The Fortune Teller

Lili Damita and Georges Melchior

Last month, actor Paul Walker died before he could complete filming of Fast & Furious 7. Yet Universal already announced that the film would still be released. You may think this is a rather tactless commercial scheme, but the fact is, this is what usually happens when the star of a film dies midway through the production.

Bela Lugosi was replaced by director Ed Wood's chiropractor on his last film Plan 9 from Outer Space when he died.

Sarah in Mothers Of France

In 1923, the most famous international star ever, Sarah Bernhardt, decided to star once again in a feature film. She had initially appeared in primitive films in the teens that proved immensely popular and no doubt helped to promote the then new medium of cinema. Since then, she had moved on from these crude visual adaptations of her stage successes to original script especially designed for the screen and her persona like Mothers of France.

La voyante (The Fortune Teller) would be written by her friend Sacha Guitry (who would also appear in the film) and she insisted it would have to be filmed inside her own apartment, boulevard Pereire, in Paris France. She was then 78 years old and had lost a leg since 1915. She had to act lying or sitting down.

Notice Charlot I, the monkey, also seen in Vidocq.

A new production company "Films Abdoré", was created especially for this film by A. Dornès. American director Leon Abrams would direct the film (some modern sources claim he was helped by Louis Mercanton, French friend of Sarah's but I could find no contemporary record of that and an article by Mercanton written right after her death does not mention his involvement in the film).

Sarah puts on sunglasses between takes to protect her eyes from the strong light projectors

Mary Marquet & Harry Baur

The story was that of Jean Detaille (played by Georges Melchior, who had gained fame thanks to the part of Fandor in the Fantômas movies), who appears too friendly with his mother-in-law in the eyes of his politician father (played by the excellent Harry Baur, who will later be Jean Valjean in Raymond Bernard's recently restored version of Les Misérables). He is thrown out of the house over a misunderstanding when his father confuses an embrace with the simple gesture of turning the pages of the sheet music the lady is reading from while playing the piano. Disoriented, Jean is mugged while walking the streets. Pierrot, a clown, rescues him and offers him shelter. In the same building lives an old fortune-teller, Madame Gainard (Sarah Bernhardt), nicknamed 'the witch'. The mother-in-law, in the hope of finding Jean, consults the psychic who eventually solves everyone's problems: Jean marries his sweetheart Suzanne (Lili Damita, before she became Mrs. Errol Flynn who dubbed her 'Tiger Lily') who also happens to be Madame Gainard's daughter, and his father gets out of some political trouble. All's well that ends well...

Except the film. Unfortunately on March 26, Sarah, who was so famous for her death scenes, actually died of a kidney failure after two days of agony and production stopped before her scenes could be completed. She was given a grandiose funeral at the Madeleine church as she had requested. Her 1915 film, Jeanne Doré, which had never seen a proper release in France until then, was presented April 6, 1923 as "her last film" which was obviously a double lie: she had starred in Mothers of France after that, and the fate of La voyante was still unsettled.

The May 24, 1923 edition of Mon Ciné magazine announces that the owners of the main theaters of Paris attended a screening of the unfinished film at the Artistic Cinema theater, rue de Douai, and it was decided then that the film could be completed using a body double (actress Jeanne Brindeau is announced as "Jane Brindeau" in the June 7 edition of that same magazine) and by using outtakes of Sarah.

Actress Pâquerette, who plays the plump kind-hearted janitor in the film, gave an informative interview to Mon Ciné magazine published July 5, 1923 where she reveals that the actors had to share the screen with a monkey and an elephant. She also mentions someone named Baudet among the cast (listed as "Mr. Baudry" in another article). She remembers coming to Sarah Bernhardt's apartment with two trucks parked outside for electricity, and that the great actress recognized her instantly: they had met once before on a voyage back from the USA 25 years before that. Apparently, she was so vivacious that her on-set nurses had to order her to be silent so she would not tire too much. Yet her eyes who fascinated the director were those of a 20 year-old.

Pierrot the clown is played by a very special personality of the circus world: François Fratellini of the famous Fratellini family, still active today. The man appeared later in Dream of Clowns (Rêve de clowns) along with his two brothers and Georges Melchior. That film was actually released on the very same day as La voyante because of the delay caused by Sarah's death.

Admirers stand in line to pay their last homage in front of Sarah's home (on the left)

That film may be the reason why Fratellini eventually had to drop the part: an article published in the October 2, 1924 edition gives a slightly different synopsis where the clown is replaced by a painter, André Reynaud (played by Jean-François Martial according to the article and by Philippe Richard according to the Cinémathèque Française records), also in love with Suzanne, whose loss of his loved one to Jean is somewhat sweetened by the fact that he gets a prize for his paintings and new professional opportunities open for him. François Fratellini confirmed in a July 18, 1924 interview for Cinemagazine that he gave up the part after the actress' death. It is indeed the "painter" version that was released in the theaters on October 31, 1924.

Lily Damita, Jean-François Martial and Georges Melchior

Jean-François Martial

An article in Mon Ciné magazine published on March 18, 1926 about Jean-François Martial confirms, with a picture, that he is the one who appears in the final version of the film as the good Samaritan who rescues the hero and nurses him in his apartment. You can even spot a canvas turned against the wall on the picture.

Nowadays, the film has vanished from public sight. It may be sleeping in the vault of a Cinematheque or may be lost forever. Let me know if you have some information. Even her apartment has now disappeared, replaced by a rather ugly modern building where a plaque commemorates her.
Yet to this day, the actress remains proverbially famous and if you ever visit Paris' Grévin wax museum, the first statue that will welcome you in the hall is that of Sarah Bernhardt. Who knows? In accordance to Sarah's motto, the film may yet turn up "quand même" ("Nevertheless").
Modern pictures courtesy of Garry.

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That's all for today folks!

Snow White premiere magazine

76 years ago, Walt Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater. Here is a Christmas treat for you: I scanned the theater's magazine "The Playgoer" presenting the program for the film from my personal collection:

 Interestingly here, the program gives foreign titles for the tale. All foreign titles for the film will differ from that: "Schneeweischen" will become "Schneewittchen" in German, "Nevolina" will actually  be "Biancaneve" in Italian, "Blanch Neige" is "Blanche Neige" in French, and "Blanca Nieve" turns to "Blanca Nieves" in Spanish.

 The mystery surrounding the names of the cast is explained here.

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That's all for today folks! Happy holidays everyone!

The Rescuers

After the smash hit of The Jungle Book and the relative success of Robin Hood, the Disney staff worked on a story based on Margery Sharp’s novels about two little mice that Walt Disney had begun supervising before his death.

Floyd Huddleston

These two heroes were part of an international rescue organization and, on their way to a mission, they met a bear who helped them freeing a kidnapped little girl named Penny. The bear, conveniently named Louie, was voiced by Louis Prima who had made such an impression as King Louie in The Jungle Book. Robin Hood composer Floyd Huddleston was asked to come up with half a dozen songs for the new film, in the jazzy spirit of Jungle Book, which was what Prima could do best.

A main title was designed to describe the activity of the organization with successive scenes showing the mice helping others animals or humans with a song to match. Finally, a ballad was planned in the style of “Love” from Robin Hood, with the same singer Nancy Adams, called "The Need to be Loved”.

Unfortunately, Prima’s health took a turn for the worse when he discovered he had a tumor and the talented singer went into a coma in 1975 and died three years later. Instead of shelving the project, the studio decided to alter their concept and remove the bear altogether. The mice were now on their own.

All songs were scrapped except “The Need to be Loved”, the only one to match the new style of the film. Yet the lyrics were changed to “Someone’s Waiting For You”. Shelby Flint, a new singer, was hired and two more similar songs were added for her by Carol Connors and Amy Robbins.

The main title would now be a stylized account of the journey of the bottle containing the message of a little girl in distress, told with a series of paintings with Flint singing a lovely ballad called “The Journey”. A first, for a Disney animated feature.

The Journey

Penny and Louie

The film was named The Rescuers and met with great success. At the time of its video release in 1999, viewers noticed that during the flight sequence, a still of a naked woman was inserted inside the window of a fast moving background. At a time when a freeze frame was impossible, the prankster technicians thought that the joke would never be noticed. The picture was erased digitally on subsequent releases.

Penny and Rufus

In 2012, a digital version of the Huddleston songs was released in the album “The Lost Chords: The Rescuers”. A year later, the rescuers came out on Blu-ray with a brand new HD restoration and the song "Peoplitis" sung by Louis Prima, Sam Butera and the Witnesses was offered as a bonus feature illustrated by production sketches of the bear.

Can any of you tell me what the connection between this film and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is?  Well, the cute little muskrat Ellie May is voiced by Jeannette Nolan, one of the voices of… the infamous Mrs. Bates!

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That’s all for today folks!

The Adventures of Tarzan

Tarzan is one of those characters that has been so popular for so long that it seems almost real. And yet, when the film Tarzan of the Apes was released in 1918, Edgar Rice Burroughs had almost just invented him. The character appeared in the novel of the same name published in a magazine in 1912 and as a book in 1914.

Gordon Griffith as young Tarzan

Producers apparently wanted Alice Guy, the first woman director, to do the film, but she turned it down. Morgan City, Louisiana, was used to stand in for the jungle because of the swamps and the vegetation. Also, the Old South would provide many black extras.

Technically, the first Tarzan to appear on screen is Gordon Griffith, who plays the hero as a boy and appears (stark naked) in the first part of the picture.

Stellan Windrow

The actor chosen to play the part of the adult Tarzan was Stellan Windrow, an unknown Swedish-born athlete who was ideal for the physically demanding part. Star power would be provided by his Jane, actress Enid Markey, who had been in movies since 1911. However, when the USA entered WWI, Windrow was drafted and had to leave the production before it was finished, after five weeks of shooting.

Elmo Lincoln

Elmo Lincoln stepped in the part. At the time, he was becoming more and more popular with audiences, playing bigger and bigger parts opposite the stars of the 1910s like Constance Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks, Dorothy Gish, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron...

However, Lincoln was nowhere near as muscular as Windrow, so the latter's performance was kept in the film as long as his face was hidden from view when Tarzan did the tree swinging.

Although the film was said to be a 3 hour three parter, the longest available copy is now 73 minutes (available on DVD). However, it was such a success that a second production was soon underway, adapting the second part of the novel. It was called The Romance of Tarzan and the two stars reunited for it. Sadly, no copy has turned up so far.

Louise Lorraine as Jane

After a 1920 serial called The Son of Tarzan and a feature called The Revenge of Tarzan both using different actors for the leads, Elmo Lincoln returned in 1921 one final time for his own unusually expensive 15 episode serial called The Adventures of Tarzan. By then, Enid Markey had declared that she was "tired of making faces" and wanted to act, so she left the silver screen for a successful career in the theater. For this production, 16 year-old Louise Lorraine replaced her in the role. She had started her career the year before in another serial starring Elmo Lincoln called Elmo The Fearless and she went on to become a serial queen, much like Pearl White.

Apparently, filming was plagued with huge problems: in mid-July, during a jungle fire scene, the flames spread through the studio,

setting three lions free among the crew, burning the set, injuring several actors and destroying three cameras. Elmo Lincoln also claimed that a lion fight scene went wrong went the lion decided to actually attack him and he had to stab it to death on camera. However, the insurance company on this film, unlike the first, would not put the lead actor in jeopardy and hired someone for the stunts (It is unclear if this anecdote relates to this film or the previous ones). As a matter of fact, Elmo Lincoln's stunt double, Frank Merrill, who also has a part as an Arab guard in the film, went on to star as Tarzan in two of his own movies.

The film was re-released in a shortened version with added sound effects in 1928. This montage was preserved and is available on DVD, but the original serial edit has only been restored as a ten episode version. Some scenes are missing like the scene where Rokoff tattoos the plan of a treasure chamber onto Jane's shoulder with his belt buckle. This still proves that the scene was indeed shot, it is now unfortunately replaced by a title card.


Elmo Lincoln continued his career mainly in bit parts, sometimes in Tarzan movies where the lead role was played by Johnny Weissmuller or Lex Barker. As for Louise Lorraine, although she had made a rather successful transition to sound films, she decided that she would withdraw from the screen after her marriage.

The film is available on DVD in the ten episode version.
For further reading, I suggest this excellent site (with another page about the 1921 serial) and the book of Elmo Lincoln's daughter.
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That's all for today, folks!

Fantasia French booklet

Here is a nice little companion to the previously published French Fantasia program. This RKO booklet is from the 1958 reissue. Click on the pictures for full quality.

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