For those of you who don't know, I kinda have a 'thing' for archive footage. Ok, it's more of an obsessive fetish. Last night's program title alone, SILENT AND EARLY SOUND FILMS FROM THE HEARST METROTONE NEWS COLLECTION (1919-30), was making me twitch. We were going to be seeing a group of news stories that had not been seen in 80 to 90-some years. Heaven! I apologized to my date, Shaun, in advance: "If I start spontaneously orgasming in the middle of this thing, it's ok to pretend you don't know me." He assured me he would.
The show was hosted by Jeffrey Bickel, Newsreel Preservationist for UCLA (and my new god), who had great notes for the each segment. The new stories were presented chronologically. The first batch of clips were silent and spanned 1919 through the mid 1920's, and had live piano accompaniment (sorry, pianist, I can't remember your name, but you did a great job!). The sound segments picked up in 1929 and a majority of them were from the following year (January to September). I can't remember all of them (there were over a hundred minutes of them) but below are a few highlights:
- A never released obituary for Theodore Roosevelt, including shots of his wintry funeral procession and burial in Long Island. Right from the beginning, the footage was fascinating and the visual quality was extremely reassuring.
- Several shots made in France following the armistice, including a victory parade. The crowd shots were incredible. There is also some extremely beautiful footage of US General Pershing leaving port in southern France (in one interesting, very human moment, somebody is helping him get something out of his eye with a handkerchief), and Victory parades in New York and Washington, DC, that deserve to be in every World War I documentary ever from now on. (Why can't I remember that guy's name? He was a big deal!)
- "Women Besiege Capitol To Urge Suffrage Bills" which I recognized from documentaries like Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America (which is worth seeing). The hats and furs are terrific in this one, though the title is overly sensational. I wouldn't say the well-dressed, slow moving caterpillar of lady protesters are 'besieging' the steps of Albany's capitol building. They are simply making their case. You go, ladies!
- A ship that has run aground near Devon, England, gets pried out of its chasm prison. Many of the reels, both silent and sound, were tinted different colors. This one was tinted bright yellow.
- The Wall Street crash of 1929, and a proclamation by Charles M. Schwab (not the Charles Schwab you're thinking of) set the sound era of Heart Metrotone off with a bang. Schwab talks about how everything is going to be fine, and there is no need to worry about the economy. I love the speeches and interviews from this period. The speakers never seem comfortable, they usually shout their speech at the camera, and it usually ends with them pausing awkwardly and asking the off-camera technicians if they are done. So human! So different from the ass puppets you see on the news today!
- The interior of a black (!) Southern (!) schoolhouse during a 'war on illiteracy,' showing African American adults learning to read. This was one of my favorite pieces, mostly because it's so unexpected; real black people are rare enough in the movies around this time. Here they are in their natural habitat (that sounds bad). Plus there are great closeups on fashion (people really took pride in their appearance back then!) and they sing a gospel song at the end. Yeah, maybe somebody could argue that it's a little racist to include that. But you know what? It's also a valuable document of American cultural heritage. Plus I couldn't stop recalling the instructor on the car-ride home: "M...A...N! Again!"
- A children's parade in central park where a little boy is named champion of a 'freckle' contest (cute), and a dower little girl dressed in bridal wear declares "I am the blushing bride" as if she's undergoing some sort of punishment (in my opinion, she definitely was).
- The 'plainest girl' in DC (or was it New York?), twenty-something Dolly Gray, is made over by a set of 'beauty scientists' while an on-camera male commentator makes shockingly sexist remarks. The end result: Dolly models her new look awkwardly. She's cute enough with the marcel wave and all, but Shaun and me like her better with long, unprocessed hair, natural eyebrows and light smattering of freckles.
- A demonstration of self-defense techniques by people with British accents. Cute.
- Also in Britain, a prince opens a hospital for children with polio. During his speech, I kept thinking of Eddie Izzard talking about EastEnders ("We must go with our strange accents...").
- Navy football players training and tackling each other. Just goes to show that football has always been America's great latent-homoerotic pastime, even without steroids.
- A group of Japanese-American teenage girls do a song and dance number. Just goes to show that Asian girls have always been and always will be TOTALLY ADORABLE!
- A guy jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge (for the second time, apparently). He says something to the newsreel camera and then gets a kiss from his stylish girlfriend, be-cloched and be-furred. Fun thirties fashion turn up so often when you least expect it!
- Tennis champion Betty Nuthall defeating Virginia Wade. My first thought was "Finally, women's tennis without the porno noises," and I was not disappointed. Miss Nuthall accepted her trophy with class and humility. Another posh accent.
- The beginning of an all-female airplane race in Long Beach, with no word on who won. And no cute flapper outfits either. Suddenly I want my money back.
- The latest fashions from Paris, and all of them have some sort of fur piece, of course. Ok, I feel better now. The narration for the episode is by some woman with a French accent that is both heavy and fake-sounding. Unlike today's models, the mannequins in this segment look like they eat healthy meals. Like today's models, they all look a bit angry.
- A women's fire brigade. For all the probably good intentions of the newsreel crew, the women seem a little foolish, fighting fires in 4-inch heels and cloche rain caps. Also, when you're going to fight a barn fire by spraying water through the front entrance, it's probably best to open both doors, rather than just one. That way, you won't spend most of the time spraying the door you left shut, and you won't get soaked by the back-splash. Just a thought.
- Finally, I get to hear what Thomas Edison and Henry Ford sounded like, and all in one story! They are addressing a group of scholarship winners. Edison can barely stand or open his eyes, and mumbles as if he doesn't know what's happening to him. To be fair, he was 82 by then. Ford, however, is the complete opposite, on the other hand. One smooth oak spouting asinine stuff like 'There's no such thing as a lost opportunity,' I thought of Gary Cooper. An old Gary Cooper with big ears and an undying hatred for Jews.
- Hiram Johnson yells at the camera about stuff. The benefits of isolationism, I think. He moves his around a little too much, and shouting even more than usual. 1930 seems early to be yelling about war anyway. Freckle boy and his contemporaries wouldn't get caught in the draft for another twelve years.
- This wasn't the last piece, but it has to have been the most priceless: Two lion tamers get married in a cage, with their prized lions standing in as witnesses. As if this wasn't already a tacky idea, a handler at the beginning lets the trap door fall on the tiger's head as it steps into the cage. I don't know how audiences in 1930 would have processed that, but in this post-PETA zeitgeist, all of us in the Billy Wilder Theater let out a gasp, followed by a rumble of righteous indignation. The bride and groom (both really good-looking) are about as nervous and distracted as could be expected, but for at least as long as the camera and sound men were rolling, nobody's face was torn off.
How miraculous that all of this survives, when you consider how much has been lost or is missing. What a shame It's about as cliché a notion as can be had, but you realize just how true it is when you're walking through the Hammer's lobby, your butt just beginning to regain feeling after 100 minutes sitting on Barbie-pink leather, and images and sounds of another age playing themselves over and over in your head. A few people looked exhausted after the show, but Shaun and I were both jonesing for more.
Where does that leave us? Well, what we all have to do is throw some money at the National Film Preservation Foundation and wait for Treasures from American Film Archive Volume 87 to come out. If the films I see tonight get released on DVD, I can see myself doing what I always do whenever I procrastinate: Adding new titles to the Internet Movie Database. Wouldn't it be nice to search for titles like Good News for Homely Girls or Edison Welcomes ‘Brightest' Boys and not come up empty-handed? John James Brookhart has a filmography thanks to NFPF's efforts. Why not grant the same opportunity to the plainest girl of 1930, Dolly Gray?
A list of showtimes and program notes for UCLA Film and Television Archive's 14th Annual Festival of Preservation can be viewed here:
http://www.cinema.ucla.edu/
