Lenore Ulric — The Blooming of “Tiger Rose” (1923) 🇺🇸
A pair of lustrous eyes shot forth a look of fear and trembling; a pair of tiny hands twitched and clutched nervously at each other, a mass of bushy dark hair quivered and shook with excitement. In a moment, Lenore Ulric, crouching beneath the narrow oaken staircase, would have screamed, but she clapped her fingers to her lips and saved the climax for another scene, as the thunder gave one gasping roll, the lightning buzzed and crackled, and the director shouted. “Cut!”
by Robert McKay Allerton
I was watching the tangled, spasmodic action of Tiger Rose, the melodrama of the Northwest, famous on the stage for its Belasco sunrise and rainstorm, and the personality of its star. It was the time of the transplanting of this Northern bloom to the novel terrain of the films. Miss Ulric had come West following a long engagement in the frivolous French play, Kiki, and was delightedly entering into a new adventure.
I had entered the set at a crucial moment — one of many in this trick thrill play. The heroine had just hidden her lover in a grandfather’s clock, hoping he would not be discovered by the mounted policeman who was hunting him down. He had been accused of murder, and there was apparently no means of escape, as he had been tracked to her dwelling by the posse, and it was now merely a question of where he was concealed.
Stimulated by the pressure of an electric button in Director Sidney Franklin’s hand, a violent storm was raging outside the room. The studio lightning, the sheet-iron uproar, the rain trickling off the roof were all real enough to make a man put up his coat collar and look for an umbrella. Most of the characters were getting steadily drenched, for it was incumbent upon them to dash out every once in a while into the wretched night, or else be doused with the sloppy prop-room sponge.
Miss Ulric undoubtedly found her situation in keeping with her experience on the stage. There was quite as much noise, and perhaps a trifle more rain, but that did not seem to dampen her ardor. It seemed to whet it (if I may be permitted the pun) for she entered into, the scene with esprit. She was exhibiting plentifully and enthusiastically all the piquant and taking mannerisms, the quick motions of her hands, the flare of her vivid eyes, the pursings of her lips that have been perhaps the source of her charm and her success in the spoken drama. In all, she was a picture of energy and life and animation, with a touch of exotic picturesqueness that augured more than pleasantly for her return — because it happens to be a return in her instance — to the misty lights and shadows of the screen.
Miss Ulric’s previous adventure into the silent drama was not an especially significant one. It was in the halcyon days that followed Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, and she made a series of plays for Fine Arts. The whole five, I believe, were filmed in the time that is now generally allotted to one, and out of them possibly only The Heart of Paula is even now slightly remembered.
At that period Miss Ulric had but recently been acclaimed queen of the Hawaiis in “The Bird of Paradise.” She had caused the zephyrs to blow across the ukulele strings from the Pacific to the Atlantic. She was, in fact, the girl who made the famous “uke” first famous, and many a moonlit love song and courtship owed their inspiration to the vogue she had started as the wild and sensuous Luana.
Of course, she is a different personality now, for Luana was her first big success behind the footlights. She has played many other fascinating roles, chiefly of the colorful species — Indianesque, Arabesque and even sweet Celestial, that have brought her all manner of applause. These have lately culminated in her portrayal of a Parisian cocotte that has been the delight of all New York for two seasons.
To be sure, she has a rare personal radiance. There is something incandescent about the shining of her eyes. They send out veritable radio shafts of light. Her hair masses and seems to crowd around her neck and face, and her lips are like a red South Sea Island rose. Truly, there is something” primitive, though delicately languorous about her. Yet a thousand people who would recognize this, would in the same breath openly refer to her as cute.
While she has oodles of temperament, and a store of vibrant feeling, there is no doubt that Miss Ulric is a splendid trouper. She played the game from start to finish while she was making Tiger Rose. On her arrival in the West, the producers took pains to put her through an experience that would impress her thoroughly with the hardships of the films. The very first scenes were taken on a distant mountain location, never visited before by a motion-picture company, and that’s a recommendation indeed for the arduousness of any location.
The luscious Lenore, unacquainted with such rigors, had to be a regular cliff-dweller. They made her climb the sides of chasms and precipices, and sit on mountain peaks to be appropriately photographed.
Older actors would have growled their heads off at such locations, but never once did she murmur. I have the word of every one for that. She was really so filled with the spirit of the thing, and actually enjoyed the unusual side of the enterprise so much, that I don’t believe she was actually aware that she was supposed to be enduring any great hardship until she was finally so informed.
The scenes that were secured while the company was on this trip form the prologue to the actual play. They are not included in the original. They establish the death of the heroine’s father, show her coming down the river toward civilization, and her meeting with the mounted policeman who takes her to a shelter with an old storekeeper by whom she is eventually adopted. The role of this elderly guardian is played by Claude Gillingwater of Three Wise Fools fame, and there are many tender and amusingly human scenes between the star and him.
Forrest Stanley will appear as Sergeant Devlin, the role originally played by Willard Mack, the author of the play, on the stage, and Theodore von Eltz, somewhat of a newcomer, will be the young surveyor lover, while Sam de Grasse will have the part of Doctor Kusick, who assists the heroine in her exciting game of keeping her man hidden.
The play, of course, is pattern. So no doubt will be the picture. But Miss Ulric’s own appearance in the part that she created, and the striking storm effects that are being sought, will add sauce to its appeal.
Tiger Rose may contain little of the sensuous lure and languor that made The Bird of Paradise famous, nor will it bring to your eyes aught of that piquancy and zest that gave such an allure to Miss Ulric’s Kiki. These are different kinds of plays. Still I venture, for her part in the new screen production, you will find that she breezes through with a token of laughter, a token of tears, and a climax of dramatic emotion.
The Tiger Rose of the motion picture was called on to do strenuous things only suggested in the play.
There is something primitive, though delicately languorous, about Lenore Ulric.
Photo by: Evans
Collection: Picture Play Magazine, December 1923