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What Doris Did

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.

What the papers said

1 review

“A three-reel number, featuring Doris Grey, winner of the Boston moving picture contest. She appears in her first release. Studio scenes are first shown, giving close glimpses of the Thanhouser players, whom Doris meets. She then takes up her trip South to get a hidden document that will save a man’s life. Her adventures on the way prove very entertaining. …

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“A three-reel number, featuring Doris Grey, winner of the Boston moving picture contest. She appears in her first release. Studio scenes are first shown, giving close glimpses of the Thanhouser players, whom Doris meets. She then takes up her trip South to get a hidden document that will save a man’s life. Her adventures on the way prove very entertaining. The plot is lightly amusing, with a few melodramatic touches at times to keep things moving. Doris is pursued by three men on her trip and is extricated by a young stowaway with whom she has befriended. Miss Grey’s work is promising.”

The Moving Picture World · 11 March 1916

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Cast and crew

Director
George Foster Platt
Cast
Bert Delaney
Charles E. Kimball
Cissy Fitzgerald
Doris Grey
Edward Earle
Ethyle Cooke
Florence La Badie as Doris’ sponsor
Gladys Hulette
Hal Forde
Harris Gordon
Leo Post
Leon J. Rubenstein
Louise Emerald Bates
Morgan Jones
William P. Burt
Photographed by
Lawrence E. Williams

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More about this film

Filmed in
New Rochelle, enroute to Florida, and Jacksonville, Florida
Bowers’ notes
  1. Doris Grey was the winner out of 38 entries in a “most beautiful girl” contest sponsored by the Boston American and held at the Boston Exhibitors’ Ball in late 1915. The prize, put up by Thanhouser, was a chance at a film career. 2. In an advertisement in The Moving Picture World, January 5, 1916, Thanhouser stated that What Doris Did would be released the week of February 14, 1916. Later advertisements (that in The Moving Picture World, March 4, 1916, for example) changed the release date to April 1, 1916.

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, “What Doris Did”. thanhouser.org/films/what-doris-did/

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