Daddy-Long-Legs

Another terrific Mary Pickford performance and film. Daddy-Long-Legs is a familiar story, but the Pickford version accentuates the comedy and leaves the sappy romance to the horrid 50s version with Astaire and Caron. Sweet and innocent, this film has several memorable comic moments, including Mary getting drunk with a fellow orphan (Wesley Barry?) and leaving the jug for a dog. Very funny. A little tipsy, Mary also slides down banisters and accidentally knocks "Stink Weed" down a well. Oops! This film is a little unusual for a Pickford picture since it allows Mary to grow up. She gets to go to college and be wooed by her roommate's uncle (Mahlon Hamilton). She's also pursued by Jimmie (Marshall Neilan, who also directed the film). Milla Davenport is the orphanage director and Fay Lemport is the nasty Angelina.

Nice comedic touches throughout to keep it all light and entertaining. The version I saw was clean, had beautiful title cards, and good (new) score my Maria Newman. All very impressive for a 1919 film. This film seems miles away from Pickford's 1917 Pride of the Clan, but she had been in over 200 films by the time she made this! Pickford was one of the greats, a true giant in Hollywood, and it's too bad she's so forgotten now. I've never seen a Pickford film I didn't like.

Mary Pickford (as Jerusha "Judy" Abbott) is found, as a baby, in a garbage dump. Orphaned, she is brought to the "John Grier Home", where young boys and girls are treated more like convicts than children. By the time she is 12, little Mary is leading the orphans in a strike against eating prunes. Some years later, Ms. Pickford is the beneficiary of a lucky, life-changing event: one of the orphanage's new trustees wants to sponsor an orphan's higher education; and Pickford is chosen. At college, Pickford is a fetching young woman, which sends Cupid's arrows flying. Love-struck Princeton man Marshall Neilan (as Jimmie Mc Bride) and "older man" (as Jarvis Pendleton) vie for Pickford's hand in marriage. Pickford becomes a writer; her first effort fails, but she instinctively follows the advice "write what you know" in creating a successful tome about orphans. Finally, Pickford must choose her man, and payback her "mysterious benefactor".

Some of "Daddy-Long-Legs" doesn't ring true; vignettes are cute, in isolation, but add little to the overall film; it's obvious, for example, that the children experience some childhood fun, which is said to be completely absent. And, the cruelty of the "John Grier Home" is hardly comparable to a prison! You may also wonder why a fully clothed boy is considered "naked", how a baby might have digested a mouth organ, how that girl got in and out of the well, and other stuff. The film is not at all unpredictable.

However, Mary Pickford is outstanding. She very believably plays "Judy" - growing from a precocious 12-year-old girl to young career woman. As the film progresses, Pickford seems to add layers upon her character. For example, in some later scene, beginning at a society party where Pickford admires some ancestral portraits; watch, as the party progresses, both Pickford's past, and future, register on her face. Pickford constructs her character extremely well.

Director Marshall Neilan (who also appears, as Jimmie Mc Bride) was an important Pickford collaborator; and the supporting cast is delightful. Wesley Barry is wonderful as Pickford's early orphan pal; he manages to steal scenes from Mary Pickford - 11-year-old Barry play "drunk" better than Pickford! Carrie Clark Ward is delightful as love-weary "Mrs. Semple", and Fay Lemport (as Angelina Wyckoff) shows how pampered, selfish little girls grow up. "Daddy-Long-Legs" was filmed again and again, but this is the definitive version, thanks, mainly, to Mary.

******** Daddy-Long-Legs (5/11/19) Marshall Neilan ~ Mary Pickford, Mahlon Hamilton, Wesley Barry

This sweet and funny silent stars Mary Pickford as an orphan who, after much kindhearted mischief, goes to college and finds true love, thanks to her anonymous personal trustee, whom she dubs "Daddy-Long-Legs" after the seeing his legs in a shadow. It's a familiar story, since it was remade in 1931 (with Janet Gaynor), 1938 (as the Netherlands film Vadertje Langbeen), and 1955, with Leslie Caron and Fred Astaire.

There are quite a few memorable images in this lovely version: the drunk dog, the one-armed doll, and the scene with the baby cupids.

The recent score by Maria Newman complements the movie, unlike the wretched one she wrote for another Pickford film, The Love Light (1921).

This movie made me happy and not a lot of movies do that nowadays. Even though the mood of the movie changed halfway through, I think it helped differentiate between the 12 year old and the adult. I highly recommend this movie to everyone!

The first time I saw this movie was late at night. My dad was flipping through channels and came across this movie and said that I would love it. Not just because it has Mary Pickford in it. So I was allowed to stay up until midnight on a school night, and back then it was a big deal! That suddenly became my dad's and my thing, to stay up late and watch old movies. I will always love this movie for itself and now it's sentimental value.

This film has all the elements of the quintessential Mary Pickford film. The little girl. Spunky. Full of love and against the odds. Willing to risk. From the "ash cans" and down to earth but capable of walking with high society with her head held high. Her profile shots by Charles Rosher are the ones we've learned to remember "Little Mary" by. The cupid scenes are incredible not so much for their content but their originality and sentiment in a film made in 1919.