The Phantom of Paris

"The Phantom of Paris" stars John Gilbert, Leila Hyams, C. Aubrey Smith, Lewis Stone, and Ian Keith. There's no Phantom, but the novel was written by the author of Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux, so I suppose the producers wanted audiences to make the connection.

Made in 1931, the movie was somewhat of a surprise to me. I always had the idea that John Gilbert was a wimpy guy with a mustache - I had only seen him in Queen Christina - but I was wrong. Here he's handsome, elegant, and his acting is marvelous. So much has been written about his voice and how Louis Mayer changed it in "His Glorious Night" to make him sound silly - I actually never believed that. I think the corny dialogue and saying "I love you" out loud - something audiences had never heard - did him in. In truth, he had a beautiful speaking voice in a tenor range - he incorporated the mid- Atlantic speech of the day as did Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn and others, and his diction was perfect.

Here he plays a renowned magician, Cheri-Bibi, who is in love with a beautiful socialite Cecile Bourrelier (Leila Hyams). Her father (C. Aubrey Smith) does not approve and instead wants her to marry the Marquis Du Touchais (Ian Keith). Cecile wants to marry Cheri-Bibi. Du Touchais then learns that Cecile's father is making up a new will and omitting him. He kills Bourrelier, but Cheri-Bibi is arrested and sentenced to death.

This is a really neat story but one has to account for dramatic license - the disguise used in this film is obvious, but entertaining nonetheless.

Leila Hyams was a beautiful, vivacious actress in the early days of talkies who retired, married an agent, and stayed married to him for 50 years. Ian Keith was a wonderful stage actor who played character roles in films - he does a great job here, as do C. Aubrey Smith, Lewis Stone, Jean Hersholt, and Natalie Moorhead.

John Gilbert would be dead five years later - "Phantom of Paris" is an excellent chance to see why he had such great stardom. I had a chance once to speak with his daughter, Leatrice Joy Gilbert, a lovely woman with two actor sons, John Fountain and Gideon Fountain. She was very proud of her father's work, as she should have been.

Phantom of Paris, The (1931)

*** (out of 4)

Well-made, if far-fetched, drama from MGM has John Gilbert playing Cheri-Bibi, a famous escape artist who plans on marrying a rich woman (Leila Hyams) even though her father (C. Aubrey Smith) is against it. The father is killed after an argument with Cheri, which causes a detective (Lewis Stone) to arrest him. Facing death in the matter of hours Cheri escapes from prison to prove his innocence. It's rumored that this film was originally meant for Lon Chaney, which if true would be interesting since it's also rumored that Chaney turned down THE SHOW, which then went to Gilbert. Whatever the truth is, this remains a pretty solid "B" movie that has some great acting and a pretty good story. I'm sure many might go into a title like this expecting some type of horror picture but it's pretty much a straight drama with some pretty tense scenes. I think the film takes a turn for the worse in the final fifteen-minutes when Gilbert takes the identity of the man he believes did the real killer. The two didn't look like one another but even if they did manage to fake people their different voices would have certainly given them away. Gilbert turns in another winning performance and what's so nice here is how incredibly charming he is. The early scenes with him doing the magic tricks had him "acting" to large crowds and I thought the charm came through just like you'd expect a real magician to do. Being Gilbert we also get a love story, which has the actor delivering soft lines and doing a nice job with it. Hyams is much better here than she was in her previous film (WAY OF A SAILOR) with Gilbert. The two come across like a real couple and have some pretty good scenes together. Lewis Stone turns in a fine supporting performance as does Jean Hersholt, Natalie Moorhead and Ian Keith. Smith only appears at the start of the film but he too adds nice support. This film was adapted from a novel by Gaston Leroux and for the most part it's pretty successful. I'm sure the original story had more magic but I guess you can only expect so much from a film like this. The 72-minute running time flies by without too many slow spots and in the end it's yet another film to prove that Gilbert did have a voice and he knew how to use it.

This intriguing film is based on a novel by Gaston Leroux (author of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) entitled CHÉRI-BIBI. John Gilbert, with all his charm showing, and looking and behaving every bit like Ronald Colman, plays a raconteur magician and escape artist named Chéri-Bibi who performs stage feats similar to those of the later American stage celebrity Houdini. The drama is set in Paris in the late 19th century. He and a 'girl of good family' named Cécile are in love. She is engaged to a dastardly aristocratic fortune-hunter named the Marquis du Touchais (this could be a satirical name meaning something like 'Lord Gotchya'), who is a most appalling character whose unsympathetic nature is exceeded only by his revolting Olympian pomposity. (There is nothing worse than a bad marquis other than, perhaps, in the world of the cinema, a bad marquee.) Leila Hyams plays the quavery-voiced ingénue Cécile, in true 1931 style. The dour and unremitting hatred of John Gilbert by a detective inspector played by Lewis Stone in his most threatening mode is the key to the story. At first Stone is secretly hired by Cécile's rich father to try to discredit Gilbert, so that his daughter will not be tempted to marry him. But Stone conspicuously fails, and is humiliated in public. His wounded vanity, elevated to the level of a maniacal idée fixe, becomes the source of years of persecution for Gilbert, whom he jails and then hunts down for years mercilessly, on a false murder charge. The story somewhat falls apart with Gilbert hiding in a cellar for four years, but then Leroux always liked men lurking underground, only to rise up with romantic intentions at unexpected moments. This is very much a watchable tale carried through by the sincerity with which its non-credible story line is believed in by the director and the actors, who all seem convinced that it is important, so it must be. After all, if it's in the papers or it's on the stage or screen, it must be true. Gaston Leroux knew that you don't have to get everything right, you just have to be able to carry off a melodrama with sufficient conviction. God knows how many times I have now seen PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, due to necessity. The reason why I don't get bored is that I sit there every time trying to analyze what it is that makes it work. Even Andrew Lloyd-Webber doesn't know. No one knows. I have certainly never figured it out and no one ever will. Actually, every time I see it I enjoy it. Now why is that? What is it about these Gaston Leroux stories that makes them not so much Ghastly Leroux stories as something more like Gastronomic Leroux stories, in the sense that they result in you just going on wanting more. 'Lerouxerie' could be patented as a kind of addictive junk food.

This is a story that combines a Houdini-like hero (Gilbert), his blonde leading lady for the third pic in a row (Leila Hyams) and an able cast supporting. It's a case of two lovers separated by the evil dealings of a Marques bent on keeping his fiancee's money, never mind the fiancee. To keep himself in dough, he kills her father, frames her lover and finally dies of the flu.

Everybody does well, but all are wasted - and to give a guy who looks like John Gilbert does plastic surgery half-way through the picture is a really bad idea.

Mr. Gilbert is good (as always), Miss Hyams is good at what she

does (and the two of them not only look good together, they play well as lovers); the bad guy (Ian Keith) and his blonde amour (Moorehead) are appropriately sleazy. Everybody looks great in evening clothes.

Somebody give them some character development! The actors do what they can, professionals all, but there's no spark. Nobody to blame but the writers!

John Gilbert's very good performance uplifts an otherwise just-OK drama. The rest of the cast is pretty good as well, but the film lacks spark and life. Maybe I went into it with the wrong expectations, because I was expecting a mystery or an adventure - there is very little of either. ** out of 4.