After a couple of years of lavish costume dramas ("Rosita" and "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall") Mary Pickford yielded to incessant public demand and returned to "waif" roles. Photoplay ran a story in 1925 (when Mary was over 32) which asked the public to nominate the roles they would like to see Mary play. The response was overwhelming. "Cinderella" received the top number of votes, followed by "Anne of Green Gables" (Mary Miles Minter had already starred in a version), "Alice in Wonderland" and "Heidi". So even though the rest of the world was experiencing the roaring twenties with flappers, bobbed hair and crazy dances, Mary was forced into one last "urchin" role, "Little Annie Rooney", taken from the popular song.
Kid Kelly's gang is waging an unrelenting war against Annie Rooney (Pickford) and her band of street urchins. I thought the fight was pretty exhilarating (if a trifle drawn out) - bricks being thrown, Annie hiding in a chimney and then falling off the roof - it was all in fun!! Meanwhile Kid Kelly's older brother Joe (William Haines) is the leader of the big gang that hangs around the streets but he has a sense of fair play, he likes the gang members to help their mothers and breaks up a fight between his kid brother and Annie and even sings her the song she hates so much just to rile her up!!
There is a lot of light hearted horse play, a horse bolts during the "war of the bricks" and of course there is the usual "let's put on a show to raise money" where everything goes wrong. Which makes the last half hour all the more poignant. Annie's father is the local policeman and when he is killed during a fight at the local dance hall her brother goes gunning for Joe who Tony (the real killer) claims was responsible for Constable Rooney's death.
I thought the movie did drag on and could have done with some tighter editing, there was a bit too much horseplay and the kid's show wasn't all that funny - also the ending where Annie is concerned about the "blood transfusion" was a bit overlong as well. Apparently according to Mary's niece, Gwynne, Mary had a lot of trouble getting the slum kids to fight with her. They were real little kids and Mary was, after all, the head of the studio and they just wouldn't do it. Another actor who benefited enormously from this movie was William Haines. Up to this time his film career had been uneventful but Mary chose him to be her leading man and by the time he got back to MGM, his career had taken off. Playing Mamie, one of the gang girls, was Vola Vale, one of the great beauties of the teen era.
However old Mary Pickford was, part of her charm and ability, to me, was that she seemed to know how to behave like a real child and that is what made "Little Annie Rooney" stand out.
Kid Kelly's gang is waging an unrelenting war against Annie Rooney (Pickford) and her band of street urchins. I thought the fight was pretty exhilarating (if a trifle drawn out) - bricks being thrown, Annie hiding in a chimney and then falling off the roof - it was all in fun!! Meanwhile Kid Kelly's older brother Joe (William Haines) is the leader of the big gang that hangs around the streets but he has a sense of fair play, he likes the gang members to help their mothers and breaks up a fight between his kid brother and Annie and even sings her the song she hates so much just to rile her up!!
There is a lot of light hearted horse play, a horse bolts during the "war of the bricks" and of course there is the usual "let's put on a show to raise money" where everything goes wrong. Which makes the last half hour all the more poignant. Annie's father is the local policeman and when he is killed during a fight at the local dance hall her brother goes gunning for Joe who Tony (the real killer) claims was responsible for Constable Rooney's death.
I thought the movie did drag on and could have done with some tighter editing, there was a bit too much horseplay and the kid's show wasn't all that funny - also the ending where Annie is concerned about the "blood transfusion" was a bit overlong as well. Apparently according to Mary's niece, Gwynne, Mary had a lot of trouble getting the slum kids to fight with her. They were real little kids and Mary was, after all, the head of the studio and they just wouldn't do it. Another actor who benefited enormously from this movie was William Haines. Up to this time his film career had been uneventful but Mary chose him to be her leading man and by the time he got back to MGM, his career had taken off. Playing Mamie, one of the gang girls, was Vola Vale, one of the great beauties of the teen era.
However old Mary Pickford was, part of her charm and ability, to me, was that she seemed to know how to behave like a real child and that is what made "Little Annie Rooney" stand out.