The Year of the Rat -- January 25, 2020

Film Daily Yearbook, 1929

In honor of the beginning of Chinese New Year, the Year of the Rat, here is the most famous rodent in cinema, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse.  Mickey made his debut in 1928.

Happy Easter #6 -- March 31, 2013

Happy Easter, everyone. Here is a bunny for Easter. Disney lost control of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 1928 and didn't get him back until 2006. The image is from the 07-March-1928 Film Daily.

Last night we went to Easter Vigil at Good Shepherd.  It was very dark when they turned off the lights.   Two adults got baptized and received first communion.  Three also got confirmed.  I organized the collection. 

Hitchcock -- Club: Royal Auto -- May 17, 2012

This post is part of For the Love of Hitchcock, The Film Preservation Blogathon, hosted again this year by Ferdy on Films (http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/ -- Sunday, Monday) and The Self-Styled Siren (http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/ -- Tuesday, Wednesday), along with Rod of This Island Rod (http://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/ Thursday, Friday). 

I hope to contribute these articles this week:
Monday -- Dial HOllywood 9-2411 for Hitchcock
Tuesday -- Hitchcock -- Berdarold, Piccy, London
Wednesday -- Alfred Hitchcock, SRO, RKO, UA, Univ
Thursday -- Hitchcock -- Club: Royal Auto
Friday -- Hitchcock -- He Has Had a Non-Stop Career


Click on images to see larger versions.  The image at the top of the page is a full-page ad from The 1963 Film Daily Year Book of Motion Pictures.


Alfred Hitchcock was a rare creative artist in the movie business, but he had to function within the studio system for most of his career.  I wanted to document the way he fit in.   For this installment of the blogathon, I went through several yearbooks from the 1920s and 1930s and dug up some interesting references to Hitchcock. 



Many industries publish annual books which describe the people who work in them and what they have accomplished.  In the film industry, this was a useful way to determine whether someone who said he had worked for DW Griffth or CB DeMille really had.   Some of these yearbooks and many other valuable resources are available in the Media History Digital Library (http://mediahistoryproject.org/).

 
The Film Daily, "The Daily Newspaper of Motion Pictures,"  a major source of news for the film industry, also published a yearbook starting around 1918. 

The 1927 edition of the Film Daily Yearbook lists Hitchcock's first two directorial credits, The Pleasure Garden and the Mountain Eagle. 

The 1927 edition also lists Hitchcock's writing credit on the Graham Cutts movie Woman to Woman.

I felt compelled to include this wonderful full-page ad for Buster Keaton.

The 1929 Motion Picture Almanac was published by The Exhibitors Herald-World.

Hitchcock's Easy Virtue is listed right after C B De Mille's Dynamite.  

Hitchcock's The Ring is listed with a couple of movies I have never heard of. 

Motion Picture News was a trade paper that merged with The Exhibitors Herald-World to form The Motion Picture Herald in 1930.  As described above in the 1929 edition, the Motion Picture News Blue Book was a collection of biographical information about people in the industry.  This edition also included some interesting ads.

Hitchcock's entry leaves out his earliest movies.
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John Ford, the smiling Irishman.

Harold Lloyd looks as if he is singing in this ad for his second talkie, Feet First.

Jean Hersholt's ad has the most interesting portrait.  I cannot make out the artist's signature.  "Appointed by His Majesty King of Denmark to head Danish constellation of athletes competing in Olympic Games to be held in Los Angeles in 1932."

The ad for Mickey Mouse Sound Cartoons mentions that Disney was still using the Powers Cinephone system.  Someone should write a book about Pat Powers. 

Lloyd Hamilton was appearing in sound comedies for Educational.

Howard Hughes was promoting Hell's Angels.

Harry Langdon was working for Hal Roach.

The Film Daily Product Guide and Directors' Annual was a mid-year supplement to the Film Daily Yearbook.   

Hitchcock's biographical entry has his year of birth wrong.  It should be 1899.

The only Hitchcock production listed is The Woman Alone.  This was based on Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and released in Britain as Sabotage.  The Woman Alone was the title for it's initial release in the US.  It was reissued in the US as I Married a Murderer.  Hitchcock complicated matters further by releasing a movie called The Secret Agent, which was based on a story by W Somerset Maugham.

As a railfan, I had to include this ad for the Fitzpatrick Traveltalks, which turn up frequently on TCM.  It features a Southern Pacific GS (Golden State) 4-8-4, in Coast Daylight colors, which is posting next to Central Pacific locomotive 1, the C P Huntington, a unique 1863 4-2-0T which is preserved at the California State Railroad Museum (http://www.csrmf.org/).

 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was stolen from Walt Disney.  The Disney corporation recently got him back.

Sphinx Films Corporation produced Yiddish-language movies, including the famous "Yiddle With His Fiddle," starring Molly Picon.

The 1937-1938 edition of the International Motion Picture Almanac was edited by Terry Ramsaye, who had published A Million And One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1925, a pioneering book about cinema.

Cameraman John Cox had worked on five Hitchcock movies, including The Ring and Blackmail.

 Edgar Clarence was "(i)n charge of architectural decor" for Blackmail.

 Graham Cutts is listed as an "independent director."  The entry mentions The White Shadow. 

 Hitchcock's entry has the wrong birth year.  Waltzes from Vienna and Strauss' Great Waltz are UK and US release titles for the same movie. 

F P Tennyson was assistant director on several Hitchcock movies at Gaumont-British.

A list og Gaumont-British releases includes The Woman Alone and "Alfred Hitchcock Production (Untitled)."  The latter could have been The Girl Was Young/Young and Innocent or The Lady Vanishes.  King Solomon's Mines with Paul Robeson and Dr Syn with George Arliss are the only other ones I have heard of.

 Hitchcock had a small ad in this edition.  I like the design.

I guess Hidden Power was yet another potential title for Sabotage/The Woman Alone/I Married a Murderer. 

A list of literary properties give the film's release title in the UK, Sabotage. 

Another item on the list is that "Untitled Original."

Several big studios had multi-page ads that ran on every odd-numbered page over a large span.  I was happy to see entertainer Bill Robinson featured in 20 Century-Fox's ad.

Laurel and Hardy fans will recognize Boris Morros as producer of The Flying Deuces. 

Actor Paul Muni shared a page of the Warner Brothers ad with Porky Pig.

The Disney ad features the boss along with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

I like the picture of western star Buck Jones.

Edward Everett Horton's ad is elegant.

An ad for Alliance Films mentions two directed by Graham Cutts, Aren't Men Beasts?  and Radio Review of  1937. 

Thank you to Ferdy on Films (http://www.ferdyonfilms.com/), The Self-Styled Siren (http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/) and This Island Rod (http://thisislandrod.blogspot.com/) for organizing this blogathon. I'm having fun and learning. 

Please consider donating to the National Film Preservation Foundation. For the Love of Film III is raising money to place The White Shadow, a 1923 Graham Cutts movie on which Alfred Hitchcock served as assistant director, on the internet for free viewing.

The Great Locomotive Chase 150 - April 12, 2012

On 12-April-1862 a group of out-of-uniform Union Soldiers led by civilian scout James Andrews, seized a train of the Western and Atlantic Railroad, which connected Atlanta and Chattanooga.  They planned to tear up the railroad, upsetting Confederate communications and transportation in an important theater of the war.

Conductor William Fuller, not about to stand for the theft of his train, pursued it on foot with a group of men.  When they found a handcar, they used that.  Eventually, they encountered an elderly switching locomotive, the Yonah, which they rode until they found a more modern locomotive, the Texas.  Using these different modes, the pursuers kept enough pressure on the raiders that were not able to inflict much damage, and were not able to take on more wood for fuel.

About 20 miles from Chattanooga, with the General out of fuel, the raiders left their train and scattered.  All were captured and tried as spies.  Eight men, including Anderson, were hanged.  Several received the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Both the General and the Texas still exist. The General is preserved in Kennesaw, Georgia and the Texas in Atlanta.

The story became the basis of two movies, one by Buster Keaton and one by Walt Disney.  I like Keaton's movie better.

Gung Hay Fat Choy #4 -- February 3, 2011

Happy Lunar New Year. This is the year of the rabbit.

The image is from Walt Disney's 1927 Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon "Trolley Troubles." Oswald's appearance changed over the years. Disney lost control of the character the next year and didn't get him back until 2006. This cartoon, the first Oswald to be released, includes some wonderful Ub Iwerks travelling shots from the point of view of the trolley as it barrels along the tracks.

Book: Walt Disney/The Triumph of the American Imagination - July 22, 2007

I just finished reading Neal Gabler's Walt Disney/The Triumph of the American Imagination. This book takes the view that Walt Disney's work, from the animated cartoons through Disneyland, to Epcot, all stemmed from a desire to create a controlled and ordered world through his imagination.

Gabler talks about Disney's early life, and explores some of the embellishments that Walt added over the years. Gabler gives a good account of Walt's entry into animation and the ways in which Disney changed animation from a haphazard business to an art. More than other biographers, Gabler then examines the way in which Walt became disillusioned with animation after the strike and the war.

I enjoyed the way Gabler talked about Walt's obsession with his garden railroad, and then with Disneyland. I did notice a factual error about the source of the first two Disneyland locomotives, but that was the only error I could detect in the whole book.

Gabler addresses the issue of Disney's alleged anti-Semetism and refutes it. Disney associated with anti-Semites, but was not one himself.

The book is worth reading.