Helen's Babies

This film was incredibly sweet with Baby Peggy and Clara Bow. Although it lacked a strong story-line, one cannot help laughing along with the "babies" antics. Too, this is one of Clara Bow's earlier performances in which she doesn't play the "IT" girl, just a normal teenager. One can easily see the brilliance emerging from Clara with this performance.

When Edward Everett Horton sends a letter he's going to visit, Richard Tucker and Claire Adams figure it a good chance for a getaway. After all, Horton has written the child-rearing book they use, so it's a grand idea to leave Baby Peggy Montgomery and Jean Carpenter in the capable hands of their uncle. Next-door neighbor Clara Bow is also interested in a man who's obviously equipped for father material. Unfortunately for everyone concerned -- especially Horton -- he wrote the book on the advice of his publishers and knows absolutely nothing about child rearing, or these two mischievous girls.

It's quite a cast, with Horton, Bow, Baby Peggy, and Tucker. William Seiter was, of course, capable of turning his hand to any project, as a good director could, but he was most frequently found at the top of his game in directing sweet, wholesome comedies like this. Although the basic plot of a so-called child expert actually knowing nothing about children has been used frequently, the source material was among the first, which lends it a freshness that other, derivative works lack, and the players add an interest to the entire film.

Peggy-Jean Montgomery was in her second year of a $1.5 million ($23 million in 2022) contract with Universal Studios as well as a sideline job paying her $300 per day in vaudeville. She was one of the highest paid actresses in Hollywood during that time based on her enormous appeal with the movie public. Just three years after appearing in her first film, 'Playmates,' in 1921, Peggy-Jean was taking the nation by storm.

What's remarkable about her odyssey is that when she made October 1924's "Helen's Babies" with Clara Bow, she was a mere five-years old. Going by her stage name, Baby Peggy, she had appeared in over 150 films, most of them money makers. "Helen's Babies," based on a John Habberton 1878 novel of the same name, has Peggy along with her sister, Budge (Jeanne Carpenter), being babysat by Harry Burton (Edward Everett Horton), author of a best selling book on how to raise children. He agrees to watch the kids so his sister and hubby can go on a well-deserved vacation. Trouble is, Uncle Harry doesn't like kids and knows next to nothing about them. The book was pure bunk that its publisher knew would sell a lot of copies.

Naturally, Baby Peggy and Budge cause havoc with Uncle Harry, making his life miserable. He's saved by Peggy's family next door neighbor, Alice Mayton (Clara Bow), who's so attractive that the bachelor Harry falls for her. For budding actress Clara Bow, she was super busy making two other films at the same time as "Helen's Babies." She became so confused as to what picture she was showing up in that she arrived on set with the wrong wig on for her role as Alice. Director Edward Cline, the noted comedy film director for Buster Keaton and W. C. Fields, was forced to delay production while Bow went back to get the proper wig fitted.

With all the money she made in movies and on the stage, Peggy should have enjoyed the fruits of her labors. However, her parents, Baby Peggy's financial handers, were proliferate and careless spenders, draining her hard-earned millions. The 1929 stock market crash placed the family in financial straits where the parents resorted to food coupons from the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Baby Peggy received a high school degree and ran away from home in 1935. Her marriage to bartender Gordon Ayres in 1938 was equally awash in poverty as newspaper columnist Walter Winchell discovered in 1940, finding the pair in a small New York City studio with only doughnuts to eat.

Wanting to get a complete break from Baby Peggy, she adopted the first name Diana and took her artist second husband's last name, Cary, when they married in 1954. She eventually accepted being the former childhood actress, writing several books on her personal experiences and the movie industry. In addition, she became a film historian, giving lectures around the country about the era of silent movies and the personalities during that remarkable time. In February 24, 2020, at the age of 101, she passed away, marking Baby Peggy as the last star of the silent movie generation and closing a unique chapter in cinema.

There's a clever set-up to this vehicle for silent film child star Baby Peggy and which co-stars a pre-stardom Clara Bow in a supporting role, "Helen's Babies." It doesn't surprise me that it's an adaptation of a novel, as written by a John Habberton, who is said to have based it on the adventures of his own sons. In the film, we have the surrogate writer of it within the film--in this case an Uncle Harry (as played by Edward Everett Horton, who'd have a long career, as opposed to the two stars here, as a character actor). It's a highly reflexive and novelistic device.

Although a bachelor writing about child rearing and, thus, not knowing what he's writing about, as far as parenting books are concerned, it's actually a good fiction strategy, of writing oneself into a dilemma that they're not initially sure how to resolve. And, that's what Uncle Harry has essentially done by writing the book that became his nieces, as they were raised on its prescripts. Their parents (his sister and her husband) are so trusting of this book that they decide a visit from Uncle Harry to be a perfect opportunity to scurry off for a vacation, leaving the girls in his charge and much to his surprise and grief. Mischief ensues.

It's a good bit of fun, too, with the exception of some dated ethnic humor. There's a black servant, "yessuhs" an' all, who runs away in sped-up motion as a scared black man trope, and, although the story would otherwise suggest Uncle Harry is watching the kids on his own, there's a mammy character with no lines. Additionally, Uncle Harry in one scene believes that gypsies stole the girls, although this is more of a knock on the character's prejudices than the film's, I suppose, but the Romani nomads still do nothing about two unaccompanied children chasing after a dog going through their camp.

Other than that, there are some humorous gags here, especially the little damsels winding up on railroad tracks as a train carrying their parents home approaches. One of the best Baby Peggy shorts I've seen, "Miles of Smiles" (1923), includes a similar joke of her being rescued from the tracks, although in that case she subsequently became the conductor of the child-sized train. Both titles play on a melodramatic trope of damsels being rescued from dastardly villains tying them to railroad tracks. As Frtizi of the Movies Silently website has made clear, however, it's a myth that this was a silent film cliché, as just about every silent film to exploit it did so parodically, as here. Also a parody, "Barney Oldfield's Race for a Life" (1913) may remain the most famous example. Indeed, the only straight dramatic use of the trope, and minus the being tied part, that I've seen thus far is from early cinema, the Edison one-reeler "The Train Wreckers" (1905).

When I first checked out some Baby Peggy movies back in 2018, when Peggy, subsequently known as Diana Serra Cary, had just turned 100 years of age, credited as the last surviving silent film star until her death in 2020, I was underwhelmed by pictures such as "Captain January" and "The Family Secret" (both 1924), and so I've been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the recent shorts I saw as part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive tribute, including her dual roles in "Miles of Smiles," and by this tribute from the live streaming of the Cinecon Classic Film Festival, of a presentation of a recording of the theatrical performance they made back in 2018 with an introduction from Cary. The print of the film today, by the way, is via the Library of Congress and the Fondazione Cinetecta Italiana, a restoration combining a domestic and a foreign print of the picture. It doesn't look that great, at least via streaming, including some apparent bleaching, but is certainly watchable.

Most of all, it demonstrates how good a Baby Peggy vehicle could be when working with clever writing and capable supporting players like Horton and Bow. That it's not only Baby Peggy who can make an amusing, mugging face for close-ups makes a big difference. It's apparent why Horton was such a successful character actor, able to compliment yet not out-shine the stars of a film. And, it's as easy to see why Bow, in a smaller part here, would become such a flapper-era sensation later with films such as "Wings" and "It" (both 1927). Even with her limited close-ups here, her facial expressions are spot on. Odd to think that she's the rising star here, while Baby Peggy, pulling in an annual salary of $1.5 million, was at her stardom peak, becoming an extra by the 1930s before her retirement from the business soon thereafter, although she went on to advocate for the rights of child actors, her own fortunate having been squandered, as detailed in her memoir and the documentary "Baby Peggy, the Elephant in the Room" (2012). Perhaps, "Helen's Babies" was also her pinnacle film, but I'd be happy to see more of her oeuvre to know if that holds true, and, sadly, most of her films, as with most silent films in general, are now lost--another fortune squandered, if only for the most part.

I viewed a print of "Helen's Babies" that was restored by the Library of Congress; despite their laudable efforts, the first title card is missing, and the nitrate deterioration is prominent throughout the first reel. I mention these flaws not to chivvy the wonderful people at LoC but because Diana Serra Cary (more about her later) has told me she has viewed every known surviving print of this movie, and she claims that LoC's is the best print in existence.

"Helen's Babies" is often cited as a Clara Bow movie, since she's the cast member who remains most well-known and popular. She has considerably less screen time here than Edward Everett Horton and the titular children, and Bow's hairstyle and make-up here are not the ones she wore during her stardom. Director William Seiter gives Bow no star treatment whatever: during her first scene (oddly clutching a white cane: where's her tin cup and her guide dog?), Bow receives no close-ups at all, and the sequence is blocked so that several other characters stand in front of her, preventing the camera from even getting a clear view of her.

Because Edward Everett Horton is remembered for his distinctive vocal traits, it's intriguing to see him in this *SILENT* film. Horton displays less of the "nelly" body language here than he did in his later films, possibly because in this movie his character is attracted to Clara Bow. Horton's character here wears a wristwatch: a decade earlier, male wristwatches were often regarded in American culture as a symbol of effeminacy, but that stereotype was put paid during WW1 when wristwatches proved more useful than pocket watches for the doughboys in the trenches.

The film's premise is strictly Plot-o-Matic: Harry Burton (Horton) has written a best-selling book about child-rearing even though he knows nothing about the subject. Because of his alleged expertise, his sister Helen Lawrence and her husband connive to put him in charge of their two young daughters while the parents go off on a holiday. To show what great parents they are, Mr and Mrs Lawrence depart *BEFORE* Horton arrives, leaving the wee tykes to their own devices. From here we're in Baby Herman territory, with the girls wreaking mayhem that causes problems for Horton.

Oh, those girls! Annoyingly named Budge and Toodie, they are refreshingly played by two genuinely delightful child actresses, giving affectless and believable performances. Budge is played by gap-toothed Jeanne Carpenter, but the ringleader of their mayhem (Toodie) is played by none other than Baby Peggy, in a truly virtuoso performance. Baby Peggy (now known as Diana Serra Cary) is still alive and well as I write this; I first met her in October 2006 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy: while watching "Helen's Babies", I found it rather strange to be viewing the antics of a five-year-old in 1924 while realising that I *KNOW* her (considerably older but still young at heart) in 2007! In an early scene, Baby Peggy clutches a Felix the Cat doll: could this be an early example of product placement?

Much of this comedy's effect is down to the crucial fact that Toodie and Budge are genuinely guileless in all their mischief: unlike Beryl the Peril or the Katzenjammer Kids, they have no malice for their adult guardian. Most of the comedy works, although I disliked one scene in which Baby Peggy continually tweaks the face of the sleeping Horton without wakening him: since Horton's character wasn't drugged or comatose, I couldn't believe that he could sleep through this. Also, Horton's character often behaves implausibly ... as when he gives the girls his wristwatch to play with, then he forgets to reclaim it.

In several sequences the comedy depends upon suspense, with Toodie wandering into genuinely dangerous situations (and no stunt double available for Baby Peggy). These sequences are staged and edited skilfully to keep the child actress safe while making her character seem to be in danger ... as when Toodie falls off a high tree bough without Baby Peggy actually being placed at treetop height.

Where the comedy really fails (for modern sensibilities) is in this movie's racial stereotypes. The Lawrences engage a black handyman who enters the house in a servile cringe, and who runs away from a frightening event at superhuman speed (via undercranking). The black chauffeur's one dialogue title is written in "yassuh" dialect. More positively, black actress Mattie Peters gives a very realistic and humane performance here (unlike her role in 'The Bedroom Window') as the housekeeper who clearly loves the two little girls and who is likely the only reason they haven't died of neglect by their careless parents.

Even more extensive (and offensive) than the stereotyping of the black characters in this movie is the extreme stereotyping of some Italian characters who arrive in a Romany caravan and speak in Chico Marx dialect. When Toodie and Budge wander into their camp, the sequence is staged to emphasise the swarthiness and foreign behaviour of these transients: the girls are potentially in danger not because they're among strangers, but rather because these are dark-skinned foreigners.

The climactic sequence, with the two girls and a dog on a railway track while a train hurtles towards them, is well-staged and has one hilariously unexpected gag. Train-spotters will be intrigued that the choo-choo in this sequence is the only steam locomotive ever made which stops at the precise instant when the engineer pulls the brake, instead of half a mile farther down the rails. At least, that's what we see here. Despite an astonishingly good performance by Baby Peggy and one almost equally as good by Jeanne Carpenter, many of the gags in this movie were too obvious or too implausible or both. I would have liked this comedy better without the stereotyping of Negroes and Italians. My rating: 6 out of 10, and most of that is for Baby Peggy's and Horton's performances.