Edward F. Cline | Hearts and Flowers / 1919

the flower girl’s loves

by Douglas Messerli

 

Mack Sennett (screenwriter), Edward F. Cline (director) Hearts and Flowers / 1919

 

Edward F. Cline’s Hearts and Flowers (1919) is a shaggy-dog tale that in its short 23 minutes takes off in so many different directions that we’re not sure where to focus. But as silent-film historian Lea Stans argues, it certainly does have its charms, although I’m not sure I totally agree with her assessment at the brilliance of its central figures, an orchestra leader (Ford Sterling), the Prune Magnate’s Daughter whom he attempts to romance (Phyllis Haver), an awkward, clumsy, and not-so-attractive flower girl (Louise Fazenda), an indignant nobleman the Prune Magnate’s Daughter is apparently dating (Billy Armstrong), and a tramp without Chaplin’s dapper spirit, the flower girl’s sweetheart (Jack Ackroyd).

     Stans argues:

 

“This is one of those shorts that’s often dismissed as “disjointed” or “slow in the beginning” or what have you. But really, I think that’s just another case of folks being too quick to dismiss anything that wasn’t made by one of the Big Four, God bless their irreplaceable masterpiece-making souls. Hearts and Flowers isn’t a candidate for the Criterion Collection, true, but like many Sennett products you sense that sincere effort went into it. There’s fun touches like the melodramatic character names given in the opening title card (Ford is “a leader of men”) and the way the audience reacts to the orchestra’s performance. Each main character is given a decent time to develop their characters and perform their “bits of business” for the camera, with the crazier slapstick saved to give the end a burst of energy.

     Ford Sterling is inspired, as he usually is in so many goofy ways. He had long since abandoned his super-duper-broad Dutch character, and playing a debonair society type seems all too easy for him. Louise is also delightful, playing a type of character that she was known for–a naive girl who is “just keen” on a man, even though he has zero interest in her. And Phyllis steals the show with her male impersonation (although Louise does manage to hold her own with a guffaw-worthy reaction to her former sweetheart showing up).”

     Even if all this were true, however, Mack Sennett’s scenario is so stuffed with gags—an Airdale dog singing along with the orchestra, one of the nightclub audience members pea-shooting the ego of self-inflated conductor, the pratfalls of our flower girl heroine, and, for absolutely no reason at  all accept to entertain the horny heterosexual men attending the movie by a bevy of Mack Sennett bathing beauties playing American football on the beach—that we keep forgetting, just as does the orchestra leader, the shallow tale at the center of it all.

      It all starts with the conductor (call him Ford, after the actor who portrays him) attempting to court the Prune Magnate’s Daughter (let’s call her Phyllis), easily pulling her away from the nobleman with whom she’s arrived and dancing with her cheek-to-cheek. The only thing that stands, or in this case sits, in his path is the infatuated flower girl (Louise) who, squatting at the next table, slowly walks her chair over to the loving couple in order to plant a kiss on Ford’s cheek. Even his describing her as having the “grace of a hippopotamus without its charm” doesn’t seem to faze her. And when he arranges for management to throw her out, she skips back for another go-round before leaving.

    Meanwhile, the spurned nobleman, attempting to get even, drops a scrap of paper by Ford’s feet announcing that a true heiress is the flower girl, whose father has left her a fortune. As quickly as he can put on his hat, delivered up to him just for the occasion, he exits the room to find Louise in the lobby where she works, her sweetheart tramp hanging out nearby

   Within seconds he’s kicked the tramp away and swept her off and back into the club where he attempts to dance with her, she capable only of a kind of jig.

 

   Phyllis, in a fury, goes to her room, stalked, she notices her earlier nobleman boyfriend bearing flowers. She attempts to hide, to enter the room across the hall, but eventually scurries back and retiring behind her dressing screen, reappears as a dapper young man, meeting the nobleman at the door, he utterly confused to see a man exiting Phyllis’ room.

      Phil immediately demonstrates “his” attraction to Louise, toying with her affections so sincerely that she, so the title card tells us, suddenly feels like a vampire who obviously is attractive to all men. Phil even kisses her, delighting her for an instant, until the tramp, she kissing him on the forehead and sending him away, as she turns for yet another kiss from Phil.      

     Ford now maneuvers his wealthy pigeon to the beach with Louise on his arm, hoping perhaps to lure her into the dark chamber of a rock formation, Louise insisting she prefers the beach, where Phyllis and several of her female friends romp in sapphic delight.

      Ford enjoys the eye candy, particularly when Phyllis runs, encouraging him to temporarily abandon Louise, Ford hinting to Phyllis that he is simply working to find a way to fund their future activities.

    Once more Louise’s tramp shows up, she briefly fondling him in the hope of arousing Ford’s jealousy. No luck, she must break up his conversation with Phyllis if he’s going to meet her family as promised.

      The family get-together proves to Ford, as nothing else has, that he has made the wrong choice in agreeing to marry Louise. Her brothers are monstrous bruisers, Pete, Al, and Harry, each one worst that the next, all out to make sure their sister “gets a good deal.” Before the ceremony can even begin they start a brawl over Pete’s pipe, Maw having to step in and slug them all in the face to get them to stop.

      When they find Ford again, he having run off from all the action, the wedding is about to start, Ford horrified by what he is about to undergo until Phyllis and her nobleman, with whom she’s evidently reconciled, break into the ceremony, shoving a newspaper in front of the orchestra leader’s face telling of the joke they’ve played on him.

       Ford goes on the run, the brothers chasing after him through room after room, each time nearly catching him while suggesting more and more dire consequences, at one point using him like a baseball which they bat about from one room to another.

       But fortunately, the tramp shows up once again, and the marriage ceremony starts without any further delays. The brothers briefly protest, demanding that Louise wait until after their father “gets out” (presumably of jail), but finally the little bridegroom has had enough. He takes of his coat, announces that he’s marrying “her,” not the family, and punches out the two of lugs.

       Not much true LGBTQ content here, but the female kisses are a lot of fun for a moment at least.

 

Los Angeles, February 7, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (February 2022).