rebel without a good
cause
by Douglas Messerli
From 1909 to 1911, Kalem pictures featured a
series of six short films, all directed by Sidney Olcott, written and starring
Gene Gauntier about a girl spy, Nan, working for the Confederate cause during
the Civil War.
The
films include The Girl Spy: An Incident of the Civil War (1909), The
Further Adventures of the Girl Spy (1910), The Bravest Girl in the South
(1910), The Love Romance of the Girl Spy (1910), The Girl Spy
Before Vicksburg (1910), and To the Aid of Stonewall Jackson: An Exploit
of the Girl Spy (1911).
These shorts all feature Gauntier as a rough and tumble hero, willing to
go through the most difficult of feats, and who at one point or another
cross-dresses in order to achieve her goals. They were inspired by the
real-life woman spy Belle Boyd. They were shot at Kalem studios near
Jacksonville, Florida.
The adventures are important, in part, because they were the precursors
to the popular serial films in the 1910s starring Pearl White and Grace Cunard,
which featured women able to take on their male counterparts; but also, in
terms of LGBTQ+ history because they represented the first wave of US films
featuring strong and daring women as cross-dressers, which included also The
House of Closed Shutters (1910), The Red Girl and the Child (1910), Taming
a Husband (1910), and Judith of Bethulia
(1914), among others.
Only three of these films remain
available, the first held at the at the Library and Archives Canada, the second
at The British Film Institute and The Library of Congress, and The Girl Spy
Before Vicksburg at the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam.
*
coded
messages
Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney
Olcott (director) The Girl Spy: An Incident of the Civil War / 1909
In this film Nan is portrayed in the
latter part of the Civil War when the Union Army had pushed their operations
deep into the South. In an early scene we see the Union soldiers arrive at her
house, ransacking the place for food and stealing her hen, with Nan, dressed as
a Southern Belle, trying to fight them off and angered by the event.
Secretly, however, the motherless girl, dedicated to the Southern cause,
along with her boyfriend have been ordered to tap the telegraph wires and
listen in to the code of the Union Army messages, reporting them back to
headquarters. The first two minutes of this film, when Nan receives her orders
has been lost, and the film picks up with the scene I describe above with the
arrival of the Union Soldiers on a raiding mission.
Immediately after, we observe her boyfriend shinnying up a local
telephone pole, where he cuts both wires and hooks them up to his own listening
device. He listens in as we seen the Union soldiers receive an important
message which their specialist telegraphs, as he jots down the messages from
the Morse Code.
Suddenly observing a small group of Union soldiers in the near
distances, he runs off, returns home and hands the message to Nan, to hide
himself jumping into an empty water barrel situated next to the house.
The Union soldiers have followed him home and, as they begin to search
the house, Nan, now dressed as a man, sneaks around from the other side of the
house and rides off on one of their horses. They ride after her, leaving only
the one horseless soldier behind. As he shoots at the escaping Nan, the hidden
boyfriend rises from the barrel, clonks the soldier over the head, and strips
him, putting on his Union uniform.
Nan, meanwhile, attempts to outrun the pursuing four soldiers, fording a
small stream, and, in what the intertitles suggest is “a clever use,” jumps off
her horse and behind a tree pulls off her male garb to transform herself back
into a woman who points out the direction to the passing soldiers in which she
claims to have seen the Confederate ride.
Eventually, they come across their stolen horse, realizing that they
have been tricked.
At Edward’s Road House, in the meantime, the now drunken group of
drunken Union soldiers sit drinking. Nan arrives on the run, and seeing the
soldiers has no choice but, in her womanly garb, to sit down to a table and
order up something, served predictably perhaps but also somewhat ironically by
a black man given the Union attempt to “free” the slaves. The Union men,
presented in this Southern version of reality as monsters, all begin to
manhandle her.
At nearly the same moment, her boyfriend, dressed in Union regalia
arrives and orders the men to leave her alone. As they move inside, he quickly
hands Nan a gun, and at that very moment the man whose horse she has stolen
suddenly arrives, recognizing her. She has no choice but to shoot him dead,
telling the other soldiers who rush out of the road house that a stranger has
just shot him and ridden off.
Nan and her Confederate soldier run off again, the four Union soldiers
behind them. Nan’s boyfriend turns, attempting to shoot them, but is himself
shot instead. Terribly wounded, he hides Nan in a large bunch of rushes as,
pulling off his fake beard and moustache, he pretends to be another Union
soldier pointing out the way of the escapees to his pursuers.
In front of her, he pulls open his shirt, revealing his wounds, falls
down, and dies, Nan rushing to his side, briefly hugging him to her before
continuing on her own escape.
In the last frame, she finally reaches her Confederate base, handing
over the secret messages where she is lauded for her brave feats.
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
*
through an
open window
Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney
Olcott (director) The Further Adventures of the Girl Spy / 1910
While Nan is visiting with several
of her female friends, a peddler arrives pretending to sell his wares, but
sneaking a secret message to her: she is wanted at Confederate headquarters.
She quickly rides there and receives her orders. Infiltrating a known
Union meeting place, Miller’s Tavern, she observes three men meeting in a back
room and, from the outside, carefully
lifts up the window a bit to listen
in to their conversation.
However, one of the soldiers observes that the room has become far
windier and perceives that the window has been risen. He goes to check out the
situation and there finds Nan scribbling down their discussions concerning
their secret plans.
Hearing his arrival, she pulls out a gun and shoots, the two remaining
within quickly moving to the window and themselves shooting, only to finish off
their fellow soldier as Nan runs off. Once more a foot pursuit follows, with
the two armed men close behind her. She returns home, lifts up of the bucket
and drops herself in the well, the two men arriving puzzled by her sudden
disappearance.
But the woman of the house, either
mother (which the documentation has told she doesn’t have), an aunt, or
servant, brought out by the soldiers immediately calls for the help of an older
man once the soldiers have left; realizing where Nan might have disappeared to,
they gradually wheel up the heavy bucket upon which she is still standing,
finding her soaking wet.
Nan, now dressed as a boy, is put into a
gunny sack by the older man and placed on his wagon with several sacks of
apples, evidently meant as provisions for the Union Army. He drives through
enemy lines, one of his bags inspected, and when safely into enemy territory
opens up the bag from which the boy Nan emerges.
The boy climbs high into a tree beneath
which two Union men come to rest or evidently picnic. But as soon as they have
sat down and opened their sack of food, she jumps from the tree onto one of the
horses and rides off.
She speeds off the Confederate camp and
proudly delivers up the Union secrets.
This second work in the series is not
nearly as interesting or unpredictable as the first, and the fact that her
scenarios were pretty much made up as the filmmakers went along becomes fairly
apparent.
By the time of the fifth extant film
the series had grown much more sophisticated.
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
*
riding the rails
Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The
Bravest Girl in the South / 1910 || lost
film or unavailable
There is no evidence that this film
is still available and it is likely a lost movie. But a synopsis does appear on
the IMDb site, attributed to Bruce R. Bardarik, without providing any
information of who he is or how he came to see this movie. It reads:
“Worn out and wounded, a Confederate
messenger crawls up to the house of Nan, and gives her a dispatch for delivery
to another agent fifty miles distant. Ostensibly bound for market, she rides
through the Federal camp, but is suspected and hotly pursued. By taking shelter
in a log shanty, she temporarily evades the soldiers, but they get on her track
again, and another thrilling chase ensues. Reaching the railway, Nan invokes
the aid of a friendly engine driver, and has the satisfaction of outdistancing
her pursuers and delivering the all-important document.”
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
*
in bed with
the enemy
Gene Gauntier (screenplay), Sidney
Olcott (director) The Love Romance of the Girl Spy / 1910 || lost film or unavailable
Evidently this fourth of the girl
spy series was to have been the last of the series. It would seem a good
ending, since the Confederate spy, oddly enough, falls in love in this picture
with a Union soldier, Captain Wilkins, who after the War claims his Rebel
sweetheart.
Accordingly, we also do not know if this film, about falling in
heterosexual love, has any LGBTQ content. I can find no pictures of the movie.
But we do still have “The Moving Picture World” synopsis, which reads as
follow:
“This is the fourth and last of the
Kalem Company's celebrated series of productions relating the fascinating
adventures of Nan, the Girl Spy. In this is shown how Fate played a trick on
Nan; how she found the man to whom she entrusted herself and her future
happiness in the army of the enemy she hated so bitterly.”
Scene I. The End of the Battle - Nan
Meets the Wounded Union Officer.
Scene II. One Mouth Later - Love's
First Awakening.
Scene III. Captain Wilkins Bids Nan
Farewell.
Scene IV. The Girl Spy Is Captured.
Scene V. The Escape.
Scene VI. Nan Tells General Lee of
Her Failure.
Scene VII. After the War Captain
Wilkins Claims His Rebel Sweetheart.
It would have been wonderful, if nothing else, to know how Gauntier and
Olcott brought the two warring sides together and justified the girl spy’s
Confederate betrayal, her support of slavery, and her previous murder of so
many Union soldiers.
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
*
deeper
waters
Gene Gauntier
(screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) The Girl Spy Before
Vicksburg / 1910
In this 5th installation
of the girl spy series, gay actor and director Robert Vignola plays the role of
the Confederate General, with Australian actor and director J. D. McGowan as
his handsome assistant. The only copy of the film that remains is held at the
EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam which explains its Dutch intertitles, translated in
the version I saw into English.
This spy story is quite simple. A Union powder wagon is making its way across
the country guarded by mounted Union soldiers. Without men he might detach to
destroy the wagon, the Confederate General is forced to call upon his own
daughter, Anna (Gauntier, her character called Nan in other sources and the
credits) who, dressed in a Union military uniform, rides to the Union unit with
a fake declaration, telling the group to move in another direction. They
believe not only in the paperwork but that its messenger is one of their own
and a male. Evidently, they are quite easily duped.
As
they prepare to turn about, Anna knocks out the young guard who is attending
the wagon and takes his place. As they begin to move forward, she plants a
dynamite cartridge under the wagon, lights the fuse, and hurries away from the
danger.
The
wagon explodes into what the publicity sheet described as “a heap of charred
embers.” As Anna rushes off, she is followed closely by Union soldiers,
escaping as she leaves her horse and dives into a river, pretending to swim
off. The soldiers follow her, swimming out of the frame. Meanwhile the camera
holds still, focusing on the rather still lovely scene of the river without
seemingly a soul in site—until suddenly Anna rises from the deep waters, having
escaped her pursuers by remaining there for a rather long period of time.
She
returns home to find her mother, frantic at her absence, kneeling in prayer.
The
scenes with the Union military, the ammunition explosion, and particularly the
river scene are all quite wonderfully filmed by cinematographer George K.
Hollister.
Too
bad the film, like Griffith’s before it, celebrates heroism for a cause that
was determined to keep blacks in slavery. It is notable that in this film, the
original driver of the ammunition wagon is a black man, not a white in
blackface.
Los Angeles, June 13,
2023
*
marching to the rear
Gene Gautier (screenplay), Sidney Olcott (director) To
the Aid of Stonewall Jackson: An Exploit of the Spy Girl / 1911 || lost film or unavailable
The final episode of the spy girl
series may have been closer to a feature film, although again we cannot know
whether or not it as any LGBTQ content. This time we do have a photograph from
the production and a longer “Moving Picture World” synopsis.
“Monday, while the girl spy is
visiting relatives, General Shields, of the Union army, and his staff, take
possession of the house for the night. Nan, seeing an opportunity to employ her
professional talents, makes an effort to learn the Union officer's plans. She
finds the General's room guarded, but discovers another way to overhear the
conversation. Retiring to her room on the second floor, she crawls out of the
window on to the roof of the gallery, lowers herself down to the ground and
takes up a position at the window of the General's room. Hearing the officer
say he would attack Jackson at daybreak, Nan thinks of the doughty General and
his Confederate army one hundred miles away. Starting on her journey, Nan rides
at top speed with her important information. Tuesday night, Nan has twenty miles
more to go and her horse is fagged out. This forces her to rest at a nearby
town, where she unwittingly runs into danger and is suspected of being the girl
spy. The loyal keeper of the tavern warns Nan of the suspicion aroused against
her and an hour later Nan escapes from her room, goes to the barn for her
horse, which she mounts and rides off. As she passes the tavern door the Union
soldiers, hearing the sound of her horse, all rush out and readily recognize
the spy is trying to escape. They quickly mount their horses and follow in
pursuit. Nan, however, being thoroughly familiar with the country, fools them.
Finally reaching the Confederate lines, she asks that she be taken to General
Jackson, whom she informs that Shields will march at sunrise Wednesday morning
and before noon will attack Jackson's flank. The doughty General of the
Confederates replies, "We will march immediately and surprise General
Shield's rear."
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema
Review (July 2023).