“Most people think it was Mack Sennett who offered me the toughest competition back in the 1920s, but in reality it was Al and Charles Christie with their sophisticated Christie Comedies. The Christies, like me, used a more classy style of humor than Sennett. He was the best slapstick comedy man of all time. But whether the Christie Comedies or the Hal Roach Comedies were best in the more subtle style of humor, only time and history will tell.”
(Hal Roach, at age ninety, in 1982)
Unfortunately, history will never have a chance to compare the Christie Comedies with either Roach or Sennett. Few of the films the brothers Al and Charles Christie made are still in existence, and to all except the real silent era buffs, the Christie Comedies are almost forgotten.
Sennett’s Keystone Studio output, principally because of the Keystone Kops, Charlie Chaplin, the Bathing Beauties, Gloria Swanson, and Marie Dressler, are still being shown at silent film festivals.
Hal Roach Comedies have survived thanks to the longevity of Roach as a producer, the Our Gang films, and Laurel and Hardy, whose contributions to Roach in both sound and silent eras can still be seen on Saturday morning television programs in countries around the world.
But few of the great Christie Comedies made between 1915 and 1932, well into the sound era, are around for the world to judge their entertainment value.
The Wall Street collapse of 1929 wiped out Al and Charles Christie. “Very few of our negatives or prints survived,” said Al Christie in 1943. “We couldn’t afford to keep that old emulsion film in the cold storage it needed to survive.”
The Christie brothers were an oddly matched pair. Al’s sole interest in the film industry was directing stylish comedies that would make people fall off their seats laughing. Charles rarely watched one of the Christie Film Company’s productions or visited the sets where the one- and two-reel films were being churned out at the rate of two or three each week. His job was to look after the books of the company.
Charles recalled his memories of the Christie brothers comedy studio in 1943. “There had to be financial control or things would have been chaotic, as indeed they were at both Sennett and Roach studios. Sennett admitted he often didn’t know whether a film made a profit because he could never give a real estimate of the production costs. Roach had a succession of business managers; some ripped him off, others didn’t know their job. I was an accountant, with film costing estimates from my days in New York, and when Al needed more than his genius at devising, writing, producing, and directing, I hopped the first available train to California to join him.”
Charles Christie was born in London, Ontario, on April 13, 1882. His brother Al followed him into the world on November 24, 1886. Their father, as manager of the city’s Opera House, was a highly respected man in the community. Their mother was the Opera House’s box-office manager and accountant.
Despite its glamourous name, the Opera House was for most of its time before the turn of the century a burlesque and melodrama theatre. When visiting performers found it tough to get good accommodations in the city, the Christies took them to their large home where they became temporary boarders for the duration of their show’s stay in town.
So the Christies’ two sons, Al and Charles, grew up in the midst of the glamour, and despair, of the world of entertainment. In 1943 Charles recalled his early days in London. “I liked the show people. But even when I was only ten I couldn’t understand their inability to handle money. I watched mother spend hours with them trying to work out budgets that would allow them to save a few dollars for the rainy days that came all too often to performers. I admired my mother’s ability to control our family’s spending, and grew up realizing it was her achievements that enabled us to live in a beautiful home without always worrying where the next penny would be coming from.”
When he was fourteen, Charles graduated from school with a final mark in arithmetic of 99 out of 100. He was proud of his graduation report, which he kept until the day he died.
His parents immediately enrolled him in an accountancy course at a local business college. There he completed a four-year course in two years, and once more, at sixteen, was the star student. “My first job,” he recalled, “was as an accounts clerk in a candy factory. At seventeen, when the accountant died, I was promoted. Much to the dismay of the factory owners I volunteered to revolutionize the company’s entire system of accounting, but when I proved to them how much time and money they were losing with the old system they told me to go ahead.”
Charles was asked by his former accounting school to set up a similar method of accounting that could be adapted to all types of industries. “They called it the Christie Method of Accounting, and before I knew it I was spending half my time teaching the system to young students, and half my time travelling all over Ontario introducing my method to other accounting schools. One of the first students to graduate from the London school, using my method, took my place at the candy factory as my teaching was now more than a full-time job.”
Al also liked the theatre people who visited his home each week, but for different reasons. In 1943 he was always happy to talk about his childhood in London. “I couldn’t have cared if the performers had money or not,” he said. “Even when I heard mother tell them not to worry if they hadn’t enough to pay for their board and lodging, that they could send it along later, I thought this was one of the great things about the theatre. You just didn’t have to worry about money or the lack of it.
“And I loved the performers’ ability to laugh at adversity. If they were booked into the Opera House on a sixty-forty share with the theatre management, and because of poor attendance their sixty percent didn’t even pay all the performers, let alone the board and lodging, they still shrugged their shoulders, smiled, and went on stage bravely even if the theatre was three-quarters empty.
“I spent most of my evenings backstage watching them perform, or I would slip through the pass door and watch from the front. Before I was fourteen I was able to understand why some routines were funny and others were not. Somehow I analyzed their material and knew immediately what was wrong. I tried telling some of the comedians how they could improve their skits. Some listened, others told me to run away, but not that politely. The ones who did listen would try changing a bit of their act each night and, often, by Saturday night, when the theatre was always full, good or bad show, they got gales of laughter and lots of applause.
“Some of the acts would slip me a coin after the second show on Saturday, saying ‘thank you’ for the ideas I had passed along. Word of mouth in the show business of those days was more often than not the way items of interest to the performers reached their destination. So after about a year performers I had never met before would greet me on Monday nights. ‘So you’re the young man who put a bit of life in so-and-so’s act. Go out front tonight and let me know what you think of my routines.’ And more often than not they added that wonderful word, ‘please.’
“By the time I was eighteen I was known as the ‘act doctor.’ I had expanded my advice from just changing the pratfalls and funny business, to rewriting their comedy skits. Before I knew it I was getting paid for my work.
“In those days the stage manager did just about everything that concerned backstage. He hung the drapes and set the scenery, sometimes with the help of just one assistant. He read the lighting plots the acts brought along and operated the lighting from a huge switchboard just off stage left, where he stood throughout the show. There were no fancy lighting experts as there are today; the stage manager of that time did the lot. Of course, he didn’t have to worry about microphones and amplifiers because there were none. If a singer or comic couldn’t be heard at the back of the stalls or up to the top of the highest balcony, he or she wouldn’t get much work.
“I started rewriting the lighting plots the acts brought with them, and before long I was doing most of the stage manager’s job. When our stage manager, Fred Mitchell, had a heart attack, I was automatically given the job.
“Suddenly I was in my element. I controlled the entire backstage. At nineteen I was getting very cocky, telling performers what to do, where to stand, and how to deliver lines. Surprisingly, I had very few problems. One act told me the word got around that playing the London Opera House was worthwhile, even at a reduced salary, because the ‘act doctor’ would give you free advice.
“A young fellow, perhaps eleven or twelve, kept coming around backstage, looking for any odd jobs. I gave him the task of brushing the stage before and after every show. George Summerville, that was his name. He told me he was originally from New Mexico, but had run away from a farm in nearby St. Thomas, where he was staying with his aunt and uncle. He desperately wanted to get on the stage, which his parents had promised he could before they were killed in an accident in the United States. When I discovered he had no place to stay I took him home and mother gave him a bed and fed him for several months.
“One day he said he was going to leave town with one of the travelling companies. He was tall, and very thin, and was the perfect foil for the usually portly, red-faced comics. I was sorry to see him go, and told him I hoped we’d meet up again someday.
“We did meet again, in 1916, when I was visiting the Sennett Studio. This very familiar-faced young man came over to me and asked if I remembered him. Suddenly I did; it was George Summerville, from London. When we had told each other the adventures that had led us to Hollywood, I suggested he come over to the Christie Studio when he needed work. He said, ‘Great, I will, but you’d better know, Al, that I’ve changed my name. I dropped the George because of what everyone called me, as I am so thin and scrawny. Now my name is Slim.’
“Slim Summerville played many parts in Christie Comedies, but his biggest successes were on the Sennett lot. That is, of course, until he played the one role people still remember today, the soldier Tjaden, in All Quiet on the Western Front. He got an Oscar nomination for that role.”
Charles Christie was only twenty-three and Al Christie just nineteen when they decided to seek fame and fortune outside Canada. “I had an offer from Liebler and Company, a New York production outfit, to be the stage manager of one of the travelling road shows they cast and rehearsed in New York, but which played theatres as far west as Chicago,” said Al. “I’d heard tales of life in the big cities and when this reputable company made me an offer, I knew I couldn’t refuse. I told them I’d move to New York if they could find a job for Charles. I ballyhooed his financial achievements and they made him a very reasonable offer, too.”
“We had our parents’ blessing,” said Charles. “Sure, we had more than a few qualms about going so far from home, but after long evenings of talking things over we decided to go. Once we’d made the decision we took two weeks to find replacement people for our jobs and then we hopped a train for the big city.”
Within two hours of their train arriving in New York City both Al and Charles Christie were working. Harry Liebler, the senior producer of the company who had paid their rail fares from London, had also fixed them up in a clean theatrical rooming house near the company’s rehearsal rooms and offices.
“Once we were settled in our rooms we were ready to work,” said Al. “It was exciting to be in New York, but we both wanted to get going. We walked over to the company’s office block and introduced ourselves.”
“Glad you’re here, boys,” said Liebler. “You,” he said to Charles, “can take that office in the corner and help sort out the financial mess one of our companies is in.” “You,” he said to Al, “can come with me to the rehearsal rooms. We are just a week away from putting out a new touring show. We need your advice on lighting and staging.”
“We were a hit from day one,” said Charles. “I sorted out their financial problems in short order, and Al had everything in place for their new show in only three days. Boy, did we think we were clever. We were in clover right up to our ears.”
For three years Al Christie travelled the United States as stage manager, sometimes company manager, too, of Liebler’s shows. During his spare time he wrote a complete comedy show that the company staged, allowing him to be assistant producer in the credits. “I liked the extra money and the recognition by the company, but I told them any more shows I wrote I wanted to produce myself,” said Al. “There was very little opposition to my dream, and within a few months I had a second show ready for production. After that I stayed in New York writing and producing as many as ten shows a year. They weren’t spectacular but they had comedy bits in them that no one had tried before that time. If I say I added a little bit of sophistication to vaudeville I don’t think I’m boasting too much.”
The word spread in New York theatrical circles that Liebler and Company had a remarkable accountant who had devised simplified bookkeeping systems for the company and its touring shows. Most touring managers had found the earlier methods of reporting income and payouts to be beyond their ability. Charles had a number of offers from top managements in the city, but he felt none of them offered the challenge that he was seeking.
“Not until I was approached by the Horsley brothers, William and Arthur, who were making the primitive films of that era in Bayonne, New Jersey, under the name Nestor Comedies, did I begin to get enthused,” said Charles. “They made the new industry sound exciting. I soon began to realize this was the future career for me.
“I had visited friends at two of the small studios in the city and had been horrified by the tremendous waste of film, materials, and manpower. Half the time they didn’t know what they planned to shoot next day, sometimes even the next hour. People being paid to act or build sets just sat around playing cards and, far too often, drinking themselves into a state where they were useless when the director was ready.
“I told the Horsleys that I was interested in their proposition, but that I had to have complete control of all financial matters. They agreed to give me this assurance in writing, and offered me more than double what I was getting at the theatre office. So, perhaps with a little doubt inside me, I left to join this new moving picture industry. I was a little concerned because I knew, at that time, no reputable actor on Broadway wanted any part of the industry, and because a lot of doubters were writing stories that said moving pictures were just a fad that would pass away very quickly.”
William Horsley told the New York World, in a story printed in 1911, that “there was absolutely no control over costs in our early days. We were much too busy playing with our new toy, the motion picture camera, to worry if we were wasting a few dollars here and there. I wonder if we would have survived as a viable industry had not Charles Christie arrived to put our finances in order. It took him two months to straighten out our mess, during which time he often worked seven days a week and eighteen hours a day, before providing us with a realistic financial picture of the company. We didn’t know it, but we were bankrupt before we really got started. He saved the studio from disaster and invented a stock and purchasing control system that I still use today. I doubt if it can ever be bettered.”
Al Christie visited his brother at the Nestor studio on one of his breaks between productions and found himself enthralled with the new industry. “But it was rather like seeing those early comedy skits that used to horrify me with their crudeness at the Opera House in London,” he said. “These were not professional comics, just ordinary people trying to be funny and they weren’t. I asked Charles if there was any chance for me to write script outlines for the company and show some of the amateur comics how to react and get the most out of funny situations. In effect, exactly what I had been doing with the stage shows, except that there I had real pros to work with. Charles said he would approach William and Arthur Horsley with the idea. But he warned it might be a little time before he got an answer as they were very busy, not only with production, but with their film laboratory and distribution house.”
While he was waiting for an answer, Al Christie wrote two or three rough ideas for comedy scripts. “Actually they were variations on skits I’d written for the touring vaudeville shows,” he said. “When Charles passed the word that Arthur Horsley had approved my idea, I was so excited I even forgot to ask if I would be paid. But I trusted Charles. Wherever money comes into the picture he deals with it the right way. I was to get $15 for each of the two one-reel script ideas, and was to work with the director and the actors to get the most out of what I had proposed.”
When the second film was being made, the director suddenly stomped off to William Horsley’s office. Horsley told this next part of the tale. “He came to me in a fury. Asked who was directing this film, Christie or him. I told him he was, so he told me to get Al Christie off the set or he would walk out.
“I promised to talk to Al, but before I had an opportunity to get him alone I was called away to see a rough cut of the first film Al had written. It hit me right between the eyes. This was comedy with style. Gone were all the grimaces and grotesque make-up that we’d thought so funny in the past. He had real people doing real things and yet it was hilarious.
“I knew I had a problem. The director who had complained to me obviously hadn’t directed this excellent comedy. This was a style I’d never seen before, and I doubted if anyone else had. And it was quite obvious that the real director, Al, must be given complete control of the second film. If you don’t believe in fate, I do. That very afternoon a piece of wood crashed from the top of the set and knocked the official director out cold. He had to be taken to hospital and by the time he returned, next day, the film was finished and I knew we had a new director with totally new ideas.”
With Charles Christie handling the finances and Al Christie turning out one successful comedy after another, it wasn’t surprising that the one existing trade paper at the time called Nestor Films “an advancement in our industry which must surely give heart to those doubters who think we will be gone and forgotten in less than a decade.”
The Nestor studio flourished until the fall of 1911, when William Horsley announced his intention of moving “lock, stock, and barrel to California.”
“We cannot waste another four months this winter in New York, with our cameras freezing and our actors suffering frostbite,” said Horsley. “I shall take Al Christie and a small contingent of actors to the West Coast at the end of October.” He added that his distribution office and accounting offices for his three companies would remain in New York.
Before leaving for California, Al Christie married actress Shirley Collins. She was added to the small party who boarded a westbound transcontinental train on October 20, 1911. Others in the group were William and Arthur Horsley and actress Dorothy Davenport. Davenport was later to become the wife of the first-known victim of director William Desmond Taylor’s drug ring, actor Wallace Reid, who died from an overdose of cocaine in 1923 when he was only thirty-two.
This was the first time in their lives the Christie brothers had been separated for more than a month or two. “I was tempted to tell Bill Horsley that I was quitting and heading out west with Al,” said Charles. “But he convinced me to hold on to the good-paying job I had. ‘When it’s time for you to join us in California, I’ll tell you’ he said.”
The quintet that represented Nestor Films in California moved into the Blondeau Tavern on the corner of Sunset Avenue (now Boulevard) and Gower Streets in an area that later became the heart of Hollywood. Al Christie convinced the hotel owners to allow them use of the hotel gardens and their large unused back lot for location shooting.
“We made a lot of films on the streets of Los Angeles and in the surrounding mountains, especially the westerns,” he said, “but we must have made close to fifty films just outside the hotel’s back door. They charged us $30 a month and threw in the interior of the tavern, including the bedrooms. They even talked other guests into playing small parts, or standing around as extras, and it didn’t cost us a cent.”
Nestor Films, with their California settings, became so successful that Carl Laemmle, then head of Universal Films, convinced the Horsley brothers that a merger of the two companies would be profitable for both. “We had still maintained our distribution house in the east, but Universal had, from 1913, been distributing all our films to every other place in the world,” said William Horsley. “The merger seemed good sense and put a lot of hard cash in the pockets of Arthur and myself.
“So we moved everything we had, and that probably was little more than a couple of cameras, over to the Universal lot. Al came with us but within weeks I could see he was unhappy being part of such a large outfit as Universal had grown to be. A month after our arrival at Universal in July 1915, he came to me and told me he had made a decision to form his own company. I wished him well and promised him any help he needed.”
“I remember telling William that I had wired to New York for Charles to quit his job there and head out west to join me,” said Al Christie. “I had no idea where we would set up shop, but the owner of the Blondeau solved that problem. We were still living there, of course. He told me he wanted to sell the tavern and grounds as he was retiring. I told him we only had a few thousand dollars, and for some amazing reason he accepted our offer of $3,000 as a down payment with $15,000 more to be paid over the next three years.
“When Charles arrived we closed the tavern down to outside guests and pooled our cash to buy the newest available camera. The Horsleys convinced Universal to do our distribution and William promised to do all our developing and printing in the film laboratory he had built two years after we arrived from New York. He even offered us the chance to defer all payments for six months, and he threw in film on the same basis, as much as we wanted.
“Universal agreed to release up to fifty one- and two-reel films for us in the first year and Carl Laemmle gave us an advance of $5,000 to help pay for the actors and the sets we would have to build. Originally, we planned to make as many westerns as comedies, but Charles convinced me that the audience enthusiasm for westerns was dropping, but there was no limit to the demand for comedy.
“So the Christie Film Company’s name went up and the Blondeau Tavern sign came down. We announced our plans through the trade press, and Universal helped by promoting our films through flyers they sent out to every exhibitor. It was Universal’s word that Christie Comedies were going to be the big thing in the coming year that gave us a wonderful boost.
“We needed actors, and we needed them fast. The Horsleys allowed us to use many of the people we had found in the four years before we became independent. Everyone was so helpful that the Christie Studio soon began to exist in bricks and mortar, no longer just a dream in our heads.”
The Christie brothers didn’t realize it at the time, but the studio they slowly enlarged over the years that followed 1915 was the first permanent studio to be erected in Hollywood. “All the earlier ones were in places like Glendale and other suburbs of Los Angeles,” said Charles. “When Hollywood was given its name in 1903 by Daeida Hartell Wilcox, after she built a beautiful home in the centre of an orchard, it was nothing more than a fifty-acre lot. Later it became a subdivision centred around Hollywood Boulevard and Wilcox Avenue. Hollywood was actually listed as a city when we arrived, and there were a number of studios built outside the city limits. Sunset Avenue was the official outer boundary of the city, and when we located at Sunset and Gower we were the very first studio inside the city limits.
On the set, from left: Harry Edwards (actor), William Beaudine (director), Alice Lake (actress), and Al Christie (producer).
“Where we were located later became the site of the Columbia Broadcasting System’s radio studios. Before we left we had expanded our land holdings and stages to cover a full city block. When they finally pulled our studio down, Charles and I attended a ceremony at which they installed a plaque on the wall of the CBS building saying this was the location of the Christie Film Company, the first permanent studio in Hollywood.”
“What a lot of people don’t know,” said Charles, “is that in 1916 the residents of the City of Hollywood decided they would be much better off being part of the fast-growing Los Angeles. And that’s what it is today, just a sub-sector of Los Angeles. There is no such place as Hollywood any more.”
“Our entire bankroll to start the Christie Film Company in 1915 was $6,000,” said Al. “When we didn’t have enough money to pay for all the actors we needed we moved them into the hotel building and let them sleep and eat there while they were working for us. A lot of them were delighted to get out of the dingy one-room apartments they were living in, and often we had trouble getting rid of them. We had a Chinese cook we inherited with the hotel, and he made magnificent meals at a cost so low we couldn’t believe it could be done, but he did it. In the first year he was probably the main reason why we were able to stay in business. And when he wasn’t cooking he became a regular actor in our films.”
Immediately the Christie brothers started operating on their own, Al Christie produced the first silent films with dialogue printed along the bottom of the film that coincided with the words the actors spoke silently on screen.
“Until Al invented this system,” said Charles, “film captions were totally separate from the story. There would be perhaps thirty seconds of action and then a full-screen caption with a few words that explained the progress of the plot. Doing it our way cost more and meant we had to have complete scripts ready for every film before shooting began. But it was new and audiences loved it.”
The Christies persevered with their on-screen captions for more than a year before any other company followed suit. “What perhaps decided Universal to copy us was the huge success of our films,” said Al. “The New York World pushed every other company to copy us with an article that said ‘Christie Films have made it possible for audiences to believe they are actually hearing the screen speak. After a while you can almost hear the voices of the actors in your head.’ In effect, what we did is what is still being done today with foreign films brought to the United States. They are captioned over the picture in English just as ours were twenty-five years earlier.”
The Christie studio gathered together a group of twenty-four comedians, foils for the comedians, and young and beautiful heroines to add romance, even if the romance was sometimes spoiled by the fair young lady receiving a pie in the face, or a bucket of water dampened the ardor of an overzealous swain.
Al Christie disputed Mack Sennett’s claim to have thrown the first custard pie in the motion picture industry. “We were so far ahead of Mack that I still recall the day he dropped by our studio to ask what we were using as the content of the pies.
“I told him we had them made by the hundred and they cost ten cents each. They were filled, I explained, with egg white and enough flour to make them gooey. I even told him we bought them from a bakery just across the street from the studio. A few days later I walked across to the bakery to order more pies and was surprised to see hundreds of boxes, similar to ours, stacked in a corner. ‘You got them ready even before I asked?’ I said. ‘No sir,’ said the baker. ‘Those are for Mr. Sennett.’”
Sennett snorted when told that Al Christie claimed to be the first custard pie thrower. “Rubbish,” he said. “We were throwing them before he was in long pants. And we had the best thrower, Del Lord, the very best. Tell that to Al Christie.”
Al Christie laughed when he was told about Sennett’s reaction. “Actually, neither of us was first; they were using them in burlesque years before motion pictures were invented. My recipe, which Sennett stole, came from my mother. She made them for the comics at the Opera House in London. Her recipe went far and wide. I passed it on to the baker and he produced hundreds of mother’s custard pies!”
But custard pies were not the big thing at the Christie Studio. “We were more concerned with story lines than sheer slapstick, and I don’t think we would have been nearly so successful if we had tried to copy Sennett. He was the master of slapstick. He dressed his people up in odd-looking clothing that no normal person would be seen dead in outside the studio. We dressed ours in street clothes and gave them funny situations that were, in our eyes, much more acceptable to the more sophisticated audiences the theatres were drawing by 1920.”
Included on the payroll of the Christie Film Studio between 1915 and 1928, when sound films were beginning to be heard, were comedians Bobby Vernon and Billy Dooley, both forgotten names today, but big favourites with silent film audiences for many years.
If Sennett had his Bathing Beauties, Christie Comedies had the likes of Vera Steadman and Molly Malone. Malone moved into radio in the 1930s and into television in the 1950s, constantly working until she died at the age of sixty-three. Dorothy Devore, considered by many to have been the most beautiful girl of the silent era, and Ann Pennington, the girl who created the famed Black Bottom dance in the late 1920s, were two more of their discoveries.
Pennington, who was born in 1894, died at the age of seventy-seven in Hollywood. She weathered more than a few scandals but kept working until she was in her sixties. She remembered the Christie brothers in a 1963 interview. “It was a crazy world. But it was fun. I threw a few custard pies myself, in fact I got quite clever and while they usually never showed the thrower, they used to show me. Looking at me now you’d never believe I was beautiful in those days, but I was. The Christies helped me out when I had problems and I’ve never forgotten them. When Charles died eight years ago I went to his funeral. There was nobody there from those old days, very few people of any kind. But it could be I didn’t recognize any of my contemporaries. I’m sure they didn’t recognize me.
“If those days could have gone on forever I would either have been dead at thirty or a big star today. Those Christie days were mostly happy days. Everyone in the studio knew, as I did, that if you had a problem you could go to either Charlie or Al. They got dozens of people out of scrapes. They were good boys, those Christies. And wonderful, talented filmmakers. Their ideas were way ahead of their time. But the stock market crash got them, as it did lots of us. I don’t regret one minute of my life, and I’ll bet they didn’t regret one minute of theirs.”
In 1919 Charles Christie started a sideline that paid dividends for more than a decade. “By 1919 the use of cars in films was becoming the big thing,” he recalled. “There were more real chases, accidents, and speedsters to fascinate filmgoers. It seemed like the boys coming back from the war wanted to do everything twice as fast as they did before.
“At the studios we found getting the older cars for comedy films was more and more difficult. Most were on the scrap heap or had been wrecked during filming. So I formed a company, Christie Cars, Inc., and hired a first-class mechanic to refurbish all the wrecks I could buy. Very soon I had two garages working round the clock on restoration and hundreds more cars sitting under little weather shelters in a five-acre lot behind the garage.
“Everyone thought I was completely crazy until they tried to find the cars they needed for their pictures. I had everything from Model T’s to Cadillacs in my collection, and before I knew it every studio in California was lining up to rent them from me.
“I soon had an office staff dealing with queries, and a number of drivers, actually actors who knew how to drive but didn’t get much action in the studios, who were on call to deliver the cars wherever they were wanted. I had days when I would have more than 200 cars rented out to different studios. Some of my drivers became the first stunt men in the industry. They doubled for just about every star in the industry. I even had to hire two female drivers just to double for the big women stars who didn’t want to get injured.
“My stunt drivers soon became a separate business. I kept both companies going until 1929, when they began taking up far too much of my time. I sold the stunt business to two of my drivers and the car supply company to three of my mechanics. Under new names, both of them were still operating in the late 1940s.”
Among the special memories of the brothers was their sound film version of Charley’s Aunt. Made in 1930, it was the first of many versions that followed over the years. “We starred Syd Chaplin, Charlie’s brother, and Charlie Ruggles in the film, and it was a great hit in the theatres,” said Al. “Reviewers were suddenly calling Syd the next big comedy star. We kept the two actors together for five more films, all big box-office hits. We wanted to keep Syd for more films, because I felt we had discovered the talent that Sennett had missed. But it wasn’t to be. Syd was disillusioned by his treatment at Keystone and when his brother offered him a full-time job as his financial manager, Syd said goodbye to acting forever. Now we will never know if he could have been as good as brother Charlie in his own way.”
Many of the performers who made Christie Films famous between 1915 and 1928 are forgotten today. Some, like Julian Eltinge, probably the greatest female impersonator the industry has ever known, is not even mentioned in such superb reference books as Ephraim Katz’s The Film Encyclopedia, and receives a scant five lines in Evelyn Mack Truitt’s Who Was Who on the Screen.
Others gone and forgotten, as far as most histories of early Hollywood are concerned, include Viora Daniel, one of Hollywood’s loveliest and most competent actresses; Jack Duffy, a great comedian whose career was cut short by cancer; and Natalie Joyce, a young performer who gave up her rising star to become the wife of the boy she left behind at home. No records show if she lived happily ever after.
Josephine Hull, born in 1884, became the leading lady in early Christie films, moving into the sound era with a voice that matched her beauty. But she is perhaps best remembered for her Oscar-winning performance with James Stewart in the comedy, Harvey, which is still shown on television today.
In 1943 she had decided her film career was over. “I’m happy now with my memories,” she said. “The Christie days were my best days. We had fun making pictures then. I made my last one in 1942. Really, I much preferred the stage. I was a star on Broadway when I was sixteen, did you know that?”
Producers decided Josephine Hull should not remain retired. She gave a glorious performance in 1944 in Arsenic and Old Lace. She told the Hollywood Citizen-News that “Al Christie coached me for that part as I felt I was out of touch and needed help. Al made my performance unique.”
In 1950 she was again coaxed out of retirement by Jimmy Stewart to play in Harvey. In 1980 he recalled the performance that won her an Oscar. “I had seen her in Arsenic,” he said. “But we had to find her before we could sign her for Harvey. It was Al Christie who located her, and he was there on the set every day coaching each line she spoke. Maybe that should have been a double Oscar in 1950, one for Josephine and one for Al as coach.”
The Christie Film Company became so successful that it had its own fan mail department long before such departments were invented. “We had as many as ten secretaries typing answers to letters eight hours a day, six days a week, and often there was lots of overtime work. They were trained to pick out items from letters and make that the focal point of the reply to that individual fan.
“Each one of our regular stars had notepaper specially printed. I remember Helen Darling demanded that hers be scented with lilac. Then once a week the actors and actresses spent several hours signing the letters personally.
“Sennett let other people sign his studio replies, even photographs, but we never allowed that. The stars took stacks of photographs home with them and brought them back autographed. Would you believe that we actually sent out 8 x 10 glossy pictures to the fans? It cost us a lot but it was worth every penny.”
The Christie fan mail department also spawned the publication of a monthly magazine, Film Follies. It was written by a staff of scriptwriters who were waiting around the studio for a new assignment.
The magazine developed from an initial eight pages to sixteen pages before it ended a twelve-year run in 1929. “We sent a copy out with every photograph and letter, and in the bigger cities it was sold in the theatres, at the candy desk, for five cents at first, but that had risen to ten cents by 1929,” recalled Charles. “Each edition was printed in two colors on quality paper. We didn’t make any money on it, but we gained thousands of regular readers and I’m sure it drew many more thousands, perhaps millions, to see our films. No other studio ever followed our lead.”
The Christies claimed to have a lion as their studio’s mascot long before Louis B. Mayer put his lion on screen to open every MGM film. “We originally had a friendly lion in the studio for use in dozens of films, and he became so well known we decided to adopt him as our mascot,” said Al. “Everyone loved him and he walked around the sets when and where he wanted.
“He was a placid old cat and when he died suddenly, from what we later learned was eating poisoned meat, the entire studio was heartbroken. If we could have found out who poisoned him we would have lynched him, or her, on the spot.” He laughed, and added, “With the cameras rolling, of course!”
In 1919 the Christies decided to break with Universal and go to Educational Films for distribution. “Universal was getting so big that only their own films got top promotion. We felt Educational, a much smaller company, would suit our style of pictures better and we were right, we stayed with them for twelve years,” said Charles. “Of course we remained with the Horsleys for all our printing and developing. They had built a huge laboratory right next to our studio on Sunset and by 1920 they were serving most of the independent producers with superb work. William’s son, known as William C., had joined the company after years of training and ran the technical side of the operation better than anyone else in the industry.”
In the late 1920s the Christies purchased the former Metropolitan Studio on North Las Palmas Avenue to supply the space needed to handle their ever-increasing production load. When it became apparent that sound was going to be the big thing in the industry, they spent more than half-a-million dollars soundproofing all the stages at both studios.
“We were still number one with our silent comedies,” said Al Christie. “By 1928 we had reached a level of sophistication that the other studios had difficulty equalling or copying.
“We were ready when sound equipment became available, and received considerable help from Douglas Shearer who was then working at MGM. We had known him for several years and he had earlier shared some of his lighting inventions with us.
“He asked if we wanted to try something that MGM had turned down, and because we knew how clever he was, we said ‘yes.’ So we were up and running with good quality sound almost as fast as Warners, MGM, and Universal. You have to remember that they were the giants of the industry, producing all kinds of films, and although we were small and specialized we more than held our own in the marketplace.”
The Christies’ first sound film, shot on the stages of the old Metropolitan Studio, was Dangerous Females, a comedy starring Marie Dressler and Polly Moran. “The other studios were looking to make an impact with sound through spectacle and musicals, but we were the only studio to concentrate exclusively on comedy,” said Charles. “Dangerous Females was such a success that we had thousands of letters asking for more of the same with the same stars. So we produced the first series of sound comedies featuring two females in the lead roles. We made seven films in the series and were repaid handsomely at the box office.”
The duo produced more than fifty full-length sound features in their two studios in 1929 before they really felt the effects of the 1929 stock market crash.
“Suddenly it was cash on the line for everything. And cash we didn’t have,” recalled Charles. “We had overreached ourselves buying the Metropolitan Studio and other real estate and when land prices dropped to zero we were left with bank loans to pay on property that was virtually worthless. Nobody was buying anything, at least at prices we could afford to accept. The bank wanted its money, and we hadn’t got it. We continued making as many films as we could. The Depression brought millions to the theatres. Our comedy films were in terrific demand. But even more in demand from the banks was the money we hadn’t got.”
“We struggled through to 1932 and introduced people like Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Lucille Ball, and Bob Hope to movie audiences for the first time,” said Al Christie. “Charles was so good at accounting that he could tell me from day to day where we stood. On February 1, 1932, he told me that if we sold all our assets we could just pay our creditors, so we decided to call our attorney, Paul Lowenthal, to convene a meeting of all our creditors.
“We made an assignment of everything we owned to the three companies, Christie Films, Metropolitan Sound Studios, and the Christie Realty Company, which held the deeds to most of the properties we had bought. Charles presented his financial statement to the meeting. It showed that our debts were $2.5 million dollars and our assets were slightly in excess of that figure. That, of course, depended on our being able to sell, in the still-depressed markets, those assets.
“The creditors agreed to be patient in view of our assignment of our personal property, which included both our houses. Charles had never married, and I had been divorced from my wife, Shirley, for quite a number of years, and had no children, so we had no concerns in that direction. We continued to make films over the eight months it took us to liquidate our assets. We ended up about $70,000 short of paying all our creditors. The Horsley brothers came to our rescue. ‘Don’t bother about us,’ said Arthur. ‘We don’t need money. Pay everyone else then pay us whenever you can.’”
It is interesting to note that the Christies’ Metropolitan Studio still stands at 1040 North Las Palmas Avenue. Today it is known as the Hollywood Center Studios, and some of the tenants have included Jeopardy and comedies like Empty Nest, Wings, and the John Larroquette Show. They still use the same sound stages that the Christies put together so well more than seventy years ago.
When all the creditors were paid, Al decided to go east to the city in which his career started, New York. Charles decided, after his experience in selling the company’s assets, to go into real estate sales. In New York Al lived for several months in a small apartment that had no heating. In Hollywood, with somewhat better weather to help the situation, Charles lived in similar circumstances. “Al bet me,” said Charles, “that he’d be in a first class house of his own before I could buy mine. I beat him by three months. I suddenly realized I was a great real estate salesman, and commissions came in at a tremendous rate. Because Al and I had paid all our debts honourably, and never did go bankrupt, as the papers at one time suggested, I was able to go to a bank and get a loan on a beautiful home in less than three months. Al had to wait a little longer, but he was back in production in New York within days of arriving there.”
A 1932 article by Marguerite Tazelaar in a New York newspaper had the headline, “Queens Lot Ready for Comedy Under Pioneer of Pie-Throwing.” It told how the film studios located in the Borough of Queens had thrown open their doors for Al Christie’s return to New York.
It continued: “Christie has received the backing of the Atlas Corporation and the Guaranty Trust Company to make a series of independent feature films to cost $250,000 each. The first is to be Frank Adam’s Fathers of Madelon, which was published earlier this year to great acclaim in Red Book Magazine. The rights to the story belong to Bernard J. Steele, president of Odesco Productions, Inc. Mr. Steele bought the story especially for Al Christie, whose comedic talents he believes are unequalled.”
Over the next nine years Al Christie made thirty-two profitable sound films in New York. He refused to vary from his intention to make comedy the base of all his productions. “But I didn’t make a great deal of money,” he recalled. “Someone else did! Working for other people isn’t like working for yourself. You don’t keep the profits. I did well enough to buy a penthouse apartment, but something important was missing from my life.”
That something was Charles Christie. In 1941, Al made a decision to return to California and get right out of the motion picture industry. “It was too big, too impersonal by the early 1940s. Money men were running the industry. Creative people were slowly but surely taking second place. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I knew I could earn a living somehow.”
By 1941 Charles Christie was living in a beautiful home at 460 South Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills. Now a top real estate broker, he had prospered in his new profession and proudly claimed to have sold Lucille Ball, Jack Benny, and other big stars their first Beverly Hills homes. He had three servants to look after his needs — a gardener who maintained the grounds, a housekeeper, and a butler, the latter an actor who came in each evening to serve dinner.
He welcomed Al back from New York and opened his home to the man with whom he had shared thirty years of his life in the film industry.
Al found work within a week. “A friend told me that morale at the huge Douglas Aircraft Company plant in Santa Monica was at an all-time low and production was suffering,” he said. “It took me twenty-four hours to decide to drive to the plant and offer my services at minimum wage. I had no difficulty getting in to see the company heads, apparently my name still meant something in the industry, and when I laid my proposal on the table I was hired on the spot.”
Al Christie’s idea was based on Douglas putting him in charge of plant entertainment. “Not the usual kind where volunteers are found among the employees and made to look like idiots singing and dancing before their fellow workers,” he said. “I told them I could deliver the biggest names in Hollywood to give daily lunch-time concerts for the workers, and at no cost to the company. When I named people like Bob Hope they were delighted. Now I hadn’t asked Hope, or anyone else if they would do the shows, but I believed I knew enough about them to know this was something they wouldn’t turn down. Although I’d been out of Hollywood for nine years I still had enough friends to get me the unlisted telephone numbers of the top stars. And in days I had set up a roster of entertainment that set my heart thumping and the workers at Douglas cheering.”
Among the stars who appeared for Al Christie at the Santa Monica plant over the next few years were Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, Dorothy Lamour, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Betty Hutton, and Gracie Fields, visiting from England. Hope made more than a dozen appearances in three years. Actors like Jimmy Stewart and Robert Taylor, who couldn’t sing or dance, went to the plant to have lunch with the workers and sign autographs. Big bands like Glenn Miller, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Les Brown, Cab Calloway, and Louis Armstrong appeared as often as their schedules allowed. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced for, and with, the workers.
“Every Monday and Friday we had a show,” said Al. “Absenteeism that had always been at its peak on those two days dropped to near zero. The company had ten professional musicians on call to play for singers like Dinah Shore and Dick Haymes. It was such an incredible success that other plants tried to copy the idea, but, though I say it myself, nobody else was able to get the stars I took each week to Santa Monica.”
When the war ended Al retired to the South Bedford Drive home. Charles continued to sell houses in Beverly Hills until 1950. Al didn’t work again. Both brothers gave much of their time during World War Two to provide entertainment for servicemen and women in their home, running them back and forth to the film studios which always welcomed the Christies and their uniformed guests.
On April 14, 1951, Al Christie died at the age of sixty-five. He suffered a heart attack at home and though he was rushed to hospital immediately he died in the ambulance. There was no service; he had much earlier requested that his body be given to medical science.
On May 1, 1951, the Los Angeles Times reported that a petition for letters of administration had been filed in Superior Court. The petitioner was Charles Christie. He informed the court that the man who made millions for himself and others three decades earlier had left only $2,597. “Of this,” said Charles, “there is $1,697 in cash and other personal property that had been valued at $900. No will has been found.” He declared himself to be the sole heir as the last surviving member of the Christie family.
Four years later, on October 1, 1955, Charles Christie died at his beautiful Beverly Hills home at the age of seventy-three. And so ended a dynasty that had given the world of entertainment more than thirty years of laughter. His funeral service, held at the Hollywood Cemetery, where he was buried, was attended by a handful of the old-time stars who remembered the days of glory at the Christie Film Studio. There is no record of their names since no newspaper reporter considered the occasion important enough to be covered. His grave is marked with a simple plaque offering no more information than his name and dates of birth and death. The plaque commemorating the site of the first Christie studio in Hollywood is twice as large.
Charles Christie left a considerable amount of money, said to be in excess of a quarter of a million dollars, his home and all its contents, to the housekeeper who, he said in a one-page will, had “stood by me for more than thirty years, through good times and bad. I wish her to have everything of which I die possessed and hope she may continue to enjoy good health for many years to come.” Unhappily, that was not to be. She died in a car accident only three months later.