Duplicity

Mary who is not Mary,

I'm sorry they wouldn't let you
grow up.
Innocence forced is
innocence lost
and you suffered for it.

I hope wherever you are now
you have your butterfly wings
and hover close to your
"beautiful white flame",

Finally free to be
the
real
Juliet.

Mary Miles Minter

You like me, you really like me!

Just got the word that both this blog and Silent Stanzas have been welcomed into the Classic Movie Blog Association!  Thanks to Rick and all the other members that voted for me. 

I'm also a member of the Large Association of Movie Blogs, so vote for me there as well!

The Price She Paid

At first glance, she seems so dated,
a creaky relic, antiquated;
but underneath the verdigris
shines something for modernity.
A simple beauty, sparkling bright,
one whom in other eras might
have been passed over (what a shame!)
had, in the teens, the biggest name.
However, after such a start
she let others steer her art;
on and off-screen intertwined
and her career was left behind.
She claimed to have complete control
but to three men she lost her soul
and sadly, faded from the screen;
at only thirty, a has-been.
A lesson calls back through the ages:
Whether earning fame or wages,
make sure your contracts are your own
lest others reap what you have sown.

Clara Kimball Young

Photoplay Online!

Thanks to Leonard Maltin's recent blog post, I've been able to wade through Photoplay and Moving Picture World online at Internet Archive.  It's just a taste of David Pierce's brilliant project, the Media History Digital Library.  Go have a look!

Media History Digital Archive

The Screen's Most Perfect Lover

daredevil,
men like you don't end this way;
broken, tired,
victim of the fight.

the pain was intense
but the cure ate you alive.

it stole your strength, your beauty,
and left you with nowhere to land
except your wife's arms.

you should have never been human wreckage.

Wallace Reid

Maid of Mystery

Though featured in the photoplays,
Her soul was on a different plane,
Marie, like Janus, looked two ways.
Though featured in the photoplays
Heavenward she fixed her gaze,
until no more for films remained.
Though featured in the photoplays,
Her soul was on a different plane.

Marie Doro

Adults Only! - Ten Nights in a Barroom (1931)

Never judge a book by its cover. This film was included in my "exploitation" films box set, but was anything but a throwaway picture; decidely low-budget, it more than made up for it in honesty and heart.

Adapted from the extremely popular temperance play (which in turn was based on the successful 1854 book by Timothy Shay Arthur), William Farnum stars as Joe Morgan, a family man led to ruin by the lure of alcohol. He is pressed into addiction by the cruel and selfish bar owner Slade (Tom Santschi), who has designs on Morgan's business.

This is a bleak, no-holds-barred look at how addiction can destroy not only one's own life but that of those you care about most deeply. Farnum emotes in an old-fashioned, melodramatic style perfect for the source material, and Peggy Lou Lynd adds a very effective (if a little heavy-handed) touch as Mary, Morgan's sick daughter who is so starved for her father's affection that she walks, alone, through the dark to fetch him from the bar.

An interesting note: the protracted fight scene near the end was a nod to The Spoilers (1914), in which Farnum and Santschi both starred. Their fight scene in that film was considered (and still is, by some) the best and most realistic one ever committed to film; for years both actors served as fight consultants on later pictures.
 
Scorecard: alcohol, gambling