When Swanson made big changes

Gloria Swanson made six sophisticated romantic dramas with Cecil B. DeMille that made her the most glamorous movie star of the silent era, but by 1924 she also had become a legendary clotheshorse about to be done in by all those elaborate costumes.

Shrewdly she chucked this image for “Manhandled,” the first of the six pictures she would make with Allan Dwan, to play a gum-chewing, subway-riding salesgirl in Macy’s basement -- even though the plot allowed Paramount to promise Swanson would be wearing “more gorgeous gowns than ever!”

This timelessly beguiling film, which opens the Silent Movie’s New Year’s Eve Double Feature at 8:30 p.m., is a typical tale of a youthful, innocent urban dreamer, but Dwan makes it a showcase for the diminutive Swanson’s extraordinary beauty and brilliance as a comedian.

Swanson is teamed perfectly with Owen Moore (Mary Pickford’s first husband) as her Irish-handsome, hard-working boyfriend whose time-consuming ambition makes her vulnerable to a series of cynical men about town.

Swanson and Dwan survived the transition to talkies, their partnership and her romance with Joseph Kennedy to remain staunch lifelong friends.

“Manhandled” will be followed by a dessert buffet reception.

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Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.” (1924) will screen at 10:30 p.m., concluding in time for a champagne toast to the New Year.

Without a doubt “Sherlock Jr.” is one of Keaton’s most inspired efforts, a visual tour de force that reveals his tremendous awareness of the resources of the camera.

Keaton is a small-town movie-theater projectionist who’s studying to be a private eye via a correspondence course and whose pursuit of a pretty girl (Kathryn McGuire) is sabotaged viciously by a rugged guy identified as the Sheik (Ward Crane).

Falling asleep on the job, Keaton dreams that he is entering the mystery melodrama on the screen, reveling in his brilliance as a detective. (Shades of Woody Allen’s decades-later but less complex “Purple Rose of Cairo.”)

“Sherlock Jr.” is an unpretentious comedy with beguiling charm and throwaway humor that asks no more than to entertain but nevertheless is open to considerable psychological and symbolic interpretation; such is Keaton’s sophisticated mastery of the visual that “Sherlock Jr.” becomes a playful consideration of the levels of reality and of fantasy.

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Screenings

What: “Manhandled” and “Sherlock Jr.”

Where: Silent Movie Theater, 611 N. Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles.

When: 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. (Reservations are suggested, with tickets available at the door beginning at 7 p.m. Wednesday.)

Info: (323) 655-2520.