Volume II: Filmography

AN AMATEUR ANIMAL TRAINER

December 30, 1913 (Tuesday)

Length: 1 reel (1,016 feet)

Character: Comedy

Scenario: Lloyd F. Lonergan

Cast: Sidney Bracy (Jack Crane, a wealthy broker, the amateur animal trainer), Ethyle Cooke (Belle, a stenographer), Justus D. Barnes (her father), Helen Badgley, "The Thanhouser Zoo" (including an elephant and at least six camels)

Notes: 1. The release date was stated erroneously as December 30, 1914 in a synopsis in the December 27, 1913 issue of Reel Life. 2. The story of the substitution of an elephant is inconsistent in the synopses and reviews reprinted below. 3. One account gives the length of the film as 1,010 instead of 1,016 feet.

ADVERTISEMENT, Reel Life, December 27, 1913:

"Played by Sidney Bracy, with Ethyle Cook as the girl. Justus D. Barnes as her dad, and the Kidlet besides. The film that proved the Thanhouser Zoo was a reality and not a device for 'press stuff.'"

SYNOPSIS, The Cinema, March 12, 1914:

"He was a gallant young man. He met the girl on a train. She had forgotten to bring money, so he paid her fare. They met again when he called on business at the office where she was employed as typist. This was the beginning. Eventually he proposed, but she referred him to father, who incidentally was a wild animal trainer. Father said, 'Yes, if you will tame this wild elephant.' The young man thought the girl was worth the effort, so he got them to take the animal to a quiet place, and then started experimenting. The elephant didn't take kindly to the new trainer, and in consequence our hero felt very sore in places where the animal had put marks of his displeasure. A rival animal trainer was nearly bankrupt. He had a little girl, to whom he was much attached. She was roaming around, and through a knot-hole in the fence viewed the amateur's efforts to tame the elephant with a great deal of amusement. When he had given up the idea she approached him, and the result of it all was that he offered her father a good sum of money to do the job for him. This being accomplished very successfully, he called the father of his girl, gave an exhibition of what could now be done with the animal, and, of course, won his suit. (Released April 6th. Length 1,016 feet.)"

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, December 27, 1913:

"The young broker fell in love at first sight with his pretty stenographer. Before she could marry him, the girl said, he must get her father's consent. So Jack Crane took the first train to the little town in New England where Ben Matthews lived, expecting to return the next day and claim his bride. However, father's consent was not so easily won. He proved to be an animal trainer, and an erratic old gentleman. Conducting his would-be son-in-law to a remote paddock on his animal farm, he pointed to an elephant grazing therein. 'Tame that beast,' said he, 'and my gal is yours.' Jack did his best. But the elephant was a fierce one - and at last, he was giving up in despair - when a little girl came to his rescue. The money Jack paid Helen's father to buy him a new elephant of tractable disposition, and to exchange it, unknown to Matthews, for the untamable one, was indeed a fortune - but it saved the little girl's father from bankruptcy - Matthew succumbed, and Jack married Belle."

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, January 4, 1914:

"Sidney Bracey is the young broker who tries in vain to become an animal trainer, but who brings strategy to his aid. Mr. Bracey plays the part very well, and receives good support. Ethyle Cooke appears as Belle, his sweetheart. Jack's stenographer consents to marry him only with her father's permission. Her father turns out to be an eccentric old man whose hobby is training animals. He shows Jack an elephant, and tells him he can marry the girl if he will tame it. The beast proves to be a particularly refractory pachyderm, but at last the little daughter of a neighbor comes to his aid. Her father obtains a tame elephant, which he substitutes by night for the wild one. This costs the young broker a big bundle of money, but it gets him the girl."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, January 14, 1914:

"A one-reel comedy that starts off with a quick romance, depicted by means of a few well-selected scenes that introduce us swiftly and securely to the ensuing plot. The man seems to win the girl without much trouble, but to win the consent of the father forms the basis of a rather clumsy plot that does not call for our interest except where the Kidlet is on the scene. Most of the plot is in the animals, but somehow they do not seem to enter into the story. One reason for this is that the actors are not used to the near presence of the elephants. After the man has won the girl, the father tells him to subdue the worst elephant on the farm and he will get his consent. This the young man does by hiring another animal trainer to do the work, and then showing the father the completed results."

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