A controversial film from 1929 that won an Oscar for Mary Pickford. Many rate Pickford's performance as one of the worst to win an Oscar.

Based on a hit play that starred Helen Hayes a few years before, the plot deals with the code of honor in the "old south." Norma (Pickford) is a coquette (flirt) and daughter of the town's doctor. He's a stuffed shirt. Boring Stanley pursues Norma but she's attracted to Michael (Johnny Mack Brown) who is poor.

Lots of histrionics lead up to Norma and Michael spending a night together. They plan to marry, but the father (John St. Polis) becomes enraged and shoots Michael. At his trial Norma tries to lie to save "daddy," but it all backfires.

Stagy and old-fashioned, yet Pickford is excellent. In her talkie debut the great silent star (of almost 20 years) turns in an electrfying performance. Yes she's too old for the part but she looks great in her flapper clothes and bobbed hair-do.

The sound is bad (as noted elsehwere on GAOH) and the acting is very hammy (especially St. Polis and William Janney as the brother). The film is stagy and static in places. It's a 1929 takie after all. But Pickford is excellent. Even Brown (talk about handsome!) gets better as the film goes on.

Matt Moore is drippy Stanley, Louise Beavers is the maid, Henry Kolker is the lawyer, Vera Lewis is the flirting old lady.

IMDb says the film cost under $500,000 to make and grossed $1.4M in the USA alone. The film was preceded by a massive publicity campaign that showed Pickford getting her famous hair cut off and styled into the fashionable bob. In her mid-30s when she made COQUETTE, Pickford looks great.

Worth a look.

also..... the final scene of Pickford leaving the court house and walking down the street is a beautifully shot silent sequence with the street lights and storefronts lighting up as she walks alone....

I watched this the other night.

It was okay, but frankly, I much prefer her silents to this film.

Part of it was the fact that the sound on this film (at least on my system) was really very poor. I could barely understand whole bits of dialog.

Also, the beginning of this film was a bit slow. Once it got rolling it was okay...but I think they could have gotten to the action sooner. All of that drama leading up to her spending the night with Michael went on too long for my taste. And I thought Mary Pickford in that opening sequence related to the dance was a smidgen annoying. But that might be personal taste as I really don't like manipulative people IRL...and she was being very manipulative, in that *especially* annoying eye-batting sort of way. :laugh:


Anyway, for what it's worth, here is the review I wrote in my blog:


Coquette (1929 - Mary Pickford, Johnny Mack Brown, Matt Moore) is probably my least favorite of all the Mary Pickford films I've seen to-date. This was Mary's first talkie, and it was also an attempt to revitalize/update her image from "America's Sweetheart" (which she was becoming WAY too old to play) into sort of a coy flapper.

IMO, the transition didn't work. Not the transition from silent to sound...and not the transition from sweetheart to flapper. My advice, if you care about familiarizing yourself with Mary Pickford: watch her silents. In particular, go for Sparrows and My Best Girl. And maybe Suds. That'll give you the basic idea of what Mary Pickford was all about at her peak. But definitely skip this little outing, unless you are a big Mary Pickford fan...or the period of transition from silent to sound really interests you.

Anyway, the story is okay I suppose. A coy and manipulative southern belle called Norma Besant (Mary Pickford) falls in love with a guy called Michael Jeffrey (Johnny Mack Brown), a crude and somewhat volatile mountaineer. Norma's father, a wealthy and successful doctor, is furious about the match and refuses to allow them to marry. Instead, he orders Jeffrey out of his house, and when Jeffrey returns after his attempts at making good at honest labor, still does not accept the young man.

Furious at Jeffrey's refusal to give up his daughter, Dr. Besant eventually shoots and kills Jeffrey in an effort to preserve his family's 'good name' after the two young lovers are caught out all night one evening. At first, Norma is extremely upset at her father and doesn't care if he is hanged for murder. But eventually she softens, and when called to the witness stand during Dr Besant's trial, lies for her dad, claiming that Jeffrey forced himself on her and her father was only defending her.

Dr. Besant is beside himself when he sees his daughter lying for him, and he FINALLY does the right thing, confessing to his crime. He then grabs the gun from among the tagged evidence pieces on a nearby table and commits suicide in a final effort to atone to his daughter for her unhappiness.

Verdict: A solid 'meh'.


Oh...and I completely agree with you about two things in particular:

1. Johnny Mack Brown - yummy! :w00t:

2. The last shot of her walking away down the street - great shot! :thumb:

Well Beda you have to remember it was 1929... My guess is that they pretty much filmed the play....

I was just blown away by the close-ups of Pickford. She was STUNNING..... Funny that in 1929 at age 35 or so she was considered to be "old." LOL

I think she never looked better in any film of hers I ever saw.... That last scene is PERFECT

Where did you both get it from? I can't find it on DVD anywhere?

I saw it on TCM last week (or the week before, can't remember which). I agree with pktrekgirl, the sound kind of ruined it for me. I haven't seen any of Mary Pickford's silents yet, but I'll have to check them out.

It was on TCM but it's available.....

"Coquette" was the first Mary Pickford movie I ever saw, about three years ago. She won an Academy Award for the role so it must be near her best I thought. Imagine my initial impression of her. Since then I've seen ten of her silents (and "Kiki") and that first impression I got, quickly became an ever-increasing personal appreciation for her filmwork. I'm glad I found Mary Pickford ...

So, I watched this again last night. Or I should say, I tediously sat through it, dutifully trying to enjoy the creeky melodrama. More than just a transitional sound effort for Pickford as pointed out, but a stark example of Hollywood struggling with sound. This film was produced when the industry temporarily slipped from focus on artsy visuals, to simply photographing pre-scripted stageplays with dialogue, almost in self-acknowlegement of it's own setback. They knew the results would be bad. For the first time, people needed to memorize their lines for film. Here, Mary Pickford struck me as going through the motions, pondering the whole time how the outcome will sound. She seems much less active and slower to project herself dramatically with sound than she always had done comedically silent. She looks really young, still very pretty, but doesn't 'sound' young. In the heat of commotion, she bursts out the door and says "I won't go to my room, I won't, I'm too old to be locked up" ... I thought OoPs (?)

The southern accents were wrongly exaggerated, especially Pickford who's dialogue is recited to script without much natural ferver. The pacing in the first thirty minutes is punishing. And William Cameron Menzies barely shows-up with any sort of effort; the walnut trees along the terrace path were not a good choice of backdrops. Sam Taylor, United Artists and Mary Pickford slapped this altogether because they had to. They were professionals and this is what they did. Pickford was not the type to sit around and wait three years for sound recording to better develop. Roll up your sleeves, hope for the best ...

The performances are good, but not Oscar worthy. I think we all pretty much recognize that Mary Pickford was not particularly deserving of her Award for this role, but was nevertheless entitled to one for film achievement. "Stella Maris", "Sparrows" and "My Best Girl" are each more award worthy, but tit for tat ... Johnny Mack Brown has a couple of good scenes acting, but his death scene wasn't one of them. Louise Beavers gets a touching moment with Mary on her lap rocking her in a big mammy hug, while Pickford recites far-off fairytale dramatics ...

A solid effort, but the technology really tells on it ...

Yes, I know. And being a Mary Pickford fan, I'm glad that I saw it and all. But I wouldn't really recommend it for a Mary Pickford rookie to start out with. I really do prefer her silents.

I'm very glad that she did a couple of talkies though. At least it's not a Valentino situation where we now don't even have any recordings of her speaking voice.

And I thought she looked quite young. Not young enough to play the adolescents that she played for quite some time...but she nevertheless looked quite young. I'd have pegged her in her late 20's in that film, if I didn't know how old she was.

I guess you are right though - we should be grateful that we have these early talkies - even if the sounds sorta sucks. This one was rough...but I watched one a few weeks ago - DANGER LIGHTS - that was even worse. In that one, you could hear the wind in the microphones. :laugh: Needless to say, I'm glad I watched it, but it will never be my favorite Jean Arthur film! ;)

well bottom line for me is that Mary Pickford won an Oscar..... She is still the biggest female star in film history and I'm glad she won.....

I recorded this a week or so ago from TCM but haven't had a chance to see it yet, but mainly I'm writing because I wanted to thank you, Ed, for always taking time to write reviews of films you see, really appreciate it!!! I don't have time for doing that much anymore, unfortunately, though I'd love to, but always a joy to log in and see a review from you, and usually films from the silent or early 30's era as well! :clap:

Mark

Yeah, I know how it is Mark ... I wish I had more time to write reviews too ...

gee you just had all that time off for being sick..... You should have been able to chalk up 10 or 20 films!!

:wave1:

I agree.

Ed is really great at starting these threads. And at least recently, it seems we've been watching alot of the same stuff so it's worked out just swell for me. :) I can just show up and react instead of trying to come up with brilliant insights or anything.

Starting these threads takes alot of time, and it is much appreciated. :)

hey thanks.... I guess we're all into the TCM Oscar schedule at the moment.....

COQUETTE gets a bum rap by most people today but I think Mary gives an excellent performance in it and far from this nonsense that some writers have started in recent years about people just voting her the award out of respect or because she courted the Academy or whatever - she received fine reviews for her performance. And the movie was a HUGE hit.

It's very clear the industry was truly impressed with her performance. I have a 1930 or 1931 movie magazine with an article called "The Five Greatest Film Performances" or something like that and many stars are quoted on their five choices and Mary's COQUETTE comes up several times including from her less than chummy quasi-daughter in law Joan Crawford.

COQUETTE was released on vhs video in the 1990's by MGM/UA and it's quite easy title to find used and often quite inexpensive on ebay, half.com, and Amazon.com, although many copies are ex-rentals.

I've been getting interested in seeing some Mary Pickford films recently including this one...I won an old copy of her autobiography (nearly as old as I am) which got me going. I see that Coquette will be seen on TCM again next month (April 18 at 6am) so I'll try to remember to watch or record that for later viewing.

I've never seen Coquette (1929) and don't expect I ever will. Everywhere you look for a review or a user's comment, you read pretty much the same thing:

Mary Pickford didn't deserve her Oscar for this film, but she got it anyway because of her large body of work in the silent era, plus of course her status as a charter founding member of AMPAS.

I'm not necessarily against Oscars that are given for a cumulative body of work rather than for a single movie; indeed, I grant that Gloria Grahame's and James Coburn's Oscars were probably for "lifetime achievement." And I applaud the very recent award given to Tilda Swinton -- though I didn't see her in that movie -- because of her fine work in other films.

That said, it is pretty difficult to wade through the critical reviews of the 1928-29 films and not come away with the opinion that Jeanne Eagels, Lillian Gish, and/or Bessie Love were robbed. One IMDb user states:

"If Eagels was alive at the time (she died in October 1929), if Paramount had more clout with the MGM-dominated AMPAS at the time, she surely would have won the Academy Award for Best Actress (it went to Mary Pickford in one of the WORST performances of the period, in the nearly-unwatchable "Coquette")."

A professional critic, Dan Callahan, wrote of Jeanne Eagels' performance in The Letter (1929):

"There's no visible technique in Eagels' performance, no distance. She's really flaming out (Lee Strasberg would have made her his star pupil). It's hard to imagine what Eagels would be like in other roles. Like Strasberg's real star pupil, Kim Stanley, maybe Eagels just couldn't sustain this level of intensity for long. If so, The Letter is enough to secure her reputation."

In his indispensable volume, "Alternate Oscars" (Delta, 1993), Danny Peary writes:

"[Pickford] invited the [Academy] judges to Pickfair for tea, thereby qualifying as the first star to campaign for an Academy Award. And she defeated several respected, veteran actresses, including the late Jeanne Eagels, who had died of a drug overdose after making The Letter. It was hard for the Academy to justify her victory because the film was one of the worst received of her career; it was generally recognized that she had been miscast as the Southern flirt who ruins men's lives.... Surely, Lillian Gish was more deserving for her riveting performance in The Wind." (Note: Miss Gish was not nominated, but should have been.)

Bessie Love's by now legendary performance in The Broadway Melody (1929), that year's Oscar winner for Best Film, is the most accessible of all the nominated star turns of 1928-29. Maybe it's unfair to Miss Pickford's memory to single out Miss Love's agonizingly felt telephone conversation while her heart is breaking, since we have seen it so often, while the Pickford, Eagels, and Gish films are so rarely aired by TCM. But I'll admit that the first time I saw Miss Love in that phone scene, I cried along with her.

In all, I don't think you will find anyone who can state without equivocation that Mary Pickford's Oscar was wholly merited for that one film alone.

Cheers,
Dan

I'm the same Dan, I've never seen "Coquette" either, not for want of trying! But over here in England its never on TCM... I'd love to see it simply to be able to judge for myself Miss Pickfords performance. I'll guess I'll have to wait till they release it on DVD as am loathed to spend money and buy a VHS copy of it when VHS is now completely on its way out...

I was lucky enough to get a DVD-R copy of Pickford in the (also 1929) movie "The Taming Of The Shrew" and thought she was brilliant in that.

David,

:mellow: Well, I have a copy of this film, but I have not seen it yet. I have had it for several months! I love Pickford, but seeing her in a talking role is a little hard to fathom! I have almost all of her surviving Silent features, with the exception of a couple titles.

For what it's worth -- and I know that may not be much -- I am enamored of one of Mary Pickford's talkie performances: her title role in Kiki (1931).

Kiki is not generally considered one of her best films, but I found it thoroughly enjoyable. Probably this was an attempt by the legendary Ms. Pickford to "jazz up" her image. Long gone were the billowy curls of her early films, where she played young girls even after she was in her thirties. Here, she sports jazz-age bobbed hair, plays a flirtatious chorus girl, and is clearly a woman "on the make" -- though chastely -- for the character played by her costar, Reginald Denny. Quite a departure from Mary Pickford's "America's Sweetheart" persona.

I've said that in Kiki, Ms. Pickford tries to "jazz up" her image. Here, she shows us her legs (which were "not bad" for someone only 5 feet tall); she removes her brassiere from beneath her blouse while standing in front of Denny; and in a later scene, she sits in front of his male assistant in her lingerie and unconcernedly puts on her stockings, slowly, one leg at a time.

The film is lively and kinetic, almost a slapstick comedy. Ms. Pickford delivers kicks to various backsides, among them Reginald Denny's and Margaret Livingston's, and gets kicked herself. Twice, Ms. Pickford is seen falling on her rear end. She even tumbles off the stage and into the orchestra pit, landing seat first into a drum -- a stunt her friend Charles Chaplin would use, years later, in Limelight (1952). I think everyone in Kiki was extraordinarily game. They were all obviously hoping to make this film hilarious.

Unfortunately, Kiki flopped at the box office, and Ms. Pickford would make only one more film -- Secrets, another flop. The writing on the wall was now more legible than ever. Maybe the public felt that, at age 38, Ms. Pickford was reaching a little too hard for the youth serum. The era of "America's Sweetheart" was over.

But she left behind a legacy of great performances, and a great public enthusiasm for America's first major female movie star.

Cheers,
Dan

Oh have you got COQUETTE Giant? I'd love to see it some day.. Maybe we can do a swap next time... Cheers David

The title song from COQUETTE has been put on Youtube. It is sung by Frank Munn and features a copy of the sheet music with Mary's photo on it.

Thanks Geoff, I will check that out.. :)