Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 7 (1914): Vice and Sex

Charles J. Hite's mind was busy thinking up new ventures, and one of these was Direct-From-Broadway Features, set up as yet another division of the octopus-like Mutual Film Corporation. In 1909 Joseph Medill Patterson, scion of the family who owned The Chicago Tribune (which was currently serializing The Adventures of Kathlyn, the Selig serial which the Tribune had sponsored), had written a play, Dope, based upon an investigation of cocaine addition in underworld dens in Chicago. Later, Dope toured as a highly successful play, with Hermann Lieb and Laura Nelson Hall heading the cast.

A way to make a quick buck in the movie game was to film the cast of a stage play, and that is just what was done in what was billed in some advertisements as a Thanhouser Special Production. Released in six reels, the longest New Rochelle film to date, Dope was said to have been made by Direct-From-Broadway Features, which, presumably, was inseparable from the Thanhouser studio. Release was in April through the Continental Feature Film Company, another Mutual division. One purpose for having multiple distribution outlets was to remove larger films from the regular release schedule, where they would not have fit anyway, and to charge a premium price for them to exchanges and theatre owners. The film, showing as it did drug addiction, prostitution, and vice, was calculated to have an impact on the wide market for white slavery films, the rage (in two meanings) of the industry at the time.

Dope drew forth long reviews in The New York Dramatic Mirror and a relatively new publication on the film reviewing scene, the well-known entertainment journal, Variety. "Sime," a writer for Variety, noted that the treatment of the subject just missed the education category and put it into the vice class, which is probably what was intended by Thanhouser. Further:

As a picture in six reels Dope is rather interesting insofar as illustrating in a legitimate way the menace of drugs. It has not the sensationalism of The Drug Terror, something to Dope's credit, and the picture moves quickly enough, being very well staged for the most part, and were it not for the unclean portions or vice sections of the film, Mr. Lieb would have had a feature he could have made extravagant claims for.... Dope as a picture will instill fear of insidious drugs, and for that purpose alone would have been worthy were the vice scenes absent.

Mr. Lieb, the principal player, gives a fair performance, fluctuating so, with a continuous comment at hand, that he aged the role without an apparent attempt to give it sufficient youthfulness. Laura Nelson Hall as the wife who became addicted to the drug had her good and poor moments also, but in the majority of the scenes did very well. Miss Hall, however, often made up too sharply. Ernest Truex, who was the "good little devil" in the Belasco play of that title, took the son, and played it lifelike. Christine Blessing gave expression to the role of Mrs. Rogers, particularly in the scene where her daughter became intoxicated. William H. Tooker and Gaston Mervale were the elderly husbands and partners in the wholesale drug firm. The film has not been elaborately produced. Much of the playing is done in the studio. Few supers were required. Dope as a feature is going to be a matter of personal opinion as to value and merit. Exhibitors who handle vice pictures can use this one; those who make it a rule not to will have to decide whether they will chance it. - Sime

More would be heard from Direct-From-Broadway Features. The Moving Picture World, April 11, 1914, printed an advertisement which announced that Beating Back, a six-reel feature film about the life of Al Jennings, made in New Rochelle, would soon be released, and that exhibitors should call, write, or wire for information.