start being honest all-of-a-sudden. What friends you kept in the business never wanted that. Maintaining illusion was a must. Vets who had gone away from a public eye were always welcomed by others of their discarded lot. You read of how they gathered at Friar, Lamb, Guild, events. Or at breakfast together, as they all still woke up early, even if costume and cameras no longer waited. To perform now was to do so for pals also forgotten by hirers. Shared morning meal took the sting out of forced retirement. I use forced as a blanket term, for who ever wanted to quit entertaining? 

Vitagraph Is Hiring Eloped Young Couples, Experience Not Required

Father Spots Daughter on Posters At The Nickelodeon Entrance. She's In The Flickers Now!

But what of the fans? They did not forget, never went away … did they? A way to find out was to write your life story, or have it written for you, at least get it researched after so many years tall-telling that you don’t even know what truth is anymore, object being to entertain, make ‘em laugh or be sad for tears behind your smile, mere extension of emote you did all along. It wasn’t just actors doing the dance, but directors too, once they went full-fabulist. Most noted was Frank Capra, who gave made-up accounts a sweet aroma. We wanted so much for his stories to be true that we finally decided they were, and anyone who said otherwise could jump in a lake. There is joy, perhaps nobility, in such faith. I have it for all of entertainers who looked back. Here was their perception of lives and career lived. One of Capra chapters told of his start with Sennett, opener words as follow: “The Mack Sennett Studio in Edendale was as unplanned and chaotic as a Keystone chase …” We want to know how planned, how chaotic, and it better be plenty so, just like funniest slapstick we ever saw. Capra like others chained himself to oars and had to row like the very devil to keep us engaged, that merely what he and they signed on for from shared beginnings. None would have it any other way.

Arrival at Vitagraph's Brooklyn Studio To Reclaim An Erring Child. The Site Is Now a Condo Complex

Reunion and Reconciliation --- All At Peace With a Career in Vitagraph Films

Shelves before Frank had been filled with reminiscence, reliable or not, mostly not. Even Mack Sennett had done his, back in 1954, before there were fuss-budgets to challenge his idea of truth. Others wove their tapestry: Jesse Lasky (1957), Zukor before that, Raoul Walsh and Wellman to come, some vivid enough to make us feel on-the-spot of history as it really happened, Karl Brown on Griffith days outstanding among these. Other of pioneers stepped up, Fred J. Balshofer and Arthur C. Miller with One Reel a Week, Lillian Gish of course, and before her, Mary Pickford. Recent, and splendid, reading time for me was Two Reels and a Crank, by Albert E. Smith of Vitagraph creation, published in 1952. Errata police then less in evidence gave Smith free reign to recall events as he pleased, sanction of a special Academy Award in 1948 having made him an unimpeachable source on starter days of movies.

It's True Love When These Femme Fans See Maurice Costello Flash Upon The Screen (The Picture Idol, 1912)

Maurice Costello with Daughters Dolores and Helene, and Mrs. Costello

Maurice Mortified As Pals Read Another Of Ardent Fan Missives

Two Reels and a Crank has not been reprinted to my knowledge. Ought to be, for I don’t know a livelier introduction to films as they formed. Vitagraph grew from partnership between Smith and J. Stuart Blackton, names once at a head of lists, forgotten since except for deepest dig into cinema past, way past as the two were cobbling reels before turn from a nineteenth to twentieth century. Smith glories in shell game filmmaking, honesty seldom a best policy where end justified means. Long enough had passed not to worry of reprisals or arrest for fraud. Smith/Blackton staged the Battle at Santiago Bay in a washtub, cigar smoke for carnage, this passed off as Spanish-American warring. They photographed waterfalls in Passaic, New Jersey, and called it Niagara. Barnum was right, suckers born every minute, all of them herding at nickelodeons.

Beth's (Clara Kimball Young) Father Asks Maurice To Family Dinner So He Can Rid Her of Star Fixation

Maurice Seeks To Disillusion Beth By Displaying Atrocious Table Manners

Smith and Blackton got starts with a ramshackle act called “The International Novelty Company,” wherein among other deceptions, they claimed to head a troupe of nine when there were actually only three, or sometimes just Al and Stuart. Latter did lightning sketches on a big easel you could see from back rows, Blackton a to-be pioneer of animation on film. He would act also for nascent reels, Vitagraph a two-man effort to start. The boys snuck footage of a champ boxing match that rivals had paid lots to photograph, Smith/Blackton figuring anything that was worth filming was also worth stealing. The two got places on youth, nerve, and brass. Smith writes how they horned in on Roosevelt’s climb up San Juan Hill, “bugs” about their heads turning out to be whizzing bullets, but alongside Teddy they stayed (Blackton’s daughter told historian Anthony Slide years later that the whole thing was hooey … they never went near Cuba … though Slide found evidence to suggest they did). Mark Twain said that as he grew older he tended to remember only the things that had never happened. Sounds a touch like Albert by the fifties, and incidentally, he writes how Vita partners knocked on the author’s door, the housekeeper telling them to get lost, Twain hailing them in, result a first-ever authorized screen adapt of one of his stories. Smith and Blackton were masters of the cold call, no entrance or transom they could not breach.

Beth Gets a Shock When Maurice Introduces His "Wife" and Children

All Done With Picture Idols, Beth Tears Up Her Fan Photos To Parental Relief

There is useful history in Two Reels and a Crank, at least as Albert Smith witnessed and understood it. We hear of oncoming locomotive imagery that freaked crowds out at dawn of film. Seems Smith and Blackton were in the booth, or beating pans, pie plates, metal sheeting to lend aural, in addition to, visual thrill. Believe Smith or not where he writes “babies yowled, youngsters trembled like aspen leaves, women screamed, and men sat aghast.” Host Tony Pastor (his vaude house) got riled by two women fainting, an ambulance parked out front for subsequent shows. By the by, that aspen leaves flourish reminded me that Smith had prose-assist from Phil A. Koury (credited on the cover), a trade veteran. Smith/Blackton liked going where big events happened, saw things to turn lesser stomachs, like human toll from the Galveston flood, immortalized by Tootie's reference at the end of Meet Me in St. Louis (“muddy and horrible and filled with dead bodies”). Sure enough was, says Smith. He saw militia “seize a man as he was hacking off a finger from a cadaver. His pockets were full of fingers, each bearing a ring. I saw the soldiers slip a sugar sack over his head, stand him against one of the funeral pyres, shoot him, then throw the body into the fire.” Now I ask you. Could there be a better reason to go out and find this book?

One more highlight (maybe two), then I’ll quit. Smith saw a chance to snatch up Mary Pickford for Vitagraph. Price was agreed upon, $10K a week for two years, with an option for two more. Here is where the biggest blunder of Smith’s career comes in, a catastrophic choice of words that could happen to any of us: Mary had a sister, Lottie, who was friends with Smith’s wife, common bond their ten-month-old babies. Mary and reps had been invited to the Smith home to sign the new contract. Lottie had told her sister about the cute Smith child, and Mary looked forward to seeing him. A deal so near closure was wrecked by the following exchange, Mary: Mr. Smith, when am I going to see that wonderful boy of yours? to which he replied Well, let’s get this matter settled first. Smith related the awful outcome thus: “Miss Pickford flushed, and a silence as of an awful crisis filled the room. Then I shall never see him, she announced, and flounced decisively out of the room.” Gone was the deal Vitagraph had borrowed a million dollars to finesse, all because Albert Smith said a disastrously wrong thing. He seemed by 1952 to have gotten over it. I’m not sure I could have. Ever make a careless remark that cost you so dear? Just shows importance of judicious wording.

Vitagraph made hundreds (upon hundreds) of films. Once an industry leader, they were bought whole by Warner Bros. in 1925. Most of what Vitagraph made is lost. Are ones that are left any good? I looked over You Tube, some silent DVD sets, and found much to enjoy. Early shorts to me are like Aesop tales, humans doing human things, much as we still do, learning lessons to guard against future mishap (Albert Smith could have filmed his blowing of the Pickford deal to powerful effect). Two pearls within copious oyster that is You Tube, both uploaded there by the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, represent Vitagraph at a peak. Made in 1912, The Picture Idol and A Vitagraph Romance last apx. fourteen minutes each, boast print quality we wish all silents had, are entertaining with surprises plenty. A Vitagraph Romance is about a couple eloping (her father disapproves). They starve briefly but are rescued by Vitagraph scouts, who put them before cameras with stardom the result. Dad sees daughter’s poster outside a nickelodeon and is won over. Happy reunion is had on the Vitagraph lot in Brooklyn, where we see filmmaking in progress. The Picture Idol has Clara Kimball Young as a silly miss falling under spell of Vitagraph heartthrob Maurice Costello. She’s a pest, him annoyed, so her Dad’s idea to disillusion daughter seems a solution to which Maurice accedes. Hilarity ensues, Maurice invited to family dinner where he makes an unseemly pig of himself, then invites Clara to his home to meet the “wife” (a male friend in drag) and four children, result she is cured of the fan bug. Surely ahead of its time was Vitagraph kidding star-driven movie culture at virtual beginnings of same. Recommended strongly then: Both these shorts at YT, plus Two Reels and a Crank where a copy can be got.