Who's on the banner?

[Kitty]

I absolutely love the theme!! Very creative and cute.

[donnie]

Yes, it's the month of May - and Mae! One of my sillier ideas for the banner... no, wait, make that silliest.

I don’t think so at all! I think it’s a wonderful idea.

Mae Marsh, of course.

You got it.

Ah, yes, May Allison. I liked her in A Fool There Was. She was a fellow Georgian, too.

Isn’t that rendering of Mae Murray wonderful? What an artist.

[BettyLouSpence]

Since June is Pride Month, I figured that a banner featuring four silent stars that we know were gay or bisexual— plus an image from a film that dealt so sympathetically with homosexuality for the era —would be a timely one.

From left to right:

Ramon Novarro started acting in 1917, playing pit parts in films such as The Little American and The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He got a more prominent role in The Prizoner of Zenda (1922), but his first major success came the following year with Scaramouche. In 1925 he played the title character in Ben-Hur, arguably his most famous role. Novarro became cinemas biggest Latin lover after Valentino's death, and he maintained his popularity through the rest of the silent era, most notably in The Student Prince of Old Heidelberg. In 1929 he starred in his first talkie, Devil-May-Care.

Novarro was Catholic and gay; this was a dilemma he struggled with throughout his life, and has been blamed as the source for his problems with alcohol.

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Dorothy Arzner was a director who entered the film industry in 1919, at first working on sets and scripts before editing films. When she edited Blood and Sand (1922), she combined stock footage of a real bullfight with the scenes of the storys bullfight that she had shot herself, thereby keeping the realism in a cost effective way. This led to Arzner working with James Cruze, and in 1926 she helped edit Old Ironsides and wrote its shooting script. She demanded that Paramount give her a film to direct or she would leave, and in 1927 she directed her first film, Fashions for Women. Three more silents followed: Ten More Commandments, Get Your Man, and Manhattan Cocktail. All are lost except for Get Your Man (minus one or two reels) and a minute long fragment from Manhattan Cocktail. In 1929, Arzner was entrusted with Paramount's first talkie, The Wild Party, where she's said to have invented the boom mike by rigging a microphone onto a fishing pole in order to give Clara Bow freedom of movement on the set.

Arzner was not officially out as a lesbian in the way we think of it today, but while she preferred to stay mum on her private life she also made no effort to hide her sexuality. She did not hide the existence of her partner, choreographer and screenwriter Marion Morgan, for example.

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William Haines began acting in bit parts with Goldwyn in 1922. After being loaned out, he soon accrued bigger roles, playing the male lead in The Midnight Express (1924) and Little Annie Rooney (1925). He had his first true breakout performance with Brown of Harvard, released by his home studio in 1926 and which established his screen persona of a pompous young man who later learns a lesson in humility. Haines starred in silents such as Tell It to the Marines with Lon Chaney, Slide, Kelly, Slide, and Show People with Marion Davies. After the part-talkie Alias Jimmy Valentine (which was shot first as a silent before Haines and Lionel Barrymore were called back to re-do the last two reels with dialogue), his first all talking film was Navy Blues in 1929.

In 1926, Haines met Jimmie Shields, who moved with him to Los Angeles where the two lived as a couple. Seven years later in 1933, he was arrested at a YMCA with a sailor. MGM terminated his contract after he refused to enter into a lavender marriage to hide his sexuality, and after a few gigs with Poverty Row studios he left acting and went into interior design, still living with Shields. In 1936, the couple were dragged out of their home and beaten by a mob, an incident which made the news. They had been accused by a neighbor of "propositioning" his son; Haines had offered the boy six cents to go home and stop bothering his dog. The case was soon dismissed for lack of evidence, and Haines and Shields continued their interior design business. Their clients included Joan Crawford, Carole Lombard, Gloria Swanson, and Jack L. Warner.

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Alla Nazimova was an actress and director who began in theatre, and by the early 1900s was a major star in the Russian Empire where she was born. After touring Europe she moved to New York in 1905, and made her English language debut on Broadway the following year. She entered film in 1916 with the lost War Brides, a filmed version of a short play. Richard Barthelmess had a bit part, and Nazimova is credited with encouraging him to act in movies; his mother is said to have helped her learn English. The following year she joined Metro and created Nazimova Productions. Her films in this period were commercial successes, but her more experimental efforts such as A Doll's House and Salomé were not, and the latter helped bankrupt her production company. By 1925 Nazimova could not find financial support to continue with filmmaking. She went back to a successful career acting on stage. Nazimova made a brief return to movies in the early 1940s; these were her last appearances on film.

Nazimova was married twice to men and was also known for having relationships with women; today she would be classed as bisexual. Like Arzner and Haines, she wasn't out like one would be today but she also did not go to great lenghts to hide her sexuality. Nazimova is also credited with coining the term "sewing circle", which was the phrase used to describe the gay and bisexual women in the film industry during Hollywood's Golden Age. The famous Garden of Allah Hotel had been owned and developed by Nazimova for several years before it was officially opened as the Garden of Alla Hotel in 1927 (the h wasn't added until 1930, when it was renamed after being sold).

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The fifth image is a screenshot from Anders als die andern, or Different From the Others (1919). It's a narrative drama that is widely considered to be the first film in the world to be sympathetic to homosexuality, and starred Conrad Veidt and Fritz Schulz. It was co-written by Magnus Hirschfeld, a physician and sexologist who headed the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute of Sex Research). Hirschfeld had a minor role in the film, which urged compassion for gay people and condemned Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, a provision which criminalized sexual relationships between men.

The films initial release was commercial, but unsurprisingly it was controversial and in response several censorship laws were passed. Very soon after it was permitted only to be shown to the medical community. Prints were later ordered destroyed by the Nazis when they came to power, but luckily the film survives today, albeit in a different version from its first release, and with many missing scenes.

Its surviving footage has been preserved, and it has been restored and released by several distributors, including Harpodeon. Dustin Allgood of Harpodeon is active on this forum (and, I just found out, has a blog where he reviews early silents); some months back, he was kind enough to let us know when his restoration of Different from the Others was temporarily available to watch for free on the Harpodeon website. There's discussion and more information on the film in the thread here.

That was the first time I saw this film, and I'm grateful to Dustin for the opportunity. I heartily recommend Harpodeon's restoration.

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[donnie]

Thanks for all the interesting background information. Though I’d heard these names, most of these I actually knew very little about, with the partial exception of Veidt.

What a shame those Arzner films are lost; they would be interesting to see. Regarding the relative openness of both Arzner and Nazimova (and others), I wonder to what extent outside of Hollywood their sexuality was known, and how they handled the risk that may have entailed—or if they just ignored it.

I wonder if that Haines Alias Jimmy Valentine is extant. That I’d love to see! Off-topic, that reminds me, I’ve got a copy of the 1915 version I’ve never even watched fully. I’ll have to dig that out. I love the O’Henry story, as well. Chilling story about that mob attack.

I’d not heard of the Garden of Allah Hotel. That was quite a renowned place! (And one of my favorite composers, Igor Stravinsky, was a resident there. )

I was also unaware of Dustin’s reviews page! Thanks for mentioning that.

PS, on the banner, I’m having some trouble distinguishing visually between Nararro and Arzner pics. What are the the objects on the left of Arzer? (Staircase railings? And the circular object?)

[Kitty]

That research is staggering! Thank you so much for sharing this info. I think this was a wonderful theme.

[BettyLouSpence]

Regarding the relative openness of both Arzner and Nazimova (and others), I wonder to what extent outside of Hollywood their sexuality was known, and how they handled the risk that may have entailed—or if they just ignored it.

Same here. It seems to me that the boundary was whether it was openly discussed in the media.

I wonder if that Haines Alias Jimmy Valentine is extant. That I’d love to see!

Unfortunately not. The good news is that some of the soundtrack survives on three Vitaphone discs, and they can be heard here on Soundcloud. The first disc for reel 6 is music and sound effects; dialogue starts four minutes into the reel 7 disc. Wiki also claims that a French 9.5mm abridgment survives.

PS, on the banner, I’m having some trouble distinguishing visually between Nararro and Arzner pics. What are the the objects on the left of Arzer? (Staircase railings? And the circular object?)

It's camera equipment. The circular object is the lens.

[donnie]

Excellent choice for this month's banner!

[BettyLouSpence]

I had a feeling you'd love this one! Yes, the banner this month features film pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché. Not only was she the first female director, but she was one of the first to make a narrative film, period. From left to right are scenes from her films interspersed with photos relating to her life and career. First is a still from A Fool and His Money (1912), which may be earliest known film with an all-black cast; next, a photo of Alice behind the camera in 1906; a scene from Starting Something (1911); Bessie Love and Alice on the set of The Great Adventure (1918); and a photograph of Solax Studios under construction in New Jersey, 1912 (spot Alice sitting in the foreground ).

[donnie]

IFirst is a still from A Fool and His Money (1912), which may be earliest known film with an all-black cast.

I've not seen that one—going to remedy that as soon as I finish up this post.

Bessie Love and Alice on the set of The Great Adventure (1918)...

Ahhhh, Bessie. I didn't recognize her.

...spot Alice sitting in the foreground

I registered there was a person there, but didn't think of it's being Alice. Should have been kind of obvious, huh? I wonder what became of the Solax studio.

[BettyLouSpence]

You may have noticed I've completely revamped the banner! To help break in the new design, I've done a repeat of the flapper banner from August 2021. From left to right: Olive Borden, Colleen Moore, Clara Bow, Phyllis Haver.