Английская Википедия:Battle of Pottsburg Bridge

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Battle of Pottsburg Bridge is a lost 1912 silent motion picture set during the American Civil War. Released in February that year by the Kalem Company of New York City, the drama was filmed in northeastern Florida at the company's "winter studio", which was located on the outskirts of Jacksonville. It starred Guy Coombs, Anna Q. Nilsson, and Miriam Cooper.

No footage of this "photoplay" is listed among the holdings of major film repositories, studio archives, or in known private collections in North America or Europe. This Kalem release is therefore presumed to be lost. A small number of production stills used as illustrations in promotions of the film survive in 1912 trade publications.

Plot

A plot summary of this Civil War drama is provided in the January 27, 1912 issue of the New York trade publication The Moving Picture World:Шаблон:Blockquote

Файл:Film still of five Kalem performers in "Battle of Pottsburg Bridge", 1912.jpg

Film still of the principal cast: (from left) Guy Coombs, Anna Q. Nilsson, Miriam Cooper holding Coombs' hands, Henry Hallum as General Stuart, Hal Clements, and Helen Lindroth

Cast

• Guy Coombs as Bartlow
• Anna Q. Nilsson as Bartlow's "sweetheart"
• Miriam Cooper as Bartlow's sister Jessie
• Henry Hallam as Confederate General J. E. B. Stuart
• Hal Clements as a Confederate officer
• Helen Lindroth as Bartlow and Jessie’s mother
• George B. Hoyt as a Federal soldier
• Extras hired from the Jacksonville area to perform as Confederate and Federal soldiers in "spectacular battle scenes"

Production

This film was part of a series of films that Kalem released in the United States between 1911 and 1915 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. In 1912 alone Kalem produced and Kenean Buel directed at least a dozen additional dramas set during that conflict: The Bugler of Battery B, The Siege of Petersburg, A Spartan Mother, The Tide of Battle, The Darling of the C.S.A., War's Havoc, 'Fighting Dan' McCool, Under a Flag of Truce, The Soldier Brothers of Susanna, Saved From Court Martial, The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg, and The Confederate Ironclad.Шаблон:Efn

Although Kalem in 1912 was headquartered in New York City on West 24th Street in Manhattan, the company in its Civil War films routinely presented Southern civilians and soldiers as daring, sympathetic heroes fighting against and defeating their Northern foes, recurring themes that later prompted actress Miriam Cooper to write in her 1973 memoir Dark Lady of the Silents, "In picture after picture we won the war for the Confederates fifty years after the war was over."

Filming in Florida

All of Kalem's previously noted Civil War dramas, as well as Battle of Pottsburg Bridge, were filmed in northeastern Florida at the company's "winter studio", which was located next to the St. Johns River "about fifteen minutes by trolley" from downtown Jacksonville. There, since the autumn of 1908, Kalem had leased spaces in an old three-story hotel to serve as the company's production headquarters in Florida. The hotel, "Roseland", was situated on three acres that also accommodated a large home, several cabins, and other outbuildings. Nearby, at the river, were a "big wharf" and "boats of all kinds", some of which served as props in screenplays and others to transport Director Buel, his camera operators, principal cast members, and any locally hired extras around the "territory rich in locations" for filming. Among other motion picture props assembled and stored on the Roseland properties for staging the Battle of Pottsburg Bridge and other war-related productions were supplies of Confederate and Federal uniforms, assorted military accoutrements, and various weapons, including several 1860s field cannons with their caissons for hauling ammunition.Шаблон:Efn

Cinematographer

The cinematographer for this drama is undetermined, although production schedules and news reports suggest it might have been George K. Hollister. In Kalem's December 15, 1911 issue of the Kalem Kalendar, the company reports that "camera operator" Hollister had transferred weeks earlier from New York to Jacksonville "for the winter" after he returned from filming in Ireland during the summer of 1911. The cinematographer by then had worked for Kalem for three years, had helped to establish studio operations in Florida, and had shot numerous photoplays there and in other domestic locations as well as overseas. Accompanying Hollister to Jacksonville in the fall of 1911 were his wife Alice and their two small children. Alice Hollister at the time was already a screen celebrity, having starred or costarred in Kalem projects filmed in New York, in earlier productions shot in Florida, and in Ireland with her husband. Later that same year, in Jacksonville, she costarred in the Civil War drama Driving Home the Cows, which was filmed by George Hollister under the direction of Sidney Olcott. That completed production would not be released to theaters until New Year's Day 1912, just a month before the initial distribution of Battle of Pottsburg Bridge.

The Hollisters' overseas travel schedule after the completion of Driving Home the Cows documents that the family and Director Olcott did not remain in Jacksonville for the winter season. By late November 1911, all of them had returned to New York City to rejoin the "'Kalem Globetrotters'", a special company of actors and crew who on December 2 departed aboard the S.S. Adriatic to travel to filming locations in southern Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. George therefore did not film Battle of Pottsburg Bridge; instead, it was shot by another Kalem cinematographer under Kenean Buel's direction.

Nilsson and Cooper

Файл:Film still of three performers in 1912 Kalem production "Battle of Pottsburg Bridge".jpg

Another still showing (from left) actresses Cooper and Nilsson confronted by George B. Hoyt in costume as a Federal soldier

While 23-year-old Anna Q. Nilsson was recognized as the lead actress in Kalem's Jacksonville company in 1912, it was actress Miriam Cooper who received far more screen time than Nilsson and who was viewed in news outlets as being the "favorite" in Kalem's Civil War dramas. Cooper, in the role of Bartlow's sister Jessie, served as this film's central action hero, performing all of her own stunts. Dressed in a "suit" of her brother's clothes, Jessie rowed out to the Pottsburg Bridge, set fire to the wooden structure, and swam to safety as Federal forces dove into the river to escape the ensuing blaze. Nilsson, on the other hand, served in a more passive, peripheral role as Guy Coombs' love interest in a romantic side story. In early 1912, the Swedish actress was already an experienced screen performer. Cooper, though, was a newcomer to Kalem's Jacksonville company of players, and for her work on this release and others, the 20-year-old actress earned a salary of "thirty-five dollars a week and expenses", which included her accommodations in Florida.Шаблон:Efn

A "serious" mishap while filming

While transporting some cast and crew by boat to film several scenes, Director Buel later reported to Kalem's home office in New York about "'an exciting experience'" that he and his players had near Pottsburg Creek as they traveled to their intended location:Шаблон:Blockquote

Burning of "Pottsburg Bridge"

The climactic battle scene in the film depicted Miriam Cooper's characterШаблон:Emdashthe "southern girl" JessieШаблон:Emdashtrapping Federal troops on a bridge by setting it on fire. According to a news item in the Kalem Kalendar, Director Buel wanted to add a true "touch of realism" to his production, so prior to filming those sequences he obtained permission from local government officials in Duval County, Florida to actually burn down the old bridge outside Jacksonville, a bridge situated near Pottsburg Creek and described to be "half a mile in length". As part of Buel's request, Kalem agreed to pay the full cost for constructing a new structure. The filming of the old bridge's destruction provided, in the director's words, a "thrilling effect" on the screen, with highly dramatic scenes full of "smoke and flames". The motion picture company's home office in New York City later reported, "The fact that the Commissioners granted this favor, attests [to] Kalem's popularity in Jacksonville and the hearty co-operation of the authorities".

Alluding to the bridge scene in this production, Cooper in her memoir comments on her stunt work and how her on-screen identity as a Southern heroine and action performer grew with her repeated performances in Kalem's Civil War pictures:Шаблон:Quote

Release, promotion, and distribution

Файл:Newspaper promotion for 1912 Kalem film Battle of Pottsburg Bridge.jpg

Newspaper promotion for the "Sensational Military Picture" in Keokuk, Iowa, March 1912

Kalem officially released the film in the United States on February 5, 1912 and widely promoted it. Examinations of available trade journals and newspapers from that period reveal few critical reviews about the overall quality of the film or many details about its content. The staff and audiences at the Picture Theatre in Los Angeles, California appear to have enjoyed the picture. In the March 2, 1912 issue of its Kalem Kalendar newsletter, Kalem quotes from correspondence it received from the owner of that establishment:Шаблон:Blockquote

The preceding quoted reaction to this Kalem film published in a 1912 Kalem publication certainly could not be construed as wholly impartial. Perhaps a less biased review of the military drama is provided in the February 17, 1912 issue of The Moving Picture World. In a short assessment of the release under "Comments on the Films", the trade journal's reviewer also compliments the quality of the film's camerawork but judges the screen depiction of the battle itself decidedly lacking in credibility:Шаблон:Blockquote

Overseas market

The motion picture continued to circulate to domestic and foreign theaters for more than a year after its initial distribution. Only eight weeks after the photoplay's release in the United States, the "grand war drama" (grand drame de guerre) was already being promoted in France. In Paris, in the April 6, 1912 issue of the Ciné Journal, the M. P. Sales Agency announces to film exchanges and cinema owners that copies of La Bataille du pont de Pottsburg would soon be available. By mid-July 1912, the Empire Film Hire Service, a rental exchange in London, was offering to lease the drama and other "features" to cinemas throughout England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom.Шаблон:Efn

Alice Hollister or Miriam Cooper?

In their promotions of the film, some news outlets and advertisers in 1912 credited and complimented another actress rather than Miriam Cooper as the action lead in the production. They erroneously cited in that role Alice Hollister, who, as noted, was the wife of Kalem cinematographer George Hollister and costarred in Driving Home the Cows, another Civil War drama shot in Jacksonville just prior to the filming of Battle of Pottsburg Bridge. One example of this misidentification can be found in the April 13, 1912 issue of the local newspaper in Logan, Utah. The Logan Republican in that issue provides its readers with its brief assessment of the screen drama after seeing it at the town's Oak Theatre: "'The Battle at Pottsburg Bridge' by the Kalem Company with Alice Hollister in the leading role, at the Oak[,] was a masterpiece of thrills, magnificently staged and played, showing how the brave southern girl saved the regiment by her daring...." That erroneous credit possibly stemmed from the newspaper's reviewer confusing this film with Driving Home the Cows, which costarred Hollister with Leo Berger and Gene Gauntier, and had been released only five weeks before Battle at Pottsburg Bridge.

More than a year after the release of the film, Miriam Cooper's performance was still being highlighted and praised in news references to the Battle of Pottsburg Bridge. In a professional profile of Cooper published in the District of Columbia, in the May 18, 1913 issue of The Washington Herald, the newspaper comments about her athletic prowess in performing all her own stunts:Шаблон:Blockquote

Lost film

Neither an original positive copy, negatives, nor partial footage from the Battle of Pottsburg Bridge is listed among the holdings of major film repositories and silent-film databases in North America and Europe, including the Library of Congress, the George Eastman Museum, the Museum of Modern Art's collection of moving images, the UCLA Film and Television Archives, the National Film Preservation Foundation, the Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the British Film Institute, Cinémathèque Française, the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, and other catalogs for silent motion pictures accessible through the European Film Gateway (EFG). Currently, this film, like the vast majority of motion pictures produced in the United States during the silent era, is presumed to be lost.

External links

• Шаблон:IMDb title