A Message from Germany

It was probably in February 1960 when, of all possible fortunate coincidences, the best occurred. Had KirchMedia contacted Buster just five years prior, he would have said something to the effect of, “Who the hell wants to see a picture that’s forty years old?” (Curtis, p. 611) Had Raymond Rohauer not ensnared him, Buster would have had to tell KirchMedia, “Sorry, I don’t have any of my films.” Now that Rohauer had acted so quickly, and now that he and Buster had a contract, and now that Rohauer had turned up so many films and ethically or otherwise laid claim to them, Buster could tell the KirchMedia emissary that, yes, he had his films and he could work out a deal. Perhaps he thought this was all a bunch of crazy talk, but just a few months after that conversation, When Comedy Was King, which included a condensation of his own film Cops, was released and it was a box-office sensation, even with youngsters. That’s when he became downright enthusiastic. Buster and KirchMedia worked out a profit-sharing deal, and now, out of the blue, more money started pouring in. How much went to Buster for brokering the deal, and how much went to Ray as business partner, I do not know. Probably 50/50, as Imogen Sara Smith states in Buster Keaton: The Persistence of Comedy (Chicago IL: Gambit Publishing, 2008, p. 220). I wish I knew how much Buster earned in residuals from the KirchMedia releases. It must have been a tidy sum.

My suspicion is that the timing was not a coincidence. Take a look at this passage from an online article by Dick Bann:

The Buster Keaton revival may never have happened were it not for the role Hans Andresen played in consolidating rights to Keaton’s silent films from three overlapping claimants, then financing the preservation performed by Raymond Rohauer, and touring with them both in Europe, before finally returning to America for rediscovery. Keaton, incidentally, is yet another example of an iconic artist who indifferently abandoned the nitrate of his own master works, believing them to be worthless! Even near the end of his life during the 1960s, Keaton could not fathom why audiences would care to watch films he made which were four decades old.

Ray Rohauer needed to amortize his investments, but the rights were all tied up. He needed a third party to consolidate the rights so that he could exhibit the films commercially. I bet it was Ray who called Hans and suggested that he talk with Buster about reissuing the movies. If my guess is correct, then suddenly all the disparate pieces fit together perfectly. Once Hans Andresen could consolidate the Friedman/Schenck rights, Ray would be free to show the movies anywhere.

Is not the above article odd? Dubbing dialogue into his silent movies? With the help of René Clair? Could that have been the plan? I thought not, but a little voice in the back of my head kept telling me to look at the Blesh book again. Pages 352–353:

Keaton’s fine early work — the shorts and features made with his own company and long since retired from projection — loomed as the most feasible means of restoring the artist’s fame, stimulating new opportunities, and bringing in needed income. Their comedy was fresh; only sound would be needed, which could be dubbed in — music, sound effects, and, here and there, actual speech. Although Keaton had released all rights, some arrangement might be made. During this period before the coming of television, Leo Morrison and Buster Collier independently attempted to get these early masterpieces, which dated from 1920 to 1928, released under some new arrangement. Finally, Joe Schenck gave his substantially disinterested consent, provided Keaton would finance the project. Once under way, the bulk of the profits would then go, as in the past, to Schenck and, presumably, the old stockholders, though this point was not clarified. However, it was not entirely this far-from-equitable arrangement that stymied the project but the unavailability on the one hand of cash and on the other of films. For the shocking fact was uncovered that the Keaton films had been destroyed, original negatives and all. They had been put in storage in 1928 and 1939. During the mid-1930’s many were ruined by a failure of the cooling system in the vaults. Shortly afterward the others were deliberately destroyed, it was claimed, because of the failure of Schenck or the stockholders to pay the storage bills. Even though many might be found in foreign prints as well as in prints in private collections, the financing problem, in the upshot, proved insurmountable. All attempts to raise capital failed. The many people to whom Buster in the past had lent so much were all looking the other way. All felt that the present Keaton was through and that the public did not want the old one.

I had not read that passage since probably the 1970’s. Looking at it again, I can somewhat piece it together. The idea for sound effects and dialogue seemed to belong to Collier and Morrison, and Buster probably went along because why not? After all, when silents were reissued, they had sound effects and most had dialogue or narration. We can see some examples, and here I need to thank the many contributors to NitrateVille for pointing these out to the world:

“Paramount Screen Souvenirs” — click on the image to view
This series began in 1931, and this clip is posted at
https://filmlibrary.shermangrinberg.com/?s=file=418297.

Some of Pete Smith’s “Goofy Movies” from 1933 and 1934 reprised silent shorts. I have one or two somewhere in my storage locker. I looked for an example online but came up empty. What I did find was a different episode, which did not concentrate on silent footage, alas, but it should give you an idea of what Smith did to the silents:

Click on the image to view
https://archive.org/details/
goofymoviesprogram11933_201912
NRA was not what you’re thinking;
it was the National Recovery Administration.

Pete Smith reprised his reprises in the early 1940’s with a follow-up series, “Flicker Memories”:

Pete Delaney, Pete Smith Does MST3K In 1941,
posted on Dec 28, 2013

Gerald Santana, Flicker Flashbacks - Rare RKO/Pathé
Newsreel & Silent Nickelodeon, posted on Sep 11, 2015

A bunch of Chaplin’s silent shorts were reissued by several companies. Here is an example of the RKO/Van Beuren series, 1932 through 1934, with sound effects but thank heaven without any talking:

Zach Mitchell, The Cure (Van Beuren), posted on Jul 21, 2018

And if you want to see something really wild, here is what the Italians did in 1935 to their feature film of 11 years earlier:

MegaLuCiiee, Messalina 1924 (1935 sound version),
posted on Jan 13, 2018

Zo, I guess that was just the way things were done back then. There seemed not to have been a thought about reissuing authentic editions commercially. Even Chaplin fell under that spell when he reissued The Gold Rush in 1942, a cropped and re-edited talking edition that, I think we all agree, unanimously, without dissent, was a terrible mistake.

When television infected our homes in the 1950’s, it continued in the grand tradition of humiliating silent movies. We already delved into the world of Paul Killiam, who devoted a goodly portion of his career as a stand-up comic to using old films as props:

MVerdoux, Paul Killiam on The Steve Allen Show,
posted on Nov 22, 2011

Buster, as we know, was a visualist who liked to tell his stories with as few words as possible. Whatever he may have originally pondered, he ultimately decided that the sound would be music only, no sound effects, no talking.

For five years? That indicates that, probably moved by the George Eastman Award, probably influenced by Sidney Sheldon, probably convinced by MoMA and the Academy, he had begun to search out his lost movies as early as 1955, when he made that trip to James Mason’s residence. Why did he say, “We’ll keep all the subtitles”? Because Chaplin had been excoriated in some quarters for deleting the titles in The Gold Rush and replacing them with narration. Buster wanted to make clear that he would do no such thing to his own movies. An hour and 40 minutes? Either he misspoke or he was misquoted. A more-correct ballpark figure would have been an hour and 20 minutes, of course. Beyond that, and more importantly, it is heartening to hear him be so defensive about his movie, which is an attitude he had not taken in earlier years.

(Some lines were scrambled below. I put them back into order and left obvious clues about where I made the repairs.)

So, what was all this about The General being shown at a campus movie house? That was almost certainly in 1956, when Robert Smith, Sidney Sheldon, and Donald O’Connor tested ideas for The Buster Keaton Story by showing a dozen of Buster’s movies at various colleges and universities in Los Ángeles. I wish I had details. I am absolutely DESPERATE for details.

hermankatnip, Buster Keaton Interview 1960 Remastered Audio, posted on Dec 3, 2018.
Interviewed by Studs Terkel.
Also available on StudsTerkel.WFMT.com.
Originally broadcast on 5 September 1960.
When this video vanishes, download it.

Sad to hear Buster struggling not to lose his breath while talking with Studs Terkel. Chain smoking was doing him in. Back in them thar days, pretty much all grownups were chain smokers. From the 1920’s through the beginning of the 1970’s, grownups almost without exception were chimneys. Even at the tender age of seven, I began to feel embarrassed for all those grownups.

In the above interview, Buster explained that he was about to reissue his silent movies in Europe with orchestral tracks. True. KirchMedia was behind this. KirchMedia was founded by Hanns Eckelkamp and managed by Hans Andresen. Together they also controlled Beta Film of Munich, Beta Film Technik of Munich, and Atlas Filmverleih of Düsseldorf. Alas, KirchMedia did not score or issue all the films, but only a few. For the German releases, KirchMedia released through Atlas Filmverleih GmbH.

The General did not get its promised orchestral score. Rather, I should say, it only got part of its promised orchestral score.

Entertainment Films Company, NYC

It was probably in 1961 that this catalogue first included The General, presumably copied from William K. Everson’s print, and I presume Bill’s print was a copy of the MoMA print, but I really don’t know and I really need to see this, but where on earth can I find a print?

Just discovered a capsule history in Samuel K. Rubin’s Moving Pictures and Classic Images (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2004), p. 176:

ENTERTAINMENT FILMS

Entertainment Films made a splash in the early 1960s when it entered the 8mm production market. One of the pioneers in the field, it made its debut with fanfare and began producing 8mm silent titles which made the average collector drool.

Early on, the company produced quality prints of The Mark of Zorro and The General. Then, in the years to follow, it offered such attractive items as The Iron Mask, Thundering Hoofs, The Leatherneck, Son of the Sheik, Way Down East, The Cat and the Canary, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 10 Days That Shook the World, Metropolis, Merry-Go-Round, The Yankee Clipper, Raffles, Road to Yesterday, Eyes of Youth and Hell’s Hinges.

I have no way of knowing what actually happened, but deliveries from the company began to take longer and longer. There were quality complaints, most of which I understand were resolved. Then, a series of broken promises about deliveries followed

My feelings are that the company over-extended itself and fell by the wayside because of it. Phil Alcuri, who headed Entertainment, attended several Cinecons and was extremely cooperative with collectors in the early stages of its existence.

Too bad! They had a good thing going!

I assume that it was Entertainment Films Company of New York to which Mr. Rubin referred in the following 1968 AP story. (Again, I descrambled a line and left an obvious clue.)