Richard Thorpe | The First Night / 1927

the spurned lover

by Douglas Messerli

 

Esther Shulkin (screenplay, based on a story by Frederica Sago Maas), Richard Thorpe (director) The First Night / 1927 [Difficult to obtain]

 

Although this film appears to still be available on Turner Classic Movies, it is rarely shown, and I have not yet found an opportunity to see it. But a rather succinct plot description is available, which I’ll recount.

      Upon the engagement announcement of Doris Frazer (Dorothy Devore) to Dr. Richard Bard (Bert Lytell), Doris receives a letter from the man to whom she was formerly engaged, Jack White (Frederick Ko Vert), threatening to prevent her marriage.

      Meanwhile, Mimi, in a role the script describes as “an adventuress,” by which we might assume she hopes to obtain money, claims that she has proof that Dr. Bard married her in France.

      Faced with these absurd threats, the couple decide to simply elope, and are married.

     But at the moment of their return home, on their first night together one of the doctor’s patients, Mrs. Cleveland (Lila Leslie), feigns illness. And Mimi arrives to claim the doctor as her husband.

     Eventually, they discover that Mimi is actually Jack White in drag, whereupon Doris and Dick admit their former affairs to one another and swear mutual devotion, putting to rest their curious pasts. What the synopsis does not reveal is whether or not the doctor had truly fallen in love with Dick in female costume long ago, or what transpired between them.

     Of course, anyone who has seen one of Frederick Ko Vert’s previous films might have easily guessed that Mimi was also Jack, despite Ko Vert’s remarkable ability to portray the female sex.

 

Los Angeles, July 17, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2022).