The Silent Film Quarterly Volume 3
Fall 2017
Issue I
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The Silent Film Quarterly
—————————————————————————— Volume III, Issue 1 Fall 2017 Table of Contents Editor’s Message 4 Silent Salon: Charles Epting 5 Silent Film Quarterly and Wellema Hat Co. Team Up for a Memorable Evening
4500 Sunset Boulevard:
Charles Epting 7
Early Women Filmmakers— An International Anthology:
Lewis Walker 9
A New Effort to Have a Plaque Placed at the Site of D.W. Griffith’s Former Studio
Blu-ray and DVD Review
Getting Away With Art, Part I:
Mark Pruett 11
Reckoning with Regulation in Pre-Hays America
Hometowns to Hollywood:
Annette Bochenek
16
Jobyna Ralston
Silent-ology: Lea Stans 20 Griffith’s Kids
Motion Picture Studios of G.P. von Harleman California:
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Review of the Wonderful Development of the Film Producing Industry on the Pacific Coast
Pulling Teeth to Find Kevin John Charbeneau 46 Nelson McDowell: The Man of Many Hats
Movie Film from Camera to Screen: Tireless Industry Working Day and Night Makes Countless Reels of Celluloid that Animate the Silver Sheets
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The Silent Film Quarterly • 4 Editor’s Message After promising no further delays in the production of this magazine, I am afraid that my professional and personal lives have once again forced me to produce two issues at once. The good news is that a part of this delay was caused by an upgrade in technology; rather than attempting to format the magazine on Apple Pages, I am now using Adobe InDesign (which I should have been doing from the start, but hindsight is 20-20). This meant entirely re-creating Issues 9 and 10 in a new program after I had already spent months laying them out. I believe the changes to the magazine to be a substantial step forward. Over the last few months I have been fortunate to visit several silent film landmarks that I have been meaning to for years. Perhaps the most significant is Thomas Edison’s New Jersey laboratory, arguably the birthplace of the motion picture industry (at least from a comercially-viable standpoint). While many great men on both sides of the Atlantic made important technical contributions to early cinema, it was Edison who first exploited the full potential of moving pictures. To walk in his footsteps and see some of his earliest inventions in-person was nothing short of remarkable. More recently I found myself in Dewey, Oklahoma, home of the Tom Mix Museum. Although Mix’s time in Dewey was brief, the museum has carried on his legacy for over 50 years. Artifacts from his military career all the way up through his eventual stardom are packed into display cases; the number of personal belongings that the museum owns is quite honestly overwhelming. The main attraction is undeniably the small metal suitcase which caused his untimely death in 1940; a macabre artifact to be sure, but an important one. Not far from Dewey is another can’t-miss attraction: the Will Rogers Museum in Claremore. While Rogers’ silent career is somewhat under-represented, there are a number of artifacts from his Ziegfeld days, as well as plenty of posters and lobby cards from his more popular talkies. Will Rogers’ grave worth the trip to Claremore alone, while the rotunda of the museum features a replica of the statue that stands in the National Statuary Hall in Washington, DC. Will’s birthplace and childhood home is preserved in nearby Oologah, just about a 10 minute drive from the museum. A charmingly-outdated voiceover by Will Rogers, Jr. plays on a loop as you guide yourself through the tiny farmhouse. Seeing the humble beginnings of one of the 20th century’s largest personalities is incredibly poignant. Before becoming the most beloved man in America, Will Rogers was a regular person like the rest of us. As I write this introduction I am putting the finishing touches on Issue 10 as well. I am so enamored with InDesign that I hope to go back and reformat the first eight issues at some point, in order to ensure consistency in style and design. Until then, I hope you enjoy Issue 9. As always, I think you for your continued support and readership. —Charles Epting, editor
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Silent Salon: Silent Film Quarterly and Wellema Hat Co. Team Up for a Memorable Evening by Charles Epting On August 26, 2017, Silent Film Quarterly in conjunction with Wellema Hat Company held the inaugural “Silent Salon.” A social hour followed by a screening of Harold Lloyd’s 1920 masterpiece Haunted Spooks (complete with live accompaniment by the incredible John Reed Torres), this event was the first of what we hope to be a regular series of such gatherings for passionate silent film fans. Cody Wellema is the entrepreneur behind Wellema Hat Company, and I can honestly say that his hats are the epitome of style, class, and distinction. Using vintage hat-making tools that he has spent years acquiring, Cody is a scholar of vintage fashion and his passion is evi-
dent in each and every piece he makes. His wonderful shop in Altadena served as the perfect backdrop for our first Silent Salon, and we are excited to work together with him on future project. It was originally my intention to project Haunted Spooks on a 1939 Keystone Model R-8 projector, using a vintage Blackhawk print of the film. However, the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry, and the night before the event my projector bulb burnt out after only a few minutes of use. Fortunately a modern digital projector was on hand, and the quality of the film was better than ever could have been achieved from an 8mm print. I have gotten to know John Reed
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Custom show card painted by Golden West Sign Arts.
Torres over the last few years from his playing at the Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo, in addition to his appearances at ragtime festivals. John impressed everyone in attendance when he positioned a mirror on top of the piano in order to watch the film, being projected behind his back, as he played along. Listening to John improvise his way through a si-
Editor Charles Epting, hat-maker Cody Wellema, and pianist John Reed Torres.
lent film is like being transported back a century—he is nothing short of a genius when it comes to capturing the sounds of the early 20th century. Perhaps the most amazing part of the evening for me was seeing a local family from Altadena who brought their three-year-old daughter along to the event. From the second we dimmed the lights and the film started, she was enraptured. Her face lit up at Lloyd’s many silly gags, and her parents told me afterwards just how much she had enjoyed herself. Many people I have interviewed have told similar stories of young children falling in love with the classic silent clowns—seeing it firsthand was incredibly uplifting. Future events will be scheduled shortly, and will be advertised on Silent Film Quarterly’s social media pages. If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please consider attending our next Silent Salon—if it’s anything like the first, I think you’ll have a wonderful time.
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The site of D.W. Griffith’s Hollywood studio today. It was here that he filmed The Birth of a Nation, Intolerance, and Broken Blossoms.
4500 Sunset Boulevard: A New Effort to Have a Plaque Placed at the Site of D.W. Griffith’s Former Studio by Charles Epting “I have heard him called a poet and philosopher and a genius and a general and numerous other things. I dare say he is a little of all of them.”
—The Los Angeles Times, November 19, 1916
With regards to the artistic nature of cinema, I do not believe there has ever been a more important figure than D.W. Griffith. Whereas Eadweard Muybridge, Thomas Edison, and countless others perfected the science of creating moving pictures, Griffith singlehandedly shaped movies from trivial entertainment to highbrow art. A 1916 profile in Photoplay states this fact much more eloquently than I could ever hope to:
He discovered a world of moving pictures; puerile, vulgarly debasing in their triviality; an entertainment one degree removed from a magic lantern show; a passing joke that was novelly attractive as dime museums formerly attracted…sustenance for the people who gape, and first aids to the yawn. That moving picture sphere in the universe of banalities received him coldly, apprehensively, as if it foresaw its dissolution into fertilizer for Art, thought, genius.