A Girl's Folly
About A Girl's Folly
Mary Baker, a country girl, meets the movie actor Driscoll while a company is shooting a western near her home. She leaves her mother and her farmer sweetheart and goes to the city with him. A screen test fails. Rather than go home, she accepts an apartment from Driscoll, who is married. On the night he throws a party there, her mother arrives. Mary leaves with her. Driscoll goes back to his wife, and Mary takes the farmer.
Cast & crew
More about A Girl's Folly
Maurice Tourneur directed and also plays the director in the film-within-the-film. Frances Marion shared the writing. William A. Brady produced. World Film Company distributed it. The working title was A Movie Romance. Scenes show the Paragon studio in Fort Lee: the lab, cutting room, printing plant, spray chamber, cafeteria, dressing rooms, and sets. John van den Broek photographed it. Doris Kenyon plays Mary and Robert Warwick plays Driscoll.
Themes
Reviews
George W. Graves in Motography praised Doris Kenyon and called the film finely finished. Edward Weitzel in Moving Picture World found the plot slight and the cast unusually strong. Variety said the public would want to see how pictures are made, and asked whether showing that was good for the business. Wid's Films and Film Folk enjoyed the film and disliked the exposure of studio practice.
Look
John van den Broek shot both the western location and the Fort Lee plant, including the lab and the cutting room.
Preservation
Prints, in differing states, are at the Cineteca del Friuli in Gemona, the BFI National Archive, George Eastman Museum, UCLA, and the Library of Congress. A complete copy reached the AFI and the Library of Congress in 1972.
Notes
- June Elvidge, Jane Adair, Chester Barnett, and Johnny Hines are in the cast.
- A complete print was given to the American Film Institute and the Library of Congress from a private collection in 1972.
- An incomplete print turned up in the 1978 Dawson Film Find, preserved in permafrost.
Scenes
- Mary watches a western being shot near her home.
- Her mother walks into the apartment party.
- The film shows the Paragon lab and cutting room.
