Tonight was the sixth and final screening of this year's Last Remaining Seats series from the L.A. Conservancy: Silent Comedy Classics.
Sponsored by Hugh Hefner.
Sorry. Had to give that line its own little paragraph. Each of these screenings has had different sponsors, and they saved Hef for last. Although I didn't see him, apparently he was out in the audience somewhere 'cause Conservancy head Linda Dishman gave him a shout-out.
Wait a minute. What happened to the fifth screening? If you've been keeping up, you'll've read about four screenings thus far: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Mildred Pierce, Goldfinger, and Young Frankenstein. Last Wednesday they screened a Spanish comedy from 1950 called El Rey del Barrio. Unfortunately I was so God damned sick from this Godzilla cold I caught in Reno that I simply wasn't up to going. Hopping on that crowded subway, going all the way downtown, sitting in a theater with 2,000 other people....I would've been misery on two legs. I'm still not a hundred percent just exactly, but I did go to the doctor's this morning to score some antibiotics. They're already making a difference. That Dr. Schneider, I tell ya. A friggin' miracle worker!
Anyway, back to tonight. So tonight's program was called Silent Comedy Classics. Yes, Classics plural. They had three lined up, two half-hour shorts, and then an hour-long feature. First you had Charlie Chaplin in Pay Day (1922), followed by Harold Lloyd in Get Out and Get Under (1920), and finally Buster Keaton in The Navigator (1924). The venue was the Orpheum, where they had Goldfinger three weeks ago. If you read that post, you'll remember that this is the venue with that huge ivory organ, the Mighty Wurlitzer, up in front of the stage where that feisty old cat Bob Mitchell was belting out the tunes before the show.
Tonight the organ wasn't just used for pre-show tunes, but for the three films' soundtracks. 'Member, these are silent films. Back in the day when silents were the thing, when they were simply referred to as the pictures because sound hadn't come along yet to create the whole silent distinction, many theaters typically had an organist up front or in the back to play a soundtrack composed specifically for whatever film was showing. As part of their effort to evoke the authentic experience, the fine folks at the Conservancy brought in an organist a bit younger than Bob Mitchell, someone who was more nimble and able to play the sucker for two plus hours solid. Chap's name was Israel, Robert Israel. So tonight Rob was playing the ivories before the show, but then he stayed there during the show to play the soundtracks. During the intermission between the two shorts and The Navigator, Rob actually took the time to explain to us that the organ wasn't as simple as it looked. It wasn't just a matter of taking enough piano lessons until you got all the keys straight, nor was it simply a matter of timing the playing with all the tomfoolery happening on the screen. Apparently this thing has quite the number of switches and buttons. For instance, the same key could play several different notes depending on which switches were in which positions. Mind you, this thing had two or three rows of keys to deal with. If you were standing on the other side of this thing from Rob, you'd barely be able to see him 'cause of how buried in this thing he was. There are so many rows of keys, knobs, and switches the poor sucker's gotta negotiate to get this thing to play what he wants to play. All that goes without mentioning the blasted pedals. During his spiel, Rob talked kinda fast and did a whole slew of demonstrations and whatnot. The man obviously knows his way around the Mighty Wurlitzer. I wonder how one learns that kind of thing. You've gotta figure this is a highly specialized career. And actually, if you look up Mr. Israel on IMDb, you'll see he's got quite the CV, which includes a ton of credits for updating the soundtracks to flicks from the silent era. He also did the music for an episode of 21 Jump Street for Pete's sake. Hey, if it pays the bills...
Before the show started, Linda thanked everyone for supporting the Last Remaining Seats program this year. 'Cause, ya know, every penny spent on these movie tickets goes toward the Conservancy's fund, which in turn goes toward helping to preserve and restore all these awesome old buildings in L.A. County. That's why I'm not exactly broken up over the twelve bucks I lost on El Rey del Barrio. It's for a great cause.
And then Linda brought out this guy called Markham, Steve Markham. Dude's in his eighties, but he was so together and with it that he could've easily passed for sixtysomething. Steve took the mic and had the stage to himself for a while. It wasn't the most stimulating lecture of all time, and yet at the same time it was kind of fascinating. Steve's forte, right? Is curtains. The spry old guy's all about the stage curtains. And so he took us through his personal history, how he sort of fell into the theater business as a youngster, and then came back to it in his twenties after WWII. He was telling us about how a lot of the material he found for his curtains came from discarded material in trash bins and whatnot. The curtain that the two thousand people at the Orpheum tonight had been looking at ever since we took our seats was one of the curtains that Steve made. Then that went up, and we got to look at another curtain, which Steve would talk about. This went on for about seven curtains. Perhaps the most fascinating anecdote had to do with the fourth or fifth curtain, which he said had been laying in a corner of the warehouse he used to work at for something like a decade. And then finally he got curious about that pile of cloth. He unfolded it, saw it would make an awesome curtain, and then set about restoring it. And it took him forever to restore. This particular curtain had sort of a tan color with various characters sown onto it, wearing garb that would've been more in style in a flick like Gone with the Wind. The characters looked kind of faded. In fact, had Steve not said anything, I would've guessed the curtain was suffering enough wear and tear to warrant restoration. But the way it was now was "brand new" relative to the state it was in when Steve pulled it out of the trash. Steve's done curtain work for a bunch of theaters in L.A., including the Orpheum back when it was still a vaudeville venue. This theater, in fact, was the fourth and last theater built as part of the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.
The only gripe I have about the pre-show entertainment is this weirdo named Maxwell DeMille. I don't know what his real name is. He's an actor who's one of many actors over the years to have played this fictional entertainer. He wore a 1920s-style suit and talked in that rapid-fire vaudevillian (vaude-villain?) kind of style. He was supposed to be funny. Perhaps part of the reason I never came close to laughing was 'cause my butt's being handed to me by the worst cold ever. But even if I was healthy, this guy still would've been annoying. He did all this banter with Linda, Steve, and Rob, and whenever they mentioned something that didn't exist in the 1920s (TV, movies with sound), this Maxwell guy would pretend to be all confused. "World War II? There was a second one?" Ugh!
Enough about the pre-show. What are these flicks about? And are they any good? In two words: Hell yeah. They each served as the perfect showcase for the comedian in the lead role. We're talking about three of the greatest comedians this planet's ever seen, and no mistake.
First, let's take Charlie Chaplin's Pay Day. Chuck plays this construction worker whose specialty is laying bricks (no, that's not a metaphor, I'm being literal). That's kind of hilarious right off the bat, right? Can you picture the chap as a laborer? I mean, the rest of the cats actually looked like construction workers, and then you had Charlie Chaplin looking like the Tramp. So right away you've got the visual absurdity that induces a chuckle before anything actually happens. The first ten or so minutes see Chuck trying to stay out of trouble with the foreman (Mack Swain). Not only does Chuck have punctuality issues, he also can't help sneaking a look at the foreman's hot daughter (Edna Purviance). By far the most hilarious part of this sequence is the lunch break. You've got the foreman sitting on the ground next to the makeshift wooden platform elevator, then you've got Chuck up on the next level with not much to eat, and someone else on the level above. So this little elevator goes up and up and down and down and up and down and so forth while Chuck takes advantage of this to take some of his boss's food before his boss has any idea what's going on. The comedy is all in the timing, which carries over to when the lunch break ends. The foreman tosses all these bricks up to Chuck who, facing the wall with his back to the foreman, catches these suckers from behind with both hands and both feet, laying each one as another gets tossed up to him. It's a brilliant sequence.
The reason Chuck didn't have any lunch is 'cause he can't afford it. He generally blows his cash on happy hour. Tonight is no exception. His wife (Phyllis Allen) is on to him, though. She snags his paycheck from the hiding place inside his little hat and sticks it in her purse. But then Chuck steals her purse and goes out and has a great time anyway. I could've sworn this bar he was at was somewhere in downtown L.A. I mean yeah, the area's changed, but not that much. The bar scene could've been filmed just blocks from where I was watching it tonight. The best part of this sequence was Chuck's getting home, or not getting home, as the case may be. This is back when downtown L.A. had a streetcar system. Chuck has a bitch of a time getting home 'cause all the streetcars are filled to capacity, and don't you know Chuck takes advantage of that crowd for more physical comedy, as he starts out in the back of a streetcar, gets squeezed into it, and then suddenly pops out of the crowd up front and off the streetcar. It's morning by the time he gets home. The poor schmo gets all of a minute of sleep or something before his wife wakes him up and confronts him with a rolling pin. Roll credits. Written and directed by Chuck. It was brilliantly simple, yet simply brilliant.
Okay. Now for the next short, Get Out and Get Under with Harold Lloyd. Directed by Hal Roach. First, a couple of a side notes. Both Hal and Harold were still a couple years shy of thirty when this flick premiered in September of '20. About a year earlier, Harold was in a horrible accident on the set of a flick where a prop bomb blew up and took off his right thumb and forefinger. So for this one, you'll notice he's wearing gloves pretty much the whole time. Apparently for the rest of his life Harold went to great pains to hide this deformity, getting flesh-colored gloves so that in black and white flicks it would look like his real hands and so forth. As for Hal Roach, after working with Harold, he never stopped looking to him as the paradigm for all the other comedians he directed. Indeed, many of Hal's later flicks were basically recyclings of the stuff he did early on with Harold. The title of this flick comes from a 1913 ditty called "He'd Have To Get Under - Get Out And Get Under (To Fix Up His Automobile)." In fact, Rob Israel, the Might Wurlitzer player I talked about above, sampled this song when he did a retooling of the soundtrack for this flick in 2004, which he used again tonight. Cool, eh?
Okay, now for the story. Like Pay Day, it's pretty simple, but deceptively so, right? Even though he was only twenty-seven at the time, Harold Lloyd was clearly a genius at the physical comedy. The gist of the premise is that Harold plays this guy who's supposed to take part in an amateur play at someone's house. When it starts out, he's overslept 'cause he's had a nightmare. The woman who's starring in the play with him (played by Mildred Davis, whom Harold would marry less than three years later) wakes him up when she calls and asks what the heck's taking him so long. And so we're off to the races. Harold hops into his Ford Model Tin Lizzie and speeds off. Sure enough, the car breaks down, and Harold has a comically horrible time getting the thing working again. Let the physical comedy ensue! At one point, in perhaps the most brilliant sequence in the film, Harold practically disappears into the guts of the car. You know that wasn't a special effect or anything. Amazing, really. Also of note is that he never would've made it to his gal's play if it weren't for this little black kid who helps get the car going again. This kid was played by Ernest "Sunshine Sammy" Morrison, who had a thriving acting career as a youngster. Thanks in large part to Hal Roach, dude starred in all kinds of stuff starting as an infant until he fought in WWII in his early thirties. When he came back from the war, Sunshine Sammy decided he'd had enough of acting and moved on to a career in the aircraft industry, where again he thrived until finally retiring altogether in his sixties.
Besides the play, Harold's gotta get there because otherwise he'll be replaced by his rival for Mildred's affection (Fred McPherson). I probably don't have to tell you that Harold does indeed make it to the play, but only just barely. In fact, in perhaps the second most brilliant sequence in the film, he sort of unwittingly stumbles into the action just as the curtain comes up. They really don't make 'em like they used to, ya know what I mean?
And now for The Navigator with Buster Keaton. Like Harold, he was still a bit shy of thirty when he made this, still relatively early in his career. Although, in terms of movie grosses, Buster never did a movie more successful than The Navigator. First, though, I simply have to tell you how Buster got the name Buster. His real name was Joe Jr. But what happened was, when Buster was a wee tot, he and his family were staying at a hotel with none other than Harry Houdini. At one point Buster slipped and fell all the way down the stairs, but got up amazingly unscathed. Harry reportedly looked at him and said, "Some buster!" And so the nickname stuck. Now what were the Keatons doing at a hotel with Harry Houdini, you might be wondering? Well, Buster's ma and pa were very successful stage comedians, and quite often they would work with Houdini, incorporating their comedy with his magic. Soon enough they all became pals.
Now here's what happens in the flick. Buster's this rich spoiled brat named...wait for it...Rollo. Don't ask. Anyway, Rollo's trying to woo this rich spoiled gal across the street named Betsy (Kathryn McGuire), whose attitude toward him is akin to arctic. Rollo books a trip to Hawaii aboard this huge ship which, unbeknownst to him, is completely deserted and has been earmarked to be set adrift and destroyed by these warring factions of old white guys. Betsy's dad John (Frederick Vroom, awesome name) owns this hunk of metal. One night, while visiting the dock, John is ambushed by thugs who kick the shit out of him. When Betty tries to lend a hand, she ends up stuck on the ship and can't get off before the thugs unmoor it. So now she and Rollo are stuck on this thing while it drifts off to God knows where.
The bulk of the flick is set on this ship with Rollo and Betsy executing all kinds of great physical comedy while they try to survive. They can't agree on anything: What to eat, when to eat, who sleeps where. At one point, while they're trying to sleep, a portrait of some intimidating guy slides back and forth in front of a hole next to Buster's bunk. It actually looks like a real person's out there watching him. Eventually they reach some island in the South Pacific which is inhabited by cannibals. Hilarity ensues! Rollo and Betsy somehow escape the island and get all the way back to the ship, but those cannibals are relentless. The stunts here are quite brilliant. Buster obviously found the most nimble cats he could to play the cannibal tribe. Just 'cause Rollo and Betsy make it back to the ship without being eaten doesn't mean they're safe. The cannibals then use ropes and makeshift ladders to swarm up to the deck. As a climax, it was perfect. Buster, who co-wrote and co-directed, saved the best comedy for the end. Finally those warring factions blow up the ship like they had originally planned. Rollo and Betsy float in the middle of the ocean with those cannibals in hot pursuit. A submarine arrives! It surfaces from directly underneath Rollo and Betsy, kind of like how Sean Connery was saved at the end of You Only Live Twice. A sailor opens the hatch and invites them in, closing it just as the cannibals arrive.
Interesting tidbit about the ship. Its real name was the S.S. Buford. Originally it was a passenger liner, and then during World War I it was used as a troop transport. After the war it gained notoriety when it was used to deport a couple hundred alleged Commies during what came to be known as the first Red Scare. By the time Buster was set to make The Navigator in '24, the U.S. government was all set to destroy the ship. Buster actually bought the thing from them with his own money. The picture was filmed mainly in Avalon Bay, that body of water separating Southern California from Catalina Island.
Whelp, that does it for the Silent Comedy Classics. I'm not sure they could've picked three better ones if they tried. This was quite a treat, and a great way to end what's been a terrific series of old flicks in these awesome and gorgeous old theaters. I can't wait till next year. What would be really cool is if they could maybe finish restoring one more of the dozen or so old movie palaces along that stretch of Broadway, so that we'll have four awesome venues to use next year. Lord knows they might have the funds now. All six shows sold out this year, which means they sold north of twelve...thousand!...tickets. At $15 per ticket ($12 for Conservancy members), you do the math.
And now for the photos. The first couple are of the Library Bar. As has been my wont during this series, I arrived downtown early enough to grab a bite and a beer (or two) at one of the innumerable cool hangouts in that area. The Library Bar's tap selection should be in the Tap Hall of Fame.
