“Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” is charmingly fun and a very pleasant Mary Pickford film. But Milestone makes this DVD release worth owning with the addition of the 1911 short “The Dream”. Overall, “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection” is definitely worth owning and having in your silent film collection!
Images courtesy of © 1999 Mary Pickford Foundation. All Rights Reserved.
TITLE: Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection
YEAR OF SHORT: 1918
DURATION: 67 minutes
DVD INFORMATION: B&W and Color Tinted
RATED: Not Rated
COMPANY: Milestone Film & Video/Image Entertainment
Released Dated: 1999
Directed by Marshall Neilan
Based on the Novel by Belle K. Maniates
Written by Frances Marion
Produced by Adolph Zukor
Cinematography by Walter Stradling
Art Direction by Wilfred Buckland
Music by Mont Alto Orchestra
The Dream
Directed by Thomas H. Ince and George Loane Tucker
Scenario by Herbert Brenon
Starring:
Mary Pickford as Amarilly Jenkins
William Scott as Terry McGowen
Kate Price as Mrs. Americus Jenkins
Ida Waterman as Mrs. David Phillips
Norman Kerry as Gordon Phillips
Fred Goodwins as Johnny Walker
Margaret Landis as Colette King
Tom Wilson as “Snitch” McCarthy
The Dream
Starring Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, William Robert Daly and Charles Arling
A widow’s eldest daughter, Amarilly, is the belle of Clothes-Line Alley, an Irish neighborhood near San Francisco’s Chinatown. There she gets a job selling cigarettes at the club where her boyfriend works as a waiter. One night a handsome socialite, Gordon Phillips, and his friends come to the club for a night of carousing. A fight erupts, injuring Phillips. Amarilly takes him to her flat where she and her mother take care of him. In gratitude, he hires Amarilly to clean his apartment. In time, Phillips finds himself falling for the young girl. His aunt disapproving of this situation, invites the Amarilly family to one of her posh social gatherings to show her nephew what a mistake he is making. Sure enough, the event is met with disastrous results convincing Phillips that she is not for him. In the end, the girl returns to the alley with her family, where her loyal beau awaits with news of his great new job.
Charmingly fun and a pleasant Pickford film worth having in your silent film collection!
In 1918, Mary Pickford was still “America’s Sweetheart” and the most popular actress on the big screen.  Since 1909, the actress was known for her dedication to her work and a decade later, by the time she began working on “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” she had 220 films under her belt.
“Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” revolves around Pickford’s character Amarilly Jenkins, the eldest daughter of an Irish family who lives in the lower-class Clothes-Line Alley where her mother (played by Kate Price) raises her and her four brothers alone and tries to make ends meet with her laundry business.
Amarilly is a street smart young woman who is dating Terry McGowen (played by William Scott) and the two have been dating for three years. But within those three years, they still have not kissed and Terry is still waiting for that day when his beloved will finally kiss him.
The two are happily in love but when a fire breaks out at Amarilly’s job, she is blamed for the fire and is fired immediately from her job. Now jobless, Amarilly worries about the family income but fortunately her boyfriend Terry has come to the rescue and gets her a job selling cigarette at the local club.
On the first night at the job, Amarilly meets the dashing and very rich Gordon Phillips (played by Norman Kerry), the son of the well-respected Mrs. David Phillips (played by Ida Waterman). Terry is a bit jealous of the rich Gordon talking to his girlfriend but he tries to be cool with it.
Meanwhile, the biggest snitch of Clothes-Line Alley, “Snitch” McCarthy (played by Tom Wilson)Â is looking to cause some trouble and tells a group of guys that Gordon and his friends are trying to pickup on their women and a fight breaks out at the club.
With chaos taking place at the club, a beaten up Gordon stumbles out of the club and Amarilly goes to help him. She takes him to her home where she and her mother can help heal him but right there watching is “Snitch” McCarthy who begins telling people that Amarilly has cozied up with the rich Gordon Phillips.  To make things worse, Terry goes to visit Amarilly and finds Gordon at her place being taken care of her and Amarilly’s mother and thinking maybe the two are together. Terry, who is jealous, bolts and leaves.
Grateful for the help that Amarilly and her mother has done for him, he offers Amarilly a job to clean his art studio and also for his mother to do his laundry and needless to say, both Amarilly and her mother are grateful. But not so grateful is her boyfriend Terry who is now hearing rumors throughout Clothes-Line Alley of Amarilly now being together with Gordon. Jealous and confused and without letting Amarilly give an explanation of why Gordon was at her place, he breaks up with her.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Phillips and her female members of the “The Society of the Betterment of Humanity” are meeting and want to work on an experiment. What if they can take someone young and poor and try to make her into a debutante. With Scarlet Fever breaking out in Clothes-Line Alley and the area being quarantined, Gordon offers her to stay at his mother’s place and immediately Mrs. Phillips and the women have chosen Amarilly to be their test example.
Will Amarilly last at the Phillips home?  Can she be a debutante? And what about her ex-boyfriend Terry? Will he ever come to his senses?
For the 10-minute short “The Dream” which is included as a special feature, Mary Pickford plays the part of a loving wife whose husband is having an affair and doing his own thing when he’s gone. Mary’s character cooks for him but the man comes home just to be difficult and mean to his wife, throwing the chair around and treating her wrong.
But then we see a transformation of Mary Pickford’s character, from the loving wife to the trash-talking, smoking and rude and crude woman as she destroys the home and laughs in her husband’s face and leaves him for a rich man.
The husband has realized that had mistreated his wife, now her husband wants to get her back.
VIDEO:
“Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection” is presented in 4:3 and is presented in B&W and color tinted while the short “The Dream” is presented in B&W.  Because this is an older DVD release, most DVD’s at the time were known for its combing and in this case, you can see some combing if you are watching and pausing on a smaller monitor or a computer. But I didn’t notice the combing watching it on my larger television.
Quality-wise, “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” looks good for a film that is 92-years-old. Granted, not sure how much more detail would be evident through a new remaster using modern DVD technology in 2010 vs. what was used to restore teh film back in 2009 but overall, it looks good for an older film. You do see occasional scratches and dust but it does not hurt the film or prevent your enjoyment of it.
Surprisingly, the much older 1911 short film “The Dream” which is 99-years-old looks fantastic. Granted, the film has its share of dust and scratches but the blacks are nice and deep and the contrast is very good for a film this old. I was quite happy to see this film included on this DVD.
AUDIO & INTERTITLES:
“Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection” features a chamber score by Mont Alto Orchestra. The chamber score works really well for the film and the piano performance by Marco Antonio De Almeida (based on music by Ernesto Nazareth) for “The Dream” is niceley done.
The Intertitles for “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” is easy to read, while “The Dream” does have its intertitle breaks but with very little verbage as the story is self-explanatory.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection” comes with the 1911 film “The Dream” (restored and was recently found back in 1999).
As a silent film fan and having a good amount of silent films in my collection, I’ve come to the point in my life where I really want to see more Mary Pickford films but unfortunately, not many are available on DVD and if they are, some companies have done a terrible job by reusing music and thus the music doesn’t match up with the film.
But one thing people can count on is quality releases from Milestone Film & Video and with their collaboration with Image Entertainment, there have been less than a dozen solid Mary Pickford releases on DVD and I’m quite grateful to that these have been released and hopefully within my lifetime, I will be able to see more.
But when it comes to Mary Pickford films, I found “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley” to be another entertaining film and as usual with Pickford films, her characters are typically of the lower-class and I would imagine during the teens, these films reached out to many viewers who were not rich and for some, Mary Pickford characters were almost heroic in nature as she was always a person who had streetsmarts or really took the initiative in getting something done. In this film, Amarilly works hard for her family, she definitely has street smarts, but also has a kind and loving heart to her family and also her boyfriend Terry.
There are some parts of the plot that probably could have been trimmed from the movie. Typically scenes that dealt with her four younger brothers as we see in one scene, her brother getting in a fight with another. The brothers are rather insignificant to the actual plot but out of nowhere, we do have scene of one of the brothers fighting with another boy and perhaps the film was experimenting on action as there we do get a brawl earlier in the film.
But if anything, the melodramatic film shows her versatility as she was playing many roles of a younger teenager or girl but once in awhile we are able to see roles where she plays a woman in love.
But I also found the IMP short “The Dream” to be quite intriguing because the film was written by Mary Pickford and feature and her husband Owen Moore, a film created the same year the two were secretly married to each other. And a film that probably foreshadowed the couple’s doomed marriage.
But as simple as the short film was, what makes it work is Mary Pickford’s performance. From the loving wife to the transformation to a rude and crude woman, Pickford was quite charming to watch in this film and a wonderful inclusion to this DVD.
Overall, “Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley – The Milestone Collection” is a solid release for a Pickford film. It may not be her best film but it was entertaining and the fact that you do get the 1911 short makes this DVD release well worth it. And considering that there aren’t many Mary Pickford films available on DVD, I’m just grateful to The Milestone Collection for releasing this DVD and hopefully we will see more Pickford releases in the near future.
