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Home , Estelle Taylor, Forrest Stanley, Louise Brooks, Natacha Rambova, Sidney Olcott

HOLLYWOOD ON THE HUDSON SURVEYS NEW YORK’S ROLE IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF MODERN AMERICAN FILMMAKING BETWEEN THE TWO WORLD WARS

Hollywood on the Hudson: Filmmaking in New York, 1920–39 September 17 - October 19, 2008 The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters

New York, September 11, 2008—Hollywood on the Hudson: Filmmaking in New York, 1920- 1939, a month-long exhibition that showcases ’s seminal yet rarely recognized role in the establishment of the modern American industry between the two world wars, is presented at The Museum of Modern Art, from September 17 through October 19, 2008. More than 25 feature and many shorts, including early sound films—musicals, comedies, animated films, and documentaries—offer a survey of filmmaking in New York during the hegemony of Hollywood, from D. W. Griffith’s return from the West Coast in 1919 to the World’s Fair of 1939. Screenings include pioneering sound films shot at the Paramount Studios in Astoria, Queens, and performances by Broadway luminaries such as Louise Brooks, , the Marx Brothers, , and . Hollywood on the Hudson is co-organized by Laurence Kardish, Senior Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art; and Richard Koszarski, on whose book, Hollywood on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff (Rutgers University Press, 2008), the exhibition is based. The exhibition recalls a point during which an industry built on centralized authority began to listen, for the first time, to a range of independent voices in cinema, each with their own ideas about what the movies could say and do. Prior to the , the Hollywood studio system was geared toward creating a standardized product and sought to appeal to all ages and classes, whereas New York cinema was technically innovative and culturally specific, and played to niche audiences, from art houses to ethnic enclaves. The collapse of Hollywood’s economic and industrial model in the post-World War I era soon forced American filmmakers to rethink the way they made films and sold them to audiences. Finding they could no longer depend on a system that required long-term contracts and studio backlots with elaborate standing sets, they began to adopt the methods being used by writers, directors, and in New York. New York makes its indelible mark in such films as (1920), which was shot at the new Fox studio on West 55th Street and made extraordinary use of the city’s locations; D.W. Griffith’s The Struggle (1931), an independent production shot at the old Edison studio in and in the surrounding neighborhood; and Monsieur Beaucaire (1924), a romantic costume drama that uses its Astoria, Queens, location as an artful riposte to the frivolities that Rudolph Valentino and his wife, Natacha Rambova, felt had been forced on him in Hollywood. In Paradise in Harlem (1939), Joseph Seiden’s fable about a black vaudevillian who dreams of bringing Shakespeare to the Harlem stage, and Murder in Harlem (1935), Oscar Micheaux’s transportation of the notorious Leo Frank case to Harlem, New York is featured as an indispensable element of the films themselves. Yet New York’s studios and soundstages were also used at this time to portray other locales as well, including Hollywood in such films as Mark Sandrich’s The Talk of Hollywood (1929), which was made at the Gramercy Studio on Twenty- fourth Street. Hollywood on the Hudson also calls attention to the diversity of filmmaking from the New York studios to independent filmmakers and producers who made Yiddish films, race films, Spanish films, and Italian films, not only for exporting but also for the city’s many immigrant communities. Carlos Gardel, creator of the genre of tango vocal movies, made four Spanish- language musicals in Astoria for Paramount release, including El Tango en Broadway (1934). Cuore d’emigrante (1932), directed by Harold Godsoe, in which a family confronts the consequences of their immigration to America, was produced in Fort Lee, NJ, for Italian-American audiences, while Tevye (1939), directed by Maurice Schwartz, is a bittersweet Yiddish tale in which the lessons of the past are projected onto an uncertain present.

No. 103 Press Contact: Margaret Doyle, (212) 408-6400, [email protected]

For downloadable images, please visit www.moma.org/press

Public Information: The Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York, NY 10019

Hours: Wednesday through Monday: 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday: 10:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m. Closed Tuesday Museum Adm: $20 adults; $16 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D.; $12 full-time students with current I.D. Free, members and children 16 and under. (Includes admittance to Museum galleries and film programs) Target Free Friday Nights 4:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. Film Adm: $10 adults; $8 seniors, 65 years and over with I.D. $6 full-time students with current I.D. (For admittance to film programs only) Subway: E or V train to Fifth Avenue/53rd Street Bus: On Fifth Avenue, take the M1, M2, M3, M4, or M5 to 53rd Street. On Sixth Avenue, take the M5, M6, or M7 to 53rd Street. Or take the M57 and M50 crosstown buses on 57th and 50th Streets.

The public may call (212) 708-9400 for detailed Museum information. Visit us at www.moma.org

2 SCREENING SCHEDULE

Hollywood on the Hudson: Filmmaking in New York, 1920–39

Wednesday, September 17

6:15 The Green Goddess. 1923. Directed by . Based on the play by William Archer. With George Arliss, , David Powell. Imperial British resolve confronts the implacable Rajah of Rukh in the most successful of the six silent features made in New York with George Arliss. Filmed at the Bronx Biograph studio. Courtesy UCLA Film and Television Archive. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 90 min.

8:15 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. 1920. Directed by John Robertson. Based on the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson. With , Martha Mansfield, Louis Wolheim. Barrymore’s breakthrough film performance (and his thirteenth feature in seven years) was shot at Paramount’s Amsterdam Opera House studio on West Forty-fourth Street. George Eastman House, Motion Picture Collection. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 91 min.

Thursday, September 18

6:15 Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em. 1926. Directed by . Based on a play by John Weaver, George Abbott. With Evelyn Brent, Louise Brooks, Osgood Perkins. A striking vision of life in the modern city, skillfully handled by one of the Paramount Astoria Studio’s hottest young directors. Evelyn Brent stars as an industrious Manhattan shop girl, but Louise Brooks steals the show as her guileless, amoral sister. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 80 min.

8:15 Enchantment. 1921. Directed by Robert Vignola. Based on a story by Frank R. Adams. With Marion Davies, . Although Davies is better known today for her costume epics, this updated edition of The Taming of the Shrew is far more typical of the films she made in New York. Joseph Urban’s stylish production design may be the first appearance of European in an American feature. Courtesy The . Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 75 min.

Friday, September 19

6:15 While New York Sleeps. 1920. Directed by . With , Marc McDermott, Harry Southern. Shot at the new Fox studio on West Fifty-fifth Street (and with extraordinary use of New York locations), this pre-noir dramatic anthology reveals the duplicity and corruption behind the public face of the world’s greatest city. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 65 min.

8:15 The Letter. 1929. Directed by Jean De Limur, Monta Bell. Based on the play by W. Somerset Maugham. With Jeanne Eagles, Reginald Owen, Herbert Marshall. The Bette Davis-William Wyler remake of 1940 may be better cinema, but Jeanne Eagles’s Oscar-nominated performance in this version--the first talking feature made in New York-- remains electrifying. Courtesy The Library of Congress. Silent, with musical accompaniment. 65 min.

Saturday, September 20

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6:15 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. See Wednesday, September 17, 8:15.

8:15 The Green Goddess. See Wednesday, September 17, 6:15.

Sunday, September 21

2:00 Way Down East. 1920. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Based on a play by Lottie Blair Parker. With , Richard Barthelmess, Lowell Sherman. When Griffith abandoned Hollywood in 1919, he chose this classic melodrama, filmed at his new studio in Mamaroneck, with extensive location shooting on frozen Vermont landscapes and the treacherous ice floes of White River Junction to announce his return to filmmaking. Silent, with musical accompaniment by Joanna Seaton (vocals) and Donald Sosin (synthesizer). Approx. 150 min.

5:00 The Struggle. 1931. Directed by D. W. Griffith. Written by John Emerson, Anita Loos. With Hal Skelly, Zita Johann, Evelyn Baldwin. An independent production shot at the old Edison studio in the Bronx (and on the streets of the local neighborhood), Griffith’s last film charts a young family’s harrowing destruction through poverty and alcoholism. 87 min.

Wednesday, September 24

6:45 Love ‘Em and Leave ‘Em. See Thursday, September 18, 6:15.

Thursday, September 25

6:00 Janice Meredith. 1924. Directed by E. Mason Hopper. With Marion Davies, Holbrook Blinn, Harrison Ford. Featuring spectacular decor by an uncredited Everett Shinn, ’s version of the American Revolution is surprisingly funny look for W. C. Fields in a bit part and has Marion Davies turning up at all the right moments. Courtesy The Library of Congress. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 80 min.

Friday, September 26

8:30 Enchantment. See Thursday, September 18, 8:15.

Saturday, September 27

1:00 Monsieur Beaucaire. 1924. Directed by Sidney Olcott. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington. With Rudolph Valentino, , . Nestled in Astoria after fleeing Paramount’s west coast studio, Valentino and his wife, Natacha Rambova, designed this romantic costume drama as an artful riposte to the frivolities they felt had been forced on them in Hollywood. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 110 min.

3:15 While New York Sleeps. See Friday, September 19, 6:15.

6:00 The Struggle. See Sunday, September 21, 5:00.

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Sunday, September 28

2:00 The Letter. See Friday, September 19, 8:15.

Monday, September 29

6:00 Monsieur Beaucaire. See Saturday, September 27, 1:00.

8:15 Janice Meredith. See Thursday, September 25, 6:00.

Wednesday, October 1

6:15 So’s Your Old Man. 1926 USA. Directed by Gregory La Cava. From a story by Julian Street. With W.C. Fields, Alice Joyce, Charles “Buddy” Rogers. A visiting princess saves a New Jersey householder homeowner from suicide, and maybe even something worse. A cunning suburban fantasy in the 1920s tradition of Sinclair Lewis or George Kelly’s The Show Off. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 80 min.

8:15 Zaza. 1923. USA. Directed by Allan Dwan. From the play by Berton and Simon. With Gloria Swanson, H.B. Warner. The most lavish of Gloria Swanson’s six Paramount Astoria productions, this gaudy period romance celebrates the theatrical world of nineteenth-century Paris through an adaptation of Gabrielle Rejane’s signature success. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 90 min.

Thursday, October 2

5:00 Cuore d’emigrante (Santa Lucia Luntana). 1932. USA. Directed by Harold Godsoe. With Carlo Renard, Yolanda Carluccio. Buffeted by the effects of gangsterism and jazz, a family confronts the consequences of their immigration to America. Produced in Fort Lee for Italian-American audiences. Print courtesy George Eastman House. 59 min.

8:00 Applause. 1929. USA. Directed by Rouben Mamoulian. From the novel by Beth Brown. With Helen Morgan, Joan Peers. A fading burlesque star hopes for better things for her daughter, but life gets in the way. Rouben Mamoulian energizes a familiar back-stage melodrama through his innovative use of the Astoria studio’s nascent sound recording technology. 80 min.

8:30 So’s Your Old Man. See Wednesday, October 1, 6:15.

Friday, October 3

4:30 Humoresque. 1920. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. From a story by Fannie Hurst. With Gaston Glass, Vera Gordon. In Borzage’s first great family melodrama, everyone suffers when success on the concert stage catapults an immigrant violinist into the alien world of Park Avenue. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 70 min.

6:30 Paradise in Harlem (Othello in Harlem). 1939. USA. Directed by Joseph Seiden. Screenplay by Frank Wilson. With Wilson.

5 A black vaudevillian dreams of bringing Shakespeare to the Harlem stage. Predating Paul Robeson’s Broadway Othello, this remarkable race movie was clearly influenced by the Orson Welles “voodoo” Macbeth of 1936. 70 min.

8:00 Murder in Harlem (Lem Hawkins’ Confession). 1935. USA. Directed by Oscar Micheaux. With Clarence Brooks, Alec Lovejoy. In a dramatic and controversial reimagining of the notorious Leo Frank case, an African- American night watchman is unfairly accused of the murder of young white woman. 98 min.

Saturday, October 4

2:00 Humoresque. See Friday, October 3, 4:30.

4:15 Zaza. See Wednesday, October 1, 8:15.

6:30 The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair. 1939. USA. Directed by Robert Snody. With Marjorie Lord, James Lydon. The average American family visits the world of the future, or at least that part of it designed by Westinghouse. The Gone with the Wind of industrial films. Technicolor. 50 min.

8:15 Cuore d’emigrante (Santa Lucia Luntana). See Thursday, October 2, 5:00.

Sunday, October 5

1:00 Murder in Harlem (Lem Hawkins’ Confession). See Friday, October 3, 8:00.

3:00 Tevye. 1939. USA. Directed by Maurice Schwartz. From Tevye der Milkhiker by Sholom Aleichem. With Schwartz. In production just as German tanks rolled into Poland, this bittersweet Yiddish fable is no Fiddler on the Roof. Projecting the lessons of the past into an uncertain present, Schwartz’s adaptation of Aleichem's story offered little comfort for modern audiences. 93 min.

5:00 Green Fields. 1937. USA. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. From the play by Peretz Hirschbein. With Michael Goldstein, Helen Beverley. Rejecting the already familiar immigrant saga, this groundbreaking Yiddish pastoral turns instead to the lost world of the Eastern European shtetl (stunningly recreated in New Jersey by Edgar G. Ulmer’s newsreel crews). 105 mins. Thursday, October 16, 6:00.

Monday, October 6

5:00 Paradise in Harlem (Othello in Harlem). See Friday, October 3, 6:30.

Wednesday, October 8

6:00 The Talk of Hollywood. 1929. USA. Directed by Mark Sandrich. With Nat Carr, Fay Marbe. The first filmed satire of talking pictures, this attack on ’s disc-sound process was made at the Gramercy Studio on Twenty-fourth Street, showcasing RCA’s rival sound- on-film Photophone system. 70 min.

6 8:30 Laughter. 1930. USA. Directed by Harry D’Arrast. With Nancy Carroll, Fredric March, Frank Morgan. A trophy wife is torn between her stockbroker husband and a struggling musician. A sophisticated glimpse of New York high (and low) society at the cusp of the market crash, with more than a touch of Phillip Barry. 85 min.

Thursday, October 9

6:00 The Emperor Jones. 1933. USA. Directed by Dudley Murphy. From the play by Eugene O’Neill. With Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges. This controversial adaptation of O’Neill’s great play was one of the first modern independent features, but it suffered heavy cuts from the censors within weeks of its release. The bulk of those dialogue cuts have now been restored by The Library of Congress. 80 min.

8:00 One Third of a Nation. 1939. USA. Directed by Dudley Murphy. From the play by Arthur Arent. With , Leif Erickson, Sidney Lumet. Adapted from the Federal Theatre Project’s long-running “Living Newspaper” production, this courageous independent film struggles with a solution to the urban housing mess. Could the New Deal provide the answer? 75 min.

Friday, October 10

4:30 East Coast Animation. Where Hollywood animators studied the work of illustrators, New York studios preferred the freewheeling vision of newspaper cartoonists like the Fleischer brothers. Felix the Cat, Popeye the Sailor, Betty Boop, and the other stars of East Coast animation reflected the cosmopolitan style of New York City in the 1920s and . This program includes all of these characters, along with a few surprises ranging from experimental cinema to industrial films. Program approx. 75 min.

6:15 Animal Crackers. 1930. USA. Directed by Victor Heerman. From the play by George S. Kaufman, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Morrie Ryskind. With the four Marx Brothers. A bogus African explorer and his zany entourage descend on Long Island’s outrageously vulgar Rittenhouse home. Paramount’s highly theatrical film version offers the Marx Brothers as Broadway celebrities, not Hollywood stars. 97 min.

8:15 Dudley Murphy on American Music. Avant-garde filmmaker Dudley Murphy, who collaborated with Fernand Léger on Ballet mecanique, felt that the new sound cinema was a perfect vehicle for illustrating the roots of American blues, jazz, and folk music. His trilogy of short musicals, made in New York for RKO and Paramount, are screened together on the same program for what may be the first time. St. Louis Blues. 1929. USA. With Bessie Smith. 15 min. Black and Tan. 1929. USA. With Duke Ellington. 19 min. He Was Her Man. 1931. USA. With Gilda Gray. 15 min. Program 49 min.

Saturday, October 11

2:00 Animal Crackers. See Friday, October 10, 6:15.

4:15 Laughter. See Wednesday, October 8, 7:30.

6:30 Applause. See Thursday, October 2, 8:00.

7 8:30 The Smiling Lieutenant. 1931. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. With Maurice Chevalier, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert. An Oscar nominee for Best Picture, this Viennese romantic triangle was the most successful example of Paramount’s effort to create a “Hollywood on the Hudson” in Astoria. 88 mins.

Sunday, October 12

1:30 El Tango en Broadway (Tango in Broadway). 1934. USA. Directed by Louis Gasnier. Music by Carlos Gardel. Screenplay by Alfredo Le Pera. With Gardel, Mona Maris, Vincente Padula, Anita Campillo. Gardel, creator of the genre of tango vocal movies, made four Spanish-language musicals in Astoria for Paramount release. Here he overcomes obstacles to open a tango palace in Manhattan. In Spanish; English subtitles. 83 min.

3:15 Back Door to Heaven. 1939. USA. Directed by William K. Howard. With Wallace Ford, Patricia Ellis, Aline MacMahon, Jimmy Lydon. Part film noir, part French poetic realism, this fatalistic account of a delinquent’s criminal career was renegade director William K. Howard’s bitter response to the strictures and conventions of the Hollywood studio system. 85 min.

5:15 Intolerance of 1933 (Victims of Persecution). 1933. USA. Directed by Bud Pollard. From a play by David Leonard. With Mitchell Harris, Betty Hamilton. A Jewish jurist insists on justice for an accused African-American, with dangerous consequences. Mixing styles, genres, and whatever film footage was handy, Bud Pollard attempted to expand the Yiddish film market by shooting the entire picture in English. 60 min.

Monday, October 13

4:30 The Smiling Lieutenant. See Saturday, October 11, 8:30.

6:30 The Emperor Jones. See Thursday, October 9, 6:00.

8:15 Moonlight and Pretzels. 1933. USA. Directed by Karl Freund. With Leo Carillo, . A modest, tuneful, and fabulously successful depression-era musical, made by Universal at Paramount’s abandoned studio in Astoria. One of the few films directed by Karl Freund, better known as the great cinematographer of Metropolis and The Last Laugh. 84 min.

Wednesday, October 15

6:00 The Talk of Hollywood. See Wednesday, October 8, 6:00.

8:30 Into the Net. 1924. USA. Directed by George Seitz. With Jack Mulhall, . The NYPD races to the rescue of twenty kidnapped heiresses. The feature version of one of the last, and best, East Coast serials, with fabulous location footage. Print courtesy of the Cinematheque francaise, Paris. French intertitles; simultaneous English translation. Approx. 95 min.

Friday, October 17

8 4:15 El Tango en Broadway (Tango in Broadway). See Sunday, October 12, 1:30.

6:30 Moonlight and Pretzels. See Monday, October 13, 8:15.

8:15 Crime without Passion. 1934. USA. Written and directed by Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur. With Claude Rains, Margo. A corrupt New York defense is entangled in his own bizarre machinations. The first, and best, of Hecht and MacArthur’s notorious series of runaway Astoria productions, with montage sequences by Slavko Vorkapich. 72 min.

Saturday, October 18

2:00 Dudley Murphy on American Music. See Friday, October 10, 8:15.

4:00 One Third of a Nation. See Thursday, October 9, 8:00.

6:00 Intolerance of 1933 (Victims of Persecution). See Sunday, October 12, 5:15.

7:30 Back Door to Heaven. See Sunday, October 12, 3:15.

Sunday, October 19

1:30 Crime without Passion. See Friday, October 17, 8:15.

3:30 Into the Net. See Wednesday, October 15, 8:00.

5:30 East Coast Animation. See Friday, October 10, 4:30.

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