Verkaufte Töchter

It sounds absurd, but I would suggest that Harry Beaumont's 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters would make an amusing double bill with Whit Stillman's 1990 film Metropolitan. Both films are rather sophisticated critiques of life among society's elite, the gala balls, the flippant attitudes, and crushing realities of romance, treachery and friendship. Written by three women, Our Dancing Daughters is an interesting example of early female empowerment, teaching women that being true to yourself is better than letting others shape you to their ends.

A young Joan Crawford, Anita Page, and Dorothy Sebastian play three wild girls in the early Jazz age who are coming to terms with their place in society and the repercussions of their "flapper" ways. Crawford is "dangerous" Diana, wild, intelligent, and sexual beyond her years. She's unapologetically flirtatious and provocative. Page is Anne, saucy and flirtatious as well. Anne is also poorer than her friends and her mother is counting on her to marry into wealth, urging her to use her virtue as a tool. Sebastian's Beatrice is largely reformed, but she has some kind of past, which bothers her more than it bothers the man who's devoted to her (at first, at least). When Johnny Mack Brown's Ben Blaine (a millionaire and former college football star) enters the picture, he falls for Diana and Anne decides that she will win his heart.

In one of her earliest roles, Crawford is amazing. If you've only seen her later performances (like her Oscar winning Mildred Pierce) or Faye Dunaway's impression of her in Mommie Dearest, it's possible to forget just how beautiful and lively she was. She's a marvelously liberated character, the type woman Hollywood frequently featured in the late silent period before forgetting about them for decades of regressive female characters. She is supported by her parents and feels strength in her independence. When she sees herself falling in love, she seems genuinely surprised and when Anne steps in, she seems genuinely heartbroken.

Our Dancing Daughters (lensed by George Barnes, who later shot several Hitchcock classics like Rebecca) is a rather joyous production when it isn't commenting on society and gender. The film had a jazzy original score written for it and the film comes alive during the several large party/dance scenes. Showing all of the freedom that late-silent films allowed, the camera is mobile and amidst the dancing. The film also features several moments of synchronized sound, mostly involving applause from the crowd.

Our Dancing Daughters is intellectually ahead of its time and it features excellent performances and fine writing. I'm telling you, look at it with Metropolitan. I bet it works well.

I'd give this one a solid and positive 7.5 out of 10.

This late silent film with synchronized music score and sound effects made Joan Crawford a star at MGM. The film was a huge hit at the box office.

Crawford stars as wild Diana Medford, a rich rich who is a leader in her set of young wealthy country club types. She's a real life-of-the-party type but is actually "good." Her rival is Ann (Anita Page), a beautiful blonde who has been raised as a mantrap. She's a deceitful liar just like her mother (Kathlyn Williams). There's also Bea (Dorothy Sebastian) who's made a few "mistakes" but is a decent young woman.

Into this swirl of country club dances and rivalries comes a handsome young millionaire (Johnny Mack Brown) who's taken with Crawford's high spirits, but as soon as she learns how rich he is, Page moves in on him.

Brown seems helpless against Page's simpering helpless act, and with the help of her grasping mother, they corner Brown into marrying Page. Crawford is devastated. Meanwhile, Sebastian's new husband (Nils Asther) is having trouble accepting his wife's "past."

A year later, the marriage between Page and Brown in rocky, especially since she's now dallying with Freddie (Edward Nugent). They show up drunk at a party where Crawford is, and the sparks fly. Brown discovers exactly how he was tricked by Page and admits if was really Crawford he loved ... and still does.

Things come to a violent climax.

Crawford and Page are excellent. Crawford does a couple of wild dances and Page excels in a drunken hysterics bit. Brown is suitably handsome. The film is also famous for its spectacular Art Deco sets and snappy jazz baby costumes.

This film established Joan Crawford as a star at MGM where she joined Marion Davies, Norma Shearer, and Greta Garbo as a queen of the lot. It also positioned Anita Page, Johnny Mack Brown, and Dorothy Sebastian at MGM as it transitioned to talkies.

This is one of the great surviving flapper films from the jazz era.

Our Dancing Daughters is a beautiful example of how far the silent cinema had come by 1928, the year it decisively decided to give itself up to talk. The medium had reached a point where the action was silent but synchronized to a score and embellished with occasional sound effects such as knocking on doors, ringing of phones or a spoken word here and there. It was the short-lived pinnacle of a dying art form. These feature films from the late silent period provide valuable insight for composers who are supplying music for previously unscored silents.

This solidly constructed and well-shot story follows the trajectories of three young females of differing temperaments living through various stages of being young and wild in the roaring twenties. We have Diana Medford (Joan Crawford), a straightforward, unashamedly pleasure-loving, self-absorbed but basically decent sort who lives to dance and generally party around. Then there is the more serious and experienced Beatrice (Dorothy Sebastian), whose fiancé (Nils Asther) chooses to overlook her wayward past as long as she will marry him and retreat from the party circuit. Finally there is Ann (Anita Page), a coldhearted golddigger who lures the dashing millionaire Ben Blaine (John Mack Brown) away from Diana by pretending to be an innocent maiden simply yearning for marriage and motherhood. At first it seems as if Diana is a hellcat, but her splashy demeanor is merely the honest excess of youth. Life has its knocks prepared for her and she has to take them, which she does nobly and sportingly. Not Ann. She turns to drink, with disastrous results.

Each of the three main characters is introduced by shots of their legs and feet: Crawford's slipping into heels to shimmy in front of a mirror; Sebastian's planted firmly next to her fiancé's as they attentively listen to a pre-date lecture by her parents; Page's seen while seated on the floor, removing a pair of ripped silk stockings, preparatory to stealing a pair of from her mother.

The soundtrack is made up of a small number of musical compositions from the period, repeated throughout the film. There are up-tempo dance numbers for the party scenes and slow ballads for the one-on-one romantic clinches. The photography is uniformly beautiful with generous use of medium close-ups, all against the backdrop of sumptuous sets designed by Cedric Gibbons. Great looking costumes too.

Crawford and Page are both stunning embodiments of the light and dark sides of "the flapper." Sebastian's role is less flashy. None of the performances is dated.

Most documentaries that deal at any length with "roaring twenties," the Great Depression or the Golden Age of Hollywood inevitably include a bit from this film, usually the party where balloons fill the air as Crawford dances exuberantly on a table top.

The movie that launched Joan Crawford's career, and which so nicely captured some of the spirit of the flappers in the late 1920's. The scenes of her cutting loose with the Charleston amidst art deco furnishings are certainly the highlight. The plot itself is a pretty thin morality tale. Crawford and Anita Page pursue the same newly minted millionaire, who confuses who is "the pure one" and of course gets it wrong. Perhaps it's understandable, since there is a lot of dancing, legs, and playful kissing of guy friends to go around. There is an undercurrent of the double standard common for the time (how interesting this was made in the same year Woolf gave her 'A Room of One's Own' speeches); Dorothy Sebastian plays another character who must live down her past, and convince her husband to forgive her for it.

The movie is silent and not in the greatest shape anymore, but that might have added a little to its charm. It's also interesting to see the short hairstyles, cloche hats, and the dialog:

Offering a drink: "Li'l hot baby want a cool li'l sip?"

After a big kiss: "What a service station *you* turned out to be!"

By the shoreline, to a pretty song; ah youth: "It's such a pleasant thing – just to be alive!" "You want to taste all of life – don't you?" "Yes – all! I want to hold out my hands and catch it – like the sunlight."

The 1928 silent film OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS is the story of three flappers and their efforts to marry the men of their dreams. Ann (Anita Page) is a conniving little tramp who passes herself off as a 'good girl' in order to win the affections of Ben Blaine (Johnny Mack Brown), millionaire from Birmingham. Diana (Joan Crawford) is a good girl who passes herself off as a bad girl as she too pursues Ben's affections. Bea (Dorothy Sebastian) used to be a bad girl but is now a good girl and hopes to marry Norman (Nils Asther), who must live with the agony of knowing that Bea was once 'free with her love'. Ben doesn't seem to know what the hell he wants and doesn't seem to know very much about women either. Throughout the film, the girls' mothers dispense motherly advice and, inexplicably, share underwear with their daughters.

Ms Crawford was hitting her stride with MGM in '28 and OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS is the best of seven Joan Crawford films released that year and the one that launched her to stardom. The scene in which she danced the Charleston was the highlight of this movie. Unfortunately the title is a bit misleading because there is in fact very little dancing in this film.

Claudia's Bottom Line: Rather boring and predictable, but check out Joan's Charleston.