Ned Kelly meets Tupac Shakur

You're getting a double dose of my A to Z Challenge contributions today. Yesterday I was too busy with an article about English castles that's now live on Gadling. Researching it took up way more time and energy than expected!

I did play hookey for part of yesterday, however, in order to watch The Story of the Kelly Gang on Archive.org. Ned Kelly was an outlaw in late-nineteenth-century Australia and was most famous for his gunfight against the police while wearing homemade armor. The law saw him as a brutal killer and thief, while many regular folk saw him as a hero who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. He became the Australian equivalent of Jesse James, larger than life.

This film was made in 1906 in Australia and at 60 minutes, was the longest film yet made. It proved hugely successful in Australia and played in theaters for 20 years. Sadly, most of the film has been lost. Back then people thought of films as disposable and most films from the first three decades of motion pictures are gone. It's only by luck that 20 minutes of the film have survived.

The guy who posted the film on Archive.org did a good job splicing the various surviving bits together. He didn't add a soundtrack, though, and not liking my silent films to be totally silent I decided to put on some music. Hmmm. . .what would go with a bandit movie? Tupac Shakur, of course! His music is about gangsters defying the police, after all.

As strange as it sounds, the music fit perfectly. Just goes to show that once art is in the public space, it can take on some strange and unanticipated forms. I bet Tupac never dreamed his music would be used to accompany a hundred-year-old movie, and I'm sure Ned Kelly never anticipated someone like Tupac!

Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Tom Mix: An Early Western Superstar

Last week I blogged about William S. Hart, the first Western movie star. Hart got the ball rolling and soon Westerns were a favorite genre among moviegoers in the days of silent film.

The next actor to make it big in the Cinematic Wild West was Tom Mix. Unlike Hart, he wasn't a professional actor drawn to a new medium. Instead, he was a real-life cowboy. He worked various jobs in Oklahoma including a stint in 1904 as a bartender and sheriff/marshal in Dewey, Oklahoma. He later worked at Miller's 101 Ranch and earned a reputation as a crack shot and fine rider, winning prizes at rodeos all around the West.

He later got a gig at Will A. Dickey's Circle D Ranch, a Wild West show that provided cowboys and horses to the early motion picture studios. In the first decade of the Twentieth century, small ranchers were being bought out and centralization was the name of the game. Many cowboys found themselves out of work and ended up living in Hollywood. There they lived like they always had, in bunkhouses and taking care of steers and horses, but this time their employers were the studios.

The Selig Polyscope Company put Mix was in his first film in 1909 and he went on to make a hundred shorts for them before signing with the Fox Film Corporation. His films always highlighted his skill with the rope and as a rider. Mix did some amazing stunts such as leaping off cliffs and riding on top of trains. These were the days before trick photography and when you see Mix doing something crazy on film, he really was doing it.

Unlike many silent stars, Mix managed to make the switch over to sound films and continued working until 1935, thrilling a whole new generation of fans.

Photo courtesy the Beinecke Library.

William S. Hart: the first Western film star

I've always been a fan of silent films. Like most people, I loved the old Chaplin and Keaton slapstick shorts as a kid. Unlike most people, I soon became entranced with the silent dramas and adventures. Back in the 80s when I was growing up, you could still see these pictures on late night TV and in New York City revival houses. Now I watch them on the Internet or at rare showings at arthouse cinemas.

I've recently been getting into silent Westerns. The first silent Western star was William S. Hart. He starred in more than 70 Westerns from 1914 to 1925 and helped establish many of the tropes still used in Westerns to this day.

Hart had a stony face and dominating manner that was perfect to play heavies. In fact, he often portrayed villains. Sometimes he'd be saved by a good woman, sometimes not. Every Hart film contained a gunfight, sometimes several, and they were always quick, brutal affairs that looked very realistic.

In The Return of Draw Egan (1916) Hart favors a slight grimace and a cigarillo that looks like it inspired Clint Eastwood's The Man With No Name. I wouldn't be surprised. Hart inspired many Western actors and helped establish the genre. He was hugely successful in his day but sadly all but forgotten now. His films are full of Victorian moralizing that come off as dated. For me at least, they retain a primal power that makes them worth watching.

In preparation for this post, last night I watched what's considered one of Hart's best films: Hell's Hinges (1916). That link will take you to Youtube where you can watch this public domain film. The rest of this post contains spoilers.