Don't Miss Joan Crawford's Flapper Trilogy On TCM

January is Joan Crawford month on TCM and they're kicking it off Thursday night with what I call the Flapper Trilogy—Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). They are an exploitative hoot, with Hollywood clucking its moralizing tongue at the antics of girls gone wild while raking in box office bucks.

Look for Monkey favorite Anita Page in all three.

The fun starts at 9 p.m. EST on Thursday, January 2, 2014.

Ramon Novarro In A Nutshell

A few facts about silent film star Ramon Novarro:

● He was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego in Durango, Mexico, in 1899. At age fourteen, he moved with his family to Los Angeles to escape the Mexican Revolution.

● Novarro made his acting debut with an uncredited part as a starving peasant in Cecil B. DeMille's 1916 costume epic, Joan the Woman.

● After ten more small, usually uncredited bit roles between 1917 and 1921, Novarro scored his breakout role as Rupert of Hentzau in the 1922 version of The Prisoner of Zenda.

● Novarro's biggest role was the title character in Fred Niblo's silent classic, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Among his silent works, I can also highly recommend Scaramouche and Ernst Lubitsch's The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg.

● As was the case with many actors of the time, his career suffered with the advent of the talkies. He made his talkie debut in 1929, and of these early efforts, I'd point you to 1931's Mati Hari in which he co-starred with an especially luminous Greta Garbo. MGM dropped his contract in 1935.

● Novarro was a devout Roman Catholic; he was also gay, and was tormented by the conflict between his sexuality and his religious beliefs. Nevertheless, he refused to enter into a sham marriage to satisfy the gossip columnists or his boss, Louis B. Mayer.

● Of his later movies, I am a big fan of his work in the 1949 comic noir The Big Steal, starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer. There he is a Mexican police inspector who plays cat-and-mouse with a thief and his pursuers. He also appeared in an episode of The Wild Wild West, a childhood favorite of mine.

● Novarro was brutally murdered in his home in 1968 by two male prostitutes who mistakenly believed Novarro had a large cache of money hidden in his home. They eventually made off with $20, were captured, convicted and served less than ten years each for their crimes.

● And while we're here, how about a few more photos of Ramon Novarro:

with Ernst Lubitsch:

with Joan Crawford:

with Norma Shearer:

Before, During And After #8: Joan Crawford

age 5

age 28 (Today We Live, 1933)

age 54 (circa 1959 by Ray Graham)

The Great Recasting Blogathon (Part Two): More Silent Movies You'll Never See

The Monkey's contribution to the Great Recasting Blogathon continues apace today. In addition to yesterday's full-blown treatment of Ocean's Eleven, here are more posters for silent movies you will never see. With the exception of the Erich von Stroheim movie, they are straight "pre-makes" of the movies you know and love.

Oh, and yes, I do realize Lawrence of Arabia was released in 1962 and thus doesn't qualify for the blogathon. For that matter, 24 was a television show and doesn't qualify either.

Sue me.

As always, you can click on the pictures to see them full size.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1902)

Unforgiven (1904)

24 (1913)

Clerks (1916)

The Princess Diaries (1917)

Groundhog Day (1918)

The 40-Year-Old Virgin (1919)

Lawrence of Arabia (1920)

Play Time (1921)

Fatal Attraction (1922)

Reservoir Dogs (1922)

Hamlet (1923)

Sleeper (1923)

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1924)

127 Hours (1925)

The Elephant Man (1926)

John Carter (1926)

Manhattan (1926)

Titanic (1927)

Easy A (1927)

Working Girl (1927)

Mean Girls (1928)

Out of Africa (1928)

Wall Street (1929)

Belle de Jour (1929)

A Random Review: Our Modern Maidens (1929)

Our Modern Maidens was the second leg of Joan Crawford's "flapper trilogy," sandwiched in between Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). Like its predecessor, Our Modern Maidens centers on girl-gone-wild Joan Crawford, this time playing Billie Brown, a rich, spoiled, Jazz addict. She's engaged to marry Gil Jordan (Crawford's real-life fiance, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), but keeps the relationship a secret until he can secure a diplomatic post worthy of her ambitions.

"It's got to be Paris!" she tells him. "The big brass band for me!"

Meanwhile, her school chum, Anita Page as the hopelessly naive Kentucky, dreams of romance—and more.

"Love! Beautiful love!" she writes in her diary. "Will it sweep me away in a cloud of glory or steal upon me ... gently?"

Unfortunately for her, the man she dreams of is none other than Billie's beau, Gil.

When Billie takes up with a powerful Washington insider—ostensibly to help Gil's career, but really to help herself—Gil consoles himself with Kentucky's virginity. When she gets pregnant, things get complicated.

Yes, this is definitely pre-Code. With its emphasis on fast cars, bathtub gin and Jazz music, the film serves as a time capsule, if not of the reality of the Jazz Age then of how America perceived it. Unfortunately, the stock market would crash just two months after the film's release. By the time its follow-up, Our Blushing Brides, hit theaters in 1930, the fun was over and Crawford's carefree flapper had become a careworn shopgirl.

While Our Dancing Daughters was Anita Page's most famous role, and best, this one is her most adorable, and the one I imagine that drove her fans—including fascist dictator Benito Mussolini—to write her mash notes by the bushel-basketful.

Equally fine is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., in one of his best silent performances, worth seeing, if for nothing else, for his spot-on impressions of John Barrymore, John Gilbert and his own father, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

Ironically, the least convincing performance in Our Modern Maidens is Crawford's own. Personally, I find it disconcerting to see her so wide-eyed and overeager, much preferring the world-weary cynicism of her best-known work. Although already a big star—a well-publicized marriage to Fairbanks, Jr. during filming didn't hurt—she wouldn't really hit her stride as an actress for another couple of years with such films as Dance, Fools, Dance and Grand Hotel.

Still, Our Modern Maidens is a frothy bit of fun and highly recommended for fans of Jazz Age frivolity. Mix yourself a gin rickey and enjoy.

Postscript: Our Modern Maidens was Crawford's last silent film, and if you haven't seen a silent film from this period, you may be surprised to discover it featured a synchronized score, sound effects and even some incidental dialogue.