“Who is the director?”

“He’s a new man we’ve just brought over from Warner Brothers. His name is Mal St. Clair.”

“St. Clair!” I exclaimed. “He’s been making Rin-Tin-Tin pictures with Darryl Zanuck. He’s a dog director!”

Walter insisted that it took more skill to direct a dog than it did to direct an actor, but I was not convinced (…).

“Come on in and sit down,” he invited. “We’ve got a great story and you’ll love the part.”

I sat down and in ten minutes Mal convinced me that he knew how to make pictures regardless of his canine past. We spent all of that first morning getting acquainted and exchanging ideas on the new picture; then we went out to lunch. By the time we came back we were practically ready to start shooting and Mal was my favourite Paramount director. A few months later he directed me in one of the best silent pictures I ever made, entitled The Grand Duchess and the Waiter. This picture boosted me up to the top rungs of the Hollywood ladder…

Adolphe Menjou – M.M. Musselman, It Took Nine Tailors, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1948

Prior to any possible influence from Lubitsch, St. Clair had already proved himself in filmmaking techniques often associated with Lubitsch: the ability to make long passages of film without titles; the tendency to become satirical when dealing with interpersonal relationships; and particularly the ability to tell stories when characters’ faces are off-screen while focusing the camera instead on other details. As for the beautiful camera work connected with Lubitsch’s romantic comedies, St. Clair had already been receiving the praise of critics for his dazzling photography since his early days at FBO. St. Clair had also been promoting “natural” acting techniques for his performers and had been doing so for more than a year before Lubitsch made The Marriage Circle.

Ruth Anne Dwyer, Malcom St. Clair. His films, 1915-1948, Lanham, Md., & London, The Scarecrow Press, 1996