Participated in a Kickstarter campaign put on by Ed Lorusso to get "Robes of Sin" (1924) fairly restored and show-able again. Finally received a copy yesterday and watched it last night. A potboiler's potboiler starring Sylvia Breamer, Jack Mower, Lassie Lou Ahern, Bruce Gordon, Gertrude Astor, Helene Sullivan, and, finally, William Buckley, this is really like watching a TV soap opera at 11:00 in the morning. The title is wholly exploitative, although the film is the same theme-wise. Breamer's married to a cop (Mower) who's been put on a strenuous time-consuming project that hopes to catch a bootlegging rum-runner (Gordon) and put him away. Since Mower has no time for taking his wife to dances - or even being at home as a normal house-husband for 1924 - Breamer is bored and, frankly, frustrated. They do have the baby, though, Lassie Lou Ahern. Across the hall from where Breamer and Mower live in an apartment, Gertrude Astor moves in. She's the current girl friend of bootlegger Gordon, though he's beginning to be bored by her. As a viewer, you can see there's nothing good going to come of all this. Gordon eventually meets Breamer through Astor, of course, and potential evil occurrences lurk...loom...begin to happen...
Actually, a fun film to watch, though the coincidences of plot are cheap and obvious, and they must have been even in 1924. This is simply a secondary programmer, but it's a good one, well acted and well put together. The fact that we still have it and can see what typical entertainment was in 1924 - much like our mindless TV of today - is an okay thing. In the vein of Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age and post-Victorian everything that seemed to become ubiquitous by the middle twenties, this film is definitely worth the simple one hour it takes to watch. Just don't expect a masterpiece. It's barely a cog in the works, but it's one that definitely helps turn the wheel...
I must admit that there was one thing that drove me bananas! Lassie Lou Ahern, playing the 'baby' of the couple, Mower and Breamer, was left in bed by Breamer at 8:00 PM - ALONE - in the apartment while she traipsed off with Gordon to a dance spot for the evening - this, while her husband was at work with the police force. In another scene, both husband AND wife have left the child alone in the apartment at night while they are about doing their things... This wouldn't sit well at all today. Wonder how well it sat in 1924? In real life, Ahern was only 3, possibly 4, when this film was made. She's playing someone about that age. By the way, she's fine in the part, very natural.