The Patsy 1928 U.S. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (77 minutes)
directed by King Vidor; produced by
Vidor, Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst; cinematography, John
F. Seitz; based on a story and play by Barry Connors; adaptation and
continuity, Agnes Christine Johnston; titles, Ralph Spence; editor, Hugh Wynn.
This antic silent comedy displays
comic timing at its best as Hollywood puts funny faces on class issues and
domestic life in a ‘typical’ American middle class home in the 1920s.
The ‘patsy’ at the center of this
film is Patricia ‘Pat’ Harrington (Marion Davies), the younger daughter in a
family of four who has a crush on her sister’s boyfriend. The film showcases Davies’ superb talents
as comedienne and mimic.
Silent film acting is mime, a step
between the spoken word and stylized conventions of dance. The vocabulary is readily
accessible, taken live from the every day. What actors do with their bodies and
their eyes, and the pace at which they do this is how this medium ‘speaks.’
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| Jane Winton, Marie Dressler, Dell Henderson and Marion Davies in King Vidor's The Patsy 1928 |
Mime makes silent film ideal for
physical comedy, though modern viewers can get too much of a good thing. Davies
and this cast work well together as an ensemble, they have terrific timing, and
their abilities are skillfully choreographed within the frame. The result is easy
to read and fun to watch.
In a classic scene in this movie—a
‘must see’ for film buffs—Davies parodies three well-known film
stars of the day, Mae Murray, Lillian Gish, and Pola Negri, as she tries to
get the attention of a drink-dazed young ‘sheik.’ The sense of wicked fun
Davies brings to these impressions makes them funny regardless of whether one
knows anything about these actresses, all of whom were her friends.
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| Marion Davies as Mae Murray |
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| Marion Davies as Lillian Gish |
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| Marion Davies as Pola Negri |
In addition, when Davies’ pairs her
middle and index fingers to dance on the table cloth during an evening out, she
quotes Charlie Chaplin’s famous tabletop dance with dinner rolls known as ‘Oceana Roll’ in The
Gold Rush (1925).
Pat’s mother, Ma Harrington (Marie
Dressler) is a post-Victorian middle class snob with social pretensions. She rules
her roost from a stoutly girdled balcony like one of James Thurber’s overwives.
Dressler, clearly having a good time, is an ideal foil for Davies
Pat’s sister Grace (Jane Winton)
takes after her mother. Grace is going out with Tony Anderson (Orville
Caldwell), an earnest developer who is designing a subdivision. Grace also leaves
her options open; she thinks she knows her way around men. While Pat moons at
Tony and hangs on his every word, Grace cannot conceive that anyone possibly
could be interested in her ditsy little sister.
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| Tony Anderson (Orville Caldwell) charms the Harringtons in The Patsy 1928. |
Pa’s relationship with Ma is
established in an early scene in their front room. Pa has settled himself on
the couch after Sunday dinner to put up his feet, smoke his pipe and read a
newspaper. Ma enters the room complaining
of her ‘health’; she makes Pa put out the pipe, give up the couch to her, and
then give her his newspaper to read.
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| Pat (Marion Davies) and Pa (Dell Henderson): natural allies in The Patsy 1928. |
Throughout the movie Ma complains
‘about everything from a bum vertebrae to exclamatory rheumatism,’ as Pa later
remonstrates with her, though the things ‘ruining her health’ generally come
down to anything unpleasant to her or contrary to her peremptory wishes.
For the small emphasis silent film
puts on words, the title cards in this movie often are succinctly humorous.
‘Maybe you don’t believe it, but I’ve had a pain
in the neck ever since we married,’ Pa
says, less to Ma than the audience.
‘Imagination!’ Ma scoffs, impervious to
irony. ‘The idea of
a big, strapping brute like you having a pain anywhere!’
Ma’s social pretenses are shown up
in an amusing sketch at The Yacht Club (where, a title says, ‘if Mary had a
little lamb it would cost $4.50 per order’—the rough equivalent of a $60 entrée
today). Billy Caldwell (Lawrence Gray), a merry prankster and scion of a
leading family, pilots himself to the club in a snazzy motor launch and pretends
to be a waiter to get Grace’s attention.
First, Billy unnerves Ma by
clowning around her chair. He appalls her by pointing to and taking from her
hand the spoon she is using for soup and giving her the proper soup spoon from
her place setting.
The title card
then has him ask Ma, in French: ‘Viens-tu
de la campagne, grande vache?’ Pat breaks out in peals of laughter: ‘He said something about a
big cow.’
Incensed, Ma turns her lantern jaw to
Pa to insist that he ‘Do something!’ about this rapscallion. When it turns out
that Billy is not an upstart waiter but ‘the right sort of people,’ the merest
breath of insult instantly evaporates.
Billy at first succeeds with Grace,
skimming off across the water with her in his launch. Pat ends up in a rowboat
with her dreamboat. But this is just the beginning of a kooky romantic comedy
that bobs and weaves through high jinks to a happy ending, with Pat puckered up
for a kiss on the threshold, peeking with one eye to see where Tony is.
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| Ready for a closeup. |
There is a modern soundtrack by
Vivek Maddala added to the original film, but MP found it too busy and
distracting and preferred to watch the film without.
Davies’ role as the long-term mistress and hostess of newspaper
mogul William Randolph Hearst overshadowed
and curtailed her acting career. Orson Welles based his newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane of Citizen
Kane (1941) partly on Hearst, but insisted that Davies was not the model
for the modestly-talented singer who became Kane’s wife in the film. Hearst and
Davies never married.
