4

ITINERANTS ADOPT A BABY

The Local Hollywood Film and the Operational Aesthetic

IN THE EARLY 1920S, JUST as the term “Hollywood” began to be used as a synecdoche for the movie industry as a whole, many itinerant filmmakers began associating themselves with the film industry in Los Angeles and then Hollywood itself.¹ While the motion picture industry was referred to by spatial metaphors throughout the 1910s—“Movieland” and “Filmland” were among the most popular terms—itinerant filmmakers were usually identified by the putative home of their production company, which in most cases was New York or Chicago, and was not of significant interest to their sponsors.² Instead, itinerant directors were often evaluated by their success in other cities, and many carried recommendation letters with them as confirmation.³ Although itinerant filmmakers made fleeting references to actors and newsreel companies, sponsors focused on the local reception of the moving pictures they commissioned and the possibility, which grew dimmer with each passing year, that their film might receive national distribution.

When itinerants began to identify themselves as Hollywood directors, the effect was more than semantic. Itinerants emphasized their professional qualifications in press releases and interviews, suggesting ties, however tenuous or false, to well-known actors, directors, and production companies. Assistant directors to D. W. Griffith, employees of Selig Polyscope, and cameramen for Erich von Stroheim were among the many individuals who, if these itinerants are to be believed, decided to leave the movie colony for an uncertain life on the road. For skeptics of the inflated biographies of their crews, itinerant directors traveled with heavy, large, and presumably expensive equipment—cameras, lights, and, in the early 1930s, sound-recording technology that were of the same quality as those used in Hollywood. Furthermore, these directors recreated the social, cultural, and aesthetic forms of classical cinema. They held screen contests, staged special effects in the central business districts of the towns they visited, and sold themselves as educators who were in town to show people “how movies are made.”

Considered in isolation, each of these developments would not be of much significance. As I have argued throughout this book, however, the local film is more a mode than a genre, a constellation of different technologies and networks that expressed themselves in unique and historically specific ways. The local film modes that were profitable, and produced most often, were ones that were easy to repeat, attractive to sponsors, and engaging to participatory audiences. The emergence of the Hollywood mode of the local film in the early 1920s was more than just a variation on the home talent productions, screen contests, and booster films of the previous decade. Instead, it helped bring about a new “horizon of expectations,” to use Hans Robert Jauss’s term, which transformed how audiences saw local movies and what they expected from them.⁴

Hollywood films were distinct from other modes of local film production, such as the home talent film and the municipal booster film, because their audience appeal rested in part on textual and extra-textual references to the motion picture industry. As a result, when audiences for Hollywood films saw themselves and places they recognized, they were encouraged to see these sights as if a professional director had filmed them. By performing as Hollywood directors, itinerant producers robbed the industry of some of its mystique, turning the screen test into just another film shoot and the special effect into easily explained camera tricks. At the same time, itinerants—almost always identified as former Hollywood directors—felt justified in critiquing the industry for trite storylines and poor acting. As a result, the Hollywood film, like the local films that were “tied in” with national releases as discussed in the previous chapter, absorbed some of the interest people had in entering the film industry, with the result of distancing local audiences from the national center of film production.⁵

INTERSTATE ADOPTS A BABY

While there were scores of directors who worked in the Hollywood mode, including Melton Barker, Salvatore Cudia, and Louise Lovely, each of whom had varying degrees of actual industry experience, the directors associated with Interstate Film Producers were among the most active during the period in which the mode emerged. Between 1914, when the Chicago company made its first film in northern Indiana, and 1934, when the company ceased operations after its last working director, Don O. Newland, retired from the road, Interstate made at least eighty films, almost all of which were slight variations of a single plot. But even though the company kept its plot, its directors readapted almost everything else about the production twice, first during the emergence of Hollywood in the early 1920s, and then for the sound era in the early 1930s. At least seven of the company’s films, produced between 1926 and 1932, are extant.

Figure 4.1. Don Newland, right, with camera and audio recording equipment (n.d.). Courtesy of Hellen Newland

Like many small film companies of the period, Interstate Film Producers’ origins are murky. The earliest known reference to the company appears in July 1914, when a representative of the company traveled to Mishawaka, a small town in northern Indiana, to produce Mishawaka Adopts a Baby, the film title Interstate used almost exclusively for its films until 1923.⁶ Although it is not certain whether Interstate was based in Chicago in the 1910s—city directories of the period list no company by that name, and there are no state incorporation records—its film production in the 1910s centered in the upper Midwest, mostly towns within 150 miles of Chicago.

While a number of individuals were associated with the company in the 1910s, including, intriguingly, two directors—Charles N. David and Ralph Phillips—who went on to work for the Chicago-based race film producer Ebony Films, it is unclear how the company was structured or who was in charge.⁷ Based on local newspaper accounts of the company’s productions in this period, it appears that Interstate’s representatives tended to work in teams, with a director and cinematographer traveling together to produce the film. Most likely, the company was structured in a manner similar to the Superior Film Company in Des Moines, in which independent camera operators borrowed the company’s materials, including professionally produced footage, such as a car chase scene or train wreck, that could easily be spliced into the film’s narrative. Regardless, the absence of company records, extant films, and, with rare exception, newspaper accounts of Interstate’s early years makes it difficult to locate clues about why its directors were able to manage the transition from producing home talent pictures to movies that could have been made in Hollywood.

DON NEWLAND AND THE HOLLYWOOD TURN

While Don Newland was not the only director affiliated with Interstate to work in the 1920s, he quickly made it his company, producing at least fifty films over the next dozen years, and possibly many more. A Michigan native who had previously worked for the Magnet Feature Film Exchange in Chicago, Newland was first identified as a director with the company in early 1922, when he went to Kokomo, an industrial town in north-central Indiana, to make Kokomo Adopts a Baby, using the same film title as that used by Interstate’s directors in the 1910s.⁸ Like his predecessors, Newland produced the same narrative fiction comedy, but, unlike them, he expanded his geographic range to include the mid-Atlantic and South, and later added sound to his productions. More importantly, however, he broke from his predecessors by emphasizing that his films should be compared to those made in Hollywood, as he himself had experience in the movie industry.

While exploitation agents and theater managers struggled to produce local films that captured the Hollywood mystique, Newland proved to be a remarkably efficient and effective director of local films that matched the industry’s bombast. He accomplished this by turning the very process of making a motion picture into a spectacle. Newspaper articles focused on every step of the production, from selecting the cast to staging shoots to developing and editing the finished product. Newland simultaneously directed motion pictures and performed as a director of motion pictures.

Here I focus on this latter aspect of Newland’s practice, both as an entry point to the films themselves and as a way to emphasize the performative aspects of the local film. My analysis is informed by recent work on film exhibition by Robert C. Allen, Richard Maltby, and Paul S. Moore, which emphasizes the relationship between the eventfulness of an individual film’s exhibition and the ordinary rhythms of everyday moviegoing.⁹ Local films, like exploitation stunts, were intended to disrupt the routine of the movie experience. My inquiry focuses on the tactics Newland used to position himself as an emissary from Hollywood and to position his filmmaking practice as identical to those used in the movies audiences usually saw. My reading of Newland’s performance is based primarily on newspaper articles written about his practice, which were numerous, as newspapers sponsored the production of his films, and repetitive, as he supplied much of the copy that was written about his films. Then, I turn to the relationship between Newland’s performance as a director and the films he actually screened before audiences. Like some home talent pictures, Newland’s films were hybrid productions, with title cards and some sequences reused in every film, while other scenes were shot anew for each town. But unlike the filmmakers behind previous productions, Newland made slight changes to his films over the twelve years he was an active filmmaker, adding, deleting, and altering scenes. Newland, it seems, grasped that the Hollywood genre formula of difference and repetition would work for local films, and he refined his filmmaking process to ensure that he could adapt to changes in the industry without losing the efficiencies he developed after years of practice.

A “BATTERY OF KLIEG LIGHTS”: THE OPERATIONAL AESTHETIC AT WORK IN THE HOLLYWOOD FILM

While there were aesthetic differences between the home talent films of the 1910s and Newland’s Hollywood films, the primary distinction between the two was a bonus feature that Newland and similar directors added to their production—a demonstration of motion picture technology, most often described as an exhibition of “How Movies Are Made.” For example, when Newland went to Elyria, Ohio, in late 1922 to film Elyria Adopts a Baby, he described his plans in this manner: “The film company will use the stage of the American theatre for making the ‘interior’ scenes. They convert the stage into a real movie studio. A powerful studio lighting system, special scenery, costumes, professional cameramen, director and all that goes to make up the fascinating process of ‘big picture’ making will be employed. The ‘exterior’ scenes for the comedy will be shot on the streets of Elyria. The public will be able to witness the making of both interior and exterior scenes thereby giving an idea ‘How “Movies” are Made.’”¹⁰

In this passage, Newland took care to distinguish his work from those made by other itinerant filmmakers, particularly those home talent productions that were now being denigrated as amateurish.¹¹ In fact, Newland’s promotional tactics borrowed from an earlier performance tradition, that of the “confidence man,” whose hoaxes and frauds were a source of endless fascination and fear in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century forward. Karen Halttunen argues that the “confidence man,” who connived naive young men into engaging in sinful behavior, was a contradictory figure, as his adoption of upper-class codes of behavior and dress made him indistinguishable from laudatory individuals, such as the characters in Horatio Alger’s rags-to-riches novels.¹²

Likewise, itinerant producers of Hollywood films exaggerated, or lied about, their film background, even as they delivered what they promised. In his study of the preeminent confidence man of the nineteenth century, the showman P. T. Barnum, Neil Harris argues that Barnum’s success as a promoter was due in part to his ability to generate controversy around the authenticity of his marvels without turning off those who become convinced that they were fakes. As Harris wrote, “Experiencing a complex hoax was pleasurable because of the competition between victim and hoaxer, each seeking to outmaneuver the other, to catch him off-balance and detect the critical weakness. . . . The opportunity to debate the issue of falsity, to discover how deception had been practiced, was even more exciting than the discovering of fraud itself.”¹³

While Harris was most interested in understanding Barnum’s success as a promoter, even when he took on an act that had failed for others, the term he developed to explain Barnum’s appeal, the “operational aesthetic,” has broader applications. By equating “beauty with information and technique,” the operational aesthetic transfers some of the appeal of a medium, such as the motion picture, from its immediate experience, either being filmed or watching oneself on screen, to the circumstances of its production, distribution, and reception.¹⁴ While one could read Newland’s entire filmmaking practice as embodying an operational aesthetic or, to put it less kindly, a con game, four elements of his practice stand out: “special effects” to entice people to participate in his films; on-location and interior shooting to contrast between different modes of Hollywood filmmaking; exaggerated, and likely falsified, claims of professional experience; and a “star contest” to obscure, rather than democratize, casting decisions.

Figure 4.2. Photograph of the production of Durham’s Hero (1925), Alvin Talmage Parnell Photographs, David M. Rubenstein Rare Books and Manuscript Library, Duke University, Durham, N.C.

As we saw in the earlier discussion of home talent productions, audiences were particularly fascinated with “special effects” in the cinema, and filmmakers often announced the local production of such effects in advance so the scene’s production could be witnessed by anyone who was interested in seeing how movies were made. One of the most discussed scenes Newland filmed was a car crash in the town’s central business district, which served to amplify public interest in his film. The special effect was accomplished entirely in-camera, with Newland’s cinematographer slow-cranking the camera, which was held upside down, as he moved the two cars in reverse. After a blast of smoke, the new cars are moved away and replaced with automobiles from the junkyard, giving the illusion that the earlier cars were destroyed. Despite the simplicity of this trick, Newland convinced newspapers, like one in Belvidere, Illinois, to boast of its novelty: “Spectators will have an opportunity to see how real comedy wrecks are staged as they do it in Hollywood. Trick photography can do some wonderful things and those in the crowd can see how the trick is done, how in the pictures they are made to see great accidents and yet nobody hurt. The trick is staged right there before their eyes.”¹⁵ Unlike the magician who performs a trick and then asks the audience to marvel at how it was done, itinerant filmmakers announced themselves by showing how professionals filmed a stock special effect scene well-known to film fans—a car crash, a rescue from a burning building, or a high-speed chase—and only later exhibited the filmed illusion to an audience who already knew how the trick was performed. For Newland, the special effect allowed him to establish his own credibility as a Hollywood director and simultaneously make the special effects themselves appear ordinary and easy to produce.

The operational aesthetic was also at play in Newland’s discussion of film locations. The location shoot was, of course, intrinsic to the production of the local film, yet itinerant directors used it in very different ways. For the producers of booster films, locations were chosen to depict the town in its best light, while home talent filmmakers wanted locations that would be instantly recognizable to audiences. While Newland shot some of his scenes in well-known locations around town, he was most enthusiastic about his ability to shoot interior scenes, which were filmed on the stage of the movie theater before an audience, using equipment and props that Newland supplied. In each town, Newland told the newspaper that the “most interesting part of the picture making is the shooting of ‘interior’ studio scenes.”¹⁶ Newland’s preference for interiors reveals an important shift in the function of the local film. By shooting in the movie theater, Newland associated his films with the glamor and universal appeal of the motion picture industry, not the places communities could recognize as their own.

By 1923, which coincided with a cycle of industry films that took Hollywood as their subject, itinerant directors also began identifying themselves with this semi-fictionalized film industry. In the early 1920s, Newland associated himself with the Interstate Film Producers of Los Angeles, even though it did not appear to have an office in that city and he continued to develop and edit his films in Chicago and New York.¹⁷ By 1926, Newland regularly gave newspapers a complete biography, including this one to the newspaper in Belvidere, Illinois: “Director Newland is a pioneer in the moving picture industry, having worked in the olden days with such stars as Mary Pickford, James Kirkwood, Flora Finch, Johnny Bunny and others when they were making one-reelers in a New York office building. Having worked as property man, electrician, studio manager and finally as director and recently having been connected with the famous Sennett, he has acquired considerable knowledge of beauty and screen types from his close connection with the beautiful Sennett bathing beauties.”¹⁸

If Newland’s autobiography is factual, the Vitagraph Company would have employed him by April 1915 (the date of Bunny’s death), when Newland was eighteen. While Newland could have been working at Vitagraph in the mid-1910s, it seems highly unlikely.¹⁹ Likewise, Newland’s “connection” with Mack Sennett cannot be confirmed. Newland also made a habit of claiming that his cinematographers had previously been assistants to Erich von Stroheim.²⁰ But even if Newland and similar itinerant filmmakers were not the out-of-work Hollywood directors they claimed to be, their practice nonetheless depended on their affiliation with the industry. In interviews, Newland offered critiques of the movie industry, advice for aspiring actors, and praise for the beauty of the place where he was filming, which, he told the local paper, would make an excellent place for moviemaking if only they had as much as sunlight as they do in Los Angeles.

Newland also turned his claims of Hollywood expertise to his favor in another aspect of his film practice, the screen contest. While the screen contest was, as discussed earlier, by now a well-developed ploy to entice movie fans to participate in the cinema, itinerants like Newland began instead casting local people to play well-known character types or even specific stars. For example, when Newland produced a motion picture in Sandusky, Ohio, in early 1923, the local newspaper announced Newland’s selection of the lead actor in this way: “Miss Beryl V. Starr, daughter of Mrs. Frances M. Starr, 1012 Fulton-st, stenographer in the office, of The Erie Food Products Co., E. Water-st, looks more like Miss Constance Talmadge, famous film actress, than any one of the other Sandusky girls bearing marked resemblance to the delightful ‘Connie’ and will take the part of ‘Ethel,’ the principal character in ‘Sandusky’s Hero,’ the Sandusky movie, Director Newland of the Interstate Film Co., is here to make.”²¹

Like previous star contests, the newspaper printed the full names and detailed information about the winner, which revealed the disconnect between the star the winner aspired to be and his or her current occupation. But unlike earlier screen competitions, which used a multiweek election conducted by the sponsoring newspaper to select the contestants, Newland chose his own cast. Soon after arriving in a town he placed a “Movie Application” in the local newspaper, which asked “girls” interested in appearing in the picture to submit their name, address, phone number, age, height, weight, complexion, and a “photograph if you have one” to Newland for his review.²² While the star contests of the 1910s were conducted with a democratic spirit, with the winner being the entrant who received the most votes from moviegoers, Newland operated his contest according to the same mystifying logic of the Hollywood screen competitions of the period.

Like many confidence men, Newland’s own story is difficult to tease out. He was not the first director for Interstate, and it is highly unlikely that he developed the publicity materials that made the company’s Hollywood turn so successful. And yet, if one measures an itinerant’s success by output, Newland is perhaps the most significant producer of local films in the 1920s, shooting dozens of pictures from New York to Florida, Wisconsin to North Carolina. In 1924, Newland employed Charles C. Fetty to be his cinematographer. Fetty, the cinematographer for the 1920 Alice Howell comedy Lunatics in Politics, is the only Newland employee whose experience in the film industry can be independently verified. Fetty worked with Newland in 1924 and 1925, leaving to start his own venture producing local films using the same script and production formula, titling his series A Day in Hollywood.²³ Newland ceased producing the Adopts a Baby series in the mid-1920s and turned to another series, Hero, which he made until the mid-1930s.²⁴

HENPECKED HUSBANDS AND BABY ETHELS: THE AESTHETICS OF THE HERO FILMS

If Newland tried, with varying success, to update his performance as an out-of-work Hollywood director, the film he remade again and again remained surprisingly staid, holding over the same plot and stock characters from the Adopts a Baby films produced in the 1910s for his Hero series, which began in the early 1920s. Newland did change how he discussed the film over time. For example, while Interstate’s directors in the 1910s described the film’s plot as a “Mr. and Mrs. Bowser” story, a reference to the fictional bickering couple created by the humorist Charles Bertrand Lewis in the late nineteenth century, Newland instead told sponsors that he was making a “Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew” picture, after the series of films by the mid-1910s Vitagraph stars.²⁵ One of the earliest plot summaries appeared in 1916, when the Alexandria Times-Tribune in Indiana recounted the story of what appears to be a one-off, Alexandria Adopts Twins, or Mr. and Mrs. Bowser. The film opens with a scene at the household of Mr. and Mrs. Bowser, soon changed to Henpeck, a bickering older married couple. A letter arrives in the mail notifying the couple that they will soon by visited by twins—in other versions, just a single “baby”—who they are expected to adopt or, in later versions, care for while their parents are on vacation. The newspaper reprints the film’s first gag as follows: “Bowser has the baby carriage all ready to meet them, thinking, of course, that they are babies and will be in care of the conductor. (Mrs. Bowser had thought so too). Such a chase as Lady Bowser is to have. For these are two good-looking young ladies that meet their uncle and as he is showing them the sights . . . Mrs. Bowser is informed of the perfidy of her husband and—immediately the chase is on.”²⁶

The “chase” of the film is emphasized in the description of Alexandria Adopts Twins and most of its successor films. Here, the chase is described as “Helen Holmes ‘stuff,’” and its thrills are so moving that the writer claims that he or she is unable to describe them in words.²⁷ Although this early summary does not reveal the rest of the plot, the resolution of the chase runs as expected in the extant films. Mrs. Bowser realizes that the babies—later, just a single “Baby Ethel”—are in fact young women, and she forgives Mr. Bowser. From this skeleton of a plot, Newland added additional storylines and new characters in the early 1920s. In addition to Mr. and Mrs. Henpeck and Baby Ethel, Newland added two young men—Billy Brown, who serves first as Mr. Henpeck’s accomplice and later wins Ethel’s affections, and a “troublesome neighbor” who informs Mrs. Henpeck of her husband’s imagined infidelity.²⁸ In later versions, Newland adds another young woman visitor, Katrinka, a “country cousin” who plays a comic role, and changes the troublesome neighbor character to “The Rival,” a newspaper reporter who also pursues Ethel. In addition to giving Newland more roles to cast—a challenge for all producers of home talent pictures—the addition of a reporter signaled that Newland was turning to the local newspaper, not the movie theater, for sponsorship assistance. In fact, Newland added a second act to his Hero films, which he began making in 1923, in which the car crash climax sets the stage for the production of a newspaper article about the events that led up to the event. Only after the car crash is turned into a newspaper article can the film’s third act begin, in which Billy Brown proposes to Baby Ethel and The Rival plays one last trick on Mr. Henpeck.

In order to underscore the interplay between the Hero films and Newland’s use of the operational aesthetic to generate interest in them, it is helpful to look at two extant films and the press coverage they received. Both Belvidere’s Hero, produced in Illinois in late March 1926, and Janesville’s Hero, made in Wisconsin in early January 1927, were typical Newland productions of the period. Newland’s publicity materials were placed effectively, with news of the film’s production receiving multiple front-page articles. Newland also produced these films rather quickly, spending five days shooting the Belvidere film and just four in Janesville. For both films, he went back to a studio in Chicago to process and edit the movies, which took a full day, before returning to town to show the finished product for a three- or four-day run. Unlike his Hollywood counterparts, who found the home talent film a difficult stunt to pull off, Newland brought industry efficiency to his operations, taking just thirteen days to make the Belvidere film and fifteen to make the Janesville film, which may have been delayed because he did not work during the New Year’s holiday.

While Belvidere’s Hero and Janesville’s Hero both received praise from their respective local newspapers and sponsors for giving audiences an opportunity to witness the production of a Hollywood motion picture, the surviving films offer a somewhat different lesson. For example, Belvidere’s Hero opens not with an allusion to Hollywood but rather a paean to the newspaper, with the scrolling text noting that it is the “one institution in which ALL are interested, regardless of creed or condition.”²⁹ While the newspaper articles about the film emphasize its affinity with Hollywood, this opening text suggests that the true purpose of the picture was to show how “one of the countless events that make up your daily newspaper” is put into print. Even though this opening credit does not appear in Janesville’s Hero, a later sequence, which depicts the production of a newspaper, appears in both films, suggesting that Newland sold the film to newspapers as an opportunity for self-promotion.

For both versions, Newland began shooting at the local movie theater—the 845-seat Apollo Theater in Belvidere and the 500-seat Beverly Theater in Janesville—soon after he arrived in town, cementing the connection among the motion picture, Hollywood, and the theater where it would eventually be seen. Newland shot scenes in the movie theater for three consecutive nights, blocking off two hours each night. Newspaper advertisements noted that “Everybody Wants to See How Movies Are Made,” and that an “Expert Director and Cameraman from Hollywood” would be on hand to show them how.³⁰ As suggested above, these interior scenes were critical to the film’s success, as they allowed Newland to demonstrate his proficiency as a director and give audiences an opportunity to compare the picture’s production to the finished project. While it is unclear from the newspaper articles when Newland shot particular scenes, there is some evidence suggesting that Newland largely shot in sequence, possibly to maintain audience interest in the picture as it was being made.

Following conventions of the period, each of the Hero films introduces its characters with title cards. While the title cards in Belvidere’s Hero are just typed text, Janesville Hero uses highly stylized title cards with language to match. According to these title cards in the Janesville film, Mrs. Henpeck is “a loud-speaking mama with plenty of static and no interference,” while Mr. Henpeck’s “batteries are run down . . . and can’t even listen in.” The early interior scenes are overexposed and poorly framed, likely due to the difficulty of filming in a movie theater.³¹ The first significant plot event to take place is the arrival of a letter from a “college chum” now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who informs the Henpecks of Baby Ethel’s impending arrival. In the letter, Mr. Henpeck’s friend reminds him of Mr. Henpeck’s earlier infatuation with Mrs. Henpeck. A medium shot of Mr. Henpeck scratching his head dissolves to one of him surrounded by young children, suggesting earlier, and now abandoned, plans for procreation.

The next scene opens with another title card, this time for The Rival, “a reporter with a nose for news and an eye for the girls.” The shot that follows, of a young man sleeping in an office, was also filmed indoors, but in the newspaper’s offices, not on the stage of the Beverly. On his editor’s orders, The Rival leaves the office in search of a story. The next scene returns to the Henpeck narrative, with Mr. Henpeck pushing a carriage to meet Baby Ethel at the train station. While walking down one of the town’s main thoroughfares, Mr. Henpeck meets Billy Brown. In the Belvidere film, the title card describes him as “the village cut-up and lady-killer,” while the Janesville film instead notes that “what it takes to get shebas, he has nothing else but,” using period slang for sexually attractive women, a reference to the Egyptomania of the period.

While Mr. Henpeck and Billy Brown are talking, an African American man also pushing a carriage enters the frame from the left. A close-up of an African American baby girl follows—intriguingly, the same shot is used in both films, as well as in Wellston’s Hero (1932), a later film—and then a cut back to a shot of Mr. Henpeck and Brown that shows the baby’s caretaker, possibly her father, leaving the carriage for Mr. Henpeck to accidentally take. Unaware of the baby in the carriage, Mr. Henpeck continues to the train station, where he meets The Rival, who is in search of news.

An iris shot shows the train arriving to the station. After a medium-shot of a woman in a fur coat stepping off the train car, a cut to a title card introduces Baby Ethel, “the cause of it all.” Ethel hands Mr. Henpeck a letter of introduction confirming her identity, and the two leave The Rival and Billy Brown behind. They hear a sound and realize that there’s a baby inside the carriage, who is once again shown in close-up. The Rival leaves Billy Brown to take care of the child, who is never again seen in the picture. This odd storyline is not mentioned in its press coverage, suggesting that Newland intended for it to surprise audiences who assumed they had witnessed the production of the entire film. Jacqueline Stewart argues that such “baby-switching” plots in transitional-era cinema challenged “traditional racial and gender roles” and, in effect, threatened “the stability of the white family and, by extension, the social order.”³² If marriage served a civic function in the municipal booster films of the 1910s, the Hero pictures suggest that marriage is merely palliative, unable to resolve sexual tensions and issues related to social reproduction. In fact, one could see the Hero films as being obsessed with the wrong kinds of babies—too many, in the case of a pair of sight gags that enclose the film; of the “wrong” race, as in this scene; and, in the case of “Baby” Ethel, not a baby at all.

The next scene takes place back in the Henpeck home, with a title card introducing yet another character, Katrinka, “a country flapper [who] visits auntie for the first time.” The first shot of Katrinka, in a threadbare coat and checkered scarf, reveals the contrast between her and the sophisticated Ethel. Newland uses parallel editing to show Katrinka settling into the Henpeck home, while Mr. Henpeck takes Baby Ethel on a tour of town. Billy Brown sees the couple again and vows to win over Baby Ethel. He races to the Henpeck home, where he tells Mrs. Henpeck and Katrinka that Mr. Henpeck is “promenading around town with a strange woman.” When Mrs. Henpeck and Billy Brown spot Mr. Henpeck and Baby Ethel, a chase commences, with Katrinka, who is wearing roller skates, serving as comic relief. Both odd couples get into automobiles to commence their chase in the countryside. For the Janesville version, Newland includes a curious sequence in which another character, Ezra Fetlock, described as “the inventor of skid chains and blow-out patches for balloon trousers,” is introduced, followed by a close-up of him spitting tobacco at a dog. In the film credits, Newland identifies Fetlock as “Guess Who?” although the repetition of this sequence in other films suggests that this was another Newland gag, as audiences proved unable to guess the identity of a character who was played by a nonlocal.³³ For the car chase scene, Newland had his camera operator turn the crank slower, in order to produce the illusion of a high-speed chase. The chase circles back into town, at which point the most extravagant special effect in the film, a head-on collision between the cars driven by Mr. Henpeck and Billy Brown, is shown. The puff of smoke that appears was likely caused by some kind of explosive, but the wreck itself is rather anticlimactic. (See Moving Image 4.1.)

Mr. Henpeck leaves his automobile, and he and Baby Ethel attempt to escape on foot, but Mrs. Henpeck, Billy Brown, and Katrinka, still on roller skates, quickly catch up with the wayward couple. Once Mrs. Henpeck realizes that the “strange woman” is in fact Baby Ethel, she reconciles with Mr. Henpeck. The Henpecks presumably return home with their two houseguests, and the narrative focus shifts to the aftermath of the car wreck.

A scene at the car wreck reveals that an older man was hurt during the collision, and he is escorted away from the scene by two police officers. With a front-page story to write, The Rival heads back to the newspaper office. At this point, the film becomes an industrial, as it shows the mechanics of publishing a newspaper using linotype. Although Newland recycles the intertitles, the scenes of the newspaper production appear to be different for each film, an odd decision as only newspaper staff would likely be able to identify their machinery. While most of these shots are overexposed and ordinary, the scene in the Janesville film closes with a particularly compelling crowd scene. Instead of workers leaving a factory, Newland shows a dozen or more newsboys exiting the underground printing press via a flight of stairs onto a previously empty street, filling the space from below.

With the special edition of the newspaper out, the focus returns to the Henpecks. Billy Brown and The Rival are outside the Henpeck home, saying goodbye to Baby Ethel, when Mr. and Mrs. Henpeck and Katrinka come home. Mr. Henpeck picks up the just-delivered newspaper, which announces that the car wreck was a “scandal.” Each town produced its own mockup newspaper, and the headlines are different in all extant films, suggesting that this was one place where Newland gave his sponsors creative input. Mr. Henpeck pledges revenge on the author of the damaging article. Several days pass. In the next shot, Billy Brown gives The Rival a trick cigar. Night falls, and The Rival visits the Henpeck home in hopes of seeing Baby Ethel. The Rival gives Mr. Henpeck the cigar and proceeds to court Baby Ethel. With parallel editing, Newland contrasts The Rival’s romancing of Baby Ethel with the Henpeck’s more tiresome life. Just after The Rival proposes to Baby Ethel, the trick cigar goes off, turning Mr. Henpeck’s face black, a possible allusion to the earlier scene at the train station. Mr. Henpeck picks The Rival up by the shoulders and takes him outside, where Billy Brown is waiting for Baby Ethel. Mr. Henpack throws The Rival onto the street, and Billy Brown comes into the Henpeck home to propose to Baby Ethel, who accepts.

THE COMING OF SOUND AND HUNTINGDON’S HERO

Like many itinerant filmmakers, success was double-edged for Newland. Working at a frenetic pace for many years, he quickly ran out of the easiest and closest marks, and repeat visits to the same town were not received with the enthusiasm necessary to make his pictures a success. In 1923, just as Newland began producing his own films, another director of the Adopts a Baby, series had to assure residents of Huntington, Indiana, concerned they were being asked to remake a film produced in their community only four years earlier, that despite “having a few scenes somewhat similar, changes in scenes will be made and an entirely different plot is promised theater goers.”³⁴ In addition, the Hero films sparked a slew of imitators, some of which were of markedly lower quality and cast disrepute on Newland’s line of work. More obviously, Newland’s own claims as a Hollywood director were undermined by his continual presence in small towns in the upper Midwest. For example, in 1928, Newland was described in an article in the Wellsboro (Penn.) Agitator as a “director from Hollywood,” but went on to disclose that he was there as part of an area tour where he had or was planning to make local films in a half-dozen nearby towns.³⁵

But Newland, like many other itinerants, did not give up when he seemingly exhausted the goodwill of his sponsors. Instead, he made the transition to sound, going back to the same city in Pennsylvania to produce a sound version of the same script. Although Newland’s return to Wellsboro in late 1933 was not considered important enough to merit a front-page article, he promised audiences a new experience: “In this picture will be talking, singing and music, all produced by people that you know. Most of the interior or studio scenes will be made on the stage of the Arcadia theatre on the three days mentioned above. This will give the people of Tioga County an opportunity to see just how a talking picture is made. A motion picture sound studio will be set up on the stage with the director, cameraman, sound man and all the necessary equipment, including camera, microphones, recording apparatus involving a cost of $15,000, in actual operation.”³⁶

Newland’s description of the film’s production suggests an upgrade of his previous practice, rather than a rethinking of what might be possible in the sound era. Because he had already become accustomed to shooting interior shots, the sound transition was easier for him than it was for most itinerants. For the Wellsboro film, Newland added a scene with the 140 piece Wellsboro Boys’ Band and employed a local orchestra for the film’s musical selections, which itself was a way to bring local sounds back in the movie theater.³⁷ This time, Newland upgraded his resume, suggesting that he had spent the past five years working for Warner Brothers and Universal Pictures, and told the newspaper that Wellsboro’s Queen would be “on a par with the average two-reel comedy that is shown on the screen of any theatre today.”³⁸

Huntingdon’s Hero, filmed five months later, reveals the challenges Newland faced with sound.³⁹ Like Janesville’s Hero, the first scene is inside the Henpeck household, only this time Mr. Henpeck, who is played by the mayor of Huntingdon, is sleeping and can be heard snoring. Although these scenes are not overexposed, the camera movement is unsteady, and there are frequent jump-cuts to mask flubbed lines. Two new characters are introduced in this scene, Mr. Henpeck’s nieces, who happen to be musicians. Like many early sound films, musical numbers run throughout the film, perhaps to both call attention to the technology and mask any problems with synchronization.

Although the plot of Huntingdon’s Hero is very similar to Newland’s silent version, sound allows him to eliminate some shots, like the close-up of the letter Mr. Henpeck receives from Baby Ethel’s parents. In addition, Newland abandons some of the visual gags of the earlier Hero, such as the dissolve showing the Henpecks surrounded by children. The sound is synchronous and was recorded on location, so street noises, birdsongs, and other aural debris fill up the film’s soundtrack. At the same time, Newland declines to shoot what might be the loudest scenes, such as the arrival of the train carrying Baby Ethel. While the train is not heard or seen at the station, the whistle is heard when Billy Brown informs Mrs. Henpeck that her husband has been seen around town with a strange woman, suggesting either fortuitous timing or Newland’s attempt to aurally match the train’s arrival with Mr. Henpeck’s trip around town with Baby Ethel. Huntingdon’s Hero also contains more medium shots and longer takes than the silent version, allowing for patches of silence between the scripted and poorly delivered dialogue.

The central tension between the technological limits of sound film and the silent-era plot of the Hero films is realized in the chase scene. When Mr. Henpeck and Baby Ethel search for a getaway car, they have to talk to a car salesman first, who gives a twenty-second sales pitch before allowing the wayward couple to make their escape. The chase scene itself, including the car wreck at the end, is almost a shot-by-shot remake of the silent version, turning what was previously the picture’s special effect into a relic. Instead of expressing marvel at the effect, the crowd gathered to witness the filming of the wreck can be heard laughing.

The next scenes proceed in much the same order as the Janesville film, but some jokes, like Henpeck’s trick cigar, do not work in the same way, given the absence of the subplot of the abandoned African American baby. In the cleverest scene in the film, Billy Brown goes to turn on the radio just when the station is broadcasting a song dedication to Baby Ethel. The camera pans from the couch to the radio and then sweeps across the stage to a shot of the announcer’s face, connecting these two separate spaces through the radio sound. The camera then swish pans back to Billy Brown, who sings to Baby Ethel. In this way, the Henpeck home becomes one with the radio studio, both of which are in fact the movie theater where Huntingdon’s Hero is being filmed. In this long take, the camera pans from the couple to the orchestra and back again, in a move that seemingly mimics those used in Busby Berkeley musicals of the period.

While Janesville’s Hero closes with the engagement of Billy and Ethel, Belvidere’s Hero and Huntingdon’s Hero continue for several more scenes, which, as a title card notes, occur several years later.⁴⁰ Billy and Ethel are walking down a street at night, followed by a little girl. Like the visual gag in the silent Hero, more and more children appear in the Huntingdon film, with the camera eventually revealing the sign for an orphanage. In the background one can hear someone, perhaps Newland himself, encouraging the children to “wrap it up” and exhorting them to move “faster” so the scene can conclude. By adding sound Newland also leaves subtle traces of its production in the picture itself, turning the “gasp of recognition” Tom Gunning wished to recover from local pictures into a quite audible plea to keep the film under budget.⁴¹

Huntingdon’s Hero closes with a local view, only this time the audience is filmed from the stage of the movie theater itself, so they will, as Newland tells them in the film, “be able to see yourself sitting down there, up here, and down there.” By producing a local view in a movie theater, Newland unwittingly strips the local film of much of its value. The seated audience could not approach the camera, and the unmarked space of the theater did not have any distinguishing characteristics that created much of the interest in local motion pictures. By filming the audience in the movie theater, the same place where much of Huntingdon’s Hero was shot, Newland suggested that the “local” was only interesting in as much as it was connected with the presence of Hollywood culture in small towns.

EVERYONE CAN BE A STAR

While Newland was one of the most prominent itinerants in the 1920s, he had many rivals, all working in much the same manner but developing their own distinctive characteristics. For example, Salvatore Cudia, a Sicilian immigrant who worked in the New York film industry, announced his arrival to town by setting a fire in an abandoned building, for which actual firemen were called, and proceeded to shoot a rescue scene, which formed the centerpiece of the film.⁴² Cudia produced many films in the mid-Atlantic, including a sound film shot of the African American community in Baltimore in 1934.⁴³

Melton Barker, who began producing his series The Kidnapper’s Foils in the early 1930s, claimed to have discovered the child star George “Spanky” McFarland of Hal Roach’s Our Gang series.⁴⁴ Unlike Newland, Barker used his casting process as a revenue stream, with families paying a few dollars in order for their children to audition for the film. In the film, local thugs kidnap a young girl, Betty Davis, after her birthday party. Several child-only search parties form to try to find Davis. After a few days, the search parties join together, and finally Davis’s call for help is heard. Once she is rescued, the children celebrate, and song and dance performances were often included in the film.⁴⁵ Barker produced local Kidnapper’s Foils productions for more than four decades, from the early 1930s to the late 1970s, and film historian and archivist Caroline Frick has located documentation of 280 productions to date.⁴⁶

While Hollywood had limited success making local movies, the local Hollywood film, on the other hand, was much hardier. Unlike exploitation managers, itinerant filmmakers were particularly good at addressing the difficulties of shooting on location. Refining the formulas used by their predecessors, they were able to replicate the special effects, narrative conventions, and acting styles associated with classical cinema. Itinerants began claiming Hollywood origins precisely at the time that the major studios had won control of almost all of American cinema. Working at the margins of both production and exhibition, itinerant filmmakers gave those interested in seeing themselves in the movies their chance on the silver screen.

NOTES

1. For an extensive history of Hollywood—the city, the real-estate development, the sign, and its cultural symbolism—see Braudy, The Hollywood Sign.

2. See Bean, “The Imagination of Early Hollywood.”

3. For example, Paragon’s O. W. Lamb, discussed in chapter 1, reprinted excerpts of such letters in his company’s brochure. See PPIE, carton 58, folder 21.

4. Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory.”

5. For more on the relationship between movie fans and Hollywood, see Morey, Hollywood Outsiders. While Anne Morey is also interested in how “film cultures were shaped by forces outside Hollywood” (3), her approach emphasizes national, if still marginal, enterprises, such as the Palmer Photoplay Corporation, which offered screenwriting courses to movie hopefuls.

6. “Film Man Here to Make ‘Movie’ of Mishakawa,” South Bend (Ind.) News-Times, July 14, 1914, 10.

7. David listed his association with the company in the 1916, 1917, and 1918 editions of the Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual, published by Motion Picture News. In the 1920 and 1921 editions of the same publication, he claimed to have founded the company. See Motion Picture Studio Directory and Trade Annual (New York: Motion Picture News, 1920), 297.

8. Newland’s previous employer was listed on his World War I draft card, which he filled out on June 5, 1918. Newland’s name appears in a newspaper advertisement in the Kokomo (Ind.) Daily Tribune, January 14, 1922, 10.

9. For an excellent introduction to this shift in cinema historiography, see Richard Maltby, “New Cinema Histories,” in Maltby et al., eds., Explorations in New Cinema History, 3–40.

10. “Elyria People to Take Part in Movie Here This Week,” Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio), December 4, 1922, 8.

11. See “‘Cumberland Hero’ to Be Filmed in This City Next Week,” Cumberland (Md.) Evening Times, August 9, 1923, 9. The article leads by noting that Cumberland is “taking another fling at the home-talent movies,” after a motion picture made earlier in the year failed to meet audience expectations.

12. See Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women.

13. Harris, Humbug, 77.

14. See ibid., 57, for Harris’s definition of the “operational aesthetic.” Several film historians have used this term to describe cinema attractions. Charles Musser sees an operational aesthetic at work in the performance of a variety of technologies in the nineteenth century, including the cinema, while Tom Gunning has argued that silent film comedy of the 1920s relied on gags about the operation of machinery. My use of the term is somewhat different, as audience fascination was not with the operation of the camera itself but rather the operation of the multiple technologies—lighting equipment, scenery, and, later, sound-recording equipment—necessary to reproduce both the experience of witnessing the production of a Hollywood film and, later, the film itself. See Musser and Nelson, The Emergence of Cinema, 135, and Gunning, “Crazy Machines in the Garden of Forking Paths.”

15. “Full Cast Is Made-Up; Will Start on Film This Afternoon,” Belvidere (Ill.) Daily Republican, March 25, 1926, 8.

16. Steubenville (Ohio) Herald-Star, February 16, 1923, 1.

17. The company does not appear in the 1923 Los Angeles City Directory, for example. See Los Angeles City Directory (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Directory Company, 1923).

18. “To Name Girl Who Will Star in ‘Belvidere’s Hero’ Picture,” Belvidere (Ill.) Daily Republican, March 24, 1926, 8.

19. For example, Newland’s name is not listed in Paolo Cherchi Usai’s filmography Vitagraph Co. of America.

20. “Who’ll Be Lucky Girl to Star in Janesville Movie?” Janesville (Wis.) Daily Gazette, December 28, 1926, 5.

21. “Miss Starr Is Chosen for Leading Rose in ‘Sandusky Hero’ Movie,” Sandusky (Ohio) Register, March 1, 1923, 1.

22. The Toledo News-Bee, November 2, 1925, 2. In other towns, Newland did not specify the gender of applicants. See “Movie Stars Wanted,” Chronicle-Telegram (Elyria, Ohio), December 4, 1922, 8.

23. Another company, Globe Films of New York, also copied Interstate’s model in 1925, producing an Adopts a Baby film in New Castle, Pennsylvania. See “‘New Castle Adopts a Baby,’ The Capitol’s Made in New Castle Photoplay Completed and Will Be Shown at the Capitol All Next Week,” New Castle (Penn.) News, August 21, 1925, 16.

24. Newland also made a film titled Wellsboro’s Queen, discussed below, and Mamma’s Choice in 1928. See “Local Movie Is Great Success,” Morning Herald (Gloversville, N.Y.), March 27, 1928, 1. But the Hero film was produced far more often than these titles. In the late 1920s, Newland had changed the name of his company from Interstate Film Producers to Consolidated Film Producers.

25. “‘Cumberland Hero’ to Be Filmed in This City Next Week.”

26. “Picture to Show Some Home Folks,” Alexandria (Ind.) Times-Tribune, July 15, 1916, 1.

27. To wit, “It’s screen stuff and even paper goes right through it, can’t be described except as you SEE it.” Ibid.

28. For a reference to a “troublesome neighbor,” see “Miss Starr Is Chosen for Leading Role in ‘Sandusky Hero’ Movie.”

29. The same sequence appears in Wellston’s Hero (1932), one of the last silent films made by Newland.

30. Advertisement, Janesville (Wis.) Gazette, January 3, 1927, 4.

31. Alternately, the poor framing of select scenes in the film could have been introduced when it was reduced to 16mm.

32. See Stewart, Migrating to the Movies, 84.

33. “Alton’s Hero to Close Run at Grand Tonight,” Alton (Ill.) Evening Telegraph, July 21, 1926, 3.

34. “Will Start Work on Movie Today,” Huntington (Ind.) Press, February 1, 1923, 3.

35. “Mr. Newland Interviewed,” Wellsboro (Penn.) Agitator, February 1, 1928, 1.

36. “Make Movie in Wellsboro,” Wellsboro (Penn.) Agitator, December 13, 1933, 6.

37. While Donald Crafton has argued that sound production was standardized by 1931, Gregory A. Waller has more recently shown that as many as a third of movie theaters had not upgraded to sound by 1933. See Crafton, The Talkies, 4, and Waller, “Robert Southard and the History of Traveling Film Exhibition,” 8.

38. “Make Movie in Wellsboro.”

39. Nathan Wagoner, a film instructor at Juniata College in Huntingdon, rediscovered Huntingdon’s Hero in 2000. See Wagoner, “The Huntingdon’s Hero Story.”

40. Of course, it is possible that this closing scene in the Janesville film was lost.

41. Gunning, “Pictures of Crowd Splendour,” 53.

42. See “To Shoot Big Fire Scene,” Washington (N.J.) Star, November 26, 1925, 1.

43. “Aspirants for Movie Career to Get Chance,” Afro-American (Baltimore), July 7, 1934, 3.

44. Frick, “Jackrabbit Genius,” 9. While Caroline Frick has not been able to confirm that Barker “discovered” McFarland, he did know the child star, and there is substantial photographic and newspaper documentation of their association.

45. Texas Archive of the Moving Image, “About ‘The Kidnappers Foil,’” http://www.meltonbarker.com/kidnappersfoil.html.

46. Frick, “Jackrabbit Genius,” 13. Barker started his career with Hugh V. Jamieson, discussed in chapter 2, and even revived Jamieson’s Won from the Flames series in the early 1920s.