Trade Talk #6

 

What Trades Told: 1929 from 1970 Viewpoint

Films in Review was among few ways film folk kept in touch, (more/less) monthly means for kindred souls to share plus be reassured that others, if few, were like them. Write in and chances were they’d print your letter. Industry notables contributed, FIR house organ for the National Board of Review, which had been around long as movies themselves. Average press run per issue was 7980, this circa September 1970. There were over 4000 paid subscribers. I was on-off among them. Considering numbers printed, it’s no wonder eBay bulges with back issues. 3100 are lately listed. They go fairly cheap, two dollars and up, even less where bunched up. My submission of two multi-part articles, one about theatrical trailers, the other on reissues, got printed around 1989, 1990. Robin Little was editor at the time. Films in Review ranks high for picture history, easy to lose myself in whatever pile falls off the shelf. Certain writers were ubiquitous. William K. Everson showed up lots. Herman Weinberg had a regular column. One feature circa seventies was “Films on 8 and 16,” by Samuel A. Peeples. Clearly this was for collectors, but Peeples addressed more than just that. He had begun as a writer for westerns, mentored by Frank Gruber of prolific past penning them. Peeples made further contacts as he gained experience. Lancer was his TV series. There also was Star Trek which he helped Gene Roddenberry develop, and for which he wrote the second pilot which sold the series to NBC. Peeples did not discuss these things in his column. Latter was for helping fans find prints to home view, legal and above board of course. Sam died in 1997 and left his collection to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. There are 225 boxes open to scholars with no restrictions. Much of that is 8 and 16mm movies. I can’t picture researchers asking to watch Sam’s black-and-white flat print of Holiday for Lovers (1959), while silent titles are long superseded by digital versions superior in visual quality. Digital has its cruel way with analog antiquity.

One extraordinary thing I came across in the inventory was a King Kong model constructed by Willis O’Brien and used in the 1933 film. That needs to be in a vault, at least under glass where visitors to the library can easier worship it. As things stand, I suspect Sam’s accumulation of a lifetime sits largely ignored, as who recalls him apart from past readers of Films in Review? Such reality weighs heavy upon all collectors who’d ask what fate awaits treasure they have gathered and nurtered. One thing I realize for looking over Sam’s backlog: No two collectors were ever alike … choices in spite of overlap were nonetheless specific to him and could not be confused with anyone else. Collecting speaks to individual identity. None need compose a memoir so long as their collection survives to speak for them. Samuel Peeple’s accumulation tells posterity who he was. There also of course is the writing. Peeples’ column reads like an ongoing story of his life, at least life spent with classic film. He’d been a child of the twenties, born 1917, saw silents give way to talkies. He’d recall this for the August-September 1970 issue of Films in Review. Sam’s mother was in the amusement business and so canvassed towns surrounding home base. Berg where they lived was small, theatres not yet wired. Some closed for lacking funds to convert, same as my hometown and lamented “Rose Theatre” that shuttered soon as ’29 curtain rang down. Sam watched silent versions of shows city dwellers got to see and hear, The Broadway Melody, Alias Jimmy Valentine, The Canary Murder Case. His being road worthy thanks to Mom gave Sam access to mute plus talkie treatments, each before or after the other, comparisons constant, him evaluating both at leisure.

Was this luck or what, Sam born in a right place at an ideal time. Late as 1970 he still remembered in detail. Alias Jimmy Valentine was “a good little melodrama” minus talk, running 7142 feet sans talk, while sound Jimmy expanded to 7803 feet, difference being seven minutes of “stand-still dialogue that was unnecessary in the silent version and would have made it drag.” What entertained before was “cinematically and dramatically useless, but necessary, in order to permit actors to speak dialogue.” Imagine being eleven (Alias Jimmy Valentine released in late 1928) and getting to compare technologies, one rushing in, the other being eased out. Stark was one Broadway Melody more/less beside the other. How far apart was the talking/singing Melody from what live accompany supplied in still "silent" houses? Sam saw The Broadway Melody with sound in the city at 105 minutes, then silent back home for 66 minutes. “Of course the musical numbers are much briefer in the silent version,” he recalled. Peeples attributed slowness of conversion not just to expense, but which system to adopt, theatres knowing but one could survive. To choose was to gamble, not unlike pick between Beta or VHS. We know sound on film won, but how could showmen long ago have anticipated that? For a meantime, they'd play safe with both silence and sound, at least till viewer preference could sort it all out. Sam, being a boy, liked his action fare, sound chosen “especially” for the “airplane ones.” Live accompany still suited best for “spooky background music” by pianos or organists addressing mysteries and “mood pictures.” For Sam, The Unholy Night was “a bore” with talk, him “loving every minute” of the same show where sound was absent save (again) that spooky music. This didn’t go so much for also mysterious The Canary Murder Case, which needed talk for explanation, especially of a “sound gimmick” around which the resolution revolved (again note length difference as estimated by Peeples: Canary with sound at 7171 feet, silent 5843 feet).

Sam saw seemingly everything off 1929’s menu. “It really was a marvelous year,” he wrote, to which we could say, Yes, it really was … and wouldn’t it be marvelous to have experienced it first hand like Samuel Peeples. Consider sobering truth of no one left to tell us what that year was like at theatres. Reading Peeples’ essay is for me like watching an early thirties film where tens of thousands of people watch a football game. You know they are virtually all gone, yet here they all were in the sunshine and having the time of their finite lives. Easy to wish I’d been around in 1929 to see The Canary Murder Case new, but then where does that leave me in 2026? Certainly not here with the rest of you. Sam chose a favorite for that pivotal year, nominees The Virginian, The Cocoanuts, Noah’s Ark, The Iron Mask, The Wolf of Wall Street (where oh where is that one now?), his pick perhaps unexpected … Paul Leni’s The Last Warning, another where he saw both silent and sound editions. Sam said Leni was such a skilled director that one couldn’t distinguish between the two, that Leni “retained the full fluidity of his mobile camera where other directors confined their cameras to sound-proof booths and boxes.” What survives of The Last Warning is the silent print, lately restored by Universal and released on Blu-Ray by Flicker Alley. That’s OK by me. From what program notes report of the sound version, we are much the better with silence, that is apart from music and effects supplied by Flicker Alley, us lucky to have The Last Warning at all. Much as I would have enjoyed canvassing theatres with Peeples and seeing silent plus sound versions of 1929 releases, chances are my vote would have tipped heavily toward the silents. Remember Murnau’s City Girl? Historians say we’re blessed it survives silent as the director intended, the talking pastiche doubtless lost for good. And what was that about Fox bringing another guy in to graft dialogue onto The Black Watch after John Ford finished it? Much of 1929 product was crazy quilt in extremis. Truth is most of it could not be digested by latter-day general viewership, but let’s be thankful Samuel Peeples stayed long enough to look back from forty years’ distance to tell us what being there was all about.