In 1919, as the Spanish Flu continued to infect and kill millions, the world tried to recover from World War I. After spending six months at the Paris Peace Conference, President Woodrow Wilson returned to the U.S. and launched an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to bring the United States into the newly formed League of Nations. On September 25th, while barnstorming across the nation in support of the League, a physically exhausted Wilson collapsed and never truly recovered. On October 2nd, a stroke left him partially paralyzed and blind in one eye.
Even before Wilson’s physical collapse, the U.S. population had reason to feel uncertain about the future. On January 6th, the wildly popular Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep. Before his death, Roosevelt had been widely expected to run for President in 1920 and hopefully return the U.S. to the peace and prosperity…
You really can’t talk about film melodrama without talking about Cecil B. DeMille.
From a modern perspective, we tend to dismiss DeMille as simply being the director of the fun but undeniably campy version of The Ten Commandments that pops up on TV every Easter. Those of us who know our Oscar history are usually quick to roll our eyes over the fact that DeMille’s film The Greatest Show On Earth won best picture over High Noon, The Quiet Man, Moulin Rogue, and such unnominated films as Singin’ In The Rain and The Bad and the Beautiful. For those who know the history of the blacklist, DeMille is a convenient villain — a director who supported the blacklist while other more critically admired directors like John Huston and John Ford spoke out against it. In fact, it sometimes seems that the only positive thing you hear about Cecil B. DeMille is that, when he showed up playing himself in Sunset Boulevard, he came across as being a nice man.
But, when you actually study the history of American film, it becomes obvious that — even if he’ll never be a critical favorite — Cecil B. DeMille is one of the most important figures in the history of American film. Starting in 1913, DeMille directed movies for over 43 years. In many ways, he was one of the first directors to truly understand how to best exploit the commercial possibilities of a good melodrama. DeMille understood that audiences enjoyed watching sin at the start and during the middle of a film as long as a healthy dose of salvation was present at the end. That salvation allowed audiences to embrace the sin without having to deal with guilt. With his early silent films, DeMille established the formula that is still used in cinematic melodrama to this day.
Consider, for example, DeMille’s 1922 film Manslaughter.
Manslaughter tells the story of Lydia (Leatrice Joy), a wealthy young woman who — much like me — likes to drive fast and dance. As we’re told in one of the opening title cards, “Her proud boast is that life has never stopped her!” When we first meet Lydia, she’s in her car and she’s racing alongside a train. When a cop pulls her over for speeding, Lydia nonchalantly bribes him with an expensive bracelet. (Myself, I always just cry whenever I get stopped for speeding. It’s just as effective and far less expensive.)
Lydia has a boyfriend, a rather self-righteous district attorney named Daniel O’Bannon (played by Thomas Meighan, a familiar face to those of us who enjoy silent melodrama). We are informed that Daniel loves Lydia for the “girl he thinks she could be, not for the girl she is.” Apparently, that’s meant to be romantic. I don’t know — if a guy ever said that to me, I’d probably slap him. And then I’d get my boyfriend to beat him up…
As Daniel watches Lydia drink and dance her way through a decadent Christmas celebration (which is captured, in loving and fascinating detail, by DeMille), he tells her, “Don’t you think you better put on the brakes before life does it for you?”
“Modern girls don’t sit home and knit!” Lydia replies. (You go, Lydia!)
Eventually, Daniel finds himself musing that “we’re no different than Rome.” He then proceeds to visualize all of the party goers taking part in a massive Roman orgy… (Daniel also visualizes what is reportedly one of the first same sex kisses to ever appear in a mainstream American film.)
Anyway, as you might be able to guess from the title, Lydia eventually kills someone with her reckless driving and guess who ends up prosecuting her in court? None other than Daniel, who links Lydia’s irresponsible behavior to — you guessed it — the collapse of ancient Rome. While Lydia find salvation in prison, Daniel starts to embrace the very sin that he originally railed against…
Manslaughter has got a reputation for being one of DeMille’s weaker silent films. It’s definitely heavy-handed in its moralizing and Meighan, as good as he may have been in films like The Racket, is actually pretty boring here. However, I still enjoyed Manslaughter, or I should say that I enjoyed the scenes in Manslaughter that unapologetically celebrated the decadence of Lydia’s life. Leatrice Joy gives a fun and likable performance in those scenes and how can you not enjoy watching people get wild in the 1920s?
Originally released in 1928 and produced by Howard Hughes, The Racket was one of the first films to ever be nominated for an Oscar. It was also one of the first films to miss out on its chance to claim Oscar glory as the first statuette for Best Picture was given to the producers of Wings.
Like many films that were made in during the silent era, The Racket subsequently sunk into obscurity and, for several decades, it was considered to be a lost film. After the death of Howard Hughes, the last remaining copy of The Racket was discovered hidden away in his vast film collection. This print has been preserved at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. After several years of restoration, the film made its first appearance on TCM in 2004 and it has since been frequently broadcast on that network. That’s how I first saw it way back in 2012.
Based on a play by Bartlett Cormack, The Racket is a gangster film. Nick Scarsi (played by Louis Wolheim) is a powerful and politcally-connected bootlegger. He’s pursued by one of the few honest cops in town, Captain McQuigg (Thomas Meighan). When McQuigg proves to be incorruptible, Scarsi uses his political influence to get McQuigg transferred to a precinct in the suburbs. However, when Scarsi’s younger brother is arrested for a hit-and-run in McQuigg’s new precinct, the captain uses the incident to launch a complex plan to bring down both Scarsi and the corrupt public officials that allow him to run the city.
Seen today, The Racket is an almost quaintly traditional gangster film. According to the film’s title cards, everyone in the film speaks in hard-boiled slang and the characters — from the honest cop to the cynical reporters to the nightclub singer played by Marie Prevost — will all seem very familiar to anyone who has ever seen a classic Warner Bros. crime film. That said, The Racket is still a lot of fun to watch and director Lewis Milestone keeps the story moving at a good pace. At the very least, it’s interesting to see a gangster film that was actually made during the gangster era. Nick Scarsi was based on Al Capone and, perhaps not surprisingly, the film was banned in Chicago when it was originally released.
The film shows up frequently on TCM and it’s also available on YouTube. And it can be watched below!
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer 
Through the Shattered Lens 