Orme is goggle-eyed for a glamorous stage star, Lillian Lyons (played by Gertrude Astor), who brings excitement to the small town in the same way Deadwood goes doolally for Miss Adelaid Adams in Calamity Jane (1953). Acting is learned, the film suggests, by observation: Jenny studies these stars closely, down to the finest details of their attire.Īrchetypes abound in Stage Struck: Jenny is the faithful female friend, dubbed “Mouse” by the guy she loves who is just not worth it. But her dream to study acting is also down to Orme’s obsession with stage and screen pin-ups alone in his room, she mimics the goddess poses of the women on his walls. Jenny takes over the griddle one day and finds she loves to make customers laugh. The griddle is usually manned by Orme (Lawrence Gray), to whom Jenny is devoted, and he savours the opportunity to entertain onlookers by flipping the cakes like a showman. The diner where Jenny works is known for its wheatcakes, prepared by a display window. Dreamer … Swanson with Lawrence Gray in Stage Struck. Despite the extravagant riches of the prologue, it settles on the sort of humble answer actors often give when reminiscing about their childhoods: the simple compulsion to entertain.

Stage Struck asks why it is that people want to perform. Jenny dreams of becoming an actor but is surrounded by crowds of hungry diners rather than starry-eyed fans.

Or is she serving someone’s lunch? With a match cut, Dwan switches from this extravagant fantasy to a no-frills West Virginia restaurant, where waitress Jenny (also played by Swanson) poses as Salome with her tray and ends up spilling a customer’s order. At a lavish banquet, she suddenly steps into the role of Salome and ascends the stairs of a temple, returning with a platter bearing the head of John the Baptist. On stage, we see Swanson bombarded with bouquets by ecstatic audiences on the street she is mobbed by an adoring public desperate for a brush with stardom. The Salome sequence comes in Stage Struck’s tongue-in-cheek prologue, filmed in an entrancing early version of Technicolor, offering assorted scenes from the life of “the greatest actress of all time”.

Gloria swanson silent start