“The Artist” : a Silent Film Revival

What a marvelous movie! I saw “The Artist” at a theater yesterday and was thoroughly entertained. I suspect this will lead to a lot more interest in the large number of genuine silent movies that still exist. I’ve watched several myself through Netflix and see one occasionally on television. 

Do see “The Artist” if you haven’t yet. The acting is great fun–the laughs and gasps of surprise are there too.

The story is simple, a romance where one character’s career is rising and the other’s is falling. The main character, George Valentin, is Hollywood’s most popular leading man who, when talkies come, plummets from riches to rags. As his career tanks, that of young Peppy Miller skyrockets, turning her from aspiring extra to leading lady.

It will be instantly obvious to those who know about Hollywood in the Twenties that Valentin’s character is based on Douglas Fairbanks. First of all, he looks exactly like Fairbanks. He performs exactly the same sort of roles, and at one point, when the date says 1931, Valentin is shown reminiscing with his own old movies and the scenes they show come from Fairbanks’ 1920 movie, “Mark of Zorro.” (I recognized those scenes right away–the jump over the wall followed by a swarm of soldiers, the leaping somersault over the fence, and the jumps from rooftop to rooftop.) Fairbanks, too, failed to make the change from silents to talkies, although in his case it was more because of his age than ability. Valentin’s story also mirrors Fairbanks’ struggle with alcohol as his popularity wanes.

 The character of Peppy Miller, enthusiastically played by Berenice Bejo, could be any one of several actresses who rose from obscurity to fame due to their looks, talent, and silver screen charisma.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t praise the superb acting skills of the little dog! I guess he won’t be nominated for an Oscar. 

The Smithsonian website carried an interesting article about this film.  See www.smithsonian.com/silentfilm

What Was America’s Fifth Largest Industry in the Twenties?

I don’t know what the fifth largest industry in the U.S. is today, but in 1920, at the start of Prohibition, it was alcohol. When you tallied up all the breweries, distilleries, and wineries in the United States, and all the support industries like barrel makers and glass bottle manufacturers, and threw in all the bars, saloons, private clubs, and caterers who served the stuff, you come up with the fifth largest industry in the country. Think of the jobs lost when Prohibition went into effect! Think of the family businesses destroyed . . . like this one:

Christian-Moerlein, one of the countries largest breweries until Prohibition (Cincinnati)

Of course, not all liquor, beer, and wine producers went out of business. Some wineries made grape juice and Communion wine, the only wine still allowed for religious reasons.  (The demand for Communion wine skyrocketed, but an even better way to get it legally was with a prescription for medical reasons, which also skyrocketed.) Some saloons turned into restaurants; others became speakeasies and sold alcohol illegally. Some breweries produced malt extract, a legal product that could be used in the home to make beer; others hung on by selling nonalcoholic beverages. But thousands and thousands of jobs and businesses disappeared. Sure, some started up again after this stupid law was repealed, but it was too late for most. 

Prohibition didn’t prohibit consumption of alcohol.

What’s the difference between the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act? I used to think they were the same thing, but the amendment is very short, only 3 sentences. It is the Volstead Act that explained how prohibition was to be enforced and which alcoholic beverages were included. The amendment simply prohibits “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States.”

Notice what it doesn’t prohibit–the drinking of alcoholic beverages. Drinking the stuff was not illegal. So private clubs and individuals could–and did–stock up on liquor in the months before Prohibition was to take effect, so they would be assured of having drinks for a long while. Supposedly the Yale Club had stocked enough to last 14 years–a prescient move, if it’s true, since Prohibition lasted 13 years, from 1920 to 1933.  

The Volstead Act defined intoxicating beverages as any beverage that contained more than 1/2 % alcohol. It made exceptions for doctors who could prescribe whiskey, for churches that could continue to use sacramental wine, and for scientists doing research. It also exempted rubbing alcohol, necessary in hospitals. Not surprisingly, these exemptions were abused, as doctors began writing prescriptions for friends, as hospital supply clerks began ordering railroad cars full of alcohol that they used to buy by the case, and bogus churches sprang up to claim the religious exemption. The law could never succeed with such a large portion of the population willing to skirt it. The majority fundamentally believed that the government had no business interfering with an individual’s choice in this matter. 

Where Does the Word “Bootlegger” Come From?

The word first appeared in the 1850s in Maine and of course it refers to smuggling liquor. But this seemed odd to me because Prohibition didn’t start until almost 70 years later. That is, except in Maine, the first dry state, where it became illegal to manufacture or consume liquor in 1851. Because Maine shares a border with Canada, the law was easily flouted. Ordinary folks wanting to smuggle liquor into the country could hide a couple bottles in their pants legs in Canada and walk into the United States. 

(Don’t jump to any conclusions about that pattern on the floor–before Hitler took the swastika for his Nazi Party, it was a perfectly respectable symbol dating from ancient times that was often used to decorate mosaics, tiles, pottery, and other items. This photo pre-dates the Nazis.)

“Midnight in Paris” – A Review

I saw Midnight in Paris last night. Why oh why didn’t someone tell me what a good movie that is? Or maybe they did, and I wasn’t listening because I dislike Woody Allen. Thankfully, that didn’t keep me from watching his movie, because I thoroughly enjoyed it. 

Time travel pieces don’t usually appeal to me, but this one was charming. One must suspend disbelief when the main character, Gil, a frustrated American writer vacationing in Paris, gets picked up each night at midnight by people in an antique car and steps into the Golden Age of Paris, the 1920s world of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Each night he returns to the Twenties and his new friends, which he vastly prefers to his life and friends in the present. There’s a lesson to be learned, and when Gil learns it, he gets the girl!

The subject of the film was quite familiar to me, since I had just finished reading “The Paris Wife,” a fictionalized account of Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley, who lived in Paris for most of their five year marriage, a time when Hemingway was poor and unknown. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and others figure in that story too. 

If you like the Twenties–and if you don’t, why are you reading this blog?–see this film. It provides a marvelous glimpse of Paris in the Twenties, not to mention lovely photos of Paris today. And read “The Paris Wife” for another take on life in Paris during these magic years.

The Return of the Cloche Hat

The NY Times has reported several times in the past few months on the fashion trend toward cloche hats. Today another article appeared, so I thought I’d share it.

Come Hither, Sighed Her Hat

As “The Artist,” the black-and-white silent film set in late 1920s Hollywood, gathers Oscar chatter, the Jazz Age fashion of that time is having a moment in real time. Cloche hats, the toppers the ingénue Peppy Miller (charmingly played by Bérénice Bejo) wears on her rise to stardom, were all over Ralph Lauren’s romantic spring runway as well as at Marc Jacobs. “There’s a mystery to the cloche,” said Mark Bridges, the costume designer of “The Artist.” “They sort of half hide the face and are coy.” Bridges used period styles to frame Bejo’s face, but these cloches are available now — for warmth and a little hat flirting.

For example, here’s Ralph Lauren’s latest, obviously inspired by the fashions of the Roaring Twenties. 

Vaudeville Performers: Love ‘em and Hate ‘em

Vaudeville performers, like those in touring theatricals, were adored on stage and snubbed off it. Lumped together with other itinerants like gypsies, hobos, and vagabonds, they were met with suspicion and distrust wherever they went. They were assumed to be criminals–pickpockets, fakers, shoplifters, grifters. Many hotels refused to take in vaudeville players or actors. Those that did were the lowest quality, usually with one shared toilet per hall and located near the train station. These would cost around a dollar a night. Performers usually tried to save the dollar by taking a night train, traveling on Saturday night after the last performance of the week and arriving in the next town on Sunday. Boarding houses often took up the slack. Most vaudeville performers stayed in boarding houses for a week at a time, eating breakfast and sometimes dinner there, if their schedules allowed. 

Circus and carnival workers, called carnies, were even more distrusted, but they had an advantage: they didn’t have to search for lodging at every stop. They lived in wagons that traveled with the show. 

Crooked Feds and Cops

Everyone knows that Prohibition brought about several unintended consequences, one of them the rise of organized crime. Less known is that it also brought about a huge increase in corrupt policemen and other law enforcement agents. Why? 

During Prohibition, thousands of federal agents were hired to enforce the new laws against selling alcohol.  In spite of this, historians estimate that only about 5% of all illegal liquor produced in the U.S. was ever intercepted. Were these agents stupid or lazy or ill-equipped? No, they were bought off! You have only to look at the numbers to see why. 

Federal agents made $1,800 a year. There was so much money to be made in bootleg liquor that they could easily be bribed. An agent could make $500 in one day just by letting his underworld contact know he was going to phone in sick, thereby allowing area shipments to move without anyone worrying about getting caught. Not just federal agents, but police, too, were bribed too, with money, liquor, women, or all three. All they had to do was look the other way. And to most people, it didn’t seem like a real crime–something that had been legal forever was suddenly illegal with the stroke of a pen. 

Street Signs in the Roaring Twenties

     According to an article in this week’s New York Times, the first center line came in 1911 in Michigan. The first electric traffic signal was in 1915 in Cleveland. The first proper stop sign , also 1915, appeared in Detroit. It wasn’t the 8-sided red sign we’re all used to; it was square with black letters on a white background. 

     In 1923 the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments thought up some recommendations about street signs, their colors, their shapes. They recommended a Stop sign with 8 sides, but their color of choice was yellow.

     The red sign didn’t come along until 1954. Red had been the preferred color much earlier (after all, stop lights are red), but a good, reflective red paint did not exist until the early Fifties. A non-reflective yellow, on the other hand, could be seen better at night. 

     So I’ve had to be careful in my novel, set in 1925, not to mention red stop signs. In fact, considering how slowly ideas spread back then, I’ve concluded that there were few stop signs at all in the mid-Twenties, expect perhaps in the larger cities. 

Cats and Rats

One of vaudeville’s best-known animal acts was Swain’s Cats and Rats. Here’s a copy of a vaudeville program where this act is featured. For some reason–probably carelessness–the name is wrong. It was Cats and Rats, not Rats and Cats. But then, look how they misspelled vaudeville–twice! 

Swain’s Cats and Rats was famous. George Burns joked about it in 1976, recalling his own days in vaudeville by saying “I was so bad, once I was on the bill, and the headliner was Swain’s Cats and Rats.” A newspaper review describes the show: “One of the best animal acts in vaudeville and misses greatness by the man’s mild showmanship. The rats and cats fraternize like lodge brothers and execute a difficult routine of wire walking and jumping and balancing stunts. One of the feature tricks is a cat stepping over seven hurdles on top of each one a rat is reclining.” Vaudeville player Joe Laurie, Jr., noted in his memoirs that the cats were fed right before each show. The rats were kept semi-starved and docile. 

Before he developed Cats and Rats, Mr. Swain (I couldn’t find a first name) has at least two other animal acts, Swain’s Alligators and Swain’s Cockatoos. Evidence for the bird act exists from as early as 1907 to at least 1918. It played all over the country: Denver, Brooklyn, Cincinnati. “A novelty from birdland,” one reviewer said, and he rated them “very good.” I found no information at all about the alligators–perhaps it was a short-lived act. 

I was so taken with Cats and Rats that I worked the act into my (as yet unpublished) mystery, set in 1925. Just a quick mention as part of a description of a vaudeville act–here it is.

The next-to-last act was Jack Benny, whose straight face and knack for timing brought laughter to the simplest lines. He screeched when he played his violin, not from lack of skill but on purpose to add humor to his act. Many’s the time I’d heard him play his old instrument better than any pro in the pit. His gags flopped, but I whistled and applauded like a madwoman. Never mind, I’m sure he could tell from the tepid audience response that tonight his schtick was off. Cats and Rats ended the show, astonishing the audience as rats rode peacefully on cats’ backs around a track, crossed tightropes, and for the finale, walked across a raised platform carrying miniature American flags.

“However do they teach them to do that!” exclaimed Valerie as we worked our way out of the box and down the side steps.

“They stuff the cats and starve the rats,” I said bluntly. “Come on.”

I could find my way backstage at any theater in the world blindfolded, with nothing but my sense of smell to guide me. The wings teemed with performers dodging in and out of dressing rooms, musicians packing up their instruments, and stage crew hauling down lights, sweeping floors, and repairing scenery for Monday’s new line-up. Shouts, scrapes, crashes, arguments, and warning calls—“Watch out! Heads up! Coming through!—surrounded us. Boys who worked for free to see the show trotted alongside electricians, scene shifters, and carpenters like young apprentices eager to help. Everything was confusion and noise. It sounded like home.