And motion pictures were what they needed—a minimum, they figured, of twelve a year (three from each). Why twelve, when organizations such as Universal and Paramount were releasing a new movie to exhibitors weekly?
They reasoned that the films produced by these top artists had broken the model of how long a motion picture would stay in a theater. In the earliest days, to keep a film in a theater more than half a week would be akin, today, to running the same episode of the same television show nightly for a month. The Birth of a Nation was the most famous exception, but it was not issued as part of a major studio release schedule but instead was exhibited—depending on the region of the country—on either a “road show” or a state’s rights basis. The typical prewar release schedule was seen with Triangle: In 1915 a Fairbanks film with a Keystone short was booked in a Triangle theater for three days—whether it packed the house to the rafters or the hall was empty. The Thomas Ince/Kay Bee films would fill the other three days. (Blue laws kept most theaters shuttered on Sundays.) This was the case even with theaters in the largest cities, such as New York. But this would change. By the time Fairbanks’s third Artcraft film, Down to Earth, was released, his popularity was such that Variety reported that the 81st Street Theatre in Manhattan was going to abandon its “split-week” practice and run the film for an entire week. As his reputation grew, and with it audience affections, the Artcraft films continued to push the envelope of staying power, progressing to two weeks and—by the time A Modern Musketeer hit the screens—to three. The same was happening with the Pickford Artcrafts. This spoke, of course, to their tremendous popularity. The norm for other films in 1919 was still one week.
This was something that Doug and Mary dearly wanted. They were, after all, participating in profit sharing on these films. The longer they could stay in a theater, the better. The flip side of this coin was apparent to both: the better they could make the films—the higher production values, the better script, the better (in the case of Fairbanks) stunts—the longer the booking and the higher the profit.
The major studios were built on the opposite model. The bill was to change weekly. They wanted to fill the houses for that week, but they didn’t want the film to linger more than a week and drive the audiences who had already seen it to a theater they didn’t own. Vertical integration—the combination of production, distribution, and exhibition—created an incentive to make midpriced films.
Accordingly, the UA founders took a public and vociferous stance against block booking, but not for the same reasons as two years prior. At that point they hadn’t wanted their returns to be diluted by the prices exhibitors were forced to pay for lesser films in order to get theirs. Now the reasoning was that they didn’t want the exhibitor to be precommitted to a schedule of films, the most recent of which would bump their latest endeavor out of theaters prematurely.
They found themselves walking a tightrope. They needed to have product, but, except for Fairbanks, no one would be able to produce a film immediately. Even a Douglas Fairbanks could not expect to make a film in January and February 1919 and have it still be in theaters nine months later, when his partners might conceivably contribute to the endeavor. (Not even the most avidly optimistic film executive could have predicted in 1919 that a mere four years later Fairbanks’s Robin Hood would stay at some theaters for six months and more.) Further, even if Doug had a film ready immediately, the organization had no infrastructure. There was no distribution network, no exhibitors signed up, no contracts with lithographers for posters—not even an office with a phone number. And unless he was going to release a film through Zukor, he didn’t even have a studio to work in.
Thus it was that although his contract with Artcraft/Paramount ended in February 1919, Fairbanks went on to film and release The Knickerbocker Buckaroo through Artcraft later that year. It was distributed as a “special”—not a programmed release. At seven reels, it was two reels longer than his norm. Zukor was able to claim bragging rights to Fairbanks for another three-quarters of a year, and Fairbanks bought time. Technically, Zukor might have claimed that Fairbanks failed to deliver the eight films a year that his contract had required (Knickerbocker was the fifth feature to be released during the second year of his contract), but he could hardly do so without being unpatriotic, with so much of Fairbanks’s time occupied in war-related work during 1918. In addition, the volume of government-requested short films that he produced extended beyond the Liberty and Victory Loan drives. In January—that same, busy January that saw the birth of United Artists—Fairbanks was tied up making morale films for Uncle Sam.
“[The War Department] laid down four principles for my guidance and told me to get busy,” Fairbanks said. “These principles are ‘purity of purpose,’ ‘cheerfulness,’ ‘steadfastness’ and ‘willingness to sacrifice.’ That’s what they gave me to work on, and it’s all they gave me to work on.” He and his team were understandably stumped at first. “I didn’t see how on earth I was going to make a picture out of that,” he said.
Finally, the idea came for an allegorical film (“It isn’t named yet, but it will be finished within a week”) about the tree of Democracy:
We open with Democracy, a young tree, sheltered and tended by Washington, and we show what our forefathers did that Liberty might live. They’re sure to like that, and it’s a good thing for all of us to remember just now. And then we go on to the time when the tree, a sturdy sapling now, is in danger from winds from the South and the North, which threaten to rend it. Lincoln hedged it about and saved it. Then we work in the idea of steadfastness, the principle that had its finest demonstration in the “Message to Garcia.”*9 The tree of Democracy is established and deep rooted by this time, ready to afford shelter to weaker, needy brethren.
And at last we show the tree grown to its full height and full of fruit. It’s a castor bean tree, this time, and Uncle Sam is forcing the beans, plenty of them, down the throat of the Kaiser, for his own good.
This curious little film—reportedly a full feature—may or may not have included Fairbanks. It is probable that he made an appearance (likely the fellow shoving the castor beans down the Kaiser’s throat), but at this point it is unknown. The film—whatever it was named—is, as with the other Fairbanks films issued on behalf of the government, lost. Still, it is evident that Fairbanks used his final months at the Famous Players–Lasky studios to full effect.
By March, he had found a new home for his production facilities, leasing the Clune studio at the corner of Melrose and Bronson in Los Angeles, with occupancy to begin in the first week of April. The fifteen-acre property required significant improvements—an indoor stage, an administration building, a carpenter shop—all of which prudent John Fairbanks negotiated for Clune to provide.
And as he prepared his first release for United Artists, Douglas Fairbanks again was working with Uncle Sam as his copilot. His Majesty the American was scripted and directed by Joseph Henabery, who, along with cameraman Victor Fleming, had recently returned from the war. “Doug promised to include in his next release some favorable propaganda in behalf of President Wilson’s League of Nations idea, which was hailed as world lifesaver,” Henabery recalled. “Doug wanted me to write a story that would incorporate some of the President’s ideas in the upcoming picture.”
Combining an administration’s political agenda in an adventure-comedy was a challenge. “The writing job was no easy one,” groused Henabery. “The Government wanted some emphasis given to each of Wilson’s proposed Fourteen Points. The danger was that propaganda could easily overburden the story, unless great care was taken to weave it in subtly.”
Here we are on curious ground. The marriage of Hollywood and Washington is something that is generally acknowledged during wartime. But the ready agreement to promote a particular administration’s peacetime agenda sets an interesting and possibly dangerous precedent. But Fairbanks, whether intoxicated by his proximity to the halls of power or simply from a form of carryover patriotism, see
med to have no qualms on the topic. The Government (capital G) wanted him? He was there! And so poor Henabery lumbered on with the story, a Ruritanian romance very similar in tone and incident to Hawthorne of the U.S.A.*10
Once the script was finished and approved by the Feds—an eight-week process in total—production began with a will. Instead of maintaining the normal pace of shooting, in which players and director wait between camera setups and lighting changes, or even the accelerated program of having a second unit director, Fairbanks’s team had three separate production crews working simultaneously. Each had its own pair of cameramen, set of electricians, and director. While Henabery was responsible for the overall direction, Arthur Rosson was directing the second unit, and young cameraman Victor Fleming got his directorial start on the third. Fairbanks would change costumes and rotate from set to set. In the words of a Wid’s reporter: “As soon as he finishes with one bunch he jumps to another gang that is all set up and waiting for him.” With this pace, filming was completed by August, giving Henabery a full month for editing.
“Hard work and money went into making it,” Henabery said of the film. Then political reality set in. “Wilson’s Fourteen Points went down the drain, and I, in a way, went with the Fourteen Points. I could conceive of no way to salvage the picture without doing damage by the removal of material relating to the propaganda, but the job had to be done. Luckily, some excess material, for which there was no room in the first cut, was available.”
The film was Fairbanks’s longest release to date, at eight reels. It also reflects a slight retrenchment from Knickerbocker in terms of cost. Tax and accounting files document that His Majesty cost $254,017.07 total (including production, negative cost, and promotion), while Knickerbocker ran $292,442.26. It opened with a title card that read, over the names of the four founders: “It is our hope and desire to attain a standard of entertainment that will merit your approval and continued support.” The title was revealed to be life-size, as Fairbanks burst through it with a somersault. Then, fists pumping, winking and smiling, he said, by way of intertitle: “Listen, Folks—they made me start the ball rolling. So here’s the first picture. Gee whiz!—I hope you’ll like it.”
The opening titles introduce Bill Brooks, a “Fire-eating, Speed-loving, Space-annihilating, Excitement-hunting Thrill Hound.” His adventure seeking is readily demonstrated in the first reel when he climbs three stories up the side of a blazing tenement building, swings on a rope to a window across a courtyard, and rescues a mother and three children. (He even obligingly returns to the burning room to recover a kitten.) He then heads to another part of town and breaks up a white slavery ring. Again the gambit of the six-room dollhouse cutout set was employed, with trap doors, windows, and stairs forming part of the action.
A reforming DA cleans up New York, which is unfortunate for our thrill-seeking hero, who is forced to pursue adventure in Mexico. Finally, a full half hour into the film, Fairbanks arrives in the mythical kingdom of Alaine. Here he rescues the king, falls in love with his beautiful ward, and discovers that he himself is heir to the throne. Ever the smiling American, he converts the country to a democracy.
The resulting film is a mishmash. It is intertitle-heavy—uncharacteristic for Fairbanks—with expensive sets but a badly wandering plot. There are some gratifying chases and stunts in the last twenty minutes, but the production was overlong and cried out for the tight directorial hand of an Allan Dwan. Contemporary critics recognized this; the Motion Picture News called it “another routine Douglas Fairbanks celluline cyclone. . . . The star dashes from mantel to balcony and from housetop to window-ledge with his customary dramatic power. In other words, His Majesty the American is just another Fairbanks comedy of the usual sort.”
Henabery was equally scathing. “My feeling about that thing was always that it was a bunch of hash.”
It scarcely mattered. Even a month before its release, the film was heavily booked, some towns having competing theater chains showing the film blocks apart, simultaneously. In New York City, the entire Fox circuit and entire Loew’s circuit booked the film, and unprecedented three-week advance bookings were arranged in multiple cities. The Capitol Theatre in New York paid a record price in film rental—$7,000 a week, with a 50 percent interest on the gross over $35,000. Certainly, Fairbanks had reason to be pleased from a financial standpoint. The return to the Douglas Fairbanks Pictures Corporation was $579,894.53, yielding a net of $325,877.46, more than three times the return of his most profitable earlier film and six times the average return of the prior thirteen. Clearly, being a distributor had its benefits.
Still, he knew he could do better from an artistic standpoint. His next film, When the Clouds Roll By, would have no government input and was a dazzling return to form. It was the story of a comically superstitious young man who was slowly being driven mad by his evil-scientist neighbor. The most memorable and striking sequence of the film occurred in the first reel: the nightmare scene. Film historians have been lavish in handing credit to fledgling director Victor Fleming for this witty, surreal sequence, but they are mistaken. This section was shot by Joseph Henabery for His Majesty the American. The press book for Majesty referenced the “wild and delirious nightmare,” including the slow-motion chase and the moment when Fairbanks entered a ballroom full of matrons clad only in his underwear. A correction slip had to be published and included with each Majesty press kit, urging exhibitors to eliminate any reference to the nightmare. Henabery’s recollections were specific:
The revolving room—that was my idea. I made this barrel-like thing, had the hawsers around it to revolve it so that when he was running on the ceiling he was really running on the floor. The camera was upside down.*11 It wasn’t used because we had too much film. Another thing we had in that . . . where Bull Montana is socked in the nose and fell down and comes up again. . . . I had a counterweight on him so he was pivoted on the floor. You’d push him down—course he was aided by a wire—but the weight below would bring him right back up. In other words, Fairbanks couldn’t knock him down.
A sharp eye will note the reproduction of the pajamas and the right side of the bedroom set from the first film to the second. The omission of the nightmare from His Majesty deprived Henabery of some rightful credit, but the sequence fits in splendidly with the story of When the Clouds Roll By.
The opening credits set the loopy tone—Fleming filmed the scenarist, himself, the cameramen, even Fairbanks with his favorite Alaskan malamute, Rex, to accompany the names on the titles. The intertitles followed suit. That which introduces Fairbanks’s character reads:
It is midnight along New York’s water front. It is also midnight in the Wall Street district. However, this has nothing to do with our story, except it is likewise midnight uptown where we first meet Daniel Boone Brown—an average young man.
Our tale proper opens with the eating of an onion—
The titles’ backgrounds were painted by popular illustrator Henry Clive and were written by Thomas Geraghty. The issue of authorship came into brief contention shortly after the film’s release. Louis Weadock was a newspaperman and short story writer who reportedly joined the scenario staff before Clouds was produced. He leaked a story to Variety that both he and Thomas Geraghty were “rather incensed over the fact that the employer-star failed to give them credit for having evolved what seems to be the greatest hit that Fairbanks has had in a year.” This was met with a quick denial by United Artists.
The story was the original idea of Douglas Fairbanks and the scenario was written by Tom Geraghty. Numerous articles have been published giving Louis Weadock mention as part author and as assistant in the screen preparation.
Weadock, it is declared, was engaged by the Fairbanks organization as an apprentice at a small salary, and was present at the studio during the making of the story. His ideas, however, did not come up to the standard required by Fairbanks and before the completion of the production he was removed from all affiliation with the compan
y. He was not placed under a long term contract, as has been announced, and is not affiliated in any capacity with the Douglas Fairbanks organization.
This, for all intents and purposes, appeared to settle the hash of the disgruntled writer, who was not heard from again.*12
Fairbanks pulled out all stops in the last reel of the film. Four enormous electric pumps drew more than a million gallons of water from the Sacramento River into an elevated reservoir in the Cascade Range. Once released, the flood washed out the town, a convincing combination of miniatures and life-size buildings. For the postflood sequence, a flooded plain near Seal Beach was filled with trees, houses, and even a floating church (handy for the provision of the minister at the film’s happy ending).
The film was a strong success. “If he had begun his United Artists’ career with it he would have given that new connection a boost which His Majesty the American failed to impart,” wrote the Photoplay critic. The returns were $531,418.18 on an investment of $256,681.65—a little less than Majesty but the second highest of any of his productions to date.
Tom Geraghty found himself sharing screenwriting credit on Fairbanks’s next film, The Mollycoddle, despite the fact that the story was entirely his and an uncredited Doug’s creation. The team was almost two months into production on the film when an author, Harold MacGrath, contacted the studio. He had published a story of that same title in a May 1913 issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Fairbanks, whose mania for everything Teddy had not diminished, did not want to lose the Rooseveltian turn of phrase for the title of his film, so he paid MacGrath $5,000 for full rights to his story. He wanted no more lawsuits along the lines of the one engendered by The Americano.
The First King of Hollywood Page 26