The saddest thing about The Red Mill is that it never got a sound adaption so the Victor Herbert-Henry Blossom score was never heard. Watching it I was hoping at least to hear some of the songs on the sound track. But there was nary a note of Herbert's heard in the film.
The Red Mill was a vehicle for the famous vaudeville team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery and ran in the 1906-07 season for 274 performances. The score consisted of such Herbert classics as In Old New York and Every Day Is Lady's Day With Me and Moonbeams. Purportedly there was a planned remake of it that was shelved that would have starred Laurel and Hardy. It might have been a great film.
This version has the plot somewhat altered to fit Marion Davies who plays a Dutch barmaid who falls in love with visiting Irishman Owen Moore. It's a good thing that Roscoe Arbuckle directing under the pseudonym William Goodrich was in charge. He saw that Davies got some nice comedy bits at which she was so much better at than some of the heavy dramatics that William Randolph Hearst her patron and paramour saw as her strength.
MGM spent a lot of money designing some great sets including a Dutch mill where Davies spends the climax trying to elude the villain with Moore trying to rescue her. It's similar to the rather outlandish and funny climax in the rollicking film Many Rivers To Cross that starred Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker with Davies her own worst enemy in the rescue.
The mill itself is very similar to the one in the Frankenstein movies over at Universal. It's quite remarkable even for today.
I'm disappointed in not hearing any Victor Herbert music, but Marion Davies is quite good in this film.
The Red Mill was a vehicle for the famous vaudeville team of Fred Stone and David Montgomery and ran in the 1906-07 season for 274 performances. The score consisted of such Herbert classics as In Old New York and Every Day Is Lady's Day With Me and Moonbeams. Purportedly there was a planned remake of it that was shelved that would have starred Laurel and Hardy. It might have been a great film.
This version has the plot somewhat altered to fit Marion Davies who plays a Dutch barmaid who falls in love with visiting Irishman Owen Moore. It's a good thing that Roscoe Arbuckle directing under the pseudonym William Goodrich was in charge. He saw that Davies got some nice comedy bits at which she was so much better at than some of the heavy dramatics that William Randolph Hearst her patron and paramour saw as her strength.
MGM spent a lot of money designing some great sets including a Dutch mill where Davies spends the climax trying to elude the villain with Moore trying to rescue her. It's similar to the rather outlandish and funny climax in the rollicking film Many Rivers To Cross that starred Robert Taylor and Eleanor Parker with Davies her own worst enemy in the rescue.
The mill itself is very similar to the one in the Frankenstein movies over at Universal. It's quite remarkable even for today.
I'm disappointed in not hearing any Victor Herbert music, but Marion Davies is quite good in this film.