Bebe Daniels Movies
American actress Bebe Daniels and the motion picture industry virtually grew up together. After touring with her stage-actor parents, Daniels made her film debut at age seven in the silent one-reeler A Common Enemy (1908). After unsuccessfully applying for a job as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty (she was well under the age of consent), Daniels secured a job at Hal Roach's comedy studio in 1915, co-featured with Roach's biggest (and only) star Harold Lloyd in a series of zany slapstick comedies. In 1919, Daniels was signed by producer-director Cecil B. DeMille to star in a group of slick, sophisticated feature films in the company of DeMille regulars Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan. Though successful in these glamorous ventures, Daniels found herself more at home in fast-moving comedy roles, in which she specialized while contracted with Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s; the actress played everything from a female Zorro type in Senorita (1927) to a "lady Valentino" in She's a Sheik (1927). When talking pictures came around, Paramount dropped Daniels' contract, worried that she wouldn't be able to make the transition to sound. But Daniels surprised everyone by scoring a hit in RKO's expensive musical feature Rio Rita (1929), managing to keep her career in high gear until her last American film, Music is Magic (1935). Upon her retirement from Hollywood, Daniels moved to England with her actor husband Ben Lyon in 1935. Enormously popular with London audiences, Daniels and Lyon starred in stage plays and films, and in the 1940s, headlined the successful radio series Life with the Lyons, which graduated to an even more successful TV program in the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1910
Nearly thirty years before Victor Fleming took movie lovers "Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz, filmmaker Otis Turner adapted L. Frank Baum's original story for the screen, teaming young Kansas native Dorothy with Scarecrow, The Cowardly Lion, and The Tin Woodman for the first time on film. Swept away to the land of Oz in a furious tornado, Dorothy and her dog Toto make their way to the Emerald City with a little help from Glinda the good witch and some exciting new friends. But Momba the bad witch is never far behind, prompting Dorothy to seek out the wizard in hopes of finding a way back home. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bebe Daniels
Don't let that title fool you: Male and Female is really James M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, as interpreted by Cecil B. DeMille. Thomas Meighan plays Crichton, the very proper butler in the British household of Lord Loam (Theodore Roberts). When masters and servants go on a yachting excursion, the vessel is destroyed in a storm, marooning everyone on a desert island. The helpless aristocrats must turn to the resourceful Crichton for survival. Before long, Crichton is ruling the roost, while his masters are cheerfully performing the most menial of tasks. Haughty Lady Mary (Gloria Swanson) foregoes her class-conscious upbringing and falls in love with Crichton. Once the castaways are rescued and brought back to England, however, the original class distinctions are restored. Lady Mary goes ahead with a marriage to stuffy Lord Brockelhurst as scheduled, but it is obvious that she will be unhappy in this "socially correct" union. Meawhile, Crichton finds happiness with scullery maid Tweeny (Lila Lee), who has loved him all along. Feeling that the Barrie play didn't have sufficient "punch" to go over with 1919 filmgoers, DeMille interpolated a dream sequence in which Gloria Swanson imagines herself a Babylonian princess; this gave the actress the opportunity to share a scene with a live and none-too-docile lion. One would think that critics of the era would haul DeMille over the coals for taking so many liberties with The Admirable Crichton, but such was not the case. One reviewer of Male and Female even congratulated DeMille for making Barrie "filmable"! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Thomas Meighan, Gloria Swanson, (more)
