Headlines

Headlines is a misleading title for this film, which is more about social scandal than a newspaper office. It begins there, where a writer (Alice Joyce) receives a telegram at work telling her that her flapper daughter (Virginia Lee Corbin) has been expelled from school. She comes home to her fiancée (Malcolm McGregor) who believes the girl is her sister, not her daughter. The young girl becomes involved with a wealthy man working on his second divorce, but her family tries to keep her from him to avoid soiling her reputation, which she is determined to destroy.

This is a fun movie with an appealing cast, big names in their day but forgotten now except to devoted silent film fans. One such person, Tim Lussier, biographer of Corbin, helped get this film released. Headlines is available from Grapevine Video in a restored print from the Library of Congress.

Newspaperwoman Alice Joyce and reporter Malcolm McGregor are in love. She's surprised he wants to marry her. They're the same age. She thinks he'd want to marry someone like Virginia Lee Corbin, whom everyone thinks is her sister. Actually, Miss Corbin is Miss Joyce's daughter from a previous marriage, and she's just been thrown out of school. She's also about to get into trouble in the world of predatory men like Harry T. Morey.

It's pretty much the peak of Miss Corbin's second career; ten years earlier, she had starred in kiddie movies for Fox. Now she was the personification not of flapper, but of teen-aged flappers, young girls, eager to be adults in the modern world, with no idea of the risks. Yes, I know that's a story so old it was probably scrawled in charcoal on Ice-Age cave walls. This is the 1920s version of it, with Miss Joyce's demure behavior and good looks contrasting with Miss Corbin's frizzy hair and attendance at drunken parties. It's all well directed by Edward H. Griffith, and at less than an hour, well worth the time of anyone who enjoys movies of that age.