Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood

4. What' s-His-Name

4 What's-His-Nam~ Produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company for Paramount release. Director: Cecil B. DeMille. Scenario by Cecil B. DeMille, from the novel by George Barr McCutcheon. Art director: Wilfred Buckland. Photography: Alvin Wyckoff Picture started: July 13, 1914. Length: 4,966 feet (five reels). Cost: $12,233.97. Released: October 22, 1914. Gross: $61 ,560. 19 Cast: Max Figman (Harvey), Lolita Robertson (Nellie), Sydney Deane (Uncle Peter), Fred Montague (Fairfax), Cecilia deMille (Phoebe, the child), Dick Le Strange (best man), Merta Carpenter (Nellie's friend), Theodore Roberts (a doctor [Roberts also portrays a theatrical bill-poster in the introductory credit sequence]), Billy Elmer (stage manager), Horace B. Carpenter, and Dick La Reno In the 191Os, as women migrated into the workforce and gained some successes in their long-fought struggle for universal suffrage, there was a knee-jerk reaction against the women's movement. Movies were quick to exploit these issues in dozens of short comedies like The Cowboys and the Bachelor Girls (G. Melies, 1910), A Suffragette in Spite of Himse/f(Edison, 1912), and Future Man (Rolma-Metro, 1916), which were filled with brow-beaten house-husbands, ball-busting wives with the physical dimensions of defensive tackles, and supposedly innocent sweet young things who could more than hold their own in a man's world. Continuing this tradition in the feature film, Cecil B. DeMille's adaptation of George Barr McCutcheon's What's-His-Name tells the story of a young wife and mother who succumbs to the lure of the footlights and leaves home, husband, and child to pursue a career on stage. The film offers a reversal ofthe classic "he-done-her-wrong" situation of so many melodramas. To DeMille's credit, What's-His-Name is sympathetic to both husband and wife and never descends to the level of caricature evident in so many "today's woman" films of the period. The stars, Max Figman and Lolita Robertson, were husband and 23 24 / Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood wife offscreen. Both had distinguished stage careers, but their success in films was limited. The bulk oftheir movie work was in a series of singlereel domestic comedies produced for Metro Pictures between 1915 and 1917. What's-His-Name offers ample evidence that DeMille still had much to learn about narrative technique in motion pictures. Without the strong physical action of The Squaw Man or The Virginian, he has difficulty conveying the details of his story. His reliance on stage technique contributes to a lack of audience involvement with the characters on-screen, due not so much to theatricality in the performances-Figman and Robertson are quite restrained in their playing-but to the mistaken notion that the story was being "put across" by the actors when in fact the absence of dialogue and the limited use of explanatory titles make it difficult to follow the action on-screen. As Nellie Duluth rises to fame as an actress she is pursued by a wealthy stage-doar-Johnnie named Fairfax. At adinnerparty one evening, Fairfax learns that Nellie Duluth is married. In McCutcheon's novel the scene is played largely in dialogue: And it was at the table, moreover, that Nellie received Harvey's note. She saw the special delivery stamp; naturally her mother's heart leaped to the thought of Phoebe. "This may be urgent," she said, turning to Fairfax, who sat at her side. They had reached the stage of coffee and liqueurs. "You'll excuse me while I read it?" He nodded; she tore open the envelope and read. And then she laughed, helplessly, until the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Oh, dear me!" she said. "That is so funny!" "May I share the jest?" asked Fairfax. "Why-Harvey's been discharging the cook! And he thinks he has to write me about it!" "Harvey?" he said curiously, a strange look coming into his steel blue eyes. "My little hubby!" she explained-and was startled at the change that came over him. "Do you mean that?" he said, in a moment. "What? About my husband? Of course!" "I've known you three months," he said. "And this is the first I've heard of him. What's the game?" What's-His-Nam~ / 25 "You might call it a guessing game, I suppose," she said, rather coldly. She held out her left hand. "Why do...