Lonesome
About Lonesome
Mary, a telephone operator, and Jim, a factory worker, each live alone in New York. On the Independence Day weekend they take the same bus to Coney Island, meet on the beach, and spend the night on the rides. A fire on a roller coaster splits them in the crowd. They know only first names. Back in the rooming house, Mary pounds the wall, and Jim, on the other side of it, opens her door.
Cast & crew
More about Lonesome
Paul Fejös directed. Carl Laemmle and Carl Laemmle Jr. produced it for Universal. Gilbert Warrenton photographed it, including the Coney Island scenes. The studio added three spoken dialogue scenes after the silent version was finished. A silent cut opened on 20 June 1928. The sound version opened on 30 September 1928, on both disc and film.
Themes
Background
Universal released it in the year theaters were wiring for sound. Houses without equipment got the silent cut.
Making
Fejös shot the amusement-park night for real crowds and rides, then Universal parked the camera for the three talkie inserts so the film could be sold as a part-talkie.
Reviews
Mordaunt Hall, in October 1928, compared it to an O. Henry story without that writer's insight. He called it agreeable and a break from formula, and wrote that in some episodes Fejös's imagination seemed stunted.
Look
Gilbert Warrenton shot the Coney Island beach, the rides, and the rooming-house climax, with the dialogue inserts filmed from a fixed camera.
Music
The synchronized score uses Irving Berlin's "Always" as a recurring theme, with sound effects on the rides. Three scenes have spoken dialogue.
Preservation
The George Eastman House holds the repatriated nitrate. The film was named to the National Film Registry in 2010.
Notes
- Barbara Kent plays Mary and Glenn Tryon plays Jim. Andy Devine plays Jim's friend. Fay Holderness plays an overdressed woman.
- The sound version runs 75 minutes.
- Irving Berlin's song "Always" is used through the score.
- Universal remade the story in 1935 as the comedy The Affair of Susan.
- The nitrate print came back to the United States when James Card traded with Henri Langlois. It is at the George Eastman House.
- The Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry in 2010.
- The Criterion Collection issued it on Blu-ray and DVD on 28 August 2012.
Scenes
- A wheel catches fire on the roller coaster and the crowd tears Mary and Jim apart.
- Mary beats on the wall of her room, and Jim opens the door from the next apartment.
Influenced
- The Affair of Susan (1935)
Also available
- Criterion Collection Blu-ray and DVD (August 28, 2012)
- Wikimedia Commons
