The silent era of film was full of notable Canadians. Most prominent were Mary Pickford and Mack Sennett, producer Louis B Mayer, comediennes Marie Dressler and May Irwin, starlets Marie Prevost, Fay Wray, Maud Allan, Florence Lawrence and Florence LaBadie who was born in New York but adopted and raised in Montreal (who I wrote about here). But if there were important Canadians Canada itself was not a significant film producer. Being at the time a small (in terms of population), largely rural and provincial nation with widely spread out population centers Canada had little of the infrastructure or investors needed to support a film industry. In fact it's notable that while most of the above mentioned figures had started out on the stages in the thriving theatre and vaudeville scene of Eastern and Central Canada in order to pursue a film career they all had to move to America. Victorian and Edwardian Canada was still not only a largely rural and agrarian country with only a few cities but much of the country was literal wilderness so it's not surprising that when Canadians started making their own films in their own country the subject matter would reflect this frontier culture but it's more unexpected that the first notable Canadian filmmakers would also turn out to be women.
The first and most important of these women was Nell Shipman (1892-1970) an actress, screenwriter and director who formed a production company with her husband producer Paul Shipman to make a series of adventure films with starting with "God's Country And The Woman" (1915) set in the rugged Canadian wilderness starring Nell herself. Nell was no waif or damsel in distress, she also served as her own stunt double as she rode horses, plunged into rapids or hung off cliffs. These films met with some success in America but her insistence on maintaining her independence made her finances precarious and the cost of making them finally led to end of her studio in 1924 and later divorce. That was the end of her film career aside from some screenwriting work. She is now seen as a pioneer filmmaker, if not THE pioneer filmmaker in Canada.
NELL SHIPMAN (center) & CREW
While Nell Shipman spent much of her career outside the Hollywood studio system she did seek commercial success and for a while found it. The other woman filmmaker would be an enthusiastic amateur. Dorothea Mitchell was a self-made business woman who took to filmmaking as a hobby and ended up almost on a whim producing three films of her own.
Born in Scotland in 1877, her father was a colonial officer building railroads in India where he took his family including his two daughters, Dorothea and her younger sister. Along with the traditional education given to respectable girls such as music, dancing, poetry and needlepoint the girls were encouraged to be independent and given a practical education including skills that would later come in handy on the frontier including riding, swimming, marksmanship, and carpentry. After her father died Dorothea took on jobs to support the family before immigrating to Canada in search of opportunities in 1904. After working her way across the country she ended up in Port Arthur, Ontario. Located in Northwest Ontario on the shores of Lake Superior, Port Arthur was a rugged frontier town of about 20,000 people with it's economy based on being the shipping terminus for the lumber, mining and fur trade as well as grain from out west. (Note Port Arthur would later be merged with the neighbouring city of Fort William and a few villages to form the current city of Thunder Bay and the two names are both used as interchangeable here).
With her savings Mitchell took the unusual step of applying for a plot of land to homestead. This was unusual in that no single woman had ever been granted such a plot but in 1907 she became the first single woman to be granted one, albeit at only half the size of a man's plot.
Among other projects she got a job as a train station manager for the CNR, ran a general store and worked as an electoral officer even though women could not yet vote themselves and she invested in the lumber business which led to an incident where one male customer refused to pay her and she successfully sued him. An incident she would later remember as a film plot. By the late twenties she ran her own real estate company as well has having a second job as accountant for Cooper Bakery, the major bakery in town.
DOROTHEA IN HER SAW MILL
Mitchell was not a beauty but she was a striking figure being tall and thin with flaming red hair and regal bearing and direct manner and she reported receiving at least nine marriage proposals (according to her own account) all of which she would reject. Unlike many frontier women who favoured drab but practical dresses and were even experimenting with wearing men's dungarees Mitchell always insisted on wearing a proper dress and hat at all times.
DOROTHEA MITCHELL
Besides her various business interests Mitchell never lost her taste for the arts involving herself in the local theatre scene and literary society, writing articles for the local paper and buying a camera and teaching herself to become a professional photographer. In 1929, by then aged 44, she and Fred Cooper, the bakery owner, who was also an aspiring filmmaker who had bought himself a movie camera co-founded the Port Arthur Amateur Cinema Society (PAACS), dedicated to trying their own hands at filmmaking, being the first such group in Canada. By World War One Port Arthur could already ten film theatres. After shooting some newsreels of local events they decided they were ready to tackle making a proper film and instead of starting small by making a few comedy shorts they instead vowed to go all-in and make a proper full length feature film.
However confident Mitchell and Cooper were they recognized the needed a more experienced director but since Port Arthur didn't have any she recruited Major Harold Harcourt, a former soldier who had worked in Hollywood as a set builder and painter and thus had at least some experience working on a film set and knew how to operate a camera, he would also play the male lead. For the cast she raided the local amateur theatrical society, roped in some friends and cast herself in a role. However forceful her personality Mitchell was self-aware enough not to cast herself as the female romantic lead however and instead cast the younger, prettier amateur actress Martha Lake.
The first problem they encountered was not having a script. After devouring every copy of photoplay magazine she could get her hands on Dorothea confidently decided she could write a script herself that wou ld reflect the Canadian experience and a woman's experience better than any big shot Hollywood writer and set to work using her own history as a lone business woman running a saw mill on the frontier. The result would be Canada's first independent feature film, a light comedy set in the Canadian wilderness called "The Race For Ties".
"THE RACE FOR TIES" (1929);
Directed by Major Harold Harcourt
Script by Dorothea Mitchell
CAST;
Joe Attwood (a homesteader) ~ Harold Saunders
Marion Attwood (his daughter) ~ Martha Lake
Aunt Sarah Attwood ~ (his sister) ~ Dorothea Mitchell
Jack Attwood (his young son) ~ Eddie Cooke
U.Ceetham (a railroad contractor) ~ Duncan Roberts
Bill Whotnot (his assistant) ~ Bill Gibson
Larkin (a lumber camp manager) ~ Maj. Harold Harcourt
Barlow (a neighbouring homesteader) ~ Ed Lindsey
The Goof ~ Wally McComber
Plot Synopsis (Spoiler Alert); Joe Attwood is a homesteader in Northern Ontario who lives in a cabin with his spinster sister Sarah, crippled young son Jack and daughter Marion who is home from college in the big city. He has been having money problems but is in the process of negotiating a deal with his neighbour Barlow to sell timber to the railroad for use as rail ties. Joe heads into the city to ink a deal with U.Cheetum, a railroad contractor who decides to delay Joe so he can go behind his back and cut his own deal with Barlow and sends his assistant Whotnot to race back to Barlow's. Joe overhears their plan but he can't make it back in time because the next train isn't leaving until the next day so he sends his dog Laddie back to Sarah with a note instructing her to get Barlow to sign the deal while Whatnot races off in his car.
Meanwhile back at the cabin his daughter Marion is home from college and bored. She sees limber camp manager Larkin riding by and tries to catch his attention but he ignores her and rides past. Laddie arrives at the cabin with the note from Joe and Sarah sets off on foot to Barlow's to sign the deal but she forgets the contract and finding it Marion sets off on foot to find her. Marion, having spent her life at school in the city is inexperienced in wilderness travel during winter and soon gets lost. Meanwhile Sarah, trekking through the snow on snowshoes cuts through the lumber camp and runs into The Goof, a maintenance man for the camp who is loafing on the job but offers to show her a shortcut to Barlow's cabin Marion is trudging alone down the road when she sees a car coming her way and decides to flag it down by lying at the side of the road and pretending to be unconscious. It turns out the car is being driven by Whotnot who stops and reluctantly offers to let her ride with him to Barlow's but the car soon gets stuck in the snow and they have to set out on foot with Whotnot using skis and Marion using snowshoes which she has never used before and she ends up constantly falling down forcing the annoyed Whotnot to carry her. Eventually they make it to Barlow's. Larkin is also at Barlow's and takes care of the frozen and exhausted Marion while Whotnot convinces Barlow to sign the contract with him. He then returns to town leaving Marion. After getting lost on the tail Sarah arrives at Barlow's to discover she is too late as Barlow has signed the deal with Whotnot so she returns home.
Larkin takes Marion home where he becomes smitten with her. Sarah arrives and informs them that Barlow has signed the contract with Barlow. Larkin examines the contract and goes off to meet Barlow who is having second thoughts about the deal. Larkin informs him that the contract is void as it was signed on a Sunday which is illegal and Larkin suggests he honour his original deal with Attwood and he agrees. Meanwhile Attwood returns home to be told by Sarah of the bad news and all are depressed until Larkin arrives with the new contract. This brightens the mood and Larkin suggests to Marion that they should become involved and she agrees to the joy of all. Finis
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L-R; CAMERAMAN FRED COOPER, DIRECTOR MAJ HAROLD HARCOURT, DOROTHEA MITCHELL, HAROLD SAUNDERS, MARTHA LAKE, EDDIE COOKE
The film's plot is simple enough and it is at least competently made and acted and makes good use of the outdoor scenes which are clearly Canadian in ways a Hollywood production likely would not have been. However the film's small budget shows in the scenes of the interior of the Atwood's cabin which is clearly a painted set. Also noticeable that the child actors and extras can be seen to occasionally glance at either the camera or director. Normally these scenes would have been reshot but since every foot of film had to be paid for it's likely they just decided to let this pass. The direction and editing is efficient and there are even a few good shots especially a closeup of pretty Martha at her window. The actors are serviceable enough with the only real standout being Martha Lake as Marion who is charming and playful enough in her role of a Flapper out of her element that she would not have been out of place in a Hollywood comedy. She is also the most modern looking and surprisingly comfortable on film for an amateur. Actually her character seems rather out of place with the rural setting with her light flapper's dress and stockings and her unfamiliarity with items like snowshoes are not totally plausible unless we assume she has spent much of her life at a boarding school in the big city.
What's notable is that while making this film was an ambitious project for the group it is also a very conservative film in it's subject matter and approach. In fact while this film was shot in 1928 it has more in common with the rural films of DW Griffith and Lois Weber from a decade earlier with it's small town feel characters, plucky female protagonists, greedy capitalists, chaste but rushed romance and easy moralizing. The film is also oddly talky for a silent film with rather more intertitles than are really needed which is another Griffith similarity but a little old fashioned for 1929. Also notable that the film's attempts at comedy are clumsy and similarly old fashioned. All this is certainly down to Mitchell as the writer and main creative force. Besides being a prim and proper lady she (and the rest of the crew) were by her own admission reliant on taking their cues from those films that actually made their way to remote Thunder Bay and we can assume that those did not include more artistically ambitious and risque films or the most cutting edge and morally complex films from Europe.
While the film is not really a masterpiece it is solidly done, coherent and watchable and was a popular success locally inspiring Mitchell to expand. The Society invested enough money to open up an office with Mitchell sketching out more films with plans of distributing them further afield. By this point calling the group amateurs was no longer accurate if it ever was. Now showing their films professionally it would be more true to call them an independent studio albeit a small one.
The next film planned would be another rural romance comedy called "Sleep-Inn Beauty" and would using the same crew and some of the cast from the first film. Once again it was planned as a feature film however disaster struck as one of the reels was reversed in the developing process (they had to send the reels away for this) and had to be discarded leaving them with having to either reshoot it or edit what they had. Given their limited budget they chose to do the latter.
"SLEEP-INN BEAUTY" (1930);
Directed by Maj Harold Harcourt
Written by Dorothea Mitchell
CAST;
O.U Nightmare (resort owner) ~ Frank Toole
Clarence Nightmare (his son) ~ Wall MComber
Daisy (a waitress) ~ Mae Flatt
An Angler ~ Duncan Roberts
Angela (his daughter) ~ Dorothy Crocker
The Justice Of The Peace ~ Chris Dunbar
Plot Synopsis (spoiler alert); Sleep-Inn is a lakeside resort owned by O.U Nightmare, a skinflint, who has an adult son Clarence, a ne'r-do-well who is carrying on an affair with Daisy, a waitress at the resort. Angela and her angler Father are guests at the resort but she is bored and starts flirting with another guest. The Father and Nightmare decide to hold a bathing beauty contest with a $500 prize so Clarence suggests Daisy enter the contest and with the winnings they can elope. On the day of the contest Mr Nightmare is supposed to be judging but he sleeps in so Clarence fills in as judge and of course picks Daisy as the winner. The two then race off to the local Justice of the Peace to be married. Nightmare wakes up and figuring out Clarence's plan sets off in pursuit. Clarence and Daisy arrive at the Justice's cabin and he marries them then they race off as Nightmare arrives too late to intervene. Finis.
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Given that we know that probably a third of this film has been lost it's not surprising that it comes off as scrimpy and ends abruptly. We don't know what is missing or what the full film would have looked like but it does appear that there are a few other characters who get introduced and then forgotten about, particularly the Angler and his daughter Angela and her budding romance. However even if we had the entire film it doesn't appear that the script has the focus of "Race For Ties" nor are the characters as fleshed out and interesting. It's even possible that the eloping couple Clarence and Daisy were not originally meant to be the main characters but merely ended up that way when others were lost in missing reels and ended on the cutting room floor. In fact Wally McComber was the only actor used by Mitchell in all her films and was normally used for comic relief. Mitchell does seem to have had a fondness for McComber's mugging but he's an acquired taste and here with his toothbrush mustache and cowlick bangs he bears an unfortunate but inescapable resemblance to Adolph Hitler which is distinctly distracting,.
Clearly Mitchell just wasn't as invested in this story or characters as she had been with those in "Race For Ties:" which were based on her own experiences. This film is instead a light comedy rom-com and as with the humour in "Race For Ties" it's old fashioned and clumsy. Perhaps the lost footage would have fleshed out the story and wrapped it up in a more satisfying manner but while with some careful editing Mitchell may have salvaged a somewhat workable film but the results of the existing film is forgettable.
One reason Mitchell might have had for rushing this film into production without reshooting the lost reel (besides being short of cash) was that she was already planning a more ambitious film, this time instead of another chaste comedy she would attempt a crime film, "The Fatal Flower". This film would end up having even more problems than "Sleep-Inn Beauty" as the film society went bankrupt and closed it's doors with the film unfinished.
DOROTHEA MITCHELL
As all fans of silent films know there are literally thousands of silent films which are lost forever and one would normally assume that an unfinished from from an obscure Canadian independent filmmaker in remote Thunder Bay would be hopelessly lost but luckily Mitchell took care to preserve the surviving footage and eventually sent it to the National Archives where it sat forgotten until 2004 when local filmmaker Kelly Saxberg and film historian Michel Beaulieu got the digitized uncut footage and edited it into a finished feature. Other than some vague plot notes and references in her memoirs Mitchell did not leave behind a proper script or intertitle cards so they figured out a proper running order came up with a script that most closely approximates what the finished film likely would have looked like.
"THE FATAL FLOWER" (1930);
Directed by Maj Harold Harcourt
Written by Dorothea Mitchell
CAST;
Dolly Dearborn ~ Margaret Arthur
Jack Madison ~ Harold Gross
The Hobo~ Wally McComber
Rest of cast unclear
Plot Synopsis (spoiler alert); Dolly is a young woman who lives in Port Arthur with her father who is also the Police Chief and Jack Madison is her new boyfriend. Jack is older and apparently wealthy but her Father disapproves of him and would prefer she dated his Head Constable Plod. The police are concerned about a rash of bank robberies in the area. Jack takes Dolly for a day trip in his new car where they play golf and on the way back they almost run down a Hobo. The Hobo recognizes Jack from running into him at a bar and overhearing him plotting some possibly illicit activities with some confederates and he reports this to the police Chief who takes no immediate action but asks the Hobo to keep an eye out for more info. That evening Plod comes to tea at the Chief's house where they discuss the bank robberies. Plod wants to impress Dolly but she becomes bored with police talk and leaves for another day date with Jack. They take a ride in his car to go canoeing on a local lake where he professes his love for her and she gives him a daisy for his lapel. Jack drives Dolly home where the Hobo spots them and reports back to the Chief who has decided to stake out the local bank. That night a masked robber breaks in and while he is attempting to crack the safe he is surprised by the Chief and in the resulting struggle the Chief is shot dead. Plod finds him and swears revenge. Dolly is at home when she is told of her fathers death. Plod visits and promises to catch the killer.
Days later Dolly gets a call from Jack who has been out of town on business, he tells her he had to sell his car and she invites him over to tea. Before he arrives Plod comes calling to report progress in the the case and he tells her he had found a flower clutched in her father's hand. Dolly recognizes it as the daisy she gave jack and he must be the robber. Plod suggests letting the meeting with Jack go ahead and having her confront Jack and getting him to confess while Plod hides where he can overhear. Jack visits and while serving him tea Dolly confronts him with the flower. Jack pulls a gun but she reassures him that she still loves him and won't turn him in. He confesses but threatens to shoot Dolly but Plod shoots him first wounding him while Dolly faints. Jack is swiftly arrested and taken away while Plod tends to the unconscious Dolly. When he pledges his love she awakens and they embrace. Finis.
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Some footage from this film is either missing or was never shot before it was shelved. At just over forty minutes long there could be as much as a reel missing although this time it doesn't really matter as ironically this film is actually tight and coherent as it is. Perhaps the missing footage would have added some exposition to the characters but we don't really need it. Whether this is down to Mitchell's original script or the job of assembling and editing done for the 2004 restoration is an interesting open question but it doesn't really matter to the viewer. The story flows efficiently and logically and the characters act consistently. The intertitles were added by the restoration and they trade Mitchell's occasional corny dad jokes for a couple of sly inside regional jokes at the expense of Fort William and Nipegon which were probably hilarious to those from Thunder Bay at least and which Mitchell herself probably would have enjoyed. As for the film itself even the strong willed Mitchell should have been happy with the belatedly finished film which finally got it's big screen premier in North Bay in 2004 followed by a short TV doc which introduced her work and legacy as a Canadian film pioneer.
As for the direction Maj Harcourt, in spite of being a WW1 veteran, has no feel for directing an action scene and the fight scene at the bank and final gunplay are perfunctory however there is a shot at the end with a suspicious Jack peering into the darkened parlour with the light behind him that was well done. As usual the acting is serviceable enough with Margaret Arthur as Dolly having some of the Flapper charm of Martha Lake from the first film and also as usual her leading men are noticeably older than her. Unlike "Race For Ties" there is nothing particularly Canadian about this film however other than a shot of Port Arthur itself it could have been made pretty much anywhere in North America. Once again for a film shot at the very end of the silent era this film feels like it could have been made a decade earlier.
HAROLD GROSS & MARGARET ARTHUR
Before this film could even be finished Dorothea Mitchell's abortive film career was already over. By 1931 the Film Society was deep in debt, the Great Depression was underway, any plans for larger distribution hadn't panned out and weren't likely to as silent films were already on the way out meaning they would have to make significant investments to buy new sound gear and learn how to use it so the ever practical Dorothea decided to close it's doors and dissolve the Society. As one would expect she didn't dwell on her failure and focused on her own real estate and accounting firms and did a lot of charity work for the Port Arthur Hospital and the Anglian Church. She would bring both her mother and younger sister over from Scotland and outlive both. She would never marry. During WW2 at the age 63 she enlisted in the Red Cross and after the war she retired to Victoria, British Columbia. Naturally even in retirement she kept busy with more charity work, joined Canadian Authors Association as secretary and the Victoria Amateur Movie Club where she made no films but she did make sure to donate her surviving film reels to the National Archives. She finally got around to writing her memoirs "Lady Lumberjack" in 1968 dying in 1976 at the age of 99.
DOROTHEA IN RETIREMENT
Dorothea Mitchell's film legacy is odd. She made only three films of which only one, "Race For Ties" was actually fully completed, and none of which got a general release. Her films were not masterpieces, they were modest, low-budget films that were not flashy or creatively ambitious and quickly forgotten. And yet she was the first independent Canadian filmmaker in Canada and one of the first indie women filmmakers anywhere, and her ability to make a proper film completely outside the film industry showed others it could be done. Her first film, along with those of Nell Shipman, presented a perspective of the Canadian frontier experience (albeit limited to an entirely white middleclass perspective) and did it from a woman's perspective in ways no American filmmaker would have done. A modern critic might point out that for films made in Northern Ontario there are no native characters at all. Possibly she was hoping to be able to distribute the films to a larger audience so kept the focus on white characters, possibly if she had made more films she would have included them, possibly she just never thought about them.
When she died in 1976 she was known to few aside from her small circle in Victoria and a few old timers in Thunder Bay until her work was rediscovered in 2004. But she would probably not be surprised by this. She was quite proud of her role as a pioneer of both Canadian and women filmmakers, she had taken care to preserve that legacy as well as writing her memoirs and was no doubt expecting she would eventually get her due. After all, she had always gotten her way.
