When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) 🏆 Marion Davies

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Release date: September 15, 1922

The film was the winner of the Photoplay Awards for
Best Pictures of the Month (November) 🏆

With an estimated cost of $1,500,000, it was considered by Life "the most expensive film that has ever been produced" in 1922. According to Variety, William Randolph Hearst launched "the most expensive and extensive campaign that has ever been organized for anything theatrical", with over 650 billboards in New York, 300 subway advertising placards, special booths in department stores that sold souvenir books, and a dazzling string of electric signs that pervaded Times Square, upon which Will Rogers quipped that Davies's next film would be titled When Electric Light Was in Power.

First Marion Davies film to cost more than $1 million to make. It was also her first film to earn more than $1 million at the box office and her first mega-hit.

Some sources say this was the #1 box-office hit of 1922. The vast majority though cite Robin de los bosques (1922) at the top of the list for that year.

Marion Davies makes her entrance downriver on a royal barge. The barge was a full-size replica built in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The scene and dance were filmed at Laddins Rock Farm in Stamford/Old Greenwich, Connecticut. Hearst commissioned two songs from Victor Herbert: "The When Knighthood Was in Flower Waltz" and "The Marion Davies March", which were played at the New York premiere.

Marion Davies took weeks of fencing lessons to prepare for the scenes in which, masquerading as a boy, Mary has to fight a bully and six other men at a roadside inn.

The Paris street scenes were filmed at the Famous Players Studio in Queens, New York (now Kaufman Astoria Studios). Thirty-two buildings were constructed at a cost of $42,000 ($745,000 in 2022). The scene at the bridge required 33 horses, nine of which were trained to jump into the water 20 feet below.

Robert E. Sherwood defined the film "gorgeously beautiful flashily romantic and stirringly impressive", ranking it as one of the best pictures of the year and appreciated Vignola's "genius for lighting and composition". In 1922, Motion Picture News stated the film was "not only Cosmopolitan's greatest achievement but one of the greatest achievements of the silversheet", wrote a positive review of the cast and praised Vignola "for his masterly direction".

Delight Evans cited the film among "the most entertaining photoplays ever made" on Photoplay in 1923. Screenland" magazine ran a poll in the spring of 1924 to find the ten greatest American films "of all time". This film came in at #10. The Motion Picture Guide praised the film for its "tremendous production values, excellent direction, and good script, and an outstanding cast", giving it three out of four stars.

It was a triumph for Marion Davies, and she was named "Queen of the Screen" and the #1 female box office star of 1922 at the annual theater owners ball (Rudolph Valentino was named #1 male star). However, the movie was negatively received in London and, according to Davies, the English did not accept an American woman playing an English character. Despite the controversy, it was appreciated by Edward, Prince of Wales, who defined it "a wonderful picture". British art dealer Joseph Duveen stated the film setting was "the most stupendous reproduction of Henry the Eighth court life that has ever been achieved — a marvelous piece of artistry".

For the world premiere at the Criterion Theater in New York City on September 14, 1922, the biggest electric sign ever seen on Broadway was constructed. It measured 60 feet wide by 35 feet tall. Marion Davies's name was spelled out in ten-foot-high letters. The sign used more than 2,000 frosted white electric lights, with a coat of arms in lights painted in red, blue, and green.

Exteriors were shot at Windsor Castle, England.

3,000 costumed extras were used in the film, most of whom lived near the Famous Players Studio in Queens, New York.

Marion Davies's gowns were the exact reproductions of those worn by Mary Tudor.

The production had so many large sets that space had to be rented at two additional studios in order to accommodate them.

In 1953 the film was re-released.

The film was spoofed in Broncho Billy Anderson's When Knights Were Cold (1923), starring Stan Laurel and Mae Dahlberg.

Ben Model used portions of the songs commissioned by Hearst for the film's New York premiere in his theatre organ score for the April 7, 2017 restoration of the film. The restored film was scanned from an original 35mm nitrate print preserved by the Library of Congress. Its color tints have been reinstated and the film's hand-colored sequence has been digitally replicated. The first time this restored Knighthood was seen just "as it appeared in the 1920s" was at a special screening in May 2023 at New York City's historic Jefferson Market Library.