Mary Pickford plays the title role in the first adaptation of Eleanor H. Porter's book which Pickford produced herself through her production company. It's about an optimistic orphan who goes and lives with her wealthy spinster aunt after her father passes away. Everyone remembers the 1960 version with Hayley Mills as Pollyanna and Jane Wyman as the aunt, but this version has much to recommend it, foremost being Pickford's adorable performance as a twelve year old girl. She was twenty-seven at the time! This movie was one of her major hits, and Pollyanna is the type of character Pickford often played in movies: adolescent girls. At barely five feet, it was easy for audiences to accept Pickford as a little girl.
This movie is a lean 57 minutes; not unusual for a feature film in that day and age. The scenario is credited to pioneering female screenwriter Frances Marion, who collaborated with Pickford on several of her key films. Pickford helped Marion become established in the movie industry - for she wielded great power during this period. Hollywood was just becoming established and she, along with Griffith, Chaplin, Fairbanks, contributed a great deal to it's foundation. Eventually, perversely, sadly, shockingly, the business they all gave so much to would, with each in a different way, come to neglect them.
You can watch Pollyanna here via Internet Archive http://archive.org/details/Pollyanna
This Hitchcock was a little bit twee for my tastes. It took three days to finish watching it. The movie opens with the death of the farmer's wife then four minutes later the farmer's daughter is getting married and after the wedding the farmer decides he wants to take a wife. He has three ladies in mind, but the perfect wife is right in front of him: his housekeeper.
Frankly, it's hard to see how the farmer doesn't grasp this from the get go; the housekeeper, Minta, is so much more attractive than the four women he proposes marriage to. Played by Lilian Hall-Davis, who was the female lead in The Ring, Hitchcock's previous release, the character has very little to do until the last ten minutes of the movie. But throughout Davis gives a calm, gentle and assured performance. Sadly, Davis suffered from severe depression in real life and like many successful silent screen actors the transition to sound hurt her career; she committed suicide in 1933.
Jameson Thomas plays the role of the Farmer; he's okay. Handsome, his idea of being a farmer seems to be poking his chest out and pointing his finger alot. There are flashes of dandy ism, a sly smile, and the following year these traits were put to great effect in the classic Piccadilly, where Thomas played a nightclub impresario. The movie was notable for featuring beautiful Chinese American star Anna May Wong, one of the very few Asian stars in that era and even today. She's best known today for playing opposite Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express.
The Farmer's Wife began on the London stage as a play from Eden Philpotts. He was also an author and poet and a friend of Agatha Christie. His play was a huge hit; none other than Laurence Olivier went on tour with it in 1926.
Hitchcock later told Francois Truffaut in their famous interview he had little recollection of The Farmer's Wife.
A silent movie from the WWI era, A Fool There Was marks the debut appearance of the movies' first sex symbol character played by Theda Bara. With her long, dark hair and huge eyes lined with kohl, Bara destroys a successful married man's life in this not particularly distinctive silent. If anything, the footage of 1914 New York City is the most fascinating part of the movie; there are several outdoor scenes with the public observing filming.
The story is pure Victorian melodrama: woman is the downfall of man. A Fool There Was began in 1909 as a Broadway play starring Virginia Pearson and written by Porter Emerson Brown. Pearson was almost cast in this movie version after Valeska Suratt and Madlaine Traverse were considered.
Shot like many silent movies during this period in Ft. Lee, New Jersey, A Fool There Was is one of only a handful of Theda Bara movies in existence. Like a good many silent movies, they were either destroyed or simply eroded in storage. In Bara's case, a huge fire in 1937 at the old Fox Film Studios in Ft. Lee, where she shot most of her movies, burned down making an ash heap of the original film negatives.
Known as a "vamp", short for vampire, Bara's career, like many sex-symbols after her, lasted just a decade, ending around 1925. Before starring in A Fool There Was, she had appeared in several bit parts on the stage and movies. Bara blamed over-zealous press agents and studio publicity for creating a false, negative persona as a man-eater who was an "Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor who spent her early years in the Sahara Desert under the shadow of the sphinx, then moved to France to become a actress" (IMDb).
She was actually born as Theodosia Goodman in 1885 to parents of Jewish heritage in Cincinnati.
In the early years of movies, many moviegoers at the nickelodeon believed the actors were the characters they played, and Bara was accosted or heckled at when she was in public; according to her, she was even refused service in restaurants.
In 1949, a planned movie version of her life was announced to star Betty Hutton(!!) by Paramount Pictures; those plans never materialized.
In reality Bara was married from 1921 until her death from abdominal cancer in 1955 to former silent movie director Charles Brabin. Like Greta Garbo, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe, Theda Bara's screen persona will remain forever young, frozen in time on celluloid.
A filmed adaptation of a Noel Coward play, Easy Virtue is rendered bland without his witty, crisp dialogue. Less visually impressive than Hitchcock's other early silent works, the movie does feature a lovely performance from stylish leading lady Isabel Jeans as Larita.
The movie opens with a close-up of a judge's monocle which the audience views a courtroom through. Isabel Jeans is being sued for divorce by her husband and stands in front of the courtroom swathed in a black and white ensemble accentuated with several long strands of pearls; and a cloche hat on top of her wavy blonde bob.
Her old husband is granted his divorce; she didn't actually cheat on him per se, just got caught in an embrace with an artist painting her portrait. Her reputation is ruined!
Fleeing to the south of France, she meets up with a younger, boyish pretty-boy and they hastily marry. However, pretty-boy's snobby, repressed grey-haired big-boned Victorian mama doesn't like his new wife and snubs her crushing Larita's serendipity. Larita is eventually "discovered" as a scandalous divorced woman with no virtue; oh, my!
Her husband's mother demands an annulment of their marriage which the pretty-boy acquiesces to. But Larita isn't going down so easily; she decides to attend a big party the family is having dressed to the nines in a slinky, beaded dress, a beaded choker along with strands of long pearls, hoop earrings, feather boa, and an ostrich fan! GIRL WAS GOING OUT LOOKING GOOD!! The party-goers stare and gasp at her languid beauty as she slowly descends the staircase, stopping at her soon to be ex-husband, who is sitting at the bottom of the stairs with his former girlfriend, tapping him on the shoulder so he can look up and behold what he's giving up because of his tacky snobby bitch mother.
She makes her peace telling his ex-girlfriend, who is sweet and feels sorry for Larita, she can marry pretty-boy; their marriage was a "cowardly" act, anyways, Larita explains.
We see Larita again in divorce court clutching a fur stole. The press find out she's there, her first divorce had made the papers, and as Larita stands at the courthouse house entrance, photographers ready to snap her picture for the evening issues, she tells the shutterbugs, "Shoot. There's nothing left to kill."
This is a mess of a movie! One of several expensive bombs Rex Harrison made after My Fair Lady, The Honey Pot is an incoherent mess. This dud was produced, uncredited, by flamboyant Charles K. Feldman and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.
I'm not sure what happened to the screenplay which Mankiewicz [All About Eve] adapted from a play by Frederick Knott [Dial M for Murder]. Rex Harrison is an eccentric millionaire in Venice who pretends he is dying inviting three former lovers so he can choose which one he wants to inherit his fortune. It's all I could decipher from the plot; the least I ask of a movie is that it makes sense. This one does not. Mackiewicz's last movie had been an incoherent overproduced expensive dud, Cleopatra, so his career wasn't exactly at its peak, and afterwards he turned to making documentaries; the Martin Luther King feature, King: A Filmed Record.. Montgomery to Memphis in 1970.
It's a shame given the caliber of the cast assembled. Besides Cliff Robertson, all give good performances in a bad movie. Rex Harrison is debonair and it's great fun watching him dance around like a ballerina. Susan Hayward is a hoot playing a spitfire character named Mrs. Lone Star Crockett Sheridan. Feldman's protege Capucine is by turns icy and droll playing a broke Princess. Edie Adams gives a bouncy, sly performance as a movie star; she looks like a synthesis of Stella Stevens and Jayne Mansfield, albeit a worn out one. According to IMDb, Anne Bancroft was originally cast in the part before, perhaps sensing disaster, dropping out.
Maggie Smith, as always, is superb. Giving a playful performance, she alone is worth watching this shit for.
The Honey Pot was cut before release in the U.S. by about 30 minutes so I'm not sure if that's why the movie is such an unmitigated disaster or not.
You can stream The Honey Pot courtesy of Hulu here.
A courtroom drama from the pen of Clifford Odets, produced by Jerry Wald and released through 20th Century-Fox, Story on Page One was the second and last movie that Odets, famed playwright of Golden Boy and Clash by Night, directed. The first had been None but the Lonely Heart in 1944 with Cary Grant and Ethel Barrymore. Rita Hayworth gives a restrained, simple and unadorned performance as a bourgeois housewife married to a detective who is accused of plotting his murder with lover accountant Gig Young; her part was offered to Marilyn Monroe who did Some Like it Hot instead. It's a welcome departure from the usual glamorous roles Hayworth was given to play throughout her career.
After the first act, the leading man and several supporting players take over while Hayworth sits on the sidelines; all whom were connected to the New York theater. Anthony Franciosa plays Hayworth's lawyer astonishingly well with great force; he was at the height of his career coming off an Oscar nomination for A Hatful of Rain. Mildred Dunnock is Gig Young's Violet Venable -ish mother; her performance should have netted an Oscar nomination. She originated the role of Linda Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on Broadway and film. Famed gay acting teacher Sandford Meisner is a terrorizing prosecutor on hunt. Man, was Meisner a powerful actor! Sexy too. He also should have been nominated by the Academy. However, this was his first movie role and the only other movie appearances he made were in the 1962 flop adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night and Elaine May's Mickey and Nicky. New York based, he had no ties to the industry - which could explain his snub- besides having been an acting teacher for many well known actors.
At the time of The Story on Page One, Gig Young was married to future Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery, daughter of 1930's-40's film star Robert Montgomery. Reportedly, he abused Montgomery during their marriage. Young later won an Academy Award for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? playing a boozed-up emcee. He had a serious alcohol problem in real life too and later took his own life, and his fourth wife's, in 1978.
The great James Wong Howe is the cinematographer.
You can watch The Story on Page One via Hulu by clicking here.
Retitled When Boys Leave Home upon release in the U.S., Downhill was the second and last teaming of star Ivor Novello and director Alfred Hitchcock. Credited with a nom de plume, Ivor Novello co-wrote the script with actress Constance Collier; she would later appear in Hitchcock's Rope in 1948. It's a misogynistic tale of a wealthy young man led by unscrupulous women to his downfall, hence the title. First he is kicked out of school because a young tart accuses him of either raping or impregnating her; second a young actress he works with on the stage takes him to the cleaner; lastly, a predatory older woman uses him as a gigolo.
Star Novello is ravishing to look at - so handsome! He is shown with his shirt off in one scene! He was gay in real life! Best known for writing and acting in musicals on the London stage, he penned the WWI classic "Keep the Home Fires Burning", and "hung" out with Noel Coward and Laurence Olivier. His film career lasted until the mid-1930's and he passed away at age fifty-eight in 1951; coronary thrombosis.
The gold-digging stage actress is played with vivaciousness by a Carey Mulliganesque Isabel Jeans. Hitchcock was evidently impressed with her for they worked together after Downhill on Easy Virtue. She appeared in Suspicion fifteen years later in a supporting role.
Along with the performances, Hitchcock's inventive camera work raises Downhill above the mediocre level. The last reel features an effective hallucination scene with characters fading in-and-out of focus from the POV of Novello's character.
The movie can be streamed here via Internet Archive.
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Socialite party-girl Betty Balfour gets her comeuppance in this light comedy from Hitchcock; one of his rare out-and-out comedies. The Roaring 1920's atmosphere is the main attraction here and there's plenty of champagne corks popping and flappers kickin' up their heels. The leading lady's airplane entrance into the movie is a hoot and so flamboyant!
Hitchcock and his crew spend most of their creativity on technical feats such as the opening with a champagne bottle bursting open. According to biographer Patrick McGilligan, a lens was attached to a large bottle of champagne, so one could see from the bottom to the opening what was going on on the other side of the room as the champagne burst out. It is one of Hitchcock's most celebrated effects.
While he toyed with technical innovations, the actual story of the movie bored him, and he was not happy on the set. However, during filming he did meet and befriend a young still photographer named Michael Powell - the future director of The Red Shoes and Peeping Tom.
Hitchcock would later tell Francois Truffaut in their famous published interviews in the late sixties that Champagne "was probably the lowest ebb in my output."
You can read more about leading lady Betty Balfour here.
Champagne is included in a collection of 20 early Hitchcock titles released by Mill Creek Entertainment that I own.
Excellent silent from director Hitchcock who came up with the scenario: a melodrama set in the boxing world of London. Gritty fairground scenes are staged with real glimpses of ordinary working-class people shown among the crowds. The fun comes from watching actual people, not just the performers, circa 1927; their manners and clothes and hairstyles.
The leads are played by Carl Brisson, Lilian Hall-Davies, and Ian Hunter.
Leading lady Lilian Hall-Davies is the standout: she has a hard edged Joan Crawford look. A child of the working-class like Crawford, her father was a cab driver. Lilian was a popular performer in silent movies but with the advent of talkies her career tapered off; sadly, she committed suicide in 1935. But in The Ring she's alive as ever - she and Brisson have a sexual energy onscreen and one doesn't believe she would actually see Ian Hunter on the side. Brisson is so much more sexier and alive! Her affair doesn't ring true; it comes across as a plot contrivance.
The story is basic melodrama through and through, but with Hitchcock's technical flourishes the viewer becomes involved in the movie and doesn't realize the blandness of the story until afterwards. Expertly shot, there are several stand out scenes including a 1920's roaring house party with a Louise Brooks look-alike kickin' up her heels. The party is cut with scenes of Brisson meeting his handlers in the next room - edited together to contrast the stuffiness of his office with the party going on in the living room whilst his wife chats up rival Ian Hunter.
Hitchcock alone is credited with the script and story. Perhaps this explains the less than original plot: Hitch always worked better with writers brainstorming ideas than completing a shooting script himself. By and large, the technical aspects of film-making were his forte. It would be the last movie he directed where he received sole screenwriting credit.
"The Ring" is part of a DVD collection of 20 Hitchcock British era films I own.
Dark Waters is a very minor suspense thriller from 1944 starring Merle Oberon and Franchot Tone. There are so many plot holes in this movie! The script is credited to five writers, including Joan Harrison and John Huston. Not sure if either of their work made it into Dark Waters. Harrison started out as a secretary to Alfred Hitchcock and worked her way up to being a script supervisor then co-writer. She came to the U.S. with the Hitchcock's in 1939 and eventually became one of the few women producers working in Hollywood during the forties and fifties; she produced Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Huston is known for directing many, many film classics and as the father of Anjelica and Danny Huston.
This is basically a B-movie with an A-list cast - it's fun to watch. One knows why and how Merle is being terrorized ; this is basically Gaslight set in the Louisiana bayous. Still there's pleasure watching Thomas Mitchell [Gone with the Wind] and Fay Bainter [Jezebel] and Elisha Cook Jr. Not Franchot Tone. He phones in his dull performance - he evidently doesn't take this movie too seriously; he was a stage trained actor aligned with the Group Theater who went to Hollywood, got married to Joan Crawford, and was best known for being Mr. Joan Crawford throughout his career afterwards. Merle Oberon is ravishing - definitely a creature of the studio system. Throughout Dark Waters Oberon just has to walk in a scene with a worried look on her face. Along with Hedy Lamarr she was one of the most exotic dark-haired movie stars of the WWII era.
First-rate collaborators are behind-the scenes and give the movie luster: composer Miklos Rozsa, winner of two Academy Awards, cinematographers John Mescall [The Bride of Frankenstein] and Archie Stout [Fort Apache], shoot some scenes from great angles : In one, Merle Oberon is on the phone and the camera looks down on her from high in the balcony of the antebellum mansion she is staying in; the intended effect being she is being closely watched by others in the house. Costume Designer Rene Hubert, who designed costumes for Oberon, would receive two Academy Award nominations in his prolific career and work with Oberon again in Desiree for which he received one of his two nominations.
Hungarian born Andre de Toth, the director, was married to peek-a-boo star Veronica Lake during the 1940's, and would later direct the first 3-D movie in 1953: House of Wax. One scene in Dark Waters involves quick sand and foreshadows the director's 3-D venture into horror. Is there quick sand in the Louisiana bayous?
Free for
streaming via Hulu.
The Manxman would be Alfred Hitchcock's last silent picture, although at the time he didn't realize his next planned project would have to be converted to sound. Shot in Cornwall, standing in for the Isle of Man, Hitchcock continues his use of ordinary people, the proletariat working class, as characters for his early movies. Beautifully photographed, it's a basic love story turned sour, but the visual trickery and expertly staged scenes elevates the material into a movie some consider his finest silent picture.
The leads are played by actors Hitchcock works with again or will in the future: Carl Brisson, Anny Ondra and Malcolm Keen. Ondra and Brisson were Polish and Danish, respectfully, acting in an English movie. This occurred frequently because one of the advantages of silent movies was their universality: no language barriers.
Two exquisitely shot scenes stand out: Anny looking out over a bluff at Keen standing on the beach in front of the waves; she runs gaily, gaily down to meet him only to learn bad news when she gets there. Second shot is a master with Anny and Keen standing in front looking glum contrasted with Brisson's joyousness behind them. One does not need dialogue to know what's going on. The images tell the story and let's the audience see rather than hear the characters' emotions.
Hitchcock and the distributor were not happy with The Manxman and dismissed it. Yet - according to screenonline.co.uk, the picture was a commercial success.
The movie is adaptation of a novel by Victorian-Edwardian novelist Hall Caine who often wrote love triangle melodramas set on the Isle of Man. Though popular in his day he is forgotten like fellow Brit Somerset Maugham.
Also noteworthy: The court scene where Anny Ondra is covered in a black blanket against her blonde locks facing the judge, her former lover, noble and suffering like Maria Falconetti in The Passion of Joan of Arc.
"The Manxman" is included in a DVD package I own with 20 of Hitchcock's early British movies.
Film-making in England in the nineteen-twenties was a distant third in terms of craftsmanship in the world; behind the U.S. and Germany and, yes,Sweden. Alfred Hitchcock's artistry lent the fledgling Brit movie business luster and cred and he made his first true suspense thriller as a director with this acclaimed silent produced in 1926. The suspense in this movie comes from what is implied rather than shown. The audience never sees the actual murderer just the calling cards he places on his victims. Ultimately The Lodger is about mistaken identity. Not murder. The Jack the Ripper murderer never shown is just Hitchcock's McGuffin: a plot point to move the story along.
With silent pictures the directors had to tell a story with images and that's why silent movies are so much more expressive and poetic than talking movies. That poetry was lost when sound came in 1927 with The Jazz Singer; the exact year this movie was released. Not surprisingly visuals are amazing in this movie; it opens with a murder, not shown but implied by a woman screaming, then a montage of police, spectators, print presses running, and then newsboys screaming the headlines. All expertly edited by Ivor Montagu. The technical tricks are what give the move weight; alas, this story has been done innumerable times.
And, of course, being a Hitchcock movie it's all about the women. Hitchcock agreed with Sardou that the women in their work "should suffer." In this particular movie the leading lady, June, doesn't suffer much, but she does have her own title cards and any scene she's in the camera highlights her; it's like there's a halo around her. June's costumes: the b&w ensemble at the end ensures she sticks out among st the brown and grays the other characters are wearing during the lynching scene. Evidence that Hitchcock wanted all eyes on her character whenever she's in a scene.
Hitchcock made June wear a blonde wig for the shoot, so his obsession with blondes was there in the beginning. He favored the fair-haired women as his work from here on out details; it wasn't something he developed over time, even though he wasn't always allowed to use these hair color types he desired. Even the murderer in the movie prefers fair haired curly-haired females.
Billed just as June, the actress June Howard-Tripp was mainly a performer in light musical comedies and revues on the stage. She only made a handful of movies; the best known of which is The Lodger. A picture of her becoming a U.S. citizen can be seen here.
The charismatic leading man, songwriter/performer Ivor Novello, was gay in real life. Originally, Hitchcock wanted the character of the Lodger to be more sinister, leading the audience to suspect that he actually was the murderer, but the studio producing the movie, Gainsborough Pictures, were worried that Novello's huge female fan base would be upset. Famously, Novello is introduced in the picture by having his shadow shown on the door of the boarding house as he approaches. In a master shot, the lady of the house opens the door and he is shown, eerily, shrouded in shadow and fog. It's the best shot in the movie.
Novello starred in a remake of The Lodger in 1932.
Also noteworthy: the mob scene at the end when Novello, hanging by a pair handcuffs, becomes entangled on an iron fence while women and men beat him. And I love the loose, frilly twenties dresses June wears.
"The Lodger" is included in a DVD package I own with 20 of Hitchcock's early British movies.
Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most successful movie directors in terms of quality and longevity. I'm going to try and watch every movie he directed! Not sure when I will finish! But will blog with my thoughts and some background info on each movie as I watch them.
Hitchcock directed his first movie in 1925 and his last in 1975. A fifty-year movie veteran. He is up there with Spielberg in terms of being a household name, even thirty-three years after his death. Everyone has heard of Psycho whether they've actually seen it or not.
Because of my love for movies and Classic Hollywood in general I'm going to start a blog sharing with cyberspace my love and respect and opinions on this twentieth century art form. For the most part, the movies will be free via Hulu or Crackle or Internet Archive.
I've been watching old movies since I was about 14 mainly on Turner Classic Movies then later with free ones online or through bootleg Youtube. By old I mean any movie made from 1900-1990, but I mostly will be watching and writing about flicks from the Classic Hollywood period. I hope to be able to keep up with my posts here because it seems on my older blogs I would lose interest! So if you come across this site don't be afraid of watching the old movies I link to because - paraphrasing the great Peter Bogdanovich - there is no such thing as "old" movies, they're just ones you haven't seen yet.
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