SCARLET PAGES (First National Pictures, 1930) directed by Ray Enright, is not a newspaper story but more of a rise to success focusing on a woman with a past living very much in the present. Starring Elsie Ferguson (1883-1961), a prominent stage actress with some silent movies (1917-1925) to her name, SCARLET PAGES not only ranks the limited few to have survived intact but her only venture in a talkie.
Opening in 1911, the story deals with a 17-year-old girl (unseen) abandoning her illegitimate baby girl to the Good Samaritan Orphanage, giving up all legal rights to her child. Move forward 1930. Mary Bancroft (Elsie Ferguson), an accomplished attorney, thanks to the kindness of fellow lawyer John Remington (John Halliday). Mary refuses to marry John, who loves her, for reasons of her own. While dining together at the Golden Slipper Cabaret, Mary and John enjoy the song and dance performance by Nora Mason (Marian Nixon), a young girl engaged to Robert "Bob" Lawrence (Grant Withers). The following day, Mr. Barnes (Neely Edwards) brings forth a client to Mary's office who happens to be Robert Lawrence who wants her to take the case of Nora Mason, arrested the previous night for shooting her father, Henry Mason (Willard Mack). Gathering enough information from both Nora and her mother (Charlotte Walker), Mary agrees to take the case to court, believing Nora (a girl with an attitude) to be innocent and shielding somebody. Other members in the cast include Daisy Belmore (Isabel Kennedy); William B. Davidson (Gregory Jackson); Jean Bary (Carlotta Cortez) and Fred Kelsey (James Murphy).
What makes this rarely seen early talkie worth viewing is Elsie Ferguson. Her voice, diction and theater training were made for talkies, which makes it disappointing that she didn't star in other films during that period, whether they be remakes of her silent movies or screen adaptations to her famous plays. With the exception of her speaking voice, it's uncanny how much Marian Nixon resembles that of the youthful Myrna Loy (then under studio contract to Warner Brothers/First National Pictures). Aside from her slightly weak voice, she gets to sing and perform with the chorus to the catchy tune of "I'm Getting Somewhere." John Halliday, better known for father figure roles in later years, gives an extremely likable performance here. The courtroom scenes are well staged, mostly divided from scene to scene by newspaper headline clippings of the trial, with DeWitt Jennings as the presiding judge. Like many films from this era as testing ground for either silent screen or theatrically trained performers, SCARLET PAGES moves swiftly and gets to the point of purpose without losing the attention of its audience for most of its 63 minutes.
Available on DVD format, SCARLET PAGES turns up sparingly on cable television's Turner Classic Movies. Once seen scheduled in the TCM program guide, make it a point to see it or wait nearly a decade for it to be shown again, if ever. (***)
