Social insecurity... Just Around the Corner (1921), with Stephen Horne, Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day Two (Part Two)

 

Some films make you cry. This simple story addresses everyday heartbreak in ways that resonate with anyone who has lost someone dear and, whilst it has its melodramatic devices, it doesn’t overplay the central drama of ailing motherly concern for family and the future. Add the most sensitive of soulful accompaniments from Stephen Horne and you’re going to be sniffling at some point.

This was Frances Marion’s second film as sole director with the first being Pickford’s Love Light and the last being Song of Love (1923) featuring our festival darling, Norma Talmadge (featured on Kino Lorber’s fabulous Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Bu-ray boxset). It was adapted by Marion from Superman, a short story by Fannie Hurst published in The Saturday Evening Post, 20^th June 1914 (24 years before Joe and Jerry debuted their, radically different, stories…), and on the face of it that’s an odd title for a story about a mother but all becomes clear.

Marion’s concerns were certainly to address working class life in contemporary New York and the few location shots are fascinating, helping to establish a strong sense of place. An opening shot of the skyline is followed by that of a bustling street market where, “around the corner” live the Birdsong family, Ma (lovely “veteran” Margaret Seddon, only 49 at the time!), son Jimmie (Lewis Sargent) and daughter/best friend Essie (Sigrid Holmquist, the “Swedish Mary Pickford” in her first American film).

Ma is ailing and her great wish is that she sees both her children in safe positions in life, Jimmie with a good job and Essie with a good man, a loving provider like her late husband. These were common concerns at the time when merely working hard couldn’t guarantee anyone of their class success. Essie is shown working in “a basement sweat shop, where youth grows old and beauty fades in making flowers for my lady’s hat.” Honestly Frances, that’d get you blacklisted three decades later…

Essie and the girls are shown working hard overseen by a hard-faced boss who turns his attention to one old woman whose fingers just won’t work fast enough for her anymore. Essie distracts him, but she’s only buying her frail colleague a little more time, no pension with this job or health insurance. Another peril is of unwanted male attention and, whilst the boss man makes them take work home at weekends to get round labour regulation, he also tries to get Essie to perform tasks outside of her job description. Brother Jimmie arrives to interrupt but there’s no doubt the threat and the power.

Essie leaves the job, her only recourse, and her flighty friend, Lulu (Peggy Parr), encourages her to take a job as an usherette at the theatre where she works – “eight dollars a week!” – which despite Ma’s misgivings – late nights, lots of men - she accepts. Lulu, true to the coding of her name, duly introduces Essie to a ticket tout (strictly illegal) called Joe (Eddie [Edward] Phillips) who has the gift of the gab a wandering eye and an absolute devotion to himself and no one else.

Sigrid Holmquist

Time after time Essie invites Joe back to meet his mother, only for him to find a last-minute excuse so that he can go and hustle, play pool and do what he wilt. He’s wasting Essie’s time but she is desperate to show her mother that she has a good man. Jimmie can see this as can a tall handsome fella, who puts Joe in his place – pushing him into a phone booth – after he sold him two dud tickets. This guy, played by Marion’s husband Fred Thomson, is entitled The Real Man in the cast list, and he carries the air of moral certainty Joe lacks: there’s an instant dislike for the weaselly schemer.

 

Time and again Joe lets Essie down, and Ma who, despite her ailing health, always prepares a meal for them, and things come to the most painfully dramatic end in a heart-melting final segment in which Ma is ill in bed, nursed by Jimmie who waits in vain for Joe to bring Essie back from a night out at a dancing competition. Many things need to happen in dramatic terms over that sequence and Marion directs with care and efficiency… there’s an especially impressive scene where er camera, or rather that of Henry Cronjager, follows a distraught Essie as she runs along snowy streets looking for Joe…

The Real Man and Joe the Liar

It does leave the question of just why Frances Marion only directed three films, but the “mysteries” of male dominance have long been examined. Here she gets some super performances from her group of players and the results are emotionally satisfying as well as convincing.

In her notes, film historian Anke Brouwers notes the socially conservative attitudes on display but even I can remember my grandparent’s generation – married all in the 1920s – talking in similar terms. As Anke says, this may not be a feminist story but it is a feminine one with the focus on Ma and Essie and their struggle for the only security and validation they, and many of their audience, could hope for.

The film, apparently, did not perform well, but as an historical document it is worth discovering. Maybe Frances had more to say… we all know why she might have been prevented from saying it.

 

One of a number of superb shots, Jimmie and Essie looking in from snowbound streets...