Volume II: Filmography

HIS GREAT UNCLE'S SPIRIT

 

Advertisement from the Moving Picture World, March 2, 1912. (F-310)

March 8, 1912 (Friday)

Length: 1 reel

Character: Drama

Cast: George Ober

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, March 2, 1912:

"For photo fans who like trick film His Great Uncle's Spirit is just jammed full of amazing trick situations and it will really leave your audience dazed and delighted! A professional magician has reason to revenge himself on the meanest miser who ever lived (all misers are that!) and he brings his knowledge of the black arts to bear on said tightwad. He scares the miser almost out of his wits and has the great, big, final laugh - and a lot of others along the way."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture News, February 24, 1912:

"A young sleight-of-hand performer found that he was also 'sleight' of audience. Business was very bad, although the show was good, and his troubles came to a climax when the village magnate seized his props and scenery for debt. The performer begged for a chance to make good, telling of the big advance sales in other towns, but the magnate was obdurate. He wanted his pound of flesh, and it was a matter of indifference to him whether any blood came with it or not. With plenty of time on his hands, the young magician's thoughts naturally turned to revenge. He knew the reputation of his enemy, miserly and grasping, a man who could never keep a clerk because he paid very little, so the magician decided to take an office position with him. He made a hit with the magnate because he only wanted a dollar a week and his board, and was engaged. Thus he was able to prepare for his tricks without fear of detection. He found that his employer was as bad as he had been painted, and his heart was steeled against him.

"Soon the magnate found that new and novel interests had entered into his life. Mysterious messages came to him through the air that the spirit of his great-uncle was displeased with him. Then the spirit began to get really busy. He took away the magnate's gold, his stocks, bonds, and securities, even food and drink was denied to him. It took the miser some time to realize that the spirit meant business, and that he insisted upon fair business dealings and generosity. To please his great-uncle the magnate completely reformed, and was afraid ever to go wrong again, because he believed it would mean another visitation. Through the liberality of his unsuspecting employer, the magician was enabled to get back to Broadway, and he told many friends he met there, 'This was one season where I didn't mind being closed up by the sheriff.'"

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, March 10, 1912:

"The viewpoint from which this offering is judged makes all the difference in its conception. To those who may be able to judge of the happy medium that goes to make up the construction of plays, farcical and dramatic as well, this production will prove a source of interest. A magician visits a country town, and because of his slim house of spectators fails and his property is confiscated. He secures employment as secretary to the theatre owner and the town's richest man, a miser. He observes the stinginess of the old man in all its phases and then decides to attempt a reformation. He slips a note in disguised handwriting purporting to be from the old man's great uncle, in which he is admonished to reform his miserly ways. Then the magician brings in his own powers as a performer and substitutes the old man's money box for an empty case and follows this with many other feats of legerdemain which in the end scare him into a change of life, and he gives away much of his hoard and turns benefactor to his neighbors. Some of the tricks might be questioned, just as they can at any magician's performance, but all are in reality simple, and trick photography has little if anything to do with their accomplishment. It is a subject well worth seeing and one which will cause much comment."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, March 16, 1912:

"The hero of this picture is a sleight-of-hand magician. A miserly theatre manager treated him very meanly. In disguise he gets employment with the old man as secretary and sees to it that he gets messages from his great uncle ordering him to reform. The situation is handled with much skill and carefulness, and the miser is very well acted in a conventional way. The story is entertaining; but the good magician, an obverse of Mephistopheles, isn't at all moments quite convincing. The photographs and all that belong to the mechanical end of picture-making are very well done. It is a good filler."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, March 13, 1912:

"As a unique little oddity in the form of a trick picture, this film is both interesting and entertaining, but it has added merit as well as interest, because the excuse for it all is an equally unique and entertaining story, and relates how a young magician came to a country town, but failed to draw a large and successful audience. In consequence his goods were attached by the miserly owner of the theater. The manner in which the young magician gets back his property and incidentally reforms the miser constitutes the enjoyment of the picture, for he proceeds to use his art in his own defense. He becomes the miser's secretary for one dollar a week, and through various tricks of magic causes him to believe that his great uncle's ghost is watching over him. At length he has his wealth mysteriously disappear, a fact which seems to open his eyes, for he soon begins to reform, and things gradually grow well with him again, brought on by the hand of the magician, who leaves him scattering gold to the poor. The characters are good and the production is adequately put on."

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Copyright © 1995 Q. David Bowers. All Rights Reserved.