High signs… Slapstick Festival Day Two & Three, Bristol Watershed and Cathedral

Paul McGann stood in the pulpit of Bristol Cathedral not unlike Lars Hanson’s priest in The Saga of Gosta Berling and he told it, with all the confidence and power of the truly convicted. There are many takes on introducing film but Mr McGann brought the passion of a silent enthusiast with the technical appreciations of a skilled actor. He introduced the films but he also set the scene but detailing choice moment of performative brilliance from Charlie, Stan and Buster, whetting audience appetites for relishing something new even amidst familiarity. When Charlie wipes Edna’s face with a soapy sock he’s reminding her of a mother long forgotten and when Stan realises he doesn’t have money in his wallet but luncheon vouchers, he gives the most devastated and bloody hilarious response; straight to camera – to us – help!!

The gala featured Chaplin’s The Vagabond (1916), one of his breakthrough two-reelers for Mutual in which he rescues Edna Purviance from a group of gypsies who stole her as a child and turned her into a drudge. It’s a life of slavery and the more I watch Charlie the more I think of his upbringing and his politics; his tramp obviously standing outside of accepted society, intervening as he sees fit. Not so archaic after all.

On the Saturday we’d see a couple of Charlie’s films from the First National period including Pay Day (1922) in which he is married and working as a builder who tries to hide some of his pay from his wife. In Their Purple Moment (1928) Stan and Ollie try to do the same so they can afford a night out on the tiles and off the hook. Of course, it doesn’t work out this way and their wives rumble them with Stan’s substituting her coupons for his stash leaving him with steak dinner for five, including two good-time girls and their cabbie, in a dangerous night club.

Mr and Mrs Keaton

The main feature was Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality (1923) the first of his features and a huge leap for comedy kind. Keaton used his budget to shift the legendary Canfield and McKay feud back to the 1830s and the early days of rail with miles of track laid for a ramshackle train pulled by a replica Rocket – preferred for comedic reasons to more historically-accurate locos. Buster plays young Willie McKay returning South to inherit his father’s “estate” only to find the Canfield family ready to avenge the death of one of their own at his father’s hands.

There’s an exception in the family view of Willie in Virginia (Natalie Talmadge who is quite good but lacks the spirit of Constance and the presence and technique of Norma) who invites him around for dinner. Only southern hospitality can prevent Old Joseph Canfield (Joe Roberts in his last film) and his sons from killing Willie and there’s a good deal of comedy business before Buster makes a break for it and ends up rescuing Virginia in an iconic scene at the falls. It’s a thrilling film with real drama added to the gags by one of the greatest comedy auteurs. We also get three generations of Keaton with Buster and Natalie’s baby boy as the young Willie and a trademark high kick from Joe Keaton at the railway station: he good knock a man down far easier with foot than fist!

Once again, The European Silent Screen Virtuosi joyfully accompanied with Günter A. Buchwald, Romano Todesco and Frank Bockius filling the cavernous spaces with perfectly judged improvisations.

Train kept a rollin'... just!

There’s more to learn about even those we know the most and another key strand from this year’s festival was those less well-known but who were once stars. Of these none shone quote so bright as Marie Prevost, one of Lubitsch’s favourite American actresses who featured in three of his Hollywood films, The Marriage Circle (1924), Kiss Me Again (1925) – of which, sadly, only a trailer remains and Three Women (1924) in a long career. She started out as a Sennett bathing beauty – legs to die for and in some of the most iconic stills of the period – achieved stardom in the twenties and gradually faded into smaller roles in the thirties.

Michelle Facey introduced and provided all of these details and much more about the actress’ backstory. A show of hands showed at the start that most in the audience were indeed not familiar with Prevost outside of the silent film glitterati in my corner! She certainly impressed us all in On to Reno (1928) with a performance as Vera, a young desperate housewife, that showcased her ability to mix toughness and vulnerability with an emotional dexterity not a million miles from Clara Bow. In films like The Racket you see Prevost’s street smarts but here, whilst she suffers no fools, least of all under-achieving husband, Bud (Cullen Landis) who’s lack of drive is about to lose them their house, you see someone the audience would find very relatable.

Vera is offered a thousand dollars to stand in for one of her company’s divorce clients, who can’t be bothered to spend three months in Reno, to enable her to register the qualifying absence from husband, Herbert Holmes (Ned Sparks). Whilst this proposition is oddly sanctioned by her boss – the law is clearly different in the USA – it makes for a whole heap of misunderstandings and fast moving, door-slamming, naked swimming, mayhem ensues. It’s pre-pre-code but also proto-Ray Cooney farcical which leaves a smile as well as a laugh on your lips.

John Sweeney’s accompaniment amplified the action as usual and made sure we enjoyed the full Prevost.

I hope we see more of Marie’s films now and that the diligence of keepers of the flame like Michelle is rewarded with more recognition for Marie’s skills and star appeal. For those wanting to find out more about MP I can recommend Stacia Kissick Jones’s Marie Prevost Project on her site; She Blogged by Night – which is an interesting tale of film research in itself.

Lilyan and Monte share a drink

I missed Reno when the Bioscope screened it last year and I also missed their screening of Ernst Lubitsch’s So This is Paris (1926) which, again, was remis of me as it is as funny as any the director’s films from this period – for me anyway! Here again we had misunderstandings between two couples but with the added flare of the director’s unique use of visual signifiers to embellish the live actions. Mary Pickford, famously fractious with Ernst after Rosita, said that all he did was “direct doors” but as Kevin Brownlow said in his introduction, Lubitsch could direct doors better than most could direct people.

Thus it is that Suzanna (Patsy Ruth Miller), wife of Doctor Paul Giraud (Monte Blue), looks up from reading a racy novel about desert romance to see the naked chest of a “Sheik” across the road in a neighbouring apartment. It’s actor Maurice Lalle (Andre Beranger) who has just finished a rather unconvincing rehearsal with his wife Georgette (Lilyan Tashman, who impressed Greta Garbo very much in this film, so I’m told by KB’s MF…) who’s disenchantments are far broader when it comes to her hubbie… Things get very “Parisian” when Paul is despatched to tell the naked performer to tone it down, as the Doc and Georgette are old friends – possibly more than friends.

Andre and Patsy

There begins a four-way tangled web as Paul and Georgette renew their dancing partnership and Maurice attempts to sheik up Suzanna’s love life. Monte Blue makes for a superb drunk and cuts a pretty sharp Charleston as well. It’s all so perfectly balanced and timed and, as has been said, one of the most criminally overlooked Lubitsch films.

Accompaniment was from The European Silent Screen Virtuosi and I loved the precision of their extemporised standards Ain’t She Sweet and The Charleston. Surely Slapstick needs to review the unofficial – and, indeed, merely rumoured/made up – Ban on Dancing?!

Paris has a brief bit of young Myrna Loy as the Lalle’s maid and five year’s earlier Patsy Ruth Miller was an uncredited bit-part player in One A Minute from 1921; ever heard of it or it’s star Douglas Maclean?

Young Patsy Ruth Miller and Douglas Maclean

Maclean made 23 feature films and was a big star for most of the twenties with a mix of Harold Lloyd’s looks and his hero Douglas Fairbanks energy. As with the latter had made what he termed “straight comedies” in which he acted a role rather than played a persona with action gags thrown in. In One A Minute (1921) he plays Jimmy, returning home after finishing college to manage his late father’s drug store and meeting an attractive young woman en route, Miriam (Marian De Beck) who we just know will be important later on…

Jimmy finds the store on it’s uppers and about to be outcompeted by a new super-drugstore run by Silas P. Rogers (Andrew Robson) who is, you guessed it, Miriam’s dad. If only Jimmy’s father had completed his research into a cure-all powder… but, what the heck, Jimmy invents one anyway and somehow, his improvised panacea actually works! It’s frothy stuff but Maclean is eminently likeable and you can see why this star shone.

Accompaniment was from Maestro John Sweeney and he made Maclean, glean!

Paul and Serge were on fire!

As ever there were many delights to be found in the sessions and Serge Bromberg’s Retour de Flamme session literally featured flames with live action peril for Paul McGann as he was “volunteered” to hold a film cannister as Serge set fire to some nitrate film stock; it was alarmingly impressive showing how many lost films met their end on this unstable storage. Still, even a century or more on, Serge and his team, plus others supplying films for this year’s festival like Steve Massa (author of Slapstick Divas: The Women of Silent Comedy and Lame Brains and Lunatics: The Good, The Bad, and The Forgotten of Silent Comedy) and Ben Model (who’s Undercrank Productions releases rare and previously lost material), keep on finding and restoring.

Serge featured some Laurel and some Hardy before uniting the two on a restored Duck Soup (1927) when their magic combination was really starting to come into focus. My Granddad Jim Joyce loved the duo and I remember watching them with him: “watch these, they’re really funny!”.

Last word goes to David Robinson who not only met the boys but was also present at Charlie Chaplin’s last ever recording session as he put the music to Woman of Paris in the 1970s. He showed us Pay Day (1922) as well as The Idle Class (1921) two films made for First National that if not prime Chaplin certainly only by comparison with the quality of his major works. Both films showed Charlie’s social conscience and he doesn’t get credit these days for his political subtexts; he’s not so much sentimental as socialist.

Colourful Aimée 

David also showed us the work of John Bunny, one of the first American comedy stars with Bunny All at Sea (1909) and Bunny in Society (1909) which featured an uncredited appearance by Our Mabel Normand which almost made me stand up, shout and point! Mabs was magnetic and these two prints were in stunning quality.

Less well known is British actress Aimée Campton a popular stage actress who made films in France as the character Maud. We saw Les Charmes de Maud (1912) together with the recently unearthed Maud Clubman aka Maud and the Batchelors (1914) with Dan van den Hurk accompanying; another performer of real style to hold in our collective silent conscience.

Another splendid silent Slapstick with so much passion on view. See you next year Bristol and long may you screen!

You should also read PH's take over at Silent London - a ball was had by all!

Charlie and Edna

Smile… It's the Old Army Game (1926), Bristol Old Vic with Sally Philips, European Silent Screen Virtuosi, Slapstick Festival

Laughter may be the best medicine but there’s a lot to be said for smiling too. Bristol’s Slapstick Festival is the best of the West, an annual institution that draws huge support from Cary Grant’s hometown and comedians past and ever-present. As I sat in the Old Vic’s café with my wife and hangover, nursing a recuperative coffee more in hope than expectation, I spotted a table-full of Goodies, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Bill Oddie and Graeme Garden who lifted my spirits higher than caffeine ever could – I grew up smiling with them and also laughing with Tim, John Junkin and Lord Barry Cryer on Hello Cheeky (not forgetting Denis King on the old Joanna… I never caught her surname).

I’ve also never quite recovered from Sally Philips’ smile as her character repeatedly failed to keep a straight face confronted with Alan Partridge’s wrong-headedness. She was here to introduce perhaps cinema history’s most sublime smiler in one of her earliest films: it’s not the shadow of Louise Brooks’ smile but the sheer brilliance that warms the heart. As Sally said, Brooks almost breaks the fourth wall with her charisma and we’re also spellbound by her dancer’s grace and her pure, unconscious expression. That smile can be used for good and ill and Sally showed us a clip from Pandora’s Box in which Lulu once more seduces her man only to smile in wicked triumph as his fiancée opens the door to see them… she can smile and be a villain too but, it's a smile that still draws the viewer in. 

This was the first time I’d seen It's the Old Army Game (1926) on the big screen and in the quality it deserves. It was Brooks’ fourth film and only her second as the female lead and she had initially turned it down possibly because Clara Bow – who was committed to making Mantrap – refused it first: although that sounds a little mythical to me. She changed her mind possibly because of her friendship with WC Fields, with whom she had worked at the Follies. It would turn out to be a fateful decision as she would end up marrying the director Edward Sutherland within two months of the wrap.

Today's accompaniment was provided by European Silent Screen Virtuosi led by peerless pianist Günter A. Buchwald, Slapstick’s musical director and now in his 13^th year at the festival. He led Romano Todesco (double bass and on the beat throughout), Marc Roos (excelling on trombone) and Frank Bockius (percussion) in an improvised score that fitted the film like a glove. In the Vic’s stalls I had a great view of the players and, especially Frank’s drumming be it on wood, tympani, or, indeed, drums. He imitated fire engines, telephone, door bells but all in a musical way and blended with the overall lines of the collective which worked thematically around the characters and situations to produce and early contender for small ensemble accompaniment of the year – I shall remind you when Silent London’s poll comes around.

The film itself was a light and frothy as one of Elmer Prettywillie’s cream sodas and is, as Günter observed post-match, almost two films; a romance between Brooks’ shop girl Marilyn and a charming chancer, George Parker (William Gaxton) and the slapstick comedy with Field as the misanthropic Prettywillie who never gives a sucker an even break, looking after number one first and often failing. Fields was 47 at the time (Brooks just 19) and the film was his chance to cross-over from the theatre to cinema following in the footsteps of other, younger, men such as Chaplin and Keaton. He regarded it as a risk which is hard to credit given his later success. An inventive and skilled performer he throws in what must have been a fair chunk of his regular act throughout a largely formless narrative involving battles with small children, family and customers.

The film starts with a daring real-time stunt as a woman (excellently played by an uncredited Elise Cavanna) drives like a maniac, narrowly missing a train just to buy a stamp: my wife gasped at the stunt and it is indeed remarkable. She wakes up Elmer in order to make her purchase and the proceeds to set off the fire alarm in trying to post her letter. The fire brigade arrives at the store to find no fire but plenty of soda and the startlingly pretty sight of Marilyn. Naturally a fire is started after they have left and Elmer spends a delirious few minutes attempting to wade through his dislocated response to the danger.

Elmer tries in vain to get some sleep but is constantly disturbed by his nephew, the knife grinder and the ice man, who cometh most inconveniently. Fields nephew is meant to look younger but is played by 11-year-old Mickey Bennett who had to work hard on some brutal stunts with Fields – he’s kicked, pulled and generally thrown around. A smaller child wouldn’t have gone the distance, but Fields’ antipathy towards children required extreme visual expression and Bennett goes with the blows like a real trouper!

Mickey’s mother, played by Mary Foy, is similarly disliked by her brother… as is the Station Agent, Tessie Gilch (Blanch Ring – Sutherland’s aunt), who has a soft spot for him... there’s so much bile in Fields’ world-view and you can understand why he had taken so long to find a story in film. He’s not much of a hero and, Marilyn aside, seems to react to circumstances with short term respite his only goal… I suspect I’m growing into the man he became.

The story, such as it is, doesn’t really get going until about half way through when salesman George Parker persuades Prettywillie to join him in selling New York land to the local Floridians. Parker has already appeared stopping off to post a letter at the station to one of his girlfriends, only to fall in love at first sight of Marilyn. He follows her into town and there’s a wonderful sequence of Brooks walking away dropping her hankie or pausing to browse the magazines, all the time waiting for Parker to catch up.

When the two do eventually connect, it is genuine but even this doesn’t stop George from involving the drugstore in his scam – does he know it’s a scam? Is he himself the victim of the New York con artists? This part of the plot is difficult to fathom – you know where the story’s going but it doesn’t really bother to explain itself and maybe that’s a post-modern comment on contemporary narrative or just an oversight.

Elmer goes with the flow and starts to sell thousands of dollars’ worth of lots to the townsfolk. Things are going well and everyone goes on a picnic, with George and Marilyn going for a swim – any excuse to get the young starlet in a skimpy costume - whilst Elmer, Mickey and the “Girls” lay waste to the garden of a wealthy family. This sequence is pure WC anarchy with windows smashed and property damaged before they escape by driving through a wall. It’s daft and purely malicious, but all done with a tipsy wink of the eye; Fields’ was possibly more hard-hitting than others of this time – he genuinely didn’t seem to care and there's a distinct edge to all the mayhem.

Of course the land scam comes back to bite them and things escalate out of control as Prettywillie goes to New York to confront the baddies and set fire to what's left of his car. Parker gets arrested and things look bad until something unexplained happens… You have to laugh. You can't help but smile.

It's the Old Army Game is now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber and is now in pretty good quality, but it’s never been as funny for me as it was today when a combination of venue, audience, music and motion left us grinning like fools.

Bristol, as ever, it’s a pleasure!

The Slapstick Festival continues for one more day – details here – and then with the gala performance of Modern Times at the Hippodrome on 10^th February: tickets available from the website.

Now there’s a funny thing… The Freshman (1925), Guenter A Buchwald, Bristol Ensemble, Slapstick Festival Gala

Another bumper show at the Colston Halls, mixing old and new as Buster, Stan, Ollie and Harold were preceded by Rory and Roy (who channelled Max)…

It was inauguration day in the US and multi-cultural Bristol was a good place to be - a city that knows its Tricky from its Trump. Cometh the hour cometh the multi-man as Rory Bremner provided pitch-perfect presidential  pretence; a much-needed humorous antidote to a western leadership that cannot even be bothered to count let alone spell-check.

Against the depressingly historic events in Washington DC, it was good to be reminded of the importance of comedy in providing relief and perspective.

First up was Buster Keaton’s The High Sign (1921) – actually his first solo short but delayed in favour of One Week, which he thought was stronger. It probably is but The High Sign is still a belter with a stone face caught up in a ludicrous plan to both kill and protect August Nickelnurser, the town miser who owns the Blinking Buzzards gang $10,000.

Buster manages to convince both the gang boss, the unfeasibly tall Joe Roberts, and August and his daughter (Bartine Burkett) that he is a dead shot thanks to the use of a hungry hound to create the impression he’s hitting all the targets in the funfair. It’s a tough commission but somehow Buster managers to get the job half done with the aid of an hilarious chase through August’s escape-routed house.

Of the films we saw, this was the favourite of my student daughter and her pal: Buster remains the coolest fool!

Dorothy Coburn and Oliver Hardy take a nap

Next we had Laurel and Hardy being offered a bonus to complete a new house on time in The Finishing Touch (1928). Homeowner Sam Lufkin obviously has more money than sense as this pair don’t look capable of working either faster or smarter. It’s the usual elegant disaster from the boys all given extra spice by the impatient promptings of a petite-yet-fearsome nurse (Dorothy Coburn), who runs a hospital nearby and asks them to keep the noise down.

Naturally there’s a cop on hand - Ed Kennedy – to keep a watchful eye and to make sure they’re both quick and quiet. Predictably, they manage neither but there’s no finer sight in silent of Ollie falling hard and Stan convincing himself and the World that it’s none of his fault.

Beat-perfect jazzy accompaniment was provided by The European Silent Screen Virtuosi, comprised of Geunter A Buchwald on piano and violin, Romana Todesco on double bass and Frank Bockious on percussion.

Roy Hudd in Max Miller style quiet suit...

Now then, the phrase “National Treasure” is often over-used but there are few more deserving of that epithet than Roy Hudd, a man whose illustrious career has always run in hand with preserving our music hall past. He is President of the Max Miller Appreciation Society and has kept The Cheeky Chappie’s legacy alive through his one-man shows and even playing him in a Doctor Who audio story (Pier Pressure).

Dressed in an outrageous Miller-esque silky suit, Roy proceeded to bring the house down with material now more sepia than blue but still showed why timing and stage-craft are so important to stand-up and slapstick alike.

"They don't make 'em anymore, duck!"

Harold's inspiration: Lester Laurel in The College Hero

Now for the main event and the screening of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925), accompanied by the 25-piece Bristol Ensemble orchestra, conducted by Guenter Buchwald and playing composer Carl Davis’s lovely score.

This was Lloyd’s biggest hit of the twenties and whilst some, like me, might prefer say Speedy, this film is an undoubted classic of structure and style as Harold is put through humiliation after humiliation until it seems he can sink no lower but just as redemption seems beyond him, well… what do you expect?

Lloyd produced and his team of writers - John Grey, Sam Taylor, Tim Whelan, and Ted Wilde – along with directors Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor – worked out this narrative arc with slide-rule precision and it was one that would only really work with Harold’s particular persona. Of the big three (or four), Lloyd was perhaps the closest to the common man of the jazz age: perpetually optimistic and ambitious, he has the go-getting intensity of the classic American and his relentless spirit sees him through.

The new arrival: keen to impress!

Chaplin is of an earlier time as is Buster and both are somehow more “primal” blue-collar personas. Lloyd is on the up and here he’s off to conquer Tate University at all costs! His idol is The College Hero (James Anderson) and he pins a photograph from the College magazine, the Tattler… he devours the literature and is very impressed with a film about a college hero who has a signature shuffle he dances before extending his hand in welcome to every new acquaintance.

Harold’s living a fantasy of college life at a time when only the privileged few would attend (the World’s turning again…) but it was obviously an inspiration as dozens of similar films were to follow after The Freshman’s success.

Harold’s initial experience is cringe worthy and the College Cad (Brooks Benedict) repeatedly lines him up and plays him for the fall. Harry borrows a line from his film hero and asks them to call him Speedy as he starts to bribe his way to friendship through buying ice cream and soda for all.

Jobyna Ralston

He hosts the "Fall Frolic" dance in an attempt to secure his popularity but his tailor (Joseph Harrington) has to be on hand as he has not completed proper stitching for his dress suit… it’s very funny but the humiliating conclusion is all to inevitable.

Only the daughter of the hostel manager, Peggy (the excellent Jobyna Ralston) see him for who he is and loves him for it. She tells the momentarily crestfallen Harry to be himself but he still thinks he has a chance if he can only get to play in the big football game…

 
The final set piece is perfectly timed and you’re shifting in your seat well before Harry gets his chance…He does succeed in an all-American way but he only because he just won’t give up: ever!!

When all artifice is stripped away that is perhaps the quality that Lloyd most represents: energy and resilience for an audience struggling in their own lives. We’ve never needed him more…and I'm now not meeting anyone new without doing the college shuffle!

A super time was had by all and once again I was mightily impressed by Bristol and its comedy commitment – the Colston Hall was pretty much sold out and this festival just gets bigger and better.

Rory and the band take a bow!

Gloria excels… Stage Struck (1925), Barbican with the European Silent Screen Virtuosi

I will always be very grateful to Lucy Porter as the last time I saw her she was giving me a publishing industry award (two actually…) and, dressed in bow tie and dinner suit, my resemblance to John Gilbert was – arguably - never more in evidence. Here she was introducing two films from her silent film idol, Gloria Swanson which showcased the appeal of one of the era’s very best performers as well as Lucy’s superb judgement.

Like most modern viewers I initially viewed Gloria through the twisted prism of Norma Desmond – a woman traumatized by her fall from fame in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard and yet watching her younger self in Teddy at the Throttle (1917) and Stage Struck, you forget the future; drawn in by her incredibly  vibrant, intelligent performing. She had the same kind of star power as Mary Pickford or Joan Crawford – wide-eyed girls next door with that little bit more who worked their socks off.

Above all else, as Lucy Porter said in her Sight and Sound article, you are captivated by just how likeable Gloria Swanson is… like Mary you simply want her to win.

Jennie's dream self

Directed by Allan Dwan, Stage Struck famously features opening and ending sequences filmed in the early two-colour Technicolor highlighting Swanson’s character Jennie Hagen’s dreams. Jennie works as a waitress in a café yet wants to be a star actress. The opening section is a pure dream of theatre from Dwan and his cinematographer George Webber, that shows Jennie superstar actress being rapturously received by her audience before declaring herself Salome and rising up some phantom steps to receive her famous platter… it looks as much like an Aubrey Beardsley picture as Nazimova’s film.

Jennie's Dream Boat: Lawrence Gray

As Salome stands triumphant the head of John the Baptist transforms into a plate of beans which begin to slide off the tray as the daydreaming arms that hold it drift back to reality with a bump.

In the frenetic every-day of the eatery the food needs to be a fast as the customers who steam in between shifts at the local factory. Jennie needs to be quick on her feet but too often she is distracted by thoughts of Orme Wilson (Lawrence Gray) – a man who flips pancakes with the aplomb of a cocktail mixologist much to the delight of the young women who gather at the window to watch him.

Beans for Baptist

Orme has distractions of his own though and longs to meet an actress like the dozens who are stuck on his bedroom wall – how can Jennie compete with all this two-dimensional perfection? There’s a funny sequence in which she mimics the pouting and preening of these impossible starlets only drawing the line at an image showing one with hardly a stich – really, Orme!

Jennie dreams of opening a restaurant with Orme but she has a plan to become an actress by correspondence course… Just $5 to hopefully show him she’s as good as any of them.

The Water Queen arrives

But the arrival of a steam boat carrying a theatrical troop brings Orme’s dreams closer to fruition. Led by Buck (ex-Sennett mainstay Ford Sterling) the players include one brassy blonde lead actress called Lillian Lyons (Gertrude Astor) who immediately catches his eye and Orme jumps at the chance to meet her.

Their first rendezvous at the café is sabotaged by Jennie with a series of comic accidents in the kitchen. Swanson is so winning in these moments, tough but vulnerable especially when measured against the towering thesp.

Jennie has pin-up envy...

There seems little she can do to knock Orme off course until, spotting her aspirations, quick Buck makes her an offer she can’t refuse… and the stage is set (literally) for a battle between blonde brawn and brunette grit… Gloria always seems to pick fights with the bigger girls, first Bebe Daniels and now Gertrude Astor: she never knows when she’s beaten!

This was very much Swanson in her comic pomp more defined than in her earlier work with Sennett and de Mille and with a romantic determination and pure will to happiness that sits far more comfortably than her Desmond desperation. This was the “face” she had then but it was also the spirit and the skill.

Jennie tries to be the actress Orme wants...

Teddy at the Throttle (1917), screened before the main film showed more of Gloria’s raw ability at just 18 working with animals and Wallace Beery, her husband at the time… just. Lucy Porter pointed out that their relationship was very much on the rocks at the time, so much so that Mack Sennett made sure they didn’t have to rehearse together. None of this impacted on the end result, a gag-packed spoof on the Perils of Pauline and other damsels who end up chained to train tracks… Swanson performed all of her own stunts but then her relationship with Beery clearly showed that she was afraid of nothing!

Gloria and Lawrence Grey in publicity still from Stage Struck

Superb accompaniment was provided by the European Silent Screen Virtuosi comprised of Geunter A Buchwald on piano and violin, Romana Todesco on double bass and Frank Bockious on percussion. They gave the films plenty of swing and perfectly matched the mood as virtuosi should.

Stage Struck was restored some time ago and looks well for its age, a shame the film is not available on home media. There’s an horrible bootleg copy of YouTube but this film and Gloria deserve a lot more. That said, seeing it in cinema with improvised accompaniment and a live – laughing - audience was the bee’s knees and we left buzzin’…