Donald Crisp | The Countess Charming / 1917 [Lost film]

the thief who got away

by Douglas Messerli

 

Gardner Hunting (screenplay, based on a story by Gelett Burgess and Carolyn Wells), Donald Crisp (director) The Countess Charming / 1917 || lost film

 

Brought from its success on stage to film, Julian Eltinge’s The Countess Charming is now lost. The story, once again, is a kind of farce involving a complex series of characters and accidental interrelationships revolving around Eltinge’s female persona.

     In this case the impersonator plays a wealthy young bachelor, Stanley Jordan, who attends a Red Cross Benefit at the country club where he meets and immediately falls in love with Betty Lovering (Florence Vidor). Unwittingly, he also offends the social scion Mrs. Vandergraft (Mabel Van Buren) and is drummed out of his social standing and ostracized from the club. 

     Incensed by the societal snubs—a situation in which Eltinge’s male figures often find themselves—he decides to get even by disguising himself as a Russian Countess, who, of course, decides that she must visit the club to be formally wined and dined. Now as a celebrity figure, the Countess is invited into the homes of the rich and famous, wherein Jordan as the Countess steals valuables and donates them to the Red Cross Fund.

      The series of thefts alarms the community, and a detective (William Elmer) is hired. He soon begins to suspect the Countess, but just as he closes in, an announcement is made that the Countess herself has been a victim of an assault and is lying on her death bed.

     Betty, concerned for the Countess, calls upon her, only to discover in her bed the man she loves, Stanley Jordan.

     Long before the Hays Code, Hollywood films had to also deal with the censors. In this case the Chicago censor board demanded cuts showing the theft of a pin from a tie and of a purse, and a removal of a wallet from a purse, all of which must have confused the movie audience as to what The Countess was doing that put her into such jeopardy.

 

Los Angeles, January 20, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (January 2022).