Exit Smiling

Stage Actress Beatrice Lillie didn't make too many movies, but when I've seen her on screen, she's been quite enjoyable. Her first film was the silent Exit Smiling.

Lillie plays Violet, the seamstress/costume manager for a traveling theater troupe, although this being one of those perennially tight on funds troupes, she really has to do a whole lot more. In fact, she pretty much does everything but act, which irritates her because she thinks she can act and wants to play one of the vamp roles, and the manager won't let her act.

In one of the small towns the company visits, there's a young man named Jimmy Marsh (Jack Pickford, tragic younger brother of Mary). He works at a bank, and the bank is short $5,000, because one of the managers embezzled the money to pay off gambling debts. But the manager framed Jimmy, so he knows the law is after him and hops on a train to get the hell out of town.

You can guess that the train he gets on is the one to which the theater company's car is attached. Violet sees Jimmy and pretty quickly falls in love with him, although Jimmy had a girlfriend back home. Not that the company can afford another mouth to feed, but Violet thinks she can turn Jimmy into an actor and get him roles in the play they're putting on. Amazingly, Violet's plan works, at least in that it gets Jimmy a job with the company as an actor. Not that it gets Violet any parts in the plays.

Now that Jimmy has a job, he and the rest of the company are traveling around from one small town to the next. And you can probably guess again what's going to happen, which is that the train is going to stop in Jimmy's home town to do some performances of the play. (Why they stop there twice is beyond me; it's not as if the play was a success the first time.) Jimmy is understandably worried that people are going to notice him, considering he's a fugitive.

But this is also going to give Violet her big break. She offers to take Jimmy's part in the play, and after the play, she also gets the chance to redeem Jimmy, which is also going to involve some acting on her part.

Exit Smiling is surprisingly short at about 76 minutes, but also a lot of fun. Lillie is quite good when she has to do the difficult task of being a lousy actress. Pickford is appealing, and among the supporting cast is a young Franklin Pangborn. The story works well even if you know where it's going, and it's interesting to see backstage of a traveling theater company, since the older cast members probably had first-hand knowledge of such troupes.

Exit Smiling does have a DVD release courtesy of the Warner Archive collection, and is certainly worth a watch.