Blue Jeans

I really enjoyed getting a chance to see silent film actress Viola Dana in action in this film at Capitolfest in Rome, NY after hearing so much about her and seeing her spritely interviews in the 1980 documentary "Silent Hollywood". It really is a rather interesting melodrama with Viola Dana in the lead as June. When we first see her she is sitting out in a field wearing a huge pair of cover-alls and the titles tell us she is homeless and hungry. I saw not a pair of blue jeans in sight for the entire film. A flashback shows us she was kicked out of the orphanage for picking flowers on the grounds to put on her mother's grave. A young man, Robert Walker as Perry Bascom, finds her, feeds her, and places her with a couple - The Tutweilers - whose only daughter disappeared years ago when she ran off with a rascal. Perry has come to town to take over the local saw mill.

Now at this point things become as tangled as a later 20th century soap opera. Apparently Bascom is not the name Perry is using because there were some real rascals in the Bascom family in the past and his prospects will be hurt in town if it gets out he is related to them. Not only that, but it turns out that a Bascom is the man that ran off with the Tutweillers' daughter and is thus June's father. Could she and Perry be related? That would be too bad because Perry and June just got married, which is also too bad because Perry was married before to a woman who turned out to have a husband at the time of the marriage, thus Perry's marriage to her was not legal. Yet wife number one shows up in town to claim she is Perry's REAL legal wife. Meanwhile there is a dishonest politician, Ben Boone, who wants to use public office to steal everything in town, including the sawmill. Perry wants to run against Boone and take away his ability to do graft.

I know it sounds confusing, but it is a beautiful little story. And there is a scene at the end where predictably the villain tries to saw someone in half at the saw mill. Who he tries to saw and who comes to the rescue is not so predictable though.

Just a few words about the cast. The actor playing Perry, Robert Walker, was born in 1888. The actor and actress playing the Tutweilers, however, were born in 1877 and 1872,respectively. This is odd because Jacob Tutweiler looks a good thirty years older than Perry, and I thought he looked too old to be playing the husband to the character of Cindy Tutweiller, but she is actually five years older than him! Perhaps it is just a good makeup job, but the ages did surprise me.

Another odd point - When Perry first comes into town he has June on the back of a bicycle. Ben Boone decides he wants to assault the girl and just lifts her off the bicycle in broad daylight! Perry fights him and retrieves June but Ben seems very angry that Perry intervened and threatens to run him out of town. All of Boone's associates saw what happened and acted like it was much ado about nothing. An interesting piece of culture coming to us from 100 years in the past.

Viola Dana shows up in town, wearing overalls. She's run away from the orphanage.Young Robert Walker, riding his modernistic pennyfarthing bicycle, spots her and rescues her from corrupt politico Clifford Bruce. She rooms with a sweet old couple, Russell Simpson and Margaret McWade. Walker is running for office against Bruce, and wants to marry Miss Dana, but Sue Eudaly wrecks his ambitions by stating that she is married to him. He replies that she was already married when the ceremony was performed, but she replies "You can't prove that."

All of these plot points will have to be connected in a neat bow in this melodrama. Why should anyone care about this set of antiquated issues in a form so lost that its only echoing survival is in Mighty Mouse cartoons and similar works that don't take it seriously?

Motion picture power couple John H. Collins and Viola Dana make it clear how to make this melodrama work: take the plot points seriously and make the people filled with passions the audience can understand: love, hate, lust and sorrow. Certainly Miss Dana -- she was also Mrs. Collins -- is beautiful and virtuous and loving and supportive. Russell Simpson and Margaret McWade also give fine performances. The other characters are reduced to stereotypes. It's understandable, given the vast number of subplots that have to be given some coverage in this well-remembered meller. Yet even the details of its stagey high point are confused; it is not the beautiful and innocent heroine who is about to be sawn in twain, but the hero.

It's pretty much the high point of classic melodrama -- assuming that's not an oxymoron -- in the movies. The form was already in decay, and while 1922's THE NINETY AND NINE seems to have been its equal in staging, production and popularity, only a short cutdown of that survives. Movie comedians were already burlesquing the genre, which today is remembered largely in Dudley Dooright cartoons.

Yet here it is, done right. Enjoy!