Manhandled

Chivalry versus reality, declares the introductory intertitle, or rather art versus labor. (The heroine finds herself in the middle of a conversation about form and content and fakes a sneeze to step out of it.) The footsore shopgirl (Gloria Swanson) in the department-store basement, splashed by passing cars, squashed in the subway with consequences for Hitchcock's Rich and Strange. A bit of fun is all she needs after the grind, but the boyfriend (Tom Moore) has his hands full with work and inventions so she ventures into the realm of aesthetes with her gal pal (Lilyan Tashman). "Be kind to boobs like these and you'll ride in a Rolls." The company scion (Arthur Housman), the patronizing novelist (Paul McAllister), the temperamental sculptor (Ian Keith) and the lecherous clothier (Frank Morgan), each warn her about the other but they're "all members of the same club." Warm gagwork analytically arranged, an Allan Dwan forte in a bright study of New York's "ladder of fortune." Swanson's Keystone training gets a fetching workout—a gum-chewing half-pint unafraid of pratfalls, a Jazz Age vitality unable to remain still to pose at the atelier. (Her impersonation of a Russian noblewoman is groundwork for Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, and allows for a title card as an unexpected visual joke.) The suburban muse, chased around the studio only to be blamed by the artists, to them a roll of Swanson's gimlet eyes. "Women always inspire our masterpieces—and prevent us from achieving them." The happy ending is seen on the miniature screens of tenement windows, and there are handsome renderings by Sirk (Slightly French) and Cukor (It Should Happen to You). In black and white.