“The illustrated journalism now prevalent finds its
finest achievements in the publication of photographs surreptitiously taken.
The value does not seem to lie in the fact that the photographs are of
notabilities, but that they have been taken by stealth.”
The Right of Privacy (1896), John Gilmer Speed
This one is a doozy, absolutely newsworthy and, with
apologies to Mrs. Wallace Reid and her subject, Gabrielle “Dolly” Dardley aka
Darley, Layral, Layradi, D'Arley… later Mrs Wiley, the characters in real life
are more extraordinary than those we see on screen. Probably best to start with
the film but be prepared for murder most frequent and some substantial case
law.
Dorothy Davenport had a highly successful career as a
leading actress and after the death of her film star husband, Wallace Reid
after he became addicted to morphine following an on-set accident, she fought
to raise awareness of the perils of drug dependency with a series of films she
produced starting with Human Wreckage (1923) which was based on this
subject and featured her playing the wife of a drug addict then onto Broken
Laws (1924) about the consequences of bad parenting, in which she also
featured. She was the prime mover behind these films but her first directing credit
was Linda (1929). She would also write and later on would take whatever
role she could earn going forward including working with her friend director
Arthur Lubin, co-writing scripts for the TV series, Francis the Talking Mule
(1950-56).
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| Dorothy Davenport aka Mrs Wallace Reid |
All that’s a far cry from this film, announced as being based
on a true story – well, certainly a story – and which starts with Mrs
Reid sitting in an almost expressionist set of a public library reading through
old newspapers about a crime of the heart committed by a woman betrayed in 1917
(the date was changed to wartime for dramatic reasons). Actually, before this,
we get the titles which are set against a fallen woman appealing to heaven for
redemption and as the titles end we see her trying to climb her way out of the
lower depths towards the light. The film may have been described as having been
“made under the personal supervision of Mrs Reid”, but the director was Walter
Lang making his first film in a career that would include Technicolor musicals
like The King and I (1956). This inventive beginning is followed by many
pleasingly framed sequences in a well-made film.
In the library the newspaper headline reads Story of
Gabrielle Darley Startling Human Document with the quote “I didn’t know
what to do… I loved him so…” from “a beautiful child-like girl”. Let’s
stick with that for now as Mrs Reid turns to camera and the title card reads: This
is a true story. Much of it is on record in the Superior Court of California.
If it contains bitter truths, remember that I only turn the pages of the past…
She calls for understanding of women like Gabrielle and hopes the audience will
play their part in helping them.
We cut to the innocent face of Priscilla Bonner as Gabrielle
Darley who is wrestling the news that her supposed fiancée has headed off to
California to marry another woman. She cannot believe that her Howard (Carl
Miller) truly intends to marry someone else and follows him, finding him buying
an engagement ring in a jewellery store. He turns and cuts her dead and then
she shoots him in a moment of disbelief – the very definition of the French
concept of un crime passionnel although surely that’s not going to
protect her in an American court.
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| Carl Miller and Priscilla Bonner |
The court case is well handled and I have to say Bonner is excellent and Lang makes the absolute most of her abilities with frequent close-ups of her huge eyes welled up with tears and hooded with bitter regret; the crushing weight of lost love, false promises and an action that killed a large part of herself as well as her cruel lover. Bonner’s peepers are almost constantly moist and with such a reflective quality you can see the outline of the camera in her irises. All this is used to great affect when, to my surprise as a first-time viewer, and no doubt many others at the time, she is acquitted by the jury of twelve men. Much is made of her poor background and her unloving parents with Harold promising romance and escape and yet delivering her only to a life of degradation and prostitution in New Orleans, then renowned for its red lights.
But she retained faith in her man and was sorely misled as
he stole her money and her heart.
After the judgement Gabrielle wants to atone for her crime
and is taken under the wing of a wealthy socialite, Mrs. Beverly Fontaine (Virginia
Pearson) who is virtue signalling at her expense and, as her housekeeper (fab
Brit Emily Fitzroy) points out, will soon tire of her. During this period, she
meets and falls in love with Mrs Fontaine’s chauffeur Freddy (Theodore von Eltz
as Terrance O'Day) and we can see a romantic redemption ahead but not so
simple.
Events get in the way as Gabrielle has to leave to find work
and Freddy is called away to the army and the war in France… she gets the
chance to work in a hospital and focuses on paying back the debt she feels that
she owes.
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| Priscilla Bonner |
It’s a very affecting film with flavour added by the likes of Tyrone Power Sr. as Gabrielle's father, Mary Carr as the protective prison matron and the imposing George Siegmann as Mr. Mack, “a client” who dwarfs Gabrielle and is the epitome of the physical and moral degradation she has had to endure. But without even knowing anything of the truth you wonder at the circumstances of the murder – why was she carrying a gun? – not to mention Gabrielle’s subsequent determination to find a humble route back to good grace.
Tightly scripted by future director, Dorothy Arzner the Red Kimono itself is an emblem of Gabrielle’s fall from grace, tinted bright red to highlight the guilt of the oldest profession and her frequent flashbacks… It’s a very effective device and combined with Bonner’s photogenic emoting makes the films narrative and moral arc a compelling one. That’s Hollywood though… there’s more outside than inside this film.
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| Another cameraman who should have got his union to prevent his having to do a roller-coaster reel! |
"Historical accounts credit Dollie Wiley with
murdering six people – five husbands and her best friend. However, police
arrested and charged her with only one murder, that of Leonard Topp whom she
gunned down in 1915. A jury acquitted her of that crime."
Prescott Daily Courier, 13th January 2002
Now, I don’t want to harsh your mellow, but the true story of
Gabrielle is not quite as it is advertised. This doesn’t invalidate the film’s
good intent nor the efforts of cast, crew and Mrs Reid to make something
positive of it but it is interesting in of itself. Also, as luck would have it,
the real nature of Gabrielle aka “Dollie” was such that reality and fiction
would meet in court and again with an outcome that arguably did more good than
the motivations guiding the action intended or deserved. Fiction is stranger
than truth.
After seeing the film in 1927, having previously been
unaware, Dollie decided to sue upon the basis of the film highlighting the past
that she was trying so hard to move beyond – her argument being that she wanted
to assume a quiet and anonymous place in society. Reid made the mistake of
using her actual name as well as her story and in Melvin v. Reid (1931) the
court decided that "any person living a life of rectitude has that
right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary attacks on his
character, social standing or reputation." So, the fiction that
presented her in the best light as a reformed and Christian character ended up
landing her a windfall when Reid eventually lost.
But it seems that Dollie was another performer creating a version of herself, perhaps one closer to the film version. Her reality was far more complex and far from walking away from the life of sex work she was very much an active participant running houses of ill repute on a commercial scale, not so much a victim but a manager. Indeed, by the time she met the man she would shoot, her lover and pimp Leonard Topp, Dollie was already running a brothel in Prescott and was a woman of some disrepute*.
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| Film Gabrielle haunted by her past... |
Defended by the flamboyant Earl Rogers, one of the most
successful criminal lawyers of the time, Dollie was able to defy the odds as she
and Rogers swayed the all-male jury. Rogers was a master of detail and
persuasive argument losing only three of his 77 murder trials as defending
counsel and he had a client here who was clearly some actress. His daughter, Adela
Rogers St. Johns covered the case in one of her first journalistic assignments,
and it was her story that was adapted by Arzner for the screenplay. After
journalism she wrote novels and a number of screenplays including Lady of
the Night (1925), Children of Divorce (1927) and A Free Soul
(1931) and even had an uncredited hand in A Star is Born (1937) which
was loosely based on What Price Hollywood? (1932) which she had based on
Colleen Moore and her husband, alcoholic producer John McCormick.
Nothing sums up the trial so much as a line decades later in Final Verdict, St. Johns’ 1962 memoir, where she wrote that with men like Topp, homicide was not only justifiable, but obligatory. For Dollie's personal narrative and Mrs Reid's film this is the money shot, but murder it was and, as in the film, the verdict is still astonishing.
Dollie’s second case followed the film about her first and Melvin
v. Reid (1931) established the limits of First Amendment defences and the
privacy tort when republishing true but shameful past facts lacks public
interest… The court reasoned that "any person living a life of
rectitude has that right to happiness which includes a freedom from unnecessary
attacks on his character, social standing or reputation." This decision still stands as a key precedent.
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| The real "Dollie" |
Yet, whilst Mrs Reid took a financial hit, Gabrielle resumed
her chosen profession and went through a series of marriages all of which ended
up unhappily, especially for her husbands. The full lurid details are to be
found in various places, there’s even a book in the works, but Leo W Banks
article in the Phoenix New Times from 12th August 1999 takes
some beating**!
It all connects to the prescient line at the top from John
Gilmer Speed, which is ever more relevant in today’s society in which our souls
are captured unwillingly by the demon devices in everyone’s pockets. What we
are doing is one thing but how it is presented in seemingly infallible moving
images is often something else entirely.
The Red Kimono was banned in the United Kingdom by the British Board of Film Censors, as with its predecessor Human Wreckage, if only they’d known the full true story, they would have banned it even more! You can find the film in the indispensable Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers box set from Kino Lorber.
*Gabrielle Darley: Murderess or Misunderstood Maiden?
March 22, 2013, By Sam Lowe
**A Madame, a Murder, a Mystery, Leo W Banks Phoenix
New Times, 12/08/1999
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