Rachel Weiss in Beautiful Creatures.

Going with just classic movies that are in my personal collection, the Top 10 contenders for Film Damsel in Much Distress are (in chronological order):

• Suspense (1913) - Lois Weber
• The Red Lily (1924) - Enid Bennett
• The Phantom of the Opera (1925) - Mary Philbin
• Captain Salvation (1927) - Pauline Starke
• Metropolis (1927) - Brigitte Helm
• The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Maria Falconetti
• Three on a Match (1932) - Ann Dvorak
• King Kong (1933) - Fay Wray
• Escape (1940) - Alla Nazimova
• Psycho (1960) - Janet Leigh

Good answers, Chill and Gen! Thanks.

Hello, Gen. How've you been doing?

Right, Vivien (Ann Dvorak) really goes through so much danger in "Three on a Match" that no matter how the story ends, you just can't get over her maladies long after the final curtain. (Ann later says that her stage name ought to be pronounced as "Vor-shack," from the European way, you know.)

Also, many of those Silents, as well as some featuring Lillian Gish, or the series with Pearl White in "Perils of Pauline."

And then later on during the Golden Age, WWII comes along with many patriotic films, such as "So Proudly We Hail!" (Claudette, Paulette, Veronica, et al.)

Sort of bypassed "Psycho" for a long time before finally saying, "Okay, okay, okay," and then became sort of surprised at how much more to the screen-story there is than just the very famous scenes, right?

Please be well!

Hi, Vin! It's good to be on a thread with you again!

Yes: Ann Dvorak's Vivien Revere Kirkwood certainly does get run through the ringer - and then some - in Three on a Match. How she ultimately goes about resolving the dilemma that she and her little boy wind up in is incredibly startling, for sure! For a 1932 film, what Vivien does truly is shocking and unexpected, and it leaves quite a lasting impression on the viewer. Particularly after the immediate lead-up to it, with the lipstick scene. Wow. That is some superlative acting by Miss Dvorak!

Yes, exactly correct how Miss Dvorak shines her professional talents across the silver screen in Melodramatic Pre-Code Three on a Match (1932), and also in a variety of genres during her film acting career.

And she carries her stellar talent in lighter fare outings, such as Racing Lady (1937), as Ruth Martin (not the same character which June Lockhart would later portray), but both Ruths display much caring for their animal friends.

In one of the earliest Perry Mason turns, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937) Ann doesn't miss a beat as Della Street (although I had been under the impression that she co-stars with Warren William in the very first Perry Mason adaptation the year prior).

Anyway, she rolls up her sleeves to play a colorful, less-sophisticated character about a teenager who attempts to discover her biological mother in Our Very Own (1950), Mrs. Gert Lynch.

And Miss Dvorak really holds her own, acting, singing, dancing in an early Musical Comedy at the newly-formed 20th C Fox, Thanks a Million (1935), as Sally Mason, no easy task opposite famed Musical star Dick Powell, alongside Patsy Kelly and Fred Allen's cranking out the wisecracks, amid a host of very professional radio stars and commanding character actors throughout the way.

All in all, haven't seen nearly a great percentage of Ann's filmography, but, yes, she certainly makes her very welcoming, very pleasant presence very well-received by appreciative audiences, to be sure.

A superb - I think perhaps her career-topping very best - Ann Dvorak performance is in the 1950 Lana Turner / Ray Milland film A Life of Her Own. The character that Ann portrays in that meets a similar (albeit strictly after-the-fact-referred-to, by other characters) fate as does Vivien Kirkwood in Three on a Match; Ann's characters and high-rise windows just don't mix!

O Defenestration, what Ann hath wrought.

(but Ann should have done all the dumping.)

Wikipedia cites upon its category of "Defenestration" many historic examples, as well as post-Code film devices, but without even checking, Ann sets one suspenseful prototype more than once....

• from King Kong to Gunga Din,
• from Hitchcock to the Three Stooges,
• from notable society figures to many Wall Street investors auto-defenestrating during the 1929 stock market crash,
• from Silent Film to the Towering Inferno, and
• from the Dark Corner to "Murder, She Wrote" - and many times over at that.

You just taught me a new word, Vin! I had to look up the definition of defenestration, as I don't think I'd ever heard/seen that word before. I now know it means "a throwing of a person or thing out of a window". Not a good way to go, for sure!

Well, I'm still not sure what its antonym would be, Gen, but perhaps something like the falling house's landing upon Buster Keaton, but he fortunately just so happens to stand in the exact spot where its open window lands, right?

That's a fun Keaton movie! Yep: The house literally crashes all around him - while he stands in line with (unknowingly) one of its falling window openings. (film clip here) Incredible stunt!

Brilliant!

Got lost for a few days in rerunning it even.

What's the plural form of genius?

Wait, we don't need to know because we have Buster.

Thanks!

And now, another trimester drawing to conclusion, we return to the circle of Damsels in Distress, one to another, to another.

After filming Shall We Dance (1937), RKO Radio Pictures cast its major box office draws into separate projects, according to mutual wishes.

For Fred, what we see here, a pairing with Joan Fontaine, a sharp talent except in dance, and so they bring in Gracie Allen and George Burns to fill in some lively routines with Fred.

For Ginger, Stage Door becomes a noteworthy Serio-Comedy turn, but because the originally-cast headliner Margaret Sullavan was expecting a visit from the Stork, RKO decides not to take full gamble with "box office poison" KH, and so Ginger, Lucy, Eve, Ann M, Gail, and company become its wise-cracking assurance.

Stage Door also features another character, an epitome of the Damsel in Distress in the person of Kay Hamilton (Andrea Leeds), who although having risen to stardom the season prior, now faces destitution all over again, impoverished, malnourished, practically homeless, and without a knight in shining armor to rescue her back to rediscovery.

Some critics opine that the screen story (heavily re-edited from the original Play) shows dramatic flaws. Perhaps one major one would be that Kay Hamilton's major Broadway stardom from last season has now become long-forgotten even by her agent, peers and theatric company.

Anyway, Andrea brilliantly plays Kay as the striving talent who deserves recognition if only by facing an upper-story window to depart the Footlights Club boarding house....

Well, no need to spoil a good Comedy on the blight of the sight of an edge of a ledge, but well done on every level.

And so your assignment for next Trimester may be to leave Defenestration far behind in order to begin a burning study of films containing Self-Immolation...?

Happy New Year's