AllMovie

It's really too bad that most of Mabel Normand's feature films no longer exist. This one (her comeback after making a large number of mediocre films for Sam Goldwyn) just barely survived -- the existing copies have been fashioned from three different sources, and it's still missing about a reel's worth of footage. Of those features that can still be seen, this one is arguably Normand's best, and her spirit -- part impish, part winsome -- carries the picture. The cast that supports her is an outstanding one -- George Nichols as Molly O'Dair's stern, working class father; Carl Stockdale as Molly's most fervent supporter; and Lowell Sherman as a slick and despicable villain. But everyone -- even the powerful Nichols -- fades into the background when sharing the screen with Normand. The highly capable Jack Mulhall, who plays the hero, is merely good-looking window dressing. At her best, there was something magical about Normand's presence and in Molly O'; she shows the ability to make the audience both laugh at her spunk and weep at her wide-open vulnerability (not unlike Charles Chaplin, who learned a few tricks from her at Keystone, and vice versa). And she creates this pathos in spite of the hokey script which producer Mack Sennett wrote himself. Especially puzzling is the end -- it would have been logical to draw the film to a close after Dr. Bryant weds Molly, but it continues on to include an overblown, melodramatic climax where Molly is being attacked in a blimp. She is saved by Bryant who drops onto the blimp from an airplane ladder. The whole film makes only marginally more sense than Normand's 1918 hit, Mickey. Although it was scandal that did in Normand's career, the poor scripts she was given certainly helped keep her down for the count. Molly O''s excellence is due primarily to Normand and not at all because of its silly story.