Volume II: Filmography

JILTED

May 14, 1912 (Tuesday)

Length: 1 reel (split with Niagara the Beautiful at the end)

Character: Drama

Director: George O. Nichols

Cameraman: A.H. Moses, Jr.

Cast: Marguerite Snow, Florence LaBadie, Harry Benham (the fiancé), William Russell (the suitor)

Locations: New Rochelle; aboard the Apache, a coastwise steamer of the Clyde Line; and Florida

ADVERTISEMENT, The Moving Picture World, May 11, 1912:

"A marvelous love story that runs all the way from New York to Florida and back again. Niagara the Beautiful gives a really beautiful finish to the film."

SYNOPSIS, The Moving Picture World, May 11, 1912:

"When the beautiful heroine and the gallant hero are wrecked, or drift to a desert island, and they are marooned, or left behind when the others sail away, they ALWAYS get married - in story books. Of course, it is all right in make-believe-land, but in real life such a course would be inconvenient, and so a certain young woman found. She was pretty enough to be a heroine, and the man who saved her life was brave enough to be her hero, but she was very mournful when she reached her friends, and thought of the rules laid down by her most popular authors. The young woman was a college graduate, wealthy in her own right, and a painter from choice. The hero was a common sailor, brave enough, yet not the kind of a man she would pick out for a life partner.

"Then there was another reason. This 'reason' was a wealthy, well-bred young man, who adored her, and whom she deeply loved. They were engaged, both were perfectly happy, but the romantic young woman believed that it could never be. By all the laws of literature, her life belonged to the man who had saved her; so when they were rescued, she wrote two notes, one to the preserver of her life, informing him that she would marry him, and the other to her fiancé, tearfully informing him that all was over between them. Real life differs decidedly from fiction. Men do not always wed the women whose lives they save. If they did so, he would go on the retired list after one act of bravery and only be eligible again when he became a widower or was freed by the divorce courts. So, for reasons that satisfied at least four persons, this adventure did not end in the story book way, and everybody was happy."

REVIEW, The Morning Telegraph, May 19, 1912:

"Here is still another photoplay which was taken in part when the company started on its trip to Florida, making at least the sixth or more film in which scenes on the steamer have been brought into acceptable usage. A girl starts for Florida, leaving her girl chum at the studio in New York and also her sweetheart. The ship is wrecked and the girl is saved by a dashing sailor whom she had spoken to a few times. She feels it her duty to wed him because of his gallant act. And so she jilts her lover. Soon she returns home to find her sweetheart still yearning for her and then the sailor calls with his own bestest girl and tells them all that he is engaged to her, and so the heroine (if she be such) wins her own love after all. The ship scenes are remarkably realistic, some of genuine taking and some of studio manufacture. Those in the stateroom showing the motion of the vessel are unusually clever in production."

REVIEW, The Moving Picture World, May 25, 1912:

"A picture giving the love story of a girl who is very sentimental. She left her fiancé in New York to visit friends in Florida. The ship was wrecked and her life was saved by a sailor. These scenes are very good. She thought it her duty to marry him. The way out of the difficulty is found through a bit of humor. It is a slight picture, but contains some fine pictures; one is of a skating pond and another is of a flower garden in Florida. Miss Snow, Miss LaBadie, and others appear in it. It is commendable."

REVIEW, The New York Dramatic Mirror, May 22, 1912:

"There is plenty of novelty in the way of background in this film, for the young lady concerned enjoys herself here in the North with skating and other winter sports and then goes to Florida. On the way there her life is saved on shipboard by a sailor, who rushes to her rocking cabin just at the crucial moment. On her arrival at Florida, she writes back to her lover, that she must say goodbye forever, as she feels in duty bound to marry the man who saved her life. It is not clear that the young man from the North ever received this letter. When she returned he called upon her, and the sailor also called at the same time. He sent a note before, however, which read: 'I am downstairs with the girl I love. Please don't marry me for saving your life. I prefer the one I've got.' After this naive 'come-back' on the girl, it is not hard to imagine where she sought balm for her wound."

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