"PAGE MISS GLORY" A pleasant surprise viewing, we stumbled over this movie this morning on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). Our Satellite Service (DISH) provided its very brief introduction; noting that Marion Davies was in the Cast, we stayed on and viewed the entire show.
I was raised in a family that did not admire Marion Davies nor, for that matter, W.R. (William Randolph Hearst). In fact, our family took its orders from the Legion of Decency listings; watching a condemned film could book you a ticket to H*E*L*L. Thus, I was amply supplied with bias and prejudice against the STAR of this movie. SURPRISE! Hey, I think she is acting! Just this week, I had read about the Production Code that governed what we the public could see - for example, the principals in a bedroom scene needed to keep at least one foot on the floor at all times. The article discussed the effect of the code upon how women were to be portrayed - before 1934, when the Code went into effect, women could be "sultry", "naughty", or whatever. After, however, the woman had to be relegated to unimportant and uninspiring roles; a rule, per the article, that led to popular male roles and the rise of male stars.
MARION DAVIES was relatively unknown to me for the aforesaid reasons - for once, my "Videohound" was mute on the movie but did show that she had two other movies released on Video.
So, we watched. We were seeing a CODE movie. A Cinderella story, she played an overly dumb blonde hotel room maid who (unwittingly)influenced a couple of promoters' efforts to create a pinup of the "the perfect" candidate for a beauty contest. The pinup is a composite of attractive parts of attractive women. Guess who looked like the imaginary pinup? We enjoyed the movie from start to finish and got a lot of good laughs - you would enjoy it. The only problem I had was the role played by Mary Astor - perhaps her sympathetic support lent stature to the movie but Astor's female role acted depressed and confused - not too dangerous to the men's silly schemes.
I was sure that W.R. had meddled with the whole thing until I looked up "Page Miss Glory" in IMDb. From there, came most of the facts quoted above. It turns out that Davies' accomplishments included Movie Scripts and she produced a dozen movies. In all she acted in 48 movies from 1917 to 1937. Since "Page Miss Glory" was her 45th, it is a mature effort.
