My Best Girl is Mary Pickford’s last silent film, a charming romance in which a shopgirl falls in love with her employer’s son, and proves that kindness is not a weakness.
My Best Girl (1927), directed by Sam Taylor, stars Pickford as Maggie Johnson, a stockgirl in a department store, and Charles Buddy Rogers as Joe Grant, the owner’s son, who works incognito in the store. Maggie and Joe fall in love without knowing each other’s true circumstances, and the film follows their romance through misunderstandings and family opposition.
Pickford’s Maggie is warm, funny and unpretentious, and her scenes with Rogers, her future husband in real life, have a genuine, easy charm. The film is light, but Pickford gives Maggie a backbone: she will not be bought, and she will not pretend to be someone she is not.
As Pickford’s final silent feature, My Best Girl is a fitting farewell to the era that made her famous, and a signature role because it shows her silent acting at its most relaxed and confident.