The Lady (1925)

Directed by Frank Borzage from a Broadway hit, the film gave Norma Talmadge one of her last major silent showcases before sound arrived, threading a fallen-woman melodrama past the era’s censors by keeping her disgrace tastefully offscreen. It returned to circulation only after a full Library of Congress restoration and a 2025 National Film Registry selection.

Background

The Lady is a 1925 silent melodrama directed by Frank Borzage, adapted by Frances Marion from Martin Brown’s Broadway play, with cinematography by Tony Gaudio. Produced by Norma Talmadge and Joseph Schenck for First National, it was released in early 1925 and stars Talmadge as Polly Pearl, an English music-hall performer who marries into the aristocratic St. Aubyns family and is disowned and separated from her infant son after her husband’s gambling ruins them; years later, working in a Paris cafe, she unknowingly encounters that son as a wounded soldier. A surviving print is missing one reel, but the film still received a full Library of Congress restoration in 2022 and a 2025 National Film Registry selection.

What to watch for

Frank Borzage draws what is often called one of Talmadge’s career-best performances, tracking Polly across decades and social classes, from showgirl to cabaret entertainer to Paris flower-seller to tavern keeper, while keeping her disgrace and later poverty tasteful enough to pass 1925 censorship standards. The film arrived near the end of Talmadge’s silent stardom, just a few years before sound ended her career outright, and gives her one of her last substantial starring showcases. How the surviving print’s missing second reel affects the pacing of the mother-son reunion is worth noting, since audiences still only have the story in that incomplete form.