The Plastic Age
About The Plastic Age
Hugh Carver, a freshman athlete at Prescott College, meets Cynthia Day during a fraternity hazing. She takes him drinking and dancing at roadhouses. His roommate Carl Peters wants Cynthia too, then gives her up. Hugh’s grades and his game fall off, and his father Henry cuts him off until he improves. After a raid on a roadhouse, Cynthia leaves because she thinks she is hurting him. Hugh wins the big football game. Peters tells him she has changed, and she comes back.
Cast & crew
More about The Plastic Age
Wesley Ruggles directed. B. P. Schulberg produced and paid $35,000 for the rights to Percy Marks’s 1924 novel, outbidding the other studios. Frederica Sagor Maas and Eve Unsell adapted it. Marks taught English at Brown and used a made-up campus. The film calls it Prescott. It was shot in the summer of 1925 at Pomona College and at FBO Studios. Allen G. Siegler and Gilbert Warrenton photographed it. Preferred Pictures released it in the United States on December 6, 1925. New York opened July 18, 1926.
Themes
Background
Marks’s novel described students he called flaming youth: jazz, flasks, and petting parties, set at a college standing in for Brown. The film keeps that campus under the name Prescott.
Making
Schulberg’s Preferred Pictures was Bow’s home lot before Paramount. He agreed to the merger only if he could control her scripts, casts, crews, and wardrobe, and if he was made an associate producer.
Reviews
The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union objected to drinking played as acceptable under Prohibition, and called the jazz dancing behavior that needed purifying by holy water.
Audiences
It was a hit in late 1925 and the picture that made Clara Bow a star.
Look
Allen G. Siegler and Gilbert Warrenton shot the film at Pomona College and at FBO Studios in Hollywood.
Music
Silent on the 1925 release. Eric Beheim composed a score later used on video editions.
Preservation
David Shepard preserved it through Film Preservation Associates. Image Entertainment paired it on DVD with The Show Off (1926). Kino issued it in August 1999 in a set with It (1927). A WebM is on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Donald Keith plays Hugh. Clara Bow plays Cynthia. Gilbert Roland plays Carl Peters.
- Mary Alden plays Mrs. Carver. Henry B. Walthall plays Henry Carver. David Butler plays Coach Henley.
- Clark Gable is an uncredited athlete. Carole Lombard and Janet Gaynor are uncredited co-eds.
- The film was Clara Bow’s first hit. After Adolph Zukor saw it, he brought Schulberg and Bow to Paramount in a deal made in early November 1925.
- Finland’s release date is April 23, 1928.
- Eric Beheim later composed a score used on video editions.
Scenes
- Hugh meets Cynthia during the hazing.
- A raid breaks up the roadhouse party, and Cynthia and Hugh get away in her car.
- Henry Carver throws Hugh out until he has made good.
- Hugh wins the football game, and Cynthia comes back.
Influenced by
- Percy Marks's novel The Plastic Age (1924)
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (The Plastic Age (1925).webm)
- Image Entertainment DVD (with The Show Off, 1926)
- Kino on Video set with It (August 1999)
