Die drei Portiermädel (The Three Daughters of the Janitor)

In his excellent biography of Jacques Tourneur, The Cinema of Nightfall, Chris Fujiwara lists Les filles de la concierge as Tourneur's best French film. Yet even him does not seem to know that, unlike what is implied by the credits on the main title of the film, it is not an original story.

The story is supposedly by Georges de la Fouchardière and Jean-Georges Auriol.
Fujiwara also tells us that 30 years after his film was released, Tourneur had considered remaking his film in the USA. Apparently nothing came of it, but it so happens that the film was already a remake.

I came across an article in the December 31, 1925 edition of the French magazine "Mon Ciné" entitled "Les trois filles de la concierge". The article is by a French reporter in Germany who reports of a film he saw at the Marmorhaus Theather in Berlin called Die drei Portiermädel, directed by Carl Boese. The story of the film follows:

Martha, Amelie & Annie

The daughters in Tourneur's version

A janitor (Margarete Kupfer) has three daughters. Amelie (Hanni Weisse) is employed in the fashion shop of Leopold Siedentopf (Jakob Tiedtke) who seduces her, Annie (Helga Molander) works for a photographer (Hermann Picha)and Martha (Maly Delschaft) is a launderer and is in love with Franz (Hugo Fischer-Köppe), a chauffeur who uses the boss's car to drive the three girls to work every morning. When he reports late to work one day, he clumsily tells his boss, Mr. Hans Brandstetter (Bruno Kastner), that he ran over a young girl. When he demands to see the victim, Franz introduces him to Annie and he falls in love with her. They soon get married.

Martha's wedding

Lucie's wedding (Tourneur)

Annie's mother, who feels ashamed of her social condition, uses an apartment in her building whose lodgers are on vacation as her own when her son-in-law visits her and pretends she is the widow of a secret service agent.
However, when Mr. Brandstetter surprises his chauffeur speaking too casually with his wife, not knowing that he is actually her brother-in-law, gets the wrong idea and Annie, upset with the whole thing, goes back to her mother's.

Siedentopf & Amelie

Brandstetter decides to drown his sorrow and goes out to a party where, by chance, he meets Amelie and Martha. When Franz sees his girlfriend with his boss, he too gets upset.
Annie and Martha are soon joined by Amelie at their mother's because she also left her husband who, it turns out, was unfaithful.

Ginette & Gaston Rival in a similar scene

The next day, Brandstetter comes back to the janitor's building where everything is explained. He embraces his new family. Franz and Martha make up and Amelie also finds happiness with Emil the bartender (Harry Halm), an old flame of hers whom she always loved.

Albert singing

Those of you familiar with the story of Tourneur's film have noticed that the only things different about this story are the names of the characters. The rest is a carbon copy. The article mentions that the film is energetic, fun and it predicts more success for it, but the journalist deplores that the  screen-writer (actually Margareta-Maria Langen) is not credited.

However, this apparently unpretentious story will surprisingly be filmed two more times before Tourneur tackled the subject! In Germany still, as a 1932 sound remake called Frau Lehmanns Töchter directed by Carl Heinz Wolff and starring Hansi Niese which will be released the next year in the USA as Mrs. Lehmann's Daughters. It also will see a limited release in eastern France, under the title Les filles de Madame Lehmann on June 14 1934, only 14 days after the release of Tourneur's version! In this output, the chauffeur sings a song, just like in the later French version.


A 1933 Swedish version called Giftasvuxna döttrar (Blooming Daughters) was directed (and played) by Sigurd Wallén.

It is unclear who the creator of the story really is since each film credits a different writer for the same plot. Wolff's version credits a book by Franz Rauch as the basis of the story. I could not find this book, though, and the man has credits only as a screenwriter and actor in most sources. Also he isn't mentioned in the first film. It is interesting how each version completely ignores the existence of the others.

Nothing in the article suggests that Die drei Portiermädel was released in France, but its success apparently resonated beyond Germany's borders. To my knowledge, if Tourneur's film is hard to find, it does exist (I have a copy), but the German original is probably lost.

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Woman to Woman

Last year saw the re-release of The White Shadow, a 1924 film directed by Graham Cutts which had been thought lost for almost 90 years. Only half the film has been recovered (Three reels out of 6), but it got immediate attention nonetheless, mainly because of Alfred Hitchcock's association with the film.

At the time, the famous director was neither famous nor even a director. He was a learning the trade by getting experience in every aspect of the picture making business. The star of the film, the one mentioned in the papers, the very reason for the film's existence was Betty Compson.

Michael Balcon

As a matter of fact, the moderately successful film was only the second leg of a package deal. And the first leg was apparently much superior.

In an interview for a French magazine, October 24, 1924, British actress Marjorie Hume explains that very few British movies cross the Atlantic, or even the Channel for that matter, but that producers found a way to ensure an international career to their films: hiring famous American stars.

Betty Compson

Wanda Hawley, Betty Blythe, Mae Marsh all spent some time in Great Britain for that purpose. And that is exactly what producers Michael Balcon and Victor Saville decided to do. They hired Hollywood star Betty Compson who had been in films for almost ten years and was fresh from the success of her comedies with Fatty Arbuckle and her features like The Little Diplomat with baby star Mary Osborne, The Miracle Man with Lon Chaney, William Desmond Taylor's The Green Temptation, Over The Border with Tom Moore and Jean de Briac,... All films distributed internationally. At the time, Betty was one of the best paid actress and would not come cheap. So the British secured a two picture deal with her.

Publicity shot of Betty Compson at home.

Islington Studios

To save costs, both films would have the same crew (among which Alfred Hitchcock gathered an amazing number of jobs) and the same setting (Paris). As a matter of fact, if most of the film was shot at Islington studio, some of it was made at the Joinville studio in France and Hitchcock went to Paris to get the needed inspiration (and pictures) to design the sets of the films.

Woman to Woman tells the story of David Compton (played by British star Clive Brook), a British army engineer who goes to war in 1914 and leaves his pregnant French mistress Louise Boucher (Betty Compson) behind. She, a dancer at the Moulin Rouge (masterfully recreated by art director Alfred Hitchcock), eventually thinks him dead when he fails to return and brings up her child as a single mother. She gains success as a dancer and becomes known as Deloryse. Though as her fame increases, her health declines. Meanwhile, David is not dead but has completely lost his memory in the battle. He now has a new name (David Anson-Prod) and a new wife!

Alfred Hitchcock's set of the Moulin Rouge

One day, by chance, he goes to the Moulin Rouge and when he sees Deloryse, remembers all. Upon learning that her long lost love is alive and married to another woman, Deloryse feels her already ailing health abandoning her. She entrusts David's new wife with her own son and goes out to keep what will be her last dancing engagement: she dies in the middle of the stage.

Deloryse dies on stage.

Betty Compson & Betty Compson in The White Shadow

 The film was a smashing success and was, as hoped, released throughout the world by Select, the Selznick company, and by Gaumont in France. The White Shadow was hastily shot next and also released internationally but the success was moderate at best, although the film had the added bonus of featuring the lead actress in a dual role.

As I said, of the second film remains the first 40 minutes and you can buy it on DVD. Of the first, more successful one, remains only a handful of stills, some of which can be seen on this website.
However, the success of the film spurred a 1929 talkie remake, directed by Victor Saville himself, also with Betty Compson, available on DVD from Grapevine.

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