Lost1914PrincessOne reelDrama

Billy’s Ruse

Name: Billy’s Ruse
Genre: Drama
Released: 1914-03-13

No copy you can watch online. No print is known to survive. What follows is what does: the release, the cast, the story, and what the trade press said at the time.

The story

“Billy is busy showing Muriel how to do the tango on the ice, with Boyd, Muriel’s sweetheart, who cannot skate, helplessly looking on, when Fanny, Billy’s wife discovers her husband with his arm rather tightly embracing a strange young woman. Billy breaks away reluctantly from his fair escort and attempts to flee. Fanny is determined to make an example of her husband for other wives to gaze upon, and finally she pursues Billy so closely that he is obliged to jump through a fisherman’s hole in the ice. He swims under the ice to another fisherman’s hole and from that coign of vantage watches with amusement his wife’s despair at having driven him into an early and unmarked grave. The reconciliation between Fanny and her shivering husband is a particularly affecting scene.”

Summary from Reel Life · 7 March 1914

What the papers said

2 reviews

Read in full · 1 min

“There is nothing that appeals to the sense of humor quite as much as the sight of some one learning to skate, and in this very amusing comedy the fact has made that the excuse for a great deal of fun. Muriel wants her sweetheart to take her skating. He can’t skate, but promises to do his best. His best isn’t much, and when Billy escapes his wife and asks her to try it with him she is only too glad to do so. But wifey sees them and follows. Billy swims under the ice to get away, and at sight of him all wet and dripping her heart is softened, she takes him home, gives him hot coffee and forgives him for all his indiscretions. A very good comedy with Muriel Ostriche as the girlish temptress and Boyd Marshall as the mistreated sweetheart.”

The Morning Telegraph · 8 March 1914

“An ice pond farce with some novices on skates furnishing fun. It is very laughable, for the author has kept the situation cleverly developing into freshly astonishing forms, and it is brightly acted. A good number for fun.”

The Moving Picture World · 28 March 1914

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Cast and crew

Cast: William Noel as Billy, Fanny’s husband
: Boyd Marshall as as Boyd, Muriel’s sweetheart
: Catherine Webb as Mrs. Warren, a neighbor
: Charles Emerson
: Eugene Redding
: Fan Bourke as as Fanny
: Muriel Ostriche as as Muriel
Writer: John William Kellette

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More about this film

Bowers’ notes: The release date of this film was erroneously listed as March 6, 1914 in a synopsis in Reel Life, March 7, 1914. However, a Mutual Program schedule printed in the same issue has the release date correctly as March 13, 1914.

From Volume II: Filmography of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. Read the history of 1914 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “Billy’s Ruse”. thanhouser.org/films/billy-s-ruse/

Where a print is held

Held by: No print known