Constance Talmadge Movies
Unlike her older sister Norma Talmadge, whose specialty was heavy drama, American silent film actress Constance Talmadge was most comfortable with bubbly light comedy. Beginning her career as a $5-a-day extra, Constance scored her first success as the tomboyish Mountain Girl in the Babylonian segment of director D.W. Griffith's gargantuan multi-episode production Intolerance (1916). So popular was her portrayal that, as a balm to audiences, Griffith refilmed the Moutain Girl's death scene for the Babylonian sequence when it was reissued separately in 1919 as The Fall of Babylon, allowing Talmadge a happy ending. The actress' brother-in-law, producer Joseph M. Schenck, set up the Constance Talmadge Film Company in 1917, giving her full control regarding script and costar approval. Though few of her films survive, Constance Talmadge is still remembered by her aging fans for such sprightly feature comedies as A Virtuous Vamp (1919), Polly of the Follies (1922) and Her Sister from Paris (1925), the last-mentioned film providing an early costarring opportunity for Ronald Colman. Not wishing to bother with the advent of talking pictures, Talmadge retired after shooting her last silent film, Venus (1929), in France. Too wealthy to worry about her fame passing, Constance Talmadge devoted her last years to her fourth husband and her charity work, never once entreating or even considering a movie comeback. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
Marguerite Bertsch, one of Vitagraph's busiest screenwriters, was responsible for the three-reel "melodramatic farce" Uncle Bill. The title character, played by Donald Hall, is the wealthy relative of bickering married couple John and Julia Mason (William Humphrey, Julia Swayne Gordon). A burglar named Oiley Curley (Jack Brawn) is mistakenly identified as Uncle Bill, an error which he intends to use to his advantage. Meanwhile, the real Uncle Bill falls head over heels in love with cute young Gladys (Constance Talmadge), who happens to be Julia's sister. Billy Quirk, a popular comedian of the era, is the "mutual friend" character who ends up tying all the loose plot strands together. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1914
The 2-reel Moonstone of Fez was produced by Flying Eagle pictures, a branch of Vitagraph studios. Matinee idol Maurice Costello plays the sweetheart of a wealthy young woman who has the misfortune to fall heir to a "cursed" Moroccan moonstone. Vacationing in France with her ailing mother, the heroine returns to her hotel room one day to discover that her mom has disappeared. Contacting the authorities, the girl is informed that neither she nor her mother are registered in the hotel -- and that it's highly possible that the mother may be only a figment of the girl's imagination. For a while, it appears as though the moonstone's curse is manifesting itself, but hero Costello proves that the girl is not hallucinating: The mother had died of bubonic plague, whereupon the nervous Parisian officials, hoping to avert a panic, wiped out all traces of the woman's existence. Based on a purportedly true story which occurred during the 1893 Paris Exposition, the plotline of The Moonstone of Fez would be refilmed innumerable times, most memorably as the 1949 British feature So Long at the Fair. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
