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theodoradove · 1 year ago

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SF Silent Film Festival winter program!

Saturday, December 2, Castro Theatre

More information, tickets and passes at silentfilm.org

10:00 AM

OF MICE AND MEN (AND CATS AND CLOWNS)

A collection of animated shorts, 1908–1928

Some of the most creative films from the silent era came out of an inkwell! Our collection includes animated shorts from 1908–1928, films that outshine much of what followed. For sheer audacity and pure joy, these films by cartoon masters Including the Fleischer brothers, Pat Sullivan, and Walt Disney, can’t be beat!

Fantasmagorie (1908, d. Émile Cohl)

How a Mosquito Operates (1912, d. Winsor McKay)

Adam Raises Cain (1922, d. Tony Sarg)

Amateur Night on the Ark (1923, d. Paul Terry)

Bed Time (1923, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Felix Grabs His Grub (1923, d. Pat Sullivan)

A Trip to Mars (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleischer)

Vacation (1924, d. Dave and Max Fleisher)

Alice’s Balloon Race (1926, d. Walt Disney)

Felix the Cat in Sure Locked Homes (1928, d. Pat Sullivan)

Live music by WAYNE BARKER and NICHOLAS WHITE

12:00 NOON

THE WILDCAT (Die Bergkatze)

1921, d. Ernst Lubitsch

Pola Negri, Victor Janson, Paul Heidemann

Before director Ernst Lubitsch left Germany to ply his famous ‘Touch’ in Hollywood, he made a series of comedies that gave hints at what was to come. The Wildcat is his last German comedy and his most riotously zany. Subtitled ‘A Grotesque in Four Acts,’ Wildcat makes use of extravagant set design and eccentric frame shapes that lend a surrealistic edge to its antic energy. Pola Negri’s Rischka leads a gang of mountain bandits who ambush Lieutenant Alexis (Paul Heidemann) on his way to the local fortress, leaving him pant-less (and smitten) on the ice. Film writer John Gillett called the film “both an anti-militarist satire and a wonderful fairy tale.”

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

2:15 PM

THE EAGLE

1925, d. Clarence Brown

Rudolph Valentino, Vilma Banky, Louise Dresser

Clarence Brown's rousing film displays a perfect blend of elements—romance, swashbuckling, a modicum of humor, and the great Rudolph Valentino! Not to mention the splendid production design by William Cameron Menzies and gorgeous camerawork by George Barnes. After Valentino's Russian lieutenant rejects the amorous attentions of Catherine the Great (Louise Dresser), she orders him arrested. Instead, he flees and becomes a masked avenger intent on righting the wrongs visited upon his father and his countrymen by loutish nobleman Kryilla Trouekouroff (James A. Marcus). But the nobleman has a beautiful daughter (Vilma Banky)...

Live music by WAYNE BARKER

4:15 PM

PAVEMENT BUTTERFLY (Großstadtshmetterling)

Germany/Great Britain, 1928/1929, d. Richard Eichberg

Gaston Jacquet, Anna May Wong

Luminous Anna May Wong goes from a fan-dancing carnival act to an artist garret and finally to the French Riviera where she accompanies a wealthy art patron around Monte Carlo, draped in haute couture. Wong left Hollywood in search of roles more fitting her talents than the racially-circumscribed ones at home. This Weimar title showcases her magnetism—when Wong is onscreen, you can't look away.

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

7:00 PM

SAFETY LAST!

1923, d. Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor

Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis

Harold Lloyd's bumpkin salesclerk comes up with a publicity stunt that will bring attention to his department store and earn him the money to marry his sweetheart—scale the 12-story building like a human fly! Shot in downtown Los Angeles, the stunt has given us one of the most iconic images of the silent era—Lloyd precariously hanging over the city street, dangling from a broken clock. James Agee wrote: "Each new floor is like a new stanza in a poem; and the higher and more horrifying it gets, the funnier it gets."

Live music by MONT ALTO MOTION PICTURE ORCHESTRA

9:00 PM

FORGOTTEN FACES

1928, d. Victor Schwertzinger

Clive Brook, William Powell, Olga Baclanova

Heliotrope Harry (Clive Brook) and Froggy (William Powell) are partners in crime—genteel armed robbery—at least until the cuckolded Harry commits an even bigger offense. Before Harry goes to prison, he leaves his baby girl on the doorstep of a wealthy couple to keep her out of the clutches of his no-good wife Lilly (Olga Baclanova) and tasks Froggy with keeping close tabs. But Froggy is no match for Lilly...

Live music by the SASCHA JACOBSEN ENSEMBLE

#silent film #san francisco silent film festival #sfsff #castro theatre #i've seen three of the five features but they're all ones i'm happy to see again #(especially safety last!!!!)#(with mont alto doing the accompaniment!!!)

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squideo · 1 year ago

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It’s hard to pin the invention of animation on a single date. Film archivists have estimated that more than 90 percent of films made before 1929 are lost forever, which makes it almost impossible to say with any certainty which first can be credited to which film.

Multiple techniques, developments and technologies were instrumental in the creation of animation as we know it today. And this progression has continued, with more variations created every decade since the 1900s. Squideo is going to dive into the evolution of animation, from its murky beginnings to the multibillion dollar industry it has become.

The first animated film has been credited to multiple titles, including Pauvre Pierrot (1892), The Enchanted Drawing (1900), Fantasmagorie (1908) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1912). The names of other films have been listed in newspapers from the time, but since they’ve been lost these cannot be verified.

Like live-action films of the time, these early hand-drawn animation films were silent. They would be shown in cinemas or, as in the case of Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur, at circuses and vaudeville acts. Animators of this age were working without the later constraints of studios or censorship, and had a lot of freedom to develop new animation styles and techniques.

The realism of early animation was greatly improved by the invention of rotoscoping, first showcased in 1912’s Koko the Clown by Max Fleischer. The rotoscope technique traced motion picture footage of a human performer, and is still used to this day albeit with the use of a computer rather than manually tracing film frames.

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Animation improved rapidly within these twenty years, and this is perhaps best demonstrated with The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), by Winsor McCay. The detail from this film, which was the longest made at that time (12 minutes) and the first confirmed example of an animated documentary, was vastly improved from his first because of the introduction of cel animation. This is named after the celluloid sheets which replaced paper in the animation process, and saved animators the time of creating multiple drawings of backgrounds and stationary objects.

The realistic animation style of McCay’s film, which was widely praised, was quickly eclipsed however by a new style which swept across the American animation industry: rubber hose animation. This debuted in 1919 when Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer created Felix the Cat.

Felix the Cat was a huge draw for 1920 cinema goers, becoming a hugely popular character which featured in 89 animated cartoons between 1919 and 1925. However the creators’ reluctance to embrace sound film technology, which was debuted in 1923, saw the ultimate decline of Felix and paved the way for Disney’s eventual domination of the American animation industry.

Despite sound technology emerging early in the decade, it took time for animators to adapt it into their work. Some of the most notable animated works of the period are still silent, such as the first claymation film, Long Live the Bull (1926), and the first feature-length animated film: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). Created by Lottie Reiniger, this silhouette animated film famously introduced the multiplane camera which the Walt Disney Company would later reinvent and use for their first feature-length film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). It was Disney which arguably popularised sound in animation, with their animated short Steamboat Willie (1928).

Walt Disney was convinced that sound technology would change the future of film, and was the secret to making his new animated character – Mickey Mouse – a hit with audiences. He was right, which imbued the company with the confidence to use other animation technologies that emerged. Five years later, Disney became the first animation company to use Technicolor when it released Flowers and Trees (1932).

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Disney’s style began to dominate animation, especially in America. For the smaller studios that lacked their budget and workforce, there was a desire for a different animation style that could be made faster and cheaper. Limited animation was the solution, and it ushered in a new era.

Warner Brothers Animation launched in 1933. It would soon become notable for its Looney Tunes series, but it was Merrie Melodies that brought in limited animation. This technique reduced the number of drawings required for each frame, in turn reducing the work for animators and speeding up the production process. It was ideal for television, a burgeoning medium post-WW2, which had smaller screens than cinemas. The Dover Boys at Pimento University (1942) was one of the first notable uses of the technique.

A lot of innovation during this next period occurred in television production, and it also saw the rise of amateur productions as filming equipment became more readily available to the public. Changing technology additionally created a divide between film and television animation which had differing styles and quality standards during these decades.

Disney was the first studio to use CinemaScope for its animated short Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Bloom (1953). Created by 20th Century Fox in that same year, it remained popular until its discontinue in 1967. This changed the aspect ratio of productions to accommodate wider, rectangular cinema screens. Television screens on the other hand were small and square. And at the start of the 1950s, many households still only had black and white televisions. This was perfect for limited animation, masking the reduction in animation quality. Television ownership grew rapidly through the decade, and producers started investing in cartoons.

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The first animated TV series was Crusader Rabbit (1949), followed by shows more familiar to modern audiences like The Woody Woodpecker Show (1957), Captain Pugwash (1957), Yogi Bear (1958), and a reappearance from Felix the Cat (1958). The first animated show to make it to prime-time was The Flintstones, which ran from 1960 to 1966. These shows were more specifically targeted at children: referred to as cartoons rather than animated television. Created by the most successful cartoon studio of the era – Hanna-Barbera (1957-2001) – The Flintstones was followed by hits like Top Cat (1961), Wacky Races (1968) and Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? (1969).

Animated films, however, were marketed as motion pictures. By the end of the decade, animation studios had started to use xerography animation – first trialled in Sleeping Beauty (1959), then fully used in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). Disney’s Ub Iwerks had adapted the Xerox process, first introduced during WW2, to work on film. This copying technique allowed animator drawings to be printed directly onto cels, massively speeding up the production process. This technique was used throughout the 1960s and 70s and other animation studios adopted the technology.

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New technology also became available to the general public. The commercially successful Super 8 camera launched in 1965, and amateur animators were able to record their own cartoons. This inspired new animation styles, such as brickfilming. Journey to the Moon (1973) was the first recorded of its kind, and paved the way for future animated films like The Lego Movie (2014).

At the start of the 1980s, ‘Saturday morning cartoons’ were flourishing while animated motion pictures were in decline. This was perhaps best exemplified by Disney, who launched Disney Television Animation (1984), while the Walt Disney Animation Studios had its budget slashed. One of its most popular 1980s films, Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), was created by an animation department which had just been sent into exile from the main studio lot.

Likewise, the other Big Five production companies started focusing on television animation. Paramount Studios created Nickelodeon (1977) and Warner Brothers Cartoons shifted to create television content. This unit would later become Cartoon Network Studios (1994). The biggest television cartoon to emerge from this period is The Simpsons, which first aired in 1987 on The Tracey Ullman Show, and is one of Fox Broadcasting Company’s biggest assets.

This did leave space for overseas animation companies, most notably the Japanese Studio Ghibli, to find the spotlight with English-speaking audiences. Castle in the Sky (1986) and My Neighbour Totoro (1988) were both critically acclaimed. Likewise, Aardman Animation – the British claymation studio – rose to prominence with its work on the Peter Gabriel Sledgehammer (1986) music video which paved the way for its Creature Comforts and Wallace and Gromit series in the 1990s. Universal Pictures also launched DreamWork Pictures in 1994, releasing its first film Antz in 1998, and would become a big player in the 2000s.

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Arguably the most successful studio to emerge was a small computer division originally created by Lucasfilm in 1979. Pixar pioneered 3D computer animation which they first publicly debuted in The Adventures of André & Wally B (1984). They would go on to make the first 3D computer animation feature film, Toy Story (1995), with Disney – although they were beaten in television by Canadian studio Mainframe Entertainment’s ReBoot (1994).

Disney was already developing digital production techniques such as its Animation Photo Transfer (APT) process was first used in Black Cauldron (1985). Their partnership with Pixar, formalised in 1991, massively improved this digitalisation; most notably with CAPS. First used in The Rescuers Down Under (1990), the Computer Animation Production System provided a host of new digital tools to animators, and kickstarted the Disney Renaissance.

This produced massive hits, not just for Disney but also breaking global box office records. The success of their films, especially The Lion King (1994) prompted their rivals to revive their own animated feature film projects. Other animated feature hits of the 1990s included Space Jam (1996), Anastasia (1997), Antz (1998), The Rugrats Movie (1998) and The Iron Giant (1999).

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The highest-grossing hits of the 1990s belonged to Disney and Pixar with the top five films being The Lion King (1994), Aladdin (1992), Toy Story 2 (1999), Tarzan (1999) and Beauty and the Beast (1991). The latter film also became the first animated film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Alongside 3D computer animation, CGI (computer-generated imagery) was growing in popularity for live-action films. First appearing in Westworld (1973), it opened the door for creators. In 1999, the latest CGI trend – motion capture animation – was used to add the first fully animated character into a live-action picture. While Jar Jar Binks wasn’t the biggest hit, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) proved to be a turning point for computer animation as the new century began.

CGI and 3D computer animation has permanently changed animation. Few films over the past twenty years were created using the traditional hand-drawn 2D animation process, although they still proved popular with audiences. This included the French film Les Triplettes de Bellville (2003), Spain’s Klaus (2019), Japan’s Ponyo (2008) and America’s The Simpsons Movie (2007). All of these films still use digital animation tools to streamline production and minimise costs.

What these changes mean, however, is that animation is no longer ruled by the largest corporations with the largest animation departments. Small teams of animators can create quality feature films using the available technology, and this has propelled the growth of small production studios. The introduction of streaming platforms has also widened the viewership for international animation.

Japanese animation, particularly in the anime style, has benefited from this. While Japanese studios gained a foothold with western audiences in the late 1980s, it has recently catapulted in popularity. Netflix reported that 50 percent more households around the world watched at least one anime title during the first nine months of 2020 compared to the whole of 2019. Studio Ghibli remains the most successful export, continuing its success with Spirited Away (2001), Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) to name a few. More studios are joining their ranks, such as the record-breaking MAPPA, WIT Studio, Madhouse and CoMix Wave Films.

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Other non-American studios that are benefiting from the decentralisation of the animation industry include Aardman Animation, Les Armateurs, BreakThru Films, The SPA Studios and Cartoon Saloon. American animators have also broken away from the studio system. LAIKA was created following the success of A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), this studio has since released Coraline (2009) which is America’s highest-grossing stop-motion film.

Many of these films are still distributed through large American companies or made in partnership with them. Illumination Studios, the makers of Despicable Me (2010) and The Grinch (2018), was incorporated into a Universal Pictures division almost as soon as it was founded. And Aardman Animation’s stop-motion feature film Chicken Run (2000) was made with DreamWorks Animation, a unit of Universal Pictures.

Since its first film in 1998, DreamWorks has gone on to create two of the most profitable animated franchises: Shrek and Madagascar. Shrek (2001) helped define the future of DreamWorks and its aim to become the antithesis of Disney – an interesting goal considering it was co-founded by a former Disney chairman, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Disney collaborator, Stephen Spielberg. Shrek modelled its characters after their celebrity voiceover artists; it ditched original scoring for pop songs; and it leant into juvenile humour.

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Disney – which purchased Pixar Animation Studios in 2006 – continued to make 2D style animation at the beginning of the 2000s. With the rising success of other 3D animation features like Toy Story and Shrek however, this was phased out. Disney’s last 2D animated feature film to date was Winnie-the-Pooh (2011), and its last 2D Disney Princess was Tiana in Princess and the Frog (2009).

Their biggest hits were Pixar productions – Finding Nemo (2003), Up (2009), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), Monsters, Inc. (2001), WALL-E (2008) and Cars (2006) – until Frozen (2013) returned them to the top. The top three highest-grossing animated films of the 2010s belonged to Disney.

Disney hasn’t ruled out a return to 2D animated features and, for its 100th anniversary celebrations, has created new 2D animated shorts which resurrect original characters like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

As one of the oldest animation studios in existence, it feels natural to look to Disney for an indication where the industry is heading in the 2020s. But as the past thirty years have proved, the industry has become a more even playing field where anyone can succeed.

Work With Us

Ready to create an animated video of your own? Watch the video below to get a better understanding of how Squideo can help promote your business, then get in touch with us to find out more!

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popmusicu · 2 years ago

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Kaputnik: How has Russian history and culture influenced the Pet Shop Boys?

Pet Shop Boys have played a pivotal role in the evolution of electronic music over the years, with an influence that has extended well beyond the synth-pop scene into theatre, musicals, and orchestral scores. Unfortunately, mainstream media often overlooks the inspiration behind their music, instead focusing solely on their status as “gay icons”.

They have consistently written about current events, fearlessly referencing topics that other shy away from, often at the risk of making “career-ending” statements. While protest songs are not a new concept, the ability to create ones that are both thought-provoking and catchy is a true art form.

One need not to look far into their catalogue to find examples of this. In the well-known “West End Girls,” for instance, they reference Lenin’s exiled route of return to Russia on the eve of the Russian Revolution with the line “From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station.”

Their fan-favorite album Behaviour (1990) has several references, notably in “My October Symphony,” written from the perspective of a Russian composer contemplating the implications of communism’s collapse on his work. The song starts with a shout of the word “October” in Russian, taken from Shostakovich’s Second Symphony, which also inspired another song on the album, “This Must Be the Place I Waited Years to Leave.”

“Go West” is another well-known song inspired by Russian history, but it’s the music video that stands out, offering an alternative interpretation of how the fall of communism in Russia implicates “going West” by filming portions of it in Red Square, Moscow.

A personal favorite, “Happiness Is an Option,” is packed with Russian references, considering that the song is built around a fragment of “Vocalise,” a 1912 composition by Sergei Rachmaninov, and the influence of the poem “This Is Neither Old Nor New” by Anna Akhmatova in the lyrics.

In the new millennium, the Boys have continued this relationship with the country on “Fundamental” (2003) with “Twentieth Century,” which highlights how communism, as a solution to the world’s problems, was worse than the problems themselves; “Minimal,” whose opening line references Kazimir Malevich’s 1918 minimalist painting; and “Integral,” inspired by the 1921 dystopian science-fiction novel “We” by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin.

More recently, Pet Shop Boys’ songs have become more explicit, with “Hell” referencing Vladimir Putin alongside autocrats like Ivan the Terrible, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin. Their latest project, “Lost”, includes demos from their 2015 album “Super” that were discarded because they didn’t fit the mood. Every song on “Lost” touches on the topic of Russia and/or the current war with Ukraine, drawing heavily from the works of authors who had to flee the USSR in the last century.

Given the vast scope of Pet Shop Boys’ catalogue and significant influence of Neil Tennant’s history degree on their lyric, it is nearly impossible to mention every reference in a short post (or even begin to dissect the electronic/orchestral score “Battleship Potemkin,” for the 1925 silent film classic that foreshadowed the Russian Revolution). Focusing solely on their sexuality overlooks the rich material they have produced on topics such as immigration, poverty, social norms, and the critique of authority and power structures. To do so is a disservice to the complexity and depth of their work.

Francisco Rojas.

#All time best #I love this #submission

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scarfacemarston · 3 years ago

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Things that existed: 1890′s-1914 (For fanfics, hc or rp!)

For me to reblog in the future with more. Notes: I did not include most of the cigarettes, guns and alcohol. These are mostly American brands or international brands in the U.S at the time. Lots of wars, psychological studies, economic recessions, inventions, and media published in this time. This is obviously not an exhaustive list. Spans from a bit before canon to RDR 1′s epilogue Pre 1890′s: (Just for fun) 1883: The Monopolist (Yes, an early rendition of the board game) The game of Logic, Oscar Mayer, Pinocchio, Long John Silvers,

1884: First modern Cash Register (Imagine the gang trying to figure out how to open one of these)

1885: Dr. Pepper (the soda), first automobile

1886: Heinz Beans, Coco-Cola, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

1887: Sherlock Holmes Book 1 by Arthur Conan Doyle

1888: Vending Machine, Drinking Straw, Four Roses (Bourbon Whiskey) Kessler Whiskey, Seltzer's for upset stomach/heartburn, Mum’s Deodorant, Hunts (the brand)

1889: Lysol 1890′s: 1890: The Picture of Dorian Gray By Oscar Wilde, Prom (The event for teens) Matryoshka doll, The Edison Talking Doll (Yes, those creepy ass ones), Lipton Tea, Vicks, Marston’s Brewery,

1891: Basketball, Rayon, Fig Newtons, Swiss Army Knife, Hormel,

1892: The second bicycle boom, the “modern” clothes washer, Maxwell Coffee House, Ithaca Kitty - an early paper doll, later stuffed toy?

1893: Cream of Wheat, Juicy Fruit Gum, Johnson’s Baby, Good and Plenty, Wrigley’s Gum, popcorn maker, toaster, Diesel Engine, moving walkways, meth, Ferris wheel, The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Sunkist Co,

1894:Corn flakes, Phonograph, Silent Films, different fonts for typewriters? Hydrogen Peroxide (The fizzy stuff that burns like hell), lobster thermidor, mousetraps, Purina animal feed,

1895:Rugby leagues, Volleyball, Budweiser, T. Martzetii Dips, Whittaker’s Chocolate, X-rays, 1896: Cracker Jacks, Movie theaters, Frank Merriwell’s Books (A children’s series), Del Monte canning

1897: Jell-O, Cotton Candy, Grape-Nuts (cereal), mufflers, vasectomies, Smucker’s (jelly company), Dracula by Bram Stoker, 1898: Pepsi, Palmolive (Brand), steering wheel, heroin, Walker’s Shortbread, Nabisco, War of the Worlds by H.G. Welles,

1899: Martha white (food), Pall mall cigarettes', Wesson cooking oil, Lux soap, flashlights, revolving doors, first early telephone 1900′s: 1900: Wizard of Oz Book 1 released by L. Frank Baum, Chiclets, Hershey Bars, Kodak cameras, Triskets, escalators, 1901: Disposable Safety Razor, Sweethearts (The candy) the Scholastic Altitude Testing (Standardized Testing that American high schoolers take. Jack would have to take one, I think.) Necco’s candy, The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter (All of her books then) 1902: Neon Lamps, Teddy Bear, periscope, air conditioning, polygraph tests, Peter Pan, The Virginian by Owen Wister - A western novel

1903: Kraft Food’s Company, Crayons

1904: Banana Split, tea bags, Ovaltine, Canada Dry, French’s (The brand), K-Y Jelly, Discoll’s Berries, 1905: Cadbury Dairy Milk, Hebrew National Brand, popsicles, RC Cola, Planters brand, Kellogg’s Brand, Arsène Lupin by Maurice Leblanc (Stories about a master thief) 1907: Gumball machine, rear-view mirrors, tootsie rolls, Hershey's kisses, 1908: Coffee filters, Ford Motel T engine, Hydrox cookies (Oreo’s lemony older brother), Milk-bone the biscuit (For Rufus), Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery, Mr. Toad - the kid’s character, 1909: More modern lightbulbs, Pearson’s candy company, Tillamook Creamery, Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux 1910: instant coffee, milkshake machines, 1911: Wall plugs, Nivea products, Midol (pain reliever), Crush Soda, Crisco, processed cheese, Mars brand, 1912: Edison Disc Record, Goo Goo Clusters, Oreos, LifeSavers candy, Lorna Doone Cookies, Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs 1913: Zippers, Crossword Puzzles, Camel Cigarettes, Hellman’s Food company,

1914: Traffic Cone, Gasmask, Tinker Toys, Listerine, Salad Cream, Heath Bar, Mary Jane Candies, Grapico Soda, Turkish Delight, Mother’s Cookies (The rainbow animal cookies with sprinkles), Chicken of the Sea, TastyKake,

Bonus: Modern Slang they would know. Sorry for the tags, but I worked hard on this and I want it to go out. Edit: Wow, thanks, guys! I didn’t expect this to gain traction. At all. Anyway, I’m a historian so feel free to send me asks about stuff like this! I will probably edit it for medical stuff.

#rdr 2 #charles smith #arthur morgan #hosea matthews #dutch van der linde #van der linde gang #john marston #javier escuella #red dead redemption 2 #sadie adler #sean macguire #jack marston #abigail marston

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dwellordream · 2 years ago

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American Culture of the 1910s: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes (1914)

“In 1914 The Nation sniffed that ‘Only persons who like a story in which a maximum of preposterous incident is served up with a minimum of compunction can enjoy these casual pages.’ Yet, as it turned out, this applied to millions. First appearing as a serial in the pulp All Story in 1912, and as Tarzan of the Apes two years later, Tarzan became a minor industry over the course of the next thirty years.

Burroughs’s creation accounts for between thirty and sixty million book sales of this and the twenty- three sequels; there were nine silent films, the first appearing in 1918, and many subsequent ones with sound – including six Johnny Weissmuller- Maureen O’Sullivan outings in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Disney treatment in 1999. Tarzan licences were sold for comic strips, radio shows and a huge range of merchandise, including bubble gum and sweatshirts.

Burroughs even bought a 540-acre ranch named Tarzana in 1919 with his proceeds, which formed the basis for today’s Tarzana – home to 30,000 people. A global icon, and one who taps into numerous long- standing national myths and legends of feral children and noble savages, Tarzan nonetheless mediates a host of commercial, sexual and racial issues informing the 1910s. As Burroughs suggested, ‘perhaps the fact that I lived in Chicago and yet hated cities and crowds of people made me write my first Tarzan story.’

He was also a failed businessman, having watched a series of small ventures collapse; he had been denied a place in Theodore Roosevelt’s famous Rough Riders regiment in the Spanish–American War; and, after a childhood in middle- class comfort, he had experienced the sharp end of American social mobility. As Gail Bederman notes, ‘he was, in short, precisely the sort of middle-class man who had most reason to crave potent new ways to remake ideologies of powerful manhood.’

He did so by yoking together a series of contradictions: a hero who is both primal and civilised, capable of murderous and wanton violence yet also capable of chivalrous restraint, the acme of racial perfection who reveals the degeneration of that very same racial stock, and a paper-thin fantasy of white male dominance whose popularity revealed the prevalent feelings of disempowerment among its many male readers.

The story begins as John Clayton, Lord Greystoke, and his wife Alice are on a diplomatic mission to West Africa. Greystoke is presented as the epitome of Anglo- Saxon racial supremacy, ‘the type of Englishman that one likes best to associate with the noblest monuments of historic achievement upon a thousand victorious battlefields – a strong, virile man – mentally, morally, and physically’.

Abandoned in Africa by their ship’s mutinous crew, they fall foul of a race of anthropoid apes, but their young son is adopted by a female ape who has just lost her own child. This ape, Kala, raises Tarzan (which means ‘white skin’ in the ape language) as her own. As he grows, his intelligence and skill with a knife he found at his father’s cabin gives him a supremacy over the tribe of apes and the other beasts of the jungle; he also teaches himself to read from primers left in the cabin.

He terrorises the nearby village of black cannibalistic Africans, and frequently kills their men by hanging them with a noose made of vines – a method replete with the overtones of lynching which the text does little to dispel. When Tarzan is twenty, the beautiful Baltimorean Jane Porter, her father, and Tarzan’s cousin, Cecil Clayton, are similarly cast adrift. This sets in motion a plot which covers Tarzan’s rescue of Jane from a rapacious ape, their developing love for each other, Tarzan’s learning of his ancestral heritage, his travel to France and the United States and Jane’s eventual marriage to Cecil.

Tarzan’s plot twists through some unlikely avenues, but it invariably engages a discussion of the problems and potential of American ‘civilization’. Tarzan is presented as effortlessly superior to Cecil in his ability to navigate the jungle and defend the castaways from its dangers, and his physique is lingered over in exactly the sort of ambivalent homoerotic terms which characterised the Popular Culture movement of the time, with its lavish photographic magazines of semi- naked men in bodybuilding poses.

Such a representation mediates the common contemporary fear that American men were becoming ‘over civilised’ and effeminate, disconnected from what Theodore Roosevelt had earlier defined as the ‘strenuous life’ of toil, ennobling hardship and willingness to engage in righteous violence. Yet, Tarzan cannot be too uncivilised and still retain his heroic status. When he encounters the moral choices that undergird modern Western culture, Tarzan instinctively behaves ‘correctly’: he avoids eating the flesh of the black men he has killed, and he chooses not to rape Jane when he has the opportunity, in both cases because ‘heredity spoke louder than training’.

At the close of the novel, Tarzan arrives in Wisconsin, driving a car and having learned to speak French, to save Jane from a forest fire: yet she decides to marry his cousin instead, because, as Tarzan is now an urbane Frenchman, he no longer appeals to ‘the primal woman in her, as had the stalwart forest god’. Once he is civilised, he loses his sexual appeal; if he remained uncivilised, a life in America would be impossible.

Tarzan ultimately founders on how contemporary American life could effectively reintegrate this version of masculinity – a masculinity of violent self-assertion which was frequently so longed for. This irresolution, however, was not what the public wanted. Tarzan’s early readers hated the ending which saw Jane and Tarzan fail to be married, and complained loudly enough that, within months, Burroughs was plotting a sequel in which they are reunited in Africa. Like other important texts of popular culture in the decade – The Birth of a Nation, in particular – the book is an articulation of Anglo-Saxon and male supremacy, a supremacy which Burroughs represents as justifi ably global and imperial in its character and methods.

In suggesting that ‘re-masculinization’ might be difficult at home but is possible in adventures abroad, Tarzan thus plays a part in a broader cultural turn of normalising and legitimating American imperialism; it is worth noting that the United States invaded the sovereign nation of Haiti just a year after Tarzan was published, and remained there until 1934; and that, in the 1910s, US troops were still engaged in hostilities with ‘rebels’ in the Philippines, which had been transferred to American control in 1902.”

- Mark Whalan, “Fiction and Poetry.” in American Culture in the 1910s

#tarzan #mark whalan #1910s #cw: racism #american culture in the 1910s #history #literature #american

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psalm22-6 · 3 years ago

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Monseigneur Myriel speaks of Les Misérables (1912, 1934)

What I learned from this is that Colm Wilkinson is not the first Valjean to later play Myriel in a film adaptation...Henry Krauss played Valjean in Capellani’s 1912 adaptation and then played Myriel in Bernard’s 1934 adaptation. This article is mostly him listing the actors in the two but it was still fun to read and includes some cute anecdotes...notably I thought it was interesting that in 1933 he was also playing Valjean in a stage adaptation and that people were excited for the play because they were looking forward to the movie. Also was happy to see Jean Toulout’s name pop up (1925 Javert) to find out that he was still playing Javert 9 years later.

[Source: L’Image, 1933]

Mme Charlotte Barbier-Krauss, the devoted housekeeper of M. Madeleine-Harry Baur, takes pity upon seeing my disappointment.

“My husbands is at the clinic, Madame, but he is already recovering. He will gladly receive you and I am certain that he will take great pleasure in speaking to you about Les Misérables…it will distract him…”

All the same, it was not without scruples that I had arrived at the rue de Texel, at the Léopold Bellan foundation. I was going to bother an invalid in order to hear the memories of he who played Jean Valjean in 1912, in the original silent film version, and 20 years later, played Bishop Myriel, under the direction of Raymond Bernard…

As soon as I entered into the well lit little bedroom, I felt all my apprehensions melt away. Rosy skinned and smiling, sitting with an open book, it was truly a man on the mend who greeted me. His quilted collar and white knit vest lent more color to his face than the threadbare cassock of the Bishop of Digne. But his good grace, his soft voice, his measured gestures, Henry Krauss certainly had no problem lending them to the character: it comes naturally to him.

And his white hair still flows like a wave- just like when it was still brown and I was a very young girl- and which moved the hearts of all the women of Brussels.

“Ah! Monsieur,” I say, “From nights spent watching Le Bossu or l’Alhambra!...and la Reine Margot!...all of Brussels was at your feet!...though I must admit to you that my heart wasn’t beating for you…It oscillated between your brother Charles Krauss and the romantic Henry Soyer, both of whom are dead now. I never knew which I preferred, which is to say, as far as sentiments, you didn’t exist to me, though you were the most famous of the group and the idol of my natal city! It would have been more tactful if I didn’t reveal this to you today. Please tell me that you’ll forgive me?”

“I forgive you, my child! You know that Monseigneur Myriel holds no grudges. Take a seat there, the sun setting behind you will provide the most beautiful lighting that a picky camera operator could ask for. When the question of lighting comes to the forefront, when cinema understands light as well as Renoir or like Rembrandt, what beautiful images they’ll show to the masses! But…what exactly is it you want me to talk about?”

“Tell me about yourself, about Les Misérables, and about one in relation to the other.”

“About myself? I was already ill when Raymond Bernard asked me to play the role of Monseigneur Myriel, and to conserve myself a little I would leave the studio as soon as my work finished, and so I would never see the regular screenings. So I have no idea ‘how it’s going’ and I’m sorry for it because I would like to be sure that it’s going well…for I’ve always doubted myself….but it’s too late to change it.”

“How do you feel presently?”

“I am recovering at full speed! And cared for wonderfully, with devotion that I can’t praise enough. I sense that speaking about theater and cinema today will do me a great amount of good!”

“Les Misérables will really have counted for something in your life.”

“Well yes. I was Jean Valjean in the first silent version; It was in the second version that Gabriel Gabrio played the role. I also played, just recently, Jean Valjean at the Ambigu theater. The success seemed unlikely to me, the play was poorly constructed, it wasn’t written very well, we were anticipating the release of the film in autumn, a film that has a thousand advantages that the play has not, in short, I thought that the public would shun us. And well! Not at all, it was me who was wrong! It was a big, a very big success. People were crying over the scene between Jean Valjean and Monseigneur Myriel! The Parisian public has been living for months in the imaginary company of Cosette, M. Madeleine, and Fantine…they are interested in them…Thanks to the film we are speaking of, Victor Hugo’s novel is back in vogue and the play benefited from that!

“That’s what I would have predicted. I believe you reprised the role of Jean Valjean after having played the Bishop of Digne in the studio?”

“Yes and that permitted me to better understand the importance of their encounter, which changed the life of the runaway convict…I believe…it seems to me that I rendered more delicately the interior and definite transformation of my character, which Monseigneur Myriel’s goodness illuminated in his soul.

“In the first film, who played Monseigneur Myriel?”

“A great actor: Léon Bernard. Javert, was played by Etiévant. That is a role that is lucky: in the latest revival at the Ambigu theater, he was played by my friend Jean Toulout [Javert in the 1925 film], an actor like few others. In Raymond Bernard’s film, he is played by Charles Vanel, who’s talent I don’t have to extol to you. By the way, this role suits him wonderfully, because too many people forget that while Javert is a brutal and perhaps heavy handed incarnation, he is also profoundly sincere and guided by conscience. Is there anyone more conscientious than Charles Yanel?

Thénardier was first played by Millot [Émile Mylo]; today he’s played by Charles Dullin; I did not have the chance to meet him at the Joiville studio, but I acted with him in the Brother Karmazoff; I know what a powerful hand he shapes his characters with. We can be sure that his Thénardier will be a striking figure, just like the Madame Thénardier of Marguerite Moreno will be. No actor is able, more so than she is, to renew herself, to transform herself. Yesterday she was the ideal interpreter of poets, a muse with an exquisite voice. Today she is a lucid fantasy, always appearing teasing and measured.

In 1912, in Paul Capellani’s film, Gillenormand was played by Lerand, who was a good strong actor. Today he’s played by Max Dearly, for whom there is no role not made to his size. Big roles, he’s big enough for them. Small roles, he is at ease in them too.

Enjolras was played by Jean Angelo…who later made so many hearts flutter…today he’s played by Vidalin, of la Comedie-Francaise. When I was in charge of certain scenes, along with Abel Gance, in his film Napoleon, I chose Vidalin to play Camille Desmoulins, that shows the high regard I hold. The poor and charming Francine Mussey played Lucie Desmoulins.

Marius, that’s Jean Servais, who proved himself in Brussels and in Paris in the Compagnie du Marais and who has a spirited and charming youthfulness. The first Marius was Gabriel de Gravone…He had big black eyes, an olive complexion, and curly hair… after the matinees at the Park Theater in Brussels, this was around 1908, all the young girls held out pens and postcards to the youth. And he would sign them….he was more intimidated than they were!

And Jean Valjean, that was me. Today he’s played by my good friend Harry Baur…A man of good taste, culture, intelligence, to him art is second nature and he is incapable of uttering a false note…”

“Would you like to speak of any of the other women, apart from Moreno-Thénardier?”

“Why yes! I will first off tell you what a joy it was for me to have as my ‘sister,’ my exquisite friend Marthe Mellot, who we don’t see enough of. She also acted with me in Brussels in a play by Paul Spaak that was very successful. She’s a charming woman with a lot of talent. I know that it’s just a little role, she is not on screen long, but it’s an important time because of the influence it has on the whole life of Jean Valjean.”

“I know that the role of passer-by, a small part in its length but extremely important because of the influence it had on the whole life of Jean Valjean, is held by Blanche Denège, who I saw many times backstage when she was acting in La Fleur des Pois [this one is kind of a mystery to me, I can’t find her connection to Les Miserables. My only guess is that she was uncredited in the role of Baptistine in the 1912 adaptation? But she seems too young.]

Florelle, who I acted with in Berlin, will be a very touching Fantine; it was Ventura who played the role in 1912. I never had the occasion to works with Orane Demazis, but like you I have applauded her on the stage and on the screen and I think that she will give a strong performance in the many complex faces of Eponine. Do you know who played the first Eponine on film, if I dare to say it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Mistinguett. She was quite simply stunning, and never has anyone deserved success as much as she does! To tell the truth, she took us all by surprise with her moving power, with…I don’t know…it is inexpressible yet very expressive.

Josseline Gael is a new comer but has already shown her potential, notably under the direction of Jacques Tourneur in Tout ça ne vaut pas l’amour.

And the young Gaby Triquet already has a well established reputation. I wish her much luck as the young Cosette, like the success which once welcomed the young Maria Fromet, who is today a performer at the Theater du Gymnase.

“And what of Gavroche?”

“Gavroche, that role is gold! The sparrow in the city! I will let myself say that Emile Genevois is an enchanting example of that formidable and charming creature.”

The sun had moved from my left shoulder to my right, the “beautiful light of the setting sun” had faded and a nurse appeared armed with a thermometer but smiling nonetheless and I took my leave of the ensemble of Karainozoff, Lagardere…and Monseigneur Myriel, taking with me the joy of having brought back old memories from one of our most brilliant actors.

#Les Miserables #Myriel #LM 1912 #LM 1934 #my translation

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princesssarisa · 4 years ago

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Character ask: Snow White's Prince

Tagged by @ariel-seagull-wings.

Favorite thing about them: He's a classic charming fairy tale prince who adores his princess: a childhood fantasy of romance that never loses its appeal.

Least favorite thing about them: For the Prince of the original Grimms' tale, the fact that he falls in love with a dead girl. I'm very grateful that most adaptations have them meet and fall in love long before the poisoned apple. For Disney's Prince, the fact that he's so underdeveloped as a character, and his fairly stiff, doll-like animation. He was the character whom the animators had the most difficulty bringing to life and it shows.

Three things I have in common with them:

*I'm passionate.

*I tend to be romantic.

*I like visual beauty.

Three things I don't have in common with them:

*I'm not royalty.

*Looking at dead bodies gives me the creeps.

*I don't know how to ride a horse – I've only ridden ponies at petting zoos when I was little.

Favorite line: From the Grimms' tale, when the Dwarfs refuse to sell Snow White's glass coffin to him:

"Then give it to me, for I cannot live without being able to see Snow White. I will honor her and respect her as my most cherished one."

And from the Disney version, the lyrics to "One Song" – classic old-fashioned romance.

brOTP: I like to imagine him becoming good friends with the Seven Dwarfs after he marries Snow White.

OTP: Snow White.

nOTP: The Queen.

Random headcanon: His name is Florian. Disney has been giving this as his name in recent years and I like it. Presumably it's derived from "Florimond," his name in the 1912 Broadway play and its 1916 silent film adaptation, and it retains the elegant, poetic quality of that name, but without being so unbearably prissy and old-fashioned.

Unpopular opinion: Let me proclaim this from the rooftops:

DISNEY'S PRINCE IS NOT GUILTY OF A NON-CONSENSUAL KISS OR OF NECROPHILIA!

Unlike the Grimms' Prince, he doesn't fall in love with Snow White in her glass coffin. He falls in love with her, and she with him, in the castle courtyard at the beginning. Yes, we could complain that they only meet for a minute and never really know each other, but that's just being stubborn and refusing to accept Love at First Sight as a storytelling convention. When he eventually finds her lying dead in the glass coffin – and as far as he knows, she is dead, he doesn't know the spell can be broken – he grieves because he loved her when she was alive. So he gives her lips a small, gentle farewell kiss, like a widow or widower might give to their dead spouse just before the casket is closed. There's absolutely nothing inappropriate about what he does. Nothing inappropriate!

Songs I associate with them:

"One Song" from the Disney film.

youtube

"Where Is the One I Long For?" from the Cannon Movie Tales version.

youtube

Favorite pictures of them:

This illustration by Bess Livings (Snow White looks a bit zombie-like, but the Prince looks good):

This illustration by Angela Barrett (look closely – he's crying 😢):

This illustration by Trina Schart Hyman (I like her bearded, manly Prince – it's a different take on the character than usual, but he looks like he'll be a strong, comforting rock of support for Snow White after all she's been through):

This illustration of the same moment by Charles Santore:

This illustration by Erin Augustine:

DIsney's Prince:

Prince Richard from the anime The Legend of Snow White:

James Ian Wright with Sarah Patterson in the Cannon Movie Tales version:

Tyrone Leitso with Kristen Kreuk in Snow White: The Fairest of Them All (2001). (Not my favorite adaptation, but I like the way he looks!)

I wish I could include a picture of Rex Smith from the Faerie Tale Theatre version too, but the only production stills I can find of him in the role are too fuzzy.

#snow white #prince #prince charming #fairy tale #ask game

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sereniphile-blog · 5 months ago

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Titanic was a little bitch movie star who died tragically young in spectacular fashion. We know. Is nobody going to talk about her older sisters who both had incredibly successful careers? They fought in the war!

Britanic deserved a Medal of Honor, acting as a hospital vessel until a mine sank her in Greece. (Side note, sank in a tenth of the time Big T did, and 97% of the victims survived 🙄). She never got into the entertainment biz. She wanted to be a nurse, and she was a damn good one.

Olympic stepped on people and they liked it. She tore a U-boat in half (also a friendly boat but they had it coming), and served as troop transport until the war ended. They called her “Old Reliable”. Here that Unsinkable? They called her reliable. She was in service two years before the Titanic was born, and she was still serving two decades after the Titanic sank. The Olympic retired during the Great Depression, for which the Axis are eternally grateful.

And then the Nasties made The Titanic(1943) as anti-capitalist propaganda, But it ended up banned because of the uncomfortable parallels with a special kind of camping

Anyway, one of the titanic’s fuel depots was on fire for most of the trip, which resulted in the ship leaning slightly. Fortunately, the side with a hole in it was the opposite side, so it balanced back out for a while.

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silent-era-of-cinema · 4 years ago

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Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (22 January 1893 – 3 April 1943) was a German actor best remembered for his roles in the films Different from the Others (1919), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and The Man Who Laughs (1928). After a successful career in German silent films, where he was one of the best-paid stars of UFA, he and his new Jewish wife Ilona Prager were forced to leave Germany in 1933 after the Nazis came to power. The couple settled in Britain, where he took British citizenship in 1939. He appeared in many British films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the United States around 1941, which led to his being cast as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942).

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt was born in his parents' home at Tieckstraße 39 in Berlin to Amalie Marie (née Gohtz) and Philipp Heinrich Veidt, a former military man turned civil servant. Veidt would later recall, “Like many fathers, he was affectionately autocratic in his home life, strict, idealistic. He was almost fanatically conservative.” By contrast, Amalie was sensitive and nurturing. Veidt was nicknamed 'Connie' by his family and friends. His family was Lutheran, and Veidt was confirmed in a ceremony at the Protestant Evangelical Church in Alt-Schöneberg, Berlin on 5 March 1908. Veidt's only sibling, an older brother named Karl, died in 1900 of scarlet fever at the age of 9. The family spent their summers in Potsdam.

Two years after Karl's death, Veidt's father fell ill and required heart surgery. Knowing that the family could not afford to pay the lofty fee that accompanied the surgery, the doctor charged only what the family could comfortably pay. Impressed by the surgeon's skill and kindness, Veidt vowed to "model my life on the man that saved my father's life" and he wished to become a surgeon. His hopes for a medical career were thwarted, though, when in 1912 he graduated without a diploma and ranked 13th out of 13 pupils and became discouraged over the amount of study necessary for him to qualify for medical school.

A new career path for Veidt opened up in 1911 during a school Christmas play in which he delivered a long prologue before the curtain rose. The play was badly received, and the audience was heard to mutter, "Too bad the others didn't do as well as Veidt." Veidt began to study all of the actors he could and wanted to pursue a career in acting, much to the disappointment of his father, who called actors 'gypsys' and 'outcasts'.

With the money he raised from odd jobs and the allowance his mother gave him, Veidt began attending Berlin's many theaters. He loitered outside of the Deutsches Theater after every performance, waiting for the actors and hoping to be mistaken for one. In the late summer of 1912 he met a theater porter who introduced him to actor Albert Blumenreich, who agreed to give Veidt acting lessons for six marks. He took ten lessons from him before auditioning for Max Reinhardt, reciting Goethe's Faust. During Veidt's audition, Reinhardt looked out of the window the entire time. He offered Veidt a contract as an extra for one season's work, from September 1913 to August 1914 with a pay of 50 marks a month. During this time, he played bit parts as spear carriers and soldiers. His mother attended almost every performance. His contract with the Deutsches Theater was renewed for a second season, but by this time World War I had begun, and on 28 December 1914, Veidt enlisted in the army.

In 1915, he was sent to the Eastern Front as a non-commissioned officer and took part in the Battle of Warsaw. He contracted jaundice and pneumonia, and had to be evacuated to a hospital on the Baltic Sea. While recuperating, he received a letter from his girlfriend Lucie Mannheim, telling him that she had found work at the Front Theatre in Libau. Intrigued, Veidt applied for the theatre as well. As his condition had not improved, the army allowed him to join the theatre so that he could entertain the troops. While performing at the theatre, his relationship with Mannheim ended. In late 1916, he was re-examined by the Army and deemed unfit for service; he was given a full discharge on 10 January 1917. Veidt returned to Berlin where he was readmitted to the Deutsches Theater. There, he played a small part as a priest that got him his first rave review, the reviewer hoping that "God would keep Veidt from the films." or "God save him from the cinema!"

From 1917 until his death, Veidt appeared in more than 100 films. One of his earliest performances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a classic of German Expressionist cinema, with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured circus performer whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (visual) inspiration for the Batman villain the Joker. Veidt starred in other silent horror films such as The Hands of Orlac (1924), also directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924), in which he played Ivan the Terrible. Veidt also appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919), one of the earliest films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily. He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929).

He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s and made a few films there, but the advent of talking pictures and his difficulty with speaking English led him to return to Germany. During this period, he lent his expertise to tutoring aspiring performers, one of whom was the later American character actress Lisa Golm.

Veidt fervently opposed the Nazi regime and later donated a major portion of his personal fortune to Britain to assist in the war effort. Soon after the Nazi Party took power in Germany, by March 1933, Joseph Goebbels was purging the film industry of anti-Nazi sympathizers and Jews, and so in April 1933, a week after Veidt's marriage to Ilona Prager, a Jewish woman, the couple emigrated to Britain before any action could be taken against either of them.

Goebbels had imposed a "racial questionnaire" in which everyone employed in the German film industry had to declare their "race" to continue to work. When Veidt was filling in the questionnaire, he answered the question about what his Rasse (race) was by writing that he was a Jude (Jew). Veidt was not Jewish, but his wife was Jewish, and Veidt would not renounce the woman he loved. Additionally, Veidt, who was opposed to antisemitism, wanted to show solidarity with the German Jewish community, who were in the process of being stripped of their rights as German citizens in the spring of 1933. As one of Germany's most prominent actors, Veidt had been informed that if he were prepared to divorce his wife and declare his support for the new regime, he could continue to act in Germany. Several other leading actors who had been opposed to the Nazis before 1933 switched allegiances. In answering the questionnaire by stating he was a Jew, Veidt rendered himself unemployable in Germany, but stated this sacrifice was worth it as there was nothing in the world that would compel him to break with his wife. Upon hearing about what Veidt had done, Goebbels remarked that he would never act in Germany again.

After arriving in Britain, Veidt perfected his English and starred in the title roles of the original anti-Nazi versions of The Wandering Jew (1933) and Jew Süss (1934), the latter film was directed by the exiled German-born director Lothar Mendes and produced by Michael Balcon for Gaumont-British. He naturalised as a British subject on 25 February 1939. By this point multi-lingual, Veidt made films both in French with expatriate French directors and in English, including three of his best-known roles for British director Michael Powell in The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940).

By 1941, he and Ilona had settled in Hollywood to assist in the British effort in making American films that might persuade the then-neutral and still isolationist US to join the war against the Nazis, who at that time controlled all of continental Europe and were bombing the United Kingdom. Before leaving the United Kingdom, Veidt gave his life savings to the British government to help finance the war effort. Realizing that Hollywood would most likely typecast him in Nazi roles, he had his contract mandate that they must always be villains.

He starred in a few films, such as George Cukor's A Woman's Face (1941) where he received billing under Joan Crawford's and Nazi Agent (1942), in which he had a dual role as both an aristocratic German Nazi spy and the man's twin brother, an anti-Nazi American. His best-known Hollywood role was as the sinister Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1942), a film which began pre-production before the United States entered World War II. Commenting about this well-received role, Veidt noted that it was an ironical twist of that that he was praised "for portraying the kind of character who had forced him to leave his homeland".

Veidt enjoyed sports, gardening, swimming, golfing, classical music, and reading fiction and nonfiction (including occultism; Veidt once considered himself a powerful medium). He was afraid of heights and flying, and disliked interviews and wearing ties.

In a September 1941 interview with Silver Screen, Veidt said,

I see a man who was once for years studying occult things. The science of occult things. I had the feeling there must be – something else. There are things in our world we cannot trace. I wanted to trace them. The power we have to think, to move, to speak, to feel – is it electricity, I wanted to know? Is it magnetism? Is it the heart? Is it the blood? When the body dies, where is all that? Where is the power that made the body live? No one can tell me it is not somewhere. If you believe in waves, which you must believe after you have the radio, why couldn't human beings contact the wave lengths of someone who is dead? ... this is the kind of thing with which I was, for many years, preoccupied. This is what I tried to find, the answer. I did not find it. But in looking for it there was etched, perhaps, on my face, some hint of the strange cabals I kept with unseen and unknown powers. I did not find it, I say. But I found something else. Something better. I found –faith. I found the ability, very peaceful, to accept that which I could neither see, nor hear nor touch. I am a religious man. My belief is that if we could help to make all people a little more religious, we would do a great lot. If we would pray more ... we forget to pray except when we are in a mess. That is too bad. I believe in prayer. Because when we pray, we always pray for something good.

He went on:

I must tell you something that will disappoint you ... far from being one engaged in strangle rituals of thought or action, what I like best to do is sit in this small garden, on this terrace, and – just sit. Sometimes, I confess, I think a lot; about my past. About my parents who are dead. I like to dream, to go away ... At other times, I sit and read. I read, often, a whole day through. I play golf. I used to be a golf fiend. Now I am not a fiend even on the links. Now I play because it is relaxation. I like the beach very much, the sea. I go to the films often, to the neighborhood theater, my wife and I. Sometimes we go to the Palladium, where there is dancing. It is an amazing sight to me to see young people, how they are like they were thirty years ago, how they hold hands, how they enjoy their lives. To me, the most beautiful thing in California is the Hollywood Bowl, the Concerts Under the Stars. For me, it is a terrific experience. I have never seen an audience in my life like that. 30,000 people, simple people, most of them, listening to music under the stars. I have never seen 30,000 people, simple people, so quiet. I like to think of them as a symbol that one day there may be that oneness for all mankind....

On 18 June 1918, Veidt married Gussy Holl, a cabaret entertainer. They had first met at a party in March 1918, and Conrad described her to friends as "very lovely, tall, dignified and somewhat aloof". They separated in 1919 but attempted to reconcile multiple times. Holl and Veidt divorced in 1922.

Veidt said of Holl, "She was as perfect as any wife could be. But I had not learnt how to be a proper husband." and, "I was elated by my success in my work, but shattered over my mother's death, and miserable about the way my marriage seemed to be foundering. And one day when my wife was away, I walked out of the house, and out of her life, trying to escape from something I could put no name to."

After his separation and eventual divorce from Holl, Veidt allegedly dated his co-star Anita Berber.

Veidt's second wife Felizitas Radke was from an aristocratic Austrian family. They met at a party in December 1922 or at a Charleston dance competition in 1923. Radke divorced her husband for him, and they married in April 1923. Their daughter, Vera Viola Maria, nicknamed "Kiki", was born on 10 August 1925. He was not present at her birth due to being in Italy working on The Fiddler of Florence, but upon hearing of her birth, he took the first train to Berlin and flailed and wept as he first met mother and child at the hospital; he was so hysterical from joy they had to sedate him and keep him in the hospital overnight.

Emil Jannings was Viola's godfather and Elisabeth Bergner was her godmother. She was named after one of Bergner's signature characters, Shakespeare's Viola. The birth of his daughter helped Veidt move on from the death of his dearly loved mother, who had died of a heart condition in January 1922.

From September 1926 to 1929 Veidt lived with his wife and daughter in a Spanish-style house in Beverly Hills.

Veidt enjoyed relaxing and playing with his daughter in their home, and enjoyed the company of the immigrant community, including F. W. Murnau, Carl Laemmle, and Greta Garbo, as well as the American Gary Cooper. The family returned to Germany in 1929, and moved several times afterwards, including a temporary relocation to Vienna, Austria, while Veidt participated in a theatrical tour of the continent.

Radke and Veidt divorced in 1932, with Radke citing that the frequent relocations and the separations necessitated by Veidt's acting schedule frayed their marriage. Radke at first granted custody of their daughter to Veidt, but after further consideration he decided that their daughter needed the full-time parent that his work would not allow him to be. Conrad received generous visitation rights, and Viola called her summer vacations with her father "The Happy Times". She stayed with him three or four months of the year until the outbreak of World War II.

He last married Ilona "Lilli" Barta Prager (or Preger), a Hungarian Jew, in Berlin on 30 March 1933; they remained together until his death. The two had met at a club in Berlin. Veidt said of Lilli in an October 1934 interview with The Sunday Dispatch,

Lilli was the woman I had been seeking all my life. For her I was the man. In Lilli I found the miracle of a woman who had all to give that I sought, the perfect crystallisation in one lovely human being, of all my years of searching. Lilli had the mother complex too. But in the reverse ratio to mine. In her, the mother instinct was so powerful that she poured it out, indiscriminately almost, on everyone she knew. She mothers her own mother. Meeting Lilli was like coming home to an enchanted place one had always dreamed of, but never thought to reach. For her it was the same. Our marriage is not only flawless, it is a complete and logical union, as inevitable as daybreak after night, as harmonious and right as the words that exactly fit the music. My search is finished. The picture in my mind of my mother is of a woman great and holy. But it is a picture clear and. distinct, a deep and humble memory of a woman no one could replace; but now it is not blurred by the complex which before had harassed my mind.

Veidt and Lilli arrived from London at Los Angeles on 13 June 1940 and resided in Beverly Hills, where they lived at 617 North Camden Drive.

Even after leaving England, Veidt was concerned over the plight of children cooped up in London air raid shelters, and he decided to try to cheer up their holiday. Through his attorneys in London, Veidt donated enough money to purchase 2,000 one-pound tins of candy, 2,000 large packets of chocolate, and 1,000 wrapped envelopes containing presents of British currency. The gifts went to children of needy families in various air raid shelters in the London area during Christmas 1940. The air raid shelter marshal wrote back to Veidt thanking him for the gifts. Noting Veidt's unusual kindness, he stated in his letter to him, "It is significant to note that, as far as is known to me, you are the only member of the Theatrical Profession who had the thought to send Christmas presents to the London children."

Veidt smuggled his parents-in-law from Austria to neutral Switzerland, and in 1935 he managed to get the Nazi government to let his ex-wife Radke and their daughter move to Switzerland. He also offered to help Felizita's mother, Frau Radke, of whom he was fond, leave Germany. However, she declined. A proud, strong-willed woman who was attached to her home country, she declared that "no damned little Austrian Nazi corporal" was going to make her leave her home. She reportedly survived the war, but none of the Veidts ever saw her again.

Veidt was bisexual and a feminist. In a 1941 interview he said,

There are two different kinds of men. There are the men men, what do you call them, the man's man, who likes men around, who prefers to talk with men, who says the female can never be impersonal, who takes the female lightly, as playthings. I do not see a man like that in my mirror. Perhaps, it is because I think the female and the male attract better than two men, that I prefer to talk with females. I do. I find it quite as stimulating and distinctly more comfortable. I have a theory about this – it all goes back to the mother complex. In every woman, the man who looks may find – his mother. The primary source of all his comfort. I think also that females have become too important just to play with. When men say the female cannot discuss impersonally, that is no longer so. When it is said that females cannot be geniuses, that is no longer so, either. The female is different from the male. Because she was born to be a mother. There is no doubt about that. But that does not mean that, in some cases, she is not also born a genius. Not all males are geniuses either. And among females today there are some very fine actresses, very fine; fine doctors, lawyers, even scientists and industrialists. I see no fault in any female when she wears slacks, smokes (unless it is on the street, one thing, the only thing, which I don't like), when she drives a car ... when men say things like "I bet it is a woman driving" if something is wrong with the car ahead – no, no. These are old, worn out prejudices, they do not belong in today.

In the 1930s, Veidt discovered that he had the same heart condition that his mother had died from. The condition was further aggravated by chain smoking, and Veidt took nitroglycerin tablets.

Veidt died of a massive heart attack on 3 April 1943 while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician, Dr. Bergman, who pronounced him dead at the scene. He had suddenly gasped and fallen over after getting to the eighth hole. He was 50 years old. His ex-wife Felizitas and his daughter Viola found out about his death via a radio broadcast in Switzerland.

In 1998, his ashes, along with his wife Lilli's, were placed in a niche of the columbarium at the Golders Green Crematorium in north London.

#conrad veidt #silent era #silent hollywood #silent movie stars #classic hollywood #classic movie stars #golden age of hollywood #1910s movies #1920s hollywood #1930s hollywood #1940s hollywood

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fuad-ramses-73 · 3 years ago

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Eva Speyer da Truus, Bob & Jan too! Tramite Flickr: German postcard. Photo: Alex Binder. Eva Speyer (1883-1932 (?)), also known as Eva Stöckl Speyer, was a German actress, who appeared in more than seventy films from 1911 to 1932. Eva Speyer was born Eva Esther Speier in 1883 in Berlin, Germany. She was the daughter of the stockbroker Fedor Speier and his wife, the milliner Wilhelmine, née Mahn. Eva received her training as an actress at the Marie Seebach School and made her debut in Hirschberg in 1904. In 1905 she appeared in Posen and from 1906 to 1908 at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf. In 1908 she embarked for America and appeared on stage in Milwaukee and in 1909 in New York. In November 1910 she returned to Germany and played at Berlin stages such as the Lessingtheater, Trianon-Theater, and the Kleines Theater. She got in touch with the film business by chance. During an engagement at the Lessingtheater, she was asked by Paul Otto to play in the silent film Nora (1911). The new medium film was becoming commercially successful in Germany. Thomas Staedeli at Cyranos: "She viewed the new medium as a welcome extra income without artistic challenge. When the technological basis improved considerably she changed her attitude to the film and saw the possibility to make the art accessible to the audience in an easy way." In the next years, Speyer developed into one of the first stars of the German silent cinema. She played suffering women in such short melodramas as Die gelbe Rasse/The yellow breed (Max Mack, 1912), Dämonen der Tiefe/Demons of the Deep (Harry Piel, 1912), and Zwischen Himmel und Erde/'Tween Heaven and Earth (Otto Rippert, 1913) with Ernst Rückert. During World War I, Eva starred in films like Der Geisterseher/The Ghost Seer (Waldemar Hecker, 1915), Der Talismann/The Talisman (Eddie Seefeld, 1915), Die Flucht des Arno Jessen/The Flight of Arno Jessen (Richard Eichberg, 1917) starring Ernst Rückert, and Es werde Licht! 2. Teil/Let there be light. Part 2 (Richard Oswald, 1918). She played the female lead in the silent Science-Fiction film Die Arche/The Ark (Richard Oswald, 1919) starring Leo Connard. It is a two-part German epic about a near future in which civilisation has been destroyed. From the 1920s onwards, Eva Speyer's days as a star were over but she proved her talent as a character actress in many well-known films. These included § 182 minderjährig/Paragraph 182 (Ernst Winar, 1927) starring Colette Brettel, Dirnentragödie/Tragedy of the Street (Bruno Rahn, 1927) starring Asta Nielsen, and Unter der Laterne/Under the Lantern (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1928) starring Lissy Arna. In the drama Jugendtragödie/Tragedy of Youth (Adolf Trotz, 1929), she played a washerwoman, whose son (Roland Varno) is sent to a reform school for a minor crime. He breaks out and commits a murder. During the sound era, Speyer appeared in three more films, Namensheirat/Marriage in Name Only (Heinz Paul, 1930) with Evelyn Holt, the comedy Ich bleib bei Dir/I stay with you (Johannes Meyer, 1932), and the drugs drama Der weisse Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) starring Hans Albers. Speyer was initially married to the actor Otto Stöckl and was therefore also known as Eva Speyer-Stöckl. In 1918, she was married to merchant Robert Ebert in her second marriage. About what happened to her after 1932, the sources differ. According to German Wikipedia, she was completely excluded from public culture because of her Jewish descent after the National Socialists came to power in 1933. and probably emigrated a short time later. However, Italian Wikipedia quotes IMDb that indicates that the actress died in 1932 at the age of 50. Where is unknown. Filmportal.de confirms this date. Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmporttal.de, Wikipedia (English, German and Italian), and IMDb. And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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The Cinematic Legacy of Lupin: Arsène Lupin’s Live-Action Filmography

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When Netflix premiered the first season of Lupin last January, 70 million sheltered-in-place households ravenously binged it, making the series the most-watched non-English show for its premiere month on the streamer so far. Lupin steals a page from French literature. The hero of Lupin, Assane Diop (Omar Sy) is inspired by France’s iconic ‘Gentleman Thief’ Arsène Lupin, a fictional figure created by French writer Maurice Leblanc in 1905.

Lupin was the subject of some two dozen books by Leblanc, who continued adding into his literary franchise until well into the 1930s. Akin to Robin Hood, Lupin stole from the rich, and often did good deeds despite his thieving capers. He was a master of deception and disguise, a lady killer who always operated with a classy panache. With a legacy spanning more than a century, there have been plenty of live-action depictions in film and TV.

The First Lupin Films are Over a Hundred Years Old

The earliest cinematic portrayals of Lupin were in black and white, and many have been lost. One of the very first was a U.S. production, a short film titled The Gentleman Burglar in 1908. William Ranows, a veteran of over sixty films, played Lupin. It was directed by one of the first film directors ever, Edwin Porter, who worked for Edison.

Leblanc was a contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Consequently, Holmes appears in a few Lupin stories. Doyle took legal action against Leblanc, forcing the name change in Lupin stories to the thinly disguised ‘Herlock Sholmes.’ As Holmes is loved by the British, Lupin is cherished by the French, and both characters became global icons. Consequently, among the many film and TV adaptations, several that depicted their rivalry regardless of copyright issues. In 1910, a German film serial titled Arsène Lupin contra Sherlock Holmes starred Paul Otto as Lupin and Viggo Larsen as Holmes (Larsen also served as director.) There were allegedly five installments in the series, but they’ve all been lost.

France produced Arsène Lupin contre Ganimard in 1914 with Georges Tréville as Lupin (Inspector Ganimard was constantly on Lupin’s trail). The silent film Arsène Lupin came out of Britain in 1916 with Gerald Ames in the titular role, followed by more U.S. productions: Arsène Lupin (1917) starring Earle Williams, The Teeth of the Tiger (1919) with David Powell, which is also lost, and 813 starring Wedgwood Nowell. 813 was the title of Leblanc’s fourth Lupin book.

Lupin and the Barrymore Clan of Actors

The legendary thespian John Barrymore played Lupin in 1932’s Arsène Lupin. He took on the role under one of Lupin’s aliases, the Duke of Charmerace. His brother, Lionel Barrymore, played another Lupin nemesis, Detective Guerchard. Given the illustrious cast, this is a standout Lupin film, although there isn’t a shred of Frenchness in Barrymore’s interpretation. Coincidentally, John Barrymore also played Holmes in Sherlock Holmes a decade earlier. He is also the grandfather of Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin revolved around the theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Historically, the Da Vinci masterpiece was stolen in 1911 and recovered in 1913. This inspired a Lupin short story, a parody akin to early fanfiction that was not written by Leblanc. In 1912, mystery writer Carolyn Wells published The Adventure Of The Mona Lisa which imagined Holmes and Lupin to be part of the International Society of Infallible Detectives alongside A. J. Raffles, Monsieur Lecoq, and other crime-solving luminaries. Barrymore’s Arsène Lupin does not retell this tale, but the theft of the Mona Lisa comes up again in other Lupin films because it’s France so robbing the Louvre is a common plot point. Netflix’s Lupin begins with Diop’s heist of the Queen’s necklace from the Louvre, an Easter egg referring to Leblanc’s original Lupin short story, ‘The Queen’s Necklace’ published in 1906.

The ‘30s delivered two more Lupin films. The French-made Arsène Lupin detective (1937) starred Jules Berry as Lupin and the American-made Arsène Lupin Returns (1938) with Melvyn Douglas who was credited under another Lupin alias Rene Farrand (Lupin has a lot of aliases). Despite being a completely different production, Douglas’ film was an attempt to capitalize on the success of Barrymore’s film as both films were from MGM. Universal Studios entered the fray soon after with their version Enter Arsène Lupin (1944) starring Charles Korvin. The following year, the Mexican-made Arsenio Lupin (1945) featured Ramón Pereda as the French thief. That film also starred José Baviera as Sherlock.

The Early Japanese Lupin Adaptations

Lupin captured the hearts of the Japanese. Ironically, Japanese speakers have a difficult time pronouncing ‘L’s so Lupin is usually renamed as ‘Rupan’ or ‘Wolf’ (Lupine means wolf-like – remember Remus Lupin from Harry Potter). As early as 1923, Japan also delivered a silent version of 813, retitled Hachi Ichi San, starring Komei Minami as the renamed Lupin character of Akira Naruse.

In the ‘50s, Japan produced 3 films that credit Leblanc: Nanatsu-no Houseki (1950) with Keiji Sada, Tora no-Kiba (1951) with Ken Uehara, and Kao-no Nai Otoko (1955) with Eiji Okada. However, post-WWII Japan has obscured most of the details on these films. Like Hachi Ichi San, these Japanese versions laid the foundations for the Lupin III, which debuted as a manga in 1967 and spawned a major manga and anime franchise. In karmic retribution for Leblanc poaching Sherlock, Japan stole Lupin. Lupin III was Arsène Lupin’s grandson.

Notably, the second Lupin III feature film, The Castle of Cagliostro, marked the directorial debut of famed animator Hayao Miyazaki and is considered a groundbreaking classic that inspired Pixar and Disney (Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective (1986) pilfered the finale clockwork fight from The Castle of Cagliostro). In the wake of the anime Lupin III Part I (1971), Japan produced some anime films that were more loyal to Leblanc, notably Kaitō Lupin: 813 no Nazo (1979) and Lupin tai Holmes (1981). However, this article is focused upon live-action adaptations. Lupin III is another topic entirely.

In the late ‘50s and into the ‘70s, France reclaimed her celebrated son. Robert Lamoureux became Lupin for two films, Les aventures d’Arsène Lupin (1957) and Signé Arsène Lupin (1959). A comedy version pitted rival sons of Lupin against each other in Arsène Lupin contre Arsène Lupin (1962). Playing the Lupin brothers were Jean-Pierre Cassel and Jean-Claude Brialy.

Lupin on the Small Screen

From Lupin III to Inspector Gadget: Examining the Heirs of Arsène Lupin

By Natalie Zutter

France also delivered several TV series. Arsène Lupin ran from 1971 to 1974 and starred Georges Descrières. It encompassed 26 60-minute episodes. L’Île aux trente cercueils (1979) is often included in Lupin filmographies because it is based on a Leblanc novel published in 1919 in which Lupin makes a guest appearance. However, he was omitted from this six-episode miniseries, so it doesn’t quite count. Arsène Lupin joue et perd (1980) was another six-episode miniseries loosely based on ‘813’ with Jean-Claude Brialy from the 1962 comedy.

One more French TV show, Le Retour d’Arsène Lupin, was televised in two seasons, 1989-1990 and 1995-1996. These were 90-minute episodes with 12 in season 1 and eight in season 2. François Dunoyer starred as Lupin.

And in 2007, the largest Lupin TV show ran for a whopping 96 episodes plus one special. Lupin was made in the Philippines no less, starring Richard Gutierrez as André Lupin

Lupin in the Last Decade

In 2011, Japan delivered one more live-action film Lupin no Kiganjo starring Kōichi Yamadera. Based on Leblanc’s 3rd Lupin book, L’aiguille Creuse, the film is reset in modern Japan.

In the strangest permutation of Japanese Lupins, Daughter of Lupin was a TV series that is an odd hybrid of Lupin III and Leblanc’s work. A campy sitcom in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Hana (Kyoko Fukada) comes from a family of thieves known as the L clan who are inspired by Lupin. Her lover, Kazuma (Koji Seto), is from a family of cops. When in thief mode, Hana wears a carnival mask and a velvet catsuit. It’s goofy, sort of a live action version of anime. It ran for two seasons in 2019 and 2020.

The Lupin Adaptation You Should See

The strongest modern adaptation of Leblanc’s iconic burglar is the period film Arsène Lupin (2004). It’s an actioner, a creation story for Lupin, starting from his childhood and moving rapidly to him becoming a master gentleman thief. Romain Duris plays the titular role, and the film is in French. Backing Duris are veteran actresses Kristin Scott Thomas as Comtesse de Cagliostro and Eva Green as Clarisse de Dreux-Soubise. The story is absurd, like a mash-up between a superhero film and the DaVinci code, and it gets a bit muddled in the telling. However, it’s shot on location (including the Louvre) and encapsulates the spirit of Leblanc’s character in an updated fashion. It’s a perfect primer for Lupin Season 2.

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Lupin seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream on Netflix now.

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classic-laugjhing-hollywood · 4 years ago

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Harold Clayton Lloyd Sr. (April 20, 1893 – March 8, 1971) was an American actor, comedian, and stunt performer who appeared in many silent comedy films.

Lloyd is considered alongside Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton as one of the most influential film comedians of the silent film era. Lloyd made nearly 200 comedy films, both silent and "talkies", between 1914 and 1947. His bespectacled "Glasses" character[2][3] was a resourceful, success-seeking go-getter who matched the zeitgeist of the 1920s-era United States.

His films frequently contained "thrill sequences" of extended chase scenes and daredevil physical feats. Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street (in reality a trick shot) in Safety Last! (1923) is considered one of the most enduring images in all of cinema. Lloyd performed the lesser stunts himself, despite having injured himself in August 1919 while doing publicity pictures for the Roach studio. An accident with a bomb mistaken as a prop resulted in the loss of the thumb and index finger of his right hand (the injury was disguised on future films with the use of a special prosthetic glove, and was almost undetectable on the screen).

He was far more prolific than Chaplin (releasing 12 feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just four), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin's $10.5 million).

Lloyd was born on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, the son of James Darsie Lloyd and Sarah Elisabeth Fraser. His paternal great-grandparents were Welsh.[6] In 1910, after his father had several business venture failures, Lloyd's parents divorced and his father moved with his son to San Diego, California. Lloyd had acted in theater since a child, but in California he began acting in one-reel film comedies around 1912.

Lloyd worked with Thomas Edison's motion picture company, and his first role was a small part as a Yaqui Indian in the production of The Old Monk's Tale. At the age of 20, Lloyd moved to Los Angeles, and took up roles in several Keystone Film Company comedies. He was also hired by Universal Studios as an extra and soon became friends with aspiring filmmaker Hal Roach. Lloyd began collaborating with Roach who had formed his own studio in 1913. Roach and Lloyd created "Lonesome Luke", similar to and playing off the success of Charlie Chaplin films.

Lloyd hired Bebe Daniels as a supporting actress in 1914; the two of them were involved romantically and were known as "The Boy" and "The Girl". In 1919, she left Lloyd to pursue her dramatic aspirations. Later that year, Lloyd replaced Daniels with Mildred Davis, whom he would later marry. Lloyd was tipped off by Hal Roach to watch Davis in a movie. Reportedly, the more Lloyd watched Davis the more he liked her. Lloyd's first reaction in seeing her was that "she looked like a big French doll".

By 1918, Lloyd and Roach had begun to develop his character beyond an imitation of his contemporaries. Harold Lloyd would move away from tragicomic personas, and portray an everyman with unwavering confidence and optimism. The persona Lloyd referred to as his "Glass" character (often named "Harold" in the silent films) was a much more mature comedy character with greater potential for sympathy and emotional depth, and was easy for audiences of the time to identify with. The "Glass" character is said to have been created after Roach suggested that Harold was too handsome to do comedy without some sort of disguise. To create his new character Lloyd donned a pair of lensless horn-rimmed glasses but wore normal clothing; previously, he had worn a fake mustache and ill-fitting clothes as the Chaplinesque "Lonesome Luke". "When I adopted the glasses," he recalled in a 1962 interview with Harry Reasoner, "it more or less put me in a different category because I became a human being. He was a kid that you would meet next door, across the street, but at the same time I could still do all the crazy things that we did before, but you believed them. They were natural and the romance could be believable." Unlike most silent comedy personae, "Harold" was never typecast to a social class, but he was always striving for success and recognition. Within the first few years of the character's debut, he had portrayed social ranks ranging from a starving vagrant in From Hand to Mouth to a wealthy socialite in Captain Kidd's Kids.

On Sunday, August 24, 1919, while posing for some promotional still photographs in the Los Angeles Witzel Photography Studio, he picked up what he thought was a prop bomb and lit it with a cigarette. It exploded and mangled his right hand, causing him to lose a thumb and forefinger. The blast was severe enough that the cameraman and prop director nearby were also seriously injured. Lloyd was in the act of lighting a cigarette from the fuse of the bomb when it exploded, also badly burning his face and chest and injuring his eye. Despite the proximity of the blast to his face, he retained his sight. As he recalled in 1930, "I thought I would surely be so disabled that I would never be able to work again. I didn't suppose that I would have one five-hundredth of what I have now. Still I thought, 'Life is worth while. Just to be alive.' I still think so."

Beginning in 1921, Roach and Lloyd moved from shorts to feature-length comedies. These included the acclaimed Grandma's Boy, which (along with Chaplin's The Kid) pioneered the combination of complex character development and film comedy, the highly popular Safety Last! (1923), which cemented Lloyd's stardom (and is the oldest film on the American Film Institute's List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies), and Why Worry? (1923). Although Lloyd performed many athletic stunts in his films, Harvey Parry was his stunt double for the more dangerous sequences.

Lloyd and Roach parted ways in 1924, and Lloyd became the independent producer of his own films. These included his most accomplished mature features Girl Shy, The Freshman (his highest-grossing silent feature), The Kid Brother, and Speedy, his final silent film. Welcome Danger (1929) was originally a silent film but Lloyd decided late in the production to remake it with dialogue. All of these films were enormously successful and profitable, and Lloyd would eventually become the highest paid film performer of the 1920s. They were also highly influential and still find many fans among modern audiences, a testament to the originality and film-making skill of Lloyd and his collaborators. From this success he became one of the wealthiest and most influential figures in early Hollywood.

In 1924, Lloyd formed his own independent film production company, the Harold Lloyd Film Corporation, with his films distributed by Pathé and later Paramount and Twentieth Century-Fox. Lloyd was a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Released a few weeks before the start of the Great Depression, Welcome Danger was a huge financial success, with audiences eager to hear Lloyd's voice on film. Lloyd's rate of film releases, which had been one or two a year in the 1920s, slowed to about one every two years until 1938.

The films released during this period were: Feet First, with a similar scenario to Safety Last which found him clinging to a skyscraper at the climax; Movie Crazy with Constance Cummings; The Cat's-Paw, which was a dark political comedy and a big departure for Lloyd; and The Milky Way, which was Lloyd's only attempt at the fashionable genre of the screwball comedy film.

To this point the films had been produced by Lloyd's company. However, his go-getting screen character was out of touch with Great Depression movie audiences of the 1930s. As the length of time between his film releases increased, his popularity declined, as did the fortunes of his production company. His final film of the decade, Professor Beware, was made by the Paramount staff, with Lloyd functioning only as actor and partial financier.

On March 23, 1937, Lloyd sold the land of his studio, Harold Lloyd Motion Picture Company, to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The location is now the site of the Los Angeles California Temple.

Lloyd produced a few comedies for RKO Radio Pictures in the early 1940s but otherwise retired from the screen until 1947. He returned for an additional starring appearance in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, an ill-fated homage to Lloyd's career, directed by Preston Sturges and financed by Howard Hughes. This film had the inspired idea of following Harold's Jazz Age, optimistic character from The Freshman into the Great Depression years. Diddlebock opened with footage from The Freshman (for which Lloyd was paid a royalty of $50,000, matching his actor's fee) and Lloyd was sufficiently youthful-looking to match the older scenes quite well. Lloyd and Sturges had different conceptions of the material and fought frequently during the shoot; Lloyd was particularly concerned that while Sturges had spent three to four months on the script of the first third of the film, "the last two-thirds of it he wrote in a week or less". The finished film was released briefly in 1947, then shelved by producer Hughes. Hughes issued a recut version of the film in 1951 through RKO under the title Mad Wednesday. Such was Lloyd's disdain that he sued Howard Hughes, the California Corporation and RKO for damages to his reputation "as an outstanding motion picture star and personality", eventually accepting a $30,000 settlement.

In October 1944, Lloyd emerged as the director and host of The Old Gold Comedy Theater, an NBC radio anthology series, after Preston Sturges, who had turned the job down, recommended him for it. The show presented half-hour radio adaptations of recently successful film comedies, beginning with Palm Beach Story with Claudette Colbert and Robert Young.

Some saw The Old Gold Comedy Theater as being a lighter version of Lux Radio Theater, and it featured some of the best-known film and radio personalities of the day, including Fred Allen, June Allyson, Lucille Ball, Ralph Bellamy, Linda Darnell, Susan Hayward, Herbert Marshall, Dick Powell, Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, and Alan Young. But the show's half-hour format—which meant the material might have been truncated too severely—and Lloyd's sounding somewhat ill at ease on the air for much of the season (though he spent weeks training himself to speak on radio prior to the show's premiere, and seemed more relaxed toward the end of the series run) may have worked against it.

The Old Gold Comedy Theater ended in June 1945 with an adaptation of Tom, Dick and Harry, featuring June Allyson and Reginald Gardiner and was not renewed for the following season. Many years later, acetate discs of 29 of the shows were discovered in Lloyd's home, and they now circulate among old-time radio collectors.

Lloyd remained involved in a number of other interests, including civic and charity work. Inspired by having overcome his own serious injuries and burns, he was very active as a Freemason and Shriner with the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. He was a Past Potentate of Al-Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles, and was eventually selected as Imperial Potentate of the Shriners of North America for the year 1949–50. At the installation ceremony for this position on July 25, 1949, 90,000 people were present at Soldier Field, including then sitting U.S. President Harry S Truman, also a 33° Scottish Rite Mason. In recognition of his services to the nation and Freemasonry, Bro. Lloyd was invested with the Rank and Decoration of Knight Commander Court of Honour in 1955 and coroneted an Inspector General Honorary, 33°, in 1965.

He appeared as himself on several television shows during his retirement, first on Ed Sullivan's variety show Toast of the Town June 5, 1949, and again on July 6, 1958. He appeared as the Mystery Guest on What's My Line? on April 26, 1953, and twice on This Is Your Life: on March 10, 1954 for Mack Sennett, and again on December 14, 1955, on his own episode. During both appearances, Lloyd's hand injury can clearly be seen.

On November 6, 1956, The New York Times reported "Lloyd's Career Will Be Filmed." It said, as first step, Lloyd will write the story of his life for Simon and Schuster. Then, the movie to be produced by Jerry Wald for 20th Century-Fox, will limit the screenplay to Lloyd's professional career. Tentative title for both: “The Glass Character,” based on Lloyd wearing heavy, tortoise-shell glasses as a trademark. Neither project materialized.

Lloyd studied colors and microscopy, and was very involved with photography, including 3D photography and color film experiments. Some of the earliest 2-color Technicolor tests were shot at his Beverly Hills home (these are included as extra material in the Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection DVD Box Set). He became known for his nude photographs of models, such as Bettie Page and stripper Dixie Evans, for a number of men's magazines. He also took photos of Marilyn Monroe lounging at his pool in a bathing suit, which were published after her death. In 2004, his granddaughter Suzanne produced a book of selections from his photographs, Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D! (ISBN 1-57912-394-5).

Lloyd also provided encouragement and support for a number of younger actors, such as Debbie Reynolds, Robert Wagner, and particularly Jack Lemmon, whom Harold declared as his own choice to play him in a movie of his life and work.

Lloyd kept copyright control of most of his films and re-released them infrequently after his retirement. Lloyd did not grant cinematic re-releases because most theaters could not accommodate an organist to play music for his films, and Lloyd did not wish his work to be accompanied by a pianist: "I just don't like pictures played with pianos. We never intended them to be played with pianos." Similarly, his features were never shown on television as Lloyd's price was high: "I want $300,000 per picture for two showings. That's a high price, but if I don't get it, I'm not going to show it. They've come close to it, but they haven't come all the way up". As a consequence, his reputation and public recognition suffered in comparison with Chaplin and Keaton, whose work has generally been more widely distributed. Lloyd's film character was so intimately associated with the 1920s era that attempts at revivals in 1940s and 1950s were poorly received, when audiences viewed the 1920s (and silent film in particular) as old-fashioned.

In the early 1960s, Lloyd produced two compilation films, featuring scenes from his old comedies, Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and The Funny Side of Life. The first film was premiered at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival, where Lloyd was fêted as a major rediscovery. The renewed interest in Lloyd helped restore his status among film historians. Throughout his later years he screened his films for audiences at special charity and educational events, to great acclaim, and found a particularly receptive audience among college audiences: "Their whole response was tremendous because they didn't miss a gag; anything that was even a little subtle, they got it right away."

Following his death, and after extensive negotiations, most of his feature films were leased to Time-Life Films in 1974. As Tom Dardis confirms: "Time-Life prepared horrendously edited musical-sound-track versions of the silent films, which are intended to be shown on TV at sound speed [24 frames per second], and which represent everything that Harold feared would happen to his best films". Time-Life released the films as half-hour television shows, with two clips per show. These were often near-complete versions of the early two-reelers, but also included extended sequences from features such as Safety Last! (terminating at the clock sequence) and Feet First (presented silent, but with Walter Scharf's score from Lloyd's own 1960s re-release). Time-Life released several of the feature films more or less intact, also using some of Scharf's scores which had been commissioned by Lloyd. The Time-Life clips series included a narrator rather than intertitles. Various narrators were used internationally: the English-language series was narrated by Henry Corden.

The Time-Life series was frequently repeated by the BBC in the United Kingdom during the 1980s, and in 1990 a Thames Television documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius was produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, following two similar series based on Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Composer Carl Davis wrote a new score for Safety Last! which he performed live during a showing of the film with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra to great acclaim in 1993.

The Brownlow and Gill documentary was shown as part of the PBS series American Masters, and created a renewed interest in Lloyd's work in the United States, but the films were largely unavailable. In 2002, the Harold Lloyd Trust re-launched Harold Lloyd with the publication of the book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian by Jeffrey Vance and Suzanne Lloyd and a series of feature films and short subjects called "The Harold Lloyd Classic Comedies" produced by Jeffrey Vance and executive produced by Suzanne Lloyd for Harold Lloyd Entertainment. The new cable television and home video versions of Lloyd's great silent features and many shorts were remastered with new orchestral scores by Robert Israel. These versions are frequently shown on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel. A DVD collection of these restored or remastered versions of his feature films and important short subjects was released by New Line Cinema in partnership with the Harold Lloyd Trust in 2005, along with theatrical screenings in the US, Canada, and Europe. Criterion Collection has subsequently acquired the home video rights to the Lloyd library, and have released Safety Last!, The Freshman, and Speedy.

In the June 2006 Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Silent Film Gala program book for Safety Last!, film historian Jeffrey Vance stated that Robert A. Golden, Lloyd's assistant director, routinely doubled for Harold Lloyd between 1921 and 1927. According to Vance, Golden doubled Lloyd in the bit with Harold shimmy shaking off the building's ledge after a mouse crawls up his trousers.

Lloyd married his leading lady Mildred Davis on February 10, 1923 in Los Angeles, California. They had two children together: Gloria Lloyd (1923–2012) and Harold Clayton Lloyd Jr. (1931–1971). They also adopted Gloria Freeman (1924–1986) in September 1930, whom they renamed Marjorie Elizabeth Lloyd but was known as "Peggy" for most of her life. Lloyd discouraged Davis from continuing her acting career. He later relented but by that time her career momentum was lost. Davis died from a heart attack in 1969, two years before Lloyd's death. Though her real age was a guarded secret, a family spokesperson at the time indicated she was 66 years old. Harold Jr. died from complications of a stroke three months after his father.

In 1925, at the height of his movie career, Lloyd entered into Freemasonry at the Alexander Hamilton Lodge No. 535 of Hollywood, advancing quickly through both the York Rite and Scottish Rite, and then joined Al Malaikah Shrine in Los Angeles. He took the degrees of the Royal Arch with his father. In 1926, he became a 32° Scottish Rite Mason in the Valley of Los Angeles, California. He was vested with the Rank and Decoration of Knight Commander Court of Honor (KCCH) and eventually with the Inspector General Honorary, 33rd degree.

Lloyd's Beverly Hills home, "Greenacres", was built in 1926–1929, with 44 rooms, 26 bathrooms, 12 fountains, 12 gardens, and a nine-hole golf course. A portion of Lloyd's personal inventory of his silent films (then estimated to be worth $2 million) was destroyed in August 1943 when his film vault caught fire. Seven firemen were overcome while inhaling chlorine gas from the blaze. Lloyd himself was saved by his wife, who dragged him to safety outdoors after he collapsed at the door of the film vault. The fire spared the main house and outbuildings. After attempting to maintain the home as a museum of film history, as Lloyd had wished, the Lloyd family sold it to a developer in 1975.

The grounds were subsequently subdivided but the main house and the estate's principal gardens remain and are frequently used for civic fundraising events and as a filming location, appearing in films like Westworld and The Loved One. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Lloyd died at age 77 from prostate cancer on March 8, 1971, at his Greenacres home in Beverly Hills, California. He was interred in a crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His former co-star Bebe Daniels died eight days after him, and his son Harold Lloyd Jr. died three months after him.

In 1927, his was only the fourth concrete ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, preserving his handprints, footprints, and autograph, along with the outline of his famed glasses (which were actually a pair of sunglasses with the lenses removed). The ceremony took place directly in front of the Hollywood Masonic Temple, which was the meeting place of the Masonic lodge to which he belonged.

Lloyd was honored in 1960 for his contribution to motion pictures with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 1503 Vine Street.[39] In 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

In 1953, Lloyd received an Academy Honorary Award for being a "master comedian and good citizen". The second citation was a snub to Chaplin, who at that point had fallen foul of McCarthyism and had his entry visa to the United States revoked. Regardless of the political overtones, Lloyd accepted the award in good spirit.

Lloyd's birthplace in Burchard, Nebraska is maintained as a museum and open by appointment.

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