The Delicious Little Devil

I was completely shocked when I saw this film. Although a Rudolph Valentino film, instead of a movie about a slick Latin lover, it was a breezy comedy about a plucky nice girl that gets ahead by pretending to be a bad girl.

This film seemed to run at high speed, but it made the action more hilarious! Mae Murray was the real star, as in this case her eccentricity worked!

Delicious Little Devil, The (1919) ** (out of 4) This film was lost until a print was found in 1991 but it doesn't do much outside of that little fact. A poor girl (Mae Murray) loses her job but decides to take on the identity of a mistress to a world famous Duke so that she can get a job as a dancer in a roadhouse.

Mae Murray got her start dancing with Vernon Castle on Broadway and soon was a star in the Ziegfeld Follies. Despite her diminutive size, she was an energetic powerhouse on stage.

TCM broadcast this film in a grouping of Valentino films but the film really belongs to Mae Murray. I should add that Mae Murray seemed to be imitating Mary Pickford when she was in her comedy cups, down to gestures, mannerisms, facial expressions, it was uncanny.

There are precious few films of the silent screen superstar Mae Murray known to exist these days and when a new one emerges it's a cause for celebration. DELICIOUS LITTLE DEVIL is particularly valuable in that it's the first of her silent comedies to rise from the archives and costars the legendary Rudolph Valentino as her beau.

An 'extra' on the recent DVD edition of the Gloria Swanson/Rudolph Valentino starrer BEYOND THE ROCKS (see my comment there), this is another recovered pic from the Netherlands archive. It's a ramshackle comedy from Universal, megged by Robert Z.

I caught this 88 year old movie on TCM the other evening. Interestimg.

Mae Murray (as Mary McGuire) works as a coat and cloak check girl; when she dons one of the customers garments and dances around in it, she is fired. Ms.