Edwin Carewe | The Snowbird / 1916

call of the wild

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mary Rider and June Mathis (screenplay), Edwin Carewe (director) The Snowbird / 1916

 

Edwin Carewe’s The Snowbird of 1916 is a rather sophisticated feature film whose heroine is what today would be perceived as a feminist—despite her privileged and sometimes frivolous upbringing.

     The movie, in fact, begins with Lois Wheeler (Mabel Taliaferro) on the tennis court, frustrated by the futile efforts of her current courtier Bruce Mitchell (James Cruze) to properly play the game. As she jokes, next time she will bring her knitting so that he might engage is something in which he is more apt. 

 

    But the wealthy young man of high society, just on the verge of being a “sissy,” doesn’t easily give up in his attempts to win Lois’ favor. She easily pushes him away, however, as often as he makes his moves to overcome her. And in a scene soon after, as she pilots her speed boat over to friends for a get-together of her posh playmates, Bruce is confined to sitting out the voyage in terror of the speed, fearful that she will kill the both of them.

      Surprised that she has shown up with Bruce, the males all attempt to discover how he’s won her over, while the females question Lois. Later told that he has described himself as “a lion tamer,” she shoves him into a small fountain, embarrassing him front of his social set.

      Although, his attempt to marry her plays an important role, of far more importance to this basically heterosexual story are the financial woes of Lois’ father, John Wheeler (Warren Cook), who in order to remain solvent, involves Bruce in a financial deal, selling his extensive Canadian lumber land so that he might reinvest in a profit-making deal with a fellow trader who will no longer advance him money.

      The deal evidently pays off—the fact of which we discover only because he is, soon after, able to offer to buy the property back from Bruce. But the real matter lies in the problems of Wheeler to provide the deed for the property to Bruce. It appears that the copy of the agreement with the former owner, Corteau, held in the local Canadian Magistrate’s office has been burned up in a fire. Henri Corteau (Edwin Carewe), the son of the man who sold the property to Wheeler, also has a copy, but refuses to give it up, falsely claiming that he still owns the land on which he lives.

      When Lois refuses to marry Bruce, accordingly, the petulant wealthy boy claims that Wheeler has tricked him in the financial deal, threatening to send him to jail if he doesn’t convince his daughter to marry him.

      So begins the real focus of this movie which can’t truly be described as an LGBTQ work despite its hints of gender fluidity and obvious representations of female empowerment.

     When she hears of Bruce Mitchell’s demands, the strong-minded Lois packs up her bags and, without telling her father except through a letter, heads off to the Canadian wilds hoping to convince Corteau junior to give up the proof of her father’s ownership, thus freeing her of the terrible consequences of marriage to Bruce.

       Arriving in small Quebec frontier village of Chalet, she is immediately told of Corteau’s hatred of women and apprised of his intractability and outward violence. Observing him in the local saloon as he pretends to court the frontier female bartender is enough to convince her that is a true brute, and she perceives the only way she might gain entry to his cabin, a long dogsled ride out of the village, is to dress as a boy.

       Hiring the dogsled driver to take to Corteau’s cabin, she, now a boy, covers herself with snow, cries out for help, and pretends to be lost and near death, luring out the mean loner to discover “him.” The ruse works, and Corteau, pulling him into the cabin where the boy, when he finally comes to, claims he has been abandoned by his fellow lumberjacks. Inspecting his find, Corteau almost waxes romantic, as he declaims: “Like a wounded snowbird you have dropped from the sky to share my loneliness—here you’ll be safe to stay and be my boy!”

        It appears that this film is taking a very fascinating direction, as Corteau expects his boy to share in his daily chores, teaching him how to hitch up the dogs, forcing him out into the cold for water, and expecting his snowbird to help in kitchen duties—all activities from which the formerly spoiled girl was protected. The boy now resents Corteau’s demands and, after a few early protestations, finally refuses to continue to do his share of the work. As a consequence, Corteau takes out a whip and prepares to use it, just as his rough handling of Lois undoes her hidden hairdo, revealing the boy to be the woman she is. 

       From there on, alas, the movie moves toward true conventionality, as the two slowly fall in love, Corteau presenting her with is mother’s wedding dress. When Lois later discovers the deed and places it near her bosom, Corteau, discovering the document’s absence, is ready to cast her out, revealing his previous hatred of women as having to do with a terrible public scene in which a woman whom he loved publicly mocked him—a scene not so very different, in fact, from what Lois has done to Bruce. But eventually the two make up and continue, long before the Hays Code days, to live together, perhaps—as one intertitle suggests—giving way to “the primitive call.”

      Meanwhile, Wheeler, accompanied by Bruce, have followed on Lois’ trail, reaching Chalet and inquiring after her whereabouts. The dogsledder admits he has taken her to Corteau’s cabin, lying to Bruce, however, about Corteau’s reaction to discovering her, suggesting that the boy and Corteau had immediately begun kissing.

      That’s enough to set Bruce off, as he also hires the dogsledder’s services, and orders the town Magistrate to keep Wheeler locked up as he goes in search of his would-be wife. Finding her in the cabin, he demands she immediately leave with him. When she refuses, a battle between the two men ensues, with both of them ending up wounded by knives. By the time Lois escapes from the room into which she has been locked, she discovers, that although he is weak and in pain, Corteau has survived. Bruce has wandered back outside only to discover that his dogsledder, upon hearing the struggles between the two, has left him behind. And now Bruce has nowhere to turn but into the snow-covered wilds where eventually he falls from a butte and dies.

      Corteau tells Lois that she must hurry off to town with the document to save her father, and she hooks up the dogs and begins her voyage only to realize that her now-lover may be more seriously hurt than she imagined. Turning back, she rushes into his arms, staying in the cabin to nurse him back to health.

      Observing the return of the dogsledder without Bruce, the father makes use of his services to rush to the cabin, where the couple reveal their situation and his daughter awards him the deed. All is saved, and they return to “civilization” to marry. But almost immediately after, Corteau feels the call of the wild and the independent-minded Lois suggests they hurry back to the world they have left behind, proving herself to be a kind of frontier woman worthy of the truly educated and manly Corteau.

     Although most sources simply credit screenwriter Mary Rider for the script, film historians now argue that it was co-written by June Mathis, for whom it would have been one of her earliest works. Later, she became known as the discoverer and promoter of Rudolph Valentino, scripting his movies The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), and Blood and Sand (1922). It was Mathis who gathered up enough money to bail him out of jail after he was arrested for his bigamous marriage to Natacha Rambova without finalizing his Mexican divorce of Jean Acker. As Nita Naldo, who worked with her on Blood and Sand, reported, “She mother to Rudy, and my dear she worshiped him and he worshiped her.” Valentino himself observed to Louella Parsons, “She discovered me, anything I have accomplished I owe to her, to her judgment, to her advice and to her unfailing patience and confidence in me.”

     In the 1920s Mathis became one of the most powerful women in motion pictures after Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge. She attempted (and failed) to save Erich von Stroheim’s 10-hour masterpiece Greed—editing it herself down to 6 hours—from the final 4 ½ hours cut by studio hacks. And it was Mathis’ determination to film the original Ben Hur in Italy, which proved disastrous for both the film and director Charles Brabin, replaced by Fred Niblo.

     Earlier in her career, Mathis performed in theater with the highly popular female impersonator Julian Eltinge.

     James Cruze, who here played the semi-villain Bruce, later directed several notable films, including The Covered Wagon (1923), Beggar on Horseback (1925), and I Cover the Waterfront (1933).

 

Los Angeles, June 26, 2023

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2023).