Coyotes and Crows at Yosemite

(This photo is from a few years ago, taken by a friend on a trip that we took to Yosemite together.) Click on any of the images to make them larger.

We took our annual trip to Yosemite to go ice skating last week and on the trip into the valley we saw a coyote....just standing by the side of the road.

Here is some information on coyotes in Yosemite.

The Handbook of Nature Study does not have any listing for coyotes in their mammal section but it did have this to say in the general mammal introduction on page 214:
"Some of the so-called game animals have suffered wanton destruction at the hands of 'civilized man,' but in more recent years many laws and regulations have been passed to give these animals more chances to live. Even more stringent laws are needed and rigid enforcement must be exacted if wild animals in general are to be expected to increase in number."
(interesting to note is that she wrote this in 1911)

I found an interesting brochure on how to help keep coyotes wild and we will be covering it with our boys. Where we live there are wild coyotes and it is always good to be aware of how we can help keep them out of trouble. We live near the edge of town so we have frequent encounters with wildlife and it is a challenge to balance our needs with those of the animals around us.
We saw lots of crows on this trip. There is lots of information in the Handbook of Nature Study about crows. See pages 124-127.
Edit: I have since discovered that these are ravens and not crows.


Crows flying with Half Dome in the background.



Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Fascinating Millipedes (not a mammal)

(click to make the photos larger)

I know we are focusing on mammals this term but we had a visitor yesterday that is worth a post. We were cleaning up our snowy, wet things and found a millipede on the towel that we had under our gloves drying on a rack.


It was fascinating to watch him crawl around and his many legs were really interesting.

Here's some information from the Handbook of Nature Study, page 448 in the invertebrates section:
"Millipede, Spirobolus. These animals live in damp places and feed chiefly on decaying matter."

I have no idea how he got into the house but it was fun to learn about him. Here is a little video of him moving around.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Barb-Harmony Art Mom

Top Ten #1 – Brandi Carlile

A singer songwriter from Seattle, Brandi Carlile takes the number one spot with her fusion of country, folk, and rock. Her first album, Brandi Carlile, released in 2005 seemed to mark her as the next Lucinda Williams, a promise that was more than met with the 2007 release of her even better follow-up The Story. Yet in spite of a big push on Grey’s Anatomy, Carlile has not yet become the big name I anticipated (which makes listening to her even cooler). Here’s a video of a very relaxed performance that gives a better sense of her style than some of her more polished videos.

Top Ten #2 – The i-phone

Just as the Walkman and the first MP3 players ushered in a new era in how we listen to music, the iPhone presages the era of the all-in-one machine in a way that I'm still not sure has been fully recognized. It is a device out of science-fiction and it's been interesting to note not only the incredible press, but also the level of skepticism and hostility. So I think it's only begun to tap its market potential. (Let's see where Apple stock is next year.)

Trying not to be caught up in the initial hype, I resisted as long as possible (about three months) but after spending long hours at the Apple Store after both my children broke their computers, I gave in. (It was fortunately just after the price drop.) But, boy, do I love my iPhone! And don’t believe the scare stories. Everything about it works flawlessly and it’s really simple to master. In order of frequency the applications I use most often are: phone, iPod, notes, photo album, camera, weather, and the link to You Tube, but my newest pleasure is using it to listen to podcasts of Studio 360 as I walk my dog. Now that’s cultural enrichment!

Top Ten #3 – What Remains

Steven Cantor’s second film about Sally Mann (his first was a 1994 Oscar nominated short) was shot over five years and largely eschews the controversy about nudity and children to focus on the creation and aftermath of Mann’s photographic studies of death. An intimate and beautifully shot feature-length documentary, the film takes you deeply but unintrusively into Mann’s personal life and ends up as a study of the life of one of our most serious and talented photographers and the challenges even a renowned artist faces. Look out for: the story and pictures of Sally and husband Larry when they first met; and the unfolding drama of Mann's Pace/MacGill exhibition.

Top Ten #4 – Blogs

As previously noted, Jorg Colberg’s Conscientious, The Sartorialist, and Alec Soth’s late blog, were not just a pleasure but an inspiration. However, to state the obvious: the entire blogosphere is simply teeming with original voices, opinions, and content. In writing this blog I often find the answer to my research on one blog which leads me to another blog, etc...

If not for blogs, how would I have known who made the bra Nicole Kidman wore on the cover of Vanity Fair? (Thank you Mr. frankufotos.) Or seen the daily photographic postings of Swedish photographer Sannah Kvist on “She Broke My Heart So I Broke Her Face”. Or even known there was a blog “For White Men Who Prefer Black Women”. (I was trying to find out who took this great period expression of pride in black beauty (below) after I saw it on another blog that was referencing Jacob Holdt’s website for “American Photographs”.) I'm still trying to find out the photographer, so blog readers, please help!

Two Years and 466 Postings Ago...

Greenbriar Picture Shows opened on December 27, 2005. It began as a place to deposit images hopefully unfamiliar to readers. Sometimes I’d post three times a day. The novelty of seeing everything go up instantly was quite a kick. Later I slowed down to once a day. After awhile, it seemed an index and search archive was needed. Greenbriar became for me one of those blogging obsessions people speak of. The movie life seems normal enough to one who lives it. I’ve been reassured in finding there are plenty of others who are similarly driven. The thing I love about the internet and DVD and TCM and all the rest is how they create opportunities for online writers to discover and rediscover movies long unseen. It happened this past year with Ace In The Hole, These Are The Damned (TCM leased a package from Sony, and suddenly this Columbia owned Hammer Film was back after decades of hibernation), and many others. Something like Witchfinder General resurfaces and informed voices are heard worldwide in celebration. I love the instant gratification of newsgroups and forums. Every day’s an adventure in this peculiarly twenty-first century funhouse. I don’t read a tenth of stuff daily I know I’d like. Forty-eight hour days might help, but not much. Blogs I follow are great because they tap into their creator’s personality and experience. Would print media ever have allowed for such expression? I think someday we’ll look back and marvel at this revolution we’re living. I don’t take it for granted a moment because I remember what it was like when we didn’t have all this. Most Greenbriar readers probably do too as I suspect we’re in the approximate same age group. Rest assured I appreciate each and all who comment here. Sometimes I think some of you ought to be writing these posts instead of me. The things I learn from readers! When Google took over Blogger, they instituted policies requiring commenters to sign on with Google first, essentially becoming a "member" of that group. I’ve not seen any downside to this, but it has complicated the commenting process somewhat. Anyone who’s had problems might look into signing with Google. It’s simple and requires no meaningful forfeit of privacy. Anyway, to those who share views with other Greenbriar readers and myself, I do offer thanks and invite you to please continue.

I’ve spent these two years reflecting on movies that have impacted on me. Most I came upon during that age of wonderment we all experience between ten and twenty when the best picture-viewing experiences of our lives are gathered and collated. I could review any number of worthwhile recent films (and I do watch a lot of them), but others are better equipped for that commission. The fact is I like ads and photos and lobby cards they generated during the classic era. Writing about premieres and ballyhoo is as close as I’ll get to reliving them, as I experienced so few classics when they were new. Sobering indeed has been my realization that most everything I speak of at Greenbriar was past before I was born. A shame I can’t get as excited over opening night of National Treasure --- Part Two, but I leave those joys to the present generation between ten and twenty, hoping they get as much fun out of what’s new as I did forty years ago over the likes of Goldfinger and The Dirty Dozen. For what it’s worth, realization of my own diminished capacity for adolescent awe came in 1977 when I went to see Star Wars first-run. We arrived twenty minutes in, and as I recall, there was a boy and two distinctly unappealing robots shuffling amidst a desert wasteland. One of them looked like a vacuum cleaner and made irritating noises. Over the next two hours, I came to know I’d lost touch with whatever it was people wanted in movies. This was the first new release I felt old watching, and that’s some kind of hammer to come down when you’re twenty-three (I’ve just this week captured Star Wars on DVR and intend to give it another chance). Such late seventies fare would accelerate my enthusiasm’s retreat toward the older stuff, and revelations would come, if at all, over encounters with classics I’d never seen. One of these was The Tall T. Some of us drove down to a vintage theatre in eastern NC some "B" western fans had taken over for a nostalgic Saturday of cowboys on the big screen. The place and the people seemed transported from 1957 when this show was new. Certainly the theatre was unchanged from that time. I came away thinking this was one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. That doesn’t happen often once you’ve reached a certain age, as I definitely had by 1992. Was it The Tall T, or this apparent trip backward I’d taken? Looking at the (so far) whole of Greenbriar, I realize there are many films that have had similar effect. I couldn’t be there when Psycho, Citizen Kane, The Searchers, and Sunset Boulevard opened, but with enough trade ads, stills, and ephemera, maybe it’s possible to travel at least part of the way back. Speaking of which, I’d invite readers, especially those who’ve joined Greenbriar Picture Shows more recently, to visit (or revisit) past postings. The search index is a good way to explore what’s been previously published on favorite people and titles. Going into this third year, and time, health, and interested readership permitting, Greenbriar looks forward to keeping its house lights burning.

PHOTO CAPTION: Up top, Joan Crawford takes a break from shooting Ice Follies Of 1939 to celebrate Greenbriar's second anniversary.

Top Ten #5 - The Sound of No Hands Clapping. By Toby Young

The second book I loved was so funny I couldn't stop laughing out loud even as I ruefully noted the diminishing number of unread pages. Toby Young was the archetypical Brit in New York whose first book, “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”, chronicled his hapless time at Vanity Fair where among other things he invited a stripper to the office on what he was unaware was Take Your Daughter To Work Day.

The follow-up finds him improbably successful after his first book is turned into a one man play in London. He is hired by a big time Hollywood producer to write the screenplay for an un-named movie about a mysterious 70s record producer. As he learns the ways of Hollywood and screws up with regularity, Young warily gets married, has a child, and in some of the books funniest moments attends various friends’ weddings where his inappropriate toasts end up losing even more friends and alienating even more people. A heroic failure in true Brit fashion, the book provides the vicarious pleasure of seeing the Emperor, himself, reveal he has no clothes, while skewering the media, the film business, and other cultural obsessions of our time.

Top Ten #6 - When the Light Goes: A Novel. By Larry McMurtry

While the cover misleadingly uses photography to reference "Brokeback Mountain" (for which McMurtry co-wrote the Oscar winning screenplay) "When the Light Goes" is in fact the latest and fourth installment in his Thalia series. Set in Texas oil country, the series began with the 1966 “The Last Picture Show”, followed by "Texasville", and the wonderfully alliterative “Duane’s Depressed”.

“When The Light Goes” picks up Duane Moore (the Jeff Bridges character in "The Last Picture Show") at 64 - now widowed, semi-retired, and crisied in just about every way. When I told my friend the über literary agent Mark Reiter I was reading it, his comment was “Oh, the sex book!” and it’s certainly….. frank. If that’s not enough to recommend it, McMurtry's writing is so sharp and breezy it’s one of those books you race through and then makes you want to go back and read all the others in the series.

Top Ten #7 – I’m Not There – the soundtrack

Merry Christmas to all!

I’ve never defined myself as a Dylan fan and I thought the movie was a mixed success, but the soundtrack was out of this world - an eclectic mix of recording artists covering 36 Dylan songs with a bonus 37th song of Dylan himself singing the title track. Many of the artists are pretty obscure. I still don’t know who John Doe is who sings my favorite song “Pressing On”, but I’ve at least heard of some of the other contributors - Karen O, Jeff Tweedy, Sufjan Stevens, etc.. Nevertheless in combination with the film, the soundtrack re-awakened my interest in Dylan so that my Christmas viewing will now include Scorcese’s Dylan documentary.

Top Ten #8 – Project Runway

If I had to pick one television show it would have to be Project Runway. What's so fascinating about P.R. is that as the contestants grapple with the weekly challenge you really do see the creative process at work from beginning to end. Idea, struggle, solution, execution. Surprisingly, the contestants seem largely friendly and supportive of each other, although there's always some super-narcissist to stir things up, and host Tim Gunn is avuncular, helpful, and charming – all at the same time. The judges are honest and incisive and so all the tension comes organically from the simple format – who is going to make the best outfit of the week and who is going to make the worst and get voted off. It’s thrilling to watch.

Teams On The Ups and Downs

Residual fame must be like that same kind of pain. The height of it is gone, and most times never comes back. I admit being haunted by the ghost of Karl Dane selling those hot dogs in front of Metro gates he’d once entered as a star, and welcomed this glimpse of twilight as a major name and his being treated accordingly. Three years prior to a self-inflicted gunshot that ended it all, Karl and partner George K. Arthur set off touring Fox Wisconsin territory theatres aboard the sister ship of Lucky Lindy’s Spirit Of St. Louis. Would that some of that luck have extended to Dane, for this would be his last walk down red carpets. Keys to the city were extended in Kenosha. The boys were mobbed at airports, and six motorcycled police escorted them to city hall. Their sketch was called Fall In, which pleased fans as this was a live on stage reprise of comedy familiar from screen hit Rookies back in 1927. Shorts they’d done recently satisfied less. Six for independent producer Larry Darmour concluded their work as a team; the most recent, Dizzy Dates, being adjudged poor even by Fox showmen now receiving them as honored guests. There were radio appearances during noon hour broadcasts. You could wish for just one to have survived, but from a local station in 1931? Not a chance. Bally efforts found dummies carried down Main Streets on stretchers. He died laughing at Karl Dane and George K. Arthur, who are appearing in person at the Fox Theatre. Celebrity faded slower in the hinterlands. Middle America was always last to forget. You could energize faded lights in Wisconsin long after they’d burned out elsewhere. George K. Arthur played a single at the San Francisco Fox Theatre in April 1930 (as shown here with The Divorcee on screen), but I’m betting he got no police escort upon arrival. Stars dimmed and otherwise were more commonplace on both coasts. Returning to an indifferent California after Green Bay-Appleton-Oshkosh triumphs must have been like coming out of a dream for the two comedians.

There was tons o’ fun out west when Monogram lassoed saddle stalwarts Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson for a middle-aged go at frontier justice seeking in a series they’d call The Trail Blazers. Most trails lately blazed by these two had been to saloons and refrigerators. Ken sauced it through much of the thirties, and Hoot never met a Hershey Bar he didn’t like. And yet there was majesty in seeing them together and back in (mostly doubled) action. You respond to these embattled vets for what they’d once been as opposed to reduced circumstances their rotten luck, bad habits, and increased poverty had now placed them in. Eight hundred dollars per feature? I’ll (very grudgingly) take it, said Maynard, but don’t expect me to wear out treadmills prepping for westerns shot on budgets of $12-18,000 apiece. Today’s steroid-ed screen gladiators could take a lesson from Ken and Hoot. Just report for duty fat and sassy (or in Maynard’s case, plain belligerent) and let the audience take it or leave it. Ken took it for six of a proposed series of eight. He was buddies with Hoot, but Universal series washout Bob Baker as third wheel was strictly (Ken regarded) poison, and after one shot at partnering the Blazers, split for permanent oblivion in the wake of alleged Maynard-abuse. They brought in Bob Steele afterward, a boyish thirty-six and less needful of stunt assist. Forty-eight years young (and road worn for seemingly sixty) Ken was no less truculent, claiming Bob had insulted his (current) wife and assigning permanent enemy status to the diminutive daredevil. Hoot was fifty-one and really needed this money, trifling as it was. He’d been off screens a long time, eating dust behind state fair caravans and belly upping with a so-called Hoot Gibson Trading Post recently opened and (more recently) closed. Gibson relaxed in front of and behind cameras. His cowboy was old-style and free of sequins and spangles favored by yodelers at Republic. An expanded girth helped conceal a pistol he wore under his belt, but I’d have been yelling for a podiatrist after a day’s shooting with another six-shooter tucked down my boot, as Gibson’s was. Hoot sits out the fisticuffs, leaving most of that to Ken and later Bob. Trail Blazer westerns were outgrowths of a three’s better than one strategy that teamed up-and-comers with faded names and gave us The Three Mesquiteers (a short-term John Wayne address), The Range Busters, and The Rough Riders, among many to whom similar labels were affixed. TCM runs Trail Blazers thanks to Warner ownership, so prints are actually good, a rarity when you’re trolling series westerns. Five Trail Blazers played last month, and I watched and slept and watched them all. Give me more of Ken Maynard manhandling simple dialogue, and I’ll take his and Hoot’s attempts at comic banter over seasoned rivals anytime. These were sagebrush giants who’d earned the right to goof off and take money for nothing as they pleased. Just having them show up was (and is) more than enough.

I always thought of Salt and Pepper as that place discarded Rat Packers went to (figuratively) die. Watching it this week revealed no buried treasure, but Sammy Davis, Jr. and Peter Lawford show aptitude for spy spoofing I’d too long neglected. For me, Salt and Pepper was zanier than Matt Helm and more fun than Flint. Transplants from Vegas Sam and Peter are Soho swingers whose club plays host to miscreants plotting takeover of the Prime Ministry. Dead bodies piling up in Sammy’s (crowded) suit closet result in Davis double takes worthy of Lou Costello, then minutes later he’s shooting (to death) a potential femme assassin in Peter’s bed (Salt and Pepper’s mood swings play like comic pages out of Bonnie and Clyde's book). Lawford in bad times, which began in earnest shortly after this and lasted an agonizing drug-riddled decade and a half before premature death on Christmas Eve 1984, claimed he was first to be offered James Bond. That’s probably bogus, as most players with British accents short of Terry-Thomas undoubtedly made similar boasts, but I’m thinking Lawford might actually have worked as 007. He’s properly suave, more than presentable in black tie, and possessing of voice and carriage in maturity consistent with most concepts of Bond. A shame he was kicked curbside by mercurial Frank, punished over random misunderstandings arising from a fateful weekend Jack Kennedy was to have spent at Sinatra’s Malibu pad (read Shawn Levy’s excellent Rat Pack Confidential for that story). Lawford had a (too) high voice when he sang (and spoke) at Metro in Good News and other musicals, but he gained authority in television and good feature parts like Never So Few and Dead Ringer. Cool and dapper were stocks in trade going to seed by Salt and Pepper time. He’s always walking through crowds waving to offscreen greeters, an interesting Lawford mannerism he used from Ocean’s 11 on. Teaming with Davis was product of their friendship, plus Sam was among few that stood by Lawford once he’d been banished from the Pack. Davis had his own ups and downs there as well, so what the hell, they’d start their own club (Salt and Pepper might better have been titled Rat Pack Remnants Loose In London). Salt (Sam) and Pepper (Lawford) fall down a lot and do variations on Bob and Bing’s patty-cake routine before killing heavies with machine guns. There must have been lots of empty hangers in Carnaby Street shops after Sam got through accessorizing, for here he’s aglow in a rainbow of leisure suits and Nehru jackets. His are real gone ensembles throughout and surely inspiration for what showed up later in Austin Power’s wardrobe. Most scenes begin and end with Sammy and Peter lighting each other’s cigarettes. Subduing henchmen with fists and artillery might play more nimbly with fitter leading men as most engagements degenerate into slapstick, though both stars sustain tumbles I’d have expected doubles to take. Japanese posters such as one shown here play up Davis and Lawford as straight-ahead crime-busting agents, reflecting the mosaic of sales strategies applied to Salt and Pepper worldwide. A woebegone sequel called One More Time is high on my must-see list, being directed by Jerry Lewis and featuring cameos by Peter Cushing (as Baron Frankenstein!) and Christopher Lee (as Dracula!). Reason for the latter might have been Sammy’s major fan devotion to Hammer Films. The soundtrack album for Salt and Pepper would seem a good listen, and it’s still available, though sensibly limited to vintage cassette and LP. Selections include I Like The Way You Dance and Chase In A Mini-Moke (Sammy's onscreen performance of the former is an especial highlight). The record illustrated once sold for forty-seven cents, which sadly may be about all this movie’s reputation will ever be worth.

Handbook of Nature Study: The Basic Ideas

(a radish from our winter garden)

• "Anna Botsford Comstock very appropriately took the view that we should know first and best the things closest to us. Only then, when we have an intimate knowledge of our neighbors, should we journey farther afield to learn about more distant things."
• From the 1986 foreward to the book Handbook of Nature Study

• "But it should not be thought that nature-study is not science. The promising science of ecology is merely formalized nature-study; indeed it might be said that nature-study is natural science from an ecological rather than an anatomical point of view. The truth is that nature-study is a science, and is more than a science; it is not merely a study of life, but an experience of life. One realizes as he reads these pages, that with Mrs. Comstock it even contributed to a philosophy of life."
• From the 1939 Publisher's forward to the book Handbook of Nature Study

Nature study is real science. It encompasses so many important skills that are needed in upper level science. The skills of observation, documentation, research, and experimentation. It feeds the mind and the heart with a love of all that is around us. It enhances your life with simple pleasures and does become a way of life.

Barb-Harmony Art Mom
Check out my page on taking a winter hike

Top Ten #9 - Patrick Tsai and Madi Ju

Patrick Tsai is a 26 year old American who moved to Taiwan in 2003 to pursue his photography. Three years later he met a young Chinese photographer named Madi Ju via the internet and shortly afterwards they began an intense personal and professional relationship. Working together under the studio name "My Little Dead Dick", they began documenting their travels and life together. Like Lartigue crossed with Nan Goldin their photographs are footloose, modern, romantic, and blissfully free of the heavy-handed Chinese references that seem so prevalent in the wake of the Asian art boom. I have never met them or seen their work in person but we have communicated via e-mail, and their pictures are the freshest thing I have seen all year.

The writer Will Doig summed up their work beautifully. “These photographs,” he said “make me want to flee — not flee anything in particular, but simply flee for the pure elation that comes from irresponsibly picking up and leaving. Because what starts as irresponsibility so often turns into opportunity, and sometimes you just need a little nudge to make that leap. This series feels like a good, hard shove.”

Top Ten #10 – Across The Universe

I’ve never been a huge fan of top ten lists (other than David Letterman’s). Too often they seem obvious or self-congratulatory. But as I’m taking off for the holidays, for the next ten days I hope you’ll find some interest in a countdown of the top ten things that enriched my life culturally in 2007.

With best wishes to all for a Happy New Year!



This Julie Taymor film which wove a bunch of Beatles songs into a trans-Atlantic love story set against the political and cultural background of the 60s seems to be film that everyone meant to see, but didn’t get around to. It got terrible pre-release publicity as a result of an editing showdown between the director and producer and that (along with a lackluster advertising campaign) seemed to rob it of the necessary kharma. It was, however, not only imaginative and entertaining, but pulled off the incredible feat of refreshing its Beatles songs and reconnecting you to what made them so special in the first place. (So the soundtrack shares kudos with the film, which should be out on DVD any day.)

Weekend Video - Grapes of Wrath

Seven years ago I happened to see the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts' landmark show, "Made in California". A vast and ambitious look at California culture, the works ranged from Edenic painted landscapes to Rock and Roll posters. What affected me most, however, was a short film loop of Henry Fonda's end speech from the John Ford film of Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". Inspired by FSA photography it was film as verbal and visual poetry, and I always felt a loss at not being able to revisit it at will. Well, thanks to the miracle of You Tube, here it is. (If you're impatient skip to 02:15 minutes into the clip.)

To set the scene: it is late at night after a dance at the workers' camp. Tom Joad and his mother stand at the edge of the wooden dance floor. Joad has killed the man who assassinated his friend the activist Preacher Casey. Now Joad must run away to take up Casey’s mission.



And here, for the record, are Fonda/Joad's words:

Well, maybe it's like Casey says. A fella ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul out there that belongs to everybody. Then....(Ma Joad: "Then What, Tom?") Then... it don't matter. I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere…wherever you can look. Wherever there's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beating up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready…And when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise, livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there too.

Vitaphone Your Sanity Away!

My job was stressful, so I thought, but I’d have rather dug roads in prison stripes than be a Vitaphone projectionist. The only thing worse would have been managing the house where sound was being introduced. Both were the roughest assignments in town during the late twenties. Not that things hadn't been bad enough before. Boxoffice receipts were dwindling as radios and gramophones were being carted into homes to widen entertainment possibilities there. Moviegoing was a seasonal affair in many towns, certainly the small ones. A visit to the local Bijou during summer months was like entering that sweatbox they put Alec Guinness in. Sound was knocking at the door, for patrons heard voices in their heads even as they sat watching what seemed increasingly old-fashioned silent images. Music and speech was now available at home after all. If we could electrify our living rooms with sound, why couldn’t theatres do the same? That desire for something new, and excitement upon getting it, inspired viewer patience that would see them through one of the most agonizing transitions an industry ever faced. Audiences sat still for presentations so wretched as to make today’s multiplex bunglings seem like models of efficiency, but end results, and everyone could envision the potential there, made all suffering worthwhile. The preceding silent slump was one distributors hoped to conceal, especially from exhibitors to whom they were peddling soon-to-be obsolete goods. So-called forced runs on Broadway created illusions of hits that seldom translated to the smaller marketplace. Harrison’s Reports noted an audience of four hundred on a Sunday afternoon at the Capitol where MGM’s silent Telling The World, starring William Haines, was otherwise playing to forty-six hundred empty seats, and yet shows drawing poorly as this remained weeks in New York palaces, just so trade ads and sales staff could trumpet them as first-run drawers. The trick, and it was surely that, was to bamboozle contracts from smaller houses denied actual head counts and records of boxoffice receipts. Hits that were really flops included Drums Of Love, The Enemy, and even Sunrise. Each played metropolitan houses beyond the public’s interest; all were touted as Broadway (and elsewhere) successes by distributors shuffling cards for potential buyers down the exhibition line. Truth is, New York first-runs had little to do with movies being shown. They were incidental to programs revolving around big time vaudeville acts. Those were the real attractions. Motion pictures, even good ones, became afterthoughts. Who cares what’s on the screen when Al Jolson, Paul Whiteman, or John Philip Souza are among the bill of fare? Theatres were spending fifteen to thirty thousand dollars a week to load up stages, and competition was fierce among NYC palaces. Total weekly expenses for such powerhouses ran as high as one hundred thousand. Extravagant numbers representing boxoffice receipts were published, but who was verifying these? Movies few cared about got the credit for three ring circuses in which they’d had but small roles, and salesmen used numbers generated by "A" list vaude talent to parlay undeserved rentals from showmen dazzled by (often doctored) numbers rung up in Gotham. Disappointment inevitably followed and distrust fermented. Sound and distributor grabs for even higher rentals would make things worse.

Vitaphone began as a strictly cosmopolitan offering. Initial programs were customized for urban audiences. There was, from the beginning, a highbrow vs. lowbrow division between those who regarded Vitaphone as harbinger for cultural uplift and others who saw it as dispenser of broad-based entertainment with appeal well beyond Manhattan sophisticates. Warners wasted little time covering all bases. Don Juan lured the carriage trade with Vitaphone prologues featuring mostly classical and operatic performers. That opened in August 1926. By October, slap-shoe comic Sydney Chaplin headlined The Better Ole, not so much in itself, but accompanied by possibly the greatest all-star vaudeville bill ever gathered, according to Variety. A highlight was Al Jolson’s Plantation Act, wherein he sang and ad-libbed to his unseen audience as though standing before them. Whether anyone realized it at the time, this was the future of Vitaphone, for patrons responded strongest to spoken word as supplement to song. Casual speech electrified as surely as currents running through horns and amplifiers. Opinion makers tried spinning emphasis toward orchestral accompaniments. New York Times critic Mordaunt Hall referred to these as Vitaphone Concerts, lofty occasions for the great moviegoing unwashed to improve themselves. Vitaphone will give its patrons an excellent idea of a singer’s acting and an intelligent conception of the efforts of musicians and their instruments. There would be much sneering among columnists over tin pan pianos (or worse, woman-handled pianos) and squeaky violins that would be replaced in small towns across the country as Vitaphone rescued provincial sinkholes denied good music for too long. So far, sound was a revolution very much supported by the elites. To further gratify rarified tastes, Warners offered When A Man Loves for February 1927, the third Vitaphone program and one that would play nineteen weeks at Broadway’s Selwyn Theatre. Shorts preceding the feature were back in longhair mode with the exception of vaudeville favorites Van and Schenck, whom the Times damned with faint praise. Although they are aptly registered, (Van and Schenck) jar on one after listening to the classical airs (in this case, tenor Charles Hackett along with selections from Rigoletto). When A Man Loves, like Don Juan, limited its Vitaphone accompaniment to orchestral scoring, with familiar to New Yorkers Henry Hadley as composer (he’d been conductor for the city’s Philharmonic earlier in the twenties). Sound effects included knocks at doors, bells ringing, and as with Don Juan, clashing of swords, but still no dialogue. Warners maintained Vitaphone as music only adjunct to play in first runs and palaces wired. Take away the limited sound and you'd still have fully intertitled silent versions for servicing of neighborhood and smaller situations. Establishment resistance to speech on screen remained an inhibiting factor. When motion picture action is interpreted not by words, but by music, an interesting art is created. True enough, and maybe we’d have been better off if electronic assist were limited to scores it could provide, but would there have been profit in that? Maybe not, for initial Vitaphone success was not to last. Receipts would begin dipping after the first three.

Vitaphone as a novelty, if not a modern miracle, saw Warner’s innovation through Don Juan (profits $473,000), The Better Ole ($305,000), and When A Man Loves ($150,000). Going to these was like attending opening night of a new play or symphony. Movies had seldom attained such prestige. Attractively designed souvenir books were available for a quarter. At twenty pages, with embossed cameos of John Barrymore and Dolores Costello on the cover, these keepsakes for When A Man Loves were sold in the Selwyn Theatre’s lobby. A copy I located bore a handwritten tribute from the nameless fan who bought it eighty years ago. I saw this at the Selwyn Theatre on Friday matinee, April 1,’27 with Helen Roone, Lil’s sister from Baltimore. One of the most beautiful pictures I’ve ever seen. Splendidly acted. Dolores Costello is exquisite as Manon and John Barrymore is fascinating as ever, if not more so. TCM can offer us When A Man Loves with picture and sound beautifully restored, but they’ll not reclaim the romance and excitement of first-run discovery like this. Precious few experienced it even in 1927, for this feature with Vitaphone accompaniment would have enjoyed but limited playdates. Speedy developments with regards sound rendered product even a few months old passe as metropolitan houses across the country began wiring (very few played sound over the 1926-27 season). Still, Warners had a grand first season with Vitaphone. Don Juan, The Better Ole, and When A Man Loves accounted for thirty-six percent of all studio profits for 1926-27, and this was a year in which Warners also released twenty-six conventional silent features, most of which saw profit well below $100,000 (Rin Tin-Tin, considered a top draw, ended but $58,000 to the good for Jaws Of Steel). By autumn of 1927, newly installed Vitaphone theatres were crying for brand new attractions to put on their talking screens. Specifically, they wanted The Jazz Singer, which would be released in October. Most audiences received Don Juan, The Better Ole, and When A Man Loves as conventional silent programs. Those woman-handled pianos would not be silenced just yet. As city patrons became accustomed to Vitaphone through 1927, inertia set in. The fourth offering with sound, Old San Francisco (June 1927), saw profits fall to $78,000. It seemed customers were back to judging movies on merit rather than novelty. Chickens came home with the fifth Vitaphone, The First Auto, which actually lost $124,000. Number Six, The Jazz Singer, would arrive not a moment too soon.

The complicating factor with Vitaphone was a human one. You could sooner juggle six orange crates than get one of these shows to play through without breakdowns or complications (accent on plurals). Managers and projectionists lived in daily fear of losing their jobs. Each blamed the other for screw-ups neither could be entirely blamed for. You’d rehearse these shows all night before opening (many did) and still something (everything!) would go wrong. Sound equipment was Greek to booth veterans accustomed to projectors dating back to the teens, and synchronizing records with pictures on screen was hell itself. They needed operators with a dozen arms like those creations Ray Harryhausen built to menace Sinbad decades later. Unions got wise in a hurry and demanded two (at least) of their membership to handle presentation. That sent house nuts through the roof, but was nothing beside what distributors were trying to rake off by way of increased sound film rentals. Minimal flat rates for silents was the norm that kept small houses solvent through much of the twenties, but this was a grim new day. Better to avoid sound altogether. Stay silent! Pick the best programs and don’t pay over $7.50 -- $10 -- $12.50 and $15.00 for from two to three days. Sage advise if you could live by it, but what to do when your customers are driving out of town to see talkers? Buy the installation --- five thousand and up for so-called dependable ones, then get ready for rentals climbing past fifty dollars per feature, plus twenty-five more for the platters. Those often came in scratched or otherwise defective. One manager drove Bulldog Drummond and accompanying discs over seventy-five miles to three other houses and couldn’t get it to play properly in any of them. A lot of owners gave up and closed. Our own Rose Theatre tried getting by with silents till late in 1929, then shuttered. Yet to come were distributors instituting percentage policies (previously applied only on super-specials). Cleveland exhibitors dug in their heels and refused to play that game. Their resolve melted in the face of a public’s demand for talkies. Film companies really had showmen by the throat this time. Salesmen for Warners went around peddling silent prints of Vitaphone features at inflated prices, citing big grosses these shows had earned in the flagships. What they didn’t address was why anyone would pay to see The Jazz Singer without sound. Things were a mess even in major venues. You needed mechanical genius and exquisitely attuned senses to checkmate gremlins hiding in this dread calliope. Motion Picture Herald acknowledged the crapshoot nature of projection with sound. Individual performances are of varying quality in reproduction and there is a wider range of quality between one show and the next. That was a tactful way of putting it, but then MPH was accepting ads from the film companies, so tact /understatement would remain first /foremost. Small comfort for lone eagles flying solo in booths above two and three thousand angry patrons. So Al Jolson jumps out of sync. Where does the operator go from there? All he can do is try to get it back right again and it is just luck if he can strike it right, said one exhausted operator. Cool heads would prevail or hit the bricks. No longer would you fire up the arcs, then sit and read a newspaper. DVD reviews of a newly released The Jazz Singer indicate there are minor sync issues yet, so I suppose the Vitaphone curse, eight decades running, is indeed eternal.

Notes On Photos: That's a Vitaphone projection set-up above, with turntable. The posed group of four includes Jack Warner, Dolores Costello, John Barrymore, and director Alan Crosland on the set of When A Man Loves.