Blondie of the Follies (Edmund Goulding, 1932)

Billie Dove and Marion Davies in Blondie of the Follies

Cast: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove, Jimmy Durante, James Gleason, Zasu Pitts, Sidney Toler, Douglass Dumbrille, Sarah Padden, Louise Carter, Clyde Cook. Screenplay: Frances Marion, Anita Loos. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: George Hively. Music: William Axt. 

Marion Davies is always a delight to watch, but Blondie of the Follies is a mess. A sort of backstage, rags-to-riches, romantic comedy with music, it was tailor-made for Davies, who had once been a Ziegfeld Follies chorus girl. In fact, it was where she caught the eye of William Randolph Hearst, But why Hearst would have okayed a story so reflective of his liaison with Davies is something of a mystery, especially since he meddled in the production to make sure it wasn't too close to real life. Not that he was a reluctant meddler: He set up his own production company with MGM for her and made sure that she was photographed and clothed in the most flattering ways possible. Davies is such an adroit comedian, the forerunner of such glamorous funny women as Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball, that she didn't need Hearst's help, especially his desire to see her in serious dramatic roles. There's some drama in Blondie of the Follies, but it's much less entertaining than Davies's clowning, as when she mimics Greta Garbo in a sendup of Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932) with Jimmy Durante as John Barrymore. The story isn't much: Blondie McClune (Davies) and Lottie Callahan (Billie Dove) are on-and-off friends and neighbors in a tenement before Lottie runs off to become a Follies girl. Visiting Lottie (now known as Lurline Cavanaugh), Blondie meets Larry Belmont (Robert Montgomery), who has set Lottie/Lurline up in a swank apartment. Blondie decides that the life of a chorus girl isn't so bad after all, and sure enough she follows in Lottie's footsteps, becoming a star and getting set up in her own swell digs by an oilman (Douglass Dumbrille). Moreover, Larry decides that Blondie is more his type than the pretentious Lurline, who is outraged when she finds out. Even though this is a pre-Code movie, there needs to be some indication that the filmmakers don't fully endorse all of this gold-digging and living-in-sin, so Blondie's dad (James Gleason) shows up to disapprove. Finally, he gives in and decides to let Blondie live how she wants to, but not without touching her conscience a bit. Blondie's ambivalence about her lifestyle and her attraction to Larry will be tested, forming what amounts to the plot. There's an interpolated party scene to let Durante do his comic shtick, which hasn't aged well, and a couple of rather clunky production numbers, but they only add to the generally unfocused character of the movie.  

The Bride's Play (George Terwilliger, 1922)

The Bride's Play (George Terwilliger, 1922)

Cast: Marion Davies, Wyndham Standing, Carl Miller, John B. O'Brien, Frank Shannon, Richard Cummings, Eleanor Middleton, Thea Talbot, John P. Wade, Julia Hurley, George Spink. Screenplay: Mildred Constantine, based on a story by Donn Byrne. Cinematography: Ira H. Morgan. Art direction: Joseph Urban.

Peg o' My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Peg o' My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Cast: Marion Davies, Onslow Stevens, J. Farrell MacDonald, Juliette Compton, Irene Browne, Tyrell Davis, Alan Mowbray, Robert Greig. Screenplay: Frank R. Adams, Frances Marion, based on a play by J. Hartley Manners. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Margaret Booth. Costume design: Adrian. Music: Herbert Stothart.

The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner, 1929)

Designed to show off the novelty of sound -- and, in two sequences, the coming novelty of Technicolor -- The Hollywood Revue of 1929 was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences, though it lost the best picture Oscar to The Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont, 1929). Today, both movies are creaky antiques, despite the effort that MGM put into producing them. In fact, The Hollywood Revue often seems like an attempt to promote The Broadway Melody, which had opened three and a half months earlier, since it gives prominent spots to that film's stars, Charles King, Bessie Love, and Anita Page. The rest of it feels a lot like amateur night at MGM, as the studio's stars are trotted out for songs and skits that often feel tired and incoherent. In a few years, MGM would be boasting that it had more stars than there are in heaven, but many of the stars showcased in the Revue are forgotten today -- like King, Love, and Page -- or were on the wane -- like John Gilbert, Marion Davies, and Buster Keaton. The ones that remained stars, like Jack Benny and Joan Crawford, did so by reinventing themselves. The Revue, which modeled itself on theatrical conventions like the minstrel show and vaudeville, both of which were on the outs, failed to break ground for the Hollywood musical: It would take a few years for Warner Bros. to do that, with 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) and the unfettered imagination of Busby Berkeley taking the backstage musical formula of The Broadway Melody and some of Sammy Lee's choreographic tricks from the Revue -- including overhead kaleidoscope shots -- and improving on them. The Revue has a few highlights even today: Joan Crawford trying a little too hard to sparkle as she sings (passably) and dances (clunkily); Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in their first sound film, doing a magic act with Jack Benny's intervention; Cliff Edwards and the Brox Sisters doing "Singin' in the Rain," which gets a Technicolor reprise with most of the company at the film's end; Keaton acrobatically clowning his way (silently) through an "underwater" drag routine; and Norma Shearer and John Gilbert in Technicolor performing a bit of the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, first as Shakespeare wrote it and then in 1929's slang. To get to them, however, you have to sit through a lot of dud routines and dated songs like Charles King's paean to maternity, "Your Mother and Mine," which must have been aimed right at the mushy heart of Louis B. Mayer.  

The Patsy (King Vidor, 1928)

King Vidor is not generally known as a comedy director, and The Patsy shows why: Vidor seems to have no sense of how to set up a gag, merely letting the skilled comic acting of Marion Davies as the put-upon younger sister, Pat Hamilton, and Marie Dressler and Dell Henderson as her parents, do the work. The result is a giddy, silly movie with a good many laughs, but not much coherence. Pat is smitten with Tony Anderson (Orville Caldwell), but her sister, Grace (Jane Winton) has her hooks in him -- until, that is, she starts running around with playboy Billy Caldwell (Lawrence Gray). Pat tries to win Tony by memorizing joke books -- for a silent film The Patsy is unusually heavy on gags in the intertitles -- but this only makes her parents, especially her domineering mother, think she's gone mad. Then she tries to make Tony jealous by pretending that she's in love with Billy, arriving at his house when he's drunk and trying to woo him by imitating movie stars like Mae Murray, Lillian Gish, and Gloria Swanson. Davies's skill and charm makes all of this palatable if not plausible, but almost every scene is stolen by Dressler, who uses face and body to upstage everyone. Vidor and Davies teamed again the same year for Show People, another comedy.

The Red Mill (Roscoe Arbuckle, 1927)

The Red Mill is a surprisingly well-preserved silent film, with crisp images -- the cinematography is by Hendrik Sartov, a Danish director of photography who also shot La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) and The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöstrom, 1926). It's also a fairly forgettable romantic farce, about Tina (Marion Davies), a Dutch scullery maid, who falls in love with Dennis (Owen Moore), an Irishman visiting Holland, and gets involved with a plot to save Gretchen (Louise Fazenda) from having to marry someone other than her boyfriend Jacop (Karl Dane). The whole thing is very loosely based on a creaky old Victor Herbert operetta. The chief distinction of the film is that it was directed by Roscoe ("Fatty") Arbuckle, who had to take the pseudonym William Goodrich because he had been blacklisted after the scandal over the death of Virginia Rappe -- even though Arbuckle was acquitted. Given that the film is a fitfully amusing comedy, whose chief virtue is that is shows off the great comic gifts of Davies, it might be surprising to find it in such pristine condition when so many other (and better) silent films are available only in patched-together restorations or have been lost altogether. The reason is probably that it was produced by William Randolph Hearst's company, Cosmopolitan Productions, which existed largely to showcase Davies, Hearst's mistress. So MGM, which released the film, took special care not to offend Hearst in its handling of The Red Mill. Davies is, as so frequently, a delight, playing physical comedy without sacrificing her beauty and femininity. She does a wonderful slapstick bit in which she tries to solve the problem of assembling a folding ironing board -- a twist on the familiar struggles of comedians with folding beach chairs. But Arbuckle, who directed dozens of short films, doesn't give this movie the pace needed to sustain itself at feature length. Frances Marion did the screenplay and the cornball captions -- sample: "A summer on Holland's canals leaves an impression, but a fall on its ice leaves a scar" -- are by Joseph Farnham.

Show People (King Vidor, 1928)

William Haines and Marion Davies in Show People

Peggy Pepper: Marion Davies
Billy Boone: William Haines
Col. Pepper: Dell Henderson
Andre Telfair: Paul Ralli
Casting Director: Tenen Holtz
Comedy Director: Harry Gribbon
Dramatic Director: Sidney Bracey
Maid: Polly Moran
Producer: Albert Conti

Director: King Vidor
Screenplay: Agnes Christine Johnston, Laurence Stallings, Wanda Tuchock; Titles: Ralph Spence
Cinematography: John Arnold
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Hugh Wynn

It's a shame that Marion Davies is known today primarily as William Randolph Hearst's mistress, and hence the presumable model for the talentless opera singer Susan Alexander Kane in Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941). For Davies was not only not an opera singer, she was also bursting with talent. King Vidor's Show People demonstrates her skill for comedy, acknowledged as an inspiration by such later glamorous comedians as Carole Lombard and Lucille Ball. Everything Davies could do except talk -- this is one of her last silent films -- is on display, including her skill at slapstick: She does a fine pratfall and takes copious amounts of seltzer in the face. (Hearst reportedly forbade her being the recipient of a custard pie -- that was somehow one shtick beneath her.) She mugs divinely as the comic actress Peggy Pepper who is "promoted" into the serious artiste Patricia Pepoire. Attempting a Mae Murray-style bee-stung lips, Davies comes up with a hilariously rabbity moue. The movie also gives us a chance to see William Haines at work. One of the few leading men of the day who dared to lead an almost openly gay life, Haines plays the comic actor who gives Peggy her first break into pictures, loses her when she tries to become a dramatic actress, but of course finally gets her after she sheds the Patricia Pepoire persona. When he was ordered by MGM's bullying Louis B. Mayer to pretend to be straight in his offscreen life, Haines quit pictures and became a successful interior designer; his life partner, Jimmie Shields, became his business partner as well. Ronald and Nancy Reagan were among their clients. Show People also has cameos by Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, William S. Hart, and other stars of the day. Peggy Pepper even encounters Marion Davies herself in one scene.