Vanity's Price

Vanity's Price
Lobby card
Directed byRoy William Neill
Josef von Sternberg (ass't director)
Written byPaul Bern (story, scenario)
Produced byGothic Productions
StarringAnna Q. Nilsson
CinematographyHal Mohr
Production
company
Gothic Productions
Distributed byFilm Booking Offices of America
Release date
  • September 7, 1924 (1924-09-07)
Running time
60 minutes; 6 reels
CountryUnited States
LanguageSilent (English intertitles)

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

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

  1. ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Vanity's Price
  2. ^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: Vanity's Price
  3. ^ Progressive Silent Film List: Vanity's Price at silentera.com
  4. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  5. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  6. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 197-198
  7. ^ Hall, 1924: "Monkey gland"
  8. ^ Sternberg, 1965 p. 198
  9. ^ Hall, 1924
  10. ^ 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.)