Tailor-made woman… Souls for Sale (1923) with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope Silent Weekender Day 2

Would you like to sin. With Elinor Glyn On a tiger skin? 
Or would you prefer. To err. With her. On some other fur?

Rupert Hughes (as quoted by Mr K Brownlow, on the occasion of his 81^st birthday)

This was one of the first silent DVDs I bought partly because of its cameos of Hollywood stars but mainly because of a fascination with Eleanor Boardman who was later to star in The Crowd and to feature so elegantly in Kevin Brownlow’s Hollywood series. Yes, there’s something about Eleanor and she’s also caught up in the William Haynes legend, with them both winning a contract through Goldwyn Pictures "New Faces of 1921" and maintaining a friendship through the years of their success and beyond: you got the feeling that they both rose above the daily Hollywood grind from the get go.

Souls for Sale is pretty light fare but it’s well made and does give a playful insight into the business of show people with Boardman’s character accidentally falling into the movies after escaping the clutches of her Bluebeard of a husband…

Charlie, Erich and Jean

The glimpses behind the scenes are, of course, precious, with Erich von Stroheim seen directing Greed, giving Jean Hersholt instructions, and Charlie Chaplin playing along by over-actively directing Mem/Eleanor in a “scene” from Woman of Paris. Elsewhere you can glimpse Hobart Bosworth, Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, Raymond Griffith, June Mathis, Marshall Neilan, Claire Windsor & many more! William Haines is also in there, his first credited appearance, as Pinky (!) the assistant director to Richard Dix’s square-jawed Frank Claymore.

Kevin Brownlow introduced on his birthday – no better treat for him than sharing in his passion – and explained that the film was partly a PR exercise to show that after numerous scandals, Hollywood wasn’t a bad place, full of upstanding professionals.

The film was based on a novel by a man named Rupert Hughes – Howard’s Uncle – who produced and adapted the screenplay and directed it. Mostly known as an historian and writer, Hughes couldn’t understand why a film company would buy an author’s work and then change so much. Here he made sure his work would see the screen as intended and the rigour of his research pays off in the detailed background to the film process.

Eleanor Boardman

Boardman was already famous as the Kodak Girl model and had already made three films but this was her first time as the main female star and so, just like her character she was in at the deep end. She’d tried to make a success on the stage in New York and made some head way but this, at 24, was her biggest break yet in the movies.

She doesn’t flunk it and, for me, gives a very relaxed and confident performance as Remember “Mem” Steddon (trips off the tongue doesn’t it…) who falls into film work as a refuge from her psychopathic husband (Lew Cody) and, against the wishes of her strictly-Christian parents – an echo of Boardman’s own folks’ disapproval. Boardman was perhaps a natural, very interesting to watch on camera and varied not only in her expression but her looks. She can handle comedy as well as drama and gives a taste of her dowdy desperation in The Crowd when watching her disastrous screen test: hands pulling her hair to a mess, tears running red down a face of real misery.

Less regal Garbo?!

She reminds me of a less regal Garbo, more down-to-earth and not quite the force or presence but still very watchable and adaptable, he relatively tall frame (over 5 feet 6… a giant in 1923!) making her both a graceful clothes horse as well as the equal of the men.

The film starts off with a shot of Mem in the back of a railway carriage with her husband Owen Scudder (Lew Cody), who is already starting to frighten her with his weird intensity – first example of Boardman’s ability to show unease. She’s desperate and jumps train at the first opportunity, landing in the middle of a desert.

Not a real sheik... Frank Mayo, Eleanor B and Richard Dix

She wanders for days and finally is saved by a Sheik on a camel… or rather handsome actor Tom Holby (Frank Mayo) who is on a location shoot for a film being made by director, Frank Claymore (Richard Dix). The crew rescue Mem with stars Leva Lamaire (Barbara La Marr… see what they did?) and Robina Teele (a feisty, Mae Busch) making sure the kid gets a break as well as medical attention. Snitz Edwards is also on hand as the lovelorn Komical Kale, who is unrequitedly in love with Leva who still mourns for her lost lover, Jim, who died as his plane was engulfed in flames.

Meanwhile Scudder with a history of marriage and murder behind him, manages to evade the cops at a railway station and then gets lucky and a little richer by taking advantage of Abigail Tweedy (Dale Fuller) who he convinces, cons and almost chokes before escaping. Of course, he’s not finished with Mem just yet…

After finding work in a hotel, the end of season forces Mem to try her hand in Hollywood and, we see her trying to sell her soul, to get into a picture, any picture… there’s a great casting session with even Eve Southern as Miss Velma Slade being told she’s only beautiful and there’s a pile of those in this town (the film was also intended to discourage people from the film business… ).

Billy Haines!

In addition to Chaplin and von Stroheim, Mem gets a tiny part in Fred Niblo’s The Famous Mrs. Fair and sees Marshall Neilan directing The Eternal Three with Raymond Griffith, Hobart Bosworth, and Claire Windsor. Star-spotting is half the fun although Kevin spoiled this by reading out the names of a table full at one point: including Barbara Bedford, Chester Conklin, William H. Crane, Elliott Dexter, June Mathis and ZaSu Pitts.

After a disastrous screen test with Frank Claymore and the crew, he realises that she’s made more for drama than comedy and gradually she starts to make her way with bigger and bigger parts. Eventually she gets her big chance in a circus film after Robina gets injured. By this stage Scudder is back on her trail and has decided that he’s in love with the now successful actor…

But, it’s a stormy night over the circus set and there’s not many places more dangerous than a film set based in a tent!

The ending is a tour de force as the storm hits and the flames rise higher – all tinted yellow in the Warner Archive/TCM restoration. One of the extras told Brownlow that the circus tent was soaked in paraffin for the fire… which Hughes didn’t let people know there were horses inside as he didn’t want them to clear a path for them; the result is chaotic but undeniably dangerous with a least one injury to a dancer.

As a defence of the film industry, that doesn’t show the health and safety standards in a good light but I guess the audience took it all as part of the drama.

Meg Morley accompanied in fine style matching the epic with the intimate in a film of many contrasting moods. There may have been a snatch of Liszt at one point but as ever Meg melds these themes into an overall improvisation that is unique to the moment and the setting.

Big productions!

The Old Swimmin’ Hole (1921) with Meg Morley

Talking of William Haines, the next film starred Charles Ray who bears more than a passing resemblance to the former. Based on a poem by James Whitcomb Riley, the film was essentially a series of backwoods episodes all told without intertitles. Directed by Joe De Grasse it was charming if a little ambient, but like all poetry, something you had to just relax and focus on. Meg Morley accompanied again and in a quite different manner; lots of light tones and energetically reiterated figures that played so well along with the “children” on screen.

I spotted Laura La Plante in Pickford curls as Charles’ love interest, so different from her close-cropped platinum bob of later years.

Another exceptional collection of films overall for the weekend and I was sorry to miss the final parts of the second day. All credit to the programmers, players, projectionists and volunteers who make the Bioscope happen and happen so very well!

Bitter sweet… Wild Oranges (1924)

What was King Vidor's agenda? Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simmon make much of the director’s Christian Science background in their book King Vidor, American; his work the result of a constant struggle between the films he wanted to make and the need to produce popular product.

Wild Oranges (1924), like The Sky Pilot (1922) may well be one of those films were he smuggled in more meaning than was apparent to his paymasters at Goldwyn Pictures – something which pointed the way to more philosophical fare such as The Big Parade and, especially, The Crowd.

Frank Mayo

It tells of one man’s reaction to chance and the decisions he wrestles with in the seductive heat of South Georgia, the old South, shrouded in cloying strands of over-growth, animalistic passion and primal fears.

The music of chance...

The story begins with what now might be described as a Paul Auster moment: a scrap of newspaper is blowing innocuously across a dirt road, what’s that got to do with the price of oranges the audience asks until the horses pulling a passing trap are distracted and bolt pulling their passengers along a break-neck speed… and so it proves as the vehicle spins round a corner sending its passenger to her death on the ground.

Her husband rushes top his wife’s aid but it’s too late: she is gone… just like that leaving a hole in her husband’s heart he never expects to fill again.

Two men and a boat

Three years pass and the man, John Woolfolk (Frank Mayo) has been sailing the World with only his right hand man Paul Halvard (Ford Sterling) for company. He never feels compelled to set down roots and travels on in the hope of never meeting Love again.

On to a Georgian shoreline well off the beaten track and with a tricky approach over fast moving shallow waters: the perfect place to get lost and the perfect place to run aground…

So far so sad but what awaits is something else… An old man (Nigel De Brulier), looks on in rising panic, a victim of congenital anxiety but still shell-shocked by the civil war fought two generations before.

The locals spy the unwanted visitors

A disheveled giant of  a man, Iscah Nicholas (Charles A. Post) also regards the boat in the harbour with fear – his mind even more clouded than the old man’s and with a darker secret that gives him more rational basis for concern.

From the boat, John spies a woman swimming and it turns out not to be Delores del Rio taking an early dip but Virginia Valli… John looks on through binoculars and no doubt reminds himself of his vow to keep on moving.

Vidor was an advocate of the filming of wild swimming

But the boat needs water and John ventures to land where he is captivated by the scent of oleanders and orange blossoms. He walks through the fruit trees encroaching all-round the once grand old house and stops to try some of the fruit… “Wild oranges – at first surprisingly bitter, but after a moment pungent and zestful with a never-to-be-forgotten flavour.”

He meets Millie (Virginia Valli) – the old man of the house’s granddaughter – who whilst she has inherited his timidity still has a clear and open mind: she can grow beyond the confines of the twisted plantation perhaps.

She and John talk and she reveals that she’s never left their land even though she’s read of the wider world… there’s a spark between the two and one that unsettles both John and the watching Iscah.

The next morning Iscah plays a mean game with Millie carrying her to the swamp where he perches her on a tree stump surrounded by alligators: he won’t release her until she agrees to a kiss. His only hold on her is through fear and the physical dominance he exerts.

Insert snappy caption here

But there are challenges to come as after chasing Paul away from collecting water with a knife, John returns to lay down the law: “don’t get me started… “ repeats Iscah to which John invites him to “start anytime he likes…” Iscah is finally meeting his match and he doesn’t know what to do.

Meanwhile Millie is lured by the promise of John’s boat and rows out for a trip which both thrills and then unnerves her… something had tied her to this land and she won’t easily be cut free.

Free all at sea

Things get darker on their return as her fears over Iscah are realised when he rushes at John with his knife… Millie throws her hands up expecting the worst only for John to easily disarm the younger, bigger but untrained man: he kicks his bottom (as I believe the American parlance has it?) as he throws the knife in the water.

But things are coming to a head and it’s not just Iscah who is losing his; John is getting too close to Millie and needs to make his escape. He cannot be unfaithful to the memory of his wife and he fears for the unlimited pain that the commitment of love can bring…

He points the yacht out to sea and looks to be on his way but as he steers in the dark he has visions of Millie; their potential happiness calling him back…

Meanwhile life is getting a whole lot more uncomfortable for Millie as Iscah proposes in his terrifying way and she only narrowly escapes his assault by blockading herself in her room… All is set for a mighty conflagration and, without giving anything away, Vidor sets up one of the most exhausting and convincing fights to the death you’ll see in silent film… it’s desperate stuff as every man, woman and dog are taken to the limits.

"Don't get me started..." "You can start anytime..."

Wild Oranges is in many ways a simple film but it benefits from this focus: five actors, a dog and two crocodiles… the confines of the boat, the decaying house and the physical constraints of the over-bearing local air, suffused with a musky fragrance that must affect the senses every bit as much as the heat.

John W. Boyle’s cinematography helps to capture this feel whilst Vidor and his editors keep the action at Southern Gothic pace – I was reminded of Mary Pickford’s superb Sparrows from 1926 which is a better film but who knows, Miss P may have seen this one?

I watched the Warner Archives DVD which comes with a splendid new score from Vivek Maddala which moves well with the storyline without overwhelming it as orchestral updates can sometimes do. Maddala’s pacing is bang on and really does catch the southern climes, the eerie warmth of the breeze and the fragrance of those bitter-sweet wild oranges.

The disc is available direct from the WB Shop or from Amazon.