Mary Pickford, then twenty-five, plays eleven-year-old Gwendolyn, a
wealthy girl whose parents are too busy with money and society to
notice her. Raised by servants and kept at a distance from other
children, Gwendolyn finally gets sent to school, where a lonely life
collides with playground cruelty. A near-fatal dose of sleeping
medicine tips the film into a celebrated dream sequence in which
director Maurice Tourneur lets his visual imagination run loose. It
was one of Pickford's biggest hits and the film that proved audiences
would accept her as a child well into adulthood, paving the way for
Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and Pollyanna. Made in 1917, it is in the
public domain.
Drama · Silent
