When Buddy met Mary … My Best Girl (1927)

This was Mary Pickford’s last silent film and was produced at the technical high point of the form with Sam Taylor directing and Charles Rosher’s camera generating those smooth “european trick shots” Hollywood had come to love. Like all films of the late period, they feel more modern than they should do given our exposure to the dulled ice age of early talkies which left events stuck in studio, actors huddled around immobile microphones… But here, the camera swoops, travels on speeding motorcars and, most importantly, shows us two people falling in love.

Whether or not the two stars began their relationship with this film is open to debate and it would be a full ten years before they tied the knot to begin their 42-year marriage, but it feels like it.

The future Mrs and Mr Pickford...

Now, for the sums… Mary Pickford was 35 – just a little older than Zooey Dechannel and a little younger than Amy Adams – and still able to carry off the shop girl ingénue. Charles “Buddy” Rogers was just 22… considerably younger than Mary’s hubby Douglas Fairbanks who was 44 at the time.

Regardless of the events off-set, the film stands as one of Pickford’s best and most enduring: a thousand rom-coms have followed in its footsteps including those still featuring Zooey and Amy.

Pots and pans

Pickford produced and it’s hard not to imagine that she also co-directed parts of the film. Our first glimpse of her is of her feet as she attempts to carry too numerous a collection of pots and pans in the department store in which she works. As one pan is picked up another falls to the floor until she has to resort to sticking her feet in them to lift them along – it’s inventively daft and shows us all we need to know about the brave and gutsy shop girl, Maggie Johnson.

Maggie works in Merril’s Department Store – I have a penchant for films set in 1920s department stores: think of Clara Bow in It! or Brent and Brooks in Love ‘em and Leave ‘em… places where society mixes almost on a level and where there’s always the possibility of unexpected dalliances across the class divide.

Are you being served?

A young man sidles up to Maggie’s counter and starts to ask her flirty questions about the various items for sale… turns out he’s the new guy 'Joe' Grant (Rogers) who eventually gets assigned to Maggie for ad hoc induction to the world of the store.

The two get on well and soon share their lunchtimes sitting cosy in a packing crate in the staff room. It is here where we see Mary’s first prolonged screen kiss: a side-on affair that conveys much delicate passion.

Maggie invites Joe home, where he gets to meet the family: Pa Johnson (Lucien Littlefield) a man disorientated by the curious position in which life has left him, not least of which is his easily-shocked and narcoleptic wife (Sunshine Hart) whom he frequently has to rouse with smelling salts.

Then there’s sister Liz (Carmelita Geraghty) a jazz baby hanging around with decidedly-dodgy men and, as a result, in constant conflict with her parents.

Sunshine Hart, Carmelita Geraghty, Mary, Pat Harmon and Lucien Littlefield

Maggie is ashamed of their bad humour and pretends that they are rehearsing for a play, leaving Joe waiting on their porch for their first date.

But she’s not the only one hiding something… “Joe” is actually Joseph, the son and heir to the Merrill fortune who has been assigned to the shop by his father Robert (Hobart Bosworth) in order to learn the business without his name giving him advantage.

His mother Esther (Evelyn Hall) also has ambitions and wants to see him married off to the winsome and wealthy Millicent Rogers (Avonne Taylor). Joe doesn’t appear to have any strong feelings about this social arrangement, at least not yet at any rate.

Buddy Rogers

Joe does well at the store and is soon being promoted but he’s also getting closer and closer to Maggie. To two spend a blissful journey in the back of a truck after walking through traffic as if it wasn’t there: totally absorbed in each other’s presence. This section reminded me strongly of the closing sequence of Sunrise (made some months earlier…) with the couple walking through the staged street traffic…

Joe and Maggie go on a rain-sodden date as he ignores his parent’s request to dine with them – they are planning to announce his engagement. He persuades Maggie to venture to the Merrill’s house to see if the family’s oft-pronounced equal treatment would extend to their being offered dinner.

Winking his way past the doorman and butlers he gets them to lay on a meal whilst Maggie looks around in nervous amazement: even more delighted by her dazzling young man than before. But, they are rudely interrupted by Joe’s parents as they arrive back home with the decorative Millicent in tow… the game’s up!

Meanwhile, Liz’ fella has really dropped her in it and they are being processed before the night court. Unable to contact the brains of the family, the Johnson’s are helpless to prevent their younger daughter from being locked up.

As luck would have it, Maggie, having tearfully made her excuses and left, encounters Ma and Pa downtown as they enter the court: she goes into battle for her sister in front of a Judge played by Mack Swain.

But Joe isn’t done yet and goes out in search of his “best girl” – he’s not going to be swayed. A helpful hobo spots events and directs him to the court where he is in time to see Maggie’s eloquent defence and to end up in clink after thumping Liz’s no good boyfriend.

Maggie brings order to the court

It makes the papers and there’s a big stink but, will class barriers be broken and will true love run smooth… We been here before my friends and I have no intention of revealing what happens.
 
My Best Girl is a lovely film and one to file under heart-warming. Rogers is good in the same way he was in Wings: wholehearted and sincere… my teenage daughter recognised those regular features instantly!

But he’s not the one you watch. It’s Mary’s show and she demonstrates an undimmed intensity with a face and a voice that can almost be heard… so close is she to the talkies. She performs particularly well in the ending section I’m not mentioning and there was hardly a dry eye in our living room: how can she do that when we can almost see it coming!? Amazing skill: a wizard and a true star!

The look of love...

I watched the Milestone DVD which comes with some precious home movie footage showing Mary and Buddy’s wedding and their honeymoon – a nice touch. Whatever the ups and downs of the decades to follow this was one of those Hollywood marriages built to last. It may have started here in front of our very eyes.

My Best Girl is available direct for institutional use from Milestone or from Amazon’s second hand sellers – seems it’s out of print and becoming collectable. Hopefully the good folks at Milestone have a Blu-ray in the works, this is indeed amongst the very best of Pickford.

Trivia: Carole Lombard has an uncredited appearance as a Flirty Salesgirl whilst Charles Rosher deservedly received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography. He shot so many of Pickford’s films not to mention his other projects with Herr Murnau.

Carole Lombard and Buddy

The first born… The Pleasure Garden (1925)

Hitchcock’s maiden solo flight appropriately enough kicked off the BFI’s second season of the restored “Hitchcock Nine”, a year after the new prints made their debut. This was the first time I had seen The Pleasure Garden and the restoration was superb as was the  spritely musical accompaniment from Stephen Horne, straight from the SF Silent Film Festival – the hardest-working man in silent-show business?

Based on the book by Oliver Sandys, and a screenplay from Eliot Stannard, The Pleasure Garden displays its director’s enduring fascination with theatrical sleaze and the troubling relationship between the watcher and the watched… Filmed in 1925 and first screened in Germany, The Pleasure Garden didn’t get a UK release until 1926 after the success of The Lodger. Even Hitch had to pay his dues.

The film opens with a chorus line dashing down a spiral staircase in a blur of energised costumery... They pile onto stage where they are ogled by a front row full of men in formal evening dress. The camera moves along the row revelling in their gaze, their faces contorted in lustful appreciation, and coming to an abrupt halt with a young woman bored to sleep… This may be a comment on the weak-minded lasciviousness of male cinema goers, but Hitch still shows us the legs…and we still watch.
 

Virginia Valli disapproves...

The focus returns to linger on one excited individual who stares intently on the legs of one girl in particular… Noticing, she darts him an eyes-wide angry glance – but he’s too carried away to take heed.

It’s a great opening and, as critic Dave Kehr has noted, something like a "clip reel of Hitchcock motifs to come"…. there would be many more stages, old-age oglers and blonde dancing girls.

The limbs in question belong to chorus girl Patsy Brand (Virginia Valli) a girl with a heart of gold who soon comes to the aid of Jill Cheyne (Carmelita Geraghty) a middle class girl who wants a short-cut to the front of stage. Jill’s purse is robbed and she loses her money and letter of introduction but Patsy takes her in and the two start to share her Brixton bedsit.

Here we find two of Hitch’s soon-to-be-stock working class characters, Mr and Mrs Sidey played by Ferdinand Martini and Florence Helminger… neither of whom sound like they frequent the Ritzy! Both perform wonderful cameos, especially Martini with his malfunctioning crystal set and headphones.

Naturally they have a dog, Cuddles, who is a tremendously good judge of character. Jill’s fiancé, Hugh (John Stuart), arrives and is greeted like an old friend whilst his partner in colonial business, Leyet (the marvellously malevolent Miles Mander) is growled at.

Carmelita Geraghty and Karl Falkenberg

The two head off to the Orient (it’s never made clear where) and Hugh leaves Patsy promising to look after the pushy but scatty Jill who has started to impress at the theatre (the Pleasure Garden of the title).

But things start to fall apart, including the plot which meanders for too long as Jill plays around with bearded Prince Ivan (Karl Falkenberg) and Patsy somehow allows herself to get married to Leyet. The two honeymoon by Lake Como and there are some sumptuous shots from cameraman Gaetano di Ventimiglia but their relationship never convinces and it’s not clear why Levet wants the marriage… some twisted idea of love perhaps or is just there to supply the bad?

Leyet heads off to the east leaving Patsy increasingly unable to curtail Jill who hoards money whilst refusing to lend a hand when Patsy wants to visit her supposedly ill new husband (his excuse for not writing backfires…).

The unknown swimmer...

The narrative now gathers more cohesion as the characters head for dramatic – if predictable - collision. Patsy borrows money from her lahverly landlords and arrives just in time to see Leyet in the arms of a native girl (actress unknown but definitely not Nita Naldi!)… In a daze, Patsy finds Hugh and starts to nurse him but it seems that the crazed Levet is not finished with her.

In what one can only describe as an ‘orribly Hitchcock-ian moment, Leyet swims out to sea to great his girlfriend and then as you think they are to embrace, plunges her head underwater... It is a genuinely shocking moment, well-rendered and a reminder of his later, more unpleasant, work.

Will Leyet get away with it or will Patsy find true love with Hugh and, will we ever find out what happens to the needy-greedy Jill?

The restoration of the film is another superb job from the BFI, and resulted from intensive interweaving of four separate prints from what was identified as the same negative. The film is someway longer than the most commonly seen versions yet whilst this is a significant British silent film, this reveals some pacing issues as well as weaknesses in story logic. That said, there are also a number of bravura moments and Miles Mander is such an absolute cad!

Miles Mander: a bounder

With the originally run of the “Nine”, the BFI had fun by using a range of musical accompaniments, from orchestral to modern jazz, IDM/techno and even beatbox. Tonight’s performance gave Mr Horne the chance to show what a specialist could do and his playing was as quicksilver and emotionally sure-footed as we’ve come to expect.

He played piano – keys and strings – flute and accordion and, disconcertingly, sometimes at least two at once.  This is all the more remarkable when you consider that his music is improvised, making the lyrical connection with narrative tone all the more noteworthy: it’s one thing to walk the tightrope whilst juggling and quite another to do it playing so well!

The Hitchcock silent series runs throughout August at the BFI and The Farmers Wife is next up for me.

So far only the restored Lodger has seen release on Blu-ray/DVD but it appears that a Pleasure Garden DVD with Daniel Patrick Cohen's soundtrack may be in the works? It would be good to have Stephen Horne's music on there too.