Marion Davies filmography?

misspickford9 · Post by **misspickford9** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:29 pm

Hey guys I've signed up to do the Annenberg tour dealy (the ''Marion Davies Beach House'' in Santa Monica) and I'd like to get a little more acquainted with Marion for it. I was wondering how many of her films still exist? Also what would you guys say are her best silents, and talkies?

My only problem with her is that everyone says shes the greatest comedienne since sliced bread, but I was very under impressed with The Fair Co-Ed...but then in fairness to Marion thats the only film of hers I've ever seen. So I'd like to check out a few more of them.

And an added question: does anyone know what films of hers were filmed at the Beach house? There is a photo of her filming a scene from "Show People" in front of the house, but I was wondering if there were any others..I thought that would be neat to include in my lecture. Thanks!

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 8:56 pm

Definitely catch SHOW PEOPLE and THE PATSY. I've also seen QUALITY STREET, which I really like, but it's more of a quirky drama/romance with some comedy than a true out and out comedy. I thought she was fine in THE RED MILL, but it didn't stick with me the way the others did. I felt a lot of actresses would have done just as well in that film.

And of course the documentary from Timeline films will give you clips of many films.

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Sat Mar 14, 2009 9:38 pm

misspickford9, Rodney,

Personally, I loved THE RED MILL. I laughed like crazy. Great supporting cast, I don't know how you could ask for much more. TILLIE THE TOILER is cute if you can find a copy. LITTLE OLD NEW YORK is a wonderful film. ZANDER THE GREAT is quite good. Would love to see THE PATSY with the Maud Nilsson score, rather than the Vivek Madalla one. His score is to much like Elevator music. SHOW PEOPLE is one of the great Silent comedies. You are lucky to have had the chance to see THE FAIR CO-ED at a live event. I have a poor bootleg copy that is barely even watchable. THE CARDBOARD LOVER is positively hilarious!

A surprising chunk of Marion's films survive. But not much has been done with the public domain titles thus far. None are presently on official DVD.

Marion from QUALITY STREET

Marion As Tina From THE RED MILL

Marion From SHOW PEOPLE

Marion From ????

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 12:18 pm

[quote="Gagman 66"]misspickford9, Rodney,

Personally, I loved THE RED MILL. I laughed like crazy. Great supporting cast, I don't know how you could ask for much more. TILLIE THE TOILER is cute if you can find a copy. LITTLE OLD NEW YORK is a wonderful film. ZANDER THE GREAT is quite good. Would love to see THE PATSY with the Maud Nilsson score, rather than the Vivek Madalla one. His score is to much like Elevator music. SHOW PEOPLE is one of the great Silent comedies. You are lucky to have had the chance to see THE FAIR CO-ED at a live event. I have a poor bootleg copy that is barely even watchable. THE CARDBOARD LOVER is positively hilarious!

Okay, I'm officially jealous now. I'd love to see ZANDER THE GREAT and LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, but I don't know of any venues around here to schedule them in unless they can be had in 16mm. I've looked from time to time, but I can't find anyone with a print.

Harold Aherne · Post by **Harold Aherne** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 2:45 pm

I once calculated Marion's percentage of surviving films, and it came to 87% including the talkies, although several are incomplete. Looking through various AMS posts, I found out more specific info--

The following appear to be lost: Runaway Romany from 1917, Cecilia of the Pink Roses and The Burden of Proof from 1918, The Dark Star and The Cinema Murder from 1919, and The Young Diana from 1922.

At least the following are held at LOC:
The Belle of New York (1919) incomplete
Getting Mary Married (1919) incomplete
The Restless Sex (1920) incomplete, also at Gosfilmofond, length unknown
Buried Treasure (1921) incomplete
Enchantment (1921)
The Bride's Play (1921)
When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922)
Beverly of Graustark (1926)

MOMA has:
Yolanda (1924)
Zander the Great (1925)

Beauty's Worth (1922), Little Old New York (1923), and Janice Meredith (1924) all exist, although I haven't confirmed which at archive(s).

I've read that April Folly (1920) and Adam and Eva (1923) survive, but I haven't heard much about them, and the latter may be incomplete. I believe all of Marion's films from 1923 onward exist, although I doubt that anything remains of her aborted 1928 musical The Five O'Clock Girl; does anyone know more?

-Harold

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:04 pm

Harold,

My friend Ed, has a copy of the Silent version of MARIANNE on DVD-R. It has a different leading man, than the sound version. No Lawrence Gray, but the film does exist. Ed is Marion's greatest fan, and believes that He has collected copies of all of Marion's surviving Silent features, but one. I do not recall the title, but I will try to find out. Off hand, I believe that it was probably YOLANDA?. However, you have mentioned several in-complete titles that I don't believe Ed, has gotten his hands on yet?

He has a very nice print of BEAUTY'S WORTH, though it is not among Marion's better films. Have yet to see a good print of WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER, LIGHTS OF BROADWAY, or BEVERLY OF GRAUSTARK.

misspickford9 · Post by **misspickford9** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:20 pm

Thanks guys! Thats quite impressive...it might be one of the highest surviving film rates like EVER! Of course since Hearst adored her pictures thats probably not too surprising. I'll have to check some of those out, I am extremely curious about Show People.

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 3:43 pm

misspickford9,

A quick note. There are two versions of SHOW PEOPLE circulating around. One has a Carl Davis score and was produced for Thames Television by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill in 1982. It was released on VHS by MGM in the late 80's or early 90's. Here's where things get confusing though. The other one was released by MGM/UA Tuner Home Entertainment on Laser-disc and it says on the sleeve that this is the Thames Silents version, but it isn't. Instead this release actually has the vintage Dr. William Axt-David Mendoza score with the popular theme song they wrote called "Crossroads".

The vintage track print is the version that TCM now runs, and has been for several years. When TCM first started in 1994, they probably ran the Thames version? I assume that when Carl Davis composed his score in 1982, the sound disc's had not yet been found, but later they were? DVD-R's of these versions are not hard to find. Both scores are quite good, and I am probably partial to the original one to be honest, maybe because it was the first one that I heard. There are some subtle differences between the two prints.

FrankFay · Post by **FrankFay** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:38 pm

Rodney wrote:
Gagman 66 wrote:misspickford9, Rodney,

Okay, I'm officially jealous now. I'd love to see ZANDER THE GREAT and LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, but I don't know of any venues around here to schedule them in unless they can be had in 16mm. I've looked from time to time, but I can't find anyone with a print.

Grapevine sold Little Old New York in a decent enough VCR version and now it's on DVD:
http://www.grapevinevideo.com/little_old_new_york.htm

This isn't an archival version by any means but I found it very watchable- and it has a pretty good compiled score.

One reel of Enchantment was shown at Cinefest some years back. It was stunningly beautiful, as was Marion- although I've heard the film as a whole is a dud, one of the Sweet Girl roles that Hearst thought was best for her.

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 4:46 pm

Frank,

I have two versions of LITTLE OLD NEW YORK. The one from the now defunct (I think) Forgotten Films, might be a slightly better print than the Grapevine version is. On the other hand Grapevine's definitely has the superior music. As Grapevine prints go, this is one of the best they have put out. Right up there with Constance Talmadge THE DUCHESS OF BUFFALO Another print with good contrast, and not to dark.

Someone just mentioned here in another thread a week or two ago, about seeing this film in 35 Millimeter at a live screening back in October of 2007.

misspickford9 · Post by **misspickford9** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 6:44 pm

Roughly how many of her films do you guys think are on DVD? And I know a few were listed above but which ones would you suggest? This way I can incorporate that too when lecturing, maybe people will check them out

.

Thanks for the heads up on the scores. Its always so tricky buying silent film DVDs right down to things like that! At least in this case its the matter of two GOOD scores...LOL thats a rarity!

Also does anyone have any talkies of hers to suggest? I believe these all have so far been silent? Are any of those on DVD? Apparently she went to great lengths to work past that stutter, and Im very curious to hear it. Maybe I'll do a Silents talk on her since a lot of people fail to realize she WORKED PAST IT lol!

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:16 pm

Sadly, the only official DVD release of a Marion Davies feature if you can consider it as such is QUALITY STREET (1927). Image Entertainment stuck this as an extra on THE REAL MARION DAVIES Documentary DVD. Even then I am not real sure the print is actually from Warner's? It looks more like a 16 Millimeter dupe than a 35 Millimeter source?

There are a number of the public domain titles that are floating around from second-tier video labels on DVD-R, but not on true DVD. A DVD set of the MGM Silents has been pending for years now, but nothing has ever come of this.

I think I have all but a couple of Marion's sound films, and she had a beautiful voice to my ear. She was very good at accents. PEG 'O MY HEART is generally considered her best sound feature. For some reason, I can't think of the name of the movie she made with Bing Crosby, but it was great. Marion maintained her popularity well into the 1930's.

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:42 am

'GOING HOLLYWOOD" is the one with Bing Crosby. TCM shows that and the other talkies, "FLORADORA GIRL" and "CAIN AND MABEL" and "BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES" and "PEG O MY HEART" occasionally.

My personal favorite is "MARRIANNE". It is a lively musical with Marion doing a French accent and singing and dancing. I've never seen the silent version. Who played the leading man?

Danny

Rodney · Post by **Rodney** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 7:58 am

Gagman 66 wrote: Sadly, the only official DVD release of a Marion Davies feature if you can consider it as such is QUALITY STREET (1927). Image Entertainment stuck this as an extra on THE REAL MARION DAVIES Documentary DVD. Even then I am not real sure the print is actually from Warner's? It looks more like a 16 Millimeter dupe than a 35 Millimeter source?

The DVD is actually called "Captured on Film: The True Story of Marion Davies," and it's from Milestone Films. It includes QUALITY STREET as an extra, with (as I remember) a score by Philip Carli. Mont Alto actually has a score for it as well, but it hasn't been recorded. I have seen both this version of QUALITY STREET and a 16mm that was in Rusty Casselton's collection that must have originated somewhere else, since each had different issues -- more nitrate decomp in the one on the DVD, and a missing scene in the 16mm. I couldn't tell you about the original source of either print. Hugh Neely of Timeline Films was one of the co-directors of the documentary, and had video transfers made for that of many of Marion's films, and he'd be the one to ask if you want to follow up.

Here's a link to the DVD:

http://www.milestonefilms.com/movie.php/cap/

misspickford9 · Post by **misspickford9** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:53 pm

Danny wrote:'GOING HOLLYWOOD" is the one with Bing Crosby. TCM shows that and the other talkies, "FLORADORA GIRL" and "CAIN AND MABEL" and "BLONDIE OF THE FOLLIES" and "PEG O MY HEART" occasionally.

My personal favorite is "MARRIANNE". It is a lively musical with Marion doing a French accent and singing and dancing. I've never seen the silent version. Who played the leading man?

Danny

We'll be viewing as a group the Marion Davies documentary, so thats all good. Honestly I must say the Santa Monica Conservancy has done a wonderful job on educating as we've had some fabulous speakers (Cari Beauchamp and Mark Wannamaker were two).

Oh my NO NO NO French comedies for awhile! After Kiki I am thoroughly tramatized, though I will assume Marion Davies movie wouldnt give me nightmares :p.

Gagman 66 · Post by **Gagman 66** » Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:49 pm

I seemed to have confused LITTLE OLD NEW YORK with WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER. I have two prints of that film too on DVD-R. One is sharper, and moves at a faster frame-rate. The other is slower moving, and not as clear a transfer. Unfortunately, I do not recall where either of these came from? I have had them for a few years now. I don't think Grapevine has released KNIGHTHOOD, have they?

Anyway, the point I am making here is I think allot of people would be very pleased with the Grapevine DVD-R of LITTLE OLD NEW YORK. Don't worry about the Forgotten films print. Contrary to what I said a couple days ago, the Grapevine print is probably a better transfer, and has a pretty good score to go along with it.