Adolph Milar (1895-1950) was born in Switzerland, but had a career in American films that lasted over 25 years.
From 1919, Milar played featured supporting roles in many silent films, but tended to be restricted to ethnic roles with the coming of sound, owing to his accent. He made an auspicious start with his first talking picture, Bulldog Drummond (1929). Later, he came to specialize in nazis, notably in Fritz Lang’s Man Hunt (1941) and in The Hitler Gang (1944), by which time he was usually uncredited.
Milar appeared as a police officer in Call of the Flesh.
Lillian Brown (1874-1956) appeared in more than 250 films in a career that began in 1910 in Chicago, working with the Selig Polyscope Company. She made her final film in 1937.
Most of Leighton’s pictures were silent (she even provided the stories for some of them in the early years). In the sound era, she tended to be credited in low-budget films, but uncredited in those with bigger budgets.
One such was Call of the Flesh, in which she played the shawl seller.
Lillian Lawrence (dates unknown) is frequently mistaken for Lillian Lawrence (1882-1926), who was a well-known stage actor.
The screen Lawrence was a bit-part character actor between 1924 and 1953, rarely credited in over fifty appearances. The stage Lawrence made occasional screen appearances, with credit, and mostly in the last two years of her life: she played the Mother in Buster Keaton’s Three Ages (1923).
It was the little-known screen Lawrence, of course, who played a nun in Call of the Flesh, her namesake having died four years earlier.
She was in some very good pictures–Footlight Parade (1933), Judge Priest (1934), Mr Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Easy Living (1937), The Grapes of Wrath (1940)–but always in a very minor role.
Call of the Flesh is the first musical at MGM to combine popular songs with extracts from Grand Opera, in the way so beloved of producer Joe Pasternak in the 40s and 50s. Sadly, the three Stothart-Grey numbers are instantly forgettable. Ramon Novarro was no Lauritz Melchior, but his renditions of Donizetti and Massenet at least deserve an A for effort.
Juan (Ramon Novarro) sings ‘Ah! fuyez, douce image’ from Manon
Tonally, the film shifts from being the light-hearted story of an arrogant young singer and his growing love for an innocent novice from the local convent, to a near-tragic final twenty minutes. It all works thanks to the acting of Raomon Novarro and Renée Adorée, and in spite of that of Dorothy Jordan. Jordan was not a bad actor, but her performance here is very laboured and one-note. She leaves inexplicable pauses before picking up her cues and relies too much on looking innocent.
Novarro, however, gives one of his best performances in a sound picture. The scene in which he heartlessly rejects Jordan because her brother has persuaded him she should return to the convent, is genuinely touching. Elsewhere, he succeeds in the difficult task of making a conceited, unlikeable character likeable and amusing.
Renée Adorée is also very good as Jordan’s jealous rival, but her performance is quite painful to watch. She was very ill with tuberculosis during the making of the film, to the extent that her friend Novarro tried to persuade her to stand down. She declined, but is visibly unwell. It was her final film, and she died a couple of years later.
Adorée does, however, combine with Novarro to deliver the MGM musicals’ first genuinely entertaining dance number. Both had worked as dancers when young, and it shows in the comic routine they deliver in the cantina.
Juan and Lola (Renée Adorée) perform the first entertaining dance in an MGM musical
The Technicolor sequences have not survived, but Call of the Flesh looks really good without them. Cedric Gibbons’s design is excellent and well photographed by Merritt B Gerstad. The scene in a church that looks like a cathedral is particularly impressive. There are even one or two stylistic flourishes from director Charles Brabin (or editor Conrad Nervig, perhaps). For example, the scene where the brother is persuading Juan to give up Maria Consuelo is truncated with dissolves, to force home the sense that Juan is being worn down.
Overall, Call of the Flesh–its terrible sexed-up title notwithstanding–is much more entertaining than might be expected.
George Westmore (1879-1931) was the founder of what is unquestionably Hollywood’s greatest dynasty. Five generations of Westmores, including six of George’s sons, worked as makeup artists for over a hundred years.
George Westmore was a hairdresser with a distinguished clientele before emigrating from the UK to Canada and then to the United States, where he worked in beauty parlours. In 1917 he established Hollywood’s first makeup department, for the Selig company, and can be credited with creating the profession of film makeup artist. In the 1920s, Westmore worked on some of the most notable pictures starring Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks, including The Sheik (1921) and The Thief of Bagdad (1924).
Shortly before taking his own life in a particularly unpleasant fashion (mercury poisoning), Westmore worked on three musicals at MGM: The Rogue Song, Call of the Flesh and New Moon.
Composer Paul Lambkovitz (1888-1953) was born either in Poland or Russia, and trained at the Petrograd Conservatory before working as both a conductor and cantor. He emigrated to America in 1922.
Lamkoff was qualified by both his professions to work as a vocal coach and choral arranger for the ‘Kol Nidre’ sequence of The Jazz Singer (1927), roles he also carried out for the 1952 remake.
He then had a sporadic career in the film industry, working as composer, orchestrator and vocal coach on a dozen or so pictures. These included Call of the Flesh, Here Comes the Band, A Night at the Opera, Rose-Marie and San Francisco. Alongside this he pursued his work as a cantor and expert on Jewish music.
Dorothy Farnum (1897-1970) acted in a couple of films as a teenager, but realized that her real strength was writing. In 1919 she sold an original scenario to producer Harry Rapf, who would later be a colleague at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After a few years of journeyman work in which she learned her trade, Rapf hired Farnum to write Beau Brummel (1924). Star John Barrymore told a newspaper it was the best part he had ever been given, and the film launched Farnum’s reputation as an expert adapter of literary works.
Farnum became one of MGM’s top-earning writers, In 1926 her adaptation of the potboiler The Torrent was the first of several collaborations with Greta Garbo. It was described at the time as “the first picture with an unhappy ending to win a box-office success”.
Dorothy Farnum wrote two MGM musicals, providing the stories for Call of the Flesh and A Lady’s Morals. Shortly afterwards she relocated to Europe, writing a screenplay in French (she was fluent in a number of languages, and had previously written the French version of A Lady’s Morals), and then working for Gaumont-British. In 1934 she retired to the south of France.
Charles J Brabin (1882-1957) emigrated from Liverpool to New York in 1900 and found work as a stage actor. In 1908 he joined the Edison company, first as an actor, and later taking up writing and directing.
Brabin directed for a variety of studios throughout the silent era, generally with success. The major exception was MGM’s Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1924) for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Brabin began shooting the film in Italy, with George Walsh playing the title character. Irving Thalberg did not like the rushes that were being sent back to Hollywood, and decided to replace both Brabin and Shaw with, respectively, Fred Niblo and Ramon Novarro.
It would seem no long-term grudges were held on either side, as Brabin did work subsequently for the studio, including on two musicals, Call of the Flesh and Stage Mother. He also had considerable success for MGM with The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932).
Charles Brabin was married to screen star Theda Bara for 34 years, until her death, one of the most successful of Hollywood marriages.
