Love, Life and Laughter

BFI Most Wanted: the hunt for Britain's missing films

Directed by George Pearson, 1923

According to contemporary reports, a genuine lost classic: the struggle of an impoverished author and a little chorus girl against the odds of the world.

Tip Toes (Betty Balfour) attends to the interior decoration of her humble garret abode.

Credits

Director Production Company Producer Script Photography Night Photography Effects	George Pearson Welsh, Pearson and Company George Pearson George Pearson Percy Strong A. H. Blake Charles Penley
Cast: Betty Balfour (Tip Toes), Harry Jonas (The Boy), Frank Stanmore (The Ballon-blower); Annie Esmond (his wife), Nancy Price (Her friend), Eric Smith (Charlie), Sydney Fairbrother (Lily)
6,290 feet, silent, black & white

Why are we so keen to find it?

It was hailed on release as a 'masterpiece' and a 'screen classic'. It was directed and produced by George Pearson, one of Britain's most distinguished filmmakers of the 1920s. Admired for his ability to imbue his characters with the spirit of Dickens, Pearson had big ambitions for cinema, which he expressed in articles and public lectures. British critics, often disparaging of domestic films, bestowed on him the ultimate accolade for a British filmmaker - comparing his work favourably with foreign films. With many reviewers judging this his best work, Love, Life and Laughter is one of the most tragic of lost films.

It also stars Pearson's long-time collaborator Betty Balfour, Britain's 'Queen of Happiness', and the most internationally successful of Britain's silent stars.

What's it about?

Tip-Toes, a happy little chorus girl, falls in love with a struggling young author. The pressbook (see below) carries a long, flowery and impressionistic 'synopsis' from which this is an excerpt:

There was once a happy little chorus girl who lived alone in a garret; and there was a lonely boy in the attic above who wrote tales nobody wanted - except perhaps the girl. One day he started to write the strange story of their two lives.

Two years ago, Tip-Toes, the little chorus girl, had gone away. To-night she was coming back. Her life, they said, had been like a fairy tale. [The author] waited with anxiety the appointed hour. He heard the chimes, and he started out for the garret where Tip-Toes had once lived. [She had confided] that she was going to be a big music-hall star one day; and he returned the compliment by confessing that he would go on writing dream stories that publishers might want in the end. [She] argued that he should write of laughter and not of tears, which nobody wanted to read about.

And then the author earned his first guinea, and they parted on the stairway - promising to meet again in the slum tenement at midnight that day two years.

Two summers passed. Laughter or tears? Success or failure? Tale of fancy or record of truth? Those who watch must decide.

Last seen?

It had its general commercial release in Britain in June 1923, with rave notices in the British press, and was shown in Finland on September 8th 1924.

What else do we know about it?

For Balfour, Love, Life and Laughter marked something of a departure from her usual frothy roles - she was best known as 'Squibs' in a series of comedies by Pearson. The pair's next collaboration, Reveille (1923), is also on our Most Wanted list. Their partnership ultimately ended after Balfour rejected Pearson's offer to divorce his wife and marry her. She later worked in Germany, Austria and France (including with the great Marcel L'Herbier) and, back in England, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Champagne (1928).

The film bears no relation to the 1934 Gracie Fields film of the same title.

Does anything survive?

A set of six production stills is held in the BFI's Stills, Posters and Designs collection, while BFI's Special Collections hold a publicity leaflet and a fully illustrated campaign booklet. The most intriguing stills show the irresistible Betty Balfour in beautiful gowns and costumes of the low comedienne type; others capture brief film scenes that feature the wretched author played by Harry Jonas and the caretakers played by Frank Stanmore and Annie Esmond. The campaign booklet, meanwhile, features a larger number of scene stills with Betty in whimsical mood, as well as six publicity posters.

Reviews

Reviews in the mainstream press were rhapsodic. For the Daily Telegraph the film was "destined in all probability to take its place among the screen classics", while the Manchester Guardian considered it " certainly the most ambitious [of Pearson's films], spectacular at times, lit and photographed with a beauty to dream of," concluding, "devotees have called it George Pearson's masterpiece, and so it is".

The Times praised Balfour as "the cleverest comedienne playing in British films", while the Evening News predicted, "what few people there are who have not fallen beneath the spell of her pretty face, clever comedy, and sympathetic interpretation of human feelings must surely be captured now." Topical Times labelled her "a genius" who could "beat Mary Pickford at her own game"

Trade reviewers were barely more reserved. While The Bioscope was fairly sober "most audiences should respond to the broad human appeal of the theme", it declared - Kinematograph Weekly considered it "amongst the best pictures produced in this country, and... certainly the most finished production Welsh-Pearson studios have turned out."

Georgia Korossi, Curatorial Assistant, BFI National Archive

You can find more about British films of the early-1920s, including entries on surviving films and video clips for users in UK schools, colleges, universities and public libraries, at BFI Screenonline. You can also view similar titles at the BFI Mediatheques.