Its plot focuses on the silent film era and five pioneers of American cinema - actresses Mary Pickford and Lillian Gish, directors D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, and Paramount Pictures founder Adolph Zukor.

When Mary Gish and her daughters Lillian and Dorothy recognize their friend Gladys Smith in a film made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, they search for her at the studio headquarters in New York City.

Produced by Harold Fielding, directed by Victor Spinetti, and choreographed by Irving Davies, the musical premiered at the Phoenix Theatre in the West End on 19 November 1980 and closed after 57 performances.

[1] The cast included Sheila White as Mary Pickford, Bruce Barry as D.W. Griffith, Kate Revill as Lillian Gish, Guy Siner as Mack Sennett, and Ron Berglas as Adolph Zukor.

[2] Veteran theatre critic Harold Hobson found it to be "a most excellent, delicate and perceptive entertainment, with young players of talent so outstanding that after fifty years of play going I was taken by delighted surprise" and concluded, "I would ask all London to go and see it.