In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

7 Scaling Paramount Pictures If Fleming had remained with Fairbanks for many more years, his career might have stumbled like Ted Reed’s. Reed stayed a Fairbanks colleague for a decade. He became a full-fledged director with The Nut (1921), the last of Fairbanks’s modern comic adventures—in part, a Chaplinesque satire of mechanical obsessions. But the success of The Mark of Zorro (1920) persuaded Fairbanks, after The Nut, to concentrate on heroic period spectacles that consumed months in production. Fairbanks turned to Fred Niblo (The Three Musketeers, 1921) and Dwan (Robin Hood, 1922) to direct these epics; Reed later served the company as a production manager on Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925) and The Black Pirate (1926). One of Reed’s lasting contributions never made it into the film history books: as the first director on I Wanted Wings, in 1941, he designed Veronica Lake’s peekaboo hairdo; Mitchell Leisen got the directing credit. Fleming, though, maintained his partnership with Anita Loos and John Emerson, making three of their snappy, ultracontemporary scripts in rapid succession. By then, Emerson had given up directing. When he and Loos broke with Fairbanks, Emerson gave a series of physical ailments as his public excuse. Some were genuine. After Emerson and Loos married and took a European tour, they adapted Rachel Barton Butler’s Mamma’s Affair as a vehicle for that deft comedienne and Loos friend, Constance “Dutch” Talmadge. They surrounded Dutch with veterans of the hit 1920 Broadway stage production. Effie Shannon repeated her crowd-pleasing performance as the mother whose psychosomatic (or hypochondriac) attacks keep her at the center of attention every time the spotlight—or her daughter —threatens to stray from her. Emerson and Loos cast Kenneth Harlan as the doctor who, at the movie’s comic pinnacle, takes one look Srag_9780375407482_3p_02_r2.z.qxp 10/13/08 10:36 AM Page 86 at the family and realizes that it’s the daughter who needs to be cured of mom-induced neurasthenia. “To direct,” Loos wrote in 1978, “John chose a newcomer, Victor Fleming.” (Fleming actually worked for the producer Joseph Schenck, who was married to Constance’s sister Norma at the time and later cofounded 20th Century, which eventually merged with Fox. Schenck also sent the director to another Broadway play, The Broken Wing, to scout it as a possible Talmadge vehicle.) Fleming’s industry and unexpected enthusiasms snared Loos’s interest. “I respected Vic’s enterprise,” she wrote, “and was intrigued by the interest he took in things outside the movies. I recall one night when Vic was bringing me home from a party and we stopped to watch a fleet of fireflies skimming about Beverly Hills. ‘Those small insects have mastered a problem that’s never been solved by science,’ Vic informed me. ‘They can produce light without heat!’ ” Fleming focused his attention on Talmadge. Mamma’s Affair would be no more than stagy piffle with a dynamite opening if not for Fleming ’s loving treatment of his lead actress. Loos and Emerson kick off their comedy-drama with a burlesque prologue set in the Garden of Eden. Proud of this addition, the team devoted much of an article they wrote on the script to “Eve forcing Adam to let her eat the apple by throwing a fit of hysteria,” the point being “that ‘nerves’ have always been woman’s greatest weapon to secure what she wants.” The movie’s introduction exemplifies wiseacre humor circa 1921 and Fleming’s gift of putting over outrageous material without fuss. Eve is a babe in a foliage-decorated body stocking, Adam is a scrawny, thatch-haired, Keatonesque caveman, and the snake is a low-tech hand puppet with the infectious effrontery of Burr Tillstrom’s Ollie (or maybe Robert Smigel’s Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog). When the snake urges Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, Adam says, “Nix on that. We ain’t supposed to eat the apple,” and warns him to stay away from his family. So the reptile advises Eve to escalate her complaints about Adam denying her any pleasure. “I never see anything but this old garden,” says Eve. The bit is funny and offhand in its daring. It’s as if the flight from paradise were the source story for all domestic hilarity from Aristophanes to boulevard farce to sitcoms. Then the stage material begins. Shannon plays Mrs. Orrin, a rich, not-so-merry widow who has tied her...

Share