Brownlow, Kevin. Napoleon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
Brownlow’s firsthand account of the search for a complete print of Abel Gance’s Napoleon reads like a Tom Clancy thriller, with a triumphant ending.
Brownlow, Kevin. The Parade’s Gone By. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1968.
This is the only indispensable source on the history of the silent film. Brownlow, a historian with matchless credentials (see Films: Hollywood; also the Acknowledgments), traces the evolution of an art form from its nineteenth-century beginnings to its annihilation by sound. His prose is both scholarly and eminently readable.
Donnelly, Paul. Fade to Black. London: Omnibus, 2000.
The author’s a gossip, and in no small way a tabloid hack, emphasizing the lurid and sensational over the journalistic approach one would prefer; but his fat (633 page) collection of movie obituaries is handy for fast-track biographical research, as well as a helpful reminder of who’s dead. Sort of a Who Was Who in Hollywood.
Drew, William M. Speaking of Silents: First Ladies of the Screen. New York: Vestal, 1989.
We should all thank providence for chroniclers like Drew and Kevin Brownlow, who have the foresight to interview Hollywood pioneers while they’re still in a condition to reminisce. (Brownlow wrote the Foreword.) Legends Colleen Moore, Blanche Sweet, Laura La Plante, and others are no longer around to share the stories they tell here in first person.
Eames, John Douglas. The MGM Story. New York: Crown, 1985.
This entry in a monumental series on the major studios is a meticulous year-by-year history of the Tiffany of Tinseltown, 1924–1981.
Griffith, Richard, and Mayer, Arthur. The Movies. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957; revised 1970.
The author of Frames learned most of what he still knows about the history of film through this huge volume, encountered at a very young age in first edition. Evidently, its authors are related to neither D. W. Griffith nor L. B. Mayer—but what fantastic billing!
Koszarski, Richard. Von: The Life and Films of Erich von Stroheim: Revised and Expanded Edition. New York: Limelight, 2004.
Koszarski’s earlier biography, The Man You Loved to Hate, was well received by critics and readers. About a third of this new incarnation contains additional and rewritten material: proof that Von Stroheim’s reputation continues to grow. This early triple threat—actor/writer/director—lived a life as colorful and dramatic as any of the characters he put through their paces before a camera, which if told on film would run at least as long as the original version of Greed.
Mordden, Ethan. The Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Mordden has a bitchy attitude; who but a Broadway gadfly cares if Fred Astaire’s dialogue mixed up its theaters and performances in The Band Wagon? But his book dishes up a sharp and knowledgable comparison of Macy vs. Gimbel in Hollywood, as well as a fast-moving but richly detailed narrative of the rise and fall of the studio system.
Naylor, David. Great American Movie Theaters. Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1987.
If you’re looking for a plush folio to display on your coffee table, filled with mouth-watering pictures in full color, this isn’t it. But being a National Trust publication, it’s exhaustive, divided up by geographical locations, and formatted to slip into your pocket like a mushroom hunter’s field guide. It’s designed to travel, but you might want to book your reservations now. Not many of the popcorn palaces it celebrates are still standing.
Sinyard, Neil. Silent Movies. London: Bison, 1990.
A solid entry-level introduction to the revolutionary medium in its formative years, with concise narrative and many photographs.
Staggs, Sam. Close-Up on Sunset Boulevard: Billy Wilder, Norma Desmond, and the Dark Hollywood Dream. New York: St. Martin’s, 2002.
It sounds like one of those fusty, pedantic snores penned for a Ph.D., with footnotes, but it’s a lively, consciously cinematic presentation of the movie behind the movie, and the unlikely events that brought together a great director, a has-been movie star, a troubled leading man, and two (uppercase) Great Directors to create the most powerful and hypnotic Hollywood-on-Hollywood movie ever made. Aside from Gloria Swanson’s brilliance as Desmond, this page-turner illuminates Erich von Stroheim’s Max Mayerling as emblematic of the pathos of the Austrian’s treatment by the industry. If you’ve seen Sunset Boulevard recently, it’s like watching it all over again in a revealing new director’s cut. If you haven’t seen it in a while, or if you’ve never seen it, Close-Up will make you want to right away (see Films: Sunset Boulevard).
FILM GUIDES
Halliwell, Leslie. Film Guide. New York: HarperCollins, 1977–present.
Halliwell was crotchedy, but correct in his details; a tradition that successors like John Walker continue to uphold. Just about everything one needs to know about just about every movie ever made is here, including the studio that made it—a detail most other guides overlook.
Maltin, Leonard. Movie Guide. New York: New American Library, 1970–present.
Maltin genuinely loves movies and it shows, but he’s no toady, nor is anyone on his staff. His is the granddaddy of all movie guides, predating home video, when his readership was restricted to that curious species that set its alarm clocks for 2 A.M. to catch creaky old favorites on The Late Show. To keep the book a managable size, recent editions have jettisoned some listings, so it’s a good idea not to throw away the older ones to make room for the new. (Advice to Maltin: Scrap the star index at the back for space. When you dropped Erich von Stroheim and kept Melanie Griffith, you destroyed its purpose.)
FICTION
Respectable writers of fiction don’t crib from one another; but there’s nothing like a well-researched, skillfully written novel on a chosen subject to inspire creation and saturate one in pertinent detail. Recommendations include:
Baker, James Robert. Boy Wonder. New York: NAL Books, 1988.
This one’s a ride, a satiric, seriocomic take on the contemporary industry tracing the meteoric rise and pile-driver fall of an enfant terrible producer. Like the movie Network, what first appeared as a riotously over-the-top sendup of American media looks like a sober documentary in light of more recent events.
Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Last Tycoon. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1941.
At the end of his gaudy, rickrack life—burned out at forty-four—the author of The Great Gatsby reached back into the past and his experiences as a screenwriter to tell the only great insider’s story of the bunkerlike life of a brilliant studio executive, based on Irving Thalberg—burned out at thirty-seven. Tragically, Fitzgerald didn’t live to finish the book. Sadder still, none has come along to equal it.
Kanin, Garson. Moviola. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.
Kanin was an insider: a phenomenally successful playwright, sought-after screenwriter (in tandem with his wife, actress Ruth Gordon), and close confidant of legends, including Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Moviola is a delectable retelling—through the eyes of a fictional ancient studio mogul—of such items of cinema lore as the romance between Greta Garbo and John Gilbert and David O. Selznick’s nationwide search for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. There’s a good deal more truth here than in many straight histories.
Roszak, Theodore. Flicker. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991.
Until The DaVinci Code came along, there was nothing out there with which to compare this book. It’s the story of a hunt for lost films, some of the technology involved, the netherworld of film societies and slasher geeks, subliminal messaging, and a conspiracy theory involving a cult made up of equal parts Shaker, Rosicrucian, and Turner Entertainment. Roszak’s book got a bounce from Dan Brown’s megaseller Code in the form of a reissue fourteen years after it disappeared below the radar.
ONLINE INFORMATION
Usually, this is an oxymoron. The Internet is unedited, and th
erefore less reliable in most cases than the Magic Eight Ball. However, Kodak has posted data on the Environmental Services page of its Web site essential to understanding the process involved in preserving, storing, transporting, and disposing of silver nitrate film, including molecular sieves and how to identify the dreaded five stages of decomposition. Details are absorbing and harrowing. The characters who stepped up beside Yves Montand to truck nitroglycerine over a hundred miles of bad road in The Wages of Fear might have balked at this cargo. You’ll find the site at—oh, something dot com. Just Google it.
FILMS
The following titles reveal, in terms this writer could never replicate, the beauty and drama of the silent film as it pertains to the career of Erich von Stroheim. Good luck finding some of them.
Foolish Wives. Directed by Erich von Stroheim, starring Maude George, Mae Busch, Cesare Gravina, and Malvina Polo. Universal, 1922.
Von Stroheim replicated Monte Carlo in astonishing detail for this melodramatic mix of seduction, blackmail, fakery, and murder. William Daniels and Ben Reynolds, who would later photograph Greed, taught their cameras to perform impossible feats. Available on DVD.
Greed. Directed by Erich von Stroheim, starring Gibson Gowland, Zasu Pitts, Jean Hersholt, Chester Conklin, and Dale Fuller. MGM, 1925.
Until someone actually discovers a complete print, we must make do with the four-hour reconstruction produced by Rick Schmidlin in 1999, using hundreds of stills and additional title cards based on Von Stroheim’s shooting script. The effect, unfortunately, is static, and counterproductive to the epic poetry of the moving image. It still manages to astonish—and shock audiences misled to believe that the motion picture was family fare until the late 1960s—but sitting through it makes one long for Thalberg’s two-hour cut. Available on VHS.
Hollywood. Produced by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, narrated by James Mason. Thames Television, 1980.
Words cannot describe this thirteen-part series of one-hour documentaries on the silent film. Scenes from classics, beautifully remastered and projected at the original speed (not the herky-jerky comic pace that comes from running them through standard modern projectors), interspersed with personal accounts by pioneers who have since gone to the mezzanine in the sky, present a look firsthand at the birth and adolescence of an exciting new medium. It’s another home run for Brownlow, with a healthy assist from David Gill, and an even greater achievement than The Parade’s Gone By. VHS, out of print.
The Merry Widow. Directed by Erich von Stroheim, starring Mae Murray, John Gilbert, Roy D’Arcy, Tully Marshall, and Josephine Crowell (cameo by Clark Gable!). MGM, 1925.
This is the one about the prince and the showgirl, based on an operetta by Franz Lehar, with the infamous boot-collection scene. (Von Stroheim: “He has a foot fetish.” Thalberg: “And you have a footage fetish!”) Not available on home video.
Sunset Boulevard. Directed by Billy Wilder, starring Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Cecil B. DeMille (cameos by Buster Keaton, H.B. Warner, Anna Q. Nillson, Henry Wilcoxon). Paramount, 1950.
Billy Wilder, another eccentric Austrian director, wrote this masterpiece under the indisputable influence of Raymond Chandler, with whom he collaborated on the script of Double Indemnity six years before. Ironically, it’s the movie most people think of when they hear the names Swanson and Von Stroheim, made a generation after the dozens of pictures that made them household names throughout the world; but then that’s the theme of Boulevard: No matter how much money you made for your studio and the industry, you’re disposable and quickly forgotten. Von Stroheim’s real-life fall from grace is eerily reflected in Max von Mayerling’s subservience to the woman he’d directed and once wed. The casting is spot-on and unique. However eye-catching you find Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical stage adaptation in the 1990s, even his pool of talent couldn’t approach an aging silent star cast as an aging silent star, a disgraced director playing a disgraced director, and DeMille playing DeMille. The film is the Gone With the Wind of cinema noir, and the best movie Hollywood ever made about Hollywood. Available on DVD.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Frames could not have been written but for the inspiration and contributions of the following people, some of whom have exited the theater:
Bill Kennedy, host of At the Movies. For decades, Kennedy, a former movie bit player (I Died a Thousand Times) and radio announcer (“Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive!”), introduced virtually the entire library of every studio afternoons on CKLW and later WKBD TV. His formidable knowledge of Hollywood lore—and his somewhat acerbic personality—required as much as fifteen minutes during station breaks while he fielded questions telephoned in by viewers. No one seemed to mind the interruptions.
Mary Morgan, hostess (with her dachshund, Liebchen) of Million Dollar Movie. This ladylike Detroiter, her hair piled high and sprayed hard as mahogany, brought a more genteel quality to local programming Sunday afternoons following Kennedy, scavenging features he’d overlooked.
Rita Bell, hostess of Prize Movie. On WXYZ Channel 7, infectiously bubbling Ms. Bell filled the time between reels taking calls from viewers trying to answer the trivia question of the hour. Each wrong answer added seven dollars to the cash prize awarded the winner.
Don Ameche, host of Armchair Theater. The urbane actor, whose career spanned sixty years (The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, Heaven Can Wait, Trading Places, Cocoon), brought style and polish to this network evening showcase, sipping cognac from a balloon glass and wearing a silk smoking jacket in the depths of a huge wingback easy chair.
The unsung programmers behind Saturday Night at the Movies. The Estleman family bonded around this weekly CBS fixture.
Deborah, the writer’s wife. An accomplished novelist (as Deborah Morgan), she made suggestions, offered advice, counseled reason, and braved the terrors of the Internet to retrieve bales of technical material on preserving and restoring films photographed on silver nitrate. In addition, she holds her husband’s hand through the closing credits long after everyone else has left the room.
Janet Hutchings, editor of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. A friend and fine editor, she’s published ten Valentino short stories as of the time of this writing. May this happy relationship continue.
The coveted final credit goes to Kevin Brownlow, author of The Parade’s Gone By and coproducer of Hollywood. He’s done more than any other person living to rescue the silent movie from oblivion and to raise the public consciousness to its appreciation; as a real-life film detective, he’s recovered hundreds of miles of footage once considered lost, including the complete 235-minute cut of Napoleon, Abel Gance’s 1927 epic—for whose 1979 premiere the eighty-nine-year-old director took his bows. In every way, Brownlow is the inspiration for Valentino. He may yet find Greed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Loren D. Estleman is the author of more than sixty novels. He has earned four Shamus Awards, five Spur Awards, and three Western Heritage Awards. He lives in central Michigan with his wife, author Deborah Morgan.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
FRAMES: A VALENTINO MYSTERY
Copyright © 2008 by Loren D. Estleman
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Edited by James Frenkel
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Estleman, Loren D.
Frames: a Valentino mystery / Loren D. Estleman.—1st ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”
<
br /> ISBN: 978-0-7653-1575-5
1. Greed (motion picture)—Fiction. 2. Archivists—Fiction. 3. Women law students—Fiction. 4. Motion picture film—Preservation—Fiction. 5. Hollywood (Los Angeles, Calif.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.S84 F73 2008
813’.54—dc22
2008004505
Loren D. Estleman - Valentino 01 - Frames Page 21