7 Silent Film Actors Who Transitioned to Talkies | Backstage 7 Silent Film Actors Who Transitioned to Talkies By Kevin Redding | Posted April 12, 2016, 1 p.m. Share: silent film The shift from silent films to talkies was a huge deal for actors in the late 1920s. Many silent film stars found it difficult to “find their voice” and place in this new Hollywood medium, which completely changed the game of on-screen performance. But while the talkies ended a lot of careers, here are seven actors who succeeded—and prospered—in the transition. Greta Garbo Starring in films such as “Flesh and the Devil” and “A Woman of Affairs,” the Swedish actor was loved by critics and audiences alike, making her one of the biggest box office draws of the silent era. As sound hit film, MGM was afraid that her accent would be the end of her career, but they were wrong. Her low, husky voice was the perfect match for her cool and mysterious personality.

Garbo’s first talkie “Anna Christie”—(marketed to audiences as the film in which “Garbo speaks!”)—was the highest-grossing film of 1930 and earned her one of two Oscar nominations for best actress that year (the other being for “Romance”), helping to solidify her success throughout the decade and overall stature as a film icon. John Barrymore Yes, that Barrymore. Decades before his granddaughter Drew played Gertie in “E.T.”, John Barrymore was an extremely renowned and accomplished actor, considered by many to be the greatest of his generation. On Broadway since he was a young man, Barrymore established himself as a prolific stage talent, excelling in comedy and Shakespeare. He was a natural fit for the screen, and after a string of popular silent films like “Dr. Jekyll and Mr.

Hyde” and “Eternal Love,” Barrymore’s booming stage-trained voice made him a force to be reckoned with in talkies as well, starring in huge hits like “Grand Hotel” and “A Bill of Divorcement.” Joan Crawford Before her vicious portrayal in “Mommie Dearest,” Crawford’s name was pretty much synonymous with “film starlet.” With insignificant roles like “Party Guest” and “Ballroom Dancing Extra” at the start of her silent film career, Crawford quickly launched herself to stardom by embracing her free-spirited flapper persona. She would soon win over audiences completely in “Our Dancing Daughters” and become a symbol of the modern woman in the ’20s. Sound only elevated her impact. She sang, danced, and showed that she had real dramatic chops in talkies such as “Letty Lynton,” and starred alongside Clark Gable in eight films. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy The most famous comedy duo in the silent era, Laurel and Hardy were incredible physical performers whose on-screen scenarios were hilarious, violent, and brilliantly complex.

Laurel, the sweet and simple little guy, and Hardy, the mean and grouchy big guy, are the archetypes on which most comedy duos are built. Because their films had always been visual, they easily made the leap to sound and became successful in using the new medium as an effective comedy tool. Whether it’s Hardy’s famous (and sassy) “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into,” Laurel’s signature whimper-cry whenever he’s bullied, or a perfectly used cat sound effect, the duo became even more popular in their talkies. Carole Lombard First appearing in silent slapstick comedies in the late 1920s, Lombard would become an Academy Award-nominated leading lady and the highest-paid star in Hollywood by the 1930s. She was discovered by “King of Comedy” Mack Sennett, who put her in 15 short films and exposed her to the genre in an impactful way.

With a quick transition to talkies, starting with “High Voltage” in 1929, Lombard’s eventual success hung on her energetic and eccentric performances in comedies like “Twentieth Century,” “Hands Across the Table” and the classic “My Man Godfrey,” for which she was nominated. Critics praised her as being a “comedienne in the first rank.” Boris Karloff Before becoming immortalized in pop culture as Frankenstein’s Monster, Karloff began his career in silent film serials like “The Masked Rider” and “The Hope Diamond Mystery,” in which he was typecast as Arabic and Indian villains, despite being British. Throughout the ’20s, he would appear in roughly 45 silent films as a character actor. After breaking into the talkies with more significant roles, it was eventually “Frankenstein” in 1931 that made him a star. His most famous character is generally silent, yes, but his subtle, sad, and powerful performance spoke volumes to the audience.

Karloff would maintain his success in horror classics including “The Mummy,” “The Old Dark House,” and “The Comedy of Terrors.” Perhaps his most heard performance, however, is as the narrator and Grinch himself in the animated classic “How The Grinch Stole Christmas!” Inspired by this post? Check out our film audition listings ! Read Also: Anna Christie - ClassicFlix paulf | 02/06/2016 ANNA CHRISTIE -- Clarence Brown, who directed Greta Garbo's breakthrough silent hit "Flesh and the Devil," was there for her again when she made her belated talkie debut as Eugene O'Neill's prostitute heroine in "Anna Christie." This dark, gritty and now pretty dated drama was worlds apart from Garbo's flossy vehicles up to then, but she manages to put the part across sympathetically and minus undo stress under Brown's judicious direction. The movie gave her another huge career boost, as it did comedienne Marie Dressler as the lovable old tramp Marthy. Given plenty of elbow room by gal pal scenarist Frances Marion, Dressler fills the part with richly layered humanity.

ANNA CHRISTIE (German language version) -- Jacques Feyder, one of the many great French directors who served unfulfilling time in Hollywood, directed this German version, which Garbo is said to have preferred over the Brown film. If true, that is understandable. Garbo, performing comfortably in German, seems more acclimated to the part of Anna by this time and reaches deeper into its emotional core. Feyder supports her by gently pushing the camera closer, making the viewer an intimate partner. The picture itself, shot on leftover sets (and leftover budget), is rather scruffy though, and the German translation does nothing for O'Neill's slangy prose. Garbo gal pal Salka Viertel is a believably tarty Marthy. Anna Christie (1930) Pages: ( 1 ) Background Anna Christie (1930) was advertised, in a two-word ad campaign, as the first talking picture (and 14th film) for cinema's greatest silent star - an asexual, supercool Nordic beauty named Greta Garbo: "Garbo Talks!" MGM Studios was quite concerned about their alluring, 24 year-old talented actress.

She was one of their biggest stars, but she had a potential liability - her untested, heavy Swedish accent. Many other silent stars had already failed or struggled to make the transition to the sound era - Nita Naldi, Vilma Banky, and John Gilbert (satirized in MGM's Singin' in the Rain (1952) ). Even after talkies were inaugurated in 1927, Garbo starred in more silents, e.g., The Single Standard (1929) and The Kiss (1929). Finally, the star's first talkie (an "ALL TALKING PICTURE") was carefully chosen for her, mostly because it perfectly suited her Swedish accent. And a familiar director Clarence Brown was also assigned to the film, having already directed Garbo in Flesh and the Devil (1926), and A Woman of Affairs (1928) (and later Anna Karenina (1935) and Conquest (1937)). The role Garbo would play, a sickly prostitute, would be in sharp contrast to the glamorous characters she had already played in silent films.

The 74 minute, black and white Anna Christie was adapted (by influential screenwriter Frances Marion) from Eugene O'Neill's play of the same name. It had earlier been a stage play, and had been filmed by producer Thomas H. Ince and director John Griffith Wray as a silent picture in 1923, with Blanche Sweet as the heroine, and George F. Marion in the same role that he played onstage (and in this version). In 1984, a film directed by Sidney Lumet, titled Garbo Talks (1984), used this film's slogan in a story about a woman whose dying wish was to meet her screen idol Garbo. The Story In the famed, immortalized scene that is about sixteen minutes into this over-rated and stagy drama, weary and ailing, man-hating Swedish-American streetwalker Anna Gustafson Christie (Greta Garbo), searching for her estranged barge captain father Chris Gustafson (George F. Marion) to seek redemption, makes her grand entrance into a NY Battery waterfront saloon from a foggy street.

The bar's waiter holds open the door to the Ladies Entrance as she struggles in, lugging an old, weighty suitcase. She shuffles over to a wooden table across from where her father's boozing companion Marthy (Marie Dressler) sits, and drops her suitcase onto the floor. Anna takes a seat in a chair, crouches down, and finally delivers her famous opening lines. In a deep and husky, heavily-accented voice, she orders: Anna: Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side. And don't be stingy, baby! Waiter: (sarcastically) Well, shall I serve it in a pail? Anna: (bluntly) Ah, that suits me down to the ground. (After the whiskey is served and downed) Gee, I needed that bad all right, all right.

Anna Christie - WarnerBros.com - Movies Anna Christie Original Theatrical Date: February 21, 1930 Sixteen minutes or so into this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize play, 1930 audiences got what they were waiting for when Greta Garbo made her entrance and spoke on camera for the first time in her career: "Gimme a whiskey." Like Lon Chaney and Charlie Chaplin, the Swedish Sphinx had continued in Silents even though Talkies were the rage. Here she made her landmark transition to the new era, playing a former prostitute whose past may ruin her chance for happiness. A different director and cast join Garbo in a German-language version (Side B) filmed on the same soundstages immediately after the English version. She called it the better film, and many fans today agree. You decide! Genre: RomanceClassic Anna Christie (1930) Anna Christie 1 hr 30 mins USA / English DVD Region 1 NR Frank Reicher Cinematography William H.

Daniels Sixteen minutes or so into this adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize play, 1930 audiences got what they were waiting for when Greta Garbo made her entrance and spoke on camera for the first time in her career: "Gimme a whiskey?." Like Lon Chaney and Charlie Chaplin, the Swedish Sphinx had continued in Silents even though Talkies were the rage. Here she made her landmark transition to the new era, playing a former prostitute whose past may ruin her chance for happiness. A different director and cast join Garbo in a German-language version (Side B) filmed on the same soundstages immediately after the English version. She called it the better film, and many fans today agree. You decide! Edition Details Anna Christie Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 6 out of 6 people found the following review useful: A compelling filming of the O'Neill play from elgin, illinois 6 March 2001 It has been reported that Eugene O'Neill maintained that this was his favorite among films which had been based on his stage successes. Having seen many of the others, it is easy to believe this.

It may be sacrilege to claim that Blanche Sweet's performance surpassed Greta Garbo's("Garbo talks"), but it seems so to me. Garbo comes across as mournful and somewhat pitiful, while Sweet conveys the kind of toughness one would expect from an "experienced"woman. Russell is more convincing as a rather immature "he-man" than is Bickford. The great Marie Dressler arguably brings too much of her own persona to the Marthy role; Besserer conveys the shrewdness that an aging woman survivor, and one can see her struggle over whether to unite Anna with her father, or to take care of herself first. The weakest performance is that of George Marion, who overacts the role of Chris. The production values and photography are serviceable; though expectedly not up to those from MGM, they give perhaps a more realistic view of a run-down waterfront scene. Was the above review useful to you? 4 out of 5 people found the following review useful: Blanche Sweet Is Terrific from United States 15 December 2007 This silent version of the Eugene O'Neill play is much more honest than the Garbo talkie version.

Silent star Blanche Sweet is terrific as the fallen Anna who finds love on a barge. The famous bar room scene is pretty much intact here with Sweet saying "gimme a whiskey." You can almost see the bar man ask if she wants it in a pail. As noted, there is more "background material" on Anna here. In the Garbo film it was mostly implied. Sweet is terrific as the sad and wounded Anna who can't deal with her own past and almost loses the hulking Mat (William Russell) because of her guilt. George F. Marion, who originated the role of Chris on stage with Pauline Lord as Anna, plays the father here and in the Garbo version. Eugenie Besserer (Mama in THE JAZZ SINGER) plays Marthy. Whle it's impossible to forget the Garbo version of this film, this 1923 version is quite good on its own terms. Sweet claimed she almost landed the talkie version until MGM figured out it was a perfect vehicle for Garbo. Who knows what this film might have done for Sweet's career.

She made only 3 early talkies and then retired, only to come back 25 years later for a few small roles in films and TV. In her talkie career, Blanche Sweet is vivid in supporting roles as Queenie in THE SILVER HORDE and totally excellent as Donnie in SHOW GIRL IN Hollywood. I've not seen THE WOMAN RACKET. She ranked as a major star in the teens (JUDITH OF BETHULIA) and through the 20s. Sweet's ANNA Christie is closer to O'Neill's play than the 30s version (including a long preamble about village life in Sweden) because of censorship issues. Despite the dour characters, the silent version has some terrific moments, and Miss Sweet is terrific. Marion and Besserer are also solid. I'm not familiar with Russell at all but he kind of grew on me. Was the above review useful to you? 3 out of 4 people found the following review useful: Serviceable filming of the play with memorable Sweet performance from Putney, VT 4 March 2002 The only real difference between this and the Garbo talkie versions is in seeing Anna as a child and seeing her downfall in flashback sequences.

Otherwise they are pretty well matched as adaptations from the stage play. Sweet does quite well in the lead, able to be both tough and vulnerable in turn. Marion repeats his original stage creation of Chris as he did in the English language Garbo talkie. Besserer does well in the Marthy role but that belongs to Dressler in my opinion. Russell's Mat is uncompromisingly ugly. And so is the plot. Here are these two vile human beings, Anna's father and Mat, blaming her for her downfall at the hands of men, and she buying it. It is a sad statement of what the "rules" used to be in society in the first half of the last century. The situation and the people are so negative and depressing it makes any performance of the work hard to watch and even harder to swallow. See this for Sweet's performance only. It's not great but it does hit the character right on the button. Was the above review useful to you? 5 out of 8 people found the following review useful: A "lost" film, you say?

from Minffordd, North Wales 29 November 2003 This silent version of Eugene O'Neill's drama 'Anna Christie', starring Blanche Sweet, is an excellent film in its own right, very faithful to the source material. It also proves a point I've often made about so-called 'lost' films: namely, that a diligent and intelligent search for a specific film can often lead to its recovery. 'Anna Christie' was 'lost' for several decades, but Blanche Sweet initiated an energetic search which led to the discovery of a well-preserved print (with Russian intertitles) in a Soviet archive. Happily, this film is now available with new English-language intertitles. One serious flaw in O'Neill's play is the extremely crude dialogue spoken by Anna and her immigrant father Chris, written in a wretched "yumpin' yiminy!" Swedish dialect. Apparently the Russian translator made no attempt to preserve this in the Russian-version titles. Eugene O'Neill did not like actors, probably because he spent so much of his childhood among barnstorming troupers (including his own father).

Yet O'Neill actively assisted in the production of this film, and it succeeds as one of the most faithful examples of his vision that I've ever seen. The greatest flaws are the stagebound sets and some howlingly bad footage of Chris Christopherson's ship at the mercy of "dat ol' devil, sea": these shots are obviously images of a miniature boat, bobbing about in a water tank! As Anna's father, George F. Marion gives the worst performance in the film: surprisingly, he repeated this role in the remake starring Greta Garbo. In recent years, Garbo's English-language version of 'Anna Christie' has been subordinated to the German-language version she filmed shortly afterwards. (Same sets, different cast, much more explicit dialogue and racier costumes.) As good as Garbo is in the German version, this silent version is better still. William Russell, as Anna's rough-hewn seaman lover, is slightly too mannered and slightly too prettified. He utterly failed to convince me that he had any emotional or sexual interest in Blanche Sweet's Anna. I have been reliably informed (by an old-time Hollywood veteran) that Russell's voice was inappropriate for talking films. I have mixed feelings towards Blanche Sweet.

When I see her name in print, I tend to visualise a cloying simpering ingenue in virginal roles, similar to Bessie Love or Lillian Gish. (I think it's Blanche Sweet's annoying name that causes me to perceive her this way.) Yet, when I watch one of her films, I almost always find her attractive and compelling. Beak-nosed, almost anorexically thin, with a nearly nonexistent bustline, Blanche Sweet is unlikely to attract modern film audiences. Yet I found her extremely sexy in 'The Sporting Venus', in which she played a glammed-up heiress in expensive gowns and a tiara. Here in 'Anna Christie', Ms Sweet wears dowdy clothes that are entirely appropriate for her portrayal of a waterfront prostitute. I really dislike films in which a leading actor or actress dresses much more expensively (and more extensively) than his or her screen character could plausibly dress in real life. Fortunately, Blanche Sweet does not indulge such vanities here. I'll rate this excellent film 8 points out of 10. Was the above review useful to you?

1 out of 1 people found the following review useful: Reunion with Father from Kissimmee, Florida 2 June 2007 "Anna Christie" (First National, 1923), a Thomas H. Ince production, directed by John Griffith Wray, from the play by Eugene O'Neill, is a story so relatively known today as Greta Garbo's sound debut for MGM in 1930, and as with most talkies, many were remakes of silent ones. While Garbo played Anna Karenina twice on screen, first in a 1927 silent (as "Love") and again in a 1935 sound adaptation, she did not originate the role of Anna Christie. That honor went to a non-Swedish actress named Blanche Sweet, whose career in motion pictures goes back to its primitive days of 1909. Appearing in a handful of shorts and feature films, almost all virtually forgotten, it's her role as Anna Christie that remains one of Sweet's most notable roles.

Much of the plot is set on a New York waterfront where Old Chris Christopherson (George Marion) receives a telegram from his daughter, Anna, whom he hasn't seen since she her childhood, that she is coming to stay with him. Aside from his sailor pals, Chris's only companion is Marty Owens (Eugenie Besserer), a prostitute as well as his mistress. Upon her arrival, Anna (Blanche Sweet) first encounters Marty at a bar before being reunited with her father. Sometime later, Anna and Chris comes to the rescue of Mat Burke (William Russell), a rough Irish seaman whose ship was destroyed in a heavy rainstorm. Mat and Chris become friends, but their friendship soon turns to rivalry once Mat starts showing romantic interest in Anna, causing Anna to reveal her troubled past that may cause her to lose the love and admiration of them both. In comparison to the Garbo remake, this 1923 original is more detailed in regards to Anna's background as revealed in a flashback sequence not used in the Garbo movie. The flashback tells of Anna as a child, and her mother being left on a Minnesota farm by her sea loving father in the care of abusive relatives.

After her mother dies, Anna, now 15, is disowned and evicted by her brutal cousin (Ralph Yearsley). She settles in Chicago where desperation has her living the life as a prostitute, causing her to become distrustful and bitter towards men to a point in saying, "Gawd, how I hate men - every mother's son of 'em." Veteran actor George Marion, who originated his role of Chris in the 1921 play starring Pauline Lord, would enact the role again in the Garbo version. The only other difference between this and the remake is that in the original, Marion's character occasionally narrates to the audience, looking over to the camera and speaking through the use of title cards. Other members in the cast of "Anna Christie" include: Chester Conklin (Tommy); George Siegmann (Anna's Uncle); Victor Potel (The Bartender); and Fred Kohler Sr (The Shipman). Rarely seen theatrically since the 1920s, "Anna Christie" was once believed to be a long lost movie with no surviving prints in existence.

An extant copy was finally discovered in Yugoslavia and restored by film department staff members of New York City's Museum of Modern Art. Aside from MOMA's sporadic revivals, "Anna Christie" served as the fifth installment on an eight week series titled "Lost and Found", presented on New York's public broadcasting station, WNET, Channel 13, during the summer months of 1978. At the conclusion of the 70 minute feature presentation that premiered July 22, 1978, host Richard Schickel has an interesting interview with its "Anna Christie" star, none other than Blanche Sweet (1896-1986). At one point during their discussion, Sweet revealed how she nearly got to appear in the sound remake before the role was handed over to Greta Garbo in a performance earned her an Academy Award nomination. Unlike Garbo, whose career extended to 1941, Sweet retired from the screen in 1930, shortly after appearing in only three feature-length talkies.

While the story and legend of "Anna Christie" remains in memory as a Greta Garbo character, the original 1923 silent did make it to video cassette in the 1990s. Unfortunately, circulating VHS copies at present does not have a musical track, something that could or should have been acquired from the distributors by licensing the piano scored edition presented on "Lost and Found." If "Anna Christie" should ever show up on television again, possibly on Turner Classic Movies where silent movies have become part of its Sunday after midnight lineup, let's hope that proper re-scoring be equipped for the enjoyment of future generations to view and rediscover the works of Eugene O'Neill and the legend of Blanche Sweet as Anna Christie. (***) Was the above review useful to you? 2 out of 3 people found the following review useful: a pretty good silent film,...but where is the musical accompaniment?! from Bradenton, Florida 7 May 2006 The main problem I had with this film wasn't the fault of the film's producers.

In the old days of silents, some films had music composed for the film but regardless of whether or not this occurred, music was provided by the movie houses--it only was sent along on an accompanying record with some of the last silent films. Despite this movie being made before this period of recorded music for films, I still expected music on the videotape or DVD--this IS standard when you buy a silent film today. But, the knuckleheads from Timeless Video produced a completely silent film--not even a banjo or kazoo to provide background music! This is really cheap! Plus, the speed of the film was way too slow (silent and sound films need to be played at differing speeds in the machine) and the Timeless folks did nothing to compensate for this,...jerks! The film itself was a completely mixed bag and I really can't say I especially liked it or disliked it. On the plus side, the cinematography was excellent for 1923. Also, the movie was pretty engaging because the plot was pretty adult and was definitely "pre-code"--i.e., the plot would have definitely violated the standards as set up in the 1930s for films with the Hays Code.

Anna Christie was a prostitute and had slept with many men in the Eugene O'Neill play and the film didn't shy away from this, nor did it ignore her having been physically and sexually abused. While it wasn't "sleazy", it sure was pretty adult far. The negatives were that, at times, the plot was really sappy and "heavy-handed" and the film reminded me of a turn of the century morality play since it seemed awfully contrived and over-acted (wild gesticulations were NOT put into all silent films--just sappier ones like this). So, you make up your mind. It IS an interesting curio and might be interesting to watch before or after you see its remakes. But, on the other hand, there are better silents out there waiting to be discovered by you. Was the above review useful to you? A Skillful, Classic Adaptation 30 October 2011 *** This review may contain spoilers *** Producer Thomas Ince had an instinct for what would please audiences, although this awareness did not always please him, as I outline in my Ince biography.

The greatest exception was Anna Christie; Blanche Sweet, who would play the title role, later gave him "great credit for producing Anna Christie. He was a very commercial man. Well, lots of people arethey like to have their films reach large audiences and that's all right. But Tom put his own money into making Anna, and it had been controversial in New York ...." Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer-prize winning play had premiered two years before, and Ince's production marked the first of his theatrical presentations brought to the screen. Anna Christie is delivered with intensity, sometimes to the point of overacting, but John Griffith Wray's direction avoids any sense of the stage origins. In adapting the play, Bradley King merely rearranged some of the chronology and cut all but the most essential dialogue for intertitles. As one reviewer noted, "The notable success of the picture lies in the fact that it has done precisely what Mr. O'Neill did, in terms of motion pictures. There is no padding, no change of characterization, no tampering with the author's intention. Every scene that enlarges the horizon of the play by virtue of the greater mobility of picture-making is a legitimate expansion of what is suggested by the text....

As far as is humanly possible they have been faithful to the spirit of the play in story, setting and acting." After seeing the movie, O'Neill telegrammed Ince to say, "Your motion picture of Anna Christie is a fine, true representation, faithful to the spirit and intent of the play." The sea is the motif, and its backgrounds constantly add to the mood, echoing the emotions. The movie opens on atmospheric shots before cutting to the coastal village seldom visited by Anna's father, Chris Christopherson. (The role is played by George F. Marion, who originated the role on Broadway and worked for five weeks at $1,000, then would reprise it in 1930 in the M-G-M remake. ) The 5-year-old Anna plays on the shore, her naiveté with a small boat almost causing her to drown. Simultaneously, her father breaks a doll he had bought for her during a spree in Shanghai. It is a forecast of the years to come. A sailor, he can never save money because of his drinking, and blames "that old devil sea" for all his misfortunes.

He arranges for Anna and her mother to live with relatives, believing she will have a life a sailor could not provide. Fifteen years later, Chris, although captain of a coal barge, is little changed, and his drinking buddy is Marthy, a floozy. Chris idolizes Anna, and when he learns she is coming to visit following her mother's death, he believes nothing is too good for her. Marthy is first to recognize Anna; she is hardly the girl Chris imagined. During a fog, an ocean liner is wrecked, and Chris's barge picks up some of the survivors, stokers from the engine room. One of them, Mat Burke (William Russell), is injured, and Anna takes pity on him, to her father's consternation; he fears she will pair off with an unlucky man of the sea little different from himself. By contrast, Anna regards herself as unworthy of Mat; she bemoans not having met him four years earlier. While a storm rages outside the barge's cabin, she tells Mat she loves him but will not marry him. The two men fight, but Anna tells them she is not "furniture," and that relatives treated her and her mother like slaves.

She was beaten and worse by the father and his sons, finally dropping her in town with $5 in her pocket to make her own way. Anna tells Mat that he made her feel clean for the first time, but he responds by telling her he'll get drunk until he washes off the stain of her kiss. Chris stops Anna from drowning herself, and in turn she finds him carrying a gunhe planned to ship out and shoot himself in despair. Mat's, having tried to forget his sorrows in drink, returns to the barge and kneels before Anna, assuring her that if she will swear she never loved another, he could forget the rest. Her affirmation is sufficient. Anna compels the two men to drink to their friendship, for they are sailing out on the same boat. Despite receiving no unusual promotion, Anna Christie won widespread critical praise. It also proved a sound investment. The movie cost $225,000, with $314,715 net. Today, Anna Christie only survives in a version that was recut for a U.S.S.R.

release in 1930 by Evgenii Chvlev, with intertitles recreated by the Museum of Modern Art from a translation and the original play, with restoration by George Eastman House. Was the above review useful to you? 'Laugh Yourself Fat' | The Weekly Standard May 04, 2009 | By Helen Rittelmeyer The Weekly Standard Sorry, you've reached the limit on the articles you can view. A Great Big Girl Like Me The Films of Marie Dressler by Victoria Sturtevant Illinois, 200 pp., $20 She was the first actress to appear on the cover of Time. She was Franklin Roosevelt's favorite comedian. In Dinner at Eight, she was given billing above not one, but two Barrymores. And today no one under the age of 60 remembers who she is. Marie Dressler's obscurity is easy to understand. In her own day it was said that her talent allowed her to "dictate to directors, buy herself diamond bracelets, and let herself get fat--which is one more right than any other screen star can exercise." History has been less kind to this portly, cow-faced actress.

In 1930, critics all agreed that she walked away with Greta Garbo's first talkie, Anna Christie. Seventy years later, one of Garbo's cigarette butts went for $352 at auction, and Marie Dressler is only just famous enough to appear on a Canadian postage stamp. But between 1930 and 1933 Marie Dressler was bigger than Chaplin. Her first attempt to make the leap from vaudeville to Hollywood was undermined by bad management and a reputation for left-wing troublemaking, but after her big break in 1930 with Anna Christie, she became one of MGM's most reliable box-office draws, especially in films that cast her as a tottering drunk or a comic old dowager. Her winning streak ended with her death in 1934. She came closest to cementing a permanent legacy with the ensemble comedy Dinner at Eight, which ends with Dressler's famous exchange with Jean Harlow. Harlow, playing the crass gold-digger Kitty Packard, mentions to Dressler that she was reading a book the other day. Dressler's exaggerated double-take is straight out of vaudeville.

"Yeah, all about civilization or something," Harlow continues. "Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?" Dressler sizes up the younger woman in a glance and answers, "Oh, my dear, that's something you never need worry about." An earlier biographer, Matthew Kennedy, summed up Dressler's special appeal: "Her secret was simple but effective--inject some humility into regal characters and some majesty into the downtrodden." Her maternal warmth and knack for physical comedy were perfectly suited to the tastes of an America scraping its way through the Great Depression. Forget the hemline index; in times of economic trouble, a woman with an ample figure is comforting, especially if she is also a master of vaudevillian slapstick. (The tagline of her film Reducing: "You'll Laugh Yourself Fat!") That is what makes Dressler a more interesting subject than any studio-era soubrette; her superstardom says as much about America during the Depression as it does about her.

If A Great Big Girl Like Me has a weakness, that's it: Victoria Sturtevant is so quick to attribute Dressler's success to personal genius that she overlooks the historical factors that allowed a homely sexagenarian to eclipse MGM's prettier properties. One generally has to grant first-time authors special dispensation to be in love with their subjects; but in Sturtevant's case, her obvious fascination with Dressler's talent leaves her blind to other, more interesting, reasons for Dressler's success. Consider her chapter on motherhood. Dressler was a rare exception to Mack Sennett's iron rule that "no joke about a mother ever gets a laugh," and Sturtevant does an excellent job of illustrating just how seriously this rule was taken in Hollywood. Studios expected screen mothers to be sentimental pillars of stability, which left very little room for chaotic slapstick or screwball banter. The hundred insufferable copycats that followed Al Jolson's "Mammy" are mostly forgotten today, but in the first five years of talkies, hymns to maternal self-sacrifice were ubiquitous.

Sturtevant quotes Anita Loos's But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes (1928): "Dorothy says that if we could only manage to get all the song writers in the world to meet Henry's mother, it would be the quickest way to free the world of Mother songs." Sturtevant writes that Marie Dressler sidestepped this convention by playing mothers as tricksters whose tricks were all "tricks of self-sacrifice." But the question is not how Dressler was able to combine the archetypes of trickster and mother, but how she managed to get away with it. After all, there was a time when she didn't: The Callahans and the Murphys (1927), which was supposed to be Dressler's comeback film, was pulled by MGM precisely because of the uproar over its depiction of Irish motherhood. One telegram referred to a scene of Dressler, as Mrs. Callahan, drunk at a St.

Patrick's Day picnic: "[T]his entire sequence has been the butt of most of the Irish societies' complaints because it shows Irish mothers drunk." One man walked out of a showing in New York: "My mother never acted like that!" It was only later, in films like Min & Bill and Tugboat Annie, that Dressler's slapstick version of motherhood became popular. What made the difference between 1927 and 1930? There are interesting cases to be made for the importance of the Depression's effect on gender roles--the way women were pushed to the center of the family and thereby made fit subjects for comedy--or for the idea that, when Americans are confronted by real national tragedy, they are less interested in cinematic melodrama. If you ask Sturtevant, however, Dressler's success was simply the alchemy of genius. This being an academic study, there is a chapter on Dressler's ambiguous sexuality, a subject on which Sturtevant does have quite a bit to say. The facts of Dressler's love life are unclear: She had an early marriage that failed, followed by a common law marriage to her business manager, who never successfully divorced his first wife.

During her final years in Hollywood Dressler was friendly with several confirmed lesbians and shared a house with the actress Claire DuBrey in what looked to outsiders like a domestic partnership. Given that the defining characteristic of lesbian culture in 1930s Hollywood was invisibility, these few details gave Sturtevant plenty to work with--especially since two of Dressler's movies, both of which Sturtevant discusses at length, have plots that revolve around the difficulty of imagining Dressler as a sexual being. In Emma an aging inventor marries his housekeeper (Dressler) shortly before he dies and his children dispute the inventor's will: Marrying his housekeeper and leaving his estate to her, they argue, must surely have been signs of senility. In Christopher Bean Dressler plays another housekeeper with a controversial husband, in this case a dead painter whose work has finally come into fashion. Art collectors arrive at the household where Dressler serves in order to find lost masterpieces, but it takes them awhile to think to ask Dressler if she knows where any might be hidden. (In fact, her marriage to the painter, Christopher Bean, had been secret.) In this second film Dressler's sexual invisibility is something of a blessing.

After her secret is revealed, she has to contend with unscrupulous art dealers trying to buy her cherished portraits; things were much easier for her when she was being underestimated. As Sturtevant points out, this is not so different from the situation of a lesbian during the Depression. When the general population preferred to think that the cohabitation of two women was most likely innocent, the women in question had a certain amount of freedom. It is not entirely clear that Dressler belonged to the '30s lesbian subculture, but Sturtevant makes good use out of adopting her as "queer." Sturtevant also observes about Dressler's political melodramas that, while they revolve around liberal arguments about plutocratic greed, the solutions they prescribe are personal, not political. Dressler saves the day by behaving like a good mother, not by staging a revolution. In a way, A Great Big Girl Like Me has the same weakness.

Sturtevant seeks to revive Dressler's reputation for personal reasons, not historical ones: "I like Dressler's work" not "Her work is an important part of Hollywood history." Still, Marie Dressler is enough of an anomaly to be of inherent interest, and Victoria Sturtevant has taken the first step in the worthy cause of her rehabilitation. Helen Rittelmeyer is a writer in Washington. Web Link: Seaworthy O'Neill | East Bay Express East Bay Express Anna Christie's powerhouse cast includes Ken Ruta and Delia MacDougall. Details: Written by Eugene O'Neill Directed by Lee Sankowich 925-943-SHOW or DLRCA.or g The photo in Arthur and Barbara Gelb's biography O'Neill: Life with Monte Cristo is telling. In 1894 a six-year-old Eugene O'Neill, looking very serious in dark clothes and cap, gazed out to sea as he sketched trees and ships in a book in his lap.

As an adult, he said of the photo that it was "amusing and characteristic." Characteristic because he would grow to love the sea, working for a time as a sailor and living above a waterfront bar frequented by seamen, but also because he would devote his adult existence to trying to capture the truth of the world through art. Truth in art was not necessarily a theatrical priority when O'Neill started writing plays. The Monte Cristo of the Gelbs' title refers to O'Neill's father James, one of the last practitioners of the overblown, "presentational" style of theater that marked the turn of the 20th century. Stanislavsky's work with naturalism in acting had yet to hit American shores; so, too, the work of such modern European playwrights as Strindberg, Ibsen, and Pirandello. The younger O'Neill would spend his life struggling against the melodramatic excesses of his father's theater, and although traces of that tradition would show up in his work, his plays are largely understood as having ushered a new form into American theater.

O'Neill, who largely insulated himself from audiences and criticism (he rarely if ever attended one of his plays after the rehearsal period was over), was probably about thirty years ahead of his time, and waiting for audiences to catch up. Which is why the story of a prostitute who gets a shot at salvation might seem blasé to us, when in fact it was pretty daring territory for 1922, when O'Neill's Anna Christie was first produced. Hookers with hearts of gold were old hat in Europe, but new for us. The story of Anna, who gets a new start when she goes to visit her seafaring father and meets the love of her life in the process, immediately captured the American imagination. Two film versions were released, the second one being famous for the tag line "Garbo Speaks!," as it was Greta Garbo's first talkie. Anna Christie also netted O'Neill (the only American playwright to win a Nobel Prize) his second of four Pulitzers. Anna Christie came early in a densely prolific career that would include Desire Under the Elms, The Iceman Cometh, and Long Day's Journey Into Night, all of which contained strongly autobiographical elements.

Oddly enough, Anna's story originally was completely secondary to the play. In its first version, the play was called Chris Christopherson, and it followed a Swedish sea captain based on a real person O'Neill met when he lived above Jimmy-the-Priest's saloon. Christopherson, like the second draft that followed it (the short-lived That Old Devil Sea), is of a piece with O'Neill's numerous one-act "sea" plays; it features a man who can't escape his connection to the sea. The play saw a very limited run, since the director hacked it down to size without the playwright's help. That may not have been the only problem, however; the published version is incredibly awkward, burdened as it is with exposition and the frayed country mouse/city mouse pairing of old salt Chris and his bright young daughter Anna, here a prim stenographer. But O'Neill didn't give up on the play. He pulled it into dry dock and changed the focus -- and much of the action -- entirely. Anna went from being an upstanding girl whose strongest curse was "by jiminy" to a hardened woman whose famous first line is "Gimme a whisky -- ginger ale on the side.

And don't be stingy, baby." Her love interest went from being the weak-willed Paul Anderson to the hypermasculine Mat Burke. And the tone of the whole work changed in a way upon which no two writers seem to agree -- did it go from being a comedy to a naturalistic drama, or is Anna Christie really one of O'Neill's two extant comedies? Whatever the case, although the sea and her power (Chris constantly refers to the sea as both female and malevolent) still feature prominently in the play, it's no longer the central character. Now, that role falls to Anna, played as both tough and vulnerable by the courageous Delia MacDougall in CenterREP's pitch-perfect production. O'Neill envisioned Anna as a sort of Valkyrie, large and well-turned of limb, but director Lee Sankowich's choice of the diminutive MacDougall makes Anna seem all the braver, surrounded as she is by hulking longshoremen. MacDougall is part of a powerhouse cast that includes Ken Ruta, Aldo Billingslea, and Pat Parker as Chris Christopherson's salty girlfriend Marthy.

Props to Ruta, the Bay Area's ur-Falstaff, for imbuing Chris with a certain sad dignity; no mean feat considering that of all the characters, Chris seems to have changed the least between Chris Christopherson and Anna Christie. The drunken Chris is a figure of fun in the first version with his "py yiminy"s and shuffling gait, but here Ruta gets right both the heavy Swedish accent and the deep sadness (Chris has lost nearly everyone he loved to either the sea or neglect). Ruta's acting of Chris as hunched and hesitant creates a powerful dynamic with Aldo Billingslea's large, virile Mat Burke, leading us to wonder if Mat could also represent Chris as he was when he was younger. Now, there are great differences between the men beyond their physical forms. Chris has "swallowed the anchor" -- a phrase O'Neill liked so much he kept it through all three iterations of the play -- laying the blame for what his life has become squarely on "that ole davil sea." Chris hates the sea but can't stay away from it. As a coal-barge captain he is neither fish nor fowl, a true sailor or a true landsman.

A scene that didn't survive from Chris Christopherson had two of his old mates castigating him for having left deep-sea work; they tell him that he isn't a real man and nearly come to blows. Mat Burke however is a real man, and boy does he know it. The first time he meets Anna he has just saved some of his crewmates from a sinking ship by no more than the force of his great strength and will, a story he tells her in great detail. "You sure do like yourself, doncha?" she asks, with a trace of obvious admiration. This was about where the muscular, feline Billingslea flexed his naked pecs in a move that nearly brought down the house at the matinee I attended. Unlike Chris, Mat has no fear or hatred of the sea. If anything he is her emissary, a true sea-creature like the one Anna is discovering herself to be. As Travis Bogard astutely notes in Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill, the problems that arise between Anna and Mat have everything to do with their life on land -- namely, in the form of her past. In their native element, however, there is an ease and rightness to their connection.

Even the way Billingslea plays Mat when he is dressed in a proper suit and shoes bears this out. He is too strong and wild a spirit to be contained in such an earthbound outfit. O'Neill appears to have been a visual thinker, if his stage directions and design suggestions are any clue. It's a tendency given full weight by director Lee Sankowich's design team. Anna Christie is a sensory feast, from Eric Sinkkonen's hyperreal barroom and barge to Kurt Landisman's excellent lighting design (especially the trick of making the beginning and end of each act look like sepia-tone photographs). It's an illusion given more weight by Norman Kern's sounds and Cassandra Carpenter's costumes. The coal-stoker's grime, the lonely sound of foghorns, the way a jacket can make a person look small and overwhelmed; this is a production that virtually reeks of the sea, and neatly frames the small, powerful woman at its center. Contact the author of this piece, send a letter to the editor, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Question: Whose first venture into ‘talkies’ was Anna Christie?
Answer: Greta Garbo