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The Roaring Twenties has come down to us in history as an era of good times and continual partying until that stock market crashed and one could no longer afford to party. Joan Crawford got her first taste of first billing and stardom with Our Dancing Daughter where she does the ultimate Charleston of the Twenties.

Crawford at first glance is one wild child, but it's just a pose. Down deep she knows when to put on the brakes. She's got two friends she parties with, Dorothy Sebastian who's reticent now, but at one time was the wildest child of all. Sebastian knows that those loose morals of the past have irreparably damaged her reputation. She'd like to really settle down, but whomever she dates is expecting only one thing.

Then there's Anita Page who comes off to her friends as prim and proper, but is really the wildest child of all. She's got a nice image, but when she parties, she really parties.

Both are after young Johnny Mack Brown who is playing what he was in real life, a recently graduated All American halfback from the University of Alabama. He likes them both and wants a wife to settle down with, but he's not a good judge of character. In fact he's a bit of a dope. He rejects Crawford and marries Page and regrets it soon enough.

MGM was stepping into the age of sound ever so cautiously. Sound effects are heard and several songs of the era are interpolated into a soundtrack either sung or played instrumentally. All these players would be talking soon enough on screen.

Our Dancing Daughters is a must for Joan Crawford fans and it's a great look at the culture of the Twenties, the Flapper Culture.

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.

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."

Wealthy and flashy Diana falls hard for Ben Blaine--who unjustly interprets her vivacity as looseness and in turn falls hard for prim and proper Anne--who is in fact a vicious gold digger with a heart of stone. Will Ben ever see through Anne's facade and realize Diana's true worth? Directed by Harry Beaumont with sets by the legendary Cederick Gibbons, OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS was bright, sharp, pretty to look at, and just sexy enough to make the censors fume--the type of film that MGM seemed to produce by the bushel during the late silent era. The studio expected it to perform well, but there was no reason for anyone to think it would generate more than passing interest, much less a legendary star. But it did.

Born in 1904, Lucille Le Sueur endured a hardknocks childhood to become a popular chorus girl in New York night spots before signing with MGM in 1925--and renamed Joan Crawford she churned out some two dozen films in three years without setting the world on fire. Until, that is, MGM allowed her dance on table tops and despair of winning her true love in this slickly produced, well acted, but essentially formula melodrama. And even today it is still possible to see what all the fuss was about: not only was she bursting with youthful energy and appeal, it was the first film in which Joan Crawford really LOOKED like Joan Crawford, and although still limited her acting chops weren't half bad either.

The overall cast is particularly strong, with Anita Page turning in a memorable performance as the pretty but wicked Anne and Dorothy Sebastian as Bea, a good girl with a few missed steps in her past; male leads Johnny Mack Brown, Nils Aster, and Edward J. Nugent provide solid support as various love interests; and Kathlyn Williams proves memorable as Anne's manipulative mother. While OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS will never rival the truly great films of the late silent era, it is still a lot of fun, and those who want to see Crawford's first cinematic hurrah will not be disappointed.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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.