Little Annie Rooney (Silent) (DVD)

Silent screen legend Mary Pickford stars in this moving melodrama of the New York slums. "Little" Annie Rooney is a rebellious street kid, watched over by her policeman father. The tough Irish cop disapproves of the girl flirting with Joe Kelley, a small-time crook. During a dance hall shootout, Officer Rooney is tragically killed. The police arrest Joe for the murder, but Annie believes him to be innocent. If the brave girl can't find her father's real killer, her boyfriend will be sent to the electric chair...

Little Annie Rooney marked Mary Pickford's return to glory after her previous films, Rosita (1923) and Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924) had underperformed at the box office. Audiences had been unhappy with Mary playing adult roles; in fact, Photoplay magazine received 20,000 letters demanding the actress go back to playing children. So in Little Annie Rooney Mary plays a 12-year-old, but at the time of production, Pickford was 32! She was actually eight years older than her leading man, William Haines, who had recently made an impression in Columbia's The Midnight Express (1924). Afterwards, the handsome actor had an unbroken string of hits at MGM, including Brown of Harvard (1926), Show People (1928) and Speedway (1929), until his homosexuality was discovered by studio head Louis B. Mayer. Rather than deny his lifestyle, Haines retired from Hollywood, spending the next forty years running a thriving interior design business with his life partner, Jimmie Shields. Haines remains a gay icon to this day. One of the highest grossing pictures of 1925, Little Annie Rooney successfully restored Mary Pickford's status as "America's Sweetheart". It even spun off into a popular King Features comic strip that lasted until 1966, though Pickford never played the character in another film.

• silent