Summary
A candied proscenium of nickelodeon dreams, Dorothy Gish’s Sheila pirouettes between sugar-kiln fumes and footlight ghosts, her waitress apron a makeshift tutu against the clatter of a confectioner’s haven. Richard Barthelmess’s heir-apparent spies her reckless jeté behind the counter, mistakes exuberance for invitation, and barges into her orbit sans ritual courtesy; she slaps him with silence, then surrenders to the same spark. Their clandestine union—inked in twilight behind the theater’s frayed velvet—shatters when patrician chandeliers glare down: the Ballantyne crest demands bloodlines as polished as its silver, so Sheila is archived as “ward,” her vows muzzled, her surname amputated. The farce unravels one gas-lit evening when she sneaks to her father’s moth-eaten vaudeville hall; the family’s chauffeured gaze catches her mid-chorus, precipitating a volcanic exit. Tom, torn between filial chains and marital gravity, storms the Moore garret; class calcifies, then cracks under the weight of two hearts beating rag-time against social politesse. Reconciliation arrives not as epiphany but exhaustion, a collective sigh that folds the gilded curtain back onto the sawdust—love acknowledged, if not absolved.
Synopsis
Daughter of impoverished vaudeville actor Lew Moore, Sheila ( Dorothy Gish ) works as a waitress in a chocolate manufacturer's candy shop, where she delights the customers with her tomboyish antics. Tom Ballantyne ( Richard Barthelmess ), the proprietor's son realizes that Sheila is excessively fond of dancing, asks her out without the benefit of a proper introduction, and she indignantly refuses. Soon afterwards, however, the two fall in love and secretly marry. Sheila's father insists that Tom's parents be informed, but when the young groom breaks the news, they react with such anger that Tom leaves home. Meanwhile, Sheila remains with the Ballantynes as their ward on the condition that she keep her marriage and her lineage a secret. One evening, Sheila decides to visit her father's theater but is discovered there by the Ballantynes. Infuriated, she vents her anger at the snobbish family and returns home with her father, but Tom follows her, and in the end, all of the parties are reconciled.
