Zanesville, Ohio sits at the intersection of the Licking and Muskingum rivers and
Zane’s Trace, a trail blazed by Ebenezer Zane to cross southern Ohio from Wheeling, WV to Maysville, KY. One famous native son is Zane Grey, the writer of westerns. Three Union Civil War generals (Buckingham, Gilbert, and Granger) also lived here. From 1810 to 1812, Zanesville served as the state capital of Ohio. Today it’s a town with a population of 25,000; it straddles interstate 70, and it’s known mostly for a Y-shaped bridge that spans the rivers. Flyer Amelia Earhart supposedly remarked that “Zanesville is the easiest-recognized city from the air because of the Y-Bridge.” It’s also home to a branch of Ohio University, and to Dr. Lisa Stein. Dr. Stein has studied the life and work of Charlie Chaplin for years, and she's the motivating force behind this conference. The "first international Charlie Chaplin conference in America" is being held now to commemorate Chaplin's first "official" visit to America in the autumn of 1910.
Thursday, October 28
This is an academic conference, so most of the people attending are academics. For others, silent films are their lifework or passion. There are people here from New York, Texas, Belgium, Ireland, Japan, France, and other places, so the conference has attracted a good bit of attention even though attendance is small (perhaps 50 people). I’m one of the few who’s an outsider, and a local. I’m interested in silent film, and in Chaplin because of the part he played in silent film, but I’m not that knowledgeable. It’s not something I grew up with. I'm building a DVD collection that includes Chaplin, and I’ve seen his early shorts, but I’ve never seen his feature films except for random clips here and there. So I’m here to learn what I can, and to support the idea of this conference, held in a small town in flyover country far from the big cities where it’s probably a lot easier to see and learn about silent films.
Thursday starts with a showing of the Immigrant, with a score composed and performed live by a local musician who brought his organ for use during the conference. That segues into a presentation by Frank Scheide on Chaplin’s probable first short trip to America in 1906, which Scheide documents by following the fortunes of a quick-to-fail show company that toured the Midwest. Then Hooman Mehran describes Chaplin’s “official first appearance in America” in 1910 by documenting the New York theaters that the Karno company played in. I don't really care when Chaplin played the Bijou, the Grande, or the Majestic, but the research into old newspapers and playbills does interest me.
After a break, we split into separate sessions and one group continues the immigration theme. I attend Ben Model’s presentation on undercranking. His thesis is that silent films were shown at a faster rate than they were shot. They might be shot at 12, 14, 16, or 18 feet per second, but still look fine when shown at as much as 24 fps. He shows Chaplin shooting schedules that list various crank speeds and descriptions such as shooting at “a happy 12.” Ben then uses clips from A Dog’s Life, The Pawnshop, and Modern Times as examples. Undercranking lets you create gags that couldn’t be gags any other way, and allows a heavy body to seem as light as a feather. (He cites Harold Lloyd’s "Step right up and call me Speedy" jig-step as an example of something you really can’t perform in real time.) He shows that for this to work, you need to add extra pauses within a film, and you need to repeat small gestures like eyebrow lifts and pointing fingers so the audience can “read” them. Undercranking also acts to “erase” certain actions that help control film pace, such as the body bumps you can see in A Dog’s Life when Chaplin tries to line up for a job. You can see those bumps in slow motion, but they’re not apparent when the film is run faster. Ben has a
Youtube channel with examples.
Edit 11/1 to provide correct URL for Ben's films.
After lunch we settle in to watch Work, One A.M., and The Pawnshop, with Ben on the organ.
Separate presentations then discuss Syd Chaplin, pro-worker sentiment in Chaplin films, and a possible progenitor for the Little Tramp, a newspaper cartoon by Frederick Opper called
Happy Hooligan. James Deutsch of the Smithsonian Institution explains that until late in the 19th century, tramps were men to be feared (he differentiated them from the more-benign hobo). That fearful image changed as the century changed. Happy Hooligan wears a tin can as a hat and dresses in disheveled clothes. He’s forever trying to be helpful while simultaneously causing chaos. He would have been appearing in the New York papers and in some early Edison films when Chaplin first arrived there.
Linda Wada presents her labor-of-love film about
Edna Purviance. The film features an interview with Lita Hill, Edna’s grand-niece. In her barn owl eyeglasses, Lita is quite a character. Even though she was in her late 70’s when the film was made, she’s clear and thoughtful. She visited her Aunt Edna often as a child, and lived with her for several years as a teenager. They’re second-hand stories of Edna’s life, of course, but interesting in spite of that.
Peter Wyeth, an English filmmaker, follows with his film about a Chaplin-based school project in London. The goal was to use Chaplin’s early life in London as a multi-disciplinary educational tool for children who are growing up in the same impoverished area. The end result was a musical production put on by the children.
It’s been a long day and I have an hour’s drive home, so I skip the reception at Zanesville’s art museum and the Keystone shorts that follow.
Friday, October 29
Personal matters prevent me from attending the conference on Friday, though there are presentations on Chaplin and women, Chaplin’s reception in France and Finland, Chaplin biography fictions, Chaplin film locations, other topics, and more Keystone shorts. I do attend tonight’s screening of The Kid and The Idle Class held at the
Twin City Opera House in McConnelsville, a town of 2,000 people about 30 miles downriver from Zanesville.
The opera house occupies one quadrant of the town’s central roundabout. It’s been in operation since 1892, and it’s a fine old house that has a single screen and a balcony. The nearest movie megaplex is a 12-screener up in Zanesville, so the opera house’s stage and screen serve a variety of purposes for the town. On Oct. 31st they’ll show The Goonies in the afternoon and Rocky Horror Picture Show in the evening. In November they’ll show Life as We Know It and Secretariat. In the coming months they’ll have plays, bands, a magician, and regular visits from the Ohio Valley Opry, a mix of country, gospel, and bluegrass music.
Conference attendees are seated in the first seven rows of the theater, which is a little too close to the buzzing speakers. Locals are also invited – they're sprinkled throughout the back of the house and the balcony. The big attraction in McConnelsville tonight may be the season-ending high school football game between the Morgan Raiders and the Philo Electrics, but we enjoy the films. Afterward we move behind the screen to have cider and cookies and learn a little about the theater. We also have the chance to handle one of Chaplin’s hats, a cane, and a small cog from Modern Times that Bruce Lawton brought to show us.
Saturday, October 30
Today starts with showings of How to Make Movies and A Dogs Life, then Kate Guyonvarch of
Association Chaplin discusses Chaplin’s life after he made City Lights. With the threat of sound films fast approaching, he spent time in Europe in ’30 and ’31, greeting fans, hobnobbing with George Bernard Shaw, the Prince of Wales, Einstein, and Mahatma Gandhi, and perhaps thinking about his future. He read a lot of books on economics and politics. A visit to Bali on the way home resulted in the beginnings of a screenplay that contrasted the simple island life with the life of “the white man,” but nothing came of that. Ms. Guyonvarch illustrated her talk with articles, photos, and letters from the association’s archives, and answered questions about how the association worked and their relationship with the Chaplin family.
Other presentations focus on verbal and visual studies of Chaplin’s work, preserving Chaplin’s legacy, Chaplin films after 1935, Chaplin impersonators, the careers of lesser-known stock players in Chaplin films, and Chaplin’s driver and right-hand man Toraichi Kono, who was imprisoned in an internment camp during WWII.
In the afternoon we see The Great Dictator, which I find boring. I don’t care for the story or the music. This film must have had more power in 1940, but it’s lost that immediacy.
The conference is to continue with a banquet and showings of A Thief Catcher, The New Janitor, and Tillie’s Punctured Romance, and won’t end until 10:00 PM, but once again I head out early for home. In general I enjoyed the presentations, and I learned a lot and got to meet several people whose names I’ve seen in books and the Web or on DVD cases. I'm glad I had the opportunity to attend.