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1914Thanhouser CompanyOne reelDrama

The Mettle of a Man

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

“Harry Raynor, private secretary to John Ross, the political boss, mortally fears his brutal employer. Ross imprisons Quinn, who has offended him politically, on a false charge of murder, and Raynor is just in time to save Alice, Quinn’s daughter, from taking her life. He entrusts the girl, penniless and ill, to his mother. In her delirium she calls constantly for her father. The young man determines to steal from Ross the evidence of Quinn’s innocence. The boss catches him in the act, and Raynor proves in a thrilling scene that he is the superior in both physical and moral courage. Quinn is exonerated, and Harry and Alice are married.”

Summary from Reel Life · 12 September 1914

What the papers said

1 review

“Harry Benham in this number portrays the secretary of a corrupt political boss, whom he holds in deadly fear. But his nerve comes up when he learns how the boss has railroaded the girl’s father to the penitentiary. This makes quite a pleasing offering. The photography is good.”

The Moving Picture World · 26 September 1914

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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.

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Cast and crew

Cast
Harry Benham as Harry Raynor
Justus D. Barnes as John Ross
Mildred Heller as Alice, Quinn’s daughter
Mrs. S. Stevens
N.S. Woods
S. Lawrence as Robert Quinn
Virginia Waite as Raynor’s mother

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

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A frame from Coals of Fire13:13
1914 · Same leadCoals 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, “The Mettle of a Man”. thanhouser.org/films/the-mettle-of-a-man/

Where a print is held

Held by
Library of Congress
Format
16 mm
Completeness
Unknown