Why Girls Leave Home

Why Girls Leave Home is a lost^[1] 1921 American silent drama film produced by Harry Rapf for Warner Bros..^[2] It was the only film from the studio to make a profit in 1921.^[3] The poster for the film was featured in the 1962 film Gypsy.^[4]

Why Girls Go Back Home (1926) is a sequel to the film that was also produced by Warner Bros.

Plot

This picture makes some revealing statements about rearing teens in the 20s—Mr. Hedder (George Lessey) is so straight-laced and old fashioned that he will not even let his daughter Anna (Anna Q. Nilsson then 33 years old) own an evening gown, believing that nice girls do not own such things! So Anna is given one by a friend who works as a model. Hedder thinks she stole it and goes to Wallace, the store's owner (Claude King). Wallace thinks Anna is running wild, and on his advice, Hedder hits her. As a result, Anna leaves home and moves in with some gold diggers. She discovers that Wallace's own daughter, Madeline (Maurine Powers) is a frequenter of questionable nightclubs. On top of that, the girl is the pawn of Reynolds (Coit Albertson), who is romancing her for business reasons. Anna finds Madeline alone in Reynold's apartment and uses this knowledge to get back at Wallace. Eventually she sends Madeline back home and the two fathers reconcile with their daughters.

Cast

• Anna Q. Nilsson as Anna Hedder
• Maurine Powers as Madeline Wallace
• Julia Swayne Gordon as Mrs. Wallace
• Corinne Barker as Ethel, a Golddigger
• Katherine Perry as Edith, a Golddigger
• Kate Blancke as Mrs. Hedder
• Claude King as Mr. Wallace
• Coit Albertson as Mr. Reynolds
• George Lessey as Mr. Hedder
• John B. O'Brien as Joseph
• Dan Mason as Dodo
• Arthur Gordini as Mr. Jackson

Preservation status

This film is now lost. Warner Bros. records of the film's negative have a notation, "Junked 12/27/48" (i.e., December 27, 1948). Warner Bros. destroyed many of its negatives in the late 1940s and 1950s due to nitrate film pre-1933 decomposition. Or in February 1956, Jack Warner sold the rights to all of his pre-December 1949 films to Associated Artists Productions. In 1969, UA donated 16mm prints of some Warner Bros. films from outside the United States. No copies of Why Girl Leave Home are known to exist.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Why Girls Leave Home.

• Why Girls Leave Home at the Internet Movie Database
• Why Girls Leave Home synopsis at AllMovie