Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

An adaptation of Kate Douglas Wiggins' famous novel and play. A polished production based on a famous novel that nevertheless doesn't stray far from Mary Pickford's established formula. It's pretty thin on plot and only mediocre entertainment if you're not a fan of Pickford's fondness for playing adolescent girls.

This was never a story I really took to as a child, and even though Mary Pickford in the title role brings a great deal of charm to the character, I still don't much care for the story. "Rebecca" is a young girl whose family have fallen on hard times. One of seven siblings, she is chosen to go and live with her two maiden aunts - "Jane" (Mayme Kelso) and Miranda (Josephine Crowell) who, frankly, don't care much for or about her. Her personality is not for giving up, though, and she determines to make friends - alighting on the poverty stricken "Simpson' family to whose aid she intends to come (aka well meaning meddling). The film is pretty episodic, as is the book, in nature - and frequently her character borders on the annoyingly precocious. This production is well constructed and at times is a little more adventurous - the storm scene at the end is quite effective, and there's no denying that the star has the part down to a tee - it's just not a particularly enjoyable part to watch develop - and, well, I didn't. The two aunts play their indifferent, curmudgeonly, parts well enough and there is a bit of light-heartedness conveyed adequately via the inter-titles, but this just wasn't for me.

When Adolph Zukor and Jessy Lasky merged their movie production companies into one, the Famous Players-Lasky, they eyed their partner in its Paramount Pictures distribution branch, William Hodkinson, to squeeze him out with an involuntary buyout. Once they did in the summer of 1916, Zukor and Lasky dropped their Famous Players' name and called their combined production and distribution company Paramount Pictures.

Zukor believed in signing the top movie stars in the business. One of his first contracts was with Hollywood's most popular actress, Mary Pickford. Her signature on the dotted line on June 24, 1916, was the first million dollar pact for an female performer. Zukor was willing to pay her $10,000 a week and to give her half the profits for each film she made. He guaranteed over one million dollars (about $20 million in today's inflationary dollars) for the year with her full control of each of her film's production, an unprecedented contract at that time.

So impressed was Zukor with Frances Marion's script of "The Poor Little Rich Girl" he took the unusual step of paying her $50,000 per year to be Pickford's official scenarioist, making her one of the highest paid writers in the business. Marion wrote two other scripts for her in 1917, both becoming instant classics.

For her second Pickford screenplay, Marion took the 1903 Kate Wiggin's children novel, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and the 1909 play of the same name and adapted it to fit Pickford's magnetic personality. The September 1917 movie contains a series of vignettes of Pickford playing a young niece who is harbored by two aunts, one cranky and the other laid back She's harped on because of her confident independence, except for a one loyal friend and a rich young man who has eyes out for the adolescent Rebecca. Innocent romance develops between the two in this feel-good motion picture which the members of the American Film Institute nominated as one of 500 films to be considered for its "Top 100 Funniest Movies."

Lovely but hard-headed Mary Pickford was something special, both at the time for the entertainment and now for the historical perspective. Out of the films I've seen of hers I always preferred Rebecca, even over Pollyanna, the story seemed more cogent, the acting by everyone more believable and the languid Victorian atmosphere more palpable. And at 25 she still believably played a teenager.

We're presented with a series of comic episodes in the life of poor young girl Rebecca Rowena Randall, sent to live with her well-to-do aunts and get a proper ejjication. She goes from selling Superba Soap door to door, reciting her unique poetry for Visitors Day at school to organising a Circus Parade and Show and then going to boarding school. On the way she manages to help various people in trouble in her own understated way and also falls in love and fixes on the man to marry - after she becomes a woman. The most violent scene is when Rebecca pulls Minnie Smellie's nose in class. With some lovely evocative olde worlde touches, especially in the storm scene we are eventually (horse) drawn to an appropriate sunbeam ending.

Most people would disdain to clap their modern eyes on this, but that's their loss. A nice little film to sink into every few years and ruminate on how the world has changed.

After her mother mortgages the family's "Sunnybrook Farm", Mary Pickford (as Rebecca Randall) is sent to live with two aunts: Josephine Crowell (as Aunt Miranda) is stern and heartless; she overrides kinder, broken-hearted, Mayme Kelso (as Aunt Jane). Predictably, Ms. Pickford finds things are not so sunny in Riverboro. Moreover, she finds her self at odds with teasing peers, like Violet Wilkey (as Minnie Smellie). Pickford perseveres. And, eventually, she warms folks up, like her older man crush Eugene O'Brien (as Adam "Mr. Aladdin" Ladd), who Pickford hopes to marry when she "grows up"...

In a first class production, Pickford has some nice moments; though, her affected "little girl" persona doesn't really succeed in effectively portraying the young heroine of Kate Douglas Wiggins' "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm", as evidenced on film. In sometimes startling contrast, several of the other young performers are noticeably more natural and/or charming. Ms. Wilkey, one of the younger set, regrettably "retired" shortly after her convincing portrayal of "Minnie Smellie". Wilkey, who also played young "Flora" in "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), was one of many marvelous young players Pickford employed, to shine by her side. Happily, kids like Wesley Barry and Milton Berle did not retire after appearing herein.

******* Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (9/22/17) Marshall Neilan ~ Mary Pickford, Eugene O'Brien, Violet Wilkey, Helen Jerome Eddy