When Norma Talmadge was making Graustark, that mythical kingdom’s name was as familiar to American audiences as Ruritania itself, yet unlike Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, George Barr McCutcheon’s six-novel series has been all but forgotten. Though McCutcheon was unquestionably the weaker writer, his Graustark touched a major chord because it gave Americans what they missed in Ruritania: the fantasy that they too could become royalty. Where Zenda and its countless offspring presented a quaintly backward Balkan world in which British ingenuity and fair play were needed to save obscure monarchies and ensure the continuity of decadent dynasties through genuinely aristocratic if not exactly royal bloodlines, Graustark took a more democratic approach, concocting a world where Americans could save these fractious kingdoms just as well as their British counterparts, while also bending centuries of tradition by paving the way for commoners to marry into royalty. In McCutcheon’s tales and their spin-offs, Stars-and-Stripes capitalism was every bit as good as an entry in the Almanach de Gotha, and the series turned the mediocre author into one of the highest-paid writers of his day.
McCutcheon never imagined such a thing when he finally managed to sell his manuscript, accepting $500 in cash for all rights from publisher H.S. Stone & Co.; in his own words, “The author never received a penny in the shape of royalties from book, play or motion pictures.” Never mind: the sequels he penned, including Beverly of Graustark (the 1926 filmed version with Marion Davies was screened in Pordenone in 2019), earned him a fortune. The film rights for Graustark were sold by the publisher in 1913, with Essanay releasing a version in 1915 (the Klaw & Erlanger/Biograph Beverly of Graustark, released in May 1916, appears to have been made before the Essanay film but distributed later). The subject’s success prompted the studio to immediately put the fourth novel in the series, The Prince of Graustark, into production, and then cinematic adaptations lay dormant until 1923, when the third novel, Truxton King, was filmed by Fox with John Gilbert.
It was a clever decision to star Norma Talmadge in an updated version of Graustark, moving her away from period pictures – advertising pushed it as a “love-story of today” – and allowing an enticing mix of glamour, verve, and drama, with the kind of warmth that connected strongly with her fan base. Though Frances Marion is given sole writing credit, Lenore Coffee was also involved in the script (her husband William Cowan was the assistant director), and while certain changes were made to the novel, the plot generally sticks to the book. The surviving nitrate at the Library of Congress is incomplete: reels 1 and 3 are missing and reels 2 and 5 are shorter than they would have been, so newly created titles fill in plot gaps. Contemporary reviews all praised the film’s opening in Denver, Colorado, when wealthy, footloose American Grenfall Lorry spies a beautiful woman in the next train. It’s worth quoting Mordaunt Hall’s description of the scene in the New York Times (08.09.1925): “She is too demure to flirt, but any man can appreciate that she is interested. She chances to look upon the well-polished sugar bowl, and therein observes Lorry’s reflection, and then the suspicion of a smile lightens her countenance. She dare not look out of the window again, but she can look in the sugar bowl.”
Lorry jumps trains and joins the mysterious woman, who impishly tells her gullible admirer that her name is Miss Guggenslocker, from the small country of Graustark. The truth is she’s Princess Yetive, heir apparent to the throne, in the U.S. incognito in the hopes of finding backing for her debt-ridden country so she won’t have to marry Prince Gabriel of Axphain. As the daughter of a king, Yetive knows she shouldn’t fall in love with an American, but Grenfall’s charms are irresistible, and once in New York she’s ready to risk it, until her father sends word she’s required back home. Lorry follows, unsure exactly where Graustark is – in the novel, his chum says, “There are so many infernal little kingdoms and principalities over here that it would take a lifetime to get ’em all straightened out in one’s head” – and there learns that Miss Guggenslocker is really the crown princess. Prince Gabriel tries to get rid of him through his henchman Dangloss (another dastardly role for Roy D’Arcy), who fakes his murder so it looks like Lorry is to blame. Yetive helps her lover escape, but he discovers that Dangloss is alive, and brings him back to Graustark’s capital, Edelweiss, to reveal Axphain’s perfidy. King Ferdinand reminds his daughter that a royal princess can’t wed an American, but she appeals to the populace and they resoundingly support her decision to marry for love.
It’s a pity Dimitri Buchowetzki only directed Norma in this one film, as she’s alive to his touch, and especially in the earlier scenes she’s delightfully relaxed and playful. The director makes excellent use of the sets – later sources credit William Cameron Menzies but ads clearly proclaim Cedric Gibbons and Richard Day as art directors – most notably the Art Deco garden, where Tony Gaudio’s camera makes terrific use of sight lines and interior vs. exterior spaces. Reviews were nearly unanimous in their praise, and the film broke box-office records at New York’s Capitol Theatre. Lenore Coffee’s 1973 autobiography is the only source that mentions the appearance of Joan Crawford, still Lucille LeSueur, as a lady-in-waiting, and it’s strange no one ever picked up on this, but Crawford is clearly visible in two scenes, once in a chapel behind Wanda Hawley, and later adjusting Talmadge’s wedding gown.
The last time Hollywood expressed an interest in Graustark was in 1937, when Samuel Goldwyn employed no less than 22 writers, including Lillian Hellman, Samson Raphaelson, S.N. Behrman, and Cecilia Ager, to come up with a new script for a William Wyler picture starring Merle Oberon, Gary Cooper, and Sigrid Gurie. It was never made.

Jay Weissberg