Proud Flesh (film)

Proud Flesh
Film still
Directed by	King Vidor
Written by	Harry Behn Agnes Christine Johnston
Based on	Proud Flesh by Lawrence Irving Rising
Starring	Eleanor Boardman Pat O'Malley Harrison Ford
Cinematography	John Arnold
Distributed by	Metro-Goldwyn
Release date	April 27, 1925 (1925-04-27)
Running time	70 minutes
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

Proud Flesh is a 1925 American silent comedy-drama film directed by King Vidor and starring Eleanor Boardman, Pat O'Malley, and Harrison Ford in a romantic triangle. ^[1]

Plot

A San Francisco earthquake orphan, Fernanda (Boardman) is adopted and raised as a gentlewoman by relatives in Spain. As a girl she is courted by Don Jaime (Ford), but spurns him and returns to her gauche relatives in California. There she falls in love with a young bathtub manufacturer, Pat (O’Malley). ^[2]

Cast

• Eleanor Boardman as Fernanda
• Pat O'Malley as Pat O'Malley
• Harrison Ford as Don Jaime
• Trixie Friganza as Mrs. McKee
• William J. Kelly as Mr. McKee
• Rosita Marstini as Vicente
• Sōjin Kamiyama as Wong
• Evelyn Sherman as Spanish Aunt
• George Nichols as Spanish Uncle
• Margaret Seddon as Mrs. O'Malley
• Lillian Elliott as Mrs. Casey
• Priscilla Bonner as San Francisco Girl
• Joan Crawford as Bit Part (uncredited)

Reception

Mordaunt Hall, critic for The New York Times , called the film "a bright entertainment in which there are a slight touch of heart interest and plenty of amusement." ^[3]

Theme

Vidor made this film, the last of a cycle of four films, in the years just following World War I. The isolationist outlook of many Americans with regard to war-ravaged Europe prompted Vidor to locate the sources of “sexual experimentation and marital triangles” and other social infidelities of the Jazz Age in the Old World. Decadent European manners were contrasted with the fundamentally commonsense virtues that Vidor believed would prevail in the United States. ^[4]

Preservation

Copies of the film are held by George Eastman House and the UCLA Film & Television Archive. ^[5]

Footnotes

1. "Progressive Silent Film List: Proud Flesh". silentera.com. Retrieved September 3, 2009.
2. Baxter 1976 p. 20: Baxter refers to O’Malley’s Pat as “manufacturer, not “plumber”
3. Hall, Mordaunt (April 14, 1925). "The Screen". The New York Times .
4. Durgnat and Simmon 1988 p. 54, p. 56
5. "The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: Proud Flesh". memory.loc.gov. Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved August 28, 2025.

References

• Baxter, John. 1976. King Vidor. Simon & Schuster, Inc. Monarch Film Studies. LOC Card Number 75-23544.
• Durgnat, Raymond and Simmon, Scott. 1988. King Vidor, American. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN   0-520-05798-8

External links

• Proud Flesh at IMDb
• Proud Flesh at the TCM Movie Database