Donald Crisp | The Clever Mrs. Carfax / 1917 [Lost film]

robbery she said

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gardner Hunting (screenplay, based on a story by Hector Turnbull), Donald Crisp (director) The Clever Mrs. Carfax / 1917 || lost film

 

One of two films that the female impersonator Julian Eltinge made in 1917, The Clever Mrs. Carfax is now a lost film, and the only description of the movie remaining is from trade magazines of the era such as Exhibitor’s Herald, from which much of my description comes.

     If Eltinge’s other stage plays and films offer any insight into the look and feel of this film, we might do well to quote from Variety regarding his 1914 stage play The Crinoline Girl: “Sure, it’s an old-fashioned farce with a melodramatic plot . . . and it won’t run a year in New York . . . Sure. . .the farcical situations are created by folks running in and out of doors. . .and much more of the same caliber. And what of it? Doesn’t it give the star, Julian Eltinge, a good excuse for appearing first as himself and then afford him an opportunity to pose as a woman without deceiving the audience and never once surrounding the female impersonator with an atmosphere that might prove offensive to the most particular individual? The main thing was to have Eltinge at all times a manly man, and this has been cleverly worked out.”

 

Julian Eltinge on break while filming The Clever Mrs. Carfax with director Donald Crips

 and Cecil B. DeMille

 

     The plot of The Clever Mrs. Carfax concerns Billy Wise (Fred Church) who dares his friend Temple Trask (Eltinge) to dress in women’s attire and join him for lunch at his club. Trask naturally takes up the bet, appearing as Mrs. Carfax, where he meets Helen Scott (Daisy Jefferson). Although he has long expressed a disinterest in women, he immediately falls in love with Helen, who tells him of her sickly grandmothers who is so terrified that Helen will take all of her money that she has hired two crooked men, putting the money in their trust.

       Trask as Carfax immediately recognizes, from his days as a cub reporter, that the grandmother’s secretary, Adrian Graw (Noah Beery, Sr.), is a former jailbird, and realizing the seriousness of the situation that Helen described to her, accompanies Helen and her grandmother on a steamliner voyage, setting in action a kind of detective story that might remind one a bit of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple tales.

       During the voyage, both as his male counterpart and his female persona, Trask/Carfax discovers that Helen cares for him, and proceeds to set out to discover the secretary and the grandmother’s maid, Rena Varsey (Rosita Marstini), involved in stealing the grandmother’s money. As Carfax she catches them red-handedly attempting to transfer her money into negotiable securities before making their escape, he turns them into the police, finally removing his wig, as Helen falls into his arms with the joy of discovering that her hero is the handsome Trask.

       Faxon M. Dean was the cinematographer of this 50-minute film.

 

Los Angeles, January 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).