Thoughts on Women Love Diamonds

So this is a bit how I imagine they made the 1927 film "Women Love Diamonds"

* "Now Miss Starke...yes...please look as much like that devil Garbo as you can.  No...MORE moody and foreign...yes that will do!"

* "Now Mr. Fairbanks Jr...this is how you'll play your scenes: you are your father.  Except for when you're hurt and upset...then you play your stepmother." 

* "Now Mr. Moore you want to look brooding.  REALLY brooding.  Kinda like a fat predecessor to Tom Hanks.  In fact hop in a time machine, view some of Mr. Hanks films, and do your best to imitate him.  Yes that will do."

Honestly it was a decent movie, a Garbo movie without Garbo (Garbo was set to make the film but went on her 'I vant to go home' strike instead, thus receiving respect and a raise).  I don't think you can fully appreciate that meaning without seeing it.  Pauline Starke is pretty and brooding, but a substitute more than anything.

Despite being advertised as a 'Douglas Fairbanks Jr.' film he's barely in it at all, though dashing when on screen (and literally living up to my summary above).  Owen Moore is a bit hammy, but good enough.  Frankly I was more taken with the little pekingese the ''mother'' was carrying around.

A mellerdrama in the truest sense the film basically (spoilers ahead!) is about a high class call girl who is swathed in the most gorgeous of fashions.  After being rejected by her naive lover for well...being a literal whore, she grows tired of the lifestyle and gets close with her working class Irish valet who happens to be madly in love with her.  Lots of mellerdrama stuff happens, many pretty costumes are paraded, and in the end the whore becomes a nurse, thus satisfying all the Mrs. Grundies of the world.

It mostly felt like a film that never quite 'got there' in terms of excitement.  However I would gladly become a high class call girl if it would net me those superb and ridiculous late flapper fashions...