Great Gatsby: A New Version

Coming to theaters near you!! The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in its latest iteration, opens this week. The story has been made into a movie at least four times, the first time in 1926 right after the book by F. Scott Fitzgerald was published in 1925. That, of course, was a black and white silent film, and no copies of it are known to have survived. 

I’m planning to see the film as soon as possible. I think it’s another indication how much the public is interested in the Roaring Twenties. Think of the series “Boardwalk Empire,” and Ken Burns’s documentary “Prohibition.” And dress styles this year are highly reminiscent of the flapper dress, straight sheath lines with drop waists. I’ll bet this movie only heightens those stylistic elements. 

A Chat with Brooks Wachtel of Hollywood

Part of the fun of research is getting to talk to interesting people.

An old college friend put me in contact with Mr. Brooks Wachtel of Hollywood, a writer/producer/director who has written or produced many documentaries for the History Channel and over 85 episodes of dramatic television, shows such as Fox’s live-action Young Hercules, the animated PBS hit “Liberty’s Kids,” and lots of Saturday morning action shows: Heavy Gear, Static, Spider-Man, X-Men, Iron Man, Robo-Cop, Silver Surfer, The Avengers, Mortal Kombat, The Mask, Beast Machines: Transformers, Godzilla, Gargoyles, Wing Commander Academy. For younger viewers, he has penned many episodes of the pre-school hit, Clifford the Big Red Dog.

The reason I wanted to talk with him was to take advantage of his vast knowledge of film history. He gave me lots of information, some of which I’ll be incorporating into book #3 of the Roaring Twenties series, Renting Silence. Things like the sort of film used in the Twenties as orthochromatic was being replaced by the better, more expensive panchromatic, which gave a truer gray range. With orthochromatic film, props and things that were actually red would film very dar while blues would go lighter, so much so that blue-eyed people seemed to have white eyes. Not a good feature. This influenced the choice of costumes, props, and even actors, of course. 

And while I already knew that silent movies were very noisy to make, with grinding cameras, shouts from the director, ongoing conversations, music from the studio musicians who were “playing the mood,” and hammering from the adjacent stage, I did not know that some studios set up bleachers and charged admission, and those audiences could be quite noisy too. All in all, an interesting conversation with Mr. Wachtel. 

The Chaperone: Fiction or truth?

I enjoyed Laura Moriarty’s book, The Chaperone, a fictionalized story about the silent film star Louise Brooks (see the September 8 post for more about that.) But I was curious, as I am whenever I read historical fiction–how much of it was true?

So I got a copy of the memoirs of Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, published in 1974. Mary Louise Brooks was born in 1906 and died in 1985. Her memoirs cover her early years only superficially and that’s the part that The Chaperone covers. She mentions going to New York in 1922 to study at a famous dance studio, Denishawn, and that she was accompanied by a chaperone.

[Mother] finally overcame his [Father] strong objection to sending a little fifteen-year-old girl away from her home alone by finding me a chaperon, Alice Mills, a stocky, bespectacled housewife of thirty-six who, having fallen idiotically in love with the beautiful Ted Shawn [owner of the dance studio] at first sight, decided to study dance with him. She agreed to accompany me on the train and live with me in New York. . . . Most of the students [in New York] were females from the Middle West, to which, like my chaperon, Alice Mills, they would return to establish Denishawn schools. . . . I tolerated Mrs. Mills’ provincialism because she shared my love of the theatre. Together, we saw all the Broadway shows . . .” 

And that’s about all Louise Brooks says of her chaperone. Using that little bit, Moriarty crafted a person with a different name. Moriarty’s character was thirty-six but not stocky, and she was not the least interested in Ted Shawn, the dance instructor, or in dance. She did enjoy theater. She found love in New York and returned home to Kansas at the end of the summer, but never established a dance school.

Having satisfied myself that The Chaperone was almost entirely fiction, I finished Louise Brooks’ memoir which continued into the sixties. In it she gives some insight into several actors and actresses she knew well, including Humphrey Bogart, Marion Davies (mistress of publisher William Randolph Hearst), Lilian Gish, Greta Garbo, W.C.Fields, and others. I learned little that I didn’t already know about Hollywood in the Twenties, but I enjoyed Lulu in Hollywood. 

And check out this blog for more than a dozen gorgeous photos of Miss Brooks in all her glory.

http://theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-original-it-girl-of-the-1920s-the-allure-of-louise-brooks/

Air Conditioning Debut

It’s a little known fact that Willis Carrier invented air conditioning not to cool people but to cool factories, to reduce humidity in factories where it was preventing machines from working properly. Only later did the idea of cooling human beings catch on.

The first public place to install “refrigeration,” as it was known, was the Rivoli Theater in Times Square, a movie theater whose advertisements boasted that the new system allowed “the manufacturing of ideal weather.” Here is an eyewitness account of the summer day in 1925 when the new Rivoli Theatre showed its first movie to an audience cooled by Carrier’s invention.

“. . . Typical of show business, the opening of the Rivoli was widely advertised and its air conditioning system heralded along Broadway. Long before the doors opened, people lined up at the box office – curious about ‘cool comfort’ as offered by the managers. It was like a World Series crowd waiting for bleacher seats. They were not only curious, but skeptical-all of the women and some of the men had fans-a standard accessory of that day. 

Patrons line up to enter the Rivoli Theater

Among the spectators was Adolph Zukor. I recall how quiet and reserved he was when he walked in and took a seat in the balcony. Zukor may have come from California, but he was there to be shown!

Final adjustments delayed us in starting up the machine, so that the doors opened before the air conditioning system was turned on. The people poured in, filled all the seats, and stood seven deep in the back of the theater. We had more than we had bargained for and were plenty worried. From the wings we watched in dismay as two thousand fans fluttered. We felt that Mr. Zukor was watching the people instead of the picture-and saw all those waving fans!

It takes time to pull down the temperature in a quickly filled theater on a hot day, and a still longer time for a packed house. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the fans dropped into laps as the effects of the air conditioning system became evident. Only a few chronic fanners persisted, but soon they, too, ceased fanning. We had stopped them ‘cold’ and breathed a great sigh of relief.

We then went into the lobby and waited for Mr. Zukor to come downstairs. When he saw us, he did not wait for us to ask his opinion. He said tersely, ‘Yes, the people are going to like it.’”

Adolph Zukor, at about the age he was when he attended the first air-conditioned movie screening in 1925

Adolph Zukor makes an appearance in my second novel, Silver Screen Murders. Now that I know about his attendance at this event, I can work it into the story for my third, which I am currently writing. It takes place in the spring of 1925, and this air conditioning event took place in the summer, so the time frame is a little off. Maybe I’ll have him talking about it, planning to attend to see how the new invention works. 

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty: A Good Book

THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty is a wonderful read. The story begins in 1922 when a middle-aged woman from Kansas goes to New York as the chaperone for 15-year-old Louise Brooks, a rebellious, thoroughly obnoxious girl who is destined for fame as one of the world’s best-known silent film stars. Why did she take on this onerous job? The chaperone has a secret motive for being in New York and sees her chance to accomplish a goal while her young charge spends her days in dancing class. The fictional tale follows both women through the rest of their lives, although they only intersect one other time.

For those who don’t know much about silent films or the Roaring Twenties, Louise Brooks is a real person, an actress who wrote her memoirs late in life. The chaperone’s life is fiction. As a historian, I can attest to the accuracy of the history–the author has done good work in reproducing the Roaring Twenties. (Less time is spent in subsequent decades.) And as a writer, I admire Moriarty’s fluid style. My next move is to get the autobiography of Louise Brooks and see how much of her life is real and how much was fictionalized.

 Did you know there is a Louise Brooks Society? Visit it at www.pandorasbox.com. 

THIS DAY IN HISTORY

On this date, June 15, in 1925, the film Don Q: Son of Zorro was released tot he public. It became one of Douglas Fairbanks’s most successful films, a sequel to his fabulously popular Mark of Zorro that came out five years earlier. In the first film, Fairbanks played the part of Zorro, of course, pretty much inventing the action adventure hero that has been such a Hollywood staple ever since. His acrobatic feats–leaping off buildings, swinging from chandeliers, and dashing about with sword fights–astonished audiences who had never seen anything like it. Five years later, he was ready for Son of Zorro, where he plays the title role of the mysterious Don Q. To distinguish father from son, Fairbanks created the son as a master with the whip, rather than the sword. Learning this skill took him months of practice with an expert from Australia. 

This film features prominently in the second book in my series, SILVER SCREEN MURDERS. Jessie has moved to Hollywood in this book and gotten a job as a lowly assistant script girl at Pickford-Fairbanks Studios where she works on the set of Son of Zorro. I wove some of the other characters into the story too, like Mary Astor who plays the love interest, and Lottie Pickford, Douglas’s sister-in-law, who has an important part as a servant girl. To get the details right, I ordered copies of both movies from Netflix and watched them several times, taking notes throughout. You can too. Or watch clips here: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNp9-XLCakw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK9_twiMlAo

How do you write a silent film script when there are no words?

It seems like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?–writing a script for a silent movie. What’s there to write, other than the occasional titles that interrupt the story? At least, that’s what I thought before I started researching this time period. 

The intersection of Hollywood and Highland Avenue in the mid 1920s

A lot of writers in Hollywood wrote film scripts for silent films. First, the writer supplied a basic “story line,” the overarching lot outline with character descriptions. If that was approved, he (or occasionally she, but not often) would develop the story line into a full treatment, creating scenes and situations, giving life to the characters. After approval, the next step was the script, or “continuity.” This involved breaking down the story into individual camera shots–long shots, medium shots, or closeups. When all this was complete, the result was typed up and carbon copies handed to the producer, associate producer, actors, script girl, director, cameramen, casting director, and anyone else involved in production. The whole precess, start to finish, might take as little as 6-8 weeks, but it was usually longer. 

Often more than one writer worked on a script, which led to squabbles over whose name would appear in the film credits. According to Frederica Sagor, a Hollywood writer in the 1920s, she got credit for writing one film that she barely touched, and was cheated out of credit for some that she accomplished entirely by herself. 

I use this informaiton in the third of my Roaring Twenties series, when I talk about Douglas Fairbanks writing his own movie script. 

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

A couple weeks ago I wrote that the fifth-largest industry in America in the Twenties was alcohol (Feb. 11 post). Guess what the tenth largest was?

The motion picture business. 

That surprised the hell out of me, because the industry seems to have still been in its early stages, but really, it had been around for about two decades, if you count nickelodeons.  When you consider not just the production of motion pictures but the thousands of movie theaters and musicians across the country involved in showing a film, the ranking seems more reasonable.  

How often do you go to the movies? (Watching at home doesn’t count.) I watch a lot of movies through Netflix and a few on television, but went to a movie theater just once in 2011.  In 1925, the number of movie tickets purchased in America during an average week was 100 million. That was with a population of 115 million. Compare that to today, with our population of 313 million, when the average number of tickets purchased is 25 million per week. That’s roughly three times as many people buying a quarter of the tickets. 

Why? Obviously, there are more alternatives today, with movies shown on television and movie rentals to watch at home, not to mention competition from the computer game industry. In addition, ticket prices have soared, making it difficult for a family to take the kids to a movie or the teenagers to afford a date.  

Rin Tin Tin: Training

One of the most amazing things about Rin Tin Tin was his training. The idea that an ordinary person, like Lee Duncan, Rinty’s owner (below, center), could train his own pet was new in the Roaring Twenties.

 According to Susan Orlean in Rin Tin Tin: The Life and Legend, dog training started in Europe, as did obedience competitions. These concepts came to the United States in the twentieth century. Before then, owners simply didn’t train their own dogs. They sent them to professionals to train as hunters or shepherds or whatever. Professional handlers trained dogs in schools for several weeks or months, then returned them to their owners with instructions. 

I learned some things in this book that I can use in my Roaring Twenties mystery series. I’m working on #3, and added a dog to the plot, a German Shepherd that looks like Rin Tin Tin but is old and feeble. But he’s still going to save the day in the end, just like Rinty! 

Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend

Historically, dogs were workers, bred to function as guards, hunters, shepherds, trackers, and beasts of burden. Surprisingly–to me, at least–the concept of a dog as a pet didn’t evolve until the early twentieth century. The canine star, Rin Tin Tin, is a fascinating case in point. I just read Susan Orlean’s book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, and recommend it highly for anyone interested in dogs or in the Roaring Twenties. 

The German Shepherd was a “new” dog in the Twenties–the breed had been developed only a couple decades earlier (guess where) and introduced into the United States after World War I. American soldiers came home with stories about this smart, brave, and loyal breed, and a few of them, like Lee Duncan, brought one home with them.

Lee Duncan (center) with Rinty

Duncan found a puppy in a ruined German kennel, named him Rin Tin Tin (Rinty for short), and took him home in 1919. Astounded at how smart the dog was, Duncan trained him and then shopped him around to the Hollywood studios until one–Warner Brothers–signed Rinty up for a movie. He acted so well in small parts in two 1922 films that he was given his first starring role in a 1923 feature film, “Where the North Begins.” After that, he cranked out features until he died in 1932 at the age of fourteen. 

Jack Warner had been leery of animal actors ever since he’d been bitten by a monkey, but he quickly came around after Rinty’s phenomenal success. Daryl Zanuck wrote the screenplays. Warner paid Rinty $1,000 a week at a time when human actors made $150. Someone figured that in eight years, Warner paid Rin Tin Tin’s owner the equivalent of $5 million. There is little doubt that Rin Tin Tin movies kept Warner Bros. Studios from going under. In fact, Jack Warner called the dog his Mortgage Lifter.

But Rinty was not a pet in these films. He was a a companion, a co-worker. He was rarely shown indoors. He wasn’t playing a role; he was playing himself. (Later, the many different male collies that played Lassie were portraying a fictional female dog made popular in the novel, Lassie Come Home.)

Rin Tin Tin astonished audiences with his physical feats. He climbed a tree, he leaped 12-foot walls, he fought bears. And he “acted.” His expressions showed sorrow, anger, and happiness as well as any human actor, and in silent movies, his lack of speech wasn’t a disadvantage. Soon, German Shepherds were the most sought after breed in America, and Rinty’s pups started at $250, the rough equivalent of $3,000 today.