Johnny Mack Brown as Billy the Kid

I recently picked up and flipped through my copy of William K. Everson's classic A Pictorial History of the Western Film, as one does when escaping the heat of an Alabama summer day. What did I find but a couple of stills and some discussion of Johnny Mack Brown's role as William Bonney in the 1930 film Billy the Kid. Let's investigate.

I've already written about the Dothan native, University of Alabama football star and actor in several pieces on this blog. Early in his career MGM tried to turn him into a romantic lead, such as the 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters in which he starred with Joan Crawford and fellow Alabama native Dorothy Sebastian. That same year major star Norma Shearer and Brown appeared in A Lady of Chance. I've devoted five posts to that film, since much of it is set in Alabama. 

In 1930 he was teamed with Crawford again in Montana Moon, which also co-starred Dorothy Sebastian. A third pairing with Crawford did not work out. Audiences failed to respond to early showings and MGM ordered the film Complete Surrender reshot with Clark Gable opposite Crawford. 

Brown soon left MGM and moved into westerns. I've posted about one of those, the 1945 "Flame of the West" in which he plays a new physician in town. Now it's time to look at another. 

Billy the Kid was one of four films Brown made in 1930 and was directed by King Vidor [1894-1982], whose career in the movies began in 1913 and lasted until 1980. The film also stars Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett, the lawman who tracked down and shot Billy on July 14, 1881. The outlaw had been sentenced to hang, escaped and killed two deputies in the process. As it happens, Garrett was born in Chambers County, so there's a second Alabama connection in this film.  

Today Henry McCarty aka William Bonney aka Billy the Kid is an iconic character with many appearances in popular culture, ranging from films and television episodes to comics and video games. But in 1930 he was just beginning his rise in the pantheon of western outlaws.

A folk song "Billy the Kid" appeared at some point in the west; the Sons of the Pioneers recorded it in 1937. A play "Billy the Kid" ran on Broadway in 1906. Two silent films about Billy were released in 1911; both starred women impersonating the male outlaw. Brown & Vidor's 1930 film was the first sound movie devoted to the Kid, and the first in which a male starred in the role!

This film was one of two released in 1930 that a used 70mm widescreen process; the other was The Big Trail starring John Wayne. Unfortunately, the Great Depression prevented cinemas from upgrading to widescreen and only a few such  movies were made at the time. The process would lie dormant until The Robe filmed in Cinemascope and released in 1953. Wayne's widescreen version has been restored, but the only known version of Brown's film is standard-width. 

Billy the Kid runs 95 minutes and was release on October 18, 1930. The film was shot on various locations such as Zion National Park, the Grand Canyon, San Fernando Valley, and Gallup, New Mexico. As the IMDB notes, the great silent film star of Westerns William S. Hart was an uncredited technical advisor. He owned some of Billy the Kid's "six shooters" and was friends with such legends of the West as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. 

Images two through six below are taken from Everson's book and offer some interesting details about the film. Hart is shown in the first photo offering one of Billy's guns to Brown. The second photo is a scene with a confrontation between Garrett and Billy. In the the text shown from the book, Everson discusses the dominance of long shots and lack of closeups and the effect of that in the standard-width version. The film is available from Warner Archive; a preview can be seen on YouTube. 

By the mid-1930s Brown began a long series of western films for several studios, including Republic, Universal and Monogram. In the 1950s his likeness appeared in a series of comic books published by Dell. He is an inductee of the College Football Hall of Fame [1957] and the first class of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame [1969]. He died November 14, 1974. Brown was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers in 2008. 

Source: YouTube 

Source: Grand Comics Database

Gail Patrick in "The Preview Murder Mystery"

One of the topics I bring out from time to time on this blog is film actresses from the state whose careers began before 1960. I've covered some others after that date, too, but today's post fits that group. 

One of those pre-1960 actresses is Birmingham native Gail Patrick. A career overview I posted in 2015 is here. In 2019 I wrote about her role as a private detective [really!] in Murder at the Vanities, a truly bonkers 1934 pre-code film. In 2020 I posted about her post-acting career as Executive Producer on the classic Perry Mason TV series and her appearance in the final episode. In 2021 I wrote about her role as the femme fatale in The Maltese Falcon--a radio version, but still....

Now we come to her role in The Preview Murder Mystery from 1936. I watched this one recently on TCM and really enjoyed it. There's a rather interesting framing device--it's a movie about the making of a movie and features quick action, witty dialog and some murders. Director Robert Florey would helm over 50 movies and numerous episodes of TV shows in his long career. By the time he made this one, he had already directed such classics as the Marx Brothers first feature, The Cocoanuts [1929] and Murders in the Rue Morgue [1932]. 

The film being filmed is "Song of the Toreador", and we get to see some extensive scenes in its preview screening. We also see even longer scenes involving the filming process, so that the cast and crew of "Toreador" are much of the cast and crew of Preview. Very meta. "Song" is a remake of a silent film starring the late husband of Patrick's character, Claire Woodward Smith. 

A lot of this film's snap, crackle and pop is courtesy of the performances by and dialog written for Reginald Denny and Frances Drake as they play the studio publicity head and his secretary. A running gag is Denny's constant proposals of marriage, and refusals by Drake, whose character is an astrology nut and keeps telling him the stars are not aligned properly.

Catch this movie if you have a chance. It's only an hour long and is available on YouTube. 

Some more comments are below. 

The entrance to the movie company's lot is actually the entrance to Paramount Studios, lightly disguised. 

The film has a number of shots making interesting compositions. Florey's cinematographer was Karl Struss, who worked on numerous Hollywood films and was a pioneer in 3-D. 

And here she is, ladies and gentlemen, Gail Patrick!

Now we see Patrick as she appears in "Song of the Toreador". 

And now we see Patrick in the preview audience watching herself onscreen.

As the murders mount up, Patrick is questioned by police. 

This film has a lot of shadow-and-light interplay in various scenes.

Joe Louis in "The Phynx"

I can guess what you're thinking--what's a phynx? Let's investigate.

"The Phynx" is a film released briefly in May 1970 by Warner Brothers Studios. Warner finally released it on DVD in 2012, and I watched it recently on Turner Classic Movies. The movie is certainly not a classic, but it has some amusing moments.

A plot summary is hilarious enough. Communists in Albania have kidnapped a number of celebrities from American entertainment and sports worlds. I don't even remember why. In order to free the hostages, U.S. intelligence puts together a rock band from scratch and turns them into world superstars. The group's name? The Phynx, of course. Once famous, the group can appear in concert in Albania and rescue the celebrities.

But wait--there's a hitch. There's a secret map that will lead the musicians to the castle where the hostages are being kept. The map is drawn in three parts on the tummies of three beautiful young women residing in different European cities. In order to find the pieces, Phynx members must "examine" hundreds of women. After that exhausting ordeal, they put the map together and head for Albania.

Are you with me so far? 

Naturally, all the kidnapped celebrities are found and released. A major feature of this portion of the film is a sequence in which they are all introduced to us, the viewers, before leaving Albania. The list includes Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan (the most famous movie Tarzan and Jane), Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall (the Bowery Boys), Ed Sullivan, James Brown, Colonel Sanders, Guy Lombardo, Andy Devine, Ruby Keeler, Edgar Bergen, Butterfly McQueen, Jay Silverheels (Tonto), Rudy Vallee, Xavier Cugat, Trini Lopez, Dick Clark, Richard Pryor, Harold "Oddjob" Sakata, George Jessel, and Rhona Barrett.

Alabama native and former heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis was also included. As the stars leave the castle in horse-drawn carriages, no less, we see duos or trios of them cracking jokes. Johnny Weissmuller says "Me Tarzan, you Jane" to O'Sullivan, a phrase never uttered during any of their many movies together. Louis and Marilyn Maxwell are sitting together and Louis actually makes an income tax joke, referencing his well-known woes with the IRS over back taxes he owed. 

This film is crazy, baby, really far out. But I had fun watching it. The parade of mostly-aging, many-by-1970 forgotten stars is a shout-out to people who had  entertained millions across the decades. I remember often watching Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall as the Bowery Boys when I was a kid, on Saturday mornings, I guess. They weren't as funny as the Three Stooges, but were pretty amusing. I also appreciated the appearance of John Hart as the Lone Ranger. I much preferred him over Clayton Moore, whom he replaced in the 1952-53 season during a contract dispute. 

The list goes on. Dorothy Lamour! Martha Raye! Joan Blondell! Ed Sullivan! Ruby Keeler! Rudy Vallee! Clint Walker in a hilarious turn as a master sergeant! Oh, and there's Richard Pryer! Butterfly McQueen! Trini Lopez! Sadly, I'm old enough to know who all these people are/were. Check out the film's IMDB entry for a full cast list. 

I should note one other appearance. Actress Sally Struthers made her first film appearance, although uncredited, as the World's Number One Fan of The Phynx. 

Johnny Weissmuller, Cass Dailey, and Joe Louis make their grand entrance. Dailey [1915-1975] was an actress, comedian and singer.

Marilyn Maxwell and Joe Louis tell jokes in their carriage ride leaving Albania. Maxwell [1921-1972] was an actress and singer probably best known for her tours with Bob Hope to entertain the troops during World War II and the Korean War. 

Louis and Weissmuller looking serious earlier in the film. Who's that mysterious gentleman behind them??

Silent Filmmaking in the Birmingham Area, Part 6: Homegrown Silents (2)

Over the years [after all, this blog goes back to 2014] I've written a number of pieces here about the Alabama connections to various silent films. One group, which includes this post, covers silents made in the Birmingham area. I've also written a number of items about actors and actresses from Alabama--such as Johnny Mack Brown, Lois Wilson and Dorothy Sebastian--who starred in silent films. Finally, I've done a few posts about silent films such as One Clear Call and Right of the Strongest based on a work by a state novelist or having some other connection. 

In this post I'm returning to the theme of "homegrown silents" that I covered in the fifth part. Films included in parts one through four originated with companies outside the state who came to the Birmingham area to film. However, in part five and now part six I've written about the Birmingham Amateur Movie Association  and its filmmaking efforts. In part five I also discussed two other local productions, Things You Ought to Know About Birmingham and The Love Beat. Since that post I've learned nothing more about them.   

Below I've included again two newspaper articles about the group I also used in part five. The BAMA originated in a meeting of over fifty people who met in the auditorium of the Birmingham Public Library on Friday night, August 3, 1928. At that meeting committees were established and membership determined, and the group watched The Nolfolk Case, made by a similar organization in New Haven,  Connecticut. The local organization had already joined the Amateur Cinema League of America based in New York City. The League, founded on July 28, 1926, existed until 1954. Publication of their journal, Movie Makers, began in December 1926. 

Officers elected at the first meeting:

Jack London, President
Louise O. Charlton, Director
E.C. Krug, Vice-President
J. Mont Thomas, Secretary
John E. Roberts, Treasurer

Committees/members

Scenario

Harry Garrett, Chair
Mrs. W.H. Yenni
Howard Parish

Membership

Mrs. Erwin Caldwell, Chair
Robert Bromberg
Mrs. J. Martin-Smith, Jr.

Constitution/By-Laws

David R. Solomon, Chair
Mrs. Priestly Toulman, Jr. 
Mrs. Howard Parish

Technical

C.L. Engle, Chair
John Roberts
Erwin Caldwell

Several films were either completed or mentioned in the items below.

What Price Pearls [1929, 16mm]
Trustworthy [1929, 35mm]
The World, the Flesh and Mercedes [1929?]
Man Shy [1929?]

Trustworthy, the story of a boy and his "gang", starred Donald Clayton, Edward Wilken, and Mrs. W.I. Woodcock. Movie Maker magazine, as noted below from its March 1929 issue, described The World, the Flesh and Mercedes as the group's completed "current production" and all that remained was work on the title cards. The November 1928 issue had stated the group's first production would be Man Shy, with a script by Mrs. W.H. Yenni based on a short story "Personally Abducted" by David R. Solomon. I have yet to reconcile these conflicting bits of information. 

Solomon's story had been published in The Designer and the Woman's Magazine in February 1925. In fact, he published a number of stories in various magazines between 1917 and 1934. His story "Fear" appeared in the very first issue of the legendary Weird Tales magazine. That March 1923 publication can be read here. The cover of that issue features "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud, "the extraordinary novelette" and "the tale of a thousand thrills" which is set in Alabama. I'll be posting about that state connection in the future. 

I have found a bit of information about two individuals named above. Perhaps one day I can research the others. "Jack London", the President, was actually John London III, the son of John and Edith Ward London. Birmingham Public Library has a collection of her papers, and the online description notes that Edith was also active in the BAMA, "for which she wrote movie scripts." Hmmm...

David Rosenbaum Solomon was a Mississippi native, born in Meridian on July 9, 1893. His mother Fanny was also a native of the state, and father Samuel was born in Poland. Solomon finished both his bachelor's and law degrees at the University of Mississippi, the latter in 1918. He practiced for about a year and a half in Meridian, then served as a second lieutenant in a field artillery unit in World War I. Afterward he joined the firm of Leader and Ewing in Birmingham. He married Madeline Hirshfield on November 1, 1920, and died on November 15, 1951, at the age of 58. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery.

These details about Solomon were gathered from several different databases at Ancestry.com I imagine searching there would yield information about many of the people named above. Some serious research at Birmingham Public Library should also turn up more about BAMA and its activities. Perhaps one day...

Beyond these articles, I have yet to discover any information about the films named, either BAMA's or the other two local productions. Perhaps one day...

Birmingham News 4 Aug 1928 via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Birmingham News 14 July 1929 via Birmingham Public Library Digital Collections

Movie Makers March 1929 p. 192

Movie Makers November 1928, p. 717

Movies with Alabama Connections: Stark Love (1927)

Well, I knew that Fob James, Jr., acted like a monkey while governor, but I didn't realize until recently that his father had actually appeared as the male lead in a silent movie in 1927. Let's investigate.

That film was Stark Love, set in the Great Smokey Mountains where it was filmed near Robbinsville, North Carolina. Directed by Karl Brown and written by him and Walter Woods. the movie was financed by a major Hollywood studio--what is now Paramount Pictures--and intended as a realistic portrait of people in Appalachia. 

To that end the two lead characters Rob Warwick and Barbara Allen are played by non-professional actors, Forrest Hood James, Sr., and Helen Mundy. Director Brown wanted to tell a story about mountain people that would be realistic in a way unseen before in Hollywood films. "Hillbilly" movies had been popular but full of stereotypes. The article about Mundy linked previously has some interesting background about casting and filming Stark Love. Numerous comments about the film can be found here. 

Brown located his two leads in Knoxville, Tennessee. Mundy was a 16 year-old high school student. Filming was done so far in the backwoods a new road had to be constructed. In the story Rob is the son of a harsh father who mistreats his mother. Rob learns to read and wants a better life for himself and the neighbor's daughter he's attracted to, Barbara [Mundy]. After various hardships and the death of his mother, Rob and Barbara escape their isolated community for a better life. Director Brown portrayed stereotypes of his own in his film; he had no direct knowledge of or experience with Appalachian mountain people. 

According to one source, [Ralph Draughon, Jr., Delos Hughes & Ann Pearson, Lost Auburn: A Village Remembered in Period Photographs. New South Books, 2012, p. 143] the premier of Stark Love took place at the first commercial movie theater in Auburn, the original Tiger Theater, which operated from 1926 until 1928. Owned by Foreman Rogers, the business was located on North College Street in an old storefront. The date was September 21-22, 1927; admission was 35 cents for adults and 15 cents.  In contrast, the IMDB says the film was released on February 28, 1927, and in those days films took time to make their way around the country due to limited numbers of prints, slower transportation, etc. I'm just not sure about the "premier" discrepancy. 

Stark Love was presumed to be one of the many lost silent films until a copy was discovered in a Czech archive in 1968 by film historian Kevin Brownlow. Although still little seen today, it was added to the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 2009. A blurry copy is available on YouTube. 

Neither lead ever appeared in another film. Mundy married, moved to Michigan and died in 1987. 

His Word War II draft card [found via Ancestry.com] tells us a bit about Forrest James, Sr. He was born in Waverly, Alabama, on August 10, 1905, and married to Rebecca Ellington James. He was 5'9" tall, weighed 160 and had brown hair and blue eyes. Karl Brown offered to take James to Hollywood, but he followed his mother's wishes and returned to finish college at what is now Auburn University. James and his twin brother William both lettered in three sports at Auburn. James then taught high school and coached baseball before pursuing a business career. He died July 2, 1973, in Birmingham and is buried in Garden Hills Cemetery in Opelika.

By the way, I can highly recommended Brownlow's massive 1968 book The Parade's Gone By as a wonderful history of silent filmmaking. 

FURTHER READING

Articles by John White:

"Hollywood Comes to Knox County," Kentucky Humanities, Spring 2010: 29-34. Published by the Kentucky Humanities Council.

"Forrest James, Hollywood's Reluctant Star." Alabama Heritage. Number 93, Summer 2009: 44-53. Published by the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the Alabama Department of Archives and History.

"Myth and Movie Making: Karl Brown and the Making of Stark Love." Film History, an International Film Journal. Volume 19, 1 (2007): 49-57. Published by Indiana University.

This book has a long chapter on the film:

Williamson, Jeremy Wayne. Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and what the Mountains Did to the Movies. North Carolina: UNC Press Books, 1995.

Source: Spokane [Wash.] Woman 19 July 1928

Movies with Alabama Connections: The Sin of Nora Moran

If I followed the Alabama connection in this film into other movies, I would never have to find other topics for this blog. Late in his career Henry B. Walthall, a major star in silent films, appeared in this 1933 crime drama. Walthall was a Shelby County native and made dozens and dozens--and dozens--of films between 1909 and 1936. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

As The Sin of Nora Moran opens we learn that Nora, lover of a married Governor, sits on death row convicted of a murder that the District Attorney, the Governor's brother-in-law, helped her cover up. She has refused to tell the truth about the crime in order to save people she loves. We can sympathize because she had killed a man who raped her. We eventually learn she claimed to have murdered him to cover the accidental death actually caused by her lover--the Governor. Got that?

Early in the film we follow Nora as she unsuccessfully looks for a job until she's hired as the assistant to a circus lion tamer. He eventually rapes her, and Nora leaves the circus for New York City. Before that we get to see an incredible wrestling match between the tamer and one of the lions.

This film is a strange amalgam of scenes set in the present as Nora awaits her fate and flashbacks--and flash forwards within those flashbacks-- to various periods as we learn about her earlier life. There are visions of the dead and from the soon-to-be-dead. District Attorney John Grant narrates the tale to his sister, the wife of Governor Dick Crawford, who is Nora's lover. There are also interesting tracking shots,  montages, and at one point a rather lingering focus on the backsides of some young ladies in a chorus line.

Zita Johann who plays Nora was an Austrian-American actress with some credits in Broadway productions and a few films. In addition to this one, she's also remembered for her role in the classic 1932 horror film The Mummy. 

Walthall has a small role as Father Ryan, who has known Nora since her days as a little girl in his orphanage. By this time, three years before his death, Walthall was acting in smaller roles but many of them. He finished his final film only three weeks before he died of an intestinal illness at age 58.

We can find Walthall listed in the 1880 U.S. Census at age two. His parents, Junius L. and A.M. Walthall, were living on their farm near Harpersville with young Henry, an older sister, and his father's mother. By 1900 they were living in Columbiana, and Henry, then 22, was a deputy sheriff. He had been educated mostly at home, but attended Howard College for six months. Walthall served in the military during the Spanish-American War, but caught malaria and was not deployed overseas before the end of hostilities. 

At some point he left Alabama for New York and began a career on the stage. By 1909 he had made his first film for D.W. Griffiths' Biography Studios. His role in Griffith's infamous 1915 film Birth of a Nation made him a star. I'm planning a blog post on Walthall in the near future and will explore his career on the stage and in the movies.

You can read appreciations of the film here and here. Nora Moran was the product of Majestic Studios, a Poverty Row outfit that operated from 1930 until 1935. This crisp 65-minute film is a strange one, but well worth watching. You can find it online at the Internet Archive.

This film is known as a pre-code Hollywood film, meaning it was made before the implementation of strict content rules for motion pictures rigidly enforced from 1935 until the mid-1950's. The rules are widely known as the Hays code after the man who developed them. I've written about another pre-code film with Alabama connections, the very strange--and I mean very--1934 production, Murder at the Vanities. 

More comments are below some of the images. 

One of the film's original posters, designed by Alberto Vargas. This same image was used on the 2013 DVD release. 

Born in Peru, Vargas moved to the U.S. as a young man after art studies in Europe. He soon began poster designs for the Ziegfield Follies and then Hollywood studios. He is most famous for the many pin-up paintings he did for Esquire during World War II and later for Playboy. 

We learn that Nora was a resident at the orphanage run by Father Ryan. She was adopted by a couple who are soon killed in a car wreck.

In this fantasy sequence three men gather around Nora's casket to talk about her execution, which has not yet taken place. Father Ryan is there, along with the District Attorney and the Governor. Her former lover, on the right in the photo below, notes that he doesn't like the way they've fixed her hair. His companion the district attorney replies that they shaved part of it so the current would go through her body. Her lover insists that's not true....Father Ryan remains silent and stoic. 

In another of several fantasy sequences in the film, an adult Nora visits Father Ryan in his office at the orphanage. 

Walthall did make it into the main credit sequence, but his role is rather small. 

Henry B. Walthall [1878-1936]

Source: Wikipedia