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Posts Archived Under Silent Movies
Cover of the code |
One of the fascinating things about watching old movies -- and we mean, really old movies from the first third of the twentieth century, is the "throw-anything-against-the-wall" feeling that the creators are making up a whole new art form as they go along.
There's an impression that the earliest features were silly comedies featuring people who moved jerkily at high speeds. But as early as the 1910s, directors like Lois Weber were making films about such controversial topics as capital punishment, drug addiction, and abortion. Such strong subjects were accompanied by strong language, but until the movies learned to talk, intertitles were able to shield the more sensitive members of the audience (or at least, those who couldn't read lips) from that language.
When technology finally allowed patrons to hear as well as see actors, moviemakers were faced with tough choices; how to maintain the grittiness and realism audiences had come to expect without making the dialogue so raw that films would be censored by regional film boards or condemned by the powerful Legion of Decency. (This was an era when the epithet "son of a bitch" caused an uproar when it was used in the 1928 play "The Front Page.") The solution was to tone down most of the language while keeping the themes the same. Movies like "Baby Face" or "Employees' Entrance" (featuring the hard-boiled Barbara Stanwyck and the delightfully sleazy Warren William sleeping their way to the top) were as popular as they were scandalous.
But even that taming was too much, and on March 31, 1930, Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America released a codified rulebook designed to ensure that movie producers self-censored their films. That way, not only would filmgoers of all ages be spared anything the least bit unsavory, but it ensured that "American" values would be promoted and upheld. So strong was the Hays Code that, in 1939, when David O. Selznick wanted to keep Rhett Butler’s final line in "Gone With the Wind" intact, he had to pay a $5,000 fine for using the word "damn."
For the next 35 years, the Code remained virtually inviolate. One of the first directors to subvert it was Otto Preminger, who fought to use such verboten words as "virgin and "rape" in his films, making them strictly "adults only" fare.
As society changed in the 1960s, the code became unenforceable. Keeping mature themes and language out of the movies became increasingly absurd, so the Code was abandoned in favor of the rating system (G, PG, PG-13, R, and NC-17) we know today.
While it's now possible to go to the movies and see and hear virtually anything, there’s still a thrill in watching a pre-code movie like "Night Nurse" and finding out that our grandparents were a lot more interesting than we thought.
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Directory categories:
Movie History, Censorship, Movies, Barbara Stanwyck |
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Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, Actors, American History, Anniversaries, Censorship, Entertainment, Filmmaking, History, Hollywood, Movie History, Movies, Nostalgia, Sex and Sexuality, Silent Movies, Society and Culture, Vintage |
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Poster for King Kong |
It probably wasn’t very long after the Lumière Brothers invented the motion-picture camera that someone realized if you stopped the camera, you could make objects appear or disappear on screen in the blink of an eye. Certainly pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès realized that by 1899 when he made his film "The Conjuror."
But the year before Méliès made his film, American J. Stuart Blackton figured out if you just repositioned things, instead of moving them on- and off-camera, you could make inanimate objects seem to move on their own.
While Blackton became known as the "Father of American Animation," most of his films were trifles and filled with gimmicks that failed to move the plot forward. As pioneering as his techniques were, decades passed before they truly came to fruition in the work of Willis O’Brien, whose birthday we note today.
O'Brien was originally a sculptor, but in the 1910s was hired by Thomas Edison to create stop-motion short films -- most of which featured dinosaurs. O'Brien began using clay for his creations, but he soon developed models that had articulated metal skeletons covered with plastic or rabbit fur. In 1925, he achieved new heights with his work in the film "The Lost World," which featured a brontosaurus running amok through London. But that film was only a warm-up for O'Brien's masterpiece, "King Kong" (which, coincidentally, also opened on this day in 1933). Working on his largest scale ever, O'Brien was able to actually shape Kong's performance, making the giant ape the most sympathetic character in the film -- never mind that his pathos was combined with bouts of ingesting and crushing people.
O'Brien continued animating until his death in 1962, revisiting giant apes in "Son of Kong" and "Mighty Joe Young," but he never again scaleed the heights he reached in 1933.
O'Brien's work may seem a little primitive to modern eyes, but without it, we’d have no Wallace and Gromit, Gumby, or even Davey and Goliath. Many of today’s CGI animators got their inspiration from watching the original "King Kong." So, on this most animated of days, let's raise a toast -- a banana daiquiri, say -- to the man who created the "Eighth Wonder of the World."
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Directory categories:
King Kong (1933), Stop-Motion Animators, Animation, Movies, Wallace and Gromit |
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Archived under: 1910s, 1930s, Animation, Anniversaries, Apes, Biographies, Birthdays, Coincidence, Dinosaurs, Entertainment, Filmmaking, Monsters and Creatures, Movie History, Movies, Silent Movies, Technology |
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Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle |
In an era that worshipped silent comedy and movie stars, Roscoe Arbuckle may have been the biggest star of all -- in every sense. Better known by the name of the character (“Fatty”) he played on screen, Arbuckle went from unknown bit player in 1909 to a 1914 contract offer of $1,000 a day, 25% of all profits, and complete artistic control of his films.
By 1921, he was at the height of his career, earning a million dollars a year and working on three features simultaneously. It all came crashing down, though, on a September afternoon in San Francisco. Behind the closed doors of his suite at the St. Francis Hotel, the popular star allegedly raped and brutalized a young actress by the name of Virginia Rappe. When Rappe later died of peritonitis, Arbuckle was arrested on charges of manslaughter and brought to trial. On December 4, 1921 the jury deliberating his case deadlocked on a decision and a mistrial was declared, setting the stage for a long, tormenting process of retrials.
Immediately after the event the newspapers went wild with sensationalized stories. One popular story claimed that Arbuckle had abused Rappe with a Coke bottle. In the frenzy of these half-truths and lies, the reality was obscured. Regardless of evidence that overwhelmingly supported Arbuckle's version of events, the newspapers of the day whipped up a frenzy of antagonism toward him. The second trial ended with the jury deadlocked 10-2 for acquittal. A third trial was ordered, and finally, the jury acquitted him of all charges in a six-minute deliberation, five minutes of which went into producing a statement of apology for the prosecutions.
Though Arbuckle had been exonerated in the courtroom, public sentiment had long since turned against him. He was blacklisted in Hollywood, and for the next decade couldn't find adequate work. Though several Hollywood notables rallied behind him, most notably his close friend Buster Keaton (to whom he had given his start), Arbuckle's career was doomed.
Eventually, he was able to find directing work (under the puckish pseudonym “Will B. Goode”), and as the years passed, the public’s attitude toward him changed. He was even able to land acting roles before his death in 1933. But as fate (and irony) would have it, he died in a hotel room after a night of celebrating a newly-acquired acting contract with Warner Brothers.
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Directory categories:
Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, Silent Movies, Silent Movie Actors and Directors, Crime News and Media, Buster Keaton |
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Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, Actors, American History, Anniversaries, Celebrities, Comedians, Crime, Directors, Entertainment, Hollywood, Law, Legal Cases, Los Angeles, Movie History, Movies, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, San Francisco, Scandals, Silent Movies, Tabloids |
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Citizen Kane
It's Terrific!
In Black and White!!! |
Ted Turner doesn't like black and white movies. Drunk on technology that allowed computers to "improve" old films by troweling layers of color over them, he threatened to colorize "Citizen Kane" -- generally considered the greatest movie ever made, largely due to Gregg Toland's superb black and white cinematography. Welles' response? "Keep Ted Turner and his damned Crayolas away from my movie."
Fortunately, Welles' 1941 contract prevented Turner from defacing "Kane," but the search for color is as old as movies themselves. Pioneer filmmakers applied watercolors directly onto film to provide viewers with some realism, and most silent features used tinting and toning (blue for night scenes, amber for outdoors) to provide atmosphere. In 1908, George Smith's Kinemacolor system gave moviegoers a taste of the real world, and in 1917, Herbert Kalmus devised the Technicolor system, which photographed red and green light onto two strips of film running through a camera. Unfortunately, the resulting images were orangey-pink or greenish-blue. The real breakthrough came in 1932, when Kalmus developed a three-strip process that gave a depth and richness to color film that hadn't been seen before.
That was the status quo for the next 50 years, as moviemakers alternated between color and black and white as subject matter (and budgets) dictated. In the '80s, though, technology enabled film owners to go through their libraries and spruce up movies that younger viewers -- not used to black and white -- found unwatchable. In most cases, the results were awful, as a limited color palate washed out details and replaced crisp images with a muddy mess. The public was unimpressed, and the fad was soon over.
In recent years, though, technology has improved, and while the results may be brighter, they still leave a lot to be desired. As for ourselves, while we like our movies in color, the silvery images captured by such artists as Toland, Arthur C. Miller, and William Daniels are priceless treasures that shouldn't be mucked with.
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Directory categories:
Movies, Cinematography, Movie History, Citizen Kane, Ted Turner |
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Archived under: Black and White, Citizen Kane, Colorization, Entertainment, Film Production, Filmmaking, Flops, Movies, Orson Welles, Silent Movies, Technology, Ted Turner |
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Since the early days of cinema, Hollywood dogs have been making a name for themselves. Household names like Lassie and Benji have delighted generations of families, but the first of the famous dog stars was Rin Tin Tin, who starred in over 25 movies for Warner Bros. between 1922 and 1931. In his early films, he would occasionally play a wolf, even though he looked nothing like one; but silent film audiences weren't as demanding as today's.
Born on this day in 1918 on a French World War I battlefield, Rinty was an overnight success and one of Hollywood's biggest stars during the 1920s. It's said that the box office success of his movies saved Warner Bros. from bankruptcy. It's funny to think that a dog saved Warner Bros., but Rin Tin Tin was as big as any human movie star. Young fans wrote to him tirelessly -- over 10,000 letters a week -- and Warners kept several stand-in dogs available to give their biggest box-office star a rest on the set. In 1930, he starred in his own radio show, originally titled "The Wonder Dog," but soon changed to "Rin Tin Tin," in which he provided his own barks, growls, and other dog sounds.
Rin Tin Tin made his last appearance in the 1931 serial, "The Lightning Warrior." Blonde bombshell Jean Harlow, who was a neighbor of Rin's owner Lee Duncan, held Rinty in her arms as he died at the age of 13.
Audiences, however, would still get their fill of Rin Tin Tin adventures for years to come. Junior, Rin's offspring, took over for the remainder of the 1930s, starring in serials and taking over the radio show. For the popular '50s TV show "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin," four different dogs were used, with Rin Tin Tin IV starring. Today, Rin Tin Tin X (yes, that's "Rin Tin Tin Ten") still makes appearances, putting smiles on the next generation of children's faces.
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Directory categories:
Rin Tin Tin, Dog Actors, Silent Movies |
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Archived under: Actors, Dogs, Entertainment, Movies, Silent Movies, TV |
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