The Wild Party
About The Wild Party
At Winston, a women's college, Stella Ames is the loudest student. She has already blundered into the sleeping berth of the new anthropology professor, James Gilmore, on the train. After Faith Morgan throws Stella and her friends out of a costume party, they go to a bar. Drunks corner Stella; Gilmore beats them off, lectures her, and kisses her. Eva spreads the story. Stella later takes the blame for a letter Helen wrote to a boyfriend the rules forbid, and she leaves school. Gilmore catches her train, says he does not believe the letter was hers, and says he has quit too.
Cast & crew
More about The Wild Party
Dorothy Arzner directed for Paramount. Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky produced. E. Lloyd Sheldon and Samuel Hopkins Adams wrote the script from Warner Fabian's story Unforbidden Fruit. Clara Bow could not work with a fixed microphone, so Arzner hung one from a fishing pole, an early fishpole boom. A silent version was also shipped to theaters that had no sound equipment.
Themes
Background
Paramount released the film in April 1929, while many houses were still being wired for sound and some states were still deciding how to censor dialogue.
In film history
Bow's first talking picture, and the earliest surviving feature directed by Dorothy Arzner.
Making
Arzner had the microphone moved on a pole so Bow could walk through a take. The rest of the company included Jack Oakie, Jack Luden, and Phillips Holmes.
Reviews
Variety said Bow's voice was good enough to survive the change to sound. Film Daily said there was nothing wrong with a voice it still called hard and metallic.
Audiences
The film did well at the box office and confirmed Arzner's place at Paramount.
Look
Victor Milner photographed the film under early sound-camera limits, with the microphone moved on a pole so Bow was not pinned to one mark.
Technique
Arzner rigged a microphone on a fishing pole so Bow could move, a setup later called the first fishpole boom.
Music
John Leipold is credited with the music.
Preservation
The film survives. It is the earliest of Dorothy Arzner's features still extant. A 2004 Senses of Cinema note lists a UCLA print as its source.
Notes
- It is Clara Bow's first talkie and the fifth feature Arzner directed. It is the earliest of Arzner's films that survives.
- Fredric March plays Gilmore. Marceline Day is Faith Morgan, Shirley O'Hara is Helen Owens, and Joyce Compton is Eva Tutt.
- Ohio censors ordered scenes cut, but the board's power over talkies was not yet settled. The picture ran with those shots blacked out and the dialogue still heard, and the audience laughed.
- Victor Milner photographed it. Otho Lovering edited. John Leipold is credited with the music.
Scenes
- Stella walks into Gilmore's train berth by mistake.
- Gilmore pulls her away from the men at the bar.
- She claims Helen's forbidden letter as her own and boards a train out of Winston.
Influenced by
- Unforbidden Fruit by Warner Fabian
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Wild Party.webm)
