Vanity's Price is a lost[1] 1924 American silent drama film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Anna Q. Nilsson. It was produced by the Gothic Productions company and released by FBO.[2][3]
The film is notable as the feature that brought assistant director Josef von Sternberg to the attention of critics for his handling of two sequences in the film.[4]
Cast
- Anna Q. Nilsson as Vanna Du Maurier
- Stuart Holmes as Henri De Greve
- Wyndham Standing as Richard Dowling
- Arthur Rankin as Teddy, Vanna's son
- Lucille Ricksen as Sylvia, Teddy's fiancée
- Robert Bolder as Bill Connors, Theatrical Manager
- Cissy Fitzgerald as Mrs. Connors
- Dot Farley as Katherine, Vanna's Maid
- Charles Newton as Butler
- Rowfat-Bey Haliloff as Dancer
Production
Von Sternberg, in his 1965 autobiography recalls:
Two incidents had been left out of the supposedly completed Vanity’s Price, which the director [Roy William Neill] had not considered worthwhile doing, and the studio [FBO] head now pleaded with me to direct those short episodes.”[5] One of the scenes concerned a young couple on a park bench, in love. The other involved a surgery in which a woman is operated in a therapeutic procedure related to the "Monkey gland" theory of Serge Voronoff.
Von Sternberg writes:
I gave orders to build an operating theatre with a deep pit and circular rows of seats rising steeply above the other to make it look like a cockfight arena. I planned to have the student physicians watch the surgery through binoculars with an occasional ironic grin.[6][7]
When the picture was previewed this sequence was praised by critics and von Sternberg was offered a position as director at FBO studios, but he turned it down to make an independently financed film, The Salvation Hunters (1925).[8][9][10]
Footnotes
- ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Vanity's Price
- ^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Vanity's Price
- ^ Progressive Silent Film List: Vanity's Price at silentera.com
- ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
- ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
- ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
- ^ Hall, 1924: "Monkey gland"
- ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 198
- ^ Hall, 1924
- ^ Baxter, 1971 p. 25-26: see footnote "October 8, 1924" review.
Sources
- Baxter, John. 1971. The Cinema of Josef von Sternberg. London: A. Zwemmer / New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. ISBN 978-0498079917
- Hall, Mordaunt. 1924. THE SCREEN: “A Rejuvenation Story.” The New York Times, October 8, 1924. https://www.nytimes.com/1924/10/08/archives/the-screen-a-rejuvenation-story.html Retrieved 20 May, 2024.
- Sternberg, Josef von. 1988. Fun in a Chinese Laundry. Mercury House, San Francisco, California. ISBN 0-916515-37-0 (pbk.)