Jennifer M

^{Jennifer M. Bean}

^{"Frozen in Time: Looking at the Dawson City Archive Collection,
1913-1919"}

^{Well I wanted to start today actually with a story. It's actually a double
edge story and it seems to be one of the kinds of trends in this conference and
of the particular nature of the work we are all involved in doing that antidote
and narratives become a part of the recovery process. In a slightly different
way from some of the more the tragic stories we heard about lost films those,
which have disappeared entirely. The numbers and static's of those, which will
never be recovered. I wanted to start us off today with a more positive story.
I also throughout the course of this talk am going to be showing a number of
slides as I speak and I should say upfront that I put these slides together in
a some what quick manor in order to come to this event and there are a couple
of occasions where you will actually see my handwriting on some of the pieces
that I have shown so I hope that doesn't distract you from the image too much.
The story begins in 1896 and it takes place in a small hinterland of the Yukon
called Dawson City just under the Artic Circle. In 1896, although it's a date
we would often associate with the very early years of the cinema, in this story
it's a case where by there were three prospectors adventurers who traveled to
this outpost dipped their pens into the icy waters of a place called Rabbit
Creek and discovered gold. Now within weeks of this gold find the word spread
around the world. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of people poured into the
Dawson City territory the unemployed immigrants etc. and within two to three
years over thirty thousand citizens populated this fairly outpost of
civilization. Eighty year passed and the balloon town of Dawson City dwindles
to about eight hundred. Not much was left and it was at this point that the
Klondike National Historic Agency voted to restore its town to the turn of the
century grandeur. So the began a restoration process, they had rebuilt a number
of building one of which was called Girdie's diamond Salon and they were taking
a construction crew, a back hoe to this vacant parking lot behind Girdie's
Diamond Salon.}

^{Parking lot that had one point been a swimming pool, before that had been
an ice hockey rink and before that had been simply a pit in the ground. In 1979
as the construction crew began to break ground they came across 538 reels of
particularly frozen 38mm nitrate film. Now within weeks of this gold strike,
word spread rapidly and many archivist and historians might remember the degree
to which a variety of agencies including the AFI the National Film Archives of
Canada and others quickly gathered together and to try and attempt to begin to
think through how this restoration project might take place. What do we do with
538 reels of partially frozen nitrate film? There was actually a good bit of
media and press attention too and there were a number of catchy headlines that
caught peoples attention such as ones that is one of my favorites There's Film
In Them There Hills. Now within the context of this symposium I think that the
Dawson City collection kind of exemplifies the notion of orphan films that we
have been talking about. Particularly to refer you back to Paulo discussion on
Thursday about those films in the post 1908 era were supposedly at this point
no longer to be sold but to be rented and then to be returned to their home
their studio. Well obviously with this collection of films discovered in Dawson
City we have a group of orphans. A group of films that were sent to this
hinterland and it didn't seem to be worth anyone's while to take the money
spend the money to send them back. Perhaps the pony express wasn't working in
quite the same way. At any rate they were left there deposited, rediscovered in
1979. Now there are a group of films there were ten reels in fact that the AFI
held a special screening for within actually even before their preservation
process was complete and these were again films that received a good deal of
media publicity. These were films that fit kind of nicely into the cannons that
we have today. There was for example a find of a 1915 film The Wild Fire which
features Lillian Russell's only film appearance. The 1916 Douglas Fairbanks
early film The Half Breed, the 1917 feature Pauly of the Circus that was
produced by Goldwin. So there were a number of these orphans that kind of came
to the publics attention almost immediately. What I want to focus on today and
bring your attention to is actually a group, the bulk of the Dawson City
collection, which are orphan films. Orphaned in double or triple ways I might
say. The films that interest me the most from this collection are a collection
of over a hundred relevant extant reels of early film series and serials. These
are films, which I say are doubly or triply orphaned. On the one hand they are
orphaned in another sense that Paulo mentioned on Thursday which is that they
were discovered, they were preserved and then put back on the shelf in the
vaults, neglected, the are housed at the Library of Congress. They have had
little impact on our understanding of the history in the cinema in the 19teens.
Triply speaking their orphan films in the third sense that Paulo mentioned
which is that these are dismembered films. There are fragmented films. There
are as I just mentioned a hundred reels approximately that were discovered. But
there is not a single title of a serial or series film that was recovered
entirely in tact. So for instance we have say 15 reels, 15 one reels of the possible
thirty reels of the Lucille Love the girl of mystery, which is a univeral 1914
film. We have ten reels out of the original thirty-three that comprised the
Molly King adventure detective vehicle of 1917, the seven pearls, with eight
complete episodes of Pearl Whites performance in Pearl of the Army but we still
lack the remaining six. We have three episodes of Adventures of Margaret, eight
episodes of The Purple Mask, ten fragments of The Crimson Stain Mystery, ten
reels of The Girl in the Game and so it goes on and on. Now what I want to do
in the time that remains for me today is in some ways attempt to return these
triply orphaned films to their rightful place in history. And to give us a
reason for dealing with the questions that are raised by this level of
neglected children. The task is a challenging one that I set for myself to the
degree that the series and serial films have been somewhat critically ignored.
But it's a task that I take up willingly because as I want to argue today
serial film in fact are not only simply
relevant parts of the history of cinema in 19teens, but in fact form the Block
Busters of the early narrative period. That they under write in fact the growth
of mainstream commercial American cinema and particularly the under write the
growth and inauguration of a number of modern film Genres. Now the film serial
is generally understood to be born in 1912. When the Edison manufacturing
company formed collaboration with McClure's Ladies World to produce a series of
one-reel films collectively titled, What Happened to Mary? These were released
in conjunction with the publication of each episodes story in the magazine. It
was played a starred, rising film star Mary Fuller and the eponymous heroine
story begins when her foster father attempts to marry her off to a suitor with
whom she is not in love. Resolving to be independent rather than unhappy in
love Mary runs away from the confines of her conventional family home and
successive episodes follow her adventures as a working girl in the big city. Of
course Edison's What Happened to Mary was not technically speaking the first
film series or serial nor was it the first to feature an independent working
heroine. As early as 1909 Carolyn released their Girl Spy series and Yankee
came out with 15 consecutive episodes of The Girl Detective in 1910 but in the
wake of Edison's sensational commercial success undoubtedly aided by innovative
tie in such as a ten thousand dollar prize that was offered for anyone who
could right the concluding episode of the series. Other newspaper, magazines
and film companies quickly followed suit. Now ignited by the powerful merger of
print and media technologies the serial phenomena of mid to late teens grew to
closely resemble the high cost, high tech, high stakes mentality that as Thomas
Shots has noticed has come to characterize what we think of as the new
Hollywood era. In 1914 serials were praised for widening the horizon of the
moving picture business and the unprecedented success of the adventures of Catheline
which was adapted by a novel of the same title by Harold Mc Graph and was I
should mention the first of the cliff hanging or the to be continued type of
serial. The success encouraged the New York dramatic mirror to call the serial
quote the best innovation of it's kind ever advanced to increase the interest
enlarge the sales and stimulate universal curiosity and cash reciprocation of
any thing ever advanced in the moving picture business. In deed Than Houser had
one of the silent eras biggest commercial successes with their 1914 serial the
Million Dollar Mystery. As Terry Ramsey reported a number of years later in
1927 looking back at the period and I quote the Million Dollar Mystery swept
through the motion picture theaters with a success without precedent or
parallel. The twenty-three chapters of the mystery played in about seven
thousand motion picture theaters in a period when they're where about probably
eighteen thousand such houses. Production costs of the mystery were in the
vicinity of one hundred twenty five thousand and the gross receipts for the
picture were nearly one million five hundred thousand-end quote. By 1916 every
major studio and I'll nod to Steve here and say with the exception of Biography
every major studio had anticipated serial production. Several companies such as
the well known Pafa were releasing four to six serials per year and the serial
film company as it's name suggests was formed exclusively for the forms of
purposes of serial production. Although industrial rumors predicting the forms
demise appeared around 1917 the serial was touted in such well known fan
journals as Photoplay as that same year as quote the great money maker
of the movies end quote and vidographic expanded also in 1917 to form a
separate company very specifically and exclusively for serial production. In
September of 1917 motion picture news included a special report for exhibitors
on what they called the power of the serials. Claiming that only and I quote
that not only the biggest companies are now offering continued stories end
quote but also estimating that quote sixty percent of the theaters in the
country is a conservative estimate of the number that will book one or more of
these serials end quote. Of equal or perhaps I should say if not more significance
especially for an industry that was increasingly driven by large scale physical
gain was the over whelming appeal of serial of films in the international
market. Frank Bruner in fact noted in 1919 and I quote there is no country nor
population that does not clamor for serials. In India for instance, serials are
about the only form of cinema product that the natives will flock to see end
quote. I don't want to take up that terminology here but it perhaps should be
addressed to some degree. These two slides here are part of a kind of a
representative of what I was calling the high tech, high scale, high profit
nature of the serials. Serials tended to take up two to three page spread in a
variety of motion pictures. Well I seem to be sorry, missing one there. There
we go. These are two from the exploits of Elaine. It was part of a three-page
spread in motography. You have serials like the Red Circle which was a Ruth
Roland vehicle in 1917 that for the first five weeks the studio bought up the
back cover of the NY Dramatic Mirror as a way of advertising it's release. Even
though as I am arguing these types of films dominated both the domestic and
international market throughout the teens. I think that their neglect in
historical and scholarly accounts is somewhat understandable. Primarily because
there are not existing standards where by we can make sense of these films
whether those standards are critical, historical or theoretical. Now there has
been one attempt, a pioneering attempt that you may be aware of and that is Ben
Singer's work that was first published in 1990 but is again a pioneering and
very compelling attempt to account for this group of films. And Briefly,
Singers argument is two fold. He argues number one that the serials represent a
Genre that is a direct cinemanic descendent of lowbrow blood and thunder stage
melo-dramas from the earlier part of the century. Secondly he using something
about what he calls a sociological line of inquiry looks at a variety of
different types of inner text that are dealing with what he calls a pervasive
discourse on the new woman and thus begins to give us a sense of how these
films were both representing and being targeted to the newly independent
working woman who was forming a major part of the young film industry. I should
take a moment and bow my head and acknowledge my debt to Ben, his work, his
printed work but his gracious energies on my behalf in sharing some archival
lists and helping me begin the process a number of years ago of looking at
these films. But I would also say that with a group of films that is large,
this pervasive a single account simply can not do justice to the complexity in
the new ances of what we have and in fact what I want to argue in the time that
remains to me is number one as we have seen or as I've briefly shown given the
commercial viability of these films, it's quite safe to say that they were far
more than independent working women who were going to see them, that in fact it
was a rather wide cross section of the film going audience. Both in domestic
arena and in the international arena. Secondly, what I want to pursue here
briefly is I've come not to think of the serials as a Genre per say rather I
think of the serials as a form of cinema and within this form has incarnated a
whole host of what we now think of as modern film Genres and these would
include the spy film the mystery film the action film the action adventure film
mystery detective films crime films. So that within this form we have the
possibility of exploring the birth to some degree of again a number, a very
popular still popular modern film genres. Now of course there were a great deal
of working women characters like Kalem's girl detective that I mentioned in
Edison's Mary. Some of the earliest cycle of film series emphasizes the
occupational hazards of girl's stenographers, detectives, and reporters. You
can see this it's highlighted in a number of titles like the Dolly of the
Dallies and The Perils of our Girl Reporters. To some degree these career girl
dramas could be categorically extended to include among their number of variety
of railway adventures. In which a female telegrapher is on hand to save an out
of control locomotive in what common parlance calls the nick of time. These
later films are particularly striking in that there central trope which
features a young woman's heroic bravery on a railway, deviates significantly
from the tenacious cliché that has lingered in popular and scholarly memory of
that silent film maiden who is inevitably tied to the railway tracks.
Admittingly in at least one episode of the hazards of Helen, which was a
railway series produced by Kalem that ran for three years, there were 119
episodes. In at least one of these episodes the villain does tie the heroine to
the tracks but she loosens the bonding wires of this semaphore with her toes,
which causes the sign to flash danger, and the conductor stops the approaching
train. Elsewhere the female telegraphers bodily determined escapes precede her
final race to save the male in need of rescue. The fourth episode of the girl
in the game, which starred Helen Homes and was produced by mutual in 1916,
begins when a young telegrapher dashes off in hot pursuit of two hinch men who
had stolen the stations payroll. Climaxes when she saves an officers life and
concludes when she comes speeding back into the half demolished camp with the
money and her safe keeping. Seen collectively I think the predominance of the
career girl in these various films could suggest a certain generic continuity.
But in fact when scrutinized carefully when we have a chance to actually look
at the films themselves a few unifying elements actually appear. In the
detective, girl detective types of films you have an architectural maze type
setting. Lots of what could be called cheers gears lighting. A lot of closed
shots angling in on the space behind hidden doors, on faces that reveal certain
types of enigmas of hopefully do reveal some. Conversely in the real wave
thrillers although they also have a working girl heroine you have very little
close ups you have a very continuous developed genre patterns of editing, it's
based on a triangulated pattern. Very quick action moving down a single local
that of the railway track with a single and not very enigmatic question that is
posed in the narrative and it is there is danger on the line, we must rush out
as the young girl get on the train and save the day. So again we are really
dealing with two quite different genre forms here. More over relative (tape
fades) with Pearl White also an evervasant heiress who's dead set on having
some adventures. You have by 1915 a film released the ventures of Margaret
again released by Kalem and Margaret was built as a quote beautiful, wealthy
refined American girl who believes in practical phralanthopy end quote. And her
success set the stage for a cluster of films or a cycle that take up borshua
women who engage in a variety of rather unusual types of social work. One of my
favorites of this cycle actually also part of the Dawson City find is a 1916
film from Universal starring Grace Cunard and Frances Ford and Cunard plays a
young wealthy heiress that set in Paris. She ends up being the queen leader of
a band of criminals known as the Patches and sets about tearing up the Parisian
landscape and houses and steals from the rich and gives to the poor in a kind
of later day Robin Hood fashion. Though the presence of mythical figures such
as Cunard Mask Avenger again call The Purple Mask although the presence of such
figures posit might be the more obvious pleasures of vicarious fantasy or
escapism present in the serials, these films were just as intimately concerned
with topical issues and social concerns of the period. With the advent of World
War I for instance brought with it a ubiquitous cycle of spy dramas or military
preparedness films. We have for instance films like the Controversial Patria,
which was produced by the Hurst Randolph Company. Patria is played by Irene
Castle she is the daughter of the last of the fighting Channings who have been
saving money and own a large munitions factory that has been designed to help
protect the US government in times of war, anytime peace is threatened. So
Patria takes on the adventures of attempting to foil the natharious plots of
both the Mexican and the Japanese government agencies who are filtering spies
into the US. Now one of the things you may be familiar with around Patria is
that it did generate a great bit of controversy. Particularly because by the
time of the films release, it was no longer acceptable to have a Japanese
villains as villain per say. The serial was censored at the local level in a
number of places and in 1917 president Woodrow Wilson demanded that the
filmmakers withdraw the serial from exhibition, change it. They did so by simply
changing the inner titles to say that these are actually not Japanese villains
but Mexican villains. And re-released it even though you have now two forms of
Mexican villains, one that looks Asian. Now that censoring case is very
interesting in it's own right but for my purposes here, I think it expresses to
us the degree to which serial films were tapping into and understood as very
powerful and influential, mass cultural forms. Another film and let me briefly
kind of move through these is another military preparedness spy drama that
starred Pearl White that is perhaps one of the most well known of the serial
stars. Pearl White made a film in 1916 called Pearl of the Army and again in
which she plays a young woman who is defeating the silent menace of spies
system that's infiltrating the US. In 1916 the US government army actually
recruited Pearl White to stand in as their poster girl and Harry Christian
Chandler designed this poster in which Pearl White is saying do you think I'd
stay at home? In an attempt to appeal to young American men to go off and serve
in the war. Although I don't have any evidence to suggest that a similar type
of address to American men was included in the original serial print. Of the
copy that we found in Dawson City there is an opening series of frames that
have this warning addressed to Canadian men quote beware Canadians once the for
invades America they will not stop there, Canada itself will be endanger of
immediate invasion we representatives of the Canadian government have promised
to raise 500,000 men up to date we have enlisted only 375,000 if we want the
allies to conquer we must furnish the men we promised and at once. Watch this
serial to see how Pearl White America's Joan of Ark works to defeat the silent
menace. Now along with demonstrating the types of intestacies between the
serials and topical and social concerns, this type of moment also gives way to
understanding a certain level of generic mixing that can take place within the
serials. In this case it would be a mixing of somewhat a documentary types of
forms, fiction, and nonfiction blended together. Happens a good bit later in
Pearl of the Army there is a moment where she is dealing with some electrical
combustion issues some new type of bomb and there is an inner title that comes
in and says you know that what she needs to do is talk to some of the greatest
inventors and there is an insertion intercut in it of a part of a newsreel that
has Thomas Edison and others grouped together chatting and then we return to
the serial story proper. Along with that type of generic mixing there is a
great deal of generic mixing that was well noticed by contemperary audiences
you have serials that will take the heroin from land to land, exotic place to
exotic place. The Perils of Pauline again is a very good example of this and we
move from what we would say are various recognizable genre forms. She fights
Indians in one, it's a western she fights pirates and seafaring villains in
another, taking us to kind of an ocean adventure. There was a film 1914 again
Universal it was Lucille Love, the girl of mystery and in this serial which
there were 14 episodes Lucille travels around the world, she chases a villain
in a sea plane in Manila to a south sea island, China, San Francisco, Mexico
and back again to the US. In one other film let me just illustrate for you Alas
of the Lumber land which starred Helen Homes in 1916 was reported by a reviewer
from variety as a serial that was quote set in the lumber lands of the
Northwest and end quote. But quickly qualified that description noting that a
serial quote rarely confines itself to one set of locations the average one
jumping half way around the earth before the finale. Now this group of, this
last cycle that I have been demonstrating is one that I actually tend to think
of as action adventure films. And a part of the interest here is on the various
exotic locals. Again, quite distinct from the railway films. One local, one
quick action. Given the limited scope of this panel I am going to need to cut
my time short here although I haven't yet had the opportunity to share with you
the wealth and the richness and the complexity of all the films that are
available. Let me end however by stating that what I hope I was able to do
today was to respond to a comment that I believe actually Chris made yesterday
about the importance of doing the kind of contexturalizing work of orphan
films. That it's not simply that we can preserve a film and expect it to speak
for itself but there is a way in which we need to understand what kinds of
historical cache various orphan films have for us. This is the task that I set
for myself today. One that I hope that was to some degree persuasive and I want
to close with a plea of sorts I suppose a request for advice or opinion, in
that one of the projects that I hope to take up in the coming year is a way of
having these films find a circulation in our own homes. I am thinking about
documentary types of films perhaps a DVD format, perhaps a TV special, etc. In
any degree to which you might have opinions or advice about how such a project
might take place. I would be quite willing either to respond to that during the
Q&A sessions or maybe later at a break. Thank you very much for your time.}