Movies with Alabama Connections: Our Dancing Daughters

I've written before on this blog about two Alabama natives who went Hollywood, Dorothy Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown. In this post I'm going to examine a 1928 silent film they made together, Our Dancing Daughters, a portrait of youth during the roaring, immoral twenties. The film also starred Joan Crawford, Anita Page and Nils Asther and was a financial success. Crawford's first film had been released in 1925; this one made her a star. 

The story unfolds among the parties, romances, and leisure activities of a group of young people moving in wealthy circles. Diana [Crawford] and Ann [Page] are best friends who meet the wealthy Ben [Brown] at one of their apparently frequent parties at the yacht club. Diana and Ben are immediately attracted to each other, but Ann soon makes her move. Diana has a "wild girl" reputation that sours Ben on her, and he marries the supposedly virginal Ann. We also watch the relationship between a third friend Beatrice [Sebastian] and another wealthy beau, Norman [Nils Asther]. Let's just say complications ensue. You can read Wikipedia's more detailed plot description here.

I enjoyed this film, which is only 86 minutes long. Watching Alabama natives acting in early Hollywood is always fun, and the story moves along at a rapid pace. I've seen enough silent films over the years that I'm comfortable watching them. 

Brown married Cornelia Foster in 1926, and they remained married until his death in 1974. They had four children. For more on him, see Beidler, Phillip D. "The Story of Johnny Mack Brown." Alabama Heritage 38 (Fall 1995): 14-25

Sebastian, on the other hand, cut a different path through Hollywood. She was married three times; the first husband was her high school sweetheart; that marriage ended in 1924. Husband number two was William "Hopalong Cassidy" Boyd; they married in 1930 and divorced six years later. The third marriage lasted until her death in 1957. She was briefly engaged to Clarence Brown, who just happened to operate a car dealership in Birmingham before his long career as a film director began. Sebastian also had an affair with Buster Keaton in the 1920's while he was married to Norma Talmadge. The affair may have resumed after she and Boyd were divorced. Sebastian was arrested for drunk driving in 1938 after a dinner at Keaton's also attended by her nephew.

See more comments below many of the stills. Reviews, commentary and more images related to the film can be found here. Brown and Sebastian both have stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

MGM tried to turn Brown into a leading man and went with the "John Mack Brown" name for a while. He made top of the line films with Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford and Jean Harlow for a few years, but then was replaced by some rising young star named Clark Cable. Brown, who had already made a few westerns, moved into that genre completely and had a career that lasted into the 1960's. He made over 160 films before he retired from the screen. Brown tested for the role of Tarzan in the 1932 film, but the director thought he was too short. 

In the opening scenes we see inside the house where Diana lives with her parents. Here they are talking in mum's bedroom before Diana heads out to yet another Yacht Club party. The Art Deco sets in this film are to die for....

At a massive party at the Yacht Club Diana cuts a rug or three. 

Meanwhile, Beatrice & Norman are outside in his car yakking. Norman wants to get married, Beatrice is resisting. This scene is the first time we see Sebastian in the film. Sebastian appeared in about sixty movies between 1925 and 1948, although most of those in the last decade or so used her in small roles. 

We have to wait a bit to find out why Sebastian is so reluctant. 

Ben lights up when he first sees Diana on the dance floor. 

Brown, of course, really did play halfback at Alabama and his performance in the 1925 Rose Bowl helped the team win a national championship. Brown's image on Wheaties cereal boxes soon followed, and he was invited to do a screen test in Hollywood in 1927. Brown was from Dothan, though, not Birmingham. 

Diana responds immediately when she sees Ben and learns his status.

There's lots of clever dialog in this film. 

Ben's initial interest in Diana is quickly overcome by Ann, the supposed "good girl" of the pair. Ben has no interest in the soiled dove Diana, who has a "party girl" reputation, so he ends up marrying Ann.

Oh, now we're back to Beatrice and Norman and their discussion in the car. 

Beatrice finally confesses--she had sex with other men before she met Norman!

Norman goes on to ask, "Were--they--of our crowd?" Beatrice is reluctant to answer, and then he declares he doesn't want to know. Then the kissing begins.

After a day of horseback riding with the gang, Diana and Beatrice have some fun with boots. 

At yet another Yacht Club party--ho, hum--the two Alabama natives have a chance to get together for a little talking. I wonder what interesting conversations they had on the set during filming. 

After Bea & Norman are married, Diana goes to visit. Some of Bea's exes tag along.

"Here's to the husbands--of the girls we love."

After breaking a glass, Norman offers a toast of his own: "Here's to the lovers--of the girls we marry." Bea is embarrassed, Diana embarrassed for her, and the exes make a quick retreat.

"Norman--you must forget--trust me!" They kiss and make up, but Norman declares, "I love you--then I hate you--then I love you again--" 

Diana comforts Bea by telling her that Norman will be back. Bea says "Yes--and all through our lives together--he'll be coming back--then leaving me again." Then she tells Diana to thank God she hasn't done "anything that can come back afterward and punish you." 

In much of the rest of the film we follow the marriage of Ben and Ann as it spirals downward. "Good girl" Ann is a lush and cheats on Ben continuously. In the end, however, Ben becomes free to marry his true love--the real good girl Diana. 

The four photographs below are publicity stills for the film. 

Sebastian and Asther made the cover of True Romances for November 1932. I'm not sure what it appeared four years after the movie. 

Source: Nils Asther fan blog

Sebastian and Asther in a photo by Ruth Harriet Louise, portrait photographer at MGM. Look familiar?

Source: Nils Asther fan blog

Sebastian made the cover of the Alabama Alumni Magazine spring 2008 for Catherine Gwaltney's article "So You Want to Be In Pictures" which examined Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown's lives and careers in Hollywood. Sebastian briefly attended the University of Alabama before marrying Allen Stafford in Nobvember 1920.

Joan Crawford Visited Birmingham--Twice

I recently read Bob Thomas' 1978 biography of actress Joan Crawford and ran across an interesting tidbit related to Birmingham. Let's investigate.

Crawford was one of the giant stars of American cinema from the late 1920's well into the 1960's. In her first film in 1925, Lady of the Night, she was a stand-in for the star, Norma Shearer, with whom Crawford would compete at MGM in just a few years. Her final film was 1970's Trog. In between she became a star by the end of the silent era, made the transition to talkies and continued her stardom for decades despite career ups and downs. She appeared in such classics and/or box office successes as Our Dancing Daughters, Rain, Untamed, Montana Moon, Mildred Pierce, Possessed, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? She was nominated three times for an Academy Award and won Best Actress for Mildred Pierce. 

Crawford's first three marriages to actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Phillip Terry and Franchot Tone ended in divorce. Her fourth and final marriage to Alfred Steele in 1955 eventually brought her to Birmingham.

Steele was a businessman in the soft drink industry. He rose to Vice-President for Marketing at Coca-Cola and eventually became CEO at Pepsi in 1949. Under Steele sales tripled from 1955 until 1957, and the brand was introduced around the world. He died of a heart attack in April 1959.

Crawford and Steele had married in Las Vegas in May 1959. After Steele's death Crawford was appointed to the company's Board of Directors and remained in that post until her forced retirement in 1973. During those years she was a relentless promoter of Pepsi; the brand appears in several of her later films.

See below for more on Crawford's adventures in Birmingham. 

Over the course of her career Crawford did youthful, smoldering and finally matronly. And she also did hats very well. 

Source: Joan Crawford--Marriages & Relationships

Crawford became a passionate promoter of Pepsi-Cola "with the same single-minded devotion that she had devoted to promoting Joan Crawford", wrote Thomas in his biography. "One of Joan's major missions was to lend glamour to the opening of bottling plants throughout the country and in foreign markets. The plants were generally located in outlying industrial areas, so Pepsi needed promotion to draw crowds. When full-page newspaper and television ads announced that Joan Crawford would appear, the results were often amazing."

 "At a Birmingham, Alabama, plant opening Joan signed autographs steadily for four hours and finally had to leave when her hand became too tired to hold a pen. Sixty thousand people appeared for the celebration. Five years later, bottler Jimmy Lee gave a "Thank You, Birmingham" party with Crawford as the major draw. The crowd was the largest in the city's history---73,000, more than attended the Alabama-Auburn football game." 

In October 1966 local Pepsi distributor Buffalo Rock opened a new bottling plant on a 15-acre site on Oxmoor Road. The facility cost two million dollars and sprawled over 75,000 square feet. To mark the occasion the Pepsi board of directors--including Crawford--decided to have a meeting there. That meeting was the first time the board had met at a bottling plant and the first time outside New York State. Thus Crawford's second appearance in the city must have been in 1971. 

Jimmy Lee, Jr. and Joan Crawford, October 1966

Source: Fisher, Virginia E. Buffalo Rock: A Hundred Years' Perspecttive [2000]

The new Buffalo Rock plant on Oxmoor Road that opened in October 1966

Source: Fisher, Virginia E. Buffalo Rock: A Hundred Years' Perspecttive [2000]

The Pepsi visits to Birmingham were not Crawford's only connection to Alabama. Early in her career she made several films with two Alabama natives, Dorothy Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown. In 1928 Crawford appeared with both actors in Our Dancing Daughters. Crawford and Brown appeared in one of her rare westerns, Montana Moon. That 1930 film introduced the singing cowboy to the movies. Our Blushing Brides, another 1930 film, starred Crawford and Sebastian.   

Movies with Alabama Connections (8): The Big Gamble

This 1931 film actually has two Alabama connections. The female lead is Birmingham native Dorothy Sebastian. The film is based on a novel by Octavus Roy Cohen, a prolific author who spent a number of years in Birmingham and who set many short stories in the city. I've posted about Sebastian in my "Film Actresses from Alabama before 1960" series and Cohen in my "Alabama Book Covers" series. 

Sebastian's male co-star in the film was her husband at the time, Bill Boyd. Sebastian and Boyd were married in December 1930 in Las Vegas. They had met the previous year while making the film His First Command. The couple divorced in 1936. By that time Boyd was just beginning to play the character that would make him even more famous, Hopalong Cassidy.

Some other interesting actors show up in The Big Gamble. Warner Oland played the villain; he was well known for his roles in other films as Fu Manchu and Charlie Chan. ZaZu Pitts had a long career in both dramatic and comedic roles stretching from silent films into the early 1960's. 

Below is the New York Times original review of the film from September 1931. The story is pretty contrived and ends as you would expect, but the Alabama connections kept me watching to the end. The Big Gamble is the first film with Birmingham native Dorothy Sebastian that I've seen, and I'll have to look for more. 

The Big Gamble poster

Source: Wikipedia

Cohen's novel was published in 1925.

On the film's release in 1931, the New York Times ran this review: 

The man with a year to live is stalking heroically and a bit sadly across the Hippodrome screen this week in "The Big Gamble," which started its public career as a novel by Octavus Roy Cohen called "The Iron Chalice." The situation is a reliable standby for the amusement-hunter who likes an hour of honest suspense between the sinister beginning and the happy ending. With James Gleason and ZaSu Pitts on hand to make funny faces at the plot, after those scenes in which Warner Oland has sent out a new ultimatum to the doomed man and lured the spectators to the tense edges of their seats, "The Big Gamble" fits without a jar into the Hippodrome program between the acrobats and the newsreel.

Alan Beckwith, gambler, is at the end of his rope, but before quitting life he wants to square his debts. Mr. North, who has a proposition for every occasion, agrees to take care of the debts if Beckwith will marry a certain woman, who shall be named beneficiary in a $100,000 insurance policy. At the end of a year, the policy being ripe for payment, Beckwith will die in an "accident" and Mr. North will be richer by his death.

Naturally the inscrutable Mr. North had not counted on his pawns falling in love. A year is a short time and love is stronger than Mr. North and all his paid gunmen. Beckwith and his wife work furiously against the deadline and manage to scrape enough money together to pay back Mr. North. Then, on Dec. 31, Mr. North announces that he wants $100,000 or nothing. In the last five minutes before Beckwith and his wife pose for the happy fadeout, "The Big Gamble" offers a wild midnight automobile chase and a final dash of the gangster car down an embankment that was exciting enough to whip yesterday's spectators into scattered applause.

Bill Boyd and Dorothy Sebastian officiate as the gambler Beckwith and his wife. Warner Oland compounds his usual expert villainies in the rôle of North. As a small-time tout who aspires to a gunman's career, James Gleason is amusing, and as his bickering wife ZaSu Pitts again exhibits her talent as a comedienne.

One Year to Live.
THE BIG GAMBLE, based on Octavus Roy Cohen's story, "The Iron Chalice"; directed by Fred Niblo; an RKO Pathe production. At the Hippodrome.
Alan Beckwith . . . . . Bill Boyd
Beverly . . . . . Dorothy Sebastian
Mr. North . . . . . Warner Oland
Johnny . . . . . William Collier Jr.
Squint . . . . . James Gleason
Nora . . . . . ZaSu Pitts
May . . . . . June MacCloy
Trixie . . . . . Geneva Mitchell
Webb . . . . . Ralph Ince
Butler . . . . . Fred Walton

SOURCE: This review appeared in the New York Times on 21 September 1931.

Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (3): Dorothy Sebastian

Dorothy Sebastian's film career flamed briefly in the late 1920's and early 1930's and then just as quickly burned out. During that period she did appear in major roles in several high-profile films with other stars of the time.

She was born in Birmingham on April 26, 1903, one of five children of Robert and Stell Sabiston. Robert was a minister and the couple had served as foreign missionaries before settling in Birmingham. Stell was a painter, and Dorothy and her mother operated a small shop selling portraits and needlepoint creations. 

Dorothy eloped with her high school sweetheart, but the marriage ended in 1924. At this point she headed to New York and what she hoped would be a dance and acting career. She played a chorus girl that year on Broadway in George White's Scandals which opened in June and ran for 196 performances. She appeared in that show with her new last name.

Sebastian managed to get a screen test with United Artists and appeared in her first five films in 1925. In 1927 she was the female lead in a Tom Mix western, The Arizona Wildcat. The next year she played along with Joan Crawford and fellow Alabama native John Mack Brown in the drama Our Dancing Daughters. 

Her acting career continued into the early sound era. In 1929 she appeared in Spite Marriage with Buster Keaton, who was her lover at the time. She also had an affair with director Clarence Brown. Interestingly, Brown had operated an auto dealership in Birmingham before World War I.

In the early 1930's Sebastian asked for a raise in her MGM contract, but the studio refused and dropped her from its roster. She appeared in a few more films before she married William Boyd, better known as cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. That marriage ended in 1936 in a bitter divorce. 

Sebastian continued to appear in a few small roles until her final film appearance in 1948. During World War II she worked in a defense factory where she met her future third husband, businessman Herman Shapiro. She died of cancer in April 1957.

A lengthy biography can be found at the Internet Movie Database along with a complete list of her films. A web site devoted to Sebastian can be found here. 

Unless otherwise noted, images are from the Lantern media history digital library.

Dorothy Sebastian

Source: Wikipedia 

Source: BhamWiki

Picture-Play Magazine 1926

Photoplay 1927

Screenland 1928

Motion Picture Classic 1928

The 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters starred two Alabama natives, Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown, who was a football great at the University of Alabama before heading to Hollywood.

Dorothy Sebastian, Joan Crawford, and Anita Page in a publicity still for OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS (1928):

Source: The Hollywood Revue blog