Oranges to California… Nell Gwyn (1926) with Meg Morley, Kennington Bioscope

Nell Gwyn was probably the first major British feature film to succeed in America following almost two decades of under-achievement from one of the birthplaces of motion pictures.

It’s a very competent picture directed by Herbert Wilcox with strong performances especially from Randle Ayrton as King Charles II and Juliette Compton as Nell’s rival for royal affection, but it it’s chief appeal is in the performance of Dorothy Gish from Ohio. The younger Gish sister is unbound and gives one of the most joyful performances I’ve seen in a silent film with a Fairbanks-ian energy from start to finish complete with head thrown back laughing and almost perpetual motion (a high-risk strategy given the lowest of low-cut costumes).

Sister Lillian couldn’t get away with either the abandon or the dresses: Dorothy is far from home and playing away with confidence and her own voice. Maybe she felt she had more technical experience than the Brits or maybe it was just the perfect role for the “Black Sheep Gish”…

In an interview in Photoplay Magazine, Dorothy said that growing up with the Pickfords, she and Mary were the ones who always “started things” whilst Lillian was put on a pedestal by both her mother and Mrs Pickford who said, “too good for this world.” Dorothy was The Little Disturber… and here she set about disturbing the heck out of Wilcox’s film.

The result is simply magnetic and it’s hard to watch anyone else and impossible not to smile along as our inventive orange seller/sex-worker/actress grabs opportunity with both hands and romances the King, becomes an actress and a fixture of British royal life for the 16 years leading up to the King’s death.

You can only wonder at the force of personality required to make the break from her humble origins and to win her Monarch’s love and a place in society for herself and then their two sons. Her influence on social policy is open to debate but Nell certainly did charitable work, leaving a legacy to the inmates of Newgate Prison and being involved – to some extent – in the establishment of the Chelsea Pensioners… a group of whom are seen waving through grizzly grey beards at the film’s end.

The script was adapted from Marjorie Bowen’s novel, Mistress Nell Gwyn, which makes a little merry with the facts – some of which I touched on in my original post of theGrapevine DVD. For this film the rest, as they say, is pop-history… or at least a thin sliver of it running through an easy-going comedy that does portray a believable romance whilst attempting to explain the heroine’s place in history if not necessarily the actuality…

Samuel Pepys was indeed a regular admirer of Nell’s theatre and kept a risqué picture of her in his study whilst the poet John Dryden praises Nell’s greatest attribute as native wit, forcing me to contain my inner Syd James… There is no doubt her glass-ceiling shattering career was historically significant.

It's good to be the King

Meg Morley – who accompanied throughout the evening - excelled with the excesses of court life and clearly enjoyed the mix of theatrical comedy and Gish intimacy. Tonally this must be an interesting film to play for as Dorothy pulls you in as any Gish does but then there is more comedy and light than delivered sister Lil’s occasional method grimness.

Dorothy and Lillian debut in An Unseen Enemy (1912)

Five years younger than Lillian, Dorothy had made a name for herself in comedy after their joint debut in Griffith’s An Unseen Enemy (1912) and this excellent short featured in the first half of tonight’s programme. It’s a tense affair with both sisters locked in a room and terrorised by a drunken thief firing a revolver through a small hole in the wall. Both women are remarkable in this feature and their unconscious styles reveal themselves as different even at this stage: Dorothy does not have Lillian’s intricacy but is no less compellingly believable.

I had previously watched the Grapevine DVD, which is tinted and in decent quality but tonight the Bioscope projected the BFI’s 35mm film and this was a revelation in overall looks: a real treat. Nell deserves to be more widely available as a showcase for Dorothy Gish as well as being the film that may have launched a British Invasion had we the product and marketing reach to follow it up.

Earle Rodney and Dorothy Devore negotiate with the parents...

Before this was an interesting cross-dressing comedy called Know Thy Wife (1918) directed by Al Christie and featuring Dorothy Devore as the fiancé of Earle Rodney whose parents want him to marry the nice girl back home. But he has the perfect plan – nothing can go wrong, at all… dress Dot up as his best man and, er, somehow avoid getting hitched to his folks’ favoured fiancé. There are some interesting confusions – think Lubitsch I Don’t Want to be a Man – before Dorothy’s hair gives her away.

First up was a mystery… a Griffith’s short called Those Awful Hats (1909) a comedy of errors or more specifically over-large headgear that obstructs cinema audiences view of the films – even today, the main reason I refuse to wear a top hat. It’s all straightforward enough except for the fact that projected on the screen was Corner in Wheat, a film made *after* the one in which it features?! The story goes that film students may have inserted the second film years later using a matte projection technique unknown in 1912 – possibly Francis Ford Coppola after one too many in the UCLA Film Studies bar?

If anyone knows anymore, please make a comment: this is a job for The Silent Detective!

UPDATE: The film is definitely not Corner of Wheat and the most likely scenario seems to be that suggested on the Classic Movie Hub: "The film utilized the Dunning-Pomeroy Matte process (an early predecessor to blue-screening). When this film was originally being restored, the elements for the film that is projected in the picture were lost. As an inside joke, the restorers filled it in with a scene from At the Crossroads of Life, a picture that D.W. Griffith himself starred in"

Those Awful Hats with the time-travelling second film projected top left

I should also mention a fascinating short from the film artist known as Arepo entitled Romance and Rococo, which showed the love affair between two porcelain dolls… the characters were constrained by their glazing but what passed between them was very enlightening especially when a worm pushed its way among their rose petals… We’ve all had our hearts cracked by such moments.

Dorothy Gish and Juliette Compton advertise

The British weren't coming, until… Nell Gwyn (1926)

 

“Whatever may be the shortcomings of English motion picture producers, if they can put together other pictures as simply and with as much dramatic effect as this story of Nell Gwyn they should have no difficulty obtaining a showing for them anywhere.” The New York Times 19th July 1926

The quality of British silent film has, it seems, always been a subject for debate and, as Kevin Brownlow points out, Nell Gwyn was the first domestic product to meet with success in America and arguably that was largely due to the presence of its Ohioan star Dorothy Gish.

Having been early-adopters the Brits had seemingly lost their way by the time of the birth of Hollywood and so few films survive of the post-War years to prove how quick the creative recovery was. Director Herbert Wilcox had served in the British Army and was one of the leading lights aiming to create a vibrant indigenous industry in the twenties.

Nell entertains the King and Lady Castlemaine

This was one of three films he made with Gish whom he persuaded to decamp to London for a couple of seasons. Five years younger than sister Lillian, Dorothy had made a name for herself in comedy after their joint debut in Griffith’s An Unseen Enemy (1912). It must have been hard having a sister like Lil but Dorothy was no slouch as she showed in Orphans of the Storm (1922).

Here she is on screen for almost the entire film and generates a likeable energy all of her own even when, it has to be said, there’s not much happening. I also have to say that I’ve never seen a Gish perform with such abandon and must observe that filming must have been delayed by regular wardrobe malfunctions… as the New York Times said, the story was not “spoiled by prudery.” There was no Hays Code in Europe and whilst the dresses are as low cut as possible there’s also no doubt about Nell’s relationship with Charles.

An accident waiting to happen...

Wilcox directs her well and creates an enjoyable “character study” of the orange seller/sex-worker/actress who came to find such favour with Charles II that she gave birth to two sons, one of whom his father made the Earl of Burford. Charles had many mistresses and many offspring – at least twelve – but his relationship with Nell is the one that endured: sixteen years together and forever in popular history.

The script was adapted from Marjorie Bowen’s novel, Mistress Nell Gwyn and, whilst it features a number of historically accurate quotes and situations, it doesn’t dwell too much on the details it has and leaves many others out altogether… a character study indeed and a straight-ahead love story between naughty Nell and charming Charles, The Merry Monarch.

Judd Green, Dorothy Gish and Edward Sorley

The story begins with the irrepressible Nell entertaining her friends in her humble home off Drury Lane. Nell dances and throws her head back in the first of many Fairbanks “aha’s”! as two war veterans Toby Clinker (Judd Green) and Dickon (Edward Sorley) lap it up in spite of the disapproval of her realist mother (Sydney Fairbrother): dancing won’t pay the rent.

Nell sells oranges to the theatre goers – other consumables are glossed over - and one night encounters King Charles (Randle Ayrton) and his royal party en route to see a play. With him are brother James Duke of York (Gibb McLaughlin) and the Duke of Monmouth (Donald Macardle) who look with horror at the chirpy urchin charming the King.

The Actress and the King

Charles accepts the gift of an orange as he goes into the theatre observed by Samuel Pepys (Johnny Butt) who sits in the audience half-watching and half-writing: don’t you just hate those in-performance texters!

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Nell also watches... carefully mimicking the actors she would so like to join on stage. In reality she was already on stage by the time she met Charles with a reputation for comedy more than for drama - just like Dorothy. Charles and James came to see her in John Dryden’s The Maiden Queen – a play Pepys saw three times: “…it is impossible to have Florimel’s part, which is the most comical that ever was made for woman, ever done better than it is by Nelly.”

Charmed Charlie takes Nell for a post-performance meal and she ends up paying after none of the royal party has any money, her quote in the film is genuine: "Od's fish! But this is the poorest company I ever was in!” Charles arranges for her to get acting lessons and to join his theatre.

A stranger to soap...

Back home Nell excitedly bounces off the walls as she tells her cynical mother of her good fortune.  Six years before Jean Harlow in Red Dust, Dorothy takes a bath in a barrel even though she has barely a cloth for a towel and seems not to know how to work the soap. Royal gifts arrive and she dances around in new shoes and silk stockings.

Nell is naturally an instant hit on stage and whilst Charles is delighted his current concubine, Lady Castlemaine (Juliette Compton) starts to feel the heat of competition – although, in fairness, Charles was never really a one-woman man…

Charles whisks Nell away from Drury Lane and installs her in her own luxurious apartment, complete with silver bed. There’s a lovely Lubitsch-esque moment when Wilcox repeatedly cuts from Nell’s face to a candelabra as one by one the King extinguishes the flames… we and Nell know what this means and Gish’s face goes from mock concern to the most genuine of smiles.

And the rest, as they say, is history… or at least a thin sliver of it running through an easy-going comedy romance that does portray a believable romance whilst attempting to explain the heroine’s place in history if not necessarily the actuality…

Four candles...

Nell certainly gave to charity and did leave a legacy to the inmates of Newgate Prison but her role in the creation of the Chelsea hospital for army veterans is uncertain. Yet when Samuel Pepys keeps a risqué picture of you in his office and when John Dryden praises your greatest attribute as native wit.. there’s no doubt Nell left her mark on the great and the good.

Dorothy Gish zips through proceedings with energy and wit of her own: she is a class act able to mix the broad pantomime with high-impact dramatic moments… and you wonder how this film would have fared in America with say Betty Balfour in the role? No disrespect to Betty, who was top of the tree in Europe at the time.

The King leads a table-top salute for Nell

Gish was 28 when she made this film and was but a few features away from shifting back to the stage. She made sporadic cinematic appearances up to Otto Preminger’s Oscar-nominated The Cardinal (1963) but mostly preferred the immediacy of the theatre… just like Nell perhaps?

Nell Gwyn is newly-available from Grapevine Video as a DVD or download. It’s not a bad print – although better is available as the excerpts in Silent Britain show – and is accompanied by a lively score from Christopher Congdon.