John Gilbert Movies

Produced for Britain's Thames television in 1979, Hollywood is a 13-part overview of the silent film era, lovingly assembled by historian Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. Each episode runs one hour, and each concentrates on a separate aspect of the art of the silent cinema. Chapter titles include "The Pioneers," "Single Beds and Double Standards," "Swanson and Valentino" and "Comedy: A Serious Business." In addition to interviews from such silent-movie veterans as Lillian Gish, Allan Dwan, Viola Dana, William Wellman, Karl Brown, Colleen Moore, King Vidor and Blanche Sweet, each episode of Hollywood is distinguished by rare, lengthy filmclips, many in pristine condition. The symphonic background music by Carl Davis superbly evokes the 1910s and 1920s without ever stooping to tinkly-piano cliches. The release of Hollywood was accompanied by the publication of a coffee-table book, also the handiwork of Brownlow and Gill. In 1988, a feature-length version of Hollywood was made available for syndication. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Movies March On was Number 12, volume 9 of Louis de Rochemont's March of Time series. Narrated by the stentorian Westbrook Van Vorhees, this fascinating documentary manages to squeeze 40 years of filmmaking into a mere two reels. Beginning with the once scandalous The Kiss (1898), the film jumps ahead to one of the first "story" films, Edison's The Great Train Robbery (1903, directed by Edwin S. Porter). Next is offered a cross-section of the great D. W. Griffith's Biograph films followed by snippets of such past luminaries as Mary Pickford, William S. Hart, Charlie Chaplin, Theda Bara, Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. In 1927, The Jazz Singer ushers in the talkie era, which is represented by snippets from films as diverse as All Quiet on the Western Front and the Mickey Mouse vehicle Steamboat Willie. After a round-up of recent cinematic achievements, Van Vorhees signs off with his customary "Time?.MARCHES ON!" Though undeniably superficial, The Movies March On at least never adopts a condescending tone when reviewing the silent era, which sets it apart from most summaries of its kind. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This story centers around a love triangle between two construction workers and a girl. The film climaxes with a fight on top of a skyscraper. The story is based on a play called Rivets. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Anyone who believes that the career of silent screen idol John Gilbert ended because his voice has too high for the talkies hasn't seen this marvelously black comedy. In perhaps his best performance of the sound era (with his supporting role in 1934's The Captain Hates the Sea running a close second), Gilbert plays a rogue who can get away with just about anything because of his charisma and charm -- and his voice suits his character perfectly. Karl (Gilbert) is a chauffeur who goes to work for a Viennese Baron and Baroness (Reginald Owen) and Olga Baclanova) on the day that two of their servants -- head butler Albert (Paul Lukas) and maid Anna (an astonishingly lovely Virginia Bruce) -- are being wed. Almost immediately Karl creates havoc in the household -- he flirts with the innocent, susceptible Anna, blackmails the Baroness, who is having an affair, and seduces the middle-aged head cook, Sophie (Bodil Rosing), only so he can get his hands on her life savings. In spite of his wickedness, there is something magnetic about Karl, and Anna -- who is vaguely dissatisfied with her loving but dogmatic husband -- finally succumbs. But all of his schemes inevitably backfire on him and after Albert gets Sophie's money back, he gladly tosses Karl out of the Baron's mansion. The next we see of him, he is c harming his way into yet another chauffeur position (hinting at a potential sequel that, unfortunately, never came). Gilbert, who wrote the story four years earlier, originally had an appropriately macabre ending -- after a brutal fight, Albert drowns Karl in a vat of wine. When he first came up with the idea, Gilbert had wanted Erich Von Stroheim to direct. By 1932, this was out of the question (MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer had little use for Stroheim). Instead, the highly capable Monta Bell was given the job -sadly, it was one his last directing assignments. During the shoot, Gilbert and Virginia Bruce fell in love and they were married in August, 1932, the month that the film was released. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

In this melodrama, a magician finds himself accused of murdering his lover's father. He flees and the lover marries her other boyfriend--the real killer. When her husband dies, the magician gets plastic surgery until he resembles the killer and assumes his former position as husband to the girl. He then begins gathering the necessary evidence to clear his name. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Based on Leo Tolstoy's The Living Corpse, Redemption was originally scheduled as John Gilbert's first talkie, but was held from release until distribution of his second, One Glorious Night. The official reason, as handed down by the MGM publicity hacks, was that Gilbert's efforts to tackle a role created on stage by John Barrymore had come acropper, so it was decided to rush him into a more typical Grausarkian romance. Others claim that MGM wanted to destroy Gilbert's career (he'd made the mistake of offending studio prexy Louis B. Mayer), so they deliberately released One Glorious Night, which contained one of the actor's worst performances, first. Even though Gilbert is rather persuasive in Redemption, he is defeated by the hackneyed script, in which the Enoch Arden-style hero, long-presumed dead, commits suicide rather than ruin the happiness of his newly remarried wife (Eleanor Boardman). Nor did it help matters any that certain scenes were extensively reshot, resulting in some deplorable continuity gaps. Contrary to the "official" MGM story, most reviewers of Redemption praised John Gilbert but condemned the film, rather than the other way around. No matter: Gilbert was dead in the water so far as the studio was concerned, and the only reason he was kept around until 1932 was that he refused to leave until his contract expired. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Desert Nights was the last silent film made by MGM's resident heartthrob John Gilbert -- and the last of his truly successful efforts. The melodramatic plot revolves around the robbery of a diamond mine, masterminded by Steve (Ernest Torrence). The criminals have taken Rand (Gilbert), the mine's manager, hostage, spiriting him off to the desert waste. Hopelessly lost, Steve turns to Rand, who knows the territory like the back of his hand, to lead the crooks back to civilization. Rand refuses but relents for the sake of Steve's partner-in-crime Diana (Mary Nolan). A spectacular climactic sandstorm effectively eliminates the villain and facilitates a happy ending for Rand and Diana. Likewise spectacular was the precipitous fall from popularity of John Gilbert after it was revealed that his voice, though pleasant enough, did not match his dashing screen image -- but this revelation was still several months in the future when Desert Nights was released. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on Olympia, a 1928 Ferenc Molnar stage soufflé, His Glorious Night has gone down in history as having more or less single-handedly caused the downfall of silent-screen matinee idol John Gilbert, whose ardent declarations of "I love you, I love you" to an overly inert Catherine Dale Owen were parodied twenty-odd years later in MGM's otherwise highly apocryphal Singing in the Rain (1952). Owen, from the Broadway stage, plays Princess Orsolini, who refuses an arranged marriage in favor of dallying with Kovacs (Gilbert), a dashing cavalry officer. But on the advice of her mother (stage luminary Nance O'Neil), the princess reluctantly informs Kovacs that she cannot love the offspring of a peasant. In revenge, the latter indulges in a bit of blackmail, but true love wins out in the end -- to the energetic strains of Franz Von Suppé's "Light Cavalry Overture". Rumors to the contrary, the problem was not with Gilbert's voice but with screenwriter Willard Mack's overly florid dialogue, which might have been fine as subtitles but sounded downright embarrassing to audiences when spoken by a cast suffering from the stilted direction of a microphone-conscious Lionel Barrymore. His Glorious Night was rather more successful in three foreign-language versions: Olimpia featuring Maria Alba and José Crespo, Olympia with Nora Gregor and Theo Schall, and Si L'empereur Savait Ça featuring Françoise Rosay and André Luguet. The story was remade by director Michael Curtiz in 1960 as A Breath of Scandal starring Sophia Loren and John Gavin. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide

Starring Joan Crawford and John Gilbert, this suspenseful, silent crime-drama follows the exploits of a gangster who does his time for manslaughter and emerges from prison determined to reform. Unfortunately, he soon finds it is easier said than done when his former colleagues pay him a call. Fortunately, his loyal gal gives him enough love and support to see that he succeeds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Michael Arlen's notorious novel The Green Hat was considered such a hot potato censor-wise that the property's title could not be used when it was adapted to film. Retitled A Woman of Affairs, this tale of a woman destroyed by syphilis was heavily laundered for the screen. Greta Garbo plays an impulsive British lass who, when denied permission to marry John Gilbert, hops from bed to bed with various partners. She marries a man who turns out to be a thief. When her husband commits suicide, Garbo is again wooed by Gilbert, who in the meantime has acquired a spouse of his own. Though she passionately loves Gilbert, Garbo sends him away, rather than ruin his life as she's ruined her own. With that classic enigmatic half-smile on her face, Garbo suicidally crashes her expensive automobile into the tree under which she sat with Gilbert the day he first declared his love for her. Outside of the always fascinating Greta Garbo, the best performance in Woman of Affairs is offered by Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Garbo's drunken, dissipated younger brother. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Gilbert was one of MGM's top stars when he appeared this melodrama. Playing against his usual matinee idol type, Gilbert plays a tough and restless wanderer. Jerry Fay (Gilbert) and Red McCue (Ernest Torrence) are fierce but not unfriendly rivals who run into each other in various ports. They meet up once again in New York to discover that they have both become bootleggers. Fay has just loaded up his speedboat with rum when he is pursued by the coast guard. He hides out in a home on the seashore, and Jane, the girl living there (Joan Crawford), threatens to call the cops. To prevent her from turning him in, Fay kidnaps her and takes her to his ship. McCue and his men, disguised as revenuers, hijack Fay's boat, and the two men find themselves face to face once again. A drinking contest between the two of them turns into a vicious battle. Fay recaptures the boat and turns it in to save Jane. Jane, who has fallen in love with the wounded Fay, cradles him in her arms. Crawford, whose star was still very much on the ascendant, would appear with Gilbert again in 1928's Four Walls. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Long believed to be a "lost" film, The Show resurfaced in the mid-1970s, proving to be a real treasure trove for aficionados of director Tod Browning. Ostensibly based on Tenney Jackson's novel The Day of Souls, the film also owes a great deal to Ferenc Molnar's Liliom. John Gilbert stars as Cock Robin, the swaggering spieler of a Hungarian "freak show" known as the Palace of Illusions. The highlight of the show is a grotesque reenactment of Salome's dance of the seven veils, replete with the beheading of John the Baptist (played by Cock Robin). The actress playing Salome (also named Salome and played by Renee Adoree) is the "kept woman" of the troupe's leading man The Greek (Lionel Barrymore), but she's really in love with Cock Robin and despairs whenever the caddish "hero" betrays yet another wide-eyed maiden. Insane with jealousy, The Greek plots to kill Cock Robin by actually cutting his head off during a performance of "Salome." With the heroine's help, Cock Robin escapes, ultimately redeeming himself by posing as the long-lost son of a pathetic, senile blind man. He then returns to square accounts with The Greek, who in true Tod Browning tradition is hoist on his own murderous petard when he tries to kill Salome with a deadly gila monster. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Amidst much fanfare, Lillian Gish was signed to a fabulous MGM contract in 1925 which not only assured her $400,000 per picture but also gave her complete control over her productions, including choice of co-stars and directors. For her inaugural MGM effort, Gish selected La Boheme, the theatrical version of Henri Murger's 1851 novel The Latin Quarter. Thanks to copyright conflicts, MGM was unable to use the plot elements from the Giacomo Puccini opera based on the Murger book (there'd been plans to prepare a musical score based on Puccini's themes, but these fell through at the last moment), so scriptwriter Ray Doyle and Harry Behn relied almost exclusively on the original novel. Gish is cast as Mimi, the fragile little seamstress who takes up residence in Paris's "artists colony." Here she falls in love with aspiring painter Rodolphe (John Gilbert), who though professing undying devotion and dedication to Mimi cannot help but dally with other girls. To finance Rodolphe's artistic career, Mimi pawns all of her belongings and takes a series of back-breaking jobs, destroying her health in the process. Only when Mimi is on her deathbed does Rodolphe realize the extent of her sacrifices -- and of his love for her. Renee Adoree co-stars as the saucy Musette, whose double-entendre antics are toned down here, while Edward Everett Horton steals several scenes as Rodolphe's musician pal Colline. Though John Gilbert hams it up, Lillian Gish's brilliant performance is a model of restraint and subtlety. For her final scene, the actress went to appalling lengths to convincingly simulate death, going without water for three days and training herself to breathe without discernible movement (even when seen today, the effect is startlingly real). Available only for archival showings until the early 1970s, a restored version of La Boheme was reissued theatrically in 1978, while an even better restoration was made available to television in the 1990s through the auspices of the Turner Classic Movies cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide