The White Moth

In Paris, Barbara La Marr is about to throw herself into the Seine when she is rescued by dancer Charles De Rochefort. A year later she is his acclaimed dance partner on the stage, captivating all the men, particularly Ben Lyon, in Paris to help fiancee Edna Murphy pick out her trousseau. Lyon's brother Conway Tearle devises a plan to rescue him from this captivating creature that will torment everyone.

The copy I looked at was in excellent shape, although it missed the crucial final six minutes. It's a rare chance to see Miss La Marr swanning about in the sort of vamp role she seems to have lived in real life as well as on the screen. Director Maurice Tourneur offers a competent job, but mostly he's there to instruct cameraman Arthur Todd on how to photography her. Still, he gets some visual flourishes, like the scenes at the Artist's Ball in Paris, where you can see a horse amidst the large crowds of costumed extras. Still, everything is in support of the five-times-married star, who had been arrested for burlesque dancing at the age of 14, and who died in 1926 of tuberculosis at the age of 29.