Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

This is an ideal role for Mary Pickford, and she is quite a joy to watch. Young, lively "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is innocent but not naive; she is charming and warm, but at the same time more than capable of taking care of herself, too - thus the character has all the qualities that Pickford excelled at portraying on screen. It was probably a pretty easy role for her to play, but the result is a delightful little comic melodrama that gives you a good idea of why Pickford came to be so wildly popular in her time.

The story follows the old-fashioned novel fairly closely, beginning with Rebecca sent to live with her two stern, joyless aunts in a new town. Much of the story's appeal lies in the ways that Rebecca responds to her new acquaintances and surroundings, and this is something Pickford does extremely well. Whether sizing up a new girl at school, or simply responding to the decorations in her aunts' home, she is convincing, captivating, sympathetic, and often very funny. And as for comedy, the wonderful circus sequence alone would make the movie worth watching.

It's hard to find this film now, but it's well worth the trouble. Perhaps from a detached point of view, this might not be considered a great movie, since the plot is somewhat predictable and very old-fashioned. But it's a thoroughly pleasurable, thoughtful film, and one filled with fine moments.

Saw Rebecca for the first time at the UCLA 2004 Restoration Festival. Obviously, Mary Pickford steals the show in a series of vignettes loosely tied together by screenwriter Frances Marion from the original children's story. Pickford is the original coquette, tiny (just watch her dancing with her "beau" in one scene), her head a mass of curls and a spunky spirit that's very twenty first century. However, there is much of the film that is dated and does not resonate with a modern audience.Of course, that's what I enjoyed most about the film- gazing back into a world which no longer exists. We get a glimpse at Victorian sensibilities- the movie was made in 1917-and harks back to an even earlier time. Much of the plot is devoted to Rebecca's heart warming but somewhat patronizing efforts to succor the woeful and shiftless Simpson family (now that's funny). The Simpsons are poor, badly dressed and lack a parlor lamp and a wedding band, until Rebecca comes along.

At times, it's disconcerting to see Pickford play a young teen because for all the prancing,pouting and curl tossing, Mary is clearly an adult woman. Even creepier is the abject attention this little girl is receiving from the village's most eligible bachelor, but I guess back even in 1917 people wanted to see a love story. Still, the film is an old fashioned pleasure, with many charming gags and characters, and over much too soon.

Lovely but hard-headed Mary Pickford was something special, both at the time for the entertainment and now for the historical perspective. Out of the films I've seen of hers I always preferred Rebecca, even over Pollyanna, the story seemed more cogent, the acting by everyone more believable and the languid Victorian atmosphere more palpable. And at 25 she still believably played a teenager.

We're presented with a series of comic episodes in the life of poor young girl Rebecca Rowena Randall, sent to live with her well-to-do aunts and get a proper ejjication. She goes from selling Superba Soap door to door, reciting her unique poetry for Visitors Day at school to organising a Circus Parade and Show and then going to boarding school. On the way she manages to help various people in trouble in her own understated way and also falls in love and fixes on the man to marry - after she becomes a woman. The most violent scene is when Rebecca pulls Minnie Smellie's nose in class. With some lovely evocative olde worlde touches, especially in the storm scene we are eventually (horse) drawn to an appropriate sunbeam ending.

Most people would disdain to clap their modern eyes on this, but that's their loss. A nice little film to sink into every few years and ruminate on how the world has changed.

When Adolph Zukor and Jessy Lasky merged their movie production companies into one, the Famous Players-Lasky, they eyed their partner in its Paramount Pictures distribution branch, William Hodkinson, to squeeze him out with an involuntary buyout. Once they did in the summer of 1916, Zukor and Lasky dropped their Famous Players' name and called their combined production and distribution company Paramount Pictures.

Zukor believed in signing the top movie stars in the business. One of his first contracts was with Hollywood's most popular actress, Mary Pickford. Her signature on the dotted line on June 24, 1916, was the first million dollar pact for an female performer. Zukor was willing to pay her $10,000 a week and to give her half the profits for each film she made. He guaranteed over one million dollars (about $20 million in today's inflationary dollars) for the year with her full control of each of her film's production, an unprecedented contract at that time.

So impressed was Zukor with Frances Marion's script of "The Poor Little Rich Girl" he took the unusual step of paying her $50,000 per year to be Pickford's official scenarioist, making her one of the highest paid writers in the business. Marion wrote two other scripts for her in 1917, both becoming instant classics.

For her second Pickford screenplay, Marion took the 1903 Kate Wiggin's children novel, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and the 1909 play of the same name and adapted it to fit Pickford's magnetic personality. The September 1917 movie contains a series of vignettes of Pickford playing a young niece who is harbored by two aunts, one cranky and the other laid back She's harped on because of her confident independence, except for a one loyal friend and a rich young man who has eyes out for the adolescent Rebecca. Innocent romance develops between the two in this feel-good motion picture which the members of the American Film Institute nominated as one of 500 films to be considered for its "Top 100 Funniest Movies."

After her mother mortgages the family's "Sunnybrook Farm", Mary Pickford (as Rebecca Randall) is sent to live with two aunts: Josephine Crowell (as Aunt Miranda) is stern and heartless; she overrides kinder, broken-hearted, Mayme Kelso (as Aunt Jane). Predictably, Ms. Pickford finds things are not so sunny in Riverboro. Moreover, she finds her self at odds with teasing peers, like Violet Wilkey (as Minnie Smellie). Pickford perseveres. And, eventually, she warms folks up, like her older man crush Eugene O'Brien (as Adam "Mr. Aladdin" Ladd), who Pickford hopes to marry when she "grows up"...

In a first class production, Pickford has some nice moments; though, her affected "little girl" persona doesn't really succeed in effectively portraying the young heroine of Kate Douglas Wiggins' "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm", as evidenced on film. In sometimes startling contrast, several of the other young performers are noticeably more natural and/or charming. Ms. Wilkey, one of the younger set, regrettably "retired" shortly after her convincing portrayal of "Minnie Smellie". Wilkey, who also played young "Flora" in "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), was one of many marvelous young players Pickford employed, to shine by her side. Happily, kids like Wesley Barry and Milton Berle did not retire after appearing herein.

******* Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (9/22/17) Marshall Neilan ~ Mary Pickford, Eugene O'Brien, Violet Wilkey, Helen Jerome Eddy