This was the first silent film I ever saw. Technically, I only saw half, as it was featured on a half hour program my mum and dad used to watch called "Silents Please". So I was overjoyed when I saw this film was an extra when I bought "True Heart Susie" and I was not disappointed.
Mae Marsh was such a convincing actress, she was able to play an imaginative orphan even when she was in her twenties. Mae plays "Hoodoo Ann", who was left as a baby on the steps of the Clarissa Parker Orphanage on Friday the 13th. She is the orphanage drudge and is unaware that everyone considers her a jinx!!! Even the other orphans shun her!! In the town Jimmie (Bobby Harron) is an aspiring cartoonist who has no encouragement from his father - "if you think you're an artist - paint the fence!!!" Ann borrows a doll belonging to Goldie (Mildred Harris) the orphanage pet (and a real brat!!) but the doll's leg breaks and Ann feels she can't return it. There are some lovely scenes with Ann playing with the doll - "the only friend she has that doesn't run away".
When the orphanage burns down, Ann is a heroine for saving Goldie and she is adopted by the Knapps. She then meets Jimmie and there is some nice humour involving a new gingham dress, a fence and a cow. Once she realises she won't be going back to the orphanage she gets to work scrubbing the furniture!!!
Two years pass and with dresses by "Vogey" -Ann is now a fashionable young lady going to her first dance. Jimmie and Ann go to the movies - a western - an amazing spoof that deliberately shows how slipshod the continuity was on some of the old films (the heroine goes to the well and each scene shows her with a different bucket, pail is written pale, the hero is shot but the gun is fired into the air). Back at home Ann tries to copy the feisty film heroine and finds a loaded gun in the attic (she doesn't know it's loaded). She is "play acting" - the gun goes off and she thinks she has killed Mr. Higgins, a quarrelsome neighbour. Jimmie has just had some cartoons accepted by a magazine and runs to ask Ann to marry him. She, unhappily, refuses him as she feels her "hoodoo' has returned and she is now a murderess!!!
Just when Ann has confessed to the sheriff, Mr. Higgins rambles in - he had gone off to get away from Mrs Higgin's nagging and slept under a haystack. This paves the way for Ann and Jimmie's marriage and her "hoodoo" is now left behind.
Bobby Harron is very good but Mae Marsh's expressive face is the whole show for me. The acting in this film seems more real and natural than acting today.
Highly Recommended.
Mae Marsh was such a convincing actress, she was able to play an imaginative orphan even when she was in her twenties. Mae plays "Hoodoo Ann", who was left as a baby on the steps of the Clarissa Parker Orphanage on Friday the 13th. She is the orphanage drudge and is unaware that everyone considers her a jinx!!! Even the other orphans shun her!! In the town Jimmie (Bobby Harron) is an aspiring cartoonist who has no encouragement from his father - "if you think you're an artist - paint the fence!!!" Ann borrows a doll belonging to Goldie (Mildred Harris) the orphanage pet (and a real brat!!) but the doll's leg breaks and Ann feels she can't return it. There are some lovely scenes with Ann playing with the doll - "the only friend she has that doesn't run away".
When the orphanage burns down, Ann is a heroine for saving Goldie and she is adopted by the Knapps. She then meets Jimmie and there is some nice humour involving a new gingham dress, a fence and a cow. Once she realises she won't be going back to the orphanage she gets to work scrubbing the furniture!!!
Two years pass and with dresses by "Vogey" -Ann is now a fashionable young lady going to her first dance. Jimmie and Ann go to the movies - a western - an amazing spoof that deliberately shows how slipshod the continuity was on some of the old films (the heroine goes to the well and each scene shows her with a different bucket, pail is written pale, the hero is shot but the gun is fired into the air). Back at home Ann tries to copy the feisty film heroine and finds a loaded gun in the attic (she doesn't know it's loaded). She is "play acting" - the gun goes off and she thinks she has killed Mr. Higgins, a quarrelsome neighbour. Jimmie has just had some cartoons accepted by a magazine and runs to ask Ann to marry him. She, unhappily, refuses him as she feels her "hoodoo' has returned and she is now a murderess!!!
Just when Ann has confessed to the sheriff, Mr. Higgins rambles in - he had gone off to get away from Mrs Higgin's nagging and slept under a haystack. This paves the way for Ann and Jimmie's marriage and her "hoodoo" is now left behind.
Bobby Harron is very good but Mae Marsh's expressive face is the whole show for me. The acting in this film seems more real and natural than acting today.
Highly Recommended.