The Other Half

“In this picture the Thanhouser producers have reached a happy medium in combining a story with an educational subject. Having the laudable purpose of giving people an idea of how the poor live and how they may be helped, and at the same time interest them in a picture as a drama, they have taken a page from the history of a common laborer, who lived with his father in a New York tenement. The scenes are exceptionally well drawn and clear, and the various incidents, many of them dramatic in themselves, have been set forth in a logical manner. Misfortune comes to the man through an accident. He loses his position, and with only one arm is thrown out upon the streets to live from indiscriminate charity. This charity makes a drunkard out of him, and the family receives none of it. Later he comes under the attention of organized charity, and from then on matters assume a brighter aspect. The man was weak, rather than worthless, and with the proper encouragement he is made to reform. The wife, sick through improper care and food, is taken to the country and, on regaining her strength, is taught how to care for her home, sew, and tend to family. The film performs its double function vigorously.”

“Millionaire Philanthropists Commend Assailed Film: Recently a permanent New York newspaper in its ‘moving picture crusade’ spoke in denunciation of a Thanhouser film entitled The Other Half, which merely gave a true picture of conditions among the poor of New York. At a recent meeting of the Board of Managers of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, a report was made on the same film and approval unanimously passed on it. The managers are almost all of them in the millionaire class and undoubtedly there never has been so moneyed a class to give praise to a motion picture. They were: Henry G. Barbey, George Blagden, Cornelius N. Bliss, Jr., George S. Brewster, Charles C. Burlington, B. Ogden Chisholm, R. Bayard Cutting...[and others—Ed].”