A frame from The Silent Co-Ed. Production still courtesy Dominick Bruzzese.

1915FalstaffOne reelComedy

The Silent Co-Ed

Also released as A Quiet Little Angel

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“The girls of Jones College are accustomed to seeing their basketball team annually defeated by Hartford College. On receiving a challenge, however, from a city settlement house, they anticipate an easy victory. It proves otherwise. Kit Donahue, the little gum-chewing captain of the settlement team, outplays the entire college five and scores an easy triumph for the urbanites. The college girls at last induce the little captain to stay at the college and play on their team. The wealthy girls club together to pay her expenses, and the brainy ones agree to get her through the examinations. She is cautioned to say absolutely nothing before strangers, as, to use her own expression, ‘her line of talk is some queer.’ So the boys of Jones nickname the new basketball star ‘The Silent Co-Ed.’ Joe Mulvaney, the janitor of the settlement house, is an ardent suitor of Kit Donahue. When he gets a letter from her telling about a ‘Percy boy’ who brings her violets, he decides it is time to stop her college education.

“On the day of the big game with Hartford, the janitor turns up and demands to see his sweetheart. The girls, determined not to jeopardize the game, manage to coax Mulvaney into an automobile and carry him many miles into the country. With victory safely theirs, they return with him to the college. He and Kit have a joyous meeting. And when the ‘Percy boy’ comes for his answer, this is the one he gets: ‘I have spilled your words to my steady,’ says the star captain, ‘and he says it can’t be did.’”

Summary from Reel Life · 26 June 1915

What the papers said

1 review · 1 advertisement

“A light comedy number featuring a basketball contest, with girl players. The janitor is in love with a settlement girl and wins her in the face of opposition. The scenes are well pictured and the number quite pleasing.”

The Moving Picture World · 10 July 1915

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3 July 1915The Moving Picture World1 min

“Rich, clean humor, rollicking fun, a gymful of pretty girls, fine acting and Peggy Burke in the role of a saucy, swat-’em-in-the-eye, winky, dinky, little college tomboy. The whole combination spells out with mighty truth the name Falstaff Comedy.—Edwin Thanhouser.”

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Cast and crew

Cast
Claude Cooper as “Percy Boy”
J. Morris Foster as the coach
Peggy Burke as Kit Donahue, the silent co-ed
Wayne Arey as Jo Mulvaney, the janitor

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More about this film

Bowers’ notes
  1. The release date was listed erroneously as July 21, 1915 in a review in The Moving Picture World, issue of July 10, 1915. 2. Wayne Arey’s surname was misspelled as “Ayre” in Reel Life, June 26, 1915.
Posters and media
Still for The Silent Co-Ed. Production still courtesy Dominick Bruzzese.

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1915 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “The Silent Co-Ed”. thanhouser.org/films/the-silent-co-ed/

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