Silent gem

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.’

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.

Marion Davies as Mae Murray

Marion Davies as Lillian Gish

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.

Tony Anderson (Orville Caldwell) charms the Harringtons in The Patsy 1928.

Pa Hen-ry! Harrington (Dell Henderson), a doctor, patiently abides. He and Pat are natural allies and share a healthy sense of humor.

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.

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.

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.