Cinesation film preservation festival

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Used with permission from Classic Images. Fall 2013

The Last Fall Cinesation

Say It Aint So

By Dave Pitts

The folks who run Cinesation say that the festival they ran in September 2013 is the last one. If that’s true, they went out on a roll. Those folks are the Great Lakes Cinephile Society, and they put on Cinesation 23 in Massillon, Ohio’s historic Lincoln Theatre, Sept. 26-29.

Cinesation has drawn a loyal audience since its early shows in Saginaw and Bay City, Michigan. It is known for running films from the 1910s through the '40s, with an emphasis on rare titles from the early years of feature films. At Cinesation you could see partial prints when no complete copy existed. Themes and genres included animation, early Technicolor, railroad pictures, five-reel westerns, silent DeMille, and serials.

The Gish sisters became festival perennials when Cinesation moved to Massillon, where Dorothy and Lillian spent many childhood summers. Other stars such as Sessue Hayakawa, Madge Bellamy, Viola Dana, Olive Thomas, and Lupino Lane, and forgotten players such as Dorothy DeVore were featured year after year because they intrigued the festival bookers.

Cinephile Terry Hoover kicked off the weekend with a request to think of the last festival as an Irish wake and enjoy every minute. Moments later Ken Maynard was riding across the canyon country in The Fighting Legion, and the sheer fun of old Hollywood made Terry’s analogy true. The complete lineup at Cinesation 23 was 21 features, spanning 1914 to 1945; 20 shorts, including recently preserved silent 2-reelers, cartoons, musical novelties, and some oddball industrial films; along with trailers, snipes, and a program of nitrate snippets from George Willeman, the nitrate vault manager at the Library of Congress.

Accompanying the silents on piano and virtual theater organ were Dr. Philip Carli and Ben Model. Their improvised scores were all that the original film makers could have hoped for. Festival audiences expect the exceptional from these two artists, and they get it. The vintage film festival with live accompaniment is the place to experience the fusion of music and image that is silent cinema.

Ideally, a film festival delivers several ‘Who knew?’ moments, when an unfamiliar star or title becomes the hit of the session. They will be different for each audience member, but at least three surprise titles at Cinesation fit the bill. A Thrilling Romance (1926) is a partial print of a 2-reeler starring Wanda Wiley, a comedienne with her own series of mid-'20s shorts, most of them lost. Wiley is not referenced in The New York Times Film Reviews, Everson’s American Silent Film, Kerr’s Silent Clowns, or Blum’s Pictorial History of the Silent Screen. So who knew? She was a trim brunette whose persona was the plucky survivor who is thrown into absurd predicaments. Her film, which goes into the fantasy life of a romance novelist, has the pep of a Harold Lloyd short.

A 1937 promotional film for Stewart-Warner refrigerators is an unlikely festival choice, but this untitled short has an appearance by Art Carney, 18 years old, doing an FDR impression. At 18, Carney was as go-for-broke as he would be with Gleason, and waves of laughter followed his vocal flourishes.

The Mad Parade (1931 Paramount), a WWI story with an all-female cast, qualifies as a ‘Who knew?’ film because it is obscure, but its outrageous plot developments push it into the category of ‘Did I just see/hear that?’ The women running a supply dump include virtuous Irene Rich, zany Louise Fazenda, war-hardened Evelyn Brent, and the sarcastic Lilyan Tashman, who tells us we are in pre-Code times with her line, “I may have to live with you, but I’ll be damned if I’ll drink with you.”

Did Clare Boothe see this? Like her play The Women (1936), the characters in Mad Parade devote every free moment to fantasizing about men. Unlike The Women, the film lets us hear men’s voices and see their shadows, or occasionally their heads and shoulders at the edge of the frame. In the film’s second half, the women are trapped in a bunker under heavy bombardment, but they’re still hashing out romantic rivalries, and one of them (Fritzi Ridgeway) threatens to expose Brent’s tryst with a soldier and get her court-martialed. The manner in which Brent deals with the snitch is jaw-dropping, but to say more would be a colossal spoiler. If you have not seen this film, look for it in the collectors’ DVD market; some dealers have it.

A different sort of novelty was Terror (Fordys 1924), a delightfully ripe melodrama about a scientist with a secret invention, ‘Radiominium’, and the enemy agents who want it. Filmed in France, this has Pearl White’s final performance, as the scientist’s daughter. She has the film’s loopiest intertitle: “Hand over my father’s invention and I’ll keep quiet about your secret passageway to the sewers!” The head spy rejects the deal. Terror is a throwback to an earlier style of silent melodrama, with extraneous characters, stunt scenes that have no rationale in the story, and medium shots in which actors line up unnaturally, as if they are about to bow. There’s nothing here for the serious student of film, but it’s a bon-bon for those who savor the ridiculous.

Cinesation always meant westerns; this year there were three. The weekend’s earliest feature was a newly-restored print of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Rose of the Rancho (1914 Paramount), with the forgotten Bessie Barriscale. She was a fairly big star at Triangle in the teens, and took some supporting roles in the sound era. Jane Darwell appears as Barriscale’s mother; at age 34, she was already taking matronly parts. The story concerns claim jumpers going after the old-line Spanish aristocracy in 1850s California. There’s a courtliness to the exposition and a monotony to Barricscale’s gestures that disinvite audience response. Still, no silent buff would miss the chance to see DeMille’s early technique. There is fluid editing, much better than the pageant look of so many early features. A brief battle scene, shot from the roof of a hacienda, compares well to the setups in Griffith’s battle scenes.

The Fighting Legion (1930 Universal) was the silent version of a Ken Maynard 5-reel western. It has a compact narrative with Maynard heading to a wide-open cow town to avenge a sheriff’s murder. Universal had efficient production crews in westerns, and this film is highlighted by Ted McCord’s location photography.

The Sundown Rider (1932 Columbia) is a Buck Jones western with a mistaken identity plot. For an early sound B western, it is violent. In one scene, a posse takes Buck for a rustler, and as punishment, they hold him down and brand him on the chest. Later, Buck encounters the real rustler, holds him down on a bar counter, and, as implied in the dialogue, mutilates his face as payback for the branding.

Two railroad adventures were shown. The Overland Limited (1925 Gotham) stars Malcolm McGregor as a civil engineer who makes enemies as he constructs a trestle bridge over a gorge. The baddies set explosives as the train makes its first run, as we expect. But here the overplotting sets up a five-way climax, in one of the most jam-packed final reels ever. McGregor dukes it out with the villain (John Miljan), who reveals his game for no discernible reason … the train’s engineer gets a mistaken signal, telling him that his little daughter is dying … the villain’s mother has boarded the doomed train … a deranged man with no connection to the villain knocks the engineer unconscious and takes the throttle … as the baddies set off the dynamite. This must have been unbearably exciting to ten-year-old boys in 1925.

The Wild Engine (1915 Kalem) is chapter 26 (out of 119!) of a Helen Holmes serial, The Hazards of Helen. Holmes had a 12-year run as the movies’ top star in railroad stories. This one is typical, and one of its intertitles sums up the genre: “A car of dynamite is running wild and may run into the picnic train!”

A bushel of comedies gave Cinesation 23 its predominant tone. His Picture in the Papers (1916 Triangle), Douglas Fairbanks’ third feature, is from his all-American go-getter phase. To get his father’s permission to marry, he must go out and win publicity for the old man’s processed vegetable firm. Amid much satire of health faddists, vegetarianism, and newspaper hoopla, Doug is in a fit of motion. Spying his sweetheart in a second story window, he scampers up the side of the building to sit on her window ledge. All of Fairbanks’ films are worth seeing. This one shows clearly why his public loved him.

The Virtuous Husband (1931 Universal) is a little known gem preserved at the Library of Congress, and seen only at occasional festival showings. The plot is a delight. A repressed young man (Elliot Nugent) depends on a series of letters left to him by his late mother to pursue his love life. Mother’s advice, unfortunately, is prudish, and causes his young wife (Jean Arthur) to rebel. Drawn into the fray are Arthur’s parents, the wonderful Allison Skipworth as her brandy-loving, domineering mother, and J.C. Nugent as her father, a Thurberesque milquetoast, a man so henpecked that his eyes glaze over when he is asked for an opinion. There is sly character comedy along with some slapstick as various characters try to make off with the chest full of mother’s letters. I’ve seen this film win over the audience at two festivals. It deserves a restoration and DVD release.

Palmy Days (1931 Goldwyn), a sassy musical comedy with Eddie Cantor, was a tremendous hit in its day. Eddie is the inept assistant to a phony spiritualist (Charles Middleton.) Spencer Charters plays a business tycoon who falls under Middleton’s spell and decides to hire Eddie as his efficiency expert. Middleton’s gang goes after Eddie and the tycoon’s millions. Cantor’s humor was playful and absurd. In the middle of one speech, he absent-mindedly takes out a paring knife and slices off chunks of his desk; later Charters does the same. For some reason, Eddie teaches Charters to quack, and the two quack back and forth for the rest of the picture. There are peppy songs such as ‘Bend Down, Sister’, with Charlotte Greenwood and the Goldwyn girls, ‘There’s Nothing Too Good for My Baby’, sung by Cantor in blackface, and the finale, ‘(My Honey Said) Yes, Yes’. Busby Berkeley’s choreography adds to the fun. This is pure escapism from the depths of the Depression.

Night After Night (1932 Paramount) is part drama, as speakeasy owner George Raft pursues a society girl (Constance Cummings.) But once Mae West blows in, at the halfway mark, as Raft’s old flame, Maudie, the audience is in her pocket. This has her trademark line, “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” She’s only in a few scenes, but she makes the most of them, and she mixes wonderfully with Allison Skipworth, who is shoe-horned into the plot as Raft’s dotty elocution teacher. This was Mae’s film debut, and the most blatant declaration of style that a star has ever made.

Skipworth turns up again in Tillie and Gus (1933 Paramount), this time with W.C. Fields. This film has Fields’ line that he likes children “if they’re properly cooked.” The plot has the two of them saving their niece from a swindler. Being bunko artist ‘missionaries’ themselves, they know all the angles. With Skipworth’s dilapidated gentility, shadiness, and taste for drink, she was a worthy partner for the Great One.

Her First Mate (1933 Universal) has been incredibly tough for William Wyler’s devotees to track down. Wyler had already made Hell’s Heroes and A House Divided by this time, but Her First Mate was a low budget vehicle for ZaSu Pitts and Slim Summerville, and Wyler did it as a contract director. The picture turns out to be a sweet domestic comedy which relies on the stars’ ditzy mannerisms, with second leads Warren Hymer and Una Merkel adding their own comic styles. It’s not a showcase for Wyler’s visual metaphors, but it showed that he could direct comedy and observe the production efficiencies. The latter issue, of course, would be a sticking point later in his career.

Hold That Blonde! (1945 Paramount) jumps ahead to a decade in which too many comedies were contrived and scored with trumpet blares for each gag. But this one works. It shouldn’t: it piles up stock elements from a thousand other films. There’s Eddie Bracken clinging to a flagpole on the side of a skyscraper; Bracken and Veronica Lake in a circular chase with cops and crooks in a darkened mansion; Willie Best terrified by Bracken in a bed sheet. The comic teamwork of Best and Bracken and a clever setup keep this comedy humming. The premise: Bracken is a kleptomaniac who falls for a professional jewel thief (Lake.) He decides to cure himself and reform her, but, of course, her gang intervenes. George Marshall directed and kept a fast pace on the story. Maltin’s guide rates this film as only fair and complains that it is “sometimes strained.” The Cinesation crowd had a great time with it.

With a cast that includes Claudette Colbert, Melvyn Douglas, Lilyan Tashman, and Franchot Tone, and a title like The Wiser S*x (1932 Paramount), we should be in comedy, but this rarely screened film is a legal thriller. Colbert goes undercover to clear her fiancé, Douglas, who has been framed for murder by the mob. She dons a curly blonde wig and uses gun moll slang, in a performance as atypical as her Cleopatra, and somehow she pulls it off. The picture lacks the bite and suspense of such gangland melodramas as Graft, City Streets, or Star Witness, but it has a good pace and a fascinating cast (including Tone and Ross Alexander in their screen debuts.)

Sessue Hayakawa, long a Cinesation staple, was brought back in two silent melodramas. The Secret Game (1915 Paramount) is a muddled WWI story, which has Hayakawa as a Japanese agent keeping watch on German agents, who are in turn attempting to steal American military secrets. The film came out two years before the U.S. entered the war, but the Germans are clearly the villains. Hayakawa’s motivation is never explained, but it must be remembered that before World War II Japan was a British ally and seized German possessions in the Pacific during World War I. Raymond Hatton as a German spy in drag, posing as a maid, adds to the story’s blurriness. A real curiosity.

In The Victoria Cross (1916 Lasky), set in the Raj era, Hayakawa disappears into the role of Azimoolah, an Indian insurrectionist. Lou Tellegen is a conflicted British officer who proves himself when the rebellion breaks out. Tellegen had perfect matinee idol features, resembling a young Christopher Plummer, but he relies on Victorian stage mannerisms in every scene, constantly clenching his fist and pointing to the horizon with the other hand. The plot is lurid. The rebels spend as much time plotting to capture ‘the white girl’ (Cleo Ridgley) as they do talking revolution. SPOILER ALERT: Hayakawa’s ex*****on is carried out by strapping him to a cannon muzzle and firing a shell through him.

Some brief notes on five features that readers will know from cable or DVD: Mockery (1927 MGM) is a Russian Revolution story with a strong lead performance by Lon Chaney as a peasant who comes to the aid of a countess (the underappreciated Barbara Bedford.) A Soldier’s Plaything (1930 Warners) is a Ben Lyon service comedy, notable for Harry Langdon’s comic relief. It was made when Langdon was desperately (and unsuccessfully) attempting to revive his career. Pardon Us (1931 MGM) is Laurel and Hardy’s prison picture, with the unforgettable image of a terrified Stan holding a machine gun, which he can’t stop firing. Keep ‘Em Rolling (1934 RKO) is a melodrama about Walter Huston’s decades-long love for an army horse. Niagara Falls (1941 UA) is another domestic farce with Pitts and Summerville, released in Hal Roach’s four-reel streamliner format.

Cinesation’s shorts have always rolled out a wealth of pleasures. There was some outstanding animation this year. The Fighting 69 1/2th (1941 Warners) shows two ant armies, clad in doughboy helmets, fighting over a picnic lunch. Elaborate gags include gas warfare using hunks of limburger and a final entente on a slice of cake which breaks up when the two sides can’t agree on who gets the cherry. Tulips Shall Grow (1942) is a George Pal Puppetoon which shows an idyllic Dutch landscape bombed by Axis planes, ending with images of re-emerging tulips in bright, hopeful colors.

In live action, Hollywouldn’t (1926 Bischoff) shows a couple of nobodies crashing a Hollywood studio. It proceeds to spoof star egos and tearjerker plots, showing an endless deathbed scene with ham actors.

Number One (1916 Metro) is a subtle comedy with Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew. The print, preserved in the nick of time, is mottled and faded, but it thoroughly charmed the festival audience. She irks her husband by comparing him to her first husband. He retaliates by creating a fictional first wife. That character comedy could be done so well in 1916 is a tribute to the Drews’ expertise.

The Goat (1921 Metro) is Buster Keaton in his prime, with an extended chase sequence and gags that latch together like well-fitted joists. One can only marvel at his creative force.

Finally, Fifty Miles from Broadway (1929 Pathe) with veteran trouper Harry B. Watson, is a prime artifact of Vaudeville. Watson trades hoary jokes with his cohorts, taps and stomps with the chorus line, and whales on a huge bass drum in the finale. It’s taller than he is. He has the time of his life, and so does his audience.

Cinesation 23 had its sweetest moment with the presentation of a plaque to one of Cinephile’s founders, Dennis Atkinson, from the nitrate archivist of the Library of Congress. In over 50 years of donating rare nitrate film prints to the LoC, Mr. Atkinson has proven himself to be one of the most important individual donors of film prints in that institution's history. Our hats are off to Dennis Atkinson who not only talks about film preservation, but exerts the effort that makes it possible.

On Sunday, as the audience dispersed, many no doubt wondered if they would ever find another source for so many vintage rarities … feature films from Woodrow Wilson’s era … fragments saved from total oblivion … early animation … wonders that shine through the murk of decomposition. No obvious answer appears.

Fond Memories of Film Dealers I’ve Known

By Dennis R. Atkinson (2013)

Way back in time, the 1950s that is, I was a teenager in high school and had been collecting films since elementary school. It was at that time that I began to make contact with film dealers. Many of them were very colorful fellows. Here are a few of my memories of some of the boys I dealt with.

Jimmy was the most colorful of the lot. Jimmy was so proud of his Hungarian-Jewish heritage! He would come around several times a year to peddle film. This went on for maybe ten years. Near the end of his visits he said he could get (and did get) any (at that time all were IB) Fox features I wanted for 100+ dollars. He delivered and delivered. Coincidentally, the last feature I bought from him was The Last Wagon. Jimmy was mysterious about where he lived. Of all the folks in film, Jimmy knew how to live and enjoy life.

Dick was a dapper gentleman from Philly. While he had features, what stands out in my mind are the two suitcases of cartoons he always carried. One was full of IB cartoons without main titles for $10 each. The other one was with titles for $15.00 each. His wares always included an assortment of WB, MGM, and Disney cartoons.

Bill was from Chicago. He had Republic B westerns for $25.00, cheaper if you bought one without a shipping case. He also had Paramount features for $75.00 each. It was revealed years later that he had set up a phony silver reclamation company and was disposing of prints for MCA.

Mr. Kay was from Connecticut. I do not recall his first name as he was called Mr. Kay by everybody. The was around 1956-7 and the Paramount shorts were sold to TV. Apparently he had access to the original materials before the titles were butchered. Any of the shorts were available in Kodachrome with original titles. He also sold major studio titles in used prints. He was a high profile dealer and the studios sued him. He WON. But a couple of days later he had a heart attack and died. It was said he had a relative highly placed in the Justice Department!

Time has dimmed my memory on the name of the last dealer. National Cinema Service was in New York City and he had the job of disposing of military prints. Approximately one year after their theatrical release, they were junked. I remember every January was Disney month. Warner's was in June, etc. I remember he offered and I accepted the first print of Oklahoma! to be junked.

Then there were the collectors. They have passed on to the film vault in the sky for they were “old men” in their 50s, 60s or 70s when I was around 20. There were so many collectors in Chicago whose names I don’t recall, but to this day when I go to the Windy City and see the street names were they lived, it brings back pleasant memories.

Thanks go to Bob, the Classic Images editor.
Fall 2013:

Dennis Atkinson

Dean of Film Collectors

Honored by the Library of Congress

By Bob King



In all the world it is hard to imagine that anyone started collecting highly flammable nitrate film when he was seven years old. Longtime film buff, exhibitor, film festival showman, and retired businessman Dennis Atkinson of Frankenmuth, Michigan may be the only one who can lay claim to that distinction. It was during World War II and a neighbor kid had a small collection of films he had inherited from his absent father. Dennis saw one of the films and decided, "I wanted it . . . I liked it."



He liked film so much it became a lifelong business for him, not to mention a hobby and an obsession. Thanks to his acquisitive talents he was able to amass an impressive amount of old nitrate film prints, many of which were unique and historic survivors of years of neglect. Being a public spirited individual, Dennis did not keep these precious records of our past for his own personal use. Instead, he donated them to the Library of Congress so that people all around the world could benefit from them.



Because of his generosity, Dennis was recently recognized by the Library of Congress for his contributions. At the Fall Cinesation film festival in Massillon, Ohio, two representatives of the LoC praised Dennis in front of an audience of film buffs and presented him with a plaque in honor of his work. George Willema, Nitrate Vault Mgr. at the LoC, and James Cozart, Motion Picture Quality Assurance, LoC, spoke of the dedication and generosity of this unique man. Dennis has been giving films to the LoC since the 1960s. No other individual has ever donated more precious nitrate to this great institution.



And it all began that day when seven-year-old Dennis saw his first batch of nitrate film at the home of a neighbor boy. The collection contained just a few features like Larry Semon's Wizard of Oz, and Sweet Adeline, Einstein's Theory of Relativity by Max Fleischer, and Chaplin's The Immigrant. As the neighbor boy got tired of looking at these prints, Dennis acquired them. "I got them from him," Dennis recalls, "by trading stuff" the other boy wanted.



Dennis' tenacity as a film collector was shown in his acquisition of Chaplin's The Immigrant. The neighbor boy had stored one reel of this Chaplin classic in his garage. Although he didn't have the complete film, Dennis kept that one reel he had, and then, "I uncovered the second reel three years later" in the same garage.



Since most collectors also do a lot of swapping, Dennis eventually traded off his print of Semon's Wizard of Oz. As is so common, he eventually had a case of "trader's remorse" and wanted to get a print of the silent Oz again. He contacted an expert for help: "David Shepard tracked down a print of Wizard of Oz for me and it turned out to be the same print I had when I was a kid."



In 1967 Dennis says, "I bought two station wagons full of nitrate. The guy who produced Scar of Shame was owner of Standard Film Service and in Michigan he was distributing through States Rights. His films ended up in a Michigan barn. The guy who owned the barn now owned the films tried to sell them to Henry Ford Museum, but they didn't want them so they gave me his name. I bought the films from him and filled two station wagon loads with nitrate. I got Scar of Shame, Let Katie Do It (1915 to 17), some DW Griffiths, Phantom of the Forest, and a bunch of decomping Chaplin Mutuals."



In 1954 Dennis started Standard Film Service in Ohio and kept it going till about 1975. He rented films to schools and individuals in US. Later he moved to Frankenmuth to start his arcade business which he ran until he retired. Back in the '70s he also started Encore Entertainment Home Video along with RKO Comedy Classics.



He recalls his early days in film with fondness. "In the beginning I dealt with people from the old studio days like Stanley Stark, and they loved film. Later on, the people I dealt with did not love film." One man named "Harry" left an especially bad impression. Harry told Dennis that there were some old silent films in his company vaults. Harry had no interest in these perhaps unique films, and worst of all, he wouldn't let anyone else see them. Dennis quotes Harry as saying, "When they start to decomp, we'll burn them. Before I'd let any Classic Images reader get them, I'll destroy them."



Despite this sort of experience, Dennis recalls that most of the people he dealt with in the film business were decent and honest. In the following reminiscence, Dennis shared his memories of some of the most interesting film characters he has known.

That's George!

The Nuclear Bunker Preserving Movie History America's movie and film archive is located in an underground bunker in Culpepper, Virginia. The bunker was originally a gold storage unit that doubled as a ...

Saturday, May 21 2016 (2 p.m.)
The Library of Congress Packard Campus, Culpeper, Va.

A TRIBUTE TO DENNIS R. ATKINSON

Many individuals have made generous donations of motion pictures to The Library of Congress throughout the years and tonight we honor one of those donors, Dennis R. Atkinson. Beginning in 1969, Atkinson has endowed the Library with more than 350 titles in both nitrate and safety film and in 35mm and 16mm formats. To this end, we celebrate Atkinson’s collection and enthusiasm, which continues unabated to this day with four rarely seen silent films that have been preserved by the Library of Congress Film Preservation Lab. They are the 1926 Action Pictures Western “Twisted Triggers” starring Wally Wales (aka Hal Taliaferro) and Jean Arthur and three comedy shorts: “Starvation Blues” (1925), “Bungalow Love” (1921), and “Ko Koo Kids” (1922). Silent film accompanist Jeff Rapsis will be on hand to provide live musical accompaniment for the program.
https://www.loc.gov/avconservation/theater/schedule.html

Schedule: Theater - Culpeper, Virginia - A/V Conservation (Library of Congress) Schedule: Theater - Culpeper, Virginia - A/V Conservation (Library of Congress)

MoMA's race to preserve classic films' sights and sounds Important work in film history is being done by Museum of Modern Art in New York. A team of film technicians has earned an Oscar of their own. They find and preserve classic films, many of which were made 100 years ago. Anthony Mason reports.

Ten years ago already...

Cinesation 2005 Film Reviews My star ratings for features are:

For the first time in many years and forever, we are not on a road trip to spend a fall weekend in a movie theater. I will miss some of it. I turned 50 this year, almost one half of my life involved with the Cinesation. That's a lot of film. I know we set out to save film and we did. DW

Martin Scorsese Backs Library of Congress' Silent Film Study, Research Reveals 70% of Features... "The loss of American silent-era feature films constitutes an alarming and irretrievable loss to our nation’s cultural record,” said Librarian of Congress James H. Billington