Overland Route to Europe, Through America -- August 8, 2013

The Pacific Mail Steamship Company had a monopoly on carrying the United States Mail across the Pacific.  It also did a big business in passengers to and from Australia, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Hawaii, Japan and China. This ad from the 14-November-1876 Brisbane Courier reports the upcoming sailing of Zealandia for Honolulu and San Francisco. 

Harry Langdon, Heart Trouble in Australia #2 -- August 2, 2013

I had a request for anything about Harry Langdon's last silent feature under his lucrative First National contract.  Heart Trouble flopped at the box office and we may never know if it was any good because it is considered lost.  I remembered seeing several items in digitized Australian newspapers.  In part one, I gave some of the results, showing the progression from main feature to second feature.  Here we see it shown until 1931, even as talkies came to dominate the market.  Click on each image to see a larger version.  I found the newspapers using the Trove Project, which is digitizing more papers all the time.  I am splitting this post into two parts.  

Part One
Part Two
A review from the December, 1928 Motion Picture Magazine 


"Movie Notes" from the 08-April-1929 Grenfell Record and Lachlan District Advertiser says that in the second feature Heart Trouble, Harry Langdon "Bombs the blues with mirth."   The main feature The Red Dance is supported the second night by a movie we saw twice in part one, Almost Human.

This large ad from the 18-April-1929 Werribee Shire Banner promotes the upcoming showing of Heart Trouble and Buster Keaton's The Cameraman at the Mechanic's Palais.  There is a nice graphic for The Cameraman.  John Ford's Four Sons was coming first. Sorry I had to split it into three pieces. 

By 17-June-1929, this ad from the Hobart Mercury says that Heart Trouble was playing on the island of Tasmania.  Note the item at the bottom: "BOX PLAN OPENS TO-DAY FOR 'THE JAZZ SINGER,' the first "TALKIE"

The 09-October-1929 Townsville Daily Bulletin, from the northeast coast of Queensland, has Heart Trouble as the main feature with a Carlyle Blackwell movie.  Harry "Bombs the blues with mirth" and is described as "the frozen-faced Comedian."  I had never seen "frozen-faced" used to describe Harry Langdon.

Two days later, the 11-October-1929 Townsville Daily Bulletin reported Heart Trouble was playing at a different theater as second feature to a Hoot Gibson movie.

This article, from the 15-September-1929 Perth Sunday Times, reports that Hal Roach has announced that he will be producing one talkie comedy a week, featuring stars such as Laurel and Hardy, Charley Chase, Our Gang, and Harry Langdon. 

This article from the 24-March-1930 Northern Star of Lismore New South Wales, says that a Hal Roach talkie short featuring Harry and Thelma Todd, "Hotter than Hot" is playing with Mary Nolan's first talkie, Shanghai Lady.  This probably decreased peoples' interest in Harry's silents. 

Meanwhile, way down yonder in Tasmania, the 07-June-1930 Burnie Advocate reported that the Burnie Theatre featured film of the arrival of aviatrix (love that word) Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Great Britain to Australia, which was playing with a talkie, King Vidor's Hallelujah.  The Davenport Majestic Theatre and Town Hall played Life's Circus, which was a silent German movie called Manege according to the IMDB, along with Heart Trouble as a second feature.  I threw in the ad for Lon Chaney in West of Zanzibar for the Chaney fans. 

In Melbourne, the 26-November-1930 Argus has Heart Trouble playing second feature to an Australian movie, When the Kellys Were Out, which must have been about Ned Kelly's gang, in a kiddie show, the Regent Children's Party.  Other movies on the bill were a chapter of Tarzan the Tiger and an Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon.  There was also a live show with a cowboy, a contortionist, dancing clowns, and other novelties.  I included the ad for the grown-up show, Caught Short, a talkie with Marie Dressler and Polly Moran.  That is a crappy title for a movie.

Even as late as 31-March-1931, the Northern Standard, from Darwin, Northern Territory, carried an article about Heart Trouble before a local showing.  It says that Harry Langdon "is an exponent of a type of comedy which seems particularly suited to himself and one other comedian -- Buster Keaton.  The art of gesture is one in which these two are extraordinarily versed..." 

Another Darwin newspaper, the Northern Territory Times, carried an ad for a showing of Heart Trouble as second feature to what appears to be a Russian circus film, or a European circus film shot in Russia.  I couldn't identify it in the IMDB, even looking at a list of Italian diva Marcella Albani's films.

The same issue of the Northern Territory Times also carried an ad about "unusual stunts" in Heart Trouble, but doesn't describe them.

The last reference I could find to Heart Trouble was in the 18-April-1931 Adelaide Advertiser and Register as the second feature to a talkie, Ladies Love Brutes. 

At the same time that Heart Trouble was playing in Australian theaters, I found ads for most of Harry's other silent features, Tramp Tramp Tramp, The Strong Man, Long Pants, Three's a Crowd, and The Chaser.  I didn't find the Sennett feature His First Flame, but I wasn't looking for it.  Perhaps, as some writers have suggested, the Australian market, like the American, was saturated with Harry Langdon. 

Harry visited Australia in 1936 to appear in a stage production of Anything Goes. 

Harry Langdon, Heart Trouble in Australia #1 -- August 1, 2013

I had a request for anything about Harry Langdon's last silent feature under his lucrative First National contract.  Heart Trouble flopped at the box office and we may never know if it was any good because it is considered lost.  I remembered seeing several items in digitized Australian newspapers.  Here are some of the results.  Click on each image to see a larger version.  I found the newspapers using the Trove Project, which is digitizing more papers all the time.  I split this post into two parts.  

Part One
Part Two
A review from the December, 1928 Motion Picture Magazine 


The earliest reference to Heart Trouble I found was the ad above in the 17-November-1928 Canberra Times.  "What need is an M.D. when you L.T."  L.T.?  Coming soon was a film of the 26-July-1928 heavyweight championship fight between Gene Tunney and challenger Tommy Gun Heeney, a New Zealander.  Heeney put up a good fight, but Tunney won by a TKO in the 11th.  Second feature Almost Human is a dog story.  The IMDB says Heart Trouble was released in the US on 01-October-1928, so it did not take long to reach the capital of Australia.

An article in the 30-November-1928 Perth Daily News gives more detail about the film's plot than I have seen before.  Harry belongs to a family of Germans who emigrated to America.  When America enters the war, he has to enlist, but with which country?  The article reads like a press release.  This shows that the movie had quickly traveled to the remote west coast. 

A brief item in the 01-December-1928 West Australian, from Perth, says that Heart Trouble will open at the Grand Theatre with Master of the World, which I assume is based on the Jules Verne story.  I can't find it in the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

 

An ad from the same issue uses a typographical style that seems to have been common in Australian newspapers.  Items like this that repeat the name of the artist and the movie many times turn up really well in searches.  Harry "bombards the blues with bombs of merriment."  

An item from the 03-December-1928 Sydney Morning Herald New Films column is not completely positive about the movie. It says  Harry's whimsicality is "positively irritating."  "At times the picture is genuinely amusing; more often than not, however, it is inordinately dull."  The reviewer gives an Australian point of view: "American audiences may be elated to see a band of American recruits, with bugles playing, drums thumping, and flags flying, on the march in 1917, three years after the Allies had entered the Great War; but the appeal to the other countries involved may not be so pronounced." 

An ad in the 04-December-1928 Perth Daily News show Heart Trouble at the top of the bill.  

 

An ad in the 19-January-1929 Queensland Figaro shows that by the next month, Heart Trouble was on the bottom of a bill with Two Lovers, a Ronald Colman/Vilma Banky silent, and it was only there for the first half of the main feature's six-day run. The other second feature, Almost Human, was on the bottom of the bill with Heart Trouble in Canberra in November. 

This ad in the 26-March-1929 Rockhampton, Queensland Morning Bulletin, has Heart Trouble as second feature to DW Griffith's remake of his own The Battle of the Sexes. I like the ad for the main feature.  Sorry the image got split. 

This ad in the 29-March-1929 Sunshine Advocate has Heart Trouble as second feature to a William Haines silent.

I will stop here for now.  In the next installment we will see talkies arrive in Australia and Heart Trouble be shown as late as 1931.