John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars

Chapter Nine

139 Chapter Nine I became arrogant, of course. I admit it. I was John Gilbert, the supreme, the untouchable. —John Gilbert, 1933 At the end of 1926 Jack was awarded Photoplay’s annual best-acting medal, one of the highest honors in those pre-Oscars years, for The Big Parade. Riding high on his success, he traveled to New York, where he was reported to be in talks with Famous Players–Lasky, which “is more than keen to annex Gilbert at the expiration of his Metro-GoldwynMayer contract, but that of course might be said with equal truth of all the producing companies,” as the Los Angeles Times wrote. “The role of Clyde Griffiths in An American Tragedy has been promised Gilbert if he will but sign. . . . He said in several published interviews that he would like nothing better than to play the Dreiser role on the screen and furthermore, as it seems definitely certain that Monta Bell will direct it when the time comes, the sympathetic relations existing between Gilbert and Bell are adduced as evidence of what is in the wind.” But the talks with Famous Players–Lasky fell through; dejected from losing his shot at An American Tragedy, Jack had to make do with a dark carnival tale, The Show. He promisingly told the Los Angeles Times, “I am a low-down bum of a sideshow barker in a traveling show, a mean little whelp who treats women shamefully and I beat up Renée Adorée.” But by the end of filming he was disenchanted: “We had to get some reclamation in the end,” he complained. “Apart from that, it is honest, all right.” 140 The Peak The Show was Jack’s first project with the eccentric director Tod Browning. A former actor (and circus clown and acrobat), Browning took up directing in the late 1910s. At Universal and later with MGM, he specialized in dark, quirky projects, including nine starring vehicles for Lon Chaney. Browning is best known today for his terrifying early1930s classics Freaks and Dracula, and he brought some of this toughness and creepiness to The Show. Browning was also a prickly character. “He was very difficult to work with,” recalled film editor Basil Wrangell. “Very sarcastic, very unappreciative of any effort, and very demanding.” Jack had wanted to appear in a film version of the Ferenc Molnar play Liliom, about an abusive, tragic carnival barker who commits suicide and comes back to earth to look after his daughter. The play was, of course, reincarnated as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel in 1945 (as Liliom, it had been shot in 1919 and would be again in 1930 and ’34). Instead, the 1910 Tenney Jackson novel The Day of Souls was optioned and this movie was ostensibly based on it—but The Show had nothing whatsoever to do with Jackson’s novel about the denizens of pre-earthquake San Francisco. Renée Adorée gives French lessons to director Tod Browning, Jack, and Lionel Barrymore on the set of The Show, 1927 (The Everett Collection). Chapter Nine 141 Perhaps to placate Jack, bits of Liliom were indeed used: Jack portrayed Cock Robin (!), a womanizing, thieving barker at a Hungarian carnival. A romantic triangle simmers between Cock Robin, hoochiecoochie dancer Salome (Renée Adorée), and “the Greek” (Lionel Barrymore ). Browning incorporated a corking revenge death plot (the Greek uses both a sword and a venomous lizard to try to kill off his rival, with predictable results—Browning was to lift this subplot the following year for the deadly Lon Chaney–Joan Crawford–Norman Kerry circus love triangle in The Unknown). Cock Robin is an enjoyably dastardly character and Jack obviously had great fun with him: he romances and robs innocent country girls, consorts with streetwalkers, even knocks Salome around when she interferes with his schemes. But that “reclamation” he complained about was indeed written in: Cock Robin is drawn into Salome’s tragic family drama and falls to his knees before her, proclaiming, “God, you’re a real dame—right straight through to the core.” Despite this, The Show is a hugely entertaining, fast-moving film, with plenty of Browning’s dark, bizarre touches, some lewd humor, suspense, and a bit of melodramatic tear jerking. Credit must also be given to costume designer Lucia Coulter (who also had worked on Bardelys). Inspired by the striped sweater, neckerchief, and black pants worn by...