''The Godless Girl'' (1928) is an American dramatic

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

directed by

Cecil B. DeMille Cecil Blount DeMille (; August 12, 1881January 21, 1959) was an American film director, producer and actor. Between 1914 and 1958, he made 70 features, both silent and sound films. He is acknowledged as a founding father of the American cine ...

, shown for years as his last completely silent film. The cast features

Lina Basquette Lina Basquette (born Lena Copeland Baskette; April 19, 1907 – September 30, 1994) was an American actress. She is noted for her 75-year career in entertainment, which began during the silent film era. Talented as a dancer, she was paid as a gi ...

Marie Prevost Marie Prevost (born Marie Bickford Dunn; November 8, 1896 – January 21, 1937) was a Canadian-born film actress. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films. Prevost began her career during the silent film era. She was d ...

, Tom Keene and

Noah Beery Noah Nicholas Beery (January 17, 1882 – April 1, 1946) was an American actor who appeared in films from 1913 until his death in 1946. He was the older brother of Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery as well as the father of prominen ...

Plot

This drama features a romance between two different teenagers: a young

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

girl, Judith Craig, and the male head of a

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

youth organization, Bob Hathaway. The two leaders and their groups attack each other, starting a riot that kills a young girl. Followed by a goofy boy, Bozo, the three are thrown into a juvenile prison with a cruel head guard and bad living conditions. The film maker makes a point of talking about the truth of prison cruelty in the middle of the movie. Bob, who is in love with Judy, eventually rescues her and takes shelter in an old farm where Judy, breath-taken by the romance and beauty of the forest, realizes there must be a God. They are found and taken back to prison and held in solitary confinement until a fire breaks out. Mame is Judy's new friend who is trying to get her out before she burns. But the rest of the prison girls escape. Bob, who is trusting in God to help them, finally rescues Judy with the help of Mame and Bozo; they also rescue the cruel head guard who pleads for his life and, as he is dying, sets them free for their kind act and rescue. At the very end, Bozo and Mame seem to end up together while Bob and Judy and their rekindled faith ride off together as the movie ends.

Cast

... Judy Craig - The Girl *

... Mame - The Other Girl * Tom Keene... Bob Hathaway - The Boy (as George Duryea) *

... The Brute *

Eddie Quillan Edward Quillan (March 31, 1907 – July 19, 1990) was an American film actor and singer whose career began as a child on the vaudeville stages and silent film and continued through the age of television in the 1980s. Vaudeville and silent fi ...

... Samuel 'Bozo' Johnson - The Goat *

Mary Jane Irving Mary Jane Irving (October 20, 1913 – July 17, 1983) was an American actress. She appeared in 58 films between 1917 and 1938. Biography Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Irving began her career as a child actor in silent films. A popular c ...

... The Victim *

Hedwiga Reicher Hedwiga Reicher (Born Hedwig Reicher; 12 June 1884 – 2 September 1971) was a German actress. Her performances on Broadway were credited with the original spelling of her first name. Reicher was christened Hedwig, but she altered the spelling ...

... Prison Matron (as Hedwig Reicher) *

Clarence Burton Clarence Forrest Burton (May 10, 1882 – December 2, 1933) was an American silent film actor. Biography Burton was born in Fort Lyon, in Benton County, Missouri and started in show business at the age of 5, playing stock and musical comedy ...

... Prison Guard * Richard Alexander ... Prison Guard (as Dick Alexander) * Kate Price... Prison Matron *

Julia Faye Julia Faye Maloney (September 24, 1892 – April 6, 1966), known professionally as Julia Faye, was an American actress of silent and sound films. She was known for her appearances in more than 30 Cecil B. DeMille productions. Her various roles ...

... Inmate *Viola Louie... Inmate *Emily Barrye... Inmate

Production

The film was inspired by a real-life incident at

Hollywood High School Hollywood High School is a four-year public secondary school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, located at the intersection of North Highland Avenue and West Sunset Boulevard in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California. Histo ...

when a student called

Queen Silver Queen or QUEEN may refer to: Monarchy * Queen regnant, a female monarch of a Kingdom ** List of queens regnant * Queen consort, the wife of a reigning king * Queen dowager, the widow of a king * Queen mother, a queen dowager who is the mothe ...

started an atheist society. She was a child prodigy and socialist orator, accused of leaving atheist pamphlets in student lockers at Hollywood High School in 1927. The lead actress,

, named her autobiography, ''Lina: DeMille's Godless Girl'', after the film. The

UCLA Film and Television Archive The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a visual arts organization focused on the preservation, study, and appreciation of film and television, based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Also a nonprofit exhibition venue, the archiv ...

later restored the film's sound version, in which dialogue scenes were added to the final reel, a film that was one of DeMille's first part-sound efforts. Actor

Fritz Feld Fritz Feld (October 15, 1900 – November 18, 1993) was a German-American film character actor who appeared in over 140 films in 72 years, both silent and sound. His trademark was to slap his mouth with the palm of his hand to create a "pop" s ...

filmed the sound sequences without DeMille's supervision since DeMille had already broken his contract with Pathé, and signed with

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc., also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and abbreviated as MGM, is an American film, television production, distribution and media company owned by amazon (company), Amazon through MGM Holdings, founded o ...

Reception

The film was very popular in the

U.S.S.R. The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

and in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. The film's popularity in the Soviet Union is believed in part to be due to the fact that the USSR's film censors edited out the main character's conversion to Christianity near the end of the movie.

Ben Mankiewicz Benjamin Frederick Mankiewicz (born March 25, 1967) is an American television personality, political commentator, and film critic. He is a host on Turner Classic Movies and has been a commentator on ''The Young Turks'' and ''What the Flick?!'' ...

Turner Classic Movies Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie channel, movie-oriented pay television, pay-TV television network, network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasti ...

discussion of the film It was a

box office A box office or ticket office is a place where ticket (admission), tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through a hole in a wall or window, or at a Wicket gate, wicke ...

disaster in the US. When released in August 1928 in its

version, it was not a success. DeMille attributed the film's failure to its already outmoded position in the transition from silent to sound cinema. Nor did it recover more than two-thirds of its production costs when released in a so-called " goat gland" version with the addition of a final

talkie A sound film is a motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, percep ...

reel in 1929.

Preservation status

In 2007, a version was released by

Photoplay Productions Photoplay Productions is an independent film company, based in the UK, under the direction of Kevin Brownlow and Patrick Stanbury. Is one of the few independent companies to operate in the revival of interest in the lost world of silent cinema a ...

and

George Eastman House The George Eastman Museum, also referred to as ''George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film'', the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in ...

, in association with the Cecil B. DeMille Foundation and

Film4 Film4 is a British free-to-air television network owned by Channel Four Television Corporation launched on 1 November 1998, devoted to broadcasting films. While its standard-definition channel is available on Freeview and Freesat platforms, it ...

, restored from deMille's own nitrate print, with a new music score by

Carl Davis Carl Davis, (born October 28, 1936) is an American-born conductor and composer who has lived in the United Kingdom since 1961. He has written music for more than 100 television programmes, but is best known for creating music to accompany si ...

Notes

External links

*
allmovie/synopsis''The Godless Girl''
at Virtual History

at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Godless Girl, The 1928 films 1928 drama films American drama films American black-and-white films Films directed by Cecil B. DeMille Transitional sound drama films 1920s prison films Films about Christianity Films with atheism-related themes American silent feature films Pathé Exchange films 1920s English-language films 1920s American films Silent horror films