A Girl in Every Port, starring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1928. A Girl in Every Port is
a classic early “buddy film,” On loan to Fox, Louise Brooks plays Marie
(Mam’selle Godiva), the girl in Marseille, France. The film was
directed by Howard Hawks, and stars Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong
as the two sailors, and features Marie Casajuana, Sally Rand, Natalie
Kingston, Leila Hyams, and Myrna Loy as the women they romance in
various ports of call. More about the film can be found on the Louise
Brooks Society filmography page.
The film was shot in November and December, 1927 at Fox’s studios in
Hollywood. Location shooting was done on a boating trip to Santa Cruz
Island, located along the California coast. The film debuted at the mammoth Roxy theater in New York City. Fox claimed, and Film Daily reported, that A Girl in Every Port had broke the “world’s record” for a single day’s box office receipts, when on February 22, 1928 it premiered at the Roxy in New York and grossed $29,463.00. A hit, the film was written up in
just about every NYC publications, from the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung to Women’s Wear Daily to the socialist Daily Worker.
The film received glowing reviews. TIME magazine stated, “A Girl in Every Port is really What Price Glory?
translated from arid and terrestrial irony to marine gaiety of the most
salty and miscellaneous nature. Nobody could be more charming than
Louise Brooks, that clinging and tender little barnacle from the docks
of Marseilles. Director Howard Hawks and his entire cast, especially
Robert Armstrong, deserve bouquets and kudos.” Weekly Film Review noted that the audience “Cheered it – and loved it!”
What many critics focused on was the bond between the two male
characters, sailors played by Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong.
Bland Johaneson of the New York Daily Mirror wrote, “A Girl in Every Port
at the Roxy is a man’s picture. It’s a good character comedy. But the
love interest is the love of two men friends. The girls are all rats.
And that limits the picture’s appeal to the romanticists. . . . Victor
McLaglen and Robert Armstrong do fine acting, and the comedy is neatly
handled.” Limitations aside, women also liked the picture, according to
the Newark Star-Eagle. “Women laughed delightedly in the Fox
Terminal yesterday at what was supposed to be exclusively a he-man
picture. Victor McLaglen starred as a true adventurer in A Girl in Every Port,
and although the film was mostly fast battling, feminine spectators
found delightful entertainment in it. . . . He has a prize associate in
Robert Armstrong, who was the fighter in the stage version of Is Zat So,
and Louise Brooks, cast as a sideshow siren, does capitally as the
crisis of McLaglen’s career as a seaport Don Juan. . . . This is a
salty, virile picture, full of flying fists and colorful rows in strange
climates and distinguished by the unmovie like and emphatic
characterizations of the two leading males.”
The salty nature of the picture did not go unnoticed. According to Irene Thirer of the New York Daily News,
“Director Howard Hawks has injected several devilish touches in the
piece, which surprisingly enough, got by the censors.” An exhibitor from
Michigan wrote in the Exhibitor’s Herald, “the salesman said
that this was a good picture when he sold it to me… time must have
rotted it for it is one of the smuttiest pictures on the market. If you
want to promote immorality, by all means play this one. I have to use
care and precaution in the selection of pictures, and this one brought
plenty of criticism”.
Aside from its popularity in the United States, the film had an even
bigger impact in Europe, especially France. Writing in 1930 in his
“Paris Cinema Chatter” column in the New York Times, Morris
Gilbert noted “ . . . there are a number of others – mostly American –
which have their place as ‘classics’ in the opinion of the French. . . .
They love A Girl in Every Port, which has the added
distinction of being practically the only American film which keeps its
own English title here.” The film enjoyed a long run in Paris, where to
this day it is still highly regarded.
Notably, Jean-Paul Sartre hoped to take Simone de Beauvoir
to see the film on one of their first dates. Later, the writer Blaise Cendrars
stated the film “marked the first appearance of contemporary cinema”.
Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place
in Australia (including Tasmania), Bermuda, British Malaysia
(Singapore), Canada, China, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) France, Hong
Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
(England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). In the
United States, the film was also presented under the title
Uma noiva em cada porto (Portuguese-language press).
Elsewhere,
A Girl in Every Port was shown under the title
Poings de fer, coeur d’or (Algeria);
Una novia en cada puerto and
Una chica en cada porto (Argentina);
Das Verdammte Herz – Zwei lustige Matrosen (Austria);
Une fille dans chaque port (Belgium, French) and
Een liefje bij elke landing (Belgium, Dutch);
Uma noiva em cada porto (Brazil);
Una Novia en Cada Puerto (Cuba);
Dívka v každém prístavu (Czechoslovakia) and
Dievca v kazdom pristave and
Vsade ine dievca (Slovakia);
Blaue jungens, blonde Mädchen (Danzig);
En Pige i hver Havn (Denmark);
Una Novia en Cada Puerto (Dominican Republic);
Een Liefje in iedere Haven and
In iedere Stad een andere Schat! (Dutch East Indies - Indonesia);
Poings de fer, coeur d’or and
Une femme dans chaque port and
Une fille dans chaque port (France);
Blaue jungens, blonde Mädchen (Germany);
Az ocean Don Juana (Hungary);
Kærasta i hverri höfn! (Iceland);
Capitano Barbableu and
Il Capitano Barbableu and
Capitan Barbablù (Italy); 港々に女あり or
Minato Ni on'na ari (Japan);
Ein zeitgemasser Don-Juan and
Meitene katra osta (Latvia);
Mergina kiekviename uoste (Lithuania);
Poings de Fer – Coeur d’Or Blaue Jungen – Blonde Madchen (Luxembourg);
Una novia in cada puerto (Mexico); I
n iedere Stad ... een andere Schat! and
In elke stad een andere schat (Netherlands);
En pike i hver havn (Norway);
A kochanek miał sto and
Dziewczyna w kaz.dym porcie and
Era Pogoni Za Bogatym Memzem (Poland);
Uma Rapariga em Cada Pôrto and
Uma companheira em cada pôrto (Portugal);
O fata in fiecare port (Romania);
Una novia in cada puerto and
Un Amor en Cada Puerto and
Una xicota a cada port (Spain, including The Canary Islands);
En flicka i varje hamn (Sweden); and
Poings de fer et coeur dor (Switzerland).
SOME THINGS ABOUT THE FILM YOU MAY NOT KNOW:
— Much was made over the “bevy of beautiful girls” appearing in the film. Writing in the Hollywood Daily Citizen, Elena Brinkley quipped, “It seems to me they’ll never finish signing girls for Victor McLaglen’s A Girl in Every Port.” Early on, among those she reports cast was Anna May Wong.
— Maria Casajuana, a Spanish-born dancer and one-time “Miss Spain,” made her screen debut in A Girl in Every Port. As a newcomer, her role was heavily promoted. Beginning with Road House (1928), Casajuana appeared in films as Maria Alba. She also appeared in Goldie, a 1931 remake of A Girl in Every Port.
— Casajuana was not the only actress
working under another name. Gretel Yolz was actually Eileen Sedgwick,
one of the Five Sedgwicks, a pioneering family in Hollywood.
— In 1931, Fox remade A Girl in Every Port as a sound film entitled Goldie.
The remake was directed by Benjamin Stoloff and starred Spencer Tracy,
Warren Hymer and Jean Harlow. The 1952 Marx Brothers’ film of the same
name is unrelated.
Some day, I would like to see a proper
DVD release of A Girl in Every Port. A few years back, there was talk of such a thing, but nothing ever materialized.
THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas
Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com).
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