Coquette (United Artists Pressbook) (1929)

PUBLICITY FEATURE SECTION MARY PICKFORD in “COQUETTE” UNITED ARTISTS PICTURE MARY PICKFORD in Sam Taylor’s Production "Coquette” United Artists Picture Copyright 1929 by the Pick ford Corporation Directed by SAM TAYLOR Based on the Jed Harris Stage Production by GEORGE ABBOTT and ANN PRESTON BRIDGERS Mary Pickford John Mack Brown Stanley Wentworth:■ ----- —Matt Moore Dr. John Besant -- - J ohn Sainpolis Jimmy Besant ------- ---- William Janney Jasper Carter ----...----- Henry Kolker Robert Wentworth _ _---- George Irving Julia ' ■ _t_■_'i___ Louise Beavers Norma Besant, the young charming daughter of a respected physician, ^ is the belle of the small, southern town in which she lives. A true child of today’s rest¬ lessness, from the top of her smartly bobbed head to the tips of her little slippers, Norma delighted in her conquests among the boys and men of her little world. To each and every one she gave her kisses with modern freedom and lightness. Each one she flattered by telling him that he was "perfectly adorable.” Then she danced on to new and untried fields. Heartless and artful in her allure was this motherless little coquette, who was the worry of her adoring father’s heart and the object of her younger brother Jimmy’s scornful ridicule. Always at her side stood Stanley Wentworth, quiet and steady, the son of her father’s attorney and best friend. Stanley loved Norma with a devotion of perfect understanding, and watched with laughing sympathy her gay excursions into romance. So Norma merrily played her make-believe game of love until young Michael Jeffrey came down from the hills. With the sincerity of his mountain forbears and the blunt straightforwardness of his kind, he refused to become another scalp for the little coquette’s belt of vanity. A son of a different world, Michael did not know the rules of the game of flirtation and insincerity. His love for the daughter of the town’s leading family was as sincere as it was stubborn in its pride. Hotheaded, roistering adventurer that he was, Michael engaged in a free-for-all street light, defending the name of the girl he loved against the sneering remarks of a gang of the town’s hoodlums. The news reached the eats of Dr. Besant. This true gentleman of the old south, angered at the joining of the name of his daughter with that of the young swashbuckler from the hills, ordered Michael to never see Norma again. Then came Norma’s awakening. For the first time in her carefree, merry life, she knew a love which dwarfed into insignificance all other emotions. It mattered not to her that Michael came from a different world, that her father’s pride of family would be trampled by her marriage to this crude outsider from the moun¬ tains. She was ready and willing to follow wherever Michael might lead, to sacri¬ fice everything for him. But Michael, too, had his pride. He would not take the girl he loved until he had proven to her and her world that he was worthy of her love. So Michael went back into his beloved hills to work, to earn the money for a little home, to show Norma’s father the steadfastness and determination of his purpose. The two young lovers set their time of separation as six months. True to his promise, a newly-born Michael bent every effort toward the goal he had set, while Norma masked with a half-hearted gaiety her longing for the return of the man she loved. At the end of three months Michael, starving for just one glimpse of Norma, hungry for just one sound of her voice, came down from his hills to spend one brief hour near her. He found her at a country club dance. Through the open windows he watched her, laughing and dancing with the boys and girls of her gay, little social world. An outsider, stalwart in his corduroys and boots, he did not try to enter, content with just the sight of her before returning to his labor of love. But Stanley saw him, and, generous in his devotion and understanding, sent Norma to him. Norma found her Michael as he was silently departing, and begged him to stay a little while before leaving her again to the loneliness of the remain¬ ing months of their agreed separation. Eager for escape from the prying eyes of the curious, Norma and Michael sought the solitude of Michael’s mother’s cabin, set in the hills near the town. But the night had eyes, and, as they left the cabin in the darkness of the dawn, , they were seen by two of the town’s glib-tongued inhabitants, returning from a nocturnal hunting trip. With squared shoulders Michael met Norma’s father, two proud men facing each other in the age-old struggle of conflicting generations, and asked for his consent to an immediate marriage, to still the gossip and innuendoes spreading through the town. The irate, heart-broken father, angered pride struggling with grief for the despoiling of his daughter’s name, ordered from his house the man he blamed for the engulfing tragedy. Michael, unbeaten and strong in his determination, departed for his mother’s cabin. Hard on his footsteps followed a bitter, half-crazed father, the blood of long generations of fiery forbears boiling in his veins. He found Michael in the lonely cabin, which had been the scene of the most beautiful hour of Norma’s life, and there he fired the revolver shot which broke the heart of the daughter he loved better than all the world. During the gray months which followed, while her father awaited his fate in the prison cell to which he had surrendered himself, the little coquette, a heart¬ broken woman now, fought her own battle with herself. In the end her love for the broken, old man, who had acted blindly in his pride and devotion, overcame her first hatred and indifference to the fate of the man who had taken her Michael from her. With head held high, she faced judge and jury and an eager world, and blackened the sacred memory of her love to save the life of her father, who looked at her with pitiful eyes, opened at last to the strength and beauty of the love he had shattered in his mad, unreasoning haste. For one last, beautiful moment father and daughter reached a perfect understanding. Then Dr. Besant, old-school gentleman of an old south, found a way to atone both to justice and his gallant daughter. MARY PICKFORD BRINGS PERFECT VOICE PLUS THE BOYISH BOB IN “COQUETTE” Three big photoplay events rolled into one are scheduled for next week’s most important film enter¬ tainment in this city, and anticipa¬ tion is at fever heat. Never has the theatre-going public seemed so eager to see and to hear and to ap¬ praise the ultra-modern achieve¬ ment promised by America’s fore¬ most motion picture star in her newest film. Mary Pickford, so long a silent heroine on the screen, has her pre¬ miere in the all-dialogue “Coquette” at the.Theatre begin¬ ning next. In this production “America’s Sweetheart” offers a triply radical advance in her art. She speaks her lines. She plays a witching contem¬ porary flapper role with alluring bobbed hair. She plays an up-to- date Broadway drama in which a great social ordeal vies with the traditional Pickford sweetness and light, and in which significant heart- wrenching realism tests the very soul of the Pickford genius. With her adaptation of the Broadway stage success, “Co¬ quette,” as her current vehicle, Mary Pickford signalizes the first entry of an ace film celebrity into the new field of the all-spoken cel¬ luloid entertainment. Equipped for this pioneering by talent already demonstrated in a long career of “silent screen” triumphs, and by her early experience on the spoken stage, the star is said to bring with her the gift of the perfect voice for theatre amplification. This is an¬ nounced as the verdict of all critics favored with a formal preview and pre-audition of the picture. It is a final endowment of nature’s riches with which this brilliant woman has been favored in her remarkable career. And from a broader view¬ point her venture is seen as a great turning point in the history of mo¬ tion pictures, which are due to enter a tremendous upheaval if the un¬ qualified success of Mary Pickford in “Coquette” is confirmed. “Coquette” is the stage play pro¬ duced by Jed Harris over a period longer than a year in New York. MP— 4 — Two-Col. New Star Head Pickford (Mat 10c, Cut 50) MARY PICKFORD in "Coquette” MARY PICKFORD IN A POWERFUL TALKIE Out Dazzling Maty Coming in “Coquette ” Among the vividly realistic scenes of Mary Pickford’s new picture, “Coquette,” which is coming to the .Theatre, .. are the two heated encounters of the little coquette’s father and her In “Coquette” at the. Theatre, Miss Pickford will be seen —and heard—as a willful, dazzling young Southern belle who defies family and convention for the man she loves. young lover. When these two men, separated by age and viewpoint, meeting only on the common ground of their love for the little flirt clash, the sparks fly fast and furiously. John Sainpolis plays Dr. Besant, the father, a gentleman of bygone day who resents and forbids the attentions to his sheltered dahghter of the young mountaineer, Michael Jeffery, portrayed by John Mack Brown. In both men boils the hot blood of their southern country. In the first dramatic meeting of these men, Michael accepts the ver¬ dict of the little coquette’s father, who orders him forever from his home. Just as he turns upon the older man with hot words of retal¬ iation, the little coquette steps be¬ tween her father and her lover, and ends their battle at its moment of highest tensity. When they meet in their second encounter, the stinging words of the father prove too bitter a dose. Bleeding from the cruel lash of Dr. Besant’s tongue, Michael turns upon the older man with a fury of burning words. He ceases to be a suppliant and becomes the aggres¬ sor, demanding the right to love and marry the daughter of the Besant family. During these scenes the little co¬ quette stands, a helpless witness, terrified at the havoc she has cre¬ ated. Torn between her devotion for her father and her love for Michael, her heart is nevertheless with the stranger from the hills. She steels herself to face her fath¬ er’s anger and the scorn of her world for the sake of this man whom she loves. With the exception of John Mack Brown, who came to the films from the college football gridiron, all of the players have been on the speak¬ ing stage. Every member of the cast was required to make exten¬ sive tests of both voice and photog¬ raphy before being chosen by Miss Pickford for a part in “Coquette.” Those who have heard Miss. Pick- ford’s speaking performance in this film promise a sensation among au¬ diences when her voice is heard, and they add that her appearance in “a wind-blown bob,” for which she sacrificed her famous curls, will complete the surrender of her ad¬ miring world to the new order of things in the amazing Pickford career. 5^-One-Col. Scene (Mat 5c, Cut 30c) MARY PICKFORD in'Coquette’.’ Mary’s First Speaking Role—and a Stunner! Mary Pickford’s all-talking screen version of the Broadway stage suc¬ cess, “Coquette,” will mark for her the unique experience of rounding out a cycle of silent-spoken silent- spoken roles which began on the stage ' and culminate now on the ultra-modern talking screen. Miss Pickford’s first appearance on the legitimate stage was a mute one. She was too young when she made her debut to manage any lines. But in a later stage produc¬ tion sire was given lines to speak and became a full-fledged actress of the time. Her first appearance in films was also, necessari y, a silent one. She could talk, but the screen could not. It was the screen’s own infancy that prescribed action without words. But now, thanks to the mechanical progress of mod¬ ern pictures, she can express her¬ self in the double dimensions of sight and sound, for she will talk on the screen in “Coquette.” Mary Pickford’s first speaking lines on the stage, according to authentic records, were: “Don’t speak to her girls, her father killed a man.” Oddly enough, in the star role of “Coquette,” her first all- spoken movie, the heroine’s father has killed a man, the drama of this eminently gripping play having a climax like this. Words in a public performance first fell from the lips of Miss Pick¬ ford upon the stage of the Princess Theatre, Toronto, when she was a member of the Valentine Stock Company of that city. The p’ay, “The Convict’s Stripes,” was one of the leading melodramas of an era when all melodramas- were “leading,” quite after the manner of this present time when every film is a “spectacular production.” When “Coquette” went into pro¬ duction at the Pickford Studios in Hollywood, right after last Christ¬ mas, Miss Pickford made her en¬ trance into the sound films. She voiced the following statement, in the tense and solemn silence of the sound stage, into the microphone: “Yes, I know—-whenever a rel¬ ative of ours kills anybody lie’s a fine gentleman defending the honor of womanhood.” And she put into it all the bitter heartbreak of her role as a frivolous small town belle faced suddenly with the stark tragedy of unwit¬ tingly having brought doom to the lad she loved with heart and soul. With these lines the actual pro¬ duction of the all-talking version of “Coquette” was begun. The lighter moments with which the drama sparkles also had their day. To hark back to the beginning of Miss Pickford’s career, her debut on the legitimate stage took place at the age of five. She portrayed a little boy, as “Cissy” in “The Sil¬ ver King.” This took place also under the auspices of the Valentine Stock Company at Toronto. As “Cissy,” Miss Pickford was just led on the stage by the hand of a buxom and determined woman playing the role of the mother. Miss Pickford shook her famous golden curls, (now definitely dis¬ carded for a ravishing bob in “Co¬ quette”) stuck out her tongue at a group of boys, and smiled prettily. Miss Pickford’s entrance into the then new experience of motion pic¬ tures, came at the close of a Broad¬ way run and extensive road tour in David Belasco’s production of “The Warrens of Virginia,” which was written by William De Mille, father of the film directors, William C. and Cecil B. De Mille. D. W. Grif¬ fith cast her as a thirteen-year-old girl in “The Lonely Villa,” one of the first Biograph two reelers. Her screen mother was the leading lady, Marion Leonard. James Kirkwood was the star. He wore a beard so that his stage following wouldn’t recognize him, for this was a time when legitimate players sneaked into the movies with a sense of guilt, with a sense of treason to the age-old prestige of the sock and buskin. “Coquette,” as it will be seen at the.Theatre next week, again takes Miss Pickford into a new field. Besides playing an a’l- talking picture, directed by Sam Taylor, Miss Pickford presents a grown up role in a romantic tragic story. She appears as a young Southern belle who defies family and convention to revel in poignant romance. DIALOGUE and SOUND have been featured in this publicity material. Theatres that run the picture silent can edit the material to conform.