Event

Bare Knees & Almost a Lady

shouldn't associate with were the subject of a number of films made toward the end of the silent era. This double-feature of rarely screened but delightful comedies in 35mm prints from the Library of Congress takes a look at these issues, peppered with roaring-twenties pop-culture
references and slang. Why did they call them "flappers?" The fads of young women in the 1920s wearing unbuckled galoshes, shorter skirts, bobbed hair and also (gasp)
smoking cigarettes is all over Bare Knees (1928), a rarely seen light comedy starring Virginia Lee Corbin and Donald Keith. The film tells the hilarious story of a married woman whose flapper sister breezes into town, attracts
the attention of several bachelors and also makes her question her own marriage. In Almost A Lady (1926), funny George K. Arthur tries to keep his sister, beautiful Marie Prevost, from pursuing a lecherous dress-shop owner played by Harrison Ford (the one from the silent era, not Indiana Jones). She's just trying to better herself, but is she going about it the right way? Rounding out the program is a reel of censor cuts that may seem tame today, but needed to be clipped back in the day when each state had
its own local censor to trim these objectionable shots out of every print that passed through their hands.
Bare Knees USA, 1928, 61 min., black & white, 35mm | Director: Erle C. Kenton | Writers: Adele S. Buffington (story), Casey Robinson (titles) | Cast: Vir|ginia Lee Corbin, Donald Keith Almost A Lady USA, 1926, 60 min., black & white, 35mm | Director: E. Mason Hopper | Cast:
George K. Arthur, Marie Prevost, Harrison Ford