PRESERVED FILMS

Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo (1924)
Production Company: Preferred Pictures Corporation. Producer: B. P. Schulberg. Director: Louis Gasnier. Director of Photography: Karl Struss. Art Director: A. E. Freudeman. Scenario: Waldemar Young, based on the novel Poisoned Paradise: a Romance of Monte Carlo by Robert William Service. Cast: Kenneth Harlan (Hugh Kildaire), Clara Bow (Margot Le Blanc), Barbara Tennant (Mrs. G. Kildaire), George Andre Beranger (Krantz), Carmel Myers (Mrs. Belmire), Raymond Griffith (Martel), Josef Swickard (Professor Durand), Evelyn Selbie (Madame Tranquille), Michael Varconi (Dr. Bergius). Transfer Note: Scanned from a 35mm print preserved by UCLA Film & Television Archive. New Music: Ben Model. Running Time: 79 minutes.

“The most interesting thing about the picture is the adorable Clara Bow’s advent as a star” was the Milwaukee News' verdict on Poisoned Paradise. “Nothing but the highest praise can be accorded Clara Bow,” proclaimed Exhibitors Trade Review: “Her performance both when she is at the heights of exaltation, and when she is cast into the depths of despair, is nothing short of inspired. There is every reason to suppose that she will become a great favorite in a short time, and her performance in this picture will do much to put her there.” Motion Picture Magazine concurred: “Acting honors belong to Clara Bow, who in less than a year has gained a name for herself that promises to be big indeed before long.”

Poisoned Paradise (1924) marked Clara Bow’s first leading role in Hollywood. She’d been recently signed to Preferred Pictures, a low-budget, independent production company run by B.P. Schulberg. Bow started there with a secondary role in Maytime (1923); afterward Schulberg began loaning her out to other studios, and she gained prominence in hits such as Black Oxen (1923). He exploited his rising star to the fullest (“Does any young actress get as many jobs as Clara Bow?” wondered Photoplay), and of the eight films Bow made in 1924 only Poisoned Paradise was a Preferred Picture. It was a test of how she would do as a leading lady, and she easily passed it.

The film is based on the 1922 novel by Robert William Service (better known for his Yukon poems “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee”); it was supposedly banned in Monte Carlo for exposing the harm caused by the casino. Bow plays Margot Le Blanc, who has been cleaned out at Monaco’s card tables by the time she meets artist Hugh Kildair (Kenneth Harlan). Touched by her travails, he hires Margot as his housekeeper. Their romance is overtaken in the last half-hour by melodramatic complications involving thieves. As Grace Kingsley of the Los Angeles Times noted, when the story “gets into action you see the wheels go round. The sweet ingenue who goes to live in the house of the artist, yet without sin; the man who thinks he has a system which will beat the game; the adventuress trying to steal the system; the kidnaping and tyings up and all the rest of the commonplace clap-trap all belong to this serial age in picturedom.”

Other critics were amused by the film’s moralism and how it “pretend[ed] to preach a sermon against gambling. Like nearly all sermonizing pictures, the sermon does not jibe with the preaching,” according to The Billboard. “The story really makes gambling at Monte Carlo mighty attractive.” In line with such moralism, Bow plays an innocent girl down on her luck, a far cry from the sensual, unabashed flapper she was becoming famous for, but the film compensated by giving her opportunities to show off her famous ability to cry on cue, and she seizes them with a raw, unguarded vulnerability underpinned by her startling vivacity.

Scholar Jeanine Basinger notes that in even in routine films Clara Bow could “always find at least one bravura moment to take advantage of—an opportunity to ‘let go,’ either by dancing wildly, kicking someone, punching someone.” In Poisoned Paradise that moment comes in her knock-down fight with an underworld lowlife, Martel “the Rat,” played by comedian Raymond Griffith. Bearing an amoral grin that signals his amusement with his role and invites the viewer’s complicity, Griffith brings a playfulness to his role that complements Bow’s vitality.

Like Bow, he was great talent on the way up and would soon progress from stealing scenes to being the lead in classics such as Paths to Paradise (1925) and Hands Up! (1926). Though much of his work is lost, he remains one of the major virtuosos of silent comedy. In his book Silent Clowns, perhaps the definitive work on the subject, Walter Kerr ranked Griffith just behind Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and Harry Langdon.

Yet another great talent ascending with Poisoned Paradise was cinematographer Karl Struss, who would go onto Ben-Hur (1925), Sparrows (1926), Sunrise (1927), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and more. He had staked a place in the industry with several Cecil B. De Mille films, but his nine films for Preferred Pictures were his first solo credits. He was especially useful in making the studio’s product look more opulent than it really was. Preferred attracted neighborhood theaters by offering films with enticingly low rental fees; profits came from shooting films quickly (five weeks or less) and keeping their budget low as possible.

In the case of Poisoned Paradise, the studio told the press it was sending the director and stars to Monte Carlo to shoot exteriors. In reality the film simply used footage from Erich Von Stroheim’s Foolish Wives (1922). For interiors such as the gambling hall, Struss used a glass shot to create the set’s upper half. Film historian Richard Koszarski observed that Struss’ lighting was generally high key, with extra backlighting needed to keep the actors from disappearing into the darkly patterned wallpaper favored by the art director.

Such efforts paid off, since what the critics consistently praised were Bow’s performance and the “lavish” settings (though Film Daily noted their resemblance to Foolish Wives’). Struss enjoyed working with director Louis Gasnier—whose career stretched from The Perils of Pauline (1914) to Reefer Madness (1936)—and praised his “fine photographic sense” and “European sense of composition; lovely tableaus.” But some critics found Gasnier’s direction sluggish: “He holds scenes and small bits of business far too long for their relative importance” (Film Daily) and “retards his action by concentrating too long on the individual sequences” (Motion Picture News). Perhaps, but for Clara Bow, Raymond Griffith, and Karl Struss, Poisoned Paradise was a success, forming a section on the bridge they crossed to greatness.

About the Preservation
UCLA Film & Television Archive and the Stanford Theatre Foundation worked from the only surviving element of Poisoned Paradise, a deteriorated 35mm nitrate print. Two missing sections were replaced with stills and intertitles, some derived from the source novel (courtesy of David Stenn). The preservation, which also recreated the film’s tinting scheme, was funded by Saving the Silents, a collaborative project organized by the NFPF and supported by the Save America’s Treasures program, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service. Further funding was provided by the Stanford Theatre Foundation. A recent NFPF grant funded scanning and digitization of the preservation print.

About the Music
Ben Model is one of the nation’s leading silent film accompanists, performing on both piano and theatre organ. Over the past 44 years, he has created and performed thousands of live scores for silent films at universities, museums, and historic theaters. He is a resident film accompanist at the Museum of Modern Art (NY) and at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus Theatre, and accompanies silents at classic film festivals around the USA and internationally. Ben’s Blu-ray/DVD label Undercrank Productions works with archives and collectors to bring undiscovered gems of silent cinema to fans. He is the producer and co-founder of The Silent Clowns Film Series, now celebrating its 27th season in NYC, and is also a Visiting Professor of Film at Wesleyan University, where he teaches a course on silent film history. His book The Silent Film Universe was published in 2025.

Further Reading
Clara Bow is profiled in Jeanine Basinger’s Silent Stars (‎Wesleyan University Press, 1998), which in turn draws on her major biography by David Stenn—Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild (Cooper Square Press, 2000). Richard Koszarski’s overview of the cinematic career of Karl Struss is part of New York to Hollywood: The Photography of Karl Struss (Amon Carter Museum, 1995).

Further Viewing
The surviving reels of Maytime, the prior collaboration of Bow, Struss, and Gasnier, can be viewed on the NFPF website. The wilderness comedy Mantrap, which Clara Bow considered her best silent film, is featured in the NFPF’s DVD set Treasures 5: The West, 1898-1938. Paths to Paradise is included in the Blu-Ray Raymond Griffith: The Silk Hat Comedian. (Undercrank Productions, 2023).