Harry Langdon, Heart Trouble in Australia #1 -- August 1, 2013

I had a request for anything about Harry Langdon's last silent feature under his lucrative First National contract.  Heart Trouble flopped at the box office and we may never know if it was any good because it is considered lost.  I remembered seeing several items in digitized Australian newspapers.  Here are some of the results.  Click on each image to see a larger version.  I found the newspapers using the Trove Project, which is digitizing more papers all the time.  I split this post into two parts.  

Part One
Part Two
A review from the December, 1928 Motion Picture Magazine 


The earliest reference to Heart Trouble I found was the ad above in the 17-November-1928 Canberra Times.  "What need is an M.D. when you L.T."  L.T.?  Coming soon was a film of the 26-July-1928 heavyweight championship fight between Gene Tunney and challenger Tommy Gun Heeney, a New Zealander.  Heeney put up a good fight, but Tunney won by a TKO in the 11th.  Second feature Almost Human is a dog story.  The IMDB says Heart Trouble was released in the US on 01-October-1928, so it did not take long to reach the capital of Australia.

An article in the 30-November-1928 Perth Daily News gives more detail about the film's plot than I have seen before.  Harry belongs to a family of Germans who emigrated to America.  When America enters the war, he has to enlist, but with which country?  The article reads like a press release.  This shows that the movie had quickly traveled to the remote west coast. 

A brief item in the 01-December-1928 West Australian, from Perth, says that Heart Trouble will open at the Grand Theatre with Master of the World, which I assume is based on the Jules Verne story.  I can't find it in the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

 

An ad from the same issue uses a typographical style that seems to have been common in Australian newspapers.  Items like this that repeat the name of the artist and the movie many times turn up really well in searches.  Harry "bombards the blues with bombs of merriment."  

An item from the 03-December-1928 Sydney Morning Herald New Films column is not completely positive about the movie. It says  Harry's whimsicality is "positively irritating."  "At times the picture is genuinely amusing; more often than not, however, it is inordinately dull."  The reviewer gives an Australian point of view: "American audiences may be elated to see a band of American recruits, with bugles playing, drums thumping, and flags flying, on the march in 1917, three years after the Allies had entered the Great War; but the appeal to the other countries involved may not be so pronounced." 

An ad in the 04-December-1928 Perth Daily News show Heart Trouble at the top of the bill.  

 

An ad in the 19-January-1929 Queensland Figaro shows that by the next month, Heart Trouble was on the bottom of a bill with Two Lovers, a Ronald Colman/Vilma Banky silent, and it was only there for the first half of the main feature's six-day run. The other second feature, Almost Human, was on the bottom of the bill with Heart Trouble in Canberra in November. 

This ad in the 26-March-1929 Rockhampton, Queensland Morning Bulletin, has Heart Trouble as second feature to DW Griffith's remake of his own The Battle of the Sexes. I like the ad for the main feature.  Sorry the image got split. 

This ad in the 29-March-1929 Sunshine Advocate has Heart Trouble as second feature to a William Haines silent.

I will stop here for now.  In the next installment we will see talkies arrive in Australia and Heart Trouble be shown as late as 1931. 

Clara Bow #6 -- July 31, 2013

A 1924 photo of Clara.  From the November 1930 New Movie. 

Speedway Films Superb -- July 30, 2013

From the 10-July-1915 Motography.  

Speedway Films Superb

As announced exclusively in the last issue of MOTOGRAPHY, the pictures taken at the Chicago Speedway on Saturday, June 26, for President Aaron M Gollos of the Photoplay Releasing Corporation by the Advance Motion Picture Company, under the personal direction of George Cox, one of Chicago's foremost producers, were shown the same evening at the Majestic theater, Chicago, creating intense enthusiasm.

On Monday, June 28, these same pictures were featured at the Orpheum theater in Chicago, as well as at the Colonial, another of the Jones, Linick and Schaefer houses, and it said were declared by the management of the theater to be the finest films depicting an automobile race that have ever been shown in the house.  Many hundreds of people were turned away early this week and tremendous bookings are being made on these Speedway pictures, which are exceptionally clear and well photographed.

Director Cox is deserving of the highest praise for the splendid results he has obtained, since the scenes showing the great crowds in the grandstands, the thousands of autos parked just outside the Speedway track, close-up views of the drivers and their mechanicians in their racing cars, and the race itself, in which the camera follows the cars all the way around the track and finishes with a close-up view of Resta, the winner, are undoubtedly intensely interesting to any lover of automobile racing and tremendously thrilling, not alone to those who saw the race, but the thousands who were unable to themselves visit the big bowl.  Without a doubt the picture will prove a tremendous drawing card in whatever theaters it is booked and will interest the public for weeks, if not months, to come. 

Henry Ford 150 -- July 30, 2013

I know Henry Ford was a bad guy in his anti-Semitic views and the way he treated his poor son, but I have always admired his engineering ideas. One that he held from his very first car, the quadricycle, was that autos should be light but strong. The Model T was an excellent example of this philosophy.  Many of my relatives learned to drive on Model Ts.

Yacht Race -- July 29, 2013

From the 02-July-1895 San Francisco Call. William A Coulter did many maritime drawings for the newspaper. Click on the image for a larger view. 

With the America's Cup and preliminary races coming to San Francisco Bay this summer, I thought I would post pictures of some racing yachts. 

TO SAIL TO SANTA CRUZ. 

The Yachts of the Pacific Club All Ready for the Ocean Race. 

A GREAT UP-RIVER CRUISE. 

Corinthians and San Franclscos Out for Fun — The Perpetual Challenge Cup.

The Pacific Yacht Club will start for Santa Cruz this morning for a holiday cruise and incidentally a race down to the city by the sea. Only five craft will start, the original programme having been disturbed from various causes. Ten vessels entered for the race, and the first to withdraw was the schooner Lily L. The reason for her withdrawal was that the heel of her bowsprit proved to be too weak for the trip, and Donald Host, her owner, is putting in a new stick. Mr. Ross confidently hoped to have the repairs made in time, but yesterday he gave the job up as a hopeless task and concluded to stay home.

Another vessel which had entered the list was the Rover, but she left for Santa Cruz on Sunday and will remain there to participate in the festivities of the fleet.

Yesterday afternoon the Annie, flagship of the Pacifics, Commodore Caduc, the Lurline, ex-Commodore Spreckels, the pilot-boat Gracie S, Captain McCullough, the Idler, Captain I. C. Wilson, and the Whirlwind, Admiral yon Schmidt, came to anchor off the seawall, between Powell street and Meiggs wharf, with everything in readiness for a race down the coast.  All hands went on board the yachts last night, and this morning, some time between 6 and 7 o'clock, the fleet will be towed to sea. It was intended to make a beat of it down the bay, but the programme was changed, as it was feared that the trip might not be made in a day. The yachts will remain at Santa Cruz until the Fourth, when the start will be made for San Francisco.

Every club on the bay will be represented under sail over the holidays, and the boats will be out from to-morrow afternoon until Sunday next The Corinthians and San Franciscos will make the up-river cruise, most of the yachts leaving Tiburon and Sausalito on Wednesday afternoon. Three of the Corinthian boats are already in the river, having left on Saturday afternoon. They are the Speedwell, Donohoe's new boat, which captured the Corinthian prize this year, in command of Ed Howard; the Belle, John and Joe O'Brien and the Harpoon, Captain Cook. To-morrow afternoon the following yachts will leave the Corinthian Clubhouse for the river: The Truant, Commodore Pew's flagship; Freda, Secret, Mignon, Dawn and Morrow, and Westerfield's new craft Aeolus, built this year by Frank Stone. The fleet will sail to Martinez and there spend the night.  Next day the yachts will go to Suisun, where they will meet the Speedwell, Harpoon and the Belle, and there spend the night. On Friday the entire fleet will come back to Benicia, and on Saturday leave for Vallejo. Sunday the fleet will race from Mare Island to Tiburon.

The San Francisco Yacht Club will also make the up-river cruise, leaving Sausalito on Wednesday afternoon. The first leg will be to Mare Island, where the night will be spent, and on the following day a run will be made to Haggin's ranch just this side of Suisun, where the night of the Fourth will be celebrated. On Saturday the fleet will rendezvous at Martinez and on Sunday the return home will be made, the yachts coming down the bay in company with the Corinthians.

The perpetual challenge cup to be raced for by all legitimate yacht clubs on the coast from San Diego to Puget Sound was placed on exhibition at the Merchants' Exchange yesterday. It will remain there for a week and on next Wednesday at noon it will be presented to the Encinal Yacht Club, which will strive to hold it against all comers. The presentation speech will be made by Uncle George Bromley and it is expected that all the prominent yachtsmen in the bay will be present.

The California and Encinal Yacht clubs have no regular programmes for the observance of the holidays, and the yachts will sail about the bay at their owners' sweet will.

Harry Langdon Heart Trouble -- July 28, 2013

I had a request for anything about Harry Langdon's last silent feature under his lucrative First National contract.  Heart Trouble flopped at the box office and we may never know if it was any good because it is considered lost.

This review, from the December, 1928 Motion Picture Magazine, is somewhat ambivalent about the movie ("What's the use of reviewing a Harry Langdon picture?"), praising it with faint damns or the other way around.

It may be ungentlemanly of me to say it, but that is not a flattering photo of leading lady Doris Dawson.

Be sure to click on the image to see a larger version.  

Curating the Bay -- July 27, 2013

We took a drive downtown to see what the traffic would be like.  It was heavy getting off the 280 extension at Sixth Street.  Fifth and Mission was more full than usual.  We had lunch across the street at Super Duper Burger.  My wife enjoyed watching lines of cars trying to get into the Jukebox Marriott.  Since my office moved, I don't keep track of the conventions that come to town.

We went to the California Historical Society to see Curating the Bay: Crowdsourcing a New Environmental History. They are experimenting with crowd sourcing at the site YearoftheBay.  There was a nice display of raw material from their collections; many items had never before been shown.  I liked the Pacific Mail and Pacific Coast Steamship Company items.