Celebrating the Dryden’s Birthday with a Preservation Screening of Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)
This article is written by Anthony L’Abbate, preservation manager in the Moving Image Department. Want to celebrate the Dryden’s 68th birthday with us? Join us Saturday, March 2, 7:30 p.m. for our screening of Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)!
The best part of working in film preservation is when you get a chance to bring back a film that has not been seen in nearly 100 years. Sally, Irene and Mary (1925), directed by Edmund Goulding, produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and starring Constance Bennett, Sally O’Neil, William Haines and Joan Crawford will have its restoration premiere at the Dryden Theatre on March 2nd.
While never a lost film, it fell into legal limbo because of a 1938 re-make by 20th Century-Fox. Since Fox and Warner Bros. (the current rights holder on the pre-1986 M.G.M. film library) were not claiming rights to the 1925 version of Sally, Irene and Mary, it sat in a vault, largely unseen since its original release, which is a shame. The film is a look at Broadway, chronicling the careers and loves of three “follies” girls. Full of title cards with Roaring Twenties slang, it also features some spectacular costumes by famous Art Deco designer Erté, who did not receive billing in the credits.
As for the leading actors, three of the four would have very substantial careers and one would be one of the all-time top stars of classical Hollywood. For Sally O’Neil, only 17 at the time, Mary was her big break. She was quite a popular player in silent films, but her popularity waned with talkies and her film career was over by 1937.
Constance Bennett was a veteran of a dozen films before she made Sally, Irene and Mary. Daughter of stage actor Richard Bennett and sister of Joan Bennett, her career peaked in the 1930’s with such films as What Price Hollywood? and Topper. She transitioned from star to feature roles in the 1940’s and, outside of one cameo role playing herself, did not make any films in the 1950’s. Bennett’s last film, Madame X was released posthumously in 1966 a year after her death.
The nominal male lead, William Haines, would become one of the top stars of the late 1920s and hit his peak of popularity in 1930. Haines left movies in 1935 to become one of the biggest interior designers in the United States right up to the time of his death in 1973.
Of course, Joan Crawford would become one of the all-time legends of Hollywood. Coming from poverty, Crawford worked her way through school but dropped out with only a primary school education. Her main ambition was to become a dancer. Eventually, she landed chorus work on Broadway and in 1924 she made a screen test for M.G.M. Once at M.G.M. it was Crawford’s own ambition to become a star. In less than a year she went from uncredited bit roles to featured roles. The role of Charleston-dancing Irene fit Crawford perfectly and started her on the road to stardom. Crawford would remain a star up to her last film Trog, released in 1970.
Like so many films from the silent era, once sound arrived, Sally, Irene and Mary went into the vault, with very little chance of being seen again. In the mid-1950s the George Eastman Museum acquired from M.G.M. a 16mm print for the collection. In 2018 the Moving Image Department received a grant from the Louis B. Mayer Foundation to restore the film. But for this restoration to look its best, better elements were needed. Thanks to Warner Bros., we were able to borrow their 35mm Fine Grain Master, a low contrast positive used to make duplicated negatives. This Fine Grain Master was struck off the 1925 original camera negative, which has since decomposed. To make the new negative and prints, we chose Cinema Arts, Inc. because they are known for their excellent work with black and white film. With the completion of this restoration for the first time since the mid-1920s Sally, Irene and Mary is once more available to entertain audiences.
