Image from Robert Spence. Ralph was known for being remarkably funny, but all of his images are like this - severe and serious. The image below calls him a demon. There is a lot going on in this image, and it is one of many that Spence shot at his desk with his typewriter and Moviola (a device used to edit film). I could not glean much from the items on the desk (the ink well and scattered papers), but it is a little amusing that he seems to have a somewhat risqué figurine on the top shelf.
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Image provided by Robert Spence. Every other image of Spence is formal and stoic, but this is a uniquely candid shot, where he is lacking his typical formal attire. Many images of Spence, like this one, show Spence engaged in a learned activity (reading or writing), even though Spence was only educated through the 6th grade.
In this terrific image provided by Robert Spence, Ralph is shown opening the door for Ruth Roland, an early star in silent movies. You can catch a few of her highlights below. The other man, I believe, is Don Meany, Spence's general manager. From All Movie Guide: “All bad little films when they die go to Ralph Spence.” So read the Hollywood trade-paper advertisement of this former Houston journalist, who entered movies as a film editor in 1921. By the mid-’20s, Spence was firmly established as one of Hollywood’s top title writers, supplying clever, witty dialogue for such silent film favorites as Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, and Marie Dressler. He was also famous as a “film doctor,” rearranging scenes and rewriting subtitles in order to make poor films good and good films great. Legend has it that he once completely altered the mood and tone of a mediocre melodrama by reworking one single introductory title, transforming the villain’s mistress into his maiden aunt. Many of his “gag” titles became classics: In 1927’s The Callahans and the Murphys, for example, he has a drunken woman exclaim, “This stuff makes me see double and feel single!” Reportedly, Spence was considered so valuable a Hollywood commodity that he earned 10,000 dollars a picture; he was also the first title writer to receive separate billing on theater marquees, and at one juncture even starred in his own series of two-reel comedies. In the talkie era, Spence continued to specialize in comedy, collaborating on many of the early Wheeler and Woolsey vehicles at RKO; he was also one of the scenarists on Laurel and Hardy’s 1939 “comeback” picture The Flying Deuces. Ralph Spence’s final film credit was the 1943 musical Higher and Higher. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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AuthorGregory Robinson is the Chair of the Humanities Department at Nevada State College. He is also the author of All Movies Love the Moon, a collection of prose poems on silent movies. Archives
September 2014
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