| The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg | |
| Director: | Kenean Buel Storm Boyd (assistant director) |
| Producer: | Kalem Company at its studio in Jacksonville, Florida |
| Starring: | Miriam Cooper Guy Coombs Anna Q. Nilsson Hal Clements |
| Music: | Walter C. Simon, composer of film's piano score for theaters |
| Runtime: | 15-16 minutes, 35mm 1 reel (1016 feet)[1] |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | Silent film English intertitles |
The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg is a lost 1912 silent motion picture produced by Kalem Company of New York City and filmed in Jacksonville, Florida. With a storyline set in the 1860s, during the American Civil War, the military drama starred Miriam Cooper in the title role with a supporting cast that included Guy Coombs, Anna Q. Nilsson, and Hal Clements.
No footage of The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg is listed among the holdings of major film repositories, studio archives, or known private collections in North America, Europe, or elsewhere in the world. This Kalem release is therefore presumed to be lost, although a few stills from the film survive in advertisements printed in 1912 trade publications.
During the American Civil War, before leaving home to join his Confederate company as a drummer boy, Alma's young brother Charles gives her a final lesson on his drum. Six months later he is killed while advancing with his fellow soldiers in battle, and his body is sent home for burial. Devastated by her brother's death, Alma is determined to take his place. She dons his uniform, modifies her appearance, and enlists in the army under a false name to serve as another drummer "boy". Soon, though, Alma is recognized among the Southern troops by an "old friend",[1] Lieutenant Lightfoot, but he promises to keep her true identity and gender a secret.
The next morning Confederate and Federal forces prepare their positions to engage in another great battle near Vicksburg, Mississippi. As part of the Northern forces' preparations, "Yankee" Lieutenant Summers is ordered to place a cannon at the extreme left flank of the Federal line. The commander of the Confederate troops recognizes the deadly tactical advantage of that heavy weapon's location, so he orders the company to which Alma is attached to either capture the cannon during the attack or at least put it out of action. Southern forces now begin their charge with their still-disguised drummer steadily beating her drum along the front rank of soldiers. Alma succeeds during the fighting to spike and disable the enemy's artillery piece. Wounded in the assault, she collapses as Federal forces retreat, but in the aftermath she is found on the battlefield by a Northern soldier, who takes her to a Federal hospital, where her identity is revealed. Later there is an exchange of prisoners, and the story concludes happily with a double wedding, with what university professor and film historian Bruce Chadwick describes in his 2001 work The Reel Civil War as a "perfect reconciliation ending".[1] [2] In an allegorical scene that could be interpreted as the reunification of a divided nation, the zealous Southern rebel Alma marries "the soldier who captured her".[2]
Kalem's The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg was part of a series of films that the company released in the United States between 1911 and 1915 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War. In 1912 alone Kalem produced and Kenean Buel directed at least a dozen additional dramas set during that conflict: The Bugler of Battery B, The Siege of Petersburg, A Spartan Mother, The Tide of Battle, The Darling of the C.S.A., War's Havoc, The Battle of Pottsburg Bridge, Fighting Dan' McCool, Under a Flag of Truce, The Soldier Brothers of Susanna, Saved From Court Martial, and The Confederate Ironclad.
All of the previously noted Kalem dramas, including The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg, were filmed in northeastern Florida at the company's "winter studio", which was located next to the St. Johns River "about fifteen minutes by trolley" from downtown Jacksonville.[4] There, since the autumn of 1908, Kalem had leased spaces in an old three-story hotel to serve as the company's production headquarters in Florida. The hotel, "Roseland", was situated on three acres that also accommodated a large home, several cabins, and other outbuildings.[5] [6] Nearby, at the river, were a "big wharf" and "boats of all kinds", some of which served as props in screenplays and others to transport Director Buel, his camera operators, principal cast members, and any locally hired extras around the "territory rich in locations" for filming.[5] [6] Among other motion picture props assembled and stored on the Roseland properties for staging The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg and other war-related productions were supplies of Confederate and Federal uniforms, assorted military accoutrements, and various weapons, including several 1860s field cannons with their caissons for hauling ammunition.
Miriam Cooper, who performed as the title character in The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg, was in 1912 a recent addition to Kalem's Florida company of players. For her work on this film and others, the 20-year-old actress earned a salary of "thirty-five dollars a week and expenses", which included accommodations while on location at the winter studio.[7] Cooper describes in her 1973 memoir Dark Lady of the Silents how she and her fellow actors at the Roseland site resided in "a big old house called Fairfield", a residence that faced the river and featured double wraparound verandas overlooking "lush green growth".[8] She also reflects in her memoir about her performances there on various war-related films:
Although Kalem in 1912 was headquartered in New York City on West 24th Street in Manhattan,[5] the company in its Civil War films routinely presented screenplays of heroic, sympathetic Southern civilians and soldiers fighting against and defeating Northern forces, recurring themes that prompted additional comments by Miriam Cooper in her memoir. "In picture after picture", she writes, "we won the war for the Confederates fifty years after the war was over."[9] The Maryland-born actress then goes on to describe how her on-screen identity as a Southern heroine and action performer grew with these Kalem Civil War pictures: Cooper recounts too in some detail how she prepared specifically for her lead role in The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg and how in that process she gained valuable experience as an actor both on and off camera:
In Kalem's preparations for staging this film and other Civil War dramas in 1912, the company had announced in December 1911 that it was continuing to purchase "authentic equipment" for its growing inventories of 1860s uniforms, swords, pistols, longarms, and heavy weapons:
Kalem's efforts to collect military items actually used during the Civil War or that were generally available at the time of the conflict earned the company a reputation for excellence and authenticity among audiences and with film reviewers, one of whom in 1912 specifically praised The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg for "showing some of the most realistic war scenes ever portrayed on the screen."[10] Even army veterans in theater audiences and enthusiasts for militaria expressed their admiration for Kalem's attention to detail, especially when comparing its productions to those being presented by other studios. In its September 1912 issue, The Motion Picture Story Magazine shares with its readers a letter the trade publication received from G. L. Eskew of Charleston, West Virginia:
Caring for all of the military gear and weapons used to stage The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg and other war films shot in Florida was a costly, time-consuming operation for Kalem. In the April 15, 1912 issue of the bimonthly publication Kalem Kalendar, the company mentions how those expenditures and others provided many jobs to residents in and around Jacksonville:
Kalem officially released the film in the United States on June 5, 1912. Ten weeks later, by mid-August, the military drama began circulating to cinemas throughout England and soon to other European markets. In Germany, for example, the weekly Berlin trade publication Lichtbild Bühne announces in its September 21, 1912 edition that Die Trommlerin von Vicksburg (The Girl Drummer of Vicksburg) had been generally available for rent or purchase from German film distributors since the 14th of that month.[11]
Back in the United States, the film continued to circulate for many months after its release. Assorted newspapers were reporting in February and March 1913 that the Civil War drama was even being screened at sparsely populated, remote venues, such as Valhalla Hall in Gardnerville, Nevada and at the Tonawama Theatre in Burns, Oregon, where the production was promoted as "a realistic war story full of patriotism and sure to please."[12] By February 1913, the film had also reached Alaska, where it was being featured at the Dream Theatre in the gold-mining town of Ketchikan.[13]
To promote the motion picture and to enhance its presentation to audiences, Kalem offered to provide theater owners "'fine music with a fine picture'".[14] The company, for 25 cents per order, sent customers sheet music for a piano score "simply arranged and especially prepared for this feature" by composer Walter Cleveland Simon.[14] [15] A copy of that 1912 printed score is preserved on microfilm at the Library of Congress under the identification title "Special piano music for: The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg" and held as part of the library's catalog of "Music for Silent Films, 1894-1929".[16] The sale of accompanying music for The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg was not a unique offer by Kalem for its productions in 1912. That year the company also offered piano scores composed by Simon for other Civil War releases such as A Spartan Mother, War's Havoc, and Fighting Dan' McCool.[17]
In addition to offering theater owners copies of Walter Simon's special musical score for The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg, Kalem informed "exhibitors" that they could obtain from their regional distributors or "exchanges" a supply of four-color lithographed posters for the film, which would be "unfailing business producers" in attracting audiences. The posters were available in varying sizes, in "one, three and six sheet" formats.[18]
The film received generally positive reviews in contemporary American trade publications and exuberant promotion in newspapers in the North, South, and across the United States. The Vermont newspaper The Barre Daily Times in its advertising invited local residents to experience "War in all its realism", in a production replete with "heroic deeds” and a "compelling story of self-sacrifice".[19] In Connecticut, the Norwich Bulletin in its July 15, 1912 issue informs its readers of the picture's opening at the town's local theater:
In Hattiesburg, Mississippi, a town in the Deep South and located about 130 miles from Vicksburg, the local newspaper announced in early October 1912 a special screening of the film and repeated some of Kalem Company's own self-promotion as a producer of well-staged and "thrilling" Civil War films, as well as comments about "Marion" Cooper's rising popularity as a screen performer:
Out in the western part of the United States, in Pendleton, Oregon, the East Oregonian describes the film to its readers in its July 15, 1912 edition, characterizing it as a "romantic Civil War production full of thrilling action". The newspaper then adds a detail about the vintage weaponry shown in the motion picture, a detail that likely drew additional attention from moviegoers who were interested in various types of artillery used during the war: "In this picture there is given a representation of a battery of four parrot guns in action."[20]
Neither a copy nor partial footage of The Drummer Girl of Vicksburg in any format is listed among the holdings of major film repositories and silent-film databases in North America and Europe, including the Library of Congress, the George Eastman Museum, the Museum of Modern Art's collection of moving images, the UCLA Film and Television Archives, the National Film Preservation Foundation,[21] the Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the British Film Institute, Cinémathèque Française, the EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, and other catalogs for silent motion pictures accessible through the European Film Gateway (EFG). While searches continue to locate a negative or positive copy of this Kalem production, or even an original fragment from the film, the 1912 release is currently presumed to be lost.