Blanche and Boris… The Deadlier Sex (1920), Silents Under the Stars, with Michael Mortilla

 

 “You can’t feature Blanche Sweet too much for her performance here certainly justified stardom and will go a long way toward pushing her up to the top again.” Wid’s Film Daily

 

If Lobster Films supremo, Serge Bromberg’s car hadn’t broken down on a trip to see his cousins in the South of France, he’d never have got into conversation with a garage mechanic who knew someone who had some old films and, as it turned out, was happy to clear some storage space. Serge discovered an old Pathé wooden camera along with a stash of films; some trailers, some pornography (natch) and a complete 35mm print of The Deadlier Sex… previously considered a lost film. Adding new intertitles, beginning and end credits and a clean-up, the film is now perfectly preserved by the Academy Film Archive and is exceptionally good-looking copy of Boris Karloff’s first major feature but also a fine example of just why Blanche Sweet was such a huge star.

 

The film was been streamed as the 33^rd annual Silents Under the Stars event run by the Hollywood Heritage Museum normally outdoors at the Paramount Ranch. This being 2020, this was the Covid-19 edition with watchers across the World glued to their laptops for a special screening accompanied by the museum’s regular accompanist Michael Mortilla and introduced by Randy Haberkamp, Hollywood Heritage board member and Silent Society Committee Chair.

 

This was also a fundraiser for the Hollywood Heritage Museum on its 35^th anniversary as well as the Santa Monica Mountains Fund for the restoration of the Paramount Ranch which has recently suffered horrendous damage in a fire. Donation details below.

 

Best of all, this film was being shown to Boris Karloff’s daughter Sara, who had never seen the film and had only come across it in an interview with his father in which he remembered the unsettling realisation of seeing himself, alone on screen and thinking, that’s how I look! The film was shot in the beautiful hills and rivers of Truckee, California which just so happens to be 24 miles from where Sara lives… You know, all in all, I think this was meant to be!

 

Onto the film itself and Wid’s Film Daily was spot on in highlighting Blanche Sweet as the outstanding player; she has a relaxed, naturalistic approach that elicits audience complicity in even the maddest of schemes driving the odd narrative. Her open features, generous smile – revealing slightly British dentures – and energetic physicality holds everything together and she’s on screen for pretty much the whole film.

 

Young Mr Karloff

She plays Mary Willard a resourceful young woman who is determined to take proper control of her father’s legacy after he dies suddenly at their home, the two in loving response looking forward to their annual walking holiday. To protect his assets, she needs to overcome the aggressive – commercial - advances of Wall Street financier Harvey Judson (manly Mahlon Hamilton), who pushes the rules to the limits in his desire to gain others’ capital.

 

This is where the film takes a strange turn as Mary decides the only way to stop Harvey from unfairly dominating the market and undermining her father’s fund is to drug and kidnap him and then take his out to the wilderness where he can either sink or swim as a proper man.

 

This seems such a common thread in the Twenties having just watched Miriam Cooper in Is Money Everything? (1923) as well as Leni Riefenstahl in The Great Leap (1927); heck, what would people say if The Deadlier Sex was a Berg Film espousing the nourishing impact of the outdoor life on conflicted urban businessmen?!

 

Still in his city suit, Mahlon Hamilton

Anyway, glossing over the fact that Kidnapping People is Wrong, Blanche quickly makes you forgive her as does Hamilton’s Harvey, as he starts offering huge amounts of money to the locals only to find that it counts for nothing in what is essentially a barter economy. Jim Willis (Russell Simpson) is one such man, an old friend of the Willards with pine wood running through his veins, pretends that Mary is his niece and also has some of the film’s best lines in the quaint ways he rejects every dollar offered by Harvey.

 

Of course, not everyone is disinterested in filthy lucre and, local tracker Jules Borney (Boris Karloff) is happy to take Mary’s money to force a fight with Harvey in an attempt to get him to “man up”. As an aside this reminds me of my Scouse Nan trying to get me into fights when I was a kid for pretty much the same reason…

 

Back in California, Jules takes things too far and having bested Harvey has to be fought off by Mary. Harvey, who doesn’t know that Mary is his business rival, begins to feel differently about his strange predicament and starts to enjoy aspects of the absolutely stunning countryside – this is one of the best looking location shoots you could hope for, positively Swedish from raging rivers to pine-topped mountains.

 

Then he has an idea to force Jim into taking him back to civilisation be pretending to kidnap Mary – here we go again people with The Kidnapping!? What could possibly go wrong? Only Jules, spotting an opportunity to rob Harvey and take Mary into the bargain. Meanwhile, what’s happening back in Wall Street and can this faked kidnapping on top of the faked rescue from another faked/actual kidnapping possibly not be found out!?

 

I have previously seen The Deadlier Sex in Pordenone back in 2017 and enjoyed the chance to see it again in a more focused setting. It’s good-looking and good fun and Michael Mortilla’s playful accompaniment brought out the best of its good humour. Robert Thornby’s direction is very effective, especially out at these rugged locations whilst cinematographer, Charles E. Kaufman, captures the sweeping vistas as well as the emotions.

Lovely depth of field Mr Kaufman!

 

Before the main feature, there was also a fascinating short called Life in Hollywood – Part One (1927) which showed the main studios with a voice-over revealing the addresses. Some still stand to this day although I’m not sure if Cecil B. de Mille’s replica of George Washington’s house is one of them.

 

The home of Hollywood Heritage, as President Richard Adkins explained, is actually the oldest film company studio and where de Mille shot the first Hollywood feature, The Squaw Man in 1913. All of which made the footage of the Paramount Farm fire all the sadder.

 

If you want to help restore this precious slice of Hollywood Heritage, click on the link here.

 

I’m sure many of us will as the silent film community is as supportive and unified as never before during the Covid-19 crisis and this was another special online moment when silent cineastes stop what they’re doing across the World and watch and learn and listen in silence.

 

Thank you, Hollywood Heritage!

 

Ain't she Sweet? 

 

Cecil's studio from Life in Hollywood (1927)

Part of the fire damaged Paramount Ranch: please donate to help with the restoration if you can.