Top Talmadge? A Pair of Silk Stockings (1918), with John Sweeney, Slapstick Festival Online

A poll in Moving Picture World in 1921, placed Norma and Constance Talmadge as the first and second most popular movie actresses in the USA and their success endured through most of the silent period.

 

Of all the superstars of silent film, Norma is perhaps the one modern audiences are most ambivalent about. Maybe this is because we don’t see her very best films that often (Smiling Through, the brace with Borgaze, Kiki et al) and because her, highly skilled, performances are in melodramas that just don’t translate that well. For me she is the finest actor of her family though with middle sister Natalie very limited in comparison – just good enough in her husband Buster’s Our Hospitality (1923) – and the youngest, Constance, excelling mostly in comedies requiring a different skill set. It is for this very reason that it may well be that she is now the Top Talmadge a century on from being overshadowed by Norma’s range.

 

Their mother thought Constance looked like a little Dutch boy (nope, me neither….) and that nickname stuck with the actress, who’s energy and sense of fun now leap out of screenings in ways that strike the same chords as Pickford, Normand and, indeed Fairbanks, with whom she starred in The Matrimaniac (1916). She was one of the brightest things in Griffiths’ sprawling Intolerance, running wild as the Mountain Girl fighting against oppression, riding chariots… but found her niche with the kind of social comedy of which A Pair of Silk Stockings is a fair example. She has an almost unconscious natural exuberance that combines with her expressiveness – huge eyes alive with feeling – to draw our response and convince with even the creakiest comedy.

 

Constance Talmadge and Harrison Ford

She’s another “time traveller” someone with a modern look and who is not burdened by over exposure as a silent icon; sneaking her persona through under the cover of her sister’s ubiquity. There are fewer preconceptions with Constance and we are simply left with what we find; interpreting her as something fresh.

 

Anita Loos was in a position to form an opinion though and the festival’s excellent compere, Lucy Porter, quoted from her autobiography, A Girl Like I, in which the writer expressed her admiration for “…one of the few genuine femme fatales I have ever known… Not to be in love with her would almost make a man seem abnormal, but no woman could be too jealous of Dutch because she had a sense of humour about sex that made her laugh off the majority of her suitors.”

 

And this we can see throughout Stockings, a very British type of farce set in an English country mansion and based on the play of the same name by Hendon-born Cyril Harcourt (originally named Cyril Worsley Perkins) which spawned further film as Silk Stockings in 1927 with Laura La Plante and John Harron. By this time Constance effectively had her own production company courtesy of her sister Norma’s husband, Joseph Schenck, and her choice of roles and crew working with screenwriter Edith Kennedy and director Walter Edwards on a number of projects including Mrs. Leffingwell's Boots (1918) and Romance and Arabella (1919).

Constance not looking at all as if she's a boy from Holland

Since it has dawned on him that he was a neglected husband, Sam’s grouch has grown daily until it is too big to swallow…

 

These films co-stared Harrison Ford as does A Pair of Silk Stockings and he has good chemistry with Constance, keeping a straight face and stubbornly struggling on digging when male pride leaves his character – described as “the husband of Mrs Sam Thornhill” - in a hole of increasing depth. Kennedy’s script makes the most of Sam’s discomfort and poor judgement as his insecurity gets the better of him with his wife Molly (Dutch) far too smart and alive for him to pin down.

 

Their row erupts or rather spirals into polite disagreement only the English could manage, over what car they should buy; Molly wants a new roadster and Sam thinks only a sensible touring car will do. He decides to test his wife by giving her the money for the car fully expecting that she’ll think twice and buy him what he wants but he’s picked the wrong spouse for that old ploy as Molly gets the sportier model. Miffed in the most passive aggressive of ways – Kennedy’s title cards are merciless – Sam decides to up the stakes just as Molly decides to trade for the tourer.

Sylvia Ashton disapproves

 

He sends a very expensive fur wrap to actress Maudie Plantagenet (Florence Carpenter), makes sure she sits next to him and Molly at the theatre, flirts ostentatiously and then makes sure that Molly sees the bill for the unfaithful fur. We then see what he expects to happen – wife contrite and desperate to win him back – and then what actually happens – wife in a fury and straight off to a divorce lawyer.

 

But their separation is only the set up for the main event which happens a month later at a house party given by Sir John Gower (Thomas Persse) and his wife played by the very stern and impressive Sylvia Ashton; the supporting players are all good here but as Lucy Porter says, she does stand out! Sam the Divorced is the “official killjoy” at the party where all their mutual friends have to tread on eggshells as he mopes about having failed to explain himself in court where he lost “hands down and thumbs up”. Fear not dear fellow, redemption lurks in even the darkest of nights…

TFW your divorced friends both turn up at the same party...

 

Molly arrives by surprise after her car breaks down interrupting the guests’ rehearsal of an Ibsen play (of course…), her old beau Captain Jack Bagnal (Louis Willoughby) is there, along with his young fiancé Pamela Bristowe (Wanda Hawley) and their friend Irene (Vera Doria) together with the Gowers they try to keep her and Sam apart… but life’s obviously not that simple. Add a beard for Ibsen, a burglar, the titular stockings and some heroically daft twists and turns and you can imagine how complicated this evening is going to get!

 

Accompanist John Sweeney drew a comparison with PG Wodehouse plays and he worked that comparison to superb effect with a seemingly effortless flow of peppy lines that wove amusingly around the sights and script. It’s just a shame we weren’t there as an audience to appreciate the performative whole but sat at our screens across the lockdown world we laughed and smiled in unison; knocked out by Dutch’s smile and Sweeney’s improvised comedic concerto!

Louis Willoughby and Dutch 

As with all the streams on the Slapstick Festival site, A Pair of  Silk Stockings can be viewed up to the 11^th March so do not miss out!

 

Edith Kennedy's title cards are a hoot!

Sam's cunning plan...

He thought I was buying a tourer!?

So bad it’s bad. Trapped by the Mormons (1922), Grapevine DVD

 “Trapped by the Mormons is such absolute rubbish that to exhibit it is nothing short of an insult to public intelligence…“ The Daily Mail, 1922

Grapevine video do a tireless job of providing otherwise unavailable films on digital media, existing in the grey areas of silent cinema copyright. Here they’ve really gone to town with a new organ score from Blaine Gale recorded in 4.0 surround sound, special features and a full-length commentary track from film historian James D’Arc. Is it worth it? Well yes, very much so from an historical perspective and in terms of presenting one of Evelyn Brent’s rare surviving British films - she made ten and few survive. However, in terms of the film’s creative content, it’s not always entertainingly awful; it’s a competent plodder and at times, so bad it’s irritating.

But, please, DO NOT let that put you off from seeking out this DVD and let me explain why… without, let us hope, a Moomins joke.

Firstly, there’s Evelyn Brent, Hollywood’s Lady Crook as biographer Lynn Kear described her after her films with Josef von Sternberg and later low-budget talkies, who, after an early start in Hollywood spent time in Europe between 1919 and 1922. British filmmakers were impressed with her American experience: “… there were pictures to do at £30 a week, which was phenomenal to me and which I only got because I had had the American experience. You could have got anything there at the time on that premise.” *

"Look into me eyes, not around my eyes..." Louis Willoughby

 

Brent was being modest of course as she’d been in pictures since 1914 and had played alongside John Barrymore and others. She acted on the British stage too and is undoubtedly the pick of the bunch in this film with H. B. Parkinson making the most of her in numerous close-ups and relying on her to add emotional weight to a fairly daft plot.

British actor Louis Willoughby is also given a lot of close-up work as the evil Isoldi Keene, leader of the Mormons and a hypnotist to boot, able to twist the perceptions of innocent English girls in pursuit of his scarcely religious aims. These close-ups are often great fun with widening eyes and dramatic face pulling that, as James D’Arc says, owed as much to the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Munau’s Nosferatu as any documented Mormon talents.

D’Arc’s commentary is good value and helps to explain the context for this view of The Church Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as the Mormons are properly addressed. Founded in the 1830s by Joseph Smith who was replaced by Brigham Young after being murdered, the Church grew in popularity with its desire to return to Christian basics. They represented a challenge to existing orthodoxies by their fundamentalism which was bound to align poorly with "modern" sensibilities.

Evelyn is alarmed

 

Famously the Mormons believed in their men being able to marry more than one woman at a time and I had to snort when D’Arc set up a context for this by saying it was only practiced by 20-25% of adherents and even then usually just limited to the two wives. That’s surely widespread enough to cause moral unease from more conventional Christians and so it’s not hard to see why the likes of Winifred Graham were unnerved by them even after the practice had been outlawed in the USA. The Church changed its position in 1890 but small groups broke away to continue polygamy.

 

Graham campaigned against the sect from the 1900s though to the late twenties and wrote a number of books including, The Love Story of a Mormon (1911) upon which this film is based. Grapevine have included a digital copy on the DVD so we can read for ourselves the author’s take on the religion she so opposed. It’s fascinating especially as it’s based in Liverpool which, for the purposes of the film, is changed to Manchester; perhaps the producers didn’t think it was credible for Scouse lasses to be so easily taken in?

The concern about Mormon influence was real enough though and no one dedicates thirty years and numerous books to campaigning against beliefs without being seriously concerned by them. Such were the times though with older certainties breaking down against a backdrop of industrialisation and then war and Graham was also concerned about US soldiers of the faith dragging innocent English girls back home with them.

A Mormon bapstism, looks kinky eh?

 

So, then we come to Master Films, the British production company who funded this film and dashed it off in around a month. They were into quickies well before the quota and keen to hit the concerns of their audience although as British film historian, Rachel Lowe said, they often underestimated their audience, serving with old fashioned melodramatic slop when they could have been more challenging.

This film was designed to provide easy entertainment and to present a horror adventure as much as anti-Mormon propaganda. When it works, that’s the aspect that makes it happen, although it’s pretty hit and miss in terms on emotional impact, overall tone and pacing whilst the three parallel perils presented at the end are purely perfunctory.

Keene has targeted Nora for conversion and marriage in Utah and fills her head with his dodgy dogma as well as convincing her he’s got mystic powers by arranging to apparently bring a dead gypsy woman back to life. This impresses Nora and her equally impressionable girls’ book group but it’s a cynical set up arranged by Keene and his crew.

 

Cecil Morton York is concerned

Back home there’s tension between Nora and her disabled father (Cecil Morton York) not to mention her fiancé Jim (George Wynn). She’s beguiled by Keene and asks her father to break off her relationship with Jim, but both start to suspect something is wrong and Jim vows to find out what it is and win her back.

 

Nora is taken in by the Mormons in preparation for a move to Utah and, she hopes, marriage to Keene who keeps on talking of her as a flower to be plucked/crushed. She’s looked after by his sister Sadie (Olive Sloane) who helps to provide a cover story as a writer in need of Nora’s assistance.

 

But, horrors, is Sadie really Keene’s sister or is she actually… no, I cannot say it!! Jim tracks Nora down but can he and the local bobbies rescue her in time or will Keene continue to have the evilest of ways?!

Can Jim (George Wynn) save the day?

The score from Mr Gale is great fun and not just for the fact that a full-blown organ is exactly what Trapped requires! I listened on headphones and it is constantly inventive, uplifting the narrative with nimble thematic textures and it sounds crystal clear and powerful; one of the most satisfying organ scores I’ve heard. I’m normally a piano man when it comes to accompaniment but this is far better than the film deserves and lifts the whole film.

 

Trapped obviously did good business as Brent also starred a few months’ later in Married to a Mormon (1922) a kind of follow-up – albeit as a different character – alongside Clive Brook who would be Rolls Royce to her Feathers in von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927). The Times was lukewarm: “(It) gains a spurious interest owing to the fact that it is more or less topical, and Miss Evelyn Brent and Mr Clive Brook act well in it.” The film is lost but we’re done with Mormons now, we know about the movement against them and their plural marriages. We know all about religious intolerance in fact and religious extremism.

Don't listen lass! He's a wrong 'un!

 

These days even unbelievers have their own religions and where none had previous beliefs, they can simply latch on to QAnon or any one of a thousand conspiracies designed to convince us that we’re good because we’re simply not as bad as pure evil. In that respect nothing has changed since Winifred Graham’s time.

 

Trapped is camp as all get out and is perfect for a group watch but there’s a sincerity behind it all that not only undercuts this but makes you want to understand more about the context and the purpose. Film historian Anthony Slide** reported Evelyn Brent watching the film and "her worst performance" with some amusement and not a few "salty comments" but she always looked like great company!

 

Trapped by the Mormons also includes a Thomas Edison short, A Trip to Salt Lake City (1905) as well as well as a documentary on the film and on the score with Blaine Gale discussing his score and shown playing at Peery’s Egyptian Theatre’s mighty Wurlitzer. You can – and must - order direct from Grapevine and all in all it’s a very worthy project from Grapevine and heartily recommended on historical as well as Evelyn Brent grounds!

 

*Confessions of the Stars: Evelyn Brent Tells Her Untold Story, Gladys Hall, Motion Picture Classic, June 1929

 **Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses, Anthony Slide, University Press of Kentucky (2002)