Davies goes to live with the Boston connivers so she can inherit her step-father's money so she can pay back a widow he bilked.
The Boston family try everything to get Davies to break the terms of the will, including letting her run around with Ted Barnacle (Matt Moore) who is a friend of wealthy Jimmy Winthrop (Norman Kerry). But they don't know that he's just a beard and that Davies is actually meeting Kerry (and his mother). Meanwhile Kerry pretends to be interested in the mousy Boston daughter.
Kerry manipulates the stock of some worthless copper mine the step-father owned. Of course the Boston buzzards think they're going to be very rich as they watch the stock soar and continue to try to get rid of Davies. But Kerry is only manipulating the stock so the old widow can get back her money.
It all comes to a crashing conclusion when the Boston bunch are confronted by Kerry and his mother and Kerry admits his stock deal.
Davies here is 22 and incredibly pretty with her frizzy teens hairdo. She also has a few nice light moments with her Boston terrier (a sneak peak at her screwball persona in the late silent era). This is the pre-Hollywood Davies that Hearst fell in love with (Davies was on Broadway in a series of shows from 1915-20). Kerry and Moore both have fun with their characters.
The ending seems a big rushed. The print is very VERY good with only a minute of minor deterioration. All the reel change info is intact (5 reels) and the intertitles very clean (and funny, written by John Emerson and Anita Loos). Well directed by Allan Dwan.
This is not a lost or forgotten masterpiece, but shows us a very young Marion Davies, already in full command of screen acting and as always, she's better than history has told us. Very charming.
