Volume II: Filmography

BROTHERS EQUAL

June 13, 1916 (Tuesday)

Length: 2 reels

Character: Drama

Director: Fred A. Kelsey

Scenario: Emmet Mixx and Philip Lonergan

Cast: Barbara Gilroy (the girl), Robert Vaughn (son of the retired trader), Thomas A. Curran (another son, a fisherman), Gladys Dore (the fisherman's sweetheart), Arthur Bauer (retired trader), Master "Bopps" Jones

Location: Jacksonville, Florida and vicinity

Note: Master "Bopps" Jones, five years of age, was the son of Thanhouser actor Morgan Jones.

ARTICLE by Tracey Hollingsworth, "Flivers From Film Folk" column, The Florida Metropolis, May 13, 1916:

"Director Kelsey of Thanhouser burnt a perfectly good house to the ground at Pablo the other day in a scene in Brothers Equal. These movie people certainly believe in putting realism into the films."

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, June 10, 1916:

"A ruggedly beautiful love drama of unpolished hearts and of primitive passions, is Brothers Equal, a two-part Thanhouser-Mutual feature. It is a story of infinite variety ranging from the heart of the metropolis to a tropical South Seas Island, embodying the tang of the sea and the voice of the city. Robert Vaughn's characterization of the socialist, an intensely dramatic role, stamps him as a finished actor. Dainty Barbara Gilroy, as the heroine, is afforded a romantic background amid the grandeur and immensity of the tropics. Heartbroken at the death of his wife, a retired trader, according to the story, left his infant son in the care of relatives and returned to the sea. The son grew to manhood and took up the cause of socialism. To practice his theories he bought an island in the tropics, and accompanied by his fiancée and her family, visited the beautiful spot. Meanwhile the sister of his fiancée was rescued from drowning by a half-breed fisherman. It is discovered that the fisherman is a half-brother of the socialist. The fisherman is no mate for the Northern girl, but in the tropics love is elementary. They are about to elope, when the socialist forgets his theories of all races being created equal, and tells the girl the truth about her lover's birth. She is horror-stricken. The fisherman gives his life in exchange for that of his mother, whom he snatches from the flames. Dying, he turns his eyes to the socialist."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, June 24, 1916:

"A two-part production based on race prejudice. In visiting an estate of his father the heir of the estate meets a white man who he afterward discovers is the son of a colored woman by his own father. The mother, a leper, about to be burned to death, is rescued by her son, who then kills himself in the presence of the white girl with whom he is in love, his brother and others. The picture, although not a pleasant one, inspires thought. It portrays the young man after preaching equal brotherhood to the Negroes discovering what the problem means when brought home to himself."

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