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43 Manslaught~r Famous Players-Lasky for Paramount release. A Cecil B. DeMille Production . Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Jeanie Macpherson, from the novel by Alice Duer Miller. Art director: Paullribe. Choreography: Theodore Kosloff. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff and L. Guy Wilky. Film editor: Anne Bauchens Picture started: May 2, 1922. Picture finished: June 17, 1922. Length: 9,680 feet (later cut to 9,218 feet) (ten reels). Cost: $384, I I 1.14. Released: September 25, I922. Gross: $1 ,206,014.65 Cast: Leatrice Joy (Lydia Thorne), Thomas Meighan (Daniel O'Bannon), Jack Mower (Officer Drummond), Julia Faye (his wife), George Fawcett Uudge Homans),Jack Miltern (GovernorAlbee), Dorothy Cumming (Eleanor), Edythe Chapman (Adeline Bennett), Lois Wilson (Evans, Lydia's maid), Casson Ferguson (Bobby Dorset), James Neill (butler), Mickey Moore (Dicky Evans), Sylvia Ashton (prison matron), Raymond Hatton (Brown), Lucien Littlefield (witness), Shannon Day (Miss Santa Claus), Guy Oliver (musician), Charles Ogle (doctor), Edward Martindel (Wiley), Mabel Van Buren, Ethel Wales, Dale Fuller (prisoners), Louise Lester, and George Field How does one explain Manslaughter? On one hand it was an important picture for DeMille-his most expensive and one of his most successful films to date, with thematic elements thatreverberated through his later work. On the other hand, the script was weak, the staging inept, and the settings lackluster. Manslaughter exhibits all ofthe excesses and none of the virtues evident in the director's other work. After completing Saturday Night, DeMille went on a European vacation accompanied by his Japanese valet, Yamabe, and art director Paul Iribe. While in Paris he contracted rheumatic fever. Although not considered fatal, the disease is highly debilitating. Severely swollenjointsrobbed DeMille ofhis ability to move. Confined to bed, and unable to keep food down, the director felt sure he was at death's door. When he was finally well enough to make the ocean voyage home, rough seas and mal de mer contributed to his discomfort. By the time he got back to Hollywood, DeMille was a physical wreck. It was April 1922 before he was able to 172 Manslaughter I 173 walk around the grounds of his Hollywood home, and Manslaughter went before the cameras on May 2.1 DeMille's illness may explain many of the picture's shortcomings. Alice Duer Miller's novel offers strong melodramatic action with a dose of social consciousness. Lydia Thorne is a rich, orphaned playgirl. She bribes a speed cop with a diamond bracelet to ignore her wild driving. Lydia's maid needs money to pay for her child's medical expenses. The rich girl ignores the maid's pleas for a loan and prosecutes when the desperate servant steals herjewels. The district attorney, Dan 0'Bannon, loves Lydia but cannot accept her wanton ways. When the speed cop is killed as a result of Lydia's recklessness, O'Bannon vows to send her to jail "for her own good." While DeMille's dramas are often extravagant, they are usually well constructed. In Manslaughter, however, Lydia's expected conversion in prison (with the aid of her former maid) is given the most perfunctory treatment, and O'Bannon's guilt-ridden fall into alcoholic desperation also receives short shrift. The basic plot is strong enough, but Macpherson's script is unfocused, and DeMille's treatment lacks visual finesse. Evelyn F. Scott, daughter of screenwriter Beulah Marie Dix, wrote that her mother "never really thought of . . . [Macpherson] as a writer, but as an exceptional collaborator for an exceptional man.... Cecil, with his past experience in writing and acting, knew not only what he required in every story he directed, but in every scene. Jeanie had a genius ... for putting this on paper."2 If one accepts Dix's assessment, Macpherson's script must have suffered from DeMille's weakened state. Through a friend in Detroit Macpherson arranged to have herself anonymously arrested for shoplifting and sent to jail for three days. DeMille claimed that she was doing research-but the arrest and imprisonment had more to do with publicity than perspicacity. Only months earlier Bebe Daniels was arrested for speeding in Orange County and spent time in the county jail. The arrest made headlines, and her crime was glorified with publicity photos of Bebe sitting for a mug shot. Only the cynical believed the star's plight was connected with the release of her picture The Speed Girl (Realart, 1921); only the simpleminded presumed that it wasn't. Macpherson's exploit showed the fine hand of the Paramount publicity...

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