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Silent Cinema

Phantom of the Opera 1925

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Here’s a little something to haunt your dreams…

“The Phantom of the Opera” is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of the Gaston Leroux novel of the same title directed by Rupert Julian. The film featured Lon Chaney in the title role as the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House, causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to force the management to make the woman he loves a star. It is most famous for Lon Chaney’s intentionally horrific, self-applied make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film’s premiere. The film was adapted by Elliott J. Clawson, Frank M. McCormack, Tom Reed and Raymond L. Schrock. It was directed by Rupert Julian, with supplemental direction by Lon Chaney, Edward Sedgwick and Ernst Laemmle. The film also features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis, and Snitz Edwards. The only surviving cast member is Carla Laemmle (born 1909), niece of producer Carl Laemmle, who played a small role as “prima ballerina” in the film when she was about 15.

Joe Rinaudo with Carla Laemmle at the Nethercutt Collection, during the premier of Joe’s meticulously restored Phantom of the Opera (complete with two-strip Technicolor sequences) in which Ms. Laemmle was featured as the ballerina.

Directed by Rupert Julian, Lon Chaney, Edward Sedgwick and Ernst Laemmle, produced by Carl Laemmle, screenplay by Elliott J. Clawson, Raymond L. Schrock, Bernard McConville, Jasper Spearing, Richard Wallace, Walter Anthony, Tom Reed and Frank M. McCormack, based on “The Phantom of the Opera” by Gaston Leroux, starring Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe and Gibson Gowland. 

Note: The video above is from the Timeless Classic Movies channel on YouTube. It is not the version restored by Joe Rinaudo.

Source: “The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Film appears on the YouTube channel Timeless Classic Movies

1929, Disney, Silent Cinema, Silly Symphony

THE SKELETON DANCE, 1929

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THE SKELETON DANCE, 1929
Walt Disney Silly Symphony

Warning: This film is not silent…that’s scary, isn’t it?

From Wikipedia:
The origins for The Skeleton Dance can be traced to mid-1928, when Walt Disney was on his way to New York to arrange a distribution deal for his new Mickey Mouse cartoons and to record the soundtrack for his first sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. During a stopover in Kansas City, Disney paid a visit to his old acquaintance Carl Stalling, then an organist at the Isis Theatre, to compose scores for his first two Mickey shorts, Plane Crazy and The Gallopin’ Gaucho. While there, Stalling proposed to Disney a series of “musical novelty” cartoons combining music and animation, which would become the genesis for the Silly Symphony series, and pitched an idea about skeletons dancing in a graveyard. Stalling would eventually join Disney’s studio as staff composer.

Animation on The Skeleton Dance began in January 1929, with Ub Iwerks animating the majority of the film in almost six weeks. The soundtrack was recorded at Pat Powers‘ Cinephone studio in New York in February 1929, along with that of the Mickey Mouse short The Opry House. The final negative cost $5,485.40.

In order to attract a national distributor for the Silly Symphony series, Walt and Roy Disney arranged for The Skeleton Dance to run at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles and at the Fox Theatre in San Francisco in June 1929, while Pat Powers arranged for it to play at New York’s Roxy Theatre from July. In early August, Columbia Pictures agreed to distribute the Silly Symphonies, and The Skeleton Dance played as a Columbia release in September at the Roxy, making it the first picture in the theater’s history have a return engagement.

In February 1931, The New York Times reported that the film had been banned in Denmark for being “too macabre”.

In 1994, The Skeleton Dance was voted #18 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field.