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 New York City’s seminal yet rarely recognized role in the establishment of the modern American film 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 films 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, Marion Davies, the Marx Brothers, Gloria Swanson, and Rudolph Valentino. 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 1920s, 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 actors in New York. New York makes its indelible mark in such films as While New York Sleeps (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 the Bronx 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 Sidney Olcott. Based on the play by William Archer. With George Arliss, Alice Joyce, 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 John Barrymore, 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 Frank Tuttle. 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, Forrest Stanley. 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 modernism in an American feature. Courtesy The Library of Congress. Silent, with musical accompaniment. Approx. 75 min. Friday, September 19 6:15 While New York Sleeps. 1920. Directed by Charles Brabin. With Estelle Taylor, 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 3 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 Lillian Gish, 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, William Randolph Hearst’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.