Wonderland Burlesque's Let's All Go To The Movies: She's A Lady! - Part XXVI

Wonderland Burlesque's

Let's All Go To The Movies

She's A Lady!

Part XXVI

Yes, sometimes? It takes a lady.

And sometimes, that lady can have a nasty temper!

Or so these films would have us believe.

They promise lots of drama, the occasional comedy or musical, and a little bit of dirt!

Let's take a walk down Hollywood Blvd. and shine a light on these magnificent classic films.

This way, if you please. But remember...

Ladies first!

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The Untamed Lady

(1926)

St. Clair Van Tassel is a wealthy society girl with an unmanageable temper. She has broken numerous engagements because of her disposition and decides to retire to the country. On the way, she stalls her car in a stream and is aided by Larry Gastlen. Their friendship soon develops into love. Larry sails for Cuba on his yacht, having refused to allow St. Clair to accompany him; and when she is discovered to be a stowaway, he turns back to New York. To thwart this, she steers the yacht off course, and when they encounter a gale, the boat is battered and St. Clair is forced to substitute for an injured stoker. Reaching port, St. Clair departs for her hunting lodge in the Catskills, where Larry follows. Trying to catch her, Larry is hurt in a fall from his horse. At the hospital, St. Clair realizes that love has at last tamed her temper.

Written by James Ashmore Creelman from an original story by Fannie Hurst, this silent drama was directed by Frank Tuttle, and stars Gloria Swanson and Lawrence Gray. 

This served as the film debut for Nancy Kelly who was a child actress at the time.

With no prints of The Untamed Lady located in any film archives, this is considered to be a lost film.

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The Scarlet Lady

(1928)

During the Russian Civil War, Lya seeks refuge from Cossack soldiers at the palace of Prince Nicholas. She becomes his majordomo and they fall in love, but Nicholas expels her after learning she is a revolutionary and the former mistress of the Bolshevik leader Zaneriff. After returning to her home village, Lya becomes a terrorist. She reencounters Nicholas in disguise as a servant after the Red Army captures his palace. After he is discovered and sentenced to death, she rescues him and they escape together.

Written by Bess Meredyth, this American synchronized-sound drama was directed by Alan Crosland. and stars Lya de Putti, Don Alvearado, and Warner Oland.

While the film has no audible dialog, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the sound-on-film Western Electric Sound System process. It was produced and distributed by Columbia Pictures and was the first sound feature released by that studio.

The film features a theme song entitled My Heart Belongs To You which was composed by Lou Herscher.

This film can be viewed in its entirety for free on YouTube, though the transfer is rather muddy.

Lya de Putti was a Hungarian film actress during the silent era. She was noted for her portrayals of vamp characters and appeared in over 30 films.

In 1913, she married Zoltán Szepessy de Négyes, a county magistrate who was ten years her senior. The couple had two daughters. Upon divorcing in 1918, Szepessy told their two daughters that their mother had died; there was even a headstone in a Hungarian cemetery that bore the inscription 'Lya de Putti - died 1920'. On March 8, 1932, Szepessy committed suicide in a Budapest hotel due to financial difficulties and grief over de Putti's death. It wasn't until his death that daughters, Ilona and Judit, learned about their mother's true fate.

She remarried in 1922 to Louis Jahnke, a Norwegian diplomat. Prior to Jahnke, she was married to the Norwegian merchant Ludwig Christensen, who left her widowed when he died of tuberculosis in 1922.

On March 5, 1926, the Ogden Standard Examiner published a story alleging that de Putti had attempted suicide by jumping out of her apartment window at the Wilmersdorf quarters. She and her lover of one year, who was also an actor, had been arguing prior to the attempt. One of her arms and a foot was broken as a result of the fall. De Putti later claimed that she was merely saying goodbye to friends when she leaned too far over the railing and fell.

In November 1927, de Putti was injured when she fell down the stairs and through a window. Some press accounts speculated that it was another suicide attempt, but de Putti denied this.

De Putti nearly died in August 1930 when the small plane she was flying in crashed.

Lya de Putti

In the late 1920s, de Putti met banker Walter D. Blumenthal. They began a relationship, and de Putti fell in love and wanted to marry him. His family did not allow the marriage, however, which resulted in de Putti going on a hunger strike in 1931.

In 1931, she was hospitalized to have a chicken bone removed from her throat. De Putti contracted a throat infection, and was taken to the Harbor Sanitarium, then located at 667 Madison Avenue, where reportedly she behaved irrationally and eluded her nurses. Eventually, she was found in a corridor. She developed pleurisy in her right side, followed by pneumonia in both lungs.

Lya de Putti died at 1:05 A.M. on 27 November 1931, aged 34, at the Harbor Sanitorium, leaving just $1,100 and a few bits of jewelry. She is interred in the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

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The Laughing Lady

(1929)

A society woman wrongly, and very publicly, accused of infidelity is dropped by her friends, spurned by her husband, and faces the loss of her child.

Based on a 1922 British play, this melodrama was directed by Victor Schertzinger, and stars Ruth Chatterton and Clive Brook.

The original play was brought to New York in 1923 and put on Broadway starring Ethel Barrymore.

The 1922 British play, The Laughing Lady, by Alfred Sutro, was transferred to the screen three times; in 1924, Paramount released a silent film retitled A Society Scandal which starred Gloria Swanson, this version with Ruth Chatterton in 1929, and in 1930, a sound version, A Kacago Asszony, was produced by Paramount at its studio in Joinville, France, in Hungarian with a Hungarian director and cast

Jeanne Eagels was to star in this film, but died before production began.

Marks the big screen debut of actress Nedda Harrigan. She had previously spent several years making a name for herself on the stage, including appearing in productions of the play Dracula with Bela Lugosi.

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The Night Club Lady

(1932)

Police Commissioner Thatcher Colt sets out to discover who murdered Lois Carewe, a tougher-than-nails nightclub hostess. The woman had been under police protection ever since she received a letter warning that she wouldn't live a minute past midnight on New Year's Eve. The murder weapon of choice? A deadly scorpion!

This American pre-Code mystery was directed by Irving Cummings and stars Adolphe Menjou, Mayo Methot and Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher.

This film was followed by a sequel, The Circus Queen Murder, in 1933 with Menjou reprising his role. A third, unrelated film featuring Thatcher Colt, The Panther's Claw, was released in 1942.

This film can be viewed in its entirety for free on YouTube, though the transfer is rather blurry.

Mayo Jane Methot was an American film and stage actress who appeared in over 30 films, as well as in various Broadway productions. She attracted significant media attention for her tempestuous marriage to actor Humphrey Bogart.

Methot met Bogart on the set of Marked Woman and the two became romantically involved, marrying in 1938. Because Bogart blamed the dissolution of his two previous marriages on conflicting acting careers and long separations, Methot gave up her acting career. They became known in the press as 'The Battling Bogarts', with Methot earning the nickname 'Sluggy', due to her combativeness.

While filming To Have and Have Not in 1943, Bogart fell in love with his 19-year old co-star Lauren Bacall and the couple began an affair. Methot caught wind of it and visited the set often. Methot struggled with severe alcoholism, and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia following a suicide attempt in 1943. Bogart attempted to save the marriage but Methot's alcoholism intensified, as did their fighting. She divorced Bogart in 1945 after numerous reconciliations. Unable to gain traction in her film career, she returned to her native Portland, and her alcoholism and depression worsened. She died of complications stemming from alcoholism in 1951, aged 47.

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The Scarlet Lady

(1969)

AKA: The Bitch Wants Blood

A comedy about self-made woman who traipses about Paris contemplating the idea of suicide before deciding  murder would be much more satisfying.

Written by Paul Gégauff and Jean Valère, this  French/Italian comedy was directed by Jean Valère and stars Monica Vitti, Maurice Ronet, and Robert Hossein. 

Monica Vitti, who is in virtually every scene, spends the entire film decked out in the latest creations of designer Christian Dior.

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And that's all for now, folks!

Tune in next time...

Same place, same channel.

Monica Vitti in The Scarlet Lady

(1969)