Unknown filmmaker | Beverly of Graustark / 1914 || Sidney Franklin | Beverly of Graustark / 1926

the goat-herder and the king

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmaker (based on the novel by George Barr McCutcheon), Beverly of Graustark / 1914

Agnes Christine Johnston (scenario, based on the novel by George Barr McCutcheon), Joseph Farnham (titles), Sidney Franklin (director) Beverly of Graustark / 1926

 

Sidney Franklin’s Beverly of Graustark is the last of the silent films and the penultimate of the four films in total during the 1920s in which Marion Davies was featured in the cross-dressing role of a male who manages to catch the eye both of the males and females around her. In this film, particularly, Davies as Beverly Calhoun, spends most of the film in male clothing, forced to perform as her cousin Prince Oscar (Creighton Hale), who, when about to be crowned King of Graustack, has a serious skiing accident, sailing off with a broken ski over a cliff.

       Although he survives, the injuries will take several days to heal, and in the meantime if Oscar is to take possession of the crown he must immediately travel to his home country to claim it. When the Graustark contingent of soldiers arrive in the nearby country to escort the future King home, they mistake Beverly, dressed in a ski suit and hat, for Oscar, and accordingly is charged with the saving the throne for Oscar.

      The villain of this Ruritanian fiction, General Marlanax (Roy D’Arcy) has arranged that Oscar and the members of his party never make it across the border, the escorts themselves having been charged to kill Oscar and his friends. Along the way, however, the party is intercepted by a goat herder, Dantan (Antonio Moreno) who interrupts their journey, strips the soldiers of their military uniforms—much to the dismay of the modest, well-brought up Beverly—and himself accompanies Oscar to the capitol city. Oscar/Beverly names him her personal body guard and immediately falls in love with the handsome peasant.

     Oscar/Beverly is further shocked to find himself put completely under the control of men. One, the King’s valets (Sidney Bracey), portrayed as a kind of sissy, prepares to remove the King’s military vestments, and is more than a little taken aback by the new King’s request for the company of a woman, yet is willing to accede to what he imagines as Oscar’s sexual desires until Beverly finally realizes how the valet has misinterpreted Oscar’s remarks. At another point, Dantan intends to sleep on a small cot at bottom of the King’s bed, until once more, taken aback by circumstances, Oscar sends him off to the vestibule. Beverly is almost totally unprepared for how “hands on” is the all-male world into which she has suddenly gained entry.  

       There are further trials she must endure, a heavy drinking scene with the General and his soldiers and the usual requirement of cigars, both reminding the knowledgeable viewer of similar scenes played out in films where women were required to show their mettle as men such as the later Viktor und Viktoria (1933).

        The scenes between Oscar and Dantan, where it is clear that Dantan is growing attracted to the young King but has no idea how to handle the situation are quite wonderful, with both Davies and Moreno endlessly smiling back at one another with sly looks and glances. Indeed Davies, with her “Beverly Bob” haircut, which caused a fashion tread among women, makes for a quite an attractive male which the newspapers of the day noted. By the time of the film’s great ball, in fact, Dantan has become so confused by the man he guards, that he sulks through most of evening, almost resentful of the invitation to dance he receives from a young woman who he knows is not the kind of woman with whom he would deem proper for the young Oscar. 

       Feeling more than a little sorry for him but also jealous of the woman with whom he is dancing, Oscar can longer contain himself, and changes his military dress for the feminine finery of Carlotta (Paulette Duval) who has been sent by Marlanax to seduce the young King. Seeing the face of the masked woman, Dantan is suddenly able to deflect his growing love of Oscar to the female look-alike, although none of this is made too obvious in the script for fear of delineating the film’s obvious homosexual insinuations.

        And somewhat as in The Clinging Vine, it is difficult to find solace in the teasing, deceiving, eye-batting female who mysteriously captivates Dantan when one compares her with the truly stunning young man that Davies has been playing while impersonating the King. The female version, we are led to believe, is always preferable to heterosexual males. And in the fact we have assume that Dantan is simply not as smart of a man as it pretends to be, given that Carlotta quickly solves the puzzle by suspecting that Oscar is not a man.

      Her collaborator Marlanax, accordingly, has now a “pawn” (chess being an important metaphor in this film) in the cross-dressing King to topple the current government. He calls for an immediate cabinet meeting where he intends to reveal the truth about Oscar’s sexuality while playing Polonius behind the arras (in this case a foldable dressing shield) to prove Carlotta’s theory.

      Having heard of the newly scheduled meeting, the real Oscar, now fully recovered, races toward Graustark, while the plotting Beverly, who is seen by Dantan as reentering the castle after their tête-à-tête, finds herself being accused of having an affair with herself—the bodyguard having presuming that Oscar is having an affair with the very woman with whom he, as he has described to Oscar, has fallen in love. Dantan leaves his post, after challenging Oscar to a dual, at the very moment with the King most needs him, Marlanax plotting his own torture of the female imposter.

       Fortunately—at least for those who demand heterosexual normativity—the “real” Oscar arrives just in time to save the day and take over the throne from his female cousin, who now sits in his resplendent court—the film having miraculously turned into early technicolor—while becoming bored with life at court without the goat herder with whom she fell in love.

    Based in the silly romantic novel by George Barr McCutcheon, the film must, of course, reveal Dantan to have really been the king of a neighboring mythical European nation, who returns to court to claim the now quite ridiculously dressed maiden’s hand, turning the American girl herself into royalty.

       Although I know that I’m not the typical audience for this kind of Hollywood romance, I cannot resist but claiming that I very much prefer Beverly the imposter.

       There was also an earlier cinematic confection titled Beverly of Graustark in 1914, wherein Beverly Calhoun (Linda Arvidson, the wife of D. W. Griffith) also travels to Graustark, in this version to visit her friend the Princess Yetive of Graustark. In this earlier work she remains a female throughout, while also gaining the attention of Prince Dantan (Charles Perley) hiding out as a goat herder named Baldos since he has been driven out of power by his evil brother, Gabriel.

       When Graustark formally demands that the country of Dawsbergen give up Gabriel and recognize Prince Dantan as their ruler, the traveling Beverly, who has been confused by the rebels with the Princess Yetive of Graustark, becomes involved with a multi-national struggle between the two forces, she also having fallen for Baldos (Dantan), permitting him refuge in Graustark and even alienating her own friend the Princess.

        In this version also there is also a subplot of female cross-dressing, when Dantan’s sister, Princess Candance, dons male attire to bring a message to Beverly, and is imprisoned by Gabriel’s forces.

        But this film is so over-plotted that the screen is almost overwhelmed by dozens of intertitles trying to spell out the story, and the work loses all of its dramatic impact, if it ever had any.

 

Los Angeles, May 18, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (May 2022).