Los Alamos Monitor: End of the eclipse: A star restored
Bruce Calvert
End of the eclipse: A star restored
ROGER SNODGRASS, ro...@lamonitor.com, Monitor Assistant Editor
At least one film at the Santa Fe Film Festival last week almost didn't
make it.
"No Star for Romaine," a work-in-progress about silent movie legend
Romaine Fielding would never have been shown without luck and the
persistence of two filmmakers.
"It's astonishing what we've accomplished," said director David
Lindblom, who is also a co-producer along with John Raymond Armijo. "We
owe everything to a compelling story and the kindness of fellow
filmmakers."
Armijo works in the New Mexico Film Office, where he came across a rare
untold story in the state's early film history several years ago.
"I mentioned it to every documentary filmmaker who has walked in the
door since 1995," he said.
In mid-September this year, the filmmaker he had been waiting for
arrived.
David Lindblom, a 1966 graduate of Los Alamos High School and now an
editor and film professional living in New York City, was visiting his
parents in White Rock, when he stopped at the film office in Santa Fe
and happened to ask Armijo if he knew anybody interesting in New Mexico
film.
Armijo told him about Romaine Fielding, a dashing silent movie
actor-director who took New Mexico by storm in the early 1900s with a
series of films culminating in a lost and unreleased blockbuster, "The
Golden God," filmed in Las Vegas, N.M. in 1913.
There were many things about Fielding and his films that Lindblom found
intriguing - that he had a meteoric career, that he was a friend of
novelist Jack London, that he was named the most popular actor in
Hollywood in 1914 but never got a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame,
that his 1913 film had the biggest budget of its time.
There was a enigmatic quality about the man, and the more Lindblom
learned the more he wanted to know.
"I just lit up," Lindblom said. "I knew we had to make a documentary
about this."
Returning to New York, assisted by coincidences, helpful librarians,
and a network of Fielding aficionados, biographers and relatives, he
began to turn up more pieces, film clips, and production stills.
"No scene recorded by the pen of Victor Hugo, no chapter from the
French Revolution, can surpass in action, in thrill or in human
interest the scene recorded this morning by Romaine Fielding's battery
of cameras," wrote a breathless reporter for the Las Vegas Optic at the
time of the 1913 production.
One piece of the vintage film, included in the documentary, shows a
violent head-on crash between two trains, each of which was being
pushed by an unseen locomotive off camera. Airplanes and armored cars
were among the props.
The documentary began to take shape, edited by Lindblom, whose
professional credits include a number of feature films, documentaries
and television productions.
Propelled along the way by clues and contacts that Armijo had gathered
over the last seven years, Lindblom found himself now in a race to put
something together in time to show it at the Santa Fe Film Festival, a
logical launching pad.
Racing for a deadline was not new. "That's my life story," he said.
The last couple of weeks he was waiting for bits and pieces to arrive.
He said he was threatening to give himself a credit as a "Fed-Ex
wrangler," for the film.
Armijo compared Lindblom's last-minute sprint to the comic heroics of
James Garner's portrayal of Lieutenant Charles Madison organizing the
D-Day invasion in the movie, "The Americanization of Emily."
Lindblom was able to arrange interviews with a biographer and a student
who had had done a master's thesis on Fielding.
One of Fielding's granddaughters happened to be in New York and she too
was interviewed. A former fashion model, now studying biology at
Harvard, Lara Fielding not only resembles her grandfather, but appears
in the video with enormous magnetism. She offers what seems to be a
real glimpse into the personality of the man she calls, "this
larger-than-life lost person."
Not until the day before Thanksgiving, less than a week before the
festival began did Lindblom call Armijo and tell him he had bought his
airline ticket. The rough cut of the work in progress would be shown.
Alice Hansen, who appeared in Fielding's film, "The Harmless One," in
1913 at the age of 15 months, agreed to come to Santa Fe for the
occasion. Now 92-years old and living in San Diego, Hansen is one of
the oldest living actors from the silent movies.
Armijo interviewed her for an oral history project while she was here.
The El Dorado Hotel, one of the festival sponsors, gave her a room
during her visit.
The festival officials found a spot to show it twice at the El Museo
venue, along with "World Without Waves," - a feature that happened to
win the festival Milagro Award for best southwest film.
After the showings, Lindblom felt heartened by the response.
Before the festival, he wondered if the movie matched the pitch.
"But when we showed it, people laughed in all the right places. I even
heard a few 'wows,'" he said. "We needed that and we met great people
who could move the film along."
He's still unsure at this point which path to take - whether it should
become a documentary for, say, the American Experience or American
Masters series on PBS or a theatrical documentary, which would require
a greater investment.
The filmmakers are seeking additional leads, materials, sources,
stories and photos and accepting tax-deductible contributions through
the Romaine Fielding Project, Resolution Media Fund, 2311 Seipstown
Road, Fogelsville, PA 18051.
mikeg...@gmail.com
IMDB list.
Any comments on the veracity of the claim that he was a big star?
Stott
supporting parts in others.Google brought up a few pictures of him-
pretty good looking.
Stott
Bob Birchard
Romaine Fielding was a big star for a short time. ca. 1912-1914.
Publicity said he was from the Island of Corsica and shaved a dozen or
more years from his age. His real name was William Grant Blandin and he
was born in Iowa in 1868. Under the name Romanzo Blondin he put up his
shingle as a quack doctor (I'm not making this stuff up).
He headed the Lubin Southwest Company and made pictures in Texas,
Arizona and New Mexico. He had a bit of the con man about him and would
blow into town, convince the locals that theirs was the perfect city for
a permanent studio, get all sorts of local cooperation, then he'd stay a
few weeks or a few months and move on to the next town. His former
studio in Las Vegas, New Mexico was used by Tom Mix and Selig in 1916.
At one point Fielding became so dissatisfied with the service at a
hotel in Las Vegas, NM that he bought (or leased) the establishment and
ran it for a time as the Hotel Romaine.
Most of Fielding's films were lost in the 1914 Lubin fire. He was
removed from the Lubin production of "The Great Divide," and later
signed to make independent productions for Universal release. But where
he had been rather prolific at Lubin, his output turned to a trickle
when he was producing for Universal and he was dumped by that company.
In the 1920s he was involved in a moviemaking scam in St.
Louis--raising money from local suckers for movies that never got made.
In the late 1920s he finally came to Hollywood and producer Charles R.
Rogers gave him work in some Ken Maynard First Nationals. Too poor to
afford proper dental work, he called upon his previous profession as a
quack doctor and filled a tooth cavity with wax. The tooth became
infected and he died from the infection in 1928.
At least one of his films survives in some form, "The Rattlesnake"
(Lubin, 1913), which was the first film photographed by future ASC
founder L. Guy Wilky.
I'd be curious to see the doc.
--
Bob Birchard
Now available from the University Press of Kentucky
“Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood”
by Robert S. Birchard
I.S.B.N. # 0-8131-2324-0
http://kentuckypress.com/viewbook.cfm?Category_ID=1&Group=42&ID=1113