Carl Harbaugh | Little Miss Hawkshaw / 1921 [Status unknown]

the heiress and the newsboy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Carl Harbaugh (screenwriter and director) Little Miss Hawkshaw / 1921 [Status unknown]

 

The wealthy Sir Stephen O’Neill (Eric Mayne) disowns and disinherits his daughter Patricia (Eileen Percy) when she marries beneath her position in Irish society. Her husband (Leslie Casey) is arrested, and Patricia escapes to the US. She dies there, leaving the care of her daughter to Mike Rorke, an elderly sailor (Frank Clark).

      Years later, we find Patsy (also played by Percy) working in Roke’s newsstand, dressed as a boy.

      In the meantime, Sir Stephen now regrets his behavior to his daughter and attempts to hunt down his granddaughter by enlisting the help of his nephew, Arthur Hanks (Francis Feeney) in order to find her.

    One of Patsy’s friends hears of the search and encourages her to transform herself into an heiress. Arthur tracks down the “heiress” and returns to Ireland with her. But by the time they have reached the Irish shore, Patsy has fallen in love with Arthur and totally regrets the sham.

      Finally confessing her true position in life, she discovers that she is the girl for whom Sir Stephen has actually been looking, a mere newsboy.

   Once more, the girl of this film has been raised basically as a boy, and is forced to make the transformation, one she/he regrets, only for money. In fact, there was no need to be anyone other than she/he was. Although the film does not suggest that Sir Stephen might have accepted Patsy as a newsboy, the plot seems to substantiate that he was searching for who she was after all, and might have equally accepted her apparently transgender identity, were it not for the interference of others. In any event, she ends up as being, in fact, an heiress, just as she has claimed to be. As in nearly all such early works in which there is childhood gender confusion, a transformation to normative gender necessarily occurs before the film’s end.

       Although there seems to be no readily available copy for home use, it is listed under the TCM site, so it may exist in the Turner Classic Movie titles. The above description based on information by Janiss Garza.

 

Los Angeles, June 30, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (June 2022).