Stubs - The First Auto

The First Auto (1927) starring Barney Oldfield, Patsy Ruth Miller, Charles Emmett Mack, Russell Simpson. Directed by Roy Del Ruth. Screenplay by Anthony Coldeway, Jack Jarmuth. Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck. Run time: 75 minutes. Black and White. USA. Silent with sound, Drama.

Made at a time when Hollywood, specifically in this case, Warner Bros., was experimenting with synchronized sound, the beginning of the end of the silent era, the studio was making a film about the end of the horse as the main mode of transportation, The First Auto. The synchronized sound, captured on a disc synchronized with the film, included music, sound effects and a few spoken words.

Set in 1895, Hank Armstrong (Russell Simpson), the owner of a livery stable, is riding high as his race horse, Sloe-Eyes, wins the big race, as well as other horse races, making Armstrong a big celebrity back in his hometown of Maple City.

Hank Armstrong (Russell Simpson) with his great love, a horse named Sloe-Eyes.

Hank’s son, Bob (Charles Emmett Mack), who doesn’t attend his father’s races, believes cars are the new thing and doesn’t try to hide his fascination. It even finds its way into Bob’s dating, as while on a date with Rose Robbins (Patsy Ruth Miller), Bob makes a primitive car out of his food. Ruth is not really impressed.

Hank feels more pressure when Elmer Hays (E. H. Calvert), the supposed inventor of the horseless carriage and the owner of his own car company, is invited to town by Mayor Jim Robbins (Frank Campeau). The whole town attends and Bob offers his services to run the magic lantern used for the  demonstration.

 Banker Rufus Stebbins (Douglas Gerrard) and family about to go for a joy ride.

Everyone seems to come away impressed and Hays states in the lecture that the days of the horse are numbered and that a car will one day go 30 miles an hour. That doesn’t sit well with Hank, but everyone in town starts selling their horses and buying cars, including the town’s richest citizen, Banker Rufus Stebbins (Douglas Gerrard), who we see take his family for a drive before driving off a cliff into a body of water.

"Bob." Hank wakes up his son to tell him about Sloe-Eyes passsing.

Hank suffers a personal loss when his horse, Sloe-Eyes, dies suddenly from a stroke. Hank feels great love for the horse that is behind his success and is heartbroken when she dies. However, when he wakes up his son with a startlingly audible “Bob” on the soundtrack, to inform him, Bob doesn’t seem to care and goes back to sleep. Hank is upset with his son’s turning his back on him and even goes so far as to threaten to whip him, which makes Bob leave home.

Barney Oldfield passes a competitor as he goes on to set a record of 60 mph in the Ford 999 model.

Leaving Rose behind, Bob sets out for Detroit, where the cars come from. It is there that he hangs around and watches the Master Driver (Barney Oldfield) race a car, taking Henry Ford’s 999 motor car up to 60 mph. Bob’s fascination with racing is only cemented.

Photo with Oldfield and Henry Ford with his 999 model which Oldfield drove to record speed.

The film then presents a montage showing the development of cars into the sleek, modern machines of 1905.

How things changed. An early model in The First Auto.

Meanwhile, the change from horses to cars leaves Hank bankrupt and he is forced to sell everything to satisfy his creditors.

Later, in 1905, now a racer, Bob returns home to participate in the first auto race in the county, but he doesn’t tell his father. Meanwhile, a rival for Rose’s affections convinces Hank to sabotage one of the cars so that it will explode. It is only when Rose comes to take Hank to the races to see his son does he realize what he’s done.

Rose Robbins (Patsy Ruth Miller) at Bob's (Charles Emmett Mack) side after the crash.

They race to the track, pulled by Sloe-Eye’s now grown foal Bright Eyes, but are too late. The car explodes and Hank is convinced that he’s killed his son. However, Rose makes to the track and beside Bob. Distraught, he sets the livery stable on fire and watches it burn to the ground. It is then that Rose shows up and tells him that Bob is okay.

Hank still isn't sure about the car when Rose tries to take him to see Bob in the hospital.

Having seen the error in his ways, Hank, along with Bob, opens an automobile business.

While the film must have anticipated a reunion between father and son, that was not possible. Charles Emmett Mack was killed when the car he was driving was struck broadside by a wagon on a country road and overturned on his way to a racetrack in Riverside, CA to film an auto racing scene for the film. His co-star Patsy Ruth Miller had turned down a ride with him that day because she was not needed for filming until later.

Mack’s character, Bob, is really not a likeable character, as he shows no emotions when his father’s horse dies and seems more interested in cars than Rose, punctuated by his leaving her behind when he goes off to Detroit. But he’s supposed to represent change while his father represents the past. Mack was only 26 when he died, having started in the business working for D.W. Griffith, first as a tour guide and later a prop man before starring in Dream Street (1921).

Russell Simpson, who played Hank, had already made well over 60 films by the time he took the role of the father clinging to his old-fashioned ways. He’s not really likeable either, as he seems to love horses more than people, even his son. A rift between father and son is really both of their fault. However, he does get one of the better acting parts, being allowed to, as one modern reviewer noted, turn the sentimentality to 11. Simpson would go on to become a member of the John Ford stock company, playing Pa Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and taking on small roles in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), Wagon Master (1950) and The Horse Soldiers (1959).

The actual star of the film, Patsy Ruth Miller, is really little more than eye candy, or what passed for eye candy in 1927. She really doesn’t have much of a role until the end, when she is interacting with Hank. Miller was discovered by actress Alla Nazimova at a Hollywood party and got her first break with a small role in Camille, which starred Rudolph Valentino. Her roles gradually improved and she was chosen as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1922. In 1923, she was acclaimed for her performance as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame opposite Lon Chaney. It’s hard to get an idea of her acting from this role, however.

Barney Oldfield. His name was synonymous with racing in the early 1900s.

Barney Oldfield, despite the top-billing, was better known as a race car driver than an actor. Once synonymous with racing, he was the winner of the inaugural AAA National Championship in 1905 and the first man to drive a car at 60 miles per hour on a circular track in 1903. Besides playing himself, Oldfield was also a technical advisor on the film. The film gives him a chance to recreate his record-setting 60 mph run, which sort of functions as a recreation with the participants involved. I don’t know if his name was enough of a draw at the time, but his screen time and billing don’t seem to go together.

William Demarest on the right provides some comic relief.

Also in minor roles are William Demarest, who plays Dave Doolittle - Village Cut-up, and Gibson Gowland, who played the village blacksmith. Demarest is seen in various scenes, no doubt in an attempt to add some levity to the story. We see him juggling eggs and pouring water down his friend’s pants, bits that must have been funnier a century ago. Demarest’s career would really take off when he became a member of Preston Sturge’s stock company, appearing in The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1942) and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). In the '60s, he would win a new generation of fans as Uncle Charlie on the family sitcom My Three Sons.

Gowland started in films playing bit parts before appearing D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation (1914) and Intolerance. He made about 63 films, mostly playing villains, and had just one starring role, dentist John McTeague in Erich von Stroheim’s Greed (1924). Here he’s back to playing bit parts.

The film’s use of synchronized sound seems to work pretty well. When you hear Hank call out “Bob” in the film, which he does twice, you get a chance to imagine what it must have been like for audiences at the time to hear it. As startling as it is now, it must have been even more so in 1927. And so much more was to come that year when Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer.

The racing is well presented. As an audience member you get a real sense of how wild those early race car competitions were. They may drive faster now, but there is so much more protection provided. Back then it seems all that separated you from injury was a hat and pair of goggles.

I’m not sure what the state of special effects were in 1927, but the fiery explosion in the final race scene look like they were scratched on the negative rather than anything physical in the production. There is no need to compare special effects then with now, but to a modern audience they look pretty fake and you have to imagine they would look the same to audiences at the time.

This is an example of Hollywood taking a real-life event and making it personal. The change over from horses to cars was a major event and did affect people like the Armstrongs, but it would have been better if one of the main characters in the film was at least likeable. Not wholly without merit, the film would have been stronger if so much of the action towards the end didn't take place off screen. Charles Emmett Mack's death before filming was completed definitely hurt the final product, but I'm not sure it would have been much better if he had lived.