The gang’s all here… Dinty (1920), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter DVD

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!

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.

 

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…

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.

 

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.

 

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!