Not a particularly good film, but a fascinating social document. A modest B’way success for playwright Lewis Beach in 1924 as THE GOOSE HANGS HIGH, then a 1925 silent from James Cruze with Constance Bennett, and here indifferently remade by Frank Tuttle off an early Joseph L. Mankiewicz script, it’s a Generation Gap story that must have played very differently in the Roaring ‘Twenties than it does in the peak Depression year of 1932. Stuffy middle-class parents have strained their finances putting the kids thru college only to find them Home for the Holidays as selfish, self-centered brats. Every bit of bad behavior generously excused. But now, thanks to some office skullduggery, Dad’s in trouble and may go to jail after his boss purposefully misrepresents his work to put together a land swindle. It’s fuddy-duddy parental concern, old-fashioned values & over-indulgence vs youthful spirits, free will for the next generation on someone else’s tab, and modern mores of ‘25 dragged into Hoover’s Depression. Rah-rah-rah hijinks looking cruel, irresponsible disrespectful. The daughter (lovely France Dee), thoughtless, at best; the son (blandly handsome Charles Rogers) tossing away his future and his parents’ sacrifice for a quick marriage. Naturally, the kids (originally three, here reduced to two) come to see their faults before cooking up an absurd counter-scam to get Dad off the hook. (And even more incredibly have Dee hooking up with family-friend eunuch Charles Ruggles.) But the sympathetic ‘20s ear that defaulted toward the views of a younger generation is missing right from the start in 1932. If only that 1925 silent weren’t lost. Especially since the daughter in 1925 was played by Constance Bennett, the real life kid of Richard Bennett, this film’s father.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:: *The lost 1925 silent not to be confused with THE RECKLESS AGE, a 1924 comedy with Reginald Denny that (naturally) survives in near mint condition.
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