thehorsesheadblog

#755) Cab Calloway Home Movies (1948-1951)

#755) Cab Calloway Home Movies (1948-1951)

OR “Hi-De-Ho-Hum”

Filmed by Cab and Zulme “Nuffie” Calloway

Class of 2022

The “Cab Calloway Home Movies” can be viewed online at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. Of the six documented reels of film, reels 1, 2, and 4 are available for online viewing (roughly 35 minutes).

The Plot: Cab Calloway is best remembered as the epitome of scat and jazz singing in the 1930s, but did you know he also filmed home movies? “Cab Calloway Home Movies” offer us brief glimpses of Calloway’s family life in Long Beach, Long Island with his wife and children, plus footage from family vacations, as well as from Calloway’s South American performance tour. And…yeah, that’s about it.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a brief overview of the collection, with the only superlative going to the “handsome” footage. Huh.

But Does It Really?: Maybe I’m experiencing some NFR home movies fatigue, but why is this on the list? No disrespect to Cab Calloway and his family, but as wonderful as it is to see this footage, I’ve tried to justify its inclusion on the NFR, and I keep running into other titles that cover the same ground. Home movies from a prominent 20th century entertainer? “Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies”. Amateur footage of a Black community? “The Solomon Sir Jones Films”. Documentation of Cab Calloway? “Stormy Weather” and “The Blues Brothers”. All these films made the NFR before “Cab Calloway Home Movies”, which makes its inclusion seemingly redundant. I’m glad the “Cab Calloway Home Movies” have been preserved and made available, but I’m still on the fence about their NFR standing.

Everybody Gets One: Cabel Calloway III started taking singing lessons and performing in night clubs when he was a teenager. After honing his craft in Chicago, Calloway moved to New York and found himself performing at the Cotton Club with the Missourians, who quickly changed their name to Cab Calloway and His Orchestra. In 1931, Calloway recorded “Minnie the Moocher”, which became his signature song and the first record by an African American artist to sell one million copies. By decade’s end Calloway would also become a star on radio and in the movies, including NFR titles “Stormy Weather” and “Snow-White”. At the time of these home movies, Cab was married to his second wife Zulme “Nuffie” Calloway, and the two were living in Long Beach raising their three daughters: Chris, Cecilia, and Cabella.

Other notes

Reel 1 is the Calloways’ trip to Trinidad and Tobago (presumably on vacation). It’s mostly drive-by shots of different buildings: post offices, police stations, even an outdoor school. We also get to see raw sugar cane being processed into sugar. I was not expecting this film to be so educational.
Reel 2 brings us back to Long Island, where Cab and Nuffie are enjoying some family time with their newborn (I’m not sure on the timeline, but I think that’s Cecilia). In contrast with Calloway’s boisterous energy on-stage, it’s nice seeing him relaxed and cuddling up with his kids. And those babies are so cute! I just want to invent time travel, go back in time, and pinch those cheeks!
Each individual reel of “Cab Calloway” has its own listing on the Smithsonian website which describes the footage in as much detail as possible, which I greatly appreciated. One interesting note about Reel 2 is that the “[o]riginal footage has exposure irregularities”. That’s putting it mildly. This reel is so overexposed it looks like God keeps trying to break into the shot. The overexposure is so distracting I didn’t even notice that one of the people visiting the Calloway’s in this reel is Lena Horne!
Reel 4 has the most going for it because it’s in color! This one features Cab and his Orchestra traveling and performing in such countries as Uruguay and Argentina. It’s all pleasant to look at, but we don’t stay on anything long enough to get a clear snapshot of time and place. Ah well.
Based on the Smithsonian descriptions, the three reels currently unavailable for online viewing include footage from Calloway’s travels to Jamaica, Haiti, Brazil, and Puerto Rico.

Legacy

Shortly after these home movies were filmed, Cab Calloway and his band split up following financial difficulties exacerbated by Cab’s gambling. Calloway continued performing on stage and TV, and even managed one more NFR movie with his appearance in “The Blues Brothers”. Cab Calloway died in 1994 at age 86.
At some point the “Cab Calloway Home Movies” were gifted to the Smithsonian by Cab’s youngest daughter, Cabella Calloway Langsam, along with several of Cab’s personal belongings. New prints of “Cab Calloway Home Movies” were made in 2016 from the original 16 mm prints, and the footage made the NFR six years later.

Listen to This: Among Cab Calloway’s posthumous achievements are two honorary Grammys, induction into the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, and the 2018 inclusion of “Minnie the Moocher” on the National Recording Registry. An essay by author and journalist Herb Boyd is a rundown of the song and Calloway’s contribution to pop culture.

#754) Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10 (1939-1956 or 1946-1957)

#754) Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10 (1939-1956 or 1946-1957)

OR “The Shape of Things to Come”

Directed by Harry Smith

Class of 2006

The Plot: How the hell do I describe “Early Abstractions”? Created by the Beat generation’s resident jack-of-all-trades Harry Smith, “Early Abstractions” is a seven-part collision of art, film, shapes, and music. Don’t try to figure it out, just let the images wash over you and go with it.

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a rundown of Harry Smith’s many achievements, and calls the films “a lovely, ever-moving collage of abstraction, color and imagery.”

But Does It Really?: We’ve covered a lot of autodidactic avant-garde filmmakers on this list, but even in that unique group Harry Smith stands out. Although his compilation of American folk music is his greatest legacy (more on that later), Smith’s film work is also worthy of recognition, and “Early Abstractions” fits the bill. As for the films themselves, it’s hard to critique them. Each of the “Early Abstractions” is a free-flowing work in progress that was never meant to be categorized or analyzed, certainly not by the likes of me. My takeaway from them is the experience of watching an artist’s evolution as he figures out what his “voice” is, with the films becoming more complex and polished as they go. “Early Abstractions” won’t suit everyone’s tastes, but they represent yet another creative voice in the experimental art movement of the 20^th century.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Portland, Oregon and raised in the Seattle, Washington area, Harry Everett Smith developed two major hobbies at an early age: collecting records and painting. As an adult, Smith moved to San Francisco, where he joined the experimental film scene and amassed as many as 20,000 records (by his estimation) including folk, blues, gospel, and the traditional music of practically every country and region in the world. After moving to New York and running out of money, Smith tried to sell his record collection to Folkways Records, who instead countered with a proposal for Smith to create a folk music compilation album. The result, 1952’s “Anthology of American Folk Music”, chronicled the genre’s more obscure entries from the 1920s and 1930s and has maintained a legacy of its own (see “Listen to This”). Very little is known about the creation of Smith’s “Early Abstractions” series as he kept no record of their production (the 1939-1956 timeline is a generous estimation). Each film in the “Abstractions” series was initially longer (anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes each) and subsequently cut down by Smith himself to synchronize with a selected piece of music that varied from showing to showing. The films didn’t receive their official titles until some point in the 1950s or early 1960s when the Film-Makers’ Cooperative started distributing prints. Smith had of history of selling, destroying, or misplacing his films, and numbers 6, 8, and 9 of the “Early Abstractions” series are presumed to no longer exist.

This section will alternate between Other notes and Things I Thought I Saw During “Early Abstractions” (or TITISDEA for short)

No. 1: A Strange Dream (1939-1947, or 1946-1948) is, in Smith’s words, “the history of the geologic period reduced to orgasm length.” I feel like I just learned a lot about Harry Smith in that one sentence. “No. 1” utilizes one of Smith’s early go-to forms of animation: painting directly onto 35 mm film.
TITISDEA1: Red blood cells, a melted popsicle, a chicken embryo, coffee mug stains.
No. 2: Message From the Sun (1940-1942 or 1946-1948): According to Smith, this film “takes place either inside the sun or in…Switzerland.” This time, Harry uses stickers from 3-ring binder paper as a makeshift stencil, with Vaseline and paint to color the frames.
TITISDEA2: Film leader, a pie chart, eggs (very pricey these days), the NBC logo from the late ‘70s, Pac-Man, and OSHA’s hazardous materials classification.
No. 3: Interwoven (1942-1947 or 1947-1949): Harry’s coloring of choice this time is batik, a dying technique more commonly used for fabric. That would explain why the animation seemed a little more “textured” than the first two. On a related note, Harry Smith enjoyed collecting Seminole patchwork, whose distinctive rickrack pattern appears in many of these films.
TITISDEA3: A hashtag, SMPTE color bars, Mondrian’s “Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow”, an argyle sweater, the Union Jack (or possibly the Confederate flag), a rotary phone.
No. 4: Fast Track aka Manteca (1947 or 1949-1950) Smith starts experimenting with filming images as opposed to just painting them. We start with footage of Smith’s painting Manteca, inspired by the Dizzy Gillespie song, which each brushstroke representing a note. This is followed by a few minutes of light patterns being superimposed over each other.
Side note: The song “Manteca” is taken from the Spanish word meaning “lard” and an Afro-Cuban euphemism for heroin. It is not, as I had hoped, named after the California city whose water slides I visited every summer in my childhood.
TITISDEA4: Headlights, fluorescent lights, constellations, a Saul Bass opening credits sequence (“Man with the Golden Arm”, maybe?)
No. 5: Circular Tensions (Homage to Oskar Fischinger) (1949-1950) was intended as a “sequel” to “No. 4”, which explains why I had a hard time figuring out where 4 ends and 5 begins. As for Oskar Fischinger, his film “Motion Painting No. 1” had been made a few years earlier, and you can see the influence it had on “No. 5”, with its emphasis on simple shapes and patterns.
TITISDEA5: Hula hoops, a CBS special presentation, and – oh no I’m being hypnotized!
No. 7: Color Study (1950-1952): Smith moves on to optical printing with what he calls “Pythagoreanism in four movements”. That’s a fancy way of saying there are a lot of shapes, with a relentless avalanche of squares, circles, triangles, etc.
TITISDEA7: Mainly all those gosh darn shapes; too many to fully make out what was going on. This one may have defeated me.
No. 10: Mirror Animations (1956-1957): The biggest leap in terms of Smith’s artistic evolution, “No. 10” is a photo collage with depictions of Buddhism and the Kabballah. After six films of shapes and colors, it’s a relief to see something that, while still abstract in concept, features more concrete visuals. I wouldn’t be surprised if Frank Mouris was inspired by this to make “Frank Film”.
TITISDEA10: Less abstract in terms of visuals, though I think I saw the electronic game Simon.

Legacy

Harry Smith made 10 more “Abstractions” between 1956 and 1981, including one that was intended as a feature adaptation of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Smith continued pursuing his other interests over the years, recording and collecting music, studying the occult, and becoming a bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. Harry Smith died in 1991 at age 68 from a bleeding ulcer. In addition to the NFR induction of “Early Abstractions”, Smith has been inducted into the National Recording Registry, and in 2023 achieved canonized sainthood by the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. I’ve covered many accomplished artists on this blog, but this is my first time covering a saint.

Listen to This: Smith’s “Anthology of American Folk Music” was added to the National Recording Registry in 2005. The NRR write-up gives a summary of the album and its “seminal role in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.” An essay by music researcher Ian Nagoski is a detailed overview the album and Harry Smith, who I guess I should have been calling St. Harry this whole time.

#753) Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939)

#753) Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther (1939)

OR “Minnesota Nice: The Motion Picture”

Directed by Esther & Dr. Raymond Dowidat

Class of 2001

The Plot: The sleepy town of Cologne, Minnesota gets the artistic amateur film treatment in “Cologne: From the Diary of Ray and Esther”. The Ray and Esther in question are Dr. Raymond Dowidat, a general practitioner, and his wife Esther. The couple have lived in Cologne for two years and document the summer of 1939 with their 16 mm camera. With Esther’s journal entries as a framing device, “Cologne” is a snapshot of what this small town has to offer, with seemingly endless farmland, the town’s feed mill, and the “good-natured German or Hollanders” that comprise Cologne’s population of 350.

Why It Matters: The NFR praises this amateur film for exhibiting “a cinematic sophistication and artistry not usually found in home movies”. An essay by Scott Simmon is an equally brief overview of the movie.

But Does It Really?: While not the first amateur film on the NFR that attempts a narrative, “Cologne” is among the first, marking the start of a recurring trend in the Registry’s 2000s inductees. In a brief 14 minutes, “Cologne” paints quite the picture of small-town Americana, along with commentary that evokes more questions than answers. I always air on the side of giving a pass to any amateur filmmakers on the list, and while I don’t strongly advocate for “Cologne” being in the NFR, I don’t begrudge its induction, so another pass it is.

Everybody Gets One: Like every other amateur filmmaker on this list, any scraps of biographical information about Ray and Esther Dowidat are few and far between. We know that Ray and Esther married in 1937 in Iowa, and later that year moved to Cologne, Minnesota following Ray’s completion of his medical internship. They had three children, the third being born shortly before Ray and Esther started filming “Cologne”. Assuming the Dowidat kids were all born in wedlock, that would mean Esther spent the majority of her two years in Cologne pregnant.

Other notes

Located roughly 30 miles southwest of Minneapolis, Cologne was incorporated in 1881 with a population of 100 and was named after the fourth most populous city in Germany (a large portion of the Midwest is of German heritage). Prior to the filming of “Cologne”, the biggest event in town seems to have been when Charles August Lindbergh (father of the famous aviator) visited in 1918 while campaigning for Governor. Other than that, the fact that “Cologne” is on the National Film Registry seems to be the town’s biggest selling point.
Esther’s diary entries are a nice touch, giving the film a cohesive throughline and elevating it above standard home movies. As best I can tell, Esther filmed these diary interstitials shortly after giving birth to her third child John.
One segment in June is a visit to the town’s feed mill at Cologne Milling Inc. The mill was owned and operated by the Guettler family, who were prominent in Cologne’s history; their family home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Representing the Guettler family in this film are Hans, Bill, and “The Old Man” (the film doesn’t specify how they are related to each other or what the Old Man’s actual name is, and my research findings were inconclusive). The mill, now known as Cologne Milling Co., is still in operation.
Most essays I have read about “Cologne” comment on the seemingly condescending point of view Ray and Esther have of Cologne and its people. The first such example is how they describe Cologne being “at one time an important little railroad town. Now—”, followed by a shot of a train speeding past the city without stopping. And now that I think about it, the “good-natured German or Hollanders” comment does seem a little backhanded. It’s like this film is the Dowidat’s ethnographic study of some far-off civilization.
August brings us the volunteer fireman’s picnic and parade, with volunteer firefighters from nearby towns lending a helping hand. That would explain why this parade is so big; I think there’s more people in the parade than there are living in Cologne.
Another prominent citizen of Cologne featured here is Henry Mohrbacher. In addition to being descended from one of Cologne’s founder, Henry owns the town saloon. We also see him making his famous turtle soup, and –Oh god he’s skinning a turtle on camera! Why is there so much graphic animal cruelty on this list? Make it stop!
More potential disdain for Cologne is on display when Esther writes about how the local saloons “play a very prominent part in the social life of the community”. She follows this up with “In Cologne everybody drinks beer”, followed by a shot of two old men getting into a seemingly good natured barfight. The final entry in which the Dowdiats announce their departure from Cologne has also raised some eyebrows, with Esther stating that she is leaving the town with “[s]ome regrets, many memories – pleasant and bitter”. Ooh, spill the tea, Esther!
The date of Esther’s final journal entry is noteworthy in hindsight because September 1^st, 1939 was the day Germany invaded Poland, marking the start of World War II. Although America wouldn’t enter the war for another two years, “Cologne” offers one of the final glimpses of a country fully removed from the war in Europe.

Legacy

The Dowidats moved to Minneapolis in 1939, and outside of Ray’s service in the Army during WWII and his work at a VA hospital in Saginaw, Michigan, not a lot is known about Ray or Esther after filming “Cologne”. Ray and Esther’s daughter Adele Johnson discovered “Cologne” in Esther’s attic and donated it to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1989. At some point around 1999, the MHS received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to have “Cologne” preserved, which no doubt caught the attention of the National Film Preservation Board, and the rest is history.
As of the 2020 census, Cologne, Minnesota has a population of over 2,000. I don’t know how many of those 2000 are German, but 95% of the population is White (which is – believe it or not – down from 97% in a previous census).

#752) Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (c. 1934 – c. 1950)

#752) Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies (c. 1934 – c. 1950)

OR “The Tap Dance Kids”

Filmed by Fayard, Harold, Ulysses, and Viola Nicholas and Lorenzo Hill

Class of 2011

This is another one of my placeholder posts. The “Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies” are currently unavailable online in their entirety, but a few minutes appear in two different TV specials about the Nicholas Brothers: the 1992 British documentary “The Nicholas Brothers: We Sing and We Dance”, and the 1999 “Biography” episode “The Nicholas Brothers: Flying High”. Thanks to Ken Scheck for bringing these to my attention.

The Plot: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Fayard and Harold Nicholas appeared on stage and screen as The Nicholas Brothers, performing their unique “flash dance” combining precision tap with outstanding acrobatics. The first two decades of their careers are chronicled in a series of home movies filmed by the brothers, as well as their parents Ulysses and Viola Nicholas. We get a peek into the Nicholas Brothers’ beginnings at New York’s famous Cotton Club, their trips to Hollywood, their extensive international touring, and personal glimpses of the expanding Nicholas family, including a pre-fame Dorothy Dandridge!

Why It Matters: The NFR calls these home movies “extraordinary” because they “capture a golden age of show business” as well as “document the middle-class African-American life of that era”. We also get an all-encompassing essay from Tony Nicholas (Fayard’s son) and Academy Film Archive expert Luisa F. Ribeiro.

But Does It Really?: I’ve been trying to track down this film for years, and although I’ve only been able to view a few minutes of these home movies, I loved every second of it. While we’ve covered a lot of show business for this blog, very little (if any) behind the scenes footage has been inducted. I get that the NFR doesn’t want to turn too meta, but this backstage glimpse of a bygone showbiz era was quite a treat. My only issue is that I haven’t been able to see all of it yet. A yes for the “Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies” on the NFR, an encapsulation of time, place, family, and remarkable talent.

Everybody Gets One: Ulysses and Viola Nicholas were both musicians at various vaudeville houses in the 1920s; Ulysses on drums, Viola on piano. Their first son Fayard was born in 1914, followed by daughter Dorothy in 1920 and second son Harold in 1921. Fayard would watch all the acts their parents performed for, learning how to imitate each act’s dancing and singing, teaching all of this to his siblings. The three Nicholas children started performing in 1931 in Philadelphia as “The Nicholas Kids”, though Dorothy left the act shortly thereafter. An offer for the newly renamed “Nicholas Brothers” act with the Cotton Club in 1932 saw the family move to New York, and by 1934 the act was successful enough that the family could afford a state of the art 16 mm camera to record home movies with. While Viola and the children filmed their share of these home movies (Ulysses died in 1935), most of this footage was filmed by Lorenzo Hill, the Nicholas family’s longtime friend and chauffeur.

Other notes

Praise be for the two documentaries featuring snippets of these home movies. It was a rare experience to be able to watch an NFR film and my research on it simultaneously. Both documentaries have the good fortune of interviewing Fayard and Harold, and the two of them are still enthusiastic and energetic in their later years, at one point even recreating one of their old routines! On hand for “We Sing and We Dance” are additional interviews with Gregory & Maurice Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Stanley Burrell, aka MC Hammer. Incidentally, both brothers are impressed by Hammer’s dance moves (even though Fayard accidentally calls him “JC Hammer”). The “Biography” episode was especially enjoyable for me because I watched that show a lot growing up. There’s something about having your life story narrated by Peter Graves that just feels right. Of the two, the “Biography” episode has slightly more of the home movie footage, but both only include a few fleeting moments of each sequence.

I’ll be covering the available footage in as close to chronological order as I can. By 1934, the Nicholas Brothers had been performing at the Cotton Club for two years, with the occasional trip out to Hollywood to film dance routines for such films as “Kid Millions” (also Harold is in “The Emperor Jones”; how did I miss that?) The Cotton Club footage is the only known footage inside the famous nightclub, notorious at the time for its segregation: Black performers for a Whites-only audience (the Nicholas Brothers were the only act allowed to mingle with the audience after a performance). The Nicholas’ Cotton Club footage is primarily taken from the wings, though someone was able to discreetly film a rehearsal from the house. Among the Cotton Club performers making an appearance here is Cab Calloway, whose own home movies have also found their way onto the NFR. Man, Calloway’s got more NFR titles than Christopher Nolan.
One of my favorite moments was the Nicholas Brothers dancing with Fred Astaire on the RKO backlot. Astaire was filming “Top Hat” at the time, and often praised the brothers’ dancing abilities in interviews, calling them his heroes.
My main takeaway from this footage is how practically every shot of Fayard and Harold offstage is them mugging for the camera or showing off a new dance move. Even in the interviews conducted for the later documentaries they always seem to be “on”. It makes sense, these two were born into show-business, they know no other life; if there’s a camera, it’s showtime. Hopefully, they were much more reserved when the camera was off.
Another highlight is the brothers performing on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hart musical “Babes in Arms”. This is that “let’s paint the barn and put on a show” musical that’s been lampooned to death over the decades. “Babes in Arms” was subsequently made into a film with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, though the script was completely rewritten, most of the score was thrown out, and…oh God they added a blackface number. Moving on…
In 1939, the Nicholas Brothers did a South American tour, and there is footage of the brothers performing with Carmen Miranda. I don’t know if this led to them appearing with Miranda in “Down Argentine Way”, but it certainly didn’t hurt.
Yes, that is a young Dorothy Dandridge in these home movies. Dandridge met Harold while the two were working at the Cotton Club in 1938 (Dorothy was part of the Dandridge Sisters singing trio), and the two were married from 1942 to 1951. Harold admitted years later that he was not the greatest husband to Dandridge, spending more time away from home playing golf, which is also documented in these home movies.
The last of the footage appears to be from one of the Nicholas Brothers’ many European trips in the late 1940s/early 1950s, most likely their trip to London in 1948 and a royal command performance for King George VI. Was he still Colin Firth in 1948 or had he already become Jared Harris?
Watching these two documentaries meant getting to revisit the brothers’ incredible work in “Down Argentine Way” (which I called “one of [that] movie’s few saving graces”) and “Stormy Weather” (“the brothers do not disappoint”). I also got to watch their dance numbers in some of their other movies, and is it me or does that “Be a Clown” song from “The Pirate” sound familiar?
According to the NFR essay there’s a lot of the “Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies” that I haven’t seen. Highlights include: a family trip to the 1933-1934 Chicago World’s Fair, a tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson at the Cotton Club, Fayard and Harold’s amateur film “Mutiny on Sugar Hill”, a star-studded USO tour in 1939, and Fayard’s stint in the army during WWII.

Legacy

Shortly after the period covered by these home movies, the Nicholas Brothers began their solo careers as Fayard returned to the United States and Harold remained in France. The two would reunite professionally upon Harold’s return to the states in the 1960s, but by that point their careers had waned, and in the wake of the Civil Rights movement their act was perceived as old-fashioned (and as they got older the Nicholas Brothers couldn’t perform as many of their more acrobatic moves as they used to). Thankfully, both brothers lived long enough to see their work get rediscovered and celebrated, with Fayard winning a Tony Award for his choreography of “Black and Blue” in 1989, and both brothers receiving the Kennedy Center Honor in 1991. Harold died in 2000 at age 79, Fayard six years later at age 91.

After Fayard’s death, his son Tony and daughter-in-law Vanita donated his home movie collection to the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles. While the “Nicholas Brothers Family Home Movies” have yet to appear online in full, snippets can be found in other documentaries, and the footage has been screened on occasion at the Academy Museum, with Tony Nicholas on hand for at least one screening to provide commentary.

#751) Heroes All (1920)

#751) Heroes All (1920)

OR “A Red Cross to Bear”

Produced by the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures

Class of 2009

Funny story: Thanks to Ken Schenk I learned that “Heroes All” is available for viewing through the National Archives if you email the Archives and request a digital copy. I emailed the Archives, filled out the request form, got the link to download the file, e-signed an agreement that I wouldn’t share the link with anyone, and watched “Heroes All” with no problems. TWO DAYS LATER the film was uploaded for viewing on the National Archives website. Watch it here with significantly less red tape than I did.

The Plot: “Heroes All” is a salute to not only the heroes who fought during World War I, but also the heroes at the American Red Cross who are helping our veterans upon their return home. Our film follows a group of veterans as they are treated at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C., where Red Cross volunteers help treat their injuries alongside the Walter Reed staff. Many of our veterans stay at the Red Cross Convalescent House at Walter Reed, where they are further rehabilitated through lodging, vocational courses, and outings to various D.C. landmarks. It’s a patriotic, maybe too upbeat look at how we took care of our veterans over a century ago, brought to you by the short-lived film branch of the American Red Cross.

Why It Matters: The NFR calls “Heroes All”, as well as the many other films produced by Red Cross at the time, “invaluable historical and visual records of the era.” An essay by Gerry Veeder, Ph.D. is a recap of both “Heroes All” and the Red Cross Bureau of Pictures.

But Does It Really?: While I have a few qualms with this movie (we’ll get to those later), “Heroes All” does what any good NFR film does; it represents a specific time and place for this country, shining a light on both our war veterans and our Red Cross volunteers. If nothing else, “Heroes All” gave me an excuse to research institutions like the Red Cross and Walter Reed that I’ve heard of all my life but know nothing about. A pass for the NFR induction of “Heroes All”; I’m just glad it’s finally online after all these years.

Everybody Gets One: The first chapter of the American Red Cross opened in 1881 in New York. Co-founder Clara Barton had witnessed the relief aid that the International Red Cross was providing during the Franco-Prussian War and wanted to bring that type of organization stateside. In its first 40 years, the American Red Cross offered aid to such events as the Johnstown flood, the Spanish-American war, the Titanic sinking, the 1918 flu pandemic, and of course World War I. Following America’s entrance into the Great War in 1917, the Red Cross set up their own Bureau of Pictures to create films that could be used as promotional and/or fundraising tools. In the next four years, the Red Cross made over 100 short films, some filmed abroad, and some like “Heroes All” filmed in one of their own chapters.

Wow, That’s Dated: Primarily the evolution of medical practices in the last century, as well as how we treat our veterans. It is interesting, however, to watch something that treats WWI as a singular occurrence; a sort of “Glad that’s over, let’s get back to normal” sort of thing. I can’t quite articulate it, but the advance knowledge of a second world war makes this film seem weirdly tone-deaf in hindsight.

Other notes

IMDb lists an Anthony Young as the director and writer of “Heroes All”, but I can’t find anything to back that up (he is not mentioned in either the NFR write-up or the corresponding Veeder essay). More likely he is the director of an unrelated 1931 film also called “Heroes All” that tends to get conflated with the 1920 “Heroes All”. Given the lack of reliable information on either film, we may never know for sure.
Shoutout to the real-life Walter Reed, a U.S. Army physician who proved in the early 1900s that yellow fever was spread by a species of mosquito and not, as previously believed, by direct contact. Walter Reed Hospital is one of many posthumous honors Reed has received, including the Walter Reed medal, and the 1938 movie “Yellow Jack” starring Lewis Stone as Reed.
Right off the bat this film is giving off an uber-patriotism vibe, with shots of the Capital and reference to “every soldier who follows the American flag” receiving medical treatment. This must be what the US Army was hoping John Huston would give them with “Let There Be Light”. This patriotic approach continues throughout, and honestly, I think the only thing keeping this movie watchable is its lack of sound. If “Heroes All” had a soundtrack with a flag-waving narrator and “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” in the background I would have gone nuts.
Today in old timey phrases that sound dirty but aren’t: “Yankee pluck”. Back then it meant American ingenuity, today it would cost extra.
Among the rehabilitation efforts at the Red Cross Convalescent House are shots of our veterans playing with a parrot and a monkey. I’m no doctor, but how do they help with rehabilitation? If you’re going to have animals around for therapeutical services, what about animals that won’t peck your eyes out or fling their poo at you? Just saying. I do love that this is immediately followed by a shot of our veterans sitting around a roaring fireplace, unintentionally implying what became of the animals.
Everything being done for these veterans is commendable, but “Heroes All” makes the Red Cross House look like a summer camp. Of course, recreational activities like swimming are a vital part of rehabilitation, but what about their PTSD? Is anyone doing anything about that? Obviously, we know so much more about PTSD now than we did in 1920, but its absence here makes the final film feel…off.
Speaking of summer camp, it’s field trip time! Our veterans visit the Lincoln Memorial, Arlington National Cemetery, and basically everything I didn’t see on my D.C. trip a few years back. Another stop on the tour is B.F. Keith’s Theatre, one of many vaudeville houses that was about a decade away from converting into a movie theater. Fun Fact: B.F. Keith was the K in RKO.
Among the vocational courses offered by the Red Cross to veterans who can’t go on the field trips: Woodworking, basket weaving, clay modeling, and yes, even filmmaking! In a brief shot, the veterans are shown the correct speed to hand crank a movie camera, which as I learned from the “Hollywood” documentary series is the same tempo as the “Anvil Chorus” from Verdi’s “il Trovatore”. I know that has nothing to do with anything we’re talking about, but there’s only so much I can say about this film’s rehabilitation practices. And hey, this is a film blog, so that information isn’t entirely off-topic.
Another one of the “weekly excursions” is to a baseball game between the Washington Nationals and the Cleveland…sorry I can’t quite make out that team name. They even meet Cleveland’s manager and center fielder Tris Speaker, as well as the Nationals’ manager Clark Griffith (misspelled “Griffiths” in the intertitle). Side note: The present-day Washington Nationals are an unrelated team (they were the Montreal Expos until 2005). The Nationals depicted here moved to Minneapolis in the 1960s and are now the Minnesota Twins.
I agree with the Veeder essay that this film’s treatment of paraplegics is uncomfortable. The loss of one or multiple limbs from the war is depicted here as a temporary inconvenience, with prosthetics being used as a catch-all solution. I know we’ve only got 10 minutes and this film is a promotional tool, but this is an infinitely more complex situation that deserves more attention. And while we’re on the subject of paraplegics and amputees, do you have to make them race each other? I just watched these guys compete in both a wheelchair race and a one-legged race! I’m sure it was intended as equitable, but it comes across as cruel and unusual.
The film concludes with one of our veterans receiving the Distinguished Service Cross presented by Colonel James D. Glennan, a senior officer in the Medical Corps. And just in case you haven’t figured it out yet, we end with the waving American flag and a brief shot of the Statue of Liberty. Cue “The Star-Spangled Banner” and play ball!

Legacy

After WWI ended and public interest in war-related humanitarian efforts waned, so did the Red Cross’s desire to make films, and their Bureau of Pictures was dissolved in 1921.
Walter Reed Hospital continued to expand and evolve over the next 90 years until it relocated in 2011 to its current location in Bethesda, Maryland. The former Walter Reed Hospital is now called The Parks at Walter Reed and is part of an ongoing redevelopment of that land by Washington D.C. into commercial and residential areas. I’m not sure of the timeline, but the Red Cross Convalescent Home was demolished at some point; most likely before the 2011 relocation.
The American Red Cross is still around and offering countless humanitarian services, including its famous blood donor program which started in 1948. Among the Red Cross’ recent efforts was helping support victims of the L.A. wildfires. Check them out and support their work.