unknown filmmakers | Cousin Lucy / 1915 || Lawrence B. McGill | How Molly Malone Made Good / 1915

two more short eltinge viewings

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown filmmakers (based on a musical with book by Charles Klein, music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics by Schuyler Greene) Cousin Lucy / 1915 [Lost film]

Burns Mantle (screenplay), Lawrence B. McGill (director) How Molly Malone Made Good / 1915

 

About a year after The Crinoline Girl, Julian Eltinge also filmed his Broadway musical Cousin Lucy, which ran on Broadway at George M. Cohan’s Theatre from August to October of 1915. Even less is known about this original musical, which involves evidently a male lead named Jerry Jackson whom the plot compels to later play his cousin, Lucy.

 

     Although the musical was less successful in New York than The Crinoline Girl (running only for 43 performances), in 1916 the cast performed in Washington, D.C., a reviewer from The Washington Post commenting: “a following as large and as enthusiastic as those loyal groups that pin their theatrical allegiance to the skirts of Maude Adams, Ethel Barrymore, or Billie Burke—as was conclusively proved at the National Theatre last night, where a large audience assembled to view the first Washington performance of Cousin Lucy.”

      The production was staged by Robert Milton, but I cannot even find a list of the Broadcast cast on-line. The major songs consisted of “Those Come Hither’ Eyes” and “Two Heads Are Better Than One,” but obviously the music would not have been featured in the short silent film.

      Again, given that this was a silent short, it’s apparent that it may have simply presented an abbreviated version or a selection of scenes.

      The same year Eltinge would appear in one more cameo role in a film entitled How Molly Malone Made Good before finally appearing in his first feature films, The Clever Mrs. Carfax in 1917 and in the same year, The Countess Charming, both films also lost.

      In How Molly Malone Made Good, a young Irish girl, fresh off the boat from Ireland is determined to become a newspaper writer like her brother, who is about to be sent off to war. Molly (Marguerite Gale) secures a job with the New York Tribune by interviewing a reclusive opera singer she’d met on the boat over.

      However, in order to keep her job she is required to another 9 stage celebrities for the next Sunday’s paper, which she manages to do despite the machinations of her rival (played by Helen Hilton) and her aide-de-crime (John Reedy). Among the celebrities she interviews are Madame Fjorde, Lulu Glaser, May Robson, Henry Kolker, Cyril Scott, Charles J. Ross, Mabel Fenton, Robert Edeson, Leo Ditrichstein, Julian Dean, Henrietta Crosman, and, of course—the reason the movie appears in these pages—Julian Eltinge. This film is in the collection of the Library of Congress and on DVD.

 

Los Angeles, September 1, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).