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Want to bring the mist of nostalgia to the eyes of the old timers? Intone the magic words Bride 13 and then just watch 'em dust off the memories as they peel back the years and relive those crazy days in the fall of 1919. The Boston cops were on strike, and Cal Coolidge was about to call in the troops, which put him on the White House path. As for Prohibition ... well, Andrew Joseph Volstead was riding high and dry, and prosperity was right around the corner for Cape Ann. So was something else: Bride 13.
Now Bride 13 was a movie, a fifteen-part silent serial (the talkies were eight years away yet), a big hunk of it filmed right here in Gloucester, and don't think it didn't make a stir. These old thrillers were box office come-ons. They'd run twenty minutes or so before the feature, hauling you back every week to see how handsome Harry got out of the last cliff hanger.
This Bride 13 was produced by Fox Films, directed by Richard Stanton, and starred Jack O'Brien, Marguerite Clayton, Edward Roseman, and Greta Hartman with a company of fifty-five. While they were shooting part of the story in Newport, Rhode Island, a crew of workmen was up here, building the darnedest castle you ever laid eyes on, right out on Salt Island off Good Harbor Beach.
You see, the story was all about these twelve beautiful daughters of these twelve rich daddies who were kidnapped off twelve New York altars while in the very act of plighting their twelve truthful troths. The baddies were a vicious band of Morroccan pirates who took the gals out to a waiting submarine which zipped them off to the impregnable castle on the island while their daddies were getting up the ransom.
Miss Clayton was the thirteenth bride - get it ? - the luscious decoy to be grabbed by the ruffians, thereby landing on the inside where she could scheme for the the rescue of her hapless sister and the other eleven. Never did figure out where Jack O'Brien came in...
And wouldn't you know? Million dollar picture ... tight schedule ... no sooner was the final nail pounded in the magnificent castle on Salt Island, when on the eighth of September an eighty-five mile-an-hour tornado bansheed across Cape Ann, flattened the whole works and blew it clean out to sea, not a piece of kindling left.
Rebuild came the order from Director Stanton, and back the workmen went. By October 10 the job was done for the second time. Imagine, a mere month to erect a castle in the air, with towers fully a hundred feet high.
They wound up the Newport end of it, and the entire company invaded Gloucester, taking over the old Harbor View on Wonson's Cove where a youngster named Stan Thompson was hopping bells and recalls with a blush some of their antics, but it would exeed the dignity of the School Superintendent for him to go into details.
Why, they even brought a submarine, the R-1, on loan from Uncle Sam, and she hung around in the Harbor, Navy manned, at the director's beck and call. And a gigantic, stupendous steam yacht, too.
The Sunday after the first week of shooting, the curious by the thousands converged on Brier Neck, and the beach on foot, auto, bike, motorcycle, horse and the old trolley. They were filming offshore aboard the yacht that day, so hundreds crossed to the island at low water and wandered about, gawking at the battlements.
Nine days later, back on the Salt, the tide turned for foul. First, Chief Cameraman Harry Plimpton was swept into the sea by a wave that snapped the lifeline from which he was hanging to a ledge. Harry was in trouble for a few minutes there until Forrest (Bunch) Bickford of Rocky Neck, who had been hired to stand by with his launch, plucked him out. Harry Wheeler of Wiley Street was helping Bunch; he minds it well.
Then a few days later all hell broke loose. Some Gloucester lads had been signed to play pirates, and in this scene they were hard at it, repelling the attack of the submarine piloted in close by Bickford.
Up on the parapet Joe Bowering and another feller were giving 'em hell with a 450-pound cannon, when on the third round they stuffed in too much powder. The gun ruptured it's moorings on the recoil, carrying the two with it, crashed through the tower floor and fetched up against a ledge.
Bowering dropped thirty feet through the hole, followed by a shower of plaster and splinters. And though his companion was knocked out for five minutes, they revived him and dug Joe out and brushed him off and sent them both back into action, not much the worse for it.
But this was just a warmup for the Great Balloon Getaway. Talk about suspense ... well, they had brought this big old hot-air balloon with a wicker basket down from Boston and had it at the battlement with a crew all set to light the fire and fill it with hot air for the take-off and getaway.
Billy Carr of Gloucester, Chief Gunner's Mate on the Navy submarine R-1 that was assigned to the picture, was to play the hero who rescues one of the brides, slashes through the nest of cutthroats, leaps into the basket with her and off. It was now November 10. A throng of 3,000 was at Good Harbor and all over Brier Neck to watch. But by the time Bill had cut a path through all those pirates with stuntman George Birdsong, who seems to have played the bride, and climbed breathless to the parapet, the air in the balloon had cooled and it wouldn't go anywhere.
Tried again and the bag ripped. Repaired the hole and once again and just as the Tired Two staggered up, the crew can't hold the blame thing any longer and it soars out to sea, Bunch Bickford and his crowd in the boat chasing it.
Well next day the breeze was from the wrong quarter, and the day after that it was too strong. On the fourth day Bill Carr was called away on duty and his place was taken by Tom Corbiey, Gloucester's scrappy little prizefighter. Conditions were perfect with an onshore wind. The cameras cranked away, the director shouted and the spectators gaped as Tom vaulted into the basket and Birdsong grabbed ahold of the trapeze swinging under it. They were off!
As the balloon was wafted away off camera it was supposed to dip and the two would drop into the water by the beach. Instead, an updraft caught it, and to the gasps of the crowd the big bag lifted high and swayed above the ledges .. impossible to exit now.. they'd break every bone.
Clear over Brier Neck it drifted and then the wind fell, and the balloon with it, and gently it deposited its passengers in a thicket of cat brier.
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Once relieved of their weight, it ascended agin, off toward Rockport, and some of the crew grabbed a couple of cabs handy, shouting "Follow that balloon!" and off they roared up the Nugent Stretch to retrieve it when it lit limp and lifeless, close by the Depot.
Later there was the escape scene, the plucky brides in their flimsies and the pirates swimming from the secret tunnel to the waiting sub in a cold mid-November rainstorm. Local boys Ed McKinnon, Mel Amero, Gordon McCarthy, Jim Arabian and Bill Dixon got in on this act. And there were takes over by Rafe's Chasm and one of a guy stranded on the Norman's Woe bell buoy.
Then the climax the whole town had been keyed up over for weeks, the blowing-up of the Salt Island castle by the pirate leader the split second before they escape to the sub.
It was all elaborately set up, twenty cans of gunpowder and an arsenal of dynamite planted all over the place, six cameras trained on the sceen, Stanton directing it from the front porch of the Sylvanus Smith cottage on Brier Neck. The warning bombs went off, and everyone stared with their tongues dry in their mouths and their hearts in their throats, and the man shoved down the plunger ... And poof ... a charge or two sputtered, but the castle, scarcely damaged, remained. Faulty wiring, Stanton fumed and ordered it repaired.
Now for the great shipwreck.
They bought the ancient coasting schooner Mineola, built in 1860, the year before the Civil war, rotting at Davis wharf, floated her, fixed her up with anchors and sails, put Bunch and Henry Bickford, Mort Mayo and Westover Brazier aboard for a crew along with the goodies and the baddies, and towed her around Eastern Point to Brace Cove behind the tug Eveleth.
Sway up sail and let her come in with the southeasterly. The cameras grind furiously as the pirates subdue the crew in a bloody fight on deck. Billy Carr (who is back) and George Birdsong slip away from the toils of their foes, scramble up the shrouds, up, up to the main crosstrees sixty feet up, poise there dramatically and dive in two graceful arcs, down into the boiling sea.
They hit the ocean, and right off they're in real-life trouble. Shock. Numbed, bruised. Carr goes under. The old Mineola surges by the two struggling figures toward the shore and destruction.
Lines are thrown from the deck. No use. Bunch Bickford jumps into the dory, casts off and goes after them. Four of the pirates mount the rail and leap overboard, among them Jim Arabian of Gloucester, Lester Francis, another Gloucesterman, lowers himself on a rope, trying for Carr, but the vessel carries him past and he lets go. Carr, thrashing, goes under for the second time.
But are the cameras getting it? This wasn't in the scenario, Francis dives and comes up with Carr, coughing and limp. The others reach Birdsong. He's unconscious. Now one of the rescuers goes under. They grab him, he's out, too.
All are hauled or clamber aboard, and at that precise moment the doomed Mineola strikes the shore hard by Brace Rock with such a jolt that her main-mast snaps (as it's supposed to) a few feet above the deck and crashes into the sea to starboard, missing Bickford in his dory by inches.
The nearly drowned actors are taken ashore and hustled off to the Harbor View and the Addison Gilbert Hospital for emergency treatment.
Meanwhile the scene goes on. The remaining pirates and the captured crew wade in through the surf, only to be ambushed and in turn captured by an Arab gang, who drag their prisoners over the rocks of Eastern Point.
In the windup, they dynamite the decrepit coaster, and she burns to the waters edge ... a glorious end for an old hulk.
Director Dick Stanton had repaired his old castle following that ridiculously unsuccessful attempt of the fleeing pirate leader to blow it up, and now all is in readiness. The gunpowder and the dynamite are planted in the right places, and the intricacies of the wiring have been checked and checked again. The six cameras are on location around the shore. Stanton and entourage are on the piazza of the Smith cottage at Brier Neck.
Dusk approaches. Crowds dot Good Harbor Beach and cluster on the Neck. There the last workmen are putting out from the island to row for the beach.
The countdown commences. The first warning bomb goes off. You can feel the tension. There is the great movieman's castle, the parapets, the towers spearing a hundred feet into the sky, empty, mysterious, a Gloucester landmark now.
The thiry-second bomb goes off. The men in the dory are half way to the beach, hear it and pull harder. The seconds tick by, and then ... KER-POW! BAR-RUMP! Up she goes! A tremendous roar, a stupendous echo, a thunderous, glorious cloud of smoke and dust, a fantastic blossom of plaster, splinters, planks, sand and stone, a horrendous splashing all about as the debris rains down on the water, a chorus of oh's and ah's from the spectators, and look! There! A rock as big as a football has mortared out of the heavens and smashed a tool box in the escaping dory!
The dust settles and the smoke drifts out to sea, and old Salt Island is once again just plain old Salt Island.
The magician of the silver screen has waved his hand from his seat on the porch, and the castle in the air has simply disappeared, at 4:20 p.m. to be exact.
It was a grande finale, like the last eye-entrancing, ear-splitting barrage that ends the Fourth of July fireworks at Stage Fort. Within two hours, all thirteen brides, and the handsome heroes and the pirates, and the cameramen and set men, prop men, stunt men, makeup artists, director, writer, publicity man and all the rest of Fox Film's million-dollar movie company had cleared out of town, off for the New Hampshire woods to shoot the lumber camp scenes, the next spine tingling episodes of Bride 13.
Ten months passed, and in September of 1920 the Selznick Company moved into town to begin production at Long Beach of a movie tentatively titled Soul and Body, starring Eugene O'Brien.
And up at the old Strand the fifteen-part serial Bride 13 opened and they had to run an extra showing of the first episode to satisfy the overflow of hundreds who couldn't jam past the doors.
Chet Wonson of East Gloucester remembers. He played the sound effects on the drums for the whole run.
February 19, 21, 23, 1968
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