by Paul R. Spitzzeri
Prior posts in the “That’s a Wrap” series of posts touching on the film industry, including motion picture theaters (Walter P. Temple built two such venues, the Temple in Alhambra and the Rialto in El Monte, during the first half of the Roaring Twenties), have featured issues of “Screen News and Programs of the California and Miller’s Theatres,” downtown Los Angeles auditoriums that were operated by the rapidly growing West Coast Theatres, Inc. chain.
These artifacts from the Museum’s collection were from 18 April 1925 and 20 December 1924, with the former going into the history of the venues and the latter, also including the program for the Lowe’s State Theatre, another prominent Angel City “movie palace,” giving some info on the Jewish owners of the chain. Here, we take a look at the 14 March 1925 edition, the 15th number of the first volume, homing in on the specifics of the offerings at the California and Miller’s, current and upcoming, live and filmed.
For the week starting that Saturday, the feature film at the California, which was on Main Street just south of 8th Street (across the street from the National City Bank and Great Republic Life buildings in which Walter P. Temple was an investor) was Isn’t Life Wonderful directed by the famous D.W. Griffith, best known today for his innovative but notorious and racist epic Birth of a Nation from a decade before. The picture was set in Germany after World War I and concerned a Polish family struggling to survive in the war-wracked country, which precipitated the conflict and went through difficult economic times because of its aggression. Carol Dempster starred along with Neil Hamilton, the two playing cousins in love who asked themselves the titular question amid the turmoil in their lives.
Dempster was almost exclusively associated with Griffith, trying to fill the immense footsteps of his earlier collaborator, Lillian Gish, after she began working with the director in 1919, and never achieved much critical respect in comparison. She retired in 1926 after marriage and lived 65 years afterward, leaving a substantial sum to the San Diego Museum of Art to grow its drawings and prints collection.
As for Hamilton, he made his first film in 1918, but achieved significant recognition five years later in Griffith’s The White Rose (Dempster being a co-star). He was a Paramount leading man in the last half of the Twenties and moved into talkies, though as a character actor, generally in low-budget, B-movies. After doing some early television and occasional film work, including three Jerry Lewis comedies, he gained some renowned as Inspector Gordon in the “Batman” television series and film from 1966-1968.
Among the supporting cast was Lupino Lane (born Henry Lupino), who came from an acting family, was a child stage star in his native England, and who made his first movie in 1915 who became well-known for his acrobatic comedy in a series of shorts in the last half of the Roaring Twenties. He made some talkies, but was more successful on stage and film in his homeland and in Europe—a cousin was Hollywood star Ida Lupino.
Also on the program at the California was its “topical review and magazine,” a sort of “newsreel;” a short by Educational Pictures called “Crossword Puzzle;” the California Chanters, comprised of a nonet of singers performing a “Songologue from Southern Italy” with pieces from operatic works and directed by former French Opera Comique tenor, Georges Simondet; a selection for Owen Sweeten and His Music Masters; and a feature called “Local Laughs.” This last was briefly highlighted by the Los Angeles Times of 12 March, which asked readers to send jokes of no more than 30 words for inclusion in the reel of fifteen such funnies, with prizes ranging from $1 to $5 and recognition on screen.
Sweeten, a native of Utah, was a cornetist who studied at the Boston Conservatory of Music and then became an orchestra leader in his home state, including in the Saltair Pavilion at the edge of the Great Salt Lake. He worked in a movie theater in Oakland, with his ensemble frequently performing on radio before, early in 1925, he appeared as a guest and then was hired to work at the California (whose orchestra leader Carli D. Elinor, well-known as a film composer, moved to Loew’s State). Later, Sweeten, whose cousin was actor Carol Ohmart, worked in Long Beach and Seattle before moving to Santa Rosa County, where he was a rancher and county sanitary inspector.
Miller’s Theatre was just a few doors down south from the California and its feature motion picture was Percy, which just finished its run at the latter and starred Charles Ray, who turned 34 on the day after this program was issued. An actor in stock theater companies for several years, he became, in 1913, part of the studio founded by Thomas H. Ince, first located where Sunset Boulevard terminates at Pacific Coast Highway where the Palisades Fire recently caused such enormous damage. He appeared in many shorts before features became the norm by mid-decade and his star rose by 1920, with Ray known for his “aw, shucks” country boy roles.
In 1920, however, he broke free from Ince and formed his own production company, leasing studio space for films that he largely directed, as well as acted in, but he struggled to keep his fan base intact, especially as he spent more money on lavish period pieces like 1923’s The Courtship of Miles Standish, the box office failure of which ended his independent work. He returned to partner with Ince and contracts were signed for Percy, after which the studio owner suddenly died, but work on the film continued.
The movie was a return to the old characterizations that made Ray a star, as he portrayed a “mama’s boy,” whose father decides will never truly be a man until a friend insists he’ll straighten young Percy out. This involves alcohol, however, and the titular character ends up working on a farm on the U.S.-Mexico border, but achieves some local renown as a violinist in a cantina. When his father shows up, Percy’s timidity is gone as he saves a girl’s ranch from ruffians.
Acting and directing veteran Charlie Murray, Betty Blythe as a Latina, and Barbara Bedford are the main supporting cast members, but the best-known of the troupe to most silent movie aficionados was Louise Dresser, a vaudeville and Broadway performer of longstanding who played Ray’s mother and went on to be nominated for Best Actress at the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. Ray, however, was not able to reestablish his stardom and the financial disaster after his production company failed was compounded by his lavish lifestyle. He continued acting and writing, somewhat sporadically, until his death in 1943.
“Screen News” commented that “Ray is once more seen as the bashful, girl-shy youth, a role similar to those which brought him fame” and that his character was “sissyfied” by interests in aesthetics and culture, meaning “everything useless” because he had “never done a real day’s work in his life.” It concluded that “how Ray finally cuts loose from his mother’s apron strings and becomes a ‘fighting fool’ makes ‘Percy’ one of the best films in which this popular star has ever appeared.”
Like with the California, Miller’s had a “topical review and magazine” to open the program, as well as the edition of “Local Laughs and an Educational Pictures short, this one called “What a Night” starring Lige Conley, who had a string of two-reel Mermaid Comedies shorts that made him famous at the time. Later, he wrote and directed for Max Sennett and also appeared in talkies, though usually uncredited, until his untimely death when he was hit by a car in December 1937.
The front page of the program promoted the upcoming week’s feature, Bad Company, directed by Edward H. Griffith (no relation to D.W.), a thirty-year veteran of writing as well as directing, and starring Madge Kennedy and Conway Tearle. Kennedy did stage work before becoming a movie actor in 1917 and worked steadily for the next several years, though her film career was over by 1928. Almost a quarter century later, she returned to movies, as well as appeared on television, and played her last roles in the mid-1970s.
Born Frederick Levy in New York to a famous cornetist father and a mother who was an actor as was her well-known stage actor mother, Tearle, taking the name of an actor/producer stepfather, was a successful stage performer from the dawn of the 20th century onward and entered Hollywood filmmaking in 1914, quickly achieving stardom for his leading man roles opposite such well-known actors as Clara Kimball Young, Mary Pickford, Corinne Griffith, sisters Constance and Norma Talmadge and Clara Bow. He continued working into the sound age until not long before his death in 1938.
The plot of Bad Company was that Kennedy’s character tried to shield her brother, heir to a fortune, from a designing woman by robbing the will from an attorney played by Tearle, so that the gold-digger wouldn’t find out how much was in the estate. Tearle’s character discovers the theft, but turns out to be empathetic to the woman’s plight, while also realizing he’d been a former beau to the scheming woman and publicly stating that they were married by common-law. When it is revealed that Kennedy’s character was the actual heir, she forgives the lawyer and, of course, all was well that ended well.
The program observed that “an unusual novelty of this film is the using of the famous Earl Carroll Vanities company” of Broadway follies performers and a New York theater was relit with fifteen Navy searchlights and five large arc lights for the shooting, this resulting in Bad Company having “one of the most beautiful scenes ever ‘shot’ for a motion picture” involving one of the performers swung on a clock pendulum in a scene called “Counting the Hours.” One of the Carroll dancers appearing in the film, America Chedister, became the wife of director Griffith. The publication also noted that this production was the first to feature Kennedy and Tearle.
Another feature in the publication reviewed the plot with no small amount of colorful verbiage, such as:
Supposing that a bobbed-hair bandit managed to get into your house on a ruse, and then at the point of an ugly gun held you up and robbed your safe of valuable papers!
Supposing that a few hours later you met this same girl bandit, but at this time she was the beautiful and popular guest at your friend’s home. What would you do under these circumstances? . . . you probably would catch your breath and sneak out to think it over, and then, if she were as beautiful as Madge Kennedy, and you were an eligible bachelor, you would fall head over heels in love.
Other short articles included reference to a upcoming feature at Loew’s State called The Re-Creation of Brian Kent, one of the stars of which was ZaSu Pitts, who became famous for her lead role in 1924’s Greed, but was better known later for her comedy and worked regularly in film, television and radio until her death in 1963. A coming soon pitch was made for Introduce Me starring Douglas MacLean, who also started on the stage and made his first film in 1914, becoming well-known through the Twenties as a mainstay of light romantic comedies, though later he was a screenwriter and producer.
The Museum’s holdings includes one more issue of the Screen News, so we’ll look to share that as part of the “That’s a Wrap” series in a future post—be sure to check back for it and other movie theater programs and film-related artifacts from our collection.