A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1928)

A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1928)

Cast: Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Johnny Mack Brown, Lewis Stone, Dorothy Sebastian, Hobart Bosworth. Screenplay: Bess Meredyth, Marian Ainslee (titles), Ruth Cummings (titles), based on a novel and play by Michael Arlen. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Hugh Wynn. Costumes: Adrian.

Our Dancing Daughters (Harry Beaumont, 1928)

Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters

Diana (Joan Crawford) is a Good Girl who people think is a Bad Girl because she likes to dance the Charleston on tabletops. Ann (Anita Page) is a Bad Girl posing as a Good Girl to try to land a rich husband. Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastian) is a Good Girl trying to hide the fact that she used to be a Bad Girl from Norman (Nils Asther), the man she has fallen in love with. And so it goes, as Ann steals Ben (Johnny Mack Brown) away from Diana, and Beatrice confesses her past sins to Norman, who marries her but doesn't really trust her. This romantic melodrama was a big hit that established Crawford as a star. She's lively and funny and dances a mean Charleston -- a far cry from the long-suffering shoulder-padded Crawford of Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) and the melodramas of her middle age, though we can see a hint of the Crawford to come when she squares off against Page, using her big eyes and lipsticked mouth as formidable weapons. The movie is semi-silent: It has a synchronized music track with some forgettable songs and occasional sound effects like the ring of a telephone and the knock on a door, and once there's a spoken line from a bandleader: "Come on, Miss Diane, strut your stuff." But most of the dialogue is confined to intertitles that tell us Diana has asked a boy to dance ("Wouldst fling a hoof with me?") or that Freddie (Edward J. Nugent) has asked Ann if she wants a drink ("Lí'l hot baby want a cool li'l sip?"). The Jazz Age was probably never like this, even at its height, which was several years earlier, but there is fun to be had here. The story, such as it is, was by Josephine Lovett, and those title cards were the work of Marian Ainslee and Ruth Cummings, who give it a mildly feminist spin: Despite the slut-shaming, the film is solidly on the side of the rights of women to have a good time. Lovett's story and George Barnes's cinematography were considered for Oscars -- there were no official nominations this year -- but lost out. 

Two Norma Shearer Silent Films

Norma Shearer meets Norma Shearer in Lady of the Night

Lady of the Night (Monta Bell, 1925)
Molly Helmer/Florence Banning: Norma Shearer
David Page: Malcolm McGregor
Miss Carr: Dale Fuller
"Chunky" Dunn: George K. Arthur
Judge Banning: Fred Esmelton
Chris Helmer: Lew Harvey

Director: Monta Bell
Screenplay: Alice D.G. Miller
Based on a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns
Cinematography: André Barlatier

Norma Shearer and Johnny Mack Brown in A Lady of Chance

A Lady of Chance (Robert Z. Leonard, 1928)
Dolly Morgan: Norma Shearer
Steve Crandall: Johnny Mack Brown
Bradley: Lowell Sherman
Gwen: Gwen Lee
Mrs. Crandall: Eugenie Besserer

Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Screenplay: Edmund Goulding, Andrew Percival Younger, Ralph Spence
Based on a story by Leroy Scott
Cinematography: J. Peverell Marley, William H. Daniels

I confessed in an earlier post that I really like the young Norma Shearer, especially in her silent films. But I can see from these two movies what led her astray in her later films: She loves the camera too much -- more than she does her leading men. Granted that neither Malcolm McGregor (Lady of the Night) nor Johnny Mack Brown (A Lady of Chance) is much more than a handsome presence on the screen -- not quite enough to act with when you've got Shearer's talent -- she still seems to hog these pictures, especially when she's playing tough girl. In Night she has a double role: the hard-bitten Molly Helmer and the sweet rich girl Florence Banning. She's surprisingly good as Molly -- and totally unbelievable as Florence, who decides to sacrifice her chance at marriage with inventor David Page (McGregor) because Molly had him first. But the incredible part is built into the story by Adela Rogers St. Johns, who churned out this sort of stuff for movies on a regular basis. In A Lady of Chance, Shearer has a role that would later be perfected by Barbara Stanwyck: the tough grifter with a soft heart. The story is nonsense again: She falls for her mark, a Southerner she thinks is a rich man, even after he takes her home to Alabama and she learns that she has jumped to the wrong conclusion. Stanwyck does it better in Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941) and The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941), but Stanwyck also had better directors than the prolific but undistinguished Robert Z. Leonard. He allows, or perhaps encourages, Shearer to mug and pose endlessly; at first she's delightful, but a little of that sort of thing goes a long way. A Lady of Chance also contains an embarrassing heap of period racism, when Shearer and Brown are being wheeled along the Atlantic City boardwalk by a singing black man, and Brown remarks that it reminds him of "the darkies singing on the plantation back home."

Coquette (Sam Taylor, 1929)

Is Mary Pickford's performance in Coquette the worst ever to win a best actress Oscar? It's certainly a bad performance, full of cute mannerisms and telegraphed emotions, along with a terrible attempt at a Southern accent. At 37, Pickford was about 20 years too old to play the flirtatious young Norma Besant, a fact that becomes especially clear when she sits on the lap of Louise Beavers, who plays her "mammy," the black servant who raised her -- Beavers was ten years younger than Pickford. But this was Pickford's first talkie after 20 years in silent films in which she become the movies' first superstar, and unlike some silent stars, she demonstrates a perfectly fine speaking voice. Still, after three more features that did only passable box office, she took the hint and retired. The main problem with Coquette is not Pickford but the creakiness of the vehicle, which had been a stage hit for Helen Hayes. The melodrama, about a flirtatious girl whose carelessness brings about disaster for both the man she loves (Johnny Mack Brown) and her father (John St. Polis) who objects to their love, is stagebound, largely because of the limitations of early sound technology, but also because screenwriter-director Sam Taylor had not made a sound film before. Pickford appears game throughout, and she's certainly a better actor than Brown or St. Polis, not to mention the callow William Janney, who plays Pickford's younger brother. In one scene Janney wears one of the most eye-offending outfits ever seen on-screen: a plaid sweater tucked into deep-pleated striped pants. My retinas have yet to recover. It's very possible that Pickford's performance stood out against the others that are in Academy records as under consideration (there were no official nominations that year): Ruth Chatterton in Madame X (Lionel Barrymore), Betty Compson in The Barker (George Fitzmaurice), Jeanne Eagels in The Letter (Jean de Limur), Corinne Griffith in The Divine Lady (Frank Lloyd), and Bessie Love in The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont). I've been unable to see the performances by Chatterton and Compson, but my pick so far would be Eagels.