Marion Davies plays twin sisters separated at birth in the steerage compartment of a ship full of immigrants docked in New York City during the mid-19th century. One girl, Anne, grows up as the privileged foster daughter of a wealthy family. The other, Fely, is a rough-and-tumble, neighborhood terror in an Irish slum owned by Anne’s parents. Neither young woman knows about the other.
Catching a break, Fely’s talent for dancing a jig lands her a coveted job in a Broadway theater soon to be illuminated by electric lights, a new technological phenomenon. Anne’s brother, Dirk (Conrad Nagel), meanwhile, becomes an investor in that same theater.
Romance blossoms between Fely and Dirk (never mind that the latter is quite aware of Fely’s resemblance to Anne). The story proceeds to an easy-to-predict finale, but the pleasures of Lights of Old Broadway go well beyond its plot, above all Davies' charming performances as sisters radically different in nature and command of their separate worlds.
This 1925, pre-sound era film, which has been preserved by the Library of Congress, also features appealing sequences of gorgeous tinting, and rowdy sequences that could only be produced on a spacious studio backlot (the film is an adaptation of a hit play), including an eye-popping street riot during a parade by Irish “Orangemen.” Strongly recommended.