Silent Era : Home Video Reviews

Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2025 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Dancing Mothers (1926)

This minor Famous Players-Lasky drama, directed by Herbert Brenon, features Alice Joyce as a long-suffering wife and mother who gave up her career on the stage for a quiet family life. Meanwhile, her husband (Norman Trevor) and daughter (Clara Bow) are back from bouncing around Europe, bringing with them a couple of shipboard infatuations in the persons of a golddigging ‘Russian’ vamp and infamous playboy Gerald Naughton (Conway Tearle).

It is not long before we know who the true star of the film is. Alice Joyce’s somber, sad stares off into the lonely void that separates her from her selfish family cannot hold command of the screen in the wake of Clara Bow’s vivacious and winning performance as the spoiled society party girl.

— Carl Bennett

Dancing Mothers (1926), black & white, 65 minutes, not rated, with At First Sight (1924), black & white, 12 minutes, not rated.

Grapevine Video, no catalog number, UPC 8-42614-10029-1.
One single-sided, single-layered, Region 0 NTSC DVD-R disc; 1.33:1 aspect ratio picture in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan image encoded in SDR MPEG-2 format at 7.0 Mbps average video bit rate (capable of progressive scan upscaling to 60 fps); Dolby Digital (AC3) 2.0 stereo sound encoded at 256 Kbps audio bit rate; English language intertitles, no subtitles; 6 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $16.95 (reduced to $14.95).
Release date: 7 February 2005.
Country of origin: USA

This DVD-R edition has been mastered from a rough but good 16mm reduction print that displays a number flaws, such as dust and schmutz, speckling, emulsion scuffing, cupping, and even a print tear. The coarse video transfer does not appear to capture all of the image detail present in the substandard print, but the results are still viewable.

The film is accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings that has been crudely processed for ersatz stereo sound.

Our hope is that a better home video edition will be produced from a higher-quality print. Meanwhile, this appears to be the best of what is available.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .

Dancing Mothers (1926), black & white, 65 minutes, not rated.

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting recordings.

This is our recommended home video edition of the film.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from ALPHA VIDEO through . . .

Dancing Mothers (1926), black & white, 85 minutes, not rated.

The film is likely accompanied by a soundtrack compiled from preexisting music recordings.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from . . .