The Flapper
About The Flapper
Ginger, a 16-year-old Southern girl played by Olive Thomas, is sent to a boarding school. She pretends to be a sophisticated adult to impress Thomas Banning, played by William P. Carleton, and gets mixed up with two jewel thieves staying at the school. She helps catch them. Alan Crosland directed. Frances Marion wrote it. English Wikipedia calls it the first American film to show the flapper style that became a fad in the 1920s.
Cast & crew
More about The Flapper
Myron Selznick produced. Wikidata dates the release 10 May 1920 and times the film at 88 minutes. Narrative locations listed there are Florida and New York City. Norma Shearer is in the cast, with Warren Cook, Arthur Housman, Theodore Westman Jr., Katherine Johnston, Eileen Percy, Charles Craig, and Marcia Harris.
Themes
Making
Marion wrote a school comedy in which the “flapper” act is a pose Ginger puts on for Banning, and the jewel thieves are guests at the school, not a separate crime picture.
Preservation
Copies are on the Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Thomas plays Ginger as sixteen. The age is the character’s, from the synopsis carried with the film.
- Shearer’s part is a supporting one, before her starring years.
- An Internet Archive copy is filed as The_Flapper.
- A Commons file uses the same title.
Scenes
- Ginger dresses and behaves as if she were already the woman Banning would notice.
- The two thieves are staying at the school.
- She helps catch them.
Also available
- Internet Archive (The_Flapper)
- Wikimedia Commons (The Flapper (1920).webm)
