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1914Thanhouser CompanyOne reelComedy

The Amateur Detective

No copy you can watch online. A print survives in an archive but has not been digitised, so what follows is the record rather than the film.

The story

“Jane and Pat, her policeman admirer, whom she has taught to believe himself a second Sherlock Holmes, think that they have discovered a blackhand plot against Mr. Wise, Jane’s employer. In reality the mysterious signs they have seen on the back fence are Jack’s secret language to Betty, his sweetheart, whom Father Wise considers too young to have beaux. Betty and Jack find out that Jane has mistaken their innocent hieroglyphics for blackhand signals, so they scheme to get father worried, to have Jack masquerade as a detective, subdue a bogus blackhand gang, and then, throwing off his disguise, claim Betty as his reward. Pat precipitates matters, however, by arresting the young hero prematurely. Jack is obliged to unmask. But Mr. Wise, seeing the joke, gives Betty to Jack.”

Summary from Reel Life · 28 November 1914

What the papers said

3 reviews

“A young couple’s ingenious scheme to obtain an unwilling father’s consent to their marriage by intimidating him with ‘Black Hand’ threats is interwoven with a comic servant’s love affair with a policeman. It is fairly amusing, but should have been taken somewhat faster.”

The Bioscope · 25 March 1915

“Jane, the cook, has persuaded Pat, her policeman lover, that he is a second Sherlock Holmes. Jack and Betty have a secret code in which they address each other on the back fence. Jane and Pat think the hieroglyphics are Black Hand signs. Pat arrests Jack, but Pa Wise sees the joke, gives Betty to him and all ends well.”

The Morning Telegraph · 6 December 1914

More reviews

19 December 1914The Moving Picture World1 min

“Another of the familiar black hand comedies, in which the girl and hero alarmed the household with mystic symbols and then turned detectives and earned the reward. The plot is only a trifle, and the cast is pleasing and the photography good.”

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Cast and crew

Director
Carroll Fleming
Cast
Carey L. Hastings as Jane
Ernest C. Warde as Pat
Harris Gordon as Jack, Betty’s sweetheart
J.S. Murray as Mr. Wise
James S. Murray
Muriel Ostriche as Betty, Wise’s daughter

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

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More about this film

Bowers’ notes
  1. In a review in The Moving Picture World, December 19, 1914, the title was listed erroneously in the plural: The Amateur Detectives. 2. This film was produced in mid October 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, “The Amateur Detective”. thanhouser.org/films/the-amateur-detective/

Where a print is held

Held by
Library of Congress
Format
35 mm nitrate print
Completeness
Unknown