CINEVENT is coming! May 24-27th Columbus, Ohio

[Richard M Roberts]

Yes Gang, Cinevent is just around the Corner, and we should have been plugging it sooner, because it is still one of the best of the National Cinephile Conventions in terms of programming, dealers room, place of venue, and just all around pleasantness and welcoming atmosphere. Steve Haynes and the Cinevent Folk put on a truly fine show.

Here’s where to go for info:

http://www.cinevent.com/

It runs Memorial Day Weekend, May 24-27 in Columbus, Oh.


As one of the people involved in the programming, I write a number of notes for the program, and I thought over the next few days I’d post a few for this years films here to whet ones appetite for what’s showing. Here are my notes for THE CANADIAN:



THE CANADIAN is one of a group of films: WHITE GOLD, THE WIND, CITY GIRL, in which the story is basically a woman who finds herself taken from her home and natural surroundings, and finding herself married to a farmer and now trapped in a remote farmland in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of a brutish male or male population. It seemed to be a hot concept that fueled the minds of some favored Auteurs, F. W. Murnau and Victor Seastrom, allowing them to place a melodramatic plot amidst the visual splendor of acres and acres of fields of wheat or corn. What sort of Director could resist that shot at some shots of Cinematic Poetry?

Murnau and Seastrom have received high praise for both of these films, even WHITE GOLD, perhaps a little bit more of a PDC potboiler, even though helmed by the talented not-quite-an Auteur William K. Howard, has gotten an editorial nod or two by the likes of William K. Everson as a worthy effort. Somehow, THE CANADIAN has managed to miss the same accolades, perhaps being felt a bit of an also-ran that recycles the same story and visuals that seem unnecessary when works by the Great Masters cover the same territory.

But the problem is see---------THE CANADIAN came first.

And to make it worse for the Auteurists, it’s directed by William Beaudine! William “One-Shot” Beaudine himself, popular target of scorn and ridicule for those who worship the Director as God, but only when their God is boring the pants off their audience or showing off with overdone fancy camerawork and “gee, look at me, ain’t I clever” filmmaking. Yep, the man who made BELA LUGOSI MEETS A BROOKLYN GORILLA and BILLY THE KID MEETS DRACULA made THE CANADIAN. How can it be possible?

Easy answer, William Beaudine was a damn good Director, at Paramount or PRC. No nods for professionalism, or working on small budgets but turning out time and again a solid piece of entertainment, whatever the script. Nothing for anyone like that, unless you’re Edgar Ulmer and sorry gang, weird as ol’ Eddie Ulmer could be even at PRC, a lot of that so-called “Auteur” ‘s product is lousy, nowhere near the solid craftsmanship that Beaudine turned out for decades, one-take and only one-take at a time perhaps, but a well set-up take, not flubbed lines and falling-over props, just a Director who’s been at it so long he knows what he’s doing, keeps it interesting, and Heaven Forbid, turns in the film on time and under-budget. Beaudine could keep the pace moving, the actors focused, and do it without acting like Erich Von Stroheim, and the B to Z programmers he cranked out in the forties and fifties are slicker and more entertaining than most.

And in the 1920’s, William Beaudine was a really good Director, after years of solid apprenticeship in the early teens, starting first as an actor at Biograph, Vitagraph and elsewhere, then becoming a Director at Kalem shouting through the megaphone at none other than-----Ham and Bud! Beaudine even became Bud Duncan’s partner in the one-reelers when Lloyd Hamilton broke his leg in several places and became incapacitated for months. Five years-plus of directing comedy shorts for Kalem, Keystone, Fox, Al Christie and Hal Roach gave Beaudine the solid filmmaking background he needed, more great directors started in this Genre’ than any other.

Beaudine’s breakthrough feature was the 1923 PENROD AND SAM, the sequel to Marshall Neilan’s PENROD (1922), based on Booth Tarkington’s great characters and thought to be better than the original film. PENROD AND SAM’s success guaranteed steady work for Beaudine throughout the next decade as a dependable director of both comedy and drama, handling the likes of A SELF-MADE FAILURE (1924) with Lloyd Hamilton and LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY (1925) with Mary Pickford. It was Pickford’s 1926 swamp drama SPARROWS that really established Beaudine’s dramatic creds, but his picture before THE CANADIAN was HOLD THAT LION! With Douglas Maclean, and his picture after was FRISCO SALLY LEVY, so it’s safe to say that William Beaudine was not taking himself that seriously as a Director.

Beaudine bounced between MGM, Universal and ended up at First National/Warner Brothers in the late 20’s, where be transitioned into talkies seamlessly, even directing a remake of PENROD AND SAM in 1931. He then found a happy berth at Paramount
where he did a fun and touching version of MERTON OF THE MOVIES retitled MAKE ME A STAR (1932), then a stylish murder mystery CRIME OF THE CENTURY (1933) and W. C. Fields’ most stylish period film, THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY (1934). In 1935, Beaudine accepted an offer to make pictures in England, where he deftly filmed a number of Comedian Will Hay’s best films: DANDY DICK (1935), BOYS WILL BE BOYS (1935), WHERE THERE’S A WILL (1936), and WINDBAG THE SAILOR (1936), as well as solid comedy vehicles like SO YOU WON’T TALK (1935) starring Monty Banks, and EDUCATED EVANS (1937) starring Max Miller.

Unfortunately, on his return to the States three years later, Beaudine found himself basically forgotten by Hollywood. Deciding that this was no time to be depressed about the state of his career, Beaudine took on whatever he could get, which was a couple of Torchy Blane programmers at Warners to begin with, but the end of the thirties found him at the new Poverty Row Studios, Producers Releasing Corporation and Monogram (incarnation number two), where his professionalism and speed brought a lot of quality to films that he made there, from enjoyable light comedies like MISBEHAVING HUSBANDS (1940) with Harry Langdon, whom was an old friend of Beaudine’s and would be in a number of his films in the 1940’s, to innumerable East Side Kids/ Bowery Boys pictures, to Bela Lugosi cult favorites like THE APE MAN (1943) and VOODOO MAN (1944). While cranking out as many as ten features a year, Beaudine went to work for Exploitation King Kroger Babb and made the sexploitation schlockfest MOM AND DAD (1944), apparently for a piece of the picture, and its long-term exhibition made Beaudine a nice chunk of change over the next several decades.

Busy making Charlie Chans, Jiggs and Maggies, Bowery Boys, and oddly enough, inspirational feature films for the Protestant Film Commission from the late forties through the mid-fifties, Beaudine’s cost-saving methods made him a natural for Television, and once again, he transitioned seamlessly as the B Movie Market began to dry up, helming numerous TV Shows like RACKET SQUAD, ADVENTURES OF WILD BILL HICKOK, CIRCUS BOY, and BROKEN ARROW. In the late fifties, Beaudine began doing a lot of work for Walt Disney, handling episodes of MICKEY MOUSE CLUB, THE ADVENTURES OF SPIN AND MARTY, THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR, even a feature film, WESTWARD HO THE WAGONS (1956). The sixties found him as the main Director on LASSIE, with time out to squeeze in a number of episodes of THE GREEN HORNET. By the time William Beaudine finally retired in 1968, he had logged a Directing Career in the Film Industry that was practically unmatched, 368 known titles in 55 years., and of all things, his MOM AND DAD is the one that made the National Film Registry.

Anyway, back to 1926, William Beaudine is assigned by Paramount Pictures to this remake of a 1913 stage play by W. Somerset Maugham, THE LAND OF PROMISE, which Famous Players had already made once in 1917 starring Billie Burke and Thomas Meighan. Meighan was to reprise his role as Farmer Frank Taylor, but he refused to go to Hollywood to shoot it, and so it was arranged to make the film on location near High River, a Farm Town 30 miles north of Calgary, Canada, finishing the film’s Interiors at Paramount’s Astoria Studios out on Long Island. In the nine intervening years since he had supported Billie Burke in the original film, Thomas Meighan had become one of Paramount’s major male actors and this time, he was the star of the film, who also had contractual pick of his leading lady. Meighan chose Mona Palma, real name Mimi Palmieri, a newcomer who only five films to her credit, but she had made a splash in her previous film, FASCINATING YOUTH (1926) with Buddy Rogers, and Paramount was looking to build up her stardom.

THE CANADIAN would be a genuine shot at stardom for Mona Palma, the female lead really was the role in the film, despite Meighan’s name above the title. Palma plays Nora Marsh, a woman from a formerly rich family who hits on hard times and moves back from Europe to live with her Brother (Wyndham Standing) and his Wife (Dale Fuller) on their Farm out in the Canadian Wilderness. Being a generally useless and spoiled woman, Nora soon fights with her Sister-in-Law and finds herself unwelcome in her Brother’s Household. With nowhere else to go, she offers to marry their hunky homesteader Frank Taylor (Meighan) who helps them work the farm. The marriage turns out to be more than both of them bargained for.

Mona Palma gives an incredible performance as Nora, taking what begins as a rather unsympathetic character through a number of harrowing changes and growth with amazing sensitivity. Though already pushing the age of 30, a precarious age for a film actress to begin a career, she is exactly the right age for Nora, a little more experience under her belt, but still in need of, and about to get, a whole lot more, and we’ll see if she survives it. Apparently Mona decided 30 was indeed too precarious an age to be starting a film career as well, for after THE CANADIAN, she only did one more film for Paramount (CABARET in 1927), and then, for all intensive purposes, disappeared from view. Little is indeed known about her, on either side of her very short film career, excepting that she lived to a ripe old age, passing away in Oxnard, California in 1989 at the age of 91, under the name of Mimi P. Cooper. We hope the marriage to Mr. Cooper was a long and happy one.

It is gradually getting a bit easier to explain Thomas Meighan’s extreme popularity during the Silent Era as a few more of his films become extant. Meighan had been a Broadway Matinee Idol since the Turn of the Twentieth Century and at the age of 36, he signed with Paramount in 1915 and Cecil B. Demille made him a Movie Star in films like KINDLING (1915), TRAIL OF THE LONESOME PINE (1916), MALE AND FEMALE (1919), WHY CHANGE YOUR WIFE? (1921) and MANSLAUGHTER (1922), but his superstardom was cemented by George Loane Tucker, who starred him with Betty Compson and Lon Chaney in THE MIRACLE MAN in 1919. Thomas Meighan continued as a Paramount star throughout the twenties, so popular that when he decided he was not going back to Hollywood when the Studio threatened to close its Astoria Lot in 1927, he became the only star making films there in the interim two years before Astoria was retooled for sound. Meighan’s first talkie, THE ARGYLE CASE, was a big hit in 1929, but the Actor was getting a little long in the tooth for his husky leading man roles, and though he had successfully moved into more fatherly supporting parts, in 1934 he was diagnosed with Cancer, and was forced to retire from the screen, passing away in 1936 at the age of 57.

THE CANADIAN basically came and went after its initial release, amid lukewarm reviews from critics who were clueless as what to make of it, and it disappeared like so many Paramount programmers of the 1920’s. It was forgotten by the time MGM released THE WIND with Lillian Gish in 1928, and today, it would be just another on the extremely long list of generally unknown and lost silents out there save for a print that managed to be one of a small group of Paramount Silents pulled from the Studio Vaults in 1969 by Richard Simonton Jr. when Paramount was donating nitrate material of their 1929-48 sound product to the then-fledgling UCLA Film and Television Archives. UCLA amazingly refused the silents, and they were turned over to the also then-new American Film Institute, who preserved them and later turned them over to the Library of Congress.

The upshot of this Discovery came in February, 1970, when THE CANADIAN was shown as part of the AFI’s REDISCOVERING THE AMERICAN CINEMA program at the LA County Museum of Art, and William Beaudine finally got to see it for the first time (when one is busy making 368 films, who can stop to watch them?). At the film’s end, and after thunderous applause, the Director of PROFESSOR CREEPS and JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEINS DAUGHTER wiped aside a tear from his eye, and said, “I’m very surprised. I was quite a Good Director once”. The standing ovation went on, and on, and on. …….

William Beaudine passed away one month later at the age of 78.

However, soon after, it seems that everyone forgot THE CANADIAN once again, too busy extolling the brilliance of Murnau’s CITY GIRL, which had suddenly reappeared in the 70’s in its original silent version, and then THE WIND was available to be seen again and hey, what about this WHITE GOLD film? Then THE CANADIAN ran at Cinecon in 2005 and everyone “rediscovered” it again, hailing it a masterpiece……..then everyone went on about CITY GIRL, THE WIND, but had forgotten about WHITE GOLD too by that time……….

Well, here it is again, here’s your chance, don’t blow it this time. Remember it, it was the first, it’s great, and pass the word.

And William Beaudine was a Damn Good Director. Period. End of Story.


RICHARD M ROBERTS

[Gary Johnson]

I was never as enamored with that film in '05 as much as everyone else was. I found the story to be a bit soft-boiled tripe and Meighan was overly hard-boiled. But it was competently filmed and the scenery was pleasant enough to help pass the time.

I did like reading the coda that Beaudine discovered that he was "quite a good director once" before he passed on.
Everyone needs some sort of validation just once on Earth before we all turn to dust.

[Richard M Roberts]

I was never as enamored with that film in '05 as much as everyone else was. I found the story to be a bit soft-boiled tripe and Meighan was overly hard-boiled. But it was competently filmed and the scenery was pleasant enough to help pass the time.

I did like reading the coda that Beaudine discovered that he was "quite a good director once" before he passed on.
Everyone needs some sort of validation just once on Earth before we all turn to dust.

A story about a rape is too soft-boiled for you?

RICHARD M ROBERTS