One century ago this week, the March 25, 1922 edition of “Moving Picture World” carried this ad announcing the release of a film adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s narrative poem “The Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding House”:
The ad is remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, because the ad tells us that the narrative is “dramatized in one reel.” This is relatively unusual for 1922 because by that time the era of the dramatic short subject was largely over. For the first decade or so of narrative films, most releases were either one reel (about 10-15 minutes) or two reels (about 20-30 minutes) in length. But in the mid-teens the tremendous box-office success of the three-hour epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) helped convince industry leaders that longer “feature length” films were the way of the future. From that point on, longer films increasingly became the centerpiece of a moving picture show, with one and two reelers, now known as “short subjects,” relegated to the role of “extra added attractions” in support of the main feature.
From that point on, the short subject form came to be largely the domain of comedies, while dramatic short subjects became increasingly rare. In fact, the production of one and two reel comedies continued unabated even after some comic stars made the transition into feature length comedies, with Chaplin leading the way with THE KID (1921). Exhibitors were happy to continue to book these short comedies, knowing that they made an excellent complement to a dramatic feature film.
But one company continued to buck the trend toward feature length dramas. The French Pathé Frères company continued to release dramatic short subjects through its U.S. subsidiary company well after most of the Hollywood industry had all but abandoned them. This was, in part, because Pathé had carved out a profitable niche as the home of popular serials like THE PERILS OF PAULINE (1914).
These “chapter plays,” in which a continuing narrative was played out over multiple individual releases, consisted of a series of episodic short dramas (or, more precisely, melodramas), often ending in a cliff-hanger to induce audiences to come back for the next episode. For exhibitors, these serial chapters served a purpose similar to that of the short comedies – as an adjunct to the screening of a feature length film. Better yet, a really engaging serial might influence patrons to return to buy a ticket for next week’s feature offering just to keep up with the serial storyline even if their interest in the main feature was only lukewarm.
Between the success of its serial offerings and the ongoing success of the short Pathé newsreels, initially there seemed to be no compelling reason for American Pathé to abandon the production of non-comedy short subjects. Even so, by late 1916 the company did acknowledge the value of adding feature length pictures to its slate of releases, diluting somewhat its focus on short subjects. The December 30, 1916 issue of “Motion Picture News” covered the announcement of a shift in emphasis:
But by early 1921 the pendulum had swung the other way, as this article from the March 12, 1921 edition of “Exhibitors Herald” testifies:
Anyone who had been following the trade papers would have recognized that the groundwork for this announcement had been laid a couple of months earlier, as exemplified by this article from the January 29, 1921 edition of “Moving Picture World”:
With all of that in mind, it is not so surprising that Pathé chose to release an adaptation of Kipling’s “Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding House” as a dramatic short subject, as befits the brevity of the poem, rather than seeking to build an expanded dramatic narrative around the bare bones of the Kipling original as other Hollywood studios might have done.
The second extraordinary thing about this ad is that the film being promoted was not produced by a big studio, but rather by a small, newly launched production company – one that, in fact, would soon fold its tent, having made little to no impression on the industry. Normally, one would expect a picture being promoted with a full-page ad to be a release originating from one of the big studios like Famous Players-Lasky or Fox. But American Pathé had, from the beginning, positioned itself more as a distributor than as a content originator. As such, they served as a conduit for small independent production concerns to get their product out to the marketplace.
One such small-time producer was Walter Montague, an actor and would-be movie impresario working out of a rented studio space in San Francisco. The December 8, 1920 edition of the “San Francisco Chronicle” had carried the announcement of movie production activity happening in the area:
It was this studio space owned by Columbia Features (no connection to Columbia Pictures) that Montague leased for shooting his adaptation of the Kipling poem. His idea for a series of films was to adapt a number of classic poems, of which “The Ballad of Fisher’s Boarding House” was to be the first. This initial offering was picked up for release by Pathé for $3500; a tidy profit for Montague, as the film’s budget had been $1700. However, Pathé passed on picking up two subsequent offerings from Montague. One of these, based on Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith,” found brief distribution elsewhere, but quickly sank into obscurity. The failure of these follow-up projects effectively brought an end to Montague’s cinematic ambitions.
But despite the rapid fizzling of Montague’s career as a movie mogul, this ad for THE BALLAD OF FISHER’S BOARDING HOUSE actually represents a significant milestone in the history of Hollywood, although no one at the time could have known it. Montague had hired, as the director of this project, a young man whose prior experience in moviemaking was minimal. This was, in fact, the 24-year-old novice’s very first job directing a film. Montague took a chance on hiring the green neophyte on the recommendation of his cameraman, Roy Wiggins, whom the youngster had befriended when he had assisted Wiggins on a newsreel project. The young man’s name was Frank Capra. He would go on to become one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, with credits that included IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936), MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939), and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946).