The Best of Everything

Joan appears only in the first 6 or 7 minutes of this "modern" (1920s) semi-morality tale that explores a concept then newly popular among the Moderns of the '20s: Should you leave a seemingly priggish husband in favor of a potentially exciting one?

Joan, as "Young Lady Catherine," does just that. In the first several minutes of the film, which takes place in the 1890s, Young Lady Catherine, newly married to the unexciting Lord Clive Cheney, decides to run off with the Best Man from their wedding, the dashing Hugh Porteous (Frank Braidwood). While Porteous and Cheney discuss guns in the library, Young Lady Catherine pins a note to their sleeping toddler, then escapes with Porteous via a waiting carriage. After the carriage is gone, the tot stumbles downstairs to his father, where the latter reads the goodbye note: "...I want happiness more than security or position..."

Cut to a title card: "THIRTY YEARS PASSED - The Circle of another generation was about complete..."

It's now the 1920s, and the abandoned tot Arnold (Creighton Hale) is now grown and married to Elizabeth (Eleanor Boardman), who is, like his mother, currently contemplating leaving her husband for a more-exciting suitor, Teddy (Malcolm McGregor---in Joan-lore, last seen in Lady of the Night). The title cards introduce Elizabeth as "just another lovely thing cutting her wisdom teeth on a wedding ring," and Teddy as "the kind of friend to whom a marriage certificate was a sort of stop-off privilege."

But before the feckless duo depart, Elizabeth first wants to meet Lady Catherine and Lord Porteous, whom she's invited to visit the Cheney estate for the first time in 30 years: "I want to see how runaway love wears after thirty years. If they're still happy, then----"

Former cuckolded father Lord Clive Cheney (Alec Francis) is supposedly away in London during this time, but re-appears suddenly, to the dismay of all present. (As in the 1890s opening, Lord Cheney comes in discussing guns...still a MacGuffin, and sorry for the Spoiler Alert, but...no one's about to be shot!)

When Elizabeth finally tells Lord Cheney that his former wife is coming to visit, he reminisces that she will probably be "frail, and quiet and sweet and lovely," dressed in "black satin and old lace." Ha! As it turns out, when Lady Catherine and Porteous finally arrive, the previously lovely and romanticized Catherine (now played by Eugenie Besserer) is fat and dowdy, cheaply dressed, and embarrassingly overly emotional. Lord Cheney looks on and remarks ironically under his breath, "Frail...sweet...quietly lovely!" And then: "Poor Hughie!"

Elizabeth is horrified---THIS is what she and Teddy might turn out to be?! She's torn... Lady Catherine and Porteous, the once-romantic runaways, are now constantly squabbling, and unattractive, 50-somethings... (Though Besserer and "Hughie" [George Fawcett] both appear to be well into their 60s.)

Lady Catherine is then seen looking through an old photo album----with an old photo of herself (Joan--a photo that appears twice more in subsequent scenes). The photo of Joan (Young Catherine) is important to the film: First, Elizabeth sees it and is newly sympathetic to the currently dowdy Lady Catherine: "Youth! It's justy a day of spring...and gone!" Then, when Elizabeth leaves the room, Hughie Porteous enters and is first grumpy as usual but, when he sees the picture, "You're just as lovely as ever, Kitty." Thus the two are, despite their present-day acrimony, also seen as loving.

In the meantime: The formerly cuckolded father, Lord Cheney, gives his about-to-be-cuckolded son Arnold some (not-so-sage, as it turns out!) advice: "Handle her gently and everything will be all right." But when the son tries speaking to Elizabeth in this "gentle" tone: "...after all, I'm really quite in love with you...and all that sort of thing," it backfires. Elizabeth meets lover Teddy out in the hall and asks him what he would do if another man wanted her: He says he'd give her a black eye. That's enough for her: She's completely turned on ("You brute!" she says lovingly) and begins preparations to run off with him... (The waiting car outside mirroring the waiting carriage of 30 years earlier.)

Thanks to some machinations from Lady Catherine, and an abrupt about-face in behavior from Arnold, all is not quite lost, however! (In the meantime, Lord Cheney and Hugh Porteous are still in the library, tipsily cackling over old times: "Pretty fair little joke on someone---eh, what, Hughie?")

Joan looks full-faced and pretty in her few moments early in the film (and in the exhibited photograph). But, alas, her middle-parted marcelled hair and pencilled-in, skyward-bound eyebrows are not at all appropriate for the alleged 1890s. And her gauzy and flouncy gown (with shoulder accoutrements anticipating the famous Letty Lynton dress in 1932) is similarly not quite right for the time period. But that's just being nit-picky. The part is too small to be any sort of "star-maker" and she does a perfectly good job in her brief time onscreen. (See this site's Images 1925 page for screen shots from the film.)

Director Frank Borzage seems a bit dull after the inventive editing and photography that I just recently watched in Pretty Ladies (also 1925, directed by Monta Bell). Most scenes in The Circle take place in one or two rooms, and are shot statically from the front, as if we're watching a play. There are a couple of shots through the library window out into the garden---of those indoors secretly watching those outdoors. And a couple of shots of Lady Catherine and Porteous motoring to the estate---shot from behind, so we can't yet see what they look like after 30 years. But aside from these mildly interesting shots, there's nothing particularly outstanding, especially given the new-fangled creative opportunities of cinema.

Borzage would go on to direct 3 more Joan films: Mannequin (1937), The Shining Hour (1938), and Strange Cargo (1940). The first two similarly pedestrian, but the latter a bit extraordinary!

The story of The Circle, based on a play by Somerset Maugham (which debuted in London and later ran on Broadway for 175 performances from 1921 to 1922), is potentially emotionally interesting: The theme of the difference between memories and reality, for instance, and of what might or might not cause regrets. But the film version makes rather a rough botch of it: The cuckolded young Arnold, rather than being rewarded for his offering of freedom, as in the play, is instead rewarded for his brutality. And in the film, the cuckolded older Lord Cheney never has a single moment alone with his former wife, whom he's seeing for the first time in 30 years. And isn't what happened to HIM the actual emotional crux of the story rather than what the shallow lovers might currently do (thus merely repeating an already oft-repeated "circle")?

Here's the scene with Cheney and Lady Catherine (Kitty) from Maugham's play, in which Cheney reveals how he's compensated for his lost love:

Cheney: When you ran away from me, Kitty, I was sore and angry and miserable. But above all I felt a fool.

Cheney: But I was a student of history, and presently I reflected that I shared my misfortune with very nearly all the greatest men.

Lady Kitty: I’m a great reader myself. It has always struck me as peculiar.

Cheney: The explanation is very simple. Women dislike intelligence, and when they find it in their husbands they revenge themselves on them in the only way they can, by making them—well, what you made me.

Cheney: I felt I had done my duty by society and I determined to devote the rest of my life to my own entertainment. The House of Commons had always bored me excessively and the scandal of our divorce gave me an opportunity to resign my seat. I have been relieved to find that the country got on perfectly well without me.

Cheney: Tell me frankly, Kitty, don’t you think people make a lot of unnecessary fuss about love?

Cheney: You’re incorrigible. Do you really think it was worth sacrificing so much for?

Lady Kitty: My dear Clive, I don’t mind telling you that if I had my time over again I should be unfaithful to you, but I should not leave you.

Cheney: For some years I was notoriously the prey of a secret sorrow. But I found so many charming creatures who were anxious to console that in the end it grew rather fatiguing. Out of regard to my health I ceased to frequent the drawing-rooms of Mayfair.

Cheney: Since then I have allowed myself the luxury of assisting financially a succession of dear little things, in a somewhat humble sphere, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five.

Lady Kitty: I cannot understand the infatuation of men for young girls. I think they’re so dull.

Cheney: It’s a matter of taste. I love old wine, old friends and old books, but I like young women. On their twenty-fifth birthday I give them a diamond ring and tell them they must no longer waste their youth and beauty on an old fogey like me. We have a most affecting scene, my technique on these occasions is perfect, and then I start all over again....

THIS compensatory reality of Cheney's---much more interesting than what the shallow young lovers might or might not do---is what the film should have captured more effectively but does not. Recommended reading: The text of Maugham's play from Project Gutenberg.

The Circle (1925) is a nice little movie that, in my opinion, has three things to recommend it. First, it is based on a story by Somerset Maugham, keen observer of the human condition, and one of the most popular writers of his day. Maugham knew how to set up engaging tales of conflict, which I think translated particularly well to the screen. (Maugham also provided the source material that inspired the 1932 Joan picture Rain, known in earlier incarnations as Miss Thompson and Sadie Thompson.) Second, it stars Eleanor Boardman, one of the leading actresses in the late Silent era (and one of the most lovely), as "Elizabeth Cheney." She has a tough role here and pulls it off well; her character is a tad silly, and doesn’t seem to know what she really wants out of life: to run away with her lover or to remain with her husband. Third, there is a meaty, albeit very brief, role for Joan.

The Circle opens with young Lady Catherine (played by the newly reinvented "Joan Crawford") deciding to run away with her lover, young Lord Hugh Porteous (Frank Braidwood is the lucky gent), leaving not only her hubby, Lord Clive (Alec Francis), but also her young child, Arnold.

Jump ahead 30 years. Arnold---now grown and played by Creighton Hale---is married to Elizabeth. Arnold has grown into a bit of a milquetoast, so Elizabeth is harboring thoughts of running away with dashing Teddy Luton (Malcolm MacGregor, whom you may remember from Lady of the Night, entry # 1 in the Joan filmography).

By odd reasoning, Elizabeth thinks it's a good idea to invite the now older Lady "Kitty" Catherine and Lord Hugh Porteous to the Cheney house, to see if a love---inaugurated under such circumstances---still burns hotly after all these years. To complicate her dilemma, there's a touching scene in which the now-older Lady Catherine looks through a picture book and comes upon a picture of her younger, more gorgeous self (i.e., Joanie!). She gazes wistfully upon her youthful self, a spring day, fleeting then lost.

The supporting cast is stellar; most were stage actors whose career in films went back to the times of DW Griffith and Edison. George Fawcett is excellent as older Lord Porteous, gruff when he needs to be, a big teddy bear when he’s trying to get back in the good graces of his wife. Lord Clive is played very well by Alec Francis. The real scene stealer, though, is Eugenie Besserer as the older Lady Catherine; she’s delightful in the light comedic scenes and adorable in the touching scene with Fawcett following their tiff. (Ms. Besserer also played Al Jolson's mom in a little movie called The Jazz Singer two years prior.)

Joan is only in the first few scenes---apart from her photo popping up in the aforementioned photo album scene---but these early scenes set the stage upon which this drama is played out. Her acting doesn't seem overly melodramatic, just right. She strikes the right balance for a women torn between love and duty. And she looks fabulous in the moonlight (although I suspect this was done with day-for-night camera trickery).