The Silver Screen Oasis

Man, Womand & Sin at M-G-M

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer let it be known that Jeanne Eagels' behavior during the filming of Man, Woman and Sin was atrocious. Silent superstar John Gilbert, rumored to have been her lover during filming, said Eagels was the most temperamental actress he had ever worked with. (Autocratic studio boss Louis B. Mayer would one day turn on Gilbert, as he turned on Eagels.)

According to M-G-M, Eagels would appear late at the studio, and she once disappeared for several days. The Hollywood trade press credited Eagels' disappearance to a booze binge. At one point, she took off on a two-week vacation to Santa Barbara without informing her director, Monta Bell. Bell asked M-G-M management to terminate Eagels' contract, which they did. Fortunately, there was enough footage so Bell could salvage the film without re-shooting.

Gilbert said of Eagels, "She seemed to hate the movies for a popularity they could not give her....[The] blind, unreasoning adulation of the movie fans was a type of popularity she spurned. Fundamentally, Jeanne was much superior to us. Movie actors are crazy to be worshiped. Jeanne Eagels wanted to be understood and appreciated."

When the film was released, Eagels' performance received mixed reviews, but the picture was a failure primarily due to the poor reviews garnered by Gilbert. Critics rejected the great lover playing a naive mama's boy in this film. Gilbert's career was salvaged shortly thereafter by the release of his second film with Great Garbo, Love (1927), an adaptation of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina that was a smash hit and launched Garbo into the cinema superstardom that eluded Jeanne Eagels.

(Marilyn Monroe would become a superstar, but never achieved the kudos for her acting that were garnered by Eagels. Yet, Monroe is a legend while Eagels, the more talented actress, is barely remembered. Monroe is a cultural archetype while Eagels remains a footnote in Broadway and Hollywood history. Such are the vicissitudes of a life in the performing arts. Neither actress ever achieved happiness.)