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...