Two items in the 6 March 1920 Moving Picture World announced that Olive Thomas' next Selznick picture would be The Flapper, with Alan Crosland directing. The story was an original comedy, written and adapted by Francis Marion, which had prompted Selznick Pictures Corporation head Myron Selznick to postpone a previously planned Thomas project calledJenny. The original title of The Flapper was The Dangerous Paradise, according to the 13 March 1920 Moving Picture World, but the studio decided on the change because The Flapper "permits more exploitation and is more attractive."
       The term "flapper" had been around for years to describe frivolous, generally well-off young women who challenged conventional dress and behavior. A British studio had made a film called The Flapper and the Curate as early as 1916, but "the flapper" didn't become an American phenomenon until the end of World War I, and this film was the first American feature to use "flapper" in the title. Selznick soon recycled Francis Marion's original title, The Dangerous Paradise, for another production, starring Louise Huff (1920, see entry), who, incidentally, had earlier, in 1918, played a character called "The Flapper" in His Majesty, Bunker Bean (see entry).
       Another 13 March 1920 item noted that production on The Flapper had already begun at the Selznick Eastern studios in the Bronx, NY, and among the actors in the early scenes were Dorothy Kent, Theodore Westman, Jr., J. Warren Cook, Charles Craig, Allen Bergman, Katherine Johnston, Marcia Harris, the Shearer Twins (Norma and Athole), Russell Hewitt, Maury Stewart, Jr., William P. Carlton, and Arthur Houseman. Yet another item in the same issue of Moving Picture World mentioned that "Olive Thomas and thirty members of her company have completed exteriors at Sleepy Hollow, Tarrytown, N.Y.
       The 27 March 1920 Motion Picture News reported that several exteriors were being filmed at Lake Placid, NY, and that Mildred Cheshire had been hired to play one of Thomas' character's schoolmates. Three weeks later, the 17 April 1920 Moving Picture World noted that the company had left for Florida "to imbue the production with realistic scenes." Most likely, Florida provided the semi-tropical locations for "Orange Springs."
       A minute-and-a half segment was filmed atop an open-air double-decker bus driving along West Forty-second Street in Manhattan. It passes the familiar New York City Library, with its distinctive 1911 marble lions in front, at the corner of Fifth Avenue.
       The Flapper, followed by Darling Mine (see entry), were Olive Thomas' last films released within her lifetime. The twenty-five-year-old actress, Hollywood's first major casualty, died of supposedly accidental poisoning in France on 10 September 1920. Her final film, Everybody's Sweetheart (see entry), was released four weeks after her death.
       Onscreen credits of the print viewed mistakenly listed Arthur Houseman as Arthur Johnston.
       According to the 23 May 1920 Wid's Daily, "Here is a delightful and real little light comedy idea that is handicapped at the end by a lot of superfluous footage....[T]here is too much detail employed in straightening out the tangle at the end and the action becomes wearisome. Some careful cutting would result in a mighty fine picture, especially if the editor removed some of the scenes in which the director has taken the story entirely too seriously."
       The Flapper is extant.