Hey, I have a blog. Cool. And hey, I have not been kidnapped and/or murdered. I have just been devoured alive by 100 year old missionaries, wanting me to praise them for their pure soul and compassion with the uncivilized darkies in the deep jungles of Africa.
Missionary with Congolese children, early 1900's. No hegemony at all.
Well, at least that was the subject in school the last few weeks, and interesting as it was I have been absent from the blog, the social network, my mother, my husband and my life in general. So sue me. At least I have gathered some cool pictures that wouldn't fit in my power point presentation at school, so enjoy the power of the white man!
Hey, can't gather enough rubber for our car factories? "Off with their hands!"
This subject has something to do with the film industry, of course. As white men colonized the African continent in the 19th century, the pure hearted missionaries around the world heard about these wild, unenlightened people of the filthy jungles, and felt a need to Christen them.
Since most missionaries thought that the world is soon to end, they were flabbergasted by the amount of people not ever having heard of the Holy Bible. Saints as they were, they left their families and children at home and sent out to cure people of their otherness.
Rwanda, probably 1920's.
"Interesting thing that natives from other countries can show their breasts and genitals all they want in photographs and in films, but we normal people just get censored. I bet it's because animals have no concept of moral". - A quote I just made up
Now, of course the people at home had to know what good deeds the missionaries were doing in Otherland in order to raise money for the missions (Swedish missionaries were often in Congo, for example), they sent home photographs showing the process. The Swedish missionaries even co-operated with the ethnographic museum in Stockholm, sending confiscated wooden gods ("the Negro can worship almost anything", as someone said) to the museum. In return, the indigenous people got some mass-produced western items. Mass-baptism, Bible studies and the burning of traditional relics were just another thing to do between tea breaks.
Before makover: Look at all those weird masks!
And weapons everywhere, bloodthirsty beasts!
Martin and Osa Johnsson, 1920's.
Ta-daa! They can almost look like normal people. At least when dressed in proper clothes and lined up in pretty rows. And with the essential presence of their European masters, signaling that they are not dangerous savages anymore.
Congo, early 1900's.
And then came the film medium! How effective a way to record the strangeness of the wild people it was. Now the entertainment industry caught up with how cool it was to go to Africa and abuse natives. Of course, people had gone to Africa to kidnap interesting looking natives for a long time. They were exhibited alive (see Hottentot Venus) at World's Fairs (quite common into the 1940's, actually), and whole native villages were re-constructed for the civilized West to point sticks at.
The white man conquering the wild nature!
"Oh, I actually needed some elephant tusks for my new piano. Extraordinary."
Theodore Roosevelt somewhere in Africa, ca 1909.
Now the film medium would make it even easier for people to become fascinated by the weirdness of strange cultures. Often the films were accompanied by a story teller, or even an entertainer dressed in the indigenous culture's clothes, and entertainment was far more important than accurate information. See the following Pathé Frères picture Roosevelt in Africa (1910). At about 3:02 you see the intertitle "Zulu women at spring". Nothing weird about that, except that Roosevelt was nowhere near South Africa at the time and that the women in the video are probably Masai. But hey, most people have heard about the wild Zulu's, it sells better. After the "Zulu women", there is a lovely little native rain dance. Not at all constructed.
Well, the Americans had their part in these kind of actions, too. (As though you didn't know.) While Europeans colonized Africa, Americans did their best to either kill or civilize the Native Americans. Native American schools were founded in the 1870's. A quote by the adorable founder of them, Herny Pratt, goes as follows: "If the Native Americans had been better at English, it would have been easier for them to protect their interests." I'm paraphrasing, since the quote I found was translated to Swedish, but the idiocy of the quote is the same. You know, if those damn Congolese beasts had been better at Swedish/German/English/French/other-civilized-languages, they would have been able to defend their countries! That's poetic justice, for ya!
German missionaries in Tanzania, ca. 1905.
"It's your fault you didn't have any dictionaries in this country. And we had a flag."
But at least the film medium was used to protect the indigenous cultures from dying out entirely. (Yes, that's exactly what people claimed back then. "Okay, it's probably not that nice to extinguish their cultural identity, but at least we record their strange rituals for their grand-grand-grandchildren to watch!")
Below I have an example from Edison Studios, called the "Buffalo Dance" (1894). Filmed in the legendary Black Maria Studio! Very realistic and worthy, indeed. With a stationary camera, they have to dance around in such small circles that they collide. But to finish this post off, you can see the results of the Native American School below the video. Ah, aren't we white people just saints?
After going to Native American School:
We let the woman keep her pipe. We'll just steal it later for museum exhibition.
Part one of my film studies is done, and this Monday we started to take things from the beginning. As you probably know, there was no single inventor of film, but rather several independent contributors that together invented a new medium that we today take for granted.
When I saw that the number of followers of my blog started to reach a three-digit-number, I felt that I had to do something special to celebrate my blog's popularity. Because that number certainly overwhelms me - how can as many as a hundred different people decide to sign up to follow my unprofessional classic film blog? Simply amazing, and I am very thankful. It gives a purpose to my burning passion, and confidence to keep it up. Of course, people might drop out and make this blog post x 4 embarrassing, but I choose to ignore that possibility.
What I decided to do was simply to list a 100 films, one movie from each year between 1909-2009, and do a 100 one-sentence-reviews of them. In order to manage the one-sentence-thing I will of course have to stretch the English grammar and language to it's limits - and just even a little bit more. Don't hate me.
Before I start off with my first 25 (1909-1934), I just want to add that the movies chosen are not necessarily my absolute favorites of those years - just movies I wanted to highlight on the blog. I also tried to provide you with either YouTube- or Internet Archive links to the films, if I could find them.
Again - thank you for supporting a dreaming film devotee. If I become famous one day I will make sure not to pay you back.
If you're not familiar with this Shakespeare play, this 12 minute film adaption (the play's first film adaption!) will probably confuse you - but see it anyway for it's disturbing qualities and the weird donkey!
French comedian Max Linder follows his doctor's prescription of a glass of red wine a day, but the generous size of the wine glass causes a deranged drunken town visit and unfortunate encounters with a bunch of police officers.
Mary Pickford plays (under the direction of D. W. Griffith) a girl mending a fisherman's nets, but her fiancée and his old love who won't let him go, and her violent brother, disturbs the peace and causes big time kerfuffle - with a pinch of gunfire.
Charlie Chaplin tears away from Mabel Normand's side to marry an unattractive farmer's daughter (in the form of an adorable Marie Dressler) who just inherited a fortune from a newly deceased uncle - but what happens if the rumors of the uncle's death happened to be a bit exaggerated...?
The first historical epic (again by D. W. Griffith) takes three hours of our time to describe the American South before, during and right after the Civil War - the camera work is just as shocking and admirable as the political incorrectness of the plot is shocking and disturbing!
Charlie Chaplin makes his best to unintentionally screw up a fire station and its employees, but manages in the end to save the well-dressed Edna Purviance and win her heart!
Max Linder boards a ship, when a beautiful girl realizes that she has forgotten to bring her bag - and off our French hero goes, runs and God-knows-what to find it, and hopefully get some romance as a finders fee.
In the Cecil B. DeMille comedy that made a star out of Gloria Swanson, a housewife ends a routine filled life with a cigar smoking husband to find a more luxurious life in the high society among clean gentlemen - but soon has to confront the truth that diamonds are only a compressed form of charcoal.
Lon Chaney plays Blizzard, the criminal and sadistic amputee leader of San Fransisco's underworld, with a task to take out revenge on the surgeon who needlessly removed his legs after an accident in his youth.
The Tramp accidentally finds himself with an abandoned child, and raises him up to follow his out-of-the-law footsteps - but unfortunate events forces them to fight for their relationship.
Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino act together in a long thought lost classic, about a young woman who marries an old millionaire, but falls in love with a handsome nobleman her own age on the honeymoon.
The most classic Harold Lloyd comedy, about a young man who sets his mind on making himself some money before he can marry the girl he is in love with - something that ends up with him risking his neck to climb outside of a high building and leaves him hanging from the hands of a clock.
Directed by the legendary Swedish director Victor Sjöström, this film tells the story about an ex-inventor (Lon Chaney) who after suffering humiliations among his colleagues starts working as a circus clown, and falls in love with the beautiful Norma Shearer who is completely unaware of his feelings.
Lon Chaney plays the immortal character of Erik, the disfigured composer who inhabits the catacombs underneath an opera house, sabotaging the operas and kidnapping the beautiful singer Christine whom he is madly in love with - all this beautifully filmed with some scenes in two-strip Technicolor!
Co-written by Stan Laurel, this crazy short tells the story about a divorced woman who just re-married when she hears that she can't inherit her rich aunts money if she has had a divorce - the natural solution of course being to, when dear auntie visits, pretend that she still is married to her first husband (Oliver Hardy), while pretending her real husband is just renting a room in the house.
Clara Bow is the ultimate flapper in the ultimate comedy about an office girl with "it", who falls in love with her ignorant boss, and does everything to get his attention - but when she helps her unwed room mate and friend to avoid loosing her baby to the authorities, a newspaper article results in some unfortunate misunderstandings.
In a self produced film Gloria Swanson plays the ex-prostitute Sadie Thompson who arrives in Pogo-Pogo to start a new life - but a sadistic priest in the form of Lionel Barrymore is not willing to leave her sinful past alone.
The first talkie on my list combines the professionals Basil Rathbone and Norma Shearer in a high society drama/comedy about Mrs. Cheyney (Shearer) who charms the rich people around her while trying to sneak away with their jewelry - but a young Lord Arthur Dilling (Rathbone) keeps his eyes on her.
A young married couple, of the modern, equal sort, face troubles when the wife (Norma Shearer) finds out that her husband (Chester Morris) has been cheating on her, and to make things even she "balances their accounts".
Two newly wed couples check in at a hotel, but realize too late that the wife of one couple (Norma Shearer) now is room-mate with her ex-husband (Robert Montgomery), the husband of the other newly wed couple - intriguing!
In the probably naughties pre-code movie ever, Jean Harlow sets out to seduce her married boss (Chester Morris), but will never stop for anything as long as the grass is greener on the other side.
The most insane, absurd and surreal war spoof there is - banned in Mussolini's Italy at the time - with the irreplaceable Groucho Marx as the dictator of Freedonia, Rufus T. Firefly.
The first and best film in the series about the married detective couple Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) - and of course, their trained dog Asta and heck of a lot to drink.
Plot: A father (a young D. W. Griffith!) and a mother (credited as Miss Earle) lives in a cabin on a mountain. The father sets off to work with a lunch box, and the mother walks into the cabin again, leaving their little infant (Jinnie Frazer) outside. We thereafter see a clip of men cutting down a tree. Suddenly a black eagle appears, grabbing a-hold of the baby and flies away. The mother sees what is happening, fetches her hat and runs off to find her husband. The parents and all the lumberjacks set off to find the eagle's nest, which they find half-way down the wall of a cliff. A woodsman (Henry B. Walthall) is lowered down to the nest with a rope. He has an intense fight with the eagle, which he at last manages to kill with a stick. He grabs the baby, and the other man pulls them up to safety.
This is an amazing little silent short, made in the birth of the cinema at the Edison Studios. The scene were the eagle flies off with the baby is one of the first immortal pictures in cinema history.
The intertitles of this YouTube clip are different from the information on IMDb, but I depend on the latter one and used that information.
"The little girl made me. I wasn't waiting for the little girl to kill me."
Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford was an Academy Award winning Canadian born actress. She was the first motion picture movie star, introduced with many nicknames such as "The Girl With the Golden Curls", "Little Mary" (she was only 1.54 m tall), and most famous - "America's Sweetheart". She was a co-founder of the film studio United Artists (together with Charlie Chaplin, husband Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith), and also one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1927. In all, she was not only the first movie star, but also a business woman and one of the greatest pioneers in film history.
Jack and Mary Pickford with silent western film actor William S. Hart.
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Canada 1892. She had two younger siblings, Jack and Lottie Pickford, who also became actors. Her father was an alcoholic who left his family in 1895 and three years later died from cerebral hemorrhage. Her mother started renting out rooms to boarders, and it was one of those house guests who introduced 7-year old Gladys to the Princess Theatre in Toronto. In the early 1900's the family began touring the United States as actors by rail. In 1907 Gladys got a supporting role at a Broadway play, written by William C. DeMille (brother to the then unknown Cecil B. DeMille, who also acted in the play). It was at that time the producer of the play gave Gladys the stage name Mary Pickford.
Later in 1909 director D. W. Griffith at the Biograph Company saw a screentest with Mary Pickford and immediately became interested in her. After only one day of shooting she got twice as much money as other actresses ($10 a day with a guarantee for $40 a week). She however began her career by playing the same kind of roles as others: rejecting women, slaves, prostitutes etc. Even though her roles from the beginning wasn't credited, the audiences recognized her. Movie theatres soon advertised the films shown by writing out that the films featured "The Girl With The Golden Curls", "Goldielocks" or "The Biograph Girl". In 1912 her career started to blossom, and she gave some of her greatest performances in D. W. Griffith films like The Mender of Nets (also featuring a young Mabel Normand), Just Like a Woman and Friends (with Lionel Barrymore). Pickford also introduced her friends Dorothy and Lillian Gish to Griffith, which proved successful for their careers.
Film clip: Lillian and Dorothy Gish with Mary Pickford and her mother, ca 1927.
Left to right: Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. The fourth founder, D. W. Griffith, is not in the picture.
In 1913 Mary Pickford took a chance on Broadway again. That experience lead her to the realization that she really wanted to be a motion picture star. She returned to film making and joined Adolph Zukor's group of famous players in his newly started company Famous Players Film Company (later Famous Players-Lasky, and even more later Paramount Pictures). Their she made, among other films, the comedy Hearts Adrift (directed by Edwin S. Porter 1914, the director of the film history milestone The Great Train Robbery from 1903), which brought in so much money that Pickford, the first time of many to come, a pay raise. That film was also the first one to put Pickford's name above the the title on the movie marquees. After a few films more, she was the most popular actress in America, if not in the world. Only Charlie Chaplin could compete with her. During the 1910's and 1920's Pickford was believed to be the most famous woman in the world, or as a silent-film journalist said:
"the best known woman who has ever lived, the woman who was known to more people and loved by more people than any other woman that has been in all history."
In 1916 she signed a contract with Adolph Zukor that granted her full authority over the production of the films she starred in. Her salary was now record-high $10 000 a week. Two years later she broke with Famous Players ans started producing her own films, and in 1919 she founded the independent film production company United Artists, alongside Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith.
"We were pioneers in a brand-new medium. Everything's fun when you're young."
Her first film as an independent producer and distributor at United Artists was Daddy-Long-Legs (1919). Mary Pickford was the first actress to receive more than $1 000 000 dollars a year.
Scene: Mary Pickford as orphan Judy Abbott in Daddy-Long-Legs (1919).
Mary Pickford behind the camera.
Little Mary needs a stool to reach the camera!
Mary Pickford was married three times. Her first husband was Irish-born silent actor Owen Moore, whom she was married to 1911-1920. That marriage is believed to have been scattered because of Moore's alcoholism, violence and shame to live in the shadow of Pickford's success. The couple lived separately for years, and Pickford became romantically involved with Douglas Fairbanks. Pickford and Moore divorced in early 1920. 26 days later Pickford was married to Fairbanks. Douglas Fairbanks became an international success after starring in movies like The Mark of Zorro (1920), so both parties of the couple were extremely popular. The couple was referred to as "Hollywood royalty" and their Beverly Hills mansion was popularly called "Pickfair".
Mary Pickford made the step from silent pictures to talking without problems, and so did Fairbanks. 1929 Pickford played the reckless socialite Norma Besant in Coquette. Before the film Pickford had cut her long, curly hair (in connection to the loss of her mother the year before) into a 1920's bob hair cut. That move covered front pages in all the world. Although Pickford won an Academy Award for the part in Coquette, the audience didn't like the film as much. Probably because of the difference between the part of seducing Norma Besant and the more cute film parts the audience was used to Pickford playing. Pickford felt however that the cute girl parts were over. She made her last motion picture in 1933 called Secrets, and then never returned to the screen again.
"I'm sick of Cindrella parts, of wearing rags and tatters. I want to wear smart clothes and play the lover."
The marriage with Fairbanks ended in 1936, after many years of struggling to have time for each other between film making and producing and world touring. Pickford had had enough when Fairbanks had an affair with English model Sylvia Ashley, which became big news. Fairbanks' son, Douglas Fairbanks Jr, stated later that both Pickford and Fairbanks regretted not trying to fix their relationship.
Mary Pickford with her future husband Charles "Buddy" Rogers in The Best Girl (1927).
However, Pickford married a third time, and that marriage would last until her death in 1979. Her last spouse was actor Charles "Buddy" Rogers (male lead in Wings, 1927, with Clara Bow), with whom she had acted with in The Best Girl (1927).
In the 1930's many people around Pickford died, which changed her persona radically. In 1933 her brother Jack died because of "progressive multiple neuritis which attacked all the nerve centers". Three years later Lottie died of a heart attack, possibly due to large amounts of alcohol during the years. 1939 Douglas Fairbanks also suffered a heart attack and died. Upon the hearing of Fairbanks' death it is reported that Pickford had burst into tears in front of her new husband Rogers and stated that "My darling is gone". According to Pickford herself, though, she had held her tears back, afraid to hurt her husband, and didn't allowe herself to cry until she was alone on a train. These deaths, the divorce from Fairbanks and the end of her film career left Pickford in a great depression.
Pickford and Rogers adopted two children in 1943 and 1944. According to several documentaries and the children's own words she wasn't the greatest mother, often remarcing their physical imperfections. The children left Pickfair at a young age, but they later in life stated that they had loved their mother, even though she wasn't very maternal.
Pickford at a Bing Crosby performance at the Coconut Grove nightclub, 1934.
During her life, Mary Pickford used her social position for many political causes. During WWI she, her then soon-to-be husband Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Canadian actress Marie Dressler promoted the sale of Liberty Bonds by giving public speeches, kicking off in Washington DC 1918. Five days later Pickford gave a speech at Wall Street to a crowd estimated to 50 000 people. She also posed for cameras kissing the American flag and auctioning one of her golden curls, bringing in $15 000. In the end of WWI Pickford co-created the Motion Picture Relief Fund for financially needy actors, together with the usual gang of Chaplin, Fairbanks, Griffith, but also other movie people.
Douglas Fairbanks making a speech to a great crowd in New York City, April 1918.
Mary Pickford gives President Herbert Hoover a ticket for a film industry benefit for the unemployed, 1931.
In addition to re-shaping the motion picture art (at the time when Pickford entered the movie business the film industry was all concentrated on film adaptions of Broadway plays and nothing else), Pickford proceeded with producing films even after her retirement as an actress in 1933. She and Chaplin remained partners in United Artists for decades. In 1955 Chaplin left the company, and the next year Pickford followed his example. She sold her remaining shares of the company for $3 000 000.
News 1956: Mary Pickford sells United Artists... and a little commercial for Camel cigarettes.
Pickford with her Honorary Oscar, 1976.
In her later years Pickford developed alcoholism, following the footsteps of her father, mother, two younger siblings and her ex-husband Owen Moore. The more the years went, the more isolated Pickford became. Soon she only allowed visits from old friend Lillian Gish and stepson Douglas Fairbanks Jr, and later on only communicated via her bed room phone. Husband Charles Rogers often gave guests tours of the Pickfair, one of the attractions being a genuine western bar Pickford once bought to Fairbanks. In 1976 Pickford received an Honorary Academy Award for life time achievement, in addition to the one for Best Actress she received in 1930 for Coquette.
Mary Pickford died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1979, aged 87. She was buried in the Garden of Memory of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetary in Glendale, California. Alongside her lies her mother, her sister Lottie and brother Jack buried.
The American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time. Edward Norton, Richard Dreyfuss and Marlee Matlin talks about the greatness of Mary Pickford.
Personal quotes:
We maniacs had fun and made good pictures and a lot of money. In the early years United Artists was a private golf club for the four of us.
If you have made mistakes . . . and there is always another chance for you. . . . you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down but the staying down.
I never liked one of my pictures in its entirety.
Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.
[on Douglas Fairbanks] In his private life Douglas always faced a situation in the only way he knew, by running away from it.
[on Charles Chaplin] That obstinate, suspicious, egocentric, maddening and lovable genius of a problem child.
Hollywood royalty, and the ideal couple of Hollywood history - Pickford and Fairbanks.
