Vanity's Price
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Josef von Sternberg (ass't director)
| Vanity's Price | |
|---|---|
 Lobby card | |
| Directed by | Roy William Neill Josef von Sternberg (ass't director) |
| Written by | Paul Bern (story, scenario) |
| Produced by | Gothic Productions |
| Starring | Anna Q. Nilsson |
| Cinematography | Hal Mohr |
Production company | Gothic Productions |
| Distributed by | Film Booking Offices of America |
Release date |
|
Running time | 60 minutes; 6 reels |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent (English intertitles) |
Vanity's Price is a 1924 American silent drama film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Anna Q. Nilsson. It was produced by the Gothic Productions company and released by FBO.[1][2]
The film is notable as the feature that brought assistant director Josef von Sternberg to the attention of critics for his handling of two sequences in the film.[3]
- Anna Q. Nilsson as Vanna Du Maurier
- Stuart Holmes as Henri De Greve
- Wyndham Standing as Richard Dowling
- Arthur Rankin as Teddy, Vanna's son
- Lucille Ricksen as Sylvia, Teddy's fiancée
- Robert Bolder as Bill Connors, Theatrical Manager
- Cissy Fitzgerald as Mrs. Connors
- Dot Farley as Katherine, Vanna's Maid
- Charles Newton as Butler
- Rowfat-Bey Haliloff as Dancer
Production
Von Sternberg, in his 1965 autobiography recalls:
Two incidents had been left out of the supposedly completed Vanity’s Price, which the director [Roy William Neill] had not considered worthwhile doing, and the studio [FBO] head now pleaded with me to direct those short episodes.”[4] One of the scenes concerned a young couple on a park bench, in love. The other involved a surgery in which a woman is operated in a therapeutic procedure related to the "Monkey gland" theory of Serge Voronoff.
Von Sternberg writes:
I gave orders to build an operating theatre with a deep pit and circular rows of seats rising steeply above the other to make it look like a cockfight arena. I planned to have the student physicians watch the surgery through binoculars with an occasional ironic grin.[5][6]
When the picture was previewed this sequence was praised by critics and von Sternberg was offered a position as director at FBO studios, but he turned it down to make an independently financed film, The Salvation Hunters (1925).[7][8][9]
Preservation
Vanity's Price is currently presumed lost.[10] In February of 2021, the film was cited by the National Film Preservation Board on their Lost U.S. Silent Feature Films list.[11]
