Helen Jerome Eddy Movies

A bit more sedate and reserved than the usual Marion Davies vehicle, this 1927 adaptation of James M. Barrie's Quality Street turned out to be one of the star's best and most likeable films. Davies is cast as Phoebe, a pretty young thing who agrees to be faithful to her sweetheart Dr. Valentine Brown (Conrad Nagel) when he marches off to war. He returns several years later to discover that Phoebe has transformed into a prudish "old maid" (after all, she is nearly thirty!) To win back Dr. Brown's love, Phoebe pretends to be her own teenaged niece, with mirthsome results. Quality Street was attractively remade with Katharine Hepburn in 1936. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Padlocked began as a serial for Cosmopolitan magazine, written by Rex Beach. After only a couple of chapters were published, Famous Players Lasky bought the rights to the story, reportedly for $100,000. Why the studio would pay so much for this utterly common (at least for its era) narrative is a mystery. It involves a minister/reformer (Noah Beery) who is so self-righteous that he sends his own daughter (Lois Moran) to a reformatory. Rebelling against her father's unreasonable strictness, she runs off to the big city and becomes a cabaret performer. The reformer has to reform himself if he wants to save his daughter from perdition and big-city womanizers. This is not one of director Allan Dwan's more distinguished films. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Edward Everett Horton is well cast in this simple little romance, which was based on the play The Nest Egg by Anne Caldwell O'Day. When John Smith (John Roche) proposes to Hetty Gandy (Florence Vidor), she writes her acceptance on an egg which she leaves for him. Unfortunately, the egg goes into cold storage and he never receives it. Unaware of this, Hetty waits patiently for him and resists the advances of Norman Frisbie (Ed Brady). After five years she gets a wire from John Smith that says he is coming for her. Hetty is thrilled until she realizes that this is a different John Smith (Horton) -- he received the egg years late and is suing the distributor. Through a series of circumstances, Smith number two and Hetty wind up married anyway. Hetty, however, is disappointed to discover that her new husband is a hypochondriac who is full of neurotic habits and fears. Through Hetty's good nature, however, Smith manages to overcome his unpleasant behavior, and the couple are finally happy. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Child actor Wesley Barry (who was actually 16 when he made this picture) played in several Mary Pickford films and his starring role in this drama almost seems like a male version of any number of Pickford roles. Ben Applegate (Barry) is left in charge of the farm after the death of his father and he also has to take care of his two younger brothers, Joe (Spec O'Donnell) and Andy (Bruce Guerin). Their guardian, Uncle Grimes (George Nichols), wants the farm for himself so he sends them to an orphan asylum. Ben manages to rescue his brothers from the institution and they all head for the courthouse to battle for their rights. Along the way, Ben has made friends with Arthur Grant (Edward Burns) and his sweetheart, Hazel Warren (Helen Jerome Eddy). The couple decides to marry so they can adopt the Applegate boys, which nicely solves their dilemma. Barry was one of those rare actors whose career went comfortably from childhood to adulthood. After playing small roles in various films throughout the 1930s and 1940s, he became a director. William Beaudine, who was behind the megaphone for The Country Kid, was well-known in the silent era for his work with youngsters, but in the sound era he became more famous for making quickie, low-budget pictures. His ease with child actors came in handy once again when he began directing the Lassie television series. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

John Craig and Mary Eileen Anderson are childhood sweethearts who grow up in a small town in this melodrama taken from the poem by James Whitcomb Riley. John becomes the owner of the local paper and dedicates himself to the public good. His childhood friend Stuff Shade (Lloyd Whitlock) promotes an oil-speculation scheme in the paper. Soon the townsfolk are pooling their money in hopes of getting rich on the oil reserves. John discovers the scheme is all a ruse and tries to warn the people that they are being swindled. After the perpetrators are exposed, a gusher comes in that makes people rich. Pat Moore and Elliot Dexter play John as child and grown-up respectively. Mary Jane Irving and Helen Jerome portray Mary Eileen, and Turner Savage is the young Stuff Shade. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

This commonplace rural drama was purely filler for Helen Jerome Eddy, Harrison Ford, and the theaters that booked it. Jane Coleridge (Eddy) and Peter Jamison (Ford) are a pair of small town sweethearts. She's an old-fashioned girl and he's timid, but he manages to get up the nerve to propose and asks her to run away with him. Unfortunately, around the time Jane's supposed to meet him at the station her father dies and she has to take care of her brothers and sisters. Jamison believes she loves someone else and disappears for several years. When he finally returns, he has a three-year-old child in tow. But he explains that his wife has been unfaithful and he and Jane renew their romance. Then wife shows up and causes trouble by claiming that Jamison left her for Jane. The townsfolk, who don't know this woman at all, choose to believe her and ostracize Jane, whom they've known all their lives. The brand new dam breaks (in a very cheaply made miniature), washing the woman away. Jane tries to rescue her, which means Jamison has to leap in and save them both. The wife, conveniently, is dying, but before she breathes her last, she confesses that she was lying. Jane is cleared in the eyes of her fellow men and women, and she and Jamison can now wed. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Lizbeth Ann Palmer (Bebe Daniels) is the daughter of a Los Angeles millionaire who is traveling to New York to visit her aunt. On their arrival, she and her chaperone dine at a restaurant and Lizbeth Ann discovers that after she pays the bill she will have less than a dollar left. She makes a bet with the chaperone that she will be able to last out the week on just 75 cents and sets out to prove it. After an unsuccessful attempt to be a flower girl almost ends in her arrest, she catches the attention of Tod Rollins, a wealthy young man (Harry Myers). He convinces his mother (Frances Raymond) to take Lizbeth home with them, but along the way, they just happen to stop at her aunt's home. There, Lizbeth finds someone wearing her clothes and pretending to be her. It's Susie (Helen Jerome Eddy), the associate of Meadows the butler (Sidney Bracey) -- they're both crooks out to get their hands on some of the Palmer fortune. Lizbeth has fun going along with it all and helping the crooks along, until she gets the opportunity to expose them. At the end of the week, she has won her bet and won Rollins. This comedy seems like it would be tailor-made for Bebe Daniels, but she doesn't quite get the same opportunity to glow as she did in some of her other pictures. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Even though most of the actors are Caucasian, with the exception of star Sessue Hayakawa, this tragic romantic drama tries to remain true to the spirit of the Orient (or at least what white folks assumed it was like). Loey Tsing (Helen Jerome Eddy), the first love of Chan Wang (Hayakawa), is sold into slavery by her father. Although Chan marries another, he still loves Loey; only the birth of a son relieves his unhappiness. He adores little Chan Toy ("Sonny Boy" Warde) even though he finds nothing to like about his wife. Through his job running a lumber yard in San Francisco, Chan comes to the home of a wealthy Chinaman, Man Low Yek (Goro Kino). It turns out that he is Loey Tsing's master. When Man Low Yek sees the two together, he angrily swears revenge and invites Chan's unfaithful wife up to the house. She brings Chan Toy, and the frightened little boy falls out a window. Chan finds him crumbled and dead and is overcome with grief. Through the use of his wiles, he causes the death of both Man Low Yek and his wife. Then he and Loey Tsing return home to China together. This drama was based on the turn-of-the-century stage play by Francis Powers. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

Milly West (a miscast Ethel Clayton) is a dancer who has her heart bent on stardom. She has an admirer in country boy Tim Ennis (Walter Hiers), who lives in the same boarding house as she does, but she turns down his marriage proposal. During a performance, Milly is injured and can't get her strength back to get another gig. Hughie Ray (William Boyd), a pal of Tim's, comes to town and offers to take Milly back to the country to recuperate. She takes him up on his offer and after she has been there a while he proposes. But Milly has been told that her injury makes it impossible for her to bear children; since she knows that Ray loves kids she tries to leave him. Ray catches up with her and when he finds out why she ran away, he says he would be happy to adopt. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

For her first United Artists release, silent superstar Mary Pickford decided to play it safe, even though it galled her to do so. There are few characters she hated more than Pollyanna, the "glad girl," but she knew that her fans would show up in droves to see this picture, which was based on Eleanor Porter's novel. So she gritted her teeth, and at the worldly age of 27, dove into the role of the eternally cheerful 12-year-old orphan girl. After the death of her father (J. Wharton James), Pollyanna goes to live with her crotchety aunt Polly Harrington (Katherine Griffith). Her father taught her to be happy at all times, and Pollyanna spreads this saccharine philosophy throughout the New England village where she now lives. The richest man in town adores little Pollyanna, and obligingly adopts the girl's favorite playmate, a little orphan boy. Even when Pollyanna is hurt while saving a child from an onrushing car, her happy demeanor never fades. The doctor (Herbert Prior) who attends her is her maiden aunt's old suitor, and they are brought together once more as Pollyanna learns how to walk again. Pickford's favorite scene was the one moment when Pollyanna gives full reign to out-and-out naughtiness. Pollyanna captures a fly and sweetly asks it if it would like to go to heaven. Assuming the answer to be yes, she smashes the insect and beams, "Well, you have!" Incidentally, this scene was not in the Porter book; most likely it came straight from the star's active mind. This picture was one of Pickford's out-and-out blockbuster successes. ~ Janiss Garza, All Movie Guide

One More American represented one more superb "ethnic" portrayal by the versatile George Beban. The star plays feisty Italian immigrant Luigi Riccardo, the eternal thorn in the side of New York political boss Regan (H.B. Carpenter). Fed up with Riccardo's interference in his graft-grabbing, Regan pulls a few strings and arranges for Riccardo and his family to be shipped back to Europe. But our hero's cause is championed by muckraking newspaper reporter Bump Rundle (Raymond Hatton), who takes on and exposes the Regan political machine. The film was based on The Land of the Free, a play by William C. DeMille, who also directed the screen version. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Abstaining from his usual "Italian" characterization, George Beban played a roistering French Canadian in Paramount's Jules of the Strong Heart. Outwardly a brutish bully, lumberjack Jules Lemaire (Jules Lemaire) is actually a big bowl of porrage and proves it by adopting the orphaned child of an old friend. He also nearly lays down his own life to rescue the father of heroine Joy Farnsworth (Helen Jerome Eddy) from a lynch mob. While many a previous Beban vehicle ended tragically, Jules of the Strong Heart concludes on an upbeat note, as Jules proudly claims Joy for his bride. This was one of the better directorial efforts of Donald Crisp, whose films were generally pale imitations of Griffith or DeMille. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide