This was the opening salvo for this season’s The Silent Clowns Film Series. The features were 1920’s Cinderella Cinders and 1927’s It. Cinderella Cinders starred Alice Howell while It starred the It Girl, Clara Bow. I liked Alice Howell better.
With her mop of wiry hair and her quirky (not-quite-Chaplin-esque) walk, Alice presents as a very funny comedienne. As a cook in a diner, she had really funny bits serving soup assembly line style. When one diner’s beard slopped into the soup, she pulled it out. The next time it did, she cut it off. Funny stuff. And her flipping of flapjacks also made for some zany visuals.
After being fired, however, she found herself in the union hall when a request came in for one cook at a fancy mansion—cue the requisite chase scene. Cindy got the job and then had to assume the role of bunco artist Countess de Bunco. After much (hic!) tippling and the arrival of the real, faux Countess de Bunco, all worked out well for Cindy in the end. Funny, funny stuff.
It, starring Clara Bow, is a classic example of a lower class shop girl setting her sights on her upper class boss. Bolts of cloth wend their way through the department store where she works and he is the boss. Identities are flipped among the shop girls for comic purposes from time to time. Throughout it all, there was heavy emphasis on the It factor—who has It and who doesn’t. Apparently the Clara Bow character (and Clara, herself) had It. I didn’t see It. Perhaps the ‘perfect flapper’ has lost some appeal some 90+ years later?
In the end, Clara got her beau, after slapstick comedy involving yachting and people falling overboard. It didn’t do It for me. For the record, It was based on a story by Elinor Glyn who had such a following in the late 1920s that she made an appearance in the film, as herself. This also didn’t do It for me.
ConcertMeister
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