Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921)

Making the most of her famous golden curls, Mary Pickford gave audiences what they wanted in this well-executed adaptation of the classic tale by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Taking advantage of well-executed camera effects, Pickford chose to portray both the plucky American boy with the old-fashioned curls and his long-suffering mother, Dearest, as well.

The widow Errol has persevered to raise a young boy in New York City, obviously emphasizing the cultured values of kindness, empathy and charity. But young Cedric Errol is frustrated with the teasing he receives in the neighborhood for his Victorian curls and longs for the day he will be a shorn young man.

Making faster friends with neighborhood adults than with taunting children, Cedric boasts of the day he will be president of the United States and ease the daily trials of his struggling best friends, the grocer Mr. Hobbs, Dick the bootblack, and Mrs. McGinty the apple peddlar.

An English lawyer arrives with the news that Cedric’s estranged grandfather, the Earl of Dorincourt, has lost his remaining son to a riding accident and reluctantly intends to bestow his estate upon the newly-conferred little Lord Fauntleroy.

Traveling to England together, Dearest is refused an audience with the gouted and cranky grandfather who blames her for the elopement and American emigration of his late younger son but who is reluctantly is won over by the vibrant and sincere personality of young Cedric.

When a golddigger proclaims herself to be the secret wife of the Earl’s older son and her own young son the true heir to the Dorincourt estate, the family bonds to challenge the spurious claim. Cedric’s friends from New York arrive with a surprise witness and the whole debacle ends with the fierce trouncing of the arrogant and spoiled false lord by the true Lord Fauntleroy.

— Carl Bennett