Our Modern Maidens (Jack Conway, 1929)

Joan Crawford and Anita Page in Our Modern Maidens

Cast: Joan Crawford, Rod La Rocque, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Anita Page, Edward J. Nugent, Josephine Dunn, Albert Gran. Screenplay: Josephine Lovett, titles by Marian Ainslee, Ruth Cummings. Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Sam Zimbalist. Music: Arthur Lange. 

Cedric Gibbons got a lot of credit for designs he didn't do: His name was listed as art director on almost all of MGM's movies from 1925, when he joined the studio, through 1956, when he retired, but largely because he was head of the art department; the actual hands-on design work on any given film was probably that of the person listed along with Gibbons, usually as assistant art director. That said, I think it's almost a sure thing that the set designs for Our Modern Maidens were done by Gibbons himself: The giveaway is that they're a splendidly, almost over-the-top art deco, a style associated with Gibbons, which influenced even his most famous design: the Oscar statuette. The décor of B. Bickering Brown's mansion is a fabulous assemblage of deco staircases, columns, cornices, and whatnots, an almost cubist setting for Billie Brown (Joan Crawford) to sashay about in, wearing designs by Adrian. The truth is, the movie needs the boost it gets from the design, given that the story is a fairly banal account of modern maidens Billie and Kentucky (Anita Page) in dangerous liaisons designed to point the moral: Don't get too modern when it comes to sex. Billie, who has her fling at several wild parties, gets secretly engaged to Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), who has a little thing going with Kentucky, but when Billie meets Glenn Abbott (Rod La Rocque), things get complicated. She flirts with Abbott, who has connections in the state department, to get Gil posted to the embassy in Paris, but breaks off with Abbott when he gets a little too hot and bothered. Then, on her wedding day, she learns that Kentucky is pregnant with Gil's child, and she realizes that she really loves Abbott. Not to worry, he'll forgive her. This was Crawford's last silent film, and it's not entirely silent: Leo roars over the MGM logo, there's a music soundtrack, some sound effects and crowd noises, and once we hear a public announcement over a loudspeaker. It's not quite as entertaining as the movie to which it's a sequel, Harry Beaumont's 1928 Our Dancing Daughters, which also starred Crawford and Page, but it holds the eye if not the mind. 

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.