"Sally of the Sawdust" is a silent with a maudlin but often comic story line whose "side attractions" make it more likely some of us would want to see it.
"Sally" is the daughter of a mother who was banished from her once-patrician home because she married a circus feller. The mother dies soon after Sally is born buy the dying mother only worries that Sally should be taken care of. The father has earlier vanished from the scene in an unspecified manner and it falls to Prof McGargle (W.C. Fields), a good-hearted side-show performer and petty swindler, to write to her grandparents to let them know what happened to their daughter, but he doesn't mention Sally.
The grandparents don't respond and McGargle brings up Sally (Carol Dempster) as a sort of innocent (in the midst of carny types) coming into almost excruciatingly adorable young womanhood. Many events and misadventures intervene as Sally and McGargle barrel toward the ultimately happy ending.
It's hard to give a star rating to a movie like this. The story line is, as I said, both maudlin and comic and you know it is likely to all resolve to the expected resolution. Yet it is charming despite (or because of) Dempster's cute mugging and posing; W. C. Fields (only his second role, I understand) is delightful; a talented and natural comic and performer, very recognizable and entertaining despite the lack of his humorous voice. He's surprisingly skinny and light-footed and pulls off the doting "adopted father" well. Carol Dempster is interesting not only for her performance but for her reputed favor with Producer D.W. Griffith (he may have sleeping with her, so produced an atypical comedy for show her off); I have heard that other performers hated her because they said she had no acting style of own, but copied the styles of other actresses. And her being the producer's pet would not bring admiration.
The other "extra" that makes this interesting is that it is supposedly set in Connecticut but it was filmed on Long Island. Before I learned this I kept thinking that the extensive outdoor scenes, buildings and locales looked like Long Island. There is even a dirt crossroads with one of the signs pointing to Hicksville, a familiar Long Island town. So the movie is also a time capsule that I thoroughly enjoyed, notwithstanding my three-star review.
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