Suds

Mary Pickford, Albert Austin, Harold Goodwin and Rose Dione.

Produced by the Mary Pickford Company for United Artists. Director: Jack Dillon. Cinematography by Charles Rosher and L.W. O’Connell. Original score by the Mont Alto Orchestra. American version courtesy of the Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division. Produced by the Mary Pickford Institute and Timeline Films for Milestone Film & Video.

Amanda Afflick is a lovesick laundress who daydreams about customer Horace Greensmith and cherishes the shirt he brought in for washing eight months and sixteen days ago. She tells her fellow workers that the garment belongs to her fiancé, a lord. Just wait, Amanda boasts, one day his lordship will return for his wash — and for her. Mary Pickford is heartbreaking as a lonely working girl so desperate for love that she tells her troubles to the laundry’s delivery horse. But when Amanda rescues the nag from the glue factory and brings him home with her to her tenement flat, the result is a huge and hilarious ruckus.

This bittersweet tale originally ended with Amanda abandoned by her "fiancé," sadly musing "Who could love me? Who could? Nobody never won’t." This conclusion struck some audiences as too tragic, so two alternative happy endings were filmed — one for the American release, one for international releases. This edition includes all three final scenes.

Cinematographer Charles Rosher used expressionistic lighting to help convey the powerful emotions in the working class melodrama. Half Broken Blossoms, half Chaplin comedy — Suds is one of Mary Pickford’s finest and most modern films.

Bonus Features

Original foreign release of Suds (67 minutes) with an organ score by Gaylord Carter.

The alternate happy ending for the foreign version with a score by the Mont Alto Orchestra.

A short side-by-side comparison of the foreign and American versions.

Suds Stills Gallery.

Birth of a Legend (27 minutes. 1966.). A short documentary on Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Reviews

"Today Mother and I saw Mary Pickford in Suds…We enjoyed greatly Mary Pickford’s true acting in a pretty, human story; how we sympathized and were thrilled, touched, at so many different times." — The diary of Anais Nin.