The Mad Dancer

The Mad Dancer is a 1925 American silent drama film directed by Burton L. King and starring Ann Pennington, Johnnie Walker, and Coit Albertson.

Synopsis
Mimi, a dancer who lives in the Latin Quarter of Paris, poses nude for a sculpture. When her father commits suicide she moves to the United States but finds her relatives there disapprove of her. She becomes engaged to the son of an American senator, but her past threatens to catch up with her.

Production
The Mad Dancer was filmed at the Tec-Art Studio in New York City. Pennington, who had performed in the Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals, appeared nude for the modeling scene for the sculpture. At the time, brief stationary nudity, similar to a tableau vivant, appeared in a few American films with scenes involving women posing for painters or sculptors. As an experiment, one scene involving Pennington and Vincent Lopez and his band was broadcast over the radio on Newark, New Jersey station WJZ (today WABC of New York City) while being filming.

Preservation
Prints of The Mad Dancer are held in the UCLA Film and Television Archive and George Eastman Museum Motion Picture Collection.