A PAIR OF SILK STOCKINGS
Starring Constance Talmadge and Harrison Ford
VARIETY
July 26, 1918
Breezy, whimsical story from Cyril Harcourt's play of the same name in which Constance Talmadge is starred. Select could hardly have chosen better. It gives her the opportunity to play a style of role which suits her best, that of an attractive young married woman who inadvertently is always getting herself into compromising positions and coming out of them flying.
"A Pair of Silk Stockings" is English, very English, and is funny, but the screen version could have been made more amusing if more trouble had been taken in writing the titles. Whoever did this made a very poor job, and the efforts to be "quite English" are ludicrous.
Outside of Miss Talmadge and possibly Harrison Ford the members of the cast lack type, and are altogether too American in makeup.
As a production it leaves little to be desired. The photography, done by James C Van Trees, is clear and sharp, and the locations are good, the exteriors appearing English. Director Walter Edwards seems to have caught the atmosphere of the British country house with its gay week-end parties.
Thomas Persee takes the part of Sir John Gower rather well, whose wife was a former barmaid (never of the Criterion or Spiers and Pond variety). Louis Willoughby as Captain Jack Bagnall falls lamentably as an English officer. He lacks that unmistakable poise of the British Army man which marks them even in civilian clothes. The other members of the cast are but fair.
With it all, "A Pair of Silk Stockings" should make an amusing summer program feature in communities far removed from Broadway.
Video source: Great Lakes Cinephile Society