Starring: Nancy Nash, Earle Foxe, Grant Withers, Lydia Yeamans Titus, Emile Chautard, Raymond Hitchcock, Ted McNamara, Sammy Cohen, Jane Winton, Lillian Worth, Judy King
Writer: Randall Faye (based on the story "The Snake's Wife" by Wallace Smith
Cinematography: Charles G Clarke
Music: SILENT (contemporary score by Donald Sosin)
B&W, 1h. 1.33:1 presentation
Released on: January 30, 1927 by Fox Film Corporation
My experience: YouTube
I had no idea what to expect with Upstream. I knew nothing about it, other than the fact that John Ford directed it. I wasn't familiar with any of the cast except Grant Withers when I checked IMDb, and had originally assumed it had something to do with boats, or rivers, or riverboats or some such thing. Then I saw the poster which looked like something out of a German Expressionist horror film, and I got really confused. Imagine my surprise when upon watching Upstream I encountered a comedy about theatrical actors.
Most of the action takes place in a New York City boarding house that caters to actors, dancers and other professional types of that ilk, run by Miss Hattie Breckenridge Peyton (Lydia Yeamans Titus). Lodging in the house are knife thrower Juan Rodriguez (Grant Withers) and his target/partner, Gertie Ryan (Nancy Nash); Eric Brashingham (Earle Foxe), the dissipated black sheep of a famous theatrical family; Shakespearean performer Campbell Mandare (Emile Chautard); a song and dance team called Callahan and Callahan (Ted McNamara & Sammy Cohen); a sister team (Lillian Worth & Judy King), and finally, a narcissistic actor known to us only as the Star Boarder (Raymond Hitchcock) and his moll, the Soubrette (Jane Winton).
Brashingham, Rodriguez and Gertie are in somewhat of a love triangle, but when theatrical producer Gus Hoffman (Harry A Bailey) approaches Brashingham with an offer to play Hamlet on the stage in London, to capitalize on his name, Campbell Mandare decides to take the younger actor under his wing and tutor him in Shakespearean performance. Will Brashingham make a success overseas, and if so, how will it affect his relationship with the others?
I have to admit, I found this film quite humorous in its takedown of theatrical performers and conventions. Coming from that world myself, I've known many of these personality types so a lot of it rang true for me. Perhaps it was this, or perhaps because I wasn't expecting a comedy, but I found this film to be quite amusing. Some attempts at humor fell flat, but much of it still landed for me.
Right off the bat the film plays with the tropes of actors changing their names. In an era when actors were Anglicizing or even changing their original names to seem less exotic (Emanuel Goldenberg became Edward G Robinson, Lucille LeSeuer became Joan Crawford, Issur Danielovich became Kirk Douglas and Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaelo Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla became Rudolph Valentino), here we have Grant Withers' knife-throwing Juan Rodriguez of Castile, who is actually John Rogers from Iowa. The Brashingham character is an obvious stand-in for John Barrymore, and even does the side-profile thing that Barrymore was famous for.
There are some very humorous title cards introducing the characters poking fun at the "type" of personalities they represent. And for a silent film, there are some pretty good verbal jokes in the cards, such as "The fact that you're a terrible actor doesn't make any difference; all I need is your name" and "It sure makes me proud that an American can get by in a foreign language like English." And there's a running gag where, whenever Miss Peyton tries to get her rent from the boarders, they all unanimously act worried and ask, "Didn't you get the money I sent you from (insert city here)?" Quite amusing.
There are also some pretty funny visual gags, including one in which Callahan and Callahan practice their routine in their room, which happens to be right overtop of the boarding house's dining room, and another one in which the two pose as a before and after for a cosmetic surgery advertisement. One of the main sources of "hilarity" is that Callahan and Callahan are obviously one Irish and one Jewish person -- 1920s racial humor at its most obvious. Ely Reynolds (from The Shamrock Handicap) appears in another Ford comedy, and this time his presence is hardly needed and sticks out like a sore thumb. All the racial stereotypes of black people at the time are piled into his character and it really brings down the film, from today's perspective.
If it weren't for his name on the IMDb credits, you would not be able to recognize this as a John Ford film in the way we understand them. There are no photographic tricks that stand out (perhaps because his usual cinematographer, George Schneiderman, did not work on this film, being replaced on this project by Charles G Clarke). The communality of the boarders is the closest to a "Fordian touch" that I could see. In fact there's a backwards dolly shot in a wedding scene that is very unlike Ford, who never liked moving his camera unless he didn't have to.
I'm sure this was just a programmer that was forced upon him by the studio that he did perfunctorily and with little fanfare. That being said, while it had its cringey moment, I still found Upstream fairly entertaining. The contemporary score by Donald Sosin really complements the comedy in the film. Definitely worth it for Ford completists, but it's an outlier in his filmography for sure.
Six terrible thespians out of ten.
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