Manhattan Madness

I saw 'Manhattan Madness', starring Douglas Fairbanks Snr, in October 2005 at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto in Sacile, Italy; they screened an Eastman House print, and the screening was made even more enjoyable thanks to a live-music performance by a seven-piece ensemble led by John M Davis, who had painstakingly reconstructed most of the original music cue-sheets from this film's 1916 release. Although Davis was ultimately unable to find some of the original music cues, he did discover an obscure Irving Berlin song titled 'Manhattan Madness' -- unrelated to this same-named movie, yet similar in tone -- which he patchworked into the score.

Some of the more elaborate silent films had music scores specially composed for them. More typically, productions such as 'Manhattan Madness' were released to cinema exhibitors with a cue sheet of sound effects and musical cues compiled from classical music and/or popular songs already published. The original 1916 music cues for 'Manhattan Madness' featured an eclectic score of melodies from many sources, as well as sound effects for gunshots, horses' hooves and breaking furniture.

Several Fairbanks films (notably 'The Mollycoddle' and 'Wild and Woolly') cast Fairbanks as an eastern 'dude' who goes out to the wild West and tangles with cowpokes: after some initial culture lag, Doug proves his ability to root'n'toot with the best of them. 'Manhattan Madness' reverses the formula, starring Doug as a western cowpoke who comes to Manhattan and runs up against city slickers. This being a Fairbanks movie, there's no doubt that he eventually comes up trumps.

In the opening scenes, there's some amusing cross-cutting between Manhattan life and the equivalent (but very different) life out on the range. Director Allan Dwan cuts from a swank Manhattan nightclub to a chuck wagon; from a double-decker bus on Fifth Avenue to a rattling stagecoach; from a Manhattan playboy to an ornery hombre.

Doug, or more likely his uncredited stunt double (Richard Talmadge?), gets to do plenty of athletics here: as Steve O'Dare -- a native New Yorker who was raised out west, now returned to the east -- Doug jumps over chairs, leaps over fences, climbs in and out of windows and even dives off a roof. However, his surroundings are somewhat less swashbuckling than usual: the very un-Fairbanksian narrative sends him into a spooky old house, with lots of trap doors, secret passages and (of course) a fair damsel in distress. This movie is as close as Doug Fairbanks ever got to Scooby-Doo territory.

The cutting in this film is very rapid, with many shots in the climactic sequence each running barely ten feet of footage at 18 fps. No editor is credited; Allan Dwan probably cut the negative himself, or supervised it.

'Manhattan Madness' is not a typical Fairbanks film, but he manages to include most of the elements that kept his fans happy while varying his usual formula. Any movie by Allan Dwan deserves to be better known. My rating for this one: 8 out of 10.

Steve O'Dare, a real Westerner from Nevada, returns to New York to visit his old college pals - and of course, they proudly show him around their 'great' big city, the clubs, the avenues, the parks; but he considers all that 'greatness' effeminate and superficial, and for every example they give for the wonders of the city, he tells them a much better story about life back home in Nevada... And so we've got the rare pleasure to get both a glimpse of Old New York in pre-WWI times AND of the 'real' Old Wild West! But the best part of it all is the story: for Steve, who initially insisted that EVERYTHING'S better in the West, suddenly changes his mind when he sets eyes on a beautiful young city girl - which brings along QUITE some thrills for him even in the 'boring' East...

A PERFECT role for Dashing Doug, who plays the fearless romantic hero obsessed with his Western lifestyle (and in fact, he WAS a Westerner: he was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1883!), and yet also able to cope with East Coast crooks - FULLY packed with action and fun, this is certainly one of his BEST comedies of his early screen days before he went into 'swashbuckling'; and a GREAT opportunity for today's audience to discover what the US - both East and West - were like 100 years ago!

The cleverly scripted "Manhattan Madness" (1916) doubtless went down a whole lot better with audiences at the time of its release. We more sophisticated movie watchers will quickly notice that Doug is NOT doing his own stunts. Mind you, he had a real good excuse. He was in hospital after an accident on the set in which he collided with an extra who discharged a pistol in his face. A blank, of course, but it had enough powder in it to burn Doug's skin! It put him in hospital for three weeks. The movie was also doubtless planned to clock in at twice the length of its present 32 minutes. Nonetheless, it's certainly entertaining and even witty (at least at the beginning), although few present-day fans will be taken in by the obvious artifice of its main plot. However, any film with Jewel Carmen is a good movie, and here she's at her glorious best!

This film actually belongs to Jewel Carmen, her character not given a name, but she certainly has the measure of the show-off "Steve" (Douglas Fairbanks). He plays a cowboy who returns to the Big Apple from his Nevada home and, unimpressed with their big, but sterile, city regales everyone with his tales of hide and horses. They decide to enact their revenge with a mock kidnap plot, but soon they begin to regret it! There's a fun chemistry between Fairbanks and Carmen, but the story is a little lacklustre and the comedy a bit too much on the slapstick side for my liking. The polished production is great, though - the lighting and editing remarkable for the time, and there is some nice location photography from both locations, but 50 minutes is too long for the rather over-stretched story. One for fans to enjoy, I think - otherwise a bit bland.