The Primitive Lover

If you ask any normal movie fan today who the Talmadge sisters were, the answer would more likely be they were a musical vocal trio rather than the hugely popular 1920's silent film stars that they were. Back then, scores of theater goers lined up to see one of Norma, Natalie or Constance Talmadge movies. The oldest, Norma, and the youngest, Constance were especially two of the most famous actresses in cinema in the late 1910's and early 1920's. The sisters were among a handful of top movie performers invited to be the first to create impressions of their feet and handprints in wet cement in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater.

Constance aimed for scripts that were comedy of manners. No finer example of her work was May 1922's "The Primitive Lover." The Frances Marian scenario about an unhappy wife, Constance, whose fantasizes on her lost and presumed dead novelist boyfriend and his romantic themes, is surprised when he suddenly returns. Her husband, Harrison Ford, decides to show what a phony in the bravado category the writer really is.

Constance is recognizable for her early role in D. W. Griffith's 1916 'Intolerance' as the Mountain Girl in the famous Babylon segment. She appeared in over 80 films, with many scripted by her talented friend Anita Loos, who contoured her screenplays to the actress' favorite type of films. "I want comedies of manners, comedies that are funny because they delight one's sense of what is ridiculously human in the way of little everyday commonplace foibles and frailties," Constance admitted.