Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 2005 Sommario / Contents

this time disguised as wearing a long gray duster, and hiding behind a
white false beard. Readmitted into the mansion by the lady of the house,
Peggy pretends to be the decrepit grandfather of the butler, and asks “to
see my grandson”! A cat pulls off her beard, and she is ejected again.
Through a series of accidents, Peggy eventually finds the pearls, takes
them to the police, and identifies the butler as the thief. Back at the
newspaper office she holds up the pearls and proclaims (in English) “I
found the necklace and caught the thief – even if I am only a woman!”
In the final shots Peggy is shown in full command, seated at her new
editorial desk, her former boss now her cringing slave, ordering him to bring
her a glass of milk. In his absence the now quite worldly feminist murmurs
with a yawn,“This has been the most boring day of my life.”When the milk
arrives she drinks it and, with all the women in the audience securely on
her side, shares a good-natured but triumphant laugh.
While I do not recall making all of the 100 or so Baby Peggy two-reelers,
there were a few I do remember because there were memorable
difficulties.The problems in this one made it unforgettable. First came the
difficult business of learning how to wear a monocle. Alf Goulding was
from Australia, where older gentlemen still wore such antiquities, and he
personally taught me that there was a special technique involved in
putting it firmly in place.As I was to be quite manhandled throughout this
chase, and even held upside-down and thrown out a window, it was
necessary to learn the trick.There is a bone directly above and one below
the eye, and the wearer must fix the glass just exactly right between the
two. Goulding even taught me how to wink with the other eye and still not
permit the monocle to fall from its place! This training took several hours
of hard work.
The other thing I found memorable was the intriguing scent of the spirit
gum which was applied each morning and held my Hitlerian moustache
in place. And every day at five when we had finished working, either
Goulding or my father told me to brace myself for my daily ordeal, and
then rudely ripped the moustache from my upper lip. It always felt as if
my flesh was going with it. Spirit gum REALLY sticks, and that was a very
painful process, which I have not forgotten to this day!
The locations are interesting, too. Although I had never seen this comedy
on screen until its discovery less than 10 years ago, I remember the
locations well. The mansion was the home of the famous silent film
director, Frank Borzage, who loaned it to Century for free because he was
a close friend of Goulding.The scenes where Peggy and the office boy steal
the motorboat and drive out across the open sea toward the big ships was
filmed at San Pedro harbor south of Los Angeles.The other water scenes
with all the rowboats, where the policewoman Blanche Payson is seen
getting into one of them during the chase, were shot in Echo Park in Los
Angeles.We worked there many times over the nearly two years I was at
Century, so I knew it well.
Blanche Payson stood six-feet-four, and Century hired her to work with
me to make me look even smaller than I already was at two and three
years of age. She had worked for some years as a bona fide
policewoman on the Los Angeles police force, and in this comedy she
wore the same official (and quite attractive) policewoman’s uniform she
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had been issued by the force. She was wooed away from that job by
Mack Sennett, who hired her to serve as security guard and chaperone
over his studio’s famous Bathing Beauties. She soon quit this job because
she realized it was a losing battle trying to protect the virtue of a bunch
of giddy girls from the scores of attentive males pursuing them. Late one
evening Sennett came to the door and asked to be admitted into his
Beauties’ inner sanctum because he needed to speak to one of the girls.
Payson flatly refused to let him pass.“But Blanche,” he cried angrily,“for
God’s sake, woman! I’m Mack Sennett! I own the studio!” “That’s what
they all say!” was her cynical reply. – BABY PEGGY:DIANA SERRA CARY, 2005
SWEETIE (Century Film Corporation, US 1923)
Re./dir: Alf Goulding; cast: Baby Peggy, Louise Lorraine, Max Asher,
Jennie the organ grinder monkey; ppp/rel: 11.2.1923, Criterion
Theatre, New York; 16mm, 589 ft., 18’ (22 fps), The Museum of
Modern Art.
Didascalie in inglese / English intertitles.
A giudicare dall’età che Peggy sembra avere in questa commedia, le
riprese furono effettuate almeno sei mesi prima dell’uscita del film.
Come accadeva spesso, produttori e registi usavano la bambina come
simbolo tascabile dei problemi sociali dell’epoca. In questo caso
interpreta una piccola mendicante italiana. Nella scena di apertura
vende giornali, ma poi diventa una suonatrice d’organetto con tanto di
scimmia ammaestrata e tazza di latta d’ordinanza. I mendicanti italiani
emigrati erano divenuti una piaga per le vie delle grandi città come
New York e molti di questi bambini venivano rapiti o venduti come
schiavi dai poveri genitori, così la storia si poteva definire d’attualità.
La furba Peggy difende un canuto violinista cieco cacciato dal suo
solito posto all’angolo. Così facendo, si trova di fronte due corpulenti
mendicanti italiani, uno dei quali canta arie familiari mentre l’altro
suona l’arpa. (I cantanti di strada ed i violinisti erano un altro grande
problema nelle città in quel tempo di massiccia immigrazione italiana.)
Un signore di passaggio si serve della tazza di Peggy e si versa da bere
da una borraccia (caustico riferimento al disprezzo della gente per il
proibizionismo), poi si allontana senza darle neanche un centesimo.
Quando la sua scimmietta prende a rubare i dollari d’argento destinati
alla concorrenza, inizia un frenetico inseguimento tra Peggy ed i
musicisti decisi a vendicarsi, ostacolati però dall’arpa da concerto.
Peggy ruba un’auto e, al volante, finisce col demolire un’intera casa di
mattoni, trascinandosi appresso la solita torma di poliziotti.
Appare poi un’elegante dama che riprende i poliziotti per aver osato
arrestare una trovatella indifesa ed invita Peggy a salire sulla sua
macchina, una Pierce Arrow all’ultima moda (che era in effetti l’auto
che io usavo fuori dal set: prova vivente della mia rapida ascesa nello
star-system!), portandosela a casa (senza preoccuparsi di barriere
linguistiche o scartoffie per l’adozione!). Sistematasi nella dimora della
madre adottiva, Peggy si inventa un comico costume egizio e balla per
gli ospiti che si sono riuniti per festeggiare il suo arrivo. L’alcool, pur