RHUBARB, RHUBARB, COCKTAIL SHAKER. Page 1 1888 words
I wonder if the Edison Company, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, or any other of the myriad early film companies ever realised that some day their one and two reelers would be historical documents as much so as the news footage of the period: that a Bronco Billy epic shot in two days at a cost of $800 would be the subject of painstaking restoration.
Outside the world of film archives, few people would know of Beryl Waitford. Even in this street not many have any idea what goes on in this rambling stucco house.
Beryl was a friend of my mother’s from their school days. As a child, I called her Aunty Beryl. In more recent times, I have been more her keeper, the nearest thing she has had to a living relative. I’ve worked for her from the day she started this business ten years ago.
She was sixty five when she left Berkely to return home to New Zealand. Hardly a sensible age to start in business but sense played no part. It was her passion to preserve the early film, a passion that has kept her own well-being in second place. She did give up smoking about five years ago, on doctors orders, but has since chewed her way through a mountain of toffees which have appeared to be her main means of sustenance. She has certainly never eaten well. And her style of dress has always owed more to Saint Vincent de Paul than to Ives St Laurient. Droopy cardigans, wooly slippers. One advantage, I suppose, of working at home.
Being remote from the major film centres has been no disadvantage. We are close to the airport and, anyway, over the years we have come to receive less and less of our work on film stock. With computer compression techniques, short films can be scanned digitally and sent to us either on D.V.D. or, better still, through the internet.
And computers are the key to what we do. The early film standard was seventeen frames per second later changed to twenty four. Early films when run on present-day equipment have everyone in frantic motion. We can correct this.
Modern compression techniques ignore static elements and record only the difference from one frame to the next. We have an algorythm which allows the computer to divide seventeen increments Richard Thomas
RHUBARB, RHUBARB, COCKTAIL SHAKER. Page 2 of change into twenty four. Or even twenty five or thirty to suit European or American T.V. Standards. I don’t pretend to know how it is done. The maths are complex. Fortunately, the computers know what to do and do it in a flash.
It is the restoration that is time consuming. We can sharpen edges, improve contrast, reduce graininess, and hide even serious damage. Most of the films we receive are in shocking condition. Perhaps taken from an only known print which has been worn by excessive exhibition or from a print copied from the old nitrate film stock only after that stock was well decayed with the emulsion lifting. It is here that we, or rather Beryl, have made our name. And it is where computers really come into their own but it is still fiddly work.
To give you some idea:- Where the background of a scene has to be reconstructed the best unblemished areas in the various frames, sometimes mere fragments, are chosen and outlined and the computer informed that these are to make up the composite background in front of which the scene’s action happens. All the blips and scratches are redundant information to be ignored. Fortunately, fixed camera positions were the norm in the days of hand-cranking but even if the camera was panned this can still be done.
Removing blemishes from moving objects, actors, horses, or whatever, is accomplished a little differently. The computer keeps track of the outlines of anything in motion and can usually calculate the correct gray-scale level for small anomilies within that outline from the levels of the adjacent areas. For larger faults, there still needs to be human intervention on a frame by frame basis. Even when you know how it’s done, the results still seem miraculous.
It is here that Beryl has particularly excelled and it is work that she has kept strictly to herself. A sure recipe for disaster. The two women, Beth and Fran, who come in part time have been left with the more mundane tasks. Transforming computer files back into positive or negative 16mm and 35mm prints or into broadcast video as required. We can meet most world standards. They keep up our own archives as well. Richard Thomas
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And what do I do, apart from picking up lolly papers? I should have mentioned that Beryl is profoundly deaf. Right from the start she needed someone to answer the phone, liaise with overseas archives and T.V. Networks, order supplies, and generally look after the business side of things. Even in these days of Fax and E-mail, many people still prefer the person to person contact of the telephone.
At first meeting, many have failed to recognise Beryl’s deafness and have found her direct stare embarrassing. Beryl comes from an age when deaf children were taught lip-reading rather than sign language. I have often heard her chuckling when on-screen subtitles were seriously at odds with what was actually being said on screen or at the salacious asides that went on among extras confident that they couldn’t be heard. Beryl once told me that she could pick a film made in New Jersey or up-state New York from one made after the drift to California by the regional accents of the extras. I would doubt that. I would think that, being something of a film historian, she would unconsciously pick up other clues.
A few days ago, I found her chanting the mantra ‘rhubarb, rhubarb, cocktail shaker’ with obvious delight. She had come across it in one of the films. Something she had not seen before. It tickled her fancy.
“New Yorkers,” she told me. “They’ll be stage actors moonlighting.” Since then, Beth and Fran and I have been mouthing ‘rhubarb, rhubarb’ at each other whenever Beryl looked in our direction. So she was bound to take the first opportunity to get her own back.
Yesterday morning, I came in with something that I had read the night before. In one of his films, Douglas Fairbanks Snr is shown with a group of men in a cantina telling them a story that amuses them greatly. As it happened it was a very rude story that brought complaint at the time from a lip-reading nurse. Had Beryl seen the film? She had.
“And what did he say that caused so much fuss?” It was silly of me to ask. I saw the gleam come into her eye. Richard Thomas
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“Rhubarb, rhubarb, cocktail shaker.” We recited it together.
“No! Seriously though,” I insisted. But she pretended to go all prim.
“You FORGET that I”M a LADY.” She was going to let me stew. It’s hard to realise that that was only yesterday morning.
The work that we have been doing is not something that other laboratories can’t do. They don’t do it because it’s not where the money is. With the expensive equipment and the degree of expertise required, they look for a better return. What we have been running here for the last ten years is less a business and more a one-woman mission. It has only remained viable because of the night hours that Beryl has put in. The ash trays in the old days and latterly the lolly papers have always given her away.
At sixty five, it made little sense. At seventy five, it made no sense at all. Being able to set foot in the past is fascinating. I find it fascinating myself, but there is more to life. I have been on at her constantly to pass on her skills to Beth and Fran. Without success.
“They’re just girls!” she has continued to insist. “Here for the money. You can’t expect them to do it properly.” Both ‘girls are in their late thirties and have families. They are quick to pick things up and very reliable. I have pointed this out many times but no-one can meet Beryl’s perfectionist standards.
So in the past few months, I have taken to paying close attention to the way she does things. I have shown interest: asked questions while trying not to be too obvious about it. Getting some hands-on was not to be expected. I must have known something.
Late afternoon yesterday, I came inside after giving instructions to a courier to find Beryl ashen and suddenly aged.
“She says that my time has run out,”was all that I could get from her and, “She says that none of us are immortal, her included.” Who ‘she’ was was unclear. Beth and Fran had already gone home by then so I made us both a cup of tea. It took some time before I could get any sense from her. Richard Thomas
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She had been running one of a newly arrived batch to make an initial assessment. It was a romance with Florence Vidor and Francis X Bushman in the leads. It was Florence who had supposedly spoken to her. I suggested that the actress had actually been speaking to someone off- screen. After all, the film was made more than ninety years ago: before Beryl was even born. But!
“No! She wasn’t talking to anyone else. She looked straight at me and said ‘Beryl. Your time has run out’.”
When she felt up to it, we ran the film so that she could show me where this had occurred. And, of course, she couldn’t. We ran it again and still nothing.
“But she did say it. She did! She did!” She was anxious to have me believe: bewildered that there was nothing to see. I said, “Yes…yes… if you say so…I believe you.”
I shut the equipment down and gave the wife a call to say that there were problems, I’d be late, and took Beryl through to her living quarters. I talked to her for an hour or more until I felt that she could safely be left. She assured me that she’d be alright. She’d had a fright, that was all, but I found her this morning slumped where I’d left her. She didn’t know me. Our feisty lady had become a rag doll.
It’s not a stroke. It’s as though ten years or more of personal neglect has kicked in overnight or as though someone has pointed the bone. The doctor has had her admitted to hospital and I really cannot see her coming back any time soon, if ever.
So where do we go from here? I look at this mass of equipment, most of it leased, the rest paid for by re-mortgaging the house, and I wonder. Is this the end? Beth and Fran are competant enough within their limits and I can find any number of people to do what I’ve been doing.
But it would be foolish to think that I, or anyone else, can ever be Beryl.