April 4, 1920. Treasure Island released, France announces advance, Soviet Union requires workers to have identification.

On this day in 1920, the film Treasure Island, or rather one of its earlier (not its earliest) versions, was released.  The popular novel has lead to frequent cinematic adaptations.

On the same day France announced it was going to occupy German cities in the Ruhr due to the failure of the besieged Ebert government in Berlin to withdraw the Reichswehr from that region.  On the same day the benighted government of the workers in the Soviet Union announced that all the benighted had to carry identification as to their place of employment so as to be able to make sure that they were remaining benighted.

March 28, 1920. Tornadic outbreaks, Typhus, Bulgarian elections, and movies.

Released on this date in 1920.  This is a lost, and then rediscovered, film and has been shown in a theater as recently as 2015.  Note, on the left page, the allegorical human figure painted into the downed timber depiction.

March 28 was Palm Sunday in 1920.  

On that date a deadly cluster of at least 37 tornadoes destroyed towns and lives throughout the Midwest and Deep South, showing the extent of the storm system that day.  Between 200 and 400 lives were lost, with about 200 deaths occurring in Georgia alone.  It remains one of the worst tornadic events in American history.

Post tornado view of Elgin, Illinois.

A disaster of another type, contaminated water, was plaguing Casper.  Casper would have outbreaks of waterborne diseases for years, including typhus.

In faraway Bulgaria, agrarians won the parliamentary election held on this date, with the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union taking 110 of 229 seats.  It was the only one of Europe's once numerous agrarian parties to come to power through controlling a majority of seats in a parliament.

Flag of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union.  The cloverleaf symbol was used by many European agrarian parties as well as a pan European organization made up of agrarian parties.  Orange is a color often used by European "center" parties due to its association with Christian Democratic parties.  The BANU was centerist, but it was not a Christian Democratic party.

While a minor party today, the BANU still exists as a Bulgarian political party.

Blog Mirror: The Cold War History Blog: Cold War Movie Review: The Third Man

Cold War Movie Review: The Third Man

February 20, 1920. Washington D. C. Scenes

Secty. of War Baker today presented eleven Distinguished Service Medals and two distinguished Service Crosses previously awarded to officers and civilians. Distinguished service medals were presented to Rear Adml. Ralph Earle, Col. Joseph P. Tracy, Col Chas Keller, Col. Alexander B. Cox, Lt Col. Karl L.Baldwin, Col James Easby-Smith, Col. Milton A Reckord, Col. M.W. Thompson, Maj. Jos C. Byron, Mr Max Thelen, Mr Gerard Swope, Distinguished Service Crosses Maj Alvin Colburn, Chaplain John Carroll Moore.

Delivering motion picture reels to White House

Technological Acclimation and Mystic Pizza

Sometimes you don't realize how acclimated you've become to technology until you experience it in an odd fashion.

The other night I was flipping  though the channels and hit upon the movie Mystic Pizza.  I've seen it before. It's really not worth watching and I knew that when I hit on it.

For those who haven't seen it, don't bother.  A synopsis of the plot, or rather plots, is as follows, as it plays into what I've noted here as the theme of this entry.  The movie follows the lives and loves of three young Portuguese American women, who all  work at a pizza restaurant in the Connecticut seaport town of Mystic.  They characters are Kat Araujo, played by Annabeth Gish (no relationship to the great silent screen star Lillian Gish), Daisy Araujo, played by the then up and coming Julia Roberts and Jojo Barbosa, played by the Lili Taylor.

Note that none of the actresses are Portuguese Americans.*

Anyhow, the basic gist of the film is that Kat and Daisy are sisters, and Kat is bound in the near future for Yale, while Daisy is wild and not bound for Yale.  Jojo is tied up in romance with a Portuguese American fisherman and the film starts off with their wedding, which is interrupted for most of the film when she collapses during the ceremony, burdened with the thought of the seriousness of the obligation she's embarking upon.

None of which has all that much to do with what I'm noting, but two parts of the plot do, and they both involve telephones.

Daisy has met a "preppy" (this 1988 film was made during the preppy era) who is a failed law student. His booting out from law school hasn't interrupted his wealth somehow, to we have the Townie/Preppy romance thing going on, a theme that dates back in various ways to the silent film era.  Kat is not only working at Mystic Pizza, but is also baby sitting the daughter of a young architect whose wife is off in England.  Yeah, you can probably see how all these plots develop from there.

Anyhow, in once scene the Daisy character is supposed to go to dinner with Preppy dude and meet his parents, but Kat, who is supposed to fill in for her at the pizza joint, doesn't show up.  Daisy tries to call her but the handset has been kicked off the phone at the Architect's house where Architect, daughter and Kat are watching television.

That struck me there simply because now you'd call on your cell.  If nobody answered you'd text.

It didn't disrupt me watching the film, and indeed I didn't have much invested in it anyhow, but that just struck me.

More significantly, however, late in the movie Architect and Kat arrange to go to a giant 18th Century house he is working on Halloween night as the house is reputedly haunted.  Note, I didn't say this movie was good.  While there, the predictable happens.  Jojo, meanwhile, has agreed to participate in this evil by watching daughter, whereupon she discovers her love for children in a weakly developed part of the film which in turn will lead to the resumption of her nuptials.  Anyhow, just like a silent film, Wife returns from England and Jojo is forced into making up a strained lie as to the missing husband and babysitter.

At that point, automatically, a modern viewer will think, as this takes place in world not all that long ago and otherwise pretty much like ours, "why doesn't she call Kat on her cell phone or text?".  It's literally impossible not to.  Of course, she can't.  They didn't exist.

That's actually my sole point in noting this movie watching experience.  I'm now so used to cell phones that my first reaction is "why doesn't she use her cell phone?", and the thought keeps repeating as you are watching these scenes.

Okay, while on this, why did I watch this, again?

I don't really know.  I know that the first time I watched this movie on television it was a few years after its release as a fellow who was in law school at the same time I was, and who was from a somewhat well heeled family in Connecticut, took enormous offense to the movie at the time it was released.  I recall him asking me if I'd seen it one day at law school.  I didn't watch very many movies while in law school (maybe none) and I'd never heard of it.  I recall his view was that the movie maker, whom he knew, knew nothing about Portuguese Americans in Connecticut.  At the time, and upon the first viewing, I was pretty surprised that he'd be so wrapped up in that as he certainly wasn't a Connecticut Portuguese American either.

None of that justifies watching this film again, but there was nothing on and I was on the verge of falling asleep so I just left it on.  Having seen it now, I think I agree with the critic noted.  Everything, including the Portuguese nature of the protagonist, is pretty underdeveloped.  You only know that they're Portuguese as somebody says something about it now and then and their being Catholic is mentioned a couple of times and oddly inserted a couple of times.

FWIW, there really is a Mystic Pizza.  Most of the people who have seen this film apparently like it, as opposed to me, who does not, and following the film, the real Mystic Pizza was redone to look like the one in the move, which provides an odd example of art following life following art, I guess.

Poster Saturday: The Cyclone. Released on January 25, 1920.

It's a lost film.

1917

I happened to catch this movie on opening day.  Off hand, I can't recall having ever seen a movie on opening day.

This film, opened on limited release just a few weeks ago and already subject to wide acclaim, is an English film that's expected to have a wide theater run in the U.S., making it one of a series of war pictures produced in the UK recently that have done well or are expected to do well in the U.S.  This would suggest that the widely held belief that Americans won't watch movies that aren't about themselves, or at least war pictures that aren't about Americans, is obsolete.  The recent films Dunkirk, The Darkest Hour and the documentary They Shall Not Grow Old have all done well in US releases.

This film, as its name indicates, takes place in 1917.  More specifically, the film takes place in April 1917, at which time the British were engaging in an offensive, and it is focused on two British soldiers who are dispatch runners.  In the movie's opening scenes the two young Lance Corporals (a single stripe in the English Army) are assigned the task of running an order from a General to a Major whose unit that is advancing rapidly in order to order that Major to halt his men before they are committed to an assault which areal reconnaissance has revealed will be a trap.

Running just under two hours long, this scenario sets up a tense journey for the men that I'll forgo detailing, as it would involve discussing elements of the plot that would constitute spoilers. And that's not really the purpose of our reviews here in any event. We will note that the film develops its plot very well, including doing an excellent job of character development in a fairly short period of time.

Indeed, we'll go so far as to say that this is the best World War One movie since Paths Of Glory, the epic 1957 film focusing on a real event in the French Army.  The two films are directly comparable other than that the trench scenes in both and the trench fighting scenes are remarkably well done.

If this film, this is aided by the technique of using one long shot, something rarely attempted in film but something that makes this movie uniquely personal.  As the film is a two hour long, single shot, the viewer is uniquely participating with the characters and never departs from the singular focus of the major protagonist, which is of course how people actual experience any significant events themselves.

The film is unique for a World War One film in that its not sympathetic with the Germans at all, which has tended to be the post 1950 view of the Great War.  Because it is a long shot, and because the film is focused directly on the protagonist, there wouldn't be an opportunity to do otherwise, but the film makes no attempt to do so.  Because of this, the movie has received some criticism from those who want to suggest its unduly patriotic or that it approaches the Great War too unilaterally.  That criticism fails to take into account the cinematography but frankly it also fails to take into account that the Germans in World War One were already exhibiting some of the conduct that they're uniformly criticized for in the Second World War and that such comments given World War One Germany a lot more credit than it deserves.

Concerning material details, this film is remarkably excellent.  Details of British uniforms are exact.  Trenches are, I'm informed, correctly done.  It's an amazing effort.  Particularly notable is the correct depiction of the use and nature of the British SMLE rifle of the time.  Also notable, however, may  be the correct depiction of the really slow nature of period aircraft, which is rarely accurately depicted.  A bit of a shock, from an American prospective, is the depiction of an army of the period which incorporated English blacks, as during this period the American military was strictly segregated.

We can criticize a few details and so we'll do so here.  On a large scale tactical level, during this period there would have been an effort to inform an advance element of a change of orders by air.  That isn't shown here, but it probably should have been addressed.  For those familiar with battlefield movements of the Great War of this period that sticks out.  It could have been explained easily enough as such efforts were frequently ineffective.

On another matter, in at least one scene one of the messenger soldiers turns into a sniper to engage him and in another the soldiers clear a farmstead.  Those familiar with actual message running will find this to be surprising as the delivery of the message is always paramount and messengers avoid engagement if at all possible.  In both instances the encounters seem unnecessary to the mission (a similar thing is done in Saving Private Ryan), although in the instance of the sniper it can be explained if the path is the only immediate one available.  If that's assumed, the soldiers action in engagement and the method of engagement is correct.

All in all, this is an excellent movie.

Paths of Glory

I just reviewed 1917 here the other day, although that review won't appear here until tomorrow, and the viewing of which caused me to recall the trench scenes of this film, Paths of Glory.

Paths of Glory is a black and white film directed by Stanley Kubrik and featuring Kirk Douglas as a French lawyer serving as an officer during the Great War.  The movie is a fictionalized account of an actual event in which French soldiers were tried for cowardice for their actions during a 1916 advance.  More than half the movie concerns their fate in French legal proceedings so the film is both a legal drama as well as a war picture.

Considered an anti war drama in typical reviews, the film contains one of the best filmed depictions of trench warfare ever made, surpassed only recently by the depictions in the English movie 1917.  The film was regarded as so critical in this regards that the French managed to put pressure on United Artists not to release the film in France for nearly twenty years.  Release in Germany and Switzerland was delayed so as to not offend the French, and the film was not released in Spain until 1986.  U.S. military establishments would not show the film.

In modern terms the film is mild as an anti war film compared to films on the Vietnam War.  And the degree to which any antiwar film is successful in conveying that message is always debatable.  At any rate, as a drama and a depiction of World War One trench warfare, the film does well.

In terms of material details, the film is a good one, accurately portraying uniforms and equipment of the French Army of the Great War.

The Natural

I made a reference to this film the other day and was surprised to see that I'd never added it to our Movies In History list.  As its a great period movie, I'm correcting the omission.

Nearly anyone who reads this will have seen this movie already.  Released in 1984, the film was based on a 1952 novel by the same name, meaning that the book had taken a surprisingly long thirty years to reach the screen.  The plot surrounds a single baseball season in 1939, but the very early part of the story set in 1923 is critical to the story.  We learn, early on, that in 1923 the then 19 year old protagonist, Roy Hobbs (played by former university baseball player Robert Redford) has a chance to enter the major leagues as an absolute stand out baseball player.  On his way to his tryout as a pitcher he strikes out a Babe Ruth like figure as a demonstration, and then has his tryout disrupted by the intervention of a literal femme fatale (played by Barbara Hershey). The story picks up again in 1939 at which time Hobbs is 35 years old and has lost contact with those back home.

Much of the film is allegorical involving the struggle between good and evil, with evil personified in the form of dramatically beautiful women played by the aforementioned Barbara Hershey and a young Kim Basinger, and good likewise personified partially in female form in the character of Hobb's teenage girlfriend (Glen Close).  The remainder of the roles are all male as they make their way through the season and through a battle of good and evil metaphorically.

This is a great film and its likely the best baseball movie ever made.  It's a great American movie.

Regarding material details, having viewed it again just the other day, I was struck how accurate the details are.  Period baseball uniforms are exact, but more amazingly crowed details are incredibly well done.  The crowd looks more accurate and more in place for a 1930s vintage crowd that crowds in sports movies made in the 1930s do.  It's simply amazing.

As this is a very studied film, like all films, there are some errors in material details. But they are very minor.  Once scoreboard depicted in actual stadium, for example, is noted not to have been present in 1939.  The Star Spangled Banner is sung before an opening ball was thrown, which wasn't actually done before every game until World War Two (it was done during World War One and then discontinued and reinitiated during World War Two). But these are minor errors. All in all, the film is amazingly well done.

Sunday, June 29, 1919. Reminding the readers that the war had ended. . . and alcohol was about to exit. Going to the movies, and the Tour de France.

Folks stopping in here yesterday saw, of course, that the banner headlines on the Germans signing the Versailles Treaty and the Great War ending.  As one of the papers below notes, it would actually require the ratification by the various signing countries to do that, but for most it would come fairly soon.  The U.S. never did ratify it, but instead ratified a treaty that picked out the clauses the Administration of the time liked, that coming after President Wilson had left office.

The US version omitted, famously, the League of Nations.

Anyhow, the big news remained on the front pages of the few newspapers in Wyoming that had Sunday editions.  Most did not.

Both local and national prohibition were also in the news.  The national news was that President Wilson had decided he had no authority to lift wartime prohibition and therefore wasn't going to, for the time being.  It was big, if odd, news in that general Federal prohibition was inevitable at this point, given the recently passed Constitutional amendment.

Locally Monday June 30 was the upcoming last day for alcohol in Wyoming, which made such headlines doubly confusing, as while the national story mattered, it only mattered somewhat and it only mattered if you lived in a place where booze was going to remain legal until the Federal ban hit.  In Wyoming, as with Colorado, that day came earlier.

The Sheridan newspaper ran that as its cover, with an odd racist cartoon that depicted booze in a mistral show fashion.  Not only is it odd to see the topic of the legality of alcohol being discussed, and its disappearance frankly celebrated, but it's really odd to see the press lean on racist stereotypes.

On stereotypes, Sunday was a big day for movie releases and the there were a number of interesting options, including Girls.

The romantic comedy Girls was released on this day in 1919.  Like most silent films, the plot is somewhat complicated.  The interesting thing, perhaps, is that this pre production code film shares a title with the latter skanky trash released under the same name more recently by HBO.  While no more restricted by the law than the latter production, the earlier one didn't plumb the same icky depths.

If you preferred Westerns, The Outcasts of Poker Flat was released, which is a well known silent film.

And the dram Sahara was out as well.  Romantic depiction of the Middle East were a big deal with early movies for some reason.

The title Sahara has been used for movies at least five times, including fairly recently.

If you lived in France, where the relief of the end of the war was particularly felt, this Sunday saw the start of the 1919 Tour de France.  The Tour is of course one of the greatest annual sporting events.  This was the 13th time the race had been run, and the first race since 1914, given the interruption of the war.

June 8, 1919. Sunday at the movies

As was the custom, a lot of movies were released on this Sunday, June 8, 1919.

These included The Other Man's Wife, a turgid, home front, wartime drama.

Also at the theaters was Pistols for Breakfast, a Harold Lloyd comedy.

And also a comedy was the Franklyn Farnum movie, The Puncher and the Pup.

May 11, 1919. Cartoons and the Cinema.

Entertainment on May 11, 1919. The ChicagoTribune cartoon section included one on movies. . . an a fair number of the same were released on this day a century ago as well.

May 4, 1919 Drama in China, and at the movies.

On this day in 1919 protests lead by Chinese students erupted over the anemic response of the Chinese government to provisions in the Versailles Treaty which gave German colonies in China to Japan.

The build up to this had been going on for years, as the Japanese government, following the Meiji Restoration, had become increasingly aggressive on the Asian mainland.  Prior to that, after experimenting with an attempted invasion of Korea in 1592-93, and again in 1597, Japan had retreated into isolationism before the encounter with American Admiral Perry.

The Meiji regime had defeated the Chinese to the world's surprise in the First Sino Japanese War, which resulted in Korea being freed from  Chinese control but not to the immediate benefit of Japan, which none the less obtained world power status as a result of the war. The disappointing territorial result, which had benefited Imperial Russia directly, soon resulted in the Russo Japanese War, which resulted in Japan having a foothold on the mainland itself and Korea had been converted into a Japanese colony.  World War One had given the Japanese an excuse to expand its colonial presence in Asia and the Pacific and during the war it had made demands upon China which caused huge Chinese resentment.  The Chinese government had resisted those demands but took a position of accord with Japan that expressed itself in a willingness to acquiesce to post war Japanese demands at the Paris Peace Conference. The Chinese people, however, were not so willing to endure such demands.

The protests are widely regarded by the Chinese Communist party as the birth of their party, and not without reason.   Many of the adherents of the May 4 Movement did become communists and many of the opponents of Chinese communism also opposed the May 4th Movement on the basis that they felt it turned its back on Chinese values and culture.

Of course, it being a Sunday, dramatic movie releases were in the offering.

Sunday, April 27, 1919. Movie releases, Marching Americans in Russia, Disbanding Reds in Limerick, Wyoming National Guardsmen to Remain In Germany

It was a car racing movie.

As we've noted here before, in the teens it was common to release movies on Sunday, taking advantage of the fact that most people had the day off.  The Roaring Road was an exciting car racing movie, in which the protagonist pursued his love interest and auto racing with equal vigor, showing how automobiles were really coming in.

If car racing wasn't your thing, on the same day Select Pictures released "Redhead".

I suspect that this is a lost film as details on the film are really sketchy, but movie taglines for it are really odd.  Alice Brady's character is described as such a tantalizing beauty that men "didn't care what color her hair was".  Eh?  And an alternative poster states "This is the girl he found himself married to".

I suppose a person would have to see it to figure that one out.

Other romances were also released to the sliver screen on this day.

Wow.  What a turgid plot.

Comedies were also in the offering, including a short featuring a wealthy man whose is a victim of mistaken identity.

Well, while people back in the states were seeing the latest pictures, soldiers were doing what they have for time immemorial.  Marching.

31st Infantry marching near Vladivostok.

The area around Vladivostok in this photo looks a lot, quite frankly, like winter scenes in Wyoming.

Those same troops had recently been fighting.  And fighting was still going on most definately, including between the Estonians and the Reds.

Anton Irv

Estonian officer, and former Imperial Russian enlisted man and then officer, was killed in action on this day in 1919 in that conflict.  He'd been one of the organizer of Estonia's armored trains, something that featured prominently in that war and in the Russian Civil War.  In the East, armored trains would continue to be a feature of conflict into World War Two.

Elsewhere some other Reds or proto Reds went home.

Members of the Limerick Soviet

The goofball Limerick Soviet came to an end after a little over week of being in existence when the local mayor and the local Bishop asked them to knock it off. They then voluntarily closed up shop.

Readers of the Cheyenne papers learned that Wyoming artillerymen would not be coming home soon.

Among other things they also read that Carranza could not hold out much longer.  The author of that article suggested American help to keep him in office would be required, which was a shockingly bad suggestion.

Chicago had its selection of Sunday cartoons of course, including ones that were not really intended to be funny.

I's interesting that even in 1919, gas mileage was a topic.

And some folks in Alaska had their portrait taken.

April 25, 1919. Anzac Day, J'Accuse, Canadians return.

On this day in 1919, the French film J'Accuse was released.  

J'Accuse can legitimately be regarded as one of the very first anti war movies ever made.  The message of the film was made all the more potent by the fact that the director had used actual French soldiers for its filming while the war was still on.  Reportedly 80% of the soldier extras in the film were killed in action before the war was over.

The movie famously features the ghosts of the dead in accusation, but it also features a somewhat complicated betrayal by a love interest plot fairly typical of early films.

Also on this day, Australian soldiers marched for ANZAC Day parades in several cities, but those in Sidney were cancelled due to the Spanish Flu.  Contrary to widespread popular claim, this was not the first ANZAC Day. The official date had been established in 1916.  This was the first post war ANZAC Day.

While Empire troops were marching in Australia, they were arriving in New York on their way home to Canada as well.

Canadian officers Sir Henry Worth Thornton (president of the Canadian National Railway in civilian life) and Air Commodore Alfred Cecil Critchley arriving in New York City on the Aquitania.  Both general officers are wearing classic examples of British officer dress.

The troop ship Aquitania arrived with Canadian soldiers on their way home, greeted by at least one British dignitary.

Gen. Thornton with Sir James Benjamin Bell, Timber Comptroller for the British government.

Ranger Texas, April 25, 1919.

Ranger Texas was photographed.

Ranger was where famous western historian Walter Prescott Webb went to school, being from a nearby farm.

If annoyed. . . .

Another 1912 vintage movie slide.

Good Night

Today's vintage movie slide we're running late in the day, for obvious reasons.

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for April, 2019. 1912 Movie Welcome Slide

Today In Wyoming's History: Updates for April, 2019:

Friday, April 5, 2019

Updates for April, 2019

Move slide from 1912.

March 27, 1919. The Arabia struck, Mary Pickford to visit Casper.

USS Arabia.

She'd been laid down in 1903 as a commercial fishing vessel.  Submarine depredations caused the Navy to take her into service in August, 1918, but with that task complete, she was struck from the Navy's rolls and sold that following November.

Why put this obscure ship in here?

Well, this blog explores trends and changes.  1919 wasn't all that long ago, at least not the way historians think of time, and therefore it wasn't that long ago when commercial operations, and even the Navy, regarded sail as still a viable means of propulsion.

There was big local news.

Mary Pickford was coming to the Irish Theatre in Casper on Sunday.

Mary Pickford in 1916.

Pickford was a huge deal in 1919, and frankly she always would be.  One of the really big early stars of early movies, the Toronto born actress was at that time as big of movie star as anyone could imagine.

Her life wasn't really a happy one.  Married three times, she became a recluse in later years and would only receive Lilian Gish as a personal visitor.  This week in 1919, however, she'd be Casper's visitor.

Casper was also declaring war on vice, the paper proclaimed.  If it was, it wasn't very successful at it.  It wasn't until after World War Two when the strong streak of vice running through Casper would be cleaned up, and the Sandbar district remained all the way into the 1970s.

Movie public service announcement from when ladies wore hats