MGM silent. 64 minutes (6 reels).

US release: 2/23/25.
DVD release: 1/19/10.

Cast: Norma Shearer, Malcolm McGregor, George K. Arthur, Fred Esmelton, Dale Fuller, Lew Harvey, Betty Morrissey, Gwen Lee, Aryel Houwink. (Joan is uncredited as Shearer's onscreen double.)

Credits:  Adapted by Alice D.G. Miller from the story by Adela Rogers St. Johns. Director: Monta Bell. Camera: Andre Barlatier. Editor: Ralph Dawson. Art Director: Cedric Gibbons.

Plot Summary:

Norma Shearer was very much an up-and-coming young actress when she played a dual role in this MGM drama. Molly, a girl of the streets (Shearer), is getting out of reform school at the same time that Florence (also Shearer) is graduating from a finishing school. While at a dance hall, Molly has a run-in with a lusty young man, but she is rescued by David, a young inventor whose workshop is nearby (Malcolm McGregor). As a result, Molly becomes David's friend, and she is the one who insists that David sell his invention -- a safecracking device -- to the banking industry instead of to a gang of crooks who have offered him a percentage of their take. Through the bankers, David meets Florence, and soon both she and Molly are in love with him. David believes that Florence is the right girl for him, but when she discovers the existence of Molly, she insists that Molly was first. Molly, realizing that Florence would be a better match for David, returns to Chunky, a young man who, like her, comes from the street (George K. Arthur). Shearer's stand-in for this picture was a very ambitious young starlet by the name of Lucille LeSueur -- better known later on as Joan Crawford. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Notes:

• Though uncredited, and only glimpsed briefly, this is Joan's film debut, as Norma Shearer's double.

• Background actor Margaret Reid wrote two pieces for Picture-Play (May and July, 1925) about the making of Lady, writing that filming occurred on MGM stage No. 7, where “a shoddy little dance hall and bar” was built to replicate a New York City Bowery nightclub. Some of the background actors were reportedly recruited from real dance halls “in the less respectable part of Los Angeles.” (AFI)

• When the film played NYC's Capitol theater, the musical overture was Tchaikovsky's "Fourth Symphony"; other music included "Endless Waters," by Robert C. Bruce.

American Film Institute page

IMDb page

Movies Silently review

Turner Classic Movies page

Los Angeles Times (1925):

The make-up of the dance hall girl is something new for Miss Shearer, especially as it is rather exaggerated. She has imbued the character with a great deal of sympathy.

Mordaunt Hall in the New York Times (March 3, 1925):

Although "Lady of the Night," the current film attraction at the Capitol, is interesting, it is not to be classed with many artistic efforts and certainly not to be compared with Charles Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris." or Seastrom's "He Who Gets Slapped." Throughout this production Monta Bell, the director, has manifested a penchant for exaggeration, and he also causes some of his characters to be hopelessly ignorant of elementary social amenities.

Norma Shearer plays a dual rôle. She is seen as Florence, the daughter of a wealthy and powerful financier, and also as Molly, a frequenter of crooks' resorts, who lives in a hovel. The outstanding note in this picture is in having the two girls fall in love with the same man—David, a young inventor, whose workshop is adjacent to Molly's flat. The dénouement of the story is not particularly original. One might almost say that it is obvious.

Miss Shearer does the best acting she has ever done. She is splendid as Molly, who wears weird clothes and has a flair for imitation aigrette feathers. She is comely, sympathetic and attractively gowned as Florence.

George K. Arthur, who played the rôle of the Boy in "The Salvation Hunters," also gives an efficient performance, but his portrayal of stupidity and ignorance is hardly in keeping with other inclinations of the character. Some men have strange ideas when it comes to dressing, but the suit worn by Oscar (Mr. Arthur) would be laughed at even in remote corners of the Bowery. The coat is an exaggerated model of the slash in the back with the long skirts and six small buttons as close together as they can be stitched. Oscar has a hankering to look like the Prince of Wales, and in the last scene he appears in a loose golf suit, with a black twoquart cowboy's hat with an expression of intense self-satisfaction.

Malcolm McGregor impersonates David, Molly becomes infatuated with him despite the fact that her young man is supposed to be Oscar. When David has a meal with Molly. Oscar is left out in the cold, sitting on a chair with the dog, an exaggerated mongrel.

One of the ludicrous scenes is where Florence drives down in her expensive limousine to call on David. She is dressed as if to go to a smart dance, which one might gather is an unusual affectation when one is calling on an inventor in a squalid section of the city. David chats with her, tells her how good Molly has been, and then Florence rises to leave. We consider that even a young inventor would escort his sweetheart to her automobile. Apparently it isn't done, as David, the beau-ideal of manhood, so gallant when it comes to kissing, permits his sweetheart to leave unescorted.

One would almost imagine that Mr. Arthur had offered some hints in the making of this picture, as there is an occasional suggestion in it of "The Salvation Hunters." Not that it is as gloomy as that pointless production, but that some of the characters are unduly slow in their movements.

Undoubtedly there are certain good ideas in this pictorial effort and some of the subtitles are witty. It is entertaining most of the time, but now and again annoying.

Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle (1995):

Directed by Monta Bell, who deserves to be remembered alongside Von Stroheim and other directorial giants of the era, the picture stars Bell's favorite actress, Norma Shearer, in a dual role. She plays a rich girl, Florence, and a poor girl named Molly, a gangster's moll... In the eyes of the world they're totally different people. The audience, however, sees them as through the eyes of an omniscient observer -- recognizing plainly that these women are, essentially, the same.... Bell creates an elliptical, dream-like landscape, in which almost everyone pursues a vision that can't be realized -- and everyone wishes he or she were something more. In Lady of the Night people look in the mirror and search their reflection hoping to find someone else there.  Complete review.

Stephanie Jones  (December 2021)

Rating:   of 5

My New Year's resolution for 2022 is to try to review by the end of the year any Joan films that I haven't yet reviewed for this site. (After BOE's 17 years online, I'm sorry to admit that, as of December 2021, I've only reviewed 26 of Joan's 80+ films.) And so, at the end of 2021, I begin at the beginning, with Lady of the Night, a 1925 Norma Shearer vehicle in which Norma plays dual characters, and in which an uncredited Joan appears very briefly twice as Norma's double---in the couple of spots where the newfangled camera trickery of 1925 did not yet allow Norma to appear in two places at once. (See the two pictures in Tom's review below---yep, that's Joan: at the 56:37 mark and the 50:37 mark of the film.)

The film begins grittily with (to quote Elvis) a poor lil' baby chile born in the ghetto, fingering her daddy's handcuffs right before he's hauled off to jail by the policeman waiting out in the hall. Cut from the birthing-bed to the court sentencing, where Daddy gets 20 years in jail and then sees the judge in the street greeting his own baby daughter in a fine carriage. The crook calls out to the judge: "Pretty soft for your kid, but what about mine?" Ah, but we're about to find out...

The film then cuts to a title of "Eighteen years later..." (with explanations that the upper-class Florence, the judge's daughter, is now motherless and the lower-class Molly, the crook's daughter, is now an orphan) and dual scenes (both characters played by Norma Shearer) of Florence at her Commencement Day from a rich girls' school (with its lighthearted giggling and affectionate classmates) and Molly at her release from a reform school (with its swaggering and grim-faced trio of graduates).

Following this beginning is a shot of Molly looking at her reflection in a passing HEARSE (!), and then a scene from the cheap dance-hall where the lower-class girls work (black jazz musicians, and Asian and fat women taxi dancers indicate the "depravity" of the place in 1925 terms), where a friend of Molly's says she is entertaining a group of UNDERTAKERS! At this point, given the overt death references, I thought the whole thing was about to be a grim morality tale of some sort...

There's a further hint of this dark plot possibility when the inventor love interest is warned that bankers will steal his invention while "crooks will be on the level with you." And then there's the upper-class Flo's prim aunt, who keeps chiding her niece for liking boys and wearing perfume. However, despite all of these hints at potentially interesting doings... This ain't no "Paid"!

What the picture turns out to be is a sensitive and mild "love triangle/quadrangle": Rich-girl Flo and poor-girl Molly both love the inventor Dave (Malcolm McGregor). And Molly is simultaneously followed about by "Chunky Dunn" (comedian George K. Arthur, who later co-starred in 1926 with a fully credited Joan in "The Boob"), a local low-life dandy who also displays his sensitivity by tracing light patterns on a table-cloth (an oddly artsy bit), and then, comically, by being willing to sit with the dog while Molly serves Dave dinner. Arthur's character is initially weak and annoying, but, with his tremulous face and puppy-like loyalty, he kinda grows on you (as he's supposed to grow on Molly).

Many of the film's edits are clever: The "graduations" at the beginning, as mentioned above, and then cuts between fancy ball/dance hall, Flo/Molly looking out of their respective windows after their man, Flo/Molly making themselves up for a date (Florence hesitant about applying lipstick, and Molly slapping it straight on in all her cross-eyed glory). There are also interesting bits about the dreaminess of both characters: Florence lies in bed reading 19th-century poetry, while Molly looks to modern-day magazines for how to dress or how to set a table. Neither knows quite how to be.

The US glass-slide tag line publicizing the film reads, "A Romance of those who Adventure while the world sleeps"----which initially appeals to a prurient public, as if decadent "ladies of the night" are roaming the streets in this film, but in fact might be a bit accurate for another reason: The Good Girl Florence is, in fact, a Romantic Adventurer who attempts to escape the restrictive world of her judge father and prim aunt (albeit in the form of an up-and-coming and non-threatening young man of whom her father approves). The Bad Girl Molly is also a Romantic Adventurer who attempts to escape the restrictive world of her sleazy upbringing via the "higher-class" examples found in magazines, and in the real-life inventor love interest, who's a step up from her usual low-life dates.

Norma Shearer is subtle and interesting as both Florence and Molly. She's a light-hearted but sensitive debutante, as well as a heavy-hearted but sensitive street gal. I liked how Molly touched Dave's hair both at the beginning and at the end of the film. And I felt bad for her when Dave brushed the "grit" out of his bed without knowing that Molly had been sitting there only hours earlier.

The ending of the movie is as bland as can be. Everyone is far too noble and understanding, and everything tied up with a too-neat little bow. Despite her heartbreak, Molly is tolerantly amused when Chunky shows up in Western gear (he had earlier promised to carry her away to the West), thus indicating she's resigned to her upcoming fate of being married to an annoying man in the Hinterland.

At this point, I found myself wishing that there HAD been a little mayhem and wicked banker scheming! And I was torn between giving this film 2-1/2 stars for its too-goody-goody aspects (and failure to develop a more interesting plot from a promising beginning), or 3 stars for its solidly good dual performance by Norma and its often-clever cuts between the lifestyles of Flo and Molly. I ended up not begrudging the film for being a dual-character Norma-feature rather than a social-realist drama.

As for Joan's appearances at 50:37 and 56:37: She can be spotted only in the last 10 minutes of the film, when Flo/Molly finally run into each other in Dave's workshop (Joan as Molly standing at the door), and then a few minutes later when Molly climbs into Flo's waiting carriage and the two face each other and hug briefly. (If you don't own the Warner Archive DVD, you can watch on YouTube.)

RE the 2006 Jon Mirsalis music overlaying the entire film on the DVD release: I don't know what music orginally accompanied the film in 1925 theaters. (Bigger bands at the grand houses, and a single piano in small-town theaters?) However: I can guess intelligently that when there's a down-n-dirty jazz club scene that clearly shows musicians on film playing jazz with horns, etc., that this mediocre, simplistic Mirsalis piano score isn't appropriate. Same with when there's a "fancy" night-club scene that shows musicians with strings---again, the ongoing Mirsalis piano soundtrack isn't at all appropriate. Pure laziness (cheapness?) on the part of the DVD's musical historians.

 

Tom C. (September 2021)

Rating: -1/2 of 5