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.

"Feel My Pulse" is quite an entertaining late-silent comedy from Paramount Pictures. This one takes an extremely offbeat premise and runs with it in a pleasing semi-deadpan style. Has been raised to be a hypochondriac according to the eccentric terms of a will. Now her skeptical Texan uncle has custody of her, so she escapes to the family-owned sanitarium, which has unfortunately been taken over by rum-runners.

Daniels plays this an understated, almost straight way that lets the comedy of the situations come through all the more, and, of course, much of the premise is an excuse for playing on the juxtaposition of Daniels' sheltered, mannered, stilted character among rough bootleggers, and this comes off well with the scenes of a newly-arrived Daniels trying to navigate riding in a taxi cab are some of the funniest.

It doesn't make sense to call this film talky since it isn't actually a talkie, but it is curiously dialgue-dependent, with frequent use of longer-title cards to carry scenes. This isn't usually too intrusive in the case of this particular film, but it's curious. The scenes that take place just after Daniels' character have arrived at the sanatorium, in fact, is essentially carried by a series of good puns that make ailments sound like drinks and vice versa ("local bruise" / "local brews"). This is a later silent feature, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were written before the studio knew if it would be made silent or not.

As others have pointed out the scene where a bottle of liquor is confused for medicine goes on a little long -- and so does a slightly disconnected scene of Daniels floating on an errant board that doesn't really come of as a stunt. Overall though the pacing is good the film moves a long at an enjoyable clip.

"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."

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.

"Feel My Pulse" is an amusing, if short and insubstantial, late-silent-era slapstick comedy starring Bebe Daniels. Daniels started out in slapstick as leading lady to Harold Lloyd in the Lonesome Luke shorts before moving to Paramount and appearing in a couple of Cecil B. DeMille's early sex comedies. Here, she has a vehicle of her own, with an impressive cast of supporting players and good talent behind the camera. Richard Arlen (who also had an important supporting role in "Wings" (1927)) plays Bebe's beau, William Powell plays the baddie, and comedian Heinie Conklin plays a drunkard. Director Gregory La Cava would later team up most famously with Powell as the lead in "My Man Godfrey" (1936). And, its plentiful title cards were written by Academy-Award nominee (for the one and only time title writing was an Oscar category) George Marion Jr.

Discovering Daniels's considerable gifts as a silent comedienne and seeing all-time great actor Powell in one of his early supporting parts in a silent film (see him also in "The Last Command" (1928)), including a bit of fourth wall breaking, are just bonuses. "Feel My Pulse" is wacky fun, with Daniels as a hypochondriac-in a role that seems to have been taken from her former partner Lloyd's early comedy "Why Worry?" (1923), as well as being reminiscent of a comedy such as Douglas Fairbanks's "Down to Earth" (1917). Despite running barely longer than an hour, however, it seems to lack much of a narrative, and that's where the numerous intertitles come in to pick up the slack. Daniels travels to a sanitarium, which she kind of owns (although she doesn't control her finances, because, I guess, this is 1928 and she's a woman), so that she may rest from her imagined ailments. Problem is that the sanitarium is being run as a base of operations by rum smugglers (this is during Prohibition, remember). Powell is the knife-and-gun-wielding head smuggler turned rapacious phony doctor and adversary for Daniels, and Arlen is one of his henchmen who, through some very convenient plot contrivances, develops into Daniels's romantic prize. The ending is uproarious fun.

As for the title cards, they contain some good jokes, including on the vocabulary of Daniels's character. Not only her use of medical language (I had to look up "angina pectoris"), but her use of ten-dollar words such as "remuneration" and "immaculate" also confuse the smugglers. The contemporary slang (e.g. Calling Daniels a "young rib") and cultural references are also of interest. This movie taught me that, apparently, Gene Tunney was well-known for his intelligence. Who knew that anyone's go-to comparison for complex lexicography would involve a heavyweight boxing champion. Numerous, if funny, intertitles are a double-edged sword in silent cinema, though. I think they tend to fill the gap where more visual means should be used. Take Daniels and Conklin's drunken encounter, for instance-it could've benefited from less repetitive drunk talk and singing in the title cards and, perhaps, more physical slapstick.