Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church Oct. 1928

This week's parish monthly calendar is from September 1928 and shows us the films scheduled to be shown in October of that year.

The first film of the double feature on October 7th was a comedy called The Missing Link (1927). There is a typo in this listing as the film starred Syd Chaplin (not "Chapman"), a half-brother of the much more famous actor Charlie Chaplin. I wrote about Syd Chaplin in an earlier entry as the Church saw another film starring Syd Chaplin called The Better 'Ole (1926). According to IMDB this film had music and sound effects through Vitaphone discs and was the fourth ever feature length Vitaphone production. The Church had shown a couple other Vitaphone films so I am guessing that they did have the capability to make use of the added music and sound effects that went along with these otherwise silent films. It appears that The Missing Link is a lost film.
I could not find any information about the second film, Football Sense. The listing does not explicitly say that this is a double feature so perhaps Football Sense was a short. That said, I have had pretty good luck finding information on shorts so far and still couldn't turn up anything so it looks like this will remain a mystery.

The short A Battling Duet (1928) was a silent cartoon from the Aesop's Fables series. The Church had shown several shorts from this animated series before and they were quite popular in the 1920s. The listing calls it "The Battling Duet" but the correct title is A Battling Duet. This typo is not as big as "Syd Chapman" but whoever wrote this schedule was getting sloppy!

The Yankee Clipper (1927), a high seas adventure about the naval rivalry between America and England in the mid-1800s, was the first film shown on October 14. The Yankee Clipper still exists and has even been released on DVD. The film stars William Boyd who was in several films shown by this Church. Boyd would later become famous for playing the title role in the Hopalong Cassidy film series. The Yankee Clipper was directed by Rupert Julian, who also directed the 1925 Lon Chaney classic, The Phantom of the Opera. The Yankee Clipper was produced by Cecil B. DeMille and featured his mistress, Julia Faye (who I mentioned last week when discussing The Main Event). The female lead in The Yankee Clipper was played by actress Elinor Fair, the real life wife of William Boyd. Boyd proposed to Fair while filming The Volga Boatman in 1926. His character was supposed to propose to Fair's character so Boyd decided to use the moment to actually propose to Elinor! Luckily Fair accepted both in character and for real. Since this was a silent film the scene of Boyd really proposing was kept in the movie! Fair and Boyd are pictured together in the above screenshot from The Yankee Clipper.

Like Football Sense, I was unable to find any information on the second film, "An Oriental Album." I'm guessing it was a short and a travel feature like I assumed with "Holland" from last week.
The Flying Age (1928) was another Aesop's Fables short cartoon.

The weekly wrap-up will be Sunday as usual. On Tuesday 11/22 I will make a special post on Fall TV shows I have been watching. There will not be a Tales from the Archives post next Thursday due to Thanksgiving but it will be back on schedule for Thursday 11/29.

Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church Sept. 1928 Part 2

This parish monthly calendar dates from September 1928. The listing also includes movies to be shown in October which I will get to in next week's installment of Tales from the Archives: The Movie Church.

The listing for September 23rd was also in the parish monthly calendar for August and I covered it in my last Tales from the Archives post. This time the title of the comedy is shown in the schedule, but I couldn't find any information on a short called Holland, which I'm guessing was a travel feature.

The first movie of the September 30th double feature was called The Sailor's Sweetheart, but I failed to turn up anything about this film either. The second film this week was The Main Event (1927) which was a DeMille Pictures Corporation production. This movie starred Vera Reynolds who was in a couple of other movies shown by this Church: Steel Preferred (1925) and Silence (1926). Reynolds frequently worked with famous director Cecil B. DeMille. In 1927 Reynolds was involved in a controversial incident when police discovered her unconscious on the floor of her home. At first it was believed she was poisoned but the doctor was unable to find any trace of poison in her body. Reynolds survived and denied she had tried to kill herself and it is assumed she became ill from acute indigestion or food poisoning. Her career continued into the early 1930s and she died in 1962. Vera Reynolds is pictured below on the right.

Actress Julia Faye was also in the film and is on the left in the above picture. Faye was in more films directed by Cecil B. DeMille than any other actress, including all of his films from 1939 on. Faye was DeMille's mistress and he kept her employed with roles in his films even after their relationship was over. Faye has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Main Event also features famous stage and film actor Rudolph Schildkraut (1862 - 1930). Schildkraut acted in the theater and motion pictures in Germany until moving to America in 1920. Schildkraut's best known film appearance was as the high priest Caiaphas in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). His son, Joseph Schildkraut, also became an actor and appeared with his father in The King of Kings as Judas Iscariot.

The short for this week was Fundamental Football, a documentary produced by the Sports Pictorials company.
Next Thursday we'll look at the films shown by this Church in October of 1928.