Volume II: Filmography

FIFTY YEARS AFTER APPOMATTOX

British release title: AFTER 50 YEARS

July 4, 1915 (Sunday)

Length: 1 reel (573 feet)

Character: Drama

Director: Ernest C. Warde

Cast: Lorraine Huling (Dorothea, as a girl; Dorothea, as an old lady), Charles Emerson (John, her brother), Boyd Marshall (Randolph Serviss, her lover), Nellie Parker Spaulding, Lindsay Morison

Notes: 1. Thanhouser originally planned to issue another film, His Two Patients, on July 4th, and appropriate announcements to this effect were released to the trade. This picture was subsequently rescheduled to a July 25, 1915 release date; however, the uncorrected date of July 4th appeared in schedules and synopses in trade publications, the July 3 and 10, 1915 issues of The Moving Picture World, for examples. It is presumed that Fifty Years After Appomattox, a patriotic subject, was considered more appropriate for release on July 4th. 2. A synopsis printed in The Biograph gave the length of this film as 573 feet, which for a reel was very short.

ADVERTISEMENT (signed by Edwin Thanhouser), The Moving Picture World, July 3, 1915

"A little war story - a breath of the sweetness, the nobility, the simplicity of the girls of 50 years ago - and Lorraine Huling is just that girl! By the way - it's a fitting Independence Day offering."

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, July 3, 1915:

"Over the graves of her brother and her husband, on Memorial Day, Dorothea, the little old lady, lives again in the days of her young womanhood. When war was declared in '61, John her only brother, went to the front. Anxious to do what she could for her country, Dorothea became one of that band of brave women, who as secret service agents risked their lives within the hostile lines. On one occasion, she was arrested and incriminating papers found in her possession. She was sentenced to be shot. A young Southern officer, touched by her beauty and youth, personally appealed to Jefferson Davis and won her release. Later, while nursing in a federal hospital, Dorothea again met the Southerner. He was wounded and a prisoner. In the act of aiding him to escape, she was detected by her brother. When, however, she reminded John that it was to Randolph Serviss that she owed her life, he no longer opposed the means she had taken of repaying her debt. At the close of the war, Randolph came North and married Dorothea. Little by little, the Southerner and Captain John forgot their old enmity and became close friends. Now they lie side by side in the family plot. And Dorothea, 'with a touch impartially tender,' strews with flowers the resting places of 'the Blue and the Gray.'"

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture World, July 10, 1915:

"The woman who loved them both waits a summons to join them in that land where there is no strife, or sectional feeling or hatred of any kind. That is the last thought that occurs to an audience in the final scene of Fifty Years After Appomattox fades into the Thanhouser trademark, leaving Lorraine Huling alone in the cemetery where she has just decorated the graves of her husband and brother who fought, respectively, on the Confederate and Union side. This poetical drama, so capably interpreted by Charles Emerson, Boyd Marshall and Miss Huling, begins with pictures showing the thinning ranks of the Grand Army of the Republic parading on Memorial Day. As she goes to the cemetery the old lady, who has been watching the parade, rehearses the past and recalls the part she took in the gigantic fratricidal struggle known as the Civil War. When the brother enlisted in the Union side, she went through the lines as a spy and finally was caught with incriminating papers. A young Southern officer, touched by her appealing beauty, interceded and she was given her freedom. She becomes a nurse. Among the wounded brought to her care is the Southern major who saved her life. She assists in his escape, but is detected by her brother who finally becomes a party to the deception when he learns what the Southerner once did for his sister. After the war's conclusion, the two young people meet amid peaceful scenes and their love comes to a happy conclusion."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, July 17, 1915:

"A Decoration Day story featuring Lorraine Huling and Boyd Marshall. The widow is seen following the ceremonies in the cemetery, going over her girlhood days in Civil War time. She was arrested as a Union spy and pardoned by Jefferson Davis. This is strongly sentimental in treatment and makes a characteristic offering of the type."

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