If You Haven't Already ...

Vote in the alternate Oscars poll for 1927.

As soon as we nail down the last of the pairings for the 2014 Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament, I'll start promoting the matchups—the tourney starts on March 2.

Reader-Voted Alternate Oscars: A Permanent Home

I've created a separate page for reader-voted alternate Oscars, here.

So far, I've only set up votes for 1926 and 1927, but I'll be doing other years eventually, not necessarily in chronological order—maybe I'll do 1939 next. Everybody knows 1939, right?

In the meantime, follow the highlighted link above and scroll down to vote on the films of 1927, a year that includes three contenders for the best silent movie ever made—The General, Metropolis and Sunrise. Oh, and stop along the way to vote for 1926's best director, supporting actor and supporting actress.

The vote never closes, so if you haven't seen all the movies, vote now, and come back later and vote again. Try not to be piggy about stuffing the ballot box, but by all means, participate.

The Singular Case Of Roy J. Pomeroy's Missing Oscar

While Katie-Bar-The-Door and I were vacationing in Alaska, I received an e-mail from Kate Corbett Pollack, a researcher with the American Pomeroy Historic Genealogical Association in Syracuse. Appropriately enough, given her place of employment, she's been researching Roy J. Pomeroy and she asked if I would spread word of his story and of a special request from the Association.

You remember Roy Pomeroy, don't you? If you're a silent film buff and an amateur Oscar historian like me, you immediately thought "Ah, yes, he won the first Oscar for special effects." Engineering effects, it was called then. He provided the sound effects for Wings, the first movie to win the Oscar for best picture, and invented what I guess you'd call rear-projection or maybe blue screen—dropping in a background behind an actor without requiring the actor to film on location.

He also worked, uncredited (nobody much got a credit in those days), on the special effects for Cecil B. DeMille's silent version of The Ten Commandments—remember the parting of Red Sea, using Jell-o? That was Pomeroy. And he was one of the original founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). For his efforts, he made over a $1 million a year in salary.

All around, well done, Mr. Pomeroy.

But then, as is often the case with triumphs, the world continued to turn and discovered it could live without Roy J. Pomeroy, particularly his salary demands and his autocratic behavior. Paramount fired him, no other studio would work with him, and his attempts to form his own company, Pomeroy Laboratories, were largely fruitless.

On September 3, 1947, Pomeroy was found dead in his laboratory of an apparent suicide. He was fifty-five.

And there the story of Roy J. Pomeroy sat until a few years ago when AMPAS began looking for Pomeroy's Oscar. Turns out no one has any idea where it is or even if Paramount forwarded the Oscar to him after it fired him.

"We would love to gain more readership for this story," Kate writes, "and perhaps an answer to the mystery of Roy's death (which looks like a suicide) and the missing Oscar. I thought by contacting others who write about Old Hollywood, this could be a way to do it."

So what say you, faithful Monkey readers? Can we spread the word and write a happy ending to Roy Pomeroy's story?

Mary Pickford: A Five-Film Primer

Today is Mary Pickford's birthday. One of the greatest stars of the silent era, and pound-for-pound the most powerful woman in Hollywood history, Mary Pickford's work is indispensable for the film fanatic. If you've never seen a Mary Pickford movie and don't know where to begin, here are five films to get you started.

The Poor Little Rich Girl (1917)

An unprecedented blend of comedy and melodrama that worried the studio but delighted its star, the story of a girl whose wealthy parents neglect her while others prey on her could easily have become sentimental claptrap. Instead, Pickford's Gwendolyn is, by turns, impetuous, flighty and sullen, but also curious, kind and fun—in other words, a real girl. The film was one of the biggest hits of 1917 and is a National Film Registry selection.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1917)

A cross between Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott, this story of a poor girl sent to live with a pair of maiden aunts is the most typical example of a Mary Pickford movie. Boasting plenty of comedy with a soupçon of pathos in the final act, Rebecca was Pickford's biggest hit yet.

Stella Maris (1918)

Based on a novel by William J. Locke, Stella Maris is a Victorian melodrama of the first water, the riveting story of two girls, one a rich shut-in sheltered from life's realities, the other, an ugly duckling orphan—both played by Pickford—whose paths intersect with tragic results. Variety called the performance "a revelation," the Los Angeles Times deemed it "brilliant, powerful and poignant" and studio chief Adolph Zukor later called it "the most remarkable thing which Mary Pickford has ever done for the screen." And they were right.

Sparrows (1926)

The other contender for Pickford's best movie, Sparrows is the harrowing tale of a group of backwoods orphans menaced by white slavers. In a sort of teenage take on Lillian Gish's gun-toting granny in 1955's The Night of the Hunter, Pickford attempts to lead her wards to safety while danger lurks at every turn—including the very real alligators director William Beaudine brought onto the set.

My Best Girl (1927)

In a rare adult role, Pickford plays a shop girl who falls in love with the owner's son. Played strictly for laughs, the result is a nifty little comedy, as fresh and light and funny as the actress who carries it on her back. As film critic Steve Vineberg says, the performance is "an extraordinary combination of spunk and delicacy." And as an added bonus, look for a brief, pre-stardom appearance by Carole Lombard as one of the shop girls.

The Cat And The Canary (1927): The Universal Backlot Blogathon

This is my contribution to the Universal Backlot Blogathon hosted by Kristen at Journeys in Classic Film.

While many great films have come out of Universal Studios since its founding in 1912, the genre with it is most associated is and probably always will be horror. From silent era films starring Lon Chaney, to Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff during the early sound era, right up to Drag Me To Hell and Shaun of the Dead in the 21st century, the Universal logo at the beginning of a film promises a viewer 90+ minutes of scary thrills and chills.

You no doubt have your own favorites, but I prefer the horror films of directors Tod Browning (Dracula) and James Whale (Frankenstein) who worked during the late silent and early sound eras. They didn't just work in the genre, they defined it, inventing many of the visual and narrative cliches we love and demand when we wait in the dark to be scared out of our wits.

As great and influential as those two directors were, however, it was their contemporary, the German Paul Leni, who might have been Universal's greatest director of horror. He was responsible for three of the best horror films of the silent era, Waxworks and The Man Who Laughed—both starring Conrad Veidt, who you may better know as Casablanca's Major Strasser—and this one, The Cat and the Canary, which like The Man Who Laughed was filmed on the Universal backlot.

The plot of The Cat and the Canary has been recycled so many times, I scarcely need describe it—an eccentric millionaire leaves a will stipulating it not be read until the twentieth anniversary of his death, a will which when read names his sweet niece Annabelle as sole heir, provided she survive a night in his spooky old mansion.

I spent a year in law school studying decedents' estates and trusts—wills, to you—and let me tell you, this is one nutty way to pass money from one generation to the next.

Add in a houseful of greedy relatives, a stormy night and the fact that the will itself has been tampered with—the old man's lawyer opens the safe for the first time in twenty years only to find a still-living moth flapping its wings inside—and you've got yourself the making of a nifty, old-fashioned ghost story.

The cast is populated with unknowns—other than Tully Marshall and Lucien Littlefield, I wasn't familiar with any of them—and the story itself is a hoary old chestnut, but with Leni's expert direction taking full advantage of Charles Hall's set design, the film is a treat from beginning to end, moving like lightning, and fun and spooky in a kids telling ghost stories on Halloween kind of way.

The film is a fine example of what the Germans called "Expressionism"—an attempt to represent the world in subjective terms, that is to say, distorted to reflect an emotional state rather than an objective one—and as such films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Nosferatu and this one demonstrate, is well suited to evoking the heightened emotional state necessary for true horror.

Working with Hall, who later created sets for Frankenstein, Dracula and Bride of Frankenstein, Leni designed a mansion that looks like a cross between Charles Foster Kane's Xanadu and Dracula's lair, a backlit castle more suited to Transylvania than the Hudson River valley, full of impossible corridors narrow yet three stories high with curtains billowing from open windows; massive doors that look like they were carved whole from ancient oaks; chairs big enough to seat Goliath; acres of cobwebs; hidden passages; secret panels; and all of it lit from below as if told by half-frightened, half-giggling kids with a flashlight during a sleepover.

"I have tried to create sets so stylized that they evince no reality," Paul Leni explained in 1924. "[It] is not extreme reality that the camera perceives, but the reality of the inner event, which is more profound, effective and moving than what we see through everyday eyes."

Unfortunately, Leni died suddenly in 1929 at the age of forty-one, and his name and his films, along with most of the silent era, was quickly forgotten by a movie-going public hungry for the next big thing, talkies.

But even if Leni himself has been forgotten, his influence hasn't. The film was a huge hit, critically and commer-cially, and has been remade at least five times, the best of them starring Bob Hope. It has also been copied and ripped off, in one form or another, too many times to count, including as The Old Dark House featuring Boris Karloff and Charles Laughton, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Mystery, with, yes you guessed it, Laurel and Hardy, and If a Body Meets a Body starring the Three Stooges.

But don't take my word for it—watch it here yourself, courtesy of the Internet Movie Database and Archive.org, and reflect as you do, just how many times you've seen it, even if you've never seen it.

The Silent Oscars: January 1—July 31, 1927 (Unofficial)

The first year of the Academy Awards covered films released between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928. Thus the oddly truncated Silent Oscar award season for 1927.

Plenty of good movies to choose from, though.

By the way, the Lon Chaney movie, The Unknown, is relatively unknown (hardy har har), but is actually a better showcase of his acting than The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Phantom of the Opera. Not to mention it's the most macabre version of O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi" ever. Directed by the great Tod Browning (Dracula, Freaks), it's must-see movie watching.

Just make sure you've tamped your lunch down tightly ahead of time.

Picture: Metropolis (prod. Erich Pommer)

Actor: Lon Chaney (The Unknown)

Actress: Clara Bow (It)

Director: Fritz Lang (Metropolis)

Supporting Actor: Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Metropolis)

Supporting Actress: Brigitte Helm (Metropolis)

Screenplay: Thea von Harbou, from her novel (Metropolis)

The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards Redux (1927-1928)

Some of you are probably too young to remember, but I originally started this blog to peddle (in a non-remunerative way) something I like to call the "Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards"—alternate Oscars (who should have been nominated, who should have won) but which as you know are really just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.

Then I got distracted by silent movies and will continue to be distracted for the foreseeable future.

But what about the Katie Awards?

Well, rather than let them wither on the vine, I'm going to post them, one year at a time, one post a day, until I run out of them, say sometime in February. I've been serving them up on the stand-alone pages highlighted on the right hand side of the blog, but people rarely head over there (why would they) and while some of my choices may be no better than "meh," the pictures that accompany them are, all modesty aside, dynamite.

So here, in case you've forgotten, are my first year's worth of picks, covering the Oscar year running from August 1, 1927 to July 31, 1928.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox)
nominees: The Crowd (prod. Irving Thalberg); The Last Command (prod. Jesse L. Lasky and Adolph Zukor); Laugh, Clown, Laugh (prod. Herbert Brenon); The Man Who Laughs (prod. Paul Kohner); Wings (prod. Lucien Hubbard)
Must-See Drama: The Crowd; The Last Command; Laugh, Clown, Laugh; The Man Who Laughs; Sadie Thompson; Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans; Wings

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Jazz Singer (prod. Warner Brothers)
nominees: The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin); My Best Girl (prod. Mary Pickford); Speedy (prod. Harold Lloyd); The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg (prod. Ernst Lubitsch)
Must-See Comedy/Musical: The Circus; The Jazz Singer; My Best Girl; The Patsy; Speedy; The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Spione (Spies) (prod. Erich Pommer)
nominees: Berlin: Symphony Of A Great City (prod. Karl Freund); October (Ten Days That Shook The World) (prod. Sovkino)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Lon Chaney (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)
nominees: Emil Jannings (The Last Command); Conrad Veidt (The Man Who Laughs)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer)
nominees: Charles Chaplin (The Circus); Harold Lloyd (Speedy)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven; Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans and Street Angel)
nominees: Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd); Gloria Swanson (Sadie Thompson)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Mary Pickford (My Best Girl)
nominees: Marion Davies (The Patsy); Norma Shearer (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
nominees: Paul Leni (The Cat And The Canary and The Man Who Laughs); King Vidor (The Crowd); Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command); William A. Wellman (Wings)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Charles Chaplin (The Circus)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg); Lewis Milestone (Two Arabian Knights); Ted Wilde (Speedy)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)
nominees: Lionel Barrymore (Sadie Thompson); Gary Cooper (Wings); Rudolf Klein-Rogge (Spione); William Powell (The Last Command)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Clara Bow (Wings)
nominees: Evelyn Brent (The Last Command); Gladys Brockwell (7th Heaven); Louise Brooks (A Girl In Every Port); Mary Philbin (The Man Who Laughs)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Herman J. Mankiewicz (titles) and John F. Goodrich (writer), from a story by Lajos Biró and Josef von Sternberg (The Last Command)
nominees: King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd); Elizabeth Meehan; titles by Joseph Farnham; from a play by David Belasco and Tom Cushing (Laugh, Clown, Laugh); Raoul Walsh; titles by C. Gardner Sullivan; from a story by W. Somerset Maugham (Sadie Thompson)

SPECIAL AWARDS
George Groves (The Jazz Singer) (Special Achievement In The Use Of Sound); "Toot Toot Tootsie" (The Jazz Singer) (Best Song); Charles Rosher and Karl Struss (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) (Cinematography); Roy Pomeroy (Wings) (Special Effects)

(Note: I'll cop to having changed one of my picks from when I originally posted them back in 2009. Originally, I went with The Crowd, King Vidor's blistering take on the American Dream, for best screenplay. At the time it struck me as edgy and unique. In fact, now that I've watched 800+ silent movies, I realize that The Crowd actually arrived at the tale end of a long series of social message pictures that dated back to D.W. Griffith's one-reel wonder A Corner in Wheat and included tales about the hot button issues of the day—immigration, white slavery, abortion, etc. Far from being cutting edge, The Crowd was in 1928 something of a cliche—a well-made cliche, perhaps, but no more brave than, say, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner was in 1967.

Instead, I've gone with The Last Command, Josef von Sternberg's moving story about a Russian general reduced after the revolution of 1917 to begging bit parts as an actor in Hollywood. It won Emil Jannings a well-deserved Oscar and also starred William Powell in one of his darkest dramatic roles. A real must-see.)

The Must-See Movies Of 1927-28

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich has called 1928 the greatest year in the history of movies, which is definitely saying something. If we expand the time frame a bit to include both 1927 and 1928, I will agree that he's on to something.

Between January 1, 1927 and the end of 1928, more than a dozen films were released which might reasonably make a list of the best movies ever made, including The General, Metropolis, Napoleon (released too early in 1927 to qualify for this year's Katies), Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, The Crowd, The Man Who Laughs, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The Circus, Wings; Laugh, Clown, Laugh and a handful of late 1928 releases, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, The Wind, The Cameraman, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Docks Of New York and The Wedding March (eligible for next year's Katies). Greta Garbo was never more popular, Gloria Swanson was still doing great work, Emil Jannings hadn't joined the Nazi party. Lon Chaney, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish gave the best performances of their careers. Directors Murnau, Chaplin, Keaton, Lang and Dreyer were at or near their peaks, and Lubitsch was emerging as the next great director. Movie audiences wouldn't see such an outpouring of quality again until 1939, the year most film historians fix as the best ever, and it's clear, at least in retrospect, that silent movies had reached their highest ever level of artistic achievement and were poised for even greater breakthroughs.

And yet, once The Jazz Singer hit theaters, studios couldn't pay audiences to see anything but talkies. Silent movies were better than ever but for the audiences of the time, they might as well have never been made. It's as if the "Mona Lisa" were hanging in Louvre unseen while art lovers rushed past it to crowd around a McDonald's placemat.

There wouldn't again be such a disconnect between quality and box office receipts until the present age.

Commercially speaking—in the long run, the only language Hollywood speaks—silent movies were dead and there was no going back.

Unfortunately, the new sound technology was primitive, relying on large, immobile cameras and unreliable microphones that glued actors in place and returned movies to that place from whence they had just escaped, the stage-bound theater. It took about five years for sound technology to become workable enough for directors to move the camera again and more than a decade for Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland to remember that they could.

In the meantime, in case you need reminding, this is my list of movies that I consider the must-see movies of 1927-28. Unlike my list of Twenty Silent Movies To Cut Your Teeth On, not all of these movies are equally accessible to a viewer unfamiliar with silent movies, but I do believe every one of them is worth the time and effort is you are so inclined.

The Circus—Charlie Chaplin's comedy of a tramp who finds love and work in the circus

The Crowd—King Vidor's gritty tale of the American Dream turned nightmare

Laugh, Clown, Laugh—Lon Chaney as a man destroyed by love

The Man Who Laughs—a macabre love story about a man with a face that inspired Heath Ledger's Joker

The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg—a bittersweet romantic comedy about a prince who falls for a commoner

Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans—my pick for the best movie of the year, about a marriage in crisis

Wings—a rip-snorting war picture about World War I flying aces and the girl they left behind

All but two of these movies, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg and Wings, are available on DVD.

You might also check out Sadie Thompson, the 1928 Gloria Swanson-Lionel Barrymore movie based on Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain." Time hasn't been kind to the print and the last reel has been lost, but film historians reconstructed the ending with the use of still photographs and what remains is very good. Sadie Thompson earned Swanson an Oscar nomination, the first of three, and might have earned her and Barrymore (the latter in a supporting role) Katies for their work if I could have been more certain of what I was seeing. Sadie Thompson is available on DVD.

What can I tell you? This whole business of handing out awards, even with eighty years of hindsight, is a frustratingly subjective business. It only gets worse the closer to the present we get.