Janice Meredith (aka, The Beautiful Rebel, 1924)

Here’s the book on Marion Davies—she was one of the most delightful comediennes of her era, but looked like a gifted amateur when she played drama. Given the evidence of Janice Meredith, I’d say the book is right on the money.

This is the kind of picture in which Davies’ great love, newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, wanted her to be seen. It’s based on the book and play of the same name written by Paul Leicester Ford and Edward Everett Rose and set during the American Revolution. The film lacks the epic heft of Griffith because director E. Mason Hopper does little to open up the action. You might describe it as “historical romance,” but you’d have to italicize romance.

Davies is the titular character, the daughter of a well-to-do royalist family living in New Jersey on the Greenwood estate. She accompanies her father (Macklyn Arbuckle) to a sale of bondservants and there sees Charles Fownes (Harrison Ford) for the first time. In a scene that will later be borrowed for Captain Blood, Janice and Charles (who is really an English lord who has demoted himself because of a love affair gone wrong—right, now you tell one) are attracted to each other but don’t really like it.

Squire Meredith will buy Charles but soon regrets the purchase when his new servant obviously falls in love with Janice. He’s sold off and she is sent to live with an aunt in Boston.

In this metropolis of fire brands, Janice is turned into a colonial Forrest Gump, meeting and helping as many historical character as scenarist Lillie Hayward can remember. Charles joins the rebels and spends much of the movie getting captured and rescued by Janice, who by now is in love with him, too. The capture/escape/capture/escape formula was popular at that time but repeated so often in a film that runs 2.5 hours, well, comparisons with The Perils of Pauline and “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight” become inevitable.

The most memorable moment in the picture comes at about the one hour mark when Janice is left temporarily in the care of a British soldier, a surprising turn by W.C. Fields. The scene is intended to be comic relief but, in its way, is heartbreaking. Ah, to think how good a feature starring Fields and Davies would have been. Here, Fields performs some shtick with his rifle that we will become used to seeing him do with a pool cue. He playfully taps Janice, who returns the tap a little harder. This, of course, ends in a shoving match, which Fields loses.

If watching Davies goof around with Fields is fun, enduring her moments of high drama can be painful. At one point she thinks Charles has been shot, and when it turns out to be another man the intensity of her reaction borders the comic. “I yield . . . to treachery!” she exclaims. I think since Davies was a terrific comic she saw the humor in everything, especially corny melodramatics. She did such wonderful impersonations of the leading dramatic actresses of the day, you almost wonder if she’s parodying herself.

The rest of the cast includes Holbrook Blinn, Joseph Kilgour, Hattie Delaro, George Nash, Tyrone Power, Sr., May Vokes, and Ken Maynard. The picture was shot by George Barnes and Ira H. Morgan, then edited by Walter Futter. Art direction was by Joseph Urban, with costumes design by Gretl Urban Thurlow. And it must be added by Davies looks gorgeous. In fact, the movie has been distributed as The Beautiful Rebel, a title I’d be willing to bet was suggested by Hearst and hated by the star.