World Day for Audiovisual Heritage 2020 - The Immigrants’ Film Story
It’s time to celebrate UNESCO’s World Day for Audiovisual Heritage today. As UNESCO puts it, “audiovisual materials as documentary heritage objects provide a window to the world as we observe events we cannot attend, we hear voices from the past who can no longer speak, and we craft stories that inform and entertain. Audiovisual content plays an increasingly vital role in our lives as we seek to understand the world and engage with our fellow beings.”
With that in mind, I have crafted a story for you, a window into the world of immigrants to America, the stage, and film history. Here is a story about a lost film that was found in Georgia, the 1929 talkie, WEDDING ON THE VOLGA.
The film came to @bmaatuga from a family in Leesburg, Georgia in 2015. The donor’s grandfather was a house painter in the Brunswick, Georgia area, and also showed movies in a traveling show. For whatever reason, he had kept some of his projection equipment, along with 6 reels of nitrate film in a tall metal film-storage canister. Luckily, that can was ventilated, and the film stayed in very good condition, despite being stored in sheds and garages for decades.
Although there were 6 reels of film--what is a full set of reels for a feature film--one of the reels for WEDDING was missing, and in its place was a reel of the early Jean Arthur film, THE BLOCK SIGNAL. The projectionist must have accidentally returned WEDDING’s reel 6 in the can with the other 5 reels of BLOCK SIGNAL when he shipped them back to the film exchange in Atlanta. Unfortunately for us, from all accounts, the most exciting action in WEDDING occurs in the final, missing reel. The donors also did not have the sound discs for the film, so what we have now is called a “mute talkie.”
As the Film Archivist, I delved into finding out more about this film. Details were sketchy, when found at all. The film was definitely known and was listed as “lost.” Several books on lost films and films made in Fort Lee, NJ, where this film was made at Metropolitan Studios, mentioned that it was a U.S.-Russian co-production, that it was a Yiddish film, or that it was a Russian import. That’s sort of true, but not exactly correct. Still, you can’t blame them too much--the film had been missing for decades so they couldn’t watch it, and, as we discovered, there wasn’t much information on the film at all, at least, not in the most visible locations.
From the AFI Catalog entry, the synopsis: “In gratitude for saving his life, Piotr offers the brutish Zhuck the hand of his daughter, Olga, who loves Alexis, a sailor home on leave. However, Borrah, an old chemist, tosses a tear bomb during the wedding ceremony, and Alexis escapes with Olga to a shack belonging to Darya, Zhuck's rejected sweetheart. Accusing Piotr of a doublecross, Zhuck hears the other fishermen reveal his hesitation during his rescue of Piotr, so that the latter might sign a will beneficial to him. Amid a happy celebration Alexis and Olga marry with Piotr's blessing.”
And, thanks to the Media History Digital Library and its digitized film publications, a boon to film researchers, a bit more information about the producers was gleaned. A November 5, 1929 issue of Variety listed that the film had been completed by producer Charles Penser, and that it was ready for release. Putting that in context, this is just a week after Wall Street Crash. By February of 1930, it was bought for states rights release in Ohio. There, the trail appears goes cold for the film in the U.S., though deeper research may still turn something up, as more source material is put online.
Professor Richard Kozarski pointed me to the script submitted for approval in New York, so we have a copy of that now. According to that paperwork, two prints appear to have been made.
The film was previewed in London in 1931 (big thanks to colleagues in London who helped with this) where it was panned for its actors’ varied accents, though reviewers did like the music, songs, and big wedding celebration scene in (the still missing) Reel 6. If you think of it, by 1931, sound films had advanced a lot, productions were very professional, and moviegoers expected a lot from sound films. Two-year old WEDDING’s small stage sets, limited budget, and disc sound doomed it. The general public didn’t really want this film.
Thanks to Dan Streible at NYU and a wonderful researcher at YIVO’s Archives able to read Yiddish who looked through Mark Schweid’s papers there, two clippings of Yiddish newspaper reviews of the film were found dating from November 1929. The reviewers loved the film! Here was the great Yiddish stage star and author, Mark Schweid, headlining and directing a film, telling a story of old Russia in which Schweid has “recreated the Russian kabak [tavern] down to the smallest detail. One does not forget for a moment that one is on the shores of the Volga.” The film must have screened primarily to Yiddish-speaking, immigrant audiences in New York, folks who would also attend Yiddish theater performances. They understood the feeling of this film. They appreciated it.
Although some film scholars don’t think much of a stagey film with poor sound and no exterior scenes, we feel it does have value. Its value lies in telling the story of a cast and crew of immigrants making good in America, succeeding as artists. Most of this information comes from census records, digitized newspapers made available online at Tom Tryniski’s FultonHistory.com, and other digitized sources.
Director Mark Schweid was born in Warsaw in 1891 and came to the U.S. in 1911. He was already an actor at that point, then became a well-respected playwright and actor in the Yiddish theater. This film was his first attempt at directing a film. He plays the lead bad guy, Zhuck. Read more about his long career here: https://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex/S/schweid-mark.htm
Mary Fowler, playing the lead bad girl, had been on stage from the age of 17. Her parents were English and Scottish immigrants and had been in the country since the 1890s. Mary was in a number of very good stage productions, notably with Margaret Anglin’s company in 1920. She starred in THE BROKEN CHAIN, “a drama of Chasidic life” in March 1929, a play directed by Schweid. She was in the play HAWK ISLAND that September with Clark Gable. She had married English actor Max Montesole against her parents’ wishes in 1923, and in 1925 their fears came true when her name was splashed across the papers after Montesole ran off with Lionel Atwill’s wife, Elsie Mackay. During the Depression, Mary joined the WPA Theater Project, performing in at least one WPA-sponsored play and teaching acting in New York City, living with her mother after her father’s death. She later became a nurse and died in 1995. (Photo: Schweid and Fowler in the film.)
Lead good girl, Henrietta Tilghman, was born in Australia (mother Australian, father American) and came to the U.S. in 1915. She started acting on the stage around 1922 and was in George M. Cohan’s SO THIS IS LONDON in 1923. Her later life was no picnic, sadly. She married an Irish immigrant, a singer, lived in Chicago for a time, then they divorced. She appeared on stage with prominent actors for several years, notably Charles Ruggles and Spencer Tracy. A love affair with inventor Lee de Forest ended abruptly when he married someone else. Henrietta took it very hard and that, in combination with her fading career, led her suicide by swallowing poison in 1931.
Lead good guy, tenor Arthur Albro (original name Abram Einstein) made his singing debut in 1909, just 3 years after immigrating to the U.S. from Odessa, Ukraine, with his mother, grandmother, and 5 siblings. The family may have fled their home after the 1905 Russian pogrom of violent antisemitic attacks, or Albro’s father may have died, leaving the family with no income. Once in the U.S., Albro became hugely famous for his romantic tenor parts in touring companies of the Lehar operettas GYPSY LOVE and MAYTIME throughout the 1910s. Hear him sing on this amberol cylinder from 1911, thanks to our friends at UCSB: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder16381 Albro had a good run on the stage and was in two silent movies, and had even studied singing in Italy, but his career was on the wane, and he began to have some health problems. WEDDING might have been a last chance to make some money in talkies. Back in Brooklyn he and his sister taught music and singing, and he and a brother ran a photographic studio; he also made photographic portraits for theater and opera performers, but financial and health reversals hit hard and the home the family had lived in for nearly 30 years was foreclosed on. Arthur died in 1944. [Side note: Arthur’s younger brother, Michael Einstein, changed his name several times, including using the last name Albro, but became better known as actor Jerry Austin, a little person, who you may remember as a Warner Bros. player in THE ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN and SARATOGA TRUNK. He also had an uncredited part in FREAKS.]
Here’s Arthur Albro in his operetta days, c. 1911 (author’s collection).
John Gould is actually the famous Yiddish Theater actor Joseph Schoengold, which we know from the Yiddish newspaper reviews of WEDDING. Schoengold was married to Frances Adler of THE Adlers; her father, Jacob, is acknowledged as the father of Yiddish theater. Schoengold died in 1943. You can hear him singing “Sonny Boy” on this recording at the Mayrent Institute: https://mayrentinstitute.wisc.edu/collection/recordings/sonny-boy.html
Betty Simonoff was a well-known actress and chazante who appeared regularly on radio. She has a small part in the tavern scene. Her amazing memoir appears on the website for the Museum of the Yiddish Theater.
Cossack dagger dancer, Zachary Martinoff, also known as Zachar, had been a real Cossack in Russia. He often performed at the Russian Yar Restaurant along with Russian “gypsy” guitarist, balladeer, and dancer, Misha [or Mischa] Markoff, which may be where Schweid knew of them. They also performed at the Russian Arts Restaurant. Markoff, who arrived in the United States in 1922, was still performing on stage and in clubs/restaurants into the 1950s, notably at the Troika Club in Washington, D.C. from the early 1930s. A piece in the 10/14/1936 Washington Post called him “the booming baritone whose guitar and gypsy songs are famous everywhere Russians gather on two continents.” He married a former Ziegfeld girl, Grace Hedenkamp. In the 1950 Census, they were living in New York again. Markoff, who was born in 1897 in Tblisi, died in 1955.
The young Danish dancer Paul Haakon, “the next Nijinsky,” had a small part in WEDDING as a go-between, fitting the filming of his scenes into a schedule that included touring with Pavlova. He went on to a long career dancing on Broadway and in films.
Producer Charles Penser was another immigrant from Ukraine. He came to the U.S. in 1902 and was naturalized in 1911. He got into the movie business by 1910 as the manager of a film company office, and worked his way into Yiddish film work for a number of years, including with Maurice Swartz on YISKOR in 1925. By 1949, he was with RKO. Alas, he had a fatal heart attack in 1955 after lunching at the famous Lindy’s.
After asking a number of colleagues who are better versed in sound discs, it seems that there is little chance the film’s fragile soundtrack discs have survived, but we also want any of you reading this to keep your eyes and ears open for them. Who knows? Maybe they’ll turn up somewhere in the future. We just want to remember this orphaned film’s terrific performers, to speak their names. Most of them escaped certain death in Europe, gave the stage their all, and had hopes of breaking into talking pictures after a lot of career ups and downs here in America. We think this film is worth preserving, even if some film scholars don’t. Granted, it’s not Garbo, but really, how many were?
The AFI Catalog entry for the film was updated by friend and colleague, the late Bob Birchard, from details I discovered, so it is no longer listed as “lost.” I presented my research at the 10th Orphan Film Symposium held at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus for Audiovisual Conservation in 2016.
So what can we do with a mute talkie? We hope to use the University of Kentucky’s Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) to match the script with the 5 reels we have. View the reels here: https://bmac.libs.uga.edu/pawtucket2/index.php/MultiSearch/Index?search=wedding+on+the+volga&rows=20
An early version of this research was posted to the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project’s (@yiddishstage) website in 2015 at: https://web.uwm.edu/yiddish-stage/a-lost-film-found. Our thanks to DYTP’s Joel Berkowitz and Debra Caplan for their interest in and assistance with this project.
(Photo below: leader on reel 4 indicating the color name for the film tint, “Candleflame.”).
Copyright Margaret A. Compton 2020.
