By George!

-- And I Do Mean, "By George" --
and By Gerianne (Smart)!
A Wednesday AM Ode to
The Summer of Walter Hacks

I’ll be out almost the entire day with poet and fellow Center for Cartoon Studies faculty Peter Money and however many of our students can join us to hike the local mountain I’m most intent upon hiking. Thus, it seems proper to set my blog compass closer to home and savor a couple of the great things about my home and home state.

So, a little taste of Vermont today, and hope you enjoy the change of pace.

You'd be hard-pressed to find much on my old high school pal George Woodard online,

even on Wikipedia,

though he's a Vermont treasure.

Oddly enough, a web search won't take you to George's most visible and vital online presence,

the site George and Gerianne Smart created for their in-post-production feature film The Summer of Walter Hacks. It's well worth a visit (give it a couple of shots to load; for some reason, it's a tough nut to crack via some servers, but it'll pop up eventually).

However, even that site is woefully incomplete, in part because George is such a truly humble, self-effacing fellow. Allow me to toot the man's horn this morning a bit, since he won't.

George has always been comfortable performing on stage as long as I’ve known him, but painfully shy about public speaking or any public arena requiring his expressing his own emotions -- it’s a conundrum puzzling to those who assume performing is the same as exposing one’s feelings publicly, when in fact these are polar opposites. George is a born performer -- give him a guitar or banjo and turn him loose, he’ll have a fine time and see to it you will, too. Ask him to mingle at a party or speak at a microphone, and he’d just as soon crawl under a rock. It’s just how he is, how it is, for many performers -- actors, musicians, etc. Fortunately, George’s performing chops extend to film performance, too, and he’s become one of Vermont’s finest actors, along with Stowe resident Rusty DeWees (The Logger).

I've known George and his brother Steve (now Waterbury Center's best vet, as in animal doctor) since grade school, having grown up within driving distance of the Woodard family farm in Waterbury Center, VT. George and I ended up appearing on stage together in some plays at our high school, Harwood Union High, in Duxbury, VT -- including a co-star stint as Barnaby (me) and Cornelius (George) in Harwood's musical production of Hello, Dolly -- and sharing a few key teachers at Harwood, primary among them creative writing teacher Carol Collins (about whom I'll write more in a bit, promise). We did some other stuff together, too -- I have very fond memories of catching a few choice 1970s movies with both George and Steve on the big screens back in the day, including a classic AIP double-feature of Yog, Monster from Space (aka Space Amoeba, its current DVD release title) and The Return of Count Yorga at the Paramount in Barre (I've since tracked down the video/DVD releases of both and sent copies to George so he could savor a little blast from the past.)

George still runs the family dairy farm in Waterbury Center, and somehow juggles that daily workload with raising his son Henry, an active life performing on stage and onscreen (yep, an acting career!), and everything else he does in and around the state.

This past Saturday, Marge and I had the great pleasure of seeing and hearing George's current stage show at the Randolph, VT Chandler Center for the Arts and Music Hall. It was the concluding event in Randolph’s first annual Fiddlehead Festival, and though we missed the rest of the town’s grand to-dos, we sure enjoyed the show.

George’s partner Gerianne Smart made sure we had choice seats, and it was a grand time -- as in Grand Ol' Opry, which George semi-annually honors with his own venerable Ground Hog Opry music & comedy stage show -- peppered with George's songs, guitar picking, comedy routines (two incorporating volunteers from the audience) and all-around fun. George's stage presence is infectious: his warm generosity of spirit, his sense of play (and fair play), his extraordinary musical skills, his jokes win over one and all. Well, maybe not all his jokes, but most of 'em. Almost three hours flew by in no time at all, and the audience stood on its feet and cheered until rewarded with one more song, one more joke.

I was overjoyed that George and Gerianne included some of George's own filmmaking ventures in the lineup, too -- his two short films (Johnny, Get the Christmas Tree! and Whatever Happened to Baby... Bear?), shot around 1998-99 during George’s film student studies at Burlington College and edited years later (2004, I think), and the current, expansive preview trailor to George’s (and Gerianne’s) first feature, The Summer of Walter Hacks.

The audience responded favorably to all three, though it was interesting to overhear, en route to our car after the show, a conversation between two elder audience members likewise making their way to their parked vehicle. One wondered aloud whether the Walter Hacks preview was mocking the conventions of 1950s films (the trailor uses that era’s style of preview -- dialogue clips accompanied by shadowed titles ballyhooing the film’s story content and high emotions (“The story of a boy... his horse [as he mounts his bicycle]... and his sidekick [as the preteen female lead’s face graces the screen]...”), integrated by a lush orchestral score -- and expressing her dismay if that were the case. I was tempted to interrupt them and say, “George is dead serious -- he loves those films, and Walter Hacks is a completely earnest film,” but that warn’t my place. Hopefully, they’ll brave seeing the film themselves.

There isn’t an iota of 21st Century cynicism or requisite irony in George as a person, or in his and Gerianne’s film: what Marge and I have seen thus far (George has shown us, over the past few months, about an hour or more of rough edit and refined sequences) has been marvelous. If anything, the film may end up a bit of an aberration for its honesty and integrity, it’s utter lack of irony -- what will 2008 audiences make of such an earnest drama?

Henry Woodard -- age 11-12 -- as Walter Hacks

The Summer of Walter Hacks is shaping up to be an excellent coming-of-age tale; set in 1952, the film chronicles the life-altering transition in young Walter’s life when he loses his father, he and his older brother try to keep the farm going, and Walter learns how treacherous the adult world can truly be. What begins by and large as an idyllic barnyard-set meditation on a child’s rich imaginative life edges into sobering collision with what it is to be cast adrift too young, to be left to one’s own devices, in keeping one’s moral compass in an adult world corrupted by and capable of calculated manipulation, trickery and deceit. Though the film is lovingly grounded in Walter’s (and George’s) affection for westerns -- Walter plays ‘cowboy’ through much of the film, which like most childhood fantasy lives acts as his escape, his filter, his shield and his means of confronting the darker aspects of real life -- what we’ve seen is ultimately closer in spirit to darker films of the ‘50s and early ‘60s like Night of the Hunter and The Fool Killer. Yep, it's that good.


Walter Hacks is also a kindred film in its rich black-and-white imagery. George has been a lifelong student of cinema, clearly soaking up an abundance of knowledge as a viewer which is somewhat surprisingly blossoming on screen -- George has evolved a keen grasp and expressive palette of the nuances of black-and-white composition, light-play and editing technique. Aiding George in this capacity is Vermont’s own Michael Fisher (who I’ll be interviewing for this blog soon enough), bringing his considerable visual and cinematic skills and knowledge to the production. Michael has a fantastic eye and knows how to get what he sees (and imagines) onto the screen with rare intensity, and he and George have forged a striking dynamic working together on this film, challenging one another and coaxing the best from each other. George has always been a natural storyteller, but The Summer of Walter Hacks is promising something truly extraordinary.

There's history here -- George's history, and that of Vermont filmmaking as a whole. It was in Randolph, VT that one-time teenage movie ingenue Marjory Wilson (she declined a marriage proposal from none other than William S. Hart, one of the first movie western stars -- and Marjory’s senior by many years) co-wrote, co-produced and directed two feature films between 1920 and 1921, The Offenders and Insinuation. The former she did not star in, and turned over to the financers (who reportedly released the film, tentatively and to little success, a couple of years later); Insinuation, however, was Marjory’s pride and joy. She starred in it as well as directed, incorporating all the regional talent within reach and opening the film in November of 1921 at -- the Chandler Music Hall. Wilson then personally roadshowed the feature around North America, appearing in person at most (if not all) venues; years later, she returned to Randolph for a repeat showing at the Chandler, with what might have been the only extant print of Insinuation. Alas, both films now seem irrevocably lost. Marjory herself abandoned her film career after Insinuation and became a renowned radio personality and popular author, focusing on speaking/writing about manners, etiquette and proper behavior in both media. Much of what I’ve uncovered about Insinuation comes from her own autobiography.

Just outside the Chandler Center for the Arts gallery space, the Chandler folks have framed and displayed photographs and a few choice regional clippings about Marjory and her films. I pointed them out to Marge and savored them during the intermission in George’s show, and couldn’t help but meditate as well on the rightness of George and Gerianne including George’s films in the evening’s program, 85 years later. Marjory Wilson would have no doubt approved.

You Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST 3000) fans may not know it, but you're already George Woodard fans. George's first lead role in a film was as the villainous J.K. Robertson of Rutland-based director David Giancola's debut feature, Time Chasers (originally titled Tangents, 1994), the first Edgewood Studios production of any scope -- and I could go on about Edgewood, but that's for another post, another time. Anyhoot, Time Chasers has been immortalized thanks to MST 3000's mercilessly ribbing of David's first sf opus, though it's also a solid example of resourceful low-budget filmmaking on its own modest terms. Judging from

the imdb.com board, it’s already shocked more than a few MST 3000 fans to see George pop up in unexpected places in other films!

Heck, George had already appeared in a key supporting role in Ethan Frome (1993), holding his own with Liam Neeson, Patricia Arquette and Joan Allen -- heady company indeed, on screen and on the set, and quite a baptism of Puritan fire, but George brought quite conviction to his role as Ethan’s right-hand man, stoic and reserved as only a New Englander can be. George went on to appear in supporting roles in Anthony Hall’s Mud Season (1999, which starred Rusty DeWees) and Michael Burke’s devastating The Mudge Boy (2003), on TV and direct-to-video programs like Rescue 9-11, Unsolved Mysteries, and the children’s vid fave Road Construction Ahead. George stars in Nora Jacobson’s excellent pair of narrative features My Mother’s Early Lovers (1998) and Nothing Like Dreaming (2004), both of which offer outstanding evidence of the man’s real acting skills; highly recommended by this viewer, and among the best films to emerge from my home state.

If you want to sample George’s musical skills, check out the extras on the DVD for Disney/Buena Vista’s feel-good documentary America’s Heart and Soul (2004), in which George and friends perform one of his favorite tunes on the front yard of his farm and home, with its breathtaking view of the area. George figures prominently in the documentary, too, a ‘role’ -- himself -- he’s proud of in a film more attuned to George’s own world view than most of the narrative films he’s appeared in (though I personally find it cloying, largely for its relentless two-dimensional caricaturing of the fascinating people and personalities the film showcases -- but George loves it, so I won’t get into that any further).

All in all, George has racked up thirty years of farm and theatrical/film experience. He left Vermont for a stretch -- his family kept the farm going as he spent several years in Los Angeles honing his acting skills on stage and film -- until he was called back to Waterbury Center to take over the farm when his family no longer could. While farming, he's kept up his film and TV work and founded the Woodchuck Theatre Company, crafting numerous stage productions in northern and central Vermont. George has always loved community theater, and keeps that passion in practice -- he even played Dracula on stage! He and Gerianne co-founded Pasture Productions as an independent film offshoot of the Woodchuck Theatre Company, and Walter Hacks is the first fruit of that collaborative effort.


Walter Hacks producer and co-scripter Gerianne Smart is a real sweetie -- Marge and I love ya, Gerianne! -- and I’m happy whenever I get to see her and George in action. Gerianne was everywhere in the Chandler Saturday night, keeping the show running, the audience happy before the show (an audience composed in part of many friends from the area, including a row of some of George’s high school classmates), and it’s clear that Walter Hacks is a harmonious collaborative venture. Gerianne entered this collaboration with her own remarkable set of skills and lifelong passions -- she’s a full-time marketing, promotion and advertising professional who runs her company, Smart Communication, out of Ferrisburgh, on the other end of northern VT from where George's farm overlooks the mountains. She is also the advertising director for Vermont Life magazine, the state’s most venerable newsstand magazine. Gerianne’s passion for the stage and screen isn’t a recent one: she’s as much a veteran as George in that department, and if anything her credentials are more ‘respectable.' Gerianne is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; she lived and worked in New York City, and in her words “performed in many productions off-off (off!) Broadway” while appearing in industrials and the 1980s soap opera Loving. Gerianne relocated to Vermont in ‘91; her ongoing efforts to continue performing on stage, in regional theater, led to her involvement with the restoration of the historic Vergennes Opera House -- she in fact became the restoration organization’s president, instrumental in the reopening of the stage after a quarter-century of non-activity and the subsequent revitalization of Vergennes itself.

I suspect (though I don’t know) that it was the Opera House that initially brought Gerianne and George together. Seeing Gerianne a couple of times now working a theater space, her contagious comfort with the entire theater setting, her skillful juggling of multiple tasks and needs (on and behind the stage as well as in the audience) while at all times working the floor and keeping everyone engaged and happy -- she’s a real people person -- I can imagine what it was that might have brought them together. In time, while helping George with the daily barn chores, it was Gerianne who galvanized George’s desire to make his own feature film -- he’d always wanted to, but it took their chemistry to get it in motion.

Together, amid the daily milking chores, they began jotting down the fragmentary story and sequence concepts George had floating around in his skull on -- udder wipes. If there’s a more classic origin to any Vermont film in the state’s long cinematic history, I’ve yet to hear it!

While George’s young son Henry delivers (in the edited sequences we’ve seen) a solid and engaging performance as Walter -- Henry inhabits the role without guile or pretension, he is Walter more than he plays Walter, if you know what I mean -- the onscreen performer here who captures the eye and heart is Francesca Blanchard, playing Walter’s classmate and ‘sidekick’ Margaret. Francesca is a natural, the camera loves her, and she brings real charisma and energy to her role. Her comfort with performing isn’t illusory: she began performing (vocal recitals in France) at age ten, continued working onstage shortly after she and her mother Jennifer (who plays Ada, the local diner proprietor and Margaret’s mother, in Walter Hacks) moved to Vermont in 2002 -- playing Gladys in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Scout in the Vermont Stage Company’s production of To Kill a Mockingbird, Jack in A Child's Christmas in Wales, and Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker -- all before age 12 -- and (inevitably?) starred as Annie in her Middle School’s production. Francesca has also appeared in a couple of short films, but Walter Hacks is her big-screen feature debut, and she effortlessly holds the screen every time she appears.


Needless to say, Marge and I are eager to see more of George and Gerianne’s movie, as it comes together. I convinced George and Gerianne to take part in last week’s WRIF (White River Indie Film) festival panel of Vermont and New Hampshire filmmakers, where they debuted the Summer of Walter Hacks preview trailor.

This is a primo year for regional filmmaking hereabouts -- George and Gerianne's film is just one of the many features currently in production and post-production in VT, and a more diverse, eclectic and creative spread of films has yet to exist in my home state! -- and I’ll share more on this and many other films and filmmakers here as time permits.

I also have to mention that Marge and I ran into one of George’s and my favorite Harwood Union High School teachers in the audience in Randolph, too.

Carol Collins taught Creative Writing at Harwood, and it was she who really fanned the flames of my pre-teen love for writing into a passion that continues to this day -- to this blog!

So, if you enjoy reading this daily blather, or anything else I've written or had a hand in over the decades, let’s hear it for Carol! I owe much of it to her encouragement, teaching, patience ("Lordy!" she used to exclaim when confronted with one of my juvenile horror opuses during my Lovecraft reading phase of life -- the word 'ichor' was a real favorite of mine that drove Carol bonkers) and tolerance.

It was terrific to see her after all these years, to shake hands and chat again with her husband Fred (among the finest men on Planet Earth, in my estimation), and to meet Carol’s brother, who was also enjoying the show.

Carol and Fred still run an active business on Route 100 in northern Vermont, just about across from Harwood Union High School, and Carol's site is worth a visit, too, especially if you're (like Carol) into all things wool and woolly.

If you see this stand (built by Fred, a master carpenter and builder-of-all-things-good) out on Route 100 between the drive from Waitsfield to Duxbury, or vice-versa, pull on in -- it means Carol's open for business, and please tell Carol and Fred that I sent you!

Hey, I gotta go.

I’ve got a nearby mountain to climb with Peter and our CCS students -- those who dare to come!

See you all tomorrow, no doubt a bit wearier and bone-sore from the hike. It’s been a long time since I climbed up a mountain... but, hey, if George can make music and movies while running an active farm, I can climb a damned ol’ mountain.

For that matter, you can, too.

Have a great Wednesday, one and all!

What's Up with the Dial Up This Morning?

I had something planned to share with y'all this morning, but due to either the weather or the vagaries of Sovernet (our server), I can't access my own email this morning for more than one email at a time. Having struggled through this nonsense enough today, I'm feeling lucky to get into the blog at all and will table my planned posts until the weekend or after.

So, local interest stories only this morning -- sorry!

This week has been an eventful one here, culminating in a Wednesday night five-town meeting of the minds in the Town Offices in Dummerston, VT about bringing DSL service to rural Windham County. Dummerston selectmen Tom Bodett (known to some of you for his Motel 6 commercials and appearances on NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me) and Kevin Ryan organized the powwow, and Jim Mahoney and I were there on behalf of the Marlboro committee; there were folks from nearby Newfane, Brooline and Putney there, too. We'll be posting the meeting notes and other info and updates on

the Marlboro broadband committee site.

In the meantime, Jane Wilde and I continue working on the upcoming launch of the Bissette website, while I chip away at other duties and projects: the weekly drawing session with a Marlboro Elementary School student (who will remain unnamed here, to protect the innocent), ongoing work with the CCS students on our late spring DVD minicomic gig, the ongoing expansion/revisions to We Are Going to Eat You, and writing and editing chores in the hopes of getting two volumes of Green Mountain Cinema this summer.

I've also had prep work for this week's illustrated lecture on comics and graphic novels -- delivered Tuesday night to an architect's association in White River Jct., VT -- and more extensive prep work for two presentations next week: a presentation in Morrisville, VT's Morristown Centennial Library on Monday May 22 at 6:30 pm (802-888-3853), and a private presentation of a lecture on psychology/psychiatry and comics for a Dartmouth gathering on Wednesday. I hereby vow to feature EC's Psychoanalysis comic and Charles Schultz's famed "The Doctor is In" panel from Peanuts among other goodies, including Justin Green's confessional Binky Brown and the Holy Virgin Mary and others.

Then there's the day-long fund-raising drawing workshop I'm giving at the Marlboro Elementary School tomorrow (Saturday, May 20th), for which I've donated my time. Morning (10 AM to 12 noon) is for K thru 4th Grade students, the longer afternoon session (1:30 PM to 4 PM) is for 5th Grade and up, including two adults who've signed up. Should be high-octane and fun, and I've got some great exercises planned. If this works out, we'll do another later this summer with wider promotion; alas, I couldn't get any assistance or aides, so I'll be on my lonesome with the small group, which is fine.

I also managed to catch evening screenings of United 93 (brilliant piece of work, and among the most harrowing docudramas I've ever seen) and Art School Confidential (engaging, excellent and haunting; kudos to Clowes and Zwigoff!) this week, too. I was suffering cinematic withdrawal symptoms, and so badly needed my dose of colored-light-on-a-big-screen and sound-coming-at-me that I would have settled for anything, really. Two good pics in a row, though, was a treat.

For your Friday reading pleasure, though, and as a follow-up to my 1927 flood 'teaser' earlier this week (as the rain picks up and continues today, after two days of sporadic sunshine here in Marlboro), I'm posting the outline for my Green Mountain Cinema II silent movie coverage. This appeared, in truncated form (edited down from this draft), in a Montpelier newspaper and in the regional newsstand magazine Livin' hereabouts in 2005; I'm expanding this considerably for GMCII, to provide broader context for my 1927 flood article and Arthur Lennig's definitive coverage of the making of D.W. Griffith's classic Way Down East, among other goodies.

Enjoy!
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REEL ESTATE: How the Movies Came to Vermont, and Vermont Came to the Movies...

The early years of Vermont’s motion picture legacy are elusive. Many of these films no longer survive, the only evidence of their flickering existence found in newspapers, trade journals, books, the occasional photograph or promotional ad. But rest assured that films were indeed being made in Vermont before the coming of sound, laying bedrock for the film and video production of today.

The first Vermont films chronicled military maneuvers, most likely filmed at Fort Ethan Allen. Hand-cranked motion picture cameras accommodated about one minute’s worth of film, and the titles were self-explanatory: Cavalry Charge, Cavalry Horses at Play, Cavalry Musical Drill, Charge Through Intervals of Skirmishes, Fencing on Horseback, Troopers Hurdling, along with Wrestling, Bareback: 3rd Cavalry and Musical Drill: Troop A, Third Cavalry (all 1897).

The famed French cinema pioneers the Lumiere Brothers August and Louis opened a plant in Burlington by Lake Champlain in 1902; it was acquired by the Eastman Company, and abandoned in 1911. The following year, celebrated silent comedy mogul Mack Sennett formed the production company Keystone with two partners, one of whom was Adam Kessel, Jr., whose Kessel Park estate on the New York side of the lake reportedly housed guest stars like Charlie Chaplin. By then, Vermont had spawned two ‘movie stars’ of its own: Commodore Admiral George Dewy of Montpelier, and Wilson Alwyn Bentley, the “Snowflake Man” of Jericho.

Dewey was one of the great naval heroes of the 1898 Spanish-American war; eager to satisfy public demand for footage of Dewey, Albert E. Smith and James Stuart Blackton boarded the cruiser Olympia in September 1899 to ‘sneak’ shots of Dewey, and later filmed the Admiral in Washington, D.C.

The team then journeyed to Montpelier to visit the Admiral’s home -- only to be tossed out. Dewey later accepted an invitation from Smith and Blackton to travel to their Vitagraph studio in Flatbush, New York and appear in The Battle Cry of Peace (1915).

The humble Jericho man who made his mark in the world photographing snowflakes was visited by Pathe News in 1917. During this outdoor session (much to Bentley’s frustration, as he worked inside), the Pathe crew clumsily faked snowfall by tossing snow from a second-story window and hung cut-out paper models of snowflakes from wires to simulate microphotography of snow spiralling through the air.

Alas, this short film is all that remains of Bentley’s motion picture career, though he was visited again in 1921, this time by the Bray Studios of New York. Bentley demonstrated a firmer grasp of the principles of cinema than did his camera-toting visitors: when the filmmakers inquired whether it might be possible to film the crystallization process, Bentley suggested they film a snow crystal melting, then reverse the film to simulate the snowflake taking form. The short film, entitled Mysteries of the Snow, was exhibited at Burlington’s Majestic Theatre, where Bentley’s slides were occasionally exhibited on the big screen.

Heartbreak fueled the first features made in Vermont. A Vermont Romance (1915) was made by “The Vermont Progressive Party”, such as it was, set and shot in and around Burlington (and, perhaps, White River Junction). It soon faded from view, perhaps because it defied genre expectations, urging orphaned lasses to spurn the lovesick farmer down the road (even if he gives his last dollar in aid), find a rich man, and marry. It was resurrected and reportedly ‘restored’ by WCAX-TV for broadcast in 1965; a shortened version of this feature is in the collection of the Northeast Historic Film Museum in Buckport, Maine. A Vermont Romance is a most curious artifact, ending with an extended tour of an industrialized bakery (where the now-penniless farmer slaves away, working for the wealthy man who won the heroine’s heart), anticipating the industrial, educational, and promotional film industry which would soon emerge in various corners of the state.

Far more classical made-in-Vermont romances blossomed in Way Down East, The Offenders, and Insinuation (all 1921). In 1920, the silent era’s greatest director, David Wark Griffith was sorely in need of success to recharge his flagging career. He purchased the rights to the popular stage play Way Down East to craft a star vehicle for Lillian Gish, one of America’s most beloved actresses, and arrived in White River Junction with his cast and crew in March of that year. Gish’s country girl, previously wed to a rich city man who abandoned her with child (which soon died), restarts her life working at a New England farm, where the stout son of the farm’s stern patriarch falls for her; gossip, the return of her rich suitor, and despair drives the forlorn lass into a raging blizzard.

Intent on creating a spectacle unlike any ever seen, Griffith dared to place Gish afloat on a cake of ice in the thawing March waters. Of all silent Vermont films, Way Down East remains the best-known. Griffith’s sensitive direction, Gish’s heart-breaking performance, and the still-spectacular climax (wherein Richard Barthelmess rushes to rescue Gish before they are washed over the falls) won raves from critics and audiences alike, though the honorable Charles R. Cummings, publisher/editor of The Vermonter: The State Magazine, ridiculed the film’s portrait of the Vermont character.

Less renowned -- and sadly lost -- are the two features made in Randolph that same year, written, directed, produced by and starring an adventurous woman named Margery Wilson, who summered in Randolph. She’d appeared in films (including D.W. Griffith’s epic Intolerance) and turned down a marriage proposal from one of America’s leading movie stars, William S. Hart. Wilson chose Randolph as the ideal place to make her features, The Offenders (1921/24) and Insinuation (1921), which were both romances in the Way Down East tradition. Insinuation debuted at Randolph’s Chandler Music Hall before its road-show engagements.

By 1920, “Moving-Picture Machines” were available for sale to the public. Adventurous theater owners one-upped competitors by producing their own exclusive newsreels. Among these was the Latchis Theatre in Brattleboro; when the Connecticut River washed a local bridge downstream in December, 1920, the unidentified Latchis cameraman filmed the spectacle. The footage was acquired (or appropriated) by the Selznick Weekly News and played nationally.

16mm film was introduced in 1923, opening the door for more regional filmmaking. These were, by and large, products of industry: quarries (the earliest, shot in the Barre quarries, dates from November, 1920), the sugaring firms (as early as 1926, shot by Harry Wendell Richardson for the St. Johnsbury-based Cary Maple Sugar Company), and more. There were home movies, many long-lost and never-to-be-recovered, though a few reside in the Northeast Historic Film Museum.

At least five cameramen in different corners of the state captured the November, 1927 flood on film. Two reels of flood footage have survived: about 10 minutes of 35mm footage sheltered at the Northeast Historic Film Museum, and 25 minutes currently housed at the University of Vermont Bailey/Howe Library Media Resources Department. Together, this archived footage present a remarkable snapshot of the natural disaster, demonstrating how active newsreel photographers (professional and amateur) had become in the most remote corners of the state.

The man who’d already shot some of the first industrial films in the state (for the maple sugar industry), Harry Wendell Richardson, shot footage along the northernmost portion of the state, showcasing the wake of the flood in Newport, Orleans, Coventry, and areas along the Clyde River; this reel is in the Northeast Historic Film Museum collection. The UVM footage, entitled Vermont Flood of 1927, is the most publicly available of all (on display at the new Vermont Historic Society Pavilion in Barre, Vermont; excerpts appear in the VPT video Vermont’s Great Flood), featuring the towns of Winooski, Bolton, Waterbury, Jonesville, Jeffersonville, Cambridge, Rutland, Proctor, Richmond, Hinesburg, and White River Junction, as well as bordering New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Four photographers are credited: Edward V. Hoyt, L.A. Norcott, “ex-Governor Proctor, of Proctor, Vt., and Ralph R. Eno of New York City.”

The silent era of Vermont filmmaking did not end with the ‘bang’ of the flood. After the arrival of sound, regional filmmakers were still using the silent film format; it was the most affordable of media, and was used throughout the 1930s.

A nomadic female filmmaker named Margaret Cram Showalter wandered New England currying funding from local businesses to produce her rapid-fire “Movie Queen” featurettes. She shot and completed these silent featurettes in a little over a week, always using the same narrative, reaping whatever boxoffice the finished product earned at the local town hall or opera house before rushing off to another town to do it all over again. At least one Vermont-based “Movie Queen” film has survived, shot in Middlebury. There may be others.

Mack M. Derick of Orleans was the sole native son to continue filmmaking (sans sound). Derick was engaged by The State Publicity Department and various chambers of commerce to make Dot and Glen See Vermont (1932), chronicling the honeymoon travels of the (fictional) couple Dot (17-year-old Josie Pomeroy, now Josie Pomeroy Sherrer) and Glen (19-year-old Glendon Foster). Vermont film historian and archivist Richard W. Moulton presented excerpts from the film (with interviews with Dot and Glen, and clips from another Derick short, Model ‘A’ in the Mud) in the VPT video Vermont Memories Vol. 1 (1994). Derick carved out a living as a still photographer; his work graced many issues of Vermont Life.

There were a handful of silent feature films set, but not shot, in Vermont, such as The Street of Tears and Which Shall it Be? (both 1924). The first sound film set (but not shot) in Vermont was Drag (1929), which brought Way Down East co-star Richard Barthelmess "back to Vermont" as a small-town newspaper publisher. Hollywood continued to set films in Vermont, all filmed on studio sets, including Frank Capra’s humanist comedy Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and William Wellman’s retaliatory satire Nothing Sacred (1937).

With the notable exceptions of Mack Derick, the Movie Queen, and industrial and education films (including those made for the growing ski industry), regional filmmaking hibernated until Robert Flaherty’s arrival in the late 1940s. In 1954, Alfred Hitchcock came here to film his peculiar black comedy The Trouble with Harry (1955)...

...but that’s another story.
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[Special thanks to the folks at the Northeast Historic Film Museum, and to Joseph A. Citro, Richard W. Moulton, Arthur Lennig, Art Donahue, Roger Wiberg, Martha Day, Lori Holiff, and Cecile Starr.]