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

 

The young ones… The Primrose Path (1925), with Stephen Horne, BFI

The eldest son is recklessly squandering his days along the path of folly - the Primrose Path - bordered by alluring  blossoms that ever beckon to youth...

 

This was Clara Bow’s 24^th film and yet she was only just 20 when it was released in September 1925, positively ancient in comparison with Baby Peggy (aka Diana Serra Carey) who was on her 25^th film aged just five with The Kid Reporter (1923): there was no hanging about in early Hollywood was there? Both films are testament to the professionalism and productivity of cinema at this stage and the opportunities for young talent to make an impact. Once you were noticed, the demand for your services was inexhaustible so long as you kept on delivering and saying yes… or at least had a parent, guardian or agent willing to do so.

 

The Peggy short was up first in this double bill of restored films… The Kid Reporter is a very competent effort that was designed to meet the expectations of its stars fan base and in its own terms it succeeds. You can see why Peggy was such a compelling character and why audiences of all ages were able to relate to her energy and humour.

 

A lot is down to the direction of Alfred Goulding who uses his remarkable asset wisely but you still have to perform even as a five-year-old and Peggy was clearly able to play act with the best of them, playing the unlikely stenographer at a newspaper run by barely-grown-ups. A string of posh pearls goes missing and the Chief offers the post of Managing Editor to the staffer who can find the story and the jewellery. No spoilers but watch the one who’s about three feet high.

 

Baby Peggy takes charge.

It’s always great to see Clara Bow on the big screen and whilst an unrestored and incomplete version of The Primrose Path had been screened earlier this year at the Bioscope, who also showed Kid Boots recently, a restoration of which was shown at this year’s Bologna Il Cinema Ritrovato, these are rare events compared with other actors of similar and, indeed, lesser status. Louise Brooks chided Kevin Brownlow for not focusing more on Clara Bow who she considered much more talented than herself and, whilst their styles differed, Bow was something of an emotional phenomenon, able to tap into a deep well of experienced sadness to present high-impact expression seemingly at will.

 

She was a natural, natural… as we can see it here even when, as the BFI’s silent film archivist Bryony Dixon said in her introduction, she’s not given much to do other than look pretty and cry which, on both counts, she does exceptionally well. But even when she’s not the centre of dramatic attention it’s always fascinating to watch Clara Bow and, as Bryony said when referencing her biographer David Stenn, his book, Running Wild, contains a lot of painful insight into Clara’s early years and the reasons why she was always able to tap into a well of sadness and would have struggled to match Peggy’s unblemished childhood charm.

 

Stenn was involved in both these restorations as was the BFI with materials used in conjunction with others led by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The colour tinting reproduces the dye-tinted colours present in the original nitrate film sources and restored 35mm print has been chemically dye-tinted, looking as good as almost any of Bow’s films in current circulation.

Clara in curls with Tom Santschi

 

The Primrose Path is no It! or Wings but it is a very entertaining programmer well-made by director Harry O. Hoyt (who went on to make The Lost World and many more) that pulls on the heart strings whilst presenting an effective plot line with many proto-gangster elements and genuine threat. You are ware of a limited budget and the tightest of briefs as sometimes cinematic code is used where linear storytelling might elaborate more fully: that is, you need to turn off your mind, relax and suspend disbelief as you fill in the odd gap.

The story is based on a fatherless family of Bruce Armstrong (Wallace Macdonald), a young man who has had his struggles with drink which resulted in an accident which left his younger brother Jimmy (Pat Moore, a bit elderly compared to Peggy but pretty good!) requiring a leg brace. They boys have no father, only a caring mother (Lydia Knott who is so quietly effective) who carries on amidst her despair at Bruce’s missteps.

 

Bruce is just about to get himself in deeper as, unable to pay his gambling debts to Tom Canfield (Stuart Holmes) a thoroughly corrupt Broadway producer, he agrees to help smuggle diamonds in exchange for a clean slate. Sounds fine, doesn’t it? Just about the only thing Bruce is doing right is dating one of Canfield’s chorus girls, a proper stunner name of Marilyn (Clara) who is no dope, seeing all the good in Bruce, and all the bad in Tom, providing more help than the young man probably deserves.

 

The review in Variety noted that “Miss Bow looked cute…” which is code for Miss Bow looked incredible in a series of daring costumes designed to show off her “dangerous curves” but which she never lets overwhelm her striking expressiveness; she gives this script total respect and adds much to the level of drama. I’m reminded of what some of the Hammer actors have told me, they had almost no time and no budgets as well but their job was to turn up and deliver a quality performance which is what we see now and then from most of this cast.

 

Holmes is despicably nasty as is his muscle, Big Jim Snead (Tom Santschi) and an Englishman, Dude Talbot (the wonderfully named Templar Saxe) who is bringing the diamonds over from Blighty hidden in a cane. He exchanges the cane with one exactly the same carried by Bruce, who the authorities do not know, and is able to evade been caught sparkling-handed. It seems like everything has worked, until a row erupts between Big Jim and Canfield who, knocked backwards, breaks his neck on the fireplace.  Dude and Jim make like bananas and split leaving a stunned Bruce to be hauled away by Marilyn…

 

The evidence pretty much fits Bruce though and he faces a fight for his life after Big Jim, assuming he has taken the loot, comes looking for vengeance… and things get a lot more complicated.

 

LV Jefferson wrote the screenplay aka Leah Baird whom the Variety review praised for putting “much of the maternal instinct into the plot” and for “making Miss Bow a clean, good, lovable girl of a cabaret who (sticks) with her boy…”. The review reproduced in today’s screening notes, is pretty jaded – so many free screenings, so little time - but concludes that “this is a very interesting picture just that, which may be more for those who prefer a reliable.” Translation required…

 

Stephen Horne accompanied, fresh from his orchestrated score for the newly restored Stella Dallas (1925) at the Venice Film Festival. There was no orchestra on the Southbank today but there was a pleasing array of themes and tones played by the one man as Stephen brough his uncanny sensibilities to bear on supporting these two quite different films. As usual he caught the emotional resonance exactly right and was especially good with Clara as she took us from upbeat to potential tragedy.

 

Another lovely screening at the BFI, London’s most functional Tardis, taking us far and wide, forward and back on a regular basis. Here’s to next time, an appointment with one Pam Greer!