Lillian Gish Reappearing as Molnar’s ‘Swan’ – By Mae Tinee (Chicago Tribune – 1930)

 

Lillian Gish Reappearing as Molnar’s ‘Swan’ – By Mae Tinee (Chicago Tribune – 1930)

  • Chicago Tribune – Saturday May 17, 1930 – Page 11
  • Lillian Gish Reappearing as Molnar’s ‘Swan’
  • Play Loses Something as an Altalker

ONE ROMANTIC NIGHT

  • Produced by United Artists
  • Directed by Paul L. Stein
  • Presented at United Artists’ theater
One Romantic Night – The Swan

The Cast:

  • Alexandra …………………… Lillian Gish
  • Prince Albert ……….…. Rod La Rocque
  • Dr. Nicholas Haller ….. Conrad Nagel
  • Princess Beatrice …… Marie Dressler
  • Father Benedict ……….… O.P. Heggie
  • Count Lutzen ……….……. Albert Conti
  • Col. Wunderlich ……… Edgar Norton
  • Symphrosa …………..…. Billie Bennett
  • George ………………. Philippe De Lacy
  • Arsene ……………………….. Byron Sage
  • Mitzi ………………….. Barbara Leonard

By Mae Tinee

One Romantic Night – The Swan

The little lady who silently became famous in days when D.W. Griffith was king (of directors), comes to her first talker a different Lillian Gish. As Alexandra in “One Romantic Night,” adaptation of the Molnar play “The Swan,” she has nary a hop, skip or wiggle to bless herself with. That pleases you. BUT neither does anybody beat her, scare her out of her wits, nor starve her – and that is not so good, for it is in the depiction of stark, stare, gibbering terror that Miss Gish is at her best. Let all the world forsake her and she becomes an actress to reckon with. Minus the hops, skips, and wiggles, and the big, mean men, she appears rather at sea. She manages her entrances and exits nicely because she’s been brought up that way, but to me her performance was utterly futile. Her voice? Pleasant.

Lillian Gish and O.P. Heggie – One Romantic Night – The Swan

With the exception of O.P. Heggie as Father Benedict, Albert Conti as Count Lutzen, and Philippe De Lacy and Byron Sage, playing small brothers of the heroine, the picture has not been happily cast.

One Romantic Night – The Swan

Rod La Rocque is princely as to uniform , but his manner and delivery are reminiscent of a soda jerker.

One Romantic Night – The Swan

Marie Dressler as mother of “The Swan” has a hard time keeping her dignity and sometimes doesn’t. You feel she is keenly missing Polly Moran and that the latter may pop out at any moment from behind a noble portiere and hit her with an umbrella.

Conrad Nagel and Lillian Gisn in “One Romantic Night”

Conrad Nagel as the tutor is a fair and manly flower and that is all.

Thus cast and lacking inspired direction, the delicate point of the original satire is dulled, and beauty of scenery and settings, excellence of photography, and lines that know their way about cannot give to “One Romantic Night” what has been taken away from “The Swan.”

The action occurs in the long, long ago when the parents of young princess and princesses mapped out their marriages for them. So here you see and elderly princess endeavoring to keep the family going by marrying her fair daughter Alexandra, fondly called “The Swan” by her late father, to the heir of a throne.

Lillian Gish – Promotional photo for “The Swan”

The little princess is willing; the prince isn’t till Alexandra, at her mamma’s behest, is coy with her brothers’ tutor, who worships her. Then – well, the Viennese Molnar knew so well how to deal with this situation!

Personally I couldn’t get at all heat up about “One Romantic Night.” And the title on a Gish number isn’t going to fool the sidewalk crowds, for they know their Lillian.

One Romantic Night – United Artists

Back to Lillian Gish Home page

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983

Image
Lillian Gish and Jeanne Moreau – Vanity Fair 1983 Vanity Fair – October 1983 Lillian Gish Jeanne Moreau This is a summit meeting: a queen paying homage to an empress. Of course, Lillian Gish, far right, is no truer a blueblood than any other homespun midwesterner. But wherever she goes now, she is treated like a monarch, acknowledging standing ovations in allAmerican palaces like Radio City Music Hall. Her admirers aren’t really applauding her 101 films (she has just completed the 102nd, about a sweet old lady and her sweet old dog). They may never have seen her slim but supernally intense performances in the D. W. Griffith masterpieces or in the Victor Sjostrom classics she made in the late ’20s at MGM. Lillian-Gish-Jeanne-Moreau 60s But they sense in her the grace, the purity, the wealth of symbolism that royalty sustains. Gish’s companion here, Jeanne Moreau, radiates a similar authority; what Gish was to the cinema of the ’20s, Moreau was to the cinema of the ’60s. “The
Read more

D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984)

Image
D.W. Griffith – An American Life (By Richard Schickel – 1984) D.W. Griffith – An American Life By Richard Schickel – 1984 Griffith! Before him, the movies were a nickelodeon novelty, after him, they were an international art form and a powerful, glamorous American industry He was the first to codify the rules and techniques of screen storytelling, the first to establish the conventions by which the unique capacities of the movies for both sweeping spectacle and profound intimacy could be employed in long, complex narratives, the first to assert the director’s claim to primary authorship of a film Above all, it was Griffith who imagined the future of his medium, and with his driving energy, his taste for the grandiose and his flair for publicity, propelled that medium toward that future—only to be crushed by the very forces he had unleashed. D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Painting; D.w. Griffith (1875-1948) Art Print for sale His story is, in huge measure, the story of how the
Read more

ART DECO FASHION – by Suzanne Lussier (2003)

Image
  ART DECO FASHION – by Suzanne Lussier (2003) ART DECO FASHION Suzanne Lussier BULFINCH PRESS AOL Time Warner Book Group Copyright © 2003 by The Board of Trustees of the Victoria and Albert Museum The term Art Deco was employed for the first time in 1968 by the author Bevis Hillier. It identifies an aesthetic in vogue between 1909 and 1939 which was adopted in architecture, the decorative arts, textiles and fashion; it also influenced the fine arts, film and photography. Art Deco displayed stylized motifs and shapes borrowed from national traditions, folk art and ancient cultures, and was strongly influenced by the art of the avant-garde. Art deco fashion_Tamara de Lempicka 1929 Art Deco emerged from a unique artistic conjunction. From 1905, avant-garde movements sprung up one after another throughout Europe: the Fauves and Cubists in Paris, the Futurists in Italy, the Constructivists in Russia. Meanwhile the Ballets Russes were founded in Russia by Sergei Diaghilev who, wanting to re
Read more