#1923 paramount

[kkoehn17]

January & February Favorites

The first favorites post of 2024, cute! I’m really trying to focus in on who I am at this very moment because every December I forget who January/February Kim was and feel like she surely existed years earlier. But alas, here I am, here we are, the January/February versions of ourselves, guiding us through the beginning of the year, doing our very best. Let’s get into it. . Books I heard so…

[justaholesir]

BRANDON SKLENAR as Spencer Dutton 1923 (2022 TV Series) created by Taylor Sheridan

[deckardsdwelling]

Harrison Ford at the "81st Annual Golden Globe Awards" ~ 01/07/24 ~ CBS/Paramount+

[deckardsolddwelling]

[1923 - 1x6 - “One Ocean Closer to Destiny”]

[We moved: @deckardsdwelling !]

[imkeepinit]

Movie poster by an unknown artist for the 1923 Paramount motion picture Bluebeards 8th Wife. This was Gloria Swanson's 24th film and 16th for Famous Players–Lasky/Paramount. It's considered a lost film.

[hearttryagain33]

1923

Helen Mirren

[dandyads]

Paramount Pictures, 1923

[corpyburd]

How was your day?😬

[fibula-rasa]

Lost, but Not Forgotten: Prodigal Daughters (1923)

Direction: Sam Wood

Scenario: Monte M. Katterjohn

Original Novel: Joseph Hocking

Camera: Alfred Gilks

Studio: Paramount (production) & Famous Players-Lasky (distribution)

Performers: Gloria Swanson, Ralph Graves, Vera Reynolds, Theodore Roberts, Louise Dresser, Charles Clary, Robert Agnew, Maude Wayne, Jiquel Lanoe, George Fawcett, Eric Mayne

Flying Stunts: Leo Nomis

Premiere: 15 April 1923

Status: presumed entirely lost

Length: 6,216 feet, or roughly 70 minutes.*

Synopsis (synthesized from magazine summaries of the plot):

Elinor “Swiftie” Forbes (Gloria Swanson) and her sister Marjory (Vera Reynolds) are committed to living life on the “jazz route” at their comfy estate on Long Island. With their freshly bobbed hair, they attend the links on Sunday instead of church, party all night, smoke cigarettes, and drink. They live by the “Seven Deadly Whims:”

New Lips to Kiss. 

Freedom from Conventions. 

A New World for Women. 

No More Chaperons. 

Life with a Kick in It. 

The Single Moral Standard. 

Our Own Latchkeys.

Their mother (Louise Dresser) also thinks young and doesn’t try to restrict or discipline her daughters. The patriarch of the family is J.D. Forbes (Theodore Roberts), a locomotive magnate who became a millionaire off WWI. J.D. has been away on business in Europe for three years.

Back in New York around the Fourth of July, Stanley Garside (Charles Clary), who runs a gambling den, throws a party for Swiftie, which includes a firework display in her honor. On the radio, the crowd hears a lecture by a Doctor Marco Strong (Eric Mayne) decrying the moral degradation of the younger generation. Swiftie broadcasts her rebuttal from her own device.

Roger Corbin (Ralph Graves), an aviator who also happens to be an engineer at J.D.’s locomotive works, is flying nearby and hears Swiftie’s rebuttal. Corbin decides to make a landing at the party and invites Swiftie for a ride. She accepts, but bad weather forces them to land and they get waylaid overnight at a local inn. Swiftie’s friends pick her up in the morning and Corbin and Swiftie part without Swiftie knowing Corbin’s identity.

Meanwhile, Marjory is being pursued by songwriter Lester Hodges (Robert Agnew).

J.D. returns from Europe soon after with no one to meet him but his chauffeur. He’s horrified to see how the women in his family are living. They’ve even converted his billiard room into a dance parlor complete with buffet bar! J.D. bans smoking, drinking, parties, and Lester.

Theodore Roberts in Prodigal Daughters from Motion Picture Magazine, August 1923

Swiftie meets Corbin at her father’s house and learns he works for dad. Corbin proposes marriage to her, but she rejects him. The daughters rebel against their newly returned father and decide to make their own way in Greenwich Village. 

Marjory marries Lester and Swiftie gets to earning a living on her own. Garside persues Swiftie and she takes to gambling at his establishment. Marjory finds out that Lester was only interested in her for her dad’s money and they split. Swiftie escorts Marjory back to their parents house, but vows to stick to her new independent lifestyle. 

Unfortunately, Swiftie begins losing heavily at Garside’s. Garside agrees to a wager against Swiftie’s debt so that, if she loses again, he’ll clear her debt, but she has to marry him within 60 days. Swiftie loses.

On Christmas Eve, Swiftie and Garside are partying at a speakeasy when the joint gets raided by prohibition agents. Luckily for Swiftie, Corbin has been out looking for her and he finds her just in time to help her escape.

The climax features an accident with a newly designed locomotive and Swiftie and Garside in his automobile. Garside is killed, but Corbin is able to rescue Swiftie and they escape via airplane.

Swiftie and Corbin get together and she returns to her parent’s home, penitent.

Scenes from Prodigal Daughters from Motion Picture News, 29 December 1923

Additional Info:

There is a sequence in the film that depicts the operation of a high-tech beauty parlor, wherein Louise Dresser’s character gets a face lift. It takes place before her husband returns from abroad, but I’m not certain with any more detail than that where it fits chronologically in the summary above.

There appears to be two sequences or at least two parts to the climatic sequence where Garside dies and Swiftie is rescued by Corbin. I’m not sure based on the summaries available precisely how they fit together, so I just described both instead of hypothesizing with no data.

---

Points of Interest:

This movie was Swanson’s 9th film out of a total of 10 with director Sam Wood. 

The full list goes:

The Great Moment (1921, only a fragment survives at BFI),

Under the Lash (1921, presumed lost),

Don’t Tell Everything (1921, presumed lost),

Her Husband’s Trademark (1922, extant on 16mm at George Eastman House & Gosfilmofond),

Her Gilded Cage (1922, presumed lost), 

Beyond the Rocks (1922, extant at Nederlands Filmmuseum, and available on home video via Milestone Films.), 

The Impossible Mrs. Bellew (1922, presumed lost), 

My American Wife (1922, presumed lost),

Prodigal Daughters (1923, presumed lost),

Bluebeard’s 8th Wife (1923, presumed lost)

That is only a 20 percent survival rate! 

[Survival status checked via LOC’s Silent Feature Film Database, and re-checked at relevant archives when available]

If you happened to read my post profiling Racing Hearts (1923), you may remember that Theodore Roberts also plays a magnate who goes abroad to Europe and has a flapper daughter, with whom he doesn’t see eye to eye. These two films were released only two months apart, so I imagine it was pretty nice for Roberts to be able to take the “two birds, one stone” approach in preparing for his work. What a type to specialize in! 

*The film was edited by censors in various state markets, so the runtime of a print in NY wouldn’t be identical to a print in Kansas.

☕ Buy me a coffee! ☕

Transcribed Sources & Annotation over on the WMM Blog!

[maysshortmoviereviews]

1923 (2022-)

The Duttons face a new set of challenges in the early 20th century, including the rise of Western expansion, Prohibition and the Great Depression.

This is the prequel to 'Yellowstone' and a sequel to 1883. It's really really very good. I love the new characters and the scenery. Really interesting characters. I have only watched the four episodes available in UK and it's brilliant. I have tried to watch 1883 but for some reason I cannot get into it. Has anyone seen it, does it get better?

If you haven't seen 'Yellowstone' then I highly recommend it, follow it by watching 1923! Is it just me, or does '1923' feels like an American version of the Downton Abbey (but Western Style!)?

[movieshaswposter]

1923: A Yellowstone Origin Story

[the-mother-of-lions]

The only thing I actively dislike about the 1923 prequel (second prequel? Series? Idk) is the white british woman finding herself while participating/benefiting from the colonization of africa. Like you could have made him fall in love with literally anyone else.

I do however appreciate that they remembered to have most of the white people in montana keep their accents. Like lets not forget that its europeans that colonized the states. Italians and french and scottish and spanish. Not just the british.

[frontporchjunkie]

1923 episode 1 is on paramount plus to stream

[deckardsdwelling]

[1923 - 1x3 - “The War Has Come Home”]

— WDD

[geekcavepodcast]

1923 Trailer

Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone prequel series 1923 follows the Dutton family in rural Montana.

1923 stars Helen Mirren (Cara Dutton), Harrison Ford (Jacob Dutton), Brandon Sklenar (Spencer Dutton), Darren Mann (Jack Dutton), James Badge Dale (John Dutton Sr.), Marley Shelton (Emma Dutton), Michelle Randolph (Elizabeth Strafford), Brian Geraghty (Zane Davis), Aminah Nieves (Teonna Rainwater), and Jerome Flynn (Banner Creighton). 

1923 premieres on Paramount + on December 18, 2022.

[worldmusicandcinema]