April 27, 2016 • 37 mins
You may not know that Salt Lake City has been home to some key moments in film history. Guest host Bryan Young joins Holly to talk about everything from Charlie Chaplin to recent movies.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So if
you follow us on social media, you know that I
was recently at Salt Lake Comic Con fan X and
(00:22):
since tracy schedule was a bit too hectic leading up
to her wedding, our friend Brian Young, who was our
guest on our live show from New York Super Week
last year, was kind enough to sit in as my
guest host. And this this is going to be the
first of two live shows that Brian and I did,
and this one focuses on film history in Salt Lake City.
I was so glad that he was able to join
(00:42):
you because I just did not have room in the
schedule or like, I think it's six hours flights each
way from Boston to Salt Lake and and then the
time they're like, I really wanted to be able to
make it, I just couldn't make the schedule work. So, uh, first,
Ally and Bryan are going to talk about, um, We're
(01:03):
going to talk about Charlie Chaplin. Heads up, there's gonna
be a little bit of talk about prostitution towards the
end of that first segment, like there's no details involved,
but a brief mention of a rumor regarding Charlie Chaplin
in his time in Utah. And as we've mentioned before,
our live shows often are a little more casual than
our work in the studio. Yeah, so sometimes you know
(01:25):
we make we make slightly more adult jokes, but we
tried to keep it clean. I don't think there's anything
that is horrifying for a kid to hear. But do you
you me want to review if you listen with younger
history bucks, So let's hop into my chat with Brian
about Salt Lake and it's surprisingly important place in the
history of cinema. Hi everybody, Oh my gosh, it's so
(01:51):
good to see you guys. Uh so, this is Stuffy,
this history class, our first Salt Lake live show indeed,
and this is this is my first time in salt Lake.
Your city is spectacular, Like it's gorgeous. There's lots of
great walking, you have amazing people. Someone um oh Knitter
(02:11):
who lives here and couldn't make the show, drop this
off at my hotel. It's the tiniest Queen Victoria of
all time. It's so spectacular. It even has a tiny
red petty coach and her bloomers. It's just the absolute best. So, um,
I have enjoyed myself already so much. How many of
you do we get to see again tomorrow? A lot?
(02:34):
A lot? Uh, you probably know Brian Young, he's local.
Nobody knows me, well they do. Now tell us who
you are, pumpkin. Um. So my name is Brian Young,
and I if you're at the convention, you've probably seen
me on Star Wars panels because I write first star
Wars dot Com and Star Wars Insider, and I do
(02:57):
a podcast called Full of Sith that we've had Hollyann
on three or four times now, right, yeah, well including
yesterday four times. This real hard. I can always keep up.
And uh, I'm also a giant history nerd, and I
wrote a book called The Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. Um.
(03:19):
And so because of that book, Holly and Tracy liked it,
and they asked me to come on the show to
do their live show in New York, UM, which was
a lot of fun. And then they were like, well,
we're going to do a show in Salt Lake and
Tracy can't make it. Yeah, Tracy is now in the
home stretch to getting married. She's just a couple more
weeks and we did a show in Chicago last week,
(03:41):
so she's like, I can't do back to back. So
thankfully we have Brian as our pinch hitter. I'm so
lucky that we have you in the wings. I that's
flattering to me. I'm just like I said, I'm I'm
very fortunate. So hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Brian yup. Uh. And what you
(04:03):
guys may or may not know, is that your city
is really tightly linked to some pretty key moments in
early cinema. I didn't even realize it until Brian mentioned
it and we started looking at it like there are
some very important things that came directly out of Salt Lake.
And it's one of those things. If you talk about
Hollywood towns are like movie towns. You think of New York,
and you think of l A and you maybe think
(04:24):
of Vancouver, and lately Atlanta has been getting some action,
although based on some politics going on, Disney may not
be there filming anymore for Marvel. Uh. But Salt Lake
doesn't usually come up, but historically it's got some really
pivotal moments and those are what we're going to talk
about today. Indeed, indeed, so we're gonna kick off h
with the fabulous and delicious one of my favorites, Charlie Chaplin.
(04:48):
He's one of my favorites too. And uh, Charlie Chaplin was,
there's no doubt about it, the biggest movie star in
the world when he made his way to Salt Lake City.
But um back when he made his career, it was
as a one reel star, right, So movies were ten
or twelve minutes long and they were just full of
(05:08):
gags and that was that. And he set out to
make his first feature film. Um so, so he would
star as the Tramp and they were the most beloved
films anywhere. And I think to put that in context,
like imagine Mickey Mouse now like times a hundred, and
that's sort of Charlie Chaplin back in the nineteen teams
and twenties. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of
(05:30):
a current actual human actor, not that I don't love
my Mickey, but who is even comparable, And it's actually
pretty hard to come up with somebody, because remember there
weren't films coming out, you know, a dozen a week.
It was like, this was your entertainment, and it was
a pretty shy load in terms of what there really
was to go see at the cinema, and he was
(05:53):
one of the few people that was just cranking them
out and entertaining people constantly. So he was ubiquitous and
he is synonymous with entertainment. And it was a global
phenomenon too, I mean, because the films were silent, you
didn't need language too to communicate, so they could just
send these prints off all over the world. And he
became the biggest star in the world. So um. But
(06:15):
in nineteen eighteen, he'd suffered a series of personal tragedies.
He'd been pushed into a marriage with a seventeen year
old bride, uh, they lost a child, and he'd hit
what he considered a creative slump, and he opted to
return to filmmaking with his first feature length film. And
by feature length, this was about This was a sixty
(06:37):
or seventy minute film, which is really short by our
standards today, but back then this was as long as
films went. Yeah, considering that twelve minutes was a standard
long ish an hour is suddenly an hour seven, an
hour to seventy minutes is suddenly a huge and ambitious undertaking.
So the film he decided he was going to work
(06:57):
on was called The Kid, and the Kid is It's
one of my farit movies. It's just it's touching, it's fantastic,
it's hilarious, and it was a very long, slow shoot
because Chaplin was a perfectionist. Um. One thing I found
interesting in researching this episode is that um, for every
fifty three minutes of film that Charlie Chaplin rolled, only
(07:19):
one minute made it into the final picture. Yes, so
if you do the math on that thousands of minutes,
it's a lot for somebody to take on. Like I said, ambitious.
He was not not shy about jumping into the deep end.
So this this young wife of his, her name was
Mildred Harris Um. By the time production was winding down, Uh,
(07:42):
she wanted a divorce. And as people who want divorces, uh,
they also want money and things in that separation. And
so instead of uh staying to have the lawyers take
the film from them because it could be declared a
marital asset, he got his editor, his cinematographer packed five
(08:04):
hundred rolls of this film into coffee canes and drove
straight to Salt Lake City. Uh. And in this this
haven of Salt Lake at the Hotel Utah which is
now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, something a lot of
you probably drive or walk by all the time. Uh.
Chaplain who was in disguise, He was completely on the
d L trying to hide out, was editing this film.
(08:27):
And we cannot stress enough, and I'll have Brian speak
to it a little bit more in a second. How
incredibly risky and dangerous this was. You may immediately think, oh,
because he's hiding from a legal divorce settlement. No, No,
this was physically very risky. Uh. The nitrate film stock
that they were using was super duper flammable and it
(08:48):
was not allowed in public buildings. Literally, like a kiny
spark would have sent that hotel up in flames. Yeah.
Film today, when I mean we have digital film now,
but even five ten years ago and in still some
places when you see seventy millimeter film that's all like
a plastic or a nylon film that they use, it's
it's a safety film. But back then it was it
(09:10):
was ready to go off at a moment's notice. And
if you listen to the show, you know all about
theater fires. We've had a number of those featured as
topics and they go poorly. Uh. And and this is
an age where everyone smoked too. So he's at the
hotel Utah uh with five hundred roles of this film
(09:33):
ready to go up in a moment's notice. It's quite
amazing we still have that building today. Well, and it's
it's one of those things that's super risky from his
point of view. Of course, it puts himself in an
incredibly dangerous position. It's also kind of a jerk move
because he put every single person in that hotel in
danger as well. So while I'm a big Chaplin fan
and i love him and his work and I'm glad
(09:54):
the film got made, that was that very nice, it
was very unsafe h uh. And he actually gave an
interview in the August nine edition of the Deserret News
and he showed up dressed in green silk pajamas, because
what's more zazzi and fabulous than that? Uh? And he
told reporters that, uh, lawyers could be more mercenary than
(10:15):
one's wife, and that Los Angeles was such a hotbed
of the profession and newspaperman that he came to Salt
Lake to concentrate on his work. So Salt Lake offered
him a haven both from his legal woes and just
creatively where he didn't have to deal with all of
the pressures of the industry. UM. So the interesting thing
about is he he worked. He went to work, and
(10:38):
he got together a version of the film and the
first audience in the world that saw the first sneak
preview of the Kid, which is an incredibly important motion picture,
um for a lot of reasons. Even the kid himself.
I don't know if you guys know this is Jackie Coogan,
who is uncle Fester on Adam's family, is like a
(10:59):
six year old kid. It um. The first screening was
in Salt Lake City, So the first time anyone ever
saw this hugely important moment in cinema history was was
right down the street here at a theater on Main Street.
And eventually, of course, he did leave Salt Lake. He
did not make this his permanent residence, and he headed
back to He headed to New York. At that point
he got his divorce settled finally, and then The Kid
(11:21):
was released in nineteen twenty one, so that was three
years that he was really working on it. And now,
of course, as Brand said, it's one of the most
important films ever made. It's like, if you take a
cinema class, you're watching The Kid the end, uh. And
it's a wonderful film. And it was cut and screened
right here in Salt Lake. Um, for those who are interested.
I mean, they did sort of memorialize this, uh exodus
(11:43):
of his movie and of cutting this movie in Richard
Attenborough's Chaplain starring Robert Downey Jr. Which it doesn't look
anything like Salt Lake City, but they got the facts
of that part of the divorce and things straight in
the film. And it's a fantastic film. You should check
out if you if you haven't. So to wrap up
with the Chaplain segment, you want to talk about prostitute
(12:04):
for a second, Brian, I do. So it's been reported
to me, and I couldn't find any firsthand sources, um,
but I could. I couldn't find any firsthand evidence of it.
But people had told me, as they had been researching
this for their own film history, that that Charlie Chaplin
was convinced that the prostitutes in Salt Lake City were
the best in the country. Um, so we have that
(12:26):
going for right, that's a claim. Same Well, this idea
that Japlin was so brazen as to take all this
flammable film into a hotel with them, that's kind of
scary to think about. That was a little dangerous. Yeah,
it's a very dangerous move. But it's really cool to
know that the final cut of the Kid was really
born and screened in Salt Lake City for the first time,
(12:48):
and that certainly puts the city on the map in
terms of film history. Or get to the next track
of film history associated with Felt Lake. We're going to
pause for a word for a sponsor. Next up, we
are going to hop into the Marx Brothers and how
they owed some of their really their greatest success to
(13:10):
the time that they spent in Salt Lake. We will
also talk about Edgar Rice Burroughs and his time in
Utah and how it shaped his writing. You may be
surprised to hear that his work in Salt Lake really
had nothing to do with writing though. And now moving
on to the next thing. Another prolific and important uh,
(13:35):
film creator, although this is multiple creators. We're gonna talk
a little bit about the Marx Brothers. Yeah, the Marx Brothers.
Everybody knows the Marx Brothers. And Duck Soup is one
of those movies that you hear it's on the top
of all of the best comedy lists and it's one
of the funniest movies of all time. But when it
came out, it was a flop. People didn't like it,
(13:58):
and they were they in a contract with Paramount Pictures
for uh duck Soup, and they were not pleased with
how that went out. So in n three, uh, they
were released from their contract and they didn't know what
they were going to do next. Uh. Yeah. I always
have to laugh because if you ask any film student
like what their favorites are, duck Soup always pops up,
(14:20):
like it's kind of like the hipster cool thing that
I love duck Soup. It's fantastic change my life. But
at the time people are like, well, duck Soup not
so much. But thankfully, even though they were dropped, they
ended up getting picked up by MGM, and producer Irving
Thalberg was working with them, and he insisted that the
problem with the material was that it didn't have a story.
It was just gags after gags after gags with no
(14:42):
reel through line. And so to help them refine the
storyline and the jokes in their next film, which was
A Night at the Opera, which is also fantastic, uh
Falberg decided that they needed to go on a tour
and actually workshop their material with live audiences in cities
to actually write good, strong jokes. And their first stop
(15:05):
was right here in Salt Lake. So the Marx Brothers
they they arrived in Salt Lake, some by plane because
they were enthusiasts that way, and others by rail. Um
they came to the Orpheum Theater. The Orpheum Theater is
now sort of an abandoned husk of a building that
was the the Utah Theater on Main Street, UM and
(15:26):
this was this old movie palace that could fit twelve
hundred people at a time UM and this served as
their home for a full week in the in April
of ninety five, and they performed at least four shows
a day to sold out crowds um the tickets at
this time, so they were charging tickets to do this
(15:47):
refining act as well so it wasn't just like, hey,
go out and fix the script. It's like, hey, go
make people pay you to fix the script. Um tickets
were forty cents for matinee, fifty five cents for evening shows,
and kids got in for a time. Well, somebody's got
to pay for their hotel and their travel, and yeah,
it just works out. It wasn't just the Marx Brothers either.
(16:09):
I think one of the most fascinating parts about it
is they brought a cast of forty Yeah. It was like,
I mean, you were getting your money's worth. It wasn't
like when you go to open mic night and you
watch people really clunk it up for a while trying
to figure out where their voices and where their jokes are.
I mean, they came with a production, so you were
just kind of paying for to do the work for them.
They were prepared. But then they could find tune based
(16:30):
on audience reaction, and they really really loved this it
turned out, and on April thirteenth nine, Groucho Marks did
an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune and he said, quote,
we are kicking ourselves. We didn't think of this before.
The successful comedy depends almost entirely upon audience reaction. And
if anyone tells you, he can sit in Hollywood and
judge in advance how much Salt Lake or any other
(16:52):
city is going to laugh at any given gag. Don't hesitate,
put in a hurry call for the psychopathic ward. We
are expecting our greatest help from Salt Lake, for it
is our first stop, and we will get a definite
idea of the script's value. So he really spoke very
highly and very openly about how instrumental their time in
Salt Lake was for making that script. Would it ended
(17:15):
up being. He didn't mention anything about the prostitutes here though,
well you know, we we don't know, no, no, we don't.
He may have also loved the prostitutes, but he didn't
say it in any interviews that we know. So after
they after they were done in Salt Lake City, they
they packed up and they took it to three other cities.
I think Seattle was the next stop. I forgot to
(17:35):
write down the other cities, so that's my bad. Um.
And then and then they ended up filming the movie.
The movie came out like later at the end of
that year. Um, that's how quickly they worked in Hollywood.
Then it was like here, you're in April. For the
next month, you're work shopping this uh screenplay, and then
come right back we're shooting it, and then it's out
the door before the end of the year. And uh,
(17:57):
A Night at the Opera became a smash hit of
them and it's regarded, as you know, also one of
their best movies of all time, and that brought them
back into into the public's paying graces. And the Utah
Theater formerly the Orpheum where they did these performances, is
actually a current priority for Salt Lake Cities Redevelopment Agency.
(18:19):
So hopefully this amazing and historically important theater, uh, we'll
kind of get another take it like the shine that
it went had and uh kind of re emergence of
its former glory. Um. There's there's some hopefully in the
show notes you'll be able to to put in we
found like the actual like newspaper articles from the day
(18:40):
and and they've got these giant ads for the show
and it's it's just like any other movie poster from
the Marx Brothers things. But uh, my favorite part of
it is like even the headlines or gags like the
headline and the top right of this is uh grout
show marks demands room far from Harpo, like they're coming
to town and Joe king around in in just the
(19:02):
most funny ways, even with just the press, Like everything
was a joke with these guys. That's why I love them. Uh.
And next, the next sort of pivotal person we're going
to talk about in film history, someone I super love
Edgar Rice Burrows. So. Edgar Rice Burrows born in seventy
five in Chicago. He was and is still one of
(19:22):
the most popular and prolific writers in the United States,
but in the nineteen hundreds he was massive. He was
hugely popular. He created both Tarzan uh and the Civil
War veteran turned hero story uh John Carter from Mars
and all those uh and For many years before he
became well known as a novelist, though, he spent his
(19:44):
time traveling around the country and doing some kind of
wacky jobs, some of which he did right here. Um. So.
In nineteen o three he left Chicago to move west,
first to Idaho than Oregon, to join his brothers in
the business of dredge and gold, and that didn't pan
out very well. Um. That was completely not intentional. You're
hurting me, Brian. I told you you'd regret that. I
(20:06):
want to keep adoring you, but you're making it. So
he moved here with his wife because his brother secured
him work as a railroad policeman. Um. And so he
worked in the Gateway area working to roust hoboes and
drunks and keep them off the freight cars, which was
a big problem back in those days. UM. Maybe it
(20:28):
still is in the Gateway area. I'm from Atlanta. Your
your rail cars seem beautiful and luxurious to me. I'm like,
the seats have covers. That must mean they don't have
a lot of vomters or peers like this is. I
was pretty excited. I'm not gonna lie. I felt like
the lap of luxury. Uh. If you've ever flown over
your fair city in the area around it. It is
(20:50):
probably no surprise that the landscapes of Utah One served
as the shooting locations for John Carter, the movie, which
I think is much maligned. Uh. And it's very likely
that these same landscapes were really a huge inspiration to
Edgar Rice Burrows, because if you look at them from above,
particularly like it looks like a foreign planet. It looks
(21:11):
completely alien and beautiful in a way that's sometimes hard
to even process. Like there's so much contrast as you
look down, especially like from the snow in the very
dark mountains, that it does sort of look like a
film set. So no surprise. Well and it's um, I mean,
we were, we were prepping for this in your hotel room.
And like looking at the view right and the salt
flats in a time where there weren't a whole lot
(21:34):
of buildings in the way of that view. Um, I mean,
there's a reason the salt flats are used for just
about everything. And he was on the west side of town,
and his view was largely you know, factories, trains and that,
um and and so living in Salt Lake City, though
he was not a fan of um so he he,
(21:56):
he explains in his own words, I think so, he says.
We were certainly poverty stricken there, but pride kept us
from asking for help. Neither of us knew much about
anything that was practical, but we had to do everything ourselves,
including the family wash. Not wishing to see Mrs Burrows
do work of that sort, I volunteered to do it. Myself.
(22:17):
During those months, I have sold my own shoes and
did numerous odd jobs. Then a brilliant idea overtook us.
We had our household furniture with us, and we held
an auction, which was a howling success. People paid real
money for the junk, and we went back to Chicago
first class. I sort of love this because I love that,
at a time when we always think about, of course
(22:37):
women did all of the housework, that he had this
sort of noble thing where he held his wife in
such high esteem that he could not bear to watch
her do menial labor. Like, there's something very endearing about that.
Don't punch your husband's I bet he's a delight. I mean,
you guys look adorable sitting here, smiling and holding hands.
(22:57):
I'm on board. Uh yeah, there is something very very
charming and unusual about that. I don't think you would
get many quotes of that nature from men living in
the nineteen teens that no, no, my, oh, my poor wife,
she shouldn't do that. It just doesn't become her. I
will do all the work. So a lot of the
way this this kind of comes into film history. Aside
from the fact that, um, he probably got a lot
(23:19):
of inspiration from John Carter here, uh, and then wrote
about it and they filmed the movie in the area.
Um is the fact that these were primary, the primary
inspiration or one of the primary inspirations for so many
movies through the years. Um. The John Carter books came
out over a hundred years ago. Are they started over
(23:40):
a hundred years ago, and they sort of influenced everything
that serialized science fiction could be over the years. So
when John Carter came out and people said, no, this
is derivative, we've seen all this before, it's because they,
like everyone else, stole it from John Carter in the
first place. And it was one of the first places
George Lucas went to um when he couldn't get the
(24:02):
rights to Flash Gordon, which was itself a knockoff of
John Carter. When he couldn't get the rights to Flash Cordon,
George Lucas went and read all the John Carter books,
the Princess of Mars books, and that was one of
the building blocks he used for Star Wars. Yeah, part
of that sort of wonderful serialized nature comes not from
the not just from the fact that it's a series
of books that actually started being printed in magazines, which
(24:25):
was pretty common you know at the time for a
long time. I mean, even you know, up into Treaman
Capote's early career, a lot of writers were releasing their
books as stories that were appearing in regular magazine. So
it kind of already has that serialized nature, which is
something so many filmmakers kind of fell in love with
and borrowed, and that you know, played into television when
(24:45):
they were doing serialized uh Saturday matinees, etcetera. So I mean,
I really can't. I don't think we can overstate sort
of how important it was. No, No, I think I
think I think it's I think people all can understate it,
but we're not doing that here, right. Uh yeah, I
mean I do, Like you said, people complain so much
(25:07):
about John Carter having no original ideas and it kind
of suffers from Diehard syndrome, or if you go and
watch die Hard now and it feels very like I've
seen all of this, but die Hard kind of set
that tone for all action movies going forward. So it's
kind of one of those things where history bites itself
in the butt because the thing that came first just
by virtue of not having gotten as much sort of airtime,
(25:27):
and marketing ends up getting a little bit damaged by
it because when people finally find it, they don't see
it for the gym that it is all the time. UM.
I think it's really interesting that so many of these
like classic movies or stories had some touchstone here to
Salt Lake City, which which I don't think people associate
stories like that with this place. Coming up, we're going
(25:53):
to get into more modern filmmaking that's taken place in
Salt Lake. But first we're gonna pause for another word
from one of our fab fond ear alright, so we're
gonna jump right back in uh and coming up, you
get to hear me use the word crevass I think
(26:14):
in the wrong way when we're talking about the film
A hundred and twenty seven hours. So sorry for any
of you uh people that will not enjoy my geography wrongitude.
There's That's another thing about live shows is we're speaking
live with no editing. People hear essay things that are
flogged in one way or another. In more recent years,
(26:42):
you guys have hosted a number of pretty interesting things,
some of which have gotten Oscar nods, including a hundred
twenty seven hours, which I will confess I haven't seen
because I don't think I can sit through it. Um.
But the old Granite Furniture building in sugar House was
the sound stage for a lot of the work that
Danny Boyle was doing here with James Franco. And so
(27:04):
if you don't know, just in case you don't understand
why I don't think I can get through it, this
is the story where James Franco plays a hiker named
Aaron Ralston who gets caught in a cravath Am I right,
and he ends up having to cut off his own
arm to escape. I mean sugar House brought that to
the world of cinema. Uh So that's why I can't
(27:27):
sit through that one. One day I will just haven't
been ready yet. Do you want to talk about the
sand Lot? Yeah? Sure, another one that I think that
we kind of hold here locally. Is really important to
the film industries of the sand Lot. Um, it's probably
one of the most favorite and time tested films to
have shot in Salt Lake City. UM. It was shot
and Salt Lake City at that time was probably just
(27:49):
the easiest place in America to convert into that Americana
Old School Field of the nineteen sixties. Um. They shot
from one end of the city to the other. UM.
The the sand lot itself is located in the Rose
Park neighborhood. They shut a lot of things at Liberty Park,
which has a really interesting, fascinating history that involves the
assassination of President Garfield. Um. You know there's there's all
(28:13):
kinds of weird history around here. We know how you
love your Garfield assassination. I do, I do. It's such
a funny story. It's it's a laugh riot, those assassinations. Uh.
Another film that shot here that I will I will
confess I'm not a fan. I love. I love a
(28:34):
lot dumb and dumber. It's just not my jam. Uh.
No shade to anybody that loves it. Like the heart
wants what it wants. It just it is in my
flavor of comedy. But it was directed by the Fairly Brothers,
and it is a fairly iconic film. I mean, everybody
knows what this film is, and it does have some
spectacularly talented people in it, just doing things that don't
work for me. Uh. And they shot a lot in
(28:54):
the Salt Lake City Airport, although that was before it
went through a pretty big renovation, so they're doing that now. Yeah.
If you if you look at it and then you
look at the airport, now you it won't really jibe.
You won't be like, oh, I know exactly where that is.
Harry and Lloyd's apartment building was filmed downtown, so you
would know this. I don't know. I only know the address,
but I don't know it. You know, offhand, it won't
(29:15):
click for me, but it's it about two South and
third East, so just a few blocks from here. Allegedly
i'd have a parade and walk over there. Uh. And
the scene where they went to the snow Owl benefit
was filmed in two different locations, across the street from
one another and about a block from here. So that's
the Devereaux Mansion which served as an exterior for shooting,
(29:37):
and the inside of the Union Pacific Depot is what
they used for the interiors for that benefit. Um. I
think one of the funniest contrasts is East and West
High School have both been used for drastically different movies.
So West High West High School was the site of
they shot a lot of SLC punk there. I really
(29:58):
love that movie and the East High was where they
shot the high school musical movies, which kind of plays
into that East Side West Side stereotype. Well, and I
think we've stumbled across the most high, hilarious Salt Lake
City double feature of all time. I can't imagine they
would draw the same audience, but it would be funny
to watch each audience the other film, like we're all
(30:22):
in this to get oh, whoa, this is this punk film?
Is it for me? Um? There's been a lot of
movies shot here. The Way of the Gun What which
was Christopher mcquarie starring Beneasielta Toron Ryan Philippie. They shot
around the streets here at night a lot because that
movie was gritty and at night. Um. Much of the
(30:42):
TV mini series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand was
shot here, and so there's still I tried to get
a list of some of the locations, but I realized
that you can probably look that up on your own.
If you're interested. There you go, Uh, you could start
you could start this as a business, your own tour
of filming locations. And always did not interested or one
of our enterprising listeners, because that's that's no small undertaking
(31:05):
so that's kind of how important Salt Lake really is
to the film and entertainment industry. So if anybody says
it's not, you tell them yes. So one more time,
I want to thank Brian for stepping in serving as
Holly's extremely excellent co host when I could not be there.
That was extremely appreciated. I'm also kind of sorry I
(31:28):
can be there in person just to hear it, but
now it's preserved forever. And I really also want to
thank the fabulous audience member who came up to me
after the show who worked on A hundred and twenty
seven hours as a reptile wrangler, and he told me
that the movie was totally safe to watch. And I
feel bad because I did not get his name, but
he showed me all kinds of fabulous snake photos and
(31:48):
pictures from the set and it was awesome and I
really really really loved it. So thank you, thank you,
And if you want to hear more from Brian, you
can find him all over the place. The book that
we featured in our live show last October as eight
Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. His newest book, The Aeronaut,
is an alternate history fiction spy thriller set in World
(32:09):
War One, and you can also find him at Brian
Young fiction dot com that is Brian with a Y,
or on Twitter at swank Motron. He's also been writing
for our parent company's project How Stuff Works Now for
a while, doing some ridiculous history pieces that we share
on our Facebook and our Twitter from time to time. Yeah,
he's been doing an excellent job on those. And I
(32:30):
also wanted to send a huge, huge thanks to Salt
Lake Comic Con Fanics for having me out to the show.
They made me feel incredibly welcomed. I really loved every
single staff member I spoke with. They were all incredibly
sweet and just really gracious and kind. And I absolutely
fell in love with Salt Lake City. I think it's
mentioned in the episode. I had never been there before
and it was just amazing. I loved it so much.
(32:51):
So thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.
I cannot tell you enough how much I enjoyed myself.
Do you also have some listener mail? I do. I
was out for a few days. I was I was working,
but I was teleworking for a couple of days in
a row, and when I came into my desk this morning.
There was a massive pile of parcels full of amazing things,
and one of them we will talk about it is
(33:13):
from our listener, Julie, and she included a letter with it,
and she said, dear Tracy and Holly, please accept these
customized picture frames as a thank you gift for the
many hours of enjoyment you have given me. I know
you're busy, so I'll just provide a few comments via
a bulleted list. She said. First, I can echo the
fan who said when she went to Europe she knew
all kinds of stuff because of stuff you missed in
history class. My daughter took me to London, Paris in
(33:36):
Bath last summer as a thank you for her expensive
college education, and I was well equipped because of your podcast.
I saw the Herschel Home and Bath and I knew
all about them. I saw dresses by Worth and Madame Vienna,
and chapter Elli's famous jacket with the butterfly buttons. In
the muse des out Decoatif. I saw strange, a strange
building with a windmill and said, holy yeah, that's the
Mulin Rouge, and I knew about it from the joseph
(33:58):
Ule episode. Etcetera, etcetera. She was outraged when Tracy said
she would likely get hate mail, and she decided to
have Lindy Hop at her wedding, and it made Julie
so angry that she had to turn off the podcast
and sit quietly for several minutes to simmer down. The
wedding has happened. Now we did not slash, are not
doing Lyndy Hop, but we are having some swing dancing.
(34:22):
Whoa mostly boiled down to Patrick not having time to
learn how to Lindy Hop from scratch. Yeah, take some efforts. Uh.
Julia goes on to say, I recently retired and I
moved to the uh key One Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.
I actually know that area a little bit. Some of
my family lives there. Uh, this area is interesting. It
might be worth a podcast. And she talks a little
(34:43):
bit about the history, So I'm gonna keep that quiet
in case we do one of those, and then she says,
I'm a cautionary tale of what happens when a person
spends most of their life with no creative outlet. A
few years ago, I invented a few friends to a
craft tea. We're In addition to cucumber sandwiches, I also
set out materials for deca podge, pen work, mosaic's, mosaics, etcetera.
For us to play with. Well, I got hooked after that.
(35:06):
All I wanted to do was wake make what my
kids call mock mosaics, which is a misnower because they
really are mosaics, but I use paper instead of glass
or ceramic tiles. I've made customized frames, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, etcetera.
For most of my family, but I am compelled to
make more. Hence these frames. Thank you so much, Julie,
because those frames are gorgeous. I literally got in, opened
(35:26):
the package, took a picture, and sent Tracy the photo
on her phone so she could see it right away.
It's so pretty, ums extremely pretty, and we'll post it
on social But also if you wanted to check out
more of Julie's design, she has an Etsy store at
Jay Carson Designs dot etsy dot com. They are absolutely beautiful. Um,
I mean I'm really blown away. Like I've seen lots
of decapodge and mosaic work over the years, but she
(35:49):
really does some just absolutely beautiful. It has like an
old world feel in some cases. There's one picture frames
she had on her shop that I saw that medieval
cats and I'm just in love with it. So she
does great work, and she was so sweet to send
us those frames. Mine has Queen Victoria in it. Tracy's
has a lovely picture of her and her beloved. It's
absolutely the coolest. So thank you. I'm always so honored
(36:10):
anytime someone takes time out of their life to make
us a thing, it's a huge honor to me. So Uh.
If you would like to email us, you can do
so at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're on Facebook dot com slash mist in history, on
Twitter at Miston History, at pinterest dot com, slash mist
in History at Miston History dot tuebler dot com, and
on Instagram at mist in History. If you want to
(36:32):
research a little bit related to what we talked about
in today's episode, you can go to our parents site,
how stuff Works. Type in the words filmmaking in the
search bar, and you will get an assortment of articles,
including one called how film festivals work and another about
how film restoration works. Uh. If you would like to
hang out with Tracy and me, you can do that
at Miston history dot com, which is our site, and
(36:53):
you can look at our backlog of every episode that's
ever happened long before Tracy and I were on the podcast,
as well as show No It's for any of the
episodes that Tracy and I have worked on, as well
as occasional blog posts. How we encourage you come and
visit us at Miston history dot com and how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(37:14):
other topics. Is it how staff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson. So if
you follow us on social media, you know that I
was recently at Salt Lake Comic Con fan X and
(00:22):
since tracy schedule was a bit too hectic leading up
to her wedding, our friend Brian Young, who was our
guest on our live show from New York Super Week
last year, was kind enough to sit in as my
guest host. And this this is going to be the
first of two live shows that Brian and I did,
and this one focuses on film history in Salt Lake City.
I was so glad that he was able to join
(00:42):
you because I just did not have room in the
schedule or like, I think it's six hours flights each
way from Boston to Salt Lake and and then the
time they're like, I really wanted to be able to
make it, I just couldn't make the schedule work. So, uh, first,
Ally and Bryan are going to talk about, um, We're
(01:03):
going to talk about Charlie Chaplin. Heads up, there's gonna
be a little bit of talk about prostitution towards the
end of that first segment, like there's no details involved,
but a brief mention of a rumor regarding Charlie Chaplin
in his time in Utah. And as we've mentioned before,
our live shows often are a little more casual than
our work in the studio. Yeah, so sometimes you know
(01:25):
we make we make slightly more adult jokes, but we
tried to keep it clean. I don't think there's anything
that is horrifying for a kid to hear. But do you
you me want to review if you listen with younger
history bucks, So let's hop into my chat with Brian
about Salt Lake and it's surprisingly important place in the
history of cinema. Hi everybody, Oh my gosh, it's so
(01:51):
good to see you guys. Uh so, this is Stuffy,
this history class, our first Salt Lake live show indeed,
and this is this is my first time in salt Lake.
Your city is spectacular, Like it's gorgeous. There's lots of
great walking, you have amazing people. Someone um oh Knitter
(02:11):
who lives here and couldn't make the show, drop this
off at my hotel. It's the tiniest Queen Victoria of
all time. It's so spectacular. It even has a tiny
red petty coach and her bloomers. It's just the absolute best. So, um,
I have enjoyed myself already so much. How many of
you do we get to see again tomorrow? A lot?
(02:34):
A lot? Uh, you probably know Brian Young, he's local.
Nobody knows me, well they do. Now tell us who
you are, pumpkin. Um. So my name is Brian Young,
and I if you're at the convention, you've probably seen
me on Star Wars panels because I write first star
Wars dot Com and Star Wars Insider, and I do
(02:57):
a podcast called Full of Sith that we've had Hollyann
on three or four times now, right, yeah, well including
yesterday four times. This real hard. I can always keep up.
And uh, I'm also a giant history nerd, and I
wrote a book called The Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. Um.
(03:19):
And so because of that book, Holly and Tracy liked it,
and they asked me to come on the show to
do their live show in New York, UM, which was
a lot of fun. And then they were like, well,
we're going to do a show in Salt Lake and
Tracy can't make it. Yeah, Tracy is now in the
home stretch to getting married. She's just a couple more
weeks and we did a show in Chicago last week,
(03:41):
so she's like, I can't do back to back. So
thankfully we have Brian as our pinch hitter. I'm so
lucky that we have you in the wings. I that's
flattering to me. I'm just like I said, I'm I'm
very fortunate. So hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Brian yup. Uh. And what you
(04:03):
guys may or may not know, is that your city
is really tightly linked to some pretty key moments in
early cinema. I didn't even realize it until Brian mentioned
it and we started looking at it like there are
some very important things that came directly out of Salt Lake.
And it's one of those things. If you talk about
Hollywood towns are like movie towns. You think of New York,
and you think of l A and you maybe think
(04:24):
of Vancouver, and lately Atlanta has been getting some action,
although based on some politics going on, Disney may not
be there filming anymore for Marvel. Uh. But Salt Lake
doesn't usually come up, but historically it's got some really
pivotal moments and those are what we're going to talk
about today. Indeed, indeed, so we're gonna kick off h
with the fabulous and delicious one of my favorites, Charlie Chaplin.
(04:48):
He's one of my favorites too. And uh, Charlie Chaplin was,
there's no doubt about it, the biggest movie star in
the world when he made his way to Salt Lake City.
But um back when he made his career, it was
as a one reel star, right, So movies were ten
or twelve minutes long and they were just full of
(05:08):
gags and that was that. And he set out to
make his first feature film. Um so, so he would
star as the Tramp and they were the most beloved
films anywhere. And I think to put that in context,
like imagine Mickey Mouse now like times a hundred, and
that's sort of Charlie Chaplin back in the nineteen teams
and twenties. Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to think of
(05:30):
a current actual human actor, not that I don't love
my Mickey, but who is even comparable, And it's actually
pretty hard to come up with somebody, because remember there
weren't films coming out, you know, a dozen a week.
It was like, this was your entertainment, and it was
a pretty shy load in terms of what there really
was to go see at the cinema, and he was
(05:53):
one of the few people that was just cranking them
out and entertaining people constantly. So he was ubiquitous and
he is synonymous with entertainment. And it was a global
phenomenon too, I mean, because the films were silent, you
didn't need language too to communicate, so they could just
send these prints off all over the world. And he
became the biggest star in the world. So um. But
(06:15):
in nineteen eighteen, he'd suffered a series of personal tragedies.
He'd been pushed into a marriage with a seventeen year
old bride, uh, they lost a child, and he'd hit
what he considered a creative slump, and he opted to
return to filmmaking with his first feature length film. And
by feature length, this was about This was a sixty
(06:37):
or seventy minute film, which is really short by our
standards today, but back then this was as long as
films went. Yeah, considering that twelve minutes was a standard
long ish an hour is suddenly an hour seven, an
hour to seventy minutes is suddenly a huge and ambitious undertaking.
So the film he decided he was going to work
(06:57):
on was called The Kid, and the Kid is It's
one of my farit movies. It's just it's touching, it's fantastic,
it's hilarious, and it was a very long, slow shoot
because Chaplin was a perfectionist. Um. One thing I found
interesting in researching this episode is that um, for every
fifty three minutes of film that Charlie Chaplin rolled, only
(07:19):
one minute made it into the final picture. Yes, so
if you do the math on that thousands of minutes,
it's a lot for somebody to take on. Like I said, ambitious.
He was not not shy about jumping into the deep end.
So this this young wife of his, her name was
Mildred Harris Um. By the time production was winding down, Uh,
(07:42):
she wanted a divorce. And as people who want divorces, uh,
they also want money and things in that separation. And
so instead of uh staying to have the lawyers take
the film from them because it could be declared a
marital asset, he got his editor, his cinematographer packed five
(08:04):
hundred rolls of this film into coffee canes and drove
straight to Salt Lake City. Uh. And in this this
haven of Salt Lake at the Hotel Utah which is
now the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, something a lot of
you probably drive or walk by all the time. Uh.
Chaplain who was in disguise, He was completely on the
d L trying to hide out, was editing this film.
(08:27):
And we cannot stress enough, and I'll have Brian speak
to it a little bit more in a second. How
incredibly risky and dangerous this was. You may immediately think, oh,
because he's hiding from a legal divorce settlement. No, No,
this was physically very risky. Uh. The nitrate film stock
that they were using was super duper flammable and it
(08:48):
was not allowed in public buildings. Literally, like a kiny
spark would have sent that hotel up in flames. Yeah.
Film today, when I mean we have digital film now,
but even five ten years ago and in still some
places when you see seventy millimeter film that's all like
a plastic or a nylon film that they use, it's
it's a safety film. But back then it was it
(09:10):
was ready to go off at a moment's notice. And
if you listen to the show, you know all about
theater fires. We've had a number of those featured as
topics and they go poorly. Uh. And and this is
an age where everyone smoked too. So he's at the
hotel Utah uh with five hundred roles of this film
(09:33):
ready to go up in a moment's notice. It's quite
amazing we still have that building today. Well, and it's
it's one of those things that's super risky from his
point of view. Of course, it puts himself in an
incredibly dangerous position. It's also kind of a jerk move
because he put every single person in that hotel in
danger as well. So while I'm a big Chaplin fan
and i love him and his work and I'm glad
(09:54):
the film got made, that was that very nice, it
was very unsafe h uh. And he actually gave an
interview in the August nine edition of the Deserret News
and he showed up dressed in green silk pajamas, because
what's more zazzi and fabulous than that? Uh? And he
told reporters that, uh, lawyers could be more mercenary than
(10:15):
one's wife, and that Los Angeles was such a hotbed
of the profession and newspaperman that he came to Salt
Lake to concentrate on his work. So Salt Lake offered
him a haven both from his legal woes and just
creatively where he didn't have to deal with all of
the pressures of the industry. UM. So the interesting thing
about is he he worked. He went to work, and
(10:38):
he got together a version of the film and the
first audience in the world that saw the first sneak
preview of the Kid, which is an incredibly important motion picture,
um for a lot of reasons. Even the kid himself.
I don't know if you guys know this is Jackie Coogan,
who is uncle Fester on Adam's family, is like a
(10:59):
six year old kid. It um. The first screening was
in Salt Lake City, So the first time anyone ever
saw this hugely important moment in cinema history was was
right down the street here at a theater on Main Street.
And eventually, of course, he did leave Salt Lake. He
did not make this his permanent residence, and he headed
back to He headed to New York. At that point
he got his divorce settled finally, and then The Kid
(11:21):
was released in nineteen twenty one, so that was three
years that he was really working on it. And now,
of course, as Brand said, it's one of the most
important films ever made. It's like, if you take a
cinema class, you're watching The Kid the end, uh. And
it's a wonderful film. And it was cut and screened
right here in Salt Lake. Um, for those who are interested.
I mean, they did sort of memorialize this, uh exodus
(11:43):
of his movie and of cutting this movie in Richard
Attenborough's Chaplain starring Robert Downey Jr. Which it doesn't look
anything like Salt Lake City, but they got the facts
of that part of the divorce and things straight in
the film. And it's a fantastic film. You should check
out if you if you haven't. So to wrap up
with the Chaplain segment, you want to talk about prostitute
(12:04):
for a second, Brian, I do. So it's been reported
to me, and I couldn't find any firsthand sources, um,
but I could. I couldn't find any firsthand evidence of it.
But people had told me, as they had been researching
this for their own film history, that that Charlie Chaplin
was convinced that the prostitutes in Salt Lake City were
the best in the country. Um, so we have that
(12:26):
going for right, that's a claim. Same Well, this idea
that Japlin was so brazen as to take all this
flammable film into a hotel with them, that's kind of
scary to think about. That was a little dangerous. Yeah,
it's a very dangerous move. But it's really cool to
know that the final cut of the Kid was really
born and screened in Salt Lake City for the first time,
(12:48):
and that certainly puts the city on the map in
terms of film history. Or get to the next track
of film history associated with Felt Lake. We're going to
pause for a word for a sponsor. Next up, we
are going to hop into the Marx Brothers and how
they owed some of their really their greatest success to
(13:10):
the time that they spent in Salt Lake. We will
also talk about Edgar Rice Burroughs and his time in
Utah and how it shaped his writing. You may be
surprised to hear that his work in Salt Lake really
had nothing to do with writing though. And now moving
on to the next thing. Another prolific and important uh,
(13:35):
film creator, although this is multiple creators. We're gonna talk
a little bit about the Marx Brothers. Yeah, the Marx Brothers.
Everybody knows the Marx Brothers. And Duck Soup is one
of those movies that you hear it's on the top
of all of the best comedy lists and it's one
of the funniest movies of all time. But when it
came out, it was a flop. People didn't like it,
(13:58):
and they were they in a contract with Paramount Pictures
for uh duck Soup, and they were not pleased with
how that went out. So in n three, uh, they
were released from their contract and they didn't know what
they were going to do next. Uh. Yeah. I always
have to laugh because if you ask any film student
like what their favorites are, duck Soup always pops up,
(14:20):
like it's kind of like the hipster cool thing that
I love duck Soup. It's fantastic change my life. But
at the time people are like, well, duck Soup not
so much. But thankfully, even though they were dropped, they
ended up getting picked up by MGM, and producer Irving
Thalberg was working with them, and he insisted that the
problem with the material was that it didn't have a story.
It was just gags after gags after gags with no
(14:42):
reel through line. And so to help them refine the
storyline and the jokes in their next film, which was
A Night at the Opera, which is also fantastic, uh
Falberg decided that they needed to go on a tour
and actually workshop their material with live audiences in cities
to actually write good, strong jokes. And their first stop
(15:05):
was right here in Salt Lake. So the Marx Brothers
they they arrived in Salt Lake, some by plane because
they were enthusiasts that way, and others by rail. Um
they came to the Orpheum Theater. The Orpheum Theater is
now sort of an abandoned husk of a building that
was the the Utah Theater on Main Street, UM and
(15:26):
this was this old movie palace that could fit twelve
hundred people at a time UM and this served as
their home for a full week in the in April
of ninety five, and they performed at least four shows
a day to sold out crowds um the tickets at
this time, so they were charging tickets to do this
(15:47):
refining act as well so it wasn't just like, hey,
go out and fix the script. It's like, hey, go
make people pay you to fix the script. Um tickets
were forty cents for matinee, fifty five cents for evening shows,
and kids got in for a time. Well, somebody's got
to pay for their hotel and their travel, and yeah,
it just works out. It wasn't just the Marx Brothers either.
(16:09):
I think one of the most fascinating parts about it
is they brought a cast of forty Yeah. It was like,
I mean, you were getting your money's worth. It wasn't
like when you go to open mic night and you
watch people really clunk it up for a while trying
to figure out where their voices and where their jokes are.
I mean, they came with a production, so you were
just kind of paying for to do the work for them.
They were prepared. But then they could find tune based
(16:30):
on audience reaction, and they really really loved this it
turned out, and on April thirteenth nine, Groucho Marks did
an interview with the Salt Lake Tribune and he said, quote,
we are kicking ourselves. We didn't think of this before.
The successful comedy depends almost entirely upon audience reaction. And
if anyone tells you, he can sit in Hollywood and
judge in advance how much Salt Lake or any other
(16:52):
city is going to laugh at any given gag. Don't hesitate,
put in a hurry call for the psychopathic ward. We
are expecting our greatest help from Salt Lake, for it
is our first stop, and we will get a definite
idea of the script's value. So he really spoke very
highly and very openly about how instrumental their time in
Salt Lake was for making that script. Would it ended
(17:15):
up being. He didn't mention anything about the prostitutes here though,
well you know, we we don't know, no, no, we don't.
He may have also loved the prostitutes, but he didn't
say it in any interviews that we know. So after
they after they were done in Salt Lake City, they
they packed up and they took it to three other cities.
I think Seattle was the next stop. I forgot to
(17:35):
write down the other cities, so that's my bad. Um.
And then and then they ended up filming the movie.
The movie came out like later at the end of
that year. Um, that's how quickly they worked in Hollywood.
Then it was like here, you're in April. For the
next month, you're work shopping this uh screenplay, and then
come right back we're shooting it, and then it's out
the door before the end of the year. And uh,
(17:57):
A Night at the Opera became a smash hit of
them and it's regarded, as you know, also one of
their best movies of all time, and that brought them
back into into the public's paying graces. And the Utah
Theater formerly the Orpheum where they did these performances, is
actually a current priority for Salt Lake Cities Redevelopment Agency.
(18:19):
So hopefully this amazing and historically important theater, uh, we'll
kind of get another take it like the shine that
it went had and uh kind of re emergence of
its former glory. Um. There's there's some hopefully in the
show notes you'll be able to to put in we
found like the actual like newspaper articles from the day
(18:40):
and and they've got these giant ads for the show
and it's it's just like any other movie poster from
the Marx Brothers things. But uh, my favorite part of
it is like even the headlines or gags like the
headline and the top right of this is uh grout
show marks demands room far from Harpo, like they're coming
to town and Joe king around in in just the
(19:02):
most funny ways, even with just the press, Like everything
was a joke with these guys. That's why I love them. Uh.
And next, the next sort of pivotal person we're going
to talk about in film history, someone I super love
Edgar Rice Burrows. So. Edgar Rice Burrows born in seventy
five in Chicago. He was and is still one of
(19:22):
the most popular and prolific writers in the United States,
but in the nineteen hundreds he was massive. He was
hugely popular. He created both Tarzan uh and the Civil
War veteran turned hero story uh John Carter from Mars
and all those uh and For many years before he
became well known as a novelist, though, he spent his
(19:44):
time traveling around the country and doing some kind of
wacky jobs, some of which he did right here. Um. So.
In nineteen o three he left Chicago to move west,
first to Idaho than Oregon, to join his brothers in
the business of dredge and gold, and that didn't pan
out very well. Um. That was completely not intentional. You're
hurting me, Brian. I told you you'd regret that. I
(20:06):
want to keep adoring you, but you're making it. So
he moved here with his wife because his brother secured
him work as a railroad policeman. Um. And so he
worked in the Gateway area working to roust hoboes and
drunks and keep them off the freight cars, which was
a big problem back in those days. UM. Maybe it
(20:28):
still is in the Gateway area. I'm from Atlanta. Your
your rail cars seem beautiful and luxurious to me. I'm like,
the seats have covers. That must mean they don't have
a lot of vomters or peers like this is. I
was pretty excited. I'm not gonna lie. I felt like
the lap of luxury. Uh. If you've ever flown over
your fair city in the area around it. It is
(20:50):
probably no surprise that the landscapes of Utah One served
as the shooting locations for John Carter, the movie, which
I think is much maligned. Uh. And it's very likely
that these same landscapes were really a huge inspiration to
Edgar Rice Burrows, because if you look at them from above,
particularly like it looks like a foreign planet. It looks
(21:11):
completely alien and beautiful in a way that's sometimes hard
to even process. Like there's so much contrast as you
look down, especially like from the snow in the very
dark mountains, that it does sort of look like a
film set. So no surprise. Well and it's um, I mean,
we were, we were prepping for this in your hotel room.
And like looking at the view right and the salt
flats in a time where there weren't a whole lot
(21:34):
of buildings in the way of that view. Um, I mean,
there's a reason the salt flats are used for just
about everything. And he was on the west side of town,
and his view was largely you know, factories, trains and that,
um and and so living in Salt Lake City, though
he was not a fan of um so he he,
(21:56):
he explains in his own words, I think so, he says.
We were certainly poverty stricken there, but pride kept us
from asking for help. Neither of us knew much about
anything that was practical, but we had to do everything ourselves,
including the family wash. Not wishing to see Mrs Burrows
do work of that sort, I volunteered to do it. Myself.
(22:17):
During those months, I have sold my own shoes and
did numerous odd jobs. Then a brilliant idea overtook us.
We had our household furniture with us, and we held
an auction, which was a howling success. People paid real
money for the junk, and we went back to Chicago
first class. I sort of love this because I love that,
at a time when we always think about, of course
(22:37):
women did all of the housework, that he had this
sort of noble thing where he held his wife in
such high esteem that he could not bear to watch
her do menial labor. Like, there's something very endearing about that.
Don't punch your husband's I bet he's a delight. I mean,
you guys look adorable sitting here, smiling and holding hands.
(22:57):
I'm on board. Uh yeah, there is something very very
charming and unusual about that. I don't think you would
get many quotes of that nature from men living in
the nineteen teens that no, no, my, oh, my poor wife,
she shouldn't do that. It just doesn't become her. I
will do all the work. So a lot of the
way this this kind of comes into film history. Aside
from the fact that, um, he probably got a lot
(23:19):
of inspiration from John Carter here, uh, and then wrote
about it and they filmed the movie in the area.
Um is the fact that these were primary, the primary
inspiration or one of the primary inspirations for so many
movies through the years. Um. The John Carter books came
out over a hundred years ago. Are they started over
(23:40):
a hundred years ago, and they sort of influenced everything
that serialized science fiction could be over the years. So
when John Carter came out and people said, no, this
is derivative, we've seen all this before, it's because they,
like everyone else, stole it from John Carter in the
first place. And it was one of the first places
George Lucas went to um when he couldn't get the
(24:02):
rights to Flash Gordon, which was itself a knockoff of
John Carter. When he couldn't get the rights to Flash Cordon,
George Lucas went and read all the John Carter books,
the Princess of Mars books, and that was one of
the building blocks he used for Star Wars. Yeah, part
of that sort of wonderful serialized nature comes not from
the not just from the fact that it's a series
of books that actually started being printed in magazines, which
(24:25):
was pretty common you know at the time for a
long time. I mean, even you know, up into Treaman
Capote's early career, a lot of writers were releasing their
books as stories that were appearing in regular magazine. So
it kind of already has that serialized nature, which is
something so many filmmakers kind of fell in love with
and borrowed, and that you know, played into television when
(24:45):
they were doing serialized uh Saturday matinees, etcetera. So I mean,
I really can't. I don't think we can overstate sort
of how important it was. No, No, I think I
think I think it's I think people all can understate it,
but we're not doing that here, right. Uh yeah, I
mean I do, Like you said, people complain so much
(25:07):
about John Carter having no original ideas and it kind
of suffers from Diehard syndrome, or if you go and
watch die Hard now and it feels very like I've
seen all of this, but die Hard kind of set
that tone for all action movies going forward. So it's
kind of one of those things where history bites itself
in the butt because the thing that came first just
by virtue of not having gotten as much sort of airtime,
(25:27):
and marketing ends up getting a little bit damaged by
it because when people finally find it, they don't see
it for the gym that it is all the time. UM.
I think it's really interesting that so many of these
like classic movies or stories had some touchstone here to
Salt Lake City, which which I don't think people associate
stories like that with this place. Coming up, we're going
(25:53):
to get into more modern filmmaking that's taken place in
Salt Lake. But first we're gonna pause for another word
from one of our fab fond ear alright, so we're
gonna jump right back in uh and coming up, you
get to hear me use the word crevass I think
(26:14):
in the wrong way when we're talking about the film
A hundred and twenty seven hours. So sorry for any
of you uh people that will not enjoy my geography wrongitude.
There's That's another thing about live shows is we're speaking
live with no editing. People hear essay things that are
flogged in one way or another. In more recent years,
(26:42):
you guys have hosted a number of pretty interesting things,
some of which have gotten Oscar nods, including a hundred
twenty seven hours, which I will confess I haven't seen
because I don't think I can sit through it. Um.
But the old Granite Furniture building in sugar House was
the sound stage for a lot of the work that
Danny Boyle was doing here with James Franco. And so
(27:04):
if you don't know, just in case you don't understand
why I don't think I can get through it, this
is the story where James Franco plays a hiker named
Aaron Ralston who gets caught in a cravath Am I right,
and he ends up having to cut off his own
arm to escape. I mean sugar House brought that to
the world of cinema. Uh So that's why I can't
(27:27):
sit through that one. One day I will just haven't
been ready yet. Do you want to talk about the
sand Lot? Yeah? Sure, another one that I think that
we kind of hold here locally. Is really important to
the film industries of the sand Lot. Um, it's probably
one of the most favorite and time tested films to
have shot in Salt Lake City. UM. It was shot
and Salt Lake City at that time was probably just
(27:49):
the easiest place in America to convert into that Americana
Old School Field of the nineteen sixties. Um. They shot
from one end of the city to the other. UM.
The the sand lot itself is located in the Rose
Park neighborhood. They shut a lot of things at Liberty Park,
which has a really interesting, fascinating history that involves the
assassination of President Garfield. Um. You know there's there's all
(28:13):
kinds of weird history around here. We know how you
love your Garfield assassination. I do, I do. It's such
a funny story. It's it's a laugh riot, those assassinations. Uh.
Another film that shot here that I will I will
confess I'm not a fan. I love. I love a
(28:34):
lot dumb and dumber. It's just not my jam. Uh.
No shade to anybody that loves it. Like the heart
wants what it wants. It just it is in my
flavor of comedy. But it was directed by the Fairly Brothers,
and it is a fairly iconic film. I mean, everybody
knows what this film is, and it does have some
spectacularly talented people in it, just doing things that don't
work for me. Uh. And they shot a lot in
(28:54):
the Salt Lake City Airport, although that was before it
went through a pretty big renovation, so they're doing that now. Yeah.
If you if you look at it and then you
look at the airport, now you it won't really jibe.
You won't be like, oh, I know exactly where that is.
Harry and Lloyd's apartment building was filmed downtown, so you
would know this. I don't know. I only know the address,
but I don't know it. You know, offhand, it won't
(29:15):
click for me, but it's it about two South and
third East, so just a few blocks from here. Allegedly
i'd have a parade and walk over there. Uh. And
the scene where they went to the snow Owl benefit
was filmed in two different locations, across the street from
one another and about a block from here. So that's
the Devereaux Mansion which served as an exterior for shooting,
(29:37):
and the inside of the Union Pacific Depot is what
they used for the interiors for that benefit. Um. I
think one of the funniest contrasts is East and West
High School have both been used for drastically different movies.
So West High West High School was the site of
they shot a lot of SLC punk there. I really
(29:58):
love that movie and the East High was where they
shot the high school musical movies, which kind of plays
into that East Side West Side stereotype. Well, and I
think we've stumbled across the most high, hilarious Salt Lake
City double feature of all time. I can't imagine they
would draw the same audience, but it would be funny
to watch each audience the other film, like we're all
(30:22):
in this to get oh, whoa, this is this punk film?
Is it for me? Um? There's been a lot of
movies shot here. The Way of the Gun What which
was Christopher mcquarie starring Beneasielta Toron Ryan Philippie. They shot
around the streets here at night a lot because that
movie was gritty and at night. Um. Much of the
(30:42):
TV mini series adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand was
shot here, and so there's still I tried to get
a list of some of the locations, but I realized
that you can probably look that up on your own.
If you're interested. There you go, Uh, you could start
you could start this as a business, your own tour
of filming locations. And always did not interested or one
of our enterprising listeners, because that's that's no small undertaking
(31:05):
so that's kind of how important Salt Lake really is
to the film and entertainment industry. So if anybody says
it's not, you tell them yes. So one more time,
I want to thank Brian for stepping in serving as
Holly's extremely excellent co host when I could not be there.
That was extremely appreciated. I'm also kind of sorry I
(31:28):
can be there in person just to hear it, but
now it's preserved forever. And I really also want to
thank the fabulous audience member who came up to me
after the show who worked on A hundred and twenty
seven hours as a reptile wrangler, and he told me
that the movie was totally safe to watch. And I
feel bad because I did not get his name, but
he showed me all kinds of fabulous snake photos and
(31:48):
pictures from the set and it was awesome and I
really really really loved it. So thank you, thank you,
And if you want to hear more from Brian, you
can find him all over the place. The book that
we featured in our live show last October as eight
Children's Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. His newest book, The Aeronaut,
is an alternate history fiction spy thriller set in World
(32:09):
War One, and you can also find him at Brian
Young fiction dot com that is Brian with a Y,
or on Twitter at swank Motron. He's also been writing
for our parent company's project How Stuff Works Now for
a while, doing some ridiculous history pieces that we share
on our Facebook and our Twitter from time to time. Yeah,
he's been doing an excellent job on those. And I
(32:30):
also wanted to send a huge, huge thanks to Salt
Lake Comic Con Fanics for having me out to the show.
They made me feel incredibly welcomed. I really loved every
single staff member I spoke with. They were all incredibly
sweet and just really gracious and kind. And I absolutely
fell in love with Salt Lake City. I think it's
mentioned in the episode. I had never been there before
and it was just amazing. I loved it so much.
(32:51):
So thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.
I cannot tell you enough how much I enjoyed myself.
Do you also have some listener mail? I do. I
was out for a few days. I was I was working,
but I was teleworking for a couple of days in
a row, and when I came into my desk this morning.
There was a massive pile of parcels full of amazing things,
and one of them we will talk about it is
(33:13):
from our listener, Julie, and she included a letter with it,
and she said, dear Tracy and Holly, please accept these
customized picture frames as a thank you gift for the
many hours of enjoyment you have given me. I know
you're busy, so I'll just provide a few comments via
a bulleted list. She said. First, I can echo the
fan who said when she went to Europe she knew
all kinds of stuff because of stuff you missed in
history class. My daughter took me to London, Paris in
(33:36):
Bath last summer as a thank you for her expensive
college education, and I was well equipped because of your podcast.
I saw the Herschel Home and Bath and I knew
all about them. I saw dresses by Worth and Madame Vienna,
and chapter Elli's famous jacket with the butterfly buttons. In
the muse des out Decoatif. I saw strange, a strange
building with a windmill and said, holy yeah, that's the
Mulin Rouge, and I knew about it from the joseph
(33:58):
Ule episode. Etcetera, etcetera. She was outraged when Tracy said
she would likely get hate mail, and she decided to
have Lindy Hop at her wedding, and it made Julie
so angry that she had to turn off the podcast
and sit quietly for several minutes to simmer down. The
wedding has happened. Now we did not slash, are not
doing Lyndy Hop, but we are having some swing dancing.
(34:22):
Whoa mostly boiled down to Patrick not having time to
learn how to Lindy Hop from scratch. Yeah, take some efforts. Uh.
Julia goes on to say, I recently retired and I
moved to the uh key One Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan.
I actually know that area a little bit. Some of
my family lives there. Uh, this area is interesting. It
might be worth a podcast. And she talks a little
(34:43):
bit about the history, So I'm gonna keep that quiet
in case we do one of those, and then she says,
I'm a cautionary tale of what happens when a person
spends most of their life with no creative outlet. A
few years ago, I invented a few friends to a
craft tea. We're In addition to cucumber sandwiches, I also
set out materials for deca podge, pen work, mosaic's, mosaics, etcetera.
For us to play with. Well, I got hooked after that.
(35:06):
All I wanted to do was wake make what my
kids call mock mosaics, which is a misnower because they
really are mosaics, but I use paper instead of glass
or ceramic tiles. I've made customized frames, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, etcetera.
For most of my family, but I am compelled to
make more. Hence these frames. Thank you so much, Julie,
because those frames are gorgeous. I literally got in, opened
(35:26):
the package, took a picture, and sent Tracy the photo
on her phone so she could see it right away.
It's so pretty, ums extremely pretty, and we'll post it
on social But also if you wanted to check out
more of Julie's design, she has an Etsy store at
Jay Carson Designs dot etsy dot com. They are absolutely beautiful. Um,
I mean I'm really blown away. Like I've seen lots
of decapodge and mosaic work over the years, but she
(35:49):
really does some just absolutely beautiful. It has like an
old world feel in some cases. There's one picture frames
she had on her shop that I saw that medieval
cats and I'm just in love with it. So she
does great work, and she was so sweet to send
us those frames. Mine has Queen Victoria in it. Tracy's
has a lovely picture of her and her beloved. It's
absolutely the coolest. So thank you. I'm always so honored
(36:10):
anytime someone takes time out of their life to make
us a thing, it's a huge honor to me. So Uh.
If you would like to email us, you can do
so at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com.
We're on Facebook dot com slash mist in history, on
Twitter at Miston History, at pinterest dot com, slash mist
in History at Miston History dot tuebler dot com, and
on Instagram at mist in History. If you want to
(36:32):
research a little bit related to what we talked about
in today's episode, you can go to our parents site,
how stuff Works. Type in the words filmmaking in the
search bar, and you will get an assortment of articles,
including one called how film festivals work and another about
how film restoration works. Uh. If you would like to
hang out with Tracy and me, you can do that
at Miston history dot com, which is our site, and
(36:53):
you can look at our backlog of every episode that's
ever happened long before Tracy and I were on the podcast,
as well as show No It's for any of the
episodes that Tracy and I have worked on, as well
as occasional blog posts. How we encourage you come and
visit us at Miston history dot com and how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
(37:14):
other topics. Is it how staff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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