Ketchikan film fest

Originally published in the Ketchikan Daily News, April 2018; written by Pat Tully

Next Saturday, April 21, starting at noon, the Ketchikan Public Library will host its annual Ketchikan Film Fest, with three major movies that were shot, in part, in our fair city.

The first, and my personal favorite, is The Silver Horde, a 1930 film starring Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur. McCrea plays Boyd Emerson, a hearty but innocent lad, in Alaska to earn his fortune and win the society girl he loves, Mildred Wayland (played by Jean Arthur). Cherry Mallotte, who unbeknownst to Emerson has earned her wealth through prostitution, uses all her intelligence and connections to help Emerson fight his deadly rival in love and salmon fishery—Frederick Marsh.

The film gets off to a rocky start—the first scenes are very fuzzy with distorted sound—but improves afterwards. It is great fun to watch McCrea and Arthur early in their film careers. McCrea is in full-fledged hero form, but Arthur is miscast as a flighty but conventional socialite (the madcap humor of her later movies—The Whole Town’s Talking; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington—is not much in evidence here).

It is even more interesting to watch Louis Wolheim as Mallotte’s sidekick George Balt, and Evelyn Brent as Cherry Mallotte. Wolheim, whose smashed-in face was the result of a college football injury, had a successful theatrical and silent movie career, playing mostly tough guys and athletes. Lionel Barrymore urged him to become an actor, telling him, "With that face you could make a fortune in the theater." Wolheim died in 1931 and is not well-known today, but his characteristic mug and pugnacity made him a great character actor during the silent era.

Evelyn Brent is also not much known today, but in the 1920s and 30s she played a variety of vamps and worldly women. In The Silver Horde Brent is well within her comfort zone, playing Cherry Mallotte with a mixture of hopeless love for Boyd Emerson, contempt for the hypocrisy of the town and its citizens, and a fierce, desperate pride.

The Silver Horde is a ‘pre-code’ film; that is, it was made just before Hollywood instituted the Hays Code which governed major filmmakers from 1930 to 1968. The Code was instituted to curb what was thought of as Hollywood’s increasing immorality, on and off-screen. A character engaging in criminal or immoral activity without suffering any on-screen consequences of that activity, was strictly forbidden by the Code. In The Silver Horde, two sympathetic characters engage in very different but similarly questionable activities, with no negative consequences. This would not be seen again in American films until the late 1960s, when mainstream Hollywood abandoned the Code.

Also being shown at the Library’s April 21 Film Fest are 1938’s Spawn of the North, with Henry Fonda, Dorothy Lamour, George Raft and John Barrymore, in a rollicking tale of love and piracy among salmon fisherman; and Cry Vengeance, a 1954 film noir with scenes in a variety of Ketchikan locations and many Ketchikan residents appearing as extras. Join us for a glimpse of Ketchikan on the silver screen!