The Seven Sisters

Mici is the middle of seven sisters who all believe if a younger sister marries first, the older sisters are all doomed to be old maids. The older sisters conspire to have the younger, pretty Mici sent away to a convent school. Mici manages to slip away and attend a fancy party, where she meets Count Horkoy. They fall in love and to the delight of Mici's sisters, the Count also finds suitable husbands for all of them. —Pamela Short The play is based on the Hungarian system of marriage, where matrimonial conventions inexorably consign to helpless spinsterhood a girl whose younger sister marries before her. Under the circumstances, therefore, seven daughters may be considered a very well-disguised blessing, particularly when the middle one is such a hoyden that she places her sisters' romantic chances in further jeopardy by being expelled from the convent school. That is what the naughty Mici does in the play. She escapes from the school and attends a masked ball, where she meets Count Feri Horkoy. She is caught, dismissed, and sent home. This starts all the trouble for the sisters' widowed mother, who on seeing Mici return in a beautiful dress, realizes that she must be placed in the background. Thereupon the rebellious Mici enters into a conspiracy with Count Horkoy to provide husbands for her senior sisters at the earliest possible moment, promising him a kiss with each betrothal. From this moment on the complications grow thick and fast. The girls in each case are duly susceptible to the charms of vigorous and attractive masculinity, but they are apparently indifferent as to the means by which the desirable end is accomplished. As a result we find the oldest sister voluntarily engaging in a most unmaidenly deception to bring about a proposal. She gets the uncle, though she wanted the nephew. Then Mici weds the lieutenant. —Moving Picture World synopsis