Ich möchte kein Mann sein... The Trail of the Law (1924), with Cyrus Gabrysch, Kennington Bioscope

“I like you better as a girl Jerry…”

This film rests on whether or not you can really believe that Norma Shearer looks like a boy yet, no matter how much you dislike the double-Oscar-winning wife of Irving Hallberg – and I’m looking at you Joan Crawford – it’s a stretch.

Norma plays Geraldine – Jerry – Varden, who grows up in an isolated wood cabin with her, some might say, over-protective father Alvin (John P. Morse) determined to hide her from the male gaze – at least as a female. Following some unfortunate business with her mother (also Norma) and a passing psychotic, Steve Merrill (Richard Neill). They find Merrill near starvation and take them into their home only for him to later attempt to steal all Alvin’s money. He is thwarted but escapes whilst Geraldine’s mother never recovers from the shock and asks that Alvin bring her up as a boy to avoid unwanted attention from cruel mankind…

Now, as Variety said at the time, “…that’s all there is to the plot, and it can be seen that the brain is not seriously taxed keeping up with it…” but once you discount the story this is a well-made and enjoyable flicker. Significantly, it’s also a film that was largely believed lost but the BFI has a copy and we should be grateful.

Norma Shearer in Pleasure Mad (1923)

Young Shearer was only 21 at the time and a few years away from really breaking through but her easy, naturalistic charm is evident throughout and her style that would come to fruition with the talkies but still impress in silents such as He Who Gets Slapped and Lady of the Night (in which Miss Crawford briefly played her double). She’s full of pep and makes a good go of the shootin’, throwin’ and fightin’ required whilst all the while looking far too fair of face and fringe to pass muster as a lad.

She brawls with Bobby Willis (Herbert Holcolm) the younger brother of her and Pa Varden’s new neighbour Caleb (Charles Byer) who’s set up a small hunting cabin with a bearded-fellow name of Tom Frost. They don’t look too pleasant… certainly not as gentile as Alvin, Jerry and their man Mathew (George Stevens).

Jerry gets the better of Bobby and a forbidding truce descends on the valley… Peace is about to be disturbed on an together different way as a canoe arrives bringing a refugee from the City, burnt-out Fraser Burt (Wilfred Lytell) looking to get away from the rate race and to get it together in the country…

Tomboy circuitry? Norma in 1925

Fraser frazzles Jerry’s tomboy circuitry and her Dad reveals all as he speaks his story and Geraldine appears in evening gown to play harp must be a devil to keep tuned in these parts?). But sneaky Bobby sees all and the Willis’ hatch a plot to take advantage of this unexpected gender fluidity…

Is Geraldine still more of a man that Bobby and Caleb will ever be, can Fraser survive a sniper’s bullet in his canoe and just who is beardy Tom really?! All will be revealed… if, that is, you’re lucky enough to see this fine 35mm print projected again.

This was the probably first time The Trail of the Law had been seen since its initial release and relatively unambitious though it is, we should still celebrate the survival of this entertainment and not just for its stars and her glory to come. This was the every-week fare of our grandparents – a classic experience if not a classic film.

Oscar Apfel

Director Oscar Apfel co-directed Cecil B DeMille’s first features, The Squaw Man from 1914 and was a highly competent pro who makes this story flow really well, aided by some lovely scenic cinematography from Alfred Gandolfi. Variety was also impressed praising the “…pictorial excellence, adequate direction, good acting… “but, noted that as “Miss Shearer is appealing even in trousers and cap… more than the usual amount of imagination is needed to conceive her palming herself off as a boy.”

Accompanist Cyrus Gabrysch was up in the hills with them all the way charting a sure-footed path alongside the narratives gentile excitements and rural revelations – making a good “harp” when Geraldine reveals the full extent of her femininity through music.

Tonight’s undercard included some strange and wonderful shorts.

Land Beyond the Sun (1912)

Land Beyond the Sun (1912) as a film made on behalf of the still-extant Fresh Air Fund a body set up to get inner city children experience of the great outdoors: “get your son and heir some sun and air!” a later slogan may have run…

In this case, it is a poor Newsboy called Joe (Martin Fuller) starved of sunlight and even love by his harsh grandma (Mrs. William Bechtel) who gets his chance for a day of sunlit escape and is so captivated by fairy stories from the fund workers, that he escapes to the sea in a boat… or does he?

Henry King crowning Ruth Roland in still from Unto Herself Alone an earlier episode of Who Pays?

The next film was altogether harder-edged as Ruth Roland and Henry King stared in Toil and Tyranny (1915) episode 12 of Who Pays?  a serious seral with a difference from the usual cliff-hanger. There were four such serials from Pathé Exchange including Who’s Guilty? and Who Wins? all tackling social issues.

I this case it’s capital against labour as Henry King’s timber worker is abused by management leading to tragic consequences for his family and that of the business owner, whose daughter is played by Ruth Roland. The film is much more even-handed and frank than you might expect from Hollywood it’s worth remembering the year and the impact of wider movements and events on capitalism’s crisis of confidence.

“If they’re not satisfied, let them starve!”

Meg Morley played along for both impeccably-well: fresh air and industrial strife conveyed with equal relaxed expressiveness.

Another winning evening the Kennington Cinema Museum: where else can you see so much rare and unique celluloid?

Teardrops… Stella Dallas (1925), Barbican with Stephen Horne and Elizabeth-Jane Baldry

“The slender rapier triumphs over the spiked bludgeon throughout the unfurling of the screen conception of Olive Higgins Prouty's novel…”  Mordaunt Hall, New York Times 17^th November 1925.

Well… I was warned I might need a box of tissues and if even Mordaunt was so moved; you know there’s an irresistible sadness about to pass in front of your eyes. What’s more accompanist Stephen Horne was assisted by Elizabeth-Jane Baldry on harp – there’s no way I was going to get through this without, you know…

Directed by Henry King with an adaptation from Frances Marion Stella Dallas walks that fine line between melodrama and drama. It features characters bound by the invisible constraints of their time and it perhaps a backwards view of social mores even for 1925 but, the story was driven by grief as much as anything else.

Lobby card with bennett, Colman and Moran

Olive Higgins Prouty wrote the novel soon after the death of her three-year old daughter in 1923 and it is the story of the sacrifices a mother makes in order to ensure her daughter’s success in life. I’m sure for Prouty this was a case of if only; a tribute to the one lost and the lengths she would have gone to if only she could have.

Any decent onto pure Victoriana is also offset by a fierce performance from Belle Bennett whose own son had also died just before she got the part: her Stella rings very true. As Pamela Hutchinson noted during her illuminating introduction, she had already launched a one-woman campaign to get the role and rewarded Goldwyn and King with a display that must have resonated with so many parents in an era when childhood mortality was far more commonplace.

Stella will do anything for her daughter even to the extent of sacrificing her own happiness: her life means nothing if her daughter cannot live well.

Belle Bennett

The film begins with a parental sacrifice as Stephen Dallas Senior (Charles Willis Lane), wealthy industrialist, takes his own life after being accused of financial wrong-doing. His son, Stephen Jnr (Ronald Colman) goes off to work in a remote corner of their business empire.

Away in this small town environment, Stephen mingles with ordinary working folk from outside his class. He forms an attachment with one lass, Stella, amidst some funny scenes on her family porch as her brothers try and interfere – the film’s not all doom and gloom and its humour also brings balance.

Stephen and Stella try to romance

Stella and Mr Dallas wed and have a daughter, Laurel, and yet it soon becomes apparent that the couple have different priorities: he needs to drive the family business in New York whilst she is happy bringing up her daughter amongst people she knows.

As gaps start to appear, not least in terms of geography, Stella spends time with an earthy good-time fella name of Ed Munn (Jean Hersholt who is so very good at playing characters with a soft moral centre…). Needless to say this doesn’t sit well with Stephen who misses the companionship of more refined women such as his former sweetheart Helen Morrison (Alice Joyce – no relation) who is now married with three boys.

Back on small-town, Laurel’s teacher spies Stella having fun with Ed and expels her from school leaving her humiliated when the rest of the class fail to turn up for her 10^th birthday party. There are some sweet moments as Stella and Laurel (who is now Lois Moran) make the best of a bad day… even Dad is not present but then why would he be; he’s got a business to run.

One party and two guests

The story moves on a few years and Laurel comes of age still played by Lois Moran (just 16 at the time and later much favoured by F Scot Fitzgerald according to PH). She forms an attachment with a young rich boy called Richard Grosvenor (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr 15 at the time!) but is ashamed of her mother with her crude ways, working class manners and dress sense.

Stella overhears some of the rich set mocking her and begins to think she can only be holding her daughter back. By this stage she and Stephen have run aground and knowing of his attachment to Helen, Stella asks her competitor directly for help…

I won’t go any further but the story becomes very focused and desperately sad - perhaps an ode to lost children for whom a mother would rather grieve when lost yet still alive rather than gone forever.

Doug Junior and Lois Moran

Faced with such emotional extremes, Stephen Horne’s score is restrained and melodic. He knows just how to under-score high emotions and this was the third time I’ve seen him play in just over a week, each one a wildly different film.

Elizabeth-Jane Baldry’s golden harp melded perfectly with Stephen’s music and is a hugely variable instrument: a piano without the keys but with an unique, taught beauty of its own. There really isn’t enough harp in my life…

Ronald and Aunty Alice (maybe)

Stella Dallas was playing as part of the Barbican’s CheapThrills, Trash, Movies and the Art of Transgression series as well as their regular silent film and live music strand. It was projected from an actual 35mm film which was a very good copy – not tinted like the old fuzzy Sunrise Silents DVD from which my screen shots are grabbed.

Not sure exactly how transgressive things got but it certainly wasn’t cheap emotionally and that is what sets it apart from mere genre: a genuinely-elevated play about grief and sacrifice. To this extent it's really all about Belle Bennett and her ability to channel her own pain into performance.

Belle rings true

Not half bad... She Goes to War (1929)

You have to be a glass half full person to really enjoy She Goes to War. Originally the film ran for an hour and a half but the version available today was cut down to barely 50 minutes. Not just the intertitles have been removed but also a lot of background for the characters with the remaining focus on the action.

From the introduction it looks like this version was cobbled together in the early 1940s as American citizens were again preparing for war. They left the sound but not all of the sense intact and you have to work out what is going on from the playing and a few snatches of dialogue.

The film would presumably have been similar in structure to The Big Parade template, with the characters being established first from patriotic stirrings, conscription, the journey to France and then showing their development as they face up to the realities of the war.

Instead this version starts with the boys' send off and shifts very quickly to the front. Some of the soldiers are joined by their women who work as nurses, cooks and cleaners.

Eleanor Boardman plays Joan Morant a socialite aiming to support her beau Reggie (Edmund Burns). In a sub-plot not too apparent in this version, Joan is resented by Reggie's commanding officer, Lieutenant Tom Pike, played by John Holland, who sees their social standing as irrelevant in the circumstances of war.

Reggie proves this by succumbing to fear of the battle to come and drinking himself into a stupor. In an attempt to protect his honour, Joan takes his place as the troops march off to the fight. Initially disguised by her gasmask, Joan covers her face in dirt and tries to pass herself off as a man, just about fooling her comrade Bill, played with energy and humour by comedy veteran Al St John.

There's an horrific battle sequence as the Germans roll barrels of oil at the soldiers who are forced to retreat. The Americans take the fight back using tanks which crawl through the wall of flames as the soldiers inside are almost cooked. The enemy are almost routed but pin down the soldiers using machine gun fire.

It is here that Joan learns the full horror of battle and finds the courage that Reggie could not. Saving the day she is carried back to base by the lieutenant, more in (totally) exhausted resignation than triumph.

She Goes to War obviously had a message and by involving a female character in combat broke some ground. Directed by the estimable Henry King (director of silent classics such as Tol'able David and Stella Dallas through to many talkies including Carousel), it features some good action sequences and looks well made from the fragments that are left.

Eleanor Boardman, one year on from The Crowd, gives a typically excellent performance, in spite of the unlikely nature of the story and is well photographed by King who gives her plenty of close ups to show what she can do. It's a shame that we don't see more of her character's roots and motivations. The cast list references a number of characters from the home front who no longer feature including Joan's aunt and maid as well as Lieutenant Pike's mother and the regimental major.

There's also a great little turn from Alma Rubens who sings to the soldiers in one scene and then plays out the part of mother to one dying boy in the film's most powerful moment. Sadly this was Rubens last film and she was to soon succumb to drug addiction. She was certainly very talented from what she shows here.

This is well worth seeking out but you have to hope that the original, full-length version is still extant and will someday get released. In the meantime, the truncated version is available on Amazon or directly from Grapevine.