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| Constance Talmadge |
Blessed are the collectors, the archivists and the
programmers, the people with a bee in their bonnet about preservation, the
completists and those for whom quality goes with rarity. I’d seen The
Helpful (?) Sisterhood (1914), the first of tonight’s films on a semi-legal
DVD collection of early Norma Talmadge Vitagraph shorts but what we saw
projected tonight was something else. A 16mm copy made from a 35mm nitrate
print, replete with all the original tints and, as its owner Chris Bird pointed
out, a lot of the sparkle you’d expect from the original. It’s the difference
between a bootleg and a surround sound remix, something almost as good as the
original experience and who knows how many other copies exist to this standard
out in the world.
The Talmadges have so often been over-looked in the
modern “canon” of silent film possibly as Anita Loos suggested in her
biography, because they barely ventured into sound films but also because,
famously, they didn’t need to. Whether Norma’s Brooklyn accent could ever have
been tempered enough to earn her the plaudits of the other Norma in the
thirties or Joan, Greta and Lillian, we’ll never know but she didn’t need to
prove herself anymore, even if her fans would have wanted her to.
I came across Norma early in my silent film journey (ooh,
it’s like Strictly!!) thanks to The Parade’s Gone By and in, her entertaining
and informative introduction, KB’s MC Michelle Facey, quoted Kevin Brownlow who
regards her as one of the finest actors of the era able to show restraint even
in the most unlikely scenarios along with Clarence Brown’s appreciation of one
of the finest pantomimists.
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| Norma Talmadge |
Well, here she is aged around 18, showing some of the range
and instinctive skill she would gradually develop in Van Dyke Brooke’s tidy two-reel
morality play about the dangers of peer group pressure and those who place
style over study at what turns out to be Talmadge’s actual alma mater in
Brooklyn. The story was written by one Margaree P. Dryden, and features Norma
as the poor but bright Mary who, living at her Gran’s (Mary Maurice) humble
home, gets to join a sorority group at college led by the daughters of wealthy
men played by Marie Tener, Mary Anderson and her younger sister Constance aged
just 16 and with bags of the pep we’ll be covering in a moment.
Mary is delighted to find herself with these new peers and stretches to keep in with them but when money comes into the picture, to buy fancy clothes she resorts to stealing. Is it worth the moral compromise and will lessons be learned by Mary but also her new friends, all of whom probably failed the entrance exam for Columbia. It’s a near perfect example of what Norma was doing as she raced towards over 100 films made between 1910 and 1915 and the start of longer features such as The Social Secretary, The Devil’s Needle and Going Straight. She would marry Joseph Schenck and together they would build the family with production companies for both Norma and Constance. Smart, smart women!
John Sweeney accompanied this gem with diligence and finesse; and also eased into the spirit for footage of Constance Talmadge wearing a drawn-on moustache and larking about with Roscoe Arbuckle and others. Then there was film of the actress with her second husband, Alastair Mackintosh in Scotland in 1926, one of the last places you’d expect to find her and, indeed, she divorced him the following year after he committed adultery. She was married four times, Norma three and Natalie once.
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| The Sisterhood with Norma in the foreground and Constance second from right |
I’m always struck by the differences between Norma and
Constance with Natalie a delicate mix of both. Norma was elegant, certainly
more controlled and with Big Sisterly behaviours – trust me, I know! – whilst
Constance aka “Dutch”, was a hyper energised ball of energy who, as with Doug
Fairbanks, was described by Loos as not so much an actor as an incredibly
likeable personality. Hyper likeability goes with the job description I suppose
and the energy levels are something to behold in the BFI’s 35mm print of The
Love Expert.
The Love Expert is not, I would venture, Anita Loos’
finest work nor that of her co-writer John Emerson but what it is is the
perfect vehicle for her friend Constance to not only act and react but to slay
the audience. To watch this film is to be assailed by close up after close up
of Connie, majoring on profiles, semi profiles – lovely both left and right –
and wide-eyed smiles that melt the cynical grey of a working day all away. Yes!
I have certain feelings for Constance Talmadge and this film has completely
disarmed me in ways that the script could barely suggest. OK, maybe I’ve OD’d
on the 35mm freshness that reveals the freckled freshness of our star’s face
and the depths in those huge eyes, but this is some mighty powerful potion, a
screen to audience transfer of pure star power.
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| Constance T: love is all you need. |
Director David Kirkland is the man to blame, as he’s used
his main asset to devastating effect and, to be fair, he had been given a story
that begins in Wendy Goes to College territory showing three types of
university student, the athletic woman, the scientific one – wearing glasses
naturally – and one who is determined to become expert in the emotions and the
science of love. Back in my college days this was all classed as
extracurricular activity like, rowing, sports and membership of the Everton
Supporters Club (there wasn’t a Liverpool one and well… I missed the accent!).
Constance plays Babs who has learned the signs of love –
blushing and heart palpitations when holding hands or in close proximity and
all of the rest, all scientifically tested, presumably emotionally as well. The
original film came with spot tints to illustrate the blushes of certain
characters but all that remains on the BFI print are the written instructions
for the tinting which flicker past every so often.
Unfortunately for Babs, at least in academic terms, her
subject a. isn’t really recognised as such and b. is distracting from her
proper studies and so she is asked to leave which delights her as she can now
really push on with the field work her theories require. Her mean old Dad John
Hardcastle (Arnold Lucy) is equally of the opinion that her “subject” is a
frivolous one and nixes her planned trip to Palm Springs when she attempts to
establish A Love Connection with his colleague Thompson (James Spottswood) but
no signs are present.
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| Middle sister Natalie Talmadge in The Love Expert. |
Kicked off the Palm Springs junket, Babs gets sent to her
Aunt Cornelia (Nellie P. Spaulding) in Boston and who is engaged to a
moderately handsome man (it’s my blog) named Jim Winthrop (John Halliday).
Their engagement has been for six years and counting as Jim won’t wed until the
rest of his family is taken care of: sister Dorcas (sister Natalie Talmadge) a
clearly good-looking woman in glasses worn to prevent her getting short-sighted
and, of course for comedic affect. Men rarely make passes at ladies who wear
glasses and even fewer would risk a conversation with Jim’s other sister,
Matilda (Fannie Bourke) who is far more believably eccentric than Natalie T is
plain.
The real fly in the ointment is Aunt Emily (Marion
Sitgreave) who is convinced her end is nigh even as she threatens to go on for
years. All of these things matter to Babs as her own test has revealed that she
is in love with Jim, their faces blushing, their hearts fluttering and their
pulse rate increasing. Now, apart from the fact that Jim is engaged to her aunt,
Babs has decided that he is The One and she hatches a plan to settle the others
down so she can get her man…
Do you need to know the plan? I don’t think so but safe
to say there’s a lot of daft fun to be had when Babs engineers a trip to Palm
Springs where she uses every bit of her “expertise” in love.
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| "Think what it means to find your mate?!" |
It’s not a great movie, and that can be said for a fair few Talmadge films, but it is a very impressive demonstration of Constance’s screen presence and her ability to hold not just your attention but an entire film together. Colin Sell played along with style, debonair digits delivering the elegant bon mots this film deserved, celebrating not the epic or the groundbreaking but the sheer entertainment and helping to restore the love for one of the brightest stars of the silent era.
So, another evening of film that is pretty much
impossible to see anywhere else. Come to the Kennington Cabaret old chums, it’s
his and her stories featuring gobbets of first and secondary sources like no
other.
If you want to find out more about Norma Talmadge then I
would heartily recommend the website put together by Greta de Groat from
Stanford University. It’s the most comprehensive source of all things Talmadge and full of rigorous analysis.
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