Volume II: Filmography

THE SUCCESS OF SELFISHNESS

British release title: THE SUCCESSFUL SELFISHNESS

February 6, 1914 (Friday)

Length: 1 reel (1,008 feet)

Character: Drama

Scenario: Lloyd F. Lonergan

Cast: Florence LaBadie (Irene, a country girl who decides to become rich), Sidney Bracy (Strand, a Wall Street operator), Nick S. Woods (Bert, a country bookkeeper), Bill Noel (Jim, a stenographer), James Dunne (Percy, a masher), Charles T. Horan (Casey, a policeman), Perry Horton (Irene's butler), Lila Chester (Irene's maid), "Miss Beautiful" (Grace, Irene's sister), Harry Benham (Tom, Grace's husband), Leland Benham (Ted, child of Tom and Grace), Helen Badgley (Nita, child of Tom and Grace)

Notes: 1. An erroneous release date of February 7, 1914 appeared in a Thanhouser advertisement in the February 7, 1914 issue of The Moving Picture World. 2. To keep up the interest of the public, Thanhouser continued to mention specifically "Miss Beautiful" in its advertising, this time noting that she was "The famous mystery girl of the Thanhouser studio." Apparently she had become "famous" in about two weeks, for her first film was Her Love Letters, released on January 20th. 3. An expanded story by Arthur Winfield, based on the scenario of this film, appeared in the April 1914 issue of The Photoplay Magazine. The names of the characters were different from that in the official Thanhouser publicity releases. The country girl was named May Burton, and her admirers were Bill Winters and Jim Clark. The Wall Street operator was named Jack Tracy. As in Thanhouser publicity, the officer was named Casey.

SYNOPSIS, Reel Life, January 31, 1914:

"Irene was not so simple as she looked. She was early convinced that the only way to get ahead in the world was to use everybody - and in the small town where she lived she practiced her theory. She never for a moment intended marrying either Bert or Jim, but she kept them both guessing, and meanwhile learned from the bookkeeping and stenography which she turned to good account in getting a position in New York. The unscrupulous Wall Street operator, whose confidential secretary she eventually became, got into trouble with the government. Fearing the testimony of his stenographer, he gave Irene a large sum of money and told her to go to Canada on a vacation. The simple little country girl, however, protested that her conscience would not permit her to run away - and when he had pleaded in vain, she played her trump card. 'Of course a wife may never testify against her husband,' she said - he saw it was a case of marrying the girl or going to jail, and he chose the former alternative. Irene was pretty, and she made a very presentable wife - but without love as a ballast, she plunged into all sorts of extravagances, and in the end was the ruin of her husband, and of her own happiness."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, February 21, 1914:

"It is what will be called a 'little' picture; but it gets its lesson over with quite a punch. There is effective comedy in the cool way Flo LaBadie gets her education from her sweethearts without having to pay for tuition at a business college and then goes to the city for a good job. She becomes in time the wife of a millionaire, and her extravagance ruins him so she is left at the end in the shadow to mourn alone. It is a very 'cool' picture, out of the ordinary run and will be welcome."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 18, 1914:

"The moral in this original little tale is pressed home skillfully and artistically. Irene, pretty country lass, is a self-seeker, and uses even her rustic admirers to her own advantage by learning typewriting and stenography and tutoring them. Then she hies herself to New York, and secures a position with a Wall Street operator. He is warned by a friend that he is in danger of being investigated by the government, and that to be on the safe side he had better send the stenographer away for a while to prevent her from being subpoenaed. When he offers to send her to Canada for a 'vacation,' she adroitly suggests that a man's wife cannot be made to testify against her husband. He takes the hint, proposes and they are married. Later she ruins him by her extravagant ways of living, and he deserts her. The story closes with her vision of her sister in a happy home with husband and kiddies. The action is well knit together and the presentation is at all points of the highest order."

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