The Social Secretary
About The Social Secretary
New York stenographer Mayme keeps leaving jobs because her bosses will not leave her alone. Mrs. Peabody-de Puyster, tired of social secretaries who marry, advertises for a lady of good family who is extremely unattractive to men — a line her son Jimmie added. Mayme applies in glasses and a prim mouth and is hired. She starts reforming Jimmie’s nights at the clubs. One night she brains him as he climbs through a window, then sees he is not a burglar. Without the makeup he recognizes her. He pretends the disguise still holds. They work in costume at the house and go out as themselves. Reporter Adam Buzzard prints a blind item about a Riverside Drive heir and his mother’s secretary. Mayme, as herself, gets Count Limonittiez to expose himself to Mrs. Peabody-de Puyster, and uses the same fire escape to stop him compromising daughter Elsie. After a quarrel, the mother loses a secretary and gains a daughter-in-law.
Cast & crew
More about The Social Secretary
John Emerson directed. Anita Loos, Emerson, and Alfred Huger Moses Jr. wrote the scenario. Erich von Stroheim was assistant director and plays the reporter Adam Buzzard. Norma Talmadge is Mayme. Kate Lester is Mrs. Peabody-de Puyster. Helen Weir is Elsie. Gladden James is Jimmie. Herbert Frank is Count Limonittiez. Fine Arts made it; Triangle released it on 17 September 1916 in five reels. Wikidata also lists D. W. Griffith as producer. A re-edited version went out in the United States in 1924.
Themes
Making
Loos and Emerson hang the comedy on one disguise: the glasses come off only at night and at dinner. Stroheim, still an assistant, is the newspaperman who prints the item.
Music
Silent.
Preservation
Five-reel prints survive at the Library of Congress, George Eastman Museum, and UCLA. The British Film Institute has an incomplete 9.5mm fragment of about 160 feet. It is in the public domain in the United States.
Notes
- The French title is La Secrétaire particulière.
- Mayme lives at the Women Stenographers Club, where the older residents do not have her problem with bosses.
- Buzzard’s blind item is the scandal that almost ends the double life.
- Prints are at the Library of Congress, the George Eastman Museum, and UCLA. The BFI holds an incomplete 9.5mm copy of about 160 feet.
- Silent Era lists a 28mm reduction at Eastman as well as 35mm.
Scenes
- Mayme walks into the Riverside Drive house in glasses and a pinched mouth.
- She hits Jimmie at the window and he sees her without the makeup.
- Buzzard’s blind item names the heir and the secretary without quite naming them.
- She takes the fire escape to keep the count from compromising Elsie.
Also available
- Internet Archive (the-social-secretary-1916-norma-talmadge)
- Library of Congress
