Vanity's Price

Vanity's Price is a lost^[1] 1924 American silent drama film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Anna Q. Nilsson. It was produced by the Gothic Productions company and released by FBO.^[2][3]

Vanity's Price
Lobby card
Directed by	Roy William Neill Josef von Sternberg (ass't director)
Written by	Paul Bern (story, scenario)
Produced by	Gothic Productions
Starring	Anna Q. Nilsson
Cinematography	Hal Mohr
Production company	Gothic Productions
Distributed by	Film Booking Offices of America
Release date	September 7, 1924 (1924-09-07)
Running time	60 minutes; 6 reels
Country	United States
Language	Silent (English intertitles)

The film is notable as the feature that brought assistant director Josef von Sternberg to the attention of critics for his handling of two sequences in the film.^[4]

Cast

• Anna Q. Nilsson as Vanna Du Maurier
• Stuart Holmes as Henri De Greve
• Wyndham Standing as Richard Dowling
• Arthur Rankin as Teddy, Vanna's son
• Lucille Ricksen as Sylvia, Teddy's fiancée
• Robert Bolder as Bill Connors, Theatrical Manager
• Cissy Fitzgerald as Mrs. Connors
• Dot Farley as Katherine, Vanna's Maid
• Charles Newton as Butler
• Rowfat-Bey Haliloff as Dancer

Production

Von Sternberg, in his 1965 autobiography recalls:

Two incidents had been left out of the supposedly completed Vanity’s Price, which the director [Roy William Neill] had not considered worthwhile doing, and the studio [FBO] head now pleaded with me to direct those short episodes.”^[5] One of the scenes concerned a young couple on a park bench, in love. The other involved a surgery in which a woman is operated in a therapeutic procedure related to the "Monkey gland" theory of Serge Voronoff.

Von Sternberg writes:

I gave orders to build an operating theatre with a deep pit and circular rows of seats rising steeply above the other to make it look like a cockfight arena. I planned to have the student physicians watch the surgery through binoculars with an occasional ironic grin.^[6][7]

When the picture was previewed this sequence was praised by critics and von Sternberg was offered a position as director at FBO studios, but he turned it down to make an independently financed film, The Salvation Hunters (1925).^[8][9][10]