The Goose Woman

1925 Drama 83 minutes Directed by Clarence Brown

About The Goose Woman

Opera singer Mary Holmes loses her voice when her son Gerald is born and comes to hate him for it. She drinks, lives in a shack, and raises geese. After a millionaire theater owner is murdered, she invents a story that she saw the crime, and the district attorney dresses her up and puts her back in the papers. The details she invents get Gerald arrested. Faced with him, she admits the lie. The theater doorman is the killer, and Gerald is cleared to stay with Hazel Woods.

Cast & crew

More about The Goose Woman

Clarence Brown directed for Universal. Melville W. Brown wrote the scenario, with Frederica Sagor uncredited, from a Rex Beach story. Dwinelle Benthall wrote the intertitles. Ray Curtiss edited. Universal opened it in New York on August 3, 1925, and released it in the United States on December 27, 1925.

Themes

  • A voice lost in childbirth
  • A false witness who wants the papers
  • A mother who recants to save her son
  • opera singer
  • geese
  • false testimony
  • murder
  • Hall-Mills case
  • Universal

Background

The Hall-Mills case, a 1922 double murder in New Jersey, was still in the papers when Beach wrote the story and when Universal filmed it.

Making

The UCLA Film & Television Archive holds a tinted 35mm print of about 83 minutes. Preservation of that print was funded by the Packard Humanities Institute.

Look

Milton Moore photographed it. The UCLA print keeps the original tints.

Preservation

UCLA holds a tinted 35mm print of about 83 minutes, preserved with Packard Humanities Institute funding. Another copy is in the Bill Sprague collection on the Internet Archive.

Notes

  • Louise Dresser plays Mary Holmes, also called Marie de Nardi. Jack Pickford plays Gerald. Constance Bennett plays Hazel Woods.
  • Marc McDermott plays Amos Ethridge. Gustav von Seyffertitz plays Mr. Vogel. George Nichols plays the detective.
  • Rex Beach drew the lying witness from Jane Gibson, called the Pig Woman, in the 1922 Hall-Mills murder case. In the film the woman keeps geese.
  • Universal remade it in 1933 as The Past of Mary Holmes, with Helen MacKellar and Jean Arthur.

Scenes

  • Mary, newly dressed by the district attorney, tells a murder story she did not see.
  • She takes the story back when Gerald is the one in custody.

Influenced by

  • Rex Beach's short story
  • The Hall-Mills murder case

Influenced

  • The Past of Mary Holmes (1933)

Also available

  • Internet Archive (BillSpragueCollectionTheGooseWoman1925)

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