THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT (1931)

[azjazzman]

Interesting, if somewhat breathless promotional film by Paramount (1931). Catch it while you can.

[entredeuxguerres]

Toward the end of Part 1, faux-marquees promoting Paramount's newest pictures flashed by quickly, one of them reading "A Farewell to Arms--Gary Cooper & Eleanor Boardman." I wish the picture had been made with that cast!

Interesting, but should have thought a brief outline of the early history of the studio, Zukor, Famous Players, etc. was in order.

[dr.giraud]

Toward the end of Part 1, faux-marquees promoting Paramount's newest pictures flashed by quickly, one of them reading "A Farewell to Arms--Gary Cooper & Eleanor Boardman." I wish the picture had been made with that cast!.

No kidding. Helen Hayes is a dud in ARMS and NIGHT FLIGHT.

[Harold Aherne]

A list of the films and actors featured. Brackets mean that the actor is identified but the film isn't; a number of identifications have been made in the AFI catalogue entry for The House That Shadows Built and these are given where applicable. Clips where no identification has been made features the actor's name only.

Les amours de la reine Élisabeth (1912)
The Prisoner of Zenda (1913)
The Squaw Man (1914)
A Good Little Devil (1914)
Carmen (1915)
[George M. Cohan]
The Call of the North (1914)
[Blanche Sweet—The Captive (1915)]
[Vivian Martin & Jack Holt—Giving Becky a Chance (1917)]
[George Beban]
[Olga Petrova—The Undying Flame (1917)]
[Elsie Ferguson]
[Dorothy Dalton]
Huck and Tom (1918)
[Marguerite Clark]
[Billie Burke]
The Cheat (1915)
[Marie Doro—The Heart of Nora Flynn (1916)]
The Whispering Chorus (1918)
[Dorothy Gish—Battling Jane (1918)]
Headin’ South (1918)
[Ethel Clayton]
[Lila Lee]
The Little American (1917)
The Squaw Man (1918)
[Pauline Frederick]
For Better, for Worse (1919)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
Homer Comes Home (1920)
[Bryant Washburn]
The Miracle Man (1919)
[Lillian Gish—True Heart Susie (1919)]
[Irene Castle]
Male and Female (1919)
The Little Minister (1921)
The Roaring Road (1919)
On With the Dance (1920)
Sentimental Tommy (1921)
The Sheik (1921)
Nice People (1922)
The Covered Wagon (1923)
Peter Pan (1924)
[William S. Hart—Wild Bill Hickock (1923)]
The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926)
The Light of Western Stars (1925)
The Ten Commandments (1923)
Behind the Front (1926)
Forbidden Paradise (1924)
The Vanishing American (1925)
It (1927)
The Kid Brother (1927)
Varieté (1925)
Beau Geste (1926)
Underworld (1927)
Wings (1927)

Some of the filmed excerpted have not otherwise survived; these include Giving Becky a Chance, The Undying Flame, Huck and Tom, Battling Jane, Sentimental Tommy, Nice People, The Light of Western Stars and others.

Is the Billie Burke clip from The Land of Promise (1917), perhaps?

-HA

[entredeuxguerres]

Is the Billie Burke clip from The Land of Promise (1917), perhaps?

-HA

Never seen her looking so young!

[missdupont]

And you notice that the Lasky-DeMille Barn has a prominent place in the film, the little acorn from which Paramount grew.

[Rob Farr]

Most of the silent clips were in chronological order and as 1923 approached I eagerly anticipated a clip from Hollywood. But who knows, it may have been lost by 1931.

[Gaucho]

@azjazzman, many thanks for the clip. I have a copy of Will Irvin's book--with the same title--from 1928 which follows the history of Famous Players Laskey and Paramount more from the biography of Adolph Zukor. While the book is very interesting I've been interested in seeing the film (or clips from it) for some time.

@Harold, thanks for that exhaustive list of the clips.

[David Alp]

Fascinating to watch! Paramount didn't exactly have the same league of stars as "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer" - but it probably came a close second or third with Warner Brothers. I like the way the announcer said "Mar-leen" Dietrich (instead of Mah-layna) LOL! She would have been horrified.

So am I right in saying the titles showing below are all lost films?

QUOTE: "Giving Becky a Chance", "The Undying Flame", "Huck and Tom", "Battling Jane", "Sentimental Tommy", "Nice People", "The Light of Western Stars"

[Donald Binks]

Interesting, if somewhat breathless promotional film by Paramount (1931). Catch it while you can.

If they only knew in 1932 what the innocent title "glancing down gay avenues of entertainment..." would conjure up with the audiences of today!

[FrankFay]

Toward the end of Part 1, faux-marquees promoting Paramount's newest pictures flashed by quickly, one of them reading "A Farewell to Arms--Gary Cooper & Eleanor Boardman." I wish the picture had been made with that cast!.

No kidding. Helen Hayes is a dud in ARMS and NIGHT FLIGHT.

I think it took old age to make Helen Hayes into a convincing movie actress. I don't think she was ever that great a screen actress but she developed character and mannerisms that worked very well on camera.

[Harold Aherne]

So am I right in saying the titles showing below are all lost films?

QUOTE: "Giving Becky a Chance", "The Undying Flame", "Huck and Tom", "Battling Jane", "Sentimental Tommy", "Nice People", "The Light of Western Stars"

No archival holdings are shown for any of them at
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/ ... -home.html

Headin' South and On With the Dance are two more that appear to be lost, and the Irene Castle clip also comes from a lost film, as no archival holdings are known for her trio of Famous Players-Lasky titles from 1919-20.

Titles featured in The House That Shadows Built that survive fragmentarily are A Good Little Devil (1 reel), the 1918 Squaw Man (no entry shown in the database above, but Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood indicates that the final reel survives), and The Miracle Man.

-HA

[David Alp]

Thanks Harold.

That's an interesting site there! I've bookmarked it by the way. The Library Of Congress site. The only complaint is that is doesn't give much information about the film itself, or the history of the film in question, but I guess you could go to other places for that. For example I typed in "London After Midnight" to see what it gave me, and it just said "no holdings" -- no mention of the vault fire of 1967 or anything like that.

[dr.giraud]

Toward the end of Part 1, faux-marquees promoting Paramount's newest pictures flashed by quickly, one of them reading "A Farewell to Arms--Gary Cooper & Eleanor Boardman." I wish the picture had been made with that cast!.

No kidding. Helen Hayes is a dud in ARMS and NIGHT FLIGHT.

I think it took old age to make Helen Hayes into a convincing movie actress. I don't think she was ever that great a screen actress but she developed character and mannerisms that worked very well on camera.

I agree. Go back and watch AIRPORT sometime, she's terrific.

[sepiatone]

Thanks Harold.

That's an interesting site there! I've bookmarked it by the way. The Library Of Congress site. The only complaint is that is doesn't give much information about the film itself, or the history of the film in question, but I guess you could go to other places for that. For example I typed in "London After Midnight" to see what it gave me, and it just said "no holdings" -- no mention of the vault fire of 1967 or anything like that.

It doesn't have to, that's why you have the AFI Catalog of Feature Length Films:
http://www.afi.com/members/catalog/Deta ... Movie=7711" target="_blank

The LoC database is an accountability online resourch and we're grateful to have it.

[sepiatone]

Toward the end of Part 1, faux-marquees promoting Paramount's newest pictures flashed by quickly, one of them reading "A Farewell to Arms--Gary Cooper & Eleanor Boardman. I wish the picture had been made with that cast!.

No kidding. Helen Hayes is a dud in ARMS and NIGHT FLIGHT.

I think it took old age to make Helen Hayes into a convincing movie actress. I don't think she was ever that great a screen actress but she developed character and mannerisms that worked very well on camera.[/quote]

I agree. Go back and watch AIRPORT sometime, she's terrific.[/quote]

She's also good in ANASTASIA with Ingrid Bergman and CANDLESHOE with Jodie Foster, Leo McKern and David Niven.

[Gagman 66]

I thought we had already commented on this a couple months ago. Is there better surviving quality prints then what we see here per chance?

[sepiatone]

I think the clip of Elsie Ferguson is from her 1918 film "The Lie".

[sepiatone]

Lila Lee is shown in an early Paramount film with Spottiswoode Aitken. The clip can only be from one of three films they did together(IMDb listing): "The Cruise of the Make-Believes"(1918), "Jane Goes A-Wooing"(1919) or "The Secret Garden"(1919)