Wild and Woolly

Jeff Hillington (Douglas Fairbanks) is the extremely naive son of a wealthy Eastern family -- he loves the Old West so much that he virtually lives it in his room. The knocker on his door is a pistol and he has a dummy horse which he leaps on now and again (actually Fairbanks was a little old for such shenanigans even in 1917, but this is easily overlooked). When his father (Walter Bytell) sends him to Arizona on business, Jeff expects it to be the place he read about in dime-store novels, and to appease him, the townsfolk put on a Wild West show. But instead of presenting a mock hold up, Steve (Sam deGrasse) and Pedro (Charles Stevens) make it real -- and they also kidnap a girl, Nell (Eileen Percy). No one knows what to do except Jeff, who uses every western cliché in the book (quite hilariously) to capture the bandits and save the girl. This tasty Fairbanks confection was one of many that was the product of screenwriter Anita Loos and director John Emerson.