Who the heck was Colleen Moore?
Back in the heyday of silent films, Colleen was a popular and prolific actress yet is mostly forgotten today. Sadly, a lot of the silent films of the early days of cinema were not preserved resulting in a lot of early movies being lost and the people who became stars making those movies becoming unknown.
The movie for today's post was once thought lost forever until a print turned up in a private collection in the 1990's and it took another 20 years to get it restored.
From 1929, it's Why Be Good?
This film is a silent movie as far as dialogue is concerned but is accompanied by a Vitaphone soundtrack that features a musical score with sound effects and some synchronized singing.
Winthrop Peabody Jr. goes out for one last night of partying before he is set to go to work the following day at his father's department store.
Peabody Sr. gives Junior a lecture about women and warns him to stay clear of the store's female employees.
Peabody Jr. arrives at the party and becomes enamored with a young beautiful woman, a dancer full of life and Joy. Her name is Pert Kelly and after fending off several men of "questionable" character, she takes a liking to young Junior.
Pert allows Junior to drive her home and they set up a date for the following night.
You know where this was going, right? I'm fairly sure this was obvious in 1929 as well.
Guess where Pert works? Yep, the same department store where Winthrop Peabody Jr. is now running things for his father, the same man who warned Junior off the female women of the opposite sex where he works.
Because she was out late, Pert is tardy to work and must report to the personnel office, where she is surprised to find Peabody Jr. working. Peabody Sr. sees what has happened and fires Pert.
(Yes, there are laws against this sort of thing NOW.)
Junior explains to Pert he didn't fire her and tries to win her over with lavish gifts sent to her home.
Pert gets a lecture from her father about the lack of virtues of the modern man. She is adamant she knows how to protect herself from such men and she is NOT that kind of girl.
Junior gets a lecture from his father about the lack of virtues of the modern woman. He is adamant he knows how to protect himself from such women and Pert is NOT that kind of girl.
But Daddy Peabody has gotten into Junior's head so he creates a test of Pert's virtue, taking her to a hotel where women are known to "put out" as it were. When he tries to push her past her personal limits, she protests and passes his test.
Pert is incensed at this test and the double standard between men and women regarding sex. "It's men who demand the kissing and spooning. You wouldn't like me if I wore long skirts and mittens and sat at home . . . .You men! You insist a girl being just what you want--and then you bawl her out for being it . . . .What I do and what I wear is because you fool men demand it."
Pert tells Junior he can take his virtue test and shove up his-
Hold on!
Pert and Junior get married that night!
And that's... THE END.
The "It's That Person Who Was In That Thing" Department
Neil Hamilton as Winthrop Peabody Jr. would later become famous as Commissioner Gordon in the 1960's Batman TV series.
Why Be Good? had been considered a lost film for many decades, with only the film's Vitaphone soundtrack still in existence.
In the late 1990s, a 35mm print of the film was discovered in the archives of the Cineteca Italiana with restoration work completed in 2014.
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| Colleen Moore as Pert Kelly |
While the Motion Picture Production Code (aka "Hays Code") would not take effect until 1934, films made before the advent of the code were still concerned with morality as films could be subject to local film boards. What might play in Seattle would not be allowed in Peoria and so forth.
Colleen Moore's forte was the modern emancipated woman who remained a good girl at heart, an archetype known as the "virgin flapper". This was in contrast to rivals like Clara Bow who were more sexually expressive.
Why Be Good? is a snapshot of the Roaring 1920's with it's extensive party and nightclub sequences where liquor flows freely (despite Prohibition) and the predominance of jazz music.
Popular jazz musicians Phil Napoleon, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, and Eddie Lang are shown performing some of the 41 contemporary songs that make up the synchronized soundtrack.
The synchronized soundtrack combined with intertitles represents a hybrid of sound and silent conventions, which was not uncommon in the early sound era.
Colleen Moore was a style influencer with millions of women replicating her bobbed hairstyle. While at the apex of her film career, her movies seen by millions, Colleen Moore could not anticipate the change in her fortunes as a movie star.
In addition to the technological change of films to embrace sound to become full on talkies, there was shift in the culture regarding the flapper girl type of role Moore was most famous for.
The roaring 1920's came screeching to a halt with the stock market crash of 1929 and the advent of the Great Depression. The bubble had burst on that 1920's lifestyle and no one was in the mood for it.
Hollywood would hit upon a formula for escapist entertainment in the form of lavish musicals but the time of Colleen Moore's type of party girl was at an end.
After her film career, Moore maintained her wealth through astute investments, becoming a partner of Merrill Lynch. She later wrote a "how-to" book about investing in the stock market. So she did OK.
Moore had a passion for dollhouses throughout her life and helped design and curate The Colleen Moore Dollhouse, which has been a featured exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago since the early 1950s. The dollhouse measures 9 square feet and is seen by 1.5 million people annually.
But most of Colleen Moore's films have been lost to the ravages of time, turning literally to dust. And along with them the fame she attained making those movies.
Thanks to TCM.com for the historical background on this movie and it's star.
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