Wine of Youth (Silent) (DVD)

Mary, a free-spirited young flapper, lives at home with her parents and spends her nights drinking, carousing and raising hell. She has two boyfriends - good-looking, assertive Hal, and gentle, considerate Lynn - but keeps them at arm's length rather than get married. To show her lack of interest in commitment, she goes on an outing at the lake with both of them. Hal gets aggressive with Mary after spotting her undressing in her tent, and the girl goes home in tears. Back home, she notices how much her own parents truly love each other, and realizes she may have made a dreadful mistake overlooking rejected Lynn...

This racy comedy of the Roaring 20s is a rarely-seen entry in the filmography of King Vidor. Because of its risque content, Vidor did not even mention it in his official autobiography. The following year, The Big Parade established him as one of Hollywood's preeminent directors, His 1928 masterpiece, The Crowd, earned him the first of five Academy Award nominations. Hallelujah! (1929), Our Daily Bread (1934), Stella Dallas (1937), The Citadel (1938), Duel In The Sun (1946), The Fountainhead (1949) and War And Peace (1956) are but a few of his many highly regarded works in the sound era. Despite Vidor's disregard for Wine of Youth, it launched the careers of its three stars, Eleanor Boardman, Ben Lyon, and William Haines. Eleanor Boardman would marry Vidor and star in The Crowd, but after their divorce in 1933 her career came to an end. Ben Lyon memorably romanced Jean Harlow in Howard Hughes' World War I aviation epic Hell's Angels (1930). He eventually married Bebe Daniels, and the two moved to Britain where they had a popular radio show. William Haines would go on to have an unbroken string of hits at MGM, including Brown of Harvard (1926), Show People (1928) and Speedway (1929), until his homosexuality was discovered by studio head Louis B. Mayer. Rather than deny his lifestyle, Haines retired from Hollywood, spending the next forty years running a thriving interior design business with his life partner, Jimmie Shields. Haines remains a gay icon to this day.

• silent