Colleen Moore was making $12,500 a week in 1929. She had appeared in two successful talking pictures, but with the vogue of the flapper waning, her employers let her contract lapse. She then financed and starred in a Broadway play. When no movie offers resulted, she returned to Hollywood in some alarm and signed for $2,500 a week, commenting, “I’m just getting a button compared to my old salary, but I’d work for nothing, it’s so good to be back.” Miss Moore showed her skill and versatility in the offbeat role of a timid schoolteacher in The Power and the Glory, 1933, but the picture failed to re-establish her. She could have cemented her comeback in any of four opportunities Hollywood gave her. She had the looks, the talent, the intelligence. She was too rich really to care.

“Roll ‘em, girls, roll ‘em,” was the “message” of a popular song of 1926, and of Rolled Stockings, 1927, with James Hall and Louise Brooks. According to Miss Brooks, who says she refused to pose for the picture, the legs shown here and advertised as hers actually belong to Nancy Phillips.

Prodigal Daughter. “After she has been saved from a shameful fate, Mrs. Forbes clasps a repentant Elinor in her arms while J.D. says, ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow.’”

Prodigal Daughter. “J.D. catches his daughters in the act of returning from a ball after midnight.”

Phyllis Haver takes a mud bath. The Perfect Flapper, 1924.

Publicity for Prodigal Daughter, 1923. Gloria Swanson proclaims the new creed of youth to her father, Theodore Roberts.

“The wildness of this wild party in The Mad Whirl, 1925, is balanced by the sedateness of the bridge-playing matron, center.”

(I tagged some of the actors in the movie. I don’t know if they are in the picture or not. I have not seen it.)

Clara Bow, second from left, and Donald Keith, next, look on at a fraternity initiation in The Plastic Age, 1925.

Sally O’Neil takes a casual swig from her hip flask as Alice White looks on in a roadhouse scene from Mad Hour, 1928.

Happiness Ahead, 1928. The power of a good woman: Colleen Moore teaches gangster Edmund Lowe to pray on their wedding night.