Dancing Mothers (1926) DVD-R

Starring Alice Joyce, Conway Tearle, Clara Bow, Donald Keith, Dorothy
Cumming
Directed by Herbert Brenon

Print: black/white
Runtime: 85 min.
Genre: drama
Print Quality: B

Believe it or not, Betty Bronson, who starred in the title role of Peter Pan,
was the first choice to play jazz baby Kittens Westcourt, the part which
eventually went to Clara Bow. Kittens was the second lead, but Bow
turned her into a sympathetic character and stole the show from the film's
star, Alice Joyce. This society drama, based on the Broadway hit by Edgar
Selwyn, probably wouldn't have been much without Bow and Joyce, but
they raised it above soap opera level and helped make it one of the
defining films of the 1920s. Ethel Westcourt (Joyce) is a very nice,
still-lovely society matron whose womanizing husband, Hugh (Norman
Trevor), is keeping a mistress, Irma (Elsie Lawson). Ethel's daughter,
Kittens (Bow), takes after her father and begins carrying on with Jerry
Naughton (Conway Tearle), a man about town. Ethel finds out about all
this and decides to fight fire with fire. She becomes a bit jazzy herself and
steals Naughton away from her daughter. The family has an emotional
confrontation in Naughton's apartments. Although Hugh and Kittens
eventually decide to reconcile with Ethel, she takes off for Europe and
leaves them behind -- quite an independent way for a female character to
end a film in 1926.