Gloria Swanson in Yentl Territory?

Photographed by Edward Steichen 1924

Gloria Swanson, born on this date in 1899, would've been 17 years old in The Danger Girl, the frenetic twenty minute comedy supervised by Mack Sennett (and embedded below). With six (count 'em, six!) lead characters, Swanson stands out as the madcap who dresses as a man to lure her girl friend's boyfriend away from the other woman who is vamping him. It's all extremely complicated for twenty minutes but Swanson gets a chaste kiss on the cheek from the vamp (while she's dressed as a man) and moves further into Yentl territory when, dressed in a tuxedo with top hat, she comes out as a woman to the man she loves (her girl friend's boyfriend, no less) and gets a kiss from him too - all in 1916!

The Danger Girl 1916

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...Airport 1975 (1974)

A classic in the disaster film genre, Airport '75 is unwittingly funny and wickedly campy. The actors are trying so hard to make the script work but it is really Karen Black, Gloria Swanson and Myrna Loy who come out smelling like a bouqet of roses. Helen Reddy sings a ridiculous song she wrote to Linda Blair, Charlton Heston does his hero shtick, and George Kennedy returns for the second of four Airport films but no one (and nothing) makes this turkey unwatchable.