Mirroring those famous Gish girls (Dorothy & Lillian), silent screen star Constance Talmadge kept largely to comedy while older sister Norma Talmadge stuck mostly to drama.* But not here. Only 32, yet starting to look matronly, Norma took a sob-sister break between GRAUSTARK/’25 and CAMILLE/’26 for this boulevard farce. And while no great shakes in the comedy department, at least she doesn’t come across as slumming. Looking a decade too old, she’s Kiki, a Parisian street hustler who worms her way into a music revue, promptly screwing up the big finale. (Funny, as she looks a bit like the real Fanny Brice and this bit is so like Barbra Streisand’s screw-up Ziegfeld production number in FUNNY GIRL/’68.) The rest of the film, kept on the move by director Clarence Brown, is a series of set pieces: Kiki makes a scene at a fancy restaurant; Kiki refuses to leave her boss’s apartment; Kiki gets drunk; Kiki pretends to be catatonic. Falling somewhere between modestly amusing and overstaying its welcome, you do get a shot at Ronald Colman in his dashing silent days as well as a very tall, rather funny rival in Gertrude Astor. Oh, and that little newsboy in the early scenes is Frankie Darro, best known for leading William Wellman’s WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD/’33.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Middle-sister Natalie Talmadge stayed mostly off-screen and married Buster Keaton. Ironically, she’s now the best known since Buster cajoled her into co-starring in his irresistible early masterpiece OUR HOSPITALITY/’23.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Mary Pickford’s last two starring vehicles were Norma Talmadge remakes: KIKI, an all-round 1931 disaster with Mary overdoing everything; then finally figuring how these newfangled Talkies might work for her in SECRETS/’33, with help from director Frank Borzage who’d done the Talmadge version in 1924. All for nought as it opened alongside FDR’s 1933 Bank Holiday. The banks survived, Mary did not.
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