The Iron Opera Collection

That’s the Last Straw
Iron Opera

That’s the Last Straw!: Directed by Melton Barker
From the late 1930s into the early 1970s, Dallas native, Melton Barker and his company, Melton Barker Juvenile Productions, traveled all over the country – from Texas and New Mexico to North Carolina and Indiana – filming local children acting, singing, and dancing in two-reel films that Barker titled The Kidnappers Foil.

The film itself changed remarkably little over its history. Melton Barker Productions would contact a local movie theater and a local newspaper to sponsor the production of the film. A casting call for local children would go out and parents would be encouraged to fill out applications that were printed in the newspaper or picked up in the theater. After paying a small fee (usually a few dollars), the children would go through a brief audition process with a representative of Melton Barker’s company. The crews were apparently very small, perhaps just including Melton Barker himself, a cameraman, a sound man and an assistant. After some brief rehearsals, the filming would begin. The locations were generally a local park and the home of a prominent local person.

This production, filmed here in Duluth, Minnesota in 1939, is a rare variation on Barker’s Kidnappers Foil script. The copy held at the Minnesota Historical Society is the only known copy of the film in existence, although at least one other production of the script was made in Ft. Worth, Texas in the 1930s.

Iron Opera: Directed by Mike Scholtz and Marius Anderson

It’s not easy to stage an opera in the middle of northern Minnesota, but this is the Iron Range where the people are stubborn and the music of the Old World still runs deep in their veins. Watch as a renowned concert pianist teams up with an Ojibwe language teacher, a skateboarding accordionist, and talent imported from every corner of the Earth to pull off the impossible.

Co-Director Mike Scholtz is a documentary filmmaker from northern Minnesota. His first feature-length documentary was Wild Bill's Run, which followed a charismatic adventurer on a snowmobiling expedition to Moscow during the height of the Cold War. Scholtz also produced the competitive jigsaw puzzling documentary Wicker Kittens. And he founded the Free Range Film Festival, an annual celebration of independent cinema that takes place in a barn cleverly converted into a movie theater.

Emmy-nominated Co-Director and Cinematographer Marius Anderson was born in Germany, met his wife in Sweden, and moved to her hometown of Duluth, MN. His work as a cinematographer, producer, and editor has been featured on Amazon Originals, PBS, CNN, The Athletic, DW-TV (German TV), SRF (Swiss TV), and ARTE (France/Germany). Marius’ debut independent documentary feature is 40 Below: The Toughest Race in the World. For more info about Marius, go to: www.londonroadfilms.com 

Runtime 01:07:00, MN US