Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim And The Deranged, Derailed Vision Of Queen Kelly

If the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out an Oscar in the category of "What Were They Thinking?" 1929's hands-down winner would have been Queen Kelly. In fact, this production was so misconceived and ill-executed, the Academy would have had to retire the award immediately afterwards, for everything that followed would have been mere anticlimax.

Queen Kelly's director—at least to start with—was Erich von Stroheim, and as soon as you see the name Erich von Stroheim attached to a project, you know there's going to be more drama going on behind the camera than ever appears in front of it. Gene Siskel, the late film critic for the Chicago Tribune, often said his criterion for judging a movie was whether it was more interesting than a documentary of the same actors having lunch. It's a hard question to answer in this case: from all reports, the director and his stars were too busy fighting to eat any meal together.

Ostensibly, Queen Kelly is the story of a young prince (Walter Byron), who on the eve of his wedding to the mad Queen Regina (Katie nominee Seena Owen), meets a naive young schoolgirl (Gloria Swanson) and falls hopelessly in love. When the queen discovers the prince's betrayal, she takes her revenge including, in von Stroheim's original vision, exiling the schoolgirl to work in an East African brothel. (The movie took its title from this last twist—the schoolgirl, named Kitty Kelly, was to have eventually become the brothel's madam, it's "queen," so to speak.)

It's really the story, though, of unchecked egos and terrible decision making, leading ultimately to an unfinished, virtually-unseen movie that has developed an undeserved reputation as one of Erich von Stroheim's lost masterpieces.

As the mo- tivating force behind this project, star Gloria Swanson deserves a lion's share of the blame for its failure. She convinced her married lover, Joseph P. Kennedy, to bankroll the movie, picked the overmatched Walter Byron as her co-star, and then cast herself in the title role. Swanson was thirty at the time and is, to put it bluntly, ridiculous as the naive teenage girl living in a convent school.

Worse, she chose von Stroheim to write and direct the movie, and then gave him part ownership of the film and control of the final cut of any U.S. release. Given that von Stroheim had a well-known penchant pouring extravagant amounts of money into uncommercial nine hour movies, perhaps Swanson should have known what she was letting herself in for.

This doesn't even address the fact that they were making a silent movie well over a year after the release of The Jazz Singer.

Without a finished script in hand, principal photography began on November 1, 1928, and it became clear to Swanson on day one that von Stroheim was making up the movie as he went along. In fact, she predicted after the first day's shooting that the movie would never be finished. How right she was.

If my in- formation is correct, the first scene von Stroheim shot was the initial meeting between the prince and the schoolgirl, and let me tell you, this was no ordinary "meet cute"—while hiking with school friends, Swanson's underpants fall off as the prince rides past on horseback, and naturally, he snatches them up and gives free rein to what must have been movie history's first panty sniffing fetish. Wow! And von Stroheim got more and more out there. In addition to the panty sniffing, he gives us arson as a conversational gambit, a whip-wielding queen, and, of course, the promise of a second act brothel setting and a minimum four-hour running time.

This inability to rein in any impulse—legend has it that the prostitutes who accompany the prince in an early scene were played by real prostitutes, recruited from the best brothel in Hollywood—was typical of von Stroheim, and Swanson realistically had no choice but to fire him, which she did at the end of January 1929. The film was only half finished.

Two years later, Swanson hired cinematographer Gregg Toland to shoot a truncated ending to the film and although von Stroheim's contract barred Swanson from showing this version in the United States, it was released in Europe in November 1932. A partially restored version of the unfinished film was finally released in the United States in 1985.

Like many movies of that time that no one had actually seen, it's reputation grew until it was regarded as von Stroheim's lost masterpiece, on par with the "butchered" nine-hour version of Greed. When it finally surfaced, it proved not to be quite what people had convinced themselves it was.

Auteur theorists love von Stroheim for the mad passion of his vision, but to be honest, the guy was probably nuts. He was certainly an egomaniac and I think the notion he was a genius derailed by the crass concerns of the studios is essentially a false one. He made pretty pictures, but he wasn't a sharp thinker—he was one of those guys (like a law clerk I knew, way back when) who if you asked him the time, would build you a clock.

Judging from what survives, the end product, here and elsewhere, didn't justify von Stroheim's means.

Trivia: To stand in as an example of the kind of silent movies Norma Desmond made, Billy Wilder used a scene from Queen Kelly (Swanson praying among an array of flickering candles) in his classic Sunset Boulevard.

Gloria Swanson: Best Actress Of 1919 (Male And Female)

The second in a series of brief essays about the Katie winners of the pre-Oscar era.

I've teased Gloria Swanson off and on for two lines of dialogue that her character, Norma Desmond, spoke in the Billy Wilder classic Sunset Boulevard—"We didn't need dialogue; we had faces!" and "I am big; it's the pictures that got small!"—but she really was one of the best actresses of the Silent Era and for her breakthrough performance in the Cecil B. DeMille drama Male and Female, I gave her the Katie for best actress of 1919.

The movie itself is an odd marriage of Upstairs Downstairs and Gilligan's Island—a group of English aristocrats and their servants are marooned together on a South Seas island where naturally the servants prove much more adept at survival than their indolent, self-indulgent counterparts. Initially, Gloria Swanson plays the most stubbornly indolent of them all, but when she falls in love with her butler, the real leader on the island, she gradually comes to realize what's truly important in life.

That is until they're all rescued and DeMille serves up one of the most reactionary endings in movie history.

That Swanson managed to make all this hokum believable was a testament to her skill as an actress. Overnight, both she and DeMille became major players in Hollywood and both were stars on their respective sides of the camera for the rest of the decade.

Swanson made such silent classics as The Affairs of Anatol and Sadie Thompson and seemed to make the transition to talkies successfully—she received an Oscar nomination for her first talkie, The Trespasser—but her career went into decline and, with one exception, she made no movies between Music in the Air in 1934 and her comeback in Sunset Boulevard in 1950, for which she received her third and final Oscar nomination.

She died in 1983 at the age of 84.

The Must-See Movies Of 1927-28

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich has called 1928 the greatest year in the history of movies, which is definitely saying something. If we expand the time frame a bit to include both 1927 and 1928, I will agree that he's on to something.

Between January 1, 1927 and the end of 1928, more than a dozen films were released which might reasonably make a list of the best movies ever made, including The General, Metropolis, Napoleon (released too early in 1927 to qualify for this year's Katies), Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans, The Crowd, The Man Who Laughs, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg, The Circus, Wings; Laugh, Clown, Laugh and a handful of late 1928 releases, The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, The Wind, The Cameraman, Steamboat Bill, Jr., The Docks Of New York and The Wedding March (eligible for next year's Katies). Greta Garbo was never more popular, Gloria Swanson was still doing great work, Emil Jannings hadn't joined the Nazi party. Lon Chaney, Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish gave the best performances of their careers. Directors Murnau, Chaplin, Keaton, Lang and Dreyer were at or near their peaks, and Lubitsch was emerging as the next great director. Movie audiences wouldn't see such an outpouring of quality again until 1939, the year most film historians fix as the best ever, and it's clear, at least in retrospect, that silent movies had reached their highest ever level of artistic achievement and were poised for even greater breakthroughs.

And yet, once The Jazz Singer hit theaters, studios couldn't pay audiences to see anything but talkies. Silent movies were better than ever but for the audiences of the time, they might as well have never been made. It's as if the "Mona Lisa" were hanging in Louvre unseen while art lovers rushed past it to crowd around a McDonald's placemat.

There wouldn't again be such a disconnect between quality and box office receipts until the present age.

Commercially speaking—in the long run, the only language Hollywood speaks—silent movies were dead and there was no going back.

Unfortunately, the new sound technology was primitive, relying on large, immobile cameras and unreliable microphones that glued actors in place and returned movies to that place from whence they had just escaped, the stage-bound theater. It took about five years for sound technology to become workable enough for directors to move the camera again and more than a decade for Orson Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland to remember that they could.

In the meantime, in case you need reminding, this is my list of movies that I consider the must-see movies of 1927-28. Unlike my list of Twenty Silent Movies To Cut Your Teeth On, not all of these movies are equally accessible to a viewer unfamiliar with silent movies, but I do believe every one of them is worth the time and effort is you are so inclined.

The Circus—Charlie Chaplin's comedy of a tramp who finds love and work in the circus

The Crowd—King Vidor's gritty tale of the American Dream turned nightmare

Laugh, Clown, Laugh—Lon Chaney as a man destroyed by love

The Man Who Laughs—a macabre love story about a man with a face that inspired Heath Ledger's Joker

The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg—a bittersweet romantic comedy about a prince who falls for a commoner

Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans—my pick for the best movie of the year, about a marriage in crisis

Wings—a rip-snorting war picture about World War I flying aces and the girl they left behind

All but two of these movies, The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg and Wings, are available on DVD.

You might also check out Sadie Thompson, the 1928 Gloria Swanson-Lionel Barrymore movie based on Somerset Maugham's short story "Rain." Time hasn't been kind to the print and the last reel has been lost, but film historians reconstructed the ending with the use of still photographs and what remains is very good. Sadie Thompson earned Swanson an Oscar nomination, the first of three, and might have earned her and Barrymore (the latter in a supporting role) Katies for their work if I could have been more certain of what I was seeing. Sadie Thompson is available on DVD.

What can I tell you? This whole business of handing out awards, even with eighty years of hindsight, is a frustratingly subjective business. It only gets worse the closer to the present we get.

A Little More Housekeeping: Katie Award Nominees For 1927-28

Again, more housekeeping, retroactively listing the Katie Award nominees for 1927-28. The winners, in case you've forgotten, are here. I'll be back on track with my next blog entry, an essay about Jean Hersholt (and Gary Cooper).

PICTURE:
The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin)
Laugh, Clown, Laugh (prod. Herbert Brenon)
The Man Who Laughs (prod. Paul Kohner)
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (prod. William Fox)
Wings (prod. Lucien Hubbard)

ACTOR:
Lon Chaney (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)
Charles Chaplin (The Circus)
Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer)
Harold Lloyd (Skippy)
Conrad Veidt (The Man Who Laughs)

ACTRESS:
Eleanor Boardman (The Crowd)
Marion Davies (The Patsy)
Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven and Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
Mary Pickford (My Best Girl)
Gloria Swanson (Sadie Thompson)

DIRECTOR:
Charles Chaplin (The Circus)
F.W. Murnau (Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans)
William A. Wellman (Wings)

SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Lionel Barrymore (Sadie Thompson)
Gary Cooper (Wings)
Jean Hersholt (The Student Prince In Old Heidelberg)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
Clara Bow (Wings)
Gladys Brockwell (Seventh Heaven)
Mary Philbin (The Man Who Laughs)

SCREENPLAY:
King Vidor and John V.A. Weaver; titles by Joseph Farnham (The Crowd)
Elizabeth Meehan; titles by Joseph Farnham (Laugh, Clown, Laugh)
Raoul Walsh; titles by C. Gardner Sullivan (Sadie Thompson)

Best Actress Of The Silent Era: Lillian Gish

If they'd handed out a career Oscar to the most highly regarded actress of the silent era, Lillian Gish would have been the consensus choice. My personal feeling is that Louise Brooks was better. But as I'll explain in connection with my picks for 1929-30, Louise Brooks's best silent films were made during the sound era; so we'll get to her later.

Another good choice would be Greta Garbo, who was the most luminescent of the silent film stars and very popular with audiences before words started coming out of her mouth. But she didn't show up until right at the end of the silent era, and like Louise Brooks, I think her best work came after the introduction of sound.

Mary Pickford would also be a good choice. She was so popular during the silent era, she was known as "America's Sweetheart" and was Hollywood's highest-paid performer, male or female.

Pickford's success was not limited to work in front of the camera. She produced thirty-four movies, wrote twelve more, co-founded the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and, along with Charles Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, formed the United Artists Pictures studio. She won a competitive Oscar in 1930 for Coquette, and the Academy further recognized her in 1976 with a lifetime achievement award.

So why not choose Mary Pickford? Two reasons. First, I have the benefit of 20/20 foresight, knowing I am going to give her a Katie for her performance in the 1927 film, My Best Girl. Second, though, and more importantly, based on what I've seen of Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford, I simply think Gish was the better actress.

Finally, we've all heard of Gloria Swanson, if only because she played fictional silent film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, and as William Holden says, "You used to be big."

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Unfortunately, I'll have to take her word for it. I just haven't seen enough of Swanson's work outside of Sunset Boulevard to say for sure.

So Lillian Gish it is. She was highly regarded at the peak of her career and is still highly regarded by people who know more about the Silent Era than I do.

Besides, I like what I've seen of her. Gish worked primarily with director D.W. Griffith and starred in his most famous movies, including the highly-controversial The Birth Of A Nation, its follow-up apology, Intolerance, and the three best silent films Gish made prior to our 1927 cutoff date, Broken Blossoms, Way Down East and Orphans Of The Storm. Gish's style was understated, at least for a time when most movie acting consisted of broad, obvious gestures and exaggerated facial expressions, and she brought a needed realism to a highly-stylized medium.

She made seventy-four movies before The Jazz Singer came along and effectively ended the Silent Era.

Her popularity already in decline, Gish made her last silent movie in 1928. The Wind, in which Gish plays a rape victim, is now rightly regarded as a classic, but with "talkies" already flooding theaters, it was viewed upon its initial release as the relic of another age. While directors and critics were split on the artistic merit of the new sound technology, the public was not. The Wind bombed, so much so, MGM released Gish from her contract.

Gish made a handful of movies after that, the best being the expressionistic noir thriller The Night Of The Hunter in 1955 where she co-starred with Robert Mitchum in one of his most famous roles. In 1946, she was nominated for best supporting actress for her work in Duel In The Sun and she received an honorary Oscar in 1971 recognizing her "contributions to the progress of motion pictures."

She made her last movie in 1987.