Volume II: Filmography

DOPE

(Direct-From-Broadway Features)

c. April 1, 1914

Length: 6 reels

Character: Drama

Scenario: Adapted from Joseph Medill Patterson's play of the same name

Cast: Laura Nelson Hall (Mrs. Binkley), Ernest Truex (Jimmy Binkley), William H. Tooker (John Rogers), Gaston Mervale (Mr. Binkley), Christine Blessing (Mrs. Rogers), John "Slim" Rogers, Jr. (Hermann Lieb)

Notes: 1. This film was produced by Direct-From-Broadway Features, a division of the Mutual Film Corporation. Filming was done by Thanhouser at Thanhouser's New Rochelle studio. Dope was advertised in Reel Life, beginning in early May 1914, by the Continental Feature Film Company, a division of Mutual, at 29 Union Square, New York City. In the July 14, 1914 issue of Reel Life, and others, it was designated as a Thanhouser "Special Production." The film was billed as "Hermann Lieb's Dope with Laura Nelson Hall." The cast members were not regular Thanhouser actors or actresses. 2. The story of the film was taken from a 1909 Broadway play written by Joseph Medill Patterson, which treated the subject of cocaine addiction. Patterson studied the subject of addiction in the company of Chicago physician J.J. Mahoney, who traveled with him to underworld dens in Chicago. 3. An expanded story, by Mabel Condon, based on this film, appeared in the May 1914 issue of The Photoplay Magazine.

ARTICLE, Variety, May 8, 1914:

"When the Hermann Lieb feature film, Dope, starts on its Western travels next week, with a Pacific Coast outlined by Harry Dull, who has been directing the New York bookings, the Thanhouser Film Co. will change the title. The Western exhibitors assert that the present title does not mean nor convey anything to their houses and for that reason have asked C.J. Hite's concern to use another name. In changing from the Dope title the Thanhouser people stand to lose $2,000 as new captions and a change of the billing and play sheets must all be changed for the Western tour."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, April 1, 1914:

"It has often been said that the best way to fight an evil is to bare it to the light of publicity in all its ugly truth, and that public opinion would then do the rest. So with this six-part sermon on the use of cocaine, there is an absolute truthful exposition of the evils of the cocaine habit, without, of course, some of the sexual laxity which follows the use of the drug. There is shown the way of acquiring the habit and its gradually growing hold upon the human frame until the final triumph that drives the human being to every crime. It is hardly a pleasant film, the whole of the space being devoted to the exposition of the subject. And yet, like the modern form of sermon which comes in a disguised form, as the treatment of a serious subject in the form of a biography, or any other topic honeyed over with the prettier wording of the subject in the form of fiction, so this, a serious, morbid and possibly a disgusting subject, has been so handled by the material built around it that it not only accomplishes its purpose - namely, the exposition - but it at the same time handles it in a more pleasant form, so as to make the story interesting, and what is more valuable, serves to hold the untiring attention from beginning to end.

"There need be no fear in the mind of anyone that the film will pall. It is so well spaced, so evenly developed, so full of vital scenes, a good many of them of a tremendous scope and strength, that there is no possibility of fatigue. And to aid the picture, an adaptation of the sketch in which Hermann Lieb played, there is the work of the actors themselves. First comes, in order of success, Mr. Lieb. His work is the inevitable result of the appearance on the screen of a finished and convincing actor of the legitimate stage. With no experience before the camera Mr. Lieb makes his every emotion register upon the celluloid. So fine is his work that one at all times forgets that he is anything but the character; his personality is lost. Among the feminine principals, first comes Laura Nelson Hall, who plays her allotted part with consummate skill. From the society woman of rich and pampered ease, she gradually merges into the cocaine fiend and then the prostitute, getting her cocaine money in that way, with the gradual and easy transition that speaks the highest knowledge of her art. One feature that will differentiate this film from all others of the 'star' kind is that the use of cocaine has the tendency to make the user desire no company save his or her own. This has resulted in Miss Hall pre-empting one-half the film and Mr. Lieb the other half, for seldom are they seen in the same scene. The end is a double tragedy for the users of the drug, and this sinister warning is another reason why the film will prove a salutary lesson and no possible temptation to the spectator. The evils, in their every phase, and none of the pleasures are brought out. It is a wholesome protest against the wholesaler of drugs, liquors, etc., from whom the evil starts as it passes to the retailer, the politician, the 'runner,' and the fiend.

"The son of the family, Slim, is first shown addicted to drink, and the doctor, to quiet his nerves, gives him an injection of morphine. That starts it, and he is seen stealing, even murdering in his craze for the drug which gets its hold upon his system. Treachery and many other evils are the result of the moral weakening of his being. At the same time, his sister, married, is introduced to the habit by some of her society friends, and she also gradually lowers herself until she secures the money be being a prostitute on the streets, having long ago left her husband when he discovered her craving for the drug. The film goes on to thoroughly expose the evil from its every angle, both male and female, and shows their final death, after having placed the blame for the habit upon the wholesaler, because of the inability to secure more of the drug."

REVIEW, Variety, April 3, 1914:

"Dope is a six-reel feature film relating to the drug habit, which just misses being 'education' through the manner in which the subject has been treated, and places itself in the 'vice' class from the author-actor, Hermann Lieb, over-reaching in a few scenes. The first and worst of these is that showing the mother of a boy, who left a pleasant home with her son because she could not secure cocaine, sunken to a street walker, drinking in the back room of a saloon and arrested for soliciting, being freed upon the promise to leave town, taking her boy, who has grown large enough to be a telegraph messenger, back to New York, where the mother joins a 'coke' sniffing party that ends in a row. The final part brings about the death of John (Slim) Rogers, Jr., the son of the wholesale druggist, and the mother (sister to Slim and wife of Rogers partner) in the retail drug store where the illicit sale of cocaine had been going on. The husband, Binkley, is led to the store by his now recovered son, and sees his wife fall dead beside the body of her brother, his death having occurred from a revolver shot by a crooked pal. The brother had been but lately released from prison, receiving 10 years for murdering his father, that also appearing in the picture. After the two people are found in the drug store by the husband, who knows it is the result of the drug habit, the husband accuses the druggist of bringing about the end, but he, in turn, produces a bottle of coke, pointing to the label bearing the name of the wholesale firm of which the husband is a member.

"This and other situations in the six-reeler are founded upon and have been adapted from Mr. Lieb's vaudeville sketch, Dope. In that playlet Lieb was the druggist - in the film he is the bad boy of the family - and as such rapidly falls down in the social scale until meeting his death. As a picture in six reels Dope is rather interesting insofar as illustrating in a legitimate way the menace of drugs. It has not the sensationalism of The Drug Terror, something to Dope's credit, and the picture moves quickly enough, being very well staged for the most part, and were it not for the unclean portions or vice sections of the film, Mr. Lieb would have had a feature he could have made extravagant claims for. The part holding the mother on the streets suggests too much in the aggregate and strikes one as an unholy exaggeration, in this particular instance. The direct story, as in the Lieb sketch, makes a connection between the wholesale and retail druggist, and in each case brings retribution home to the wholesaler. Dope as a picture will instill fear of insidious drugs, and for that purpose alone would have been worthy were the vice scenes absent.

"Mr. Lieb, the principal player, gives a fair performance, fluctuating so, with a continuous comment at hand, that he aged the role without an apparent attempt to give it sufficient youthfulness. Laura Nelson Hall as the wife who became addicted to the drug had her good and poor moments also, but in the majority of the scenes did very well. Miss Hall, however often made up too sharply. Ernest Truex, who was the 'good little devil' in the Belasco play of that title, took the son, and played it lifelike. Christine Blessing gave expression to the role of Mrs. Rogers, particularly in the scene where her daughter became intoxicated. William H. Tooker and Gaston Mervale were the elderly husbands and partners in the wholesale drug firm. The film has not been elaborately produced. Much of the playing is done in the studio. Few supers were required. Dope as a feature is going to be a matter of personal opinion as to value and merit. Exhibitors who handle vice pictures can use this one; those who make it a rule not to will have to decide whether they will chance it. - Sime"

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