The Cheaters (silent)

The Cheaters (silent) (1929)

clip

'Clever fingers'

This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Paula Marsh (Isabel McDonagh billed as 'Marie Lorraine’) returns to her father (Arthur Greenaway) after stealing from a jewellery store owned by John Travers (John Faulkner). Paula voices doubts about continuing as a thief.

Curator’s notes

by Graham Shirley

Preceding this sequence’s return to Bill Marsh’s hideaway, an intricate 15-minute sequence has covered a theft of a necklace from a jewellery store by Paula and an accomplice pretending to be a wealthy daughter and mother. On their return to deliver the necklace, Paula takes Marsh aside to express doubts about continuing as a thief.

While Paula’s transformation from tough cookie to woman with a conscience is a little abrupt, it is a scene to which Isabel McDonagh (credited as Marie Lorraine) brings naturalistic conviction. During filming, the sequence’s huge wall safe and its ‘staircase’ were physically operated from behind the set by several of the McDonagh sisters’ siblings. Paulette McDonagh had cast Arthur Greenaway as Bill Marsh after being impressed by his stage performance as Shakespeare’s Richard III, a role he specialised in during the late 1920s and early 1930s.

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