Chimmie Fadden Out West (1915)
(Cecil B. De Mille, US 1915, 81 min., 35mm)
Chimmie Fadden Out West, was Cecil B. DeMille’s follow up to his very successful film version of Chimmie Fadden (1915). Both films starred Victor Moore—probably best known to modern audiences as the destitute father from Make Way for Tomorrow—as the loveable Bowery hooligan, Chimmie Fadden. For the sequel, Chimmie is sent to Death Valley as part of a railroad scheme, where he pretends to find gold. Chimmie Fadden Out West is a fast-moving comedy, with wonderful location photography and a great performance by Moore. Once considered a lost film, DeMille had a 35mm, tinted, nitrate print in his personal collection. The film was originally preserved by the George Eastman Museum in black and white in 1974. In 2012, with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, a new restoration using DeMille’s 1916 nitrate print was undertaken to create a new preservation negative, from which new color release prints were made, that replicated the tinting of the original nitrate print. Now audiences can enjoy Chimmie Fadden Out West much in the same way that audiences first did in 1915. Preceded by a brief excerpt from the original film, preserved by the Svenska Filminstitutet.