Mamba

press release: USA | 1930 | DCP | 78 min.

Director: Albert S. Rogell; Cast: Jean Hersholt, Eleanor Boardman, Ralph Forbes

In 1913 German East Africa (now Tanzania), an impoverished countess is purchased to be the wife of an abusive and hated plantation owner (Hersholt), and she soon finds herself terrorized by the alien environment. Tiffany, a low-budget, independent studio, challenged the majors with this colonial melodrama, investing half a million dollars to make a talkie in two-color Technicolor. Although Mamba was a box-office hit, Tiffany went bankrupt in 1932 and many of the small studio’s releases disappeared into oblivion. This UCLA restoration was made possible in part by the discovery of a complete nitrate print discovered in Australia in 2009! Preceded by Hearst Metrotone News, Vol. 1, No. 269 (1930, 9 min.) and Me and the Boys (1929, 9 min.)

All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.

Down and Dirty in Gower Gulch: Poverty Row Films Preserved by UCLA

During the 1930s and 1940s, while the major studios controlled first run theatres, numerous independent studios produced what were called “B-Films,” whether westerns, crime dramas, or horror. Low budget studio independents, like Monogram, Producers Releasing Corporation, Reliance, Republic, and Tiffany, were housed in rental studios off Gower Street in Los Angeles, often referred to as “Gower Gulch.” So-called “Poverty Row” pictures were usually made for $100,000 or less, and shot on five to ten day shooting schedules. Despite their exceedingly low budgets, resulting in often cheesy sets and under par acting, the poverty row studios had a surprising degree of freedom to tackle controversial subject matter, whether venereal disease, the psychology of kidnap victims or rampant quackery in the medical profession. The lack of budget also gave creative film directors, like Edgar G. Ulmer and Lowell Sherman, the opportunity to turn minimal resources into expressive devices. UCLA Film & Television Archive has moved increasingly towards preserving independent and poverty row titles, many of which are no longer copyrighted, because their producers never registered the films to begin with or lost rights because they went bankrupt. These “orphan films” visualize many of the repressed or forbidden themes that preoccupy the nether regions of the American psyche. Get ready for a wild ride!  (Jan-Christopher Horak, Director, UCLA Film & Television Archive).