The Toilers & The White Sister

[Derek Boothroyd]

The Stanford Theatre showed the first silents in their Ronald Colman
festival this weekend. The first was the surviving footage from
Colman's English film The Toilers (1919), apparently about two
or three reels. (It was missing at least the opening credits and
then a section from the middle of the film.) As such, it was
primarily of interest for showing Colman before his Hollywood persona.

The print of The White Sister was a new one made from a 35mm negative
that Warners found almost at the last minute. It provides quite
a contrast to the earlier film and I really appreciated seeing it
on film for the first time. The Theatre opened a new gallery with
posters and movie memorabilia with quite a few keybook stills from
the film. There were also a number of posters and lobby cards,
some relating to the current festival and others not.

I highly recommend the silents the next two weekends, Her Night
of Romance (Constance Talmadge / Colman comedy) and Stella Dallas
and am looking forward to seeing The Night of Love (the following
week) for the first time.

- Derek B.

[Neil Midkiff]

Derek Boothroyd wrote:
> The Stanford Theatre showed the first silents in their Ronald Colman
> festival this weekend. The first was the surviving footage from
> Colman's English film The Toilers (1919), apparently about two
> or three reels. (It was missing at least the opening credits and
> then a section from the middle of the film.) As such, it was
> primarily of interest for showing Colman before his Hollywood persona.

I just got home from the Sunday showing of this program. "The Toilers"
is indeed fragmentary -- roughly twenty-five minutes of extant material.
This apparently was a preservation copy of a rather battered and
shrunken original print, and though the image is scratched and jumpy, it
was sharp, reasonably fine-grained, and had a good tonal scale, showing
that the original was well-photographed. Colman looks younger than his
28 years in this film from the very beginning of his career. A few
characteristic stances and gestures were already in his repertoire, but
it's clear he was still finding his craft. Dennis James gave a careful
introduction to let us know what to expect, and his organ accompaniment
very tastefully carried us along with the story, making this "vault
remnant" more than watchable, if not terribly memorable.

> The print of The White Sister was a new one made from a 35mm negative
> that Warners found almost at the last minute. It provides quite
> a contrast to the earlier film and I really appreciated seeing it
> on film for the first time.

I was seeing this for the first time, and though I expected this one to
be special (having seen ROMOLA a few years ago at the Stanford), it
exceeded my expectations. Lillian Gish was definitely playing her trump
cards at every opportunity -- the story could have been written with her
in mind. Colman had grown into his well-loved image by this time (and
then hardly aged for the next 34 years!), and his performance is
perfectly in keeping with this melodrama of love, separation, family
plots, religious faith, and natural disasters. Henry King's direction
was clear and moving, and the supporting cast was excellent, as were the
Italian locations used. I took a friend along who has seen only a few
silent features, and he was quite impressed with the storytelling power
of this film.

The print was clearly put together from a variety of sources, mostly
very good to excellent ones, with a few scenes showing a bit of
decomposition or image waver, and a few short bits apparently filled in
from what looked like good blowups from 16mm. On the whole, well above
average restoration work, and quite often extremely beautifully
photographed and preserved.

Dennis James told us that he had done most of the work on preparing the
score when he got (through David Shepard) a copy of the original cue
sheet; it confirmed that most of his choices were in line with the
original suggestions, and filled in some details such as the specific
Italian folk songs that were performed in the street scenes. Certainly
this is the kind of film that needs a strong score; it was about two and
a quarter hours but seemed rather shorter with accompaniment; in
retrospect, it might have seemed like three hours if watched without the
music.

> The Theatre opened a new gallery with
> posters and movie memorabilia with quite a few keybook stills from
> the film. There were also a number of posters and lobby cards,
> some relating to the current festival and others not.

David W. Packard has acquired a collection of Colman's personal papers,
some of which were on display as well, including letters and telegrams
of congratulations on his Academy Award from such famous names as "Noel"
and "Cole" and "Winston" and "Fred and Phyllis" and "Ginger", all signed
just like that. An autograph letter from Basil Rathbone claimed that it
was only the third time he'd been moved to write a "fan" letter to
another actor.

The photographs from THE WHITE SISTER were a stunning set of large (11 x
14?) album prints signed "Abbé" showing both scenes from the film and a
few behind-the-scenes shots such as a lavish-looking picnic lunch for
the cast.

> I highly recommend the silents the next two weekends, Her Night
> of Romance (Constance Talmadge / Colman comedy) and Stella Dallas
> and am looking forward to seeing The Night of Love (the following
> week) for the first time.
>
> - Derek B.

Once again, the complete program is at

http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/stf/

If you're able to get to Palo Alto, California for these, it's worth the
trip!

-Neil Midkiff

[ChaneyFan]

Everyone in the audience today (probably 50 people or so) must have
been an a.m.s. member! I paid my $7 just to see THE TOILERS then left,
having just played for THE WHITE SISTER within the past year. I
clocked TOILERS at 22 min and it is obviously a 3-reeler that is
missing R2 (it ran at about 18 fps I believe).

The papers in the new lobby are indeed amazing and are alone worth a
trip to the theater. I particulary liked all the congratulatory
telegrams to Colman from people like "Larry and Vivian" (Olivier &
Leigh...who were close friends), the fan letter from Jack Warner, and
the "I'm suing you" sounding letter from Colman to Sam Goldwyn. I'm
not clear that Packard owns these. I got the impression they were on
loan, possibly from Colman's daughter who Packard brought to the
theater many years ago the last time they did a Colman series.

I highly recommend STELLA DALLAS, THE NIGHT OF LOVE, HER SISTER FROM
PARIS, HER NIGHT OF ROMANCE, THE SPORTING VENUS, BEAU GESTE, and THE
WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH if you can catch them. In fact, except for
ROMOLA, THE RESCUE, THE UNHOLY GARDEN, and CLIVE OF INDIA, the entire
series is worth seeing.

See you all at KIKI!

[greta de groat]

Well, i was one of the ones there last night instead.  I was just going to ask, Jon, if you could give us the lowdown on The Toilers, but Neil beat me to it.  I notice that the program said it was 5 reels, so maybe that was the original length.  Colman was hardly "all over the place like a jumping jack" as he later described.  His performance was respectable, but it was odd seeing him so young and occasionally awkward. But at the end, when he was sitting in church quietly watching the others, then he looked like the "real" Ronald Colman.

I arrived too late to see the letters and such, but since i'll be spending a lot of time there in upcoming weeks, i'll have plenty of chances.  Besides the silents, i'm really looking forward to seeing the Goldwyn talkies--i saw these over and over on TV as a teenager and haven't seen them since, and i just loved them at the time.  Actually, i really wanted to see Unholy Garden again, but will be out of town (darn) but will be delighted revisit Condemned and The Devil to Pay.   And i can't wait to see Kiki with an audience.

greta

[Derek Boothroyd]

In article <1145242432....@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,

ChaneyFan <Chan...@aol.com> wrote:
>Everyone in the audience today (probably 50 people or so) must have
>been an a.m.s. member! I paid my $7 just to see THE TOILERS then left,
>having just played for THE WHITE SISTER within the past year. I
>clocked TOILERS at 22 min and it is obviously a 3-reeler that is
>missing R2 (it ran at about 18 fps I believe).

I was at the Saturday night show and the audience was much larger
then. I seemed like a typical size for a less known silent, perhaps
half full. I appreciate having the two showings; there are a few
I'll take advantage to see twice since the chances of seeing them
again any time soon are pretty small.

- Derek B.

[John Mc Keown]

Sorry to seem like a dunderhead, but why did Warner's have a nice print of
WHITE SISTER?

Wasn't that was an Inspiration picture? Did they (MGM) get materials with
the rights for the remake?

John.

"Derek Boothroyd" <der...@Stanford.EDU> wrote in message
news:e1ui2q$dkb$1...@news.Stanford.EDU...

[Derek Boothroyd]

In article <ewU1g.8$sg...@newsfe2-gui.ntli.net>,

John Mc Keown <john.mcmenoli...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>Sorry to seem like a dunderhead, but why did Warner's have a nice print of
>WHITE SISTER?
>
>Wasn't that was an Inspiration picture? Did they (MGM) get materials with
>the rights for the remake?
>
>John.

They didn't give any explanation but that was my assumption. It
is my impression that that was standard practice.

Apparently the studio didn't have time to make a new print and
lent it to have one made in the Theatre's film lab.

- Derek B.

>"Derek Boothroyd" <der...@Stanford.EDU> wrote in message
>news:e1ui2q$dkb$1...@news.Stanford.EDU...