The Plastic Age (1925)

Director: Wesley Ruggles
Writers: Eve Unsell and Frederica Sagor, based on the novel by Percy Marks
Stars: Donald Keith and Clara Bow

Index: That's a Wrap!

As I write, Paramount are involved in a new merger, trying to buy Warner Brothers against opposition from Netflix. This film was made by Preferred Pictures, who had been founded by a former Paramount publicist in 1918, who then merged his company with Paramount because they wanted its leading lady, Clara Bow.

I’m watching with her in mind, even though the film is far more about the character played by Donald Keith. There are reasons why Clara Bow’s name is still remembered while Keith’s is not and they’re obvious after she’s been on screen for about ten seconds.

I did have other names in mind too, because I know that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are both in here somewhere, as they would be again later in the month in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, but I couldn’t find either of them. It was early for both of them, as neither made a major name for themselves until the thirties. They were both huge stars when Donald Keith was retiring, in 1936, though not yet married to each other. That happened in 1939.

In 1925, twenty-two year old Keith is the all-American boy ready to go to Prescott College, with the fastest 440 yard dash ever made by a prep student. We’re also told that the thrill of going to college is the thrill for the plastic age of youth, which is the only mention of the title anywhere in the film.

I remember that mindset from The Freshman earlier in 1925 but Hugh doesn’t have quite as many mishaps getting to college as Harold did in that. Otherwise, it follows a vaguely similar arc, but played straight, making it seem like a movie released in September was an advance parody of one released in December. What it’s more likely to mean is that there were a lot of these films being made and this was one more.

There are two key relationships established relatively quickly. The first of them is between Hugh and his roommate, Carl Peters, who puts a photo of any girl on his wall once he’s kissed her twice. The “real hotsy-totsy” in school, he tells Hugh, is Cynthia Day, who he pins up as Hugh arrives. She’s clearly the latest of many and he must consider himself a ladies’ man. Of course, the other will soon be between Hugh and Cynthia, who he meets while being hazed.

Keith actually isn’t bad here. He looks good in a boy next door way rather than a matinee idol way. He looks confident but naïve. And he looks fit for an athlete. That’s really all he has to do in this film: look like all those things and the flow will take care of the rest.

Bow, however, is a revelation from her first appearance. Hugh is dumped into a sorority in costume and has to sing in front of the girls, a weird experience in a silent movie. As a fellow pledge is dressed as Salome and has to dance, he doesn’t have it too bad even if he looks a bit dorky in a top hat. She manifests at a curtain to swap facial expressions with Hugh and she wins that face off effortlessly.

And so they’re an instant item and we have a love triangle. Where we’re going, though, is that she’s not good for him, in the sense that a talented athlete needs discipline and she’s the precise opposite of that. Coach Henley already told him that the only thing that can beat him is himself, and he fails to comprehend that, as we watch him fail because he’s too busy with a girlfriend who likes to dance and party.

At his first track meet, which he confidently expects to win, he comes last. Even the papers say he’s “out of condition” and his parents lay down the law. Go back to college, says his dad, and don’t come back until you make good. If you’ve seen any college movie, that isn’t likely to happen overnight, especially with Cynthia to lead him down every wrong path.

We’re about halfway through the picture at this point and it hasn’t been particularly great. Keith is fine as Hugh but Hugh’s rather vanilla and I wasn’t anywhere near as invested in his college career as his parents. Similarly, Gilbert Roland is fine as Carl but we don’t care enough about him to feel the urge to take sides. Maybe in 1925, there was Team Hugh and Team Carl, but somehow I doubt it.

Bow is fantastic as Cynthia but Cynthia’s a bad influence and not much more. It’s a little fun watching her enjoy herself, not so much watching her destroy Hugh’s potential and the most drama we get is her stringing both these men along at some school dance and driving a wedge between them that germinates later in the film, when both want to be quarterback.

The good news is that this is a huge turning point and, while I’m not going to tell you what it turns into, I will happily say that I started to care because of the changes made.

I started to care about Hugh, not because of his looks or his athletic abilities, but because he does the right thing at a crucial point, even though nobody would have thought ill of him for not doing it. That one act speaks volumes more to his character than any other moment and it feels unforced.

I also started to care about Cynthia, proving that she’s a lot more than she initially seems. Hugh’s decision didn’t come with a downside, but Cynthia’s does and she does it anyway, for the best of reasons. While I didn’t care for the couple much halfway through the film, now I wanted a happy ending.

By the end of the movie, I even cared a little bit for Carl, though that took longer in coming and wasn’t anywhere as impactful. Of course, this isn’t his movie, so it wasn’t anywhere near as needed, but it helped deepen it a little.

I’m unsure how much of this came from the original novel by Percy Marks, who taught at Brown University and others. In the book, the college is Sanford not Prescott, but neither are Brown. That didn’t stop them from letting him go, albeit by not renewing his contract rather than outright firing him. How dare he suggest that students haze each other and spend their time partying and making out?

The film follows suit, but then there isn’t a heck of a lot of studying in any college movie I’ve seen from this era. They tend to focus on athletics, typically American football, and the personal relationships of the characters.

Like the others, this one ends with a game and it goes exactly the same way as the others, down to the final play in the final seconds. It’s clearly already a cliché in 1925, but people still write that same game into movies today.

This is far from essential, but it finds its feet halfway and Bow is the best thing about it by far. No wonder Paramount aquired an entire indie studio just to get her.