Feel My Pulse

The silent movie era was filled with a large number of male comedians. But when film fans are asked to name just one comic actress during that era, confusion reigns. Despite a desire to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, Bebe Daniels had an impressive resume of comedic roles, including many films as the female sidekick to Harold Lloyd. As cinema's first ever Dorothy at nine in her movie debut in 1910's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Daniels has threaded in and out of comedy films through the late 1950s.

Daniels' last surviving silent movie (she made four additional "quiet" ones that have been lost) was a comedy, February 1928's "Feel My Pulse." She's a wealthy hypochondriac, Barbara Manning, who inherits a sanatorium on an island just off the Southeast coast of the United States. Little does she know when she arrives to receive treatment that the asylum has turned into a bootleggers' storage and transit warehouse, led by actor William Powell. She's escorted to the sanatorium by her taxi driver, actor Richard Arlen. Through a series of discoveries and shootouts, Barbara shows her chops in defending herself against gun-toting thugs.

Daniels is at her best in "Feel My Pulse" as the hypochondriac who verbally battles with Arlen while in transit; a priceless piece of comedic acting. Her sophisticated language appears to be lifted off the pages of high literature than in normal conversation. A relative's advice to seek excitement and adventure as a panacea for all her ills certainly is delivered as soon as she steps into the sanatorium.

Arlen, best known for his male co-starring role in 1927's "Wings," serves as a potential romantic interest to Daniels. His film career was one of the longer ones in Hollywood, extending well into the late 1970s. William Powell plays the heavy in "Feel My Pulse," which he did on occasion during his silent period. The direction of Gregory La Cava showed the former animated cartoon producer for William Hearst was adapt at handling light-hearted comedies. As a good friend and drinking companion to W. C. Fields, as well as a director to his two silent movies, La Cava went on to direct such classics as 1936's "My Man Godfrey" and 1937's "Stage Door." In both films he was nominated for the Academy Awards' Best Director.

Bebe Daniels is the pampered heiress who believes she has a dicky ticker, and William Powell's the shady doc fronting a bootleg operation disguised as a care home. Lightweight and inoffensive, and it makes a change to see Nice Guy Bill cast as a villain.

"Feel My Pulse" is a wonderful film that gives a feel for how people must have enjoyed the "moving pictures" in the earliest years of filmdom. Production and technical qualities were quite crude. Some labs and film preservation groups have been restoring films from that period. Often times that includes digital enhancements and improvements that render films clearer and crisper than some may have appeared on original showing. The DVD I bought of "Feel My Pulse" is not one of those. But for the lower quality, I would have rated this film even higher.

This is one of the best of the full-length silent feature films that had a plot. It has a crazy plot, and is very funny. Without sound, of course, the humor has to be carried even more strongly by the story lines projected on the film, and by the acting of the cast. Some modern movie fans are quick to chide early cinema for its over-acting. But, the physical expressions and gestures were how the humor and drama were conveyed, thus the varying degrees of them. This is a wonderful film that shows very well how that was done. It's as amusing to me today as it must have been to audiences nearly a century ago.

Bebe Daniels plays Barbara Manning, Richard Arlen is Wallace Roberts (aka, Her Problem), William Powel plays Phil Todd (aka, Her Nemesis), and a hilarious character by the name of Thirsty McGulp is played by Heinie Conklin. Powell was a seasoned actor already in the silent era, and his character here is a real hoot. The cast are all quite good.

Daniels was just two years younger than Gloria Swanson when she appeared in her first full-length feature film, "Male and Female" in 1919. It was the start of the last decade of the silent film era. Bebe's film career shot up just as fast as Swanson's from then on. She had made dozens of shorts since childhood, but now she was set in a film career that included a range of roles from comedy, romance, crime, mystery and adventure, to drama, war and western films. Of course, until 1929, these were all silent films. She was one actress who made a successful move to sound films. She was very talented as a singer, dancer, writer and producer.

Daniels has many films to her credit, but left Hollywood behind in the late 1930s. She married actor Ben Lyon, and the two performed for years in London. Ben served in the U.S. Army Air Force and was in charge of Special Services in England during World War II. The couple had a long-running radio show on BBC that was popular with the Americans serving in England. It was called "Hi, Gang!" After a short return to Hollywood in 1946, they went back to England and did another long-running popular radio show, "Life with the Lyons." The Lyons made their last film together in 1955. It was a British comedy take off from their radio show, "The Lyons Abroad," and their son and daughter were in the film as well.

The couple was married 40 years until Bebe's death at age 70 in 1971. She had suffered strokes in the early 1960s. The IMDb trivia section has an item that particularly interested me. Bebe had a second cousin, Lee De Forest, who was a prolific American inventor and early pioneer of radio. According to the entry, De Forest visited the set of Bebe's 1929 movie, "Rio Rita," and lent his technical skills to improving the sound quality of that and other films to follow.

This is a silent film well worth having in a movie collection. I think it's one worth restoring and making into digital.

Here's a sample of the scripted humor in this film. Roberts drives Miss Manning to the sanitarium over a very bad road. She is bounced all over the back seat. When they get to the sanitarium, she gives him a piece of her mind. The film script reads, "If you were a doctor, I could show you bruises that would astound the medical world."

And, here are some more pieces of dialog to match the very funny video. Uncle Wilberforce (Melbourne MacDowell), "What's wrong? I don't kiss often, but I've never had a complaint." Uncle Edgar (George Irving), "What shall we do? He'll ruin 21 years of antiseptic supervision."

Typewritten note: "Dear Miss Manning. Things is pretty dead. Hoping you are the same. Sylvester Zilch, Caretaker."

Todd, "Stop talking and give your nose a rest."

Barbara, "Do whatever one does to start the vehicle – and let us away over hill and dale."(sic) … "Keep the vehicle stationary while I lubricate my larynx."

Todd, "Wilfred sprained his head in a conference… Mr. Brewster has laughing asthma." Barbara, "Remember, Mr. Brewster, a spray a day keeps the microbes away."

I've come to the conclusion the people don't rate a review on IMDb on the basis of whether they found it useful, or even whether they agreed or disagreed with the reviewer's comments on the movie itself, but strictly on the basis that the reviewer has either praised a star who is no longer regarded as with-it, or demoted a star who is regarded as one of Hollywood's super-elite. I made both mistakes with the following review. I praised Richard Arlen and demoted William Powell – even though Powell himself often said that his characterization in this movie was not a performance he was proud of, and that he was simply tired of playing the villain. Anyway, although Louise Brooks always regarded Richard Arlen as one of the least capable actors in Hollywood, Arlen was in fact extremely charismatic in the right part. Oddly enough, it was the simple, easy, one-dimensional parts like his role in "Beggars of Life" that had directors like Wellman tearing their hair in frustration. But give Dick a complicated what-she-didn't-know-was, and he was terrific. His charming performance in this movie is an excellent example of the skill that enables him to carry off the acting honors with seeming ease, outclassing both William Powell (whose lack of enthusiasm at once again playing the heavy is patently obvious) and even Bebe Daniels (who plays on just the one hysterical note throughout with no subtlety whatever). To make the screenplay work, Bebe should at least partly meet her match in Powell. But she doesn't. She walks all over him from the first, and this destroys any comic tension in the plot. It's not until she comes up against Heinie Conklin that we find an actor who can equal Arlen in keeping her at bay. Director La Cava and photographer J. Roy Hunt do their best to keep up the pace and give the plot developments much-needed credibility and atmosphere, but finally go all out instead for an over-the-top, slapstick conclusion. Available on both an excellent Grapevine DVD and a just barely watchable Alpha.

Bebe Daniels stars as a hypochondriac heiress who retires to her family's sanitarium for a rest. Her Texan uncle says what she really needs is adventure and romance--not a rest cure. On the boat trip to the rest home, which is on an island, Bebe runs into hunky Richard Arlen (a dead ringer for a young Harrison Ford) who zooms her across the sea--just the beginning of Bebe's adventures. The rest home is actually a bootlegger's paradise run by fake doctor William Powell. Lots of complications and plot twists with Arlen actually an undercover reporter. Bebe looks great and is very funny. She had once been Harold Lloyd's leading lady in a series of films, so she knew comedy. Powell is appropriately hammy as the doctor; Arlen is handsome as the leading man; Charles Sellon is the caretaker. All good fun. Bebe Daniels is best remembered for her talkies 42nd Street and the first Maltese Falcon with Ricardo Cortez as well as her long marriage to Ben Lyon. With this film Bebe Daniels joins Colleen Moore and Marion Davies as the best silent comediennes.