Philippe DeLacy Movies

The second of three versions of the Ferenc Molnar play The Swan, One Romantic Night represented the talkie debut of the great Lillian Gish. The star plays Alexandra, a mittel-European princess who falls in love with Dr. Hafler (Conrad Nagel), her brother's tutor. Alas, affairs of state demand that Alexandra marry Prince Albert (Rod La Rocque), whom she does not love despite his graciousness and affability. Our heroine's problem is twofold: she must let Dr. Hafler down gently -- then she must do the same for herself. Though about ten years too old for her role, Lillian Gish is as serenely regal as ever and does a nice job of modulating her stage-trained voice (which under normal circumstances was capable of reaching the last row of the balcony) for the more intimate demands of the microphone. For the record, the original Broadway production of The Swan starred Eva Le Galleine; the 1925 film version starred Frances Howard, while the 1956 remake top-billed Grace Kelly, who of course eventually became a real-life princess. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this drama, a young wife is devastated to discover that her husband has sold their son to a wealthy couple and left her. The woman begs the couple to return the infant, but the heartless duo refuses. The woman goes on to become an opera star and at the peak of her fame, again goes to the couple. This time they find the woman so charming that they agree to return the child. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The circus provides the backdrop for this melodrama that chronicles the lives of four children raised within the big top. Two of them have grown to be lovers. Though they appear inseparable, trouble ensues when a usurper takes the girl away. The picture is considered a lost work -- no copies are known to have survived. It was nonetheless regarded as an excellent film upon release (hence the 3.5 star rating); a 1928 Variety review proclaimed it "an elegantly produced, photographed, and directed picture by Fox, of high value regular release quality, and missing the super height class only because it is missing any one big kick." ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this moving drama, a young woman is forced to take care of her many brothers and sisters while their wealthy parents live life in the fast-lane. She is saved by an American who has come to Italy for vacation. He becomes her friend, and the children come to adore him. They eventually fall in lover, but unfortunately, he already has a fiancee waiting in Switzerland. He must go to her. Fortunately, he soon returns after breaking off his engagement. Happiness ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Royal Rider is an amusing mixture of traditional western fare and Ruritanian melodrama. Ken Maynard plays Dick Scott, a rodeo star who takes his Wild West show to the mythical kingdom of Alvania. Here he becomes pals with the country's boy-king Michael (Philipe De Lacey). Inevitably, our hero protects the young monarch from scheming revolutionaries, led by the duplicitous Alvanian prime minister (Theodore Lorch). Olive Hasbrouck co-stars as Ruth Elliot -- King Michael's governess and Dick Scott's love interest. The basic premise of Royal Rider was entertainingly retreaded by Tom Mix in 1932's My Pal the King. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This was the third screen version of A.E.W. Mason's oft-filmed novel about one soldier's triumph over cowardice and was the last rendering during the silent era. Here, Richard Arlen stars as Harry Faversham, the British officer who resigns rather than fight against rebels in Egypt. When four of his former colleagues present him with feathers signifying their belief that he's a coward, Faversham has a change of heart, and posing as an Arab, he goes on a potentially deadly mission to rescue captured British forces. Fay Wray also appears as Ethne Eustance. Wray and directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack would reunite four years later for another classic tale of adventure, King Kong. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

For a humble "B" picture, The Broken Mask was able to assemble an impressive cast. Cullen Landis stars as an Argentine dancer who is unable to find work because of his horribly scarred face. While seeking out employment in New Orleans, Landis is reaquainted with another Argentine, popular dancing star Barbara Bedford. She arranges for the hero to undergo plastic surgery, and when he emerges from the bandages, he is almost as good-looking as she is. Landis and Bedford form a professional partnership, which eventually blossoms into a romance. But the plastic surgeon who performed the operation is also crazy about Bedford; thus, the doctor inveigles Landis into another operation, during which he intends to slash up the poor boy's face all over again. But Landis catches on to the doc's scheme and angrily administers some "surgery" of his own with the help of an Argentine cattle-whip. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This MGM-ized adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina was originally titled Heat but was changed to Love when someone at the studio pointed out the possible implications of having the opening title read "John Gilbert and Greta Garbo in Heat." Heavily updated and revised, the film bore scant relation to the Tolstoy original, save for the fact that heroine Anna Karenina (Greta Garbo) is threatened with ruin by her aristocratic husband Karenin (Brandon Hurst) when she falls in love with dashing Russian officer Vronsky (John Gilbert). The story goes that MGM head Irving Thalberg purchased the novel without reading it, only to discover to his chagrin that Tolstoy's heroine "solves" her problems by throwing herself under a moving train. While it's hardly likely that the well-read Thalberg would not be aware of the book's outcome, it is true that Love was shipped out with two different endings. The original tragic denouement was retained for the European prints, while a ludicrous happy ending -- in which the widowed Anna is permitted to marry Vronsky after a respectable five-year period -- was tacked on in America. Nor was this the only change: when it became obvious that the film's original Karenin, Lionel Barrymore, was stealing focus from Garbo, Barrymore was replaced by the less charismatic Brandon Hurst. As a Tolstoy adaptation, Love was a flop; as a lush, quasi-erotic Gilbert-Garbo vehicle, it was a hit. Nine years later, Garbo would co-star with Fredric March in a more faithful cinemadaptation of Anna Karenina, with the doleful ending intact. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This was Emil Jannings' first American-made picture, and his portrayal is reminiscent of his characters in his previous films, The Last Laugh and Variety, and would later be echoed in The Blue Angel. Jannings' powerful performance, along with his acting in The Last Command, would win him the first Academy Award for Best Actor. August Schiller (Jannings) is a content husband and father of six children who works as a cashier for the Germania Bank. He is sent to Chicago with some of the bank's securities and during the train ride he is thoroughly vamped by Mayme, a cheap little crook (Phyllis Haver). Mayme takes Schiller on a wild debauch and when he wakes up in a sordid transient hotel, he realizes that she has made off with the securities. He goes in search of her and is attacked by a thug (Fred Kohler) who steals his valuables. As the two men struggle, the thug falls in front of a train and is killed. A few days later, Schiller reads in the paper that the thug was identified as him, so instead of disgracing his family he decides to remain living in secret. Years later, when he is completely down and out, he hears that his son (Donald Keith) is now a famous violinist. On Christmas, he makes his way to his old home and watches the holiday feast through a window. He is driven away and crawls back into obscurity. Ironically, Belle Bennett, who played Schiller's wife, was the star of the 1925 version of Stella Dallas, a tale which ends in a similar fashion. The Way of All Flesh was based on a story by Perley Poore Sheehan. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

The oft-filmed Gene Stratton-Porter novel The Magic Garden was given a splendid (if economical) screen treatment by FBO Pictures in 1927. As ever, the story concerns Amaryllis Minton (Joyce Coad), a spoiled girl who is sent to live with her country-squire Uncle Paul (William V. Mong). Redeemed by her friendship with her crippled neighbor John Guido (Philippe DeLacy), Amaryllis and her new companion are permitted entry into a "magic garden," which they alone can see. Unlike most future adaptations of this venerable tale, The Magic Garden details the adult relationship of the grown-up Amaryllis and John, played in the later scenes by Margaret Morris and Raymond Keane. The present unavailablity of this version of The Magic Garden makes it difficult to compare the film with the better-known 1949 remake. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Historically important as the first film to carry a Vitaphone sound track (consisting of music and sound effects, but no dialogue) Don Juan is a first-rate production by any standards, and would have been just as good with or without musical accompaniment. John Barrymore plays the legendary lover Don Juan, raised by his cynical father (also played by Barrymore) to "love 'em and leave 'em", and to never trust any woman. All of this changes when he meets the beautiful Adriana Della Varnese (Mary Astor). When it seems that Adriana has betrayed him in favor of a wealthy marriage to the lecherous Count Donati (Montague Love), Don Juan renounces her and returns to his rakish ways. What he doesn't know is that Adriana is a political pawn, who has been forced into an alliance with Donati by the calculating Borgias (Estelle Taylor and Noah Beery Sr.). By the time Don Juan finds out that his true love is still true, he has been tossed in prison for killing Donati in a spectacular duel. He breaks out, rescues Adriana from the Borgias' torture chamber, and escapes with his beloved to the safety of Spain. The plot is, of course, more complicated than that, but so fascinating is John Barrymore's performance that it's difficult to concentrate on anything else. The film's highlights include the out-sized duel between Barrymore and Montagu Love, capped by Barrymore's spectacular leap from the top of a huge staircase, and the torture chamber sequences, wherein Barrymore sneaks past the Borgia guards by assuming the facial characteristics of fiendish torturer Gustav von Seyfertitz--and this without makeup. "In the know" film historians may read a lot more into the Barrymore/Mary Astor love scenes than is readily apparent, forearmed as they are with the knowledge that John and Mary had once been passionate lovers offscreen. Scenarist Bess Meredyth used the Lord Byron poem Don Juan as a mere stepping stone for this imaginative, exquisitely filmed romantic adventure. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Artistic backgrounds and trick photography were the draws in this romantic drama, based on The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. As Ben Ali, Ramon Novarro practically disappears in the midst of all the camera work and set design, as does his co-star Kathleen Key (who, incidentally, was a descendent of Francis Scott Key). The film's titles are, more often than not, direct quotes of the Rubaiyat's verses. As a result, the plot sticks pretty much to the original Edward Fitzgerald translation -- Ben Ali, the son of Omar (Frederick Warde), is engaged to Sherin (Key), but lusty old sheik Hassan Ben Sabbath (Edwin Stevens) wants Sherin for himself. Although Ben Ali gets the girl, Edwin Stevens walks off with the acting honors, and occasionally another actor's presence emerges memorably in the midst of all the fancy backgrounds and harems, most notably funny-faced character actor Snitz Edwards as Omar's servant. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi