Isabel Berwin

The girlfriend of the son of a rich railroad tycoon, attempts to help him escape the clutches of his well-meaning, but over-bearing mother whilst encouraging her own father not to give up on his business, by instigating a staged kidnapping and black-mailing scheme.

When Tourneur adapted the allegorical plays The Blue Bird by Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck and Prunella by British playwrights Harley Granville Barker and Lawrence Housman in 1918, they had been successfully staged for many years, opening in Moscow and on Broadway and everywhere. Today, the saccharine charm of these anti-modern fairy tales doesn’t work any more. But undistracted by the meaning or action of the film, we can enjoy the surface of Prunella all the better, the dazzling sets and costumes, silhouettes and painted backdrops created by the great art director Ben Carré in a fashionable Art Déco Neo-Rococo style.

Eunice Torrence (June Elvidge) has wed the elderly Geoffrey Farrow (Joe Herbert) only because her mother (Isabelle Berwin) wanted her to marry money. But Farrow is a rotten character and Eunice, who really loves Don Chadwick (John Bowers), immediately regrets her decision.

In the poorest section of the city lives Nell, who spends her days at her grandfather's bird store, finding constant delight in the companionship of her feathered friends. One day Nell's grandfather is run over by a car driven by Mr. Morris, a millionaire, who offers to purchase a bullfinch at a large price in order to forestall a damage suit.

Miss Petticoats stops a runaway horse, saves a wealthy woman from death, is rewarded with position as a private secretary. Society shuns her. She goes abroad; then see how she becomes the acknowledged daughter of a French Count and falls heir to a title.