W. C. Fields Theme of Classic Filmfest

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

Just three weeks after the annual Labor Day Cinecon classic film festival in Hollywood there’s another weekend gathering in the Midwest, the annual Fall Cinesation in Massillon, Ohio. There, with a hundred or so other cinephiles, I watched films at the historic 1915 Lincoln Theatre from last Thursday night through Sunday afternoon. Some of the roughly 20 features and over 20 shorts were extremely rare, some even one-of-a-kind, while several others are available on DVD (although video picture quality cannot compare with original film prints projected on a big screen). And of course all the silent films had musical accompaniment performed live.

This year Harriet Fields, granddaughter of comedian W. C. Fields, was on hand throughout the weekend, introducing films that starred her grandfather and answering questions from the audience. She noted that a selection from her family’s collection of memorabilia, recently donated to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is available for touring museum exhibits and has so far been shown in Los Angeles and New York to popular success.

Fields features that were screened included the slow but interesting all-star 1933 version of “Alice in Wonderland,” the pleasant Jane Powell wartime morale-raiser, “Song of the Open Road” (1944), and one of Fields’ all-time classics, “You’re Telling Me” (1934), which includes his famous golfing routine. Also shown was his classic 1930 short “The Golf Specialist,” in a pristine 35mm print that looked as if it were shot yesterday, and a few newsreels (and even cartoons) in which Fields made an appearance. Both “You’re Telling Me” and “Alice in Wonderland” are available on fine DVDs from Universal Home Video and “The Golf Specialist” is available from Criterion and various other distributors.

Besides “You’re Telling Me,” the best films of the weekend were “Just Pals” (1920) and “The Westbound Limited” (1923), both of which can be found on DVD but were shown in high-quality 16mm film prints. “Just Pals” is a touching rural drama directed by John Ford, and starring Buck Jones as a bum scorned by supposedly righteous townspeople who eventually proves himself by thwarting a bank robbery. It’s full of Ford’s trademark character touches, sentiment, ironic comedy, and social commentary, and contains a good performance by child actor George Stone. It’s included in the “Ford at Fox” DVD set from Fox Home Video. “The Westbound Limited” is a rousing railroad melodrama from a low-budget independent studio, yet is packed with action, a nicely-plotted and unexpectedly complex story, gorgeous location photography, and slick, effective editing. Grapevine Video has a DVD version available.

Another fun movie was the odd and rather dark Douglas Fairbanks comedy, “When the Clouds Roll By” (1919), which is available on an adequate but disappointing DVD copy but was shown in a beautiful 35mm film print that greatly added to its enjoyment. In this one, Fairbanks is superstitious and a crazy doctor is experimenting to see whether he can drive him to suicide by exploiting his superstitions and manipulating the good and bad things that happen to him.

Much rarer was a film with a similar theme, “The Devil” (1920), starring George Arliss in his first movie role as a sinister doctor who is pretending to be the friend of two young couples but is simultaneously playing on each one’s jealousy and suspicions to destroy their friendships and romantic relationships. This film had been believed lost but was discovered a little over a decade ago, and was shown in a recent 35mm restoration from the Library of Congress.

Fargo-Moorhead area favorite Colleen Moore had an early starring role in the 1922 Goldwyn film, “Broken Chains.” This rural melodrama, produced from the winner of an amateur screenwriting contest, featured Malcolm McGregor as a spoiled young millionaire who goes to work at his family’s lumber camp to prove himself a man. There he meets pretty young Colleen, whose brutish husband (Ernest Torrence) keeps her literally chained to their remote forest cabin. Naturally the two young people fall in love and McGregor ultimately faces off with Torrence in a vicious and impressively staged fight scene by the end of the film, which is strongly reminiscent of the classic “Tol’able David.”

“Cradle of Courage” (1920) is a William S. Hart film that’s not a western but features his standard character, this time a career safecracker who decides to go straight after fighting in World war I as a sergeant. Both his former gang and his tough old mother (!) try to get him back into his life of crime and are shocked when he decides to become a cop, but naturally the usual Hart formula applies, with a few interesting variations and complications. This film is also available on DVD from Grapevine Video.

A few other hard-to-find features worth seeing included Olson & Johnson’s wacky comedy “Crazy House” (1943), the well-mounted action adventure “The Soldier and the Lady” (1937), based on “Michael Strogoff,” the fun murder mystery “While the Patient Slept” 91935), the Clara Kimball Young soap-opera “Forbidden Woman” (1919), the surviving last half or so of the Dorothy Gish theatre drama “Stagestruck” (1917), the horserace romantic melodrama “Better Days” (1927), and the silly precode musical comedy “Let’s Go Native” (1930).

A couple more films on the schedule that can be found on DVD include the old-dark-house comedy-mystery “The Black Cat” (1941) and the ambitious silent feature version of “Alice in Wonderland” (1915).

Many of the shorts were just as interesting, entertaining, and/or rare, with the standout likely being the 1933 Technicolor screen tests for a never-produced version of “Hamlet” starring John Barrymore, Donald Crisp, and Reginald Denny.

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