Volume II: Filmography

THE LIE

William Russell is shown playing chess with the father of a girl who had spurned him. Courtesy of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (F-120)

September 19, 1911 (Tuesday)

Length: 1,000 feet

Character: Drama

Cast: William Russell (the broker)

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, September 16, 1911:

"You know the harmless, foolish liar, who hasn't got brains enough to tell one that you can immediately spot as an unprincipled whopper. We never mind him. But the crafty, malicious liar - the brainy, sneaky proposition with plots of the cleverness worthy of a nobler cause - that is a menace with which our story deals. But in addition to his character he plays his hand in the guise of friendship. Now put two and two together, and add to it the splendid acting of the Thanhouser stock, with our never-failing photography. That's no 'baker's half dozen'!"

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, September 16, 1911:

"A young artist and a businessman he thought his best friend, are both suitors for the same girl, and the artist won. The broker concealed his rage under the masked friendship, and the happy couple never dreamed that he was secretly planning revenge. The broker had a stenographer, an orphan girl, who was the sole support of her little sister. The stenographer was in financial difficulties and the broker by accident discovered it. So he proposed to the girl that she aid him in a 'little joke,' promising that if she did so he would give her, what to her was a large sum of money. Her share in the plot was that she be in the artist's room at a certain hour when the artist would be there, he not knowing of her presence. To strengthen his scheme, the broker induced the stenographer to write a fervid love note, presumably meant for the artist.

"The broker's plot worked like a charm. He managed to secure a wax impression of his rival's door key, made a duplicate of it, and gave it to the stenographer. Then he waited his time. While calling at the girl's house, ostensibly to play chess with her father, he heard the artist tell his sweetheart that he would have to go home early as he had some important work to do. A telephone message enabled the broker to instruct the stenographer to reach the house ahead of the artist, and she concealed herself in an inside room. The note, dropped on the reception room floor, was found by the engaged girl, as the broker had planned it, and she hurried off to confront her supposedly recreant lover. The stenographer was found in the room and the explanations of the mystified artist were disbelieved. The girl haughtily broke her engagement and the man who had wrecked two lives was happier with the success of his infamous scheme.

"But there are generally some little thing that a criminal overlooks that spells defeat in the hour of his apparent trap. The stenographer and her little sister were passengers on a boat, and the artist, broken hearted and dispirited, was there, too. The little sister fell overboard and the plucky artist, risking his own life, dived over and saved her. The stenographer realized that the man she had wronged had dared death to help a child, and one that was very dear to her. She did not dare to tell him what she had done, but visited the other woman. To her she confessed everything, blaming the broker, who was present, as the author of the plot. The artist sat in his studio, too unhappy to work. Life held but little for him, he thought. But in the hour of his darkest dejection, the woman he loved best in the world entered, confessed that she had misjudged him and promised that if he forgave her, they would go through life together, hand in hand, loving, loyal partners. And the efforts that had been made to part them, in the end, only brought them more firmly together."

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, September 24, 1911:

"We cannot withhold the query as to the fate of the real heroine of the story and about whom the whole action revolves. She is dropped abruptly and nothing is shown as to what becomes of her because of her rash act in betraying the unscrupulous broker in whose employ she worked as stenographer. This man is in love with a society girl who becomes engaged to an artist. To break off this match the broker prevails upon his stenographer to write a note to the artist making an appointment to meet him in his studio at night. He then secures an impression of the door key to the studio, has a duplicate made, and goes to the home of the wealthy girl to call. After the artist leaves the broker drops the note on the floor, the fiancée picks it up, becomes enraged at the supposed perfidy of her lover, and with the broker and her father, goes to the studio, where they find the stenographer.

"The engagement is broken until the office girl has accidentally met the artist on an excursion boat and later confessed the plot to the heartbroken maid, who has meanwhile taken up with the broker. She casts him aside and welcomes the return of the artist - but the other miss, the principal of the drama, is left out in the cold and nothing is shown as to her final settlement with her employer. The studio might have been presented in better fashion, as there is a lack of any true atmosphere in its furnishings. How does it happen that the artist does not find the stenographer in his room when he makes a change of garb and gets into a bathrobe, which in all likelihood would be kept in his bedroom where the girl hides? Aside from such matters the production is interesting and will please the average spectator."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, October 7, 1911:

"A pretty melodrama, well planned, with clearly contrasted characters. The main plot (the story of interrupted love) is worked out to its happy ending. The counterplot is left at loose ends. In this, a pretty stenographer and her little sister are left uncared for. It was the need of the money, that her employer, a broker, offered that induced the older of these sisters to play, without knowing its import, a part in the lie that divided the hero and his sweetheart. The hero later rescues the little sister from drowning and then the big sister confesses to the heroine. It is a pleasant picture and commendable. Its chief shortcoming is that the interest is divided between the orphan sisters and the love story."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, September 27, 1911:

"This interesting story shows admirable construction and is played among actual and well chosen backgrounds and suggestive settings. It is agreeably acted, though the actor impersonating the artist did not seem to fit his role. To get rid of his rival, the artist, the young businessman determines to imperil the good name of this man. Knowing that his stenographer is in need of money, he offers to reimburse her if she will help him play a little joke. As he had planned, she goes to the artist's apartment while he is away and enters with a key that her employer had had made from an imprint of wax. The fellow then arouses suspicions from a note he writes, suggesting the presence of the other girl. He takes the artist's sweetheart thither, and the stenographer steps forth. She later confesses when on an outing at the seashore the artist saves the life of her young sister."

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