Community Library Notes
“The Electric Hotel” by Dominic Smith is the historic story of Claude Ballard who lives in the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. Author Smith describes the hotel as it was as a home for retired movie stars and directors with its frayed and Moorish tapestries on Sunset Blvd. We learn about Claude’s life when a film student comes to interview him about the films he made in the early years of filmmaking.
As a young man, Claude was hired by the Lumiere brothers to show their invention to the actress Sabine Montrose. She had the guts to play Hamlet. She did it well in spite of the noise from the adjoining theater. Prior to this Claude had taken the camera into a hospital to photograph women “hysterics” as they walked. He also took photos of a cat falling off a ladder and landing on its feet. The machine was called a “cinematographe” and people gasped in amazement. Claude has also photographed his sister as she lay dieing. Then he photographed Sabine as she lay in a bubble bath on the roof of a New York hotel. He shows the film at men’s clubs in Australia. Claude makes much money. We learn the history of cinema while enjoying the drama of Claude’s life.
Claude hires a young man, Chip Spalding, to be his assistant.
Hal Bender buys a cinematographe and renovates an old theater in lavish style in Brooklyn. Martin, the graduate student, learns from Claude that he has the first film, “The Electric Hotel” in a hidden canister. Thomas A. Edison is suing everyone to keep control of his inventions, so they have to hide their films. Antique-like photos start each chapter to show us the settings. Bender’s mother Flossie, runs the concessions and is in charge of the cash register.
In 1908, Claude and company buy 20 acres overlooking the Hudson River with potential for a studio and filming locations. Because Sabine is not giving Claude the attention she had in the beginning of their relationship, he plans to make a film of her death in a creepy, isolated building called the electric hotel. A widow runs the hotel. Men come to see her, and end up dead or missing. Sabine likes the idea and wants to visit the widow so she can make her acting more realistic. After the film is made, Sabine writes the widow and offers to adopt her two children, Cora and Leo. Sabine tells the widow she plans to marry Claude. He will be a good father.
In 1963, Claude calls Martin when he can’t sleep and they watch the restored footage of a German soldier in a spiked helmet during the first world war, in Belgium. Claude and his assistant Chip had driven into the shelled village of Antwerp with their cameras, a tripod and extra rolls of film. Author Smith fully describes the film-maker’s task as they hide in a tree or behind a wall. Claude filmed dozens of dead men and horses as it rained and flooded the trenches. Claude is arrested by German officers, his wound treated, and is taken to a chateau where he is praised for his movie work and served elegant buffet dinners. He’s treated with respect as an American. But Claude makes sure his camera is on to show the horrors the Germans did in Belgium. He hides the films and shows them later to a large gathering of press reporters and reps of many countries. The world is stunned and vows to help Belgium.
Does Claude escape from the Germans? Does Martin, the student, show the films at his presentation?
Do the original actors and film-makers show up at the occasion many years later? Find this fascinating story on the new fiction shelf of your Mendocino Community Library.
The Mendocino Community Library is at the corner of William and Little Lake streets, Mendocino. Hours: Monday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; closed Sundays and holidays, 707-9375773.