Safety Last (1923) with Live Musical Accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis

Last Sunday, Carlos, a few friends and I went to the Somerville Theatre to watch Harold Lloyd's Safety Last (1923) on the big screen with live music performed by my favorite accompanist Jeff Rapsis. Rapsis has been performing alongside numerous silent films throughout the Summer and Fall for the Somerville Theatre. The last one I went to was Ben Hur (1925) (you can read about that experience here). Jeff's performances are always top-notch and you are guaranteed to have a good time. He honors the silent films by showing them in the best way possible: in their original format if possible, on the big screen in a proper theatre and with live music. It's the way these films should be seen and makes for the most enjoyable experience. Jeff improvises his music paying close attention to what's happening on the screen and how the live audience is reacting to the film. He's a marvel, passionate about what he does and his performances are growing in popularity. I commend the Somerville Theatre for taking a chance and hosting these events.

Before each screening, Jeff Rapsis always plays some music to entertain the audience as they find their seats and wait for the show.

I was so pleasantly surprised as to how many people showed up for this event! Jeff Rapsis always brings in a good crowd but this is the first time I've been to one of his performances where the house was packed. It made me really happy to see this.

I brought friends to this screening. New friend RJ and my film loving friends Kevin and Lisa attended. As I mentioned before, my husband Carlos was there. I can always count on Carlos to support me in pretty much any of my classic film adventures. If he's free, he's willing to go with me no matter what film is showing. I think it's really important to have supportive friends and family who are willing to try something different because they see how much passion you have for it. A big thanks to RJ, Kevin, Lisa and Carlos for attending.

Jeff Rapsis had performed music for other Harold Lloyd films in his series for the Somerville Theatre. The Freshman (1925) screening had been a big hit (I wish I had attended!) and a lot of patrons came back for Safety Last. This screening was introduced by Annette D'Agostino Lloyd (no relation) who is a Harold Lloyd expert and has written a biography on him. She discussed the film and gave people some background on Harold Lloyd and two other stars in the film Bill Strother and Lloyd's wife Mildred Davis. 

Then it was time for the show! It has been quite a few years since I've seen Safety Last (1923) so it almost felt like I was watching it for the first time. And what an experience it was. We all laughed so much. This film is so exquisitely funny, has great comedic timing and I found myself slapping my forehead a few times at some of the hilarious situations the characters get themselves in. For those of you unfamiliar with the film, Harold Lloyd plays a young man who is engaged to a girl. He sets out to the city to make a good living so that he can marry his love. He gets stuck in a dead end job at a department store and uses all of the money to send back his girl trinkets to make her think he's doing better than he is. His buddy (Bill Strother) helps him out of a bind when Lloyd has to pull off a big publicity stunt to get his department store lots of new business. The stunt? Climbing the department store's building, freehand! His buddy was supposed to do it for him but was otherwise engaged in a chase with an angry police man with whom he had a previous encounter. There was no other options for Lloyd except to do it himself. And of course, hilarity ensues.

All of my friends enjoyed it and Kevin even told me it was a new favorite film for him. The biggest surprise for me was Carlos who was laughing so hard throughout the whole film. Lloyd's character works in the department that sells fabric to ladies who want to make their own dresses. A lot of hilarious moments in the film come from Lloyd's interaction with his lady customers. Then it hit me! No wonder Carlos is cracking up. He works at a men's clothing shop and also has to deal with customers and their crazy demands. The film was resonating with him because of that connection. Huzzah! This made me so happy.

Carlos trying to mimic Harold Lloyd climbing up a building. Davis Square, Somerville, MA

The music performed by Jeff Rapsis was spectacular as always. There was one scene in which the Department store is having a sale and Harold Lloyd's counter is overwhelmed by frantic customers. A big lady stands in the back and pushes her way through the crowd. Rapsis gave her special music to both complement her and her actions. I laughed! It was so funny. Rapsis told me later that at one point he even stopped playing music for a few second so that the audience could enjoy their laughter. His music was great. It really complements the film and the live experience. I feel like each performance is customized for us but also to glorify the film. At the end, Rapsis got a huge round of applause and he always takes a moment to honor the film and to thank the audience. If you want to learn more about Rapsis' scoring of Safety Last and his previous experiences with the film and its music, check out his blog post.

Rapsis makes time after each screening to talk to any of the audience members one-on-one. He always recognizes me and gives me a big hug when I see him. So many people attend his performances so I feel special that he remembers who I am. He told me about his upcoming Peter Pan (1924) screening in November and I definitely plan to go to that one. It'll be close to my birthday so perhaps I can work it into a birthday celebration of some sort.

A big thank you to Jeff Rapsis and the Somerville Theatre for hosting such a wonderful event!

If you are interested in attending these screenings, check out the Somerville Theatre website or Jeff Rapsis' blog for upcoming shows. They are special event priced at $15 and are a great time!

Room 1219: The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood

Room 1219
The Life of Fatty Arbuckle, the Mysterious Death of Virginia Rappe, and the Scandal That Changed Hollywood
by Greg Merritt
Hardcover - 440 pages
ISBN 9781613747926
Chicago Review Press
September 2013

Barnes and Noble

IndieBound
Powells

"He is forever the life of the party, forever a defendant, forever a villain or a victim or both, forever remembered – when he is remembered – for his tremendous and devastating fall from grace.” – pg 342, Greg Merritt

It was Labor Day 1921. A lively party was happening in Room 1219 of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, California. Movie stars Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle and Lowell Sherman were there, dressed in their pajamas and sipping on cocktails, along with their cohort Fred Fishback. They booked the two adjacent rooms and invited some ladies to join them in some Prohibition-era naughtiness. Young up-and-coming actress Virginia Rappe was one of those ladies. Everyone was having fun when things took a turn for the worse. At one point, Arbuckle and Rappe had sneaked off to be alone. Rappe suddenly began to write in pain. She was in agony, tearing at her clothes and the fellow party goers had no clue how to help her. She was moved to room 1227 where nurses and doctors treated her and eventually she was moved to a local sanitarium. Rappe died on September 9th, 1921 of a ruptured bladder and all fingers pointed to the larger-than-life movie star Fatty Arbuckle as the person to blame for Rappe's untimely death.

Virginia Rappe

The death of Virginia Rappe and the trials against Fatty Arbuckle that followed was a series of events that forever changed film history. A movie star acting badly was one thing but being linked to someone's death was a whole other story. It was a result of the very public Arbuckle case and some other Hollywood scandals that the Hays Code was inevitably written and eventually enforced. Movies and their stars were now seen as a potential bad influence on movie goers and Hollywood had to reign that in quickly if it wanted to prosper. Arbuckle was never convicted of a crime against Rappe but was forever marred by the scandal. His acting career and his flamboyant Hollywood life was essentially over. He went on to direct films and found himself behind the same camera that he had once found so much success in front of.

Greg Merritt's Room 1219 is probably the best book I've read all year. It's incredibly well-organized, insightful, thoughtful, unbiased, thorough, clear and well-written. I was very interested in the Arbuckle-Rappe scandal but was worried that I would be overwhelmed with boring information about the three trials. My experience was quite the opposite. I was enthralled and found myself not wanting to let the book go.

The key to the book's success is Merritt's organization of the chapters. Each chapter alternates from the details of the scandal to biographical chapters on Arbuckle and one on Virginia Rappe. Flipping back and forth gives you a respite from being overwhelmed with too much detail. And this book has a lot of information to take in so the structure really helps. You go from the minute details of the scandal, the case and the three (yes three!) trials to the humanity of the lives and careers of Arbuckle and Rappe.

Even though there is only one chapter devoted to Virginia Rappe I don't feel like she was neglected at all in this book. There isn't much information on her but Merritt does very well with the sometimes conflicting data he acquired. He pieces together her life in a way that we really get a sense of who she was. He also devotes a chapter to Will H. Hays, the man who developed and enforced the Hays Code which restricted what could be shown in films. The Arbuckle-Rappe scandal is one of the major reasons why the Hays Code was put into effect so it's crucial for readers to understand what implications that scandal had for film history. You also learn quite a lot about Arbuckle as a man and as an actor. Arbuckle was married, yet privately separated from his first wife Minta Durfee, and very popular and well-known at the time of the scandal. It really couldn't have come at a worst time in his career. There is a lot of humanizing of Arbuckle. We learn about his three marriages, his troubled relationship with his father, his penchant for buying expensive automobiles and his friendship and working relationship with Buster Keaton. However, Arbuckle is painted not as a martyr but as a man with all his strengths and weakness on display.

Arbuckle and Keaton - Source

My favorite chapter in the book is entitled Labor Day Revisited. In this chapter, Merritt carefully lays out each and every scenario of what happened that evening on Labor Day 1921. Did Arbuckle really kill Rappe or was he a victim of circumstances? Merritt gives us the scenarios presented by the Defense and the Prosecution and examines the strengths and weaknesses of each argument. And with all the information he has collected, Merritt gives us his own conclusion of what happened. What I love about this books is how unbiased it is. Merritt is working off of his research and lets the information speak for itself. It's in stark contrast to all the articles published in many news outlets during the scandal that wanted to paint a story that tantalized and entertained.

Whenever I write a book review I try to present a books strengths and weaknesses. I really couldn't find any fault with Room 1219. If you are not interested in the time period, the context or the people involved then this book might not be for you. However, if you do have an interest in the Arbuckle-Rappe scandal, film history or 1920s history in general, then you need to run out and buy this book immediately! My only very small complaint is that I wanted to learn more about the Mishawum Manor scandal that Arbuckle was indirectly linked to prior to Rappe's death. Merritt dedicates only a few pages to this. My reason for wanting to know more is that this scandal happened in my very own neighborhood! And I had no clue! Thanks to Merritt I have a new research project on my hands.

Greg Merritt is also the author of Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film Making, Film Production: The Complete Uncensored Guide to Filmmaking and Off the Lot: A History of American Independent Film.

Thank you to Meaghan from Independent Publishers Group for sending me a copy of the book for review!

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) Filming Locations ~ Part 3 Cambridge Cemetery

After finding the filming locations in Downtown Boston and Beacon Hill for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968),  Carlos and I headed to Cambridge, MA to find the cemetery from the film. Finding specific locations in cemeteries is more difficult than it seems. I personally have tried to find the graves of the author Henry James (Cambridge, MA) and the actress Thelma Todd (Lawrence, MA) with no luck and even though I had photo and location references from the Find-A-Grave website.

You would figure that cemeteries would not change much over time, with the exception of new headstones, but that's just not the case. Weather causes damage, teenagers vandalize and knock over headstones, many gravestones get replaced, plants and trees grow or are taken down, etc. Also, unless you are looking for something in a small cemetery, most cemeteries are complex labyrinths of stone, pavement and plants and are difficult to navigate if you don't know what you are looking for or don't have some guidance.

I went into this particular project with an open mind. Carlos didn't. He thought he could find the exact spots right away but I knew better! Our first mistake was thinking that the cemetery scenes in the film were shot at Mt. Auburn Cemetery. We went there and good thing Carlos asked someone at the visitor center because we were told the actual filming location was the adjacent Cambridge Cemetery and not Mt. Auburn. IMDb clearly states Cambridge Cemetery so I'm still confused why I thought it was Mt. Auburn to begin with!

The well-organized bank heist in the films ends with a money drop off at a cemetery just outside of the city. The bags of money are deposited in a trash can and shortly afterwards Thomas Crown arrives to pick up the loot. There are several shots of the Cambridge Cemetery, before you get to the drop off location, and I picked this one above because it stood out. The sculpture is of four cannons topped off with cannon balls and what look like graves of veterans surrounding it. I figured this one would be the easiest to find. It took some time but I found it.

And here it is! Notice how all the headstones are gone? They were replaced by flat markers. See what I mean about cemeteries changing over time? This part of the cemetery was a Civil War memorial and the graves were of fallen soldiers. It was very sobering to be there.

What the Civil War memorial looks like from the other side

Then we started looking for the money drop off location. I knew this one would be tricky and that we would need to compare screen shots from the movie with the areas and specific headstones we came across. I made an album on Picasa of my screen shots and accessed them on my iPhone. It helped a lot to have the screen shots on hand to compare with what we were seeing in real life.

This is the spot we were looking for!

This is the one screen shot I was most grateful for because it helped me find the exact location of the drop off. Compare the three tombstones in the foreground of the shot with the ones below.

I tried to line up the shot as close as I could to the original, even trying to get that pointed headstone in the bottom left of my picture. Notice how different the tombstones look 45 years later. That one on the right seems to be sliding off some sort of pedestal. The trashcan where Steve McQueen picks up the trash would have been towards the back.

Here are some more shots of the area.

If you watch the film closely, you'll spot these two headstones, the Skelton above and Nourse below. Kudos to Carlos who took the time to note the names.

We looked for this headstone in particular but couldn't find it. It was supposedly next to the Skelton and Nourse headstones but when we were there that spot was empty. There wasn't even a marker. I'm wondering if this was a fake headstone added for effect. "Blessed are the Pure in Heart" is what you see when Steve McQueen drives away with the bank loot.

You might think it's pretty strange of me to visit a cemetery looking for filming locations and photographing graves. That's actually pretty normal for me. Ever since I was a teenager, I have been fascinated with cemeteries and I did a lot of photography work at many of them.

I hope you enjoyed my little series on the filming locations of The Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Carlos and I plan to find more locations but we may have to wait a while before we have time to do this kind of research again.