Post by Coopsgirl on Aug 21, 2009 16:34:27 GMT -6
Gary had gotten a bit part in Sam Goldwyn’s new film The Winning of Barbara Worth but he really wanted the supporting role of Abe Lee. He worked up the courage to speak to Henry King, the director, about the role but it had already been filled. The actor they had for the part was stuck filming another movie for Warner Brothers when production of Barbara Worth began so King told Gary he would use him for some long shots until the actor showed up. When it was clear that the actor would not be able to make it, Gary was given the role. Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky played the leads of Willard Holmes and Barbara Worth.
As the story begins we see Banky burying her husband in the desert. She and her young daughter (who will turn out to be Barbara when she grows up) get back in their covered wagon and continue to head West. They soon run into a large sandstorm and try to take cover. Next we see Jefferson Worth played by Charles Lane and his party who are also travelling West. They find baby Barbara clinging to her dead mother in the sand and Jefferson adopts her.
We flash forward about 15 years to the little desert town where Barbara and her family live. Her father has an idea to build a dam on the Colorado River and use it to irrigate the desert thus brining life to a lifeless expanse. Jefferson hires James Greenfield played by E.J. Ratcliffe and his adopted son Willard Holmes (Colman) who are engineers from New York. Upon their arrival we get the convergence of our main characters and the movie gets rolling.
In his first scene, Gary as Abe Lee and his father played by Paul McAllister, are doing some survey work in the desert. The title card lets us know he is a childhood friend of Barbara’s but we soon discover his feelings for her go beyond friendship. As Abe is looking through one of his instruments, he sees Barbara on her horse.
Willard and his father are also approaching at the same time in their car whose tires are having a hard time getting through the sand. Willard also spies the lovely Barbara and as both he and Abe watch her, her horse begins to buck violently and she is nearly thrown from the saddle. She barely hangs on as the horse takes off. Abe jumps on his horse and gives chase. After a few minutes he catches up to her to find she has been thrown to the ground. He sits on the sand with her in his arms trying to revive her. Willard catches up with them and Barbara comes around to find them both making a fuss over her.
A big party is thrown for the newcomers and this scene has a little comedy, drama, and romance. Abe sees Barbara and Willard dancing and he looks so pitiful like he just lost his new puppy.
Then Barbara smiles at him and he smiles back, but as soon as she looks away, that sad look is back.
Abe walks outside to get some fresh air and then Barbara and Willard come out but don’t see him and they just walk right past him and out in the courtyard and Abe dejectedly goes back inside.
The comedy part comes in when we see a man ask a woman to dance and when she stands we see she is quite a bit taller than he is but they go for it anyway.
We cut back to Barbara and Willard and he is telling her that she is wasting herself and her beauty there “like an orchid in a bucket of sand”. She tries to convince him how beautiful the desert is and how much she loves it and how much she hopes they succeed in their irrigation plan. Their conversation is interrupted when Abe comes out to say goodnight.
Abe says “Adios, Hermanita” meaning “goodbye, sister” and she also says “goodbye, brother” back in Spanish. She then explains to Willard that is the language of the desert when he asks why they speak in Spanish. From the way they address each other and her body language towards Abe, we can see she only sees him as a friend or a brother type. This reminds me of the scene between Gary and Katy Jurado years later in High Noon when they briefly speak in Spanish to each other. Both scenes have a real feeling of warmth to them.
Next the men in the town, including Abe and Willard, are moving their supplies out to the desert to begin building the dam. Abe confronts Willard who seems too soft to take the heat at first but then he pulls himself together by thinking of Barbara and they continue on.
As they are building the dam it’s going well and settlers begin moving to the new town. Then the dam is opened as Willard, Barbara, Abe’s father, and Abe look on excitedly.
Willard takes the opportunity to plant a big kiss on Barbara and she quite enjoys it much to Abe’s consternation.
Next there is a scene of a man planting seeds and the sun shining through the clouds behind him is beautiful; another example of the fine cinematography throughout the film.
Willard goes to see Barbara to let her know he will be going back East soon and he wants to take her with him. She jokes with him about it but doesn’t give him a definite answer. Abe sees this and like the kiss earlier, he isn’t happy about it.
Now the real conflict of the movie kicks in. Abe and his father get notices that they have been fired from the project and Abe is especially upset at this as he knows the dam needs reinforcement or the town could flood. His father told Greenfield that as well. Then he says he thinks it was really Willard’s idea.
They are at Barbara’s home and she overhears their conversation and comes running in to defend Willard.
With this new development, some of the people in town decide it’s too dangerous to stay so they pack up and head out. Willard meets their caravan on his way back from the dam. He tries to find out what’s going on but no one will talk to him. He rides to the back of the group to find Barbara and Abe but they only tell him they are leaving Kingston and then they ride off with no further explanation.
He rides after them demanding to know what is going on. Abe rides on ahead leaving them alone.
She tells him all he cares about is money and that he used the people who trusted him then rides away again. Determined to find out what’s going on, Willard rides on to Kingston to ask his father if he knows anything about this. He explains that he fired the men for spreading lies about an impending flood. Willard sides with the fired men telling his father the local Indians are also predicting a big flood and that the dam may not hold. Upon hearing this, Greenfield fires his own son.
Next we cut to Barba, the new town established by Jefferson Worth far out of reach of the river and any possible flooding. One month has passed and while everything seems to be just peachy, Jefferson doesn’t have enough money to meet the payroll for his employees. Abe’s father suggests they go to San Felipe to request a loan from a big money man there named Cartwright. Willard has also traveled to San Felipe to speak with Cartwright and get enough money to make the needed reinforcements to the dam. While Jefferson Worth, Abe, and his father are gone to San Felipe, Greenfield has sent one of his men to Barba to get everyone riled up about Jefferson missing payroll so they will go back to Kingston.
Cartwright has decided to the give them the money for the dam and for Jefferson’s payroll. Barbara is able to get a call through to them at Cartwright’s office and she lets them know that people are threatening to burn down the town. He tells her they got the money and that Abe will ride back with it immediately. Willard volunteers to ride back with him.As you can tell, neither man is too happy to be in the company of the other.
Greenfield’s spy lets him know about Abe riding back with the money and informs him that some of his buddies will be waiting for them at Devil’s Canyon and will “pick him off” and then steal the cash. Greenfield looks uneasy about the plan but doesn’t stop it. The next morning Abe and Willard come under fire and take a couple of the bad guys out before Abe gets shot in the leg and Willard is also grazed in the shoulder before taking cover.
Willard then shoots the last bad guy and he helps Abe up onto his horse. Gary really does a fantastic job here of seeming to be in great pain. I can imagine it’s hard to act like you are really hurt when you feel fine and especially being as inexperienced as he was when this was made, it’s quite impressive. Willard gets on behind him and they try to resume their journey but his leg is hurt too badly and they must stop.
There’s all kinds of trouble going on back in Barba as a couple of Barbara’s friends are trying to keep the peace while they wait for the payroll. Greenfield’s agent who started the trouble breaks into her house and tries to molest her. Little does he know she’s a pistol packing mama!
Back on the trail, Abe tells Willard to continue on without him and he gives him the money. They shake hands as if to bury the hatchet, and Willard leaves Abe his cigarettes and puts a canteen close by so he can reach it before leaving.
Barbara has gotten away from the bad guy and rushes out to tell everyone that Abe is coming with the money; she doesn’t know that Willard is really the one who will save the day. He quickly arrives with the cash and then collapses from his injuries and the wear from the journey. Before he loses consciousness, he tells Barbara where to find Abe and they send a group out to find him.
The next morning we see Barbara changing the bandage on Willard’s arm and he tells her that she is wonderful and he loves her. Before she can answer, they bring Abe in.
Willard looks on and believes Barbara to be in love with Abe. However Willard does not hear Abe tell her that he knows now she only loves him like a brother. Meanwhile, Willard is outside talking with his father and Barbara overhears him and misunderstands him when he says he won’t ask her to marry him. She didn’t hear the last part where he said “because she loves another man”.
A man rides into town to let them know the dam is about to burst and that Kingston will be destroyed. They try to shore up the dam but it’s not use so they warn the townspeople and they try in vain to escape. This is the most impressive sequence of the film as the dam lets loose and the river runs wild. Many people made it to higher ground at Barba, but we know that many men, women, and children did not.
Thankfully, these cuties who we saw running away on their own earlier, survived.
Willard’s father has also survived and he was brought into Barbara’s house where she cleaned him up as he was covered with mud. There’s a pillow on her couch with a swastika on it which took me aback at first, but originally that symbol stood for fertility so it was very well placed in a movie about making a garden out of a desert. He explains to her that Willard truly loves her but thinks she’s in love with Abe. She rushes out to find him and tells him she loves him too just before he and a large group of men embark on their mission to rebuild the dam.
We get a title card telling us Willard tamed the wild Colorado river and now the desert is like a new Eden. We get shots of orange groves and vineyards as we follow Willard’s car on his way home to his wife and baby.
I really like this film. The story is very interesting and was taken from the best seller written in 1911 by Harold Bell Wright. The cinematography is beautiful and some scenes filmed in soft focus are especially lovely. We can thank Frances Goldwyn, Samuel Goldwyn’s wife, for the fact that this film survived. Many studios unfortunately scrapped their silent films to save storage space and during WWII many were melted down to get the silver out of the film for the war effort. This one was saved because Frances was a fan of Gary’s.
I think Gary and Ronald Colman did excellent jobs. Their acting styles which are very natural and real would serve them well during the transition to sound at the end of the decade and make them both very popular, Oscar winning actors. I also like Vilma Banky, but you can tell her style is more similar to the pantomime style used during the silent era. I love silent films but I do tend to gravitate more towards the ones where the actors employ a minimum of that style and have a little more naturalness in their performances. There really aren’t too many where the people are just flat out hammy, so if you’re not a big fan of silents, maybe you should give them another look as there are some really wonderful silent films out there.
One strange thing I have noticed in reading different books about Gary, they usually state that his character died at the end of this film. If he did, then it must be implied because we get no indication of that. The last we see of him is when he is taken into Barbara’s house and laid on the bed. He’s injured but it doesn’t seem to be life threatening so I’m really not sure where that idea came from.
In one scene Gary’s character was supposed to ride into town weary from a long ride, knock on the door at Barbara’s house, deliver his message and then fall flat on his face. In order to get him to look sufficiently worn out, they made him walk around the set for a couple of hours and then put some mud on his face. They also told him not to brace himself when he fell because it needed to look real and that the other actors would catch him. He did just as he was supposed to and they caught him just before his face would have hit the floor. Samuel Goldwyn was watching and he thought Gary was the best actor he’d ever seen. Years later Gary joked it looked so good because he really was worn out. He ended up being too good and they were afraid he would look more like the hero than the lead Colman, so his big scene was cut.
Here are some links to sites with more pics and some great info about the making of the film. It was really a Herculean effort.
www.silentsaregolden.com/reviewsfolder/winningbarbaraworth.html
www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/BarbaraWorthmakingof.html
gchudleigh.com/barbmv1926.htm
As the story begins we see Banky burying her husband in the desert. She and her young daughter (who will turn out to be Barbara when she grows up) get back in their covered wagon and continue to head West. They soon run into a large sandstorm and try to take cover. Next we see Jefferson Worth played by Charles Lane and his party who are also travelling West. They find baby Barbara clinging to her dead mother in the sand and Jefferson adopts her.
We flash forward about 15 years to the little desert town where Barbara and her family live. Her father has an idea to build a dam on the Colorado River and use it to irrigate the desert thus brining life to a lifeless expanse. Jefferson hires James Greenfield played by E.J. Ratcliffe and his adopted son Willard Holmes (Colman) who are engineers from New York. Upon their arrival we get the convergence of our main characters and the movie gets rolling.
In his first scene, Gary as Abe Lee and his father played by Paul McAllister, are doing some survey work in the desert. The title card lets us know he is a childhood friend of Barbara’s but we soon discover his feelings for her go beyond friendship. As Abe is looking through one of his instruments, he sees Barbara on her horse.
Willard and his father are also approaching at the same time in their car whose tires are having a hard time getting through the sand. Willard also spies the lovely Barbara and as both he and Abe watch her, her horse begins to buck violently and she is nearly thrown from the saddle. She barely hangs on as the horse takes off. Abe jumps on his horse and gives chase. After a few minutes he catches up to her to find she has been thrown to the ground. He sits on the sand with her in his arms trying to revive her. Willard catches up with them and Barbara comes around to find them both making a fuss over her.
A big party is thrown for the newcomers and this scene has a little comedy, drama, and romance. Abe sees Barbara and Willard dancing and he looks so pitiful like he just lost his new puppy.
Then Barbara smiles at him and he smiles back, but as soon as she looks away, that sad look is back.
Abe walks outside to get some fresh air and then Barbara and Willard come out but don’t see him and they just walk right past him and out in the courtyard and Abe dejectedly goes back inside.
The comedy part comes in when we see a man ask a woman to dance and when she stands we see she is quite a bit taller than he is but they go for it anyway.
We cut back to Barbara and Willard and he is telling her that she is wasting herself and her beauty there “like an orchid in a bucket of sand”. She tries to convince him how beautiful the desert is and how much she loves it and how much she hopes they succeed in their irrigation plan. Their conversation is interrupted when Abe comes out to say goodnight.
Abe says “Adios, Hermanita” meaning “goodbye, sister” and she also says “goodbye, brother” back in Spanish. She then explains to Willard that is the language of the desert when he asks why they speak in Spanish. From the way they address each other and her body language towards Abe, we can see she only sees him as a friend or a brother type. This reminds me of the scene between Gary and Katy Jurado years later in High Noon when they briefly speak in Spanish to each other. Both scenes have a real feeling of warmth to them.
Next the men in the town, including Abe and Willard, are moving their supplies out to the desert to begin building the dam. Abe confronts Willard who seems too soft to take the heat at first but then he pulls himself together by thinking of Barbara and they continue on.
As they are building the dam it’s going well and settlers begin moving to the new town. Then the dam is opened as Willard, Barbara, Abe’s father, and Abe look on excitedly.
Willard takes the opportunity to plant a big kiss on Barbara and she quite enjoys it much to Abe’s consternation.
Next there is a scene of a man planting seeds and the sun shining through the clouds behind him is beautiful; another example of the fine cinematography throughout the film.
Willard goes to see Barbara to let her know he will be going back East soon and he wants to take her with him. She jokes with him about it but doesn’t give him a definite answer. Abe sees this and like the kiss earlier, he isn’t happy about it.
Now the real conflict of the movie kicks in. Abe and his father get notices that they have been fired from the project and Abe is especially upset at this as he knows the dam needs reinforcement or the town could flood. His father told Greenfield that as well. Then he says he thinks it was really Willard’s idea.
They are at Barbara’s home and she overhears their conversation and comes running in to defend Willard.
With this new development, some of the people in town decide it’s too dangerous to stay so they pack up and head out. Willard meets their caravan on his way back from the dam. He tries to find out what’s going on but no one will talk to him. He rides to the back of the group to find Barbara and Abe but they only tell him they are leaving Kingston and then they ride off with no further explanation.
He rides after them demanding to know what is going on. Abe rides on ahead leaving them alone.
She tells him all he cares about is money and that he used the people who trusted him then rides away again. Determined to find out what’s going on, Willard rides on to Kingston to ask his father if he knows anything about this. He explains that he fired the men for spreading lies about an impending flood. Willard sides with the fired men telling his father the local Indians are also predicting a big flood and that the dam may not hold. Upon hearing this, Greenfield fires his own son.
Next we cut to Barba, the new town established by Jefferson Worth far out of reach of the river and any possible flooding. One month has passed and while everything seems to be just peachy, Jefferson doesn’t have enough money to meet the payroll for his employees. Abe’s father suggests they go to San Felipe to request a loan from a big money man there named Cartwright. Willard has also traveled to San Felipe to speak with Cartwright and get enough money to make the needed reinforcements to the dam. While Jefferson Worth, Abe, and his father are gone to San Felipe, Greenfield has sent one of his men to Barba to get everyone riled up about Jefferson missing payroll so they will go back to Kingston.
Cartwright has decided to the give them the money for the dam and for Jefferson’s payroll. Barbara is able to get a call through to them at Cartwright’s office and she lets them know that people are threatening to burn down the town. He tells her they got the money and that Abe will ride back with it immediately. Willard volunteers to ride back with him.As you can tell, neither man is too happy to be in the company of the other.
Greenfield’s spy lets him know about Abe riding back with the money and informs him that some of his buddies will be waiting for them at Devil’s Canyon and will “pick him off” and then steal the cash. Greenfield looks uneasy about the plan but doesn’t stop it. The next morning Abe and Willard come under fire and take a couple of the bad guys out before Abe gets shot in the leg and Willard is also grazed in the shoulder before taking cover.
Willard then shoots the last bad guy and he helps Abe up onto his horse. Gary really does a fantastic job here of seeming to be in great pain. I can imagine it’s hard to act like you are really hurt when you feel fine and especially being as inexperienced as he was when this was made, it’s quite impressive. Willard gets on behind him and they try to resume their journey but his leg is hurt too badly and they must stop.
There’s all kinds of trouble going on back in Barba as a couple of Barbara’s friends are trying to keep the peace while they wait for the payroll. Greenfield’s agent who started the trouble breaks into her house and tries to molest her. Little does he know she’s a pistol packing mama!
Back on the trail, Abe tells Willard to continue on without him and he gives him the money. They shake hands as if to bury the hatchet, and Willard leaves Abe his cigarettes and puts a canteen close by so he can reach it before leaving.
Barbara has gotten away from the bad guy and rushes out to tell everyone that Abe is coming with the money; she doesn’t know that Willard is really the one who will save the day. He quickly arrives with the cash and then collapses from his injuries and the wear from the journey. Before he loses consciousness, he tells Barbara where to find Abe and they send a group out to find him.
The next morning we see Barbara changing the bandage on Willard’s arm and he tells her that she is wonderful and he loves her. Before she can answer, they bring Abe in.
Willard looks on and believes Barbara to be in love with Abe. However Willard does not hear Abe tell her that he knows now she only loves him like a brother. Meanwhile, Willard is outside talking with his father and Barbara overhears him and misunderstands him when he says he won’t ask her to marry him. She didn’t hear the last part where he said “because she loves another man”.
A man rides into town to let them know the dam is about to burst and that Kingston will be destroyed. They try to shore up the dam but it’s not use so they warn the townspeople and they try in vain to escape. This is the most impressive sequence of the film as the dam lets loose and the river runs wild. Many people made it to higher ground at Barba, but we know that many men, women, and children did not.
Thankfully, these cuties who we saw running away on their own earlier, survived.
Willard’s father has also survived and he was brought into Barbara’s house where she cleaned him up as he was covered with mud. There’s a pillow on her couch with a swastika on it which took me aback at first, but originally that symbol stood for fertility so it was very well placed in a movie about making a garden out of a desert. He explains to her that Willard truly loves her but thinks she’s in love with Abe. She rushes out to find him and tells him she loves him too just before he and a large group of men embark on their mission to rebuild the dam.
We get a title card telling us Willard tamed the wild Colorado river and now the desert is like a new Eden. We get shots of orange groves and vineyards as we follow Willard’s car on his way home to his wife and baby.
I really like this film. The story is very interesting and was taken from the best seller written in 1911 by Harold Bell Wright. The cinematography is beautiful and some scenes filmed in soft focus are especially lovely. We can thank Frances Goldwyn, Samuel Goldwyn’s wife, for the fact that this film survived. Many studios unfortunately scrapped their silent films to save storage space and during WWII many were melted down to get the silver out of the film for the war effort. This one was saved because Frances was a fan of Gary’s.
I think Gary and Ronald Colman did excellent jobs. Their acting styles which are very natural and real would serve them well during the transition to sound at the end of the decade and make them both very popular, Oscar winning actors. I also like Vilma Banky, but you can tell her style is more similar to the pantomime style used during the silent era. I love silent films but I do tend to gravitate more towards the ones where the actors employ a minimum of that style and have a little more naturalness in their performances. There really aren’t too many where the people are just flat out hammy, so if you’re not a big fan of silents, maybe you should give them another look as there are some really wonderful silent films out there.
One strange thing I have noticed in reading different books about Gary, they usually state that his character died at the end of this film. If he did, then it must be implied because we get no indication of that. The last we see of him is when he is taken into Barbara’s house and laid on the bed. He’s injured but it doesn’t seem to be life threatening so I’m really not sure where that idea came from.
In one scene Gary’s character was supposed to ride into town weary from a long ride, knock on the door at Barbara’s house, deliver his message and then fall flat on his face. In order to get him to look sufficiently worn out, they made him walk around the set for a couple of hours and then put some mud on his face. They also told him not to brace himself when he fell because it needed to look real and that the other actors would catch him. He did just as he was supposed to and they caught him just before his face would have hit the floor. Samuel Goldwyn was watching and he thought Gary was the best actor he’d ever seen. Years later Gary joked it looked so good because he really was worn out. He ended up being too good and they were afraid he would look more like the hero than the lead Colman, so his big scene was cut.
Here are some links to sites with more pics and some great info about the making of the film. It was really a Herculean effort.
www.silentsaregolden.com/reviewsfolder/winningbarbaraworth.html
www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/BarbaraWorthmakingof.html
gchudleigh.com/barbmv1926.htm