Bessie Love and Harrison Ford star in this brisk comedy about a family that travels west to California to pay the back taxes on their house. Bessie is the brains in the family, and Ford is a sometime boy friend. Ugly cars and the desolate countryside of 1927 America make this an amazing capsule of long-ago America.
May Robson is the mother, Erwin Connelly is the father, and Junior Coghlan is the kid. John Patrick plays the "he-beauty contest" winner on his way to crash Hollywood. There's also a stereotypical Jewish junk man and his son, Moe, but no credits. The VHS copy I have is rough and the music is god-awful classical stuff tacked on. This might have been a better film in 1927 because Bessie Love and Harrison Ford were MGM stars and this film is a Cecil B. DeMille production directed by--of all people--Alan Hale! Also actress/scenarist Zelda Sears was involved. This must have hit just as talkies changed Hollywood forever. Bessie Love would win an Oscar nomination the following year for The Broadway Melody, and May Robson would win an Oscar nomination for Lady for a Day. Harrison Ford, however, would make a couple talkies and then retire from films in 1932.
May Robson is the mother, Erwin Connelly is the father, and Junior Coghlan is the kid. John Patrick plays the "he-beauty contest" winner on his way to crash Hollywood. There's also a stereotypical Jewish junk man and his son, Moe, but no credits. The VHS copy I have is rough and the music is god-awful classical stuff tacked on. This might have been a better film in 1927 because Bessie Love and Harrison Ford were MGM stars and this film is a Cecil B. DeMille production directed by--of all people--Alan Hale! Also actress/scenarist Zelda Sears was involved. This must have hit just as talkies changed Hollywood forever. Bessie Love would win an Oscar nomination the following year for The Broadway Melody, and May Robson would win an Oscar nomination for Lady for a Day. Harrison Ford, however, would make a couple talkies and then retire from films in 1932.