John Ford | Upstream / 1927

the faith keepers

by Douglas Messerli

 

Randall Faye (screenplay, based a story by Wallace Smith), John Ford (director) Upstream / 1927

 

By the mid-20s 90% of all commercial pictures screened around the world were made in the US. One of the last stops of the US distribution shipments was New Zealand, and when they finished showing there, those distributors expected that either the copies would be destroyed or shipped nearly 7,000 miles back to the US. But New Zealanders, fortunately, did not listen much to the distributor’s expectations, and many of them fell into collector’s hands, ending up eventually in the New Zealand Film Archive, where at the turn of 21st century, film archivists found hundreds of canisters, unlabeled and even mis-labeled, containing numerous US films that were destroyed or deemed lost to decay in the US.

      Among those “lost films” was noted filmmaker’s John Ford’s early silent work from 1926 Upstream which along with some 176 films shipped to the US for preservation, was finally rediscovered by American audiences at an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences showing in 2010.

      The film revealed a somewhat different Ford, far more experimental and influenced by unlikely figures such as F. W. Murnau and working in a comedic genre. If there is a hero here, it is the aging, slightly academic Shakespearian actor, Campbell-Mandare (Emile Chautard), penniless as all the others, yet allowed to stay in Miss Hattie’s (Lydia Yeamans Titus) “resting” house simply because of his long-ago status as flame-keeper of great Shakespearian theater. At one point in the work, in pure faith he lights candles to both the great interpreter of Hamlet, Edwin Booth and to his young mentor, Brashingham.

      What it does share is Ford’s later ability to gather a fairly large cast of character types but yet invest each with enough depth that we see them basically as individuals rather than the mere stereotypes.

      All of the figures in Miss Hattie’s house are second or even third-rate has-beens who work throughout the US on brief tours of vaudeville and burlesque, with only the elderly actor already mentioned and the “Star Boarder” (Raymond Hitchcock) having ever performed in legitimate theater. Hattie is particularly fond of her Star Boarder who, although equally poor, flirts shamelessly with Hattie and with any other woman upon whom he casts his eye, particularly The Soubrette (Jane Winton) with whom he regularly attempts to play “footsie” at the dinner table.

      Juan Rodriguez aka Jack La Velle (Grant Withers) is a knife thrower who works regularly with the lovely Gertie Ryan (Nancy Nash), both of whom have temporarily taken on a new member, Eric Brashingham (Earle Foxe), mostly because they feel sorry for him because of his absolute lack of talent and the fact that he has been ostracized from the great acting family of the Brashinghams.

      Hattie’s menagerie also includes a juggler, a sister act (Lillian Worth and Judy King) which the titles tell is closer related as mother and daughter than most such sister acts, and a black servant, who later gets involved in the knife-throwing act.

     Two of the most important tenants, due to their role with regard to the film’s central themes, are the “brother” dancing duo, Callahan and Callahan (Ted McNamara and Sammy Cohen), who as film commentator Hope Anderson confirms, in case anyone missed it, “are most certainly not brothers,” which suggests that the two, sleeping in one bed, are more likely gay lovers. Neither, moreover, are they both Irish, a fact that Hattie uses to threaten them for their non-payment, showing an advertisement of Cohen’s character in a before/after shot of rhinoplasty. The threat is not for their co-habiting as gay men but is an anti-Semitic threat. Jews were even less welcome to “rest” at most such establishments than a gay couple.

      The central subject of this film, however, is the trio of lovers Brashingham who appears to be in love with Gertie, Gertie who is most definitely in love with the fairly handsome untalented actor, and Juan or Jack (depending upon which day they are acting out a Spanish theme) who truly loves Gertie.

       Out of the blue, a theatrical agent, Al Forest, appears. For a moment everyone at the table imagines that he is visiting on their account, but all are shocked when he requests a meeting with Brashingham, who he is willing to hire to play Hamlet in London just on account of his family name.

       From a simply self-centered nincompoop, Brashingham’s transformation to a pompous ass is revealed by Ford through a few remarkably caught poses before the boarding house hall mirror. It is a brilliant scene which demonstrates all we need to know about his thoughtless villain of the piece, who keeps promising Gertie that he has something to ask of her before he leaves.

       She is certain that he will plead with her to join him or even ask her marry him on the spot. But when the time comes his “profound” question is, “Can you loan me 50 dollars?”

     Yet the disappointed troupe are pleased for his sudden, if undeserved opportunity, Campbell-Mandare even offering up to teach the fool—who at the table quotes Hamlet’s famous lines to Horatio “Alas poor Yorick, I knew him Horatio,” as “Alas poor Yorick, he knew me well.”—everything he knows about Shakespeare in one night.

     And evidently what he teaches Brashingham is brilliant, since just before going on stage the terrorized actor wishes that his teacher were there to remind him and calls up his mentor’s ghost instead of Hamlet’s father to help him get over his stage fright, another memorable cinematic moment in this excellent film. His performance is declared to be masterful and he is recognized even with a nod from the royal box.

       The brash young man becomes famous, traveling back to New York to throngs of followers who acclaim his performances. But the sad troupers at Hetties receive not a word, not even, in Campbell-Mandare’s case, a simple thanks.

       In the meantime, they all go on tour and return just as broke as they left, several pretending to have mailed Hattie checks, none of which, shockingly, has she received. Even Callahan and Callahan return, welcomed by Hattie and the others with open arms.

      Having completely recovered from her temporary infatuation with Brashingham, Gertie realizes she really loves Jack, and when Jack asks her to marry him quickly accepts with the entire troupe of actors applauding their celebratory kiss and planning their wedding with a boarding-house ceremony.

     All would be well and end well if Brashingham’s brazen agent, Forest, hadn’t suggested that his client pay a visit to the boarding house where he began his career began as a publicity stunt.

      Of course, as required in such plots, Brashingham arrives at the very moment that the couple have declared their vows and imagines that the snap of the camera is for him instead of the couple. The wedding party suddenly is represented, through the actor’s perverted logic, as a celebration for his return. Even Gertie’s bridal bouquet is usurped as flowers intended for him. His old friends can hardly get in a word to describe what is truly happening, both in real time and with regard their feelings about him.

      When Campbell-Mandare compliments him on his performance of Hamlet, hoping that perhaps we might finally be thanked for his contribution, Brashingham declares that his audiences do not come to the theater to see Hamlet but to see him!

     Along with Gertie—furious with her former heartthrob’s return on this special day—the old lover of the bard retires to his room in disappointment and anger.

      Still misconceiving all events, Brashingham even attempts to join the wedding dinner until finally, Jack tells him the truth, while noticing that the now famous Hamlet fraud has also sneaked away from the table to join Gertie in her room.

    Furious, Jack storms toward his new wife’s bedroom, with the now drunken Callahan duo just behind him as support, recognizing presumably what it feels like to be an outsider as Juan/Jack still is by societal definitions. “Honor of family at stake——Callahan and Callahan not foun’ wantin’,” they declare. It is strange perhaps, but maybe inevitable given that they have no family but the actors with whom they board, they become the staunchest of supporters for their friends’ heterosexual love. Ford transforms them into heroes of a different sort.

     But it is Campbell-Mandare who joins the others in this final show-down who truly gives Brashingham a comeuppance, even if the actor is too in love with himself to be affected by his words: “You, on whose unworthy shoulders fell the mantle of Booth, by accident—you, whose conceit is as great as your ignorance——You, in whose power it was to bring joy to thousands! You have degraded your great gift. Get from me! Go!”

       And with that they not only toss him down the staircase but out the front door where he rolls into the row of now several cameras arrived to get a picture of this now infamous celebrity.

       As Ford will achieve time and again through his career, he has restored moral values without diminishing those who may not live precisely according to the societal norm. The outsiders who “rest” at Hattie’s house have found a haven in their mutual concern and love.

     Oddly, Ford’s inclusive view is not so very different from the queer kinds of family love revealed time and again in films such as Rebel without a Cause; The Boys in the Band;  It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives; You Are Not Alone; My Father, My Mother; La Cage aux Folles; Parting Glances; Young Soul Rebels; The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Boys on the Side; When Everyone Knows; Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train; Relax...It’s Just Sex, and so very many others, wherein the moral ground of family life is utterly redefined.

 

Los Angeles, April 2, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (April 2022).