Sapper (H. C. McNeile) published Bulldog-Drummond, first in the series of novels about the clubland hero, in 1920. It was adapted for the stage in London in 1921 and, by this time, there had already been two British films made - Bulldog Drummond (1922) by the company Hollandia, one of several British-Dutch co-productions at this time (see for instance the 1920 Fate's Plaything and the 1921 Circus Jim)but probably lost and Bulldog Drummond's Third Round (based on Sapper's second novel in the series), again probably a lost film.
This is the first US attempt at a "Bulldog Drummond" film, Americanised so that Drummond is now a New York dandy rather than a London clubman and is not I think strictly based on any of the Sapper novels.
As well as clubland hero, Drummond is also the quintessential "postwar" hero in the sense that he is the typical upper-class chap who finds himself at a loose end once the First World War was over. This notion of postwar "ennui" features continually in British popular literature between the wars and is peculiarly British. The French and the Germans had both suffered too greatly to feel nostalgic about the war; the British had suffered significantly but also significantly less.
Drummond is a typical postwar hero too in that he is relatively impoverished, reflecting the fact that the depression that followed the war war brought a marked decline in the wealth of the British upper and upper-middle classes.
None of this makes quite so much sense in a US context, where the involvement in the war had been considerably less profound, its social effects negligible and and where the postwar economic effects had largely been beneficial until the European economic depression began to react back on the US economy at the very end of the twenties.
This film was supposedly a part-talkie but the version I have seen (and possibly the only version that survives) is silent. The definitive film Drummond would be played by British actor Ronald Colman in the full talkie Bulldog Drummond of 1929.
This is the first US attempt at a "Bulldog Drummond" film, Americanised so that Drummond is now a New York dandy rather than a London clubman and is not I think strictly based on any of the Sapper novels.
As well as clubland hero, Drummond is also the quintessential "postwar" hero in the sense that he is the typical upper-class chap who finds himself at a loose end once the First World War was over. This notion of postwar "ennui" features continually in British popular literature between the wars and is peculiarly British. The French and the Germans had both suffered too greatly to feel nostalgic about the war; the British had suffered significantly but also significantly less.
Drummond is a typical postwar hero too in that he is relatively impoverished, reflecting the fact that the depression that followed the war war brought a marked decline in the wealth of the British upper and upper-middle classes.
None of this makes quite so much sense in a US context, where the involvement in the war had been considerably less profound, its social effects negligible and and where the postwar economic effects had largely been beneficial until the European economic depression began to react back on the US economy at the very end of the twenties.
This film was supposedly a part-talkie but the version I have seen (and possibly the only version that survives) is silent. The definitive film Drummond would be played by British actor Ronald Colman in the full talkie Bulldog Drummond of 1929.
