Norma Talmadge at Vitagraph
Norma Talmadge was credited in 89 films produced by the Vitagraph Company of America between 1910 and 1915, and appeared uncredited in many others. In the period when she worked for the company, it was the largest film-producing company in the U.S. in terms of the footage of the films it released; in the world only Pathé Frères produced more. From 2,000 feet a week in 1909, production grew to 8,000 feet a week in 1913. This rapid expansion required the multiplication of producing units, with many productions occurring simultaneously, and new units needed new directors. These directors were primarily recruited from the company’s actors, and very often directors acted in the films they directed. Although different subjects dictated differently structured casts, and the company liked to display its large range of actors in productions with multiple characters – notably films featuring three or four of its ingenues, like The Troublesome Stepdaughters and The Lovesick Maidens of Cuddleton – more often a series of films would have a single director and the same principal cast.
Margaret “Peg” Talmadge, Norma’s mother, argued that, unlike Constance, Norma was never an extra at Vitagraph. From Talmadge’s description of her part in her first film, the now-lost The Four-Footed Pest, it was a typical bit part, but it is clear that from the beginning she believed, as did her colleagues, that she was a new member of the Vitagraph company of actors rather than a casual worker. (Vitagraph was a neighborhood resource for Brooklynites, especially older schoolchildren, who could make a few dollars by applying to be extras in Vitagraph films. Both Natalie and Constance Talmadge profited by this, until Constance’s mimicry impressed Ralph Ince to the point that she was taken on as a regular actress.)
Initially, Norma appeared mostly in films directed by and featuring Charles Kent, who usually had the lead part. From 1912, she was more often directed by Van Dyke Brooke. Of the nine Vitagraphs in our programme, six are directed by Brooke, and he acts in all six, so our Norma Talmadge Vitagraph series can also be seen as a Van Dyke Brooke retrospective. Van Dyke Brooke (1859-1921) joined Vitagraph as an actor in 1908, and almost immediately became a director. He is said to have had a long stage career previously, but we have not been able to trace any documented account of this. As an actor, he usually played old-man parts, often the family lawyer or doctor, but in Talmadge’s films his roles are often more prominent, so that Mrs. ’Enry ’Awkins is more his film than hers. As a director, he pioneered a deep-staged, low-camera style in films which depended less on editing, and especially less on alternating editing than Biograph films in the same period, and even those of his colleague at Vitagraph, Ralph Ince.
In her earliest films, few demands for acting ability were made on Talmadge; she mostly had to look beautiful in passive ingenue roles. By her own account, she was particularly impressed by Florence Turner, with whom she acted in one of her first films, A Dixie Mother (1910), and she seems to have emulated Turner in various ways. Both actresses were happy to play very different parts, even ones at odds with the dignity of a leading lady, and also old women, as in A Dixie Mother. Turner played a Japanese fisher boy in Hako’s Sacrifice (1910; shown in last year’s Giornate) and the ragamuffin Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1910), and made grotesque weeping faces in She Cried (1912). Turner excelled at conveying powerful emotions with very little outward movement, most of the signs being in the face and stance rather than by gesture. These tendencies are clear in Talmadge’s performances, too – she is a fright in the “Belinda” series, and expresses grief with great restraint in The Loan Shark King. These tendencies continued to characterize her performances after she left Vitagraph.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

A DIXIE MOTHER (US 1910)
regia/dir: Charles Kent. cast: Charles Kent (generale sudista/Confederate general), Florence Turner (sua moglie/his wife), Carlyle Blackwell (il figlio minore del generale/the general’s younger son), Norma Talmadge (his wife). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 17.12.1910. copia/copy: 35mm, 846 ft. [orig. l: 997 ft.], 13′ (18 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

A Dixie Mother is the earliest film featuring Norma Talmadge known to survive; it is her second or third known film. Her first was A Four-Footed Pest (released November 1910), and she may have appeared in the 1910 version of Francesca da Rimini (she described having been on the set, but she may have merely been watching the shooting). At this time, and until the summer of 1911, although Vitagraph did not actively suppress the names of its actors, it did not issue cast lists to the press or put them on title cards, so the meager credit information above is based principally on Talmadge’s own later accounts. The film is mainly remarkable for Florence Turner’s performance as an elderly mother.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

MRS. ’ENRY ’AWKINS (US 1912)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. cast: Van Dyke Brooke (Noah Clayton, ambulante/costermonger), Norma Talmadge (Liza Clayton, sua figlia/his daughter), Harry T. Morey (Bill Brown, ex-pugile/ex-pugilist), Maurice Costello (Henry Hawkins, giovane ambulante/young costermonger), Kate Price (Mrs. Moggs, padrona di casa/landlady). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 13.03.1912. copia/copy: 35mm??, ?? ft. [orig. l: 1,000 ft.], 12’08” (?? fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

Talmadge has more to do in this film, and she successfully conveys a daughter who loves her bibulous father but will put up with no nonsense from him. But the honors, in acting and direction, go to Van Dyke Brooke as the father, who is sitting in a chair by the fire, facing front with his gouty foot propped up in front of him, in every scene in the Clayton house (as is usual with films of this period, the room is always shot from exactly the same position). At the beginning of the last scene the only light comes from the fireplace on the right (probably from a small arc light); Clayton’s daughter Liza comes in behind him, barely visible in the darkness, and tweaks his nose, while Henry lights the kerosene lamp on the table, and the lights come up on the set.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

AN OFFICIAL APPOINTMENT (His Official Appointment) (US 1912)
regia/dir: Charles Kent. scen: Catherine Carr. cast: Charles Kent (colonello/Colonel Armistead), Harold Wilson (Amber, il suo domestico/his servant), Tefft Johnson (Mr. Murdock, il Segretario di Stato/Secretary of State), Norma Talmadge (sua figlia/Murdock’s daughter), Mrs. B.F. [Edith] Clinton (Miss Miggs, la padrona di casa/the landlady). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 04.11.1912. copia/copy: DCP, 10’26”, col. (da/from 35mm pos. nitr., [orig. l: 1,000 ft.], imbibito/tinted); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Packard Campus, Culpeper, VA.

Originally released under the title An Official Appointment, this film was later reissued as His Official Appointment, the title on this print. Talmadge is mainly called upon to be charming. It is her charm that prompts her father to present her with the bunch of violets whose circulation is the narrative device that holds the film together. The exteriors were shot in Washington, DC, on the Mall and by the Old Executive Office Building that then housed the Department of State. Talmadge said the journey there was the longest she had taken up to that time. She had to learn to drive a horse trap for the film, and it nearly ran away with her, as it does in the story.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

JUST SHOW FOLKS (GB: Just Show People) (US 1913)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. scen: Walter C. Bellows. cast: Leo Delaney (Piquet, il clown/the clown), Norma Talmadge (Rosa, sua moglie/his wife), Helene Costello (Toto, loro figlia/their child), Courtenay Foote (La Bine, l’acrobata/acrobat), Kate Price (padrona di casa/landlady), Hallam Cooley. prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 18.02.1913. copia/copy: 35mm, 848 ft., 13′ (18 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

Barry Salt has suggested that D.W. Griffith was a director of intermediate spaces – that is, while the action might be centered on one space, characters would be shown in adjacent spaces and move into the central space and out of it. By contrast, Vitagraph directors, and especially Van Dyke Brooke, rarely showed surrounding spaces. Thus, in Mrs. ’Enry ’Awkins, we are never shown the spaces adjacent to the Claytons’ sitting room. Just Show People is a partial exception, however. We are never shown the spaces surrounding the protagonists’ rented apartment, but at the circus we see the green room, the principal couple’s dressing room, the circus arena, and the corridor linking the dressing room and the green room. Nevertheless, these spaces are closely linked only when Piquet is dragged from the corridor into the green room and breaks his way out of it.
Another feature of the film is the otherwise unconnected shots of trapeze artists. On first viewing, we wondered if these might not be later interpolations by a collector, but this does not seem to be the case. The background in some of them is the same as in the scene of Rosa climbing to her perch, and they are placed to cover gaps in the story – thus, one of the first covers Piquet’s change from his street clothes to his clown costume.
When Leo Delaney and Talmadge are paired, it is usually, as in Father’s Hatband, as a romantic couple, but here Delaney has to manage the transition from a mean drunk to the heroic savior of his wife. Talmadge’s role is reactive, but she successfully differentiates her reactions to her child, the landlady, the manager, and her husband with very slight changes in facial expression and bodily stance.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

A LADY AND HER MAID (US 1913)
regia/dir: Bert Angeles. scen: Beta Breuil. cast: Florence Radinoff (Miss Ophelia), Norma Talmadge (Belinda), James Morrison (Billy), Lillian Walker (estetista/beautician), Hughey [Hughie] Mack (dentista/dentist). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 22.05.1913. copia/copy: 35mm, ?? ft. [orig. l: 1,000 ft.], 13’55” (?? fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

And now for something completely different. This film was the fourth in a 5-part series, all directed by Bert Angeles, called the “Belinda Series” in the company’s bulletin, Vitagraph Life Portrayals. The film is like a John Bunny-Flora Finch comedy, with Hughey [Hughie] Mack and Florence Radinoff in the Bunny-Finch roles. Talmadge has buck teeth and pigtails that stick out on either side of her head; the protruding teeth are “cured” by Mack with a mallet and cold chisel, while Lillian Walker deals with the unruly hair. Although there are no examples of such straightforward slapstick in Talmadge’s later films, she seems quite happy in the form in this one.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

FATHER’S HATBAND (US 1913)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. scen: Monte Katterjohn. cast: Norma Talmadge (Doris Mason), Van Dyke Brooke (Mr. Mason), Leo Delaney (Sam, l’impiegato/the clerk), Harry Lambert (Mr. Henpeck), Flora Finch (Mrs. Henpeck). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 29.10.1913. copia/copy: 35mm, ?? ft. [orig. l: 1,000 ft.], 15’17” (?? fps); did./titles: NLD. fonte/source: Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.

Many of Talmadge’s Vitagraph films, and many of the company’s other films, are romantic comedies of this type, with a courtship obstructed by parental disapproval which is eventually overcome, usually by some comic mishap – in this case, by customers at a barbershop accidentally taking each other’s hat. Van Dyke Brooke plays the obstructing father. Talmadge’s leading man here, as in many films in 1913 and 1914, is Leo Delaney. Note the use of a mirror to extend the visible space of a hallway without cutting.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

MEMORIES IN MEN’S SOULS (US 1914)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. scen: James Hopper. cast: Van Dyke Brooke (Hartley Graham), Walter Horton (Jones), Norma Talmadge (Eleanor Emmons), Charles Eldridge (Edgar Beverly, il suo tutore/her guardian), Antonio Moreno (suo figlio/his son), Thomas Morgan (il figlio di Graham/Graham’s son), Audrey Berry (la figlia di Graham/Graham’s daughter), Grace E. Stevens (chaperon/Eleanor’s chaperone). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 06.08.1914. copia/copy: 35mm, 935 ft. [orig. l: 1,000 ft.], 14′ (18 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

An example of one-reel filmmaking’s predilection for flashback construction to compress a multi-year narrative into a quarter of an hour. Although in scenes in the present Van Dyke Brooke has his typical old-man part, in the flashbacks he is the romantic protagonist. Talmadge, too, has to change from a young girl to a middle-aged woman.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

THE LOAN SHARK KING (US 1914)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. scen: Laura Colfax. cast: Van Dyke Brooke (Hartman, il re degli strozzini/the loan shark king), Norma Talmadge (Helen, sua figlia/his daughter), Antonio Moreno (Harry Graham, l’artista/an artist), Helen Connelly, Bobby Connelly (i loro figli/their children), Edwina Robbins (Mrs. Stone). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 08.10.1914. copia/copy: incomp., 35mm, 996 ft., 15′ (18 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

Classical filmmakers were always wary of stories relying on surprise, for fear their audiences would be confused by it. The wariness was even greater concerning one-reel films, with so much less time to anticipate the resolution. It might seem that The Loan Shark King would be better if the audience only learned that the loan shark king is Helen’s father at the point she finds it out, but the film insists on identifying him as such from the beginning, stating it in the cast list and the first narrative title. As in most of her other films, both for Vitagraph and later, Talmadge has a reactive rather than an initiating role, but her reactions are central to the film, and her handling of them reaches the levels she achieves in her feature films.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs

ELSA’S BROTHER (US 1915)
regia/dir: Van Dyke Brooke. scen: W.A. Tremayne. cast: Norma Talmadge (Elsa), S. Rankin Drew (Jack, suo fratello/her brother), Van Dyke Brooke (il nonno orologiaio/their grandfather, a watchmaker), Donald Hall (Hammond, proprietario della miniera/mine-owner), E.A. Turner (Philip Lessing, il capo ingegnere/his chief engineer). prod: Vitagraph Company of America. dist: General Film Company. uscita/rel: 17.04.1915. copia/copy: 35mm, 1852 ft., 27’30” (18 fps); did./titles: ENG. fonte/source: BFI National Archive, London.

Like most of Talmadge’s later Vitagraph films, Elsa’s Brother is a two-reeler, and like most Vitagraph two-reelers it falls into two distinct halves, with a narrative pause at the end of the first reel, as recommended in screenwriting manuals. The first reel takes Elsa’s brother Jack from the family home to near-death out West; the second centers on Elsa’s courtship of a man who believes he is responsible for Jack’s death. Jack’s resurrection resolves the situation.

Ben Brewster, Lea Jacobs