Good question

Some months back, TCM ran three movies starring actress Colleen Moore, who was big in the silent era and probably could have remained successful until World War II changed everybody's tastes -- except that she retired from making movies in the mid-1930s. TCM ran two of her talking pictures, and one silent movie with synchronized music and sound effects. That silent is Why Be Good?, and since today is apparently "National Silent Movie Day", I picked today to post about it.

Moore is the female lead, but we don't see her first. Instead, we see the male lead. Winthrop Peabody Jr. (Neil Hamilton) lives in a swanky 50th floor apartment in one of those fashionable New York City skyscrapers, where he enjoys partying with his equally rich and stylish friends. However, the partying is about to end for Winthrop. He's the son of Winthrop Sr., who owns a big department store. Junior is going to take it over eventually, but Dad wants him to learn the ropes, and now is the time for him to start as the personnel manager, where, as a title card informs us, he oversees two hundred men -- and a thousand women. Dad warns son not to get involved with the female employees which is of course excellent advice.

Another title card informs us of a place that's several floors below, but in a completely different neighborhood. That place is Jazzland, and tonight they're holding a dance contest to see which couple is best at the Charleston. Winning that contest is Pert Kelly (that's Colleen Moore, if you couldn't tell) and her partner. Her dancing draws the eye of other men, specifically smooth operator types like Jimmy Alexander who seems to go off with all the pretty girls at one point or another. Pert is at heart a good girl, as we see her only pretending to drink from Jimmy's flask by putting her finger over the opening, and then try to escape when Jimmy tries to paw her.

When she tries that escape, she's spotted by... Winthrop Jr., who has decided to go slumming at Jazzland with some of his friends. She's happy for the escape and for Winthrop to drive her home, except they spend a good deal of time being polite together. Pert gets home late, which irritates her parents. Worse, staying out that late causes her to be late for work the next morning, which is a problem, because she works at... Peabody's department store. (Winthrop Jr. never revealed he was a Peabody, and Pert obviously had no reason to point out where she works.)

Having shown up late, she gets called up to the boss' office, where it's revealed that personnel manager and the shop girl know each other. Peabody Sr. is obviously pissed that his son couldn't be bothered to follow his advice, even though Junior didn't realize he was out with an employee. Dad can't really fire his son, so he fires Pert instead. Junior tries to explain that he wasn't the one who wanted Pert fired, and spends the rest of the movie trying to win Pert back. Can he do so? Will Pert accept him?

Considering the sort of movie Why Be Good? is up to this point, it shoud be obvious how it's going to end. There are no surprises here, but what Why Be Good? does, it does well enough. Colleen Moore is appealing as always, and Hamilton is suitably handsome for all the women to swoon over. The print TCM ran is a restoration print with the Vitaphone disc intact, and looks quite good. Why Be Good? is definitely worth a watch.

For the record, tonight's "National Silent Movie Day" lineup on TCM is:

8:00 PM Greed, or at least the four-hour reconstruction of it. As I said when I blogged about Greed in 2010, there was a good 130-minute movie to be made from the original source material, but director Erich von Stroheim didn't give the studio a chance to release that.
12:15 AM The Enchanted Cottage. This is the same story as the 1945 adaptation; both of them were based on a stage play. I have not seen the silent version before but I have it set to record to go into the backlog with a ton of other silent films I've got.
2:00 AM Gösta Berlings Saga, a Swedish movie starring Greta Garbo and Lars Hanson before both of them came over to Hollywood. Garbo you'll remember; Hanson is more remembered by silent fans since he didn't make the transition to English-language sound movies. Two of his best-known Hollywood silents are The Scarlet Letter and The Wind.
5:15 AM Hot Water, another Harold Lloyd quickie clocking in at just under an hour. I did a post some weeks back on For Heaven's Sake, and have Grandma's Boy as part of my silent film backlog to get through.