THE FLAPPER (1920) DVD - OLIVE THOMAS, WARREN COOK, THEODORE WESTMAN Jr.

Description: A flirtatious young girl is sent to a boarding school by her strict father where she leads the Roaring 20s "flapper" lifestyle. The amazing Olive Thomas stars in the movie that created a social buzz in 1920...... THE FLAPPER - 1920 Sixteen-year-old Genevieve 'Ginger' King (Thomas) is living in a very wealthy family in the boring town of Orange Springs, Florida with her younger siblings, where her unchaperoned decision to drink a soda with a young male is considered scandalous. Because of her questionable behavior and yearning for a more excitable life, Ginger's father decides to send her to a boarding school in Lake Placid, New York. Mrs. Paddles' School for Young Ladies is administered by the strict disciplinarian, Mrs. Paddles (Marcia Harris). Despite the strictness there, the girls have fun getting into flapper-lifestyle trouble including flirting. Richard Channing (William P. Carleton), an older man, rides past the seminary every day, prompting romantic fantasies among the schoolgirls. When Ginger connives a sleigh ride with Channing, she lies to him about her age, saying she is "about twenty". Ginger is quickly charmed and becomes enamored with him. Ginger soon gets into trouble with the headmistress by sneaking out to the local country club where Channing is having a party. One of her schoolmates, Hortense (Katherine Johnston), who is described as “a moth among the butterflies”, informs on her. Hortense’s actual motive for doing this is to get the headmistress out of the way so she can rob the school's safe and flee with her crooked boyfriend Thomas Morran (Arthur Housman). Acting on a vaguely worded note she receives, Ginger—while traveling home from school—goes to a hotel in New York City where Hortense and Thomas are staying. They force her to take some suitcases for safekeeping, cases that contain stolen valuables, including fancy clothes and jewelry. Knowing that Channing has gone to Orange Springs on a yachting trip, Ginger decides to use the clothes and jewels to present herself as a more-mature, well-dressed “woman of experience” when she returns home. Her plan backfires, and her father believes she is lying when she says it is all a joke. Detectives then show up wanting to know why she has stolen loot; and both her young admirer Bill and Channing think she has really become a wicked woman. Hortense and her crooked boyfriend now turn up in Orange Springs to reclaim their ill-gotten loot. Their subsequent capture by the police clears Ginger's name and restores her reputation. The events in the lives of Ginger King and another character are presented as incidents in a (non-fiction) newsreel at the end of the movie The Flapper is a 1920 American silent comedy film starring Olive Thomas. Directed by Alan Crosland, the film was the first in the United States to portray the "flapper" lifestyle, which became a cultural craze or fad in the 1920's. Pittsburgh-based Olive Thomas won a beauty contest while working at a Manhattan department store. The publicity ended up netting her a spot in the Ziegfeld Follies and jump-started her film career. She appeared in silents such as Madcap Madge (1917) and Indiscreet Corinne (1917). She died rather tragically at the young age of 25 after accidentally overdosing on mercury bichloride in Paris. Olive Thomas, a worldly wise 25, plays aspiring adventuress (and vamp) "Ginger" King, 16-year-old nymphet daughter of the senator from Orange Springs. Remanded to finishing school in upstate NY, seeking kicks she flees to wicked Gotham and then bests her hometown "smarter set" in full (Lillian Russell) vamping drag. Olive appears, luminously, in almost every scene, with radiant star power. Like the generation of (talking) screwball comediennes that followed her later, Olive is outrageously beautiful and scandalously funny, establishing the flapper style template for parallel silent mimers Marion Davies, Clara Bow, Mabel Normand, Pola Negri (in WOMAN OF THE WORLD) and Louise Brooks. The film dates from 1920, and Thomas (with long unbobbed hair, not yet shimmying to the Charleston) is artistically poised midway between the faux sanctity of her sister-in-law Little Mary Pickford or the sisters Gish, and those more brazen successor flapperettes Davies, Bow, Normand, Negri and Brooks. (Not by accident the chic sisters Shearer, Athole and Norma, have uncredited bit roles in support of Thomas). Olive's star turn is dazzling and not yet dated, and she enjoys special backing from the first-rate Selznick (Myron deputizing for father Lewis) production team: Frances Marion wrote a madcap, witty script (hence Ginger's heedless teenybopper generation repeatedly characterized as "sap-headed and pin-feathered"), and her title cards are equally literate and artful. The daring cinematographer is John W. Brown, who photographs Thomas exquisitely in real locations, with fun snow scapes at Ithaca, NY, and in some risky traffic jams in midtown Manhattan (Thomas glows like a beacon even thronged among dozens of boulevardier extras). Thomas' director is her contemporary Alan Crosland (1894-1936), a Dartmouth graduate and actor-turned-auteur historically famous for Jolson in THE JAZZ SINGER. Crosland was younger, hungrier and more interesting in Olive's silent era, although his later sound credits at Warners also include the first Perry Mason film (CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG) and a lavishly original (Technicolor, Vitaphone) Sigmund Romberg operetta VIENNA NIGHTS. His direction is not obtrusive, but the assured framing and editing suggest an intelligent, unaffected, and young cinema showman.Both Olive Thomas and Alan Crosland are worth rediscovering and rewatching, and this "Gingery" flapper is one of Thomas' few surviving films, out of some two dozen. Viewers won't be able to take their eyes away from her beauty and vivacity, and Ms. Marion's dandy script maintains the gentle, self-deprecatory comedy quotient at a continuously seductive simmer, silently anticipating the screwball vogue by some 15 years. By the way, the bad guy in the film is played by Arthur Housman. Housman was a VERY prolific guy in silents and talking pictures and mostly played silly and affable drunks. Here he plays a very, very different sort of man. Olive Thomas was a terrific actress. Too bad she died so young. This is one of her last films as she died later in 1920 at only age 25. She was more popular than many of the young silent film actresses at the time and it's unfortunate that many of her films are lost and that the legacy of this fine young actresses has not stood out compared to other contemporaries due to the fact that people today have had not much access to any of her films unless you attend a silent film festival. While many past stars enjoyed success in their lives, many of these lives were tragically cut short. Olive Thomas showed great promise during her life until it all came to an abrupt end because of her untimely passing at age 25. A great LEGEND is that OLIVE THOMAS' ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre in New York City...which I find somewhat amusing! I love OLIVE THOMAS films...it is so unfortunate that not many of her films exist in complete form today. Also I find it sad that her talent seems to be forgotten....but FINALLY...we have this to DVD remind us of all the charm and beauty that was Olive Thomas. This film would make a terrific double-feature along with Clara Bow's "It". Both show a similar sort of character but from different perspectives. Plus, both are quite enjoyable and well written. Worth seeing and a must-see if you are a fan of silents (like me). HAPPY VIEWING!!!!! This DVD is BRAND NEW......NEVER OPENED....STILL SEALED! Will be shipped VERY SECURELY! PAYMENT THRU PAYPAL THANKS FOR LOOKING!!! “I think that you die when your time comes and not until then. I feel the same about other things as I do about death. I don’t think you can change anything that is going to happen to you any more than you can change anything that has happened to you. That’s why I never worry, and that is why I don’t think people should get conceited and think themselves better than others.” –Olive Thomas.

Price: 9.95 USD

Location: Lake Stevens, Washington

End Time: 2025-01-14T20:27:26.000Z

Shipping Cost: 4.55 USD