Volume II: Filmography

THE SILENT WITNESS

Florence LaBadie and William Russell, a young married couple, are shown above as the central figures in a dramatic court case. Harry Benham, standing to the left, looks on.

Edwin Thanhouser himself is seen in the jury box to the extreme right. Courtesy oft the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. (F-280)

February 13, 1912 (Tuesday)

Length: 1 reel

Character: Drama

Cast: Florence LaBadie (the young wife), William Russell (the young husband), Joseph Graybill (the blackmailer), Violet Heming, Edwin Thanhouser (cameo appearance as member of the jury)

ARTICLE, The Moving Picture News, February 3, 1912:

"When on January 12 Thanhouser issued The Twelfth Juror many observers of Thanhouser work stated that it was the best mystery picture that that producer had ever turned out. The mystery element was unusually well sustained. But now advice comes from New Rochelle of 'a mystery sensation' that out-sensations the Twelfth Juror picture. The new effort is called The Silent Witness, and, as its title indicates, is a story of the courts like its mystery predecessor. It deals with a young businessman whose wife is annoyed by an assistant in the district attorney's office. The assistant is found shot in the businessman's home, and the district attorney seeks to send the businessman to the chair, when a housemaid rushes into the courtroom and gives the judge a packet which convicts the very district attorney who is prosecuting the case."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture News, February 3, 1912:

"The president of a state bank, who has become deeply involved through speculation, finds that the district attorney has evidence that will send him to jail. In a last effort to escape the consequences of his crime, the banker calls on the official of the law, and succeeds in bribing him to suppress the case. Not only is the district attorney a grafter, but his secretary is much of the same calibre. He has been watching his chief for weeks, hoping to 'get the goods on him,' and he finally succeeds. During the conference between the district attorney and the banker, the dishonest secretary is hidden in an adjoining room, and unseen by the others, he takes a photograph over the transom just at the interesting moment when a considerable amount of money changes hands. The secretary develops the picture, and finds that it is excellent. Whereupon he proceeds to blackmail his employer, and finds it possible to live extravagantly without work. He laughs at the district attorney, and retains the evidence of the official's crimes, knowing that he is safe as long as he can place his hands on it.

"Among the friends of the secretary is a young couple, and the secretary, becoming idle and dissipated, proceeds to make love to the wife. He hides his passion until one evening when he finds the wife alone. Then he boldly tries to embrace her, and she struggles to escape. The husband comes back at this moment and makes a rush for the would-be despoiler of his home. A lamp, the only light in the room, is upset, and the place is dark. Then there is a flash and a shot, and the young blackmailer falls to the floor, dead. The police are promptly on the scene, having heard the shot, and find the couple in the room with the body of their one-time friend. The wife thinks the husband fired in anger, and the husband believes the wife shot to protect herself. The woman faints, and the man 'confesses' and is led off to prison. Neither they nor the police suspect the district attorney, but he is the guilty man. Driven half mad by the constantly increasing demands of the blackmailer, he had followed him through the streets, determined to end his life of torment. At the house he saw his chance and took it.

"The district attorney is called upon to prosecute a man he knows to be innocent. Then the situation is further complicated by the wife who, to save her husband, confesses that she is the guilty person. The district attorney, in his summing up, accuses them both. His speech is well underway when an unexpected witness appears at the last moment. The slain man occupied a furnished room, and the place was being put in order for a new tenant. The maid, in the course of her work, discovered a packet, cunningly hidden, containing proof of the district attorney's guilt, and the strong inference that he was the only person who was interested in putting the secretary out of the way. Suddenly confronted with this evidence, the prosecutor broke down and confessed. Husband and wife, each of whom had tried to take the consequences of a crime to save the other, find that both are guiltless and are set free."

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, February 18, 1912:

"Detective stories and tales of crime, while often condemned, are in reality but pictures of life, and it is always with a keen sense of pleasure that a story is read or witnessed that so pictures an event of dramatic interest. In no other film story involving a tale or complications, of criminal act, of courtroom trial and legal routine has there been realized a more striking sense of proportions, and as to exceeding naturalness in large groupings and general staging. The taxing of the photograph of the district attorney who accepted a bribe from a criminal banker, the developing of the same in a dark room, the evolution of the tale when the secretary uses the photograph to blackmail the official, the killing of the secretary by the attorney, and the trial of the woman accused of the deed, with her final vindication through the presentation of the photograph in court, is told in an evenly dramatic way that is most commendable. The several roles are all well handled, the scenes finely made."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, February 24, 1912:

"It is a very commendable melodrama, closely knit, artistically staged and acted, exciting and well photographed. It has an intensely dramatic ending. The last scene is in a courtroom where a young husband (Mr. Russell) is on trial for murder. The district attorney is making a passionate plea for conviction, but we know that this district attorney killed a man himself. At the critical moment the silent witness is handed to the judge. Its photographs are often very pretty, indeed. It is an excellent feature picture."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 21, 1912:

"The action in this thrilling little drama is fast and progressive, accumulating event upon event in such an exciting and absorbing manner that one is carried along by the very intensity of its action until the satisfying and convincing close. The management of the story is remarkably good, especially in the manner in which the large amount of material has been used that ordinarily might make several pictures. Perhaps this over supply of complication is something of a drawback. The secretary of the district attorney obtains a certain power over the district attorney by taking a picture of the attorney while he is taking a bribe from a certain bank president. The picture is taken over the transom leading into the private office, and would mean exposure of frauds that had been perpetrated against the public. Thus in turn the secretary is bribed into silence. At last the district attorney follows this young man to the house of a friend, to the wife of whom the secretary had been paying considerable attention. The attorney shoots the young man through the window just as the husband enters and then throws the revolver through the window. Thus the guilt falls upon either the husband or the wife. The wife declares that she is the guilty one to save her husband. At the close of the trial, when all things seem to tend to conviction, the landlady of the deceased secretary rushes in with a note from the secretary declaring that the attorney had threatened his life. She delivers also the incriminating photograph. The district attorney is then made prisoner."

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