Lettres d'autrefois

The story line in this rare silent film "The Ghost Of Rosy Taylor" was similar to a Mary Pickford type vehicle: young girl's father dies, she is taken advantage of by the system, somehow arrives in America with only the wages of a few dollars on her person, and struggles to survive, to find love and her place in life. Hint: there really isn't a ghost involved here, but therein lies the basis for the comedy.

The quality of the film that has survived is pretty poor, and a disclaimer is given at the beginning of the film. However even through the poor quality of most of the film the beauty of Mary Miles Minter shines through. She showed a sweet flair for comedy that was very appealling. Too bad scandal ruined her career, she could have quite possibly succeeded Mary Pickford as America's Sweetheart after Pickford got older, cut her hair, and eventually faded from public view.

Few films starring Mary Miles Minter exist, and even fewer are in wide circulation. Viewing this film, it's easy to see why Mary Miles Minter became such a star. She is lovely to look at and absolutely charming on screen.

As the other reviewer mentioned, the surviving print has some moments in absolutely dire condition. But Minter's talent and charm overcome this and make this rare opportunity to witness Minter's talent something no movie fan or historian should miss.

This film is also important because while many are familiar with the scandal that destroyed Mary's career (through no fault of hers, I might add,) few have experienced her first-hand, and this is a perfect example of Mary's charisma, and the style of silent film before 1920.

Sloman's view that Minter was "the best looking youngster but the lousiest actress" is a little severe but she was certainly only moderately talented and her looks were only such as to appeal to the (enormous) hebephile market tha Pickford was already so succesfully exploiting. She can still evidently make the truncheon twirl (like that of the Irish policeman in the film) of many a male viewer.

What I find interesting in this film is its edge of social satire not because it is very penetrating - it is not - but because it is so peculiarly women-centred (something Sloman may have had litte sympathy with). The understaning of the absolute centrality of the question of "the servant problem" to early twentieth-century life is very accurate and very important from a feminine point of view. It dominated - as the film shows - the lives of the wealthy housewives and it equally dominated the lives of working-class or poorer women who depended heaviy on this sector - the alternaives were far grimmer - for respectable and not necessarily overly exploitative - it depended on the employers - employment. The whole story turns round this one factor in a way that is really very interesting and might provoke thought in one half of the population at any rate (the ones not too voyeuristically interested in the "girly" charms of Mary Minter).

Note that there is another element of role-reversal in the situation that is very deftly sprung on the audience half way through the film (a revelation carefully delayed by the clever narrative structure). Pretty little Minter is doing work in the film that was intended for a black woman.

The writer is not "Joseph" but Josephine Daskam Bacon also known as Josephine Dodge or Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon or Josephine Seldon Bacon about whom it is difficult to find any information (feminist redisoceries of women writers is a saldy selective business which tends to ignore those who do not quite fit its political agenda) but she was a prolific and versatile writer whose works seems invariably to have focused on wome's issues.

I am being careful with my terminology because Daskam Bacon does not seem to have been a feminist and may have been an anti-feminist but, if so, an anti-feminist from a strongly "feminine" point of view - we need a word to describe this category - a defender of "womanly values". I do not know what her connection was with Josephine Jewell Dodge (February 11, 1855 - March 6, 1928), a notorious anti-suffargist and founder of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage but also - note - an educator of importance and a leader of the day nursery movement (you see why we need a word for such women) but I think there was one. Presumably her mother, Anne Loring 1850-1900, had some connection to have named her Josephine Dodge).

At any rate Josephine Dodge Daskam seems to have belgonged to this same catgory of strong women with pronounced "feminine" but not really feminist views and yet do battle against the double standards of society, quite often with mordaunt humour. Her Fables for the Fair: Cautionary Tales for Damsels not Yet in Distress (1901) are well worth reading.

"I do not believe in women's suffrage. Why? Because a woman can n more do a man's work than a man can do a woman's. There has never ben a first-clas woman writer...I write second-class stuff myself.....ad, whille women have been first-class mothers, I defy you to mention a man who has ever really been a first-class mother." This is Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon speaking, not Josephine Jewell Dodge. She herself never had children and is even quoted as saying that women who wrote boks should ot have children. She was author inter alia of Which Is the Greater Woman, Home Builder or Brain Worker? which aimed to "pint otu some fallacies of the Suffragette Movement"

This all helps to understand the context in which this film is written a context where to quote Jewell Dodge "tariff reform, fiscal policies, international relations, those large endeavors which men now determine, are foreign to the concerns and pursuits of the average woman. She is worthily employed in other departments of life, and the vote will not help her to fulfill her obligations therein." It comes really as no surprise that this film should be the work of the woman who wrote Scouting for Girls.

It is moreover a very cleverly written script, containing as it does a flashback within a flashback (and at one point even a flashback within a flashback within a flashback), that handles a complicated scenario with very considerable skill. Mrs. Bacon may have written "second-class stuff" but she wrote suprisingly good second-class stuff.

Whether Josephine Dodge Daskam Bacon thoguht Mary Miles Minter was cute is not known.....

Wealthy American women Marian Lee (as Mrs. Herriman-Smith) and Helen Howard (as Mrs. Jeanne Du Vivier) are convinced the latter's house cleaner "Rosy Taylor" is a ghost, after they learn she has kept up chores after her reported death. Then, the story flashes back…

…to begin in a French town, where pretty Mary Miles Minter (as Rhoda Eldridge) lives with her poor father, George Periolat (as Charles Eldridge). When her sickly father dies, Ms. Minter learns he was a self-exiled American named Charles Sayles. Penniless, Minter gets a job as nursemaid to a wealthy woman voyaging to the United States; so, Minter returns to her ancestral home. In America, Minter has trouble with lodging and employment. Finally, she manages to earn some money posing as the departed "Rosy Taylor", servant for Ms. Howard. Then, while working, she is startled by the appearance of Howard's brother Allan Forrest (as Jacques Le Clerc); the hung-over man reports Minter to the authorities as a burglar, and she is sent to reform school. Minter escapes, and returns to work. Again, she meets Mr. Forrest, romance blooms, and mysteries unravel…

After a flashback, the film cleverly returns to the opening situation. Otherwise, this is a fairly routine Minter vehicle; it resolves itself too quickly, and leaves promising characterization undeveloped. Minter is charming; she was a genuine "child star" who remained very popular as a young woman, until her career ended in the wake of the scandal involving the shooting death of her then (1922) director/lover William Desmond Taylor. Supporting player Kate Price is memorable as kind-hearted landlady "Mrs. Sullivan".

Nitrate decomposition frequently mars the picture, but the film retains its integrity.

***** The Ghost of Rosy Taylor (7/8/18) Edward Sloman ~ Mary Miles Minter, Allen Forrest, George Periolat