The Plastic Age, 1925

The Plastic Age is a 1925 American black-and-white silent romantic comedy film directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Clara Bow, Donald Keith, and Gilbert Roland.

The film was based on a best-selling novel from 1924 of the same name, written by Percy Marks, a Brown University English instructor who chronicled the life of the fast-set of that university and used the fictitious Sanford College as a backdrop. The Plastic Age is known to most silent film fans as the very first hit of Clara Bow’s career, and helped jumpstart her fast rise to stardom. Frederica Sagor Maas and Eve Unsell adapted the book for the screen.

Even though the film was a wide spread success, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) showed concerns for the film’s portrayal of alcohol consumption as acceptable, regardless of the restrictions that prohibition brought in. They also voiced their opinion on the swingers’ dance style and jazz music as “behaviour which is desperately in need of purification by the cleansing powers of Holy water.”