Pretty Ladies – Silent (1925)

Description

Pretty Ladies is a 1925 American silent comedy-drama film starring ZaSu Pitts and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film is a fictional recreation of the famed Ziegfeld Follies. Directed by Monta Bell, the film was written by Alice D. G. Miller and featured intertitles by Joseph Farnham. Pretty Ladies originally featured musical color sequences, some in two-strip Technicolor. However, the color sequences are now considered lost.

Plot
Maggie (ZaSu Pitts) is a popular Ziegfeld Follies dancing comedian whose husband leaves her for one of the show’s beauties, and who longs for the life of other chorus girls but eventually finds love by being herself.

Production notes
The film was set in New York City and shot at MGM Studios in Culver City, California. The film’s sets were designed by the art directors James Basevi and Cedric Gibbons.

Pretty Ladies marked the first credited appearance of “Lucille Le Sueur”, soon to be known as Joan Crawford. According to Lawrence J. Quirk, author of The Films of Joan Crawford, this film was the only time Crawford was credited by her real name (Crawford is also billed as LeSueur in the 1925 promotional film MGM Studio Tour). It was also one of the first screen appearances of Myrna Loy (then still performing under her real last name Williams), who signed a seven-year contract with Warner Bros. in 1925 and then finally signed with MGM where she became a star in 1934 with the release of The Thin Man.

Cast:

• ZaSu Pitts as Maggie Keenan
• Tom Moore as Al Cassidy
• Ann Pennington as Herself
• Lilyan Tashman as Selma Larson
• Helena D’Algy as Adrienne
• Conrad Nagel as Maggie’s Dream Lover
• Norma Shearer as Frances White
• George K. Arthur as Roger Van Horn
• Lucille LeSueur (Joan Crawford) as Bobby – a Showgirl
• Myrna Loy as Ziegfeld Girl (uncredited)
• Carole Lombard as Showgirl
• Dorothy Seastrom as Diamond Tights
• Gwen Lee as Fay
• Roy D’Arcy as Paul Thompson
• Lew Harvey as Will Rogers
• Walter Shumway as Mr. Gallagher