Lights of Old Broadway (1925) User Reviews (2)

The Great Marion Davies

[drednm · 31 January 2009]

THE LIGHTS OF OLD Broadway stars the great Marion Davies in a dual role. She plays a set of twins separated at birth. One becomes Anne, a society girl in New York; the other is Fely, an Irish toughie who somehow lands on the musical stage. She meets the suave Dirk (Conrad Nagel) who is Anne's half brother. Anne's family also owns the slum in which the Irish families live.

As with Davies' terrific LITTLE OLD NEW YORK, this story is also set against an historical background, involving the story of the coming of electricity to the city. So along with show biz figures like Tony Pastor, Weber and Fields, etc we also see Teddy Roosevelt and Thomas Edison. Anne's family has a lot of money in gas, but somehow Fely's father has stock in electricity. The snooty family tries to keep Nagel away from the low-born Fely.

Davies is terrific playing the blonde Fely (she does a few stage numbers) and the dark-haired Anne. Davies make a solid comic entrance as Fely (minus a tooth) balancing herself on a stack of tables and chairs and defying the mob the city kids.

Nagel is fine as the hero. Both Karl Dane and George K. Arthur show up in small parts.

Wonderful vehicle for Davies! Loads of fun, well done on all accounts.

[mmipyle · 9/10 · 19 June 2021]

"Lights of Old Broadway" (1925) stars Marion Davies and Conrad Nagel. Davies plays twins whose mother dies on the way over to America on a ship, and now the twins are separated by being given to two different families, one a very poor Irish immigrating family and the other a very wealthy American banking family. Based on the stage play "The Merry Wives of Gotham", this is told in rip-snorting style, with Davies as the Irish lassie now a star in an earthy burlesque (not strip!) joint in a tough section of NYC around 1870. She's also (as her twin) the respectable, slightly uppity daughter of banker Frank Currier and his wife Julia Swayne Gordon. Eventually the two meet, of course, but do they ever figure out who they are? Is it necessary that they do? It's the DNA and how it makes the girls behave when together that counts!

Conrad Nagel plays the son of banker Currier, and he falls madly in love with the poor squatter, the Irish lass Fely O'Tandy. Of course this starts a rumpus which drives the wheels of the film; that, and the fact that Currier wishes to drive off the squatters, all the Irish and other immigrant souls who've squatted on a certain piece of land. Of course, too, the O'Tandy's live on that land.

Wonderful bit of hokum! It's loads of fun watching Davies and her Irish father, Charles McHugh, battle their way through all of the plotting before them. This new release from Kino-Lorber is superb! Tinted, with at least one handschiegl scene and Technicolor in a couple of others, this is an absolutely beautiful restoration. Very highly recommended!

For the record, you'll love seeing Teddy Roosevelt as a young boy, Tom Edison trying to market his "sound machine", and all the references to lighting the streets of the downtown city with electric arc lamps as opposed to gas. The last figures prominently in the plot of the film. Tony Pastor and Weber and Fields are also integrated into the plot. If you look closely, you'll see Karl Dane, George K. Arthur, and even Mary Gordon in small or insignificant parts. Matthew Betz has one scene as the leader of a plot against those who would move the squatters from their property.