New book on silent mystery and detective movies

By Thomas Gladysz
San Francisco Silent Film Examiner

If you saw The Cat and the Canary (1927) at the recent Balboa Theater birthday bash, or the revelatory A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in 2007, or the grim Asphalt (1929) at the Berlin & Beyond Festival in 2005 – or if you’ve seen Sherlock Holmes (1922), recently released on DVD as part of the KINO “John Barrymore Collection” - then you’ve seen a classic mystery or detective film from the silent era.

Those well known titles and many more less familiar one are included in Ken Wlaschin’s recently published Silent Mystery and Detective Movies: A Comprehensive Filmography (McFarland). This new book is a 285 page, illustrated guide to silent films with mystery and detective themes and content; it describes more than 1,500 works belonging to one of the most popular of all genres. While most of the motion pictures covered in this book are American or English in origin, notable mystery and detective films from around the world are also featured.

The silent-film era is known - in part, for its thrilling serials and cliffhangers, its rogues and villains, sophisticated crime stories, and an air of suspense that kept audiences returning to theaters week after week. Throughout the Teens and Twenties, major film stars such as Lon Chaney, Francis X. Bushman, King Baggott, Maurice Costello, Pearl White, Helen Holmes and even Harry Houdini appeared in such genre pictures.

Why this book, and why now? As Wlaschin argues in his introduction, the popular cinema of the silent era is not as well known as it deserves to be. Wlaschin writes, “Standard histories of the cinema tend to emphasize ‘quality’ films and major directors, skipping over ‘entertainment’ genres like detective and mystery movies. And yet these films were among the most popular of the silent era with large audiences around the world.”

Silent Mystery and Detective Movies goes a long way in lifting the genre out the shadows. The book is designed as a user-friendly guide with entries in alphabetical order. There is also information about archival prints and available videos and DVD’s – though sadly, fewer than ten percent of the films included in this book have survived the passage of time. Wlaschin claims to have seen most of the surviving ten percent, which makes him uniquely qualified to author this title.

Supplementing this A to Z encyclopedia, there is also an appendix of authors whose stories were filmed in the silent era, and a bibliography. As well, there are illustrations showing scenes from individual films, postcard portraits of the stars, posters, and the covers of a few recently released VHS and DVD titles.

It’s all here, from the films you’ve heard of to those you haven’t. For example, silent cinema enthusiasts may be aware of the early American and British Sherlock Holmes movies but are unlikely to know of the Danish and German versions. As well, they may know of the American Boston Blackie films but may not be familiar with European detective series like Nick Carter, Nat Pinkerton, or Miss Noboby.

The City Gone Wild (1927), for example, is a now lost 6 reel Paramount film which few have heard of. But in the late Twenties, it was routinely compared to the still celebrated Underworld (1927). Directed by James Cruze, The City Gone Wild is gang-land melodrama which tells the story of a criminal lawyer who turns prosecutor to avenge the death of his friend. The film stars Thomas Meighan, Marietta Miller, and Louise Brooks as the curiously named “Snuggles Joy.”

There’s also Queen of Diamonds (1926), another now lost 6 reel film released by FBO. In it, a chorus girl played by Evelyn Brent pretends to be a look-alike Broadway star who has been kidnapped. Brent, who appeared so many crime-world dramas (including a few mystery and detective films) that she was known as Hollywood’s Lady Crook, was especially effective. Variety called her the perfect “crookess.”

Though not a cliffhanger, What Happened to Mary? (1912) was an earlier twelve part Edison production widely considered the first ever American serial. It tells the story of Mary, a foundling who has run away from her foster father and must cope with villains as she battles to get her just inheritance. A friend asks her to turn detective (“I’d like to that that” she responds with pluck) to get evidence to put evil Uncle Craig in jail. What Happened to Mary? was directed by J. Searle Dawley and stars Mary Fuller and Charles Ogle. Each were involved, just two years earlier, with another groundbreaking Edison production, Frankenstein (1910).

There are also entries on the three different silent versions of Alias Jimmy Valentine – 1915 with Robert Warick, 1920 with Bert Lytell, and 1928 with William Haines in the title roles; as well as Arabia: The Equine Detective (1913), a two-reeler from Selig; The Bat (1926), based on the famous play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood; Betsy’s Burglar (1917) in which Constance Talmadge dreams of being a detective; The Cinema Murders (1919) starring Marion Davies; Do Detectives Think? (1927), a comedy starring Laurel & Hardy; Fantomas – both the French and American serials; The Girl Detective (1915) starring Ruth Roland in the first 7 of 17 films; the various versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles; the strange French serials Judex (1916) and Les Vampires (1917); The Illustrious Prince (1919), starring Sessue Hayakawa in the E. Phillips Openheim story; and The Poisoned Light (1921), a Czech film starring the lovely Anny Ondra. She would go on to star in two features films directed by Alfred Hitchcock. And let's not forget the legendary and long lost London After Midnight (1927), a silent mystery film with horror overtones which the authors describes as a tongue-in-cheek parody of detective stories,

There is a lot more here, of course. Rogue Cinema called this work “comprehensive . . . massive . . . an excellent reference title.” It is all that, and more. And, it’s a lot of fun to read. I never knew it existed, but now I want to see the film about that four-legged sleuth, Arabia: The Equine Detective!

Author Ken Wlaschin, who lives in lives in Palm Springs, California is the former director of creative affairs at the American Film Institute. He headed the Institute’s National Film Theater and founded its Los Angeles film festival. He previously directed the British Film Institute’s National Film Theater and London film festival for 14 years.

Besides Silent Mystery and Detective Movies, Wlaschin is also the author of three mysteries stories as well as a handful of other books on music, opera, and film including Gian Carlo Menotti on Screen (McFarland, 1999); Encyclopedia of Opera on Screen (Yale, 2004), Encyclopedia of American Opera (McFarland, 2006) and The Silent Cinema in Song, 1896–1929 (McFarland, 2009). The latter title was reviewed here on examiner.com.

The literature of mystery and detective films is explored further in Thomas Mann’s Horror and Mystery Photoplay Editions and Magazine Fictionizations (McFarland, 2004). Any sincere enthusiast will want to check out this informational book.

For more info: Visit the McFarland page to learn more about this new book. Silent Mystery and Detective Movies: A Comprehensive Filmography by Ken Wlaschin is available on-line or through better independent bookstores.

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