Mary, Queen of Tots

Mary is a poor little rich girl. The gardener is her only friend. Her busy parents leave her mostly to her strict governess. After a mud pie debacle, the governess sends her to her room. The gardener brings her four dolls which a couple had made modeled after the neighborhood kids. The dolls have their playtime in her room. Her governess throws away her dolls. Mary runs out into the neighborhood to search for them and finds her dolls-turned-real.

It is the Our Gang kids. I love the Toy Story section. This could have been a total Toy Story short and that would have been great. Her mistaken assumption is funny. Farina's reactions are hilarious. It is just a fun short.

Mary Kornman, all of 10 years old, plays the title role in this really charming Our Gang short. She plays a precocious rich girl who is pretty much without friends. Her favorite person is the gardener. He gives her four dolls which are dolls of the members of Our Gang. After beginning to tell them a story, she falls asleep and they come to life. For the time, the special effects are very good. From there many things happen, but it all adds to up to a very charming film about friendship, wishes and hopes. Mary was only in films until age 25, and she was a beautiful girl and woman (she is in the later talkie "Fish Hooky") with Mickie Daniels, who is the freckle faced kid in this short. This is fun for all ages. Though its a silent film, kids will still like its imagery. Watch and enjoy.

This is one of the most charming and the best of the silent Our Gang comedies. In this one, the Gang's resident cutie-pie Mary Kornman plays a poor-little rich girl neglected by her mother and barely tolerated by an evil governess. However, a poor immigrant family of dollmakers makes some dolls that look like the male Our Gangers. Mary loves the dolls, but then the real Gang boys come to her mansion-thus she thinks they've come to life, and........well, see for yourself.

This is one of the most imaginative and charming of the seldom-seen silent Our Gangs. The scene with the dolls coming to life as the boys will make anyone smile, and Mary and the fellas amuse throughout. However, Politically correct modern viewers will groan at the scene where Mickey Daniels casually refers to the Italian-American dollmaker as a "wop." This minor slur aside, its a great film.

Mary, Queen of Tots (1925)

*** (out of 4)

Charming Our Gang short has Mary playing a rich girl who isn't allowed to have any real friends of her own. The gardener makes her four dolls and bases their appearance on the neighborhood kids, which just happen to be the Our Gang group. Mary goes to sleep and dreams that the dolls come to life and when she wakes up she begins to think she's still dreaming as the dolls are still alive (but this time the real kids). MARY, QUEEN OF TOTS doesn't have a great number of laughs but at least the film has a lot of heart and imagination. The more of these Our Gang shorts I see I'm starting to realize that the best ones feature an imagination and that's clearly the most important thing. I thought the "dream" sequence was without question the highlight of the film because the Our Gang kids are shown as miniatures and I was shocked to see how well the special effects were. The larger sets look extremely believable and I can't help but feel the studio spent a few extra dollars. Some of the gags don't work too well including one with the kids being scared by the radio. Others work fairly well including a sequence where the kids keep slipping on a "magic" rug.

A great example of early, silent Rascals. Little lonely rich girl, Mary, gets a gift of four dolls. There's an amazing dream sequence where the dolls come to life and romp around Mary's bedroom-- these are some of the best special effects I've seen from the '20s. Mary must somehow retrieve the dolls after they are taken away by her evil governess. A four-year-old Farina steals the show in a hilarious scene with a collapsible top hat.