Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church - Dec. 16th 1928

The schedule at the "Movie Church" for December 16th 1928 contained one feature film, Hold 'em Yale (1928), followed by the short films When a Man's a Prince (1926) and Matching Wits (1928).

Hold 'em Yale (1928), like several of the films shown by this church, was produced by the DeMille Pictures Corporation. I wasn't able to find out if it survives or not so I'll have to assume it is a lost film. However, you can buy a framed print from the movie here!
The actor on the left in the above still from Hold 'em Yale is Rod La Rocque. Although he is sitting down in the picture, La Rocque stood a tall 6'3". La Rocque was an American actor who married the famous Hungarian silent film star Vilma Banky in 1927. Unlike a lot of marriages between movie actors, they stayed together until his death in 1969. La Rocque started appearing in films in 1915. He retired in 1941 to become a real estate broker. La Rocque received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.

Another actor in the cast for Hold 'em Yale was Lawrence Grant. Grant was a British actor whose career started in the silent era and continued into the 1940s. He appeared in popular films such as Shanghai Express (1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), Werewolf of London (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941). Grant hosted the 4th Academy Awards in 1931.

When a Man's a Prince (1926) was a short film starring silent film comedian Ben Turpin. The film still exists, but seems to be an incomplete version from a 1947 re-release. Turpin was cross-eyed due to an accident in his youth but managed to turn his affliction into a movie career. He even bought an insurance policy in case his eyes got uncrossed!
Turpin's earliest film credit goes all the way back to 1907. Turpin received what is believed to be the first instance of a comedian being hit with a pie in the face in the 1909 short Mr. Flip. In 1917 Turpin joined Mack Sennett's studio and became hugely popular in the 1920s. Many of his films were parodies of contemporary films and actors. For example, When a Man's a Prince pokes fun at Erich von Stroheim.
Turpin was a devout Catholic so I think he would've been happy that a Catholic Church showed his work.

Above is another picture of cross-eyed Ben Turpin as I couldn't find any pictures related to the final short!
Occasionally I will discover spelling errors in the titles of these schedules and we have another one this week as it should be Matching Wits (1928) not Matching Mits. Matching Wits was a Sport Pictorials production. Sport Pictorials were short documentaries on various sports which the company produced from 1921 thru 1929. This church showed Sport Pictorials shorts quite often. Two other series the Church liked to show a lot were Aesop's Fables and Our Gang, both of which I covered last week.

Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church Nov. - Dec. 1926

To follow up my last Tales from the Archives post, the Church of the Holy Infancy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania would show movies every Sunday for several years in the 20s and early 30s. From now on my weekly Tales from the Archives post will be about the films showed monthly, in chronological order. This week we start with the first listing, which dates from a November 1926 parish monthly calendar.

This article came out directly after the article I posted last week. It had only been one month and the movies were a hit at the parish! It is fascinating to note that the Church tried to avoid showing films that were already screened locally. The article mentions that cinemas would change the films they are showing quite frequently, and certainly more often than movie theaters do today. A lot of films were made during this time period, it is a shame that 80% of them are lost.

The first film, Lover's Island, starred actress Hope Hampton. Hampton was best known for playing flapper roles in the 1920s. Hampton was in the first of the Gold Diggers films in 1923. She was also in the film The Light in the Dark (1922) which starred Lon Chaney. The film was presumed lost for years but a nitrate print was found in 2003. You can see that film here.
Hampton is said to be one of the real life inspirations for the character Susan Alexander Kane, the talentless wife of the Charles Foster Kane in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941).
Although there is an IMDB listing for Sea Scamps I was unable to find much about it other than that it was a short comedy.

The next week the Church showed Ship of Souls (1925) which starred Bert Lytell. According to IMDB, this drama was filmed in Hollywood in a single-strip stereoscopic (3D) process developed by Max O. Miller and released on 20 December 1925. I'm not sure exactly what this means though. 3-D films did exist in the 1920s but were not made often. Was the whole film shown in 3-D or only part? Did the parishioners of this Church get to see it in 3-D?
This website claims that a print of the film exists but gives no other information.
Bert Lytell was a popular actor during the silent film era. Sadly his career pretty much ended with the advent of talkies. Lytell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Unlike Sea Scamps, I was able to find out a lot more about this week's short. My Stars was a short comedy which starred Johnny Arthur, a famous actor of the 1920s and 1930s. Arthur was best known for playing comedic "pansy" characters. After the Hays Code banned these types of roles his characters became masculine wimps. It's kinda funny that the Hays Code was banning gay stereotypes for the wrong reasons. Arthur is probably best known today for appearing in three Our Gang shorts in the 1930s. Like Hope Hampton, Arthur also starred in a Lon Chaney film: The Monster (1925).
Now its time for the really cool trivia: My Stars was written and directed by William Goodrich, a pseudonym of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle! Arbuckle was blacklisted in Hollywood due to a major scandal, but for a while he worked as a writer and director at Goodwill Productions under the William Goodrich name.
My Stars is the only film in this article that I know for sure still exists. In fact you can buy it on DVD here as part of the Forgotten Films of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle collection.

The third and final week in this article's listing featured a film starring Clara Bow, a true Hollywood icon. Bow was known as "The It Girl" and was the biggest sex symbol of her time. Although her popularity waned after the silent era, she is still quite well known today and is by far the biggest name mentioned in this article.
Despite Bow's star power, Two Can Play (1926) is believed to be a lost film. According to IMDB only a small fragment and the trailer survive. It is pretty weird to see an ad for a showing of a film that appears to no longer exist. At least I know exactly where to find this film if I ever get access to a time machine!

Al St. John emerged as a silent film comic in shorts such as the one showed at the Church, Live Cowards. It appears that Live Cowards is a lost film. However, you can see Al St. John in action on YouTube with none other than Fatty Arbuckle AND Buster Keaton! St. John plays the "Holdup Man." Check it out here!

Unlike most silent film actors, St. John would become best known for his talkie career. In the 1930s and 1940s he played the famous character Fuzzy Q. Jones, a recurring comedic sidekick in tons of Western movies. Below is a picture of St. John as "Fuzzy," you should be able to guess how he acquired that name!

Come back on Sunday for the weekly wrap-up! The next installment of Tales from the Archives will be next Thursday (as usual) as we take a look at more films shown by this Church.

Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church

While volunteering at the PAHRC I went through parish monthly calendars (essentially church bulletins) for hundreds of parishes. While I didn't go through each page of these calendars, there was one parish that stood out. Church of the Holy Infancy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania showed "motion pictures" each Sunday in a parish building. Here is the first article announcing the showing of these movies from October, 1926.

                              
                              

The Catholic Church has had an interesting relationship with cinema over the last century so I find it fascinating that this Church was showing movies every week, and on a Sunday no less! Over the course of several years, most issues of this calendar list the movies shown each month. So for my next installments of Tales from the Archives I'll put up these listings of movies and do a little research on those films. What movies were they watching at this Church? Did these films feature any famous actors? Do any of these motion pictures survive or are they lost? Find out starting next Thursday! Sunday is the weekly wrap-up as usual.

A condensed version of my Tales from the Archives series has been posted at the Archives official blog! Check it out here: PAHRC