Exhibit Review: Classic Film Posters, Barrymore Film Center and Museum, Fort Lee, NJ

Film fans often take for granted the unique power of a movie poster. It must intrigue and lure potential audiences without misleading them about the content being advertised. If it’s lucky, it will also be aesthetically beautiful, and freeze the image of the film for ages to come.

I thought of this while viewing “Coming Attractions: Classic Film Posters from the Konstantino Spanoudis iKON Collection,” at the Barrymore Film Center and Museum in Fort Lee, NJ, not far from where I live in Bergen County. If you have a chance, rush to see this exhibit before it closes January 5. Even better, couple your trip with a ticket for one of the classic, independent, or art house movies playing in this burgeoning mecca for cinephiles in the tristate area.

The 70 items on display range from 1910, the dawn of the silent era (which began, this nonprofit center and museum will remind you, in Fort Lee) to 1981, concentrating mostly on the U.S. but with some foreign posters for a wider context.

As you look through the materials, you might be surprised to discover that issues that preoccupy Americans now had their genesis over a century ago. Censors back then, for instance, focused first on these posters—an inexpensive alternative to newspaper advertising.

Lithographers were the original creators of movie posters, and, like the other form they created—circus posters—highlighted, and sometimes exaggerated, lurid content. Opponents’ anger, then, often concentrated on the art itself, which would likely be seen by more passersby than the movies themselves.

As late as the 1930s, American movie posters were still seen as the products of hacks who labored in an industry more respected for the money it generated than as an art. So many motion pictures were being produced then that the useful life of a poster could be only days, leading to their trashing, recycling, or return to exchange.

French, German, and Italian artists often signed their work, enjoying greater recognition than their largely anonymous American counterparts. (A conspicuous exception: Saul Bass, who transformed the movie-poster industry with his art for Otto Preminger, Billy Wilder, and Alfred Hitchcock—and whose seminal work for Anatomy of a Murder is shown here.)

Konstantino Spanoudis, a Greek-born Fort Lee owner and curator of iKON Art Gallery, has amassed well over 6,000 movie posters since he began accumulating this art in the late 1980s.

What’s on display in the museum’s 1,800-sq.-ft. exhibition gallery reflects his fascination especially with classic Hollywood, B-westerns, Abbott and Costello comedies, sports, and “race films” (movies made by Black filmmakers for segregated movie houses).

Nearly 20 of the pieces relate to Bergen County, mostly Fort Lee, including for:

* Fighting Death (Solex Studio, Fort Lee, 1914)

* Silent “vamp” Theda Bara’s Carmen (made at Fort Lee’s Fox Studio, 1915); and

* The multi-part Lincoln epic, Son of Democracy (filmed in Ridgefield Park, 1917).

Among the other titles promoted by these posters:

* Sarah Bernhardt’s Queen Elizabeth (1912), one of the first silents to promote a specific film and star rather than “the movies” in general; and

* Gilda (1946, pictured), the film noir starring Rita Hayworth;

* La Dolce Vita (1960), by Federico Fellini, one of the imports that these posters advertised;

* A trio of James Bond films, from the Sixties dawn of the franchise (Dr. No, Thunderball, and You Only Live Twice);

* Jaws (1975), and;

* Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

The industry has progressed from an ephemeral advertising art to one whose most prized items can garner $40,000 to $50,000. The Barrymore exhibit provides a great way to appreciate two fine arts that nobody expected much from at their beginnings: the motion picture industry itself, and the posters that promoted it to a public that eventually couldn’t get enough of it.

Exhibit Review: ‘The Royal Family’ of Broadway, Hollywood—and Fort Lee, NJ

In the late 1920s, when the George S. Kaufman-Edna Ferber comedy The Royal Family played to packed audiences at the at the Selwyn Theater, audiences knew that the group in the title were not Britain’s Windsors but an American acting dynasty strongly resembling the Barrymores. When Paramount Pictures adapted the play for the big screen in 1930, the studio felt it best, considering the many non-theater aficionados outside the Big Apple, to tack “of Broadway” at the end of the title.

Over the last century, with siblings John, Lionel, and Ethel filming one classic after another—and with John’s granddaughter Drew making her own contribution to the industry as an actress-producer—the Barrymores could just as easily be called “The Royal Family of Hollywood.” Now, with an exhibit about the multi-generational thespians now running in a film center named for them in northern New Jersey, they could also be labeled “The Royal Family of Fort Lee.”

In a late January blog post of mine that related my discovery of the Barrymore Film Center, I promised that I would discuss a first-floor exhibit on the family that runs through the end of March. It really is must viewing for anyone interested in film and theater history—even, more broadly, New Jersey and Fort Lee history.

The exhibit curators have scoured far and wide for photos, posters, sculptures, props, and other materials associated with John, Lionel, and Ethel Barrymore. Separate walls tell the story of each sibling—all loaded with talent, looks, and money, but also with more than the normal share of offstage drama that actors often encounter.

The dynasty started not with this trio but with John Drew, who became an actor and theater manager after emigrating from Ireland in the 1830s. In turn, his daughter Georgiana, herself an actress, wed Herbert Blythe, an Indian-born British stage actor professionally known as Maurice Barrymore. It is he who, in effect, became the patriarch of “The Royal Family.”

A talented comic actor who became one of the first Broadway stars to star in vaudeville, Maurice did well enough financially to buy a summer cottage in what is now the Coytesville section of Fort Lee, several blocks from the film center. (Despite ardent efforts by film buffs, that house was demolished 22 years ago.)

As the museum chronicles, Fort Lee, because of its proximity to Broadway, the Hudson River and Palisades, became the de facto birthplace of the American film industry. It’s appropriate, then, that three of Maurice’s acting progeny, all of whom spent much of their youth in the town—Lionel, Ethel, and John Barrymore—came as close as you can get to being present at the creation of this narrative art form.

(Oddly enough, though the three had more than 300 screen appearances among them, they only appeared together once on the big screen—the 1932 film Rasputin and the Empress. A poster for that movie, part of the exhibit, is the image accompanying this post.)

Moviegoers of the past few decades are likely to be familiar with the four decade career, as actress, producer, talk-show host, and gossip-page fixture, of Drew Barrymore. But her triumphs and travails pale in comparison with the great sibling triumvirate who dominate the Barrymore Center exhibit.

Still, you’ll likely be in for something of shock when you first enter the exhibit room to see a photo of a young woman who bears a startling resemblance to the current best-known member of the family. But it’s not Drew but Ethel Barrymore—a similarity all the more surprising because Ethel was Drew’s grandaunt rather than, more directly, her grandmother.

Among the items that depict Ethel here are a photo, a portrait, a bust of the actress, and a poster from her first movie, The Nightingale, shot in 1914 right in Fort Lee.

Unlike her brothers, “The First Lady of the American Theater” worked primarily on the stage, as she followed in the tradition of her grandfather, John Drew, as star and manager of Broadway’s Ethel Barrymore Theater, which the Shubert Organization created as a vehicle for her.

A guide at the museum told me that her favorite member of the family was Lionel Barrymore, and the artifacts on display make a compelling case for his versatility.

Then in their toddler stage, films in the silent and early talkies era left Lionel and many other denizens of Hollywood skeptical about their cultural potential—even when, as in his case, he went behind the camera to direct, rather than his usual position in front.

(He is best known, of course, for his performance as miserly Mr. Potter in the Yuletide classic It’s a Wonderful Life—a kind of American counterpart to his annual radio broadcasts over two decades as Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.)

The creative instinct that Lionel couldn’t display, even as a well-compensated contract player for MGM Studio, he satisfied by picking up a paintbrush or playing the piano and oboe. While walking through the gallery, you’ll hear his First Piano Concerto and Memoriam on the Death of John Barrymore.

Although Ethel and Lionel displayed more self-discipline, John Barrymore has always fascinated me the most of the trio. His talent was matched by an appearance that gave rise to the nickname “The Great Profile.”

Unfortunately both were exceeded by a raucous lifestyle that spawned a million anecdotes—most, remarkably enough, true. (When asked if the very young Romeo and Juliet had a physical relationship, he cracked, “They certainly did in the Chicago company.”)

Committing his father to Bellevue in 1901 was a searing experience for John, but he could not escape the family propensity for substance abuse—and he seems to have passed this genetic inheritance to children Diana and John Drew Barrymore and the latter’s daughter, Drew.

By the early 1930s, John was having trouble showing up on time for studio work and memorizing his lines. Within a decade, as a has-been Shakespearean actor in the stage comedy My Dear Children, he verged close to self-parody.

But the exhibit also includes evidence that John at his best was an electrifying, even pioneering, actor, such as the chair and dagger he used in a 1920 stage production of Hamlet (proclaimed for years as the best many had seen) and the suit of armor he donned for Richard III.

If you have a chance, see the Barrymore exhibit before it closes March 26. Both aficionados of this legendary family and those with only the slightest inkling of what they once meant to the early film industry will come away with greater appreciation for this trio who left their unmistakable marks on American entertainment.

Exhibit Review: “Catholics in New York 1808-1946”

In early December, I decided to take a “staycation” in the New York metro area, catching up on necessary tasks and, for a couple of days, seeing cultural sites. One of the latter was the Museum of the City of New York.

Despite my longtime interest in history, I had stayed away from this institution because of the way it spun the controversy surrounding its mid-1990s “Gaelic Gotham” retrospective of Irish-Americans in the city into a dispute over political correctness rather than what in fact it was—an argument about scholarship and museum governance. My annoyance over this issue was so pronounced that I refused to support the institution for a long time thereafter.

Several years ago, however, the leadership of the museum underwent a transition, leaving me more disposed to see a topic there of compelling interest. Catholics in New York 1808-1946 fit the bill perfectly, dealing not just with religious, urban, and political history but also, for me, with personal history, since my mother’s side of the family were part of the New York Archdiocese for most of the first half of the 20th century.

Catholics, of course, were in New York before 1808. But that year marked the official designation of the Archdiocese of New York by the Vatican, so it serves as a useful measuring point to measure progress over the years in numbers and influence.

The luck of the Irish was with me the day I visited the museum. As I approached, camera crews from “Gossip Girl” were all around the place. Praise be to God--admission was free! I put the nine dollars I saved toward purchasing the companion book for the exhibit—and, faithful reader, I took back (at least for 24 hours) all the negative thoughts I’d ever had about why teenagers were wasting their time with this show.

The exhibit, which opened in mid-May, ended on New Year’s Eve, and I was only sorry I didn’t see it sooner. Excerpts from interviews with several notable New York Catholics (still-practicing and lapsed) played on a small TV monitor, including with veteran journalist Pete Hamill (who noted that his own writing was influenced by Mass, “which is essentially a three-act play”) and educator Frank Macchiarola.

An unexpected source of humor came from one of the interviewees, Sister Nancy Callahan, who as a youngster startled her parents with the rather stark difference in her alternative career plans: “Well, I’m going to become a nun or an interior decorator!” (She also movingly notes that they told her that if things didn’t work out in the convent, she could always come home.)

Along the way, I learned several facts I hadn’t realized before:

* The venerable city institution St. Vincent’s Hospital was established by Archbishop John Hughes in November 1849. I guess he wanted to make sure it was run by someone he trusted, because the operation was headed by Sister Angela Hughes, the archbishop’s own sister.

* The great Olympic runner Jesse Owens came to national prominence in 1934 at races held in NewYork under the Catholic aegis.

* In 1849, the Irish “apostle of temperance,” Fr. Theobald Mathew, traveled around the city, where he administered “the pledge” of abstinence from liquor to 20,000 people.

Longtime readers of this blog know my intense fascination with the first Roman Catholic nominee of a major American party, New York Governor Al Smith, so I was glad to see material on him, including photos, clippings about his battle against bigots in his 1928 Presidential race, and even an award he won in grade school for (naturally!) elocution.

All kinds of artifacts fill the exhibition—not just the usual photographs and cartoons, but also medals, clothes, communion cards, and the like. They all serve a purpose, however: to show how the faith underlay just about every aspect of its adherents’ lives—school, the workplace, hospitals, and politics. (The imperative to look out “for the least of mine” played out in the social welfare legislation pioneered by Smith and Albany colleague Robert Wagner and later implemented on a mass scale as part of the New Deal.)

I especially enjoyed the interactive map of archdiocesan parochial schools in 1945. I had fun typing into the screen the names of parochial schools that my mother and her siblings had attended (e.g., St. Charles Borromeo in Manhattan), seeing how many students had been enrolled at the end of the war. Several older exhibit visitors enjoyed this even more, as they had attended these very schools. I can only imagine the stories that my mother and her deceased and surviving siblings might have shared had they seen this.

You cannot absorb history without noticing how much certain aspects of the past play out, in different contexts, in the present. Only a couple of days after I visited this exhibit—which noted how Catholics built up their own social institutions in the hostile New World environment—came the news that Bernard Madoff had exploited similar Jewish philanthropic activities.

Especially after viewing the “Catholic New York” exhibit, I could only read with sympathy Wall Street Journal reporter Lucette Lagnado’s piercing examination of the conundrum faced by these Jewish charities. She quotes a comparison by a Jewish-American historian, Jonathan Sarda, of the affluent Orthodox Jewish community of New York to "a kind of shtetl -- a very wealthy shtetl."

Having read similar references to “the Catholic ghetto” of parallel institutions before the election of John F. Kennedy, I understand all too well not only the desire to belong that makes one want to tear down these social enclosures, but also the nostalgia for solidarity and the longing for “the kind of more humble, more individual tzedakah, or personal charity” that informs Ms. Lagnado’s piece.

The same day, I also saw at the museum an exhibit on the photography of Southern author Eudora Welty. At some point, I may write also write about this exhibit (which is still ongoing as of this writing).

In the meantime, since I have taken the museum to task in the past, I think it only fair to commend it now for this exhibit, and, in particular, take note of those most crucially involved with it. Deborah Dependahl Waters served as curator, with Sarah Henry acting as contributing curator and the historian Terry Golway (who also edited the companion volume) acting as curatorial consultant.