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1914Thanhouser CompanyOne reelFantasy

The Tin Soldier and the Dolls

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

“Helen had a whole nursery full of dolls, but when her uncle gave her a wonderful new one, her excitement knew no bounds. That night she dreamed that her beautiful new doll and the tin soldier had come to life and that the tin soldier proposed marriage to the doll. But here’s where tragedy stepped into Helen’s dream. There was an older doll, a sort of adventuress, who lured away the tin soldier from his young wife and who caused the pretty doll wife to jump over the crest of a cliff in sheer despair. Helen awoke to find herself peering over the side of her bed, which in her dream she had imagined was the cliff. The new doll lay on the floor where she had dropped it and had been smashed to bits by its fall. Woman-like, Helen blamed the tin soldier for it all and thereafter the soldier doll got nothing but slaps and bumps in the nursery, circumstances which resulted in his premature demise.”

Summary from Reel Life · 4 April 1914

What the papers said

4 reviews · 1 article

“This is quite a charming children’s tale of dolls which come to life while their small owner is asleep. The Thanhouser Company have become famous for the clever juvenile performers whom they number among their artistes, and in consequence they are particularly well fitted to give us such a picture as the present. Little Helen Badgley makes a pretty baby …

Read in full · 1 min

“This is quite a charming children’s tale of dolls which come to life while their small owner is asleep. The Thanhouser Company have become famous for the clever juvenile performers whom they number among their artistes, and in consequence they are particularly well fitted to give us such a picture as the present. Little Helen Badgley makes a pretty baby heroine, whilst Miss Mignon Anderson—that surprisingly versatile and finished young actress—is excellent as an animated doll. One feels that all three of the dolls would have been more effective if they had been played in a more stilted and exaggerated fashion. Their faces, too, might have been ‘made up’ to approach more nearly to the true doll’s proper stolidity and lack of expression. But, even though there is no great distinction between them and their human mistress in appearance, they are perhaps all the more charming for that very reason. Every youngster will adore this delightful nursery drama, whilst for grown-up children also it will be by no means without attraction. Of its kind it would be difficult to imagine anything better.”

The Bioscope · 5 April 1914

“A charming comedy-drama which children are sure to love. Helen dreams that her dolls have come to life. The tin soldier and the blonde doll are married, but a brunette—a sort of an adventuress—lures him away from his bride and she commits suicide. Helen wakes up and on looking over the side of her bed, finds the blonde doll has …

Read in full · 1 min

“A charming comedy-drama which children are sure to love. Helen dreams that her dolls have come to life. The tin soldier and the blonde doll are married, but a brunette—a sort of an adventuress—lures him away from his bride and she commits suicide. Helen wakes up and on looking over the side of her bed, finds the blonde doll has really fallen over a cliff and is lying on the floor dead. She blames it all on the tin soldier, and after that he is treated very badly in the nursery.”

The Morning Telegraph · 12 April 1914

More reviews2 · 11 April 1914 – 8 April 1914

11 April 1914The Moving Picture World1 min

“The Kidlet’s dolls have come to life while she dreams and, played by other Thanhouser people, act the story of love and jealousy to a tragic end, when the blond, heroine-doll falls off the bed and wakes the Kidlet. This little player is a treasure and gives just the touch to the picture that it needs to make it go well. A pretty offering, artistically set, and beautifully photographed.”

8 April 1914The New York Dramatic Mirror1 min

“When a kid’s toys come to life is a subject of this one-reel fairy tale devoted to children and eminently fitting for them, and no doubt for their elders also. Lots of double photography is used, as the tin soldier makes love to the blonde doll and then the brunette. Lots of jealousy is also caused. And the toys do have a terrible time of it, until the child, played by the lovable Kidlet, wakes up from his [sic] dream. Mignon Anderson takes the part of a child. The Twins are in it, as also the Kid. They all do finely, the piece has been staged in a manner that bespeaks the finished and at the same time artistic director. In the coming to life and in a number of other scenes hard to handle the film runs smoothly and delightfully due to able handling.”

Article

4 April 1914Reel Life1 min

“And who is ‘the dare-devil ingenue leading lady’ of Thanhouser? To see her, you’d never suspect it was little Mignon Anderson. But then, you’ve never caught her fearsome risks for the glory of Thanhouser. In The Tin Soldier and the Dolls, she had to fall off a stone wall fifteen feet high. Mignon weighs only a hundred, but she is so essential to Thanhouser that when she attempts one of her daredevil stunts, the director engages ten husky fellows to hold the life net. One would suppose that Miss Anderson were a trained gymnast or acrobat especially engaged to perform these aerial antics. But she has been a Thanhouser player for the last three years, and is one of the daintiest, cleverest ingenues in motion pictures. She is perfectly fearless, and has announced that she will not wear a wooden kimono for a few years to come.”

Have you seen this film, or a print of it?

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
Charles T. Horan as Gray, Helen’s father
Helen Badgley as Helen, queen of the nursery
Lila Chester as Mrs. Gray, Helen’s mother
Madeline Fairbanks as minister
Marie Eline
Marion Fairbanks as Grace, formerly a doll
Mignon Anderson as May, formerly a doll
Riley Chamberlin as Helen’s uncle
Roy Hauck as Jack, formerly a tin soldier
Writer
Lloyd F. Lonergan

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

Watch instead

Films you can watch from the same company

Matched by cast, director and kind
A frame from The Children’s Hour12:30
1913 · Same castThe Children’s Hour
A frame from Coals of Fire13:13
1914 · Same castCoals of Fire
A frame from Just a Shabby Doll14:40
1913 · Same castJust a Shabby Doll

More about this film

Bowers’ notes
  1. The title appears erroneously in the singular, as “doll,” in numerous listings; in various mentions in its April 4, 1914 issue, Reel Life had it both ways—singular and plural. 2. The review in The New York Dramatic Mirror identifies Marie Eline only as The Thanhouser Kid, although the film company dropped this nickname late in the preceding year. However, it continued to appear in numerous trade notices, of which this is mentioned as an example.

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 Tin Soldier and the Dolls”. thanhouser.org/films/the-tin-soldier-and-the-dolls/

Where a print is held

Held by
No print known