The Bad Man (1923 film)

Last updated

The Bad Man
Directed by Edwin Carewe
Based onThe Bad Man (play)
by Porter Emerson Browne
Produced byEdwin Carewe
Starring Holbrook Blinn
Jack Mulhall
Walter McGrail
Enid Bennett
Cinematography Sol Polito
Production
company
Edwin Carewe Productions
Distributed by Associated First National Pictures
Release date
  • October 8, 1923 (1923-10-08)
Running time
70 minutes (7-reels)
CountryUnited States
Languages Silent
English intertitles

The Bad Man is a 1923 American silent Western film with prominently featured satirical and comedic elements. The film was directed by Edwin Carewe, who produced it for his own motion picture company and adapted the scenario from the play of the same name by Porter Emerson Browne. The play had opened at Broadway's Comedy Theatre in August 1920, and ran for a very successful 342 performances, closing in June 1921. The film version, from Edwin Carewe Productions, was released by Associated First National Pictures on October 8, 1923. The title role was played by the star of the play's Broadway and touring productions, Holbrook Blinn, and the other leading parts filled by Jack Mulhall, Walter McGrail and Enid Bennett. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Plot background

The titular character, a Mexican outlaw named Pancho Lopez, bore an undisguised resemblance, both in name and personality, to Pancho Villa, a pre-eminent Mexican Revolutionary general. Villa was in the news before and during the play's run and his assassination on July 20, two-and-a-half months before the film's release, appeared in all the headlines. Nine years earlier, a supporting actress in The Bad Man (Teddy Sampson) had played one of Pancho Villa's two sisters in the 1914 Mutual Film feature The Life of General Villa .

Plot

The plotline has Lopez (Holbrook Blinn) and his band of outlaws living from the proceeds gained as a result of theft and confiscation of property. One of the victims is rancher Gilbert Jones (Jack Mulhall), whose cattle losses are pushing him to the edge of bankruptcy.

Lopez prepares to deprive Jones of the remainder of his cattle and valuables, and kidnap his beloved former sweetheart (Enid Bennett), who is now married to heartless loan shark Morgan Pell (Walter McGrail). Lopez recognizes Jones as the man who, years earlier, saved his life. Determined to show his gratitude, the powerful bandit robs the rapacious bank which, in cahoots with Pell, cheats and exploits the locals, and gives the money to Jones. When Pell arrives to foreclose on Jones' oil-rich ranch, Lopez, addressing him as "Mr. Loan-Fish", inquires of him whether women in his country inherit their late husbands' wealth, and then, since he considers the despicable corrupter to be an unworthy opponent, tells his top aide to shoot him (intertitle: "Pedro, I do not hunt rabbits—you keel heem"), thus freeing his widow to marry Jones. Finally, he returns all of Jones' stolen cattle and bids the happy couple farewell, thanking them for making him feel good.

Cast

Critical reception

A year before Mordaunt Hall would receive a byline as The New York Times'  first official film critic, an anonymous reviewer, writing for the paper in October 1923, reported that "Blinn seems to take the same Keen enjoyment in playing the part for the screen as he did before the footlights. His is a lesson for motion picture players, for he is never at a loss for a smirk, a smile, a look of surprise, threatening gestures, or interest in what is going on around him. Blinn's hands and feet appear to suit the very expression of his darkened countenance." [4] A writer for Spokane's Spokesman-Review also extolled Blinn's acting and described the picture as "head and shoulders above the average screen performance. The suspense is kept taut enough to snap at any time, the comedy is scintillant, the acting of Holbrook Blinn superb." [5] In examining the 86-year-old film in 2009, critic Ojos de Aguila noted that "Lopez is an allegorical stand-in for the mysterious and appealing side of Mexico and represents the complex tension of attraction and repulsion that marked relations between the United States and Mexico. It is not an irony that his very repulsive nature—the ability to kill—is also the source of his nobleness, albeit a naturalistic and primitive form of nobility." [6]

Later versions

Holbrook Blinn died in June 1928, at the dawn of the sound film era, following complications in the aftermath of a horse-riding accident and, in his September 6, 1930 review of the sound remake, Los Angeles Times'  Philip K. Scherer noted that "Porter Emerson Browne's opera bouffe, The Bad Man , is now a talking picture. With Walter Huston in the part Holbrook Blinn would doubtless have taken had he lived, the film opened yesterday at Warner Brothers Downtown Theater." [7] Produced by First National/Vitaphone Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Pictures, and directed by Clarence G. Badger, the remake starred, in addition to Huston as Pancho Lopez, Dorothy Revier as Ruth Pell [Mrs. Morgan Pell], James Rennie as Gilbert Jones and Sidney Blackmer as Morgan Pell. In line with common practice during the early years of sound film production, foreign-language versions were simultaneously initiated, with the Spanish-dialogue entry, El hombre malo, directed by Roberto E. Guzmán (actors and staging) and William C. McGann (technical set-ups), spotlighting bi-lingual star Antonio Moreno as Pancho Lopez, while the French-language variant, Lopez, le bandit, helmed by bi-lingual director Jean Daumery, had French actor Geymond Vital portraying Pancho Lopez.

A second remake, still keeping The Bad Man title, adapted by Wells Root and directed by Richard Thorpe for MGM in 1941, starred Wallace Beery, who had already portrayed Pancho Villa in the studio's top-grossing 1934 production, Viva Villa! , as Pancho Lopez, Laraine Day as Lucia Pell [same as the name given to Mrs. Morgan Pell in the Broadway play], Ronald Reagan as Gilbert Jones and Tom Conway as Morgan Pell. In keeping with Beery's by-now-established trademark broad acting style, a greater emphasis was placed on humor, to the extent that the 1941 version is frequently categorized as a comedy. Furthermore, according to a number of film sources, Beery had still additional experience in his portrayal of Villa, having played the part not only in Viva Villa!, but purportedly also seventeen years earlier, in the 1917 serial, Patria , produced by William Randolph Hearst and starring dancer Irene Castle in the title role. [8] The incomplete restored version of Patria does not confirm, however, the presence of either Beery or the character of Pancho Villa.

Between the release of the 1930 and 1941 versions, there was also a semi-disguised one in 1937, West of Shanghai , directed by John Farrow for First National/Warner Bros., which retained most plot elements from Porter Emerson Browne's play, but restructured the setting, character names and other details. The bandit leader was now a Chinese warlord, General Fang, as seen through the image of Boris Karloff who had already portrayed the villainous Oriental mastermind, Fu Manchu, in 1932's The Mask of Fu Manchu and would play the Chinese sleuth, Mr. Wong, Detective , in a series of five films directed by William Nigh for poverty row Monogram Pictures, starting a few months after West of Shanghai. The remaining characters also ran true to pattern, with Beverly Roberts as Mrs. Gordon Creed, the Mrs. Morgan Pell prototype, now named Jane, Gordon Oliver as the Gilbert Jones-like Jim Hallett who, years earlier, had saved General Fang's life, and Ricardo Cortez as the smooth-talking, venal-minded, Morgan Pell-styled Gordon Creed.

Preservation

With no prints of The Bad Man located in any film archives, it is considered a lost film. [9]

Related Research Articles

<i>Viva Villa!</i> 1934 film by Howard Hawks, Jack Conway, William A. Wellman

Viva Villa! is a 1934 American pre-Code film directed by Jack Conway and starring Wallace Beery as Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa. The screenplay was written by Ben Hecht, adapted from the 1933 book Viva Villa! by Edgecumb Pinchon and O. B. Stade. The film was shot on location in Mexico and produced by David O. Selznick. There was uncredited assistance with the script by Howard Hawks, James Kevin McGuinness, and Howard Emmett Rogers. Hawks and William A. Wellman were also uncredited directors on the film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wallace Beery</span> American actor (1885–1949)

Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American film and stage actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill (1930) opposite Marie Dressler, as General Director Preysing in Grand Hotel (1932), as Long John Silver in Treasure Island (1934), as Pancho Villa in Viva Villa! (1934), and his title role in The Champ (1931), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 films during a 36-year career. His contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer stipulated in 1932 that he would be paid $1 more than any other contract player at the studio. This made Beery the highest-paid film actor in the world during the early 1930s. He was the brother of actor Noah Beery and uncle of actor Noah Beery Jr.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pancho Villa</span> Mexican revolutionary general and politician (1878–1923)

Francisco "Pancho" Villa was a Mexican revolutionary and general in the Mexican Revolution. He was a key figure in the revolutionary movement that forced out President Porfirio Díaz and brought Francisco I. Madero to power in 1911. When Madero was ousted by a coup led by General Victoriano Huerta in February 1913, Villa joined the anti-Huerta forces in the Constitutionalist Army led by Venustiano Carranza. After the defeat and exile of Huerta in July 1914, Villa broke with Carranza. Villa dominated the meeting of revolutionary generals that excluded Carranza and helped create a coalition government. Emiliano Zapata and Villa became formal allies in this period. Like Zapata, Villa was strongly in favor of land reform, but did not implement it when he had power. At the height of his power and popularity in late 1914 and early 1915, the U.S. considered recognizing Villa as Mexico's legitimate authority.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gilbert Roland</span> American actor (1905–1994)

Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso, known professionally as Gilbert Roland, was a Mexican-born American film and television actor whose career spanned seven decades from the 1920s until the 1980s. He was twice nominated for the Golden Globe Award in 1952 and 1964 and inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Carewe</span> Native American actor and director (1883–1940

Edwin Carewe was a Native American motion picture director, actor, producer, and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holbrook Blinn</span> American actor

Holbrook Blinn was an American stage and film actor.

<i>And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself</i> 2003 American television film by Bruce Beresford

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself is a 2003 American made-for-television western film for HBO in partnership with City Entertainment and starring Antonio Banderas as Pancho Villa, directed by Bruce Beresford, written by Larry Gelbart and produced by Joshua D. Maurer, Mark Gordon, and Larry Gelbart. The cast also includes Alan Arkin, Jim Broadbent, Michael McKean, Eion Bailey, and Alexa Davalos.

<i>The Bad Man</i> (1941 film) 1941 film by Richard Thorpe

The Bad Man is a 1941 American western film starring Wallace Beery and featuring Lionel Barrymore, Laraine Day, and Ronald Reagan. The movie was written by Wells Root from the 1920 Porter Emerson Browne play of the same name and directed by Richard Thorpe. The film is a remake of the 1923 silent version and the 1930 remake starring Walter Huston. The 1941 supporting cast includes Tom Conway and Chill Wills.

Riders of Death Valley is a 1941 American Western film serial from Universal Pictures. It was a high budget serial with an all-star cast led by Dick Foran and Buck Jones. Ford Beebe and Ray Taylor directed. It also features Lon Chaney Jr. in a supporting role as a villainous henchman as well as Noah Beery Jr., Charles Bickford, Guinn "Big Boy" Williams, Monte Blue, Roy Barcroft, Richard Alexander and Glenn Strange.

<i>The Bad Man</i> (1930 film) 1930 film

The Bad Man is a 1930 American Pre-Code Western film starring Walter Huston which was produced and released by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. The movie is based on Porter Emerson Browne's 1920 play of the same name and is a sound remake of the 1923 silent version of the same name. The film stars Walter Huston and features Dorothy Revier, Sidney Blackmer and James Rennie.

<i>West of Shanghai</i> 1937 film

West of Shanghai is a 1937 American adventure film directed by John Farrow and starring Boris Karloff as a Chinese warlord. It is based on the 1920 Porter Emerson Browne play The Bad Man. Three other films, all titled The Bad Man, are also based on the same play:

<i>Zander the Great</i> 1925 film

Zander the Great is a 1925 American silent comedy drama film directed by George W. Hill, in his first directing role for MGM. The film stars Marion Davies. The screenplay by Frances Marion is based upon the Edward Salisbury Field 1923 play of the same name.

Porter Emerson Browne was an American playwright, born Beverly, Massachusetts.

The Bad Man may refer to:

<i>Girl of the Rio</i> 1932 film

Girl of the Rio is a 1932 American pre-Code RKO musical film starred Dolores del Río and Leo Carrillo. Directed by Herbert Brenon, the screenplay was written by Elizabeth Meehan and Louis Stevens, based on the play, The Dove by Willard Mack, which was itself based on a magazine article by Gerald Beaumont. The film is a remake of the 1927 silent film, The Dove, starring Norma Talmadge.

The Bad Man is a 1920 three-act comedy play by American playwright Porter Emerson Browne. The Broadway production at the Comedy Theatre ran for 342 performances beginning August 30, 1920. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1920–1921.

Pancho López may refer to:

<i>King of the Bandits</i> 1947 film directed by Christy Cabanne

King of the Bandits is a 1947 American Western film, directed by Christy Cabanne. It stars Gilbert Roland, Angela Greene, and Chris-Pin Martin, and was released on November 8, 1947.

<i>Madonna of the Streets</i> (1924 film) 1924 film

Madonna of the Streets is a 1924 American drama film directed by Edwin Carewe and written by Frank Griffin, Frederic Hatton, and Fanny Hatton. It is based on the 1904 novel The Ragged Messenger by W. B. Maxwell. The film stars Alla Nazimova, Milton Sills, Claude Gillingwater, Courtenay Foote, Wallace Beery, and Anders Randolf. The film was released on October 19, 1924, by First National Pictures.

Pancho Villa was famous during the Mexican Revolution and has remained so, holding a fairly mythical reputation in Mexican consciousness, but not officially recognized in Mexico until long after his death. As the "Centaur from the North" he was considered a threat to property and order on both sides of the border, feared, and revered, as a modern Robin Hood.

References

  1. ↑ newspaper ad in Easton, Pennsylvania for a screening of The Bad Man (Easton Daily Free Press, June 20, 1924)
  2. ↑ newspaper ad in Sonora, California for a screening of The Bad Man (The Union Democrat, February 28, 1925)
  3. ↑ color poster advertising "THE BAD MAN   the laughable thriller by Porter Emerson Browne with HOLBROOK BLINN and an all star cast"
  4. ↑ "THE SCREEN". The New York Times review of The Bad Man (October 9, 1923)
  5. ↑ "THE BAD MAN AT RITZ SCORES; Holbrook Blinn Lifts Clever Play Far Above Usual Run of Photo Dramas" (The Spokesman-Review, June 29, 1924)
  6. ↑ "The Bad Man (1923)" Ojos de Aguila Film Review (November 18, 2009) Archived December 18, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ↑ Scheuer, Philip K. "Walter Huston Acts Bad Man; Traditional Role Filled by New Favorite Play Done in Talkie Form at Downtown Conteniences of Plot Seen in Version" (Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1930)
  8. ↑ Soares, Andre. "On TCM: Wallace Beery Movies" (Alt Film Guide, August 17, 2013)
  9. ↑ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: The Bad Man
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.