Cecil B. DeMille’s 1924 silent film, “Feet of Clay” has been lost to the ages, unless someone finds a print in their musty attic or dank basement. Here’s the plot edited from Wikipedia:
Kerry Harlan (Rod La Rocque) is unable to work because he was injured in a battle with a shark, so his youthful wife Amy (Vera Reynolds) becomes a fashion model. While she is away from home, Bertha (Julia Faye), the wife of his surgeon, tries to force her attention on Kerry and is accidentally killed in an attempt to evade her husband. After the scandal Amy is courted by the dashing Tony Channing (Ricardo Cortez), but she returns to her husband and finds him near death from gas fumes. Because they both attempted to commit suicide, their spirits are rejected by “the other side” and, learning the truth from Bertha’s spirit, they fight their way back to life.
For DeMille’s reputation, it might be a good thing that this film has been lost!
Above are Rod La Rocque, Julia Faye, Vera Reynolds, and Ricardo Cortez. So much drama in one photo as the two couples have switched partners! Below is a surviving still from the film, which was shot on Catalina Island.
While the pier is still there (although most likely redone at some point), the building in the background does not appear to exist anymore.
In the first detailed view below, the cast is literally horsing around:
Sunbathers on the shore:
About to make a dive:
I’ve been to the Island twice, most recently in 2020. While it is beautiful, I can’t say it’s a place that I would rush back to.
See more Catalina photos at my main website.
4 comments:
It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's mine. I'm heading back to Catalina in early November. Also the pier shown in those shots above can't be lined up because it doesn't exist anymore. Most people only think of Catalina's one and only pier, the "Green Pier" built by the Banning brothers in 1909. Few realize there was a second pier built in 1911 to alleviate congestion and that was the ( as far as I can tell, unnamed ) second pier. Since the existing Green Pier is often called the Pleasure Pier, let's just call that other one the Misery Pier. If you look in the shots of the Misery Pier, you can see the hillside very close to the ground. That would put it closer to the roundabout at Whittley Ave., where Marilyn Monroe worked at the ice cream shop. In your third pic, that ice cream shop would be the 2-story square building on the right of the arch. It's hard to place buildings because an awful lot of Catalina's buildings burned down in 1915. Of course if that pic is related to a 1924 pic then maybe those buildings are still there and just remodeled. The exteriors are no longer consistent.
Trust you're away of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22w88qb9xs
(Also on one of the Warner Archive shorts collections)
Wow, no I was not. Thanks DBenson. Right at 0:55 you get the single best color view of that second pier that I've ever seen. Amazing to think it was 'the big pier" that the larger ships docked at. Now it's gone. It's amazing to see a series of musical/dance numbers performed there. You couldn't do that today, too cramped, too busy.
This is from "Classic Musical Shorts from the Dream Factory" (volume one), and looks even better on disc. One disc is filled with this and similar shorts in nifty locations; "La Fiesta de Santa Barbara" includes the familiar scene of a very young Judy Garland singing "La Cucaracha". The rest of the set is other MGM shorts, some in B&W, ranging from filmed vaudeville acts to an oddly pretentious little fantasy called "The Spectacle Maker".
I'm big on theatrical shorts, and not just cartoons and name comedians. Warner Archive has issued several sets, now MOD, and every set runs the gamut from creaky relics to little treasures to madness (a collegiate musical set at a barber college; department store mannequins coming to life; Leon Errol as Adam wandering through history ...).
Post a Comment