The Plastic Age (Silent)

Naive small town boy and football star Hugh Carver wins an athletic scholarship to Prescott College. Once there, he immediately falls head over heels in love with free-spirited flapper Cynthia Day. In his pursuit of Cynthia, he soon falls into a world of speakeasies, fast cars, and the Charleston. Before long Hugh's athletic performance - and his grades - begin to suffer. Realizing that her noncommittal flirting has been the cause of Hugh's downfall, Cynthia refuses to see the boy any longer. A heartbroken Hugh vows to win the big football game for Prescott…and if they win, a changed Cynthia might just be waiting for him…

Advertised as an "exposé" of the wild lives of 1920's youth, The Plastic Age is most significant as the film that made Clara Bow a full-blown star. Based on a 1924 novel by Percy Marks, a Brown University professor who based the book on observations of his students, the movie rights were quickly bought up by producer B.P. Schulberg, who was looking for a vehicle for his discovery, the 20-year-old Clara Bow. Though Clara had certainly made an impression in films such as Free to Love and My Lady of Whims, she'd yet to have a real hit. The success of The Plastic Age catapulted her to stardom, and soon she was signed by Adolph Zukor to Paramount Pictures, where she would be immortalized in the classic It (1927). Despite this, The Plastic Age did engender some controversy - the Women's Christian Temperance Union felt the film should be banned for making alcohol consumption acceptable, and classified the swing-style dancing on display as "behavior which is desperately in need of purification by the cleansing powers of holy water."