Gioco di bambole

Thus it is impossible to rate. The sound discs are lost as well, so there is no way to judge the pacing and the plot of the film. Often Richard Barrios' book "Song in the Dark" offers some insight on these early sound productions, but in this case there is no mention of the film.

That's too bad because this film was an early effort by director Michael Curtiz and starred Dolores Costello, who disappeared from film not so much because of lack of interest, but because she dropped out of acting for awhile to raise a family. We don't have much of a record of Costello's voice in these early talking films, although she did many of them, because they are all lost save "Noah's Ark", which also happens to be a Michael Curtiz film.

The most information that can be gleaned is from the New York Times film review that survives which calls it "an amateurish audible film comedy" and the author of the article puzzles over the title. Probably because Warner Brothers of that era named films to draw in audiences more than to indicate the nature of the plot. Apparently Costello plays a stage actress who becomes the object of affection of the member of a wealthy family - the Fairchilds. The head of the family, perhaps an older brother?, is willing to pay off the actress rather than see his brother marry her, although the feeling of affection is not reciprocated by the actress. Somehow, the actress winds up at a Fairchild garden party where the dances of the day are performed by the attendees. And apparently one of the matrons of the Fairchilds turns out to be a kleptomaniac. To what end I have no idea.

This sounds something like the plot of Golddiggers of Broadway, although that film was released just one month before this one. Lots of stills survive, and they all look like slices of roaring twenties life, so that makes the totality of the loss doubly tragic.