{"id":447,"date":"2013-04-27T11:57:03","date_gmt":"2013-04-27T15:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=447"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:28:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:28:22","slug":"the-history-not-found-in-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=447","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe History Not Found in Books\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, when I least expect it, I hear a nugget of wisdom that just keeps me thinking for days. On March 28, I attended a lecture at Indiana Landmarks about historic buildings. This will be of no surprise to the folks who know that Indiana Landmarks<\/a> promotes (among other things) preservation of historic buildings. The lecturer was Henry Glassie<\/a>, a really top-notch guy who gave a smoother lecture than I ever could. (Full disclosure: Indiana Landmarks is also hosting a showing<\/a> of my restoration of The\u00a0<\/em>King of the Kongo<\/em> in July of this year, but I’m not shilling for anyone.)<\/p>\n

\"glassie\"
Henry Glassie (picture from Indiana University)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Glassie spoke about surveying historic buildings in Virginia, and he had traced the designs to countries that had had similar designs in Europe.\u00a0 Barns and houses, primarily.\u00a0 He noticed that there was a definite pattern in the buildings depending on where the inhabitants had originated in Europe.\u00a0 He also noted that the folks in the American South had cleverly adapted some of these buildings to make newer and more useful designs, while retaining the original character of the older design.<\/p>\n

Then he started speaking about what happened to these buildings over time.\u00a0 You may know that a lot of barns are endangered today simply because we don\u2019t know what to do with barns, since farming is now industrial and not familial.\u00a0 And\u00a0modest\u00a0old houses are a bit of a problem as we move into larger McMansions to hold all of our stuff.\u00a0 Glassie noted that all of the houses\u00a0he had surveyed…\u00a0all\u00a0<\/i>of them… that represented\u00a0what is perceived as\u00a0the popular cultural history of Virginia, had been saved, and in many cases restored. The others\u2014the little dwellings, the sheds, the outbuildings\u2014were either gone or in worse shape than ever.<\/p>\n

The plantation houses, the houses of the rich, the story of Gone With the Wind<\/i> and all that goes with it… those were saved. The smaller houses, the ones for poor families, the odd barns, the work buildings… those were being demolished, because no one wanted to deal with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to save some of these,\u201d Glassie said, \u201cbecause these buildings tell us of the history not found in books.\u201d<\/p>\n

My mind spun!<\/i>\u00a0 I loved this idea.\u00a0 I knew exactly what he meant.\u00a0 We preserve the popular stuff, the stuff we know about, the stuff we can still identify with, and the rest gets swept under the carpet.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t fit in with our idea of the past, so out it goes.\u00a0 Who cares if it documents a truth that a clever historian can read and decode?\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t fit our narrative, so begone!<\/p>\n

And immediately, I realized that this is the kind of film history I practice.\u00a0 The film history not found in books.\u00a0 I realized that this <\/i>is why the \u201cHoly Quintet\u201d of classic films annoys me a little (Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, Citizen Kane, <\/i>and Singing in the Rain<\/i>.)\u00a0 Those stories have been told.\u00a0 They\u2019ve been retold.\u00a0 They\u2019re part of our narrative of film history.<\/p>\n

This is why, in popular culture,\u00a0Gone With the Wind <\/i>is the first Technicolor film ever made.\u00a0 Who cares that Becky Sharp <\/i>came four years earlier?\u00a0 And what of the two-color Technicolor that dated back to 1917? \u00a0It may be true, but i<\/em>t doesn\u2019t fit our narrative\u2014out it goes.<\/i><\/p>\n

The trouble with this is that what doesn\u2019t fit the narrative doesn\u2019t get seen, and what doesn\u2019t get seen doesn\u2019t get preserved.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same with films and buildings.\u00a0 In the words of Hannibal Lecter, \u201cWe covet what we see.\u201d\u00a0 And if we don\u2019t see it, then we don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

OK, it\u2019s a little granule of a thought, I admit, but it\u2019s a powerful one.\u00a0 The history not found in books.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 I began to realize that I fight very hard to tell film history not found in books.\u00a0 I find so many fascinating nooks and crannies that I want to share them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m kind of the opposite of the traditional film history guy: If the story has been told, then I want to move on to a new story.\u00a0 Yeah, I know about the script troubles in Casablanca <\/i>or Buddy Ebsen in\u00a0The Wizard of Oz<\/em>.\u00a0 What else is there?<\/p>\n

I remember when I first started showing the pilot for Dr. Film<\/i>.\u00a0 People screamed at me.\u00a0 \u201cOK, we like what you did with the characters, we like how you did the show, but the feature you picked, Murder by Television <\/i>(1935) is terrible!\u00a0 You should take that out and put something good in, something like White Zombie <\/i>(1932).\u00a0 That\u2019s about the same length and it\u2019s at least a decent movie.\u00a0 And since it stars Lugosi, you\u2019ll only have to re-shoot the ending, so it\u2019ll save the whole show.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I didn\u2019t want to do that.\u00a0 I refused to do that.\u00a0 I have a very solid concept for Dr. Film<\/i> and White Zombie <\/i>wasn\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

I like White Zombie<\/i>.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fine film.\u00a0 Lugosi is great in it.\u00a0 It would make a fantastic episode of Matinee at the Bijou<\/i>.\u00a0 And, for the record, I like Matinee at the Bijou<\/i>.\u00a0 But Dr. Film <\/i>isn\u2019t Matinee at the Bijou<\/i>.\u00a0 It\u2019s seeking to tell the untold stories.<\/p>\n

In the opening credits, the members of the Midnight Film Society slink into their chairs and the narrator solemnly intones, \u201c…they screen the unseen…\u201d<\/p>\n

White Zombie <\/i>isn\u2019t unseen.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the most common Lugosi films out there.\u00a0 If you\u2019ve seen 15 Lugosi films, you\u2019ve seen White Zombie<\/i>.\u00a0 Since I don\u2019t have a fantastic rediscovered print like Tom Holland found, I didn\u2019t have anything unique to show.<\/p>\n

As this little nugget of truth continued to worm its way into my skull, I came to realize just how much I love the untold stories in film history…<\/p>\n

I lobbied last year (and this year) to restore\u00a0The King of the Kongo\u00a0<\/em>because it represents so many untold stories: What was Boris Karloff doing in movies before he was famous? \u00a0What were the early sound serials like? \u00a0Did early part-talkies use undercranking? \u00a0It isn’t a great movie either, but it deserved to be restored. \u00a0It needed to tell its story.<\/p>\n

Max Lerner once said, \u201cHistory is written by the survivors.\u201d\u00a0 Film history is too.\u00a0 I love DW Griffith, but is he really the father of film?\u00a0 We\u2019ve found out recently that other people at the same time were doing innovative work as well.\u00a0 Griffith had the advantage of being preserved and available because of MOMA and Library of Congress, but it\u2019s only recently that we could see early works by Raoul Walsh or even Cecil B. DeMille (whose early work is really cool… before he started making stale costume dramas that made more money.)<\/p>\n

We know Fritz Lang (survivor) but not Paul Wegener (most films lost).<\/p>\n

We know Willis O\u2019Brien (survivor) but not Charley Bowers (many films lost).<\/p>\n

We know Laurel and Hardy (only one short lost) but not Max Davidson (fewer shorts, and several missing).<\/p>\n

The stories of Cecil B. DeMille and John Ford are changing as we find their early work to be more interesting and significant than we had thought.<\/p>\n

MGM star Clark Gable we remember, but what of MGM star Lee Tracy?\u00a0 There was a time when Tracy was a much bigger star.<\/p>\n

I find myself drawn to these kinds of things.\u00a0 I find that the films in the popular culture, the ones written about in books, are often no better than the obscure little pictures we\u2019ve never seen.<\/p>\n

\"Alternate<\/a>
Alternate title for Merry Go Round from 1932<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A couple of years ago, Universal reprinted Merry Go Round <\/i>(1932), which might as well have been a 1945 film noir<\/i>.\u00a0 Universal had a stupid policy in the 1960s and 70s: if it wasn\u2019t a monster movie, or it didn\u2019t have Bob Hope, Abbott and Costello, WC Fields, or the Marx Brothers in it, then it wasn\u2019t worth reprinting.\u00a0 This meant that scads of great titles from Universal and Paramount (Universal owns the Paramount library from 1929-47) are sitting unseen in vaults because they were deemed unmarketable.<\/p>\n

Merry Go Round <\/i>was a great story of double dealing, corrupt city officials, shady lawyers, bed-hopping, etc.\u00a0 Just the kind of thing that would be great cinema in 10 or 15 years.\u00a0 And we\u2019d never heard of it.<\/p>\n

Because we\u2019d never seen it.<\/p>\n

Because its story wasn\u2019t told in books. \u00a0(And there was no reason to tell its story in books, since no one had seen it. \u00a0Sitting there in a film catalog, it doesn’t look\u00a0particularly interesting.)<\/p>\n

OK, maybe I screwed up in showing Murder by Television <\/i>on Dr. Film.\u00a0 <\/i>I personally find this an \u201care you kidding me?\u201d moment in Lugosi\u2019s career.\u00a0 He\u2019d just done The Raven <\/i>at Universal, and now this?\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 And you unravel the answer: he needed\u00a0 cash, so he would take work anywhere.<\/p>\n

Sure, it\u2019s a bad film.\u00a0 But why <\/i>it\u2019s a bad film is really fascinating.\u00a0 And I find it a fascinating film to see for its badness.\u00a0 That doesn\u2019t mean I only want to show bad films.<\/p>\n

And it certainly doesn\u2019t mean I want only to show good films.<\/p>\n

It does mean I have no interest in showing Casablanca<\/i>, Gone With the Wind<\/i>, The Wizard of Oz, Singing in the Rain<\/i>, and Citizen Kane<\/i>.\u00a0 Come to think of it, lump White Zombie <\/i>in with them.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still fascinated with film history\u2013obscure but interesting and worth revisiting\u2014the history not found in books.\u00a0 If Dr. Film <\/i>ever makes it to air, then you can expect to see more of these kinds of stories.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy to leave the mainstream to Robert Osborne.\u00a0 He\u2019s better at that than I am!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, when I least expect it, I hear a nugget of wisdom that just keeps me thinking for days. On March 28, I attended a lecture at Indiana Landmarks about historic buildings. This will be of no surprise to the folks who know that Indiana Landmarks promotes (among other things) preservation of historic buildings. The … Continue reading “\u201cThe History Not Found in Books\u201d”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,207],"tags":[145,25,82,144],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-background-on-the-blog","category-film","tag-books","tag-dr-film","tag-film-history","tag-glassie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1911,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/1911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}