Dark Lady in love shock… Is Money Everything? (1923), Miriam Cooper

It was such a horror I’m glad I don’t remember anything more about it…

Four decades before Lennon and McCartney wrestled with the relationship between love and money, Miriam Cooper and Norman Kerry were involved in earnest consideration of the same issue under the guidance of Glen Lyons. The results are pretty conclusive and if the Scousers had been paying more attention they could have saved themselves hours of writing in Paul’s living room and the resultant two minutes and twelve seconds of pop glory but perhaps you can never have enough evidence?

I wasn’t really here for the answer just for the chance to see The Dark Lady of the Silents as Miss Cooper entitled herself in her autobiography, written “with” Bonnie Herndon and published in 1973 when she was – probably - 82. As I may have mentioned in the past, the star of Griffiths’ Intolerance and Birth of a Nation (not Oh, KKK…), has always stood out for me. There is indeed something about Miriam and if it’s not necessarily her acting, it’s certainly her look, at once striking and almost modern with big, soulful eyes that manage to be more knowing and yet less emotionally engaged than Lillian’s or Mae’s.

She is highly watchable and holds the attention on screen in spite of her honest assessment that she wasn’t a great actress and that her strong features and those dark eyes, described to her in the book as “sensual” and “liquescent” by two breathless academics after one screening of BoaN, touched many a watcher. She certainly did not lack the disciplined desperation of the poorer class nor the ability to transport herself into a role and suggested that an imagination born of necessity was key to her success.

Miriam Cooper

“… when Mr Griffith told me, ‘you’re a Southern girl watching your brother go off to war’, I didn’t have to act, I was that girl.”

She draws some fascinating parallels with her contemporaries – all of them young, pretty women, often without fathers and seizing the chance the pictures provided to support their families. These were also characteristics that appealed in inappropriate ways to DWG too and Mary Pickford wasn’t the only one who thumped the old racist. Cooper wonders how so many youngsters could write about the silent era and rightly points out that so much of the contemporary sources were PR guff: I’m not making anything up. I was there… Yet, she clearly is inventing some events and storylines throughout her story, not that this stops the book being entertaining. She tells all in a stylishly frank way, dishing dirt and opinion as freely as you’d expect from a grand dame but we’ll never really know if her first cinema make-up was applied by Mack Sennett or whether Lil and DW were closer than professionally required?

Only three of her forty shorts and five of her twenty one feature films survive, BoaN, Intolerance, The Woman and the Law – Griffiths’ director’s cut of her main story in Intolerance - husband Raoul Walsh’s Kindred of the Dust (1922) and Is Money Everything? So, unlike her hated love rival (?) Theda Bara, she at least has some major films extant and even this film allows us to see her in a run-of-the-mill feature in decent shape the Grapevine DVD being taken from a 35mm print.

Norman Kerry

Miriam took a pay cut down to $650 a week to make Is Money Everything? as times were still unsure for her and Walsh who was yet to breakthrough. She filmed in Detroit whilst he soon set off for Tahiti to make Lost and Found on a South Sea Island. They were also starting to drift in their marriage and she wonders whether she still loves him in her diary as quoted in the biography. Absence made the hearts fonder although they did eventually divorce in 1926.

 Cooper describes the film as apt because of their money worries but it’s also about a couple faced with a choice of success in business or with their marriage which might explain why I find her portrayal convincing enough! She plays Marion Brand, wife of John Kerry’s ambitious grocer, John. John’s a god-fearing man at the start of the film and one who eschews violence, much to the pleasure of his father-in-law, Reverend John Brooks (John Sylvester).

After marriage he buys into the town’s grocery business and starts to make a real success… which increasingly is at the expense of other local businesses. His ruthlessness impresses a rich city woman, Mrs. Justine Pelham (Martha Mansfield) travelling through town, and it won’t be the last time the two cross paths as John transposes his grocery acumen to Wall Street.

The pressures of earthly success drive the Brands apart...

The family moves to high society in New York and whilst Marion begins to get isolated, the city slickers flock to John’s new success yet some, notably Justine’s husband, Roy (William Bailey) and leading financier Phil Graham (Lawrence Brooke), clearly do not like his impact on their capital nor his aggression. Pelham sends his wife to extract as many secrets as she can but Justine has her own more romantic agenda and sets about tying to woo John away from Marion.

The films only around the hour mark, yet it’s light on the detail of the money making and heavier on the social life of the Brand’s new society. There’s a long sequence on a hunt during which Justine pretend to have fallen from her horse in order to entrap John but, corporate killer he may be, he does not lack in love or loyalty to his wife.

But, as the money keeps pouring in, the pressures on the Brands’ marriage only increase as the temptations of unchristian power and desire beckon… Marion is there suffering in almost every scene and if there’s to be a way out, she will have to be the one to take drastic measures.

Martha Mansfield plays The (One Who Would Be) Other Woman

So… not a classic but Glen Lyons directs well and creates a watchable morality tale that was no doubt a crowd pleaser across the mid-West. Throughout it Miriam Cooper draws the eye and for the reasons she and Bonnie Herndon articulate in the biography, quoting film historian Walter Coppedge, “Of dark liquescent eyes and a strangely still but magnetizing beauty, Miriam Cooper’s looks were oddly provocative: she had sex and breeding, and she moved with an inviting grace… Griffith’s ‘Dark Lady’… struck a contrast with the two other types he developed…” these being the “vivacious freckle-faced hoyden” (Constance Talmadge) and the “ethereal innocent” (Lillian Gish).

Further viewing: One of Cooper’s best-looking survivors is the sixteen minute The Confederate Ironclad (1912), directed by Kenean Buel and available to view in stunning quality at the National Film Preservation Society website – which is full of wonders!

It is also well-worth watching The Woman and the Law (1915) on the Eureka Intolerance set, you see more of Miriam and the narrative is naturally far more focused than the strands we see in the main film. Plus, there is just more of the dark eyes and the timeless connectivity of Ms Cooper!

Further reading: If you can find a copy, don’t hesitate to pick up The Dark Lady of the Silents – as Miriam says, she was there and even at a distance of sixty years, her recollections are invaluable especially when place in the context of the more forensic studies of those academics who weren’t.

Lobby card bonus:

Sleepin' in the sun... Lazybones (1925)

Buck Jones

“Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.” as Quarry Bank High School alumni John Lennon once said, yet for Steve Tuttle, life is what happens when he’s busy not even making plans. Named Lazybones by the locals he spends his time in relaxed denial always putting off till tomorrow what could be done today.

He gets caught napping even by the local fish quick enough to leap off the line after waking the faint-hearted fisherman, insists that his ragged roof doesn’t need fixing as it’s not raining and asks his Mom (Edythe Chapman) to remind him to fix their wonky gate: “that darn gate!” says everyone who passes through it today, tomorrow and for years to come.

There’s surely not much mileage in this lazy tale I hear you cry and yet Frank Borzage’s film is gently misleading; elegantly side-swiping the expectations of audience and Hollywood alike with a narrative that is far harder than it looks.

The director elicits some superb performances from his cast, chiefly from Buck Jones who was best known for cowboy roles and yet here creates a nuanced character as far away from genre preconceptions as you could imagine. Jones is a handsome chap and looks like one of life’s easy winners and yet here he presents as a man preparing himself for disappointment by prevarication: why look life square in the eye when you can just sleep it off.

No flies on Steve: they all get caught in the spider webs on his shoes...

Is he waiting for something to happen? When it does he is quick to react and demonstrates physical and moral courage and yet… will these acts change him into a more acceptable “hero”? Maybe he does enough and deserves security in his own nature after all it’s the energy and ambition of the more aggressively moral souls around him that create the misery. Lazybones is as much about the competitive consensus as it is about the titular slacker: he remains true to himself whilst the others in passing judgement lose out.

Emily Fitzroy and Jane Novak

Borzage’s composition and cinematography is suitably dream-like with cameramen Glen MacWilliams and George Schneiderman picking up the wonderful light of the rural settings: something so bright that any sensible man would shield his eyes and just lie back on a tree trunk to bask…

Written by Frances Marion from a play by Owen Davis the film is a tale of the unexpected that only really makes itself known in the closing sequences but I won’t give those away… 

Emily Fitzroy and Jane Novak

It begins with Frank’s gentle routines being disturbed by the arrival of his sweetheart Agnes Fanning (winningly-winsome Jane Novak) and her fearsome mother (Emily Fitzroy). The two ride in by tandem and Mrs Fanning’s stiff-backed posture lets you know to expect the worst… She cannot disguise her disgust at Steve and certainly doesn’t want his relationship with Agnes to develop.

Steve manages to get his jalopy running and momentarily impresses before it blows up, he tells Agnes he has plans and whilst in a more typical film there would be a hidden secret to rescue his fortune here you cannot be so sure.

Mrs Fanning much prefers the local “Beau Brummel”, Elmer Ballister (William Bailey) who she has lined up for her elder daughter Ruth (Zasu Pitts); he’s a real go-getter and full of it. She writes to Ruth telling her to return from her teaching post and prepare herself for wedlock. But Ruth has been rather busy away from home having married a sailor and born his child only to be rapidly widowed following his death at sea.

Zasu Pitts

She returns home with her child convinced that no one will believe that she has ever been married (no licence?) and in a moment of desperation, throws herself into the fast-running waters on the edge of town. Now we see how fast Lazybones can move if he wants to as, hearing her cries he wakes from his slumber-fishing to dive in and save her.

Ruth after the rescue...

Safely on the river bank, Ruth tells all and Steve agrees an unlikely plan to save her reputation by looking after her baby daughter until she has the strength to confess all to her mother. He returns home with the baby spinning the tale of finding her abandoned and spurred on by Elmer’s callous disdain, announces that he will adopt.

Ruth is safe for the moment but when she finally tells her mother the old harridan refuses to listen or believe taking a stick to her terrified daughter in a genuinely shocking moment. Mrs Fanning may well be the wicked witch of the mid-West but a shadow of shame hangs momentarily across Emily Fitzroy’s brow before she grits her teeth in cruel resolve.

Ruth cannot take her baby back and Steve realises that he’s in for the long haul. Agnes cannot face this with the inevitable implications concerning the child’s true father, and she tells poor Steve that she will never speak to him again… her final card played to her lasting regret.

Events move forward to 1915 with Kit now a young girl (played by Virginia Marshall) who is still regarded with suspicion by the locals. Agnes sees her trying to befriend a local child only for the mother to pull her away whilst Steve tells his adopted daughter that it’s all his fault for being lazy.

War comes and Steve listlessly enlists only to find himself an accidental hero after he sleeps through the order to advance and ends up capturing a German squadron from the rear. He returns to a hero’s welcome and to find Kit all grown up and looking mighty pretty (Madge Bellamy).

Kit is in love with one Dick Ritchie (Leslie Fenton) who has even fixed that darn gate. Richie proposes but Steve also realises that he has feelings for his young ward…OK, that’s a bit from left field but it’s not the only surprise as events play out in a very European way…

Lazybones packs an accumulation of little punches that leave your thoughts provoked long after the film has stopped playing. It is an intelligent film from Mr Borzage and one that stands the test of time with a message that nothing should be taken for granted in a World of false formalities.

In addition to Buster Jones, Zasu Pitts is also on song, giving her all in her uniquely-unsettling way as the woman with her life ruined by the need to keep up her mother’s appearances whilst Emily Fitzroy is also good as her sister Ruth whose heartbreak is slower burning but none the less real.

Lazybones is available on the Murnau and Borzage box set from TCM – very collectably-priced on Amazons but you can also watch it more cost-effectively on Netflix US.