Virginian-Pilot: A Cape Charles cliffhanger: Where's ''Mr. Hobbs''?
Bruce Calvert
A Cape Charles cliffhanger: Where's ''Mr. Hobbs''?
Bob Gilly (Robert Bolger) and Timmy Hobbs (Frances Helm) meet in Cape
Charles in "The Story of Mr. Hobbs." The movie's last reel (or
reels) is missing. CAPE CHARLES HISTORICAL SOCIETY
By DIANE TENNANT, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 1, 2005
''THE STORY OF MR. HOBBS'' is a prosaic title for such a dramatic
cliffhanger of a movie.
Greed, despair, certain death and true love duke it out on Virginia's
Eastern Shore in this 1947 film that features salt-of-the-earth clam
digger vs. rich soulless banker.
Between the lines, "Mr. Hobbs" is really the story of its maker,
Nell Shipman, a silent film actress, screenwriter and producer of
independent movies who ran afoul of the Hollywood machine in the 1920s.
She was famous, she was infamous, she was broke and desperate at times.
"Hobbs" was the last movie she ever made.
She shot it in Cape Charles, a small town that rose to fame and fortune
with the railroad and then faded away as she herself did. Like Shipman,
Cape Charles is on the rise again.
But "Hobbs"? It's still a cliffhanger.
VIDEO: The climatic final - or currently final - scene of the movie,
the confrontation beween Mr. Hobbs and Mr. Lester. Watch the scene.
Nell Shipman,
the filmmaker
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Because nobody knows how it ends.
The movie opens with a soliloquy:
"I'm Crad Hobbs. I'm a Bay waterman, from a region of the Eastern
Shore - of Virginia, that is. Some folks name our bays mud marshes,
fit for nothin' but mudhens. To us Baymen, the windin' channels are
highways criss-crossin' the green pastures of the marshes, the
bountiful passages where we harvest our catch: oysters, clams, crabs,
scallops. But it's a good life, or was, for us Eastern shoremen,
until that old devil ocean started on its rampage, began tearin' down
the island barriers and threatenin' to swamp us out. My island
suffered the most from old ocean's stinkin' blows. Hobbs Island,
named for my forebears. There's places used to be two miles from the
surf which now are in the water at high tide. ... A lot of us are
waitin', workin' and watchin', yeah, a-waitin' to see who will
win, the sea or us."
In 1947, when films came on multiple reels, "Hobbs" had eight
reels, maybe nine, maybe 10. Only seven survive.
Even they were lost for decades, because the movie had three different
titles. "The Clam-Digger's Daughter" was how the British Film
Institute filed it. "A Tale of the Tidewater" was another name. But
Cape Charles, when it started looking in 1992, desperately wanted
"The Story of Mr. Hobbs."
Letters by the ream crossed the Atlantic until, finally, the three
titles were reconciled into one film, saved by a private collector and
donated to the British archive. Now, the Cape Charles Historical
Society sells videotapes of "Hobbs" in its museum for $15 each. The
movie runs for an hour, and it ends just as the action is heating up.
Marion Naar has grown tired of this.
Naar is president of the society. On a freezing day in February, she
opened the closed-for-the-season museum and coaxed the office
temperature into the low 40s. She pulled out a binder that tells the
story of Mr. Hobbs from the town's point of view.
The bank building. A local house. The ferry dock and the railroad
station and the newspaper office. Hog Island for the beach scenes.
Willis Wharf for the docks. Cape Charles of the past, preserved on
film.
Townspeople also were involved, said society member Virginia Savage.
Locals rented out lodging and cars and typewriters. Several local
ladies were hired to make copies of the script. None of those still
alive remember how it ended.
In 1996, the historical society held a grand opening for the museum and
showed "Hobbs" in the local theater - perhaps its first
appearance on the silver screen, because it was never released by its
maker. The show was attended by the one surviving cast member, Frances
Helm, who had played the clam-digger's daughter.
"I said, 'Frances, how did it end?' " Savage recalled. "And she
said, 'I really don't know.' "
Narrator: "It may be that Crad Hobbs wished his only child had been
born a boy, someone to carry on the fight. He named her Timothy, Timmy
for short, and he taught her how to crab and oyster and clam ... . But
he couldn't teach her to forget she was as the good Lord made her, a
girl, a girl with a love song on her lips and a love light in her eyes
and true love running in her heart, for Timmy's sweetheart was coming
home, home from far-off places and bitter fighting, home to the
sea-drenched, pine-laden air of Virginia's Eastern Shore. ...
"Timmy!"
"Bob!"
"How are ya, honey?"
"Fine. Just fine. How you been?"
"Aw, just fine. Gee, you're lookin' fine. I mean, you're
lookin' swell!"
"Oh, Bob!"
"Aw, Timmy, honey!"
The screenwriter, Nell Shipman, found true love herself at least four
times. Born in Canada, she toured with vaudeville companies for a while
and married for the first time at age 18. Her other romances may or may
not have included marriage, because she was just like the women she
played on screen: independent, strong-willed and determined to save the
day on her own.
Shipman's most famous role was in 1919's "Back to God's
Country," set in the Far North, in which she mushed sled dogs,
rescued her husband and outwitted villains. She had a modest nude
scene, more hinted at than revealed, and the outdoors, back-to-nature
scenes involved plenty of animals, which she gathered into her own
menagerie of 100 bears, deer, dogs, cats, wolves, bobcats, cougars,
whatever.
But Shipman kept cutting connections. She divorced her promoter
husband. She refused to sign a contract with Samuel Goldwyn and lost
her star status. She broke off with her co-producer. She infuriated
investors by producing "The Girl From God's Country" on 12 reels,
about 120 minutes long. They cut it back to nine. Shipman was so angry
that she took out ads urging theaters not to show it and moviegoers to
stay away. Hollywood cut its connection with her.
Shipman kept making movies, but by 1924 she was bankrupt. A judge
ordered her animals sold to pay debts. The San Diego Zoo took them in.
Shipman moved to the East Coast, took up with a portrait painter and
wrote stories.
Financial woes pursued them, and they rarely stayed more than a year in
one location. With her three children, Shipman traveled the country,
finally meeting a film director named (at that point) Amerigo Serrao.
With him, Shipman arrived in Cape Charles.
The movie continues with a visit to the shrinking Hobbs Island.
Hobbs: "Well, this is what's left of the summer house of the man
that could have saved my island. The livelihoods of all us oystermen
and clam diggers. That is, if he'd-a cared. But he didn't care. No,
he didn't care."
Bob to Timmy: "He wants us to go in there. What is it? What's in
there?"
Timmy: "Bob, I'm scared. Sometimes I think he's not quite -
well, you know."
Bob: "I know."
Timmy: "He comes out here lots of times and it's almost as if
he's buried himself in there. Like as if it was a tomb."
Hobbs calls them into a ruined house that had belonged to Mr. Lester, a
rich banker from New York.
Timmy: "Oh, Pa, let's not talk about him. It always upsets you.
Hobbs: "I like to talk about Mr. Lester. I like to think about what
I'd do if I had him here, in Mr. Lester's old beach cottage, his
old broken up, rich-Yankee, $50,000 beach cottage that the ocean done
come in and washed up with my island!"
It is revealed that the Baymen had asked Mr. Lester for a loan of
$36,000 to build a breakwater to protect the islands and the shellfish
beds. He refused.
Tom Trusky, head of the Idaho Film Collection at Boise State University
, is a Shipman devotee. He tracked down most of her movies, organizes
Shipman film festivals and edited her autobiography, which was
published after her death.
"One of the problems with 'The Story of Mr. Hobbs' is the sound,"
Trusky said. "You'll hear a lot of wind, for example, in some of
the scenes. Some have clearly been dubbed - they've had the actors
come into a studio to read their lines to try to match their lips."
Shipman's standard plot, he said, involved a heroine, assisted by an
animal, battling the great outdoors to save an artistic lover from
death and herself from the aggressive, crude villains. The heroine of
"Hobbs" is typical, he said. "She's the smart one, she's the
savvy one, she's the one that makes the plot go."
Trusky, who had searched diligently for "Hobbs" but never found it,
attended its premiere in Cape Charles. He found himself bothered by
Shipman's treatment of a black house servant and a Latin American
ruler. "It seemed to my '80s or '90s eyes," he said, "very
racist."
Trusky went home and examined her other films with that in mind. What
he concluded was that her stereotyped treatment of Chinese and
Hispanics and blacks was based on gender. A woman of any race was
basically treated well, he said, "but if you're male and you're
in power, she has an ax to grind with you."
"Hobbs" is no different.
Bob reveals that he wants to be a newspaper reporter instead of a
waterman. Timmy, while shocked, agrees to elope with him, because she
knows Mr. Hobbs will never forgive Bob.
In New York, Mr. Lester, the banker, decides to loan a Latin American
country $50 million as a favor to the U.S. government. Lester and the
dictator will seal the deal on a remote island off the Virginia coast
to avoid publicity.
Government man: "I don't think even you realize how very important
this really is. If one more South American country is, shall we say,
inundated by the 'red sea,' the political balance of the entire
Western Hemisphere will be upset."
Lester, on the phone: "Get me President Carrera at Buena Ventura. "
Carrera: "Oh, senor, I greet you. ... My spies tell me that next
Saturday the army is going to revolute. Even now, soldiers, they
standing outside yelling, 'Carrera, Carrera, you fat, well-fed son of a
gun, you pay us back wages and overtime or we slit your throat from
here to here. You can look for yourself, senor." And he holds the
receiver up to the window.
The cartoonish dictator was played by Peter Varney, aka Amerigo Serrao,
aka about six other names. Most of the film's credits appear to be
pseudonyms. Shipman's name is absent. It could be, researchers
speculate, that the filmmakers were trying to avoid creditors and
alimony payments.
The story in Cape Charles is that Serrao was a gambling man who played
poker at a local hotel. Once his debts mounted up, the last reel of the
movie was taken as either collateral or insurance. Shipman's son told
Trusky another theory.
"He believes the sound people in New York held the last reel of the
film until the bills were paid," Trusky said, "and the bills were
never paid."
Meanwhile, back on the screen, Mr. Hobbs is hired to carry the banker
to Winston's Island for the rendezvous, by a man unaware of Hobbs'
vendetta against Lester. Timmy recognizes her father's boat as it
leaves the dock with the banker aboard and, with Bob, who wants to
interview Lester, realizes the danger. Timmy explains all to Mrs.
Lester, and the three of them set out to the rescue in the boat that
Bob inherited from his oysterman dad. Mrs. Lester is so grateful that
she promises to secure the loan for the breakwater. But Mr. Hobbs
already has Mr. Lester on Hobbs Island.
Lester: "You've brought me to the wrong island."
Hobbs: "Wrong island for you. But the right island for me."
Lester: "Oh, come, come. This is ridiculous."
He offers Hobbs $1,000 to take him to the rendezvous.
Hobbs: "I don't want your money. You can't buy your way out of
this one."
Lester: "I've had enough of this nonsense!"
Hobbs: That's the way I felt when you turned us oystermen down on our
breakwater. Had your snooty secretary chase us out of your office. You
wouldn't even talk to us."
Lester: "You were one of those men who -"
Hobbs: "I sure was. I made up my mind right then I was gonna pay you
back iffen I could ever get my hands on ya. And now I have!"
Lester: "You're mad. Completely mad."
Hobbs: "Sure, I'm mad! So mad right now that I'm gonna kill you,
Mr. E.K. Lester! I'm gonna kill you!"
They struggle, Hobbs pops Lester on the jaw, wraps him in a fishing net
and drags him into Lester's ruined summer home.
Hobbs: "This whole room is under water at high tide. I'm gonna lock
you into it and the next tide'll drown ya."
Lester: "Wait! I was commissioned to deliver this package to two
gentlemen from South America, over on Winston's Island, just about
now.
Hobbs: "You ain't gonna make it."
Lester: "I thought maybe you wouldn't mind delivering it for me."
Hobbs: "Huh unh. I got to get back to my clam diggin'."
Lester: "Now wait a minute, Mr., uh, what is your name?"
Hobbs: "Hobbs. Crad Hobbs."
Lester appeals to his patriotism, saying, "This is a matter vital to
hemispherical solidarity."
And the movie stops.
Cape Charles wishes someone would finish the film. Naar, Trusky, the
proprietor of a local bed and breakfast - no one takes credit for the
idea, but somewhere along the line someone suggested a contest.
Everyone liked it.
So Naar plans to contact film schools and independent festivals with
the notion, see if anyone wants to finish "The Story of Mr. Hobbs."
She's not quite sure how to proceed. A student project, perhaps. A
cash prize. A Nell Shipman film festival that culminates with all the
possible endings.
Something.
Because they all want to know how the movie -