“The Director’s Hunches”: La Cava in Hollywood, the Silent Features (1925-1928)

Gregory La Cava’s journey in the motion picture industry appears like a haphazard series of events, with La Cava also going backwards and becoming a gag man again, but the final destination of filmmaker is insight upon his relationship with Richard Dix. La Cava’s first time working with Hollywood studios was on Dix films, and it’s interesting to think that if it were not for Dix’s interest in La Cava’s scenarios, La Cava may have stayed circling in the uncredited. I wouldn’t say that Dix’s influence in La Cava subsequently becoming the director is particularly exaggerated either, and La Cava’s indebtedness reflects in their enduring friendship, despite not working together beyond the silent period, like La Cava’s friendship with W. C. Fields, but as McCrea recalls, these relationships though were mutually destructive, with Dix also being an alcoholic: “He was at Paramount when he started. Richard Dix was the guy who worked for him there, they were buddies, and Dix was a buddy of mine, a booster of mine; he called me Joey. He got me in Lost Squadron [RKO, 1932] with Von Stroheim and all of them…The two people he liked the best among actors were Hepburn and me. And Richard Dix, of course. They got drunk together.”¹ McCrea discussing how Dix assisted him in his career supports the many publications claiming how Dix personally requested La Cava to direct the subsequent features her previously worked on as gag-man and uncredited director of segments.

La Cava’s style is something that was developed and defined particularly fast upon working with Richard Dix and W. C. Fields. We are fortunate that a substantial number of La Cava’s silent work has survived that we are able to see this growth and influence from his actors on the work he produced. La Cava’s work with Dix is the lesser of the two, but in the surviving films from their partnership you can seee that interest La Cava had in real personality. The films La Cava produced with Dix became of note when a 1928 article described their partnership as, with “Dix Combination With La Cava Is Big Film Success.”² It’s interesting to note that La Cava’s uncredited work on The Lucky Devil was acknowledged in these early focus pieces on La Cava and Dix’s collaborations, and being defined as key to the success of the film. La Cava’s early struggles in the motion picture industry before finding this described success with Richard Dix made an engaging story for columnists, too, with a story I cite from the Tulsa World edition of the print. “Real Courage Wins Director His Film Niche: Gregory La Cava, Former Cartoonist, Waited 10, Years for Chance”³ titles the triumphant story of La Cava. The courage in waiting which the piece refers to is, in their words, “Of course, courage does not make films for La Cava. His ability does that. But the point is that he was in the motion picture industry for 10 years as an animated cartoonist, gag man, comedy writer and obscure director of two-reel comedies before his nervy qualities won the coveted chance of directing a feature picture.” It’s interesting to see a rather earnest reflection of the tribulations faced when working in the motion picture industry; how it is not a straight line to the top, as reflected in La Cava leaving C. C. Burr to pursue a career in feature film making but not automatically being granted the directorial position by Famous Players–Lasky and Paramount.

The picture created of La Cava in this article is particularly wonderful in showing his dedication and interest in contracting a scene, and character, to be as true to life as possible. The respect La Cava garnered from cinematographers like Leon Shamroy finds its traces in La Cava’s dedication to getting a specific shot and shooting a sequence in a very particular way, as this article discusses, it extended to putting his own safety at risk: “”The Shock Punch,” a Dix story In which the hero played an iron worker tossing. rivets atop a towering skyscraper. Scenes were made on the, beams of the New Tork Telephone company buliding some 30 stories above lower West street. Furthermore, It was windy and altogether most uncomfortable for anybody except Iron workers or daredevil camermen. La Cava volunteered to direct the risky scenes. de did and they proved to be the picture’s most thrilling sequences. Came another Dix picture. “The Lucky Devil,’ In which Richard won an exciting cross-country automobile race from a group of professional drivers. They went on location to the dirt roads of New Jersey near Lakewood and hired a dozen professional speed kings. Opening wide the throttle and plunging 90 and 100 mlles an hour. True to movie tradition, the race lad to be photographed from a speeding auto in front of the others. The job called for steel nerves and La Cava accomplished the feat at direction. Incidentally, he surmounted the purely mechanical phases of the situation and developed a series of uproarious comic episodes.”⁴ A rather fantastic narrative, but La Cava’s interest in capturing the real life of individuals, such as steel workers and racer drivers in this case, does show in this work despite not being entirely his work and remaining uncredited in the final film. La Cava’s risk taking described here is probably part of what made him eventually wanted in the Hollywood branch of Paramount and Famous-Players.

Not only in the pictures are there the traces of La Cava’s idiosyncrasies that became synonymous with him later in his career, but certain techniques of production with his “character actor stock company”, as Kay Francis described, that La Cava seemed to create over the course of his career. The title for this blog post came from this article published in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1928, where La Cava’s interest in hiring certain people was described as: “Director’s “Hunches” Make One Job Certain.” In what was described as “superstition” in the subsequent article is La Cava’s interest in certain personalities: “Superstition plays an important role in the lives of motion picture directors. This is evidenced by the tale told of Gregory La Cara, director of Bebe Daniels’ latest Paramount comedy which is now playing at the Arcadia Theatre. When La Cava made his first production several years ago he had Henry Golding (a misprint of Harry Cording) as a member of the cast. The picture was a suecess, Golding was also cast in the second photoplay to be made by In Cava and this, too, was a hit was a hit. Since that time La Cava has insisted that Golding brings him good luck and he refuses to start a picture unless the latter is with him either as a helper or as a player.” From choosing Joel McCrea over more popular leading men to casting his former secretary Dorothy Wilson in a leading part, La Cava always seemed to take a particular interest in casting, as this article dictates. La Cava’s particular interest in the whole canvas, rather than elevating the personality of just the leading actors themselves is evident in these silent features, too, as this 1926 interview with Richard Dix following a showing of “Let’s Get Married” seems to indicate: “”Gregory La Cava, my director, is a nice chap and all of that, but he does get the queerest thoughts. The scenario provides that I be taken temporarily out of the picture, so he got a wicked idea. As I emerge from a cabaret, the evidences of a fight are strewn all over the sidewalk. Bodies of the combatants are in a heap. Then-whiz—! through the balmy atmosphere comes a glass projectile which lands on my skull. La Cava’s problem is solved-but oh, my poor head!”⁵ A print of the film survives in the Library of Congress, I have, unfortunately, not seen the film yet so I can’t gauge the success in La Cava’s exploration of “film beyond the star system.” It’s interesting seeing what La Cava gravitated to throughout his career; like in terms of technical points of interest, La Cava was amused by slow motion and the warping of sound to mimic one’s internal thoughts (the unusual use of sound is noticeable in Fifth Avenue Girl (1939) and Unfinished Business (1941), but I’ll discuss this in later posts about his later career), and in thematic and narrative concerns, creating a snapshot of humanity which went beyond the isolated nature of the star and just capturing the star’s personality.

Esther Ralston recalls the New York location shootings for Womanhandled (1925) in her memoir, and it’s interesting to note that La Cava’s interest in New York goes beyond studio interest in New York stories, as Central Park is a point of interest in subsequent La Cava films such as Gallant Lady andFifth Avenue Girl in particular as a cross-class meeting point and almost a place of erosion of social conventions. Ralston recalling the film: “After Kiss for Cinderella was finished, the director, Gregory LaCava, called me to the studio to talk about my next picture with Richard Dix, Womanhandled. One of the first scenes we did on this picture was on location in Central Park, by the lake. I was supposed to be walking my little dog when he falls into the lake. I start yelling for help and along comes a young man (Dix) who bravely dives headfirst into the lake to rescue my pet. Since the lake at that spot was only a foot and a half keep, the expression on Dix’s face when he stood up in that shallow water, with mud all over his face, made a very funny scene.”⁶ Ralston draws attention to the wonderful visual nature of La Cava’s sense of humour. For a filmmaker known for his excellent wisecracks and barbs, it’s possible to forget that the La Cava touch does not reside primarily in the dialogue, but it is in these certain gags that remind you of his value of the visual medium of film, and his nature as a cartoonist.

Ralston’s recollections are invaluable with providing insight to how La Cava worked in the silent period. I wanted to include this other extract from Ralston’s memoir as it’s interesting to see how La Cava directed and guided his actors in his silent feature period. Ralston hints that the structure to filming Womanhandled (1925) consisted of filming the on-location sequences first and then ending production with interior scenes and close-ups. In my previous blog post Barbara McClean I mention that she had to add a few close-ups in The Affairs of Cellini herself, and it’s interesting to think of this in combination with Leon Shamroy’s notes on La Cava’s interest in the whole image, the medium shot to see both actors responding to each other. In terms of production cost, it’s obvious why on-location sequences were shot first, but it’s interesting to think about La Cava’s relationship with the close-up, why certain films of La Cava’s have more close-ups than others, etc. Anyway, here’s a wonderful anecdote regarding how La Cava directed in the silent period and the comedy of motion picture making from Ralston’s memoir: “Back to the studio I went for the last and interior scenes for Womanhandled. While we were in Houston on location, we had made one big scene of a cattle stampede on the Blakely ranch and now we were to do the close-ups at the studio. In this scene, I was supposed to be driving a covered wagon across the plains, right in the path of the stampeding cattle. When 1 see my danger, I faint against the side of the wagon and the hero, Richard Dix, rides ahead of the cattle and, leaping from his horse to my wagon, grabs the reins and drives my wagon out of the path of danger. For this close-up at the studio, I was seated in the wagon in front of a moving cyclorama while prop men rocked the horseless wagon back and forth as though it was moving across the plains. “All right now, Esther,” said Mr. LaCava, the director, “You look out and see the stampeding cattle. You’re terrified. That’s right, you don’t know what to do, you drop the reins … and faint … slowly. That’s fine. Now you hear horse’s hoofs pounding behind you. You raise your head weakly, and see Richard ride up and leap on the wagon.” Since this was still in the days of silent movies, I was able to follow my director’s instructions as he gave them, but when I weakly raised my head and saw Mr. Dix riding on a saddle-covered BEER BARREL, pushed alongside my wagon by four prop men, I burst out laughing and it was at least ten minutes before I could control my hysterics enough to go on with the scene. Ah, me, the funny things the audience never sees!”⁷

La Cava’s success with the pictures he made with Richard Dix being attributed mainly to La Cava’s work were stressed by studio publications reporting as such, like the Exhibitors Herald reporting that La Cava worked as editor for Womanhandled (1925) too.⁸ The interest generated around La Cava as the dominant vision guiding these films culminated in his work with W. C. Fields. So’s Your Old Man was the first of the two films La Cava made with Fields, and like Running Wild, Fields later remade the film in sound. Fields’ Sam Bisbee is a small town inventor who creates an unbreakable glass windshield that garners the interest from the U.S. government, but when displaying his invention his car gets switched out, and miserably returns home. On the train (beautifully composed shot from the doorway of the train when Fields ponders whether to down to vial of poison he has is, well, beautifully composed with such life from the children playing pat-a-cake in the aisle), he meets Alice Joyce’s Princess Lescaboura, who wants to help a poor individual to prove her worth to Prince Lescaboura (Charles Byer),changing his luck but still making him the talk of the town. A few great moments, to me, are in La Cava’s superb sight gags; especially with the vial of poison. The life of Fields’ Bisbee concluding in a mansion and still corralling his two “scientist” friends to go along with his antics also neatly reflects the subsequent relationship with Fields, La Cava and company.

It’s important to note that La Cava wrote the original story for his second film with Fields, Running Wild (1927), inspired by both his subsequent friendship with Fields and La Cava’s probable familiarity with Fields’ act and persona from vaudeville. La Cava worked, in his words, as a supernumerary for the Lewis Waller Repertoire Company in around 1911/12⁹ so he was around and involved in the theatre circuit during Fields’ increasing rise in popularity, but that is also exactly that–La Cava may have just encountered a performance with Fields during his time on vaudeville and Broadway. I say this tentatively of course. Anyway, back to Running Wild, the image we have of W. C, Fields persona today, a figure of such distinctive voice and wise cracks, is difficult to contend to with the medium of silent film, but La Cava’s two features with Fields showcase Fields’ wonderful physicality and capability with sight gags (Fields kissing a horseshoe and throwing it over his shoulder for luck and smashing the florist window in the process tickled me in particular). Running Wild follows in the similar vein of So’s Your Old Man with a down on his luck Fields, except with Running Wild taking the fantastical turn of Fields’ Elmer Finch being hypnotised, after running into a vaudeville hypnotist show to evade the police, into believing that he is a lion and proceeds to terrorise his employers and pretty much the whole of New York City. The strength of Running Wild is in the little things La Cava incorporates to illustrate Finch’s susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion, which is in his superstitious beliefs.

Great sequences in Running Wild are in the romps around New York (Jon Bengtson maps the locations in the film in his blog Silent Film Locations), preceding and proceeding Fields’ hypnotism, and showcases Fields’ wonderful physicality. La Cava’s light closeups accentuate these delightful little gags. Running Wild reminds me a lot of La Cava’s animation work on The Breath of a Nation (1919), but with hypnotism taking the place of liquid courage. La Cava’s interest in social conventions and the class divide is also no less present in Running Wild, with the post-hypnotist half of the film being reminiscent of the destruction of the Barclay Department Store in She Married Her Boss. Running Wild also has a fantastic closing image of W. C. Fields as Napoleon. I was curious about how La Cava and Fields’ relationship developed during their two films together, as when Fields’ posthumous memoir talks about “one punch” La Cava¹⁰ it is in the subsequent friendship capacity, and his reverence for him as a director: “Greg La Cava, to my mind, the No. 1 director of these great and grand and glorious United States of ours. I have many friends, Directors, and I hate to have to expose my hand like this. Greg is a highly sensitive, finely educated mug, rhetorical, artistic and with a comedy sense not equalled by any other director. (Notice, I purposely left the comedians out of this.)”¹¹ So I contacted his estate through his granddaughter Dr. Harriet Fields, and I’m very thankful for her assistance in providing some information to the items held at the Margaret Herrick Library, due to my inability to go there in person, and she provided her view on their working relationship: “W.C. Fields and Gregory La Cava met and worked with each other in New York and then in Hollywood in talking films.  Although, W.C. Fields knew what made people laugh and therefore, he really did not take well to direction from La Cava or anyone else.  That said, they remained good and loyal friends until the time of my grandfather’s death in 1946.”¹²

Running Wild is breezy fun, but it is also an interesting piece of work on both its position in reflecting La Cava’s sensibilities and the image it had in Fields’ mind on his future performances. Mary Brian, who plays the daughter in Running Wild, befriended Fields and Michael G. Ankerich noted in his interview with her that “eight years later, Fields, fighting with Paramount over casting selections, insisted that Brian recreate the role of his daughter in the Running Wild remake, The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), with Brian stating: “Fields was a wonderful guy. He liked to throw me off during our scenes. We’d go into a scene, and, for example, I would go over to get my overcoat. It wouldn’t be there, and I’d have to look for it. Or, I’d get on the phone and would hear something funny on the other end. He wanted to het my reaction without spoiling the scene. He tried, but he was never able to throw me off.”¹³ The sly spontaneity Fields brings to a scene to deliberately throw off that Brian details does sound like a trait that La Cava would have been drawn to in his professional life. La Cava’s final transition to Hollywood appears to be immediately following his films with W. C. Fields, which were filmed at the Long Island Studios in New York, (along with Paradise for Two (1927), the lost Dix-La Cava film sandwiched between the two Fields), as it was reported that La Cava was one of the twenty two directors who transferred from the east coast following the closing of the Paramount-owned Long Island plant for long feature production.¹⁴

La Cava’s first film on arrival in Hollywood was the 1927 picture Tell It to Sweeney with George Bancroft and Chester Conklin. It’s unfortunate that, much like his two-reelers, very few of his silent works at the Hollywood branch survive, with only two of the five features surviving. The survival status of this work is also questionable due to the only print of Tell It to Sweeney has been located in the Gosfilmofond, and whether that print has been re-cut or deteriorated its difficult to investigate, but the thought that it survives is nice. Tell It to Sweeney is La Cava’s sole venture into the world of the railroad worker, following Conklin and Bancroft as railroad engineers on the same road, to use this contemporary review’s sucint coverage: “the former operating old Isobel, a decrepit iron steed which is his pride, and the latter in command of the Mogul, the crack engine. Conklin has a pretty daughter, the sweetheart of the son of the owner of the railroad. Bancroft meets her and falls in love in his crude way. How it all ends after a wrestling match between Conklin and Bancroft provide the major part of the laughs. Doris Hill appears as the daughter and Jack Luden as her fiance.”¹⁵ A story of increasing modernisation represented in the advancements of the railroad may have been of interest to La Cava, given the lack of status a studio director has at this point in their career, and it would be great to see the possibility of great physical gags and stunts given the setting one day. The concluding wrestling match in the picture was the subject of a few publicity stories surrounding the film, with one interview with La Cava circulating about how the great comedy of the picture was in that sequence: “I believe the wrestling scenes in Tell It To Sweeney will be the hit of the picture,” La Cava concluded. “Our comedy men worked for days figuring different stunts. While we were taking the scenes, the onlookers howled. And that’s a good sign.”¹⁶ La Cava’s familiarity with boxing possibly lends well to filming and assisting in the construction of action sequences.

La Cava followed his assignment with Sweeney with a reunion with Richard Dix. The final film La Cava made with Dix was publicised on the nature of the Dix-La Cava partnership; with reports emphasising that La Cava was partially given his break due to his work as assistant director and gag man on Dix’s pictures, and that the “Dix-La Cava Team” produced successful films.¹⁷ La Cava and Dix concluded their film work together with The Gay Defender, which is also currently under the status of lost (I like to be optimistic!). The information available about it reads like a Spanish Robin Hood, with Dix playing Joaquin Murrieta, who, when Americans invade his land, fights to protect his hacienda and, naturally, win the girl (the great Thelma Todd) in the process. The nature of this narrative initially reads as outside of familiar territory, but, fascinatingly, still draws from that social conflict La Cava is fascinated by based on Dix’s placement as a Mexican against invading Americans. At this point in his career, La Cava’s status increased to being in the position to be slightly more selective with his projects; represented in his rather small output in comparison to other studio directors. The smaller output of films results in drawing attention to possible reasons for La Cava’s interest in certain stories and themes, such as La Cava following The Gay Defender with Half A Bride (1928); where the narrative poking at the eccentricities of the rich is reminiscent of the likes of My Man Godfrey (1936).

A “holy grail” of lost films, for me, would be La Cava’s Half a Bride. My prayers were partially answered by the Academy Archives restoring Esther Ralston’s home movies, which featured set footage from Half a Bride and the publicity tour for the film. I try to be optimistic about the survival status of Half a Bride upon the discovery of the likes of The Pill Pounder, but, for now, I must be content with the items that survive around the periphery. Half a Bride reunites La Cava with Esther Ralston to play around with Arthur Stringer’s, the Stringer responsible for the story for the great Dawn-Swanson picture Manhandled (1924), “White Hands”, I say play around with as the element of the island is where the similarities between the plot of Half a Bride and “White Hands” ends, which is unfortunate from the historical perspective due to the picture’s current status as lost; but unsurprising due to the nature of film adaptations and La Cava’s reputation. Anyway, La Cava’s Half a Bride involves La Cava’s interest and curiosity surrounding the social class system; with Esther Ralston’s impulsive heiress Patience Winslow seeking out a “companionate marriage”, the idea of a marriage on the basis of equality presented as a new modern idea. Film Daily summarises the film as such: “This is a strictly modern story, employing the idea of a companionate marriage. Esther as a sensation seeker embarks on a trail marriage but her dad has her kidnapped on his yacht. The latter is wrecked, and she and the captain (Gary Cooper) find themselves on a deserted island. Here a neat love story works out, showing how the girl comes to love a man whom she had always disliked. It is a good story of modern social life, and affords a variety of atmosphere, moving from scenes pf wealth to the underworld, life on board a pleasure yacht, and then the deserted island. Nothing big or startling. Just a smooth program number well told.”¹⁸ The hate to love element of the romance, the conflict of Cooper and Ralston’s relationship, reads like the elements of the great screwballs of the 30s, but it is in the modernity of the companionate marriage that appears like the subject that would have appealed to La Cava to explore. It is interesting seeing which narratives and elements La Cava returned to throughout his career, and, what also develops, there appears to be elements that La Cava adapts and changes either due to personal growth or audience response. It is crucial to be tentative regarding directorial growth, especially with filmmakers that did not explicitly discuss their career to reliable sources, but it is interesting to see what techniques of La Cava start to develop, such as La Cava’s interest in purposeful close-ups. Writers for The Film Spectator paid particular close attention to the director of the picture, and the excessive close-ups to break up the scenes:

“When Gregory La Cava was making a picture out of Half a Bride he was faced with the intriguing problem of making it interesting in spite of the fact that most of the story is told with Esther Ralston and Gary Cooper together on an otherwise uninhabited island. A storm carries them to the island and they remain there for three or four months. The island sequences have only the two characters in them, one crude interior and rather bleak exteriors, but the director was not hampered by the scarcity of material, for these sequences are the most interesting in the picture, being more logical and better acted and directed than those before and after the island episode. The fact that a pretty girl and an eligible youth are forced to live together on an island devoid of all modern comforts is in itself romantic, but it takes good direction and acting to make it interesting on the screen. As the picture opens we discover Esther in bed after a particularly large night. There is someone under the clothes with her, and she find an audience dull enough to consider such a sequence of events plausible. It is an astonishing thing to find in an otherwise sensible and logical picture. The close-up curse afflicts the picture. La Cava had a scene which apparently he did not know how to handle, consequently he resorted to the close-up, that unfailing haven for baffled directors. Two people are seated side-by-side on a couch, drinking. We are treated to a succession of individual close-ups of them just drinking. I wish some one would tell me why it is done. And we have one of those disgusting huge close-ups of a kiss, something that we find in nearly all pictures, and which shows us, more than any other one thing, how vulgar the producer mass mind is. However, we have to thank Half a Bride for not having Esther’s hair marcelled all the time she is on the desert island. And we have to thank it also for being a bright and entertaining picture, in spite of the few frailties that I have pointed out.”¹⁹

The excessive use of the close-up is evident of La Cava experimenting, when thinking of Esther Ralston’s recollection of the shooting of the close-ups being an afterthought, and it is surprising to think of when considering the article Leon Shamroy wrote in response to working with La Cava on Private Worlds (1935) and She Married Her Boss (1935), and The Film Spectator’s focus on the perceived excessive use of close-ups emphasises the purposeful use of the close-up following Half a Bride that Shamroy discussed.²⁰ The lost status of the film means that it is impossible to garner the success of the film outside the perceived excessive use of closeups. Homer Dickens, however, details in “The Complete Films of Gary Cooper” that the “cute little comedy” gave Cooper “a chance at comedy and he learned a great deal from one of the best comic directors…Despite the thinness of the plot, director Gregory LaCava injected many wonderfully comic touches, for which he was later to become so famous in films like My Man Godfrey and Stage Door. This was Cooper’s second film with lovely Esther Ralston, with whom he had appeared in Children of Divorce. The made a delightful comic duo.”²¹, and whether Dickens located a print of Half a Bride to know this I do not know, but it also emphasises the great loss of this film that we cannot see La Cava and Cooper’s work together. The surviving silent work from La Cava show a constant artist at work; learning from mistakes, such as the reported excessive use of closeups in Half a Bride, and endlessly curious about the possibilities of motion picture making. Fortunately, La Cava’s most creative work from his silent features survives with his concluding silent picture, Feel My Pulse (1928).

La Cava’s style culminates in his final silent film Feel My Pulse (1928). Despite the rather tepid response to the film at the time, it is, in my opinion, La Cava’s best work from the silent period. The success of Feel My Pulse is largely testament to the athleticism²² of Bebe Daniels’ performance; Daniels’ Barbara Manning is a rich hypochondriac who inherits a sanatorium; unbeknownst to her, the sanatorium has been hyjacked by rumrunners and bootleggers. Daniels companion to the sanatorium, Richard Arlen’s Wallace Robert, witnesses the hypochondriac’s great health in the fact she can run practically abseil down the side of a building, is partially her saviour from the likes of William Powell (in his villainous character days), who try to exploit and manipulate the heiress into believing that they are employees of the sanatorium. I say partially because the great strength of Feel My Pulse lies in Bebe Daniels’ independence and her great physical comedic capabilities to rescue herself.

Feel My Pulse is emblematic of La Cava’s comedic sensibilities from his animation days and his insatiable curiosity about the technical possibilities with the motion picture. La Cava’s fascination with technical and special effects pops up throughout his career, such as the warping of sound in Fifth Avenue Girl (1939) and Unfinished Business (1941)²⁰, and in Feel My Pulseit is on display in a scene where Daniels uses a bottle of chloroform (not in the way you would possibly suspect) to break up a brawl in the sanatorium; smashing it on the ground turning the fight into a slow-motion ballet. According to some trade reviews, La Cava used of the slow-motion effect in The Pill Pounder (1923), but I haven’t seen the surviving print to confirm that. Anyway, La Cava’s curiosity surrounding the possibilities of the motion picture camera in creating a feeling is emblematic of these photographic risks. La Cava’s particular interest in the work of the cameraman was noted by cinematographer William Clothier, who recalled seeing cinematographer Joseph H. August and La Cava meeting on set ahead of production on Primrose Path (1940): “I remember Joe walked on the set one time with Gregory LaCava. I don’t remember what the picture was, but they had a cyclorama, I think, of a village below San Francisco or something, and they wanted to shoot a night sequence. So he went around and cut holes in it and made windows and put lights back there, and it was fantastic. He used to do the damnedest things.”²¹ This working relationship that Clothier displays shows La Cava’s interest in using these techniques to wither further align with the character’s internal psyche, as the sound warping illustrates in Unfinished Business, or to further create an image close to reality and completely capture the reality of a city. 

La Cava’s trust and interest in the work of the cinematographer is also illustrated in the speedboat sequence, seen in the left photograph, with La Cava reportedly encouraging J. Roy Hunt to mount his camera on springs to the speedboat to photograph this sequence in Feel My Pulse: “One of the most difficult scenes photographed for motion pictures was obtained during the making of Feel My Pulse, Bebe Daniels’ latest starring vehicle. It consists merely of several “shots” of the star in a speedboat that is moving through the water at a rate of 40 miles an hour and the speedboat, combined with a heavy
sea, was responsible for all the trouble. In the first place, Director Gregory La Cava required a scene which required careful photography free of vibration and with the camera mounted to the bow of the boat, J. Roy Hunt endeavoured to get it. soon saw that the vibration of the boat was too great. Another craft was chartered with the same result. Hunt then set to work. He called the property department for an order of springs similar to those used in the ordinary bed and lashed them to the top deck. Then, by a series of weights placed on his tripod, acting as counter-balances, he was able to “shoot” the sequence without any difficulty-that is, not counting a drenching from the sea water. Another unique feature of the production is that all of the interiors were photographed with the sets illuminated by incandescent lights, an innovation in the industry. Hunt was one of the pioneers in this branch also.”²³ This story being circulated in publicity of the film gives wonderful insight to how La Cava worked with Hunt, and, according to Daniels, Hunt was not the only one drenched during the shoot: “the laugh is on Gregory LaCava, who is directing. He was putting us through a scene yesterday while perched on the stern of a speed boat. Dick Arlen and I were in the water. Right in the middle of the action the driver of the boat got his signals crossed and started out with an awful lunge. Gregory struggled to retain his balance, let out a yell, and landed in the water between Dick and me. He was a good sport and calmly stood up and retook the scene while standing waist deep in water.”²⁴ These fun little stories are always quite entertaining, but they also provide interesting insight to La Cava’s temperament as a director; which, as this story illustrates, was not one of a tyrannical megaphone man. La Cava’s involvement in the construction of the scene is also on display here, with, as displayed in his gagman days, La Cava working though the scene by placing himself in the same situation as his actors.

Feel My Pulse is a fitting conclusion to La Cava’s silent period in both animation and motion picture making, with the elasticity of Bebe Daniels’ performance being reminiscent of animation. John Gillett also observed the great cartoon element to Daniels’ performance and Feel My Pulse in the programme notes for the 1977 BFI Gregory La Cava retrospective, which I have included in the images below, and paired the film with one of La Cava’s animation shorts.

The relative success of Feel My Pulse suggested that La Cava’s future at Paramount was certain as the coming of sound approached across the horizon, but on the conclusion of his picture contract La Cava left the studio. Winifred Kay Thackrey shed some light on the possibilities surrounding La Cava’s habitual studio hopping beyond the reputation he was developing as an alcoholic: “La Cava was not easy to know. He kept to himself. No illusions, little faith in human kindness or the loyalty of coworkers, deeply suspicious; but once in a while the veil of secrecy would lift and he would talk-usually at night when we had finished shooting.”²⁵ The image of the studio family, the studio director and the loyalty expected of that opposes this image Thackrey creates of La Cava. The “stock company” of certain writers and actors, no matter the studio, being rather small is also reflective of this very private individual. Paramount took La Cava to Hollywood and after ten features, La Cava ventured forth under First National Pictures and Warner Brothers to make Saturday’s Children (1929), putting his acerbic wit into sound. 

Sources:

1. “Interview with Joel McCrea”, People Will Talk, John Kobal, pp. 293, 296, 1985. ↩︎
2. “Dix Combination with La Cava is Big Film Success”, The Vancouver Sun, 23 February 1928 ↩︎
3. “Real Courage Wins Director His Film Niche”, Tulsa World, 28/11/1926. ↩︎
4. “Real Courage Wins Director His Film Niche.” ↩︎
5. “Richard Dix and Let’s Get Married”, The Crowley Post-Signal, 15 June 1926. ↩︎
6. Someday We’ll Laugh, Esther Ralston, p. 84. ↩︎
7. Someday We‘ll Laugh, pp. 88, 89. ↩︎
8. “The Film Mart”, Exhibitors Herald, 25 December 1925. ↩︎
9. Mary A. Roberts, “Gregory the Great: an interview with Gregory La Cava,” Broadway and Hollywood “Movies” magazine, October 1933. ↩︎
10. From the various loose-leaf articles found in the collation of this memoir describes La Cava with such nickname, W. C. Fields by Himself, p. 144. ↩︎
11. W. C. Fields by Himself, p. 156. ↩︎
12. Private correspondence with Dr. Harriet Fields over email, 06/02/2026 ↩︎
13. Mary Brian, interviewed by Michael G. Ankerich for “The Sound of Silence: Conversations with 16 Film and Stage Personalities Who Bridged the Gap Between Silents and Talkies”, pp. 143-144. ↩︎
14. “22 Paramount Directors Assembling on West Coast”, Exhibitors Herald, March 26, 1927. ↩︎
15. “Tell It to Sweeney at the Granada Saturday”, San Francisco Chronicle, 27/10/1927 ↩︎
16. Imperial Valley Press, 11/12/1927 ↩︎
17. “Dix-La Cava Team All Good”, The Washington Herald, 12/11/1927 ↩︎
18. “Half a Bride review”, The Film Daily, Sunday, September 2, 1928. ↩︎
19. “Esther and Gary Spend Time on a Desert Island”, The Film Spectator, June 23, 1928, ↩︎
20. Leon Shamroy, “Tasks of a Cameraman”, Brooklyn Eagle, October 13, 1935. ↩︎
21. Homer Dickens, “Gary Cooper, The American Man”, The Complete Films of Gary Cooper, p. 7, p. 52. ↩︎
22. Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon’s memoir, “Life with the Lyons”, p.117, Daniels defined this period as her “athletic comedies”, with very physical comedy reliant on the skills she developed under Harold Lloyd. ↩︎
23. “At the Temple”, The McCook Daily Gazette, February 22, 1928 ↩︎
24. “Bebe Daniels on Location”, Grace Kingsley for the Los Angeles Times ↩︎
25. Winifred Kay Thackrey, Member of the Crew, pp. 264.
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