Happy Halloween! We’re already in the double-digits with these Shamedowns, all…can you believe it? The year is going by FAST. As usual, if anyone is just joining us and wants to know what the heck a Shamedown is, CinemaShame’s 2023 Call To Shame can be found here. My previous 2023 Shamedowns can be found here. All right, here we go…
It’s always interesting to see where a legendary director got his or her start, and Alfred Hitchcock made his directorial debut with 1925’s The Pleasure Garden, a four-reeler with a seemingly salacious title and an even more salacious plot description on Amazon Prime:
Two couples’ romances are fancifully intertwined.
Ah, yeah, this could get a bit…awkward. We’ll hope for the best, though, right?
The movie opens at a music hall called the Pleasure Garden, where showgirls are plying their trade and the front row is full of mostly elderly stage door Johnnys. Among the chorus is Patsy (Virginia Valli), who’s regularly approached by well-heeled men looking for a good time. She’s no dummy, though–she knows every pickup line and none of them impress her.
When Patsy meets Jill (Carmelita Geraghty), the two become fast friends and roommates. Jill seems green as grass, but she’s an amazing dancer and the Pleasure Garden’s owner, Mr. Hamilton (Georg H. Schnell) gives her the lead in the new show.
It doesn’t take long before Jill becomes a star, and soon her fiance, Hugh (John Stuart) comes to see her. Patsy hangs out with Hugh while Jill is off trying on costumes for the new show and then Hugh happily sits in the audience with his co-worker, Mr. Levet (Miles Mander) while Jill and Patsy perform. Hugh has taken a job on a plantation in the tropics and since he can’t take a wife with him, Jill has promised to wait while he’s overseas for the next two years.
Heh. Jill may have promised to wait, but she’s not exactly faithful, as those stage door Johnnys are just too tempting, including the imperious Prince Ivan (Karl Falkenberg). Patsy, who has promised Hugh she’ll keep Jill on the straight and narrow, is in despair because Jill won’t give up the Prince, who some say is fake.
Waiting in the wings is Mr. Levet, who cheers up a reluctant Patsy by promising to marry her. Patsy’s parents are overjoyed; Patsy’s dog, Cuddles, not so much. Patsy and Levet honeymoon in Italy before Levet goes off to join Hugh in the tropics.
Cuddles is an excellent judge of character, because Levet immediately cheats on Patsy as soon as he’s set up in his own little hut on the island. He also gets the fever, which prompts Patsy to rush down to see him. She first asks Jill for money, but Jill won’t hear of it, and Patsy goes off heartbroken.
Jill might not be redeemable, but the big question is whether or not Patsy’s happiness is doomed, and there may be a rather ghostly solution.
Pleasure Garden might be Hitchcock in the making, but we can still see shades of what he would become. Hitchcock famously loved pairs, and the movie features two couples; well, two and a half if we’re going to get technical. There are also several instances of double-crossing, another plot element Hitchcock loved. The only trademark we don’t see is a Hitchcock cameo, unless it was very subtle.
Overall, though, Pleasure Garden is a pretty weak movie. These two couples’ lives aren’t as magically intertwined as the plot summary makes them out to be, as Jill goes sour on Hugh in short order and we barely see anything of the relationship between she and Prince Ivan. The story-telling feels haphazard, the relationships feel rushed and forced, and what happens right before the ending seems a little too out of left field. I don’t want to spoil anything, though, because while the film isn’t great, it deserves at least a little mystery.
Some of this seeming shoddyness could be chalked up to the bootleg feel of Amazon’s copy of the film, as time hasn’t been kind to The Pleasure Garden. It’s been heavily pirated over the years and has the distinction of still being under copyright outside of the United States while being in public domain within the United States. While the British Film Institute has restored the film, there are no available NTSC or PAL-formatted video releases as of this writing.
It’s a shame, too, because the public deserves to see Hitchcock’s directorial debut in the best light possible. The sense we get of The Pleasure Garden might seem a bit weak in the few sources we have available, but it’s still very interesting to see Hitchcock peeking through.
And now we come to the next item on the agenda, which is the Pick My Movie Tag! Without futher ado, this month’s nominees are…
Andrew and Michael from Maniacs and Monsters!
Pretty appropriate for Halloween, right? Andrew and Michael’s mission, should they choose to accept it, is to review the best horror film they’ve seen this year. It doesn’t have to be new, just new to them. The tag rules and a banner can be found here. Congrats, guys!
Coming up in November (click on the image for more info)…
November’s going to be a busy month, at least towards the latter half, and because the Two Jacks Blogathon falls on the third Tuesday of the month, there won’t be a During World War Two post. I’d love to, but it’s just too much. We’ll be back to the war in December, though.
Other than that, there’s plenty of stuff coming up that I’m excited to share with you, so I hope you’ll check back often. All right, thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you tomorrow for our latest installment of the Stage To Screen series. Have a good one…
The Pleasure Garden is free to stream for Prime customers.
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