Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 9: 1916 Florence LaBadie Scores a Success

Next on the Pathé schedule of releases was The Fear of Poverty, distributed as a five-reel Gold Rooster Play on September 10th. Reviewers were enthusiastic. The commentary in Exhibitors Herald is representative:

As a whole: excellent; star: splendid; story: original; cast: admirable; settings: good.

This is one of the very best of Gold Roosters. The theme around which it is built is an appealing one, and a very true one; the story made from it is highly dramatic and at times emotionally effective. There is a certain charm in the story with carries it from the depths of depression to which the general subject matter tends to pull it. The picture will please any audience greatly. Florence LaBadie takes two parts, and the few double exposures are done naturally. There is no use of this device simply for its own sake. The only times it is used are those when it is necessary to the story.

The narrative deals with the daughter of a woman who had been a poor girl. When her husband became rich, so great was her fear of returning to the old poverty that she sacrificed everything to gaining and keeping her wealth. She brought the daughter up with the belief that wealth was all that mattered. When the girl marries a man whom she does not love, the mother is happy. But the daughter is not happy with her husband as she has fallen in love with a struggling young artist. Her husband loses her money and kills himself, leaving the girl to seek happiness with the artist. The mother is convinced in the end that wealth is not such an important thing after all. The acting and settings are excellent throughout. George Marlo, a popular Thanhouser favorite, plays the artist convincingly. Miss LaBadie does her usual good work. Altogether extremely satisfying.

Saint, Devil and Woman, also featuring Florence LaBadie, was produced earlier in the year as a Thanhouser Classic but was released by Pathé on September 25, 1916 as a Gold Rooster Play. The film garnered mixed reviews. Variety had this to say:

Thanhouser has released under the Pathé Gold Rooster brand an uncanny and ridiculous photoplay, written by Philip Lonergan and directed by Frederick Sullivan. It is called Saint, Devil and Woman and starts off with a statement that it is "founded on psychological facts."

A young convent girl, heir to a wealthy uncle, is under the hypnotic spell of the executor, a villain made up a la Mephisto. He compels her to become a she-devil, scratch and tear her maid, cut the wages of her employees, etc. In the end she is changed from a "fiend incarnate" to her former sweet self by a handsome young doctor who is also a hypnotizer and possessed of a will even stronger than that of the villainous executor. With the death by suicide of the executor all the girl's diabolical impulses depart and she returns to the convent, fearing to face the world. Thither goes the doctor and says: "Are you afraid to face it with me?" And then she lays her curly locks upon his manly bosom and the picture fades out. Florence LaBadie plays the girl and does nicely with a very difficult role.

Wid's Film and Film Folk dissected the production:

We get here an action melodrama with situations which are lacking in suspense because it is rather apparent all the time just how the plot will develop. The offering is terribly handicapped by many long titles, which explain exactly what is going to happen, this being done so frequently that it puts the production in the "primer" class. It would seem that those who edited this offering have no respect whatever for the intelligence of their audiences. Instead of allowing the characters to put over the dramatic scenes - and I can tell you that the director and artists presented the dramatic scenes in a very acceptable manner - the title writer proceeded to tell just what was in the mind of every character and just what they were going to do. Such editing is inexcusable. From start to finish the interiors were classy, the photography was clean-cut, and many of the lightings were particularly effective. Miss LaBadie, Mr. Dion and Wayne Arey, who carried the three principal roles, worked smoothly, and with properly worded titles and a plot which was a bit less obvious their scenes would have registered quite satisfactorily. Unfortunately all of their work suffered because every one knew by the titles and by the plot construction what they were going to try to do long before they started. Such construction discounts any dramatic action.

The story was the old innocent-queen-villainous-prime minister idea reconstructed to cover the innocent heiress made to appear as an overbearing tyrant through the manipulations of a villainous executor. The peasant hero who figures in the romantic version of this familiar plot appears as a doctor working in the slums. They then introduced the old hypnotic stuff, with the villain making the heiress a she-devil, and the doctor saving her by his superior hypnotic power. In order to have some "big" scenes they dragged in a strike on the finish, ordered by the heiress while under the villain's power, and stopped by the heiress when the doctor got busy.

As a sample of the titling, I might tell you that, when they got to the big scene where the villain and the hero were battling for the swaying of the heroine, the editor stopped the scene at the big moment and inserted a long title telling what was going to happen, instead of allowing the characters to put it over by their acting, which they were truly capable of doing. It must have been that there was not enough footage when this climax was reached, because although the hero conquered and stopped the strike, and the heiress knew that the villain was a murderer wanted by the police, they allowed the villain to nonchalantly remain about the place, with the result that he again influenced the girl, and the hero had to come in and do it over again, the police coming in on the final curtain to arrest the murderer just after the hero had saved the heiress again by his superior hypnotic power. There was a lot of action to it, but none of it really got under your shirt. It is fairly interesting as stories go, but it lacks the essentials that make a big production.

Producer Sullivan is deserving of credit for the general excellence of the offering, although it is regrettable that such atmosphere should be wasted on such an ordinary story. The old story about the famous author who had been pestered by a writer to read his play certainly applies to this. After going over the highly praised production, the famous man wrote the following note: "My dear sir; I have read your play. Oh! my dear sir!"

The lightning scenes were particularly worthy of comment, one flash showing a pillar hit by a lightning bolt being quite effective. The entire cast was quite satisfactory, although occasionally some of the gestures were a bit theatric. Among those in support were Ernest Howard, Claus Bogel and Ethyle Cooke.

The Box Office Angle: If your audience accepts action melodramas without serious complaint, even though the stories be old and obvious, this should go over very satisfactorily. It has been very well done except for the titling. The story would have had a great deal more strength if the climax had come after the first battle of mentalities for the control of the hypnotized girl. I fear that most audiences will be amused rather than convinced when this battle is repeated the second time. You may be able to pull some business on the name of Miss LaBadie, with her work proving most satisfactory in this [sic] who have her marked as one of their favorites. The chief weakness is that the story doesn't convince."

In its September 9th issue, The Moving Picture World carried several Thanhouser news items: Vincent Serrano, a well-known stage actor, had been signed for work in A Modern Monte Cristo. O.A.C. Lund, a well-known director, was set to work on a Thanhouser film. The Southeastern Film Corporation was incorporated with a capital stock of $300,000 and was set to produce films in Florida and other Southern locations and to operate a string of theatres, causing this reaction: "The managers of the Vim, Kalem, Gaumont, Thanhouser, Eagle, Palm and United States studios in Jacksonville are stated to have commented favorably on the movement."

In the same month Intolerance, D.W. Griffith's first epic film since The Birth of a Nation, was released. The Moving Picture World called it "the world's greatest motion picture." Note