Johnny Mack Brown & "A Lady of Chance" (5)

This post is the fifth and final part of a look at A Lady of Chance, the 1928 silent film starring Johnny Mack Brown and Norma Shearer. Part one is here, part two is here, part three is here and part four is here.

My comments on the film are at the end of this post. 

Once the police arrive and take Gwen and Brad into custody, Dolly confesses everything and begs forgiveness. 

Steve doesn't want to give her up, but Dolly says he needs a "nice girl."

The police are ready to break up the love birds and take "Angel Face" to jail. 

Dolly and Steve share a final kiss. 

Some time later Dolly is brought into a meeting room in the prison. 

Dolly is suddenly hopeful. Not only will she be freed, but Steve still loves her. 

So this tale of the big city con woman and the Alabama small businessman ends happily!

Brown in his football days at UA

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

A comic book series featuring Brown appeared in nine issues from October 1950 until September 1952.

Source: ComicBookPlus

I really enjoyed watching A Lady of Chance; the film showed up on Turner Classic Movies a few months ago. I've seen a number of silent films over the years, so watching this one was nothing unusual. Shearer and Brown were both excellent in their roles, although Shearer was obviously the more experienced actor. Brown's inexperience worked fine for the earnest, humble character he played. I haven't seen many of Shearer's films, but she is a delight to watch in this one. The film has both humor and genuine emotion and despite its flaws an interesting story. 

Watching silent films and other older movies set in the period they were made allows us to enter another world--the past. Although fictionalized, the films are time capsules of the minutia of daily life at the time--cars and other transportation, clothing, furniture, the way people related to each other. We get to peer inside businesses and dentist offices, operating rooms, and people's homes. The experience brings plenty of visual delights and exciting stories if we leave behind our modern film expectations of rapid action, lots of special effects, and color. Silent films had all those things, but not in the quantity of today's movies.

Historical dramas from these early periods of commercial film can also be fascinating to watch. We can see another era's views of historical figures and events made for a popular audience. That's something we could only get from fiction and poetry before the movies came along.

A good place to start on the silents is the Movies Silently blog. And TCM is a constant source of riches on both silent and "classic" movies and even the shorts that filled out programs at early movie houses. 

The End

Movies with Alabama Connections: Birthright (1939)

I recorded this film when it appeared on TCM a few months ago, and recently got around to watching it. Here's what I found.

Our story begins with Alabama author T.S. Stribling and his 1922 novel Birthright. Although born in Tennessee, Stribling spent some of his early life in Lauderdale County on the farm of his maternal grandparents. He graduated from college at what is now the University of North Alabama and from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1907. 

Stribling moved to Nashville and set up practicing law. Before long he was writing magazine articles and doing newspaper reporting in Chattanooga. In 1917 his first novel, Cruise of the Dry Dock was published, and Birthright followed five years later after first appearing in seven parts in Century Magazine. Before his death in Florence in 1965 he had published 16 novels, many articles and dozens of detective, science fiction and adventure stories in various pulp magazines.

His best known work is probably The Store, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932. The novel was the middle work of a trilogy; the other two are The Forge (1930) and Unfinished Cathedral (1934). Set in the Florence-Lauderdale County area in the antebellum period, the works deal with subjects and injustices that displeased local residents. Despite the trilogy's international success, Stribling did not return to Florence for many years.

Birthright is the story of mulatto Peter Siner who leaves his small hometown in Tennessee to get an education at Harvard. He returns with high hopes of building a school for black children and initiating changes between blacks and whites, but is unable to overcome prejudices supporting the status quo. He eventually relocates north of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Two years after Birthright appeared in book form, African-American novelist and filmmaker Oscar Micheaux made his first film version. This silent film is currently presumed lost. Between 1919 and 1948 Micheaux made numerous films; he was perhaps the most important African-American filmmaker in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. Largely forgotten by the time he died in 1951, Michaeux's life and work have attracted wide interest in recent years. 

The subject of Stribling's novel obviously interested Michaeux, who returned to it in 1939. Although crude by modern standards, the film is an earnest and fascinating portrait of a young man far ahead of his time--much like Michaeux himself. Upon his return to his hometown, Peter Siner is immediately taken advantage of by a local banker, much to the amusement of local whites and the chagrin of Siner's friends. The incident just confirms the prejudices of many whites about black abilities.

Throughout the film, Siner retains his dignity despite the frustrations of his hopes and goals. The film explores relations in the black community, including romantic ones, as well as the ways in which whites and blacks dealt with each other in the South during the Jim Crow era. 

I can understand why the black actors appeared in this film. Beyond the obvious reason of employment, these performers knew of Micheaux who was well established by 1939. The real puzzle is the white actors who played racist Southerners; why did they do it? I can imagine friends and relatives might not have been pleased if they found out. But then such a film would not be marketed to whites or seen by many. 

Like all silent and early sound films, the 1939 Birthright will seem crude by today's standards or even when compared to the slick Hollywood productions of the day. But Micheaux's film raises important issues and offers fascinating glimpses of the society in which it was filmed. 

 

Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama

Title page and two of the several illustrations from Stribling's novel.

Source: Internet Archive

Two scenes from the film

Oscar Micheaux [1884-1951]

Source: Wikipedia

U.S. postage stamp issued in 2010

Johnny Mack Brown & "A Lady of Chance" (1)

After his football playing days at the University of Alabama ended, Dothan native Johnny Mack Brown signed a contract with MGM and took up residence in Hollywood. His spectacular performance in the team's win at the 1926 Rose Bowl against the University of Washington--which was heavily favored--created a media sensation. Brown even made the front of the Wheaties cereal box. Producer and director King Vidor took notice; Brown went to California again in 1927 and had a long career in the movies. His first film appearance came that year in Slide, Kelly, Slide--a baseball movie. 

Brown became best known as one of the kings of the B westerns; he starred in dozens--and dozens. Yet in the early part of his career--mostly the silent movie part--the studio attempted to make him a leading man to play alongside some of Hollywood's female stars including Mary Pickford, Joan Crawford [several times] and Norma Shearer. He even acted with fellow Alabama native Dorothy Sebastian--along with Crawford--in Our Dancing Daughters also released in 1928. In the following year he starred opposite Mary Pickford in her first talkie Coquette--for which she won an Academy Award. He was sometimes billed as John Mack Brown in those days.

In 1928 Brown appeared in eight films. I recently watched one of those efforts, A Lady of Chance, released on December 1 of that year. Brown is the romantic lead opposite Norma Shearer, at the time one of the biggest stars of either sex in Hollywood. She also happened to have married the previous year Irving Thalberg, who at the age of 26 in 1925 became head of production at the newly formed MGM studio. I wonder if the former football player from Alabama was a bit nervous his first day on the set?

I'm going to do something a bit different with this topic, five different posts containing about twenty screen shots each from the movie. That will take us through the entire 78 minute film. Why am I doing this? Well, this movie not only stars an Alabama native early in his career, but a significant portion of the film is set in the state as well. So there's that. Hmm, I wonder where that idea came from?

Comments are below many of the photos. I'll have some final thoughts on the film at the end of the last post. 

This production was Norma Shearer's last silent film. She continue acting until 1942; her final film was Her Cardboard Lover. Shearer was the first actor to be nominated five times for an Academy Award; she won in 1930 for The Divorcee. Her brother Douglas G. Shearer was a pioneer of sound design in motion pictures; he won seven Academy Awards during his long career. The two were the first siblings to win that award.

The film was written by A.P. Younger and Edmund Goulding. Younger wrote for some 60 films between 1919 and his suicide in 1931. Goulding had a long career as screenwriter, director, songwriter and producer; he directed the classic film noir Nightmare Alley in 1947. He died in 1959.

Robert Z. Leonard was an actor director and producer whose career lasted from 1913 until 1957. He died in 1968.

The film was edited by Margaret Booth, whose Hollywood career spanned nine decades. 

As of this writing, you can view A Lady of Chance on YouTube.

Three supporting actors in this film were all veterans. Lowell Sherman who played Brad, had success as both an actor and director. He directed May West and Katherine Hepburn in two successful films before his untimely death at age 46 in 1934. Gwen Lee, who played Gwen, had mostly supporting roles in some 60 films. Eugenie Besserer often played mother roles as she did here; she acted that part for Al Jolson's character in The Jazz Singer.  

The early part of the film introduces us to Dolly Morgan, known as "Angel Face".  She is a parolee still using her looks to entrap wealthy men into situations where she can relieve them of some of that wealth. Two other con artists, Gwen and Brad, recognize her and persuade her to join them in their next job. The pair attempt to bilk Morgan out of her share after their success, but she manages to steal the entire $10,000 and disappear.

Here's what the New York City police had on "Angel Face"

Dolly next turns up in Atlantic City where she happens to meet Steve Crandall, a businessman from Alabama, at a convention. 

Steve is working on a telegram but is interrupted before he pays for it.

Dolly reads the telegram to Crandall's mother, which mentions the coming deal that will be worth a million dollars. Naturally, Dolly's interest in Steve is immediate. 

Dolly pays for the telegram, and thus the cynical and crooked city woman and the innocent from Alabama can "meet cute."

And does Steve ever fall hard for that "angel face". 

You can just see the wheels turning in Dolly's head as she realizes she has this sap in the palm of her hand and plots her way to Steve's coming riches. 

The black man pushing their cart through the park one evening has been entertaining them with song, so here we have the first "ahem" moment of this more than eighty-year-old film. This actor looks familiar, but he is unlisted in the film's entry on IMDB.

TO BE CONTINUED 

That Time Miss America Played Miss Alabama

Ok, let's see if we can sort this confusion out.

The silent film The American Venus is a romantic comedy set in the midst of a beauty pageant. Filming was done at the actual Miss America contest held in the Million Dollar Pier Ballroom in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on September 11, 1925. Additional filming for the Paramount Pictures release was done in Astoria Studios on Long Island, in Greenwich, Connecticut, and supposedly a "swimming hole" in Ocala, Florida. Unfortunately, the film is now lost. More about the film can be found here.

The AllMovie site has these comments:

"The physical attributes of lovely leading lady Esther Ralston are amply displayed in American Venus. This satire of beauty contests gets under way when two competing cosmetic companies seek the endorsement of the winner of the American Venus pageant (Ralston, of course). Complication ensue when it appears that our heroine's contest win was rigged. This plot point mirrored a real-life occurrence in 1925, when it was alleged that the Miss America pageant had been fixed; apparently it hadn't, since Miss America herself, Fay Lanphier, makes a cameo appearance in American Venus. Of more interest historically is the presence in the supporting cast of cult favorite Louise Brooks, not to mention the Technicolor bathing-beauty scenes."

The 87 minute film, released on January 31, 1926, is notable for several reasons. The winner of the 1925 Miss America contest, Fay Lanphier [1905-1959] appears as--wait for it--Miss Alabama. A surviving trailer viewable on YouTube announces "an eye feast of beautiful women" and "75 Atlantic City bathing beauties" and "a galaxy of glorious girls". The American Venus was a success, playing around the country for two years. All that pulchritude did bother the usual suspects, who tut-tutted about too much visible skin.   

Lanphier never made another movie; her contract with Paramount was cancelled. However, this one aided the careers of two other actresses. Esther Ralston moved into leading lady roles. Louise Brooks appeared in the first credited role of her brief but spectacular career. 

The 1925 Miss America has a couple of firsts to be noted. Lanphier was the first Miss California to win the crown and also the first Miss America to star in a feature film. More on Lanphier can be found here. She married her high school sweetheart, had two daughters, and died in 1959 aged 53. 

So why did the real Miss California and Miss America play Miss Alabama in the film? 

Who knows? The real Miss Alabama in 1925 was Nellie Kincaid, who competed in Atlantic City as Miss Birmingham. In those days many contestants held local and not statewide titles. I have been unable for certain to find information on Miss Kincaid. A quick search at Ancestry.com did turn up in the 1930 U.S. Census a Nellie M. Kincaid. She was living with her parents Elijah and Margaret and younger brother Edward at 144 57th Street South. Her occupation? Actress. She was 21 years old, which would have put her at 16 for the Miss America pageant if she was indeed that Kincaid. 

Lanphier can be seen in the first three photographs below; Kincaid is visible in the final one. 

Poster for the film; source is Wikipedia

Lobby card for the film; source is Wikipedia

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Miss America Titleholders

Source: "Surviving Pieces of Lost Silent Films" on YouTube 
[The American Venus trailer is the second item, after a fragment of Cleopatra]

Contestants in the 1925 Miss America pageant. Nellie Kincaid, Miss Birmingham, is the sixth from the right in the upper row. If you follow the link below, you can see a much larger version of this photo. You can also see her in the portion below. 

Source: Wikipedia