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1915Thanhouser CompanyTwo reelsDrama

The Duel in the Dark

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

“John Gregory, district attorney, carries on a vigorous campaign against clairvoyants and hypnotists, who are swindling the citizens. His assistant is Ralph Morris, his daughter’s fiancé. Advance information in regard to police raids is given out to the offenders themselves, and circumstances compel Morris to suspect the district attorney. He challenges him openly, forcing him to resign. The young man’s engagement to Florence is broken. Meanwhile, Florence has become greatly concerned over her mother’s strange actions. At last she succeeds in winning from Mrs. Gregory a confession. A few weeks before, injured in an automobile accident, she was taken into the house of Sardo, the leader of the hypnotists. He cured her of the violent headache the shock had given her, and then, by the use of mesmerism compelled her to spy upon her husband and return to the clairvoyant with information. She promises she never will have anything to do with Sardo again. But his influence proves too strong. Florence follows her mother to the mesmerist’s house, where the daughter pits her will power and her love for her mother against the hypnotist’s control. After a terrible psychic struggle the girl wins. Sardo is arrested and Gregory reinstated; and Morris, after receiving his forgiveness, marries Florence.”

Summary from Reel Life · 13 March 1915

What the papers said

1 review

“A two-reel story written by Philip Lonergan, in which the wife of a prosecuting attorney falls victim to a hypnotist. Her husband is at the time engaged in routing out the fakers in this and kindred lines. The hypnotist compels her to install a dictograph in her husband’s room and betray him in other ways. The duel in the dark …

Read in full · 1 min

“A two-reel story written by Philip Lonergan, in which the wife of a prosecuting attorney falls victim to a hypnotist. Her husband is at the time engaged in routing out the fakers in this and kindred lines. The hypnotist compels her to install a dictograph in her husband’s room and betray him in other ways. The duel in the dark is where she and her daughter fight to free the mother’s hand from the hypnotist’s power. This plot is somewhat similar to previous offerings of the kind and makes an offering of about average strength throughout.”

The Moving Picture World · 27 March 1915

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Cast and crew

Cast
Arthur Bauer as John Gregory
Carey L. Hastings as his wife
Florence La Badie as Florence, their daughter
Morgan Jones as Sardo, the hypnotist
J. Morris Foster as Ralph Morris
Writer
Philip Lonergan

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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 1915 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “The Duel in the Dark”. thanhouser.org/films/the-duel-in-the-dark/

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