Somebody's Widow

Screenwriter Cullen Landis and his secretary, Billy Bevan, come to the seashore to work on a serial. After finishing the next-to-last chapter, they take a walk on the beach. So intent on their plotting are they, they bump into a bevy of beautiful girls. One of them, Billie Rhodes, says she can have Landis at her feet by the end of the day. She dresses in widows' weeds and cries her eyes out, attracting Landis' sympathy and love. But one of her companions (who looks to me like Una Merkel, who was 10 when this was made) tries to spoil her game by telling Bevan what is going on.

Most people think that silent comedy was all slapstick and chases. Certainly, when Bevan went to work for Mack Sennett, he proved himself adept at taking a pratfall. Here, though, he is called on to act, and he, along with Landis and Miss Rhodes, does a fine job. As, indeed, he would do after sound came in and he made his living as a supporting and bit player for many years.

Miss Rhodes was a practical woman. She left the movies in 1925 after her husband died and film roles dried up. She returned to her work as a singer, and made a good living for herself. She died in 1988 at the age of 93.