Silent Film Sunday: Bumping Into Broadway 1919

In the trifecta of male silent comedy stars (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd) Lloyd typically gets the bronze, but he's my favorite.   




Lloyd's films are sweet, funny and charming and for silent comedies they hold up well.    His glasses character exemplified a be-spectaled go-getter embodied the can do attitude of the 1920s.   Lloyd first played the glasses character in a 1919 short comedy Bumping Into Broadway.

 

In the film Lloyd plays a character known simply as the boy a would be musical comedy writer in dire financial straits:

He lives in a Boarding house populated by theatrical types, including of course, the girl, a chorus dancer, played by Bebe Daniels.  

The boarding house is run by a stern land lady and her beefy tough guy   The guys job is to toss out any boarders who have gotten their third notice to to pay the rent.  Both the boy and the girl have just received theirs.

The heroes troubles continue.  The boy continues to fail to find a producer for his play

and the girl gets fired from her chorus dancing job.

After a number of adventures the boy and the girl north wind up at a club where the girl is on a date with a wealthy play boy and the boy is gambling in an attempt to win the money to produce his play.

a few more antics the boy wins big at gambling and love!

The entire film is less then a half hour long and can be seen on you tube (here is the link).  It's essential viewing for all Harold Lloyd fans.

Vintage Outfit Post-1940s Mexican Playsuit Set for A Trip to Coney Island

About once a year when the weather turns warm I like to make the girls in the silent film clip below (from 1905!) and visit Coney Island.

Coney Island is a bit of a trip from our home, about an hour and 45 minutes  with walking and train time, and there our closer beaches in NJ but even though it has sadly been updated Coney Island still has some vestiges of vintage charm that keep me coming back year after year.

This year we went on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend and it was the first time the weather was really warm enough for summer clothes, so I wore my  1940s Style Mexican Playsuit from Kim Clark.  I nabbed it when she put it up for sale in the 1930s and 40s clothing exchange facebook group and it is really fabulous, and way, way out there.  There is no fading into the back ground in this get up.  Plus I love  that it has a jacket.  I don't like to get too much sun or show too much skin so a play suit with a big jacket is right up my alley.

The fabric in both the jacket and the play suit is really light and very comfortable.

I paired the play suit set with a big 1940s Mexian tourist hat.  I actually had the hat first and when I saw the play suit I knew they where made for each other.

I carried the Mexican theme through the outfit by adding a Mrs. Polly's Lucite brooch of a little man in a sombrero.  Isn't he cute:

Sadly, as I said before most of Coney Island has been distressingly modernized and Hurricane Sandy certainly didn't help. 

 Still if you look close there are some remnants of the old Coney Island.   

Nathan's Hot Dogs has been there for a 100 years.  The day before we visited they where selling hots dogs for 5 cents, the price from when they openned in 1916.

We also saw a shooting gallery that had been there since 1940:

We always finish our Coney Island trips with lunch at L & B Spumoni Gardens a restaurant that has been open since 1939.  They serve the best Sicilian style pizza and Spumoni I've ever had.

Where do you like to go when the weather gets warm?

Outfit Details:

1940s style Play Suit and Jacket-Kim Clark 
1940s style sandals Remix vintage shoes
1940s Mexican sun hat Dixiefried
1940s style novelty brooch-Mrs Polly's Lucite

Silent Film Sunday-The Little Matchgirl

From Christmas 1902...

Vintage Style Icon-Theda Bara The Original Vamp

Today marks the 130th birthday of one of early cinema's most enduring figures, Theda Bara the original vamp. 

While her name is largely forgotten today, her iconic image all dark hair, piercing eyes, and poisonous lips remains.   During the teens and early 20s she was one of films biggest stars and earliest sex symbols, earning 4,000 dollars a week and appearing on the covers of numerous film mags.

Throughout her career Bara usually played a definite type, the vamp.   The opposite of sweet, girlish Mary Pickford, the vamp was conniving, sexual, and used her charms to enslave men, draining them of their power as a vampire drains blood.   

In A Fool There Was, 1915, Bara cemented her image as the vamp when she played the "vampire women." A beautiful creature who meets a business and family man on a ship and seduces him. The vampire women degrades and enslaves men, causing them to abandon their moral codes and become devoted only to her.

The film is the origin of the famous line "kiss me, you fool" though the actual title card reads: "kiss me, my fool."

Eager to capitalize on Bara's exotic image in the film the studio created a glamorous false history for her.  Though in actuality she was born in Ohio to Polish and Swiss immigrant parents, Fox Studios claimed she was the Egyptian born  daughter of a French actress and had grown up in the Saharan desert under the Shadow of the Shinx.  Her new image fit perfectly with her biggest role in 1917's Cleopatra, no copies of which survive.

Many of Bara's films where filmed at Fox Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey before  cinema made the move to Hollywood.  A street in the town is now named after her

Sadly all but 6 of Bara's films are lost.  Most were destroyed in 1937 in a storage vault fire.  She left behind few films, but an enduring legacy.  

Silent Film Saturday The Mermaid

Vintage Mermaids!!!!

This year I am finally going to check out the Coney Island Mermaid Parade.  Its the countries largest art parade, meaning its not affiliated with any religious or ethnic group, its just a parade of individuals dressed as mermaids.  Its also Coney Island's busies day of the year with crowds said to rival Times Square on New Years Eve.  This is what has always kept me away in the past but I figured I need to check it out once in my life and this Saturday I am going with a friend from work (no way John was braving those crowds.)   So I've had mermaids on the brain and here are ten fabulous images of vintage mermaids.

Silent Film Sunday-Girls at Coney Island 1905

In this Thomas Edison film from 1905 the young ladies from Miss Knap's select boarding school go on an outing to Coney Island.  The film has excellent picture quality and is full of fun details: the girls parasols, the giant old car, the 1900s bathing dresses, and the girls obvious delight at the beach and on the rides.

Silent Film Sunday-Early 1900s Fashion Film

Happy Birthday Mary Pickford

Most people today have never heard of Mary Pickford, but this silent screen star was a major box office draw during the early years of cinema.  She became one of the first real Hollywood celebrities with thousands of worshipful fans who idolized her ringlets and obsessively followed her every action.  Despite her image as an icon of sweet innocence, Pickford was a keen business women who along with her then husband Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin founded United Artists.  My favorite thing about Mary Pickford though?  She seems to have been photographed with more cats and dogs, often while very cutely dressed, then any other film star in history.  Tomorrow is the 122nd anniversary of Pickford's birth and in her honor here are some of her cutest photographs with dogs and cats:



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Here is a clip of Pickford in Pollyanna 1920