Spooktober 16: Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920)

 

Just like the vampire form in Nosferatu remains one of the scariest in the history of vampire films, John Barrymore's Mr. Hyde remains one of the scariest, if not the most frightening, Hyde in film history.  It is also not reliant solely on special effects/makeup or superior acting prowess, as other famous Hydes have. Barrymore's Hyde instead employs a winning combination of the two.  For this alone, the film remains one the most effectively frightening horror films of all time. A quick look at Barrymore's Hyde.

 

Born Today July 17: Jakob Christoph Heer

 

 1859-1925

Swiss novelist Jakob Christoph Heer was born on this date in Töss in the Kanton of Zurich (a village still located on the the outskirts of Zurich proper).  Heer was educated at Winterthur and became a teacher by profession. He had worked as a Vicar until 1897 when he obtained his teaching certificate and then worked in as an educator full time after 1882. All the while, he wrote novels in the romantic style, focusing on a sub-genre of "Domestic Romance." Writing in Swiss German, his theme heavily eschewed the increasing advance of technology and the increased removal of populations from rural life, focusing instead on the "idyllic" in living in natural settings surrounded by the pastoral rather than advances in technology (even in pursuits like farming).  In 1902 he was finally able to take up full time free lance writing. Heer's work has not been adapted for film often, but all the four films have been features; including the very first film made in 1929. This film was, though, was no small deal. It was a partial silent American production directed by none other than Ernst Lubitsch. Eternal Love would be the last "silent" film that he made (it actually featured sound effects by MovieTone).  It also starred Camilla Horn and John Barrymore in the leads and was based on Heer's novel Der Koenig der Bernina. The other three productions have all been German language films of Austria, Germany and his native Switzerland. The first full sound film made from his work was the 1932 German Sacred Waters; this was followed some 25 years later by the Austrian Der König der Bernina in 1957. The most recent use of his work for an adapted script came just three years later, way back in 1960 with the joint Swiss/West German production of Secred Waters. Though Heer is known as a novelist, he was also a prolific writer of short stories, poems and--not surprisingly--local travel literature (though he is said to have very much disliked the concept of tourism). Heer died in Zurich on the 20th of August, a little better than a month after his 66th birthday. A huge stone memorial was put up in his honor at Winterthur, the village where he recieved his education and began his writing career.

IMDb

Born Today February 15: John Barrymore

1882-1942

John Sidney Blyth (some family spellings have the name spelled Blythe) either on this day or on Valentine's Day in Philadelphia.  It could easily be said that he was born into acting royalty; even then the Drew and Barrymore families were giants of the stage.  His parents were British actor Maurice Barrymore, whose birth name was Herbert Blyth, who had adopted the Barrymore last name after he took a liking to it from a poster is saw in Haymarket Theater in London.  His mother was Georgie Drew Barrymore; she was the descendent of the powerful and well known theater family the Drews.  Her parents were well off and occupied high positions in the theater, including her mother, who was a famous thespian and one the earliest female managers of a large theater, the Arch Street Theater; her father, who was also an actor, was considered a comedic genius.  Several other members of the Drew family were also successful actors of the stage. While a great deal of the details of John Barrymore's early life are not known, it is known that he was steeped on the theater and accompanied his parents on at least one major dramatic tour.  The family was not without it's stresses; Barrymore was often a naughty, uncontrollable child (owed to being the baby of fmaily?) and he was sent away to numerous schools.  One actress from Poland insisted that he and his two siblings be baptized into the Catholic faith (apparently as a show to his mother's secret conversion); his grandmother came to live with the family when her theater business began to flounder, and that caused considerable stress with the household.  But, it was his mother's death from tuberculosis when he was 11 that left him solely in the custody of his grandmother, who raised him.  He would go onto attend (and be kicked out of) one prep school.  For higher education, he decided that a stint in his father's home country would be the thing, and in 1898 he headed off to King's College in Wimbledon, eventually winding up in the Slade School of Fine Arts.  Though, none of this made much of an impression on him, and he was soon enjoying the London nightlife more than anything.  He returned to New York in 1900, where he found work as an illustrator for The New York Evening Journal.  That same year, he was persuaded by his father, despite that he had proclaimed a disliking for the professor of acting, to join performance of a short play.  But, it was a stage incident in the play that his older sister Ethel was acting in that would have a real effect on how he viewed acting.  She had persuaded the director to take him on when the production was short of players, one evening he forgot his lines, and admitted so on stage; rather than giving in, the actors then proceeded to improvise the whole scene instead.  He then got himself embroiled in a real scandal that included in the murder of the high profile New York architect Stanley White.  He almost had to testify at the trial of the man who shot White.  Already in the throws of a serious drinking problem, he was fired from his newspaper job for producing poor illustration while intoxicated.  It was then that he resigned himself to taking up the family business of acting.  Between the year's 1903 and 1913, Barrymore appeared in larger and larger roles on the stage,  many of which that would go on to be hits.  It was during that later part of this theatrical run, that he is thought to have entered the motion picture business.  It is known that in 1912 he traveled to Los Angeles.  Five films (it is sometimes listed as 4) then came out with the name of an actor as "Jack Barrymore" as a star; it is generally agreed that "Jack" was, in fact, John Barrymore.  The first of these was The Dream Of A Moving Picture.  All of them were produced by the Lubin Manufacturing Co., and all but one--the last one--were intended to be vehicles that studio's in house "star" at the time Jerold T. Hevener.  The last of these films, One On Romance, which was actually released in 1913, saw "Jack Barrymore" as the top billed star.  John Barrymore's film career was off.  The first film that carries Barrymore's actual name came in 1914 with An American Citizen.  The film was directed by none other that J. Searle Dawley, probably the first true director of films, for the Lasky Famous Players, that would later become Paramount.  Barrymore would go on to be one the most recognizable faces in silent film and super-star known all over the globe.  Before we had Lon Chaney Sr. in recognizable horror transformation roles, we had Barrymore in the roles of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in the Famous Players version of the Stevenson story in 1920 (not that Chaney wasn't in films before this, he was!).  That on-screen transformation is still in the horror vaults as one the finest ever filmed.  The number of seriously famous silent films that he appeared in during the 1920's are basically two numerous to list here (that what links below are for); but what is remarkable about his career, is that up until 1925, he had never left the stage.  This meant that when the inevitable happened, that talking pictures would take over, the studios had little to worry about in regards to his voice capabilities; what they did have to worry about (and they knew it), was his ever growing debilitation from alcohol consumption.  Given his star power, it's little surprise that Barrymore was one of the actors put in the earliest transitional or partial sound films.  The first of these was in 1926 with Don Juan.  Vitaphone provided the sound effects and some early musical scoring.  The first full sound (in other words, "full on talkie") that he appeared in, was General Crack in 1929.  By 1933, he had gone to work for MGM and his health began fail. The first effect of this to primarily affect was his ability to remember lines for live performances.  It's not that he didn't make films in the 1930's that showed terrible performances, it's just that they were few and far between and most studios wouldn't chance handing him a role due his extreme alcoholism, despite a spate of film appearances in 1933.  He wound up with a recurring role in the Bulldog Drummond series as Col. Neilson.  He collapsed on the set of a "reality" radio show of it's day--Rudy Vallé's show, sort a Howard Stern affair of it's time--on the 19th of May in 1942.  He was rushed to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital, where he died 10 days later from cirrhosis that resulted in kidney failure and complicated by pneumonia.  He was 60 years old.  He was buried at first on the 2 of June 1942 in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles-- apparently against his wishes--his devoutly Catholic sister insisted on the burial there.  In 1980, his son disinterred his body for cremation and reburial next to his parents in the Mount Vernon Cemetery in Philadelphia, par his original request.  Today, for "Barrymore" fans not familiar with his work on it's own merits, he is most famous for being the grandfather of actress Drew Barrymore.

His current burial site in Philadelphia

Former burial site in California, now empty, but still maintained.

IMDb

Wikipedia

TCM page

Find A Grave For Original Burial Information

Find A Grave For Reburial Information

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920)

Photo of the set for the film

Born Today September 17: Dolores Costello AKA Goddess Of The Silent Screen

1903-1979

Born in 1903 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by 1909, she and her sister Helene, who was 3 years younger than her made their first film appearance in an early adaptation of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream."  Interesting, a lot of sources on the film don't mention that their father Maurice was also in the film as Lysander.  It was probably because of their father that they became child actors at all, he was an actor and director in his own right (though the question marks come in as to whether he got where he was in Hollywood because of his daughters in the first place); Interesting, though,  Wikipedia page doesn't make any reference at all to her father's role in her's or her sister's acting careers.  Additionally curious to me because Dolores is the grandmother of Drew Barrymore.  So much is made of Drew's Barrymore family background in acting and movie making--almost nothing is ever made of her Costello ancestry on the same subject.  Even her Drew family ancestry, a well known theatrical family, is more a topic of conversation concerning her acting blood relations.  Dolores and her sister were contracted to the Vitagraph Film Company through the year 1915, possibly or probably arranged by their father.  Almost all of those films were shorts.  During that time, if my count is right she appeared in a staggering 33 films, many of them with her sister.  Their success together in film resulted in both appearing on Broadway.  After that contract ran out, she didn't appear in another film until 1923.  She went on to sign with Warner Brothers in the 1920's, which, is in part, how so was selected for a major starring role opposite John Barrymore, which how she met the man that would become Drew Barrymore's grandfather.  She became romantically involved with him probably  as a result of a later role that the pair starred opposite each other again in 1927, and they were married in 1928.  They went on to have two children together, Dolores Barrymore and John Drew Barrymore (father of Drew, and other children)--who went on to have a tumultuous career in Hollywood.  She quit acting in 1931 to devote time to her family, but resumed acting after her divorce from John Barrymore, but, all though she had ample speaking talent for the so-called "talkies" she quit acting permanently in the early 1940's, with her last role coming in Michael Curtiz's This Is The Army in 1943 (that film, as a matter of trivia also had Ronald Reagan in a role--it is currently on Amazon Prime, if anyone is interested).  Her need for having to quit acting were for reasons that don't often get talked or wrote about when it comes to early Hollywood.  Make up that was used on her during the silent years, especially when she was a child at Vitagraph ruined her complexion to the point that it was basically it could not be camouflaged.  So the rest of her life was spent in semi-seclusion due to Hollywood make-up ravaging.  She did, however, sucessfully manage an avocado farm in California.  One tragic thing that did occurr during the 1970's, her house was hit with a flash flood that destroyed most of her personal early Hollywood/John & Dolores Barrymore memoribilia, a true lose to the most talented family in acting and to history.  She passed away, suffering from emphysema on the first of March 1979.  She is interred at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.  She certainly earned her nickname "Goddess of the Silent Screen!"

Dolores and Helene

The Career of The Goddess Of The Silent Screen

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1909)

The Telephone (1910) (this was released as a split reel along with a the title A Day On The French Battleship "Justice")

Consuming Love; or St. Valentine's Day In Greenaway Land (1911)

The Geranium (1911) (the sister's father was also in this, along with Ralph Ince)

The Child Crusoes (1911)

His Sister's Children (1911)

A Reformed Santa Claus (1911)

Some Good In All (1911) (Dolores was in this with her father minus Helene)

Captain Jenks' Dilemma (1912)

The Meeting Of The Ways (1912) (Maurice Costello also in this)

For The Honor Of The Family (1912) (their dad was also in this one)

She Never Knew (1912)

Lulu's Doctor (1912) (another all family affair)

The Troublesome Step-Daughters (1912)

The Money Kings (1912) (yet another family affair, a note about IMDb here:  the poster they have posted for this really WRONG, laughingly so!  Most of these types of shorts didn't have full posters.)

A Juvenile Love Affair (1912)

Wanted...A Grandmother (1912) (another father daughter collaboration)

Vultures And Doves (1912)

Her Grandchild (1912) (Dolores in the with her father, no sister)

Captain Barnacle's Legacy (1912)

Bobby's Father (1912)

The Irony Of Fate (1912)

The Toymaker (1912)

Song Of The Shell (1912)

Ida's Christmas (1912)

The Birthday Girl (1913)

The Hindoo Charm (1913) (Maurice Costello actually directed himself and his daughters here)

In The Shadow (1913)

Fellow Voyages (1913) (Maurice Costello co-directed this with Eugene Mullin, with the family starring)

Some Streamer Scooping (1914) (now this really is a family affair, Maurice directing, daughters starring and joined by their mother Mae Costello)

Etta Of The Flootlights (1914) (Maurice co-directed his daughters and himself with Robert Gaillard)

Too Much Burglar (1914) (the same direction and cast here, except that the Gaillard is credited as "Robert Gaillord.")

The Evil Men Do (1915) (same exact credits here, complete with misspelled name)

The Heart Of Jim Brice (1915) (same credits as the last two films)

The Glimpses Of The Moon (1923) (full starring role for Maurice with just a bit part for Dolores.  Lost Film)

Lawful Larceny (1923)

Greater Than A Crown (1925) (a remake)

Bobbed Hair (1925)

Mannequin (1926)

The Sea Beast (1926)

Bride Of The Storm (1926) (lost film)

The Little Irish Girl (1926) (presumed lost film, there are some legitimate rumors that a copy may in the private collection, or stored someplace misnamed)

The Third Degree (1926)

When A Man Loves (1927) (another role starring opposite John Barrymore, partial silent, sound effects and musical score by Vitaphone)

A Million Bid (1927) (partially lost film,  Michael Curtiz directed)

Old San Francisco (1927) (two version, one silent and one full mono sound with dialog by Mono, with sound effects and score by Western Electric Apparatus)

The Heart Of Maryland (1927)

The College Widow (1927)

Tenderloin (1928) (partial silent, mono talking sequences by Vitaphone, lost film)

Glorious Betsy (1928) (two version one silent, mono sound version by Vitaphone)

Noah's Ark (1928) (Mono-Western Electric)

The Redeeming Sin (1929) (partial silent, the mono talking sequences by Western Electric, also a lost film)

Glad Rag Doll (1929) (also mono--Vitaphone Michael Curtiz directed, lost film)

Madonna Of Avenue A (1929) (another Michael Curtiz directed early talkie, sound by Vitaphone)

Hearts In Exile (1929) (another early talkie lost Michael Curtiz directed film)

The Show Of Shows (1929) (early musical, here she has a singing credit as well)

Born Today September 12: Dickie Moore (RIP!)

1925-2015

This is a sad one for me!!  Mr. Moore only passed away this past Monday in Wilton, Conn. and the age of 89; and today would have been his 90th birthday (crying a bit while writing this).  I would have loved nothing more than to wish him a very happy 90th! Though reports of cause of death have been dementia, so I'm not sure it would have been so happy.  Born John Richard Moore, Jr. exactly 90 years ago today in Los Angeles, he like, Wally Albright (also born in 1925) was an early credited child actor and also a member of the Our Gang Little Rascals.  His first acting credit came in 1927 when he was not just two years of age.  Past his teens, he has only one (that I can find) moving picture acting credit in his twenties and then he quit acting, though his pursuits in life where not far from the theatrical world.  He even appeared on Broadway before his acting retirement.  He served in WWII and wrote for stars and stripes, a skill that would become helpful later in life when he found transitioning from child actor to adult acting basically unbearable (something that so many child actors can attest to--just ask Macaulay Culkin).  He became a active in the actors union in the New York area and founded a successful public relations firm called Dick Moore and Associates to represent actors.  It is still in business and it was their president that announced his death this week.  He became known as an inside man in the entertainment biz and (I'm jealous) reportedly had his own booth at famed New York restaurant Sardis.  He is also known for writing an important book on child actors of his era entitled Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (But Don't Have Sex or Take The Car) published in 1984, in which he recounted his own difficulties as a child actor at the time and interviewed several contemporary child actors for the book, one of the most memorable reportedly with Shirley Temple (as a point of trivia, Temple received her first on screen kiss form Moore).  He also interviewed actress   Jane Powell, herself born in 1929, for the book; it was their first meeting, but not their last.  The two were married in 1988 and she is now his widow.  Condolences go out to his family--he had one son, who has children--associates and friends.  It is also with great sadness that I report and that another Our Gang star Jean Darling passed away Friday week ago--Sept. 4, at the ripe old age of 93 in Germany.  Condolences to her friends and family as well.  May the both be at peace. [Added note here, Internet Movie Database has his date of death wrong, for anyone looking up the movies from links here.  Hopefully it will be corrected.]

Moore and Powell--Happy Couple

His Silent Era Work:

The Beloved Rogue (1927) (a John Barrymore film)

Object: Alimony (1928) (Roscoe Karns starred in this)

Blue Skies (1929) (partial silent, soundtrack and sound effects by MovieTone)

Madame X (1929) (early talkie, sound by Western Electric.  Lionel Barrymore directed)

Don Juan (1926)

Today is Dia de la Raza in Mexico; it's their Columbus Day.  If anyone has visited my Friday Horror Blog or my Native American food blog, you know that have native ancestry from several southeastern tribes and connections to the Mexica ("Aztecs") of Mexicol (alternatively Mexichol the native spelling and pronunciation of the country).  Over at the Scare My On Fridays blog we are protesting with a day long early nod to Miccailhuitl (Dias de los Muertos/Days of the Dead) and to the country of Mexichol.  Over at New World Food we are doing the same with a focus on some Mexican food.  Yehyoli Mexcihol! (Viva Mexico). Here is a Warner Bros. partnership with Vitaphone Corp from 1926 starring the great John Barrymore as Don Juan.

Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920)