E. Mason Hopper | Almost a Lady / 1926

imaginary writers and dukes

by Douglas Messerli

 

Anthony Coldeway and F. McGrew Willis (screenplay, based on a story by Frank R. Adams), E. Mason Hopper (director) Almost a Lady / 1926

 

This feature silent film survives in two prints, one at the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée in Fort de Bois-d'Arcy and the other at the UCLA Film and Television Archive. No DVD edition, however, exists.

     In this instance the IMDb description is particularly incoherent, but in general the story seems to be of a pretty young woman, Marcia (Marie Prevost) who finds a job working as a model for a lecherous dress-shop owner, whose advances she keeps resisting despite the expensive gifts he awards her.

      One day she meets with a prominent society woman, Mrs. Reilly (Trixie Friganza) in the shop, who is about to throw a special party for a Duke, and invites Marcia, evidently to come in drag as a noted male writer in order to impress her guest. The “Duke,” it turns out, is named William Duke (Harrison Ford), not at all a titled “duke,” which creates a series of complications when the two, the famous writer and Mr. Duke actually meet.

       The silent actor Harrison Ford, no relation to the modern romance and adventure-story lead, was equally as handsome, however, and was a noted stage actor who, beginning in 1915, also performed in over 80 films. In 1951 he was struck by a teenager driver and never recovered from his severe injuries, living in the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills until his death in 1957 at the age of 73.

       Discovered by Mack Sennett in the 1910s, Canadian Marie Prevost went on to star in over 120 films, and was a particular favorite of Ernst Lubitsch for whom she performed in his three comic silents The Marriage Circle (1924), Three Women (1924), and Kiss Me Again (1925). By 1926, however, Warner Brothers had let her go, and her career took a serious tumble, which led to depression and severe alcoholism. She died in 1937 of acute alcoholism with only $300 to her name, which led to the establishment of the very institution, the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in which her co-star much later died.

       The film is interesting to LGBTQ individuals because serves as yet another example of the rise of women in male drag in the 1920s, moving them closer to the roles in the 1930s as performed by Greta Garbo, Katherine Hepburn, Marlene Dietrich and others. 

 

Los Angeles, June 26, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).