1916FalstaffOne reelComedy

The Snow Shoveler’s Sweetheart

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

“The proprietor of the only garage in the village was not popular, because he seemed to have only one idea in mind—that of raising the price of gasoline. The disliked man had a daughter, who naturally had a sweetheart. He was a young man who had come to the town and started a photograph gallery. With local customers he was also unlucky, for somehow the pictures he took were always out of focus. Within a short time the sheriff took possession of the photograph gallery. The young man called upon the girl and told her his career was over. He was just about starting away when he saw that snow was falling, so he turned upon his father-in-law-elect, and said resolutely: ‘Listen! A job awaits me—and I will become a snow shoveler.’ And he did. The snow shoveler worked so enthusiastically that within a few hours he became a foreman. In the meantime the garage keeper was in trouble. A poor widow and little child had endeavored to buy some gasoline and had been rudely repulsed. She sobbed out her sad story to several young men, and they determined to make an example of the wicked garage keeper. They found him in his home and would have made him swallow his own gasoline had it not been for his brave daughter. The girl went to the roof of the building and attracted the attention of her sweetheart. He came to her rescue. The intruders were vanquished. His narrow escape taught the garage keeper the wickedness of his conduct. In addition, he permitted his daughter to marry the man of her choice.”

Summary from Reel Life · 25 March 1916

What the papers said

1 review

“Frances Keyes, Harry Bates, and J.C. Yorke are the players in this amusing comedy. The snow shoveler was once a photographer whose luck turned because of his peculiar manner of making people look either short and broad or tall and slim, amusingly abnormal. So a snow shoveler he becomes, and gains the consent of his sweetheart’s father to their marriage by an act of bravery while shoveling snow in front of the old man’s home.”

The Moving Picture World · 8 April 1916

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Cast and crew

Cast
Frances Keyes as his sweetheart
Harry Bates as her father
Jay C. Yorke as snow shoveler

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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 1916 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “The Snow Shoveler’s Sweetheart”. thanhouser.org/films/the-snow-shoveler-s-sweetheart/

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