SUDS
Starring Mary Pickford
PHOTOPLAY
September 1920
Miss Pickford's Amanda Afflick, the pathetic drudge of "Suds," is the better performance of the two. Her histrionic instincts are truer than Doug's, and she has a better sense of character. But I found the picture not particularly good entertainment. The pathos, for one thing, is laid on a bit thick, forcing the suggestion of its unreality. It is all artistically screened and beautifully pictured; the dream of the little laundry girl, who sees in the clouds of suds that rise from her tub visions of the grand young gentleman who is one day to raise her from her lowly estate, is amusingly set in the narrative and kept nicely in key with the slightly extravagant tone of the story, and the broader comedy incidents of Amanda's turning her room over to Lavender, the poor old delivery horse she saved from the glue factory, delight the children. But "Suds" is an effort to compromise between the real and the unreal, and to me such compromises are never entirely successful. Little Mary proves herself a fine little actress, however, and perhaps that is triumph enough for one feature. Neither curls nor smirks nor Pollyanic aids to sympathy are dragged in to help her, nor is she granted the solace of an altogether happy ending. Jack Dillon did the directing, and the supporting cast is competent. The story was taken from the one-act play, "'Op o' My Thumb," which Maude Adams played a dozen or fifteen years ago.