Bootlegs No More #4

 

Further Online Pearl Dive: Two-Color Dix, Norma's Last Silent But With Sound, and Cats Scratch Canaries to Disc Accompany

The Vitaphone Soundtrack Project astounds anew, each upload a revelation. They make multiple landfalls a week with treasures unheard, sometimes unseen, latter at last on quality terms not accessible before. Often they’ll go reel by reel as a feature is assembled from elements gathered, Vitaphone discs unearthed like combing tombs in Egypt. Platters are extant, or they are not. Studios may have them and choose not to share. Same with archives. VSP is a citizen’s archive. There should be, ultimately will be, more like them. Whatever is found is funneled to a fanship hoping the Project knows how much we appreciate them. Of late is Redskin (1929), Paramount’s two-color modern-set saga of the West, its native-borns torn between tradition and white man ways. Richard Dix stars, notable Noble Johnson a primary threat. Redskin was offered years ago as part of an “American Film Archives” DVD box, long out of print and not cheap when they surface. VSP has that beat anyway for finding more Vitaphone discs and wedding them to High-Def image courtesy the Library of Congress.

Redskin uses Technicolor for splendor of nature, then switches to tints when Dix is seized as a boy and put in a white school, his college career also rendered in monotones. Mood is enhanced or subdued by whatever drama suggests, a technique common to silent cinema but lost once talkers imposed their sameness. Kevin Brownlow wrote about Redskin in The War, the West, and the Wilderness. He as would others noted social issues touched upon in early sections with action seizing emphasis for a vigorous third act. Redskin is among reward for copyrights falling like nine pins, and note upcoming New Years gift that is all of 1931 free to stream. Ads are rife at You Tube unless you premium-subscribe which lots do because it’s well worth the tab and they offer hundreds of comp movies besides, features licensed by YT and containing many classics. VSP can’t always locate whole of sound for a feature although they do reassemble available records to cover sections where accompany is currently missing (not to despair as these records continue to turn up).

I couldn’t tell a difference, so skilled are their tech efforts. Lately VSP came across sound for the last two reels of Seven Footprints to Satan, which Greenbriar loudly lauded last year when Serial Squadron released the feature with a modern score. What VSP tenders is twenty so-far minutes of what went out to 1929 audiences, Reels Five and Six so far. “What music they make” as Dracula said, and here’s hoping the other four discs turn up, which considering re-surface rate of these relics, I’m more than hopeful they will. Same for Reel Two of 1928’s A Lady of Chance, where Norma Shearer falls in with crook Lowell Sherman and minions. All VSP has is one Vitaphone record that covers ten minutes of screen action, a story within the story that pleased me wholly plus gave hope that maybe we’ll someday get the whole thing with original music accompany.

Warner Archive offers a standard DVD of A Lady of Chance, a good print with a lately composed score. I wonder if Warners has any of the original Vitaphone music/effects disc for A Lady of Chance. If so, they should make them available to the Project, unless of course Warner Archive intends to release the feature on Blu-Ray. VSP’s in-progress ventures are fun following, and of course we are all invited to keep eyes open for Vitaphone records that might turn up … where? … at flea markets, eBay, attics, possibilities are infinite. Met a guy once who was using them for serving plates. I am guardedly optimistic that A Lady of Chance and Seven Footprints to Satan will someday be complete in terms of picture and original sound, but that will need a fan community’s diligence. Rest assured this stuff is out there, and in the most unexpected places. In the meantime, I await whatever treasure the Vitaphone Soundtrack Projects rains down upon us, and appreciate their efforts to rescue and revive our early sound heritage.