Thanks to the folks at Grapevine Video I've finally managed to see this film again after many years, and it's a pleasure to report that Feel My Pulse holds up quite well: it's a cheery comedy that offers an array of amusing characters, a number of good quips (delivered via title card, of course) and occasional touches of low-key slapstick. It's a pleasant and satisfying example of studio craftsmanship in the waning days of the silent era.
Leading lady Bebe Daniels is perhaps best remembered today for her role in the 1933 classic 42nd Street, as the brittle star performer who breaks her ankle on opening night, thus permitting chorus girl Ruby Keeler to "go out there a chorus girl and come back a star." Buffs know that Bebe polished her acting chops as Harold Lloyd's leading lady in dozens of his early short comedies, that she went on to play support to everyone from Gloria Swanson and Wallace Reid to Rudolph Valentino, and that by the mid-1920s she was starred in her own series of features. In Feel My Pulse she is the center of attention in a vehicle tailored to her skills, and she's charming. Rather like Colleen Moore, Bebe's comic technique involved a whimsical approach to semi-realistic situations, with free reign given to wisecracks. Slapstick was considered somewhat passé by this time, and is downplayed. Bebe's character in this film is a pampered rich girl, one who has been raised in an unnaturally antiseptic environment because of an odd clause in the will left by her late father, an eccentric hypochondriac. She's perfectly healthy, but has been kept in a sort of bubble of doctors, pills, and "rest cures." Seeing the film again today I'm struck by how strongly Bebe's character suggests the pampered millionaires played by Buster Keaton and Bebe's former co-star Harold Lloyd, especially in his great feature Why Worry? Like Buster and Harold, Bebe behaves and speaks in the high-handed fashion of a spoiled brat, but we know she's good-hearted underneath the hauteur, and moreover that she'll be awakened to the real world eventually, and will be the better person for it.
In the course of events Bebe manages to bumble her way into a sanitarium owned by her family which, as it happens, has been taken over by bootleggers. The best scenes involve Bebe's bumpy introduction to leading man Richard Arlen, who initially appears to be one of the rum-runners, and her first encounter with the head crook, portrayed by the one and only William Powell. I've seen Powell in several early roles where he plays a villain, but never so amusingly as here. When he realizes that Bebe is thoroughly gullible he impersonates a doctor, and she falls for the routine hook, line, and sinker. Eventually Powell drops the doctor act and puts the moves on Bebe: leering, chuckling coarsely, smacking his lips, and all but twirling his mustache—The Thin Man as you've never seen him before! I guess it goes without saying that virtue eventually triumphs. Arlen turns out to be a good guy, while Bebe learns she's not so frail after all, defeating the crooks with vigor she never knew she had. The climax features a memorable routine in which the crooks are overcome with a dose of chloroform, and this, thanks to the special effects department, causes them to, dance, trip, and stumble down a flight of stairs in slow motion, which is both funny and strangely dreamlike.
Feel My Pulse is not without flaws: a drunk scene between Bebe and Keystone veteran Heine Conklin is, in my opinion, unwisely prolonged, and there is a general over-reliance on title cards which suggests the screenwriters were already thinking about writing for the talkies. Still, all told, this is a cute movie that provides a number of laughs, and gives a modern viewer a good sense of what silent comedy was like in its final days.
Leading lady Bebe Daniels is perhaps best remembered today for her role in the 1933 classic 42nd Street, as the brittle star performer who breaks her ankle on opening night, thus permitting chorus girl Ruby Keeler to "go out there a chorus girl and come back a star." Buffs know that Bebe polished her acting chops as Harold Lloyd's leading lady in dozens of his early short comedies, that she went on to play support to everyone from Gloria Swanson and Wallace Reid to Rudolph Valentino, and that by the mid-1920s she was starred in her own series of features. In Feel My Pulse she is the center of attention in a vehicle tailored to her skills, and she's charming. Rather like Colleen Moore, Bebe's comic technique involved a whimsical approach to semi-realistic situations, with free reign given to wisecracks. Slapstick was considered somewhat passé by this time, and is downplayed. Bebe's character in this film is a pampered rich girl, one who has been raised in an unnaturally antiseptic environment because of an odd clause in the will left by her late father, an eccentric hypochondriac. She's perfectly healthy, but has been kept in a sort of bubble of doctors, pills, and "rest cures." Seeing the film again today I'm struck by how strongly Bebe's character suggests the pampered millionaires played by Buster Keaton and Bebe's former co-star Harold Lloyd, especially in his great feature Why Worry? Like Buster and Harold, Bebe behaves and speaks in the high-handed fashion of a spoiled brat, but we know she's good-hearted underneath the hauteur, and moreover that she'll be awakened to the real world eventually, and will be the better person for it.
In the course of events Bebe manages to bumble her way into a sanitarium owned by her family which, as it happens, has been taken over by bootleggers. The best scenes involve Bebe's bumpy introduction to leading man Richard Arlen, who initially appears to be one of the rum-runners, and her first encounter with the head crook, portrayed by the one and only William Powell. I've seen Powell in several early roles where he plays a villain, but never so amusingly as here. When he realizes that Bebe is thoroughly gullible he impersonates a doctor, and she falls for the routine hook, line, and sinker. Eventually Powell drops the doctor act and puts the moves on Bebe: leering, chuckling coarsely, smacking his lips, and all but twirling his mustache—The Thin Man as you've never seen him before! I guess it goes without saying that virtue eventually triumphs. Arlen turns out to be a good guy, while Bebe learns she's not so frail after all, defeating the crooks with vigor she never knew she had. The climax features a memorable routine in which the crooks are overcome with a dose of chloroform, and this, thanks to the special effects department, causes them to, dance, trip, and stumble down a flight of stairs in slow motion, which is both funny and strangely dreamlike.
Feel My Pulse is not without flaws: a drunk scene between Bebe and Keystone veteran Heine Conklin is, in my opinion, unwisely prolonged, and there is a general over-reliance on title cards which suggests the screenwriters were already thinking about writing for the talkies. Still, all told, this is a cute movie that provides a number of laughs, and gives a modern viewer a good sense of what silent comedy was like in its final days.
