When opera star Geraldine Farrar (1882-1967) made her screen debut in Cecil B. DeMille’s Carmen (1915), the beloved diva’s participation in film seemed so contrary to logic that the New York Times film critic remarked, “It is a curious commentary on the crazy economy of the theatre that a supreme dramatic soprano should give any of her precious time to a form of entertainment – to an art, if you will – wherein the chief characteristic is a complete and abysmal silence.” Yet Farrar conquered the screen just as she had the opera world, and the intense passion generated by her fans led in 1920 to music critic W. J. Henderson dubbing her enthusiastic female acolytes “Gerryflappers.”
By the time of The World and Its Woman, her fifth feature for the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, Farrar’s salary was among the highest in the industry: according to the Goldwyn papers at the Margaret Herrick Library, she received $150,000 for four months of shooting, while her co-star husband Lou Tellegen earned a modest $600 per week (reportedly the borzoi hound made $50 a day). Originally titled The Golden Song, the story was designed to take advantage of the strong anti-Bolshevik sentiment then sweeping America. It begins some years before the 1917 Revolution, when young Marcia Warren, the daughter of an American mining engineer working in Russia, falls in love with her playmate Prince Michael Orbeliana. As an adult, the Prince (played with marked hauteur by Tellegen) has long forgotten his American friend, but Marcia (Farrar) still dreams of a union, even after she’s become a famous soprano and he’s married the snobbish Baroness Olga Amilahvari.
Class conflict rears its ugly head when Marcia rejects the advances of Peter Poroschine, and he aligns himself with the Bolsheviks. While Prince Michael is fighting at the front, Poroschine and his nefarious cohorts – grimy and lecherous, in the standard portrayal of Russian revolutionaries – take control, with Marcia’s former friend Erina Rodina acting as a spirited provocateur. (The Belgian print’s intertitles call her “the Théroigne of Bolshevism,” in reference to the French Revolution’s Anne-Josèphe Théroigne de Méricourt, a rabble-rouser born on what is now Belgian territory.) Using classic anti-Bolshevik propaganda of the era, the film throws in the so-called “nationalization of women” act, a spurious but highly effective rumor that the Soviets were forcing women into prostitution. (The theme appears in several films from 1919, including The New Moon, Dangerous Hours, and Common Property.) When Marcia tries to flee, Erina attempts to stop her, leading to a notable catfight that won high praise from the Los Angeles Evening Herald, saying it surpassed the famed brawl in 1914’s The Spoilers: “More power to the director, Frank Lloyd, who…must have promised each a box of bonbons as a bonus for realism.” In fitting tribute to the film’s pro-American patriotism, Marcia and Prince Michael, returned from the front, flee to Arkhangelsk, where they’re rescued by Allied battleships seen in two inserted actuality shots. The promise of freedom in America beckons. The Woman has survived her World.
Goldwyn wanted a big production for his star, commissioning art director Hugo Ballin to design lavish sets said to cost $35,000 and occupying over three acres at his Culver City Studio, including scaled-down imaginings of such St. Petersburg landmarks as the Smolny Institute and the great arch of the General Staff Building. Equally impressive was the Opera House, filled with 750 extras to applaud Marcia’s triumph in Massenet’s Thaïs. Included in the crowd was Count Camille Ferri-Pisani (1885-1954), who writes of his experience in “Au Pays du Film,” first serialized in the magazine Cinéa in 1922 and published in book form one year later. According to Ferri-Pisani, the set was packed with exiled aristocracy: a Russian prince, a Venetian marquis, an English baronet, a German count (cousin to Hindenburg), and a Dalmatian margrave once chamberlain to Emperor Franz Joseph. It’s possible that Ferri-Pisani, the margrave, and the count are among the men congratulating Marcia backstage after the performance – indeed, Ferri-Pisani claims the count and Farrar remembered each other from when she was singing in Berlin and had been the rumored lover of the German Crown Prince. One must allow for exaggeration: he incorrectly states that the scene featured Farrar singing Lohengrin, and that 1,200 extras were packing the opera house set, although reports did say that up to 2,700 extras were employed in outdoor scenes.
Scottish-born director Frank Lloyd (1888-1960) emigrated to Nova Scotia in 1909 and arrived in Hollywood with a West Coast vaudeville company in 1913. Taken under the wings of Lois Weber and Otis Turner, he wrote several one- and two-reel scripts and then enjoyed success as a director for various studios before being hired by Goldwyn, where he remained until 1922; their first film together was The World and Its Woman. Lloyd was one of the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and received Academy Awards for Best Direction for The Divine Lady (1929) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935); his Cavalcade (1933) received the Best Picture award.

Antonia Guerrero, Jay Weissberg