Claire de Lorez Movies

This first film version of Joseph Kessel's wartime novel L'Equipage was adapted for the screen by its director, Maurice Tourneur. The story focuses on the exploits of a French flying squadron, commandeered by lieutenant Jean Dax. A hothead and a nonconformist, Dax is roundly disliked by everyone except fellow officer George Charlia, with whom he becomes close friends. This relationship is doomed when Charlia falls in love with Dax's wife Camilla Bert. Under normal circumstances, Dax would "demand satisfaction" from Charlia, but war is war, and the two men are obliged to fly off together on a suicide mission. Only one of the two men returns, leaving Bert to grieve over the memory of the other. L'Equipage was remade by Anatole Litvak in 1935, and two years later was refilmed in Hollywood, again by Litvak, as The Woman I Love. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Coast Patrol was a threadbare silent 5-reeler starring Kenneth MacDonald as an officer in the titular patrol. Nothing much happens really, except for a few misunderstandings, fistfights and boat chases. The film was, from all reports, well photographed; too bad there wasn't anything truly worth photographing. Spottiswoode Aitken, once one of the stalwarts of D.W. Griffith's stock company, is wasted in a minor role. If Coast Patrol has any distinction, it is that it served as one of the first leading-lady assignments for the very young Fay Wray. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This melodrama about the moral redemption of two crooks stars Eileen Pearcy and Tom Moore. Whitey (Moore) goes from being a war hero to a crook. He earns the admiration of Kitty, a fellow crook (Pearcy), when he saves her from the advances of Mal (James Mason). She goes to the country to recover from a nervous breakdown, and to reform. Whitey and his pal, Skeeter (Eddie Phillips), are in the midst of a job when they are caught by the night watchman. Skeeter shoots him and is himself killed. Although Whitey is held as a witness, his friend, detective Jim Condon (Stanley Blystone), allows him to go free on the condition that he will go straight. Whitey goes to the same small town where Kitty resides and gets a job in a bank. It turns out that Kitty is staying with Skeeter's mother, and Whitey tells her that her son died a war hero, and hands over his own medal to prove it. He believes that Kitty is in love with Fred Morton, the bank's cashier (Tom Gallery), so he keeps his distance. There's a shortage at the bank and Whitey is a suspect, but Morton -- who throws over Kitty when he discovers her past -- is the real culprit. The despondent Kitty tries to commit suicide by going over the falls, but Whitey rescues her. The two reformed crooks are ultimately united. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Produced by the prolific Film-Booking-Office, who specialized in inexpensive westerns, Range Terror starred the taciturn Bob Custer as a Texas Ranger. Aided by clever pooch Alaska, Custer tracks down the villain who killed lovely Thais Valdemar's young brother (Bobby Mack). As was often the case with FBO, the cast was more interesting than the film. The villain was played by one Boris Bullock, a Russian-born character actor who briefly pursued a starring career under the rather obvious name Kit Carson. Leading lady Thais Valdemar was the girlfriend of MGM star comic Karl Dane and was better known for suing a plastic surgeon than for any film role. The comedy was in the capable hands of Milburn Morante, whose career dated back to early silent slapstick farces. Custer's career waned with the coming of sound, but he nevertheless managed to hang around until 1937. He later became a building inspector. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Silent screen idol Rudolph Valentino made his next-to-last screen appearance in this romantic comedy/drama. Count Rodrigo Torriani (Valentino) is a notorious ladies' man who has become the subject of a long list of breach-of-promise suits filed by disappointed former girlfriends, which has left him destitute. Needing to learn a new trade, Rodrigo comes to the U.S., where his knowledge of Italian artifacts is put to good use by Jack Dorning (Casson Ferguson), an antique dealer. While Rodrigo's new trade would presumably put him back on the straight and narrow, such is not the case, as he finds himself the object of two different women's affections -- Mary (Gertrude Olmstead), Jack's secretary, and Elise (Nita Naldi), a wealthy socialite. Cobra reunited Valentino with Nita Naldi, who had starred with him in Blood and Sand and A Sainted Devil; within a year of Cobra's release, Valentino would die unexpectedly, and within three years, Naldi would retire from the screen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This silly farce was typical Constance Talmadge material. She has great support here, with the suave Ronald Colman as her co-star (the two of them, along with director Sidney Franklin, would team up a year later for another film, Her Sister From Paris). Samuel C. Adams, an American millionaire (Albert Gran) brings his daughter, Dorothy (Talmadge), to England to see a specialist about her heart trouble. So that she won't be hounded by press and fortune hunters, Dorothy makes herself up to look extremely ugly. Lord Paul Menford (Colman) spies her without the hideous makeup job and falls in love with her immediately. He poses as his uncle, a heart specialist, so that he has a chance to meet Dorothy. While he's getting to know her, his agent is selling her father the Menford estate. Menford finally admits the ruse and later that night, he gets drunk and goes home -- only he has forgotten that he no longer lives at the Menford estate. He crawls into his old room to find Dorothy there. When a friend arrives the next morning, Menford introduces Dorothy as his wife to avoid a scandal. They decide to get married for real, but a misunderstanding splits them up. The rift, however, doesn't last long -- Mr. Adams tricks the couple into reconciling. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

This mystery-drama was one of the last films from director J. Gordon Edwards, who is best known for his work in the 1910s with screen vamp Theda Bara (Edwards died in 1925). It is also the final film made by very minor screen star (Barbara Castleton). Bruce Norman (Raymond Bloomer) is being hunted down as a murderer and his wife, Allayne (Barbara Castleton), figures out a way to save him. A stranger with amnesia (Albert Roscoe) wanders into their studio, so Allayne places some of Norman's letters in his pocket while Norman himself steals away. As a result, the man is identified as Bruce Norman -- and a killer. Since he has lost his memory he has no way of standing up for himself. Predictably, the man recovers his memory just in time to keep from being convicted of murder. The picture was based on the novel and play by Maravene Thompson. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

The mystical novels of Vicente Blasco-Ibanez were much prized by ambitious silent filmmaker Rex Ingram, who filmed two of them in the 1920s, both ostensibly vehicles for his actress wife Alice Terry. The first of the two, Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, was infinitely more successful than the second (Mare Nostrum), a fact that can be attributed to two little words: Rudolph Valentino. The quintessential Latin Lover stars as Julio, the scion of a wealthy Argentinian family. During the years prior to World War I, Julio's relatives relocate to Germany and France, with Julio opting for the latter country, where he opens an art studio. Here he carries on a torrid affair with Alice Terry, the wife of an attorney. When World War I breaks out, Terry joins the Red Cross and her husband enlists in the army, while the carefree Julio avoids involvement in the conflict. Only when visited by the spectres of the Four Horseman--war, conquest, famine, and death--does Julio don a uniform. His death is a symbolic sacrifice on behalf of Ms. Terry, whose husband has been blinded in the war: and, in an additional symbolic grace-note, Julio dies at the hands of his own cousin, now a German officer. The film's Big Money sequence was the one in which Rudolph Valentino danced the forbidden tango in a dingy, smoke-filled Argentinian cantina. That's what made him a star, not all that mumbo-jumbo about fate, destiny, and Four Horsemen. Proof that Valentino and not Blasco-Ibanez was the principal drawing card of this film was the 1962 remake, in which Glenn Ford portrays Julio. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide