The Merry Widow **** (1925, Mae Murray, John Gilbert, Roy D’Arcy, Tully Marshall, Josephine Crowell, George Fawcett, Edward Connelly) – Classic Movie Review 5809

Co-writer/ director Erich von Stroheim 1925 silent MGM version of the famous Franz Lehar operetta Die Lustige Witwe is hugely successful and was a huge success.

The wayward maverick director encourages Mae Murray’s classiest performance as Sally the Merry Widow, despite the on-set rows between them. It is also one of John Gilbert’s finest hours as the lecherous guardsman, Prince Danilo Petrovich, the King’s nephew, who soon falls for dancer Sally O’Hara (Murray).

George Fawcett plays the broke King Nikita I of Monteblanco, who sends a guard to Paris to catch a rich US widow, setting off the plot. It also stars Roy D’Arcy as Crown Prince Mirko, Tully Marshall as Baron Sadoja, Josephine Crowell as Queen Milena, and Edward Connelly as the Ambassador.

Of course it is hard now to come to terms with a musical without singing (piano accompanists were given scores to play the music, composed by William Axt and David Mendoza). But Stroheim’s visual flair is still remarkable in this richly enjoyable, epic silent movie (137 minutes), shot in black and white by Oliver T Marsh, Ben F Reynolds and William H Daniels, with one sequence in two-strip Technicolor shot by Ray Rennahan. The two-tone Technicolor end sequence is now lost.

Producer Irving Thalberg and the finally and artistically extravagant Stroheim also argued. Clark Gable and Joan Crawford appear as extras before their eight movies starring together.

Also in the cast are Helen Howard Beaumont, Gertrude Bennett, Bernard Berger, Sidney Bracey, Estelle Clark, Albert Conti, D’Arcy Corrigan, Xavier Cugat, Anielka Elter, Dale Fuller, Jacqueline Gadsden, Louise Hughes, Harvey Karels, Hughie Mack, Charles Magelis, Anna Maynard, Ida Moore, George Nichols, Beatrice O’Brien, Lon Poff, Eugene Pouyet, Frances Prim, Oscar Rudolph, Don Ryan, Rolfe Sedan, Carolynne Snowden, Merewyn Thayer, Edna Tichenor, Lucille Van Lent, Wilhelm von Brincken, Clara Wallacks, Zack Williams and Zalla Zarana.

Erich von Stroheim and Benjamin Glazer are credited for the screen adaptation and scenario, with Marian Ainslee for the titles.

It is available on Region 1 DVD.

The score on the TCM version is arranged and performed on a Möller pipe organ by Dennis James.

It was remade as The Merry Widow by Ernst Lubitsch in 1934 with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, and again as The Merry Widow by Curtis Bernhardt in 1952 with Fernando Lamas and Lana Turner.

Alas, gossip tells that Mae Murray was ‘abusive and borderline delusional’, and was the main inspiration for Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950). She was known as ‘The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips’ and ‘The Gardenia of the Screen’.  In 1927 she walked out of her MGM contract, making a powerful enemy of studio boss Louis B Mayer, who later refused to rehire her and effectively blacklisted her from working for Hollywood studios. Her last film was in 1931. In the Forties, she often appeared at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe nightclub, where her dancing, in particular the Merry Widow Waltz, was well received. But for most of her later life she lived in poverty.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5809

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com