Volume II: Filmography

Episode 5 .

THE MILLION DOLLAR MYSTERY

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA

a.k.a. THE PROBLEM OF THE SEALED BOX

July 20, 1914 (Monday)

Length: 2 reels (reels 9 and 10)

ARTICLE, The New Rochelle Pioneer, June 25, 1914:

"At the Bottom of the Sea, the fifth episode in the great Million Dollar Mystery, will, of course, be the headliner at Loew's Theatre, as far as the photoplays are concerned, for the first three days of the coming week. The great serial, filled with daring exploits and hairbreadth escapes is responsible for filling the popular playhouse at every performance, while the usual variety of vaudeville keeps the audience amused between times.

"A synopsis of the coming episode is told as follows: The Countess plans a cunning scheme. This causes Florence to despair. Jones, learning of it, secretly removes from its hiding place a tin box labeled 'Sid Hargreave' [sic]. Cautiously, he steals away with it, hires a swift motor boat and starts out to sea. The band's spy sees Jones remove the box. After losing sight of him, the spy, joined by Braine, traces him, hires a speeding motor boat and locates him desperately trying to bury the box on a nearby lonely island. They frustrate this plan, pursue him, and in a whirlwind chase close up with him. The scene ends with the pursuing motor boat a mass of flames, the pursuers struggling in the sea, Jones speeding away safely and the box, still unopened, at the bottom of the sea."

ARTICLE, Reel Life, June 27, 1914:

"Albert C. Froome, who for several years headed the bill at the New York Hippodrome, has joined the Thanhouser forces. He is famous in the theatrical profession for his dare-devil stunts and absolute fearlessness. His work in The Million Dollar Mystery will carry many of the thrills of the big production. Recently, he starred in a scene in which a racing motor boat was set on fire and then destroyed by an explosion. In a racing boat there is precious little room for passengers. When the fire broke out Mr. Froome was surrounded immediately by the flames, but he went right on with the action. Just as the boat was blown in pieces by the explosion, Mr. Froome leaped into the water, his clothes ablaze - a bit of realism which had not appeared in the scenario. Frank Farrington also made the leap with him.

"Life guards and passing steamers began signaling, and the America's Cup defender, 'Vanitie,' stood by, her crew ready to lower a small boat to the rescue. But Director Howell Hansel passed word that it was not a marine accident, and Mr. Froome and Mr. Farrington clambered aboard the Thanhouser launch, jubilant, and ready to do it all over again."

SYNOPSIS-ARTICLE, Reel Life, July 18, 1914:

"Angered by the way Florence Hargreave has slipped through their fingers just when they believed they were about to wrest from her the secret of her father's millions, Countess Olga, Braine and their band of conspirators form another plan to entrap her. Braine dictates the following newspaper personal which is inserted in a local paper: 'Dear Florence - The hiding place is discovered. Remove to more secure hiding place at once. - S.H.'

"A conspirator (Albert C. Froome) is sent disguised as an organ grinder to spy upon the occupants of the Hargreave mansion so that in the event the treasure is removed after the personal is read it can be traced to its new hiding place. The conspirator is accompanied by a girl dancer. Jones, Hargreave's butler, sees the organ grinder approach the limousine of the Countess Olga when the latter motors out of the Hargreave grounds. Returning to the curtains, through which he can peep out upon Margaret [sic; Florence was intended] and Miss Farlow, the butler overhears them reading the personal. Jones at once realizes that the advertisement is meant to frighten Florence, and determines to mislead the supposed organ grinder.

"He watches the conspirator creep close to the mansion and climb a tree, from which he drops to the roof of the porch. Jones then goes upstairs into Florence's room and, after assuring himself the organ grinder is on watch, slides up a picture of Sidney [sic] Hargreave and two other panels in the wall. This action reveals a brass-bound box with the name Stanley Hargreave upon it. The Italian hurries to Braine and tells him that he has discovered the hiding place of the treasure and that the butler is about to secrete it elsewhere.

"Braine and the organ grinder follow Jones to a boat landing where they learn that he has engaged 'Little Marie,' one of the fastest power boats on the seaboard. The conspirators also engage a speedy motor boat and set off in pursuit. After cruising about the Sound, the conspirators finally spy a launch miles off on the farther shore. Jones is digging furiously, apparently trying to bury his box before discovery, but when his boatman tells him that a launch is heading full speed toward the cove in which they have taken refuge he rushes back to the 'Little Marie.' The speedy launch is driven quickly out of the cove into the open Sound.

"Then starts a desperate race between Braine and his fellow conspirator on the one hand and Jones on the other. The long black craft hired by Braine has a greater supply of gasoline, however, and at last draws near Jones' boat. Jones, seemingly making a last desperate fight for possession of the Hargreave treasure, draws a revolver and shoots a hole in the feed pipe of Braine's launch. He raises the box high in the air and casts it into the sea. Jones then quickly makes his escape and Braine's craft drifts helplessly about. The conspirators can see the treasure box resting at the bottom of the sea, but while they are peering over the edge of their launch, gasoline, seeping through the bullet hole in the feed pipe, is ignited by the sparking motor and in a few minutes the launch is aflame from stem to stern. Driven from their boat the conspirators plunge one by one, their clothes aflame, into the sea. They have taken only a few strokes from the launch when the gasoline tank explodes and sends the launch to the bottom.

"In this by-adventure Jones is merely amusing himself at the expense of the conspirators. Confident of his ability to mislead the members of the Black Hundred unassisted, he does not call Norton to his aid, and back at the Hargreave mansion the young reporter's love affair with Florence advances by leaps and bounds, always restrained, however, by the chaperonage of Susan Farlow, Florence's instructress and mentor.

"In the fifth episode of The Mystery President Hite has again striven for realism. The motor boat used by the conspirators was purchased at a price running up into four figures, and thrifty Long Islanders who saw the boat burning up in the waters of the Sound shook their heads at such apparent waste of money. The owner of the craft who built the motor boat with the intention of entering it in the international motor boat races waxed indignant when he saw the boat blown up to provide the spectacle, which constitutes the 'punch' in the fifth episode of The Million Dollar Mystery. 'If I had known that my boat was to be used like that,' he said, 'I never should have sold it.' Director Howell Hansel consoled the irate motor boat enthusiast by pointing out that millions of people in the next few weeks will be entertained by the thrilling finish to the motor boat race.

"Sub rosa, Frank Farrington and Albert Froome are glad that the burning and destruction of the boat was staged only once - and that before the camera. Mr. Farrington's trousers were burning before he leaped from the boat, and Mr. Froome, while swimming away from the burning craft, was struck by a blazing piece of the boat's hull, when the gasoline tank exploded. Each episode of The Million Dollar Mystery has been designed to contain at least one spectacular feature in addition to the stirring series of adventures incidental to the plot."

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, August 2, 1914:

"In the fifth installment of the Thanhouser serial the activities of Jones, Hargreave's butler, begin to assume proportions which promise to make him the central figure in the plot action. With able foresight the author of the photo-mystery has conveyed the impression that the butler could tell, if he would, where the treasure of Hargreave was hidden. The conspirators themselves begin to realize that the butler is the key to the situation, and determine to watch him closely. And Jones determines to fool them - which he does.

"Sidney Bracy plays his important role with remarkable ability. He conveys by the expression on his face just the right degree of information to his audience without revealing to them anything definite. One knows that he is deceiving Braine and his cohorts, but one does not know surely whether he is not at the same time deceiving the audience. And when there is a $10,000 thought attached largely to Jones's actions, thinking out the activities of such a man becomes a painful process. Florence LaBadie is the same attractive little heroine of the first four episodes - not at all emotional, and not a great actress - but adequate in her part in that she looks pretty and interesting and quite unaffected. Naturalness is her forte.

"Action in the fifth installment is rapid and smooth, but does little to advance any of the main issues of the story. Jones, having observed several men skulking around the premises and realizing from scraps of a conversation which he overhears that a fake advertisement has been sent to Florence signed with Hargreave's initials, determines to put the conspirators off the scent. The advertisement has ordered the girl to remove the treasure to a more secure hiding place. The butler therefore takes a supposed treasure box from the wall behind Hargreave's portrait (while a conspirator looks through a window) and hurries away. The conspirators give chase. Jones takes to the water in a fast motor boat, and the villains still pursue in another fast boat. After an exciting race - the issue of which can never be in doubt to anyone who has ever seen a real motor boat - Jones is overhauled and throws the treasure box overboard. While the conspirators are endeavoring to find some way of recovering the box, which they see resting comfortably on the bosom of Davy Jones, their boat catches fire and they are forced to swim for their lives.

"There is one bit of work in this episode which puts the damper somewhat on the realism of the last two reels. Jones is supposed, according to the story and according to all laws of intelligence, to hire a fast racing boat for the attempted escape. Now what he hired may have been fast - although there is no such evidence in the film - but it certainly was not a racing motor boat! The boat of the conspirators has the advantage of looking quite like a fifty-mile-an-hour winner, but the craft in which the butler embarks looks more like a yacht tender than it does like a speed boat. But barring this fault the film is all that previous numbers have led the public to expect it would be."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, August 8, 1914: This review is reprinted in the narrative section of the present work.

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, August 5, 1914: This review is reprinted in the narrative section of the present work.

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