A home movie version of the Dumas play. A young woman becomes a courtesan and tragedy befalls her. Appearances are made by many socialites of 1920s Paris and New York.
01-01-1926
33 min
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HELLA
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Writer:
Alexandre Dumas fils
Key Crew
Theatre Play:
Alexandre Dumas fils
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson (April 9, 1898 - January 23, 1976) was an American concert bass-baritone, athlete, actor and political activist. Born in Princeton, New Jersey he was educated at Rutgers College and Columbia University Law School. After briefly practising as a lawyer he left the trade due to racism and instead pursued his acting and singing career.
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth (1929), and It Can't Happen Here (1935).
Several of his notable works were critical of American capitalism and materialism during the interwar period. Lewis is respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him, "[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."
Alexandre-Pierre Georges Guitry (21 February 1885 – 24 July 1957), known as Sacha Guitry, was a French stage actor, film actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright of the boulevard theatre. He was the son of a leading French actor, Lucien Guitry, and followed his father into the theatrical profession. He became known for his stage performances, particularly in boulevardier roles. He was also a prolific playwright, writing 115 plays throughout his career. He was married five times, always to rising actresses whose careers he furthered. Probably his best-known wife was Yvonne Printemps to whom he was married between 1919 and 1932.
Guitry's plays range from historical dramas to contemporary light comedies. Some have musical scores, by composers including André Messager and Reynaldo Hahn. When silent films became popular Guitry avoided them, finding the lack of spoken dialogue fatal to dramatic impact. From the 1930s to the end of his life he enthusiastically embraced the cinema, making as many as five films in a single year.
The later years of Guitry's career were overshadowed by accusations of collaborating with the occupying Germans after the capitulation of France in the Second World War. The charges were dismissed, but Guitry, a strongly patriotic man, was disillusioned by the vilification he received from some of his compatriots. By the time of his death, his popular esteem had been restored to the extent that 12,000 people filed past his coffin before his burial in Paris.
Guitry was born at No 12 Nevsky Prospect, Saint Petersburg, Russia, the third son of the French actors Lucien Guitry and his wife Marie-Louise-Renée née Delmas de Pont-Jest (1858–1902). The couple had eloped, in the face of family disapproval, and were married at St Martin in the Fields, London, in 1882. They then moved to the then Russian capital, where Lucien ran the French theatre company, the Théâtre Michel, from 1882 to 1891. The marriage was brief. Guitry senior was a persistent adulterer, and his wife instituted divorce proceedings in 1888. Two of their sons died in infancy (one in 1883 and the other in 1887); the other surviving son, Jean (1884–1920) became an actor and journalist. The family's Russian nurse habitually shortened Alexandre-Pierre's name to the Russian diminutive "Sacha", by which he was known all his life. The young Sacha made his stage debut in his father's company at the age of five.
Lucien Guitry, considered the most distinguished actor in France since Coquelin, was immensely successful, both critically and commercially. When he returned to Paris he lived in a flat in a prestigious spot, overlooking the Place Vendôme and the Rue de la Paix. The young Sacha lived there, and for his schooling he was first sent to the well-known Lycée Janson de Sailly in the fashionable Sixteenth arrondissement. He did not stay long there, and went to a succession of other schools, both secular and religious, before abandoning formal education at the age of sixteen. ...
Source: Article "Sacha Guitry" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Charles “Charlie” Chaplin (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best-known for his work during the silent film era. He used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency by the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in Kid Auto Races (1914). From 1914 onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was producing them, and by 1918 he was also composing the music for them. In 1919 he co-founded United Artists. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time.
Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, and after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of Philadelphia acted in her parents' stage company. The two met and married as members of Augustin Daly's company in New York. They both acted with some of the great stage personalities of the mid Victorian theater of America and England. The Barrymore children were born and grew up in Philadelphia. Though older brother Lionel Barrymore began acting early with his mother's relatives in the Drew theater company, Ethel, after a traditional girl's schooling, planned on becoming a concert pianist.
The lure of the stage was perhaps congenital, however. She made her debut as a stage actress during the New York City season of 1894. Her youthful stage presence was at once a pleasure, a strikingly pretty and winsome face and large dark eyes that seemed to look out from her very soul. Her natural talent and distinctive voice only reinforced the physical presence of someone destined to command any role set before her. After the opportunity to appear on the London stage with English great Henry Irving in "The Bells" (1897) and later in "Peter the Great" (1898), she returned to New York to star in the Clyde Fitch play "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" (1901) (produced by her friend and benefactor Charles Frohman), which brought her initial American acclaim. Lead roles, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (1905) and starring in "Alice By the Fire" (also 1905), "Mid-Channel" (1910) and "Trelawney of the Wells" (1911) proved her popularity as a warm and charismatic star of American stage. In the meantime she married stockbroker Russell Griswold Colt in 1909 and gave birth to three children while continuing her acting career.
Although the stage was her first love, she did heed the call of the silver screen, and though not achieving the matinée idol image that younger brother John Barrymore garnered in silent movies after similar chemistry on stage, she won over audiences from her first film appearance in The Nightingale (1914). However, her early film roles, steady through 1919, took a back seat to continued stage triumphs: "Declassee" (1919), her impassioned Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" (1922), "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1924) and, especially, "The Constant Wife" (1926).
She harnessed her considerable talents in the role of an activist as well, being a bedrock supporter of the Actors Equity Association and, in fact, had been a prominent figure in the actors strike of 1919. By 1930 she was entering middle age and her movie roles reflected this. Except for Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with her brothers, the roles were elderly mothers and grandmothers, dowager ladies and spinster aunts. Perhaps wisely she put off Hollywood for over a decade, with stage work that included her most endearing role in "The Corn is Green" (a tour that lasted from 1940 to 1942). She finally moved to Southern California in 1940.
When she passed away in 1959, she was interred near her brothers at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.
Pauline Starke (January 10, 1901 – February 3, 1977) was an American silent-film actress born in Joplin, Missouri. She made her acting debut appearing as a dance extra in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance (1916). She continued to play bit parts until director Frank Borzage started casting her in leading roles, beginning in 1917. Selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1922, Starke starred in a number of films from 1916 to 1935. She had been introduced into the film industry by a friend following the completion of her education. She scored several lead roles in films, establishing her as a prominent silent-film actress during the 1920s. She married twice in her lifetime. She first married producer/director Jack White in 1927 and later married actor George Sherwood. She died from the aftermath of a stroke on February 3, 1977 in Santa Monica, California. Pauline Starke has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6125 Hollywood Blvd, for her contributions to Motion Pictures. --From Wikipedia
Aileen Pringle's favorite film was a mid-1920s silent based on a book by Elinor Glyn: Three Weeks (1924), sort of a "Lady Chatterly's Lover". She recalled in a 1980 telephone conversation: "The film was in good taste; some people thought the book was trashy". Anita Loos wrote in "A Girl Like I", the first volume of her autobiography, vaudeville comic Joe Frisco telling Glynn: "Leave me get this straight. You want to find some tramp that don't look like a tramp, to play that English tramp in your picture. But take it from me, that kind of tramp don't hang out in Hollywood". Aileen had spent her 20s married to Charles McKenzie Pringle, the son of Sir John Pringle, a Jamaica landowner and a member of the Privy and Legislative Councils of Jamaica. Aileen lived in Jamaica until she went on stage with George Arliss. When she began divorce proceedings against Pringle in 1926, Hollywood gossip columnists speculated she would marry H.L. Mencken. She did not remarry until 1944 when she became the bride of James M. Cain, author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". I opened my 1980 telephone conversation with Aileen by mentioning that the day before I had been reading her correspondence with Mencken at the New York Public Library. "But all the letters were destroyed", she said. I knew that Mencken had asked for all of his letters to her back at the time he became engaged to Sara Haardt. Aileen was the only woman who received such a request from Mencken at that time. "It was your letters from the late '30s and '40s I was reading", I told Aileen. "In one of them Mencken was urging you to write a book. Did you ever finish it?" "No. I got married instead." In a 1946 letter she wrote to Mencken. "If I had remained married to that psychotic Cain, I would be wearing a straitjacket instead of the New Look."
Date of Death 16 December 1989, New York City, New York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Patsy Ruth Miller (born Ruth Mae Miller; January 17, 1904 – July 16, 1995) was an American film actress.
After being discovered by actress Alla Nazimova at a Hollywood party, Miller got her first break with a small role in Camille, which starred Rudolph Valentino. Her roles gradually improved, and she was chosen as a WAMPAS Baby Star in 1922. In 1923, she was acclaimed for her performance as Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame opposite Lon Chaney.
In the later part of the decade Miller appeared chiefly in light romantic comedies, opposite such actors as Clive Brook and Edward Everett Horton. Among her film credits in the late 1920s are Broken Hearts of Hollywood (1926), A Hero for a Night (1927), Hot Heels (1928), and The Aviator (1929). Miller retired from films in 1931. She made a cameo appearance in the 1951 film Quebec, and came out of retirement to do the film Mother in 1978.
Miller later achieved recognition as a writer. She won three O. Henry Awards for her short stories, wrote a novel, radio scripts, and plays. In 1988, BearManor Media published her autobiography My Hollywood: When Both of Us Were Young.
Rex Ingram started his film career as a set designer and painter. His directorial debut was The Great Problem (1916). A true master of the medium, Ingram despised the business haggling required in the Hollywood system. He was also unhappy with the level of writing he found in American writers. This led him to work with such foreign writers as Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, which resulted in the first major role for the young Rudolph Valentino. Ingram was a great friend of Erich von Stroheim, who, like Ingram, was a great filmmaker, but often went way over budget.
In 1924, Ingram moved to Nice, France, where, in his own studios, he directed films of his own choosing, often with his then-wife Alice Terry. In his later career he acted as a mentor to the young Michael Powell.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Richard Semler "Dick" Barthelmess (May 9, 1895 – August 17, 1963) was an Oscar-nominated silent film star.
Barthelmess was educated at Hudson River Military Academy at Nyack and Trinity College at Hartford, Connecticut. His father died when he was a baby and his mother, Caroline Harris , was a stage actress, so he worked in theatres in his early days, between schooling, doing "walk-ons". This led to acting in college, doing amateur productions. Russian actress Alla Nazimova, a friend of the family, had been taught English by Barthelmess's mother. Nazimova in return convinced Barthelmess to try acting professionally and he made his first film appearance in 1916 in the serial Gloria's Romance as an extra. At this time he also appeared as a supporting player in several films starring Marguerite Clark. His next role, in War Brides opposite Alla Nazimova, attracted the attention of legendary director D. W. Griffith, who offered him several important roles, finally casting him opposite Lillian Gish in Broken Blossoms (1919) and Way Down East (1920).
He soon became one of Hollywood's highest paid performers, starring in such classics as The Patent Leather Kid (1927) and The Noose (1928); he was nominated for Best Actor at the first Academy Awards for his performance in both these films, and he won a Special Citation for producing The Patent Leather Kid. He founded his own production company, Inspiration Film Company, together with Charles Duell and Henry King. One of their films, Tol'able David (1921), in which Barthelmess starred as a teenage mailman who finds courage, was a major success.
With the advent of the sound era, Barthelmess' fortunes changed. He made several films in the new medium, most notably Son of the Gods (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1930), The Last Flight (1931), and The Cabin in the Cotton (1932), Central Airport (1933), and a supporting role as Rita Hayworth's character's husband in Only Angels Have Wings (1939).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Barthelmess , licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dorothy Elizabeth Gish was an American actress of the screen and stage, as well as a director and writer. Dorothy and her older sister Lillian Gish were major movie stars of the silent era. Dorothy also had great success on the stage, and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Dorothy Gish was noted as a fine comedian, and many of her films were comedies.
Carmel Myers was an American actress successful in, particularly, Silent films. She is best remembered for her performance as Egyptian seductress Iras in the 1925 epic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.