#charles rosher

[chaplinlegend]

Charlie Chaplin, Edna Purviance and 4-year-old Dorothy D. Rosher (future famous JOAN MARSH) in the movie "The Bond" (1918).

The short film "The Bond", lasting approximately 6 minutes, was shot during World War I.

The film is full of patriotic scenes intended to encourage people to purchase bonds, the money from which will support the Allied forces fighting in World War I. The creators refer to interpersonal bonds such as friendship, love and marriage, at the same time emphasizing the great importance of freedom.

The film was shot from August 15 to 22, 1918. Dorothy D. Rosher worked from August 17 to 19 for $10 a day.

The film premiered on December 16, 1918. One of the main roles was played by Edna Purviance.

(photos of Dorota D. Rosher and Charlie Chaplin by the Chaplin Archive)

[genevieveetguy]

. You're the most perfect person I've met.

3 Women, Robert Altman (1977)

[docrotten]

NIGHTWING (1979) – Episode 222 – Decades of Horror 1970s

“I’ve decided to end the world. They all have to go.” Well, you can forget about cleaning the house, then. Join your faithful Grue Crew – Doc Rotten, Bill Mulligan, Chad Hunt, and Jeff Mohr – as they check out some Indigenous American culture infused with apocalyptic horror in Nightwing (1979).

Decades of Horror 1970s Episode 222 – Nightwing (1979)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

Decades of Horror 1970s is partnering with the WICKED HORROR TV CHANNEL (https://wickedhorrortv.com/) which now includes video episodes of the podcast and is available on Roku, AppleTV, Amazon FireTV, AndroidTV, and its online website across all OTT platforms, as well as mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Killer bats plague an Indian reservation in New Mexico.

Directed by: Arthur Hiller

Writing Credits: Steve Shagan & Bud Shrake & Martin Cruz Smith; (1977 novel by) Martin Cruz Smith

Music by: Henry Mancini

Cinematography by: Charles Rosher Jr. (director of photography) (as Charles Rosher)

Visual Effects by: Carlo Rambaldi (special visual effects)

Selected Cast:

Nick Mancuso as Youngman Duran

David Warner as Phillip Payne

Kathryn Harrold as Anne Dillon

Stephen Macht as Walker Chee

Strother Martin as Selwyn

George Clutesi as Abner Tasupi

Ben Piazza as Roger Piggott

Donald Hotton as John Franklin

Charles Hallahan as Henry

Judith Novgrod as Judy

Alice Hirson as Claire Franklin

Pat Corley as Vet

Charlie L. Bird as Beejay (as Charlie bird)

Danny Zapien as Joe Mamoa

Peter Prouse as Doctor

José Toledo as Harold Masito (as Jose Toledo)

Richard Romancito as Ben Mamoa

Flavio Martinez as Isla Laloma (as Flavio Martinez III)

Lena Carr as Pregnant Woman

Virginia P. Maney as Old Squaw

Wade Stevens as Ambulance Attendant

Robert Dunbar as Helicopter Pilot

John R. Leonard Sr. as Helicopter Pilot

When a shaman decides the world must end and all must die, he performs a ritual that releases a very large and murderous Desmodus rotundus colony, commonly known as a guano-load of vampire bats! Nightwing (1979) is the only venture into horror for director Arthur Hiller and writer Martin Cruz Smith. Even so, the 70s Grue-Crew are bat-guano-crazy over their movie. Between the story, the bats, and the cast (Strother Martin’s in the house!), there is plenty of fuel for their talkabout!

At the time of this writing, Nightwing (1979) is available to stream from YouTube and PPV from Prime and AppleTV. The film is available on Blu-ray formatted physical media as part of a double-feature with Shadow of the Hawk (1976) from Mill Creek Entertainment. 

Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1970s is part of the Decades of Horror two-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1980s. In two weeks, the next episode, chosen by Jeff, will be Craze (1974), directed by Freddie Francis and sporting a bunch of Oscar winners. It’s got to be great, right? Right? Why are you laughing?

We want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans: comment on the site or email the Decades of Horror 1970s podcast hosts at feedback@gruesomemagazine.com.

Check out this episode!

[byneddiedingo]

Fred Thomson and Mary Pickford in The Love Light (Frances Marion, 1921)

Cast: Mary Pickford, Evelyn Dumo, Fred Thomson, Eddie Phillips, Albert Prisco, Raymond Bloomer, George Rigas, Jean De Briac. Screenplay: Frances Marion. Cinematography: Henry Cronjager, Charles Rosher. Art direction: Stephen Goosson. Film editing: Stuart Heisler.

Watching Mary Pickford in The Love Light is exhausting. She is continuously on, rough-and-tumbling with her brothers, gamely sending them off to war, grieving their deaths, rescuing a sailor from drowning, hiding him from the villagers, flirting with him, discovering to her horror that he's a spy and that he may have made her the inadvertent cause of her brother's death, sending him off to the mercy of the villagers and his death. And just when it seems like she can't suffer (or act) any more, she has his baby (they were secretly married), goes mad and sees it adopted by another woman, gets it back, loses it again in a fiendish plot by the other woman, goes mad again, regains her sanity when her childhood boyfriend comes home from the war blinded, teaches him how to cope with his blindness, and eventually rescues her child from the clutches of the other woman by boarding the storm-tossed vessel in which the woman had tried to abduct the baby. It's one of those soaped-up melodramas we think of as typical of silent films, but it works, mostly because Pickford is amazing, but also because Frances Marion was such a skilled director and writer. Marion later became  the first woman to win an Oscar for something other than acting, with her award for writing The Big House (George W. Hill, 1930), though by that time she had given up directing. (As a writer, the IMDb credits her with 188 titles, though some of those are remakes of her earlier films.) Still, it's primarily a showcase for Pickford's special brand of hard, determined acting. She resembles in her determination such later stars as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, though they lacked Pickford's façade of softness (a softness masking steel). Davis would, of course, somewhat cruelly parody Pickford later in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962). One great plus to The Love Light is the fine cinematography of Charles Rosher and Henry Cronjager.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Image Makers: The Adventures of America's Pioneer Cinematographers

It's rare for me to find a documentary on film within which I can find no errors. Maybe I was just so swept up in the beauty of the images or the rhythm of the narrative in Daniel Raim’s IMAGE MAKERS: THE ADVENTURES OF AMERICA’S PIONEER CINEMATOGRAPHERS (2019, TCM) that I missed something. But I found the whole utterly enchanting. The focus is on seven early cameramen: Billy Bitzer, Rollie Totheroh, Charles Rosher, William Daniels, Karl Struss, Gregg Toland and James Wong Howe. Fanciful sketches accompany their life stories along with generous film clips, from Bitzer’s first film with D.W. Griffith, “A Calamitous Elopement” (1908) through one of Howe’s last great films, HUD (1963). The experts, including Kevin Brownlow and cinematographers John Bailey and Rachel Morrison, truly are expert, and the instances in which they analyze the shooting of a particular sequence don’t detract but rather add to its particular power. Raim may have left out a personal favorite of yours (I’d love to see a full-scale study of Nicholas Musuraca), but what he includes is beautifully handled, and getting another chance to see John Gilbert and Greta Garbo share a cigarette in FLESH AND THE DEVIL (1926) or Virginia Cherrill recognize Charlie Chaplin at the end of CITY LIGHTS (1931) or Orson Welles walk through that hall of mirrors in CITIZEN KANE (1941) is always a good thing.

[davidhudson]

Karl Freund, January 16, 1890 - May 3, 1969.

With fellow cameramen Günther Rittau (left) and Charles Rosher (middle).

[tvln]

bed of roses (us. la cava 33)

[sesiondemadrugada]

Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1927).

[absencesrepetees]

sunrise: a song of two humans (f.w. murnau, 1927)

[10oclockdot]

Regimes of Time: Great Long Takes, ep. 47 The man meets the woman from the city in Sunrise (dir. F. W. Murnau, 1927)

For years, Photoplay magazine had listed their six (or more) Best Performances of the Month in a column reviewing new movie releases. But in their December 1927 issue, they did something they'd never done before: alongside names like Mary Pickford and Gloria Gaynor, they also listed "The Camera in 'Sunrise.'" It was no joke. Sunrise went on to capture the first Oscar awarded for Best Cinematography. But these days, 90 years after Sunrise's release and over four decades after the invention of the Steadicam, it can be hard to recognize what a landmark achievement this was. Some context is necessary to perceive this long take from Sunrise as both a culmination of German Expressionist camerawork (and perhaps, by extension, silent-era cinematography as a whole) and a starting point for many later explorations and elaborations of the aesthetics and philosophy of cinema.

In the mid-1920's, a number of German filmmakers, Murnau the most noted name among them, developed a style or ethos of camera movement called entfesselte camera (often translated as "unchained" camera, though sometimes rendered "unfastened" camera). Film historians Bordwell and Thompson point out that screenwriter Carl Mayer might be responsible for first imagining the unchained camera in Germany, since his script for the 1923 film Sylvester specified that the camera should track smoothly down a long city street (Film History: An Introduction (3rd Ed.), 98). I say "in Germany" because at the same time Abel Gance in France and Dziga Vertov in Russia were both cooking up their own new camera tricks and techniques. Carl Mayer, it should be noted, also wrote the scenario for Murnau’s 1924 film The Last Laugh and several other projects now noted for their unchained camera. But without cinematographer Karl Freund's technical innovations on The Last Laugh -- including mounting the camera on a bicycle for its famous opening shot -- the sublime camerawork on Sunrise might never have happened. Karl Freund worked with Murnau on one more film, 1925's Tartuffe, after which Murnau further honed the techniques of unchained camera with cinematographer Carl Hoffmann. From here, the skills passed to Hollywood cinematographer Charles Rosher. Rosher explained, "Carl Hoffman photographed Faust and I learned a great deal from him. I took several ideas back, including the dolly suspended from railway tracks in the ceiling, which I adapted for Sunrise, Murnau's first American picture. ... For some scenes, such as the swamp sequence, the camera went in a complete circle. This created enormous lighting problems. We built a railway line in the roof, suspended a little platform from it, which could be raised for lowered by motors" (qtd. in Kevin Brownlow, The Parade's Gone By..., 230-32). Almost immediately, the techniques which Murnau and his German Expressionist colleagues pioneered became part of the Hollywood toolkit. But they had an even more direct influence on one of the 20th Century's greatest directors. In 1924, a young Alfred Hitchcock had the opportunity to observe Murnau at UFA in Berlin during the making of The Last Laugh. According to Hitchcock himself (cf. James Bade, here), he was so inspired by what he saw that he embarked on a careerlong investigation of camera techniques and visual storytelling.

Murnau's innovations proved equally influential for the trajectory of film theory. And this deceptively simple shot, in which the camera glides through a foggy moonlit marsh to witness the meeting of two people, connects in some way to his entire legacy. For instance, Marc Silberman argues that the unchained camera, as developed for The Last Laugh, was able to represent the psychic disruptions that German life underwent in the mid-1920's as white collar and service sector jobs in urban areas rapidly replaced factory wage labor (German Cinema: Texts in Context, here, pp. 19-33). Interpreted in the context of Silberman's claims, Sunrise employs its mobile camera to address the same tension between modern and traditional ways of life, but from the rural, rather than urban, perspective. Indeed, this long take stages that very rendez-vous between the tempted man of the country and the frau fatale of the city. As soon as they embrace, Murnau cuts to an image of the man's wife tearfully embracing their baby at the thought of the family's impending dissolution. The idea that this collision of city and country is destructive rather than productive was first proposed by Alexandre Astruc. Writing in the Cahiers du Cinema, he argued that the image in Murnau "is the meeting place for a certain number of lines of force... brought to this point of extreme tension so that henceforth only their destruction can be conceived and supported. ... Every frame of Murnau's is the story of a murder. The camera will have the simplest and most shocking of roles: that of being the annunciating and prescient terrain of an assassination" (qtd. in Brian Henderson, "The Long Take," here, pp. 7-8). Whereas the Soviets used editing to bring opposing forces or ideas into collision, Astruc claims that Murnau developed a vocabulary of staging this collision within the shot.

Starting in the 1940's, film theorists became embroiled in ongoing discourse over which of these -- the shot or the cut -- constituted the essence of cinema. Andre Bazin, the most influential of the Realists, championed Murnau for an aesthetic in which "montage plays no part" ("The Evolution of the Language of Cinema," in What is Cinema Vol. 1, 26-7). Bazin believed that cinema was not so much an invention as it was a desire. Humans, he argued, pursued a longstanding psychological desire for the preservation of likeness, and to fulfill that desire, we developed techniques and technologies like linear perspective, the camera obscura, photography, and cinema. Cinema, as he saw it, was no incidental gadget, but the latest device that sprang from humanity's fundamental desire for realism (a desire which cinema, incidentally, did not quench; Bazin predicted further inventions, beyond cinema, that would make more perfect reproductions of the world). Following from this, Bazin praised the work of directors whose use of wide-angle lenses and long takes allowed viewers to encounter represented space and time in their relative wholeness, rather than through the fragmentation and illusionism of montage. Here, the realism -- or, at least, the event of the shot -- envelops the viewer. In moonlit reeds and fog that feels genuinely nocturnal, we follow the man across a single-plank bridge, through some low-hanging leaves, and over a fence. Following his line of sight, the camera does not cut, but instead pans left and pushes its way through more leaves to find the woman clandestinely waiting for him. As he approaches, she touches up her make-up. Though the camera followed the man's eyeline to the left, he enters from the right. A pause, and they embrace. Perhaps mimicking the moral ambiguity or hazard of this adulterous topos, Murnau confuses space by having the man walk behind us. But this is not spatial disorientation for its own sake -- again, our transit through this murky world embeds us within it. We do not watch from a distance. We walk right into the film. Picking up on this, scholar Sabine Müller argues that Murnau's moving camera triggers a "kinesthetic empathy" in the viewer -- an emotional response based on the camera's simulation of something like a body in motion (here).

Finding a way to release internal emotional states into the material of the mise-en-scene is, of course, the bread and butter of German Expressionist cinema. At its inception around 1920, directors like Weine (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) and Wegener (The Golem) took this externalization perhaps a bit too literally, designing sets in the shape of jagged cubist explosions. Murnau, on the other hand, materialized whatever tumultuous collision of emotion lay at the heart of his story through nearly elemental archetype. In Sunrise, Astruc's collision of forces is not limited to the rural and the urban, or even the modern and the traditional. As this long take graphically expounds, it's about light and darkness. Gilles Deleuze argues that German Expressionism is defined by its orchestration of light intensity, whether understood as gradients of chiaroscuro, as black and white rays, or as the overall contrast in settings between "the luminous town and the opaque marshland" (Deleuze, Cinema 1, 49). Indeed, the very title of the film designates such a zone of light collision: Sunrise, where the day and the night meet. Understood this way, the metaphysical terrain of the story transcends a simplistic standoff between the modern and the traditional to something more rarefied, more abstract -- something fundamental about love, commitment, and sacrifice.

Sunrise stands as one of the crowning achievements of German Expressionist style. But far from the end of an era, Murnau's work (and Sunrise in particular) inaugurates the dawn of much of what came later: the stylistic inspiration for Hitchcock and film noir, the post-theatrical collaboration between actors and camera in creating performances, aesthetic debates over long takes and filmic realism, and the legacy of silent-era cinematography in inspiring freer, more elaborate camera movements thereafter. I can hardly imagine Regimes of Time without the groundwork of Sunrise.

[chaplinlegend]

JOAN MARSH born July 10, 1914 as Nancy Ann Rosher in Porterville, California, briefly known as Dorothy D. Rosher.

One of the biggest movie stars of the 1930s. She gained popularity as a "platinum blonde", often compared to Jean Harlow. Her father, Charles Rosher, was a famous cameraman and a close relative of actress Mary Pickford.

Joan Marsh first appeared in front of the cameras as a 9-month-old baby ( The Mad Maid of the Forest ) 1915. Promoted by her father, Dorothy Rosher, as she was called, easily handled child roles. At first, she appeared in films alongside Mary Pickford - "Daddy Long Legs", "Pollyanna", but over time she managed to achieve independence. She attended several private schools, but did not stay in any for too long, because they isolated her from acting. At the age of 14, Joan began acting in films again. However, MGM, with whom she had a contract, usually gave her not very serious engagements. Joan had a beautiful voice and with the introduction of sound films, she had no problem moving to silent films. She played supporting roles alongside such movie stars as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Loretta Young, but this did not change her image. In 1937, she got married for the first time, and three years later she returned to acting for the third time. At first, she was again given "sweet" roles, until she finally played in the film "The Road to Zanzibar", where she played with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. It turned out that the actress had a great talent for comedy. Unfortunately, she was not able to use it, because in 1944 she ended her artistic career, discouraged by uninteresting offers. Her last film was "Follow the Leader" from 1944. Joan Marsh died in 2000 in Ojai, California. She was 87 years old.

Dorothy D. Rosher (Joan Marsh), at the age of just four, had a brief cameo in Charlie Chaplin's 1918 film "The Bond."

Fun Facts:

She appeared in 62 films. She won no awards or nominations.

Her father, Charles Rosher, was sentenced to prison in 1938 for failure to pay alimony to Joan Marsh following a July 1936 court case; Rosher stopped paying alimony to Marsh when she turned 18 because (he claimed) she was self-sufficient as an actress and was earning $100,000 a year.

Joan March, who married and divorced screenwriter Charles Belden, retired from the screen after marrying John D. W. Morrill in late 1944.

Her last film was 1944's "Follow the Leader".

[lostgoonie1980]

205. Virtude Selvagem (The Yearling, 1946), dir. Clarence Brown

[dweemeister]

Sparrows (1926)

In the silent era, actress Mary Pickford became one of the first female producers in Hollywood. Her influence allowed her to co-found United Artists with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith, and to become one of the few women charter members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS; an organization that earlier this week invited hundreds of women and non-white figures working in cinema to address diversity concerns). Yet during the peak of her career, audiences had expected “America’s Sweetheart” to be just that – a sweetheart. See, Pickford – even in her young adulthood – had been typecast by her adoring fans as the earnest young child with the curls trying to do the right things for others. The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917), among others exemplified that typecasting. And by the mid-1920s, Pickford had grown fatigued of these similar roles. Yet when she asked her fans through Photoplay magazine what would they like to see next from her, their answer was near-unanimous: “give us back our Little Mary!” Pickford obliged.

Enter Sparrows, directed by William Beaudine (and Tom McNamara in the final days of production, but he is uncredited) and also starring Gustav von Seyffertitz, Charlotte Mineau, Roy Stewart, and an endearing bunch of children. This would be one of the last Mary Pickford silent films, the last time Pickford would play a child. With Southern Gothic fiction (derived from literature, this includes twisted plotlines amid nefarious, oftentimes eccentric, and morally flawed characters) influences mixed with German expressionism (derived from silent films, this includes distorted geometries and highly stylized sets displaying intense juxtapositions of lights and darks), Sparrows is one of the finest Mary Pickford vehicles – poorly dated only if the viewer is unaware of the constraining public expectations heaped upon one of the silent era’s most important stars.

Somewhere in the Southern United States, surrounded by an alligator-infested swamp is the farm of Mr. and Mrs. Grimes (von Seyffertitz and Mineau). The Grimes’ farm is a “baby farm”, in which the children – mostly orphans – there are tasked with backbreaking physical labor. Whenever a stranger comes to the Grimes’ farm for business, the children are ordered to hide. The oldest child, Molly (Pickford), is a teenager and acts as a maternal figure to the fellow children. Molly and the others are starved, beaten, berated, manipulated, abused. So, to keep spirits up and to answer the many questions from the children why no one is coming to help them, Molly’s bedtime stories and motivational lines to the children borrow heavily from the Bible – that sound you heard was Cecil B. DeMille shedding a tear or two.

That frustration from the children is sometimes palpable. “A whole month ago you said the Lord would help us get away – what’s He been doing all month,” asks one. After reciting from a verse referring to God – some of these verses seem misplaced in the film – watching over sparrows, another child asks how come sparrows are receiving preferential treatment from God. The use of Christian allegories in Sparrows is a clumsy narrative tactic that only works in one of the film’s most surreal moments. One night after briefly mentioning Jesus’ story to the children, a sleep-deprived Molly must tend to an ailing baby in a barn. As soon as Molly falls asleep, this scene contains a wonderful, dreamy special effect (perhaps double exposure?) where a shepherd – Jesus Christ – takes the baby from Molly’s arms and to whatever lies beyond, where there might be less suffering. The poignancy here, the deliberate timing of this effect, and the realization by Molly – once she awakens to find the baby, not shown within the frame, has passed – that this young one need not suffer anymore is an emotional groundswell that Sparrows never recaptures.

Throughout the course of Sparrows, there is talk – among Mr. and Mrs. Grimes and among the children, separately – of a mass escape. Yet Molly, who could plausibly escape on her own, is duty-bound to her friends, her surrogate family of younger siblings. No harm should come to them. All Molly wants is that the children are spared additional torment beyond what has already characterized too many of their respective childhoods. For some viewers, I imagine this may appear to be silent film hokiness; no reasonable, able-bodied, self-interested person might keep themselves in this situation for so long. But that’s just the appeal of these melodramas that first appeared in the final years of the silent era (melodramas, by their very construction, require longer running times than what a short film could offer) – that the characters involved symbolize an ideal aspired to. That ideal is an affective one, and viewers are perhaps closer to that ideal than they might realize.

It is Mary Pickford, in this final role as a child, that makes this work. At thirty-four years old when Sparrows was first released, this film also marks Pickford’s delicate balance from being a crowd-pleasing waif to a singular girl with her own self-interests, not always wearing a bullish determination on her face. Again, I go back to the scene where Molly sleeps with the dying baby in her hands. Those few seconds looking at the departed baby say everything – surprise, sadness, solace – in just a brief moment. Such a turn needs no words, and has been rarely seen since synchronized sound in movies became the norm.

Meanwhile, Gustav von Seyffertitz and Charlotte Mineau are adequate as Mr. and Mrs. Grimes. From Mr. Grimes’ cartoonish appearance and the couple’s exaggerated bickering, these roles probably should have been played as straight as possible to heighten the dread and drama that I think Beaudine was intending in the final half-hour.

Credit cinematographers Charles Rosher (1927′s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1946′s The Yearling), Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, 1940′s The Great Dictator), and Hal Mohr (1927′s The Jazz Singer, 1935′s Captain Blood), and especially art director Harry Oliver (1925′s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, 1937′s The Good Earth) for beautifully shooting and designing a set that never seems stagebound. Hundreds of large trees and several hundred pounds of Spanish moss were ordered and used for the set – built on four acres of Pickford’s United Artists studio. Oliver even aged the wood before using it to build the Grimes’ abode and the children's’ shack, in addition to employing an aluminum powder to simulate a moonlight sparkling effect – cameras in the 1920s could not shoot at night without astronomically expensive lighting. This effort creates a gnarled, swampy forest that serves as the atmospheric backdrop to a climax that looks realistic, even if it is hard to believe the events onscreen.

That climax also included Mary Pickford carrying a baby surrounded by alligators. Beaudine, forgetting to take his common sense with him to the movie set that day, proposed that Pickford carry a real baby with real alligators snapping at her ankles. This plan almost became reality, if it weren’t for the irate intervention of Pickford’s husband at the time, Douglas Fairbanks. So though real alligators were used in some of the shots in Sparrows, Mary Pickford was probably never in any real danger during the climax, if you believe the account of Hal Mohr – most accounts claim that real alligators were attempting to bite Pickford’s legs off.

Actor endangerment or not (and this includes a scene about a perilous tree branch where I’m not convinced those alligators were fake), Sparrows is a good, moody silent film that united elements of German expressionism with Southern Gothicism. In a time when she was expressing her independence through her business transactions at United Artists and the roles she would later play, Mary Pickford is near the pinnacle of her enormous talent here, showing audiences then and today what silent film acting could be.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.

[bigspoopygurl]

3 Women (1977)

“Ever since you moved in here you've been causin' me grief. Nobody wants to hang around you. You don't drink, you don't smoke. You don't do anything you're supposed to do!”

Director: Robert Altman

Cinematographer: Charles Rosher Jr.

[loveless422]

Charles Rosher (shown here with Kathryn Grayson and Ava Gardner) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography (Color) for Show Boat (1951).

[moviessilently]

Stage star Lenore Ulric brings her signature role to the screen in this melodrama set in Canada. We have Mounties, trees and bloody revenge. The usual Hollywood Canadian wilderness picture, in other words, but we have the added bonus of a super Mountie and a location shoot in Yosemite.

Home Media Availability: Released on DVD.

This is my contribution to the O Canada Blogathon hosted by Silver Screenings and Speakeasy. Be sure to read all the other reviews!

Go get ‘em, tiger!

I do love Mountie flicks and I know I’m not alone. What’s not to love about noble gents in great hands tracking down evildoers? Unfortunately, the quality of Mountie pictures can be described as spotty at best. For every piece of quality entertainment, we have a few bombs. For example, Nomads of the North features Lon Chaney as a sexy fur trapper. Really. Where the North Holds Sway is essentially a western with more flannel. See what I mean? Well, let’s see if this picture will make up for the bad ones.

Will Forrest Stanley’s Mountie win us over?

Tiger Rose is an adaptation of a 1917 stage play written by Willard Mack (you can read a public domain copy here) and produced by the famed David Belasco, who had quite a number of western and wilderness pictures in his repertoire. Warner Bros. scored a casting coup when they obtained the services of Lenore Ulric, who had created the role of Rose on the stage and had not been seen in movies in six years. The film was subsequently remade as both a silent and a talkie as a 1929 Lupe Velez vehicle but, alas, the remake is not on home video.

(I should note that the version of the film I saw runs for just one hour. Tiger Rose as originally released ran for eight reels, which would be eighty minutes at minimum and likely far longer. The storyline is smooth and I did not notice any particularly large holes in the plot.)

The things you find when you go fishing.

The film opens in a quiet Canadian trading community that bears a shocking resemblance to Yosemite. (Mainly because the exteriors were shot there. Whodathunkit?) Sergeant Michael Devlin (four-time Marion Davies leading man Forrest Stanley) is a Mountie’s Mountie and he comes riding hell for leather into town. He has fished a half-drowned woman (Lenore Ulric) out of Loon River and turns her over to the kind locals for some first aid.

We know that this young woman has been through a lot because she looks like this:

I wish I could look that good after almost drowning.

Yipes! When they say “waterproof” on the mascara bottle, they mean it! And who made her hairspray? Color me impressed.

Devlin tells the story of his brave rescue in flashback and it strikes me that this would have been a far more impressive opening scene for the film than shots of the great outdoors. Devlin races on horseback to catch up with the woman in the water—she’s caught in a current heading for a waterfall because this is a melodrama—and then he dismounts and throws himself off a cliff into the river below. That is some grade A stunt work and it’s a pity that the suspense is spoiled by using the flashback structure.

Now THAT is what I call an epic rescue.

Anyway, the young woman is named Rose and she likes to hunt and swear in the most adorable way possible. Devlin is interested but Rose falls for Bruce Norton (Theodore von Eltz), a dashing engineer. (Not there are two words I never thought I would type in the same sentence.) It’s love at first sight but Bruce is on a mission: he has tracked down a nefarious bad guy-type and he means to kill him for the sake of someone called “Helen.” There’s a suitably violent struggle for a pistol and Bruce ends up shooting his target, one of the local doctors.

When confronting one’s arch-nemesis, one would think one would be on the lookout for hidden weapons.

Another local doctor (this town is flush with ‘em, it seems) examines the body and delivers a mysterious proclamation. It seems that everyone in this picture has decided to become Lemony Snicket. The second doctor is played by Sam De Grasse, noted villain of Fairbanks flicks, and he sets out to help Bruce… or does he?

Devlin receives news of the murder and springs into action. He takes his trusty rifle and is able to wing Bruce lickety-split. Bruce is in a pickle as a storm is coming in and Devlin’s posse has the area surrounded. He takes refuge in Rose’s cellar, where she and the doc discover him a bit later. But Devlin hasn’t given up the chase and it’s going to take a very clever plan to evade our unstoppable Mountie.

Bruce learns that Devlin plays for keeps.

Will Bruce get away? Do we really want him to get away? I mean, that Devlin guy is pretty cool. In any case, find out in Tiger Rose!

Lenore Ulric does well overall but her Broadway experience causes her to play things in a broad way. (Get it? Get it?) It’s not too distracting but there are a few scenes in which her gestures get out of control and I wish I could assure her that we saw her in the nickel seats. She also applies her makeup with a trowel, which is distracting alongside the more subtle cosmetics of her costars and the general grit and outdoorsiness of the picture. (Makeup in the silent era was wildly inconsistent but the basic rule was that the actors should try to match one another in general amount and application.)

I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more lipstick.

Ulric is further hampered by silly title cards that attempt to mimic French Canadian dialect. And does her background ever amount to anything in the picture? It does not. I am on record as hating dialect title cards and unnecessary dialect title cards are even worse. Frankly, it’s amazing that Ulric manages to rise above the silliness.

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Let’s face it, Rose’s motivation is a little weak. She met Bruce the day before and had a flirtation that lasted all of five minutes, that hardly seems like a good reason to risk everything for him. But… this is a melodrama. Love at first sight is a staple. What’s more problematic is the fact that her contributions to the story are pretty much superfluous. The doc and Bruce would have escaped on their own and the ending of the film (being intentionally vague here) would have been essentially the same with or without Rose. Yes, it’s fun to see a silent heroine wield a pistol but it’s not unheard-of. (See Back to God’s Country, a smashing Canadian wilderness picture in which Nell Shipman saves the day with firearms and a killer dog.)

For Helen – You will always be in my heart, In my mind, And in your grave.

Theodore von Eltz is okay as Bruce but the film misfires when it plays Button Button with his past and motivation. It would have been far more believable if he had confided his sad tale to Rose. As the film stands, the leads are forced to run around being terribly mysterious when any normal person would be asking some questions. “Um, why’d you shoot the guy? I know the doc said you had good reasons but I’d kinda like some clarification. Also, do you shoot girls? Asking for a friend.” Look, this mournful “Oh, my horrible past that I will not clarify!” stuff is amusing in A Series of Unfortunate Events but it gets rather tedious in a drama.

This looks like a job for… Devlin the Super Mountie!

I usually find Forrest Stanley to be a bit on the dull side but I really liked Devlin the Super Mountie. He doesn’t show up much in the beginning but every time he does, he performs some splendid stunt, strikes a heroic pose and otherwise shows himself to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent. In our world of gravel-voiced antiheroes, Devlin’s unabashed good guy-ness is a positive breath of fresh air and Stanley manages to do it all without coming off as sanctimonious or trite.

No villain is safe on Canadian soil!

Devlin’s whole “unstoppable manhunting force for good” act just gets better and better as the film progresses. I don’t know about everyone else but I was definitely rooting for him to get his man. The fact that Bruce’s motivation is not revealed until the finale makes him a rather opaque hero, which in turn makes Devlin’s straightforward lawman stuff even more appealing. Why were there no Sgt. Devlin of the RCMP spinoffs? Come on, people, you missed a huge opportunity!

Looks trustworthy to me.

I have to say, though, that the casting of Sam De Grasse really threw me off. Here’s a man who can make picnics and candy and flowers look sinister and he spends the entire picture lurking about in a most ominous manner. I kept expecting him to stab Bruce in the back or something.

Legendary cinematographer Charles Rosher makes the most of the films Yosemite locations and the cast is frequently posed against lovely natural backdrops. Hey, if you’ve got it, you flaunt it. He does equally well with the moody shadows of the nighttime storm scenes. The man was good, is what I’m saying. Check it out:

When interviewed by Kevin Brownlow for The Parade’s Gone By, Rosher revealed the film was significant in his career as it was the only time movie mogul Harry Warner ever gave him (or anyone else) a bonus. Lenore Ulric was due back in New York for rehearsals and if the film was not finished in time, the entire crew would have to follow her to the east coast and finish making it there at great expense.

She has a schedule to keep and you do not want to cross her.

Director Sidney Franklin was too nice to rush things along so Rosher took over the role as expediter and the picture was finished on schedule. Ulric got to New York in time, Warner Bros. didn’t have to move production across the country and everyone was happy. Harry Warner personally thanked Rosher and told him that shooting in the east would have added $25,000 to the film’s budget. There was a funny bit of business where Warner wouldn’t let go of the check but Rosher got his bonus in the end. Fully deserved too, I might add.

(Rosher also received a telegram from Belasco himself complimenting him on his camera work. Rosher claimed it was just because Ulric, a Belasco favorite, liked her closeups.)

In the cellar, out of the cellar, in the cellar… make up your minds!

But back to the film as we need to discuss some significant flaws. The main issues of the story come from the script. Its stage roots show particularly in the third act as the story’s setbound nature becomes obvious. The leads scamper from the house to the cellar to the house to the cellar to the cabin to the house. Rosher and Franklin try their best to open things up with shots of the great outdoors but there’s only so much that can be done and the story ends up feeling a bit claustrophobic.

No, sitting under a staircase doesn’t count as a scene change.

(Spoilers Ahoy!)

The finale of the film descends into absolute Victoriana, coincidences and all. It turns out that the doc was Bruce’s brother-in-law all along and it looks like everyone is going to get away when Devlin reveals himself and begins to make his arrest. Rose springs into action and holds Devlin back with a pistol while Bruce and the doctor escape. This means prison for Rose but after holding Devlin prisoner all night, Bruce returns to turn himself in and save her from sacrificing herself. Why they didn’t just tie Devlin up and all escape together, I have no idea. In any case, Devlin is moved by the gesture but he still arrests Bruce.

Hurray! You know, for people whose Hollywood motto is, “We always get our man,” the Mounties certainly seem to let a lot of fugitives go. I’d complain but then I remember that I almost never get my mail delivered during snow, sleet and dark of night. Hollywood needs more realistic mottos for its government organization. “We always get our man unless he’s dating that girl we used to like.” Well, not this time! Devlin remains a Mountie’s Mountie and thank goodness. Of course, Bruce just gets a few months in the pokey, which kind of retroactively nullifies the urgency of his escape. “I need to get away! I can’t serve six months! It’s inhuman!”

(End Spoilers)

Goodby and good luck in your new life, Rose. I planted cocaine in your dog sled.

Is it worth seeing? Oh, definitely. Tiger Rose is as corny as can be and no Mountie film cliché is left out, though some are twisted about and played with. Also in the plus column, the cast is game, Rosher’s cinematography is gorgeous and it’s all in good fun. If you get into the spirit of the thing, I think you’ll have a great time. It’s one of the better Mountie flicks of the silent era.

P.S. #TeamDevlin

Where can I see it?

Tiger Rose is available on DVD from Grapevine.

Tiger Rose (1923) A Silent Film Review Stage star Lenore Ulric brings her signature role to the screen in this melodrama set in Canada.