Lost1914Thanhouser CompanyOne reelComedy

Mrs. Pinkhurst’s Proxy

Name: Mrs. Pinkhurst’s Proxy
Genre: Comedy
Released: 1914-01-04

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

“The women’s society in a small Western town had engaged the famous foreign reformer, Mrs. Pinkhurst, to lecture in the town hall—for which she was to receive $500. At the last hour, Mrs. Pinkhurst sent word that she could not come—but the telegraph boy lost the message, and it fell into the hands of a tramp who had been reading about the celebrated woman lecturer in the newspapers, and saw in the situation an easy way to make some money. He secured an effective disguise and palmed himself off as Mrs. Pinkhurst, making a very eloquent speech. No one suspected the hoax—and the $500 was just within the tramp’s grasp—when the police rushed into the hall and arrested him. Mrs. Pinkhurst, it appeared, was still in Europe, and the police were after a clever bank embezzler who had been impersonating her all over the country. The bank embezzler had slipped out of the game just in time, when the unfortunate tramp jumped in.”

Summary from Reel Life · 3 January 1914

What the papers said

2 reviews

“A good humored burlesque in which Riley Chamberlin masquerades as a well-known militant suffragette. All goes well until his discovery, when he is helped out of town. This has several moments of an amusing sort, though it never becomes extremely laughable.”

The Moving Picture World · 10 January 1914

Read in full · 1 min

“A one-reel comedy for suffragettes, that mocks the militants and their mannish mode of dressing. This is a rich streak of satire on the pretensions and foibles of the vote-getting sisters of a rural community. It would interest if only because of the subject with which it deals. There is a complete and satisfactory plot, added to which are the humorous situations. It is an offering with very little chance for acting possible, rather roughly staged, and with a little too much importance to the inessential details. This general style of humor has been presented many times before. The hobo, the best thing in the offering, happens upon a telegram that is to tell the local branch of the woman’s suffrage movement that a certain lecturer cannot be with them that night. So the tramp disguises himself as the woman, and is paid for the lecture. Then he is arrested because it is found out that the original lecturer is a forger wanted in many states. Here the end of the film makes us wish that we could see more of his adventures.”

January 6, 1914 (Tuesday)

No Thanhouser release because of the three-reel release of the following Friday.

The New York Dramatic Mirror · 14 January 1914

Have you seen this film, or a print of it?

Prints of films thought lost still turn up in attics, private collections and archives. A record like this one is how the next one gets found.

Tell us about a print

Cast and crew

Cast: Carey L. Hastings as Miss Jane Jennings
: Catherine Webb
: Ethyle Cooke
: George Barnes as village constable
: Mrs. S. Sullivan
: Marvin Perry Horton as Bill, a brakeman
: Riley Chamberlin as Jack, a hobo, a.k.a. Mrs. Pinkhurst
: Sidney Bracy as Tom, a rural station agent

Every name opens that person's page, with each film they appear in and which of them you can watch.

Watch instead

Films you can watch from the same company

Matched by cast, director and kind

15:13

1912 · Same castThe Star of Bethlehem

15:49

1915 · Same castOld Jane of the Gaiety

13:13

1914 · Same castCoals of Fire

More about this film

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, “Mrs. Pinkhurst’s Proxy”. thanhouser.org/films/mrs-pinkhurst-s-proxy/

Where a print is held

Held by: No print known