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42 Saturday Night Famous Players-Lasky for Paramount release. A Cecil B. DeMille Production. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Original story and scenario by jeanie Macpherson. Art director: Paullribe. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: September 26, 1921. Picture finished: january 2, 1922. Length: 8,597 feet (nine reels). Cost: $224,635.05. Released: February 5, 1922. Gross: $753,807.83 Cast: Edith Roberts (Shamrock O'Day), Sylvia Ashton (her mother), jack Mower (Tom McGuire), Leatrice joy (Iris Van Suydam), Conrad Nagel (Richard Prentiss), Edythe Chapman (his mother), julia Faye (Elsie Prentiss), Theodore Roberts (uncle),john Davidson (the count), james Neill (Tompkins), and Winter Hall (the professor) With the recession at its height, and past budgetary indiscretions to be accounted for, DeMille was under pressure from Famous Players -Lasky to limit the cost ofhis next picture to $150,000. Saturday Night was designed to be produced inexpensively. There was no historic flashback or dream sequence, and the actors (with the exception of Conrad Nagel) were selected for economy rather than star power. Jack Mower and Edith Roberts were both moderately popular players who spent the better part of their careers in Universal program pictures. Leatrice Joy was "at liberty" after an engagement with the struggling Goldwyn Company . Even with the drive for economy, however, DeMille found it impossible to make the picture for the budgeted figure. Lasky again interceded, and the budget was increased 50 percent. Saturday Night turned into an impressive production. Though the settings lack some of the conscious styIe of earlier DeMille pictures, the film offers an uninhibited Halloween pool party, a spectacular tenement fire, and a brightly lit Coney Island midway. "Paul lribe was DeMille's French art director," recalled Mitchell Leisen, lribe's assistant on Saturday Night. I used to have knock-down drag-out fights with him and he'd 169 170 / C~cil B. D~Mill~'5 Hollywood fire me.... At the end of the day, Iribe would suddenly drop everything on my shoulders and go home. I remember one time I worked all night long trying to get a set for a big carnival sort of thing [the Coney Island set for Saturday Night]. At 6:00 in the morning, I decided that I would go home and take a bath, and then come back and finish up what had to be done. I fell asleep on the bathroom floor and I didn't wake up until 10:00. I tore back to the studio and Iribe was in flames because he had to go back in there and finish this thing up. That was one of the times I got fired; maybe it was the last, I can't remember. Eventually I heard Douglas Fairbanks needed somebody to do costumes [on Robin Hood], so I took that job instead of trying to get back in Iribe's good graces.! At the time Saturday Night was in production, Leatrice Joy was married to actor John Gilbert. According to their daughter, Joy's work with DeMille led to the breakup of their marriage. Gilbert was jealous of his wife's success and accused her of having an affair with the director, and the arguments between husband and wife began to affect her work in the picture. DeMille threatened to replace the actress, telling her, "Miss Joy, your work must come first. If it doesn't, then you and I will have no reason to continue together. Is that perfectly clear?" Leatrice Joy, not about to throwaway her opportunity to be seen in a DeMille picture, left her husband to pursue her career.2 She became one ofCecil B. DeMille's favorite players. Like Gloria Swanson, Joy graduated from two-reel comedies , bit parts, and leads in modest features. The real star of Saturday Night, however, is Edith Roberts. Born in 1901 (or 1899 according to some sources), Roberts was on stage from the age of six. Her first screen work came with Al Christie's Nestor brand comedies, and by 1917 she was starring in Bluebird brand features for Universal. In Saturday Night she shows a vivacious charm, and it is a pity she never worked again with DeMille. Her career lasted to the end ofthe silent era, but she never became a top box-office attraction. Edith Roberts died in 1935 from complications of childbirth. For all the compromise that went into its creation, Saturday Night turned out to be one ofDeMille's very best films-genuinely funny, and at...

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