Grandma's Boy Ghost Sign

HERITAGE

‘Ghost sign' for 1922 movie reappears at Granville-Robson

BY JOHN MACKIE

(Article from The Vancouver Sun)

  Ninety years after it was covered up by a building, a "ghost sign" for a 1922 movie has reappeared at Granville and Robson.

  The sign promotes the Harold Lloyd comedy Grandma's Boy, which played at the Capitol theatre Oct. 2-7, 1922.

  The sign is painted onto the north wall of the Power block at 817 Gran­ville, across the street from where the Capitol opened in 1921. Hence the sign includes a red circle reading "Capitol over there," and features a wonderful disembodied hand with a finger point­ing across the street.

  The sign reappeared during the demolition of the three-storey Farmer building at 801 Granville. The Farmer building was constructed in 1922, so the       Lloyd sign would have been cov­ered up almost immediately after it was painted, and hidden for nine decades.

  Signs like this are called ghost signs, because of their ghostly faded beauty and/or because they advertise long-dead businesses.

  Several ghost signs have cropped up in recent years in Vancouver, includ­ing a lovely ad for Shelly's Bakery on Victoria Drive and a bunch of long-hidden painted signs on the Wood-ward's building. Part of an old painted sign for the Pantages theatre showed up on the side of the Regent Hotel when the 1907-08 theatre was being torn down.

  Still, heritage expert John Atkin says he's never seen a painted sign for a movie, which would have had a short shelf life.

  "You can certainly see movie posters and billboards [in old photos], but not [signs] painted on the wall," he said.

  "I think the management of the the­atre took advantage of the brief period when a building [on the corner] was demolished and before construction started on the new one."

  Lloyd is largely forgotten today, but he was one of the giants of the silent screen, a comic genius whose popu­larity once rivalled Charlie Chaplin. He made 205 films between 1913 and 1947, including 40 short films in 1919 alone.

  By 1922 he was doing longer features such as the 60-minute Grandma's Boy, which an ad in the Oct. 1, 1922, Vancouver Sun called his "first five-reel comedy." It played the Capitol for only a week before moving to the Dominion for a week and then leaving town. A painted sign would have cost the owner of the Capitol much more than hanging a poster, but would have grabbed attention away from competi­tion like the Tom Mix movie The Big Town Round-Up that was showing at the Rex, or the Cecil B. DeMille movie Manslaughter at the Dominion.

  The full glory of the painted ad for Grandma's Boy may be unveiled over the next few days as the building that covered it up comes down, brick by brick. But it won't be visible long, because the building it's on is also coming down, save for the facade.