Thursday, October 20, 2016
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Born Today October 6: Janet Gaynor
1906-1984
Born Laura Augusta, with either her last name spelled Gainor or Gainer, in Germantown, Pennsylvania, she was nicknamed "Lolly" as a child. Her father was a theatrical painter and paperhanger; it was he that began to teach her song and dance, as well as acrobatics when she was just a toddler. When she entered school, she then began to act in school plays. After her parents divorced and her mother remarried, the family eventually settled in San Francisco. When she graduated from high school there, she began doing stage work in Melbourne, Florida while on winter vacation. Upon her return to San Francisco, the whole family moved to Los Angeles so she could be pursue a career in acting. She, accompanied by her stepfather, began to present herself at studios there, where she eventually landed a role as an extra in a Hal Roach film. The film was Cupid's Rustler, the year was 1924. She continued to get work in roles as extras regularly until 1926, when she began to get small roles that she credited for, the first of which was The Johnstown Flood, a Fox film that she was hired for after Fox offered her a screen test. By 1927, she had blossomed into one of Hollywood's leading ladies. She played a lead role as "The Wife" in F. W. Murnau's 1927 feature Sunrise, for which she won one of the very earliest Oscars, in the category of Best Actress in a Leading Role--she was the very first winner for this category. She also won for her role in Street Angel (a partial sound film). The award, which was presented in the year 1929, combined the work. Another interesting fact is that she was only 22 years of age at the time; she would remain the youngest actress to win in the category until 1986, when at 21 Marlee Matlin won for Children Of A Lesser God. Her first full sound film came in 1928 with 4 Devils, which had an alternative silent print, and was also directed by Murnau. By 1929, she had made the transition to speaking roles and even starred in a film with early color sequences (Sunnyside Up). By the age of 33, she had been making films for almost 20 years and had made up her mind to retire, which she did in 1938. After this, she worked sporadically, and almost entirely in television. She found a new profession is painting however, becoming very accomplished in still life depictions of flowers and vegetables. She finally made her professional stage debut in 1980! She worked in the theater for 2 years. In September of 1982, a taxi in which she was a passenger was struck by a van that had run a red light; she was left with several very serious injuries, including 11 broken ribs. She passed away 2 years later on 14 September; with her long time doctor declaring that her death was brought on by the accident, from which she had never fully recovered. She is buried in the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery. [For anyone that interested in visiting, it is located in the Garden of Legends section, Lot 193)
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Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Born Today October 4: Jeremias Gotthelf
1797-1854
Writer Jeremias Gotthelf was born Albert Bitzius in the Swiss town of Murten into a family of the church. His father was a pastor. In 1804 the family moved to the small village of Utzendorf, where his education began. In 1812, he moved to Bern to complete his education, where he, in 1819, became a founding member of the Student Society Zofingig--it is the second oldest fraternity in Switzerland. In 1820, he became a pastor--the professional that he would remain in for the remainder of his life. He began writing later in life, publishing under the carefully held pen name of Jeremias Gotthelf, who, it was contended, was a real person--though this is probably not the case. His best known work is Die schwarze Spinne (The Black Spider), an allegorical fantasy horror tale involving a story of the plague told through the vehicle of a monster who has made a pact with the devil. It is this work that we are concerned with here in regards to silent film. In 1921 the German film company Turma Film made a film based the novella that was released on the 8th of August. The page for it on IMDb can be found here. The most recent version of this story (and apparently the most recent film based on his work) came in 1983, with a Swiss production company, IMDb page here. Bitzius (aka Gotthelf) died in the Swiss town of Lützeflüh on the 22nd of October in 1854, leaving behind a large influential ecclesiastical philosophy in the German speaking regions of Switzerland. He was 52 years of age. He is buried in the town cemetery there.
Monday, October 3, 2016
Countdown To Halloween: Melies' The House Of The Devil (1896)
Widely believed to be the first horror movie made.
Born Today October 3: Alphonse Winckler
1839-1925
Winckler was born on this date in Champanole France. He appears, along with 3 other men in one of the early Lumiére Brothers shorts from the 1890's. Partie d'écarté or The Messers. Lumiére at Cards (or Men Playing Cards as an alternative English title) was produced in 1896 and lasts for less that 1 minutes. Most of the cast is made up of members of the Lumiére family. The film appears as No. 73 in the Lumiére catalog. The still above is from the film. Winckler appears to be the man who is standing. Additionally, the Lumiére catalog lists him as appearing in the title number 48 Embarquement pour la promenade, but he is not currently credited with that on IMDb. Winckler died at the age of 82 on 21 April 1925 in Lyon, the home town of the Lumiére production facility.
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Born Today (Not So Silent Edition) October 1: Henry Clay Work
1832-1884
American composer Henry Clay Work was born in Middleton, Connecticut to an abolitionist family. The family's property actually became a stop on the Underground Railway. Naturally talented in music, he was a completely self taught musician and songwriter. During his lifetime, he worked in many aspects of the music profession. By the time he was in his early 20's, he had found work as printer in a shop that specialized in setting musical type. As it turns out, the sound of the machinery as it worked away, helped him keep time to musical compositions that he wrote in his head and committed to memory. He also had an ear for dialectical speech, using many negro wordings and terms that he over-heard from slaves passing through his parents property--he also had a fondness for Irish speech of the English language. This wound up being the reason that many of his songs became popular with late 19th century minstrels--and later became associated with the disgraced black face song and dance routine. There is not a shred of evidence that he was even slightly racist, however; he did grow up at stop for the smuggling of slaves from the south to help them to Canada and freedom. Most of his compositions were intended to bolster the Union. He was also known for penning at least one composition that became an anthem of the temperance movement. One of his compositions made it into an early all sound musical short film in 1929. "Kingdom Coming" was featured in Paul Tremaine and His Aristocrats, a 9 minute film featuring the jazz group playing several popular tunes of the time (sound by Vitaphone). Later in 1929, that same song was featured in a black and white Mickey Mouse cartoon entitled When The Cat's Away (sound here provided by the little known Powers Cinephone Sound System). He is most well known for being a songwriter that sold a million copies of a song in 19th century--quite the feat at the time. Most recently his "Marchin Through Georgia" was featured in the 2013 film Saving Lincoln. Work passed away on the 8th of June in Hartford, Conn. at the age of 51. He is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Hartford. Read more about his musical career at Wikipedia (listed below).
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Friday, September 30, 2016
Born Today September 30: Frederick Sleigh Roberts
1832-1914
The subject of early documentary newsreel style films, Lord Roberts, was born in India into a prominent Anglo-Irish military family. Eton educated, he later attended Addiscombe Military Seminary, before entering the East India Company Army as a Second Lieutenant. He eventually rose all the way to Field Marshall and served as the Commander in Chief of the Forces for the British Military. He later became the 1st Earl Roberts. Starting in 1899 he was featured in a number of short documentaries by various early British film companies performing various official duties. The first of these was Lord Roberts Unveils Statue of Queen Victoria by the Hepworth company. He continued to be the subject of, and in, such shorts right up until a year before his death; the last of which was England's King at Liverpool (1913), produced by the Kalem company. On the 14th of November 1914 he passed away from pneumonia in St. Omer, France at the age of 82. His body lay in state before he was given a state funeral and buried at St. Paul's Cathedral. He is only one of two non-royal individuals to lay in state in the 20th century; the other being Sir Winston Churchill. For more about his extensive life, see the Wikipedia link below.
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Tuesday, September 20, 2016
Born Today September 20: Kermit Maynard
1897-1971
Actor, stuntman and body double Kermit Maynard was born today in Vevay, Indiana. Growing up in a family of five siblings (including older brother Ken who went into movies before him, and for whom he served as a body double--despite their age difference, most in Hollywood assumed they were identical twins). As a young man, he attended college at Indiana University and played as a linebacker for the Hoosiers in the early 1920's. Also while there, he played baseball and basketball, but in the end, he did not graduate. At some point along the way, he worked for a time as a meat packer for the Hormel company. He also found work a local circuses. He later followed his rodeo veteran older brother into moving pictures in Hollywood by early 1927. The first film that he appeared in was Prince of the Plains, where he was cast as the star and credited (as he would be in all the silent film in which her appeared) as "Tex Maynard." In all, he made 6 films in the silent era under his "stage" name. In then doesn't appear again in a film until 1930, when he took an uncredited role in the all talking Rin Tin Tin film The Lone Defender. He never went by the name "Tex" again. This is also the film in which he began to appear as a stunt man, a career which spanned even longer than his acting career. In addition to his own older brother, he worked as an action double of a number of other western actors. Throughout his long career, he appeared in over 280 films and television episodes up to the year 1962, when he retired. Maynard passed away in North Hollywood on 16 January 1971 of a heart attack, 2 months before his older brother Ken passed in March of the same year. He was 73 years of age. He is buried in the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Born Today September 19: Ben Turpin
1869-1940
Bernard Turpin was born today in New Orleans, LA the child of a candy store owner. Having been born long before the invention of the moving picture, he obviously got his start on the stage; which in his case came in the form of various traveling shows. He possessed a body type and face that lent itself to comedic work, with one of his eyes permanently crossed (later in his life, he famously--and comically--took out an insurance policy with Lloyd's of London in case his eyes straightened out), and an oversized handle bar mustache. In the early days of his career, he found work in circuses, vaudeville and burlesque. He developed an exaggerated form of physical comedy that laid the ground work for what we now call "slapstick;" and was this talent that eventually got him into the motion picture business. He made his film debut in 1907 in a comedic short that he was specifically cast for: An Awful Skate, or, The Hobo On Roller Skates. From this point onward, he starred in a series of slapstick comedy shorts, making him a huge star of the silent cinema, even playing roles such a "The Tramp" long before one Charlie Chaplin would take up that comedic identity. In fact, the company that introduced Turpin to the moving image was Essanay, who would later employ Chaplin, who became their biggest star until his departure bankrupted the studio. This is when things began to deteriorate between Turpin and Essanay. As soon has they hired Chaplin, they made Turpin his comedic side-kick, setting up his characters as mere foils for which Chaplin could play off of. Turpin was naturally insulted by this. In 1917 he went to work for the king of comedy Mack Sennett. Turpin signed a very lucrative contract the the Mack Sennett Studios. Much to Turpin's delight, he quickly became one of their biggest stars; so much so, that he began to introduce himself as "I'm Ben Turpin, I make $3000 a week!" He worked steadily up through the invention of talkies, at which time--owed to good investments--he chose to retire from the industry, rather than attempt to make the transition to talking cinema. Still, he was sought out for cameo comedy appearances in films regularly. In 1935 he, and other stars from the silent comedy era (including Chester Conklin and Ford Sterling), starred in Keystone Hotel; it was his only starring role in the sound era. The last film that he appeared in, very briefly, was Laurel and Hardy's Saps At Sea (1940). He was set to make a cameo appearance in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), but Turpin died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 70 on the first of July before filming started. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA.
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