The Silent Plea (1915)

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Edith Storey | Harry T. Morey | Lionel Belmore (Director)

Rest of cast:

Donald Hall | Edward Elkas | Mary Anderson | Helen Connelly | Malcolm Lee Beggs | Denton Vane | Anders Randolf | Mae Koch (Story) | Marguerite Bertsch (Scenario) | Sophie Irene Loeb (Scenario)

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“A Silent Plea”

Three-reel Vitagraph subject powerfully points out why indigent widowed mothers should be pensioned.

Reviewed by George Blaisdell.

It sometimes happens when we have a picture with a civic purpose that we get the moral but find the story has been overlooked. In A Silent Plea, a three-reel Vitagraph subject to be released on February 2, we have not only a powerful moral but also a powerful story. It is a plea for the turning over to widowed mothers of the money the state now devotes to the support of children in institutions, in order that the children may have the benefit of the mother’s guidance. The story was written by Mae Koch. The adaptation was by Marguerite Bertsch, in co-operation with Sophie Irene Loeb, member of the New York State Commission for Relief of Widowed Mothers. We are going to hear much of A Silent Plea following its release. It is a picture that will give an exhibitor opportunity of bringing to his house the leaders of civic thought in his community, and will give these opportunity to send their friends.

Edith Storey has the part of the mother who bravely fights her way in the world that she may support and keep to herself the son and the daughter following the death in an accident of the husband and father. As the sub-title indicates, it is the breaking of the tender thread that holds the home together — and every one knows of numberless instances of these comfortable homes and happy ones that have but one life between them and poverty. Miss Storey gives a portrayal that in strength matches the deep appeal of the many situations into which the mother is thrown. It is her picture more than that of the remainder of the cast. In the beginning we see her in the forgotten garb with the puffed sleeves of twenty years ago. The atmosphere of the happy domestic circle is finely established.

Following the accident the action jumps twenty years. The wife goes to an old friend of the family, now a state senator. To him she tells her story, and in retrospect we see what has happened in the intervening years. We see the breaking up of the home, the renting of a cheap apartment and the securing of employment by the wife; the indications in the acts of the children that the new environment is changing their characters for the worse; the relentless pursuit of the widow by her employer and her final discharge; her appeals to a charitable organization; the promised investigation and its unfruitful results; the arrest of the boy and the turning over by the kindly judge of the case to the Children’s Society; another investigation, and the taking away of the children, with its heartbreak for the mother. In her momentary visits she sees the children slipping away from her. When they are grown the mother is powerless to stem the tide that is pulling them down in their weaknesses. The daughter falls into the employment of the manufacturer who had discharged the mother. The son is arrested for falsifying his books.

This is the situation when the mother goes to the senator. He listens to the telling of this story. He announces that he is going into the senate and make a speech for the passage of the widows’ allowance bill. We see him as he does it. It is an impressive sight. Alternating titles, couched in eloquent sentences, tell us what he is saying. He appeals for the mothers and for the children — we get flashes of a group of the little ones. The senators, at the conclusion of the speech, crowd about the Senator and congratulate him — and pass the bill. The story ends right there. We may guess the rest; but the point has been made, and in a way that drives under our skin and into our minds the great need of legislative action in the one particular direction.

Lionel Belmore is the producer of this subject. He is to be thanked for what he has given us. Harry Morey is the senator. Mr. Morey has thrown into his interpretation a depth of feeling and a power of portrayal that makes his impress felt in the story. Donald Hall plays the husband, and plays it well. Edward Elkas is the manufacturer who meets his death when at a gay dinner party he arouses the ire of one of his companions; his attentions to the girl with him are only too plain.

In A Silent Plea we have a story with a purpose and a purpose with a story.

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Scene from A Silent Plea (Vitagraph)

Collection: Moving Picture World, January 1915