Little Annie Rooney

Rambunctious Little Annie Rooney (Mary Pickford) lives in a poor tenement and leads her gang of fellow pre-teens in fighting against another group of kids. Her father is a respected incorruptible neighborhood policeman. Her brother Tim is hanging around the wrong crowd.

Thirty three year old Pickford returns to playing a child as she had done earlier in her career. It may seem unnatural for this work but there is a modern equivalent TV show right now. Pen15 has two young women around thirty playing 13 year olds around other actual 13 year olds. The comedy works because the surreal element allows more comedy to be injected. Once that happens, it can slip in some real heartfelt drama. That's what's happening here in this movie. It's great that the movie starts with that tenement fight between the two groups of kids. It's fun and the hilarity opens up the heart. Pickford was once a great Hollywood star and this shows why.

Annie Rooney lives with her officer father and brother Tim in the slums of New York, where she is constantly getting involved in many fights with the other neighborhood kids. Annie secretly has a crush on Joe Kelly (whose little brother Mickey is head of the gang that Annie constantly battles), who is in a gang that is headed for trouble, says Officer Rooney. Kelly sponsors a dance, where Tony plans to shoot Kelly in order to get even with him for making him look like a fool in front of his girl, but Officer Kelly gets fatally wounded instead. Tim (part of Kelly's gang) is told by Tony, and friend Spider, that Kelly shot his father, so he goes after him in vengeance. Annie learns of this and goes to stop her brother, if she is in time. Very good mix of humor and heart in this film, even though the plot doesn't start until the 40 minute mark of the film. Pickford is enjoyable (even though she was 33 playing a girl no more than 12-13) and really gets into her character. Haines doesn't play Kelly as tough as he should, but is able make the audience feel for him on an emotional level. The scenes where the officer tells Annie of her father's death and the ending really put a lump in your throat. The mix of all sorts of kids throughout the film are fun to watch. Rating, 8.

While there is not much to "Little Annie Rooney" aside from the way that it showcases Mary Pickford's many talents, that's not a bad focus for a movie to have. The story does seem to be planned almost entirely with that goal in mind, as most of the other characters are not developed very much, and most of the plot likewise comes back to the ways that events affect Annie. Of course, Pickford is more than up to carrying the load, and while this picture has to rank a little lower than a good number of her other movies that have more depth to them, it's still worthwhile.

Through the course of the story, Annie finds herself in numerous kinds of situations, and several sides of her character come out. She has a tomboyish, boisterous side, yet she can plead with her father on behalf of a misunderstood friend. The scene where she prepares her father's birthday party could very easily have become unbearably cloying or melodramatic, yet she handles it very well, making use of the best possibilities available rather than resorting to cheap sentiment. (In that particular scene, a couple of creative camera shots also help it to work.)

There are very few actresses, especially in the present, who could make so many different things work believably and without undue emoting. While much of the movie is simple and sometimes even a bit contrived, It's still worth seeing as one of many chances to see such a fine actress at work.

Although it might seem a bit bizarre to see a 32-year-old woman play the part of a 12-year-old, Mary Pickford soon makes you forget the incongruities and simply enjoy the fun.

Mary is a street kid in New York City, with her own lovable gang of mischief makers, whose attentions are engaged by the older William Haines (he was 25 at the time & just on the cusp of his own screen stardom.)

To give away too much of the plot would not be fair. Suffice it that Mary is great fun to watch & amply displays why she was Hollywood's first and most beloved super star. Production values are very good, with lots of extras making the NYC street scenes quite believable.

Even at 5'1" and 33 years old, Mary Pickford pulls off the part of the 12 year old daughter of a policeman pretty well, and this is a silent film worth seeing. She looks a little out of place in the madcap early scenes where rival gangs are brawling and hurling a flurry of bricks at one another (think a slightly harder edged version of Little Rascals), but she's also pretty cute all wound up and throwing haymakers. The film includes Asian, Jewish, African-American, Greek, and Irish characters, and while there is a cringe-inducing scene where the black boy dances "the shimmy" in a grass skirt, stereotypes are reasonably contained. Nevertheless, these scenes with the gang were my least favorite, and they are a bit on the long side.

Where the film picks up is with little Annie Rooney's home life. Walter James is great as her even-keeled father, and the scenes of sibling rivalry with her older brother (Gordon Griffith) are cute. The other actors seem to tower over the petite Pickford, and I have to believe they made some of the furniture larger than normal to help her pull of the role. Director William Beaudine also takes advantage of the beautiful sets that were built, and captures some nice city shots. I don't want to spoil the plot, accept to say it takes an unexpected dramatic turn, and that made it interesting for me.

Pickford was a powerful force in Hollywood in 1925, and it's fascinating to me that she produced, wrote, and then took the part at her public's request. Four years later she was still pulling off a role of much younger woman in Coquette, a film I liked a little more, and so it's surprising that just four years after that, in 1933, she would play her final part as an actress. She had a rough time of it in life thereafter, battling alcoholism and depression. It seems this film captures her at the height of her powers, when she was on top of the world, and that adds to its charm for me.