The Flapper

The Flapper is a 1920 American silent comedy film starring Olive Thomas. Directed by Alan Crosland, the film was the first in the United States to portray the "flapper" lifestyle which would soon become a 1920's fad.

Unlike most silent films, The Flapper has survived largely unscathed and fully complete. All but a few small intro cards have survived and even the original color tinting remains.

Plot

16-year-old Genevieve 'Ginger' King (Thomas), is growing up in the boring town of Orange Springs, Florida where having a soda with a boy is scandalous. Because of her behavior and yearning for a thrilling life her father decides to send her to a boarding school, Mrs. Paddle's School for Young Ladies, which is run by strict disciplinarian Mrs. Paddles (Marcia Harris) in Lake Placid, New York.

Despite the strictness, the girls have fun getting into flapper lifestyle trouble including flirting. Richard Channing (William P. Carleton), an older man, rides past the seminary every day, prompting romantic fantasies among the school girls. When 16-year-old Ginger connives a sleigh ride with Channing, she tells him she's "almost twenty". Ginger ends up falling for him.

Ginger gets in trouble with the headmistress when she sneaks out to the local country club where Channing is having a party. One of her schoolmates named Hortense (Katherine Johnston) tells on her, but her motive is to get the headmistress out of the way so she can rob the school's safe and sneak away with her crooked boyfriend Thomas Morran (Arthur Housman). Thanks to a vague note, Ginger goes to a hotel in New York on her way home from school where Hortense and her boyfriend are. They force her to take the suitcases back with her. The suitcases end up containing the valuables, which include fancy clothes and jewels.

Knowing that Channing has gone to Orange Springs on a yachting trip, Ginger decides to use the clothes and jewels and pretend to be a woman of the world when she goes home. The plan backfires, and her father believes she is lying when she says it's a joke. Detectives show up wanting to know why she has stolen loot, and both her young admirer, Bill, and Channing think she has really become a wicked woman.

The events in the lives of Ginger King and another character are presented as incidents in a (non-fiction) newsreel at the end of the movie.

Cast

• Olive Thomas as Ginger King
• Warren Cook as Senator King
• Theodore Westman, Jr. as Bill Forbes
• Katherine Johnston as Hortense
• Arthur Housman as Tom Morran
• Louise Lindroth as Elmina Buttons
• Charles Craig as Reverend Cushil
• William P. Carleton as Richard Chenning
• Marcia Harris as Mrs. Paddles
• Bobby Connelly as King, Jr.
• Athole Shearer as Extra (uncredited)
• Norma Shearer as Schoolgirl (uncredited)

Production notes

Frances Marion wrote the screenplay which was responsible for bringing the term flapper, which had been a slang term for many years, into popular use in the United States.^[1] Thomas appeared in only two films after The Flapper. She died in Paris in September 1920.^[2]

Home media release

In 2005, The Flapper was released on Region 1 DVD by the Milestone Collection as part of The Olive Thomas Collection.^[3]

References

External links

• The Flapper at the Internet Movie Database
• The Flapper is available for free download at the Internet Archive [more]
• The Flapper at allmovie
• The Flapper at Rotten Tomatoes
• Variety 1920 Review