Volume II: Filmography

THE DUEL IN THE DARK

March 23, 1915 (Tuesday)

Length: 2 reels

Character: Drama

Scenario: Philip Lonergan

Cast: Arthur Bauer (John Gregory), Carey L. Hastings (his wife), Florence LaBadie (Florence, their daughter), Morgan Jones (Sardo, the hypnotist), Morris Foster (Ralph Morris)

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, March 13, 1915:

"John Gregory, district attorney, carries on a vigorous campaign against clairvoyants and hypnotists, who are swindling the citizens. His assistant is Ralph Morris, his daughter's fiancé. Advance information in regard to police raids is given out to the offenders themselves, and circumstances compel Morris to suspect the district attorney. He challenges him openly, forcing him to resign. The young man's engagement to Florence is broken. Meanwhile, Florence has become greatly concerned over her mother's strange actions. At last she succeeds in winning from Mrs. Gregory a confession. A few weeks before, injured in an automobile accident, she was taken into the house of Sardo, the leader of the hypnotists. He cured her of the violent headache the shock had given her, and then, by the use of mesmerism compelled her to spy upon her husband and return to the clairvoyant with information. She promises she never will have anything to do with Sardo again. But his influence proves too strong. Florence follows her mother to the mesmerist's house, where the daughter pits her will power and her love for her mother against the hypnotist's control. After a terrible psychic struggle the girl wins. Sardo is arrested and Gregory reinstated; and Morris, after receiving his forgiveness, marries Florence."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, March 27, 1915:

"A two-reel story written by Philip Lonergan, in which the wife of a prosecuting attorney falls victim to a hypnotist. Her husband is at the time engaged in routing out the fakers in this and kindred lines. The hypnotist compels her to install a dictograph in her husband's room and betray him in other ways. The duel in the dark is where she and her daughter fight to free the mother's hand from the hypnotist's power. This plot is somewhat similar to previous offerings of the kind and makes an offering of about average strength throughout."

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