THE BARKER d: George Fitzmaurice
by Andre Soares
The Barker (1928)
Direction: George Fitzmaurice. Screenplay: Benjamin Glazer; dialogue by Joseph Jackson; titles by Herman J. Mankiewicz, from Kenyon Nicholson’s 1927 play. Cast: Milton Sills, Dorothy Mackaill, Betty Compson, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Who does your hair? Milton Sills is envious of Dorothy Mackaill’s modern chic bob.
FATHER KNOWS LESS
Recently restored by UCLA, The Barker is one of those strange hybrids made at the dawn of the sound era: certain sequences have dialogue, others have only a background score and intertitles. The Barker, in fact, is stranger than most for the dialogue isn’t restricted to one reel or two. Characters start talking unexpectedly, only to go silent again a few scenes later. Besides its historical importance as one of those transitional curiosities, this B-movie melodrama produced with a mostly A-class talent has enough intriguing elements to keep viewers at least moderately entertained.
The basic plot, from Kenyon Nicholson’s 1927 play (remade twice during the talkie era), is inconsequential. A carnival barker (Milton Sills) does his best to ensure that his wet-behind-the-ears son (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) will become an attorney, all the while trying to prevent a tough carnival girl (Dorothy Mackaill) from eloping with the boy. The boy’s presence also incites the wrath of the barker’s girlfriend, the show’s hula dancer (Betty Compson). It doesn’t take long before all those flaming passions explode. (See synopsis.)
Frank Borzage could have turned The Barker into a grade-A romantic melodrama, while Erich von Stroheim or Tod Browning could have turned it into a deliciously seedy and decadent tragedy. But in George Fitzmaurice’s competent but uninspired hands, The Barker never quite reaches those lofty (or lowly) heights. Instead, it is an example of a well-crafted but superficial Hollywood product that keeps one’s interest without ever becoming truly moving or gripping.
Technical limitations may have been an issue. In a couple of pivotal talking scenes — e.g., the moment when the barker almost sends the hula dancer to the Great Beyond — the set up is incongruously static. That quite possibly happened because the actors were stuck in place so their voices could be picked up by the temperamental microphone.
Another of the film’s handicaps is non-technical. In the title (and biggest) role, Milton Sills is an effective presence in the silent scenes, but his lackluster line delivery makes him woefully inadequate in the talking sequences. In the few Sills vehicles I’ve seen — besides The Barker, The Sea Hawk and The Valley of the Giants come to mind — this tall, imposing actor shows a marked physical presence on screen but his acting has failed to leave much of an impression. (Edward G. Robinson would have been great as the strong-willed barker.)
A very young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., on the other hand, is surprisingly believable as the innocent boy in love, and so is Betty Compson (who received most of the raves when the film came out) as the scheming hula dancer.
But the film’s scene stealer is Dorothy Mackaill. Sporting a hairdo currently associated with chic butch lesbians, Mackaill’s tough, masculine vibes and her husky voice make her more alluring — and more modern — than any of the other performers in the film (and than most other performers of that period, including the revered Louise Brooks.) Without showiness or any exaggerated mannerisms typical of silent-film stars, the actress manages to convey both her character’s outward toughness and her vulnerable, sensitive core.
Additionally, even though Betty Compson is the one wearing skimpy clothes, it is a fully dressed Mackaill who has the film’s sexiest scene: While lying with Douglas Fairbanks in an orchard, she determinedly places his hand on her breasts. That moment is as effective today as it must have been nearly eight decades ago. (Indeed, the orchard scene was deemed obscene by several state censors in the U.S.)
Though hardly a great drama — the pat happy ending, in particular, is a major letdown — The Barker is a perfectly serviceable melodrama that brings to life a long-lost era, while offering the chance for modern audiences (hopefully this film will turn up on Turner Classic Movies one of these days) to discover a long-forgotten actress in top form.
Nifty Miller (Milton Sills), a barker at a dingy carnival, sends his son, Chris (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.), to law school because he wants a better life for his boy.
During a summer vacation, Chris shows up at the carnival. In order to accommodate his son, Nifty takes some time off from his romance with Carrie (Betty Compson), the hula dancer. Carrie is furious. She wants to get rid of the boy no matter the cost.
She hires a fellow carnival attraction, Lou (Dorothy Mackaill), a tough dame who suffers no fools, to seduce the young and innocent Chris. The seduction works, except that the experienced Lou also falls for Chris’ youthful charms.
The young couple want to get married, but Nifty is adamant that Lou should leave his boy alone. Chris, however, stands up to his father — even after getting punched to the ground. He and Lou elope, though before leaving the carnival Lou indignantly (and inexplicably) tells Nifty that Carrie had paid her to seduce Chris.
The barker goes berserk. He attempts to strangle Carrie, but is prevented from committing murder by his fellow carnival players. He turns to drinking instead, and disappears.
Time passes. Then one day, Nifty finds himself in the same town as the carnival. Also there are Lou and Chris, attorney at law. Nifty returns to his barker post, and makes peace with both Carrie and Chris.
Restoration:
The restored print of The Barker is from a 16mm negative that was blown up to 35mm.
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UCLA preservationist Robert Gitt explained that the sound disc for the last reel was found broken in three pieces. A specialist had to glue it together, and sound technicians later managed to erase a loud cracking noise made by the damaged disc. (Initially, The Barker was shown as a Vitaphone sound film, i.e., the sound was played on a disc that matched the action on screen.)
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A freeze-frame showing a closeup of Milton Sills is used in the film’s last few seconds so as to replace that last bit of decomposed film.
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Until recently, The Barker was only (and rarely) shown as a silent. Since much of the film has no intertitles to convey the dialogue, audiences were left quite confused. Additionally, the available prints had severe damage caused by splicing together bits of film.
The Barker – The Play:
The Barker, written by Columbia University professor of dramatic art Kenyon Nicholson, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Jan 18, 1927. Directed by Priestly Morrison, the stage version starred Walter Huston (as the barker), Claudette Colbert (as the girl), Norman Foster (as the boy), and Eleanor Winslow Williams (as the hula dancer). The play ran for 221 performances. Source: Internet Broadway Database.
Production:
The Barker was shot as a silent, and had talking sequences added afterwards. One particularly unusual aspect of the use of sound in The Barker is that, unlike most other part-talkies, the background music continues playing during the scenes with dialogue.
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Even though Dorothy Mackaill had fully lost her Yorkshire accent by the time she was featured in The Barker, her character makes a point of explaining that she was born in England.
Cast:
Betty Compson, whose career had hit hard times in the late 1920s, was reportedly cast in The Barker after director George Fitzmaurice saw her stuck in a traffic jam along Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.
In "The Girl Who Came Back," columnist Adela Rogers St. Johns wrote, "If you didn’t see The Barker, you missed a great moment in screen history. The first-night audience in Los Angeles greeted that comeback of Compson’s with cheers that must have been very dear to her."
Compson was "considered" for the Best Actress Academy Award, as no official nominations were announced that year. (The 1928-29 period covered films released in the Los Angeles area between Aug. 1, 1928, and July 31, 1929.)
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The Time obit for Milton Sills, who died of a heart attack at age 48 following a tennis match with his wife, actress Doris Kenyon, at their home in Brentwood on Sept. 15, 1930, described Sills as "famed cinemactor, intelligent player of stupid two-fisted roles (Men of Steel, Hard Boiled Haggerty, The Barker), onetime Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Chicago, onetime actor of melodrama with a kerosene troupe in Ohio, onetime Broadway idol, all his life a student of literature and music."
The Time obit also quotes Sills as saying that "I went on the stage . . . because I thought it would give me more leisure to read. . . . What I would rather have done than anything else is write."
The Barkerwas remade as Hoop-la (1933) at Fox. This later version was directed by Frank Lloyd, and it starred Clara Bow as the girl, Preston Foster as the barker, and Richard Cromwell as the boy. The minor role of Carrie, the hula dancer, was played by Minna Gombell. The adaptation was written by Bradley King and Joseph Moncure March, assisted by Benjamin Glazer.
A bowdlerized, musicalized, color version at Twentieth Century-Fox, Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe (1945), was adapted for the screen and directed by George Seaton. Set in the musical theater world, it starred Betty Grable and Dick Haymes. In a supporting role, William Gaxton played the boy’s father. Beatrice Kaye played a variation on the Betty Compson role.
Review Snippets:
"There are four really human portraits in this none too weighty story, and Milton Sills and Dorothy Mackaill make the most of their opportunities in conflicting rôles. Mr. Sills is for the first time in many a moon quite restrained in his acting. He impersonates Nifty Miller, the silver-tongued, but occasionally hoarse-throated barker, who is supposed to be able to give his colleagues cards and spades in this line of endeavor. It is a rôle that one would imagine would be well suited to the audible stretches, but, through no fault of Mr. Sills, the sound device did not add one whit to the effect last evening. In fact it was a relief when the scenes were silent, accompanied by the now much despised subtitle." Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times.
"George Fitzmaurice directs intelligently and movingly the consequences of a circus-man’s proud affection for his son and his fear that circusing will spoil the boy’s chance of amounting to something. Highly admired as a stageplay two seasons ago, the story by Kenyon Nicholson is better than most screen-stories; and Milton Sills, the barker, is convincing even when he chokes his girl friend (Betty Compson) for contriving the seduction of his son by one of the carnival ladies (Dorothy Mackaill). … And the hitherto silent voice of Milton Sills has been surpassed, in its recording quality, only by that of Lionel Barrymore. Time, Dec. 17, 1928.
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According to Donald Richie’s commentary a Criterion Collection DVD, “The Barker” was the inspiration for Yasujiro Ozu’s excellent 1934 silent movie, “A Story of Floating Weeds”. Ozu remade his version of the story in a second film entitled simply “Floating Weeds”(1959)
Perhaps these are not, technically speaking, remakes of “The Barker” but I thought they deserved mention here.