A word or two about my middle school before I get into my reminiscing proper. I attended Samuel Morse Middle School for the Gifted and Talented. To put the matter in shorter terms, I went to a nerd school. Most of the kids I went to school with in middle school went to a college bound high school (no doubt another nerd school) whereas I did not. No doubt many of them went to years of college and are now mathematicians or chemists or designing new computers or something. Well, at least a couple of them must be. A lot of the guys I knew were (and no doubt a few still are) incredibly intelligent and must have accomplished something. However, as this story is not about them, I shall not continue to muse on them for the moment.
The last period of the day was an elective class. Every six weeks we had to sign up for a new class. I forget the exact reasoning behind the concept, but I think the reasons were: (1) to get us used to the concept of signing up for classes, which we'd have to do in high school, (2) to let us end the day on a happy note, and (3) to let us see another side of our teachers. You see, the elective classes were all based on things the teachers were interested in teaching, hobbies that they were willing to share with us. Most of them were pretty fun. I remember taking origami once, chess once or twice (and realizing I wasn't all that good at it, so, if you see my Doctor being brilliant at chess, he's not getting it from me), and cribbage quite a few times as I really took to the game (although I haven't gotten to play it for years now). Some of the classes you could take as many times as you wanted, others you could only take once a year, depending on the teacher, subject and demand for the class. The class I really loved was one of those 'once a year' classes. If it wasn't, I would have signed up for it and taken it as often as I could and then I wouldn't have learned cribbage.
One of the shop teachers, Mr. Kukla, ran the class. He had metal shop, had glasses and a thick mustache, and had a tendency to look at you like you'd just given him a reason to sock you in the eye. He was moderately gruff and grumpy sounding. All of which I learned quickly as he spoke to us that first day. I cringed at my desk, wondering if I'd made a mistake. This is when I discovered about that third reason, learning about our teachers. You see, Mr. Kukla was a collector of movies.
This would be the mid eighties now and, while home video recorders had been around in one form or another since the sixties and the VCR since the late seventies/early eighties, it was still relatively uncommon to have one. Schools, in general, still did not have them in quantity (I ran projectors in middle school but as never part of AV or anything). Mr. Kukla collected a format that was just getting ready to die out, 8mm home movies. More specifically, he collected early comedy films. While I forget the exact title, the class was a history lesson of early comedy films, focusing on silents. Considering my interest in early films, I thought I might find this interesting. It was probably the best class I ever had in school. As it turned out, not only did Mr. Kukla collect these films, but he was a member of a local fan club (likely a local tent of the 'Sons of the Desert', these details fade from the memory with time) and he and his buddy had a Laurel and Hardy styled slapstick routine that they would perform. It got him featured in the local newspaper while I was in school, and I kept the article (I've no idea where it is at the moment, otherwise I'd reference it and improve this memory a bit). At a talent show, they performed for the school. It was hilarious. So, despite his gruff exterior, he was actually a pretty nice, funny guy, he just wasn't about to take any crap from us kids.
The basis setup for the class was this: after we got settled and took attendance, he would tell us what we were going to see that day. He would explain a few things about the star or group if we hadn't seen anything by them previously, explaining about their career and what kind of characters they tended to play. He would explain a few things about the movie specifically, explaining references our young minds might not understand about a movie from the twenties and thirties or how certain scenes, like stunts, were filmed back then. Then, when he felt we had enough information to get a grip on the film (but not so much that we wouldn't have time to finish it), the lights would go out, he'd start the projector, start some old time background music on his tape recorder for the completely silent movies, and we'd watch a two reeler. In this way I got to see some truly ancient films (I think the oldest we watched was from 1909), into Harold Lloyd films, really old 'Our Gang' shorts (very pre 'Spanky' and 'Alfalfa' and the rest of that group), Chaplins, Charlie Chases, Laurel and Hardy shorts, and a bunch more I'm not remembering. It was brilliant and funny and every day was something interesting, new and different.
If my book reading of old horror films while younger did not inform me about missing films and footage, then it was probably this class that did it (although in a few short years I'd find out about the Doctor Who problem). I remember him explaining about the Laurel and Hardy short 'The Battle of the Century' and then showing us the footage that did exist at the time. It was great. (Oddly enough, one of the summers I was in middle school, our family went on one of our very infrequent vacations up to Wisconsin Dells, which is a local tourist attraction with lots of mini golf courses, arcades, shops, water parks, etc. It was a wax museum that I had to go into. The last room had Laurel and Hardy in it with a fragment of a movie on an endless loop. It was the existing footage from 'The Battle of the Century'. Odd that.) I'll try to make this explanation short, but knowing me, it'll get lengthy. Any road, most shorts were two reelers, meaning simply enough that they went to two reels of film at some point. I'm not sure if they were sent out to the theatres as two reels or when they were filmed/edited they went to this length, my memory fails me here. The reel was a way to estimate the length of a production by indicating the length of the physical film, there were single reel films, two reelers, four reelers, whatever. A reel ran at about ten minutes, give or take a minute or so either way. Therefore, most two reelers ran from between 18 and 22 minutes. If it helps, most all Three Stooges shorts were two reelers. At some point in time, the negative for 'The Battle of the Century' went missing along with any archive prints, whether they were accidentally destroyed or the film just disintegrated is of little concern as it was gone. However, in the late 50s/early 60s there were a couple of documentaries on the subject of the silent era which used parts of silent comedies in them. Really, they weren't so much documentaries as just clips of different shorts strung together. The end to 'The Battle of the Century' was the finale of one of these. This is lucky as it preserved this bit of film for us, albeit slightly edited. It also supports one simple fact: 'The Battle of the Century' contains the greatest pie fight ever caught on film. It builds slowly over the last few minutes of the short until it gets to the point that, literally, an entire street is involved in this pie fight. Pies are everywhere. No one is safe. It's hilarious. At this point in time, when Mr. Kukla showed this to us, he showed us that footage and, I believe, some stills that had been taken which helped illustrate the missing sections. At some point before this (although I don't believe that he had this print), in the mid seventies, the first reel was found, so all that missing now is a few segments from the second reel. In this condition, the short is available on tape and it is very well presented. If you have an interest in this sort of thing, I highly recommend the tape. Not only is it interesting from an historical point of view, for the way they reconstruct the missing sections, but it's also funny and proves that this short was important for another reason: Lou Costello has a cameo (although this is before he was famous).
So I got to see all these great films. I could only take the class once a year, but every year I was there I took it. Every year he changed the lineup of the films at least slightly so I got to see new things. It was just great.
Even if it affected me in no other way (and I'm not sure that the class did), I still love Stan and Ollie. It may have started that need to preserve film and television, but I'm not sure. It may have started my interest in classic comedy, but I'm reasonably sure I had that already. So I guess I'm only sure of that love for Stan and Ollie. That's enough for me. Thanks Mr. Kukla.
-Stephen M. Wolterstorff
1/12/2000
