Ping
Ping
“A Trip Down Market Street,” or at least part of it, aired on CBS 60 Minutes a few years ago. I’m surprised to learn it’s 13 minutes in length.
That particular film was put on a train headed east the night before the earthquake and that’s why it survived.
My grandfather was up north mining gold when the quake hit and was one of many young men recruited to assist in recovery efforts immediately thereafter. He gave me a San Francisco cop’s billy club that he picked up while he was there. I used to carry it in my car but lost it with a bunch of other stuff during my divorce. He was a rural mail carrier during WWII and used to carry an H&R Young American .22 revolver on his route. That I still have.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaxcXfSwdE
This video has a side by side view of Market Street before and after the quake.
My mother lost a uncle in that quake; his body was never found. His widow grieved, remarried, and was lost track of.
Just before WWII, some of the family was vacationing on the Mendocino coast, and spotted him. He admitted his identity, and that he had taken advantage of the chaos to run off with his secretary, and change his name.
So this gives hope to finding the lost moon landing tapes. Of course it will take at least a hundred years, if ever.
How many FReepers know the etymology of the word "Essanay" and why the museum in Fremont is named "Essanay"? It's a fascinating story (pardon me for going slightly OT here):
Finally, look how far ahead of his time Chaplin was! Chaplin in "A Woman," 1915:Essanay - Chaplin Brand
By Jeffrey Vance, adapted from his book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema (New York, 2003) © 2009 Roy Export SASIf the early slapstick of the Keystone comedies represents Chaplins cinematic infancy, the films he made for the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company are his adolescence. The Essanays find Chaplin in transition, taking greater time and care with each film, experimenting with new ideas, and adding flesh to the Tramp character that would become his legacy. Chaplins Essanay comedies reveal an artist experimenting with his palette and finding his craft.
After the expiration of his one-year contract with the Keystone Film Company, Chaplin was lured to Essanay for the unprecedented salary of $1,250 per week, with a bonus of $10,000 for merely signing with the company. The fourteen films he made for the company were distinctly marked and designated upon release as the Essanay-Chaplin Brand. The companys headquarters were in Chicago, Illinois, and the company had a second studio in Niles, California [today, "Niles" is an historic district of Fremont, CA, no longer a separate town]. The name Essanay was formed from the surname initials, S and A, of its two founders: George K. Spoor, who provided the financing and managed the company, and G.M. Anderson, better known as Broncho Billy Anderson, cinemas first cowboy star.
Essanay began in 1907 and a year later became a member of the powerful Motion Picture Patents Company. Chaplins one year with the company was its zenith. The studio foundered after Chaplin left to join the Mutual Film Corporation and finally ceased operations in 1918. Essanay would most likely be largely forgotten were it not for Chaplins early association.
While no single Chaplin film for Essanay displays the aggregate transformation to the more complex, subtle filmmaking that characterizes his later work, these comedies contain a collection of wonderful, revelatory moments, foreshadowing the pathos (The Tramp), comedic transposition (A Night Out), fantasy (A Night Out), gag humor (The Champion), and irony (Police), of the mature Chaplin films to come.
The most celebrated of the Essanay comedies, The Tramp is regarded as the first classic Chaplin film. It is noteworthy because of Chaplins use of pathos in situations designed to evoke pity or compassion toward the characters, particularly the Tramp. An innovation in comedic filmmaking, The Tramp dares to have a sad ending. Pathos also appears in The Bank, in which Charlies heart is broken when the object of his affection throws away the flowers he has given her and tears up the accompanying love note.
Chaplin infuses the Essanay comedies with a number of other innovations. The first is comic transposition. In A Night Out, his second film for Essanay, the Tramp, thoroughly inebriated, gently puts his cane to bed, pours himself a glass of water out of a candlestick telephone, and uses toothpaste to polish his boots. Chaplin also employs fantasy for the first time in the Essanays films. In A Night Out, as Ben Turpin pulls the Tramp along the sidewalk, he believes that he is floating among flowers on a river. Chaplins own style of gag comedy develops in the Essanays, exemplified in The Champion, in which a David-like Tramp receives the assistance of his loyal bulldog to best his Goliath-like boxing opponent. Irony, a hallmark of Chaplins mature work, appears for the first time in the Essanays. Irony is conspicuous in Police, in which an evangelist implores the Tramp (who has just been released from jail) to go straight but is later revealed to be a pickpocket himself. Finally, Chaplin first utilizes several other devices in the Essanay comedies that will become signature features of his later films: dance (Shanghaied), the equivocal ending (The Bank), and the classic Chaplin fade-out (The Tramp).
You can still buy Chaplin's Essanay Comedies. I've got them on my home video server.
Interesting Side by Side view:
San Francisco Earthquake 1906 - Before and After Journey Down Market Street
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TaxcXfSwdE
How cold the flea market merchant not know what a treasure they had??
I would not mind San Fran to get hit again....only 10 times worse