Children have always wanted to know what Santa Claus is doing all year round.
There are different theories. He only gets one day of vacation, December 25th. Santa usually has a beach vacation in summer. He enjoys camping and singing Christmas carols at bonfires. He gets three weeks to relax or to go travelling right after Christmas. What is the right answer?
Let's see what "Santa Claus" from 1925 has to say - or rather show - on this matter (and please don't ask me why I watched the sepia version, I didn't even notice until writing this).
Two children manage to catch Santa when he comes down their chimney and ask him that important question, and although he's on such a tight schedule during this night, he finds the time to tell them.
He starts describing where he lives in the North, "a fairy kingdom bound by vast glaciers, towering ice crags and endless fields of snow", shaken by the North Wind, whose "borders are guarded by Goblins of the deep" (a huddle of walrus in the sea) while "the Monarch of the Arctic watchfully patrols my domain" (a polar bear running and swimming).
Back in his "warm snow castle" built out of snow blocks, he quickly checks toy production and then sits down to work on the naughty and nice list.
Bad news for Billy Smith, because when Santa watched him through his weirdly long telescope, he harrassed a blind street violinist by cutting the leash of his dog which drove some kids to knocking over the violinist's cup for coins. That got Billy a good shaking from Bobby Harrison and his name being scratched out by Santa while Bobby gets an entry for "a live pony and cart".
Next up another product test - no worries, the model train is perfect craftmanship and runs wonderfully!
Then Santa tells the children about training his reindeer and how he found Blitzen as a baby in the snow.
Saturdays are holidays, on those occasions he goes visit the Inuit (of course white people still called them Eskimos back then).
Once a year he gets a visit from the Easter Bunny (you see Santa sitting outside with a bunny on his lap) for a long consultation about which children deserve a nice Easter basket, and a white ptarmigan brings all the letters that children write to him.
He also meets up with fur-clad Jack Frost who makes the snow and ice for the old-fashioned Christmas Santa demands. This is Jack using his magic star wand to create the beautiful ice ferns and flowers on windows in the cities.
On Christmas Eve, Santa climbs into his (amazingly small) sleigh and brings gifts round the world. The Inuit children are the first ones to get theirs.
He also has a warning, though. If you have a chimney that isn't cared for, he can't get into it which means the children in that house don't get gifts (at that point der Dekan urged me to check our chimney while Gundel, several years older and wiser, just looked at him smugly).
Then he says goodbye to the children and heads back to the North where he and his helpers have a well-deserved rest.
The film starts with saying "Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt present a fantasy actually filmed in Northern Alaska" and ends with "Merry Christmas to all - and to all a Good Night. The End. Mr. and Mrs. F. E. Kleinschmidt".
Who are the Kleinschmidts?
German-born Frank Emil Kleinschmidt emigrated to the USA at the age of 22 and went to Alaska four years later where he raised three daughters with his first wife.
He was an explorer, captain of a merchant freighter and an official photographer and cinematograph for the Austro-Hungarian army in the First World War, he was even arrested and imprisoned for espionage.
He made documentaries of Arctic hunts and expeditions since 1909, for example during hunting tours for rich tourists, and he also returned to Alaska after the war.
In this case, Mrs. Kleinschmidt is his second wife Teresa Evelyn Fillion, called Essie, who went on expedition with him.
So it's not surprising that parts of "Santa Claus" make you think of one of those documentaries showing people, animals, and the landscape of the North.
Maybe he used some of the material from them or they just gave him the idea to take a Santa Claus costume along for the outdoor shots sometime and then do the studio shots with a different Santa who reminds me a bit of vintage creepy Santa and crying children photos. It's probably the beard whose look has changed a lot in modern times.
According to Wikipedia, Kleinschmidt toured the US around Christmas showing the film and I bet children were shocked by the fact that Santa spent a lot of time watching them through his telescope.
I wonder how much Essie contributed to the film.
The mixture of real Alaska and Christmas narrative makes this a rather charming watch.
By the way, did I fail to mention the tiny fairies dancing and singing Santa to sleep?
Sources:
1. Lea Stans: Obscure Films: "Santa Claus" (1925). On: Silent-ology, December 24, 2020
2. Stella Dagna: Captain F.E. Kleinschmidt's Arctic Hunt. On: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 36, Pordenone, 30 September | 7 October 2017
3. Frank E. Kleinschmidt on Wikipedia
4. Margaret I. MacDonald: Capt. F. E. Kleinschmidt and His Sojourn Among the Animals Peculiar to Northern Climes. In: Moving Picture News 5, 1912, 14, pages 18 - 19 (via The Internet Archive)
5. Captain Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Geni
6. Frank Emil Kleinschmidt on Find A Grave
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