An addendum to last week's post on "Woman-handled" by Arthur Stringer.
Much of yesterday was spent reading 'The Survival of American Silent Feature Films: 1912-1929,' a 2013 study by historian and archivist David Pierce. It was a disturbing yet pleasant distraction from the mess that is the republic to the south.
I could hear it from my Canadian home.
David Pierce's findings brought focus to the awful truth that the vast majority of silent films are likely gone forever. Seeing it all laid out with such accuracy chilled the bones.
This year alone, I've written about lost silent film adaptations of Elinor Glyn's Three Weeks, Frank L. Packard's The White Moll, and no less than three Gilbert Parker novels (The Money Master, The Translation of a Savage, and You Never Know Your Luck), all the while struggling to get some sense of what they were like through century-old trade magazines, reviews, stills, and adverts.
Happily, the adaptation of Arthur Stringer's Womanhandled (1925), subject of last week's post, is readily available on YouTube. The same can be said – for now, at least – of Stringer's Manhandled (1924), which was reviewed here eleven years ago. By great coincidence, Manhandled is singled out in Pierce's study as an example of a film that has survived, but in a lesser format.
Manhandled began as a longish short story spread out over two issues of the Saturday Evening Post. Russell Holman expanded it to novel-length in a movie tie-in published by Readers Library (UK) and Grosset & Dunlap (USA).
Womanhandled had no movie tie-in, which is just as well as there are only the faintest traces of Stringer's story in Luther Reed's screenplay.
Stringer's story begins in New York's Waldorf Astoria, at which novelist Baran Bowerman has just given a talk. He is approached by young Glenna van Gelder, who warns that he's being made soft by fawning female fans. Baran tries to toughen himself at a ranch outside Calgary only to find that the cowboys he seeks to emulate have decamped for more lucrative jobs in Hollywood westerns. Coincidentally, Hollywood comes to Alberta to shoot a western. Baran is injured whilst saving the film's leading lady from certain death when a stunt goes wrong. Glenna, who just happens to have been vacationing with her father in Banff, visits our hero as he recovers. It's implied that their story doesn't end there.
Like "Women-handled," Womanhandled opens in New York, but in Central Park, where well-dressed man of leisure Bill Dana is feeding squirrels. He rescues a small boy who has fallen into the lake. Molly Martin, the boy's, um... she can't be his sister, can she?
Anyway, Bill notices that Molly's carrying a copy of Emerson Hough's North of 36, and so pretends to be a Westerner in order to impress. This works to his advantage as Molly, herself a Westerner, came east as a child after daddy died. She has a thing against Easterners, especially the men:
Bill, like Baran, goes west to make a man of himself in order to win over the girl; and, like Baran, discovers that the true cowboys have decamped for Hollywood. He finds himself working with Bowery bums who round up cattle in flivvers.
Bill ends up spending more time on the links than the range, and is about to board a train east when he receives a letter from Molly saying she is on her way west.
I'll write no more because I don't want to spoil things entirely, except to say that a scene in which the African-American housemaid's family is pushed to pass themselves off as Native Americans has become the subject of some debate amongst those who've seen the film.
Is it racist or a comment on racism?
Wherever you land, keep in mind that it has nothing to do with Arthur Stringer.
I'll write no more because I don't want to spoil things entirely, except to say that a scene in which the African-American housemaid's family is pushed to pass themselves off as Native Americans has become the subject of some debate amongst those who've seen the film.
Is it racist or a comment on racism?
Wherever you land, keep in mind that it has nothing to do with Arthur Stringer.
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