The Plastic Age (film)
| The Plastic Age | |
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Reprint of the promotional poster
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| Directed by | Wesley Ruggles |
| Produced by | B.P. Schulberg |
| Screenplay by | |
| Based on |
The Plastic Age by Percy Marks |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography |
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| Distributed by | Preferred Pictures |
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Release dates
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Running time
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73 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language |
Silent film English intertitles |
The Plastic Age is a 1925 black-and-white silent film, starring Clara Bow, Donald Keith, and Gilbert Roland in his film debut. The film survives today not only on 16 mm film, but also on video and DVD. The film was based on a best-selling novel from 1924 of the same name, written by Percy Marks, a Brown University English instructor who chronicled the life of the fast-set of that university and used the fictitious Sanford College as a backdrop. The Plastic Age is known to most silent film fans as the very first hit of Clara Bow's career, and helped jumpstart her fast rise to stardom. Frederica Sagor Maas and Eve Unsell adapted the book for the screen.
Hugh Carver (Donald Keith) is an athletic star and a freshman at Prescott College. During a hazing initiation by his fraternity brothers, he meets Cynthia Day (Clara Bow), a popular girl who loves to party and have a good time. She introduces him to the pleasures of illicit drinking, dancing at illegal roadhouses, and getting nasty in the back seats of cars. A love-triangle develops between Day, Carver, and Carver's roommate, Carl Peters (Gilbert Roland), who also likes Day. Eventually, Peters gives up his crush on Day and reconciles his friendship with Carver.
Carver's grades, athletic performance and moral character begin to suffer as a result of his late nights and wild partying, and on a visit home, his strict father tosses him out of the house and tells him not to come back until he's 'made good'. After almost being arrested at a roadhouse raid, Day and Carver escape in her automobile, and Day realizes that her lifestyle is bad for Carver, so the two stop seeing each other.
Carver's school performance then improves greatly, and he leads his teammates to victory at the big football game at the end of the year. Peters tells Carver that Day still loves him, and that she has changed, becoming less wild and more mature. Day and Carver are reunited at the end.
The Plastic Age was based on the 1924 novel of the same name, which was written by Brown University professor Percy Marks, a popular novelist at the time. Marks' novels were based on his students, the 'flaming youth in rebellion' of the twenties, who danced to wild jazz, drank from silver flasks, and had petting parties. Benjamin Percival Schulberg, the CEO of Preferred Pictures (a film studio & film distributor, as well as an actors agency), outbid all the major and minor studios for the rights to the The Plastic Age; Schulberg paid $35,000 for the copyrights to the novel. The Plastic Age was filmed in the summer of 1925, at both Pomona College, located in Claremont, California, and in Hollywood, at the FBO Studios, the production company owned and operated by Joseph P. Kennedy, the wealthy Boston, Massachusetts banker/stockbroker patriarch of the Kennedy family.
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