Les révoltés du Clermont

"Little Old New York" is a fictional story about Robert Fulton's invention of the first successful steamboat. It is based on a 1920 Broadway play by Rida Young of the same title that ran for 308 performances. Young was a playwright who became best known for her lyrics to Victor Herbert's operetta, "Naughty Marietta."

Fulton had been living in Europe for some 20 years where he first made a living as a painter and then began working on inventions, sometimes with others. Back in the States, Fulton set out to find backing to build the first steamboat to navigate rivers. Henry Stephenson plays Robert Livingston, a former U.S. ambassador whom Fulton had met and befriended in England. Livingston helped raise the funds for Fulton's steamboat.

Richard Green plays Robert Fulton, and while the story is about his invention, it revolves mostly around another couple. Much, if not most of this is fictional, of course. Alice Faye plays Pat O'Day, a wharf front tavern owner who first is smitten by Fulton, and then helps round up support and finances for him. Her cohort in this adventure is Charles Brownne, played by Fred MacMurray. He's been Pat's beau all along.

This is a light comedy and drama about Fulton's invention. It does have some historical value, but mostly in its pictorial presentation of the docks and shipbuilding of 18th and 19th centuries, The Fox studio did a superb job in replicating the shipbuilding works of New England of the day. And in portraying the craft of shipbuilding at the time.