Vanity's Price

1924 film

  • September 7, 1924 (1924-09-07)
Running time
60 minutes; 6 reelsCountryUnited StatesLanguageSilent (English intertitles)

Vanity's Price is a lost film[1] 1924 American silent drama film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Anna Q. Nilsson. It was produced by the Gothic Productions company and released by FBO.[2][3]

The film is notable as the feature that brought assistant director Josef von Sternberg to the attention of critics for his handling of two sequences in the film.[4]

Cast

  • Anna Q. Nilsson as Vanna Du Maurier
  • Stuart Holmes as Henri De Greve
  • Wyndham Standing as Richard Dowling
  • Arthur Rankin as Teddy, Vanna's son
  • Lucille Ricksen as Sylvia, Teddy's fiancée
  • Robert Bolder as Bill Connors, Theatrical Manager
  • Cissy Fitzgerald as Mrs. Connors
  • Dot Farley as Katherine, Vanna's Maid
  • Charles Newton as Butler
  • Rowfat-Bey Haliloff as Dancer

Production

Von Sternberg, in his 1965 autobiography recalls:

Two incidents had been left out of the supposedly completed Vanity’s Price, which the director [Roy William Neill] had not considered worthwhile doing, and the studio [FBO] head now pleaded with me to direct those short episodes.”[5] One of the scenes concerned a young couple on a park bench, in love. The other involved a surgery in which a woman is operated in a therapeutic procedure related to the "Monkey gland" theory of Serge Voronoff.

Von Sternberg writes:

I gave orders to build an operating theatre with a deep pit and circular rows of seats rising steeply above the other to make it look like a cockfight arena. I planned to have the student physicians watch the surgery through binoculars with an occasional ironic grin.[6][7]

When the picture was previewed this sequence was praised by critics and von Sternberg was offered a position as director at FBO studios, but he turned it down to make an independently financed film, The Salvation Hunters (1925).[8][9][10]

Footnotes

  1. ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Vanity's Price
  2. ^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Vanity's Price
  3. ^ Progressive Silent Film List: Vanity's Price at silentera.com
  4. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  5. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  6. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  7. ^ Hall, 1924: "Monkey gland"
  8. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 198
  9. ^ Hall, 1924
  10. ^ Baxter, 1971 p. 25-26: see footnote "October 8, 1924" review.

Sources

  • Baxter, John. 1971. The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg. London: A. Zwemmer / New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. ISBN 978-0498079917
  • Hall, Mordaunt. 1924. THE SCREEN: “A Rejuvenation Story.” The New York Times, October 8, 1924. https://www.nytimes.com/1924/10/08/archives/the-screen-a-rejuvenation-story.html Retrieved 20 May, 2024.
  • Sternberg, Josef von. 1988. Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Mercury House, San Francisco, California. ISBN 0-916515-37-0 (pbk.)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Vanity's Price (1924 film).
  • Vanity's Price at IMDb Edit this at Wikidata
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Films directed by Roy William Neill