Crystal Balls in Film 4

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Further Crystal Balls in Film!

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Crystal Balls in Film, Part Four

One of the best parts of collecting images of crystal balls in cinema is the prospect of locating the film and watching it. Whether sincere, hokey, spooky, or corny, every one of these movies tells us something about how crystal gazing was seen by the screen writers and directors of the past 125 years, and also how the prop masters and actors dealt with the crystal sphere as an artifact.

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  1916: "The Mysteries of Myra," starring Howard Estabrook as Dr. Payson Alden, Jean Sothern as Myra Maynard, and M.W. Rale as the Master of the Black Order. Myra Maynard is plagued by a wide variety of metaphysical assaults by the corrupt Black Order, a secret organization which uses magic, curses, and any supernatural means possible to achieve its ends. Myra's father belonged to the Black Order until his death, and two of his daughters have already committed suicide. Will Myra be next? This is a partially lost chapter-play film of 15 episodes, written by the noted occultist and paranormal researcher Hereward Carrington. The double-thumbs-up gesture seen in this poster was made famous by the founder of the Order of Thelema, Aleister Crowley, who also appeared in the movie. It has been restored in part through the use of stills and other working materials and is currently available on DVD and in text form.
  Colour movie poster.
  Genre: Occult, Horror.

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  1916: "The Mysteries of Myra," starring Jean Sothern as Myra Maynard. The text of this ad reads: "ACHIEVEMENT - We do not need to use superlatives -- Nor do we deem it necessary to say that THE MYSTERIES OF MYRA is the greatest feature series ever released. We will let this information come from 1,487 of the leading exhibitors, reviewers and newspaper men who attended the private showing of this feature series. And furthermore, to reiterate our contention, we might add that out of an audience of 1,487 we actually closed 703 contracts. THIS IS HISTORY! You can book it at our nearest exchange. INTERNATIONAL FILM SERVICE INC., 1 COLUMBUS CIRCLE, N.Y." The "contracts" referred to in the text committed theater owners to show every chapter for one week, until the series was completed. This serialized movie was so popular that it was also issued in the form of a novelization in 1916.
  Black and white advertisement in "Variety Magazine," April 28, 1916; p. 29.
  Genre: Occult, Horror.

We can learn about how fortune telling, prophesy, divination, and the occult have been perceived over the years when we see the role played by the crystal gazer in a fictional story. And because crystals are so flashy, they serve as stand-ins for all means of fortune telling. Prop and character are always linked: There are movies in which we can see horoscopes and astrologers, hands and palm readers, cards and cartomancers, and just flat out clairvoyant seers — but when the sets are dressed, many of those readers end up with a crystal ball somewhere in range of the camera's eye. They are simply too attractive to leave out of the picture.

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  1916: "The Mysteries of Myra," starring Jean Sothern as Myra Maynard. Myra flirts with the occult as the Black Order closes in on her, trying to force her to suicide through the exercise of mental concentration. This photo is the basis for the "Variety Magazine," advertisement." This is an important film because not only does it present the use of divination tools such as the crystal and automatic writing, it was the first movie to feature a sinister or Satanic occult order, astral travel, hypnotic control by means of spinning mirrors, and a bizarre humanoid monster along the lines of Frankenstein.
  Black and white movie still.
  Genre: Occult, Horror.

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  1929: "The Black Watch," starring Victor McLaglen as Captain Donald Gordon King and Myrna Loy as Yasmani. In the early part of her career, Loy often played an exotic Eurasian or a vixenish villainess.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Drama.

On the other hand, one of the most frustrating parts of collecting images of crystal balls in cinema is the issue of "lost films." It is shocking how many movies, both silent and sound, simply do not exist anymore. For some of these, we have a few publicity stills, newspaper advertisements, and lobby cards, but for others all that may remain are the notices in theatrical news magazines announcing the commencement or the wrap of shooting, or a review in some hick paper in Indiana that praised the show to the skies, thus adding to our frustration because we will never be able to see it.

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  1933: "Ramblin 'Round Radio Row #7," starring Al Dary and Ray Kulz. A radio salesman is trying to sell some gypsies a radio, but they have their own easy to operate crystal ball, which even functions as a TV. They show him how well it works by listening to and watching the doings of the Rhythm Boys (shown here), the Pickens Sisters, Tito Guizar, and Ann Lee, and let him try to receive a Frank Hazard program.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Short.

• 

  1939: "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island," starring Sidney Toler, Cesar Romero, and Victor Sen Yung, and featuring Gerald Mohr as Dr. Zodiac in a wild costume with a yoke that depicts all of the Sun Signs. Charlie's investigation of a phony psychic during the 1939 World Exposition on San Francisco's Treasure Island leads him to expose a suicide as murder.
  Black and white publicity still.
  Genre: Mystery.

Among the most frustrating of these lost films is "The Crystal Ball" of 1914. All that remains is a poster (with a crystal ball), a lantern slide advertisement (of a Hindu swami with a crystal ball), and a plot synopsis from "Moving Picture World" — yet this is the very first movie ever to feature a crystal ball. Also elusive -- although portions of it, and a complete novelization, remain -- is "The Mysteries of Myra," written by the enormously influential paranormal researcher and occult author Hereward Carrington, and featuring no less a personage than the occultist Alistair Crowley. A dedicated group of film historians known as the Serial Squadron has restored and compiled the three episodes that remain, and, working from the contemporary novelization and script, have assembled publicity stills in their proper order to fill in as many blanks as possible -- but we will never see this movie the way it was shown in theaters when it was a weekly chapter-play that thrilled the nation.

• 

  1939: "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island," starring Sidney Toler and Cesar Romero, and featuring Gerald Mohr as the sinister Dr. Zodiac.
  Colour movie poster.
  Genre: Mystery.

• 

  1939: "Charlie Chan at Treasure Island," starring Sidney Toler and Cesar Romero, with Victor Sen Yung as Jimmy Chan.
  Colour movie poster.
  Genre: Mystery.

Another area of frustration involves my collection of publicity stills featuring actors and actresses (mostly actresses, if the truth be told) holding or gazing into crystal balls -- with no indication as to the date the photo was made or the name of the film — if there was one — to which it can be attached. Sometimes a search through the performer's filmography pays off and the image can be tagged to the right film. But quite a few remain loose and undated.

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  1943-1945: "Inner Sanctum" was a series of six movies, starring Lon Chaney, Jr, and featuring David Hoffman as the Spirit of the Inner Sanctum. The series was based on a contemporaneous popular radio show of the same name, and each feature film was introduced by Hoffman's floating head in a crystal ball.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Mystery.

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  1943-1945: "Inner Sanctum" film series, featuring David Hoffman as the Spirit of the Inner Sanctum. The six films in the series were: 1) "Calling Dr. Death," 1943; 2) "Weird Woman," 1944; 3) "Dead Man's Eyes," 1944; 4) "The Frozen Ghost," 1945; 5) "Strange Confession" (a.k.a "The Man Who Reclaimed His Head"), 1945; and 6) "Pillow of Death," 1945.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Mystery.

Then there's the problem that arises when we have seen a film once or even several times, or have read its synopsis, and we know for sure that there is a crystal ball scene in it, but no matter where we search, we cannot find a poster, publicity still, or lobby card of the scene in which the crystal ball appears.

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  1944: "Black Magic," starring Sydney Toler as the Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan and Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown. Charlie searches for a murderer amidst numerous ghosts conjured up by a strange variety of spiritualists and occultists.
  Colour movie poster.
  Genre: Mystery.

• 

  1944: "Black Magic," starring Sydney Toler as Charlie Chan, Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown, Joseph Crehan as Sgt. Matthews, Jacqueline deWit as Justine Bonner, and featuring Dick Gordon as William Bonner, with his sinister crystal ball.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Mystery.

This is especially galling when we use the IMDb database to search for films with the keywords "crystal ball," and neither IMDb's image cache, nor a wider search engine exploration produces a single image, and we do not have the film in our own rather extensive collection. (Okay, frankly, we have thousands of films on DVD; but we are cheap and won't pay more than ten bucks each for them!)

• 

  1944: "Black Magic," starring Sidney Toler as the Honolulu police detective Charlie Chan, Frances Chan as Frances Chan, Dick Gordon as William Bonner, Geraldine Wall as Harriet Green, Frank Jaquet as Paul Hamlin, Mantan Moreland as Birmingham Brown, and Claudia Dell as Vera Starkey. Toler was the second European-American actor to play the Chinese-American Charlie Chan on screen, and he starred in 22 Charlie Chan movies made between 1938 and 1946.
  Colour lobby card.
  Genre: Mystery.

• 

  1940s: Ann Sheridan holding a crystal ball. Here is one of our mystery photos. Is this just a cute publicity photo or does it relate to a film in which the actress-singer Ann Sheridan actually appeared?
  Black and white publicity still.

Sometimes we can rent or purchase a purported crystal ball film and make a screen-grab of the crystal ball scene — if the quality of the print is clear. Other times we know the film is not lost, but we cannot locate a copy anywhere. Or, sad to say, we lacked the time to make the screen grab this year, and are putting it off until ... whenever.

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  1945: "Blithe Spirit," Starring Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, and Kay Hammond, and featuring Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati, the crystal gazer.
  Colour still.
  Genre: Fantasy.

• 

  1945: "Blithe Spirit," featuring Margaret Rutherford as Madame Arcati. Based on the poplar play of the same name by Noel Coward, the light-hearted story is about a man and his second wife who are haunted by the ghost of his first wife.
  Colour still.
  Genre: Comedy, Fantasy.

With all of that in mind, we have arrived at a plan to make this collection bigger, better, and more eccentric than ever: crowd-sourcing. What follows is a list of films that have crystal balls in them, according to the IMDb keyword database, which is itself crowd-sourced, and thus prone to error.

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  1946: "The Phantom Thief," starring Chester Morris as Boston Blackie, with Jeff Donnell, George E. Stone, Murray Alper, and Joseph Crehan, and featuring Marvin Miller as the crystal gazing Dr. Nejino. There were 25 Boston Blackie feature films made between 1918 and 1949, an NBC radio series ran from 1944 to 1950, and "The Adventures of Boston Blackie" appeared ion TV from 19591 through 1953. Chester Morris starred in 14 of the films, as well as voicing Blackie in 1944 on the radio. In this film, Morris's 11th outing in the role, Blackie encounters sinister seances and ghostly apparitions as he tries to track down a blackmailer-murderer.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Crime, Drama.

• 

  1947: "Hard Boiled Mahoney," starring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and Bobby Jordan as the Bowery Boys, and featuring Dan Seymour as Dr. Armand, the rotund crystal gazer. The Bowery Boys was a long-running comedy franchise, and for many years, Dan Seymour was every director's go-to-guy if they wanted a comedic fat man in a turban and robes.
  Sepia and green ink movie poster.
  Genre: Comedy.

Still, despite the possibility of crowd-sourcing errors, these are films we have not seen yet — and they are the films from which we want crystal ball screen grabs. If, during a search at IMDb or elsewhere online we have found a publicity still, poster, or lobby card of a man in a turban, we presume that he is a "Swami" or crystal gazer character in the film, and we offer both the character name and the actor's name.

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  1948: "Night Has a Thousand Eyes," starring Edgard G. Robinson as John Triton. After phony stage mentalist Triton mysteriously acquires supernatural powers of precognition, he becomes frightened and abandons his act to live in anonymity.
  Black and white still.
  Genre: Fantasy.

• 

  1950: "Le Furet," starring Pierre Renoir as Doctor Darvel Juste, with Jany Holt and Colette Darfeuil. A mysterious person known only as "Le Furet" (the Ferret) sends letters to the Parisian Police telling them when and where a series of murders will occur .
  Colour movie poster.
  Genre: Drama.

Can you help by supplying a screen shot of a crystal ball scene in any of these movies?

• 1918: "Betta, the Gipsy"
  • In Wales, a gypsy queen changes her sister's dead baby for one by the same father. The child grows up to marry her daughter.
  • Director: Charles Raymond | Stars: Marga Rubia Levy, Malvina Longfellow, George Foley, Edward Combermere

• 1922: "Haxan," a.k.a. "Witchcraft Through the Ages"
  • Fictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.
  • Director: Benjamin Christensen | Stars: Benjamin Christensen, Elisabeth Christensen, Maren Pedersen, Clara Pontoppidan

• 1924: "The Thief of Bagdad"
  • A recalcitrant thief vies with a duplicitous Mongol ruler for the hand of a beautiful princess.
  • Director: Raoul Walsh | Stars: Douglas Fairbanks, Julanne Johnston, Snitz Edwards, Charles Belcher

• 1930: "Honeymoon Zeppelin"
  • A jealous fiancee returns her engagement ring and flies off with another man on a blimp bound for Havana. On the voyage, his rival proposes, so the jilted fiance rushes to intercept the zeppelin by seaplane.
  • Director: Mack Sennett | Stars: Nick Stuart, Marjorie Beebe, Daphne Pollard, Edward Earle

• 1932: "Sinister Hands" — Swami Yomurda (Mischa Auer)
  • During a séance at an elderly millionaire's house, the millionaire is murdered and detectives realize that everyone who was at the séance had a motive for killing the man.
  • Director: Armand Schaefer | Stars: Jack Mulhall, Phyllis Barrington, Crauford Kent

• 1934: "The Moonstone" — Yandoo (John Davidson)
  • A valuable gem from India is stolen in an old dark mansion and it is up to Scotland Yard to find out who took it.
  • Director: Reginald Barker | Stars: David Manners, Phyllis Barry, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Jameson Thomas

• 1937: High Flyers
  • Two men running a carnival airplane ride are hired to fly to retrieve what they think are photos for a reporter; actually, they are retrieving stolen diamonds.
  • Director: Edward F. Cline | Stars: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Lupe Velez, Marjorie Lord

• 1939: "A Star is Shorn"
  • Bumbling talent agent Danny Webb tries to help a struggling actress get work.
  • Director: Del Lord | Stars: Danny Webb, Mary Treen, Ethelreda Leopold, Eugene Anderson Jr.

• 1941: "Playmates"
  • Lulu Monahan, the press agent for John Barrymore, is attempting to get a sponsor for a radio program.
  • Director: David Butler | Stars: Kay Kyser, John Barrymore, Lupe Velez, Ginny Simms

• 1942: "The Falcon Takes Over"
  • The Falcon and reporter Ann Riordan try to solve a string of murders after an ex-wrestler, released from jail, goes looking for his girl friend.
  • Director: Irving Reis | Stars: George Sanders, Lynn Bari, James Gleason, Allen Jenkins

• 1943: "No News Is Good News"
  • Robert Benchley ("The Answer Man") answers questions sent in by people.
  • Director: Will Jason | Stars: Robert Benchley, John B. Kennedy, Lon Poff

• 1946: "Aladin"
  • A Filipino adaptation of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp.
  • Director: Vicente Salumbides | Stars: Norma Blancaflor, Jaime de la Rosa, Naty Bernardo, Salvador Zaragoza

• 1947: "Le tempestaire"
  • In a village in Brittany, a worried young maid asks for help from a mysterious old man and his magical crystal ball in order to calm down the rough seas.
  • Director: Jean Epstein

• 1955: "Black Cats and Broomsticks"
  • An RKO-Pathe Screenliner short subject. Superstitions are examined in the context of mid-20th century America. Walking under ladders, spilt salt, stepping on cracks, haunted houses, voodoo dolls, and such illustrate the widespread belief in the supernatural.
  • Director: Larry O'Reilly | Star: Peter Roberts

• 1955: "A Time to Kill"
  • In the grounds of a dark, deserted mansion, a blackmailer collects money from his victim.
  • Director: Larry O'Reilly | Star: Peter Roberts

• 1957: "The End of the Fortune-Teller" ("Konec Jasnovidce")
  • Private clairvoyant Mathias Scibolini carries out his work with honesty and to the full satisfaction of his clients.
  • Directors: Ján Rohác, Vladimír Svitácek | Stars: Milos Kopecký, Frantisek Filipovský, Jirina Bohdalová, Vladimír Mensík

See Also

Lovely Ladies and Their Little Balls

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catherine yronwode
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Special thanks to my dear husband and creative partner nagasiva yronwode for illustrations, scans, and clean-ups.

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