Credited cast: | |||
Adolphe Menjou | ... | Prince Lucio de Rimanez | |
Ricardo Cortez | ... | Geoffrey Tempest | |
Carol Dempster | ... | Mavis Claire | |
Lya De Putti | ... | Princess Olga Godovsky | |
Ivan Lebedeff | ... | Amiel | |
Marcia Harris | ... | The Landlady | |
Lawrence D'Orsay | ... | Lord Elton | |
Nellie Savage | ... | The Dancer | |
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Dorothy Hughes | ... | Mavis's Chum |
Josephine Dunn | ... | Undetermined Secondary Role | |
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Dorothy Nourse | ... | Undetermined Secondary Role |
Jean Fenwick | ... | Undetermined Secondary Role (as Jeanne Morgan) | |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
Nina Quartero | ... | Vamp |
Geoffrey, a young and impoverished writer, is desperately in love with Mavis, who lives at his boardinghouse and is also pursuing a writing career. Unable to marry her because of his poverty, in his anger he curses God for abandoning him. Soon Geoffrey meets Prince Lucio de Rimanez, a wealthy, urbane gentleman who informs Geoffrey that he has inherited a fortune, but that he must place himself in the Prince's hands in order to enjoy the fruits of his inheritance. What Geoffrey doesn't know is that Prince Lucio is actually Satan, who is using Geoffrey as an experiment to show God that he can corrupt anybody. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com
This movie is available from Grapevine Video. Only two of the three films that Griffith did for Paramount exist, the only being "Sally of the Sawdust", that co-starred W.C. Fields. This one has Adolpe Menjou making an interesting entrance and exit as a well-dressed Prince of Darkness. Top billed, he actually has less footage than Ricardo Cortez or Carol Dempster, the actress Griffith really tried to make a star; she starred in almost all 1920's Griffith films up to this point and would vanish from the film scene much more effectively than Garbo would or could after this. Lillian Gish she wasn't. Actually, her pretty but not very beautiful looks help with the story of Cortez being dazzled with the fetes that Menjou takes him to. He actually even marries somebody else, played by Lya De Puti. The plot with this is somewhat ridiculous. However, Griffith's cross-cutting of the fetes and Dempster's loneliness is very effective. I really liked the showing of newspaper slowly covering the meal that Cortez was supposed to show up to and of she pretending he was there. (Echos of Chaplin's similar scene in "The Gold Rush".) I had much more fun watching "America" and "Isn't Life Wonderful", two other and the better known Griffith-Dempster films. But enjoyed Dempster more in this one.