Lois Weber— What Do Men Need? (1921) 🇺🇸

January 23, 2024

“What men need,” said Lois Weber, “is to see themselves as they really are. What they need is to face the truth about themselves — but they won’t do it. It is too bitter a pill.”

by Emma-Lindsay Squier

If you are a man, you will smile cynically at this statement made by the famous woman director. If you are a woman, you will smile sadly, perhaps grimly. But however you smile, you will agree with her. Being a woman, I agreed; not because of a blasted romance or a trusting heart deceived, but just as a matter of principle. We women have to stick together.

Lois Weber, as you perhaps may know, has been called the “yellow journalist” of the screen. The photo stories which she has written and directed are consistently daring in their nature. They deal generally with sex.

Until I met Lois Weber I thought her daring was of the box-office variety. I thought she skated on thin ice because there is a certain type of public which will pay more for thin ice than for solid ground. But now it is my honest belief that Lois Weber makes the pictures she does because she wants to tell the truth about life as she sees it: because she believes that people should not hesitate to look facts in the face, and because she rebels at man-made morals being thrust upon womankind through the medium of manmade pictures.

Lois Weber must be seen to be appreciated. None of her photographs do her justice, nor do the word sketches drawn by typewriter artists. Many of the pictures she has made bear the stamp of the yellow journalist. But to know Lois Weber is to know that she is a white crusader bearing on her shield the flaming cross of her convictions.

It was to learn the inside facts concerning the much-mooted picture “What Do Men Want?” that I went out to interview her.

I had heard upon good authority — masculine authority I might add — that the picture was too utterly risqué for even the most hardened exhibitor to take a chance on. I heard that it had traveled from west to east and from east to west half a dozen times, arousing exclamations of horror each time from the director general producer down to the director general producer’s assistant secretary’s office boy. On each trip the shears of the cutter snipped virtuously and now that the lily-minded powers that be have sufficiently safe-guarded the young and innocent picturegoing generation — the same generation that sits spellbound through such naive little screen stories as Sex, “Don’t Change Your Wife,” and “The Thunderstorm” — the moral lesson contained will have all the terrific punch of a warm-milk cocktail.

I went, as I have said before, to get Lois Weber’s version of the much-traveled picture. I thought to find a woman belligerent, tearfully resentful, sternly masculine in her conviction that she had been bitterly wronged. I found a woman who radiated charm, not only from her own personality, but who managed to surround the whole studio with a homelike and feminine aura. She is of medium height, and her dark hair lies in graceful waves around her face. Her eyes are green and turn up at the corners ever so slightly. Her mouth is firm and humorous and her handshake is as steady as a man’s. But she is intensely feminine. So is the studio. It is an old house converted into a screen-craft shop with a tennis court at one side and a green lawn in front. There is a fireplace in the outer office, which is furnished with rocking-chairs like a living room and in Miss Weber’s own sanctum there is another fireplace with a huge couch before it, piled with pillows. She told me that she made practically all her scenes away from the studio. If she wanted to film a kitchen, she rented one in somebody’s house; if she wanted a drawing-room, a jail, or a church, she didn’t build the sets on the stage behind the studio, she went where they really were, taking her lights, electricians, and actors along. “Then what do you use the stage for?” I asked. “To give dances on,” she replied quickly. She was not the least bit vindictive about the way her pet brain child had been manhandled. It seems to me that she stands outside of herself looking on at life, not as a participant, but as a spectator. She does not believe that anything is worth ‘grieving terribly for; she thinks that loss of poise destroys one’s sense of values.

“They said to me after seeing the picture” — she always refers to it as the picture — “‘It shows that a woman made this.’”

“I said to them: ‘Yes, it does show that a woman made it. And it also shows that men are afraid to see themselves as they really are.’”

The story in brief, concerns a young man who marries his high-school sweetheart. He tells her he loves her; but what he really loves is her mouth, her long lashes, her creamy skin. He wants her, and he gets her. But married life palls, although children come to bless the union. What does he want? Perhaps it is money and power. Through a fortunate deal in stocks he achieves wealth, and later, the power he has sought. But after a while life again takes on a dusty look and a musty taste. What does he want now? He meets a fascinating woman, a drug addict, whose conversation is racy, and whose attentions are flattering. Ah! That’s what a man wants! The companionship of a woman who “understands” him. He goes to her again and again. His wife and children are neglected, his conscience goes vagabonding. Then somehow the woman’s charm fails. He discovers that her voice is high-pitched, that to maintain her vivacity she must have drugs, that she is ready to give her favors to the highest bidder. He leaves her, disgusted with everything in life, and with the thought of his quiet fireside soothing his fevered mind. But grief has done its work with the lovely girl he married. When he comes to plead forgiveness, her mind is so dulled by pain that she no longer cares whether he goes or stays. She accepts him again, dutifully, but without pleasure. “Do you know what men want?” he asks her, as they sit before the fire.

“What they haven’t got,” she says quietly. “No,” he replies, “they want the intelligence to understand that a home, honorable responsibility, and the companionship of a true woman are the greatest blessings of life.”

I have left out the touches that make — or rather, made — the picture such a widely discussed feature. There was a scene, for instance, where a pool-room hanger-on, ogled a girl on the street corner, and mentally disrobed her. The outlines of her body were made to show through her clothes — in a double exposure, of course — and the powers-that-be fairly stuttered in an effort to express their horror.

“But men do it,” Miss Weber told me. “I have seen them do it numberless times! It struck home, that’s all.”

There was another scene where the “other woman” is using her seductive powers to entrap the man she wants.” She undressed — behind a curtain — and donned a black chiffon négligée. It was handled delicately, but it was bold. The cutters’ shears haven’t left a remnant of that episode.

But aside from the bits — which, I frankly think should be left unscreened — are pictured fragments taken from life, so gripping, so analytical, and so real, that one is amazed at the caliber of the intelligence which would censure them. For instance: Miss Weber heard an actor on the lot telling of his “system” for winning the hearts of women. She eavesdropped without shame — and gave his “system” into the hands of the pool-room character. The powers that be thought it “dangerous.”

After she had read the script to the assembled cast — including also the electricians and carpenters, for it is her custom to have every one who works with her familiar with the story she is making — one of the voting men came to her in private, and told her with worried amazement, that she had him in the story. If she had taken scenes from his own life, he maintained, she could not have hit more squarely upon the truth.

Then another came and told her with awe in his voice that in that story she had things from his own life, and after that one of the carpenters wanted to know how much she knew about him, because there were things in that story — et cetera.

This really happened; It simply goes to show that whatever objectionable features Lois Weber had in “What Men Want,” she at least had several grains of universal masculine truth — and the truth hurts.

“When I delivered the picture to the producer who had contracted for it,” said Miss Weber. “I waited expectantly to hear the praise I was sure I would receive. Then one day a phone call came. It was the producer. He said in a slow voice weighted with portent. ‘Mrs. Smalley’ — she is Mrs. Phillips Smalley [Phillips Smalley] in private life — ‘I have just seen your picture.’

“‘Yes?’ I said eagerly.

“‘And I want to tell you that I am shocked; I have never been so shocked in my life! It is lewd; it is disgraceful! It is altogether impossible!’

“And so,” said Lois Weber to me with her humorous, understanding smile. “I say that what men want, is flattery. What they need, is to be told the truth about themselves.”

[As we go to press we are informed that the title of Miss Weber’s forthcoming picture referred to in this article is to be changed. The new title has not, at this time, been decided on. — Editor.]

Lois Weber— What Do Men Need? (1921) | www.vintoz.com