The Cat's Pajamas (1926)

• 53%
• 1926
• Comedy
• William A. Wellman
• Betty Bronson
• Ricardo Cortez
• Arlette Marchal

One of the unfortunately "lost" films of silent-screen ingenue Betty Bronson, The Cat's Pajamas casts Bronson as a naïve seamstress. Sally (Betty Bronson), seamstress for a fashionable modiste, supports a crippled father (Theodore Roberts) and adores her kitten, Tommy. Though loved by Jack (Gordon Griffith), a taxi driver, she is infatuated with Don Cesare Gracco (Ricardo Cortez), an operatic sensation. Sally attends an opera performance; Tommy escapes from the cloakroom and wanders backstage. Don Cesare, talking to reporters and seeing the cat, says he will marry the first woman it leads him to: Tommy's selection is Riza (Arlette Marchal), a temperamental dancer. The cat becomes a news item, being given a diamond necklace for having led Cesare to his love. Jealous of her fiancé's publicity, Riza decides to postpone the wedding and refuses to try on her wedding dress. Sally then is recruited as a model, and when Cesare proposes to her, she accepts; but after the marriage, she declares she wanted to teach him a lesson and leaves him. Following a series of complications, however, Sally and Cesare are happily reconciled. The Cat's Pajamas represents one of the earliest feature-length directorial efforts of William A. Wellman.