Grass; A Nation's Battle for Life


45m 1925
Grass; A Nation's Battle for Life

Brief Synopsis

In this silent film, nomadic tribes make a perilous journey each year in search of fresh grasslands.

Film Details

Also Known As
Grass; the epic of a lost tribe
Genre
Documentary
Silent
Release Date
Jan 1925
Premiere Information
New York premiere: 30 Mar 1925
Production Company
Famous Players--Lasky
Distribution Company
Paramount Pictures
Country
United States

Technical Specs

Duration
45m
Film Length
7 reels

Synopsis

Marguerite Harrison, Merian Cooper, and Ernest B. Schoedsack travel through Asia Minor to reach a tribe of nomads in Iran known as the Bakhtiari. They follow the tribesmen on their 48-day trek across deserts, rivers, and mountains to reach summer pasture for their flocks. The hardships and conquests of the 50,000 tribesmen are shown: fording the treacherous waters of the Karun River by floating on rafts buoyed by inflated goatskins; ascending an almost perpendicular mountain only to be confronted by yet another, pathless and covered with deep snow; and finally descending to their goal--a fertile and grassy valley.

Film Details

Also Known As
Grass; the epic of a lost tribe
Genre
Documentary
Silent
Release Date
Jan 1925
Premiere Information
New York premiere: 30 Mar 1925
Production Company
Famous Players--Lasky
Distribution Company
Paramount Pictures
Country
United States

Technical Specs

Duration
45m
Film Length
7 reels

Articles

The Sea of Grass


"I was too dumb to quit," said director Elia Kazan of his second feature film, The Sea of Grass (1947). While he had an inkling during pre-production that this was to be a messy shoot, he tried to persevere as best he could, though in the end his instincts were right: this is not only the least "Kazan-like" of his movies, but it's the weakest of the Tracy-Hepburn vehicles. The problems Kazan faced can basically be boiled down to (1) a studio-imposed production schedule, and (2) severe conflicts between the director and his stars.

The movie's plot is best described as a western-set soap opera with Katharine Hepburn as a St. Louis lady who marries New Mexico cattle baron Spencer Tracy, only to find out that he is tyrannically battling the homesteaders who have been settling on his land (which is known as "the sea of grass"). Turned off by her husband's methods, Hepburn has an affair with his enemy, Melvyn Douglas, which produces a son. She and Tracy get back together, and the illegitimate son eventually grows up as a ne'er-do-well (Robert Walker), leading to more tragedy and melodramatic conflicts.

Kazan was so attracted to this story that he specifically asked MGM to let him direct it. He was under contract to Fox at the time, where he had directed his 1945 debut A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it was not an exclusive contract and he was free to work for other studios if he wanted. What drew him to The Sea of Grass, he told interviewer Michel Ciment, "was the size of the classic American story" and "a feeling...that when history changes, something wonderful is lost." Kazan envisioned spending months on location a la Robert Flaherty, and making an almost anthropological film using unknown actors whose "faces are like leather." What he got instead was a typical studio movie with huge stars on a soundstage.

Meeting with MGM producer Pandro S. Berman, Kazan discovered that the studio planned to shoot the film almost entirely on the lot with rear-projection images of rolling grass and hills. "It became apparent," Kazan told Ciment, "that none of the picture was going to be shot on location - and it was a picture about grass, country and sky! Now, if I had been knowledgeable, strong, confident, if I had protected my own dignity, I would have quit. But somehow I was trained not to stop, to find the best solution possible." When the final script came in, it too was not quite to the director's liking, but there was little Kazan could do. He had yet to make a serious name for himself in Hollywood, and his clout was limited.

All accounts of The Sea of Grass stress the disharmony on set between Kazan and his two stars. Tracy was suffering from drinking problems and under-acted. Hepburn was primarily interested in controlling Tracy's drinking and overacted. Kazan's Method approach did not work well with Tracy's more instinctive style, and they clashed, with Hepburn arbitrating the confrontations. In her biography Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Leaming wrote, "Kate insulated Spencer from pressure that might drive him to drink. Concerned solely with keeping him sober, she encouraged him basically to walk through the film. Shrewdly, she made it impossible for Kazan to say a word about Tracy's listless performance. Hardly would he finish a take when Kate's voice resounded through the set: 'Wasn't that wonderful? How does he do it? He's so true! He can't do anything false!' Kazan was defeated."

Co-star Melvyn Douglas echoed these observations in his autobiography. Kazan, he recounted, was intimidated by his two stars. He would "work into the night preparing for the next day's work, soaking himself in the script, only to be confronted in the morning by genial Spencer Tracy, who would arrive, throw himself into a chair and casually memorize his lines. Kazan seemed to want bursts of energy and an undertone of malevolence out of the actor; Spence projected a heavy, relaxed authority. He was wonderfully skillful but, finally, did not do what the director requested."

For his part, Kazan found Tracy a far cry from the unknown, leathery face he had desired: "I found that he did not like horses and horses did not like him. He is supposed to play a man who spends most of his time on a horse. He was rather plump, not a western type... not at all, in any way, like the type he was being asked to portray."

As for Hepburn, Douglas wrote that "though playing a lady from St. Louis who was virtually being ground into the plains, she seemed reluctant to put aside her star's glamour. Each time she emerged from the dressing room, she had on a fresh new frock, a costuming scheme to which she steadfastly clung in spite of several confrontations with her director." Kazan told Ciment of this: "All the dresses were very nice, but not at all lived in... The effect of the picture was a lot of pretty illustrations."

Douglas poked some fun at himself, too, recalling that after three years away from movie cameras, he was nervous and "could barely ride a horse." When the movie came out, he received a fan letter that requested he "leave the heavy emoting to Laughton" and return to being "gay, debonair Melvyn."

Early in production Kazan got an amusing lesson in the MGM studio philosophy. He had just shot a scene between Hepburn and Douglas in which Hepburn cries. Kazan was proud of the way it turned out; Louis B. Mayer, however, was not. Kazan went to see the studio chief. "She cries too much," Mayer said. "But that is the scene, Mr. Mayer." "The channel of her tears is wrong." "What do you mean?" pressed Kazan. "The channel of her tears goes too close to the nostril, it looks like it is coming out of her nose like snot." "Jesus, I can't do anything with the channel of her tears!" Kazan exclaimed. "Young man," replied Mayer, "you have one thing to learn. We are in the business of making beautiful pictures of beautiful people and anybody who does not acknowledge that should not be in the business."

Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Director: Elia Kazan
Screenplay: Vincent Lawrence, Marguerite Roberts, Conrad Richter (novel)
Cinematography: Harry Stradling, Sr.
Film Editing: Robert Kern
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse
Music: Herbert Stothart
Cast: Spencer Tracy (Col. James Brewton), Katharine Hepburn (Lutie Cameron Brewton), Robert Walker (Brock Brewton), Melvyn Douglas (Brice Chamberlain), Phyllis Thaxter (Sara Beth Brewton), Edgar Buchanan (Jeff).
BW-123m. Closed captioning.

by Jeremy Arnold
The Sea Of Grass

The Sea of Grass

"I was too dumb to quit," said director Elia Kazan of his second feature film, The Sea of Grass (1947). While he had an inkling during pre-production that this was to be a messy shoot, he tried to persevere as best he could, though in the end his instincts were right: this is not only the least "Kazan-like" of his movies, but it's the weakest of the Tracy-Hepburn vehicles. The problems Kazan faced can basically be boiled down to (1) a studio-imposed production schedule, and (2) severe conflicts between the director and his stars. The movie's plot is best described as a western-set soap opera with Katharine Hepburn as a St. Louis lady who marries New Mexico cattle baron Spencer Tracy, only to find out that he is tyrannically battling the homesteaders who have been settling on his land (which is known as "the sea of grass"). Turned off by her husband's methods, Hepburn has an affair with his enemy, Melvyn Douglas, which produces a son. She and Tracy get back together, and the illegitimate son eventually grows up as a ne'er-do-well (Robert Walker), leading to more tragedy and melodramatic conflicts. Kazan was so attracted to this story that he specifically asked MGM to let him direct it. He was under contract to Fox at the time, where he had directed his 1945 debut A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it was not an exclusive contract and he was free to work for other studios if he wanted. What drew him to The Sea of Grass, he told interviewer Michel Ciment, "was the size of the classic American story" and "a feeling...that when history changes, something wonderful is lost." Kazan envisioned spending months on location a la Robert Flaherty, and making an almost anthropological film using unknown actors whose "faces are like leather." What he got instead was a typical studio movie with huge stars on a soundstage. Meeting with MGM producer Pandro S. Berman, Kazan discovered that the studio planned to shoot the film almost entirely on the lot with rear-projection images of rolling grass and hills. "It became apparent," Kazan told Ciment, "that none of the picture was going to be shot on location - and it was a picture about grass, country and sky! Now, if I had been knowledgeable, strong, confident, if I had protected my own dignity, I would have quit. But somehow I was trained not to stop, to find the best solution possible." When the final script came in, it too was not quite to the director's liking, but there was little Kazan could do. He had yet to make a serious name for himself in Hollywood, and his clout was limited. All accounts of The Sea of Grass stress the disharmony on set between Kazan and his two stars. Tracy was suffering from drinking problems and under-acted. Hepburn was primarily interested in controlling Tracy's drinking and overacted. Kazan's Method approach did not work well with Tracy's more instinctive style, and they clashed, with Hepburn arbitrating the confrontations. In her biography Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Leaming wrote, "Kate insulated Spencer from pressure that might drive him to drink. Concerned solely with keeping him sober, she encouraged him basically to walk through the film. Shrewdly, she made it impossible for Kazan to say a word about Tracy's listless performance. Hardly would he finish a take when Kate's voice resounded through the set: 'Wasn't that wonderful? How does he do it? He's so true! He can't do anything false!' Kazan was defeated." Co-star Melvyn Douglas echoed these observations in his autobiography. Kazan, he recounted, was intimidated by his two stars. He would "work into the night preparing for the next day's work, soaking himself in the script, only to be confronted in the morning by genial Spencer Tracy, who would arrive, throw himself into a chair and casually memorize his lines. Kazan seemed to want bursts of energy and an undertone of malevolence out of the actor; Spence projected a heavy, relaxed authority. He was wonderfully skillful but, finally, did not do what the director requested." For his part, Kazan found Tracy a far cry from the unknown, leathery face he had desired: "I found that he did not like horses and horses did not like him. He is supposed to play a man who spends most of his time on a horse. He was rather plump, not a western type... not at all, in any way, like the type he was being asked to portray." As for Hepburn, Douglas wrote that "though playing a lady from St. Louis who was virtually being ground into the plains, she seemed reluctant to put aside her star's glamour. Each time she emerged from the dressing room, she had on a fresh new frock, a costuming scheme to which she steadfastly clung in spite of several confrontations with her director." Kazan told Ciment of this: "All the dresses were very nice, but not at all lived in... The effect of the picture was a lot of pretty illustrations." Douglas poked some fun at himself, too, recalling that after three years away from movie cameras, he was nervous and "could barely ride a horse." When the movie came out, he received a fan letter that requested he "leave the heavy emoting to Laughton" and return to being "gay, debonair Melvyn." Early in production Kazan got an amusing lesson in the MGM studio philosophy. He had just shot a scene between Hepburn and Douglas in which Hepburn cries. Kazan was proud of the way it turned out; Louis B. Mayer, however, was not. Kazan went to see the studio chief. "She cries too much," Mayer said. "But that is the scene, Mr. Mayer." "The channel of her tears is wrong." "What do you mean?" pressed Kazan. "The channel of her tears goes too close to the nostril, it looks like it is coming out of her nose like snot." "Jesus, I can't do anything with the channel of her tears!" Kazan exclaimed. "Young man," replied Mayer, "you have one thing to learn. We are in the business of making beautiful pictures of beautiful people and anybody who does not acknowledge that should not be in the business." Producer: Pandro S. Berman Director: Elia Kazan Screenplay: Vincent Lawrence, Marguerite Roberts, Conrad Richter (novel) Cinematography: Harry Stradling, Sr. Film Editing: Robert Kern Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse Music: Herbert Stothart Cast: Spencer Tracy (Col. James Brewton), Katharine Hepburn (Lutie Cameron Brewton), Robert Walker (Brock Brewton), Melvyn Douglas (Brice Chamberlain), Phyllis Thaxter (Sara Beth Brewton), Edgar Buchanan (Jeff). BW-123m. Closed captioning. by Jeremy Arnold

Grass


When Robert Flaherty unveiled his groundbreaking documentary, Nanook of the North (1922), he not only established the basic vocabulary of documentaries, but also started a trend toward real-life, man vs. nature epics. The most devastating of these pictures would have to be Grass, a harrowing record of human bravery and endurance that, after all these years, is still an astonishing thing to see.

Grass's directors, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and their patron, Marguerite Harrison, set out to make a film about a nomadic Asian tribe. The only problem was that they knew little about nomadic Asian tribes and even less about where to find one. After a false start and a lengthy journey, they eventually came into contact with the Bakhtiari in what is now known as western Iran. The Bakhtiari proved to be extraordinarily courageous, fascinating people, and the fledgling directors ended up with some of the more remarkable footage in motion picture history.

Each summer, the Bakhtiari would journey, with their livestock in tow, to pasture grounds in the highlands. What this meant was that 50,000 people and 500,000 animals (that's not a misprint) would trudge across a 12,000-foot mountain range in the snow, ford a river, and climb a sheer mountain face! Their journey was literally a matter of life or death, and it's all caught on film. Stunning moments abound, but you won't soon forget thousands of people swimming across a raging river on inflated goat skins, with their livestock tied up and sprawled across makeshift rafts! Grass may be slightly rickety in its construction, and some of the subtitles verge on the inane, but much of what you'll see is truly beyond belief.

As Richard Griffith noted in a 1925 Museum of Modern Art bulletin on Grass, Cooper and Schoedsack, formed a partnership based on ³a mutual interest in the strange, the dangerous, and the unknown.² Schoedsack, who started out as a camera operator for Mack Sennett, made his name by shooting amazing World War I battle footage, during which he put himself very much in the line of fire. In 1919, still looking to fight, he journeyed to Poland where he met up with Cooper, a kindred spirit who was formerly a pilot in the French military, but by then was a lieutenant-colonel in the Russo-Polish War. After the war, Cooper convinced Schoedsack to join him in making Grass.

Harrison, an ex-journalist and spy (!) who had reportedly saved Cooper's life during the Russian Revolution agreed to help finance Grass, but only if she could participate in its production. So, after writing a check for $5,000, she took the trip of a lifetime. Harrison serves as a sort of stand-in for the audience, appearing in many shots along with the nomads. To call Harrison, Cooper, and Schoedsack gutsy would be a vast understatement. These filmmakers could have been killed while trying to secure their footage, and many of the people they were photographing actually did lose their lives.

Somewhat surprisingly, given their intense personalities, Cooper and Schoedsack had a sense of humor about their exploits. The first fictional film that they made together was a little picture called King Kong (1933), which, of course, is about a gang of camera-toting adventurers who get more than they bargained for in an exotic location. That's right- King Kong is semi-autobiographical! After the traumas they shared with the Bakhtiari while making Grass, Kong would have been a cakewalk even if the gorilla were real.

Producer: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Screenplay: Richard Carver, Terry Ramsaye
Cinematography: Merian C. Cooper, Marguerite Harrison, Ernest B. Schoedsack
Film Editing: Richard Carver, Terry Ramsaye
Cast: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, Marguerite Harrison, Haidar Khan, Lufta.
BW-71m.

by Paul Tatara

Grass

When Robert Flaherty unveiled his groundbreaking documentary, Nanook of the North (1922), he not only established the basic vocabulary of documentaries, but also started a trend toward real-life, man vs. nature epics. The most devastating of these pictures would have to be Grass, a harrowing record of human bravery and endurance that, after all these years, is still an astonishing thing to see. Grass's directors, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and their patron, Marguerite Harrison, set out to make a film about a nomadic Asian tribe. The only problem was that they knew little about nomadic Asian tribes and even less about where to find one. After a false start and a lengthy journey, they eventually came into contact with the Bakhtiari in what is now known as western Iran. The Bakhtiari proved to be extraordinarily courageous, fascinating people, and the fledgling directors ended up with some of the more remarkable footage in motion picture history. Each summer, the Bakhtiari would journey, with their livestock in tow, to pasture grounds in the highlands. What this meant was that 50,000 people and 500,000 animals (that's not a misprint) would trudge across a 12,000-foot mountain range in the snow, ford a river, and climb a sheer mountain face! Their journey was literally a matter of life or death, and it's all caught on film. Stunning moments abound, but you won't soon forget thousands of people swimming across a raging river on inflated goat skins, with their livestock tied up and sprawled across makeshift rafts! Grass may be slightly rickety in its construction, and some of the subtitles verge on the inane, but much of what you'll see is truly beyond belief. As Richard Griffith noted in a 1925 Museum of Modern Art bulletin on Grass, Cooper and Schoedsack, formed a partnership based on ³a mutual interest in the strange, the dangerous, and the unknown.² Schoedsack, who started out as a camera operator for Mack Sennett, made his name by shooting amazing World War I battle footage, during which he put himself very much in the line of fire. In 1919, still looking to fight, he journeyed to Poland where he met up with Cooper, a kindred spirit who was formerly a pilot in the French military, but by then was a lieutenant-colonel in the Russo-Polish War. After the war, Cooper convinced Schoedsack to join him in making Grass. Harrison, an ex-journalist and spy (!) who had reportedly saved Cooper's life during the Russian Revolution agreed to help finance Grass, but only if she could participate in its production. So, after writing a check for $5,000, she took the trip of a lifetime. Harrison serves as a sort of stand-in for the audience, appearing in many shots along with the nomads. To call Harrison, Cooper, and Schoedsack gutsy would be a vast understatement. These filmmakers could have been killed while trying to secure their footage, and many of the people they were photographing actually did lose their lives. Somewhat surprisingly, given their intense personalities, Cooper and Schoedsack had a sense of humor about their exploits. The first fictional film that they made together was a little picture called King Kong (1933), which, of course, is about a gang of camera-toting adventurers who get more than they bargained for in an exotic location. That's right- King Kong is semi-autobiographical! After the traumas they shared with the Bakhtiari while making Grass, Kong would have been a cakewalk even if the gorilla were real. Producer: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack Directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack Screenplay: Richard Carver, Terry Ramsaye Cinematography: Merian C. Cooper, Marguerite Harrison, Ernest B. Schoedsack Film Editing: Richard Carver, Terry Ramsaye Cast: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, Marguerite Harrison, Haidar Khan, Lufta. BW-71m. by Paul Tatara

Quotes

Trivia

Notes

Also known as Grass; The Epic of a Lost Tribe.

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States 1925

Selected in 1997 for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.

reels 7

Released in United States 1925