Previewing History: "Peepshow Pioneers", Episode 1 of TCM’s Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood

by Robert Cashill

 

 Thomas Edison, the Mark Zuckerberg of his day, with a kinetoscope reel

Premiering on Turner Classic Movies Monday, Nov. 1, at 8pm EST is the first part of its ambitious seven-part series Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood. Premiering right now is our first-ever serial post, previewing each new episode before it airs. We begin at the beginning, in the primordial ooze of the industry from 1889-1910, but first a bit about the program.

Venerable documentaries about the movie industry and its major players have long been a part of TCM’s programming, including the work of Kevin Brownlow (who is receiving an honorary Oscar next month), Richard Schickel’s Emmy-nominated The Men Who Made the Movies (1973), and even Dick Cavett’s freewheeling interviews with the likes of Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. Its own movie star biographies can be compulsive viewing; two that linger in the memory are Garbo (2005), cowritten and codirected by Brownlow, and Lana Turner…a Daughter’s Memoir (2001), with Cheryl Crane relating her homicide-tossed relationship with her mother. This, though, is the big one, tracing the evolution, rise, and fall of the studio system, from D.W. Griffith to Dennis Hopper. It even comes with its own touring multimedia exhibit, which is wending its way through a few cities until Nov. 20. A nice bit of ballyhoo—you’ve heard Christopher Plummer narrate the show, now see one of his costumes from The Sound of Music.

Needless to say this not one of Martin Scorsese’s personal essays on the topic, nor will any Godardian digressions be entertained. This is a foursquare, meat-and-potatoes approach, with a main musical theme that would not have sounded out of place had it been used in HBO’s solemn World War II miniseries The Pacific. Plummer’s opening narration in the first chapter, “Peepshow Pioneers,” lays out the theme for each episode to come, over recognizable clips of our favorite larger-than-life personalities, tantalizing us—then we’re plunged into the dark ages. Far be it from me to criticize the dawn of filmic time; it’s an endlessly fascinating era, but, as a hook, a harder sell for the broader audience the show is aiming for.

The big problem for anyone tuning in is that there are few remaining links to this past to illuminate its flickering glories. And so the talking heads are brought on, a parade of film scholars I couldn’t really place, save for the ubiquitous Leonard Maltin, without whom no Hollywood documentary is complete. (I’m not knocking anyone else’s qualifications, it’s just that none are given in the screener DVDs I received. ID’ing each person with a book or other publication would have been helpful, and perhaps they will be in the finished product.) No one has anything terribly trenchant to say about Muybridge and Méliès and the early “phantasmagorias” and nickelodeons—we get the gist of it, and move onto the next thing. Compression will be a complicating factor in these briskly paced hours.

Interest picks up whenever the praised and reviled Thomas Edison, the Mark Zuckerberg of his day, takes someone to court for patent infringement. Would there have been a Hollywood at all without him driving his competitors from the East Coast to escape his lawyers? This isn’t the kind of show to speculate, but that is a reasonable conclusion to make, and the program is fortunate to have Universal founder Carl Laemmle’s niece Carla on hand to confirm that Edison was a constant thorn in every nascent movie mogul’s side. (Carla Laemmle, 101, had bit parts in the 1925 Phantom of the Opera and the 1931 Dracula, and I hope to see more of her.)

Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood strengthens as it coalesces around Griffith, Mary Pickford, the Warner brothers, and the Gish sisters. An inspiring few minutes is spent with Alice Guy-Blaché, the first female director and one of the first directors to push the movies toward narrative. The show hits all the marks you expect it to hit (cue The Great Train Robbery) but throws in a few surprises, like the price of a moving picture show in rural Arkansas (two chicken eggs for adult farmers, one for kids)—and, as someone who has been stuck on the Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge more than once, is it possible that Fort Lee was once this side of paradise for moviemakers? The most satisfying element of “Peepshow Pioneers” is the footage of these men and women at work, laying the foundation for the dream factory.

Next week: The Birth of Hollywood, 1910-1920.

For more information about Moguls & Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, click here. Click here for an episode guide, including airdates and a list of films to be shown with each installment.

Robert Cashill, a member of the Online Film Critics Society, is a Cineaste Associate and the Film Editor of Popdose.com.

 

Copyright © 2010 by Cineaste Publishers, Inc.

 

 

Cineaste,Vol.XXXVI No.1 2010

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