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Day 3 of Carole & Co.'s Great Silent Recasting Blogathon.
Today: An Ernst Lubitsh pre-make of Woody Allen's 1994 film and current Broadway musical, Bullets over Broadway. Ronald Colman gets the John Cusack role as a talentless playwright, Gloria Swanson Dianne Wiest's Oscar-winning role as an over-the-hill Broadway diva, a young Jean Harlow plays the brainless gangster's moll, Louis Wolheim the gangster, George Bancroft the bodyguard with a hidden talent, Theodore Roberts the harried manager, Fay Wray the long-suffering wife. Also with Anna May Wong, Claude Allister and Zasu Pitts.
Tomorrow: Clara Bow and Gary Cooper.
I've written at length about director/producer Cecil B. DeMille (here, for example), one of the best and most influential of the silent era directors.
If you know him only from his bloated Bible epics of the 1950s, you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about. But the fact is, beginning in 1918 with Old Wives For New, DeMille reeled off a series of "nervously brilliant, intimate melodramas" and "sly marital comedies" (Scott Eyman, Empire of Dreams) centering on the notion that grown ups engage in sexual relations and are glad that they do.
Ah, sophisticated sex comedies—God bless 'em. Here are three by DeMille to bring you up to speed:
Old Wives for New (1918)—In the first of his sex comedies, DeMille dispense with karma and moral judgment, and puts the fun back into sex, sin and every kind of bad behavior. People drink, lie, carouse and generally defy social mores, and not only suffer no consequences, they prosper. Murder goes unpunished, adultery is rewarded and divorce is presented as a sane and sophisticated solution to an unhappy marriage. Starring Elliott Dexter, Florence Vidor and Theodore Roberts.
Male and Female (1919)—DeMille added a young Gloria Swanson to the mix and both of their careers really took off. Basically, the cast of Downton Abbey gets shipwrecked on a desert island, with Swanson as a upper crust nitwit and Thomas Meighan as her butler. Of course, only the servants possess any useful survival skills. Upstairs is down, downstairs is up, in this sophisticated satire of the British class system. Also featuring Theodore Roberts and Bebe Daniels.
The Affairs of Anatol (1921)—Maybe the most famous of DeMille's comedies. Here, a bored husband (All-American heartthrob Wallace Reid) looks to spice up his love life with a series of what turn out to be disastrous affairs. By the time he returns to his senses, his wife (Swanson again) has embarked on an affair of her own. With Bebe Daniels (as Satan Synne!), Elliott Dexter and Theodore Roberts.
Have fun!
My purely idiosyncratic list designed to promote the Funny Lady Blogathon now up and running at Movies, Silently. "A baker's dozen" implies pies will be thrown and some of these funny ladies, particularly Mabel Normand, threw a mean one. Things might get messy so dress appropriately—you've been forewarned.
13. Daphne Pollard—standing 4' 9", this diminutive comedienne was a star in Mack Sennett's stable in the mid-1920s.
12. Bebe Daniels—co-starred in the early Harold Lloyd shorts then jumped to Cecil B. DeMille's sex comedies.
11. Jobyna Ralston—the "girl" in most of Harold Lloyd's latter-day features, including Girl Shy, The Freshman and The Kid Brother
10. Constance Talmadge—remembered now for her turn as the "Mountain Girl" in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, in her day she was beloved for her comedy.
9. Edna Purviance—made more movies with Charlie Chaplin than any other actress.
8. Ossi Oswalda—maybe the least known to American audiences, she was Ernst Lubitsch's go-to girl before he moved to Hollywood.
7. Colleen Moore—this fresh-faced girl-next-door had a knack for finding trouble.
6. Gloria Swanson—long before Norma Desmond, she was playing second fiddle to superstar Teddy the dog for Mack Sennett then graduated to DeMille's groundbreaking sex comedies.
5. Marion Davies—Orson Welles owes somebody an apology: this woman was talented and funny.
4. Clara Bow—the original "It" girl: beautiful, tender, funny and ultimately doomed.
3. Marie Dressler—the star of the first feature-length comedy, 1914's Tillie's Punctured Romance, she made a comeback in 1928 and eventually won an Oscar. (Dressler's the one on the right.)
2. Mary Pickford—number one at the box office, number one in our hearts, number two on this list.
1. Mabel Normand—sometimes credited with throwing the first pie in movie history, she was the beauty who starred with such beasts as Charlie Chaplin and Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle.
That's it. Have at it.
Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard surely ranks as one of the greatest movies of all time, and perhaps the greatest movie about the movies themselves.
Sunset Boulevard was perfectly cast with Oscar-nominated performances by William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim and Nancy Olson, but the film nearly featured very different performers in the lead roles.
Montgomery Clift had already signed on to play struggling screenwriter Joe Gillis before backing out days before filming started. "It so happens Mr. Clift had had an affair with an older woman in New York," Wilder recalled years later. "And he did not want to make his first picture playing the lead, the story of a man being kept by a very rich woman twice his age. He did not want Hollywood talk."
Fred MacMurray turned down the part, and the studio vetoed Wilder's suggestion of Marlon Brando, who at that point had yet to make a movie. Only then did Wilder reluctantly cast Holden, who despite starring in Golden Boy in 1939 had yet to make his mark in Hollywood. The compromise proved to be fortuitous, providing a breakthrough role for Holden, and introducing Wilder to an actor who would go on to star in four of his films.
The female lead proved even harder to cast. Among the many actresses Wilder approached were Mae West, Norma Shearer, Pola Negri, Greta Garbo and—particularly intriguing to me—Mary Pickford. There are many different stories about what happened next.
"Mr. Brackett and I went to see her at Pickfair, but she was too drunk," Wilder later claimed. "She was not interested." On the other hand, Scott Eyman, one of Pickford's biographers, wrote that she was indeed interested but wanted the script rewritten to emphasize Norma Desmond, a change Wilder was not willing to make. Still others have suggested Pickford simply feared damaging her image.
In any event, fellow director George Cukor soon after suggested Swanson, an inspired choice, it turns out. The performance was so good that Barbara Stanwyck kissed the hem of Swanson's skirt at the premiere.
Would the film have been as good with Pickford (or West or Shearer or Negri or Garbo) in the lead? It would have been different, that's for sure. Swanson was something of a larger-than-life figure herself and if you know her silent work, particularly the six films she did with Cecil B. DeMille, you know Norma Desmond was right in her wheelhouse. As Wilder himself noted years later, "There was a lot of Norma in her, you know."
Too racy?
A look ahead at the Monty's March Madness Favorite Actress Tournament, part of which we'll be hosting here at the Monkey.
Voting begins March 5.
Mary Pickford
Birth Name: Gladys Marie Smith
Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "They Had Faces" #2
Birth Date: April 8, 1892
Birthplace: Toronto, Canada
Height: 5' 0½"
Film Debut: The Heart of an Outlaw (1909)
Academy Awards: Best Actress (1928-29) (Coquette), honorary Oscar (1976)
Silent Oscars/Katie Awards: Best Actress (1917) (Poor Little Rich Girl and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm), Best Actress (Comedy) (1927-28) (My Best Girl)
Three More To See: Stella Maris, Tess of the Storm Country, Sparrows
versus
Janet Gaynor
Birth Name: Laura Augusta Gainor
Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "They Had Faces" #7
Birth Date: October 6, 1906
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Height: 5'
Film Debut: Cupid's Rustler (1924)
Academy Awards: 2 nominations, 1 win (Best Actress, 1927-28 for 7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans)
Silent Oscars/Katie Awards: Best Actress (Drama) (1927-28) (7th Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans)
Three More To See: Lucky Star, State Fair, A Star is Born
The winner of this match-up will face the winner of:
Lillian Gish
Birth Name: Lillian Diana Gish
Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "They Had Faces" #3
Birth Date: October 14, 1893
Birthplace: Springfield, Ohio
Height: 5' 5½"
Film Debut: An Unseen Enemy
Academy Awards: 1 nomination, honorary Oscar (1971)
Silent Oscars/Katie Awards: Best Actress (1920) (Way Down East), Best Actress (Drama) (1928-29) (The Wind)
Three More To See: The Mothering Heart, Broken Blossoms, The Night of the Hunter
versus
Gloria Swanson
Birth Name: Gloria May Josephine Svensson
Tourney Bracket and Seeding: "They Had Faces" #6
Birth Date: March 27, 1899
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
Height: 5' 1"
Film Debut: The Misjudged Mr. Hartley (1915)
Academy Awards: 3 nominations, 0 wins
Silent Oscars/Katie Awards: Best Actress (1919) Don't Change Your Husband and Male And Female) and Best Actress (Drama) (1950) (Sunset Boulevard)
Three More To See: The Affairs of Anatol, Sadie Thompson, Queen Kelly
Spencer Tracy's performance in Father of the Bride is one of those that looks effortless until you start thinking of all the ways it could have gone wrong. The film's producers initially talked of casting Jack Benny, which on the surface makes sense—he was one of the most popular entertainers in America and he was famous for playing cheapskates:
"Your money or your life!"
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!"
But Benny in the title role would have very quickly become a one-note joke—he's cheap, we get it.
And then there's the remake with Steve Martin, a very fine comic actor, but boy, was he a disaster in this part. His relationship to his daughter isn't touching, it's creepy, bordering on the incestuous. Not to mention I did the math in my head while I was sitting in the theater watching this some twenty-plus years ago (good lord, when did I get to be this old?) and I realized the wedding was costing him something like $125,000—those are 1991 dollars, mind you—a ridiculous amount of money. That Martin was unable to make his objections to this runaway insanity seem even remotely reasonable is an indictment of both him and the remake's writers.
With apparent ease, Tracy steered his performance away from all these potential disasters, and in the process, makes us feel sympathy for him—the money, the loss of his "little girl"—even as we laugh at his foibles.
It's another movie, perhaps as in all of his movies, where you're tempted to say, "He's not really acting, he's just playing himself." Except that when you see his top six or eight movies—Fury, Libeled Lady, Captains Courageous, Woman of the Year, Adam's Rib, Bad Day at Black Rock—and compare them to each other, you realize he's covered a lot of ground. What he consistently does is find the core of humanity in his character, no mean trick, I think.
PICTURE (Drama)
winner: Sunset Boulevard (prod. Charles Brackett)
nominees: All About Eve (prod. Darryl F. Zanuck); The Asphalt Jungle (prod. Arthur Hornblow, Jr.); Gun Crazy (prod. Frank King and Maurice King); The Gunfighter (prod. Nunnally Johnson); In A Lonely Place (prod. Robert Lord); Night and the City (prod. Samuel G. Engel); Wagon Master (prod. Merian C. Cooper and John Ford); Winchester '73 (prod. Aaron Rosenberg)
PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Harvey (prod. John Beck)
nominees: Born Yesterday (prod. S. Sylvan Simon); Cinderella (prod. Walt Disney)
PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Rashômon (prod. Minoru Jingo )
nominees: Los olvidados (prod. Óscar Dancigers, Sergio Kogan and Jaime A. Menasce); Orphée (Orpheus) (prod. André Paulvé); La Ronde (prod. Ralph Baum and Sacha Gordine)
ACTOR (Drama)
winner: William Holden (Sunset Boulevard)
nominees: Dana Andrews (Where The Sidewalk Ends); Humphrey Bogart (In A Lonely Place); Marlon Brando (The Men); José Ferrer (Cyrano de Bergerac); John Garfield (The Breaking Point); Stewart Granger (King Solomon's Mines); Gregory Peck (The Gunfighter); James Stewart (Winchester '73); Richard Widmark (Night and the City, Panic in the Streets and No Way Out)
ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Spencer Tracy (Father Of The Bride)
nominees: Ronald Colman (Champagne For Caesar); Broderick Crawford (Born Yesterday); James Stewart (Harvey); Clifton Webb (Cheaper By The Dozen)
ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Gloria Swanson (Sunset Boulevard)
nominees: Anne Baxter (All About Eve); Peggy Cummins (Gun Crazy); Bette Davis (All About Eve); Gloria Grahame (In A Lonely Place); Eleanor Parker (Caged)
ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Judy Holliday (Born Yesterday)
nominees: Joan Bennett (Father Of The Bride); Betty Hutton (Annie Get Your Gun)
DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: Akira Kurosawa (Rashômon)
nominees: Luis Buñuel (Los olividados); Jean Cocteau (Orphée a.k.a. Orpheus); Jules Dassin (Night and the City); John Huston (The Asphalt Jungle); Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy); Joseph L. Mankiewicz (All About Eve); Anthony Mann (Winchester '73); Nicholas Ray (In A Lonely Place); Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard)
DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Henry Koster (Harvey)
nominees: George Cukor (Born Yesterday); Vincente Minnelli (Father Of The Bride); George Sidney (Annie Get Your Gun)
SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: George Sanders (All About Eve)
nominees: Louis Calhern (The Asphalt Jungle); Sam Jaffe (The Asphalt Jungle); Toshirô Mifune (Rashômon); Erich von Stroheim (Sunset Boulevard)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Celeste Holm (All About Eve)
nominees: Jean Hagen (The Asphalt Jungle); Josephine Hull (Harvey); Machiko Kyo (Rashômon); Marilyn Monroe (The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve); Nancy Olson (Sunset Boulevard); Thelma Ritter (All About Eve)
SCREENPLAY
winner: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, from the story "The Wisdom of Eve" by Mary Orr (All About Eve)
nominees: Mary Chase and Oscar Brodney, from the play by Mary Chase (Harvey); Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, from the stories "Rashômon" and "In A Grove" by Ryûnosuke Akutagawa (Rashômon); Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman, Jr. (Sunset Boulevard)
SPECIAL AWARDS
Hans Dreier, John Meehan, Sam Comer and Ray Moyer (Sunset Boulevard) (Art Direction-Set Decoration); Russell Harlan (Gun Crazy) (Cinematography)
Is there anything more heartbreaking than the disappointed face of a child who didn't find a silent movie in his or her Christmas stocking? Probably, but why risk it? If the little shavers on your shopping list are anything like me, they hunger and thirst after a working knowledge of the silent film era. Don't let them down!
"But Monkey," I can hear you say, "I don't know where to start. What movies would you recommend to help start my son's or daughter's (or even my) silent film collection?"
Glad you asked. Here are a baker's dozen guaranteed to make you an expert in no time. (And no, I have no financial stake in my recommendations or your choices.)
Landmarks of Early Film, Vol. 1 [Image Entertainment]
With film pioneer Georges Méliès back in the popular consciousness thanks to Martin Scorsese's terrific new film Hugo, maybe it's time to figure out where he actually fits in the history of film. You could read about it here, but why waste valuable eyeball space on my yack and blather when you could fill your senses with the real thing? This DVD is a good way to dive into the work of film's earliest pioneers, including works by Méliès, Thomas Edison, D.W. Griffith and the Lumière brothers, among others.
(I understand there's a five-disc collection of Georges Melies's work from Flicker Alley which purports to include every Melies film in existence, 173 in all. Holy cats. But I haven't seen it and it's temporarily unavailable at Amazon.com.)
Chaplin at Keystone: An International Collaboration of 34 Original Films [Flicker Alley]
A magnificent restoration of all 34 of the films Chaplin made at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios, including the first feature-length comedy ever made, Tillie's Punctured Romance. This is not only a nice introduction to Chaplin, but also includes terrific work by Roscoe Arbuckle, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler. Start with The Rounders, move on to Tillie, then go back and see them all.
Intolerance [Kino]
Are you a connoisseur of mind-blowing cinema? Then watch this D.W. Griffith epic and consider your mind blown. Still belonging on a short list of the most ambitious movies ever made, Intolerance (from the "Griffith Masterworks" series) weaves four storylines from different points in history together to examine and expose man's inhumanity to man. Its kaleidoscope of images influenced filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein, its depiction of the fall of Babylon and a woman racing a train to save an innocent man from the electric chair are unforgettable, and Constance Talmadge is a hoot. Also includes orgies, beheadings and the life of Christ—something for everybody!
Male and Female [Image Entertainment]
What silent film collection wouldn't be complete without an entry from director Cecil B. DeMille and his favorite star, Gloria Swanson. Although DeMille would later become known for his turgid Bible epics, he really made his name with a series of sophisticated sex comedies, most starring Swanson. In this one, aristocrat Swanson winds up stranded on a desert island with her butler, and when the hired help are the only ones who know how to get things done, upstairs quickly becomes downstairs and vice versa. Norma Desmond was right—they didn't need dialogue; they had faces!
Nosferatu (The Ultimate Two-Disc Edition) [Kino]
You're going to want at least one example of German Expressionism, one of the most influential artistic movements of the 20th century, and one film from F.W. Murnau, who directed some of the most beautiful films of the silent era. Why not kill two birds with one stone and go with the vampire classic, Nosferatu. Be careful, though—there are many versions of this film floating around, some virtually unwatchable. Me, I'd go with the two-disc edition from Kino.
The Black Pirate (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
There never was a better movie pirate than Douglas Fairbanks—not Errol Flynn, not Tyrone Power, not Johnny Depp. And this early color film (using a primitive two-strip process) might be his best. With the graceful and athletic Fairbanks at its heart, The Black Pirate is as fluid as a ballet while at the same time serving up a rip-snorting yarn filled with all the swash you'd ever care to buckle. (Don't have a Blu-Ray player? Don't despair. Try The Thief of Bagdad from Kino instead.)
The General (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
There are no wrong choices when it comes to Buster Keaton on Blu-Ray. So I'll just go with the best choice—The General. Not only is it one of the greatest comedies ever made, it's also an action film that puts most of its modern counterparts to shame. Based on an incident from the American Civil War, the story—about a lovelorn engineer who finds himself battling spies who hijack his train—features a spectacular chase involving two, then three speeding locomotives, daredevil stunts, explosions, burning bridges, comic mishaps, sight gags, split-second timing, all while Keaton woos the girl. Keaton's famously understated reaction to the chaos around him only adds to the modern feel of the production. (No Blu-Ray? No need to feel blue. It's also available from Kino in the "Ultimate Two-Disc Edition.")
The Complete Metropolis (Blu-Ray) [Kino]
If The Black Pirate is a swashbuckling ballet, Fritz Lang's Metropolis is a science fiction opera, and in this newly restored edition, as close to Lang's original vision as we're likely to get. Its story of a world divided into haves and have-nots, with a populist political movement secretly controlled by the corporation it aims to topple, feels as up-to-date as anything you're likely to see at the theater this year. Oh, and it boasts a beautiful robot played by Brigette Helm. What more do you want? (Also available as a DVD.)
TCM Archives: The Garbo Silents Collection [Warner Home Video]
Flesh and the Devil was the first pairing of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert, who would soon become one of movie history's most torrid, tempestuous couples. Garbo created a sensation with her ethereal beauty, cool, exotic manner and thoroughly modern characterization of an amoral woman who slept with whomever she wanted, while Gilbert further cemented his reputation as the screen's greatest lover. The collection also includes The Temptress and The Mysterious Lady. Considering it's going for $8.99 at Amazon.com, that's an exceptional bargain.
It [Kino]
Prefer your sex symbols served hot? Then you don't want to miss It, starring the original "It" Girl, Clara Bow. This mischievous comedy catapulted Bow to superstardom—and tabloid notoriety, most of it, unfortunately, pure fiction. The disc also includes the documentary Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl, which will give you insight not only into the troubled life and times of Clara Bow, but also into the transition from silents to talkies, the most pivotal event in Hollywood history since the invention of the camera. (Note: The DVD of another Bow picture, Wings, winner of the first Oscar for best picture, finally goes on sale January 24, 2012.)
TCM Archives: The Lon Chaney Collection [Warner Home Video]
The obvious choices for an introductory Lon Chaney film would be The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Phantom of the Opera (Image Entertainment just released a Blu-Ray of the latter in November), but I'm going with this collection that includes The Ace of Hearts, Laugh, Clown, Laugh and The Unknown. Laugh, Clown, Laugh shows off Chaney's acting chops at their finest, while The Unknown (from legendary horror director Tod Browning) captures Chaney at his creepy, crazy best.
The Passion of Joan of Arc [The Criterion Collection]
The true story of the trial and execution of one of history's most famous leaders, The Passion of Joan of Arc is beautiful, engrossing and deeply moving. It's also startlingly fresh, telling truths about the self-serving, corrupting nature of power as current as today's headlines, proving once again that our forefathers were much more modern that we currently dream of being. That, I think, is one of the hallmarks of true art, an ability to speak across generations in a unique and unforgettable way. Or leaving all that aside, it's just a great, very watchable movie.
Pandora's Box [The Criterion Collection]
Virtually unknown in her day, Louise Brooks today might be the silent era's most recognizable actress. Playing the prostitute Lulu with a unique combination of wide-eyed innocence and unabashed sexual appetite, Brooks created a character so unforgettable that twenty-five years later French film historian Henri Langlois declared "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!"
What? No Mary Pickford? Well, I'll tell you. There are some good ones from The Milestone Collection, but they're all out of print and going for $50 and more through third-party sellers on Amazon.com. If you want to spring for one of her films, I'd say go for Stella Maris—it's my favorite Pickford film.
Likewise, Harold Lloyd is out of print again. I have The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection Vols. 1-3 myself—7 discs of absolutely wonderful comedy. If it ever shows up again, I'll let you know.
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