Three off-beat films from the last days of silents, and the first days of sound.

In the early days of sound, Menzies and Riesenfeld made a whole series of one-reels, shot silent, and designed to fit - and illustrate - well-known musical classics. The plots of some of them were quite inane, but all of them had top-notch camerawork and solid production values. Often quite elaborate sets were "borrowed" from important feature pictures then in production. Zampa, based on the music of Joseph Ferdinand Herold, is one of the best of the series and a really interesting little film. No cast is supplied, and we haven't been able to identity the heroine as yet, but the hero is a grade-B western star, Buddy Roosevelt (still active in bits) and the villain is Wallace MacDonald, a quite popular leading man of the twenties and early thirties, and now a good low-budget producer for Columbia Pictures.

When we ran The Bat Whispers some months ago, we stirred up a great deal of interest in the wonderful - and forgotten - director, Roland West. Therefore, although it has been shown spasmodically on television, in somewhat cut versions, we are glad to be able to show this, his third film, with Chester Morris (Alibi and The Bat Whispers being the other two), and his last film. When Thelma Todd (her appearance in this film under another name has never been explained) was found dead, there was more then a hint of murder. And Roland West, with whom Todd had had a romantic liaison, was one of the number one suspects. Murder was never actually proven and thus West was cleared, but many still considered him guilty. He was out of films -- and until his death, lived only on the fringe of Hollywood activity, as the proprietor of a restaurant.

Like most of West's films, Corsair doesn't make it easy on the audience. The plot development is far from straightforward, and the motivations often extremely involved. Many of the strongest plot elements are not present in the original novel at all - a fairly routine tale of gangsterism and bootlegging, written by Walton Green, a prohibition inspector. At a time when so many talkies were just that, Corsair is all movie, with a reliance on the same technique that so distinguished The Bat Whispers - dramatic lighting and close-ups, superb moving camera shots, an excellent use of shadows, and, in this film, some really lovely night exteriors. As a part of the gangster cycle of the early 30's, it has something in common with The Finger Points in its casual acceptance of crime, and in its total lack of any kind of "moral compensation" for the criminals - even though their crimes have included cold-blooded murder. Chester Morris and Fred Kohler make a fine pair of rival bootleggers, and there is an interesting performance from Ned Sparks too. All in all, Corsair is one of the most interesting of the many interesting films that got lost In the shuffle in the early 30's -- and not the least of its many appealing qualities, is the lovely period background music by Alfred Newman.

With this mailing we're enclosing a circular from one of our members, Richard Kraft, which we think may be of interest to the 349 other members. If we were writing the circular we'd have described Dick as "formidable" rather than "genial"... however! While we're doling out free advertising, we'd also like to mention the one-man archive, Johnny Allen, who can be found (figuratively speaking) in box 78 of the Radio City Post Office. Johnny has been very kind to this society, loaning Down to the Sea in Ships and other priceless items. To the collector of stills, posters, pressbooks, prints and other film memorabilia, he's invaluable. Johnny sells and trades; we recommend the former. The latter rather tends to resemble the scene in David Harum wherein Will Rogers and Charles Middleton whittle at a stick as they do their horse-trading!