When you think about the great silent film stars, Dorothy Mackaill is probably not among the first names that come to mind. But she had a solid film career, starting as an extra in 1920 up to her biggest hit, The Barker in 1928, and then on to talkies.
Mackaill was born in England and ran away to London as a teen to go on the stage. She was a showgirl in London and Paris and then headed to Broadway when a choreographer friend got her a job in The Century Revue. She also worked for Florenz Ziegfeld in his 1920 edition of Midnight Frolic.
She was an extra in The Face at the Window (1920), which she filmed before departing England. While working as a showgirl in New York, she appeared in three Torchy comedy shorts with Johnny Hines. Her first American feature film was Bits of Life (1921), which included four stories with different casts. Among the stars were Lon Chaney, Anna May Wong, John Bowers, and Noah Beery. Mackaill got top billing for the first time in The Streets of New York (1922), but she was still working for small East Coast companies.
In 1923, Mackaill got a big break by being cast opposite Richard Barthelmess (in the first of four films together) in The Fighting Blade, a film that exists in the UCLA archives. She had also moved up to a major film company, Barthelmess’ Inspiration Pictures. In 1923, Mackaill starred with Bebe Daniels and James Rennie in His Children’s Children for Famous Players-Lasky (the future Paramount). Mackaill finished off the year re-teaming with Barthelmess in Twenty One.
Mackaill starred with George O’Brien in two films: The Man Who Came Back, playing a night club singer, and in The Painted Lady (both 1924). She starred with Aileen Pringle in One Year to Live (1925) and had the title role in Chickie (1925). Mackail also starred with Milton Sills for the first time in The Making of O’Malley and re-teamed with Barthelmess in Shore Leave (1925). Shore Leave is an interesting film because both stars play against type. Barthelmess plays a tough sailor named Smith who happens to meet a mousy dressmaker (Mackaill) while on shore leave. He’s determined not to get involved and she pines away in a small New England seaport village.
1925 marked the first of 12 films with Jack Mulhall as Mackaill starred in Joanna, a story about a rich flapper who falls for a poor man. In 1926, Maickaill re-teamed for the last time with Richard Barthelmess in a Ranson’s Folly, a western about the notorious “Red Rider.”
Subway Sadie (1926) had Mackaill starring as a sales girl who who must choose between a job in Paris or marriage to her boyfriend (Jack Mulhall again). Mackaill and Mullhall toplined Just Another Blonde (1926) which also co-starred Louise Brooks. This film survives in the UCLA archives but is missing pieces from each of the 6 reels. Mackaill starred with Lowell Sherman and Lawrence Gray in Convoy and again with Mulhall in Smile, Brother, Smile as well as The Crystal Cup and Man Crazy (all 1927).
She started off 1928 with Mulhall in Ladies’ Night in a Turkish Bath, apparently a zany comedy that survives. For Lady Be Good (1928) the ads said this was a “Broadway hit brought to the screen in the mirthful Mackaill-Mulhall manner.” Waterfront (1928) would turn out to be Mackaill’s last silent film, although it had a Vitaphone music score and sound effects accompaniment.
The Barker (1928) was an important film for its stars: Mackaill, Milton Sills, Betty Compson, and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. It was a big box-office hit and won an Oscar nomination for Compson. Because of the talking sequences, the film transitioned its four stars into talkies (although Sills died in 1930). Interestingly, although the film existed in the UCLA archive, the Vitaphone sound disks were lost. When they were discovered, they were badly scratched, damaged, or broken, but the Vitaphone Project was able to repair the disks. The restored film has been shown at a few festivals. The Barker was remade in 1933 as Hoopla with Clara Bow (her final film) in the Mackaill role.
Mackaill made six films in 1929. First National quickly re-teamed Mackail and Sills for another film with talking sequences, His Captive Woman and then Children of the Ritz and Two Weeks Off with Mulhall. Her first all-talkie was Hard to Get, followed by The Great Divide, and The Love Racket. The Great Divide is an interesting films about a mine owner (Ian Keith) who runs across his dead partner’s daughter (Mackaill) who is a party girl. So of course he decides to kidnap her and head for the open spaces of the west where she grows to love the west and him. Myrna Loy co-stars as a woman in love with Keith.
The Flirting Widow (1930) starred Mackaill in a pleasant drawing-room comedy about an eldest daughter who pretends to be engaged to marry so her younger sister can get married, thereby avoiding the tradition of wearing “green stockings” at her wedding. Although set in an English country manor, Mackaill has no English accent. There’s a funny exchange early in the film when Mackaill sports a slicked-back, mannish hair-do. A house guest tells her, “In that outfit, you almost look like a man.” She eyes him and shoots back, “And in that mustache, you look like a man … almost.”
The Office Wife (1930) starred Mackaill as a writer hired to do a book about the relationship between bosses and secretaries with art ultimately imitating life. 1930 also saw Mackaill teamed again with Milton Sills in Man Trouble, a story about a nightclub owner who saves a girl from drowning and then falling in love with her.
One of Mackaill’s best talkies was Bright Lights (1930), a backstage musical and murder mystery that was originally filmed in 2-strip Technicolor (only a B&W version exists). She is a stage star on the night of her final performance. She’s leaving show biz and marrying into a wealthy family. Via flashbacks we are shown her true past, starting in a dive in South Africa, dancing a sleazy hula number and cavorting with several men. Frank Fay plays her devoted (and ignored) pal, and Noah Beery is the lecherous suitor. When the men get into a fight, Mackaill hurls a lit oil lamp at Beery and burns his face. Of course Beery shows up on Mackaill’s final night and gets involved in murder. Mackaill gets to sing and dance to outrageous numbers like “Cannibal Love” and “Song of the Congo.” She also dresses in a tuxedo and sings and dances to “I’m Just a Man About Town.”
She starred in Once a Sinner and Kept Husbands with Joel McCrea in 1931. The latter is a story about a spoiled rich girl who proposes to a working man and then runs rampant over his life until the big marital blowup. Fast paced and funny in spots, this is a little gem.
After a few more so-so films, Mackaill landed Safe in Hell (1931), a remarkably lurid pre-Code film about a New Orleans prostitute who thinks she has killed a man. Her boyfriend (Donald Cook) helps her escape to a Caribbean island that does not extradite residents. On the island, Mackaill meets an unsavory bunch of murderers and thieves all living in the same hotel. There’s also the local police chief who lusts for Mackaill. There’s a surprise ending to this one. Surprisingly, First National/Warners did not renew Mackaill’s contract after this film; her career went into a quick decline.
Mackaill teamed with Humphrey Bogart for Love Affair (1932) for Columbia and then went to Paramount for a second lead role in No Man of Her Own (1932), which starred Carole Lombard and Clark Gable in their only film together.
She appeared in five more B films through 1934. The oddest of these may have been The Chief, (1933) with Ed Wynn. In 1937 she made her final film, the British Bulldog Drummond at Bay with John Lodge.
Dorothy Mackaill pretty much retired from acting, aside of a few TV appearances. She lived in Hawaii for most of the rest of her life, traveled widely, and never looked back.