The Bad Man (1923 film)

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The Bad Man
Directed by
Associated First National Pictures
Release date
  • October 8, 1923 (1923-10-08)
Running time
70 minutes (7-reels)
CountryUnited States
LanguagesSilent
English intertitles

The Bad Man is a 1923 American

Associated First National Pictures on October 8, 1923. The title role was played by the star of the play's Broadway and touring productions, Holbrook Blinn, and the other leading parts filled by Jack Mulhall, Walter McGrail and Enid Bennett.[1][2][3]

Plot background

The titular character, a Mexican outlaw named Pancho Lopez, bore an undisguised resemblance, both in name and personality, to Pancho Villa, a pre-eminent Mexican Revolutionary general. Villa was in the news before and during the play's run and his assassination on July 20, two-and-a-half months before the film's release, appeared in all the headlines. Nine years earlier, a supporting actress in The Bad Man (Teddy Sampson) had played one of Pancho Villa's two sisters in the 1914 Mutual Film feature The Life of General Villa.

Plot

The plotline has Lopez (Holbrook Blinn) and his band of outlaws living from the proceeds gained as a result of theft and confiscation of property. One of the victims is rancher Gilbert Jones (Jack Mulhall), whose cattle losses are pushing him to the edge of bankruptcy.

Lopez prepares to deprive Jones of the remainder of his cattle and valuables, and kidnap his beloved former sweetheart (Enid Bennett), who is now married to heartless loan shark Morgan Pell (Walter McGrail). Lopez recognizes Jones as the man who, years earlier, saved his life. Determined to show his gratitude, the powerful bandit robs the rapacious bank which, in cahoots with Pell, cheats and exploits the locals, and gives the money to Jones. When Pell arrives to foreclose on Jones' oil-rich ranch, Lopez, addressing him as "Mr. Loan-Fish", inquires of him whether women in his country inherit their late husbands' wealth, and then, since he considers the despicable corrupter to be an unworthy opponent, tells his top aide to shoot him (intertitle: "Pedro, I do not hunt rabbits—you keel heem"), thus freeing his widow to marry Jones. Finally, he returns all of Jones' stolen cattle and bids the happy couple farewell, thanking them for making him feel good.

Cast

Critical reception

A year before

Spokesman-Review also extolled Blinn's acting and described the picture as "head and shoulders above the average screen performance. The suspense is kept taut enough to snap at any time, the comedy is scintillant, the acting of Holbrook Blinn superb."[5] In examining the 86-year-old film in 2009, critic Ojos de Aguila noted that "Lopez is an allegorical stand-in for the mysterious and appealing side of Mexico and represents the complex tension of attraction and repulsion that marked relations between the United States and Mexico. It is not an irony that his very repulsive nature—the ability to kill—is also the source of his nobleness, albeit a naturalistic and primitive form of nobility."[6]

Later versions

Holbrook Blinn died in June 1928, at the dawn of the sound film era, following complications in the aftermath of a horse-riding accident and, in his September 6, 1930 review of the sound remake,

Clarence G. Badger, the remake starred, in addition to Huston as Pancho Lopez, Dorothy Revier as Ruth Pell [Mrs. Morgan Pell], James Rennie as Gilbert Jones and Sidney Blackmer as Morgan Pell. In line with common practice during the early years of sound film production, foreign-language versions were simultaneously initiated, with the Spanish-dialogue entry, El hombre malo, directed by Roberto E. Guzmán (actors and staging) and William C. McGann (technical set-ups), spotlighting bi-lingual star Antonio Moreno as Pancho Lopez, while the French-language variant, Lopez, le bandit, helmed by bi-lingual director Jean Daumery
, had French actor Geymond Vital portraying Pancho Lopez.

A second remake, still keeping

Irene Castle in the title role.[8]
The incomplete restored version of Patria does not confirm, however, the presence of either Beery or the character of Pancho Villa.

Between the release of the 1930 and 1941 versions, there was also a semi-disguised one in 1937,

poverty row Monogram Pictures, starting a few months after West of Shanghai. The remaining characters also ran true to pattern, with Beverly Roberts as Mrs. Gordon Creed, the Mrs. Morgan Pell prototype, now named Jane, Gordon Oliver as the Gilbert Jones-like Jim Hallett who, years earlier, had saved General Fang's life, and Ricardo Cortez
as the smooth-talking, venal-minded, Morgan Pell-styled Gordon Creed.

Preservation

With no prints of The Bad Man located in any film archives, it is considered a lost film.[9]

References

  1. ^ newspaper ad in Easton, Pennsylvania for a screening of The Bad Man (Easton Daily Free Press, June 20, 1924)
  2. ^ newspaper ad in Sonora, California for a screening of The Bad Man (The Union Democrat, February 28, 1925)
  3. ^ color poster advertising "THE BAD MAN   the laughable thriller by Porter Emerson Browne with HOLBROOK BLINN and an all star cast"
  4. ^ "THE SCREEN". The New York Times review of The Bad Man (October 9, 1923)
  5. ^ "THE BAD MAN AT RITZ SCORES; Holbrook Blinn Lifts Clever Play Far Above Usual Run of Photo Dramas" (The Spokesman-Review, June 29, 1924)
  6. ^ "The Bad Man (1923)" Ojos de Aguila Film Review (November 18, 2009) Archived December 18, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  7. ^ Scheuer, Philip K. "Walter Huston Acts Bad Man; Traditional Role Filled by New Favorite Play Done in Talkie Form at Downtown Conteniences of Plot Seen in Version" (Los Angeles Times, September 6, 1930)
  8. ^ Soares, Andre. "On TCM: Wallace Beery Movies" (Alt Film Guide, August 17, 2013)
  9. ^ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Catalog: The Bad Man

External links

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