HAPPINESS
starring Laurette Taylor, Pat O'Malley and Hedda Hopper
MOVIE WEEKLY
March 22, 1924
Laurette Taylor has for many years been considered a thoroughly able actress. She has studied her craft diligently and long enough to know it in detail. Perhaps that's why, with the aid of a sympathetic cameraman, she makes such a remarkable very-young female. The average aforesaid,Young Female is content with just an occasional flirt of a head, shake of a thigh, and jerk of an impertinent hand. No so Miss Taylor! With magnificent muscular coordination, she keeps everything going at once. She is the composite of all stage and screen Young Folks. She is a very whirlwind of mannerisms, cuteness and enraging crudities.
In "Happiness," the cinema version of her husband's play, Miss Taylor -- and she is the whole show -- creates one of the most definite and unforgettable characters in many moons of movies. As a pert little New York shopgirl, she is truly remarkable. We have never encountered anyone who, to our taste, was more remarkably unpleasant and nerve-racking than that little girl of Miss Taylor's creation.
There is a large group cluttering the universe who mistake wretched manners for humor, stupidity for wit, and commonness for "good, clean fun." These will find their summum bonum in "Happiness."
"Jenny Wreay," Miss Taylor's character, is one of those wretched little things who get on in the world by the sheer energy of their personalities. They are the sort who trip up tired policemen, throw snowballs at top hats, and slap gentlemen's faces.
Of course, in the picture she jumps and bounces her way to happiness, leaving in her wake an oozy excrescence of platitudinous bunk along the lines of "the dull are happy," "the virtuous grow old," etc. It's fine.