THE HAGHEFILM / SELZNICK SCHOOL FELLOWSHIP 2004
THE LAST CALL (M. W. Garsmon, Inc., US 1922)
series: A Nick Carter Featurette
Dir: Al Hall [= Alexander Hall]; story: from the Nick Carter Stories by Street & Smith; cast: Edmund Lowe (Nick Carter), Diana Allen (Patsy); incomplete, 35 mm, 1322 ft, 19’ (18 fps), George Eastman House. Preserved and printed 2004 from a 35 mm nitrate positive print.
English intertitles.
Grand piano: David Drazin.
Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro: Preservation Awards, 12 Oct 2004
Caroline Yeager (GCM): "This installment in the Nick Carter mystery series appropriates part of the title The Last Call; or, Nick Carter's Patch-Work Problem, published by Street & Smith on 22 November 1913 (five cents at the local newsstand) without the plot. Intrepid detective Nick Carter outwitted the bad guys in a long series of pulp paperbacks, starting with The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square, which first appeared in the 18 September 1886 issue of the New York Weekly. The brainchild of Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of Street & Smith, the first story and its two sequels were the work of John Russell Coryell. Subsequent installments were written by dozens of other authors, the most prolific being “Chickering Carter”, the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey, another dime novelist who wrote a number of the Jack Wright stories."
"The Nick Carter series ran in a variety of different detective magazines, and proved a popular draw when adapted to the screen. Like any noble detective, Nick has his assistants: Patsy Murphy, a bootblack, and Chickering Valentine, a teenage Nevada ranch-hand who is adopted by Nick. Foursquare, upright, clean living, moral Nick bests criminals with his wits, brawn, and clever use of disguises. The stories were first adapted to the screen in the early 1920s as a series of 2-reelers. MGM produced Nick Carter, Master Detective in 1939, and the stories continued to be source material for sound films in both the United States and France. They were also produced as a popular radio show, Nick Carter Master Detective (1943–1955), and still later they morphed into Nick Carter: Killmaster, a globe-trotting spy who appeared during the James Bond craze of the early 1960s. The Last Call finds clean-cut Nick trying to save an opera singer who has been kidnapped by her own husband!"
"The print shown here was preserved by Annette Groschke, winner of the 2004 Haghefilm Fellowship of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, awarded each year to a student of the course held at George Eastman House. The 35 mm nitrate source was affected by terminal decay, with extensive decomposition of the emulsion in several sections." – Caroline Yeager (GCM)
AA: Nick Carter was the first action hero of screen serials when Victorin Jasset directed the first installment in France: Nick Carter, le roi des détectives. 1ère série: Le Guet-Apens (1908), seen in 1992 at the great Éclair retrospective at the GCM. There have been many Nick Carter series since, but this Alexander Hall / Edmund Lowe entry seems almost unknown today. Films reflect each other at festivals: the radiophone aspect made me think about Dziga Vertov and Radio-Pravda! Signora Bonelli, the great opera star, is being kidnapped while on the air performing Carmen. "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre" (The Toreador Aria) is among the tracks performed. The pianist at Teatro Zancanaro blithely ignored the Bizet cues.
THE LAST CALL (M. W. Garsmon, Inc., US 1922)
series: A Nick Carter Featurette
Dir: Al Hall [= Alexander Hall]; story: from the Nick Carter Stories by Street & Smith; cast: Edmund Lowe (Nick Carter), Diana Allen (Patsy); incomplete, 35 mm, 1322 ft, 19’ (18 fps), George Eastman House. Preserved and printed 2004 from a 35 mm nitrate positive print.
English intertitles.
Grand piano: David Drazin.
Viewed at Teatro Zancanaro, Sacile, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (GCM): Fuori quadro: Preservation Awards, 12 Oct 2004
Caroline Yeager (GCM): "This installment in the Nick Carter mystery series appropriates part of the title The Last Call; or, Nick Carter's Patch-Work Problem, published by Street & Smith on 22 November 1913 (five cents at the local newsstand) without the plot. Intrepid detective Nick Carter outwitted the bad guys in a long series of pulp paperbacks, starting with The Old Detective's Pupil; or, The Mysterious Crime of Madison Square, which first appeared in the 18 September 1886 issue of the New York Weekly. The brainchild of Ormond G. Smith, the son of one of the founders of Street & Smith, the first story and its two sequels were the work of John Russell Coryell. Subsequent installments were written by dozens of other authors, the most prolific being “Chickering Carter”, the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey, another dime novelist who wrote a number of the Jack Wright stories."
"The Nick Carter series ran in a variety of different detective magazines, and proved a popular draw when adapted to the screen. Like any noble detective, Nick has his assistants: Patsy Murphy, a bootblack, and Chickering Valentine, a teenage Nevada ranch-hand who is adopted by Nick. Foursquare, upright, clean living, moral Nick bests criminals with his wits, brawn, and clever use of disguises. The stories were first adapted to the screen in the early 1920s as a series of 2-reelers. MGM produced Nick Carter, Master Detective in 1939, and the stories continued to be source material for sound films in both the United States and France. They were also produced as a popular radio show, Nick Carter Master Detective (1943–1955), and still later they morphed into Nick Carter: Killmaster, a globe-trotting spy who appeared during the James Bond craze of the early 1960s. The Last Call finds clean-cut Nick trying to save an opera singer who has been kidnapped by her own husband!"
"The print shown here was preserved by Annette Groschke, winner of the 2004 Haghefilm Fellowship of the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation, awarded each year to a student of the course held at George Eastman House. The 35 mm nitrate source was affected by terminal decay, with extensive decomposition of the emulsion in several sections." – Caroline Yeager (GCM)
AA: Nick Carter was the first action hero of screen serials when Victorin Jasset directed the first installment in France: Nick Carter, le roi des détectives. 1ère série: Le Guet-Apens (1908), seen in 1992 at the great Éclair retrospective at the GCM. There have been many Nick Carter series since, but this Alexander Hall / Edmund Lowe entry seems almost unknown today. Films reflect each other at festivals: the radiophone aspect made me think about Dziga Vertov and Radio-Pravda! Signora Bonelli, the great opera star, is being kidnapped while on the air performing Carmen. "Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre" (The Toreador Aria) is among the tracks performed. The pianist at Teatro Zancanaro blithely ignored the Bizet cues.
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