The Crowd (1928)

THE CROWD  (1928)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: King Vidor
    Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach,
    Daniel G. Tomlinson, Dell Henderson, Lucy Beaumont
King Vidor's silent melodrama about an ambitious young man who moves to the city, hoping to grab a piece of the American Dream. Some of this is a bit overdone, but Eleanor Boardman (aka Mrs. Vidor) does a nice job as the protagonist's sympathetic wife, and the camerawork still looks spectacular. James Murray, who plays the lead, was unknown at the time and he got some decent reviews, but his career never really took off. He became an alcoholic, reduced to panhandling in the street, and drowned in the Hudson River, a possible suicide, in 1936.