Two for the Show

Yesterday’s travel travails — the buses in Edinburgh were so slow about getting me up town I missed the direct coach to Bo’ness, so too the train to Linlithgow and this time I practically stepped from my carriage into a passing bus, no delay at all, got to my destination early enough to stroll around the shops.

“Look,” I told Mark Fuller, “I got twelve Norman Wisdom films for a pound.”

“You were robbed.”

Frances Marion directed only two films and a bit — her box set would be puny beside Norman’s — the second, JUST AROUND THE CORNER, screened in Bo’ness on Friday. Lambent sepia images very occasionally invaded by nitrate decomposition antimatter blobs — this is presumably as good as this film is ever going to look, and the dabs of decay just add atmosphere really.

Marion is the real star name here, her leads Sigrid Holmquist, Margaret Seddon et al, are not much remembered today. Though her husband Fred Thomson, who she met during Mary Pickford’s WWI film JOHANNA ENLISTS, cast here in the role of “The Real Man,” would become a fairly big western star, but while Tom Mix and “Hoot” Gibson’s names just about survive, I hadn’t heard of poor Fred.

JATC is a Fannie Hurst melodrama — the pains of motherhood — with some little blasts of social commentary, some of it quite sharp. On this evidence Marion could have kept on directing, the film is very well made — her AD was Stuart Heisler, I didn’t know he went back this far — but she didn’t enjoy the role.

Someone who clearly DID was Victor Fleming, director of the evening’s show, MANTRAP with Clara Bow, Edinburgh’s own Ernest Torrence, Percy “corpse-teeth” Marmont and Eugene Pallette. Casting seemed to follow the principle that surrounding Clara incredible pulchritude with incredible hulkitude would make her shine more sweetly.

Photographed out in the wilds by James Wong Howe, although he wasn’t using the Wong yet. Lots of fun — Clara’s incorrigible flirting provoked some particular female laughs from the audience.

Here I am at home typing this when I should be one a bus to Bo’ness. I’m a poor cinephile, snatching an extra hour’s sleep rather than plunging into a bright but cold morning to see STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (with Ernest again). I tell myself I’ve already seen it. But myself isn’t convinced.