The Wild Party

This film was not box office poison as people flocked to the Theater to hear the "IT" girl talk for the first time. During filming of the feature to capture clara bows voice as she moved they straped the mic on a fishing pole creating the boom mic we know today. It is so interesting to see college girls in the 1920s its such a fascination maybe because Im college aged as the time im writing this review. Clara bows voice is not what you expect, i feel like people expected something cute, and squeeky kind of like jean Harlow. While this is a very early talkie you can see many actors including bow still act as if it were a silent picture.

The Wild Party, scandalously translated into Portuguese as Louca Orgia (Crazy Orgy), is a curiosity from the early days of sound, which stands out for three relevant aspects.

The first is the leading role of Clara Bow, the greatest sex symbol of American cinema in the 1920s, who here made the perfect debut to talkies, revealing a fiery, fluent, even devilish interpretation, with an energy and independence that makes us understand why she was the muse of men in the 1920s. A striking personality that completely dominates the film.

On the other hand, we have Fredric March, in only his second credited film (the first being The Dummy, a comedy from the same year, with Ruth Chatterton), who begins a brilliant career, almost at the same time as Clara Bow ends hers in 1933, whether due to her marriage in December 1931 to Rex Bell, with whom she would have two children in the following years, or due to schizophrenic crises, which would even lead to her hospitalization in the late 1940s.

The third interesting fact is the direction of Dorothy Azner, one of the rare female directors of the time, who had debuted in 1927 with the silent film The Queen of Fashion, and would go down in history as the first woman to direct a sound film (Manhattan Cocktail, in 1928, only partially spoken). The Wild Party was her first fully sound film. She would still direct 15 more films, until prematurely ending her career in 1943, at only 46 years of age.

The film is a romantic comedy, set in a girls' school, where a student and a teacher fall in love and begin a secret relationship, against the school's strict rules.

Wild party girl Clara Bow (as Stella Ames) has plenty of fun at the "Winston" college for young women. Parties and roadhouse jaunts are the college girls' preoccupation. On the train trip to "Winston", Ms. Bow recalls accidentally climbing into bed with fellow traveler Fredric March (as James "Gil" Gilmore). As it turns out, Mr. March is the school's new Professor of Anthropology. Bow and her housemates see the good-looking teacher arrive, and immediately become interested in anthropological matters. Eventually, Bow and March fall into each other's arms, which threatens their student and teacher status at the college.

Bow's first "talkie" was not unsuccessful, although it is sometimes recalled as a failure. Perhaps, detractors are recalling Bow's subsequent talking features. Strangely, she became more unnatural, hesitant, and uneven in later films. Possibly, she was rattled by negative reviews. However, by 1931, Bow's performances became more assured. By then, unfortunately, it was too late for the huge audiences attending "The Wild Party" to appreciate her efforts.

"The Wild Party" is a more than respectable talking film debut; while undeniably silly, it was a fun "college youth" film. Bow wasn't going to be young forever, obviously; but, she could still carry out the college hi-jinks. March and the supporting cast perform well. And, Paramount assigned a woman, Dorothy Arzner, to direct the film.

Watch for one notably silent word "mouthed" the film. When Bow and the women are in the back seat of the car, they see March walking in the street, and Bow exclaims, "----!"

****** The Wild Party (4/6/29) Dorothy Arzner ~ Clara Bow, Fredric March, Joyce Compton

In fact, on some levels it is a fascinating look at college girls at play at the end of the roaring twenties. The year is 1929 and the place is mythical Winston College, an all-girl school. Stella Ames (Clara Bow) is the most popular girl in school and life of the party, Helen Owens (Shirley O'Hara) is the smartest girl in school, and Faith Morgan (Marceline Day) is a trustee of sorts in the dorm where the girls live who is given to lecturing Stella and has a very stern outlook on life. All of the girls get along pretty well with the exception of one who seems to delight in snooping and gossiping - her antics enter heavily into the plot. The romance here is an unlikely one between young professor of anthropology Dr. Gilmore "Gil" (Fredric March) and party girl Stella. The relationship starts out antagonistically due to an incident a few months before Gil came to the college. A mishap in the sleeper car of a train had a sleepy Stella getting up in the middle of the night for a drink of water and returning to the wrong berth - Gil's, in fact. She's determined to get even with him for teasing her at the time, and is surprised when he doesn't seem to know she's alive.

The college stag dance with girls dancing with girls in which Stella and her two buddies enter the stag dance in a sort of conga line dressed in sequined bathing suits, raccoon skin coats, and high heels is truly an iconic moment in late 20's film. The story should hold your interest although there is nothing truly unique about it, and I thought that the acting and direction were quite good for an early talkie. Sure, Bow has a very noticeable New York accent, but it suits her in this and the other early talkie roles I've seen her in as it accentuates her brashness. Director Arzner keeps things moving by not letting a dead camera just hang there while actors endlessly speechify as is common in other films from this same year. As for the plot devices, there's a rowdy roadhouse, a near-attempted rape, a shooting, dorm fire-drills and head counts at embarrassing moments, and one of the girls falling asleep on the beach with a man at a party until 4AM and then losing the page of a letter in which she is writing about the incident. Wherever did that piece of paper go? I'd definitely recommend this to early talkie fans.

The first thing I had to wonder, just prior to watching "The Wild Party" was whether or not it was based on the novelette I'd ripped through, just a month or so ago: The Wild Party by Joseph Mancuso March--originally published in 1928. Discovering that this was a very different story was my only disappointment.

It often seems that no small number of people, out there, don't want to give the early days of Hollywood the credit it so richly deserves. And that's sad; as sad as, say, the somewhat dark story behind "It" Girl, Clara Bow--whose mother considered slitting the girl's throat when Clara declared her she wanted to be an actress.

(Fortunately that didn't happen. If it had, film fans of today might not have an inkling of a clue that, even way back then--in the days that would become infamously known as "The Great Depression"--girls just wanted to have fun.)

Clara Bow plays her role of mischievous college girl, Stella Ames, to-the-hilt. And a young, debonaire Frederic March as straight-laced college professor Gilmore is her perfect counterpart.

The way the two begin seeing eye-to-eye may be said to be expected, but not totally predictable--because the antics of Stella Ames and her sorority sisters provide just the right element of subplot. If there was any one flaw in this gem, it was that the sound quality was often so scratchy, I was unsure, now and again, what one actor or another had said.

Still, this in no way detracts from the film's overall quality. (One must taken into account, after all, that 1929 was the infancy of the "talkie" era). Come to think of it, I can

only imagine what a "wild party" '29 must've been for many Hollywood executives and stars alike--the huge stock market crash aside!