“Peggy Manners is the daughter of H. E. Manners, who runs a general store in Felton, Cal. Peggy thinks he is a prosperous merchant in a large town, for he manages to send her checks and keep her east during the summer vacations of the fashionable school which she attends there. One summer when he sends her a check for the summer’s expenses, Peggy decides to surprise her father by a visit to California. She surprises him, and herself, too, for she Jinds his establishment to consist of a rundown place, with one lazy clerk. Peggy sets to work housecleaning. She stirs up the clerk until he displays the wares so attractively that [customers] begin to come in frequently. Later she meets Clyde Gardiner, the son of Roland Gardiner, who has bought up most of the forest for miles around and wants to start a game preserve. Gardiner closes up the mountain road and forbids hunting or Jishing, much to the anger of the mountaineers, who have made their living off the mountain for so many years that they looked upon it as free grounds. Clyde is much under the thumb of his father, and father does not propose to have the daughter of any country store keeper marry his son. Gardiner has summer guests, a widow and her daughter. They have designs on the Gardiner money, until one night when all sorts of things happen to keep the mountain side busy. First the villagers decide to burn out Gardiner and run him out. Peggy persuades them not to do it, and herself goes to the rich man and begs him not to shut off the mountain privileges from them. He tells her that he has recently purchased the property and that he can do what he wants with it. That night a storm almost drowns him out. Next morning there is no food, no Jire, no servants—nothing but shivering and hunger and complaints from the company. Clyde disobeys his father and asserts his rights. He goes down to the store and hires out to Peggy as a clerk. Father stands it as long as he can and then goes to the store to buy provisions. Peggy is waiting for him. She charges him a hundred dollars a pound for ham and other things in proportion. ‘Holdup,’ shrieks Gardiner. ‘Not so,’ smiles Peggy, ‘the stuff is ours. We bought it and we can do what we please with it.’ Gardiner pays the price and gets the provisions. But nobody at home can cook. The summer guests leave in a rage and Gardiner goes back to the store, where Peggy gets him a nice hot breakfast and he decides that she is just the girl they need in the Gardiner Family.” - The Moving Picture World, November 10, 1917, p. 913
Re-issued in 1920 as "Peggy Rebels"
Peggy Leads the Way was released on October 29, 1917, which means that Mary Miles Minter, born on April 25, 1902, was only 15 during filming. Her leading man, Alan Forrest, was 31. Today, it sounds concerning to ask for a 15-year-old girl’s hand in marriage, as it is implied that Forrest’s character Clyde Gardiner will ask of Peggy at the end of the film. However, in 1917, Section 56 of the California Civil Code dictated that the minimum age at which a woman could marry without parental consent was 15. Peggy Leads the Way is not the first film Minter made for the American Film Company in which her character implicitly or explicitly gets engaged or married—in fact, an engagement occurs in her second confirmed film for American, Dulcie’s Adventure (1916), when Minter was only 14. This depiction of an engagement involving someone below the minimum marriage age indicates that the film company was indifferent to casting accurately aged women. This indifference to Minter’s age unfortunately extended beyond casting. James Kirkwood, the director of Dulcie’s Adventure, engaged in a romantic and sexual relationship with Minter while she was 14 and 15. Despite the minimum marriage age being 15, the age of consent in California was 16 at the time, so Kirkwood and Minter’s sexual activity was considered statutory rape.1 If law corresponds to morality, then the moral image American portrayed through Minter was betrayed by the immorality of its personnel like Kirkwood. Lana Danzeisen - FAMSTW 151FA 23 July 2022 1 https://www.silentera.com/taylorology/documents/files/srk.pdf