DVD: The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, Volume 2 -- October 11, 2015

Moving Picture World, 11-September-1915

In 2014, famous motion picture accompanist Ben Model released The Mishaps of Musty Suffer, a DVD which presented 11 of the 30 one-reelers starring Harry Watson, Jr as Musty Suffer.  All but 5 of the 30 survive.  The Library of Congress acquired the films in 1947 and preserved them. I wrote about the first DVD here:
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2014/08/dvd-mishaps-of-musty-suffer-august-1.html


Harry Watson, Jr and his partner George Bickel started working together in circuses, including Ringling Brothers and Forepaugh-Sells Brothers.  They moved on to vaudeville and then early editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. 

Producer George Kleine made two features with Bickel and Watson in 1915.  These count as very early slapstick features.  A three-reel re-release version of The Fixer is one of the extras on the DVD.  The pacing was uneven, but I enjoyed it.  I enjoyed seeing Watson in (mostly) civilian clothes.  One of the Mexican generals was played by Snitz Edwards. 

Later in 1915, Kleine produced Keep Moving, a picaresque fantasy feature starring Harry Watson, Jr as Musty Suffer.  Kleine did not release the feature.  Instead, he recut it into a series of one-reelers.  He must have added more material, because the first group included ten films.  Two more groups of ten films each followed.  The last group was released by Essanay, and half of those were produced by that company.  Those are the films that are lost. 

Most of the films open with a title that says "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer in Numerous Whirls."

The first Whirl on this set is "Out of Order" from 1916.  It includes the Fairy Tramp and Musty's magic horseshoe. Musty winds up working in the Busy Bee Amusement Arcade, which includes a dime museum, a shooting gallery a movie theater with escalator, a shoe shine stand, an automat restaurant, a skating rink, a bowling alley and a dance hall.  Musty is called up to work in the ticket booth, the shooting gallery, the shoe shine stand, the movie theater and the museum.  This gives many possibilities for gags.  He also serves as a spieler, and follows his spiel with a wonderful dance.

In "Showing Some Speed," Musty plays the same messenger boy he played in "Blow Your Horn,"with the same abusive boss.

"Strictly Private" is the third Whirl on the set.  "Musty hunts wild horses in the bad land of New Jersey."  He finds a spirited steed, played by two guys in a horse costume.  Musty calls upon the Fairy Tramp for a cabbie's suit and a carriage.  The poor horse has a hard time pulling the carriage.

"Musty's Vacation," the last Whirl on the set, may have been the last one produced.  It has the Essanay Indian logo at the end.  Musty finds a lunch ticket and gets plastic surgery in an attempt to look like the picture on the cover.

The other extra on the set is "The Actor's Fund Field Day," a 1910 Vitagraph short showing fund raising activities at the Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants.  Bickel and Watson perform their band routine.

Watson was a great clown.  Model's music enhances each item.  I look forward to finding and reading Steve Massa's notes on the movies.

Did I make you anxious to buy it?  Go here:
http://amzn.com/B00W67RNJQ

Moving Picture World, 25-September-1915

Mighty Like a Moose -- September 2, 2014

This item, from the 12-July-1926 Film Daily, is an ad for "Mighty Like a Moose," a two reel Hal Roach comedy, distributed by Pathé, starring Charley Chase and Vivien Oakland as an ugly couple who each decide to have plastic surgery to surprise the other.  It is a funny one. 

A note at the bottom says that this ad is a cornerblock provided to theaters to use in newspaper advertising.

DVD: The Mishaps of Musty Suffer -- August 1, 2014

Moving Picture World, April 8, 1916

They're at it again.  Famous motion picture accompanist Ben Model has released two volumes in the DVD series Accidentally Preserved, and they were accompanied by a book by Steve Massa:
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2014/01/dvd-accidentally-preserved-january-27.html
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2014/03/dvd-accidentally-preserved-volume-2.html

Both were funded through Kickstarter. 

Model's latest project, also accompanied by a book by Massa, presents 11 of the 30 one-reelers starring Harry Watson, Jr as Musty Suffer.  All but 5 of the 30 survive because producer George Kleine was careful to preserve his work and release it to the educational market. 

Harry Watson, Jr and his partner George Bickel started working together in circuses, including Ringling Brothers and Forepaugh-Sells Brothers.  They moved on to vaudeville and then early editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. 

Producer George Kleine made two features with Bickel and Watson in 1915.  These count as very early slapstick features.  Later in 1915, Kleine produced Keep Moving, a picaresque fantasy feature starring Harry Watson, Jr as Musty Suffer.  Kleine did not release the feature.  Instead, he recut it into a series of one-reelers.  He must have added more material, because the first group included ten films.  Two more groups of ten films each followed.  The last group was released by Essanay, and half of those were produced by that company.  Those are the films that are lost. 

Most of the films open with a title that says "The Mishaps of Musty Suffer in Numerous Whirls." 

The quality of the images is generally excellent, with lots of sharp detail. 

The first film in the set, "Going Up!," was the fourth Whirl in the first series and definitely one of the ones taken from the feature.  It includes the Fairy Tramp and Musty's magic horseshoe.  I was stunned by the quality of the image in the opening, where Musty drains some gasoline from a car and then drinks, and then hops a ride on the luggage rack of another car. 

Many films in the series included fantasy elements, like the Fairy Tramp, quick changes done with stop motion, and stop motion animation of objects. 

The next film in the set, "The Lightning Bell-Hop," was Whirl #6 in the first series.  It includes fantastic gags such as a working gaslight drawn in chalk, and a very skinny room with very skinny furniture for a very skinny customer. 

The third film in the set, "Just Imagination," was Whirl #8 in the first series.  The Fairy Tramp and the magic horseshoe appear again.  The Fairy Tramp gets Musty a job in a medical study, which turns out to be a series of cruel, but mostly funny, pranks. 

"Blow Your Horn" was the first Whirl in the second series of ten films.  Musty becomes a bicycle messenger and has a series of adventures.  The best part is when he works with two life-sized dummies who move in unison with him. 

"While You Wait" was the third Whirl in the second series.  Musty gets a series of jobs from an employment agency, but they are all in the same house at the same time.  He is a maid, a butler and a gardener. 

"Local Showers" is the fourth Whirl in the second series.  Musty has a toothache and goes to a nightmarish dental office. 

"Outs And Ins" is the seventh Whirl in the second series.  Musty is magically transformed into a worker in an automat restaurant.  When he finds people trying to cheat, he deals with them harshly.  There are some interesting sanitary practices, like putting dirty plates back on the shelf. 

The last complete movie in the set, "Spliced and Iced," is the only representative of the third series, being the seventh member.  A tall Cupid, possibly played by the actor who was the Fairy Tramp, shoots Musty with a huge arrow.  A mysterious man called "Mister Sherman" keeps giving Musty advice about love and marriage.  I had to run the movie back to see if I had missed his introduction, but he just popped up.  Musty marries a woman who may have been played by a fat, ugly man and it is not a happy match.  At the end, Musty declares "Sherman was right" and jumps off a cliff.  He doesn't jump up at the bottom.  The shot is followed by a shot of an American flag.  I had to think about it, but "Sherman was right" is a phrase that comes up at times, generally agreeing with General William Tecumseh Sherman's "War is Hell." 

Extras include a boxing scene from "Hold Fast," the third Whirl of the first series.  This was a famous Bickel and Watson routine.  There is also a newsreel showing Watson visiting Chicago for an exhibitors' convention, and a gallery of stills. 

Watson was a great clown, with a very expressive face.  I enjoyed the set. 

Ben Model's music enhanced every item.   Steve Massa's book filled in many of the details I would not have known about.  Thanks to both of them and everyone who contributed to the production. 

Daily Variety, 02-June-1916.

Snub Pollard -- July 13, 2014

Snub Pollard was born in Australia.  He supported Harold Lloyd in most of his early movies.  Later, producer Hal Roach gave Pollard his own series, where he frequently performed with Marie Mosquini. 

A friend had a Super-8 copy of "It's a Gift," one of Pollard's most popular shorts. 

From the October, 1921 Cine-Mundial. 

Book: Lame Brains & Lunatics -- April 10, 2014

I finally finished reading Steve Massa's excellent book Lame Brains & Lunatics/The Good, the Bad and the Forgotten of Silent Comedy. 

I was happy to learn from his introduction that his first film-related magazine was Forrest Ackerman's Famous Monsters of Filmland.  I saved my quarters to buy that magazine.  He learned a lot from Daniel Blum's A Pictorial History of the Silent Screen.  I enjoyed that one, too, frequently taking it out from the Richmond Branch Library.  I was sad that some pages and some individual photos had been cut out. 

Steve starts his book with a chapter on comedy teams of the Teens.  He talks about some that I knew, like the Snakeville comedies of Essanay and John Bunny and Flora Finch at Vitagraph, and some that I did not know, like Heinie and Louie and Lyons and Moran.  He talks about Montgomery and Rock.  I'm sorry to see that most (all?) of their movies are lost.  I remember reading a book which featured a long interview with Joe Rock. 

A short chapter on Mack Sennett comes before a long one on Roscoe Arbuckle.  I liked the description of Arbuckle's skill as a director.  Massa has dug up information I didn't know about Billie Ritchie, who claimed that Chaplin was imitating him.  Ritchie "deserves his own place in silent comedy history for presenting possibly the most low-down, despicable, and unlikeable character ever seen on the screen." 

Alice Howell gets a chapter of her own.  Two little-known Vitagraph series, Josie and the Jarr family have a chapter.  Then Gale Henry has one. 

Moving Picture World, October 14, 1916

To me the most interesting chapter was the one about Marcel Perez, who had a significant career in both French and American comedies.  Perez went by many names and his characters went by many names, including Tweedledum, Dweedledum and Tweedie.  I don't remember reading about him before I read Steve Massa's book.  "Tweedy's Tangled Tale" is a good title for the chapter. 

Charles Parrott, Charley Chase, gets a well-deserved chapter, which traces the influences his early directing and writing had on his later star vehicles. 

The chapter on Fay Tincher shows how, unlike many comedians who strove to develop a single, consistent character, that Tincher had three distinct characters. 

The chapter on Al St John answered the question of how Al was related to Roscoe Arbuckle.  Al's mother was Roscoe's sister.  It also gave me a better appreciation of the way that Al moved away from the psycho-rube-hillbilly he played at Keystone and Comique and became a more well-rounded performer in the 1920s. 

The chapter on Marie Dressler shows how her career rocketed up and down in the Teens and Twenties. 

The Max Linder chapter ends with a portrait of Max that shows the effects of his terrible problems. 

The chapter on comedy teams of the Twenties, like the chapter on the Teens, includes teams I know about, like the Hallroom Boys and Adams and Conley, and teams that I didn't know like Virginia Vance and Cliff Bowes and Al Cooke and Kit Guard.  I learned about Cooke and Guard in this book and then got to see them soon after in the second Accidentally Preserved DVD (http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2014/03/dvd-accidentally-preserved-volume-2.html). 

"Keaton and the Silent Comedy Grapevine" talks about Buster Keaton's influence and imitators.   Massa talks about how Larry Semon and Charley Bowers shared Buster's tendency towards surrealism. 

I enjoyed the chapter on cross-eyed George Rowe.  Massa quotes Sam Gill on his efforts to track Rowe down after someone mentioned that he had bumped into him on Hollywood Boulevard in 1966.  Massa tried to find death information about Rowe, but the commonness of the name frustrated his efforts. 

 Film Daily, 16-September-1926

I also enjoyed the chapter on Our Gang/Little Rascals and their imitators. 

Massa talks about Stan Laurel and Harry Langdon, and how Stan learned from Harry, in a two-page chapter. 

The text concludes with chapters on Max Davidson and WC Fields. 

A long appendix has selected filmographies for most of the comedians discussed in the book. 

Run out and buy a copy of Lame Brains & Lunatics.  Don't fall into a mud pit or slip on a banana peel. 

A Keystone Every Monday -- March 25, 2014

Last year we marked the 100th anniversary of the Keystone company.  Here is an ad for Keystone's first release, a split reel of "The Water Nymph" and "Cohen Collects a Debt," from the 28-September-1912 Moving Picture World.  Most 1912 film ads did not name the performers, but this one talks about "Four Famous Comedians," Mack Sennett, Mabel Normand, Fred Mace and Ford Sterling. I have seen "The Water Nymph" and it is a good one.  That's a nice photo of Mabel.

Welcome to the Big V Riot Squad -- January 1, 2014

What is the Big V Riot Squad?  Well, back about 100 years ago, the Vitagraph Company was one of the major film producers in the United States.  In the early teens, the Vitagraph was known for refined comedies featuring John Bunny, Flora Finch, Mr and Mrs Sidney Drew and others.  Keystone started producing less-refined comedies in 1912 and John Bunny died in 1915.  The Vitagraph moved away from drawing-room comedy and towards slapstick. 

Featured in some of their short comedies was a gang of roughneck comedians who were billed as the Big V Riot Squad.  You'll see them mentioned above, in an ad from the Bourbon News of 22-February-1918, in "Sleuths and Surprises."  The Vitagraph liked alliterative titles for its comedies.  Among the members of the squad was Joe Rock, an acrobatic comedian who made many films teamed with Earl Montgomery.  Rock later became a producer.  He produced "Lucky Dog," the first film which featured both Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. 

I have been working on a blog called The Pneumatic Rolling Sphere Carrier Delusion (http://cablecarguy.blogspot.com/) for about six years now.  I have used it to explore many different areas that interest me: San Francisco history, baseball, railroads, and many other things.  One of my strongest interests has always been in movies and pre-cinema moving picture devices.  I will probably branch off into the stage, early radio and television now and then, but I will mainly concentrate on movies.  I am particularly fond of silent movies and silent comedy. 

I think the time has come to split my movie interests off into another blog, so here we are.  Please find a seat and the show will begin shortly.  Ladies will kindly remove their hats.