Born Today February 6: "Baby" Carmen de Rue

 

1908-1986 

 

Child actress Carmen De Rue, who was credited as "Baby de Rue" (or sometimes by her full birth name of Carmen Fay De Rue) when she started acting in films in 1914 at the age of six years old, was born on this day in Pueblo, Colorado.  She was the daughter of Eugene De Rue who would go on to be a director, but in 1914 he was part of the cast of the historically important feature The Squaw Man (February 1914); and it was on that film that his young daughter Carmen was brought in for one of the child parts. Her years active in the film industry span between 1914 and 1918--with the vast majority of her film roles coming in the first two years (!); so, just four short years.  She had some fourteen appearances in films in 1914 and seventeen in 1915. In addition, most of her film appearances up until 1916 were in shorts. In at least one role, in The Master Mind, an Oscar Apfel film penned by Clara Beranger from 1914, she played a boy. During her short career she appeared in multiple films with Norma Talmadge, Bessie Love and Dorothy Gish. Her last five film appearances came in pictures directed by one or both of the Franklin Brothers (Chester and Sidney), whom had directed her in several shorts in 1915.  Most of her later films were fantasy pictures based on children's stories; and most starred actor Francis Carpenter, a fellow Coloradan. Her last role came in the comedy Fan Fan, a Chester brothers film in the role of Lady Shoo opposite Virginia Lee Corbin's lead as Fan Fan; the film was released in November 0f 1918. De Rue married and had a son and seems to have stayed in the Los Angeles area. She died in North Hollywood on the 28th of September at the age of 78.  She was cremated and her ashes were ceremonially scattered after a memorial service.

Still from The Doll-House Mystery (1915)

 

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Born Today January 17: Oscar C. Apfel

1878-1978

Born on this day in Cleveland, Ohio, Oscar C. Apfel was ever the man of the mid-west.  He lived a portion of his young adult life where he was born and worked in commerce.  For some reason he suddenly decided to become an actor, abrutly switched careers and soon debuted on the local stage.  No one could have predicted that he would end up one the most prolific directors and actors of the silent era.  Starting on the stage in 1900 at the age of 22, he was surprisingly suited for the stage and moved quickly through stage ranks to became both a director of plays and a producer of them.  He soon migrated to Broadway itself, and reportedly became the youngest stage director at the time in the U.S.  It stands to reason, that being in the geographical environs of the first studios in the New York area, he would eventually become a part of the film industry in some fashion.  As it happens, he went to work for the company that gave the world it's first film studio: Edison.  Apfel's career unfolded a bit backwards; usually actor became directors, not the other way around.  In his case, he directed a full two years before he appeared in a film.  He made his motion picture directing debut on the 1911 short The Wedding Bell; dramatizing the terrible conditions of New York tenements, it was more of a "public service announcement"--an awareness drama--than it was a melodramatic fancy (this would not be the last time Apfel was involved in this sort of film, Apfel directed one of the first films depicting the Armenian Genocide: Auction of Souls aka Ravished Armenia in 1919).  He stayed with Edison through a good deal of 1912, where he used a number of innovative camera and editing techniques that are not often seen in films dating from the era --including the zooming close up and a dissolve.  Certainly, the last film that he made for them,  The Passer-By, used both of these very well and showed him to be a very careful and crafty filmmaker (the film survives and is available--it was included on the box set Edison: The Invention Of The Movies).  He then moved on to Reliance-Majestic studio, which was one of the newer studios locating significant operations on the west coast and later had a contracutuel connection, and even later, a partnership with D.W. Griffith.  Thelma (1912) appears to be the first film that he made for them after his move there.   It was at this studio that he directed himself in his film acting debut in 1913; the film was The Fight For Right.  Probably Apfel's most important work came at Jesse Lasky's studio.  The company's other director of note was Cecil B. DeMille--DeMille though had never directed a film--so he was paired up to make films with the more experienced Apfel. They made several films together, and none is more well known than The Squaw Man 1914--their very first. The film is really famous for being the first feature ever to be shot in Hollywood; and though it rightly deserves it's fame (not least because it was Cecil B. DeMille directing debut), but there were other Hollywood firsts that date all the way back to 1911 that are not nearly as celebrated.  Apfel would team up with DeMille later that same year to direct the very first version of Brewster's Millions starring Edward Abeles and Joseph Singleton who had appeared in The Squaw Man. The "mentoring" of DeMille continued in The Master Mind (1914) (screenplay by Clara Beranger), and with making of The Only Son (also in 1914 and marking the directors debut of DeMille's brother William). The feature film business in Hollywood was indeed off to a roaring starting by The Famous Players-Lasky distribution network. Apfel would continue his co-directing partnership with DeMille for a couple of more productions, but struck out on his own again for The Last Volunteer (August 1914) with his own Hollywood feature, starring Eleanor Woodruff as the beguiling Katrina.  Although Apfel would helm up a couple of short films after this point, the rest of his directing would lie in the direction of feature films only.  In 1915, Apfel joined Fox Film after directing a couple of films for Oliver Morosco Photoplay Co. He stayed with the company through most of 1916, next ending up with a contract at Paralta. His last film at Fox was Fires of Conscience (September 1916) starring William Farnum; while his first Paralta production was A Man's Man (April 1917) starring J. Warren Kerrigan, an actor that had been discovered by Tom Ricketts another director that made Hollywood history by making one of the very first films of any length there in 1911, the same year that Apfel got into directing at Edison back east.  Apfel next went to work for World Film after only directing 2 titles for Paralta; he stayed with World through several titles, the first of which was Tinsel (July 1918) and with the last being The Steel King (November 1919).  He directed no films in 1920 and only one--Ten Nights in a Bar Room--in 1921. In 1922 he began to direct films under his own production house Apfel Productions, which is listed as only producing just one film in 1922: The Wolf's Fangs. One of Apfel's most well known directions from the 1920's was the very first Bulldog Drummond film released in 1922, starring matinee heart-throb Carlyle Blackwell as the titular character. His directing career in the 1920's jumped around from company to company, including a short stint at Metro directing Viola Dana. He ended up directing Buddy Roosevelt the western Code of the Cow Country for Action Pictures in 1927.  His directing career came to a close without ever working on a film with any sort of sound; he, did however, return to acting and had a part ("Champagne Joe") in the Fox prohibition themed crime melodrama Romance of the Underworld (November 1928), which featured Western Electric sound effects and musical score. He had his first speaking role in the Hal Roach full sound "Blondie" short Hurdy Gurdy, featuring Thelma Todd in 1929. He ended the decade with the role as "Major" in the Marion Davies drama Marianne also released in 1929.  He had a very prolific acting career throughout most of the 1930's, cut short only by his death from a sudden heart attack on the 21st of March in 1938 at the age of 60.  His last film in which he played an uncredited Red Cross personnel, Angel of Mercy, a short film part of MGM's Passing Parade series, was released in May of 1939, over a year after his death. For such a consequential and long working person in the cinema history, it is surprising that I can find no information on his burial/memorial.  

Still from The Squaw Man [source: the American Film Institute]

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Born Today August 17: Samuel Goldwyn

1879-1974

For fans of film history and those who even casually watch silent films, Samuel Goldwyn needs no introduction! Goldwyn is the G in MGM. Born Shmuel (Schmuel) Gelfisz on this day in Warsaw, Poland when it was still a part of the Russian Empire (the year of his birth has been a matter up for question for decades--but for our purposes, 1879 will do). He grew up in a Hasidic household; he was the eldest child and his father was a struggling furniture dealer (mostly of second hand goods). After his father's untimely death--and the weight of the family fell to his young shoulders, he fled to Hamburg, Germany. The greater family had relatives living in the UK (England) and Shumel had plans to make his way to them. In the meantime, he trained as an apprentice to a local glove maker. Eventually saving up enough funds to make his way to his relatives in Birmingham, England--it was his relations there who changed his name to "Samuel Goldfish"--in part to disguise his origins. He didn't remain with them for long, before getting money (reportedly by any means necessary) to sail to the North American continent. He sailed out of Liverpool either for Canada or the east coast of the U.S. (probably the former) on the 4 of January 1899 (accounts of Goldwyn's time with his relatives in England vary--some having him in the country as early as 1895--though the later date of 1898 appears correct).  Goldwyn (Goldfish) arrived either in Canada or the US a couple of weeks later and was in Philadelphia by the 19th of the month. He then made his way into the upstate New York garment industry located around Glovesville (it was called that for a good reason, as it was the "capital" of glove-making in the U.S. at the time).  It turned out that Samuel had prodigious talents has a salesman and marketer. It did not take him long to rise in the company. He eventually was named vice-president of the Elite Glove Company, and after spending nearly five years in that position in upstate, his money allowed him to relocate to New York City. There is NO mystery as to how Goldfish made it into motion pictures. In 1910, he had wed one Blanche Lasky, who was the sister of...you guessed it....Jesse Lasky. Lasky had long been involved in performance, he had gone from being a popular vaudeville performer to successful Broadway producer, meeting the DeMille's along the way--it was only natural for Lasky and Cecil B. De Mille to want to venture into films....but they needed a capital investment--hence the involvement of his brother-in-law--the newly rich Samuel Goldfish (mind you, there are plenty of stories that have Samuel pressuring the two stage producers into films--either way, the rest is history).  The new company that was set up was The Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company.  Goldfish was involved in the film business years before any official credit came to his name. The ground breaking and history making film The Squaw Man, which lays serious claim to being the first feature length film made in Hollywood was the company's out of the gate picture--it was co-directed by De Mille and Oscar Apfel (another founder at Lasky Feature Play).  

Promotional put together by Samuel, bearing his original Anglicizied name and his titles at Lasky.

Way, way back in the day, the company that we now know as "Paramount" was in it's earliest days a fledgling distribution company--it was initially a exhibition house involved in nickelodeons, that got into film exchanges (or brokering) between companies. Ever the businessman and from rags to riches European immigrant himself, Adolph Zukor, had been in a film distribution deal with the company for some time. In June of 1914 Lasky also penned an agreement with with Paramount. As essentially the only production houses providing films to Paramount, it was only a matter time before the two companies merged. This occurred two years later in June, thus creating one the biggest actual film studios to thus far exist (it was more than likely this merger that put the nail in the coffin of the Edison film production house, which closed it's film making facilities for good in 1918). The company was Famous Players-Lasky, but Zukor, in a basically dirty tricks move had also been secretly purchasing stock in Paramount--he pulled a coup just before the merger of Player and Lasky. Ousting everyone at Paramount and replacing them with his own people, and putting the Lasky people in charge of the newly merged entity, it was also only a matter of time before tensions flared. Cutting a very long story a little short, this lead to Goldfish forming his own company and producing his own films. Again returning to Broadway to find capable producers and directors, he convinced the famous Selwyn brothers to come in with him forming Goldwyn Pictures. It was not long thereafter that Goldfish legally changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn (stuff of legends now, I suppose). Absolutely the most famous thing that Goldwyn Pictures introduced was is logo/marketing mascot "Leo the Lion."  One the production houses first films as Polly of the Circus in 1917; a Mae Marsh film, of which the newly "minted" Goldwyn was the executive producer.     

  

 

Between 1917 and 1924, he racked up the vast majority of his direct production credits, with roughly the other 1/4 or 1/3 coming with his new independent company established in 1924. During the company's existence, a sampling of directors who worked for them include George Fitzmaurice, Tod Browning, George Loane Tucker, Wallace Worsley, Albert Parker, Allan Dwan and western specialist Clarence G. Badger. In 1924, Goldwyn Pictures was acquired Marcus Loew's company Metro in April--his company having already acquired a small production company out in California called "Mayer"--thus creating the famous MGM that we know today, despite his name in the company logo, Goldwyn himself never had any position with the famous company. Goldwyn, though, was never out of pictures however, not even for a day.  He established Samuel Goldwyn Production in 1923, it would become the premiere independent film production house in Hollywood's golden age.  

The company actually came "online" in 1923, before the finalized sale of Goldwyn Pictures to Metro. The first film produced was Potash and Perlmutter, directed by Badger, who had come with Goldwyn to his new company. While the company had most of it's biggest successes out of the silent era, it did have at least a couple of notable titles to it's name in the 1920's. Biggest among them was most certainly Stella Dallas in 1925 (in 1925 Goldwyn himself [not his company] was involved personally with the production of  Ben Hur). The company was also responsible for the reboot of Bulldog Drummond character, bringing the hard boiled literary character to sounded film for the first time in 1929 (Ronald Colman as Bulldog).  By 1926, a full studio facility had been built in Hollywood on Santa Monica Blvd. and films like the comedy Partners Again (1926) were filmed completely on site there.  Among the directors working for this new Goldwyn company were Fred Niblo, Henry King, Victor Fleming and Herbert Brenon. In fact it was a Fred Niblo film that first contained sound produced at the studio: Two Lovers, a historical romantic drama that contained sound effects and a musical score by Western Electric, the film starred Vílma Banky and Ronald Colman (in a funny bit of trivia--Colman's character uses an alias...."Leatherface" 😆).  The Herbert Brenon directed adventure romance (also starring Coleman) The Rescue was the first full talkie for the studio--released in January 1929.  The company's last release in the 1920's was a full on talking melodrama, filmed partially on location on the Santa Catalina Island and starring....yes...Ronald Colman.  Condemned! was released on the 3rd of November. 

         

There first release of the brand new decade (the company's most successful 10 years!) was the cat burglar "crime romance" Raffles, released in July of 1930 and starring....yes...Ronald Colman again. The studio also quickly got into the musical business starting with Whoopee! (October 1930) starring funny man Eddie Cantor; and added King Vidor to their list of directors who made pictures with them with Street Scene starring new-comer Sylvia Sidney being his first.  But it was with Arrowsmith  in 1931 that the studio hit pay-dirt, the film was directed by John Ford was nominated for 4 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (and...it starred, you guessed it! Ronald Colman).   It was the first of several films to be nominated thusly during the 1930's. The studio's best investment was in the hiring of director William Wyler, though he was replaced by Howard Hawks on Barbury Coast, his Dodsworth was not only nominated for 7 Oscars, it won for Best Art Direction. Other Goldwyn produced Wyler films that garnered Oscar nominations include Dead End (1937) again with Sylvia Sidney, Wuthering Heights (1938) with Merle Oberon (which won for Best Cinematography) & Little Foxes (1941) with Bette Davis. The production company also remade it's Stella Dallas in 1937, directed by Vidor--it too was nominated for Academy Awards. Goldwyn himself would go to be honored by the Academy in 1946 with the Irving B. Thalberg Memorial Award, an irony given that Thalberg was famous as head of production for MGM. Goldwyn was the 8th recipient of the award. His last production credit came in 1959 with Porgy And Bess starring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Danridge, Pearl Bailey and Sammy Davis Jr.--nominated for 4 Academy Awards, it won for Best Score. Goldwyn's next-to-last producer credit came on his only foray into television on the made-for television science fiction film The Unexplained based on a Ray Bradbury story (teleplay by Raphael Hayes)--it aired on the 10th of July in 1956.  He then retired to his home on Laurel Lane. He died in the home on New Year's Eve in 1974 at the age of 94. He was buried in a sort-of unmarked grave (in Hasidic tradition) in a special private garden with no public access at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.  Goldwyn's second marriage was to actress Frances Howard, who had a very short career. Their son followed his father into the business, as hae several grandchildren have gotten into the business in various capacities. Unfortunately, a number of his family members left behind in Poland died at the hands of the Nazi's during the Holocaust, despite the family's best efforts to get them out of Europe.                                    

[Source: Dennis Svoboda and Anneabe (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today February 1: Lillian St. Cyr (Red Wing)

1884-1974

The Native American silent film actress who was simply known as "Red Wing" was born Lillian Margaret St. Cyr in Nebraska on this day. She was born a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation in Nebraska, better known to the rest of world as Winnebago (now formally the "Winnebago Tribe Of Nebraska" [not to be confused with the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin]), though her father was reputed to be of French Canadian & Native ancestry from the related tribe of Sauk peoples. The reservation where she was born, is located in the northeastern corner of the state and actually occupies a small portion of Iowa. She was raised on the reservation, before being sent to the infamous Carlyle Indian School in Pennsylvania, after which she moved to the Washington D. C. area to take up a domestic situation at a Kansas Senator's residence there.  It was here that she met J. (James) Younger Johnson (better known as James Young Deer), a native of the city, who was mixed race (African, Native & European) and a member of the almost completely decimated eastern tribe the Nanticokes (themselves a member nation of the Delaware Confederacy). The two married in 1906 and by two years later they were making films in New York. This came by way of the two of them performing in western acts in major cities in the northeast.  Her film debut came in Kalem's The White Squaw (1908)--billed as "Princess Red Wing" (because every damn actress, whether actually native or not, who played a native role had to be a "princess" something or other...also, I have to say, just typing the word "squaw" also ticks me off!).  The following year, she appeared in the Lubin production The Falling Arrow, which was directed by her husband under the name James Young Deer.  The two of them were subsequently hired by Bison. The first film at that production house that she appeared in A Cowboy's Narrow Escape in 1909 was not directed by her husband, despite his situation there; it was instead directed by Fred J. Balshofer.  The studio, by the way, dropped the "princess" tag on her name thankfully. Bison made the relocation from New York to California in 1909 and St. Cyr and Johnson Young Deer went with them. Though her husband worked at Bison, he never directed there, though he did act in some of the films that she made with them--all of them were instead directed by Balshofer (the only "stand out" in this period of her acting career came when her and her husband worked on D.W. Griffith's Biograh release The Mended Lute in 1909).  Young Deer departed for other companies that would allow him to direct.  At Vitagraph--the company her husband first moved to--she appeared in the first film that bore her name: Red Wing's Gratitude (directed by Young Deer) in 1909. Bison caught on to this and duplicated it for several films in 1910. Though the vast majority of the films in which she acted came before 1914, she is by far best remembered for her role in The Squaw Man (there's that word again!*) in 1914. It's a legendary film in so many ways: first film direction by Cecil B. DeMille, first feature length western filmed in Hollywood...and the list kind of goes on; I am not going to take up the production of the film here (another time, perhaps), but I will say that her portrayal of Nat-U-Ritch is considered one of the most revered in Hollywood history. For a town that came to demonize and stereotype Native Americans, and make barrels of money doing it, this was one production where at least two of the native actors had a real hand in shaping the way natives where portrayed!  She only appeared in four films after this, and in the last one, she went uncredited. By 1915 and 1916, the studios were condescendingly crediting her either as "Miss" or "Princess."  Her last film appearance came in 1921, some five years after her appearance in Clune Film's Ramona (1916); the film was the Paramount distributed-William S. Hart production White Oak (1921), an exploitation western that did feature Chief Luther Standing Bear (Mato Nanji), but other than that, the film shows the signs of stereotypes that would become the norm of westerns. It seems that she had truly had enough of acting in the late 1910's and that her appearance in one production in the 1920's in a small role signals that she was tired of the whole profession. She certainly was done with California, and I am not sure that she ever really liked the place to begin with. Couple that with a not-so-nice divorce, she retired from the industry for good and returned to New York City. She lived there for the remainder of her life, remarrying in 1925, only to get divorced again in 1929. She never had any children. She passed away in the New York City on the 13th of March in 1974 at the age of 91. Her remains where transported back to her reservation for burial at the St. Augustine Mission Cemetery there. She is buried under her birth certificate name and her film name of "Red Wing of the Silent Era"--most importantly, her Native Ho-Chunk name of Ah Hoo Sooch Wing Cah**.

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Wikipedia Entry for the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) Language

*There are a number of theories as to whether the word "squaw" is Iroquoian or Algonquin, but there is no debate as to whether the term was meant, and sadly continues to be, derogatory.  There is strong evidence that the term is indeed derived from far eastern Algonquin languages, in which case it means "vagina"...or in other words "cunt." It's derogatory use, stemming largely from fur-trapping Europeans--basically meant "wife on the side." Don't expect a full reference here, a great deal of this notation is from my own memory...and experience. But please do see Wikipedia.

**She was a relative of Native American actor Vincent St. Cyr.

Born Today May 18: Alfred E. Gandolfi

1885-1963

Silent film cinematographer Alfred E. Gandolfi was born on this date in Italy.  Almost nothing is known about his early life, or how he came to the United States.  During his career, he worked at Fox, World, and eventually Goldwyn (the "G" in MGM).  The first film that he is thought to have worked on came in 1914 with The Squaw Man a film co-directed by  Oscar Apfel and Cecil B. DeMille.  The first film that he is known to have worked on came the next year with After Five, again co-directed by Apfel and DeMille.  For some reason, he had a long hiatus in work from 1924 until the early 1930's.  The last film that he worked on the silent era was The Trail Of The Law (1924), an Oscar Apfel directed vehicle.  He did not return to film work until 1931 with the full sound The Viking-- a Canadian film.  The last film he is known to have worked on came the next year with Amore e morte (1932), an Italian language American film.  Gandolfi obviously spent the rest of his life in New York City, where he died at the age 78 on the 9th of June 1963.  There zero information about his life from the 1930's until the 1960's--never mind information about his burial.  

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