Black Oxen
About Black Oxen
Madame Zatianny, who was Mary Ogden of New York, has had a glandular treatment and X-ray surgery in Austria that restore her youth. She returns to the United States. The playwright Lee Clavering falls in love with her. The flapper Janet Oglethorpe wants him and he does not notice. He and Mary plan to marry. Prince Rohenhauer, an old lover, talks her out of it. She breaks with Clavering and goes back to Austria. Lee leaves with Janet in a taxicab.
Cast & crew
More about Black Oxen
Frank Lloyd directed it from Gertrude Atherton's 1923 novel. Frank Lloyd Productions made it. First National released it on December 29, 1923. Wikipedia gives 80 minutes. A circulating copy runs 58 minutes and 27 seconds. Corinne Griffith plays Madame Zatianny. Conway Tearle plays Lee Clavering. Clara Bow plays Janet Oglethorpe. The title comes from Yeats: "The years like great black oxen tread the world." A. L. Burt issued a photoplay edition with four stills.
Themes
Making
Lloyd cast Griffith as both the vanished socialite and the woman the treatment sends back to New York.
Preservation
A circulating copy runs 58 minutes and 27 seconds.
Notes
- The treatment is glands and X-rays, not a wig or a double.
- Janet is the flapper. Mary is the woman who looks decades younger than her history.
- Prince Rohenhauer is a former lover, not a new suitor.
- The Yeats line is the source of the title.
Scenes
- Mary comes back from Austria looking young.
- She leaves Clavering, and he rides off with Janet.
Influenced by
- Gertrude Atherton's Black Oxen (1923)
