John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

User avatar
drednm
Posts: 251
Joined: August 5th, 2009, 9:29 am
Location: Maine

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by drednm »

His Glorious Night apparently resides in an archive in mint condition (LOC or UCLA, I don't remember) but has basically been unseen since its debut. Kevin Bronwlow told he had seen it and was bored. He didn't think it was funny, just boring. I still just want to see it.

I have to admit I have never seen a bad John Gilbert performance. Maybe the films were not great, like ( Gentleman's Fate) but his performances have always been solid. I think there were a lot of actors who were consistently good no matter what the studios gave them for roles: John Gilbert, William Haines, Marion Davies, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, Evelyn Brent, Betty Compson, Richard Barthelmess....

Certain performers transcend the material. I guess that's the ultimate definiton of "star."
User avatar
moira finnie
Administrator
Posts: 8024
Joined: April 9th, 2007, 6:34 pm
Location: Earth
Contact:

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by moira finnie »

Hi Fernando,
Great to see you posting! I hadn't seen your previous comments about some of John Gilbert's sound movies earlier in this thread, but I can certainly see what you mean about his influence on Gable--though, as they crafted his image at MGM in the tough times of the Depression, Gable seems to have buried the vulnerability in his characters and emphasized toughness, becoming more of a wisecracking roustabout--at least until GWTW.

With Gilbert in movies such as Fast Workers and Downstairs he seemed so modern it was a bit startling. One of the odd but interesting aspects of his performance in Gentleman's Fate was that he played more of a "stranger in a strange land" character when he learned more about his family, himself and the world outside his penthouse, almost as though he was a man who went to sleep in the Roaring Twenties, but awoke with a bleak morning hangover in the Thirties.
drednm wrote:His Glorious Night apparently resides in an archive in mint condition (LOC or UCLA, I don't remember) but has basically been unseen since its debut. Kevin Bronwlow told he had seen it and was bored. He didn't think it was funny, just boring. I still just want to see it.

I have to admit I have never seen a bad John Gilbert performance. Maybe the films were not great, like ( Gentleman's Fate) but his performances have always been solid. I think there were a lot of actors who were consistently good no matter what the studios gave them for roles: John Gilbert, William Haines, Marion Davies, Kay Francis, Miriam Hopkins, Evelyn Brent, Betty Compson, Richard Barthelmess....

Certain performers transcend the material. I guess that's the ultimate definiton of "star."
His Glorious Night appears to be in the UCLA Film Archive, with a detailed listing about the movie found here. As Leatrice Gilbert Fountain wrote in her bio of her father, Dark Star, most reviews of His Glorious Night were favorable, though audiences did titter when actually hearing the flowery dialogue that John Gilbert had to deliver--putting into leaden words what had always been suggested with a look or gesture before.

I've often wondered why John Gilbert couldn't have walked away from that onerous yet lucrative contract he had with MGM, but he probably had his reasons. If he could have left that behind, perhaps he would have found his way into the behind the scenes work or character acting that he seemed to enjoy.
Avatar: Frank McHugh (1898-1981)

The Skeins
TCM Movie Morlocks
feaito

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by feaito »

Glad to see you posting back at SSO Moira! :)

I'd like to have chance of watching much maligned "His Glorious Night" (1930)... In Thalberg's bio by Vieira, he attributes its failure mainly to Lionel Barrymore.
User avatar
moira finnie
Administrator
Posts: 8024
Joined: April 9th, 2007, 6:34 pm
Location: Earth
Contact:

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by moira finnie »

Here's a bump for this thread to remind us that TCM has wall-to-wall John Gilbert today, featuring his silents as well as his sound films. (See posts earlier in this thread for the complete list of films to be shown).

Image

I've just gotten caught up in The Show (1927) after catching He Who Gets Slapped (1924) earlier today. His roguish character in The Show makes me wonder if he might have been a good choice for Liliom sometime. He certainly had enough experience playing roles set in a carnival-like atmosphere!
Avatar: Frank McHugh (1898-1981)

The Skeins
TCM Movie Morlocks
User avatar
charliechaplinfan
Posts: 9040
Joined: January 15th, 2008, 9:49 am

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by charliechaplinfan »

I've never seen a bad Gilbert performance either and his talkies were a revelation, not at all bad the likes of Fastworkers and Downstairs very good. It's interesting what Vieira says about Lionel Barrymore, I'd read the same thing myself, although why risk your biggest prize with an uncertain director like Lionel Barrymore.

Enjoy your Gilbert day :D
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
User avatar
MichiganJ
Posts: 1405
Joined: May 20th, 2008, 4:37 pm
Contact:

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by MichiganJ »

A few thoughts on Gilbert Day:

I'd already seen most of the John Gilbert silents that aired on his "TCM day" and I think he was one of the better silent actors. While he has little to actually do in He Who Gets Slapped, the picnic sequence with Shearer shows his ease with romance and humor. The romance and frankly pure lust is amped up to the nth degree with Garbo in Flesh and the Devil and on thru Desert Nights--a film I like a lot despite it being incomplete and little more than a programmer--Gilbert's confidence is hard to resist.

With the exception of The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (where Gilbert does a mildly amusing but bordering on embarrassing Balcony Scene from Romeo and Juliet with Norma Shearer, who comes off slightly better), I hadn't seen any of Gilbert's talkies before. Judging by the high ratings these films get at IMDB, my expectations were set pretty high, but with one or two exceptions, I found Gilbert's talkies to be pretty mediocre at best.

Considering all the stories that Meyer was out to sabotage Gilbert's career, I was surprised at the relatively high production values, including casting, in Way For a Sailor, a film I thought was pretty good. The TCM print needs remastering, but it's obvious that some money was spent on the film, and it shows, particularly during the exciting finale. Gilbert is fine, if maybe a little unbelievable as a Merchant Marine sailor, at least when considering the "mugs" he hangs out with. The real marvel for me, though, was Leila Hyams, whose Joan has seen it all before but try as she might, can't help falling for the handsome gob. I liked, too, how the film ended without either of them having to make too many compromises.

Gentleman's Fate could have been a really good Warner Brothers film; it even has Mervyn LeRoy, fresh off of directing Little Caesar at the helm. This again seems to contradict the Meyer-sabotage theory, but in any case, Gilbert seems mis-cast, and the film is one of the worst edited "classic" films I've seen in awhile. (There are a lot of scenes that end, but the camera holds for what seems like minutes before finally cutting to the next.) There is a pretty good plot, which is best left discovered, and a few humorous sequences (the guns under the table made me laugh out loud). Poor Marie Prevost gives a great supporting performance, but again has to be eating every time we see her. Anita Page shows up for the final half hour to provide another love interest for Gilbert, but the whole thing could have been executed better.

The Phantom of Paris once again sports a good supporting cast and offers some production value. This is one of those look-alike stories, where Gilbert has to impersonate the bad guy to clear his name. Gilbert really looks nothing like his nemesis, (well-played by Ian Keith), and he supposedly gets plastic surgery (which in this case means grows a beard), and despite the lack of any real resemblance, it's fun seeing Gilbert effortlessly slip from one persona to another. (By the way, the film's title has no meaning. There's no phantom. It's just a rip-off title because the film is based on a Gaston Leroux novel.)

Downstairs again has a terrific cast and Gilbert is clearly having a great time playing against his image. As Fernando wrote earlier, it's almost startling how adult and un-clichéd the film is. I wonder, though, if again it would have been an even better film if made at Warners. For me, the best Gilbert talkie I've seen, by far.

The Captain Hates the Sea is awash with Columbia character actors (including the Three Stooges), but even with all of those characters, there's not a single one to like. Listed as a comedy, there are absolutely no laughs, and instead it's really a long arduous journey to an unsatisfying ending. Consider poor Gilbert's role, where he simply plays a drunk. And that's it. His character doesn't even warrant a story, let alone a conclusion. That Gilbert effortlessly plays the drunk is, frankly, just really sad.

I'm not convinced that Meyer or anyone actually sabotaged Gilbert and his films. But to me, it seems pretty clear that Gilbert would have done better to chuck his contract and try his hand at other studios, writing or even possibly the stage. Then, like Lillian Gish (whose own talkie debut is pretty dreadful), Gilbert might have gone on to return as a great character actor.

A final note on Gilbert's voice. In the early films, it is high. Not un-masculine or anything, but it's definitely a "tenor" if not even a "countertenor". The rumor is that Meyer had the treble tuned up when recording Gilbert, and that's what it sounds like. There is no low end. However, it's clear that the voice recordings were done live (not ADR), and there's no way that any engineer could manipulate the mono recording in such a way to do anything to Gilbert's voice that would not also effect Shearer's (in the Romeo scene) or Wallace Berry's (in Way For a Sailor). As recording techniques improved, Gilbert's voice gets rounder, but even in Queen Christina, he's still a solid tenor. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
"Let's be independent together." Dr. Hermey DDS
User avatar
LostHorizons
Posts: 517
Joined: October 22nd, 2022, 4:37 pm

Re: John Gilbert's Sound Career on TCM

Post by LostHorizons »

MichiganJ wrote: August 29th, 2010, 4:51 pm A few thoughts on Gilbert Day:

The romance and frankly pure lust is amped up to the nth degree with Garbo in Flesh and the Devil and on thru Desert Nights--a film I like a lot despite it being incomplete and little more than a programmer--Gilbert's confidence is hard to resist.
Flesh and the Devil is the film which introduced Gilbert to Garbo and actually ignited their off screen affair. It’s a very nice film but would have benefited a bit by cutting out some of the latter half of the middle section when Gilbert returns to Germany from Namibia. From there, it should just go straight to the duel.
Post Reply