The Dream Lady (1918)

• Directed by Elsie Jane Wilson.

(Yes – another silent directed by a woman. Deal with it.)

(Also, it should be said that after SOMETHING NEW (1920)…I’m really hoping that this isn’t just a glorified, hour-long pillow commercial.)

• Screenplay by Fred Myton, based on the novel “Why Not?” by Margaret Widdemer.

• Opening title:

“What do girls, in general, and Rosamond Gilbert, in particular, dream of?”

The short answer, according to the film, is being a cone-hatted princess being courted by a knight (literally) in shining armor.

The long answer, we seem to be about to find out – is much more interesting & far more empowering than that. Enter our heroine: Rosamond Gilbert.

• Rosamond (Carmel Myers) is an orphan who’s been brought up by her uncle, the “irascible old Major” (alas, we’re not told the name of the actor who plays him). Though Rosamond is clearly the frolicky dreamer type – Uncle Irascible seems to be a no-nonsense, no-fun kind of fellow, who says delightful things like, “I forbid you to sit on the damp ground, lest you catch pneumonia and let all the doctors take my money.”

• (Perhaps not-so-) Sadly, Uncle Irascible dies, leaving Rosamond to strike out on her own at last – greatly aided, I would think, by the $10,000 Uncle WealthPants Irascible bequeathed her.

($10,000 in 1918 – in case you’re curious, because I certainly always am – is a cool $169,597 by today’s standards. And shit, that’s a lot!)

• Like a real badass, Rosamond decides to move to a cottage of her own in a beautiful forest. When her new neighbor/move-in helper Mr. Squire (first name John – played by Thomas Holding) en(s)quires about the arrival of ‘the rest of her family,’ she gets to cheerily reply that nope, there is no family & that it’s only her.

“Look at this elephant I have brought with me. It is a symbol of my independence,” she states with a charming amount of matter-of-factness.

I love it.

• For her next trick(s), Rosamond adopts a wilderness hoodlum named Little Orphan Allie (Elizabeth Janes) and sets up shop – in her backyard – as a “dream realizer.”

• There’s a complicated-in-tone, yet supremely interesting plot-string involving Rosamond helping a woman named Sydney Brown (Kathleen Emerson) live her dream of dressing up like a man.

(I don’t have much more to add than that, though I definitely wish I did…it’s just a very intriguing story choice for 1918, particularly in a film directed by a woman. There’s a mini-snafu involving Rosamond & Sydney & a kiss goodbye, while Sydney’s dressed as a man – and then there’s a reveal later on in which Sydney re-feminizes herself to go on a date with her new bro-dude BFF…and the bro-dude just rolls with it ecstatically, rather than being outraged or weirded out, or any of the negative emotions you might imagine fitting into the situation instead.

Like I said – it’s all very interesting…but the film is so short & does so well at making these parts lighthearted & frothy, that any sort of analysis just kinda ends there.)

• Anyway, Neighbor John is at this point thoroughly infatuated with Rosamond the Dream Realizer, and his housekeeper Martha (who also used to be his governess, and as such is real damn tired of him being a bachelor) is psyched.

• Carmel Myers is absolutely lovely in this role – the spiritedness of her grins & gestures are all precisely what they need to be.

• Unfortunately, the Neighbor John/Rosamond romance is briefly delayed by the entrance of Jerrold (Philo McCullough), an “inventor” (aka: SCAM ARTIST) into the picture.

• We find out that while Jerrold is off in the wilderness flirt-scamming Rosamond, he is ignoring his responsibilities within his family business – which we soon learn (with much glee) has something to with pears.

Yes, you read that right. Pears.

• Anyway, that only lasts until a friendly policeman shows up at Neighbor John’s house and is like, ‘Hey man – do you want your investment check back? In case you didn’t know, Jerrold’s a motherfucking phony.’

• Thomas Holding, by the way, does a solid job as Neighbor John; the character requires a weird combination of timid charisma, and Holding nails it.

• The movie ends with Rosamond & Neighbor John getting hitched (much to the delight of Little (former) Orphan Allie) – thus crossing off the last ultimate goal from Rosamond’s list: “Marrying a true gentleman.”

(For the record, the other 3 things on the list, which she – not surprisingly – checked off over the course of the film, were:

Cottage in the forest.

Japanese dressing gown.

Livorian bloodhound.)

(And no, a “Livorian bloodhound” is not a real thing. Neighbor John did that research for us, and then Allie purchased what she thought was the next closest thing at a market, with her milk money.)

• This was a very enjoyable little film, and Elsie Jane Wilson did a commendable job directing it.

• Definitely better (and far more captivating) than SOMETHING NEW…and I may have even liked it more than the second-to-last woman-directed silent I posted about, Julia Crawford Ivers’s THE CALL OF THE CUMBERLANDS (1916). (This one was quite a bit more straightforward & more comedic & happy in tone – so I guess it was perhaps easier & more fun to watch.)

• Recommended….that is, if you can find it!