David Harum (Famous Players, 1915)

David Harum (Famous Players, 1915)
Directed by Allan Dwan
Starring William H. Crane

I read the novel this film is based on a couple years ago. David Harum, the book, isn’t about David Harum. The main character is John Lenox and the story follows him as he struggles to get ahead in life, hoping to one day be wealthy enough to make a suitable husband for the rich Mary Blake. While traces of that are here in David Harum, the film, this David Harum very much is the focus of the story, with John fading quite into the background. I’ll say upfront, I don’t fault the film for that. Novels and movies are two different media, and what works in one may not work in the other. A faithful David Harum adaptation would be terribly dull, just by nature of how the book is written.

David Harum (William H. Crane) is a successful banker in the small town of Homeville, New York. His cashier, Chet Timson (Hal Clarendon), is a slimy fellow who thinks he’s a great deal more essential to the running of the bank than he actually is. It comes as quite a shock when he finds himself fired and a new man, John Lenox (Harold Lockwood), at his place behind the counter.

John is in Homeville following the suicide of his father, who had gotten himself into some particularly dire financial straits that have left John virtually penniless. All he has left is a worthless tract of wasteland, which he would sell but David has a hunch that it may turn out to be of some value.

Chet is involved in a counterfeiting operation. He had been taking the counterfeit bills from some nefarious character and exchanging them for real currency at the bank. Now it seems to have caught up with him and the Feds are in town investigating. Chet is sweet on the schoolmarm, Mary Blake (May Allison), who plainly favors John over him. Seeing a chance to kill two birds with one stone, he plants the counterfeits on John and alerts the authorities.

John is arrested, but David suspects a set-up. He finds the other man involved in the counterfeiting plot and forces him to confess. Unmasked, Chet finds himself persona non grata and the whole town gathers to ride him out on a rail. Incidentally, the engineering report that David had been waiting for finally arrives: that wasteland of John’s sits atop an enormous oil reserve worth untold fortunes.

It’s quite a departure from the novel’s plot. The counterfeiting operation, the federal investigation, the love triangle, Mary being a teacher (or even being in Homeville at all) — those are all inventions of the film. There were some counterfeit bills in the book, but they weren’t even a subplot, much less the central conflict. They were just a minor incident in John’s apprenticeship — David testing his integrity. No, if you were expecting to see the book put to screen, you’d come away from David Harum disappointed. Taken on its own, however, David Harum is an enjoyable film. The story holds together and doesn’t drag, with a good mix of exciting and tender moments and occasional comic relief, but even disregarding that, you have to commend the film for its faultless cinematography. I especially liked the tracking shots that take you down the street to the bank — you get a good feel for Homeville, both as it’s physically arranged and, more abstractly, the way that it all converges on David Harum.

Side note, we can be pretty sure that filming wrapped by May 7^th, 1915 at the latest, since the ship they’re on is the Lusitania.

My rating: I like it.

Available from Televista. I’d usually link directly to the distributor’s website, but I just can’t get it to work, so have an Amazon link instead.

The Borrowed Flat (American, 1911)

The Borrowed Flat (American, 1911)
Directed by Allan Dwan (maybe?)
Starring J. Warren Kerrigan

A true chamber drama, in the sense that it takes place entirely on a single set with a principle cast of just two players. Further, the whole film appears to have been done in one continuous take (there are actually a few cuts, but most are masked by title cards and the one that isn’t is so seamless that I had to step over it frame-by-frame to find it).

Percy Pigeon (J. Warren Kerrigan) arrives home to find a “Kick Me” sign on his back — it’s April Fool’s day, the calendar reveals. He’s expecting his aunt to visit later and, as he hopes to be well remembered in her will, he wants to make a good impression. This involves replacing the artwork on the walls with signs reading “Love Your Relatives” and “What is Home Without an Aunt?”

Bobby, Percy’s friend, appears and asks to borrow his apartment to meet his fiancée. Percy agrees. Bobby writes to Dolly to come at once and they’ll be married right away, then leaves to get dressed. Once he’s gone, Percy decides to play a joke of his own. He takes Bobby’s letter and readdresses it to Bridget O’Rafferty, their washerwoman. Later, when Bobby is waiting in the apartment alone, Bridget shows up ready to get hitched and isn’t eager to take ‘no’ for an answer.

After Bridget’s exit (pushed out the window), Bobby notices the letter from Percy’s aunt on the table and, returning tit for tat, takes a dress and wig from the closet (why does Percy have these?) and impersonates her. Percy is surprised. It seems like there should be more to the ending, but the original end card is intact on my print and it runs all of its advertised 420 feet, so I don’t think anything is missing. It just very abruptly stops with Percy on the floor searching for a dropped ring (?) while Bobby as Auntie stands over him.

Technically speaking, this is not an advanced film (aside from that impressively concealed cut while Bobby is fiddling with the latch on the trunk), but even if the technique wasn’t pioneering, the story is well enough presented. “It fulfills its purpose”, to quote Moving Picture World. They didn’t seem to care for it much. While all the other films got a paragraph synopsis, The Borrowed Flat has just “A comedy presenting what happened in a borrowed flat”. I wouldn’t be so dismissive, though. I personally found it entertaining.

My rating: I like it.

Available from Harpodeon

Man’s Calling (American, 1912)

Man’s Calling (American, 1912)
Directed by Allan Dwan
Starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Jessalyn Van Trump

In California, a “religious old mountaineer” (George Periolat) intends that he son (J. Warren Kerrigan) should become a friar. He’s sent to the mission, but before reaching it, he meets a girl (Jessalyn Van Trump) and falls in love. After several days, he decides to abandon the cloth and marry her.

A year passes, and at its end, the son returns home to visit his father. The father, who all the while has thought that his son had entered the priesthood, is surprised to see him. “I heeded the call of love”, he explains. His father rejects him, not angrily but in crushing disappointment. The son calls his wife over. At the sight of her and of the newborn child she carries, the father yields and embraces them both.

The announcement for Man’s Calling in the trade magazine Moving Picture World somewhat grandiloquently calls it a drama “dealing with the psychology of the soul”. That doesn’t actually say much about what the film might be, but it does suggest what it isn’t. One reel dramas can often feel more or less rushed because they try to maintain a sense of constant action and try to cover too much material than they can do justice, but Man’s Calling keeps the plot remarkably simple and staid, and in doing so, it really gives itself some room to breathe and allows the cast to act with deliberation and conviction. Regardless of whether it succeeds in revealing the “psychology of the soul”, it does manage to use its thirteen minutes to establish believable characters that appear to act with real emotion.

My rating: I like it.

Three Million Dollars (American, 1911)

Three Million Dollars (American, 1911)
Directed by Allan Dwan
Starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Pauline Bush

To close out the gay-themed silent films review series, I’ve decided to take a look at a film that doesn’t feature any gay characters, but does star a notable gay actor: J. Warren Kerrigan.

Great God Kerrigan, as he was known, was one of the first major movie stars and appeared in well over a hundred short westerns in the first half of the 1910s. He principally worked for the American Film Manufacturing Company – or the Flying “A” – under the direction of Allan Dwan. Very, very few of those early shorts survive. I’ll be looking at one of them: Three Million Dollars (1911).

 

Joseph Close (George Periolat) receives a letter from the lawyer of his wealthy and recently deceased brother informing him that his daughter Estella (Pauline Bush) stands to inherit $3,000,000 on the condition that she marries before the end of the month, but “the girl refuses to get married because nobody loves her”. Joe isn’t about to let $3,000,000 slip through his fingers over so minor an issue. He offers a thousand dollars apiece to a group of cowboys to abduct his daughter, find and abduct a suitable husband for her, and then bring them before the Justice of the Peace.

The unwitting groom is Arthur White (J. Warren Kerrigan). He’s taken, tied and blindfolded, to the feed lot, where they already have Estella waiting, similarly encumbered. Before the Justice of the Peace arrives, Arthur wiggles free. He unties Estella, the two steal a horse, and they make their escape into the desert.

As they flee from their kidnappers, Arthur and Estella fall in love and decide to go back. They tie themselves up again and wait for the Justice of the Peace, who marries them on the spot. Joe, so pleased with the outcome, kisses both Estella and Arthur – the latter making quite a show of spitting and rubbing his face afterward.

 

Three Million Dollars is a silly film, but I don’t know if that’s intentional. It was billed as a western romance, but it strikes me as more of a comedy. The romance doesn’t exist – after a frantic escape across the desert, they climb a rock and Arthur says “Let’s go back and get married”. That’s the extent of the romance between the two leads. Apart from that, though, I have to say that I was very impressed by Pauline Bush. She acted extremely well during the abduction and escape. Kerrigan was hamming it up and not taking his role at all seriously, but I can’t say I blame him.

What happened to Kerrigan’s stardom? There were a few factors at play. The studio line was that he lost his audience’s favor by refusing to enlist in the First World War, which was true. It’s also true that he made some rather unfortunate remarks in that regard, to the effect that it was a good thing so many plebes were going over to be cannon fodder that a star like him could stay safe at home. It was said jokingly, but it didn’t make him any friends.

The other and probably more significant reason was Kerrigan’s refusal to marry and his disregard for secrecy. In the early days, it didn’t matter. The industry was small and insular, and when it came to the performers’ personal lives, audiences were only spoon-fed whatever lies the studio thought it best for them to hear. By the end of the 1910s, it had got too big and the stars lived too much in the public’s eye. The studio may not care whether or not an actor was gay, so long as they kept selling tickets, but they had to shield themselves from the moral crusaders crying for censorship and government oversight, and overtly gay actors were a liability. Others, like Alla Nazimova and Charles Bryant, entered “lavender marriages” – where a gay actor and a lesbian actress marry, show themselves off together in public, and give a few interviews about how married they are – but Kerrigan wouldn’t do that. Kerrigan also had a tendency of being a little too catty in interviews. In one famous example, his usual reply to the “Why aren’t you married?” question – “I have my mother to take care of” – wasn’t good enough and the interviewer kept doggedly approaching it from different angles until at last asking point-blank if he even liked girls. Kerrigan replied: “I like them just fine, when they leave me alone.”

Kerrigan never entirely vanished, but his days of being a star were over. He attempted a come-back in the mid-1920s, with films like The Covered Wagon (1923) and Captain Blood (1924), but his career didn’t revive and he retired from the screen. When he died in 1947, he was survived by his boyfriend of nearly forty years, James Vincent, who he met on set when he was just starting out at the Flying “A” in 1910.

How do I rate the Three Million Dollars? As a pure romance, it’s laughable, but taken as a comedy, it’s not bad – far from good, but not bad. That can only mean…

My rating: Meh.

Available from Harpodeon