Good References (1920)
(Roy William Neill, US 1920, approx. 60 min., 35mm)
UCLA Festival of Preservation Tour | Silent Tuesday. Constance Talmadge, one of the silent era’s most popular comedic stars, plays a down-on-her-luck working girl who impersonates a friend to take a job as secretary to an elderly socialite. Things immediately start going downhill when she is tasked to introduce a ne’er-do-well nephew to high society—but ends up bailing him out of a string of scandals instead. Long considered a lost film, an original nitrate print of Good References surfaced at the Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague, which was provided to UCLA for this restoration. The Czech intertitles have been translated back into English and re-created in the style of the original production. Preservation funded by the Packard Humanities Institute, Barbara Roisman Cooper, and Martin M. Cooper.
Preceded by Tramp Strategy (Alice Guy, US 1911, approx. 12 min., 35mm, silent w/Dutch intertitles), a short about a mischievous vagabond who infiltrates a bourgeois household. Funding provided by New York Women in Film & Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Trust and the Film Foundation.
Live piano by Philip C. Carli.