Showing posts with label Lois Wilson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lois Wilson. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

Lois Wilson's "Deluge"

I've written a couple of blog posts about Lois Wilson, an actress born in Pittsburgh who grew up in Alabama. She won the first contest of what became the Miss Alabama pageant before heading to Hollywood. Wilson had a long career in both silent and sound films between 1915 and 1949. She also had roles on several television soap operas in the 1950's. Wilson never married and died in 1988. 

In the first post I covered her life and career in some detail. In the second one I wrote about Birmingham sculptor George Bridges and the work he created inspired by her 1934 film No Greater Glory. 

In one of her 1926 roles she played Daisy Buchanan in the first film version of The Great Gatsby. That film is currently lost; in this post I'm discussing one of her sound films believed lost for many years, the 1933 work Deluge. A copy was discovered in a film archive in Italy in 1981. This Italian-dubbed copy was issued with English subtitles. In 2016 a 35mm negative with an English soundtrack was located and restored by Lobster Films. 

Deluge is perhaps the first in a genre familiar to us today--the natural disaster film that focuses on small groups of survivors. We get the buildup as scientists follow the signs of coming events, the disaster itself, and two romances in the ruins. Special effects footage from this film were used in at least three other movies in the 1930's and 1940's. 

The film's source is a 1928 novel of the same name by English author S. Fowler Wright. He wrote a number of science fiction novels, as well as historical fiction  and mysteries. Deluge: A Romance became a best-seller in both the United States and the United Kingdom. A sequel, Dawn, was published the following year but was not as successful.  

Deluge the film was made in what is known as "pre-code Hollywood". This period lasted from the beginning of widespread use of sound in 1929 until mid-1934, when the "Hays Code" of censorship accepted by the studios went into effect. Many films addressed topics later to be banned: infidelity, abortion, illegal drug use, sexual relationships between blacks and whites, promiscuity, prostitution and more. Oh, and what passed at the time for an abundant exposure of female flesh. Most of these films seem tame compared with today's movies and television, but were bold and groundbreaking for sound films in the early 1930's. Deluge manages to include some infidelity and a few glimpses of ladies in their underwear and such. 

A lot of the same subjects had been explored in silent films, however. An over the top example is The Mystery of the Leaping Fish, a Sherlock Holmes parody in which Douglas Fairbanks plays Coke Ennyday, who injects you-know-what. The short comedy film is a riotous depiction of cocaine use that seems shocking even now. 

All topic drifting aside, I enjoyed watching Deluge. The film holds up remarkably well; the flooding of New York City is especially impressive. Contemporary audiences, not jaded by CGI effects in so many films, could watch in awe as a model Big Apple was swept away. The scene in which the city if totally flooded and most inhabitants drown would be recreated in the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow. Deluge, which cost $171,000 to make and filmed entirely in Los Angeles, is only 70 minutes long and moves quickly. You can watch Deluge on YouTube

Wilson made a number of other films after Deluge; her final one was The Girl from Jones Beach in 1949. In the early 1950's she appeared in three different television soap operas. She never married and died at age 93 in 1988.

Actress Peggy Shannon, who plays Claire, died in 1941 at the age of 34. In May of that year her husband Albert Roberts returned to their apartment to find Peggy dead in a chair at the kitchen table. She had died of a heart attacked resulting from alcoholism. Three weeks later Albert committed suicide sitting in the same chair. 



The cover of Wright's 1928 novel 



Source: Wikipedia



Cover of a 1998 VHS release

Source: Amazon













Early in the film we meet Claire [Peggy Shannon] getting a rubdown and displaying some skin. 






Scientists all over the world are watching the signs of impending apocalypse. 


Just before the apocalyptic events reach them, there is a touching family scene with Helen [Lois Wilson], Martin and their two children. They soon have to evacuate their home for higher ground.


Some four minutes of the film are devoted to the destruction of New York City. 









After the deluge, Martin awakens in a devastated landscape. Helen and the children are nowhere to be found.



Helen is rescued by two lowlifes who do no have the best intentions toward her. We get another bit of Pre-Code female flesh in this scene. At this point we have no idea what's happened to the children. 



The two men soon fight over Helen, and the big one, Jephson, survives. In order to escape, Helen heads to the water and swims off. 



Pre-Code films got away with this sort of thing. 



Meanwhile, Martin has found a cabin and nearby mineshaft to live in. Guess who washes up on his beach--Claire, of course.



Claire and Tom quickly develop feelings for each other in this almost-bucolic Adam-and-Eve situation. 






Meanwhile, in the ruins of a seaside town, Helen is reunited with her children and living with a man named Tom.






Some of the men with Jephson have entered the cavern to search for Claire and Martin. 



Claire and Martin are ready for them. 

Some townspeople happen to be in the area and rescue the pair. The group returns to town, and Martin and Helen are reunited.



 Needless to say, Claire and Tom are devastated by this development.  


Helen visits Claire and they discuss their mutual love, Martin. Claire is determined not to give him up. 


However, when Claire sees Helen and Martin at a town meeting, she realizes they are a happy couple. She heads to the beach.


In a scene that mirrors Helen's earlier in the film, a distraught Claire swims away, presumably to her death. Martin has followed her and watches her go.


The End 

 

Friday, June 5, 2020

The 1934 Lois Wilson Statue

In March 2015 I posted on this blog about Lois Wilson in the first of a continuing series about film actresses from the state whose careers started before 1960. Although born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1894, Wilson grew up in Birmingham and graduated from what is now the University of West Alabama. In 1915 after teaching for a brief period and then winning a beauty contest that made her the first Miss Alabama, she headed for Hollywood. 

Between 1915 and 1936 Wilson appeared in some 150 silent and sound films, mostly for Paramount. After 1936 she appeared in four more movies before retiring from films for good. She did perform on Broadway and in TV soap operas such as The Guiding Light [January 1954-December 1955] and The Secret Storm [1954]. She died in Reno, Nevada, on March 3, 1988. 

One of six films she made in 1934 was No Greater Glory. Directed by Frank Borzage, the movie is based on the 1906 novel The Paul Street Boys by Hungarian author Ferenc Molnar. The anti-war allegory follows two gangs of boys as they prepare to fight over an empty playground. Wilson plays the mother of one of the boys. Apparently, according to a New York Times article cited in the Wikipedia entry, the film was not a financial success. 

One viewer obviously taken with the film was George Bridges, a Birmingham sculptor. Bridges saw the film at a special preview at the Empire Theater and was so impressed by Wilson's performance he created this statue seen below.

Although born in Chattanooga, Bridges  spent much of his life in the Magic City. After World War I service he met and married Birmingham debutante Eleanor Massey. In 1921 the pair built a home in Homewood's Edgewood community that would serve as an artistic vortex for decades. They traveled far and wide from Paris to Greece and Morocco, but they always returned to host the salons at their home. Among other efforts, the city's Little Theatre originated in discussions there. 

Bridges' best known work is the Brother Bryan statue in Five Points South. He also created the monument to Tom Talbot, founder of the International Association of Machinists in Grant Park in Atlanta. Bridges died in 1976. Eleanor, herself a prolific painter, continued as an artistic and civic whirlwind until her death in 1987. Their pink stucco house remains in private hands; you can see many historical photographs of the house and Eleanor and George and their works here. You can read about the recent threats to the house and efforts to save it here.

Lois Wilson is described in the caption as "Birmingham's first picture star" and in "her greatest role in years" in this film. I wonder what happened to the statue?

See below for a bit more about Wilson. 




Source: Birmingham News 4 May 1934 via Newspapers.com



Source: Wikipedia




Lois Wilson in The Truth About the Movies edited by Laurence A. Hughes and published in 1924. Her statement is below.







In 1926 Wilson played Daisy Buchanan in the first film version of The Great Gatsby released just a year after the novel was published. Like so many silent films, this one has not survived but a one-minute trailer does exist. Thus we have an Alabama actress playing a character based on Alabama native Zelda Fitzgerald

Source: The Film Daily 1926 via Media History Digital Library





Monday, March 16, 2015

Film Actresses from Alabama before 1960 (1): Lois Wilson


One of the earliest actresses from Alabama to find success in Hollywood, Lois Wilson is probably unknown to most state residents today. Although born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 28, 1894, her family soon moved to Birmingham where she grew up. 

We can find some interesting information about the family in the 1910 U.S. Census. Her father is A.K. Wilson, a Canadian native. Her mother Constance was born in Pennsylvania. Also listed are three other daughters, all younger than Lois, and grandfather William Wilson. The family lived in the city's 15th Ward. 

She graduated from Alabama Normal College in Livingston, which is now the University of West Alabama. Apparently Wilson just missed the era of famed educator and reformer Julia Tutwiler, who directed the school from 1881 until 1910.

By 1915 Wilson was teaching school. We can assume her ambitions ran beyond that; she entered a Miss Birmingham contest sponsored by the Birmingham News and Universal Pictures. By winning she received a trip to Hollywood for an audition. After a brief period in Chicago, she won her first film role--a small part in a short, The Palace of Dust. She made four other films in 1915 alone. By the time she more or less retired from the movies in 1941, Wilson had acted in more than 100 silent and sound motion pictures.

Wilson appeared with various established or up-and-coming film stars of the silent and early sound eras: Pola Negri in Bella Donna [1923], Rudolph Valentino and Bebe Daniels in Monsieur Beaucaire [1924], Louise Brooks in The Show Off [1926], Bette Davis in Seed, Davis' second film [1931] and Tom Mix in Rider of Death Valley [1932].

She worked with Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in The Dumb Girl of Portici in 1916. Wilson played heroine Molly Wingate in one of the most popular westerns of the silent era, The Covered Wagon [1923]. In that same year she appeared in Hollywood, one of the earliest films using cameos by a parade of stars--in this case ones such as Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Noah Beery, Mary Astor, William S. Hart and Alan Hale. She played Shirley Temple's mother in Bright Eyes [1934].

In 1922 Wilson was in the first group of WAMPAS Baby Stars of actresses expected to be major stars. That campaign was a promotional effort by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers and ran annually until 1934.

In 1926 she played Daisy Buchanan in the first film version of The Great Gatsby released just a year after the novel was published. Like so many silent films, this one has not survived but a one-minute trailer does exist. Thus we have an Alabama actress playing a character based on Alabama native Zelda Fitzgerald

Wilson made other films with Alabama connections. In 1921 she played the title character in Miss Lulu Bett; her male co-star in the film was Milton Sills. You can read a long review of the film by Fritzi Kramer here. A few years later Sills would star in Men of Steel, a picture filmed mostly in Birmingham. In 1922 she appeared in Manslaughter with Thomas Meighan. Two years later Meighan would be in the Birmingham area to film Coming Thru

After 1941 Wilson made only one more movie, The Girl from Jones Beach in 1949. The comedy starred Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo; Wilson played the mother of Mayo's character. She did not completely retire from acting, however. She had a couple of roles in Broadway productions and did network television work on the soap operas The Guiding Light and The Secret Storm.  

Wilson was a good friend of silent film star Gloria Swanson and made an appearance on the 1957 episode of the television series This Is Your Life when it profiled Swanson. In 1950 Swanson had played former silent star Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., one of the great films about Hollywood. 

Wilson died at 93 on March 3, 1988, in Riverside Hospital in Reno, Nevada. She is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. She never married. Whether she ever returned to Alabama after leaving in 1915 is currently unknown. 


.
Picture-Play Magazine December 1918
In the section titled "Favorite Picture Players" she follows Mary Pickford and Alice Joyce









Wilson made the cover of Picture-Play in April 1923.




Motion Picture Studio Directory for 1919
Wilson's entry is in the right hand column, 3rd down





Source: BhamWiki.com