Model from Montmartre
Information on Nita’s films was derived from Wid’s Film Daily, Wid’s Yearbooks (1920-1928), Film Daily, Motion Picture News, Motion Picture World, The Motion Picture Almanac 1929, the International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) database, the American Film Institute (AFI) Catalog of Feature Films, and from the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences.
Information on Die Pratermizzi was provided by Nikolaus Wostry of Filmarchiv Austria, translation by Martin Semlitsch.
Information on The Mountain Eagle was derived from J. L. Kuhns, “Filmography Notes on the The Mountain Eagle,” The Mountain Eagle core production file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Information on The Ten Commandments was derived from Robert S. Birchard’s Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, The University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
Films are listed in order of release date.
1920
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount Artcraft
Director: John S. Robertson
Scenario: Clara S. Beranger, based on the original story by Robert Louis Stevenson
Photography: Roy Overbaugh
Length: 6,355 ft.
Release date: April 20, 1920
New York premiere: April 1, 1920
Review: Wids Daily, Variety
DVD: DVDs are available through Image Entertainment (1999) and Kino (2001). The two releases are compared and discussed at Silent Era.
The Common Sin
Production: Burton King Productions/Hallmark Pictures Corporation
Released: Hallmark Picture Corporation
Director: Burton King
Scenario: F. McGrew Willis, based on a story by Willard Mack
Photography: Ernest Hall
Release Date: July 1920
Length: 6 reels
Status: Lost
Note: J.W. Film Corp. acquired The Common Sin, retitled it as For Your Daughter’s Sake, copyrighted it (LU17208), and rereleased it as a 5 reeler in late 1921.
Life
Production: William A. Brady Productions
Released: Famous Players-Lasky
Director: Travers Vale
Original play: Thompson Buchanan and William A. Brady
Photography: Frank Kirby
Release date: See note
Reviews: Wids Daily, New York Dramatic Mirror
Status: Lost
Note: This film was produced at Peerless Studios in Ft. Lee, NJ. It premiered in Stamford, CT in late October 1920 but was not distributed nationally until Famous Players-Lasky released it in 1921. Per FP-L’s file synopses: positive footage 4,712 ft. negative footage 3,631 ft. negative titles 1,270 ft. (Wid’s gives total footage at about 6,500 ft.).
1921
The Last Door
Production: Selznick
Released: Selznick Pictures
Director: William P.S. Earle
Scenario: Edward Montagne, based on an original property by W.B. Foster and Ralph Ince
Photography: Jules Cronjager
Length: About 6,000 ft.
Release date: May 1921
Reviews: Wid’s Daily, Moving Picture World
Status: Lost
A Divorce of Convenience
Producer: Selznick
Released: Select Pictures
Director: Robert Ellis
Writer: Sarah Y. Mason from a story by Victor Heerman
Photography: Afred Gondolfi
Release date: May 1921
Length: 4,995 ft.
Review: Morning Telegraph
Status: Lost
Experience
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount
Director: George Fitzmaurice
Scenario: Waldemar Young, based on a play by George V. Hobart
Photography: Arthur Miller
New York premiere: August 7, 1921
Released: October 23, 1921
Length: 6,560 ft.
Reviews: New York Times, Variety, The Lowell Sun
Status: Lost
Note: Negative cost $325,000, domestic sales $449,000, foreign sales $123,000.
1922
The Man From Beyond
Production: Houdini Picture Corporation
Release: Houdini Picture Corporation
Director: Burton King
Scenario: Coolidge Streeter, based on a story by Houdini
Photography: Frank Zucker, Harry A. Fischbeck, A.G. Penrod, Louis Dunmayr, L.D. Littlefield
New York premiere: April 2, 1922
Length: 6,200 ft.
Reviews: Film Daily, New York Times, Motion Picture News, New York Tribune
DVD: Houdini: Movie Star
For all your Houdini needs, visit Wild About Houdini, at http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/
Reported Missing
Production: Owen Moore Productions
Released: Select Pictures
Director: Henry Lehrman
Scenario: Lewis Allen Browne
Photography: Jules Cronjager
Release date: April 5, 1922
Length: 6,900 ft.
Reviews: Film Daily, Variety, New York Times
Status: Lost
Channing of the Northwest
Production: Selznick
Released: Select Pictures
Director: Ralph Ince
Scenario: Edward J. Montagne from a story by John Williams
Photography: Jack Brown
Release date: April 20, 1922
Length: 4,725 ft.
Status: Lost
Story “Channing of the Northwest,” by E.B. Gleason, Motion Picture Classic, May 1922
A Trip to Paramountown
Promotional Short
Production Company: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount
Director: Vernon Keays
Photography: Karl Brown
Technical Director: Walter Reed
Scenario: Jack Cunningham
Release date: July 10, 1922
DVD: Available as a bonus feature on Flicker Alley’s
Valentino: Rediscovering an Icon of Silent Film
The Snitching Hour
Production: Arthur Houseman Comedies
Release: Clark-Cornelius
Director: Alan Crosland
Scenario & Story: Lewis Allen Browne
Titles: Joseph W. Farnham
Release date: July 1, 1922 (alternate date August 11, 1922)
Length: 4,850 ft.
Review: The Sandusky Star Journal
Status: Lost
Blood and Sand
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: Fred Niblo
Scenario: June Mathis, based on the novel by Vicente Blasco Ibañez and play by Tom Cushing
Photography: Alvin Wyckoff and Arthur Edeson
Release date: September 11, 1922
New York premiere: August 6, 1922
Length: 4,850 ft.
Reviews: New York Times, Variety
DVD: Kino Video, Blood and Sand
Anna Ascends
Produced: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount
Director: Victor Fleming
Scenario: Margaret Turnbull, based on a play by Harry Chapman Ford
Photography: Gilbert Warrenton
Release date: November 20, 1922
Length: 5,959 ft.
Reviews: Motion Picture News, New York Times, Variety
Status: Lost
Note: Play purchased April 27, 1922 for $7,500.00; negative cost $121,000.00.
1923
The Glimpses of the Moon
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: Allan Dwan
Scenario: Lloyd Sheldon, based on the novel by Edith Wharton
Photography: Hal Rosson
Release date: April 8, 1923
Length: 6,502 ft.
Reviews: Exhibitors Herald, New York Times, Wid’s Daily
Status: Lost
Note: Novel published by D. Appleton & Co., 1922. Purchased August 25, 1922 for $15,000. Negative cost $262,000. Domestic sales $462,000, foreign sales $79,000.
You Can’t Fool Your Wife
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: George Melford
Scenario: Waldemar Young
Photography: Bert Glennon
Release date: April 29, 1923
Length: 5,703 ft.
Reviews: New York Times, Film Daily, Exhibitors Herald, Le Film Complet, Part 1 Part 2
Status: Lost
Property purchased July 21, 1921 for $7,500. Negative finished April 12, 1923, cost $200,000. Domestic sales $496,000, foreign sales $89,000.
Photoplay Magazine, July 1923, p.72
Lawful Larceny
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: Allan Dwan
Scenario: John Lynch, based on the play by Samuel Shipman
Photography: Hal Rosson
Release date: July 28, 1923
Length: 5,503 ft.
Reviews: Film Daily
Status: Lost
Note: Paramount sold the property to RKO, which remade the film in 1930.
Hollywood
Cameo appearance
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: James Cruze
Scenario: Tom Geraghty, from an original story by Frank Cordon
Photography: Karl Brown
Release date: August 19, 1923
Review: Film Daily
Status: Lost
Note: Story purchased September 30, 1922, for $2,000. Negative footage 8,218 ft., negative cost $201,959.
The Ten Commandments
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Scenario: Jeannie Macpherson, from a suggestion received through a contest in the Los Angeles Times
Art directors: Paul Iribe and Francis McComas
Assistant Director: Cullen B. “Hezie” Tate
Photography: Bert Glennon, Edward S. Curtis, J. Peverell Marley, Archie Stout, J.F. Westerberg, Donald Biddle Keys
Technicolor Photography: Ray Rennahan
Technical director: Roy Pomeroy
Film Editor: Anne Bauchens
Release date: December 4, 1923 (Hollywood premiere)
DVD: Available as an extra on the 50th Anniversary DVD release of DeMille’s 1956 The Ten Commandments.
Note: Picture started: May 21, 1923. Picture finished: August 16, 1923. Length: 11,756 feet (14 reels). Cost $1,475, 836.93. Gross: $4,169,798.38.
Don’t Call it Love
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount
Director: William C. deMille
Continuity: Clara Beranger
Original Property: “Rita Coventry” by Julian Street; play by Hubert Osborne
Photography: Guy Wilky
Release date: December 30, 1923
Reviews: Film Daily, Los Angeles Times, Film Daily Ad, New York Times
Status: Lost
Note: Original property purchased April 24, 1923, price $15,000.00. Negative cost $58,338.62, script cost $11,027.54. Working title “Everyday Love.” The reader synopsis in Paramount’s script file, written in the 30s, discourages a possible remake by commenting: “The sophisticated, glamourous women in the slick-magazine school of 1923 have a little too much flourish for today.”
1924
The Breaking Point
Produced: Famous Players-Lasky
Released: Paramount
Director: Herbert Brenon
Scenario: Julie Herne and Elfreda A. Bingham, based on a novel and play by Mary Roberts Rinehart
Photography: James Wong Howe
Release date: May 4, 1924
Reviews: Robert Sherwood, Film Daily
DVD: Not available on DVD. A 35mm print is held at the Library of Congress. The film was shown at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto XV in Pordenone in 1996 and at Cinecon in Los Angeles in 2010. More information on the film is available from the Pordenone database.
Note: Play and book purchased October 18, 1923 for $40,000.00. Script cost $5,414.48, negative cost $112,798.41. Negative completed February 11, 1924; foreign footage 6,729 ft, American footage 6,697 ft.
A Sainted Devil
Production: Famous Players-Lasky
Release: Paramount
Director: Joseph Henabery
Scenario: Forrest Halsey
Photography: Harry Fischbeck
Release date: November 17, 1924
Length: 8,633 ft.
Reviews: Chicago Tribune, Daily Mirror, Daily News, Evening World, New York Journal, New York Morning Times, Telegraph, Unknown
Status: Lost
1925
The Lady Who Lied
Production: First National
Release: First National
Director: Edwin Carewe
Scenario: Lois Zellner and Madge Tyrone; Lois Leeson adapted the story by Robert Smythe Hutchins
Photography: Robert B. Kurrle
Release date: July 12, 1925
Length: 7,111 ft.
Reviews: Motion Picture World, New York Times, Film Daily
Status: Lost
The Marriage Whirl
Production: Corinne Griffith Productions
Release: First National
Director: Alfred Santell
Scenario: Not credited, based on a property by J. Hartley Manners
Release date: July 19, 1925
Length: 7,505 ft.
Reviews: New York Times, Film Daily
Status: Lost
Note: Working title “National Anthem.”
Clothes Make the Pirate
Production: Sam E. Rork Productions
Release: First National
Director: Maurice Tourneur
Scenario: Marion Fairfax, based on a property by Holman Day
Photography: Harry (Henry) Cronjager
Release date: November 29, 1925
Length: 8,000 ft.
Reviews: New York Times, Film Daily, Los Angeles Times, Jefferson City Tribune
Status: Lost
Cobra
Production: Ritz Carlton Pictures
Release: Paramount
Director: Joseph Henabery
Scenario: Anthony Coldeway, based on a play by Martin Brown
Photography: Harry Fischbeck and J.D. Jennings
Release date: November 30, 1925
Reviews: New York Times, Exhibitors Herald
DVD: Naldi HQ prefers the Image Entertainment release
Note: Play purchased July 16, 1924 (percentage agreement); dialogue rights $40,000
1926
The Miracle of Life
Production: S.E.V. Taylor
Release: Associated Exhibitors
Director: S.E.V. Taylor
Scenario: Elizabeth Musgrave
Photography: A.G. Penrod
Release date: February 28, 1926
Length: about 5,000 ft.
Review: Film Daily
Status: Lost
The Miracle of Life was re-released May-September, 1929 and toured in New York theaters as part of a sex education and birth control lecture entitled “The Sex Side of Life.” Showings were gender-segregated. The 16-page pamphlet sold at these lectures, also entitled “The Sex Side of Life,” was written by feminist and birth control advocate Mary Ware Dennett. At the time of these lectures, Dennett was embroiled in a legal brouhaha; her name is not mentioned in any of the ads for the program so we believe it is unlikely she herself gave the lectures. The presentation was shown in Brooklyn, Jamaica, Astoria, Rochester, Troy, and in Times Square. Information on Mary Ware Dennett can be found here:
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/blogs/culturalcompass/tag/mary-ware-dennett/
The Unfair Sex
Production: Diamant Film
Release: Associated Exhibitors
Director: Henri Diamant-Berger
Scenario: Arthur Hoerl, based on a property by Eugene Walter
Photography: Alfred Ortlieb
Release date: April 17, 1926
Length: 5,016 ft.
Review: Film Daily
Status: Lost
The Mountain Eagle
German release title: Der Bergalder
Prod: Gainsborough-Emelka
Rel: Lee-Bradford (Artlee) Pictures
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Length: 7,503 feet (American print listed at 6,000 ft)
Release date: May 23, 1927
German release date: May, 1926
London trade show: October 1, 1926
U.S. Release date: November 1, 1926
Status: Lost
Articles: Motion Picture Classic,_December 1926, New York Times, June 20, 1926
Note: This film is usually credited with the American release title of Fearogod. Hitchcock scholar J. L. Kuhns disputes this credit, stating “the evidence for this is nil.” Your Naldi Investigators have reviewed the available documentation and concur with Kuhns’s finding. Contemporary mentions of this film in American sources use the title The Mountain Eagle. Fearogod was probably a working title.
Film Daily Yearbook, 1927, pgs. 332, 373, and 418, showing American release title as The Mountain Eagle: Film Yearbook 1927, pg. 332, Film Yearbook 1927 , pg 373, Film Yearbook 1927, pg. 418.
Images courtesy Internet Archive, at: http://www.archive.org/stream/filmyearbook19271927newy#page/n5/mode/2up.
Link: The Mountain Eagle is Number One on the British Film Institute’s “Most Wanted” list of lost British films. You can read more about The Mountain Eagle and see stills from the film at:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/nationalarchive/news/mostwanted/mountain-eagle.html
La Femme Nue
Production: Pathé-Natan
Release: Paramount
Director: Leonce Perret
Scenario: Leonce Perret, based on a play by Henry Bataille
Photography: Raymond Agnel
French release date: December 10, 1926
U.S. release date: September 15, 1928 (as The Model from Montmartre)
Length: 5,941 ft.
Reviews: Film Daily, Cinea-Cine, December 15, 1926, Cinea-Cine, Part 2, Cinea-Cine, Part 3, Cinea-Cine, Part 4
Status: Non-access holdings, 35mm nitrate negative and safety copy, approx. 2,500 meters, flash titles, Archives du Film du CNC (Bois d’Arcy).
DVD: Not available.
Note: “The part of the Princesse de Chabrant, an enigmatic and shady character smelling of high adventure and fraud, is held with authority by Nita Naldi. The artist provides some excellent moments when still and posing. The close-up in the floral float in Nice has a lovely smoothness. But, when moving and shot in a defective angle, Nita Naldi looks heavy and a trifle vulgar. It is true that the part is deliberately unpleasant and should encourage leniency from us.”
Cinéa-Ciné Pour Tous No. 75, 15 December 1926, p. 16, translation by Christine Letoux.
1927
Die Pratermizzi
Italian release title: La Maschera d’oro
Hungarian release title: Prater Mici
Production company: Sascha-Filmindustrie (Vienna)
Producer: Alexander Kolowrat
Director: Gustav Ucicky
Screenplay: Walter Reisch
Photography: Gustav Ucicky, Eduard von Borsody
Theatrical release: January 7th, 1927
Passed censorship: between October 12 and 16, 1926 (WP)
Length: 2,683 metres; 6 Acts
Location: Wien
Studio: Sievering
Synopses: Die Pratermizzi; Le Masque d’Epouvante, Part One; Part Two; Part Three
DVD: The entire film is not yet available on DVD. Only 1,263 meters of Die Pratermizzi survive in a shortened French version, which is in itself fragmentary. A clip from the film appears in the Vienna Film Archive DVD release Der Wiener Prater im Film, (Sonderedition Film + Text, DVD, Christian Dewald and Werner Michael Schwarz (eds), Verlag Filmarchiv Austria, Vienna, 2005), but Nita does not appear in the footage used.
1928
What Price Beauty
Production: George S. Ullman Productions
Release: Pathé Exchange
Director: Thomas Buckingham
Scenario: Natacha Rambova
Photography: J.D. Jennings
Release date: January 22, 1928 (production completed in 1925)
Length: 5,000 ft.
Review: Film Daily
Status: Lost
