The Alice Howell Collection #4, “How Stars Are Made” (1916) – reviewed by George

By late 1915 Alice started having shorts built around her. The character she had developed was a slightly addled working-class girl with a round Kewpie-doll face topped off with a pile of frizzy hair. This film shows Alice’s attempts to make good at L-Ko and gives a tantalizing look behind the scenes at L-Ko’s shooting stages (and more).
Opens with Lillian (Alice) trying to get an interview at L-Ko, but everyone is busy and has no time for her. Left alone she imagines filming a scene that ends with her kissing the hero.
She writes a note and sends it in and whatever she wrote was super, because a raft of executives runs out of a studio and finds her. Then they laugh cruelly because she is a bit overweight, and they leave. But she grabs one and drags him back and conducts the interview herself. “I’ll play leads or do janitor’s work.” So he gives her a broom.
Then a lot of funny slapstick occurs, and she ends up cleaning an actress’s dressing room. Well, why not? She tries out cologne and make-up and other stuff, and finds a newspaper with a story about the soon-to-happen Mid-Winter Floral Parade, which is described as the biggest event of the season. The float creating the most interest is that of the L-Ko Company which depicts Virtue defeating Evil. And L-Ko will star the young couple chosen to play Vice and Virtue in a new film. Well, she finds one of the janitors (Raymond Griffith) and they work up costumes, and then get caught by the pair already chosen (Gertrude Selby and Dick Smith). What to do? Well, beat them up and run outside and get on the float! And all is well, until the beaten-up pair runs after the float, and there’s more slapstick. Fast and funny and Recommended!
Directed by John G. Blystone.