review for Amarilly of Clothesline Alley on AllMovie

There is a wonderful moment early on in this delightful comedy where tenement dweller Amarilly has been fired from her job as a theater's scrub woman. Mary Pickford stands dejected in the shadows of the theater building, her shoulders sagging, her head lowered. But suddenly she shakes those famous curls, straighten her shoulders and saunters down the street, her silly hat bobbing jauntily up and down to the rhythm of the "Mary Pickford Collection's" recently added ragtime score. It is "our Mary" at her best; little Miss Sunshine who never lets a bit of adversity ruin what by all accounts seems like a nice enough day. Pickford is a grown woman in this film not an adolescent, but her tenement waif remains the unpolished naif who blithely wears a ragged muff that reminds a neighbor of a cat who died the week before. Written by Pickford's friend Frances Marion, her tongue firmly planted in cheek, and helmed by the star's favorite director, Marshall Neilan, Amarilly of Clothesline Alley is a spin on the old Pygmalion theme and reminds us of what a wonderful Eliza Doolittle "America's Sweetheart" may have made had she been given the chance.