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What Price Glory (1926 film)

What Price Glory is a 1926 American synchronized sound comedy drama war film produced and distributed by Fox Film Corporation and directed by Raoul Walsh. The film was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects using the Movietone sound system though it contains no audible dialogue. This film is historically significant as it was Fox's first sound film. The film is based on the 1924 play What Price Glory by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings and was remade in 1952 as What Price Glory starring James Cagney.[2][3] Malcolm Stuart Boylan, founder of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, was title writer on the Fox attraction.[4] The film is preserved in full with its original sound-on-film elements at the George Eastman Museum.

What Price Glory
Directed byRaoul Walsh
Written byJames T. O'Donohoe (scenario)
Malcolm Stuart Boylan (intertitles)
Based on
What Price Glory?
by Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings
Produced byWilliam Fox
StarringVictor McLaglen
Edmund Lowe
Dolores del Río
Phyllis Haver
CinematographyBarney McGill
John A. Marta
John Smith
Music byErnö Rapée
Lew Pollack
Distributed byFox Film Corporation
Release dates
  • November 23, 1926 (1926-11-23) (Silent version)
  • January 21, 1927 (1927-01-21) (Sound version)
Running time
116 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageSound (Synchronized) (English Intertitles)
Box office$4 million (U.S. and Canada rentals)[1]
What Price Glory (1926) (Silent version)

Plot

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Flagg and Quirt are veteran United States Marines whose rivalry dates back a number of years. Flagg is commissioned a captain, he is in command of a company on the front lines of France during World War I. Sergeant Quirt is assigned to Flagg's unit as the senior non-commissioned officer. Flagg and Quirt quickly resume their rivalry, which this time takes its form over the affections of Charmaine, the daughter of the local innkeeper. However, Charmaine's desire for a husband and the reality of war give the two men a common cause.

Cast

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Production

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Edmund Lowe, Dolores del Río and Victor McLaglen in What Price Glory

Fox acquired the film rights to the play What Price Glory? for $100,000.[5]

The film was directed by Raoul Walsh and released as a silent film by Fox Film Corporation on November 23, 1926, in the US, and had a 116-minute running time. On January 21, 1927, a short film of singer Raquel Meller was shown before this feature at the Sam H. Harris Theater in New York City. The short film, not quite synchronized, was the first public presentation of a film in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system.[6] On January 21, 1927, Fox re-released What Price Glory with synchronized sound effects and music in the Movietone system.[7]

Part of its fame revolves around the fact that the characters can be seen speaking profanities which are not reflected in the intertitles, but which can be deciphered by lipreaders. However, the production by Arthur Hopkins of the Anderson and Stallings play had featured audible profanities, and its program featured the statement that "'What Price Glory' is a play about war as it is, not as it has been presented theatrically for thousands of years. The soldiers in 'What Price Glory' talk and act as much as soldiers talk and act the world over. The speech of men under arms is interlarded with profanity. Oaths mean nothing to a soldier but a means to obtain emphasis."[8]

The studio was reportedly inundated by calls and letters from enraged Americans, including deaf and hearing impaired people, to whom the vivid profanity between Sergeant Quirt and Captain Flagg was extremely offensive.

In the 1924 Broadway play the roles of Captain Flagg and Sgt. Quirt were played by Louis Wolheim, fresh from his triumph in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape and William "Stage" Boyd. Curiously Wolheim and the younger William Boyd would play characters similar to Quirt and Flagg in the 1927 film Two Arabian Knights.

Although the title is sometimes listed as having a question mark, the Movietone version has simply 'WHAT PRICE GLORY', as does at least one silent trailer as well as some of the posters.

In his autobiography, Peter Cushing claimed his wife, Violet Hélène Beck Cushing, was part of the cast prior to their marriage.[9]

Composers Ernö Rapée and Lew Pollack collaborated on the popular song "Charmaine" for the film, named after the character of Charmaine de la Cognac.

Adaptation

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McLaglen and Lowe reprised their roles from the movie in the radio program Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt, broadcast on the Blue Network September 28, 1941 – January 25, 1942, and on NBC February 13, 1942 – April 3, 1942.[10]

Sequels

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Lowe and McLaglen played two similar Marines in the RKO Radio Pictures film Call Out the Marines (1942).

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ Cohn, Lawrence (October 15, 1990). "All Time Film Rental Champs". Variety. ISSN 0042-2738.
  2. ↑ Arthur Gewirtz, James J. Kolb (2004). Art, Glitter, and Glitz: Mainstream Playwrights and Popular Theatre in 1920s America. Praeger/GreenwoodPlays. ISBN 0-313-32467-0.
  3. ↑ What Price Glory the play as produced on Broadway at the Plymouth Theatre, September 5, 1924 to September 12, 1925, 435 performances; IBDB.com database
  4. ↑ Staedeli, Thomas. "Porträt des Drehbuchautor Malcolm Stuart Boylan". Swiss Silent Film Website. Cyranos2000. Retrieved January 22, 2014.
  5. ↑ Suid, Lawrence H. (January 13, 2015). Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. University Press of Kentucky. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-8131-5808-2.
  6. ↑ Bradley, Edwin M. (2004). The First Hollywood Musicals: A Critical Filmography of 171 Features, 1927 Through 1932. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. p. 6. ISBN 0-7864-2029-4.
  7. ↑ Progressive Silent Film List: What Price Glory (1926) at silentera.com
  8. ↑ [https://www.newspapers.com/image/1067696928 Newspapermen Present War 'As Is' in New Play— 'What Price Glory' Rings with Profanity; Producer Says It Is True to Life.", by Westbrook Pegler, Chicago Tribune, in the Springfield (Mass.) Union, September 11, 1924, p.8
  9. ↑ Cushing, Peter (2013). Peter Cushing: The Complete Memoirs. Signum Books. ISBN 978-0-9566534-8-2.
  10. ↑ Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Revised ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-0-19-507678-3. Retrieved September 14, 2019.

Further reading

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