Donnie recommended this to me—thanks! I enjoyed this one.
Nearly two hours long but well-paced, the film explores a role reversal of master and subject when a yacht carrying an English lord, his children and their servants wreck on a tropical island. Gloria Swanson plays the spoiled eldest daughter, Mary Loam, and Thomas Meighan plays the family's butler, Crichton. Lila Lee plays Tweeny, the adorable scullery maid (check out those Princess Leia buns she sports at the beginning... or are they Princess Lila buns??). Daddy Roberts, a familiar face from
Miss Lulu Bett,
Something to Think About, and
Excuse My Dust, makes an appearance as Lord Loam. Oh, and Bebe Daniels makes a surprise appearance in the famous Babylonian fantasy sequence near the end of the film.
I've seen the pairing of Swanson and Meighan before in
Why Change Your Wife?; they're always an attractive couple. There's a love triangle of sorts between Mary, Crichton and Tweeny, with Tweeny pining for Crichton and Crichton attracted to Mary, though Mary would laugh off the idea of a romance with her butler, a man beneath her in station. Well, that is, until a fateful day out yachting...
After the wreck, Crichton quickly takes charge, and the family soon sheds their snobbery to work and survive. Two years later, the group has made a really impressive home for themselves: their hut is outfitted with mechanical contraptions, including a device that, with the pull of a lever, will set off a smoke alarm to alert passing ships. Crichton, adorned in leopard skins, is now the "king" of the group, with everyone else answering to him. The love triangle takes on a new dynamic: Tweeny is still in love with him as always, but Mary finally enters the mix, realizing her attraction for Crichton.
There's some interesting foreshadowing in the film via poetry, with prominence given to this line by William Ernest Henley:
Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a King in Babylon
And you were a Christian Slave
And, DeMille being DeMille, we get a short but sweet Babylonian fantasy sequence, after Crichton saves Mary from a leopard prowling some nearby ruins (did they sedate the leopard or something before tossing it in that close-up, btw?). Crichton is re-imagined as a powerful Babylonian king (with Bebe Daniels as his consort), and Mary as a Christian slave, clad in skins. After refusing to be his, she is sent to the lions' den, the famous sequence shown in the 1980
Hollywood documentary where Gloria Swanson talks about the experience of being so close to a real lion; what a brave woman!
Crichton and Mary are about to be married on the island, but Tweeny spots a ship sailing by, and Crichton, despite Mary's pleas (and some reluctance in himself, I suspect), pulls the lever to signal rescue, and putting an end to the social order on the island as they must return to the "old ways".
Back home in England, everything is back to the way it was, with Crichton a butler now serving the family once again. Tweeny wins her man and Crichton asks her to marry him. The film ends with vignettes from Lady and butler: Mary, though still heart-broken, eventually moves on and marries a fellow nobleman, Lord Brockelhurst, who had been courting her since before the adventures on the island; Crichton and Tweeny are settling in to their new lives in America well, having started a homestead.
This is a bittersweet ending. I won't lie; I was kinda rooting for Mary to buck the old order and get with Crichton, even though I felt bad for Tweeny and Crichton's behavior back on the island as the "king" kinda annoyed me. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised when Tweeny
did marry Crichton, as I was expecting Mary to end up with him after all. I still had that "maybe...?" in the back of my mind even when they were back home in England, but then Crichton said he was gonna marry Tweeny. Oh, well; at least Mary didn't seem to be under any duress when saying 'yes' to Brockelhurst, and I got the impression that she genuinely liked him enough to marry him. And Crichton and Tweeny
are a very cute couple
Gloria was
so beautiful with her hair down, btw, on the island. It just framed her facial features so well.