Born into a wealthy Jewish family in what was Russia but is located in modern day Moldova, Leib Milstein showed an early interest in the theatre and the dramatic arts. His family discouraged this by sending him away to study engineering but the draw of the theatre meant he neglected his classes, failed his coursework, and subsequently bought a one-way ticket to the US.

Milstein worked as a janitor, door-to-door salesman, a lace machine operator and a portrait and theatre photographer, later joining the Army’s photography unit after the US entered World War I. There he trained in aerial photography, assisted on training films, and edited documentary combat footage, working alongside future Hollywood directors Josef von Sternberg and Victor Fleming.

Following his discharge from the Army he changed his surname to Milestone, secured US citizenship, and with the help of an Army friend gained an entry-level position as an assistant editor in Hollywood. Between his discharge and starting his studio job Lewis made ends meet working as a card dealer at a Los Angeles gambling venue.

At the studio Milestone accepted any job he was offered, earning his first credited role as an assistant on Dice of Destiny. His roles included editor, general assistant, script writer and gag writer for Harold Lloyd. In this period Milestone also developed a reputation as a “film doctor”, skilled at salvaging movies for a number of different studios.

While writing screen treatments for Universal and Warners, Lewis approached Jack Warner with the offer of a free story provided he was attached to direct. This resulted in Milestone’s directorial debut Seven Sinners, one of three films he made with Marie Prevost, Mack Sennett, and screenwriter (and future producer) Darryl F. Zanuck. The film’s success established Milestone as a capable director.

His next notable film was Two Arabian Knights, considered Milestone’s most outstanding silent film and his first working under the exceptionally difficult Howard Hughes. The film won the Academy Award for best comedy direction beating Charlie Chaplin for The Circus. Milestone’s next film, The Garden of Eden, was favourably compared to the work of Ernst Lubitsch and established his reputation for making comedies.

Afraid of being stereotyped, Milestone pivoted to make the gangster film The Racket which was earned him another Best Picture nomination.

Milestone pivoted again when he made his anti-war picture All Quiet on the Western Front, a film widely regarded as his directorial masterpiece, and one of the most powerful war films ever made. Originally conceived as a silent film, the silent and talkie versions were filmed together and in sequence. This likely inspired one of Milestone’s most significant technical innovations… the post-synchronization of sound recordings which freed up the camera for tracking shots and the later addition of sound effects which graphically depicted the effects of artillery and machine gun fire.

The movie enjoyed both critical and public acclaim, won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Milestone took home the Academy Award for Best Director. This established Milestone as a premiere talent and Howard Hughes rewarded him with the opportunity to direct The Front Page.

The film was highly influential, recognised for introducing the fast-talking, wise-cracking reporter and was later acknowledged as a pre-cursor to the screwball comedy as seen in Howard Hawks’ remake His Girl Friday. Some consider The Front Page to be Milestone’s far greater accomplishment for being the perfect translation from stage to screen.

It earned an Academy Award Best Picture nomination, and Milestone was listed among “The Ten Best Directors” by a Film Daily poll of 300 movie critics. Despite this success Milestone was increasingly troubled by what he saw as the diminishing control of directors in the studio system. In response he helped organise and then joined the Screen Directors Guild alongside Frank Borzage, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian, and William Wellman. The organisation grew to 600 members in just a few years.

After struggling to find compelling material Milestone settled on Rain, the adaption of W. Somerset Maugham’s short story. Rising star Joan Crawford was attached to play prostitute Sadie Thompson, and unencumbered by the yet to be enforced production code Milestone was free to explore topics such as rape, violence and to use sexual and religious symbolism. The film was considered “slow and stage-bound” with Milestone acknowledging

I started the picture slowly, too slowly, I’m afraid. You can’t start a picture slowly. You must show things happening.

Following two lacklustre musicals, Milestone had more success with The General Died at Dawn, a film admired for its style and for the technical skill on show. This included an impressive use of tracking shots, a split screens and the innovative use of a match dissolve. While Milestone wasn’t happy with the result, the film is considered a masterpiece of 1930s Hollywood cinema.

Newly contracted to Hal Roach, Milestone was asked to adapt John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Milestone solicited Steinbeck’s approval for the script, and got it past the Hays Office after only “minor” changes. The film enjoyed critical success and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture but failed at the box office, perhaps suffering from a down-beat ending that sees the mercy-killing of Lennie at the hands of his friend George.

In 1943 Milestone returned to Warner Brothers for war film Edge of Darkness, a typical piece of war time propaganda. Milestone described it thus:

Edge of Darkness has done away with disillusionment. We know the enemy we are fighting and we are facing the stern realities of the present war. The moral of Edge of Darkness is “United we stand, divided we fall.” That is the great lesson of our time and the keystone for victory for the democratic cause.

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His next film, The North Star, was also a propaganda film, but one requested by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to celebrate America’s wartime alliance with Russia. It received mostly positive reviews, though some critics saw it as pro-Communist propaganda. It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Special Effects, Best Musical Score, Best Sound and Best Original Screenplay but was largely ignored at the box office.

In the post-war period the film caught the eye of the House Un-American Activities Committee and turned unwanted attention on Milestone which was piqued by his birthplace and his Left-wing beliefs. In 1946 he was summoned to appear before the committee. He testified as an ‘unfriendly witness’ and was labelled a Red sympathiser by Hedda Hopper. Unlike the Hollywood Ten and many others, Milestone was able to keep working though his career was adversely affected.

In the same year Milestone directed one of my favourite film noirs… The Strange Love of Martha Ivers. It has great performances from leads Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin, as well as from newcomers Kirk Douglas and Lizabeth Scott. It’s likely that the film’s critique of post-war, urban America as corrupt and irredeemable struck a cord with the under-fire Milestone.

In 1950 Milestone was sent to Australia to make the long delayed Kangaroo (also known as The Australian Story) to utilise frozen funds that could only be used in Australia. Milestone disliked the initial script and against the studio’s wishes oversaw a rewrite. Maureen O’Hara felt the script had been ruined, intended to withdraw from the film, but was forced to remain to avoid a political incident. The film was moved from New South Wales to South Australia where Fox had built a base of operations.

Despite all its problems, when the film was released in Australia its initial box-office performance was strong, but following a number of negative reviews ticket sales soon dried up.

As his career was winding down Milestone took on Korean War drama Pork Chop Hill, the story of a strategically pointless assault by a company of U.S. infantrymen to secure and defend a nondescript hill against a much larger Chinese battalion. Milestone was unhappy with the final cut, describing it as just another war movie, a genre he had also grown tired of.

Milestone then accepted an offer from Warner Bros. to produce and direct the comedy-heist film Ocean’s 11. While the screenplay was considered “preposterous”, Milestone delivered a film that equivocates between a pure satire of American acquisitiveness and its celebration. The film was a box-office success, but critics have widely dismissed it as unworthy of Milestone’s talents.

For his final film Milestone was asked to replace Carol Reed as director of Mutiny on the Bounty. Reed had quit because he could not cope with Marlon Brando’s difficult behaviour. Initially Brando was better behaved, but in order to just finish the film Milestone ultimately decided let him do as he pleased.

Milestone’s final request before he died was for Universal Studios to restore All Quiet on the Western Front to its original length. Milestone films Seven Sinners, The Front Page, The Racket, and Two Arabian Knights have been preserved by the Academy Film Archive. And many of Milestone films remain both much loved and much admired.

Looking across all Milestone’s work you see a range of outstanding and mediocre films across many different genres which was a function of his role as a studio director. What was consistent across all his films was his fluid camera style which was likely stems from skills learned during his time with the Army’s photography unit, which in turn made war films one of his stronger genres.

What is unquestionable, is so many of his films are worth going back and revisiting.

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Not only have I been formed by living in a very different time, with different experiences and exposed to different social forces, I have also seen films that were made after and were perhaps influenced by these old films. The closest any of us will ever come to time travel, despite what we see in the movies.

Watching The Great Gabbo, I kept expecting the ventriloquist’s dummy to take on an evil life of it’s own, perhaps influenced by modern horror films like Child’s Play or Trilogy of Terror. But that moment never came and I think the film is better for it.

You can check out The Great Gabbo by clicking on the image below.If you do, let me know your experience by clicking on the comments tab. I’d be interested to know if you had a similar experience to me.

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The second film I’m featuring this month is many things… unique, a little bizarre, utterly surprising, but also kind and sympathetic. There really is no other film like Freaks.

The title is awful and perhaps one of the reasons so many people got the wrong idea about the film initially. It was initially banned, before making its way on the ‘exploitation film’ circuit, only later being rediscovered and embraced by a new audience for which it was never intended.

The statement that a film was ‘ahead of its time’ is used too often, but in the case of Freaks this is certainly true. If you’re a paid subscriber you can access the film by clicking on the link below.

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By 1960 both Powell and Hitchcock had developed reputations as directors with a long track record of making great films. Hitchcock had come off a run of critically and commercially successful films when he decided to make Psycho for which he was only able to find limited support. Paramount, believing the movie would do poorly at the box office, only agreed to proceed after Hitchcock deferred his salary in lieu of a percentage of the box office. With a limited budget Hitchcock had to shoot in black and white and rely on crew members from his TV show. The film was not only influential, it was also a monumental critical and commercial success.

Michael Powell had built a mighty reputation through the 1940s alongside Emeric Pressburger making films such as The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. Powell too committed himself to a project for which he found little support. His long-time collaborator Pressburger refused to work with him on Peeping Tom because he found the subject matter distasteful. Powell persevered, making a film that not only treads similar ground to Psycho but does so in a far more effective and authentic way.

However the reception that Peeping Tom received, at the time of its release, was essentially the complete opposite to that enjoyed by Psycho.

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Peeping Tom suffered a critical mauling followed by public outcry which resulted in it being pulled from British cinemas after just five days. Powell was criticised for using himself and his son as the central character’s father and that character as a youngster respectively, suggesting that Powell overly identified with the movie and that the use of his son bordered on abuse.

The film is ground-breaking, regarded as one of the first slasher films and the first mainstream British movie to feature female nudity. The controversy began on-set when after filming a nude scene a photo-journalist snuck on-set in an attempt to get photos of Pamela Green, the “first nude woman in a British feature-length film.”

The backlash against the film was due to a combination of the onscreen nudity and what people saw as its distasteful content. The film centres on a serial killer who seeks out women to murder so he can film their terror as they die, cutting the footage together to make a snuff film for his private viewing pleasure.

An early sign of trouble was seen at the premiere where following the screening nobody from the audience went to shake the hand of either the film’s lead (Karlheinz Böhm) or Powell. Narratives about this marking the end of Powell’s career began soon after with British reviews exhibiting over the top levels of negativity, in the case of the Monthly Film Bulletin Powell was likened to the Marquis de Sade.

Kinematograph Weekly provided one of the more supportive reviews stating “Most of the national critics were not enamoured with the subject matter” but the magazine found it “a powerfully gripping, well-produced picture” that should “do very well as an X certificate booking.”

In contrast, Derek Hill of Tribune magazine suggested that “the only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer”. Len Mosley of the Daily Express found the film more nauseating and depressing than the leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay, and the gutters of Calcutta. While Caroline Lejeune of The Observer wrote: “It’s a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom”. Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard called it “loathsome” and The Huddersfield Daily Examiner believed the film was made for “perverts only.”

Pamela Green felt the public relations department was missing an opportunity to promote the film, so she posed for several photos in movie-related costumes as well as nude to drum up publicity. Images were sent to mainstream newspapers and magazines, with the nudes used in magazines Green was connected with.

Peeping Tom was first released in the United Kingdom by Anglo-Amalgamated, who through films like Horrors of the Black Museum and Circus of Horrors had become associated with themes of voyeurism, disfigurement, and sadism. While their films were typically released in the US by American International Pictures, AIP were not interested in handling Peeping Tom.

Astor Pictures picked up the US distribution rights in 1962 distributing it alongside genre horror films, art films and exploitation films. It failed to find an audience in part because it received a B rating from the National Legion of Decency for being “morally objectionable in part”.

When first released in Italy in 1960, the Committee for the Theatrical Review of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities rated it as VM16: not suitable for children under 16. In order to be screened publicly, the Committee required the removal of a number of nude scenes.

The film was banned in Finland until 1981.

Peeping Tom later enjoyed a cult following, especially among filmmakers, and subsequently earned a critical reappraisal. While the comparisons to Psycho have long been acknowledged filmmakers typically cite it as being more influential for treating the killer in a more tragic and sympathetic way, which was a major innovation.

The film is now considered a masterpiece and among the best horror films of all time, with The Guardian ranking it 10th while somewhat predictably ranking Psycho at number 1. Its among Martin Scorcese’s favourite films, Premiere magazine voted it one of “The 25 Most Dangerous Movies”. It’s on Roger Ebert‘s “Great Movies” list and is one of the “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”

None of this was lost on Powell who noted in his autobiography: “I make a film that nobody wants to see and then, thirty years later, everybody has either seen it or wants to see it”.

To suggest that Powell’s contribution to film ended with this film is sadly misguided. He may have subsequently been faced with few opportunities other than making films in Australia, but his contribution was immense. Australian film production had not been in a more moribund state when he made They’re a Weird Mob, which was not just a fabulous film but its success was responsible for reigniting interest in making Australian films. He returned a few years later with a very young Helen Mirren to make the under-rated Age of Consent, which is another of his under-appreciated films.

In my eyes Peeping Tom was a monumental success on several different measures, but it was a film that didn’t fit for a long time.

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Director Tod Browning had enjoyed tremendous success with Dracula but it was a success built on the wild popularity of the play and on the appearance of Bela Lugosi who had wowed audiences on both Broadway and in Los Angeles. Universal Pictures had also invested heavily, not only in purchasing the rights but also in choosing to shoot two versions of the film simultaneously, one in English and one in Spanish.

The film was of course a massive success and Browning was subsequently given a great deal of freedom in both choosing his next project and how it would be made as he took on the dual role of director and producer. It should have come as no surprise that he would choose to adapt elements from the short story “Spurs” by Tod Robbins which revolves around Jacques, a dwarf performer in a small French travelling circus and his troubled romantic pursuit of the troupe’s bareback rider Jeanne Marie.

Browning had been fascinated by the circus and carnival life since he was a child and at 16 had run away from his well-to-do family to join a travelling circus. He made his way into film, first as an actor before moving into direction alongside D.W. Griffith. By 1925 he was a successful director working at MGM, and had developed a recognisable filmmaking style.

In 1925 he made The Unholy Three which follows a trio of criminal ex-carnies and a pickpocket who become jewel thieves, commit murder and attempt to frame an innocent bookkeeper. The same year he made The Mystic, a story of embezzlement and swindling that includes Carnivals, Hungarian Gypsies and séances.

Then in 1927 Browning made The Show which follows a swaggering carnival barker who becomes entangled in a web of love, jealousy, and danger backstage at the Palace of Illusions. He later made The Unknown, the story of “Alonzo the armless,” a Gypsy knife-thrower who throws knives with his feet and harbours a secret love for his assistant. A story that linked physical deformity with sexual frustration.

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While Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy and Jean Harlow were all considered for Freaks major stars were overlooked for an ensemble cast that included little known Russian actress Olga Baclanova, Harry Earles (who had worked with Browning in The Unholy Three), Earles’ sister Daisy (as his love interest Frieda) and an extended cast who were drawn from carnivals and sideshows. Filming began in late 1931 and immediately raised concerns at MGM. Some employees found the presence of the actors portraying the “freaks” as discomfiting, and other than a handful of so-called normal looking “freaks” they had to remain in a specially-built tent and away from the studio lot.

Olga Baclanova had a vastly different reaction. On first meeting her co-stars she said:

First I meet the midget and he adores me because we speak German and he’s from Germany. Then he shows me the girl that’s like an orangutan; then a man who has a head but no legs, no nothing, just a head and a body like an egg. Then he shows me a boy who walks on his hands because he was born without feet. He shows me little by little and I could not look. I wanted to cry when I saw them. They have such nice faces, but it is so terrible.... Now, after we start the picture, I like them all so much.

Test screenings drew strong negative responses so Irving Thalberg, without Browning’s consent, sanitised it by cutting a number of scenes and added alternate footage bringing the running time down to 64 minutes. Its world premiere at the Fox Theatre in San Diego, where the film was shown in full, was a success and in its heavily edited form it found success in smaller cities such as Cincinnati, Boston, and Saint Paul.

Everywhere else it bombed, with Freaks becoming the only MGM film ever to be pulled from release before completing its domestic engagements. MGM sold the distribution rights to Dwain Esper for a 25-year period for $50,000. Esper attempted to lean into the so called grotesque appearance of many of the actors by re-releasing the film under the titles The Monster Story, Forbidden Love, and Nature’s Mistakes. The film was banned in the United Kingdom for over 30 years, and was labelled as “brutal and grotesque” in Canada.

The critical response to the film was especially interesting. While most reviewers went beyond being highly critical to express outrage and revulsion, New York reviewers saw merit in the film. The New York Times called it “excellent at times and horrible, in the strict meaning of the word” as well as “a picture not to be easily forgotten.” The New York Herald Tribune wrote that “in some strange way, the picture is not only exciting, but even occasionally touching.” John Mosher of The New Yorker called it “a little gem” that “stands in a class by itself, and probably won’t be forgotten in a hurry by those who see it.”

Despite the critical backlash and its initial failure at the box office it was subject to public and critical reappraisal in the 1960s, as a long forgotten Hollywood classic, particularly in Europe, and was screened at the 1962 Venice Film Festival. In retrospect, numerous film critics have suggested that the film presents a starkly sympathetic portrait of its sideshow characters rather than an exploitative one, with Andrew Sarris declaring Freaks one of the “most compassionate” films ever made.

John Thomas in Film Quarterly deemed it “a minor masterpiece.” Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine puts it best saying that previous criticisms of the film “seriously underplay the film’s blistering humanity and the audacious aesthetic and philosophical lengths to which Browning goes to challenge the way we define beauty and abnormality.”

Shortly after the Venice Film Festival Freaks was shown for the first time in the United Kingdom and in the 1970s and 1980s the film was regularly shown at midnight screenings in the US. It enjoyed a critical reappraisal in France and has been cited as one of the 50 most important American films ever made. It is listed among the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and is now considered by many to be the most remarkable film of Tod Browning’s career, eclipsing Dracula.

Misunderstood? Ahead of its time? You decide, it’s just a pity we will never see it as Browning originally intended.

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Based on the 1928 short story “The Rival Dummy” by Ben Hecht the script was adapted by Hecht and playwright Hugh Herbert into a musical drama, a genre which was new to audiences. Director James Cruze took things a step further by making the unusual decision to shoot a number of the film’s sequences in Multicolor, a subtractive two-colour motion picture process that had been pioneered that same year.

Cruze was an atypical director, not only coming from a Mormon family in Utah but also someone who was believed to be part Ute Indian. He had paid his way through drama school by working as a fisherman before dabbling in film acting and producing. In 1923 he shifted his primary focus to directing, though by 1929 Cruze’s directing career was on the decline and The Great Gabbo was a chance to resurrect it. Cruze felt the moody Erich Von Stroheim was the perfect Gabbo, and cast his wife Betty Compson as his long suffering assistant Marie.

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Von Stroheim saw his involvement with this film as a fresh start following the difficulty he’d had directing the film Greed, a film that remains infamous for it’s exorbitant cost and its original 10 hour running time. While Von Stroheim managed to cut it to 6 hours, and then 4 hours, the editing was handed to the film’s scriptwriter by the frustrated studio and she cut it to 2 1/2 hours. When the heavily edited version flopped at the box office Von Stroheim disowned it.

This expensive failure and his reputation for being notoriously difficult to work with led to his blackballing as a director and elater sparked a desire to re-launch himself as an actor.

The film’s story focuses on the brilliant, but obnoxious, ventriloquist Gabbo who increasingly uses his dummy “Otto” as a conduit for his true feelings and beliefs. Despite Gabbo’s astonishing ability to make Otto talk and sing while he smokes, drinks, and eats, the film opens with Gabbo playing to small audiences in flea-pit venues. He takes his frustration out on his girlfriend and assistant Mary, who loves him, but is driven to leave by his megalomania, superstition, irritability, and cruelty. Her biggest regret is in leaving Otto through whom she believes she can see Gabbo’s better nature.

Two years later Gabbo has become a nationally renowned ventriloquist, revered for his talent, but still pining for Mary, who is now romantically involved with another singer/dancer, Frank. With both Mary and Frank performing in a show in which Gabbo is the headliner, he attempts to win her back. Despite some initial success Mary remains committed to Frank, causing Gabbo to spiral from eccentricity to complete madness.

In anger and frustration Gabbo punches Otto in the face, disfiguring him, before storming onstage and creating the violence and mayhem that effectively ends his career. Gabbo walks off into oblivion, carrying his disfigured dummy and muttering to himself, likely to never be seen again.

The film interweaves stark drama with quite elaborate full-length, large-scale, on-stage musical production numbers. The film’s relentless energy is driven in large part by these song and dance numbers but also by Von Stroheim’s performance. His overt self importance, his demeanour (that resembles that of a Prussian army officer) and his offensive behaviour are compelling rather than endearing, as he struts around, slurping his coffee, constantly complaining and bragging. His Gabbo is a gluttonous, showbiz animal, whose supreme confidence in his talent leads to him treating his audience as an annoyance.

The character of Gabbo is resurrected in the eyes of the audience at the point of his downfall. After behaving as an appalling brute for almost the entire film, by the time of his meltdown we are given an insight into the pain of his existence at which we pity him for his suffering and the knowledge he doesn’t have the character to rise above it.

The production manages to create a believable and spectacular Broadway revue, which is impressive given the significant constraints that would have existed working for a poverty row studio like Sono-Art. The film opened to lukewarm reviews and although Von Stroheim’s performance was praised, the film did nothing to further his career.

The original film ran 96 minutes, including the exit music, and survives in a number of forms of different lengths, but what seems to have been lost is the colour sequences that Cruze experimented with. But this doesn’t adversely affect the film we can see today.

Since the making of The Great Gabbo many films have turned their eye on the performing arts and have featured troubled and troubling central characters with great success. Whether this film’s difficulties were a result of being among the first of its kind, or just ahead of its time, it has attracted more interest in the years after it flopped at the box office.

What’s interesting about looking back on films long after they were made is what you can see, or imagine, with the benefit of hindsight. It is tempting to see the film as commentary on how Hollywood treated Von Stroheim or even his character as a caricature of the person he was. The same commentary surrounds Von Stroheim’s appearance in Sunset Boulevard as the madly devoted and long forgotten director from the silent era.

Von Stroheim’s biographers have said that he often took Otto home with him after shooting, and for many years wanted to remake the film, which could be seen as another example of supposed madness of Von Stroheim.

If the name Gabbo rings a bell it is probably due to The Simpsons and the episode “Krusty Gets Kancelled”. Gabbo is the name of a walking, talking, singing (and borderline evil) dummy who works with a man named Arthur Crandall. Gabbo returned in later episodes where he was seen to have been ruined by scandal and left to do performances at casinos and other low-rent locales. It’s a similar story with the roles of the ventriloquist and his dummy reversed.

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First up is the great Mabel Normand, known for the influence and control she had over many of the films she appeared in, at a time when women weren’t afforded that kind of power.

The Extra Girl is notable for a number of reasons. While today, films about the film industry are unremarkable, in 1923 that was less true. This wasn’t the first film to take on the subject but its success did pave the way for other influential films about Hollywood, such as King Vidor's Show People (1928).

In 1923 Hollywood was little more than a decade old, still the film rolled out many of the cliches that have persisted, most notably the story of small town girls travelling to Hollywood with hopes of becoming a star.

Constance Talmadge has a different but no less profound influence on films and filmmaking.

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The two Talmadge sisters (Norma and Constance) became two of the most beloved stars of the silent era but in many ways were very different. Norma was a slight, doe-eyed brunette beauty adept best known for portraying emotionally intense characters. Constance was a tall, gawky blond, far less pretty but with an infectious personality, a talent for physical comedy, and a spirited on-screen presence.

Despite these differences, the sisters were often closely associated due to their studio’s publicity department who highlighted the familial connection, and marketed their films together to distributors. This promotion didn’t mention that they had grown up in impoverished circumstances with a largely absent, alcoholic father and a mother, Peg, who made ends meet by renting out a spare room, taking in laundry, selling cosmetics and teaching art classes.

Growing up the the girls had been inseparable, putting on little plays, supporting each other, cheering each other’s achievements, and raising stray and injured cats, dogs and birds in their basement. After a friend suggested that Norma would make a good model for title slides which were shown in early nickelodeons, Peg became a pushy stage mother promoting first Norma, and later Constance who people described as having undeniable spunk and charm.

Constance was different. Blonde where her sister had dark hair, she was buoyant, showed a talent for comedy, and went by “Dutch” a nickname Peg had given her because she looked like a cherubic Little Dutch Boy.

Constance’s first comedy short for Vitagraph was In Bridal Attire (1914) and was followed by appearances in a number of two-reel comedies predominantly with comedian Billy Quirk. Her big break came when D.W. Griffith cast her as The Mountain Girl in Intolerance (1916), with Griffith re-issuing her segment as a solo feature entitled The Fall of Babylon (1919), for which he re-shot her death scene ending so that her character would live happily ever after.

After this she was promoted to starring parts at Triangle Film Corporation where she formed an important professional relationship with writer Anita Loos who admired her “humour and her irresponsible way of life” and would go on to write a number of screenplays for her.

According to Loos, Peg Talmadge convinced Joseph Schenck to start The Constance Talmadge Film Company after her contract with Triangle expired, with Loos and husband John Emerson co-producing her films. Constance’s popularity soared with a 1921 Moving Picture World poll rating Norma and Constance Talmadge as the first and second most popular movie actresses respectively, while they also enjoyed a sizable international following.

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Into the early 1920s Constance charmed audiences with a number of flapper-era comedies, mostly co-starring alongside silent film great Harrison Ford. When asked about her abilities as an actress Constance said:

I enjoy making people laugh and this type of work comes easiest and most naturally to me, I am not a highly emotional type. My sister could cry real tears over two sofa cushions stuffed into a long dress and white lace cap, to look like a dead baby, and she would do it so convincingly that 900 persons out front would weep with her. That is real art, but my kind of talent would lead me to bounce that padded baby up and down on my knee with absurd grimaces that would make the same 900 roar with laughter.

Throughout the 1920s Constance’s films became fewer and further between, with her last film Venus (1929) being produced in France. While Time magazine reported at the time that Constance had become bored with filmmaking, the truth was that talkies had arrived and she didn’t have a voice (described as ‘squeaky’) that would allow her to make the transition. So Constance retired after appearing in more than 80 films.

Her mother Peg held on to the hope that Constance might one day return to films, saying:

Success and fame cast a spell that can never been quite shaken off. A woman, because of her love, may say, and in the fervor of the moment believe, that she is ready to give up her chosen work. But there is sure to come a time when keen longing and strong regret for her lost career dominate over the more placid contentments of love and marriage. Then unhappiness and friction ensue.

Even if Constance didn’t abandon acting for love, Peg was mistaken as not only did her daughter not return to acting, of her four marriages, the two most enduring came after she left acting.

During her career Constance had a lower profile sister than her sister Norma, but today she is far more recognisable with her madcap antics credited as a precursor to the screwball comedies of the 1930s.

She left her mark in other ways too. Along with her sister Norma, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks, Constance inaugurated the tradition of placing her footprints in concrete outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. True to her comic tendencies, rather than leaving single hand and foot prints, she left a trail of five footprints in her slab as if she were walking away.

Constance was also honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Thankfully almost half of Constance’s feature films have survived in their entirety with several others surviving in part. That’s a far better record than that of other films that were made at the time. As they say, you can’t keep a good woman down, and ‘Dutch’ was certainly irrepressible.

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Beginning at Biograph and working exclusively in tragedies under the direction of D. W. Griffith, she later moved on to Vitagraph where she made a series of comedic shorts featuring as ‘Betty’, including a co-starring role alongside John Bunny, film’s first comedy star.

Mabel’s move into comedy was the result of Griffith having no project ready for her and sending her down to the Biograph comedy unit, who initially didn’t want her either. According to Mabel, while killing time swimming the director saw her and decided having one of the characters watch her through binoculars would make a good scene. Mabel performed so well that she found herself transferred to Biograph’s comedy division. Being slim and attractive she broke the mould for comediennes of the time who drew laughs with their fat bodies or their grotesque movements.

At Vitagraph, founder Albert E. Smith believed he had over-estimated Mabel’s “potential for future stardom” and let her go. An intensely beguiling performance in Her Awakening, directed by D. W. Griffith, drew the attention of Mack Sennett while he was working at Biograph. The two began a relationship and Sennett later brought her to Keystone Studios when he founded it in 1912.

One of Normand’s most significant contributions was the creation of the “Mabel” character, a spirited, independent, and mischievous young woman. ‘Mabel’ was seen as the quintessential modern, 20th-century woman, a groundbreaking character who resonated with audiences and helped redefine the role of women in film.

By this time Normand was writing her own films with her appearance in A Noise from the Deep marking the first time its star received a pie in the face. Her directorial debut came in 1914 with Mabel’s Strange Predicament, which also marked Charlie Chaplin’s first appearance as The Tramp. While the story of Chaplin’s discovery is contested, it is generally agreed that Sennett would not have hired or retained Chaplin had it not been for Normand.

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Chaplin had struggled to adapt to the demands of film acting, but Normand persuaded Sennett to stick with him. She appeared alongside Chaplin in a dozen subsequent films, almost always as a part of a couple. Chaplin recalled:

“We used to go to the park with a stepladder, a bucket of whitewash, and Mabel Normand, and make a picture.”

Later, Normand starred with Chaplin and Marie Dressler in Tillie’s Punctured Romance, the first feature-length comedy.

Sennett’s motivation for encouraging Normand to direct was likely a combination of his respect for her as an actress, his love for her, and as compensation for her low pay. Chaplin’s salary famously rose to $1,250 per week after he left Keystone, while Normand was still paid $175.

After Chaplin moved on, Mabel began working with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in a series of popular shorts. The pair continued acting together until they both left Keystone for better pay.

Mack Sennett’s creation of Keystone was contingent on Normand joining him; and he insisted Normand have credit and say in the company. Sennett and Normand became engaged around this time, though the engagement ended when Sennett was caught cheating on her. Those who knew them believed they were the loves of each others lives however they were never romantically reconciled.

In 1916, Normand founded her production company, Mabel Normand Feature Film Company, in partnership with Mack Sennett. This gave her even greater creative control over her projects and cemented her status in the film industry. Sennett had recently joined Triangle Film Corporation and Mabel’s film company formation was likely designed to help Sennett retain her services and support Triangle. Only one feature film, Mickey (1918), was released by the company and only after Normand had signed a five-year contract with Samuel Goldwyn. The reason for the extended filming and post-production period is believed to be a combination of Triangle’s management difficulties and Normand’s developing tuberculosis.

She lost her company in 1918 when Triangle went through a massive shakeup which also resulted in Sennett losing Keystone Studios and establish his own independent company. In 1918, as her relationship with Sennett came to an end, Normand signed a $3,500-per-week contract with Samuel Goldwyn.

In 1920 Mabel Normand returned to Keystone to work with Sennett again on Molly O’ in what was intended to be her come-back film. The release was marred by Fatty Arbuckle’s rape trials, and much of the rest of Normand’s career was similarly affected by scandal, including persistent, but unsubstantiated, stories of her drug and alcohol abuse.

Normand’s decision to once again sign with Sennett to make features in what would turn out to be a rocky venture. Normand’s health was deteriorating due to the tuberculosis she has contracted when she was 10 and wasn’t made any better by her longstanding habit of heavy smoking.

Normand continued working, making The Extra Girl but soon after its release Mabel became associated with more scandal that included the shooting of a butler was shot at a party she attended and the poisoning death of her friend, actress Olive Thomas. She had little connection to either death, but the inclusion of her name in the stories made for good headlines and sold papers.

Still trying to resurrect her career, Normand joined Hal Roach Studios after conversations with director and producer F. Richard Jones, who she had previously worked with at Keystone. She made films such as Raggedy Rose, The Nickel-Hopper, and One Hour Married (her last film) all co-written alongside Stan Laurel. These were well received and by 1928 she had signed with the William Morris Agency to make talkies, but her poor health soon interrupted these plans.

By 1929 Mabel’s health had deteriorated to the point that she had to be sent to Pottenger Sanitorium where she remained until she died from pulmonary tuberculosis in February 1930, at the age of 36.

Some have suggested that the reason Mabel’s name faded into relative obscurity was the result of misfortune and her association with a number of Hollywood scandals.

The Fatty Arbuckle trials drove a wedge between the film industry and the cinema-going public and led to a great many changes. Arbuckle faced three highly publicised trials for the manslaughter of model and minor actress Virginia Rappe. Although he was finally acquitted, the scandal damaged his career and his films were banned from exhibition for a short time. As these were films Mabel also appeared in it damaged her too.

Mabel was also caught up in the 1922 murder of director William Desmond Taylor. She had formed a close relationship with him, based on their shared interest in books and on the night of his murder left Taylor’s bungalow at 7:45 pm carrying a book he had lent her. As the last person known to have seen Taylor alive, the LAPD identified her as a person of interest, subjected her to a grueling interrogation, but eventually ruled her out as a suspect.

Then in 1924, Normand’s chauffeur Joe Kelly shot and wounded millionaire oil broker and amateur golfer Courtland S. Dines using her pistol. In response, several theatres stopped screening Mabel’s films, while the Ohio state film censorship board banned them.

She did however leave quite a legacy. She was the only comedian to work with industry heavyweights such as Charlie Chaplin , Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, D.W. Griffith, Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Hal Roach, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Fred Mace, Fred Sterling and John Bunny.

Her importance to early Hollywood was acknowledged by Billy Wilder who named the lead character in his film Sunset Boulevard Norma Desmond, which is said to be a combination of the names Mabel Normand and William Desmond Taylor.

Many contemporary comedians, such as Lucille Ball and Carol Burnett, have cited Normand as an inspiration, admiring her ability to captivate audiences with her fearless physical comedy and her knack for finding humor in unexpected situations.

And of course, Normand has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She was quite a lady who deserves to be remembered.

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