Little Old New York

Another charming and enjoyable Marion Davies film. She plays Patricia/Patrick O'Day from Ireland. Davies is excellent and plays the role with the humor and self awareness that the role calls for considering the material she had to work with.

Harrison Ford also does a good job playing against his feelings towards the character of Davies/Pat O'Day. What makes this film interesting is how they play on the border of same sex love.

It's very well made and directed. Hearst never went half way on any picture of hers and this is no exception.

I will not write about this interesting film in general, but will focus on one little aspect of it. Let's begin.

The old mr. O'Day had two kids, Patrick and Patricia. I wonder what would he have called a third child, had he had one. But that's out of the question, now. Well, the young and beautiful Patricia O'Day (Marion Davies) plays almost all the film through en travesti, impersonating her dead brother. And she manages to fool half the population of 1807 New York (the other half didn't have the occasion to meet her). Which is astonishing.

First of all, her new dress: it's quite boy-ish, in the sense that it is different from the dresses the other women wear in the movie, but it's also different from those of the men. Her curly hair is cut and straightened: again, it does not resemble either the girls' or the boys'. She wears make-up, lipstick and all, and, well, she even has quite some boobs! It reminds me of an early personification of Hannah Montana. Younger generations could know who I am referring to: anyways, this miss Montana is a (fictional) girl whom nobody recognizes when she wears a wig, and, apart from that, is absolutely identical to the girl without a wig.

As you can well understand, in a film conceived in that way there must be a moment in which she reveals her identity and her sex: and there is indeed, toward the end. How does she manage the revelation? Boy or girl, she looks almost the same, so there's only one way (compatible with public morality) to do it: she just says it. I'm a girl! In the next scenes she looks as before, only with a more girlish dress and her hair curled again. The overnight perming.

By the by, another little thing: in the middle of the movie an U. S. flag is raised, with 15 stars for 15 states: in 1807 there were two more.

The plot: rich guy dies leaving estate to nephew; nephew dies suddenly; niece disguises herself as nephew to claim money.

These days that setup takes less than a minute. But in Little Old New York, it takes 15 minutes. That might have been OK in 1923. In 2023 it had my fidgeting. I mean, why would I care about Gloria Vanderbilt or Jerry Jeff Astor or Washington "Dr W" Irving.

But it gets worse, the nephew and niece are brawling, filthy Irishmen who are so poor their belongings are being auctioned off when the caravan of legal minds pulls up to tell them of their inheritance.

Davies, sporting a really bad wig, desperately flails her arms around in an attempt to be what I assume was ''funny" in 1923. I call it the ''Robin Williams School of Comedy."

Finally, a half-hour into this mess we finally get to see Davies dressed up as a boy, pulling faces. It's not funny. Then she's asked to emote over her dying father. She can't pull it off.

I'm sorry, but the more Marion Davies movies I see - and TCM devoted a month of Tuesdays to her - the more I am convinced she was, in fact, a talentless floozy promoted way beyond her abilities by King of Misinformation William Randolph Hearst.

If you want to introduce someone to the joys of silent films this movie would be an excellent choice. I was sitting on the edge of my seat after the first ten minutes, with a big smile on my face. Few films, silent or talkie, can do that for me. It was great fun!

Pretty Marion Davies plays a fiesty Irish lass in 1806, who is forced by her father to pretend she is a boy, with the intent to claim a fortune from her dead uncle in America. Dashing Harrison Ford the First plays the step-son who is being cheated out of his inheritance, and who finds himself strangely attracted to the young "boy", for whom he is forced to become guardian in old New York.

Great comedic and romantic touches between the two leads add spark to a fast paced story. This film was very daring for its time too, especially in the scene where "Patrick" (alias Patricia) is tied to a public square and her shirt ripped off for a whipping before an angry mob.

If you get a chance to see this delightful film, please do so. You will not regret it in the least.

The otherwise likeable Marion Davies gives us possibly cinema's worst female-pretending-to-be-a-male impersonation in this lively but hoary silent from William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Productions. She's pretending to be her own recently deceased brother so that she can claim the inheritance left to him by an American uncle who has long been estranged from her side of the family. Harrison Ford (not that one) is the relative who stands to inherit otherwise. There's something a little unavoidably uncomfortable about the increasing affection Ford's character feels for Davies when she's disguised as a boy, and it isn't completely dispelled once her secret is revealed. It's an entertaining silent though, which features an hilarious boxing match (featuring Louis Wolheim) followed by a mass brawl.