Tag Archives: Silent films

Lady Lumberjack

June 11, 2011 By in Amateur, Women Tags: 2 Comments

Our story begins with Dorothea Mitchell, born in England in 1877 and raised in India, where her father was involved in railway construction. Disappointed in having no sons, Dorothea’s mother encouraged and her sister to becoming practiced in what were considered manly occupations, such as carpentry, marksmanship and military-style riding. The family returned to England in the 1890s, and when her father died Dorothea became, in her words, “the man of the family”. She emigrated to Canada in 1904, ran a boarding house in Toronto, then became the companion help to a mining engineer and his wife at Silver Mountain, Ontario. She went on to run a general store, then to manage a sawmill. Her family joined her when she succeeded, unusually, in obtaining land under the Homestead Act, such as was not generally granted to women.

In 1921 she moved to Port Arthur, becoming a teacher and then a bookkeeper. Her hobby was photography, and in 1929 she met Fred Cooper, a bakery store owner, who had purchased a 16mm film camera when he and his wife went on a trip to England. Cooper and Nitchell were seized with an enthusiasm to make a fiction film. Cooper and Mitchell established the Amateur Cinema Society of Thunder Bay (aka Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society), which became a member of the Amateur Cinema League – an American-based but worldwide federation of amateur film clubs, evidence in itself of the great enthusiasm for amateur film production (particularly dramatic films) at this time, encouraged by the introduction of 16mm film stock in 1923.

Mitchell first looked for a script in filmmaking manuals of the period, but finding nothing to her liking decided to write a feature film script for herself. The Amateur Cinema Society of Thunder Bay’s first production was A Race for Ties (1929), directed by Harold Harcourt (a one-time military adviser to some Hollywood films), written by Dorothea Mitchell (she also acted in a small part) and photographed by Fred Cooper. Based on Mitchell’s own life experiences, the film told the tale of the competition between a small sawmill owner and a large timber company to obtain a major railway construction contract. She later wrote an account of the film’s production, from which this extract is taken:

Neither had any of us the foggiest notion how long the completed story would run. We just kept going. (The ultimate was 1600ft). Directly after a roll was exposed, it had to go east to be processed and on its return the cameraman, director and I would congregate in my office (evenings of course), run it through a projector and cut it up. As Secretary Treasurer (and a few other odd jobs for good measure). I kept a record of every clipping, placing each in numbered section of egg-boxes – I’d dozens of them! – until interiors were taken and could be inserted in appropriate spots. Yes, there was ample unseen work, as well as fun. It may interest modern amateur-movie makers to know that projectors at that time were treacherous creatures! If stopped while the lamp was “on,” the film scorched – naturally adding to the ticklishness of the constant reviewing necessary.

The film was followed just a few months later by production, Sleep Inn Beauty (1929), a short comedy about a bathing beauty contest, directed, written and photographed by the same trio.

A Race for Ties (1929)

The Society’s final production was to have been The Fatal Flower (1930), but although photography was completed, a lack of funds and apparently some waning enthusiasm from other Society members meant that the 45-minute film remained unedited and unviewed. Mitchell went on to take charge of the Voluntary Registration of Canadian Women during the Second World War, took up amateur filmmaking again in her sixties with the Victoria Amateur Movie Club, then turned to writing short stories and an autobiography of her younger days, Lady Lumberjack, published in 1968. She died in 1976, aged ninety-nine.

Happily, Mitchell’s films, along with her papers, have survived, and an active project exists to research and promote the work of Mitchell and the Amateur Cinema Society of Thunder Bay, centred on the website www.ladylumberjack.ca. Named after the title of the Society’s final, unfinished film, the aims of the Fatal Flower Project are to make available again the films made by the Society and now preserved by Library and Archives Canada, on DVD and online; to republished the book Lady Lumberjack; to produce educational packages; and boldest of all to finish off that unfinished film, The Fatal Flower. Using Mitchell’s original footage, the Project has edited the film and added its own titles in a style emulating that of Mitchell’s earlier films, produced a music score and even created period-style posters.

The Fatal Flower (1930), as reconstituted in 2002 by The Fatal Flower Project

And there’s more. Local filmmaker Kelly Saxberg, Fatal Flower Project member and someone greatly enthused by the story of her enterprising predecessor, has produced a documentary, Dorothea Mitchell: A Reel Pioneer, which tells the story of Mitchell, the Amateur Cinema Society of Thunder Bay and the reconstruction of The Fatal Flower. The documentary is embedded at the top of this post, and as you will have seen, A Race for Ties and The Fatal Flower have recently been made available online through Vimeo. The documentary can also be ordered on DVD.

The Fatal Flower Project talks up Dorothea Mitchell a good deal. The Fatal Flower itself is now headed by the words “a film by Dorothea Mitchell”, which wouldn’t have been on the original titles had they been written. There is much about the importance of her work to Canadian film history (A Race for Ties is championed as “Canada’s First Amateur Feature-Length Film”), particularly women in early Canadian film history (the documentary compares her to the rather better-known Nell Shipman). The literature stresses the importance of the films to the history of what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario, and there is much in the films that was clearly aimed at a very specific audience, the films haing been screened locally at the time to raise funds for charity.

Are the films any good? Of their kind, they are more than competent. They have all the hesitancies and gauchness of amateur dramatic films, but they were put together competently and entertainingly. Mitchell could construct an extended film story, and Harold Harcourt did rather well as a director for military adviser. There is good, varied use of locations, and the performances of the amateur cast are fine. You might need to be Canadian to see the most in the films and their story, still more someone from Thunder Bay, but there is something for anyone in the tale of Dorothea Mitchell and her film society, and the films charm and entertain. Perhaps most importantly the project serves to highlight the great enterprise, enthusiasm and cine-literacy demonstrated by the large number of amateur filmmakers at this time, whose love of the cinema could not be contained simply by going to the cinema. A very good job has been done all round.

The Lady Lumberjack site is at www.ladylumberjack.ca. It has detailed background information on Mitchell’s life and her films.

The films and documentary are available to view on the Lady Lumberjack Vimeo channel. SleepInn Beauty is not available online at present.

Mitchell’s books, all of the films and documentary are available for sale from www.ladylumberjack.ca/order.html

Chaplin in Babylon

June 8, 2011 By in Comedy, Festivals, Performers Tags:

Last year saw the appearance of a new silent film festival, the StummfilmLIVEfestival put on by the Babylon Kino cinema in Berlin, a 1929 cinema with original Art Deco screen and refurbished original organ. That first festival was a bold statement of intent, with an impressive ten-day line-up of classic silents. The Babylon Kino has made good on its promise to make the festival an annual event, and to keep up the eye-catching programming standard.

And so, from 15 July to 7 August 2011 the second StummfilmLIVEfestival will feature the complete film works of Charlie Chaplin – 80 films in twenty-four days (the filmographers among you might like to comment on whether there are precisely eighty films in Chaplin’s silent filmography). A full programme has not been published as yet, but there will be ten main screenings of the silent features with orchestral accompaniment by the Neues Kammerorchester Potsdam, conducted by Timothy Brock, on these dates:

15 Jul – The Gold Rush
16 Jul – City Lights
17 Jul – The Gold Rush
22 Jul – Modern Times
23 Jul – The Circus
24 Jul – The Kid
30 Jul – City Lights
31 Jul – A Woman of Paris
06 Aug – The Gold Rush
07 Aug – The Chaplin Review

Other musical accompaniment will be provided by Neil Brand, and Geraldine Chaplin is the guest of honour. As the Babylon website notes (in German only), eighty years ago, on 9 March 1931 Chaplin visited Berlin to promote his new film City Lights, so this is a sort of anniversary coming home for Chaplin. Tickets can now be booked for the orchestral screenings, and there are further details – in German only – on the festival site.

Female Hamlet

June 5, 2011 By in DVD and Blu-Ray, Performers, Theatre, Women Tags:

Asta Nielsen in Hamlet (1921)

The second notable Edition Filmmuseum DVD release to tell you about is Hamlet & Die Filmprimadonna, to be issued on 10 June 2011. It was 2009 when the DVD label first announced that a DVD of Asta Nielsen’s Hamlet (1920), from the coloured print discovered in 2005, was forthcoming. Whether it was licensing issues, or technical matters that held up the release I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter – all that matters is that such a key film, from a fine restored print, and with a highly commendable score, is available on DVD at last. It certainly ought to have an impact.

The Danish actress Asta Nielsen was probably the leading European film performer of the 1910s. Though her dark demeanour and unconventional beauty probably led to a lack of success in the USA, in European countries, especially Germany, she was revered, with films such as Afgrunden (The Abyss) (1910), Balletdanserinden (1911), Die Suffragette (1913) being among the most iconic and forward-looking of their age. She and husband/director Urban Gad moved to Germany in 1911 and it was in that country, after she had established the Art-Film company, that Nielsen (now parted from Gad) embarked a radical film interpretation of Hamlet. Possibly by this time Nielsen’s star was a little on the wane, but her taste for the bold and challenging was undimmed.

It was a bold enough decision to film Shakespeare, whose plays had lost favour with cinema audiences and producers once feature films had come in. But Nielsen and her directors Sven Gade and Heinz Schall went further. Though the essential structure of the film was taken from Shakespeare’s play, they went back to Shakespeare’s source material, in particular Saxo Grammaticus, to rid the play of its Renaissance trappings. And then they went further by making Hamlet a woman. The scriptwriter Erin Gepard apparently found justification for this in a obscure work of Shakespearean criticism, The Mystery of Hamlet (1881), by one Edward P. Vining. Vining’s earnest expressed thesis was that the deep-rooted mysteries lying at the hear of the play and particularly the character of Hamlet could be readily explained if you understood that Hamlet was a woman, forced to disguise her sex for political expediency, with the added complication of being in love with Horatio.

Here is some of Vining’s argument:

There is not only a masculine type of human perfection, but also a feminine type; and when it became evident that Hamlet was born lacking in many of the elements of virility, there grew up in him, as compensation, many of the perfections of character more properly the crown of the better half of the human race. All mankind has recognized the deep humanity of the melancholy prince, and many have been puzzled to find that they were instinctively compelled to bow before him in admiration, while still finding in him so many faults and weaknesses. The depths of human nature which Shakespeare touched in him have been felt by all, but it has scarcely been recognized that the charms of Hamlet’s mind are essentially feminine in their nature.

One has only to argue that Hamlet could have his feminine side and yet remain a prince to put Vining’s arguments in their place, but it is true that there have been a number of female Hamlets on the stage from the 18th century onwards. Among the stage performers who were not content to be confined to playing Ophelia have been Sarah Siddons in the 18th century, Charlotte Crampton, Clare Howard, Alice Marriott and Alma Murray in the 19th, and in more recent times Frances de la Tour and Angela Winkler. The evidence of such performers suggests both something particularly feminine in the character of Hamlet, but also a desire to lay claim to an iconically male role.

Perhaps the most notable female stage Hamlet also became the first film Hamlet when Sarah Bernhardt was filmed in 1900 in the duel scene from Hamlet. Not only was it the first film Hamlet but it was the first Shakespeare sound film, as it was made for the Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, with the film synchronised to a phonograph recording. Female screen Hamlets post-Nielsen have been rare, though the Turkish actress Fatam Girik was the star of İntikam Meleği (1977), English title the helpfully literal Female Hamlet. It is perhaps because it is so often such a struggle just to get Shakespeare filmed that few producers or performers have felt any need to takes things further and explore such gender reversal. Opportunities on the stage have been that much greater in number, as Tony Howard documents in his excellent Women as Hamlet: Performance and Interpretation in Theatre, Film and Fiction.

Nielsen’s interpretation was therefore part of a clear (if marginal) stage tradition, but was something of a bolt out of the blue for film. There was nothing really to compare it to in 1921, and little since – it is a film that stands on its own. It is Nielsen’s great accomplishment that we immediately accept her as Hamlet. Her androgynous looks help to a degree, but crucially she is not trying to be a man playing Hamlet (as Bernhardt and her predecssors had done) – she plays a woman who must disguise herself as a man. There is no questioning of the rightness of the idea when we watch the film, and little sense of any forcing of the narrative to fit the thesis. It works on its own terms. It has its absurdities, inevitably, particularly when Horatio discovers that the dying Hamlet has been a woman all along, but that may simply be a fault of our modern eyes. Technically the film is no masterpiece. It is plainly directed, somewhat meanly produced, and not memorably performed aside from Nielsen. But it does succeed as a consistently imagined world, where people live, work, rule and affairs of state take place. As I wrote previously here about seeing the film in 2007, “there is a keen sense of palace life going on while the central figures progressively, and madly, destroy one another”. Moreover, there is no sense at all of something translated from stage to screen. The best Shakespearean cinema is invariably where cinema comes first.

The Edition Filmmuseum DVD derives from the colour version (i.e. tinted and toned) discovered in 2005 and restored by the Deutsches Filminstitut. It comes with a new score by Michael Riessler which I found especially haunting and appropriate when I heard it in 2007. The release is a two-DVD set. Disc 1 is the film (110 mins). Disc 2 has Die Filmprimadonna (1913), starring Nielsen and directed by Urban Gad; Nielsen home movies, films on the restoration process and a short entitled Der elektronische Hamlet 2007 (2008).

Bioscope Newsreel no. 25

June 3, 2011 By in Animation, Newsreel, Television and radio, Wildlife Tags:

Paul Merton, a sign, and an orange

Another week has gone by, and silent films continues to make the headlines – almost literally so in the case of our first news story. Read on.

The continuing story of Zepped
Silent films made it through to the popular consciousness this week with the widely-publicised news of the upcoming (June 29th) auction of a curious 1916 film called Zepped (previously reported on by the Bioscope in detail). Amazingly the story made it to the main BBC news, plus a wide number of newspapers. The film, found on eBay, combines routine animation of the period with clips from Chaplin films. The ignorant claims being made in the press for what is a minor of work of passing interest to Chaplin experts and early animation buffs are frankly embarassing, though I dare say its owners will have the last laugh if they really do get the six-figure sum they are hoping for. Only if the figure includes pence, that’s what the Bioscope thinks… Read more.

Merton’s Hollywood
However, another instance of the popularisation of silent films has been surprisingly successful. Paul Merton’s earlier programmes on silent film comedy have been a bit of a mixed bag – enthusiastic but muddled. Paul Merton’s Birth of Hollywood, however, started off rather well last week, with an opinionated but informative and generally disciplined account of Hollywood’s formative years. We have quite high hopes of this evening’s second episode, which covers the Fatty Arbuckle scandal. Read more.

Napoleon’s maps
We have already enthused about The Cine-Tourist, a website on the mysterious and poetic connection between films and maps. Just up on the site is a page on the use of map imagery in Napoléon vu par Abel Gance (1927). It’s an engrossing and illuminating piece of close visual analysis, warmly recommended. Read more.

The balancing bluebottle
Those in the UK might like to listen out on Radio 4 this Sunday at 13:30 for a repeat of The Balancing Bluebottle, the engaging programme from 2009 on naturalist filmmaker F. Percy Smith, one of the great obscure filmmaker of the silent era. It’s presented by the Science Museum’s Tim Boon and the Bioscope makes a brief appearance, interviewed in a windy corner of Leicester Square. Read more.

The Bray Animation Project
A fine new website has been published by Tom Stathes dedicated to research into the 1913-1927 output of American animation studio Bray, producers of such series as Colonel Heeza Liar, Happy Hooligan and Krazy Kat, and featuring the work of Pat Sullivan, Max Fleischer, Pat Sullivan and John Bray himself. There is a studio history, filmography, ample illustrations and a discussion board. Read more.

‘Til next time!

Poor people

June 1, 2011 By in Children, DVD and Blu-Ray, Magic lanterns, Pre-cinema, Social themes Tags: 1 Comment

Screening the Poor 1888-1914

Two posts are coming up on two important DVD releases from that excellent label Edition Filmmuseum. Post number one is on an innovative two-DVD set of magic lantern slides and early films, Screening the Poor 1888-1914.

Cinema was the ‘poor man’s theatre’ (to use a common phrase of the time); it also spoke to and documented the lives of the poor. In doing so it built on a tradition of social concern filtered through visual entertainment that had its roots in the magic lantern. In church halls, schools and missions throughout the late Victorian period, audiences were presented with sentimental but often heart-rending tales of the hardship suffered by those at the lowest rung on the ladder. The showmen, lecturers and propagandists who put on such lantern shows swiftly adopted the cinematograph as an additional weapon in their armoury, with early projectors often capable of presenting both film and slides. This multimedia nature of early ‘cinema’ shows is well-known, but is seldom reflected in modern-day exhibition of early film, still less in DVD releases. And that is what makes Screening the Poor so unusual – it brings together the lantern and the cinematograph on DVD in a conscious echo of the programmes of the late 1890s/early 1900s. The blurb for the DVD explains this further:

Around 1900, the issues of poverty and poor relief were the source of heated controversy. This DVD illustrates in seven chapters how examinations of the ‘Social Question’ were presented in magic lantern slide sets and early films. On the screens of auditoriums, Sunday schools, music-halls, cinemas and churches, visitors could witness orphans freezing to death in the snow, drunkards plunging their families into misery and helpless old people begging for a scrap of bread. Audiences experienced poignant moving pictures in performances with music, singing and recitations. The
photographic and film industries delivered glass slide sets and films in very large runs on a variety of themes relating to poverty.

This DVD recalls the forgotten art of projection and presents it anew on the modern electronic screen: drawing on original images and using authentic projection equipment, Ensemble illuminago shows enchanting Victorian slide shows and films in a live musical performance at the Munich Film Museum. Digital slideshows reconstruct the interaction between slide sets und text recitals, and early silent films are accompanied with music as they were a century ago: piano and violin underscore the moods that find visual expression in the films.

Nowadays it is rather unusual to find both films and slide sets presented on one DVD. Around 1900 it was common knowledge that the “moving pictures” in a film had evolved from photographic slide sets. Showmen, touring lecturers, music-hall entrepreneurs and cinema operators often used both projection media alternately in their live shows.

It is also unusual to compile DVDs thematically, according to social themes, rather than in a form that reflects pure film history (such as the output of a studio, director or actor). So this is a curated DVD, and the words below are from the DVD booklet, written by Martin Loiperdinger and Ludwig Vogl-Bienek. Whether an item is a film or a set of magic lantern slides is identified at the start of each description. Often the same subject from the same literary source (particularly the poems of George R. Sims, a once highly popular and influential documenter of the lives of London’s poor) cross from lantern to cinematograph. So, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now …

Comment les pauvres mangent à Paris

DVD 1
Slumming
Charitable organisations and dedicated journalists decried the misery of the slums in industrial cities. ‘Slumming’ was the term used to describe tourist outings or philanthropic day-trips to witness the poverty. Those who eschewed direct confrontation could visit magic lantern shows or the cinema: the photographic and film industries provided a constant supply of new material covering diverse issues of the ‘Social Question’.

  • Magic Lantern: The Magic Wand (GB 1889). Producer: York & Son, Text: George R. Sims. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard. – During an excursion through the slums of London, an author hears the story of an 8-year-old girl who discovers a magical way to cope with her mother’s death.
  • Film: Comment les pauvres mangent à Paris / How the Poor Dine in Paris (FR 1910). Producer: Pathé. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – The first film reportage about the ‘clochards’ of Paris: it is difficult to distinguish the extras acting in the film from the real homeless people.
  • Film: Le Violoniste della carità / The Two Violonists (IT 1910). Producer: Cines. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & violin) – Two elegant young ladies embark on a slumming adventure: they swap their clothes with two poor sisters and perform as street musicians in their place.
  • Film: La Tournée des Grands Ducs / Seeing the Real Thing (FR 1910). Producer: Pathé, Director: Yves Mirande, Cast: Armand Numès, Gaston Sylvestre, La Polaire. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano ) – This film parodies the slumming trips made by members of Paris high society. An acting troupe satisfies the demand for entertainment by playing ‘real Apaches’.

Children in Misery
The huge number of poor children was a central issue of the ‘Social Question’. They were not to blame for their wretched situation – and their need of help was obvious. Nonetheless, they were often suspected of being petty criminals. Slide shows and film screenings, however, usually presented impoverished children to their audiences as needy creatures deserving of help and affection.

  • Magic Lantern: Ora pro nobis (GB 1897). Producer: Bamforth, Text: A. Horspool, Music by M. Piccolomini. Live Performance: illuminago – Karin Bienek, Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Piano: Judith Herrmann – Ignored by passing churchgoers, an orphan girl freezes to death at her mother’s grave – an appeal to the Christian duty to provide help and alms to the poor.
  • Film: Le Bagne des gosses / Children’s Reformatory (FR 1907). Producer: Pathé. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & violin) – An orphan boy flees from a correctional institution in which children aged between eight and twelve are mistreated in the manner of prisoners in a penal colony.
  • Film: Bébé veut imiter St. Martin / Baby Pantomimes St. Martin (FR 1910). Producer: Pathé, Director: Louis Feuillade, Cast: Clément Mary. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – Cinema’s very first child star gives a freezing girl half of his overcoat and learns that half a coat is of little help against the cold.
  • Magic Lantern: Billy’s Rose (GB 1888). Producer: York & Son, Text: George R. Sims. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard – Death and salvation in the slums: a girl goes in search of a rose for her dying brother, but she freezes to death in the process and hands him the rose in heaven.

Child Labour
Impoverished children were made to work as street peddlers, shoe-shines, and messengers to help support their families. The labour unions, social reformers and charitable organisations were particularly critical of the perilous conditions faced by child labourers in factories.

  • Film: The Cry of the Children (US 1912). Producer: Thanhouser, Director: George O. Nichols, Cast: Marie Eline, Ethel Wright, James Cruze, Lila H. Chester, Text: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1843). Score by Andrew Crow (Wurlitzer organ) – A moving appeal against child exploitation featuring highly realistic staged film footage. The story of a young girl’s death in a textile factory became a manifesto of the American reform movement against child labour.
  • Magic Lantern: The Little Match Girl (US 1905). Producer: McAllister, Text: Hans C. Andersen (1845), Images: Joseph Boggs Beale (1905). Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Karin Bienek
  • Film: The Little Match Girl – Print title: Het Luciferverkoopstertje (GB 1914). Producer: Neptune Films, Director: Percy Nash. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & violin) – The young street vendor in H.C. Andersen’s fairytale The Little Match Girl (1845) is one of the most famous and enduring icons of poverty. The story of her death and salvation has inspired countless book illustrations, magic lantern shows and film productions to the present day.

Rigadin a l’âme sensible

Charity and Social Care
Controversies concerning the justification, necessity and limits of aid surrounded the public discussion on the ‘Social Question’ from the beginning: able-bodied poor people of working age were generally suspected of being themselves to blame for their poverty due to negligence, idleness, or alcoholism, or even of deviously abusing
the benevolence shown to them. Slide sets and early films on the issue of poor relief addressed such prejudices – and also made fun of over-enthusiastic benefactors.

  • Film: Le Chemineau / Print title: De Zwerver (FR 1905). Producer: Pathé, Director: Albert Capellani, according to Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862). Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – A tramp who has stolen the holy silverware is acquitted. The pastor places charity before the law and claims that he had given the tramp the plundered goods. The missing scene at the end of this film can be seen on a postcard in the ROM section of this DVD.
  • Film: Rigadin a l’âme sensible / Whiffles Has a Sensitive Soul (FR 1910). Producer: Pathé / S.C.A.G.L.,Director: Georges Monca, Cast: Charles Prince, Gabrielle Chalon, Andrée Marly. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano, viola & violin) – In this comedy, our sympathy is not directed at the poor, but rather at the aristocratic benefactor who cannot bear to see suffering: he hands out all of his money – and even gives away most of the clothes on his back.
  • Magic Lantern: In the Workhouse (GB 1890). Producer: Bamforth, Text: George R. Sims. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard – During Christmas celebrations at the workhouse, an old man attacks the British poor relief system: his sick wife had died of starvation the previous Christmas because the care authorities had ruthlessly stuck by their regulations.
  • Film: Christmas Day in the Workhouse (GB 1914). Producer: G. B. Samuelson Productions, Director: George W. Pearson, Text: George R. Sims. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – In the film version of this ballad, the old man dies just as he finishes his lament.
  • Film: Ahlbeck. Der Kaiser bei den Berliner Arbeiterkindern in dem von ihm gestifteten Heim / Ahlbeck. Wilhelm II visits a Working-Class Children’s Home (DE 1914). Producer: Eiko-Woche. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – At the Baltic Sea spa town of Ahlbeck on the island of Usedom, Kaiser Wilhelm II becomes convinced that playing in the sand of the dunes is beneficial to the recuperation of children.

Enter not the Dram Shop

DVD2
Drink and Temperance Movement
Alcoholism was often blamed as the cause of poverty. However, many social reformers emphasised that it was instead a consequence of poverty. In their war against the ‘demon alcohol’, the Temperance Movement relied on the persuasive power of projected images. Tales of drunken fathers who drove their families to ruin were part of the standard repertoire in early cinema and magic lantern shows.

  • Film: Manchester Band of Hope Procession (GB 1901). Producer: Mitchell and Kenyon. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – The Temperance Movement held street parades to rally support for their cause among the local populace.
  • Magic Lantern: Enter not the Dramshop (GB 1890). Unknown Producer. Text & Live Performance: illuminago – Karin Bienek, Ludwig Vogl-Bienek. – The pub threshold marks the crossroads between well-being and downfall: victims of alcohol are presented for purposes of pedagogical instruction. Medical diagrams illustrate the devastating effects of alcoholism on the human body.
  • Film: Les Victimes de l’alcoolisme / Victims of Drink (FR 1902). Producer: Pathé, Director: Ferdinand Zecca. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & violin) – Based on Émile Zola’s novel L’Assommoir, this film depicts the gradual decline of a labourer who starts out as a decent family man and ends up an inmate of a madhouse wracked by delirium tremens.
  • Film: Une Vie gaspillée (Print title) / A Life Wasted (DK 1910). Producer: Continental Films. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & violin). Original title not known. – A drunkard’s daughter likewise falls victim to alcoholism and freezes to death because her parents refuse to take her in.
  • Magic Lantern: Buy Your Own Cherries! (GB 1905). Producer: Bamforth, Text: John W. Kirton. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard – The landlady of a pub refuses a carpenter the cherries that are standing on the bar. He thus renounces alcohol, instead spending his money on his family, and starts his own business.
  • Film: Buy Your Own Cherries! (GB 1904). Producer: Robert W. Paul. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano, viola & violin) – The film version foreshortens the ending: instead of continuing to drink, the carpenter buys gifts for his wife and children.
  • Magic Lantern: Dustman‘s Darling (GB 1894). Producer: Bamforth, Text: Matthew B. Moorhouse. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard – At the door of a tavern, a widowed dustman tells the story of how his little daughter inspired him to give up drinking.
  • Film: A Drunkard’s Reformation (US 1909). Producer: American Biograph (US 1909), Director: David W. Griffith, Cast: Arthur V. Johnson, Linda Arvidson, Adele DeGarde, Robert E. Harron, Florence Lawrence, Mack Sennett. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – While visiting the theatre with his young daughter, a drunkard is cured of his alcoholism. By cross-cutting between the Temperance Movement play on the stage and the reactions of the father and his daughter in the auditorium, D.W. Griffith makes visible the psychological process of an internal catharsis.

Don’t go down the mine, Dad

Perils of Wage Labour
Poor people who were able to work received no support. The working classes were forced to take on poorly-paid and dangerous jobs in order to survive. Mining accidents spread fear and terror among mining communities. Sensational special effects on the screen, such as firedamp explosions, helped reinforce demands by the labour unions and charitable organisations for safer working conditions and improved support for surviving dependants.

  • Magic Lantern: A Bunch of Primroses (GB 1889). Hersteller / Producer: York & Son, Text: George R. Sims. Reconstructed by Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Speaker: Mervyn Heard – A bunch of primroses lies on the death bed of a young female worker and tells of how she blossomed in the country and met an early death doing factory work in an industrial city.
  • Film: Au Pays noir / Tragedy in a Coal Mine (FR 1905). Producer: Pathé, Director: Ferdinand Zecca. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano & viola) – Mining accidents used to be part of daily life for miners: Pathé, the leading film company of the time, condemned this scandalous situation by releasing this melodramatic social reportage which was shot partly on location at a mining site and partly on a recreated set in a film studio.
  • Film: Die Beerdigung der Opfer des Grubenunglücks auf der Zeche Radbod bei Hamm i. W., den 16. Nov. 1908 / Funeral of the Victims of the Radbod Mine Desaster near Hamm in Westfalia, Nov 16, 1908 (DE 1908). Producer: Welt-Kinematograph. Score by Günter A.Buchwald (piano) – The mourners pass by the camera, silently following the coffins of colleagues killed in the accident: they start to move – they are alive! They escaped with their lives once more …
  • Magic Lantern: Don’t Go Down in the Mine, Dad (GB 1910). Producer: Bamforth, Text: Robert Donnelly, Score by Will Geddes. Live Performance: illuminago – Karin Bienek, Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Score by Judith Herrmann (piano) – Dramatic slides illustrate a popular miners’ song: the sick son senses an impending accident and thus saves his father’s life.

Escape
Magic Lantern shows and early films about the ‘Social Question’ rarely tell of a successful escape from poverty, and the elimination of poverty is not an issue. The flood of emigrants was addressed by slide sets used by charitable organisations to prepare the migrants for an uncertain future. However, other means of escape from poverty were at hand: salvation in the afterlife or in the world of fantasy.

  • Film: The Two Roses (USA 1910). Print title: Les Deux roses, Producer: Thanhouser, Cast: Marie Eline, Frank Hall Crane, Anna Rosemond. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – Tony Prolo is a track worker, and his son is run over by a car driven by the company boss: the boy recovers and the worker’s family is given a nice new home as a gift.
  • Film: Deux petits Jésus / The Foundling (FR 1910). Producer: Pathé / S.C.A.G.L., Director: Georges Denola, Cast: Jeanne Delvair, Jeanne Grumbach, Georges Paulais. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano) – Abandoned by the father of her child, a young mother is confronted with ignorance when she goes begging: in desperation she seeks refuge in an abbey church, lays her baby in the nativity crib – and dies.
  • Magic Lantern: The Emigrant Ship (GB 1890). Unknown Producer. Live Performance: illuminago – Karin Bienek, Ludwig Vogl-Bienek, Score by Judith Herrmann (piano) – This magic lantern show about the departure and sinking of an emigrant ship was extremely popular due to its motion and dissolve special effects. It is accompanied with emigrant songs, slides of the blessings of the New World and a dazzling light show – the Chromatrope …
  • Film: Geheimnisvolle Streichholzdose / A Match Box Mystery (DE 1910). Deutsche Bioscop, Director: Guido Seeber. Score by Günter A. Buchwald (piano, viola & violin) – A man without legs sells matches: in a surprising animation, the matches group together to form a variety of forms, until ultimately a small windmill made of matches burns down.

This is an excellent compilation, which illuminates the visual media of the late 19th/early 20th centuries and illuminates what concerned society and how it chose to express that concern. Like the best of the magic lantern and cinematograph shows, it imparts a strong impression upon the mind, teaching us of the sorrows of an age not so far away. I hope the DVD finds its way to new audiences.

Out of the vaults

May 29, 2011 By in Archives and museums, Online videos Tags: 2 Comments

Bela Lugosi and Alma Rubens in The Rejected Woman (1924)

George Eastman House has announced an online cinematheque. As the American film archive puts it, “Since we cannot screen everything in our Dryden Theatre, we have mined our vaults for favorite hidden treasures to showcase online”. The initiative has started out with 59 films, most of them silent, with the promise of more films to come.

The initiative is highly welcome, though the presentation is a little disappointing. There is no simple listing of the titles available; instead the front page displays thumbnail images of the main titles (where these exist), with the user have to hold their mouse pointer over the image to discover the title and date. Clicking on any one image gives you the video itself, a short description, the year of release and basic technical details. There are no cast and productions credits (unless mentioned in the description), and no country of production given. The video player (Flash) works well enough, though image quality isn’t always too great at full screen. All of the films come with a rather prominent George Eastman House onscreen graphic in the bottom right-hand corner.

But enough of such cavils. It is a fascinating selection of oddities, rarities and some classics, of which these are some of the highlights the Bioscope has spotted from among the silents. Do note that all of the silent films are presented without musical accompaniment.

  • Colonel Heeza Liar on the the Jump (USA 1917)
    Animation by John Randoph Bray, one of a long-running series feature the adventurous, braggart Colonel.
  • Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (Germany 1919)
    The first film made by German silhouette animator Lotte Reiniger, a delightful piece dance-like piece with two lovers whose title translates as “The Ornament of a Loving Heart”.
  • The Stolen Voice (USA 1915)
    Short feature film (44mins) with fascinating theatrical background details, directed by Frank H. Crane and produced by William Brady. It stars Robert Warwick as an opera singer who mysteriously loses his voice.
  • Beasts of the Jungle (USA 1913)
    Stagey drama set in India and Africa, with much use of wild animals (elephants, tigers, lions), directed by Alice Guy-Blaché from her American period, starring Vinnie Burns.
  • The Copperhead (USA 1920)
    Handsomely-presented feature film based on a Civil War-themed drama, with Lionel Barrymore repeating his great success in the 1918 stage version.
  • Huckleberry Finn (USA 1920)
    The only silent version of Mark Twain’s novel, directed by William Desmond Taylor and starring Lewis Sargent as Huck.
  • A Movie Trip through Film Land (USA 1921)
    Animation and live action film on the film production process, photographed by Joseph De Frenes, rich in facts and figures, absorbing in its display of the technical processes.
  • Thais (Italy 1917)
    Experimental work with bold visual invention by Futurist filmmaker Anton Giulio Bragaglia. As the GEH notes put it, the film displays “a sometimes dizzying and illusory world in which the characters (and the audience) may find it difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction”.
  • The Camera Cure (USA 1917)
    Keystone slapstick comedy directed by Herman C. Raymaker, starring Maude Wayne and Malcolm St. Clair.
  • Les Fromages Automobiles (France 1907)
    Also known as The Skipping Cheeses, this is an interesting example of how George Méliès lost his way in his later years as a filmmaker, as the cheeses in question are hardly visible and the human characters are too far away from the camera for the comedy to work.

Mae Murray in Kodachrome Test Shots (1922)

  • Danse Macabre (USA 1922)
    Intriguing combination of ballet, animation and ghostly superimpositions made by avant garde director Dudley Murphy, with the dancers Adolph Bolm and Ruth Page.
  • Homunculus (Germany 1916)
    Apparently a condensed, feature-length version of the original six-part series, hugely popular in Germany, directed by Otto Rippert, about a scientist who creates an artifical human being, starring Olaf Fønss as Homunculus.
  • Daughters who Pay (USA 1925)
    Feature film starring a pre-Dracula Bela Lugosi as Serge Oumansky, a Communist agent trying to organise terrorist actions against the United States government.
  • The Lost World (USA 1925)
    Cast-iron classic based on the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novel, with pioneering animated dinosaurs created by Willis O’Brien.
  • The Flute of Krishna (USA 1926)
    Kodachrome colour film chreographed by Martha Graham and produced by Rouben Mamoulian. According to the GEH notes, “The Flute of Krishna is the only surviving record of Graham’s choreography, as dance notation had not been invented when the piece was created”.
  • The Rejected Woman (USA 1924)
    Another fascinating glimpse of the pre-vampiric Bela Lugosi, in an interesting melodrama filmed in Montreal and New York, also starring Alma Rubens and Conrad Nagel, and directed by Albert Parker.
  • The Confederate Ironclad (USA 1912)
    Kalem Civil War drama, Guy Coombs and Anna Q. Nilsson.
  • Kodachrome test shots (USA 1922)
    Two-colour Kodachrome film tests, featuring Hope Hampton, Mary Eaton and Mae Murray.
  • Out of the Fog (USA 1922)
    An odd comedy filmed by Harris Tuttle, one of the development team that produced 16mm film stock for Eastman. The film, which satirising the adventures of the team itself, is thought to be “the earliest surviving, formally produced 16mm motion picture”.
  • The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (USA 1916)
    Feature film version of the novel and hit play set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, directed by Cecil B. De Mille and starring Charlotte Walker and Thomas Meighan.
  • Gown of Destiny (USA 1917)
    Curious Triangle Film Corporation production about a French dress designer who creates a special gown that makes whoever wears so alluring that their husbands or suitors extend themselves in one way or another that ending up helping the French war effort.

There are more titles than this, including sound films of course (e.g the Technicolor 1937 feature Nothing Sacred and a delirious 1963 treat, Wayne D. Sourbeer’s How to Play Pinball). We’ll keep an eye out for more silent film treats. Anyway, some real treasures to explore, and many thanks to George Eastman House for having made them available to us all.

Bioscope Newsreel no. 24

May 27, 2011 By in Awards and contests, Festivals, Modern silents, Newsreel, Performers, Wildlife Tags: 1 Comment

Jean Dujardin and Uggy share the acting honours in The Artist

Things are still unsettled here at New Bioscope Towers, what with so much stuff still in boxes and electrical matters needing to be sorted out, but your scribe will for a while rest upon a handy packing case and record for you some of the news items from the world of silents this week (and the week before).

Best film dog
As many of you will know now, the modern day silent film The Artist did not win the Palm d’Or at Cannes, though it was a close run thing. Jean Dujardin did pick up the award for best actor, but probably a little closer to the Bioscope’s heart was the announcement of the Palm Dog – an unofficial award for the best performance by a dog in a film shown at Cannes – which went to Uggy, a Jack Russell member of the cast of The Artist. Uggy’s performance has been variously described as “stunning”, “stand out” and “the finest in the 11 year history of the Palm Dog”. Read more.

The world remembers part 1
UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme highlights important documentary heritage artefacts from around the world, and as we have reported before now, a few films have been included so far. Newly inscribed on the register is the important Desmet collection of films, company documents, posters and film stills from the 1910s, submitted by the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam(formerly the Nederlands Filmmuseum). Also inscribed in 2011, by the Russian Federation, is Tolstoy’s Personal Library and Manuscripts, Photo and Film Collection. I wasn’t aware Tolstoy had a personal film collection – as we have noted before, he was no lover of the medium. We will have to find out more. Read more.

The world remembers part 2
But there are also national registers, and new to the UK Memory of the World register is the extraordinary Mitchell & Kenyon collection of some 800 films from the Edwardian era, mostly actualties depicting lives in English and Irish working towns. Congratulations to the BFI National Archive which cares for the collection and successfully argued for the collection’s inclusion on the UK register (along with the GPO Film Unit collection of the 1930s). Read more.

Tuff times ahead
Toronto’s annual festial of modern, one-minute long silent films is open for entries once more. Describing itself as ‘the world’s only true “underground” film festival’, films submitted and selected get to reach over 1.3 million daily commuters who ride the Toronto subway system. The event takes place 9-18 September 2011 and this year’s guest judge is Atom Egoyan. The deadline for submissions is 15 July. You can see past award winners on TUFF’s Vimeo site – and the standard is high. Read more.

The genius of Buster
A thoughtful and observant article by Jana Prikyl on Buster Keaton has been published in The New York Review of Books to coincide with the screening of twelve feature-length and twelve short films by Buster Keaton, at Film Forum, New York City, 23 May – 8 August 2011. The essay covers Kino’s recent DVD and Blu-Ray releases, the Brownlow/Gill documentary A Hard Act to Follow, Kevin W. Sweeney’s Buster Keaton: Interviews, and James L. Neibaur’s The Fall of Buster Keaton: His Films for M-G-M, Educational Pictures, and Columbia. Read more.

‘Til next time!

Performing new media

May 25, 2011 By in Conferences Tags: 3 Comments

Charles Urban (centre) and camera operators Albuin Mariner (nearest left) and Joseph DeFrenes (nearest right) filming the Delhi Durbar in Kinemacolor in 1911, from http://www.charlesurban.com

Domitor, the international body dedicated to the scholarly study of early cinema, is to hold its next conference at Brighton, UK, 25-28 June 2012, arguably the the birthplace of cinema, given the great creative work undertaken there my cine-artists such as George Albert Smith and James Williamson in the late 1890s. The call for papers has just been issued:

Performing New Media, 1890-1915
Twelfth International DOMITOR Conference
Monday, 25 June to Thursday, 28 June, 2012 [Update: dates are now 18-22 June 2012]
University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

From the 1890s to the start of the First World War, a new media culture of projected images emerged. Showmen and women, entrepreneurs, educators, scientists and others employed magic lanterns and cinematographs in a variety of contexts that shaped and expressed the social, cultural and commercial significance of these new media. Given that these silent screen technologies almost always demanded accompaniment (words, music, sound effects) and that the combined use of lantern slides and short films implied varied and sometimes complex programmes, these events were effectively always performances. Projectionists, exhibitors, onstage talent, musical accompanists, backstage crews – all contributed to performances that could include live music, song, lectures, narration or sound effects in union with projected images. The growth of this new media also precipitated the rise of the new film industry and gave birth to the concept of ‘the cinema’. Around the world purpose-built cinemas opened in the 1900s, creating new and distinctive venues. However this screen practice was not yet ‘pure’ (i.e. film only) as these early venues were also active sites for the exhibition of films within multi-media performances. Exploring the nature and uses of these hybrid and multifaceted new media performances at this pivotal historical moment (‘the invention of cinema’) and analysing their social, cultural, economic and ideological meanings provides this conference with its subject and purpose. By engaging these concerns in Brighton three and a half decades after the famous 1978 FIAF conference, we wish to address and expand the historiography of early cinema in light of recent explorations of the intermedial and performative nature of contemporary new media.

We invite papers that explore such areas as:

  • old and new histories and theories of media / screen practice 1890-1915 – challenging the established historiography through the study of screen history / theory in the context of its ‘performance’
  • new media performance practices – origins and histories: the role of showmen and their creation of programmes; the combination of the lantern and the cinematograph within performance; the use of lecturers, narration, music, song and sound; the rise of the new media travelling show and the use of networks / circuits of venues; the history and dissemination of performance techniques
  • the role of gender, race and class in shaping these practices
  • the social, cultural, commercial and ideological natures of these programmes
  • performance and professionalization
  • the industrialisation of the lantern from the 1880s and its impact on performance (e.g. the rise of manufacturers devoted to lantern projectors and slides, the standardisation of slide formats, the production of catalogues and the introduction of distribution systems)
  • the particular relationship between the magic lantern and the cinematograph
  • the use of recorded sound as a performance component
  • new media performances in the context of both national and trans-national practices
  • educational, religious, or scientific new media performances
  • the ‘news’ on stage and on screen: employing the lantern and the cinematograph within performances that addressed such events as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, the Spanish-American War and the Delhi Durbars
  • ‘textual variability’: from page to performance through new media presentations (e.g. Dickens or the New Testament)
  • the venues for this history and their new media programmes, cultures and audiences (this includes the first purpose-built cinemas); architecture and performance
  • new media programmes and the city 1890-1915: tourism, culture, entertainment and economic development (e.g. Brighton and late Victorian seaside resorts)
  • new media and its intermedial and intertextual relationships with other performance practices (e.g. the circus, the music hall / vaudeville, pantomime, theatre and the travelling show)
  • the relationship between performance theory and new media performance, 1890-1915
  • researching new media and its performance: the archival challenges and opportunities
  • the (sometimes historiographically and theoretically fraught) relationships among new media of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries

Although we imagine the general time frame for the period covered by papers in the conference to be 1890 through 1915, we realise that cinema developed unevenly across the global stage. For that reason, papers treating cinema after 1915 in countries where early cinema practices postdate the proposed time frame will be given full consideration. Similarly, papers that examine the history and current status of early cinema’s place in the archive and museum—specifically related to the concept of “new media performance”—are also welcomed.

Proposal Submission Process: Those wishing to submit a proposal should do so no later than 31 October 2011 to: domitor2012@gmail.com

Proposals for pre-constituted panels of 3 or 4 participants will also be considered; such proposals should be submitted by the panel chair and consist of the collected individual paper proposals in addition to a brief rationale for the pre-constituted panel.

Proposals for individual papers should be no longer than 300 words and be written in either English or French. Only a paper written in one of those two languages can be presented at the conference. Papers prepared for conference delivery should stay within a word limit of 2500 words and be able to fit within a 20-minute presentation format (including any audiovisual material used to supplement the paper). We request that all papers be submitted by 30 April 2012 to allow for simultaneous translation.

While membership in DOMITOR is not required to submit a proposal, anyone presenting a paper at the conference must be a member. To become a member, please visit this site: http://www.domitor.org/en/About/member.html

It’s good to have the Domitor conference come to the UK at long last (its first conference was in Québec in 1990), and to a city so rich in cinema and performance history generally as Brighton. Hopefully the broad topic will encourage a wide variety of papers – and lots of new faces, please (as well as the much-loved old ones, of course).

For more information on Domitor, visit their bi-lingual (Franch-English) website (which I believe is about to undergo a major re-design quite soon).

No laughing matter

May 24, 2011 By in Festivals Tags:

http://www.slapsticon.org

Sad news to relate, but the 2011 Slapsticon festival of rarely seen comedies from the silent and early sound eras has been cancelled. The organisers have provided this note of apologies and explanation:

It is with profound regret that we are announcing the cancellation of Slapsticon 2011 and Slapsticon’s severing of relations with the Artisphere, the new group that replaced the old Arlington County Cultural Affairs this year that had presented the Slapsticon at the Rosslyn Spectrum Theater since 2003.

Unfortunately, disagreements over last-minute contract negotiations forced no further option, and we apologize to all for this inconvenience. We assure you this decision was not made lightly or arbitrarily. Those who have sent in registrations will have their checks returned or payments refunded and if you have questions about registration refunds you can send an email to mgaffen [at] arlingtonva.us or call Maggie Gaffen at 703-228-1841.

We are currently examining other options and offers to move this event, and we’ll let you all know these plans when we’ve made decisions regarding this. We want to thank the fine folk at Arlington County Cultural Affairs for their support of Slapsticon over the last eight years. It is now time to move on.

Let’s hope pastures new are found soon.

Since Mother goes to the movie shows

May 18, 2011 By in Music Tags: 4 Comments

Since Mother goes to the movie shows (Victor 1916), performed by the Peerless Quartet, from the Library of Congress’ National Jukebox

The National Jukebox has recently been unveiled by the Library of Congress. It is a collection of thousands of historical sound recordings that are being made available online to the public free of charge. The collection includes 10,000 78rpm disc sides issued by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1900 and 1925, and many more titles are promised in the months ahead.

The National Jukebox comes with all sorts of background materials and links on historical sound recordings, playlists, and special features on artist and genres. The Bioscope took up the Library of Congress’ invotiation to users to create playlists, and has produced one on motion pictures. There are recordings about going to see films, songs written to promote films, songs from stage shows that exploited the popularity of films (such as Queen of the Movies and The Girl in the Film), and songs and tunes about film stars. Though the number available isn’t huge, it is nevertheless useful evidence of the popularity and pervasiveness of motion pictures. Popular song communicated popular understanding. Listen, for example, to the Peerless Quartet complaining in 1916 in ‘Since Mother Goes to the Movie Shows’ on how homelife has changed since Mother picked up the moviegoing habit, or see the lyrics to ‘McGinty at the Living Pictures’ from 1902 which tells us how excited some could be at what they saw on the screen [Note: See comments – this song refers to tableaux vivants, not motion pictures]:

Dan McGinty went into the opera show
With his old wife Mary Ann,
And he took a front seat, near the middle aisle.
Amongst the bald-headed clan;
But he wasn’t prepared for the sights he saw.
And he laughed with might and main
When the living pictures came to view.
Why he nearly went insane.

When he saw the Sleeping Beauty, why he got such a shock
You could hear his heart a-ticking like an eight-day clock.
Then he danced and he pranced, and says he, “I’ve been to France, But that’s the finest sight I ever saw”;
Then his eyes bulged out, he began for to shout;
The gallery boys they hollered, “Put that Zulu out”.
Then his wife grabbed his feet, pulled him under the seat.
So he couldn’t gaze upon the living pictures.

The Library of Congress supplies embed code to let you place the player for any individual track on your website, but unfortunately these don’t work with pernickety WordPress. So here are the recordings Bioscope has found, with recording details (title, duration, artist, label and number, take, and date) and link to the recording. Or just follow this link to the playlist on National Jukebox itself.

  • And he’d say Oo-la-la! Wee-wee (03:07)
    Pietro [i.e., Pietro Deiro], performing
    Victor 18625
    Matrix/Take: B-23415 / 2
    1919-10-16
    Note: Instrumental medley, including Take Your Girlie to the Movies
  • Ching-a-ling’s jazz bazaar (04:04)
    Joseph C. Smith’s Orchestra, performing
    Victor 35695
    Matrix/Take: C-23859 / 4
    1920-03-19
    Note: Medley includes At the Moving Picture Ball
  • Come out of the kitchen, Mary Ann (02:43)
    M. J. O’Connell, performing
    Victor 18221
    Matrix/Take: B-18789 / 6
    1917-01-02
  • Gems from Queen of the movies (04:11)
    Victor Light Opera Company, performing
    Victor 35365
    Matrix/Take: C-14410 / 2
    1914-02-04
    Note: Songs from the 1914 show Queen of the Movies: Girls run along; Forgive and forget; In the night (When the moon slyly winks); Who is to know?; Oh Cecilia; In the night
  • Gems from The girl on the film (03:41)
    Victor Light Opera Company, performing
    Victor 35363
    Matrix/Take: C-14271 / 3
    1914-01-06
    Note: Songs from the operetta The Girl on the Film: We’re all going to the mill; Won’t you come and waltz with me?; Oh, oh, oh; Steady Freddy; Do be quiet; Won’t you come and waltz with me?
  • The girl on the film (04:02)
    Victor Military Band, performing
    Victor 35361
    Matrix/Take: C-14253 / 1
    1913-12-30
    Note: Tunes from the operetta The Girl on the Film: Hesitation waltz; Won’t you come and waltz with me; Steady Freddy; Typewriting girls
  • Hollywood (02:52)
    Joe Raymond Orchestra, performing
    Joe Raymond, performing
    Victor 19211
    Matrix/Take: B-28986 / 4
    1923-11-27
  • In the night (when the moon slyly winks) (02:52)
    Lyric Quartet, performing
    Victor 17546
    Matrix/Take: B-14406 / 2
    1914-01-30
    Note: song from Queen of the Movies
  • McGinty at the living pictures (02:31)
    Edward M. Favor, performing
    Victor 740
    Matrix/Take: [Pre-matrix B-]740 / 1
    1902-04-09
  • Mickey (03:14)
    Joseph C. Smith’s Trio, performing
    Victor 18532
    Matrix/Take: B-22365 / 3
    1919-01-28
    Note: Song written to accompany the 1919 Mabel Normand picture Mickey
  • Oh! Cecilia (02:46)
    Lyric Quartet, performing
    Victor 17546
    Matrix/Take: B-14405 / 2
    1914-01-30
    Note: song from the 1914 show Queen of the Movies
  • Poor Pauline (02:28)
    Billy Murray, performing
    Victor 17655
    Matrix/Take: B-15140 / 6
    1914-10-20
    Note: Song about Pauline White
  • Queen of the movies (03:50)
    Victor Military Band, performing
    Victor 35366
    Matrix/Take: C-14298 / 1
    1914-01-09
    Note: Three tunes from the 1914 show Queen of the Movies: In the night (When the moon slyly winks); Oh Cecilia; Girls run along
  • Since Mother goes to the movie shows (03:15)
    Peerless Quartet, performing
    Victor 17959
    Matrix/Take: B-17022 / 1
    1916-01-18
  • Smilin’ through (02:15)
    Reinald Werrenrath, performing
    Victor 45166
    Matrix/Take: B-22688 / 3
    1919-04-15
    Note: Song written to accompany the 1920 Norma Talmadge film
  • Take your girlie to the movies (02:43)
    Billy Murray, performing
    Victor 18592
    Matrix/Take: B-23020 / 2
    1919-06-19
  • That’s a real moving picture from life (03:01)
    Billy Watkins, performing
    Victor 17586
    Matrix/Take: B-14635 / 2
    1914-03-26
  • Those Charlie Chaplin feet (04:01)
    Victor Military Band, performing
    Victor 35469
    Matrix/Take: C-16047 / 2
    1915-05-25
  • Zudora (03:15)
    Harry Macdonough, performing
    Victor 17734
    Matrix/Take: B-15650 / 2
    1915-02-02
    Note: “created for Thanhouser’s greatest photoplay”

If there are other on the National Jukebox that I’ve missed, please let me know. Many of these recordings can be found scattered in many places across the Web, but it is very handy to find them in the once place, and so usefully categorised.

The Bioscope also recommends IN Harmony: Sheet Music from Indiana, previously the Indiana University Sheet Music Collection, which has sheet music for several of the songs and tunes about motion pictures featured on the National Jukebox.