Derek Jarman: Film History Series

Derek Jarman, “Caravaggio”, 1986, Film Scene Gifs, Cinematography Gabriel Beristain, Cinevista (USA)

Born in Northwood, Middlesex in January of 1942, Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman was an English artist, film maker, costume and stage designer, writer and poet, and gay rights activist. His film career began with experimental Super 8mm shorts and developed into such mainstream films as the 1986 historical drama “Caravaggio” and the 1989 “War Requiem”, that featured Laurence Olivier’s last screen performance.

As an author, Jarman published several works: a poetry collection entitled “A Finger in the Fishes Mouth”; two diaries, “Modern Nature” and “Smiling in Slow Motion”; two treatises on his art and films, “Chroma” and “The Last of England (aka Kicking the Pricks)”; and the 1984 “Dancing Ledge”, an autobiography of his life until the age of forty.

The son of Royal Air Force officer Lancelot Elworthy Jarman and Elizabeth Evelyn Puttock, Derek Jarman received his elementary education at the preparatory Walhampton School and Dorset’s Cranford School, a progressive boarding and day institution. Beginning in 1960, he studied Art and English at King’s College, London, which was followed in 1963 by four years of study at University College London’s Slade School of Fine Art. In the 1970s, Jarman embraced his homosexuality and became a public figure for the gay rights campaign.

Jarman’s first venture in film making was a series of experimental shorts filmed with Super 8mm film, a format he used frequently throughout his career. Among these films are the 1984 “Imagining October, an examination of art and politics at the end of the Cold War; 1985 “The Angelic Conversation”, an arthouse drama of homoerotic images combined with Judi Dench’s readings of Shakespeare sonnets; and 1990 “The Garden”, an arthouse allegory that examined the suffering and ostracism of a gay male couple during the AIDS crisis. “The Garden” was entered in 1991 into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival.

As a stage set and costume designer, Derek Jarman did the design work for the 1968 Sadler’s Wells Opera production of “Don Giovanni” at London’s newly renovated Coliseum in the West End. He was chosen as the production designer for director Ken Russell’s 1971 historical horror-drama “The Devil’s”, a controversial film for which Russell received the Best Foreign Director Award at the 1972 Venice Film Festival. Jarman’s work with this film, as well as his work on Russell’s 1972 “Savage Messiah”, gave him a transition into mainstream narrative filmmaking.

Jarman’s debut film was the 1976 “Sebastiane”, a story spoken in ancient Latin dialogue about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This film featured some of the first positive images of gay sexuality in British films. “Sebastiane” was influenced by films from the Italian arthouse oeuvre, particularly the cinematic style of Frederico Fellini. In 1977, Jarman began shooting scenes for the 1978 “Jubilee”, a heavily punk-influenced film that transports Queen Elizabeth I forward in time to an England troubled by the unemployment and rising inflation of the 1970s. Now considered a cult classic, the film was adapted in 2017 as a play for the Manchester Royal Exchange Theater.

After several years of preparation, Derek Jarman directed his next film, the 1979 adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. His original adaptation was intended for a stage play; however, he ultimately decided to proceed with a film adaptation. Seeking a balance between the aspects of theater and film, Jarman reworked the text so it would capture the mystery of the original without the theatrics. Inspired by films produced by Hammer Film Productions, Jarman utilized voice-over narration, costumes from muliple eras, sounds of heavy breathing, and blue camera filters to create a film that was well received upon its release.

Jarman learned his HIV-positive diagnosis on the twenty-second of December in 1986. An outspoken advocate of gay rights, he openly spoke publicly about his condition and his struggle with the virus. Despite his illness, Jarman continued making both mainstream films and Super 8mm shorts. In 1987, his arthouse film “The Last of England” was released. This film dealt with the loss of English culture in the 1980s and the formation of the Section 28 Local Government Act that banned any “promotion” or discussion of homosexuality and thus stifled LGBT support groups.

Derek Jarman’s 1989 “War Requiem”, produced by Scottish novelist and director Don Boyd, brought Laurence Olivier out of retirement for his last screen appearance. For its soundtrack, the film used noted composer Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem”, a work he wrote for the consecration of the Coventry Cathedral. Violent war footage and poetry written by war hero Wilfred Owen were overlaid on the score. While filming his 1990 “The Garden”, Jarman became seriously ill but managed to complete the work. This arthouse film was loosely based on Christ’s crucifixion; however, the film’s protagonist is a gay male couple whose idealistic existence is interrupted by arrest, humiliation, torture and death.

Now working in a simpler format due to his failing health, Jarman directed his 1991 “Edward II”, a romantic historical drama based on Christopher Marlowe’s 1594 play of the same name. This was followed by the 1993 experimental comedic-drama “Wittgenstein” based on the life of philosopher and professor Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose life and career were affected by periods of depression. By 1993, Jarman was dying of AIDS-related complications that had already rendered him partially blind and only able to see in shades of blue.

Despite his advancing illness, Derek Jarman completed his 1993 “Blue”, a single screenshot of saturated blue color with a background soundtrack by Simon Fisher Turner. Over the soundtrack, Jarman and some of his long-time collaborators described Jarman’s life and artistic vision. “Blue” made its debut at the 1993 Venice Biennale and later became part of the collections at the Centre Georges Pompidou, New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Collection, and the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis. Jarman’s final film was the 1994 “Glitterbug”, a documentary of his life as seen through home movies, that was posthumously aired on BBC Two’s episodic television show “Arena”.

Jarman died on the nineteenth of February in 1994 at the age of fifty-two at London’s St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. His body is interned in the graveyard at St. Clement’s Church, Old Romney, Kent. A blue English Heritage plaque honoring Derek Jarman’s life was placed at the site of his live-in studio at London’s Butler’s Wharf in 2019.

Notes: After his HIV-positive diagnosis, Jarman made the decision to leave London for a period and bought a small fisherman’s cabin, Prospect Cottage, on the beaches of Dungeness, Kent, with an inheritance received from his father. Using his creative energy, Jarman created a sculpture garden from discarded metal engine parts and local coastal plants. After his death, Prospect Cottage was purchased in 2020 through an Art Fund campaign and is now a public site overseen by the UK charity Creative Folkestone. Jarman’s archives from the cottage were placed on a long-term loan to the Tate Museum Archive.

An 2023 article by artist and curator Robert Priseman for “ART UK”, entitled “Derek Jarman’s Garden: A Heart of Creativity”, examines Jarman’s life at Prospect Cottage: https://artuk.org/discover/stories/derek-jarmans-garden-a-heart-of-creativity

“FILM London” has a short 2024 article on Jarman’s life and the Jarman Award for emerging artist filmmakers that was instituted in 2008: https://filmlondon.org.uk/flamin/about-derek-jarman

Alastair Curtis wrote an excellent 2023 article for “FRIEZE’ magazine on Derek Jarman’s final film “Blue” and its adaptation into a stage production: https://www.frieze.com/article/derek-jarman-blue-now-2023

Top Insert Image: Trevor Leighton, “Derek Jarman”, 1990, Bromide Fibre Print, 36.7 x 29 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Caravaggio”, 1986, Cinematography Gabriel Beristain, Cinevista (USA), Umbrella Entertainment (Australia)

Third Insert Image: Steve Pyke, “Derek Jarman”, 1983, Bromide Print, 37.6 x 38 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Fourth Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Sebastiane”, 1976, Cinematography Peter Middleton, Cinegate Ltd

Fifth Insert Image: David Thompson, “Derek Jarman”, 1992, Toned Archival Print on Kentmere Paper, 34.5 x 27.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Bottom Insert Image: Derek Jarman, “Jubilee”, 1978, Cinematography Peter Middleton, Cinegate Ltd

Stellan Rye and “Der Student von Prag”: Film History Series

Josef Fenneker, Lithograph Film Poster for Arthur Robison’s 1935 Version of “Der Student von Prag”, Deutsche Kimemathek, Museum für Film and Fernsehen, Berlin

Born in July of 1880 at the Danish city of Randers, Stellan Rye was a film director and screenwriter active during the early twentieth-century. In his short career, he wrote and directed three productions: the 1913 “Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague)”; the 1914 “Der Flug in die Sonne (The Flight into the Sun)”; and the 1914 “Ein Sommernachtstraum in Unserer Zeit (A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Our Time)”, co-written with German actor and horror novelist Hanns Heinz Ewers.

Rye joined the Reichsheer, the German Army, at the onset of World War I. Taken prisoner almost immediately, he died as a prisoner of war in France on the fourteenth of November in 1914 at the age of thirty-four.

Stellan Rye is best known for the 1913 German silent horror film “Der Student von Prag”, considered to be the first German art film, a pioneering work that raised cinema from its fairground origins to a viable art form. The film is loosely based on several literary works: Alfred de Musset’s poem “The December Night”, Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “William Wilson”, and the German legend of the Renaissance alchemist and magician Johann Georg Faust.

“Der Student von Prag” featured German actor Paul Wegener in his debut film role as the poor university student Balduin. He acted alongside Austrian actor John Gottowt in the role of Scapinelli, and Austrian-German actress Grete Berger as Balduin’s love interest Countess Margit. “Der Student von Prag” was art director and set designer Robert A. Dietrich’s first production in a career that spanned more than a hundred films. The film was shot on locations around Prague and at the Babelsberg Studios, now the oldest large-scale film studio in the world, having produced films since 1912.

In this horror story, poverty stricken Balduin signs a contract with the diabolical Scapinelli that will award Balduin one hundred-thousand gold pieces in exchange for any item in his lodgings. Scapinelli, dressed in all black, chooses Balduin’s reflection in the mirror and takes it away. During his courtship of Countess Margit, Balduin and Magrit are terrorized by his mirror double. Magrit, too frightened by the sudden appearances of the double, discontinues the courtship. Depressed, Balduin shoots his double with a pistol and it vanishes. However, Balduin himself becomes stricken and falls dead. The evil Scapinelli arrives, tears up the contract and departs happily.

German cinematographer Guido Seeber employed new technical camera effects of seamless double exposures to create one of his most notable accomplishments, the doppelgänger image of Balduin’s mirror double. An accomplished technician and a pioneer in his field, he also employed chiaroscuro, sharp contrasts between light and shadow, to create distinct areas on the sets. Hungarian composer and pianist Josef Weiss wrote the historic piano score that accompanied “Der Student von Prag”; it was the first film score written for a German language film.

Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” was both a critical and commercial success. The film tapped into the real sense of dissociation and alienation that was prominent in a society struggling with the collapse of the German Empire. The themes of the film became a major influence on German cinema produced during the years of the Weimar Republic. The insecurity and social changes that followed the deaths and devastation of the first World War became major themes for post-war German film makers.

Expressionism, developed as an avant-garde style before the war, remained popular during the Weimar Republic and extended to a wide range of the arts, including music, literature, dance and architecture. Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” was remade twice: Austrian Expressionist director Henrik Galeen’s 1926 version with Conrad Veidt, and German director Arthur Robison’s 1935 version with Austrian actor Anton Walbrook. Other notable films produced during this time period included Robert Wiene’s 1920 “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and two films by Fritz Lang, the two-part 1922 “Dr. Mabuse”, and the 1927 “Metropolis”.

Notes: All insert images are film stills from the original 1913 “Der Student von Prag”, directed by Stellan Rye, that featured Paul Wegener, John Gottowt and Grete Berger.

A full-length version, with subtitles, of Stellan Rye’s “Der Student von Prag” can be found on the Internet Archive site located at: https://archive.org/details/der-student-von-prag-1913

Actress Grete Berger, born Margarethe Berg into an Austrian Jewish family, began her career in 1904 at the Deutsches Theater under prominent film and theater director Max Reinhardt. She was cast in several films directed by Stellan Rye or Paul Wegener, among which was her role in the 1913 “Der Student von Prag”. After the accession of power by the National Socialists in 1933, Berger fled with her husband to Italy where in April of 1944 they were arrested by the German occupational authorities. She was transferred, along with Austrian-Hungarian actor Jacob Feldhammer, in May of 1944 to the Auschwitz concentration camp where they were murdered on the twenty-third of May in 1944.

An 2023 article on Anton Walbrook, who performed the role of Balduin in Robinson’s 1935 version of “Der Student von Prag”, is located in the Film History Series of this site. A well known German actor who acted alongside some of Germany’s leading ladies, Walbrook, who was homosexual and the son of a Jewish mother, left Germany in 1936 to work for many years in the United States and England.

Kerwin Mathews: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Kerwin Mathews”, 1960, Publicity Photo, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Columbia Pictures Corporation

Born in Seattle, Washington in January of 1926, Kerwin Mathews was an American film and theatrical actor. Although he appeared in several war and crime dramas, Mathews is best known today for his starring roles in the heroic fantasy adventure films of the 1950s and 1960s.

Born the only child of the family, Kerwin Mathews was two years old when he and his divorced mother moved to Janesville, the county seat of Rock County, Wisconsin. He graduated from the city’s high school in 1943 where he had been active in the school’s theatrical productions. During World War II, Mathews served in the United States Army Air Forces as both a pilot and a swimming instructor. After his military service, he studied for two years at the private Milton College before transferring, with drama and musical scholarships, to Beloit College.

After graduating from Beloit College, Mathews remained for three years as a member of its faculty with courses in speech and the dramatic arts; he also appeared in productions by regional theater assembles. After teaching English at Lake Geneva’s high school in the early 1950s, Mathews decided to pursue an acting career in California. While training at the Tony-Award winning Pasadena Playhouse, he was noticed by a casting agent from Columbia Pictures and, upon approval by studio head Harry Cohen, signed to a seven-year contract.

As an actor on television, Kerwin Mathews made his debut appearance as Major Caldwell in “The Escape of Mr. Proteus”, a 1954 episode in American Broadcast Company’s science-fiction series “Space Patrol”. Between 1954 and 1959, he had a variety of roles on major theatrical series including “The Ford Television Theater”, “Playhouse 90”, “Matinee Theater” and the “Goodyear Television Playhouse”. Mathews had the lead role of Johann Strauss Jr. in the Walt Disney 1963 two-part television film “The Waltz King”, a biographical film on the struggles of Johann Strauss Jr. to prove himself as talented as his composer father.

Mathews’s first appearance on the big screen was an uncredited role as a reporter in Fred F. Sears’s 1955 crime film noir “Cell 2455, Death Row”. He received his first film credit in Phil Karlson’s 1955 heist film “5 Against the House” for his acting alongside Guy Madison, Kim Novak, Brian Keith and William Conrad. In 1957, Mathews appeared in a starring role as actor Lee J. Cobb’s son in Vincent Sherman’s crime film “The Garment Jungle”. His first leading role in film was Sergeant Thomas A. (Tom) Sloan in Paul Wendkos’s 1958 World War Two film for Columbia Pictures, “Tarawa Beachhead”, a role which gained him critical recognition for his performance.

Both handsome and an agile fencer from his days at Beloit College, Kerwin Mathews was chosen by Columbia Pictures for the role of the dauntless hero in Nathan Juran’s 1958 classic Technicolor fantasy-adventure “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”. This film featured stop-motion animated creatures created by the master of the craft, Ray Harryhausen. The climatic battle between Mathews and the sword-wielding skeleton became a classic scene in the fantasy adventure genre. The first of the three Sinbad movies from Columbia, “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” was selected in 2008 for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

In 1960, Mathews had the leading role in another Columbia/Harryhausen film, director Jack Sher’s 1960 “The 3 Worlds of Gulliver” based upon Jonathan Swift’s 1726 “Gulliver’s Travels”. In 1962, he was given the lead role in Nathan Juran’s 1962 “Jack the Giant Killer” with stop-motion animation by Project Unlimited, an Academy Award winner for its work on George Pal’s 1960 “The Time Machine”. Despite his previous appearances in such movies as “The Last Blitzkrieg” with Van Johnson and “The Devil at 4 O’Clock” with Sinatra and Spencer Tracy, Mathews felt that Columbia was now restricting his roles to the adventure genre.

Kerwin Mathews appeared in one last film for Columbia Pictures, the 1963 psycho thriller “Maniac” and then traveled overseas as a freelance actor in a search for better roles. However even in Europe, the roles he managed to obtain were all in the adventure genre. Mathews starred in the 1960 Italian-French epic “The Warrior Empress” and Hammer Films’s “The Pirates of Blood River” for Columbia. He next had the lead role in two French spy films written and directed by André Hunebelle, the 1963 “OSS 117 Is Unleashed’ and its sequel, the 1964 French-Italian collaboration “Shadow of Evil”. In 1968, Mathews starred in two low-budget films in Europe, “Battle Beneath the Earth” filmed in England and “The Killer Likes Candy”, a spy film directed by Maurice Cloche and Federico Chentrens.

Mathews returned to the United States in 1969 and continued acting. He had the supporting role of Marquette in Gordon Douglas’s 1970 American Western for United Artist, “Barquero”, which starred Lee Van Cleef, Warren Oates and Forrest Tucker. In 1971, Mathews had supporting roles in Harry Essex’s monster film “Octaman”, part of the RiffTrax Live series, and the television movie “Death Takes a Holiday”. His last lead role was in Nathan Juran’s 1973 horror film “The Boy Who Cried Werewolf”, a film he immediately disavowed..

After guest-starring on the television series “General Hospital” and “Ironside”, Kerwin Mathews ended his acting career in 1978. He had relocated to San Francisco where he managed Pierre Deux, an antique and furniture retail establishment. Throughout his later years, Mathews was a committed patron of the city’s various opera and ballet companies. He died in his sleep at his San Francisco home at the age of eighty-one in July of 2007. Kerwin Mathews was survived by his life-long partner of forty-six years, Tom Nicoll, a British display manager he met in Knightsbridge, London in 1961.

Top Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews as Alan Mitchell, 1957, “The Garment Jungle”, Film Still, Cinematographer Joseph F. Biroc, Director Vincent Sherman, Columbia Pictures

Second Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “Barquero”, 1970, Film Still, Cinematographer Jerry Finnerman, Director Gordon Douglas, United Artists

Third Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “Jack the Giant Killer”, 1962, Film Still, Cinematographer David S. Horsley, Director Nathan Juran, United Artists

Fourth Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews, “OSS 117 Is Unleashed”, 1963, Film Still, Cinematographer Raymond Pierre Lemoigne, Director André Hunebelle

Bottom Insert Image: Kerwin Mathews and Charles Van Johnson, “The Last Blitzkrieg”, 1959, Studio Publicity Shot, Cinematographer Edward Scaife, Director Arthur Dreifuss, Columbia Pictures

Robert Florey: Film History Series

Born in September of 1900 in Paris, Robert Florey was a French-American film director, screenwriter, journalist and actor. He is known for his early career’s avant-garde German expressionist style and for his later work as a reliable studio-system director to complete troubled productions.

Born Robert Fuchs, Florey spent his early years in Paris near the Montreuil studio of George Melies who was producing highly successful films with experimental camera effects. He appeared in a small role in Alfred Lind’s 1916 multi-reel silent film for Signet Films, “Le Cirque de la Mort (The Masque of Life)”. Florey initially worked as a film journalist and then became an assistant director and actor to silent film maker Louis Feuillade. Florey was assistant director for Feuillade’s 1921 “L’Orpheline” and the 1921 film serial “Parisette”. After these films, he relocated to the United States as a Hollywood journalist for the French weekly Cinemagazine.

Having established himself in Hollywood, Robert Florey became the foreign publicity director for both Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and the European advance manager for Rudolph Valentino. His first work as an assistant director in the United States was for Gothic Pictures’s 1925 silent drama “Parisian Nights”, that featured an early supporting role for Boris Karloff. Between 1925 and 1927, Florey was an assistant director at the newly established Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Among his silent films with MGM were the 1926 “La Bohème” and 1927 “The Magic Flame”.

In his early years as a director, Florey did work for multiple studios. His first film was the 1927 silent romantic drama “One Hour of Love” for Tiffany Pictures. Other works included “The Romantic Age”, a silent drama for Columbia Pictures, and “Face Value” for Sterling Pictures, both in 1927. Florey co-wrote and co-directed with cinematic artist Slavko Vorkapić the 1928 silent experimental short “The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra”, a satire of Hollywood with rapid camera movement and superimposition. Widely released in theaters by FBO Pictures, the film is considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema and was entered into the National Film Registry.

After accepting a contract with Paramount Pictures in 1928, Robert Florey directed the 1929 mystery drama “The Hole in the Wall”, which featured Edward G. Robinson and Claudette Colbert, and co-directed with Joseph Santley the first Marx Brothers film, the 1929 “The Cocoanuts”. After directing four films in Europe, Florey returned to Hollywood and worked for Universal Pictures. Originally given the directorship of the 1931 “Frankenstein”, he was replaced by director James Whale who cast Boris Karloff as the monster. Florey became the director for the 1932 “Murders in the Rue Morgue” with Bela Lugosi. With the help of cinematographer Karl Freund, he transformed Poe’s short story into a Americanized version of German Expressionist films.

Between 1933 and 1935, Florey worked on fifteen B-movies for the Warner Brothers Studios, principally as director. Among these were the 1933 “Ex-Lady” with Betty Davis; the 1933 “The House on 56th Street” with Kay Francis; the 1934 “Smarty” with Joan Blondell and Warren William; and the 1935 “Woman in Red” with Barbara Stanwyck. From 1935 to 1940, Florey was a director for Paramount Pictures where he made fast-paced, cynically toned films with dramatic lighting. Among these were the 1936 “Hollywood Boulevard” with John Halliday and new actor Robert Cummings; the 1937 “King of the Gamblers” with Claire Trevor and Lloyd Nolan; and the 1937 “Daughter of Shanghai” with Anna May Wong. “Daughter of Shanghai” was later added to the National Film Registry in 2006.

Robert Florey directed three movies for Columbia Pictures in 1941. Among these was the 1941 “The Face Behind the Mask”, a film noir crime drama written from Thomas O’Connell’s play “Interim” specifically for actor Peter Lorre. Following his stay with Columbia, Florey began a ten-year period of freelance work as a director for different studios. Among these films were the Warner Brothers’ 1943 musical “The Desert Song”; Twentieth-Century Fox’s 1943 wartime film “Bomber’s Moon”; Warner Brothers’ 1946 horror film “The Beast with Five Fingers” that featured Peter Lorre; and Charlie Chaplin’s 1947 black comedy “Monsieur Verdoux”.

After 1951, Florey devoted himself almost exclusively to work as a director in the medium of television. His methodic and quick-paced directing made him particularly suited to episodic television work. Forley’s initial work included two televised specials for Disney Studios in 1951, “The Walt Disney Christmas Show” and “Operation Wonderland”. Over the course of his career in television, he was responsible for over three hundred episodes of such shows as Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color, Studio 57, General Electric Theater, Wagon Train, Zane Grey Theater, The Untouchables, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits, among others.

Robert Florey published a number of books on film history including the 1927 “Pola Negri”, a biography of Polish stage and screen actress Pola Negri; the 1927 “Charlie Chaplin”; and the 1966 “Le Lanterne Magique (The Magic Lantern)”, which documented the history of cinema. He was honored in 1950 with a knighthood in the French Légion d’Honneur. Robert Florey died in May of 1979 at the age of seventy-eight in Santa Monica, California. His body was interred at the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles.

“Florey was a free spirit who valued his personal liberty within the studio system (but) he never had the commercial clout to make that system work for him…he amused himself with second-string projects and B-picture budgets, relatively minor efforts on which he could word undisturbed, casually inserted a personal touch here and there.” —Film historian Richard Koszarski, Hollywood Directors:1914-1940, Oxford University Press, 1976

Second Insert Image: Robert Forley, “Ex-Lady”, Betty Davis, 1933, Warner Brothers Studio, Cinematography Tony Gaudio

Third Insert Image: Gertrude Mitchell, “Robert Florey”, 1936, Set of “Till We Meet Again”, Paramount Pictures, Gelatin Silver Print, Hulton Archives

Fourth Insert Image: Robert Forley, “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, Bela Lugosi, 1932, Universal Pictures, Cinematography Karl W. Freund

Bottom Insert Image: Robert Forley and Joseph Santley, “The Cocoanuts”, Harpo and Chico Marx, 1929, Paramount Pictures, Cinematography George J. Folsey and J. Roy Hunt

Anthony Asquith: Film History Series

Alexander Bassano, “Anthony Asquith”, 1927, Whole Plate Glass Negative, National Portrait Gallery, London

Born in November of 1902 in London, Anthony Asquith was an English film director. He was the son of Margot Asquith and Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916. Along with Alfred Hitchcock, Carol Reed and David Lean, Anthony Asquith was one of the internationally acclaimed British film directors at the top of the profession in the 1950s and 1960s.

A reluctant aristocrat, Anthony Asquith was educated at the private Eaton House, Winchester College in Hampshire and, from 1921 to 1925, Balliol College, Oxford. Although he was interested in music, he decided to pursue a career in the rapidly growing British film industry. Asquith traveled in 1920 to Hollywood to observe American film production techniques. In England, he made his debut as a silent film director with the 1927 British black comedy “Shooting Stars”. Asquith followed the comedy with the 1928 drama “Underground”, a story of four lives that intersect in London’s underground tube network.

Asquith’s work in silent film was influenced by the German Expressionist film movement and was experimental in nature. This can be seen in his best-known silent film, the 1930 “A Cottage on Dartmoor”, known for its meticulous and emotional frame composition. Asquith’s tense, shocking thriller, which stylistically brings to mind the early work of Alfred Hitchcock, is filled with innovative camera work by Stanley Ridwell and fast editing work to produce an eerie and unpredictable atmosphere. In his role of director, Asquith was a master of atmosphere and extracted the most emotion from dramatic situations. He became known as an actor’s director and was able to get some of the finest performances from Britain’s greatest actors.

The majority of Anthony Asquith’s oeuvre was divided between semi-documentaries and the adaptation of plays and novels. These he staged in a stylistically restrained, tasteful, but nuanced manner. In collaboration with English playwright Terence Rattigan as screenplay writer, Asquith directed film adaptations of ten famous plays written by Rattigan. Among these adaptations were the 1948 “The Winslow Boy”, “The Browning Version” in 1951, and the 1940 “French Without Tears”, Rattigan’s first successful play which premiered in 1936.

One of Asquith’s best known films is the 1938 “Pygmalion”, an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play, which Asquith co-directed with its star Leslie Howard. A critical success even in the United States, the film received multiple Academy Award nominations; Bernard Shaw won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay. Asquith’s most successful postwar film was probably his 1952 adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Ernest”; it still remains today, after seventy years, the best adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s work.

In the 1960’s, Anthony Asquith was directing lavish all-star productions. He was one of only three British directors who were directing major international motion picture productions in that time period. Asquith directed the 1963 British comedy-drama film “The V,I.P.s” with a large cast that included Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Maggie Smith, Rod Taylor, Orson Welles and Margaret Rutherford, among others. The film, shot from a screenplay by Terence Rattigan, was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Margaret Rutherford, cast as the Duchess of Brighton, won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Asquith’s next project was the 1964 “The Yellow Rolls-Royce” with a screenplay by Rattigan and production by Anatole de Grunwald. The twenty-three member cast of this drama included such stars as Rex Harrison, Ingrid Bergman, Shirley MacLaine, Omar Sharif and George C. Scott. In the early part of 1967, Asquith was signed to direct the 1968 big screen adaptation of Australian author Morris West’s “The Shoes of the Fisherman”. This American political drama of Vatican and Cold War intrigue included a major cast with such stars as Laurence Olivier and Anthony Quinn. Due to ill health in November of 1967, Asquith dropped out of its production.

The Honorable Anthony Asquith died in February of 1968 of cancer, at the age of sixty-five, in London, England. He was buried at All Saints Churchyard, Sutton Courtenay in Berkshire, England. Over the course of his career, Asquith directed forty-two films and was instrumental in the formation of the London Film Society. In his honor, the British Academy Award for Best Music is named the Anthony Asquith Award.

“Although I was sparing with the big individual close-ups, I was tempted in the scene where Edith Evan’s voice goes up three octaves on a single syllable when she says the word “hanndb-a-g”. On films, as you know, voices haven’t need to be raised to reach the back of the gallery. We take care of that, and actors and actresses keep their voices right down. In the case of (the character) Lady Bracknell, however, it was different: she is a monster anyway and she is more than life-size, and certainly Edith Evans IS life-size. I didn’t try to modify her performance in any way, because it seemed to me to be splendid.” —Anthony Asquith on directing “The Importance of Being Ernest”

Notes: It was Asquith’s father, Herbert Henry Asquith, serving as Home Secretary, who ordered Oscar Wilde’s arrest for his homosexual behavior. This arrest for indecent behavior led to Wilde’s incarceration in the Reading Jail and personally destroyed the playwright. The arrest and imprisonment of Wilde affected gay culture in Britain for most of the twentieth-century. The irony of Herbert Henry Asquith’s participation in this event is that Anthony Asquith, his youngest son, was gay.

English theatrical actress Edith Evans is considered the greatest actress on the English stage in the twentieth-century. Over a career of more than fifty years, she appeared in modern and classical roles in the West End of London and on Broadway in New York City. In 1946, Edith Evans was made a Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, the equivalent of a knighthood.

Film historian Peter Cowie, a specialist in Swedish cinema, wrote an excellent article for the Criterion Channel on the Anthony Asquith’s life and his major film adaptations. The article can be found on the Criterion Channel’s website located at: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4495-anthony-asquith

Top Insert Image: Howard Coster, “Anthony Asquith”, 1935, Bromide Print, 15.8 x 11.2 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Second Insert Image: Anthony Asquith, “A Cottage on Dartmoor”, (Hans Adalbert Schiettow and Norah Baring), 1921, Cinematography Stanley Rodwell

Third Insert Image: Anthony Asquith, “Libel”, 1959, Film Pster, Cinematography Robert Krasker

Fourth Insert Image: Anthony Asquith, “The Net”, (James Donald and Phyllis Calvert), 1953, Cinematography Desmond Dickinson

Bottom Insert Image: Ernest Cyril Stanborough, “Anthony Asquith”, 1930s, Bromide Print, 22.7 x 17.7 cm, National Portrait Gallery, London

Martin Kosleck: Film History Series

Herbert Irving Leeds, “Martin Kosleck as Heller”, 1942, Film Clip Photo,“Manila Calling”, Cinematography Lucien N. Andriot, 20th Century Fox

Born in March of 1904 in Barkotzen, now Poland’s Barkocin, Martin Kosleck was a German film actor who began his career during the silent film era. He appeared in more than fifty films and numerous episodes of television series, as well as, roles on the Broadway stage. A talented artist, Kosleck supported himself between film roles as an impressionist-styled portrait painter whose work included portraits of Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Bette Davis. He had a solo exhibition of his portraits and other works in 1935 at the Los Angeles Museum that received great reviews.

Born Nicolale Yoshkin to a forester of German-Russian and Jewish lineage, Kosleck studied for six years at the Max Reinhardt Dramatic School located at the Palais Wesendonck in Berlin Tiergarten. His forte was Shakespearian roles, however, he also appeared in musicals and revues at both German and English theaters. At the age of twenty-three, Kosleck had his film debut in International Film AG’s 1927 “Der Fahnenträger von Sedan”, a silent film by Austrian director Johannes Brandt. Three years later, he appeared in director Carmine Gallone’s musical “Die Singende Stadt (The Singing City)” and Richard Oswald’s sci-fi horror film “Alrune”, both sound films.

In the early 1930s, Kosleck met and began a relationship with the actor Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, already an established artist in Weimar Germany’s film industry and close friend of Marlene Dietrich. This sometimes turbulent relationship would last until Twardowski’s death from a heart attack in 1958. During their early time together, the National Socialist Party under Adolph Hitler was growing in power. Kosleck, an outspoken critic of the Party, soon earned the animosity of the newly established Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels.

Martin Kosleck, after learning he had been tried in absentia and sentenced to death, escaped to Britain in 1931. The following year, he arrived in New York City and performed on Broadway in “The Merchant of Venice”. This play featured the return to acting, after an absence of thirteen years, of Maude Adams who at that time was the most popular stage actress in America. Kosleck’s role in this play was noticed by director Anatole Litvak who signed him with the Warner Brothers Studio; his first role was in directors William Dieterie and Busby Berkeley’s musical comedy “Fashions of 1934”.

Hans Twardowski also left Germany in 1931 after finishing his role in Viktor Tourjansky’s “Der Herzog von Reichstadt”. He traveled to the west coast of the United States and first appeared in Universal Studio’s 1932 pre-Code drama “Scandal for Sale”. Twardowski appeared in several war films with Kosleck, including “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”, “Espionage Agent” and “The Hitler Gang”. His acting career ended along with the war; however, he continued to write, direct and act in stage plays. A talented singer, he also sang tenor in a number of musicals.

In 1934, Kosleck was given a small role playing Propaganda Minister Goebbels in the highly controversial Warner Brothers’s drama “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” based on a book by FBI agent Leon Turron who had uncovered Nazi operations in the United States. Kosleck, inspired by his deep hatred of the Nazis, portrayed Goebbels with an icy demeanor and piercing sinister stare, a performance that made Kosleck the directors’ choice for roles depicting both criminals and Nazi villains. Between 1939 and 1944, he appeared as the bad guy in a total of twenty-two war films and crime thrillers that include “Espionage Agent”, “Nick Carter, Master Detective”, “Calling Philo Vance”, “Nazi Agent”, and Paramount Studios’s “The Hitler Gang”, the second of his three roles as Goebbels.

After the end of the Second World War, Martin Kosleck continued his work at Universal Studios with appearances in several horror films. The first of which was the role of Ragheb, the Arkam sect disciple, in the 1944 “The Mummy’s Curse”. This film was Universal’s fifth entry in its “Mummy” franchise as well as Lon Chaney Jr’s final appearance as the mummy Kharis. In 1945, Kosleck again co-starred with Chaney as the disturbed plastic surgeon Dr. Rudi Polden in “The Frozen Ghost”. He was in two Universal films in 1946: a supporting role in “She-Wolf of London” which starred June Lockhart who had just finished filming “Son of Lassie”, and “House of Horrors”, a film which contains one of Kosleck’s best horror film roles, the obsessed sculptor Marcel de Lange who controls the mad killer known as “The Creeper”.

In 1947 Kosleck unexpectedly married the German actress Eleonora van Mendelssohn. Born to an elite banking family in Berlin, she was both a sensitive and vulnerable woman who had married four times and, after an abortion, initially used morphine as a sedative but soon became addicted. With less film roles offered, Kosleck returned with his wife to New York city where he appeared on Broadway in Jean Giraudoux’s “La Folle de Chaillot”, a production starring John Carradine and Tony Award winner Martita Hunt, that was recognized as one of the best plays of 1948-1949. Kosleck also had an extensive career in television with appearances on such shows as “Hallmark Hall of Fame”, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “The Outer Limits”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission Impossible” and “Studio One”, among others.

Martin Kosleck’s last screen appearance was as Horst Borsht in Robert Day’s 1980 detective comedy “The Man with Bogart’s Face”. This film is also noted for being the last film appearance of George Raft. Martin Kosleck died at the age of eighty-nine following abdominal surgery at a Santa Monica convalescent home in Los Angeles County. His body was cremated; the location of his ashes are unknown.

Notes: Eleonora von Mendelssohn, already a fragile person, had taken the role of caregiver for both her hospitalized gay brother Francesco who had suffered a stroke and Kosleck who had attempted suicide over a love affair dispute. In January of 1951, Eleonora committed suicide with a toxic cocktail of ether, pills and injections. Her body was discovered by Hans Twardowski. To better understand the tragic life of Eleonora von Mendelssohn, I suggest reading the biographical article located at The Mendelssohn Society website: https://www.mendelssohn-gesellschaft.de/en/mendelssohns/biografien/eleonora-von-mendelssohn

A complete list of Martin Kosleck’s films and television appearances can be found at the Swiss film site Cyranos located at: https://www.cyranos.ch/smkosl-e.htm

An article entitled “The Cult of Actor Martin Kosleck in The Flesh Eaters” contains information on Kosleck’s work with Universal Studios. It can be found on the Cult Film Alley website located at: https://cultfilmalley.com.au/2022/05/12/the-cult-of-actor-martin-kosleck-in-the-flesh-eaters-1964/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Martin Kosleck”, Studio Publicity Film Shot, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Eugene Fords, “Berlin Correspondent”, (Virginia Gilmore, Sig Ruman, Martin Kosleck), 1942, Cinematography Virgil Miller, 20th Century Fox

Third Insert Image: Tim Whelan, “The Mad Doctor”, (Martin Kosleck and Basil Rathbone), 1941, Cinematography Ted Tetzlaff, Paramount Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Leslie Goodwins, “The Mummy’s Curse”, (Peter Coe, Martin Kosleck, Kay Harding), 1944, Cinematography Virgil Miller, Universal Studios

Bottom Insert Image: Jean Yarbrough, “House of Horrors”, (Rondo Hatton and Martin Kosleck), 1946, Cinematography Maury Gertsman, Universal Studios

Rouben Mamoulian: Film History Series

Robert Mamoulian, “Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, December 1931, Cinematography Karl Struss, Music Herman Hand/ Johann Sebastian Bach, Running Time 90 Minutes, Paramount Pictures

Born in October of 1897 at the Georgian city of Tiflis in the Russian Empire, Rouben Mamoulian was a theatrical and film director noted for his contributions to cinematic art at the beginning of the sound era. Escaping the Soviet regime, he fled to England and later immigrated to the United States where he established his film career.

Born to an ethnic Armenian family, Rouben Mamoulian studied criminal law at the University of Moscow. Interested in theater, he trained at the Moscow Art Theatre under theatrical director Yevgeny Bagrationovich Vakhtangov who produced some of the most original and bold productions of Russian theater after the Revolution. In 1918, Mamoulian founded a drama studio in his hometown of Tiflis, now Tbilisi. In 1920, he toured with the Russian Repertory Company to England, where he stayed to study drama at the University of London.

Mamoulian began directing English stage productions in 1922. In the following year, he immigrated to the United States and became, at George Eastman’s request, the director of the American Opera Company in Rochester, New York. From 1925 to 1926, Mamoulian was head of Eastman’s School of Dance and Dramatic Action. During the late 1920s, he taught drama and directed productions at New York City’s Theater Guild. Mamoulian established himself in theatrical circles with his all-black cast production of Dorothy and Dubose Heyward’s 1927 “Porgy”. He would later direct George Gershwin’s 1935 Broadway production of “Porgy and Bess”.

Rouben Mamoulian, in addition to his theater work, directed Paramount Pictures’s 1929 early sound film “Applause” at their Astoria Studio in Queens, New York. For his film debut, he decided that stylization would be better than realism if done with flourish and skill. For the opening scene of this story, Mamoulian employed a roving camera in a soundproof booth that tracked along a desolate street before turning to follow the sound of a marching brass band. A cutaway in the film then transports the audience to a band practicing in a seedy theater.

In addition to defying the wisdom of a stationary camera, Mamoulian recorded the dialogue on separate microphones and combined them in post-production. He also employed sounds at the end of scenes that anticipated the action about to happen. In order to impose spatial depth, rhythm and momentum to the film, Mamooulian overlaid scenes with sounds of train doors opening, car horns blaring and people singing in the background. This innovation, seemingly simple by today’s standards, made a bold cinematic statement in 1929 when the sound era was just developing.

In 1931, Rouben Mamoulian directed “City Streets” for Paramount. This pre-code gangster film was written by famed detective-mystery author Dashiell Hammett; it featured Sylvia Sidney and the rising star Gary Cooper as the carnival worker who falls in love with the racketeer’s daughter. In the same year, Mamoulian directed the first sound version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”. Considered by many critics as Mamoulian’s masterpiece, the film is known for Fredric March’s transformation between characters, made possible by Mamoulian’s innovative makeup and lighting effects. March was a winner, along with Wallace Beery in Vidor’s “The Champ”, for the Best Actor at the 1932 Academy Awards.

Mamoulian directed two more films for Paramount; the 1932 “Love Me Tonight”, one of the most accomplished of the early musicals due to his seamless blending of action and songs; and the 1933 “The Song of Songs”, a melodrama with Marlene Dietrich that was not well received by critics. Working now for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Mamoulian directed Greta Garbo in the 1933 biography “Queen Christina” and had great success with the 1935 “Becky Sharp”, an adaption of the novel “Vanity Fair”, which was the first feature released in Technicolor. After three more films with MGM that were not well received by the critics, Mamoulian took his talents to Twentieth-Century Fox.

Rouben Mamoulian directed two distinguished films for his new studio: the 1940 swashbuckler “The Mark of Zorro” with great performances by Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell and Basil Rathbone; and the 1941 “Blood and Sand”, a pageant of the rise and fall of a bullfighter which reunited Power and Darnell and also starred Rita Hayworth. After Otto Preminger secured the rights to Vera Caspary’s novel “Laura”, Darryl F. Zanuck approved Mamoulian to direct the film with Preminger as the producer. When problems developed between the cast and director, Mamoulian was fired and Preminger reshot all the footage.

Through his career, Mamoulian felt strongly that a director should be given creative freedom; he was never tolerant of creative interference. Disillusioned with Hollywood, he returned to Broadway where he directed two major musical hits, the 1943 “Oklahoma!” and the 1945 “Carousel”. Mamoulian directed just two more films for MGM: “Summer Holiday” in 1948 and the 1957 musical “Silk Stockings”, which starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, featured music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Although he was scheduled to direct the 1958 film version of “Porgy and Bess”, the position of director was given to Preminger. In 1963, Mamoulian began shooting the 1963 epic “Cleopatra”; however, after six days of shooting, he was replaced with Joseph L. Mankiewicz. This was Mamoulian’s last involvement with a Hollywood film production.

Rouben Mamoulian was personally recruited in 1936 by the Directors Guild of America’s co-founder King Vidor to help organize fellow movie directors. His strong allegiance to the Guild and unwillingness to compromise led to his being targeted in the 1950s Hollywood blacklisting. Mamoulian died of natural causes in December of 1987 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Note: Senses of Cinema, an online film site with interviews and extensive biographies of both actors and directors, has an interesting article on the 1929 “Applause”. Senses of Cinema can be found at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/applause/

Senses of Cinema also has an article on Mamoulian’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which can be found at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/cteq/jekyll/

Top Insert Image: Rouben Mamoulian, Self Portrait, circa 1939, Vintage Black and White Print, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Rouben Mamoulian, “Myrna Loy”, 1932, “Love Me Tonight”, Cinematography Victor Milner, 104 Minutes, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Rouben Mamoulian, “Fredric March”, 1931, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, Cinematography Karl Struss, 98 Minutes, Paramount Pictures

Fourth Insert Image: Rouben Mamoulian, “Gary Cooper and Sylvia Sidney”, 1931, “City Streets”, Cinematography Lee Garmes, 83 Minutes, Paramount Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Rouben Mamoulian, “Tyrone Power”, 1940, “The Mask of Zorro”, Cinematography Arthur C. Miller, 94 Minutes, Twentieth-Century Fox

Robert Wiene: Film History Series

Robert Wiene, “The Hands of Orlac”, 1924, Silent Horror Film, Running Time 99 Minutes, Cinematography Günther Krampf and Hans Androschin, Producer Pan-Film

Robert Wiene was born in April of 1873 in the German Empire city of Breslau, now the city of Wroclaw in Poland. He was a German film director, producer and screenwriter who worked in a variety of genres including the German Expressionist movement of the early twentieth-century. Wiene was the elder son of theatrical actor Karl Wiene and the brother of Conrad Wiene, who also entered the German film industry.

Wiene traveled during his formative years with his family throughout Central and Western Europe; he lived in Stuttgart, Vienna, Dresden and Prague. Wiene studied law at the University of Berlin and the University of Vienna where he earned his law degree. He practiced law in the central German city of Weimar until 1908. At which time, Wiene relocated to Vienna for a position as manager of a theatrical company; this position gave him the opportunity to perform in its stage productions.

Robert Wiene’s initial participation in the German film industry was writing the screenplay for director Friedrich Müller’s 1913 silent film “Die Waffen der Jugend (The Weapons of Youth)”. This film is now considered a lost film. In the following year, Wiene directed his first film, “Er Rechts, Sie Links (He This Way, She That Way)”, a marital short comedy for the Berlin-based Messter Film. Messter Film became the center of the German film industry and played a prominent role in the development of the longer-running feature film. Between 1914 and 1918, Wiene wrote the screenplays for fifteen movies he directed for Messter Film.

In 1919, Wiene and Austrian film director Heinz Hanus founded the “Association of Film Directors in Vienna”. This association was a member of what would become the Filmbund, a professional support group for the Austrian film industry which was on the verge of collapse. In 1920, Wiene directed what is probably his best known film, the 1920 silent horror film “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari”, considered the archetypal work of German Expressionist cinema. The script was written by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, both pacifists, and was inspired by their experiences with the military during World War I.

After the success of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, Robert Wiene became an independent director for the remainder of his career. In 1923 for Neumann-Film-Produktion GmbH, he directed and wrote the screenplay for the 1923 silent drama “Raskolnikow”, an adaption of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s epic 1866 novel “Crime and Punishment”. An avant-garde psychological drama, it starred Ukrainian-born actor Gregori Chmara and premiered in Berlin. This film also had a strong influence on the development of German cinema.

Wiene continued to direct and write screenplays for silent films until 1928. His final silent film was the 1928 “Unfug der Liebe (Folly of Love)” for Max Glass Film. Austrian director Max Glass wrote the screenplay and produced the film, which starred Maria Jacobini and the British actor Jack Trevor. Wiene directed his first sound film, the 1930 drama “Der Andere (The Other)”, at Berlin’s Terra Studios. He shot a French-language version entitled “The Prosecutor Hallers” immediately afterwards with different actors at the same studio. Wiene directed three more films in 1931: “Panik in Chicago”, “Der Liebesexpress (The Love Express)”, and in collaboration with French director Pierre Billon, “Nuits de Venise (Venetian Nights)”.

In 1933, Robert Wiene directed “Taifun (Typhoon)”, a drama film based on writer Melchior Lengyei’s 1911 play of the same name. This was Wiene’s last film in Germany. In May of 1933 four months after the National Socialist Party took power, the film was banned. The film was seen by the censors as portraying Asian characters as more noble than Europeans; the censors were also concerned the film’s portrayal of the French justice system as incompetent might undermine the audience’s faith in the German system. The film was heavily reshot with an altered plot under the title “Polizeiakte 909”; the Japanese were now portrayed as unsympathetic villains.

Wiene relocated to Budapest in 1933 and never returned to Germany. In September of that year, he started directing the 1934 “Eine Nacht in Venedig (One Night in Venice)” for Hunnia-Film, at that time the most significant sound film studio in Hungary. Two versions were shot simultaneously, a German language film and a Hungarian version with Hungarian actors. After finishing the film, Wiene traveled to London and finally to Paris where he attempted to make a sound remake of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” with artist Jean Cocteau.

Robert Wiene died in Paris from cancer on the seventeenth of July in 1938, ten days before the end of production on his spy thriller “Ultimatum”. The film was finished posthumously by his friend Robert Sildmak, a prominent film director at Universal Films in Hollywood. Robert Wiene was buried at Paris’s Bagneux Cemetery in a temporary concession plot that was later recycled. There is no trace of his grave today. Only twenty of the ninety films Wiene created are currently known to exist.

Note: Robert Wiene’s 1924 silent horror film “The Hands of Orlac” was based on French writer Maurice Renard’s novel “Les Mains d’Orlac”. It starred Russian Empire-born actress Alexandra Sorina and the prominent German-born British actor Conrad Veidt, who had played the murderous somnambulist in Wiene’s “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”. The film was shot at the studios of Listo Film in Vienna and had its Berlin premiere in September of 1924.

Several reconstructed versions of the film exist today with new sound scores by such composers as Henning Lohner, Paul Mercer, and Donald Sosin. German-émigré film director Karl Freund, as a final assignment with Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, directed a 1935 adaption of Renard’s novel under the title “Mad Love”. This film starred Peter Lorre as Dr. Gogol, Frances Drake as Yvonne Orlac, and Colin Clive, known for his 1931 role of Henry Frankenstein, as the somnambulist Stephen Orlac.

In 1960, French filmmaker Edmond T. Gréville directed both an English and French version of “The Hands of Orlac”, based on his screenplay of Renard’s novel, that starred Mel Ferrer, Dany Carrel, Lucile Saint-Simon and Christopher Lee. The film’s cinematography was done by Desmond Dickinson and featured a score by French pianist and jazz composer Claude Bolling.

Second Insert Image: Robert Wiene, “The Hands of Orlac”, 1924, (Alexandra Sorina and Conrad Veidt), Cinematography Günther Krampf and Hans Androschin

Third Insert Images: Robert Wiene, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, 1930, (Conrad Veidt), Cinematography Willy Hameister

Fourth Insert Image: Robert Wiene, “The Hands of Orlac”, 1924, (Conrad Veidt), Cinematography Günther Krampf and Hans Androschin

Bottom Insert Image: Robert Wiene, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”, 1930, (Werner Drauss and Conrad Veidt), Cinematography Willy Hameister

Mauritz Stiller: Film History Series

Mauritz Stiller, “Vingarne (The Wings)”, 1916, Silent Film Scenes, Screenwriters Axel Esbensen and Mauritz Stiller, Cinematography Julius Jaenzon, Original Running Time 69 Minutes, Distributor Svenska Biografteatem

Born in July of 1883 in Helsinki, Mauritz Stiller, birth name Moshe Stiller, was a Swedish film director of Finnish Jewish descent known for his pioneering work in the Swedish film industry. His family of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage originally lived in Russia and Poland before settling in Finland. At that time, these countries were autonomous regions of the Imperial Russia under Emperor Alexander III.

Mauritz Stiller was raised by family friends after the death of his father in 1887 and the subsequent suicide of his mother. Interested in acting from an early age, he was offered the opportunity to practice his acting skills in the city theaters of Åbo and Helsinki. In his twenties, Stiller received a draft notice to enter the army of Czar Nicholas II, who as the last Emperor of Russia had ascended to the throne in November of 1894. Instead of entering service, Stiller chose exile and settled in Sweden where he later became a citizen in 1921.

By 1912 at the age of twenty-nine, Stiller had become a member of Sweden’s developing silent film industry. He initially was a scriptwriter, actor and director for short silent films. Stiller appeared as an actor in four films in 1912, his first being the role of a passenger in the 1912 “Trädgårdsmästaren (The Gardener). After these four films, Stiller focused on his writing and directing; he acted in only two more of his films: the 1914 “När Svärmor Regerar (When the Mother-in-Law Reigns)” and the 1916 “Vingarne (The Wings)”.

As his skills developed, Mauritz Stiller began directing feature-length productions. His 1918 feature “Thomas Graals Bästa Bam (The First Child of Thomas Graal)” received critical acclaim. This comedy on the best way to raise children starred actor and director Victor Sjöström and the stage and film actress Karin Molander. By 1920, Stiller had directed more than forty films and was considered a leading figure in the Swedish film industry. Among these films was the 1919 sixteenth-century crime drama “Herr Arnes Pengar (Sir Arne’s Treasure)” based on author Selma Lagerlöf’s 1903 “The Treasure”. This silent film was the first to feature illustrator Alva Lundin’s handwritten artistic title cards.

Stiller met a young actress named Greta Gustafsson at the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm. He cast her in the secondary but important role of Elizabeth Dohna in his 1924 romantic drama film “Gösta Berlings Saga (The Atonement of Gosta Berling)”. In 1925, Stiller accepted an offer from Louis B. Mayer to direct for Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios. He relocated to the United States accompanied by Gustafsson, soon to be given her acting name Greta Garbo, and the actor Einer Hanson, who had appeared in Stiller’s films. Both actors became successful at MGM; although Hanson achieved greater success with his move to Paramount Pictures.

Mauritz Stiller was assigned to direct the 1926 “The Temptress”, Greta Garbo’s second film with Metro Goldwyn Mayer. After repeated arguments with the studio’s executives, he was replaced on the film by Fred Niblo, who had recently finished work as principal director on the 1925 silent epic “Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ”, the third highest-grossing silent film in history. His contract terminated, Stiller was immediately signed by Paramount Pictures for whom he made three successful films in 1927. However because of continuing disagreements with Paramount’s executives, Stiller was terminated in the middle of his fourth film.

Mauritz Stiller returned to Sweden in 1927; he died in Stockholm from pleurisy, an infection in his lungs, at the age of forty-five in November of 1928. His body is interred at the Northern Cemetery in the Solna Municipality of Stockholm. For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Stiller was given a star in 1960 on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A monument in Stiller’s honor was erected in the southern Swedish city of Kristianstad.

Notes: Mauritz Stiller’s 1916 silent film “Vingarne (The Wings)” was adapted from Danish author Herman Joachim Bang’s 1902 novel “Mikaël”, based on the life of sculptor Auguste Rodin. The novel would serve, eight years later, as the source for director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1924 silent film “Mikaël: The Story of the Third Sex”. Besides being an early homosexual-themed film, “Vingarne” is noted for its plot presented through flashbacks, as well as its use of a framing story, a main narrative that sets the stage for a set of shorter stories. The film is largely lost; only thirty minutes of its original seventy minute length still survives. There are several versions of the remaining film with added soundtracks on YouTube.

“Vingarne” tells the story of a devious countess (Danish actress Lili Bech) who comes between gay sculptor Claude Zoret (Norwegian actor Egil Eide) and his bisexual lover and model Mikaël (Swedish actor Lars Hanson). This leads to Zoert’s death at the base of a statue depicting Mikaël as the mythological winged Icarus. It should be noted that openly gay Swedish actor Nils Asther, later a Hollywood star, had his first film role, albeit uncredited, in Stiller’s “Vingarne”.

A biography of Nils Asther can be found in the Film History Series archive of this site.

Top Insert Image: Arnold Genthe, “Mauritz Stiller” Date Unknown, Photo Proof

Second Insert Image: Mauritz Stiller, “Hotel Imperial”, 1927, Film Poster, Cinematographer Bert Glennen, Production Famous Players-Lasky, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Roger Tillberg, “Greta Garbo and Mauritz Stiller”, 1925, Gelatin Silver Print

Fourth Insert Image: Mauritz Stiller, “The Street of Sin”, 1928, Film Poster, Cinematographer Bert Glennon, Harry Fischbeck and Victor Milner, Production Adolph Zucker and Jesse Lasky, Paramount Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Mauritz Stiller, Pola Negri, George Siegmann”, 1927, Film Set of “Hotel Imperial”, Gelatin Silver Print

James Searle Dawley: Film History Series

James Searle Dawley, “Snow White”, 1916, Silent Fantasy Film, Cinematographer and Producer H. Lyman Broening, Running Time 63 Minutes, Starring Marguerite Clark and Creighton Hale, Production Company Famous Players Film Company

Born at Del Norte, Colorado in October of 1877, James Searle Dawley was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, stage actor and playwright. During his career, he directed over three-hundred short films and fifty-six features with such actors as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd, and John Barrymore. Dawley also wrote several Broadway productions as well as plays for repertory companies.

The youngest of three sons born to James Andres Dawley and Angela Searle, James Dawley received his initial education in Denver and later attended the city’s Saxton College of Oratory. As a child, he permanently lost the vision in his right eye, an injury which challenged his later career as actor and film director. At the age of seventeen, Dawley had his first stage performance as François in the Lewis Morrison Company’s 1895 New York City production of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s “Richelieu”. Three years later, now billed as J. Searle Dawley, he served both as performer and stage manager for the Morrison Company’s productions.

Dawley left the Morrison Company and performed on the vaudeville circuit from 1899 to 1902. He returned to the theatrical stage as a member of the Edna May Spooner Stock Company based in Brooklyn. Actress and playwright Edna May Spooner and her family were a fixture in Brooklyn’s theater life and operated its Bijou Theater for several years. Recognized for his past production experience, Dawley both performed on stage and managed the company’s productions. He also wrote and produced fifteen plays during his five years with the company.

In May of 1907, J. Searle Dawley made the decision to start a career in the rapidly expanding motion-picture industry. He was hired by Edwin Porter, the production head at Edison Studios, to serve as director for the company’s main film facilities in the Bronx, New York. His first project as director was the now-lost 1907 comedy “The Nine Lives of a Cat”. After experiencing some initial frustrations, Dawley quickly established himself as a reliable director who could produce a wide range of releases, often two or more films in a single week. Through his career with Edison Studios, he directed over two-hundred single-reel films. Among these were “Bluebeard”, adaptions of both “Michael Strogoff” and “Faust”, and “Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest”, noteworthy for its special effects and an early screen appearance by film director D. W. Griffith.

By 1910, Dawley was directing increasingly elaborate productions for the Edison Company. Although they were still one-reel films, they included the 1910 Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol” and two presentations of historic naval battles: “The Stars and Stripes”, a depiction of John Paul Jones’s victory in 1779, and “The Battle of Trafalgar”, the story of British Admiral Lord Nelson’s 1805 triumph over the French and Spanish warships. In both of these productions, Dawley oversaw the creation of large maritime sets inside Edison’s Bronx studio, construction of the ships’ decks, and simulated views of the battles using small-scale models and silhouettes.

In 1910, J. Searle Dawley was screenwriter and director for the longer running (fourteen minute) silent horror “Frankenstein”, the earliest known screen adaption of Shelley’s novel. Staged and filmed in three days at the Bronx studio in mid-January, Dawley used special effects for the creation of the monster. A burning papier-mâché human figure was shot on red film, separately and in reverse, and then spliced into the master negative for the final print. This reverse action produced a creation scene in which the monster forms slowly as it rises from a cauldron of blazing chemicals.

In the same year, Dawley traveled to California and set up Edison Studios at Long Beach. This new arrangement required him to write more screenplays and direct film productions on both coasts. Dawley made several attempts to create films longer than the fifteen-minute one-reel film; however, Edison had little confidence in the attention span of the audience. In 1913, Edwin Porter hired Dawley to work with him at Adolph Zuckor’s new studio, Famous Players Film Company. Dawley directed its first thirteen releases, among which was the romantic comedy “An American Citizen”, the first feature film for actor John Barrymore.

After leaving Famous Players in May of 1914, James Searle Dawley, along with Frank L. Dyer and J. Parker Read Jr, established the film company Dyreda. In the fall of 1914, arrangements were made with World Film Corporation to distribute their releases; Dyreda would later merge with Metro Pictures, a forerunner of Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Dawley returned in 1916 to Famous Players, later Paramount Pictures, for two years. During this period, he directed over a dozen films, including “Mice and Men” and “Snow White”, both in 1916; two 1917 films “”Bab’s Diary” and “The Seven Swans”; and the 1918 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, a five-reel film produced by Adolph Zucker and Jesse L. Lasky.

Dawley freelanced as a director for several years before joining Fox Films in 1921. The last feature film he directed was the 1923 drama “Broadway Broke”, produced by Murray W. Garsson and distributed by Lewis J. Selznick. Months later, Dawley made his final directorial works in collaboration with the inventor of the first practical electronic amplifier Lee de Forest. Their two experimental sound films, “Abraham Lincoln” and “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, were both released in 1924. Dawley worked through the late 1920s and 1930s in radio broadcasting, journalism, and sound-film technologies.

James Searle Dawley married Grace Owens Givens in June of 1918; the couple remained together over thirty years until Dawley’s death, at the age of seventy-one, in March of 1949. He died of undisclosed causes at the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. Dawley’s ashes were interned in the columbarium at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory. Silent film star Mary Pickford and director Walter Lang spoke at the service. Dawley’s personal papers, scrapbooks and several Edison production scripts are housed in the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California.

Note: Dawley’s 1916 “Snow White” was considered a lost-film destroyed in a vault fire. A substantially complete print with Dutch subtitles, albeit missing a few scenes, was located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1992. It was subsequently restored through the work of the George Eastman House, the world’s oldest museum dedicated to photography.

Second Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “The Harvest Moon”, 1920, Film Poster, Six-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer Bert Dawley

Third Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “Frankenstein”, 1910, Film Poster, One-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer James White

Fourth Insert Image: James Searle Dawley, “A Virgin Paradise”, 1921, Film Poster, Eight-Reel Silent Film, Cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg and Bert Dawley

Bottom Insert Image: “Marguerite Clark and Creighton Hale”, Silent Film Clip Photo, “Snow White”, 1916, Five-Reel Silent Film Director James Searle Dawley, Cinematographer H. Lyman Broening

Jack Edward Larson: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Jack Larson as Jimmy Olsen”, circa 1950s, Studio Publicity Photo, “Adventures of Superman”, Warner Brothers / International Movie Data Base

Born in Los Angeles, California in February of 1928, Jack Edward Larson was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and librettist; he wrote the libretto to American composer Virgil Thomson’s 1972 three-act opera “Lord Byron”. Larson’s acting career spanned a period of sixty years, during which he appeared in both film and television productions.

The son of George Larson and Anita Calicoff, Jack Larson was raised in Pasedena, California, and attended its Junior College. Encouraged by his teachers to study the works of Shakespeare, he began writing and directing plays at the college. Larson’s productions caught the attention of a talent scout from the Warner Brothers film studio. After signing with Warner Brothers, he was given his first role, as Lieutenant ‘Shorty’ Kirk, in director Raoul Walsh’s 1947 aviation film “Fighter Squadron”. Three uncredited roles followed: the boy role in R. G. Springsteen’s 1949 drama “Flame of Youth”; the role of Dusty in Philip Ford’s 1950 western “Redwood Forest Trail”; and the role of Tommy in Ford’s mystery film of the same year “Trial Without Jury”.

In early 1951, Larson was presented with the film role of an energetic but naive young reporter. Encouraged by his agent, he agreed to portray Jimmy Olsen in Robert L. Lippert’s black and white film “ Superman and the Mole Men”. This film, shot in the month of July, served as the pilot for the “Adventures of Superman” television series. The initial filming and production for the first season was accomplished in August/September of 1951. There were one hundred-four episodes in the series which was filmed in black and white until 1954 after which it was filmed in color until the series’ end in April of 1958. While Larson’s character of Jimmy Olsen gave him wide recognition, it also limited his development as an actor by typecasting him in his future roles.

During his film work on “Adventures of Superman”, Jack Larson continued to appear, both credited and uncredited, in fourteen films produced through different production companies. Among these were Joseph Kane’s 1951 adventure film for Republic Pictures “Fighting Coast Guard”; Harry Levin’s 1952 family comedy “Belles on Their Toes” for 20th Century Fox; Thomas Carr’s 1953 western for Allied Artists “Star of Texas”; and John H. Auer’s 1957 drama for Warner Brothers “Johnny Trouble” which starred Ethel Barrymore in her final role.

Larson made cameo appearances in two films of the Superman series. He played a train passenger in Richard Donner’s 1978 “Superman”. In Bryan Singer’s 2006 “Superman Returns”, Larson was given the role of Bo, the Metropolis bartender and loyal friend of Superman. In addition to his film roles, Larson also acted in several television series: the 1955 “Navy Log” with roles in four episodes; “The Millionaire” in 1960; “Gomer Pyle” in 1965; “Superboy” in 1991; “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” in 1996 as old Jimmy Olsen; and “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit” in 2010.

Jack Larson was a longtime friend of Gore Vidal whom he first met in 1954 at a Santa Monica party. His social circle included other literary figures such as Christopher Isherwood and expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles, author of “The Sheltering Sky”. In 1958, Larson met his life partner, the director and screenwriter James Bridges. Listed among Bridges’s many films are “The Paper Chase”, “Urban Cowboy” and “The China Syndrome”. Larson and Bridges resided together at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed George Sturges House in Brentwood, Los Angeles, until Bridge’s death in June of 1993.

Prior to his meeting Bridges, Larson had been the companion of actor Montgomery Clift. When Larson was feeling typecast by his Jimmy Olsen character, it was Clift who advised him to stop putting himself in those casting positions, advice which Larson followed by writing plays and librettos. Due to his long association with Clift, Larson was interviewed extensively for the 2018 biographical documentary “Making Montgomery Clift”. Directed by Hillary Demmon and Montgomery Clift’s nephew Robert Clift, the film presented a different side to Montgomery Clift’s life than previous biographies. Told through interviews with family and friends, it presented Clift as a man who enjoyed life and was comfortable with himself as a gay man.

Jack Larson died on September 20th in 2015 at the age of eighty-seven. On both plays and films, he had often collaborated with his longtime partner, James Bridges. Larson’s interment was at the Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, California.

Notes: As part of its “The Interviews: Twenty Five Years” series, the Television Academy has a two-chapter video interview with Jack Larson on its site. I highly recommend this interview; click on full interview to see the lissted sections. The interview can be located at: https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/jack-larson#interview-clips

Top Insert Image: William Claxton, “Jack Larson”, Jack Larson and James Bridges Photo Shoot, 26.7 x 34.3 cm, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Second Insert Photo: Photographer Unknown, “Jack Larson (Jimmy Olsen) and Steve Reeves (Clark Kent)”, circa 1950s, “Adventures of Superman”, Film Clip Photo, Everett Collection

Third Insert Photo: William Claxton, “Jack Larson”, Jack Larson and James Bridges Photo Shoot, 26.7 x 34.3 cm, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Photo: William Claxton, “Jack Larson and Jame Bridges”, Photo Shoot, Gelatin Silver Print, Private Collection

Segundo de Chomón: Film History Series

Segundo de Chomón, “Hôtel Électrique”, 1908, Running Time 8 Minutes, Producer and Distributor Pathé Frères

Soundtrack Courtesy of Japan’s Euodia Chamber Ensemble

Born in the Aragon city of Teruel in October of 1871, Segundo Victor Aurelio Chomón y Ruiz was a cinematographer, film director and screenwriter. A pioneer in camera and optical techniques, he is regarded as the most significant Spanish silent film director in the international context. Known for his technical quality and creativity, Chomón worked with the most important film companies of the time, including Italia Films and Pathé Frères.

Segundo de Chomón was the son of Isaac Chomón Gil, a military doctor, and Luisa Ruiz Valero, born in the city of Calamocha located in the Teruel Province. It is believed he undertook engineering studies; however, there are no known records of graduation. Chomón resided in Paris between 1895 and 1897 where he discovered the cinematic works of Auguste and Louis Lumière, French pioneers best known for the films produced through their Cinématographe motion picture system. While in Paris, Chomón met French silent film actress Julienne Alexandrine Mathieu whom he would later marry. In addition to acting in Chomón’s films, Mathieu would collaborate with Chomón on scripts and special effects.

Between 1897 and 1898, Chomón fulfilled his military service in Cuba; upon his return to Paris, he became interested in film production. At Georges Méliès’s recently founded film company Star Films, Chomón worked alongside his wife in the workshop where they hand-colored film, frame by frame. He designed some celluloid templates that facilitated this work and achieved greater precision in color delimitation. With slight changes, this system was later patented by Pathé Frères under the name “Pathécolor”. At the turn of the century, Chomón relocated to Barcelona where, acting as an agent for Pathé Frères, he opened a workshop to publicize and distribute the company’s films.

In 1901, Segundo de Chomón began making films on an independent basis with distribution through Pathé. His first film was the 1901 silent short “Descente du Mont Serrat”. In the following year, Chomón produced a series of films which were inspired by the stories he found through the book publisher Editorial Calleja. He experimented in this period with double exposures and techniques to create gigantic effects which he used successfully in his 1903 “Gulliver en ie Pais de los Gigantes”. Due to the quality of his films, Chomón received financial support for his filmmaking from Charles Pathé who desired to compete with Georges Méliès’s company, Star Films.

Now a valuable asset to Pathé, Chomón relocated in 1905 back to Paris, where in addition to directing films, he was given charge of the color stenciling workshop. In 1907, he was selected to co-direct the remake of Pathé’s top director Ferdinand Zecca’s 1903 “Vie et Passion de Notre Seigneur Jésus Christ”. Chomón’s most productive years were between 1907 and 1912, a period in which he worked with Zecca and such talented directors as Gaston Velle and Émile Cohl. In 1912, Chomón accepted an invitation to make films in Italy. He worked on the special effects for other directors’ films, most notably Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 epic “Cabiria”. Pastrone recipocally collaborated on Chomón’s last directorial film, the 1916 “La Guerra e il Sogno di Momi”.

After his move to Italy, Segundo de Chomón’s own films became less frequent. In 1924, he worked in a collaboration with Swiss engineer Ernest Zellinger on a color cinema system for which they won the Gold Medal at the International Exhibition of Photography, Optics and Cinematography in Turin. Instead of directing his own films, Chomón primarily worked in visual effects for the films of others, including Italian actor and director Guido Brignone’s 1925 “Meciste in Hell” and French actor and director Abel Gance’s 1927 “Napoléon”. Both these directors were highly regarded: Guido Brignone was the first Italian director to win at the Venice Film Festival, and Gance’s epic “Napoléon” is widely considered one of the greatest and innovative films of the silent era, if not all time.

Chomón was a meticulous and perfectionist technician who would spend months to perfect a special effect, even if it would only last a few seconds on screen. In his films, he used a vast repertory of special effect techniques including colorization of film, the use of models, double exposures, overprints, schüfftan effects (covering part of the camera’s view with a mirror to create an image with multiple parts), pyrotechnics, camouflage and crank pitch, the removal of an object while the camera is turned off and then on to cause a disappearance.

Best remembered for his special effect films, Segundo de Chomón died in Paris on the second of May in 1929 at the age of fifty-seven. Over the course of his career, he received credits on one hundred forty-five films from 1901 to 1916.

Notes: The 1908 silent French comedy-fantasy film “Hôtel Électrique” was directed by Segundo de Chomón and produced by Pathé Frères. The film’s cast included just Segundo de Chomón as Betrand and his wife Julienne Mathieu as Laura. This eight-minute film is one of the earliest uses of stop motion animation in history, though it is not the first. Chomón used the technique in his 1906 film “Le Théâtre de Bob”, which animated puppets, and the American director J. Stuart Blackton used stop motion for his 1907 “The Haunted Hotel” produced by the American Vitagraph Company. However, the “Hôtel Électrique” is unique in its early use of pixilation, a technique using live actors as the frame-by-frame subjects.

From 1907 to 1909, Julienne Mathieu was credited in at least forty-two films, many of them shot by Chomón with her assistance on special effects. She also appeared in films by Ferdinard Zecca, Gaston Velle, Albert Capellani, and Lucien Nonguet. Mathieu ended her film career in 1909. From 1912 to 1925, she is reported to have been living with her family in Turin, Italy. On the first of December in 1943, Julienne Alexandrine Mathieu died at the Ospizio della Carità (Hospice of Charity) in Chieri while the city was under German occupation after the fall of Fascist Italy.

In the Ultrawolves Archive, there is a 2018 article on Segundo de Chomón’s French 1908 colorized short silent film “La Grenouille (The Frog)”. This rather unusual film for the era can be located at: https://ultrawolvesunderthefullmoon.blog/2018/07/15/segundo-de-chomon-la-grenouille-the-frog/

Second Insert Image: Segundo de Chomón, “Les Roses Magiques (The Magic Roses)”, 1906, Pathé Frères

Third Insert Image: Segundo de Chomón, “La Voyage sur la Planète Jupiter”, 1909, Pathé Frères

Bottom Insert Image: Segundo de Chomón, “Les Oeufs de Paques (Easter Eggs), 1907, Pathé Frères

Mime Misu: Film History Series

Mime Misu, “In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice)”, 1912, Written and Directed by Mime Misu, Film Runtime 42 Minutes, Continental-Kunstfilm, Berlin, Germany,

Remastered with English Subtitles and Score by Swiss Composer Christophe Sturzenegger

Born in January of 1888 at the county seat of Botosani in the northern part of Romania, Misu Rosescu was a pantomime artist, ballet dancer, film actor and director. He was nephew to the prominent writer Rahel Levin Varnhagen whose home became a center for the intellectual and political figures of German culture. Born into a family of musicians, artists and performers, Rosescu made his stage debut as a child performing ballet and pantomime.

Rosescu’s many talented performances were recognized and gained him free entrance into the Bucharest Art Academy. During his studies, he was assigned to the Royal National Theatre in the capital city of Bucharest. After his graduation with honors, Rosescu began a successful career appearing in theatrical performances at the provincial theaters of Romania. After his performance at the 1900 World Fair in Paris, Rosescu established his own theatrical production company and toured Berlin, Budapest, Vienna and London.

Misu Rosescu, now using the name Mime Misu, entered into the growing film industry. In Paris, he was initially employed by Lux, a film production company located in the 14th arrondissement, and later at Pathé Frères which was becoming the world’s largest film equipment and production company. In 1912, Misu signed with Berlin’s newly established Continental=Kunstfilm which had just begun to release a mix of comedies, melodramas and documentaries. mis

Through Continental-Kunstfilm, Mime Misu wrote and directed three films in his first year. The 1912 silent film “Das Gespenst von Clyde (The Ghost of von Clyde)” was a media story of Count Arthur Hamilton who died in the British Castle of Clyde under mysterious circumstances. Misu’s 1912 “In Nacht und Eis (In Night and Ice)” was a silent adventure-disaster film depicting the recent sinking of RMC Titanic. Having achieved some success with his drama-documentary narrative style, Misu made the 1912 “Das Mirakel (The Miracle)”. Based on the thirteenth-century temptation legend of Sister Beatrice, the film later appeared under the title “Das Marienwunder: Eine alte Legende (The Miracle of Mary: An Old Legend)” due to legal rulings in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Misu made one more film in Germany, the 1913-1914 “Der Excentric Club”, for Projektions-AG Union, a Frankfurt film production company that soon moved to Berlin, the new center of the German film industry. He traveled to the United States where he made one film, the 1914 “Money God”, under his personal production company Misugraph-Film. Lacking support in the United States just as the First Great War began, Misu returned to Europe and settled with his new wife, Bertha, in Berlin’s inner-city district of Wilmersdorf. In 1915, he directed in the Netherlands his last film, a disaster film of a sinking ship entitled “Ontmaskerd (Unmasked)”; the credits list his birth name, Misu Rosecu, as director.

Mime Misu traveled to the United States every year from 1915 to 1917. He maintained office space in Berlin for his production company Misugraph-Film until 1921. There is, however, no record of any artistic activity from 1915 to 1921. In 1921, Misu apparently misrepresented himself as to his involvement with the Famous Players Film Company, a film venture owned by Paramount Pictures’ founder Adolph Zukor. This led to the publishing of their exchanged letters in Berlin’s film journal Fil-Kurier. An accomplished stage performer and director of six films, (Mime) Misu Rosescu died in Antwerp, Belgium in the summer of 1953.

Among the films in his career, Mime Misu’s best known work is the 1912 “In Nacht und Eis’, the earliest surviving film depiction of the RMS Titanic disaster. Camera work was done by Willy Hameister, Emil Schünemann and Victor Zimmermann. Most of its footage was shot in a glasshouse studio inside the courtyard of Continental-Kunstfilm’s offices at 123 Chausseestrasse. Other footage was shot in Hamburg and, possibly, aboard the Hamburg-docked German ocean liner Kaiserin Auguste Victoria.

At a running time of thirty-five minutes, “In Nacht und Eis” was shot in black and white with various scenes tinted to increase their impact. The film starred actors Waldemar Hecker as the telegrapher, Otto Rippert as the Captain, and Ernst Rückert as the First Officer. The Berlin Fire Department provided the flood waters necessary for the scenes of the Titanic’s sinking. “In Nacht und Eis” was considered a lost film until February of 1998. At that time, the German film archivist Horst Lange, after reading an article discussing this loss, informed the newspaper that he possessed a print of the film.

Note: The above video of “In Nacht und Eis” is from the Titanic Officers site which contains a multitude of articles on the ship’s officers and other aspects of the Titanic and its sinking. The Titanic Officers website can be found at: https://www.titanicofficers.com/articles.html

For those film buffs who are purists, there is a restored silent version, sans soundtrack, on the Internet Archive. This slightly shorter film with a runtime of thirty-four minutes is located at: https://archive.org/details/silent-in-nacht-und-eis

Top Insert Image: Mime Misu, “Das Mirakel”, 1912, Publicity Photo on Cardstock

Bottom Insert Image: Mime Misu, “In Nacht und Eis”, 1912, (Otto Rippert and Ernst Rüchert) Film Clip Photo

Jackie Moran: Film History Series

Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran”, circa 1940s, Vintage Promotion Shot, 20.3 x 25.4 cm, Private Collection

Born in Mattoon, Illinois in January of 1923, John Edward Moran was an American film actor who is credited for roles in thirty-seven films. He is known primarily for his roles in youth-oriented films, particularly the roles of Huckleberry Finn and Buck Rogers’s sidekick Buddy Wade.

Discovered by actress and film producer Mary Pickford, Moran was taken by his mother to Hollywood, California for a 1935 screen test. Initially signed to Columbia Pictures, he was given the screen name of Jackie Moran and was cast in a significant number of supporting film roles. At the age of thirteen, he appeared in three 1936 films: the debut role of Tommy Blake in Elliott Nugent’s romantic comedy “And So They Were Married”, the uncredited role of Duckfoot in director Eric C. Kenton’s crime film “Counterfeit”, and the role of young Paul Darnley in Wesley Ruggles’s drama “Valiant is the Word for Carrie”.

After appearing in “Outcast” and “Michael O’Halloran” in 1937, Jackie Moran played the co-star role of Huckleberry Finn in David O. Selznick’s 1938 Technicolor “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” with actor Tommy Kelly as Tom. Moran received critical praise for his natural acting skills and went on to star in several films produced by Republic and Monogram studios. In 1939, he had a role in Joseph Santley’s 1939 drama “The Spirit of Culver” where he acted alongside fellow child actors Jackie Cooper and Freddie Bartholomew.

Cast in a cameo role for the 1939 “Gone With the Wind”, Moran played Doctor Meade’s son who, furious at his brother’s death in the war, enlists in the Confederate Army to seek revenge. Moran was next signed by Universal Pictures to play the role of Buddy Wade in its 1939 science fiction film “Buck Rogers”, a serial based on the original 1928 magazine stories and comic strip. The twelve-part serial starred Larry (Buster) Crabbe as Buck Rogers who, assisted by his sidekick Buddy, fights the evil dictator Killer Kane. The role of Kane was played by character actor Anthony Warde known for his portrayal of unsavory henchmen. Produced on a limited budget, this serial saved money on special effects by using sets and background shots from previous science fiction movies.

In eleven of his films, Jackie Moran was teamed up with child star Marcia Mae Jones, who initially co-starred with him in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as Tom Sawyer’s cousin Mary. They also appeared in supporting roles for Deanna Durban’s 1938 musical “Mad About Music”, an exclusive boarding school film which went on to receive four Academy Award nominations. Robert F. McGowan, known for his “Our Gang” comedy shorts, cast Moran and Jones as the stars in four Monogram Studio productions that idealized life in pre-World War II America. These were the 1938 adventure film “Barefoot Boy” and a trio of films in 1940: the school dance film “Tomboy”, the mystery film “Haunted House” and the drama “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”.

Moran continued to act in films during the years of World War II. His last major production was in David O. Selznick’s 1944 epic drama film “Since You Went Away”, an Oscar nominee for Best Picture in which Moran played a grocer’s son opposite Shirley Temple. In 1945 to 1946 near the end of his film career, he played in a collection of teenage musical comedies produced by Columbia and Monogram studios. Among these were a lead role in the comedy-mystery “There Goes Kelly” and co-starring roles in Columbia’s “Let’s Go Steady” and Monogram’s “High School Hero”. Moran’s final film role was in Columbia’s 1946 college drama “Betty Co-Ed”.

Little is known of Jackie Moran’s remaining forty-four years outside of what was stated by his lawyer Robert Doyle and other acquaintances in obituaries. In the 1950s, he became a script writer for secondary movies. A scriptwriter named John E. Moran produced four scripts in the 1960s for American film director and producer Russ Meyer who was known for his successful series of campy sexploitation movies. These film scripts included “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”, “Good Morning and. . .Goodbye!”, “Common Law”, and “Wild Gals of the Naked West”. In the last two films, John E. Moran was credited with small roles.

In his later years, Moran worked in public relations for the Roman Catholic Diocese in Chicago. He relocated in 1984 to the historic town of Greenfield, Massachusetts where he wrote a novel entitled “Six Step House”. On the twentieth of September in 1990, Jackie Moran succumbed to lung cancer at the age of sixty-seven in Greenfield’s Franklin Medical Center. After a private funeral, Jackie Moran’s ashes were scattered, as requested in his will, on the backstretch of the Del Mar Racetrack, a thoroughbred horse racing facility in Del Mar, California.

Note: For those interested, the entire Universal Studios’s 1939 “Buck Rogers” serial can be found, courtesy of ComicWeb Serial Cliffhanger Theater, at the DailyMotion website located at: https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x4qzsf

Film Gifs of the opening credits of Chapter One of the Buck Rogers serial can be found in this site’s article entitled “Buck Rogers: Tomorrow’s World”.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran as Huckleberry Finn”, 1938, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, Director David O. Selznik, Cinematographer James Wong Howe

Second Insert Image: Cinematographer Jerome Ash, “Jackie Moran and Buster Crabbe”, 1939, Film Shot from “Buck Rogers” Serial Film, Director Ford Beebe and Saul Goodkind

Third Insert Image: Movie Poster, “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”, 1940, Jackie Moran and Marcia Mae Jones, Director Robert F. McGowan, Cinematographer Harry Neumann

Bottom Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Jackie Moran”, Date Unknown, Original 35mm Color Transparency, Private Collection

Wesley Barry: Film History Series

Born in Los Angeles, California in August of 1907, Wesley E. Barry was an American actor, director and producer. A child star in silent films from 1915 to 1924, he made a successful transition in his adult years to other activities in the film industry.

In 1914 at the age of seven, Wesley Barry was noticed by a director for his distinctive facial features and given a contract with Kalem Studios, a production and distribution film company founded by screenwriter Frank J. Marion, Biograph production manager Samuel Long, and wealthy film distributor George Kleine. With his freckles covered with greasepaint, Barry made his screen debut in the 1915 “The Phoney Cannibal”, a silent short starring the child-star duo Ham Hamilton and Bud Duncan. His first appearance in a feature film was the role of a freckled school boy in Marshall Neilan’s 1917 “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm”, which starred Mary Pickford as Rebecca.

Noted now for his freckles, Barry soon became a much demanded child actor. In 1919, he was in Neilan’s comedy drama “Daddy Long Legs”, which starred Mary Pickford, and Cecil B. DeMille’s adventure film “Male and Female”. Barry appeared in four silent films in 1920; but it was the success of Neilan and John McDernott’s 1920 comedy drama “Dinty”, specifically written for Barry, that made him a star in his own right. Throughout the 1920s, he appeared in twenty-two screen productions, among which were the 1922 “Penrod” with Our Gang actor Ernest “Ernie’ Morrison; the 1924 comedy “George Washington Jr.” with actress Gertrude Olmstead; and the 1924 sports comedy “Battling Bunyan” with Frank Campeau, known for his roles in cowboy westerns.

Wesley Barry, grown out of his infancy, made minor film appearances in sound films throughout the 1930s. He appeared in director John Ford’s 1937 drama “The Plough and the Stars”, which starred Barbara Stanwyck and Preston Foster, and Hal Roach’s musical comedy “Pick a Star”, released through MGM in 1937 and, later, by Astor Pictures in 1954. Barry did play the lead role the 1938 western “The Mexicali Kid” in which he played under the direction of Wallace For and opposite Jack Randall. He stopped acting regularly after his appearance in the 1939 “Stunt Pilot”; his last role on the big screen was an uncredited appearance in the 1943 baseball comedy “Ladies’ Day”.

Beginning in the 1940s, Barry directed and produced films, a career which would extend thirty years. For about a decade, he directed B movies including some in the “Joe Palooka” and “Bowery Boys” series. Barry also worked in the field of television where he directed several episodes of “Lassie”, the police dramas “Mod Squad” and “The Rookies”, and the western series starring Guy Madison, “The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok”. In 1952, Barry both directed the drama film “The Steel Fist”, starring Roddy McDowell, and co-produced Frank McDonald’s action film “Sea Tiger”. Among the westerns he directed were “The Secret of Outlaw Flats”, starring Guy Madison and Andy Devine, and “Trail Blazers” with Alan Hale Jr, both films released in 1953.

Wesley Barry founded his own production company Genie Production in the beginning of the 1960s. His first film though his studio, now considered a sci-fi cult classic, was the 1962 “The Creation of the Humanoids”. The film, starring Don Megowan, was based on the story of robots, disparagingly referred to as ‘clickers’, who provided android bodies to the dying, radiation-affected human race. Barry’s studio produced two more films in his lifetime: the animated 1963 fantasy “The Jolly Genie” and a 1965 television documentary “The Market”.

Barry also had a prolific career as an assistant director on many major motion pictures, most notably director Roger Corman’s 1967 American gangster film “The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre”, one of the few Corman films backed by a major Hollywood studio, in this case 20th Century Fox. Barry’s last credit as assistant director in the film industry was a 1975 episode of “The Rookies”. Wesley Barry died on the 11th of April of 1994 at the age of eighty-six in Fresno, California.

Note: Wesley Barry’s “The Creation of the Humanoids”, based on an original story and screenplay by Jay Simms, was produced on a limited budget, apparent from the film’s rudimentary sets and costumes. At a time when black and white film stock was still being used for many major productions, Barry and co-producer Edward J. Kay opted for the added expense of color film. The cinematography was done by twice-Academy Award winner Hal Mohr who used all his experience to make the best of the sets. The makeup artist was Jack Pierce who created the iconic “Frankenstein” and “Bride of Frankenstein” makeups for Universal Pictures.

“The Creation of the Humanoids” can be found on disc and many cable venues. It is also located at the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/tcoth44546478

Top Insert Image: John J. Mescall, “Wesley Barry”, 1935, Film Shot from “Night Life of the Gods”, Director Lowell Sherman

Second Insert Image: Film Poster, “The County Fair”, 1920 Silent Film, Directors Edmund Mortimer and Maurice Tourneur, Cinematogaphers René Guissart and Charles Van Enger

Third Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wesley Barry and Molly Malone”, 1924, Publicity Card for “Battling Bunyan”, Card Stock, Director Paul Hurst, Cinematographer Frank Cotner

Fourth Insert Image: Film Poster, “Creation of the Humanoids”, 1962, Director Wesley Barry, Cinematographer Hal Mohr

Bottom Insert Image: Film Poster, “The Mexicali Kid”, 1938, Director Wallace Fox, Cinematography Bert Longenecker, Monogram Pictures