The Other Woman's Story (1925)
Audiences love happy endings, or at least a plot with enough jokes to lighten the mood of heavy-handed topics. Viewers often have an aversion to tragic tales, considering them as taboo when not treated with satire and/or absurdity to make them palatable.
Also invariably, fans dislike actors playing against type, although any actor wanting to express their versatility and talent welcomes the opportunity to “stretch their wings” and take on a role that is the complete antithesis of that which they have become strongly identified. This is especially true for frustrated “B-list” actors who have made a career playing a particular “type” and attempt to escape the typecasting by seeking out a role that plays against their norm.
Such is the case of actress Alice Calhoun in 1925’s The Other Woman’s Story. Having recently completed one of the longest studio contracts on record with the now-defunct Vitagraph Studios, Alice was one of the first motion picture actresses to attempt to free-lance and seek out diverse roles, instead of accepting the saccharine parts that had been assigned to her for years and were continuing to come her way. As an actress who was known for playing “good girl” roles, in The Other Woman’s Story, the script called for her to portray a faithless wife and scheming murderess who pins the blame on her husband but in the end, pays the ultimate price for her crime: death. Told in a series of flashbacks while he sits on death row, actor Robert Frazier’s character of Alice's husband recalled the events that led up to his precarious situation.
But the producers of The Other Woman’s Story, B.P. Schulberg Productions, felt that the public’s aversion to the idea of a woman, even a guilty one, being executed would not be acceptable. They then changed the ending to an implausible one, with a prostitute who knew the truth all along coming clean at the eleventh hour, and Alice’s character being released into the custody of her husband.
Even with the amended conclusion, the reaction by audiences to Alice’s character was shocking, especially to her loyal fans. Infidelity, divorce, murder, and a trial were not the usual theme of films starring Miss Calhoun, and seeing her in the role of an evil, manipulative woman was certainly not de rigueur. And even as trite as the re-written ending was, however, Alice’s portrayal of a wicked woman was spot-on convincing.
The status of this highly unusual film in the anthology of Alice Calhoun’s body of work is that The Other Woman’s Story is in a two-part copy, stored in the nitrate vaults at the UCLA Motion Picture Collection. Part one of the film is approx. 1 reel of 35 mm. nitrate print, owned by the Producers Library (Footage.net), and an additional 5 reels stored in the same location (owner unknown). The exact condition of these prints of The Other Women’s Story are unknown at the time of this writing, but there is a good possibility that an attempt to salvage and preserve a copy of it will be made in the near future. Other considerations would be the expenses involved in saving the film, and copyright considerations in regard to future public access.
"Preservation" of film, such as The Other Woman’s Story, refers to physical storage of nitrate film in a climate-controlled vault, and hopefully, eventual repair and copying the actual film elements. The first and foremost pressing consideration of preservation of a film such as The Other Woman’s Story is the critical issue of film decay because it is a nitrate film. Movies made in the first half of the 20th century were filmed on an unstable, highly flammable cellulose nitrate film base, which requires careful storage to slow its inevitable process of decomposition over time. This also includes "orphan" films, such as documentaries and home movies.
But Alice Calhoun’s controversial character in The Other Woman’s Story was such a departure from the trite and true parts normally portrayed by her, that it makes a good argument for preservation of the film as an important piece of the fractional remaining body of work of this pioneering film actress. The UCLA Motion Picture copy being the only “known” reproduction of this film makes the case for pursuing preservation of it instrumental in facilitating the cause of keeping the history of film alive, as well.
Let's hope that happy ending occurs soon, because nitrate won't wait!
(c) Susann Disbro Gilbert
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