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 casts Bebe Daniels. as a rich girl who because of her parents' fear of germs has been raised like a hothouse geranium. Howard Hughes or television's Adrian Monk has nothing on her.

Because of some 'excitement; it's decided that Daniels needs a rest cure and the family has endowed a sanitarium located on an an offshore island. But the mental health field just ain't that lucrative and the one they put in charge of the place has turned it over to William Powell and a gang of rum runners. Remember this is the time of Prohibition.

One of Powell's gang is roughneck Richard Arlen and while Daniels may have led a sheltered life she sure knows what she likes in men. Though the two don't hit it off at first she comes around.

The film is directed by Gregory LaCava and he would go on to direct William Powell in one of his greatest films My Man Godfrey. When he decides to play along with Daniels and treat her like a patient in her own sanitarium notice his body language. It really does look like Godfrey Park in My Man Godfrey.

The climax is hysterical as Daniels shrugs off all the inhibitions her hot house upbringing has given her. Can't say any more, you have to see it.

Glad this silent film has not been lost.

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.

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 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.