Our Dancing Daughters

(Harry Beaumont, US 1928, 83 min., 16mm)

Parties | Silent Tuesdays. Joan Crawford’s whirlwind performance in this film (her first major role) now seems the epitome of Bright Young Things of the Jazz Age—bootleg hooch, good lovin’, and dancing, dancing, dancing without a thought for tomorrow. Our Dancing Daughters is not only a reflection of the Roaring Twenties, but a kind of unconscious valedictory to the period, shifting from wild parties to remorseful melodrama in a way that foreshadows the effects of the impending stock market crash of 1929 upon American society. Live piano by Philip C. Carli.