"Lillie's great talents were the arched eyebrow, the curled lip, the fluttering eyelid, the tilted chin, the ability to suggest, even in apparently innocent material, the possible double entendre". Sheridan Morley in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
From the first moments of her appearance in this film, you
know you are watching one of those rare performers whose style and skill simply
connects perfectly with the modern viewer: reader, let me tell you of the
actress out-of-time that is Beatrice Lillie.
Born in Toronto to a concert singer mother and a British
army officer who later became a Canadian government official, Bea didn’t lose
touch with the old country and made her West End stage debut in 1914 earning
sufficient fame to end up marrying Sir Robert Peel (the fifth Baronet and great
grandson of the Tory PM of the same name).
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| Beatrice Lillie |
She was a highly successful stage performer on both sides of
the Atlantic and needed to be as Bobby didn’t have wealth, nor the ability to
generate a new fortune – spending the first night of their
honeymoon on a losing streak in the Monte Carlo casino. Then, during one trip to Broadway, Bea was engaged to play in Exit Smiling, her first and only silent
film.
Sometimes experienced stage actors struggled to transpose
their skills to the big screen where every exaggerated inflection required to
be seen in the stalls can be magnified a thousand fold. But Lady Peel was a natural with her
expressive understatement, timing and droll understatement perfect for the medium.
She thought this film rather cheesy and, whilst it’s true
that her performance gives it more interest than the story may otherwise have
demanded, Exit Smiling is an amusing
film, well observed and paced and with a wonderful supporting cast.
Directed by Sam Taylor based on Marc Connelly’s play of the same name, Exit Smiling tells the tale of a fourth division traveling repertory company inflicting a drama called Flaming Women on the mid-West.
Beatrice plays Violet the company’s maid who doubles up as
bit-part player by night and all-round dogsbody by day: cleaner, cook and
seamstress all in one. She’s desperate for her big break to join the others in
a proper part and almost gets her chance when the show’s leading lady – Olga
(Doris Lloyd from Walton, Liverpool – wonder if she knew my Great Grandmother?)
– is delayed after an incident involving the consumption of more than several
beer bottles.
The play begins and quickly we can see the quality of thespian
endeavour the company provides: Violet almost forgets her maid’s hat, and her
lady, Dolores Du Barry, arrives closely followed by an evil moustache twirling
scoundrel who means her ill. The lady’s beau arrives in the form of Cecil
Lovelace (Franklin Pangborn) whose camped-up cowboy quickly engages in an
unconvincing struggle with the assailant as they panto-fight over a gun
Some long acts later, the show heads towards its dénouement
as Dolores vamps it up in order to distract the villain just long enough to
save her true love, some elements of the audience watch with rapt attention. A
little drama can go a long way…
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| Scouser Doris Lloyd vamps it up to confound the cad! |
They head off to their next engagement in their own railway
carriage which includes a saloon car, sleeping bays and storage space for props
and scenery. Is this just the kind of long-haul company that Mary Pickford and
Lillian Gish would have started out with in their teens?
At one of the stops they are joined by a sad young man,
Jimmy Marsh (Jack Pickford) who leaving East Farnham for some unknown but
obviously bothersome reason.
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| Jimmy admires Violet's style |
He instantly catches Violet’s attention as she rehearses her
vamp moves between carriages and she tells him that she’s an actress, impressed he confesses that he's always wanted to meet an actress, seeing only the surface
self-confidence of her display.
Violet manages to persuade him to audition for the company
and with her help (and that of a discretely held onion) manages to convince the
hard-hearts of the seasoned pros. He’s in and very soon he’s playing the
leading bad guy.
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| Beatrice Lillie and Jack Pickford |
This is great for Violet who falls hook, line and sinker for
this fresh-faced young man but she never shows him and he can never see anyone
other than the up-beat, helpful individual who does her best for him.
The show goes on and on as they schlep from small town to
small town and the friendship between the youngsters grows as the supporting
characters are revealed: the old pro who once played with Elmer Booth (he of
Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley),
greedy show-runner Orlando Wainwright (DeWitt Jennings) and the camp Cecil.
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| Show people: DeWitt Jennings and Franklin Pangborn |
Meanwhile we cut back to Jimmy’s home town as we learn the
reason for his leaving as his girlfriend (oh no!) Phyllis (Louise Lorraine)
tries to convince her bank manager father of his former teller’s innocence
whilst he offers her Jesse Watson (Harry Myers) as, in his view… a perfectly
acceptable alternative.
But Jesse isn’t quite the man he seems as we are shown local
crook Tod Powell (Tenen Holtz) asking him for a “loan” knowing who the money
was really removed by and who put Jimmy in the frame.
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| Tod puts the squeeze on sneaky Jesse |
The innocent man is miles away on a train… or is
he? Jimmy steps out of the actor’s carriage to greet another day only to find
that they’re arriving at East Farnham: he can’t be seen here and he certainly
can’t play on stage!
Violet, as she always does, has a plan and it’s an imperfect
but funny one. Events descend into chaos as the strands come together and all
matters come to a head in a breathless – poignant – finale which it would be
cruel to reveal: you really have to see it for yourself.
Exit Smiling is
available from Warner Archives complete with a new, orchestrated score from Linda
Martinez which matches the story’s energy even if occasionally out of step with
Lillie’s nuanced expression. But, she's just so quick...
Sadly that was it for Beatrice Lillie’s silent films
although she returned occasionally to cinema work from early talkies up to Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967. She
much preferred stage work – feeding off the audience reaction and enjoyed a
long varied career on the boards, no doubt with her own changing room and a
maid of her own.
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