User Reviews

Here is a film equal to the sum of its parts. Like a sturdy and attractive house, Zander The Great was constructed by skilled and competent craftsmen performing at their best.

Marion Davies, who excelled in homey and warm-hearted physical comedy was frequently shoehorned into dramatic roles for which she was ill suited. Her comic brilliance shows in her portrayal of Mamie Smith. In a truly great screen entrance, Mamie is introduced in close-up as she fights her way through an enormous pile of dropped laundry at the orphanage where she toils away with the other girls. Playing the ingenue with more exuberance and success than did the older Mary Pickford, Davies has another hilarious scene, pigtails flying, on an out of control motorized bicycle. She escapes the orphanage and the cruel hand of its matron and is taken in by kindly Mrs. Caldwell, played by Hedda Hopper. Her husband long disappeared into Mexico, Mrs. Caldwell lives with her infant son Alexander, dubbed Zander by Mamie. Time passes, and Mamie becomes a young woman and Zander a little boy. Mrs. Caldwell dies, still longing for the return of her husband, while Mamie swears to find and reunite him with his son. Authorities arrive, threatening to cart Zander off to the very same orphanage from which Mamie had previously escaped. Mamie steals the family car and flees with the child. Pet bunnies multiply in the back seat as Mamie and Zander pass from state to state, arriving at last in Arizona, where they find themselves at the door of a derelict ranch occupied by a band of desperados. A plot twist that could only happen in the movies reveals the leader to be none other than Zander's father. Mamie escapes the gang in a wonderful chase on horseback through the Joshua trees (in Arizona?) only to end up back at the ranch. Her attempts to mother the gang allow for several comic moments. Particularly funny is a scene in which she cuts their hair with a large metal pot for a guide. All is revealed in the end, with Zander's father and Mamie falling in love and riding off with Zander in tow, through an orchard populated with hundreds of happy bunnies.

"Zander The Great" is an example of why MGM was the most successful house of the studio system days. Photographed by the great George Barnes, the credits are a who's who of Hollywood's best journeyman actors and technicians. Harry Myers, one of the desperados, went on to play a drunken millionaire in Chaplin's City Lights.