Frames (28 page)

Valentino started the film rolling and joined her on the sofa, set on a raised platform to look down on the screen. She snuggled close to him and intertwined her fingers with his. He asked her where she’d been all his life.

“I know where I’ll be for the next eight hours.”

“Or ten.” He smiled.

**

CLOSING CREDITS

The following sources were instrumental in the writing of
Frames:

BOOKS

TECHNICAL

Cameron, James R.
Sound Pictures: Motion Picture Projectionist’s Guide.
Woodmont, Conn.: Cameron, 1944.

The material is dated, but that was no hindrance to a story centered around a film shot eighty years ago. This updated edition of “the most practical book ever offered projectionists” appeared twenty-nine years after the first, with insights on the handling and presentation of nitrocellulose (silver nitrate) film, four years before the introduction of cellulose triacetate (“safety stock”).

Kiesling, Barrett C.
Talking Pictures: How They Are Made/How to Appreciate Them.
New York: Johnson, 1937.

Dated also, Kiesling’s entertaining text nevertheless dissects the Dream Factory at the height of its success.

Schary, Dore (as told to Charles Palmer).
Case History of a Movie.
New York: Random House, 1950.

The movie,
The Next Voice You Hear,
is a dog; but Schary, head of production first at RKO, then MGM (Irving Thalberg’s old job), provides an insider’s tour of the moviemaking process from concept to public exhibition.

HISTORICAL

Architectural Digest,
“Hollywood at Home” (various issues). New York: Condé Nast, 1990-2000.

For many years a fixture at Academy Awards time, the swanky home magazine served up capsule biographies of stars, directors, writers, and producers classic and contemporary, with glimpses of their private lives and bushels of industry anecdotes—until cranky letters from color-photo fetishists persuaded the editors to discontinue the tradition.

Brownlow, Kevin.
Napoleon.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.

Brownlow’s firsthand account of the search for a complete print of Abel Gance’s
Napoleon
reads like a Tom Clancy thriller, with a triumphant ending.

Brownlow, Kevin.
The Parade’s Gone By.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1968.

This is the only indispensable source on the history of the silent film. Brownlow, a historian with matchless credentials (see Films:
Hollywood;
also the Acknowledgments), traces the evolution of an art form from its nineteenth-century beginnings to its annihilation by sound. His prose is both scholarly and eminently readable.

Donnelly, Paul.
Fade to Black.
London: Omnibus, 2000.

The author’s a gossip, and in no small way a tabloid hack, emphasizing the lurid and sensational over the journalistic approach one would prefer; but his fat (633 page) collection of movie obituaries is handy for fast-track biographical research, as well as a helpful reminder of who’s dead. Sort of a Who Was Who in Hollywood.

Drew, William M.
Speaking of Silents: First Ladies of the Screen.
New York: Vestal, 1989.

We should all thank providence for chroniclers like Drew and Kevin Brownlow, who have the foresight to interview Hollywood pioneers while they’re still in a condition to reminisce. (Brownlow wrote the Foreword.) Legends Colleen Moore, Blanche Sweet, Laura La Plante, and others are no longer around to share the stories they tell here in first person.

Lames, John Douglas.
The MGM Story.
New York: Crown, 1985.

This entry in a monumental series on the major studios is a meticulous year-by-year history of the Tiffany of Tinseltown, 1924—1981.

Griffith, Richard, and Mayer, Arthur.
The Movies.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957; revised 1970.

The author of
Frames
learned most of what he still knows about the history of film through this huge volume, encountered at a very young age in first edition. Evidently, its authors are related to neither D. W. Griffith nor L. B. Mayer—but what fantastic billing!

Koszarski, Richard.
Von: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim: Revised and Expanded Edition.
New York: Limelight, 2004.

Koszarski’s earlier biography,
The Man You Loved to Hate,
was well received by critics and readers. About a third of this new incarnation contains additional and rewritten material: proof that Von Stroheim’s reputation continues to grow. This early triple threat—actor/writer/ director—lived a life as colorful and dramatic as any of the characters he put through their paces before a camera, which if told on film would run at least as long as the original version of
Greed.

Mordden, Ethan.
The Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

Mordden has a bitchy attitude; who but a Broadway gadfly cares if Fred Astaire’s dialogue mixed up its theaters and performances in
The Band Wagon?
But his book dishes up a sharp and knowledgable comparison of Macy vs. Gimbel in Hollywood, as well as a fast-moving but richly detailed narrative of the rise and fall of the studio system.

Naylor, David.
Great American Movie Theaters.
Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1987.

If you’re looking for a plush folio to display on your coffee table, filled with mouth-watering pictures in full color, this isn’t it. But being a National Trust publication, it’s exhaustive, divided up by geographical locations, and formatted to slip into your pocket like a mushroom hunter’s field guide. It’s designed to travel, but you might want to book your reservations now. Not many of the popcorn palaces it celebrates are still standing.

Sinyard, Neil.
Silent Movies.
London: Bison, 1990.

A solid entry-level introduction to the revolutionary medium in its formative years, with concise narrative and many photographs.

Staggs, Sam.
Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream.
New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.

It sounds like one of those fusty, pedantic snores penned for a Ph.D., with footnotes, but it’s a lively, consciously cinematic presentation of the movie behind the movie, and the unlikely events that brought together a great director, a has-been movie star, a troubled leading man, and
two
(uppercase) Great Directors to create the most powerful and hypnotic Hollywood-on-Hollywood movie ever made. Aside from Gloria Swanson’s brilliance as Desmond, this page-turner illuminates Erich von Stroheim’s Max Mayerling as emblematic of the pathos of the Austrian’s treatment by the industry. If you’ve seen
Sunset Boulevard
recently, it’s like watching it all over again in a revealing new director’s cut. If you haven’t seen it in a while, or if you’ve never seen it,
Close-Up
will make you want to right away (see Films:
Sunset Boulevard).

FILM GUIDES

Halliwell, Leslie.
Film Guide.
New York: HarperCollins, 1977— present.

Halliwell was crotchedy, but correct in his details; a tradition that successors like John Walker continue to uphold. Just about everything one needs to know about just about every movie ever made is here, including the studio that made it—a detail most other guides overlook.

Maltin, Leonard.
Movie Guide.
New York: New American Library, 1970—present.

Maltin genuinely loves movies and it shows, but he’s no toady, nor is anyone on his staff. His is the granddaddy of all movie guides, predating home video, when his readership was restricted to that curious species that set its alarm clocks for 2 A.M. to catch creaky old favorites on
The Late Show.
To keep the book a managable size, recent editions have jettisoned some listings, so it’s a good idea not to throw away the older ones to make room for the new. (Advice to Maltin: Scrap the star index at the back for space. When you dropped Erich von Stroheim and kept Melanie Griffith, you destroyed its purpose.)

FICTION

Respectable writers of fiction don’t crib from one another; but there’s nothing like a well-researched, skillfully written novel on a chosen subject to inspire creation and saturate one in pertinent detail. Recommendations include:

Baker, James Robert.
Boy Wonder.
New York: NAL Books, 1988.

This one’s a ride, a satiric, seriocomic take on the contemporary industry tracing the meteoric rise and pile-driver fall of an
enfant terrible
producer. Like the movie
Network,
what first appeared as a riotously over-the-top sendup of American media looks like a sober documentary in light of more recent events.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Last Tycoon.
New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.

At the end of his gaudy, rickrack life—burned out at forty-four— the author of
The Great Gatsby
reached back into the past and his experiences as a screenwriter to tell the only great insider’s story of the bunkerlike life of a brilliant studio executive, based on Irving Thalberg—burned out at thirty-seven. Tragically, Fitzgerald didn’t live to finish the book. Sadder still, none has come along to equal it.

Kanin, Garson.
Moviola.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.

Kanin
was
an insider: a phenomenally successful playwright, sought-after screenwriter (in tandem with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon), and close confidant of legends, including Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.
Moviola
is a delectable retelling—through the eyes of a fictional ancient studio mogul—of such items of cinema lore as the romance between Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and David O. Selznick’s nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in
Gone With the Wind.
There’s a good deal more truth here than in many straight histories.

Roszak, Theodore.
Flicker.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.

Until
The DaVinci Code
came along, there was nothing out there with which to compare this book. It’s the story of a hunt for lost films, some of the technology involved, the netherworld of film societies and slasher geeks, subliminal messaging, and a conspiracy theory involving a cult made up of equal parts Shaker, Rosicrucian, and Turner Entertainment. Roszak’s book got a bounce from Dan Brown’s megaseller
Code
in the form of a reissue fourteen years after it disappeared below the radar.

ONLINE INFORMATION

Usually, this is an oxymoron. The Internet is unedited, and therefore less reliable in most cases than the Magic Eight Ball. However, Kodak has posted data on the Environmental Services page of its Web site essential to understanding the process involved in preserving, storing, transporting, and disposing of silver nitrate film, including molecular sieves and how to identify the dreaded five stages of decomposition. Details are absorbing and harrowing. The characters who stepped up beside Yves Montand to truck nitroglycerine over a hundred miles of bad road in
The Wages of Fear
might have balked at this cargo. You’ll find the site at—oh, something dot com. Just Google it.

FILMS

The following titles reveal, in terms this writer could never replicate, the beauty and drama of the silent film as it pertains to the career of Erich von Stroheim. Good luck finding some of them.

Foolish Wives.
Directed by Erich von Stroheim, starring Maude George, Mae Busch, Cesare Gravina, and Malvina Polo. Universal, 1922.

Von Stroheim replicated Monte Carlo in astonishing detail for this melodramatic mix of seduction, blackmail, fakery, and murder. William Daniels and Ben Reynolds, who would later photograph
Greed,
taught their cameras to perform impossible feats. Available on DVD.

Greed.
Directed by Erich von Stroheim, starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, and Dale Fuller. MGM, 1925.

Until someone actually discovers a complete print, we must make do with the four-hour reconstruction produced by Rick Schmidlin in 1999, using hundreds of stills and additional title cards based on Von Stroheim’s shooting script. The effect, unfortunately, is static, and counterproductive to the epic poetry of the moving image. It still manages to astonish—and shock audiences misled to believe that the motion picture was family fare until the late 1960s—but sitting through it makes one long for Thalberg’s two-hour cut. Available on VHS.

Hollywood.
Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, narrated by James Mason. Thames Television, 1980.

Words cannot describe this thirteen-part series of one-hour documentaries on the silent film. Scenes from classics, beautifully remastered and projected at the original speed (not the herky-jerky comic pace that comes from running them through standard modern projectors), interspersed with personal accounts by pioneers who have since gone to the mezzanine in the sky, present a look firsthand at the birth and adolescence of an exciting new medium. It’s another home run for Brownlow, with a healthy assist from David Gill, and an even greater achievement than
The Parade’s Gone By.
VHS, out of print.