WILD AND WOOLLY
starring Douglas Fairbanks and Eileen Percy
VARIETY
June 22, 1917
Douglas Fairbanks in his second "personally supervised" Artcraft production, "Wild and Woolly," by Anita Loos, directed by John Emerson, to be released June 24, is a riotously successful entertainment, if the laughter it elicited from the trade paper reviewers at a private projection room showing can be taken as a criterion. It is a typical Fairbanks role, provided one can stretch one's imagination to the point where "Doug" will be accepted as a grown up young man - the son of a new York millionaire - who believes the west is still infested with train robbers, stage coaches and every hour shooting affrays. But as it is farcical entertainment pure and simple, the depiction of a young man still carried away with dime novel ideas must be overlooked. Then it is redeemed by the farce developing into the real thing, and the enthusiastic young easterner become a genuine hero, performing such stunts as lassoing a bad man escaping on horseback and firing innumerable revolver shots without every hitting the hero. You've got to laugh when the hero rides in the midst of a bunch of drunken Indians, swings the girl on the back of his horse and makes a getaway without being shot. The plot to the five-reeler is that the boy's father sends him west to investigate a railroad proposition, and the natives, anxious to show him a good time, transform their ordinarily peaceful little village into a lawless community, loading the youth's guns with blank cartridges and permitting him to fire away at any and everything. It is all so utterly absurd that you must laugh in spite of yourself. And then, having done so, and come to a realization that you "fell for" it, it dawns upon you that you've enjoyed a very pleasant innocent hour, in spite of yourself. And that being so, it's a good picture.
For more information, see "Wild and Woolly" as our "Feature of the Month"