Show Off, The/ The Plastic Age

Idols Of The Jazz Age

A double feature, each starring an icon of the 1920s: Legendary Louise Brooks' appearance in The Show Off gives this well-made Paramount programmer most of its latter-day appeal, but the film is also well worthwhile for other reasons. Clara Bow as a fast-living jazz baby with a heart of gold ignites the screen in The Plastic Age, a raucous collegiate comedy of Prohibition era youth.


Louise Brooks has been canonized for her unself-conscious sexual allure, a quality recognized by German director G.W. Pabst, who cast her as femme fatale Lulu in Pandora's Box. Only two years earlier, however, Brooks was in supporting roles such as this fetching girl-next-door who steals every scene she's in. Her movie neighbor, Lois Wilson, plays Amy Fisher, the gullible fiancée of Aubrey Piper (Ford Sterling), a humbug whose pompous behaviour and incessant boasting mark him a worthless charlatan to everybody but her. When Amy marries Aubrey in spite of the family's objection, their lives spiral toward poverty, and it falls to the abrasive braggart to somehow save the day. This film was directed by Malcolm St. Clair, who by the late 1920s was regarded as second only to Lubitsch as a director of sparkling, sophisticated comedies with Paramount's top stars, and he gives surprisingly serious scope to a film which was probably planned as just as harmless diversion.


Clara Bow in The Plastic Age expresses the youthful exuberance and 1920s playfulness that made her an icon of the era and an unqualified screen legend. At Prescott College, she evokes the carefree lifestyle of the fast crowd with its ribald pranks, wild parties, and heavy petting. IN addition to male leads Donald Keith and Gilbert Roland, a very young Clark Gable can be glimpsed in several scenes as one of Prescott College's charismatic revelers.