Vanity

Leatrice Joy stars in this drama directed by Donald Crisp and produced by Cecil B. DeMille.

Joy plays an incredibly spoiled San Francisco heiress whose days are filled with being pampered by her staff, shopping, partying. World War I is raging and her boyfriend (Charles Ray) is about to go to war. She feels she should "do her bit," so she joins a sort of USO and puts on shows. Here's where she meets Dan Morgan (Alan Hale).

Time passes and Ray returns from war wounded. He wants to get married and Joy agrees, but after she accidentally runs into Morgan again, she stupidly agrees to meet him on this boat on the eve of her wedding. She knows it'll be her last chance at a fling.

She gets more than she bargained for when Morgan tries to attack her and his crazed cook (Noble Johnson) tries to join in.

The film co-stars Mayme Kelso as the mother and Helen Lee Worthing as the maid with sticky fingers.

This movie stars Leatrice Joy as an upper-class lady engaged to a rather staid and dull Charles Ray during the War. While Ray is Over There, Miss Joy does her bit by running a recreation hall for Our Boys. She's directing a play for the delectation of the troops, with sailor Alan Hale as a would-be lover. She has to keep reminding him of the difference in their classes.

Soon enough, the War is over and marriage with Ray impends. The day before, she encounters Hale again, who invites her aboard his ship. Again, she reminds him of his place. But that evening, while Ray is celebrating with the boys, mother Mayme Kelso is snooting around with friends, the servants are in their quarters partying about the forthcoming nuptials, and Miss Joy is learning all about marriage from a book, she grows restless. It's her last night of freedom! So she goes to see Hale's boat and learns about life the hard way; his attempts to rape her are interrupted by cook Noble Johnson; the men struggle, Johnson strangles Hale, and Miss Joy shoots Johnson dead to escape his unwanted intentions.

There's a third act when a detective comes to the door next day. Unhappily, while the rest of the film is in great shape, the last reel is not.

Miss Joy does a great job of acting, and clearly this programmer was intended for her. Although it is central to the movie, the sequence aboard Hale's boat seems to be too slow, despite Miss Joy's excellent reaction shots. The sloth gave me a chance to criticize his toupee. It's not clear what could have been cut -- the movie as is is a bare hour -- but perhaps the wrong bits wound up on the cutting-room floor. It could have used some comedy relief, something more than an abbreviated subplot about housemaid Helen Lee Worthing stealing from her employers.

Still, the moral of the story -- you don't learn about life on Nob Hill or in books -- is a sound one, Miss Joy acts up a storm, and DP Arthur Miller shows what he can do with close-ups. It's an hour well spent.

Well, made it through "Vanity" (1927)! Back on March 8th of this year, Ed Lorruso, who produced this new Blu-Ray from a LOC restoration in a Kickstarter campaign, wrote on the Nitrateville site:

"Went thru the 13 episodes of the fabulous Hollywood documentary series by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill again. It's a breathtaking achievement. The interviews they compiled with luminaries like Swanson and Gaynor, Viola Dana, Leatrice Joy, Jackie Coogan, etc. Are beyond priceless...And in that same episode there was a clip of Leatrice Joy in Vanity (my next project!), which was a major surprise, as an example of glamour lighting."

I have to admit that the statement about "glamour lighting" is what strikes me most when thinking back about watching the show, even more, perhaps, than the plot lines and characters which are not very pleasant to watch at all! The production is a Cecil B. DeMille Pictures Corporation one, and I've always kept a memory for the set designs in DeMille's late 10s/early 20s films like "Why Change Your Wife", "The Affairs of Anatol", "Old Wives for New", or "Don't Change Your Husband". They are rich and full, carefully detailed. In "Vanity" there is a starkness of design in Leatrice Joy's boudoir that is startling and humongous! It has all the trappings of Bauhaus austerity! Now, one of the plot characterizations is that of Joy being a spoiled rotten elite who wouldn't smell if she walked through elephant poo. She has a servant for each detail of her dress, for each detail of any need. Frankly, the character of Joy throughout this film is disgustingly difficult to watch! The sets in which she is placed are lit to showcase how large everything is to keep her happy and how trifling she genuinely is within them. But, as a viewer watching this on a television, it comes across as though we're watching a play that has been filmed. It is a disparate watch and disengaging. When Alan Hale finally comes into the picture in a major way the change in tone is also a disparate one. That is, too, the idea of the film, but Donald Crisp the director doesn't do it very comfortably. Then comes the character change in Joy and suddenly the end.

I found this a challenging watch. I'm going to assume that it may have been a challenging watch in 1927, but I may be utterly incorrect. Charles Ray, who plays the man who is to marry Joy in the end, seems bloated and lifeless in this picture. He's never been one of my favorite actors in the first place, so my prejudice begins at the beginning - and remains. The one character I enjoyed watching was Mayme Kelso who plays Leatrice Joy's mother. She oozes her eliteness and condescension like a viper putting venom in an eyeball. It's almost humorous while being completely without humor and done in a most serious manner.

I'm very glad that Ed has produced this and given us another Leatrice Joy vehicle to watch. She's good at what she has to do, but it's not a pleasant thing to watch. One man's opinion.

The final reel of the film has quite a bit of nitrate deterioration. It does detract from enjoyment even more than the characters already in the film. The character played by Noble Johnson will not be seen by a black audience as anything they would enjoy watching, either. He's a deaf cook on the boat owned or run by Alan Hale. Both characters are stereotypically evil. They may as well have tied Joy to the railroad tracks and twirled long mustaches as they laughed at her fate - but there weren't any railroads in the film.