June Caprice does a flop in "Little Miss Happiness", her latest feature released by the Fox Film Corporation. Miss Caprice tries to Pickford her way through this picture and falls short of registering in every respect. It isn't the girl's fault entirely, for the story isn't any too good, but at that the little star discloses the fact that she is lacking in the essentials that are necessary to one who wishes to maintain the position in the screen world that the Fox people elevated her to. In the first place the little lady's personality fails to get to her audience, and when it comes to the moments where the registering of emotion is needed she fails to drive home her points. The story is a rather weak attempt to follow the general plot that was the basis of "Tess of the Storm Country" and the author of "Little Miss Happiness" Clarence J. Harris, did not put any punch into his yarn. Had he followed out his suggestion embodied in his title he would have fared to better advantage. "Little Miss Happiness" could have waded her way through five reels and by her philosophy of the poor, cheered the grouches, and heaped coals of fire on the heads of the scandal mongers and finally won her way victoriously to the altar on the arm of her hero amid the good natured smiles on faces where disdain, avarice, and hatred once held court. But no, Mr. Harris had to dig up all the old melodramatic junk that was used in "Way Down East" and a score of plays of that type and piece it into his picture. The trouble is that he did it altogether too poorly to make an impression. John Adolfi, who directed the picture, managed to do very well with the material he evidently had on hand, but the finished product is rather a sorry specimen of the usual type of features that are released from the Fox office. Variety, 1 September 1916.
