Little Annie Rooney
About Little Annie Rooney
Annie Rooney runs a children's gang in a New York tenement and fights the Kid Kellys. Her father is the beat cop. Her brother Tim runs with Joe Kelly's older gang. After the children scare a fruit vendor's horse, Officer Rooney makes them repay five dollars, and they put on a Wild West play to raise it. On the night of the precinct dance, which is also the officer's birthday, Tony fires at Joe in the dark and kills Officer Rooney. Tony and Spider tell Tim that Joe did it. Tim shoots Joe. Annie and the children take Tony to the police. At the hospital she gives blood for Joe, thinking the transfusion will kill her. Joe lives. Later he drives Annie and her friends through town, and Tim, now a traffic officer, waves them on.
Cast & crew
More about Little Annie Rooney
Mary Pickford produced the picture and wrote the story under the name Catherine Hennessey. Hope Loring and Louis Lighton adapted it. Tom McNamara wrote titles. William Beaudine directed. Charles Rosher and Hal Mohr photographed it. United Artists released it on 18 October 1925, after a New York opening on 15 October. Scott Eyman gives the domestic gross as $1,100,000. Pickford was 33 and played a girl of about twelve. The tenement streets were built on the Pickford-Fairbanks backlot.
Themes
Making
After Rosita and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, in which she played adults, Pickford went back to a girl part she wrote and produced herself.
Reviews
Eileen Whitfield writes that Pickford, at thirty-three and just out of Rosita and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall, slips into the body of a twelve-year-old tomboy. Jeffrey Vance, in notes for the Academy restoration, calls the film one of her most accomplished and a direct way into her work.
Look
Charles Rosher and Hal Mohr shot the backlot tenements. The 2014 restoration recovered tinting from Pickford's nitrate print.
Music
Silent, with English intertitles. Andy Gladbach wrote a score for the 2014 restoration.
Preservation
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences restored the film in 2014 from Mary Pickford's 35mm tinted nitrate print, in partnership with the Library of Congress.
Notes
- William Haines plays Joe Kelly. Walter James is Officer Rooney. Gordon Griffith is Tim. Carlo Schipa is Tony. Hugh Fay is Spider. Spec O'Donnell is Abie. Eugene Jackson is Humidor.
- Pickford said the idea came while she was walking a vacant city set. She asked Mabel Normand, who pushed her toward an Irish title and story.
- Intertitles refer to the 1889 music-hall song "Little Annie Rooney.
- The children's gang is written as Irish, Greek, Jewish, Italian, Chinese, and African-American neighbors on one block.
- The Academy's 2014 restoration added a score by Andy Gladbach.
- Kevin Brownlow notes that the streets, for all their detail, were a backlot, not the Bowery.
Scenes
- The horse bolts with Annie on its back, and Joe catches her when she falls.
- In the dark at the dance, Tony's shot meant for Joe kills Officer Rooney.
- Annie offers her blood at the hospital, sure the transfusion will kill her.
Also available
- Internet Archive (LittleAnnieRooney_)
- Wikimedia Commons (Little Annie Rooney (1925).webm)
