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!!

 

 

Home truths… Back Pay (1922), with Andrew Earle Simpson, Undercrank Productions DVD

 

The story of Hester Bevins is as old as sin, but sin is just a little bit younger than love, and often the two are interchangeable…

This film is about karma but in terms of its survival, it’s hardly been instant given that we can only now rewatch it a century after its release. Any film directed by Frank Borzage you’d expect to be not only commercially viable but also available and yet it took a Kickstarter campaign from composer Andrew Earle Simpson, supported by Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions to produce the DVD I now hold in my hand (typing with my right!). My name is on the credits along with hundreds of others world-wide who have pitched in on this one and it feels good to be a small part of preserving these films not just in digital formats but also in memory and wider study.

The only copies of Back Pay and its companion on this project, Borzage’s The Valley of Silent Men (1922) are held as part of the Marion Davies collection in the Library of Congress, and Back Pay is presented from a new 2K scan of the LOC’s 35mm acetate duplicate negative, printed from the sole surviving 35mm nitrate print.  It includes the film’s original tinting scheme and looks fabulous, especially as it also includes Grace Waller’s original art titles and “art” is what they are with illustrations enhancing the witty script from the great Frances Marion, who adapted from the short story of the same name by Fannie Hurst.

It’s 1922 and there’s still plenty of women involved in Hollywood and Fanny Hurst was arguably the most popular writer in America with a stonking twenty nine films based on her stories. Hurst chronicled the lives of working class urban lives and was, according to Grace Paley in The Stories of Fannie Hurst*, “…a pioneer in writing about working women, from maids to secretaries to garment workers, from prostitutes to artists,” weaving these together into “… captivating, deeply human stories that capture her characters’ struggles, triumphs, conflicts, and loves.”

Seena Owen

You can see the huge cinema going everywoman audience relating to this and especially Back Pay, which ponders the right of women to hold ambition in ways reflective of post-War equality – in the US as in the UK – women’s role in the war effort had earned them more respect and recognition. It’s easy, but remiss, to overlook this context in viewing what is a melodrama and also to take the proximity of the Great War for granted; four years on, countries were still full of physically and mentally damaged veterans who had lost their place in a society that didn’t always understand their sacrifice. In this way Back Pay reminds me a little of Maurice Elvey’s Comradeship (1919), which dealt with the social and welfare aftermath of the conflict.

Hester Bevins had spent her life in Demopolis, one of those small, changeless towns which stand like sentinels beyond the outer gates of New York.

 

Here we start with a small town called Demopolis in which young Hester (Seena Owen) is gradually suffocating, every train heading away breaking her vaguely ambitious heart just a little bit more and with all around her seemingly satisfied with their lot. “She was filled with a passion for excitement and luxury – and certainly neither of these could be found in the boarding house of Mrs Elmira Simmons…” with every mealtime a thudding reminder of the past, present and potential future if she stayed.

Her one bright spark is boyfriend Jerry (Matt Moore) who loves her even more deeply than he loves the town and his job at the General Store. He’s scrimping and saving but $150 a month isn’t going to buy Hester the lifestyle she wants as she tells him they’re simply too poor to marry.  Borzage and his cameraman Chester A Lyons, capture some idyllic scenes of country life, especially the town’s annual picnic with egg and spoon plus sack races, dancing and music; it’s like something from a Sjostrom outdoor adventure with some craggy-faced locals providing realist flavour.

Hester and Jerry make their way for some peace and quiet and have their faithful disconnection as he proposes and she smiles briefly before declining as they talk into the night. She sings a partially finished song for them and tells him she will finish it later… only much later, as she decides she must find herself in New York. Hester’s train leaves Jerry abandoned as Frances Marion writes, two decades before Cole Porter, that to say goodbye is to die a little…

To New York City and a jump five years ahead, years of struggle… in which old beliefs and high ideals went one by one… Until luxury claimed her – on its own terms. Hester’s journey is only thus hinted at but she is now living in a fine appartement maintained by her wealthy boyfriend, the presumably married, and certainly much older, Charles G. Wheeler of Wall Street (J. Barney Sherry). She has other friends with names such as Kitty (Ethel Duray) and Speed (Charles Craig) and life is one long, well-dressed, well-watered, party with jazz music on tap and plenty of joie de vivre. Hester has a Rolls from Charles but now wants a $22,000 fur coat from her sugar financier, and she’ll get it too by making him have to out-compete friend Speed’s generosity.

 

The wages of sin is death. If sin has any wages, some of us are going to collect a lot of back pay!

On a weekend away, she asks to get dropped off in the old town and, spotting Jerry, reconnects with the man who has never stopped loving, or waiting, for her. Jerry is now on $200 a month but, as Hester says, that wouldn’t even cover her mink stole. Hester still loves Jerry but she loves the high life more… The story moves on and, as the parties continue, Hester in platinum gown dancing on a chair, we see Jerry fighting in Europe, and calling out Hester’s name as the bombs fall in No Man’s Land. The film is about to pivot as Hester reads of Jerry’s heroism and his return, injured from the front… everything she knows is about to be challenged by the conflicting realities of love, war and commerce.

I love a good location

 

It's a measured film, slow by modern standards but the narrative doesn’t feel forced from Borzage who is more than willing to let his talented cast pull the viewer along. In this so much rests on the almost ever-present Seena Owen whom I have not seen before but is so good here. I must seek out more of her work.

 

The new score from Andrew Earle Simpson is also very enjoyable, lyrical and rich in tone it provides the sincerest of accompaniments and elevates the whole experience; I’d love to hear it live. Until then, we have this excellent release from Undercrank which in addition to a 4k restoration of The Valley of Silent Men** also includes a video essay on Borzage at Cosmopolitan, Randolph Heart’s company for which he made these films. The sets also have informative Film Facts that run along the intertitles to explain the background to the films.

 

The set is being generally released in February/March 2023 and you can order direct from Undercrank right here.

 

* The Stories of Fannie Hurst, (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2004) Fannie Hurst, edited by Susan Koppelman and with and introduction from Grace Paley.

** This film does raise the question of whether Ben Model can see Steve Massa’s house from his roof… if there is a Valley of Silent Men, these two surely live in it, along with Mr Simpson!

Down and out in London and Marseille... The Lady (1925), Daan Van Der Hurk, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day 8

Now we have it, Norma Talmadge’s finest dramatic performance and a story in which she gets through two or three times the amount of work for a normal film and probably even more for Heart of Wetona. Directed by Frank Borzage, it’s tempting to visualise him coaching her through some of the heaviest emotional lifting, which occasionally stretches her technique but she always comes through, sometimes with cheeks soaked in tears, a dewdrop on her retroussé nose, working at a pace with even Gish or Garbo. It’s a remarkable film and it gives her the opportunities she often missed, partly through her own choice.

For most of her career, Talmadge called the commercial shots and as Jay Weissberg pointed out in his introduction, The Lady was too louche for middle American audiences and did not perform that well. As Talmadge herself said, quoted by Ben Brewster and Lea Jacobs in their notes on the Giornate site, she wasn’t going to follow up the film’s style “… I am not going to do any more like it for a time, anyway. Not that I don’t like to do characterizations – I love it. But what can we do? We must play to the box office… So, for a while I am going to do modern things. I think they want to see me in gowns, in style.”

To European audiences, there would have perhaps have been less of a negative reaction but maybe Norma was also typecast to a degree and the idea of her playing a character making a living as a prostitute, no matter how understated, was not the "Norma" her public loved.

Frank Borzage had already worked with Talmadge on the more successful Secrets (1924) and must have earned her trust for this bolder film. Adapted by Frances Marion from Martin Brown’s play of 1923, the narrative is unusually structured with an older Talmadge running The Brixton Bar, a “British” pub in Marseilles, during the Great War before a flashback which explains how she got there. Apparently, the play was the first in mainstream theatre in which the heroine announces she is pregnant, be that as it may, it’s less “announced” in the film and the child appears allowing inferences to be drawn.

Two Tommies wander, one a young private the other a rather drunken sergeant, very very arf’arf’an’arf, who staggers around before squirting the landlady, Polly Pearl (Talmadge) comically in the face. That ain’t no way to treat a lady she exclaims to general mirth from some of the regulars before settling down and talking with the kindly Mr. Wendover (Marc McDermott). Wendover comes from the same village as Polly although the pictures he shares are of Magdalen Bridge and the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, rather bigger than a village!

You wouldn’t believe that 24 years ago I was knockin’ them off their seats in a London music hall…

She recounts her history and how she came from England to this moment… the camera pulls across a swarming theatre floor and we meet Polly Pearl, the Girl with the Glad Eye, entertaining the throng with a song and a dance. Watching intently is Leonard St. Aubyns (Wallace MacDonald) a proper swell who, only has eyes for his Pearl as she arranges for a cigar-chomping stage boy to rebuff other visitors.

Soon the fantasy is rudely interrupted by the arrival of St. Aubyns, Sr. (Brandon Hurst, lovable as always) who offers her money to leave his son alone but it’s too late old chap, the couple have already married and, as quick as Senior can say “you’re disinherited” they’re off to Monte Carlo for an extended/belated honeymoon with fellow dancer Fannie Clair (Doris Lloyd) and her man Tom the Bookie (Alf Goulding). All seems fine until Leonard, unlucky at the tables, starts taking an interest in a Countess Adrienne (Paulette Duval) and, in front of her very eyes, Polly’s live crumbles. There are two moments in the film when Talmadge absolutely lets rip and here she attacks Duval’s character, knocking her swiftly to the ground. I’m not saying Borzage encouraged proto method but you don’t often see silent actresses engage in a proper Bank ‘oliday (c.f. your Cockney Music Hall Dictionary).

 

Polly is Friendzoned in the cruelest way...

Down and out on the Riviera, Polly finds herself in a bar run by one Mme. Blanche (Emily Fitzroy), completely unaware that it’s a bordello. It’s at this point that Polly’s baby appears and, out of options she finds friendship and a way to survive in the bar, whether by performing on stage or other means… you can see how some would have been displeased with Our Norma’s predicament.

 

Polly has her standards though and has the boy christened by preacher John Cairns (John Herdman) who, along with his wife (Margaret Seddon, as featured in Just Around the Corner elsewhere in this Giornate). Who turn out to be crucial when St. Aubyns, Sr. arrives with the news that his son has died and that he wants to take possession of his grandson. He has the legal papers to do so and Polly has no option but to hand her baby over to the Cairns. Talmadge is at full stretch during the sequence, misery piled on misery and injustice. She launches herself at St. Aubyns, Sr… echoing the wishes of the entire audience.

The only gig in town?

Polly heads back to London in a forlorn search for her son, at rock bottom she’s shown in blue darkness trying to sell flowers and hoping beyond all reason to chance upon her boy. It’s desperately sad and, Talmadge judges it just right and there’s not a dry eye in our house… We fast forward another two decades and her old friend Mme. Blanche has helped set her up in this bar where she can life out what remains of her wasted life in relative comfort.

 

Wendover urges her to not give up, even as she displays every sign of having done so. But… well, you really have to seek this out and marvel at her final flourish!

 

The Lady thoroughly deserves its reputation and this restoration has balanced the meaning as far as possible given the state of the surviving materials. Now we can all see for ourselves what the reviewers and audiences of the time could see in this remarkable actress and I would echo Jay Weisenberg’s hope that this is just the start of Norma’s wider rehabilitation.

Wit's end?

As he said, Talmadge is also so generous with her co-stars, allowing them to shine alongside her; it was her production company after all but she knew the value of teamwork and of honest artistic expression as well as crowd-pleasing box office fare.

Daan Van Der Hurk accompanied with some gorgeous lines and the full measure of Talmadge’s ambitions here. This was delicately nuanced playing that, just like the star, never dropped into melodrama or over-expression. Wonderful stuff that, again, I really wish I could have been there to see live! Next year Pordenone, I’ll be Covid free and ready to buy round after round of Aperol Spritz… just you wait!

Talmadge’s career dénouement has long been a puzzle with legend having Constance reminding her that Ma’s trust funds meant that they didn’t need to work again and Norma saying to fans, "Get away, dears. I don't need you anymore and you don't need me." as quoted by both Anthony Slide and Denise Lowe. Jay suggests the words of her second husband George Jessel in his book Elegy in Manhattan (1961, after Norma’s passing), offer a clue with his poem, told from her point of view explaining that she’d never been a stage actress, only a silent one, and it was just too late to learn another craft. She’d done enough and now it was time to just live.

 

Norma Talmadge

 

Social insecurity... Just Around the Corner (1921), with Stephen Horne, Giornate del Cinema Muto, Streaming Day Two (Part Two)

 

Some films make you cry. This simple story addresses everyday heartbreak in ways that resonate with anyone who has lost someone dear and, whilst it has its melodramatic devices, it doesn’t overplay the central drama of ailing motherly concern for family and the future. Add the most sensitive of soulful accompaniments from Stephen Horne and you’re going to be sniffling at some point.

This was Frances Marion’s second film as sole director with the first being Pickford’s Love Light and the last being Song of Love (1923) featuring our festival darling, Norma Talmadge (featured on Kino Lorber’s fabulous Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers Bu-ray boxset). It was adapted by Marion from Superman, a short story by Fannie Hurst published in The Saturday Evening Post, 20^th June 1914 (24 years before Joe and Jerry debuted their, radically different, stories…), and on the face of it that’s an odd title for a story about a mother but all becomes clear.

Marion’s concerns were certainly to address working class life in contemporary New York and the few location shots are fascinating, helping to establish a strong sense of place. An opening shot of the skyline is followed by that of a bustling street market where, “around the corner” live the Birdsong family, Ma (lovely “veteran” Margaret Seddon, only 49 at the time!), son Jimmie (Lewis Sargent) and daughter/best friend Essie (Sigrid Holmquist, the “Swedish Mary Pickford” in her first American film).

Ma is ailing and her great wish is that she sees both her children in safe positions in life, Jimmie with a good job and Essie with a good man, a loving provider like her late husband. These were common concerns at the time when merely working hard couldn’t guarantee anyone of their class success. Essie is shown working in “a basement sweat shop, where youth grows old and beauty fades in making flowers for my lady’s hat.” Honestly Frances, that’d get you blacklisted three decades later…

Essie and the girls are shown working hard overseen by a hard-faced boss who turns his attention to one old woman whose fingers just won’t work fast enough for her anymore. Essie distracts him, but she’s only buying her frail colleague a little more time, no pension with this job or health insurance. Another peril is of unwanted male attention and, whilst the boss man makes them take work home at weekends to get round labour regulation, he also tries to get Essie to perform tasks outside of her job description. Brother Jimmie arrives to interrupt but there’s no doubt the threat and the power.

Essie leaves the job, her only recourse, and her flighty friend, Lulu (Peggy Parr), encourages her to take a job as an usherette at the theatre where she works – “eight dollars a week!” – which despite Ma’s misgivings – late nights, lots of men - she accepts. Lulu, true to the coding of her name, duly introduces Essie to a ticket tout (strictly illegal) called Joe (Eddie [Edward] Phillips) who has the gift of the gab a wandering eye and an absolute devotion to himself and no one else.

Sigrid Holmquist

Time after time Essie invites Joe back to meet his mother, only for him to find a last-minute excuse so that he can go and hustle, play pool and do what he wilt. He’s wasting Essie’s time but she is desperate to show her mother that she has a good man. Jimmie can see this as can a tall handsome fella, who puts Joe in his place – pushing him into a phone booth – after he sold him two dud tickets. This guy, played by Marion’s husband Fred Thomson, is entitled The Real Man in the cast list, and he carries the air of moral certainty Joe lacks: there’s an instant dislike for the weaselly schemer.

 

Time and again Joe lets Essie down, and Ma who, despite her ailing health, always prepares a meal for them, and things come to the most painfully dramatic end in a heart-melting final segment in which Ma is ill in bed, nursed by Jimmie who waits in vain for Joe to bring Essie back from a night out at a dancing competition. Many things need to happen in dramatic terms over that sequence and Marion directs with care and efficiency… there’s an especially impressive scene where er camera, or rather that of Henry Cronjager, follows a distraught Essie as she runs along snowy streets looking for Joe…

The Real Man and Joe the Liar

It does leave the question of just why Frances Marion only directed three films, but the “mysteries” of male dominance have long been examined. Here she gets some super performances from her group of players and the results are emotionally satisfying as well as convincing.

In her notes, film historian Anke Brouwers notes the socially conservative attitudes on display but even I can remember my grandparent’s generation – married all in the 1920s – talking in similar terms. As Anke says, this may not be a feminist story but it is a feminine one with the focus on Ma and Essie and their struggle for the only security and validation they, and many of their audience, could hope for.

The film, apparently, did not perform well, but as an historical document it is worth discovering. Maybe Frances had more to say… we all know why she might have been prevented from saying it.

 

One of a number of superb shots, Jimmie and Essie looking in from snowbound streets...

Lust in the dust? The Song of Love (1924), Directed by Frances Marion, produced by Norma Talmadge

Outside of Miss Talmadge there isn't an awful lot to "The Song of Love." It is another of those desert stories, the same type more or less that went out of fashion a little over a year ago…

The Variety reviewer (1) wasn’t pulling any punches about this film or even it’s undoubtedly very popular star – the highest paid female actor at the time – although he was considerably impressed with her revealing costume. The New York Times - Mordaunt Hall? -concurred on both film and the newly discovered Talmadge torso, a step away from her usual “demure” roles…

Imagine passing into the Rivoli with a vague impression of Miss Talmadge in poke bonnet and voluminous hoop skirts that jealously guard even her ankles from view, and suddenly beholding a startling vision of undeniable beauty, clad expensively, but not extensively.

Film Daily felt Norma looked ill at ease in the revealing costume – she certainly didn’t wear anything so skimpy again – but perhaps all of this shows that even though a highly competent and versatile star, the public had an expectation of what a Norma Talmadge film should be.

Norma's saying no to Arthur Carewe

No doubt intended to cash in on the sex and sand success of The Sheik, The Song of Love is entertaining but a bit of a clunker, one of so many well made, mediocre films that have blighted Norma’s reputation in spite of the evidence of her work with Frank Borzage (Secrets (1924) and The Lady (1925)), sentimental neo-classics like Smilin’ Through and the energised comedy of Kiki. As Lea Jacobs (2) has pointed out, Norma was let down by too many weak plots and even weaker dialogue. Jeanine Basinger (3) further suggests that the oldest Talmadge was just too versatile for her own good and “never developed a single persona, a ‘role’ that audiences thought was actually her in real life…” She was considered a fine actor and one who took on all kinds of roles many of which showed her as a transitional figure; “she had one foot in the 1890s and the other in the 1920s…”

All this said, Norma Talmadge is likeable in every film I’ve seen her in and, whilst F Scott Fitzgerald described her as the epitome of glamour in Tender is the Night, he also wrote that she must be a fine noble woman beyond her loveliness. Maybe Norma’s just too nice for modern tastes?

Too nice?

She transcends the limitations of Frances Marion’s adaptation of Margaret Peterson novel’s Dust of Desire and brings out the humour in a script of varying sensibilities that leaves even Norma sometimes staring our through lines she can scarcely believe… and she was the producer! Marion co-directed with Chester M. Franklin, one of only three films she directed, the others being Mary Pickford’s The Love Light (1921) and Margaret Seddon’s Just Around the Corner (1921). It’s a competent film, enjoyable on its own terms but mostly for Norma.

Song of Love is set in the town of Ahamar in Algeria and Norma plays an exotic dancer (in old money) called Noorma-hal (see what they did?) and described as The Rose of All the World by the appreciative locals in her Uncle, Chandra-lal’s (Hector V. Sarno) gambling den. Her biggest fan, Ramlika (Arthur Edmund Carewe) just so happens to be the leader of a Tuareg uprising against the occupying French “Christian dogs” (probably) who are likeable colonialists dressed smartly and unaware of the hatred all around them

New romantic or glam? Joseph Schildkraut

Ramlika’s passion is not reciprocated by Noorma-hal and is only inflamed by her skimpy style and sure-footed gyrations – which are mostly shot at distance either to shield the delicate audience from the full-on raunch or, possibly the fact that a stand in is being used. But Norma carries it all off and Ramlika promises that when this is all over, she’ll be his.

The local colonial notables, Commissionaire Desmond (Earl Schenck), Captain Fregonne (Mario Carillo), Dr. Humbert (James Cooley) and their American friend Dick Jones (Laurence Wheat) from Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA… have gotten wind of the plotting and called in French agent Ramon Valverde (Joseph Schildkraut) but, round these parts, it’s not just walls that have ears but curtains too with Ramlika’s spy, Chamba (Albert Prisco) hearing the whole plan.

Valverde is no mug though and makes his first appearance in disguise looking something like Spandau Ballet’s bass player in 1983 as he listens in to the Tuareg’s plans at the gambling den. He doesn’t go unnoticed by our dancing heroine who ignores his make up sensing the goodness of the man inside. Ramlika isn’t impressed and the two men fight with Valverde making good his escape and deciding to use Noorma-hal’s attraction to him to keep tabs on the uprising.

Maude Wayne as the Other Woman

Whilst all’s fair in love and war, Valverde goes on to show us his moral fibre when he refuses to rekindle an old affair with the Commissioner’s wife Maureen (Maude Wayne). But Noorma-hal catches them in the act of not continuing and assumes, correctly based on his previous thinking, that he only wants the white Christian woman. Passions are, however, on the rise and Noorma-hal is soon stuck between a frog and a hard face as she must decide who to betray and when. The Tuareg forces are massing and only she can stave off disaster but, at what cost to herself?!

               

As the above reviews indicate even at the time this was an old tale and whilst there are twists and turns, they are mostly predictable. What saves it is Norma who is nearly always in the moment and the only really relatable character throughout.

I watched the film on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray set, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers (4) which uses the German print which has a different ending from the US print – which is explained via title card and which is the more surprising conclusion for a number of reasons. The print quality is mostly excellent but there is some deterioration which Greta de Groat says is not present on the other surviving print held at the Library of Congress but you can’t have it all - it's a mostly fine looking 

film and inspite of the gripes, who doesn't like watching Norma T work even if it's mostly so much sand and fury signifying very little.

Norma Talmadge straight to mirror

1. Greta de Groat’s excellent website has a wealth of Norma information and links to the World-Wide-Web of Talmadge – I lifted the Variety and NYT quotes from her!

2. Writing in Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s, Rutgers University Press (2010)

3. Jeanine Basinger – Silent Stars, Wesleyan University Press (2000)

4. The six Blu-ray set Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers is of course essential and available direct from Kino Lorber as well as via Amazon.com – anyone else finding that export restrictions are being tightened recently?

 

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