The First Auto

Warner Brothers Studio was continuing to perfect its sound-on-disc film format, a technology that showed immense promise throughout the first half of 1927. The company's sixth feature film to use the Vitaphone system was June 1927's "The First Auto." What was revolutionary about this picture was the advancement of both the music and the special effects accompanying the motion picture. Not only had the sophistication of the sounds been increased since Vitaphone's feature film debut in 1926's "Don Juan," but the soundtrack actually contained a few brief words.

Besides having a more complex soundtrack, "The First Auto" also serves as an historical record showcasing some of the very earliest horseless carriages under their own power. The movie's plot describes a successful race horse owner, Hank Armstrong (Russell Simpson), disparaging the advanced technology of automobiles. He wins a bet against one of the car's owners, proving his contention that cars will never replace horses in speed or in power. By the early 1900s, however, Hank's son, Bob Armstrong (Charles Emmett Mack), and all his pals have gasoline engine fever, and are foaming at the mouth to get their hands on them. Bob becomes a race car driver, and an exciting conclusion makes no doubt that automobiles are here to stay.

Not that they were any safer than horse carriages. In real life, actors appearing in "The First Auto" were killed in two separate accidents. Extra and script girl Helen Howard died when her and two other cast members were in a car that collided with another vehicle in downtown Los Angeles. The driver, William Demarest, who played the village funnyman and was Uncle Charlie in 'My Three Sons,' suffered cuts and bruises in the overturned car while extra Loretta Rush cracked her skull. After filming was over, Charles Emmett Mack died in an auto accident. His part as Bob was a major role for Mack, killed at the age of 26.

Sound pictures were only a year or two away, but this silent looked, in spots, as if it had been made earlier.

The best silent movies used a minimum of inter-titles, but "The First Auto" was overburdened with them -- oh, granted, not as overburdened as some other movies, but still there were too many.

There are, though, several reasons to watch this movie, and only a few to cause head-scratching and puzzlement.

First, seeing the original Barney Oldfield, as himself, is probably reason enough to watch "The First Auto." Oldfield was a magic name in the early years of both autos and cinema, and was an automotive hero a long time before there was such a thing as NASCAR.

Second, seeing Russell Simpson as the lead is a treat. He was an excellent actor, but was nearly always relegated to a "with" role. Even if in top-line films, he was put into secondary positions, and obviously, just judging from "The First Auto," he was fully qualified to get top billing.

Finally, one has to see it to believe it: The "special effects" when a race car supposedly catches fire ... well, "primitive" doesn't begin to describe it.

Perhaps we need to give an "A" for effort; and to note how far we have come in effects is one very good reason to watch this.

One major player was killed before filming was complete, but the result is no "Plan 9 from Outer Space": "The First Auto" is seamless in how that actor's death is handled.

This really is a movie to watch, for the good cast (also look for the adorable Patsy Ruth Miller), for a good story, and to see how the world of movie-making has changed.

This movie is a nostalgic look back at another time. Both for us, here and now -- and for the audience it was originally made for in 1927. Just because both 1927 -- when the film was made -- and 1896-1906 -- the time-frame of the story -- are both behind us, we tend to jumble them together as being early 20th-Century, or "the past". Well -- 1896 was already the deep past for these filmmakers. They were looking backwards just as much as George Lucas was when he made "American Graffiti."

This is a patchwork of a film -- part comedy (including some old vaudeville routines. William Demerest and his clown companion are present for no other reason except comic relief. In vaudeville, the clowns in front of the curtain were there to mask the noise and movement of scenery and costume changes taking place on the stage behind the curtain.) Such clowning was obviously not necessary for the movies, but it's still there -- and we get to see what people were laughing at before stand-up monologue comedy was the only game in town.

The film is part melodrama as we see how a horse in the late 1890's could be the friend and companion of the pre-industrial era, and how the death of a man's horse could bring a man to tears. "A horse is loyal. A horse remembers! A horse knows what gratitude is!" -- words spoken by the father/livery owner who is then called a "Brute" (an animal) by his son.

With it's pre-talkie talking-and-scored soundtrack, it sometimes plays like a rough experiment in early film sound technologies (which exactly parallels the story of the first automobiles -- and how quickly they displaced the horse-centered life.) Within 3 years, silent pictures were as gone from the landscape as horse-drawn buggies. The equally experimental "special effects" fire in the engine of a moving race car isn't exactly the parting of the Red Sea -- but we still get the idea.

It also has the air of a headliner news-reel -- when surprise! Barney Oldfield, playing himself, races around the horse track so that all of America (at least those who went to the movies) could see him do what he was famous for -- speed racing!

At it's heart, however, this is a story. It is about family and about learning what matters (sometimes called family values), and of generations -- a father with both feet firmly planted in the pre-automobile age, and his son who is racing after the biggest technology of the time. They loose each other, almost loose everything else, and then find each other and move into the automobile age together -- where the father opens a car dealership and goes to the car races while the son spends his days at the horse shows. -- and "gosh, what's the world coming to next?" as a bi-plane soars overhead.

This is not a "great" movie -- but it is great fun, and a great window back both to 1927 and it's time of plenty before the stock market crashed us into the Depression; and to the 1927 recollection of 1896, when the lights of technology were just beginning to turn on. It is a wonderful piece of film history, now preserved for my great- and great-great grandchildren. --Thanks to all those doing film preservation -- we love it.

This "dawn of sound" museum piece (3 spoken words, sound effects, and music)does have a certain charm, when it doesn't try to be funny, in telling of a livery stable operator who has trouble accepting the emergence of the automobile. Russell Hicks and Patsy Ruth Miller are pretty good in their roles. The rest of the cast are pretty awful. If you can time warp yourself back to 1927 to view the film in the ambiance of its era, you may find it mildly enjoyable. If you are firmly fixed, mind-wise, in the year 2000 probably not.

Only thirty years after the emergence of the automobile this is a historic classic. Son Bob's love for his father, who is not able to adjust to the coming of the auto, makes for good storytelling and lends itself well to silent film. The use of some sound effects and a few words makes the story even more interesting. The high point for me was seeing Barney Oldfield playing himself. One of the great racing drivers of all time he seems a thousand years away from the young, slim and clean driver popular today. I truly enjoyed this film.