Flappers - the independent and adventurous young women of the 1920s.
Let me invite you to "The Flapper" from 1920, a silent film which is said to have made the term really popular.
As usual, here's the plot first (spoiler alert!).
Sixteen year old Genevieve "Ginger" King, daughter of wealthy and strict Senator King, is living in Orange Springs and she's bored because that is the kind of town where "girls who hobnobbed at the soda fountain were talked about", especially if they go there at the invitation of a young man - Billy in this case - without taking along a chaperone!
Thanks to the "scandal", Ginger finds herself in a boarding school near New York very quickly. As luck has it, though, the military academy that Billy just joined is in the neighborhood and although the headmistress is very strict, the girls get to go outside. Ginger doesn't just meet Billy there, though, the girls are also fascinated by the stranger riding by every day and whom they find incredibly romantic.
Billy is trying his best to impress Ginger by boasting about his skills and invites her to a sleigh ride which is rather brave for a boy whose only experience has been with a rocking horse so far.
Unfortunately, the sleigh topples over and the horse runs off with it, Billy chasing after it and leaving Ginger lying in the snow. She gets picked up by the romantic stranger, Richard Channing, who gives her a ride back in his sleigh and whose question about her age she answers with "about 20", so he invites her to a dance at the Country Club.
Ginger is about to decline when she notices her schoolmates watching them. She can't resist, agrees and sneaks out that night.
Her schoolmate Hortense, however, informs the headmistress who doesn't lose a minute to bring Ginger back and reprimand Channing for inviting her in the first place. He complains to his friends by saying something mean about young girls which hits Ginger hard.
Hortense has different plans, she uses the headmistress's absence to get to the safe which is full of jewels (a bit weird for a school, don't you think?) to meet her accomplice Thomas later.
Hortense and Thomas escape to a New York hotel and send Ginger an anonymous telegram from there to make her come there once the school vacation begins. They want to use her to transport the jewels for them by threatening her, but they don't expect Ginger to open the suitcases and use the jewels for a plan of her own. She wants to pretend to have become a vamp in order to pay it back to Channing. Once she has shocked everyone at home with her new look, she sends the suitcases to the New York Police.
Then her father comes home and doesn't believe when she tells him that it was all just a joke, and it sure isn't helpful that the New York Police turns up as well and wants to know where her "pals" are hiding!
Luckily, that's when Hortense and Thomas arrive to get their loot back. They try to escape again, but get arrested.
Last but not least Channing comes to Ginger's rescue again explaining everything and even convincing the senator to let her go to the soda fountain with Billy.
Happy ending achieved!
There's a lot going on in these 85 minutes and some of the jumps between locations were a bit confusing, but really this is just about a young girl who wants to be an adult, who wants freedom, independence - and of course some fun! Can you remember what you were like at the age of sixteen? Maybe just as impetuous as Ginger and maybe as lucky regarding the consequences?
After all, W. P. Carleton, who played the "romantic stranger", was 22 years older than Olive Thomas (Ginger), not that something like that seems to be that unusual for older movies. I really didn't like Channing at the beginning, but he redeemed himself by helping Ginger out later.
I really liked Olive Thomas's acting, both as the young school girl (despite being 25 at the time) and as the vamp (she looked amazing in that stunning black outfit, by the way). She was cute, she was feisty, she was funny and very much the center of the film.
I also liked Billy as the young boy trying hard to impress his first love and his fellows at the military academy even if he wasn't that successful. Maybe you have met boys like him as well? (Theodore Westman Jr. died at 24, but I couldn't find any more info about him.)
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| Even the intertitles are cute! |
It's sad that Olive Thomas's promising career was cut short and this was one of her last films.
Olive was married to Mary Pickford's brother Jack. Young as they were - both in their mid-20s - they led a rather wild life and in case of Olive also a very short one.
Although her death at 25 was officially ruled to be an accident, it caused a scandal in Hollywood, and there are still theories about what really happened. Olive and Jack, trying to save their marriage, had gone to Paris for a second honeymoon. Thanks to his infidelity, Jack suffered from syphilis (he died at 37, by the way) and was treated with mercury bichloride. Why Olive ingested this medication which was meant to be applied topically, isn't clear, but it was a tragic and ugly death.
Let me add that I didn't pick the film for this story, I only found out about this afterwards.
From what I read, most of Olive's films are lost, but I'm definitely going to see which ones I can find.
"The Flapper" was a cute comedy and it goes on my re-watch list.
Sources:
1. Jossalyn Holbert: The Illustrious Life and Mysterious Death of Olive Thomas. On: In Their Own League, March 15, 2020
2. Gordon Thomas: Beautiful Dead Girl: On Early Hollywood Casualty Olive Thomas (Oct. 20, 1894 - Sept. 10, 1920) and "The Olive Thomas Collection" on DVD. On: Bright Lights Film Journal, September 10, 2015
3. James L. Neibaur: The Olive Thomas Collection (Milestone Film and Video). On: Senses of Cinema, May 2006
