Quick-Seat Chair Goes To Hollywood – Lost Horizon 1937

By Khadi Madama Quick-Seat Chair Wellness Coordinator

In this original screenplay directed by Frank Capra and starring Ronald Coleman, as well as a cast of my other favorite old stars, the first scene that lets me know that Quick-Seat Chairs should have been on that set is the first scene, which opens in the crowded and chaotic tiny airport on the northwest frontier of China.  A panicking crowd of people is pushing and shoveling, trying to get information about how to get a flight out of town amidst an incoming invasion.  There is no place to stand, and worse, nowhere to sit once they can secure a flight. My point is that there is no place to put chairs. Not regular chairs, anyway. But there is always room for a quick-seat chair or several, whether while filming or while waiting off-set for a cue.  This was the opening scene that set the tone for the rest of the movie because it’s about people in distress trying to find their way. Ronald Colman, Robert Conway, a diplomat, and a handful of others are boarded onto an elaborately comfortable plane belonging to a Maharajah. All seems perfectly in order until they discover that their pilot, one of the RAF, has been abducted and replaced by a Mongolian pilot. Subsequently, they crash into the high mountain crags of the frozen Himalayas, their pilot dead, with the thought of impending death upon them. And yet, like so many, who, walking through a different type of cold white wilderness—the white marble halls and floors of various buildings—find themselves just about ready to give up (you know that feeling when your sciatica acts up), and there it is, just before your eyes, the sight of a quick-seat chair, and you’re saved. Well, that’s not exactly what happens to our band of misplaced exiles. What happens is that a rescue party arrives to save them.  The only problem is that it is a long, arduous, cold, and dangerous trek further up the mountain. And, although Quick-Seat Chairs can be installed easily just about anywhere, just running a screwdriver into the mountain could cause an avalanche—but that’s for another movie, Lady Vanishes—where there are no accommodations for sleeping, sitting, or eating.

The happily saved group, escorted by Sherpas, arrives at tropical-like Shangri-La. Pristinely beautiful. Conway and the others are shown glamorous accommodations, a formal dining room with wonderful food and gracious service, polite servants, and beautiful oriental clothing. They are warm, welcome, and wonderful. There is only one catch: they cannot leave until the next envoy of Sherpas arrives, and no one knows when that will be or ever.

Frank Capra spent a fortune making this film, two million dollars, and spared nothing towards its classical film perfection. In a radio screenplay of the movie, he explained that when the film company arrived in the high mountains of the small country of Hunza, which is where they filmed on location, they gave out bars of Lux soap, one of their sponsor, to all of the natives as gifts. The natives loved the bars of soap so much that they wore them around their necks. If they loved bars of soap so much, what on earth would they have done with Quick-Seat Chairs installed in their already tiny homes? We’ll just have to imagine that because Quick-Seat Chairs wouldn’t be invented for more than half a century later. But I bet the natives would have just loved them, even if they couldn’t wear them around their necks. 

Lost Horizon is a glorious movie with a talented cast, spectacular music directed by Max Steiner, and breathtaking set designs and costumes. Actor Edward Everett Horton in a Chinese silk embroidered Cheong Sam is just the best! There is so much space in the palatial Shangri-La headquarters, but where do the servants sit when they aren’t being called for a task? Back in those days, they were standing. Always standing where a pristine white Quick-Seat Chair could have just done the trick.  Back in Hollywood, director Frank Capra utilized a 13,000-square-foot industrial building to create a frozen film set for many of the scenes. Can you imagine being an actor and having to wait standing up in the cold for your cue to get on screen? Quick-Seat Chairs would have at least helped to make the actors’ lives more comfortable, if not warmer.

I’ve watched that movie so many times that I can almost repeat the dialogue verbatim but these days, I tend to watch the same movies with a new lens. The Quick-Seat Chair lens of improved spatial use and expanded seating availability where it is impossible to have chairs all over the place. Chairs, in the wrong place add to fall risk.  Being able to sit safely, comfortably, and as needed, is a real concern for many with chronic mobility issues and those without them who simply have a surprise visit from an old injury at the wrong time. Just a day’s worth of gardening will render me needing to sit 3 times more than days that I don’t. That’s the magic of Shangri-La, you get younger when you’re there in the mythical realm high above Tibet. But you’re also in the magic realm of a Quick-Seat Chair, when one suddenly appears, seemingly out of nowhere, when you least expect it and when you truly need it.

Quick-Seat Chair. Temporary Seating That Closes Itself