Not missing out on Mary... Stella Maris (1918) with Meg Morley, Hippfest at Home ‘24

FOMOH… defined in Bo-ness as yon Fear of Missin’ Oot (On) Hippfest is high as I sit in South Cambridge 390 miles away from this year’s event but only inches away thanks to the streaming element of the festival, Hippfest at Home providing a sample pf the atmosphere and the cinematic treats being screened with accompanying piano-cam showing the players at work accompanying the silents and stirring the watcher’s hearts and minds.

Time flies and festivals fly even faster and there was, Alison Strauss the head of Clan Hippfest queuing up a vivacious introductory video from Pamela Hutchinson before introducing one of our finest accompanists, Meg Morley, who proceeded to enhance the extraordinary Stella Maris, one of Mary Pickford’s very best films and in which she gives Lon Chaney a run for his money playing two characters that look almost nothing alike.

She plastered her hair with Vaseline, smudged make up round her eyes to make them appear smaller, darkened her nostrils to make them wider and contorted her body to leave one shoulder higher and her back twisted... Pickford’s conviction and commitment to the roles is astonishing and , if you didn’t know she was both malnourished orphan Unity Blake and the titular bed-ridden privileged princess you’d struggle to recognise the most famous woman of the time…

The Mary we expect.

As Pam said, the dual roles gave Pickford a chance to draw on her impoverished, and abusive, past in deeper ways and with her great collaborator and a featured artist of this festival, Frances Marion scriptwriting, the two were able to create two unforgettable characters and to hint at real darkness. This is no Poor Little Rich Girl… Pickford was choosing her projects and her teams by this stage and this was a story she wanted to really challenge herself as well as the audience.

 

Based on the 1913 novel by William J. Locke, Stella Maris was directed by Marshall Neilan who Pickford compared the director favourably with DW Griffith, she always was a challenge, and felt that their shared Irish heritage helped him get the best out of her. As a result, this was the highest grossing film of 1918, on a level with say Barbie in tickets sold if not pink tinting and confused messaging. Stella Maris knows exactly what it wants to say about poverty and even the way wealthy women are treated by their so-called carers. By this stage Mary must have found much to identify with both her characters and that makes her choice of story all the more powerful and revealing.

 

Pickford is first seen as Miss Stella Maris a tragic young woman born into a wealthy family and yet in poor health: she cannot walk and is kept bedridden, well-protected from the horrors of outdoor life. She lives with her Aunt Julia Lady Eleanor Blount (Ida Waterman) and Uncle Sir Oliver Blount (Herbert Standing). Her favourite visitor is family friend, journalist John Risca (Conway Tearle) with whom she enjoys a fantasy existence of castles and kings. Interesting that she relies on a journalist to not tell her the truth…

The Mary we get.

But John has a darker home life with an alcoholic and abusive wife Louise (an excellent Marcia Manon, clearly having a whale of a time) whose numerous addictions are laid out for all to see: the wicked witch of this story. Listless Louise only ever gets passionate about punishment but is switched on enough to scour the local orphanage for home help in the form of the energetic but under-fed Unity Blake. Face and body posture twisted out of all proportion; Pickford must have suffered for this role in ways that only Chaney would appreciate.

 

Unity fails to meet her new mistresses exacting demands and is savagely beaten only being saved after neighbours here her screams. The police arrive and Louise is imprisoned for her assault. Wracked by guilt, John resolves to look after Unity and brings her into his house where she is looked after by his Aunt Gladys (Josephine Crowell). This upper-class generosity only extends so far though and they all resolve to keep Unity’s existence a secret from the enforced innocence of Stella. Here it is interesting that Stella’s innocence is prescribed by her relatives whilst Unity’s is seemingly just her natural state… in spite of all that she has been through.

Doctors gather to see Stella and decide that her legs can be restored through a new operation. The months pass and gradually she returns to full health. Inevitably she encounters Unity in a stunningly well realised double exposure: this is the tricky part - acting with yourself. By this stage it’s not Unity’s tale that threatens Stella’s fairy-tale world view but the world itself as she sees squads of soldiers marching past her huge garden and the questions keep on coming…

The film doesn't hold back from showing the desperation and brutality

Meanwhile, Louise is released for good behaviour and sets back to her recidivist ways aiming to ruin her estranged husband’s budding romance with the beautiful and unsullied Stella. Yet Unity has also developed feelings for her saviour… There’s a startling moment when she caresses John’s coat on a clothing stand, wrapping its sleeves around her and relishing the imagined intimacy, made almost real by the texture and the smell…

I won’t give away the ending but this is one you should see if you’re looking for Mary Pickford’s best films and if you haven’t already watched her tour de force. It's clearly one of her more political statements as well given the disparity between the two main characters and the disappointments of the rich woman discovering the nature of a world she has been deliberately isolated from. It's almost a fable of Pickford's own journey... she wants to be allowed to be both the woman she was and the successful star; with due respect to all on this spectrum of luck and life.

Meg Morley accompanied with a heart-breaking emotional narrative of her own which hit so many sweet and sour touch points in its intimate entanglement with the two Pickfords. Wonderful skill and sensitivity, I only wish I’d been there to hear it live. Next year no FOMOH!!