Applause

(Rouben Mamoulian, US 1929, 80 min., 35mm)

Our silent film series always ends with an early sound film to demonstrate the changes in the industry. Here, Helen Morgan plays Kitty Darling, a burlesque star with dreams of Broadway. Pregnant and with a husband on death row, Kitty decides to send her daughter to a convent school to focus on her career. Years later, when the daughter, April (Joan Peers), returns and joins her mother’s act, she must confront her mother’s declining career, the advances of her mother’s boyfriend, Hitch Nelson (Fuller Mellish, Jr.), and a potential future for herself away from the stage - and her family.