What Price Decency?
Cast & Crew
Arthur Gregor
Dorothy Burgess
Alan Hale
Walter Byron
Val Duran
Henry Durant
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Norma, an American who has been forced to become a streetwalker in London, discovers too late that the freighter on which she has been visiting Dutch trader Klaus Van Leyden has left its dock and she cannot get off. She rails at Van Leyden, who then proposes marriage. Imagining herself a "decent woman" and the mistress of a charming home with a beautiful view, Norma accepts, and a marriage ceremony is performed aboard the ship by a drunken mate. At Van Leyden's trading post in Africa, however, Norma finds his house to be a mosquito-infested shack on the edge of a jungle, where rain incessantly falls. Van Leyden, who despotically rules the tribesmen who gather pearls, also treats Norma brutally. Although Norma tries to make the best of her situation, after Irish trader and adventurer Tom O'Neil arrives, they fall in love. She refuses, however, to leave with him for Ireland because of her marriage, but when she learns from Van Leyden that the marriage is fake, she thrashes him with the large whip he uses on tribesmen, thus blinding him. The tribesmen then finish him off with a spear in his belly. As a fire begins from an oil lamp Van Leyden overturns in his blinded state, Norma overtakes Tom about to leave for Ireland. She confesses her past and they embrace.
Director
Arthur Gregor
Cast
Dorothy Burgess
Alan Hale
Walter Byron
Val Duran
Henry Durant
Zeppo, The Monkey
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
This was the first film of the Equitable Pictures, Inc., a subsidiary of Majestic Pictures Corp. Reviews were unanimous in denigrating the film. Variety stated, "Few indies [i.e. independent productions] are as bad as this one." Motion Picture Herald suggested that the film "can be considered as a possibility for exhibition in only the more inconspicuous of the smaller houses of the country," while New York Times summed it up as "an amateurish and tedious production." Reviewers noted that the New York theater where the film was shown advertised it as risque, which, the reviewers were quick to point out, was inaccurate.
