Barbara Kent: “I really didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, but being an actress was not it.”

—The Sound of Silence, by Michael Ankerich.

Barbara Kent, b. Barbara Cloutman, who passed away a few weeks ago, was one of the last surviving movie stars—Mickey Rooney, ailing and frail, might be the last—who worked in the golden era of silent movies and then made the transition to sound.

She was a reluctant actress, a star whose light shined quite briefly, and then with exquisite sanity, she stepped out of the limelight and into the embrace of private life and marriage.

In 1925 Kent won the Miss Hollywood beauty pageant. Apparently, her parents pushed her to enter the contest. Thus, from the very beginning, Barbara was playing a role she neither sought nor desired. Though she had no acting experience, Universal offered the tiny—she was under five feet tall—baby-faced, 17 year-old beauty queen a contract.

In 1926, Kent was cast in ”Flesh and the Devil” (1926) as a young woman in love with the dashing John Gilbert who has eyes only for the heartless vamp Greta Garbo. Garbo gets all the loving close-ups, but I’ve always felt that Kent was far more attractive and desirable than the remote and narcissistic Garbo.

Kent starred opposite Oliver Hardy in “No Man’s Law” (1927). In this film, she’s seen swimming in the nude, but in fact she was wearing a flesh-colored body stocking. This was something of a minor scandal, but a little scandal has never hurt the career of a Hollywood ingenue.

My very favorite Kent film is “Lonesome” (1928), a near-masterpiece set in Coney Island, directed by Paul Fejos. Kent plays Mary, a switchboard operator who meets Jim (Glenn Tryon), a factory worker, in Coney Island. They spend the day together, fall in love, and then get separated in the bustling crowd. It’s a simple urban tale, a slice of poetry that’s distinguished by the heart-breaking sincerity of the performances and the director’s keen eye for location and expressive camera movement. Sadly, Universal added three stiff talking scenes to the film in order to show off the new technology. This bone-head move—the studios were in a panic about talkies—nearly ruins the magic of a wonderful if obscure movie.

Barbara Kent and Harold Lloyd in “Welcome Danger” 1929, her first movie of the sound era.

After taking voice lessons, Kent made the switch to talkies. She starred opposite the great Harold Lloyd—he first laid eyes on her at Hearst’s San Simeon castle—in his first sound film, “Welcome Danger” (1929). Kent plays Lloyd’s love interest, though she’s dressed as a man when they first meet.

In “Feet First,” (1930) Lloyd plays a shoe salesman who believes that Kent is the boss’s daughter and goes to lunatic lengths to impress her. Lloyd was a great spotter of talent. That he used Barbara in two pictures back to back is evidence of Kent’s promise as a star.

In both films Kent is charming, feisty and adorably mischievous. She’s the all-American girl every American boy aspires to marry.

Kent married MGM executive-turned-agent Harry Edington in 1932 and, except for a few more film roles, she retired to private life. The two remained together until Edington’s death in 1949. Kent married Jack Monroe, an engineer, in 1954. Monroe died in 1998. Towards the end of her life, Kent lived in Palm Desert, Calif.

Kent granted few interviews and frequently denied that she was ever a movie star. Make no mistake about it, Kent is a Hollywood success story. She survived the grinding wheels of stardom. Later in life Kent observed:

“It saddened me when I watched the likes of Bette Davis and Anita Page crawling across the screen looking like a cross between Baby Jane Hudson and a tired, chipped old porcelain dolly. I am a firm believer in the Mary Pickford school, where one should quit whilst still good-looking and on top.”

An active woman, Kent piloted light aircraft until her 85th birthday and played golf well into her mid-90s.

It is odd, but I suddenly realize how deeply attached I am to the stars of the silent screen. Their images have nourished me, their films taught and continue to teach me my craft as a screenwriter. I have internalized their dramatic emotional lives, and in some cases I have come to understand—however imperfectly—their real lives which were, quite frequently, even more tumultuous than their fictional lives.

Now, I am witness to the final heart beats of that remarkable generation. Movies are ribbons of dreams–and this dream, the age of silent movies, when the visual language of movies was invented and perfected–is coming to an end.

RIP, Barbara Kent.

I did not see more than a handful of contemporary releases that came close to the smart pacing, narrative sophistication and honest passion of these older films.

Though I will give a strong nod to 500 Days of Summer and Funny People, two fine films. Both are beautifully written, carefully structured and oh what a relief, they vigorously espouse what can only be described as (mostly) conservative values, a welcome relief in this post-modern age where nihilism passes for, ahem, cutting edge entertainment.

But I roll with classic Hollywood, silent movies and films from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Keep in mind that most of the movies on my list were produced on modest budgets, never intended as studio blockbusters.

I’m not claiming that any of these movies are classics like The Crowd or Seven Samurai. I am saying that these ten films are grand entertainment from Hollywood’s great dream factory and well worth seeking out.

Ernest Torrence, John Gilbert and Mary Nolan fight over the last drop of water in Desert Nights, 1929.

10. Desert Nights, 1929, starring John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence and Mary Nolan. Directed by William Nigh. Titles by Marian Ainslee, Adaptation by Endre Bohem.

This was Gilbert’s last silent movie. To an adoring public he was known as The Great Lover. At one point, Gilbert was the highest paid actor at MGM earning a cool million a year. But Gilbert, enormously self-destructive, got into hot water with his boss L.B. Mayer and then booze, babes, and sound finished off a great career.

Here, Gilbert plays Hugh Roland, the woman-starved manager of an African diamond mine. Lord Stonehill, Ernest Torrence, and his daughter Diana, Mary Nolan, arrive to visit the mine. But they are impostors who grab a sack of diamonds then kidnap Roland. The trio ends up stranded in the Kalahari Desert. Not knowing how to survive in the sun-baked waste, the thieves are forced to rely on their hostage in order to stay alive.

Mary Nolan, real name Mary Imogene Robertson, born into poverty on a Kentucky farm, was at age 15, a Ziegfeld beauty nicknamed “Bubbles”—draw your own conclusions. With shimmering blond hair and a shirt open to her waist, Nolan gives off Pre-Code heat like a destroying angel.

Mary Nolan, studio portrait. Before liquor, drugs and a string of abusive relationships destroyed her career and her life.

She’s a scrumptious dame who enjoys the feel of a rifle in her arms as much as a man. Nolan, almost totally forgotten, was even more self-destructive than Gilbert. A string of abusive men—including MGM fixer Eddie Mannix—beat her to a pulp. She ended up a hopeless heroin addict, and in 1948, Nolan died in Cedars Sinai of Los Angeles weighing just 70 lbs. She was 43 years old.

Desert Nights has a running time of just sixty-five minutes. It moves like a bullet and combines action and romance in a nifty, unpretentious package.

Here’s a clip from the first few minutes of the film. Gilbert gets a look at Nolan’s exquisite face at about the three-minute mark. His reaction shot is beautifully modulated. And watch what Mary does right after she hooks Gilbert.

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9. Parole Girl, 1933, starring Mae Clarke, Marie Prevost and Ralph Bellamy, directed by Eddie Cline. Screenplay by Norman Krasna.

This film is definitely a B movie elevated by Mae Clarke’s memorable performance. Parole Girl—fabulous title—is another Pre-Code goodie that explores one of Hollywood’s most durable stories: a (sorta) good girl gone (sorta) bad, only to go (truly) good once she meets the right man.

Clarke plays a sympathetic con artist who ends up in jail—the scene where she begs for mercy is gut-wrenching—and once behind bars she swears vengeance against the department store manager, strait-laced Ralph Bellamy, who refused to give her a break.

When she exits prison Mae is wearing a shockingly post-modern geometric hairdo that frames her as a sleek, deco avenger. The film is stuffed with plot contrivances that, upon reflection, are just plain bizarro. But Mae’s sincere and naturalistic acting style gives credibility to the whiplash plot turns. Her revenge is tricking Bellamy into a sham marriage—don’t ask.

Mae Clarke, her geometric haircut makes her look like a sleek Deco avenger, Parole Girl, 1933.

This little gem zips along at a dazzling pace, clocking in at—hey, I’m sensing a pattern here—sixty-five minutes.

The photography is lush and effervescent, filled with gorgeous shots that you don’t expect from a Columbia programmer. The Director of Photography was Joe August who in the 20’s and 30’s shot films for John Ford, Howard Hawks, Lewis Milestone and Frank Borzage.

Mae and her gold-digging sidekick Marie Prevost—former Sennett cutie-pie she died an alcoholic, alone and broke in a cheap hotel room—are down at the heel dames, always dressed at the height of fashion. Even the notoriously cheap and vulgar head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, understood that no matter how poor was a depression-era girl, the public yearned to see their stars draped in furs and bias cut silk gowns.

Mae Clarke is best remembered for getting a pineapple in her face—here’s my post about that famous scene—but if not for her fragile mental state, she could have been one of Hollywood’s greatest stars. TCM programs this beaut every once in a while, so check their schedule.

8. Tell it to the Marines, 1926, starring Lon Chaney, Billy Haines, Eleanor Boardman, and Carmel Meyers. Directed by George W. Hill. Screenplay by Richard Schayer. Titles by Joseph Farnham.

Tell it to the Marines, 1926. Billy Haines looks on as Lon Chaney romances Eleanor Boardman.

U.S. Marine Sergeant O’Hara, Lon Chaney, in one of the few films in which he’s not in make-up, has his hands full training raw recruits. ‘Skeet’ Burns, Billy Haines, is a brash and uncooperative Marine. And to make things worse, Burns also sets his sights on nurse Nora Dale, the lovely Eleanor Boardman, whom Sergeant O’Hara secretly loves.

This is a lovely and unexpected romantic comedy from Lon Chaney, best known for playing unfortunates like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera.

Here’s clip where ladies man Haines makes a move on Eleanor Boardman:

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Chaney (1883-1930) was one of the great stars of the silent screen. He only made one sound movie, the very strange The Unholy Three, 1930, before cancer of the throat killed him. Watching him work without make-up is a revelation and a joy. He plays a classic American character, rigid but fair, tough yet vulnerable. His face is weathered with deep creases, signs of wisdom gained through a lifetime of war and barracks humor. It’s an iconic American performance. Tell it to the Marines was Lon Chaney’s biggest moneymaker.

Lon Chaney as Sergeant O’Hara.

George W. Hill was a fine director who got his start as an assistant to D.W. Griffith. Before becoming a director Hill was an accomplished cinematographer who was known for his skill in lighting leading ladies. In 1929 Hill scored another huge success with The Big House starring Wallace Beery. And in 1930, Hill again hit box office and creative magic with Min and Bill, making Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler MGM’s biggest stars for the next four years. Tragically, Hill was in a serious car accident at the peak of his career. His injuries caused intense physical and personal anguish. In 1933, he was discovered in his Malibu home dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 38 years old.

7. Bed of Roses, 1933, starring Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea and Pert Kelton. Directed by Gregory La Cava. Screenplay by Wanda Tuchock.

Constance Bennett was an actress who specialized in playing diamond draped society girls. Here, in a witty and carefully structured script by the great Wanda Tuchock, Bennett is a gum chewing—though very well dressed—prostitute, who, in league with her wisecracking sidekick Pert Kelton, get hapless men drunk before robbing them. The hard-boiled tone of the film is economically established in the first scene where, released from jail, the prison matron cautions Kelton: “Miss Brown, you’re much too impulsive.” Drawls Pert: “I ain’t got an impulse left.” Constance and Pert sashay around with hands resting languorously on their hips. They whistle at men and call them “big boy” before heartlessly taking them to the cleaners.

This is yet another Pre-Code stunner, with dialogue and narrative details that disappeared after The Motion Picture Code was enforced in 1934. It’s a moral fable deliciously soaked in sin and gin.

Constance Bennett meets and is mightily attracted to handsome and rugged Joel McCrea, the honest skipper of a cotton boat. But she chooses to score big by tricking a wealthy publisher into—here we go again—a sham marriage. Will Constance live a life of loveless luxury or will she choose true love as the wife of a river rat?

Constance Bennett, studio portrait. For three wonderfully informative essays about Constance and her entire dysfunctional show biz family, head on over to Self-Styled Siren.

Bennett, a clotheshorse thin as a willow, strains a bit in the role of a bawdy hooker. It’s not who she is. Bennett’s inner patrician fights the character’s wanton nature. Nevertheless, this is one of Constance Bennett’s most surprising and interesting performances.

I couldn’t find any clips from the film but I did find this great 1937 “educational” short of Bennett demonstrating her daily beauty routine. Highly informative.

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Anyhoo, back to Bed of Roses. Pert Kelton, a talented actress who excelled in playing hard luck tramps, was cast as the original Alice Kramden in The Honeymooners. But Kelton was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and replaced by Audrey Meadows. In her later years, Kelton was featured in a series of Spic and Span commercials that fixed her image as a product pitcher. Bed of Roses is longer than Desert Nights and Parole Girl—by two minutes. We who work in contemporary Hollywood have a lot to learn about structure, narrative economy, and pacing from Hollywood’s Golden Age.

6. The Godless Girl, 1929, starring Lina Basquette, Marie Prevost and Tom Keene, directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Story by Jeanie MacPherson. Titles by Beulah Marie Dix.

During production of The Godless Girl, Lina Basquette, recent widow of Sam Warner, found solace in the arms of ace cameraman  Pev Marley—always a smart move for an actress who wants to guarantee a glamorous celluloid image.

We tend to forget that Cecil B. DeMille was, at one time, a pioneering visual stylist. In 1928, DeMille hired Lina Basquette for the lead role in The Godless Girl. In her outrageous and addictive memoir, Basquette claims that during the private casting session with DeMille, he reached into her blouse and fondled her breast, assuring her that he only wanted to make sure she was a cooperative actress. She was.

Basquette plays Judy, a militant high school atheist. A clash between the atheists and Christians leads to a riot in which a student is killed. Basquette and the Christian Boy are sentenced to a state reformatory where DeMille and his longtime scenario writer/mistress, Jeanie MacPherson, dwell lovingly on the cruelty and corruption of the facility.

This all sounds incredibly heavy handed and it is. It’s also sort of glorious and The Godless Girl makes for compelling viewing. The riot scene, a huge set-piece, is viciously staged and so effective I was chewing my handkerchief throughout. And the shot of a girl falling down the cavernous stairwell is genuinely haunting. Here’s a clip showing the riot and the death spiral. Note the eloquent monorail—specially constructed by DP Pev Marley for this film—shot on the staircase. In this way DeMille nails the geography of the brawl and it’s kinetic effect.

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Naturally, there’s a love story between atheist Basquette and the lantern jawed Christian, played by Tom Keene. There are two striking scenes where the lovers ink over their prison numbers creating poetic new words—a clever and lyrical touch.

Lina Basquette began her career as a Ziegfeld ballerina. She performed with, among others, Louise Brooks and Desert Night’s Mary Nolan. Lina states that her virginity was such a precious and rare commodity in Hollywood that Mommy Basquette sold her as an 18-year old child-bride to Sam Warner, the Warner brother responsible for bringing sound to the movies.

Constance Bennett,  a guest at the wedding, consoled the unhappy virgin bride, who was, after the ceremony, vomiting in the restroom, with these words:

“Actually, Sam’s not a bad guy—as men go.”

Constance, mercenary to the core, further counseled Basquette: “Just be sure, after you give, you get.”

Studio portrait of DeMille’s Godless Girl. After she left Hollywood in 1943, Basquette became a noted breeder of Great Danes.

Basquette’s Hollywood career was not distinguished, but her private life was, well, epic. She married seven times, compulsively fell in and out of love with drunks, rogues, and liars. She actually rates her numerous lovers in her wacky memoir, Lina: DeMille’s Godless Girl. Among others, Basquette had violent and passionate affairs with heavyweight Jack Dempsey, mobster Johnny Roselli and finally Ludwig, a Nazi.

She also claims that Hitler, in a private audience in Berchtesgaden, offered her the opportunity to be Germany’s biggest movie star. In a scene that seems lifted out of a Mel Brooks movie, Lina insists that love-struck Adolph tried to rape her. As horny Hitler groped, Basquette breathlessly cried out that her grandfather was Jewish. Der Fuhrer quickly lost interest.

The Godless Girl is a compelling and hugely entertaining film, with fluid camera work and some stunning visuals. The film culminates with a massive fire in the reformatory, a jaw-dropping conflagration that rivals the burning of Atlanta in Gone With the Wind.

Next week, the top five movies I screened in 2009.

And here’s my list from 2008.

© Robert J. Avrech

Lillian Gish

The great twin tragedies of the fate of silent films in the modern era is indifference and ignorance. And for those who have seen clips from silent films, they invariably view muddy, degraded prints projected at the wrong speed, hence the jerky motions that give the impression that all silent films are bad slapstick.

Of course, we all owe a great debt to Robert Osborne and TCM for programming so many fine silent films. At last, film lovers have the opportunity to screen a varied selection of silent films and appreciate the great craft that was abruptly short-circuited with the advent of talkies. The best silent films were a universal language in which image, motion and emotion were paramount.

Silent movies were shot and duplicated on fragile nitrate stock. In the few original prints I’ve been fortunate enough to screen the images are just stunning. The screen glows with a liquid, silvery radiance that’s impossible to duplicate on modern film or tape. The finest silent film players were geniuses who conveyed a world of emotion through the most subtle means.

The great director King Vidor, (1894-1982) whose career spanned eight decades—from early silent movies right into the sound era—directed Lillian Gish in a 1926 silent version of La Boheme.

At this point in her career, Gish was so powerful that she had contractual approval over script and director. The intensity of her work ethic, the dedication to her craft simply awed Vidor as he noted so many years later in his excellent 1952 memoir, A Tree is a Tree.

The title is very funny, an insider Hollywood joke. It’s a quote from a penny pinching studio executive who famously said: “A rock is a rock, a tree is a tree. Shoot it in Griffith Park!” Hence, in early films, Los Angele’s Griffith Park was used as a location for cowboy movies, Civil War movies, New York’s Central Park, the Scottish Highlands, Versailles—you name it, Griffith Park served as a default location.

Director King Vidor

Here, Vidor describes how Gish rigorously prepared for and played her dramatic death scene in La Boheme:

When she arrived on the set that fateful day, we saw her sunken eyes, her hollow cheeks, and we noticed that her lips had curled outward and were parched with dryness. What on earth had she done to herself? I ventured to ask about her lips and she said in syllables hardly audible that she had succeeded in removing all the saliva from her mouth by not drinking any liquids for three days, and by keeping cotton pads between her teeth and gums even in her sleep.

A pall began to settle over the entire company. People moved about the stage on tiptoe and spoke only in whispers. Finally came the scene where Rudolph carried the exhausted Mimi to her little bed and her Bohemian friends gathered around while Mimi breathed her last. I let the camera continue on her lifeless form and the tragic faces around her and decided to call “cut” only when I saw that Miss Gish was forced to inhale after holding her breath to simulate death. But the familiar movement of the chest didn’t come. She neither inhaled nor exhaled. I began to fear she had played her part too well, and I could see that the other members of the cast and crew had the same fears as I. Too frightened to speak the one word that would halt the movement of the camera, I wondered how to bridge this fantastic moment back to the coldness of reality. The thought flashed through my mind, “What will the headlines say?” After what seemed many, many minutes, I waved my hand before the camera as a signal to stop. Still there was no movement from Lillian.

John Gilbert bent close, and softly whispered her name. Her eyes slowly opened. She permitted herself her first deep breath since the scene had started; for the past days she had trained herself, somehow or other, to get along without visible breathing. It was necessary to wet her lips before she could speak. By this time there was no one on the set whose eyes were dry. The movies have never known a more dedicated artist than Lillian Gish.

Lillian Gish, on her deathbed in La Boheme.

Miss Gish did not work with King Vidor again until 1946 when she played Mrs. McCanles in David O. Selznick’s Duel in the Sun. There’s a lovely and touching moment in the film when Jennifer Jones says to Gish: “I’ll be a good girl—I want to be like you.”

Whenever I’m in production, working with actors, deep in my heart I too hope that they want, consciously or not, to be like Lillian Gish.

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech

In 1923, Colleen Moore’s starring vehicle, Flaming Youth was an international box office hit that ushered in the era of the Flapper. The Jazz crazy kids wore their galoshes unbuckled causing the rubber tongue to flap. Thus: Flappers.

 
Colleen Moore, studio portrait in the Stars and Stripes.

I’m waiting for that particular fashion statement to reappear.

Colleen Moore, born Kathleen Morrison, (1900-1988) and her husband John McCormick embarked on a grand tour of Europe to promote Flaming Youth, Colleen’s career, and enjoy a belated honeymoon.

Colleen’s look, specifically her Bobbed haircut, was a global fashion rage. Contrary to popular opinion it was Moore who pioneered the severe cut—not Louise Brooks. It is sad and certainly a skewed vision of film history that the current Louise Brooks cult has spread like a virus, whereas Moore, a far more important figure in motion pictures, is virtually forgotten.  George Cukor, a director who knew something about Hollywood stardom, was utterly baffled by the post-modern Brooks fever. When queried about the star of Pandora’s Box, Cukor forcefully exclaimed: “Louise Brooks? She was nothing!”

Anyhoo.

From where did the idea for this cubist haircut originate, so markedly different than the opulent Victorian tresses in favor at the time? Moore explains that her mother copied the look from a favorite childhood Japanese doll.

The new hairstyle sent a fascinating and complex message: this young lady is independent, plucky, fiery yet down-to-earth, tom-boyish but completely feminine; she’s the decent and adorable girl next door who is a boy’s best friend and then KABOOM! the love of his life.

Never a great beauty or a smoldering presence, Moore presented a new female paradigm: cute, feisty and refreshingly devoid of a self conscious sexuality. The surprising Bob helped cement Moore’s image as the modern American woman, and it changed the trajectory of the young actress’ career from feature player to star. At the height of her stardom Moore earned $12,500.00 a week.

The haircut also gave birth to a new product that is still with us: The Bobby Pin.

In Dublin, a celebrity starved crowd of 10,000 frantic fans broke through a police cordon and grabbed at Colleen who was wearing a stunning cape covered with intricately stitched tiny feathered plumes. Finally, McCormick lifted Colleen on his shoulders and carried her to the car where she arrived “looking like a plucked chicken.”

In Switzerland the mayor of Zurich arranged a dinner party in Colleen’s honor. An orchestra was present to play the the American national anthem.

Colleen describes the scene in her superb memoir Silent Star:

We’d no sooner sat down than the mayor, with a small bow to me, signaled the orchestra, who started playing “My Country,’Tis of Thee.” We all got up and stood very silent. When we sat down again, I said to the mayor, “That was the English national anthem, ‘G-d Save the King.’”

I should have kept my mouth shut. The mayor sent for the orchestra leader, spoke a few words to him in German, and no sooner had we started the soup course than the orchestra struck up again, this time with John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.” The Mayor stood up, beckoning to all of us, saying excitedly, “Stehen sie auf, bitte—everybody please stand up.”

We all stood, the orchestra finished, we sat down, and the American consul and I burst out laughing. When the mayor asked what we were laughing about, like an idiot I said, “That wasn’t our national anthem. That’s a march.”

The mayor, red in face, sent for the orchestra leader, spluttering German at him. The leader turned to me and asked the name of our national anthem. I said, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

He returned to the bandstand, the mayor watching him with an eagle eye. A few moments later the orchestra struck up “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the mayor rose, saying, “Stehen sie auf, bitte,” and a tableful of by-now bewildered guests stood at attention once again. When we sat down, I smiled at the mayor and said, “That was lovely.”

In 1930, Soviet director Sergei Eisentstein arrived in Hollywood to set up several projects. The talented propagandist met everybody in the business, partied like one of the Communist hacks in Ninotchka, but, naturally, got stuck in development hell, and returned to mother Russia without a deal. Studio heads were baffled by his adaptation of Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Eisenstein said a great deal about Hollywood and the decadent capitalists he encountered. He judged Marlene Dietrich dull, Greta Garbo stupid. But Collen Moore, rhapsodized Eisenstein, was the only intelligent woman he met in Hollywood.

Colleen Moore, Desert Flower, 1925

Colleen’s first husband, studio executive John McCormick, was, in many ways, responsible for steering the meteoric rise of her flapper film career. Unfortunately, he was also an alcoholic and frequently abusive.

Director Mervyn LeRoy in his fascinating autobiography Take One, describes a terrifying night when McCormick, on a bender, tried to hurl Moore out of a N.Y. hotel window. LeRoy—from an assimilated Jewish San Francisco family whose last name was probably Levine—saved Moore’s life by smashing McCormick over the head with a chair. The gallant and properly violent LeRoy—at the time a top “comedy constructor” for Moore—remained as her protector the entire night, the two of them aimlessly walking the streets of New York.

In Hollywood past and present, major movie stars have major tzuris.

In fact, Moore and McCormick’s troubled relationship inspired George Cukor’s top-notch insider Hollywood drama What Price Hollywood in 1932 as well as the three versions of A Star Is Born.

Colleen Moore, Her Wild Oat 1927.

Tragically, Flaming Youth, is presumed to be a lost film. Perhaps, somewhere in an archive in Eastern Europe, lies a decaying copy of this legendary motion picture. I wouldn’t be at all surprised.

And as an example of how a lost film suddenly shows up—in this case Czechoslovakia—a Colleen Moore movie, Her Wild Oat, long considered lost, has been rediscovered and expertly restored. This article is an interview with archivist and historian Joseph Yranski who met Colleen Moore in the early 1970s, and remained friends with her until her death in 1988. Yranski was indirectly responsible for the rediscovery of Her Wild Oat.

Colleen Moore and the six-year-old Mickey Rooney in Orchards and Ermine, 1927

On DVD you can see Colleen Moore in Orchids and Ermine, 1927. Colleen plays a shop girl, a flapper, who’s looking for a sugar daddy. But she’s got to remain an innocent at heart, meaning she has to fall in love for the sake of love—not money. There’s romance, mistaken identity, and of course true love triumphs in the end. It’s a screwball comedy before screwball comedies were invented in the 30’s. Moore is magnetic as a gold digger who’s not as avaricious as she should be. A classic.

Colleen Moore in the dog house, in Ella Cinders, 1926.

Ella Cinders was probably Colleen Moore’s best role. In this spin on the Cinderella story, and much like Mabel Normand’s The Extra Girl, 1923, Moore plays a young girl in a dead end life who dreams of stardom, wins a beauty contest and goes to Hollywood. Once there, our heroine discovers that the contest was a scam. But with determination and talent Ella makes it in the movies and, natch, finds true love. This film is absolutely charming and Moore is delightful. Lombard before Lombard, Lucy before Lucy. You can get a DVD of the film here.

The Scarlet Letter, 1934, starring Colleen Moore and Alan Hale, 1934. This is a sound film, late in Colleen’s career. Moore was primarily a comedian but here she was trying to broaden her horizons as an actress. I haven’t yet seen this film so I’m clueless. But anything with Colleen Moore is interesting.

Broken Hearts of Broadway, 1923, was produced just before Moore broke through as a major star. Colleen plays the role of Mary, an aspiring actress who arrives in New York, all young and wholesome. Will she betray her friends for fame and fortune? This is a lovely show-biz morality tale, and Moore, as always, is genuine, vivacious, and utterly magnetic.

Reel Baseball/The Busher is a collection of baseball-themed silent movies. Colleen Moore co-stars with Charles Ray in The Busher, 1920, about a small town pitcher who is brought up to the big leagues but can’t quite make the grade. Colleen plays Mazie, his local sweetheart. Charles Ray was briefly a star of the silent era who specialized in playing rural heroes. On screen Ray was a one dimensional performer who relied on an aw’, shucks grin and a standard check list of hick mannerisms which appealed to audiences—for a short window of time.

Off-screen Ray was hugely tempramental, and according to Adolpf Zukor’s memoir had an inflated sense of his own importance. Ray spent his fortune lavishly and went bankrupt when he produced and financed his own pictures. Eventually, Ray devolved into alcoholism and uncredited walk-ons.  In 1935, Ray published a collection of short stories titled Hollywood Shorts, Compiled From Incidents in the Everyday Life of Men and Women Who Entertain in Pictures. Anthony Slide, in his seminal volume Silent Players, reports that, “…an undercurrent of anti-Semitism is evident in a number of stories, suggesting that Ray blamed his downfall on Jewish studio bosses.” Impoverished, Ray died from an infected tooth in 1943 at the age of 52.

I saw The Busher on TCM—I have a TCM addiction and I am powerless to control it—about a year ago. Moore, was not yet a star, just another feature player trying to claw her way from the middle ranks. But as soon as she appears on-screen—behold!—a refreshing, exuberant presence. The petite and vivacious Moore just blows the eager-to-please Charles Ray off screen.

Colleen Moore as Mazie on Charles Ray's lap in The Busher.

Fortunately for Colleen, the black and white film stock of the time never registered that one eye was brown, the other blue. She would have looked cross-eyed.

John Gilbert, who rose to be the first million dollar contract matinee idol at MGM, has a supporting role in The Busher as the spoiled rich kid who’s vying for Colleen’s affections over Charles Ray’s salt of the earth hero. Tragically, Gilbert, talented but immensely self-destructive, had a tortuous love affair with the great narcissist Greta Garbo—she left him stranded at the altar—and then, with the coming of sound his career crashed and burned in a terrific orgy of booze and babes.

After her retirement from motion pictures in 1935, Colleen Moore dedicated herself to an ongoing project: building the world’s most dazzling and elaborate doll house, actually a fairy castle. She toured with the fairy tale house to raise money for children’s charities.

The house is an engineering marvel. It has its own miniature sophisticated lights and wiring, a self-contained plumbing system, and a Lilliputian library with books signed by some of the greatest authors of our time. Every single detail of the castle is simply breath taking.

The fairy castle is on permanent exhibition in Chicago’s Museum of Science of Industry. Here’s the homepage.

Moore also wrote a best-selling volume: How Women Can make Money in the Stock Market.

Colleen Moore was Mervyn Leroy’s champion in Hollywood. She also mentored the luminous teen-age Loretta Young, and wisely cast an inexperienced but jaw-droppingly handsome Gary Cooper in his first starring role opposite Moore in Lilac Time, 1928. Moore believed that LeRoy, an incredibly bright, energetic, and creative young man, would develop into a fine director. She was right. LeRoy was known—before Orson Welles—as “The Boy Genius.” So let’s close with LeRoy’s warm words about this important actress and Hollywood icon:

Colleen Moore was a remarkable girl who grew into a remarkable woman… and became, next to Mary Pickford, the biggest silent film star of them all.

Later, she would retire from the screen at the height of her fame, marry well, and spend the rest of her life doing important civic works in Chicago, writing books, raising her stepchildren, and doting on her grandchildren. She was never anything but a lady, throughout her career and her postcareer life.

Her fame, however, never went to her head in any way. Perhaps because of her affluent background, she was never spoiled by her wealth., never seduced by her notoriety, never changed by her success. She was always sweet—in the best sense of the word—and kind and pleasant to everyone she met. I doubt that there was a man who worked on her pictures who was not platonically in love with her.

Links:

The Colleen Moore Project

Colleen Moore: Century Baby

Another Colleen Moore Site

Copyright © Robert J. Avrech