Hearts and Flowers
About Hearts and Flowers
Ford Sterling leads the orchestra in a hotel and flirts with the guests. He dances with a prune grower's daughter (Phyllis Haver), whose boyfriend (Billy Armstrong) watches. The flower girl (Louise Fazenda) falls for the conductor even though she has a sweetheart (Jack Ackroyd). He brushes her off. Armstrong then lets him think the flower girl will inherit two million dollars. The lie pulls Sterling toward her, her three brothers get involved, and the finish is a chase through the hotel.
Cast & crew
More about Hearts and Flowers
Edward F. Cline directed, with Mack Sennett also credited. Sennett produced and wrote the scenario. Floyd Jackman and Perry Evans photographed it. Famous Players-Lasky released it through Paramount on 22 June 1919 as a two-reeler, Sennett production number 45, Paramount number 3343. Edgar Kennedy, Bert Roach, and Kalla Pasha play the flower girl's three brothers. Heinie Conklin is a guest with a pea shooter. It is not a Fox film.
Themes
Making
Sennett's 1919 unit stuffed the hotel with an orchestra, a flower stand, and a lineup of bathing beauties, then let Sterling's flirtation collide with Fazenda's brothers.
Look
Floyd Jackman and Perry Evans shot the hotel orchestra and the chase.
Preservation
A print exists. Silent Era lists it among the holdings associated with Blackhawk Films. Public domain in the United States.
Notes
- An intertitle has Sterling tell Fazenda, 'You have the grace of a hippopotamus, but lack its charms.'
- The two million dollars is a lie Armstrong uses to aim Sterling at the flower girl.
- Bathing beauties in the hotel sequence include Virginia Fox and Sybil Seely, later Buster Keaton's leading women, and Phyllis Haver.
- Silent Era places a print with Blackhawk Films. Public domain in the United States.
- Joseph Belmont plays both the piccolo player and the minister.
Scenes
- Sterling dances with Haver while Armstrong glares from the table.
- He tells the flower girl she has the grace of a hippopotamus.
- Armstrong's story of a two-million-dollar heiress turns Sterling back toward Fazenda.
Quotes
You have the grace of a hippopotamus, but lack its charms.
