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List Price: $29.99 | | Label: Image Entertainment
Salesrank: 44707
Released: April 26, 2005 |
| Our Price: $14.49 |
| Used Price: $13.95 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
n the heyday of silent films, a winsome ingenue named Olive Thomas had a seemingly charmed life. Born in the mining town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, her beauty and spirit carried her to New York where she found fame and fortune.
Description of The Olive Thomas Collection: The Flapper/Olive Thomas - Everybody's Sweetheart:
Film history records that during the late Teens of the 20th century, Olive Thomas was the screen's "quintessential American girl" and possibly "the most beautiful woman in the world." The beauty was there for anyone to see: a heart-shaped face, luminous skin and smile, large eyes whose deep blue photographed a lustrous gray. As for quintessential American girlness, she'd been born in the milltown of Charleroi, Pennsylvania (unlike "America's sweetheart" Mary Pickford, who'd been born Canadian), and gone from gingham counters in Charleroi and then New York City, to modeling for the most popular portrait artists of the day, to stardom with the Ziegfeld Follies. Wonderfully natural on screen, she made a passel of movies (eight in 1919 alone), married Mary Pickford's brother Jack, got to define the screen image of "the flapper" (albeit comically), and may have been turning into a real actress when she died in Paris in 1920, either a victim of accidental poisoning or an impetuous suicide.
It's necessary to say "film history records" because the films themselves, by and large, do not survive. One that does, pristinely, is The Flapper (1920), Thomas's next-to-next-to-last movie. Written by the estimable Frances Marion, it's an easygoing comedy about a Southern teen who, sent to a ritzy boarding school up North, gets into mischief while acting the sophisticated grownup to impress a suave gentleman and match wits with a pair of jewel thieves. She's lovely to look at, and there's an exhilarating sequence shot atop a double-decker bus as it bears her along Fifth Avenue--an innocent girl in a vibrant metropolis she had already seduced years earlier.
Completing the Collection is Olive Thomas: Everybody's Sweetheart, an hourlong documentary chronicling the actress's life and career--including her relationships with Flo Ziegfeld and the three Selznicks, Lewis J., Myron, and David--and affording glimpses of some of her other movies. Much of the commentary is supremely fatuous, but not the legend that her ghost haunts the New Amsterdam Theatre where her star first rose. --Richard T. Jameson
The Olive Thomas Collection: The Flapper/Olive Thomas - Everybody's Sweetheart Reviews:
Worth A Viewing 
2009-12-14 - First watch the bio on Olive Thomas, then her films.
Not remembered today, none the less, she was a beauty during her short life.
Buy used and you won't be dissapointed.
Good showcase for silent movie star 
2009-06-07 - The majority of silent films are lost forever and this one starring Olive Thomas, who died two years later in Paris under mysterious circumstances, is a good addition to your film library. The film itself is better than average and a good example of a film of that time. The special feature documentary about Olive narrated by Rosanna Arquette is fascinating, but another feature recreating scenes that indicate Olive's personality starring one of her descendants doesn't work. But overall the movie and special features are worth it.
This is a beautiful film
2009-05-04 - I heard about Olive Thomas through the internet, because I'm interested in silent movies. This DVD is great - one of her famous movies, "The Flapper" and a story about her life. She was so beautiful and expressive.
Charming 1920 comedy about a Teenager and Her Rush To Grow Up
2007-08-19 - THE FLAPPER is the only widely available film starring the lovely starlet Olive Thomas whose tragic, mysterious death later in 1920 has perversely kept the star's name alive more than any of her work in motion pictures. That's a particular shame for THE FLAPPER reveals Olive to be a delightful little impish comedienne who deserves to be remembered for her talent.
Olive stars as a young southern heiress (daughter of a Florida senator) whose "daring" for her small town (drinking sodas in public with a boy!!) persuades her father to send her to an exclusive girls school in New York where presumably she will learn to be a little lady. Little did he know!! This may have be the first of many films - from FINISHING SCHOOL (1933) to THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS (1966) to the quite recent films starring those tabloid-plastered bad girls of today - were those exclusive schools for young women tend to be more a breeding ground for girls gone wild (at least what passes for wild in their respective eras). Olive in no time in New York has managed to jump the fence to talk to boys, played hooky to go sleigh-riding, and flirt with a man old enough to be her father. When one of her classmates robs the school safe and darts off to New York City, she lures the ever precocious (though still remarkably innocent) Olive into visiting her and becoming an unwitting accomplice. Norma Shearer is highly visible in a bit part as one of Olive's chums at the school.
The print of this film is stunning and the photography is a knockout in the on-location scenes set in snow-covered New York. The film beautifully captures the fun of a day in the snow, a treat denied most of us not living in the Northern part of America. The screen titles are frequently hilarious (the scenarist was the legendary Frances Marion) and often quite charming with lovely and/or amusing border art.
Not to be missed is Olive's return to Florida where she vows to "show" the locals how worldly she has become, all decked out in black and unmistakably burlesquing the notorious "sex" novelist of the day, Elinor Glyn.
This movie is over 85 years old and yet it shows you that in some ways young people are the same no matter what era they live in. They enjoy the fun that youth has to offer them but still try to rush the clock (as Olive literally does at one point, moving the clock up two hours so she will have "stayed up" until midnight) into full blown adulthood. Olive's delightful performance as Ginger (an ironic name since she strongly resembles actress Dawn Wells, the "Mary Ann" of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND) will charm you as she gets into one predicament after another yet survives them all although the tragic real life climax of Olive Thomas is never out of one's mind and sadly there was no happy fadeout for her.
One of My First Silent Films
2007-03-05 - THE FLAPPER was one of the first silent movies I watched. In fact, I still haven't watched a whole lot of them, but I am starting to, and though I haven't watched many silents like I said, I have a feeling THE FLAPPER is one of the better silents made in that period (1920-1925). I bought this because I was reading about Olive Thomas in this book called THE ZIEGFELD FOLLIES and it was really good, and I thought Olive's life sounded very interesting, and from what the book said, she seemed like a very good actress. So I bought this, and it was AMAZING!!!!! Olive is MIRACULOUS!!!!! She is very funny at times, and at the scene where Ms. Paddles, her boarding school mistess, makes her leave the Country Club Dance, you feel sorry for her. She seems pretty normal at first, but as the movie goes on, she keeps on getting more bubbly and full of energy, and she is so VERSATILE, and it's just so FUNNY!!!!! THE FLAPPER is about a girl in a small town, Genevieve "Ginger" King (Olive), who is shipped off to a boarding school for girls in New York, which is run by this old lady named Ms. Paddles. After a small while, the girls all accept Ginger, and they have fun at school, but there is this snobby, cheap girl named Hortense who looks about 40, so I was like, " Why is she a student?" But she is and there's nothing anybody can do about it now. Norma Shearer is in here as one of Olive's school mates, and I personally think she would make a better Hortense than this Katherine Johnston. But Katherine does a good job of being a nasty, lying, sleazy schoolgirl/crook. Then there is this boy named Bill (Theodore Westman Jr.) who lives near Olive at her small town, and also goes to this military school near hers. He has a crush on her, and it is cute how he takes her for sleigh rides, and tries to impress her. The whole movie is very cute, so here is a basic plot outline before I get carried away: Olive goes to a boarding school, tries to get a handsome mystery man to fall in love with her, gets mixed up with some crooks, attempts to play a big prank on her fammily back home, and that's all, because I don't want to spoil anything for you. And just so you know, the print is terribly pristine and is definitely one of the best restorations of a silent picture I've seen. And now for the documentary: It's a really interesting, artful, and good summary of Olive's life, what kind of person she was, and good stuff like that. And there are even more extras, and there's nice too. And now, thse are the few silent movies I've seen and I reccomend them all: Wings (1927) A good/okay war drama brightened up by Clara Bow, and my VERY FIRST silent. The Plastic Age (1925)- a good,funny sint that gets boring in parts, again saved by Clara Bow. Intolerance (1916)- A marvelously artful film by D.W. Griffith, that is VERY, VERY good, but can be difficult to sit through, because it's long. The Show Off (1926)- A great, side-splitting funny silent that also makes you feel sad, a REALLY goodmovie. I reccomend this movie for starting your silent movie collection, also a great family film, because my mom liked it too. The Garden of Eden (1928)- THE BEST SILENT MOVIE I"VE EVER SEEN EXCEPT FOR THE FLAPPER!!!!! HIGHLY RECCOMENDED AS A GREAT FLAPPER FLICK!!!!! The Affairs of Anatol (1921)- A wonderful, ornate dramadey with Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, and Bebe Daniels. Worth buying just for the sets, costunes, and the scene where Wallace smashes up an apartment with gusto. And that's all I've seen so far. I hope to see many more great silents, and I hope this review was helpful. And aside form silents, I reccomend you watch a great movie titled THE BROADWAY MELODY OF 1936, the best musical I've ever seen. June Knight would've made a good silent actress with her amazingly expressive face. Bye, pearls in your oysters!
