Betty Balfour

BFI has just announced the discovery of a British masterpiece called Love Life and Laughter by George Pearson. Maybe this will throw a little light on its forgotten star.

When BFI restored "the Hitchcock 9": Alfred Hitchcock's surviving silent films, I couldn't help but think that some of these films probably wouldn't have gotten this attention, had they not been directed by the master of suspense. Yet, at the time they were made, his involvement was definitely not the selling point of these films. The real stars were the ones you could see on-screen and no one outside the business knew who Mr. Hitchcock was.

The scenario of Champagne, which ended up being a light comedy, was developed from the pre-established title and could have been entirely different. Indeed, Hitchcock initially thought the story would be articulated the opposite way: a poor girl working in a champagne factory would sin her way to the top of the social ladder and then go back to her old job when she grew tired of it.

In the end, the film would tell the story of a rich heiress who would be taught a lesson by her rich daddy by cutting off her endless money supply. She learns the lesson, goes back to being rich and everyone is happy.

1925 portrait

Such a seemingly tepid story could not be expected to be rendered more appealing by a then relatively new director (although the pressbook for the film boasts that he already has "the reputation of being the premier British director"), so a star was hired to ensure box office returns. Her name was Betty Balfour, who had just been christened "Britain's favorite actress" and is remembered today (if at all) only for this film.

Yet in the early twenties, Betty Balfour had become immensely popular in Great Britain thanks to her recurring role as Squibs, which began in the eponymous film. Her fame even crossed the Channel in 1922 when these films hit the French screens.

She started to work on stage at the age 18, in October 1914, at the Ambassadors in London thanks to producer C. B. Cochran who met her through the help of her admirer Lady Fitzmaurice. There she played a one act play called From Louvain. The next year, she appears in the show More.

When C. B. Cochran takes the direction of the Palladium, he also takes her along. Betty stars in All Women, a revue that she tours around the country. Upon her return in London, she plays at the Palace Theater in June 1917.

Betty in Nothing Else Matters

At the time, she was a victim of a German bomb and had to stay in bed for several months. But she went back to work in 1919, at the Alhambra, as Violet Manstone in the show Medorah. Her success in it triggered a two-year movie contract with Welsh Pearson and Company at the condition that she would disappear from the stage during that time. Her first screen role was that of a maid, Sally, in Nothing Else Matters, starring Moyna MacGill, Angela Lansbury's mother.

Then came Mary Find The Gold opposite Hugh E. Wright.
The role that propelled her to stardom was the title role of Squibs where she played a London flower girl. A character that seemed to gain the sympathy of the audience. So much so that Betty was dubbed "the English Mary Pickford" and, after a film called Mord Em'ly and another called Wee MacGregor's Sweetheart (shot in Scotland), she went back to the role in Squibs wins the Calcutta Sweep.

Wee MacGregor's Sweetheart with Donald Macardle

The Calcutta Sweep was a lottery. Each ticket cost one pound and the number of winners was determined by the number of horses in the Epsom Derby. Each winner was assigned a horse and the winning horse determined who among the ticket holders won the highest sum (several thousand pounds). For instance, a 1921 winner was a Londoner who won £69,000.

George Pearson, Hugh Wright, Betty Balfour & Fred Grove on the set.

Some of the exteriors for this film were even shot in Paris, on the Grands Boulevards and in Piccadilly Circus where Squibs learns that she won the lottery and kisses a surprised policeman in her excitement, a scene that was apparently shot among the unsuspecting crowd. Apparently Miss Balfour's boyfriend of the time played a policeman in the film.

Squibs has just won the lottery!

Before the Calcutta Sweet movie even finished shooting, the contract was renewed for two additional years. With it came two sequels called Squibs M.P., and Squibs' Honeymoon (for which she became respectively producer and screenwriter), all directed by George Pearson. Even though the next films are not direct Squibs sequels, Betty Balfour was typecast in similar roles in films like in Love, Life and Laughter. In this very recently recovered film, one of her old vaudeville act was used. She eventually ended her collaboration with George Pearson and tried to change her image.

Love, Life and Laughter

Her fame outside of Great Britain permitted her to export her talents in Europe, so she starred in several films in France (she was fluent in French) and in Germany.
The film Bright Eyes [Champagner], directed by Geza von Bolvary, was even sometimes confused with Alfred Hitchcock's film just because it shared the same star and a similar title. 

Prince Aage of Denmark visiting the set of Alfred Hitchcock's Champagne

It is ironic that her best remembered film today is Champagne, one of the films she made in an attempt to move away from her usual roles of poor but optimistic characters and the one film that is most often overlooked in the articles about her in the 1920s.

One of the films she made abroad was Monte Carlo by French director Louis Mercanton. According to Mon Ciné magazine, this was the first production to actually be filmed inside the casino. The same director also worked with her in Croquette and La petite bonne du palace. Another famous Frenchman, Marcel L'Herbier directed her in Le diable au coeur. In Paradise, she wins a prize and decides to travel to the Riviera (the actress broke a rib during her energetic dance scene with Alexandre D'Arcy).

Carlyle Blackwell, Jean-Louis Allibert & Betty Balfour in Monte Carlo

By 1927, she was making another international film called La fille du régiment from an Italian operetta with a German director and German actors, for a British company, opposite an Egyptian co-star. It was shot in Barcelona, London, Berlin, Paris...
In her interviews, she says she disliked talking pictures but had more faith in color.

Love, Life and Laughter

When the talkies came, however, she had to adapt. She starred in the first British musical, Raise the Roof, opposite Maurice Evans and in a second one called The Nipper. After which she vanished from the screen for 4 years.
When she returned, she played second fiddle to singing star Jessie Matthews in Evergreen, one of the few films she made that is available on DVD today. She then attempted to revive her fame as Squibs in a 1935 musical remake of the film. While not a complete failure, the film was not the success Betty hoped and, after one last film, she stopped filming. She made one last attempt in films ten years later in a film opposite another Hitchcock regular Gordon Harker: 29 Acacia Avenue.
After a return on the stage, she eventually retired and, were it not for Hitchcock's unpretentious comedy, she would be forgotten today. But maybe this newly rediscovered film will change that a little.

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That's all for today folks!