Adventures in Blu-ray: When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922)

The Kickstarter project from March of 2016 to raise funds to restore the 1922 Marion Davies feature film When Knighthood Was in Flower came to a most gratifying conclusion on the first of this month, when I received the Blu-ray/DVD combo that was my reward for tossing a few coins into the guitar case.  (There were 317 backers, and a total of $11, 928 was raised; the project’s goal was attained eight hours within its initial Kickstarter posting.  Yowsah!)  We have silent film accompanist Ben Model (and Undercrank Productions—in association with Greenbriar Picture Shows) to thank for this beautiful restoration; Ben availed himself of a 12-reel 35mm nitrate print of Knighthood’s “road show” release in the collection of the Library of Congress…so if you’re saying to yourself right now “Oh, I saw this already on YouTube” you really haven’t seen it the way silent movies are meant to be seen and enjoyed.

Ben Model

For starters, the refurbished Knighthood sports digitally reinstated tints and tones; the LOC print (which includes a reel from a nitrate print courtesy of the Michael Yakaitis Collection at the Academy Film Archive) was in black & white, but the indications for the tinting and toning were printed into the first and last frames of most of the reels, which proved quite a help in the restoration project.  The final reel, which features the film’s protagonists being pursued by soldiers wielding weapons and torches, digitally replicated the hand coloring (thanks to Jack Theakston, the torches give off an orange glow that is amazing to look at) of the original release.  Knighthood also boasts a brand-new theatre organ score composed by Mr. Model, and a most informative liner note booklet written by the woman who trims the hedges at Backlots—Marion Davies biographer and fellow CMBA member Lara Gabrielle Fowler.

Lyn Harding, Marion Davies & Forrest Stanley

Based on the 1898 novel by Charles Major (under the pseudonym Edwin Caskoden—one of the film’s characters amusingly borrows this name) and the 1901 play by Paul Kester, When Knighthood Was in Flower is a romantic melodrama set against the background of England’s Tudor period.  King Henry VIII (Lyn Harding) wishes for his sister Mary to wed French king Louis XII (William Norris) …though it’s more of a merger than marriage.  Alas and alack, Mary has become quite taken with Charles Brandon (Forrest Stanley)—a commoner who makes her poor heart go lub-dub from the moment she meets him at a jousting tournament.  Chuck’s lower societal caste dictates that any coupling between him and the princess is RIGHT! OUT! —so when Henry exiles Charles to “New Spain,” Mary insists on running off with him disguised as his brother.

The male masquerade of Marion Davies’ Mary isn’t any more convincing that the drag she donned in Little Old New York (1923); she and Charles are quickly rounded up by all the King’s horses and all the King’s men.  Charles is to have a date with the executioner…but Mary agrees to marry Louis XII if her brother will spare his life.  The scrofulous old fart (Louis) has his card punched when he attempts to behave like the young lover he’s convinced Mary wants and needs…and with the King’s death, his skeevy nephew Francis (William Powell—billed as “William H.”) decides to put the moves on the Widder Tudor.  Fortunately for Mary, Charles comes to her rescue…and King Henry VIII provides the obligatory happy ending.

A title card that produced a hearty guffaw.  (Why would she be dressed like a wonton?)

Davies & William Norris

With the help of her producer-patron—newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst—Marion Davies had already headlined fourteen feature films by the time When Knighthood Was in Flower hit theatre screens in 1922.  Flower would be the movie that cemented Davies’ stardom; it was a big budget costume epic, produced at a cost of $1.5 million (about $21 million in today’s dollahs) and believe you me—every penny of it shows in its lavish attention to detail (costumes, sets, etc.).  The 1922 version of the Major novel-Kester play made quite a few “best” lists (in addition to being the sixth biggest box office hit that year); it had been previously filmed in 1908 (though it is believed to be lost) and would see another adaptation in 1953 with Walt Disney’s The Sword and the Rose (the U.S. title).

William (H.) Powell

The more of Marion Davies’ cinematic oeuvre that I am exposed to the more I enjoy, though I’m firmly in the camp that believes that she was showcased best in comedies like The Patsy (1928—still my personal favorite) and Show People (1928).  Her talents as a comedienne are on display in Knighthood though, in very brief glimpses; I laughed loudly at the face she makes at one of the foreign ambassadors giving her the once-over on behalf of their marriage-minded monarchs, and when she and Stanley are hiding out at an inn while on the run from King Henry she does a funny backwards stagger into a fireplace as she cavorts in her male masquerade.  Knighthood started out kind of slow for me (I’m not much of a costume epic guy) but became more engaging as it built up a head of steam toward the finish.  It was also a treat seeing William Powell (in his second film…and in tights, even) as the lecherous Frances; a note at the (always reliable) IMDb states that despite both Davies and Powell being stars at MGM in the 1930s this was the only film they appeared in together.

The restoration of When Knighthood Was in Flower is beautifully done and a round of kudos go out rewarding the hard work that went into this Blu-ray/DVD.  It will be made available for general release July 25, 2017 (according to the listing at Amazon), and if you’re a silent movie buff you’ll want this one for the shelf…if you’re a Marion Davies fan, you’ll definitely have to have this.  Knighthood is also scheduled for a showing on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ when Marion Davies is one of the thirty-one stars feted during Tee Cee Em’s Summer Under the Stars in August.  (It airs at 8pm EDT on August 29th; two other recently restored Davies vehicles—Enchantment [1921; 9am EDT] and The Bride’s Play [1922; 10:30am EDT]—are also in the lineup.)

Lubitsch of Arabia

Janaia (Pola Negri) is a breathtakingly beautiful dancer who travels with other performers in a caravan…and who’s attracted the attention of a Bagdad slave trader, Achmed (Paul Biensfeldt).  Achmed has been commissioned by Zuleika (Jenny Hasselqvist), the current favorite in a harem maintained by “The Mighty Sheikh” (Paul Wegener), to procure women for her hubby…because she no longer wants to be the favorite, preferring instead the romantic attentions of Nour-Ed Din (Harry Liedtke), humble (and handsome) clothes merchant.  His Sheikhness, learning of Zuleika’s perfidy, condemns her to death…but she is spared when the Sheikh’s son, Sheikh, Jr. (Carl Clewing), pleads for her life.  Janaia is not so fortunate—the cruel despot bumps off both her and Sheikh, Jr. (they were having a little thing on the side) but before he can add Zuleika and Nour-Ed Din to the body count he is dispatched to the Great Beyond by the hunchbacked Abdullah (Ernst Lubitsch), who’s avenging the murder of Janaia.

All this palace intrigue has been condensed into a fifty-minute cut-down of Sumurun, a 1920 melodrama directed by Ernst Lubitsch before he emigrated to the U.S. and exhibited “the Lubitsch touch.”  (“Sumurun” is the name of the Zuleika character in the original German movie.)  The movie would be released in America the following year and retitled One Arabian Night; the (always reliable) IMDb lists the movie’s running time as a longer eighty-five minutes (another DVD version clocks it at 105).  The 50-minute version is from an Alpha Video release that came out in mid-May.

The shorter running time on the Alpha DVD really hurts the viewing experience, sad to report.  It makes One Arabian Night confusing and often difficult to comprehend, which is a shame because I had heard a good many positive things about the picture and I was looking forward to sitting down with it.  It’s not entirely unrewarding; it’s interesting early Lubitsch (his later themes of infidelity and naughtiness are on full display in this tale based on the pantomime by Friedrich Freksa), and it also showcases the appeal of Pola Negri, who would go on to a prolific career as a silent screen siren.  It was with the success of Night in the U.S. that Mary Pickford was encouraged to invite the director and his star to make movies in Tinsel Town.  Lubitsch would continue to direct classics like Trouble in Paradise (1932) and Ninotchka (1939) until his death in 1947 (his valedictory feature, 1948’s That Lady in Ermine, was assigned to Otto Preminger after Ernst died during production) but Negri, despite box-office hits like Forbidden Paradise (1924—directed by Lubitsch) and Hotel Imperial (1927—the only other Pola film I’ve seen), went back to Europe to work toward the silent era (her thick Polish accent would have been a problem)—only resurfacing in two later American films, Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and The Moon-Spinners (1964, her final movie).

Sadly, Lubitsch abandoned a promising career in front of the camera with this film (he made cameo appearances in a few of his talkies and in the Ed Sullivan film Mr. Broadway [1933]; he’s also in the trailer for The Shop Around the Corner)—he’s quite good as the sympathetic hunchback who pines for Negri’s character from afar, then later gets an opportunity to be a hero at the end.  I’ve mentioned on the blog before that while I have a tremendous admiration for Ernst as a director his movies just aren’t my particular cup of Orange Pekoe (it’s not him—it’s me) save for To Be or Not to Be (1942), which I will watch at the drop of a hat.  (In Milt Josefsberg’s The Jack Benny Show, he includes an anecdote from his famous boss in which Lubitsch “acted out” how he wanted Benny to play Josef Tura in To Be…so the director never got performing completely out of his system.)  Lubitsch fans will want to check this one out if they haven’t already; many thanks to my friend Brian Kray at Alpha Video for providing me with the screener for this review.

Bank(s) holiday

You know the famous quote from John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962): “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”  The legend goes that up-and-coming movie mirthmaker Mario Bianchi was inspired to adopt the nom de screen of “Monty Banks” (also spelled “Monte Banks”) when the legendary Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, his employer, told him in 1917: “You can't play another 'montebank' [mountebank] with a difficult name like Bianchi!”  It makes for an amusing story…except that in a 1918 two-reeler, The Geezer of Berlin, “Banks” was still billed as “Bianchi.”  What we can be certain of is that despite his popularity in the 1920s as a comedy star in various shorts and features, Monte’s mostly remembered today (if at all) as the husband of British entertainer Gracie Fields (he directed her in four feature films during the 1930s).

Banks’ enduring contribution to silent comedy is featured in the Robert Youngson compilation Days of Thrills and Laughter (1961): the laugh-a-minute, thrill-a-second, runaway train climax from his 1927 feature Play Safe.  This sequence was later recycled for a two-reeler released that same year entitled Chasing Choo Choos (Play Safe didn’t do well at the box office)—and this engaging short is one of five comedies featured on a new DVD release from Alpha Video, Monty Banks: Hollywood’s Forgotten Comic Genius.  Choo Choos is an entertaining cutdown (the eye-popping stunt work is courtesy of Harvey Parry), though to be honest I think you’re better off watching this material in Thrills and Laughter…only because that movie concentrates on nothing but the chase, whereas Choo Choos contains a little bit of the backstory that might be confusing if you’re not familiar with the plot of the full feature.

Monty Banks in Wedding Bells

The wonderful thing about Forgotten Comic Genius is that Chasing Choo Choos isn’t even the strongest short on the DVD; I really enjoyed Wedding Bells (1924), in which Monty plays a would-be groom who must deal with his jealous bride (Ena Gregory) the morning after his wild bachelor party.  Monty doesn’t know that his neighbor (William Blaisdell) from across the hall is babysitting his fiancée’s dog (she won’t marry him unless she’s certain the dog is properly looked after), and Neighbor has smuggled the mutt into Monty’s crib out of sight of the landlady (Louise Carver).  Ena thinks that Monty’s playing around, and refuses to do the matrimonial sashay down the aisle unless Fido is outta there.  So Monty hilariously attempts to shed himself of his new pet, with hilarious results…and then when Ena gets everything straightened out with the neighbor, Monty must get the dog back.  The gags in Wedding Bells are clever and the denouement is hilarious (I did see this one coming, I must confess), making the overall effort a most delightful two-reeler.

Banks in The Covered Schooner

Pay or Move (1924) is also a gem; Monty must protect the father of his girlfriend (Gregory again) from a sinister outfit known as the Koo Koo Kans (my, that’s subtle)—even though he’s in Dutch with the old man because he’s in arrears where his rent is concerned (Papa is his landlord).  There are good gags in this one, but what makes them so engaging is that Monty’s character is shown to be a very resourceful individual (he’s able to fool a couple of goons with some mannequins dressed in police uniforms).  The Covered Schooner (1923—directed by Harry Edwards; the title is a jokey reference to The Covered Wagon) is just a slight slip in quality, mostly because it starts out strong (Monty’s a florist who’s trying to close shop so that he can rescue his girl (Lois Boyd) from the amorous clutches of Captain Blaisdell) but peters out in the second half (Monty gets shanghaied aboard Blaisdell’s ship).  (Though one gag did make me snort out loud: for some odd reason, there’s a gorilla among Blaisdell’s cargo [and not a particularly convincing one], and Blaisdell and his crew decide to throw Monty into the cage where the animal is certain to make quick work of him.  Then they look inside…and both Monty and the gorilla are on the floor of the cage, shooting craps.)

John Carpenter, Movie Man

The weakest short on Forgotten Comic Genius is Paging Love (1923)—fortunately it’s also the first short, so it’s kind of like eating your vegetables before you get to the dessert—and really, it wouldn’t have been that bad if someone had just considered making a one-reeler out of the material (the plot in this one, in which Monty must sell a copy of his prospective father-in-law’s [busy Blaisdell] encyclopedia to win his daughter’s [Boyd again] hand, is painfully thin).  (The last five minutes has Banks channeling his inner Harold Lloyd when the shenanigans go “high and dizzy.”)  All five of these comedies come from the collection of my Facebook chum John Carpenter (a.k.a. “The Movie Man”), whose participation in Alpha’s Blondes and Redheads: Lost Comedy Classics was so essential to that DVD release’s success.

As I was browsing the Internets looking for photos to illustrate this essay, I laughed out loud at some of the search results because a small group of people seem to have confused Monty Banks with Harold Peary, radio’s The Great Gildersleeve—and because I knew you’d be saying right now “Oh, come now, Ian” I grabbed this screen shot for proof:

Yes, that is misidentified at Getty Images.  I would expect something like that at eBay or even the (always reliable) IMDb…but Getty?

“It is almost impossible now to describe a once-popular comedian like Monty Banks by speaking of his mannerisms; he doesn't seem to have any,” observed Walter Kerr in The Silent Clowns.  “He is short, on the plump side, possessed of a miniature mustache that would seem suave on a head waiter but it is somehow a badge of apprehension on him.  He is likeable.”  Kerr goes on to say that despite his extensive comedy training Banks rode out his career in silents emulating Harold Lloyd (while taking special pains to ensure that the “thrills” in those features steered close of trickery).  “The stunting is impeccable, worth keeping in film anthologies; but we cannot quite remember the man.”  That’s why we’re fortunate to have releases like Monty Banks: Hollywood’s Forgotten Comic Genius—they do so much to make certain we don’t forget.  (Many thanks to my Alpha pal Brian Krey for the screener.)

Early Women Filmmakers Blu-ray/DVD Giveaway

Lois Weber's The Blot

Giddy from the success of their Behind the Door (1919) contest from this past March, Flicker Alley is back in the giveaway game…and they asked Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—in addition to other respected classic movie blogs and websites—if we’d like to be a part of a contest in which the prize is a copy of Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology, their bodacious new Blu-ray/DVD release celebrating the innovative and groundbreaking talents of fourteen celebrated female film directors.  How could I refuse to participate in what is surely going to be one of the most talked-about classic film releases of 2017?

Did you know that more women worked in the film industry during its first two decades than at any time since?  That a woman created some of the first narrative films ever made?  Or that in 1916, the highest-paid director in Hollywood was a woman?

Despite their incredible achievements, many early women filmmakers have been largely written out of film history, their contributions undervalued. On May 9th, Flicker Alley presents Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology on Dual-Format Edition Blu-ray/DVD, showcasing the work of 14 of early cinema's most innovative and influential women directors, re-writing and celebrating their rightful place in film history.

Read on for your chance to win a copy!

Germaine Dulac's La Cigarette

International in scope, this groundbreaking collection features over 10 hours of material, comprised of 25 films spanning 1902-1943, including many rare titles not widely available until now, from shorts to feature films, live-action to animation, commercial narratives to experimental works. Directors include Alice Guy Blaché, Lois Weber, Mabel Normand, Madeline Brandeis, Germaine Dulac, Olga Preobrazhenskaia, Marie-Louise Iribe, Lotte Reiniger, Claire Parker, Mrs. Wallace Reid (Dorothy Davenport), Leni Riefenstahl, Mary Ellen Bute, Dorothy Arzner, and Maya Deren.

Alice Guy Blaché's Falling Leaves

These women were technically and stylistically innovative, pushing the boundaries of narrative, aesthetics, and genre. Going back to the beginning of cinema, this collection makes visible the tremendous directorial contributions women made all around the world. Beautifully restored in high definition, Early Women Filmmakers features new scores by Sergei Dreznin, Frederick Hodges, Tamar Muskal, Judith Rosenberg, and Rodney Sauer and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.

Bonus Materials Include:

•             Booklet Essay: By film scholar and Women Film Pioneers Project Manager Kate Saccone.

•             Audio Commentary: For Lois Weber’s The Blot by author, professor, and expert on women and early film culture Shelley Stamp, courtesy of Milestone Film and Video.

For a complete list of films included on the set, please visit Flicker Alley.

Release Date: May 9, 2017

List Price: $69.95

Order now on sale for $49.95 through May 16th!

Watch the trailer:



One lucky winner will receive a copy of Early Women Filmmakers: An International Anthology on Dual Format Edition Blu ray/DVD from Flicker Alley! Giveaway is open to residents of U.S./Canada and ends on May 22, 2017.

Watch the above trailer, comment with your thoughts, and enter to win on the form below:

Entry-Form

Remember, members of the TDOY faithful—you cannot win if you don’t enter!  (Don’t ask me how this principle works…it just does.)  You don’t want to miss out on this fabulous prize!