Watch and Read List for 12/9/2024

 

Watched/Read: Hootenanny, Pearl White, Charley Chase, and Earnest Endeavor

Earnest means “showing sincere and intense conviction.” To that let’s add uphill climbing. Loving old film, old music, old anything, means coming to all its rescue, the wrest from underserved obscurity, shouting to all what they are missing. Some shout till hoarse, eternal champions for the forgot. I can talk of Hootenanny, Pearl White, and Charley Chase at Greenbriar and be understood, nowhere else though. Was that case in the sixties and seventies when vintage was supposedly venerated? (it was, sort of, but nothing, I submit, like now). Back then Hootenanny was fresher memory, Pearl White known if faintly for the Perils of somebody or other, and oh yes, Universal in 1967 did a new Perils of Pauline with the Dodge Rebellion girl. Today Pearl White is remembered about like Pamela Austin (who?) is remembered. Charley Chase has always been just on the verge of being rediscovered and properly celebrated. Mountain first scaled by Robert Youngson now has flag planted firmly by Kit Parker, Richard M. Roberts, consortium of collectors, archives, dedicated rescuers of reputation Charley Chase never lost, was ours to find and finally did thanks to tireless dig for what was left of Chase legacy, prints that is, ones-of-kind in much instance, us in nick of time to enjoy comedies he did in 1927 instance. Again to point of so many more caring about classics back in our precious era that now is as past as we then were from the films and stars themselves. If we were so much more appreciative back then, how is it seven, closer to eight, hundred names get credited on Kickstart, Go-Fund-Me discs every time a new silent is fan-financed and released? If those folks aren’t earnest, I don't know who is. Repeat as I have to being tiresome: Vintage has never had it better than right now.

Michael Hayde sat before the family Philco and saw Hootenanny when it first-ran. The series lasted about a year and a half, between April 1963 and September 1964. ABC was the presenter, and for North Carolina at least, that meant fewer people saw it, ABC largely snow country in our territory. Hootenanny was never syndicated, so poof and the show was gone after ‘64. “Eighteen of the forty-three total programs (originally 13 half-hours for season one and 30 hours for season two) exist whole or in part …” according to author Hayde. Folk music was the format, performers brought on to do music other than mainstream or rock and roll. Much of this was popular, as there was taste for things besides pop or watered down beat. Hootenanny came smack before and during Brit and Beatles invasion. Did that hasten its demise? Hayde answers in detail, telling how controversy dogged the series almost from start and certainly to a finish. Folk artists were protest before protest got hip. In fact they were hip, saw answers blowing in wind far back as Peter, Paul, Mary singing such words in 1963, “peace, war, and freedom” topics A, B, and C which lined up even with others of the Folk movement. Groups like P,P, and M got hot along with the Kingston Trio, one of whom hailed from my home county, these boys singing of foothill dwelling anti-hero Tom Dula, popularly rechristened Tom Dooley, hung locally and long ago for a love crime. Here’s miracle that surely fated Michael Hayde to write a book on Hootenanny: His father recorded much of the series on audio tape during the 1963-64 run, thereby preserving performance otherwise lost to time. You could almost say Michael was born to write Hootenanny --- The Craze and Controversy of TV’s Folk Music Series. If he didn’t, who would? After all, he has those tapes, and surely no one else does. This is a great book, being music history, TV history, social and political history, the works. I read it quick because I couldn’t put it down.

Then there is Pearl White, whose remarkable story William M. Drew tells. Mr. Drew is one of our premiere film historians. All I need see is his name on a cover and I will want the book, this declaimed previous in Greenbriar coverage of The Last Silent Picture Show and Mr. Griffith’s House with Closed Shutters, both splendid and revelatory. William Drew does with his newest what has long needed doing, a Life and Times of serial queen Pearl White: The Woman Who Dared, who’s been ignored in part because so much of her film past has gone with nitrate winds. Not all however, for there are tantalizing pieces at You Tube, much uploaded by Eric Stedman of The Serial Squadron. Is it reasonable to expect all fifteen or more chapters of any silent serial to survive? Those that do and feature Pearl White are fascinating and yes, she did stunts herself, and no, I don’t see how the woman survived knocks and falls she took. Pearl made serials when everybody went to serials, not just kids like later would be the case. Girls who’d become famous were her devoted fans. Norma Shearer hopped up on the running board when Pearl’s limousine passed on parade in Norma’s Canadian hometown. William Drew tells the life and the drama and gives us a history well beyond just perils Pearl braved onscreen. In fact, she braved a good many in public life apart from movies, being progressive before progressive was fashionable if not expected. Her name was remembered best by those who grew up watching her exploits. Once these were gone, and eventually the films too, who was left? My father saw The Perils of Pauline in 1915, kept it in mind enough to speak of it fifty years later, so yes, Pearl White was meaningful, and still should be. Maybe William Drew’s fine book, and peruse of those serial chapters at You Tube, will get that accomplished. Either way, there is plentiful joy in both.

Charley Chase burns bright at Greenbriar, the more so thanks to Kit Parker DVD and Blu-Ray, where volumes have issued forth of the talking comedies, and now silents dating from 1927, all here in whole or surviving part thanks to search and reclaim by Chase devotees. Pretty much whoever follows classic comedy follows also Charley Chase, who used to be hard to access but really isn’t anymore with so much now available and more to come. These silents, as with so much of silents once they are restored and re-presented, routinely surpass what we expect. Several with Chase surprise for elements I don’t expect, always something not noticed before. When you sit alone in a room and laugh out loud, you know a comedy is working. Here’s kick beyond Chase and anyone he shares the screen with --- those titles by H.M. Walker, Hal Roach staff man who was Greek chorus to happenings we’re looking at, launching laughs before we even see Charley or the rest. Wit of Walker astonishes me, him having plied trade a hundred years ago. Who else of funny folk as far back score mightily as him? They say Walker while a maestro of clever titles fell down with dialogue once talkies arrived. True? Charley Chase wrote, directed, conceived lots of what went before cameras in addition to himself starring, an all-purpose comedy man with a brain thinking funny for all hours awake, probably in dreams too for ideas he’d show up for work with. Were great comedians taken for granted during the twenties? You’d think so for there being so many, and each so prolific. This newest Charley Chase set is replete with gems, plus there are bonuses to flesh out life and works from the Hal Roach lot, from which comedy emerged its sunniest.