This was a vehicle for the remarkable young performer
Wesley Barry and yet, it is perhaps more historically notable for providing one
of Colleen Moore’s biggest breaks. Moore’s extraordinary energy comes through
as she plays a young “colleen” (how many times? Etc…) who leaves Ireland for
America where her new husband is making a new life. She’s striking and vibrant
in these scenes but when fate takes a nasty twist and she falls ill with tuberculosis,
she offers up one of the most believable performances in her sick bed. There’s
a stillness to her expression, hardly the energy or will to even smile at her
son and there’s no flicker of hope in her drained eyes. That’s acting and
that’s range; and there’d be far more to come.
At the time 13-year-old Wesley was the star and he’s also
very good, displaying a winning youthful pluck that would lead to a string of
“our gang” type successes throughout the twenties. He was one of the leading
freckled performers of the age, Marshall Neilan being one of the first to deploy
them to full effect in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm – no grease paint and
no credit in Mary Pickford’s film, but it got him noticed! Wesley grown up was
less of a proposition for Hollywood and after the films dried up in the
thirties he went behind the camera and was assistant director for a number of
films including Roger Corman's 1967 film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
Barry also directed films and his most notable effort was The Creation of
the Humanoids (1962), apparently Andy Warhol’s favourite film, depicting a future
society in which robots are persecuted by the fanatical humans of The Order
of Flesh and Blood (1962) that’s gone straight to the top of my watch list!
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| Wesley Barry contemplates what he must do to impress Andy Warhol |
Such things were probably far from Wesley’s mind in 1920
and he’s very engaging in a film that packs a lot of action and simple fun in
with the melodramatic. Marshall Neilan created the film for his freckled friend
with a script co-written by Marion Fairfax which allows the lad to show his own
range.
Not quite knowing what to expect the early scenes in
Ireland lead me to expect a romance in the old country as good catholic girl
Doreen Adair (Colleen Moore), falls for protestant Danny O'Sullivan (Tom
Gallery). Whilst her father disapproves of the Orangeman, he’s got plenty of
get up and go and after getting approval marries Doreen and sets off to
America, the land of Irish opportunity.
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| Colleen Moore knows the score |
But as Doreen and their baby, Dinty, follow months later,
she arrives in San Francisco just in time to find that her love has died in a
car accident. Doreen works all the hours at menial jobs and brings up Dinty in
a poor but decent way and we move forward twelve years we see her painfully ill
in bed whilst the spunk kid is out selling newspapers as their breadwinner.
There’s a rival paper gang trying to muscle Dinty’s boys
out of their corners but Dinty’s a determined lad and sets about the bigger
bullies as you’d expect with superior vim and strategy. It’s all good fun and
presages a more adult battle between local mobsters and the police. I do like
Dinty’s multi-ethnic band of younger brothers with African American Aaron
Mitchell as Alexander Horatius Jones and the Chinese American Walter Chung as
Sui Lung, and, whilst it’s a precursor of Our Gang (1922–44), it also reminded
me of the gang in Penfold and Sam (1923), itself a follow up to the now
lost Penrod (1922) which starred Barry. It’s so interesting that the
good guys are multi-racial whilst the bad guys are all bigger and white?
Hollywood liberals eh? Hold on…
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| Noah Beery... bloomin' 'eck!! |
Anna May Wong was just 15 and only two years older than
Wesley Barry, yet she gets to play Half Moon, not the public house in Putney,
but the wife of Wong Tai (an improbable Noah Beery) an opium smuggler
and head of a Tong gang. Wong Tai – that leery, Beery look in his eye – is
cruel and ruthless, employing a sharp-edged pendulum in his secret den to
torture and otherwise ensure compliance with his commands. He can do nothing
though when his son (Young Hipp) is sent down by Judge Whitely (J. Barney
Sherry) but kidnaps his daughter (see-saw Marjorie Daw, … one of the great
silent film stage names) with the intention of freeing his boy.
The police are involved but they need the help of Dinty’s
newsboy legion who, through their work and cultural diversity have an insight
into the workings of the Chinese underworld. It’s one thing for the baddies to
take on the men in blue but when the youngsters get involved… things move too
fast.
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| Anna May Wong was two years older than Wesley Barry |
It’s "feel good" in excelsis and everything works out through collaboration and trust just the kind of message families and children most wanted to here in the land of second chances. Unsurprisingly Dinty was a success and one of the films of the year according to Photoplay magazine and box office returns. It also provides some excellent shots of contemporary San Francisco all of which add an element of realism to the film as well as glimpses of the city 100-years past.
This is Edward Lorusso’s tenth Kickstarter funded
presentation and the source film came from a private collector. The print
quality is very good and the experience is enriched by Ben Model’s practiced piano
accompaniment which matches the flow of the film’s pace and tone to a tea.
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| Aaron Mitchell is ace too! |
The production is now available from Grapevine Video on Blu-ray and DVD and you can buy direct from their site here. It comes with the
comedy short A Two-Cylinder Courtship with Billie Rhodes and Edward
Lorusso providing accompaniment.
Mr Lorusso is also on another project now, Marion Davies
in Zander the Great, a new scan of the original 35mm nitrate print by
Library of Congress. There’s still time to support this very worthwhile project and the link is right here… please support if you can!
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