Silent film star Mary Pickford was ‘America’s sweetheart,’ but she is anything but in this film about a New York City tenement kid who suffers a lot of hard knocks but comes out a winner.
Silent movies return to Cannon Grange Hall with films featuring Laurel & Hardy and Mary Pickford on Saturday, March 19, at 7 p.m.
The double feature will present Putting Pants on Philip and Little Annie Rooney. Both will be accompanied by live piano music performed by John Mucci, film historian and member of Cannon Grange. Mucci will also play an original score of Irish melodies on the grange’s 1903 upright.
Putting Pants on Philip is a short made in 1927 that was the first film to bill Laurel & Hardy as a comic team. In it, Hardy plays Piedmont Mumblethunder who is embarrassed by his kilt-wearing Scottish nephew Philip, played by Laurel, and tries in vain to get him to wear pants.
Little Annie Rooney, based on the 19th-Century music-hall song, was one of Pickford’s most successful films. In it, Pickford, who wrote the film herself, plays a New York City tenement kid on the Bowery, whose father is a cop. While there are plenty of street skirmishes among the kids in the neighborhood, their elder siblings are in real gangs, and Annie has the bad luck to fall in love with one the gangsters. Laced with comedy, the story turns serious when the man she loves is accused of killing her father, and she tries to clear his name. The climax is comedic yet heartbreaking all at once.
Tickets are $6 per person and may be purchased at the door. Refreshments will be available prior to the movies and during intermission. Free parking is available at the grange hall and railroad station across the street.
Information: cannongrange.org, Cannon.Grange@yahoo.com or 203-762-1900.
The post Silent double feature at the grange appeared first on Wilton Bulletin.