The story
“Zudora, the widely heralded serial by Daniel Goodman, the first episode of which, The Mystic Message of the Spotted Collar, will be released by the Thanhouser Film Corporation on November 23, is distinctly unusual both in conception and in its handling. Altogether it promises to be a most fascinating story to follow. There are to be in all 20 episodes, each complete in itself. Thus, those who have not seen Chapter One will enjoy Chapter Two or Three just the same. In that respect Zudora is comparable to a series of short stories in which the same characters appear, but at the same time it proceeds like a novel towards the final climax.
“Thrown on the screen first is a picture of Harold MacGrath, the famous writer who is to novelize for more than 500 newspapers this latest creation of the author of The Battle of the Sexes, in consultation with the creator of this photomasterpiece, Dr. Daniel Carson Goodman. They presently give place to Marguerite Snow, the Countess Olga of The Million Dollar Mystery, now a winsome girl of 18, Zudora, daughter of a miner and a circus acrobat. She is followed by James Cruze, who, as the long-haired Hindu mystic, Hassam Ali, uncle of the orphan, Zudora, seems possessed of a parchment-like skin and an expression of hypocritical solemnity. Harry Benham, strong and well set-up, bows from the screen. He is to play John Storm, Zudora’s lawyer lover.
“Hassam Ali, the mystic, uncle and guardian of the 18-year-old beauty, Zudora, sits by the fire in his handsome home. Events of 17 years before pass in review, as in a dream, before him. He sees himself once more the side show fakir and fortune teller with the circus. He sees his sister, the tight rope walker with that same circus, coddling the infant Zudora. The circus has just returned to the mining town where his sister’s husband, Zudora’s father, has been prospecting for gold. The little family is reunited, and events move quickly, for that afternoon the baby’s father discovers unlimited gold in the Zudora mine—his mine and named after his baby. Mad with happiness he becomes over excited, sets off a blast too soon, and is killed. They tell his wife, the baby’s mother, just as she is about to walk the tight rope, and she, too, attempting to do her circus ring stunt, becomes dizzy, and falls to her death.
“All these scenes Hassam Ali sees repeated in his dream. He wakes, and, waking, remembers how the baby’s father with his last breath had willed the mine, worth $20,000,000, to his daughter, Zudora, to become her property absolutely, when she reached her eighteenth birthday. In the event of her death, however, it was to go to the next heir at law. Hassam Ali, her nearest kin and thus the beneficiary in the event of her death, with stealthy cunning plans to get the mine’s $20 million for his own.
“The wonderful photography in the handling and taking of the figure of Hassam Ali sleeping by the fireplace, while scene after scene passes by him in review, is worthy of special note. Seldom, if ever, has such clever double exposure work been recorded. The setting shifts. Hassam Ali is seen staring into the crystal where, written large, appears the word ‘Zudora.’ He is startled, but he is also determined. His one fear is caused by the advent of the young lawyer, John Storm, in the life of his niece and ward, Zudora. He has never told her of the inheritance that will be hers when she’s 18. That will help. And he recognizes also that he must under no circumstances be implicated in the girl’s removal.
“Leading her lover by the hand, Zudora comes to Hassam Ali. ‘This is John Storm, and I love him,’ she says ingenuously. ‘And I love your niece,’ Storm tells Hassam. Stiff armed, Hassam Ali pushes the young attorney from him. ‘Go! Go!’ he cries, and to Zudora he says: ‘You have always been interested in my mystical work, you have shown your ability, you have begged me to let you help, when detective cases were brought to me to solve. Now you may have your chance. The next 20 cases that come to me I will give to you to solve. If you solve them you may have this man, John Storm. If you fail you must renounce him forever. That is what I have decided.’ It was, indeed, what he, Hassam Ali, had decided. He had hit upon this plan as the one safe and sure way of getting rid of Zudora without involving himself in any way, and it so happened that John Storm himself was the accused in the next case brought to Hassam Ali to be unraveled.
“Storm had been defending a case for the city. Opposed to him was a prominent lawyer named Bienreith, and the case became so interesting that the newspapers began featuring it. Storm had even had one of these papers in his hand when he came to claim Zudora from Hassam Ali. He was dumbfounded when his sweetheart’s uncle denounced him, and turned him away from the house. He did not know that he represented the very chance Hassam Ali had been awaiting for 18 years.
“After Storm has gone from the house, stoop shouldered, and for the moment disheartened, events move quickly across the screen. The illuminating acting, the clear photography, and the splendid arrangement of this reel will hold the audience spell-bound. Storm is seen to slap Bienreith’s face in the courtroom after the latter has made a particularly insulting speech. ‘Meet me tonight at midnight—only one of us shall survive.’ That is written on the sheet slipped across the attorney’s table. Storm goes home. Alone in his home he practices with his revolver, between shots sipping a glass of water.
“’Only one of us will survive.’ That telltale sheet of paper is found by a reporter. An hour later the newspapers are full of the approaching duel, Zudora reads. Fearful that her sweetheart may be shot, Zudora, as soon as she reads the news, determines to prevent the duel. Putting a harmless but potent drug in her reticule, she goes on to Storm’s home where she finds him practicing with his revolver. Into his glass of drinking water she pours the sleeping potion, and then leaves him. Too strong a man to yield to unnatural sleep without a fight he staggers into the open air and—away.
“When Bienreith is found dead in his room the blame is placed on Storm. Where is John Storm? The police cannot find him. No one knows where he is. Suddenly the screen shows him staggering down a city street bareheaded, wild eyed. A newsboy approaches him, studies his picture in the paper, and then points out the resemblance to a policeman, who arrests the half-crazed wanderer. Zudora, hearing of it, knows that something must be wrong, that John Storm, the man she had learned to love, never could have committed a cowardly murder, and she rushes to her uncle, Hassam Ali, and begs that she be allowed to solve this mystery.
“In examining Bienreith’s things Zudora discovers some pencil marks on his collar. When Storm is brought into the courtroom and formally charged with murder, she tries to explain to the court that she can clear Storm of the guilt. Burns, Hassam Ali’s confederate, puts a revolver against her neck, unseen by anyone. But his nerve fails him for she turns suddenly, apparently heedless of her danger, and takes a pencil from his waistcoat pocket.
“The pencil marks she then makes on a slip of paper to prove her contention to the crowd startle her. There is a strange similarity between those made by Burns’ pencil and those on the spotted collar, and when court is adjourned, she persuades Burns to come home with her. She takes him at once to the room of mysteries and there, amid the strange, weird lights and mystic whirligigs, she hypnotizes the man. Meanwhile she has hidden two lawyers from the court, where they can hear Burns’ story. Under her influence he confesses and tells how he killed Bienreith.
“The picture changes. Hassam Ali is shown in his private apartments. He opens the wall by a secret spring, and revolver in hand is shown looking down into the room of mysteries. He listens intently, ready to shoot the moment Burns shows any signs of confessing the real secret which would involve him in the crime. Maddened by the revolving lights Burns makes a dash at them just before he reaches the fatal point at which Hassam Ali would have shot him. As he touches them a blot of electricity leaps through his body. He falls to the floor dead, as the two lawyers concealed by Zudora behind the black velvet curtains, step into sight and congratulate her. ‘You have solved your first case,’ her uncle tells her, sourly.”
Summary from Reel Life · 14 November 1914
