The Cinematheque

Constance Talmadge, younger sister of Norma Talmadge, was a major star of silent-era comedy before retiring in 1929, barely into her thirties. F. Scott Fitzgerald described her as ​“the epitome of young sophistication—the deft princess of lingerie and love … the flapper de luxe.” In this wonderful comedy of manners, Talmadge is an unemployed woman without references who cons her way into a job as secretary to a wealthy socialite, only to be handed the impossible task of managing the boss’s scandal-prone, ne’er-do-well nephew. Good References was considered a lost film until an original nitrate print was discovered at the National Film Archive in Prague; it was provided to UCLA for this restoration.

Preservation funded by The Packard Humanities Institute, Barbara Roisman Cooper and Martin M. Cooper.

preceded by

Tramp Strategy
USA 1911
Alice Guy-Blaché
12 min. 35mm

A mischievous vagabond infiltrates a bourgeois household in this newly-discovered one-reel comedy by Alice Guy-Blaché, cinema’s first female director, who worked for Gaumont in France before relocating to America.

Preservation funded by New York Women in Film & Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Trust and The Film Foundation.