Mar 14, 2017
Screenland’s “Most Beautiful Still of the Month” for February 1930, featuring Lupe Velez (as Anita Morgan) in Hell Harbor (Henry King, 1930).
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Screenland’s “Most Beautiful Still of the Month” for February 1930, featuring Lupe Velez (as Anita Morgan) in Hell Harbor (Henry King, 1930).
A particularly racy promotional pic of Evalyn Beveridge, about whom IMDb, the AFI Catalog, and Lantern have absolutely nothing to say. Did she actually exist?
Seriously, though, this pic has a very “last known photo” vibe...
From Broadway and Hollywood News: Movies (June 1934)
Screenland’s “Most Beautiful Still of the Month” for March 1930, pulled from Young Eagles (William Wellman, 1930).
Promotional photo for a booking of Kismet (Louis J. Gasnier, 1920, Waldorf Film Corp.) at Saxe’s Strand theatre in Milwaukee, WI. The photo depicts stage settings and characters from the film’s prologue, a live-action performance developed to precede the film and introduce characters, themes, and/or situations to the audience. William Paul’s When Movies Were Theater describes the use of prologues during the late 1910s and 1920s, so check there (in Chapter 5, specifically) for more.
Cinema Treasures has a pretty interesting write-up about the Strand. Apparently, the theater was by no means a picture palace; in fact, it didn’t even have a stage until 1920 or 1921, according to CT!
From the AFI Catalog: “In the course of a single day, Arabian beggar Hajj cheats and robs, tries to kill the Caliph, is imprisoned for his crimes, and escapes from the dungeon. Later, Hajj saves his daughter from becoming a member of the harem of a wazir, whom he then drowns. Finally, after being banished, Hajj decides to make a pilgrimage to Mecca and falls asleep on the steps of the same mosque where he awoke that morning.”
From Motion Picture News, 15 January 1921.
Among Screenland’s “Best Lines of the Month” for December 1929, this interaction from the wondrous, magical, infinitely-better-than-La La Land, Fox Film Corp. production Sunnyside Up (David Butler, 1929).
Ad for Such Men are Dangerous (working title: The Mask of Love; Kenneth Hawks [despite the ad], 1930, Fox Film Corp.) in Exhibitors Herald World, 15 June 1929. The AFI Catalog entry for this film is nuts...
SYNOPSIS: Belgian financier Ludwic Kranz (Warner Baxter), who believes that wealth can buy him anything, marries Elinor (Catherine Dale Owen), a beautiful young girl who is virtually forced into the marriage for financial reasons. She deserts him, repulsed by his disfigured face, and he sails for Germany, leaving the impression that he has committed suicide. There his face is transformed under the care of a plastic surgeon (I assume Dr. Erdmann, played by Bela Lugosi), and he returns to revenge himself on his wife; but when this woman who has despised him actually falls in love with him, he relents and is willing to forget the past.
The film was released in both sound (Movietone) and silent versions (not atypical for the early sound era).
FROM THE AFI CATALOG: On 2 January 1930, while filming a flying sequence for the picture, director Kenneth Hawks (1898 - 1930), assistant director Max Gold, cameramen George Eastman and Conrad Wells, assistant cameramen Otto Jordan and Ben Frankel, prop men Thomas Harris and Henry Johannes, and pilots Hallock Rouse and Ross Cooke were killed in a two-plane, mid-air collision off the coast of San Pedro in Southern California. According to Los Angeles Times news articles in early January 1930, Hawks’ brother, director Howard Hawks, had been at the airfield when the planes took off, but decided not to fly. Kenneth Hawks had been married to actress Mary Astor since 1928.
As noted in reviews, Such Men Are Dangerous was inspired by the life of internationally famous Belgian financier and aviator Alfred Lowenstein (1877 - 1928), who died under mysterious circumstances on 4 July 1928, when he fell from his private plane as it was crossing the English Channel. The highly publicized incident prompted various theories about Lowenstein’s disappearance, from suicide, murder, or, as dramatized in the film, an attempt to escape his old life and start over under a new identity.
American Film Institute: AFI Releases Landmark Study About the Contributions of Women to Early Cinema
American Film Institute: AFI Releases Landmark Study About the Contributions of Women to Early Cinema
https://www.afi.com/news/afi-releases-landmark-study-about-the-contributions-of-women-to-early-cinema/ “Initiative Documents Hundreds of Previously Unrecorded Female Filmmakers for Film History Today, AFI released the results of their groundbreaking gender study focused on silent era films. The project, titled Women They Talk About after the 1928 feature film, is an initiative documenting the…
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From the AFI catalog: IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE the #1 film on our list of the most inspiring movies of all time, debuted in NYC on this day in 1946.
Watch the original trailer here.