Vamp legend Theda Bara returned to the screen in an espionage comedy, playing an American agent with an explosive egg being pursued and hampered by Hal Roach luminaries like James Finlayson and Oliver Hardy.
Home Media Availability: Widely available in the public domain market
It’s a living
In 1927, Photoplay magazine published a piece by Frances Clark entitled Fighting the Sex Jinx. The article warned newcomers Lya de Putti and Greta Garbo not to follow the path of Theda Bara. “There is no pleasing the public in this sex business. Once you have established yourself as a death-dealing vamp, the public will have you in no other role… The public quickly tires of extreme types. Exotic figures like Theda Bara, Betty Blythe and others flash suddenly across the screen — and then fade away. Once the curiosity of the public has been satisfied, the extremes of ‘Vamping” pass the border of credibility and audiences lose interest.”
The vampire trope became wildly popular in the 1890s and the movies quickly capitalized but the trend really kicked into high gear when Theda Bara entered the scene in 1915. For four years, no cinematic man was safe and she played both original characters and famous fatal women from Cleopatra to Carmen. Tired of being typecast, she left the Fox studio in 1919, around the same time the vamp craze was dying out. Ironically, other than her vamp debut in A Fool There Was, the only surviving Fox Bara film is East Lynne, in which she plays against type as a wife seduced and abandoned by a cad.
Bara is almost unique in that none of her greatest hits seem to survive beyond fragments, so it is impossible to judge her in her prime. The consensus seems to be that A Fool There Was was a breakout performance but Bara was just getting revved up with spicier, flashier (pun intended) material yet to come. It’s like judging Humphrey Bogart’s career from High Sierra and The Return of Dr. X.
Bara married director Charles Brabin but wanted to return to the spotlight and signed on with Chadwick to appear in The Unchastened Woman in 1925. Chadwick was a smaller studio with ambitions of jumping to the big leagues and had signed numerous current, former and future stars in a bid hit the jackpot.
Comedy producer Hal Roach had similar ambitions and had been engaging big names to class up the joint. He had particularly pursued Bara to star in a series of short films and signed her in 1925. Coverage of the time declared that this was the first Bara comedy but, in fact, she had appeared alongside the animated Mutt and Jeff in Meeting Theda Bara in 1918, at the height of her fame at Fox.
Madame Mystery was the first film in the series and Bara was placed in the capable hands of director Richard Wallace and Stan Laurel, who had been signed onto the Roach team that same year. Laurel doesn’t appear in the film but friend and frequent collaborator James Finlayson plays the lead.
Finlayson is a starving writer and Tyler Brooke plays his friend, a starving artist. Finlayson is posing for a portrait in a frock and a pair of falsies when he and the artist witness a wild car chase. Madame Mysterieux (Bara) is being pursued by rival agent Fred Malatesta. The agents are knocked unconscious in a car wreck and Brooke and Finlayson discover their secret orders and the reward for the capture of Madame Mysterieux’s egg-shaped parcel.
It is actually an explosive capable of blowing up a building but our feather-brained heroes are only looking at the money. They steal the identities of the agents and follow Madame Mysterieux onto an ocean liner bound for America. The captain is played by Oliver Hardy, who may have figured into Stan Laurel’s later career, I believe. His attempts to be obsequious annoy the mysterious lady.
There’s a big slapstick chase and Finlayson ends up ingesting the bomb. Will this be the new Titanic with all hands lost? See Madame Mystery to find out!
So, as to the film itself… it’s fine. Very typical of the Stan Laurel Brand with a bit of dark humor and the story kind of trailing off. It was met with generally positive reviews and theater feedback was generally good, with some houses reporting low attendance. The film was released alongside, Wife Tamers, a Roach production with Lionel Barrymore and at least one theater showed them as a double bill in place of a dramatic feature. It didn’t make a huge impact overall but it wasn’t heavily disliked.
Madame Mystery was to have been the start of Bara’s career with Roach but it proved to be a one off. The pay was good but the reception was not what Bara had hoped and, in any case, her husband was not thrilled with her cavorting on the screen, so she backed out of the Roach deal.
Fighting the Sex Jinx had warned Greta Garbo against following the path of Theda Bara and, to a great extent, the Swedish star did manage to avoid burning out. Ironically, though, Garbo did end her career as Bara did: in a not-too-popular comedy. That said, I would watch Madame Mystery a hundred times before I ever inflicted The Two-Faced Woman on myself again.
In many ways, Madame Mystery is a victim of its own star. Theda Bara fans, starved of Bara in her prime, seek out this picture and are disappointed to find that it mainly consists of Hal Roach Lot of Fun shenanigans with a few Bara poses. But Madame Mystery is not a bad comedy by any means. The stars are fun, we get to see early Ollie, and it features some of the dark humor of Stan Laurel. It may be the last Bara film but it’s among the first Laurel and Hardy collaborations.
Bara does almost no vamping in the picture, that is left up to Finlayson, who flirts with the secret agents while wearing his fake breasts and Victorian dress. I mean, that was obviously the funnier choice but it is a shame that he and Bara didn’t have a vamp-off because that would have been a comedy for the ages. Still, Bara was game for the madness (she was supposed to have quite a good sense of humor) and I wish she had done a couple more pictures with Roach before calling it quits.
Madame Mystery is all about adjusting expectations. Ignore the breathless studio publicity and view it as a Finlayson comedy with a bonus cameo and I think you will be happier with it. I would love to see a clearer version, though. The available home media releases are smeary and difficult to watch.
Where can I see it?
Released on public domain disc.
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