Willard Louis Movies

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

It's hard to determine who plays the title role in The Love Toy, though chances are the designation refers to the regal heroine, Princess Patricia (Helene Costello). Escaping an unwanted marriage, roguish American Peter Remsen (Lowell Sherman) finds himself in the mythical kingdom of Luzania. Making the best of the situation, he ends up taking over the nation's army and rescuing Patricia from unfriendly invaders. Lowell Sherman was at the time married to leading lady Costello, the daughter of former matinee idol Maurice Costello and the sister of Warner Bros. star Dolores Costello. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Mademoiselle Modiste is based on the Victor Herbert-Henry Blossom operetta of the same name -- minus the music, of course. The incredibly gorgeous Corinne Griffith stars as Fifi, a personable salesgirl in a fancy Parisian dress shop. Impressed by Fifi's business skills, wealthy American tourist Hiram Bent (Willard Louis) offers to buy the shop and install the girl as the manager. No, he doesn't want to put the moves on our heroine -- he simply wants to set up a moneymaking business that will recoup the cost of his expensive vacation. Fancying himself a hot-shot promoter, Hiram decides to attract potential backers by promoting "Mademoiselle Modiste" (actually Fifi) as a woman of mystery, refusing to introduce her to the backers until the shop is opened. All of this is quite confusing to Fifi's sweetheart Etienne, who is certain that the girl has become a high-priced prostitute -- an assumption seemingly confirmed when Fifi is discovered in a state of undress in Mr. Bent's hotel room. Mademoiselle Modiste was remade in 1931 as Kiss Me Again with Bernice Claire and Walter Pidgeon. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ernst Lubitsch, the master of sophisticated comedy, directed this romantic silent romp starring the ill-fated Marie Prevost as LouLou, a married woman who develops an infatuation with a handsome musician. When LouLou asks her husband Gaston (Monte Blue) for a divorce, he shrewdly agrees without an argument; of course, LouLou imagines that something must be amiss if Gaston is so eager to give her up, so she then moves heaven and earth to win him back. Kiss Me Again also features Clara Bow in a key supporting role, two years before It made her the hottest female star in Hollywood. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This action-packed melodrama was adapted from the stage play by Elmer Vance, the man who did the adapting was future film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck, who at the time was a mere screenwriter for Warner Bros. When he is jilted by his girl, Ben Wilson (Monte Blue) becomes a hobo. His life takes a turn for the better when he saves a mail train from being wrecked during a storm. Jim Fowler, a mail clerk (Tom Gallery), befriends him and gets him a job on the Limited Mail. After several years, Wilson works his way up to engineer, and he also falls in love with Caroline Dale (Vera Reynolds), who lives in Fowler's boarding house. A runaway freight train crashes into the Limited. Fowler is killed, but his son, Bobby (Jack Huff), is saved, as is Wilson. One of Wilson's convict friends saves Bobby from drowning, and once again, he saves the Limited from a wreck. Caroline happens to be on board at the time, and finally she and Wilson are united. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

During the mid-'20s, Monte Blue and Patsy Ruth Miller starred together in a number of pleasantly entertaining comedy-dramas for Warner Bros. This one is typical of the bunch -- it's well made and has a lot of thrills -- but it's not great filmmaking. Patsy Ryan (Miller) is engaged to fighter Lefty O'Brien (Blue) against the wishes of her father (Willard Louis). Ryan wants to see his daughter marry someone wealthy so she can leave the Lower East Side behind. When Patsy is injured, Lefty calls for Dr. Franklin (Nigel Barrie), who begins to court her. But the doctor is not an honorable man, and when he invites Patsy and her father to his country lodge, Lefty follows after the train in his car. The auto is wrecked, and the train runs wild. To save the day -- and his sweetheart -- Lefty hires an aeroplane and leaps onto the train. In spite of all the danger they are in, Dr. Franklin has chosen this time to try to force himself on Patsy, and Lefty shows up in time to beat him up and stop the train before it hits a landslide. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Norma Shearer, who hadn't yet become the queen of the MGM lot (or won mogul Irving Thalberg as her husband), stars in this comedy with Lew Cody. Ruth Lawrence (Shearer) is the stenographer for David Colman (Cody) and John Sloden (Willard Louis). The two men are less than impressed with Ruth's appearance, since she wears dowdy clothes and no makeup. Colman, in fact, says he wouldn't kiss her for a thousand dollars. Ruth overhears his remark and decides to teach him a lesson. While on a business trip with Sloden, Ruth finds a beauty specialist and undergoes a transformation. Now that she is breathtakingly gorgeous, she brings Colman to his knees. He calls on her, but she has conspired with the janitor (Karl Dane) that as soon as Colman begins kissing her, he will show up and claim that she is his wife. Finally, Ruth confesses the trick to Colman and they end the film together. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Tourist Mary Brown (Dorothy Devore) spends Three Weeks in Paris -- which looks suspiciously like the Warner Bros. backlot. The question: will Mary return home with her virtue intact? A better question: Does she want to? During her tenure in the City of Light, our heroine is wooed by continental lothario Duc de la Porte (Gayne Whitman) and rakish American Bruce Gordon (John Patrick). Chances are, however, that she'll end up with all-around good guy Oswald Bates (Matt Moore). The screenplay for Three Weeks in Paris was penned by one Darryl Francis Zanuck, whose best years definitely lay ahead of him. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The upstart Warner Bros. took a whack at Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1920 novel about an American-born countess (Beverly Bayne) whose estrangement from her brutish Polish husband (Stuart Holmes) becomes a cause for celebration in her socially prominent New York family. The flamboyant countess takes up with the fiancée (Elliot Dexter) of her cousin, and together they lead a Bohemian life. Hoping to forget the countess, the young man marries the wall-flower cousin (Edith Roberts). Soon enough, the new bride is expecting, and her philandering husband repents. The Age of Innocence) marked a comeback of sorts for Bayne and Dexter, both fast fading stars of the past decade. The Age of Innocence was filmed again in 1934, with Irene Dunne as the countess and the underrated Julie Haydon as the cousin, and, perhaps even more memorably, in a sumptuous 1993 production directed by Martin Scorsese and featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, Daniel Day-Lewis and Winona Ryder. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, Rovi

A bachelors' club is shaken when one of its members forfeits his five thousand dollar fee to wed. Then another member adopts the child of a dying friend. This inspires Robert Audrey (Harry Myers) to adopt, too -- he figures it will get his mother (Georgia Woodthorpe) off his back. Mrs. Audrey picks out the photo of an adorable six-year-old war orphan, not realizing that the photo is 12 years old. So Audrey is quite shocked when pretty Ruth Atkins (Mae Marsh) shows up on his doorstep. The other members of the club also adopt war orphans with unexpected results -- crotchety old James Crockett (Claude Gillingwater) requests a boy but winds up with a girl and the highly efficient Henry Allen (William Louis) gets triplets. These children win over their reluctant adopted daddies with no problem, while Audrey falls in love with Ruth. Crockett and Allen both find wives who can mother their children and the bachelors' club is dissolved. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

Although this drama was based on the Sacha Guitry play Deburau (which starred Lionel Atwill on Broadway), Warner Bros. changed it around and threw in a bit of Camille for spice. Jean Gaspard Deburau (Monte Blue) is a clown for a Parisian pantomime theater. He falls in love with Marie Duplessis (Marie Prevost) and neglects his wife (Rose Dione). Eventually, Madame Deburau leaves him for his friend, Robillard (Willard Louis). But instead of finding solace with Marie, Deburau discovers that he was only a passing fancy to her. After she leaves him for Armand, he quits the stage. The only light in his life is his son, Charles (Pat Moore). Years pass and Marie finally comes back to him. Her health is gone and Armand has left her. She begs Deburau to return to the stage and, deliriously ill, marries him believing he is Armand. Deburau breaks down during his performance and Marie dies. But he dresses his son, now grown (and played by Pierre Gendron), in his clown outfit, and he successfully carries on in his father's footsteps. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi

This first movie version of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt stars the corpulent Willard Louis in the title role. A middle-aged businessman/blowhard in the small town of Zenith, Babbitt is somewhat naïve in the ways of the world. He allows himself to stray from his long-standing marriage to wife Myra (Mary Alden) when he succumbs to the charms of avaricious Tanis Judique (Carmel Myers). Before he comes to his senses, Babbitt nearly ruins the reputation he has spent a lifetime judiciously building up. Warner Bros. remade Babbitt in 1934, with Guy Kibbee typecast to perfection in the leading role. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Filmmaker Hugo Ballin) pulled out all the stops on this adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's novel of the Napoleonic era. He surrounded his wife, Mabel Ballin, who plays Becky Sharp, with sumptuous period sets and a fine cast. Ballin stays close to the novel, detailing the scheming Becky's tumultuous rise to the top of society circles and back down again. Her ambitions begin with Joseph Sedley (Willard Louis), the brother of her wealthy school friend, Amelia (Eleanor Boardman). When he doesn't respond to her overtures, she becomes governess for the children of Sir Pitt Crawley (Robert Mack) and secretly weds Captain Rawdon Crawley (George Walsh). Amelia meanwhile, has married her childhood sweetheart, George Osborne (Harrison Ford). Since her own marriage has not been a financial success, Becky decides to go for Amelia's husband. Osborne dies in battle and Becky turns her attentions to the rich Marquis of Steyne (Hobart Bosworth). Her husband catcher her with the Marquis and leaves her. After helping bring Amelia together with Captain Dobbin (Earle Foxe), Becky winds up alone, spending her life doing good works. Actually, some of the casting here was too good -- although this was only Eleanor Boardman's fourth film, she got rave notices as Amelia, and the New York Times asserted that she should have played Becky instead of Mabel Ballin. ~ Janiss Garza, Rovi