Dear Reader #165

Dear Reader,

Coming soon, our new magazine, The Golden Age of Hollywood, available from all leading Internet outlets. Here’s a preview of the cover.

Clara Bow’s fourth movie was The Daring Years aka The Folly of Youth. The movie was produced in New York during the first half of 1923 and released on September 15, 1923.

The Daring Years was adapted from a photoplay by Richard Ellison. Clara was listed fourth on the bill, as ‘John’s Sweetheart, Mary’. Unfortunately, this movie is regarded as lost.

A silent melodrama, The Daring Years features a love triangle and a man wrongly accused of murder. The man, John Browning, is strapped into an electric chair when a lightning bolt (!) and Clara Bow save the day. 

The premise for The Daring Years, an accidental shooting, is sound, but maybe the movie could have done without the lightning bolt.

After the completion of The Daring Years, Clara embarked for Hollywood where she released a few lighting bolts of her own.

🖼 Advertisement for The Daring Years.

Joint Highest Grossing Movie of 1925: The Big Parade.

The Big Parade was a silent war drama directed by King Vidor. It starred John Gilbert and Renée Adorée. Written by World War One veteran Laurence Stallings, the movie has been praised for its realistic depiction of warfare. Furthermore, it heavily influenced a great many subsequent war films, especially All Quiet on the Western Front.

Regarded as one of the great World War One movies, The Big Parade told the story of an idle rich boy who joined the US Army’s Rainbow Division. Sent to France to fight in the war, he befriends two working class men, experiences the horrors of trench warfare, and finds love with a French girl, played by Renée Adorée.

Through public records, I’m tracing the ancestry of actress Eva Marie Saint. I’ve discovered that she’s directly descended from Sir Thomas Pope, 1507 – 1559, founder of Trinity Church Oxford, Councillor to Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth. Further royal connections are highly likely.

At this stage, I need to pause and double-check because it’s probably that one of these branches will connect with noble pedigrees.

The Four Pound Brick, Series 1, Episode 20 of The Rockford Files was written by the all-female team of Leigh Brackett and Juanita Bartlett from a story by Leigh Brackett. 

Leigh Brackett wrote science fiction and fantasy, and novels in the style of Raymond Chandler. Indeed, there are noirish elements to The Four Pound Brick that suggest Chandler’s influence. Leigh Brackett also wrote the screenplay for Chandler’s classic The Big Sleep.

Rocky, Becker and Angel are well to the fore in this episode, and the closing scene with Becker in Rockford’s trailer highlights how these characters have become members of the Rockford ‘family’.

Clara Bow Quotes: “What a thrill! I was now a fully-fledged motion-picture actress, and only fourteen years old (census returns suggest that Clara was sixteen when she broke into the movies). I was the idol of the neighbourhood. Those children who had heretofore passed me by now were my staunch friends. For hours I had to relate my experiences in the motion-picture studio. This certainly was the ultimate in happiness. But little did I know how fickle Fate can be…”

Intertitle #5

As ever, thank you for your interest and support.

Hannah xxx

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