In this presumably lost film, teenage actress Mildred Harris takes on a more "adult" melodramatic role. Poor but pretty, Ms. Harris leaves her working class boyfriend for a wealthy suitor who turns out to be interested in - you guessed it - sex. When this film was released, Harris had just become Charlie Chaplin's first young bride. She was, also, pregnant; but, you can't "tell" in surviving movie stills. There were scenes with Harris in a wedding dress, and other fetching attire. Taking advantage of the situation, some theaters showed "Borrowed Clothes" with Chaplin's much more popular "Shoulder Arms" (released around the same time). There were no contests to determine which film was superior.
Hazel Simpson Naylor's review in "Motion Picture Magazine" (February 1919) shared, "The most interesting item in this Lois Weber production was the starring of Mrs. Charles Chaplin. In other words, various theaters took advantage of Mildred Harris' recent acquisition of the Chaplin cognomen to so bill the picture. The age-old theme of the poor girl who fails to obtain employment, and the rich young man who wants her without orange blossoms, totters thru another five reels of melodramatically photographed celluloid. Between overloaded sets of scenery and direction that permits dramatics all over them, little Mildred Harris has scarcely a chance to be even interestingly 'ingénue-ish'."
**** Borrowed Clothes (11/4/18) Lois Weber ~ Mildred Harris, Lew Cody, Edward Peil
