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1910Thanhouser Company1,000 feetDrama

The Writing on the Wall

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

“Turner, a man of bad character, conducts an inn in the country. His stepdaughter Grace is his trudge. When on an errand to the village she meets Jack, wealthy young man. He is much attracted by her. Jack goes to the bank and draws a large sum of money. Hank, a pal of Turner, sees him and tries to ambush him on the road, but fails. Then he goes ahead to tell Turner. Jack, on his trip, meets Grace. Nearly exhausted, he takes her home, and thus seems to play directly into the hands of the villains. They steal his revolver, and would drug him, were it not for the fact that Grace writes a warning on the wall with wine. Jack, aided by Grace, escapes but the girl is wounded. Jack marries Grace.”

Summary from The Moving Picture World · 11 June 1910

What the papers said

1 article

Article

14 May 1910The Moving Picture World1 min

“Stop! You’ve drank the poison! This cry echoed through the Thanhouser studio one morning recently and caused all eyes to focus on Barry O’Neil, the stage director and the man responsible for this thrill. Of course it came out that the cry was a stage direction, but withal it was so odd that the usually blasé studio workers wanted to know the reason whereof. This is it: In the barroom scene in The Writing On The Wall, a coming Thanhouser release, then in production, two villains drink with a hero at a rough pine table and manage to drug his brandy. The hero raised the glass to his lips, but the director discovered that it wasn’t the drugged one. One of the villains had got it in the mix up—he was spoiling himself! A strong but unlooked-for situation! Hence the director’s call.”

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.

Tell us about a print

Cast and crew

Director
Barry O’Neil
Writer
Lloyd F. Lonergan

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 The Girl of the Northern Woods10:32
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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 1910 →

Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “The Writing on the Wall”. thanhouser.org/films/the-writing-on-the-wall/

Where a print is held

Held by
No print known