The Wild Party
1929, NR, 110 min.
Directed by Dorothy Arzner, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Clara Bow, Frederic March, Shirley O’Hara, Marceline Day.

The final film in this AFS series, The Wild Party is a curio by any standard. Starring “It” Girl Clara Bow in her first talkie, the film is also directed by pioneering woman director Dorothy Arzner, who was selected by Paramount to direct the studio’s first talking feature. The “college girls go wild” genre is a tried-and-true formula much older than all those late-night videotape hustlers on the TV commercials would have us believe. This one has party girl Bow pursuing the new anthropology professor on campus played by Frederic March. Its not much in the enduring comedy department but it’s certainly a fascinating relic.

This article appears in February 22 • 2002.

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Marjorie Baumgarten is a film critic and contributing writer at The Austin Chronicle, where she has worked in many capacities since the paper's founding in 1981. She served as the Chronicle's Film Reviews editor for 25 years.