Vera Lewis Movies
Affectionately described by film historian William K. Everson as "That lovable old wreck of a busybody," actress Vera Lewis was indeed quite lovable in person, even though most of her screen characters were sharp-tongued and spiteful in the extreme. Lewis first appeared in films in 1915, playing bits in such historical spectacles as D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) and the privately-funded Argonauts of California. By the 1920s, she was well-established in such venomous characterizations as the remonstrative stepmother in the 1926 Colleen Moore starrer Ella Cinders. She continued playing small-town snoops, gimlet-eyed landladies, irksome relatives and snobbish society doyennes well into the talkie era. Even when unbilled, Lewis was unforgettable: in 1933's King Kong, she's the outraged theater patron who mercilessly browbeats an usher upon finding out that the mighty Kong will be appearing in person instead of on film. When all is said and done, Vera Lewis was never better than when she was playing a gorgon-like mother-in-law, as witness her work as Mrs. Nesselrode in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and as Andy Clyde's vituperative mom-by-marriage in the 1947 2-reeler Wife to Spare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1923
Madalyn Harlan (Estelle Taylor), the daughter of wealthy socialites, falls in love with the chauffeur Jerry Ryan (David Butler) in this uneven society drama. She and Jerry are secretly married, but Jerry's mother tells Madalyn that Jerry is through with her. She takes poison in the cabaret that holds so many happy memories. Jerry moonlights as a cabbie and discovers too late that the drunken woman at the bar is his own wife. He steers the cab towards the river as he considers plunging to his death. The film suffers from uneven editing. Although credited, performances of Noah Beery, Frank Currier, and Hank Mann have bee eliminated, Marguerite de la Motte, John Bowers, and Walter Long co-star. The apparent lack of communication between studio heads, the editor, and those in charge of continuity give an ironic twist to the term "the silent era." Watch for comedian Chester Conklin in a small part. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marguerite de la Motte, John Bowers, (more)
- 1923
Metro pulled out all the stops on this picture, which was based on the novel by Mary Roberts Rinehart and starred eight-year-old Jackie Coogan. The studio spent upwards of a million dollars on mob scenes and spectacular sets for this mythical kingdom tale. Coogan's father, Jack Coogan Sr., supervised the production, as he did on many of his son's pictures. King Karl of Livonia (Alan Hale Sr.) has grown old and feeble and the hopes of his country are all on little Prince Otto (Coogan), an orphan who is the only heir to the throne. As a result, Otto is not allowed any childish pleasures -- it's all about court formalities. The boy isn't even allowed to have a puppy. Naturally, the young prince is frustrated and when he gets the opportunity to run off with an American boy, Bobby (Raymond Lee), he takes it. After he returns, the guard keep a closer eye on him -- the country is about to break out into revolution and his life is in danger. But Otto manages to escape once again on his birthday, and while he is gone, the King dies. Without the presence of Otto, the people start rioting. As the prince tries to get back to the palace, the revolutionists kidnap him. Otto's friend, Lieutenant Nikky (Allan Forrest), comes to the rescue and the boy returns to become King. If the name of Raymond Lee doesn't strike a bell, his face should; he's the boy who gives Coogan a black eye in The Kid. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jackie Coogan, Rosemary Theby, (more)
- 1922
Although the spirited Bebe Daniels was sorely miscast as a long-suffering orphan in this comedy-drama, she somehow managed to pull it off. Nancy (Daniels) works for a cruel couple, the Kellys (James Gordon and Vera Lewis). Mrs. Kelly has turned her into a drudge, while the alcoholic Mr. Kelly tries to force himself on her. When she can take it no longer, she sneaks into a car owned by Jack Halliday ($Edward Sutherland), a wealthy young man she once met. When he arrives home and finds her, he lets her stay since his parents are gone and loans her his sister's clothes. But Jack's fiancee, Elizabeth Doane (Helen Holly) is not at all thrilled with the situation and wires his father. Jack's parents return and they convince Nancy that there is no place in their world -- or Jack's -- for her, and that she must return from where ever she came. She leaves while Jack is away, but when he discovers she is gone, he rushes after her just in time to save her from the drunken Mr. Kelly. After that he and Nancy quickly drum up a minister and wed. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bebe Daniels, Edward Sutherland, (more)
- 1922
Laurette Taylor played the orphan Peg for so long on stage that by the time she starred in the motion picture, she was undoubtedly too old for the part. But then, when Marion Davies starred in the 1933 talkie version, she was 36. The performances of both women in their respective pictures were surprisingly good, considering that in those days film was considered a medium tailor-made for dewy-eyed youth. When her mother dies, Margaret O'Connell, better known as Peg, has to leave her father (Russell Simpson) in Ireland to live with her snooty English relatives so that she can inherit a lot of money. But her relatives -- Mrs. Chichester (Vera Lewis), Ethel Chichester (Ethel Grey Terry), and Alaric Chichester (D.R.O. Hatswell) abuse her and her dog Mike. Only the presence of their neighbor, Sir Gerald Adair (Mahlon Hamilton) -- whom she calls Jerry -- makes things even remotely tolerable. But Peg finally decides she can't stand the Chichesters any longer and returns to Ireland. Jerry goes after her to declare his love and they marry. King Vidor directed -- it was an unusual type of picture for him, but critics singled his work out for praise. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurette Taylor, Mahlon Hamilton, (more)
- 1922
Even though this light comedy never leaves the confines of its hospital setting, it's still highly amusing. Billy Grant (Richard Dix) winds up in the hospital after going on a wild spree when his fiancée breaks up with him. Jane Brown (Helene Chadwick) is his nurse, and he begs her to marry him. She agrees because she believes that he is dying. The truth is that Grant has married her just to get back at his relatives, who helped ruin his relationship with his fiancée. Jane asks to be transferred to the maternity ward, and she helps a newborn baby and its mother reunite with its father. While searching for the man, however, Jane breaks some hospital rules and she's in danger of being fired. Grant comes to her aid and also claims her as his wife. This picture was based on two stories by author Mary Roberts Rinehart. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Helene Chadwick, Richard Dix, (more)
- 1921
Bebe Daniels stars in this adaptation of the Miriam Michelson novel (and play), In the Bishop's Carriage. Thief Tom Dorgan (Wade Boteler) has trained an orphan, Nance Olden (Daniels) to be his accomplice. At a station she pretends to faint so that Dorgan can steal a diamond necklace from a man's pocket. She then hides in a carriage which turns out to belong to Bishop Van Wagenen (Herbert Standing). To cast off any suspicion she pretends to be crazy, so the Bishop feels sorry for her and takes her to his friend's home. Mr. Ramsey (Z. Well Covington) is the man Dorgan robbed, so Nance has to keep up her ruse. Later that night, Dorgan enters Nance's room and is caught. He's sent to prison for his deeds. Meanwhile, Nance has fallen for William Latimer (Emory Johnson), who is engaged to Nellie Ramsey (Ruth Renick). He's onto her, but he teaches her the meaning of right and wrong. When Nance has reformed, they marry. This was an odd, and not very satisfying vehicle for rising star Bebe Daniels -- it was primarily a drama, and as Harold Lloyd's former foil, she was already known for her comedic talents. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bebe Daniels, Emory Johnson, (more)
- 1920
Although Nurse Marjorie (Mary Miles Minter) proves to be a skilled caregiver, she is actually the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Donegal (Arthur Hoyt and Vera Lewis). To her parents' consternation, she has decided to take a stab at being self-supporting. Her main patients are a child with a broken leg and John Danbury (Clyde Filmore) of the House of Commons, who has been temporarily blinded. Danbury falls in love with Marjorie and becomes jealous because she's spending so much time with the other patient, who he thinks is a grown man. In an attempt to discourage the romance, Marjorie takes Danbury to meet her parents -- only they don't go to the Donegal estate, but the home of a fish dealer who has agreed to stand in. However, the woman's comically uncouth ways don't dampen his spirits or his suit, and Marjorie is finally impressed with his sincerity. So she reveals her true identity, manages to overcome the obstacle of her title, and is united with Danbury. This film was based on the novel by Israel Zangwill, who was famous for his tales of British life. It is apparently the only surviving film made by director William Desmond Taylor that starred Mary Miles Minter. In 1922, Taylor was mysteriously murdered, and although it is almost certain that Minter had nothing to do with the crime, the negative publicity still ruined her career. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide
- 1919
Although a New Yorker by birth, silent screen actress Edith Storey had appeared in westerns as early as 1910 when she was engaged by Gaston Mèliés as the leading lady of his San Antonio-based Star Film Ranch. Storey's career was on the wane, however, when she played the dainty "Colonel Billy" in As the Sun Went Down, a rather commonplace western melodrama in which a romance with a handsome would-be crook (Lew Cody) is rudely interrupted by a blackmailer. A true screen pioneer who was one of the Vitagraph company's strongest assets in the mid 1910s, Storey retired in 1921. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide
- 1917
Jack and the Beanstalk was the first of Fox's Sunshine Kiddies films, a delightful (and now sadly lost) series of opulently produced films based on famous children's stories. Most of the major roles -- both adult and juvenile -- were filled by such talented child performers as Francis Carpenter, Virginia Lee Corbin and Violet Radcliffe, though certain key roles were essayed by adults; in Jack, for example, the giant was played by the gangly J.G. Traver, and his wife was portrayed by the hatchet-visaged Vera Lewis. It was also not uncommon for the female child actors to play male roles, in the tradition of the English Pantomime plays. Often mistakenly categorized as spoofish predecessors to Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies, the Sunshine Kiddies entries were played with a straight face, though it was hard to take the notion of children playing grown-up roles too seriously. Virtually all of the Kiddies films were directed by the fraternal team of Chester and Sidney Franklin, and at the outset of the series were produced in association with D.W. Griffith. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Sometime during the shooting of the landmark The Birth of a Nation, filmmaker D.W. Griffith probably wondered how he could top himself. In 1916, he showed how, with the awesome Intolerance. The film began humbly enough as a medium-budget feature entitled The Mother and the Law, wherein the lives of a poor but happily married couple are disrupted by the misguided interference of a "social reform" group. A series of unfortunate circumstances culminates in the husband's being sentenced to the gallows, a fate averted by a nick-of-time rescue engineered by his wife. In the wake of the protests attending the racist content of The Birth of a Nation, Griffith wanted to demonstrate the dangers of intolerance. The Mother and the Law filled the bill to some extent, but it just wasn't "big" enough to suit his purposes. Thus, using The Mother and the Law as merely the base of the film, Griffith added three more plotlines and expanded his cinematic thesis to epic proportions. The four separate stories of Intolerance are symbolically linked by Lillian Gish as the Woman Who Rocks the Cradle ("uniter of the here and hereafter"). The "Modern Story" is essentially The Mother and the Law; the "French Story" details the persecution of the Huguenots by Catherine de Medici (Josephine Crowell); the "Biblical Story" relates the last days of Jesus Christ (Howard Gaye); and the "Babylonian Story" concerns the defeat of King Belshazzar (Alfred Paget) by the hordes of Cyrus the Persian (George Siegmann).
Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly naïve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Rather than being related chronologically, the four stories are told in parallel fashion, slowly at first, and then with increasing rapidity. The action in the film's final two reels leaps back and forth in time between Babylon, Calvary, 15th century France, and contemporary California. Described by one historian as "the only film fugue," Intolerance baffled many filmgoers of 1916 -- and, indeed, it is still an exhausting, overwhelming experience, even for audiences accustomed to the split-second cutting and multilayered montage sequences popularized by Sergei Eisenstein, Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, Joel Schumacher, and MTV. On a pure entertainment level, the Babylonian sequences are the most effective, played out against one of the largest, most elaborate exterior sets ever built for a single film. The most memorable character in this sequence is "The Mountain Girl," played by star on the rise Constance Talmadge; when the Babylonian scenes were re-released as a separate feature in 1919, Talmadge's tragic death scene was altered to accommodate a happily-ever-after denouement. Other superb performances are delivered by Mae Marsh and Robert Harron in the Modern Story, and by Eugene Pallette and Margery Wilson in the French Story. Remarkably sophisticated in some scenes, appallingly naïve in others, Intolerance is a mixed bag dramatically, but one cannot deny that it is also a work of cinematic genius. The film did poorly upon its first release, not so much because its continuity was difficult to follow as because it preached a gospel of tolerance and pacifism to a nation preparing to enter World War I. Currently available prints of Intolerance run anywhere from 178 to 208 minutes; while it may be rough sledding at times, it remains essential viewing for any serious student of film technique. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, (more)
- 1915
Elsie Janis was one of the major names of the musical comedy world. In addition to starring in several highly regarded vehicles, she was also a prolific playwright and director, as well as an indefatigable troop-show entertainer during World War 1. The 1915 silent film Caprices of Kitty robbed audiences of the pleasure of Janis's rich singing and speaking voice, but her talent and vivacity still shone through every frame. The star plays a boarding school student who will lose her inheritance if she spends any time with her fiance in the six months prior to her marriage. In order to rendezvous with her beloved, Elsie resorts to clever disguises and elaborate costumes. All's well that ends well in this sprightly romantic comedy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1915
British musical-comedy favorite Elsie Janis, whose tireless barnstorming during the WWI years earned her the soubriquet "The Sweetheart of the AEF," was aptly cast in the title role of Madcap Betty. Janis also wrote the film's screenplay, which deals with the misadventures of a convent-bred girl during her first foray into the Real World. Betty's boyfriend Jim Denning (Jim Denning) stands by in bemused silence as Betty's behavior alternately elicits hilarity and embarrassment. But in the end, Betty assumes a less zany pose to win back Jim from a beautiful rival. It was a great misfortune that talking pictures had not been perfected in 1915, robbing movie audiences of the opportunity to hear Elsie Janis' splendid singing voice and gift for mimicry. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
While busy with The Birth of a Nation, director D.W. Griffith began a small-scale contemporary drama called The Mother and the Law. The film was designed as an indictment against professional do-gooders who take it upon themselves to "reform" the poor. One victim of this misguided treatment is played by Mae Marsh, whose baby is claimed by the moral uplifters when her husband (Bobby Harron) proves unable to provide for his family. The film's dramatic highpoints include a violent capital vs. labor clash, and a climactic race for life as the husband is slated for execution for a crime he did not commit. If this all sounds familiar, it is because an abbreviated version of The Mother and the Law was incorporated into Griffith's four-part spectacular Intolerance; it was later released as a separate feature, with newly shot scenes added. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, (more)
