What's The Last Silent Movie You Watched? [2020]

[Big Silent Fan]

Because of a prompting from this forum I re-watched "Victory" (1919) with Jack Holt, Seena Owen, Wallace Beery, Lon Chaney, Sr., Bull Montana, Ben Deeley, and others.
Chaney simply steals the show out from everybody in it! He's fantastic as the Hispanic knife-wielding psycho baddie. Seena Owen is quite good, but like Holt, she's only secondary to the baddies, and Chaney, though he's not the head of the baddies, he's the one we watch. He's just magnificent.

Really wanted to watch this because of the cast and nice print, but for me, there just wasn't enough story to support the characters who mostly, just sat around. What story there was, made no sense to me.

This is the DVD that also has "The Wicked Darling" on it. The print for "Victory" is fabulous. Glorious direction by Maurice Tourneur, and the camera work by René Guissart is superlative. Art direction is spare but extremely well done. Writing is a tad too spare at times, but overall for such a show this is good work from 1919. Very highly recommended. Especially for fans of Chaney, Sr.

The Wicked Darling on the other hand was a nice surprise and a film to watch more than once.
Priscilla Dean also starred in "Outside the Law" With Chaney again and she starred in "The White Tiger" (1923), featuring Wallace Beery in a supporting role. All good films to watch, all three were directed by Tod Browning.

[bgp]

My Chaney marathon continues and so far this week I've watched "He Who Gets Slapped" and "The Unholy Three", enjoyed both very much. HWGS was quite depressing though that ending, even my wife was quite pleased how the fate of the baron and the other fella turned out. TU3 was very good as well, though I thought it started to drag a little towards the end (some slight editing could have fixed that). I will be checking out the sound version tomorrow.

I really wish WB would put their Chaney films out on blu-ray. While I realize full restorations would be quite pricey, just fresh 2k HD scans would be great. But they seem to have zero interest in putting out silent films on blu-ray.

[R Michael Pyle]

After nearly forty years, re-watched "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" (1921) with Pomeroy Cannon, Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, John St. Polis, Josef Swickard, Alan Hale, Wallace Beery, Jean Hersholt, Mabel Van Buren, Bridgetta Clark, Virginia Warwick, and so many others. Directed by Rex Ingram, with cinematography by John F. Seitz, this is one of the genuine classic anti-war/WW I films ever made. I must admit that, when having finished it and trying to sum up my thoughts, I just kept thinking, "This one really holds up!" There were a couple of moments when Josef Swickard, playing the father of Rudolph Valentino, seemed to hearken back ten years in his acting technique to stage movements with his arms, but even these made little difference, as the direction by Ingram had a certain momentum in it that drove the action past any sense of out-of-placeness of the acting technique. Ingram was a master of telling a story. Like Hitchcock, he takes his time at the beginning by allowing exposition to set character in place. Once all the character of each main player is established, then the story unfolds like a scroll of an ancient lost classic coming to life. It's genius.

Valentino, from the moment we see him first, dancing the tango and giving that stare to the camera with a cigarette dangling from his lips, is mesmerizing. And Alice Terry, beautiful Alice Terry, is so easy to watch as she negotiates between a much older husband (St. Polis) and the inviting amours of Valentino. Then the war finally comes, and the two sides of the original family - one German, one French - find themselves more at odds with each other than they originally were.

If you've never seen this masterwork, it's time you do. It really deserves its place in the pantheon of great silent films, and especially as one of the truly great films of just post WWI that happens to have a serious anti-war theme, besides.

[R Michael Pyle]

Watched what remains of a hot-edged, old-fashioned potboiler if ever there was one, "Triumph", (1917) with Dorothy Phillips, Lon Chaney, Sr., William Stowell, William Dyer, Claire Du Brey, and others. About Phillips' desire to triumph in the theater; she succeeds in getting a good part, rises, then sees the opportunity to reach an acme with a part in a play written by a critic who aspires to see his play performed, but can't find anyone to produce the play. The playwright is Lon Chaney, Sr. Meanwhile, William Dyer, the producer for whom all are working, a corpulent, imperious, and authoritarian overseer, as well as a lecherous snake with his leading ladies, wants to have his way with Phillips if she's to reach her pinnacle of success. He produces the Chaney play for Phillips, but now tries to have his way. When he catches her in an embrace with Chaney he cancels the play just as it's about to open. The embrace, though possibly genuine, was Chaney's attempt to show Phillips how to play a love scene better. Even so, both probably feel a genuine love. It must show, because Dyer's genuine ire burns up the scene as he screams his disenchantment and socks Chaney. It has been made known to the audience through a prior scene that Chaney is a very, very sick man and possibly only has a short time to live. We know this as the next part of the film ensues. Phillips in a fit of pique goes to Dyer's room at the theater, grabs a knife when he says he'll go ahead and let the play proceed if she promises a tad of love...and kills him. Here, the third reel ends and the rest of the film is missing!!!!

We learn through intertitles that Chaney takes the blame. We also learn two other STARTLING facts which would have completed the film... I won't give away the rest. Take it from me, I said this was a potboiler, and I mean it... The film is good for one reason and one reason only - it's a Lon Chaney film. Dorothy Phillips is rote all the way. She doesn't give a bad performance at all. She also is about as inspiring as watching corn grow. Claire Du Brey, on the other hand, the prior leading lady in the troupe, and the one who Dyer had been claiming as his own, gives a sharp, driving, and wonderful performance as a nasty rival to Phillips. She's far more interesting to watch. Chaney himself is always a pleasure to watch, though here he only needed a mustache to twirl a few times to seem a few iota over the top. Luckily, he doesn't have a mustache. Still, that face of his could speak volumes when he acted. Dyer gives a well modulated performance as the lecherous producer. William Stowell as a leading man in the company and secondary lead is fine, if not written into the plot very well.

Well worth the watch. Too bad it's truncated. The nitrate deterioration beginning with reel 2 is also pretty bad, though it doesn't interfere with the presentation. From Grapevine Video. If you're a Chaney completest as I am, you'll want to seek this one out.

[bgp]

Unfortunately TRIUMPH is no longer available from Grapevine, per their page: "Product has been discontinued to make way for Jon Mirsalis' upcoming Lon Chaney release that will include the surviving footage of TRIUMPH."

So what is this particular release they speak of?

[Brooksie]

If you've never seen this masterwork, it's time you do. It really deserves its place in the pantheon of great silent films, and especially as one of the truly great films of just post WWI that happens to have a serious anti-war theme, besides.

Amen to that. I'm hoping that with the 100th (!) anniversary of the film next year, we'll see a Blu-Ray release. It certainly warrants one.

[Big Silent Fan]

Watched a delightfully fun Western Melodrama from DeMille in 1915.
The first title:

Jesse L. Lasky Presents David Belasco's Great American Play, The Girl Of The Golden West. Cecil B DeMille, Director General.

Adapted for the screen and produced by Cecil B. DeMille, the lighthearted 45 minute melodrama sure helped us to forget all the World's problems for a little while. It came complete with a lively piano score, where the pianist clearly watched the picture while playing. There's one brief point in the story where he used the theme music for "Shave & a Haircut, six bits" that left us in stitches. It was the next best thing to live accompaniment.
The film was intentionally funny and only briefly had image deterioration. The rest was simply a joy to watch, reminding me of DeMille's The Squaw Man.

Turns out the story was done again as a two hour musical in 1938:
A lovesick sheriff (Walter Pidgeon) competes with a Mexican bandit (Nelson Eddy) for a mining-town saloon-keeper (Jeanette MacDonald). wikipedia.org

[greta de groat]

Watched a delightfully fun Western Melodrama from DeMille in 1915.
The first title:

Jesse L. Lasky Presents David Belasco's Great American Play, The Girl Of The Golden West. Cecil B DeMille, Director General.

Adapted for the screen and produced by Cecil B. DeMille, the lighthearted 45 minute melodrama sure helped us to forget all the World's problems for a little while. It came complete with a lively piano score, where the pianist clearly watched the picture while playing. There's one brief point in the story where he used the theme music for "Shave & a Haircut, six bits" that left us in stitches. It was the next best thing to live accompaniment.
The film was intentionally funny and only briefly had image deterioration. The rest was simply a joy to watch, reminding me of DeMille's The Squaw Man.

Turns out the story was done again as a two hour musical in 1938:
A lovesick sheriff (Walter Pidgeon) competes with a Mexican bandit (Nelson Eddy) for a mining-town saloon-keeper (Jeanette MacDonald). wikipedia.org

Also filmed in 1923 with Sylvia Breamer and again in 1930 with Ann Harding, which is lost (don't know about the 1923 version). Also a Puccini opera, of all things. Love the chorus running around shouting "Hello!" and ordering "Weeskee".

The MacDonald/Eddy version has a lot of annoying plot tweaks, like the whole point of it ....

greta

[boblipton]

Robes Of Sin (1924): Sylvia Breamer is married to Police a detective Jack Mower. They have a daughter, Lassie Lou Ahern, live somewhere near Times Square, and they love each other very much. Yet a housewife, even in Manhattan, has a busy day stuck in the apartment. Mower is working at curbing the bootleg gang run by Bruce Gordon, so he doesn’t come home most evenings. When he does, he’s exhausted. So she is bored. Things start to perk up when Gertrude Astor moves into the apartment across the hall. She’s taken it to be near where her boyfriend, William Buckley works. He’s a bootlegger who works for Gordon. When Gordon visits, he’s much taken by Miss Breamer and makes a play for her.

That’s not going to turn out well, is it? It’s a cheaply made picture, full of goofs — there are no palm trees on the streets of New York City’s suburbs — and stiffly written dialogue for Gordon’s title cards. Although the performers are skilled professionals (I’m very fond of Miss Astor, especially in comedies), this movie was never intended as a major production, and it shows it, both in its length and in the simplicity of its design. Nonetheless, at one hour, it’s certainly a competent example of the sort of movie that made up the majority of film programs in the era.

This programmer was recently released on DVD by Ed Lorusso as one of his Kickstarter-funded projects. There’s a fine score by Donald Drazin, and the print is in remarkably good shape. There are currently no plans to release it to a wider audience, but earlier examples of Ed’s restorations have appeared on TCM and from some of the smaller home video companies.

Bob

[GishFan]

Sherlock Jr. - While I have had all the Keaton DVDs for many years, there were still many of his movies I had still not watched. Last night I was listening to a podcast where two film geeks were discussing their lists of silent films, but they weren't necessarily their favorite or best films. Anyway, one of them was Sherlock Jr, which they raved about. It was the favorite silent for one of them. So, today I watched it and I have to say I do not really see it.

It was entertaining enough, but IMO nowhere near as good as, say, The General. One thing it has going for it is its brevity, coming in at 44 mins. Silent films need to be REALLY, REALLY good to keep people's attention for more than an hour or two tops. I love silent films, but even if I am enjoying one, I still occasionally nod off at times.

One thing that stuck out to me in this film is that there are jumps in the story, suggesting parts were cut because Keaton didn't think they were working well. There is an interview he did where he talked about cutting a scene in The Navigator after it tested poorly twice. Said it was a good bit, but it didn't work in the context of that scene. I think that happened here too. Don't really have any trenchant analysis of the film, but it was good. Pretty much anything BK does is worth seeing.

[R Michael Pyle]

Had never watched "Girl Shy" (1924) with Harold Lloyd before. Brother! Had I been missing something!! What a fabulous silent film! It's famous for its last rush/chase/scramble scene; I knew that. What I didn't realize was that the scene goes on for a third of the film! It makes chase scenes in "Bullitt" or "The French Connection" look like pikers! This came the year after "Safety Last" where Harold hangs on the clock, one of the sacrosanct picture scenes of all film. Well, it has given Lloyd a psychological movie persona of acrobatic performer to nearly anyone who holds an interest in film. Even if you've never seen a Harold Lloyd film, you'll probably know the name as the one attached to the man who hangs from a clock in a film, and you've probably seen a picture of that scene somewhere and know it in the back of your mind. Well, Lloyd was famous for such antics in film, had been for years, and he continued to be for many years after. "Girl Shy" is certainly no different. It is antic after antic after antic. It is creativeness alive. It never stops at inventiveness. I don't need to give a synopsis. Take my word that you won't be able to take your eyes off of the screen from the get-go. Harold never stops being hyper Harold. Even when he's trying to calm himself down (and here he also's hampered by a stu-stu-stu-stutter) from his frenetic behavior, he does it frenetically. He's a riot!

One of the musts of silent comedy.

[boblipton]

I envy you. This is one we usually come to early, without a full appreciation of its delights. We can never see a film for the first time more than once.

Bob

[R Michael Pyle]

I envy you. This is one we usually come to early, without a full appreciation of its delights. We can never see a film for the first time more than once.

Bob

And I am two-and-seventy,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

[drednm]

I envy you. This is one we usually come to early, without a full appreciation of its delights. We can never see a film for the first time more than once.

Bob

And I am two-and-seventy,
And oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

When dementia sets in you can

[Jim Roots]

It’s a cheaply made picture, full of goofs — there are no palm trees on the streets of New York City’s suburbs —

Gosh darn it, yet another cherished delusion busted!

Jim

[Mike Gebert]

Palm trees? You must be thinking of Aurora, Illinois.

Party on, Bob.

[boblipton]

Palm trees? You must be thinking of Aurora, Illinois.

Party on, Bob.

Actually I was thinking of Denver, Colorado like in The Narrow Margin.

Bob

[2 Reel]

Scarlet Days (1919) by D. W. Griffith, which I had thus far avoided seeing in its entirety because of my overexposure to negative comments from reliable sources, deserved a full, fair run. I misjudged. The film should survive and be seen, if only as an example of how a top director and cast could completely misfire in 1919. I couldn't find any aspect worth recommending. Plot is just boring, the acting is largely over the top, the titles are flowery, too many, and held on the screen too long, and few characters even remotely reflect real life except for what you might find at a spastic mime convention. Frankly, Griffith's work in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908) is more interesting.

[R Michael Pyle]

Watched "An Eastern Westerner" (1920) with Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, and many more. The theme must have been very popular. One of my favorite early Douglas Fairbanks films is "Wild and Wooly" (1917) which took a similar theme of Easterner being sent West by Papa to make a man out the son, or something almost like that. Here Lloyd is a wild man, wild about women, the shimmie, and staying out late. Just exactly WHAT Papa thinks will happen to Lloyd by sending him out West I'm not sure, but he does. The West looks like a set out of William S. Hart or even Broncho Billy. Wild and unpaved. Dirty. And mean. Yes, it's funny. It's Lloyd. Timing's perfect as usual. A pleasure to watch. But this is recycled stuff as far as story is concerned. It's second rate Lloyd, if there is such a thing. But second rate Lloyd is above first rate most. Hey, it's only 23 minutes.

[bgp]

1928's "Our Dancing Daughters." I like Joan Crawford's movies but haven't seen much of her silents. This one was extremely good. My wife and I highly enjoyed the film. It felt like it should have been a pre-code talkie. Like the Chaney dvds, I really wish Warner would do 2k scans of their silents. It would benefit their movies so much.

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

Although somewhat damaged in places, THE CIGARETTE (1919) appears to be director Germaine Dulac's earliest surviving work, belonging to her more 'commercial period'. It concerns an Egyptologist who has married a much younger woman, and his jealousies when a young lounge lizard comes on the scene.

His fears are actually unfounded, and the silly fellow plans a peculiar way of bumping himself off. Taking his cue from historical precedent, he injects poison into a cigarette, then mixes it with o bundles of others, so that he doesn't know which one it is. For a presumably intelligent man, this seems positively crack-brained, and the perils are soon seen when the young lady decides she fancies a puff, not to mention the servant who pinches one at the same time as draining off the wine glasses. There is also an odd scene when the wife sends him on what turns out to be an obviously wild-goose-chase, rather than an errand which is feasible.

These aside, THE CIGARETTE is an elegant drama, with touches of humour, although I don't know if there is any missing footage. Anyone who has been flummoxed by THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN will be quite surprised at this one, which also has echoes of Dulac's feminism which was shown in THE SMILING MADAME BEUDET and CELLES QUI S'EN FONT a few years later.

[R Michael Pyle]

Watched "Among Those Present" (1921) with Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Aggie Herring, James T. Kelley, Vera White, William Gillespie, and a large host of others. This 34 minute short is a hodge-podge of running gags that take place when a hotel coat-room checker takes on a disguise of a nobleman as a gag for a large party that intends to go on a fox hunt the day after a large dinner event on the night of arrival. It's typical Lloyd with the antics and frenetic behavior, and the gags are funny. It's good, though, that the film's only 34 minutes, because it was wearing itself thin by the end. Still, a really fine short comedy. The scenes of how he hunts, everything from birds and small game with a shotgun to hunting for the fox - where a bear gets involved, too - are very funny!

[R Michael Pyle]

Watched two more Harold Lloyd short(er) films last night: (1) "Never Weaken" and (2) "A Sailor-Made Man".

"Never Weaken" (1921), though plot-wise both typical of most of Lloyd's 20's shorts and put together as if tying strings together just to have them in a skein - although it seems to work! - ends with a long routine of Lloyd on steel rafters and girders at great height on a being-built new building. Lloyd just keeps the viewer at the edge of the seat/bed/couch/whatever with daredevil nonchalance that is done nonetheless at a frenetic pace. Very fun too watch! To heck with any plot...just watching Lloyd is hilarious. And, no, those ridiculous glasses never seem to waver on his face even when the wind is blowing like mad and Lloyd is stumbling at twenty storeys up...

"A Sailor-Made Man" (1921) clocks in at just a few minutes less than 50 minutes, but it plays fast enough to be like a twenty minute short. Again starring Lloyd and Mildred Davis, this one has him wooing her by finally getting a job...going into the US Navy. While there they go to a middle-eastern country where a rajah tries to abduct Mildred who's parents and friends are on a personal vacation/furlough on a yacht that ends up at the same country. Lloyd has to save Mildred. Wow! Somehow he does it! Imagine that. This one is very funny, with perfect timing, etc., just like all of his others, but this one runs a tad too long for me. For most, if you begin with this one...you'll love it!!

[Big Silent Fan]

Yesterday, my friend and I watched Nell Shipman's Grubstakes(1923). Written and produced by Nell, it's a 98 minute long, restored film, without any sound. An incredible story involving 'human trafficking in the Yukon (were they supplied all the girls for the dance halls), but there's so much more. Poor Nell gets duped into believing a rich man wants to help her start a laundry business in the Alaskan gold fields.
The plot twists and turns again and again, even to where a Mountie is searching for Nell for stealing a dog sled. Lots of big brown bears and other wildlife appear in the film that most will never watch without sound. One intertitle in the film talks about "two chechahcos getting themselves lost." I just learned about that word in the Alaskan film of the same name.
This is a wonderfully restored film that could never be enjoyed without proper sound. I was pleased with how well my music worked.

[MaryGH]

A Woman of the World (1925)

It's not just Pola Negri that makes this silent film attention holding; it's Malcolm St. Clair's directing, the script, and supporting actors that provide the right amount of comedy-drama in this 1 hour 10 minute feature.

Negri is a European countess visiting a small town in America, boarding with an older couple, Chester Conklin and Lucille Ward when she meets a number of men who are attracted to her for her worldliness. Of course the rest of the town's citizens, especially the married women, have an issue with Negri's presence in their town and cannot wait for her to leave. Holmes Herbert become smitten with her during a social gathering at Conklin and Ward's house, and decides to court her. But when he sends that cute Charles Emmett Mack to Negri with a bouquet of flowers, Mack is equally smitten with the countess. What is a countess to do? Especially when her "secret" - a small tattoo she got in memory of a man she once loved - gets out, well...back then the only people who got tattoos were sailors. Nowadays we don't think twice when someone we know gets a tattoo.

This is the first silent film I've seen with Pola, and introduced to Mack. It appears that Charles Emmett Mack had a lot of promise as a silent film actor when his star was rising when he was killed in a car accident in March 1927 while on the way to film a racing scene in The First Auto (1927). The car he was driving in overturned and collided wit another car, which killed him instantly.

Very enjoyable movie from start to finish.

[R Michael Pyle]

Bob Lipton's already reviewed this recently (I think on the 14th), but this is what i submitted to IMDb (and, by the way, great job, Ed!):

Participated in a Kickstarter campaign put on by Ed Lorusso to get "Robes of Sin" (1924) fairly restored and show-able again. Finally received a copy yesterday and watched it last night. A potboiler's potboiler starring Sylvia Breamer, Jack Mower, Lassie Lou Ahern, Bruce Gordon, Gertrude Astor, Helene Sullivan, and, finally, William Buckley, this is really like watching a TV soap opera at 11:00 in the morning. The title is wholly exploitative, although the film is the same theme-wise. Breamer's married to a cop (Mower) who's been put on a strenuous time-consuming project that hopes to catch a bootlegging rum-runner (Gordon) and put him away. Since Mower has no time for taking his wife to dances - or even being at home as a normal house-husband for 1924 - Breamer is bored and, frankly, frustrated. They do have the baby, though, Lassie Lou Ahern. Across the hall from where Breamer and Mower live in an apartment, Gertrude Astor moves in. She's the current girl friend of bootlegger Gordon, though he's beginning to be bored by her. As a viewer, you can see there's nothing good going to come of all this. Gordon eventually meets Breamer through Astor, of course, and potential evil occurrences lurk...loom...begin to happen...

Actually, a fun film to watch, though the coincidences of plot are cheap and obvious, and they must have been even in 1924. This is simply a secondary programmer, but it's a good one, well acted and well put together. The fact that we still have it and can see what typical entertainment was in 1924 - much like our mindless TV of today - is an okay thing. In the vein of Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age and post-Victorian everything that seemed to become ubiquitous by the middle twenties, this film is definitely worth the simple one hour it takes to watch. Just don't expect a masterpiece. It's barely a cog in the works, but it's one that definitely helps turn the wheel...

I must admit that there was one thing that drove me bananas! Lassie Lou Ahern, playing the 'baby' of the couple, Mower and Breamer, was left in bed by Breamer at 8:00 PM - ALONE - in the apartment while she traipsed off with Gordon to a dance spot for the evening - this, while her husband was at work with the police force. In another scene, both husband AND wife have left the child alone in the apartment at night while they are about doing their things... This wouldn't sit well at all today. Wonder how well it sat in 1924? In real life, Ahern was only 3, possibly 4, when this film was made. She's playing someone about that age. By the way, she's fine in the part, very natural.

[R Michael Pyle]

Also on the DVD disc of "Robes of Sin" is a Billie Ritchie short, "Almost a Scandal" (1915), a 12 minute or so film from the EYE film museum of Amsterdam and repatriated (?). Although suffering a great amount of nitrate deterioration, the film is still quite watchable. It even has one or two toned scenes and one or two barely visible remaining tinted scenes that help make the film quite something to see for the year it was made. Ritchie always claimed that Chaplin stole his character from him, and just by the dress alone we can see that the possibility is there, whether or not any truth in the overall reality exists. The character, dress/costume(tramp) and all, and the antics are similar to very early Chaplin when the raucous and very aggressive physical slapstick antics were a part of Chaplin's short films. They became much different about a year later, say, late 1915 or 1916. This one with Ritchie concerns a couple of characters, Henry Bergman and Ritchie, who notoriously flirt with every woman in sight. Ritchie takes one of them on a date. She turns out to be the flirty wife of Bergman. Riotous behavior erupts.

I can't say I laughed out loud at any of this. Some of it is the kind of film behavior of the early teens that turns me off. It's too slapsticky for my taste. Lots of slugging and downright cruel antics that serve no kind of humor but sophomoric stuff you'd see in grade-schoolers of the 50's. There are some well executed timed scenes that I thought were well done, but - were they really funny? Not necessarily. At least not today. Oh, well, my opinion of Ritchie: he's not Chaplin, that's for sure. He'd make a better stunt man.

[Jim Roots]

A Woman of the World (1925)

It's not just Pola Negri that makes this silent film attention holding; it's Malcolm St. Clair's directing, the script, and supporting actors that provide the right amount of comedy-drama in this 1 hour 10 minute feature.

Negri is a European countess visiting a small town in America, boarding with an older couple, Chester Conklin and Lucille Ward when she meets a number of men who are attracted to her for her worldliness. Of course the rest of the town's citizens, especially the married women, have an issue with Negri's presence in their town and cannot wait for her to leave. Holmes Herbert become smitten with her during a social gathering at Conklin and Ward's house, and decides to court her. But when he sends that cute Charles Emmett Mack to Negri with a bouquet of flowers, Mack is equally smitten with the countess. What is a countess to do? Especially when her "secret" - a small tattoo she got in memory of a man she once loved - gets out, well...back then the only people who got tattoos were sailors. Nowadays we don't think twice when someone we know gets a tattoo.

This is the first silent film I've seen with Pola, and introduced to Mack. It appears that Charles Emmett Mack had a lot of promise as a silent film actor when his star was rising when he was killed in a car accident in March 1927 while on the way to film a racing scene in The First Auto (1927). The car he was driving in overturned and collided wit another car, which killed him instantly.

Very enjoyable movie from start to finish.

Included in my book of 100 Essential Silent Film Comedies.

Jim

[drednm]

Re: Robes of Sin,, here's what I had on my Kickstarter page.

An article in Exhibitor’s Herald on March 201, 1926 boasted that Herman F. Jans had just completed a film titled The Roaring Forties. This refers to a couple of blocks in New York’s theater district. Jans went on to say that “no district in the world can compare” and that it “caters to every sort of individual and where characters of every sort reside.” The writer claimed, “It was for this reason that he had a story of this section of New York prepared and made into a motion picture.”

It never bothered to explain that Jans has bought Robes of Sin and simply retitled it and was releasing it as a new picture. Variety noted in its June 23, 1926 review that “it must have been made some time ago, for the skirts of the female players are down to the ankles, or maybe the producers are modest.' It then states that “Miss Breamer has been idle for over a year. This picture was probably made before that.”

Breamer had retired to marry soon after making this film in 1924.

[bgp]

The Lon Chaney marathon continues at my house. Wife and I recently watched "Mr. Wu", "Mockery" and "Tell It to the Marines." Enjoyed all 3 and they were quite different from each other. Of the three, "Mr Wu" was probably my favorite but all were great.