Boots: The Rider of Death Valley and The Trial of Vivienne Ware
Call them bootleg, black market (discreetly “grey”), stuff of illicit
circulation but circulating widely nonetheless. This once was what film collecting
was all about. Anyone not dealing contraband was not dealing movies, at least movies
collectors wanted. Best brigands in the business are passed now. A number got
busted when the FBI was handmaiden to studios. Feds that cleaned out one dealer’s
house even took his Castle films, fact those were legit mattering not a whit. Few dealers were stopped by regulations, like Cagney and Robinson flipping Prohibition the bird. Film companies finally realized they could do better joining rather than beating
collectors. My first 16mm print in 1972 was Mutiny on the Bounty, the 1935
version, which I got from a vendor who appropriately lived in Death Valley, apropos to today’s topic. Buying unsanctioned discs is Ebay commonplace, and
look at what springs up on You Tube hourly. Pirates never had it better, nor
viewers to relish their bounty. Such seems an only route to much of what fans
long to see, devotees fated to dwell in moral twilight. Where Boots
Are Best thus debuts as a series, today’s entry its inaugural. |
| Lost in a Desert Hell --- Could You Trust Tom To Get You Out? |
THE RIDER OF DEATH VALLEY (1932) --- Let’s agree that Tom Mix line
readings are … eccentric? Most don’t know Tom from talkies, or at all for that
matter. I can think of no bigger star so forgot since his prime, except virtually
all of western names once revered by young and old, none more so than Mix, who
made enormous money when money was still real money. My back door disc of The Rider
of Death Valley came from heaven knows what “liberated” print that for all I
know was a same one William K. Everson used for his 2-11-80 NYU class. Everson
knew how lucky he was to score that as I am for the DVD slipped my way at a
cowboy show back when they still had cowboy shows (all gone, as in not a one
left, and if I’m wrong, do brighten my day by telling me so). To whom will it
matter that The Rider of Death Valley is lauded best of nine Mix talkies plus
his 1935 serial, The Miracle Rider? I’ve written of Mix before, radical gestures considering how obscure he’s become. There are corners of the Internet, and
Facebook, to celebrate him. Old-timers I knew, long gone now, waxed eloquent on
him. Nobody rode like Mix … that we know … but something about his performing
shifts to highest gear once Rider chips go down. He growls lines and acquits
like a cobra, his voice dry dust raspy and authentic for one of his wives
having shot Tom in the throat (had he left the cap off their toothpaste?). Threshold
question then: Is The Rider of Death Valley a good western? I argue yes, and the more so would if only Kino came out with a Mix Blu box (all nine of the
Universals --- imagine!). Rider begins in town then shifts to title valley for
as stark an account of water deprivation and slow death in the sun as any movie
made to then or since. Mix starts off like Randolph Scott in The Tall T, jolly
and jokey, until landscape closes in, then he’s determined, intense, utter
conviction pouring off him like desert sweat. Water runs out and villain
ride-alongs will trade their gold for a sip, but no, Tom has the canteens plus knowing
human nature, that is, humans being no d—n good. |
| He's Stern As Here, and Won't Buckle Under a Punishing Sun |
Fun if overdue is seeing bully and badman Fred Kohler in tears chasing
after a lake mirage and getting a mouthful of sand, vultures waiting their turn. Powerful image is Mix beating beloved Tony to make the
horse go back to his ranch for help, for which Lois Wilson chides Tom till he
tells her it’s the first time he ever struck Tony and it’s breaking his heart,
but there’s no other way to save their lives. Here’s as intense a desert trek
as I ever saw in a film. You wonder if they’ll get out of this. Location
work looks miserable as convincingly cracked lips on the cast. Kids should have
got purple hearts for getting through The Rider of Death Valley, being raw steak
even for 1932 and for adults same as youngsters. Mix takes customary punishment
for a man past fifty who’d had his body busted in a hundred ruining ways. Cue
the Schine’s Palace in Lockport (but what state?) giving away a Beautiful Live
Pony to some lucky kid, whoever he/she was, lucky that is till he/she gets home to Dad who’s
just come off a twelve-hour shift at the railroad yard with barely enough poke to
feed a wife and five others of brood. How do you suppose he’d react to Junior
leading even a free nag up to the door? (nag probably accurate, it unlikely the
Schine would be giving away Seabiscuit or his equivalent) Management doubtless took a cussing that day along with return of the animal. Then what? Long
since spent milk, but I could wonder how many unwanted pets were handed out at
matinees to cause no end of complication at home. You fret for the poor,
unwanted beasts gone from pillar to post and no one to finally claim them. Hope
this horse was finally a rescue for some person or entity other than glue
works. There’s a two-and-a-half-minute segment from The Rider of Death Valley on
You Tube that looks better than woebegone boot I have, so maybe there’s hope
for improved quality to eventually show up. In the meantime, we make do like Tom with his drying canteen.
 |
| Neither a Glowing Prospect, So What's Precode Pin-Up Lillian Bond To Do? |
THE TRIAL OF VIVIENNE WARE (1932) --- Long been a hound for You Tube, it being all the television I care to watch anymore. Others seem in accord if
statistics are any guide. Celebration of sensation and tabloid style media is timeless
theme at YT, it evoking The Trial of Vivienne Ware, humdinger of a precode dug from Fox
catacombs years back (late 60’s) by archivist Alex Gordon and put barely into
circulation, ignored thanks to barely part. William K.
Everson had a 16mm print, ran it at his NYU class, where many a classic was
born then regrettably forgot because studios cared too little to share with a
wider public. Word of Vivienne worth spread via collector tom-toms and renegade
discs spread at shows at which I scored one off a dealer since gathered to
reward. The Trial of Vivienne Ware thrills … no … exhilarates, as few of 30’s
kin can. What I said about YT and tabloids --- and cue hackneyed the more things
change, the more they stay, etc. You Tube videos on any/all topics routinely
grab us via clickbait “preview” clips and visual cues outlandish as any front
page of the New York Mirror in heady days, The Trial of Vivienne Ware reminding
me more of now than then that was 1932. Vivienne Ware is about Joan Bennett put
on a fry pan for murder, sharkish radio broadcasters on the scene, mere sheet
of glass separating them from courtroom proceedings. Did this go on during
the early thirties? I seem to remember Bruno Hauptmann tried publicly. Anyway,
there’s footage of him on the witness stand, and at You Tube appropriately. The
Trial of Vivienne Ware conducts hearings we’d much enjoy if reality served them
so raw, knives thrown at testifiers, witnesses on a verge of exposing a killer
shot dead in open court, all stuff of anarchic dreams and reported breathlessly by wireless press. What a circus radio must
have been if Vivienne is any guide.
 |
| Watch Zasu Here and Realize What a Consummate Actress She Could Be |
7 Comments:
Schine’s Palace in Lockport was in upstate New York.
A sad misfire was Blake Edwards's 1988 "Sunset", which fictionally teamed Tom Mix with Wyatt Earp. My expectation was a lively confrontation / contrast between a genuine historic figure and a Hollywood star preparing to play him. Almost at once they're comfortable coworkers, the script pointing out Mix's cowboy bona fides. So we're going to get these real sons of the West versus the artifice and jazz age sin of Hollywood? No. We quickly see it's the standard corrupt town out of a hundred noirs / adult westerns, so our two cynical cowboys are right at home. In the end it's a fancy period whodunit with no interesting friction between the characters or their environment, so you wait for a point or purpose that never comes.
Also, Malcolm McDowell's character is named Alfie Alperin and rose to stardom playing a Little Tramp, and naturally abandoned that to become a merciless studio mogul right around the time real comedy stars were peaking. Are we to infer this alternate universe Chaplin is meant to represent somebody or something real?
Thanks for the great tip on "The Rider of Death Valley". Watched it yesterday online and loved it. An instant addition to my list of favorite vintage westerns. Mix and Tony are both in terrific form. But the whole story's absorbing and beautifully executed. Special kudos to Lois Wilson and Forrest Stanley as well; each made the transition from silent to sound with real aplomb.
That list of titles brought back memories. The best dealer (who shall go unnamed) told me I was his favourite customer. I asked why. He replied, "You call. Ask for a title, I find it. I call you. You say, 'How much/' Everyone else spends an hour or more trying to knock down my price." I just figure if I want the best from people make them enthusiastic.
Compare those 16mm prices with what we now pay for higher quality, legal Blu-ray and DVD. I don't complain about the prices.
We are in a golden age.
The 1935 Mutiny on the Bounty is a good collector choice. One of those rarer titles that really can be watched many times over and still feel fresh. It always did have a slightly grainy dupe look. All the more surprising that the OCN turned up in the 21st century. Those 16mm lists are a reminder of the cost and the effort required back then. People today complain about card inserts being damaged and all sorts of technical impositions, but have no idea about film in the sense each print was unique.
Dan Mercer speaks to collecting and copyrights (Part One):
As I recall, we were standing early one morning by the stoop of a nondescript row home in one of the working class boroughs of New York, waiting for our host. Presently, we saw the slender figure of a man in a brown leather jacket walking towards us. His hair was graying and he had the pallor of someone who rarely experienced the sun. A gray man for a gray day. You raised a hand and called out, "Hey, Dick." Immediately he stopped and seemed to shrivel within his jacket, like Bob Steele after he was plugged by Bogart in "The Big Sleep." A moment later, he recovered and came up to us. Then commenced a weird and wonderful day, as Richard Bojarski shared with us various gems from his collection of films. I wondered, though, at his initial reaction. Did he owe someone money? Were there fellow collectors who had a beef with him?
It didn't occur to me that he might have been afraid of the FBI, as I knew so little about the film collecting scene then. You referred to the FBI in your piece as being "handmaiden to studios." So it was that a few years later there was a knock at Dick's door and the FBI did confiscate his collection. As did most collectors, he let it go, no doubt in the belief that he was guilty of holding copyrighted material and fortunate that the punishment was no more than its repossession. In that, however, he was most probably incorrect.
The Copyright Act made it a crime to "willingly and for profit" infringe a copyright or to knowingly aid and abet in such infringement. The penalty was a fine of $1,000 or one years imprisonment, or both. The MPAA Film Security Office was charged by the studios with protecting their copyrights and gradually attracted former FBI agents to administer it. Probably it was through their professional connections that the FBI itself became their private strong arm squad to enforce the criminal provisions of the Act. However that might have been justified, the manner in which the FBI did so was high handed and frightening in democratic republic. They generally never relied on warrants but simply entered the residence of a collector with no more than a knock on the door, and they usually took whatever films they found, whether copyrighted or not. The collector was then faced with the prospect of suing for the return of his prints before they were turned over to the Film Security Office. Few did so, the cost of a legal action almost always exceeding the value of the prints and the possibility of a fine and imprisonment being somewhat daunting.
As a matter of law, however, the collector in nearly every case would have had a perfect right to possession of his prints. The Copyright Act excluded property subject to "first sale" from its coverage. "First sale" referred to a transfer from the copyright holder to someone else, who thereafter could sell the item to anyone else, the copyright to it having been extinguished. For example, if you bought a new book at a book store, you could sell it after you were done reading it and have no concern about violating the Copyright Act.
With regards films, then, selling the print of a copyrighted film without authorization might be an infringement, but selling one that has been "first sold" is not.
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
In practice, large numbers of prints of films had in effect been "first sold," as when television stations were allowed to keep prints from a film package by paying a fee, when distributors made special arrangements with program directors, allowing them to keep certain prints, or when prints were sold to film salvage dealers, who would extract the silver content of black and white prints through a chemical process. If any of those prints were subsequently sold to other parties and eventually ended up in the hands of a collector, they were no longer subject to the Copyright Act.
These are, of course, legitimate "first sales." The prints of films also entered the market place through other, illegitimate means, as when additional copies not authorized by the studio were made at a film laboratory and then sold, or when bootleg copies of prints in the possession of a theater or television station would be made and sold. While such prints were not excluded from copyright protection, telling them apart from other prints that were could be difficult.
Taking into consideration first sale principles, such leading cases as United States vs. Drebin and United States vs. Atherton required the government to establish five things in order to obtain a criminal conviction: (1) Infringement of a copyright, (2) of a work that has not been the subject of a "first sale," (3) done willfully, (4) with knowledge that the copyrighted work has not been the subject of a "first sale," and (5) for profit. All elements, would have to be established beyond a reasonable doubt.
In view of the case law, it would have been very difficult if not impossible for the government to obtain a criminal conviction against the typical hobbyist film collector, like Richard Bojarski, who might have sold a few items in his collection now and then in order to obtain funds for additional prints. Even those collectors who posted advertisements in "The Big Reel" or other publications--"No rights given or implied"--and with the decided aim of making a profit, would probably have been protected, given the difficulty of proving all of the elements, including the demonstration that such a person knew that the print he was selling had not been "first sold."
As noted, however, few collectors availed themselves of this protection or forced the FBI to prove its case. I can only wonder at how many reels of film the Film Security Office ended up with that had been first sold or were out of copyright, or had even been issued by companies like Castle Films or Blackhawk for sale to collectors. No doubt its administrators chuckled to receive a Blackhawk print of a Buster Keaton film, given that 8 mm was not a format generally used for commercial exhibition, college shows in old gymnasiums aside. And no doubt they were not especially concerned, such tallies only enhancing the appearance of having done their job to the studios, however much anguish and heartbreak was left in its wake.
Post a Comment
<< Home