Last week, it was announced that digitally preserved copies of 10 previously lost American silent films were presented to the Library of Congress by the Russian film archive Gosfilmofond.
The 10 films constitute what’s being described as the first installment of what promises to be an ongoing repatriation of material. According to the Library of Congress press release, preliminary research conducted by the staff of the Librarys’ Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation indicates that up to 200 movies produced by U.S. movie studios during the silent and sound eras may survive only in the Gosfilmofond archive.
Like many other American films during the silent and early sound era, these once “lost” films were distributed to other countries - including Russia. Shown in Russian movie houses, the films were given Russian-language intertitles.
The story has a local angle. One of the films presented to the LOC is Valley of the Giants (Famous Players, 1919), a popular outdoor adventure starring leading man Wallace Reid. Much of the film was shot in northern California - including scenes in and around the towns of Arcata, Eureka, and Korbel. The film is based on a book by the popular San Francisco-born author Peter B. Kyne.
(Many of Kyne’s works were adapted into screenplays starting in the silent era, particularly his first novel, The Three Godfathers; it was published in 1913 and proved to be a huge success, with at least 7 filmed adaptations appearing in later years.)
Valley of the Giants stars Reid, Grace Darmond, Charles Ogle (the original Frankenstein), Alice Terry, and Noah Beery. The film was directed by James Cruze, a now under-appreciated director whose silent and talkie credits include The Covered Wagon (1923), Merton of the Movies (1924), Pony Express (1925), The City Gone Wild (1927), The Great Gabbo (1929), and the original Gangs of New York (1938). By 1927, Cruze was considered one of the most popular and highest-salaried directors in the business.
Valley of the Giants tells the story of a young man (Reid), who upon his return from college, learns that his father is in danger of losing the family’s land to an unscrupulous lumberman. The film is highlighted with a daring scene played out on a runaway logging train.
Reid was one of the most popular film actors of the late teens and early 1920s. He teamed up with Cruze for several pictures in 1919, including Valley of the Giants. It was well reviewed in its day. When it showed in Oakland at the Franklin Theater, the film was described as one of Reid’s best in the pages of the Oakland Tribune.
Valley of the Giants was remade in 1927 and 1938, but it is this first version that provides an important footnote in film history. While on location in southern Oregon and northern California, Reid was injured doing stunt work. He reportedly was given morphine injections for the pain by a studio physician, in order that the actor might keep working; the injections eventually led to his addiction and untimely death in 1923.
At the time, some wondered how an otherwise wholesome looking actor could have died of what was reported to be a drug overdose. Shortly after word, Reid's widow, Dorothy Davenport (billed as Mrs. Wallace Reid), co-produced and appeared in Human Wreckage (1923), a film made to publicize the dangers of drug addiction.
With renewed calls to clean up the movie industry, Reid's passing proved a turning point in the public's perception of Hollywood.
For more info: Read the complete Library of Congress press release on this important donation at http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2010/10-239.html. David Menefee’s biography of Wallace Reid is forthcoming from BearManor Media.
Thomas Gladysz is an arts journalist and author. Recently, he wrote the introduction to the new “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Böhme's classic book, The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press). Gladysz will speak about this new book at the San Francisco Public Library on November 14.
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