Frank Lloyd in 1920

What was Frank Lloyd doing a century ago, in 1920?

He was 32 years old, with wife, Alma and daughter Jimmie (our Mom), they lived on Vine Street in Hollywood, he drove his Model T to the Goldwyn studio (Pickford-Fairbanks Studio), and had already acted in more than 50 films and listed his profession in the 1920 census as “Motion Picture Director”.

Frank was enjoying success, “a master cinematician making cinema marvels” guaranteeing box office success. 1920 was an amazingly busy, full year for him, after the horrors of World War 1 and Spanish flu. Prohibition of sale of alcohol began (later we’ll talk about the ways Frank got around this law), massive miner and steelworker strikes (Hollywood technicians were organizing too), fear from the far-left Red Scare (who can you trust?), Babe Ruth’s first year as a Yankee (see photo of Frank as a RedSox fan), 19th amendment guaranteeing women’s right to vote and even the beginning of personal home radio sets (gosh! live shows and music going out over the air waves).

It seems that each of the four Lloyd movies of 1920 touches on controversial topics beginning with….

The Woman in Room 13, 50 minutes, Goldwyn Studios, first a Broadway success, movie scenario by Richard Schayer (later success as writer for Frankenstein(1931), The Mummy (1932). And starring the captivating talented beauty, Pauline Frederick.

In this “baffling mystery melodrama”, teased as “a play for every woman; a lesson for every husband”, our heroine Pauline Frederick stars as Laura Bruce, wife to corrupt police commissioner, John, played by Charles Clary. She divorces John when she finds him in a drunken state with another woman and weds Paul Ramsey played by John Bowers. Follow this now!

Ramsey’s boss, Dick Turner, a libertine, played by perpetual bad guy Richard McKim, sends Ramsey away on a long business trip, why?, so he can get close to Laura.

Clever Ramsey hires protection for her. BUT, the bodyguard happens to be her ex-husband, Bruce, who is looking for revenge, oh no! (All this story in 50 minutes!) Laura is lured to Turner’s apartment (“Room 13”) where she meets up with Edna, an old flame of Turner’s who has given up all her wealth for his love and convinces Laura to leave; that’s an important detail. In the apartment below, Bruce, the ex, has installed a dictaphone (innovative listening device) and makes Ramsey, the good husband, listen to the conversation between Turner and Edna. Ramsey believes the voice to be his wife, oh no! “My wife’s voice!” he swears, rushes upstairs, batters down the door just as Edna slips out the back window. Ramsey shoots Turner dead! (I hear the audience cheering.)

At the trial, Ramsey will go free if his wife confesses (well….lies) that she was in the room. Should she swear if she was the Woman in Room 13 when the fatal shot was fired? A societal and personal conundrum. She confesses! He’s freed. They reconcile! Whew! Later Edna confesses to Ramsey that she was the Woman in Room 13, that it was her voice he heard on the listening device.

Melodrama rules!

Here, in one of the first films to use a dictaphone machine, even though a silent movie, a listening device captures the conversation in another room, in Room 13. Remember...1920s technology!

As a curiosity, wouldn’t it be great to see this movie? It still exists, barely.

A tinted 35 mm nitrate print with some decomposition and mold damage, with French intertitles, was recently found in a collection in Europe; currently it is as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, standing in line for restoration. Hurry!

A remake in 1932 starring Elissa Landi exists,

Coming soon: The Silver Horde, theater ads “There is nothing in this world that men and women love better than a love scene — unless it be a fight.” Tune in!