loving sappho
by Douglas Messerli
Clara Beranger and Forrest Halsey, Oscar Apfel
(director) Phil-for-Short / 1919
I have to admit, unlike so very many of the
gay men of my generation I have never worshipped female actresses, nor I have I
generally sought such divas out as gay icons, Judy Garland perhaps being the
only exception: how else can anyone with a shred of gay pride respond to such a
gorgeously vulnerable voice? Well, I have to admit Jean Arthur’s crackly
vocal-chords sent shivers down my spine, with immediate love following close
behind. And, really, who could not respond to the absolute beauty of Ingrid Bergman,
Loretta Young, or Grace Kelley. And, one of our own, bisexual Katherine Hepburn
continues to intrigue me for her intelligence. The cinematic tomboy beauties
Audrey Hepburn, Jean Seberg, and Jeanne Moreau, moreover, were always
intriguing. All right, I didn’t have a wall in my basement bedroom on which to
post these Hollywood actresses in order to confuse my witless parents.
I
have, however, just fallen in gay love with silent actress Evelyn Greeley,
known in her time as the “most-proposed to” Hollywood star, who reminds me
mostly of Irene Dunne playing across from Cary Grant, with a soupçon of
Katherine Hepburn and maybe a dash of Myrna Loy tossed in. She’s a
knowledgeable innocent with a boyish manner with clever female instincts in her
1919 film Phil-for-Short. And don’t let that title fool you.
Phil is really named Damophilia Ilington (Greeley), who was one of
Sappho’s dearest friends, a moniker picked out by her Greek scholar father
(Charles Walcott). Phil has shortened her name, quite innocently, from her job
of farming her father’s backyard fields in order to help her poverty-stricken
family, herself, and their loyal servant Pat Mehan (James A. Furey) survive,
while dressed as a boy—to the scandal of the neighborhood societal
correctionists, brother and sister Eliza MacWrath (Ann Eggleston)—the latter of
whom was surely the model for Elvira Gulch in The Wizard of Oz—and the
local preacher Donald MacWrath (Jack Drumier).
Phil, who argues against Miss MacWrath that her chosen nickname is
certainly a better name than “Damn,” is a natural born feminist, who has been
encouraged by her free-thinking father to think for herself. In her spare time,
she dons a white Greek gown and practices original variations of dances that
had already become popular with early US dancers Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn, and
Isadora Duncan, perhaps an even greater offense to local community morals.
And
as her father dies, she pleads to not have to marry the old hypocrite MacWrath
simply so that she will be “looked after.” She escapes the marriage, but
MacWrath has himself appointed her guardian nonetheless. And when he and his
sister Eliza insist she wear black to her father’s funeral, she resists so
severely that they lock her in her room.
Dressing up as a boy, with the help of Pat who the MacWrath’s have just
dismissed, she escapes, going on the road with the servant who fiddles in his
spare time.
Inevitably, as in all films that believe fully in the coincidence of
fate, she encounters the one other devoted Greek scholar in the state, John
Alden (Hugh Thompson), also a student of Sappho, but equally a man who has
never been married and, in this case, hates the company of women. As a boy,
however, Phil quickly worms his way into Alden’s heart, and for a while it
appears that the film will take an odd direction straight to man/boy love. In
fact, it persists as a quiet sub-theme throughout the movie, as the major plot
of the film turns its attentions to the more conventional conundrum of how a
woman might win the love of a man who detests her gender.
In
various guises, the story was later played out by Gary Grant in Bringing Up
Baby (any man who convinced himself to marry Alice Swallow [Virginia
Walker] doesn’t truly love women); by Grant again as the woman-hating writer
Mortimer Brewster who nonetheless marries Elaine whom he immediately abandons
when he discovers his aunt’s several murders of unsuspecting male visitors; and
in the play, movie, and musical versions of Pygmalion, where Eliza Doolittle
must convince Professor Henry Higgins that he truly loves her instead seeing
her merely as a kind of pretty doll to dress up and conquer his male
competitors. Even Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll, which I describe
above, might be perceived as a variation on the theme.
Hugh Thomson, as Alden, however, is clearly no Cary Grant—he’s far more
like Elliot Gould, for whose attraction to another gay female icon, Barbra
Streisand, might be explained, in part, by this movie—and, although Phil seems
almost certain she can win her man over, his conversion to normative
heterosexuality is an arduous task. She visits his classroom as a girl only to
discover that he is so disgusted by his female students that he nearly ready to
resign his college teaching post. She convinces the dean to hire her as the
teacher of the female students, and almost immediately wins their favor by
teaching them her Greek dances, while attracting Alden’s boys simply by being a
lovely woman.
Disgusted by what he describes as her flirtations, Alden remains
unconvinced of the teaching arrangement until Phil cleverly begs his help in
teaching her how not to be flirtatious, which gives her full liberty, of
course, to try out her wiles on him.
But once more the MacWrath’s seek her out, demand that she be fired, and
insist on bringing her home, which temporarily throws her back into the role of
pretending to be a boy, permitting us to believe she can fool Alden by stealing
his glasses. Eventually, the MacWrath’s and the police discover her pretending
to be a boy in his house and being as conventional as the MacWrath’s, Alden
declares he has no choice now but to marry her.
But even their marriage remains a sham, the two sleeping in separate
rooms, with him displaying no signs of sexual or even affectionate love. It
takes a trip back to his Boston parents, the meaningless attentions of
lecherous violinist, and a trick Phil cooks up to make Alden think she is
spending the night with the fiddler before he finally realizes that she is his
Sappho and the young boy he seeks to protect and influence all rolled into one.
Even though the second part of the film will certainly disappoint the
gay audience who might have hoped that this rather sophisticated film might
actually explore a world where an independent young woman chooses a transsexual
solution finding himself in a relationship with an older gay man, the more
predictable heterosexual ending is still filled with hints of Greek expressions
of love.
At
one point at a party given for the newlyweds, Phil is taken aback by watching
the young and women dancing together and declares that her vision of dance is a
woman-only sacred and spiritual event; the differences between her and Alden,
we suddenly realize, are not as vast as one might think. Phil and Alden are
equally influenced by the works of Sappho. And both see love more in terms of philia,
agape, and even ludus, more than in terms of eros or mania.
What he hates about women is what he perceives as their inconstancy, and what
she dislikes about men is their violence and attempt to control. Both offer
each other another version of their gender that is far more compatible than the
stereotypes in which they are usually signified.
One
must also note that the writer of this film, Clara Beranger, was an extremely
powerful female figure in Hollywood whose story hasn’t yet been sufficiently
told. Beranger began her career as a journalist, but quickly moved into the
fledgling new industry of motion pictures. She started out by contributing
stories for Edison’s one-reelers, and soon after worked as a writer for Fox
Film Corporation and Pathé. Moving on to World Film Corporation, Beranger saw the
industry as having great potential for women writers like herself. As she
commented in 1918, the year before she wrote the script for Phil-for-Short:
“It needs no cursory glance at the current
releases and those of even six months ago to prove that there are more writers
among the feminine sex than the male persuasion. The heart throb, the human
interest note, child life, domestic scenes and even the eternal triangle is
more ably handled by women than men because of the thorough understanding our
sex has of these matters.”
The years of 1919 to 1926 were particularly fruitful ones for Beranger
as she became a major screenwriter for William deMille, brother to one of that
organization’s major directors Cecile, who together with the director of Phil-for-Short,
Oscar Apfel, would define the adventurous filming techniques for the Famous
Players-Lasky company, which would later become Paramount Pictures.
Lori Rossiter, writing in the “Women Film
Pioneers Project,” observes:
“According to the biography of deMille’s
daughter, the dancer and choreographer Agnes deMille, which cites letters from
deMille to his wife, Agnes’s parents’ marriage had faltered. In 1921, deMille
fathered an out-of-wedlock child by his mistress, the screenwriter Lorna Moon.
When the child was adopted by deMille’s brother Cecil and his wife, the secret
was kept from nearly everyone. But four months after the birth of his son,
deMille became romantically involved with his new collaborator, Clara Beranger.
At some point Beranger separated from her husband of thirteen years, Albert B.
Berwanger, with whom she had had a daughter, Frances, born in 1909. When
deMille’s wife learned that her husband was seeing Beranger, she forced her
husband to make a choice. William attempted to have it both ways, but, in 1927,
deMille and his first wife divorced. DeMille married Beranger a year later.”
When William lost everything in the Depression market crash, Beranger
became his full support, convincing his brother Cecil to employ him to write
scenarios with her. Working as a team, Beranger and deMille wrote over 23 films
during the next few years, works less extravagant than Cecile B. DeMille’s
achievements, but highly respected by reviewers and audiences alike. Beranger
continued to collaborate even with the advent of the talkies, scripting Craig’s
Wife (which I also review in these volumes) in 1928.
After retiring from writing for the movies, Beranger became one of the
original faculty members of the University of Southern California School of
Cinematic Arts, which began as a collaboration between the University and the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Among the original faculty members
were actors and directors such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, D. W.
Griffith, and Ernst Lubitsch, along with producers Irving Thalberg and Darryl
Zanuck. William deMille was appointed as director of the Drama Department,
while Beranger became one of the loudest supporters of the idea that it was
necessary for Hollywood to teach a new generation of artists. She wrote one of
the most popular text books, Writing for the Screen in 1950.
One
source lists the innovative director of this film, Oscar Apfel, as being
bisexual, but I can find no evidence to support this claim, although most
biographies suggest that he never married, not, as we know from studies such as
William J. Mann’s Behind the Screen, that it necessarily reveals one’s
sexuality. Plenty of married men and women in Hollywood were also homosexuals
and lesbians.
Los Angeles, July 3, 2023
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July
2023).
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