The Apple-Tree Girl

Shirley Mason stars as the "ugly duckling" cousin who has to go live with her snotty rich cousin (Joyce Fair). While the cousin is popular and has many boyfriends, Mason is not, so she makes a list and declares that she will be popular, famous, and marry a millionaire.

At school she meets a poor boy (Raymond McKee) who wants to be a doctor but the cousin makes fun of them as being "raggedy" as she cavorts with her rich friends. Mason is eventually forced to teach in a one-room schoolhouse.

She learns how to play golf and McKee becomes a doctor. Will Mason achieve her goals? Will there be a happy ending? Will the cousin get her comeuppance?

Shirley Mason (sister of Viola Dana) is charming and pretty. McKee and Fair are good in their roles. There's also Jessie Stevens as Madame Bazin and Edward Coleman as the "town catch."

Filmed mostly in rural Connecticut.

That's just one of three goals Shirley Mason sets herself. The other two are how to make everyone like her, and how to be famous.

She certainly has a hard row to hoe. Everyone likes her pretty cousin, Joyce Fair, and thinks of Miss Mason as the smart, plain one -- a common situation for the beautiful actresses who star in romantic comedies. Only poor medical student Raymond McKee and her aunt, Jessie Stevens, like her. She is poor, her late father's investments having failed. As a result, she has become a teacher at one of those one-room schoolhouses that used to dot the countryside. However, she decides that if she likes everyone, they will like her; for fame, she teaches herself golf so she can compete in an international tournament; as for that millionaire.....

Miss Mason, like her sisters Edna Flugrath and Viola Dana, is pretty and charming and quite the actress. This movie, one of several directed by Alan Crosland for the Edison Company, was too late to save their movie-making operation. It's beautifully shot by Phil Tannura, large parts of it at the New London Golf Club. I find it a tad abbreviated in its story telling. It takes about a minute for Miss Mason to go from someone who reads about golf to competing in a world championship. Even so, it's a charming fable about a pretty girl, so that's more than good enough. It's another excellent dvd that Ed Lorusso has produced in collaboration with the Library of Congress. I'm looking forward to the next!