Exit Smiling

A travelling theatre company moves from town to town. The company is not a successful one. The play they perform is called Flaming Women. It is a stage piece cut to the melodrama pattern. The company’s wardrobe woman also handles the odd jobs. She dreams of stepping onto the stage. She wants to play the female lead in the play. Nobody gives her the chance. She stays behind the curtain. The reckoning inside the troupe is a comedy of its own. The film was made at the end of the silent period. The comedy is built on the body and on timing. Gestures and faces stand in for speech. The gap between the stage and life feeds the joke. Beatrice Lillie and Jack Pickford appear in the seventy seven minute film, an American production Sam Taylor finished in 1926.