Sally of the Sawdust (1925)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

D.W. Griffith

Writers:

Dorothy Donnelly (play)
Forrest Halsey (writer)

Release Date:

2 August 1925 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Plot:

Judge Foster throws his daughter out because she married a circus man. She leaves her baby girl with Prof...

Plot Keywords:

Circus | Based On Play

Cast

Carol Dempster	...	Sally
W.C. Fields	...	Professor Eustance McGargle
Alfred Lunt	...	Peyton Lennox
Erville Alderson	...	Judge Henry L. Foster
Effie Shannon	...	Mrs. Foster
Charles Hammond	...	Lennox, Sr.
Roy Applegate	...	Detective
Florence Fair	...	Miss Vinton
Marie Shotwell	...	Society Lady
Glenn Anders	...	Leon, the Acrobat

Also Known As:

Poppy (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

104 min | USA:113 min (DVD version) | Canada:113 min (Ontario)

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Certification:

Canada:G (Ontario) | UK:U

Filming Locations:

Long Island, New York, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

D.W. Griffith had good reason not to use the name or title "Poppy" for this movie -a movie titled "Poppy" with a character by that name had come out in 1917.

Movie Connections:

Version of Poppy (1936)

W.C. Fields... the Silent Movie Actor.

I am a great fan of W.C. Fields, and continue to study his life and especially his work that is available to us. This is the only movie currently available to me to judge his work as a confident silent movie actor and comedian. I admit that perhaps I am not coming to this movie with the best agenda to appreciate it as a film on it's own terms. This is a D.W. Griffiths film after all - the alleged father of movies as we know them today. Don't ask me. I wouldn't know if that's a deserved reputation or not.

I did enjoy this film. I thought Carol Dempster was good in her role, but of course I was more interested in the times when Fields is on screen. There are some specific moments for Fields fans to savour. The fleeting shots of his juggling skills, the first evidence of the subtle reactions and gestures that we know from his classic talkies of the 1930's, and the peanut cart disguise for a liquor cabinet that survives from his Zeigfield Follies days.

This won't be a movie I turn to as often as I do to the great W.C. Fields films of 1932-34, but I'm just so glad that it has not been lost to us as have been other of Fields silent film work.