If Anita Stewart is remembered at all it is as the star who launched Louis B. Mayer into the film producing business. She first met Mayer through a newsboy, Toby, who was one of her biggest fans, he also felt Mayer was destined for greatness and set about a meeting. Mayer felt her signing would be a huge feather in his cap. Vitagraph refused to release her so she began to have "sick" days. The case went to court and Vitagraph won - Anita was forced to finish her last two films. She was miserable as Vitagraph started building up a new discovery, Corinne Griffith, at her expense and when she finally did get over to Mayer she couldn't regain her lost popularity. "Human Desire" was one of the two films that she owed Vitagraph but interestingly it had a Mayer insignia.
When artist Robert Lane's (Conway Tearle, dare I say it, looking pretty youthful) bored, dissatisfied wife, Helen, goes to Naples she meets Berenice (Stewart), an orphan who has been bought up in a convent but yearns to give her heart and love to all the little "bambinos"!! She is an innocent and when Helen tells her that in America babies and children are often neglected, she decides to go there "as it can't be far, after all, the fine ladies came in a carriage"!!!
Anita Stewart was such a captivating personality and even though by 1919 this film was at the end of her popularity, it ticked all the boxes of the type of characteristics her fans knew and loved. From the start of her career fan magazines had written of the Anita Stewart charm, virginity and purity and a complete all round girl. Who knows how long she would have been able to keep giving her adoring public what they wanted.
Masquerading as a boy, she catches the eye of Jasper Norton (Robert Steele) who helps her with her passage to America. He organises a convent sister to meet her at the New York docks but as luck would have it Berenice is lost in the crowd and finds herself alone, hungry and friendless on Robert Lane's doorstep. He is at the cross roads with his huge canvas "Madonna and Child" - the model, while a great girl, is hardly Madonna material and the baby won't stop crying. Berenice is a life saver who calms everyone around her. Soon a chaste love springs up between the two and while Robert can't marry because Helen refuses to grant him a divorce, he can grant Berenice's wish by adopting a child for her to love. But then - disaster!! Helen drops by when Robert is visiting his sick mother and destroys Berenice's happiness by casting doubtful aspersions on their living arrangements (she also thinks the baby is their own) and calling her "a woman of your kind", Berenice goes out of her mind and is taken to the hospital!!
There are plenty more adventures - as well as an interesting scene showing just how decent working girls pooled their resources and shared a flat - Robert's model rescues Berenice from the streets and once again her maternal instincts become invaluable as she looks after the flatmate's toddler.
I may have thought Tearle looked youngish but in reality he was in his 40s when he made "Human Desire", having come into films only a couple of years previously after having been on the stage for over a decade. Naomi Childers who played Lane's sister and did feature prominently in the movie as a good friend to Berenice had been a Ziegfeld Follies girl and was once voted the world's most beautiful woman. She was known as "The Girl With the Grecian Face".
Highly Recommended.
1 out of 1 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
