Phil For Short

Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive series Cinema's First Nasty Women. Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.

The Dranems, France, 1913

Monsieur Dranem cooks, cleans, and sews “like an elephant threading a needle”, as per Ciné-Journal, while his militant wife gambols in pantaloons, smokes pipes, drinks pints, plays cards (with “Léontine”), and assaults her cowed spouse.

DCP, b&w, silent, 11 min.

U.S., 1919

The daughter of an eccentric professor of Greek antiquity, Damophilia (Evelyn Greeley) has never been one for convention. Shortening her name to Phil, she manages the family farm in overalls and short bobbed hair much to the horror of the local busy bodies. When her father dies and the busy bodies come to reign her in, Phil hits the road disguised as boy and meets another professor of ancient Greece (Charles Walcott), an avowed women-hater who takes a shine to Phil’s well-versed “twin.” Misperceptions and misunderstandings—orchestrated and otherwise—abound from there until love wins out—on Phil’s terms—in this charmingly subversive romantic comedy.

DCP, b&w, silent, 82 min. Director: Oscar Apfel. Screenwriters: Clara Beranger, Forrest Halsey. With: Evelyn Greeley, Charles Walcott, James A. Furey.