The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Hollywood's Forgotton Film Pioneer

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

From the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., author Mark Kearney tells Steve Paikin about his book, "Al Christie: Hollywood's Forgotten Film Pioneer."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. If you're a movie history buff, you'll recognize the names Max Sennett and Hal Roach as being

among the greatest of the Hollywood producer-director pioneers from a century ago. Mark Kearney has just written a book suggesting we ought to put a third name on that list, Al Christie. And so we've come to the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, to find out why. Mark, great to meet you. Good to meet you, Steve. First question is, what are we doing here in the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario? Well, we're here because the subject of my book, Al Christie, started his show business career here.

He was a stagehand at the Grand Theatre. What year? Well, the theatre, this version of the theatre was built in 1901. He might have actually worked at the older one, which burned down a year before that. So we're talking early 1900s for sure. Your book is called Hollywood's Forgotten Film Pioneer. Al Christie, how did you come upon his story in the first place? Well you know it was almost like a random thing.

I was browsing the shelves of one of the libraries at Western University where I teach and I was looking through a bunch of books about Hollywood film history and I came across a guy By the name of John S Robertson who was a silent film director from London, Ontario And I'd never heard of this guy and I thought well, that's interesting I should look him up and do some more research on him looking him up led me to Al Christy who also is from London Ontario and Christy seemed to have more about more written about him than Robertson So I just sort of shifted the focus from him to Christie.

Well, in fact, I guess about 100 years ago, when they talked about the big producer-directors in Hollywood at the time, there was Max Sennett, there was Hal Roach, and there was Al Christie. Now, the first two guys among film buffs are pretty well remembered. How come not your guy? That's a good question, and I still ask myself that question. How come not your guy? That's a good question, and I still ask myself that question.

Christie was as popular as they were. His films were as popular as they were in the sort of 1920s. Sennett especially made slapstick films. He was the pie in the face, the, you know, Keystone Cops, Car Chases, etc. Christie was more of a situational comedy director. His movies, his short movies tended to have more plot. They had stories. There was some slapstick, but not too much.

And I think that in some ways, slapstick lives on. You can still have slapstick today and people laugh at it. If you have a situation comedy from more than 100 years ago, some of the things are relatable, but not everything. So I think that's one thing. I've been told by silent film historians that Sennett was a great self-promoter, probably the best in the business at the time. So that might be a reason.

The other thing is that Sennett worked with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Norman, Fatty Arbuckle, people that sort of went on to become really, really famous in the silent film era. Hal Roach worked with Laurel and Hardy. They had big names attached to them. Christie, his comedians, his actors, for whatever reason, were popular at the time but didn't really live on. What do you mean? Harrison Ford was one of them. Harrison Ford. There is an actor by the name of Harrison Ford. Maybe not the one we know today. Not the one we

know today, yeah. But there was Harold Lloyd back then. There was Buster Keaton back then. The names that you mentioned. Did Christie get to work with any of them? Christie worked with Keaton in the 30s when they started making sound films. Christie used Keaton in a couple of films. Keaton's career at that point was sort of on the down slide. And so I think Keaton was happy to get any kind of work he was going to get.

And Christie was, at that point, had moved to New York and was making short comedy films there. And he did a couple with Keaton. I wonder if that's another reason why Christie's name is not as big as those other guys, is that those other guys tended to make feature movies and Christie's movies were shorter. Yeah. Did that matter? I think it did because feature films sort of took over in the 1920s. And Christie was a real believer in the short films.

And his interviews, his promotional materials, whenever he had the chance, he would talk about, it's the short films that people come to see. That's why they're really here in the theater. They don't really want to see the long features. And so he kept making them. He did make his own features. They did do well, some of them. But he was definitely a believer in the short film. And the other ones that you mentioned, people like Lloyd and Keaton and Chaplin also starred in their movies, right?

So they're not only directors, they're actors, whereas Christie, he's just the producer-director. He's not on camera. Did I read this right in your book that he set up, Al Christie, the first ever Hollywood studio at Sunset and Gower? Sunset and Gower. So this is the reason one of the main reasons I wrote about Christie. He's the first director producer in Hollywood ever. He goes out with his company in 1911 they show up they don't know anything about Hollywood but there's a tavern there that's for rent and he thinks this is a great place, it's at Sunset and Gower, and the next day

they're shooting movies. So I always like to say that all of Hollywood movie history begins with Al Christie. Every Canadian that's ever gone to Hollywood has a direct line to Al Christie, he's the first guy there. He makes films there for about a year, they merge with Universal Pictures, which is still around today. He works for them for about three or four years, and then he goes back to the Sunset and Gower site and sets up his own studio in 1916.

And what was it called? Christie Comedies, Christie Studios. Is there anything there today to acknowledge that history? There is not. There used to be. I was there about 20 years ago and the building that was there on that site was the CBS headquarters and they had a plaque out front saying this is the site

where Al Christie blah blah blah set up a studio on this site. CBS Studios since moved away from that that corner and I was there about three years ago doing research for the book, and I went to look for the plaque. It's not there. I think it's in there. Wherever they moved, they took the plaque with them. Also fair to say he made the first ever Hollywood comedy movie? Yes, absolutely.

He would have been the producer on the very first Hollywood movie, which would have been a drama probably, but yes, the very first comedy film would have been his. He has a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California. He does. He's had one since 1960. He died in 1951. So his star has been there quite a long time. And I have gone out of my way to let the people at Canada's Walk of Fame know that, hey, isn't it interesting that this guy who's Canadian has a star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood,

but we don't have one for him in Toronto. So I've written to them and I've suggested that he get one. Anything in London, Ontario, his hometown? Not that I'm aware of. And I think there's something, again, you could have a plaque or something, maybe here at the Grand in front of the Grand because he worked here, just to acknowledge that, you know, here's the guy who basically started the Hollywood film industry, and he's from London. Well, you can't see it here, but apparently backstage, he's got his name on the wall here.

Apparently, yes, which is something somebody told me before, and I thought, really, that's interesting. And so, yes, he's got his name in big letters. I don't know how it got there. I'm not sure anybody knows how it got there. But it's great that they're acknowledging that he has some connection to the Grant. Okay, so Mark, take us back. How did this guy get into the movie business to begin with? So he grew up not too far from here, a few blocks from where the Grant Theatre is. He probably would have been a teenager. He was interested in comedy actors, vaudeville acts.

So anybody coming through on the vaudeville circuit would have come through London, done their show, and moved on to the next city. He, for some reason, felt that he could help their comedy. He would watch their act, and I don't know if he took notes or whatever, but he would find a way to go and talk to these people and say, you know what, I've got an idea for your show. You should try it out. And some of them did and apparently got laughs.

So apparently he got this reputation. There's this young kid in London, Ontario. If you want help with your show, go see him and he'll see what he can do. He wasn't doing that full time. And I don't think he was working at the Grand full time, but he did work as a stagehand here. He probably would have been in his early 20s or late teens early 20s and he was apparently had a knack for comedy and was not shy about making suggestions and when he finally got his movie studio up and

going how many movies a year did he make well he made more than a thousand films in his career which is about a 30-year career so he was making I probably in the early days as many as 50 a year got it and then 30 maybe 25 a year these again were mostly short films 10 minutes 22 minutes something like that but still even for the silent film area a thousand films in a career is just to me is mind-blowing incredibly prolific absolutely are they viewable today anywhere some are there's some on YouTube. Not a lot, but I've seen some. Some of them, some of the silent ones, some of the talking ones that he made.

There's a museum outside of San Francisco called the Niles Silent Film Museum. They have about 30 or so of his films there, and they did a retrospective on him about three years ago. There's some in the Library of Congress in the U.S. There are a lot of private collectors apparently that would have some. Eastman House in Rochester, New York has some of his films. And I'm told, I don't really know the extent of it,

there are various archives probably in Eastern Europe that have some of his films. Czech Republic, Poland for some reason. Why? I don't know. I mean his films were shown all over the world because silent films were kind of a universal language. He went to Europe a lot to promote his films when he was running his studio. For whatever reason he had popularity in Europe as well. Frank Capra is a name that many of our viewers and listeners will know, became a legend in Hollywood, and they worked together.

What was that experience like? Yeah, so Capra, this is a very typical Christie thing, which is people on their way up or on their way down, he worked with. So Frank Capra came to work at Christie Studios when Capra was a nobody. He was a would-be screenwriter. He wrote about it a little bit in his autobiography about he would just do any job he could with the Christie's. He tried to write some scenes, hoped that they would let him direct. I don't think he ever got a chance, but he was probably there for about a year or so learning the

film business. And then off he went to work with other studios and then of course he became one of the most important directors in Hollywood in the 30s and 40s. He was always experiencing financial troubles. How come? Making movies in in Hollywood in the 1910s and 20s was not an easy business. There were a lot of little studios, there were bigger ones that were getting bigger, who had distribution deals set up etc. And Christie, you know, he went on his own and so he had to do all his There were bigger ones that were getting bigger, who had distribution deals set up, et cetera. And Christie, you know, he went on his own. And so he had to do all of his distribution deals himself as well.

He didn't have a lot of money, but he had loyal actors and he seemed to have popular films. So he was generating income. But in the late teens, there was, you know, World War I was going on. So that was hurting attendance. Spanish flu came in, that really hurt attendance at movie theaters. So he, like others, had to struggle.

Around 1920 or so, he got a distribution deal with a company called Educational Pictures, which was based in New York, and that pretty much saved, I think, saved the studio. They had a good deal. Educational had a really wide network. And so in the 20s, the Christie's actually thrived and they made a lot of money. And there was a story, I think, in the local London Free Press at the time that noted that,

you know, Al Christie has just become a millionaire or something like that, which is like, ooh, a big deal. So he and his brother, Charles, who handled the money money outside of the business they did very well in the 20s and then they of course the depression came along and that hurt them Christie seemed to like making movies about people in curious or odd but always funny circumstances and there was a movie you sent me I guess what is 15 16 minutes long something like that it's Wife. Do you want to just give us the plot of that? Yeah, so Know Thy Wife is from 1918.

It's a short comedy. It's a very typical Christie film. It's a story about a guy in college and his wife, who is also in college, and they are secretly married. And his family back home wants him to come home and marry the girl next door. And so he doesn't know what to do. And the parents don't know that he's already married.

They have no idea that he's married. So instead of just telling them they're married, he and his real roommate decide that the wife is going to dress up like a guy and be Steve, Steve the roommate from college. So they go back to meet the parents under this pretense. And of course the parents put them up in the same bedroom because it's just two guys and they're college roommates, et cetera. And so that's how the sort of the plot goes from there

is this idea of how do we, when do we reveal that in fact they actually are married, sorry girl next door, you're not the one that he's going to marry. And Steve is actually a woman. Steve is a woman. And so this is a very common thing in Christie movies. His actors and actresses, the actresses will dress up as men, pretend to be men as part of the plot. The actors will dress up as women as part of the plot as a way to sort of advance the story, some kind of mistaken identity, etc. The other thing that's I think also interesting, and particularly in Know That Wife, is that the woman, Dorothy Devore, is the actress, she's in college, and that's probably a pretty unusual thing from that era. And he has several

films where women are either in college or they're working. They're doing some kind of thing. They're not just a housewife. And that's very typical, again, of Christie. Well, I'm guessing there'd be something else in that movie that you wouldn't have seen every day if you went to the movies 100 years ago. And that is, of course, with the mistaken identity happening, the husband and wife are sneaking in a kiss, of course, behind the scenes. And the mom walks in and catches what she thinks are two guys kissing. Right, exactly. and wife are sneaking in a kiss of course behind the scenes and the mum walks in and catches what she thinks are two guys kissing right exactly and what

does it say and she said the title says you boys sure like each other or something like that right this is a really interesting thing from a hundred and whatever years ago right and that I think, is an interesting plot point because we get, at least for a modern-day audience, that's a pretty good laugh. How did audiences, were they shocked back then? Or they just know, oh, well, of course, we're in on the joke. We know that she's a female, not a guy,

but interesting that they would have a scene like that, for sure. He did have a lot of adversity in his life personally as well. His first marriage breaks up, his 10 year old daughter is killed. Tell that story, what happened there? His 10 year old daughter Lenora, who they called Shirley, was in a riding accident, a horse riding accident in 1922. Apparently she was riding with somebody, she turned to talk to somebody or something happened and she was thrown from the horse. She didn't die immediately, but she died probably within a day.

And she was only 10 years old. The thing that I could not find anything about is what was his reaction to this? What was his life like after that? There were stories in the papers in Los Angeles about it. So he was well known enough. From what I gather, he didn't stop working. He was churning out films in that time frame. I think she died in the summer, and that summer,

he was making as many films as he always did. One of his actresses told a silent film historian many years later that Al was never the same after that. But that's about as far as I got with it. She's buried in the same cemetery as he is in Hollywood. He did remarry a few years later, and that's really all we know about Shirley and her death. He had a quite amazing house, Waverly. Tell us what that looked like.

Yeah, the Waverly Mansion is in Beverly Hills and he and his brother Charles built that in the mid-1920s. So again, they're doing very well and it's a big Tudor style house, which is unusual for Beverly Hills at that time. Five car garage, nobody had a five car garage back then, and three wings. So he lived there in one wing, his brother Charles lived in the other, and their mother Mary, who had moved out to Hollywood, and their half-sister Anne lived in the other wing. It was called the Waverly. As far as I know, the reason was that Charles Christie was married to a woman named Edna Duran from here, from the London area. Edna Duran's father, George Duran, was a famous architect in this area,

and he built a house here in London in the 19th century called the Waverly Mansion for one of the rich families here. So it's my guess is that this is sort of Charles's nod to his father-in-law that they call the mansion in Beverly Hills the Waverly. I see in the book you say Cole Porter wrote Night and Day in that home. Apparently Cole Porter wrote the song Night and Day in the Waverly Mansion probably around 1930. He must have been just visiting there or a guest or whatever. The Christie's as I said went bankrupt in the Depression a few years later. They sold the house. The house

was sold several times over the years. Debbie Reynolds the actress got married there, one of her marriages in 1960, And the latest purchase of that house was in the early 1990s by Phil Collins, the rock star, and his then-wife, Jill. And Jill still lives in the house. She does. She does. And I got to go visit with Jill. I did an interview with her, not in the house. But at the end of the interview, she said, you know what, I think you should come to the house tomorrow.

And so the next day, I pull up, come to the house tomorrow. And so the next day I pull up and they open the gates and there's Jill and she's walking around the grounds and she's telling me about the Waverly and there's an object that's on the outside of the house that's apparently depicts an architect, which makes me again think that this was a nod to Charles's father-in-law. And after about 15 or 20 minutes of that, she said, you know, I think we should go inside the house. But she can't take any pictures. How cool was that for you? It was very cool. It was very cool because if you're driving along where the house is,

you can't see it from the street. There's too much vegetation and there's a big fence, et cetera. So I thought, wow, I'm so close. It would be so nice to get in and see the house. And then to get in and see the inside of the house was great as well. That was very nice of her. Very nice of her. She was very, very helpful.

Charlie's Aunt. That's one of his pictures, but that's a feature-length film, right? Which he didn't do many of, but that was, was that his best one, do you think? I think it's the one that critics tend to focus on when they, when anybody says anything about Hal Christie, which isn't much until this book. They usually mention Charlie's Aunt as one of his more successful films. When anybody says anything about Al Christie, which isn't much until this book, they usually mention Charlie's Aunt as one of his more successful films. It's a feature-length film.

It stars Sid Chaplin, who is Charlie Chaplin's brother. Al Christie bought the rights. It was a stage play that had been around for about 20 or so years, at least. Very popular. He bought the film rights. He hired Chaplin to be the star of it. He didn't direct it, but he produced it, and as a producer he probably would have had a lot of say on just how the film turned out. I'm told by one film historian that every year in Hollywood in those days the film distributors

would have a list of what they thought were the best, most successful films at their theaters across North America. And Charlie's Aunt would have been in the top three. And it was the same year that Charlie Chaplin made The Gold Rush. And The Gold Rush was behind Charlie's Aunt. How about that? So how about that? I mean, that's a pretty successful film. Now, 1929, the jazz singer comes out, the first talkie ever with Al Jolson. How did that change Al Christie's business? So when they made the Jazz Singer, 1927, the Jazz Singer, there had been a few talking films

beforehand but this was one that really popularized talking films and I think the lot of people who might know anything about Hollywood history know that that's really a you you know, a marking point. That silent films and then there's sound films. It didn't happen overnight because a lot of the theaters weren't even wired for sound to show it. And so a lot of movie makers, including Christie, would have made silent and sound versions for the next couple of years till about 1929. Christie embraced it. He was on Talking Films right away. I don't know really why, except that he just thought this was an excellent idea.

He started making sound films almost right away. He and his brother Charles bought a studio, the Metropolitan Studios in the Hollywood area, and leased it out to other filmmakers, including Harold Lloyd, to make sound pictures there. And so that was it. Christie switched over to sound pictures and made nothing but sound pictures after that. There's a movie that he did called The Birth of a Baby, which, as the title suggests, has the birth of a baby in the movie. Was that controversial in the time?

Absolutely controversial. And it's interesting. I've never seen it, but my understanding is they found some woman who was willing to be filmed. It's kind of a documentary of her giving birth to a baby. And there was a lot of outrage about this. She came out in favor of it and said, we must show this film. This is absolutely necessary so that people know how babies are born or whatever. Al Christie didn't seem to catch much of the controversy. It was more about the film itself. It did quite well. Obviously, the fact that it was banned probably helped business, as it often does. Years later, about 1947, I think it was reissued, and millions of people saw it. And according to at least one story in the Los Angeles Times, there were people

keeling over, fainting when they saw this, probably mostly guys who just never knew what to do. And so it was a very popular film. When he died in 1951, did the media make much of a fuss about it? It got a fair amount of attention. He was a well-known guy in Hollywood. He hadn't been making movies then for about ten years at that point. But from what I could see of the various news clips, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, any of the big newspapers made mention of him,

you know, sort of Hollywood pioneer dies. Some of them had his age wrong. Some of them had his work when he started in Hollywood wrong. But nevertheless, he did get a lot of coverage, and it was obviously somebody who had touched a lot of people by the time he did die. Having spent so much time now trying to tell his story, do you think he does belong up there on the Pantheon

with Max Sennett and Hal Roach? I absolutely do. You know, it's not to say, oh, I've written about Al Christie, therefore he's the best, whatever. No, I just think that he and Sennett and Roach were considered at the time in the 20s, sort of that group of three silent film directors who were kind of a notch below Chaplin and Keaton, etc. They all did short films and long films.

Both Sennett and Roach eventually got honorary Oscars. Christie died too soon and didn't get his. I think he should have, based on his career. And I think that if you watch his films, if you can watch some of his films, and you watch Roach films and you watch Sennett films, I think you're going to have good films and you're going to have some films that aren't so good. But that's just the way the movie business is.

Have you figured out why the lack of prominence for him over the years bothered you so much that you decided you needed to write a book about it? You know, as a journalist, you know, you're always looking for good stories. And to me, this was a story of, when I came across it, this is the first guy that ever made a movie in Hollywood. I thought, well, that alone seems enough to sort of just write something about. And then, oh, but by the way, he had a 30-year career in movies. He made 1,000 films.

Some of them were very critically acclaimed, et cetera, et cetera. Why is he not getting... Why is his story not being told? And of course, being here in London, being Canadian, why is he not getting, why is this story not being told? And of course being here in London, being Canadian, again, it's just like this story needs to be told because he's a very prominent part of Hollywood history and was acknowledged as much.

In the late 20s there were several stories of him looking back when they first came to Hollywood and reminiscing. So he was known as a sort of Hollywood pioneer. Why hasn't there been a book about this guy? I thought, well, if there's a book to be written, then I should do it, because I'm here and I'm in London, and I'm interested in silent movies, and I'm a writer. And so it was just everything coming together, and I hope that this will help sort of right the wrong of him being overlooked.

Well, I'm a big movie fan, and I can tell you, I was very happy. I knew nothing about him and was very happy to know about him, having now read the book. So great job. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate that. Now, I've got one last kind of odd question. What is it like to have the name Mark Carney at this day and age in our country's history? Well, nobody's ever mistook me for the other Mark Carney,

who spells his name differently. He's C-A-R-N-E-Y. But, you know, you get, obviously, you get the odd joke about, oh, yeah, I saw you on the TV last night. No, it's not me. You know it's not me. Do you plan to run for the liberal leadership? I don't have any plans at this moment, Steve.

At this moment? I have no plans. So it's a possibility? No, it's not a possibility. You're not shutting the door? I am shutting the door. I will not do that. Okay, okay.

Well, we can channel the spirit of Al Christie to come shoot it if you like. Yes, yes. If and when you make the announcement. That would be great. But we'll make it silent so that nobody can hear what I'm saying. Very good. Mark, this was a pleasure. Thanks for doing it.

Thank you, Steve. The Agenda with Steve Paikin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you. Thank you for supporting TVO's journalism.