Hitmaker Herbert Brenon gives this modern-family melodrama a polished sheen, and Clara Bow a show-stealing role. Alice Joyce is sublime as the wife and mother who dares to stake her own claim in the swirl of 1920s nightlife that has already ensnared her philandering husband and thrill-seeking daughter, while Bow effervesces as the Jazz Baby who needs saving from herself.
Dancing Mothers was produced by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation and distributed in the United States by Paramount Pictures. The eight-reel feature was released on 8 March 1926. No 35mm film materials are known to survive. What remains are slightly abbreviated 16mm prints produced and circulated by the Kodascope Library. This restoration is based on two Kodascope prints. The primary source is a tinted 1928 print conserved at the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center. It was supplemented with material from a 16mm diacetate tinted print from the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, Blackhawk Films collection. In accordance with archival restoration ethics, digital intervention was limited to mitigating damage and accumulated wear suffered by the original film materials. This restoration was completed in March 2024 by San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
